Heroes Die

by Matthew Woodring Stover

  He’d been drowsing in his chair despite the drug, almost dozing off in the afterglow of the successful live feed, when he’d been yanked bolt upright by Caine’s line about toppling a government so much like our own. He’d struggled heroically against the fog in his brain as he listened with growing incredulity to the conversation that followed, and he cursed himself for inattention, for waffling. He’d left it too long, let too much go out. By the time his horror finally overcame his natural inertia and he’d slapped the switch, it was too late.

  There should be a feeling of triumph, here, however petty that triumph might be—he’d finally gotten that bastard, finally showed Caine and Michaelson both who was really in charge around here—but instead there was a taste of dust in his mouth and an uneasy griping in the pit of his stomach.

  He knows. Caine knows.

  He looked down through the one-way glass at the transfer platform as Michaelson, below, lifted his eyes toward the techbooth.

  He’s looking right at me. But . . . that’s ridiculous. How could he know I’m up here in the booth?

  One of the techs whistled to himself, low and slightly awed. “He looks kinda angry.”

  Another tech forced a weak chuckle. “It’s a whole different feeling when he’s looking that way at you, isn’t it?”

  Kollberg huffed a sigh through his nose and thumbed the key to connect his intercom mike to the Security office.

  “This is Kollberg. Send a riot team to the Cavea. Full gear.”

  This was one of the reasons that Actors were never to be transferred in the midst of an Adventure: any emotions Caine was feeling right now would be chemically echoed in the bloodstreams of the five thousand first-handers. Even the tranks that were being fed through their simichairs’ neurochem drips didn’t entirely eliminate the possibility of trouble.

  And then there was Michaelson, who wasn’t getting any tranquilizers at all.

  Even as Kollberg finished speaking, Michaelson pushed himself upright and began to walk slowly and carefully down the long flight of steps at the side of the ebony ziggurat of the transfer platform.

  Kollberg pressed his lips together and tapped his fingers against one another in series: index-middle-ring-little, over and over again, obsessively focusing on the inaudible four-beat drumroll. He’d have to say something, do something that would keep Michaelson on the platform, at least for the couple of minutes it would take for the secmen to arrive in their cardinal red body armor, with their stickyfoam and power rifles loaded with gelslugs.

  He keyed the mike for general address, and his amplified voice boomed through the Cavea. “Michaelson? Er, Caine? Please stay on the platform. We’ve had a transfer malfunction. We’re trying to correct it right now; there’s a chance we might be able to send you back immediately.”

  That should handle him; Kollberg turned his attention to his real problems. First, he’d have to find some way to mollify the chairmen of the linked Studios around the world; they would probably all call en masse to shout and scream and variously vent their outrage at this interruption of Caine’s Adventure. Kollberg expected these calls to begin any second, but this wasn’t his biggest problem.

  He was also expecting—dreading would be a better word—a call from the Board of Governors. He’d have some explaining to do. Even the thought of dealing with that blank screen and digitally modulated voice twisted his guts into knots that seemed to tie his throat closed as well. He needed that confidence back, that rush he’d had with the live feed; it seemed now that he’d crashed as far as he’d risen. With trembling fingers, he opened the carton and pried out another capsule. He turned away from the techs and dry-swallowed it painfully.

  “Uh, ’Strator?” one of the techs said dubiously. “You might want to look at this.”

  “I hardly have time . . .” Kollberg began irritably, but his voice trailed off to silence and his mouth went suddenly dry as he automatically followed the line of the tech’s pointing finger.

  Far down below in the Cavea, Michaelson was sprinting up the long slope of the center aisle, heading for the door.

  This could be a problem.

  But problems were what he was paid to handle. With only an eyeblink’s hesitation, he keyed his mike for Security.

  “This is Kollberg again. Detail three men from the riot team to meet me at my office. Not in the Cavea, not at the techbooth, at my office, do you understand?”

  His assistant would have already left for the evening; they’d have the kind of privacy Kollberg wanted for what was to come.

  “And not regulars. Specials. I want three specials at my office, and three more specials up here at the techbooth. Order them to take custody of Hari Michaelson and escort him to my office. Authorize the use of force.”

  He turned to the curious techs and looked into the growing apprehension on their faces. “When Caine gets here—and he will, ah, make no mistake, this is where he’s coming—tell him I’m expecting him in my office. Nothing more, nothing less. Three secmen will shortly arrive to take him there. It would be best, in fact, if you speak with him very little. I believe that he’s, ah, planning to hurt someone. Don’t let it be you.”

  With that, he waddled toward the techbooth door as fast as his jiggling thighs could carry him.

  26

  HARI LOOKED UP at the blank mirrored surface of the techbooth as the echoing hollow words died away and realized that through this particular looking glass, he could find some answers.

  With the thought came instant action: he sprang off the transfer platform and hit the floor running. The five thousand first-handers who filled the Cavea didn’t so much as twitch as he passed, still locked deep in the chemical slumber of the sendep cycle that would gradually bring them back to themselves.

  Tuxedoed ushers scattered at his approach, and the broad double doors at the Cavea’s rear boomed back against the marblepaneled walls when he crashed through them. His injured knee screamed at him with every step, and his shoulder burned, and neither pain could register through the greater pain that squeezed his heart.

  An alarm Klaxon blared as he slammed the crash bar of a service door, and the corrugated steel of the tech stairs rang under his boot heels. The long twisting spiral was tall enough to have him breathing hard before he reached the serviceway that circled the Cavea. Far below the alarm still hooted.

  He burst through an unmarked door into the sterile monochromatic compartment of the techbooth.

  Four men in tech whites stared at him, frozen in their chairs. They all had that pinched, flinching look of physical fear, but none of them seemed surprised to see him. One of them lifted his hands, palms out.

  “Hold it!” he said, and patted the air as though Hari were an angry dog who could be stopped with a strong tone. “It was a technical malfunction, all right? Amalfunction.”

  “You don’t lie even as well as I do.” Hari paced toward him. “What happened? Why was I pulled?” He came closer and bared his teeth. “If you start talking before I get within arm’s reach, I won’t hurt you.”

  “Chairman Kollberg,” the tech squeaked, then coughed and started again. “Chairman Kollberg is, ah, expecting you in his office—”

  “He called down here to tell you that?” Hari leaned on the back of the empty swivel recliner at the stage manager’s station—and registered that the leather was warm. “No . . . He was here, wasn’t he? He wasn’t talking from his office . . . He was right here.”

  The warmth on the leather that he felt now, it had come from Kollberg’s soft, moist flesh. The idea of it caught in Hari’s throat, and he pulled his hand away with a grimace of revulsion. He saw the mushroom-shaped fist button of the emergency recall switch at the top of the panel in front of the chair. It was dark now, dead, but in his mind Hari saw it glow red, saw Kollberg’s round and sweaty fist slap down on it. For a moment he entertained a crimson fantasy of ripping Kollberg’s fingers off that hand one by one and jamming them down his throat; he shook his head sharply to drive the
image away, but it came leaking back.

  “In his office, huh?”

  “And, uh, uh, Caine? He’s already, uh, already called Security—called them before he left here. They’re supposed to escort you down there.”

  Hari nodded. “Yeah. He would.”

  He understood that the nervous tech was trying to help by telling him this, trying to keep him out of trouble. He also understood that it was far too late for that. “Thanks anyway,” he said, and left.

  They were waiting for him in the hall outside.

  Three secmen, Studio Security in full riot gear: cardinal-colored body armor of carbon-fiber ceramic backed with Sorbathane, mirrored antilaser face shields locked down on their helmets, canisters of stickyfoam at their belts, Westinghouse power rifles with hundred-round hoppers of gelslugs held diagonally across their chests.

  They moved with the robotic lockstep precision of Workers.

  There were recurrent rumors that the Studio numbered some of the cyborged felons among its Security force. They made up for their lack of higher cognitive function by their perfect obedience; they could not even consider refusing an order.

  When Hari stepped out, one of them said, “You will come with us,” in a flat, emotionally dead voice, and Hari suddenly lacked the energy to invent a reason why he should resist. He shrugged and kept walking; the secmen fell into step around him, flanking him to the sides and behind.

  The secmen herded him out of the service corridors to the gilt-filigreed door of the Chairman’s private lift and keyed a code on a view-blocked pad. The elevator carried them down the long, ear-popping descent to Kollberg’s subterranean office.

  It was cool here, far, far down below the tower of the Studio. Hari remembered the last time he was here, a lifetime ago, how it was almost cool enough to keep Kollberg from sweating—but not quite. The thought of even looking at Kollberg’s grey, doughy face made the whatever-it-was he’d eaten last, back there in the Warrens, rise up in his throat.

  The door to the inner office stood open, and Kollberg’s voice came from within. “Michaelson. Come in. Don’t bother to sit.”

  The secmen didn’t follow Hari through the door, but there were three more inside, as indistinguishable as cars from the same plant.

  Kollberg sat behind his desk, looking—if possible—more repulsive than usual. The dim light from the night skyline that showed on the repeater gave his pale flesh a greenish cast and highlighted the dark shadows under his eyes. His jowls hung slack, and there was a bitter twist to his bloodless reptilian lips. Not even Kollberg, Hari noted, was sleeping well these days.

  “I just got off the screen with the Board of Governors,” Kollberg said, “and I am in, ah, trouble.”

  Hari felt a surge of gratification—the bastard wasn’t going to get away with this, after all—which was instantly dispelled by the Chairman’s next words.

  “I am in trouble because I didn’t recall you sooner. I was there, in the techbooth. It was my fist on the emergency transfer switch. That responsibility was put into my hands directly from the Board of Governors themselves, and now my career trembles on the brink of disaster because I was too lenient. I let you go too far.”

  Hari was acutely aware of a flesh-crawling feeling on the back of his neck, which probably came from the muzzle of a power rifle being aimed there by the silent secmen behind him; it was this that stopped him from going over the desk at Kollberg’s throat.

  “Maybe you could explain that to me, Administrator,” he said tightly, chewing on the courtesy title.

  Kollberg steepled his fingers in front of his face. “ ‘Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable,’ ” he said distinctly. “Do you know whom I’m quoting?”

  Hari frowned. “Kennedy—John Kennedy, one of the leaders of the old—”

  Kollberg’s hand slammed down on his desktop with sudden violence.

  “No, you slack-jawed piece of Labor trash! I’m quoting you!”

  Hari stood dumbfounded while Kollberg recounted his recent conversations with the Board of Governors; the Chairman grew angrier and more impassioned, coming to his feet, waving his hands and spraying spit.

  “. . . and finally, in what was probably the stupidest single act I’ve seen you perform in your entire long career of stupidity, you come out and tell a hundred and fifty thousand first-handers that the Studio, Adventures Unlimited, an entertainment corporation, has ordered you to murder the head of state!”

  All the hurt, all the anger he carried within, boiled until his chest might explode. They’d pulled him, they’d killed Shanna, over his politics.

  For their image.

  The cords in Hari’s neck pulled his head down irresistibly, like a maddened bull’s, and all he could say was, “It was the truth.”

  “The truth!” Kollberg snorted contemptuously. “If you’re so concerned with truth, why don’t you tell your Ankhanan friends who you really are? Why don’t you tell Talann how you found her in the Donjon? Don’t whine to me about truth, when everything you’ve built your life on is lies!”

  “All right,” Hari said. His voice had that cinder-block rasp in it again. “I won’t. You just tell me one thing. When that all came out, all the shit about my contract, I was sitting there, holding her hands.” He was panting now, with the effort required to restrain his killing rage.

  “If you’d pulled me then, the transfer field would have automatically extended, and she’d have come with me. She’d be here now. Why did you wait? Why did you fucking wait?”

  “Don’t shout at me,” Kollberg said coldly. “Remember your place. I have had my fill of your insolence and disrespect. Raise your voice again and I’ll have the secmen shoot you. Understand?”

  Hari ground out, “Why did you wait?”

  “I said, do you understand?”

  Hari forced a “Yes” through his clenched teeth.

  “Yes, what?”

  “Yes, Administrator, I understand.”

  “Very well, then. The answer is simple. You are contracted to kill Ma’elKoth; once that is done, you may save your wife, or not, at your, ah, leisure. Not before.”

  “That’s the price, then. That’s the real deal.”

  “Yes. And, furthermore, if you wish the cooperation of this Studio, I expect you to confront and slay Ma’elKoth outside the Colhari Palace. The twenty-seven hours you spent out of contact are troublesome enough by themselves. If the climax occurs, ah, offstage, so to speak, we won’t get any cube sales or rentals whatsoever. Any more inflammatory remarks along the way, and please believe that I won’t hesitate to recall you again. If necessary, I’ll have you tried for sedition.”

  The rage drained out of Hari as though a sluice gate had opened in his heart, and Caine looked out from behind his eyes.

  “Maybe I should just kill you. Maybe if I kill you, I’ll get a better deal from the next Chairman.”

  “Don’t waste my time with empty threats,” Kollberg said. “You’ll do nothing of the kind.”

  “That’s what Creele thought.”

  “Eh?”

  “Ask me a question, Administrator. Ask me how I knew those King’s Eyes weren’t going to shoot me on the spot, shoot me down like a mad dog when I killed the Monastic Ambassador. Go on, ask me.”

  Kollberg sat perfectly still. “Ah—”

  “I didn’t,” Hari said flatly. “Think about it.”

  The Chairman’s eyes slowly widened, and his lips smacked as he started to speak, stopped himself, started again, but he couldn’t decide what to say as it slowly dawned on him that he really could die here, in his office, right now.

  “You think about that,” Hari told him. “You think about that before you decide you can sacrifice Shanna’s life for better ratings, for your fucking margin—”

  Hari’s voice trailed away as he heard the words that he had just spoken.

  He stood on the carpet, blinking.

  For the second time in half an hour, tha
t crystal shower tinkled around him, and the pieces clicked into a new picture.

  The Long Form. Lamorak on freemod, cut off from Studio monitoring. Lamorak the traitor. And Kollberg had said something, something about Shanna’s Scarlet Pimpernel act working too well, being too easy . . . And the sudden insistence on rank, standard up-caste bullshit to avoid giving a straight answer to a straight question: Why had he waited until just then to hit the switch? What was the final straw?

  What had he been about to do?

  Tell the truth about Lamorak.

  And the only way that the truth about Lamorak could hurt the Studio, could hurt Kollberg, was if he was acting according to the terms of his contract.

  If someone had ordered him to give her up.

  “Oh, my god,” Hari whispered in awe. “Oh, my fucking bleeding god.”

  All this brutality. All this pain. The fear, the loss. All the suffering—not only his, but Shanna’s, the tokali’s, Talann’s, the dead Twins, even Lamorak’s torture—it all began here. In this office. Behind this desk. Within the squirming maggoty brain of this evil, evil man . . .

  “She was right,” he breathed. “Shanna was right. It’s all about profit margins. About ratings. She didn’t pull enough audience, so you had her sabotaged. You had her betrayed so that I’d have to go for her. You could make it a global event. You. Not Lamorak. You.”

  Hari felt a twisting in his guts, a shimmering in his limbs: Caine coiled there, inside him, hungry, aching for blood.

  “What are you babbling about?”

  “What did you offer him? I’ve known Karl for ten years; what could you offer him that would make him do this?”

  Kollberg pressed the meat of his lips together into a rumpled, liver-colored asshole. “Michaelson, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I strongly suggest that you do not repeat any of these wild accusations outside this office. The Board of Governors wants you cyborged, Michaelson, for merely making passing comments; it is only my, ah, my intercession that keeps you alive and free. Should you speak such treasons in public, I would not be able to protect you.”