Operation luna, p.7
Operation Luna, page 7
"Yes, well, yes, but I should think if they opened up to us—"
"That's more complex than it sounds, as well you know, Robert Shining Knife."
He bit his lip. "Um-m, yeah. Possibly our operatives were kind of hamhanded yesterday. Is that unforgivable? The situation came at them in a rush, out of nowhere. Can you help us make amends?"
Ginny shrugged. "Maybe I can refer you to someone who may be able to." Sharply: "You've something more specific in mind for Steve and me. Otherwise you wouldn't flit us off like this. What do you think we can do that your thaumaturges can't?"
He sighed again. "I'm not too sure. Put us onto a spoor they might not scent?"
"Where? Obviously you've gridded the locality, and each of your teams will go over its assigned square with magnifying glasses and dowsers."
"They could miss traces you and Steve wouldn't. That's why I was anxious to get us in the field ahead of them."
"You're talking about a lot of acreage," I put in. "No way can we cover it all. Where should we head?"
"I hoped you'd have an intuition. As a medicine man myself, I knew from the first this isn't a routine case." Shining Knife's shoulders slumped. "It was worth a try."
"Hold on, man," Moy said. "We haven't provided the Matucheks near enough information. Like, we're asking them to make straw without bricks, right?" To us: "Okay, let me fill you in a little bit, like on the Asian angle."
Ginny twisted around to look straight at him. Edgar peered from the globes. It was easier for me. He leaned back in his seat, making a relaxed, open-handed gesture. "You see," he related, "we know—Military Intelligence and everybody else concerned does—the Chinese are hot to get into space and would dearly love to be first. Prestige, seizing the high ground, et geopolitical cetera. They can't do that unless they stymie our effort, right? Also the Europeans', but it's way behind ours, and as for the Russians, with that huge religious revival of theirs they'll be content to orbit a few ikons. Now, the FBI keeps liaison with Scotland Yard, so we know Fu Ch'ing is currently in England."
"Fu who?" I blurted.
Moy gave me a capitalized Look. "You've never heard of the insidious Dr. Fu Ch'ing?"
Under the cloudlet, against the sun-glare beyond, the bones stood forth in Ginny's abruptly pale face. "I have," she said.
Moy nodded, more calm because he'd dealt with this more. "Sure, you would have, Mrs. Matuchek." To me: "It isn't publicized. The evidence has to stay confidential—protection of sources and so forth. Beside… hm-m… any journalists who've picked up some hints, either they came to bad ends, quick-like, or they've been smart and kept quiet. He's the top thaumaturge in China, and also its top secret agent."
"Not that he acts under orders," Shining Knife observed. "There are times when he is the Chinese government."
The small hairs rose across my body. Wolf, I'd have given a better display. "If he's that big, why isn't he under constant surveillance?" I demanded.
"Impossible," Moy explained. "It was indirectly, through their own spies, that the British Secret Service learned he's come to England. Applying their resources, they might find out where he's headquartered— maybe they have, a time or two—but what use is that? If they tried to raid the place, he'd be gone, taking everything important with him."
"Does the Yard have any idea what his purpose is?" Ginny asked.
"They and the Foreign Office can guess. Make trouble wherever he can. But mainly, insert some bad luck into the European Conference on Activity in Space. It's meeting in London this year, you may know, and has hopes of actually accomplishing something. But meanwhile, we Americans were ready for a major launch—and there Fu Ch'ing is, better connected to us across the Atlantic than across the Pacific. Wouldn't he try to take advantage of that?" Moy shrugged. "It's a thought. One of the many we need to pursue."
"My brother has Chinese connections," Ginny murmured. "Possibly that has sympathetic, sensitizing effects on me—" She stiffened. "Why didn't you invite him along today?"
As seldom before, Shining Knife sounded awkward. "He's a, a scientist, isn't he? Not a practical goeticist. I don't think this is in his area of competence."
Ginny clenched her jaw. "So you say. I thought jargon was beneath you, Robert."
I saw him wounded. He masked it fast.
She relented for the time being. "However, what we want is the truth. All right, after what you two have told us, plus whatever knowledge we two have, I can try."
She stood up on the carpet. The cloudlet hazed her head; stray locks fluttered like flame. She took her wand from her belt pouch and extended it. The star-point at the tip burst into brilliance, even in this light. It lay loosely in her right hand while the green eyes half closed. The raven jumped to her shoulder and spread his wings straight aloft, like pieces of night. When she reached behind her and touched her left fingers to my head, tiny lightnings went through me.
I heard her murmur and sensed her think.
The wand swung about of itself to point southeast. "Go yonder," she said.
* * *
7
We landed in a gaunt part of the malpais, beyond sight of anything human, and got off.
Mostly that great volcanic basin is rather beautiful. Grass, brush, and small evergreen trees cover it more fully than you might expect in so arid a land. Sandstone cliffs, like pale gold, rim it on the east, mesas and ridges on the west, beneath the royally blue sky of high altitude. But Ginny's wand had led us to the edge of a lava outcrop. Black, ropy masses lay tumbled before us, hot and hard; sharp shards waited underfoot for us to stumble on and slash ourselves if we fell. The sun savaged them.
Even here life kept a hold, a thin growth of stuff like saltbush, snake-weed, and bunchgrass, gray spatters of lichen, now and then a tiny flower. However, this was not a friendly place.
"I think you'd better go wolf, Steve," Ginny said into the quietness. "We'll need every capability we have."
"Yeah." Having expected that, I'd prepared. I went to the rear of the rug. The G-men had opened the coffer and were taking out their apparatus. "If you'll make room for me, I'll transform," I offered. "Provide you a better nose, if nothing else."
"Uh, won't the ultraviolet be dangerous for you?" asked Moy as he buttered sunblock over his exposed skin.
Evidently he wasn't too familiar with the subject. Nobody can know everything. "Not in itself, except for inhibiting the change in either direction," I said. "In my movie days, we often shot a scene under pretty fierce edisons." To make conversation while they emptied the coffer: "The reason werecritters were traditionally believed to be nightgangers was that in nature only a full or nearly full moon gives the combination of polarizations, strong enough, necessary to trigger the hormones and such. Getting caught in animal shape by dawn could mean you were in big trouble. You might have to do desperate things, trying to stay alive through the month. It helped give our land a bad name—which, in turn, helped sour their dispositions and make outlawry look not so bad."
"Ah, yes, it comes back to me now. The Bureau does employ a few therianthropes, you know." A few; we tend not to be organization persons, what with the wild instincts latent in us. "I never chanced to meet any till you, Mr. Matuchek, either professionally or socially." Moy smiled. "At least, that I'm aware of."
I nodded. "We're fairly scarce to start with. And there isn't a lot of demand for the ability anymore. Trite in show biz. These days Incanta-tional Light and Technics can provide way fancier special effects. We do some police work, as you say; some military; and the Park Service would like to have more of us as rangers than it's got, but the pay's lousy. So, often, to avoid prejudice or cranks or inane questions, weres keep their nature to themselves and only change privately, for fun."
"They have semi-secret social groups," Shining Knife said. "Not the Lions, Elks, or Moose."
"It's hardly a Chinese thing at all," Moy observed. "Last I heard, the scientists hadn't agreed yet on how much that's due to culture, how much to genetics. Genetics mostly is my personal guess, because Japan's different."
I registered my surprise. "But aren't the Japanese and Chinese people close kin?"
"Not really. The distant ancestors of the Japanese came mainly from Southeast Asia. I'm told that weretigers are well-known down there."
I'd tangled with one once, Near Eastern. "Notorious, but rare. A man's got to be monstrous tall and heavy to have the mass of a respectable tiger. Wereleopards, now, or weredeer—" My mind wandered irresponsibly off to a silly old college song, tune of "Auld Lang Syne."
We're deer because weredeer because we're dear—
"Okay, Steve, the space is yours," Shining Knife said. Sweat blotted his blanket and shimmered across the thunderbirds, solar discs, and whatnot else painted on his body. I was pleased to see that among the objects removed were a cooler and four thermoses, plainly containing lunch. No doubt the bottles were full of lemonade or iced tea, but I imagined a few cans of beer in the box.
I took off my boots and clothes, down to the knitsuit underneath. Tossing them at a seat, I climbed into the coffer. Shining Knife closed the lid. Cramped in darkness, I fumbled after the Polaroid projector hung on my breast, aimed it, and thumbed the switch.
Transformation roiled me.
Wolf, I rapped with a paw. Shining Knife let me out. I sprang forth. Unshod, I felt the harshness of the terrain; but though I was a timber wolf, not a coyote, my pads were tough as leather. The heat was harder to take. Only my feet and black nose could sweat. I lolled my tongue. The steamoff from it sent a measure of-—no proper human word available— relief down to the end of my abbreviated tail. The glare hurt worse. My eyes were nearsighted but sensitive. Ginny hurried over with a pair of dark glasses from her pouch and slipped them onto my muzzle. They were prescription, too; I saw almost as well as before.
This meant less than you might suppose. The dimwitted human aspect of me appreciated it, but I was largely lupine, my brain attuned to scents, sounds, breezelets that stirred the fine hairs in my ears and ghosted along my pelt, the taste of that air— Again, I haven't words. No language does. A lizard scuttered between stalks of grass. My nose told me how cool-sweet its flesh would be and I resisted the temptation to snap it up like a canape off a tray. Somewhere nearby a rattlesnake lay coiled in the shade of a rock, a thicker, sharper smell: touch me not. The sun baked fragrances out of weeds and a faint memory of ancient brimstone out of the lava…
"All set?" Shining Knife called. "Let's get going."
I don't remember the next few hours very clearly. As said, while in some ways I was smarter and more aware than ever in human shape, I didn't have my normal IQ by a long shot. Besides, I never was a warlock. I knew the everyday cantrips and such, plus those needed for my engineering work, plus oddments acquired here and there, but the Art of my companions went leagues beyond that, and on three separate roads.
Ginny, her own glasses on her like a mask, set Edgar anight as she might have loosed a hawk. The wand quivered in her grasp, seeking to and fro; the star-point now blazed, now dimmed to a coal; she uttered words in tongues unknown to me.
Shining Knife danced. The eagle bonnet shivered, the blanket tossed, as if borne on unfelt winds. His voice keened high. The gourd rattled in his hand. Sometimes he'd pause and stride across yards of desolation, to hunker down and peer, take a pinch of soil and sniff, ponder on what he had found. And sometimes he'd sit cross-legged, stare straight out over immensity, lose himself altogether from us.
Moy walked around slowly, also often stopping. In his left hand, supported on the arm, he carried a clipboard holding several sheets of paper. Some were covered with Chinese characters, some were blank. A container at the top held small implements. He'd take sightings with compass, goniometer, and plumb bob. He'd consult his texts. With a calligraphic fountain brush he'd make notes, which included vivid sketches of the scenery. Other writings were calculations or spells.
Me, I coursed to and fro, snuffing the earth and the air, hunting for spoor. Beetles, ground squirrel scat, packrat burrow, stray feather, forsaken bone… For a while a stand of rabbitbrush threw me off. Its smell has been variously compared to dog piss and to a blend of thyme and skunk. Pretty overwhelming.
I worked my way around it and happened to come on the first clue.
But that was when I saw Edgar descend for a close peek. Nor would either of us have found anything if the party as a whole hadn't charmed— intuited, reasoned, made—progress forward in the right general direction.
Traces, weathered but too strong to be quite gone, a reek that raised the lips off my fangs and my muzzle on high… The howl rang lonesome through the noonday silence.
The others joined me as fast as the terrain allowed. I vaguely followed their excited voices: "—demonic… Nothing I've ever met before… Or I, unless— Mr. Moy?… Let me examine this more closely. If Mr. Matuchek will please outline the scented area—" My nose scuffed the dirt and got dust up it. I sneezed. That was okay; it blew out the odor.
"Shen—I think," Moy said low. "Could be something else—not clear enough to tell—but, yes, the geomantic alignment—"
We pressed our search harder. The trail, dim, repeatedly lost and regained, led toward unseen Cardinal Point. Once I heard Moy mutter, "Possibly accompanied by some kind of o-bake," and didn't understand.
What I did know, when I came on it, was the remnant of a big fat male stench not unlike what I might have left, except for overtones that made my tail-stump try to tuck itself between my hind legs. I mastered the fear but didn't quite dare make a noise. Instead, I lolloped back and tugged at Ginny's jeans.
She and the agents squatted to exercise their particular Gifts. Edgar flapped to perch on her shoulder and croak in her ear. She nodded grimly.
"Out of my department, I'm afraid," Moy said after a few minutes.
"In mine, I think," Shining Knife answered. "We've had word on the Plains—" He glanced at Ginny. "Coyote, right?"
"Yes, I'm sure." Her tone was flat. "He met the other or the others, whoever or whatever they were—he met them here. But first, in his insolent fashion, he signed the territory."
To me, at the moment, that seemed a fairly natural thing to do.
"Rendezvous arranged by Fu Ch'ing?" Shining Knife wondered.
"I can't say," Moy replied. "Let's push on."
We did. The dome of the VAB at the Point hove above the horizon, wavery in heat-shimmers. We glimpsed distance-dwarfed figures scrambling about, FBI personnel. Probably we were near the end of our own usefulness.
No. Shining Knife spotted the last indications we found—crushed stems, scuffed soil—and pointed me at them. Human smells barely lingered. A few feet away, Coyote's and his cronies' drowned them. However, the physical marks were plain. I heard Shining Knife interpret them: "Somebody landed a broomstick, and walked around in company with the Beings. A man, not a woman, to judge from the footprints, blurry though they are. Steve, do you by any chance recognize a scent?"
I shook my long head. After two days in this weather, what individually identifiable mortal odor could remain? Inwardly, I shivered, and I choked off a growl. A hint, a tinge? No. Impossible. Besides, we canines don't rat on our friends.
Our party searched a bit more but found little or nothing. Also, by then we were exhausted and starved, and had emptied our canteens. We trudged back to the carpet. Edgar flew, and sat there when we arrived. "Lunch!" he demanded hoarsely.
My companions set it out. Meanwhile I crawled into the coffer and rechanged. That takes practice when you're an animal. The confined space didn't make it easier. First I squirmed around to lie on my back, so that the flash, hung from its cord, rested flat on me. Holding it down with my right paw, I used my left to press the switch. After that I worked it around, caught it under my jaw, and let it shine over my belly, hind legs, and tail. Not a dignified procedure, but sufficient for transformation.
When I came out, Shining Knife had evoked local HQ on the annular phone and was reporting in Middle Sumerian. It's been reconstructed by tablet animation techniques, but is still obscure enough that hardly anybody knows it—not even thaumaturges wanting yet another exotic language for spellcasting—except in places like MI and the FBI, where they worry about eavesdroppers a lot.
By the time he was finished and I was dressed, the sandwiches, potato salad, and drinks had been set out. No beer, damn it. When he's on the job, Shining Knife is such a Boy Scout. Well, thirsty as I was, iced tea went down fine. We reversed the front seat of the Landlouper and sat face to face under the cloudlet, eating off our laps. Edgar stuck his beak in and nipped as he pleased. He figured he'd earned it.
Being newly human-intelligent, I needed explanations. "What did we actually find?" I asked.
"Plenty," Shining Knife said. "I doubt we could have without your help and Ginny's." The raven's beady eyes ransacked him. "And Edgar's, of course. Before the assigned search teams got this far, nature would have wiped out every helpful sign." Nature, always seeking for balance, blurring tracks to oblivion, evaporating volatiles, annulling memorials and memories. "Your country thanks you." He could say things like that without running for office. I liked him anyway. Too bad we kept clashing.
"As of now," he went on, "the teams have only gotten evidence of Coyote's nearness on the night of the disaster. Probably the, hm, the demons didn't need to approach any closer than we did today. From that distance, they could weaken the guardian spells."
"How?"
"Subtly, so that nothing visibly changed, no alarms went off, no warning was given," Moy said. "Cardinal Point was protected against Western goetics, white, Indian, and paranatural. It was not protected against influences more exotic. Nobody expected attack from that quarter. Also, to this day there's a great deal we don't know about the fine points of Far Eastern thaumaturgics. I'd guess that these Beings opened a way for Coyote to play his tricks."
