robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain

by Robert N. Charrette

  There wasn't supposed to be anyone there. She turned.

  A tight knot of business-suited men stood facing her. The Mitsutomo pin gleamed from each lapel. None of the faces were friendly, and she recognized the foremost one.

  Ryota Nakaguchi.

  She swallowed hard. Nakaguchi was a kansayaku, officially a free-roaming auditor for the corporation, but in reality a hatchet man. Nakaguchi was rumored to have direct access to Mitsutomo-sama himself. He was the old man's facilitator; he also cleaned up messes. Efficiently. More than one departmental chiefs head had rolled under his hatchet. Until now, she had thought her position as head of North American Group made her immune to Nakaguchi.

  Something exploded beyond the Perspex wall; she could hear fragments pelting the barrier. She was afraid to look. Nakaguchi's cold eyes told her she was not immune. "Konichiwa, Ms. Martinez. I believe you have some explaining to do."

  CHAPTER

  1

  It was Friday night and the Rezcom 3 mall was busy, which was just the way he hoped it would be. He was a little worried about being recognized, but not much. It had been almost a year since he'd been here. He dressed differently now and wore his hair differently, too. It would take more than a casual glance to recognize the John Reddy who used to live here. But then, he wasn't that John Reddy anymore. That John Reddy had been buried after being killed in a break-in at the Woodman Armory Museum, where he had worked as a security guard. It had been in all the local media and it was in the police files. Condolences due to the bereaved mother for her son gone to join his long-dead father.

  Condolences were a bit premature.

  There were lots of people thronging the mall, too many for the security guards to watch individually. He was just one among many. He walked casually, trying not to make it obvious that he was headed for the doors to the south residential tower. No one accosted him. No one called out his name in shock or surprise.

  He felt a little disappointed.

  He felt a lot more disappointed when he reached the entry to the tower. He'd been hoping someone would have propped the door open, a common occurrence on a hopping Friday night. It wasn't. It was shut, sealed. On the wall beside it, the brushed metal and plastic screen of the security panel gleamed softly. The computer behind the security system glared at him with the brazen red eye of the active light. It would know who he was if he put his hand on the recognition panel, a necessary step in activating the system. The computer didn't care about his new clothes and haircut.

  The problem was that he didn't want to tell the computer he was here. The computer was Mitsutomo. He had no interest in letting the paternal corporation know its prodigal son had returned.

  Standing around dithering was only going to attract attention. Just in case someone had noticed him stop, he looked around, switching the line of his gaze randomly and trying to look like a fuzzed-out kid who'd just happened to stop in front of the access corridor. He shuffled away, walking a little unsteadily to keep up the illusion.

  lust in case.

  It might be, probably was, pointless, but he did it anyway. He had taken too long to screw up enough courage to come back here to have it blown just because he was an amateur at this sneaking and poking stuff.

  On his third pass near the corridor, he spotted a couple of mainline straightline wage slave types just as they took the turn. He angled his path and started down the corridor just about the time they reached the door. Still looking at his pal, one of them pressed his hand against the recognition panel. The other caught sight of John approaching.

  John saw the calculation in the man's eyes. What was he facing here? A scuzzy kid coming home, or a mugger? Or worse, a street kid about to lay guilt on them for their well-earned, easy lifestyles and ask for a handout?

  John didn't look Mr. Corporate in the eyes. No threat, Mister. Just a kid. Don't want nothing from you.

  Except that you hold the door.

  John was close enough, and the man's corporate politeness made him hesitate just long enough that John grabbed the door before it clicked shut.

  "Sorry," Mr. Corporate said. His smile was full synthetic and vanished faster than Foamnut™ packing in a heavy rain.

  "Null," John replied.

  The street slang got a twitch from Mr. Corporate and his pal. Mr. C was thinking he'd miscalculated and should have shut the door. His pal was clearly feeling the same way. They were two to John's one but they were still edgy. Too safe, I hey were. Entirely too safe.

  He gave them a grin, showing a little teeth. Not mainline straightline safe, the smile said. They twitched.

  The elevator car arrived and Mr. Corporate's pal slipped in and punched the door closed. The closing panels nipped Mr. C's heels as he boarded. John let them go; they'd had their thrill for the day. He took the stairs.

  The stairway didn't have buttons to push that might get logged in the computer. The well was all concrete, with steel handrails and steel steps. It was all echoes and chill. He paced himself going up, knowing it was a long climb. No need to rush. Not now.

  On the twenty-third floor landing he stopped, staring at the big "23" painted on the concrete. He could see the faint outline of black that had once closed up the three and turned it into an eight. That had been Yael's idea. How long ago? A lifetime. He wasn't a kid anymore.

  At least not that kind of kid.

  Too bad.

  He tugged on the fire door and froze before he'd gotten it more than a couple inches open. An elevator was arriving in the lobby, the doors already opening. It couldn't be his bad luck that those two wage slaves lived on twenty-three. No, ihey'd have reached it a long time ago if they had. He caught sight of a bent figure with a familiar shuffle, ft was worse: Mr. Johnson, a neighbor who knew him. He let the door slip closed, holding on to make sure it would be quiet.

  John gave the man time to make his way to his door, more time to open it and go inside, and a little more time just to be sure. He was certain Mr. Johnson would recognize him, and he didn't want to be recognized. When he thought he'd waited long enough, he headed down the corridor Mr. J had taken. He didn't count doors or look at apartment numbers; he knew exactly how many steps it took. He stood, at last, in front of the door.

  There was no name card in the slot above the lock.

  Did his mother still live here?

  The missing card wasn't an answer. That sort of thing had happened before, petty vandalism by the Rezcom kids. Hell, he'd done it himself.

  So here he was. Now what?

  Getting past this lock wouldn't be as easy as the one downstairs. This was a private residence door; the lock would only recognize the registered inhabitants. He didn't know too many dead people living in Rezcom 3 and registered with the security computer. It would have been part of the normal practice for the filing of his death report to result in his access authority being wiped from the computer's memory.

  He could press the visitor's button and call the resident to let him in. If his mother wasn't here anymore, he could say that he'd gotten the wrong floor or something equally harmless. But if his mother was here, it didn't seem like the right way to announce his return.

  Should he try the lock? Systems glitched sometimes; his recognition code might still be in there. What would be his mother's reaction if he just walked in alive and whole and missing for nearly a year without a word? And what if someone else had moved in? He'd been told that his mother had moved, but his source was a proven liar. Standing stupidly in front of the door like a fuzzed dode wasn't getting him anywhere.

  He pushed the visitor's button.

  Ten seconds.

  Twenty.

  Thirty.

  A minute went by. No one answered.

  He knew his mother's habits well enough; she'd have the call set to repeat in the bathroom, in the bedroom, and even as an interrupt flasher on the wallscreen. She hated missing visitors. Of course a stranger might do things differently. He pressed the button again.

  Nothing.
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br />   He looked at the card slot and palm plate of the lock. He didn't have a card anymore, but the lock was supposed to open when the system recognized the handprint of a resident and the person punched in a code; a safety feature for lost cards. He remembered the code well enough and his handprint hadn't changed. Did the safety feature mean that the apartment's system had a link with the building's mainframe, or did it keep the codes in its own tiny silicon brain? He'd never worried about such things when he lived here, but hidden computer links were the sorts of thing he had to worry about now. Would an attempt to open the door be logged somewhere in the Mitsutomo computers, where people interested in finding him would see it? He wished he knew. He wished he knew a lot of things. Like how to force the lock or hack the codes.

  Hell, he hadn't come here to stand in the hall.

  He palmed the plate and punched the old code. Almost immediately, he heard the sound of the bolt snicking back. Still not quite believing his luck, John tried the handle and found that it moved. Some security tech somewhere had saved himself some work by not bothering to cancel a dead person's codes. Not surprising; most people coming back from the dead wouldn't need to open a door. At least none of the ghosts he'd read about ever worried about such things; they just walked right through doors. Maybe the tech had read the same stories, maybe not. But however it had come to pass, he had his entry. He opened the door and went inside.

  The apartment looked exactly as he remembered it, save that it was dark, empty, and the vid wall was on standby mode. His mother never left the vid that way; it was always on when she was home and recording when she wasn't. But it was the sameness of the furnishings that told him he was not likely to find his mother here; she'd never go even six months without some sort of redecorating. The apartment was still dressed in last year's autumn colors. How long had she been gone? There wouldn't be any layers of dust for clues; the cleaning 'bots would take care of that. The computer would know the date of the last use of the apartment's systems, but he wasn't about to ask it; he had chanced enough in getting in.

  But if his mother was gone, why wasn't the apartment empty or rearranged for a new tenant? And if she wasn't gone, why hadn't anything changed? Some people kept things the same after the death of a loved one, but Marianne Reddy hadn't done that for her husband, as much as she had loved him. She had loved John, too, but he didn't think she'd show such obsessive behavior for him, either.

  He thought about the computer again. She might have left a message. A stupid thought, really. Not for him anyway. He left the computer alone.

  He looked into her room. It was neat and tidy, with the same frozen-in-time look about it that the main room had. He checked the closet. There were clothes, but the selection looked incomplete somehow. He wasn't sure, though, because he had never really paid all that much attention to his mother's wardrobe. He tried a couple of the drawers and found only a small selection of underwear and such things. Her toiletries and her favorite jewelry were gone. It was as though she had packed for a trip and never come back.

  Where had she gone? Was she coming back? For that matter, was she still alive? Recalling the ruthlessness of those who had come looking for John and his friends, John knew that he couldn't be sure. His hope of finding her here and safe had fled. Maybe if he'd come sooner. But he hadn't. He'd put off trying for so long, and now that he'd worked up his nerve and come back, he'd found nothing. Bennett had told him she was no longer here, but John hadn't wanted to believe that. Bennett was a manipulative liar. Bennett had also said she was safe, which was something that John did want to believe, but Bennett had lied about so many things that John just couldn't know what was truth and what was lies. Now he knew the truth of one of Bennett's statements and could only wonder about the other.

  He felt depressed.

  When this had been his home and he'd felt this, he had always retreated to his room and lost himself in a good book or vid. Maybe seeing his room would make him feel better now. If it was as unchanged as the rest of the apartment, he could pick up a thing or two he would like to have; he hadn't had the opportunity to take anything with him when he fled last fall.

  His room wasn't quite the way he remembered it. His usual mess on the floor and desk had been cleaned up and things had been moved around. His mother did that sometimes. Even without the familiar chaos, the place felt welcoming. He wandered about, picking up things and putting them back or into his pockets. There were a lot of memories here, but, strangely enough, that didn't seem to be why the room did not feel empty.

  As the sense of his mother had permeated the rest of the apartment, another feminine presence dominated here. A familiar presence. Faye's presence. John's room was the only place in the apartment where Faye would spend any time. He hadn't seen her since his return from the otherworld. Having a sense of her proximity seemed a taunting echo of his safe, homey past.

  Faye had been his companion for as long as he could remember. Throughout his childhood and adolescence no one else believed she existed, for she was invisible and no one but John could hear her speak. An imaginary friend, they had said, but John had always known she was real. They'd sent him to psychiatrists to rid him of an unhealthy attachment to a childish fantasy, but John had remained steadfast. He had known Faye was real, despite all they said. Faye had been that touch of magic he knew the world needed to be complete. John had learned to tell the psychiatrists what they wanted to hear. He and Faye had laughed many times over the gullibility of such supposedly learned shrinks.

  In the otherworld she had been real enough to see, and hear, and touch. Real enough for him to know she was a woman and he was ... Well, there was no point in thinking about that. When he'd found himself again in the real world, she wasn't there beside him. He'd wondered why for weeks. He'd been trying to convince himself that he shouldn't expect to see her again.

  Memories stirred his feelings. Even if he never saw her again, he could never forget her. She was a part of his life he'd never forget. He wished she was here. Now.

  He almost felt she was. Though there was no reason she should be here, John couldn't keep himself from speaking.

  "Faye?"

  He felt a stirring. It wasn't a sound or flash of movement, but it was there nonetheless. His eyes darted about the room.

  "John?"

  Her voice was faint, as though she spoke from a great distance. He was startled to realize that he heard her voice with his ears.

  "Am I dreaming, John?"

  It was her voice! She was here! But where? There really wasn't anyplace she could hide.

  "Where are you?"

  "Here, John."

  He turned toward her voice, but didn't see her. But he felt her. She was beside him, enfolding him in an ethereal embrace. Her caress might have been a cool, spring breeze. He tried to hug her back, but here was nothing for him to grasp.

  She laughed. "You know better than that."

  Did he? "What's happened?" When last he'd seen her she had been as real as he was. Real enough to touch, to hold, and to make him react as he was reacting now, straining against the tightness of his jeans.

  "This is the sunlit world, John. I'm not very strong here."

  Strong enough to affect him, despite what he feared about their possible blood relationship. Her words weren't meant to refer to the attraction he felt; they had something to do with her magical nature. "I don't understand. I thought things were supposed to be different now."

  "They are."

  "Then why can't I see you anymore?" Or touch you?

  "We're no longer in the otherworld."

  "You mean that's the only place I can see you?"

  "I think so."

  "You don't know?"

  She laughed again, melody in his ears. "I'm not one of the great ones to understand the heart of the world. Be happy that we're together again. I am."

  "So am I." Though he still wanted to touch her.

  "I'm glad you came back. I've been here since the Lady returned me to this re
alm. I didn't know where else to go. It's been very lonely."

  "No one's been here?"

  "Not since the Rezcom men locked the doors."

  "You haven't seen my mother, have you?"

  "Your mother? Oh, you mean Marianne Reddy?"

  He almost asked who else, but thought better of it and just said, "Yes."

  "I don't know what happened to her. There was no one here when I got back. Just the Rezcom men since. I kept hoping you'd—John, there's someone coming."

  He'd guessed as much; his scalp was prickling. During the last few weeks on the street, he'd often gotten such a sensation when someone was looking for him.

  He heard the door unlock.

  "There are two of them," she whispered.

  John caught a reflection of light and image in the main room's window before he eased the bedroom door shut, cutting off the line of sight. He'd seen two men in Rezcom security uniforms, the Mitsutomo logo bright on the left shoulders of their shirts.

  Damn, the lock did have a link to Mitsutomo security.

  "I'll hide you like at MaxMix Manor," Faye whispered.

  Having experienced it before, John was more confident this time. He stood still when one of the guards approached the door to his room.

  "Wasn't this shut?" the man asked in a whisper.

  "Don't remember," his partner replied.

  "I think it was."

  "Okay, okay. I'm right behind you."

  The door flew open, revealing a tall security guard. He had his gun drawn. The other man had a weapon in Ms hand as well. The tall guard took a step into the room and looked around nervously. His gaze passed across John without stopping.

  "You're getting jumpy, Floyd," the backup man said.

  "This place gives me the creeps," Floyd said. "You weren't here the last time, Charley, or you'd be as jumpy as me."

  Charley shrugged and holstered his pistol. "Let's check the rest of the place."

  Floyd backed out of John's room, holstering his gun and joining his partner to search the rest of the apartment. When they were done, Floyd raised his hand unit. "This is Kendall. We're in South 23G. There's no one in the apartment."