Ash Ock

by Christopher Hinz

  “You’re lying,” he repeated.

  Buff shook her head angrily. “Believe what you want, then.”

  “No,” said Martha calmly. “Enough crap.” She stared at him. “You’re right, there’s more. Nick warned us that you might become . . . unstable . . . lose control . . . sort of like what occurred back at the auditorium. Nick said that if that happened, it was all right, just so long as you came out of it okay. But he said that it was also possible that you might come out of one of these episodes with a different personality.”

  “Oh, shit,” muttered Buff. “We’re not supposed to be telling you any of this.”

  “If that happens,” Martha continued, “we’re to contact Nick immediately.” She set her coffee cup down and wiped a napkin across her lips. “But if this other personality of yours becomes aggressive, we’re to take action.”

  Gillian felt a tight smile creep across his face. “What kind of action?”

  “Subdue you, if possible.”

  “And if I can’t be subdued?”

  Martha met his hard gaze and a cool smile twisted her lips. “Then maybe we’ll have to kill you.”

  “Oh, shit,” groaned Buff.

  And Gillian knew that Martha—and probably Buff as well—had killed before.

  I should be furious at Nick. But he felt no rage. The midget had done what Gillian would have done under the same circumstances. Nick would not have told these Costeaus about Catharine, nor about the Ash Ock who lurked in Gillian’s cells. Enough had been revealed, however.

  Empedocles remained an unknown factor, and a potentially dangerous one. I’m afraid of you, myself, he admitted. I’m afraid that if you arise, Gillian will be changed.

  Nick had done the right thing.

  Gillian felt the tension leaving his face. He smiled openly at Martha.

  “Why are you telling me all this?”

  Martha shrugged. “I don’t like bullshit assignments.”

  Buff rolled her eyes. “Oh, the Lion’s going to love that excuse.”

  “Let’s hope,” said Gillian calmly, “that the need to take action against me never arises.”

  Buff glared at Martha. “Let’s hope that we don’t get fired.”

  “What happened to me back in the auditorium,” Gillian explained, “is called the gestalt—a hyperalert state that allows me to process information in a very special way. It was not one of my episodes of . . . changed personality.” He hesitated. “At least it didn’t start out that way. What I mean to say is, what happened to me in the auditorium was not exactly what Nick warned you to watch for.”

  The Costeaus stared at him, Buff grim and uncertain, Martha faintly curious.

  “I realize that all this must sound very strange to you,” he added quickly. “But it’s important. And there’s one more thing you should know. If my altered personality does emerge, it may prove to be . . . helpful. A friend, not an enemy.”

  “Maybe we should be fired,” suggested Buff. “I don’t think we’re going to like this assignment.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Martha.

  Buff was silent for a moment. Then she grinned. “I guess you’re stuck with us.”

  “I could have done worse,” Gillian admitted.

  The black Costeau’s face sparkled. “Can we take that as a compliment?”

  “I wouldn’t,” said Martha.

  Gillian met her cynical gaze, saw blue eyes tinged with anger, and in that moment he learned something else about Martha: she was a woman who burned inside, a woman with a morass of barely contained furies and desires. Such emotions were almost Costeau trademarks, perhaps, but like everything else about Martha, they were much more pronounced. She reminded him of Grace, the pirate who had been slain by Reemul fifty-six years ago. Both women lived fiercely, sheltering their agonies, but in Martha the hidden pains danced even more wildly across the surface, like nonconcentric ripples from a raging waterfall, creating indefinable perimeters, blurring her edges. Extreme caution was necessary around such a woman. You could disturb those ripples—intrude upon her—without knowing it. She would be unpredictable. And that made her extremely dangerous.

  He changed the subject. “This plasma necropsy business—did it provide you with any important information about the victims of this massacre? Or any of the other killings?”

  Buff shrugged. “Not really. We did fluid linkages at all the previous murder sites, as well as this one. It allowed us to determine precise times of death—down to the second, even. We were able to chart the order in which the victims died, to about a ninety-nine percent accuracy. And we picked up a wealth of extraneous health data: who was keeping their teeth clean, who had a cold, who was promiscuous, who was not.” The Costeau smiled. “Important stuff, right?”

  “Nick may be able to make use of it,” replied Gillian. “But we’re still missing something important about these killings. I almost had it back there . . .” He shook his head. “A facet that’s being overlooked. Shooter and Slasher . . . they’re not positioned right. Their attack profile makes no sense.”

  He outlined his analysis: Shooter’s right-handedness, the 360-degree combat radius that shrank to 180 degrees at the end of each of their attacks, opening up that huge blind spot, making both killers more vulnerable to attack from the rear. He explained, as best he could, the hyperalert state that he was able to put himself into, the gestalt that allowed him to subconsciously examine a murder site.

  “Maybe we should go back to the hall,” offered Buff. “You could put yourself into this hyperalert state again.”

  “It’s not that simple. The gestalt . . . takes a lot out of me. And trying to do it a second time—trying to absorb the same images, the same scene . . .” Again, he shook his head. “It usually doesn’t work. A murder site has to be fresh; I must perceive it as a brand-new sensory experience. Otherwise, the gestalt becomes cluttered by earlier sensory data.” He did not tell them that he was also wary of another encounter with Catharine.

  And it was not Catharine per se who brought on his fear. He knew that. It was what his lost tway represented: the possibility of the whelm, the possibility that Empedocles could arise, assume control against Gillian’s will . . .

  This is crazy. I shouldn’t be frightened of you—my own monarch. A part of me desperately desires to make you real. I need to feel the duplicity of existence that once seemed so natural. I need your wholeness, your clarity. I need to feel like a tway again.

  But conflicting emotions remained: desire and fear.

  “So what do we do now?” asked Buff.

  “I don’t know.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  Buff asked: “Do you think we’re dealing with a Paratwa assassin?”

  “I’m not sure,” admitted Gillian. “It doesn’t feel quite like a Paratwa. But it doesn’t feel like human killers, either. What do you think?”

  “I think that if it were a Paratwa . . . I think that there’d be more victims.”

  “The number of victims can’t be taken as a sign. Some Paratwa killed very few people, priding themselves on assassinating only specific targets. Others were outright mass murderers. A few were so effective that they never left any witnesses.” He hesitated. “But you’re right, there could have been more victims in these current massacres. I think that our assassin, whether Paratwa or human, is not operating to the fullest level of its abilities. The death tolls in these massacres could have been much higher.”

  Buff nodded. “But this combat radius . . . that’s what’s really bothering you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You say that it creates a big blind spot, makes them terribly vulnerable. But Martha and I have studied all the massacres and as far as we could ascertain, no one has yet attempted to make use of this blind spot of yours. I mean, this lessened combat radius doesn’t even come into existence until near the end of their rampages. But by that time, everyone’s too terrified and panicked to even think about trying to counterattack. So m
aybe the killers realize that; they know that no one’s going to give them any trouble.”

  “I considered that possibility,” said Gillian. “But remember, these killers are very methodical. Look at their escapes: in all six massacres, once the killers have exited the immediate combat area, they simply vanish. You would expect at least someone to have a vague idea in which direction they had fled. But no one sees anything. That sort of disappearing act doesn’t happen naturally. They must have transportation waiting—cars parked nearby. Probably the killers change their appearances as they’re running; maybe they duck into an alley for a moment. They use reversible garments and minor cosmetic alterations; they remove a face mask or slap a new one into place. Whatever the case, ten or fifteen seconds later, they’re unrecognizable.

  “These massacres are carefully orchestrated, from beginning to end. But one sour note spoils the whole performance: the opening of that blind spot. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit.”

  Martha rubbed her thumb across the sapphire over her right nipple. “Maybe they had backup.”

  Gillian frowned. Deep down inside him, a weird sensation took hold, a vague pulsing beginning at the top of his spine and slowly spreading outward to cover his whole body. His skin felt electrified; goose bumps tickled the back of his neck. Either he was about to suffer another headache or he was on the verge of a revelation. He hunched forward. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said,” answered Martha, sounding a bit annoyed that she had to repeat herself. “Maybe they had backup. Someone covering their rear.”

  “Yeah,” added Buff, “someone who stayed hidden, but who was there just in case they got into trouble.”

  Gillian gripped the edge of the table. The gestalt—the same one that had been interrupted in the massacre hall by the appearance of Catharine—abruptly returned. A raging stream of raw data closed in on him, blinding external senses. The stream took on a life of its own, circling ever tighter until it transformed itself into a whirlpool, a vortex possessing its own sights, sounds, and odors, and with proportions that threatened to overwhelm his conceptual understanding. But he concentrated on the center of the whirlpool, delimiting awareness to one cold question:

  Why does Slasher always cut to the left?

  And then the whirlpool collapsed in upon itself, condensing into something solid, condensing until only a speck of hard logic remained. And that speck was the answer to his question, the missing piece of the puzzle.

  Awareness returned abruptly to the present. Buff was staring at him with a deep frown. Martha’s hands had dropped beneath the table and Gillian had the vaguest feeling that the blond Costeau had procured a weapon from her medical bag, and that it was trained on his guts. He held up his hand. “It’s all right. It’s not what you think. It’s not my . . . altered self.”

  Martha raised her eyebrows slightly. But her hands remained hidden.

  Buff spoke hesitantly. “Was that . . . the gestalt?”

  Gillian nodded. “Yes, the conclusion of the gestalt that began at the massacre site.” He smiled grimly. “In a way, the answer to the puzzle was a simple one. But it was an answer that I was not prepared to accept. It goes against all that I know, all that I’ve been trained to understand. But it’s a truth, and I can’t deny it.

  “I know what we’re dealing with. Something new . . . something totally different. I’ve never even considered something like this before, and that’s why it’s been so difficult for me to comprehend.

  “These killers are not human beings. We’re faced with a Paratwa assassin. But no ordinary Paratwa.”

  “There are three of them,” concluded Martha.

  “Yes,” said Gillian, a bit awed to actually hear it expressed in words. “Three of them. Slasher, Shooter, and a third tway—a backup—waiting in the shadows, ready to cover that 180-degree blind spot should the need arise. A Paratwa assassin consisting of three tways.”

  Martha laid her left hand back on the tablecloth. A tiny needlegun was clutched in her palm.

  Buff gave a weak smile. “Just a little something to put you to sleep. Just in case. Harmless, really. An anesthetized dart, too. You’d hardly even feel it.”

  Gillian smiled. Both of Martha’s hands had been under the table. More than a mere needlegun may have been trained upon him.

  He stood up. “We’re going back to the Lion’s retreat. I have to meet with Nick.” The midget might be able to shed some light on this strange new threat.

  The Costeaus rose. Martha nestled the needlegun back in her medical bag and slapped five cash cards down on the table.

  It was a much larger tip than Gillian would have left.

  O}o{O

  Philippe left Mr. Cochise’s office thinking: I believe that this is a really good thing that I am doing.

  He gripped his new suitcase tightly and smiled throughout the elevator ride back down to Venus Cluster’s spacious lobby. The Irryan street was uncrowded; the late afternoon sunlight was just beginning to lose its fierce midday brightness and the shuttle terminal was only a few blocks away. Philippe decided to walk. He arrived at the docking bay in short order and, with prepurchased ticket in hand, passed unchallenged with his suitcase through the contraband/weapons detection grid and boarded the express shuttle bound for home—the colony of Toulouse.

  As the transport fell away from the seventy-mile-long Irryan cylinder, Philippe experienced that familiar sensation of disappearing gravity. A small girl, seated across the aisle with her parents, wiggled in excitement, pointing through the portal as the magnificent view of the Capitol shrank to full perspective. Philippe smiled with understanding. Even though his job required frequent intercolonial travel, he often experienced similar invigoration when his shuttle departed from a cylinder. But not today. Today there was something more important on his mind: the really good thing that he was doing.

  Flight time passed quickly, and soon he was gravitized again and disembarking upon the soils of Toulouse. Mirrors had rotated into darkness hours ago and it was well after midnight before the taxi dropped him at his single-unit Alpha-sector apartment. After he had secured the door and lowered the shades and scanned his rooms with the tiny bug-checker that Mr. Cochise had given him, the next instruction abruptly popped into his head.

  The suitcase must be opened in a very special way, Mr. Cochise had said. Place it on a firm surface with the lock strip facing you. Set the bug-checker upright near the center. Wait for the bug-checker to blink three times before opening the suitcase.

  Philippe laid the hardframe carrier on his desk, feeling happier by the minute. The suitcase was not very big—maybe eighteen inches by twelve, and no more than five inches thick—but it was big enough to bestow upon him an odd kind of pleasure just from gazing at its burnished bronze surface. He followed Mr. Cochise’s precise directions, knowing that he was doing the really good thing. The tiny sensor atop the bug-checker flickered brightly—three times in rapid succession.

  Philippe popped open the suitcase and unsnapped the protective sealtite cover. Inside lay a translucent mass of protoplasmic material, pulsating with life, and wreathed by a conglomeration of bluish-white superconductor circuitry. The membrane appeared to be about the size of a human heart, but Philippe knew that this was no human organ. He had no idea what the purpose of the suitcase was, but that was not important. Only the really good thing that he was doing mattered.

  He smiled as Mr. Cochise’s next set of instructions entered awareness.

  Fastened under the lid you will find a tiny edible injector. Insert the injector directly into the membrane and withdraw fluid until the injector reads full.

  Philippe continued to smile with pleasure as he located the device and pushed the slender needle into the soft red membrane, carefully observing the readout on the injector’s trunk. When it indicated a full dose, he withdrew it from the protoplasmic mass. Almost immediately, he recalled fresh mandates.

  Place the edible injector on your tongue and close your
mouth. In three or four minutes, the injector will melt. Swallow the liquid and then wash it down with a large glass of water.

  Mr. Cochise was right—the injector melted very quickly and Philippe washed it down with his best imported mineral water, straight from the dispenser hose. Swallowing the cool liquid seemed to trigger yet another set of instructions.

  Under the lid of the suitcase, at the spot where the injector was fastened, is a strip of fabric different in color from the rest of the material. Lick your tongue across this strip until it is soaked.

  Philippe felt inordinately pleased with himself for locating the strip—it was bright white, while the remainder of the smooth fabric was matte black. He gently licked the light-colored band. It tasted sour.

  Sour. That reminded Philippe of a phone number: BC84-162F. Excited, he sat at his terminal and quickly typed the code. A recorded message appeared on his screen.

  STATE NAME AND COLONY

  “Philippe Boisset, Toulouse cylinder,” he answered proudly.

  PLEASE WAIT.

  Philippe sat before the blank screen for at least five minutes, but he did not feel bored. On the contrary, he felt that deep sense of satisfaction that came with accomplishment. He knew that he was doing the really good thing to the best of his abilities.

  Finally, his terminal speaker began to emit a deep hum. Philippe recognized the sound. A line scrambler had been activated. A moment later, a strong male voice came over the line. “Mr. Boisset?”

  “Yes.” The voice was unfamiliar to Philippe. It was certainly not Mr. Cochise.

  “Are you alone?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Good. Go to the suitcase and check the strip. You should see two colors. Tell me what they are.”

  Heart pounding with excitement—caught up in the wondrous mystery of this game—Philippe ran to the open suitcase and checked the white strip. The voice was correct. The white strip that he had licked had changed colors. He raced back to the terminal.

  “Blue and orange,” he replied eagerly.

  “Excellent,” said the voice. “Now, Mr. Boisset, here are your next instructions. Place the bug-checker inside the suitcase and reseal the unit. Put the suitcase inside a waste bag. Next, you are to hide the suitcase in that special secret place that you and Mr. Cochise discussed. And after you have properly hidden the suitcase, Mr. Boisset, remember: You must take the fastest route back down to street level. Do you understand?”