Resurrection, Inc.

by Kevin J. Anderson

  Vincent left the sacrificial chamber, slipping into the dark and hidden catacombs that would take him to a mass-trans station, where he could catch a skipper back to the mansion before curfew. He had no desire to see any part of the tumult he had left behind….

  Like a careening pendulum, once set in motion he turned against the neo-Satanists and became their most outspoken opponent. In a press release Julia had written, Vincent told the cult’s dark secrets and the sham. Normally reclusive, Vincent Van Ryman appeared on several news services and found himself quoted liberally in the current-events databases.

  He sent a copy of the press release to Nathans with a note that said, “Sorry, Francois. But this has gone on long enough.”

  Vincent had not spoken to the other man since meeting Julia, and he wanted to let Nathans settle down before trying to get in touch again. Now that Vincent spent his days with Julia, he had little time for anything else.

  Sweating and precariously balanced on the eaves of his home, Vincent took down the gargoyles from the roof gables; Julia stood on the ground next to the sharp wrought-iron fence, apparently ready to catch him if he fell. Later, armed with paintbrush and scrubbing tools, she went about defacing all the pentacles from the mansion.

  Afterwards, as dusk settled on a very different Van Ryman mansion, they sat in the sauna next to the master bedroom, drinking iced tea. A full pitcher rested on one of the floorboards, water beading down its sides from the heat and steam.

  “I think I’m going to purchase a Servant, maybe two,” Vincent suggested. “That way we can have more time with each other.”

  She closed her eyes and nodded wearily. “Mmmm.” She ran the cold, wet surface of her iced tea glass along her chin and jaw, relishing the coolness. Julia looked completely content.

  He felt satisfied himself. He had been afraid that challenging the neo-Satanists would be much more difficult, with far greater repercussions. But it had been so easy. And it was all over now.

  21

  Enforcer Jones ran blindly through the streets, waving his hands in front of him though the crowd had long since thinned out. He breathed heavily; the damp, unfiltered air whistled through his nostrils.

  The Enforcer wore only his armored boots and his black skin-pants; everything else was gone. He had discarded the rest of his armor in scattered pieces during his dazed flight. The suit radio had gone with it, smashed under someone’s feet. His skin crawled with the memory of hundreds of hands grasping, groping, tearing, trying to kill him by sheer force of numbers.

  His ears roared, but Jones kept himself from screaming, from releasing the pressure still building within him. What had he done? How had he deserved this? The Enforcer continued to run, trying to flee farther, hide deeper into anonymity.

  Enforcers weren’t supposed to run. But right now his Guild status didn’t concern him. Most of all he wanted to forget the nightmarish memories, sharpened by his own fear….

  As the rebel Servant had vanished down the streets, moving faster than seemed humanly possible, Jones found himself trapped by the murderous mob. He had killed someone. Maybe more than one. The people surrounded him like the tentacles of a voracious squid. Chaotic anger filled the air, making it difficult to breathe with the sweat and shouts and liquid hatred. Hands, bodies, people pushed at him.

  Some of the pedestrians began to throw things. Jones felt his armor battered and pummeled—and he struck back. He fired his weapons, hoping to awe and frighten the mob, to drive them away, to give him some breathing room.

  He was an Enforcer. His friend Fitzgerald Helms had died for Jones to get into the Guild. He wasn’t after the pedestrians—he wanted the Servant. He had to stop the Servant, because he didn’t want to think where the Guild would demote him if he screwed up one more time. Jones had no more amnesty units left to his name.

  But the runaway Servant had escaped—wounded but gone, and the mob remained. The mob wanted only blood anyway, and they hated Enforcers almost as much as they hated Servants.

  A suicidal old man managed to snatch one of Jones’s weapons and cradled it gleefully in his gnarled hands, but the Enforcer shot him. The weapon spun away into the crowd, and moments later someone else picked it up and began shooting indiscriminately. Jones realized with horror that several people in the crowd were laughing.

  Two more people reached for the remaining weapons that bristled from his armor. Training and blind reflexes took over now; panic smothered all thoughts from the rational part of his brain. Moving jerkily, Jones shot in all directions until the pocket bazooka was empty.

  But still the people didn’t fall back.

  Someone yanked the heater-knife from its socket at his side, and the seal broke with a thin pop. The hot blade glanced off the Enforcer’s white armor. Grasping hands tore the other two projectile weapons from their sockets, and Jones knew that even the dura-plated armor couldn’t withstand such an attack.

  The people continued to press forward. Frantic, unable to escape, Jones fled deep inside himself, letting the body fend for itself. Uninhibited, his hands chose the last alternative open to him.

  Someone was trying to break his arm, but the Enforcer managed to wrench it free, blessing the slickness of the polished armor. His finger found a depression in his chest plate and pushed a release button.

  Dense clouds of stinging black smoke poured from the joints of his armor, pushing the mob back with its foul smell. Hidden by the smokescreen, Jones pulled off his helmet and threw it far into the unseen crowd. He held his breath and ran through the blinded and choking people, trying to remain unobtrusive, shedding pieces of armor and hoping to become invisible, normal, just another face on the street. The armor was his protection, a part of him insisted; it made him an Enforcer, someone to be feared and respected, and he shed it with a growing horror at himself. But he had to get rid of the armor, had to get away from the clutching, murderous crowd….

  Still moving mechanically, dazed, Jones came to an enclosure between two tall blank-faced buildings. A chain-link fence surrounded the enclosure, topped with glistening barbed wire. Inside the fence a mushroom forest of satellite dishes stood skewed at various angles, a haphazard array pointing toward invisible targets in high orbit. Some of the dishes were solid, some made of wire mesh.

  The shadows of the struts and the dishes beckoned him, and some irrational impulse told him he had to get inside. Jones glanced along the ground, found a crumpled aluminum can, and tossed it at the chain-link fence, watching carefully for sparks.

  The Enforcer felt a rush of adrenaline again as he visualized the hands reaching toward him… his own weapons stolen, playfully turned against him… the mob’s anger pouring down like boiling oil, knowing that in an instant he would be torn limb from limb….

  Jones grabbed the chain-link and scrambled up. He paused at the barbed wires, wondering if they might be coated with some deadly substance or paralytic drug. Even though he had no armor protecting him this time, his Enforcer training had taught him how to avoid barbed wire. He swung his slim dark body over and let himself drop to the ground. The armored boots absorbed much of the impact, and he crouched, looking around, then sought the safety of the tangled shadows.

  His chest heaved as he lowered himself under one of the deepest shadows, sheltered from sight. Jones let the last adrenaline course through his bloodstream, making lap after lap of his circulatory system. And then he drowned in a numbing grayness of exhausted sleep.

  He awoke long after nightfall. Cool darkness around him made the satellite dishes seem like alien sentinels. He could look through the wire mesh of one dish to see scattered stars far above, most of them washed out by the ambient glow of the Metroplex.

  Jones sat up with a jolt and looked at his wrist chronometer. After midnight—past curfew. And he was an Enforcer, out of uniform, with no ID.

  He shuddered. He had left his armor behind. Was he even an Enforcer anymore? He had deserted his duty. He had let another rebel Servant escape. He had killed pe
destrians. He had been the cause of a bloody riot.

  How would the Guild look at it? Would they punish him, demote him to some even worse job? Would they dismiss him, make it impossible for him to find other work—force him to become one of the jobless blues? Or would they quietly kill him, an embarrassment best forgotten?

  Jones crouched, unmoving, debating with himself whether he should try to avoid the Enforcer curfew patrols, try to make it back to his own dwelling without being caught. Or should he just stay put where he was, shivering in the wet coldness of the night, and hope nobody found him before morning?

  Hiding under the skeletal support beams of the satellite dishes, he felt lost and cold and confused. He was a disgrace. He didn’t want to confront his peers. Only the familiar surroundings of his apartment would help. He wanted to go home. He wanted to clutch at the things around him like a security blanket.

  Jones grasped the chain-link fence and started to climb. He froze, motionless, when the fence rattled in the after-midnight silence. He waited, then scrambled the rest of the way up. From this direction the barbed wire slanted outward, much easier to crawl over.

  He dropped to the ground and tried to remain in the building shadows, slipping from one street to the next, looking for familiar landmarks, trying to get his bearings. Off in the distance and in the after-curfew silence, Jones could hear the sounds of one of the mock street battles staged by the Guild. But this one was far away. He was safe.

  The lights from the silent hovercar stabbed down at him as he tried to cross an unlit intersection. Jones stopped dead in his tracks and then slumped his shoulders in defeat.

  While he and Frampton had been on their curfew patrols, most people caught out after midnight tried to escape and hide, making the Enforcers use the hovercar’s scatter-stuns, but Jones knew flight was useless. He surrendered without resistance.

  The Enforcers emerged from their vehicle and strode toward him. Jones waited, feeling fear grow—but he dismissed it—he had had enough of fear for one day.

  The shorter of the two Enforcers gruffly began to quote the specific sections of the Guild code Jones had broken. Jones raised his hand and began to quote the same words in unison until the other patrolman stopped speaking.

  “I know,” Jones said. “I’m an Enforcer, too. Used to be on curfew patrol.” He gave his name and ID number, and told his story, knowing exactly what the two curfew patrolmen thought of it; he had encountered enough different excuses while on patrol. “Maybe you have an A.P.B. out on me?” They had to, of course. He was an Enforcer missing in the line of duty. Someone had to be looking for him. He could explain.

  The taller of the two Enforcers, who had not yet spoken a word, entered Jones’s ID number and description into a portable Net terminal. Jones waited for it to be verified, but then the silent Enforcer keyed everything in again, deeply puzzled. He called the other Enforcer over and keyed in the information a third time.

  Dread grew in the pit of Jones’s stomach. What had the Guild done to him now? All this was getting to be too much, and he didn’t think he had any more panic left inside him. “Look, I can take you back to my apartment. You’re going to have to escort me there anyway. The Net will let me in, and I can prove my identity to you.”

  He waited, exasperated. The two Enforcers looked at him, then looked at each other, considering.

  “I can prove it! Come on.”

  “I think you’d better do that, Mr. Jones,” the shorter Enforcer finally said. His voice came out hollow behind the face mask.

  Jones followed the two Enforcers to the large armored hovercar. He stopped himself from clambering in front with the two patrolmen and complacently went into the segregation chamber.

  The chamber had no windows, and Jones sat sulking, drawing his knees up against his bare chest. Shivering, he wondered what he was going to do. The hovercar lifted off and rose into the air. He waited; it seemed like forever.

  But at last the hovercar drifted back to the ground again with a muffled thump as it came to rest. Jones blinked and stepped out into the darkness as the pressurized hatch hissed open. The two Enforcers flanked him on either side. He recognized the tall complex of Guild dormitories, and he glanced at the repetitive rows of windows stacked up several stories. Each window looked the same, and Jones couldn’t begin to guess which one belonged to his own quarters.

  Watching Jones skeptically, the two curfew patrolmen escorted him to the terminal mounted beside the sealed door. Showing a confidence that he did not feel, Jones entered his logon name, ID number, and access code. His knees felt weak with relief as the screen flashed “ACCESS GRANTED” and the door opened.

  “We’d better accompany you to your room,” the shorter Enforcer said.

  “Certainly,” Jones said, more confident now. The three entered, taking a lift up to the sixth floor.

  He reached his door and said, trying to hide the relief in his voice, “This is it. I’m sorry for the trouble, and I’ll be facing a few reprimands tomorrow.”

  Jones opened the door and took a step inside. He saw motion in the dimness of his own room, and he let out a gasp as two blue-armored members of the Guild’s Elite Guard stood up simultaneously from where they had been waiting for him.

  The two white-armored curfew patrolmen stiffened in shock and confusion. Jones wanted to say something, but the words crumbled in his mouth. He had seen the Elite Guard only once or twice, escorting very important people or performing extremely dangerous high-visibility missions. He could not imagine what he had done to attract their attention.

  The two Elite Guards stepped closer to Jones. “We’ll take him now,” one of them addressed the curfew patrol men. “I suggest you don’t report your pickup. We’ll handle all the details. Now go back to your patrol.”

  The white-clad Enforcers saluted mechanically and turned to leave, as if they were running away.

  Jones stood motionless, terrified. One of the Elite Guards closed the hall door, sealing the room and leaving the three of them alone together.

  22

  “Tell me about it,” the nurse/tech said.

  Still frightened and confused, Danal reached into the open trapdoor of his mind, hauling out the last captive memories like strongboxes from a musty cellar.

  Vincent Van Ryman’s carefree, euphoric attitude had lasted only a few days after he had denounced neo-Satanism. At first he felt victorious, childishly proud of himself and happy to have made a difference. Several times Vincent tried to contact Nathans, but the other man refused to speak to him, not acknowledging or even reading Vincent’s messages. Vincent brooded over his mentor’s cold treatment, sad and disappointed. Julia convinced him that Nathans would calm down, given time.

  Then he received the first death threat from a disgruntled neo-Satanist cult member, someone whose focus in life had been stripped away because of Vincent’s cynical revelations. Other threats came in rapid succession. Particularly vicious were the jobless blues, so long dejected and hopeless, the ones who had fastened upon neo-Satanism as a new light at the end of their tunnel. Now they felt cheated once more.

  Vincent received anonymous messages dropped into his electronic mail files, one of them even addressed to Randolph Carter, his carefully guarded secret identity. Someone tied a handwritten threat to a rock and threw it at the shatterproof transplastic windows of the Van Ryman mansion. The rock thumped harmlessly off the glass, disturbing Vincent and Julia from a game of cribbage in the study.

  The vehement anger behind the threats bothered Vincent. Julia had convinced him that the truth was always best, but now he began to experience a growing horror, wondering if perhaps these people didn’t want the truth, but preferred something exotic to believe in.

  Vincent went outside, picking up the rock from the thorny shrubs around the house. Whoever had thrown it was gone, fled into the thinning crowds as dusk began to settle over the Metroplex.

  Some of the threats were crudely veiled; some were blatant and explicit. He kne
w that simple Servant bodyguards—such as those his father had owned years before—could not offer sufficient protection, especially if one of the disgruntled fanatics decided to blow up the entire mansion. He glanced at the scrawled threat, then destroyed the note before Julia could see it.

  It gave him an odd, warm sensation to realize that he was actually more afraid for Julia’s sake than for his own.

  With his father’s share of the neo-Satanist profits, Vincent Van Ryman compiled the most effective, most sophisticated Intruder Defense System ever designed. He supervised its installation himself and spent hours studying its complexity, poring over blueprints as he sat on the hard floor of the study, legs crossed, soaking up the warm purple glow of the crystal fireplace.

  A deadly force-field shell surrounded his property in a protective dome over the mansion; intricate computer-monitored surveillance systems detected external motion, activating additional alarms when objects moved too close to the perimeter; a pack of repair-rats labored in the conduits beneath the ground, mechanically inspecting and maintaining the network of power cabling.

  Three times within the first week Vincent found blackened corpses slumped against the invisible force field, people who had tried to creep up to the mansion from the back.

  Isolated in their island of protection, Vincent and Julia remained absorbed in each other, content with each other’s company and needing no one else. Together they decided to get a pair of Servants for the cooking and cleaning and housework, leaving them more time with each other. They ordered one male and one female Servant, Joey and Zia.

  The Servants filled their roles, did their jobs, remained unobtrusive and patient in the mansion. Waiting. Vincent did not see any significance in the fact that Joey’s physical build was oddly familiar, identical to his own. Vincent had been too naive, too trusting.

  He of all people should never have underestimated Francois Nathans.