Fiddleback Trilogy 1 - A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "What do you want from me?" His cry echoed with desperation. He slumped to the side against Alejandro.

  "You have to answer me a question."

  "If I know it, yes, anything."

  "Hang on, Willem, you're almost home."

  I stood and drew the gangers with me into a knot near the door. "You know Garrett wants you at peace, right?"

  I got shakes and nods in response. "Good. The answer he's going to give me would probably prompt all of you to do something less than prudent. Garrett trusted me to deal with you, now you have to trust me to handle this. You have to leave and take your people with you. Okay? Leave this to me."

  The Dragon leader's ears spread then retracted once. "Done." He looked at the other two gangs' members. "Continue the truce at least until Garrett's back on his feet?"

  Jalal and the Diablos agreed to that. Jalal nodded at me. "I'll keep Rafe in line."

  "Thanks."

  Jalal hauled Rafe out of the house, and the crowd outside began to disperse. I dropped back down in front of Willem. "Willem, the question is this: Heinrich is getting a lot of backing to buy weapons to start a war here in the southside of Phoenix. Someone is financing him. They are good. They have supplied H&K weapons, which makes the culprit look like Honeywell & Koch, but their citadel is in a prime war zone. So, tell me, who's playing Fatherland to Heinrich's Führer?"

  The boy hung his head. "Build-more."

  "Do you have a name there?"

  "No, but he's in security and he has lots of dolmarks."

  "Good boy. Alejandro here will take you to a place where you can sleep until morning. You should be okay by then. We'll keep the blindfold on because the transformation makes eyes rather sensitive."

  Alejandro helped the kid up, and I slit the ropes on his ankles with a knife from the trauma box. Standing, I looked over at Bat. "Did you hear all that?"

  He nodded.

  "Good, relay it to Jytte and see if she can get us some likely candidates for our mystery man. Have her run a check that shows areas of conflict between Build-more, Lorica, H&K, Sumitomo-Dial and Genentech Carbide. I want to know what the target is. Oh, and have her compile a dossier for me on Nerys Loring."

  Bat nodded slowly. "You did good work here. I would have started breaking bones."

  "I was tempted, but I promised."

  "I don't make promises I don't want to keep."

  "Well, I only make promises I think I can keep." I looked out the window at the gangs melting away in the darkness. "I only hope circumstances don't force me to break this one."

  I returned to Marit's home by 1 A.M. I looked in on her and found she was sleeping peacefully, so I undressed in the guest room and crashed on the bed there instead of disturbing her. While I knew I would find it both comforting and soothing to have her lying next to me, I was not certain I wanted to be soothed or comforted at that moment.

  There was no question in my mind that Coyote's traitor had leaked word of the meeting to Heinrich and his Aryans. Knowing that the Aryans were working for Build-more meant I had a possible employer for the traitor, but that was a grand leap in logic that I wanted to avoid. The last thing I needed to be doing was looking for evidence that confirmed my theory, instead of finding the theory that fit the facts.

  So, what were my facts? From Nerys' reactions to me, I was outside talent brought in, apparently, to take her father out of the picture. Her mood shifted abruptly and radically when I hinted her father still was alive. Clearly he still knew something that could cause her problems, but what it was I could not tell.

  I also had the fact of Nerys' animosity toward Marit to deal with. That appeared to explain Leich's attack on us at Danny's place. His tie to Nerys had been firmly established by his being my escort to her home. I still wondered if he was in some way related to the Reaper I had shot. I knew it was impossible for anyone to have survived the damage I did to him in my escape, but after visiting an alternate reality and seeing how hard Draolings were to kill, my resolve on that point was beginning to erode.

  The fact of a traitor in our midst was one of the toughest to deal with. Because everyone in the cell knew about the meet Hal had arranged, anyone could have played Judas. Handing out restricted information was the only way to determine who the spy was, and, despite the odd stuff that had happened in Sedona, Rock Pell looked like a good candidate on that count. We had not been ambushed by any predetermined setup, and he had not known we were going.

  Still, that was negative evidence and provided a direction for further inquiry, not proof of guilt.

  Somewhere in the middle of trying to organize different tasks for different people I drifted off to sleep. My subconscious mind kept gnawing on that difficulty, which manifested itself as a strange dream. It was set at a posh cocktail party, and in it everyone I had met appeared to be animated, but, as I moved around, they turned out to be paper-thin cutouts. On one side I saw them as they appeared to be on the surface, but from the other I saw them at their worst. Rock, for example, counted 30 silver coins over and over again while wearing a Nazi uniform.

  Weirdest of all, Coyote appeared as a white silhouette that always kept his back to a wall. I could not get anything from him except an occasional nod of approval. While I found that chilling, the one time I stepped in front of a mirror I saw a blank image staring back at me. In my mind, then, Coyote and I were one and I found that idea unsettling for reasons I could not figure out.

  A black shadow entered my dream. I looked for and found the familiar gold ring. "El Espectro. Are you really here, or are you part of my dream?"

  The shadow turned a circle, showing itself to be more substantial than the other denizens of my dream. "Here, in the, ah, flesh."

  "You've spoken with Loring?"

  The shadow man nodded. "I have communicated with him, and I found it disturbingly easy. I am afraid he has ventured into realms where he is not equipped to go."

  "Meaning?"

  El Espectro motioned with his right hand as if he were wiping the fog from a mirror. As he did so the background of my dream went away. I saw through the opening he had wiped and found myself staring out at a reddish plain with a dark bowl of sky and twinkling stars. He stepped through the streak he had created, and I followed him. As I looked back I saw my dreamworld contract down to a pinprick of light, then soar up to become the third star in the belt of Orion the Hunter.

  "What you and I have just done is shift from one frame of reality to another. One mark of this ability, for example, is being able to dream in color instead of black and white. That is your conscious mind being able to accept and deal with a vast array of input. Some people are blind to that input, others cannot process it—without help, that is."

  "I'm not certain I understand what you're telling me." I shrugged my shoulders. "For as long as I can remember, which is not long at all, I have been able to dream in color."

  "You and I are among the gifted few of humanity. We are what charlatans and psychics have called sensitive. We have a natural ability to pull in and deal with more sensory input than others. It is a form of empathy, really, and is roughly akin to being able to see in the ultraviolet or infrared ranges of electromagnetic radiation. We know insects can do the former and some snakes the latter. For us, until we are educated and equipped with skills, our empathy may be little more than feeling uneasy in a bad situation, or getting uncomfortable feelings from another."

  I smiled. "Whereas you, who have studied and refined your skill, can read minds and perform other miracles."

  El Espectro inclined his head in a concession to my point. "True, though my miracles are really little more than parlor tricks. Telekinesis, pyrokinesis, telepathy, psychometry, clairvoyance—all of these are branches of this thing that makes us different. We are still human, but we are adept where others are blind."

  "And Nero Loring is one of the blind."

  "Exactly. And unfortunately. He is, as a creative person, one of the most brilliant I have ever had the pleasur
e of meeting. His mind works so quickly and in such a complex manner that I can do no more than pick off stray surface thoughts. I could more easily read War and Peace in Inuit than I could fathom his mind. Yet, for all that, had he been with us in the protodimension yesterday, he would have found himself in a world of gray-flannel Jell-O. He would have seen nothing but us, and would have been helpless if we chose to abandon him."

  A comet of ill-omens streaked across the heavens. "I sense danger in your use of the word 'unfortunately.'"

  "Quite a bit of it, in fact. About four years ago, as I piece it together now, he started to see clues of some very disturbing things. At the very least he began to suspect the existence of dimensions other than the one in which Earth exists. He began to toy with a device that would allow him to detect signs of that universe. He thought of it as a radio-telescope for looking through dimensions. It was something that was akin to the dimensional gateway I used to send you and Ms. Fisk back to Eclipse.

  "This he did on his own time. Apparently, about four months ago, he discovered something that deeply shocked him. His daughter ousted him from the company two months later and tried to have him put away. Company loyalists managed to hide him."

  "And I was brought in to kill him."

  El Espectro's head came up. "Conjecture, or you know this for a fact?"

  "Solid conjecture. The signs are there." I folded my arms. "I have since suffered from amnesia, so I am not certain about anything. Nerys acts as if that was my mission, and she was quite disturbed when I told her I had gone to Sedona on the track of a rumor about her father."

  "This could complicate things." The shadow man thought for a moment, the shook his head. "You will have to proceed very carefully."

  "I intend to. Now, bring me up to speed on Nero."

  "Ah, yes. When Loring was ousted, he lost access to his machine. He spent much of his time on the run studying certain mystical texts which describe other dimensions, other creatures and the like. I do not think he ascribed to any one in particular, but was looking for something that matched what he had discovered by using his dimension scope. He found it in a work of fiction—a collection of short stories by Edgar Allan Poe.

  "Nero chose to believe the pernicious slander about Poe promulgated by Rufus W. Griswold."

  "Namely that Poe was an opium addict?" inquired Tycho.

  "Correct, or, rather, incorrect. Poe may have been, as are you and I, a very creative empath who was able to peer into other dimensions. Nero, starting from that point, has secluded himself in a place where he can obtain and use psychotropic drugs to free his mind to roam where he was able to go using his dimensionscope."

  "And it won't work?"

  "This is the rough equivalent of a man who has studied an atlas jumping on a raft and waiting for Brownian motion to carry him from New York to Europe. He may get there, but he has no control over his travel. He is destroying his mind with these things—and for nothing." Anxiety filled El Espectro's words. "Whatever he thinks is so urgent he is unable to handle in any event."

  "What do you need from me?"

  "The wound I suffered was a bit more debilitating than I had imagined. I cannot fetch him and dry him out. I need you to do that for me. Once you get him, I want you to leave him with friends of mine in Eclipse."

  "A cutout?"

  "More for your protection than mine, Mr. Caine." El Espectro reached out and pressed his left hand to my forehead. I felt a tingle run over my scalp and instantly I knew the route I was to drive both to find Loring and to bring him to El Espectro's people. "There, that should help you. I wish you Godspeed and suggest, unless you know who your traitor is, you travel alone."

  El Espectro's image faded with his voice. Through where he had been, the sun began to rise over the edge of the planet, and I shielded my eyes against the light. As I turned away from it, I felt sheets twist around my legs, and I opened my eyes. Letting my arm fall, I saw the sun dawning from the reflective face of the Sumitomo-Dial citadel.

  I smelled coffee and looked over at the doorway. Marit stood there in a loosely belted silk robe, the color of blue in a housefly's body. As she leaned against the door-jamb, the gap in the robe ran from her throat, down between her breasts, across her flat belly and down to trace the line of her hip and right leg. She clutched the steaming mug right below her face and seemed more intent on inhaling it than actually drinking it.

  I smiled. "If coffee tasted half as good as it smells, it would be a winner."

  She took in a deep sniff, then smiled. "I needed it to wake up. I had a nightmare."

  "Oh?"

  "Yes, I dreamed I woke up and you weren't in bed beside me."

  "Sorry, I didn't want to disturb your sleep last night."

  "I know, but with the news about Hal, I was worried."

  I sat up in bed and held my arms out to her. She set her cup on the nightstand, then crawled into bed beside me and I held her. "I didn't know you knew about Hal."

  "Jytte called last night with the news. She said Candy didn't make it."

  I felt a shiver run through her. "No, she didn't. We do, however, have a lead that Jytte and Bat should be following up."

  "Really? Can I help?"

  I shook my head. "Not with that, but you can help by spending one more day in bed."

  She snuggled in more tightly to my chest. "With you here too?"

  "Don't I wish." I tipped her chin up with my left hand and kissed her on the lips. "I have to head out and do something on the reservation. If you can call down and have your Ariel ready for me to use, I would be very appreciative."

  "I can call for you. How soon do you want it?"

  "An hour?"

  "An hour?" With the pout on her face and the tortured tone in her voice, she made it sound like a nanosecond. She rolled over onto my chest, pinning me to the bed. "Make it two hours, Mr. Caine, and give me a down payment on the appreciation, and you have a deal."

  "My pleasure, Ms. Fisk."

  "I'm counting on that, Mr. Caine."

  Having left bed well after I was awake, I showered quickly and dressed in very casual clothes. Marit offered to wash my back for me, but I reminded her she had to call about the car. She went to do that, but she noted that she expected the other 90% of my appreciation to be paid when I returned. I offered to sign a note, but she agreed to take me at my word.

  Feeling a bit paranoid, I not only packed my Colt Krait, but I also brought the one I had taken from the Reapers and my sniper rifle—though I did leave it in the case. Given that I was headed out into the trackless wastes of the Salt River Indian Reservation, I assumed having a long-distance weapon would be a good idea.

  Marit concurred in this thinking. "If you are right in thinking that the Witch hired you to kill her father, taking along as much artillery as you can carry to retrieve him is not a bad idea at all. I can still ride backup."

  I shook my head. "No. I want you to take one more day to recover. I want you ready in case anything we learn from Loring demands action."

  She reluctantly agreed to stay home and had Juanita pack me a lunch. I accepted the brown bag from the Hispanic woman, then Marit gave me a kiss as if she were a housewife sending her husband off to the office. "Be careful."

  "As always." I winked at her. "Oh, look, don't tell anyone else about this, okay? Hal doesn't need the burden, and it might not pan out."

  "Right."

  I took the elevator down to Level Five and picked the Ariel up near the McDowell car transport area. The attendant directed me toward the "hellavator," which is resident slang for the car elevator that takes vehicles straight down to ground level if that is quicker than picking up one of the freeways out of City Center. Because I wanted to head directly out McDowell toward the reservation, I decided that was the best way to work things.

  I guess, in the back of my mind, I had expected to pick up a tail, but I never expected it to be so blatantly obvious. I spotted it first at 16th and McDowell and confirmed it by the time I shot u
nder the Squaw Peak Parkway. Streetlights strobed across the hood of the car as I hit the accelerator and started to run. My tail, knowing they had been made, picked up speed as well.

  I eased the Krait from my shoulder holster and laid it on the seat beside me. Hitting the switch to roll down my driver's-side window, I kept an eye on my rearview mirror and the pickup truck with two Aryans in the cockpit and one in the back. The man in the back raised a rifle, and I saw a muzzle flash a second before the back window shattered and blew back out in a jagged ice storm.