Jim Butcher - Ghost Story

I went past the tree house without stopping or slowing down for several more minutes, and then went evasive. I couldn’t be sure the Corpsetaker didn’t know I had ridden in on her coattails, and if she was following me, or had sent a construct to do so, I didn’t want to lead her to Molly. So the carpet went from forty or fifty miles an hour to more than a hundred, and at the same time I constructed a veil around me so that I surged forward and simply vanished. I flew low, snaking through the streets, and only after I’d crossed my own trail five or six times without spotting anything shadowing me did I finally soar in to the tree house.

It looked like a miniature home, with a door and siding and trim and windows and everything. A rope ladder allowed one to climb up to the porch, but it had been pulled up. I floated up to the door on the flying carpet and knocked politely.

“I have you now,” I said, as much like James Earl Jones as I could. I do a better Yul Brynner.

Molly’s strained face appeared at the window and she blinked. “Harry?”

“What’s with the come-hither, grasshopper?” I asked. “You practically vacuumed me in with the Corpsetaker.”

Molly narrowed her eyes and said, “What was I wearing the first time we met?”

I blinked at her, opened my mouth, closed it, thought about it, and then said, “Oh, come on , Moll. I have no idea. Clothes? You were, like, eight years old and your mom tried to shut the door in my face and I was there to see your dad.”

She nodded once, as if that was the answer she’d been looking for, and opened the door. “Come on.”

I went into the tree house with her.

The inside was bigger than the outside. You can do that sort of thing in your imagination. It’s kind of fun. I’ve got one closet of my castle that looks like a giant disco roller rink. The roller skaters come after you like juggernaut, the music makes heads explode, and the mirror ball distributes a killer laser beam.

Molly’s headquarters looked like the bridge of, I kid you not, the U.S.S. Enterprise . The old one. The one that was full of dials that obviously didn’t do anything and that had a high-pitched, echoing cricket chirp going off every five or six seconds.

There was an upside to that setting, though: Molly was wearing one of the old sixties miniskirt uniforms.

Look, I’m not interested in a relationship with the kid. I do love her tremendously. But that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t look fantastic. Anyone with eyes can see that, and I’ve always been the kind of person who can appreciate gorgeous scenery without feeling a need to go camping in it.

Actually, glancing around, there were about half a dozen Mollys, all of them wearing old sixties miniskirt uniforms, each of them manning a different station. The one who had opened the door had jet-black hair in a neat, almost mathematical, gamine-style cut and slightly pointed ears.

“ Star Trek ?” I asked her. “Really?”

“What?” she demanded, bending unnaturally black eyebrows together.

“There are two kinds of people in the universe, Molly,” I said. “ Star Trek fans and Star Wars fans. This is shocking.”

She sniffed. “This is the post-nerd-closet world, Harry. It’s okay to like both.”

“Blasphemy and lies,” I said.

She arched an eyebrow at me with Nimoysian perfection and went back to her station.

Communications Officer Molly, in a red uniform with a curly black fro and a silver object the size of a toaster in her ear, said, “Quadrant four is below five percent, and the extra pressure is being directed at quadrant three.”

Captain Molly, in her gold outfit, with her hair in a precise Jacqueline Onassis do, spun the bridge chair toward Communications Molly and said, “Pull out everything and shift it to quadrant three ahead of them.” The chair spun back toward Science Officer Molly. “Set off the nukes in four.”

Science Molly arched an eyebrow, askance.

“Oh, hush. I’m the captain, you’re the first officer, and that’s that,” snapped Captain Molly. “We’re fighting a war here. So set off the nukes. Hi, Harry.”

“Molly,” I said. “Nukes?”

“I was saving them as a surprise,” she said.

There was a big TV screen at the front of the room—not a flat-screen. A big, slightly curved old CRT. It went bright white all of a sudden.

“Ensign,” Captain Molly said.

Ensign Molly, dressed in a red uniform, wearing braces on her teeth, and maybe ten years younger than Captain Molly, twiddled some of the dials that didn’t do anything, and the bright white light dimmed down.

From outside, there was a long scream. An enormous one. Like, Godzilla-sized, or maybe bigger.

Everyone on the bridge froze. A brass section from nowhere played an ominous sting: bahm-pahhhhhhhhhhm .

“You’re kidding,” I said, looking around. “A sound track?”

“I don’t mean to,” Ensign Molly said in a strained, teenager tone. She had a Russian accent that sounded exactly like Sanya. “I watched show too much when I was kid, okay?”

“Your brain is a very strange place,” I said. I meant it as a compliment, and it showed in my voice. Ensign Molly gave me a glowing grin and turned back to her station.

I walked to the right-hand side of the captain’s chair and folded my arms. The screen came up to light again, showing a devastated section of the city grid. No, not decimated. Had that part of the city been decimated, one out of every ten buildings would be destroyed. That’s what decimated means. Personally, I think some early-years, respected television personality got decimated and devastated confused at some point, and no one wanted to point it out to him, so everyone started using them interchangeably. But dammit, words mean what they mean, even if everyone thinks they ought to mean something else.

Science Molly spoke in a grim voice. “Nuclear detonation confirmed. Enemy forces in quadrant four have been decimated, Captain.”

I pressed my lips firmly together.

“Thank you, Number One,” Captain Molly said, spinning back to face the front. “Harry, um. Help?”

“Not sure what I can do, grasshopper,” I told her seriously. “I barely managed to steal a bathroom rug from some rubble and whip up a flying carpet. Her stuff goes right through me, and vice versa.”

She looked at me for a moment, and I saw the same look of fear flicker over every face on the bridge. Then she took a deep breath, nodded, and turned to face the front. She started giving smooth orders, and her other selves replied in calm, steady voices.

After a few moments, Captain Molly said, “If you aren’t here to . . . I mean, if you can’t help, why are you here?”

“Because you’re here,” I said calmly. “Least I can do is stand with you.”

“If she wins . . .” Captain Molly swallowed. “You’ll die.”

I snorted and flashed her a grin. “Best thing about being a spook, grasshopper. I’m already dead.”

“Quadrant three is collapsing,” Communications Officer Molly reported. “Quadrant two is at twenty percent.”

Captain Molly bit her lip.

“How many quadrants?” I asked her.

“Four,” she said. “Since, you know. Quad rants.”

I wanted to say something about deci mated, but I didn’t. “We’re in quadrant one?”

Captain Molly nodded. “I . . . don’t think I can stop her, Harry.”

“Fight’s not over until it’s over, kid,” I said. “Don’t let her beat you. Make her work for it.”

Science Molly said, in a firm tone, “Death is not the only consequence here. Should the Corpsetaker prevail, she will have full access to our talents, abilities, memories, and knowledge. Even though we have spent the last months distancing ourselves from others to insulate against a situation such as this one, the Corpsetaker could still inflict considerable damage on not only our friends and family, but on complete innocents. That is unacceptable, Captain.”