The Council of Shadows s-2

by S. M. Stirling

  "Granted. Though the wars were amusing as well…But that is all the more reason to end the project of science. It will let them acquire far too much understanding of the Power. That we cannot allow, and killing too many individual scientists again risks revealing presence by absence."

  "Then you will back the EMP attack?"

  "No, no. You-and your sister-are quite right there. Far too dangerous. Let it be the plague; we and our servants-" He smiled grimly. "Our renfields, as the younger generation put it…Did I ever mention that I met the man Stoker? He was invaluable to us…In any case, we will be prepared, and when the humans despair we will step forward and stop the pox…when their numbers have been culled sufficiently. One-sixth or one-fifth the current total, that would be more than sufficient. As many as there were when I was your age."

  Seraphine smiled; the long, lean, aquiline face of the Somali girl she wore made it extraordinarily wolflike, and her yellow eyes glowed.

  "And then the world will be as we wish it, wild and free. Enough humans for servants and food and amusement, enough to make the things we need. Few enough that once more the world will be sweet and uncrowded, the air and water clean, with many plains and woods and mountains empty save for great numbers of beasts. We will have the jets and yachts and things for our palaces and estates, and the humans will have just as much as we choose to give them, and they will worship us. As we wish it, forever."

  Ellen sipped more of the brandy. The horrible thing is, that isn't even the worst possible alternative.

  "Ah…would you need science for that?" she asked. "Ignorant serfs wouldn't be much use in keeping the central heating going."

  "No, no," Seraphine said. "Not science. Only engineering, really. Science we could gradually abolish. A tiresome thing, in any case."

  Adrian sighed. "I suppose I must support your position, then, Greatgrandfather," he said. "Option two it is."

  He and his progenitor locked eyes for a moment, and then he finished his brandy.

  "It will be useful to have your support in Tbilisi, my descendant. You inspire a good deal of fear, which is of course in the end the basis of all respect."

  Adrian's bow was graceful. "Thank you for the excellent dinner."

  "You would not care to join us for other fare?" His molten-gold eyes paused on Ellen. "Your…wife could participate, in a number of different ways."

  "A thousand thanks, but not tonight," Adrian said.

  Ellen buried her face in her hands and huddled against Adrian in the back of the limousine.

  "Oh, Christ," she said.

  "You were splendid, my sweet. You were brave as a lioness."

  His arm went around her shoulders, and she could feel the chuckle rumble through his throat. "And it is because of you that we know about the plague that Adrienne and her conspirators developed. And even now the Brotherhood is preparing."

  She took a shuddering breath and let it out slowly. "Yes. Will they have enough vaccine?"

  "Enough, and knowledge of how to make more. The Council may plan to step in as saviors; instead they will be exposed, and their numbers are so few that even the Power would not be enough, not against a humanity knowing what they are and united against them. Nothing is certain, but it may be the turning point in this long war!"

  "Well, that's good to hear. At least this wasn't a complete wash."

  "No. And-" He frowned.

  "Aha! That's your portentous frown."

  "I had a flicker. When Etienne mentioned the children. Something…yes, portentous. A shadow from the future. Something involving them; some decision I will make concerning them. That is…is becoming…a crucial point on which much will turn."

  "What sort of decision?"

  He smiled. "That is impossible to know at this point."

  She punched his shoulder; it was like striking a layer of resilient hard rubber through the fine cloth.

  "In other words, you know it'll be important, but not how. And you don't know whether deciding one way or another will make things good or bad!"

  "It is often that way when many adepts surrounded a nexus. The most fortunate choice will gradually become clear."

  Ellen made an exasperated sound, and then a little squeak as his hand gripped the nape of her neck.

  "Perhaps you worry too much, and about the wrong things, my sweet."

  Ellen fluttered her long fair lashes. "Why, whatever could you mean, good sir?"

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dream.

  The sense of sick dread got worse as the flames erupted through the door and Eric Salvador was flung back to lie helpless in the dust of Afghanistan that had eaten so many soldiers' bones in so many wars. This time he could see the figure who walked through the fire.

  It was a woman, young, naked, her face doll-like and pretty, with slanted eyes, hair piled up on her head in an elaborate coiffure that looked Asian. If he'd seen a picture like that he'd have gotten horny. Instead he felt as if giant fingernails were screeching down slate everywhere in the universe, as if he should run and run and run, and there was a stink that wasn't physical at all, and he retched hopelessly.

  "Who's been a naughty boy?" she crooned. "Naughty, naughty. I'm naughty too, sometimes."

  Then she knelt by Johnson's body, only it wasn't Johnson anymore, it was Cesar, and he was naked too. They rolled in the dust, coupling like dogs, but Cesar was screaming. When she raised her head, blood masked her mouth and dripped from her chin and poured from Cesar's throat. Yellow flecks sparkled in her dark brown eyes. "I just love brave men," she said. "They're delicious!'

  "Christ!"

  This time there were cigarettes under his searching hand. Eric fumbled the lighter twice. The dark coal glowed like an eye as he sucked in the smoke. He fumbled for the light switch and sat with his feet on the floor, then pulled the smoke into his lungs again, coughed, inhaled again. After a while his hands stopped shaking, and he looked at the time. It was just three o'clock, which meant he'd been asleep a bit less than two hours. The air in his bedroom smelled close, despite the warm breeze that rattled the Venetian blinds against the frame of the window. Sweat cooled on his back and flanks.

  He looked at the phone. "I'm not going to call. Cesar puts up with a lot, but he's not sleeping alone this last month. I can't tell him I had a bad-"

  The phone rang. He picked it up. ?Jefe?

  "There's anyone else at this address?"

  "Get over here. I've got something you need to see. About the Breze case."

  Eric Salvador knew something was wrong. He could feel it, a prickling along the back of his neck. Cesar's house was completely dark except for the light from the street lamp, which was very damned odd even at three thirty, since Cesar had just called him. His partner's new Chinese import was parked in the driveway; the ground between the road and the house was gravel, with a few weeds poking through. The neighborhood was utterly quiet, and the stars were bright. A cat walked by, looked at him with eyes that turned into green mirrors for an instant, and then passed. Nothing else moved.

  Shit, he mouthed soundlessly, and pulled his Glock 22, his thumb moving the safety to off.

  Then he touched the door. It swung in. He crossed the hallway, instinctively keeping the muzzle up and tucking his shoulder into the angle between the bedroom door and the wall. Then the smell hit him. He looked down. It looked black in the low light, but the tackiness under his foot was unmistakable.

  "Are you certain, Herr Breze?"

  "Yes, I am, Herr Muller," Adrian said. "And no offense, but how often have we had this little conversation over the years?"

  The conversation was in English, the easiest common language. Professor Duquesne had boiled with indignation for an instant when it turned out that Muller's French was only passable, worse than Ellen's. The middle-aged German banker spoke English with near-complete fluency, if also with an accent that reminded her irresistibly of Christoph Waltz in Inglourious Basterds, which one of her roommates studying classic film at NYU had played o
bsessively despite complaints. He even looked a little bit like the actor, though heavier-set, and with thinning blond hair combed over the top of his head.

  It was a good movie for its day, even in 2D. But not thirty-six times!

  Muller sighed. "I hope our wealth-management section has not disappointed you, Mr. Breze."

  The Commerzbank Tower gave an excellent view of downtown Frankfurt, being nearly a thousand feet tall, complete with open gardens every twenty stories or so and a central atrium. Muller's office had a prestigious amount of exterior window, and let you see that unlike most European cities the center was dominated by skyscrapers, if not to a Manhattanesque degree.

  "I've never been to Frankfurt before," she said, partly to defuse the heavy tension. "It's very high-rise. Not at all like most central cities over here."

  "Ah…there was extensive rebuilding after the Second World War," Muller's secretary said with a discreet cough.

  She was named Saracoglu and she was youngish, about Ellen's age, with even more of an hourglass figure. The cool gray business suit tried to play that down; she had black hair cropped very short, gave off an air of efficiency and was almost as dark as Adrian. There was a slight guttural accent to her English, German and French.

  Ah, Ellen thought. Speaking of wars. Even in the twenty-first, that was a bit tactless of me.

  Urban renewal courtesy of the 8th Air Force and the RAF, and the rebuilding in the three generations since had reached for the currently gray and drizzly sky around the gray and flowing River Main.

  Less for the historical preservationists to preserve. Though in a lot of Europe stuff that looks like it was medieval or Renaissance or baroque is post-1945 restoration of buildings that were blasted down to the basement. Prague's the only one that wasn't heavily damaged, if I remember correctly.

  There was silence for a moment and then Adrian addressed the banker:

  "Quite the contrary, it's been very satisfactory. I have my own reasons for new arrangements that are not, strictly speaking, of a business nature. Let's leave it at that."

  The decor in the big room was old-fashioned icy-modernist with very subdued PoMo flourishes, probably because times hadn't been flush enough to redo since the last renovation in the early years of the century. Muller's desk was a glittering expanse of dark stone, for example, and so was the oval conference table. On a plinth there was a small sculpture that looked like a length of bronze intestine, and a faint smell of the flowers in Bohemian crystal vases.

  "In good conscience I cannot advise moving substantial assets into gold at this point, much less distributing them as you propose," Muller said. "And why pay a premium for coin and small bars? And silver…not a good investment at present."

  Adrian smiled. "I appreciate your concern, Herr Muller. I don't expect to make much return on the transfers."

  "You realize that Swiss bank security is, ah-"

  "Not what it was, yes. That is why I'm diversifying the locations, and not just to the Caymans, you will note."

  Another sigh. "As you wish, mein Herr."

  His secretary opened an accordion file of black leather and began producing documents, along with a print-and-retina scanner that she plugged into a secure link on the table.

  "First," Muller said, "the signing authority for the initial fifty-million-euro tranche under the Aegis Project fund, to be held in short-term commercial paper until drawn. You and Frau Breze will both have full discretionary authority, and Herr Doktor Duquesne unless and until you remove him. All payments authorized by Monsieur Duquesne will be listed as withdrawn from the project's funds, whose ownership will of course be strictly confidential."

  They signed and entered their biometric data and DNA samples; Duquesne was looking a bit stunned at the amount he was being given to play with, just for starters. Plus an official salary of a hundred thousand euros a year personally, which was extravagant for a European academic.

  "And here is Frau Breze's power of attorney and authorization to access the other funds, and her personal account as per your instructions."

  She darted a quick glance at Adrian, and found him smiling with that odd quirk-mouthed expression, half-teasing.

  "I thought you might want to pick up a few pictures while we were in Europe, my sweet," he said. "You deserve it more than I, in any case. You will derive more pleasure from it; and that will give me great pleasure."

  Ellen read the papers before she put her name to them. Essentially Adrian had irrevocably signed over an undivided half interest in everything he owned worldwide. And there was a personal account she could use for day-to-day needs with a total draw of…

  She choked slightly at the amount. Day-to-day needs like buying Nob Hill, or possibly Oahu, given the way the real estate market had tanked again lately.

  Money doesn't really mean anything to him, she reminded herself. He can pick stock market winners by intuition. But it does to me! I grew up poor. Trailer-trash poor, except that we had Granddad's house, which was what a retired miner could buy in Swoyersville in the nineteen sixties. My father was a no-good drunk and a sponger and I clawed my way into university working three jobs and getting scholarships in my spare time. Now I can collect Old Masters if I want to.

  Of course, there were drawbacks.

  Monsters who can walk through walls are going to keep trying to kill me, I have to shoot people in alleys or stab them with knives…On the other hand, I get Adrian, who's worth it all and more. And someday it may be fun to be very, very rich, if civilization hasn't been destroyed in the meantime. If I can ever manage to feel unguilty about it. Maybe I'll endow a foundation…

  She laughed and signed her name with a flourish. The prospect of enough leisure and safety to wallow in upper-class guilt and go around contributing to good causes was fairly remote right now.

  "Thank you, Frau Saracoglu," Muller said.

  Not Fraulein, Ellen thought. That's dropped out of use for anyone except little girls.

  "These to the secure vault now, bitte, " he continued, indicating the documents.

  Adrian's phone rang, a soft sequence of notes from a famous piece by Delibes, one that was a bit of a joke if you knew how it had been used in the movies. He tapped it, and she could faintly hear:

  "Pooka here."

  The way his face went blank made her sit up and take notice. Duquesne didn't catch it, and Muller was unreadable because he always looked like a truck had just run over his puppy, but Saracoglu noticed something.

  "Pardon," Adrian said, and walked over to a corner of the room.

  The conversation was minimal; from the way his eyes flicked to the screen, text was coming through as well, or possibly a visual. When he tapped it closed and returned to the table he was frowning.

  "Herr Muller, we'll need to charter a jet. Something with transatlantic capacity, and immediately. Whatever's available."

  Muller looked even more lugubrious, but his secretary/assistant merely nodded and began tapping at her keyboard even before he prompted her.

  "Any specifications, Herr Breze?" she asked.

  "That it fly all the way," Adrian said dryly. "The flight plan is Hamburg to Tucson, Arizona. Earliest possible departure."

  In the elevator on their way to the ground Ellen looked at him.

  "Harvey," he said to her; which told Duquesne nothing.

  Then to the professor: "It seems you'll be having a colleague sooner than we thought, monsieur."

  Peter! Ellen thought with a stab of delight.

  He'd been the only friend she'd had at Rancho Sangre Sagrado…unless you counted people who were obscenely evil, batshit crazy with variations on Stockholm syndrome, or both. Certainly the only one she'd been able to talk freely with, Jose, had been all right, but he was born a renfield.

  The Frenchman was looking at his own notepad; Adrian had transferred a list of suppliers and locations.

  "Sweden?" he said. "An abandoned military base? And underground?"

  " Discretion, monsieur. Touj
ours discretion. Remember what happened in Paris."

  He shivered a little. "And these people, these suppliers…are they reliable?"

  "Entirely, as long as they're paid. Will there be a problem with logistics?"

  "I am familiar with that aspect, and there are some individuals I could hire to handle administrative matters, perhaps?"

  "I leave that entirely in your hands. I wish results, and quickly; I don't care how. More than our lives depend upon that, but certainly our lives, at least."

  Duquesne's expression was dubious, some fear, with a hint of exaltation. From her acquaintance with Peter Boase she understood that. Anyone who'd spent his adult life fighting for every penny of grant money would be attracted by the prospect. It was a peculiarly rarefied and intellectual form of greed in the service of pure curiosity.

  "But it is-" he began.

  "Most irregular, I know. You are not…how do the Germans put it…you are not operating in a salonfahig fashion anymore."

  When they were alone for an instant waiting for the cab, she leaned close to Adrian.

  "He's alive?" she asked. "Peter's alive?"

  "Yes. Evidently my parents…acquired him rather than killing him. Possibly because of the research he was doing for Adrienne. And he has escaped."

  "He escaped? He's safe, then?"

  "Escaped, but not at all safe; he contacted Harvey, and that makes it entirely likely the enemy will be on his trail as well. That's why we have to get there as soon as possible, while Monsieur Duquesne gets his project started here."

  Peter Boase gripped the silver table knife convulsively. The night was much cooler than the day even here in southern Arizona. Outside the night was silent, save for the hoot of a great horned owl once as it glided past. He tensed at the sound, relaxed as he realized what it was, then tensed again.

  It's not paranoia. They really can turn into birds. That would be a good way to scout around.

  His eyes flicked to the ancient LCD beside the bed. One o'clock in the morning. Hours before the sun would come up and…