The Paratwa (#3 in the Parawta Saga)

by Christopher Hinz

  And if that day ever did come, the Lion hoped it would be under sunny skies.

  He found himself chuckling heartily, amused by his own contradictions. So much for his sharp analysis of the weather debate.

  A Costeau guard, with thruster rifle slung over his shoulder, emerged from the house, searching for his leader. The young guard glanced around suspiciously, obviously scanning the surrounding forests for some indication of what was causing the Lion of Alexander, chief of the United Clans, acknowledged head of the entire Costeau population, to laugh aloud. When the guard realized that they were alone, he cleared his throat.

  "Sir, I have Doyle Blumhaven for you."

  The Lion felt the last remnant of joy slip from his face. Doyle Blumhaven was one of the few people capable of doing that to him.

  He sighed. “Bring a monitor outside. I'll speak to our esteemed councilor right here.” And never mind the weather.

  The guard shook his head. “No sir, he's not on screen. He's here, at the retreat."

  Doyle Blumhaven? Here in the flesh? E-Tech's director rarely left his offices in the main governmental district, some thirty miles to the south. And as far as the Lion knew, Blumhaven had never before been to the clan of Alexanders’ private preserve. Although they were both councilors of Irrya, the Lion could not imagine what had motivated Blumhaven to enter the unofficial heartland of the Costeaus.

  He nodded to the guard and then made his way around the stone path that encircled the large A-frame. Near the front of the house sat Doyle Blumhaven, at one of the lawn tables, on a slightly elevated ridge of groomed albino grass. He wore a conservative blue suit, expertly cut to deemphasize his heavy frame. A servant had already brought a tray of refreshments, and Blumhaven was munching contentedly on pita bread stuffed with mashed flounder.

  At the sight of the Lion, a tight smile crept across the councilor's pudgy face. “Terrible weather, isn't it?"

  "Most upsetting."

  Blumhaven licked a crumb from his upper lip. “Councilor, this retreat is a marvelous place. You and your Costeaus should be most proud."

  "We are,” replied the Lion, perceiving the E-Tech councilor's words as a reminder that Costeaus were different from other colonists. Despite the great inroads made to mainstream the Costeau population, the walls of prejudice still existed. To the Lion's way of thinking, Doyle Blumhaven remained a living example of subtle bigotry.

  At least they don't call us pirates anymore, he mused, recalling the once-common nickname for Costeaus, a nickname that the mainstreaming movement had worked hard to eliminate from intercolonial vocabularies. Of course, deep down, we still think of ourselves as pirates. It was an identity that even the most mainstreamed Costeaus still clung to, long after they had given up their clan odorant bags and assumed the soothing smells of proper culture.

  Blumhaven finished the pita bread and reached for a pitcher of cognac tea. “It's just a shame that my visit cannot be under more pleasant circumstances.” He glanced upward at the darkening skies.

  Before the Lion could respond, another guard emerged from the house. The guard handed the Lion a printed message. The Lion read it silently, then sat down at the table, directly across from Blumhaven.

  "Doyle, my security people report that you have brought with you a speck camera and some tracking gear. I'm afraid that it's our policy to discourage active surveillance gear here at the retreat."

  Blumhaven shrugged, then reached under his coat. The guard leaned forward, anticipating being handed the devices, but Blumhaven quickly snaked his hand across the table and deposited the two small rectangular units in the Lion's palm. A spark of static electricity jumped between the devices.

  "Sorry,” muttered Blumhaven. “These damn things are always giving me shocks. I carry them only because my Security people insist."

  "Of course,” said the Lion, handing the devices to the guard, who whisked them back into the house. “Your equipment will be returned to you at the main parking lot when you depart,” he offered, not satisfied by Blumhaven's explanation of why such devices had been brought here. Still, Doyle's reasons were probably innocuous. Perhaps he feels the need to protect himself amid this haven for pirates.

  "Foolish of me,” said the E-Tech councilor. “I wasn't thinking. I didn't even stop to consider that your retreat would be under such tight security."

  "Of course. And now, Doyle, just what are these unpleasant circumstances that have prompted your visit?"

  Blumhaven set down his drink. “Recently, a special audit of the E-Tech stasis vaults uncovered a discrepancy. It seems that the stasis capsule that was supposed to contain Gillian and Nick was switched with another capsule. A bit of chicanery, I'm afraid. We can't seem to locate the Gillian/Nick stasis capsule anywhere."

  The Lion remained silent.

  "And last night, of course, a man used a Cohe wand in Sirak-Brath, and with a great degree of expertise, according to witnesses. Since the killers responsible for the Order of the Birch massacres have never employed that particular weapon, and since Gillian is known to be an expert with the Cohe, E-Tech was wondering if Gillian—and Nick—could have been awakened from their stasis sleep?"

  "It certainly sounds possible."

  Blumhaven gave a forced chuckle. “Yes ... very possible. And if so, that means that there is quite possibly a traitor in the E-Tech vaults—a highly skilled programmer with confidential access to the E-Tech stasis vaults, and probably the data archives as well.

  "Since it is well known that the Lion of Alexander has been an advocate for awakening these two men from stasis, E-Tech was wondering if you—or any of your Costeaus—might have some knowledge of these troubling events?"

  The Lion smiled grimly. Do you think I'm a complete idiot? Do you think I'm going to admit that Inez Hernandez, Adam Lu Sang from the data vaults, and myself conspired to awaken the Paratwa hunters from their fifty-six-year sleep?

  Blumhaven, seeing that no answer was forthcoming, continued. “Since you personally knew Gillian a long time ago, our people believe that he might try to contact you.” The councilor licked his lips. “Could this have occurred already?"

  "If Gillian were to contact me, I'm afraid such a meeting would be held in the strictest confidence."

  A flash of anger distorted Blumhaven's baby-fat cheeks. “This is a most serious matter ... a criminal matter. And for your own benefit, I might say that political suicide is not an attractive thing to witness. If you know something about Gillian and Nick, I would strongly suggest that you come out with it right now. It will only be a matter of time before we identify the traitor in the E-Tech vaults who arranged for the awakening, and that person will bear the full brunt of E-Tech prosecution. Doubtlessly, to save his own skin, this person will implicate any fellow conspirators.

  "I might add that since E-Tech determined the identity of one of the perpetrators who escaped from the Venus Cluster massacre—a Costeau named Buff Boscondo—we have been diligently trying to identify her male companion. We now believe that this male could have been Gillian. Since this Boscondo woman, who boasts quite a history of unproven criminal activities, has been known to associate with the clan of Alexander—your clan...” Blumhaven trailed off with a meaningful shrug.

  The Lion stared upward, into the great bubbling patches of gray-green mist that marred the seventy-mile-long capitol cylinder. Directly overhead, where the cosmishield glass should have been providing this sector's primary light source, the mirrored image of the sun was totally hidden behind swiftly churning cloudbanks.

  A day of programmed obscurity.

  "Doyle,” he said quietly, “if E-Tech should learn anything new regarding these affairs, I would appreciate being kept informed."

  Blumhaven stiffened. “I can assure you that you will be kept abreast of current developments."

  The Lion stood up. “Is there anything else that we need to discuss?"

  "Nothing that can't wait until the next Council meeting,” replied Blumhaven, slowly lifting
his bulk from the chair.

  The Lion walked him toward the path leading to the main parking lot beyond the woods. “Anything new on the Order of the Birch massacres?” quizzed the Lion, knowing that this remained a sore spot with Blumhaven. E-Tech Security still seemed totally impotent in dealing with the continuing killings. There had been two new massacres in the last week alone, bringing the total number to eleven.

  "We have some leads,” muttered Blumhaven. “Since the Venus Cluster killings—since we first learned that it is probably a Paratwa assassin we are dealing with—we have been making steady progress."

  Steady progress, thought the Lion, a misnomer for we've learned nothing new. And Blumhaven obviously did not realize that the Lion had been the one responsible for leaking the information that the Order of the Birch killers was indeed a singular Paratwa. The Lion remained angry that the Council had voted—over his own and Inez Hernandez's objections—to withhold that information; publicly, E-Tech Security continued to proclaim that the killers probably were not a Paratwa, although increasing numbers of freelancer reports disputed those assertions.

  Of course, the Lion recognized that he was just as manipulative with information as Blumhaven. The E-Tech director and the rest of the Council still did not know that the assassin they were dealing with was a tripartite, composed of three tways instead of the normal two. Nick, ever one to hoard information, had felt it best that they keep that little tidbit to themselves, at least for the time being.

  The Lion halted at the edge of the woodland. “Good-bye, Doyle."

  Blumhaven's tone softened. He almost sounded polite. “Please give some added consideration to what we have discussed. Your political future must certainly be more important to you than a misguided friendship."

  "It's not,” said the Lion. Blumhaven stared at him for a long moment, then turned and marched up the winding path through the pines. The Lion waited until Doyle had vanished from sight before heading back to the house. Nick stood waiting for him just inside the door.

  The Lion shook his head. “Our little conspiracy is being uncovered."

  "I was listening,” said the midget, leaping up onto the lawn table. “I'm not surprised that Blumhaven's finding things out, but I'm real curious about why he felt he had to come down here and tell you what he knows."

  The Lion nodded. “A bit strange."

  "At any rate, if he had any hard evidence, he would have used it. So he's still guessing."

  "But not for long, I'd suppose. Is Adam still trying to penetrate E-Tech Security?"

  "Yeah,” said Nick. “I guess we'd better warn him that things are getting edgy. Tell him to back off a bit ... at least from E-Tech Security. But I don't want our efforts against the sunsetter to be hindered."

  The Lion scowled. “Adam could be in great danger—"

  "We're all in great danger, Jerem, so it's almost an irrelevant point. Besides, in the last couple of weeks we've been developing a closer understanding of the relationship between the sunsetter and Freebird. Adam is convinced—and I'm beginning to agree with him—that Freebird is protecting the sunsetter from harm solely because that is the best method for a computer program of its nature to thwart its own destruction by the sunsetter. By acting as the sunsetter's guardian angel, Freebird stays one step ahead of it.

  "We're also beginning to suspect that the sunsetter's primary reason for destroying all of those ancient programs in the first place was to drive Freebird out into the open."

  "Freebird is the sunsetter's actual prey?"

  "It sure as hell is looking that way. There's a very strange relationship between these two programs. I hate to anthropomorphize, but the more we learn about Freebird and the sunsetter, the more I feel that we're dealing with a pair of ancient enemies, long at war with each other."

  The Lion gazed at a genetically altered peach tree near the corner of the house, its rainbow elephant leaves flopping in the soft winds. A faint smell of dead fish assailed him: the unique identifying brand of the clan of Alexander, still worn by many of the Costeaus at this retreat in small odorant bags fastened to their waist belts.

  He turned back to Nick. “I suppose even if I ordered you and Adam to abstain from your efforts for a while, it wouldn't do any good."

  Nick grinned. “Hell, Jerem, we're computer hawks. Neither rain nor sleet nor snow nor Paratwa will keep us from our appointed rounds. But relax—I'll tell Adam to be extra careful from here on out."

  "I do not think that I will be able to do much relaxing in the weeks to come."

  Nick gazed up at the brooding skies. “Yeah ... the storm's a-coming."

  O}o{O

  Susan Quint, at a state of consciousness somewhere between the dusk and the darkness—on the rim of the dreamtime—believed in her own immortality.

  It was a feeling totally consistent with her newfound body-thought, her hyperenhanced awareness of self, the completeness of existing freely in one place at one time: her intellect a true focusing and amplification of base emotions—anger, fear, joy, sorrow—those raw natural feelings complementing the deeper urges of the physical self.

  I am a force existing discretely within a matrix of other forces. I am a human being alive within the larger world.

  Susan pulled back from the dreamtime, allowed logical thought to disengage slightly from the undammed flow of mind/emotion/body, allowed herself to perceive her own nature from a distance, like a winding river glimpsed from a steep hill. Now she could see her vision of immortality through the unencumbered apparatus of digital conception, as a human mimicking the actions of a computer. Far above the river of her own soul, she could analyze the interconnections among the three distinct states of consciousness. From that vantage point, she conceived of immortality as it truly was, not as some mythological state enabling a person to live forever, but as the free, totally unencumbered flow between the distinct facets of her own self: mind/emotion/body. Within the realm of the creature known as Susan Quint, she could move in any direction; the river brooked no bounds. She could swim to any inlet, bask on any bank, dive beneath the deepest stretches of water without mortal fear of drowning in whirlpools of childhood pain.

  Yet she could see clearly those places where she was again a child, trying to understand her parents’ bizarre behavior, trying to attain a stability within a home that—at times—offered little more than a dark sanctuary against the more dimly understood dangers of the real world. Now Susan could apply the logic of intellect to that portion of her life. Now she could understand how her parents’ fanatic religious devotion to the Church of the Trust had driven them insane, and how that insanity had created the wellsprings for much of the unpleasantness in her life. The greatest turbulence had occurred during Susan's eleventh year, when her mother and father had committed suicide.

  She would never again forget the pain.

  I am my body-thought. I have access to the entire tapestry of my past; all my triumphs, all my grief. I am immortal. I contain eternity.

  "Where are you?” challenged a voice.

  Susan, with one impossibly fast motion, dove from that conceptual vantage point, high above that river of her life, back into the roaring clarity of pure body-thought. In the relatively spacious midcompartment of their shuttle, she whirled to face the voice.

  Simultaneously: jaws chomped together, activating her crescent web. Hands slid effortlessly into the side pouches of her flakjak, whipped out two small knives, energizing them via skin galvanics and palm pressure.

  Multicolored beams leaped from their hilts, tripling in length as she charged forward, her arms extended outside the crescent web's protective aura: standard attack-posture for a fighter armed with flash daggers.

  Beside Timmy stood the familiar target grid. Susan spun sideways, chopped five times with her right arm, pivoted one-eighty degrees, leaped sideways, then thrust her left flash dagger straight at the profile of the dummy's narrow head. The makeshift quintain, crudely cut from a baffle plate of titanium alloy, shredded i
nto half a dozen pieces. Susan's final thrust burned through the left earlobe of the now-unsupported head; gravity sent the pieces crashing to the deck.

  Her proctor's eyes widened with obvious pleasure; Timmy's massive body seemed to quiver, the folds of fat dancing in an ecstasy of satisfaction. “Dead-center.” He chortled, gazing serenely at his handiwork, the pieces of which now littered the floor of the shuttle's midcompartment.

  "I'm glad you're impressed,” said Susan, deenergizing the twin daggers and replacing them in the flakjak's specially designed slip pockets. She maintained the invisible crescent web in its active mode, however, continuing to protect her body from front and rear attack. Some days, Timmy was full of tricks; it would not do to release her defenses just yet.

  He smiled openly. “You made it look easy. Your piercing technique with the daggers is excellent, but don't get trapped into using the blades in that specialized way. At four of your last five sessions, your death-blow was delivered with a thrust."

  She shrugged. “It felt right. I assumed this was an enemy with an active web. It would be far more difficult to slash through the crescent's weak side-portals than to administer the blade as I did."

  Timmy chewed on that for a moment. Then: “Soon you'll be ready for moving targets."

  "I can't wait.” She edged her way over to one of the midcompartment's windows, making sure that she kept Timmy in peripheral view.

  "Where are we?” she asked. They were flying very low across the surface of the planet, probably less than six hundred feet above the ravaged terrain. Damaged buildings, most of them two and three-story concrete structures, stood along the edges of trash-strewn highways. Everything was whipping by extremely fast; Timmy had the shuttle on automatic, was keeping them at low altitude to lessen their chances of being spotted by ground-based E-Tech scanners.