She stared at him, uncomprehending.
The bald man shook his head admiringly. “He’s got this … this talent. Like … suppose there’s a situation that won’t give. A bad situation. And other Enforcers try this and they try that, and it won’t give. Danivon comes along, and he picks this one and that one and some other one, and he takes them into the situation, and all of a sudden, powee, things change.”
“How does he do that?”
“He says he smells ’em.” Curvis grinned at her and winked, as Danivon came back to the table. “Catalysts.”
Fringe told herself she couldn’t handle any more of this at the moment, not Danivon, not his friend, not the little animals lying there on the table, each with its tail over its eyes, each with a little stack of now-circular crackers, each one staring at her through its tassel, as though waiting for her to do something amusing. She stood up, laying coins on the table for her own drink. “I’ll let you know. Where will I find you?”
“We’ll find you,” said Danivon, returning to the table.
She left it at that. As she walked away, she heard her own voice saying, “I’ll let you know. Where will I find you?” and turned to see one of the little animals looking after her. It opened its mouth and said it again, making a comical face. She shook her head and stalked away. Pocket munks, for the love of heaven. Why did they chew things into circles like that?
When she had gone, Curvis asked, “What’d you think?” He pocketed his pets and stared at Danivon, waiting for an answer.
Danivon Luze gestured vaguely and stared at the wall for a long time before he said, “Oh, she’s right. I’m sure of that. But something about her’s not quite …”
“Not quite what?”
“I don’t know. Not quite solid, somehow.”
“Looked solid enough to me.”
“I don’t mean her body, Curvis. Not her health. Not her abilities, which Zasper says are good enough, though I’d like to see her use a weapon.”
“Well, stick close for a few days and we probably will. Lot of stuff going bang here in Enarae.”
“True.”
“Those strange people from who knows when, those twins. Do they smell solid.”
“For what they are.” He smiled a lazy smile. “I guess.”
“Why are you taking them along?”
Danivon slapped the table with his hand, almost angrily. “Damn, Curvis, I’ve told you a thousand times I don’t know! Ask an artist why he’s putting blue in the shadows. Ask a dancer why she bends sideways….”
Curvis interrupted, “All right. You don’t know why. Do you know if we need more?”
“All I know is, the team isn’t complete yet.”
Curvis started to ask how he knew and who next, but caught himself in time. “You want another drink?” he asked instead, receiving no answer at all. Danivon was sitting there, head down, nose twitching, smelling something, his eyes half-closed.
Sometimes when he got into these moods, he didn’t move for hours. “Shit,” said Curvis softly as he went off into the crowded room to find himself some amusement.
Danivon, left behind, was wondering the very things Curvis had been wondering, why and why. What might have happened had he been a different child, a different youth? If he hadn’t so early gained a reputation for helpfulness, for example. He’d done that since he was just a kid, shown up when someone needed a hand. Sometimes even before the helpee even knew it, here’d be Danivon, grinning all over his face, explaining, “I smelled you needed somebody.”
It was true, though no one had believed it at first, not even Zasper. At first everyone thought it was some kind of joke, that someone had put him up to it. Later they learned he really did smell such things. At least, he received information in a way that seemed to him like a smell, whatever it may actually have been, not reliably always, but often enough to be useful. He smelled people needing help; he smelled difficulties that wouldn’t come unraveled; he smelled women lusting after him—or after other people; he smelled solutions to problems; he smelled people who could do things together they could not, or at least did not, do separately.
He smelled hatred and lust. He could sniff a crowd and tell whether it would become a mob or merely a purposeless pack that would get bored and break up. And though he could never explain what his talent really was or how it worked, Danivon’s nose had become very valuable to Council Supervisory. He had done lots of things for Council Supervisory, though doing their work had sometimes bothered him a lot—though he never let it show. Bothered him, but it had never frightened him until now.
Why now? Why this smell of trouble? Why this stench of darkness? Why these smoky twinings and luminous blotches, always seeming about to resolve into faces, never quite doing so. Why? Not a dream. He couldn’t remember any such light, any such darkness. A threat, yes, but more than merely a threat. Fear, heart-stopping fear, the nightmare kind he sometimes woke from almost screaming, heart hammering! He heard cries, pleading, as though through some linkage with some other place, an echo of a sound. The stink of sweat, somebody’s sweat, somebody scared and running.
Not precisely the most hopeful signs and portents with which to start a journey. And why the strange twins from the past? Why Fringe? He might have added her, anyhow, just for the way she looked, the sidelong glance she gave him, the light flickering deep in her eyes, the way she walked and spoke, as though carelessly, but with that tension in the tilt of her head, as though she were waiting for something to happen. Yes, he might have wanted Fringe just for herself,
