The Chrome Borne Read online

  Sam was pretending to watch the road, but he was really watching Tannim out of the corner of his eye. And that last, about the board founding SERRA, had been a real slip. Tannim hadn't meant to say that. But what made it a slip?

  "So? What's this SERRA?" he asked.

  "South Eastern Road Racing Association," Tannim replied promptly, and with enthusiasm he didn't try to conceal. "It's an offshoot of the SCCA—Sports Car Club of America. Part of the problem for us was that SCCA doesn't allow the sort of modifications we wanted, and the folks in SERRA wanted to push the envelope of sportscar racing a bit more, more `experimental' stuff. Fairgrove also supports an IMSA team, running GTP, but that's for pro drivers, guys who don't do anything but drive, and we've only just started that circuit. Some of us—like me—still race SCCA, in fact, I drive for the Fairgrove team. There's things to like about both clubs, which is why Fairgrove still maintains a team in both."

  "You don't drive in the Fairgrove SERRA team?" Sam said. Tannim shrugged.

  "We've got some drivers as good as I am on the SERRA team, drivers who can't race SCCA cars. Since I could do both, I opted for the SCCA team, and left rides for the other guys." He grinned. "Don't worry, I get plenty of track time in! If I had the time, I could spend every weekend and most weekdays racing."

  Sam had no doubt that Tannim was a professional driver in every sense of the word, despite the disclaimer; the way he handled this car put Sam in mind of an expert fighter pilot, of the way the plane becomes an extension of the pilot himself, and the pilot can do things he shouldn't be able to. There was an air of cocky competence about the kid, now that he was behind the wheel, that was very like a good pilot's too.

  "That's not cheap, fielding several teams—" Sam ventured.

  "Three teams, each with several cars, and no, it isn't cheap," Tannim admitted cheerfully. "The founding families started out independently wealthy—inherited money that survived the '20s crash—but they've been making racing pay for itself for a while now. Not just purses and adverts—they've been farming out their experts—" he grinned again "—like yours truly, and opening up their shops for modifications to whoever was willing to pay the price. But that could only go so far. Now we'd like to hit the bigtime. Indy-style, Formula One, that kind of thing. Getting right up there with the big boys—maybe even have the big boys come to us. But to do that, we have to have something better than just mods. We have to have original advances. That's where you come in."

  He braked, briefly, and Sam caught the flash of a bird's wings in the headlights. An owl; a big one. Most drivers wouldn't have known it was going to cut across the car's vector. Most drivers wouldn't have bothered to avoid it.

  "Maybe," Sam replied, feeling his way. "I don't know; this sounds like it could be very risky business. . . ."

  "Your part won't be," Tannim promised. "Fairgrove will pay half your consultation fee up front, before you even pin on a badge, and put the other half in escrow in your bank." Then he named a figure that would have given Sam cardiac trouble, if not for watching his diet and cholesterol. It was considerably more than his salary at Gulfstream had been. Of course, one of the disadvantages of staying with a firm for years was that your salary didn't keep pace with the going rate for new-hires with similar experience, but—this was ridiculous; they couldn't want him that badly! Could they?

  "What about disclosure?" he asked, when he could speak again.

  "We've got a tentative non-disclosure clause in your contract, but we can modify it if you feel really strongly about it," Tannim said. "We based it on the non-disclosure clause at Gulfstream, but we made one modification, and that's in the area of Research and Development in safety. Anything that's a significant advance in safety is immediately released, and patents won't be enforced. Think you can live with that? Even if it means a loss of income?"

  Since that was the one area where Sam had himself had several heated arguments with his own bosses over the years, he nodded. "Some things should be common knowledge," he said grimy. "That's in a Mercedes ad, but it's true for all of that."

  He asked many more questions over the course of the next fifteen minutes, and although Tannim never refused to answer any of them, he kept getting the feeling that the young man was doing a kind of verbal dance the whole time—carefully steering him away from something. It wasn't where the money was coming from; at least, this wasn't the kind of youngster or the kind of operation Sam would have associated with money laundering and organized crime. And car-racing wasn't the kind of operation that would lend itself to that sort of thing anyway. It wasn't what he would be expected to accomplish. It was nothing that he was able to put a finger on. But there was some skillful verbal maneuvering going on here, and Sam wished strongly that he could see at least the shape of this blind spot, so he could guess at what it was hiding.

  Tannim pulled off the highway onto a beautifully paved side road, and stopped at a formidable gate, punching in a code on the keypad-box just in front of it. The gate-doors retracted—

  And just on the other side of the gate, a miniature traffic signal lit up—the yellow light first, then the green, and the radar detector under the dash lit up. Tannim turned toward his passenger with a sparkle in his eye, and a grin that bordered on maniacal. "Did you know that there's no speed limit on private driveways?" he said, conversationally. Then he floored the accelerator.

  Once again, it was a good thing that Sam had been watching his diet for years—and that he was well acquainted with "test pilot humor." As it was, by the end of that brief but hair-raising half-mile ride, he wasn't certain if Tannim had added years to his age, or subtracted them by peeling them off; with sheer speed as the knife-blade. One thing was sure; if Sam's hair hadn't already been white, the ride would have bleached it to silver.

  Tannim pulled up to a tire-screeching halt beside another miniature traffic light. As they passed it, Sam noted—faintly surprised that he still had the ability to notice anything—that going in the opposite direction, the light was red as they passed it. It turned yellow well after they passed, then green a moment later. A wise precaution, if people used the driveway as a dragstrip on a regular basis. A board lit up with numbers, and Tannim laughed out loud. "Elapsed time and speed, Sam." He cocked his head sideways like an exotic bird. "Not my best run, but not bad for nighttime, and with a passenger weighing me down."

  They rolled up to a driveway loop at a sedate pace. In the center of the circular cut-out was a discrete redwood sign reading "Fairgrove Industries." The building itself looked like Cape Canaveral before a shuttle launch, with hundreds of lights burning. Evidently these people were night owls.

  Tannim pulled the Mustang into a parking slot, between a Lamborghini Diablo and a Ferrarri Dino. "Expensive neighbors," Sam commented. Tannim just chuckled, and popped his seatbelt.

  He led the way through a series of darkened offices; the clerical staff was evidently not expected to keep the same hours as the techies. The offices themselves gave an overall impression of brisk efficiency with a touch of comedy; although the desks were clean and orderly, there were toys on all the computer terminals and desks, artwork and posters on the walls, and so many plants Sam wondered if someone had raided a greenhouse. Most of the artwork and toys had something to do with cars. These people evidently enjoyed their work. And these were working offices; had been for some time; there was no way you could counterfeit that "lived in, worked in" look. Whatever else Fairgrove was, it had been in existence for some time. This was no façade thrown up to delude him.

  Tannim brought him to a soundproof wall—Sam recognized it as the twin to one at Gulfstream, that stood between the offices and the shops—and opened a door into bright light and seeming chaos.

  There were cars in various states of disassembly everywhere, each one surrounded, like a patient in intensive care, by its own little flotilla of instrumentation and machinery. There was a lot of expensive equipment here: computer-controlled diagnostic devices, computer-controlled manufacturing ma
chinery behind the cars on their little islands of activity—

  There must have been several million dollars in cars alone, and about that in equipment. Oddly enough, though, no one seemed to be using any of the latter; they all seemed to be working directly on the cars. The machinery itself was standing idle. In fact, given the sheen of "newness" on all that expensive gimmickry, most of it hadn't ever been fired up.

  Why buy all that stuff if you weren't going to use it?

  Tannim was looking for something, or someone, craning his head in every direction. Sam was unable to get his attention, and really, didn't try very hard. There was definitely something odd about this place. There was a facade—and it was in here, not out in the offices.

  Finally, as a little group of people emerged from behind one of the cars and its attendant machines, Tannim spotted whoever it was he was looking for among them. He waved his hand in the air, and called out to them.

  "Yo!" he shouted, his voice somehow carrying over the din. "Kevin! Over here!"

  A tall, very blond man turned around in response to that shout, green eyes searching over the mass of machines and people.

  And Sam felt such a shock he feared for a moment that he'd had a stroke. Those eyes—that face—they were familiar.

  Hauntingly, frighteningly familiar, though he hadn't seen them in nearly fifty years.

  He knew this man—

  —who wasn't a man.

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was the same face—not a similar face, the same face, the same man. Identical. There was no confusing it, nor those green, cat-slitted eyes.

  Inhuman eyes; eyes that had never been human.

  Sam fell back across the decades, to his childhood, and his home, and one moonlit, Irish night.

  * * *

  Sam stumbled along beside his father, miserable right down to his socks, and wanting to be home with all his five-year-old heart.

  "Da—me tum hurts," Sam whined.

  The full moon above them gave a clear, clean light, shining down on the dirt path that led between the pub and John Kelly's little cottage. A month ago, they wouldn't have been on this path. A month ago, Sam's mummy, Moira, would have made them a good supper, one that wouldn't have hurt Sam's tummy the way the greasy sausage-and-potato mix the pub served up did. In fact, a month ago, John wouldn't have been anywhere near the pub, and the pint of whiskey he had in his back pocket would have lasted him the month, not the night. He would've had tea with his good dinner, not washed bad roast down with more whiskey.

  But that was a month and more ago, before Moira took a cough that became worse, and then turned into something awful, something called "new-moan-yuh." Something the doctor couldn't cure, nor all the prayers Sam and his Da had offered up to the Virgin.

  She'd taken sick on a Monday. By the following Monday, they were putting her under the sod, and the priest told him she was with Jesus. Sam didn't understand any of it; he kept thinking it was all a bad dream, and when he woke up, his Mummy would comfort him and everything would be all right again.

  But he went to sleep at night, and woke up in the morning, and it wasn't all right. His Da was drinking his breakfast, and leaving Sam to make whatever breakfast he could on cold bread-and-butter and go off to stay with Mrs. Gilhoolie, since he was too young for school. John Kelly was going to work smelling like a bottle, coming home smelling like a bottle, and taking Sam to the pub every night for a bad supper and more bottles.

  It was cold out, and Sam had forgotten his coat "Da," he whined again, knowing that he sounded nasty but not knowing what else to do to get his Da's attention. "Da, me tum hurts, an' I'm cold." The wind whistled past them, coming around the Mound, and cutting right through Sam's thin shirt and short pants. The Mound was an uncanny place, and Sam didn't like to go there. The Fair Folk were supposed to live there, and they weren't the pretty little fairies in the children's books and the cartoons at the cinema; Sam's granny had told him about the Fair Folk, and she had never, ever lied to him. They were terrible, wonderful creatures, taller than humans, handsome beyond belief, and many were utterly unpredictable. The best a human could do was steer clear of them, for no human could tell whether a man or woman of the Folk was kindly inclined towards humans or dangerous to them. Even when they seemed to be doing you favors, sometimes they were doing you harm, the bad ones. And the good ones sometimes did harm with the idea of doing good.

  But right now Sam had more immediate troubles than running into one of the Fair Folk. His tummy hurt, he was so cold his teeth chattered, his head hurt, his Da was acting in peculiar ways—

  And oh, but he missed his Mummy—

  "Daaaaa," he whined, holding back tears of grief. When his Da said anything about Mummy, it was to tell him to be a man, and not cry. But it was hard not to cry. The only way he could keep from crying, sometimes, was to whine. Like now. "Daaaaaa."

  There was no warning, none at all. One moment he was stumbling along beside his Da, the next, he was sprawled on the cold ground beside the path, looking up at his Da in shock, his face and teeth aching from the blow his Da had just landed on him. The moonlight showed the murderous look on his Da's face clearly. Too clearly. Whimpering, with sudden terror, he tried to scramble away.

  He wasn't fast enough.

  His Da grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him to his feet, then off his feet, and backhanded him. Sam was in too much shock to even react to the first two slaps, but at the third, he cried out.

  There was no fourth.

  John had his hand pulled back, ready to deliver another blow. Sam struggled fruitlessly in his father's iron grip, crying—

  Then there was a tremendous flash of light; Sam was blinded, and felt himself falling. He flailed his arms wildly, and landed on his back, hard enough to drive the breath out of him.

  He wheezed and rubbed his eyes, trying to force them to clear. The sound of someone choking made him look up, squinting through watering eyes, still trying to catch his breath.

  What he saw made him forget to breathe.

  A tall, terrible blond stranger, dressed in odd clothing, like something out of the pantomimes of King Arthur, was holding his father by the throat. John Kelly was white-faced and shaking, but was not trying to move or fight the stranger. This was no one Sam had seen in or near the village, and anyway, most of the people around here were small and dark, or small and red-haired. Not tall and silver-blond. The man looked down at Sam for a moment, and even though the only light came from the moon overhead, he saw—clearly—that the man had bright, emerald green eyes; eyes that looked just like a cat's. And long, pointed ears.

  This was no man. This could only be one of the Fair Folk, the Sidhe; and the fairy-man's eyes caught Sam like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a motorcar.

  Sam couldn't move.

  John Kelly made another choking noise, and the stranger turned those mesmerizing eyes back towards his captive.

  "John Kelly," the terrifying man said—with a gentleness made all the more terrible by his obvious strength. "John Kelly, you're a good man, but you're on the way to a bad end. 'Tis the luck of your God that brought you here tonight, within my reach and my ken, for if you hadn't struck your lad just now, I wouldn't have known of your troubles and your falling into the grip of pain and whiskey. Now get hold of yourself and get your life straight again—for if you don't, I swear to you that we'll steal this lovely boy of yours, and you'll never see him again, this side of paradise. Remember what your mother told you, John Kelly. Remember it well, and believe it. We did it once within your family, and we can and will do it again, if the need comes to it."

  There was another flash of light. When Sam could see, the man was gone, and his father was sinking slowly to his knees. Sam still couldn't move, numb with shock and awe, and feelings he couldn't put a name to.

  For a long, long time, John Kelly lay in the dirt, his shoulders shaking. Then, after a while, John looked up, and Sam saw tears running down his Da's face, glistening in the moo
nlight.

  "Da?" he whispered, tentatively. "Da?"

  "Son—" John choked—and gathered Sam into his arms, holding him closely, just the way he used to. Sobbing. Somehow that made Sam feel both good and bad. Good, that his Da was the man he loved again. Bad, that his Da was crying.

  Sam said again. "Da, what's the matter? Da?"

  "Sam—son—" John Kelly wept unashamed. "Son, I've been wicked, I've been blind with pain, and I've been wicked. Forgive me, son. Oh, please, forgive me—"

  Sam hadn't been sure what to say or do, but he'd given his father what he asked for: Forgiveness, and all the love and comfort he had.

  Eventually, John Kelly had gathered his son up in his arms, and taken him home. And from that day until the day he died, he never touched another drop of alcohol.

  * * *

  It can't be— he thought dazedly, from the perspective of half a century away. It can't be—

  Despite the Sight, he'd assumed for decades that the whole incident had been a dream, something his childish imagination had conjured up to explain his father's brief, alcoholic binge and his recovery.

  He'd only been five, after all. But this, this tall, blond man striding toward them was the same, the very same person as that long-ago stranger. No matter that the long hair was pulled back into a thick pony-tail, not flowing free beneath a circling band of silver about the brow. No matter that the clothing was a form-fitting black coverall, incongruously embroidered with "Kevin" over the breast pocket, and not the tunic and trews of a man of the ancient Celts. There was no mistake.

  Sam knew then that he must be going mad. It was an easier explanation than the one that fit the situation.

  The man strode towards them with all the power and grace of a lean, black panther in its prime. As he neared them, he smiled; a warm smile that reached even into those emerald eyes and made them shine. "You've grown into a fine man, Sam Kelly," he said, stopping just short of them, and resting his fists on his hips. "A fine man, like your father John, and smarter than your father, to wash your hands of a dying land and seek your life on this side of the water. Now you know why we chose you, and no other."