Tuesday, November 02, 2004

Chapter 2: "Objects in Motion"

Colinaude knew he had someone dogging him. This person had been dogging him for months. He hadn’t been as careful as he thought. His name was Agent Neville, and his was not the first of his kind, and as was still possible, not the last, either. Down Cobb Lane the two proceeded along together, separately. Down past the tenants, past the abandoned shanties. Soon the housing development was long in the distance, the secret base of the Eidolon just another monument of the neighborhood, as with all monuments something to note only if you were looking for it. The same politicians who had sent Neville after him would call upon Colinaude’s home as a campaign pledge. Year after year. It never changed.

Neville had lately decided tracking Eidolon’s movements was what was in his best interests. He couldn’t put two and two together. No. 33 Cobb Lane didn’t have the proper papers, in fact nothing on Cobb Lane had proper papers, and so the agent couldn’t know who lived there. All he knew was that the Eidolon periodically emerged from that pit, as if a rat from a sewer. And from there, all the way down the lane. It seemed fitting that the two would have this starting track, so that they could each gather themselves. Colinaude spent the time gathering his mental notes on Cad, including all the contacts he was going to check on and the bribes he would need to finagle to create new ones to potentially replace old ones. He imagined Neville to be calculating future steps as well. What did he have planned for this Eidolon? Chances were Colinaude would figure that out before Neville would. That’s the way it always happened.

Every hero had their own agent assigned to them. Most never knew it, and some that did eventually slipped and fell right into the improvised traps waiting for them to stumble into. Those were the expendable heroes anyway, the bandwagon bunch, the less dedicated, less developed, less motivated. The type who had no business in the business. If something was going to knock them out of the loop, it might as well be the bitter legitimate forces they were circumventing.

It occurred to Colinaude that men like Neville were now spending more time looking after those who were doing their jobs for them than actually doing their jobs. Not that heroes were a new deal. One of his favorites had operated in the 19th century, had penned a book that was equally inspirational for his current dilemma. "Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight," the memoir had been titled. Nevertheless, the competition between himself and Neville was a welcome source of amusement for Colinaude. He enjoyed the thought that the agent would ever have been interested in Cad had Eidolon never brought the scam artist to his attention.

As it was, Neville was almost as interested in dogging Eidolon as cracking down on Cad, and it had introduced a new wrinkle into Colinaude’s canvassing operations to just try and throw the agent for enough loops so he could get on with his work. One of the best ways was taking advantage of the incidental crimes, the pettiest of the petty, to break things up. As it turned out, Cobb Lane was good for one of those on this night. It had always been a safe bet to count on Cobb for that sort of thing.

Miss Aubrey Oldenburgh had a knack for getting into trouble. She was advancing in years, but had always walked slowly, and to top that off appeared to be completely oblivious to the world outside her own thoughts, which Colinaude had once found out involved her precious cats, all of which had long ago been deceased. Waiting for her was the youth known in his circles as Random Red, for reasons known only to those circles. Normally Red wouldn’t be doing anything like this alone. In fact, Colinaude couldn’t remember Red as having done anything alone before. The only reason he could distinguish the youth now was because he had ‘Random Red’ stitched into the back of his ballcap. Otherwise Red looked quite naked without the rest of the posse.

With himself and Neville both out of sight, and Random Red trying to be as well, Colinaude watched as the mostly solitary figure of Oldenburgh shuffled up Cobb Lane, from the corner of Weston where the stop sign had "go" spray-painted over it in bold green letters. Maybe Red had done that. The craftsmanship had been good whoever had done it. Normally the artist did only a cursory job, as if they’d felt rushed in the defacing process, like someone was keeping time, someone making sure they didn’t spend too much time before moving on. At least with graffiti there was the proper care taken. And with this sign. But Oldenburgh never noticed it, and would never have noticed Random Red, either, despite the fact that his odor gave him away even more than his loud manner of dress and decorum. That scowl could probably be heard a mile away.

And the knife he held was probably flashing like a lighthouse beacon. Colinaude couldn’t know because his goggles had a built-in dimming effect, so that no one could ever blind him into submission, not that he wasn’t fine-tuned enough to compensate. As Red began to make his move, so did the Eidolon, and Neville’s pen as well. Why he needed to take notes was beyond Colinaude, but he didn’t plan on arguing the point.

Before Red could bring the knife down on Oldenburgh, Colinaude had closed the distance of a matter of meters and swung his left hand around, knocking Red’s own hard enough to jar the knife and startle Red himself enough onto his behind. "Careful on your feet," the Eidolon intoned, before knocking a scrambling Red right back down. Another blow knocked Red unconscious. Colinaude never left an identifying symbol behind to let the eventual authorities know who exactly had intervened. Neville had a log full of such incidences, but would never share those notes. Once he placed the phone call, always obscuring his voice in his naturally gifted way, Colinaude left the scene behind completely. He didn’t like to dwell on such things.

Oldenburgh was flustered. This was not the first time Eidolon had rescued her, but it seemed that way now. She was all over herself, and Colinaude, pestering "thank you’s" and kisses as if it were Christmas and mom and dad had just given her that pony she’d always wanted but probably never got. "You might as well thank him as well," Colinaude said, motioning toward to the limp Random Red. "I couldn’t have done it without him."

A few minutes more and Colinaude finally split away. He knew exactly what Oldenburgh was going to do next. If she were anyone else, she might call a few friends and neighbors, write the local paper, "Traverse Tracks," possibly even inform the authorities herself, or call an ambulance and a lawyer. Instead, she would go right about the rest of her day as if nothing at all had happened. In the end, that’s really what happened. Nothing at all. Not considering the fact that Oldenburgh had nothing Random Red or his pals would have been interested in, there was also the fact that all Colinaude had really done was the most basic of heroic acts, something even one not dedicated to heroics could have done. Not on Cobb Lane, but generally speaking. If someone like Godsend weren’t interested in someone like Cad, then they’d be even less interested in someone like Random Red. There was certain glamour involved, or rather not involved, in what heroes chose to concentrate on.

While Colinaude was leaving the last of Cobb Lane behind, he took advantage of the last few notes Neville would be taking on the incident and slipped off in the most expeditious way he knew. There were certain features of this landscape that could be advantaged by those who knew them well enough, and those who knew them well could use them in the most efficient manner possible. Men like Colinaude had taken magic out of the realm of merriment and made it into a practical affair. He was well versed in taking advantage of every distraction, and if he’d really wanted to he could have fooled Neville’s relatively well-trained eyes even without Random Red’s intended activities presenting themselves.

Slight-of-sight was one of his craft’s best weapons, and it took the best to master it. Needless to say, those who allowed themselves to be caught by the likes of Neville never mastered it, and those that did never really had to worry. It could be used on just about everyone, from opponents to allies, and every observer in between. One of the best ways to identify someone worth noting for future reference was if they weren’t fooled. Neville was one of the better agents, but he wasn’t that good. Colinaude enjoyed putting him on and then letting him loose now and again, just to mess with him.

But he was free now. Through a fence here, under some cracks there, up a rusting fire escape, down another. It helped if nothing changed very often, and change was worth gambling on in this neighborhood. Bet the house against it every time and you’d wind up ahead all the time. He was ready for business now. No more fooling around. In addition to contacts he also had other heroes waiting for a word or two, including the dreaded Godsend, the conversation with which Colinaude could already anticipate in full. It was always the same with that one. Just once he’d like the opportunity to ask Godsend if he’d run into any Random Reds last week. But Godsend was always interested in only one conversation, and it was always a one-sided one. The last thing Colinaude needed was preaching.

At the subway terminal, the Eidolon waited in plain sight, and no one noticed. Just a few minutes now.

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