“Their names…there are three men and a woman, and a little girl. The men are named Oram Blaisdell, and Carleton Miletti, and Ray Aldridge, and the woman is Gwenyth, I don’t know her last name, and the little girl’s name is Angela Thompson, I talked to her sometimes. I think Carrie’s brother Brian was the last one assigned to contact them…”
* * * *
Pel stared at the object in dismay as he wiped blood and bits of fat and skin from his hands. A thick, soapy smell filled the room.
The thing on the table was made of human flesh, or a reasonable approximation. It had the shape of a woman. He thought he could force it to live, if he wanted to.
But it wasn’t Nancy.
He had thought he remembered her every feature, every inch, every detail, but the thing he had created, had grown and gathered and shaped into a semblance of humanity, was not Nancy. The face was wrong. The proportions were wrong.
“I was never a sculptor,” he said, flinging down his washrag in disgust.
Behind him stood two fetches and three others; two of the others, the two wizards, stirred at his words.
“Your pardon, O Great One,” Athelstan said, looking quickly from Pel to the inanimate body and back, “but I see no flaw in this homunculus. Surely, it…”
“It’s not Nancy,” Pel shouted at him, wheeling to face the wizard. The air crackled with anger, and red light blazed from the walls; Boudicca backed away a step.
“Nay, ’tis not,” Athelstan admitted hurriedly, “nor did I say it might be. Yet you’ve created here a woman—is that not a fair start? To make so fine a semblance as you desire, one needs must have better to work from…”
“I don’t want a semblance,” Pel barked. “I want Nancy. And Rachel. My wife and daughter.”
“And surely, with patience, you’ll have them,” Athelstan said. He gestured at the woman who stood stolidly to the side. “Have you not brought this one back from the dead? Can any doubt that you have the power to wreak whatever you will?”
Pel turned and looked at Susan. She gazed calmly back, and he relaxed slightly. He had brought her back without any problem.
But he hadn’t had to create a body for her.
“Doesn’t look much like Nancy, does it?” he asked her.
Susan looked at the lifeless homunculus. “It’s a good try,” she said slowly, “but it isn’t quite right, no.”
Pel turned to Athelstan again. “If we had some of Nancy’s hair, would that help?”
“Oh, most assuredly! By the Law of Contagion we derive the Law of Parts, and see thereby that the part can be made equal to the whole—from a single hair, in time, we can surely recreate all the pattern of your wife’s flesh.”
“Do you know how to do it?”
Athelstan hesitated, then glanced at Boudicca.
“I do,” the female wizard said.
“Good,” Pel said. He looked at Susan, then away.
If he sent Susan back to Earth, why would she return? It was, perhaps, cruel to keep her here, but so far she hadn’t asked him to send her home, and it was so good to see her alive again, to have the company of a fellow Earthman.
Maybe she wasn’t sure the magic that had revived her would hold back on Earth—and for that matter, Pel wasn’t entirely certain, either, but Shadow’s fetches had lived in the Galactic Empire, and Prossie had said simulacra had lived there; why not a revenant on Earth, then? Susan had left Earth alive, and would return alive, and what difference did it make what had happened in between?
But he wanted her here.
He would open a portal to Earth, and send someone to bring him back Nancy’s hairbrush, and Rachel’s, and the bedroom and bathroom wastebaskets, and anything else that might have hairs or fingernail clippings in it.
But he wouldn’t send Susan.
“You,” he said, pointing at a fetch. “I have an errand for you.”
* * * *
The lieutenant looked up, startled, at the sound of a footstep. He closed his book.
A man was walking across the basement, a pale man dressed in strange black clothes, paying no attention to the lieutenant or anything else. The man was marching directly toward the stairs.
“Hey,” the lieutenant said, dropping Destroyer novel #82 and getting to his feet. “Hey! Hold it, you!”
The man in black paid him no attention whatsoever. He began marching up the stairs, his tread heavy on the wooden steps.
The lieutenant hesitated; should he call in, or stop this guy?
If he took the time to call, the man might get away.
He drew his sidearm. “Stop right there!” he shouted.
The man kept on up the stairs.
The lieutenant cursed; he couldn’t shoot in cold blood, not just for ignoring him. The man might be deaf. He shoved the pistol back in its holster and ran after the stranger.
He caught him at the top of the stairs, threw an arm around his neck and pulled him back.
The stranger didn’t exactly struggle, but he did try to keep walking for a moment. When he realized it wasn’t working he stopped.
He let the lieutenant carry him back down to the basement, and did not resist as his arm was twisted up behind his back and held with one hand while the lieutenant used the other to work the radio.
The lieutenant had no idea why the silent stranger was being so cooperative, and he hurried to get his message through while the cooperation lasted.
He didn’t know that the fetch had been ordered to bring certain items, and no one had told him to hurry.
* * * *
“Aldridge and Blaisdell are easy,” Johnston told the FBI man, pointing at the list. “Blaisdell’s in Tennessee—you people gave us a report on him, which is why we decided to turn the job over to you. That, and we hope you can be less conspicuous about picking them up.”
“We’ll try,” the FBI man said dryly.
Johnston ignored the sarcasm. “Aldridge is in Oakland; he’s in the papers. Miletti is supposed to be local, but we don’t know which jurisdiction, Virginia or Maryland or the District, and we haven’t located him yet. Thompson is trickier—we think she might be in Texas, but that might just be something she was pretending. Thorpe can maybe give you more on the little girl…”
The intercom buzzed.
“Damn.” Johnston pushed a button. “What is it?” he demanded. He was tempted to add, “This better be good,” but he didn’t. His people all knew that.
“Sir, there’s been an incident at the Brown house…” his secretary began.
“Damn,” Johnston repeated, releasing the button. He got to his feet and grabbed for his jacket.
“If you can keep up,” he told the FBI man on his way to the door, “you can come along.”
Chapter Eight
“What the hell is taking so long?” Pel wondered aloud.
No one answered. Taillefer and Mahadharma had both slipped away some time ago, and were probably halfway to their respective homes—Pel thought he could probably locate the wizards’ auras, or whatever it was the matrix let him see, but he didn’t see any reason to bother. Athelstan was off getting himself something to eat—he’d skipped a meal or two while he tutored Pel in the manufacture of homunculi, and was making up for lost time. Boudicca had stepped out to the privy.
The only people in the room, besides Pel himself, were the revivified Susan Nguyen and a fetch. Fetches generally didn’t answer questions, didn’t talk at all unless directly ordered to do so, and Susan was keeping her own counsel.
Pel wondered whether the fetch had a name. Obviously it had had one when it was a living man, but did it remember that? Had Shadow given it a new name, perhaps?
It probably didn’t need a name, though; fetches didn’t seem to have any real sense of identity. They were interchangeable zombies, as far as Pel could see.
Pel supposed he should have asked the dead man he’d revived about it—after all, he’d been a fetch for some time before Pel’s experimentation had restored him ful
ly to life. He’d been so distraught, though—Pel had thought it kinder to just let him go home.
Of course, Pel thought, he could just restore this fetch and ask him. In fact, he probably should restore all the fetches—and he would, when he had a chance, but for now they were useful and he was busy.
“What’s it like, being dead?” he asked Susan.
She stared at him, apparently untroubled by the shifting glare of the matrix. “I don’t remember,” she said.
“Really?”
“Really. I had shot Shadow, and she turned to face me, and then there was a sudden pain, and then I was lying on the floor and you were standing over me, with Shadow’s lights all around you.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
Pel considered Susan for a moment. She was something to think about, to distract him from wondering why that stupid fetch needed half an hour to collect a couple of hairbrushes and wastebaskets. He thought back to that insane, terrible confrontation, here in this very room, just a few days ago, really, when Shadow had killed Raven and Valadrakul and Singer one by one.
“Why’d you try to shoot her?” he asked.
Susan blinked.
“I mean,” Pel said, “you were always so good at surviving, at putting up with whatever it took to get through. You didn’t fight the pirates who captured Emerald Princess, or the slavers on Zeta Leo III—you just outlasted them. So why’d you try to shoot Shadow?”
“I don’t…” Susan stopped, obviously struggling to organize her thoughts. She tried again.
“I don’t know,” she said.
Pel waited, and after a moment she continued, “All my life, I survived by waiting. When I was a little girl I survived the Viet Cong by waiting until my parents saw their chance. Then I survived the Cambodian pirates who sank our boat by not fighting back while they killed my family and raped me, and I survived the refugee camps by never causing trouble, and I survived the racists and sadists all through school and college and law school by just putting up with their abuse. I always played by whatever the rules were, to survive; I became a lawyer so I could have the rules on my side for once. Whoever knows the rules, whoever makes and interprets the rules, comes out on top. So I didn’t fight the spaceship pirates or the slavers—they had the rules, and I didn’t.”
“So why’d you shoot Shadow, then? She made whatever rules she wanted!”
“Because I was tired of playing by the rules,” Susan said. “I was tired of being passive; I wanted to finally do something more than survive. If Shadow died, we could change the rules any way we wanted.”
“But she killed you,” Pel said.
“But she killed me,” Susan agreed. “It was stupid. I should have just waited, the same as I always have.”
Pel hesitated. She’d tried to be a hero, and she’d wound up dead, and Pel figured that that was what always happened to heroes in real life, but here she was. This was real life, but it was like a story, too—the fact that he was alive and Shadow wasn’t proved that. “But it’s turned out okay,” he said. “I mean, you’re alive again, and I guess now I make the rules, so you’re safe.”
She stared silently at him.
* * * *
The room was cool, but Spaceman Hitchcock was sweating visibly.
Bascombe smiled bitterly at that. As if Hitchcock had anything to sweat about! He was probably about to be proclaimed a hero for coming back up the ladder alive, as if that was some great accomplishment. Hitchcock was just scared because he was face to face with Space Marshal Albright and Secretary Markham—the poor little nobody wasn’t used to facing the big brass. Hell, he’d be nervous just facing Under-Secretary John Bascombe, and these two were probably here to shoot Bascombe’s career down in flames.
If he’d had just a little longer Bascombe thought he could have pulled it off, could maybe have moved the Department of Interdimensional Affairs out of the Department of Science and right up to cabinet level.
“Just tell us about it, Spaceman Hitchcock,” Secretary Markham said. “Don’t worry about the formalities. This Major Johnston offered you a deal?”
“No, sir,” Hitchcock said. “He offered the lieutenant a deal, and the lieutenant wouldn’t take it. Me, they just told to come back here and report—I didn’t have to do a thing in return.”
Markham nodded, and Bascombe frowned.
“And what was it that you were to report, Spaceman?” Marshal Albright asked.
“He said—Major Johnston said to just tell you what happened, and that they want to talk, they aren’t hostile. That’s all. And that you get the lieutenant and the others back when you agree to talk, and not before.”
“And do you think that’s the truth?” Albright asked.
Hitchcock blinked. “Do I think what’s the truth, sir?”
“That these people aren’t hostile.”
“I don’t know, sir. They treated us all right, but…well, that doesn’t mean much.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Albright agreed. He glanced at the silent figure of his personal telepath, then at the Secretary of Science.
Bascombe wondered how Albright could stand having a telepath with him all the time. It was supposed to be a great honor to have one’s own telepath, with one at all hours of the day or night, but that was an honor Bascombe could do without—a damn mutant freak spying on him every second. Bad enough working with them when he was on duty.
Markham had one, as well, of course. Bascombe supposed the telepaths had names and identities of their own, but no one had introduced them; they were just there, part of the background.
That was a drawback to political advancement he had never really considered.
Secretary Markham leaned forward and said, “Spaceman Hitchcock, this Major Johnston is the highest-ranking official we’ve yet contacted on Earth. Do you think you could go to Terra and tell the Emperor about him?”
Hitchcock went white, and Bascombe winced. In all his years of political jockeying he had never yet had the honor of reporting directly to His Imperial Majesty, and here this poor frightened gee-puller was being offered an audience.
That was an honor Bascombe did want—but he wasn’t about to get it.
Hitchcock stammered incoherently until Albright finally broke in. “Never mind, Spaceman; I don’t think we need to send you to Terra.”
Hitchcock relaxed, but at the same time a look of hurt disappointment crossed his face.
“Yet,” Albright added. “I’m sure that eventually His Majesty will want to meet you and thank you.”
Hitchcock nodded.
Albright and Markham leaned together to confer for a moment, and Albright’s telepath leaned in with a word or two as well; then Markham turned and looked straight at Bascombe.
“Mr. Bascombe,” he said, “I believe we’ve heard everything we need from Spaceman Hitchcock for the present, but there are a few things we’d like to ask you. If you would be so kind…?”
He gestured toward the interrogation chair, where an Imperial guard was guiding Hitchcock to his feet.
Bascombe straightened. Here it was, at last. If he could sell this, he was made.
If not, he was ruined.
He rose and rounded the table, watching the telepaths as he went.
* * * *
“He doesn’t look very healthy,” Johnston said, eyeing the pale, black-garbed figure. It was a deliberate understatement; the gaunt stranger looked downright corpselike.
“Doesn’t seem to be able to talk, sir,” the lieutenant said. “I haven’t gotten a sound out of him—not so much as a grunt. He just sits there.”
“Do you speak English?” Johnston asked loudly.
The stranger didn’t stir; he simply sat, staring straight ahead. A layer of grayish dust covered the family room sofa, but this mysterious person didn’t seem to notice. Johnston looked at the stranger’s hands, and at the largely-undisturbed dust.
He hadn’t touched the couch anywhere except where he n
ow sat.
That didn’t seem natural.
An airman stood beside the couch, one hand on the stranger’s shoulder. Johnston looked at that, and the lieutenant followed his gaze.
“If we don’t physically hold him he starts walking away,” the lieutenant explained. “Frankly, sir, I think he’s mentally disturbed—autistic, or something. We can’t communicate with him at all.”
“Then how’d he get into the basement here?” Johnston asked.
“I don’t know, sir—I didn’t see him arrive. Just all of a sudden he was there.”
“We might just let him go and see what he does,” Johnston said.
No one answered. The black-clad stranger didn’t move.
The fellow looked like a corpse, Johnston thought. It was hard to believe he could move at all.
“Let him go,” Johnston said.
The airman hesitated, then lifted his hand.
The pale man stood, rising smoothly from the couch without a single wasted motion, and began walking. Johnston, the lieutenant, the FBI man, and one of the three airman followed; at Johnston’s command the other two airmen remained in the family room.
Johnston had expected the stranger to aim for the front door, but instead the silent visitor marched up the stairs and into the master bedroom. There he paused for a moment, scanning the room, then headed for one of the dusty, cluttered dressers. He picked up a hairbrush, then another, and another; clutching the three brushes in one hand he turned and scanned the room again.
“Hairbrushes?” the lieutenant asked incredulously.
The stranger spotted his target, and picked up the pink plastic wastebasket from beside a bureau. He dropped the brushes into it and headed for the door.
The FBI man and the airman stepped quickly aside.
“Major, do you know what’s going on here?” the FBI man asked.
Johnston shook his head.
The stranger had to step carefully when he searched Rachel Brown’s room—the floor was strewn with toys. Johnston saw him hesitate at the sight of the plush alligator on the girl’s empty, unmade bed, the first time the man had acted like a human being, instead of a machine.
The Reign of the Brown Magician Page 9
