Shit, he thought. Tomorrow, I pay for everything.
DAY TWO
“What’s wrong with you? You never even get angry! Even a shout would be better than this, than this, this calm . . . nothingness.”
“Come on, Shanna, Jesus Christ. What would shouting prove—who has the loudest voice?”
“Maybe I’d just like to be able to believe that you have a passion for something besides violence. Maybe sometimes, I wish I were as important to you as killing people—”
“Dammit, that’s not fair—”
“Fair? You want fair? Let me quote you: ‘I believe in justice, as long as I’m holding a knife at the throat of the judge.’ ”
“What does that have to do with—”
“Everything. It’s all part of the same thing. I suppose I shouldn’t expect you to understand.”
1
A TOO-YOUNG, TOO-PRETTY man with artfully curled hair stares earnestly out from the main screens of homes all over the world.
“For those of you just joining us, this is Adventure Update, your only Worldwide Twenty-four-hour Source for Studio News. I’m Bronson Underwood.
“Our top story this morning: in less than one hour, the legendary Caine will make the transfer into the City of Life, the capital of the Ankhanan Empire, on the northwest continent of Overworld. His real-life wife, the well-known Pallas Ril, is lost somewhere within the city. The graphic that you see in the lower left corner of your screens is our best estimate of the number of hours remaining until Pallas Ril’s amplitude match fails and she slips out of phase with Overworld. As you can see, if Caine cannot save her, Pallas Ril will die, hideously, in one hundred thirty-one hours—only a little more than five and a half days.
“Adventure Update will run this graphic twenty-four hours a day, as long as we have any hope remaining, and we will offer hourly updates on Caine’s progress in his desperate search.
“In our next hour, we’ll have the tape of LeShaun Kinnison’s interview with Caine himself, and let me tell you, it’s really something. But now, we go to our chief analyst for Ankhanan affairs, Jed Clearlake.”
“Good morning, Bronson.”
“Jed, what can you tell our viewers of the current situation there in Ankhana? How much do we actually know?”
“Well, Bronson, more than you might think. First of all, the one hundred thirty-one hours is only an estimate; a number of factors can affect the phase-locking capability of . . .”
And this is barely the beginning.
2
THE MOUNTAIN OF stone and steel that was the San Francisco Studio towered above the broad plain of landing pads and carports. The eagles that circled the mountaintop were the limousines and flying coupes of the Leisurefolk and Investors, soaring through endless loops of holding patterns.
The weather had broken overnight. The rising sun painted the polished Gothic arches of the windows and glittered in the eyes of gargoyles that crouched among the arms of massive flying buttresses. High granite walls—the first line of defense against under-caste intrusion—ringed the entire compound.
Outside the iron-toothed mouth of the enormous gate, the hordes of undercastes—the Laborers and Artisans and even some Professionals who were not too proud to mingle—shifted and stamped and flowed toward the wide road, restrained by the linked arms of the red-suited Studio Security force who lined the curbs.
Within the hour, Caine himself would pass through these gates.
In the Cavea, the great hall of five thousand firsthand berths, a battalion of ushers fiddled and fitted and plugged the wealthy clients into their simichairs.
In the subscription boxes, the Leisurefolk and their guests enjoyed the delicacies and exotic wines that each box’s waiter had to offer and talked about Caine’s extraordinary performance at the Subscriber’s Ball. Opinion was divided: most believed that it was a particularly inspired piece of Studio theatrics, but a stubborn minority maintained that what they’d seen was entirely unplanned—that something real had happened.
All agreed, however, that it had powerfully captured their interest. Many had passed a sleepless night in anticipation, and of those who had slept, many had dreamed of being Caine.
In the techbooth that overlooked the ebony ziggurat of the Cavea’s transfer platform, Arturo Kollberg snapped useless orders and fumed and brooded on his humiliation the night before, on the brink of his greatest triumph. It was intolerable, and something had to be done.
Something would be done, and he would certainly do it.
This wasn’t personal, he assured himself. It wasn’t some fit of pique, a need to salve his wounded vanity. Kollberg thought of himself as a bigger man than that; he’d always understood that his personal needs must be subordinated to the necessities of his position, and he’d always done so. The humiliation he’d suffered, the insult to his person, the threat, was irrelevant; he could let it pass unrequited, if he chose. That was a matter between Michaelson the man and Kollberg the man; it was personal, and it could be forgotten.
The insult to his position was another matter entirely.
That was between Michaelson the Professional and Kollberg the Administrator. To ignore it would begin to unravel the very fabric of civilization.
Administrators the world over have two mottoes, two simple principles to guide them in their lives: Deference to Those Above, Respect from Those Below, and: Service.
All Administrator children learn early that they are the guardians of society, that they are, in fact, the axis upon which turns the world. Ranked below them are the Professionals, Artisans, and Laborers; ranked above are the Businessfolk, the Investors, and the Leisure-folk. Administrators are the center, the fulcrum, the balance point, and their role is nothing less than the maintenance of civilization. Administrators take the directions of the upcastes and translate them to reality by their direction of the downcastes. Administrators allocate the distribution of Earth’s dwindling resources. Administrators manage the enterprises; Administrators promulgate the regulations; Administrators create the wealth that is the engine of the Earth.
Administrators carry the world upon their backs and ask for nothing in return.
One of the most basic skills of the Administrator, an essential element of his education, is the maintenance of the dignity of his position. The moral authority of an effective Administrator is so powerful that undercastes—and even lesser Administrators—follow his directives without question; great Administrators have undercastes that actually compete against each other in the performance of their functions, for no other reward than an approving glance and a firm Good job.
But when errors and weakness erode the authority of the Administrators, undercastes become surly and shiftless—sometimes goldbricking and malingering to the point of sabotage, to where it actually harms the corporation. This was no myth, no ghost story to frighten Administrator children; Arturo Kollberg had seen it in action.
Kollberg was the product of a mixed marriage. His father—a competent if unexceptional Administrator of a Midwestern hospital—had married below himself, had taken to wife one of the Professionals he supervised. Kollberg’s mother had been only a thoracic Surgeon, and the other Administrator pups, cruel as children are the world over, had never let him forget it.
Kollberg’s childhood had been spent watching helplessly while the parents of his schoolmates had risen in status and position, had been transferred away to challenging and glamorous posts all over the world. Kollberg’s father, in his foolish weakness, had condemned himself to the obscurity of his provincial hospital, largely because he never understood how to keep his undercastes in their proper place. He’d even allowed Kollberg’s mother to continue to work—but as long as she did Professional work, she could not upcaste to Administration; to come from reduced circumstances was no shame, but to prefer those circumstances was criminally selfish. She’d gone on performing her surgery, heedless of the damage this did to the career of her husband and the life of her only son.
But the blame couldn’t be laid entirely on her head. His father had never understood the importance of dignity, of Administrative image. Fundamentally weak-spirited and easygoing, he’d preferred to be liked more than respected. He’d never insisted on proper deference; even now, Kollberg could raise a burning blush of shame when he remembered how his father would let his mother speak to him in public without use of his courtesy title, how he would let her touch him in front of other undercastes.
Kollberg had defined his life in opposition to his father’s. He’d never married, had no interest in family—in fact, he never intended to marry. A wife would take up too much of his attention, would interfere with his ascetic devotion to the performance of his duties. He insisted upon—and got—precisely proper deference from those below him, and he offered precisely proper respect to those above. He knew exactly where his place was in the hierarchy of reality, and he knew exactly the vector of his life.
Upward. Slowly, perhaps, but ever upward.
Through devotion and skill he’d risen throughout his career, from an assistant departmental supervisor in his father’s hospital to his father’s own job. One of the proudest moments of Arturo Kollberg’s life, one of his most cherished memories, was the day he had entered his father’s office to personally hand-deliver the Notice of Forced Retirement. He’d proven what could be accomplished by a skilled Administrator, and he’d proven that he had every one of those skills, despite his miscegenetic birth.
But conquering his father hadn’t been enough for him. There was only so far an ambitious man could rise in the health-care system. Now, twenty years later, he was among an elite of which the average Administrator could only dream. He’d outstripped every one of his schoolmates, their parents, every Administrator he’d ever met: he was not only a Studio Chairman, but Chairman of the Studio, San Francisco, the one that had started it all, the one where the first Winston Transfer equipment had been built by the hands of Jonah Winston himself. This Studio had transformed not only the nature of entertainment, but the structure of society itself.
It had been crumbling when he took it in hand, practically a derelict, a joke, a backwater final resting place of Peter-Principled incompetents. His peers had shaken their heads gravely when they’d heard of his transfer there, and they’d clucked solemnly about the self-destruction of a promising career.
They clucked no longer.
San Francisco was now the jeweled diadem of the whole Studio system, the flagship operation, the prestige market; San Francisco took in fifty million marks a year from the mere waiting lists it maintained for hopeful subscribers to its top ten stars.
And when one speaks of the top ten stars of San Francisco, when one speaks of the top ten stars of all time, one inevitably comes around to Caine.
Say what you will about Burchardt, about Story and Zhian and Mkembe, bring up any name you want; there was only one Caine. Never been anyone like him, probably never will be again; often imitated, never duplicated. There were any number of conflicting theories about Caine’s continuing popularity, giving the credit variously to his eloquence, to his curious combination of ruthlessness and passion, to his peculiar quirks of honor; Kollberg knew all these to be empty rationalization.
In a word, bullshit.
There were two reasons that Caine continued to dominate both the firsthand and secondhand markets. The first was his snarling bare-knuckle brawling.
Throwing spells is one thing—feeling the power of magick surge through your body. Hacking into an enemy with a steel blade is something else—something more intimate, more brutal. But even that can’t compare with the erotic power of the snap of bone beneath your bare hands, the smack of flesh on flesh and the sudden, delirious surge that takes you when your enemy gives that faint sigh—that gasp of the consciousness of defeat—when his face goes slack and he sees his death in your eyes. It’s the fighting itself that Caine’s fans live for, and Caine throws himself into combat with the abandon of a cliff diver: he springs out into space, to live or die, just for the rush.
The second reason was Kollberg himself.
Kollberg had made Caine, had managed his career with the sort of personal attention that most men reserve for their sons. Anyplace on Overworld where a situation was reported that would make a thrilling backdrop for a Caine story, Caine went. Kollberg had even sent him to places where other Actors were at work—even when it meant dropping him into their story lines and having him take them over. Kollberg had been criticized for this favoritism, and he’d been criticized for pandering to the public, for damaging the stories of the other Actors and destroying their artistic validity.
He had answered every charge with a gesture, a chubby finger pointed straight at the Studio’s bottom line. Even the lesser Actors gave up grumbling; after all, the chance that Caine could show up unexpectedly in their Adventures boosted the subscription rates for every single Actor in San Francisco.
But this matter of Caine setting himself against Kollberg, defying him to his face, even threatening him—this could not be allowed to pass. Michaelson shouldn’t even really be considered a Professional—this current fad for pandering to the egos of Actors had gone too far. Professionals, indeed. If anything, Actors should be Artisans, at most; their trade was a simple exchange of handiwork for money. A true Professional is a member of an elite society with a self-enforced ethical code; a true Professional is accountable for the results of his work.
Kollberg smiled grimly to himself. Now that would be amusing—if someone held Caine accountable for his actions, if he ever really had to face the consequences of things he’d done. It was a happy fantasy, but one he couldn’t afford to indulge. Caine was too valuable.
And really, he reminded himself, it wasn’t Caine who had threatened him: it was Michaelson. Caine was the one who brought all this wealth into the Studio; it was Caine who was Kollberg’s greatest success.
It was Michaelson he’d find a way to punish.
3
HARI FINISHED HIS workout with a series of spin kicks against the head-sized holographic target that danced in the electrostatic mist at one end of the Abbey’s gym. Back-spins to both sides, hooking kicks, side kicks, crescents: Hari spun until sweat sprayed out horizontally from his hair.
He shook his head and made a mental note to be cautious about his left lead; some change in the weather had stiffened the old sword cut on his right thigh, slowing him enough that he was only landing about three in five of his back kicks on the bobbing target. This was a bad trend: he wasn’t a kid anymore, and experience compensates for speed only up to a point.
He went straight to the screen without bothering to shower. He toweled away most of his drying sweat while he spent a few minutes with his lawyer, making sure that his affairs were in order, and especially that the annuity he’d arranged for his father’s upkeep was unbreakable. That done, he clicked off. There was no one else he had to talk to.
He draped the towel across his shoulders and headed for the vault. The Studio limo would be landing in fifteen minutes.
It was time to become Caine.
The vault in the Abbey’s basement drew enough power to light a small town. This vault maintained an Overworld-normal field that allowed him to store Caine’s outfit and weapons so he’d never have to change at the Studio vault with lesser Actors.
It was only the size of a small closet: exactly twice as big as he needed.
With the door open, the empty left side of the vault stared back at him. Occasionally he entertained masochistic fantasies of buying duplicates of Pallas’costume, just so there’d be something there, in place of this mocking emptiness. Sad dreams of a desperate man—he could never hang his own costume there, just as he still slept to one side of his king-sized bed.
He pulled out his gear.
The black leather tunic was faded and cracked—white salt rings of ancient sweat circling the armpits, rawhide laces stretched and stiff. He put it on the immaculate upholstery of the dressing
room couch, next to the soft black breeches that were covered with slices and tears crudely sewn; the coarse brown thread showed like old bloodstains against the leather. On the floor he set the pair of supple boots, cut low to the size of the high-top tennis shoes of a different era.
He stood naked before the full-length mirror on the outside of the vault door. The flat muscles of his chest, the ridges of his abdomen, the bunched cords of his thighs and arms, all stood out like they’d been cut into stone. He turned slightly and narrowed his eyes, regarding the slight thickening just below his waist with critical distaste. Maybe this was an inevitable consequence of pushing forty—or maybe he’d been slacking. Only the faintest twinge of vanity colored his disapproval; nearly all of it was caused by the certain knowledge that four or five extra pounds could slow him fatally at the critical cusp between victory and death.
He had the build of a middleweight boxer, somewhat tall for his weight. His skin was a swarthy map of crisscross scars on which could be traced the high points of Caine’s career. Here was the puckered circle of the crossbow quarrel he’d taken at Ceraeno; here was the diamond scar of the sword thrust through his liver outside Toa-Phelathon’s bedchamber. Up at his collarbone was the jagged axe cut where Ghular Freehammer had nearly decapitated him; there on his back were parallel scars given him by a puma in the cat pits of Kirisch-Nar. He had a story for every major scar and not a few of the minor ones; now in the mirror he touched each scar and let each story flood his mind, reminding himself once again who he was.
I am Caine.
The big scar, from his right hip down his thigh, the one that slowed those kicks—that one he’d gotten from Berne.
He shook off that memory and slipped into his supporter—a leather jockstrap padding a steel cup sewn within. He pulled on the leather breeches and drew the pair of throwing knives from his thigh sheaths to test their razor edges against his forearms. He stepped into the boots, and checked the small leafblade daggers in the ankle sheaths. Inside the tunic were sewn the sheaths for three more knives—two long ones below the armpits for fighting, and another throwing knife between the shoulder blades. He laced the tunic up to his sternum and belted it with a supple garroting-rope cored with steel cable.
Heroes Die Page 12
