Max Quick: The Bane of the Bondsman (Max Quick Series Book 3)

by Mark Jeffrey

  Max shrugged. “Couldn’t sleep. Lot on my mind.”

  “Oh?” Sasha replied with a wry knowing smile. “Like what?”

  “The Bondsman, of course. Maurice. And that story of Arturo Gyp you and Casey told.”

  “Which part?” Sasha asked, and then smiled coyly. “Oh. Let me guess. The Cody Chance part.”

  “What?” Max snapped his eyes up, an instant of pain searing through their brown, watery depths. “No. Not the cowboy guy thing. Besides, he wasn’t even real. I mean, why should I be jealous of a guy who isn’t real?”

  Sasha drew a White Rose and twirled it in her hand. “You mean not real … like these?”

  “Geez, Sash. Seriously? You actually sleep with them on now? You and Casey are serious gun-heads these days.”

  She only shrugged. “If you’d been to the Gyp, you’d understand. Logan White-Cloud would have our hides if we were any less on our toes. Especially here, in this world, where we still don’t know much about what’s going on.” She paused and then added, “So if it’s not Cody Chance, what is it?”

  “Blackthorne,” Max said, handing her a cup of coffee. Sasha’s head snapped back slightly. The very name of the Sheriff startled her.

  “Keep it down,” Sasha said, looking worriedly towards the room Casey was sleeping in. “I’m not sure she’s … well, ready to talk a lot about that yet.”

  Max nodded. He could relate completely, unable to bear the story of his own failure. Lowering his voice, he said: “I will. But anyway, the way I understand it, he was basically a manifestation of Casey’s dark side. Right? He was her shadow, made real. And at some point, he took on a life of his own. He became self-aware, started thinking for himself. And that’s what Archons are – alive fear.”

  Sasha nodded. “That’s right. So?”

  “So I’ve been thinking about the Bondsman. And the fact that he wears that mask all the time. There must be a reason for that.” Max paused and then said, “So. What if the Bondsman is my dark side? What if he’s basically my Blackthorne?”

  Sasha shook her head. “How would that explain the mask?”

  “I’m getting to that,” Max said. “Look. When you and Casey were in Arturo Gyp, you were really still back at the Pyramid of the Arches, knocked out. And while you were knocked out, you shared a dream. That malfunctioning Arch somehow linked you two together.

  “But because you were in a dream, Blackthorne could appear any way he wanted. Or what Casey wanted, to be more accurate, since it was her dream. He could have been a dancing elephant in a Tutu. But Casey’s subconscious decided that he would appear as an old West gunfighter.

  “But what if she had not been dreaming? What would Blackthorne have looked like then?”

  “You’re not making any sense,” Sasha replied, scratching at her tangled mop of hair.

  “Sorry. I’m still booting up. Coffee needs to kick in.

  “Here. Let me explain it this way. Remember when Casey asked you what the shootout with Blackthorne was really all about? You told her that it was a battle for her soul. It was about who she would be when the gunfight was over. If she won, she would still be herself. And that all turned out fine. She did win. So both of you came back.

  “But what if she had lost?

  “What if Blackthorne had won? Who would be looking out of Casey’s eyes right now?”

  “Well, Blackthorne, of course,” Sasha replied. “He actually managed to do that once, you know. That was how he figured out he was just piece of Casey’s mind, not a Niburian. He only took her over for a brief moment. Casey described it like being a prisoner in her own body.”

  “Right,” Max said. “If Blackthorne had won, it would have been like that for her all the time. She would have ceased to be Casey Cyranus. Instead, she would have been, essentially, an Archon. But with a body. An ‘Eater of Time’ as Maurice put it, with a blonde puppet here in the real world.”

  “I’m still not seeing what this has to do with the Bondsman,” Sasha yawned.

  “And I’m still getting to that.” Max sighed. “Okay. Here it is, then. What if the Bondsman is a future version of me? What if, at some point, I lose the internal fight that Casey won? Then, my own inner Archon would get loose and he’d be staring out at the world through my eyes.

  “And that would be the point of that golden mask he wears. It would be so that the present version of me would not know that a future version of me would eventually become the Bondsman. The future-me would lead the past-me down a road that would result in me becoming him. By the time it was me in the Bondsman suit, it would be too late. My inner Blackthorne would be in control. I wouldn’t be Max Quick anymore: instead, I would be the Bondsman with Max Quick’s inconvenient face – which I would forever cover with a golden mask.”

  Sasha just stared at him. “Max. Look. I get how responsible you feel for all of this, after the Machine and all, but that is just paranoia talking. You’re just –”

  Max cut her off. “Paranoid? No. Not really. Think about this. To take over the world, you’d need a lot of power. Think about that, Sasha. The whole world. Sure, you’d need access to all the Niburian technology, which the Bondsman obviously has. But the tricky part isn’t the stuff, it’s the people. You’d need to control the population of six or seven billion. And you’d have to be invulnerable to assassination. There could be no weapon on earth that could hurt you. And everyone would have to fear you. You would need almost perfect knowledge of everyone and everything going on around you.

  “That’s what would take the power. The list of potential Bondsman suspects just got a lot smaller, didn’t it? It would have to be someone like me. Wouldn’t it?”

  Sasha was about protest when she realized he was right.

  “Well. Who else could it be? Who else has power like that?”

  Sasha thought for a moment and then said, “Enki. Enki does.”

  That was true. Max hadn’t thought of that. “Hmm. You’re right. Enki is a possibility. Or it could be Ninti, from what Ian and I have seen. She’s just as powerful.” He paused and then added, “For that matter, if Romani or Gustav or any of them were still alive, it could be one of them.”

  “Okay,” Sasha said, smacking her teaspoon on the plate just a little too loud. “Just for the sake of argument, let’s say you’re right. How could the Bondsman possibly force you to, like, turn into him? When the time came, you’d basically just refuse. You’d just say no, right?”

  Max laughed a little. “It’s not that simple. I learned at least that much from the Machine.”

  “Why not?”

  “’That which we resist, persists’,” Max quoted.

  Sasha stared blankly back at him.

  “It means that when you fight something, you give it power. Like a Chinese finger puzzle. You ever try one of those?

  “Anyway, you put your fingers in this like wicker tube. And the more you pull on both ends, the more the puzzle contracts and squeezes your fingers. You can’t get out. Your fingers just get more and more stuck. The act of trying to fight it is what makes it work, what gives it power.

  “That’s what happened to me with the Machine. Paradoxically, the very act of fighting it was what completed it. Without me, the Machine would not have worked. The Archons goaded me into going after it.”

  Max sighed with weight of a lesson learned too late.

  “When I attacked the Machine, I became a piece of it. So my guess is that this will be the same sort of trap. The Bondsman will try to make me fight him. And somehow, that’s how I’ll become the Bondsman.”

  Sasha thought about this for a moment. “So what’s the answer? Do nothing?”

  “No. Of course not. But the answer is also not a straight-forward fight.”

  Sasha thought about this for a moment and then said, “Logan White-Cloud would have disagreed with that completely.”

  WHEN THE rest of the company awakened a few hours later, the storm actually seemed worse.

  Management sent compl
imentary breakfast up to their rooms, apologizing for the inclement weather as if it were directly the fault of the Shell Hotel staff. When Sasha peeked her head out the front door of the Pearl Suite, she saw that the hallways were filled with guests going to and fro. And that they were very angry about this state of affairs.

  “What? The Bondsman’s weather control is not working?” one very large woman screamed — at Cassandra, who was apparently working the hallways today, since she could not work the patio. “How is that possible? Our lord and Bondsman is is complete control of the weather! Everyone knows that!”

  “Yes, well something new and unforseen is interfering with the usual control,” Cassandra said with a look of helplessness in her eyes. “That’s what we’re being told.”

  “Hmmf!” the fat woman huffed and retreated to her room, slamming the door.

  Cassandra caught Sasha’s glance and hurried over. “Good grief,” Cassandra said. “I’m so sorry you had to see that. This hurricane … nobody knows how it happened. How about your room though? Do you have everything you need?”

  Sasha nodded. “Oh we’re just fine. Don’t worry about us. Worry about the rest of the Shell.”

  Cassandra nodded gratefully and hurried off. “I’ll check on you in a few hours.”

  IAN SPENT most of the day with his head stuffed deep inside the SAI-80 computer, grumbling about how horrible and primitive it was. But nevertheless, he patiently teased out more detailed information out about the Bondsman’s world and history in general.

  Max, Casey and Sasha spent the day watching the Bondsman’s horrid television channels. Most of it was documentaries on the accomplishments of the Bondsman — it seemed he invented nearly everything from the lightbulb to the SAI-80 Ian was using right now. Then there were the ‘historicals’ as they called themselves, essentially breathless documentaries about how the Bondsman had brought the warring countries of the world together into a perfect peace. ‘Hystericals’, Sasha called them, as they were so obviously filled with lies, that even with no knowledge of this world the average person could see right through their propaganda as ludicrous.

  “I had a weird dream last night,” Sasha said at one point. “It’s kind of a blur … but the big thing is, I remember this girl in a flowing white dress and bare feet. You know, like in a Maxfield Parrish painting. Anyway, she was suspended mid-air inside of a glass box … and her arms and legs had these like, white marionette threads on them — like someone was controlling her.”

  “Oh, that’s weird!” Casey exclaimed. “I dreamed about that exact same thing also!”

  “You did?”

  “And also about a boy,” Ian chimed in, looking up from the screen now. “He was dressed in a black robe and standing in a red checkerboard. A blonde boy. And all these people in business suits below him were pointing at him.”

  Sasha and Casey looked him, transfixed. “Hey … yeah,” Casey said. “I remember that as well.”

  “And there a pyramid in the background,” Enki said, entering the room now. “With a burning bush in the foreground and a black sun — like Sasha’s slave glyph — burning in the sky.”

  “Yeah,” Max said at last. “I had that same dream as well. How can we all have the same dream?”

  “I don’t know,” Enki said after a long moment. “It seems … improbable. But I have a theory. I think that this Bondsman is far more than just another dictator. I think he has somehow polluted the psyche of the world.”

  “How do you mean?” Sasha asked.

  “Deep down inside all of us, where dreams come from,” Enki said, “We all draw from the same core set of symbols. These same symbols are drawn from over and over again. That’s why other people’s dreams seem on some level familiar to us as well. But I think in this world … the world of the Bondsman … those symbols have been changed. The collective unconscious has been corrupted. These new, horrible images have been inserted. And every night, I suspect everyone here dreams them, which reinforces this reality.”

  “But they’re not real,” Sasha said. “They’re dreams.”

  “And you have heard me speak about the Dreamtime,” Enki said. “And each time I have, I have spoken of something real. You think this world around you is any less a dream than what you experience in sleep? You think Arturo Gyp was ‘just a dream’? No. Reality is just another species of dream — and dreams just another species of reality. And the Bondsman controls both species here.”

  Casey thought on this for a bit and then said, “Enki. Our guns. They came out of a dream. So where did you get them?”

  Enki looked startled at the question. In fact, Casey saw something like extreme anger sear through his eyes. It reminded her of when Mr. E grew angrier and angrier on the Isle of the Dreamtime when Max asked him about his own past and the Pendant. That had resulted in Sasha, Ian and herself being imprisoned in some sort of scarlet ice — until Max was able to figure out how to command Mr. E.

  But he would not be able to command Enki, she knew that. He was not a construct in a Book — he was the real Enki. Yet his reaction was startling, baffling. After a moment, he said grimly, as though barely containing rage, “Now’s not the time for that, Casey.” Then he brightened, like a switch had been flipped internally. He clapped his hands goofily. “Now!” he said jovially, “I have a very important mission for all of you!”

  “What’s that?” Ian asked.

  “Rest! Recuperate! You have each been through a very long ordeal. And you need time to recover. The world of the Bondsman is not going anywhere. And by chance or providence, we have landed in an oasis of sorts — we should take advantage of that.”

  “But we can’t just sit here,” Casey said. “We have to figure out a way to —”

  “During World War II,” Enki cut him off, “Winston Churchill took time out, now and again, to simply and quietly paint in the countryside. He recognized that he could not be at his best unless he also allowed for rest. The same goes for you. The same even goes for me. This is a resort. So I am going to insist that you all enjoy yourselves for the next few days. Swim in the pool! Play tennis! But get your minds of the Bondsman — for just a little while.”

  “I don’t like this idea,” Max said uneasily.

  “And you Max,” Enki said. “You need this most of all. You’re so traumatized by the release of your old memories on top of everything else that you don’t even recognize how badly you need this.”

  “He’s right,” Casey said quickly, before Max could say anything further. “He really is right, Max. Have you looked in the mirror lately? You look like you’re about to drop over at any moment.”

  Max was about to protest further, but deep inside, he knew they had a point. Surrendering, he rose and wordlessly shambled back to his bedroom.

  As Casey watched him go, all she could think about was Enki’s strange reaction to the question of where he had gotten their guns.

  BUT MAX found himself unable to sleep. He awoke with his heart racing, hugging his knees in terror. He turned his envious gaze on Ian, who slept peacefully with a half-smile plastered on his face.

  The Dream came to Max whenever he closed his eyes, but it wasn’t that. Something else was bleeding through the Dream, like when two radio stations are near one another and you can barely make out the second one ever so faintly.

  But whatever it was, it was getting louder, more insistent. It was a sort of knocking, like someone at the door. During a time around 1200 AD, Max had lived one of his many lives in the forests of Germany. The small village he inhabited had a legend about an trickster spirit called Salad that would torment the living by knocking on tables and doors. ‘Oh, that’s Salad knocking,’ they would say whenever they heard a banging noise that had no earthly explanation.

  Salad was knocking now.

  It drove Max to full wakefulness. He itched all over. Lying in bed was suddenly intolerable.

  He rose, feeling better already that he was vertical. The recentness of the ordeal in 1912 combined
with his newly-returned memories must be doing this, he reasoned. It was 4:00 AM. He wanted to talk with somebody, but there was no one.

  He put on his clothes and shoes and decided to go for a walk.

  THE WINDING WOODEN hallways of the Shell Hotel were enough to calm his nerves for a bit. The tension eased off, retreated. He walked the impossibly long corridors end to end, treading a sumptuous carpet decorated with the Hotel’s signature nautilus design, a self-repeating fractal, spinning the golden mean into infinity. He descended a flight of stairs. He did the same on the next floor down and the next.

  When he reached the ground level, he strolled through the Lobby, half-expecting to see that Jane Willow girl waiting for him. But it was empty except for the night staff. They nodded at him respectfully but said nothing.

  But then he got a slam of something. It punctured his eyelids like a stab of migraine, scratching static across his vision. This way, it shouted. He found himself looking down a hallway he had not noticed before. The knocking was more insistent than ever, loud, and coming from a specific direction now.

  There was a presence here in the Hotel. And it wanted him to know it was here.

  It was inviting him, demanding he come.

  Salad knocking …

  Okay Salad. Let’s find out who you are.

  Max strode down this new mysteriously hallway. This wing of the Shell had only a single level, and extended along the quieter backside of the Hotel. It seemed more exclusive, more private — and no creaking footsteps ever troubled these guests.

  When Max reached very end of this hallway, he found himself standing before Room 99. The presence on the other side of the door was positively shrieking on a psychic level. He senses were ablaze and broke out into a profuse sweat.

  He should go back, he knew. He should talk this over with Enki.

  But then the door opened, beckoning him. Standing before Max was none other than Marvin Sparkle.

  The enormous black man was dressed in a sporty immaculate white suit and shoes. Max’s eyes involuntarily darted to his massive hands, looking for the sickle-blade that had once sliced his belly open.