A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  I gathered from context that the Sunburst Foundation helped get kids the materials or training necessary to complete their educations. The article noted that living at 36th Street

  and Palm Lane

  was not that far from his former home in City Center, but that Garrett said he felt far more at home now than he did during his playing days. Reading that brought a smile to my lips for reasons I could not fathom, but I let the smile remain anyway.

  The blue and yellow Ultra-shuttle arrived with brakes squealing. The doors opened, and I stepped aboard. I ran my pass through the reader beside the driver, and my destination appeared on a little screen on her right. She snapped the doors shut and started the vehicle forward before I found a seat, but I defied inertia and sat without mishap.

  The article about Garrett put some things into perspective about this Coyote and his organization. I knew from Estefan that Coyote had helped him when he showed up in the city. It seems equally likely that he noticed Garrett's efforts with Sunburst and created a liaison so they could share resources and avoid duplication of effort. Rock Pell, on the other hand, was useful as a gadfly who could flit between various groups and gather information. That, in turn, could be used by Coyote and Garrett to head off trouble.

  My piecing together those bits of the puzzle helped ease my mind. Lurking in the back of my brain had been the nagging question "Why are they helping me?" The answer, it seemed to me, was that they were helping me because I was in trouble. I also suspected that they would want me to help them in the future. That harkened back to Estefan's "paying forward" remark. Because they both helped other unfortunates, I knew I had not been singled out for special treatment, which dulled my feelings of paranoia.

  In another squealed brake symphony, the Ultra-shuttle let me off in front of Ernesto's Upstreet. It looked like a nice restaurant and, if the line of very expensive automobiles parked along the side was any indication, one patronized by some of the city's more successful mid-level management. The building's facade had been done in faux marble, with smooth Doric columns and a down-scaled copy of Michelangelo's David, modestly augmented with a figleaf.

  The doorwoman waited with her white-gloved hand on the door's handle, but I shook my head and walked over to the valet's station. I handed the ticket to the pimple-faced kid sitting inside the tiny shack. "It's been here for the past two days. I was detained."

  The kid shrugged his shoulders and set down a comic book. He flashed the ticket through a reader similar to the one the Build-more guard had used. "Not a problem, it's still here. Gonna have to charge you for the storage, though. $27.50."

  I pulled three Reagans from my wallet, and he dutifully passed the coded end of them through the barcode reader. "Keep the change," I added.

  The kid looked unimpressed, but ran off to get my car anyway. I glanced at the screen but I could not decipher any of the coding except where it totaled my charges. I suspected somewhere in that jumble of numbers and letters I could have learned a great deal about my life, but I was blind to it.

  I was not blind, however, to the car the kid drove up. Fire-engine red, the General Dynamic Motors Lancer looked less like a car than it did a shark cruising for pedestrians. Sure, it was of domestic make, and probably had been put together in GDM's west Phoenix plant, but could smoke the international competition with ease. I dimly recalled seeing a street sprint evaluation of the Lancer up against the Mitsubishi-Ferrari Kamikaze that might as well have been the Battle of Midway II.

  The smile on the valet's face came not from the Reagan I offered him, but from driving the car on the short run from the parking lot. "I took good care of it."

  "And I appreciate it, believe me." I slid in behind the wheel, and he closed the door behind me. I fastened the lap belt, but before I did up the double shoulder straps, I popped open the glove compartment. It was not as large as the one in Rock's Elite, nor did it have cosmetics, but it did contain something that was more valuable to me than gold.

  I pulled the rental receipt and unfolded it. Paydirt! I smiled as I read the car had been rented to Mr. Tycho Caine. I didn't recognize the name, but I rolled it around in my mouth a couple of times and it worked okay. Cool name, cool car. Find out who wants you dead, and you could be in good shape. I refolded the paper and slipped it into my windbreaker's pocket.

  Locking in the shoulder restraints, I slipped the car into gear and eased it out onto the road. The Lancer rode as easy as water gliding across ice. On the upper shot of 32nd Street

  there was no traffic in front of me, and I felt sorely tempted to wind the car out. Glancing in the rearview mirror for Scorpion Security vehicles—which I realized I could not have identified anyway—I noticed a Chrysler LeBoeuf pull in behind me and come up fast.

  Somewhere in my head a part of me started to calculate the rough odds of someone coming after me so immediately. In a metropolis that boasted over 3 million people, the odds started long, but became short fast. The last place I was known to have been was at Ernesto's. Clearly I left there with someone else, or not under my own power. I was moved down to Slymingtown and left for dead. If whoever had wanted me dead had looked for an obit on a John Doe, he would not have seen it. If he then heard about the problem with the Reapers, he might set up a stake-out on my car to see if I claimed it.

  I felt my heartbeat quicken as I decided I was being followed by people who knew something about what had happened to me. The chase made my blood race and my nostrils flare. I felt the same energetic jolt I had when I confronted Jackson. The urge to stop my car, pull my Krait and start shooting nearly overwhelmed me.

  At the same time as bloodlust rose up in me, I shunted those feelings aside. As I made a quick right turn onto Camelback heading east, I knew there was only one way to determine if these folks were following me or not. At 36th I took another right and the LeBoeuf stayed right on my tail. Furthermore the driver decided he'd been spotted, so he hit the accelerator and pulled into the left lane. A hand with a gun appeared through the driver's side window.

  I tapped the gas and the Lancer's engine roared loudly. The car lunged forward, and the LeBoeuf surged ahead to catch up. As I hit the brakes and dropped the car out of gear, the Chrysler rocketed past me. The passenger pulled the trigger on his pistol as fast as he could, but tracking my car while his sailed on was well nigh impossible.

  I yanked up on the hand-brake, immediately kicking the Lancer into a bootlegger's turn. As the LeBoeuf again appeared in my rearview mirror, I hit the foot brake, jammed the car into first and popped the clutch. The Lancer bucked a bit, forcing me back into the driver's seat, but it shot off like an arrow. At my first intersection, I cut right and left the Chrysler behind.

  As I entered this narrow side street in the limited network of roads above the city of Phoenix, I realized that one important factor in evading pursuit is having a better knowledge of the battleground than your enemy does. I clearly did not have this, or I would not have entered a street marked "Dead End." A hundred yards later, as I brought the Lancer to full stop just before the roadway came to a full stop, I wondered if that sign might not have been prophetic.

  The Chrysler filled the street at the far end, offering me no chance to get around it. Its headlights flashed in tandem off the guard rails lining the elevated roadway. It came forward slowly as if a mechanical beast stalking prey.

  I popped my restraining belts and stepped out of the Lancer. Moving a couple of paces toward the LeBoeuf, I pulled my Krait and flicked the safety off. Dropping to one knee, I held the gun in both hands and sighted carefully.

  Something about being under fire causes most folks to panic. The LeBoeufs passenger, to forestall that happening, leaned out of his window and aimed back at me. His first two shots wounded the tarmac to my left. I returned his fire, and when he flopped limply in the window with a lot of blood leaking over the rest of the car, the driver decided I was his.

  In his position I could see his thinking. As I discovered when I shifted over to target
him, the LeBoeuf had been specially fitted with bulletproof glass and puncture-resistant tires. The body had been armored too, so all I managed to do was strike sparks from the hood or spatter lead on the windshield.

  The driver hit the gas. I swapped out my spent clip for a new one and triggered two shots as I stood. The car, its engine howling demonically, charged straight at me. The driver corrected as I took one step to my right, lining me up with his hood ornament. At the last second he even began to ease off on the gas as he did not want to sail on into my car and off the upstreet.

  I leaped back to the left, barely avoiding the dead passenger's flailing arms. The driver started to apply the brakes, but I triggered off three shots that stabbed through the open passenger window. I don't know where they hit, but they did, and he lost control of his vehicle. As I crammed myself up against the guard rail, his LeBoeuf slammed my driver-side door shut, then started my car tumbling.

  The Lancer rolled perfectly, with fiberglass side panels shattering and flying off into the air. The windscreen and rear window both blew out, sending sparklies of glass hail down into the streetlights' halo below. With a hideous cracking sound, the Lancer flattened the wooden barricade marking the end of the road and plummeted out of sight.

  The Chrysler, its frame sparking as it scraped over the edge, careened after my Lancer.

  I threw myself to the ground as the fireball from their final collision lit up the street. Debris pelted me and a secondary explosion shook the roadway. When I looked up, little fires burned like votive candles to mark the cars' passing at the end of the roadway. Flames from below licked up as if yet hungry for more and, in the distance, I heard the keening wail of sirens.

  I tucked the gun away and jogged along the roadway until I came to one of the concrete stanchions holding the roadway up. The concrete relief decorations on it made climbing down simple enough, and the added light from where two cars had crushed a chiropractic office and set it on fire provided all the light I needed to see where I was going.

  I found a 7-Eleven and dropped a copper Columbus coin in the slot. Fishing Rock's card from my pocket, I dialed him up. "Rock, this is your mystery man. My car was a Lancer."

  "Was? What happened?"

  "Nothing much. Pick me up, and I'll tell you about it."

  "How will I find you. Where are you?"

  "I'm not sure," I laughed, "but I've set a signal fire. You can't miss it."

  I hung up the phone and found my hands were shaking. I knew it had to be the physical aftereffects of the adrenaline rush I'd felt up on the overstreet. As I looked at the fire burning a block distant I also knew I felt afraid. A fraction of a second slower and I would have been jammed between both of those cars. I would have been roasting in that fire and that realization sent a shiver up my spine.

  I sincerely hoped my shots killed both men before their car went over.

  Scorpion Security cordoned off the area fairly quickly and their firefighting arm came in and had the blaze smothered in no time at all. When Rock rolled up, fire marshals had started picking through the steaming, foam-covered wreckage. They repeatedly looked at the half-melted cars, then back up at the upstreet and at the wreckage again.

  "Roger,"Rock said into his carphone asI sat down and pulled the door shut. He glanced at the flaming wreckage and winced. "If I ever offered to let you drive one of my cars, forget it."

  A weak smile lightninged across my face. "My name is Tycho Caine. The Lancer was a rental."

  "Glad you know your name." Rock pulled a wide U-turn in the road and headed us away from the fire. "I talked to Hal. He heard from Coyote. You're in for a big palaver with a bunch of us. Coyote has decided your problem is our problem."

  Rock drove me to what looked like an abandoned executive garden office building. A chainlink fence topped with concertina wire surrounded the place and had signs on it that threatened prosecution of trespassers. The windows facing the street had been boarded up and a couple of walls had been decorated with graffiti. When Rock drove up, he punched a code number into a keypad beside the gate and it rolled back automatically. Once we were in, it shut again.

  Rock took us around back and parked the car in some covered parking. Using another security code, he let us in through the back door. Once he made sure the door had closed, he pulled a nasty little Nambu automatic from an ankle holster and set it on the table in the anteroom. He glanced at my holster and I reluctantly did the same with my Krait.

  I followed him into another, larger and more well-lit conference room with a big table in the middle of it. "Everyone," Rock announced to the five other people in the room, "this is Tycho Caine, the man with many enemies and no memory. Hal Garrett you already know."

  I nodded and shook Hal's hand again. "I hope your meeting went well."

  "As well as can be expected."

  Rock pointed to a well-dressed Hispanic man. "This is Alejandro Higuera."

  Higuera offered me his hand, and I shook it firmly. He looked similar enough in build and features to me to have been Estefan's cousin, but there was a world of difference between them in culturalization. Alejandro was clean-shaven except for a thick moustache. His hair had been professionally styled, and his suit cost easily three times what Estefan made in a good month. A gold Rolex watch glinted on his left wrist as he adjusted the knot of his tie, and a diamond-encrusted ring flashed on his little finger.

  "Charmed."

  "As am I, Señor Higuera."

  Rock pushed on and pointed to an unlikely pair of individuals in the corner. "These are Natch Feral and Bat."

  Natch Feral, I gathered, was the girl's street name. At first I thought her sloppily groomed, but then I noticed her long, kinky hair had been bound and stuffed down the neck of her leather jacket to make it difficult to grab in a fight. Her eyes had a hint of almond-shaping to them, but her hair and cafe-au-lait complexion suggested more than just oriental blood in her mix. Small and undoubtedly quick, she wore fingerless gloves that exposed daggerish fingernails painted black. Her bright blue eyes shot old Heinrich's racial heredity theories down in flames.

  Bat, on the other hand, looked like an ancient, square-jawed socialist hero statue that had come to life. He was not as tall as Hal Garrett, easily surrendering eight inches in height to him. On the other hand, Bat had to outweigh Garrett by at least 25 pounds, tossing him up into the 325+ pound class. From what I could see beneath the plain white T-shirt he wore and through his short-cut black hair, that weight had been distributed 90%/10% between muscles and scars. Bat carried his fists balled, and I saw thick lines of scars on his knuckles. Whoever this man was, he had been in a lot of fights and, by the look of him, he'd won more than his share.

  "Hello," I offered.

  Natch squinted at me, then grunted. Bat let her answer serve for him as well.

  The next person in line offered me her hand. "Hello, I am Marit Fisk, Mr. Caine."

  I smiled broadly, and I saw reflected in her blue eyes her pleasure at her effect upon me. "Tycho, please, Ms. Fisk"

  "Then you must call me Marit."

  "As you wish." As I took her hand and shook it, I sensed some anger from Rock. I glanced in his direction and saw the tightness around his eyes, but I did not care. If he had a problem with Marit, that was for him to deal with. I did not know if they were lovers, had been lovers or, in Rock's dreams, would be lovers, but I could not fault him for his taste.

  Tall for a woman, Marit had broad shoulders that tapered to a slender waist. Her long black hair covered her shoulders and went to the middle of her back. Obviously athletic, she was one of the very few women who could successfully wear a Spandex bodysuit and not suffer for her audacity. The two-inch heels on her boots accentuated the length of her legs. Her smile brightened a beautiful face and, as she directed it at me, I realized I had met the woman with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life.

  From the corner of my eye I caught Natch smiling at me.

  "Where's Jytte?" Rock snarled.

 
"Right here. I had work to complete."

  Something about the woman appearing in the room's other doorway shocked me. At first glance I would have called her beautiful. The long locks of golden blond hair cascaded in waves over her shoulders and nearly reached her tiny waist. Though the jeans jumper she wore was hardly stylish, she did belt it in the middle, allowing the dress to hint at a very appealing body beneath. Her striped blouse was not quite the height of chic and she wore it buttoned down at both wrists and up at the throat as if to hide as much of her bare flesh as possible.

  As she stepped forward into the light, I saw what had set off unconscious warning bells in my head. Her face had absolutely no animation at all. She looked to be wearing more of a mask of beauty than the real thing, though all I saw was her flesh. Her dark eyes did not match the blond hair or her fair complexion, and while she was statuesque, she moved with a coltish awkwardness that reminded me of the herky-jerky motions of a manual transmission car driven by someone who's not yet gotten the hang of the clutch.

  I extended my hand to her. "Hello, I am..."

  "Tycho Caine, I know." When I looked shocked, her eyes tightened a millimeter or two. "Rock reported the crash, and I managed to tap into the Scorpion site commander's datafeed. Tracing the car tag numbers and identification numbers got me the rental record. I have your financial file, and I even have your Digital Express bill. The Mizuno Sheraton in City Center still has your room and is racking up charges each day."

  Marit rested her right hand on my left shoulder and, in a husky voice, introduced me. "This is Jytte Ravel. She is our communications coordinator and, lucky for us, one of the better computer empaths in the world. It was probably more difficult for her to hide her tracks than it was for her to get any of the information she's compiled."

  I knew computer empaths were what once had been simply called hackers. Using an uncanny amount of intuition and frighteningly competent programming skills, they were able to burrow into computer networks. Clearly this Jytte had the run of the city's computers, which made her very valuable. I gave her an appreciative smile and acknowledged her skill with a nod.