Liege-Killer

by Christopher Hinz

  His wife continued. “The Sirak-Brath project has wide support. Drake is obviously hoping that if he puts ICN money into such a universally recognized cause, some of the heat will be taken off his organization.”

  Rome gave a thoughtful nod. “Why would Drake offer such an unconditional loan to West Yemen in the first place?”

  The financial expert threw up his arms. “That we’re not sure of. Unless perhaps Drake and the ICN actually wanted this loan money to be used to finance La Gloria de la Ciencia.”

  Rome frowned. Drake had always seemed to take a moderate stance when it came to La Gloria de la Ciencia. Had he changed his policy?

  The corporate watchdog folded her hands and hunched forward. “Even with this Sirak-Brath restoration project, Drake is in a lot of trouble. Though it makes no real sense, people are connecting this Paratwa assassin with La Gloria de la Ciencia. Our polls show that La Gloria de la Ciencia has dropped several percentage points in public acceptance since the butchery at the zoo.

  “When this West Yemen affair goes public, the ICN will be firmly knotted to La Gloria de la Ciencia’s public-acceptance ratio. And our studies show that La Gloria de la Ciencia’s popularity will continue to drop as long as this assassin is on the loose.”

  “Which could be for quite some tune,” Haddad pointed out.

  Doubt struck Rome. It was not just the ethics of the whole affair, the fact that E-Tech would gain political strength as long as the Paratwa was alive—that he had seen from the beginning. But things were falling into place too neatly.

  He studied the excited faces. “How did we confirm all this information?”

  “A variety of sources,” said the financial expert. “I have my own high-level contacts over at the ICN.”

  His wife smiled. “Drake couldn’t hope to keep something like this a secret for very long. Too many people involved.”

  Rome nodded. “Any ideas why Lady Bonneville told us about this West Yemen Corporation loan? After all, she’s a frequent supporter of La Gloria de la Ciencia. And she generally backs Drake to the hilt.”

  The financial expert shrugged. “She was probably just trying to score some points on the side with E-Tech. Sooner or later, we would have found out about that loan anyway, along with everyone else.”

  Rome hesitated. “It seems that E-Tech should realize incredible gains from this whole affair. Does that strike anyone as suspicious?”

  Haddad allowed a rare smile. “No.”

  Everyone seemed to nod their heads in agreement with the Pasha. The corporate watchdog added:

  “E-Tech has been losing ground for so long now that I think we’ve all forgotten what it’s like to come out on top. We’re instantly suspicious when E-Tech makes a gain—it’s so unusual!”

  Laughter erupted around the table. Rome did not join in.

  It’s wrong. We’re missing something here.

  Begelman waved his hand. “Yes! Yes, I understand your suspicions, Rome. Friday’s Paratwa attack—the street killings in Jordanian Paris—two Irryan diplomats were among the thirty-three victims.” The programmer’s face lit up. “Those diplomats were on their way to a bioconference!”

  Everyone looked at Begelman, waiting for him to continue. He just sat there, grinning madly.

  One of the young Science aides lowered his head and coughed. “I believe what Dr. Begelman means is that those two diplomats were the most vocal supporters of E-Tech policy attending that conference. Their murder could be construed as a direct attack upon E-Tech.”

  “Of course that’s what I mean!” snapped Begelman.

  Rome allowed his attention to wander from face to face. He thought: Almost everyone at this table is caught up with the idea of victory—Drake discredited, La Gloria de la Ciencia politically crushed, E-Tech realizing a huge gain in prestige—a dream come true.

  He could not shake the feeling that things were all wrong.

  I should have asked Nick to be here. The midget seemed to have a better sense of Irryan politics than most of the people gathered at this table. A fresh perspective could be helpful.

  The majority of Rome’s staff, however, now considered Nick and the runaway Gillian as serious a problem as the Paratwa. He knew that it would not have been wise to allow Nick to participate in a staff conference.

  He suppressed his worries. “Do we have anything new on the Jordanian Paris massacre?”

  The Pasha shook his head. “As was pointed out, the only notable victims were the two Irryan diplomats. The others were mostly shoppers, unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

  “And the witnesses?”

  Haddad shrugged. “The Guardians released all of them within hours of the massacre. Covertly, we questioned several of these people. All told the same story—they heard the screams, saw the black light of the Cohe wands. Then nothing. A street full of bodies and severed limbs was all that remained. No Paratwa.”

  “It happened too fast,” added one of the Science aides. “It’s estimated that the entire massacre took less than ten seconds.”

  Haddad spoke calmly. “The creature probably feigned fright, blended into the crowds that were running in all directions. Guardians were dispatched to cover Jordanian Paris’ terminals, but it was several hours before all of the ports were under surveillance. And with this creature’s ability to disguise itself ... The Guardians now assume that the Paratwa escaped from the colony.”

  An aide laughed bitterly. “The way the Guardians are telling it, the creature ran away in fear.”

  The Pasha continued. “The Guardians have also released the young warden who witnessed the destruction and killings at the Northern California Preserve.” Haddad nodded toward Begelman.

  The computer hawk flapped his scrawny arms. “We secretly questioned the boy. His testimony reinforces our theory that the Paratwa is from the breed of Terminus.”

  Rome kept his disquiet to himself. The breed of Terminus? This monster slaughtered thirty-three human beings and we’re still analyzing its origins. He knew he was reacting emotionally. Such knowledge about the assassin was important. But we should be doing more.

  He asked, “What about Nick and Gillian?”

  Haddad stared at the far wall. “Essentially, there is nothing new to report. Nick is still receiving phone calls from public booths at all hours. We suspect that he has worked out some sort of complex timetable for keeping in touch with Gillian. We have tried planting a variety of audio bugs on Nick, but he has, thus far, deactivated all of them. We are tracking him via the subcutaneous transmitters, of course, but these phone calls are elliptically routed and of such short duration that we have not yet been able to initiate an effective trace.” Haddad paused. “He is very clever.”

  “We should do something!” cried one of the Science aides. “Throw this Nick in a holding cell until he talks.”

  A chorus of agreement rang out. Haddad stared at Rome.

  He met the Pasha’s glare. “Nick is to be kept under surveillance—nothing more.”

  “How do we know,” Haddad argued, “that Gillian is out there ‘recruiting,’ as Nick claims? These men are mercenaries—hired killers. I do not understand the basis of your trust in them.”

  Rome declined to answer. Gillian and Nick simply felt trustworthy.

  One of Haddad’s lieutenants burst through the door. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but there’s been another Paratwa attack!”

  Everyone tried to talk at once. Rome held up his hand for silence.

  The lieutenant gave a breathless nod. “It raided one of our hi-tech storage warehouses on Oslo. The creature killed our staff and the guards, then burned the building to the ground. It may have stolen weapons—we have no way of knowing. There were explosions. Colony officials have declared Oslo a major disaster!”

  Haddad muttered a curse.

  “There’s more. After the creature hit the warehouse, it went to a public park several blocks away and opened fire on the citizens.”

  Rom
e drew a deep breath. “How many dead?”

  “We don’t know. We believe there were only about a dozen of our people manning the warehouse. But the park was hit heavily. They say at least fifty citizens were killed there.” The lieutenant paused. “Apparently, most of the citizens were children.”

  Rome gritted his teeth, fought back a mixture of fury and horror. Such a monstrosity!

  “Any leads on the creature?” asked Haddad.

  “No, sir. It disappeared, just like it did in Northern California and Jordanian Paris. The Guardians sealed all of Oslo’s main ports but...” He shrugged. “There have been no sightings, as yet.”

  Rome nodded. He felt certain the Guardians would not find the Paratwa.

  Haddad dismissed the lieutenant, turned to Rome.

  “The outcry will be massive when word of this latest massacre goes public. E-Tech should be ready to offer all possible assistance.”

  The financial expert spoke up, “I believe it would be wise for E-Tech to set up a sizable reparation fund. Cash could be made available to the families of all Paratwa victims.”

  Heads nodded assent around the table. One of the Senate advisers spoke loudly.

  “We should prepare to reintroduce defeated legislation, especially those bills pertaining to the expansion of E-Tech technosecurity measures, Irryan Senators who normally oppose us may now be more malleable.”

  Rome held his anger in check. Times of turmoil are times of great gains. Yet we must not deaden our feelings toward the horror. He recalled Nick’s descriptions of pre-Apocalyptic life, the hard decisions made by the E-Tech leaders of that era. Maybe emotional denial is the only way to survive such times.

  But today was not an era of universal destruction and madness. Rome refused to believe that one vicious creature could wipe out two centuries of relative peace. Hard decisions, yes. But I won’t allow E-Tech to feed off the carrion of this Paratwa.

  He spoke coldly. “Within your departments, you may make such preparations. But at this time, E-Tech will take no formal action regarding Senate bills.” Rome met the financial expert’s stare. “There will be no reparation fund from us. It smacks of patronage, not of real concern for the victims. Regular relief organizations will provide for those families.”

  The Pasha narrowed his eyes. “Many would not perceive a reparation fund as patronage.”

  “Perhaps not. But that’s what it is.”

  Haddad lowered his gaze. Around the table, staff members muttered to each other.

  Rome felt a sudden chill. I stand alone.

  There were no other matters of importance. Rome adjourned the meeting, sat silently while the staff fled from the room. By the time they had all exited, he had come to a decision. He opened an audio link to his execsec.

  His aide put through his call to Angela at once. Rome explained to his wife that they would be having a last-minute dinner guest this evening. He told her who it was and asked her to make the necessary preparations. Angela, ever practical, inquired as to whether she should place extra cushions on their dinner guest’s chair.

  Rome thought it would be a good idea.

  O}o{O

  The thoroughfare was dirty and the gutters overflowed with refuse. Heavily scarred plastic sidewalks vibrated under a thousand foot-beats. People scurried along, bumped one another, fought, shouted, made music into the night. A mad array of odors floated along the boulevard: bubbling cheese and pungent spices—tarragon, marjoram—roasted meat, honeymilk, fresh urine, a scent of lilac. Battered cars, screeching, dodged the waves of humanity that flowed from one sidewalk to another. Gillian felt as if he had come home.

  Sirak-Brath was Rio and New York and Tokyo and Montreal and London. It shuddered with life, splattered the more vibrant emotions of the human psyche onto its streets, painted hot flashes across its potpourri of low buildings.

  Laser images flickered; mute projections vying for attention, inviting the passerby to enter the shops and dress the best, eat the finest, experience the deepest. Tracking sensors beamed stereophonic messages into the air: mating calls of the merchant. Red coherent light exploded from a clothing store’s marquee and formed a hologram of a scarlet woman that moved in cadence with Gillian for ten steps, its silky urgent voice inviting him to spend his cash without delay.

  Sirak-Brath was a transplanted chunk of Earth’s madness and its passion. Young men and women, stripped to bikinis, silently danced beneath the glow of a smoky yellow streetlamp. A gang of teenagers, with brown helmets and huge silver stars pinned to their jackets, forced themselves into the deepest concentrations of people, cold eyes searching for opposition. A woman with seven-fingered hands preached the gospel of the Trust. A fat prostitute on the shoulders of a silken robed giant wormed through the crowd, hunting for prospective clients.

  And then there were the pirates.

  Gillian paused to watch a trio of female Costeaus marching calmly down the center of the sidewalk. Everyone stepped out of their way. A strong feceslike odor emanated from the women but Gillian knew that the odorant bags alone were not responsible for their ease of movement through the crowd. The silver-star gang, eight or nine strong, glared at the pirates, but the youths moved from their path just like everyone else.

  The three women did not look overtly dangerous. Gillian recognized one source of Costeau strength: the women projected an aura of complete indifference to the rhythms of the street. They moved in their own world, oblivious to the shouting and screaming and selling that crackled the night air. They ignored the madness and passion.

  Disassociation alone could not account for such controlled power. Instinctively, Gillian knew that if it came to a fight, the three women would take on any challenge, without fear.

  But the ultimate strength of the Costeaus remained their adherence to the rule of the clan. An offense against one pirate was considered an offense against his or her entire clan. Make an enemy of one Costeau and you might find twenty-five thousand of them mad at you.

  Gillian had arrived at two more conclusions since his arrival in Sirak-Brath. Costeaus would make excellent fighters; as a people, they possessed that natural fearlessness that came from years of persecution. They would die gladly for a cause, unconcerned about the odds. If motivated, they would go up against a Paratwa.

  That motivation was the problem. The pirates would be more difficult to recruit than either he or Nick had imagined. There would be few mercenaries to be found among such a people. They would fight for their own reasons, not for someone else’s.

  Gillian turned off the main thoroughfare onto a dimly lit side street. Above him, the sky dissolved from pale blue to red and then into deep violet, all within the space of a minute, as if the sunset programming had been madly speeded up. It was his fourth day within the colony and such haste no longer surprised him. Night was eagerly awaited in Sirak-Brath.

  Two blocks later, the street terminated in a hedgerow. He halted beside a battered kiosk, read the brief inscription.

  The Teddy Carrera Memorial Park covered over a thousand acres of the colony’s Gamma sector. At one time, the park had probably been a well-kept mixture of trimmed hedgerows, small trees, and flowered dwarf grass rolling across the squat hills.

  Now, in the dim light, the hedgerows resembled monstrous castle walls, huge oaks and pines looked as if they were trying to grow straight across to the other side of the cylinder, and the hills were mostly barren clumps of dirt. Concrete paths wound through the maze in all directions, occasionally disappearing into confluences of bristling olive hedges. Human garbage lay everywhere, as did an incredible variety of abandoned artifacts. The weirdest sight, only yards from where he stood, was a dilapidated car punched hallway through a hedge, ten feet off the ground. The driver must have been doing well over a hundred.

  Gillian took the main path, which wound between a pair of giant hedges. Within seconds, the street disappeared from view and the familiar noises became muted. Darkness enveloped him; starlight reflecting down from the cos
mishield glass overhead cast just enough illumination to follow the twisting path. For all intents and purposes, he had entered another world.

  He wore mushboots. Their liquid soles, combined with years of practice, enabled him to walk in relative silence. Though he saw no one, a subtle background of human sounds confirmed that he was not alone within the park. From his left came a hint of distant laughter; muffled words rang out somewhere ahead. And beyond the hedgerow off to his right, he heard the faint patter of footsteps.

  At night, stay out of the parks!

  He had received the warning from a number of people over the past few days—another similarity between this colony and the great cities of Earth. Most of the warnings had come from drunks, scuddies, heroin addicts, and a host of other narrowly focused individuals. The taverns of Sirak-Brath overflowed with such people.

  Pirates and smugglers also frequented the taverns, and many possessed the qualities he was searching for. Most of the smugglers turned out to be too self-centered—unsuitable for Paratwa combat. The pirates had the right attributes; the ones he had met were tough, resourceful, aware of the intricacies of teamwork, and fearless. But they were impossible to communicate with. Several nights of bar hopping had so far led to nothing but frustration.

  You could talk to the pirates, of course, and after a few drinks, maybe even share a story or two. But a cultural wall went up whenever Gillian hinted at his real purposes. Several of the pirates had made it plain that they were available for hire for the right price. Most of them had been unfazed when Gillian mentioned that the work would be extremely dangerous. He felt sure that they would have no qualms about going up against a Paratwa.

  But Gillian needed more. That cultural wall had to be broken down. There would have to be a commitment based on mutual trust, not merely an exchange of cash. A combat team attempting to defeat a Paratwa needed a deeper unity.

  Whoever had begun to shadow him from the other side of the hedge was noisy in comparison to Gillian, yet sophisticated enough to keep pace. Probably he or she was tracking Gillian with a portable radar scanner. Gillian took that as a good sign. The shadower was fearless enough to utilize restricted technology.