A Game of Universe (5 page)

I packed my equipment into two large suitcases that were shielded from the casino’s sensors. Then, using the suite’s terminal, I linked to the bank and squared my debts. For the two hundred thousand the gambler borrowed, I paid twice that for a day’s accumulated interest. Next, I located Virginia’s account, hidden in a file marked “Golden eggs.” There were thousands of similar accounts. So much for Erybus being a reformed man. Half the Golden City staff was slave labor.

Before you rescue our pilot,
Fifty-five said,
shouldn’t you take some precautions? I can think of a dozen people who would like to see you dead.

I stripped off my tuxedo, and slid into a shadow skin. It analyzed the ambient light, and canceled it with an identical, but inverted wave pattern, making me a nonreflective piece of darkness. Over this, I slipped into a pair of gray slacks and a white shirt that were thin enough to let it function properly. The shadow skin was no cloak of invisibility. If I moved too fast, its tiny brain couldn’t process the data fast enough and I “blurred.” And in strong light, the batteries got sucked up quickly. There were better models, but this is what Fifty-five packed for me when we left to hunt Omar.

Don’t complain, junior. We didn’t have time to learn new technology. Stick with what I know.

I deposited two hundred and seventeen into her account, then grabbed the Grail database, folded it twice, and stuffed it in my vest pocket. Herding my luggage in front of me, I left the suite, entered the lift, and descended into the lobby of the hotel.

Virginia waited for me, and she neither looked like a casino dealer, nor like the attractive young woman who had kissed me minutes ago. She wore a pilot’s suit: layers of tubes, armor, life-support micromodules, and combat boots. I preferred her in a cocktail dress and heels. Her long hair was drawn back into a tail then stuck down her collar. And upon her forehead was a double silver star, the insignia of a pilot of the second rank. It linked the bioware inside her skull to a starship’s computer.

“Congratulations,” I told her. “You’re a free woman.”

“Thank you,” she said, then immediately asked, “what model ship do you want?”

I thought I’d at least get another kiss for settling her debt, but nothing, hardly a smile.

A professional pilot cannot become involved with her employer,
Celeste told me.
It’s a rule within their guild. No sex on the job.

You might have told me that before.

“I’ll leave the choice of the vessel up to you,” I replied. “All I require is speed, but nothing that produces relativistic effects. I’d rather not worry about time dilatation when I’m working with a deadline.”

“They all have relativistic effects,” she told me. “Diminishing the temporal dilation narrows our choices quite a bit. A space-cutter or a mass-folding generator would be best, assuming the impound yard has one. It’ll be a crap shoot.”

“You’ve been to the casino’s impound yard before?”

She nodded. “They mainly sell scrap, old ships seized from longtime losers, but now and then a rich guy will hit a streak of bad luck. He either sells his yacht or gets sold on the slave blocks. I know the mechanics, so we should be able to get a decent price. How much do you want to spend?”

“Will three million suffice?”

Virginia whistled low, and her eyes glazed over in thought. “That’s a lot of money.”

“Then, please,” I said with a sweep of my hand, “lead the way and let us spend it.”

We marched together through the Golden City, through casinos full of tourists who had forgotten the time, lost in losing their money, submerged in clouds of smoke and flashing lights, mesmerized. Virginia took a shortcut through the red-light level, past the sensuous mud pits, the chamber of horrors, and a medieval castle, complete with princesses waiting to be rescued or captured.

You’ve picked up a tail,
whispered Fifty-five.

We caught an escalator to the next level, where cheap hotels, black plastic rectangles three stories tall, stood one after the other in perfect rows. They reminded me of dominoes, balanced and ready to topple with the slightest push. This was where the unlucky ended their tour of the Golden City. They were too broke to stay anywhere else, and too desperate to recoup their losses to leave.

I glanced over my shoulder and spotted my tail. Indeed, they were obvious. Four gigantic men, more oxen than human, pushed their way up the escalator to get closer. Their muscles bulged and flexed under their tight shirts—so large they had to be implants.

We stepped off the walkway, and I ushered Virginia into the nearest glass elevator and punched the button marked “S” for spaceport. Below, I saw my four friends pile in the next available lift and continue their pursuit.

We were about thirty seconds ahead of them.

Up three levels, through twenty meters of foamed concrete, then the doors dissolved and we walked onto the spotless white tiled floor of the spaceport. Clusters of bank terminals, instant-win machines, souvenir vendors, and fast food joints were strategically placed so the tourists couldn’t help stopping to spend their money. The place was packed with a crowd of fresh arrivals all heading in the opposite direction than we wanted to go.

Overhead, through the clear dome, ships propelled by waves of gravitons or mystic sails effervescent with wizardry drifted lazily by, all with different trajectories like motes of dust. It always fascinated me to watch them.

“There,” Virginia said, and pointed to a hanger on the far end of the ever-plastarmac, “that’s the impound yard.”

“Why don’t you go ahead of me?” I suggested. “There are a few things I have to take care of before we leave. I’ll catch up to you in one hour.”

“One hour,” she said, “you got it.” She then marched into the crowd and disappeared.

I must caution you about this pilot
, said the psychologist.

Dragging my luggage with me, I ducked into a restroom to change clothes and arm myself. The bathroom had four stalls for privacy, a locker area, six urinals, and a smiling attendant.

I smiled back and said, “Beat it.”

“I beg your pardon, sir?” His grin vanished.

I dug an orange token out of my pocket, flipped it to him, and said, “Leave.”

The attendant’s smile returned. He left.

The psychologist continued,
I sense from her an unusual loyalty for you. This is common for a woman who is rescued from an unpleasant situation; however, you should be aware of certain emotional dangers
—

Later,
snapped Fifty-five.
We’ve got work to do. Did you see? Your pursuers wore gold crosses, crucifixes with a single eye in the center.

The Order of the Burning Cross,
I said.
Sister Olivia’s men.

My former Master had lousy timing. I was happy to know he lived, in some fashion, but his appearance at Erybus’s meeting put me in a precarious position. The others thought I was an expert on the Grail. If I were in their shoes, that’s what I’d think too, and I’d either pump me for information, or eliminate me, or both. Probably both.

I double-checked my shadow suit’s batteries: full. Good.

My favorite blade was under my sleeve in an ejector sheath. Why bother to carry a knife when I had an arsenal of modern weapons? It was the best close fighting weapon. It couldn’t be dampened (as Gilish’s plasma tube in the Turquoise Room had been), it couldn’t jam, or run out of ammunition, but most of all, there’s nothing like a length of steel in your hand, its weight, edge, and balance a natural extension of your arm. Besides, with the persona of Medea to help me, I was one of the best swordsmen alive.

This particular weapon had a self-stick grip inlaid with black opal, and a straight double-edged blade enchanted to slice through normal metals like paper, but never to cut its wielder.

Next, I took a recoilless accelerator pistol from my bag. While it occasionally did malfunction, and did run out of ammunition, it handled most trouble before I had to use a blade. No larger than my hand, it was easy to hide and easy to use. With a brush of my thumb I could adjust the power from the lowest setting, which welded metal, to the highest, an overload discharge, without moving my finger from the trigger. Into its grip went a bar of depleted uranium, which was ionized, then accelerated to a fraction of light speed. These jewels of kinetic energy ripped through stone like tissue paper, not to mention what they did to human flesh.

I sensed Medea close. She knew what was about to happen.

Your rings,
she reminded me.

Thanks.
I fished two rings from my bag and slipped one onto each hand. They were emerald green, but when held up to a bright light, they shimmered with rainbows. Inside each was a core of high explosive, and about that was wrapped a hollow wire filled with nerve toxin. The blast didn’t do much damage, but the cloud of poisoned wire fragments made for an effective antipersonnel weapon.

Last, I gave the copper band on my wrist a twist for luck. That made the gambler happy. Without its obscuring properties to confuse the spaceport’s sensors, I’d never be able to carry the tools of my trade.

I left the bathroom and returned to the crowds surging through the terminal like salmon swimming upstream. A bellhop slid up to me and offered to carry my luggage. I hefted my suitcases onto its flatbed and ordered it to the impound yard. Then, as it left, I snapped the antenna off. This would mean a trip to the repair shop for the robot, but only after my bags were dropped off. I’d be long gone before anyone traced my luggage or me.

My escorts were still with me, milling about, reading magazines, and trying to be inconspicuous. There was little chance of that. They were two and a half meters tall, and followed me with obvious bovine eyes. All very unprofessional.

I went to the ticket counter and booked passage for Virginia and me to the middle of nowhere, then sat and watched my tails watching me, hoping to give her enough time to find a decent ship. Half an hour, then I stood, stretched, and strolled back to the bathroom. This time, my muscular friends decided to go in with me. It appeared an ambush was in order … for one of us.

One stall was occupied.

You’ll have to eliminate him,
said Fifty-five.
No witnesses.

Dialing the accelerator pistol to its lowest setting, I welded the stall’s latch in place. By the time the fellow inside pulled up his pants and crawled out, it would be over.

I moved my fingers, thumb to pinkie, first, followed by three other rapid mnemonics that released the ocular enhancer from my memory. The blue-tiled room turned brilliant in my boosted vision, and I saw everything, every scrap of toilet paper stuck on the floor, every character of graffiti etched into the mirrors, and the thousands of fingerprints smeared on the aluminum condom dispenser.

I shot the lights out.

The man inside the stall cursed at the darkness, cursed again when he jiggled the hot latch, and cursed a third time with scalded fingers stuffed in his mouth.

Witness eliminated,
I informed Fifty-five.

Someone entered, then hesitated, uncertain what lurked here in the dark, and quickly closed the door. It opened a crack. A grenade was tossed in, and the door slammed shut again.

I ducked, rolled into the corner, and covered my head. There was no explosion, only a whisper of gas from the device. Good, they wanted me alive. That gave me an edge. The room started to spin, my tongue went dry, and vision blurred. I had to get out and quick.

They wanted me to make a run for it. I would, but not in the direction they thought.

I picked a wall, dialed the pistol to full power, and fired. A shower of white ceramic chips, foamed concrete, and metal sparks filled the air where I blasted a hole. Water erupted from the wall, dousing me, and steaming where it touched the molten stone. I stuck my hand into the opening, past ruptured water pipes. It was a hair too small for me to get through. I could have made it larger, but water was everywhere. Shooting now would just get me a face full of steam. Gritting my teeth, I dislocated my shoulder, held my breath, and squirmed into the newly made hole, through the rushing water and brushed against scalding stone. It hurt like hell.

I fell into a narrow access corridor stuffed with valves, pipes, and air conduits. The air was noticeably clearer. So was my head. It wouldn’t be long before they figured what happened, so I removed one explosive ring filled with poison, set its proximity fuse, and ran.

At the first intersection, I took the descending path and jogged for ten meters before I reset my shoulder. I had done this so many times you’d think I’d be used to it by now. No such luck. The bone ground back into the socket and sent excruciating lances down my arm and across my heart. That was my right shoulder. Had I thought about it, I should have dislocated my left. I was right-handed.

Behind me, I heard crumbling stone, and squealing metal echoed in the tunnel. My muscular friends were widening the hole. There was a dull thump as my ring exploded, followed by a pair of screams. Good.

Hearing footfalls, I activated my shadow skin and flattened against a wall. In these cramped quarters, however, they might hear me, and they were large enough so they might scrape against me if they came too close.

Two men appeared in my branch of the tunnel. They bled from a dozen cuts, wore green glowing low-light goggles, and carried lethal-looking sidearms. They didn’t appear too happy either.

Rest your arm,
Medea said.
Let me take care of this. I am left-handed.

I thought you’d never ask.

4

M
edea pressed my body against the wall, tensed my muscles, and with her left hand unsheathed my blade in one smooth motion, savoring the gesture. She was rated an expert with most firearms and possessed three black belts, but her real passion was for swords and knives—anything with an edge. She was one of the most dangerous people I ever had to kill.

The two men trotted down the tunnel. Up close, they were two hundred kilos of angular muscle, square jaws, and crew cuts that revealed their low foreheads. They didn’t need the pistols they carried; they could tear me apart with their bare hands. The one on the right stopped and waved a scanner in front of him.

Medea crouched into a ball and waited.

I find a hint of cowardice in your actions,
the psychologist whispered.
Every time there is barbarity to be done, you release her.

What do you mean?

Killing without guilt. It must be convenient for someone in your line of work.

I might have argued, but why? He was right. I didn’t enjoying killing people. It’s just what I did for a living.

The muscle boy with the scanner whispered to his partner, “He’s close. I’m not picking up a heat trail, but his footprints end here.” They both looked up, thinking maybe that I crawled into the network of pipes overhead. No such luck.

Medea moved then, a shadow in the shadows. She kicked low—knocked the one closest to her off his feet.

The other one shot at her. A sticky net expanded and hit the wall, sounding like a wet towel snapped. It stayed there, aimed too high to touch Medea.

She lunged up and caught the gunman in the soft under parts. Beneath his skin was a layer of armor, a weave of metal and carbon fibers, but my enchanted blade easily slid through, up into his guts, and pierced his heart. A single convulsive cough and he died.

She had time to shoot his partner while he got to his feet, but instead she kicked his pistol out of reach and flicked off the shadow skin. She wanted to take him up close and personal. She wanted him to try to kill her.

When he saw Medea step from her personal shadow, he charged.

It startled me how fast he moved, but Medea was ready. She stepped out of his way, grabbed his arm, and twisted. Something popped. Using his tremendous momentum, she directed him into the concrete wall. The crack of skull on stone, and he fell stunned to the floor. Medea finished him there, once across the throat and again in his back to sever the spine.

“Is that all?” she asked, disappointed, and glanced down the tunnel for more playthings. There were none in sight, so she released control of my body.

I immediately caught the scent of blood, thick in the air, and felt my muscles burning with her leftover adrenaline.

Medea was a homicidal psychopath (the psychologist confirmed this diagnosis). She lived for the thrill of murder. That was all there was to her, all that I absorbed from her soul. Ironically, this made her the best behaved of all my personas, because she never wore my flesh too long. She stayed only to kill, then departed, unable to understand any other aspect of consciousness.

There were probably more of Olivia’s men around, so I ran.

A dozen twists and turns, and I found a passage that doubled back under itself, back under the runway and out to the hanger where I hoped my escape waited. Stenciled over the entrance were the words: ABANDONED #A-11. DO NOT ENTER.

I ignored the sign, entered, and sank knee-deep into foul smelling sewer.

It was familiar terrain. After the death of my Master, it was in the sewers I hid. A shadow of guilt entered my mind, which I banished before the psychologist had a chance to dissect it. Unfortunately, like the smells rising from these murky waters, the incident would not go away.

Excellent,
cried the psychologist.
Such a rare pleasure to examine your early memories. Continue, please.

Sixteen years ago, my Master died by my hand. He was a popular man with powerful friends, so no expense would be spared to locate his murderer. I had to flee.

There were two options: leave the planet, which cost more money than I had, or go underground, literally. Only meters of stone would block the divinations and probes the police used to locate criminals such as myself. The logical decision was the sewers. I had the ocular enhancer to see in the dark, and if I could stand the smell, I might have a chance.

The sewer was a maze of tunnels, drains, concrete, and earth that mingled with pungent urine and excrement. I wandered there for ten weeks, all that time afraid of the police finding me, and afraid of my Master’s spirit rising from the water to avenge his death. But those things never happened. The only phantoms that roamed the wormholes were my own feelings of guilt.

That didn’t mean I was alone.

The sewer was alive with predator and prey. There were insects with white bodies, long antennae, and stingers. There were leeches to suck the blood from my legs. There were floating colonies of microbes that glowed faintly red, and dissolved any organic matter they happened upon. Also here were mole-like creatures, no eyes, with whiskers longer than their body, inoffensive, except for their taste. They were hunted by the king of the underground, the lermix.

Lermix swam and slithered faster than I ran. It wasn’t a worm, nor a reptile, but something of both with a translucent segmented body that stretched for a dozen meters. Tiny mouths covered the creatures’ tentacles, that touched, tasted, and dragged them through the darkness. And they stank, stank like nothing else in the damp rotting place, of rotten eggs and month-old milk. I learned to run whenever I caught that odor.

I might have stayed there forever, forgetting my life on the surface, had not Fifty-five crossed my path. Most of the time, I didn’t need to see. I heard everything I needed to amidst the continual dripping of water, and that’s how I detected him. His heavy strides and rhythmic sloshings echoed ahead of him.

I backed away from the source of that noise, and released my ocular enhancer.

The sloshing stopped.

With the veil of darkness lifted from my eyes, I saw a man, ten meters away, wearing green phosphorescent bug-eyed goggles. He turned that unnatural gaze my way, grinned, then started toward me, sending a wave of filth in my direction.

He must be the police. In a way, I was relieved to see him. At last, I’d have a chance to explain what I did and why—explain that it was an accident. But he didn’t look like a policeman, no uniform, no partner … although he did have a gun strapped on his shoulder.

I ran.

Plowing through the waist-high water, I heard him laugh behind me.

I sprinted, given new energy from my fear.

Usually, I took care not to run. It stirred up the stuff that had settled on the bottom. I gagged on the stench—ammonia, vomit, and rancid table scraps—coughing while I struggled to keep ahead of him. Spending the last seven years in libraries didn’t help either. I was in lousy shape.

His sloshing got closer and closer.

I had to hide. And the only thing to conceal myself in was the water. To drink a drop of it however, was to endure cramps and diarrhea for days. I had to be careful. I ducked around a corner and saw what I wanted, a deep pool where the stone of the tunnel sagged. I plunged in.

The cold water was full of floating
things
that I didn’t care to identify. With one hand pinching my nose shut, the other sealing my mouth, I went down to the slimy bottom. Above, I felt the vibration of his boots on the stone. His steps got louder until I thought his next one would fall on my head. A pause. Then he ran, down another passage.

My breath was gone, but I waited until black dots danced inside my lids before I surfaced. Eyes still shut, I cleared my mouth of the poisonous water, spit the putrid taste out quietly, then looked.

He was there waiting for me.

I hesitated only for a second, but that was long enough for him to draw his gun. A strange sound, a polite cough, and halfway between my hip and knee, my leg exploded. I reeled from the impact and collapsed into the swampy liquid. My shattered bones ground together. Pain flooded my mind.

“Gotcha!” he cried and sloshed over to me.

I crawled to the side of the passage, half in and half out of the water, in a daze, not really certain what had happened. I knew I had to get out. The blood in the water, the lermix would smell it. They would come searching with their tentacles for breakfast. Breakfast, which meant fat sausages floating down the sewer, scrambled eggs, pancake boats, and orange juice. I drifted for a moment, not awake or asleep, in a dream state, peaceful, calm, and then the stench of reality pierced my delirium. I saw the man tinkering with a device on my leg, a box of blinking lights and small mechanical arms.

“There,” he said, “that should keep you alive while we talk.”

“What?”

“No, no.” He wagged his finger in front of me, “I’ll ask the questions. Who sent you? The Red Guard, or has Sixty-two decided to take me on again?”

“I was just here,” I whimpered. “I wasn’t sent by anyone.”

He punched my mangled leg and knives of fire flashed along every nerve. I didn’t scream though; the lermix had good ears.

“No one is
just
anywhere, junior. You have guts, though, I’ll give you credit. It’s not every person who’d take a dunk in this stuff. But why make your death a messy thing? I have drugs that can make it easier. Tell me what I want to know, and I’ll give you one final dream.”

The pain sharpened my mind. I was beyond fight or flight—this was when the fox chews his leg off to escape the trap—so I stared into his solid green glowing eyes and told him what he wanted to hear. “OK, it was Sixty-two. He sent me here to track you down.” I had no idea if what I said meant anything, but from the man’s reaction, the nodding of his head, I knew it did.

“And he knows about my assignment?”

“I guess so,” I said.

He frowned and thought about that for a moment. Past the dripping water, past the ringing in my ears, I heard them come, the near silent ripples, and the vile stench that always accompanied the lermix.

The man made a face at this new aroma, but dismissed it and asked, “Where is he now?”

“Not on this world. He said he was going to—”

The lermix were close. I saw their probing tentacles in the dark, reaching forward, touching, mouths opening, and leaving trails of slime. Maybe I’d get lucky and they would surprise my assailant, give me the opportunity to crawl away while they ate him.

He followed the motion of my eyes as they tracked the monsters’ approach. Turning, he didn’t even panic at the sight of the three massive worms. He carefully drew his pistol and fired. A dull thump, and one of the titanic worms thrashed about in convulsions. A second shot and it stopped.

He spared a glance at me, but my head was tilted back in the water, eyes shut, not in pain (although there was enough of that to occupy my thoughts), but in concentration. I prepared the mental construct I swore only ten weeks ago I’d never use, the borrowing ritual.

Underwater, I made the gestures that keyed the mnemonics. It was complex, hideously so. A mistake would destroy my intellect and leave me an empty shell.

Four more shots, and a final fifth, then he turned back to me. “Now junior, you were about to tell me where I could find Sixty-two?”

The sorcery bloomed before me, full in its strength. It snared him in a steel web, penetrated his brain, and forced our minds to touch.

He was astonished, not expecting an attack from me, and certainly not psychology of this magnitude. The man however, managed to slowly bring up his pistol, and aimed it at me with his remaining willpower.

I had an edge. I had used this ritual against a mind greater than his, my former Master, and survived. Still, this man’s desire to live was great, and he struggled like a fish tangled in my net. I let him think he was winning, allowed my concentration to flag for a moment—long enough to remove the weapon from his grasp—then I clamped down on his mind and broke his will.

His stray thoughts came to me. I learned he had been awake for two days planning a murder, and that took its toll on his determination.

Sleep
, I told him.
Rest, and I’ll give you one last dream to send you on your way.
I entered his soul. “Knowledge,” I commanded as required by the ritual. “Give me your life.”

He taught me, unfolded his life for me as a rose would open in the sun. Those inner layers, his childhood, the center that influenced the shape of the outer petals, poured from his mind. Each memory I tore out by the roots. Gone was the family who took care of him with their wealth and love. He wasted it. I took his education in art history, which he only used to cheat his clients with sophisticated lies. Then to the outer petals, the recent recollections, which I discovered were as blood red as mine.

Tiring of simple cons, he purchased an audience with Umbra Corp. They had heard of him and his schemes and were impressed with the moderate wealth he’d accumulated. They took him in, trained him, and made him one of their own.

This Sixty-two he mentioned wanted to kill him. While it was illegal to murder their ranked counterparts, it happened. Attrition meant advancement. The man before me was ranked Fifty-fifth out of one hundred and twenty-eight active members. With his death, Sixty-two moved up one notch to become Sixty-one, as did all the others ranked Fifty-sixth or less.

I took the names of Fifty-five’s contacts, the names of his victims, and the secrets of the Corporation he was privy to. Those were buried deep, shielded from probes, and protected from unwanted intrusion. I tore through his mind, cracked it open like an egg, not caring what spilled out, only wanting that golden yolk: information. And it came, as I knew it would.

I stopped the ritual and let out a sob, not from pain or remorse, but the tender sweet sob of rapture. It was not like the first time, when I destroyed my Master’s mind; this was pure pleasure, the tasting of forbidden fruit. I would have continued, but there was nothing left. His mind was devoid of memory. With no thoughts to command his body, his breath became erratic, bowels loosened, and spasms jangled his body.