Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  So he was free to do what he had come here to do.

  He walked around the mall again, telling himself that he was just making sure that he wouldn't encounter any unexplained problems, but knowing he was really putting off doing what he had come here to do. He'd been less scared when he and Dr. Spae had been chasing Quetzal. Back then, he hadn't had time to think about what he'd been doing.

  It was nearly Halloween, the time of year when the spirit world was close and the dead rose to walk again, and the mall stores were ready for it, where they weren't laying out Christmas decorations. Skeletons and ghosts and gravestones and vampires abounded in festive, commercial gaiety. It seemed that everywhere he looked, giant pumpkins grinned at him with lopsided smiles. Hollow smiles, they were, ignorant smiles; all flashy advertising style and forgotten substance. There was grim, hard truth behind those symbols, a truth that had been lost somewhere along the line while the otherworld was farther off than it was these days. The lights are on in there, Mr. Jack O'Lantern, but is anybody home? Do you know what your duty is, O Great Orange Guardian of the Home?

  Home.

  He'd been wanting to go home for—how long? Now here he was, on the threshold and hesitating. She wasn't going to come out looking for him. He had to go to her. No one else would tell her that one of her dead was coming home.

  The residential area was quiet and empty. He walked through the corridors constantly expecting to meet someone, but he never did. At last he stood before the door and the uameplate confirmed what Shahotain's disk had told him. Marianne Reddy lived here. He pressed the bell.

  The woman who answered the door was his mother. She looked older and more worn, but he had no trouble recognizing her. She opened the door wide, with all the assurance of the protected. Knowing how easily he'd entered, John felt a little queasy about her lack of caution, but he smiled. Squinting at him curiously, she spoke first.

  "Do I know you?"

  "Yes." Her blank look told him that she didn't recognize him. It's okay. It really is. No surprise. He'd known that instant recognition wasn't likely. He dragged off the wool cap that hid his hair and ears. "It's been a while. I've changed quite a bit."

  "I know your voice." Now she looked puzzled, and a little disturbed. "But your face isn't at all familiar. Are you made up for some reason? Of course, it's almost Halloween, isn't it? If you're doing some kind of promotion, I ought to tell you that I do all my buying on-line."

  "Still watching Happy LifestylesEM?"

  She blinked in confusion. "Why, yes. How did you know that? Are you from the network? Are you doing a survey?"

  "No, no survey either. I'm John."

  "That was my son's name."

  "It still is."

  Her friendliness vanished. Looking at him suspiciously, she solemnly said, "My son is dead."

  "No, he's not." I'm not.

  "I don't think I want to talk to you."

  She started to close the door. He slapped his hand up onto it and held it fast. She struggled for a moment to shove the door closed. It wasn't a contest. Her strength apparently exhausted, she staggered back away from the door. The panel flew wide. John entered.

  "Wait. I'm not going to hurt you," he said in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. To validate his words, he stayed near the doorway, afraid that going any deeper into the apartment would alarm her further. It was time for the alternate approach that he had hoped he wouldn't need. He should have known better. He'd had it easy with Dr. Spae and Sue; they had both already known that John was really a changeling elf. "I've got some papers here you need to see."

  She backed away, putting a table between them.

  Really, Mrs. Reddy." He was surprised at how much it hurt to address her formally, but it seemed necessary. He had in go one step at a time. John produced a printout. "This is a i opy of the public records report filed on the Armory incident. It includes a bio on John Reddy. Look it over. Espe-i tally the physical data. The man who died in the museum was five inches shorter than your son."

  She wouldn't take the report. He put it down on the table, shoving it toward her. She stared at it as if it were something dangerous.

  "Whatever is in there is wrong," she said. "It must be a clerical error. Yes, that's it. Johnny died in the fire."

  "Look at these, then." He offered her another report and an ID card. The report he'd gotten out of public records. The card was one of the things he'd picked up from his old room the last time he'd gone looking for his mother. "The public database has the same data as the incident report, but they're both wrong. Look at the height on the ID card. You know that card's John's. You know how tall he was."

  She stared at the card, not at the data but at the picture. I lor expression softened. He started talking, reminding her about incidents, recalling things they had done together, and describing their old apartment. She'd know they were true. She'd know that only he could know about them. She stared nl the picture while he talked. Finally he ran down and slowly, very slowly, she looked up at his face. Her lip trembled.

  "Who are you? How do you know these things?"

  "I'm John, Mom."

  "No." She shook her head. "No. Johnny's dead."

  "I'm alive, Mom. Alive as ever, just different. It's kind of hard to explain."

  Her head shook steadily now. "I don't want to talk to you anymore. You're ... not right."

  Exasperated, John snapped, "What's not right is you not giving me a chance to explain."

  She started at the crack in his voice. "This is very cruel, what you are doing. Get out of here. If you don't go right now, I'll call down to security."

  "This isn't Rezcom 3, Mom. There's no security to call down to."

  She edged toward the end of the table away from him. "I'll scream. I will!"

  What a cruel joke. He'd finally gotten his reunion with his mother and she was going to scream and call the cops to get the crazed creepoid out of her life. Hell, this wasn't what he'd wanted. He looked at the terrified woman before him. She looked as though she might have a heart attack at any moment. Or go into screaming hysteria. This wasn't what he'd come here for.

  There didn't seem any point in staying, and there were a lot of good reasons for going. He headed for the door.

  There was a man in the hall, a big hard-looking guy who stared right at John. The hall lights were bright and John hadn't pulled his cap back on. He stood revealed as what he was, but the man didn't act surprised. He spoke in a matter-of-fact voice.

  "It's not a mask, is it?"

  "No, it isn't." Elf, human, what did it matter? John didn't have a home or family anywhere now. "What the hell is it to you?"

  "Profit."

  As John saw the gun start to come up, he dodged backward, into his mother's apartment. Something whizzed down the corridor, through where he had been standing. Whatever it was whirled and twirled and grew as it traveled, until it struck the wall at the corridor junction with a sticky splat. He had a good idea what it was; he'd seen vids of the Paris rioting in '03; the police had used guns that shot an immobilizing mass of gooey foam.

  The man in the hall swore. Marianne Reddy started to scream.

  "Get down!" John yelled at her. "Hide!"

  She didn't move, just stood screaming and trembling. John ,i.ti led toward her, intent on getting her out of the way. Reaching the table, he realized he'd forgotten to close the door. The gunman was in the doorway. He had a different weapon in his hand now, not a capture gun.

  "Don't move. Don't even breathe," he said. "Except when I tell you." John froze; he didn't dare do otherwise.

  "Very good," the gunman said. "Now, step away from the woman."

  "You won't shoot. You want me alive," John said, hoping lie was right.

  "It's the first choice, but it's not my only option."

  John wasn't about to bet his mother's life on the chance that this stranger wouldn't shoot. He stepped away.

  "You can stop yelling now, ma'am," the gunman told her.

 
I'm with the police. It's all right now."

  Marianne Reddy paid as much attention to him as she had to John. The gunman didn't look happy. He kept his gun pointed at John and indicated the door with his head.

  "Come on, you. We're leaving."

  John hesitated.

  "I could shoot her to shut her up," the man said.

  The gunman sounded like he just might. John edged past him into the corridor. The man followed him, closing the door; Marianne Reddy's screams were cut off. The gun disappeared into the man's coat pocket.

  "Don't get any ideas," he said. "I don't mind putting a hole in the coat. Now, put your hat on."

  "You're not a cop," John said, doing as he was told.

  The man chuckled. "It's a private firm."

  "Mitsutomo."

  "Nice guess."

  John felt like an idiot. "I should have known they hadn't given up."

  "I said it was a nice guess. I didn't say it was right. Come on, get moving. You and I have places to be."

  The gunman directed John toward the stairwell. The residential corridors that John had found pleasantly empty now seemed appallingly deserted. They encountered no one in the stairwell, either. Bypassing the main entry level, they went down another floor, through a utility corridor to a back entrance, and outside.

  "We walking?"

  "Panel truck. End of row."

  John saw the truck. The walk to it was long and open, the only cover being past the truck where a strip of buildings backed onto the parking lot. A lot of open space between them and the truck, plenty of chance to be seen—only this end of the parking lot was as deserted as the rezcom's corridors.

  John had to think of something, or this mook was going to drag him off to God knew where. He needed the cavalry to arrive, or a magic trick to—Magic? John didn't know of any magic that would stop a bullet, or make him fast enough to outrun one. But there were other kinds of magic, and he had an idea of what he might try.

  As they reached the truck John stumbled, going to his knee near the back of the track. The gunman stiffened, the muzzle of his weapon straining against the fabric of his coat. John had come very close to getting himself shot. He tugged at his boot lacing. "Boot lace is loose."

  "Fix it then. You almost got yourself shot. You might not be so lucky next time."

  "My thought exactly."

  Head bent, John worked on the lacing. Watching his captor, he tried to guess how gullible the man might be. If John got in the truck, he would lose his last opportunity to run. Time to take a chance.

  Touching on his own fear, John cast an audible glamour behind the man. A scream sounded. The gunman's head twisted to check it out. As soon as the man's eyes left him, John threw himself into a backward roll. He tucked around the corner of the truck, to put its bulk between him and the gunman. He conjured another glamour, the sound of running feet pounding toward the buildings, something to cover the sound of his own crabwise motion toward the truck's far side. The gunman appeared at the truck's fender, his pistol out. To John's relief, the man didn't look at him. The mook's attention was directed toward the apparent source of lohn's false sound. The weapon's muzzle shifted with the man's stony glare, searching the shadows in unison for his escaped prisoner. At the man's feet John stayed quiet, finding the shadows where he wouldn't be seen.

  After a very long time, the gunman shook his head, puzzled. "How the hell is he masking his thermal sig?" He stared into the darkness for another long time before putting his pistol away. "Next time," he muttered as he turned away.

  John felt him enter the truck. Was this the time to really run? He thought about the vehicle's rearview mirrors. No, the magic had worked so far; he'd trust it a bit longer.

  The truck started quietly, hinting that—-like its driver—it had more to it than its battered surface showed. John waited until the truck left the parking lot before standing up. He watched until it ran up the ramp and disappeared onto the highway. He was safe.

  But what about next time?

  Whoever the gunman was, he had tracked John to Marianne Reddy's place. Once John had feared that he would bring danger home with him, but he thought that those wild times were over. Clearly there was to be no end to them. If he tried again to convince Marianne Reddy that he was her son, he might bring the gunman or others like him. Such men might not be content to leave an old woman out of their affairs, especially if they figured out the connection between Jack the elf and Marianne Reddy. He couldn't do that to her. She might have forgotten him, but he couldn't forget her.

  He jumped when a voice spoke from behind him.

  "Nice use of glamours, Jack. loreneth taught you well."

  Bennett.

  John turned and glared at him. "Hell of a time to show up." "I knew you'd come here sooner or later."

  "Hope you've had a long, cold wait."

  "Not long, certainly not by any reasonable time scale. As to being cold, you know better than that. This weather's far too mild to affect elves like us."

  "I'm not an elf like you."

  Bennett smiled and raised an eyebrow. "You haven't slipped back into denial because of Shahotain's little game, have you?"

  "Game? What do you mean game?"

  "Plot. Scheme. Ploy. Machination. Call it what you will. His profit from it is fleeting. He will regret what he did to you."

  Was that anger on Bennett's face? John couldn't believe it. "Going to try the avenging father trick?"

  "Would that make you feel better about me?"

  "No. I'd know you were only doing it for whatever problems he caused you." Though John wouldn't mind seeing Shahotain get what was coming to him. "Why should I want anything to happen to Shahotain? He's done more for me than you ever have."

  "Meaning he gave you the disk that led you here? Where do you think he got that disk?"

  "Not from you."

  "Not directly. I could have arranged for you to have that information at any time. He used stolen knowledge to further his own ends."

  And you never do that. "If you knew where my mother was, why didn't you tell me when I asked?"

  Bennett gazed into the sky. He sighed. "And just how did it go, in there? No, you don't have to tell me, I can see the answer in your face. Still, it might have been worse. You're here, alive and free, and you now know that changelings can't go back to their old lives."

  "I knew that," John lied. "I know I can't go back. I just wanted her to know I'm not dead. That I still— What the hell's the point of telling you this?"

  "You need to say it. Isn't that reason enough? Get it out of your system. It's time to face the fact that Marianne Reddy is not part of the life of Jack, an elf. It's hard, I know—"

  John slapped away the hand Bennett reached toward him. "What the hell do you know about it!"

  "I understand better than you think," Bennett said, staring again at the sky. When he looked at John again his eyes glittered, despite his human guise. "I wanted to spare you this pain; the transition to knowledge is always hard."

  John didn't need the bastard's false sympathy. "Just leave methe hell alone!"

  "Very well." Bennett took a step backward, into the shadows beyond the streetlight, and was gone.

  Part 3

  DARKNESS COILED AROUND HIM

  For all the sustenance from the harbinger's feedings, Van Dieman still had a taste for good food such as Loch-Olber |prepared. Chef Gambino was quite inventive with the sauces he created to complement the lobster. Considering the trip he and his companion were going to take, he had decided to indulge himself, and Loch-Olber's was tailored to refined indulgences.

  The harbinger, nestling close and comfortable, enwrapped him in coils invisible to the ignorant mundane throng. It shifted against him slightly, stirring like a dog catching a familiar spoor in its sleep. He scented something too: a certain tang in the air, a scent of magic, or, more properly, a scent of magician. With senses attuned by his association with the harbinger, spotting the source was simplicity itself. An
unfamiliar man was being seated at a booth on the far side of the dining room. Though he was a stranger, his companion was not. Dozens of parties, political gatherings, and business conventions had acquainted Van Dieman with Pamela Martinez.

  He knew from his predecessor Nakaguchi's reports to the followers that Martinez had for some time been clandestinely investigating the rising energies and realities of the new age. The Dark Glass files on her suggested that she was continuing her futile work to contain the blossoming magic. That information, along with his own investigations, had revealed her part in the awakening and subsequent destruction of Quetzal. Van Dieman supposed that as a good Follower of the Glittering Path, he should be contemplating revenge against her, but he was not. Had the Feathered One still been among them, Van Dieman's position would not have become half as commanding. Looked at in a certain light, his current prominence was due to Martinez and her undercover network of magic haters.

  Everything he knew about Martinez suggested that she would be working against magic, but here she was consorting with a mage. Did she know the nature of the man with whom she shared her table? A fine irony if she did not. But she could be very aware of what the man was, and her presence here might not be coincidence. Could she have learned of Van Dieman's activities? Was she out to destroy him as she had Quetzal? Was the mage accompanying her a recruit in a strategy of fighting fire with fire? If so, she was making a mistake. Her companion's aura was weak, weaker than Van Dieman's had been even before he had the augmenting strength of the harbinger. If she intended to put her man against him, she would lose..

  He decided to finish his meal, and to observe them as he did. He noted what seemed to be a celebratory air. An affair was the obvious conclusion, but with a mage? Martinez was known for the force of her convictions, one of which was the distrust of all things magical. Could she put that aside to consort with a mage? It seemed unlikely, unless she had deeper reasons. But the longer he watched the more he became convinced that there was nothing more than a business relationship between the two. Whatever the case, something had gone well for them.

  If Martinez and a mage were celebrating, there must be something of interest in the cause. What might it be? He could set the usual assets in motion to search out the reason, or he could attempt to scry it out himself, but neither approach would give him a quick answer. He was here and they were here. He would try the simple, direct approach. If that failed to yield significant results, any data he gained would provide a springboard for one of the alternative methods,