Free American Craftsmen by Tom Doyle Page B

you?”
    “Nothing,” I said. I couldn’t say that I would likely perish when I took out the mole, so I told her the other reason. “I had a minor foreboding this morning.”
    “Not from doing craft?”
    “No, not intentionally.”
    Hutchinson closed her eyes and shook her head. “Morton forebodings. Battlefield diaries with the last entry reading ‘Today I died.’ Wills with the date of decease. Taking a suicidal mission because the command post was going to be blown up anyway. And dreaming those damned Lincoln dreams.”
    “What the fuck, Hutch? I’m a little edgy and you’ve got me on the Lincoln train, first class?”
    “Easy.” She reached out a hand to just touch my arm. “Any time frame on this foreboding?”
    “It feels like there’s still some time.”
    “Then we’ll do this through channels,” said Hutchinson. “I’ll check out Sphinx and these Gideons. I’ll get the spooky spooks at the Peepshow on it. They’ll see if anyone’s painting your crafty ass.”
    “You’re going to tell Sphinx?” I asked.
    “I’ve got my own contacts there,” she said.
    “You said it yourself,” I said. “They might hunt me instead.”
    Hutchinson fixed her maternal stare on me. “These aren’t the days of Roderick and Madeline. You’re my responsibility, and I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”
    She stood up. “I’ll have intel start today. We’ll stop this thing before you see me next. And you’ll see me sooner than scheduled. My word on it.”
    “And if Sphinx is behind this?”
    “Then I’ll get you close enough to her to do what you do.”
    Hutchinson offered her hand; I gripped it. The hand was cold. I asked, “Are you feeling OK?”
    “Never better.”
    “While you’re checking on me,” I said, “keep an eye out for yourself.”
    “Another foreboding? Don’t worry. The Hutchinson tradition might be less colorful than your family’s, but once we’ve entered the service we follow the book, and we survive. So we’ll do this my family’s way. Watch yourself, and stay away from the craft. I’ll handle any bad guys, mundane or SPACTAD.”
    But when Hutchinson left, I looked at my hand, and felt the inadequacy of a handshake.
    *   *   *
    That night, instead of the desert, I was standing at the prow of an enormous ship, all glowing white in the twilight, as if carved from ivory. The ship was gliding impossibly fast over an inert ocean. I could have spread my arms out and played Titanic, but no icebergs relieved the gray view. I would have welcomed a crash, even a sinking, anything to stop the fast-approaching, dark, indefinite shore, because there, the scarlet horror of the Red Death waited.
    That wasn’t the greatest horror. At my side, in a diaphanous shroud billowing in the silent wind, stood Scherie. Our brief contact had tied her to my destruction.
    I woke up, roaring “No!”
    The Lincoln dream, and the Red Death, both Family omens of doom. Scherie and I didn’t have much time. The boat dream had only given Abe one day’s notice. Lincoln had been crafty alright, but a Morton was craftier. We might have a month, but no more, and a lot less if I had the second dream. The Red Death’s connection to Roderick and the Left Hand only confirmed the illness of the omen.
    When I got out of bed, I avoided mirrors and the inevitable double image of life and death that Lincoln had seen. The Mortons have never made great knights errant. Damsels in distress were too often traps for the unwary. But I felt a greater need to protect Scherie, an innocent, than to save myself. I couldn’t see where this need had come from. My guilt about my last mission seemed a thing apart from this other emotion. As the morning went on, the urge to protect Scherie didn’t fade.
    Was this simple attraction? I refused to believe in love or even intense like at first sight, and goddamnit I couldn’t afford it now. Instead, I told myself that a craftsman might feel a compulsion to save an