“Don’t ask me, ask Ruth.”
The members left, laughing, but Jay was intrigued. Knowing more of Virtu than of Verite, the idea of a religion that had begun in what he thought of as his home turf had a strong appeal for him. Perhaps the Elishites had answers about the Lord of Deep Fields, about the interface, about the nature of the soul of a proge.
Eagerly pulling down a menu, he requested information on the Church of Elish. It obliged with a long list of services, transfer facilities, and related information. Jay saw that there was a public service in a few hours.
Good. He’d have time to go home, have a late lunch, and check in with Dack. This should be fun.
* * *
The Elishite service, Jay gathered, began in Verite, but he was certain that he could slip into the throng once the congregation crossed over into Virtu. This he did, adapting his outer garb to match the loose robes worn by the wide-eyed men and women who shuffled out of a broad corridor and into the outer precincts of a temple built atop a squat ziggurat.
Jay was rather proud of the ease with which he made the changes to his attire. He had arrived in the virt site in the persona of a brown-haired man of average build and average height whose somewhat bulbous nose and thin eyebrows gave him just enough distinction to make him completely anonymous. For clothing he had worn the closest approximation of Elishite robes that he could design from a hurried study of their promotional brochures. Now, he widened the hem border a touch, darkened the taupe in the embroidery and confidently slipped into the procession. His one fear had been that there would not be a seat for him, that the Elishites only translated full congregations, but he filed into a seat as if he belonged there and when no fuss was raised decided that he was safe.
The priest who descended from the pyramid to begin the service wore loose robes, fancy headgear, and something draped over his shoulders. Jay had seen variations on this theme often enough that he spared the costume little attention. What did impress him was the man’s halo—a faint blue aura strongest around his head but visible as a dim, almost subliminal outline around his entire body. Classy: just enough to make the man seem touched with divinity. Jay approved. He wondered if the priest designed it himself, or if the Church had a standard proge—probably the latter.
With half an ear, he listened to the invocations to the various deities, waited to hear something unusual, felt vaguely disappointed that what was being presented was a prettified version of material he had heard elsewhere—powerful gods who (despite their power) yearned for human worship. Then the service took an unexpected twist—Jay leaned forward so that he could be certain of what he was hearing—yes! The priest was actually claiming that the gods came among them, attended services, basked in the proximity of their worshipers.
Jay tried to decide if any other of the religions he had sampled had made such a blatant claim. Voudon’s possession by a loa was the closest he could recall; all the other faiths contented themselves with some version of Christianity’s “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there will I surely be” or, at best, a group leader who claimed to be the incarnation of some deity. This was quite different.
He straightened, eager to hear more. The priest went on, explaining that Virtu was not merely an artistic construct, it was effectively the collective unconscious of the human race and that within that unconscious the gods had survived. Now that humans had found their own way across the interface, the gods (courtesy of the Church of Elish) would mingle with them.
There was more of the same, elaboration, vague promises, followed by a sharing of bread, salt, and wine. Jay listened with some reservation, but much curiosity. At the end of the service, he picked up a listing for the Church’s other offerings. He knew that he would be back.
* * *
Link Crain knew he was in trouble when he heard a footfall beyond the door. He had just succeeded in picking the lock on the file cabinet. The window, by means of which he had entered the office perhaps five minutes before, remained open. He had checked it carefully and was positive it was not connected to an alarm system. The entire setup had seemed fairly primitive. Obviously, this was a facade and he had set off something more sophisticated on entering—or even before that. For that matter, though, he might even have been spotted as he’d made his way across the grounds. The means was not really important. They knew he was here.
He had secured the office door on entering. That meant he had a little time. He pulled open the top drawer of the cabinet. Neatly labeled file folders were arrayed before him: Building Code Variances (Vu),
Building Code Variances (Ve), Architectural Prelims (Vu), Contractors (Ve), Subcontractors (Vu)…
He closed the drawer, drew open the next. No knowing whether all the files held what their labels indicated, of course. No time to look, either. He cursed softly as he heard the doorknob rattle.
Payroll files… He closed the drawer. An anachronism in this day and age, of course. Which is why he’d wanted to check it. Now, though… He closed the drawer, drew open the next. Might not be anything he wanted here. Or it could be in the desk. Or a hidden wall safe.
Someone threw his weight against the door. It creaked…
Directories in this drawer, one of them labeled “Personal.” He removed it, rolled it, stuffed it into his jacket pocket. Probably worthless. Still…
Another blow upon the door, a cracking sound from its Irame. He also appropriated something labeled “Organizational.”
He closed the drawer, opened the bottom one. Personnel files of some sort. Two more cabinets, not enough time. Damn! He’d anticipated having hours in which to work the place over.
He killed his light, slipped it into his other pocket as he crossed the room to the window. He was out it, down among shrubs, and out again before he heard the door give way within. When the lights came on he was already sprinting across the lawn toward the high metal fence.
Into the shrubs along the fence then, he moved to the section he had carefully cut through several days before, by means of which he had entered earlier. It faced upon a quiet side street. It stood easily, its mobility unnoticeable save upon close scrutiny, leaned against a spread of branches. He began working his way back to it.
Suddenly, a figure rose up at his back.
“Hold it right there!” came a voice from behind him, punctuated by the small safety release and priming click familiar to every virtventure participant in the world, only this was real—really real, that is.
Link raised his hands immediately.
“Turn around!”
He began to do so, hampered more than a little by the surrounding shrubbery.
Before he had turned halfway the man fell against him, knocking him off balance. The fence was still out of reach and the foliage at which he clutched gave way. A hand caught him by the right biceps, however, before he toppled. He began to struggle as soon as he recovered his balance, tried to pull away.
“Easy, kid,” came a sharp whisper. “It’s okay.”
Link finished turning toward the man who had spoken, realizing as he did that the guard lay on the ground between them. In the faint light from the street he could make out the rough features and thick sandy brows and hair of the big, pale-eyed individual who had hold of him. The man released his arm and smiled.
“Drum,” he said. “Desmond Drum. And you’re Lyle Crain.”
“Lincoln Crain.”
“Oh? I thought it was Lyle…”
“It was, once. I changed it.”
“Well, Lincoln—”
“Call me Link.”
“Okay, Link. Let’s get the hell out of here.” Drum glanced toward the doctored section of fence.
“What about this guy?”
“He’ll be okay. Let’s go.”
Link turned and moved back to the fence. Drum stepped over the prostrate guard and followed him. In a moment, they had removed the loose section of fencing and stepped through the opening onto the sidewalk.
They
replaced it with some small rattling, and Drum jerked his head to the right.
“This way,” he said.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Link responded. “Where are we going?”
“My car. A couple of blocks from here. Get us out of the area.”
“Then what?”
“I’d like to talk to you.”
“What about?”
“Well, we can begin as we walk along. But let’s start moving before the cops show. Somebody might have called in. Or there may be another guard coming…”
Link fell into step beside him.
“I’m a private investigator,” Drum began.
“Really? I thought you guys did all your work in Virtu, hustling through records.”
“Most of us do, these days,” Drum replied. “But a lot of really important things stay here in Verite—on paper or in someone’s head—and don’t leave any tracks in Virtu. Somebody’s got to work this side of the street.”
Link smiled.
“I know,” he said. “There’s a lot of good stuff in old-fashioned file cabinets.”
Drum nodded.
“A good reporter would know that,” he said, “though most of them do all of their work in Virtu, hustling through records and getting by on handouts.”
Link laughed.
“Touche,” he said. “All right. You’re all right. So how do you know I’m a reporter?”
“How old are you, anyway?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Hm. According to what I’ve got you’re sixteen—just barely.”
“What the hell have you got, and where’d you get it?”
Drum crossed the street.
“I got it all. Hunted through public records in Virtu. Cheap and easy.”
“So why ask, if you already know?”
“You run the simple ones by first, make it easy to cooperate, maybe set up a pattern. Easy to check on.”
Link shrugged.
“Thanks for your help, but I didn’t ask for it. I don’t owe you any truth.”
“The truth is such a precious thing that you keep it to yourself, eh?”
“If by that you mean truth costs, yes, you’re right.”
“You got any that might be worth something—specifically, on the Elshies?”
“Maybe. You buying?”
“No. But I know someone who might be. I’d like to take you to see him now. That’s my car.” He gestured toward a small blue Spinner sedan across the street. “Interested?”
Link nodded. “I’ll talk to him,” he said.
Drum palmed the lock open and they got in. A moment later he had started the engine and the vehicle had risen above the roadbed, vibrating.
“So why Lincoln?” Drum asked, as they drifted to the side then took a course forward. “You a Civil War buff?”
Link shook his head.
“I read The Autobiography of Lincoln Steffens,” he said. “It’s what made me decide to be a journalist. Times change, but a story’s still a story.”
“Wasn’t he one of those early reporters for whom the term ‘muckraker’ was invented?”
“Yeah,” Link said. “But a lot of people make it sound the way you did—like the tabloid segments. Gossip and all. The muckrakers, like Steffens and Tarbell, were investigative reporters. They did exposes of business abuses—like in the oil industry—and crooked politics. They were all hell on finding conflicts of interest, payoffs—”
“How about religions? They ever cover shady religions?”
“I don’t think so,” Link said, glancing out the window at the Elishite office he had visited.
“So this was your own idea?”
“That’s right. Got the idea reading about the late twentieth-century television evangelists. Thought there might be something juicy here, too.”
“Did you find it?”
“If I did it’ll be a major newspiece soon.”
“You saying you wouldn’t work for a private customer?”
“I don’t know. You giving me a problem in journalism ethics, testing my principles?”
“I believe it was Oscar Wilde who said that the best thing about principles is that they can always be sacrificed to expediency.”
Link chuckled with him.
“If I had a story and you’re asking me whether I could be paid to kill it, I don’t know. Like anything else, I’d have to have real facts before 1 could decide. When I said that things cost, I wasn’t talking about killing a story, though. I was talking about maybe selling some information. That’s different than promising never to use it.”
“Agreed. I was just sounding you out.”
“You haven’t really asked me yet whether I have anything worth selling.”
“Do you?”
“Well, I might have an interesting item, if we live,” Link replied, still looking out the window.
“What do you mean?” Drum asked.
Link jerked his thumb in the direction he was staring.
“It’d be a better story, though,” he went on, “if I could learn how the Elshies make those Virtu powers work in Verite.”
Drum turned his head in the direction of the gesture.
“Holy shit!” he said, and the car leaped forward. “How long’s that thing been up there?”
“Not long,” Link replied. “Slow down. I’m not sure it knows what it’s after and you may draw its attention.”
The figure in the sky was bull-shaped, winged, human-headed, bearded. It moved in a large circle, as if seeking something below. After a time, it began to drift in their direction.
Drum had braked at Link’s suggestion, but now he began accelerating again, slowly. As he did, he punched a phone sequence in the design on the dash. The screen remained blank, but moments later the call was answered by a husky masculine voice.
“Yes?”
“Drum.”
“Problem?”
“I’m on my way, but I’ve picked up a tail in the sky.”
“What sort?”
“Archaic. If it goes potty it’ll likely be bullshit.”
“Oh, my! If it’s really real, then someone with a Virtu power is on your ass.”
“I’d already figured that. What should I do?”
“What’re you driving?”
“A blue 2118 Spinner compact.”
“Pass the place we were to meet, slowly, and call me three minutes later.”
“Hope I can make it.”
“Me, too.”
Drum glanced back and up over his left shoulder to where the Elshie beast seemed to hover. He turned right onto a wider thoroughfare. A red sedan passed him. A half mile and two turns later, when he was preparing a sigh of relief as the creature dwindled and vanished to the south, he turned a corner to see it swooping toward him out of the east. He accelerated immediately. Link was speaking into the back end of a pencil mike.
“In violation of every principle of aerodynamics,” he dictated, “it comes on, dropping toward us like an avenging angel out of Old Testament Babylon.”
“If you don’t mind,” Drum said, wrenching the wheel suddenly and turning up a side street, gyros squealing in protest, “you’re a little distracting.”
“If we die I’d at least like the byline,” Link protested, though he lowered his voice thereafter.
Drum opened his window, removed an oddly shaped pistol from within his jacket, leaned partway out, and began firing at the impossible beast. The weapon made a small hissing sound each time he discharged it. The bull in the sky jerked slightly as the fourth round was fired and veered off suddenly at treetop level.
“…even now mounting on high for its second pass,” Link went on.
“Cut that out!” Drum ordered.
The figure soared, turned. The next intersection was too busy to crash. Drum turned his head from side to side now.
Ahead and to the right, a large man stood beside the road, hat pulled low over his eyes. He leaned upon a tree to his left; his right hand r
ested atop a cane.
Drum braked for several seconds, then accelerated again. It seemed as if he might make it through the intersection legitimately…
A soft explosion occurred overhead, a muffled popping sound. A flash of red-and-yellow light passed through the car. The vehicle rocked on its cushion of air. Drum sped through the intersection.
“…only to vanish in an inexplicable burst of fire,” Link dictated.
Drum slowed, departed the roadway, drifted through a park. Link, silent now, shifted uneasily. “Uh, it was probably me it was after, wasn’t it?” he said.
“Probably.”
“It means they had someone with a Virtu power back at the office, and the veeper got a look at me somehow.” He ran a hand through his sandy hair. “Might not have been sure at first which car I was in.”
“Sounds right.”
“Circled a bit, then decided to try this one. Became certain when you took evasive action, when you shot at it. Came on strong then. I’m wondering how heavily it might have come down on us. I’ve a feeling it wanted blood.”
“It did seem pretty intent.”
“I don’t understand what happened back there, though.” Link gestured to the rear, in the direction of the road. “I’m sure it didn’t combust spontaneously. You led it into some sort of trap involving that guy you were talking to on the phone, didn’t you?”
“Good guess,” Drum said.
“But I don’t see how you could have anticipated something like that and set it up.”
“Good,” Drum said, pushing in a number. “Omniscience bothers me.” Several seconds later, it was answered, and he said, “Drum here. What now? And by the way, thanks.”
““That meeting’s off,” came the reply. “But I still want to see you.”
“All right. Where?”
“You still know how to find the place where we first met?”
“Yes.”
“Meet me there in two hours.”
“Yes.”
Drum drove across the park and out onto a narrow thoroughfare. He moved slowly along it.
“Who is this guy we’re going to see?” Link asked.
“We shall refer to him as ‘the client.’ “
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