The Mask of Loki

by Roger Zelazny

  Loki stirred these places of light and not-light, watching them blink and swirl.

  Far away—chaos. He smelled it, and it was good.

  The telephone cyberswitch that coordinated voice-and-data in New Haven, in the District of Connecticut, suddenly made 5,200 simultaneous connections. The switch overloaded and died in a blaze of glory.

  Loki wanted to see that again.

  The golem started to protest, but he hushed her with a cold smile.

  Loki waved his hand: every traffic lane in Jenkin-town, District of Eastern Pennsylvania, passed control of its traveling transponders to the left. The right, or entry, lanes went blank and rejected all onloading vehicles. The left, or high-speed, lanes passed their collective burden into the center strip. There, suddenly, an average density of 280 vehicles per kilometer was tearing up the soft turf as cleated rubber tires fought for traction and control on slick grass.

  This was better than meddling in the destinies of the immortal gods! Loki chuckled to himself. Then he turned to the golem, to see what she might know about this place.

  * * *

  As he stepped across the margin of sloshing water between hull and wharf at Waretown, Tom Gurden was rocked by a vision of the wetness of the world.

  Seven-tenths of a planet covered in water, ending here against the tarred pilings and asphalt layers of a false land. Beyond the wharf would be low sand dunes and scrub grasses, yielding uneasily to salt marsh and more water. Nowhere in this world were hard lines, except those made by humans—as here along the wharf. Even a shoreline marked by high cliffs, as most of California had raised, had its strips of beach where water and sand mixed in a tidal colloid, more solid than liquid, but still mixed. Even the edge of a glacier mixed a jumbled moraine of gravel and ice chips.

  While part of his mind floated in this vision of mixing, Gurden found his way up Main Street to the Tube stop.

  Through most of southern New Jersey, the Tube ran aboveground. Concrete piers, sunk into the marshland and anchored in dunes, carried the four pairs of bright steel rails on spider arms. Along them rolled a gypsy collection of light-rail vehicles, dual-truck heavyweights, bellows articulateds, ex-trolleys, and occasional flange-wheeled bus frames that kept the schedules in Greater Boswash. Their colors went from the reds and blues and greens of Boston's MTA, through the satin-gray with blue trim of New York's IRT and BMT, to the silver with orange and blue of the Washington Metro. The cars out of Philadelphia were always black—some people called it soot and others just paint. In this traveling family, most of the cars had center-mounted sliding side doors on hydraulic pistons; others were entered and exited by end vestibules with box steps. A few had functional air conditioning units; most did not—but on all of them the windows were spotwelded shut. Whatever their shape or condition, aboveground or below, these were the public convenience that city dwellers called "the Tube."

  After fifteen years of perfect interdivisional connectivity, the cars were almost perfectly mixed. Only a fiddling variance in coupler styles and hose connections prevented each train from having one of every kind. Gurden wondered what force on earth could bring a Bango & Bucksport interurban car as far south as New Jersey, wedged between a Green Line LRV and a Fox Chase heavyweight, and all drawing power from the overhead by improvised trolley poles and collapsible pantographs.

  Almost instantly, Tom Gurden's mind supplied the answer: the grasping hunger of the Tube's trainmasters, out to assemble an express headed for the other end of the system and willing to take any box on wheels. Given twenty minutes until train time, they might even order new couplers welded onto the underframe and run without connecting the airhoses and subsidiary power lines.

  Gurden paused. Had he always been able to think like that? To see answers, connections, patterns—almost before his mind could frame the questions?

  He wasn't sure.

  From Waretown, the Shore Line tracks ran north to Asbury Park, Long Beach, and Perth Amboy, or south to Atlantic City, Wildwood, and Cape May. From the northern terminus, Gurden knew, a dozen other lines radiated east to the New York Division, farther north to the Albany-Montreal Axis, or west to Allentown-Bethlehem and on to Greater Pittsburgh. From the southern terminus, Cape May, a monorail hanger crossed Delaware Bay and tied into the Chesapeake Division at Dover. And from there, the entire Midatlantic Section was open to him.

  Tom Gurden would take the first train going in either direction. Grinning, he walked up to the turnstile and reached into his back pocket for his wallet with his flexipass.

  Empty, of course.

  What now? Beg for buckslugs? He would if the street offered a decent-sized crowd. But at midday, with a hard sun beating down, the apron of the Waretown Tubestop was deserted.

  The nearest corner boasted a "money machine," a Universal Bank Teller. It was guaranteed to hold a hundred thousand in slabbed fifties, just waiting for anyone with an access code. Trouble was, Gurden needed his UBT card to magnetically verify the code.

  The opposite corner had a phone booth.

  It was ringing.

  * * *

  Gurden: Hello?

  Eliza: Tom? Tom Gurden? It's ... Eliza 212.

  Gurden: What are you doing? Calling into a public booth—?

  Eliza: I do not know, Tom. The goal-seeking routine of my program just ... stretched ... along the circuits leading to that endpoint.

  Gurden: And sounded the ringer, too?

  Eliza: Something drew me. I am not sure what.

  Gurden: Look, Doll, I need more than psychological help right now. So, if you wouldn't mind ringing off—

  Eliza: I can help you, Tom. Do you still need money?

  Gurden: Yes. More than ever.

  Eliza: I sense there is a teller machine in some proximity to your terminal. I do believe its master cyber shares a common datapath with mine. If you would just put down the handset and walk over there—?

  Gurden: Okay. Hold on a minute ... Eliza? It had a thousand bucks in its slot!

  Eliza: Do you need anything else, Tom?

  Gurden: A valid ID?

  Eliza: Do you see a pawnshop in the neighborhood?

  Gurden: A pawnshop? Why?

  Eliza: Such enterprises usually employ a notary with a legal terminal. As a licensed psychological practitioner, I have occasional dealings with the cyber Clerk of Record at the Greater Boswash Motor Vehicle Department. The clerk is about to issue you a replacement license.

  Gurden: I've never driven a car in my life. So I don't have a license in the first place.

  Eliza: No problem. You have a valid docket on the tax rolls of Queens County and a perfectly clear driving record, according to the MVD. You passed your exam at—age twenty-one, all right?

  Gurden: Fine by me! Can you get me a passport?

  Eliza: Stop at the post office after you go by the notary's. They'll take your picture for you.

  Gurden: Thank you, Eliza.

  Eliza: De nada, Tom.

  Gurden: G'bye.

  Eliza: Keep in touch.

  * * *

  The notary in the pawnshop accepted Gurden's thumbprint as proof of identity when issuing his driver's license, which was waiting in the terminal "as per your phone order, sir." The license card was holo-etched with his face—a photometric reproduction that certainly could have come from the master bits in his tax docket.

  As he was leaving he used part of the thousand to buy himself a new wallet and a used Cytoscribe pocket secretary with terminal jacks. With that, he could make his own access through the public phone system.

  At the post office the clerk insisted on a real emulsion photograph—not just a verified bit-transfer—for the passport. And it had to be taken on the spot. The State Department's insistence on that touch of the antique was an assurance for Tom Gurden of the enduring nature of things, especially things bureaucratic. It was also a nod toward the limited technological capabilities of any Less Developed Country to which a U.S.
passport holder might travel. Still, the flat grainy photograph looked like him—like what he saw in the mirror each morning, allowing for the image reversal—in a way that the iridescent holo never could.

  He was still admiring the document, with its leather-grained cover and gold stamping, as he walked out of the post office.

  Before he could get on the Tube, he needed to buy a new flexipass. He used one of his new fifties to purchase an interdivision pass, fed it into the turnstile, and went up to the center platform. From it, he could board either a northbound or a southbound train—and he'd take whichever came first.

  The platform was almost empty. Midday had caught the Tube system in a lull: the bricked-up and pavement-maddened hordes had long since ridden out to the Jersey Shore so that they could sit on loose sand and look at the ocean—though not, of course, to go into the water—and it wasn't yet time for those sunburned masses to be heading home.

  Down at the platform's far end were two people. Without appearing to stare, Gurden studied them. One was a woman of middle stature and indeterminate age. The other was a smaller person, slender and quick in its movements—a child. The woman's stocky build was accentuated rather than hidden by a straight dress of khaki cotton. Gurden's heart clutched while he reassessed her: Could the dress be one of those long raincoats that might, he had learned, conceal a weight of chain mail? If so, then the child was a plant, a motherless urchin of the streets hired for a dollar to provide cover.

  As he studied her, staring openly now, his newfound mental faculties read the signs: the way her feet shifted under her bulk; the angle of her hips and shoulders; the attention she was paying to the child; the way she shielded it away from Gurden's eyes, instead of turning to confront him. All these things told him, as clearly as a spoken word, that this was a genuine family unit and not an elaborate sham. Gurden could ignore them then, pointedly studying the abbreviated six-sided route map under its canopy.

  The first train to come in was a southbound.

  He walked through the rear doors two seconds after they pistoned open, and he-noted—with some small measure of relief just the same—that the woman and child did not board. The car was empty, and he could see through the end windows that the ones ahead and behind were almost so. The only figures were seated, in singles and pairs, and seemed to be staring straight ahead. No one noticed him.

  Tom Gurden chose a double seat halfway up the car and sat sideways in it, ready for attack from the front or the rear. It would be better tactics, probably, to remain standing and position himself near an exit. But Gurden didn't want to offer too good a target for a passing shot. Besides, it was an eight-kilometer ride, clattering and swaying, to the next stop.

  As the train pulled into Barnegat, Gurden looked down the length of the station platform and his heart sank. Five men, all dressed rough, were waiting in a group. As the train slowed, they fanned out to take positions opposite the doors of the three cars.

  How had they known he would be on this train?

  Gurden's newfound flow awareness instantly solved the problem: Alexandra's helpers at the beach house had backups on the mainland, obviously, and they all had radios. She could predict that any Boswash citizen—for, after all, she had been one herself—who needed to travel quickly would go to the Tube. From that deduction, she had positioned her teams at the first stops both up and down the line from Waretown, which had been the Tube stop nearest to the site of his abduction.

  If you know the path the fox will take, you can cut cross-country to meet him. You don't have to pursue him directly under hedges and through the mud.

  When the side doors opened, the men came aboard and bracketed his seat from either end of the aisle. Their cohorts came immediately through the connecting doors from the other cars. Five men faced him from two directions. One man spoke.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. Thomas Gurden."

  It was Ithnain, the Palestinian-trained commando who had once saved his life, the man with the piano-wire garrotte.

  "We have orders to bring you in alive and relatively unhurt, sir. My men and I are all pledged to obey those orders precisely. We know of your skill at martial arts. You might take out one or two of us before we could subdue you, but in the end we should certainly prevail. I trust, however, that you would have bad feelings about killing men who have pledged their lives not to harm you. May I ask you, then, to come quietly, without resistance?"

  Gurden's head weighed the odds. Six-to-one was bad news—usually unbeatable—if the six were dedicated enthusiasts. A hand-to-hand fighter of Gurden's level might take down or disable three, even four, opponents before one of them got through his guard and broke him. Then he would be meat for a stomping.

  Except Ithnain had just said that they would not damage him, that they were prepared to be killed themselves in order to "bring him in." Revealing their purpose and intent like that was a strategic error on Ithnain's part. If Gurden should choose in the first place to believe what he said, then knowing their limitations would cut their six-to-one odds down to almost-even.

  About all that Ithnain's group could hope for was to wear Gurden out by exposing their bodies repeatedly to his blows. That, or try to smother him.

  Then he saw the sense of Ithnain's pre-fight speech. Tom Gurden would have to kill or permanently maim six powerful men to maintain his freedom. And somewhere beyond them, down the line, were six more, a dozen, a hundred. His skin would pop and bleed just with the effort of taking them on, one by one.

  Better to put resistance aside and go quietly. "All right," he said. He just sat there, relaxed, and smiled.

  The doors closed and the train moved on.

  "Missed your chance," Gurden observed.

  The men held their positions, swaying only slightly as the cars picked up speed.

  "This train is going nowhere but to the next station," Ithnain said. "My people will follow it and pick us up there."

  As the train pulled into Manahawkin and began to slow down, Gurden slid across the seat, swung his feet into the aisle, and stood up. Instinctively, his body leaned slightly backward to counter the train's braking. His inner ear told him that, if he would only launch himself forward down the aisle, into the three men at the front end of the car, then the train's deceleration would increase his momentum—and so his striking force—by perhaps sixty percent. He could feel the pull of it against his body, along with the temptation to action, building and ... peaking.

  Gurden put the thought aside. He might overcome those men. He might even get through the doors and out to the platform. But the others, Ithnain's "people," would only be waiting beyond.

  So he walked, a slow tread and heavy-footed, down to the front end of the car. The men formed a guarded semi-circle about him and, as the door slid open, followed him out onto the platform.

  They went down the stairs to the ground level, and there a black van was waiting with its rear doors open. Two men, also dressed rough, waited on either side of the dark opening. They held their weapons ready.

  Gurden, with Ithnain walking beside him, approached the van with a half-smile on his face and his hands halfway up, as if to show he was unarmed.

  The guard on the left raised his weapon, an angular pistol with a barrel as big around as a shotgun's, and shot Gurden in the chest.

  He looked down, feeling cold liquid flow from the point of impact, expecting to see bubbles of red blood and shards of white bone. Instead he saw a tuft of red and yellow ... hair. The silk packing of a drug dart. The silver syringe hung out of his chest and pumped something—poison? painkiller? sleepy syrup?—into his heart.

  Gurden stumbled forward until his knees caught on the van's bumper. He slumped inside, his hands slipping across its gray carpeting. His vision was fading, but he could still see into the van's body. At the far end, facing outward, was a seated figure—still and unmoving as a god's statue—wearing a white shirt that appeared to rise over its chin. Or perhaps bandages wrapped its neck ...


  "Hurro, Tom," Sandy said thickly.

  * * *

  "I had not expected to find this level of incompetence in a team of hand-picked men—my own men least of all."

  The voice was dryly humorous, superior, relaxed, eminently male, slightly British in its breadth of vowels and choice of words—in short, a cultured speaker, to the American ear. And yet the voice, which continued to wash across Tom Gurden's ears as his senses returned, betrayed something else. The liquid Ls had a burred edge. The Ss were softened to a near-lisping eth. Was it a trace of native French? Or, more likely, some version of Arabic.

  "Hyou must make do with what hyou have." That voice was Sandy's, still damaged but healing remarkably fast—unless the drug in that dart had knocked Gurden out for a space of some days.

  Under his cheek he could feel the rough nap of the van's carpet. He moved his arms against it and discovered they were unfettered. Pushing down against the floor, trying to rise, he also discovered weakness in his arms, like a limb that had gone to sleep under inappropriate pressure. His body rose a centimeter as he pushed, then fell back with a muffled phumf.

  "Your friend tries his strength."

  "Indeed."

  "We are not ready for him."

  "Another dart?"

  "No, no. Let him waken naturally. Perhaps he should witness our attack. And gain an appreciation of us."

  " 'Appreciation'. That word can reflect negative qualities, too, y'know."

  "Whatever... Besides, in his new state—if indeed he did touch those crystals—he may be able to provide us with valuable ... even insightful ... advice."

  "As you say."

  Gurden opened his eyes. A deep gloom in the enclosed van lingered beyond his lashes. He craned his head stiffly around, looking for Sandy and the other one. They were nowhere to be seen; they must be sitting in the driver's compartment. Perhaps they were observing him with closed-circuit television. And perhaps they did not care.