Fiddleback Trilogy 1 - A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  The sizzling blue tendrils hooked over the vortex's event horizon as the plane of the dream shifted. I saw the tentacles thicken as whatever they were attached to pulled itself up out of the hole that now lay parallel to the floor. As the thing neared the top, the tentacles lost their suppleness and hardened into a thin blue outline-chitin with spikes and bumps and horns kinking its flesh. The creature itself, to my eyes, became a thing visible only as a thick, smoky-gray translucence that leeched light from the sun it eclipsed.

  Talons and elbows appeared first, with two arms becoming four as it heaved its bulk out of the hole. I could not see its face, but atop its head I saw a crown with seven spires surrounding one grander tower in the center. I could not tell if this was something the creature wore, or was part of it.

  One pair of legs appeared, then another to clutch the edge of the hole. The creature remained perched there like some arachnoid gargoyle watching me from the roof of a church. One arm stretched out in my direction, each segment of exoskeleton telescoping out like an antenna. Three talons, each set at a 120-degree angle from the other, reached for me, and I heard the chitin click as they met and missed barely a millimeter from my nose.

  "The pet no longer wishez my carez?" The creature spoke in scents and colors, but I heard words form in my brain. "Iz the pet infirm?"

  Behind me, suddenly, where nothing could stand or be, I sensed another presence. When this one spoke, I actually heard the words with my ears. I wanted to turn to look at him, but I found myself held even more rigidly than I had been in the toxin's grasp. This is a dream. Your body is asleep. Not moving is natural.

  Somehow, knowing that, I still panicked.

  "So you use the term pet to define slaves?"

  The creature looked up and focused beyond me. "If your power matched your audacity, you might be ztrong enough make a zlave of me."

  "But never a pet, I think."

  I felt hands on my shoulders. I moved my head enough to glance at my right shoulder and there saw a shadow hand with a golden ring on the appropriate finger. The ring had a design that looked to be, at first, the Egyptian Eye of Horus, but it was different as well. Still, the green eye stared back at me, and my panic began to drain.

  The creature again reached for me, but I managed to jerk back enough to avoid the second swipe. "Do not interfere with my pet! It belongz to me. Give me what is mine."

  "Your pet belongs to himself. He is not yours, nor is this place yours. Be gone."

  Golden lightning played through the blue outline, sparking gold from the crown's spikes. The thing reached back with a hind leg to grasp the far edge of the hole, but missed, and the whole beast swayed as it fought to regain its balance. Throwing all four pairs of arms wide, it braced itself like a huge mechanical crane, but its limbs trembled with the strain.

  "You zmall creaturez zo revel in zuch insignificant victoriez." Its voice started to distort as if the creature was both close and far at the same time. "Yoooouuuur raze izzzz owwwuuurrrrzzzz to devouuuurrrr aaazzzz we will it." It looked down at me. "Come ttttoooo mmeee, my pet. I willlll rewaaarddd your fiiiiideliteeeeee."

  "Be gone," repeated my guardian.

  "I will come again." The creature struggled against the vortex, then, like a diver who surrenders to gravity in the midst of a dive, it straightened its limbs and slipped from sight. The light at the edge of the hole brightened, but only because the hole itself started shrinking. I sat up taller in bed and saw it tightened down from the size of a truck tunnel to a pinpoint, then it vanished.

  Behind me I heard mild laughter. I turned to look, but only caught a fleeting glimpse of a human silhouette. It evaporated instantly as the sun's rays poured through the master bedroom's unshaded window. I glanced back and felt the light skewer my brain, then my arms collapsed, and I dove nose-first into a pillow.

  "Dispénseme, señor."

  Squinting I looked toward the corner of the room just beyond Marit's vanity table. Pretty, despite being a bit heavy, a woman smiled at me. She wore a gray dress—a uniform really—that buttoned up the front and had been trimmed collar and sleeves in white. "Señorita Fisk, she say to let you sleep, but Señor Garrett will be here in a half hour to speak with you."

  I nodded and rolled over on my back. The cocoon I had dreamed enfolding the lower portion of my body was, in fact, one of the lavender silk sheets on the bed. It probably ended up being good that I'd wrapped it around myself because—despite having triggered the dream—I was naked beneath it, and it saved me some embarrassment in this encounter. "Juanita o Anna?"

  "Juanita, Señor."

  My stomach growled. "What time is it?"

  "Noon. Señorita Fisk said to fix you breakfast when you woke up." Juanita smiled. "I have put fresh towels in the bathroom for you, and I can make food while you shower."

  "Good. Just a sandwich, I guess."

  "Bueno, señor."

  "Gracias," I said to her retreating back. I freed myself from the sheet and wandered into the bathroom. Shutting the door behind me, I saw myself in the triptych mirrors and realized I'd not shaved for at least three days.

  My beard was coming in black and gave my lean face an edge. Maybe I won't shave it all off.

  Unlike Estefan's home, here I did not need to pump water up to a holding tank. The oval tub was set diagonally across one corner of the room and was almost big enough to have given my ill-fated Lancer a good washing. I stepped in and thought for a moment that I might need a ladder to climb back out again. Pulling the curtain shut, I turned the water on and began washing.

  Freed of any important tasks, my mind started mulling over the dream I'd had. The only vivid symbol, aside from the monster, was the strange design on the shadow man's ring. It had been formed by melding the letter R with the Eye of Horus design. I could not remember having seen it before, but it could have been something floating to the surface from before I lost my memory. I made a mental note to ask Hal about it.

  The presence of the monster and its referring to me as its "pet" did not really surprise me, especially after Marit used that term to describe Pygmalion's victims. I was not in control of my current situation and, in many ways, it did feel like others were toying with me. The shadow man was clearly a metaphor for my hidden identity or Coyote. It seemed obvious to me that the message of the dream is that with help, I would be able to put all of this behind me.

  I smiled. Dreams are never that simple.

  I turned off the water and dried myself off. Using the electric razor in the shaving kit Roger had sent up, I removed all of my beard except for a narrow band running the line of my jaw to my chin and on up as a moustache. While I knew that would be insufficient to fool anyone who was hunting for me, I liked how it made me look.

  Back in the bedroom I scouted around and discovered my clothes had, in fact, been placed in the master bedroom. I matched a blue button-down shirt with my jeans and boots. I wore the vest beneath the shirt and ended up adding a navy-blue sweater. Marit kept her apartment cold.

  I found Hal waiting for me in the living room. He stood and gave me a warm smile. He wore gray sweats with the Suns logo emblazoned on his chest. "You look better and better each day. How do you feel?"

  "More myself?"

  Garrett laughed, then joined me as we walked toward the dining area. I saw Juanita had set two places and an open beer stood at each one. "Hope you don't mind. Juanita offered, and I can't remember ever having turned down a meal."

  I took the place at the end of the table, facing the windows. "By all means. I'd rather have someone to talk to while I eat."

  Hal sat at my left hand. "Marit is out making some arrangements for a little problem Coyote has to deal with. She will be back in a couple of hours to start getting ready for this evening."

  I nodded to Juanita as she set a plate in front of me. "This problem, it has to do with the Warriors and the Blood Crips?"

  Hal picked up his turkey sandwich and held it in both hands with his elbows on the table. "The Warr
iors are looking to expand their territory or, at the very least, reclaim some turf they lost two years ago. They are pushing the BCs east, which is backing people right up against Lorica. The BCs don't really want the area the Warriors seem determined to take, so I've been trying to negotiate a solution. It's tough going."

  "I imagine." I crunched a potato chip. "Anything new in my situation?"

  The black man wiped a little mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth. "Jytte says you're still dead as far as any official sources are concerned. The funds you gave Roger have been pushed aside into an account named Uriah Thompson just to keep the fiction of your death intact. Roger knows, and the change was made before anything showed up on his computer anyway. We have even dummied an inquiry from San Francisco from a relative of yours inquiring about obtaining your remains from the crash."

  I thought for a second as he attacked his sandwich again. "Roger works for Coyote?"

  Garrett's eyes hardened a bit as he swallowed. "Coyote helped Roger at one point, same as me, same as all of us. So, yes, he reported on you to Jytte." Hal glanced over at where I had left the case I had gotten from the hotel's safe. "And, no, Marit has not told me what is in the case, but she did mention you had it so that Jytte could erase any notice of its having been recovered."

  "How did he recruit you?" I lifted my own sandwich to my mouth and bit down.

  Garrett smiled in spite of himself. "One night I got a phone call. I had been on the fence about retiring from basketball. I felt the attrition rate on highly-paid players was getting a bit high, and the law of averages and I were on a collision course. I had already formed the Sunburst Foundation, but thought I could spend my last year in the NBA plugging it and get more money to fund it.

  "This caller, who was calling on my unlisted home phone, identified himself as Coyote. I'd never heard of him before, but he told me that if I decided to play that season, I would have my left hand broken in the 10th game of the year. I would come back in time for the drive to the playoffs, but I would die in a seventh and deciding game against the Nicks."

  "Hmmm." I nibbled at the edge of my sandwich. "In your shoes, I would have taken him as a madman, or someone being paid frighten me."

  "Oh, he did frighten me, but I knew, just listening to him, that he was no threat to me." Hall took a pull on his beer. "Somehow he managed to add my fax number to an owners' network, and I saw enough stuff coming through that I knew the season was being scripted in a way that certain teams would make the playoffs and, while there would be a winner, their victory would be, at best, pyrrhic. The sum and total of the season would be grimly disappointing."

  "You opted out."

  "Right. I threw myself into the Sunburst Foundation. Anonymous donations filled up my war chest and now even the southside gangs will hold off on making war long enough for me to try to find a more peaceful solution to their problems." He smiled. "Every so often Coyote tips me when something really strange is going down, so I can forestall it. Gang violence is down over 30% from five years ago."

  "Now Heinrich and his boys want to make it a growth industry again."

  "You got the picture."

  I thought about the sniper rifle in my case. "If he becomes an obstacle, let me know."

  Hal shook his head. "You and Bat think the same way. The solution to this situation is figuring out what Heinrich wants and then figuring out some way to get it to him without making the other gangs lose face or their temper."

  "That is not an easy line to walk, my friend." I picked a brown chip from among the others. "Some folks will listen to reason and," I snapped the chip in half, "some folks need killing."

  Hal leaned back in his chair. "That's pretty cold coming from a man who woke up in a body bag."

  "Truer than either one of us wants to know." I reached out and plucked the pen he had clipped to the collar of his sweatshirt. Smoothing out my napkin, I drew for him the symbol I'd seen in my dream. "Do you know what this is?"

  His hand descended on the paper like a giant brown tarantula and spun it around. "I can't recall seeing it before. What is it?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know. I saw it in a dream. You want another beer?" He nodded and I called out, "Juanita, dos cervezas, por favor."

  "A lot of people believe in dreams, but not me."

  "Why not?"

  "Because all I ever see in them are the shots I missed."

  Juanita appeared from the kitchen with a beer in each hand. She set the bottles on the table, then saw the napkin. "El Espectro!" She quickly crossed herself.

  I grabbed the napkin and held it up to her. "You know this?"

  She held her hands out to shield it from her eyes. "Por favor, Señor, por favor." She turned and fled.

  Hal and I exchanged confused glances. "What did she mean by 'the ghost?'"

  Garrett shrugged eloquently. "In Eclipse there have to be about a billion 'ghosts.' I've heard stories that 'real' vampires live in Drac City, or that some weird brujo is waging war against demons and devils on a daily basis. I've also heard mutant wolves and other monsters roam the countryside, and after the tinkering with the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, who knows. As far as I'm concerned, it's all fiction."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Which is what others might say about Coyote."

  "There's a difference with Coyote."

  "And that is?"

  "He's real. I've seen him, talked to him. I know when he has gone to war, and I know the people he's helped—through me or through others. Marit is one, for example, and Estefan another."

  I crumpled the napkin. "You're right. We'll leave ghosts to fight dreams." I patted my vest. "And I'm content to let Coyote handle reality."

  After we finished lunch, Hal headed back down to the Mercado on Level Seven to make arrangements with Alejandro concerning the Lorica reception that evening. I offered to go with him, but he said no. "You're dead right now. Jytte says she can keep you in the grave until tonight, at the very least. Tonight your unanticipated resurrection might shake some folks, and that will help us unravel the whole thing."

  "Works for me." I shook his hand. "One last thing, has there been any word on Nero Loring?"

  "None."

  I didn't let his hand go. "Was Coyote involved in getting him free of his daughter and corporation?"

  Hal tightened his grip a little. "If he was, he did not involve me in it."

  We broke our grip by mutual assent, and Hal retreated into the transversor. I saw by the red readout of a digital clock that it was already 1 P.M. I had no idea when Marit would return or when the reception was, so I wandered down to her media room, found a remote control and started a survey of the television landscape.

  Television, despite having 178 channels available, proved more desolate than South Mountain's Desert Preserve. Aside from premium channels that started racking up special charges when I flitted across them—as denoted by the total accumulating in a small LCD panel down in the corner—the vast majority of stations were only transmitting in black and white. With a wall-mounted HDLCD unit from Sony like the one Marit had, that was the rough equivalent of using a professional Cuisinart to process dried-out dog food. I expected television to be banal, but having one whole channel devoted to rebroadcasts of 40-year-old Soviet grain harvest films was a bit excessive. Still, I did imagine they looked very good on the Soviet sets that most folks owned.

  The city's public-access channel did provide a bit of insight into the nature of Phoenix. Programs on it alternated between promotional videos that featured an incredibly optimistic artist's rendition of what Phoenix would look like in five years, and utterly bizarre fare in five- and 10-minute bites that reflected the sharp split between City Center and Eclipse. Chiropractors and naturopaths diagnosed problems and offered back adjustments for those patients who would press their backs against the screen. Psychics warned of hideous calamities and conspiracies that no one but they knew about. Members of every bughouse club from Arizonans for the Preservation of the Black Scorpion to the Pho
enix Skeptics did their bit to proselytize their causes, filling the airwaves with an unending stream of contradictory and confusing "facts."

  "The city could call this channel the good, the bad and the ugly," I muttered as Heinrich's face appeared on screen.

  His program was called "People of Purity." In it he read report after report of crimes committed by people of color while a videotape copied from news reports played in the background. At the end, while a video of him and his "honor guard" kicking the life out of a black youth played, he said, "People of Phoenix, come to us. Take back your city. The phoenix is destined to rise to greatness from the ashes. Mud people are the ashes of humanity. Join us, and reclaim your heritage!"

  Unconsciously I sighted down my index finger and brought my thumb forward like the hammer falling on my Krait. "Some day, Heinrich."