Temporary Agency, page 5
‘The SDA?’ my father repeated.
‘Let me explain what I’ve found out. To begin with, the F.I. request turned out to be quite a battle. Our government agencies do not like giving up their secrets. Especially the embarrassing ones.’ She looked at Paul. He was breathing heavily. ‘When we talked on the phone,’ she said, ‘you told me that your Lisa ran a temp agency.’
He said, ‘That was her cover.’
‘Oh no,’ Ms Birkett said. ‘That part of her story is actually true. Except that she does not find little typing jobs for secretaries. Lisa Black Dust—that’s her proper designation, by the way—Lisa Black Dust 7 runs a temp agency for Malignant Ones.’
None of us spoke for a moment, then Mom said, ‘I don’t understand. You mean she hires out demons?’
Ms Birkett nodded. ‘Precisely.’
Mom said, ‘But who are their clients?’
Ms Birkett smiled again before she spoke. ‘Corporations, lobbyists, large charitable organizations—but mostly the United States’ government.’
My father whispered, ‘Oh my God.’ Paul moaned.
‘The government?’ I repeated.
‘That’s right. Various agencies, investigatory arms and, I suspect, the White House, though sections of the report came blacked out. “National Security Sanctification.” One part that was not censored, however, described the involvement of one particular client of Black Dust 7. The Spiritual Development Agency hires her services on a very steady basis. When Mr Cabot and Ms Pierson came for help they spoke first to an underling. Someone “not in the loop” as the expression goes. When Mr Sebbick came on the case, however, the situation changed dramatically. For Mr Sebbick knew Lisa Black Dust 7’s cover name and the location of her operation.’
I said, ‘So the noble SDA tried to shut us up in order to protect themselves.’
‘Exactly, Ms Pierson. And protect their convenient relationship. And they might have succeeded except for one factor their over-confidence failed to take into consideration. You and your family refused to let the matter drop. You contacted me.’
I grinned, ‘Too bad for them they didn’t get a Malignant Speaker to tell their fortunes.’
Ms Birkett laughed. ‘Yes, and lucky for us.’
My father said, ‘I’m glad you two find this so funny.’
‘Not at all,’ Ms Birkett said, but something of a smile remained. ‘I assure you I recognize the urgency. In the past two weeks I have done little else but work on this case.’
Mom asked, ‘But what do they do for the government?’
Ms Birkett shrugged. ‘Spying, sabotage, manoeuvering decisions by other agencies, or even other governments. Possibly assassinations.’
‘The French prime minister,’ I blurted. ‘His so-called heart attack.’
Her eyes narrowed, and then she nodded very slightly. ‘I spoke out of turn,’ she said. ‘A bad habit. I think we had best keep such speculation amongst ourselves.’
I looked at the floor. ‘Of course,’ I said.
My mother said, ‘This is horrible. It’s…it’s just horrible. How does the government pay the Malignant Ones?’
Ms Birkett said nothing for a moment, then, ‘I don’t think you want to know that.’
‘Oh,’ Mom said. ‘Oh.’
Paul said, ‘What am I going to do? What can I do?’
Ms Birkett said, ‘You already have done it, Mr Cabot. We have done it.’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said. But his voice sounded a little stronger.
Ms Birkett leaned back in her chair. ‘We have something on them. We know something the government would not like to see published in the New York Times.’
Mom said, ‘But what can we do with it? I mean, we can’t just give interviews to the Times.’
‘Please,’ Ms Birkett said, ‘I do not envision you appearing in the newspapers. Quite the contrary. The possibility is simply a threat, a weapon.’
‘I still don’t understand—’ Mom said, but Ms Birkett stopped her. She held up a sheet of paper dense with writing and some sort of sacred seal stamped on the bottom. ‘This,’ she said, ‘is a cease and desist order, issued this morning by Judge Malcom Bennett. Judge Bennett is a very useful man. A number of times, when the government and I have come to an agreement, Judge Bennett has given it the appearance of judicial compulsion.’
Daddy asked, ‘What exactly do they cease and desist doing?’
‘The order, in fact, does not restrain them so much as compel them. It requires the SDA to cease protecting Black Dust 7 and to begin protecting you and your family. In short, to do its duty.’
Mom said, ‘But that horrible…that disgusting…yesterday—’
Ms Birkett nodded. ‘The agreement came into effect at 12:01 this morning. Yesterday was Black Dust 7’s last chance to express her rage. I had demanded immediate application, but the SDA argued that they needed time for their technicians to establish controls. Now they will pay for that mistake. I have already made some phone calls and begun the paperwork for damage claims.’
Daddy asked, ‘Do you need information from us for the claims?’
‘There’s no hurry. Marjorie—my secretary—will get the details from you after the depossession process.’
‘This court order,’ Daddy said. ‘It doesn’t order them to stop hiring Malignant Ones to do its dirty work?’
She shook her head. ‘No. It does require the government to cease all dealings specifically with Black Dust 7 and her agency. It does not, however, require anything further from them. The language is very careful.’
‘And we don’t go to the Times?’
‘No. What purpose would it serve? This agreement secures your safety. If we expose the government, that will remove the incentive to protect you. We certainly don’t want any repeats of what happened yesterday. Or worse. And I assure you, the government will continue to deal with Malignant Ones, no matter how much we expose this particular arrangement.’
I said, ‘So we just let them continue.’ As soon as I’d said it, I wished I could take it back. I felt so ungrateful.
Ms Birkett said, ‘I’m afraid so, Ms Pierson. We take the victory we can get.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I mean, thank you.’
Paul asked, ‘How can we trust the SDA? They could say they’re protecting me—us—and do nothing.’
Ms Birkett said, ‘Of course. That is why I have demanded that my own team monitor the entire depossession process. And remember, the threat of exposure will remain.’
My father asked, ‘What’s to stop them just—getting rid of all of us? If we’re gone, we can’t expose them.’
‘They would have to get rid of me as well. And I have created various information-dumping routines “in the event of my untimely disappearance” as they say in the movies.’
‘Wow,’ I said.
Paul said, ‘What about afterwards? How do I know she’ll leave me alone?’
‘Because of the protection the SDA will give you. And because it will suit the government for you to remain unharmed. And the government will make sure it suits the Malignant Ones.’
Daddy asked, ‘But can the Malignant Ones themselves control her?’
‘Oh yes. The Bright Beings, the Benign Ones and the Malignant Ones together, actually form something of a single entity. The individual Beings appear to us as separate, like people, but we might describe them better as branches of that one entity. Configurations, to use the proper term.’ She paused. ‘The point is, they can control her, and they will.’
Paul said, ‘What about my job? Am I going to have to walk past the damn temp agency every time I go to work?’
‘Certainly not,’ Ms Birkett said. ‘All traces of Lisa Black Dust 7 and her agency will vanish from the building.’ She smiled. ‘When you return to work, your colleagues will no doubt tell you of the week the government shut down the building. “Resanctification of an architectural landmark” I believe they will call it.’
We stayed in her office a little bit longer, talking about what would happen, what the SDA would do, how they would reseal our house and purify Paul’s apartment, how they would take us to a depossession centre, how we’d have to sit around in quarantine for a week but nothing would hurt.
Finally we had to leave. My folks shook her hand and hurried out of the office. Paul shook her hand, too, but he didn’t look at her. I think he was crying.
The escort team, two women without any masks but carrying government sanctified electronic spirit dispersers, waited in the doorway. They looked bored. I got up last and shook her hand, trying to do it as strong as she did. I was halfway to the door when she called to me, ‘Ellen,’ she said, and I turned. She was smiling. ‘I’ve enjoyed meeting you,’ she said. ‘If you find yourself downtown, please feel free to drop in on me.’
‘Oh yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I will. Thank you. Thank you very much.’ And then I left.
The depossession took five days. To be honest, it was mostly kind of dull. We had to go to an SDA safe house upstate, along the Hudson. It was very pretty, with views of the cliffs and lots of woods. Except we didn’t get to look around much. We chanted and sweated and wrote things on paper and made ‘substitutes’ (dolls, that is; you should have seen my father’s!). At least we got to do some stuff down by the river, at night. Most of the time, however, I had to sit in my room, or else lie down on a surgical table while people in lab coats and sanctified masks (I kept looking for the crocodile woman but she never showed) smeared creams and smelly oils on me and wiped them off, or painted pictures and wrote words on my belly, or else ran tests with electrodes attached to my head, lights shining in my face, and so on.
I don’t know what I was expecting, maybe the building shaking, slime pouring out of the walls, shrieks and wild laughter—you know, the kind of thing you see on TV shows.
Only once did something really weird happen, and it wasn’t the kind of thing you expect. It was night time and they’d taken me down to the river again, a small cove with a ring of metal poles near the edge of the water. My caseworker tied a black silk blindfold around my eyes and then directed me to sit down in the centre of the ring. The poles gave off a low rhythmic hum.
For a while I just thought about school or something. Slowly, the hum got louder and my head started to hurt. Suddenly, I heard giggles behind me. I turned my head, frightened. Why were the techs giggling? But the sound came from somewhere further back, somewhere in the woods.
I reached up to pull off the blindfold. ‘No,’ my caseworker said. ‘Leave it on.’ My hand didn’t move, just held on to the cloth. ‘Leave it alone,’ the caseworker said. I let go.
The giggling got louder, then changed to moans and sighs. I could hear voices, though I couldn’t hear what they said. Until a voice I knew said, ‘Two is lovely, but three’s a feast. Ellen?’ I pulled off the blindfold. Outside the circle of poles, beyond the stupid techs who didn’t seem to notice anything at all, Lisa Black Dust 7 and Alison Birkett lay naked together at the edge of the trees.
‘No!’ I shouted, or something dumb like that, and covered my eyes with my hands.
‘Don’t leave the circle,’ my caseworker told me. I could hardly hear her, the roaring in the poles had gotten so loud. It ran from pole to pole, round and round the ring. ‘What do you see?’ the caseworker asked. I shook my head. Alison Birkett’s voice called my name again.
When I looked again, she and Black Dust 7 were kissing each other and doing things with their hands I don’t want to describe. And suddenly I could feel them touching me, sliding invisible hands all over my body. I thrashed around like someone slapping away a swarm of bugs.
‘Don’t leave,’ my caseworker said again, but I just shouted at her, ‘Shut up!’ Okay, I told myself, don’t panic. Trying to ignore the laughter and those horrible hands all over me, I closed my eyes, took a breath—and said all the formulas and prayers the techs had been teaching me over the past few days. The laughter died away, the hands became feathers.
And I wanted them back. I wanted to stop the chants and the formulas, I wanted to bring back the voices, the hands. I felt so lonely, so ashamed. Alison Birkett would hate me, no one would ever love me. No one ever had loved me. But now these two wonderful beings had come to rescue me. Why was I driving them away? Didn’t I know they only played a game, pretending to be enemies so they could trick the idiots, like my parents and the SDA? They couldn’t fool me, they knew that. I was much too smart for any of that. Why was I driving them away? If I joined them the three of us could do anything. They needed me, Alison Birkett needed me. If I turned her down now, she’d never speak to me again.
Thank mine and everyone else’s guardians that the caseworker didn’t say or do anything. I’m sure if I’d heard that whining voice I would have given up the protections just to spite her. Instead, I clenched my fists and said as loud as I could, ‘Ferocious One, I beg you to release me. I know that nothing I have done deserves your Malignant Intervention.’ I repeated it twice more, louder each time. Inner conviction, they say, is half the working. When I opened my eyes again, they were gone.
I wondered a lot what Paul was going through. If the monster could do that to me, what would happen to my poor cousin, the only one of us who’d actually given in to her? I only saw him once during our time in the safe house. I saw him at the other end of a corridor. I called to him but he turned away, and then my own caseworker pushed me into another lab room.
After five days they pronounced us ‘free and liberated’. Just like the Pentagon, I thought. We shouldn’t have any more trouble they assured us. But just in case, they gave us each a silver medallion to wear around our necks, charged and sanctified in the SDA laboratories and triggered with our own special enactment prayer. We had to say the prayer when we woke up or went to sleep or ate anything (‘even a piece of chewing gum’ my caseworker told me) or washed our hands or went to the bathroom—but especially if we felt afraid. ‘Remember,’ my caseworker said, ‘fear is the danger sign. Don’t ignore it. Don’t convince yourself it’s nothing or it’s just nervousness. In all likelihood it will be nothing, but don’t ignore it. Any time you feel afraid, say your protection.’
We were standing on the lawn and she was giving me a last-minute lecture, but I was really just looking for Paul. I knew my folks had finished, but where was Paul? Suddenly I saw him, in the doorway shaking hands with his own caseworker. He was laughing.
‘Paul!’ I shouted, and ran over and hugged him. I felt like a dumb kid, but I couldn’t help myself. He looked so wonderful, so healthy. He separated from me, grinned, then hugged me again. He was wearing a shirt I’d never seen before. It looked new and I wondered if his caseworker had given it to him.
Ms Birkett’s people drove us home. I wanted to ask how they liked working for her and stuff like that, but it didn’t feel like the time. My folks said almost nothing, just stared out the window. Paul did most of the talking. He talked about getting back to work, about whether he should give back the promotions (he laughed when he said it, and then added ‘But why shouldn’t I get something out of this? I’ve sure as hell suffered enough.’), how great it was not to feel scared all the time, how he almost wished he could have seen Lisa’s face when they banished her from the building. And yet, when he stopped talking and turned to the window, I could see him trembling.
I didn’t see Paul too much during the next few weeks. We talked a couple of times, and he told me a little about all the questions they’d asked him about Lisa and what he’d done with her. But nothing about what had happened to him over the five days in the safe house. And then he stopped calling me, and to be honest I didn’t call him.
I didn’t see Alison Birkett, either. I don’t know why, I kept wanting to call her, to make up some excuse why I had to go downtown so I could visit her. But somehow I never did it. It wasn’t because of what had happened by the river. At least I don’t think it was. I mean, I knew very well that the thing with Black Dust 7 was not Alison Birkett. But maybe I thought if I saw her I would have to tell her. I don’t know. So instead, I went to the library and read about her, everything I could find.
I also didn’t see much of my friends. The thing was, I still couldn’t tell them. The agreement with the government demanded that we keep the whole thing secret. I guess I could have made up some story how I’d met Alison Birkett, but what was the point if I couldn’t give the real reason? And I didn’t feel much like talking with them if I couldn’t talk about everything that had happened. So I mostly went to the library, or stayed home and watched TV, or else rode my bike down to the shore.
And every day I said my words. And did my enactments and made my offerings.
Three weeks passed before the ‘incident’ happened. That’s what the newspapers called it later. There were two, really, mine and Paul’s, but Paul’s was more spectacular. My incident took place in a teashop on Northern Boulevard, near my home. I’d been down in the library, feeling sleepy, so I thought, I know, I’ll go have some tea. Ye Village Tea Parlore (no kidding, that’s really what they called it) had just opened, selling lots of herb teas and gooey cakes and yoghurt and blueberry scones.
So I was sitting there at a glass-topped iron table in a pink chair that hurt my back, when this kid came in. He looked about my age, but he sure didn’t look like anyone from this neighbourhood. He wore a torn T-shirt and dumpy jeans and shoes with big holes in them. And he started to spray paint graffiti all over the walls. I couldn’t believe it. Just coming in off the street like that. I turned around, figuring someone would come charging from the kitchen to throw him out. Instead, the waitress and the owner just stood there, watching. And then they turned to me. And smiled. With my face. They looked just like me, except they were versions of me all pitted with disease.
I looked again at the graffiti. My name was all over it. And the rest of it—it went on and on about blood and filth and lot of things I don’t want to repeat. Behind me one of the women laughed, an hysterical giggle.
