by John Shirley
Up they went, riding the lift. Ben noted the man wore a nulgrav web and he congratulated himself that his guess had been correct. The stranger had taken the pedestrian route out of the building, assuming that a delegate would not think to look on the ground. He forgot I am Ben Rackey, too.
Unresisting, but walking with no hurry, the man willingly preceded Ben into the suite. Gloria was staring out the open window, her back to him. Ben snorted.
“I’m right here and intact,” he said, “I switched on the web halfway down, had to get there fast—”
As if bitten, Gloria leapt about to face them, and Ben was secretly pleased to see the beginnings of tears in her eyes. She shrugged and turned away, and he pretended he hadn’t noticed the tears.
He marched the stranger to the guest room, and sat him on the bed. Ben called over his shoulder, “Gloria, notify Kibo. Ask him to come.”
Ben turned back to his guest. Still pointing the needler at the stranger’s chest, he sat in a chair across from him.
The spy managed a fairly convincing sputter, “If you are going to...to rob me, Sir, I suggest you get on with it.”
Ben laughed and shook his head. “Try again. If you’re an innocent bystander why do you walk a pedestrian route while you’re wearing a web?”
“I—I might ask you the same thing.”
“Ah, but I never claimed to be an innocent bystander. I am not at all innocent, frankly. I’ve killed many men. I’ll kill you and then I’ll yawn. How do you want to die? Quickly, I assume. No reason to draw out the process, I’ll be glad to accommodate you. Quickly it is, then—”
Ben raised the gun and set the sights between the two sad blue eyes.
“What—what is it you want to know?” came a tremulous voice.
“No,” said Ben. “That’s not going to work, either. Now you’re going to try the tearful confession bit on me. But you’ll give me false information which only a sucker would believe, merely because you’d acted scared. No, I want to know who your employer is. Now look, face it: I’m too smart for you. I’ll kill you if you don’t cooperate. Let’s be honest. Let’s start with your name. What is it? Your real name. Do not lie, not a little bit, not even about your name. ‘Takes one to know one,’ the saying goes, and I’m the world’s best liar.”
The man cleared his throat. Something went out of his face and what remained was unyielding and mocking.
“My name is Regnor, Finlan Regnor.” He was not lying.
“I’ve heard of you. You’re a hit man. You watch your victims for a long time before killing them, to make sure it’s fool-proof. Very professional.”
“Thank you.” He cleared his throat and inclined his head politely. “And I’ve heard of you. You’re the best.”
“You’re very kind. But if I were the best you’d never have heard of me—anonymity is part of the trade. That’s one reason I wanted to retire, you know. It’s very dangerous for a Professional Irritant to get sloppy and pick up a reputation. You work for Chaldin.”
Ben had caught him off guard; the man blinked twice before shaking his head and putting on a puzzled look. “Chaldin?”
“Cut it out. How much did you hear?”
“I—uh,” Regnor began.
But when the door burst open behind, Ben was sitting too close. The door struck his chair hard and the needler, held loosely, went flying from his hand.
Instantly, Regnor was up and moving. Kibo plunged through the door and after him, but Regnor tossed a small explosive ahead of him. The bedroom window exploded outward and Regnor dived through the gap, falling toward a nulgrav current. “So he knows that trick, too,” Ben muttered, getting up. He turned to Kibo, “You brought a nulgrav car?”
“Yes—but why not follow him out the window?”
“We couldn’t make up for his head start that way. In the car we can move faster. Lead me to it.”
They ran out through the living room, through the other bedroom and out onto the balcony. One of the Brothers of Proteus was waiting at the wheel of the dart-shaped, three-man car. Ben climbed hurriedly through the door-hatch, Kibo close behind. They settled into the seats, and before the hatch was closed they had cast off, swishing round the triangular building in search of Regnor.
“I need this fish,” Ben said. “I need what he knows. He’s with the Order. He’s an assassin.”
Kibo nodded and they descended, slowed to search the swarm of elite on the upper currents.
Ben spotted Regnor heading South, toward the nearest exit from the city.
“We can’t just grab him, it would attract too much attention. I shouldn’t have come along—I’d be recognized. As Ladd.” said Ben. “Did you bring the scrambler?”
As answer, Kibo reached under the seat and came up with a glass tube, long as his index finger, with a dark blotch at one end. He gave the scrambler to Ben, who opened the car’s side window.
They pulled up beside the current, dodging traffic signs, ignoring a floating warning light that said Off Channel, Alter Course.
They paced Regnor, Ben keeping the scrambler propped on the top of the door frame, trying to get a clear shot. The glass tube was small, inconspicuous, no one who looked their way would be likely to recognize it as a weapon. And, in fact, it was no weapon, by strict definition. It fired a small, soft projectile which affixed itself to its target, gripping tenaciously and scrambling the receiving nodes of the target’s nulgrav web, cutting off his support.
They were twenty feet over pedestrian level now. Warning signs flashed all around. .
Regnor had seen them and was trying to keep to the center of the crowd.
They were getting curious looks from the traveling aristocrats. He had to get a clear shot or take his chances, soon. He got a glimpse of Regnor through a rift in the crowd, and fired.
Regnor tumbled into space, and down. But from third class level it was only twenty feet down to street level and he landed atop a cluster of pedestrians, bringing four of them to the ground. In the back of the car, Ben and Kibo quickly changed into pedestrian garb and climbed down to the nearest rooftop, instructing the driver to wait there until they signaled for him.
When they reached the street, they regretted it.
Regnor dressed as a Detroit demagogue, was the object of a small but promising riot. None of Ben’s doing. Since Regnor was contained by a cluster of some two hundred clawing pedestrians, Ben could not get to him.
“Should have stayed in the car and grabbed him from above,” Ben said.
“No,” said Kibo, pointing out the power lines. “We couldn’t have made it through. But it doesn’t matter, does it? They’re likely to kill him. They don’t get a fallen, helpless aristocrat every day. By the time Security gets here they’ll have crushed him but good…”
“I want to question him. He might know Chaldin’s plans for me, how he plans to alert the delegates to my cover, that sort of thing. I need him. Anyway, it looks like they’re not going to kill him yet, they’re carrying him. Somewhere. But Security will be here soon. If they take him and question him, my real name might pop out. Then that will be it for the operation. So, Kibo, signal your brothers. A spontaneous strike—and quick. Large scale. Time to really earn your money. Hit them hard. That will draw Security away from the riot and from Regnor...”
Kibo nodded and spoke rapidly into his hand-radio.
In less than five minutes a series of explosions erupted a few blocks away. Sirens sang out. Kibo nodded to himself and whispered huskily, earnestly: “Long Live Progressivism!”
Ben almost laughed. But it was too hot for joviality and Regnor was almost out of sight, carried by the crowd on its multitude of limbs around the corner. Ben and Kibo struggled after.
The dusk was coming, but somehow it seemed to intensify the heat, and the sweat of the pushing, elbowing herd of humanity was cloying with pent hostilities. Through years of practice and association with it, Ben could pick out the scent of the glandular discharge resulting from anger—he could d
istinguish it from the scent of a normal sweat.
They were pressed into the throng, and they were just two more threads in the spreading weave of fury. Ben felt his heart, pounding with it, his throat dry with it, his eyes narrow with the mob’s anger.
He and Kibo forced their way to within twenty feet of Regnor. Kibo shouted something, but Ben could not hear it over the uneven roar of the crowd. He glimpsed Regnor. The man was white-faced, bleeding from the nose and torn lips, but still alive.
They pushed past wood and brick bordellos with doors fashioned to resemble huge labia, past shop alcoves, arcades hung with Detroit’s famous multi-weave hammocks and skin-macramé soulprints, niches inset with oversized, sputtering models of the V-8 internal-combustion engine, the earthly avatar of the God Ford. Here and there in the crowd black letters hovered perpetually, upheld and arranged by compensating nulgrav currents projected from throat-shackle webs worn by those convicted of petty crimes; the criminal was free, but everywhere he or she went they were followed by their signs, rotating, starkly proclaiming:
Shoplifter or Chronic Liar or Con-man or Chronic Drunk, or Friend-maker.
The letters followed the pedestrian shoplifter or chronic liar or con-man or drunk or the garrulous; everywhere, everywhere, at home or public, so the lawbreaker would never be without derision. The letters were immutable and their shadows crawled over the sullen faces of the convicted in penumbral stigma.
Dragging the man it believed was a fallen patriarch, the mob poured out from the narrow way, onto a wide square a quarter of a mile to the side. Into this mall Regnor was carried, bobbing like a cork on a stream. To the left a stalk of four fluted exhaust pipes towered five storeys over an open-air church––open-air so the worshippers could survive the carbon-monoxide fumes from the incense burned there––presiding in chrome over raucous string music and shouts of square dancers. It was Sunday. Every Sunday was a pedestrian holiday. “Swinger yer partner rounder round!” chanted the nasal square-dance fiddler.
Above and directly ahead, five storeys high, a huge vidscreen showed the holiday football games, transmitted live from the pedestrian stadium by the Southern Wall. The mammoth figures on the tremendous screen overflowed onto the field, convulsions of scrimmaging giants that became an inspiration to the crowd in the square to further the growing riot. As those toting Regnor shouted: “Looker wot we gotter! It rains patriarchers now! Falls from skyer!”
“Make his feeter kiss earther!”
“Make him dancer on the earther!”
“And now?” Kibo asked Ben, shouting over the noise.
“And now…” He took a deep breath. It was too hot. “I don’t know. I can’t get to him. There’re even more people here. What are they going to do!” Ben regretted calling in the terrorists, now. They’d infiltrated, encouraged others to join the melee, circulating and swelling the mob. Currents from every street fed into the square. Suddenly an idea struck him: Since the mob currents came from opposite directions, he might be able to direct them against one another, and that in the new tussle they would forget Regnor.
Even as he decided to try it, he knew the outcome and wished he could stop.
He was swept away in the mob exultation, and already he was tranced and projecting. The exciter was alive in his chest, metallic, immaculate, pulsing.
The riot exploded.
They were not a colorful bunch at first. They dressed mostly alike; the same rough dark weaves in the ancient business-suit style. In the heat and pressure Ben was tormented by his own scratchy pedestrian suit.
Everywhere, the same pasty, round, angry faces. A lake of them boiling up as the word got around: A patriarch fallen from the currents!
Ben applied heat. They steamed, boiled—at first they were dark bodies, swarms of shouting mouths and bobbing heads, all so crowded together they blended into one monochromatic creature. At first. Then, the blood added color. It was patriarch blood, raining from the sky, as they tore Regnor into shreds and tossed those shreds into the air over their heads, anointing themselves with the blood of patriarch pedigree. Breathable air was scarce in the thick of the riot. Many fainted. The crowd pressed still closer, straining for the blood.
Ben had been careless with the dissemination of the mania transfer and some of it had affected Kibo. Infuriated, trained to be lethal, Kibo lashed out at the clawing arms, at the flailing fists, at the wild, flashing eyes that seemed to come at him, not in pairs, but as an endless sea of roiling hatred. Kibo pulped noses, broke bones, gouged eyes until a path opened and, pressing through it, first he then Ben broke free from the crush and stumbled out of the square.
Ben tasted salt and felt a thick wetness on his tongue, and realized his nose was bleeding. But he barely noticed; he was surveying the carnage. He had failed, in one way. But he had to make the best of it. He turned to Kibo and whispered terse instructions. Kibo, calmed now, spoke into his communicator. Soon, the Brothers of Proteus, infiltrating the mob, were shouting and chanting: “Progressivists! Progressivists! Progressivists!”
The crowd, with nowhere to turn their fury but on each other, picked up the chant as a meaningless but satisfactory slogan: “PROGRESSIVISTPROGRESSIVISTPROGRESSIVIST.”
Kibo and Ben turned away, walking stiffly, their muscles aching, back to the rooftop where waited their nulgrav car. The Progressives' would be blamed for the riot, and that was well. But they had lost Regnor. And something more.
“I lost something more than. Regnor there,” Ben murmured.
Gloria was massaging Ben’s back in the sultry midnight darkness on the balcony. Ben lay nude with his chin propped on his crossed arms, gazing out through the marble-like balustrade at the muted lights of the sleeping city. Few lights, tonight, with the new curfew. Security was out in full. It had been the first full-scale riot in a generation.
Humming, Gloria began to knead his neck.
For such bony-looking fingers, Ben reflected, Gloria’s touch was remarkably soft.
“Well?” said Gloria, with a mockery more pronounced than usual. “I’m waiting for the big announcement. What else did you lose besides Regnor?”
“Control.” It hurt to admit it aloud. For a Professional Irritant it was the ultimate demeaning admission. “Maybe it was an occasion like at the party in Denver where I lost Ella. When I used disruption for…fun. When I didn’t heed it. Only, this time it was on a larger scale. I wanted to use the exciter. I knew it would do no good, then, that it would only cause more havoc, that it wouldn’t properly apply in that situation. But I wanted to use it. I couldn’t help myself.”
The doorbell chimed. Gloria sighed and stood up. Ben stretched and got to his knees, rotating from the waist to get the cricks from his back. He rose and went to the dresser, switched on the house nulgrav currents. He pulled the thin transparent web over his bare chest and was bobbed six inches off the floor. He pressed a button on the dresser, and the small component parts of his head-dress flew from their niche in the wall and arranged themselves over his head in the identity pattern of Delegate Ladd. He went to answer the door.
He hesitated before the oval portal. Needler? He looked over his shoulder. Gloria was covering him, out of sight from the person standing in the hall; she stood just inside the bedroom door, needler at ready. Also, there were the two Brothers’ bodyguards in the car above the balcony.
Ben palmed the latch and the door slid open.
Three patriarchs stood there, six inches off the rug. He knew only one of them personally; a young man, tall and spare, with a long nose and binocular spectacles. The others he knew only from his files of their personal activities and voting records. But even so, there were things he knew about them that their spouses did not know.
The eyes of the other two patriarchs were fashionably hidden in cupped opaque lenses; they wore filmy blue togas and fluttering wrist pennants. They were of medium height and regular features, thinning hair, on the middle-aged side. Their expressions were impassive.
The young man
nodded cordially. A Security guard stood out of sight by his left elbow. Waiting? Ben saw only his shadow.
“You three are welcome within. Greetings in the action, welcome in the reaction… Unless you keep him on a leash, your pedestrian watchdog must remain outside,” said Ben, bowing.
The young man nodded and spoke in whispers to the guard.
The three delegates entered and Ben closed the door and ushered them into the reception room where they sat cross-legged on lavender clouds. Ben provided wine. These amenities done, he said, “I hope you are comfortable.”
“This is quite an ostentatious household,” remarked the young man. “The rest of us don’t live quite so lavishly. It seems most of our money goes to the Fist––”
“I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure—”
The young man, Bolton, introduced his companions. “Crowler Bunn, fiftieth Delegate. Alster Remm, eighty-sixth Delegate. Delegates Bunn and Remm, I’d like you to meet Mr. Ben Rackey.”
Bolton said it smoothly and calmly.
Ben tried to look politely puzzled and wondered if he succeeded.
At least, when he said, “I beg your pardon—I am titled only Delegate Tozar Ladd, Esteemed Sir…” no one laughed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Man in the Rose Suite
Young Bolton’s eyes were not visible beneath the tubular glasses. But Ben could see in the creases around his mouth a certain smug humor. He was enjoying this opportunity for undermining a Senior. Obviously, Bolton was convinced he was Rackey. Waste of time to dissemble.
Ben smiled graciously and nodded, acknowledging Bolton’s cleverness. He glanced over Bolton’s shoulder. Gloria was still hiding in the bedroom, the door slightly ajar behind the three delegates. If he were to signal her she would be glad to kill them.
He could frame the Progressivists…
But there was that guard outside the door and, really, a professional should never soil his home with the blood of his enemies. It was sloppy. Enemies should be disposed of like garbage into a dispose-all, zip and it’s a puff of vapor. Clean and swift. But in Astor, waste was recycled…