This choice: Take Hal yourself as a disguise • Go Back...Chapter #75Hal Is Where Home Is by: Seuzz   "I don't want to count on anything until we actually get this guy," you tell Frank, and put the last touches onto the mask. "You say he makes his own luck. I don't want to jinx it." You lay the mask onto the unconscious Jacob Darrow.
He sits up with a confused expression on his face—all golems seem to reset to the same look of befuddlement, no matter who they are golems of—and Frank starts questioning him. Darrow is reticent at first, but he starts to answer when you take to repeating Frank's question, and he starts to show a little fear when he finds he's forced to answer. The long and the short of it is that Hal Swann is certainly in the neighborhood; he showed Darrow some cell phone pictures of Frank and Joe and asked him to scout this "meeting place" for them, and Darrow is supposed to return with what he's learned.
"I'll go with him," Frank says. "Call Joe up here and get him to wait by the elevators for us."
"Are you going to be able to handle him?" you ask, though now it's certainly too late for another plan.
"If we can disarm him," Frank says. To Darrow he says, "Let me do the talking," when the golem opens its mouth to say something. You repeat the order when the thing tries to argue.
* * * * *
Your nerves are stretched very thin during the interval that follows. If you fuck up your play for Hal Swann, not only will the Stellae be alerted that Frank and Joe have gone "retrograde," but you will have probably blown your cover at the Strausslers. You wipe your palms on your shirt a couple of times, and give some thought to changing into Jonathan Straussler's imago. But you don't because you are not sure you've got time to change clothes along with faces; and besides, you'd probably be just as nervous as Jonathan as you are as yourself.
After fifteen minutes you are verging on panic when you hear a sound like a muffled elevator bell; voices sound softly in the hall outside. You scamper over to the door with a blank mask in your hand. It opens, and you just catch yourself from walloping the mask into Joe. He grins at you and steps to the side.
But it's like something's gone wrong with your eyes, and you don't really make out the face of the next person to enter. You just thrust the mask at him. But your palm is slick again, and the mask slips and clatters into the guy's elbow. You stumble, and someone yells "Jesus, Will!" and then you're knocked in the side of your head and spin into the door. You're vaguely aware of some kind of a scrum that takes your feet out from under you. You wind up sitting on the floor.
When you clear your head, Frank is glaring down at you. "The fuck happened to you?"
"I dunno! The mask—!" You gulp and catch your tongue. But Joe is lowering a prone figure to the floor. "It slipped. Is that—?"
"That's him," says Joe. "Darrow, get in here!" A fourth figure, that of Swann's accomplice, enters and Frank slams the door. "Don't yell at Will, Frank. Hal probably held something back. Or maybe it's just him. Do you want me to put him on the operating table?"
"Yes, please," you reply as Frank helps you to your feet. "What took so long?"
"Hal did," Joe puffs as he drags the prone Stellae into the adjoining room.
"We had to give him a story about what happened to us," Frank said. "Then we had to tell him we had some sensitive stuff upstairs—Fane stuff—so he had to take off any protections he had on him in case he blew something up. I'll go get them," he adds, and goes out into the corridor.
You ignore Darrow, who is standing in a corner with a pale face, to follow Joe. "Frank says we need to talk about what we're doing with Hal," you say.
"Ayup." Joe drops your latest victim onto the table. "Make him into one of us, or recycle him for parts?"
Maybe it's just your resentment of the strain he put you through, but you decide you want to add Hal to your own collection, and to make him one of your own faces. "So you want to be two Stellae," Joe says grimly. "Does that mean Frank and I get to divide Rick and Aparijita between us?"
"Maybe," you say. "That's something to talk about later."
"It's something to talk about now, Will," Joe says. "We've been letting you take the lead, but Frank and I've been talking, and we want to start sharing the loot out equally."
You feel yourself getting a little hot. "You've been picking up the lion's share of the loot, Joe," you retort. "You've got the Strausslers and all their money and the people they got working for them—"
"And you're gonna get Fane."
"We're all going to get Fane, aren't we?"
"Then we should share the essentia out evenly, shouldn't we?" Joe says with sweet venom.
You kick at the floor. He's right, you suppose, and you'll have one advantage going forward: you have remote sigils on them so you can step in to control them if ever want to.
But you're still uncertain, so you temporize. "Look, we'll get it sorted out real soon. But I should get inside Hal— Or get him onto me. Whichever, in case there's something we need to know."
"Fair enough," Joe replies. "Just so you know that we—"
"I get it Joe." You remind yourself that, in his position, you'd feel the same way. Because, of course, a copy of you {i|is in his position.
* * * * *
It will make a lot of noise, but with Swann out of commission you don't care, and instead of putting on his mask you strip him to operate on.
He's an unprepossessing physical specimen. He's in his late twenties, with a great nimbus of dark brown hair that floats about his head and touches the top of his shoulders. He is so pale that a little green actually shows under his skin, and his whiskers—for he hasn't shaved in a day or two—are very black. He has a patch of curly hair in the very middle of a flat chest, and a little bit of a paunch. Maybe his limbs have a sinewy strength, but it will be only that, for they have little mass or definition. In his ratty black trainers, his dark pants and t-shirt (with its yellow hammer-and-sickle) and cheap flannel jacket he looks like what Frank and Joe have said he basically is: an undernourished, underexercised, underemployed post-doctoral student who survives on government handouts in the seediest parts of the university towns while agitating for social, political, and economic revolution.
To cut down on the amount of noise you remove his anima, imago, and essentia in one great blast, then split the last-named into ten bottles, in case you decide to share him equally with your teammates. Then you shrink the resulting golem into a small but heavy totem that can be lugged around without being noticed. "Give me a new identity, Joe," you say as you strip.
"And let's hope there aren't any surprises," Joe says as you lay yourself on the operating table.
You close your eyes so you won't see it coming.
* * * * *
"Well?" you say when you can't stand the suspense any longer.
"I thought you were getting used it," Joe says. "It's all done."
You open your eyes and sit up. "I didn't feel anything," you say doubtfully.
"And I keep telling you that you never do." Joe smiles. "Wanna go looking for Swann now?"
You gulp. It's one thing to give one of your colleagues a new batch of essentia in its own segregated setting. It's another to give one to yourself—and for it to be Stellae essentia besides. The last time a retrograde Stellae—and you suppose that's what you are—tried the trick, he more or less melted himself.
You cover your eyes, hunch yourself, and wipe your chest.
Your guts take a hard, fast ride on a Tilt-a-Whirl, and you grab at the floor. Your heart is beating hard when you open your eyes and look around.
Something about the world does seem a little different. There's a "fuzz" to it, as though you can almost see and almost feel the metaphysical sigils that knit together to create the physical world. But maybe it's your imagination. At least you don't feel like you're suffering a breakdown.
"Is that the essentia?" Joe asks. "What about the face?"
You take another breath, close your eyes, concentrate, and wipe your hand across your face.
The resulting sensation is less disorienting, but it's dramatic enough. It's like your whole brain has slid away on a track and another brain—with completely different memories and skills and personality—has slid in to replace it. It's an even stronger change than when you briefly turned yourself into Jonathan Straussler back in Saratoga Falls.
But it's still you as you fall backward onto the operating table to laugh at the ceiling.
"Well?" Joe says.
You thrust your fists into the air. "Oh! Brilliant!"
* * * * *
You catch sight of Frank standing in the doorway as you scramble over onto your hands and knees to peer at the operating table that ... that turned you into the guy who is now so fascinated by the workmanship. Soft bangs fall into your face, and you push them away. "Oh, Stars, Joe! You ever seen anything like it?" Your cock hardens as you study the sigils. "Where's my staff? Gotta get the design into m' files. Some of this I can—"
"We got time for that later, Hal," Frank says, and he heavily emphasizes the name.
Hal. Hal Swann. Yes, you are Hal Swann, one of the Stellae's expert—though slapdash—designers. This is who you are.
It's who Joe and Frank could be, too.
Or maybe you could keep Hal to yourself, and make them more fully "Will Prescott" by sharing with them your original essentia.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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