by Unknown
Pandur had already wondered what the cultists lived from. Gradually the structure of the Thing became clear in his mind. To be close to Tungrita, part of the group lived in the building permanently. The remaining followers supplied the front line with food and whatever else was needed. It had always been this way, that cults and religions enabled their leaders to enjoy a pleasant life. In many cases, this material component was the true motive for founders of religions to set up shop themselves. It wasn't so much a question of spiritual substance, but of a neat motor yacht, sisters in the faith who were willing to lay out, and a healthy financial return. Pandur had to admit that the Tungrita Thing didn't have to palm off its adherents with theological gobbledegook, but had an honest-to-goodness object of worship to offer. These people got something for their ecus.
All told, religions wordwide were on the retreat, however. The Awakening of the Sixth World had by no means produced the expected drive to the spiritual. In the minds of most people, the scientifically explicable world had merely been expanded by an astral dimension. Metahumans, dragons and sorcery had become elements of the everyday, too immediate to give birth to new catechisms. After all, who would worship a conjuring elf if he is no more than the neighbors' boy? The impressive dragons, which had awakened from the slumber of millenia and burst forth from beneath the mountains, were more likely to have been suitable cult objects. This would probably have appealed to individual vain dragons. But the dragons' willingness to integrate into human society put paid to this. The material impulses of these once mythical creatures was only too apparent. Their marked interest in finance, and the opportunities provided by capitalism of amassing riches, barred their way. But dragon's had absolutely no need to play the church boss to become billionaires. They managed it through economic acumen, breathtaking financial transactions, an assortment of underhand tricks and intrigues. In short, they were thoroughgoing scoundrels and ideally equipped for the material world. Too well to be convincing prophets of a god that stood above material things. They themselves stood in their midst and their highest values were those of good old Uncle Scrooge.
What Tungrita gave the cult members, besides her mere magical presence, was unclear to Pandur. Self-glorification perhaps. The hope of seizing a tiny scrap of power and significance in a world whose structures were opaque and dominated by others. Pandur was unable to judge whether Tungrita was aware of this herself and was pursuing her own objectives. In particular, he would dearly have liked to know what interest she had in him personally. Or in Druse. After all, they had both been saved from death twice by Tungrita's interventions. Tungrita had destroyed enemies who were out to kill Pandur or Druse, or both of them. Consciously? With a plan behind it? On a whim? Accidentally? Or was he underestimating the influence of the Thing? Were Druse and he pieces in a game being played out by the nameless First Spokesman with the powers in the land?
The two men followed the First Spokesman. He chose a different route from the one they knew to reach the lower stories. It was evident from looking at the staircase that it was used more frequently than its counterpart on the ocean side. It was kept superficially clean.
The First Spokesman hardly spoke as they climbed down the stairs. He remained unapproachable and buttoned-up, almost unfriendly. Perhaps he was annoyed about having allowed strangers to gain an insight into the Tungrita Thing - however sparse this information had been and however reluctantly it had been given.
They reached a window that had subsequently been widened to make a doorway, and clambered down an iron ladder to a pontoon attached to the outer wall by steel cables. In this way the cultists had created a dock which was independent of the tide. The pontoon bobbed indolently on the water. A light breeze was blowing, no comparison to the stiff wind that had prevailed the previous night. There was drizzle. A miserable morning, overcast and grey. Tied to the dock lay a launch of oldish design that had apparently been re-fitted for solar power, the entire upper deck having been covered with silicon cells.
Pandur cast only a cursory glance over the launch. Instead, he gazed across at the four-square block of the arcology, which only hesitantly tapered in its upper regions. The predominant impression it left was that of a cube looming out of the water like an artificial basalt rock, a gigantic Kaaba of the North, black and menacing. For the first time he saw the Bremerhaven arcology in daylight and so close up. The long rows of small windows looked like firing slits but the gun turrets, visible even from this distance, made it clear that snipers were superfluous. There were far greater calibers on hand. In the center of the arcology, a radar tower reached up to the clouds.
Above a forest of antennas, several radar scanners revolved on their axes, slowly, precisely, tirelessly, the infallible sensors of a stronghold that cut itself off from everything and let nothing near it. And sometimes struck with deadly efficiency.
Pandur counted seven private helicopters, but no military ones, on the arcology's heliport. Two freighters lay at the deep water dock. He had been wrong to believe reports that the arcology was supplied from shore exclusively by cargo hovercraft and routed its long-haul traffic through Bremen. In this, he saw a sign of further entrenchment, which had started when Proteus had acquired the arcology a few years ago from a consortium of companies.
It was evidently low tide. The arcology and the high-rise weren't the only objects protruding from the water. Two hundred meters away there were the remains of another high-rise, in much worse repair, a jagged something that only allowed its former contours to be guessed at. It looked as though the upper part had been blown up or shot to pieces. A whole forest of twisted metal, remnants of docks, cranes and skeletal production halls had been staked out with warning buoys. A
barrage bristling with sharp barbs, set by a trapper intent on capturing ships to incorporate in his collection of scrap. A
few hundred meters from it there was the stump of a once high church spire. Added to this were innumerable smaller objects, looking, in the diffuse light of dawn, like abstract sculptures, too distant to betray what purpose they had formerly served. The rest of the town that had been swallowed up by the Flood crouched invisible beneath dirty-grey waters on the bed of the bay. In the far distance, Pandur could make out the faint contours of a coastline running far behind where the dikes had once stood. Marshes that dried out and flooded again in the rhythm of the tides, dead mudflats and saltwater reedbeds in which particularly hardy plants withstood the contaminated water. There were no more people living here now than in the Middle Ages, and there was no reason to erect new dikes for them. In flood-endangered regions, a causeway ensured that the freeway from Bremen to Cuxhaven, as well as the Transrapide line, was not impeded. The same was true for the west-east connection to Hamburg, which, in the Elb swamplands, led across the infamous Theodor Storm Causeway. Infamous because the TSC remains to this day a favorite target for eco-terrorists.
Druse only had eyes for the arcology. Nothing else seemed to interest him, he seemed to take nothing else in. Hate and fear were written in his face as he looked across to the black block. But Pandur noticed something else, something puzzling. Admiration? Longing? For an instant it occurred to him that this was how a boy must look who had been beaten and rejected and was now looking back with conflicting emotions at his family home. But he had to admit he was possibly reading things into Druse's expression that just weren't there.
A cowl-draped figure stood at the helm of the launch. When it turned in his direction, Pandur realized it was a young woman, who looked towards him with unconcealed curiosity. She was powerfully built, but not fat, and had medium-length hair dyed green. One half of her face was covered by a paisley pattern that extended from her forehead to her chin, and glittered in a multitude of colors. Evidently enplants, which lent the face a metallic hardness that contrasted with the rounded contours.
Pandur nudged Druse with his elbow when he made no move to break out of his reverie as he gazed at the arcology. The redhead gave a start, took in the launch an
d the woman, and walked with Pandur and the First Spokesman to the edge of the dock. He smiled at the young woman and the smile was returned. Interest? On Druse's side, definitely. On the woman's, perhaps. Pandur had the impression that their eyes remained entwined longer than was normally the case in such situations. Druse was certainly not a handsome man, but he seemed to have that certain something that attracted women. Pandur noted it without envy. Or was there more behind it? Did Druse know the woman from the past? Since it had emerged that Druse was not only a cast-out pirate and accidental companion, but was hiding something from him, Pandur observed the other man with vigilance and mixed feelings.
"Juriela," the woman said, holding out her hand and helping both men on board in their turn. They stepped over the low rail, stretching across the narrow gap between it and the dock. Old car tires served as buffers. Again Pandur had the feeling that Druse left his hand in the woman's longer than was necessary. He didn't get very much out of it though, as Juriela was wearing thick, yellow gloves.
"My friends call me Juri," Juriela went on, with eyes only for Druse.
"Hello, Juri," said Druse. He gave his own name and that of Pandur. He dispensed with any elaboration and Juri took in the names without comment. She definitely had had dealings with other pirates or knew people with streetnames. Her weirdly patterned face suggested she had links with the subculture and wasn't leading the life of a sarariwoman. What on earth had led her to the Tungrita cult? The quest for a special kick?
The First Spokesman looked down on them frostily. Presumably he frowned on one of his sheep fraternizing too closely with strangers. And pirates, at that. Although it hadn't been talked about, he was bound to know that Pandur and Druse had been among those who had attacked the King Creole. Maybe he had seen it with his clairvoyance. What was more, it had certainly been covered in the media. Only night and the bad weather had preserved them from helicopters filled with camera teams from the regional trid TV stations.
"Thing Sister Juriela will bring you ashore near Stotel," he said.
"Thanks for everything," said Pandur, offering his hand.
The old man brushed him off by making no move to say goodbye with a handshake. "We did it for Tungrita. Thank her."
He turned away, striding stiffly across the dock, climbing up the ladder and disappearing inside the building.
Juri let go the ropes. Druse helped her as if it were the most natural thing in the world while Pandur gazed after the old man. Pandur didn't feel offended, regarding the rejection as consistent with the personality and interests of the cultist. In his moated castle, the man was a kind of priest-king who, after the errant paths of the Runenthing, had found a new goal and fulfilment late in life. Authoritarian and self-righteous, as Pandur judged him to be, as well as aloof in his dealings with people, and all this coupled with a sense of superiority, he looked on Tungrita as more or less his private property. He didn't want any strangers here. And probably he was jealous that Tungrita had twice bestowed her favor on them. He seemed to be glad to be rid of them again. And he saw no necessity to send the unwelcome guests on their way with kind gestures.
The launch's electric engine began to purr, but the sound was quickly overlaid by propeller noise. The screw churned up the water, making it foam up a dirty grey, and thrust the boat away from the dock. It soon picked up speed. Juri set course for land, negotiating, with the dreamlike certainty of a local, shallows and obstacles.
Druse threw back the hood of the cowl to let the wind blow through his hair, but was promptly scolded by Juni.
"Leave the hood up, chummer," she ordered.
Druse was amazed, but obeyed at once. "Why?"
"Why d'you think you're both wearing cowls?"
"No idea," Druse admitted. "We were told to put them on and that's what we did. Why shouldn't we give granpa a bit of pleasure after all he did for us?"
"You oughta show the First Spokesman a little more respect," said Juri, not without an edge to her voice. She seemed to think something of the old man. But he was the leader of the cult, after all, probably its founder, and for her perhaps the greatest guru.
With her tart response, she had amazed Druse yet again, but he gave in immediately. "So ka. Won't happen again."
Juri appeared mollified and went on in a friendlier tone, " We're being watched every inch of the way by the arcology. And Proteus is looking for a certain Druse." The night's events seemed to have got around. "We don't necessarily want to advertise to Proteus that two strange men are being taken ashore in the launch, right?"
"Won't they draw the right conclusions despite the cowls?" Pandur asked sceptically.
"Could be," said the young woman. "But we don't have to invite it."
"And what if Proteus attacks the launch?" Although Druse made an effort not to let his unease show, his voice sounded husky.
"Then Tungrita will help us!" Juri replied with the passion of the believer who brooked no contradiction. "But the coven is tired from the long night. It will call on Tungrita if it has to. But if it can be avoided, it's better all round, so ka?"
At the arcology, everything was quiet. Although Juri carefully ensured that they didn't enter the security zone around the fortress, there could be no doubt the launch was moving across Proteus's screens. In all kinds of magnified and split images. Not a nice thought.
The launch sailed near the coast in a semi-circle around the arcology. For a while the fortress lay at a constant distance to starboard. Then it fell behind. The launch was moving south in the old river valley of the Weser.
Up to now Pandur hadn't given much thought to the short and longer-term future. He had still expected the decision to be taken out of his hands. Known and unknown megacons wanted Druse and Walez. What were they waiting for? Were they really letting themselves be deceived by two cowls? Had they lost the scent? Pandur couldn't believe they had. But the facts indicated that the opposition had at least taken a break. No helicopters, no MTBs, no megacon guardsmen. Not even Tupamaro or Tungrita, who always provided variety. It was time to take his destiny in his own hands again.
He didn't have to consider long. His sub-conscious had long since made the decision. Going back was out of the question even if he could find another captain who needed a wamo rider.
He would return to the shadows. Back into the matrix. Work as a decker again.
What else was there for him? If his enemies had traced him even among the pirates, there was no safe place for him. Better to operate under the opposition's nose than in front of their claws.
There were a few friends who would help him if he was desperate. Rem, the mysterious dwarf, who went by the name of Grusim in the subterranean Kingdom of Hvaldos. He had never yet let Pandur down. Was he still living in the lumpenloch of Zombietown, he wondered? There were others he trusted, and yet others who owed him a favor. He'd manage.
Pandur, though, preferred to stand on his own two feet if he could. He just had to simply begin somewhere. Get out of the north German swamplands. He needed a run. And he was bound to find one in the nearest sprawl. He was Pandur. Not Bad Luck Walez. That was in the past. Two years is a long time.
He'd go to Hamburg. A skip and a jump from here. If he could only get a good run at it. To do that, he needed dry land under his feet. New clothes. Ammo. Transport. Quite a list for starters. Especially when he was traveling light, looked like a monk who'd been in an accident and didn't even have a dried-up ebbie. His credstick was back there on the Broken Heart. No big loss. Whoever had inherited it wouldn't be able to afford more than a pot of soycaf ashore. He regretted having left behind Miriam's credstick. It would have paid for a ticket on the Transrapide. Miriam would be surprised at what would going on in her account soon. Pirates were not as considerate as Thor Walez when it came to other people's property.
"What's the place called again where we're going ashore?"
Pandur asked the young woman. "Stotel?"
"Right."
"Never heard of it."
&
nbsp; "No call to."
"Freeway access, Transrapide?"
"Both."
"I love the dump!"
Pandur would have most liked to ask Druse how he saw his future. But he was already thinking in the way he had thought in the years he had spent in the shadows. No unintentional information to third parties! Not even when they seemed trustworthy. Juri seemed alright, but what she knew could be discovered by anyone who softened her up with drugs or torture. If she didn't volunteer it or sell it for a few ecus. If his enemies picked up his trail.
Anyway, Druse appeared to be occupied with other matters. He was joking around with Juri and she seemed to be enjoying it. He probably saw his immediate future in the girl's bed. And Druse apparently wasn't the type who made plans that went beyond the edge of a bed. Unless it was the route to the next bed.
I don't need Druse Pandur thought. It's probably best for both of us if we split up. Then at least we won't have to help bear the other's risk.
On the other hand, it wasn't his way to leave a chummer in the shit. If Druse wanted to go with him, Pandur wouldn't object. And if Druse requested Pandur's Secura as a mouthpiece for an enforced conversation with Proteus, Pandur wouldn't refuse him. He would ask him about his plans as soon as they were alone. In Stotel. Or wherever.
The drizzle had stopped. It was brightening up. The sun came out from behind the clouds.
"What's that?" Pandur asked, pointing to a concrete mountain jutting out of the water a short distance away.
"A time bomb," Juriela answered. When Pandur looked at her questioningly, she continued. "An atomic reactor. They just had time to pull out the reactor rods but not enough to recover them, because everything was already flooded. They poured plastic and special concrete over it until the mountain was formed. Don't ask me what's gonna happen when it starts cracking and water seeps through to the rods."