He stood for Aubry, extending his hand. "Winters," he said. "You might call me the mayor of this marginally controlled chaos. Please sit." Aubry did, and the door was closed behind him.
"Of course, I've heard about what you did for our people in Los Angeles. We're very grateful. If there's anything that I can do for you ..."
Aubry was silent for a moment, then threw caution to the winds. "There is something. Something very specific. I was in Ephesus when it was blitzed—"
"What—?"
Aubry nodded soberly. "It wasn't pretty."
Winters turned back to the window. "I hope you don't think we had anything to do with it. We didn't. You have to believe that."
"I do," he said bluntly. "But I want to find the men who set it up."
"Vengeance?"
"Yeah. That, and something else. Something happened during that attack. I was shot at, nearly burned and blown up and suffocated. Fine. But something happened that! shouldn't have. There was a fighter. Barely five feet tall. Moved faster than anything human, stronger than anything that size has a right to be. I know that if the answers can be found anywhere, they'll be found here."
Winters glared at him, and once again, Aubry couldn't shake the impression that one of his eyes was dead.
"The training programs relating to combat are exclusively for the NewMen, and the forces of Gorgon. Quint is insane for physical combat. Insane." Winters shook his head. "The shortest Gorgon is Alfred Eubanks, at five feet ten."
"I didn't say that you trained him. Grapevine says that Gorgon knows more about combat than any group in the world. Somewhere in this camp, there has to be someone who can give me a lead."
"Were there . . . bodies left behind?"
"Three. Normal human size. On the record as mercenary soldiers, seen action in a half-dozen theaters. Anyone could have hired them. Dead end."
"They were very thorough."
Winters stood, and looked out across the camp, his fingers laced behind his back. "These are . . . bad times, Mr. Knight. As you yourself know. We are under many pressures. I wish I could help you, but I cannot."
"Then find me someone who can."
"I'm sorry."
Aubry looked over to Miles, who shook his head.
"All right, then," Aubry said. "Let's talk about another rumor. I've heard tell that a man can get a new start in the NewMen. That if he's willing to go through the operations and procedures, that he can put his past identity behind him."
"That was . . . sometimes possible in the past. Understand, Mr. Knight, that you are . . . somewhat notorious."
"Only in California."
"I'm sorry. We can't take the risk."
Aubry stood, and his face was twisted with fury. "What in the hell are you talking about? I risked my life for you people. The reason that I'm notorious is that I came out and saved Bloodeagle and his group from being killed by the same bastards that are after me now. After you now. And just maybe did the damage up in Ephesus and tried to blame it on you. All I'm asking for is sanctuary. If that's too much to ask, then I made a big mistake, didn't I?"
Winters paced again, face troubled. "You're right, of course. You are our guest. We will do everything possible to make you comfortable, and give you what aid we can. 1 tell you though, Mr. Knight—"
"Aubry."
"Mr. Knight. You will get no satisfaction asking questions about the 'small figure' you claim you saw."
"If it was an illusion, it left some hellacious bruises."
"There is a reality that I had to deal with, as the NewMan Nation became stronger," Winters said, his voice was sad and rather flat. "As we grew, we became a symbol, and drew people to us from all over the country, until we became a force in Arizona. With power comes politics. I give you my word, Mr. Knight. None of our people were involved in the Ephesus affair."
"You're—"
Miles reached over and grasped Aubry's hand. "Thank you, Joseph. That will be enough for now."
"You are . . . welcome to our camp," Winters said. His eyes were narrowed.
Aubry rose, nodded. "When will I be contacted? What are the tests?"
"Soon. For now, enjoy yourself. Enjoy the hospitality of the camp."
They were halfway down the stairs before either of them spoke again. Miles broke the silence. "Winters is at the top of the political structure."
"Then he's in charge?"
"No. Not exactly. Gorgon pulls a lot of weight."
"How do I meet them?"
"Hard, Aubry. Not easy at all. They have a favorite bar, but it's private."
"Can you get me in?"
Miles shook his head. "Not really. I can show you where it is. From then on, it's up to you."
"Got it."
Aubry shook Miles's hand outside the Golden Bough and clapped him on the back. "I need a chance to move around here, to get a feel for the place. Do you think it's all right?"
"No problem. I have business to take care of. I'll keep my ears open. If I hear anything ..."
"I know."
Aubry moved off through the streets. The farther he wandered from the industrial section, the more frankly sensual the designs and decorations became.
The doorways and stenciled windows, the endless images of men embracing, were almost overwhelming.
The main boulevard branched into dozens of side streets, many of them lined with apartments. It was interesting: the layout was more crowded, more cluttered, less territorial than that of the women's encampment. The men here were dressed with the very flash that Ephesus seemed to have disavowed. They were bedecked in colored silks and hand-carved leathers, and carried themselves like peacocks.
There was more laughing and singing and general camaraderie than he had ever experienced. To either side, bars and taverns called to him, their music playing a raucous, gut-pounding beat. They smelled of sweat. As the evening wore on, and he made his circuit of the camp, he became more and more aware of his own difficulty in dealing with the very level of intensity.
There were almost no women in the camp. The ones he did see were sad and scrawny, or pathetically overweight. Not one seemed even as healthy in mind and body as the men in Ephesus, and none of those had been prizes.
He felt awesomely, achingly lonely. There seemed no place that he felt comfortable sitting and thinking. He felt like a shark. That he had to keep moving, moving, or be swallowed by mysteries that he barely understood.
Where is Promise? Now?
He didn't know, and wanted to so badly that it hurt. He sat on a bench across the street from a bar called The Pitstop. He watched the men drifting in together, and listened to the laughter, and the music, felt a clinching sensation in his chest.
Then he noticed the figure watching him. The man was average-sized, and slender. Bundled in a windbreaker and slacks, it was difficult to make out any physical characteristics, but there was something disturbing about the way that he moved. Aubry felt himself pulled, and the pull was almost more than he could stand. The man entered The Pitstop.
Aubry watched the door for a long moment, then squeezed his eyes shut and walked, then began to run, back to his room.
Miles was waiting. Aubry closed the door behind him, and walked around the bed to the plush chair by the window.
"What did you find?" Miles asked.
"Just . . . checked things out. The lay of the land. Found out that the lay of the land was me."
"You are quite a hunk."
Aubry squeezed his eyes shut. "Miles. I'm flattered. I'm also trying to figure out things I've never even thought about. So do me a favor and don't start with me, all right?"
Miles grinned at him. "Well, I've got the clothesline, if you need it."
"No. I'll . . . just sleep right here, if that's all right."
Miles sobered. "Aubry, that's ridiculous and you know it."
"Just ... let me be ridiculous tonight then. OK?"
Miles nodded and turned over. Suddenly his voice rose again. "Oh—by the way, did
get one thing for you. A name. 'Medusa.' "
"Lady with the snakes?"
"I don't know what it means."
Miles rolled back over, and was almost immediately asleep. Aubry was awake much later. He stared at the ceiling, and listened to the distant, potent roll of the music, and the sound of his own breathing thundering in his chest.
Miles awakened suddenly. The darkness was enveloping, but he heard the sound again: a soft, urgent cry, like a child tossing in nightmare.
The words "walls" and "dark" and a muted scream were all that he could make out. Miles rolled out of bed.
Aubry lay curled onto his side on the lounge chair. He shook uncontrollably, the sweat beading on his forehead like raindrops on oilskin.
Miles wanted to touch, to hold or comfort, but there was nothing he could do that Aubry would not misinterpret. There was no way to reach him that would not damage. The walls were too high, the darkness too deep.
Miles pulled a light blanket from a cabinet on the wall, and spread it out over Aubry, tucking it gently under his friend's chin.
It wasn't much, but it would have to be enough.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Deliverance
Monday, June 26
"Lord, let our bodies and minds be equal to the tasks' ahead of us this day, and every day. Lift us up into the heights. Let pain, let defeat, let disappointment but drive us on, and yet on, toward perfection. Let our minds and bodies be temples unto your spirit. Let it be thus now and evermore, Amen."
Aubry looked out across the amphitheater, and felt the words in his bones. There were only one or two women to be seen in the entire theater. There certainly would have been more if this had been merely a gathering of male gays. There would have been sisters, mothers, and the inevitable "fag hags."
But, and he had to remind himself, this wasn't merely a gathering of the homosexual elite, those who could afford the time to support a leisure environment that affected the politics of a state.
It was a subset of that group, those who believed in a hyper-male ideal. And as an intensification of that ideal the NewMen, who grew out of the hormonally altered athletes of the eighties, were the children of parents obsessed with performance. Inevitably, when it became known in the nineties that genetic modification of fetuses could create a hyper-athlete, some parents selected the option. Call them frustrated athletes, call them unfeeling monsters willing to create pariahs in the service of an illusory ideal, the NewMen were a reality, and an extraordinary number of the experiments, male and female, had chosen homosexuality as their life-style. In Arizona, the NewMen gathered. The female "hyper-women" had never banded together to become a force.
A very few hyper-hyper heterosexual relationships had been formed. Fewer lasted. None bred true.
Aubry looked around, noting the endless rows of suntanned bodies. Some, but not many, were overweight. Some, but not many, were unpleasantly thin. The Nation's emphasis on male beauty put the plain or unconditioned at a prohibitive disadvantage.
There were a few bulky figures, the men carrying the artificial wombs. Their faces were serene and calm, and they smiled sweetly.
The meeting broke up, and the men began to stream away to their jobs, their commitments, their various pleasures, leaving Aubry with a few dozen men in the meeting hall.
The central icon at the front of the hall was not the traditional crucifix, a symbol of suffering, death, and guilt as much as redemption and rebirth. In its place stood the stone image of a beautiful Christ, a smooth-muscled God whose wrath would have been awesome to witness.
Aubry walked down the center aisle toward the statue, and gazed up at it. It dwarfed him, and looked down on him with a faint smile curling those alabaster lips. Aubry felt lost.
In the week that he had been in the camp, he had seen nothing that would help him, had grown only more and more disturbed by the emotional tone. Things were happening here. Something important, but he couldn't grasp it. Couldn't grasp them. Perhaps the growing unease that he felt was related more to what was happening inside him than what was happening outside.
To understand, one must go to the heart.
But he couldn't. Not here. He was . . . troubled.
Aubry looked back up into the clearing rows, and once again he saw the figure that had eluded him earlier. It drifted like a shadow, wearing a cloak that disguised the figure somewhat. It stopped and talked to someone else in the stands.
Aubry felt himself pulled, and gripped the edge of the granite block on which the Statue rested.
Why was everything so out of control, unraveling more swiftly all the time? There didn't seem to be any answers in the realms where he ordinarily looked for answers. It was terrifying, and he had to go forward, couldn't go back.
Bloodeagle had given him his space in the room, and the space between them yawned like the Grand Canyon. Too wide. Impossibly wide.
He wanted . . .
He wanted to touch someone.
He bowed his head. What was happening to him?
He heard footsteps behind him, and the sound of robes swirling in the faint wind, and he held his breath. It wasn't fair. It wasn't.
Promise, damn it, where are you when . . .
He turned, hands still gripping the block behind him, and stood very still.
The hair was cut very short, the eyes golden, the lips full and now drawn tight, curled down at the corner with a question.
Feminine. Too damned feminine. And he felt his body cry out, and he was ashamed.
Then the figure spoke. "Your name is Aubry Knight."
Aubry swallowed, hard. The voice. It could have been a woman's voice—low, powerful, intelligent. The lips could have been a woman's lips, full, and moist now. Aubry felt his body respond. His shame deepened.
He nodded his head without speaking.
"My name is Marina. I think that you want to talk to me.
The noise in the bar was intense, but if they hunched together and spoke in normal tones, they could hear quite well.
"I recognized you. You're lucky nobody's turned you in." She smiled like a circling shark.
Aubry peered down into his glass. "I didn't think that those broadcasts were being seen outside of California." "They aren't—but I've researched everything that influences or has influenced DeLacourte in the past few years, and your picture came up. And then your name in camp. Among the Gorgons."
"Gorgons? You've talked with them?"
"A little."
"How the hell—I haven't been able to get in to see Ibumi or anyone. How did you—"
"You mean, as a woman?"
"That's exactly what I mean."
"I usually get what I want."
Aubry took another drink, watching the male dancers in the front of the room. Suddenly the gyrations and contortions seemed almost humorous, and nothing like the threat they had seemed just hours before. He watched Marina over the rim of his glass, and the slow fire of his anger seeped into his veins like lava.
"I have other connections with them. The full name is Batiste. Marina Batiste. I was a newswoman working with TriNet."
"Past tense?" The curves under her jacket were still boyish, but it was easier now to see the woman beneath the thin disguise. "You don't really think that you can pass as a man, do you?"
"I'm not trying to. There are women in the camp. I got in through my connections with Gorgon, but I can move more freely if I'm not stared at quite so much."
"Just what do you want from me?"
"Something very odd happened a month ago. I was sent on a news story, to cover Gorgon's activities. I actually got footage of them making the rescue in Nigeria. You must have heard of it. DeLacourte won't run it."
"Why? It make Gorgon look too good?"
"Exactly. Now, everyone knows the antipathy that DeLacourte has for Gorgon. What you may not know is that Gorgon hates DeLacourte just as much. DeLacourte probably leaked the Swarna assassination to the press."
"So there really was
a hit scheduled?"
"You bet your ass." She dropped her voice until it was barely audible above the music. "Harris OK'd it right after entering office. Full approval. If it hadn't been for the leak, Gorgon would have blown Swarna's head off: the plan was good. Officially nothing ever happened, but Harris knows, and Swarna knows. He lost his brother Kibu. Blown to bits. Not enough left to bury. Swarna's been quoted as saying he'll kill Harris and Gorgon."
She took a pull of her beer. "Anyway . . .I'm going to be making a documentary on Gorgon, to be released to the general public. We have this group of heroes in the midst of one of the most hated and misunderstood minorities in the country. I think that that is a story worth telling. Don't you?"
"Yes. Now—why are you talking to me about it?"
"I want to know what your connection is. You helped them in Los Angeles. There wasn't a lot about it above-ground in the media, but the name Aubry Knight has turned up in closed sessions."
"Why would you remember it?"
"Well, not that many men go up for Nullboxing. Then, not many Nullboxers get framed for murder."
Aubry felt himself tense. "Framed . . ."
"Shit. Didn't you know that there's a rumor that Luis Ortega had a tape of the entire frame-up? Showed it to his guests at night. You were had, my friend."
Aubry sat bolt upright in his chair, and suddenly he wasn't in the bar anymore. He was in Luis Ortega's study, and Promise was there, and Luis was stark naked, vulnerable, frightened. And Promise triggered a tape, a tape of the night on the beach when Maxine betrayed him, and his entire life crumbled like a shattered stained-glass window.
The tape! How could he have forgotten it all of this time? Could it clear him? Lord—could it? If it did . . . if it was possible . . . then . . .
And Maxine. There was a time when the only thing that had kept him alive and sane was the hope that one day, somehow, he could kill that lying, manipulative bitch. Feel her neck between his hands, and squeeze, and twist ...
He jerked his mind from that track. "The tape. Where is it now? Do you know?"
"After Tomaso Ortega disappeared, the West Coast family was a shambles. Records were burned, destroyed, before tax and drug enforcement agents could seize them. There went the tape."
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