Choose Your Enemies Carefully

by Robert N. Charrette

  Rinaldi kept his hands on the table, but his gaze skimmed along the seated diners. "I know you better than they do. Retro me, Satanas."

  Dan lowered the plate and laughed. "I am a persuasive fellow, but I have never claimed to be that particular silver-tongued devil."

  "But you are a devil none the less."

  "So I have been called, but I am not. I am a creature of the earth, Pietro. No more, no less. The earth is as much a home to me as it is to you, and we each have a place in the grand scheme. I am only attempting to offer you a better place, one in which you can exercise the power that you long for. You are obviously superior to the masses who throng the outside world. The superior are not bound by the conventions of the inferior. It has always been so. Haven’t you always known that your destiny was to be a magician?

  "Join with us and it can be so."

  Rinaldi ignored the newly offered plate and said, "God is my armor. He offers all the power I need."

  Foolish man, Janice thought. God set the natural order on the earth and in that order, one relationship was paramount: predator and prey. If you were not one, you were the other, and the superior preyed upon the inferior. Having made the world as it was, God understood. How could Rinaldi not see that?

  "Your vision of God offers you nothing but frustration and privation," Dan said. "Knowing no better, you accepted that distortion of reality. But you are no longer an uneducated child, sheltered by a limited view of creation. You have seen magics, great and small. You have seen the spirits moving through the air. How can you just be a bystander? How it must gall you to be unable to partake in the wonders!"

  "It is as it must be," Rinaldi said.

  Janice thought his voice held less of the obstinate conviction with which he had started. Dan had said Rinaldi was an intelligent man; perhaps he was beginning to see Dan’s wisdom. Janice found herself hoping that he would.

  "Must be?" Dan questioned. "Very little must be to a man who has the strength to seize opportunity. You can see that if you just look around you. My companions have partaken of my table, and they are whole. They are better than whole; they are stronger than they were before they joined me. Your gift lets you see that, doesn’t it?"

  Rinaldi hung his head and said nothing.

  "Look at them!"

  Rinaldi’s head snapped up at the command. He stared at the feasters with eyes as bleak as winter.

  Dan sat back, smiled with satisfaction. "Yes, you can see that their auras are stronger for partaking of my feast. You can be stronger, too. Strong enough to burst the bonds that tie you and touch the face of magic. You want to feel the magic, don’t you?"

  In a very small voice Rinaldi said, "Yes."

  "Then join us," Dan said, leaning forward to offer the platter for the third time. "It’s not hard. Partake. Take the power of another into yourself. Make yourself strong."

  Rinaldi’s nostrils distended. He began breathing hard, as if he was exerting himself physically. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. His eyes devoured the meat on the platter.

  "Come, Pietro. You can’t deny me. I’m only trying to help you fulfill your destiny."

  Rinaldi locked his fingers together, elbows resting on the table and lowered his forehead to his hands. He was shaking.

  Dan snorted and passed the platter to Janice. She took a portion for her plate and passed it on. She felt sorry for Rinaldi. Why was it so hard for him to accept a place among them? How could he not want what Dan offered him?

  The platter completed its course and the feasters began their meal. From behind the barrier of his folded hands, Rinaldi watched them. His eyes grew wilder.

  At last he shouted, "Don't you all realize what you are eating?"

  Silence descended on the table. Dan smiled at Janice and she smiled back. "Prey." she mouthed silently to her lover. Dan’s smile grew wider. Glover cleared his throat and spoke.

  "Oh, yes. We are quite aware. We partake of the ritual portion. It is necessary for the completion of the ritual. We purify the impure and return them to the holy cycle of the earth. Through us they are cleansed and, through them, we are strengthened."

  "God save you! You’re eating human flesh!" Rinaldi seemed verging on the edge of hysteria. "Give up your sin! Fight off the evil influence of this creature!"

  "We partake of a ritual sacrament," Ashton responded calmly.

  "And here I thought the Church had become more broad-minded about alternate religions," said another druid.

  "We do this for the good of the land," added a third.

  Rinaldi tried to get up, but Dan gestured and an invisible hand threw the priest back into his seat.

  "It is impolite to leave the table before the meal is finished." Dan admonished him.

  "Let me go! I reject you!"

  "I am patient, Pietro," Dan said, unruffled by Rinaldi’s outburst. I’ll give you another chance."

  "I will die first."

  "Perhaps. Perhaps not. I am persuasive as well as patient. I'm sure you will come around to my point of view. Soon or late, everyone gets hungry."

  39

  "I’ve got a line on the priest," Jenny’s synthesized voice announced from the telecom.

  Hart considered telling her decker to put her time into higher priority searches, but data was data and Jenny, like any good decker, collected whatever was lying around. Hart knew she should be thankful to be relying on Jenny again, instead of the more technically brilliant, but emotionally unstable, Dodger; but the stress under which she was operating was disturbing her usual crisp grasp of the situation.

  "What’s the word, Jenny?"

  "A street runner posted an FYI on the local shadownet after seeing a magically assisted snatch outside St, Basil’s in South London. Dated the op just after noon yesterday. Victim matches the priest’s description."

  "Could still be a thousand people."

  "A thousand people don’t attract the attention of other people, two of whom match descriptions with your druids."

  "You got any more details?"

  "Negatively. Spotter didn’t want to get involved. Beat feet soon as he twigged to the op. Said catching fireballs wasn’t his style."

  "Smart."

  There was a pause, then Jenny said in a tentative voice, "I thought we were, too, boss."

  "You got a problem, Jenny?"

  "Negatively, boss," she responded quickly. "You pay the bills and I run the Matrix. What could be better? I just think this one’s running a little close to overheat, and you're awful close to the fire."

  "Just do your job, girl. I'll be all right."

  "Hope so. Just don’t want to see the boss getting hurt for no good reason."

  Hart didn’t like the idea of getting hurt, for any reason. Jenny's fears weren’t groundless. There were too many factions scrambling around. The sooner things were settled, the better.

  "Did you get the mercs lined up?"

  "Prepaid bond locked them down, but if they’re as good as they claim, we don’t have enough in the account to pay the completion fee. Logistics ate a lot of the budget."

  "Don’t worry, they’ll take enough casualties. Feed me the rendezvous data."

  The telecom beeped, signaling a datafeed on the second line. Hart split the screen and reviewed the details. They were satisfactory.

  "Time to go to work, Jenny."

  "I’m gone, boss." Jenny’s voice faded out in simulated doppler echoes.

  * * *

  Word of Father Rinaldi’s fate finally reached them, and it was not good. In attempting to contact the investigative team his order had sent to the British Isles, the priest had run afoul of agents of the Hidden Circle and been captured. Sam had no doubt that the priest would be one of the victims at the renegade druids’ next filthy ritual.

  Rinaldi's capture complicated things, and Sam didn’t need any more complications. Everything was too confused as it was. He stared at the opened packet that Dodger had brought.

  Weighting down the curl of the pa
per was a pistol holster wrapped up in its belt. The smooth black leather encased his Narcoject Lethe, the same pistol that Dodger had given him and that Hart had taken away after she shot him. The other end of the wrappings was held down by a fossil tooth. "Some kind of Late Cretaceous dinosaur," the paleontologist had said when Sam had taken it to the museum open house. Sam thought he had a better idea of its origin but he had been wounded and delirious that night in the badlands when he had broken it free from its sandstone entombment. Whatever it had been, it had become a power fetish for him when he drilled a hole to take a ritually knotted cord so that he could wear it around his neck. Folded neatly between the gun and the tooth was the fringed kevlar-lined leather jacket that Sally had given him after his first solo shadowrun.

  What had motivated Hart to give Dodger this packet of gifts for Sam? It didn’t seem to be booby trapped; Sam had detected no residues of spells, and Willie had confirmed that no technological bugs infested the contents of the package. "He’ll need it," she had told Dodger. For what? Against her? If it was meant as some sort of apology, why hadn’t she contacted him herself? The unlooked for return of his goods only confused him more, raising additional worries.

  Time was running out.

  With Rinaldi needing to be rescued, the runners had to split their already pitifully weak forces. It couldn’t be helped. If their attack against Hyde-White went off before they rescued the Circle’s captives, there was too great a chance that the captives would be killed out of hand. If they made their rescue attempt before the spoiling attack, the Circle would be alerted that Sam’s team was back in action. That surprise element was their only advantage, and a pair of simultaneous operations was the only way to use that advantage. It was also a good way for the runners to be defeated in detail.

  They were so pitifully undermanned for what they had to do. Herzog was dead, and Willie’s street contacts had told her that the shaman’s death had effectively cut off any chance of local help. The word on the street was that the run was suicide. Dodger was still trying to contact some out-of-town friends, but Sam didn’t have much hope that they would be able to stand up to the druids. He had detailed them, should they show, to helping Dodger go after Rinaldi. With the distraction Sam's attack would provide, Dodger's group shouldn't face organized opposition. At least they had been able to make connections through Cog to outfit Willie for the raid.

  The plan was weak and Sam knew it. But they’d make the run. The split weakened the effort, perhaps fatally; but Sam couldn't abandon Rinaldi, and he couldn’t see a way to stagger the operations. It was all at once or not at all.

  He tossed his head back and closed his eyes, using the exercises Herzog had shown him to reduce the tension. When he felt his neck muscles relax a little, he sighed and brought his head upright again. Beyond Hart’s engimatic gift the telecom screen glowed with a frozen image. The screen showed a hardcover book lying on a rug, half covered by a sheet. Due to the forced image enlargement, the image wasn’t sharp, but it was clear enough for Sam to recognize it. While Dodger’s electronic delvings seemed to contradict Sam’s certainty that the woman who was residing in Hyde-White’s residence was his sister, the book argued otherwise. And, to Sam, the book won the argument and spurred his haste.

  Only the author’s name and half of the title were visible, but Sam knew the book, anyway. It was R. Norman Carter’s Queen of Sorceries. The original spine of the cover was gone, replaced by a strip of plastiboard taped down to protect the binding. Sam remembered his father standing behind his shoulder monitoring him as he carefully lettered the name of the book onto that now-scuffed piece of board. He could hear Janice crying in the other room and the soft, comforting tones of his mother as she tried to soothe her frantic daughter. Sam had still been mad and unrepentant about teasing his sister about her fondness for the story. His father had said it had been cruel to tease Janice, but Sam hadn’t understood at the time. He had thought that his father would approve of his attitude. After all, the book glorified magic. Sam had thought he was rescuing Janice from the perils of magic.

  What he hadn’t known when he was nine.

  Even with its shoddy repair, or perhaps because of it, the book had remained one of Janice’s childhood treasures. Like their father, she had always been sentimental about books. Sam didn’t understand the passion she felt for the physical object, but he knew that she would have used her limited weight allowance to take her favorites with her to Yomi.

  Now that book sat in Hyde-White’s residence, and Sam could not believe that it belonged to anyone other than his sister. Somehow, Hyde-White had rescued her from Yomi and seduced her. For the first, Sam had to be grateful; the druid had done something Sam had been unable to do. But, for the second, the man had only earned Sam’s enmity. Janice had obviously exchanged one form of bondage for another, and she probably was more than grateful for the attention the fat druid gave her. Her goblinized form would not be beautiful.

  Sam could not leave his sister living a lie. He was all the family she had left, and he would have sought her freedom even if Hyde-White had been no more than a wealthy and jaded corporate with an exotic taste in bedmates. The druid’s evil taint made Janice’s rescue and Hyde-White’s elimination imperative.

  * * *

  Dodger knew that the electronic contact would have been safer. Not that he was worried about physical safety; he had chosen the meeting site carefully. Though elves were uncommon throughout the plex, their presence in this dive of a pub was less remarkable; London’s metahumans showed remarkably more tolerance for each other than the norms did for any of the metatypes.

  Even though a Matrix connection would have given him less opportunity to screw up. he wanted an inperson meet. It wasn’t because he wanted to deal with Estios face to face—that was a pain on which he would gladly pass. He felt a need to see Teresa again.

  He was on this third V-juice when Estios and Teresa entered the pub and took a booth in the back. From his shadowed position at the bar, he waited, watching to see if they had a tail. Satisfied that there were no obvious followers, he flipped a one-band credstick to the ork behind the bar and joined them.

  Teresa looked tired and worn down, but she had a smile for him. Beneath the layer of exhaustion, Estios’s expression was even more sour than usual. The hand he tapped nervously on the table was wrapped in surgical tape. The exposed flesh at the base of his fingers looked raw.

  "Let’s get to it, alley runner. I don't like being out in the open like this."

  Dodger gave him a smile as wide and honest as that of a megacorp's public relations director. "Indeed, I think 'tis a lovely evening as well, and your inquiries into my health are sincerely appreciated."

  "In your pointy ear, smart-ass. We lost Chatterjee the other night."

  Dodger swallowed his levity. He hadn’t particularly liked or disliked the Indian elf, but he had respected him as a competent runner. "I know. I’m sorry."

  "That don’t change anything. He's still dead. If we’d had some more muscle on the floor, he might not be." Dodger’s retort was cut off" by Teresa.

  "There’s no need to lay guilt on Dodger. You went ahead with the raid after you knew he couldn’t make it."

  "Don’t start," Estios snapped.

  Teresa sat back. Estios’s heated reaction seemed to assure her that her point had been made.

  "Chatterjee knew the risks, alley runner," Estios said directly to Dodger, as if he needed to explain his own responsibility in the other elf’s death. "We’re not playing games here. But his death costs the team, and I don’t plan on losing anybody just to have a chat with you. Make your point quickly, or we're gone."

  "Very well. We’ve gotten reliable information on the itinerary of one of the Circle. There will be an opportunity for a strike."

  "I assume your presence here means that Verner isn’t going after him."

  "Her. It’s Wallace."

  "Whatever," Estios said, dismissing the correction with an irritated wave of h
is injured hand. "You had reported that his strategy was to whittle them down." Dodger tried to sound properly offended by Estios’s implication. "I have reported all with scrupulous accuracy. Sir Twist wants to wait for a shot at bigger fish."

  "But, Dodger, why pass this information on to us? If we hit Wallace, it’ll stir the Circle up," Teresa observed. "That would seem to complicate Verner’s plans."

  "A successful raid will also weaken the Circle." He turned to Estios. "I think even you can see that an opportunity to weaken them will be to all our benefits."

  "There will be just the one?" Estios asked, still suspicious. "They been hanging pretty close since we iced Carstairs."

  "For this occasion, the Circle will be separated. One druid and a minimum amount of muscle is all there will be. The Circle continues to expand their shadow contacts, and there is to be a meet with an important runner. Since the site is within Wallace’s turf, the politics of the situation demand a show of trust. Security will be light."

  "You've got plans for the meet site?"

  "Of course." Dodger slid a chip case across the table. "Times and routes as well."

  "And you’re willing to take Chatterjee’s place on this hit?"

  Dodger hesitated. "I'll ride Matrix cover."

  "Some brave fellow, eh, Teresa? Can’t get shot or flamed in the Matrix."

  "There are dangers enough in the Matrix," she said. Dodger wondered if she was worried about him. Estios made his own feelings clear by saying, "Not when we all know the Circle hasn’t got a decker in his league."