Nurse Venus

Chibi Moon said, "Yes, okasan," and, as usual, the search party winked out right after.

Usagi usually insisted on wheeling herself, but she so was very tired and worried that she let Naru wheel her into the elevator. She sighed; the elevator was very slow, and it got stuck about once a month and needed practically all her friends from Mercurius to get it working again--they couldn't call in a regular elevator man, of course, because of the secret second basement.

Trying to keep her mind off the danger her children were in, Usagi said, "Dr. Alvarson promised he was going to send us some help about this elevator from the Grey Company. You have his crystal. Is there any news about it?"

Naru said, "No, not today . . . Mina-chan's husband will be awake soon."

Usagi exclaimed, "What? You just put the spell on."

Naru said, "It does not work on him well now. He has some magic, and he is building up an immunity to my spell."

Usagi pondered."Magic . . . maybe that is how he was able to hurt me."

Naru said, "He did not know you then, Usagi. You were killing his friends."

Usagi said, "He did not really think they were his friends . . . but he felt for them. It hurts to read his thoughts. I need to do it all the time, but it hurts."

"Does Mina-chan truly love him?" Naru asked.

"That is not . . . " <your business.> Usagi sighed. "I do not know. She really does not know. She does love him in a way like she loves the children. As big and as tough as he is, he is like a child in some ways." She shook her head. "But what man is not like a child." Usagi shook her head, and after a moment said in a different tone, "Children should not have to fight like that. My children should not have to."

"But how will we stop them?" Naru asked rhetorically.

Usagi said, "Yes . . . Pleione asked me if she could go tonight."

Naru exclaimed, "She did? I told her no! She should not go behind my back!"

Usagi said, "I told her that, but you know she will just keep asking . . . If she starts going, then Rei cannot stop Deja any more. And even I can see Zara's sigil now. She will probably be next." Usagi reached back to take Naru's hand. "But it is better that they learn early, when it is not so dangerous. My little moon is a smart fighter now. If she finds something like the Iturbe-monster, she knows how to fight better. In a few years, we will have many senshi, almost an army. The three Chibis could probably beat Queen Beryl and her Generals all by themselves."

Naru said, "Don't exaggerate to make me feel better . . . Oh, no!"

The elevator had stopped. It was dead again.

Then the phone rang. Naru picked up the receiver. "Hello . . . What? . . . Stop, listen, we are stuck in the elevator now!"

"Who is it?" asked Usagi.

Naru said, "It is Mina-chan. A man has come to see her husband."

"A policeman?" asked Usagi.

Naru said, "He says no . . . she has already let him inside."

Usagi exclaimed, "A stranger in the house at this hour? Mina-chan has lost her brains again!"

Naru said, "She is whispering . . . she wants to know if you can read his thoughts from here."

Usagi said, "No, I cannot read thoughts very far away unless I transform . . . I will try. Cover the phone."

Usagi transformed. She was instantly in agony and screamed so loud she set Naru's uncovered ear ringing. Tears streaming from the pain, she reached out with her mind . . . Then she screamed again and transformed back. Naru held her tight, and pulled her back up, making sure she was secure in her chair. But she was sitting in urine and waste now. There was nothing for it, except that Naru took off her sweater and began using it to clean up Usagi as best she could.

Usagi said, "The phone . . . tell Mina-chan he is a reporter, and he wants to expose the government for something . . . that is all I could read. Oh . . . He speaks no Japanese."

Naru picked up the phone and spoke quite loudly, perhaps because Usagi's screams had half-deafened her for the moment.

"What was that?" asked Crawford.

The very pregnant blonde replied, "Oh . . . my friend spilled something. She does that a lot. Just a minute . . ."

Crawford heard someone talking very loudly from the other end of the phone now . . . Japanese, probably, or maybe Korean. Crawford knew there were Koreans who had lived in Japan for generations, although this wasn't likely to be one . . . the Japanese who had odd hair and eye colors had lived in the north, and they hadn't started moving down to Tokyo and the sprawl south of it until about the time he'd been in the Army, doing his service in Japan, more years ago than he liked to think . . . he'd never picked up the lingo, though. An ear for language was not one of his assets.

But he could read faces very well. The blonde was hiding something. And he already knew she was Jones' wife . . . "Where is your friend? That sounded like it came from below."

The younger Mrs. Jones said, "Oh . . . problem with the elevator again. Stuck. I'm going to have to help them get out again."

"Can I help?" asked Crawford.

The blonde said, "No . . . thank you, but . . . wait here. Unless you want to go now. My husband is asleep. I don't think he will want to see you tonight."

"It is important . . . are you sure I can't help with the elevator?" Crawford asked.

The blonde paused, and lost her fluster. "Mr. Crawford, I have let you in to my home at a late hour, but will you understand that I do not want to take you where there might be no security cameras? We had a man break in here once, and we are very careful now. So, you can wait, or you can go. I am sorry, you seem a good person, but I have seen many that looked like good persons and who were not. If you need to use a restroom, there is a small one there, through that door." She left him, moving with astonishing grace for a woman so near to full term. Just before she disappeared around the far stairs, she said, "Don't go any further than the restroom. You may find an unpleasant surprise."

Crawford was now alone in the enormous main room. It reminded him of a seedy hotel lobby. It looked lived-in, utterly unlike the sterile museum-look of every other mansion he'd ever been in. There were tell-tale signs of children everywhere: a forgotten doll near a lamp, a stack of coloring books; comics, about half in English, half in Japanese. He spotted a pacifier under a couch, and impulsively knelt down to get it.

"Who are you?" called an unfamiliar voice. And yet . . .

Crawford looked up. A man was standing at the railing that ran all around the main room, about twenty feet up. Another hotel-like feature . . . The man was hard to see in the subdued light. About all he could tell was that he was black. But . . .

"Mr. Jones?" asked Crawford.

"Yes," responded the man. His voice was ragged, and not very loud.

"Kevin Jones?"

"Yes. Who are you? What do you want?" He was a bit louder, and clearly irritated.

"I'm Mr. Crawford. Your mother said I should talk with you . . . I remember you, but you sound different . . . could you come down? I can barely hear you."

"Yeah."

"I think there is trouble with the elevator," said Crawford.

"Damn, again . . . not so loud, there's some folks sleepin.'"

The man came down, slowly. Crawford wondered if he should help, but the man said nothing more, just groaned and grunted as he came down a careful step at a time. At last he was down. He walked forward toward Crawford using two canes, the kind with sleeves that you slip your wrists into. As he came into the light, he could see why. The man's hands were a pink mass of scar tissue. He had only one thumb and one finger with nails; all his other digits were missing joints, most more than one.

His face--he didn't really have one. His "nose" was a hole in his face. He had no lips, though his teeth were covered by strange looking grafted tissue. He had no eyebrows, and only a few patches of hair on his head. The only human thing about his face was his eyes. His eyes and the small area of whole skin around them made him look like a monstrous raccoon, set in the midst of more pink scar tissue.

Crawford actually lost control for a moment. "My God!"

The gorgon of a man actually smiled. "Well, five, ten more years of plastic surgery, I might be all the way up to just ugly!" He raised one of the canes, and pointed with it for a wobbly moment. "Have a seat. You know where my wife is?"

Crawford said, "She went to help her friends. I think they are stuck in the elevator."

"Probably . . . " said Jones.

"Do you want to go help them?" asked Crawford.

Kevin Jones said, "Not much I can do . . . Minako never tells me anything that would make me worry. But that means I always worry about what she ain't told me. He sat down, and picked up a phone, the same phone his wife had used. "Miz Umino? . . . Don't let Minako do anything stupid! . . . You sure? . . . You sure? . . . All right, but if you ain't out here in ten minutes, I'm callin' the Fire Department!" He hung up.

The man who had once been handsome young Kevin Jones looked at him for a long moment. The he said, "I remember you . . . you did a story on Moms."

"Yes. Nearly four years ago, now," said Crawford.

Jones said, "Yeah . . . Ronnie was still alive. What do you want to talk about now? I ain't in the business. And I won't tell you nothin' about what I used to do in the business. And I don't need to have folks feelin' sorry for me."

"Why not?"

Jones said. "I got Minako. Got a couple of kids comin'. Got some kids here that ain't scared of me. They even kinda like me, when I ain't yellin' at 'em to mind. That's more than Ronnie's got. Or Odum, or Billy."

Crawford said, "Yes . . . Your wife is quite a woman."

Jones paused. "So . . . You still got something to say?"

"Yes, I do . . . Can you tell me how you got like this?" asked Crawford.

Jones said, "Just like I said. Some things flew down from the sky. They killed everyone but me."

Crawford said, "Forgive me . . . but that just doesn't sound possible."

Jones said, "Well, it happened. Just like that. I dream about it all the time. I dream they come back, and they get Minako, and Moms, and Marvell, and all my friends . . . burn them up."

Jack Crawford asked, "Are you sure you saw the things shooting at you? Maybe you saw birds. It's hard to judge sizes at night."

"We wuz sure as hell burned," said Jones.

Crawford said, "Yes, but maybe not by what you think . . . has anyone from the government talked to you about it? Not police, though they might have pretended to be police or FBI."

"What do you mean?" asked Jones.

Crawford asked, "Did they ask you about the weapon that did this to you?"

Kevin Jones didn't answer right away. Finally he said, "Yes, there were some that asked me if I saw any funny weapons. But I saw what I saw. It was no weapon. That thing was shooting at me from its head. It had hands, but there weren't nothin' in them."

"You saw all that?" asked Crawford.

Kevin Jones said, "I saw all that. It was the last thing I saw through my scope . . . just before my damn gun melted. They said I'd have immunity for that, and I got signatures. I ain't just another dumb-ass nigger."

Crawford saw Jones was going to be a dead end. He probably believed what he said . . . but it was nonsense. <Brainwashed?> No, that was a myth. It happened so fast, Jones synthesized it later, and came up with this . . . the only known survivor was a dead end.

Not all leads pan out.

Now Crawford began to think of a graceful way to leave. But if Jones wasn't going to help this story, he had turned out better than he had ever expected. <And>, Crawford thought, <Kevin Jones would make a good story himself . . . if he survives Marvell's endgame.>

Crawford said, "Well, you saw what you saw. Do you have any idea why this happened?"

"No."

Crawford noticed that Jones' wife had returned-- glided up from behind him, passed, and went to stand behind her husband. She shook her head. Then she bent down and kissed the "face" of her husband, and said, "Don't call the fire department. Usagi will be very mad if you bring them in with their axes and their great big boots. Now, be nice. I have to go check on the children."

"Do you have to?" said Kevin Jones.

"If I wake up anyone--" his wife started to say.

"You already have!" called an irritated female voice from the stairs. "What's going on?" Two more young women with long blonde hair were coming down; they looked much alike, though not much like Mrs. Jones.

Jones called out. "The damn elevator is stuck again!"

The taller of the two new blondes said, "Oh for Chr . . . Come on, Aly. Who's stuck in it?"

"Miz Chiba and Miz Umino," said Jones.

The taller one said, "Of course . . . Well, at least you aren't stuck in it this time."

"Amen to that," said Jones.

"Excuse me . . ." said Crawford. "You look familiar."

"You don't. I'm Dr. Gonsoles, and this is my sister Alison."

"Alison Gonsoles? From Grosse Pointe Michigan?" Crawford asked.

"Yes, I'm Alison," said the other one, who looked a little younger. She looked like she was going to say something else, but then Dr. Gonsoles cut her off.

The taller one said, "Your a reporter, aren't you? God, every time I think--"

"Mr. Crawford came to talk to me, Miz Gonsoles," said Kevin Jones.

The sisters both looked at Jones wife at exactly the same time and with exactly the same expression: realization. But why were they looking at the wife instead of Jones?

Crawford's hunch had been right after all. Alison Gonsoles was the Christmas Miracle, the kid who'd turned up alive after five months, the only one who might have survived the Cabin Killer. Suddenly he was sure she had . . . because what was she doing in the same house as another possible witness to the anomalies?

But the moment for a confrontation that might break open the story passed before he could really believe it was there. People were streaming down the stairways now, mostly children, mostly girls. But there were two unsettling men: a small fellow with penetrating eyes and a well-built one with the catlike ease of a natural fighter. They stood quite noticeably between Crawford and the women, who were all absorbed in tending the children. The women huddled, literally; then the Gonsoles sisters went off, gathered some of the oldest children, and disappeared into the same place Mrs. Jones had before Kevin Jones had come down.

Jones introduced the two new men as Mr. Urawa (the short one) and Mr. Kumada. Kumada did all the talking from then on--he was a one of those people who could go on for hours without saying anything, just massaging you with words. But he was also building a wall of words between Crawford and everyone else. Crawford felt Kumada knew exactly what he was doing; shifting his verbal sparring even as he changed his stance, never locking his knees, always ready to move while seeming relaxed . . .

Crawford noticed that Jones had fallen asleep a few minutes later. His wife eased him onto his back on the couch, with infinite patience, fetching pillows and an afghan to cover him, never really rousing him. That kind of affection couldn't be bought; Officer Shaw had read this one completely wrong . . .

There was a new development eventually. The Gonsoles sisters returned carrying a woman in their arms, a woman whose legs hung like a marionette's. They carried her upstairs. The poor woman, yet another blonde who looked a lot like Jones' wife, was crying tears of embarassment; she had soiled herself, and Crawford could smell it. <A paraplegic. Trapped in their elevator for over an hour and they didn't call the fire department.>

These people had something to hide, but he wasn't going to find it tonight. He managed to climb over Kumada's wall of words long enough to say "Good night."