by S. J. Ryan
“There must be pheromone that she emits,” Athena whispered to the basket by her side.
The Hunter-Assassin took the basket away and then, among crossbow-laden guards, Athena was alone with the solace of her thoughts. Which were of how, no matter what their plans, Nemesis would soon come and exterminate them as if they were bugs. All she had to do was relax and wait.
16.
With Ada von Turingtest at his elbow, Matt Four watched the approach of the city of Hafik from the forward windows of the passenger cabin of the airship liner. Emerging from the haze, the narrow streets and scattering of buildings known as Hafik were unimpressive compared to Binti – and Binti had been nothing compared to Victoriana.
“I hope this ordeal is finally over,” Ada said. She did not mean the quest to halt the plans of Athena Spencer and Eric Roth. She meant their commercial airship flights. She'd been complaining about everything during the two legs of the trip eastward: the cramped accommodations, the 'horrible' airline food, the traffic pattern delays, the turbulence, the crying children. “Do you see the ship of your friends?”
Matt Four returned to squinting at the scene below. The airfield by the city had several docking masts and a row of hangars. Airships that he'd learned to identify as cargo transports, passenger liners, and military craft were hovering, docking, and berthed about the field. None of the vehicles in the air or at dock resembled the image that Ivan retained of the Good Witch, even allowing for the upgrades that the airfield mechanics at Binti said had been done to the ship.
“I don't,” he admitted. “It might be inside one of the hangars, but I can't see well enough to tell.”
She gave a perplexed look. “Oh, that's right. You don't have telescopic vision. Your little brother didn't share his demon's special abilities.” 'Little brother' was how they had agreed to refer to Matt the Template, after deciding that having two Matts was confusing and 'The Star Child' was pretentious. “Do you want me to look?”
“If you could.” He pointed to the hangars. “Then feed the telemetry to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ivan – your demon – will explain.”
Matt Four become aware of the crowd of fellow passengers pressing against the windows of the lounge alongside them. He wondered if anyone was overhearing the conversation, and what they would make of it. More likely, he thought, they were wondering what a girl who could be no more than fifteen Earth years was doing in the company of a man old enough to be her grandfather.
Ada – the former Lachela of Klun – didn't seem to realize that such a pairing was not socially approved outside the unholy walls of the Abbey, and every time she casually bumped against him, he cringed. At some point, he thought, they would need to have a talk, the kind of talk that he thought he'd avoided having to give by not having children of his own.
A pop-up window appeared in Matt Four's field of vision, receiving the telescopic telemetry from Ivan Four, who was still resident in Ada's head.
Being yet kilometers distant, the hangar interiors were dabs of gloom in normal vision, but in the implant's telescopic vision, suitably enhanced, details emerged. Most of the hangars were empty. A yacht was resting in one, a civil patrol craft in another. In the hangar at the end of the row, while the gondola was yet hidden, enough of the tip of the envelope appeared just inside the hangar doorway to verify a match with the configuration of the Good Witch.
Matt Four pointed with more certainty. “That might be it.”
“Unless they've already gone to the Other Side.”
“Yeah.”
That was likely, Matt Four thought. When he and Ada had arrived at Binti from Victoriana, he had expected to find the Good Witch waiting at the secondary municipal airfield where Ivan Beta said that it would be undergoing 'upgrades.' Instead, airfield officials and mechanics said the ship had departed for Hafik hours earlier. Matt Four had asked if the crew had left a message.
Just that they were 'going home,' the officials replied.
Why would they abandon the kid? Matt Four had asked himself several times since. Nonetheless, the description of the crew – a man and woman in late middle age – matched the photo images of Prin and Andra that Ivan Beta had stored.
Fortunately, a small commuter shuttle was scheduled for the Binti-to-Hafik run a couple hours later. And so Matt Four and Ada had gone on to Hafik, after a brief shopping trip during the layover to buy him 'some sensible clothes' to replace the rumpled dinnerware that Athena had provided. Thus, for all the urgency of their adventure, they were well-fed, clean, and rested by the time the shuttle airship descended toward Hafik.
Upon docking and egressing the airship, they picked up their luggage (Ada had done a lot of shopping) from the airfield terminal carrels and hailed an open-cab taxi to navigate the streets of the airfield to the hangar row. Halfway there, Matt Four heard Ivan Four say, “Lachela. We are being followed.”
Not having cameras in the back of his head, Matt Four tried to turn in his seat. Ada's arm smacked his chest and her eyes shot a frozen stare. “Don't look back. I'll show you.”
Her hair was done up in the common Victorian style and Ivan Four's microcameras embedded in the pores of the back of her neck provided video telemetry of the view behind. The images were transmitted to Ivan Beta, and Matt Four watched through a pop-up.
Yes, another taxi-coach was following from a distance of a hundred meters. The passenger was a bearded man in suit and bowler hat.
“He has been with us since I picked up you and Mister Plow outside the mansion,” Ada said. “I saw him board the liner with us at Victoriana. I asked the demon to inform me if he appeared again.”
“Who is he?”
“I don't know. Perhaps a detective? He has that look.”
In hindsight, Matt Four thought, it was obvious that Athena would have the police surreptitiously watching her home during her absence, at the least to protect against break-ins. As even a police state seldom has laws against invited guests leaving a home, the police hadn't intervened when he and Matt Four had departed the mansion. Nonetheless, apparently out of curiosity, they had sent one of their fellows to tag along.
Ada fidgeted. “Wizard, what do we do?”
Thousands of years of human evolution under the all-seeing eye of civil authority provided the instinctive response: “Act natural.”
As the coach proceeded along the hangar road, the presence of humans became less, the grounds more overgrown with weeds, the hangars became older and their paint more peeling. Their coach stopped in front of the hangar at the end of the row. Matt Four swung his legs and luggage onto the tarmac and scrutinized the small ship within the hangar.
The wooden gondola was unique and though the engines differed from the photos in Ivan Beta's archives, the envelope was unchanged. Ivan Beta calculated a 99.7% positive match. Matt Four decided there couldn't be two ships like it, so it had to be the Good Witch.
Ada paid the driver and dismissed him. She came alongside, stared for a long moment, and said, “Did they actually travel in that thing?”
“From one side of the world to the other, right through the storm barrier.”
“It looks . . . hand-fashioned.”
“Yep.”
“I apologize for anything negative I have said about airlines.”
“You know, there's no commercial service between here and Britan. We'll have to travel in that. Are you still sure you want to come along?”
“Would you still take the demon with you?”
“I'm afraid we're going to need all the help we can get.”
“Then I am coming.”
He surveyed the interior of the hangar. “No one seems to be home. What does the demon say?”
He could have asked Ivan Four directly, but he'd come to agree with her viewpoint that maybe it was a little rude to converse at length with an implant without asking the host – even if it was his implant.
After a pause, Ada replied, “The demon says there is a
person behind the wall on each side of the door.”
“Could be our Prin and Andra. One way to find out.”
As they walked forward, two men stepped into the hangar doorway, one from each side. The shoulder patches on their uniforms proclaimed each to be a 'Civil Officer' of the 'Hafik Police Agency.' Each man held a gun trained on the visitors, and their expressions were serious.
“Identify yourselves!” the senior officer demanded. “What are you doing here?”
Matt Four's mind was spinning. “Uh, we, uh – “
Before he could say more, a male voice shouted gruffly from behind, “Watch them carefully!”
The officer stared past Matt Four and said, “Who are you?”
The man in the bowler hat trotted from down the street. He extended an identification card with photo ID toward the police officers.
“Inspector Yon Sagrid, Pavonia National Police.”
Examining the badge, the officers straightened. The senior officer said, “Oh yes. The wireless informed you were coming. We have been instructed to fully cooperate with your investigation.”
“We haven't done anything wrong!” Ada blurted, searching from face to face, apparently seeking a sign of compassion.
Sagrid returned a hard expression, then addressed the police officers: “I want to begin interrogation immediately. Do you have the others?”
“They're being detained at the station.”
“Well, let's go there and bring these two along.”
“All right you two,” the senior officer said, gesturing at Matt Four and Ada with his gun. “Let's get a move – “
He said no more, because at the instant, Ada turned into a blur that flashed from man to man. The policemen and inspector closed their eyes and drooped their heads. Ada shimmered back to solidity in front of Matt Four, breathing hard and perspiring.
“That was close,” she said. “Let's get out of here!”
“No,” Matt Four replied. “He mentioned 'the others' and the policeman said they're at 'the station.' That must be Prin and Andra. They must be under arrest. We need to rescue them.”
“How can we do that? We don't know where the station is. Even with hypermode, escape from a jail will be too dangerous.” She watched his pensive eyes. “Won't it?”
While she had been talking, Matt Four had been thinking. Decades of guerrilla warfare and diplomacy had taught him to think outside the box – sometimes way outside the box.
“What we need,” he said, “is to go back in time and do this over.”
She blinked. “I can't tell if you're joking.”
“First, we'll need to wipe their short term memories. Ivan will tell you what to do.”
While Ada went from man to man, pressing her fingers to their necks so that Ivan's tentacles could invade their craniums, Matt Four plucked the identification from Sagrid's hand and rifled through the inspector's pockets. He found a wallet and a gun and a small container of spare ammo and put them into his own pockets.
By then, Ada was finished with her task. Matt Four held out Sagrid's badge ID, explained to Ivan Four how he wanted it altered, and posed for a stone-faced photograph in front of Ada. At his direction, Ada passed her hand over the document, examined the result – and gasped.
“I didn't know demons had this power!”
“It's why no one uses paper documentation on Earth anymore.”
“This will make life so much easier after I return to Victoriana.”
“One thing at a time.”
The still-unconscious Sagrid was nudged forward to where Matt Four had been standing alongside Ada. Matt Four in turn stood where Sagrid had been standing behind them. He gave the nod.
Ada blurred between the three men in trance. By the time she was back to her previous position, they were blinking awake.
The senior officer looked around in confusion, then focused upon Ada and Sagrid before him. He leveled his gun.
“Identify yourselves! What are you doing here?”
Before Sagrid could say anything, Matt Four shouted from behind: “Watch them carefully!”
The police officer turned to Matt Four. “Who are you?”
Matt Four extended the altered identification. “Inspector Yon Sagrid, Pavonia National Police. I assume the wireless informed you of my coming.” He had assumed a 'wireless' was a radio communications device of some type, as it was without wires and informed people.
The officers examined the badge and nodded. “Oh yes. We've been instructed to fully cooper – ”
“What's going on here!” Sagrid demanded, his confusion changing to anger. He glared at Matt Four, then said to the police officers, “This man is an imposter! I am Inspector Sagrid!”
“Do you have identification?” the senior officer coolly asked.
Sagrid started to reach inside his vest – causing the police guns to immediately center on him. With a wary nod, he slowly resumed reaching inside. Instantly his eyes widened. “My badge! It's gone!” He patted his pockets furiously. “So is my gun! My wallet! My wallet is gone!” He pointed at the ID card in Matt Four's hand. “That's my identification! He must have stolen it from my pocket!”
The officer compared the card to Sagrid's visage and shook his head. “The photograph matches him. So does the other information.”
“Something not right is going on here!” Sagrid bellowed. “Contact my superiors in Victoriana – “
“Can we get on with this?” Matt Four bellowed back. The officers gave him full attention, and Matt Four continued: “I want to begin interrogation immediately. Do you have the others?”
“Yes, they're being detained at the station.”
“Well, then, let's take these two and go to the station.”
“All right you two. Let's get a move on!“
As he was handcuffed, Sagrid continued to insist that he was the real inspector and Matt Four was an imposter, but to no avail. Eventually the senior officer told him to shut up.
A steam-powered lorry arrived and carried them to a squat brick building with small barred windows at the periphery of the field. Past counters and heavy security doors as well as a small army of armed police officers, they were escorted into a waiting room where they were met by a police captain, who took Matt Four aside for discussion.
In a low voice, Matt Four said, “This individual – “ he nodded toward Sagrid “ – is highly unstable as you can tell. He is not the ringleader of the operation, just some sort of courier dupe, and I'd just as soon that you lock him away for now.”
“Done,” the captain said. “What about the girl?”
“She appears to be an innocent stranger to the whole affair. I presume that he acquired her somewhere along the way as a traveling companion.”
The captain scowled. “I can well imagine. Why, he's thrice her age! His kind makes me sick!”
“Yes. Well. I'll take her into my custody and see that she's escorted back to Victoriana. In the meantime, I want you to bring out the two individuals that you detained with the ship.”
“You're going to interrogate? I'll have the dunking machine prepared.”
Matt Four inwardly shuddered. “I've had a better idea. A little deception is in order. I'm going to convince them that I'm that fellow there, whom they were expecting. I'll tell them that I've bribed you to release them and their ship, which you will do.”
“And why?”
“According to our informant reports, they are scheduled to rendezvous with another ship in their conspiratorial organization, so what I will do is have them fly me aboard their ship to the rendezvous location. You of course will have patrol ships following at a discreet distance, and when the rendezvous occurs, you'll have the opportunity to capture both ships and bring down their entire operation. There should be commendations for each of us.”
The captain frowned. “Once they're in the air, what if they attempt to fight or flee?”
“Do you think either is possible? You've seen their ship.”
> The captain laughed – but almost immediately his face became pensive.
“Ah, if you don't mind, one small question. Seriously – is there going to be a bribe?”
Matt Four flashed his teeth. “The sovereign of Pavonia can be most liberal with her gratitude.”
And so a few minutes later, Prin and Andra were 'released' into the custody of 'Inspector Sagrid,' and with Ada along also, they were taken by lorry across the airfield to the landing zone where the Good Witch was fueled and prepped. The foursome boarded the ship under the eye of the police captain, who nodded as a locker-chest big enough to require two persons to carry was brought aboard by airfield personnel and stowed inside a storage cabinet. Matt Four assumed the chest contained supplies for the journey and thought no more about it.
Andra took the steering wheel and signaled the ground crew to release the lines. Once the ship was airborne, Prin turned to Matt Four and said, “You're his archival clone, aren't you?”
Startled, Matt Four asked, “How did you – “
“Subtracting for age, I can see the resemblance.”
“Oh. Hadn't thought about it, I suppose there is one.”
“There definitely is. That is why I realized that when you spoke to me at the station about 'bribing the police' so that we might 'make the rendezvous,' it must have been some sort of code.”
“I'm glad you caught on.”
“Where is Matt?”
“Last I knew of his situation, he was prisoner aboard a military airship, heading to the other side – your side – of the world.”
“Then we should follow.”
“That's the plan.”
Engines chugging and propellers whirring, they passed over the farms and hills of the island of Novacosh, then over what was, for this part of the world, the Eastern Sea. The sky ahead was clear, for the storm barrier was yet hours away. During the journey, Matt Four had time enough to explain his experiences with 'the kid' and Athena.
“Poor Matt!” Andra said. “He may be a wizard but he's also an impetuous child!”
