The Cloak of Night and Daggers
ഀഀ![[cover]](covers/conad.gif)
ഀഀThe Cloak of Night and Daggers [?]
ഀby Rosemary Edghill
ഀDAW Books (January 1997)
ഀISBN: 0-88677-724-0
Helicon was the largest SF Convention still located within a day-trip of New York. Helicon was held the week before Christmas, traditionally a dead weekend for conventions, but there were enough people, lured by an excuse for going somewhere other than home for the holidays, to keep Helicon going. The year that the first Star Wars movie came out and America celebrated its Bicentennial, Helicon had still been held within New York City itself, and the tales of its destruction of upmarket Manhattan hotels were the stuff of legend.
ഀഀഀThese days George Lucas was filming prequels, and Helicon was held in the wilds of, alternately, New Jersey and Upstate New York, hosted by unwary hoteliers who had not yet heard the tales.
ഀഀഀOr, perhaps, had heard them and didn't care.
ഀഀഀThe New York hotel was the Hotel Escher, which was located in Manningtree, an area of Westchester County that had hit economic rock bottom when IBM left. Five hundred SF fans could do what they liked: they could not equal the damage done by the recession. And so this year, once again, the pre-Solstice saw it filled almost to capacity with the few, the proud, the cream of New York area SF fan-and-prodom and its associated life forms.
ഀഀഀ"Check-in sucks," Holly Kendall observed succinctly, standing behind a bulwark of duffle-bags in the middle of the Escher's shabby, overcrowded lobby. She and Carol (who'd flown in from Idaho yesterday, obsessively overpunctual as always) had driven out to the airport to pick up Margot -- whose flight was supposed to arrive at noon and was late, as if it knew it carried Margot and had a tradition to uphold -- and then headed straight for Manningtree. Unfortunately, at least a hundred other people had all had the same idea, all converging on the Escher lobby in time for the 2:00 check-in and carrying more mismatched luggage than had been seen at the wrap party for Voyage of the Damned.
ഀഀഀ"It wouldn't suck if you weren't bringing enough gear for two men and a boy. The hotel does have beds, you know," Margot replied.
ഀഀഀ"I'm going to an event next weekend," Holly -- aka Lady Fiametta of the Danelaw -- responded weakly, with a glance at four extra-large cargo duffles.
ഀഀഀMargot snorted elegantly.
ഀഀഀAs a professional writer -- or, as Margot put it, a Professional Female Fantasy Writer (her current series, The Quest For The Phoenix Throne, the detailed adventures of the feckless Prince Perigord and his companion, the runaway librarian Azure Bowl, had reached Volume 5, a cliff-hanger ending involving the Goblin Market and a talking sphinx) -- Margot Reasoner felt called upon to dress (as she occasionally said herself) like some unearthly combination of Miss Piggy and the Wagnerian soprano at the Met.
ഀഀഀThis probably explained the cape, Holly thought with a combination of resignation and envy. It was silk velvet, Holly knew with costumer-trained instincts, a deep violet-tinged indigo with a glittering star-pattern worked somehow into the weave. It was lined in bright primrose satin, and, draped over Margot's robust frame, made her, well, difficult to overlook. She'd worn it on the plane, which meant she was wearing it in the lobby. This being Helicon, it only drew a few envious looks.
ഀഀഀ"Maybe if you guys, um, left the luggage with me?" Carol suggested hopefully.
ഀഀഀCarol Goodchild was shorter than either Holly or Margot and a great deal more self-effacing. She also had much less luggage than either of the other two. Carol had white-blond hair and grey eyes and despite these advantages managed to look like an apologetic sheepdog most of the time. Carol lived in Twisted River Idaho (population 1,465 if you really stretched things) and was the sole suzerain of the library. Two years before she'd worked at Brooklyn Public Library. Of course, two years ago Carol had been married, too.
ഀഀഀIt had taken a combination of threats, pleas, and downright bribery (Margot had promised the Twisted River Association Library a large donation of books from Margot's publisher) to get Carol to Helicon, and only the reminder that Carol would be only a few hours drive from Ippisiqua and could therefore add in a visit to her friend Ruth to see how she was settling in to her new job had finally been enough to swing it.
ഀഀഀ"Yeah, right, okay, sure, whatever," Holly said, in answer to the luggage question. She began heaving duffle bags in the direction of Carol's feet with a reckless disregard of anyone who might be in the way.
ഀഀഀ"Jeez, lady, what's in these things?" the bellman said, at the same time Holly said:
ഀഀഀ"Oh, never mind, let me handle those--"
ഀഀഀAnd Margot said: "Room 555; the neighbor of the Beast."
ഀഀഀCarol pretended a great interest in the opposite wall.
ഀഀഀWith the ease of long practice, Holly swung one of the bags up off the luggage cart -- it clanked alarmingly -- and carried it into the suite, waddling only a little. By the time the bellman had finished schlepping Margot's nine pieces of lipstick- red hard-sided Samsonite into the main room, Holly had gotten her four largest duffels stacked in a corner. He regarded them dubiously as he finished moving Carol's two battered no-brands into the room. Margot gave him a twenty. Carol closed the door behind him in relief.
ഀഀഀ"Really, you guys," she said.
ഀഀഀ"England expects," Margot said cryptically, opening the door that led to the bedroom.
ഀഀഀHolly flopped down on the couch in the main room. She was glad Margot had insisted on a suite -- they weren't much more expensive than a triple, and for Margot it was tax-deductible. And with the amount of luggage each of them had. . .
ഀഀഀ"There is no room," Margot announced, returning to the main room, "in the closets."
ഀഀഀ"Oh I don't have to--" Carol began.
ഀഀഀBoth of the others turned on her.
ഀഀഀ"There are times when I think you're too self-effacing for your own good," Holly said to her friend.
ഀഀഀ"Assertiveness is a virtue," Margot added. "I owe everything I am today to being unreasonable."
ഀഀഀ"If you don't think passivity is a virtue, you've never attended a meeting of the Twisted River Library Board," Carol said dryly. "If it'd been left to them to vote the money for civilization, we'd all still be living in trees."
ഀഀഀ"And loving it," Margot shot back, la Maxwell Smart. "But seriously folk--"
ഀഀഀ"You need the space for your masquerade stuff," Carol pointed out.
ഀഀഀ"This is true," Margot said.
ഀഀഀ"What are you doing this year?" Holly asked, genuinely curious. Margot's entries nearly always got at least a Judges' Mention.
ഀഀഀ"Ballgown from The City With No Name," Margot said promptly. "You know, Ellen Kushner?"
ഀഀഀHolly frowned. She knew the book, of course, but. . .
ഀഀഀ"And since they're never mentioned and never described, whose to say that whatever I do isn't accurate?" Margot finished triumphantly.
ഀഀഀCarol snorted and took her suitcase into the bedroom.
ഀഀഀHolly was the first one to finish unpacking. Margot was emptying her suitcases as methodically as if she were moving in for life, and Carol was sitting on one of the beds watching raptly, but Holly's method was simply to find the bag that held her con-clothes and leave them in it.
ഀഀഀ"Hey, guys?" she called through the door. "I'm going to go down and find out about Registration, okay?"
ഀഀഀ"Bring back Pepsi!" Margot called.
ഀഀഀHolly waved -- though neither of the others could possibly see her -- and let herself out the door of the suite.
ഀഀഀHolly Kendall was 5'10", with brown eyes and russet hair which, when braided, fell to her waist. She was an RN with a psych specialization, and for the last three years she'd worked as an EMT in New York City, which meant that the muscles she'd earned spending weekends swinging a sword in the SCA came in very handy on occasion.
ഀഀഀHolly liked the SCA. Even with Kingdom politics, it was about as far from reality as you could get.
ഀഀഀThe only thing farther was Helicon.
ഀഀഀIt helped that they held it in the Hotel Escher, which had been renovated some time in the nineteen sixties by an architect who'd apparently received his early training designing tesseracts. The hotel had seven floors. They were not, however, stacked one on top of the other. To get to the seventh floor, you took the elevator up to five and walked across. At the far end of the seventh floor was a staircase that went down one flight -- whereupon you were in the ballroom, which was on the first floor.
ഀഀഀRobert Heinlein would have loved it.
ഀഀഀSince Holly had been coming here for a number of years, she navigated the selection of half-staircases and two-floor elevator rides needed to get her from the suite floor (five) to the function rooms (seven) from which she could reach Registration (one) on personal autopilot, her mind on next weekend's "White Mare: Frigidare" camping event in the Shire of Val-Coeur.
ഀഀഀThat was when she saw the stranger moving slowly down the empty corridor, one hand on the wall.
ഀഀഀHolly's mind pegged him easily and instantly as a stranger, even though the Escher was rapidly filling with con-goers and it would not be entirely outside the realm of possibility for one of them to be wandering the halls in a bathrobe and jammies. It was partly the way he moved, as if he weren't entirely sure that the prosaic corridor around him was real, and partly that he looked miserable, as if there were no more fun anywhere in the universe. As she got closer, Holly revised her opinion further. Not just a mundane. Not at all.
ഀഀഀThe stranger was downright skinny; hollow-cheeked and gothic as a Russian vampire, and his wrist, where the sleeve of the dark blue terrycloth robe had fallen back from it, was slender and frail-seeming, the veins and tendons clearly visible. He was about an inch shorter than she, with a spiky mop of hair the color of new butter that was long in spots and short in spots and looked as if someone had tried to trim it with a three-hole punch. His skin had the fishbelly pallor that Holly, a nurse, automatically associated with great age or a prolonged hospital stay: whiter than white, with an almost violet undertone to it. Like some faster-than-intern computer, Holly's streetwise brain sorted through all the possibilities and came up with one that seemed all-too-likely.
ഀഀഀEscaped from an institution.
ഀഀഀBy now she was even with him -- close enough to see that one eye was green and the other was hazel. In the dim light of the corridor, they seemed to shine like a cat's. He wasn't very old at all; some intermediate "adult" age from twenty to forty, old enough to be out on his own. Her eyes flicked to his left wrist and saw what she expected to see: the plastic Patient ID that every patient wore.
ഀഀഀ"Can I help you?" Holly said in her best professional nurse's voice. She wanted a closer look at that bracelet: it would tell her his name and where he was from.
ഀഀഀHe turned toward the sound of her voice, slowly enough to tell Holly as plainly as if he'd said it aloud that he was heavily medicated. It was a moment before his eyes focussed on her.
ഀഀഀ"No," he said, enunciating with great clarity, as if speaking to the foreign-born, "I don't think so."
ഀഀഀHolly suppressed an unprofessional sound of amusement. Well, she'd asked. . . .
ഀഀഀJust then a gaggle of con-goers appeared at the ballroom end of the stairs, all talking at once. They were wearing Helicon badges and flourishing the rest of their Program Packets, obviously looking for something in the Transdimensional Corridor -- probably the dealer's room.
ഀഀഀThe effect on the stranger was startling. He threw himself backward into a doorway, his eyes flickering from side to side as he searched for some escape route. It was several seconds before he located the sound of the noise, but once he did he relaxed almost at once.
ഀഀഀThe conventioneers passed between Holly and the stranger without sparing the man in the bathrobe a single glanced. They turned the corner and vanished from sight. Before the stranger could focus on her again, Holly stepped across the hall and seized his wrist. She held the ID band up to the meager light in the hall. The stranger did not resist. She could feel his pulse fluttering, hummingbird-fast, beneath her fingers.
ഀഀഀ"It's okay," Holly said, in automatic soothing tones. "Nobody's going to hurt you."
ഀഀഀThe end of the sentence was slightly strangled as she got a good look at the bracelet. A bar code. Who the heck bar-codes their patients? For one stunned moment she entertained the possibility that this was some new weird form of hall-costume, and he'd turn out to be from, say, Vulcan General Hospital, but couldn't force herself to believe in it. As an EMT in New York, second-guessing people was a survival skill, and Holly'd become very good at it. This guy wasn't faking anything.
ഀഀഀ"Yes, they are," the stranger said seriously. Holly was baffled until she played back her own last words in her mind.
ഀഀഀ--Nobody's going to hurt you.
ഀഀഀ--Yes they are.
ഀഀഀWithout thinking, Holly pushed up the sleeve of his robe. When she saw the skin at the inside of his elbow, she sucked air in through her teeth in a hiss.
ഀഀഀThe skin around the needle-tracks was purplish -- inflamed, Holly was willing to bet, although the color was wrong. These were the marks of weeks, maybe months, of injections, unskillfully given -- or perhaps given for so long that the skin was starting to break down regardless of the care that had been taken.
ഀഀഀ"Who's going to hurt you?" Holly asked.
ഀഀഀThe corridor was too dark to see very well in, but her sense of something wrong was growing all the time. He seemed too lucid for a mental patient, and the only other causes she could think of for those tracks -- rehabilitating junkie, AIDS victim, terminal cancer -- didn't fit the rest of it. She tried to think of all the hospices, secondary care facilities, and hospitals in the area that were close enough for a sick frail man to walk from on an afternoon in late December.
ഀഀഀ"I don't know." The voice was weary, defeated. "Let me go." He swayed against the door, turning his head away and putting his free hand to cover his face. His hair -- long on this side -- fell forward.
ഀഀഀHe had pointed ears.
ഀഀഀHolly felt her preconceptions realign with an audible thunk. It couldn't be a stunt -- nobody she knew would carry a gag to such ridiculous lengths -- but real people didn't have pointed ears. She had a nagging feeling of something she'd forgotten, but brushed it aside. Whoever this guy was, he was hurt and lost, and that made him her business.
ഀഀഀ"Why don't we come over here into this nice room and sit down?" Holly suggested brightly.
ഀഀഀThe first item on the programming was at six; at a quarter of four the function room was deserted, with rows of pink chairs facing a white-swathed expanse of table. Holly led the man she already thought of as her patient -- a real busman's holiday, this, she acknowledged wryly -- to the nearest chair and then went over to the table to fetch him ice-water. On the way back she detoured to shove the door to the hall shut. With a little luck, nobody would open it again for a while.
ഀഀഀ"You have to let me go," the stranger said when she got back with the pitcher and glass. But he took the cup from her and drank gratefully.
ഀഀഀHolly stared at his ears. She couldn't imagine how she could have missed them before, even in the dim light of the hallway. Real genuine Star Trek pointed ears, without any sign of spirit-gum or scar tissue anywhere.
ഀഀഀReal? Oh don't be silly, Hollisandra, Holly chided herself.
ഀഀഀHe -- she was going to have to think of something to call him soon -- held out the empty cup for a refill, and Holly poured, trying to think. She almost wished he were bleeding -- for that, at least, she knew what to do.
ഀഀഀ"Is there somebody chasing you?" Holly said. He smiled slightly and didn't answer.
ഀഀഀHe'd said somebody wanted to hurt him, but he could be confused, delusional, or just plain wrong. She wished she knew what he'd been shot up with, and how much, and when. Thirst could mean any of the downers, all of which caused "cotton- mouth". Holly refilled his glass again. The pitcher was almost empty, and anyone could come in at any time.
ഀഀഀ"Do you think I could look at your eyes?" she said cautiously.
ഀഀഀShe waited, but he didn't answer.
ഀഀഀ"'Stoned again,'" Holly muttered irreverently, and gently put her hand on his face to tilt his head back into the light.
ഀഀഀHe didn't squint, or flinch away from the brightness. He didn't have to. When the lights from the ceiling shone fully into his mismatched harlequin eyes, the pupils contracted to vertical slits.
ഀഀഀAnd Holly remembered where she'd seen someone like this before.
ഀഀഀ"Hi, my name is Holly Kendal, and I'm your EMT for the morning."
ഀഀഀThe unit was already rolling. They'd found this guy down on the tracks on the "E" line, and with the city's subways all but closed down by the Subway Slasher, Holly was relieved to discover that their client's injuries didn't seem to be much worse than a whack upside the head, even if he was now bound for Bellevue under police escort. She brushed his hair back, very carefully, to see if she could tell what was bleeding and see what she needed to do at the site.
ഀഀഀThe client had pointed ears.
ഀഀഀShe glanced automatically at his eyes. They were the bright leaf-green of expensive contact lenses, and the pupils had contracted in the light until they were little more than vertical slits.
ഀഀഀThe client wasn't human.
ഀഀഀBut this was New York, and Rule Number One, even for Emergency Medical Technicians, was "mind your own business". She hesitated, chewing at her lower lip.
ഀഀഀ"How are you feeling?" she asked carefully. "Do you speak English?"
ഀഀഀ"Dizzy," the man on the gurney said, closing his eyes. . ..
ഀഀഀA few minutes later he'd fainted -- at least, he closed his eyes and didn't say anything else during the trip -- and when the unit got to Bellevue Holly'd gotten him into Emergency and dropped off the paperwork and that was that. They'd gotten a call for another run almost immediately, and for awhile she'd forgotten completely about the entire incident, eventually adding it to her "Weird but Meaningless" mental files along with so much of life in New York City. She'd never found out what happened to their client.
ഀഀഀHe might even still be at Bellevue, even though that had been more than two years ago, because this guy was not him. Same species maybe. . . .
ഀഀഀGet a life, Hollisandra! And right now it didn't matter if he was Starman or The Creature From The Black Lagoon -- what was she going to do with him? She couldn't just walk away?
ഀഀഀ"My name's Holly Kendal. I'm a nurse." Silence. "I'd like to help you. Do you belong in the hotel?" Silence again. "What's your name?" Holly said mournfully. He regarded her with the same vague, sweet, apologetic smile. Automatically, Holly smoothed the hair back out of his eyes. She couldn't imagine any place that wouldn't at least give its patients a decent haircut.
ഀഀഀHer fingers recognized the injury before her mind did; Holly was already recoiling with nausea before her eyes had time to focus on the dime-sized shiny pink burn. There was one just like it on his other temple.
ഀഀഀElectrodes.
ഀഀ"Aw, c'mon, Hol, it's not like they can really feel it. A few thousand volts through the old bean and they're just meat." And then he'd taken the cigarette, and. . . .
ഀഀഀShe'd nearly lost her RN's license over that one, and she had broken the orderly's jaw. And now she didn't work Psych any more, because no matter what you did, it wasn't always your shift and you couldn't stop what happened on other people's shifts.
ഀഀഀBut electroshock shouldn't leave marks like that. And almost nobody used it any more.
ഀഀഀ"C'mon," said Holly, putting an arm around her patient's bony shoulders and hauling him to his feet. "Walkies."
ഀഀഀ"Run away," the stranger said.
ഀഀഀ"Margot? Carol? I'm back -- there's somebody with me," Holly added quickly, just in case.
ഀഀഀCarol came into the living room, wearing jeans and a sky- blue sweater with a white unicorn knitted into it. She stopped when she saw the man with Holly.
ഀഀഀ"Holly . . . ?" Carol said forbiddingly.
ഀഀഀ"I found him wandering the halls," Holly said. She led him over to the couch and lowered him to it. He sank into the cushions gratefully and lay back; he'd gotten progressively less steady on his feet until Holly had almost ended up carrying him back the rest of the way to the room.
ഀഀഀ"Hi," said Carol uncertainly. He closed his eyes.
ഀഀഀ"He speaks English, but he's pretty doped up right now, I think," Holly said. "And he's got pointed ears."
ഀഀഀ"He's got what?" Margot had walked out of the bedroom on the last sentence. Her voice was curiously flat, and she looked like some kind of high-toned corporate raider in her maroon business suit and killer heels.
ഀഀഀ"Pointed ears," Carol repeated helpfully.
ഀഀഀ"And you brought him here?" Margot said.
ഀഀഀ"I don't know where he goes," Holly said, looking back and forth between her friends and her patient. "He's got an ID bracelet, but it's bar-coded, and he's all doped up, and . . . other stuff," she finished on a note of distaste. Carol had been a New York City cop's wife, and Margot was pretty tough, but there were just some things Holly didn't want to say out loud if she didn't have to.
ഀഀഀ"Hello-o-o. . ." Carol waved a hand back and forth in front of his face. He opened his eyes and gazed at her fingers with complete blankness.
ഀഀഀ"Cut it out," Holly said.
ഀഀഀ"So what," said Margot, "are you going to do with him?"
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