Evil Triumphant

by Michael A. Stackpole

  Will had been amazed by the intricate and elaborate charade Jytte had set up in conjunction with the Japanese. She had argued, quite rightly he thought, that the workers were not going to function well if they believed they were being sent out and away from Earth to another dimension that could prove dangerous. The dimensional travel aspect just made things too weird, and that could have caused mass defections and unrest in the work camps.

  To avoid that, the workers were introduced into Turquoise through a three-step process that worked exceedingly well. From Phoenix the workers were flown in a jet to Japan. With the exception of a few workers who had been in the armed forces, it was the first plane ride for the workers, and it took very little persuasion to get them to avail themselves of anti-motion-sickness drugs. The systemic sedatives they were given kept their stomachs under control and dulled their senses until they functioned on a level just higher than that of a lobotomized zombie.

  Once they reached Japan, they were shipped in buses from the airport to the Galbro Center. Under the pretense of a physical examination and inoculations, they were drugged again and shipped to Turquoise through the dimensional gateway located at the center. Barely conscious when they arrived, Will, Tadd Farber and others in the know got them to the temporary buildings erected by the IDC ninjas.

  The third step involved the workers’ acclimatization to Turquoise. For most it was not difficult, because the change of scenery made the place fascinating. The generally cooler temperature and abundance of plant life — albeit blue — seemed to have a calming effect on the workers. Very few of them knew enough in the way of astronomy, botany or biology to tell they were not on Earth, and those expressing concerns were soon argued into complacency by self-proclaimed experts in whatever subject happened to be being discussed.

  Everyone had gotten used to their new, temporary home. Most assumed they were somewhere in southeast Asia, and Borneo had recently been offered as a site. Will knew the night-music of birds and insects in the jungle was unlike any heard on Earth, but the Eclipsers had no frame of reference from which to draw that sort of conclusion. In absence of fact, they made up their own reality and felt more secure in it than they would have if they knew the truth.

  Will found himself slowly beginning to offer evidence that backed their explanations for things, because it kept a peace in the camp. The hardest thing for him to accept was that the blue foliage, when it started to die, turned green, then degenerated into a slime. One of the men suggested the bluish tint meant the plants were better suited to the cold, since everyone knew people’s lips became blue in the cold. The green things turned to slime because they got too hot and just melted. While that explanation twisted logic into a Klein pretzel, Will saw that it made a basic sense and agreed to it to bolster the self-esteem of the man who had suggested it.

  Tadd Farber entered the tent and slapped a couple of men on the shoulder. He laughed at a joke, then got himself some coffee and came over to join Will. “Long day, eh, Will?”

  The Native American nodded. “Long, yes, but you seem to be holding up well.”

  Tadd smiled proudly and straightened his shoulders. Will had seen Tadd grow stronger with the responsibility thrust upon him. The workers seemed to regard Tadd as an informal supervisor and often shared little problems with him. Because of Bat’s apparent respect for Tadd, the other toughs patrolling the camp deferred to Tadd, and that made it easier for Tadd to keep some sort of order within the worker camp.

  “I’m just burning off energy I’ve been hoarding for years.” Tadd slapped his paunch. “More cases of beer went into this than I care to remember, but 10 days here is sweating it out of me. We’re ahead of schedule on setting up windmills and might maintain this pace if the phantom masons can stay ahead of us.”

  Will nodded as Tadd lowered his voice. In conjunction with Vetha, a number of creatures that Jytte had called Plutonians had been brought to Turquoise to do heavy lifting work. About the size of a Caterpillar tractor, and looking like an ant built by the same firm that manufactured armadillos, the Plutonians had incredible strength and actually seemed possessed of a basic intelligence. With Vetha giving them simple directions, they were capable of excavating and positioning over a dozen huge rock plinths on hillside terraces, then raising dolmen on them to provide the height needed for the windmill mechanism. Will had seen them the evening they cleared the space for the encampment, and he’d not slept well for the next two nights.

  One of the men from the circle looked over at Tadd. “Hey, boss, you figure the phantom masons are out there tonight?”

  Tadd shook his head. “How many times I gotta tell ya, Bill, them’s fairies on steroids. You leave a bowl of milk out for them, and they do your work.”

  Will laughed lightly to bolster Tadd’s joke. From the first, the biggest discipline problem they had encountered was the desire of the workers to go out and watch the dolmen going up in place. The lack of tractor marks around the work site, the lack of engine noise and the occasional breeze carrying some heavy and almost noxious scents from the work area became a mystery the men wanted to solve. Tadd had told all of them that the Japanese were in charge of that portion of the project, hence the lack of interaction, but a few brave souls had made attempts to see what really went on at night.

  The Native American looked over the lip of his cup and studied the men in the circle. Two are missing. The fat one — Kent — and the kid from Iowa. He grabbed Tadd’s shoulder. “Kent and Billy Kaufman aren’t here.”

  Tadd set his cup of coffee down and swore. “Aw, shit, Mooney, you’re not here gaslighting me while the Kent and Bill show tries to get a glimpse of the Japs, are you?” He stood and shook his head. “Not only will the security guys we got beat the hell out of them if they find them, but the Japanese have their cyberninja dudes out there. You guys stay here. Will, come with me and we’ll see if we can find the Hardy Boys before they get into trouble.”

  Will dumped his coffee in a plastic trash bin as he followed Tadd out of the tent. “You find Bat and get his people to secure the perimeter. I’ll tell Hal about these two, and he can warn the ninjas.” Tadd nodded and cut off toward Bat’s tent while Will shot off in the opposite direction. Dead center in clearing he found the mobile home that served as the command center for the beachhead. He vaulted the wooden steps in one leap and pulled the door open.

  “Sorry to burst in, Hal, but we have two guys...” Will hesitated when he saw Hal Garrett was not alone and nodded to both the Yidam and Crowley’s shadowform. “Two guys went into the jungle to try to see the ‘phantom masons’ at work. You need to alert...”

  “...the Japanese.” Hal reached for a walkie-talkie. “They’ll find them, don’t worry.”

  A hoarse male scream cut through the cool night air. Will turned and leaped off the stairs, then started to run north in the direction of the jungle and the windmills beyond. The Yidam caught up with him in two steps and Crowley came up right behind, though he seemed to be favoring his right leg. “I don’t know what it could be — there’s been nothing large and predatory we’ve found the jungle yet.”

  “Could be as little as someone having fallen and broken a leg.”

  Will heard Crowley’s words, but he knew neither of them believed it. They broke through the broad-leafed undergrowth and stepped into an alien world. The night-music had stopped with the scream, reducing the jungle to a static scene of long shadows and deceptive vistas. Unconsciously, Will began to downplay his reliance on sight and started to concentrate on sound, smell and intangible, extra-sensory impressions.

  Crowley and the Yidam moved off toward his left. Will realized they were on the correct track toward the injured man. Making as little noise as possible as he moved through the jungle, Will could hear moans and a sibilant sound that he took to be the whispered reassurances of the second man to his fallen partner. The Native American knew he should head for them and offer assistance, but something else pulled at him and directed him deeper into the jungle.r />
  At one time Will would have denied what he was feeling. As he stalked through the jungle, he felt less himself than he did a vessel that an animal spirit could inhabit. As opposed to being a trespasser in the pristine, primal world of Turquoise, Will felt a part of the natural order in this place. The second he realized that, it also occurred to him that what he was tracking was something that was utterly alien to Turquoise.

  As he expanded his senses, the proto-dimension of Turquoise became alive for him. He could feel his fellow humans and sensed the fear oozing out of them. From the north, he caught the hunting-searching intensity of the Japanese as they closed on the scream. From the Yidam, he got a sense of foreignness, and more so the Plutonians and Vetha out at the windmill site. That he got no indication of Crowley did bother him for a moment, but by then the Yidam had reached the pain locus he took to be Billy or Kent, so he assumed Crowley’s impressions were masked in the agony maelstrom.

  He drifted more to the right, closing on his quarry. He did not know what it was, but he could tell it was different and wrong. He felt it was the rough equivalent of a mechanical dog among a litter of puppies. It was the right size and shape, but just had an artificial, constructed feel to it. Will latched on to its manufactured aspect and headed directly for it.

  He found himself almost on top of it before he realized how close he had gotten. The creature’s small size had deceived him into thinking it was actually a bit more distant than it was. The creature’s head oriented toward him, and Will felt a thrill run through him as the creature’s mouth opened in a silent scream, it bounced back, leaping out of his way, and smashed into a thick-boled tree.

  Part of Will realized he was unarmed except for a knife, but another part of him drew the blackened-steel Corvo knife without hesitation. He came forward, feinting once with the blade, then pulling back as the creature struck at him. Will hissed as he felt talons rake his forearm, but instinctively he knew it was nothing more than a flesh-wound.

  The Native American lunged forward and slashed the knife’s curved blade over the creature’s torso. A thin line opened on its chest and began to ooze black, but Will caught no terror from the creature. Instead of fleeing as it had before, the beast cut to the right, then slammed a bony fist into Will’s ribs.

  The punch carried with it enough strength to lift the young man from his feet and deposit him in the brush about a dozen feet away. Will landed on his back and let his momentum carry him on a somersault through the undergrowth. He came back up, then ducked to the right, as if by instinct, to avoid the creature’s hurtling body. It missed with its flying tackle, and Will turned to face it in a small clearing.

  Will felt a curious detachment. He saw himself circling this short, slender and armored beast like a coyote searching for a porcupine’s soft spot. He realized the creature had struck at him defensively, hoping to scare him or hurt him enough to prevent pursuit. It wanted to escape him, not kill him.

  Fearsome though it was, he knew it was not really meant for combat. The big eyes, large ears and inclination to run first told Will the creature was not a predator. This realization fed back on the mechanical nature of it, and the Native American suddenly understood its purpose in being in Turquoise.

  He also knew that discovery of its purpose meant he had to kill it. To do that he had to become a predator, so, without a thought, he abandoned himself to the spirits his grandfather had taught him about all his life.

  The fragment of human consciousness that remained in his skull accepted that the spirit that chose him was Raven. He flipped the hook-bladed knife over in his right hand until it mirrored a raven’s curved beak, then came in at the creature. He feinted a slash with the blade, then kicked the creature square in the chest as it pulled away from the blade. A hop-step forward and another kick later, Will sent the creature sprawling.

  Will landed on the creature’s back and ran the knife around under its chin. Hauling back hard he felt the blade bite into and through the thick muscles of the beast’s neck. He pulled back with all his strength and ended up all but severing the head. Black blood gushed out over his hands and the knife, but felt curiously cold and smelled bittersweet, like rotting flesh. The creature twitched twice, then lay still. As Will stood, he noted that its limb lay twisted in an utterly unnatural pattern.

  He felt a hand on his right shoulder, and full human consciousness returned to him as he focused on Crowley’s shadowform. “Interesting prize you have here, Will.”

  The Native American grunted and dropped into a crouch. “It was a scout, Crowley. It was created specifically to do recon through the dimensions.”

  The shadow man nodded. “I wonder why it didn’t leave Turquoise when you discovered it?”

  Will shrugged. “Perhaps the threat level I represented did not trigger its desire for self-preservation.”

  “Or its sense of self is subordinate to its sense of duty.” Crowley crouched down beside Will and touched the creature’s chitinous mask. “Looks rather like a samurai’s battle-mask, wouldn’t you say?”

  Will nodded. “Could be. Does that mean what I think it does?”

  “That Ryuhito had a hand in creating this thing? Perhaps.” The shadow man rested his elbows on his knees and interlaced his fingers. “The fact that it did not leave when discovered suggests that not much thought was given to the sorts of situations it might face.”

  “You think it’s a prototype scout just on a random mission?”

  Crowley nodded. “That’s the best we can hope for, I’m afraid.”

  Will grunted. “And worse case is that he’s got big brothers and they’ll be all over us like smog on LA.”

  “And soon,” Crowley added, “much too soon.”

  Chapter 16

  Betrayal!

  Ryuhito smiled as he put a word to the emotion filling his chest with fire. Betrayal! He relished it, embracing every bit of pain and righteous anger it brought to him. As his great grandfather might have done with a new species of oceanic invertebrate, Ryuhito cataloged every detail of what he observed. He related it to what he already knew and realized he had known it before, but in a more docile and benign state.

  It occurred to him, as he floated above the quartet of scouts that had returned, that he had known betrayal from the day of his birth. The techno-giant corporations that ruled Japan through an industrial shogunate had only ever really paid lip-service to the Imperial families. If his grandfather objected to the actions of this minister or that, the man would resign in disgrace. The corporations would choose another man, an ideological clone of the first, to replace him so business could continue as usual. Worse yet, of course, was the fact that the minister who had left power would not only not atone for his error through sepukku, but he would often be given a corporate position of greater power than he had known in the government.

  Ryuhito looked around him and reveled in the sense of correctness he gathered from the tower in which he floated. Once he had determined which of his warriors would operate well, he created armies of them and set them against each other in epic battles. The losers were destroyed, but the victors were immortalized. They were permitted to form themselves into the walls and floors of his tower, surrounding him with the sort of loyal retainers his family had known since before time itself was born.

  The corporations mocked the Imperial family and the traditions upon which their own power was based. Ryuhito had seen his grandfather pressured mightily by his conflict with the corporations and had bristled at the injustice of it. The corporations operated as if a coerced renunciation of divinity actually could have stripped the Imperial family of their birthright. That it could not was intuitively obvious to even the most casual of observers, but the corporations were not even as observant as that.

  They will learn to regret their arrogance. Ryuhito nodded to himself with satisfaction. His current situation had helped him put his past into perspective, and with it came an important revelation: He knew he could use the sensation of betraya
l to power himself. He felt it more strongly than he did pain and knew that a sense of betrayal was more acute within those raised in the Japanese culture. Being betrayed was a breach of honor that demanded restoration of same, and the drive to restore that equilibrium knew no equal in the Japanese psyche.

  Ryuhito focused on his current betrayal. He decided, when one of his scouts did not return from an extended reconnaissance sweep of the dimensions, that Pygmalion had deliberately gone out and destroyed it. He had done so for reasons that actually made Ryuhito’s face bum with shame, but any error he may have made in his designs did not warrant such a humiliating lesson.

  He had learned, from the previous missions, that his scouts were very good at returning and reporting on things they had seen. For the large part, the reports made reading soy futures in binary seem the excitement equivalent of live sex shows in the Chicago Stockyards, but Ryuhito had been pleased with how his scouts had functioned. Their armor and coloration defenses had kept them from harm and the most potent threats had come from adverse conditions instead of any indigenous life forms stalking the scouts.

  The loss of a scout taught him a bitter lesson. Because he had not anticipated a scout failing to return, all data had been stored in the creature’s brain until return. Providing a telepathic ability to communicate information in a realtime setting would not have been difficult. In fact, he conceded to himself, creating a creature that could handle reports that had shifting time differentials between the proto-dimensions would have been a challenge.

  He also realized his scouts were flawed because they did not have a way to alert others in case of an emergency. He decided he should have cloned each of the scouts, or perhaps breed them in teams, so that at any sign of distress, another scout could be dispatched to find out what was happening to its teammate. With the real-time input, a lot of that information would already be available, but having another scout there to gather additional data would not hurt at all.