Fiddleback Trilogy 1 - A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Coyote is good, I told myself, and has to be to play this way and survive. I smiled and motioned for Bat to follow me out. I wonder if I am that good?

  I had a sinking feeling I'd find out far sooner than I wished.

  Marit had said the dinner was formal, so I dressed for the occasion: I wore the silvery Krait. Aside from that, Bat and I dressed alike in boots, blue-jeans, T-shirts and black leather jackets. I bought the coat at the place across the City Center walkway from where Bat purchased his black "Hell's Belles" shirt.

  When we met outside I looked at the image of the blonde female thrash guitarist in black leather with spiked boots stomping on someone who looked a lot like Watson Dodd and shook my head. "I'm not sure, Bat. Marit did say 'formal.'"

  "I know, that's why I bought this one." He started walking toward the Randolf Street maglev station.

  I caught up with him. "Ah, Bat, 'formal' means a bit more than 'clean.'"

  "I know. That's why Heidi Stiletto isn't naked." He bared his teeth in a fierce grin.

  "You're enjoying this, aren't you?"

  "People stomp on ants all day, every day. Is it any wonder ants love picnics?"

  "Good point."

  We boarded the more crowded common-carrier section of the maglev train. We found enough room to get seats, but Bat seemed to enjoy roaming up and down the car we were in. He didn't say anything, but he glared at corporators who wore clothes similar to ours. Those poor individuals may once have thought themselves chic in dressing like folks from Eclipse, or brave for actually having ventured down below Frozen Shade, but their encounter with Bat doubtlessly gave them reason to question either idea.

  The Build-more citadel could have been dubbed "the Lobby Archipelago" because of the vast amounts of area given over to the intersection of corridors. Each lobby had at least one scale model of some building the company had produced somewhere in the world. I gathered, from a quick sampling, that the whole citadel had been laid out over a virtual map of the world and, as projects were completed, a scale model went up in the lobby that most closely corresponded to the construction site on the map.

  A model of the Sears Megalith in Rio dominated the lobby we wanted. The elevator went up to the floor just beneath the one on which MacNeal lived. Bat boosted me up through the ceiling hatchway, then pulled himself up onto the top of the cage. We climbed up the interior girder lattice, and Bat pried the elevator doors open.

  We found ourselves in another lobby, of course, but this level of the tower only had four apartments on it. We found MacNeal's, and Bat threw his shoulder against the double doors. They snapped open, and we sauntered in like guests who were mildly miffed at having been shut out. A butler tried his best to stop us in the hallway, but Bat just picked him up and carried him back into the room he had just left.

  Marit had not been wrong when she said everyone on the guest list was Phoenix Forty material. That informal group of business heavyweights had run the city since the 1960s, passing their positions in it from father to son or CEO to CEO. It had long since expanded beyond the original 40 members, but alliteration kept the name alive. Of the dozen men in the walnut-paneled room, I recognized seven from ads I'd seen on Marit's television. Four of the remaining men were Japanese and only the last person, an Anglo, was young enough to be the evening's host.

  Marit had mentioned the meeting was stag. The charming dozen young ladies seated beside some of the city's most powerful men probably had something to do with that decision. Their presence at the long mahogany table made me smile, and not just because they were very pretty to look at. Because they were there, no one would want to arouse official or media scrutiny of this gathering unless absolutely necessary.

  It was my job to make them think it wasn't. "Excuse the intrusion, ladies and gentlemen, but I need to speak with Mr. MacNeal." I motioned toward the door to Sinclair. "If you please, sir, I think privacy would be preferred."

  Sinclair started to get up, moving slowly and deliberately to show me he wasn't afraid, but his father clapped an iron fist over his wrist and pulled him back down in his chair. The white-haired MacNeal patriarch looked at me with fire in his blue eyes. "I remember you from the party the other night. If you have business with my corporation, you come see me during business hours. I can fit you in, say, in a month?"

  His little joke brought polite laughter from the other diners. Sinclair, on the other hand, was doing a slow burn. He played with a silver fork in his free hand, his blue eyes burning with the same fire as in his father's, but not directed at me. His left hand knotted into a fist and twisted slightly, but he could not pull it away from the old man without making a scene. Knowing the Japanese set great store by a son's respect for his father, I could see Sinclair restrain himself, and I admired the dark-haired man for that.

  I glanced at my associate. "Bat, clear the room."

  I had half expected him to throw the struggling butler at the table, scattering candelabra and shattering china soup bowls and plates. I didn't really want to see anyone get hurt, but I had no time to fool around, and there did have to be some sort of payback for Hal's injuries. Bat, I knew, liked to hurt people and was quite good at it, but never did I dream he had style as well.

  He dropped the waiter. "There's a bar down in Eclipse called the Lost Dutchman. In the corner it's got a spittoon that's been there since the days when the sun used to shine through the window and heat it up every day. Everything went into it—chaw, dribble, beer—everything, and no one ever cleaned it out."

  He slowly started to walk around the table and stopped at a big silver tureen of New England clam chowder.

  "Yeah, it was about this size. Anyway, last week, a guy came in. He said he was a prospector and he'd lived in the desert for the past 20 years and wanted a drink. He also said he didn't have a red Columbus on him. The bartender told him to get out, but the prospector said he'd do anything for a drink."

  Bat smiled in a way that I finally figured out his true nature: He didn't just like hurting folks, he liked being cruel. "The bartender pointed at the spittoon. He said, 'I'll give you all the beer you can drink if you take one swig from that spittoon.'"

  Bat was good at cruel.

  The women already started shifting uneasily in their seats. The men began to wince. The Japanese huddled together as one of their number translated the monologue. My palms began to sweat, and my mouth got dry.

  Bat slowly lifted the tureen in his hands and stared down into the creamy soup as if it were a long-fermented vat of saliva and used chewing tobacco. "The prospector picked the spittoon up. He looked at it, then looked at the bartender. Then he did it!"

  Bat lifted the big silver bowl to his lips and drank. He tipped it back, swallowing again and again, very loudly. Soup spilled out from around his mouth and splashed off his shoulders. Chunks of potatoes and cream-covered pieces of corn flew like shrapnel, flecking the diners, yet they watched him as if hypnotized. Finally he tipped the tureen all the way up and captured the last drop on the tip of his tongue. His dark eyes filled with joy, Bat curled his tongue back into his mouth.

  His chin white from the liquid, his shirt dripping soup, he let the tureen crash to the floor. The bartender looked at the prospector unbelievingly. "'You only had to take one swallow, old man!'" He let the words bubble up through more soup as it spilled from his mouth.

  "'I know, I tried,'" Bat said in the prospector's voice, "but it was all . . . one piece.'"

  My stomach convulsed at the punch line, but unlike the other folks in the room, I was working on an empty stomach. MacNeal's American guests retched first, followed quickly by the Japanese when the translation was finished. Darius MacNeal pushed his chair back and hunched over, which allowed Sinclair to recover his arm and stand. He dabbed at the corner of his mouth with a napkin, then said nothing as his guests bolted from the room.

  Sinclair looked slender and quite dignified in his tuxedo. A good five inches shorter than me, he had an athletic build and enough control over hims
elf to have sublimated any visceral reaction to the joke Bat had told. In fact, as everyone but his father filed out, he arched an eyebrow and looked at Bat. "I trust you found the soup to your liking?"

  Bat belched loudly.

  "I'll pass your compliments to the chef." He glanced at his father's pale face, then looked at me. "You have my undivided attention."

  "You're paying the Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance to start a gang war that will put pressure on your competitors in this city. I want you to stop."

  "No."

  I frowned at him. "You won't stop?"

  Sinclair picked up a glass of white wine and sipped it. "No, you're wrong in your assumption that I'm paying Heinrich and his boys to start a war. I know the technique, and I know how to stop it. I put them on retainer so they won't let themselves be used against us. That's all, nothing more."

  I listened carefully to him and while I half expected him to lie to me, I knew he was telling the truth. Even so, I couldn't believe it because Willem had been positive, and Sinclair was the only man who fit the profile. "You admit giving them money?"

  "'Admit'? You make it sound like a crime." He set his glass down. "I initiated the contact, I arranged for a monthly stipend to be paid, and I've even paid them bonuses when they've driven off thieves trying to rip us off. However, I'm not financing a war. Not only does that cause more trouble than it's worth, it's expensive. I'm giving them enough to keep them drunk and happy, nothing more. Only a fool would arm them and point them at a target."

  "If you're not doing it, who is?"

  Darius MacNeal sat back in his chair and laughed quietly. "I am."

  "What?!" Sinclair turned on his father. "We discussed this. You said you wouldn't do it!"

  The older man slammed a fist onto the table, splashing chowder all over and making wineglasses jump. "Build-more is my corporation! I make the decisions, and I don't have to answer to you. Why pay for an asset if you aren't going to use it? So what if those little fascist bastards go and shoot Lorica up? Who cares?"

  "I care, Mr. MacNeal." I leaned forward on one of the abandoned chairs. "I care because one of my friends got caught in the crossfire. His wife was killed, and he's in the hospital."

  Sinclair shook his head. "Hal Garrett . . ."

  "Right," I nodded.

  "Who?"

  Sinclair stared at his father disbelieving. "Hal Garrett, the basketball player. You met him last year when you threw a benefit banquet for his Sunburst Foundation. You gave a speech in his honor, then gave him $10,000 in corporate funds."

  The old man shook his head. "Huh. Really? I can't remember."

  "Let me tell you something you can remember, Mr. MacNeal." I met his defiant stare with one that was pure holocaust. "If Heinrich and his people do anything, absolutely anything, I will personally make sure you have a closed-casket funeral before the week is out."

  "You can't threaten me."

  "I don't threaten, Mr. MacNeal, I merely supply people with life choices."

  Sinclair shook his head. "Don't worry, this Aryan thing will stop now."

  "In a pig's eye it will." Darius MacNeal stood up and tugged at the hem of his jacket. "I own Build-more, I make policies."

  "If you continue paying Heinrich, I'll quit."

  MacNeal looked at Sinclair the way an exterminator looks at a cockroach. "You can't quit, you're fired."

  Sinclair's face brightened. "Good, then I don't feel bad about kicking your ass out of my home."

  "And as your landlord I won't mind evicting you. You have a week."

  "One more thing, Mr. MacNeal," I growled, "you were paying to have Lorica given some trouble. How much would you pay for the Witch's head on a platter?"

  MacNeal's eyes narrowed. "Name your price."

  "$1,000,000, payable to the Sunburst Foundation."

  "$1,000,000! That's seven years of bedevilment by the Aryans."

  I smiled. "You get what you pay for."

  He nodded. "How will I know when you've done it?"

  "Oh, don't worry," I laughed, "it'll be in all the papers."

  As we left Sinclair MacNeal's suite, Bat saw one of the diners and got the man to retch by making a simple "gulp" sound. We laughed about that as we took the elevator down and used the maglev train to take us back to City Center. I accompanied Bat down into Eclipse, but he went off to earn some pocket change in a pit fight, and I headed back to Coyote's stronghold.

  I spent the next two hours getting voice samples and burning vox response chips for the explosive detonators. I double-checked all the equipment that Bronislaw had sent over, made modifications to some of it, and arranged it in discrete piles and color-coded it for everyone. All they had to do was come in, suit up and we'd be good to go.

  I returned to Marit's home a little after midnight. When the door to the transversor opened I thought, for a moment, that something was wrong. Every light in the place was out and had been replaced by a multitude of candles glowing in the darkness. My recollection of the house outside Sedona flashed before my eyes, but evaporated as I saw Marit walking toward me from the back.

  The diaphanous gown clung to her like a white fog and stretched to taut invisibility against her flat stomach. She moved forward and, in the flickering half-light, looked more a ghost than a real person. I caught a hint of flowers as she stopped and candlelight reflected gold in her blue eyes. She folded her bare arms across her midriff, and her right hand bunched the fabric on her left hip.

  "Tycho, if we attack Lorica, we'll die."

  Her words came quietly in a tone befitting such a dire and final prediction. I saw gooseflesh pucker the flesh of her arms, and her nipples became erect. Her eyes never left mine, but the shifting of the candle flames made it look as if a thousand little demons danced within her skull. Her face remained blank, as if it had been composed for viewing by a mortician.

  "If you are that certain of death, Marit, take a pass. Don't go."

  She shook her head in a motion so slight that had her hair not moved, I might have thought it a trick of the light. "No, I will go. I must. I owe it to the others." She blinked her eyes and some life returned to her face. "It's just that I wanted to let you know what I am feeling. I want you to understand why it is so very important for you to be with me tonight. There is only one way to defeat death, really drive it away."

  She turned back in the direction from which she had come, but held her left hand back out to me. "Come with me, my love. Let us laugh at death together."

  The next morning Marit and I walked into Coyote's stronghold hand in hand. Jytte was there before us. Bat and Natch arrived soon after we did, and I set about briefing them as I put the equipment for Crowley and Loring into a pair of large, canvas duffle bags.

  "Your equipment is color-coded with a small piece of tape on it. Bat, you've got red; Marit, blue; Natch, green; and Jytte, gold. I'm black. Get your body armor on first, then suit up in the rest of this stuff. If you need any help, sing out."

  Natch frowned. "I know this is Eclipse, but won't we look a bit conspicuous going into Lorica with all this on? I mean, shouldn't we get it into Lorica first, then put it on once we get inside?"

  I nodded. "Good thinking, but things have changed a bit. After I left Bat I spoke with Nero Loring and El Espectro."

  Bat shivered. "Crowley? I shouldn't have let you within 50 miles of Sedona."

  "Right. Loring told me that the woman running Lorica is not, in fact, his daughter. He says the real Nerys was kidnapped and this new Nerys was substituted for her. He came to that realization recently, yet was ousted from Lorica before he could act upon that knowledge. He would have done something, in fact, but his daughter's captivity made that impossible. We're going to rescue her and then put and end to the Witch."

  Everyone accepted my explanation with a little more ease than I would have expected, but life in Eclipse was weirder than I found myself comfortable with anyway. Clearly the folks near Boxton had known the tenement through which Marit and I had r
eturned to Eclipse was the seat of some weird stuff. They'd set up barricades against whatever came out of it. Likewise the Indians had come up with a very effective way to deal with creatures like Leich. Instead of worrying about the grander implications of these inhuman things and other places, they just handled them.

  I suited up. I put on my radio headset and settled the earpiece over my right ear. The main body of the box I clipped to my belt. I turned it on, heard static, and shut it off again. The earpiece, which also served as a microphone by picking up sound through the Eustachian tube in that ear, fit snugly over my ear but did not wholly prevent me from hearing sounds other than the radio.

  That in place and working, I pulled on my combat harness, buckled the web-belt around my waist and tightened up on the shoulder straps. Across my stomach I had three ammo pouches, each with two clips for the AR-15-A2. At the small of my back I kept another pouch that contained six blocks of Semitek with radio/vox detonators attached. A holster on my right hip contained the Wildey Wolf and on the left hip, to balance it, I had three clips of ammo for the gun. Under my left arm I wore my Bianchi shoulder holster with one of the Colt Kraits and on the right three clips for it helped balance me out.