Choose Your Enemies Carefully

by Robert N. Charrette

  Was this the computer system of the English crown?

  There was one way to find out. Dodger urged the horse forward.

  The destrier’s hooves thundered on the wood of the bridge, the noise of them jangling Dodger’s nerves. Stealth and the roundabout way were his preferred approach. The bridge seemed to go on and on, its span stretching far further than it had appeared to do. Dodger’s suspicions were only beginning to rise when the black knight appeared at the far end. The knight’s midnight steed reared slightly as it began its charge.

  Clattering steel and the ringing of iron-shod hooves filled Dodger’s ears.

  Ah, a countermeasure at last.

  The need for action released his tension. Dodger’s fingers flew across the keys of his cyberdeck, priming his attack and defensive programs and tweaking them to suit the imposed imagery. The ebon boy in the mirror-polished armor held out his gauntleted hand and a crystal lance appeared in it. A shield as reflective as his armor came into being on his left arm. He lowered his weapon into the slot on the shield, using the resting point to steady his grip as he spurred forward.

  "Have at thee, Sir Ice."

  The two charging chevaliers met in a crash. The black knight’s weapon was longer and he struck first. Dodger felt the lance point slam into his shield. For a terrifying instant it hung, pressing him back against his saddle’s cantle and threatening to unhorse him. But then the point slid free and slithered along the curve of the shield and away.

  His own point slipped past the knight’s shield, catching him full on the helm. The shock ran straight through the lance into Dodger’s arm and threw him back into the cantle again. His point had struck cleanly and he had braced well for the shock. The knight’s helm lifted from his shoulders and flew backwards to strike the bridge surface with a clarion ring.

  Unmasked, the knight was revealed as an empty suit of armor. He and his destrier faded and vanished even before Dodger came abreast of them. Unimpeded, the milky stallion raced on.

  On a whim, Dodger dipped his lance and speared the fallen helm. He lifted it high, allowing the lance point to pass through the eyeslit so that the helm could slide the length of the weapon. Since he had no further need for the shield, it vanished, allowing him to use his freed hand to remove the red and yellow plume from his vanquished foe’s headgear. Dodger retired the attack program as well. When the lance misted to nothingness, the knight’s helm volatilized into smoke and blew away.

  Feeling exhilarated by his victory, Dodger affixed the plume to his own helm. A suitable token of prowess, he thought.

  He slowed his destrier as he approached the gate to the castle. No sense rushing in before gauging the opposition. He expected another black knight at the very least. The castle was moated; might he face a monster?

  To his surprise, nothing moved to bar his path as he started forward. The drawbridge even remained down. The inhabitants of the castle continued about their business. The gate guards even greeted him pleasantly when he drew near. He was puzzled at his acceptance until he noted the predominant color scheme of the castle’s denizens. Everyone wore a favor or plume of red and yellow, if not full livery of the two colors. The plume he had snatched from the black knight’s helm was red and yellow. No doubt, it was a passcode. Grinning, he guided his horse across the drawbridge and into the courtyard.

  He dismounted, his horse vanishing now that it was no longer needed, but he kept a copy of its program in storage. He might need it for a getaway. The courtyard was bustling with activity, servants and craftspeople attending the multitude of tasks necessary for the running of a castle. How much was analog for computer activity and how much was simply local color he didn’t know. He wandered about, looking for a way into the keep.

  Long minutes of searching proved useless. Either he was missing something, or he hadn’t understood the parameters. If this were a real castle, and he a real knight, all he would have to do was stop a servant and ask directions.

  That, he realized, was the answer.

  Interrupting a working functionary would be too obvious a disruption of routine. Dodger waited until one of the many liveried folk who appeared to be messengers of some sort passed near him. He stepped into the servant’s path, blocking him only long enough to learn his destination. He heard his own voice asking directions. The imposed imagery again, converting his realworld decking into apparent actions that suited the milieu.

  He got into playing the game. From servant to servant he passed, each one dressed in fancier clothes than the last. He passed through the ranks of the castle’s hierarchy until he faced the seneschal. Dodger was pleased. The seneschal was the keeper of the castle, the repository of all having to do with its function. He suspected that he had reached the main databank. Unlike the other constructs, this one, a beefy red-haired man wearing a furred cloak over his rich garments, spoke to him before he had said a word.

  "Good day. Sir Knight. I am at your service, save you demand aid at variance with my fealty to my liege. I am Cai."

  "Cai the Senescal?"

  "Certes."

  "As in foster brother of King Arthur?"

  "That is my honor."

  "And this castle is?"

  "Camelot, of course."

  "Of course." What else would it be?"And what is Camelot, Good Cai?"

  "Camelot is the stronghold of Arthur, my liege and the rightwise true king of all Britain. All the lands you see about you are his realm. From here he sallies forth to fight the forces of encroaching darkness with the aid of his loyal knights. The land is all."

  If this was Arthur’s turf, Dodger had just taken down one of his knights. Or had he?"Do his knights wear black armor?"

  "The knights wear whatever they find suitable to their own nature. They are a brave and hearty lot and serve our liege well. ’Tis they who have won him the lands from which his revenues come. Had they not done so, this castle would not be so great. Arthur is well served."

  "And where are these knights? I see none in the court."

  "On quest at the moment. As always, the king’s knights strive to enlarge his realm. Soon Arthur’s loyal vassals shall win him more followers, the king’s retinue shall grow, and he shall establish his rule over all the land. Then, the land shall prosper and Camelot shall come again unto the world. All of its might shall stand in service to our lord’s right."

  "And where is the king himself?"

  "He sits at table, enjoying the royal entertainment."

  "May I see him?"

  "I regret that he sits not in open court, but you may enter the vestibule and gaze upon him, if you so wish."

  "I so wish."

  Cai led Dodger to the great hall. Cai was careful to remain between Dodger and the door, but Dodger could see most of the interior. It was thronged with courtiers, entertainers, and servants whose moved in a kaleidoscope of color and sound.

  An elevated dais ran the width of the far end and was backed by an opulent cloth of estate. The king’s throne was positioned in the center. The king stood before it, his face turned away. He was leaning on a long table that ran before the throne. Golden plates and goblets adorned the table, which was covered in brilliant white samite cloth on which had been embroidered scenes of the hunt. The king’s fidgety stance suggested that he was waiting for something. A flourish of trumpets pulled Dodger’s attention to the other end of the hall. Obviously, a feast was in progress, for servants were carrying a great roast beast from the kitchens. They carried their burden the length of the hall to lay it before the royal presence. As it passed by, Dodger thought that there was something odd about the animal; although it looked mostly like a pig, the roasted corpse seemed to be too long in the body. Its oddity did not bother the king. As soon as the servants set it down he took up his knife and sliced himself a portion.

  Having served himself, the king sat and Dodger was able to see his face. The decker had been expecting some idealized noble visage but instead saw a very human face. That was startling enough; Matri
x imagery was normally not configured that way. This system was really strange. A wisp of fear flitted across his mind. Was his own face on display?

  The king’s face was one Dodger had seen recently. It took him a moment to remember where: this man’s picture had been among those Willie had taken of the druids’ acolytes. Why was he here playing the role of King Arthur? What kind of place did he have in the system? If his was some kind of position of control, what about the druids?

  The king was not the only one sitting at the table. The faces of the others were veiled in shadow, however. Were this a real court, they would have had to be great lords and high vassals to sit at the king’s side. All the seated figures were as still as statues, but none of the courtiers in the hall seemed to notice. A system operations sign? Were the shadowed constructs placeholders for other members of the cabal who were not presently active in the system?

  "Good Cai."

  "At your service, Sir Knight."

  " ’Tis I who may perhaps be of service. To His Majesty, that is. But before I petition to enter his service, I would like to know my place lest I inadvertently offend one of the nobles of the court. Pray, tell me of the great ones. Who are the greatest of His Majesty’s servants?"

  Cai smiled and gestured toward the hall. Soft light from an unknown overhead source illuminated the seated figure on the king’s immediate right. "Without a doubt, his enchanter stands closest to His Majesty’s ear. The wizard is the king’s tutor and dear to my liege’s heart. Merlin is his name. He is a mighty wizard as well as a master of statecraft. ’Tis Merlin who gathered the knights of my liege’s Round Table." Dodger recognized the new face: Hyde-White the fat druid.

  The light died over Merlin and the figure to the king’s left was bathed in light. Cai continued. "Foremost among the knights of the hall is Lancelot."

  The seated knight bore the face of Andrew Glover. Dodger’s expression tightened but Cai apparently didn’t notice his audience’s reaction.

  "He and the Orkney Knights are all the remain in the inner circle of knights, Arthur’s closest confidants and staunchest defenders."

  Lights played across faces. All were those Willie had tagged as druids. "All that remain?"

  "Alas, some of Arthur’s truest knights have recently fallen in battle. There is evil abroad in the land, foul foreign knights who would frustrate Arthur’s dream and throw the land into turmoil. This must not be."

  Cai’s eyes narrowed in sudden suspicion.

  "The land is all," Dodger said quickly.

  Cai smiled, and Dodger relaxed. He had chosen the right password to escape the intruder detection routine. For the moment, he was still safe. He didn't know for how long. The Cai program obviously had triggers near sensitive points, or a random check function on interfacing users, or both. Already Dodger had gathered a lot of information, even if it was couched in arcane form. Analysis would surely straighten some of it out.

  What else could he do here that would not raise immediate alarms? What might a travelling knight be free to see? Not the defenses certainly, or the treasury.

  "Cai, I have travelled a long way and seen many strange things. Have you a sage or a chronicler to whom I relate my tale?"

  "Certes. Do you wish to see him?"

  "I so wish."

  They turned around to find a page standing in their way.

  "Sir Dodger, I bear a gift from an admirer," the young boy announced in a reedy voice.

  Beware of constructs bearing gifts, a wise decker had once said. What was going on now? Was this some sort of subtle attack by the ice?

  "I may not accept a gift," he said, improvising. "I have made a vow."

  "You cannot refuse," Cai said. "This page is in the service of the Lady Morgan Le Fay. None may refuse her gifts."

  " 'Tis true, Sir Knight," the page concurred. "Accept the Lady’s gift, given in all honor and courtesy, for she sends it with all good will. She knows of your recent victory and is impressed by your skill with the lance. She finds you worthy of reward. Please, Sir Knight."

  The page held out the packet. Wishing he could think of something else to do, Dodger took the offering. When it did not discorporate his construct, lock the persona into stasis, or send him into instant brain seizure, he felt relieved. He unfolded the wrappings to reveal a jumble of computer chips, cred-sticks, and corporate identification cards. A quick survey showed that they all had the same codes; he held in his hands the complete Matrix record of one Samuel Verner.

  "What is going on?" he asked aloud.

  The page answered, obliquely. "My lady wishes as well to apologize for her lack of courtesy when last you met. She thought that this offering would please you and demonstrate her good will."

  "The last time we met?" Dodger felt faint, but persona constructs don’t pass out. He didn’t like the way this new twist pushed against the limits of the imposed imagery.

  "She comes now." The page bowed and indicated an approaching figure before vanishing as if he had never existed.

  The woman wore a long, flowing dress that fit snugly to her full and fetching figure. The gown was midnight itself, swallowing all light. The skin of her throat and neck was brilliantly contrasted against the fabric. It seemed to gleam. It did gleam. Her skin was not the pale tone fashionable in the court, but a faint silver.

  As silver as her perfect face and delicately rounded, hairless skull.

  He recognized the woman identified as Morgan and felt his loins heat up.

  This is impossible!

  When last they had met, she had effortlessly hijacked him through the Renraku Matrix and held him prisoner. He didn’t know why; he didn’t want to know. The thing calling itself Morgan Le Fay was neither decker nor system construct. Though he was not sure, he suspected it was something that should not exist; an artificially created machine intelligence, an AI, a real ghost in the machine. During his first encounter with it, the AI had presented itself to his perception as a female counterpart of his own persona construct while simultaneously displaying an entirely different image to another decker. This thing had abilities he couldn’t understand. It was apparently sentient, but if its actions were any indication, it was slightly crazy. But crazy was defined by the human norm, and who could know what the norm was for an entity dwelling totally within the electron space of the Matrix? He had thought the AI confined to the Renraku Matrix.

  He was obviously wrong.

  Morgan Le Fay smiled warmly at him. He fled the only way he could be sure to evade her. He jacked out.

  27

  Sam didn’t like Dodger’s analysis one bit, but it made sense. It matched too well against the data they had gathered while Dodger was pursuing the blind shunt that had led him to the Camelot system. It fit with the police cover-up. Most of all, it explained the strange alliance of corporate and political figures who made up the Hidden Circle.

  The druids were apparently operating in the interests of Gordon. Their patron wasn’t the crowned king, but only barely. In the turmoil of political compromise and under the economic pressure of the corporations, Windsor-Gordon’s faction had lost the bid for his affirmation as the true heir to the throne. George Edward Richard Windsor-Hanover, the other principal claimant, had been crowned instead.

  Since his ascension to the throne, George Hanover had often favored corporate interests. No doubt, the European Corporate Community was pleased at having found the technical loophole that assured the superiority of Hanover’s claim to Gordon’s. But minor technicalities couldn’t change Gordon’s bloodline. His connection to the House of Windsor made him successor to the throne should George VIII and his children die without heirs. Given Gordon’s strong association with the Green Party, the ECC would find him an uncooperative king. Thus, while the ECC made sure that their boy George and his family were well protected, they would not mind seeing Gordon do something to bar himself forever from the throne.

  Their attitude was not universal. Gordon’s bloodline was more than enough for royalists li
ke Burnside. Whether they favored the current king or Gordon, the royalist factions had worked too hard in restoring the shattered monarchy. The last thing they wanted was to see their handiwork be swept away in a scandal. They would do whatever they could to cover up Gordon's misdeeds and polish his image as a suitable member of the royal family. The inspector and his cronies would suppress Gordon's part in the killings if they could.

  The whole arrangement stank. It was a stench Sam was coming to know well, the corruption of power. Power was what it was all about. Gordon grasping for the throne and the druids of the Hidden Circle reaching to further their own interests. It was just barely conceivable that they sought to install Gordon as king because they believed he was the rightful king. More likely, they wanted a puppet who owed them everything.

  Gordon courted the druids for the power they represented. No doubt, he expected to control them once he was king. No ambitious man could ignore the power a circle of druids offered. The Hidden Circle commanded considerable magical power as well as substantial mundane power through their advantageous placement in political and corporate structures. So great a concentration of influence would be hard to duplicate in such a small number of British citizens.

  Sam didn’t know who was using whom in this arrangement, and it didn’t really matter to him. They were all participating in the magical sacrifices. They were all guilty.

  Justice seemed further and further away, as the runners’ forces disintegrated. Two nights ago they had disrupted the druids’ ritual and achieved one confirmed kill and a second probable, but it had cost them. Estios, Chatterjee, and O’Connor were still missing. Dodger was fretting and had abandoned his affectation of ornate speech. He had to be pulled away from his cyberdeck to eat, and he barely stuffed down food before jacking back in. Hart maintained that the raid on the warehouse had effectively scuttled the Circle’s scheme. She insisted that there was no need to do anything else, and that it was too dangerous anyway, as the disappearance of Estios’s crew showed. She refused to do any leg work or magical searches. If their sack time hadn’t been full of heated apologies, Sam would have thought she had finally gotten bored with him and was anxious for a more attractive partner. Only Willie seemed to be staying on track. Her payments had vanished along with Estios, but she was still on the job and sending second-rate drones anywhere she thought she might pick up a lead.