Wu.
The man looked exactly the same as when she had last seen him, on Terra Buena, after her operation. He had been in the hospital with her, nursing injuries in the aftermath of an incredible battle with Aubry.
Wu was exactly five and a half feet tall, and as thin as a skeleton. His eyes were frighteningly direct. He wore a purple silk robe that disguised his cadaverousness, but she remembered him in the bed next to hers, an enormous bruise coloring the side of his face. A bruise that shrank daily, as if there were some healing factor within Wu that radiated abnormal vitality.
The man was an enemy—the West Coast head of the most powerful criminal organization in the Western world. But there had been a truce for the last three years, and Wu had done nothing to exact vengeance, or to expose Aubry's identity.
Perhaps . . . just perhaps there was hope.
He held out his hand to her. "Promise. Time has passed. You are, as always, radiant."
She smiled. "I must tell you that I am surprised at the pleasure I feel in seeing you."
"We were not enemies," he said. He clapped once, and a servant appeared. "Will you join me in tea?"
"Certainly."
He led her to the garden, and sat with a folding, spiraling motion. The illusion was complete here. The outside sounds receded, and the walls themselves were utterly invisible. They could have been in the middle of a jungle, in the midst of a vast garden that stretched away into the distance.
"This is very nice."
"It is a quieting environment. I come here to think. To relax. Relaxation is a prize beyond measure."
"I can understand. Your responsibilities."
He smiled then, just a shadow of one, and Promise answered it with a sliver of her own. "I have to admit that I am surprised to see you back in the city. I heard that you and Aubry had found it . . . expedient to leave town." He shook his head. "That one. He is . . . amazing. He has never received proper training, but his natural skills, and the skills from that—what is it called? Nullboxing?—are almost beyond belief. When I think what might have been done with a proper teacher . . ."He shook his head.
"We had been forced to leave the city. I am back because I am deeply disturbed."
Wu inclined his head thoughtfully. "Some might expect me to have great animosity toward you. It is because of your man that my neck spent three months in a cast. But it is also due to your husband that I am the sole director of West Coast operations."
Promise felt uncomfortable, shifted in her seat. "I heard that Marguerite died soon after we left. She never came out of her coma."
Wu's green eyes closed gently. "No. She just slipped away." He looked at Promise, and there was some emotion there that she couldn't quite label. "Not a bad death, as they go. 1 doubt if mine will be so . . . peaceful."
"And Tomaso?"
"Insane. Alive. He is in Europe, in a clinic. He has yet to remember his name. In any case, he was purely an organizational man. There was no talent for the human factor. Enough of that. Due to the Family's involvement with you, my fortunes have increased dramatically. I have to admit that I am also interested in renewing contact with Aubry." A girl brought tea. Wu sipped, watching Promise over the lip of the steaming cup.
"I . . . can't promise you that possibility."
"Oh? Why?"
"Aubry and I aren't together now."
"I see. Well. It may be that I can help you. What does it concern?"
"Does the Ortega Family traffic in human fetuses?"
Wu froze, his green eyes suddenly even darker and more piercing. He stood, and clasped his hands behind his back, looking out at the holo wall. At last he turned to face her.
"You have asked a question that I should not answer. The fact that you came to me to ask would be reason enough for a more prudent man to terminate you."
Promise took a cautious sip. "Then you've given me part of my answer."
"I must think upon this. Before making a decision, I must ask you why you ask this."
"Don't you know?"
He turned. His eyes were piercing. "No."
"I'm talking about Terra Buena," she said. "I was told that I lost my baby. I spontaneously aborted while unconscious. I have to know if that was true, or if . . ."
Wu's face hardened. "I see." He thumbed the control in his pocket, and the wall of images changed, became a rolling, powerful wall of water, the walls of a tidal wave, a rolling tsunami that challenged her powers of perception. How to remain calm if such a power came for her?
"I believe that there are certain things in this world that are beyond the efforts of man to stop or limit, or even influence. There is a possibility that what you say is correct. If it is, then by all that is right, you should find out. Certainly I would not live without knowing. I have no children. After infection with Cyloxibin I dare not make the attempt—I have no wish to give life to a freak."
"You will help me?" She could hardly believe her ears.
"You realize that some of the operations are legal."
"I know. As an alternative to abortion. My . . . mother helped originate the technology."
Wu raised an eyebrow. "Yes? McMartin Cryogenics maintains a facility in Los Angeles. Then there's Xenon in Atlanta, and IUH in Pittsburgh. But my specialty was . . . import and distribution, until Cyloxibin hit the market. Now, there is more profit in other black market products, and gambling."
"I don't understand. Why is that?"
Wu's laughter was sharply musical. "Cyloxibin addiction drives all other chemical substances out of the system. When it eventually fades, desires for any drug, including alcohol, are minimized. Whatever curses it may carry, it brings one gift, as well."
"You said that you might be able to help me."
"Yes." He sat down again. "You know enough to hurt me, and you have never spoken."
"And you knew enough about Aubry to hurt him."
"There was no profit in it. None at all. And in this world, there is no need to destroy potential allies."
"Allies?"
"There are other enemies on the horizon. There is this man, DeLacourte. He frightens me. It is said that there are only three kinds of men in the world. One says openly that he is out to take what is yours. This is the easiest kind of man to deal with—he is a businessman, and you can deal with him frontally. The second kind says that he is concerned with your best interests, but he is lying, and knows that he is lying. This man is a thief, and he can also be dealt with easily. But the most dangerous kind of man is the one who says that he is only interested in your welfare, believes that he is interested in your welfare, but somehow ends up taking what is yours. This man is the worst."
"Why?"
"Tomas de Torquemada was such a man. He believed that torturing you to death was for your own benefit. Men of good will will follow such a man. Movements grow up around him. Adolf Hitler was undoubtedly such a man—he believed that what he was doing was ultimately for the good of the world. They are infinitely dangerous.
"Sterling DeLacourte . . . disturbs me."
"He frightens you?"
Wu smiled secretly. "It is not a subject for discussion." He shook his head, and appeared eager to move to a new
subject.
"I don't have very much for you. But I have something. The doctor who worked on your case in Terra Buena also worked with the fetal operation until two years ago. I know this. It is therefore entirely possible that he might have done something while you were unconscious. His personal effects may be found. His contacts, friends, and relations interviewed."
"I don't understand ... is he dead?"
"He might as well be."
"Why?"
"Thai-VI."
Promise covered her mouth with her hand. Thai-VI, the terrible venereal leprosy which had ravaged hundreds of thousands of victims before the Containment Act of '23.
She felt sick. It was better for him if he were dead.
"Where is he?" '
"The Hoopa camp, I believe. Hi
s name is Allred. Doctor Gerold Allred. There may be answers there for you . . . if you have the stomach to retrieve them."
"It's my baby," she whispered. "I don't have any choice."
Wu nodded approval. "Very well," he said. "Then I will help you get in."
"Why? Why do you do this for us . . ." She caught herself, looked down at her hands. "For me?"
"I like to play games," he said. "You and Aubry Knight are disruptive influences. I want to see what will happen. It is not my game I introduce you into. I ask you . . . where is Aubry now?"
She closed her eyes. "I'm not sure. I think that he's following his own leads. There was a man. Someone who hurt him in a fight. He has to find this person."
Wu nodded his understanding. "For a man like Aubry Knight, it would be almost impossible not to. Very well—I will help you. I ask you one favor."
"Anything."
"Tell me . . . how this thing develops. I am interested." Wu drew himself up. "Promise. I must leave you now. Call me tomorrow, and I will have your information. Good luck to you in your hunting." He walked her to the tubular elevator shafts. She stepped in, and watched Wu as his body seemed to rise. Inside the tube, she felt no movement at all.
Chapter Twenty-One
Bordertown
Monday, June 12
Traffic was snarled in downtown San Diego. Wherever Aubry turned his head, the view was clotted with humanity. Even now, in the midst of the Recovery, San Diego was still a favorite jumping-off point for American migrant laborers seeking work in Mexico. He could see the battered trucks filled with overalled workers hoping to get across the border, could read the tired faces on the street corners, could watch the electronic signs which flashed the relative strength of the dollar and the peso. From this, the Mexican government would decide how many Americans to allow across the borders to jobs in the Mexican oil fields.
The great desalinization plants north of Mazatlan and on the Gulf of Mexico had begun flowering Mexico's deserts, and there was work there for the lucky gringo with the grease to get across the border.
There were jobs in Los Angeles now, Aubry thought, allowing a bit of satisfaction to bubble up. He had been responsible for some of that. But now there was no satisfaction. Now he allowed himself to slide through a seething ocean of humanity, hunched over, smelling them, seeing them, feeling them, but not really letting them into his world.
He prowled past a Golden Arches, contemplated a McSushi and fries. He chose an El Polio Muerto nestled under a smiling poster of President Roland Harris, wire-rims twinkling with sincerity as he reminded one and all that this is your country.
He ordered a slab of immolated chicken. As he waited he scanned the room. It was full of men who were full of beer, watching the stage at the front of the room, where a girl who looked about twelve sat in the sawdust, strumming a guitar and singing in a voice that was far too old and experienced for her years. Her eyes were wide and sad with wonder as her song told them how she had been hungry, and frightened, and ultimately saved from a life in the streets by the kindness of them.
"I was saaaved ..." she sang, without a knowing wink. The room rocked with cheers, and bids for the evening's favors.
Aubry felt sick, and left the restaurant, carrying his steaming chicken with him. He chewed each rubbery mouthful carefully as he wove through the crowd.
He scanned, watching, watching for the head that seemed to rise higher than the surrounding heads. For the voice that struck a nerve, for the hunt, the sign.
He pulled his thin coat around him, not too tightly. Any tight clothing would betray the dimensions of his body. Loose as it was, he might have been mistaken for a barrel of a man, perhaps one somewhat overweight, not the two hundred and thirty pounds of muscle and bone that damned near screamed for attention.
But who were they? There were so many. . . .
A man strode the periphery of the crowd, and Aubry's eyes went to him instantly.
He knew the face. It was strong, and unsmiling, and held a kind of casual strength that Aubry empathized with instantly. The man stood a head above the crowd. Some looked at him admiringly as he passed. Others spit on the sidewalk. He passed by, without the slightest recognition of insult.
Aubry fell into line behind him, following.
The man walked down two streets, and then turned into a narrow building. Another of the enormous men was standing at the front door. He carried a sidearm, a Walther automatic pistol. God in heaven, how much grease had been used up to get a pistol license for a NewMan, for Christ's sake? They had enough trouble with just their hands swinging at the ends of their arms, let alone a gun.
Aubry walked up to the front door. The man at the door studied him. For a moment, an automatic smile of welcome came to his face. Then it cooled.
"I don't know you," he said. "You don't have any business here, human."
"Ask Bloodeagle about that. Tell him Warrick is here to see him." Aubry buried his hands deeply into his pockets. He hated standing out there, exposed and vulnerable. He could almost feel the crosshairs centered on his forehead.
The man on the front door had an amazingly, unnaturally broad face, as if the hormones which reinitiated growth had misfired on him. This one had to be a result of some of the forbidden hormones, drugs that were illegal in almost every nation in the world, despite a thriving underground market for them. Everyone involved in sports medicine knew that after the age of twenty-two or so it was impossible to get any further growth from the human skeletal system: the bones had capped.
But there were always people who tried anyway. Even if the result was the abomination before him, a grotesque misshapen lump of a man. An apparently clear mind stared out from the face of a monster, a mind which knew that its body had gone haywire, knew that its bones were thickening and the muscles growing even now. And that there was nothing to be done for it. He had made his choice.
The NewMan turned, and one great misshapen hand took the intercom phone from its hook. He spoke into it softly for a few seconds, then turned back to Aubry.
His eyes were piglike and suspicious. "All right. He says to come in."
The door swung open.
Something inside Aubry relaxed. Many of the people in the inner room were normal-sized human males, but a few—and they were clearly a breed apart—were Aubry's size and even larger, immense men, men who moved as if their bodies were driven by oiled cables rather than muscle. They turned when Aubry entered, and gave him a nod of recognition. He was among his own, accepted instantly, the flares of interest automatic but unintrusive.
Miles came down the stairs from the upper floor, and he held his hand out, his smile wide and genuine. "Warrick! It's good to see you. Where is Promise?"
"Up in Oregon, as far as I know. I have some business to attend to. And Miles—Warrick isn't my real name."
Possibilities ran through Miles's mind like lightning crackling in a cloud. "I see. Would you come to my office, where we can talk for a while? Privately?"
"That's exactly what I'd like."
Several of the men in the room grinned at Miles as he led Aubry upstairs, and a couple of inquisitive eyebrows were raised. Miles winked back, and Aubry gritted his teeth, trying not to pay attention.
Miles sat back in his office chair, settling his enormous frame comfortably, and pausing before asking the obvious question. "Well . . . what is your real name?"
"Knight. Aubry Knight."
The NewMan nodded. "I won't ask for explanations. This is the safest house on the West Coast, Aubry. There's the New York Commune, of course, and then Monument Valley."
"Has there been any grief in Arizona?"
"Not yet. Not that I've heard." Miles watched him closely, and Aubry drew up slightly in his seat, very conscious of Miles's eyes on him, and wondered why he felt so self-conscious. "Now then. What exactly is the problem?"
"If anyone would know of a group of mercenaries using unusual physical skills, I figured that it would be your people."
"Unusual skills? What exactly do you mean?"
"I mean that I ran into a man who wasn't half my weight who nearly killed me. I'm telling you that he didn't move like anything that I've ever seen . . . except that he was fast. God-awful fast."
"You say that he was small?"
"Four and a half feet tall."
Miles sat back, and thought.
"It was almost ..."
"Almost what?"
"As if I was fighting a woman. Just a feeling. It's not easy for me to talk about this."
"Why not?"
"There was something wrong."
"Wrong how? What did you feel?" "I can't explain it, Miles. It was gut-level. It felt terrible." Aubry gestured vaguely. "Empty."
Miles's voice became distant. "You say that it might have been a woman?"
"Might. I don't think so. Didn't have much time to think—I was fighting for my life."
"I see." Miles templed his fingers. "I owe you more than I can ever pay, Aubry. Even counting that, I just can't tell you everything you need to know."
"You know what is happening?"
Miles nodded slowly.
"Then tell me, man. Don't leave me hanging."
"I can't. But people owe me favors. Maybe we can talk to them. Would you be willing to try?"
"Hell yes. Who, and where?"
"His name is Quint."
"Head of the Gorgons?"
"Yes. And we have a project. . . one which involves hermaphrodism. I don't know how far it's gone. We have to go to Monument Valley, in Arizona. There may be some answers there."
Aubry stood, paced across the room. He peered out through the window. Outside the window, across the courtyard, was a flickering billboard, the picture of DeLacourte smiling at them. The man gave him the creeps.
Across the street was a board carrying the bland, paternalistic face of President Roland Harris. He had a very rectangular face, and honest, direct eyes. As Aubry watched, the image faded and shifted, alternating with a flag at full mast.
"This is something big, isn't it?"
"Bigger than you think. Otherwise I'd tell you, Aubry."
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