by Bill Adams
“Freeman…Sly, is it?” he said.
“It’s okay,” I told him, stepping aside to bring Sturm in front of me with one friendly hand on his back. Van Damm stared at his face. “This is an old acquaintance, Lance Sergeant Freiherr Sturm. His other eyebrow is next door.”
When a nasty shock registers, the arms instinctively move away from the body to bring the hands up—the opening I’d wanted. I reached under and around to clamp a full-nelson on the back of Sturm’s neck.
“Put him out,” I said, and I’d been right, Van Damm had something up his sleeve—a silvery spring-loaded weapon. Sturm’s arms couldn’t break my hold, but his legs were strong; he threw himself sideways and backward from wall to wall of the tiny office in an attempt to dislodge me, knocking over a chair and wastebasket, until Van Damm overtook him with what turned out to be a compressed-air knockout injection. A few seconds later Sturm turned to dead weight and nearly dragged me to the floor.
Van Damm bent down and peeled the remaining shaggy caterpillar from Sturm’s face, then wiped off his fingers as an afterthought. “Just as you described him, no eyebrows at all,” he said. “Some venereal disease, no doubt. Why’d they risk sending the same man after you again?”
“A good sign,” I suggested. “Maybe Malatesta can only trust a few of the Hard Men to back his secret agenda.”
“If that’s who is behind it,” Van Damm said. “We’ll know soon enough. Can you drag him into the next room?”
“Your help would be appreciated, mate.”
In the back room a small cot stood next to a large safe, from which Van Damm removed a folded plastic sheet and a black leather doctor’s bag. I had to hold the man with no eyebrows by his armpits until Van Damm had draped the sheet over the cot; then we lowered him on top of it.
I told Van Damm how I’d happened to encounter Sturm, and the story he’d used on me, while from the black case Van Damm removed a flexible black collar which he fixed around Sturm’s neck, then a set of headphones which plugged into the collar. At my look of puzzlement, he explained that the drugs he employed would keep Sturm from speaking above a whisper. Next he unpacked a variety of knives, probes, and electroshock needles and laid them out on top of the safe.
“We’ll have to get his clothes off before we can secure his wrists and ankles,” he said.
“Can’t you…do it all with drugs?” I said.
He snorted contemptuously. “There is no such thing as truth serum. Hypnotic drugs make subjects want to talk, yes, but they’ll say and believe anything at all. Fine, if you want to hear about how they were abducted by space dwarves in one of their past lives, but no good for our purposes. We want the truth, and the truth always hurts. People tell the truth to avoid a greater pain.
“Look, this venereal mercenary has tried to kill you once—twice, really. He murdered some innocent bystander on the Jade Canal, not to mention his own assassin comrade. And now he’s going to suffer the same amount of pain whether you assist me or cower outside in the bar drinking. But I could use you, and your knowledge of the Pretender’s circle, to navigate my way among the lies.”
“I’m not sure I—”
“For instance—the story he told you next door indicates that they’ve guessed your working relationship with the Foyle woman. Aren’t you curious to learn whether they are holding her somewhere as we speak, perhaps subjecting her to the same sort of interrogation?”
Five minutes later, Sturm was bound and awake, and Van Damm began.
I stuck with him for less than an hour, then escaped into the bar and cowered, just as he had said, over a brandy, trying to blot out the look of Sturm’s bulging eyes—a vein had burst in one, misting half the white with red—eyes that had seen human feelings in me and prayed to me for death. But first I called Foyle’s room from a wall booth, got no answer, and left a message. It was all I could do. La Rete di Venezia did not include a wireless relay system for wristcomp-to-wristcomp calling; there was no demand for it in this high-privacy culture, and loners like Foyle or myself wouldn’t have subscribed anyway.
Nearly another hour passed before Van Damm came out in a fresh change of clothes and a vaguely postcoital glow. He sent the busboy on an errand—although, he assured me, the kid was on his intelligence payroll—and poured me another brandy, commenting on what a filthy habit it was; he drank only seltzer.
“Not much of a challenge, that Sturm,” he said. “Can’t understand a coward like that. No matter what I promise him, he knows he’s not going to live. So why not take the only revenge available, and hold out to the end? I would, I know I would. Of course, I’m fighting for all of society and generations yet unborn, while he knows he’s just a deviant criminal. I suppose that saps the will.”
I nearly replied to this horseshit, but dropped it, finally asking only, “Foyle?”
“They haven’t touched her. They assume that she’s just your tool. And as long as you’re at large, you could make a stink if she disappeared. She’s a celebrity among the Kanalists, you know. Besides, you were right, Malatesta has only a few special agents, and lost one when they tried for you on the canal; he has to conserve his resources.”
“But it is Malatesta.”
Van Damm nodded. “And behind him, a secret society within the navy. Sturm was just an initiate, but Malatesta is higher up.”
“The Few?”
Van Damm was visibly surprised. “I hadn’t realized V. had given you so much background…Yes, it does sound like one of the Few’s fronts. It’s strange, though. I was told we never came into contact with them anymore. The Consultant has targeted secret purges against them regularly for decades; when they do turn up now, it’s always some plot against him personally. I don’t understand why they should commit to this field of collateral destabilization. Unless…but that’s an up-echelon policy consideration. Let’s just say you’ve given me some valuable food for thought. Dare I hope that this assassination attempt is repayment for a successful mission last night?”
“I got in and out, but I didn’t see anything,” I said. “There could have been something there, I just didn’t have time. Malatesta probably suspects me—he always has.”
“But do the Few really care about the Shy Lock, or is it merely outside agents of any kind that they fear? I’ll have to think about this.” Van Damm didn’t look unhappy as he sipped his seltzer. “The immediate objective is to get rid of Sturm’s body. Stay clear of this place for a few days.”
“Willingly.”
◆◆◆
Foyle did get the message I’d left for her, and the next time I called her place she was waiting for me. I took a gondola to meet her. The moment I was on the water, my mind went adrift. Images flashed past with trauma-dream sharpness and lightning speed; they cut and they burned. Domina arched in bed, Sturm on his cot, Foyle’s face lighting up for me, Julia’s shy smile for the Pretender, the kitchen knife in Kostain’s back, a scalpel in Van Damm’s hand, Von Bülow and Summerisle giving me orders, my hand feeding drops of brandy to the gyal-wa mask, Sly’s face in the mirror, the Pretender meeting me sword to sword, three swords thrust through a heart amid falling rain on a Tarot card, “We have arrived, Signore, wake up!”
Foyle’s usual kiss, cool but yielding and sweet, accompanied by a question I couldn’t answer: “Where were you last night?” Coffee to counteract brandy. I was trying to concentrate, to marshal facts. I had to tell her enough of the truth to protect her, to let her know that Malatesta suspected her—
But she already knew; it was part of the news she had for me. “Arn suggested to Malatesta that they recruit me for their special training. I have some guerrilla background—I should tell you about it sometime. Anyway, when he brought up my name, he was told to stay away from me. I’m afraid they’ve guessed I’m spying for you. But Arn didn’t like the dressing down he got; he’s more or less on our side now.
“He told me all about this special training. Malatesta has taken over some of the palace offices th
at were vacated for the run of the play. You know, they cleared out a section beneath your theater during the renovation, and I guess it’s convenient for him to work down there between escorting your Boss back and forth. So he’s holding briefings in those offices at night, when there’s no one to see all these Hard Men using the glass elevator.
“Then, on weekends, the special training teams flitter out to the polar wastes of Dreeland and practice cold-weather commando operations, with an emphasis on seizing command-and-control centers. The target is probably Scandia—it’s an icy hard-luck world where the Column exerts direct control through a governor, much hated. Arn’s just a grunt, no genius, but even he wonders if a dozen or two Hard Men are enough for a coup d’état, no matter how much popular support they may find. He’s afraid that the Pretender will go along for the raid and get caught with the rest of them.”
“That could be just what Malatesta wants,” I said, trying to remember if I’d ever even mentioned the Few to Foyle. If the Few hated the Consultant, and Summerisle really was the Consultant, it made some sort of sense for them to strike at his front man, the Pretender. I supposed. “Any idea when this is scheduled to happen?”
“They’ve completed the training. They have a transport, small but heavily shielded, and gravity-reinforced for ground landings, waiting at the Ventura spaceport—Bay 120. Already fueled. They’re supposed to stay sober and on call for anytime in the next two weeks.”
“I wish I could…concentrate,” I said.
“You’ve got a dress rehearsal tonight and a premiere tomorrow. You’re only human. I’ll keep thinking about it. One good thing—they’re not posting human guards on the transport. They don’t want to attract the attention, and probably don’t see any need. But, of course, there’d still be an alarm system to get past. But don’t worry about that now. Lie down and take a nap.”
I wanted to, but not there—not where she could hear what I might say in my sleep. Holding everything together and keeping everything to myself had become the same thing in my mind, such as it was. I made some excuse and went home.
◆◆◆
I slept for two hours, as badly as I’d feared, to awake with a hammering heart and no breath at all. Despising this weakness, I punished myself with alternate boiling and freezing showers, replaced my gyal-wa, and headed back to the theater, where the players who’d stayed all afternoon looked just as nervous as the latecomers.
But Julia was transformed, a young goddess in her makeup and costume. Her eyes shone as she whispered, “It’s wonderful and terrible, isn’t it? But I’ve learned that I can handle anything.” She put one hand on my shoulder. “You mustn’t worry about me anymore, I’m a grown woman.”
As the star, I got a tiny dressing room to myself. I slowly put on my makeup, sparingly as always—didn’t want to interfere with the gyal-wa’s respiration—but following dead Arturo’s old suggestion that I increase my resemblance to the Pretender, give the audience a subtextual thrill. Do two levels of irony cancel out? On with Manfred’s clothes—not much different from standard Venezian, aside from the ridiculous but princely cape.
I drifted out into the wings, where Ivan paced nervously and Ishigara sat in a lotus position with only the whites of his eyes showing. “Ready to go on?” someone asked. But I had never been offstage, not for months and months—years, really. Funny, there’s always a moment before I do a play when my whole body stiffens with the realization that I don’t remember a single line of dialogue; then it comes back. Tonight was just the opposite. When I finally wandered onto the stage I gave the worst performance of my life, but never had to reach for a single word; I had escaped so deeply into the ritual of the play that I kept all its emotions to myself, projecting nothing to the audience.
I was Manfred, cursed with the belief that I was the only real person in the universe, save perhaps one, who was dead. I could raise spirits and pull strings, manipulate everyone even though they plotted desperately against me, but I took only the coldest satisfaction in it all, and wished only for oblivion, the end of the memories that haunted me.
At the intermission, the Pretender tried to catch my eye as he told the rest of the cast, “In case you were wondering, I’ve told Chris to hold himself back tonight. He’s not going to carry you, he’s going to save his energy. But I want the rest of you to find your highest pitch. Tomorrow night, every part is going to be a star part. Is that clear?” I heard some relief in the replies; he was a good actor.
I turned away from him, saw a mirror, and knew a moment of sheer terror at the sight of a Larkspur face—had I left my gyal-wa behind?—then realization and fury at myself. Made up like him, and not just him—Get a grip, Evan, remember who you are.
Manfred. He toys with them all, sells his soul to reencounter his dead love—his sister Astarte—and then, with a revolution at his back and the powers of hell raining from the clouds, he dies—but on his own terms.
I felt nothing.
Not even shame, when the Pretender got me aside for a moment afterward. “Lose this, whatever it is,” he said. “Sleep it off tonight and burn it off fencing in the morning. I’m not even going to give you my notes. You know how to do this part, and tomorrow you’re going to do it.”
No feeling, no thought, as I stared into the mirror in my dressing room. I dozed in the chair, and woke with a terribly stiff neck, my skin like ice. Changed clothes, and went out into a dark and deserted theater. Alone. But maybe not.
Sounds from another dressing room: soft words, moans, rhythmic creaking. The door was open a crack, and I peered through.
The Pretender and Julia. Of course. They didn’t notice me. How long before Domina found out? Betrayed her husband for nothing. Kitchen knife in her back. Three swords in a heart. Get a grip.
The canals by night, edged in blue light, laughter and candles passing by in boats, music pouring from every dockside club. The air so cold, so very cold. Where am I going, where do I belong?
◆◆◆
I knocked on the door, and Foyle answered in a bathrobe. “I didn’t expect you,” she said, smiling until she took in my face.
“Have to tell you something. Many things.”
“What’s…wrong with your voice?”
“It’s my real one.”
Chapter Twenty
“Your teeth are chattering. Let me get you some tea.”
“This afternoon, you asked where I was last night. I was with Domina.”
She took it like a good soldier. “Lady West?” No expression as she poured tea, just a casual: “ ‘Pumping’ her for information, no doubt.”
“It’s more complicated than that. It’s all one big thing, something I should have told you a long time ago. I’m sorry. But first, I want to say—this sounds so craven, but it’s true—how much I’ve always admired you, even before I ever imagined we’d be together.” I could barely taste the tea or complete the thought.
“I’ve always thought you were the real Kanalist, the straight clean blade I would be if I could. I’ve always wanted to become an honorable man, an enlightened one, a Master. But I’ve…had so much to carry, it’s bent me out of true. I can’t handle it any more, I have to tell someone, and you’re the one, it has to be you. If it hurts you, I’m sorry, but you’ve got to believe me, I never wanted to hurt you.”
She was smiling now, fully protected by a manner almost maternal. “You’re not on stage now, darling. You don’t have to make a speech. I don’t remember either of us swearing eternal fidelity, and Domina West’s tits would tempt a eunuch. I understand, and there’s an end to it.”
“You don’t understand. Sorry to be theatrical, but with me the speeches, dramatic gestures—I can’t help it, they come from the heart, such as it is. It’s who I am, you see. It’s who I am.”
And I took off my mask.
It was as if she’d lost her own face for a long moment of blank incomprehension. But she never took a step backward, and then she whispered, “The voice, too. You’re
…the real one?”
“False to you, I’m afraid, but yes, I’m—”
WHAP! I didn’t even see it coming, a backhand slap with half her weight behind it.
“No clever fucking dialogue, please, just tell the truth.”
I swallowed the metallic taste of blood. “I am the real Evan Larkspur. The one you met two years ago.” Starting that far back made it easier to talk, somehow—just recounting history. “You thought I had a solid cover identity within the Column government, that I could work with you against them. I let you think that. I was really just one step ahead of exposure, as always, as always. I needed the Grandmaster’s ring, so I stole it from you. I was going to create a Pan-Kanalist movement, unite the underground lodges against the Column; I didn’t think you’d begrudge me the ring if you knew the truth. But of course someone else beat me to it, didn’t he? I’m here for the same reason you are, more or less, only there’s a lot more to it than that. And this time, I want you to know everything.”
“Why didn’t you tell me in the first—”
“Because I wanted you. I needed someone in all the universe who would be on my side, and I wanted it to be you, and I knew you wouldn’t sleep with another ‘man of destiny’ like your husband.”
It took another second for that to click, and this time I saw the slap coming but did nothing—WHAP!—to duck it.
“My diary.”
“That, too. Please let me tell you everything. You can do anything you like after that. Abandon me here if you want, you’ve got a right. But let me tell it. Let me get it all out before I choke on it.”
◆◆◆
She let me talk. I put the mask back on, explaining that I had to, or it would starve to death; then I sat on the end of her bed and spilled it all, while she stood across from me stiff and hard-faced.