Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  The mage noticed Van Dieman as he crossed the room. He could see it in the way that the man stiffened in his seat. Martinez noticed her companion's reaction and looked up just as he arrived.

  Good evening, Ms. Martinez. No, no, don't get up. I have only a moment. I was on my way out when I saw you, and I thought I would stop and assure myself that there were no hard feelings over the last Defense appropriation?"

  "Senator Hidoshi still seems to prefer pork over practicality" she said, indicating that there were indeed hard feelings, which didn't surprise him. In fact it pleased him, because it meant they'd hurt Mitsutomo.

  Yes, well, a man in Hidoshi's position does have to consider his constituency. Perhaps Mitsutomo will have better luck next time." Time to include the mage. "I don't believe that I know your new associate, Ms. Martinez?"

  "Abraham Gower." The man's eyes flashed at Martinez as d she had betrayed him. She ignored his reaction. "Abraham, tins is Anton Van Dieman, president of Network Securities Corporation. Congratulations on your promotion, by the way." He brushed aside her complimentary remark, knowing it for mere formality, as she added, "Too bad about Slaton."

  "Yes, quite unfortunate." For Slaton.

  "Heart problem, I heard."

  frightened to death, actually, courtesy of the harbinger.

  He did not take sufficient care of his body. Not uncommon among higher-level executives. But you and I know better,

  don't we?"

  "Are you implying something, Mr. Van Dieman?"

  "Nothing more than the obvious. Slaton was a sluggish old man. His fate shouldn't surprise anyone. The old must make way for the new. It is the order of things. Don't you agree, Mr. Gower?"

  (iower paled under Van Dieman's attention and had trouble finding words. This Gower was not a follower, Van Die-man would have known the name. Gower had learned whatever magic he knew from a different tradition, though the tiny pentacle he wore as a tie tack hinted that it was a related one. The man's sensitivity was sufficient for him to know Van Dieman for a mage, and to judge by his nervousness, he recognized Van Dieman as his superior in the Great Art. Van Dieman enjoyed the man's discomfort. Martinez stepped in.

  "Most things happen in their proper time, but certain things seem to happen at, shall we say, convenient times."

  He smiled at the spite in her tone. "Convenient is an interesting word. In some ways, I would think that Slaton's death came at no more convenient a time than the demise of Kansayaku Nakaguchi."

  Gower looked nervously at Martinez, but she kept an admirable stone face. Still, his hint that she had done for Nakaguchi as he had done for Slaton had quieted her. Was she vulnerable on that front? Van Dieman knew that she had nothing to do with Nakaguchi's death—Quetzal had handled that—but Martinez had covered it up and taken advantage of it. Would she have acted if Quetzal had not gotten him first? Her eyes said she was capable. At the very least, she was guilty by desire.

  "But enough of that," he said. "Good fortune, however come by, is a matter for celebration, is it not? If I may be so bold, what brings you and Mr. Gower out on the town?"

  "Mr. Gower is part of a new venture," she replied guardedly.

  "A new venture? Always cause to celebrate. I, too, am opening new avenues."

  "Shall we trade secrets, then?"

  "I don't think my associates would care for that."

  She had expected no less. "Nor would mine."

  There was nothing more to be gained with this ploy. What did her petty secrets matter? If Gower was the best she could muster, she and her associates were no threat. Her insolent obstruction of his whims was an annoyance of the sort he still had to endure in order to maintain appearances. "Things will be different when I return."

  "Oh? You're taking a trip?" she asked with false innocence and real interest.

  To the cold mountains in the heart of ice, the harbinger saidsleepily in Van Dieman's mind. The longing and desire churning through its dreams excited him. For the moment, he needed to hide that excitement.

  Yes," was all the answer he gave Martinez. He made his good-byes politely. Martinez returned them just as politely, just as full of empty cordiality. He left them. They were the past, dreaming of the future—a future that they, in their ignorance of the Glittering Path, could not know as a false dream. The coils of the harbinger caressed him. Anton Van Dieman was not ignorant of the order of things to come. He was no false dreamer. He had the will and the way—and the futlure was going to be his!

  Pamela liked to think that she had a grasp on the future and the path she needed to get there. She didn't like it when rivals intruded upon her unexpectedly and threatened that future. Van Dieman's recent succession to power within rival Metadynamics meant a shift in the balance of commercial power. She was still assessing the ramifications of that change and adjusting her assessment of what it meant to her company and her plans. She knew too little about Van Die-man and his plans, having paid insufficient attention to normal business matters, while being bound up in launching Thaumatechnics. Had her inattention cost the Keiretsu? < (early the man had plans and had meant to disturb her by hinting at them. Unfortunately, he had succeeded. Things will be different when I return. What did that mean?

  Gower had another question.

  "Who was that?"

  "I told you," she said, annoyed. "Anton Van Dieman."

  He was still staring at the door through which Van Dieman had departed. "I know you told me his name, but do you know what he is?"

  She had told him that too. If he kept up this idiot act, she would reconsider his appointment as president of Thauma-technics. "What are you talking about?"

  "He has darkness coiled around him."

  "Abraham," she said, exasperated. "I would appreciate your speaking plainly. I am in no mood for mystic mumbling."

  Gower seemed to come to himself. "I'm sorry, Ms. Martinez. I, uh, I was taken somewhat off guard by Mm. He has a very strong aura, the strongest I've seen since—"

  "Since what? Don't stop there."

  "Since Quetzal."

  Now it was Pamela's turn to be caught off guard. "Are you saying that he's a sleeper?"

  "I hadn't considered that." He thought about it for a while. She let him; his unique perspective was one of the things that made him valuable. Finally, he said. "No, I don't think that he is a sleeper. He is a mage, though, that much is clear. One of significant power. Yet there is something else about him, a strangeness that I haven't seen before, something dark and nasty."

  "Hagen says that there are more than one kind of sleeper."

  "I considered that. Yet the sleepers are human, are they not?"

  Who the hell knew? Too many things mixed up in the chaos were not human. "Hagen hasn't said otherwise."

  "Exactly. How much do you know about Mr. Van Die-man?"

  "He's the new head of Network Securities, largest and most powerful of the Metadynamics corporate family— which makes him a most powerful man indeed, considering that MetaD is one of the Keiretsu's greatest rivals. He's been a fast riser; he only recently became a significant player. He's reportedly ruthless to opponents and openhanded to supporters. An ambitious fellow, by all accounts." She thought about what she was saying. A rival's evaluation report on her would describe her in much the same terms. She knew few details concerning Van Dieman, and the real story would lie in the details. Until now she'd had only peripheral dealings with Van Dieman, and she hadn't needed to know details. But there would be many details in the Mitsutomo databank, and what was in that bank was hers. She would know more by tomorrow.

  "Nothing unusual in the psych evaluations?" Gower asked.

  " That's a strange question."

  "I have no doubt that he is a dangerous man. Your remarks about the convenience of Mr. Slaton's death stirred something in him."

  "Are you suggesting that he actually had something to do with the man's death?" For all her ambition, she had never killed to open a job slot. If Van Dieman had, he might have provide
d a lever with which to remove him from the playing field, mage or not. "You say my remarks stirred him? Was he feeling guilt? Satisfaction, maybe?"

  Gower looked uncomfortable. "I wouldn't dare to be so precise. I know that your comments touched him. Warmed him, I am sorry to say. Beyond that I can't be sure. There was so much that was strange about his aura."

  "Abnormalities?"

  Gower became suddenly reluctant to talk. She had to prod him.

  "1 cannot give you clinical certainty," he said at last.

  "Tell me what you think. You wouldn't be where you are if 1 didn't value your opinion, Abraham."

  "When you asked him about his trip, there was—I don't know how to explain this—another voice, that was not a voice, his but not his. It was very disturbing."

  "Another voice?" Lunatics heard voices, and sometimes those voices told them to kill. "Is he insane?"

  Gower gave a nervous laugh, fiddled with his tie tack. "I am afraid that the Art and its manifestations have not been refined even as precisely as psychology. The data necessary for a mage to turn out an evaluation report full of probabilities are still being gathered. We work in a young field. Consider how long it took psychology to emerge from personal opinion."

  She didn't need a psych eval to know that he was avoiding something unpleasant. "And what is your personal opinion of Mr. Anton Van Dieman?"

  "Insanity is built on disharmony," he said. "That man has conflict within him, but there is a fundamental harmonic that I don't think would be there if he were insane. To be honest, Ms. Martinez, I am afraid that he is not insane."

  There was another explanation for voices in a person's head, an older explanation. She hated thinking that it might be a real explanation, but so much that she had once thought unreal had become commonplace. "You are not suggesting demonic possession?"

  "I don't think I've ever met a demon." Gower's eyes strayed to the door. His fingers caressed the amulet on his tie.

  "Abraham, look at me. Would you know one if you saw one?"

  "I would hope so, Ms. Martinez." His eyes were bleak, frightened. "By God, I would hope so."

  She wouldn't let his fear infect her. There had to be a better explanation than demons. A more reasonable one. Didn't there? Demons were just things made up to frighten children and unrepentant sinners. There weren't any real demons. Were there? Hagen would know. And if he didn't, there were answers elsewhere. She would find them. She would.

  "I think there's more research to be done," she said, and signaled the waiter to bring the check. She drank down the last of her espresso. She'd call from the car to have more ready when they reached the office. She was not going to be sleeping much tonight.

  Holger heard voices, but they weren't the voices he'd grown accustomed to. These were deep, gravelly voices. they were discussing him, conjecturing on his condition, considering abstruse technical details that somehow applied to him. These voices weren't telling him what he believed in, or suggesting courses of action, or even just babbling at the edge of coherency. The voices that had done those things were quiet, as quiet as they had been in the car and in Bear's office. They were gone.

  He was sure that they would be back.

  But he was content with his reprieve, save for the smell. Unit smell again. Chromed steel and ozone and tile and disinfectant and latex. It was the hospital smell, the sickness smell. Even knowing that he was sick, he hated it.

  Tentatively, he tested to see if the restraints were there. They weren't. The restraints belonged to a different time, didn't they? He'd grown unsure of his place in time lately.

  He smelled the stink and listened to the murmuring voices. He tasted something metallic and harsh on his tongue, and against his skin he felt the play of air chuffing from a blower set somewhere above and behind him. Four of his five senses told him that he had left the dreams behind. He opened his eyes to confirm that he was awake and immediately feared that his senses had betrayed him.

  Wires trailed from pads stuck against his skin, pads he couldn't feel. The wires led to machines, machines monitored by short, stocky men in white coats. Bear's friends, that's what he'd been told.

  He closed his eyes, but the men in the white coats didn't go away. Behind his eyelids they wore black coveralls studded with pockets and equipment. Round black helmets covered their heads, hiding their wide faces and bushy beards. They were coming for him! Gunfire! The dwarves were rushing forward, attacking.

  "Modulate the alpha rhythm," a distant voice said.

  Doctors didn't carry guns. Something was wrong.

  "Calm down, Mr. Kun. Calm down. You are among friends. No one is going to hurt you."

  Friends? With guns? No, with lab coats. Doctors, trying to help him. He knew that. He'd been told that by a friend. Friends were what he needed. A whispered voice, not directed to him, spoke.

  "I think it would help if you spoke to him."

  "All right." Bear spoke as quietly as the stranger, then again, louder, to Holger. "Everything will be all right, Mr. Kun. Relax. You're in good hands."

  He wanted to believe that everything was all right. Bear sounded so sure, so believable. He opened his eyes, but he couldn't see Bear until—against a stranger's whispered advice—he came into view from somewhere beyond the foot of the bed.

  "You've been asleep for a while," Bear said, patting Holger's shoulder reassuringly. "You're safe. Well guarded."

  He wanted to believe that he was safe, wanted to believe that he could trust this man. Holger remembered that he had already trusted Bear. Bear had taken him to his friends, and had convinced Holger to let them examine him. Holger had agreed to that examination and the sedation that Bear's friends had said was necessary. Holger had trusted Bear, trusted him with his life.

  "Now what?" he asked.

  Bear looked across Holger to one of the doctors, who had just come into Holger's range of vision. Holger had met this one before—he was the one who had come in with Bear at the Pend Foundation. Wilson was his name.

  "Now we consider some of our options," Wilson said. from what you told us before we started poking around, I'd say that you are unaware of how extensively your bodily systems have been modified."

  He had told Bear's friends about the modifications of which he was aware, although he hadn't told them everything that the Department's doctors had told him about the capabilities of the implants. But this man spoke of extensive modifications. How extensive? Perhaps the Department's doctors had not been honest about how much they had done to him. Just what had they done to him? "What sort of modifications?"

  "To begin with, as you suspected, there was a tracer signal emitter. A simple subcutaneous implant, nothing special about it. We've already removed it and sent it on a journey far away from here."

  That was fine by Holger.

  Wilson looked at the screen of the pad that he held. He nodded in satisfaction. "Your reaction to the tracer's fate is encouraging, Mr. Kun. This record will go a long way to convincing some about your sincerity."

  Holger didn't care. "What else?"

  "The mastoid commo receiver you mentioned is not standard issue. It is, we believe, the source of some of your voices.' When you are out of contact with the ECSS net, as you are now, the occurrence of voices goes down—but only some of the voices go away, yes? I thought so. If you are willing, we believe that we can disable the receiver without danger to you."

  Again, fine with him, especially if it quieted the voices. He'd risk "danger" for that. But Wilson's answer was incomplete. "You said some of the voices."

  "That is correct. We believe that we have identified another source in a systematic monitor which seems to react to specific stimuli by triggering counterstimuli. When the triggering stimuli is specific, the response is specific as well, apparently in the form of memories. We believe that some of the stimulated reveries are based on real memories while others may be altered or completely fabricated experiences. With less specific stimuli, the system responds less specifically,
triggering neurochemical emitters to overwhelm your honest reaction with simulated needs or emotional states. We believe that translation of the system's signals into intelligible images is probably responsible for some of the voices as well."

  The Department's doctors had given him false memories. They had tried to take away his past. He'd had an "accident" once before. If that memory was real. How much had they stolen from him and replaced with their lies? "How can I tell which memories are real?"

  "That won't be easy. With time and careful monitoring, we may be able to help you sort them out. No promises."

  Always maybes and somedays. Never any promises. All right, then, he could play the hand he'd been dealt. He'd have to live in the present and let the past be the past, whatever it was. When he encountered a suspicious memory, he'd just have to be suspicious. He didn't like being suspicious all the time, but he had survived such paranoid times before. That was a memory of which he was sure.

  "Tell him the rest," Bear said.

  The rest of what?

  "Very well," Wilson said reluctantly. "Mr. Kun, there is an extensive network of microfibers paralleling much of your neural network. High-density clusters of these fibers occur in several areas, suggesting subprocessing units at those locations. Near several of them we have detected implanted objects displaying chemical compositions consistent with nanocomputers. We believe these units to be similar to standard medical signal control and interpretation units, such as those used for treatment of sensory and motor control disabilities. Such as interpretation is supported by the presence of several linked nanocomps in the regions of your cerebral hemispheres and cerebellum. We have also detected several dispensers whose locations suggest that they contain neurochemicals such as stimulants, depressants, and curiously enough, memory enhancers.