Ramona froze. “With all due respect, sir? That’s not an option. We need you here to unlock the charter, and this is the only way that we can do it safely.”
“Safely?” The quantator popped and crackled as the blue wireframe glared back. “Ms. Ferrari, you do not have any idea what ‘safely’ would constitute, considering my current form of existence. I am ‘safe’ because I am contained here, within Metis.”
“But, Mr. Tesla. This is the charter that you yourself agreed upon! This is the foundation of Echo!” Ramona’s voice rose in the small space. “Without this charter, the organization that you helped to create is going to fall into the hands of a madman!”
Tesla glanced away, blue lines wavering. “I cannot participate in such a fashion, Detective. To leave such containment would invite the possibility of erosion and possibly death.”
Ramona drew a deep breath and stood, eyes closing briefly as she lay a hand flat against the surface of the quantator. “With all due respect, Mr. Tesla, that is a risk that the entire organization has taken in your absence. The minute that I walk out the door of this safe house with the badge that bears the Echo insignia, I take that risk on the walk back to the train, on the ride home, even while I’m sleeping in my barely slept-in apartment.” Her eyes narrowed, but she willed her voice steady in the role of the proverbial “good cop” with a side of guilt trip. “I can promise you, your own nephew took that risk when he met with government agents who wanted to take hold of the organization, and I was with him when a half-dozen Echo operatives defended him from a wave of Death Spheres and Kriegers.”
Now she turned, and Ramona jabbed a finger at the floating head. “Every single day, there are dozens of Echo operatives and civilians who are still clinging to those ideals that make up the institution—your institution—and you’ve got the nerve to sit back in your perfect little jar back in Metis and tell me that you can’t risk death?” She snorted and leaned down, her face so uncomfortably close that the wireframe of Nicola Tesla shrank back a bit. “Your nephew died protecting Echo. My friends died protecting Echo. I’m ready, if I need to, to die to protect Echo. If you’re trying to invoke some bit about how you can’t risk death because you’re afraid to die or that you’re too important to risk it to save Echo, then I may as well just hand Verdigris the keys and we all sit back with popcorn to watch the Thulians swarm the planet.”
“Ms. Ferrari, you don’t—”
“Coward.”
The floating head twitched; the thin lines connecting the myriad of nodes became fuzzy for a split second. Ramona’s lip curled. “How do you think it makes me feel, knowing that I have to be the channel for some entity who knows how far away, who only exists as a connect-the-dots hologram? Do you think I jumped at the chance to participate? Don’t you think I’m a little concerned that if this goes south, I have to deal with your consciousness behind mine for all eternity?” She jabbed a finger at the wavering blue head. “In case you’ve forgotten, Mr. Tesla, I’m the last so-called normal you have in this organization who has a clue as to what’s really going on and who wants to help.”
The wireframe blinked, grew fuzzy, and slowly faded out.
Ramona sagged against the quantator, hanging her head. This wasn’t what Vickie had asked her to do, and desperation had turned the negotiation into an argument. She expected the chirp of Overwatch through her inner ear at any time, chastising her for screwing up their one chance of getting Nicola Tesla to help them unlock the charter. Ramona halfheartedly scrolled through a list of possible outcomes, each one more hopeless than the last, so caught up in her own thoughts that she almost missed the hiss and crackle that preceded Tesla’s voice.
“You are correct, Ms. Ferrari.” The blue mouth moved slowly, the words deliberate. “This venture is not without risk for the both of us. And yes, I had forgotten that you are the last remaining non-metahuman within the upper tier of the organization who understands the gravity of the situation.”
“It’s not a badge I wanted to wear,” she offered softly.
Nicola Tesla inclined his head, mouth drawn tight. “Nevertheless, I concede that your concerns are no less than my own. These processes that involve the arcane carry with them a certain risk, for all involved.”
Ramona held her breath and nodded once, hope glimmering inside.
“If you, in your current state, are willing to endure this risk, then I will do so as well. Given our respective circumstances, you have far more to lose than do I.”
“Thank you, sir.” Ramona nodded politely, smile held in check. She kept her words short and gracious. “We will call you when ready.”
The blue wireframe winked out, with Marconi’s faint laughter coming through before the quantator antennae sank back into the desk. She lifted her voice, a smile on her face. “Overwatch?”
“Here, Detective. Whatcha got?”
Ramona sank into the chair, relieved. “Bring it on. The Eskimos have their bikinis.”
* * *
Yankee Pride had obliged without any question or comment when Vickie hooked him up at the CCCP headquarters, although Ramona had seen him squirm a little when the optical piece found purchase behind his eyeball. Thanks to his weekly visits with Dixie Belle, he had the personal items that Vickie required. He offered them to her with a smile.
Vickie stood just in front of the quantator like a priestess at an altar, head down, arms out at her sides, palms down. Then she dropped her arms about halfway, inverted her hands to palms up, and slowly raised them to shoulder height again. The hair on the back of Ramona’s neck stood up as the cement floor crumbled in a very precise set of patterns to about an inch deep in lines about half an inch wide. It looked for all the world as if an invisible force was stamping a double circle, around Vickie and the quantator, with four smaller circles at equal intervals between the inner and outer circle. The quantator itself sat precisely in the middle of one of those four circles.
“Okay, YP. You stand here, and hold your mama’s hair.” She pointed at the one of the small circles immediately to her right, and Pride stepped gingerly into it, taking the lock from Vickie.
“Now we get to play ‘ghost in the machine.’ Ramona, come over here, please.” Vickie crooked a finger at her. Ramona marveled at the change in the woman, when she was doing something she was the expert at. This was an entirely different Vickie, scarcely recognizable as the nervous creature that hunched her shoulders and tried to be invisible when more than three or four people were in the same room. Ramona stood in front of the quantator, and placed her hands on it where Vickie directed, trying not to shiver. “All right, Mr. Tesla,” Vickie continued as Tesla’s solemn wire-frame visage appeared between the antennae. “Are you ready?”
“Are you certain this will work?” There was real fear in Tesla’s voice, and Ramona didn’t blame him. If this didn’t work . . . he’d die. Forever.
“As certain as Heisenberg will let me be,” Vickie told him. “Remember, this is largely governed by will. You really have to want this. Truly, and without reservation. Can you do that?” She patted the quantator reassuringly. “Remember also, once this works, I’ve got you set up to transfer to any other chosen vessel and back. That might turn out useful, or just entertaining.”
Tesla paused for a very long moment, then his expression firmed. “You have all risked your lives over and over in this endeavor, Miss Nagy. I can do no less. Yes. I want this.”
“All right then.” Vickie stepped out of the quantator circle. “Then here we go.”
Her hands moved in tai-chi-like patterns, sketching things in the air, things that sometimes looked like arcane symbols and sometimes like equations. They made Ramona feel a little dizzy, so she shut her eyes and concentrated on feeling—like a hostess, waiting for a welcome guest. But she could also feel the hair on the back of her neck rising involuntarily, and something like a charge building in the air, just before a lightning strike. The tension began to ratchet up, and just when she wanted to scream at Vic
kie to get it over with already, the mage finally barked the word “Fiat!” and—
And suddenly there was someone else in her head.
This wasn’t like being with a telempath like Bella, or a telepath like Jamaican Blaze. This was . . . it felt as if there was someone behind her, except when she turned, there wasn’t.
It is very disconcerting for me, too, Miss Ferrari, said an apologetic voice that came from everywhere and nowhere. At least it seems to have worked.
Vickie peered at them, and seemed to intuit that Tesla had made it in, since she nodded in satisfaction. “Okay, let’s try the control thing for just a second. Ramona, relax, and think about anything pleasant. Especially relax your jaw. Mr. Tesla, please try saying something.”
Ramona’s thoughts immediately went to Rick, and she was so busy blushing she didn’t even notice when Tesla started to speak. He pitched her voice oddly, and it had his own distinct accent. “Testing. Well, it appears we have a success.” Disconcerting did not begin to describe how she felt when her mouth produced words that she had no control over.
“Good.” Vickie nodded. “Let her have control back for a moment, you haven’t piloted a body in a long time, and you probably won’t remember how. Ramona, here—” Vickie handed her the sample of Alex Tesla Senior’s blood that Bella had found in cold storage. “Take the circle opposite Pride, please.” She placed the second lock of hair, this time from Yankee Doodle, on top of the quantator, put the charter on the floor in the center of the main circle, and stepped back to the last empty small circle as Ramona took her place. “Now the real show begins. From now on, nobody move. I don’t care if there’s a fire, a flood, an earthquake or an Echo full scramble. Until I tell you, no moving. I’m playing with space-time here, and bad things happen when you cross space-time boundaries.”
Once again, she bowed her head and held her arms out to her sides. Again, her hands were palms-up. This time, however, her hands made identical, rotating, gathering gestures, before she opened her palms and suddenly brought them up, like a conductor calling for the opening chord from an orchestra.
Ramona nearly leapt out of her skin as she was answered, both by a sound, like the ringing of an enormous bell, and by an uprush of blazing green light that abruptly filled all the channels that had been cut in the floor. The light in the outermost circle streamed upwards in a curve and met to form a half-dome over them. Vickie made a second gesture like the first; more light blazed up and another booming note answered her—this time the light was gold. She did this twice more, with red and blue light answering, all the colors finally mingling to form a steady white blaze that reminded Ramona, somehow, of starlight.
Vickie raised her head, dropped her left arm, and made a lifting gesture with her right hand, and the charter levitated upward to about waist height on a pillar of white light.
“We stand in the place outside of space, and the time outside of time, where only truth can be spoken, and only truth can be revealed,” Vickie said, her voice having a curious, echoing tone to it. “Yankee Pride, for that is the name that is truer than the one you were born with—do you speak as the heir to Alexander Tesla?”
“I do,” Yank said, steadily, though he was looking a little pale.
“And do you bear the token, freely given, of your mother, Dixie Belle?”
“I do.”
“And is it your will that this charter be unlocked, laid bare, and revealed for any to read?” There was something oddly ominous about the way Vickie said those words.
“It is.”
“And will you lend your strength to this task?”
“I wi—” Yank said, and then he could say nothing more as the blue light erupted from him, and a beam as thick as his arm streamed out of him and into the pillar in the center. It was hard for Ramona to tell for sure, but he looked like someone who had grabbed a pair of hot wires and was frozen in place. She licked her lips nervously, and sensed Tesla inside her, shivering.
I do not care for magic. When Jeremiah Stone performed this the first time, I did not like it, and I like it even less now.
Wait—who? Jeremiah Stone?
But Vickie was asking the same questions of the quantator, and Marconi was answering them, steadily, the same way. This time the beam of light was red. Then it was Ramona’s turn. Or rather—Tesla’s . . .
If you don’t do this, she thought fiercely at him, we might as well all take out big life insurance policies, because our heirs are going to need them.
She waited apprehensively as Vickie asked the questions, and . . .
Her mouth opened, and Tesla answered them. And the beam of green light erupted out of her, and it was exactly like grabbing a couple of hot wires. She was barely conscious of the fact that Vickie was speaking again, barely registered the words.
“The words have been spoken. Consent has been given. Strength has been lent. Now I, Officiant, give consent and lend my strength to the support of all. Let the charter be unlocked, the words laid bare for any man to see. Fiat!”
The word ended in a high-pitched keening of pain as the final beam of yellow light erupted from Vickie’s chest and hit the pillar. The light in the center of the room went from brilliant to blinding. Ramona closed her eyes, and she could still see it burning through her lids as her body was held rigid in the magic’s thrall.
Then, abruptly and with no warning, the light blinked out, and whatever held her in its grip let her go. She slumped, but mindful of Vickie’s warning, she teetered and held herself as still as she could as she opened her eyes.
Still in there, Mr. Tesla? she thought.
Yes, Miss Ferrari, came the weary-feeling answer. That . . . was no easier the second time.
“Stay put a little longer, folks,” Vickie said. She sounded as if she had just done three rounds of the parkour course. With a hundred-pound backpack. Backwards.
The light still shone around them but depleted and dull, and the charter was lying on the floor again. Vickie made the reverse of the gestures she had before, and the dome of light faded, the colors shining up from the channels in the floor faded, and finally, there was nothing but the room with its single electric bulb, the quantator, and the paper on the floor.
“Now you can move,” Vickie said, and flexed her fingers. “And now, Mr. Tesla, we can send you back home again.”
* * *
“Now the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question,” Ramona said, when Tesla was safely back in cyberspace, or whatever electronic afterlife it was he inhabited. “What is it that is in this charter that is going to . . .”
All three of them were scanning it, but Vickie was evidently the speed-reader among them, because she let out a whistle and planted her finger on a paragraph in the middle of the last page. “This,” she said. “Holy Cauldron, this changes everything.”
Quickly Ramona skipped to that paragraph.
This clause is to establish the leadership and fundamental rule, in perpetuity, of the organization to be known as Echo. As with all organizations, shareholders and stockholders will be established. All metahuman members of Echo, from this day forward, are shareholders of one and only one share each. Only shareholders may vote on matters pertaining to the leadership and their own welfare. For the purposes of establishing and continuing the leadership of Echo, and ensuring the welfare of the metahumans of Echo, stockholders in Echo are not voting shareholders. The Chief Executive Officer of Echo will be, in perpetuity, absent the failure of the bloodline, the direct heir in the bloodline of Nicola Tesla. The Chief Executive Officer cannot be replaced, neither by vote, nor by dismissal. He can only step down of his own will. In the event that there is to be no direct heir in the bloodline of Nicola Tesla, only the previous CEO can designate an heir, that heir must be a metahuman of Echo, and only the shareholders of full voting shares can ratify that heir. In the event no heir is ratified, a new Chief Executive can only be elected by the shareholders of full voting shares. Only metahumans of Echo, past and present, will hold full
voting shares. Voting shares may not pass to heirs, in order to ensure the welfare of the metahumans of Echo. In wartime, should the CEO not feel capable of fully directing Echo, the CEO may designate an additional, temporary position, Acting Executive Director, with whom he, or she, may share leadership and executive decisions. The Acting Executive Director must also be a metahuman of Echo, and the position is not heritable nor transferable. This clause cannot be changed, nullified, nor revoked, either by the stockholders or the shareholders. Should this clause be changed, nullified, or revoked, the Charter will be deemed null and void, Echo will be dissolved as an organization, and the resources therein will be divided among the voting shareholders. Stockholders will derive no benefit from the dissolution of Echo.
“You guys realize what this means, don’t you?” Vickie said. “Verd’s toast. If he tries to get a stockholder vote to kill the charter leadership clause, he loses Echo. If you think the rumblings of revolt are bad here, you should catch the scuttlebutt from some of the other Echo chapters. He made a big mistake in exiling folks he didn’t like elsewhere—all he did was spread dissent around. The second we get all the metas together to vote, he’s out, and Pride’s in. And”—she added gleefully—“he just set that meeting up himself.”
“The memorial—” Pride said, stunned.
“For which Verd is providing all-expenses-paid tickets to all the retirees, and any other metas who want to come, yeah.” Vickie’s head bobbed. “I can make sure the lines are clear for phone-in votes too, once we start the meeting.”
“What about the charter itself? Where do we keep it now?” Ramona looked to Pride apologetically. “I know this is your mother’s only copy, but I can’t say that I feel good about it leaving here now that it’s unlocked.”
Pride shrugged. “Then it doesn’t leave here. I don’t know of any place in Atlanta that’s more secure than this building, save for Ms. Vickie’s apartment. Do you think that the Commissar would mind keeping this for a while?”
Revolution: Book Three of the Secret World Chronicle Page 37