Mindwar

by Andrew Klavan

  But for now—for this second—these next few minutes—he had transformed himself into the living image of one of the alligator guards!

  Just before the plane started falling out of the sky, Victor One sensed they were in trouble. He didn’t know what it was that made him think so. Just something in the motion of the aircraft made him sit up straight in his canvas seat and glance across the heads of the Traveler and Leila Kent into the questioning eyes of Bravo Niner.

  B-9 lifted his chin in a question: What’s wrong?

  But it was Jonathan Mars who noticed the look of alarm on the bodyguard’s face and spoke aloud: “Victor One, is something the matter?”

  Victor One wasn’t sure. He just had this weird sense that something had seized hold of the plane from outside, as if a giant hand had wrapped itself around the fuselage. He was about to shrug this off as some kind of superstitious notion brought on by anxiety.

  Then the plane went nose down and started plunging toward the earth.

  Leila Kent screamed.

  “What’s happening?” the Traveler shouted.

  “We’re going down!” shouted Echo Eight.

  They were. There was nothing but night at the windows. They couldn’t see what was happening, but they could feel the fall accelerating every second, the g-force pulling at their faces, throwing their bodies hard into their shoulder straps. Victor One knew they didn’t have much time. The U-28A had already been flying low, trying to stay in uncontrolled airspace and avoid the attention of local air control. Dropping at this rate, they would pancake into the earth in under a minute. They’d all be dead before they ever felt the crash.

  “Did someone fire on us?” shouted Jonathan Mars as the plane screamed toward destruction.

  “We’re going to crash!” Leila Kent screamed.

  “I don’t think this is damage,” said the Traveler—his voice, Victor One noticed even now, was remarkably quiet, remarkably calm.

  Then none of them said anything. There was nothing to say. The plane drove downward through the night, its engines letting out a shrieking whine that filled the air around them. Her mouth wide with fear, Leila Kent reached out a hand for the Traveler and he gripped her hand in his own. There was no time for anything else but last prayers and last thoughts . . . pictures in their minds of the people they loved or should have loved . . . spirits reaching out to God . . .

  Then, with a stomach-dropping swoop, the plane leveled out. Victor One jolted straight in his seat as the g-force released him. They all did. They all looked out the windows.

  Victor One wasn’t sure where they were—somewhere over forest near the East Coast, he believed—but he could make out the lights of a house or two in the near distance and he could see how far they’d fallen, how low they were, how close to the earth: close; they were very close! Another three seconds of dropping as they had and they would have been smashed and fried.

  The others were staring questions at one another, their mouths still open in shock: What just happened? Each of them felt a sort of mad disorientation, as if they’d been torn from the darkness of death and hurled back into the blinding light of life again. Which, of course, they had.

  Leila Kent was the first to speak. “Is it over? Are we going to be all right now?”

  As if in answer, the door to the cockpit banged open. The copilot, a young Air Force man named Danny Roth, stood in the frame, one foot over the threshold. His face was white, and his expression showed he was as dazed as all the rest of them.

  “We’ve lost control of the plane!” he said breathlessly. “It’s flying on its own.” He looked from frightened face to face as if begging someone for help. Then he said, “Which one of you is the Traveler?”

  The professor adjusted his glasses and with a voice still almost supernaturally calm, he said, “I am.”

  Copilot Danny Roth stared at the Traveler for a long moment before he spoke again. It seemed as if even he did not believe what he was about to say.

  “There’s someone who wants to talk to you,” he blurted out finally. “He says . . .”

  But before he finished, a new voice came over the cabin intercom. It was a deep male voice with a thick Russian accent.

  “Dr. Lawrence Dial,” it said thickly.

  The Traveler looked up as if he expected to see the speaker floating near the cabin ceiling. “I’m Dr. Lawrence Dial,” he said. “Who are you?”

  The answer came back at once: “I am Kurodar. And I am in control of this plane.”

  There was no time to hesitate, no time to waste. Even as Rick started out of the water pipe, he could already feel his alligator morph beginning to fizzle and fade. He had to keep all his focus on maintaining his shape, even as he moved out into the guard-infested cellar. One slip of his focus, and he would snap back into his ordinary form and they would spot him.

  He strode with as much confidence as he could muster through the freezing mercury puddles. He stepped out of the end of the pipe and felt his feet touch the slimy moss of the cellar flagstones. With a huge effort of will, he turned his heavy snout this way and that, shooting red lights out of his eyes as if he were searching for someone—as if he were searching for himself! And all the while, he kept moving. The morph would last only another few seconds. He had to get through the guards and get out of there.

  All around him, the other alligators were doing the same as he, their clawed feet kicking through the puddles, their tails lashing back and forth behind them, their snouts turning, their red beams lancing the dark.

  And now a pair of those red beams passed over him. Rick felt a surge of fear. For a moment, he lost his concentration. A line of static sizzled through his shape before he could will himself to hold his form.

  But too late! The alligator guard had already noticed him. The guard’s red beams moved on—then stopped—then moved back and pinned Rick where he stood. Rick held his breath. The large guard-bot was looking right at him, staring at him as if it knew that something about him was not quite right.

  Rick fixed his concentration, trying to keep his morph steady. If the alligator shape slipped now, he was done for.

  The guard stared at him for what felt like twenty minutes. He was a fierce-looking creature with a huge sword at his side and a strange symbol emblazoned on the breastplate of his armor. Rick held his alligator shape in place and kept moving, pretending he didn’t see how the guard was watching him.

  Then his pulse skipped as one of the other guards shouted, “Kaaf! I heard something here!”

  At that, the alligator with the symbol on his breastplate—Kaaf—turned away.

  Rick seized the moment. He had spotted a great stone stairway against the far wall. Three other alligators were patrolling the area between here and there. Focusing all his spirit on remaining in his shape, Rick joined them and wove his way among them, moving as quickly as he could over the damp and slippery cellar floor.

  He got past the alligators. He reached the stairs: bulky flagstone steps leading to a heavy wooden door above. He started climbing out of the cellar, away from the other guards—and as he did, he felt his energy give way. His mind was exhausted. His focus slipped altogether, all at once. His alligator morph crackled with purple lines of energy—then it faded away. He slid back helplessly into the shape of himself.

  He ran the rest of the way up the stairs. There was nothing else he could do. He took the steps two at a time, stretching his long legs to make the leaps, hoping for all he was worth that none of the alligators in the cellar below happened to look up the flight of stairs and see him. He was at the door in seconds. He seized hold of its iron ring and pulled it open.

  He stepped through the door and shoved it shut behind him, praying that none of the alligators below would follow him up.

  He had come into a narrow hallway. The walls were of rough uneven stones, and rose high, high above him toward a vaulted ceiling. To his left, the corridor dead-ended against a heavy stone wall. To his right, though, there was an exit. R
ick crept cautiously toward the exit. When he reached it, he pressed close to the wall and peeked out.

  He caught his breath. He saw at once he was in the heart of the fortress. It was an awesome sight: a vast, soaring Great Hall of stone and stained glass. The walls seemed to rise and rise forever. The rosette windows seemed as big as suns, decorated with richly colored scenes that Rick could not identify. Huge statues of men he likewise didn’t recognize stood in niches looking out with dead stares. Enormous antique furniture—throne-like chairs and ornately carved tables and tall display cases holding bizarre weapons—lined the walls at the edge of the elaborately designed carpets. Above it all, there hung chandeliers—enormous wooden wheels, each the size of a flying saucer, each with dozens of candles burning in them, bathing the hall in wavering red-and-yellow light.

  Below, along the walls, there were heavy black doors. At each door, there stood an alligator guard, his leathery hand resting on his sword hilt, his eyes moving back and forth to sweep the area around him with red beams.

  As Rick surveyed the scene, there was a noise . . . a movement. Rick ducked back—then cautiously peeked around the corner again. He saw a great pair of double doors swinging open in the center of the wall across from him. He saw the alligator guard there stand aside respectfully.

  And then he saw Reza.

  This was the first close look Rick had had of him. An amazing and frightening sight. The assassin whose hologram portrait Jonathan Mars had shown him had been transformed into a long, tall, purple humanoid with leathery wings. He was almost naked except for the heavy belt that held a dark skirt over his lower torso. He had rippling muscles in his narrow chest and strangely thin yet powerful-looking whip-like arms. Huge yellow eyes beamed out of the purplish skin of his sharply angled face. And as he hovered above the floor, a thin tail lashed the air behind him. He had large hands with even larger claws coming out of them. He looked very much like the devil himself.

  As he came out the door, Rick got a glimpse of a magnificent room within: a huge circular space with columns and statues and a starry dome like a planetarium’s. Hanging in the middle of the air in there, he saw some sort of moving mist. A living mist, it looked like. And there were images inside it. Images of faces. People.

  With a jolt, Rick thought he recognized one of them: Jonathan Mars!

  But before he could be sure, the double doors swung shut. The guard took his place before them again. And Reza moved away to float farther along the wall of the Great Hall.

  The demon moved to a small black-iron door set in the stone. Another guard stood there. He unbolted the door for the assassin. With a flap of his wings, Reza went through.

  Rick had only a moment to glimpse what was inside: a huge moving engine of some kind, a great wheel throwing off crackling purple energy. Some kind of generator.

  Then the demon entered the room and the black door clanged shut behind him. The guard moved back into place in front of it.

  Rick drew back into the corridor, breathing hard. What had he just seen? What should he do now? He had to think. He needed a plan. His mission was to find out what was going on here. That meant getting into the domed room—that was obviously the center of the fortress; that was where the action was. He had to figure out a way to get in there.

  He wasn’t sure he had the energy to morph into an alligator again, but he might have to try. Other options? The walls of the corridor were uneven, with stones jutting out here and there. He might be able to climb up one of them. He might be able to get onto one of those chandeliers . . .

  He never got to finish the thought. Suddenly, red light pierced his field of vision. He turned and saw that the door to the stairs behind him had opened. The guard named Kaaf had come looking for him, following him up out of the cellar. The beams from the alligator’s eyes touched Rick as he spotted him.

  Kaaf’s jaws opened wide, baring his dagger-like teeth. He was about to call for help.

  Rick drew his sword and rushed at him.

  Reza had dispatched his guards to search the cellar for the intruder, then tried to contact the master through his communicator. There was no reply. He hurried back to the Sky Room to make his report to Kurodar in person.

  “Master!” he cried as he flew in.

  “Quiet!” boomed the presence above him. The mist of Kurodar had now spread out in tendrils across the painted sky. It pooled here and there, and moved in some places in circles of light that turned into misty corkscrews. At the foggy pink core of the great man’s presence, images were forming. Reza saw they were the images of the people in the Traveler’s plane.

  Reza understood that the master’s enterprise had reached its crisis point. Still, he had to tell him, “Master, I think the intruder has returned!”

  “Then find him!” Kurodar boomed imperiously. “Kill him! That’s what you’re here for! Go!”

  Reza bowed his head and flitted out of the room. The cellar next, he thought. And he was about to fly across the Great Hall to the corridor on the other side—the corridor where Rick was hiding right that minute.

  But then he thought: No. He had to check the Generator Room again. He knew he was being obsessive about it, but it bothered him—haunted him: the idea that someone might sneak in there and bring the whole fortress—and Kurodar’s plan—to a standstill.

  Quickly, he flew to the small iron door. The guard unlocked it, and Reza ducked in to check the Disperser Wheel one last time.

  Sword drawn, Rick charged down the alley toward Kaaf the alligator guard.

  Kaaf let out a hissing snarl. With a sting of metal, he drew his own weapon, a massive broadsword. In one fluid motion, he lifted it above his head and brought it sweeping down at Rick as Rick rushed toward him.

  Only Rick’s athletic reflexes saved him from being cleaved in two. He threw up Mariel’s blade crosswise above him. The steel sang out as it caught Kaaf’s descending broadsword on the thick of its blade. Rick felt the jolt of the impact as the two swords crashed together only inches above his skull.

  The powerful Kaaf tried to force his sword down through Mariel’s blade, but Rick grabbed the guard’s arm with his free hand, lifted his own leg, and planted it square in the middle of the alligator’s belly. He kicked out. The guard went stumbling backward. In almost the same motion, Rick brought his sword whipping around toward the alligator’s enormous head.

  The corridor was too narrow for such a swing. Rick’s sword point scraped the stone wall, sending up sparks. That slowed his attack and Kaaf, still off-balance, managed to bring his sword around to defend himself. There was another sting of metal on metal as the two swords came together, the guard blocking Rick’s blow. The alligator went into an answering attack at once, slashing at Rick with a backhand stroke. Rick stepped back, and the alligator’s sword point swept past his face, so close he felt the wind of it as it went by.

  The force of that swing turned the alligator half around. That gave Rick the opening he needed. He stepped forward. Grabbed the alligator’s forearm, holding his sword at bay. Then, with a cry of fear and fury, he thrust the point of Mariel’s blade up into the underside of the reptile’s enormous snout.

  The blade struck home. The point pierced the alligator’s throat and continued up into its head. Kaaf’s eyes went wide—then blank with death. His body flashed and flickered with purple bolts of energy. Even as Rick pressed the sword point home, the lizardly security bot winked out and vanished in a hot violet flash of light.

  But there was no time to celebrate the victory. Rick heard a hissing roar from the vast hall behind him. He heard thundering footsteps on the flagstones out there and more thunder on the flagstone stairs leading up from the cellar below. More guards! Rick realized: Kaaf must have raised an alarm.

  The thundering alligator footsteps grew louder on every side of him.

  He was surrounded.

  Victor One’s eyes darted from face to face. He looked at the Traveler, who seemed strangely serene as he waited for the voice of Kurod
ar to continue over the plane’s loudspeaker. He looked at Leila Kent, who seemed amazed and shocked at what was happening. He looked at Bravo Niner and Echo Eight: the faces of the professional fighting men were still and watchful. He looked finally at Jonathan Mars, whose deepset eyes were alive with ferocious intelligence. Then he looked back at the Traveler, as Kurodar’s voice once again filled the U-28A’s cabin.

  “I have taken control of seven passenger planes,” said Kurodar in his thick Russian accent. “Altogether, there are two thousand and six people on board these aircraft. They are flying above a city with a population of over half a million. If you do not do what I tell you to do, I am going to bring every one of those planes crashing into the most densely populated portions of that city. I estimate it will take me between one and a half and two minutes to bring down all seven planes. In 120 seconds, I will snuff out an untold number of lives and cause a level of destruction and terror not seen in your country for over a decade.”

  The Traveler nodded. “Very impressive,” he said quietly.

  A touch of pride seemed to enter Kurodar’s voice as he answered: “It is only the beginning—only a hint, a taste—of what the Realm can do. If there weren’t so many doubters in the Assembly, I would have waited and shown you what it could achieve in all its glory. Then you would have seen something. Your entire nation in flames. But you will see it yet. As I say, this is only the beginning.”

  The voice fell silent. The U-28A continued to skim swiftly over the trees below.

  “Go on,” said the Traveler, his tone still calm. “What is it you want?”

  “I want you, Dr. Dial,” said the Russian’s voice.

  The Traveler shrugged his thin shoulders, blinking bemusedly behind his glasses. “It seems you already have me.”

  “I do,” Kurodar replied. “And it is very helpful. There are many who fear you in the Assembly, you know.”

  “Fear me? No one of goodwill needs to fear me.”