Choose your enemies carefully s-2

by Robert N. Charrette

  Dodger's suspicions flared again. "More trouble to cause?''

  "You betcha," she replied jauntily. "When you see him, give him these."

  Hart dug a wrapped packet out of her satchel. The bundled had filled most of the bag's volume and, when the soft sides collapsed, Dodger could see the outline of a gun. He took the offered bundle. From his weight and balance, he suspected a second weapon was wrapped within its softness.

  "Why should I?" he asked as she headed for the door.

  She kept walking, saying over her shoulder, "He'll need them."

  Sam didn't know what he expected to see, but he kept rerunning the tapes Willie had made from the trideo monitors in Hyde-White's residence. Willie watched them with him, getting twitchier with every repetition. The copy spun to an end and Sam reached for the controls to rewind the tape.

  "Ain't ya seen enough?"

  "One more time, Willie."

  "Jeez. Ya been through through it a billion times.

  Look, Twist. I'm not a forensic expert, but I am a woman. I'd say there was a woman living in that residence. Ain't that what ya want to know?"

  Sam nodded abstractedly as the tape clicked over and started to play again. "But what kind of woman, Willie? A norm, or something else?"

  "Do I look like a parabiologist?" Willie bounced up from the floor, grabbed a half-full bottle of Kanschlager, and downed it. "The blowups show a lot of hair scattered around, but, frag it, that don't tell us anything without chemical analysis. The fat druid and his woman could have a dog; there's enough gnawed bones in the kitchen."

  "It didn't smell like a place where a dog lived."

  "Well, then, a cat! Jeez, Twist, what do you want?"

  "I want to know about my sister. They told me she had goblinized." Would Sato have lied about that? No, the doctor had said she was in the kawaru ward, so it had to be true. But what about later? Maybe she had died, been killed by Hyde-White and his flunkies. Maybe that was why Renraku had never let him communicate with her.

  Sam didn't want to believe it. He felt sure he would know if she was deada151he was a fragging shaman with fragging mystical powers! If he couldn't sense the death of his own sister, his only living relative, what good were those powers? Still, he had been a reluctant shaman and had avoided a lot of what he needed to know about his gifts. He couldn't be sure that the magic would let him know if she was dead.

  The portrait in Hyde-White's sanctum didn't have to be his sister. It could be a coincidence. So why didn't he believe that?

  He tried to picture the painting in his mind. He wanted to remember a detail, any detail that would confirm or deny the subject's identity. All he succeeded in doing was calling up the horrid smell again.

  That awful stench seemed somehow… familiar.

  In his memory, it had another quality that was absent in the chill confines of the sanctum. Sam knew he had smelled the odor before; suddenly, he knew where. It had not been in the mundane world, but in the realms of the spirits where the Man of Light had worn fire like fur, and exuded that stench.

  Sam remembered what the Man had said about manipulating his emotions and meddling with his memories. Had Dodger seen the same woman in that portrait?

  "Hyde-White, old man. Good to see you," Glover exclaimed. "Recovered from your injury?"

  "Almost."

  Janice knew better. Though Hyde-White still wore bandages and limped, Dan Shiroi had long ago recovered from the injuries dealt him by a ravaging band of shadowrunners. She disliked the fat shape Dan wore. She was not skilled enough to pierce his mask and so, like his coconspirators, she could only see the obese bulk of Hyde-White even though she knew Dan's lean, furred shape hid within it. His obsession with masks no longer bothered her. She understood and embraced the necessity. She looked forward to the day when he would teach her enough to mask her own shape as effectively as he did his own, and she would be able to deceive the slimy Glover and his like.

  "Your pet appears as ravishing as ever," Glover said archly.

  When he thought he was unwatched, Glover regarded her with the disgust one usually reserved for things that crawled out of one's food. She suspected he knew her true form; he was a druid, after all. She also suspected that his attitude was more than the prevailing English class consciousness. The man seemed to have a pathological hatred for metahumans. But then, did that make him different from the average norm?

  Glover struck her as a petty, small-minded man despite his grandiose plans for the country. She didn't like him, and wished Dan didn't find it convenient to associate with him. The other druids were nearly as bad.

  Dan had told her how his Hyde-White identity was involved in the plot to replace the monarch. She had thought the plan put him too near the spotlight of publicity, but had dropped her arguments when he explained that his participation would place him in a position to influence policy regarding their metatype. The risk seemed worth it; they needed every protection they could get from the swarming norms. Even if it meant using such unsavory persons as Glover.

  With her presence at these increasingly frequent dinner parties, she had come to see just how well Dan had the druids under his influence. They treated Dan like a revered elder. Alone at his home, she and Dan had laughed at them, especially Glover. The archdruid was so devoted to Hyde-White and the cause. Glover, who hated all metahumans, fawned on one regularly without ever knowing the truth. It was a rich oke.

  Much better than the hoary jests exchanged by the rest of the druids once she and Dan joined them. There was the usual round of pleasantries from which she was excluded. The snubbing didn't bother her; she only came for Dan's company, and the food.

  The seemingly interminable interlude in the lobby ended and Barnett, the hosting druid, opened the doors to the feast hall. The site was one of his company's conference centers, and he seemed unduly proud of it. Janice found the decorations tasteless and boring. The table, on the other hand, was set with superb style. The selection of condiments and sauces was extensive, offering a wide variety of flavorings for the main course of rare meat which dominated the setting. To either side of the golden platter with its mound of bitesized morsels, were baskets of sourdough rolls, excellent for sopping juices. Save for the guest's place, each diner's setting included a delicate ewer containing his or her favorite beverage. The guest's plate was flanked with two glass goblets, one brimming with iced water and the other gleaming with a dark wine.

  Scattered among the auxiliaries to the main course were small dishes of vegetables and fruits. They added a splash of bright color to the table, but Janice no longer found such foods appetizing. Her changed metabolism was exclusively carnivorous.

  The guest was already seated at the table across from the seat of honor, which was always given to Dan at these affairs. The seats for her, the druids, and their companions were ranged along the opposite side from the seated man, flanking Dan's chair on either side.

  The guest didn't look up as the feasters entered. In the subdued lighting, Janice at first did not notice the extensive bruising on his face; but as she took her place, his battered visage was obvious. His dark clothes were tattered and stained, and his posture made them hang on his gaunt frame as if he had been shrunken within them. He had the air of a man resigned to an unpleasant fate.

  "You could have gotten our guest a change of clothes," Dan said to Glover as he seated himself. "I did," the archdruid replied. "He refused them." "Perhaps you should have offered sackcloth and ashes," suggested Ashton.

  His remark raised general laughter around the table. Janice didn't get the joke and didn't join the merriment. No one noticed.

  "You are impolite, my friends," Dan chided gently.

  "Pietro Rinaldi is our guest. If he wishes to attend in casual dress, I will not spurn him from my table."

  Rinaldi looked up when Dan said his name and his eyes widened slightly when they rested on the speaker. He looked next at Janice and she smiled at him, hoping to set him at ease. He shivered and his gaze
slid away to skim over the lavish meal set upon the table. Dan handed the great platter of meat to Glover, starting it down the side of the table away from Janice. As he awaited its return, he engaged their guest in conversation.

  "I was pleased to learn you had been persuaded to stay with us, Pietro. An opportunity to interact with a person of your quality and distinction is far too rare a pleasure."

  Dan waited for Rinaldi to speak, but he rudely remained silent.

  "Come now, Pietro. It will not imperil your soul to talk to me."

  Rinaldi glared at him before saying, "Will it not? I know what you are."

  "Ah. Your gift of sight. Your fellow Sylvestrines told me that it was very strong. It must be difficult, always seeing things and never having the experience to truly understand them. You have my sympathy."

  "Spare me," Rinaldi said. Janice thought the tone of his response was rude. "I understand your kind well enough."

  "Do you, Pietro. I hardly think we have been rep resented fairly in the arcane libraries in which you have studied. I expect you have seen nothing but biased accounts, half-truths, and ill-informed speculations. But rather than arguing about what you think you know, I'd like to talk with you about something you know very well.

  "You see, I know about you, Pietro Rinaldi. I know the facts of your career and numerous small details of your history. But more importantly, I know what kind of man you are. You are a doer, a man of action.

  "As I learned of how your gift had been limited, I was saddened. To find yourself only able to watch the magic that makes the world live… such a limitation is a criminal shame. You are not a watcher, Pietro. It must gnaw at you to always see and never do." "I have accepted my lot."

  "Fine words, and a noble sentiment. I'm sure your superiors approved and encouraged that attitude. However, acceptance of the inevitable is no virtue. Virtue requires sacrifice, does it not? At the very least it requires voluntary abstention. But your inability to touch the real magic is far from voluntary.''

  As her own had been, Janice remembered. She had yearned for the magic, and had despaired when she was told she hadn't been blessed with the ability.

  Rinaldi said, "I learned long ago not to aspire to what cannot be."

  Dan shook his head. "You mean, what you were told could not be. Are you really sure that you can never have the magic flow through your hands?''

  Janice had been sure until she met Dan. He had shown her the way.

  "Pietro, your ignorance made things safer for them. With your access to magic limited, you were no threat to them."

  Dan accepted the platter back and forked several juicy chunks onto his plate. "Knowing what I am, you know that I walk ways different from those of the bulk of humanity. Those paths have taken me to places of arcane knowledge. The power I have touched in those places transcends moral strictures, and 1 have learned how to share that power. 1 can offer you a way to transcend your own strictures. Magic, Pietro! If you accept my ways, the binding can be broken. I can lead you into the realms of power and show you the secret paths. I can give you the magic you long for. All I ask is that you embrace us and our cause." Dan held out the plate of meat. "Eat with us."

  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."

  "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 meres 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."