Evil Ascending

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The elevator door to Sinclair's suite opened, and the two women stepped out into the foyer. Rajani smiled as she looked out into the opulence of Sin's accommodations. "This is not at all like the Hyatt, is it?"

  Natch shook her head in response to the question, and Rajani immediately picked up a spike in the low-grade hostility she'd been getting from Natch throughout their morning's adventure. Rajani set her Yakult Swallows' baseball cap back on her head. "Why don't you like him?"

  Natch shrugged silently and punched the glowing red message button on the side of the cabinet in the foyer. "Jes don't, that's all." The printer dutifully spit sheets of paper into the tray on a shelf. She sorted through them and then tossed them back into the basket. "Four from Hal, one from Lilith, one from a guy named Kip Martin and one from an Erika. 'Cept for Hal's, all of them came in on Saturday, and Martin wants to know why MacNeal stood him up."

  Rajani opened herself up to the impressions in the room and smiled unconsciously. She had found her room at the Hyatt hopelessly sterile. Even the beds had nothing by way of unique impressions. Everything there struck her as washed-out and gray.

  The suite, by contrast, felt like a riot of bright colors. Unfortunately, the strongest of them was a glossy black radiating out from Natch like a damp fog that threatened to swallow everything else. "Please, Natch, don't resent him so."

  Sharp red lances jabbed out of the black fog. "Why not? It's his fault Hal was shot and Hal's wife Candy is dead. He hired the Warriors for Build-more, and his father gave the orders."

  Rajani shook her head. "No, that's not possible." She opened her hands and raked them through the air. "The man who was here could never have condoned a murder like that. No, I can't believe it."

  Natch's dark, almond-shaped eyes narrowed. "What do you know of him? You've never met him."

  "People leave impressions, Natch. They leave them on things." Rajani looked around the room. "Living here for the past two weeks has meant Sinclair has left his mark on this place." Oddly, she found she could not impersonalize him by calling him MacNeal the way Natch had. "So have others."

  Natch slowly smiled. "And I thought Hal had you along with me just so I could baby-sit you." She laughed and jammed her hands in her pockets. "Tell me about the others."

  Rajani freed her mind of conscious thoughts and immediately found herself attracted to a big chair in the living room. She drifted toward it and ran her hands over the embroidered fabric. "There was someone here of incredible power and presence. The impression here is stronger than any other in the whole place, but it is focused right here." Outside of my brush with Fiddleback, I have never felt anything this strong.

  "What do you make of this?" Natch tossed her a dark ball that unfurled itself into the silk stocking she'd pulled from behind a couch cushion. "Either MacNeal dresses funny, or he did the do with some b-squeeze."

  Rajani caught the stocking and relished the softness as it curled over the back of her hand, "It belongs to a woman, but it is new, so that's all I can tell." She frowned. "What does 'did the do' mean?"

  "You know, got down, got physical, did the lambeda." Natch planted her fists on her hips. "You know."

  She followed Natch's gaze toward the suite's bedroom, then saw the other woman blush. "Oh, they engaged in procreative activities. Like you and Bat."

  Natch's nostrils flared. "You some kind of psy-spy?"

  "No, no, believe me." Rajani swallowed quickly. "As Jytte requested, I have remained very careful not to intrude. The only things I do pick up are those feelings that are so strong that you cannot contain them. They are the same ones that you humans tend to translate into physical action, like a caress or a kiss. I mean, literally, that is a sign that you cannot contain the emotion, and I pick it up like hearing a snake's rattle seconds before feeling the bite."

  She saw Natch was not convinced. "Is not my assumption about you and Bat a logical one? You share the same room at the Hyatt. You spend a great deal of time together. You clearly care for him. Are these not the signs of a bonded relationship among humans?"

  "My relationship with Bat is special, Rajani." Natch's eyes focused distantly. "He helped me out in a very dangerous situation. He wasn't doing it for me—he wanted to take me away from the broker to whom I'd been sold to hurt that man. It was one of the first times he and Coyote—the original Coyote—worked together."

  Natch's head came up and her gaze met Rajani's openly. "I was in bad shape—they'd tethered me to a hype so I wouldn't run. I needed someone, and Bat got elected because of proximity. He didn't want the job, but I think no one ever needed him before. It surprised him, as did I when I didn't break when he touched me."

  "You're an anchor for him."

  "No. I'd love to be an anchor for him." Natch shook her head and pulled her blue Dragons baseball cap down to shield her eyes. "At best, I'm a brake on him, slowing him a bit, but he's bound for where he's bound, and there's no stopping him."

  Rajani sensed Natch's reluctance to continue, so she quickly shifted the subject. "I do not think, based on this stocking and the things I feel about Sinclair, that there was any bonding here. If not for this, I do not think I would have known she was here."

  Natch shrugged. "Anything that will tell us where he is?"

  Rajani moved past Natch and headed into the bedroom. She felt stronger impressions coming from the bed, as well as a hint of the woman's presence, so she stayed away from it. Instead, she stepped into the bathroom and discovered a surprise. "Natch, come here."

  "What?"

  Rajani pointed to the clear counter space on either side of the bathroom sink. "When I was allowed to watch television, I used to watch detective programs. They always get things like hair samples from brushes or can tell how much money someone makes by their choice of cologne."

  "Word up. This room is chilled to stuff like that, though."

  "Exactly, I think." Rajani turned to her and smiled. "In Hal's room, during the meeting we had this morning, I used the bathroom. Hal's shaving kit was all laid out nice and neat on the counter. He even had a little case there with places for everything, and it had the logo of the hop team he used to play for on it."

  "That's 'hoop,' Rajani."

  "Hoop, okay. The point is that Sinclair's shaving kit isn't here. If he'd been taken by someone, I don't think they would take his stuff with them, do you?"

  Natch darted back out of the bathroom, and Rajani heard the sound of the closet door sliding open. "Most of the hangers are full, and the valet service's plastic wrap is still on his tuxedo. Looks like maybe one business suit is gone. Maybe the stocking woman has our boy out playing when he should be working."

  "Maybe." Rajani walked from the bathroom to the dresser and fondled one of a pair of cufflinks sitting on top of it. "Could Jytte check to see if he's rented a car or bought train tickets or charged a gift or something?"

  Natch nodded and pointed at the phone on the bedside table. "Call her and ask her to start."

  "No, I can't."

  "What?"

  "Jytte acts very skittish around me." Rajani cupped the cufflink in her hands and shook it around. "She doesn't trust me. She keeps pushing me away."

  Natch laughed. "She does that to everyone, including herself. Ever notice how she always sits in the darkest part of a room and keeps out of line with a mirror?"

  Rajani shook her head.

  "Then you've not been around her much. She got worked over by a guy called Pygmalion. I don't know much about him, except that he's supposed to do with flesh what Michelangelo did with marble. I heard Jytte used to be a frumpy little mouse of a woman."

  "Is that possible? She's so beautiful now."

  The petite woman shrugged. "Don't know, but that's what Jytte says. She also says she doesn't remember anything about the Pyg-man, but I think that's because she isn't trying hard enough to remember. I think part of her secretly loves the way she looks now, which fuels her hatred for Pygmalion and herself—him as the man who raped her body and he
r for letting herself be a victim. She doesn't want to face any of it, so she never lets anyone in and keeps to her machines.

  "You, you're a threat because you can muck around in her mind." Natch winked at her. "I know, and so does she, that you're not doing that. I also think she had it bad for the real Coyote, and when he went the way of all flesh, she threw herself into making sure the new Coyote would become everything his predecessor wanted him to be. With him being off and out of touch, and you arriving with a warning, well . . ."

  "It's messing with her wet-ware?"

  "You're hooked tight." Natch looked at the closet again, then back at Rajani. "You don't think MacNeal is out scrappin' with the stocking lady?"

  Rajani's hands flattened around the cufflink. "No. I think he went to a party in his tuxedo and was wearing these cufflinks at the time. He was confident and happy and in his element. He was doing all he could to make an impression, and I think he succeeded."

  "One silk legskin: Exhibit A."

  "True. I can't see him starting out so formally then backsliding. He would make the next outing even more spectacular." She glanced over her shoulder at the chair in the living room. "No, I think he subsequently had a visitor who asked him to do something for him."

  "Is he in danger, do you think?"

  "I don't know." She added the other cufflink to its mate. "These tell me nothing."

  Natch frowned, then slapped her forehead with her open right palm. "If my head weren't bolted on."

  "What?"

  Natch marched back out into the main room with Rajani following behind. "MacNeal is supposed to be a big security expert, isn't he?"

  "I guess."

  The American woman knelt down and ran her hand beneath the dust curtain around the base of the couch. "He was bound to have a gun somewhere. Needed easy access, but had to be located in a place where it was not likely to be discovered by the staff, since guns are illegal in Japan."

  Rajani marveled as Natch moved through the room and searched it thoroughly. "You've done this before?"

  "Girlfriend, I've made a tidy living off finding things folks don't want found."

  "What can I do?"

  Natch shrugged again, then pointed at the metal briefcase beside the message unit in the foyer. "It's possible he kept it there. Check. If it's locked, sing out."

  The Jes'da female picked up the briefcase and crouched slightly to balance it on her thighs. Gold-nailed thumbs pulled back on the buttons, and the latches snapped open. Rajani lifted the lid expectantly, then shut the case again. "Empty except for a stack of computer paper. What next?"

  Natch straightened up. "Computer paper?" She shook her head. "And you call yourself a security expert, MacNeal?"

  Crossing the room, Natch opened the door above the message center, exposing the printer. It sat on a Plexiglas stand that had nestled in it a stack of computer paper. Twisting the stand and printer around, Natch pulled on the bottom half of the paper stack, and it came out in one solid, doughnut-shaped piece.

  "I don't understand."

  "It's easy, Raj. Folks got to thinking that thieves are really stupid. We would take a printer or a computer, but leave the paper behind because it was heavy and had no value to a fence. They were right. As a result, though, they pulled a switch on the old hollow book hiding-place trick and took to making little hideaways in a two- or three-inch stack of paper."

  "So, as long as the printer didn't run out of paper . . ."

  "Or some clumsy thief didn't accidentally knock a pile of paper onto the floor . . ."

  "The valuables would remain hidden." Rajani looked at the paper in Natch's hands. "No gun."

  "Right, no gun." She set the paper back in the cabinet and closed it up. "That means, as you figured, MacNeal went of his own accord and had time to take his gun with him."

  Rajani's left fist closed on the cufflinks. "And that means he knows he's walking into trouble."

  Using a hammered-silver mirror, Coyote placed a new strip of white adhesive tape over his nose. After he had stumbled to his chamber upon his return from the clutch dimensions, he had slept for the better part of a day. Sometime during that day, he discovered when he woke up, he had been bathed and bandaged. Already the swelling in his face had gone down, and the outer edges of the bruising beneath his eyes had begun to turn a jaundiced yellow.

  "You heal quickly, Kyi-can."

  Coyote turned slowly. "So it appears, Lama Mong. When do I resume my training?"

  "Whenever you feel physically able, Kyi-can." The monk watched him serenely. "The way you mend, it should only be a couple of days."

  "I'm physically able now, Mong. You know as well as I do that I could go out into your main courtyard and take on everything you care to throw at me."

  "Really?" Mong's face hardened. "Your bruises would seem to suggest something to the contrary."

  The tall man leaned back against the stone wall and let the cold, rough stone leech heat from his body. "Physically, I'm ready, but I need answers to some questions before I decide to continue. First and foremost, why the charade?"

  "Charade?" Mong folded his hands into the sleeves of his red robe. "What charade is this?"

  "This shell game about training me to walk through dimensions." Coyote held his right hand up and started ticking things off on his fingers. "I have learned in weeks—I have mastered in weeks—skills it takes your monks a minimum of five years to learn—longer in most cases. Those monks adhere to strict rules of conduct to cleanse themselves spiritually. They can be expelled from the monastery for lying, stealing, fornicating and murdering, yet I have done all of these things, and the reason I killed was for money. In four hours of contemplation, I manage to attain a knowledge and understanding of the universe many would envy after a lifetime of meditations."

  "I have often praised your prowess, Kyi-can, and I have told you that, as an outsider, there are things about you that are unimportant."

  "That's bullshit, pure and simple, Mong, and you know it." Coyote's right hand closed into a fist. "The fact is that you've not taught me anything here, really. All you've done is reacquaint me with skills I already possessed. And you've done this while keeping me under a microscope. You've been watching me and testing me. Why?"

  The old man's voice took on an angry edge Coyote had never heard before. "You are the one spinning this fantasy. Why do you think I would agree to open Kanggenpo to you, then participate in this testing?"

  The tall man pushed off the wall and paced through his small cell. "You trained Crowley and, through him, learned of me. From him, you learned I had been one of Fiddleback's pets. He told you what I had done to defeat Fiddleback and, from the last journey he and I took together, he realized that my training had gone even further than the original Coyote had dared guess."

  He looked over at the monk. "You were afraid I was still one of Fiddleback's minions. If I was, you would stop me, is that it?"

  "You are every bit as quick as Mi-ma-yin told me."

  "Why?"

  Mong seemed to shrink as he sighed. "In 1989, I was sent as an envoy from Tibet to Beijing to plead with the government to stop the dilution of our population. I had hoped, with the reforms sweeping the world, that the spirit of freedom had truly come to my homeland. In Beijing, I saw many things, wondrous things, from which I had been isolated in Kanggenpo. I became swept up in the fervor and intoxicated by the prospects of liberty.

  "I was in Tiananmen Square on the 3rd and 4th of June. Yes, I had seen death before, but never like this. I watched as freedom-drunk students stepped bravely before tanks, knowing in their hearts that their countrymen could never run them over. I watched others march singing into the face of machinegun fire. And I was dragooned to help burn the bodies and hide the evidence of what happened, then I returned home to a new wave of repression."

  Mong wore the pain of years on his face as he looked at Coyote. "There, in Tiananmen Square, I felt the first touch of the Dark Lords. I do not know if that was Fiddleback or anot
her of his misbegotten brethren, but it showed me that malign forces did inhabit the universe. When Mi-ma-yin said you had been forged by one of them, I felt no choice but to bring you here so I could see for myself what you were. If, as Mi-ma-yin felt certain, you had been broken away from the Dark Lord's control, you could serve as a hideously powerful weapon to use against any and all of them."

  Coyote clasped his hands behind his back. "What do you think? Do I still belong to Fiddleback?"

  "If I thought that, you would not have recovered from your injuries." The monk smiled grimly. "I am not, however, the court of final arbitration."

  "The Yidam." Coyote rubbed his chin with his left hand. "This begins to make sense. The night we fought in the training area, he sought evidence of any special ability Fiddleback might have given. He thought, because of the advantage he had over me, I would use it. Then he had to save me from the gorfash because he had not made his decision about me yet. But why was he . . ." Coyote's head came up. "The red pulse that you shot back into Kanggenpo, that alerted the Yidam to the getsul's distress. That's why you tried to stall me and keep me back."

  "He has fought gorfash before."

  "I see. Then, two days ago, in the clutch, he came to provoke me and get me to betray myself. He threatened to kill me, but did not." Coyote gingerly brushed the fingertips of his right hand over the tape on his nose. "Why not?"

  The monk shook his head. "That is a question I cannot answer. Only he can answer it."

  Coyote pressed his lips together into a flat line. "And I know where he is, so the only question I have now is how do I get there?"

  Mong smiled. "You knew much before you came here, but the exercises I forced upon you honed your skills. You know what you are; that is your strength. As the Yidam has said, if you are worthy of the answer to your question, you will find the way to obtain it."

  The setting sun cast the Dukhang's long shadow over Coyote like a shroud. He stood there with his back to the east gate, concentrating on the Yidam's portrait. Clad in boots, fatigue pants and a sleeveless black T-shirt, he tugged on black leather gloves and flexed his hands. A breeze tousled his dark hair, then died abruptly.