A Gathering Evil

by Michael A. Stackpole

  I thought for a second as he attacked his sandwich again. "Roger works for Coyote?"

  Garrett's eyes hardened a bit as he swallowed. "Coyote helped Roger at one point, same as me, same as all of us. So, yes, he reported on you to Jytte." Hal glanced over at where I had left the case I had gotten from the hotel's safe. "And, no, Marit has not told me what is in the case, but she did mention you had it so that Jytte could erase any notice of its having been recovered."

  "How did he recruit you?" I lifted my own sandwich to my mouth and bit down.

  Garrett smiled in spite of himself. "One night I got a phone call. I had been on the fence about retiring from basketball. I felt the attrition rate on highly paid players was getting a bit high, and the law of averages and I were on a collision course. I had already formed the Sunburst Foundation, but thought I could spend my last year in the NBA plugging it and get more money to fund it.

  "This caller, who was calling on my unlisted home phone, identified himself as Coyote. I'd never heard of him before, but he told me that if I decided to play that season, I would have my left hand broken in the 10th game of the year. I would come back in time for the drive to the playoffs, but I would die in a seventh and deciding game against the Nicks."

  "Hmmm." I nibbled at the edge of my sandwich. "In your shoes, I would have taken him as a madman, or someone being paid frighten me."

  "Oh, he did frighten me, but I knew, just listening to him, that he was no threat to me." Hall took a pull on his beer. "Somehow he managed to add my fax number to an owners' network, and I saw enough stuff coming through that I knew the season was being scripted in a way that certain teams would make the playoffs and, while there would be a winner, their victory would be, at best, pyrrhic. The sum and total of the season would be grimly disappointing."

  "You opted out."

  "Right. I threw myself into the Sunburst Foundation. Anonymous donations filled up my war chest and now even the southside gangs will hold off on making war long enough for me to try to find a more peaceful solution to their problems." He smiled. "Every so often Coyote tips me when something really strange is going down, so I can forestall it. Gang violence is down over 30% from five years ago."

  "Now Heinrich and his boys want to make it a growth industry again."

  "You got the picture."

  I thought about the sniper rifle in my case. "If he becomes an obstacle, let me know."

  Hal shook his head. "You and Bat think the same way. The solution to this situation is figuring out what Heinrich wants and then figuring out some way to get it to him without making the other gangs lose face or their temper."

  "That is not an easy line to walk, my friend." I picked a brown chip from among the others. "Some folks will listen to reason and," I snapped the chip in half, "some folks need killing."

  Hal leaned back in his chair. "That's pretty cold coming from a man who woke up in a body bag."

  "Truer than either one of us wants to know." I reached out and plucked the pen he had clipped to the collar of his sweatshirt. Smoothing out my napkin, I drew for him the symbol I'd seen in my dream. "Do you know what this is?"

  His hand descended on the paper like a giant brown tarantula and spun it around. "I can't recall seeing it before. What is it?"

  I shrugged. "I don't know, I saw it in a dream. You want another beer?" He nodded and I called out, "Juanita, dos cervezas, por favor."

  "A lot of people believe in dreams, but not me."

  "Why not?"

  "Because all I ever see in them are the shots I missed."

  Juanita appeared from the kitchen with a beer in each hand. She set the bottles on the table, then saw the napkin. "El Espectro!" She quickly crossed herself.

  I grabbed the napkin and held it up to her. "You know this?"

  She held her hands out to shield it from her eyes. "Por favor, Señor, por favor." She turned and fled.

  Hal and I exchanged confused glances. "What did she mean by 'the ghost?'"

  Garrett shrugged eloquently. "In Eclipse there have to be about a billion 'ghosts.' I've heard stories that 'real' vampires live in Drac City, or that some weird brujo is waging war against demons and devils on a daily basis. I've also heard mutant wolves and other monsters roam the countryside, and after the tinkering with the Palo Verde Nuclear Plant, who knows. As far as I'm concerned, it's all fiction."

  I raised an eyebrow. "Which is what others might say about Coyote."

  "There's a difference with Coyote."

  "And that is?"

  "He's real. I've seen him, talked to him. I know when he has gone to war, and I know the people he's helped— through me or through others. Marit is one, for example, and Estefan another."

  I crumpled the napkin. "You're right. We'll leave ghosts to fight dreams." I patted my vest. "And I'm content to let Coyote handle reality."

  After we finished lunch, Hal headed back down to the Mercado on Level Seven to make arrangements with Alejandro concerning the Lorica reception that evening. I offered to go with him, but he said no. "You're dead right now. Jytte says she can keep you in the grave until tonight, at the very least. Tonight your unanticipated resurrection might shake some folks, and that will help us unravel the whole thing."

  "Works for me." I shook his hand. "One last thing, has there been any word on Nero Loring?"

  "None."

  I didn't let his hand go. "Was Coyote involved in getting him free of his daughter and corporation?"

  Hal tightened his grip a little. "If he was, he did not involve me in it."

  We broke our grip by mutual assent, and Hal retreated into the transversor. I saw by the red readout of a digital clock that it was already 1 p.m. I had no idea when Marit would return or when the reception was, so I wandered down to her media room, found a remote control and started a survey of the television landscape.

  Television, despite having 178 channels available, proved more desolate than South Mountain's Desert Preserve. Aside from premium channels that started racking up special charges when I flitted across them— as denoted by the total accumulating in a small LCD panel down in the corner—the vast majority of stations were only transmitting in black and white. With a wall-mounted HDLCD unit from Sony like the one Marit had, that was the rough equivalent of using a professional Cuisinart to process dried out dog food. I expected television to be banal, but having one whole channel devoted to rebroadcasts of 40-year-old Soviet grain harvest films was a bit excessive. Still, I did imagine they looked very good on the Soviet sets that most folks owned.

  The city's public-access channel did provide a bit of insight into the nature of Phoenix. Programs on it alternated between promotional videos that featured an incredibly optimistic artist's rendition of what Phoenix would look like in five years, and utterly bizarre fare in five- and 10-minute bites that reflected the sharp split between City Center and Eclipse. Chiropractors and naturopaths diagnosed problems and offered back adjustments for those patients who would press their backs against the screen. Psychics warned of hideous calamities and conspiracies that no one but they knew about. Members of every bughouse club from Arizonans for the Preservation of the Black Scorpion to the Phoenix Skeptics did their bit to proselytize their causes, filling the airwaves with an unending stream of contradictory and confusing "facts."

  "The city could call this channel the good, the bad and the ugly," I muttered as Heinrich's face appeared on screen.

  His program was called "People of Purity." In it he read report after report of crimes committed by people of color while videotape copied from news reports played in the background. At the end, while a video of him and his "honor guard" kicking the life out of a black youth played, he said, "People of Phoenix, come to us. Take back your city. The phoenix is destined to rise to greatness from the ashes. Mud people are the ashes of humanity. Join us, and reclaim your heritage!"

  Unconsciously I sighted down my index finger and brought my thumb forward like the hammer falling on my Krait. "Some day, Heinrich.
"

  Behind me I heard clapping. I spun around in the capsule chair and saw Marit standing in the doorway. "I didn't hear you come in."

  "This room is soundproofed. I like your taste in targets. Getting to know your foe?"

  I shrugged. "Hal doesn't think a 180-grain bullet whizzing along at 3000 or so feet per second would improve Heinrich's disposition, so no hunting permit." I turned my left wrist over and looked at my watch. "It's six now. What time does the party start?

  "Depends. "She gathered her hair back into a ponytail and fastened it with an elastic band. "I'm going to start getting ready as things officially kick off at 7:30. We won't arrive until an hour after that, but why rush? I'm taking a shower. Want to scrub my back?"

  The television started showing a Phoenix Skeptics tape proving bodies found in the desert definitely were not trolls. "Garbage in, garbage out." I hit a button on the remote control, and the screen went black. "After watching all that stuff, I definitely need a bath. Lead on, m'lady."

  Two hours later I stared at my image in a trio of full length mirrors. I wore black shoes and socks, black slacks with creases sharp enough to shave with and a heavily starched white shirt with onyx studs and cufflinks. At the collar I wore a large, silvery, rectangular-cut hematite stud and no tie. The collar itself, which had no lapels, pressed uncomfortably against my Adam's apple.

  "I feel like a wolf in priest's clothing."

  Marit glanced up from her vanity table and looked at my reflection in her mirror. "Pleased to meet you, Father Caine. Would you care to minister to my spiritual needs later?"

  I gave her a smile. "You say that only because I look neither pious or holy."

  "Oh, I'd say you look like a holy terror to me."

  "You're not the one I need to impress tonight."

  "Coming back from the grave, you'll look like an unholy terror to them."

  "Amen." I slipped on the Bianchi holster and settled the blued Krait beneath my left armpit.

  Mascara brush in hand, she paused. "Do you think that is necessary?"

  "I hope not, but you know the saying: 'Praise God, but pass the ammunition.'" I pulled my jacket off the hanger in the closet. "Will they let me keep it?"

  "Normally, no, but I trained with the guy heading up the security detail on this reception. I told him I was bringing a bodyguard along. He'll let you pass."

  "Good."

  I pulled the jacket on and smiled broadly. Roger had put together a jacket that did triple duty. It was appropriate for the gathering, stylish enough to get noticed, but not weird enough to be laughed at—and it concealed the gun perfectly. As I had seen in his drawing, he started from a basic waist-cut jacket, then had flipped over and extended the left lapel of it so it attached on a diagonal that ran from my right shoulder to just past the midline at my waist. In effect I had a black asymmetrical double-breasted jacket with enough room in the left flank to mask the presence of my gun. Furthermore, because Roger had left a gap in the velcro that closed the jacket, I could reach inside with my right hand and draw the Krait without being forced to open the suitcoat at all.

  I tugged at the waist and looked at myself in the mirror. The slight dip in the jacket's fabric at my throat left the hematite visible. The jacket hung perfectly and felt comfortable on me. Even the trace of beard on my jaw fit with the image the clothes had created, that being someone who could quite possibly be as dangerous as I was afraid I might be.

  Marit walked up behind me and kissed my right ear. "If I tell people you're a priest, you'll have women wanting to confess and convert all evening."

  I winked at her reflection. "Tell them I take my vow of celibacy seriously."

  "Ha! Fuel thrown on the fire, that would be." Her darkened eyes narrowed. "That tale might even attract the attention of the Witch herself."

  "Nerys Loring?"

  Marit's nostrils flared. "She Who Would Eat Her Own Young." She shook her head. "I don't even want to think about her right now." Taking two steps back, she held her hands out. "Well, tell me how beautiful I look."

  Turning around, I did nothing to hide my look of pleasure. Marit wore a strapless crimson leather minidress which clung to her somewhat tighter than oxygen clings to hydrogen in water molecules. Her lipstick matched her dress, as did the pair of two-inch stiletto heels on her feet. She bent over to smooth her white stockings, then innocently glanced up to see if the sight of long legs had affected me in the desired manner.

  I cleared my throat. "Do that at the party, and I'll be forced to shoot."

  She giggled and straightened up. She added a ruby pendant and matching earrings to her outfit, then pulled on a black jacket that had been cut high enough to reveal the lower edges of her breasts. "We're a pair. I'm dressed to stun, and you're dressed to kill."

  To get to the party we took the transversor to the elevator, then descended to Level Nine. From there we walked to the Civic Center Tower and boarded an express elevator to the 45th floor. Because of the tower's height, the elevator shafts could not run all the way up to the top and, under normal circumstances, our car would have moved sideways into another shaft to take us the rest of the way up to the party.

  The circumstances surrounding the Lorica Industries Reception, however, were nothing even close to normal. We stopped at 45, and the doors opened slowly. Bright video lights blasted into the box and bleached all but the brightest color from us. I raised my hand to shield my eyes, but Marit reacted to the light like a plant seeking the sun.

  Flash strobes went off like explosions in an air raid and left tracer-like afterimages on my eyes. People in the crowd called Marit's name, and she turned toward their voices, smiling like a fox eluding hunters. Lorica security guards cleared a path for her through the press of reporters, and I followed in her wake. A reporter asked who I was, but Marit waved the question off with casual disregard.

  A security man guided us to a short corridor that led to an express elevator to the top of the tower. Marit preceded me through a metal detector, then turned and spoke to the security force lieutenant seated at the desk beside her. "Hi, Charlie. This is Günter, my bodyguard. I told Captain Williams about him."

  The white-haired older man stood and motioned for me to step around the barricade.I1 did so and opened my jacket. He reached in and pulled the Krait from the holster. Hitting the thumb release, he slid the clip free, then worked the slide and popped the live shell out into his hand.

  "I like the Krait, Mr. Günter." He returned to his desk and opened a drawer. He pulled out a fluorescent orange stop-tab and inserted it into the chamber. He closed the gun on it, leaving an orange tab protruding from the open breech about a quarter of an inch. He shoved the clip home, then returned the pistol to me. "Standard procedure. We don't want personal security shooting first. If you see anything strange, you report it to one of us, got it?"

  "Got it." I made my voice sound like that of someone I could imagine being named Günter. "Could I have my bullet as well?"

  The old man nodded. "Sure."

  He tossed it to me, and I put it in my pocket. Closing my jacket, I smiled at him, then followed Marit to the express elevator. A white-gloved attendant pushed the button, and we watched as the numbers in the LED window above the doors counted down from 90.

  I jerked my head back in the direction of the other elevators. "Quite a zoo there."

  Marit smiled and gave my right forearm a squeeze. "Local press. They want gossip and stars to brighten their newscasts. Local celebrity stuff always goes down well with the folks in Eclipse. It lets them dream about getting to City Center at some time in their lives, I guess. I know that's what I used to fantasize about when I lived there."

  The elevator arrived, and we stepped into it. The attendant, a black woman, smiled politely and turned the key that sent the box skyward. We did not speak as we ascended and, as we sailed past Floor 80, Marit did a last minute check of her makeup in the elevator's mirrored walls. "Ready if you are."

  The doors opened, and I brac
ed myself for another light show, but none materialized. We stepped into a small lobby that looked perfectly normal, even if the lights were a bit dimmer than normal in commerce. Off to our right, double doors stood open into a reception room that actually occupied both the 90th and 91st floors of the Civic Center tower. The room's floor lay a half level below the lobby and an upper balcony over-hung the entrance. The lights, both crystal chandeliers and wall mounted, art deco lamps, were tuned down to low intensity so the room's light would not cause too much in the way of reflections on the exterior glass walls.

  As I moved from the lobby to the reception area I saw the room was, in fact, a doughnut that revolved around in a slow, almost imperceptible counterclockwise motion. The core of the 91st floor was greater in diameter than the lobby below it, providing the overhang. I smiled as I noticed a slight drift in the crowd in a direction opposite the motion of the room. Without thinking, people were desperately trying to maintain their position relative to the landmarks outside.

  The windows showed a truly wonderful panorama of Phoenix. The entrance pointed east toward the Lorica Citadel. The rising full moon backlit the corporate towers and made the maglev train tracks look like buttresses on the exterior of an old cathedral. Blinking red and blue lights on top of the towers matched the winking of the stars in the night sky and, in the background, I saw the distant lights of a plane coming in for landing at the regional airport southeast of the city.

  What surprised me the most was how well the black panels roofing over Eclipse reflected the stars and moonlight. As far as the stars were concerned, the photovoltaic cells could have been a placid ocean and, without my feet planted firmly on the floor, I would have had a hard time telling exactly which way was up. The moonlight—twin slivers outlining the Lorica silhouette— collected in sharp lines at the seams, but looked no different than it might have on a dark sea.