Iceblood

by James Axler

  Sarcastically, he replied, "If it starts to hurt too much, sing out."

  Climbing the staircase wasn't quite the ordeal Kane had feared. The risers were broad, not particularly high, and Grant was able to relieve him some of the burden by bracing one arm against the balustrade. Though they staggered and swayed a bit, they managed to make it to the top without falling or stopping for a rest.

  They shuffled through the vast exhibit halls. Domi took the point while Brigid walked beside Grant and Kane, steadying them.

  "Did the Russian and his crew make off with the rock?" Grant asked.

  "Afraid so," Kane answered curtly, boots crunching loudly on shards of glass.

  "You should've gone after them," Grant said reproachfully. "I would've been all right."

  "Now you tell me," Kane retorted. "Fuck it. If Balam wants that rock so much, he can go after it himself."

  By the time they reached the museum entrance, the pewter-colored sky had darkened to the hue of old lead.

  "If we're really lucky," Brigid commented dourly, "we'll get back to the installation just as the sun goes down."

  They weren't lucky. Fighting through the tangled green hell of Central Park was slow, exhausting work. Thorny vines constantly snared Kane's legs, and twice he nearly tripped and dropped Grant. After they made their way through the park, they were forced to stop and rest for ten minutes.

  Despite the pain pill Grant had taken, he winced constantly and was barely able to bite back groans. Brigid and Domi took turns supplementing the support Kane provided for him, although he protested, claiming two blasters were needed to adequately cover the zone. However, only once did they catch sight of a darting, indistinct figure that might have been a scalie. It maintained a safe distance from them. They came across the corpses of Chu and the scalie still lying in the street. The scream-wings had stripped almost all the flesh from them, and it was impossible to tell by the bloody, skeletal carcasses which had been mutie or human.

  By the time the jagged tops of the World Trade Center came into view, full night had fallen. Nearly two hours had passed since they left the museum. All four people were too tense and weary to celebrate. The scalie Domi had shot floated in a pool of drying blood in the parking garage.

  "About there," she chirped, striving to sound cheerful.

  Kane glared at her. His legs wobbled, his jaw throbbed and his shoulders and back ached with a constant, bone-deep pain.

  "Another one-percenter to add to our scorecard," Grant husked out faintly. "That's something."

  * * *

  Within minutes of rematerializing in the Cerberus jump chamber, Grant was wheeled off in a gurney to the dispensary. Domi ignored all of DeFore's instructions to remain behind. She distrusted the "fat-assed doctor lady," as she referred to DeFore, because she suspected the older woman had designs on Grant.

  Lakesh was full of questions, and his seamed face collapsed into a scowl of disappointment and anger when Kane tendered his report.

  "So," he said, his reedy voice pitched low, "you got nothing but hurt?"

  Brigid removed the imaging scanner's hard disk from her coat pocket and handed it to him. "We can find out where Zakat and his people came from and jumped from, at least."

  Lakesh said nothing, but judging by the set of his lips, he didn't think the disk was much of a prize.

  Kane tugged off his helmet and fingered the swelling at his jaw hinge. "When Balam mentioned a thief, he didn't mention that he was a District Twelve officer. A professional."

  Lakesh peered at him over the rims of his eyeglasses. "You said he was in the company of Asians?"

  "And one hybrid, as far as I could tell."

  Lakesh blinked in surprise. "A hybrid?"

  Brigid nodded. "I didn't have the chance to get a really good look at him, but he had all the primary physical characteristics."

  "More than that," interjected Kane, "he claimed his name was Gyatso Chohan, direct descendant of the Maha Chohan, the Agarthan ambassador."

  Both Brigid and Lakesh stared at him in astonishment. Brigid was the first to recover sufficiently to speak. "Then there could be a direct link between the Chintamani Stone, Agartha and the Archon Directorate."

  "Which means," Kane declared coldly, "Balam isn't telling us everything he knows about the stone — which should come as no great surprise."

  Lakesh shook his head in furious negation. "You don't seriously suspect Balam sent you into a trap, do you?"

  "At this point, I seriously suspect everything Balam told us — or didn't tell us, particularly about a hybrid with a connection to this Agartha place."

  "The only way to settle the matter," Brigid said crisply, "is to question Balam. Do you think Banks feels up to another ventriloquism session?"

  Kane eyed Brigid's face, which was crusted with speckles of scalie blood. "Whether he is or isn't, I know I don't feel up to it at the moment. We should clean up before we do anything."

  Lakesh slapped the hard disk against the palm of one hand. "And I should trace the jump line used by Zakat and his people. Let's meet at Balam's holding facility in an hour or so."

  Kane and Brigid crossed the control complex to the main corridor. Since the rad counters registered negligible levels of radiation, they saw no need to visit decam. Kane said to her quietly, "You handled yourself well back there, Baptiste."

  Dryly, she replied, "If I hadn't, I'd be dead. Later I'll have a nice case of delayed reactions."

  "I'll slap you if you really need it."

  She turned a bend in the corridor, heading toward her quarters. "And I'll do the same for you."

  Kane went to his own suite of rooms, shucked out of his armor and took a long, hot shower. After pulling on the one-piece white bodysuit, he took ice from his small refrigerator, wrapped it in a towel and applied it to the side of his face. He sat down and tried not to dwell on dark thoughts, but they crowded into his mind. It was always difficult to reconcile the present with the past.

  Shortly after skydark, a group of families who had taken measures to survive a nukecaust and its resulting horrors emerged from their shelters, their caves, their refuges. The North American continent was now the Deathlands, but they believed they had inherited it by divine right — they had survived when most others had not.

  The families and their descendants spread out and divided the country into little territories, much like old Europe when it had been ruled over by princes and barons. Though the physical world was vastly changed, they were determined to bend it to their wills, to control it and the few people still struggling to live upon it.

  At first the families half-jokingly referred to themselves as barons, but as the years crawled by, the title no longer had a fictitious origin. The families instituted a tradition and bestowed upon their descendants the title of baron, and the territories they conquered became baronies. Though these territories offered a certain amount of sanctuary from the anarchy of outlying regions, they also offered little freedom. In the beginning, people retreated into the villes ruled by the barons for protection, then as the decades went by, they remained because they had no choice. Generations of Americans were born into serfdom, slaves in everything but name.

  After nearly 150 years of barbarism and anarchy, humankind reorganized, coalescing from the ruins of the predark societal structures. Many of the most powerful, most enduring baronies evolved into city-states, walled fortresses whose influence stretched across the Deathlands for hundreds of miles.

  In decades past, the barons had warred against one another, each struggling for control and absolute power over territory. Then they realized that greater rewards were possible if unity was achieved and common purpose exploited.

  Territories were redefined, treaties struck among the barons, and the city-states became interconnected points in a continent-spanning network. The Program of Reunification was ratified and ruthlessly imposed. The reconstructed form of government was still basically despotic, but now it was institutionalized and shared b
y all the formerly independent baronies.

  Control of the continent was divided among the nine baronies that survived the long wars over territorial expansion and resources. With this forward step in social engineering came technical advances. Technology, most of it based on predark designs, appeared mysteriously and simultaneously with the beginning of the reunification program. There was much speculation at the time that many previously unknown stockpiles were opened up and their contents distributed evenly among the barons. Though the technologies were restricted for the use of those who held the reins of power, life overall improved for the citizens in and around the villes. To enjoy the bounty offered by the barons, all anyone had to do was to first accept responsibility and then to surrender it.

  It had all seemed so simple. Irresponsible humanity had allowed their world to be destroyed by the irresponsible people they had put in charge; therefore humanity would no longer be permitted to have responsibility, even over their own lives. The barons accepted the responsibility, or rather had it ceded to them.

  The populations of the villes and the surrounding Outlands cooperated with this tyranny because of a justified fear and an unjustified guilt. For the past eighty years, it had been bred into the people that Judgment Day had arrived and humanity had been rightly punished. The doctrines expressed in ville teachings encouraged humanity to endure a continuous punishment before a Utopian age could be ushered in. Because humanity had ruined the world, the punishment was deserved. The doctrines ultimately amounted to extortion — obey and suffer or disobey and die.

  The dogma was elegant in its simplicity, and for most of his life, Kane had believed it, had dedicated his life to serving it. Then he stumbled over a few troubling questions, and when he attempted to find the answers, all he discovered were many more troubling questions.

  However, the most important question, the guiding mystery of his life was to learn who — or what — was actually responsible for the nukecaust and for implanting these mistaken beliefs in humanity.

  Intellectually, he knew all the conditioning was a sham, psychological warfare practiced on a national scale. Dealing emotionally with the realization was a different matter altogether. Breaking away from a lifetime of indoctrination, of believing in certain things in certain ways, sometimes seemed an insurmountable problem.

  Conditioning.

  Kane turned the word over in his mind a few times, then removed the ice pack. His jaw was numb, but the swelling had been reduced. He left his quarters and walked to the dispensary.

  Grant lay on one of the beds within a screened partition. DeFore hovered over him, elevating his right leg. It was swathed in bandages and encased in a metal splint from instep to knee. An IV drip was attached to a shunt on the inside of his left elbow. Black stitches showed at the corner of his mouth. Domi stood at the head of the bed, crusted blood showing stark against her white face.

  "What's the diagnosis?" he asked, attempting a bantering tone.

  He had directed the question at Grant, but DeFore answered curtly, "A closed fracture of the tibia and talus bones. A number of strained ligaments, abrasions and some internal bruising."

  DeFore, a stocky, buxom woman with bronze skin, ash-blond hair and deep brown eyes, made no secret of her dislike of Kane — or rather, her distrust of him. In her medical opinion, he displayed unstable tendencies and exhibited symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome. In the recent past, she had tried to order Kane confined to the redoubt so he could be treated, but she had been overruled.

  "And the prognosis?" he inquired, this time asking her directly.

  Grant answered before she could. "At least a week flat on my back."

  "Could be worse," remarked Kane. "Not everybody who's gone one-on-one with a blue whale got off so lucky."

  "I'll chill that scrawny Russkie rat-bastard next time I see him," Domi asserted fiercely. "Big time."

  "You'll have to get in line," Grant rumbled.

  DeFore finished propping pillows beneath Grant's leg and turned to face Kane, full lips pursed in disapproval. "Thanks for bringing me another casualty, Kane."

  "Don't start," Grant said sharply. "This wasn't his fault. Blame Lakesh for buying into Balam's wild-rock chase."

  DeFore looked to be on the verge of saying more, but she addressed Domi. "You need to clean up. We don't know that scalie blood might not have toxic bacteria swimming around in it."

  Domi glowered at her, but Grant side-mouthed to her, "Do as she says or you'll be on the receiving end of a sponge bath."

  The girl reluctantly moved away from the bedside. Grant met Kane's eyes. "You figure what happened was part of Balam's plan to get us chilled?"

  "I don't know. I doubt it. I do figure he knows more about all of this than he let on. I intend to get the answers out of him."

  Grant snorted scornfully. "What makes you think he'll be straight with you the next time?"

  Kane showed the edges of his teeth in a hard, humorless grin. "Because next time, I'm making the rules."

  19

  Kane, Banks, Lakesh and Brigid stood before the glass walls of Balam's cell. All eyes were fixed on Kane, and they reflected incredulity and skepticism in equal measure.

  "No," Lakesh declared, shaking his head vehemently. "Absolutely not. I forbid it."

  Kane bristled at Lakesh's autocratic tone, but he kept his anger in check. "I'm not suggesting this for the hell of it. We've got to try a new approach in dealing with Balam. We all troop in here like we're requesting an audience with a goddamn baron, communicating through a second party while he's safe and smug behind glass. He won't even allow us a good look at him."

  "He's a prisoner," Banks protested.

  "But he doesn't act like one," Kane countered, "and most of the time he's not treated like one. You in particular treat him like a foreign dignitary or a diplomatic envoy instead of what he really is — an arrogant, conniving, inhuman monster who wants something from us."

  Although her expression showed doubt, Brigid said, "You've got a point. The only time we've ever achieved any kind of exchange was when you behaved disrespectfully toward him."

  Lakesh squinted toward the cell, swallowing hard. "But to release him after all this time… it's dangerous."

  "That's what he's conditioned us to believe," Kane declared. "Psy-war tactics, just like the conditioning perpetrated by the unification program. We know now it was all bullshit, nothing but control mechanisms. That's what I think Balam's standard 'we stand, we know, we are' message is.

  "He's been a prisoner here for over three years. That's the hard reality. We can keep him here forever or let him go. We have the power to do that. Not him. Past time we let him in on that fact."

  No one spoke, but they eyed each other questioningly, nervously.

  "We've got to knock him off his pedestal," Kane argued. "Stop segregating him from the apekin. Prove to him once and for all who is the prisoner and who are the warders. If he wants favors from the warders, then he's got to give something in return. Like the truth."

  Brigid clicked her tongue absently against her teeth, swiveling her head to stare at the red gloom within the recesses of the cell.

  Contemplatively, she murmured, "You're right. We did what he asked us to do and nearly got killed. If he had told us a hybrid was involved, we could have taken measures."

  "Maybe he didn't know a hybrid was involved," Banks protested, though he didn't sound convinced of his own words.

  "You told us he had an extreme reaction to Baron Ragnar's assassination," Brigid reminded him. "That proves the existence of a mind-link between Archons and hybrids."

  Banks shrugged. Kane gazed levelly at Lakesh. "Well?"

  The old man sighed and tugged at his long nose. "I don't know. I simply don't know. I traced the jump line Zakat and his people used. The transit path didn't track back to Russia but originated from an unindexed unit, not part of the Cerberus network."

  "Did you get a fix on the unit?" Brigid asked.

  "Tibe
t, somewhere in the Himalayas. By cross-referencing the coordinates with the geographical database, it locked in on the Byang-thang Plateau."

  "The Byang-thang Plateau?" echoed Kane, stumbling over the pronunciation. "What the hell is there?"

  "An old Russian or Chinese military installation, perhaps."

  "Or," Brigid ventured, "the Trasilunpo lamasary I found mentioned in the historical records — the same lamasery where the Chintamani Stone was reputedly sheltered. A modular gateway unit could have been installed there before the nuke."

  Lakesh nodded. "I considered the same thing. The autosequencer shows a live transit line, so our unit can lock in on it."

  Kane's lips compressed. "Waste of time."

  Lakesh looked at him quizzically. "Why so?"

  "Because none of us will be following that line unless you agree to release Balam."

  The old man's blue eyes flashed with sparks of anger. "Blackmail is beneath you, friend Kane."

  "It's not blackmail, it's negotiation. You want something from me, I want something from Balam, Balam wants something from us. We all get something or nobody gets anything."

  Lakesh scowled ferociously, but Kane maintained a composed, neutral expression. He noticed Brigid doing her best to repress a smile.

  Kane guessed the kind of thoughts wheeling through Lakesh's mind. The cooperation among the Cerberus exiles was by agreement; there was no formal oath or vows like those he and Grant had taken upon admission into the Magistrate Division. There was no system of penalties or punishments if cooperation was withheld, nor was there a hard and fast system of government within its vanadium walls.

  There were security protocols to be observed, certain assigned duties that had to be performed, but anything other than that was a matter of persuasion and volunteerism. Lakesh really didn't have the power to forbid anyone to do anything, so Kane had him over the proverbial barrel and he wasn't ashamed of it.

  Finally, Lakesh spit a wordless utterance of frustrated disgust and gestured toward the control console. "Do it, Banks. Open the cell."