Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  "Sue—"

  "Come on, magic man, go poof."

  What could John say? Sue thought he was running a scam on her. What proof could he offer her that he wasn't doing what she thought? Anything he said was just words. From her point of view, she was justified. How could she know of the strangeness of time in Faery? How could she understand it when John, who had been there, didn't understand it?

  "It's not that way, Sue."

  "Poof!"

  With a gust of wind that snatched away Sue's hat, the promised rain arrived in sheets. Sue didn't go after the hat. Neither did John. They stared at each other, getting wet.

  Finally she said, "No magic?"

  "I can't do that kind of magic."

  "I ain't as stupid as you think I am." She turned her back on him and went down the stairs to her door. Stiff-shouldered, she worked her key in the lock. She tugged the door open and shot him a look. "Ya follow me and I'll shoot ya dead and sell your body parts. Probably get a good price for your eyes, too."

  She went through and closed the door. He heard the bolt slide home. More bolts too, security locks.

  John stood in the rain, the world all sodden and gray around him. He stood there for a long time, but Sue didn't come back out. She wasn't going to, and no amount of hoping was going to change that. On his way out of the alley, he picked up her hat. It was already soaked and would be worthless trash by morning if it sat out in the rain. Turning it over and over in his hands, he walked down the street, his elven boots kicking up spatters of murky water. His feet were dry inside the boots, protected by some elven magic. His face wasn't dry, though. There were no elven magics for that.

  Holger recognized the voice coming from the bank of monitors in the shop window. The sound drew him like a magnet, recalling to him the thoughts that had led to his first tolerable night since the incident at the old mall. The words weren't important, starting as they did in midsentence and vanishing the same way. It was the voice.

  He crossed the street and stood before the shop. Its window was filled with video monitors, stacked side by side and atop one another so that dozens of screens poured their light out onto the sidewalk and into Holger's eyes. The screens in the center stayed with a single channel while those along the edges shifted channels, finding new images to exhibit, a ripple of change running among them, switching each to a new presentation as it passed. A selector—preprogrammed or random, he couldn't tell which—jumped from screen to screen until it chose one to replace the central images. Sound from the chosen slice of the media bombardment was shunted to speakers, offering it to the sidewalk and to Holger's ears. The fickle, mutating outer screens were not allowed the dignity of sound. While Holger sought the source of the voice that had arrested his attention, each of those vid images competed for his regard, sought to steal his eyes. Eyes were so much more capable of taking in the chaos of the world, and so much less confused by it than ears.

  Holger's eyes were not confused. Among the wall of images he found a face that evoked the strangest combination of memories: memories of dark places dared, blurred memories of standing side by side against danger—memories that Holger could not possibly conceive of being attached to that face, for they were things of his childhood, things of dreams and wonder and imagination. Though he had not yet heard the voice again, he felt certain that it belonged to that face.

  He knew that face. The hair was cut shorter, the beard more fashionably trimmed, the clothes right out of Gentm, but the face was familiar. He knew those eyes. They were the sort of eyes one never forgot.

  He wanted to hear the voice again, to know the message that this man carried for him. He waited, patient, as the world flowed past around him. Some cursed him, some jostled him, some ignored him. Their reactions were unimportant. He wanted to hear the man speak. He remembered this man as one who could be trusted.

  A true memory or a false one? Or merely an embodied hope?

  Holger studied the face. He did know this man. This was a man with many names, as Holger had been. In memory, this was a confused man, a man out of his proper place, as Holger was. On the vid, the man looked different. He had changed, had clearly become a man who had a place, a man with answers. All Holger had were questions.

  Sound snatch by sound snatch, Holger learned that the man was appearing on an infoshow for the Pend Foundation, publicizing the organization's commitment to revitalizing the world in all its natural and proper order. Very Green. Very idealistic. Holger sensed an intense and honest commitment to the avowed goals, an integrity that he found himself craving with the intensity of a soldier's after-battle thirst. Holger needed to see this man, in person, to talk to him, to learn from him the secret of the peace he had achieved; but how to contact him?

  Infoshows normally fed a steady stream of advertising and contact information through a strip at the bottom of the screen; but the shop had co-opted the feed channel, dumping its own ads atop the originator's messages. Holger didn't want to buy what the shop was selling, he wanted the information it had taken away. He had to wait through fifteen cycles before the sound snatches coincided with a segment of the infoshow in which contact information was given. Holger didn't mind the wait. In a lot of ways, his waiting was over.

  If.

  If the man was what Holger believed him to be, and not just a faulty memory.

  The physical kill and the gushing rush of power from the feeding that followed echoed and enhanced the thrill of the corporate kill, making the Nashua acquisition all the more satisfying. Tonight's prey was tasty, surprising in its richness. For the moment, Anton Van Dieman was sated. His alliance with the harbinger had opened very satisfying, very rewarding avenues.

  Besides the raw taste of power, his ally brought the great gilts of knowledge and understanding. The harbinger had become his tutor in comprehending and manipulating all things arcane. Van Dieman was an eager and attentive student, far more than he was for any human teacher. He had already outstripped the most advanced among the followers, to become their leader in all but name. Some were calling him the new Quetzal, though they did not think he knew. That pleased him.

  So much was open to him that he had a little trouble choosing from among his opportunities. So much to gain, so many scores to settle, so much to achieve. The world lay before him, opened to him by the secrets that the harbinger whispered to him in the night. Such insights had already brought him advantages in the business world, and he had increased his power and improved his position through apply-ing his new understandings almost as much as he had through direct application of his improved arcane skills. Network Securities Corporation, a major player—soon to be the major player—within the Metadynamics corporate family, was his now. And once he led the corporate family, it would not be long before Metadynamics was the undisputed leader of the commercial community and, by the most obvious of extensions, of the world.

  Unfortunately his ally and teacher had an active, insatiable hunger that was a potential source of danger. He understood the hunger well. Who could deny the delegability of the feast? But the appetite was dangerous nonetheless. Remembering how Quetzal selected his sustenance, Van Dieman had guided the harbinger's hunts, steering it toward the detritus of society and away from those who would be missed. The time of revelation was not yet upon them.

  Discovery of their hunts would be inconvenient at best, and the effort necessary to deal with meddlers would most certainly interfere with their work. The work to open the Way would not bear interruption. He would not permit himself to be balked. His mundane power, great though it was growing, would be increased immeasurably once the Way was opened. He had no intention of losing his opportunity to control such authority.

  Unfortunately, tonight's prey had been more than the derelict he appeared to be. He had fought the implacable coils of the harbinger. The futile struggle should have added piquancy to what the harbinger had shared with Van Die-man; it should not have left a lingering aftertaste of taint. There had been something untoward a
bout this one. Siphoning off a living being's energy was a curiously impersonal thing. Nothing of the person came through. There had been nothing to tell Van Dieman what had made this man different from their other victims, but he felt sure that there was a difference. When the harbinger finished with it, Van Dieman examined the husk.

  There was a tiny lump behind the man's right ear: something inorganic lay beneath the skin. Van Dieman focused a tiny fraction of the fresh energy still coursing through him and slit the skin with surgical precision. The object he removed, a subcutaneous processor and communication lav glistening with blood on his palm. tiny fibers, now broken, trailed from it. His own Network Securities Corporation trafficked in the chips that empowered such devices.

  So many possibilities.

  He concentrated on the unit, seeking its source through piychometry. As with so many modern devices, the images of origin were diverse, diffuse, and mostly worthless. Yet he < used dedication, both to the man who now lay a lifeless, withered corpse at his feet and to something greater, something to which the man himself had been dedicated: the Federal Security Agency.

  Van Dieman had not been informed of any FSA operations in this area. Was the agency watching him, or had he

  and his companion coincidentally stumbled onto some unrelated operation? He had learned to suspect coincidences. With so much power focused through the harbinger, it was too much to expect that this agent they found in their path was there by accident—which meant that the agency had deliberately put this man near him.

  Not unwise from their point of view, he supposed—he would have done the same in their place—but foolish to get i aught at it. What was behind this? Were they aware of his program to suppress all the records of the harbinger's activities? Had his cover-up aroused suspicion in some quarter? I le knew that there was no official awareness of his intimate connection with the harbinger—he'd made sure of that. It had been so easy, as their principal arcane adviser, to tell them what was important and what was not—so easy to feed them lies and be believed. Now he saw that the ease might have been illusory and that his efforts might not have been as successful as he had believed. Clearly they did not trust him completely. This agent's presence suggested that uncontrolled, and therefore dangerous, elements might lurk within the forces he had gathered. How much did they know? How much did they guess? For the moment he could only wonder.

  Steeling his fingers with arcane strength, he crushed the device to powder. Would that he could dispose of the agent's body as easily. This husk could not simply be abandoned. It must be disposed of in such a way as to leave the agent's masters wondering about his fate.

  The harbinger remained quiet, unconcerned by Van Die-man's worries. Doubtless his companion did not understand the danger. Oddly, that reassured him, for it proved yet again that the harbinger, for all its power, still needed him. The modern world was not the one that the harbinger had known of old, and that was still Van Dieman's greatest power over his companion. By that knowledge he constrained it, and with those constraints he ruled it, but the situation was changing. With each new prey that they took, Van Dieman's power grew stronger, and the secret chains of mastery that he was forging grew stronger as well.

  As if aware that his thoughts touched upon it, his companion stirred. He reached out to the shadowed coils to offer reassurance of his presence and devotion, and sensed that it was not as calm as he thought. A strange restlessness resonated through the harbinger.

  "What is it?"

  Ah, hear them. They sing.

  He heard nothing. Through their link, he felt that the harbinger's attention was on the sky. He looked up, seeing nothing but a few stars burning through the sprawl glow. He knew there were more stars, many more, and with his arcane sight he could see them in all their glory.

  They are calling.

  "The stars?"

  The others. I must go.

  Go? Van Dieman was not ready to surrender his access to the ways of power. "Our work is not yet done."

  Not yet done, the harbinger agreed. The others want to join us.

  Others? How much more powerful would he be if he con-hulled others of its kind! "There are more harbingers waiting to come here?"

  More. They cry in the darkness, seeking the way.

  "And we can help them find it?"

  ()pen the way. Not here.

  An image of the telesmon appeared in his mind. The Key.

  "Where?"

  South, it told him. To the place where time shivers, to the window where the shell of life is weakest.

  "Of course." He would take it wherever it wanted to go. I tut first, "We must dispose of this husk."

  Unimportant.

  " This one is not like the others. This one may bring the lorces of the opposition if his death is known."

  Yes. Very well. Leave it to the fire.

  There was fire, springing to life all around them, filling Ihe alley with heat and lurid light. Enwrapped in power, he tell no discomfort. Fire would serve. Fire was a cleansing agent, capable of obliterating things beyond the abilities of modern science to reconstruct. There were still some agents one could rely upon.

  Pamela Martinez could rely upon numerous agents, but she was coming to doubt that Hagen was one of them. Hendrik Hagen had been her right-hand man in the restructuring of the Charybdis Project, and eager to help. But he fought— and continued to fight—her establishment of Thaumatechnics, the successor to the project that would utilize what they had learned. He complained that the new corporation would do more to encourage the arcane than to suppress it. Pamela preferred to think that Thaumatechnics and its programs were a viable effort to control the magic and prepare for its inevitable spread. Early market positioning was absolutely vital to eventual dominance.

  Hagen's foot-dragging was only one of the obstacles Pamela saw hindering her efforts to define Mitsutomo's future role. Entrepreneurs and small companies were already developing preternatural resources. For the moment, the new companies dealt in fringe stuff and special interest pandering, but she knew better than most that those companies were just the beginning. Most of the Keiretsu's major partners had once been hungry young start-ups, each riding the crest of a single specialized product, technology, or service. She understood what catching the wave meant. She did not intend to get left behind.

  At least as great a threat was the possibility that a rival with resources comparable to Mitsutomo's might have the same insights that she had so laboriously gathered through the Charybdis Project. Mounting evidence suggested that such a fear might be justified. Metadynamics, for example, had recently made some real estate acquisitions of questionable value—questionable, if one were not aware that their newly acquired parcels appeared to be loci of preternatural activity. And if one were aware, one found additional questions to ask. How much did Metadynamics know about the use of magic? What were their sources? What plans did they have to take advantage of the changing world?

  Some of MetaD's recent actions had disturbed Hagen enough that he had come to her, even though, by his own admission, he had no idea of their rival's goal.

  "What makes you sure that Metadynamics is involved?" she asked him.

  "At the moment, the evidence is admittedly circumstantial, but I expect confirmation within forty-eight hours. However, considering how formidable Metadynamics has proven in less, ah, esoteric arenas, we cannot afford to take any chances."

  She didn't like to take chances, and he knew it. "We cannot afford to create unnecessary enmity, either."

  "Agreed, but a prompt response may be necessary. A recent report suggests that Metadynamics may be about to step up their programs. Several of our street contacts confirm that one of their regular freelance agents—Benton by name—is

  once again in the Providence area. You may recall that he

  was involved with last year's attempt by Metadynamics to acquire a certain property in that district." the Pickman holding."

  "Exactly."

  She rememb
ered the case because it had been her first hint that someone at Metadynamics was aware of the changes. the property was an old factory, completely outdated, belonging to a nearly defunct, family-held publishing firm. She had seen no obvious value to a conglomerate of MetaD's size and interests—unless she assumed that they had observed what Mitsutomo's own agents had observed, and that the property was indeed a locus of otherworldly activity. MetaD's attempt to buy the property outright had failed. Pickman Publishing had rejected MetaD's generous offer out of hand, and that had seemed to end the megacorp's interest in the property.

  But now it seemed that Metadynamics had not been discouraged. Hagen had uncovered a systematic buyout of nearby real estate. Piece by piece, the properties surrounding I the Pickman Building were being purchased by holding companies. Hagen had electronic records showing several of those holding companies to be controlled by members of the Metadynamics family, and he said that he would soon be able to prove that all of them were tied to MetaD.

  "So now they're trying to acquire all the property surrounding it?" None of Hagen's documents suggested a reason. "To what end?"

  "Observation? Containment, perhaps?" Hagen shrugged uncomfortably. "We have insufficient data."

  "Then we must obtain some data."

  "Efforts are being made, but I do not think we will see timely results."