He’d had cause to make use of Chu Lin’s services once, but that was a long time ago.
“Leave me alone, I didn’t come here to fight,” Soren said.
There was a slight time delay as his would-be adversary’s cybernetic gray parrot, perched on his shoulder, translated for him. Some of the locals used real birds. But they were hard to find and expensive; easier just to buy a synthetic one from the Transhumanist district. The synthetics could translate between any two languages, moreover, well beyond the range of even the best African grey. “That’s too bad,” his adversary said in Mandarin, “because a fight is what you get.” He was courteous enough to wait for his parrot to translate for Soren. The Chinatown district was big on certain animals: exotic birds, Komodo dragons, tigers. Again, some were very high functioning synthetics that could carry on conversations like Natura’s creatures, only based on the robotic wizardry of the transhumans, not on her kind of magic.
The guy charged him—well, as much as one could charge in this fighting style; he looked more like he was falling down drunk over him. But Soren only had to touch him to send his nanites into him. A few sent on their way to his brain, and he fell like a stone. He’d be comatose until someone from the Transhumanist district revived him. With Bozo dispatched, Soren didn’t expect too much further trouble. But it was just the opposite.
They were coming at him in numbers now. Not all of them would be so easy to put down. There were many in this district every bit as tech-loving as him, and they’d have figured out ways around the stunt he just pulled. He guessed that for those, he’d just proven worth their time, that’s all, with his narrow escape.
Soren shouted, “Chu Lin, put a stop to this!”
Several of them took a considered step back. Chu Lin was a legend in these parts. But when Chu Lin didn’t speak up on his behalf, the mob of wannabe fighters began closing in on him again.
It was quite possible Chu Lin didn’t even live on this block, so he just couldn’t hear the outcry. And Soren could expect no friends here who’d relay the message for him.
Soren slipped into his tai chi stance. There was going to be no avoiding this, and no avoiding getting his ass kicked.
Each time one of them connected with Soren, the blow hurt like hell, but it was an opportunity to send some nanites into them. Even if they had countermeasures, he had to hope his ploys would be successful against some of them. One dropped when his jugular exploded, erupting with blood. Soren had deployed the nanites with a pressure point jab to that area, figuring even if the guy was saturated with nanites, by the time they got to where he’d placed the nanite bomb, it would be too late. He was right—this time around.
As to killing the guy… . It was a bit over the top, but that was Chu Lin’s specialty, bringing people back from the dead. He’d just have to hope that Chu Lin found him worthy of resuscitation. If not, Soren was doing Chu Lin’s dirty work for him.
Soren took a barefoot kick to the neck. His nanites deployed from where they felt the blow. They electrocuted his attacker by glomming on to the nearest nerve ending they could find and discharging everything they had stored up in them. Once again, the ploy worked. His assailant convulsed in midair, his body parallel to the ground from his jumping kick. By the time he fell, there would be no getting up again, not without heart paddles connected to a defibrillator at the very least. Not without a lot more than that, if he were nano-infested and the other nanites added to the chain reaction.
The fact was Soren was pretty fast on his feet. He was quite the champion in his time, even if he’d long ago abandoned the discipline. His mastery of chi had just taken him in other directions. Especially since going transhuman.
“Enough!” a voice shouted from the balcony above. Soren recognized it as Chu Lin. “Bring the dead bodies to me—later, after my friend has gone and we’ve had a chance to catch up.”
Chu Lin had no official ranking in their community; he wasn’t himself a fighter. But no one argued with that guy; no one messed with someone who could bring you back from the dead. No one was surrendering an ace up the sleeve like that.
The bodies were already being carted away. And Soren was being ushered upstairs, past Chu Lin’s own defenses. They were loyalists happy to dedicate a piece of their day to ensure no one got past them who Chu Lin didn’t want to get past them. The price of notoriety was that everyone wanted to get past them. Soren could relate. He also prized his privacy rather highly.
The fat guy at the foot of the stairs resembled a living Buddha. They were baited traps one and all that those new to the sector fell for every time. They seemed defenseless enough—it would take a half hour for them to get vertical, assuming they could. But these were the chi masters extraordinaire, who didn’t have to touch you to seriously mess you up.
The other guards, perched on each landing of the stairs, advertised their fighting styles a bit less, but Soren couldn’t imagine what they did to you was any prettier than they looked. If they weren’t wearing a wakizashi sword—chosen for in-close combat—they were sporting daggers or “jewelry” no less lethal. Soren glanced away from their blades, down at the trail of blood on the steps, where no doubt no shortage of heads and body parts had rolled in response to gravity after tussling with one of these guys.
Once inside Chu Lin’s flat, Soren had to put his hand up to his eyes to prevent a seizure. The overload of discordant colors alone… . The Chinese used a very different color palette as a rule than westerners were used to. Chu Lin laughed. “Your friend Victor would love it. The patterns are extremely complex, but they form mandalas. They help me center my mind.”
“To each his own, I guess.”
“What brings you, my friend?” Chu Lin gestured to the low-slung table and the cushions at opposite ends for Soren to take a seat. He did, and Chu Lin joined him.
“A rather large favor.”
“How large?”
“You’re more likely to flick your finger to have me killed by one of your people than grant it.”
Chu Lin grunted. “Interesting. Finally, someone with a proposal that doesn’t entirely bore me to death. Or so one hopes.” He sipped his tea. Soren wondered if they were all down to living off dried herbs by drinking teas and eating canned foods, until the effects of the Tillerman could be neutralized. Chu Lin was youngish for a grand master, maybe mid-forties. Handsome, in the way of Japanese anime, with the narrow, pointed chin, the face air-brushed of all signs of age. Though if Soren suggested he looked Japanese, Chu Lin would kill him for sure.
“I need you to raise me an army of the dead,” Soren said.
Chu Lin finished sipping his tea, missing just the smallest of beats, and lowered the cup very, very slowly, his face impassive.
“Why do I sense that’s not the hard part?”
“Hard enough, but you’re right. I can’t have just any souls popping back into these bodies, least of all the owners of them. I need you to tap a realm where souls go to, to learn how to laugh away the worst kind of suffering. I need a troupe of clowns that could only be forged in the rungs of Hell not even Dante had a stomach for.”
The impassive face held and held until Soren was certain he was a dead man. He was talking blasphemy by the standards of just about every religion heard and unheard of. And while he wasn’t exactly up to speed on Chinese mystical traditions, he was fairly sure this was an abomination by their criteria as well.
Slowly, Chu Lin started laughing. “You’re going after the Tillerman. A psychic counteractive drug.”
“Yes. He’s feeding off of sorrow and this sea of listless souls. I need people he can’t reach, no matter how hard he retaliates. And trust me, he’s not going to sit still for this. I’m asking you to bring all kinds of suffering on your people, on mine, on all peoples. This is going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets better. Malaise as a state of mind will start to look like a fucking Mardi Gras celebration.”
Chu Lin sucked in what was known in his circles as the breath
of life. A power breath, by other traditions. “I say one thing for you; you never bore me.”
Chu Lin reached for his cup, took another sip, and meanwhile his eyes had gone vacant. He was mulling over the proposition, or so Soren hoped. When he set the teacup down again, he said, “What you ask will be extremely difficult. Fortunately for you, I know just the realm of souls. Tapping it will not be the problem. They will be all too happy to come here and spread the joy—in their own inimical manner. The hard part will be coming by the vessels. For an army the size you need… .” He paused and rubbed his knees. “I will not be able to do it one body at a time. The Tillerman will likely dispatch me long before I put a dent in his sorrow-peddling.”
Chu Lin was up and pacing, his tea cup in hand. He was looking out the window now, problem solving his way through this. He was the only one who could find a way out of this particular predicament. Soren had no choice but to let him work it out in his mind at his own pace.
But his impatience eventually got the better of him. “I was thinking you could flush every soul out of their bodies at once across the entire planet.”
Chu Lin gasped and turned. “Victor, he could create a vessel for them,” Soren suggested, “until you could return them to their bodies.”
Chu Lin as quickly composed himself and turned back to his window. “No, Victor is no match for the Tillerman. And the Tillerman will still have that equity of souls Victor creates a holding bay for to feed off in order to fight off an assault from the ground. I must find a way for these invading souls to inhabit the body without pushing the others out. Let them learn enough from the masters of Dante’s Divine Comedy to perhaps hold their own should the Tillerman ever return.”
Turning back to Soren, Chu Lin said, “And, of course, there’s the question of such a massive expenditure of psychic energy to perform this magic. The honest answer is it can’t be done. But I’ll meditate on the problem. You’re not exactly catching me at my best. I’m feeling the Tillerman’s effects, same as everyone else. And I’m not sure I could have pulled off this stunt even when I was a hundred percent.”
“Whoever you need to help you, whatever wizards you need me to put at your disposal, just say the word, and I’ll have Victor round them up. He may not be able to do much about the Tillerman, but no one is about to cross that guy.”
Chu Lin nodded. “Let’s hope that won’t be necessary. The less Victor knows about how I wield my magic, the better.”
Soren knew that Victor was best with forms of magic having to do with mathematics and physics, primarily. It was how he was able to capture the essence of how Realm Defyer did his work. The fact that Chu Lin was scared of Victor getting too close suggested his own form of magic might be related enough to those fields for him to be concerned. Though Soren couldn’t see how. Maybe just the part of the magic that related to a planet-wide body-snatching. Soren, did you think about that?
Standing, Soren bowed to Chu Lin in the way of the Chinese. Chu Lin gave him a curt nod back. Soren took his leave of him. He was hoping Chu Lin would give him some signal to look for. But then, he supposed, when the deed was done, he’d know. It’d be the kickoff to the real Armageddon. The current period by then would seem like the prayer vigil that came before, like Lent, coming before Carnival instead of after. With the merry fools Soren was inviting by way of Chu Lin to join them for end-of-world celebrations, this was going to be more like one of those Louisiana sendoffs, where the funeral cavalcade was accompanied by revelers playing lively jazz music, and dancing and singing in the streets. It struck a lot of people as weird, at a time that seemed to call for grief and sorrow as a proper send off for the dead. As to the weirdness part, they hadn’t seen anything yet.
TWENTY
“You did what?! You gave some guy permission to possess me?” Victor took a very ominous step toward Soren that he really didn’t appreciate.
Soren, for his part, held out his hand arrestingly. “Victor, this is you we’re talking about. I’m not exactly expecting the laugh therapy to take in your case. Just remember, the more you resist, the more negative energy you give this Tillerman character to feed on. If I were you, I’d take the medicine along with the rest of us.”
“I’ll have you know I’m a positively fun guy with a fabulous sense of humor.” The argumentative tone and the force of delivery alone had Soren thinking of Shakespeare’s, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
“It won’t be that bad, really,” Soren said. “Just be ready with your Ghost Busters canister when the cloud of listlessness hanging over all of us starts to lift. Oh, and I wouldn’t expect the Tillerman to take all this lying down. I’d get ready with whatever other countermeasures you have in place. Please tell me you’ve been working on other countermeasures while I’ve been away.”
“Yeah, well, about that… .” Victor picked at the whiskers on his chin. “I haven’t exactly been the font of inspiration of late. Surprised you pulled this idea out of your ass like you did. Though I must admit, it sounds like a decent enough notion. Even if that point doesn’t ameliorate my desire to gut you right now.”
Something told Soren to go over to the window. So he did. “It’s starting,” he said.
“What’s starting? I think I’d know if I was possessed, I tell ya.” Victor came over to the window-wall of his roof-top penthouse. Sure enough, he could see for himself the dead bodies crawling out of their graves. Even the unmarked ones, and there were a lot of those since people started burying dead bodies most anywhere just to get them out of the way.
Victor waved his hand and compressed time and space so they appeared to be closer to the ground than they actually were. Now it was more like looking out the window from the second story instead of from the penthouse.
One of the dead guys who’d crawled out of the ground was peeing against a lamppost. He was doing it off one leg like a dog; he must have been some circus acrobat or dancer when he was alive, as he was striking a ridiculously hard-to-maintain pose on one leg. Victor was pointing at him and laughing his ass off.
Soren hadn’t turned up his nose at Pee As A Dog, but he turned it up at Victor. “Oh, you’re possessed, all right.”
“I am not,” Victor insisted.
“You’re laughing, Victor. Need I say more?”
“Naaaahhh.” The more defiance Victor tried to cram into that one syllable the more mock it sounded to Soren.
“Trust me, the scene’s not that funny. Let’s hope these guys have some first rate clowns in the bunch, as I don’t think the second rate ones are going to cut it.”
“Where are you headed?” Victor asked, as Soren made his way toward the door.
“It’s End Times Mardi Gras. I’m going to join the celebration. Better be worth a few laughs, or we’re every bit as screwed as the term ‘End Times’ suggests.”
Victor returned his attention to the window. The next thing Soren knew he was spanking the glass with his hand, he was laughing so hard. “No, stop, please stop. I can’t take it.”
Soren shook his head, mumbled, “The higher they are… .”
***
Outside Victor’s building, two women, dressed demurely to downplay their body fat, walked side by side to egg one another on along the sidewalk as part of their arduous attempt to lose weight. Apparently, Soren thought, observing them as they walked by, as bad as the Tillerman made them feel, feeling obese was even worse.
When the ghosts took over their bodies, Dressed Demurely 1 and 2 pushed the two sidewalk-surfing teens off their boards—interrupting their suicidal antics, done today in an effort to end it all as opposed to showing any genuine joie de vivre—and hopped on.
The women found their clothes blown off them by a gust of wind—and with a little help from the ghosts—as they gained momentum, their farts acting like nitrous gas in a speedster.
The two ladies were beyond mortified; they put their hands up to their faces and screamed. If it was any consolation, Soren thought, those silk-woven br
as and panties, the only things remaining on them, looked like they cost a couple thousand bucks a pair. So there was still no mistaking these Swank Town residents for commoners.
The death defying daredevil stunts were the least of it; it was the farts propelling the two fat ladies forward causing the true consternation.
The dynamic duo, built like a pair of tops with most of their masses at the center, and weighing several hundred pounds each, barely held their balance as the boards stopped before the traffic lights, showing red. They were now well off the sidewalk, planted in the middle of the street. When cars pulled up to them on either side, revving their engines, the drivers twitching their eyebrows tauntingly, the ladies didn’t appreciate the miscommunication. They weren’t here to race; they were here to be saved.
“Help us!” one of them screamed.
The other one quickly followed suit with, “We’re possessed!”
“Oh, like we aren’t riding these bozos for all they’re worth,” came the ominous, haunting voice of one of the possessed drivers, the one facing the ladies out his driver’s side window—in the polished-to-perfection yellow dune buggy. His randy, pretend-hobo getup was all the rage in Swank Town; rich dudes paying a fortune to look like a vagabond, adjusting their haircuts and clothes to match. Mind you, the haircuts cost over a thousand dollars each and the clothes even more. The faux garb didn’t come with the smell, either. This one sported the several-week-long unshaven look.
The ghosts had managed to coordinate stealing just the perfect cars for the gag and getting them on site in time before the lights turned. The showroom-quality antique roadsters couldn’t have been tough to find in Swank Town; anywhere else, definitely.
“Don’t look now, but the light’s green!” Yellow Dune Buggy Guy yelled. And then he and Red Dune Buggy Guy floored it. For what it was worth, Soren thought Red Dune Buggy’s faux-ruffian look was far more convincing. He was going more for street tough than street indigent, and with the bald head and beard, and temporary tats, could have passed for an actual Hell’s Angel.
Reborn (Frankenstein Book 1) Page 17