The Albino Knife

by Steve Perry

  The guard hurried away to do his assigned chore, and her father turned back toward her.

  "You move well," he said. "I don't recognize the style."

  Her heart rate and breathing had slowed but the reaction to the danger had set in. She had defended herself before, usually from overzealous suitors, once from a would-be rapist, but never against so many armed men. Her father had done most of the actual fighting, but she had been a part of it. Her words spilled out; she always talked too much and too fast when she was scared.

  "It's called Jalka sla Nio, the Nine-strike Foot. My instructor is Kaplanian, from the Nordic Complex.

  The name comes from the nine surfaces used to kick an opponent: the instep from the ankle to the base of the toes, the right and left sides, the ball, big toe, bottom flat, bottom heel, back heel, and the Rodiya jambe." She paused for air,then hurried on. "Actually, the Rodiya jambe strikes are done with the lower leg or knee and consist of another seven moves, even though they are all lumped together as the Ninth Surface."

  She was babbling; gods, he would think that she had lost her mind!

  Khadaji smiled at her.

  Veate took another deep breath and allowed it to escape slowly. "You're used to this," she said, waving at the now-empty hallway."People with guns. I'm not."

  He gave her a moment to relax. "I was scared, too," he said.

  "What?Really?"

  "It never goes away, the fear, not when your life is at risk. Each time is new, each time is different. You learn that if you keep moving, you can survive, but you don't ever really get used to it. It's like a serpent in your belly, cold, waiting to roil around and knot your guts. And I'm long out of practice."

  She didn't say anything.The great Khadaji, admitting that he was afraid? That didn't go along with the image she'd grown up with. He was a man who was supposed to have liquid nitrogen in his veins, a man who had spat in Death's eyes so often that Death had gone blind trying to take him. Dammit, he wasn't supposed to be human! He was supposed to be arrogant, uncaring, and easy to dislike. She had spent years setting him up as somebody unworthy of her, and unworthy of her mother before her. And now, here he was behaving in ways she had never prepared for, never anticipated. She did not want him to have any redeeming qualities. He had deserted her mother, after all was said and done, and had never been the father she had needed.

  Ah, said her little voice,but what would have happened if he had known about you? Would things have been the same ?

  He should have asked!

  Ah.Of course.

  "My mother has always had someone to protect her," she said. "Albinos need protection. I grew up watching her always relying on somebody. I decided I'd never put myself in that position if I could help it.

  Maybe if she hadn't depended on the casino's security, she'd still be here."

  "No defense is perfect," he said. "No matter how strong or fast or clever you are, sometimes you come up short."

  "That's funny, coming from you."

  "I was good, but I was also lucky. It could have just as easily gone another way. Your mother was the target of somebody who wasvery careful andvery good. I doubt that knowing how to fight would have helped her much."

  "Maybe not.But I'm not ever going to surrender my welfare to anybody else's care."

  "Good for you," he said.

  They were so easy to fool that it was pitiful, Wall thought. There Cteelstood, a human echo of a computer ghost who had also been named for another, a man who had once been Wall's most trusted advisor. He'd killed the original Cteel, of course, because the man had betrayed him. Still, it amused Wall to have the name continue. And so now Cteel Three stood in front of the holoproj, hand reaching for the control, motionless to Wall's altered scan, frozen in that way a computer can almost stop the flapping of Chronos's wings. Wall now had the ability to split real-time into so many parts that the flight of a bullet became as the movement of viscous gel on a cold winter's day. He could brake time yet more, could live in his bioelectronic circuits the entire span of a man between two beats of a human heart. True, he did not spend much of himself that way, because while he was a computer, he had been born of woman, and he was in his own thoughts a man still. But every now and then, the ability to play God could not be denied.

  Cteel, a statue, longed for the control, and Wall took a certain kind of joy, knowing he could keep the man that way virtually forever. The metaphysics of it were quite astounding.

  Enough.I release you.

  Cteel waved his hand over the heat-sensitive control and the holoproj blossomed to life. The man on the screen was rugged-looking, as muscular as Cteel himself and then some, with jet hair and emerald eyes, and an expression that brooked no resistance to his will.

  Wall shaped a mental laugh, knowing that the image he created from photons and thought was the idealized image of Cteel's father, an authority figure to the nth degree for the man who cleared his throat now to speak.

  "Commander," Cteel said.

  "You have done well," Wall said. The voice was deep, quiet, but laced with power sonics that beat hypnotically upon the ears of any listener. Where he sat at the table nearby, Tone was compelled to turn and look at the fake man upon the screen.

  They did not know, of course. All of his underlings thought Wall existed in the flesh. He gave different ones different images he imagined they would most respect or fear, and he was literally a man of a thousand faces. Or ten thousand times ten thousand, did he choose.

  "Thank you, Commander. What are your orders?"

  "Leave Tone to watch the woman.Go to the Toowoomba station and wait for a delivery. Be there by noon tomorrow. "

  "Commander."

  Cteel reached up to cut the comlink. Wall turned his attention elsewhere.

  He had constructed for his amusement a room with a skylight. Bright sunshine flooded down upon a cushion upon the floor of his room, and it was upon this cushion that the image of Wall as he had been five years past lay naked.

  Before him, the honeysuckle-scented air shimmered as he brought forth one of his flowers.His flowers.

  Ah, yes.The girls, the perfect children, never more so than now, when he could alter them as he wished, to be anything he wished.God, indeed, to create with no more than desire that it should be so.

  The air shimmered, and the girl came into being. She appeared, was short, petite, just on the budding lip of womanhood.

  She was twelve. No, make that eleven and a half.

  The image altered slightly. The tiny breasts grew a tiny bit smaller, the fuzzy pubic hair thinned to the faintest wisps of down. Yes. Better.

  Blonde.No, brunette.Shining hair falling to her sweet and tight buttocks. Skin colored like thimblebee honey. Long lashes over sky blue eyes.All atremble, this newborn virginal child. Here.Now.His.

  "Wh-who are you?" she asked. And the voice was of course perfect, high, nervous, but curious.Wanting to know more, much more.All those things that he, Wall, could teach her.Afraid, but drawn. In joy and pain she would learn, but the joy would more than mitigate the small pain and the tears would become only a faint memory. She would know pleasure to her depths and be ever thankful to him for the lessons, for he was the kindest ofmen, and gentle beyond compare.

  "I am your friend," Wall said. "And you are my flower, come to lay your sweet petals on me."

  The girl looked puzzled.

  Wall raised one hand languidly. "Come over here, child. I will teach you everything you need to know."

  He had her hesitate, the part of him that had built the fantasy. He could keep the two parts almost separate, the computer god and the naked man, almost, but not quite. It took some of his pleasure away from it. Although these flowers were more perfect than any he had known as a man, although he could make them be or do anything he wished, the anticipation, the wonder, themystery was lessened here. He would trade the total control for the imperfections in the smallest part of a second, were that in his power.

  To feel the living skin
against his own for real once again would be worth all that he could do in his most virulent fantasies.

  And it was going to happen. Soon, he would be able to open the petals of a real flower once again. He was going to torture and kill his enemies, yes, of course, but he was going to start a new garden, and therein would be hundreds of young flowers, awaiting his gentle and caring hands. They had called him perverse when he wore flesh, but they were fools and did not know, could never know the truth of it. He gave his flowers joy, and lesser men envied and hated him for it.Fools, all of them.

  As he desired, the girl overcame her hesitation and came toward him.

  Marcus Jefferson Wall smiled, and reached up for her.Such a beautiful child.And so lucky to have found him.

  "Sleel?"

  The matador wore his know-it-all grin as he sauntered into the rental cube where the others waited.

  "Found the guillotine seller," Sleel said. "I persuaded him to give me the name of the guy who bought them. I asked him real politely."

  Dirisha said, "And—?"

  "The buyer did his business by com. The arms dealer keeps recordings of all calls. He can traceback the callers, so I got an address. And look at this. The buyer did it on visual."

  "That doesn't seem real bright," Geneva said.

  Sleel pulled his belt computer and tapped in a file number. A quarter-scale holoproj lit the air.

  Bork and Geneva moved closer as Sleel turned the unit so that the image above it faced them. The man on the screen was talking, though Sleel had not triggered the sound.

  Dirisha felt a chill touch her. She knew the man on the holoproj.

  So did Bork and Geneva . Bork got it out first, in an awed voice: "Massey?"

  Sleel looked serious, unusual for him. He added the speaker's voice. It was Massey's voice, too. And'it was impossible, not just impossible, butfuckit impossible, because Massey was bootsole colddead . The last time Dirisha had seen him, he'd been floating in a haze of his own crystalized body fluids in Deep outside of the shipRaymond Bartlett . The best medics that ever lived could not bring a man back from vacuum rupture and hard freeze, and the exhaust of the escape ship in which Dirisha had been fleeing from theSoldatutmarkt spy would have cooked the body to a black crisp on top of that. No way could Massey be alive. No way.

  So, unless the people they were hunting were capable of miracles like bringing back the for-sure dead, this had to be a trick. They must have known that we'd get this far, Dirisha realized. They've been too smart in hiding things to let this accidentally slip past. Somebody who knew about Massey, knew enough to build a fake image of him complete with the right voice to taunt them, was involved in all this.

  Who? Why?

  What did it all mean?

  Chapter Twelve

  IT DIDN'T TAKE long to find out that the six who'd bypassed the casino's security were no more than relatively ignorant hirelings. Their leader had not met the man who wanted the job done, said job being to capture Khadaji and Veate, only seen him on the comlink's holoproj. What were they supposed to do with the pair, once they'd been collected? Wait to be contacted. How had they managed to get past the electronic safeguards in the casino? They didn't know; it had all been arranged by somebody. They could not say what they did not know, and it seemed that they knew little.

  A few days after the aborted kidnapping, Khadaji received a call from Earth.

  It was Diamond.

  "I have the analysis on the mirror bomb," he said.

  Khadaji nodded at the image of the younger man floating in the air in front of him. "Yes?"

  "It was the same lot as the stuff that blew up the exhibit here, but timed differently. This one wouldn't have oxidized enough to detonate for another two weeks, at least."

  "Odd," Khadaji said.

  "Yes, isn'tit. Here's something else you'll probably find interesting. If we assume that there was zero or minimal oxy content before the device was exposed to the air in Juete's cube, then my calculations indicate that the mirror was there about six days.Between one hundred and forty to one hundred and fifty-five hours, roughly."

  "Put there well after Juete was kidnapped."

  "So it would seem."

  "Any way to trace the origin of the explosive?"

  "We're working on it."

  Khadaji discommed and leaned back in the form chair.Very interesting indeed. Somebody was playing games, and they were fairly convoluted.

  A few hours later, he got a call from Dirisha.

  "Hello, Emile."

  "Dirisha.How are things on your end?"

  "Kinda odd."

  "There's the key word of the day.How so?"

  She explained to him about their visit to the docks in Dogtown, and the holoproj recording of Massey.

  She transmitted a copy of the recording, and waited while he quickscanned it.

  "What do you think it means?" she asked.

  "I think it means somebody is playing with us."

  "Yeah, what I figured.Who?"

  "No idea. Where do you go from there?"

  "We're all running down our sublevel contacts. Bork knows somebody who knows somebody in Black Sun."

  "Take care."

  "Of course.What about you?"

  "I'm going to work the political end. Rajeem has lists of those fairly high up in the Confed who fell hard when it came down."

  He felt another presence arrive in the room, behind him.

  That would be Veate, coming back from breakfast in the casino.

  "Keep us posted," Dirisha said. "How are things with your daughter?"

  She was standing right behind him, but he didn't hesitate. Call it like it was."A little strained. She's a pretty sharp kid, though. You ever heard of something called Jalkasla Nio?"

  "New Nordic foot-fighting," Dirisha said. "A guy broke some of my ribs with it once.Long time ago."

  "Veate is good at it. We had a little trouble here and she held her own. She's okay when things heat up."

  "Nice to hear.We'll let you know if we come up with anything. Stay well, deuce."

  "You, too.Discom."

  When Khadaji turned away from the com, he saw that Veate was indeed standing there. She looked embarrassed.

  "I didn't mean to eavesdrop," she said.

  He shrugged. "You're in the middle of all this. Might as well know what the rest of us know."

  Veate watched her father stand and move to the computer. He had been complimentary toward her when talking to the black woman. There was an easy rapport between him and Dirisha, a time-together thing, and on the face of it, nothing to be gained by telling the woman that his daughter was competent and clever. He had known she was there, of course, so maybe he was trying to curry her favor. She couldn't be sure.

  There was an awful lot of all this she couldn't be sure about. Her father was liked by a lot of people, respected and trusted by them. Those things didn't go along with the image she wanted to keep of him.

  • • •

  Cteel arrived at the Toowoomba station, a small storage building in the middle of hundreds virtually identical with it on the industrial side of the city. The shiny gray plastic of the structure gleamed under the Australian sunshine, and the place smelled for some unknown reason of dust and rubbing alcohol.

  As he was many places, Wall was also here.

  It was not necessary for Cteel to go anywhere, but this was all part of Wall's game; he wanted those who were in his employ to think there was a network of living people involved in all this.

  The holoproj winked into life as Cteel entered, and the image floating in the stale air was of a man Cteel had never seen.

  "Yes?" Cteel said.

  "The Commander hasbade me to direct you to theTiboburraMedicalCenter , where you are to collect a certain doctor, one Elbu ra Jambi, and his equipment and assistants."

  "All right.Anything else?"

  "The medic will be conducting a certain experiment at the zoo. See to it that he has the full cooperation of the staff and
any items he deems necessary."

  "Understood."

  Wall dissolved the image, sending it back into his vast memory stores, and watched through his photomutable gel cameras as Cteel left the building. If Jambi's experiment worked, the timetable would be advanced considerably. If not, well, Wall had nothing if not time.

  In any event, there were other things that needed to be done, and Wall set about doing them.

  On Mti, in the student complex, a dissident group that thoughtitself a well-kept secret suddenly found in its electronic mail an offer of aid in the circulation of its literature of revolution. The students would be cautious, but in the end, they would accept the help.

  Large monies were always well protected, and even Wall's abilities could be thwarted when one began speaking of electronic sums in the billions of standards. True, he put all of his energies into it, he could eventually bypass many of these wards, but it was not necessary. Not every organization was as careful as galactic banks and stock exchanges, and into a number of these less-guarded computers Wall could reach.And did. He had enough credit of his own, of course, but causing certain key businesses to either fail or succeed through his manipulations was part of his plan.

  Causing union trouble was easy enough, since unions were almost always paranoid by nature.

  "Are you sure about this?" the union leader asked.

  "Of course I'm sure," said the image of a man who never lived save in Wall's projection. "The bastards are trying to break you. I'll upload the evidence and you can see for yourself."

  "Thank you, citizen worker."

  "It is my duty, citizen worker. No more."

  "How much explosive we talking about here, pard?" asked the gunrunner.

  "A thousand kilos of shapegel.Military grade."

  "No problem, but not cheap, you know?"

  "I am a reasonable man. We can negotiate, can we not?"

  "Why, sure."