“My father went down to Washington when they debriefed you. The program was over but he still had a few friends-he pulled strings just to watch. He was so excited-he was going to see Renn!”
“He just wanted to see the horns on my forehead,” Max flashed his horrible smile again. “He was interested in seeing someone else like him-someone else like you.”
“You’re somethin’, sweetie,” Tauber crowed. “You’re just what we’ve been needin’.”
Kate started at that, throwing an alarmed look around the car.
“Whoa-wait a minute,” she said, hands raised in protest. ”Let’s get something straight. I don’t do this stuff. My dad’s been calling me for weeks to do research for him-I’m in school in Philadelphia and he’s useless on the Internet- was useless.”
Her eyes fluttered. She tucked her chin up and plunged ahead.
“He and Dave Monaghan worked themselves up about this whole L Corp business. They went into spasms about something every couple years. Except I guess they got it right this time. So I have his research and the notes I took for him. I’ll share them with you. But after that, I’m going back. To School. Where I belong.”
“That’s what I said the other day,” Max told her. “That I wasn’t getting involved.”
“We need ya,” Tauber drawled. “This is a big fight we’re in. With what you did back there-”
“I have no idea what I did back there!” Kate burst and shrunk back into her seat, defiant and guilty at once. “Look, I’ve seen what happens to…people like you. Nobody wants you running loose. Nobody trusts you.”
“People like us?” Tauber said. “Honey, we’re people like you.”
“I am a graduate student in Museum Planning,” Kate insisted, talking right over him. “I have a life and a boyfriend. As soon as I finish my thesis, I’ve got six good institutions that want me.”
“You are the possessor of very powerful forces and senses, more powerful than 99 % of the population. If you don’t-” Max paused, looking at his lapel. A funny smell filled the car.
“I spent my whole childhood getting disciplined,” Kate rattled on, “for things I didn’t mean to do. My parents got in the way of every good date I had, because they thought I gave boys crushes on me. I didn’t even know-”
“Stop,” Max said.
“What good is it anyway? The things you find out, no one even wants to know. It’s like-”
“STOP!!”
Kate flinched. “Stop what?” We all seemed to notice the smoke at the same time.
“You’re burning a hole in my shirt,” Max said. A little plume of blue steam was rising from the corner of his breast pocket.
“I’m not,” Kate whispered, pulling her head back into her shoulders.
“You may not be aware of it,” Max said, “but…you are,” and he tamped the smoke out with his finger.
Kate gulped hard and jerked her head sideways into the window. “Dammit! I’m not…Shit!” She clamped her arms across her chest. “I’m- beyond all this!” She dissolved into tears, drawing herself into the corner of the chair. Max offered a hand on her shoulder, but of course he didn’t have the touch for it and she wasn’t interested anyway.
We headed north through Harrisburg. The highway whittled down a few lanes due to construction and we crawled for a while. Max probably could have made everybody pull out of the way if he wanted, but it seemed like everyone needed to breathe, to regain a sense of the world around.
“Are we going somewhere?” Tauber asked finally.
“I’m not sure yet, just keep moving,” Max said. “They don’t know where we’re going.”
“Well, neither do we,” Tauber answered, “so they’re on the money.” Max shot him a look.
“Where’s the rest of your team?” Kate asked, ending a long silence. “Who else is working with you?”
Long pause.
“It’s-it’s just us,” I said.
Recognition broke over her face in waves. Disbelief came first. She searched our faces, to confirm we were serious. Then she started to laugh, almost against her will. “Are you kidding?”
“No,” Max sighed. That was when reality swept over me all at once. I’d been so caught up in what we were doing, in the energy and activity of it, I’d lost track of just how crazy the whole idea was. The ring in her question was reality and it wasn’t pretty.
“Do you know who these guys are?” she demanded. “I mean, anything these companies say in public record is meant to mislead and L Corp admits to thirty billion annual revenue. They opened the doors six years ago, supposedly for political consulting but last year wasn’t even an election year, at least not in this country. So it’s either Defense or they’re selling drugs-who else makes that kind of money that fast? They had a couple guys camped around my house the last few days-I figured, if they were trying to get inside my head, I’d get inside theirs first. They’re serious, they’ve got big resources and big backers and some big deal happening really soon.”
“Tomorrow,” Tauber said.
Kate’s eyebrows went up like exclamation points.
“You know that? For a fact?”
She kept looking back and forth from one to the next of us. You could feel the air leaking out of the car. She stared out the window, tapping her knuckles against it like a drummer.
“I have an apartment,” she said finally, “in Philadelphia. Dad never visited me, so they couldn’t have gotten the address from him. You should be safe there overnight.” She made a disgruntled count of the company. “Someone’s going to have to sleep in the bathtub,” she announced.
Her apartment was in what looked like a very dignified old garage. “It’s a mews,” her voice echoed as she opened the huge door-someone had built it some time ago to fit the ornate archway on the street. “We’re tracing back the documents-I know it’s at least two centuries old but that’s as far as we’ve gotten.” The neighborhood was one of those arty places where everything looks a little rundown but one neighbor stacks huge paintings in his window while the sound of a jazz band drifts out of the next.
The TV was on when she opened the front door. The two spooks, Tauber and Max, immediately went stiff and cautious, moving through the place door to door, throwing open and checking each room thoroughly before relaxing. Kate walked calmly past them into the kitchen to make coffee.
“Steve leaves the TV on all the time-when he’s here, when he’s gone. It’s his imaginary friend.”
“Steve?” I asked.
“My boyfriend.”
“You live together?” Max demanded. The tone of voice said he wasn’t convinced there was no threat. “He stays here even when you’re gone?”
“Well-he and Morgan were here. They’re away this weekend.” She hesitated for a moment. “She’s my roommate-Steve’s with her too,” she said with a little hesitation.
“So he’s the apartment boyfriend,” I remarked and Tauber shot me a look. Kate just nodded and went back to her coffee. “Do you have tea?” Max asked and she nodded and ran water into a kettle.
“They won’t barge in on us?” Max asked. “The roommate and…your boyfriend?”
“They’re gone till Monday,” Kate answered wistfully, kindling a questioning look on Max’s face.
There was an artist’s easel propped against a corner, holding a book of drawing paper. Max tore off a page.
“We’re going to spread out on the table,” he announced, setting Kate scrambling to move a pile of academic journals onto the floor before he could upend them. Max spread the paper across the surface. Kate pulled out a speckled journal out of the side pocket of her suitcase and opened it to a page marked by a yellow stickie.
“These are my father’s notes from his talks with Dave, my notes from our conversations and my research. I can’t promise they’re word for word but the gist should be right.”
The pot started to whistle. Kate turned but Tauber held up his hand. “You stay, sweetie,” he said. “I can make tea-and coffee.”
“My hero,” she answered. She opened her book and started reading out loud. Each major point she made, Max jotted on the sheet, lines drawn between known connections and dotted lines between suspected or hypothetical ones. It was a familiar list-L Corp, using mindbenders to bolster candidates and business clients, an army of low-level mindbenders to send out mental suggestions and the Big Scheme coming soon.
“There’s not much new here,” Tauber said when she’d finished. The table was a nice mess of papers and
