Chapter #42... And a Hole Card Is Revealed by: Seuzz   "Anyway, to continue," Rick says after a frightful pause. "I pretended to swallow the story about Delp and Blackwell. But I needed confirmation that there was something screwy about the boys' reappearance before I could jump down that particular rabbit hole. Because once you start getting paranoid, it's hard to pull back.
"And I got confirmation fast. Got it when Delp turned up under that woman's mask, along with a burned up book that looked like the Libra--"
"That was another fake," you say. "I've got--"
"Who's telling this story," Rick peevishly demands.
"I'm sorry. I was just--"
"You tell me you wanna hear my story, and then it's your mouth doing most of the moving."
"I'm sorry. I'll--"
"I've wasted half my breath, and if I don't finish it will all have been for nothing."
"I'm just trying to tell you I've got the real Libra Personae in the back seat. It's in my bag."
"Oh." He glances back. "Well okay then. Good."
Silence.
"You got confirmation fast?" you prompt.
"Huh? Oh, right." He grumbles in the back of his throat. "Yeah, that fire and death was another screwy thing. Gonna me ask why I thought that?"
"No."
"I'll tell you anyway. I don't mind an impossible story now and then. In fact, I kinda like 'em, because if there's something impossible about the solution, it tells me I'm likely on the right track."
"Okay, now I gotta ask why you say that."
"Because life ain't tidy," he snorts. "The story about Blackwell and Delp was a straightforward case of logical impossibility, and I don't like those. But real life also has lots of little impossibilities. Things that don't make sense. Weird coincidences and accidents that look like they can't be accidents. A good solution is always just a little bit fuzzy because it'll have a few of these impossibilities hanging on its edges."
"Can you give me an example?"
He thinks a bit. "Sure. Almost five years ago Aubrey Blackwell stole the Libra Personae from an estate office in upstate New York. But he didn't walk out the door with it. He just switched addresses on the box it had been packed in. He pulled one label off, and put a different label on. Scribbled in a new address.
"But he couldn't send it to himself, because what if the package got tracked? So where could he send it? He had a package of his own in his pocket, containing some instruments he'd had special made. Ah, he thought, I'll send it to the people who made these instruments. Then I'll visit them, find the book, and steal it back. So that's what he did. He mailed it to that business, then broke in and made off with the Libra. As it happens, a month later it slips out of his hands. That's when you would have found it."
"Huh," you say. "So what's the loose end?"
"Understand that I know all this because I looked inside Blackwell's mask. I saw him change the label and write down the new one, and I saw why he picked that new address."
"Okay."
"So here's the weird thing. He had it sent to Harris Prescott, care of Salopek Engineering. That's the office that handled his special tools, and that's the office he stole the Libra out of."
You stare at Rick. "Are you shitting me? He had it sent to my dad?"
"Uh huh. Creepy, isn't it? Your dad touches it, loses it, and then you of all people pick it up again after Blackwell loses it again. An impossible coincidence, but that's all it can be, because there was nothing sinister about any of the steps. Okay, it's not really impossible. But just impossible enough to give the story the right amount of fuzz.
"So, what happens when a story isn't fuzzy?" he continues. "Then all my alarms go off, because life is never tidy. But the story about the boys' reappearance was as crisp and clean as a freshly laundered shirt. Boys come back. Why? Because the spell got broke. Why did it get broke? Because the spellcaster died. Where did he die? He could have been anywhere in the world, but he was still in Saratoga Falls, easy to find, under a mask. Easily recognizable, too, because only the mask, not him, got burned up. Oh, and the book that caused all the trouble? Reduced to a cinder. No fuzz. No knots. All written out like a proof. Like a fairy tale."
Something about this reasoning strikes you as deeply implausible. You're not sure whether to accept it as a "fuzzy edge" to Rick's story or challenge it as a serious impossibility. Paradoxes, you sense, lie at both ends of the dilemma.
"Besides," he dryly continues. "I'd already found the real Delp, so I knew this new Delp was a problem."
"What do you mean you found Delp?"
"I dug him up, the one who set himself on fire four years ago in the Keyserling library. That was one of the first things I--"
"Ewww!"
"--did after reading the forensic reports on his death. He'd been conclusively identified, so I wanted to see if there was a mask in the coffin. There wasn't, so it had to be him. But then we find another Delp under a mask in that mortuary. This one can also be conclusively identified as Delp. So there's a contradiction even worse than the one about when you got amnesia. Two Braydon Delps."
"How did Frank and Joe explain it when you told them?"
"I didn't tell them. I play all my cards close to the vest when I got doubts. Notice I'm being very free and open with you."
"I'm flattered."
"I can tell."
"I'm serious when I say that, Rick."
"So am I. But that was my confirmation that there was something Looney Tunes about Frank and Joe's resurrection. I decide I'm being played for a chump. I keep my distance and pretend I'm checking on the story about Delp and Blackwell, even though I'm well past it, and well past caring about it."
"But how does that put you on to me?"
"It goes back to that story about Delp. Whoever made that up seemed very keen to tie you in to it. Why make you the patsy, when your involvement wouldn't have been possible? They could have faked up any other patsy without causing a contradiction, but they wanted you in the middle of it. Why?"
You can answer his question, though you don't: Hyde-White wanted to see you punished for rejecting his offer to join Fane.
But Rick has his own answer: "So it made me wonder if you weren't the real key to the mystery. I wondered if maybe they wrapped you up inside an impossible story because you were the only true thing, the real clues, the actual solution. Maybe they hid you in a tissue of lies, so that if I discarded the tissue I'd discard the only true thing in the whole mystery.
"And I decided I was on the right track when I spotted the watcher they put on you. Julian Dey know about those?"
"Yeah, they're a kind of occult reconnaissance drone," you say. "You put them on someone, and then you can spy on them from a distance, see what they say and do. Frank put one on me when we got to London. It was part of the tool kit Dey gave him and Joe."
"Right. We don't go in for those in the Stellae. Fucking invasion of privacy. Well, usually we don't go in for them."
He shifts uncomfortably. A penny drops in your head-- "Wait, Rick, are you saying that you--"
"I just modified one, okay? Your friends at Proteus put one on you, and I spotted it when we met at the coffee shop. When I took you into the bathroom I, uh, changed the frequency, so they'd lose track of you, and started using it to track you myself. I wanted to see what you'd get up to, see what kind of trouble happened around you. Because if they were interested in you, I was going to be interested in you too." He takes the knife from his pocket. "This was my remote monitor."
"That's how come you knew I -- ! You've been spying on me the whole time! I bet you even saw me inside Fane tonight!"
"Oh yeah, you've hardly been out of my sight. I had a lotta fun watching you play Lydia Rachels."
"Were you the one that put that mask in my bag?"
"Of course. I sicced Mac on you too."
"Mac?"
"Swann. I called him, told him about you, told him to pretend he'd found you on his own. I thought maybe he'd help shake things loose. It's his specialty."
You don't know whether to scream at Rick or kiss him. Well, you can't kiss him, because he smells like an old goat that's been rolling around in a bed of dead skunks. But you can't really scream at him either. You have to content yourself with slamming the heel of your hand repeatedly against the steering wheel.
But you do curse when Rick adds, "And Mac's here too. He's the one keeping the Fane trucks disabled."
* * * * *
"Fucking brilliant!" Swann grins at you through the driver's side window after you've pulled up next to the parking garage, and gives you a thumbs up. "Yer gonna keep the look, right? Pretend t'run things while steerin' the swine into a mountain?"
"That's your job," you retort. "I'm not a Stellae."
"Oh but you are," Rick says. "Said so yourself this evening. Nice bluff, by the way."
"What? No, that was just a story I was telling Joe--"
"But it's the truth. Your invisibility trick. If you're not a Sulva, I'll eat my jacket." Rick sniffs at his shoulder and makes a face.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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