Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3)

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Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 8

by Michael Shean


  Bobbi said nothing.

  “And after you saw him a second time and left, the body stayed with Monsieur Knightley. What was it that you brought to him, I wonder? Who – or what, perhaps – was that girl?”

  At once Bobbi became aware of Violet’s closeness, and the anger radiating silently from the other woman’s body. She had told Violet what Mother’s plan had been when sending the Princess Dolls over, or at least what Cagliostro had told her of it, this plan in which Bobbi had been an unwitting part. “I don’t like to discuss past business.” Bobbi voice came out flat. “Someone sent me out to collect a body and bring it to him, that’s all. Good money, and no questions.”

  Silence hung between them, stifling and heavy, and no one moved for a while.

  Pierre shrugged. “It is only curiosity from which I speak. And of course, I understand. But this man, this Knightley, he has surfaced again, and once again he is in Seattle – but not in the Verge, running a service for those who can afford him, oh no.” He opened his eyes wide in an impressive gesture. “He has just opened a clinic in Tenleytown.”

  Bobbi arched a brow. “Tenleytown, huh? Well, they’ve gotten large enough that a doctor of his caliber would be welcome, black clinic or no.”

  “Indeed.” Pierre said. “I am told that the civil reclamation effort has been quite good to them. A salvager’s paradise, as it were.”

  “A lot less in the way of ferals now,” Violet said.

  Thanks largely to Redeye. The memory of the dead cyborg made her shift slightly in her seat. And to us. “All right. Thanks for letting me know, Pierre. Maybe we’ll catch up sometime. You said there was a second matter?”

  “Oui.” Pierre leaned forward a bit, and as he did, he collected about himself an air of great hesitation. “As it happens, because you are asking if people are looking for you, I should like to ask if you have heard from your associate – ah, former associate, I should say – Monsieur Scalli?”

  Bobbi and Violet exchanged looks again. “I haven’t. We really don’t talk anymore. Why do you ask?”

  “Oh?” Pierre blinked. “You have not lost him, I hope?” He glanced aside at Violet and winked. “He’s a very tall fellow, the monsieur. Very easy to spot. “He rose and sidled to the coffee maker, pouring the rich, dark liquid into one of the gilded cups that sat beside the machine on the table. “We were in communication about a consignment of hardware, nothing more. But I have not heard from him. It has been a week since we were to discuss the sale, you see.” Pierre gestured to the pot. “May I interest you in a cup?”

  A frown found Bobbi’s lips. “No, thank you. I guess I can’t help you, Pierre. I’m not really his keeper anymore. Not that I ever was in the first place.”

  “I see.” Pierre sounded somewhat disappointed as he returned to his seat and took a sip of coffee. “Well, I suppose that’s that, then. If you should speak with him, however, you’ll pass on my message, non?”

  “Of course.” Bobbi got to her feet. “So that’s it then, I guess.”

  “If you say.” Pierre took another sip, watching the two of them from over the rim of his cup. “How long will you be staying in Paris?”

  “Undetermined as of yet.” Bobbi smiled.” Thanks, Pierre. We’ll talk soon, all right?”

  “À tes souhaits,” Pierre said, and remained on the sofa as Bobbi and Violet took their leave. Before the door closed, she thought she heard the faintest spitting sound from behind her.

  They walked along the avenue, silent in the warm Parisian autumn as they tracked their way back north toward the Arc de Triomphe. The great old monument stood as a giant’s plaything in the center of the Place Charles de Gaulle, scarred from errant rocket strikes during the latest war. In the distance, beyond the beautiful old buildings of the city’s heart, the clawing spires of modern towers seemed mercifully dwarfed in the shadow of its majesty. Bobbi thought of the Space Needle back home, and its pitiful little enclosure surrounded by the mall blocks and office structures. Here, at least, the cage that enclosed history was big enough to let in some air.

  When they stopped at the mouth of the avenue, looking up at the great marble arch, Violet spoke. “This is where it all started.”

  Bobbi turned. “What did?”

  “The whole thing.” Violet, hands in her pockets, turned a little Bobbi’s way. “Well, not here here, but Versailles isn’t far away.”

  “Yeah…“Bobbi blew out a breath as traffic passed in an ozone buzz. Paris banned all hydrogen or hydrocarbon vehicles; the city was all electric. She thought about what the French court must have been like when the Yathi first arrived, all powdered wigs, cruel and pale as death. No wonder the Mother of Systems incarnated here and none so much as blinked an eye. Considering what she’d read about the time, Bobbi could easily imagine how the ‘new’ Madame de Pompadour would have been so popular. She wondered where Jeanne Poisson died and the Mother of Systems became her, what had happened to break her spirit. “They looked down on her when she was in the court, you know.”

  “Who?” Violet blinked.

  “Jeanne.” In Bobbi’s outfit, they often called Madame de Pompadour by her first name to separate the woman from the monster she became. It humanized things, and reminded them that there had been ten thousand years and more of uninterrupted human history before the pale wrath of the dead star descended upon them.” I wonder what it was like for her here. Was she already converted when she came to court? Was it when she was fucking the king?”

  “I don’t remember things like that,” said Violet. “I don’t think the thing that stole me was old enough to know who the Mother was, short of official history. Mother goes back…oh, some three thousand years, you remember.”

  “I remember.” Bobbi nodded. Before Jesus, there was Mother. Dad would’ve loved to know that. It certainly would have turned him off religion. Which was the problem with him, of course. There would have been nothing to replace the zeal for God back then but alcohol and whatever redneck pursuits he cared for. Might have ended up seeded himself, and then where would she be? “Leave it to a civil servant to fuck things up for everybody, I guess.”

  “A civil administrator.” Violet flicked a glance Bobbi’s way. “Don’t forget, that’s like, president, kind of. And she was the best one they had.”

  “The craziest one they had,” Bobbi said.

  Violet shrugged. “Yeah, true. But that’s politics for you.”

  Politics, indeed. They had learned in the last four years, between talks with Cagliostro and with former implantees, that the Yathi existed in city-states before their star began to falter. Their civilization was more or less a confederation of highly advanced hives. They had evolved from creatures somewhat similar to bees and wasps after a fashion, and the vehement tribalism that consumed insect hives had followed them into their civilized age. A council of male and female creatures led each hive, an arrangement that echoed the old structure of “first pairs” that once dominated a hive’s genetic pool. Over time, however, these representatives ceased to be mating pairs. They became something akin to an elected council, and the Mother of Systems had sat on the council of the largest hive of all. Though she held the title of civil administrator, she was also an extremely ambitious and intelligent member of a race already rich in such characteristics. When planetary telescopes discovered the stellar instabilities that would doom their world, she convinced the ruling councils of the various hives to form a unified government. They called her the Mother of Systems in part because she had given birth to their modern government as well as the plan that would scout a new world for habitation, and in so doing, ultimately save the species – or at least the best portion of it – from incineration.

  But not from her.

  “Politics,” Bobbi said. “It always comes down to that, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” Violet leaned in and wound an arm around her waist. “You’re worried about Scalli, huh.”

  Bobbi didn’t look at her. “Shouldn’t I be? He was my best
friend at one point.”

  “I know.” Violet gave her a squeeze. “I’m sorry. I want to eat the motherfucker for what he said to you. What he’s done. But you know I won’t.”

  “To eat human flesh is an abomination, you said. “A faint smirk lined Bobbi’s words.

  “Yeah, well.” Violet shrugged. “He’s too skinny now anyway. And it would make you sad.”

  “You’re too good to me.”

  Violet squeezed her and grinned. “You just keep that in mind.”

  They laughed a little before falling silent, standing by the venerable traffic circle and its ancient centerpiece. The cars went by, their engines only adding to the quiet between the two women.

  “We should go back to the safe house,” Bobbi said.

  “And then?” Violet untangled herself from Bobbi and slipped her hands in her pockets.

  “Then we take stock of everyone, tell them what’s up. We try our best to get a hold of Scalli. And I need to talk to Cagliostro, too.”

  “To figure out what’s going on?”

  “To kick his ass between his shoulders such as it exists. I want to know why he’s not been talking to us. Then we can figure out what’s going on.”

  She felt a chill then, as if some small wind had blown through from the city’s past, when the world still had real seasons. Bobbi would do a lot for a little winter now.

  espite all the synthetic meat the Yathi had jammed into his head, Tom still had vivid dreams.

  Usually about home, about Baltimore. He dreamt of his mother, who used to lead him down the gray streets on one of her many shopping expeditions. She was always buying things. It made his dad furious, and sometimes he would hit her before he would chuck the stuff out or make her take them back. Sometimes he hit Tom, too, but the dreams never touched on that. He dreamed always of the happy times, with his father gone at work and he and his mother visiting the malls. So much color, so much light. So much better than the small rooms of their condominium, which barely kept any trace of the items his mother so desperately tried to fill them with.

  Instead, his eyes opened again to the dim Swiss sky, the bleak walls of another alley, of the dead sign of Bar Skorpion standing cold and drained in its bracket above the back door. Cold seeped into his awareness, the wetness of the evening followed, bringing with it the smell of ozone and scorched hair. He also became aware of the timer in his head, the one the mystery voice had given him.

  Only thirty-seven seconds had elapsed. Plenty of time left with which to get away.

  He rose to his feet with difficulty, swaying on the spot. A void shadowed his senses, something subtle, deep and far away – the absence of the Seal, which had, at least for the moment, been disabled by the direct application of high-energy current. No doubt he would need a lot of rest soon so the auto repair systems could truly regenerate his body. But for now…

  The back door of the bar swung open. A burly man emerged, looking like a television gangster in his untailored gray suit, cheap gold jewelry and his affected scowl. He found Walken standing there, pale and strange, dirty, and said something in German that suggested he did not like what he saw.

  Walken stared at him. The man wore a Unicom band on his wrist, a Mektrex product that combined a phone and short-ranged network terminal in an integrated unit. It was easily the most expensive thing the man had on him, made of gleaming synthetic onyx with a Greek key motif in silver. It had been released in the years since his capture, but he had no problem recognizing it. “I need to make a call. Give me your Unicom.”

  Whether or not the man actually knew English, the mention of the band around his wrist drew an angry reply. He stepped forward, lifting his arm in a backhand strike, only to find Walken’s hand clutched around his forearm.

  “I really must insist.” Walken gave the man’s arm a squeeze – he did not wish to harm him, but the timer drained away at a precipitous speed. A little pain would direct him. “Give me your Unicom. Please.” At the word “please,” he squeezed a little harder, and the man let out a grunt of pain. He raised his free hand in preparation for another blow, but when Walken did the same, he thought better of it, and instead he reached up to take the bracelet off his wrist.

  “Danke,” Walken said, trying his best to scrounge through his memories and dig up some scrap of serviceable language. He strapped on the Unicom and took off down the alleyway, leaving the other man gaping in his wake.

  The maze of alleyways spooled out in front of him. He did not know where his path led, but kept to the backstreets with ease, terrifying homeless people and the like as he hurtled forward, a pale smear of motion. With the Seal disabled, he could move with impunity, and did not stop until he reached the gloomy piers that stretched along the northern bend of the Aare. There, hunkered in the shadow of a chain of storage barns, he stroked the Unicom’s surface to activate it, hoping a biometric security system wouldn’t lock him out.

  He was lucky – the man might have enough money to have the device, but he wasn’t smart enough to secure it. A small holographic display appeared, which he manipulated with programmed ease. It had to be programming. He had no experience with the device otherwise. Walken pushed this and a thousand other questions to the back of his mind and called the number the voice had given him, illuminated only by the pale glow of the unit’s holo-emitter, and waited for a response.

  On the fourth ring, a display panel winked into view. No video appeared, only a panel of static.

  “Mr. Walken,” said a voice, deep and sonorous like thunder even through the tiny speaker membrane. “I’m glad to see that you managed to get a hold of us.”

  Walken nodded. “I’m afraid I’m a little different than the last time anyone saw me.”

  “Not quite so different as you might expect.” A stiffness infused in his tone that Walken could not identify. “Are you hurt? Can you travel?”

  “Yes, but…“Walken considered the count in his head. They would have converged on the spot some twenty minutes ago. “I need to get out of the city. Can you please tell me what’s going on?”

  “It will be easier to explain in the air,” the voice replied. “Can you get to the Demolition Zone?”

  Walken considered a moment. From the north shore of the northern bend of the river, the blasted plain of the Old City of Berne stretched, the devastation of the past War plain. The irony of its name did not evade him, a Seattle native. Nothing old survived intact in this world anymore. “I might be able to make one of the bridges.”

  “No, don’t do that. They will be watching for you.” A pause. “Take the river.”

  He looked from the quays to the black, polluted water between there and the Zone. “I will do it. I swam the river before, the last time I tried to escape.”

  “I know. And you should move quickly.”

  Walken got to his feet and frowned. “What if they’re waiting for me there?”

  “All avenues of escape are anticipated,” the voice said, “so you will need to be quick and stealthy. I’m having someone pick you up in twenty minutes.”

  Walken looked surprised. “From the ground?” Berne had a forest of security gates ringing the city borders, much like Seattle had keeping the Old City from the Verge. “They’ll be waiting for you there.”

  “Deliverance will come from the air,” replied the mystery conspirator. “And do not worry about civil defenses. I have accounted for those as well.”

  The concept of swimming the polluted river made him hesitate, but only for a moment – he more considered the possibility of what else might be there than simple polluted water. During his first attempted escape, one of the damned centipede war machines found him in the water and secured him. The thought of being dragged back down into the dark again, embraced by metal claws tightened his throat.

  But it’s not as if he had much in the way of choice. Walken forced his attention back from memory and to the floating square of static. “I’ll see you in twenty minutes.”

  “It will not
be me, but an associate. We will talk when you are clear of the city.” With that, the holographic window disappeared.

  He looked across the water once more at the remnants of the landscape on the other side. While the city itself had been largely reconstructed, the Berne Civil Demolition Zone remained as the war had left it. It had once been the heart, the original incarnation of the city. At some point, fearing defeat, one of the five PMCs fighting over the region paid to have a satellite pulled out of orbit and hurled at the area. What didn’t burn up hit the canton like a small nuke, flattening it. A massive crater lay in the center, around it a black, pocked plain. Toxic dust from the satellite’s power plant saturated everything, making the whole area rather unpleasant for humans to live in. Given ready availability of other real estate that remained environmentally clean, the city planners had so far decided to leave the Zone to the past.

  Walken squared his shoulders and turned off the Unicom. A swim wouldn’t hurt it, nor would it bother him. He didn’t even have to breathe for long periods, as he discovered from his last plunge. Only his brain needed oxygen, after all. He apparently had a sizable reservoir. He also had a great deal of questions, and a massive deficit of options. As Walken walked across a ribbon of tarmac toward the piers, he wondered if he would ever be able to get a full tally of just what his body was capable of.

  He stripped down to the thin shirt and boxer briefs he had stolen, and descended into the Aarne. The cold water smelled faintly of sulfur and gasoline. His eyes adjusted as they opened in the dark, revealing a landscape made up not of the cat-eye greens of night-vision filters, but the grayscale contours of a sonar map. Somewhere in his body, an ultrasonic beacon mapped the river around him. He played dolphin, pushing off from the bank in bare feet, and propelling himself forward with a powerful breaststroke.

  His limbs were stronger than he realized, and he crossed the river with excellent speed. Here at least he felt grateful for his body, for the lack of a need to breathe and the easy grace his elongated limbs gave him in the water. He almost enjoyed it. Almost. The mention of sensor buoys in the river and the memory of the gleaming centipede kept his head on a swivel, so to speak, taking in the sonar panorama with the utmost attention. But as he crossed, he sensed nothing, and soon the far bank of the river loomed like a wreckage-studded wall ahead of him.

 

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