No sign of an inhabitant, though, so I climbed around the heaps to where I’d found the door last time.
Well. No door, but behind a few obscuring pieces of junk, I saw a blank metal wall. You could mistake it as an old refrigerator if you didn’t know to look closer and see it was just too big.
I let out a loud sigh, slumped forward, and started unwrapping the Machine. “It’s a shame to eat your door twice.”
Car parts fell away as if naturally overbalanced. The wall collapsed inward, hitting the floor of the tunnel inside with a resounding clonk. Any attempt to pretend that had been an accident collapsed when that slab sank into the floor, leaving a smooth entrance.
I walked down the long, space-defying hallway to the lighted doorway at the end.
It still led to that old cathedral. Some of the equipment had been rearranged, but not much. The biggest difference was that the old man sat on a chair in the middle of the floor, in the middle of a ring of robot parts. The chair looked antique, with a pointed back I’d never seen before, and threadbare red upholstery too thin to serve as more than decoration. As for the robot parts… well, that was a guess. Curved sections of metal shell, motors, pistons, chunks of electronics, they lay around the chair in no obvious order, but definitely gave the impression of a disassembled high tech machine.
Frankly, the old man didn’t look much better. This time his overalls were dirty, and he had dust on his face and shoulders, and in his hair. Red ringed his sunken eyes, like he hadn’t slept much. When I stepped up to the edge of the ring of parts, he looked up and gave me a bitter glare. “You didn’t mess with the sign this time. Everyone always messes with the sign.”
Heh. Maybe that was his doorbell, so I’d caught him by surprise?
Further small talk did not seem likely, so I unslung my staff, leaned on it, and skipped introductions. “I need your professional advice.”
The glower remained fixed on me, studying me with small, hard, deep green eyes. Had that been their color last time? His skin was less red, more brown than I remembered. Maybe he’d just gotten a tan. I had time to notice all of that before he spoke. “This is not about the Upgrade, is it.” Not a question, a prediction.
If he weren’t totally the wrong person for the expression, I would have smiled. He credited me with not being whatever normally irritated him. I shook my head. “Only distantly. I need the advice of a cyberneticist who understands power enhancers. My biological double made one.”
No response, but his stare looked a little less irritated, a little more interested.
I pushed on. “She has my mad science super power.”
“I’ve heard about it,” he admitted.
Probably from Cassie, a thought that made it hard not to grin. Maybe I should, but I didn’t want to risk insulting him. “When I use it, I enter a fugue state. I know I get manic while it takes over, but this… it scared me. She took a pill, and had access to my power, but she also sounded completely insane. Not ranting villain insane, babbling and twitchy insane. You’re the only person I know of who understands power enhancements. I just… need someone to reassure me I’m worrying for nothing, that it’s safe.”
Still no answer. He looked at me, no longer radiating anger, just blank silence.
But silence itself was an answer. “So it’s not safe.”
He leaned back as far as the stiff chair would allow him, which wasn’t much. The impression of tiredness returned. “I don’t know. On the one hand, you sound like you had a mild case of Jekyll/Hyde to begin with.”
Okay, now I smirked. Bitterly, but a smirk. “Yeah, and now we’re in separate bodies.”
A grunt was all the recognition that got, and he went back to what he was saying. “On the other hand, there are risks to giving an ‘occasional’ power a kick like that. It can grow.”
“My power is about eight months old, now. It’s been growing rapidly the whole time. Mourning Dove said she could see it. That’s how I got into this mess.”
He shook his head, slow and grim. That haggard face was good at grim. Black fatalism radiated from it, and weighted his tired voice. “I can’t give you a reliable answer. Yes, it might be dangerous. Mad science medicine often has long-term side effects. If each pill leaves some permanent damage, you may not want your head back.”
I watched his face. His expression wasn’t just weary. It was tense. “And the other thing?”
He shot me another searching look, a little irritated, a little impressed. Either he really was a grumpy old man, or he’d practiced the role to perfection. A faint growl even tinged his reply. “Getting your head back may be moot. Has anyone told you how rare mind swap technology is?”
That shocked me. I stood upright, letting my arms hang in front of me so the staff extended crosswise. My eyebrows clicked together. “It’s been mentioned, but I hadn’t really thought about it. I assumed you could get mad science anything. My power can make mad science anything, but… I’ve been told a power like that is… once a century.”
“Or more. A lot more,” the old man said.
Criminy. And I had to fight that legendary-level super power.
He leaned forward again, balancing his skinny elbows on equally skinny knees. “I know of no one making mind swap devices today. Temporary versions exist, but they’re magic, require lightning, and I do not think they would work on a robot.”
“And if you don’t think…”
He nodded, a tightness around his mouth accepting my assessment of his expertise. “I know what I’m talking about, yes. I believe I am the only mad scientist alive who could even make an unsafe version, and I won’t.”
Hmmm. I let go of the staff with one hand to tap my chin. “Everyone thinks you’re dead. Maybe…”
He shook his head, which sank a little farther between his shoulders. “I am aware of only one mind copier. It copies rather than transfers, and it is lost. Last I heard, a pathetic little weenie villain named Mammon owned it, but he didn’t make it himself.”
“I found that one, and modified it to do transfers. That’s how I got into this body. But it left something behind in my head, a version of me attached to my super power. Or maybe my power copied me back into my own brain.” I let out a sigh, and shook my head so hard my pigtails flapped. “Either way, it doesn’t matter. She broke the device way beyond repair.”
His eyes lowered, just a little, staring off into the distance of his own thoughts rather than at me. Quietly, with the rhythm of a man assembling a list, he said, “A mad scientist named Paul Pitmier used to make mind transfer devices. Not a hero or a villain, really, just crazy and obsessed. They were one-shot devices, and have all been used. The Great Vivifactor had a lens that swapped consciousnesses in the 1800s, but I saw it broken. Nothing remains of Da Vinci’s Soul Explorer, or Tikilek’s Ultimate Sacrifice. I guarantee that. Using a creator’s mind as a template for a sentient robot is common, but useless to you. There are aliens who could switch your minds easily, but I wouldn’t hand my worst enemy to them.”
I gritted my teeth and winced. “Not going to let Puppeteers mess with my head, no.”
His head sunk sharply, hanging down now between his arms. It wasn’t a grizzled, weary old man expression, more of a theatrical display of defeat. A touch of exasperated energy crept into his voice as well. “Why am I not surprised you know the second most closely guarded secret in humanity’s history?”
Going for broke, I said, “I assume number one is the stone gates and artifacts?”
That got no response, which meant I’d nailed it. Kind of sad, really. I was hoping there was something even more cool that I’d missed. Of course, there could be an awful lot of really secret secrets left to discover just below the top two.
The lack of response went on. And on. Past ‘maybe I should say something’ to not wanting to interrupt him because he had left drama behind and had to be seriously thinking.
He did, eventually, lift his head. The look he gave me might be sober, but only tha
t. No hostility or bleakness. “I may be too pessimistic about this. Despite what I like to think, I do not know everything. I have been out of touch with the world for two decades. There might be options I know nothing about. You’re still hunting for hen’s teeth, Bad Penny.”
Reaching behind my shoulder, I grabbed a braid and twisted it as I did my own thinking. “I’ll work something out. All you’re telling me is that I have to steal information before I steal the device.”
That got a smirk. Was it the first smile I’d seen from this professional crotchetiness manufacturer? It lasted about a second, and then went back to flat seriousness with a hint of anger. “You know who I am. You didn’t last time.”
I told the First Horseman, “Yes. Whatever you used to be, all I know about you right now is that you help children.” I’d have shrugged it I could. This was clearly a bigger deal to him than to me.
Much bigger. He glared, some of that real hardness stirring in his eyes like when I’d left last time. “I killed people. Many, many people. Personally, and through others.”
“Then why did you stop?” I asked, meeting his gaze with quiet curiosity.
His mouth twisted. That hollow face did disgust well. His already rough voice rasped with it. “Because I was wrong. I had a plan to make the world better. A grand philosophy, considered and studied, plans laid and settings arranged for longer than you would believe. Many would die, but heroes would be better afterwards. People would be better. The world would be better. At last, I had everything in place, and launched my dream.”
“And…?”
His shoulders twitched twice, jerking first to one side, then the other. He was looking inward again, not focusing on me. “Everyone fulfilled their roles, followed their schedules. It all went exactly as I expected, except the world wasn’t a better place. Society didn’t change. No one changed, except the people who died. Heroes, villains, and many, many innocent people, because I was arrogant enough to think they were acceptable sacrifices to my dreams.”
With a huge, heavy sigh, he met my eyes again. Bitterness still sharpened his voice, but his face had gone calm again, at least. “I tried to make excuses. I tried to blame not getting a fourth horseman, but I’m too old to fall for lies like that. I put the principle to which I’d devoted my life to the test, and it turned out to be a fantasy.”
My eyes had gone wide and my face tight, but only with shock from the strength of the First Horseman’s self-hate. Slowly, I shook my head. “If you’re expecting me to judge you, this is way out of my depth. I can’t even figure out right and wrong dealing with my exact double. I’ll let the people whose job it is to decide these things figure out if you deserve to die or be locked up forever or whatever.”
His mouth tightened in a momentary grimace. “There’s no prison humans can build that I couldn’t walk out of. Killing me is the only punishment the heroes have.”
Criminy. What intimidated me was not the crime he confessed to, but the gloomy, fatalistic way he’d delivered that last line. This guy believed he was Claudia-level power.
My words came slowly, as each thought arranged itself. “I’m just going to deal with you as I know you now. If someone else punishes you, maybe you’ll deserve it. That’s beyond me. What it looks like to me is that you’re trying to make me hate you.”
“No.” The word was surprisingly quiet. His face had gone still as well, the frown contemplative, but with the anger gone. “You’ve come to me for assistance twice now. I wanted to know what kind of person I was helping.”
Um. “Did I pass?”
“I’m not sure I have the right to judge.” He was still looking me in the eyes, and if there was mockery in echoing my answer, I couldn’t spot it.
He stood up, groaning and pushing his hands on his elbows as if he were the weak and weary geezer he looked like. “Thank you for not destroying my door again. I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
That was obviously a dismissal, so I gave him a small, grateful bow. “You did. I know where to go from here. I won’t tell anyone about you, either, and not just because it would be getting personal.”
Leaving him watching me with his grumpy old man face, I walked back out of the church and down the hall towards the regular world. What I needed now was to get a little bit evil. That’s what was working best for me so far, after all, and after talking to the First Horseman, I was giving up even wondering which of me was the good one.
I just needed some easily manipulated dupes…
led my gullible patsies through the dark, winding pathways of the arcade, towards a door concealed by deep shadows and its own monotonous appearance. Unaware of the doom I led them towards, they guarded my back as I peeked through.
An empty lounge. Excellent. Abandoned, in fact. No personal items, no refrigerator, just a couple of couches, chairs, and tables.
“We’re clear. No demon princess,” I assured Marcia and Cassie.
Cassie shifted from foot to foot, awkward and scowling. We’d gone out in costume this time, but she hadn’t been using her powers. Her hair had turned from blue back to a pale blonde, unkempt rather than sticking up and back like a spiky dandelion. “Are you sure? Having her around is like having to chaperon your chaperon.”
I reached back and patted her arm. “She agreed we’re settled, and it looks like she doesn’t use this lair anymore.”
Marcia, completing our villainish trio, noisily cracked her knuckles. “I can find out if she’s here.”
I narrowed my eyes, my mouth flatly skeptical and my stare reproving. “She’s not here, Ouroboros.”
Cassie only relaxed a little, twisting from side to side to look into the beeping gloom. “Why are we here? We don’t play the kind of games you get in arcades.”
Marcia sneered, but not at Cassie. Her unfocused eyes looked inward, at her memories. “My father expected me to get high scores in all the rhythm and shooting games, but I’ve never seen any of these.”
Closing the lounge door, I straightened up and flaunted my third smuggest grin. “And that is why we’re here. I bet Lucyfar wouldn’t put her lair in any normal arcade, and if she did, it wouldn’t stay normal. We would have had fun poking around anyway, but I think I guessed right.”
“Huh,” said Marcia. For a moment her face pinched up on one side, eyebrows and mouth in a lopsided tilt. Then she grabbed my wrist and Cassie’s, and dragged us through the darkness to one of the machines, each one its own spotlight. She treated it to a ferocious glare, and then nodded. “You’re right. Take a look at this thing. I thought it was just broken, but it’s been modified. ‘Mad science’ modified.”
The arcade machine had been one of those dancing rhythm games I avoid like the plague. The sign over it even read ‘Dance’, but then had been broken off before the rest of the name. ‘Dance’ was all the title screen said, either. Normally, they had pads in front of them with symbols to step on. This had a pad, but the rubbery surface tucked into the sides looked more like a momentarily inactive moving walkway.
Still taking charge, Marcia plunked a couple of quarters into the machine’s slots. Those read ‘Twenty-five cents’, another sign these could not be regular arcade cabinets. Smacking the joystick around as if she knew what she was doing, Marcia flipped through a dozen different images of characters and names of dances before settling on an extremely goth couple, and ‘Tango.’ Grinning and grunting in satisfaction, she hit ‘Start.’
In black and white, the little man with his black hair and tall, willow-slender woman in her long black dress separated. He held out his hand.
Holograms over the pad, red-and-blue outlines of those same two figures in position. Marcia grabbed me by both shoulders, and physically yanked me into the spot occupied by the woman’s blue outline. She pushed Cassie into the red, even though Cassie was slightly taller than me.
The holograms adjusted, roughly matching our heights. Cassie held out her arm to occupy the same raised pose, with the hand extended slightly downward.
/> My blue outline lifted her arm in response. I tried to match it, until Cassie’s fingers closed over mine.
String instruments wailed a music sting, then settled into a swift zigzag of slowly descending squeaks. Our holograms raised their arms, and Cassie and I imitated them, then circled around each other as the woman made a circuit around her partner in prim baby steps. Mine were a tad less graceful, as I stumbled to keep up and watch both the dancers on the screen and the hologram I had to match simultaneously.
When I looped around in front of Cassie again, the red hologram grabbed the blue hologram’s wrists. Cassie stepped in close behind me. On the screen… uh…
On the screen, the man kissed the woman’s arms and shoulders about forty million times. Our holograms, thankfully, did not encourage Cassie to do the same. After several seconds, the woman on the screen cleared her throat delicately, gave her partner a sharp look, and jerked her head a couple of times in our direction. He got the message, and with visible reluctance stopped smooching her throat.
Another music sting, and he spun the woman in the black dress around, only to take both hands in his and snap her tightly against him. Half a second after our blue and red guides, Cassie and I did the same. She bent me back, both of us giggling and snorting.
Then the dance began. Cassie’s arm curled around my back. I lay my hand on her shoulder. We stalked side to side, following our extended arms like a boat sailing behind its pointy prow. The pad rolled underneath us, keeping us in place.
We were not good at this. At all. The outlines kept leaving us behind, and we missed an entire move where I was supposed to bend back and swing around, because I couldn’t even see my guide hologram do it. The woman in the black dress on the cabinet’s screen actually winced at my mistake there.
You Believe Her Page 30
