Star Harbor Nights

"You've been quiet," Allison said to Echo. They sat in a bare visitor lounge inside the maximum security perimeter of the Dunwich Asylum. Minerva had gone off to talk to Rhyme's handlers... her doctors, officially, though nobody was actually qualified to give her any form of treatment. Ford had tagged along. He was interested in an internship in his civilian identity, and didn't mind using his Thunderclap guise to get a peek at the inner workings of the place.

"Well, I've been sleeping," Echo replied, which was true. While in the sleeper cabin, she'd also changed out of her civilian clothes into her fighting uniform, which at first looked like it was just tights. The seams were actually stretchable nylon panels... a functional size-changing costume on a budget.

"Yeah, but I mean in general," Allison said. "Your mood, as much as anything. You're kind of putting out a thoughtful, quiet aura... and I don't just mean that as a telepathic thing."

Allison had, of course, slipped on the silvery circlet lent to her by Bast. She did not want to expose her growing telepathic sensitivity to the unfiltered mental leakage of the hospital's permanent residents.

"The thing is," Echo began, then trailed off, and began again. "The thing is... people always question the usefulness of my power, and I've always known I could actually be really helpful, in the right situation. The right situation being on a team, with lots of people who have different powers I can grab hold of. Now, I'm in that situation... at least temporarily... and nobody is questioning my right to be here... but now that I don't feel like I have to defend myself against other people's doubts, I'm starting to hear my own again."

"You're not having second thoughts?" Allison asked.

"Not really, no," Echo said. "It's just a bit of an adjustment."

"Oh, honey, I know all about people making fun of 'useless' powers," Amy said. "That's the danger of having powers that have anything to do with water... usually I end up punching crooks in the face while they're laughing at the fish out of water. Either that, or I just 'grab' all the water in their guts and start yanking it around. Then I kick them."

She laughed. It sounded nervous, and more than a little bit forced. She had been quiet, too... and her skin was showing an uncommon amount of green. Allison knew how her roommate felt about Rhyme, and even had some idea why now. She thought about saying something, but didn't know what.

"Hey, this has got nothing to do with anything, really," Beau said, breaking the silence that followed the laughter before it could become uncomfortable, "but when I was on the video phone with Claire, While we were... well, not while we 'were' but after we 'were'... I mean, after we did... well, Claire said... uh... you know, never mind. Forget I said anything."

"No, what did Claire say?" Allison asked. She wasn't inclined to put much stock in anything "Clever" Claire Clevenger could come up with, but a dangling "never mind" always got her interest.

"Well, I know this'll sound just like, you know, a Claire story, and it probably is," Beau said, "but she says she managed to find another name to go with the face of that Drosselmeier guy. Karl, um... Karl Heinrich Drossen. Guy was a big Nazi scientist who disappeared after the war. She says his picture's a spot-on match for the man who came to the Owlery, even though the picture was taken more than sixty years ago."

"What, she thinks he's a vampire or something?" Allison asked, trying not to laugh at the idea.

"She, uh, did. She said she's reviewed her memories of him and the information on Drossen and now she thinks he's cyborg," Beau said sheepishly. "Look, I know she's crazy. It's just, crazy or not... I also know she's smarter than me, and I just feel like I should listen to her."

Allison nearly choked. She'd said... or rather, thought... almost the same thing to Beau while watching his memories of a sexually-charged encounter with Claire. Her intention had been to make the youth realize the damage he risked to his reputation and life by having intimate contact with a seventeen year old girl in a semi-public place, but she hadn't had any real idea if she'd accomplished anything.

She hated to think she'd somehow planted a compulsion in Beau's mind to believe any wild, far-fetched thing that spilled out of the girl's motor mouth.

"Okay, it's a stupid thought," Beau said, not knowing the real reason for Allison's reaction. "Sorry I mentioned it."

"Hey, as long as you're not losing sight of reality, I think it's kind of sweet that you give Claire a bit of a hearing," Allison said. "You might especially want to listen to her on the subject of propriety."

"Uh, yeah," Beau said. "It's weird... before I knew who she was, she was just this girl I had the hots for. I figured she was probably a ditz, because blonde and, you know, built like that? Okay, that's not the most enlightened way of looking at things... but then finding out she had a brain, too... even a messed-up super brain... especially a messed-up super brain... I just... well, I've met a lot of girls, but only one Claire."

"You don't have to explain it to me," Allison said, smiling. "I'm all for romance."

Minerva returned a short time later, Ford in tow.

"It's all set up," she said. "Do you want company when you're dealing with her?"

"My instinct is that if you're there, she'll just want to mess with you," Allison said.

"And if I'm not, she'll just want to mess with you," Minerva said.

"I figured that, but at least I might figure out why she wants to mess with me," Allison said. "If you can observe us without Rhyme knowing, I'd say do it... the universal wisdom might help us spot if she's laying a trap."

"That didn't work out so hot last time," Minerva said. "You have to remember, I'm not used to having it all the time. I'm not always sure what it's trying to tell me, other than the big stuff."

Minerva and Allison were lead to Rhyme's room... it was a cell, but they didn't call it that. One whole wall of it was a one-way observation window. Rhyme had been restrained, movie serial killer style, against the opposite wall. Minverva stood back from the door as Allison was let in.

"Mindfyre," Rhyme said in acknowledgement. "I'd heard you got a new costume. What happened to it?"

She'd worn her old blue bodysuit, even with the laser burn. Her newer outfit's psychic augmentation mesh would conflict with the blocking properties of the headband she wore.

"It's at the cleaners," Allison said. "I got your message."

"'Message' might be too strong a word," Rhyme said. "You were not far from my thoughts when I constructed the aliases for my recent capers, but the idea that you might notice and seek me out was sort of a long shot. Not that I don't want to speak with you... it's so rare that I get visitors. My own family never comes to see me, except that brute Minerva, and then only when she wants something. Oh, on the subject of family... any out-of-town cape who talks to me ends up talking to my cousin Evelyn afterwards, in one of her guises or the other... when you do see her, please tell her I'm going to feed her daughter's intestines to her while she's still alive, won't you?"

"I'll tell her you said hi," Allison said.

"She'll find that nearly as disturbing, I assure you," Rhyme said.

"So, since I did seek you out... what did you want to say?" Allison asked, determined not to get sidetracked by Rhyme's cruel games.

"I confess, I wasn't completely sure at the time," Rhyme said. "I just had a feeling that such a meeting might prove to be... of interest to me." The words "of interest" send a chill down Allison's spine, for reasons she couldn't put into words. She remembered what Thoth and Amy had both told her, about how she was better off not doing anything to bring herself to the insane villainess's attention. "At the very least, I relished the thought of meeting you face-to-face... that band of memory metal around your head is an unexpected touch, I must say. It's such a precious resource. I'm surprised to see it in the possession of an untested neophyte like yourself."

She'd surprised Rhyme already? Allison decided to try to press that advantage.

"This? This is nothing," Allison said, trying to sound as blasé as she could. "I have armor made out of it at home."

"Really? Made by Thoth's capable hands, no doubt," Rhyme said. "Fascinating stuff, memory metal. You know, one of the reasons it's called that is that, if tempered correctly, it can be cast in one shape, then re-forged into another, and be made to switch between them when it receives the appropriate trigger. I always thought it would be fun to make a suit of armor with an interesting fail safe, like plates that turn into spikes driving inwards... or a mesh that constricts to crush and suffocate. Rather like the corset in Snow White. Isn't that an interesting visual?"

"You're clumsier than I've been lead to believe," Allison said. "There's no reason that..." She stopped herself from saying Thoth's name, though it was a foregone conclusion that Rhyme knew who she was talking about anyway. "...anyone would have  put a hidden self-destruct in my costume."

"I suppose he just gave you, an inexperienced heroine he hardly knows, a gift composed of the world's rarest metallic element out of pure altruism."

"You don't understand the heroic mindset," Allison said.

"No? My father was a hero... I was nearly so myself. In fact, I could have lived in the valley of mists forever in comfort and luxury if I hadn't decided to make the Amazons pay for their crimes," Rhyme said. "I'd call that a noble sacrifice brought on by a heroic impulse... though it looks like I'll live forever, anyway. Did you hear that some bright young fellow has prepared a scholarly paper postulating that, millions of years from now, after all other life has been wiped out by catastrophic climate change and radiation, the earth will be populated with a whole new order of life that will have evolved from bacteria in my fecal matter? I think it's a load of shit, personally... pun most certainly intended... but it makes you wonder about the ultimate origin of the current life on this planet. The excrement of a god is as good enough an explanation as any for a lot of the people walking around."

Allison resisted the temptation to speculate on the origin of Rhyme's life. Her intuition told her that this was a trap... mentioning Rhyme's parents, in a bad light or good, would give her an excuse to fly into a rage and delay meaningful conversation.

"Don't you find that most of the time, when somebody says 'no pun intended', they have in fact carefully constructed their statement around both the questionable word play and the obligatory disclaimer?" Rhyme asked when she saw Allison wasn't going to respond. "As if a pun is the very height of wit, and saying 'no pun intended' somehow heightens it."

"I know you worked with the villains behind the mind control scheme," Allison said, smoothly pressing on. "I'm sure you know who they are, and you didn't mind setting your sisters up to fight them, even knowing that they might have defeated the whole scheme."

"How'd that work out, by the way?" Rhyme said. "And do not dissemble... I shan't tell you a thing unless you tell me the results."

"They both got nabbed, but one broke free with my help," Allison said.

"That would probably be whichever of the two had the electric eyes at the moment," Rhyme said. "Yes? I rather thought that power would prove somewhat incompatible with their hardware, in the long run. It was only a matter of time before somebody figured out how to use it to short the thing out."

"Let's talk about that," Allison said. "You helped create the mind control system, right?"

"I filled in some blank spots in their basic theory. They had a solid idea... but there was, quite simply, no way to combine disparate chemical elements with which they worked in the manner which they desired," Rhyme said. "That is...no way, if one works within the bounds of the laws of chemistry as they're understood by modern science."

"Which you don't," Allison said.

"That's right. I have a whole different perspective on the ways which various chemicals can be made to interact with each other," Rhyme said. "That fossilized fraud of a scientist they'd dug up..."

"Drosselmeier," Allison said.

"If you interrupt me again, the next time I step out, I'm going to thread your intestines through one eye socket and out the other," Rhyme said. "But yes, him."

"You're kind of hung up on intestines, aren't you?"

"The human body only gives us so much to work with, and that's more the pity," Rhyme said. "But... in any event... Drosselmeier tried to get me to explain my methods, but I could see he hadn't the mind for it, even if I were inclined to share. So, you know about Drosselmeier... what other names have you dug up?"

"Geppetto," Allison said. She almost added, "And Molly.", but she still wasn't sure if that creepy interlude had been anything more than a nightmare.

"Ah, the big man," Rhyme said. "I've never made his acquaintance. The somewhat whimsical Italian name... juxtaposed with Drosselmeier as a former Nazi... does suggest a few things, but there is not enough data to form a real hypothesis. Still, my impression is that he and Drosselmeier go way back. My impressions are very rarely wrong."

"So, why are you telling me all this?" Allison asked.

"You don't find it interesting?"

"Of course I do," Allison said. "I just want to know what your game is."

"If I tell you, then it won't be a game," Rhyme said. "But let's make it simple: I think it would be... interesting... to see you go head-to-head with this little syndicate."

Every time Rhyme said something was "interesting," it made Allison's flesh crawl.

"Why?" she asked. "What's so 'interesting' about me?"

"That is the question, isn't it?" Rhyme said. "The 'bad guys' are interested in you, the 'good guys' are falling over themselves to help you... and now here I am, the smartest talking ape on the planet, taking time out of my busy schedule of flaying people alive in my mind to shoot the breeze with you. What is so special about you?"

"I don't know, what?" Allison asked.

"Well, lets start with our friends, the toymakers. I know that the bird-beaked bungler... I wonder why does nobody ever say, 'no alliteration intended?' Doesn't that strike you as odd? But, I digress... I know that the bird-beaked bungler will have identified the weak spot in their system: the electronic control chip," Rhyme said. "It's the ugly wart on an otherwise beautiful face, and the only vulnerable spot, as well. At the point when I tendered my services to them, they were hard at work on a solution: a non-technological, telempathic control interface that could function even with the mind vacant and the body seemingly comatose."

"That's why they focused on multiples," Allison reasoned. "The so-called 'twin connection'... or quadruplet connection, in the case of the Aces."

"Correct," Rhyme said. "The empathic bond shared among the Aces runs deeper than ordinary telepathy and is not subject to the normal constraints of such. It is, in effect, a private, no-intercept communication band. It was also apparently too subtle for the unevolved apes to duplicate or manipulate usefully.

"But I tried reaching out to the Aces, and the... well, your sisters," Allison said. "There was nothing there I could contact."

"That's because you were trying to get to their minds, which at that point existed in a state of disconnect from their brains," Rhyme corrected. "Your gift, though, could be used to address the peripheral nervous system directly... you don't use it that way, because you think in the 'language' of mind, not of nerves, but you can bet that Drosselmeier has a solution for that. It probably killed him to be forced to halt his other experiments even briefly to work in that direction... you know what they say about Nazi scientists and twins."

"Go on," Allison prompted. She quickly added, "about my gift, not about Nazi scientists."

"Well, as you may or may not consciously realize, here are actually two unique entities involved in the human thought process: the brain, which is physical, and the mind, which is not. A thought is represented within the brain as a series of electrochemical impulses... within the mind as, let's say, a ripple in the ether. Scientists and philosophers argue this back and forth, but neither the mind nor the brain exists independently of the other. They are both reflections of each other... a change in one begets a matching change in the other," the villainess continued. "This is where telepathy comes into play... the common statistic quoted among parapsychologists is that ninety percent of telepaths function by broadcasting something which affects the brain by way of the mind, projecting more 'ripples in the ether.' The remainder affect the mind via the brain. The actual ratio is closer to ninety-nine to one. You, of course, are one of the few who fall into the second category... the so-called 'neural telepaths,' who are quite often primarily psychokineticists."

"I know what I am," Allison asserted.

"I wonder, though... do you?" Rhyme asked. "There are others with that particular capability, of course... one in one hundred telepaths would still leave between six hundred and one thousand individuals in the country, ignoring the folks who can only pick up an occasional stray thought and focusing only on those who are capable of true two-way communication. If we tighten the parameters to those who have what we'll call an exploitable level, I'd say the pool shrinks to around one hundred people."

"And all those one hundred are targets like me?" Allison asked.

"Oh, not at the moment," Rhyme said. "They only need one."

"Then that brings us back to the 'why me' question," Allison said. "It can't be just geographical proximity... statistically, California has the highest concentration of psychics in the country, followed by Louisiana. Unless I've got you to thank for painting a bullseye on me, like you did with your sisters."

"Far from it... I did not know you existed until they inadvertently brought you to my attention."

"So they already knew about me," Allison said. "We can keep dancing around this forever, but what's so special about me?"

"You are a chrysalid, are you not?" Rhyme said. "A confirmed genetic categorization of DK-C-G."

"That's true," Allison asked. "I am. Why would they want a chrysalid in particular?"

"Strictly speaking, they don't," Rhyme said. "The presence of the Calder trait actually disqualifies you from being made a subject of the mind control experiments... the pesky little gene would respond to the body shutting down around it by activating itself. That was the original purpose for Lysenkol, incidentally: controlled creation of superhumans. Before the Calder gene was activated, the Soviet human augmentation program was responsible for exposing hundreds of thousands of people to all sorts of unpleasantness in the hopes of triggering a metahuman transformation. Lysenkol proved ideal for this exercise, because it both somewhat moderated the otherwise unpredictable metamorphosis process in the successful cases, and left the subjects alive in the unsuccessful ones. Deliciously, the test subjects who didn't gain powers when exposed to Lysenkol were subsequently killed by exposure to radiation and toxic chemicals, when we now know that the failure to respond to Lysenkol indicated they had absolutely no potential for adaptive mutation."

"Fascinating historical aside," Allison said.

"There are, according to my information and best guess, no more than six registered chrysalids in the United States," Rhyme said. "While that part of the registration information is not disclosed to the public, you can be assured that several top military and government officials know the names and powers of each and every person on that list, so they can keep watch if you ever go... 'butterfly.' Now, of the six individuals, whose names and powers are known to some by heart, how many do you suppose are also neural telepaths?"

"Are you saying the military's involved in this... this syndicate you mentioned?" Allison asked.

"Not the military as such, but somebody with access. Can you think of a better explanation for why you, of all people, would happen to have come to their attention?" Rhyme said. "You're not famous. You're not important... except for being on a very exclusive top secret government watch list. It stands to reason that any additional importance you might have picked up comes from your position on that list."

"If you think about it, the same reasoning could explain why the Pantheon of Heroes takes such an interest in you. You remember asking why Thoth... and of course it's him... would have given you an outfit that's been fitted with an out?" Rhyme said. "Butterflies who survive their metamorphosis have a high incidence of going rogue, you know."

"Or maybe it's just because I'm friends with... somebody," Allison said hotly, remembering at the last minute not to give Rhyme any more information than she already had. "You think of that?"

"Oh, you don't mean... why, little Amphitrite," Rhyme said. "She's about your age, isn't she?"

Allison said nothing.

"It's amazing how human she looks, isn't it?" Rhyme said. "I'm sure a person as sexually dysfunctional as you must be has marveled at her beauty. How perfectly formed, how perfectly... mammalian. It's amazing to think that, under that beauty... under all that skin... well, you've seen it, haven't you? What she really looks like?"

"We don't have secrets from each other," Allison said.

"I was the first one to find her other self," Rhyme said. "When I was forced to discipline her, for going against my wishes. She hadn't yet hit adolescence. I don't think she was quite ready to come out of her shell yet.. she had a sort of gooey, half-baked look. If you'd seen her in that state, I doubt you could even stand to look at her now. It's a pity I was interrupted before I could do any further anatomical studies... who knows how far I could have advanced the science of freak biology if I'd been able to vivisect her completely."

"You might as well not bother," Allison said. She felt her power twitching, beneath the shield created by the metal crown, but kept her outward calm. "I know that you did bad shit to Amphitrite... she never told me the specifics, but she didn't have to. I'd take off this band and cremate you alive, if I didn't know that would just play into your hands."

"Don't flatter yourself," Rhyme sneered. "I could break you like a twig, with or without your telepathy, if that's what I wanted. As I said, I'd rather see how this plays out. I don't doubt you'll survive it... though maybe not unscathed... but since you test me, I'll tell you this for nothing: when you see Amphitrite, you'll imagine her being tortured as a little girl, and you will give her a look of pure and unabashed pity, and she will see that pitying look, and for a moment, it will destroy her. You'll see it on her face. Only for a moment, but she'll go through her life with the memory of the look on your face, and you with the memory of the look on her face."

"Fat chance," Allison said. "You're a lousy hypnotist. Do you have anything else meaningful to say? Like maybe who else is in this synidcate?"

"It's a prediction, not a suggestion... though much later, it will eat you up wondering if it would've still happened if I hadn't put the idea in your head. In any event, I think that I've given you enough," Rhyme said contemptuously. "High military. There's a very limited circle of people with the 4B clearance to access that list. If your detective friend's little toy computer can't narrow that down, I'll be slightly disappointed."

"Fine, we're done, then," Allison said, heading towards the door.

"Done? This is just a start," Rhyme said while Allison was forced to wait for it to be opened from the outside. "I'll tell you something else... if you love Amphitrite, you won't watch her back too diligently in battle. If she dies a quick death, it will spare her all sorts of pain down the road."

"Maybe you should..." Minerva began as soon as Allison stepped through the security door.

"Save it," Allison said, heading back to the waiting area.

"You're back," Amy said, rising to greet her. "How did..."

The image of Amphitrite as a child, still fresh and firm in Allison's memory from Minerva's dream, flashed into Allison's mind. She imagined that beautiful child being tortured and skinned by the youth Pallas. She couldn't help it. The image burned in her brain.

Against her will, something must have showed.... because Amy's face fell, shattered. The face of the goddess became human, child-like and injured. A moment later she recovered, and gave a little sort of half-smile before her serene beauty returned in full. She blinked a couple of times.

"How did it go?" she asked, as if nothing had happened. Even the speedsters probably hadn't caught the significance of what had just passed between them.

"I... I have our next lead," Allison said.

She would force herself not to dwell. She probably would have given Amy the same look even without Rhyme's prediction... she couldn't help feeling sorry for pain suffered by the friend she loved so dearly... but Rhyme's words had given added weight to something that otherwise would have passed in an instant. That was the real trap.

"That's great," Amy said. "Can we... go somewhere else to discuss it?"

"Anywhere," Allison said. "I've had enough of asylums for one night."

"There's that hostility against the mental health profession again," Minerva joked.

It was exactly the sort of thing Allison needed to hear.