A Game of Universe (28 page)

19

O
ur footsteps made crisp clicks across the granite floor. They echoed off the far wall, past an information obelisk full of neon. The lobby was empty save a janitor and a tour guide who sat together, sipping mocha la oranges under a painting of Cain strangling his brother Abel. The gift and coffee shops were both closed for the evening. The guide gave us a sharp glance, irritated by our late visit, and curtly informed me: “We close in fifteen minutes.”

I gave him a sheepish smile, shuffled over to the information obelisk, and asked it where the John Wilkes Booth statue was. It illuminated a green path on the floor to show me, then wished us a pleasant visit. Lily, Quilp, and I followed this pistachio-colored trail through three galleries—Mayan sacrificial altars; Martian tapestries from the New Kingdoms, their threads still flickering electric blue; and Renaissance oil paintings on loan from the Vatican.

Framed in gold,
Brutus on the Senate Steps
caught my attention. I liked the piece because Brutus looked so determined marching down those steps, while the other senators were bewildered and bemoaning the death of Caesar.

We come not to praise Caesar,
Fifty-five said.
We come to dig him up.

These
objects d’art
glorified murder. It was for the cadets and tourists; it made the Corporation appear civil, clothed what we did with a history and a thin veil of respectability.

There was some truth in the lie. After the First Expansion, when man had explored only a handful of stars, and empires and bureaucracies vied for territory, Umbra Incorporated had been an instrument of revolution. They pruned away rotten officials and corrupt leaders, making way for healthier growth. But when the first supraluminal impeller was successfully tested, and suddenly man could be anywhere he wanted in the galaxy, everything changed. The Second Expansion exploded with wonders unknown, contacts with alien societies, new technology, war, xenophobia, disease—exponential growth and ferocious decay. To survive the transition to a galactic corporate market, the Corporation adopted a policy of eliminating its rivals rather than competing with them. Now, there were no noble sentiments or talk of revolution, only profit.

It never used to bother me, but now with Osrick in my mind, I felt a twang of uneasiness. Murder for profit, murder as a career, murder was all I had left.

I quickened my stride. We had to be out of sight by the time the museum closed. The green line turned through a scalloped archway, into the Hall of Heroes where six hundred statues of the greatest assassins stared at us. I counted one hundred twelve pairs of cutthroats, then halted at a golden bronze Mati Hari, strings of real pearls, impossibly full lips, and erect nipples beneath her beaded dress. She watched a dapper Mister John Wilkes Booth opposite her. He still wore his opera tuxedo. Behind him were two flags, red and blue stripes, one set parallel, the other crisscrossed, and both spattered with blood, powder burns, and white stars. I brushed these curtains aside and perceived the faint outline of a door set flush in the wall.

“Quilp?”

He ran his finger along the door’s seam, then stopped and pushed. A tiny optical port popped open. He removed a scanner from his bag. Fifty-five noted an accelerator pistol in there. Quilp adhered a socket over his eye and plugged in.

“I’ll be a few seconds,” he whispered. “The operating system is resisting me.” Without looking, he fished through his bag, removed a capsule, piss-yellow chlorozeneatol, and pressed it to his neck. It hypercompressed, his skin flushed, three heartbeats, then he declared, “I’m into the security network. Hang on.”

I backed off and let him work, glancing up and down the corridor. Empty.

Lily read the display at the base of Booth’s statue. She wandered over to Mati Hari. How long until she figured out what Umbra Corp was? What I did for a living?

Forget her,
Fifty-five said.
Imagine this scenario: Quilp sets off the alarms instead of shutting them off. We’re caught, and he squeals about our freelance job. Hell, they might even reward the creep for turning us in.

He’s not that smart,
I said.
Besides, I can’t circumvent all the security. We still need him.

So steal his mind.

And be stuck with him forever? Inherit his addictions? I’ll pass.

A breeze tickled my face, and the flags rippled. I pulled them aside and saw the door, a meter thick slab of alloy, floating silently open. Quilp sat cross-legged, face rigid with concentration, eyes darting back and forth disabling the security programs. Two spent ampoules dangled from his neck. He hadn’t bothered to remove them.

“Quilp?”

He grunted.

“Give me ten minutes to get rid of any guards, then follow. We’ll be leaving from the top. Understand?”

He nodded.

I took one step through the opening, and Lily grabbed my arm with her gloved hand. “My husband,” she said, “I wish I had a token to give you, a kiss or a life-protecting charm. Alas, I do not. Please be careful.”

“I will,” I replied, then slipped through and heard her whisper: “Return to me the Cup of Regulus.”

It was dark inside, so I unwound the ocular enhancer from my memory. The shadows melted and revealed a short hallway that ended with a blank wall. It also revealed a hallway crowded with copies of myself, a dozen other phantom Germains.

It startled me for a second, seeing so many of them. Last time, in the catacombs under Castle Kenobrac, there had been only one duplicate. Why were there so many now?

Some walked forward, cautiously, pistols and blades in hand, others had just entered the hall, and one scaled the walls like a spider. One duplicate stepped upon a faint circular outline in the floor—a flash of light; his skin dissolved, bones eroded, and he vanished. They all flickered then and faded. Had I the time I would have released the ocular enhancer repeatedly to follow these ghosts. Time, however, was one thing I had little of, so I continued.

From the architectural plans, I knew a lift was at the end of this corridor. Quilp had to bring it down and open it. Before I took a step, however, I meticulously searched the floor, ceiling, and walls for sensors or booby traps. It looked clean, but I trusted nothing.

I took fourteen steps, and with each one I waited for alarms to sound, an explosion, or gunfire. Nothing. The wall dissolved and I stepped into the lift. As the door faded back into place, scanners turned on. The copper band about my wrist tingled. Its obscuring circuits made me appear harmless. If it failed, the elevator would halt, maybe they’d gas me. I wouldn’t even get a chance to fight back.

The odds are in our favor,
the gambler said.
You’ll fill the straight. Don’t worry.

Sweat trickled down the small of my back.

The door opened. No squadron of guards was there to greet me, and no sirens shrieked. I made it to the second floor.

Yellowed light globes twinkled along walls that stretched three stories tall and were covered with a hundred thousand ivory squares. Within the span of one hand, I covered a five by five patch of the little plaques. Beneath were the atomized remains of the cadets who never graduated, the ones who were
almost
part of our brotherhood. Medea slept here. The squares weren’t labeled though, so there was no telling which one she was.

Setebos’s stolen plans indicated there was a sensor web on the ceiling. I looked up and squinted. It was there: fragile threads of optics and vibration detectors that looked like cobwebs. My enhanced sight saw it was dark and inert. Good, Quilp was on the job. A simple stroll down this corridor, another lift, and I’d be on the third level. Perfect.

My elation faded with every step, though. I couldn’t help thinking of the thousands of fallen classmates behind those squares. So many to die young and without purpose. The weight of their deaths was a heavy thing to wade though.

Get a grip, junior,
Fifty-five hissed.
That Osrick guy must be turning your insides soft.

At the end of the chamber, I waited for the elevator.

Thirty beats of my heart passed. Quilp should have it down by now. A faint imprint of circuitry outlined the wall. The lift was here. It just wasn’t opening. Maybe Quilp got caught. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t stand around and wait. Rubbing my hands and shuffling my feet, I primed the surfaces of my gloves and boots. With the touch of a spider, I scaled the wall.

One knock on the roof. A dull solid metal sound returned.

I pulled off my right glove, then squeezed my thumb and pinkie together, and unlocked the first of the seventeen mnemonics of the
Theorem of Malleability.
Memories of harmonic oscillators, secret alchemy symbols, and Fourier transformations welled up from my unconscious. Power collected in my hand. Fog overflowed and drizzled to the floor. Filaments of frost crept down my arm, and my fingers erupted with lavender flames. There was no pain, no burning, only concentration and cold. I touched the ceiling. It was firm, then it softened to slush. I sculpted a hole large enough to wriggle through, then let the metal solidify.

Up through the opening and onto the third level I went.

The Hall of the Honored Dead had a medicated, antiseptic smell. An elevator stood open on my left, and to my right, a corridor sloped up. The walls, ceiling, and floor were a polished stainless alloy with spiral patterns buffed upon their surfaces. This passage corkscrewed counterclockwise, higher into the pyramid.

Set waist-high on the walls were markers of polished blue-gray stone with flecks of black. Behind them lay the remains of my ranked predecessors. Some bore the faces of their owners, others epitaphs in calligraphy, family crests, a hundred angels that danced upon the head of a pin, Buddha sitting, Jesus crucified, sword-wielding saints, a cluster of stars, the coiled Universe dragon, rosebuds, and infinity runes. The icons of a thousand religions and the words of prize-winning poets reflected off the walls, jumbled in an unrecognizable collage. And for all the glory, no one was here to see it, except me.

Etched onto Cassius’s grave was an ancient oak. I didn’t recall his file saying he was a religious man, and I didn’t recognize this symbol, but I had the nagging feeling that I should.

A tree such as this has many mythological representations
, the psychologist told me.
Prominent in many religions, it is a symbol of fertility, of—

Can the lecture,
hissed Fifty-five.
We have work to do.

He was right. I continued, yet that sense of recognition lingered.

The graves abruptly ended—leaving plenty of room for future would-be heroes—and the corridor branched. According to the plans, the left way led to a guard station, beyond which was the vault that held the deads’ earthly possessions. The right branch led to the three-way intersection Lily had warned me of.

I went right.

It looked like a normal fork in the hall to me, but Lily claimed the plumbing in the walls was a magic triangle, here to keep an otherworldly creature captive. I squinted. Indeed, there were three faint lines on the floor. In the corner of my vision, I caught a shape: a cloud of clear smoke, luminescent vapors that curled as tentacles might, and disembodied piranha jaws leering. I looked directly at the thing and it vanished.

The guard station might be easier. I turned back.

There was a fat piece of shadow where the wall met the ceiling. With a nimble touch, I crawled up and dissolved into insubstantial black, then inched along upside-down until I hung over the guard station. It was a cube of clear everplastic, and inside a cadet fidgeted, trying to get comfortable in his cramped quarters. In the space his knees should occupy were controls for the artillery outside—a Gatling gun mounted on a universal turret.

I had no desire to see how it worked.

The cube was impenetrable to anything I could do to it, so the cadet inside had to help me. I removed a glove, and got the lucky ring off by first sucking my finger to lubricate it, then scraping it up and over the knuckle with my teeth. I tossed it. The ring bounced once, made a perfect “ping,” hit the wall, rolled, started to spin, wobbled, then came to a stop.

The gun automatically tracked the iron band of four-leafed clovers, and the cadet jumped, startled by the sound. He stared a long time at the ring, frowned, then gave a cautious look down the hall, even straight up, but saw nothing. He touched the control panel.

The copper band on my wrist itched as it deflected the scan.

He unholstered his sidearm, then dissolved one side of the cube and stepped out. Very carefully, pausing to listen in between his steps, he went to the ring, then crouched to pick it up.

Medea fell on him.

A stab into his back, rip across, and she cleanly severed his spine. One wipe of my blade on his gray uniform, then she returned my body. I retrieved my lucky ring. Inside the security station, I disabled the sensors and the force coils on the stairs ahead.

Don’t just stroll up there,
warned Fifty-five.
You’ve memorized the floor plan, but there might be more guards. This has been too easy so far. I don’t like it.

I kept to the shadows and slithered over the stairs so my eyes barely peeked over the top. Ten meters of hallway, then a four-way intersection, take a right, and there was the vault. Simple.

A bubble materialized at the end of the passage and drifted silently toward me. It was wet and black, like a drop of oil suspended in water, and moved fast. If I ran for it, the thing would see me. I dropped down the last two steps, took up a defensive posture, blade in hand, and froze.

This orb floated to the edge of the stairs, and paused, just far enough out of reach so I couldn’t lunge at it. Within the dark globe were all manners of eyes—organic, mechanical, and three that glowed with a distinct magical presence. It
had
to have seen me, yet it rotated on its axis and went back the way it came. Maybe Quilp had gotten to it.

I wouldn’t bet too much on that,
whispered the gambler.

I looked over the edge again.

A second orb appeared—this one patrolled the corridor left to right. The two passed one another in the intersection, exchanged a burst of static, then continued. I counted ten seconds, then the one going right to left returned. Twenty seconds more and it came back, and so did the first orb. That gave me a twenty-second window to get down that hall and inside the vault.