Fiddleback Trilogy 1 - A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  "Maybe." I returned his smile and let Rock daydream about untold wealth. I sat back and just hoped that the treasure was the solution to the question, "Who am I?"

  The Build-more checkpoint reminded me more of a secret military facility than it did any sort of urban subdevelopment. Walls ran from the ground right up through Frozen Shade above us. Sections of it reminded me of pictures I'd once seen of the old Berlin wall, with building fronts as part of the wall with their doors and windows bricked over. Graffiti decorated the walls in a few places and tattered handbills in others, but the Build-more corporate logo predominated.

  We tried to enter it at 32nd Street and Camelback but the Build-more security guards refused to give Rock access to the drive-up ramp despite his having the valet ticket and a nice car. "Here, this is the number for my phone," he said handing me a preprinted card. "You'll have to go up there yourself and use the Ultra-shuttle to take you to Ernesto's. When you get your car, head back here and drive down. If you have trouble, call me."

  "Got it." I popped out of the car and shoved my wallet into my back pocket again. I flashed the valet slip to one of the guards who had refused us earlier. He took it from me and, resting his Armalite Stormcloud on his right shoulder, carefully scrutinized it. He turned from me and held it under an ultraviolet light. That caused a green barcode to glow on the face of the ticket and a red laser-beam flickered across it to read it. Seconds later some data came up on a small video display.

  "Checks." He took a pass from his desk and pushed it down into his timestamp machine. "This will get you on the second level, sir. The Ultra-shuttle will be along in 15 minutes or so."

  I smiled and accepted both the valet slip and the travel pass from him. "Thank you."

  "Sir, one thing." The guard leaned in close to me. "I know you execs find playing in the shadows down here exciting, but I do not recommend it. Every so often, one of you doesn't make it back, if you know what I mean."

  Yeah, I have a vague idea. "Thanks for the warning, Bud. I'll remember it."

  He pointed me toward an elevator marked "Transient," and I stepped into it. In accordance with the verbal instructions the elevator gave me, I inserted the travel pass into the slot, and it immediately climbed to the next level up. The door opened and directed me to the transit station on my right.

  Being 40 feet up gave me a different perspective on the city. From here I could see the labyrinth of upper-level roads very clearly. They appeared positively deserted compared to their counterparts below. They also looked clean and well-maintained. They avoided repetition of the grid pattern used on the streets below, but from what Rock had said, I gathered they only went to places of importance, so they did not have to go everywhere.

  Looking out over the city, on a level just about 15 feet above most of the streetlights, I could see a number of tallish buildings, but they all stopped before they hit Frozen Shade. They looked like little seedlings languishing in the shadows of the massive corporate citadels. Looking south I could make out, in the distance, the Lorica complex and more to the west, the solid wall that formed the City Center.

  Consulting a sign I saw, the circuit that would take me to Ernesto's had an estimated transit time of 15 minutes. I stepped over to an autovend newsstand and shoved a Lincoln into the slot. I mulled over the selection, noting for the first time that it was the middle of June, and finally chose a Phoenix Metro magazine. If I'm stuck here, I might as well know something about the place.

  I collected the magazine and the two copper Columbus dollar coins the autovend offered in change. Thumbing through the magazine I recognized a face from a picture. In a column called "Where Are They Now?" I saw Hal Garrett surrounded by smiling kids. I read:

  When Hal Garrett walked away from a 5.5 million dollar one-year deal, most folks figured he'd end up in the State Hospital at 24th and Van Buren. "It was quite a large amount of money to pass up, but I felt I was past my prime." Garrett, who had averaged 28 points per game with the Phoenix Suns the previous season, appeared to be set to play well into his 40s, so his refusal to play another year stunned most bystanders.

  Garrett, today the CEO of the charitable Sunburst Foundation, says he misses basketball, but not the big leagues. "When I have a chance I go down to the park and play with some of our kids. Sports can be a way out from living in the Eclipse, but it's for the lucky few. Our kids have to learn to stop killing each other, then to get a job, if they want to make life better for themselves than it was for their parents."

  I gathered from context that the Sunburst Foundation helped get kids the materials or training necessary to complete their educations. The article noted that living at 36th Street and Palm Lane was not that far from his former home in City Center, but that Garrett said he felt far more at home now than he did during his playing days. Reading that brought a smile to my lips for reasons I could not fathom, but I let the smile remain anyway.

  The blue and yellow Ultra-shuttle arrived with brakes squealing. The doors opened, and I stepped aboard. I ran my pass through the reader beside the driver, and my destination appeared on a little screen on her right. She snapped the doors shut and started the vehicle forward before I found a seat, but I defied inertia and sat without mishap.

  The article about Garrett put some things into perspective about this Coyote and his organization. I knew from Estefan that Coyote had helped him when he showed up in the city. It seems equally likely that he noticed Garrett's efforts with Sunburst and created a liaison so they could share resources and avoid duplication of effort. Rock Pell, on the other hand, was useful as a gadfly who could flit between various groups and gather information. That, in turn, could be used by Coyote and Garrett to head off trouble.

  My piecing together those bits of the puzzle helped ease my mind. Lurking in the back of my brain had been the nagging question "Why are they helping me?" The answer, it seemed to me, was that they were helping me because I was in trouble. I also suspected that they would want me to help them in the future. That harkened back to Estefan's "paying forward" remark. Because they both helped other unfortunates, I knew I had not been singled out for special treatment, which dulled my feelings of paranoia.

  In another squealed brake symphony, the Ultra-shuttle let me off in front of Ernesto's Upstreet. It looked like a nice restaurant and, if the line of very expensive automobiles parked along the side was any indication, one patronized by some of the city's more successful mid-level management. The building's facade had been done in faux marble, with smooth Doric columns and a downscaled copy of Michelangelo's David, modestly augmented with a fig leaf.

  The doorwoman waited with her white-gloved hand on the door's handle, but I shook my head and walked over to the valet's station. I handed the ticket to the pimple-faced kid sitting inside the tiny shack. "It's been here for the past two days. I was detained."

  The kid shrugged his shoulders and set down a comic book. He flashed the ticket through a reader similar to the one the Build-more guard had used. "Not a problem, it's still here. Gonna have to charge you for the storage, though. $27.50."

  I pulled three Reagans from my wallet, and he dutifully passed the coded end of them through the barcode reader. "Keep the change," I added.

  The kid looked unimpressed, but ran off to get my car anyway. I glanced at the screen but I could not decipher any of the coding except where it totaled my charges. I suspected somewhere in that jumble of numbers and letters I could have learned a great deal about my life, but I was blind to it.

  I was not blind, however, to the car the kid drove up. Fire-engine red, the General Dynamic Motors Lancer looked less like a car than it did a shark cruising for pedestrians. Sure, it was of domestic make, and probably had been put together in GDM's west Phoenix plant, but could smoke the international competition with ease. I dimly recalled seeing a street sprint evaluation of the Lancer up against the Mitsubishi-Ferrari Kamikaze that might as well have been the Battle of Midway II.

  The smile on the valet's face cam
e not from the Reagan I offered him, but from driving the car on the short run from the parking lot. "I took good care of it."

  "And I appreciate it, believe me." I slid in behind the wheel, and he closed the door behind me. I fastened the lap belt, but before I did up the double shoulder straps, I popped open the glove compartment. It was not as large as the one in Rock's Elite, nor did it have cosmetics, but it did contain something that was more valuable to me than gold.

  I pulled the rental receipt and unfolded it. Paydirt! I smiled as I read the car had been rented to Mr. Tycho Caine. I didn't recognize the name, but I rolled it around in my mouth a couple of times and it worked okay. Cool name, cool car. Find out who wants you dead, and you could be in good shape. I refolded the paper and slipped it into my windbreaker's pocket.

  Locking in the shoulder restraints, I slipped the car into gear and eased it out onto the road. The Lancer rode as easy as water gliding across ice. On the upper shot of 32nd Street there was no traffic in front of me, and I felt sorely tempted to wind the car out. Glancing in the rearview mirror for Scorpion Security vehicles—which I realized I could not have identified anyway—I noticed a Chrysler LeBoeuf pull in behind me and come up fast.

  Somewhere in my head a part of me started to calculate the rough odds of someone coming after me so immediately. In a metropolis that boasted over 3 million people, the odds started long, but became short fast. The last place I was known to have been was at Ernesto's. Clearly I left there with someone else, or not under my own power. I was moved down to Slymingtown and left for dead. If whoever had wanted me dead had looked for an obit on a John Doe, he would not have seen it. If he then heard about the problem with the Reapers, he might set up a stakeout on my car to see if I claimed it.

  I felt my heartbeat quicken as I decided I was being followed by people who knew something about what had happened to me. The chase made my blood race and my nostrils flare. I felt the same energetic jolt I had when I confronted Jackson. The urge to stop my car, pull my Krait and start shooting nearly overwhelmed me.

  At the same time as bloodlust rose up in me, I shunted those feelings aside. As I made a quick right turn onto Camelback heading east, I knew there was only one way to determine if these folks were following me or not. At 36th I took another right and the LeBoeuf stayed right on my tail. Furthermore the driver decided he'd been spotted, so he hit the accelerator and pulled into the left lane. A hand with a gun appeared through the driver's side window.

  I tapped the gas and the Lancer's engine roared loudly. The car lunged forward, and the LeBoeuf surged ahead to catch up. As I hit the brakes and dropped the car out of gear, the Chrysler rocketed past me. The passenger pulled the trigger on his pistol as fast as he could, but tracking my car while his sailed on was well-nigh impossible.

  I yanked up on the hand-brake, immediately kicking the Lancer into a bootlegger's turn. As the LeBoeuf again appeared in my rearview mirror, I hit the foot brake, jammed the car into first and popped the clutch. The Lancer bucked a bit, forcing me back into the driver's seat, but it shot off like an arrow. At my first intersection, I cut right and left the Chrysler behind.

  As I entered this narrow side street in the limited network of roads above the city of Phoenix, I realized that one important factor in evading pursuit is having a better knowledge of the battleground than your enemy does. I clearly did not have this, or I would not have entered a street marked "Dead End." A hundred yards later, as I brought the Lancer to full stop just before the roadway came to a full stop, I wondered if that sign might not have been prophetic.

  The Chrysler filled the street at the far end, offering me no chance to get around it. Its headlights flashed in tandem off the guardrails lining the elevated roadway. It came forward slowly as if a mechanical beast stalking prey.

  I popped my restraining belts and stepped out of the Lancer. Moving a couple of paces toward the LeBoeuf, I pulled my Krait and flicked the safety off. Dropping to one knee, I held the gun in both hands and sighted carefully.

  Something about being under fire causes most folks to panic. The LeBoeuf's passenger, to forestall that happening, leaned out of his window and aimed back at me. His first two shots wounded the tarmac to my left. I returned his fire, and when he flopped limply in the window with a lot of blood leaking over the rest of the car, the driver decided I was his.

  In his position I could see his thinking. As I discovered when I shifted over to target him, the LeBoeuf had been specially fitted with bulletproof glass and puncture-resistant tires. The body had been armored too, so all I managed to do was strike sparks from the hood or spatter lead on the windshield.

  The driver hit the gas. I swapped out my spent clip for a new one and triggered two shots as I stood. The car, its engine howling demonically, charged straight at me. The driver corrected as I took one step to my right, lining me up with his hood ornament. At the last second he even began to ease off on the gas as he did not want to sail on into my car and off the upstreet.

  I leaped back to the left, barely avoiding the dead passenger's flailing arms. The driver started to apply the brakes, but I triggered off three shots that stabbed through the open passenger window. I don't know where they hit, but they did, and he lost control of his vehicle. As I crammed myself up against the guardrail, his LeBoeuf slammed my driver-side door shut, then started my car tumbling.

  The Lancer rolled perfectly, with fiberglass side panels shattering and flying off into the air. The windscreen and rear window both blew out, sending sparklies of glass hail down into the streetlights' halo below. With a hideous cracking sound, the Lancer flattened the wooden barricade marking the end of the road and plummeted out of sight.

  The Chrysler, its frame sparking as it scraped over the edge, careened after my Lancer.

  I threw myself to the ground as the fireball from their final collision lit up the street. Debris pelted me and a secondary explosion shook the roadway. When I looked up, little fires burned like votive candles to mark the cars' passing at the end of the roadway. Flames from below licked up as if yet hungry for more and, in the distance, I heard the keening wail of sirens.

  I tucked the gun away and jogged along the roadway until I came to one of the concrete stanchions holding the roadway up. The concrete relief decorations on it made climbing down simple enough, and the added light from where two cars had crushed a chiropractic office and set it on fire provided all the light I needed to see where I was going.

  I found a 7-Eleven and dropped a copper Columbus coin in the slot. Fishing Rock's card from my pocket, I dialed him up. "Rock, this is your mystery man. My car was a Lancer."

  "Was? What happened?"

  "Nothing much. Pick me up, and I'll tell you about it."

  "How will I find you. Where are you?"

  "I'm not sure," I laughed, "but I've set a signal fire. You can't miss it."

  I hung up the phone and found my hands were shaking. I knew it had to be the physical aftereffects of the adrenaline rush I'd felt up on the overstreet. As I looked at the fire burning a block distant I also knew I felt afraid. A fraction of a second slower and I would have been jammed between both of those cars. I would have been roasting in that fire and that realization sent a shiver up my spine.

  I sincerely hoped my shots killed both men before their car went over.

  Scorpion Security cordoned off the area fairly quickly and their firefighting arm came in and had the blaze smothered in no time at all. When Rock rolled up, fire marshals had started picking through the steaming, foam-covered wreckage. They repeatedly looked at the half-melted cars, then back up at the upstreet and at the wreckage again.

  "Roger," Rock said into his carphone as I sat down and pulled the door shut. He glanced at the flaming wreckage and winced. "If I ever offered to let you drive one of my cars, forget it."

  A weak smile lightninged across my face. "My name is Tycho Caine. The Lancer was a rental."

  "Glad you know your name." Rock pulled a wide U-turn in the road a
nd headed us away from the fire. "I talked to Hal. He heard from Coyote. You're in for a big palaver with a bunch of us. Coyote has decided your problem is our problem."

  Rock drove me to what looked like an abandoned executive garden office building. A chain-link fence topped with concertina wire surrounded the place and had signs on it that threatened prosecution of trespassers. The windows facing the street had been boarded up and a couple of walls had been decorated with graffiti. When Rock drove up, he punched a code number into a keypad beside the gate and it rolled back automatically. Once we were in, it shut again.

  Rock took us around back and parked the car in some covered parking. Using another security code, he let us in through the back door. Once he made sure the door had closed, he pulled a nasty little Nambu automatic from an ankle holster and set it on the table in the anteroom. He glanced at my holster and I reluctantly did the same with my Krait.

  I followed him into another, larger and more well-lit conference room with a big table in the middle of it. "Everyone," Rock announced to the five other people in the room, "this is Tycho Caine, the man with many enemies and no memory. Hal Garrett you already know."