Caine Black Knife

by Matthew Stover

  The vast curving screen that fills the far wall of the conference room shows a glowing skeletonized schematic of the vertical city. The schematic rotates slowly, displaying differently colored pinpoints of light: a virtual orrery of fourteen planets.

  “I, ah, must say, Michaelson,” muses the doughy troll that you call Administrator Kollberg, “you are taking all this rather, mmm, well . . .”

  You roll your head to the right, and without the slightest twist of emotion regard the nine inches of iron nail still jammed through your wrist. “It wasn’t exactly a surprise.”

  And I love how your voice sounds inside your head, even at a dull flat hum . . .

  “Well, yes. When you pull the spike yourself, online—oh, that will be very dramatic.”

  “I can hardly wait.”

  “Don’t let it concern you. You’ll get another round of injections before the retransfer. You’ll barely feel a thing. We dial down the dolorimetrics on the cube recordings anyway; no one wants to really feel your pain—the public wants to savor your suffering, not share it.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So think of this as an opportunity to do some real acting for a change. Make it convincing and move on. Staggering off into the darkness—”

  “I want to talk to Marc Vilo.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “My Patron. I want to talk to him.”

  Kollberg shifts his weight backward in the comfortable looking chair and lets his thick lips flap their way through a long, slow sigh. “I’ll take that tone from you once, Michaelson. But you’re not on Overworld now. Mind your place.”

  You close eyes that burn and sting. *From the air,* you tell yourself in silent monologue. *Something in the air.*

  Already you narrate your life.

  “Sorry, Administrator. Sorry. It was the meds talking. But please, sir, if you would only let me—”

  “Entertainer.” The plump Administrator rises and folds his soft pale hands in front of his crotch. “As I have explained, Businessman Vilo has already signed off on your new contract. He’s a very busy man.”

  “Please put a call through, Administrator. Please. He’ll take it. He will.”

  “He may. But he won’t change anything. He can’t; Studio operations are sacrosanct. Now. Here’s your escape.” Kollberg takes a few steps toward the head of the table. One of those soft pale hands unhitches itself from his crotch and clicks a pen-size control.

  The schematic of the vertical city dissolves into a new view, from the upland plateau side. One bright red star shines well away from the exit tunnel.

  “This is where you will retransfer. Once you have removed the spikes from your arm and your ankle—”

  “How am I supposed to have gotten all the way up there?”

  Kollberg looks at you.

  You swallow, and drop your eyes—a conditioned reflex? Or is the empty malice in his colorless gaze too much for the nerves of a mere Hari Michaelson? “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Please, Administrator. Continue.”

  “Well.” Kollberg clears his throat: a cough delicately indulgent as a cautious pedophile’s. “Actually, it’s a fair enough question. After you retransfer, you’ll cover the continuity gap in your Soliloquy. It doesn’t take much—just a phrase or two about the struggle to crawl all that way, and something about the confusion of the battle against Pretornio’s zombies covering your escape—”

  “But—” You shake your head, your face twisting to mirror the twist of sick anticipation in your stomach. “—but, well, I mean, first they’re not zombies—”

  “Oh, whatever, Michaelson, please don’t quibble—”

  “And there’s just no way I could have crawled that far in that kind of shape. Hell, I don’t think I could crawl that far now, meds or not—I don’t think I could crawl that far if I were healthy—”

  “It’s a silly objection, Michaelson. No one will care. After all, that ogrillo bitch practically healed you on the spot, didn’t she?”

  “Not exactly healed; I mean, look at me—”

  “Now, as you struggle away from the city, you’ll find a saddlebag just here—”

  He clicks the control again, and a new pinpoint lights up a few hundred virtual meters from the first.

  “—which you will theorize must have fallen from one of the horses during Kess Raman’s abortive attempt to flee—”

  “Are you serious?”

  “In that saddlebag are four canteens of water, as well as jerky and flatbread. There are also several vials of a cream which you will identify as a medicinal salve; when you rub it on your wounds, this will cover the effects of the intra-dermal time-dissolve antibiotic and steroid capsules we’ve injected along your spine. They’ll release over the next seven days, though you’ll hardly need them that long, as you shall see.”

  The twist on your face becomes a full wince; nausea thickens below your throat, and it can hardly all be from the antibiotics and steroid injections, can it? “Um, Administrator—?”

  Kollberg again clicks the control, and the virtual city shrinks into a vanishing perspective; a new star appears virtual kilometers away. “Roughly here—where you can easily arrive before daybreak—you’ll find two horses, which you will identify in Soliloquy as from the company’s remuda and theorize that they must have escaped from the others during the raid. Make up whatever names you like; it’s not important. One will be fully tacked and will have saddlebags of its own, also containing filled canteens and provisions, as well as some spare clothing and boots, so that you can dress yourself and bandage your wounds. Don’t worry about having to find them—we’ll transfer them in near enough your location that you’ll be able to hear their tack jingle—”

  “Administrator, please.” You duck as though you would bob and weave if you weren’t strapped to the motorbed. “Isn’t that a little . . . convenient? I mean, come on, sir—finding the saddlebag with exactly what I need—then a horse, with clothes and boots—not to mention that ogrilloi don’t let horses just wander off; horsemeat tastes like—”

  “Michaelson, this is a fantasy.” Kollberg sighs with exaggerated patience.

  “No one expects it to make sense. It’s not supposed to be realistic.”

  He clicks the control again, and the wall view dissolves to a colorfully illuminated map of the eastern Boedecken. “Now. You’re only seven days’ ride from the Khryllian outpost at North Rahnding; by switching horses and sleeping on horseback, you could make it in less than five—”

  “Five days? Sir, please—if you’ll only make the call to Businessman Vilo—”

  “Wait, wait; you haven’t heard the best of it, Michaelson.” Kollberg’s voice heats up, and a sheen of sweat slickens his upper lip. His eyes go squirrel-bright. “We will arrange for a Khryllian reconnaissance-in-force to be moving out into the fringes of the Boedecken; though I cannot guarantee the actual makeup, there is a strong chance that you should see at least five Knights, possibly as many as ten, and up to one hundred fifty armsmen—”

  “What good does that do anybody?”

  “You’ll encounter them less than three days out from the vertical city. You’ll tell them that the Black Knives have a captive Knight of Khryl . . .”

  Kollberg leans closer. His breath smells of lavender and orange mints.“Imagine the rescue, Michaelson. Imagine. Ten Knights. One hundred fifty lancers. Falling upon the Black Knives like a steel thunderbolt . . . with you as the advance scout, having received a Khryllian Healing for all your wounds. With you penetrating the camp to locate the prisoners, to prepare them for rescue. With you finally using all the skills of the Monastic assassin you are, to eliminate pickets and preserve the element of surprise . . .”

  “I can see why you like it.”

  “And this is why you’ll like it, Michaelson. This is why I went to Businessman Vilo; this is why I risk my career on an emergency transfer for an unknown Actor. A never-was.”

  Kollberg leans even closer. Under the sick-sw
eet pastilles, you can smell on his breath the blood-sugar problems that are bringing on his type 2 diabetes.

  “Can you say: first-handers?”

  And now you can’t breathe at all, and I’m sure it’s not from the smell. “Are you serious?”

  “Oh, yes. Oh, I am. I’ve been showing clips of your Adventure to a few . . . select connossieurs . . . already. As soon as you make contact with the Khryllians, we’ll be putting you on live. For the whole rest of the Adventure. Live.”

  “Live . . .” you echo. Your lips hang. You can no longer feel your toes, or your fingertips.

  “Because I see something in you, Michaelson. I saw it from the moment that buck stood up on the badlands. I know star power. You have it. And I saw it first.”

  As you stare at him, all you see now is the sweat beginning to collect in droplets on his face. “If you only knew how long I’ve been waiting to hear somebody tell me that.”

  If he only knew how what should have been the sweetest moment of your life somehow leaves your mouth full of dust and bitter ash.

  “I’m going to make you, Michaelson. I’m going to make Caine the star you deserve to be. And in the process, I’m going to make myself into the top Administrator in the whole damned Studio System. It all starts right here. But you have to play, Michaelson. I can make you go back, but I can’t make you be the Caine you need to be to make this work.”

  You lower your head and stare again at the spike. And I can only guess what you are thinking.

  Are you remembering that the whole time you’ve been back in the Studio—the whole time you’ve been back on Earth—from the tiny Winston Transfer chamber to the emergency infirmary to the recovery room to here, you have been given not so much as a glance outside? Because this is all you say here: all you have ever said: all you will ever say:

  *Not one window.*

  No glimpse of the world you were born into. The universe you had left, and to which you have been returned.

  It is at this moment that something within you unlocks. I feel it in your chest: as though an iron band fastened around your heart snaps open at the touch of a key in your mind. “I get it,” you say slowly. “When you rescued me, you weren’t saving my life. You were saving your career.”

  Kollberg actually grins. “Michaelson, you died the day you passed your Boards. If you’d given yourself up for dead back then, you’d already be a star.”

  You do not answer, for truth requires no reply.

  “All right,” you say after a moment. “All right.”

  Your left hand can make a fist. Your right can, too, and though the nerve-block handles the pain well enough, the slide of your wrist tendons around the nail twists you full of nausea.

  That is the nausea’s source.

  Isn’t it?

  “All right. It is what it is.”

  Kollberg offers a moist chuckle. “Most things are.”

  You nod toward the screen. “Give me back the vertical city, will you?”

  Kollberg clicks, and the schematic grows itself around the constellation of fourteen stars.

  “Those are the surviving humans?”

  “Mmm.”

  “How do you track them?”

  “By their thoughtmitters, of course.”

  You only stare.

  Kollberg’s lower lip bulges. “I’m sorry—was this a mystery?”

  Again you can’t quite manage a deep breath. “They’re all Actors? All of them? The porters—everybody?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “Pretornio?”

  “Livia Murphy, out of New York.” Kollberg manipulates his control, and the screen flares with a view of the Black Knife camp seen through a veil of blue-white flame, while hidden speakers burst to life with the crackle and spit of burning fat and the bone-conducted distortion of Pretornio’s voice, chanting her Old High Lipkan.

  Another twist of the control cancels the audio, and Kollberg sighs. “Quite the pity, actually. Had any of her own Studio’s Administrators a hint she was capable of such power, she may have had a more . . . extensive career.”

  “Holy crap . . .” You lie motionless on the bed, cold and once again numb. “It is a snuffer . . .”

  “Oh, please.” Kollberg looks disgusted. “Grow up, Michaelson. The Studio doesn’t produce snuffers. That’s an urban legend.”

  “All Actors,” you murmur. “Every one of them . . .”

  “Of course. How do you think your bloody expedition was organized? You think it’s easy to place Actors on real treasure hunts?”

  “Why didn’t—but we didn’t know—”

  “Because you’re Actors.” Kollberg flicks a piece of imaginary lint off the sleeve of his Administrator’s chlamys. “Even with unbreakable conditioning-blocks and the most expensive training in the history of Earth, you just can’t stay in bloody character. Look at you and Bergmann—the instant you’re alone together, you’re reminiscing about your damned school days. I mean, really.

  Do you have any idea how much editing we’ll have to do in that sequence?”

  “Bergmann? You mean Marade?”

  He nods. “Olga Bergmann, out of Vienna. By the way, the sex was superb; we’re keeping that. Very nicely played, on your part; you have an eye for neurotic weakness. If she lives through the rescue—and you do, of course—we’ll slot you for some team-up Adventures. Banging the big Nordic blondes always goes down well. Oh, and speaking of going down—next time, make sure she gives you head. I’ll speak to Vienna about it. You can sixty-nine if you want, but really it’s better if she just does you. You’ve heard of the sexual position sixty-eight? ‘Give me a blowjob, and I’ll owe you one.’ Ha-hrm. Especially if she’s on her knees. That’s nuclear when it’s a powerful woman; the more submissive, the—”

  “Administrator, for Christ’s sake—”

  “Entertainer.” Kollberg leans on the word. His little piggy eyes have receded into his face. “The proper response to a direct order is ‘Yes, Administrator,’ or, informally, ‘Yes, sir.’ ”

  He waits.

  Vomit burns the back of your throat.

  Kollberg says, “Let’s give a try, shall we? Entertainer?”

  Your jaw locks down so hard your teeth ache. Your throat clamps shut. You manage to say, “Yes, Administrator,” anyway.

  You’ve done harder things. Can you remember any right now?

  Your gaze goes from the spike through your wrist to the fleshy curve of Kollberg’s cheek and back again. *The real difference between him and Crow-mane ,* you monologue, *is he’s too fucking smart to give me a free shot.*

  And, of course, that Kollberg has offered you something to lose. “Yes, Administrator.” It’s easier the second time. It gets easier every time. “All right, Administrator.”

  “Now. Let’s start again.”

  You grind words out between your teeth. “I still need to talk to Marc Vilo.

  Please, sir.”

  Kollberg shakes his head. “I thought I explained—”

  “You did. But you don’t understand, Administrator. I’m not trying to get out of this. I’m not trying to get out of anything.”

  Kollberg settles back into his chair and folds his hands over the soft curve of his belly. “I’m listening.”

  “We’re on the same side here, Administrator. You want Caine to be a star. I want Caine to be a star. More than anything. More than being alive. Being an Actor—that’s all I’ve lived for since I was ten years old. And you—well, I don’t know you. But you’re what, forty? And you’re still putting together crapass straight-to-cube Adventures with packs of no-names? Your career’s not going exactly the way you hoped either, I bet.”

  Kollberg’s only response is a squint that seems to suck his eyeballs all the way to the back of his skull.

  “I’m guessing this Adventure’s the biggest you’ve ever done. It is, isn’t it? And sometime before we all got bagged—maybe back when I went walking out that gate—you saw a whole new future open up in front of
you.”

  You can’t get your teeth to come apart, but you can unleash a facsimile of Caine’s grin. “I’m reading your fucking mind, aren’t I?”

  Kollberg’s lips squeeze themselves into a liver-colored asshole.

  “Pulling me was the biggest chance you’ve ever taken. That’s why you’re down here. That’s why you’re bullying me into this horseshit escape thing. You bet that brand-new future on me.”

  Words squirt through those lips like a fart. “If I did?”

  “You’re gonna lose.”

  Kollberg lurches forward, red flush climbing his face. “The difference between us, Michaelson, is that I can lose and live. Remember I can put you back right where I found you.”

  And this, My Love, is where you become My Love. This is where I know you are truly Mine. When you let the grin fade. When you let your eyes go soft, and you let your voice drop like a lover’s. When you say, “That’s what I want.”

  “Eh?”

  “Administrator, you’re not a real Studio man. Not really.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “I’m not trying to be impertinent, please, Administrator, but—where did you come from? What branch of Service?”

  “Health care,” Kollberg admits reluctantly. “I ran St. Luke’s Ecumenical, in Chicago. But I’ve always enjoyed—”

  “Yeah. Everybody does. But listen: popping in a cube now and then isn’t the same. It doesn’t mean shit. Adventures Unlimited is my whole life, Administrator. I have breathed Adventures in and breathed them out since I was old enough to work secondhander gear. Before I was an Actor, I was a student of Acting. Before I was a student, I was a fan. A real fan. Do you have any idea what that means? What it is to be a fan?”

  “Well, I hardly think—”

  “Fan is short for fanatic. You get it? This isn’t just a hobby for me. Or a career path. This is my fucking religion.”

  “Religion.” That liver-colored asshole drops the echo like a soft turd.

  You let passion rise in your voice: the iron band that had unfastened within your chest goes red, then white, then melts and burns away. “When you’re a fan, it eats your life. There’s nothing else for you, you get it? Administrator, everything I know came from Adventures—shit, the only reason I learned to read was that there just aren’t enough good real Adventures, so I started reading ones people just made up—then I started reading the shit they based those Adventures on, and—well, I just never stopped. It’s all I ever thought about. It’s still all I think about.”