Marque of Caine

by Charles E Gannon

  He almost stumbled—jumping in the armor was still a gamble—straightened, saw half a dozen men following Pip over the cubist wreckage that was the remains of the first car’s failed boarding ramp. Several of Weiner’s guards from the battery car fired out the ruined windows of the nearest corridor coach. One of Pip’s men went down with a cry, clutching his leg. Another slumped, hit the ground as limp as a rag doll.

  Robinson and his team wheeled into crouches, returning fire with less accuracy but greater vigor. One of the guards dropped just before a boarder leaned over the roof and arced a vial into their firing position. The explosion blew through the side of the car, left a jagged hole where the guards had been sheltering. A survivor, covered with dust, crawled feebly out of the smoking debris, trying to reach its ragged edge and roll down to the ground. The tail man of Pip’s team lagged a moment, raised his wheelgun, fired. Blood splattered out from the side of the guard’s neck. He collapsed.

  Similar scenes played out along the length of Weiner’s ravaged train as Riordan neared the coupler between the observation car and the following coach, his pistol trained upon that gap. As he reached the step-up, a wounded guard leaned out the doorway of the passenger car. Bloodied and swaying, he brought up a sawed-off double-barreled shotgun.

  Riordan stopped, fired three fast rounds. The second hit the man in the gut, ruining his aim just as both barrels discharged. The buckshot churned the gravel rail bed a yard beyond Caine’s left foot.

  The staggering guard grasped at the porch rail, trying to remain upright. Riordan dropped his lanyarded revolver, seized the grab bar, and pulled himself up in one long leap. He landed on the top step. The man’s holster flap was back, his hand on his pistol. Leading with his sword, Caine kept his forward momentum and thrust from the hip.

  The point of his saber punched through the guard’s sternum. The black-uniformed man fell back, sliding off the sword but still moving, still trying to reach his pistol. Riordan aimed and plunged the saber in again, closer to the heart. The man slumped, gargling a sigh before blood ran from his mouth.

  He’s not real; none of this is real, Riordan told himself as he cleared his saber and caught up the revolver he’d let swing on its lanyard. He cocked the weapon just as another guard came out the rear door of the observation car.

  This was an easier shot; the man was only four feet away, had no cover, was framed in the doorway, didn’t have a weapon ready. Riordan aimed, cheated the barrel lower, and emptied the three remaining chambers in rapid succession.

  A rough triangle of large, bloody craters—typical of .44 caliber lead bullets—erupted on the guard’s solar plexus.

  As the man fell, Riordan tore the pistol off its lanyard and let it drop. Pompogne leaped up the stairs and over the body, followed by one of Robinson’s men. Pip, just behind, waved others into the observation car. The steady outgoing gunfire suddenly shifted to furious, internal fusillades as Weiner’s men hammered at the boarders coming in both the forward and rear doors.

  Riordan pulled his second revolver, considered his sword, sheathed it.

  Pip, grinning despite the carnage, nodded at the pistol. “Glad you practiced every day?”

  Riordan nodded. “Let’s go.” They followed the last of Pip’s men into Weiner’s observation car.

  Bodies. Blood on the jagged remains of windows, on shredded silk blinds. Smoke so thick it hung in drifts. More than a dozen frantic, dodging men. All firing. Never more than four yards away from each other. Missing far more often than they hit.

  Arms akimbo and miraculously unscathed, Weiner stood with his back to the rear gallery window, watching the slaughter. He smiled when Caine entered the shooting gallery that had been, only a few minutes before, his opulent and spacious lounge.

  Riordan ignored the magnate, brought his left hand up to steady his aim, and began firing, cocking the hammer after each shot. Those slivers of extra time did not only pay off in accuracy; he was twice able to hold fire when one of his men charged past and into the fray.

  After the fourth shot, one of Weiner’s personal bodyguards stopped targeting the other entrance to the car, head turning, seeking the source of the slow, steady reports that had killed one guard and wounded two others. A small man, he was not only competently wielding a pistol in either hand, but was now drifting their barrels in Caine’s direction, as if they were divining rods that would reveal the source of the unacceptably effective fire.

  Riordan hastily fired the last two bullets in his revolver at the veteran shootist—missed with the first, only winged him with the second. Caine presumed himself to be as good as dead.

  But grazing the small man’s arm had put a hitch in his machinelike precision. That was all the opportunity that Pompogne and Heidl needed. They aimed hastily, fired until the gunman went down.

  Riordan pulled his final revolver, cocked it, crouched as he moved forward. Pip dodged over to his side, drew a bead on Weiner, even as the earl’s last few guards began collapsing back into a tight, protective knot. “Pip,” Caine warned, “remember. I kill Weiner.”

  Robinson nodded, gesturing to remind their men of the plan’s final protocol. It was unlikely any saw or understood. The volume of fire had decreased, but both sides were still playing hide-and-seek with pistols at point blank range.

  Pushing back the stubborn terror of standing up into an imaginary firefight, Riordan rose, aimed, squeezed the trigger twice.

  One of the two guards covering Weiner stumbled aside, clutching his wrist. Caine cocked the pistol and closed the distance. A flurry of shots from Pip took down the last guard.

  Leaving Caine standing four feet away from Weiner, no obstructions between them.

  Lawrence Weiner was not the titan that the newspapers and portraits made him out to be. He was not much more than five feet six inches and was more stocky than he was imposing. His facial features were not as fine and commanding as on the front page, but were actually rather genial. The sort of guy with whom you could share a few drinks and laughs.

  None of that mattered. Riordan raised his pistol and squeezed the trigger.

  Misfire.

  Which is why I insisted on double-action revolvers. Riordan squeezed the trigger again.

  This time, against all probability, the action jammed. As if the mechanism that turned the cylinder had hung up.

  Weiner-Kutkh smiled more broadly, even as his last guard fell, gutted by three rapid rounds from a wheelgun.

  The room was silent, eyes moving between Riordan and the dreaded Earl of Greater Connecticut. Caine hauled back on the revolver’s hammer with both thumbs, hoping that would unjam the mechanism.

  The hammer resisted, began to give way—and the mainspring broke with an audible pang.

  Weiner-Kutkh waved airily. “I seem to have been born lucky.”

  “Said every cheater who’s ever lived,” Caine retorted. He leaped forward, arms outstretched.

  Weiner’s smile became open-mouthed astonishment as Riordan did not stop to grapple, but rather, caught the smaller man in a bear hug and kept charging forward.

  They crashed through the rear gallery window and plummeted like a many-limbed millstone toward the frigid river below, Riordan’s armored arms still locked around the man he had to kill.

  If not by gunshot, then by drowning or hypothermia.

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  JULY 2124

  LELTLOSU-SHAI, BD+75 403A

  Riordan awoke with a start, expecting a crushing blow and icy darkness instead of the dim white room of Kutkh’s underground bunker. His heart was racing, but not arrhythmically.

  He sat up sharply. Not only did he lack any memory of dying, he also didn’t remember the long fall to the Connecticut River. But if the fall hadn’t killed him, then why…?

  As if appearing out of nowhere—or had it?—a robot rolled toward him. It proffered his duty suit.

  Kutkh’s voice erupted from the robot. “Attend me! Immediately!”

  Just as polite as ever.
“Can’t, if I don’t know where you are.”

  “Follow the robot, human.”

  Riordan maintained a leisurely pace as he complied. He carefully observed the familiar surroundings until he was led into a large, wholly unfamiliar room. Kutkh was lying on an elaborate couch that looked more like an escape pod. “Human!” she cried. “You are reckless! Suicidal!”

  Riordan smiled. “And you’re not really here. Nor am I. We’re still in a simulation. But it’s not Virtua. This one has”—he looked around—“flaws.”

  The room was abruptly gone, gray nothing in its place. Kutkh materialized, apparently standing on a flat surface in the midst of the void. “I misspoke. You are not merely dangerously suicidal. You are insane. Your actions are without logical coherence. You allow years to pass without any attempt to kill me. But finally, just as you are poised to ruin the entire model with a popular rebellion, you mount a crude and outlandish assassination attempt.”

  Riordan smiled. “Which killed you, just the same. Or would have, if you hadn’t stopped the simulation.”

  “I did not stop the—”

  “I can understand your frustration, of course. On the one hand, you couldn’t overreact to the growth of the global resistance movement, even when you started getting impatient, wanted to be able to leave the model. But you couldn’t ignore the other leaders of the 3C when the rebels openly challenged Coal in a place where your control was weak and large, and angry armies could be raised: western China.

  “Besides, you’ve had enough of your ‘game.’ You wanted to get on with your own life. So when I beat you in China, you decided that enough was enough. You devoted your forces, and focus, to getting rid of me.” Riordan smiled. “You took your eyes off the ball, Kutkh.”

  “So, the uprising in China…that was all a ruse?”

  Riordan nodded.

  Kutkh’s eyelids flickered: incomprehension, not anger, this time. “But why? Threatening the world order was entirely unrelated to your objective: killing me.”

  Riordan smiled. “Not if it made you pay less attention to your personal security.”

  “I did not change my security precautions. I remained—”

  “Kutkh, once I kept you in the model longer than you expected, or wanted, your attention to terminal defense started slipping. First you started traveling more. Then, when you realized I wasn’t coming for you directly, you started relaxing surveillance on your routes, your associates. All because you believed you had my persona figured out: an opponent who relied on guile not strength, who struck you where you were weak and avoided where you were strong. I wasn’t the half-evolved savage you expected to try murdering you on your throne. I was a patient adversary who had resolved to kill you with a death of a thousand cuts.”

  Kutkh blinked rapidly. “So your plan, from the first, was—”

  “To make you so certain that I was determined to defeat you strategically that you would no longer expect a brute-force blow to your face. Like the one that just killed you. Or should have, several times over. But I guess you couldn’t stand being bested at your own game.”

  “You did not best me! I was simply—”

  “Kutkh. I had my pistol aimed at your heart and took three shots. You caused three misfires. In a revolver. Then we were falling eighty feet toward the Connecticut River. You were too weak to escape and I weighed enough to sink us straight to the bottom. But you either stopped the simulation, forced it to defy physics, or both.”

  Kutkh’s lamprey mouth writhed for a moment. “I understand your suspicions, Caine Riordan, but your accusations are incorrect. Firstly, I did not alter or terminate our encounter. Virtua itself did that.” Seeing Caine’s doubt, she explained. “All designated observers of the model are impervious to both intentional and chance terminations. This is usually achieved by plausible alterations of events.”

  Riordan managed not to roll his eyes. “So Virtua kept my revolver from killing you three times by ‘altering outcomes.’ It’s still cheating. But when we crashed through the gallery window and started falling, it stopped the whole program. Why didn’t it just adjust the outcome again, keep the window from breaking?”

  “Physics.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Kutkh’s gills warbled in exasperation. “In the case of sudden and unforeseeable threats, the only way to avert an observer’s death may be to halt the program. When you rushed Weiner in the observation car, Virtua no longer had sufficient time to insert a natural event that both saved me and remained in compliance with the laws of physics. If it violates those laws, Virtua loses both its experimental validity and its immersivity.”

  Kutkh allowed several fingers to droop. “So Virtua paused the model for a millisecond—just long enough to extract us. To anyone observing, we continued our plunge into the river and disappeared. We will be reinserted into the event stream at a place and time of our choosing.” Kutkh stood slightly more erect. “Your willingness to hear my explanations is gratifying. I hope it signals your willingness to restart our contest.”

  “Contest? Virtua won’t allow you to be killed. You said it yourself: you’re a ‘protected user.’”

  “We can alter the terms of the challenge so that—”

  “No. I’m done.”

  Kutkh’s face and voice hardened abruptly. “If your participation is at an end, then so are your hopes of finding your mate.”

  Riordan smiled. “Kutkh, you just admitted that Virtua had to save your life. That’s the same as admitting that I killed you, that I won. So you are going to honor our agreement.”

  “What makes you so sure?” There was slightly less hauteur in her tone.

  “Because if you don’t, I will inform your users why the model had an interruption today: that you are tampering with Virtua.”

  Kutkh’s voice became dismissive again. “Finding the users of this model would prove extremely challenging.”

  “For me, yes, but I’ll bet Uinzleej, Oduosslun, and Laaglenz could locate them easily. And political power players like Glayaazh, Heethoo, and Nlastanl might want to investigate further. I suspect that forcing me to participate in your little death match isn’t strictly legal.

  “Either way, the scandal of an investigation, and the loss of privacy, will drive users away from your model. And you’ll become an object of scorn once they learn that, after setting me an impossible challenge in a rigged game, you still had to cheat to win. Against a human.”

  By the time Caine finished, Kutkh’s posture was rigid. “I shall not be baited by you, human. But since you are willing to stoop to extortion”—Riordan had to suppress a chortle at her hypocrisy—“I shall give you what you wish: contact with your mate.” Then her mouth twisted slowly. “Of course, you may be so changed that she will not recognize you. Or will not wish to.”

  Riordan wondered if it was his real or virtual extremities in which he felt a sudden chill. “What do you mean? I haven’t changed.”

  “No? I shall demonstrate. Wiggle the fourth finger of your left hand.”

  Riordan grew angry. “I can’t. You know I lost it during the fight in—” But before he could finish with, “Rangoon,” he discovered that the missing finger was not only back on his hand but wiggling.

  The chill in Caine’s extremities expanded, ran the length of his body. Which made him wonder: the length of my real or virtual body?

  The twist of Kutkh’s mouth tightened. “As I asserted, you are changed. The discrepancies and uncertainties will increase. You will labor to suppress habits you acquired in Virtua, will fight against muscle memory natural to that body but which makes you clumsy in your real one. You are already missing ‘persons’ you met in Virtua, though you are also telling yourself that they are not real, that they are simply a collection of impulses sent to your brain.”

  Kutkh’s smile was that of an assassin giving the knife one final twist. “And so, with every passing day, you shall wonder at, and be changed by, this question: is there really any differe
nce between the impulses and waves that create your experiences here and those that created them in Virtua?”

  Riordan, suddenly weary and disoriented, struggled to fight against the conceptual undertow of Kutkh’s assertions. Which was why he was caught off guard when her tone changed from condescending to eerily earnest. “The inevitable implication is that we are not defined by the crude particulars of our physical existence. Rather, we are creatures woven from strands of time and consciousness. We have no true self independent of those strands, whether they are spun in this world or in Virtua.”

  Riordan’s instinct told him that Kutkh was leaving something out of this relentless cascade of assertions, but if even a fraction of what she said was true… “So, the simulacra in the model,” Riordan said carefully, “have, well, a reality of their own.”

  Kutkh’s fingers fluttered aimlessly. “The starting population of any model is drawn from real templates. Their consciousnesses are complete matrices of actual minds from that world. Anything less would invalidate the analytical value of the model and make complete immersion impossible for later users.”

  Riordan could not trust himself to speak. Myriad realizations came at such speed and in such disorder that any attempt to articulate them would simply result in disjointed babbling. And pushing up unbidden through that riot of contending thoughts came the memory of Laaglenz explaining, “The universe of the Prime Model exists, complete and whole, when you enter it. There is no generation at all.… Just as it is in reality.”

  So were these “models,” well, copies of the original universe? It seemed impossible, but it agreed with Laaglenz’s claim that, “the entire universe of the simulation is fully defined, down to the last subatomic particle.” Which made a terrible kind of sense. Elder miracles notwithstanding, there was no way to pregenerate a whole universe. It had to be a copy. But it would still be impossible to control it, to productively manipulate and track a dataset as big as infinity itself. Unless…