by Carl Sargent
“True, but I still don’t like sitting around on me arse waiting for ten tons of crap to fall on me head,” Streak announced.
“I could have handled them,” Juan said evenly. He had dispensed with the usual heavy jacket and his almost grotesque cyberarm was all too apparent.
“Well, maybe,” Michael said in an irritated tone, “but we’re here to talk.”
“Well, bufldrek away, Mister Negotiator,” Juan said evenly. “Better than getting shot at, I guess.”
As they made their way along the appalling road, the car bumped and bounced far less than it should have, providing excellent testimony to the skill of the Rolls Royce engineers and their suspension systems. Now and then they passed straggles of people, with their donkeys and carts and baskets and homes, until eventually they saw the building in the distance.
The dome structure had what seemed to be silvered or smoked glass atop it, and it looked like an observatory some corporate or military interest might have constructed on the moon. Its futuristic and hi-tech appearance contrasted startlingly with the humble, simple nature of everything else in the place as they reached the outskirts of the town itself.
“What the frag is that?”
“And how the hell was it kept secret?”
“It was kept secret,” Salai announced to them, proving that he could converse with them when he wished to do so, “because the local people are very, very loyal and do not speak to outsiders.”
“But satellite systems would have detected this.”
“They can be dealt with,” Salai said offhandedly. “It’s not difficult to crack them.”
“I suppose if you can crash into the megacorps, then that wouldn’t be so difficult,” Michael tried as a gambit This time he got no reply.
“This seems too easy, too quiet,” Michael fretted after their attempts to grill Salai got them nowhere. “We can’t just turn up and meet the man here. Something’s got to go wrong somehow. It doesn’t feel right.”
“Feel right?” Kristen smiled. “I don’t usually hear you talk like that, Michael.”
“I’m not usually in this kind of situation.”
“Where you’re not in control.”
“When I have no control whatsoever.”
The conversation was cut short as the car came to a halt before the domed structure, and Salai hopped out to open the rear doors for them.
“Oh, and don’t wave that silly gun at me,” he told Streak in a bored voice. “I don’t need men at my back here. One false move and you’ll have the flesh stripped from your bones by spirits in a second.”
“He’s not lying,” Serrin said flatly. He’d been as self-absorbed and quiet as he had been all day, thoughts and theories spinning in his head, but he took note of the presences here and warned Streak not to step out of line. Geraint, too, could sense the strong magical presence of the place. though no magician, he had some latent psychic gift, and something this strong he could sense. He was uneasy.
The automatic doors of the building opened, but before Salai could show them in, a small group of local men rushed toward them, one of them grabbing Michael’s arm as he walked toward the door.
“Is this not a great time? Are you with the prophet?’ the man said eagerly, his eyes wide with near-rapture. Astonished, Michael could only mumble some inane pleasantry and bolt for the door like a rabbit for its hole.
“What the frag-”
“This way,” Salai said with no word of explanation. They got into the elevator and descended some unknown distance before the doors swished open again to reveal the neat, cool, air-conditioned corridors of a subterranean complex.
“How the hell did you build this out here?” Michael asked, astounded.
“These people have been working on it for nearly twenty years,” Salai said slowly. “They really are faithful. They have been for a very, very long time.”
“The Mandaeans, you mean,” Serrin said lightly, as if it were an offhand observation.
“Yes,” Salal answered him with a gleam in his eye. “So you have begun to form a picture.”
“I think I finally realize the importance of the image outside the basilica.”
“Ah, that was a fine work. My master can craft great illusion-illusion that is great because it reveals the truth. So you think you know, then.”
“No,” the elf said slowly, “but I think I’ve learned not to ask the wrong questions.”
Salai stopped and looked at him hard. “I may have underestimated you,” he said. “Perhaps you will be ready for the move beyond. You’ve put your finger on the Johannite heresy.”
“I read about it,” Serrin confessed. It had only been a recent acquaintance.
“What on earth are you two talking about?” Michael demanded.
“It’s the belief that John the Baptist was the true divine figure,” Serrin said. “The people here have always believed that. Their sacred text is the Book of John. It was the image in the photo ID from the airport, the raised finger. ‘Remember John’. It’s something to do with this belief. That’s why we’re here. It’s the only thing about Ahvaz that’s singular. The cult is very small.”
“Good, you’re still only halfway there,” Salai said with the relief of someone who’s found that a bright and thoughtful child was not, after all, more intelligent than he or she ought to be. And they may be few in number, but one faithful and loyal man is worth more than a hundred fainthearts. Isn’t that true, Mister Mercenary?”
He looked at Streak and the elf saw him as someone not half so foppish and supercilious as he’d taken him to be.
“Too true, mate,” the elf said. “Well, now where?”
“To meet my master. But I cannot permit any form of weaponry. That means, I regret, that our fine friend here”-he looked disapprovingly at Juan-will have to remain outside. I cannot allow that thing,” and he pointed to the cyberarm, “inside a room with my master.”
“Of course,” Michael said. He handed over his own gun, and told the others to do the same.
“I don’t like this,” Streak growled. “I feel naked.”
“Get used to it,” Michael told him. “We have no choice. We’re not here to be threatened or harmed.”
“Far from it. You are called as witnesses,” Salai said with a returned air of annoying superciliousness.
“Bugger that. When they knock on the door it’s definitely time to get the Predator out,” Streak growled.
“I hardly meant Jehovah’s witnesses,” Salai said impatiently. “Nothing could be less apt, under the circumstances.”
“And now enough of this. If you’re ready, it’s time to meet my master and behave with the deference he deserves.”
Michael already had whoever they were going to meet tagged as a serious nutcase. Brilliant, obviously, but the man gibbering about the Prophet outside made him think they were about to meet someone with some very serious delusions indeed. He couldn’t know that the belief was useful to that very person, and one he allowed to remain unchallenged not least because it gave comfort to simple people who had, in return, given him sweat, labor, and love for many years now.
The internal doors down the corridor swung open. They were made of smoked glass and revealed nothing inside the room, so when what lay beyond them was revealed, the newcomers did not have the benefit of forewarning, and they were astounded by the scene before them.
The figure sat with his back to them in a high-backed chair, only the long, flowing gray hair visible to them, save for his long-fingered hands resting on the arms of the chair. The walls were covered with designs and sketches, finely rendered, apparently blueprints for optical systems of extraordinary complexity. On the desk before the figure was what had to be a cyberdeck, though it was unlike any they’d ever seen. It made the finest customized Fairlight look like a child’s toy. There was not a right-angle on it. It was sculpted, apparently of ivory or something similar, and had fluted edges and the eerie, unreal hyperreality of some alien artifact.
It looked like it could only ever exist inside the extreme geometrical perfection of the Matrix, not out here in a real world of chaotic imperfections. Pearly light glowed around it, and in the near-darkness of the room it seemed for a moment that a reflection of that light covered the head of the seated figure like a halo. The nimbus winked out of existence and the figure turned around, the chair swiveling through a hundred and eighty degrees.
My God, Michael thought, this is the finest cosmetic job I’ve ever seen in my life. Forget the supermodels and the simsense stars, this is an absolutely perfect replica. Younger, of course. The photo ID wasn’t decked at all.
Staring at them, quietly and gravely and with his hands folded gently in his lap, was a person who for all the world was the perfect image of Leonardo da Vinci.
28
“I must commend your plastic surgeon,” Michael said. “It’s a magnificent job.”
“Shut up,” Serrin said swiftly. He knew, although the others-including Streak-had not realized it, that the figure was an elf. The long, flowing hair concealed the most obvious distinguishing feature, the ears, and the Looseness of the figure’s simple robed garment hid his body shape. But Serrin could tell instinctively that the man was elven, and that he was not the kind of person to trivialize himself with cosmetics. And all the implications of that made Serrin very worried indeed.
“I’m glad you are here,” the figure said in English, in a quiet voice that struck them all with the unstated force of its serene dignity. Seated simply in his chair, there was an aura about him that stopped wisecracks and levity in their tracks.
“Why are we here?” Michael asked, hoping to get the edge by doing the questioning.
The elf regarded him levelly, unblinking. “For different reasons, actually. In your case, because I expect to deal with Renraku through you. I also hope you may come here on a more permanent basis, but we can talk about that later.”
Michael ignored that last, surprising gambit. “Who are you?”
“You can see who I am.”
“I can see who you appear to be.”
“You can see who I am,” the elf repeated, without any impatience, but with a slight sadness instead. “I am who I appear to be.”
“No. Impossible.”
“Why?”
“Leonardo da Vinci has been dead for more than five hundred years.”
The elf smiled slightly. “We’ve grown used to such subterfuges,” he said simply. “There are times when it becomes necessary.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Perhaps at the moment you can’t,” the elf said sadly. “It doesn’t matter at this time. Are you interested in this?”
Michael looked longingly at the deck the man indicated with a wave of his slender hand.
“Come and see,” the elf invited him.
“I don’t see any hitcher ‘trodes,” Michael said uncertainly, his curiosity struggling with his fearful confusion.
“You won’t need that. Shall we see what your friends are doing in Chiba?”
“Are you serious? No, I’m Sorry, that was a stupid question. You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”
“Very simple,” the elf said. “Anyway, you need no jack. Just sit down.”
Michael sat in the chair next to the elf while the others, unsure of what they should be doing in this ritual, kept quiet and waited to see what would happen.
Michael had heard of the otaku, of course, the cybershamans who needed no deck to run the Matrix, but claimed some mystical communion with it, a union that let them use strange, singular skills in their autistic minds to work within it. And the elf worked in the same way, but he also channeled whatever he was doing through the deck, save that he used no physical link with it. He guided Michael’s persona-in itself an impossibility since Michael’s own deck was still in their plane, back at the airstrip-deep into the very heart of the Renraku Chiba core system. Everything within it, the icons of company deckers and reactive ice, was moving at a snail’s pace. They traveled through the system and the elf accessed some personnel records of Renraku’s top executives and danced back out of the system as easily as he’d penetrated it. To Michael, leaving it was like waking from a dream.
“How is this possible?” he said in utter wonder. “Are you otaku?”
“I have their skills,” the elf said. “though they aggregate with this deck. It works on paraoplical principles. It interfaces with the mind more or less at the speed of light.”
“Impossible,” Michael said, knowing he was wrong.
“You seem to be saying that a great deal, Michael Sutherland. Do you not believe your own senses? No matter. I will go into the details with you later,” the elf promised. “However, unless my information is much mistaken, we have some rather urgent business at the moment which is more pressing. In about eight minutes a missile is due to hit this building and, unless I am much mistaken, it will probably bear a tactical nuclear warhead.”
“What?” Geraint almost exploded. This was all too much to take.
“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” the elf said calmly. “It will be shot down automatically. However, one of the reasons I wanted you here was to witness the event. You can go and take a look at the wreckage and verify the details for me. Actually, it means that the military men who accompany you will be useful additions to your number. I hadn’t expected them, but the unexpected can be rewarding.”
“Whose missile is it? And why?”
“The nuclear missile belongs to the Vatican,” the elf said. “And they hope to prevent me letting the world know a great many things they don’t want anyone to know.”
“I simply do not believe this,” Geraint protested. “This must be some kind of illusion or lie.”
“Which is why I very much want you to go and see what’s left of the wreckage when it’s shot down,” the elf said very earnestly. “I want independent witnesses to prove to the world that the Vatican took what I knew seriously enough to try to murder several thousand helpless, innocent people around this place in order to keep it all from reaching the ears of this hungry world.”
“I’ll scan it out,” Streak said, “And I’ll find out where it was manufactured and whose it was. He can’t con me on that kind of thing.”
“That’s what I hoped,” the elf said, really in earnest now. It struck home. He needed them for this, and they had to take him seriously.
“But why? What do you know? How can it possibly be worth a nuke? And what does it have to do with your running the Matrix and threatening every corp out there?” Michael asked in a flurry of queries.
“As to that, I just want the money. I need it. I have work to do on a scale beyond what I can manage to earn from what I do quietly here and there. Such funds got this place built, but now I need much more.”
“Twenty billion each from eight megacorps?”
“Well, I didn’t think I’d get it From all of them. Actually, twenty billion would be a good start. I think I can persuade Renraku to accommodate me,” the elf said. “On balance, I deemed them the best option for negotiations. They’d get a lot in return.”
“They’d bloody well have to,” Michael said, amazed.
“Well, there is this,” the elf said, indicating the deck. “Is this worth twenty billion?”
Michael was stopped in his tracks. He stared wildly at the elf, his breath coming hard.
“Frag me, it is. I reckon it is.”
“Well, it’s only a toy,” the elf said, “so perhaps I can hold out for more than that.”
“Isn’t this eight minutes getting a bit, well, shorter?” Streak suddenly asked. He ignored Michael’s expression of sheer disbelief at the elf’s comment that the deck was only a toy.
“Yes, yes. Salai will deal with it,” the elf said impatiently.
“Antimissile rockets can’t be counted on with a nuke if it’s smart,” Streak insisted.
“It won’t be done with such primitive things,” the elf told him.
&nbs
p; “So, how?”
“Well, as I think they put it these days,” the elf said with a slightly sad smile but a smile nonetheless, “it’s all done with mirrors. Focused lasers. The warhead will be vaporized. The man casing will remain intact, though, for you to inspect and identify. There will also be sufficient radioactive material for you to collect a sample of and trace. I have suitable protective clothing available, I believe. That’s the kind of thing Salai handles.”
“Who is Salai?” Kristen asked suddenly, her tongue working at last.
“You’ll have to forgive the name,” the elf said. “An affectation when I adopted him. He’s oraku, but a very versatile young fellow and far less antisocial than most of them. He does, however, have some of the more negative traits of his historical antecedent.”
“He gambles, spends too much, and is rude to his master,” Serrin said, almost smiling. He’d studied the biographies carefully.
“Yes, all of that,” the elf said. “You have done some homework. I expected that of you from the reports. I could not be certain that Mr. Sutherland would recruit you, but when he did. I was pleased. Merlin thinks well of you, I know.”
“You know Hessler.”
“Oh, very well. We have known each other for, shall we say, some years. I must add, though, that he did not tell me anything of what passed between you. He simply allowed me to know that you were someone who could be worked with. That was important knowledge. I very much hope he is right. We shall all have to.”
“Look,” Serrin said, “we’re almost totally in the dark. We have to know what’s going on. You say too much we can’t understand.”
“You had to start from the icon in the Matrix,” the elf told him.
“Yes. It identified Leonardo. It’s also heretical, and in some sense fraudulent. The Shroud is a fake.”
“Of course it is,” the elf said. “Pope Innocent wanted it done. Innocent! Hah! It had a history, entirely superstitious and unconfirmed, but he thought it would make an excellent inspiration for the gullible. He really was an unprincipled old bastard, even by the standards of the times, and that’s saying something. Since it seems some, many, still believe in that ridiculous cloth, it’s plain that he knew what he was doing.”
