Slowly, gently, Jack ran his fingers over the top surface, then over the edges and along the sides, his senses alert, looking for the slightest twinge. Blankness. He turned it over and proceeded to do the same thing with the lower, slightly bubbled surface. It was inert.
He stood considering. Okay, maybe it was because of what the thing was made of. Maybe this strange metal denied the accumulation of the type of energy he worked with. That was one plausible explanation. Could alien energies affect the human psyche? But then that didn’t make sense either. Plenty of people had handled this thing. Stepping around the other side of the desk, he rummaged around, looking for something. Ah, there it was. He knew he kept a knife in there somewhere. He lifted it out and opened it, looking at the short blade, considering, and then leaned over the artifact. It was only the underneath. Pressing the very tip of the knife to the surface, he applied gentle pressure. He sucked in his breath. The knife tip had gone in slightly. Quickly he lifted it away. As he watched, the tiny mark he’d made faded and disappeared. No, that couldn’t be right. He leaned forward and scored a line with the knife tip, a long scratch in the undersurface, applying even, heavy pressure. It left a visible mark. And then—it took a little longer—but as he watched, the same thing happened. What had been a visible scratch a moment before quickly faded.
“Shit,” he said. If this object had lasted for all that time unaffected by the elements, by the passage of time, he just shouldn’t be able to mark it with an ordinary knife. Or maybe that was the way it worked. Maybe it repaired itself, fixed itself. The problem was, it reminded him of something else, something that was all around him. There was a real suspicion starting to grow in his mind.
“Dark,” he said. Time to try one more thing to test it out. The windows opaqued and the lights dropped. He carried the artifact over to the sleep couch and stripped off his shirt and trousers, draping them carefully over the stand he had programmed just for that purpose. Well, this time he had something to work with, so he was going to work. Moving the artifact to the side, he lay back on the couch, then carefully lifted the light metal tablet and placed it on his chest. He reached up, feeling for the inducer pads, applied them to his temples, then linked his fingers above the artifact, holding it in place in the center of his chest.
“Begin.”
The waves pulsed through him, starting to work at his consciousness, pushing him down, further, further. The object was cold and smooth against his skin, resisting the warmth of his flesh.
Darkness. Waves. Lapping against his thoughts. Deeper still.
He was back on Mandala. At least he thought it was Mandala. The brightness of the sky made him wince. An open featureless plain stretched around him. The sky was right. The plain looked right, just as it had before in the dreams. He turned slowly, looking for some indication that he was not misreading the location. Flexing his fingers, he realized suddenly that he was no longer holding the artifact. Okay, that was bizarre. Usually, if he used a physical object as a dream prompt, it would come with him into the dreamscape, guiding him. Sometimes larger, sometimes smaller, there was normally a dream representation of what was giving him the cues.
Jack concentrated, slightly disconcerted by this absence. He tried to will the artifact into existence, holding his hands in front of him, visualizing its appearance between them. After a while he gave up. That wasn’t going to happen. He looked around again, searching, but the empty expanse of plain still stretched around him, nothing breaking up the smooth, rolling ground.
Jack muttered. Even the dreams were starting to fail him. He picked a direction at random and started walking. He walked and he walked. It seemed like he crossed miles, but still the landscape stayed the same. Slight rises and dips in the ground were the only thing to break up the continuing sameness. Eventually he stopped. This was getting him nowhere.
“Where are you going, Jack?”
He turned slowly, toward the sound of the voice. It had come from directly behind him. It was Talbot—the “before” Talbot.
“Well, it looks like I’m going nowhere fast,” said Jack. He gave himself a quick frown. What had made him say that?
Talbot threw back his head and laughed. It was a deep belly laugh that shook his entire frame.
“What?” said Jack.
Talbot struggled to regain control, looking as if he was going to burst into laughter again. “Oh, that’s good, Jack. Oh, that’s so good. Nowhere fast.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
Talbot turned and started wandering away. Jack could hear him talking to himself, saying “Nowhere fast” over and over and shaking his head, occasionally chuckling. And then, Talbot was gone. He was alone again on the empty plain.
Jack turned and started walking again. For some reason, he knew he had to walk. The ground started to rise in front of him. Step after step he climbed the gentle slope, and as he traveled the angle grew steeper. Finally he stopped. Nowhere fast. This was getting him nowhere fast too.
Quickly the sky darkened, the light slipping away, not like a sunset, but as though someone had slowly turned a dimmer across the landscape. He glanced up. A black sky was peppered with stars. He half expected this to turn into a flying dream again, but it didn’t. Talbot’s laughter came again from somewhere in the distance.
He concentrated on the artifact again, seeing if he could force the dream into some sort of shape that made sense. The darkness grew darker. No. That wasn’t what he wanted.
But then he was somewhere else. The realization came to him slowly. The darkness had made the transition imperceptible. He was in a room. Featureless. Four walls. A ceiling. Low light. There were noises coming from an adjoining room. Jack reached out one hand, feeling for a door, and found it. Carefully he opened it and looked out. A wide, dimly illuminated space stretched out in front of him. Long benches stretched across the wide room, a lab or something, and bits and pieces of things lay scattered across the surfaces. The space was windowless, and what meager lighting there was, was directed down over the benches. The objects lying scattered in seemingly random order across the bench tops were just that—objects. He couldn’t tell what they were. He poked his head farther through the doorway. He was about to walk over and start inspecting these things, when something else caught his attention.
Over in one corner, there was more light. One of the benches was brightly illuminated by some lamps. A couple of large machines sat in the corner next to the illuminated space. In front of the bench stood a familiar rotund figure, dressed in a white coat. Hervé Antille.
“So fast, these new ships,” said Hervé. He turned to face Jack, breaking into a wide smile. “So fast. They really can go nowhere fast.” He threw back his head and laughed. “Nowhere fast.” He tapped the side of his nose with one finger, then beckoned Jack closer.
Taking the cue, Jack crossed between the benches and moved up to stand in front of Hervé. Hervé looked him up and down, still grinning. “Yes, very good,” he said. He waved his hands at the two large machines. “Wonderful what you can do these days,” he said. “What would you like? A bag? Some luggage?” He threw back his head and laughed again. His belly jiggled. The laughter stopped and Hervé lowered his face, fixing Jack with a serious expression. “Anything you want,” he said. He reached across to the closest machine and pulled open a door. “Here, for you,” he said.
Jack stepped forward, leaning closer to look inside the open door. Inside sat the travel luggage Billie and he had taken to Mandala. Jack frowned and turned. Hervé laughed. “Anything you want,” he said.
Jack shook his head.
Hervé turned back to the bench. In front of him lay the artifact. He beckoned Jack closer, and leaned over it. As Jack watched, he reached out with one hand and twisted some of the designs on its surface with his fingers. They changed, staying in the new shapes impressed upon them.
“Where do you want to go?” said Hervé. This time he was peering at Jack with narrowed eyes.
&n
bsp; Again Jack shook his head.
“Nowhere fast,” said Hervé, and laughed. “Like everyone else.”
And Jack was awake.
As he peeled the pads from his temples, shifted the artifact from his chest and slowly sat up, there was more than a suspicion starting to form in his head, and the possibility amused him. “Lights,” he said. He remembered the way Hervé had reacted when he’d even suggested that he acquire just the smallest thing from the site.
He looked down at the artifact and slowly smiled, running his hand over its cool hard surface. Yes, it was very good. Very good indeed. Billie was going to like it too.
He retrieved the greasy cloth from where he’d dropped it, carefully rewrapped the artifact, and slid it away out of sight. That would do for the time being. Now it was time to get some proper sleep.
Twenty-One
The next morning, Jack’s mood was buoyed by the previous evening’s revelation. He wandered around the kitchen humming while he got his first coffee of the day in process. His sleep had been deep, populated by dreams, but dreams that were just the normal workings of his subconscious mind, nothing to lead him down a further path of discovery. Billie wandered in looking disheveled, and stood watching him, her morning scowl firmly in place.
“So what’s wrong with you?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, something must have happened. What’s made you so happy?”
“Hmmm?” he said. “Oh, I think I’ve worked some things out. It came to me last night. Everything is not as it seems, Billie. Everything is not as it seems.”
She grimaced at him and pushed past, pulling out her breakfast things. It was a bit early yet for him to drop the bombshell on her. He wanted her to be well and truly awake. He grabbed his coffee and headed into the living room, found himself a place on the couch, and waited for her to get through her morning ritual.
There was another advantage to the plan that was starting to take shape in his head. If Outreach and Van der Stegen were truly involved in this whole mess, then making sure they didn’t get the artifact either was another bonus. Any way he could frustrate their efforts was a good thing. He still hadn’t forgotten what made that particular outfit tick, and there was no way he could have imagined that he’d have an opportunity to get back at them. It wasn’t as if he was carrying around a grudge—it was more that they deserved to have things work against them occasionally. If he, Jack Stein, could be the one to make that happen, then that was all the better. Outreach, Landerman, all of that type deserved what they got. It had even gotten to the point now where he wasn’t too worried about his fee, but he was going to make damned sure he collected, regardless of how this whole thing turned out. He sipped at his coffee, contemplating. Some ideas were starting to form, even though he hadn’t quite worked out how he was going to handle all the finer points yet. He would need Billie’s help, of course. Making everything believable was the key and of course, timing. Timing would be everything.
It took a while, but at last Billie seemed as if she was ready to hear what he wanted to tell her. He called her in to the living room to sit down. She avoided the couch again and instead took the chair opposite.
“After everything happened last night, I had a session, Billie.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I did some work with the artifact. Some dream stuff. It gave me some clues and I think I know what we have to do now.”
“Uh-huh . . .”
He held his hands out, palms up, one on either side. “How do you make someone stop wanting something?”
She shook her head.
“You give it to them.” He closed his fingers into fists, then opened one hand again.
“Huh?”
“Well, Landerman wants the artifact, Farrell wants it. Probably someone else as well. All we have to do is give it to them.”
Billie looked outraged. “You can’t.”
“Ahhh, but here’s the trick,” he said. “You give it to them, but you don’t.”
“I don’t get it. You can’t give it to them. It belongs at the university. You’ve got to send it back, Jack.” There was an almost pleading tone in her voice now. “You can’t let them have it.”
He grinned. “That’s right. And someone else has already had the same idea.”
She was frowning again.
He opened his other hand. “You give it to them, but you don’t give it to them.” He fixed her with a steady look. “I think the artifact’s a fake.”
She took a couple of seconds to process that. “But how. . . ?”
“I’m not really sure. I should have gotten something big from it, but I felt nothing. That’s what made me suspicious in the first place. I took it into the office and used it as a dream prompt.”
“So . . .”
“And then I made a couple of connections. It was the Copy Shop that did it, finally.”
She pulled her knees up, looking confused. “I still don’t get it.”
“I think the real artifact is still safe and sound on Utrecht at the university. Probably in the hands of Dr. Hervé Antille. I think what we have here is a reproduction. A very good copy, but a copy all the same. I have the idea that it’s probably not an exact copy either. If I’m right, whoever copied it has changed something, maybe something about the pattern on the top, something that makes it different from what it’s supposed to be.”
She looked into the distance, thinking. “But why would someone do that?” she said finally.
Jack stood, breaking into a smile again. “Because whoever did it is very clever.”
Billie sighed. “Stop playing games, Jack. Just tell me.”
Jack nodded. “All right. This is how I think it happened. Talbot had some contact at the university, someone who could get him material from the site, or at least said he could, which isn’t quite the same thing. That someone would have to be reasonably high up in the archeological chain to have access to the proper parts of the university. I think that that person is Hervé Antille. You saw yourself how he was about the site, how important he thought it was.” He’d started pacing again.
“So . . .” he continued. “Whether it’s Hervé or not, it doesn’t matter, but it would make sense. He keeps on popping up in the dreams about Mandala and the artifact. So, just say it is Antille. He knows that there are some pretty powerful people wanting to get this thing. He knows that they have massive resources and, at least in the case of Landerman, commitment. They won’t stop. So, how does he stop them, how does he turn them away from wanting it?”
Her eyes widened. “He gives it to them.”
“Uh-huh . . . but he doesn’t give it to them. He gives them something that they think is the artifact.”
She was sitting up straighter on the chair now, a look of revelation on her face. “And he makes a copy, just like they copy things at the Copy Shop.”
“Sure. He has the technological resources of a university to do it. Why not? At the Copy Shop, they said they could program it to make a faithful copy of whatever it was you wanted. It would look like it, feel like it, but it wouldn’t be the same. There’d be differences. The holographic logo, for example. That’s a difference. That was where the dream pointed me.”
“Uh-huh,” said Billie, nodding her head slowly.
“So . . . how do you safeguard what you’re doing? How do you make sure that the knowledge will belong to everyone if you crack the code?”
“You keep the real code and give everyone else a fake one.”
Jack slapped his hands together and stopped his pacing. “Exactly!
“So, what do you think?” he said, crossing back to the chair and sitting slowly.
She was picking at the end of one fingernail, frowning. That made him nervous. He’d lost count of the number of times he’d sought some sort of validation from Billie. She had a sharp mind and had a way of cutting through the crap. She was refusing to look at him. He narrowed his eyes.
“Billie?”
“Hmmmm?” she said, still not looking at him.
“Well . . . what do you think . . . ?”
She sighed and tutted. “I don’t know,” she said. She shook her head. “I just don’t know.”
Jack frowned. How could she not see it?
Then she looked up, fixing him with a blank, uncomprehending expression.
“I don’t get what you’re saying,” she said.
“Billie?”
She suddenly grinned. “Ha! Got you.”
“Billie . . .”
“Well, it serves you right. You should have come straight out and told me.”
He growled, and then despite himself, broke into a grin too.
Twenty-Two
Jack had spent the rest of the morning thinking things through. In the early afternoon, he decided it was time to put his plans into action.
“Billie, I’m going to need you to do something.”
The way he’d said it had obviously alerted her. She stood with crossed arms, looking at him suspiciously.
“Okay, listen, you may not like this, but you’re going to have to visit Morrish. I think you can get away with doing it where I can’t. Laduce really doesn’t like me, and if we’re going to make this all happen, then we have to get both Morrish and Laduce to play along. You’ve got a better chance of being able to do it than I have.”
Slumping back into a chair—she was still avoiding the couch—she looked at him, both sulky and accusatory at the same time.
“Why do I have to do it? Why can’t you just call?”
“No, it’s too complicated. You know that Morrish and Laduce aren’t exactly the brightest pair. It may take a bit of explaining. I can trust you to do that. If I was to turn up there, Laduce would be just as likely to accuse me of conspiracy or something and lock me up again. We can’t afford to take that risk. I have to be around to do this. While you’re gone, I’m going to call Landerman and Farrell and get them here. Meanwhile, before you go, I need to know if you can do something for me . . . and this is another reason why I need you to go and see Morrish. You’re the one who understands how these things work, and you’re the one who can explain it to them so they might have a chance of understanding.”
Metal Sky Page 22
