Tears leaked from the corners of Boone's eyes. "Oh, God. What do you want of me?"
"I am not your God, Thomas, merely your death. I want you to take the laser and put it in your mouth and pull the trigger."
The moment Boone had known was coming since he had awakened here in this place left him so weak with fear he could not even lift the laser they had placed in his hand. "Please," he whispered. "Please no. I don't want to die."
Boone was aware of Obodi coming closer. "What is a life, Thomas? A small thing, given casually, taken the same. It is nothing to be struggled for so furiously. Calm yourself and do not be afraid. Put the weapon in your mouth and pull the trigger."
Tommy Boone found a last reservoir of strength, snarled, "Fuck you and die," and lifted the laser--
"Stop!" The Voice was his father's, and Joe Mantika's, the man who had recruited him into the Rebs, and Father Bob's from Sunday school, merged into one thundering command. The Voice rolled over him: "PUT THE WEAPON IN YOUR MOUTH AND PULL THE TRIGGER!"
Tommy Boone did not hesitate. He flipped the safety off, brought the laser around, and blasted his own head off.
Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon stood in the circle of light, in a cellar in the city of Philadelphia, looking down upon the headless body of Thomas Daniel Boone, a good and true man.
Different than the Flame People, without doubt. Resistant to Speaking--but not impervious to it.
It was a good sign.
They kept him waiting nearly an hour.
Dvan did not let himself grow impatient. He had dealt with the Sicilian Old Ones before, though not recently, and understood the protocols that needed to be observed. He sat in a cool breeze and bright warm sunlight, with a glass of red wine on the small round patio table before him, looking out over the Santonia family's gardens, down across sculpted terraces of growing grapes. Don Emilio would leave him waiting until his business was done, whatever it might be, but no longer.
Shortly after one o'clock the don came out onto the patio, greeted Dvan warmly, and seated himself. "Forgive me, William. But it has been many years, and your call came with such short notice--" Emilio shrugged. "It took me some time to verify your activities of the last decade or so." The old man smiled at Dvan. "I was surprised, to tell the truth. Newsdancing--" He shrugged again. "It seems a waste of talents such as yours."
Dvan smiled at the man. "Perhaps. But it is safe and requires little exertion, and I find in my advancing age that this appeals to me."
Emilio frowned. "Advancing age, eh? You must be, perhaps, eighty? It's been a good while, my friend. You've carried the years--remarkably--I might even say surprisingly--well."
"As have you, Don Emilio."
Emilio nodded, accepting the lie for the politeness it was. "What can I do for you, William? If you have some thought of putting my name on the Boards, I must tell you it would disturb me."
Dvan made a dismissive gesture. "Don Emilio, in the last few hours you have searched the Net for my name. If any article about you or yours had ever been published under my name, you and I would not be talking."
Emilio said softly, "How I can be of service?"
"I'm looking for a man. His...occupation," said Dvan carefully, "was that of procuring women."
The old man shook his head. "We have no interests in--"
"He went by the name of Lucabri."
Silence fell. In the quiet Dvan could hear the buzzing of flies in the garden, the distant whine of the robots working the vineyards. Emilio stared at Dvan with hard, flinty eyes.
"He first appeared in Amiens, in France, early in '72. The next time I have certain knowledge of his location is in Genoa, in the summer of '73. And from there he vanishes. If you know where he might be, and would share that knowledge with me, I would be indebted to you."
"What is your interest in this...man?"
Dvan gave him an answer he knew the old don would accept. "It's not personal. I am doing a favor for a friend."
Understanding lit the old man's eyes. "Someone with a daughter, perhaps? Or a sister?"
"It would be a reasonable guess."
"And what action would you take if you were to find him?"
"I would ease the suffering of my friends, Don Emilio."
"While you have been wandering around Europe, William, Sig-nor Lucabri has left a trail of bodies across Occupied America." The old man rose from the table. "If you wish to find him, go to America." Don Emilio stopped at the sliding glass door that led back into the villa. A servant inside opened the door for him, and he stood in the opening looking at Dvan--a wizened, shrunken old man who Dvan could not reconcile with the giant of a man he had known fifty years prior, who had killed men and loved women with equal passion. "He has been going by the name of Mister Obodi. And he is with the Rebs." Don Emilio gestured to the servant who had opened the door. "Please call Signor Devane a cab, and escort him to the gate."
The old man turned about, and walked back inside slowly, shuffling across the black tile.
"Who is this?" Sedon asked quietly.
They sat together in the living room of Obodi's house in San Diego, looking at holos. The living room's bay windows looked out on a view of the beach, of the restless Pacific Ocean.
Sedon's manner was sleepy and relaxed and satiated; Chris Summers, in the two years he had been working with the man he knew as Mister Obodi, had seen it before. It was the way Obodi looked following a night with a boy who had pleased him, or after killing someone who had displeased him.
The holo was clearly a publicity shot; it showed a man perhaps in his forties or fifties, with dark hair and brown eyes. "This is Douglass Ripper," said Summers. "Publicity still. He's the Unification Councilor for New York Metro; he sits on the Council's Peace Keeping Oversight Committee. He requisitioned the PKF report on you."
Sedon quirked an eyebrow. "Indeed? Should I concern myself with this person?"
Summers said patiently, "He's a popular man, sir. He's running for Secretary General, and he's probably going to win."
"In December?" Sedon smiled, a lazy, relaxed smile. "I hardly think so. What else?"
Summers nodded. "One more item. Command, next. This is a--"
Gi'Suei'Obodi'Sedon rose to his feet slowly, expression draining from his features, staring motionless at the holo.
At the man.
Summers continued a bit slowly. "--a newsdancer. He's been asking people about Signor Lucabri; we had a report that he met with Emilio Santonia. I wondered if you wanted anything done about it."
Sedon did not reply. The pale blue eyes stared, unblinking, and his hands trembled. He brought his hands together abruptly, stood with his hands clasped together in front of his chest and said something in a language that Christian Summers had never heard before.
"Sir? Are you all right?"
Sedon said something again in the language Summers did not recognize, then shook himself and said in very slow English, not looking at Summers, "Find...him. The man...and bring him. To me."
"Mister Obodi? You know him?"
Sedon stared straight ahead, at the holo of the newsdancer. A big black haired giant of a man with pale skin and dead black eyes. "He cannot be alive." He shook his head slowly, spoke half to himself. "A...resemblance, is the word. It has been too long for...Dvan...to be alive."
Christian J. Summers said, "'Dvan?'"
Finally Sedon looked at him. "What is his name?"
"Devane, sir. William Devane."
Sedon's voice was a mere whisper. "Oh, my old friend...." His eyes closed and he crumpled where he stood.
* * *
16.
She spent Friday with Douglass at the house in upstate New York.
There were times when Denice's life seemed starkly unreal to her; days such as these contributed.
Her earliest memories were of the Advanced Biotechnology Research Laboratory in New Jersey; and then of the PKF barracks in New York, and then, briefly, the happy times at the Chandler Complex. During all those
years she had been one child among many; that Carl and Jany were her biological parents, and David's, did not seem to matter; Carl and Jany were everyone's parents, parents to the near two hundred and forty children who had been placed in their care; Jany in particular had little more time for her own children than for all the others. She and David were only two years younger than the youngest of the Project Superman children. She remembered being cared for by other children; by Trent, and Heather; by Willi, who was somewhat older than the rest. Of rooms that were, even in the relatively large Chandler Complex, always too cramped, always shared with too many others.
A discontinuity occurred in her memory during the Troubles.
Afterward, the Young Females Public Labor facility, one room, with forty other girls. When Orinda Gleygavass had at last come for her, the opportunity to share a room with only three others girls had seemed like heaven.
Briefly she and Tarin Schuyler had lived together; for close to three years she had shared an apartment with a girl named Kim Mikonos, at Goddess Home.
In the course of her life she had grown so accustomed to living with others, in small spaces, that she did not truly notice it.
Ripper's house sat on two acres of empty land, shaded--over shaded, Ripper sometimes said--by trees upward of a hundred and fifty years old. The trees blocked any view of the house from the distant road; because she could not see them, Denice could often forget the presence of Ripper's security, four Security Services bodyguards, stationed down at the gate. The house was two stories tall, with ten rooms; Ripper was the only person who lived there.
There were servants somewhere, human rather than 'bots, a gardener and a maid, but Denice virtually never saw them.
His mother was dead; his father, step-mother, and two sisters lived on what could only be called an estate, four klicks further north. Denice had been there once, had not been surprised that his family, though gracious, had not seemed to think much of her.
A simple sign of wealth; not counting the genies she'd been raised with, Ripper was the only person Denice had ever met who had more than one sibling. The license was prohibitively expensive.
They rode horses in the morning, and played tennis in the afternoon. Ripper was a surprisingly good tennis player, and occasionally won; technique counted for a lot, and Denice's immense edge in speed and strength were largely offset by the fact that Ripper had been playing his whole life. Denice had never held a racquet until six months ago.
After dinner they went swimming together under banks of sunpaint so bright it seemed like daylight.
Ripper, after a few laps, sat in the whirlpool near the shallow end of the pool and watched Denice move back and forth through the water. After half an hour, she took a break, came over and joined him in the whirlpool.
"In college, thirty years ago," said Ripper, "I was on the swim team. I swear, Denice, you're a better swimmer than anybody I ever saw in damn near professional level competition."
"Thank you."
"Where did a street kid from New York learn to swim like that?"
Denice ducked her head, came back up with her hair slicked away from her face. She told him as much of the truth as was necessary. "The summer of '72, when I went out to California. I spent most of the summer swimming in the Pacific."
Ripper studied her curiously. "When you were out at the witch's commune--what was it called?"
"Goddess Home."
He was silent, the bubbles swarming up around him. When he spoke, one who did not know how he thought might have thought he was changing the subject. This is where you've come from was the unspoken subtext: "Where do you envision yourself going, Denice?"
She shook her head. "I don't know."
"Ever considered getting into politics?"
"You mean as a candidate myself?"
He looked at her steadily. "Yes."
"No. Not really. I don't think I'm qualified."
"You're not, aside from having good people skills and a certain degree of passion. But you're also quite young. You could go back to school."
"Back to school? Douglass, I haven't been to school since the Troubles."
He nodded. "And it shows. You're horrible with the Net, you don't write well, you're ignorant about a lot of things you shouldn't be ignorant about. Finances, law, history, practical business." He shrugged. "But you're bright and you work hard and you handle people well. If you wanted to go to school, it could be arranged. A degree in political science, perhaps, and an MBA wouldn't hurt you any. You could also take a degree in Unification Law; it's useful even if you never take the bar exam. Bodyguard is a dead end."
Denice blinked. "Are you serious?"
"You look thoroughly horrified, dear. Is going to school so scary?"
"I'd be--Douglass, I'd be thirty-five before I got through with all that!"
Unification Councilor Douglass Ripper gazed blankly at her, then burst into a fit of giggles. "You'd be--thirty-five," he gasped. "My God, your life would be--over." He rolled over on his back in the bubbling warm water, stared up at the black night sky, just visible beyond the haze of the banked rows of sunpaint, and laughed so hard he couldn't breathe. "Thirty-five!" He started to say something else, and then simply gasped again, "Thirty-five!"
Denice pushed his head under the water.
He came up choking and gasping for air. "Stop! Stop! I give--"
She gave him time to get some air, then pushed him under again and held him down while he fought. Not long, six or seven seconds, though it probably seemed longer to him. He pushed up hard and she let him up.
"I'm sorry," he sputtered, "I'm sorry sorry sorry sorry."
She sat back down on the little tile ledge. "You shouldn't laugh at me."
"Obviously not." He coughed once, shook his head slightly. "I'd feel damn foolish being killed by my own bodyguard. How could I explain it to Ichabod?" He waded over to where she sat, sat down next to her and took her hand in his. "I'm sorry, okay?"
Denice nodded. "Okay."
"I won't do it again."
"I'll hold you down longer next time," she warned him.
He looked deeply into her eyes, said very seriously. "I am totally and completely intimidated. I will never never laugh at you again."
She kissed him on the tip of his nose. "Good."
"It's just--"
"What?"
"You're the first person I've been in love with since I was twenty years old," he whispered. Denice looked down, nodded once, and Ripper said softly, "I want you to do well."
Somewhere in the city of Encino, slightly northwest of Los Angeles--Callia Sierran did not know exactly where, as she had been brought there in a darkened car--was the estate from which the Temples of Eris had arisen.
The Prophet Harry Devlin had once walked these grounds, had slept in these rooms.
Somewhere inside that estate, in a small empty room with a large bay window, Callia stood with her hands clasped behind her back, and said to the woman who had founded the Erisian Claw, who had recruited Callia and her brother into the Claw, "I don't quite know where to start."
The woman who sat facing her, a teacup of fine china cradled in her lap, was clearly aged. In another time she might have passed for thirty or thirty-five. Today the exquisite grain and slight looseness of the skin at her neck and hands marked her age: past her second round of geriatric skin regeneration, and thereby at least seventy, perhaps older. "Indeed," the woman said after a moment. "I've audited your report. Perhaps your impressions of the meeting would be most helpful."
Domino Terencia, Callia's immediate supervisor--the woman who had largely raised Callia and her brother after their father's death at PKF hands--stood immediately behind the old woman. She nodded imperceptibly.
Callia interpreted it correctly: Be brief. "Yes, ma'am. We met with 'Sieur Obodi downtown, at the law offices of Greenberg & Bass, at 8:30 this morning." She did not need to elaborate on the point; Greenberg & Bass had fronted for the Rebs for at least twenty years. "He
's clearly legitimate; he wants to work with us, and he seems to have the authority to make such a commitment for the Rebs. The list of Rebs who were there was quite impressive; Christian J. Summers, Maxwell Devlin, half a dozen others who are in my report. Perhaps even more significant, ma'am, was who did not show. Belinda Singer was not there, and when I asked about her was told that she had retired from administrative duties. Nor was F.X. Chandler present; as you're probably aware, he did retire, straight off Earth, about six months ago. He's living in an orbital retirement home and apparently his security is tough." She paused. "I think he got on the wrong side of Obodi, and ran."
"Sensible," the old woman remarked. "What were you told about Tommy Boone, and what was your impression of 'Sieur Obodi?"
"Tommy Boone, ma'am, 'sleeps with the fish.'"
"How colorful."
"Old One slang," said Domino quietly.
"The Italians?"
"Yes."
The old woman nodded. "Interesting." To Callia: "Does he?"
"Sleep with the fish?" Callia thought about it. "The Peaceforcer Elite who deserted, Christian Summers--he was present. If Boone were alive, Summers would have stayed in Japan, I think. There was no love between those two. Beyond that I can't say."
"Go on."
Callia said, "Ma'am, 'Sieur Obodi scares me. I believe that he is in control of the Johnny Rebs. I found him formidable; a matter of personal bearing. I think you would have to meet him to understand. He speaks with a slight accent, as our reports said, but I don't think it's Italian; his accent's nothing like Domino's. He speaks as though he were raised speaking a tonal language such as Japanese. How someone who is clearly not an American has ended up in control of the Johnny Rebs is, frankly, beyond me." Callia paused. "But there's little doubt that he is. When he spoke, people listened the way they used to listen to Tommy Boone. And we already know that Rebs who don't take his orders die. Quickly."
The old woman looked out the window at the tall green fields of marijuana, sipped cold tea from her china teacup, and said without emphasis, "Lovely."
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