Blood Engines(51)

 

B hesitated. He didn’t like being jerked around. Marla could appreciate that. But she didn’t want to get into the habit of explaining herself to him. If she did, B might expect an explanation when there wasn’t time to give him one, and such a delay could prove fatal. Then again, if he was more than a half-assed seer, if he actually had the power she suspected, she needed him as an ally. She shouldn’t push him too far. So when he hesitated, she said, almost gently, “Don’t forget, your life depends on mine. And bringing me a garter snake right now will help us both.”

 

B nodded, and headed back to the Vivarium.

 

Marla and Rondeau sat on a low concrete wall that marked the edge of a strip-mall parking lot. “So after we get one of those frog-eating snakes, what then?” Rondeau said.

 

“We find Mutex, and I rip his extremities off until I get the Cornerstone back.”

 

“And how do we find Mutex?”

 

“Have you ever heard of that band ‘…And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Dead’?”

 

“Ah,” Rondeau said. “Got it. We follow the bodies.”

 

“Maybe,” Marla said. “That’s the worst-case scenario. There’s a small chance that we might be able to find a shortcut.” That small chance was B, if he turned out to be what Marla barely dared hope he was.

 

“All hail the great god Shortcut,” Rondeau said, a little glumly.

 

“Say hallelujah,” Marla agreed.

 

 

 

 

 

10

 

 

 

B returned with the garter snake, a long, dark green curl of life in a small white cardboard box. “You’re not going to sacrifice this or anything, are you?” B said, as Marla peered into the box.

 

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I can’t imagine that sacrificing eight inches of snake would get me much in the way of favors anyway.” She cleared her throat, put her face close to the box, and said, “Ch’ang Hao, this is Marla. I need to call in that favor now.” She lifted her face away, and they all watched the snake, which lifted its head up above the sides of the box and swayed a little.

 

“Ah,” Rondeau said. “So what now?”

 

“Apparently nothing instantaneous,” Marla said.

 

The snake crawled over the edge of the box, flowing like living green water, and fell the short distance to the ground, where it continued slithering away, roughly westward.

 

“Think the little snake’s going to deliver the message in person?” Rondeau said.

 

“Anything’s possible.” Marla sighed. “I’m not good at being patient. I say we head back into the city, grab some food, and see what else we can find out about Mutex. I wish I knew where to find the other sorcerers in this city. If Mutex really did go around accosting all the big noises in the city, maybe he let something useful slip to one of them.”

 

They went back to the commuter train station and boarded an empty car on a San Francisco–bound BART train. Rondeau and B talked about restaurants, while Marla thought about where to start in her search for other sorcerers in the city.

 

The door at the far end of the car opened, and two men entered. Marla looked at them, frowning. They were identical twins, in their twenties, with buzzed-short black hair and glasses with chunky black frames, and they wore matching clothing—red T-shirts, khaki cargo pants, black hiking boots. They each had mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and other devices clipped to their belts, and carried matching black laptop bags over their shoulders. Marla figured they had more computational power hanging on their bodies than had existed in the entire world circa 1950. They stopped in the aisle beside Marla’s seat, each gripping the overhead rail left-handed, leaning slightly toward her at precisely the same angle. “You’re Marla,” one of them said.

 

“You have to come with us,” said the other. Their voices were exactly the same.

 

“We’re all on the same train,” Marla said. “Going the same way. So for the time being, I don’t have any objection to that.”

 

They looked at each other with eerie simultaneity, then back down at Marla. “We’ll get off the train at Civic Center,” one said. “and you’ll come with us. Someone wants to meet you.”

 

Marla crossed her legs, bumping one of the men gently in the knee with her foot in the process. He stepped backwards, out of her way—and so did the other guy, though she hadn’t touched him. She glanced at Rondeau, who raised an eyebrow, and Marla shook her head fractionally. B looked a little frightened, which just went to prove that he didn’t know much about Marla at all, since these were clearly people of the henchman variety, and Marla had never met a henchman yet that she couldn’t fillet one-handed if the need arose.