The Man Who Stole the Weather

Adulation from the witch followed, praising Dawson for the beauty of her essence, the purity of her powerful body and the nobility of her commitment to justice. Dawson had noted that her actual qualifications were probably her reputation with Lone Star, her wide latitude in investigating cases, the total absence of cybernetic implants and the arrangement of her chromosomes just happening to align with what their Mother Earth cell considered desirable.

But the witch wasn't deterred, either being a true believer or a good enough actor to pass for one to a captive audience. She assured Dawson that all she wanted was for her to drink of the commune's love nectar and if after that she had no wish to be a part of their whole she would be free to leave. But the stern looks and crossed arms of the two brawny amazons behind her indicated that not only would Dawson not be free to leave, she would be drinking of the commune's love nectar until she no longer had a desire to leave and they would hold her face and pour it in her mouth themselves if such was required.

As far as attempts to compromise her went, it was one of the more inventive. Without all the drinking and tripping of the occupation years, it was possible Dawson could be living in Berkeley now, eating only organic vegetables and witch cunt. As she was now the streets here were an odd kind of apprehensive at her presence. Berkeley's superstitious and flamboyantly dressed denizens lounged in door frames and down alleyways in the shade of hanging gardens strung between ancient apartment buildings overgrown with foliage. She passed an old chain link fence that had been turned into a site for wild tomatoes to cling to while the lot beyond it was filled with apple trees among which street children chased each other under the watchful eyes of elders with painted faces and traditional garments.

There were no sounds of normal city life here, no passing cars or police sirens, no whirring of surveillance drones or gunshots in the distance. No limousines or shipping trucks hogged the streets which instead were cluttered with lean-to shelters made from living logs or corrugated metal panels, competing for space with open-air fortune-telling parlors and board-game congregations squeezed in between the carts of self-made merchants with glinting eyes and curios carved from questionable ivory or shaped from still-growing wood, set in their stalls beside totems resembling every animal ever imagined and guarded jealously by dreamcatchers drifting in the wind off the bay.

There was technology here, of course; commpads, display screens and speakers, the occasional firearm tucked into a waistband or holstered on the hip of a particularly well-dressed priest. Solar panels gealmed on top of a greenhouse so tangled up in wires it looked like it had been built by birds who had gotten into real estate and who now nested on them freely. Around every piece of metal or circuitry nature had been draped as if to mitigate the harmful effects of modern science on the people who found it too useful to swear off completely.

And animals were everywhere. Cats, dogs and century ferrets roamed freely across Berkeley, fed by every hand and stroked shortly after. A horse grazed in a grassy field that might once have been used for a sport, brushed by a woman with hair down to her ankles. In the glassless window of a pedestrian bridge over one street an orangutan chewed an orange, watching people go by and waving at them. The people waved back.

Dawson was noticed, everywhere she went. Those with eyes sensitive to such things saw her essence which she'd heard shone like the sun, at least in the spiritually barren wasteland of civilization in the sixth world. People sensitive to details saw the badge gleaming in the front pocket of her coat or the bulge of the gun hanging on her hip. And those whose greatest sensitivity lay between their legs drank in the shape of her whole body, the fluid and deliberate way she moved like a predatory cat with watchful grey eyes beneath the brim of her hat. Every part of her appearance served a purpose, and high on the list was to impress upon people I come to set the world to rights and I will not be stopped.

She had crafted herself to be noticed and without fail they noticed her. Years of experience had taught her to look for the small ripples her mere presence could have on the constituent peoples of an environment: a suspiciously blank space in an assortment of inventory could have a moment before her arrival been the resting place of illegal merchandise, the over-enthusiastic purchase of an innocent knick-knack could be the smokescreen concealing a furtive exchange of coded information and most often the casual but sudden disinterest a customer showed in wares which had just seconds ago been of immense interest to them was their pointed attempt to flee the scene without drawing attention to themselves. The harmless glances over their shoulder to see if she was following them were a common giveaway.

But this time it was not a missing detail which caught Dawson's attention. This time the beginning of the trail was to her like a sign pointing to the object of her search: a small medallion hanging above the stall-sign of a venerable Arabic man selling seeds and grain. It was solid iron and cast in the shape of a circle--representing the planet--held by two cupped hands together. The worldwide symbol of the Mother Earth movement.

He looked up from an ancient paper ledger and, to his credit, did not panic or launch into a too-eager charade of friendliness and legal innocence. His voice was heavily accented and bore the slight mispronunciations of someone who had learned the English language on the street and never had time to master its finer points.

"Good day, detective. How is it that I can assist you?"

Dawson made no effort to lower her voice. No doubt numerous ears of all shapes and sizes were listening intently at this moment, and wherever she ended up going word of her imminent arrival would have long since gotten there before her.

"I need to meet with Mother Earth," Dawson said. The seed-seller's expression did not change, and he did not refute the asserted association. She had found that quite often those who believed what they did was right had little cause to hide their allegiances. It was only the more affluent of law-breakers who felt a need to conceal their true colors lest their house of cards come toppling down. The neo-pagans of Berkeley had almost nothing, and thus almost nothing to lose, foremost among those being their chains.

The seed-seller offered only two words. "Estrus," came first. Second was "Avalanche."

Dawson thought for a moment, and then nodded. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and with it a silver star, which she set on the stall counter as a show of gratitude. The seed-seller regarded it with tangible skepticism, but after a few seconds of contemplation nodded faintly and drew the chip to his side of the counter. If she had brought it out before or during the asking of her question, he likely would not have answered. This was not a bribe, merely a show of appreciation for his willingness to speed along justice. Tangible incentives to uphold the law in the sixth world were few and far between, and the manner in which she had provided it showed respect and even a measure of trust.

Without another word she turned and started heading deeper into Berkeley. Estrus was the street name of a brothel close to the center of the township, technically illegal to operate but it was impossible to enforce the city-wide prohibition on unlicensed sex work due to the free-range nature of Berkeley as a whole. To experience lawfully ironclad companionship one had to travel as far as Marin City and allegedly there was so much red tape that by the time you got to doing the deed you'd lose your appetite for it. Estrus was supposed to have an emphasis on the "all natural" angle so popular among neo-pagans. No medical contraceptives were employed but she had it on good authority that the witches who ran the operation used a few tricks to make sure neither the workers nor their customers turned into values in a metahuman multiplication table.

An hour of navigating the flora-choked streets put Dawson outside of a squat three-story apartment building that was outwardly no different than any of the others she had yet passed, which was to say that it was overgrown with vines and laden with window-gardens. Dim red and orange lights strobed from the glass in the upper two floors, giving the impression of a rectangular lava lamp that had been turned on just as the sun began to go down.

But the giveaway was the door. First the mere fact that there was one here, and second the fact it had a sliding slot set in the top so that someone on the inside could quickly look out and communicate with someone on the outside. Hands in her pockets, Dawson strolled up to this door and kicked it twice with her right foot.

A second later the slot opened up and a pair of sharp brown eyes looked back at her. The deep voice of a female ork spoke from the interior.

"What do you want?"

"Inside," Dawson stated, holding the gaze. "Want to talk to someone."

The doorwoman stood on her toes to angle her eyes out of the slot towards Dawson's chest. "You a cop?" It was more of a statement than a question, given the evidence.

"Yeah," came Dawson's answer. "No I don't have a warrant and no I'm not going to come back with one if you don't let me in, because I'll get in tonight either way. Tell your madame I'm not here to cause trouble."

The eyes remained for a few moments and then the phrase came, "Wait here." The slot closed with a sliding of metal in desperate need of grease.

About six minutes later, the slot opened back up and the eyes reappeared again. "No trouble," the ork repeated.

"None at all," Dawson assured her. The slot closed once more and it was followed by the sounds of several locks and braces being undone and moved. At last the door opened inward and she was waved in by a tough-looking ork woman with a shaved head and a piercing in her lower lip that gave her a perpetual sneer that Dawson was willing to classify as artificial resting bitch face.

"We're watching you," the ork said, closing the door and re-locking it once Dawson was inside.

"I hear you can make a lot of money being watched here," Dawson said. Despite her job description being to look rough, the ork couldn't keep herself from smirking slightly.

"Straight down the hall," the ork said, "In the lobby."

The interior of Estrus was warm, the kind of cloying atmospheric warmth that encouraged people to take off some of their clothes just to be comfortable. She travelled past rooms that had shut doors, rooms that had no doors, rooms whose doors were merely a curtain of beads or satin and of course rooms whose working girl or guy was standing in the doorway on the watch for customers. Always they saw the badge first and it helped them hold their tongue; a few even looked nervous that they would be propositioned by her, be it because of her badge, her build or both.

The lobby had been arranged and decorated to resemble the lair of a particularly erotic sorceress. A crystal ball on a table was host to a dwarf woman in rich purple robes who was flanked on one side by an elf man dressed in only a leather harness and sports cup and on the other by a human woman in a naught but a loin cloth. Both of them perspired liberally, sweat dripping from their bare bodies even as their suspicious eyes watched Dawson move towards the madame on duty.

Behind the trio on one wall, next to the spiral staircase that led to the second and third floors, a once simple painting of an ork and a human embracing each other had been serviceably doctored to show a woman's hand clutching a marionette control bar, strings draped down and attached to the two figures.

"Detective," the dwarf woman said in a tone that bordered on sultry. "To what do we owe this pleasure?"

Dawson didn't waste words. "I need to speak with someone called Avalanche."

The madame seemed genuinely surprised by that. "Avalanche? Whatever for? Is she guilty of a crime?"

"No," came Dawson's reply, "Why, do you want to report her for one?" The dwarf chuckled good-naturedly.

"So far as I'm aware she's not committed any that the rest of us aren't also guilty of. I do hope that's not why you want to see her."

"I don't typically work vice," Dawson said, "And even when I do I prefer to target people who actually do bad things. Worst I see going on here is being too heavy on the sales pitch. Wouldn't hurt to turn the heat down a little, working folk might last a little longer."

Once more the dwarf woman laughed briefly. "We want people in and out as fast as possible, detective. We're scratching an itch, not giving people a bath."

"I doubt I'll be even that long," Dawson said. The madame nodded and gestured to one of her attendants, the elf.

"Bruno here will show you to a room. I'll send for Avalanche and you can have your talk."

The room was on the second floor, nominally better furnished than those on the first and fitted with one of the orange-and-red lights that was probably intended to get people in the mood. Dawson stood watching the street below through the window and after around ten minutes, the heavy wooden door opened up to admit someone.

She had to duck slightly to get in beneath the frame and when she stood up she rolled her shoulders as if even this mere inconvenience was undertaken with a measure of disdain and she much would have preferred to simply break the wall down with her forehead. And she could have done so with the smooth, polished horns jutting from her skull, curled slightly back at the tips in a way that afforded maximum penetration when goring a target at center mass.

Judging the troll to be an even nine feet, Avalanche towered over Dawson who by human standards was herself considered tall. She lumbered across the room while adjusting her black leather jacket, an article that had been violently resized to fit her massive frame and as a result looked on her more like a vest. Her skin was a cool blue, her eyes a solid and dull white like hard-packed snow and her expression one of half-disdain, half-interest.

"What do you want, star? Whatever it is you think I did, you're wrong. Haven't been outta Berkeley all week!" She hesitated for a moment as Dawson looked her up and down, then began flexing slightly as if believing she was being checked out. "What's wrong? Never seen a fomori before, huh?"

"Not in person," Dawson admitted. "You're broader than I'd have imagined. I thought you were supposed to be a little smaller than normal trolls."

Avalanche waved her hand dismissively. "Maybe for spell-slingers. I'm all ice n' muscle, star. Keep that in mind if you think about gettin' any ideas with your cuffs."

"Not here to arrest you," Dawson said evenly. "I need to contact someone in Mother Earth and a street vendor dropped your name."

Immediately becoming defensive, Avalanche chewed on words to make sure she chose them carefully. "N' whatta you want with them?"

Hands still in her pockets, Dawson dropped a fragment of the information she had gathered thus far. She had a feeling laying out the whole plan as she imagined it would probably just overwhelm Avalanche and make her reluctant to get involved.

"A week ago someone used some stolen tech to capture a storm off the coast, and now I think they're going to use it for something destructive. I want to know if Mother Earth is involved."

Even this little bit of information made Avalanche avert her eyes. She had a terrible poker face.

"You know something about this," Dawson said quickly. "Just tell me now. I'm not going to arrest you if you didn't have a hand in it. And if you did, we can talk about extenuating circumstances."

The troll's first expressions were anxiety and her gaze flicked to the window, as if she had any chance of ever fitting through it. But after a moment her white eyes slid back to Dawson and something bloomed in her expression. Was this the first time Avalanche had ever been in possession of something someone else wanted? The way she set her hands on her hips suggested she wasn't going to let this opportunity pass her by.

"I might know somethin' about it," the fomor said with a tone dripping with smug self-aggrandizement. "What'll you give me to talk, huh?"

"What do you want?" Dawson asked, though she already had an idea what the answer would be. "Money?"

Waving her hand, Avalanche dismissed this notion immediately. "What would I spend it on? Can't get anything nice in Berkeley n' most folk outside it won't even give me the time of day. I bet every shop on the coast has a 'no trolls' sign just for me!"

"It's wrong of them to act that way," Dawson said softly. "In a better world there would be no such signs."

A small smile was born on Avalanche's face at the show of sympathy, if only because it seemed to mean Dawson was amenable to what she would eventually ask. "Yeah, that's right! 'N you know, I like how warm it is here and all 'n they do pay me, but the madame--she never lets me touch anyone, y'know?"

Dawson feigned shocked. "Do you mean you're not one of the working girls?" she asked. "Someone as big and strapping as you doesn't even need a bed." More likely she was forbidden from sitting or laying on them, since her considerable weight would probably shatter the frame and box spring on the first thrust.

"That's what I said!" Avalanche blurted, scratching her chin with one meaty hand. The lush silver-and-blue braids hanging from her head jostled on her shoulders as she became more animated. "But she won't go for it. You got any idea how worked up someone can get, listenin' to everyone else fuck all day 'n not ever bein' allowed to do it yourself?"

Not lately, Dawson thought. "I can see how frustrating that would be," she agreed. "Have you tried entering into a relationship with someone? I hear that kind of thing can be pretty romantic." That or five someones.

At this comment the troll began visibly brooding. "Tried a few times. People are too worried about, you know... getting broken."

"Those horns of yours do look pointy," Dawson pointed out. Immediately the fomor lifted one hand to them and felt their tips self-consciously.

"And what is it you want me to do?" she asked next. "Talk to the madame for you, see if she'll make an exception?"

Now they came to the sharp end of things. Avalanche waved her hand dismissively again and unveiled what she surely thought was her most brilliant idea to date. "Well, actually... You look pretty tough... I was thinkin' maybe you n' I could just..."

Dawson said nothing and kept her expression from changing, hoping that by forcing the troll to say out loud what she wanted it would shame her into rethinking her plan, but unfortunately Avalanche wasn't big on either shame or thinking and she plowed right ahead.

"You know, fuck. You could... let me fuck you for a while. You don't look like you'll break, 'n I'll be gentle! Just a few m... a few hours, you know? Just 'till I'm satisfied."

Three revisions in the same breath. Next it would be just 'till the seventh world.

"Fucking informants is not within my legal arsenal," Dawson said. Rather than the outright refusal it was intended as, Avalanche saw this as the start of negotiations.

"I won't tell anyone!" she promised. "Won't leave this room, ah? 'N when we're done, I'll take you to meet the commune! Promise!"

"You promise," Dawson repeated softly, lifting one brow. "For some reason I feel an aversion to taking the word of someone who I already know wants to fuck me."

Avalanche shifted uncomfortably. "Come on," she pleaded, "It won't be that bad! You might even like it. Can't be the worst thing you've ever done for a job, yeah?"