Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves

by Robert N. Charrette

  With the help of the copilot, Benton and the flight attendant began to control the thrashing of Van Dieman's body. With the increasing physical restraint, Van Dieman found it easier to force his will on the harbinger. Regaining access to its inchoate mind, he forced calm upon it, beating the rebellious beast down into submission. With it cowed, he was able to return to conscious control of his body.

  "You may take your hands from me now," he said. "I am all right."

  "Are you sure, sir," the attendant said. "I think we ought to—"

  "I said I'm all right! Leave me alone!"

  Rocked back by the power he put into the command, she obeyed him. Van Dieman slumped in his seat, glaring at the copilot, who returned to the cockpit without another word.

  Van Dieman felt the eyes of the passengers upon him. He had made a spectacle of himself—or rather the harbinger had done it for him.

  Foolish creature, he admonished it silently.

  Unnatural, it responded. It still jittered at the edge of panic. The earth is too far. Return. Must return at once.

  We will return to the ground soon enough.

  Too far.

  The harbinger moaned and complained for the entire flight, but under his strong control, there was no repeat of the strange hysteria that had gripped the creature. It shifted and twitched, settling down only when he reassured it. But its periods of calm grew shorter and shorter. Van Dieman's patience had worn thin enough to break by the time the pilot announced their descent into Kennedy.

  Not much longer now, he told it as he might speak to a child.

  Too long. Too long.

  There will be longer times.

  No!

  Yes. This method of travel is necessary to reach the place in a timely way.

  He could feel it assessing the truth of his statement. He sensed its distress.

  What must be, it said. Coiling tightly around him, the harbinger shifted. Its consciousness dimmed below the point at which he could communicate with it. The harbinger had withdrawn that way before, and its retreat offered Van Die-man no cause for worry. He knew that the harbinger had come back to him when he felt its surge of joy as the verrie's wheels touched the earth.

  As Benton had arranged with the verrie's pilot, the craft put down at the edge of its owners' parking area, as far as possible from prying eyes. But Van Dieman's episode with the harbinger had complicated their arrival: an ambulance and a team of paramedics stood by with the ground crew. Per prior agreement, Benton departed through the copilot's hatch on the side of the verrie away from the terminal while the pilot fussed with the landing, centering local attention on the craft. Through a window, Van Dieman watched him sprint unmolested toward the baggage gate. Once inside, he would begin making further arrangements.

  Van Dieman had been supposed to exit with the other passengers, anonymous among them. There was no record of his leaving Boston; there would have been no record of his arriving in New York. To the authorities back in Boston, Van I )ieman might as well have simply disappeared. In truth, the media were already reporting him missing in what they were calling the "NSC Aircraft Bombing." Metadynamics and Network Securities Corporation flacks were, of Course, denying that he had been on the doomed flight. Van Dieman had been wise in priming them to cover his trip. An incident such as the one at Logan might well have sparked stock runs or even a takeover attempt—there would certainly have been an internal power struggle—and he was not ready to surrender any of his hard-won gains. Money and mundane power would still matter in the new world that was coming.

  Unfortunately the plan had developed a hitch: the people aboard the verrie. Thanks to the harbinger's fit, they would remember him. All that had been gained by his secretive departure from Boston would be lost unless he acted. He needed to silence these witnesses—quickly, effectively, and in such a way as to hide his hand in it. One of the passengers coughed, suggesting an idea.

  Pneumococcus bacteria lie dormant in the lungs of almost every person on earth. They do not threaten a healthy person. However, if activated and energized with arcane force, the disease could blossom; and if accelerated by that same force, the disease could strike swiftly and fatally, congesting the lungs and suffocating the victim.

  A waste of fodder, the harbinger complained.

  There will be more. For now I think it best that what is done here not look like your usual feeding, he told it. Losing his temper with the captain of NSC security in Boston and allowing the harbinger to ingest the man's essence had been a mistake.

  The harbinger growled incoherent complaint, but lent its strength to his plan. In less than a minute surprised passengers and aircraft crew died choking on their own fluids. But to gain the full advantage of what he had done, he needed to be well away before it was discovered; and to do that, he still had to deal with those waiting on the tarmac. It was a small matter to make himself appear to be the verrie's pilot. Not an exact likeness, of course, just a uniform and insignia— enough for the ground crew to respond to. He opened the passenger hatch and extended the stairs. The , paramedics were waiting at the bottom when he reached it. They needed no urging to board.

  "You!" Van Dieman shouted to the milling ground crew. "Come on! They'll need your help too."

  The signs of authority affected them strongly. It didn't hurt that Van Dieman added a compulsive push to their reactions. The ground crew followed the paramedics onto the verrie. Van Dieman did not need to climb back up; his hand on the railing was sufficient to connect him to the shell containing the magic he shaped.

  He dealt with the new arrivals as he had with the crew and passengers.

  Let the authorities here wonder at the plague ship that had arrived on their doorstep. The quarantine would delay inquiries long enough for Van Dieman's needs.

  Benton was making the arrangements for the next leg of Ihe journey, summoning the requisite aid and taking the precautions he deemed necessary. Caution was indeed advisable now that this new, unknown opposition force had entered the picture. Van Dieman decided to arrange some precautions of his own. The public comps in the main terminal allowed him to make the necessary calls with sufficient discretion.

  Finishing his arrangements, he realized that he was hungry, as he often was after working magic. The harbinger hungered as well; he could feel the gnawing intensity of its want. He'd done what most immediately needed to be done, and there was time before he was to meet Benton.

  "We'll find you something soon," he told the harbinger.

  Even an airport as large and busy as Kennedy had dark and quiet corners.

  A system as large and busy as Mitsutomo's main database offered many places to hide bits of information. The decker Pamela employed knew most of the dark corners, those places where the furtive could stash things they didn't want others to see. Normally Pamela left the ferret Work to her decker, but occasionally she did her own snooping. She liked to keep up on what was being hidden away, especially when it affected her place in the organization.

  One of her special interests of late was seeing just what, among the steady flow of information into the Thaumatech-nics data store from former Charybdis Project sources, was being diverted or dumped by the esteemed Mr. Hagen. Take, for instance, the latest file deleted by Hagen: an SIU sign-off report on an incident.

  Normally the system picked up any reports where the Special Investigations Unit retained interest in a case. This time a flag calling for any unusual data on a related item in old Charybdis files had brought in one that SIU had passed on. The old file was on one Marianne Reddy, a Mitsutomo dependent. Sorli had put a watch on her as a part of his program of surveillance on probable agents of the otherworld. After a museum fire of suspicious origin in which Reddy's son had been killed, she had been sequestered under surveillance. Nothing had turned up in connection with her, but her old apartment had been the site of several "visitation" events, all verified by Gower. Nothing new had shown up for over a year; the case had been closed down, surveillance terminated, al
though apparently someone had missed shutting down Sorli's flag. This new report, involving a prankster and a police impersonator, sounded like a strange harassment crime, but it had nothing otherworldly except the Halloween costume worn by the prankster. SIU had—quite reasonably, it seemed—signed off on it. So why had Hagen bothered to delete it?

  A matter for another day.

  Today, she wanted answers from Hagen on his sudden reawakening of interest in the Wisteria killer. She kept her face neutral as he entered her office and took his place in the chair. He knew about the sensors in the chair and showed no hesitation in sitting.

  "Shall we get right to business, Mr. Hagen?"

  "I am at your disposal, Ms. Martinez."

  "Good. Let's start with you telling me what has motivated your renewed interest in the Wisteria killer."

  The sensors registered only mild surprise. He shrugged. "The creature itself is of little consequence. It has, however, apparently been harnessed by interests at odds with our own. That is what must concern us."

  "Us? Why not return the matter to the police? Didn't you originally declare it a matter for them?"

  "I did. Unfortunately, the situation is now beyond their competence, the scope of this matter having broadened considerably. The creature, or possibly merely the study of the thing, has opened new avenues for its controllers."

  New avenues? Van Dieman had used the same phrase last night. "Just what do you mean?"

  "You have not read the new analyses that I posted to you tills morning?"

  She hadn't, but it would not do to admit that. "Maybe I just want to hear you say it out loud."

  "Out of character for you," he said with a brief, sly smile. "What is important is that the particular otherworldly intrusion dubbed the Wisteria killer has become inextricably connected to one individual in particular. That individual belongs to a rival organization, an organization with programs addressing the redevelopment of magic in the world."

  "Names, Mr. Hagen."

  "Anton Van Dieman. Metadynamics."

  What connection? Pamela wished she had read Hagen's report. "Give me the highlights."

  "We can now correlate the Wisteria killer's most recent activity tightly with the presence of Van Dieman. It stalks whatever city he is in. We believe that this is the final proof necessary to confirm that Van Dieman is magically active. I lis potential as a threat has greatly increased.

  'During the period of Van Dieman's association with the creature, several affiliates of Metadynamics, including Van

  Dieman's own Network Securities Corporation, have shown interest in occult matters: recruiting psychics, acquiring property where or near where we have documented other-world intrusions, building databases of unexplained phenomena, and even collecting specimens of unnatural beings. They have made no overt moves to match your own formation of Thaumatechnics, but such a move can only be a matter of time. Commercial rivalry, however, may turn out to be inconsequential. We have disturbing reports of Metadynam-ics activity around several of the sites associated with Quetzal."

  God, would that specter never be laid to rest? "Including Nakaguchi's resonator sites?"

  "Every one."

  That was the answer she hadn't wanted to hear. Gower hadn't yet puzzled out the complete purpose of those arcane devices, but he was certain that they would have a deleterious effect on their immediate areas, possibly on the world as a whole. The resonators were, in Gower's words, "aligned with the malign." If Van Dieman and MetaD were involved in activating those things, perhaps they too were aligned with the malign. "Van Dieman is advising the FSA on Dark Glass, isn't he?"

  Hagen nodded. "You begin to appreciate how dire the situation has become."

  Appreciate? No. You needed hard facts to appreciate a situation. But did she feel dread? Yes. You didn't need facts to be afraid. "If you and your cabal have been following these developments, why didn't you act sooner?"

  "We believed that the situation was under control. We miscalculated. The matter has now gotten out of hand."

  Now gotten out of hand? "You have been conducting an operation."

  "Not utilizing Mitsutomo assets, I assure you."

  The chair said that his statement was truth, ninety percent certainty. Still, he was officially a member of the Keiretsu family. Actions that brought blame to him brought blame on

  the Keiretsu. The scandal involving Nakaguchi was still fresh. She did not want to have to deal with another rogue.

  "I will not support illegal actions," she told him.

  "Have times changed, Ms. Martinez? No, don't take offense. I understand. Hie problem is that Van Dieman is leaving the country. It would be easier to stop him here."

  "Then he wasn't on the plane at Logan."

  "He was there." Truth again. "Else there would have been no need to shoot it down."

  Hagen knew too much to avoid the obvious conclusion. "The NSC aircraft bombing was your operation?"

  "It would have been better had the gunner let the craft get over the bay."

  Not only did he not deny the attempt, he gave her additional details. "So you tried to Mil him and failed. Now you want the Keiretsu to get involved. Are you sure Sorli hasn't come back to run operations for your cabal? How many innocent people did you kill? How many more did you endanger?"

  "How many more will he kill? That is the question that must be asked, Ms. Martinez. Make no mistake; he must be slopped."

  The creature certainly needed to be stopped. But Van Die-man? "We don't even understand the threat he poses."

  "All the more reason to stop him."

  A paranoid's logic. Still, she was not surprised by the siatement. She recognized the determination in Hagen without needing it confirmed by the monitor. "You will proceed with your plans whether I offer aid or not."

  "Yes."

  "The Keiretsu cannot be involved in the murder of business rivals."

  Hagen looked disappointed.

  Van Dieman might or might not be a dire threat. The killer creature certainly was dangerous. She had long ago learned that what one could not control, one might still direct. That seemed the only course left her, unless she wished to adopt dwarvish tactics.

  "An attempt to eliminate the Wisteria killer would be a worthwhile endeavor. Very public-spirited. Especially if documented. It is conceivable that the creature might claim another victim before it could be stopped."

  "Ah, Ms. Martinez, I must confess that for a moment I doubted you. I am ashamed. You are a most perspicacious employer."

  "Mr. Hagen, as a perspicacious employer I choose employees who are both wise and careful, those who understand the needs of the Keiretsu. You are still employed by the Keiretsu, yes? Do we understand each other?"

  "I believe we do."

  "I hope so, Mr. Hagen." She killed the monitor on the chair and tapped the control to open the office door. "Now, I think that it's back to work for both of us."

  Holger felt much better when he awoke with the morning sun shining in the window of his room at the Pend Foundation headquarters building. He had gone to sleep apprehensive about sleeping in an unshielded room, but the dwarves had been as good as their word, and he had passed the night undisturbed by voices in his head. He was surprised at how light he felt with that burden lifted.

  Unless, of course, they had lied about doing anything and the room was shielded against transmissions. But that was paranoia, wasn't it? It was hard to put away the paranoia alter living for so long in a world that it ruled.

  Someone had entered the room unnoticed while he slept. That someone had recovered his stashed clothing and gear, mid brought it here. He didn't remember telling them about the stash, but he wouldn't be surprised if he had. He'd been strung out pretty far. He checked the pile. Everything was there, even his weapon. The fact that the Glock was loaded suggested a certain amount of trust on his hosts' part.

  In among the gear was a Shilson Detector™, a device that would let him determine whether or not the room had any of t
he standard shielding schemes. Using it would say that he didn't trust the dwarves' word. Were they watching to see whether he did use it? Was that why his gear had been brought to him? If he used the device he would know whether the voices were gone or just taking a vacation. He would know that the dwarves had done him a good turn. But what did it say about him that he would prove their trustworthiness by such a distrustful method?

  He needed to know, whatever they might think about him. He needed a point of reference. He needed to know whether his new acquaintances told truth or lies. If checking on them offended them, he could apologize, blaming his apparent distrust on caution. Contemplating his deceitful intent, he thought of Bear's trust in the dwarves. Bear believed them. Shouldn't that be good enough for Holger?

  He wished it were. But not yet. Taking up the device, he ran the start-up diagnostic, then ran through the scan programs until he was sure that the room was clean of protections. The only localized electromagnetic disturbance was consistent with a security system monitoring the windows. Not the door, he noted. Not even a signature for a video camera.

  They hadn't lied.

  And he hadn't believed them.

  He started when a loud knock sounded on the door. Ashamed to be caught with the device in his hand, he tossed it onto the pile before responding. Bear stood there, dressed in a Bard Taliesin T-shirt with the sleeves ripped off, sweatpants, and athletic shoes. He looked like an ex-pro athlete ready for a workout, but Holger knew better.

  "How are you feeling?" Bear asked.

  "Better than I have in weeks," Holger replied honestly.

  "Good. Up for some exercise? I could use a partner. Ever work with a sword?"

  "I've had a little bit of kendo, but I've done a lot of escrima work. The art uses sticks, but the principles are supposed to be applicable to swords."

  "Escrima? Never heard of it." Bear shrugged. "But if you think it will work for you, we can give it a try. Sticks, you say? Long or short?"