Deathstalker Coda (54 page)
Authors: Simon R. Green
“My dear fellow, it was just a job, I assure you. Nothing personal.”
“And I was so quick to believe your lies,” said Douglas. “I should have known better. I always trusted Lewis to guard my back, when we were Paragons together. I trusted him with my life, then.”
“Pity you couldn’t trust him with your fiancée,” said Mr. Sylvester. “But let bygones be bygones. We have an alliance to discuss.”
“Why did the Emperor send you, Mr. Sylvester?” said Douglas.
“Because he needed someone who could negotiate delicate matters without getting too emotional,” said Mr. Sylvester, happy to be back on safer ground again. “And, truth be told, he doesn’t have that many people left he feels he can trust anymore. Possibly because he’s killed most of them.”
“This whole idea of an alliance stinks,” Tel said forcefully. “We’re safe here in the Rookery. We don’t need Finn.”
“The city needs us,” said Douglas. “And we could accomplish a lot more with the support of Finn’s people.”
“But you can’t ally with the Durandal!” said Stuart. “He’ll betray you!”
“He’ll certainly try,” said Douglas. “This is Finn we’re talking about, after all. But for the moment . . . we need each other. And he knows me well enough to be sure that I won’t let personal differences get in the way of doing the right thing. The thralls have to be stopped, and my people saved. And we can only achieve that by pooling our resources. So, we are allies. Because as bad as Finn is, the uber-espers are worse. And by far the most immediate danger . . . Pardon me, Mr. Sylvester; I’m thinking aloud. Tell your master that the deal is made, subject to certain conditions. The first of which is, my help comes at a price. In return for this strictly temporary alliance against a common foe, I demand that he give up to justice the criminal scientists who have done such evil in his service. People like Elijah du Katt, who produced the clone of my brother James; and Dr. Happy, for what he did to Anne Barclay.”
“The Emperor anticipated your request,” Mr. Sylvester said smoothly. “I have both these gentlemen waiting outside. With your permission . . . ?”
Douglas nodded quickly, surprised. Stuart drew his disrupter. Mr. Sylvester walked slowly over to the door, careful not to make any sudden movements, opened the door and beckoned to the masked man waiting in the corridor. He stepped into the room, still carrying his great glass jar under a heavy cloth, and then reached up to remove the silk mask that covered his face. Elijah du Katt peered quickly about him, sweating heavily and twitching nervously.
Keeping a careful eye on the gun in Stuart’s hand, du Katt pulled the cloth away from the large glass jar, revealing the severed head of Dr. Happy. The head was in pretty bad condition. Most of the skin had rotted away, showing patches of discolored meat and bone. The lips had receded back from the protruding teeth, and the eyes had shriveled up in the sockets. Thin wisps of hair sailed away from the misshapen skull, drifting slowly on the preservative fluids that filled the jar. What made it so much worse was that the head was very definitely still alive. The eyes tracked back and forth, fixing on people in turn, and the mouth moved constantly, as though trying to speak. Everyone studied the head with varying amounts of horror and disgust, except for Nina, who pressed forward eagerly.
“Oh, this is just gross! Puketacular! This is going to look really great on the next news broadcast. Lead spot guaranteed; they won’t be able to look away. We were all sure Finn had him killed long ago. Why didn’t Finn have him killed?”
“It wasn’t for want of trying,” Mr. Sylvester admitted, gesturing for du Katt to put the glass jar down on a nearby table. The head bobbed slightly, and a few bubbles popped out of the eaten-away nose. “It seems Dr. Happy had taken to dosing himself with some of his more esoteric concoctions. He was never the same, after he came back from Haden. As I understand it, and I’m quite prepared to admit that I don’t, the good Dr. Happy has been dead for some time, but he won’t lie down. Finn used him as target practice for a while, and then he had Dr. Happy beheaded, to stop him from running around and upsetting the servants. The body then ran about the lab, crashing into valuable equipment, while the head called the Emperor names. In the end the body was captured, cut up, and burned, and the ashes scattered in separate locations, just in case. And he sent you the head. It is yours to do with as you please, and no, you can’t send it back again. The same goes for du Katt, of course.”
“What the hell was Dr. Happy trying to achieve with his drugs?” said Nina, kneeling before the glass jar, and tapping on the glass with her fingers, to try to attract the head’s attention.
“No one’s exactly sure,” Mr. Sylvester said uncomfortably. “Apparently, at some point he saw beyond the boundaries of reality, and what he found there destroyed whatever rational part of his mind was left. All he did after that was throw things at people and wander through the palace corridors singing show tunes. Badly.”
Douglas’s attention was fixed on the sweating, shaking Elijah du Katt. “So, clone master, have you anything to say for yourself?”
“None of it was my idea, Your Majesty! You must believe that! It was all down to Finn, all the things I did . . .”
“Yes,” said Douglas. “All the things you did. Like desecrating my brother’s grave for the cell samples you needed to produce his clone. Like aiding and abetting in the imprisonment and death of my father. Things like that.”
Du Katt tried to speak, but nothing come out, and he stood silent under Douglas’s accusing gaze.
“The Emperor supposed you would want to execute du Katt and Dr. Happy yourself,” said Mr. Sylvester. “So he sent them to you. As a gift, and a sign of . . . good faith.”
“Yes,” said Douglas. “I want to kill them. For all the harm and suffering they caused, for all the lives they poisoned and ruined. But I can’t just kill them. That would be wrong. Personal vengeance masquerading as justice is Finn’s way. I have to be better than that. There has to be justice. There has to be a trial.”
“We don’t have time for trials,” said Diana Vertue, striding briskly into the room without waiting to be invited or announced. “Come on, Douglas; you didn’t really think you could hold this meeting without me knowing? I am a telepath, among other things. What’s the matter; were you afraid I wouldn’t approve of an alliance with Finn? Hell, I can face reality when I have to. A very temporary alliance against the uber-espers is the only sensible answer to our current problems. But we don’t have the time to waste on show trials for trash like this. If you can’t kill them, I can.”
She looked at Elijah du Katt, and he collapsed dead on the floor. She looked at the severed head in its jar, and Nina recoiled with a squeak as head and jar vanished in a flare of psionic energies. Diana looked at Mr. Sylvester, and he flinched and cried out.
“So perish all traitors,” said Diana Vertue, still sometimes Jenny Psycho. “Say hi to Finn for me, Mr. Sylvester. Tell him I’ll be seeing him soon.”
Mr. Sylvester was still shaking when he was escorted back out of the Rookery, to carry Douglas’s acceptance of the alliance back to Finn Durandal.
Douglas Campbell addressed a huge rally of his people, in the biggest open square in the Rookery. It took hours for the crowd to assemble, as damn near everyone came to listen. Nina’s cameras floated overhead, carrying Douglas’s words to the rest of the city, and Logres, and all the worlds in the Empire. Everyone knew about the thralls, everyone knew what the stakes were, so Douglas kept it short and simple.
“We have to go out and fight the thralls. We, and Finn’s people, are all that stand between total domination of Logres by the uber-espers. I know it won’t come easy, to fight alongside Finn’s soldiers. Thugs and bullies and scumbags, most of them. But . . . the enemy of my enemy is my ally, if not actually my friend. There will be time for settling old scores later. After we’ve beaten the uber-espers and their thrall army.
“And we can beat them. Thanks to the training we’ve put you through, preparing for the rebellion, you’re all first-class warriors. The thralls aren’t. All they have is numbers, and there’s a limit to how many of them can get into the city at one time. And because they’re being controlled by minds far away, they won’t be able to change tactics or react quickly to changing conditions. That should give us the advantage we need. And remember: always shoot to kill, even if you think you recognize someone. The people you knew are dead, mind-wiped by the controlling minds. We can’t save or rescue them; their bodies are nothing more than empty shells.
“So, go and prepare yourselves for war, and victory. It is our time, come round at last.”
The crowd cheered him until their throats were raw, brandishing their weapons at the sky, and of everyone there, only Douglas wondered if what he’d said was really true.
Douglas went back to his hotel room, to be alone with his thoughts for a while, only to find an old familiar face waiting for him on the viewscreen Nina’s people had set up. The media tech who’d taken the call nodded quickly to Douglas, and then hurried out of the room. Douglas lowered himself slowly into his chair, never taking his eyes off the face on the screen. Lewis Deathstalker smiled back at him.
“Douglas. It’s been a long time.”
“Yes. Yes, it has. Hello, Lewis.”
“Hello, Douglas. A lot has changed, since we last spoke.”
There was no sign of Jesamine Flowers on the screen. Douglas didn’t ask. “I’ve been talking to one of Finn’s creatures, a Mr. Sylvester. He’s admitted to planting and spreading lies about you and Jes. I’m so sorry, Lewis. I should have known.”
“I did try to tell you,” said Lewis.
“I know you did. But I was rather . . . upset, at the time. You and Jes . . . Oh hell, Lewis. Come home. All is forgiven. Can you forgive me?”
“Of course,” said Lewis. “What are friends for? Even if you did behave like a complete prick.”
They laughed quietly together, for the first time in a long time.
“About coming home,” said Lewis. “That’s the point of this message. The fleet is on its way. We should be with you in a day or two. Maybe less, if the stardrives don’t explode under the strain we’re putting on them.”
“That is good news,” said Douglas. “We desperately need allies with major firepower. Are you up to date on what’s happening here?”
“Yeah. We never miss Nina Malapert’s broadcasts. How the hell did the uber-espers get that powerful?”
“Beats the hell out of us. Have you heard anything about Shub?”
“Just that all their machines have shut down. All our ships’ AIs are offline.”
“I tried contacting Shub for help when it all went to hell here,” said Douglas, frowning. “No one’s answering. No reply from their Embassy, or their homeworld. That has to mean something.”
“Could the uber-espers have taken them out? I wouldn’t have thought they could possess artificial intelligences, but . . . Or maybe the Terror’s got to their home planet?”
“No,” Douglas said immediately. “I’d have heard about that. All the latest reports say the Terror’s still on course, and days away from its next target. What kind of support are you bringing me, Lewis? I could use some good news.”
“Seven hundred and fourteen starcruisers, plus hundreds of ships from Mistworld and Virimonde. And . . . a couple of surprises. On top of that, Jesamine and I, and Brett Random and Rose Constantine, have all been through the Madness Maze. We’re pretty surprising ourselves, these days, if not exactly in Owen’s class. And John Silence is with us! The legend himself! He’s the admiral of our fleet.”
Douglas leaned forward eagerly. “You’ve been through the Maze! What was it like?”
Lewis thought about that for a while. “I don’t know whether it’s a machine, or alive, or both. It opens you up.
Makes you more than you were. It’s like being in another place, maybe the place we were before we were born. It feels like coming home, like family. Oh hell, Douglas, there just aren’t the words.”
“Apparently not. Pour on the speed, Lewis. We need you and your fleet here soon, or you’ll be too late to do anything but scorch the whole damned planet from orbit. Don’t hesitate to do that, if there’s nothing else left. The uber-espers cannot be allowed to leave this world.”
“I’m not sure even a scorching would kill those monsters,” said Lewis. “But you can trust me to do whatever’s necessary.”
“Of course,” said Douglas. “I always could. How is she, Lewis?”
“She’s fine,” said Lewis.
They looked at each other for a long time, but there really wasn’t anything else they could say.
Diana Vertue and the Psycho Sluts labored together to produce a psionic working that would shield and protect the Rookery while they were out in the city. Plugged directly into their unconscious minds, the working would hold the shield in place without their having to think about it all the time, for as long as one of them still lived. There were some in the Rookery who wouldn’t be going out to fight; those too young or too old, or still recovering from the last invasion, and they had to be kept safe from possession, as well as attacking thralls. The shield would keep out the uber-esper minds; they’d have to turn up in person to force a way in, and they weren’t that stupid.
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