The Green Memory of Fear. B. A. Chepaitis

face grew sober and concerned. She could see the places where his childhood would drop from his cheeks and the bones live close to the flesh. He would be a handsome young man.

      “It wasn’t brave,” he said. “I just didn’t want to have to, like, explain what happened. Besides I knew cops need evidence. Right?”

      She nodded. “You did the right thing.”

      “You gonna ask me a lot of questions about the other boys?”

      “Not too many,” Jaguar said. “I’m here about you, not them.”

      “I can tell you something,” he said firmly. “I know why they did it. Shot people.”

      “Why?”

      “Because he said to. And I know why they killed themselves.”

      “Why?” Jaguar asked softly.

      “Because they didn’t want to become him,” Daro said. Fear made his face young again, a little boy seeking shelter from madmen.

      She saw herself at his age, living in the streets, her hands covered with blood from the rats she’d catch and eat, her eyes a wall against everything. Then, as if someone had changed channels on a television, she saw Daro kneeling in front of Dr. Senci, whose face stretched into sexual ecstasy while Daro’s eyes were blank with horror. She saw him struggle to be released from the Doctor’s hand, heard him gasp.

      Stop it. That feels funny.

      Just a little more, Daro. Good boy. That’s the way.

      Jaguar stepped back, and the image dissolved. They hadn’t made contact. At least, she hadn’t. What had she seen? She took in air, a short breath sucked in between her teeth. Daro, looking at her, shuddered.

      Susan put a hand on his shoulder. “Daro?” she asked.

      He shrugged, but leaned into her at the same time.

      “We don’t have to talk about lawyers and trials just yet, do we?” Susan turned to Jaguar and smiled hard. “Let’s have a snack, and Daro, you should change and wash up for dinner. Let’s do that. Okay?”

      Jaguar turned to her. She was desperately seeking a way to keep this tidy and clean. And she hadn’t a chance in hell of succeeding.

      “I think that would be a very good idea,” Jaguar said, and followed her to the kitchen.

      Planetoid Three—Toronto Replica, Zone 12

      The day after Jaguar left for Toronto Alex went back to the Senci file, and a hard copy of Davidson’s Etiquette of Vampires. He opened the book and the file on his desk, and contemplated.

      Dr. Senci’s file was merely a review of the basic facts. After the Serials his primary home was in Toronto, though he maintained his New York residence. He had money he said came from his family, but those records were destroyed in the violence, so they couldn’t check on that. Looting, mugging, searching the pockets of the dead—all this was common during the Killing Times, though Dr. Senci didn’t seem the type for that kind of thuggery.

      Alex drummed his fingers on his desk and peeked at his computer screen to check his calendar for the day. Final reports to file. Stats to update. He had training sessions all day tomorrow, something he often brought Jaguar to. Training was the best time to get to know new Teachers and to spot the ones with psi capacities. Jaguar could sniff those out even before the Teacher knew they had them, and given her own skills, she was the best at showing them how to use what they had.

      She carefully couched all her words in psychological terminology because the Governor’s Board still frowned on open use of the empathic arts, but they knew her, so they must know what she was up to. Probably they’d use it against her the next time she got in trouble, though at this point he didn’t think they’d fire her. She’d prevented too many potential PR disasters for them to risk that. They’d keep her around, because they never knew when they’d need her.

      He didn’t think they’d be so lenient if they knew she was researching vampires, subspecies Greenkeepers. He wasn’t sure what he thought of it himself.

      He stroked the book on his desk, flipped the pages around while he mentally reviewed the basics. Davidson said Greenkeepers accessed regenerative biochemicals through energy, blood or sex. She saw it as a specific psi capacity, and since it allowed them to live virtually forever, they had plenty of time to develop expertise in other psi capacities as well. They were usually hypnopaths and Telekines as well, often shapeshifters or Protean changers. If they were empaths, they would also be deeply shadowed, filled with that emptiness extant from the beginning of time.

      They were a dissonance, Davidson said, in a universe that strived toward harmony. A gathered bundle of negative energy moving outside the constraints of time. The longer they lived and fed, the more energy they could accrue, and the more energy they accrued, the longer they continued to live and feed.

      Davidson said their energy field appeared either as a space emptied of light or a dense greyness, but unless you knew that, you could stand next to one on the streets and notice nothing unusual beyond a slight but constant chill. An empath might sicken in their presence, or catch an odor of decaying flesh in their breath, said to be mildly toxic.

      If one fed off you once or twice the results would be nausea, flu-like aches and weakness, but if they kept feeding off you, you’d wither and die unless you became a Greenkeeper and fed off someone else. And only a Greenkeeper could transform someone who was not born to it, something they rarely did since they weren’t big on sharing.

      She speculated that perhaps there was actually only one original Greenkeeper, a mutation that never spread because it would not serve the human species well. That template may have made others in its early days, then seen the folly of overpopulating the planet with more like itself. And it might still be alive.

      Destroying any Greenkeeper was difficult at best since they could regenerate and heal wounds rapidly. If you shot a Greenkeeper once, odds were high you wouldn’t live long enough to get in a second shot, or to plunge your hand into his chest to rip his heart out, one of the best ways to kill them. They were, Davidson added by way of exquisite understatement, highly dangerous.

      That is, they were dangerous if they existed, which Davidson never admitted to believing. In fact, she stated frankly that there was no evidence backing any of the stories she’d collected. Nor, Alex thought, did any of it necessarily have anything to do with Dr. Senci, though Jaguar obviously suspected it might. Still, she had yet to say the magic words, Dr. Senci is a Greenkeeper, and she wouldn’t until she knew they were true. She was proceeding more slowly than usual, and he was glad of that.

      A knock on his door brought his attention away from his reading. “Come in,” he said, and the door opened to Rachel, who walked in and handed him a disk.

      “Senci,” she said. “Or actually, it’s about his victim. His psych evaluation. I couldn’t get it until we were officially on the case.”

      Alex slid the disc into his computer. Rachel stood behind his chair, looking over his shoulder. The file scrolled out the medical life of Daro Karas, born twelve years ago to an older couple in Toronto, through the aid of in vitro fertilization. His infancy was normal. His toddler-hood was normal. He’d had all his vaccinations, grew at the usual pace, got all his teeth in, and showed no signs of ill health. A fine and healthy male specimen.

      Then, at eleven, he started having nightmares, in a specific and repetitive form. They got so bad his parents took him to see his doctor, who recommended Dr. Senci.

      Alex knew all this. Then, something on line three caught his eye. He read, then twisted a scowling face to Rachel. “Hell. Did she know this?” he asked.

      Rachel shook her head. “She won’t get this until tomorrow, when she meets with the Provincial people. And it’s kind of buried so she might not catch it right away. I mean, that wording—metaphoric interpolations involve mythic creatures, etcetera. That’s why I brought it up. So you could let her know.”

      Alex