Indefinite Renewal Read online

  “We won’t speak of this again,” he warned Francisco moving away from the car. The other man had regained his own feet and was staggering toward the vehicle slowly. “Ever.”

  “No,” the little Italian agreed, his tone serious for once. “We will not.” The look he gave Nick was half-rage and half—respect? “Well played, sir,” he admitted softly. “I look forward to the day Daniel attempts to command you, and to your response.”

  Nick didn’t know how to respond to that, so he merely watched as the older Renewed slid awkwardly into the driver’s seat and pulled the door shut behind him. A moment later he had reversed the car and pulled away, its headlights washing across Nick before leaving him there in the dark, his mother still unconscious in his arms and on his shoulder.

  Nick sighed.

  It was going to be a long walk home.

  Nick made it back without incident, and called a car after pausing just long enough to stash the gun again, shed his long coat, and eat a quick bite to replenish some of what he’d given Francisco. The car pulled up as he was finishing his snack, and he carried his mother out and lowered her into the back seat, then slid in beside her and gave the driver her address. If the man thought anything about seeing a tall young man taking a small, unconscious older woman home, he didn’t say.

  Once there, Nick carried his mother inside and over to the living room couch. He set her down there, looked around, and spotted a mystery novel on the coffee table. A bookmark was thrust in a little more than halfway through. Nick set the book beside his mother on the couch. She often fell asleep reading—with any luck she’d think that she’d done so again, and that the rest had been a dream.

  Of course, that didn’t explain her cell phone.

  Nick had forgotten to take it off Francisco. Maybe his mother would think she’d lost it somewhere, but that wasn’t like her.

  Well, he’d worry about that later.

  For now, he crept back out of the apartment, pulling the door shut behind him and locking it securely. Then he trudged off toward the L and home.

  The next time he stopped by the club, Nick was told there was a package waiting for him. It was a small wooden box, simple but elegant.

  Within was his mother’s cell phone, and a note:

  On my honor.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Several more days passed before Nick finally found the time to catch his breath. He didn’t have to be anywhere, or do anything, or teach anyone, or write any papers. He just sat in his apartment and enjoyed the respite. Then he was at last able to take the first step toward cataloguing Chi’en Lee’s abilities and merging them with his own.

  She had a vast understanding of Oriental mythology, it turned out, as well as a good working knowledge of both Eastern and Western mysticism and the traditions they grew out of. He also added fluency in Chinese and Vietnamese to his list of talents, and a great deal of recipes for Chinese dishes, along with a surprising amount of information about James Joyce, for some reason. But most important was the thing he could feel tugging at the back of his mind, just under his consciousness, coloring the edge of his vision with odd images and causing him to have strange dreams that night about where he would go and what he would say the next day.

  Sure enough, the following morning he discovered that his phone had been cut off by mistake, and he spent a good two hours arguing with the officials over the phone from his office, before finally getting it straightened out. Even the estimated time of repair had been right in his vision the night before, and he felt an odd chill from the enormity of just what he could now do. For a moment he even considered scrapping his whole plan, just dealing with what he had now, but then struck the thought from his head. He had come too far, and gone through too much—not to mention the people he had taken—to stop now.

  There was a certain amount of control to the ability, he discovered, like the switch on an alarm clock, and he slept more soundly the next night, after finally figuring out how to perform the mental equivalent of switching it off.

  Then he started in earnest.

  The process involved several different levels, the most crucial of which was the psychological—unless the person really believed that it would work, everything else would mean nothing. Nick had no problem with that side of things, since he had the professor’s own convictions to go on, as well as the results from previous tests, but some of the other aspects were a bit draining. There were certain vitamins and chemicals that were ingested, in order to build up certain levels and reduce certain physical blocks in the brain, and he was forced to cut down on caffeine, since that tended to obscure certain brain-wave patterns and make others too energetic to be controlled properly. Then there was a hypnotic process that he had to perform on himself with a mirror every day, followed by several yoga-like exercises. There was usually a good deal of reading as well, but Nick didn’t have to bother with that because he already had the information in his head. Plus the standard tests for psychic ability, which he did well on thanks to Chi’en Lee, and more specific ones for her clairvoyance, and mental teasers designed to force distinct segments of the mind and the brain to work and to expand.

  It was a long grueling process, and some of the things he was required to do seemed more like hocus-pocus or witch-doctoring than real science, but Nick followed through with them anyway, trusting to Dr. Alexander’s judgment, and gradually he did see a difference.

  It started when he dropped by Chris’ one night, to see how her new furniture arrangement was, and to find out whether she wanted to go out and get something to eat. There was no answer when he knocked, but the door was unlocked—despite all warnings, Chris continued to leave her door open, even after three years up here and one burglary—and he let himself in, peering around the place. There were noises coming from the kitchen, what sounded like her voice, so he headed in that direction.

  “Chris?” No answer.

  “Chris?” He rounded the corner, and found her perched on a barstool by her kitchen counter, phone in one hand and pen in the other. She didn’t look up as he came in, and he didn’t want to interrupt, so he took the director’s chair by the porch door and settled down to wait.

  It didn’t take long.

  “Yeah, okay, that sounds good. I’ll be there—thanks.” Chris added something to the pad resting on her knee, and hung up the phone, the end of the pen held firmly between her teeth. Then she set the pad back down on the table, rose smoothly off the stool, and disappeared down the hall, in the direction of the bedroom.

  That was odd, Nick mused to himself, but stayed where he was. Chris was a little absent-minded sometimes, and she might have needed to grab something from her room before she forgot about it, but usually she at least said hi before wandering off somewhere. He waited a minute, listening for returning footsteps, and then pried himself off of the canvas seat. Just as he succeeded in removing himself and took a step down the hall, he heard the door to her bedroom open, and the sound of bare feet slapping on wood.

  Good timing, at least, he thought as he stepped aside so that she could squeeze by in the narrow hall—he wouldn’t have minded if she had had to press past him, but they had been over that territory several years ago, and he had accepted the position of close friend as the best he could hope for. But she certainly didn’t act like a friend as she walked by—there was still no greeting, no glance of recognition, nothing.

  It was as if he weren’t there, he realized, as he watched her move to the fridge and get out a glass of juice. After another second or two, waiting for some sign that he had been mistaken, he finally gave up and took action.

  “A-hem.”

  “Wha . . . “ Chris jumped slightly, and Nick watched the juice in her glass slosh about in a brief attempt to escape, before calming back down. Then he transferred his gaze to Chris herself.

  “Nick!” She set down the glass and stepped around the counter, giving him a hug that always made him wish things had worked out differently, and a smile so warm
he was glad of the way things were. “You surprised me—I didn’t hear you come in!”

  He looked at her carefully then, trying to see whether she were stringing him along, but Chris had never been one for practical jokes, and she seemed completely serious. “You really didn’t see or hear me before just now?”

  She shook her head, and then tilted it inquisitively to one side. “No, why? How long have you been here?”

  “Just a second or two,” he lied, deciding that the truth would only raise questions he probably couldn’t answer. Then he let a disapproving look drop over his face. “But you see how easy it is for someone, anyone, to get in here without you knowing?”

  That got a laugh. “Nick, stop worrying!” Chris gave him a playful shove, and shook her short brown hair. “I know the risk, but I just can’t bring myself to lock it.” Bright green eyes regarded him. “So, what’s up, anyway?” She grabbed his arm then, a look of mock-urgency crossing her face. “Please say you’ve come to take me to dinner—I’m starving, and there’s nothing here but a can of soup and some limp carrots.”

  “Well, in that case you’re in luck,” Nick responded, taking her hand and looping his arm in hers while attempting a half-bow. “I was in fact hoping you would do me the honor of joining me for dinner.” She giggled at his serious manner, and he found himself smiling as well. “Shall we?” Chris nodded and they headed for the door, but a part of Nick’s mind was still focused on what had just occurred. All through the evening, as they ate enchiladas and drank margaritas and later when they wandered through shops and tried on hats and odd party masks, he was working over the situation in the back of his head, and by the time he dropped her back off at her apartment and headed, weary but content, back to his own dwelling, he had worked it out.

  Invisibility. Or rather, not the classic movie bit, where someone vanishes right before your eyes, but the real kind, where you’re still there, but people just don’t notice you. That was why Chris had walked right past him—he had been there, and her eyes had probably registered it, but something in her brain told her to ignore that information, to pretend it hadn’t noticed him. Dr. Alexander’s memories provided several examples of people with the ability, unobtrusive to the point of being invisible, and he had even realized where he had gotten it from.

  Charlie. It all made sense. The burglar had broken into his apartment, and yet he hadn’t woken up until the man was inside and bumping against things. Then, when he had come into his room, Nick had almost missed spotting him, even though he knew the man was coming and was trying to locate him. And a quick review of Charlie’s memories proved that he had always been very good at sneaking up on people—it was one of the reasons he had become a thief in the first place. The man had obviously possessed the ability in a small degree, and Nick had gotten it from him, and now that he was undergoing the process it was getting stronger, to the point where a good friend didn’t even see him when he was standing in front of her in broad daylight! He hoped that this one would prove to have a cutoff switch, the way Chi’en Lee’s precognition had, or he could find himself being left out of a lot of things rather quickly!

  On the bright side, however, it showed that the process was showing results, and that it even worked on people who weren’t aware of their abilities.

  The next day he applied himself to the steps with renewed vigor, convinced that the end was finally in sight, and over the next two weeks he discovered more and more abilities among himself, mostly by accident; one day he was watching television, and groaned when he realized that he had left the remote on top of the set, and didn’t feel like getting up to retrieve it. “Here, remote,” he called out playfully, wishing he could actually train the thing to come when he called, and then forgot the idea and sat with his mouth open in amazement as the small device rose slowly into the air and floated lazily across the room, hovering before him for a full half-minute before he collected himself enough to reach out and grab it.

  A day later he passed an old lady in the park, emptying a bottle of pain-killers into her hand, and then almost crumpled to the ground as his head seemed to explode into a knot of grinding pain. The pressure seemed to stab into his eyes as he staggered over to a bench for support, and he gasped for air, feeling his forehead collapse in on his brain. A minute later the pain suddenly vanished, and he straightened up again, taking several deep breaths and nodding at the old lady, who was looking at him with a curious mix of sympathy and dread.

  “Bad headache,” he told her, and she nodded in perfect understanding, holding the bottle out in mute offering.

  “No thanks, it’s better now,” he informed her politely, and then headed quickly back down the path before the pain could hit again. Alexander’s thoughts identified what had just occurred as empathy, the ability to feel others’ emotions and physical sensations.

  Just my luck that it first kicked in when passing somebody with a migraine, he thought sourly as he retraced his steps home, but he dutifully filed it away under his growing list of abilities.

  By the end of the week the list had increased to six items, and he could place the original owners of each of them except for one.

  Amy had proved to be a receiving telepath, which explained why, occasionally, she had finished his answers to her, but then hadn’t appeared to understand what she had just said—she had simply been picking the words out of his head.

  The empathy had turned out to come from Dr. Alexander himself, and helped explain why the man had been so good at making others feel at ease—he had been able to tell when they were uncomfortable, and could take steps to alleviate it.

  Jeremy Baker, the unfortunate psych student, had proved to have lurking pyro tendencies, as Nick discovered when he got angry at an article in the paper one day, and caused it to ignite in his hands—since then he had been very careful about losing his temper, and hadn’t been to see Daniel at all, since the older man’s ability to upset him now constituted a very real danger.

  The only one he couldn’t figure out was the telekinesis, which meant two things: one, that it was probably his, since the only other person left was Murray Williams, and his memories held hints of an odd, almost hypnotic ability to sway people; and two, since he couldn’t think of any instances where he had affected objects by will alone, Dr. Alexander’s process had finally worked, and he had managed to unlock an ability in himself that had been latent only, and bring it under conscious control.

  The control part he tested by an impromptu dance of silverware across his table one night, and the sight had almost made him break down into convulsive laughter. Either he was one of the most powerful people in the world now, or he was destined to be a great nightclub act.

  The mention of power brought with it an image of Daniel, and of the Club, and that sobered him quickly. Now that he had finished the process, and gained access to the abilities inside of him, it was time to continue with his plan. He would have liked a little more time to become completely proficient in his new skills, but if he waited much longer Daniel might wonder what had happened to him, and he needed his father to stay out of the way for a little while longer.

  That settles it then, he thought as he scooped the now-lifeless cutlery up in his hands and deposited them back in the drawer. Tomorrow it’s back to the Club, to check in with Daniel and get the next list of instructions from him, and then it’s back to Hanson and Harrop. His lips curved up in a faint smile at the thought of his next visit to the brokerage firm. And then we’ll see whether I should deal with Daniel and his plans the way I’d originally hoped to, or book myself onto the Tonight Show.

  The next morning Nick slept in, rose feeling refreshed, showered and shaved, and treated himself to fresh-ground coffee and a buttered croissant at a nearby bakery before heading for the nearest El stop. It was a nice day out, and the train was fairly crowded as a result, but he managed to grab a seat by the window, and quickly lost himself in the view and his own thoughts. As the ride stretched on, however, odd bits and pie
ces began to intrude.

  . . . wife doesn’t think I can pull off the promotion . . .

  . . . was it two or three stops from here? Damn, where are those directions?

  . . . kill him if he tries it again . . .

  Nice legs on that one—wonder if she . . .

  With a start Nick glanced around him, eyes darting through the crowd as he attempted to pick faces out of the teeming mass. He stared for long minutes at the young man eyeing the blond woman in tights, the short older woman muttering to herself in the back, the tired worker in his jeans and gray shirt, and the young couple fumbling with a map, before falling back against the hard plastic of the seat. Great, he thought, now I’m reading minds! And not one or two, but everyone around me!

  As the consequences of that slowly seeped in, the panic left him, to be replaced by a startling sense of power. It really works, he thought to himself, turning back to the window and studying the reflections of the people in the smeared glass. I can read minds!

  Trying to contain his excitement, he focused on the young man again, and after a minute managed to pick out his thoughts again, without any of others—it felt a lot like tuning a radio to the channel you wanted, rather than randomly scanning stations, and there was even a sense of having locked onto that particular mind, as if he could relax and not have to worry about losing the signal now.

  All right, Nick thought, let’s test that, and he took a deep breath, slowly forcing his attention away from the process of mental spying and to the thoughts themselves. For several minutes he simply listened to the man, whose name was Pete, apparently, admiring the blond girl by the door, thinking about ways to approach her, and reminiscing about past girls he’d known. Pete was just remembering a particularly steamy night in a private pool with a redhead named Nancy, and Nick could feel the warm beginnings of a blush on the back of his neck, when he was distracted from his unusual voyeurism.