The Blue Balloon (207)

[PSI-3]

Fall lunches were easily dawdled over. Easier, now that Magnificent’s education had been partially delegated to people qualified to fill in the gaps. Also, Brigadier General Glorious D’Iver did not particularly wish to be roped into seeing yet another movie. This week’s offerings at La Stella didn’t even have any explosions.

She had consumed part of a seagull in a shady tree near the beach while gazing at the ocean and not being at all wistful. An ocean was scenic.

The most scenic route home was to follow the beach southwards and cut through Candlewood Park as quickly as possible — the park part as opposed to the industrial part. Soot was unpleasant to have in feathers. She might dispose of a few pigeons on the way, but she preferred not to eat there.

Most non-prey motion was noted and dismissed. A flash of color caught her eye — she thought maybe a balloon, which was odd for Candlewood Park — and she circled around once to investigate it.

It was a tall, thin blue human being, not a balloon. But she recognized this one.

Mr. Zusman was also an unusual thing to see in Candlewood Park. Magnificent had told her he was going to take some time off today, and she was going to help teach an art lesson with Milo and Calliope. The General had given her a book on surrealist painters for the reference and sent her on her way with hardly a thought. She hadn’t even intended to check up on them.

Candlewood Park was not the sort of place people spent their time off, unless they were factory workers with lunches. Now that she thought about it, she had assumed Mr. Zusman was more the sort of person who would get on the bus to view that ‘romantic comedy’ at La Stella. Or, if he couldn’t afford that, just walk to MacArthur Park or the beach, and perhaps consume a hot dog or pretzel.

He was standing under a lamppost with his hands in his pockets and his head down.

A man touched his shoulder and addressed him. He nodded and they departed together towards the trees.

The General could not frown, but the random stranger and instant departure for privacy were suspicious. Is he selling drugs?

There were a few you couldn’t just buy in a pharmacy — of which Candlewood Park had plenty. Marijuana and its cousins were only legal in a licensed establishment and had to be consumed on the premises.

What is your job? thought the General, with narrowed gem-bright eyes. He used to deliver newspapers, but Maggie had gotten him fired. Night work. He worked nights. Late nights. The Captain had said something about ‘flexible hours,’ she was sure of it. He drank coffee with Mr. Zusman and then put him on a bus.

A bus to Candlewood Park? To sell drugs?

She tucked in her wings and followed them into the trees.

It only took her a few passes. The foliage was sparse and Mr. Zusman really did resemble a balloon. She landed in one of the taller candlewood trees and peered down at them between its evergreen branches.

They were standing amongst some waist-high thorn bushes which offered concealment when viewed from the path. There were bottles and paper litter caught against the lower branches, which Mr. Zusman kicked absently away as he spoke to the gentleman. She couldn’t hear them. Mr. Zusman shook his head. The gentleman touched his shoulder again and leaned in. Mr. Zusman nodded with his head down.

The gentleman undid his belt, and then his trousers.

The General took off in a burst of feathers and flapping and damn near slammed into another tree.

She landed in a third, a good distance away, and perched facing its gnarled trunk, shuddering.

He can’t. No. He can’t! Why? Why…?

If she had a human tongue in her head, she would’ve been swearing out loud. The consternated cheeping noises which escaped her were psychologically unsatisfying and only increased her anxiety. She sounded like a nervous canary.

If she had hands she would’ve punched something. All she could do was grip the branch a little tighter.

WHY DIDN’T THAT IDIOT JUST GET A JOB WITH ANOTHER PAPER?

She suppressed an urge to turn back into a human and demand it of him.

She couldn’t go back there, they were…

Oh. Oh, gods.

But he can’t do that. She twisted her claws on the branch. He can’t. He can’t do that. There are laws! He’s supposed to have a license and work indoors where I never see him if he’s going to do that!

I didn’t see him, she thought. I was mistaken. I’ll just go home.

She did not leave the tree, either to go home or have another look at the men and confirm her ‘mistake.’

The issue, Glorious, is not the reason or the legality. The issue is that someone you and your daughter know is doing something that is going to get him killed. You are at a crime scene in progress and you are tweeting on a tree branch like a sparrow.

She bit the branch above her, snapping off a piece, which she turned over once in her mouth and dropped to the ground.

He is an adult human being who is free to make his own choices and he’s probably not going to get killed right now!

‘Yes, Magnificent,’ she pictured herself saying. ‘I did happen to see your teacher walking into traffic the other day. I made no attempt to stop him because he is an adult human being who is free to make his own choices and he might not have been hit by a bus. I’m certain we can find someone else to teach you emotional regulation. What about Mordecai?’

Then I just won’t tell her I saw him, she thought.

She worked her claws on the branch as if she wanted to tear it in two.

What is the matter with you? You’re not going to do anything about this because you feel squeamish? Unlicensed prostitution is rampant and dangerous, you already know that, and you have the opportunity to stop some of it, so let’s go! You’ve fought in wars! How is an awkward conversation with a vague acquaintance worse?

She began to edge back and forth. There was no room among the branches for an eagle to pace.

Novel situation. Novel situation. This is a novel situation, and I have not rehearsed for it. I never even considered I was going to need a response for something like this.

What do I say?

It doesn’t matter what you say, all you have to do is clap your hands and yell at them like two dogs you want to break up with a hose. I promise you, Glorious, they will stop. If they haven’t already while you’ve been dithering about it.

She twittered weakly to herself. But I don’t have a hose.

It wasn’t very cloudy.

Will he know it was me?

Honestly, Glorious, do you care?

…He’ll have to stop if it’s raining. He won’t do any business in the rain. I’ll make sure he’s leaving from a distance, he’ll never see me, and I’ll go home and decide what to do about it. I’ll… I’ll write it down and edit it!

Yes, Glorious. Like at Valvienne. A speech. ‘Stop having sex with men in the bushes, it’s icky. Swords into plowshares. This is not the end.’

This is not helpful.

She left the tree.

It began to rain.

———

He was lying on the ground with an obvious red stain on his white T-shirt.

Mercifully, his trousers were on. She tried not to assign any meaning to it.

The other man was nowhere in sight.

She turned off the rain. “I should’ve stopped you the moment I saw you,” she muttered.

“Are you still alive, Mr. Zusman?” she demanded, at a run.

The soaking wet man in the bushes gave a groan and put both hands over his face, without moving otherwise. “Oh, gods, I thought that was you,” he said, muffled. There was a dusty footprint on his shirt which seemed to indicate he had been stepped or stomped on. A few crumpled blue-gray sinq notes littered the ground around him.

She skidded to a halt and fell to her knees in the mud. “Where are you injured?”

“Casse-toi.”

“In Anglais, if you are capable. Let me see.” She pulled down his hands.

He had taken one or two good shots to the face. There was blood leaking out of his nose and mouth, and a laceration on his right cheek that might have been caused by a ring.

She wondered, with disgust, if it had been a wedding ring.

“Is that all?” She pulled up his shirt and he shoved her away.

“Laisse-moi! Haven’t you done enough to me? Oh, gods, what am I going to do looking like this?” He sat up and put both hands over his face again.

She put a hand on his back to steady him. “We will go to Hyacinth and have her stitch you up, and when you are able, we will file a report with the police.”

He began to laugh.

“I will file this under symptoms of a severe head injury or emotional distress, Mr. Zusman, but are you able to get up and walk? The buses don’t like to stop for me when I levitate things.”

He swatted a hand at her, but without much hope. “Leave me. I don’t have the energy to explain this to you, and I don’t want to be in a coma. It won’t help.”

“You have been assaulted,” she replied. “The nature of the violation is not important at this time. We will perform triage and stabilize you, only then will it be necessary to take steps so that this man cannot harm anyone else. We will discuss the nature of your employment and other matters at a later date. I am capable of being discreet.” She opened her purse. “If you’re worried about the bus, I will clean up the blood. Just give me a moment.”

“Assaulted?” He choked another laugh. “I tried to renege on a verbal contract. I thought I saw a bird I knew. He wouldn’t let me.” He glanced at the ground. One of the notes was in easy reach. He swept it up. “Et voilá. He threw money at me. It’s not even theft of services. Just a… a…” He giggled and wiped his eye with his sleeve. “Another rude customer. We hospitality-industry people do not report rude customers to the police. It’s a darn good thing we don’t or they’d never have time to arrest anyone else. No, Brigadier General D’Iver, qu’est-ce qui me fait chier is he hit me in my face, and Milo and Calliope and your daughter are expecting me back at the school!”

“This argument is pointless.”

She had barely an instant to catch him folding his hand into the gesture for a shield. His image warped into a fish-eye, and before she could deliver her standard countermagical response, he did something else that threw her back ten feet into another set of thorn bushes, on her backside.

He lowered his hand and the shield evaporated. “Don’t,” the schoolteacher said in a low, dangerous voice. “Do not escalate this, General D’Iver. Please. For my sake. I am not going to let you knock me out and drag me back to your house, but if we do something here that gets the police involved, everyone back in Strawberryfield is going to find out why. I will lose the children. I will lose the school. And then I will die. It might take me a while, but I will find some way. Don’t kill me, General D’Iver. If you want to be a decent human being, help me get up to Sabot Street where I can get a cheap bed for tonight and clean up, then make up some excuse for Maggie and the others. I’ll only need one night, I heal fast. Or if you don’t want to get involved, then just leave me and we can both pretend this never happened. But please don’t kill me.”

She stood slowly. “Mr. Zusman, that laceration requires stitches.”

He touched his cheek and examined the blood that came away on his fingers. “No it doesn’t. That’s one of the few good things I get for being colored. I know my body and you have to trust me.”

“I am making my own assessment,” she replied. As she did not attempt to come nearer or knock him out again, he gave her time to do so. “I will take you to some accommodation with a bed and a bathroom if that is what you require of me right now,” she said. “But you must understand, Mr. Zusman, I am terrible at improvisation and I have no idea what I’m going to tell my daughter that she will believe.”

“Maybe we can come up with something on the way up to Sabot,” he allowed. “Do you promise that’s where we’ll go if I go with you, and you’re not going to trick me or hurt me?”

“I promise.”

He regarded her for a moment.

He sighed. “All right.” He began to collect the crumpled sinqs from the ground around him.

“You’re taking the money?” she cried.

He laughed and shook his head. “What good will it do if I leave it here?”

———

The nearest bus stop was at the west side of the park. He allowed the General to clean him up, dry out his soggy clothes, and do what she could to stop the bleeding. He was able to walk, though slowly, hunched over and holding his stomach.

“We might be able to say someone beat you up for some other reason. Racially-motivated violence?” There seemed to be a good amount of that in the paper.

He shook his head. “Milo and Calliope know what I came here to do. They were polite about it, but I know they know, and they know I know they know. I can’t tell about Calliope, but Milo and Ann aren’t going to let it slide if they see me like this, they… Ann…” He shuddered and looked away. “She figured it out and I don’t want to think how because she’s so young and I’m afraid for her. But they know how it is and they’re afraid for me too, both of them.”

“Then they’re both fools and they shouldn’t have volunteered to take over the school so you could do this.” She shook her head. “But they’re not about to tell the whole neighborhood and ruin your life, Mr. Zusman. We have no good options and you may have to put up with a little humiliation.”

“It’s not that.” He stopped walking and hung his head. “They’ll make me stop.”

“I am going to make you stop, Mr. Zusman. I’m just not going to involve the authorities or do anything to upset you right now.”

He looked up, he failed to meet her eyes, and he looked down again. “You can’t. I can’t. I don’t have any other way to make money.”

She lowered her voice. “Is this the drugs? Is this so you can buy drugs? Are you still abusing drugs?”

“It’s only one and it abuses me.” He began to walk again, faster, trying to leave her behind.

She was beside him, he wasn’t fast enough.

“This is how I buy everything, General D’Iver,” he muttered. “Everything that isn’t given to me, or something I find in the trash, this is how I get it.”

“Why don’t you just get a job with another paper?”

“They’ve all already fired me. The Daily News was the last. That isn’t Maggie’s fault. I’m not reliable.” He only paused a moment. “That’s the drugs. Heroin. The name of the drug is heroin, General D’Iver. And I am unreliable because sometimes it’s the only thing that helps and I don’t want to use it. Whenever I have money I spend it on other things, all of it. So if I start to lose my grip and I can’t function, I don’t have any heroin to take to put myself back together. Even when I still had the papers, I set things up so if I wanted any heroin I had to come to Candlewood Park and let people hurt me like this. I usually don’t. I usually just hide and collapse somewhere instead.” He shrugged. “But sometimes I do. Sometimes this is easier. So I’m used to this sort of thing, you see.”

“There are places where they help people with your problem, Mr. Zusman.”

“No there aren’t.”

“There are meetings…”

He stopped again and put out a hand to stop her too. “Let me ask you something. I don’t notice anything on you, but you know other soldiers. You must know other soldiers who lost a piece of themselves in that dirty little business we had a few years ago. Do you think any amount of meetings might help remove the desire to have their arm or leg or whatever part back?”

She stiffened and scowled. “Amputations do not work that way, Mr. Zusman. It is not a ‘desire.’ The brain is wired to accept sensory information from a whole human body. It is able to adapt to a loss to a certain extent, but in one way or another it will always be looking for that missing information. The real life — not ‘phantom’ — discomfort from a missing limb can drive men to suicide. This is why a touch-sensitive prosthetic made of appropriate material is so damn important to quality of life. The lack of research and customization options and just plain money to provide such things is a war crime in progress!”

He nodded to her. “I can’t prove it to you, not any more than a soldier can prove their phantom pain is real, but my brain has been rewired and it was no more voluntary than having a piece of me shot off. I need something that is no longer a part of me and it hurts. I didn’t even do it to myself for fun. The experience didn’t even have that to recommend it. You might call it an assault. Except, once again, I agreed to do it and I wasn’t allowed to back out.” He scoffed. “Nobody even threw money at me. Tactics. I got a crash-course in tactics that I’m never, ever going to use for no pay and no pension.”

She blinked. “What did you say?”

“Tactics.” He waved a hand at her. “The god who got high with my body and left before I could crash was someone who did tactics. Obviously we thought we needed that sort of thing to save lives, but it turned out just the opposite. I’m sorry. I really need to get to that bus stop. I need to sit down.” He began to walk again, a little faster. “I shouldn’t talk, I’m going to make myself sick.”

She picked him up.

He regarded the tips of his shoes hovering a subtle three inches off the ground. “General D’Iver…”

“Conserve your strength. I will sit you down at the bus stop and purchase some painkillers and a soda of your choice at the nearest pharmacy. A certain amount of shock is to be expected, even from minor wounds, and I can only guess at the internal damage.”

“I am not a balloon.”

“Would you believe the only reason we are having this conversation is that for one brief instant I thought you were?” She carried him along, refusing to acknowledge his protest, until he gave up.

———

“You’ve been changing without eating,” he said.

“I carry this weight for emergencies,” she said. She handed him the open soda and a bottle of paracetamol.

He took both and set them on the bench beside him, without looking. “Is that what I am?”

“If you’d like to be less of one, you could start treating yourself with the common sense and respect you would allow literally any other human being.”

“You realize you’ve just bought an addict drugs.” He took two pills and washed them down.

“Context, Mr. Zusman.” She sat down on the far side of the bench and looked at the street. “If you prefer gentlemen, the obvious solution is for Miss Rose to get you a job at her nightclub.”

He cackled and covered his eyes with a hand. “Oh my gods, you are being so damn delicate about this I’m about to throw up.”

“Then sip your soda.”

He did. Once. “No, I do not ‘prefer gentlemen,’ but ladies don’t pay to have sex with homeless strangers in the bushes. And employment at Ann’s club is not contingent upon such things in the first place. However, they are already overstaffed with people in worse situations than myself who need it more. I, on the other hand, can’t put in regular hours at regular times. And, as previously stated, I am not reliable. If I let her get me a job, and she would, I would only get myself fired and make her ashamed of me.”

“If you really require this drug as you say — if it serves the function of a prosthetic for your damaged brain — why don’t you just take it? If it really is something that allows you to function instead of impairing you. It is legal for purchase. You can even get a prescription. If you don’t trust yourself to take it only when you need it, you might leave it with Hyacinth. She appears to have no problem with drug use of any kind.”

“I have no idea if you’re trying to do psychology on me here and maneuver me into a meeting, but I don’t take it when I need it because I do not like needing it. I don’t like who I was when I took it, during the siege. I was literally another person most of the time, and I didn’t like him either, but I didn’t like myself. I was a worse version of myself. I’m ashamed of it and I don’t even like remembering it. I don’t want to do now what I did then. I want it to be over.” He sighed. “But it’s not.”

“This really does sound like a job for a psychologist of some kind.”

“‘Psychology,’ for someone in my income bracket, means I get arrested for having a breakdown in public that’s so bad it scares people, and they throw me in that asylum outside of town for the rest of my life. For the safety of others.”

“Aren’t those meetings free?”

He twisted his whole body away from her and did not speak for over a minute. “I looked into the meetings. If I tell you about that, will you be satisfied?”

“My satisfaction is irrelevant. I am only making conversation while we wait for the bus.”

“I am about to sit next to you on a bus for an hour while you judge me and that is not irrelevant, General D’Iver!”

“Would you prefer it if I sat somewhere else?”

“Now that is irrelevant. You’ll be deciding whether your daughter can continue to associate with me if you’re sitting on the opposite side of the planet.”

She nodded quietly. “But I intend to defer it until you are able to defend yourself. There is no reason to do that now.”

“C’est des conneries,” he muttered into the palm of his hand. He sat back and took another sip of soda. “It’s nice of you to intend, but forgive me if I don’t believe you can pull it off. I think you made your decision the instant you took off from that tree, and you’re just working out how to justify it to yourself. I want you to have this information now, so you’ll give me a chance, but I’m in no shape to edit it or be polite. I’m sorry.”

She stood. “Finish your soda, Mr. Zusman. I see the bus. I’m just going to make certain the driver does not attempt to depart without us.”

He tucked the glass bottle in his coat pocket. You got a penny for turning those in.

———

They sat at the back. Both could do with a little extra space, not just for height and width but for the compounding awkwardness.

She looked out the window and did not speak. She could monitor him from his faint reflection in the glass.

After five minutes sitting with his head down and his hands folded in his lap, he said, “It’s a book. The meeting people have a book. They have all different names and people in charge, but they all use this one book. In a very roundabout way these places are churches, but they bend over backwards to pretend they’re not. Churches aren’t special, there are so many churches. So many gods. So many deals on offer. But funnily enough, most doctors and scientists don’t put random people who wander in off the street in charge of your healthcare. Hyacinth excepted, but that’s only in emergencies and she doesn’t have a book.

“I went to the library and checked out the book. That’s free too, and you don’t have anyone smiling at you and pressuring you to stay and drink coffee. I prefer to read the fine print and make my own interpretation of religious matters before I talk to anyone, that’s just my culture. And my experience.”

He took a breath and tipped back his head, letting it all out in a slow sigh.

“I don’t know how to express… It was inconsistent. The science/medicine/religion thing. They can’t make up their minds. But the extent of the revulsion… the erosion of my autonomy and personal safety…

“I’ve called gods into my body, General D’Iver. The men who wrote the book haven’t and can’t. Their experience of gods is totally alien to mine. Their experience of surrender is. I can only hope that they mean well, but I can’t believe that they do because they are inconsistent.

“You have to understand that inconsistency when you’re dealing with an Invisible is an existential threat. It means they are hiding something from you and they may harm or kill you, or someone you love. My suspicion of inconsistency is light-years beyond not wanting to be sold a crummy used car, is what I am trying to tell you.

“I will buy that I have a disease. I certainly feel sick. I will buy that I can’t sneeze into a petri dish and get a definitive diagnosis because there are many human diseases like that. Doctors mostly look at clusters of symptoms and guess. I will even buy that it’s not curable without divine intervention, because I am familiar with many diseases like that too. One of them killed Erik’s mother.

“What I cannot do is make the logical leap that therefore this disease affects my soul and not my body, and if I perform these certain purification rituals just so, the Right God will notice me — like a millionaire philanthropist who rescues orphans off street-corners — and fix me. It won’t contact me directly and I can’t contact it, but it’ll be there, monitoring my progress and ready to reject me and all my hard work if I get the rituals wrong. And the very first ritual is that I must accept the existence and help of this God, submitting to its judgment and will entirely, and if I ever waver in that it won’t help me, and the rituals won’t help me. But I must do them anyway and keep trying to be good enough, because this God is endlessly patient, just extremely petty, and it might help me again later.

“And if I’m not getting help, then that’s on me for not working hard enough, or the Right Way. This Right God, which does not have a name or much specific about it, cannot be contacted or held accountable. If it works, you get none of the credit and if it doesn’t, it’s all your fault, but you have to do all the work either way. Now, leaving my own personal hell — which I was trapped in for almost two years — aside, doesn’t that sound like a scam to you?”

“But Mr. Zusman,” said the General, “you are wearing a Reductivist medallion.”

“I’m what?” He hauled it out of his shirt and stared at it.

“I saw it when I attempted to check you for further injuries. Reductivist religions hold that there are Right or True Gods, anywhere from one to… The highest number I’m aware of is twenty-four. I believe that particular sect you are endorsing has seven. They observe people and help based on various criteria, which are recorded in various books — books that frequently disagree with each other and make little sense, as you seem to have been perturbed to discover. Were you not aware of this? Did you find that somewhere and think it was jewelry?”

He stuffed it back into his shirt and crossed both hands over his chest, as if he’d just found out he was wearing ladies’ underwear. He scowled. “Your daughter… Your daughter gave me that and told me it was ‘significant squiggles!’” 

“That is technically correct,” said the General.

He dropped his face in his hands, muffling his response, “I know why she didn’t tell me, but gods, I wish she had. People have seen me with that.”

“Are you going to stop wearing it? I may need to come up with some explanation why. Perhaps the person who beat you up stole it?”

“No.” He adjusted his coat and fussily folded his hands. “Maybe I’ll put tape on it. On the God part. Do you have any tape?”

“No.”

“You didn’t even look.”

“I know I do not have tape.”

“You could fit a bowling ball in that bag. Why don’t you have tape?”

“I do not require it.”

“If I had a purse, I would put tape in it.”

She did not respond.

He sighed. “It doesn’t matter. I’m sorry. But that’s why I can’t do meetings, even if they are free. Wanting heroin is bad… I mean it feels bad. It kills me. But it’s not as bad as forking my whole life over to a god again and having everything that goes wrong be my fault. Not just for two years, forever. I can’t. Maybe some people can, but I…”

She had her hand on his arm.

“Everything that goes wrong is not your fault. That is a lie abusive people feed their victims to get them to do what they want. I will not expect you to go to any meetings with such people in order to continue your association with my daughter. When you are better recovered, I will lay down some rules about doing things which might get you injured or killed and upset her. She does not handle being upset very well and I was hoping to decrease the difficulty while she is learning.”

He was staring at her hand on his arm. He wasn’t sure why that was there or what to do about it. “I… I might not be able to do what you require of me, General D’Iver.”

“How do you think you might manage with two-hundred-and-fifty sinqs a month?”

His hand drifted down, clutched the edge of the bus seat, and froze that way. “What?”

“I will need to research what paperwork is required of me. Please do stop by the house tomorrow and update me on the status of your recovery, but I may not have any information for you yet. Nevertheless, I will begin as soon as we have found you a safe bed and I promise, I will get you that money, Mr. Zusman. And perhaps, though I cannot promise and I will need to calculate it, a lump sum of back pay approaching eighteen-thousand or so.”

“You can’t give a drug addict eighteen-thousand sinqs!” he shrieked.

The entire population of the bus, including the driver, turned to stare at them.

“I’ll take it,” one of them said.

She shooed a hand at them. “I will deposit it in some manner of trust fund and curate it if you can’t come up with a way to spend it, but might I suggest a down payment on some manner of housing?”

“You are out of your mind!”

“I suppose the logistics are more complicated than that, perhaps your crash-course in tactics will be of assistance. The important thing is that you are returning to teaching full-time this instant. Agreed?”

He was just staring at her with his mouth open.

“Take your time, Mr. Zusman. You have been through a traumatic experience and we aren’t even past Eddows Lane yet.” She adjusted her purse and returned to looking out the window.