Find Your Own Truth

by Robert N. Charrette

  They might try to lock him out of the Matrix and into this finely furnished cell, but he was the Dodger. He could never be confined.

  He didn’t bother to check the lock before prying open the control plate. Having lived in comfort too long, they had forgotten what could be done with ordinary things. In less than ten seconds he had scrambled the security circuits enough to open the lock. He was reasonably sure that he hadn’t set off an alarm, either.

  He felt light-headed. The exhilaration, he supposed. The hall floor was cold against his bare feet, and the speed of his motion made a cool breeze across his naked flesh. Ills of the flesh. Unimportant. As unimportant as his nakedness.

  Naked. How appropriate. Soon it would be more so. As soon as he reached his goal. He knew the mansion well.

  He padded down the back stairs. Two full flights, and three steps of the next flight. He reached down to the floorboard, steadying himself against the railing as his fragile flesh threatened to betray him. His fingers found the latch and lifted it. A panel rose, revealing a hollow in the wall.

  It was there, just as he remembered: a monitor station. A few keystrokes brought him the message that the connections were all active. He smiled. Fumbling open the storage compartment, he drew forth the datacord. His fingers were clumsy—nothing but weak flesh things—but he got one end of the cord into his datajack and the other into the port on the station.

  He curled the fingers of his left hand into his palm and gave his wrist the fast double-cock needed to release the prongs. Three tapering cylinders of silver slid from the ecto-myelin sheaths in his forearm.

  You can take the decker away from the cyberdeck, but you can’t take the Dodger away from his key to the Matrix.

  Naked he would go forth to find her.

  They said it was too dangerous to enter cyberspace without the buffer of a cyberdeck. They were right, of course; it was dangerous. But he had done it before. Decker slang called it “jacking in naked” when only the decker’s organic brain stood as defense against the dangers of IC and the navigational peculiarities of the Matrix. An organic brain was a fragile thing to Stand between the crystalline fury of ice and the darkness of death.

  But what matter danger? A threat to the organic existence was no threat at all, for she was not part of organic existence. She was waiting for him in cyberspace, and Dodger would go to meet her.

  He slid the prongs into the station’s data ports, and the infinite glories of the Matrix exploded in his head, filling his soul with their wonder. He saw her in the distance, waiting.

  “Morgan." he called, using the name she had chosen for herself. “I’m coming.”

  He flew to her side.

  * * *

  Sato inspected his arm. To all appearances, it was a normal human arm. The doctors had done their job well. He lifted the gown’s sleeve to seek the join. The scar was already fading under the influence of fast-healing drugs and skin-regenerative implants. Very well, indeed.

  “Akabo.”

  The enhanced soldier who served as his bodyguard rose smoothly to his feet and crossed the small room. He was still wearing the tight-fitting leathers he preferred for street work.

  “Any word from Masamba?”

  A slight shake of the head. “Mage is still looking. Matrix team is still hunting as well.”

  “Then it will be some time before your special talents are needed. I suggest that you pay a visit to the medical team and express my thanks for their work. The usual payment.”

  Smiling grimly, Akabo nodded. “What about Sori-yama? He assembled the team.”

  “Leave him alive. The good doctor is too valuable. Though a brilliant man, he is not impractical, as are so many scientists. He will understand the warning.”

  “Yeah. And he’s a bit too tight with Grandmother.” Akabo flinched back at Sato’s reaction. Sato held down the impulse to take his bodyguard by the throat and drain him dry. Let the threat of his anger be enough for now. Akabo would not be so bold as to mention the subject again. Intimidation was enough for now. The killer was himself too valuable to lose. For the moment.

  28

  Howling Coyote cut off the song in mid-note and put the flute down. “Why am I bothering?”

  “Because you promised to teach me." Sam said. “Hey hey, Dog boy, wasn’t talking to you. Don’t need you to tell me the answer. I already know it.”

  “Then why—never mind.” Sam was tired. He had been working all morning at perfecting the shuffling steps the shaman had shown him, but obviously not hard enough for Howling Coyote. In spite of the simplicity of the dance, Sam continued to lose the pattern after only a few minutes. It was as though he couldn’t match the rhythm of the music for more than a short period. Though the music didn’t seem to change, Sam continued to end up out of step.

  It was all so simple. So why couldn’t he get it right?

  He wiped a sweaty forearm across a sweatier brow, then held his arm there to shade his eyes as he looked at the sky. No wonder the old man was exasperated. The sun was low in the sky, and Sam had not managed to keep the dance going for more than half an hour. The history chips said that the Ghost Dancers had performed their ritual for days on end, fresh dancers taking the place of the exhausted, without ever a break in the pattern. The power Sam needed to help Janice wouldn’t require that level of performance, but Sam knew he was still not going strong enough or long enough.

  “Are you going to play some more?”

  Howling Coyote shrugged, then spat. “Ain’t what I want to do at issue here.”

  “You’re the teacher." Sam objected. “I’m here to learn lessons from the master. Seems to me you’re not doing your job very well. You promised to teach me.” The old man’s eyes narrowed, and he stood. “Ya want a lesson, I’ll give ya a lesson. Ya gotta strip yourself clean before ya can do the big magics.” The shaman’s hand snaked out and grabbed the pendant that swung from a thong around Sam’s neck. He waved it in front of Sam’s eyes, then let it drop heavily against Sam’s chest. “What’s that, Dog boy? What’s that thing you wear around your neck?”

  “A fossil tooth that I use as a power focus.”

  “Uh-huh. And those things ya got tied onto your jacket?”

  “Fetishes. They help with the magic.”

  “Uh-huh. Got all ya started with?”

  “Of course not. I lost a lot of them when Urdli blasted me through the Weapons World window.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s the tooth and the fetishes ya got left have in common? Where’d ya get them?”

  “I found the tooth in the badlands, just before I met Dog for the first time. I thought it was a dragon tooth at the time. Dragons are magical beasts, so I made it into something to help me with my magic. That’s what the fetishes are, magical tools I made to help me.”

  “What about the other stuff?”

  “What other stuff?”

  “The pictures in the inside pocket, left front.”

  Sam didn’t bother to ask how Howling Coyote knew about that. “They’re just pictures. They’re not magical.”

  “They show your sister, your brother, and your parents, right? What’s more magical than family? It’s real important to you, Dog boy. Leastways, that’s what ya told Urdli. Ya telling me connections ain’t important to magic?”

  Sam wasn’t sure what answer the shaman wanted. “Ya don’t have to answer that. Answer this, though. What've they all got in common?”

  Nothing. Everything. Sam didn’t know. What was the old man driving at? All he could do was guess. “They’re all connected to my magic ”

  “Think up that answer by yourself?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “Just yourself?”

  Exasperated, Sam snapped, “Yes, just myself.”

  “Exactly.” The old man sat down, took off his reservation hat, and laid it on the ground beside him. From his pouch he took a comb, then he began to braid his hair. The gray strands glinted like metal in the sunset. “Now build a fire.”


  It took Sam better than an hour to arrange the wood to the shaman’s satisfaction. Following Howling Coyote’s directions, Sam gathered herbs from the jars on the shelf in the kiva and brought them to the shaman, who scattered some over the wood and some into the air. The rest he made into a little pile atop the small bundle of plant fiber and kindling. Then he directed Sam to bring a coal from the kiva’s firepit to light the fire.

  The fire caught at once, and Sam was glad. Chilled by the early evening breeze, he craved the warmth of the fire. He wanted to sit by it and relax, but Howling Coyote had other plans.

  “Follow me." the shaman ordered. “Do the steps as I do. Listen to the chant. Sing it when you know it.”

  Howling Coyote began a shuffling, stomping dance around the perimeter of the fire. His voice was low and gravelly as he sang the chant. He beat time with a rattle made from a hollow gourd. The song grew in strength until it throbbed with power. It was a calling song:

  He comes, in fire and smoke.

  He comes, opening the way.

  He comes, with lies and truth.

  Turning to beauty, he comes.

  Sam followed in the dance, moving in perfect rhythm to the song. Smoke washed across his body and filled his nostrils with the rick, resinous odor of burning pine. The chant filled his mind and he joined the song, his voice blending with the old man’s. They danced the moon into the sky.

  The smoke that had seemed to reach out and enfold Sam pulled back. It hung low over the fire, in defiance of the leaping flames. The smoke gathered into a roiling cloud that obscured the shaman dancing on the opposite side of the firepit. A shape began to coalesce within the cloud. It stretched, arms reaching for the sky. Though human from waist to neck, the smoke image had the head of a coyote. Its pointed snout split wide in a canine grin, then snapped shut. Head raised, it howled soundlessly at the moon. The snout came down and the ghostly image turned its dark, knowing eyes of emptiness on Sam. The jaws opened again, pausing briefly in that grin before yawning wider and engulfing him.

  Sam’s consciousness swirled in the magic. Enfolded in its embrace, he was at harmony with the world and with himself. He was not afraid.

  He sensed that he was whole now, all he was and all he had ever been. At first he let himself float, riding the mana stream, letting it take him deeper into the otherworld, into himself, and into the unbridled realm of magic. For magic was the root and he needed to see the beginning, the seeds of his trials and triumphs.

  When had it begun? When had magic first touched his life?

  He thought about his first meeting with Dog, but immediately realized that as potent and outlandish as that experience had been, the magic had touched him even before that. According to Professor Laverty, Sam had used magic to protect himself from an attacker’s spell long before meeting his totem. Sam remembered the glade and the fireball that had blasted him, burning his clothes and nearly killing him. He hadn’t even known what he was doing at the time, but he had deflected the mana force of the spell. Would that have been the first time magic had affected his life? It was the first personal, tangible effect he could remember. His earlier contacts had been simply as an observer when someone else had used a spell. Surely that had to be it.

  He cast his mind back, willing the magic to let him relive his first magical experience. Surely there was something to be learned now that he understood magic better. This must be what Howling Coyote intended by arranging this dream flight. Howling Coyote had hinted that it would be a key to his life and Janice’s. If that were true, Sam would use that key to unlock the chains that bound her.

  The magic embraced him and swirled him away. Time slipped from the present to the past, merging the two. Then became now and he was as he was then, except that memories of things yet to happen also wrapped his perceptions. Twist the shaman coexisted with Sam Verner, mundane.

  The spell almost broke when he realized the day and time to which he had been projected. It was nine o’clock on the night of February 7, 2039. He was young, a teenager who was still Sammy to his family. That wouldn’t last long. In an hour, he would be an orphan.

  February 7, 2039, the terrible day that later became known as the Night of Rage. On that night, the world spasmed in a massive explosion of violence. Though metahumans were mainly the victims of the destructiveness and brutality, in some instances they struck back, individually and in groups. In major cities and metroplexes, riots and fires raged for days. In the less urbanized areas, the violence sputtered on for weeks. The media blamed it on everything from outside psychic influences and coincidence to the spontaneous release of repressed aggressions and any other magical or scientific reason the various experts could think to spout. Somehow, the media hounds never saw their own role, never realized that the global village created by communications was also a powder keg of emotions that a single spark could set off across the world.

  Like so many other families, the Verners were involuntarily caught in the violence. That evening Sammy’s father had made a rare, impetuous suggestion that the whole family abandon their usual routine and go out to dine. Mother had insisted that Janice must be home in bed by ten, but Father, uncharacteristically, had overruled her. The occasional late night never hurt anyone, he said. They had all bundled up, walked the three blocks to the metro, and then boarded the bullet train to the Greenbelt Mall District.

  The dinner was fun, but his parents’ jolly mood crumbled as the family headed for the theater. Already the public tridscreens were running the first reports of the fire in the warehouse district of Seattle, where thousands of metahumans were being burned to death and a terrorist group calling itself the Hand of Five was taking responsibility. Father’s face went grim and determined as he listened to the reactions of the crowd in the mall, most of whom seemed sympathetic to the terrorists. Father herded them to the metro, and they took the first train back to the burbs. Sammy sensed the fear beneath his parents’ concern. Oliver and Janice felt it, too. Oliver and Father spoke quietly together for a while, then Oliver turned around to smile at Sam and Janice and told them it would all be fine. He was scared, too; Sammy could smell it. But Sammy took his cue from Oliver and tried to hide his own growing fear. Not so Janice, who began to whimper and demand that Mother hold her. There wasn’t much conversation during the train ride. Most of the people on board echoed the same racist sentiments the Verners had heard expressed at the mall.

  As they got off the metro, Sammy knew something was wrong. The neighborhood was lit as brightly as day, but day had never been so red. All the dogs in the neighborhood were barking.

  When the Verners reached their street, they saw their house in flames. The wall fence around the property was battered down in places, while some sections still standing were scrawled with words such as “Ork Luvver."

  “Race Traitor." and other less savory things. Through one gap, Sammy could see a stark and obscene silhouette. He puzzled at the shape, but Twist knew what the boy he had been was seeing. It was their handyman Varly. The poor ork had been crucified on their front lawn.

  Father whispered something to Mother. He ordered Oliver to stay with her. She took hold of Janice and Sammy’s hands. Striding forward, Father headed for the knot of people gathered near the driveway. Tears streamed down Mother’s face. Oliver looked annoyed and glared after Father, but he stayed put. Sammy heard his father’s angry voice demanding to know what was going on, ordering the mob to disperse.

  They jeered at him.

  He repeated his demands and they laughed, an animal sound, wild and dangerous. One came forward and shouted something incoherent into Father’s face. Another crept out and swung a fence board against the back of Father’s knees. As the elder Verner collapsed, the one who’d shouted at him sidestepped to let him fell to the sidewalk. Then the mob rushed in, beasts tearing at the fallen foe.

  Oliver rushed forward, disappearing instantly among the surging crowd. Sammy heard screams, but they sounded too high-pitched to be Oliver’s. They s
ounded like a girl’s screams. Twist knew better.

  The mob reached them. Mother shoved Sammy and Janice behind her, but someone tore her away. Sammy grabbed his sister and ran. A howling rose behind them, and he dragged her along even faster. Turning down the alley between the Foster and Lee places, he knew he couldn’t outrun the mob; he was just a kid and he was carrying his little sister. Pulling Janice into the deep shadows around the Fosters’ shed, he crouched there, tucking Janice against the building and covering her head with his arm. Hed protect her as best he could. He tucked his own head down and closed his eyes.

  He wanted to run away from these awfui people, find a better place to hide. Twist understood as the terror-born, desperate need of young Sammy Verner called to the city spirit, wrapping its protection around him and his sister. It was only a small, weak spirit, much too small to have covered and hidden the whole family from the mob, even if it were not already too late.

  A tentacle of the mob surging down the alley brushed unseeing past the huddled children. Not finding its victims, the tentacle retracted back to its parent body as the mob moved on down the street. Now they turned their fury against the Andersons’ house, burning it completely before moving on again.

  Sammy stayed huddled where he was, hugging his sister. Sam didn’t dare move even after she had cried herself to sleep. She needed her sleep. Mother had said so. He cried, too, but would not let himself sleep.

  Then a man came walking down the street and crossed the mouth of the alley. He was dressed in fine clothes. The flickering light of the fires glittered from gold on his fingers and from the head! of his cane. He looked like a rich businessman, out of place in the burbs. But he didn’t act out of place; he acted instead as though he owned it all. Sammy Verner didn’t know him, but Twist did.

  The man was Mr. Enterich, an agent of the dragon Lofwyr. Ever since the Haesslich affair, Enterich had been a symbol of duplicity for Sam. the perfect corporate false front for the savage and duplicitous maneuverings of the worm that gnawed at the wood of society. Twist had no memory of Enterich being present that night.