want, but I just know they're lying to me. They are so lying to me.'
Jack debated whether or not to tell her about his call to the morgue. As the mother, didn't she have a right to know?
'I don't think you're paranoid, Dawn. In fact, I'm pretty damn sure you're not.'
She frowned. 'What do you mean?'
'When Weezy told me how they wouldn't let you see your baby's body after he died, I had the same thought: No reason in the world they wouldn't show you unless they couldn't-because they had no body… because he wasn't dead. Now, granted, I've got a suspicious mind that sometimes leads me astray, but more often than not, it's on target.'
Dawn straightened. 'And this time?'
'Well, you tell me: No death certificate was filed for a newborn with a Wednesday morning time of death.'
'I knew it!' She balled a fist. 'I'm not crazy!' She looked at Jack and then Weezy. 'But where is he? Where's my baby?'
'If I had to guess,' Weezy said, 'I'd say he's in this Mister Osala's house.'
Dawn gasped. 'No way! I was just-'
'Kicked out,' Jack said, seeing the logic. 'You had to go because he was expecting another guest.' He ripped the top sheet off the legal pad and prepared to take notes. 'First off, how do you spell his name?'
'O-s-a-l-a.'
Jack printed that at the top of the sheet. Something about the name… but it wouldn't come.
'Okay, now tell me everything you know about Mister Osala and his place…'
5
'Jack,' Weezy said as he followed Dawn out the door, 'I need to talk to you about something.'
He watched Dawn disappear into her apartment, then stepped back into Weezy's. The plan was for him to pay a visit to Osala's place and see if he could get in and find the baby, or evidence that a baby was living there.
'What's up?'
'Did Dawn's description of her baby stir up any memories?'
'Should it?'
He did remember a faint reaction, but it had been overshadowed by Dawn's belief that her baby was still alive.
'Covered with dark hair… clawlike hands… and tentacles? Ring any bells?'
'No.'
'Back when we were teens… the basement of the Lodge…?'
And then it hit.
'Oh, jeez!'
… the feeling of something coiling around his neck… black-furred paws scraping along concrete… a snakelike thing-maybe a tentacle-waving in the air…
No wonder she'd gone pale. He was probably looking a little pale himself right now.
'You don't think there's any connection, do you? I mean, how can there be?'
'Lately I've been catching references to q'qrs in the Compendium, so they're up front in my mind. Srem doesn't present a drawing of a q'qr-at least I haven't found one yet. Her references are always oblique because, like so many things in the Compendium, she assumes the reader is already familiar with what she's discussing. But that thing that chased us back in Johnson seems to fit what I've put together about q'qrs. And things that Dawn said about her baby fit too.'
Jack was having trouble wrapping his mind around that one… or maybe his mind simply didn't want to go there.
'But q'qrs disappeared with the First Age, what, fifteen thousand years ago.'
'Maybe not. Maybe some survived the cataclysm.'
'But Dawn's baby?'
'Think about it: Q'qrs were created by the Otherness back in the First Age. Maybe 'created' isn't the best word-genetically retrofitted or repurposed from human DNA is more like it. They became the source of the Taint, what we know as oDNA, which everyone carries to varying degrees. So, in a sense, they've never been away. They live on, right here in our genomes.'
Lots of them lived on in Jack's genes, and he didn't like it. But he saw where Weezy was going.
'I get it. According to Veilleur, Jonah Stevens's plan was to produce a child-Dawn's-so packed with oDNA that it would be able to replace the One. You're thinking he wound up creating a q'qr instead.'
'Not a real, one hundred percent q'qr, but something close.'
'But what could the Order want with it?'
She shrugged. 'Who knows? Maybe to use it as a mascot. Maybe they plan to supplant the One themselves.'
He gave her a look. 'What?'
'I don't believe that either. Just throwing things out. Whatever their reason, we should know it, don't you think?'
'Exactly. That's why I'm going to pay a visit to Mister Osala.'
Her expression turned worried. 'You'll be careful, please?'
'I'm always careful.'
For some reason he had a feeling he should be especially careful with this Osala guy.
6
The lobby of Osala's building had an almost cathedral air about it. High-ceilinged but not that high. Maybe it was the wrought iron affixed to the entry door, or the dark wood and pointed arches within that gave it a gothic feel. Maybe it was a cathedral-consecrated to money and set in the ionospheric rent district.
He noticed two elevators opposite the entrance.
'Got a repair order for…' Jack squinted at the name scrawled on the work order… 'the Osama elevator.'
He carried a red steel toolbox and wore oil-smudged overalls.
'It's Osala,' the doorman said, giving him a suspicious look. 'Repair order from who?'
He had a small, thin frame and deep brown skin, with short gray hair and a matching beard. He wore a gray uniform with dark red piping and a brass name tag that read MACK. He looked sixtyish and like he'd been around the block a few times.
Jack shrugged. 'From whoever manages this place. I just go where they send me.'
He handed over the work order and Mack studied it.
'This says you're to fix a noise.'
'That it do.'
'It ain't making a noise. It works perfect.'
Jack shrugged again. 'Like I said: I don't write up the work orders, I just go where I'm sent.'
Dawn had told him everything she knew about the place. She'd described the Osala duplex in impressive detail but was vague about the rest of the building. One elderly doorman during the day-that would be Mack here-two elevators, one for the exclusive use of Osala's penthouse. She said the building had been virtually deserted since the holidays, with most of the other tenants fleeing to warmer climes till spring. Even Osala had been 'down south' a lot lately.
Jack liked the virtually deserted part because he might have to improvise. He hoped it wouldn't come to that because he hated to improvise. But in case it did, he'd applied a droopy mustache and shoved some cotton
