Technomancer Read online

Jenna had returned to the doorway. “You have to tell me why you are playing with that thing, or you have to leave.”

  I glanced at her. “It’s strange,” I said. “But don’t you think it should have dried up by now? I mean, it looks like it was just cut off. So disgusting.”

  “You said it was from some alien. Maybe their blood stays wet longer.”

  I thought about what McKesson had said about these other places—that in other worlds the rules were sometimes different. I wondered if that could be the case here. It didn’t sound right, however. This was our world. Wouldn’t this finger have to play by our physical laws? Evaporation dried things, turning liquids into solids.

  I picked up the bottle and looked inside. There was no trace of the blood that I could see. I turned my pocket inside out next. There were no stains there. Not the slightest trace of blood.

  “I think we really have something here,” I said. “Do you have a lighter?”

  “I don’t smoke.”

  I picked up the wad of tissues I’d used to take the finger from my pocket. I carefully leafed through them. There was no blood on any of them.

  “Have you got a knife?” I asked.

  Jenna stared at me. “You’ve got to be kidding. Don’t you think it’s dead already?”

  “Anything will do. A nail file?”

  Sighing, she left and rummaged in her makeup kit. She came back and handed me a pair of nail clippers. “I don’t want them back when you’re done,” she said, and left the bathroom.

  I couldn’t cut the nail—or the flesh. I tried the tip of the pearly spur—it was like steel. I tried the delicate strips of torn skin next, but couldn’t dent them. It was as if the finger was made of soft, flexible titanium. I couldn’t mark any part of it. And yet, it had been cut free of a Gray Man recently. Therefore, it must have undergone some kind of change to its nature.

  Finally, the clippers broke in my hand. I tried soaking the finger in the sink, then toweling it off. There were no changes in its appearance. I left the finger on the counter and walked back into the room.

  “Well?” Jenna asked. “Are you going to tell me why you’ve turned into a ghoul?”

  “I think it’s an object,” I said, frowning.

  She looked at me, shaking her head in confusion.

  “Like your ring or my sunglasses. I can’t change or damage it. Even though it’s a piece of dead flesh, it won’t rot, and the blood in it won’t exit. The skin can’t be cut.”

  “How could that happen?”

  “It’s frozen somehow,” I said. “Like the other objects. It’s impervious.”

  “Are you going to use it as a bulletproof shield? It’s a little on the small side.”

  I shook my head. “If it is an object, it has a power.”

  “What power?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But I mean to find out.”

  I put the finger back in the small plastic bottle. “I need some help,” I told Jenna.

  “As long as I don’t have to touch it—or look at it much,” she said.

  “I want to hang it around my neck. I need some kind of strong, stringlike material.”

  Jenna stared at me for a second or two. “You’re going to make a necklace out of it?”

  I nodded. “A talisman, I suppose.”

  “That’s crazy.”

  After a bit more polite urging, I got Jenna to help me drill two holes through the bottle’s cap with her nail file. She donated a tiny black purse she didn’t really need, and we removed the strap. I promised to buy her a new one. Within a few minutes, I had the finger hanging securely around my neck. I stuffed it under my shirt.

  “How does it look?” I asked her.

  “I almost can’t see it,” she said, examining me. “But even if it was invisible, I’d know it was there. And that’s not attractive. Do you really have to carry it around?”

  “If it’s an object, it has a power,” I said. “All the objects I’ve seen have to be worn by the user in order to work.”

  “What if it has the power to cook eggs or switch channels on the TV?”

  “Mildly useful,” I said. “But I think it’s more than that. I told you about the cultists, remember? They tried to use their powers on me, but somehow missed.”

  “You think this alien body part protected you? Like some kind of lucky rabbit’s foot?”

  “Gilling said I had objects—not just one. Maybe he knew, somehow.”

  “He sounds crazier than you are,” she said.

  I beamed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “What are we going to do now?” she asked.

  “We’re not going to do anything. I’m going to test it.”

  “You mean—you’re going to see if it protects you?”

  “Yes, and since I’m pretty sure it will only protect the wearer, I’m going alone.”

  She took off her ring again and put it into my hand. “I really want you to use this,” she said, clearly expecting an argument. “Consider it a loan if that helps. I can’t find out what happened to Robert with it. But I bet you’ll be glad to have a little luck now and then.”

  This time, after a moment of hesitation, I took the ring. Her logic persuaded me—OK, and a little touch of greed. I eyed the golden circle, trying not to feel excited about it. Somehow, these objects captivated my mind. I put the ring on my thinnest finger and twisted it so the diamond was on the inside. It looked like a simple gold band.

  “I’m going to give this back when I return,” I said.

  “I know.”

  I tried out the ring, using it to cheat at Keno in the lobby restaurant. I was careful, only winning every tenth game or so. Jenna had told me she didn’t feel good about using her ring anywhere other than the Lucky Seven. She still held a grudge against that place. I wasn’t interested in money—I only needed enough to survive. But I wanted to know how to use my objects.

  Half an hour later, I left Jenna and headed for the Lucky Seven. I wanted to have another talk with Rostok. I figured Jenna was probably safer without the ring than she was with it, anyway. These objects seemed to attract trouble.

  I didn’t get to Rostok right away. Someone had just been found dead in the Lucky Seven, under less-than-ideal circumstances, and that changed things.

  The hotel was less imposing in the dying daylight. It was also less attractive without the twinkling green lights. The casino resembled two square towers of gray concrete—which was exactly what it was. I approached the building in the shade of the west tower and walked up the red-carpeted steps. I felt numerous eyes on me the moment I passed through the polished glass doors. Undoubtedly, a dozen cameras and eyeballs were checking me out. As I crossed the hotel lobby, a man in a khaki uniform with a mustache that covered his upper lip in red-pepper bristles tapped me on the shoulder. After some initial confusion, I realized first off that someone was dead; McKesson had been called but hadn’t gotten there yet; and that rather than being about to give me the boot, they wanted me up to the room where the murder had occurred right away. As they put it, “You work with McKesson, right?” And who was I to say I didn’t? After all, we often wound up appearing together at unpleasant events. McKesson would be mad I’d pretended to be his partner, but I’d deal with him later.

  In the bowels of the hotel, we passed through a door with a combination lock, like the one I’d encountered on my first trip to visit Rostok. I wondered if I would be meeting the hotel’s owner and his pet named Ezzie again today. I rather hoped I wouldn’t, even though they were the most probable sources of hard information in this place.

  “The body is right inside,” the security guy told me. He stopped and tapped on the combination lock. It beeped five times then clicked open.

  I must have had a funny look on my face, because he frowned at me as I hesitantly stepped into the room. I tried to force myself to act calm and in charge. I straightened my shoulders and walked confidently into the dimly lit room.

  The first thing
that hit me was the smell. It was an awful mix of barbeque and burnt plastic. The lights were on automatic, and they flickered into full brilliance at about the same time the security guys let the door click behind me.

  What I saw next stopped me in my tracks. Bernie, the pit boss that Jenna and I had just spoken with a day ago, was dead.

  He was lying on his back on what appeared to be a conference table. He hadn’t passed away in his sleep either. He had a foot-wide burn mark over his body—a long streak of charcoal, as if someone had run him over with a steam iron. Blackened flesh and melted clothes had fused together. His one remaining eye was open, staring sightlessly at the fluorescent lights directly overhead.

  I took an unsteady step forward, with my hand over my nose. Getting closer to the corpse wasn’t making the smell any better. I walked around the conference table, looking for evidence. The carpet was burned at the foot of the table, where something hot had first gotten hold of the man. That streak of melted carpet fibers could only have been caused by intense heat. It led from a spot on the floor about six feet from the corpse. The trail was straight and purposeful. Whatever had caused it had rolled right up and right over Bernie. But the trail ended abruptly after that. There was no sign of a burned path leading into or out of the room. The conference table itself was barely scorched. There were even a few paper cups and a stray pen sitting undisturbed on the table itself.

  I checked Bernie’s wrists next. His hands had been burned away to bone and ash. I assumed this might be considered a defensive wound. He’d burned away his hands trying to defend himself. But his wrists were intact, and there were lines of blood and flaked skin around each of them. I nodded, still holding my nose. Someone had cuffed him and let him die helplessly.

  My immediate suspicion, of course, was that it had been Ezzie, or one of her type. It almost certainly had been a creature like the lava slug I’d found in the middle of my burnt house. What else could it be? The evidence pointed toward an organized effort, however. The only way such a creature could get into and out of a building without burning it down was via a rip in space. Could the cultists be involved? Gilling might have brought it in, rolled it over him, and then popped it home again. Or maybe that was Rostok’s power, here inside the Lucky Seven. Maybe that’s why he had Ezzie, because he could move things into and out of his domain.

  Frowning, I straightened up. I knew I didn’t have much time left. I was surprised, in fact, that McKesson hadn’t shown up yet. He was the master when it came to finding freaky crimes.

  I opened the door and stepped out between the two security men, both of whom were waiting nervously in the hall. I noticed that they took pains not to look inside the conference room.

  “This is quite a mess you have here,” I said.

  “You got that right,” Mr. Red Mustache said. “How are you going to do it? A big black body bag and an ambulance around the back? We’ll wheel the gurney out ourselves. The less the paramedics see, the better.”

  “I’m afraid we have a problem,” I said.

  They looked instantly worried.

  “News has leaked out about this—accident,” I said. “Do either of you have cell phones on your persons?”

  Sagging jaws. They blinked and looked confused.

  “We didn’t call anyone, Mr. Draith.”

  I nodded as if I didn’t believe a word they said. “I see. Well, it doesn’t really matter. The call records are all there in the system, aren’t they? We’ll find out in the end. In any case, I need to talk to Mr. Rostok.”

  “That’s not possible—”

  “It’s not only possible, it needs to happen now. If you don’t want a news wagon out there in the valet parking with a satellite uplink to Los Angeles, I’d suggest you cooperate and quit trying to cover your tracks.”

  “We aren’t covering up anything,” Mr. Mustache said. “We didn’t call anyone—did you, Nate?”

  Nate shook his head. His eyes were big and scared.

  “If corpses can’t be neatly disposed of, a guilty party must be found. Can either of you two gentlemen guess who that might turn out to be in this situation?”

  Confusion on their faces was replaced by panic. “Right this way, Mr. Draith.”

  They put me on a private elevator to the top floor. After crossing an empty lobby, I found myself in front of a familiar door. It opened at my approach. As before, no one greeted me at first. I took a confident step forward into the darkened room and stood calmly.

  “Can I sit down while my eyes adjust, Mr. Rostok?”

  “You may indeed, Mr. Draith,” came the rumbling response. “You’ve changed, haven’t you? Death stalks you, and it has built character where there was none before.”

  Not quite sure what he was getting at, I felt in front of me until I found the chair I’d sat in previously. I put my butt in the seat and peered into the gloom. The LED lights were there, I could see them faintly all around me. I thought to myself I should bring a flashlight next time I came to visit this reclusive man.

  “I’m through with riddles, if that’s what you mean,” I said. “Let’s cut the crap, shall we? Ezzie killed Bernie. The evidence is clear. You called McKesson to clean up the mess. Must be nice to have the police so terrified of unexplainable deaths they are willing to clean up your messes for you.”

  “It is convenient.” Rostok chuckled. “But Ezzie didn’t kill anyone. She’s old now, you see. Her kind become larger and cooler as they age. You would have smelled burnt carpet the first time you met her in this room if she’d been hot enough to hurt anyone.”

  “Hmm. I suppose you have a point there. But it was definitely one of her kind. Are you denying involvement?”

  “Tell me, is this Bernie person your golfing partner? Or perhaps a friend you get drunk with? Have you two exchanged your most private sorrows?”

  “Far from it.”

  “Then why are you so interested in how he died? It’s not your job. You’re not really a detective.”

  I snorted. “I think I’m a better investigator than McKesson. He is the opposite of a detective. Rather than seeking truth, he’s a master of deceit. But I’ll tell you why I’m interested. Because everyone I seem to get close to—dies. They all die in bizarre, usually horrible ways. Wouldn’t you want to know who was behind such murders?”

  Rostok moved, standing up and walking past me. I saw his hulking shadow and heard his footsteps upon the carpet. Then I heard ice cubes falling into a glass. “Would you like a drink?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  “I suppose I would want to understand what was happening to me in your situation,” he said. “But the answers aren’t here for you. In fact, your arrival here a second time might endanger my life as well.”

  “More riddles? Is that all you have for me?”

  Liquids filled a glass I couldn’t see. Ice tinkled and clicked.

  “Reach out your hand,” he said.

  I did so, and a glass was pressed into my palm. I brought it to my nose to identify the beverage. It was vodka with some cream flavorings. I sipped it and found it pleasant. Unsurprisingly, Rostok drank the pricey stuff.

  “Have you ever heard of Indian Springs?” he asked.

  “No. Have you ever heard of Howard Hughes?”

  Rostok laughed at that, the first real laugh I’d heard from him. “Say what you will, but my paranoia has served me well,” he said.

  “Tell me about Indian Springs, then.”

  “It’s a small town less than a hundred kilometers north of here. Just beyond that, they set off more nuclear tests than anywhere else in the world. There have been about two thousand such tests in all history, and nine hundred and fifty-one of them were performed very near Las Vegas. Did you know that?”

  I thought about it. “I suppose that I did. But it’s not something that I think about every day. Are you saying that Ezzie and her kind are some sort of mutants? Because I’m not buying that.”

  “No, not at all. I’m saying that they
performed a lot of strange tests in the last century—playing with physics, you understand. It is my belief that they did more than split atoms under this desert. I think they fractured something bigger.”

  “Fractured what?”

  “I don’t know. A membrane between two coexistent places, maybe. Our world appears solid to us, but really it is more like a liquid. These rips in space—I think they are akin to splashing raindrops. They cause a disruption in the otherwise flat, featureless surface of our reality.”

  I shook my head and gulped my drink. His theories were interesting, but I knew they were only theories. I also knew they weren’t helping me. “Can we get back to what happened to Bernie?”

  “You said it yourself. You happened to Bernie. Everyone you get close to dies.”

  I stared at the man’s dark shape. I didn’t like his answer. I thought of Jenna, Holly, even McKesson—I didn’t want any of them to die. They were the only people I knew. Well…I guess I wouldn’t miss McKesson all that much…

  “How do I stop this?” I asked. “What should I do?”

  “I think I’m getting old.” Rostok sighed. “I shouldn’t be talking to you so much. I think these matters are best left alone, Draith. So forget them and live your life. It’s time for you to leave now.”

  I wanted to rage at him in frustration. I decided to give it one last try. “What does your object do in this place, sir? What power do you have over this domain that makes you so strong?”

  Rostok chuckled in the darkness. “Pray you never learn the truth about that.”

  “You want to get rid of me to protect yourself,” I said. “Even if I leave now, are you sure you’ll be safe from my curse? I’ve been here to see you twice in the span of a few days. Several events have occurred around the Lucky Seven that needed—cleaning up.”

  Rostok was silent for a second. “Tell me,” he said. “What’s the first thing you remember?”

  I paused. I’d expected him to become angry. I’d hoped that by poking at his obvious paranoia, I would get more out of him. Instead, he’d switched topics on me and ignored my bait. I almost told him that I could barely remember anything. The accident had eaten up my past. Thinking about it now, I felt more empty than ever. I’d lost all my belongings. If I had a family, I hadn’t been able to find them. The only thing I had was the picture that had survived the accident. Two smiling parents and a baby who might or might not be me. No other clues.