robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain

by Robert N. Charrette

  Could they be flawed? Could Nakaguchi be working from a faulty base? Could that be why he was working with a monster like Quetzal?

  Good questions, but she wanted answers.

  She ran a comparison between Nakaguchi's occult history files and the ones she'd gathered in her database. The editor noted strong correlations, but highlighted some significant differences. She set the editor to sift for any common threads in data exclusive to Nakaguchi's files and got a large number of references and passages from a single source: a book called The Hidden Splendour. One of the passages proclaimed it a watershed work of occult philosophy.

  She didn't recall the title.

  The public library database responded to her request for a download with a "not available." There were no other works by the author, either. She checked her file of occult works, and though there was no copy, which was not surprising, there was a notation about it.

  From Sorli. She understood why she didn't recognize the title when she read Sorli's commentary. He dismissed the book's author, W. E. J. Magus, as a lunatic and the book's contents as the ravings of a madman. He must not have thought the book important to her education in things arcane. Why? So many of the occult references that Sorli had insisted she read had seemed the ravings of madmen. What made this one different?

  On the theory that the author would be easier to find than a

  single title, she consulted Gemmatics, one of the Keiretsu's publishing companies. Among the variety of services Gemmatics offered was a database of pseudonyms; it was an extensive database. Her check revealed that the name "W. E. J. Magus" belonged to William E. Jeffries. No date of death was listed for Jeffries, suggesting that he was still alive.

  She set a dossier trace on Jeffries and sat back to await the results. She had a feeling she was getting close to something. Knowing who Jeffries was, and learning more about his take on the occult, would tell her things about Nakaguchi; the hatchet man had clearly been a student of Jeffries and his occult worldview.

  To know the student, learn about the teacher.

  A madman, Sorli had said. Such a description might well be applied to Nakaguchi. She needed to know more about the sort of madness that was corrupting him and making a bid to corrupt the Keiretsu.

  Her perscomp announced departure time for the Cytronics board meeting.

  Jeffries would have to wait. She reconfigured the data dump from on screen to her "immediate" file. The Keiretsu's computers were the best in the world. She'd have what she sought by the time she returned.

  Charley made it to the Settawego Building with five minutes to spare. Good thing he'd been working out of the Need-ham office to be nearer the ongoing investigation at the Hilton. The building was a black rectangle thrust out of a I mige of Sandcrete™, a not particularly noteworthy example of early-century architecture, but he felt stupid when he realized it was his destination; the tower of the Norwood Hilton stood only a block away. He'd been back and forth past this place for a week.

  The place was definitely corp, but like a lot of buildings of its vintage, it had no logo plastered on the upper stories to advertise the building's ownership. He didn't see any ownership marks until he walked up to the main entrance, where a discreet Mitsutomo Keiretsu logo was inlaid into the marble facing over the doors.

  Hadn't Kravatz said somebody showing the Mitsutomo logo had 'napped Lancaster?

  Mitsutomo was one of the biggest of the big; messing with them would make life miserable for him. He hoped that whatever Caspar thought was here was really connected to one of the remora clinging to the public floors of the corporate shark's building, rather than the shark itself. Charley wasn't big enough to survive getting stepped on by Mitsutomo.

  As he entered the building, Charley slipped on his Tsurei Seeing Eyes™. The photosensitive glasses contained a fiberoptic camera and a short-range microphone that could transmit image and sound to his belt unit. Clean recordings were admissible in court and had helped put more than one rapist into psychochemic therapy. Not that he had a court order permitting him to record. And not that he'd be likely to get one for recording on corp property. But using the glasses for private purposes wasn't illegal; they made a great memory aid.

  The lobby was the bottom of a yawning pit of an atrium, a six-story barn. A mezzanine made a second deck of public space and filled a small fraction of the vertical space. Stores and kiosks and restaurants made up most of the tenants, but there were a few small business offices too; most of those were on the mezzanine. Several banks of elevators to the corporate eyrie dominated the northern end, defended by a glassed-in security area. The transparent barrier extruded a tentacle to a private entrance; Charley saw several limousines waiting there. The rest of the place was open and lively and crowded with people.

  Couldn't Caspar have been more specific?

  Charley was still checking the layout when a full bank of < levators opened their doors with drill field precision. Compiler-coordinated precision, more likely. A phalanx of suits Hooded out of the elevator cars. Some formed up in a double iow, an honor guard of sheep awaiting the vips of their flock. The rest bustled on down to the waiting limousines.

  Big show.

  Charley recognized the honcho when she emerged from the central elevator. Pamela Martinez. This wasn't the sort of turf the head of Mitsutomo NAG usually hung out in. Clearly something was up with the corp.

  Business for the Special Investigations Unit? Charley hoped not.

  The parade of suits got more interesting when he saw that Martinez wasn't the only one in her elevator car. Two guys exited after she did, a sharply dressed Japanese and a frail-looking Black with white hair. Etiquette among corps with Asian ancestry had the top dogs coming out last. Who were l hese guys, to outrank the head of Mitsutomo NAG? They were ciphers to Charley. He tapped the record stud on his belt unit; if he was interested he could research them later.

  The flunkies swarmed around the Mitsutomo bigwigs in I he usual way, escorting them to the waiting vehicles. Nothing strange there. Although there were a few odd fish in the shoal; Charley noted a dwarf in the Japanese's wake, and a pair of suits with black leather medical bags tagging along behind the Black. Not typical suits, but not SIU strange.

  After the limousines pulled away, the lobby seemed quieter, as if a storm had just blown through. Charley waited, keeping a lookout for whatever strangeness Caspar expected him to find. To blend in, he took a seat in the lounge near the elevator banks, where he had a good line of sight to the main entrance and a couple of the side ones as well. Occasionally he'd fake a call on the house phone as if he was trying to reach somebody upstairs. While he played his blend-in game, 1400 hours came and went. He gave it another ten, and then another, just because Caspar hadn't steered him wrong yet. He still didn't see anything that fit the spec for an SIU investigation.

  Modus 112, huh?

  The closest thing to a streeter he'd seen was an independent vendor checking in at the desk guarding the entrance to the Mitsutomo preserve. Her clothes were too offbeat to be corporate, but she was far too clean and well-heeled to be streetlife. No Unregistereds here. Especially no dead Unregis-tereds here.

  The answer, huh?

  Right.

  What was Caspar thinking about?

  "He's not... well," Kranekin said in a warning tone as they slopped before a door no different than a dozen they'd passed.

  John gave the dwarf a sharp look. "What do you mean?"

  "Perhaps it's best that you see for yourself."

  Kranekin nodded to Wilson, who placed his hand on the frame of the door. Silently, the door slid open to reveal a well-lil room that John immediately classified as a hospital room despite the stone and wood of the walls; it had that kind of smell. A scattering of odd machines gave an undertone to the lighting from their flickering readouts. Bear was in the center of the room, but he wasn't lying in bed. He was in some kind of fluid-filled tank like something out of Stellar Wars: The final GenerationEM.

  Th
ey had shaved Bear's beard to fit a respirator mask. The newly exposed skin showed an ashen color that was hidden by the darker tone of his tanned cheeks. He had lost enough weight that John wondered if he'd be able to stand. How long had he been in the tank?

  John entered the room under Wilson's prodding. Neither of l lie dwarves said anything. They let John stare undisturbed.

  Intermittently Bear's voice came from a speaker on the side of the tank. It was weak, his words strange. He was speaking in the tongue that John had heard him use when the crazy sorceress Nym had called him from his sleep. John still didn't understand a word of the babble.

  John felt numb and confused. In deciding to accept the recorded invitation to meet with Bear, he hadn't really known what to expect; but this wasn't it. One thing was clear: Bear was in no shape for a conversation.

  "He never made that disk, did he?" John turned on Kranekin. King or not, the white-haired dwarf seemed to be the one in charge around here. "He didn't send for me. You did."

  "A necessary deception. We did not expect you would trust the word of our agent alone. Although the message was a construction to gain your confidence, the heart of the message remains true. Artos needs your help."

  He certainly needed somebody's help. "What did you do to him?"

  Wilson answered. "We were attempting to help him adjust to the present times, through the use of an accelerated learning process. Even though it's a new tech, we'd never had problems with it before. Unfortunately, there were some unexpected complications. Arthur has slipped into a delirium wherein he knows no fixed time or place. We had hoped that you might anchor him."

  "He needs your help, John Reddy," Kranekin said.

  "You mean you need my help."

  Kranekin shrugged his massive shoulders, a motion that barely disturbed the flow of his hair and beard. "In this, it is the same thing. We are trying to help him."

  "For your own ends."

  "We have our concerns," the boss dwarf acknowledged. "However, in this matter we are obliged to do what we can to see him well."

  "See him well? He wouldn't be like this if you hadn't messed with his mind."

  "We acted with his consent and took all reasonable precautions. It remains unclear whether his condition is any fault of ours," Kranekin said gruffly.

  "However, we did introduce him to the technology," Wilson said. "We understand our obligation and are acting to fulfill it, which is why we brought you here. Are you willing to help him?"

  "Why? So you can control him?"

  "He is of no use to anyone, including himself, like this. He would not abandon you in similar circumstances."

  John wasn't so sure. Bear was fully capable of dumping people. He'd been ready to abandon Trashcan Harry when he and John had been in Mitsutomo's clutches. Of course, Bear had known that Harry was a goblin and had no use for him; he'd come to get John. In those days, John had enjoyed a somewhat dubious status as a comes, one of Bear's close companions, but that had been before Bear had learned of John's parentage.

  Would he abandon John? Once John would have agreed with the dwarf and said no. But now? The last time he and Hear had seen each other, Bear had called John a traitor. Not a goodwill and boon companionship sort of attitude.

  But John remembered other words as well, friendlier words. That was the Bear John preferred to remember. He looked at the tank and felt a little sick himself. The man in the tank didn't look like either of the Bears he remembered. Who could say how this man would see him? Where did these dwarves get off in making predictions about Bear's attitude?

  "How do you know what he'd do?"

  Kranekin took a moment before answering. "We have some experience of him."

  What was that supposed to mean? This Kranekin looked as old as a fossil. Could it be—"You mean you knew him before, um, like, when he was king?"

  Nodding solemnly, Kranekin said, "We knew Artos the king."

  We? Was that the royal we? "You knew him personally?"

  "Our history is not the question here. You are the question." Kranekin pointed at the tank. "Are you willing to help him?"

  John stared at the frail figure floating in the tank. Unable to help himself, he had to ask, "How dangerous is it?"

  Wilson surprised him. "For you or for him?"

  John surprised himself by feeling as fearful for Bear's future as for his own. These dwarves were responsible for Bear's condition. What if Bear got worse? What if John ended up like that?

  "For both of us."

  "You will be in no danger," Kranekin assured him.

  "What about Bear?"

  "He can only be better off."

  Some people said that being dead was better than being sick. John wasn't sure he believed that, though. Could he help Bear? God knew he needed help.

  "Are you willing to try?" Kranekin asked.

  John swallowed hard. "Yeah, I guess."

  "Are you ready to try?"

  "You mean here and now?"

  "You got someplace else to be?" Wilson asked.

  The sudden rush made John suspicious. "You haven't given me a lot of reason to trust you guys."

  Wilson nodded. "For your own safety, in case you declined to help."

  "You mean like, so I won't know much if you let me go?"

  Kranekin nodded.

  "You'd actually let me go?"

  "Sure," said Wilson. "Why not?"

  "Spillway Sue, too?"

  "Again, why not? She's seen less than you have."

  "I wish I could believe you."

  "You can," Kranekin said. "You can go; you need only turn your back on Artos."

  John didn't like the way the boss dwarf put it. Sure, he knew the price of leaving, but what was the price of staying and helping? The dwarves said it would be safe. They said

  Bear needed him. But was any of it true? They'd used a lie to get him here. Were they lying now?

  "What if I say that I want to go? What happens to Bear? What are you going to do to him?"

  "You are not the only option," said Kranekin. "Perhaps not even the best."

  "Most of our doctors favor a different course of treatment anyway," Wilson observed. "A radical course."

  Pointing to the tank, Kranekin said, "You are wasting his time, Reddy. Possibly you are wasting his life."

  Laying guilt wasn't the way to get John to agree to go along. He wasn't the one who'd gotten Bear screwed up. Let them fix their own mess. Why should he help them? They'd never done anything for him.

  Still, John's eyes kept drifting back to the tank. Bear looked so helpless, so . . . what? John wasn't sure, but he knew something in him ached, seeing Bear this way. But what could he do? He wasn't a doc or a psych; he didn't have a degree in anything, let alone anything useful. He wasn't much of anything.

  Bear had come for John when Mitsutomo kidnapped him. John had been Bear's comes. When Bear had made the offer, John had been thrilled. For a time John had considered himself squire to the greatest knight in the world, a knight who was a little tarnished and a lot outdated, but a knight nonetheless. It had been a dream come true. Sort of. Didn't he owe something to Bear? What if there was something he could do to help?

  He'd given Caliburn back to Bear and saved Bear's life. And Bear hadn't even said thank-you. Hadn't that repaid Bear for his rescue of John? More than repaid him for the baseless accusation of treachery. He and Bear were quits, weren't they?

  Staring at Bear's shrunken figure, John knew they weren't finished. Bear's accusation of treachery had been baseless. John had resented it, not just because there were no grounds for it, but because Bear had jumped to conclusions. Bear had believed John had betrayed him just because of what John was, not who he was. John wanted to show Bear just how wrong he was. But there had been no chance. Well, here was a chance.

  A chance that, even if successful, might put both of them in more trouble than they'd been in before. He only had the dwarves' word that they wanted to help and that they were Bear's friends. They certainly d
idn't act like friends. But if John didn't cooperate with them, they would do something else to Bear. Maybe something worse. Knowing he would probably regret it, he asked, "What do you want me to do?"

  Kranekin nodded brusquely and made some kind of signal with his hand. A moment later, a door that John hadn't noticed before opened and admitted a trio of dwarves wearing white lab coats that almost brushed along the floor. Their beards were close-cropped like Wilson's, but they were built more like Kranekin, almost as wide as they were tall and with big, solid guts; despite their conventional clothing and hairstyles, they would have stood out on the street as nonhuman.

  One of the whitecoats carried a boxy helmet in one hand. John could see chips and wires embedded in the clear plastic surface of the lumpy thing. A pivot on either temple held a transparent half mask that would cover the wearer's eyes and nose. Kranekin took it and held it out to John.

  "It is inelegant but functional," said the boss dwarf. He sounded a little embarrassed.

  Inelegant? It was ugly. "Well it's not going to make the Fashion Forward list. What is it?"

  Wilson answered him. "An interface device. It's your ticket to the virtual environment we've got set up."

  Virtuality headgear? John hadn't seen anything like it at the mall; there it was all slick and rugged goggles and gloves and cockpits. While the idea of playing with some fancy virtual environment was exciting, the circumstances were something less than he'd have liked. At the very least, he wanted to know what sort of place they were going to toss his mind into. "What kind of environment are you taking about?"

  "One familiar to him, at first. We need to reestablish his past before we work on his present."

  And what about his future? John didn't think he ought to ask; he was a little afraid of the answer he might get. Was he going to be helping Bear, or just setting him up for Kranekin and his people? He took the helmet in his hands.