by Carl Sargent
"You wouldn't really have ratted on him, would you?" the elf asked. Geraint was a good friend.
"Of course I wouldn't. When he stops to think about it, he'll know that and calm down. But we needed the money. I don't have that much in liquid assets," Michael told him. "Hell, don't worry about it. We used to do a lot worse to each other back in our schooldays, old boy."
"I suppose we should book flights to Berlin, then," Serrin said. He was feeling slightly disorientated. It was six in the morning, but it felt like the middle of the afternoon. The middle of the afternoon on a day after one of the world's most horrifically extreme binges on most forms of self-abuse known to man.
"I'll get the credstick transfers ready so I can pick up the money at the airport," Michael told him. "If we leave right away, we'll be in Berlin by early afternoon. We can get some sleep and then go buy everything we can lay our hands on in the evening. And visit Mr. von Hayek tomorrow at dawn. Just when the sun comes up, heh-heh."
The Englishman groaned as he rose from his chair. He was stiff and his left arm still throbbed with a dull ache. Serrin lit a cigarette and coughed.
"God, does your body feel as bad as mine does?" he asked the elf. "I ache all over."
"Snap," Serrin replied with feeling.
"Ever get a massage from a troll who really knows what he's doing?"
"Sounds appalling," the elf replied with even more feeling.
"Does it? One hour after he's pummeled your every muscle into burger meat you feel like death. You sleep some, you wake up and then you feel like you could run a marathon. I don't usually need it, with my meditating, but I've been skipping my sessions for days and I think we should call out the Troll Roll for a service call."
"Terrific. I can't wait," Serrin said laconically and coughed again.
"Oh, and just one other call," Michael said quietly, walking into his bedroom. They didn't listen in.
Niall landed the plane at Saint Malo and fumed for half an hour while he waited for the right official to turn up to examine his papers. Nantes or Paris, he wondered, which was quicker? It had to be Paris. He could fly to Munich from there. But that was the obvious route, and they might be following him
Stop being paranoid, he told himself. It's got to be Paris. I'll never get a direct flight to Munich from Nantes, even if it is almost a hundred miles closer. I can make Paris by noon, Munich by four, probably, and then Schwandorf by six. I could do it tonight.
No you can't, Mathanas let him know. You know how much time the rituals will take. You won't be ready until the dawn. Let it happen at sunrise. Luther will always be a little less than his best at that time. You know, too, that assensing the place and examining the defenses will take hours. It cannot be rushed.
An hour delay might mean the crucial hour's difference, Niall pleaded. It might be the hour during which he finally sets the thing free.
Mathanas considered, and told him that that was a
chance they'd have to take. Niall drained a credstick and changed it for francs and marks in bills at the bureau de change. He bought himself a ticket for the Paris shuttle, then headed for the platform.
On the way he caught sight of his reflection in a mirror. The change of clothes Patrick had prepared for him was rustic enough that he resembled a French farmer heading off to some mindless political protest or other, though his own dramatic features gave the lie to that. Tucking his hair down into the collar of the almost shapeless jacket, he stooped to hide his face and disguise his height. Then he shuffled on, slouched and with his head kept down, out onto the bare concrete of the almost deserted, litter-choked train platform.
Serrin argued with Kristen while Michael packed and Tom returned to his own room. He begged her not to come with them. She wasn't trained in using a gun, she would be at risk, it was crazy. She was furious.
"I used it well enough before," she protested, which was true enough. If she hadn't gotten that head shot right, he'd have been drilled through by the machine-gunner back in New Hlobane.
"But this is going to be different. Very, very dangerous," he said.
"So? I want to be there," she insisted. She had a way of tapping her right foot on the floor when annoyed, something he hadn't noticed before. If not for the tenseness of the situation, he'd have found it desperately endearing.
"We'll have plenty of muscle with us," he said.
"You ain't got no one yet," she pointed out. "I won't let you go without me. Maybe I might have to pull the trigger for you again." She smiled happily. It was her trump card and she intended to get maximum use out of it.
"And don't forget," she went on, grinning hugely, "I got two men in my life to take care of. There's you, and there's my husband." Serrin couldn't help but laugh; she'd won the argument.
"All right. But, promise me you'll stay way back. You cover whoever's going in, but you stay out."
"Promise," she said with a taunting grin, one that said, well, she'd do her best, but amp;
The troll lay on his bed, huge feet hanging over the end of it, looking quietly through the window at the early New York sun. With hands cupped over his belly, he dug the fingers of his left hand into the smartgun link he could feel below the skin of the other.
Damn it, if I hadn't ruined my body with metal, he thought, I'd be a much better shaman. But it's too late to go back and undo it all now.
Reflections seemed to rise up in his mind unbidden. What's going to happen to me? I'm twenty-five years old. I got chosen by Bear. Everybody knows that doesn't usually happen to street people. The street shamans I know, most of 'em go with Rat, a few with Dog the better sorts and I've run into a few Cat folk. But Bear doesn't often show up in the city. Yet I don't feel out of place there amp; here. Strange amp;
His mind flashed back to New Hlobane. Without the slightest chance of finding Serrin, he'd done so. And he'd accomplished it by trying to do absolutely nothing, just being empty and still. He couldn't make sense of that. Tom had spent his whole life trying to do things: running the shadows, killing, stealing, drinking in the bad old days, working in downtown Seattle in the better ones. Anything he'd got from life, anything that had any meaning for him, he'd gone out and actively sought to get, or at least tried to.
But he felt there was something real bad at the end of all this. Sure, he listened to the Englishman's arguments and facts and took it all in. But Tom didn't feel facts. He could only feel what he could tangle with.
I ain't tangled with this nosferatu thing, but I can feel its badness from thousands of miles away, he thought. Tom couldn't image what he would do when they got there. Just have to wait and see, he supposed.
His daydreaming was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Troll Roll is here. You need a workover?"
The red-haired elf trembled as he waited at the airport. He'd survived by a miracle, though he couldn't be sure whether there really was such a thing.
If she finds out amp; Maybe he believed me. Maybe he's seen the light, he's a brother, he can't betray us, he just can't. That would be blasphemy.
If I go back to Jenna, she'll have me killed. Worse. She'll rip my mind apart to find out what really took place and then amp; his mind flashed to the nightmare portrait of Jenna back in Tir Tairngire. Her beautiful face, but on her body the thorns and the endless blood. She could do that to me.
I've got to get to Luther, he realized. I have to warn him direct. Phoning is no use. Not from here.
Magellan raced to the ticket counter to change his destination.
25
Michael was delighted to find that, by chance, George from immigration was lurking around the departure checkpoint at JFK.
"You again, huh," the man growled. "You really seem to get around."
"Honeymoon, chummer," Michael beamed happily.
"Sure. With those two coming along as bridesmaids, I suppose," he sniffed, looking Serrin and Tom over.
Michael laughed at the man's feeble joke. The good humor got them through with little more than a cu
rsory check.
"Let's hope he's still here when we get back," Michael said. "I don't want to go through all that drek again."
"We could always go to Cape Town afterward and get Kristen a real ID," Serrin said.
Michael whirled round, a beatific smile on his face, and threw his arms around the elf, hugging him tight. Serrin winced. His body still felt like it had been hammered with a meat tenderizer after the troll masseuse had done her work.
"I love you, you're a genius," the Englishman babbled.
Serrin looked at him, uncomprehendingly.
"From Cape Town, we can hit Bop. Sun City. It's a stinking drekhole, but there's something there I'd totally forgotten about until this moment."
"Which is what?" Serrin asked, trying to figure out what this crazy Englishman was bleating on about.
"Quickie divorces. Valid for any marriages within the Confederated Azanian Nations. I read about it somewhere," Michael said delightedly. "If both parties are present and in agreement, just pay the fee, and prestochange, no more mister and missus. Automatic." He raced off into one of the shops, returning in minutes with an indecently large bouquet of roses. They looked as if they might be real, but silk wasn't a bad substitute. He half-forced them on to Kristen and got down on one knee before her.
"Darling, will you do me the honor of divorcing me?"
The girl almost fell backward laughing, but Serrin thought her beautiful wide smile had never been so lovely.
"Well, I don't know, Michael. That's a big decision for a girl. But, yes," she laughed, "I do."
Michael smiled as he got to his feet, dusting off his hands to show a job well done. "Now, let's go and blow that bloodsucker into the next universe."
As they made their way to the departure gates, the troll turned to Serrin.
"You got some crazy friends, chummer," he said happily.
"Yeah, he is kind of strange."
"And she's beautiful," the troll said quietly.
Serrin felt his heart skip a beat. It hurt to think that they were about to plunge into something that was as powerful as it was infernal. They didn't know if they'd still be alive tomorrow and yet he was dragging Kristen straight in it. For one moment, he wanted desperately to turn around, to walk away, to say this isn't our struggle, let someone else do it. But he knew he couldn't. There wasn't anyone else.
Niall bought a wristwatch in Paris. He looked at the gold Fuchis and the rest of the gleaming trays filled with absurdly overpriced ostentation for people who wanted to advertise their wealth, then settled on an economical Korean model. He hardly needed it to know what the time of day was, however. He always knew that from the sun and moon, from the feeling inside his own body. But, for some reason, maybe superstition, he thought he needed one.
He felt alone. Mathanas was gone from him, away in his astral form, investigating their route, assensing for
any pursuers, drawing on his own energies for what lay ahead. Niall sat in a sidewalk cafe along the Champs Elysee, skewering a garlic-coated snail from its shell and sipping what the French laughably referred to as beer. It tasted like a mix of bad British lager and something extracted from the bladder of a devil rat, but at least it was cold. He set the fake stein down on the table before him and wiped the foam from his lips.
I am truly an idiot, he thought. Who comes to France and orders beer! Serves me right.
The wristwatch told him he still had thirty minutes before the train to Charles de Gaulle airport and the flight to Munich. He ordered a Cointreau chaser and drained the glass in one gulp.
Here's to the next life, he thought philosophically, and then went to find a cab to the airport. He'd abandoned any surveillance of the Americans well before this; it was too late for them now.
They made Berlin by four, feeling better for the naps they'd taken in flight. Serrin, in particular, was happily surprised to find that Michael was right about the massage. Some of his muscles even felt like they might be on the verge of relaxation.
Serrin had never been in the city before, but hadn't really believed Michael's description during the flight. Surely no place could be so chaotic. It was just too plain dumb, and Germans were too sensible.
Except in Berlin, as he realized once they got there.
Immigration barely looked at their IDs; the inspectors merely threw a glance at the covers of their passports, smiled at the marriage registration, and offered Michael congratulations in a tone of voice that suggested they'd recently got lucky intercepting the importation of something both interesting and illegal and chipped or imbibed most of whatever it was.
The airport was Babel rebuilt to feature runways. The concourses seemed to be filled with street-theater freaks, jugglers, puppeteers, Dadaist mime geeks, religious lunatics proclaiming the end of the world next Monday, Wednesday, or Friday depending on the cult, burned out
chipheads, street girls, street boys, street whatevers, and drunks. Occasionally, passengers like themselves did their best to weave their way through the human detritus blocking their path. Security, such as it was, seemed totally oblivious except where outright violence was threatened. Serrin's little group hadn't gone ten yards without being offered girls, boys, expansion of consciousness by guru or pill, redemption by mail order, and membership in societies and organizations catering to every inclination imaginable and a few that weren't.
"I've never been here before," Serrin said as Kristen clung to him, "and I'm never, ever, coming back again."
"Oh it's not so bad, chummer. It's just that the Free City has abandoned pretty much everything worth having from the last six thousand years of civilization," Michael grinned. "But the beer's good. And the place isn't all like this. Of course, some of it's worse. Most of it, if I were to be truthful. But the Metropolitan, where we're staying, that at least is an oasis of sanity. Well, it's got security anyway, which is what we need. And we can get things here we couldn't get anywhere else in the German Alliance. We've got a busy evening ahead."
Serrin was hugely relieved when they reached the hotel, where Michael had booked them a four-bedroom suite. The trid screen on the wall of the salon was the biggest he'd ever seen.
"This is class," he admitted reluctantly while Michael burrowed into the fake mahogany bar for beers. "I think we've got three options," the Englishman said, forcing the top off a bottle and taking a long drink.
"One: we find the most efficient-looking mercenaries money can buy before midnight. We've got to move that fast. Taking any longer will give people more time to start checking us out more closely. Not a complication we want. I can spread enough money around to buy us quality, but let's face it, you can't pay anyone enough to risk his life against a nosferatu."
"A nosferatu mage," Serrin said.
"We don't know that for sure," Michael replied. Serrin's look told him to take some things on trust.
"But mercenaries might cut and run," Michael continued. "Which wouldn't be very convenient for us. That leaves us two other possibilities. One I've already discounted, but I'd like to mention it so you can follow my thinking."
He's back in form, Serrin thought. He has that hypo-manic glint in his eye, and I think he actually believes his line that Englishmen are almost bulletproof.
"Forgive me for this one, but it's Humanis."
Tom was half-out of his chair when Michael, genuinely afraid that the troll might deck him with a watermelon-sized fist, waved him back.
"I said I'd discounted that. It's just that the master race would die willingly to deal with the problem we've got. We might not even have to pay them. Come on, be fair, you have to admit they'd be motivated."
"I've put about maybe a dozen of those guys into the ground over the years and I'm not ashamed to say I've never lost a minute's sleep over it," Tom growled.
"That leaves us a third possibility. There's the Ork Liberation Army. I should say the Ork Anarchic Commune, the Wardogs, half a dozen of 'em, but it's the same thing. Orks are a quarter of the population here. The rea
l activists divide into two groups. One bunch, the ones I've mentioned, are hard guys, but they protect what they've got and work to get a bigger slice. They're organized, so there's a general ork policlub. The other bunch are the ones to avoid. The Horde. They just like killing anything that doesn't look like a big, bad ork. The trick is to recruit from the former and not from the latter."
"Can we do that?" Serrin wondered.
"There's a bar, the Meld In, in Grenzstrasse. Ironically enough, it's a hangout for Berliners who actually want to improve relations between metatypes. Won't find any Horde members there. But we'll find everyone else. Now this is a tricky one. We need types smart enough to be enraged by the idea of what Luther's doing, while avoiding the ones so over-motivated that they'll want to rip our heads off first."
"Why orks, specifically?" Tom asked.
"Just because they're the most numerous and best-equipped muscle available here. But, slot, if there are
dwarfs, trolls, or anyone else willing to come along and help us out, the more the better. The other good thing about orks is that they'll keep it to themselves."
"And what about me?" Serrin asked. "We're going to ask them to blow away a megalomaniacal elven racist, and here's an elf asking them to do it. Isn't that going to look rather suspicious?"
"No," Michael said slowly. "Not if they see you're really there with Kristen." Avoiding Serrin's uncomfortable look, he continued. "Look, let's do a quick inventory on ourselves. One troll. One elf. One white man. One black woman. Are we a plausible group for furthering some kind of racist plot?"
"Probably not," Serrin agreed.
"No. We're actually not an unlikely collection of folks to oppose that very thing."
"Maybe it would be better if Serrin didn't actually go along to meet the orks. Your logic is right," Tom told Michael, "but life isn't logical."
"More's the pity," Michael said dryly. "No. I don't want to deceive them, even by omission. We go in on this together. That's what we'll be asking them to do."
