Angry Lead Skies

3

Playmate said, "It would be better if Kip explained."

"But can he pay attention long enough to do it? Somebody please tell me something." Patience is not one of my virtues when I've got a sneaking suspicion that somebody wants me to work.

Kip opened and closed his mouth several times. He was trying but he'd become distracted again.

I sighed. Playmate did, too. "He lives in his own reality, Garrett."

"So it would seem. You know him. Long time know him, yes yes. You tell me, Horsepooperscoopinman. He invents things, yes yes? You're here, yes yes. Why?"

"Somebody—and I have a feeling it might actually be more than one somebody—has been following him around. He claims they've been trying to dig around inside his head. Then this morning somebody tried to kidnap him."

I looked at Kip. I looked at Playmate. I looked at Kip again. Heroic me, I managed to keep a straight face. But only because I deal with these problems myself on a regular basis. Particularly threats of mental vandalism and larceny.

Another cascade of remote amusement. Kip jerked in his chair.

I suggested, "Tell me why anybody would bother."

Playmate shrugged. He seemed a little embarrassed, no longer sure seeing me was the best idea. "Because he invents things? That's what he thinks."

"So what's he invent?"

"Ideas, mostly. Lots of ideas for devices and mechanisms that look like they'd work just fine if we could get the right tools and the proper materials to build them. We've been trying to put a couple of the simpler ones together. In practical terms he's mainly made little things of not much value. Like a writing stick that doesn't crumble in your fingers like charcoal can but that doesn't have to be dipped in an inkwell or water every few seconds. Eliminates the problems you have with wet ink. And there was a marvellous tool sharpener. And a new style bit that isn't nearly as hard on a horse's mouth. I'm already using that one and it's been selling pretty well. And he has all sorts of ideas for complicated engines, most of which I just don't understand."

Kip's head bobbed a little, agreeing with Playmate but about what I have no idea.

"What about family?"

Playmate winced. That wasn't a question with which he was comfortable. Not in front of the kid, anyway. "Kip is the youngest of three. He has a sister and a brother. His sister Cassie is the oldest. She has four years on his brother Rhafi, who has a couple on Kip. His mother is... unusual." He tapped his temple. "Their father is missing." He held up two, then three fingers to indicate that multiple fathers had to be considered. Possibly Cypres wasn't aware. In such matters, sometimes, mothers can be less than forthcoming.

"The war?"

Playmate shook his head. He rested both of his hands solidly on Kip's shoulders. It was impossible for that kid to sit still. He had begun rifling through the stuff on my desk, reading snippets. He could read. That was not common amongst youngsters. I was willing to bet his literacy was Playmate's fault.

I pulled my inkwell out of harm's way while thinking that eliminating wet ink might be an amazingly wonderful trick. When I get going I get the stuff all over the place.

The boy said, "There are more of them all the time, you know. They're looking for Lastyr and Noodiss. They've hired a man named Bic Gonlit to help them."

"Garrett?" Playmate demanded. "What?"

"I know Bic Gonlit. Know of him, anyway."

"And? You look puzzled."

"Only because I am. Bic Gonlit is a bounty hunter. He specializes in bringing them back alive. Why would he be interested in Kip?"

Kip's tone told me he wondered why everyone else in this world had to be so thick. "He's not looking for me. They don't care about me. They want Lastyr and Noodiss. They're only bothering with me because they think I know where those two are."

"And do you?" Lastyr and Noodiss?

"No." Not entirely convincingly, I thought.

Those names didn't fit any recognizable slot. Not quite elvish. Maybe upcountry dwarfish. Possibly ogreish, if they represented nicknames. Noodiss sounded like something scatological in ogre dialect.

"Who are they?"

Kip said, "You can't tell them from real people. They make you think you're looking at real people. Unless you look at their eyes. They can't disguise their eyes."

Who can't? "What the hell is he talking about, Play?"

"I'm not sure, Garrett. I can't get any more sense out of him than that. That's why I brought him to you."

"Thanks. Your confidence makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over."

Playmate ignored my sarcasm. He knew me too well. "I thought he was mental, too, at first. This's been going on for a while. And I never saw anything to convince me that he wasn't making up another one of his stories. But then somebody broke into his flat. While some of his family were there. Which is weird, because the Proses don't have a pot to pee in. Then, next day, this morning, they came to the stable. Three of them. Three strange, shiny women. I've been letting Kip use a corner of the smithy for a workshop. He does his projects there. They tried to drag him off."

"You didn't let them?"

"Of course I didn't let them." He was offended because I'd even asked. "Though it wasn't all me. They seemed extremely distracted by the horses. Afraid of them, even."

"That just sounds like basic common sense to me."

"You shouldn't joke that way, Garrett." Playmate just will not believe the truth about horses.

"These guys know horses mean trouble and they've got a beef with this kid and those things are somehow a surprise to you?"

Some people view the world through a whole different set of spectacles.

Playmate chose not to pursue the debate. "Their eyes were weird, Garrett. Almost like holes. Or like there were little patches of fog right there hiding them when they looked straight at you."

I tried to imagine the encounter. Playmate abhors violence, yet, for a nonviolent idealist, he can be totally convincing in any argument that steps on a banana peel and slides off the intellectual plane. Playmate has sense enough to understand that not everyone shares his views. There are some people that need hammering and others that just plain need killing. There are people out there even a mother couldn't love.

"These visitors some new kind of breed?" All the races infesting TunFaire seem capable of interbreeding. Often the mechanics aren't easy to visualize but the results are out there on the street. At times nature takes a very strange turn. And some of the strangest are among my friends.

Kip shook his head. Playmate told me, "Give me a sheet of paper. I'll draw you a picture." He produced a small, polished cherrywood box with silver fittings. When opened it revealed a battery of artist's tools. He took out a couple of sticks I decided had to be Kip's inventions.

"Another unsuspected talent." I pushed over a torn sheet of paper. I'd only just started using its back side.

I recalled seeing charcoal drawings around Playmate's place but I never wondered enough about them to make a direct connection.

This detecting business requires great curiosity and attention to the tiniest details.

I was amazed once Playmate got started. "You're in the wrong racket, Play."

"Not much call for this kind of thing, Garrett." His hand moved swiftly and confidently. "Maybe in a carnival." He was a lefty, of course. They always are. The guy who did Eleanor probably had two left hands.

The portrait took shape rapidly.

"The original must've been one ugly critter." It had a head like a bottom-up pear. It had a mouth so small it was fit to eat nothing but soup. No ears were evident but Playmate was still drawing.

His hand moved slower and slower. A frown creased his forehead. Pinhead sweat beads appeared. He strained mightily to get his hand to do something it didn't want to do. He gasped, "Less call than there is for new preachers."

"What's wrong?"

"This won't come out like what I saw. I wanted to draw the woman in charge. A small woman, average-looking with ginger hair. Cut off straight above her eyes and straight all the way around the rest, two inches down from where her ears should've been."

The thing he had drawn owned no ears.

He was drawing something that wasn't human. Its head was shaped something like an inverted pear. Its eyes were oversize, bulgy, teardrops shaped, evidently without pupils. He did not put in a nose. Instead, there were slits, unconnected, forming an inverted Y.

I observed, "There isn't any nose. And what about ears?"

"I thought they were hidden under her hair. I guess... not. There're these dark, bruise-looking patches down here, practically on the neck. Maybe they do the same job."

That was weird. I couldn't think of a race that didn't have ears of some kind. In fact, most races have ears that make our human ones look like afterthoughts. Great hairy, pointy, or dangly things all covered with scales and warts.

"Old Bones, you've got to help us out here. Why can't Play draw what he really saw?"

Grumpy atmospherics. Kip squeaked. The Dead Man observed, Mr. Playmate appears to be reproducing what was actually in front of him rather than what he believes he saw. It is possible he was gulled by some illusion. The illustration does resemble the boy's recollections of his elven acquaintances.

"Wonderful. Play, I'll bet Colonel Block wishes he had somebody who could draw pictures like this of the villains he wants to catch."

"The Guard can go on wishing. You know I'm a simple man, Garrett. Not greedy at all. But I do have to point out that a second-rate stable operator like myself still makes a better living than the best-paid honest policeman."

"Most everything pays better than being honest. You want to work for Block and Relway, you'd better have a bone-deep law and order calling. Now what?"

Kip was making noises. He wasn't as impressed with the sketch as I was. "The eyes aren't right, Play."

"They wouldn't be, would they?" Playmate growled. "Since whenever they look straight at you they go all smoky. And they aren't eyes like ours, anyway. They don't have any eyelids."

"It's not that. It's their shape. They're bulgier... "

Garrett!

The kid jumped, squealed, went paper pale in an instant, scattered the documents on my desk. He moaned, "They're here! They're trying to get into my head again!" He tried to jump past Playmate.

"Hang on to him!" I said. "That's just old Chuckles deciding to pick on me for a minute."

Old Chuckles demurred. He sent, The young man is entirely correct, Garrett. There is an unknown creature in the alleyway out back trying to look into the house. I am confusing it and blocking it but that is extremely difficult. The work requires most of the attention of most of my minds.

The Dead Man belongs to a rare species known as Loghyr. They have that knack. Of having multiple minds capable of parallel and independent function. I've heard that some develop multiple personalities. I can't imagine. Old Bones is a complete horror show being just one of himself.

Simultaneous shrieks sounded upstairs and in the small front room. I don't know what Katie's problem was but it was audibly obvious that the Goddamn Parrot had decided to focus his powers of persuasion on convincing the world that he was about as sane as a drunken butterfly.

The creature is now confused by what I have done. Which is to connect it to a couple of marginally sensitive but completely empty minds. Perhaps it will become equally lost.

"That's no way to talk about my girlfriend."

The Dead Man was able to make the air sneer. And I suppose he had a point. Nature endowed Katie with countless delicious attributes. At first glance excessive intellect doesn't appear to be one of those. But, actually, bimbo is a survival strategy that she has let get out of control.

The kid began babbling soft nonsense not unlike that of yon inebriated megamouth. It sounded suspiciously like some of the nonsense Katie whispered when she was about half-asleep and purring. I asked Playmate, "Kip have a history with booze or drugs?" The kid was now not speaking any form of Karentine I recognized. My place isn't the neighborhood ranting ground for any of those cults that specialize in speaking in tongues.

Even so, soon every fourth word out of Kip's mouth sounded vaguely familiar. They may even have been real words—completely out of context.

"No. Never. He doesn't have that kind of imagination. But this's exactly the way he got when those elves came looking for him."

"Elves? What elves? Are we suddenly starting to get somewhere?"

"No. I just feel more comfortable calling them elves. Say they were elf-sized but they weren't like any elves that we know. They were female. You ever see a female elf who didn't look like the devil's disciple?"

Not my choice of descriptives but I knew what he meant. Even the ugly elf girls are pretty enough and wicked enough to melt your spine with a wink and a smile and a wiggle if the fancy takes them. "No. Never have."

"These girls... weren't. They were almost asexual."

"How did you know?"

Garrett! I do not enjoy such an oversufficiency of mind-space that I can waste any following your digressions. Save that for later. The creature is in the alley. It is confused. It can be captured. Will you please see to that and cease this passing the time of day with Mr. Playmate?

"Play, my sedentary sidekick tells me one of your elves is skulking around in the alley out back. Why don't we go invite him to the party? We can smack him around a little to break his concentration. Old Bones can ransack his mind while he's distracted. Which means I'll be able to find out what this's all about and you'll find out if there's any real reason for you to worry."

Damn! That wasn't the best word to use. Playmate worries. All the time. And his worry-to-success equation is an inverse proportion. He only gives up worrying and fussing when things get truly awful.

Garrett!

"All right!" He's so damned lazy he can't be bothered to die but he expects me to scurry like bees getting ready for winter. And sees no inconsistency. "All right. Here's the official plan, Play."