Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (23 page)

"I'm not inviting you home."

He didn't expect her to. "This vehicle is neutral ground, Doctor."

She shook her head. "You've locked me in cars before, Kun."

Had he? He didn't remember. "All right, then." He slid across to the passenger seat. "You take the controls."

"So the autopilot can drive us wherever the hell it is you want to get me?"

"The dogbrain is dead," he said, pointing out the shredded electronics under the steering column. He didn't want the car going to a prearranged location any more than she did.

She remained suspicious. "Why should I trust you?"

"I don't know."

She blinked, surprised by his answer. "No prepared bullshit story?"

"I could ask you the same thing."

"Touche." She got in, leading with her walking stick, and closed the door. She kept the stick between them. "This a Department vehicle?"

"Yes." Holger's eyes were riveted to her stick. He remembered strange lightning coursing across its surface, arcing away into—into something he refused to remember. By force of will, he kept his mind inside the car. "Its systems offer us privacy."

"Except for its own little recordings, of course."

"Same as the dogbrain."

"Really? I don't suppose you can prove that?"

He shook his head. Either she believed him or she didn't. There was no reasonable way to offer proof.

"I suppose it doesn't really matter," she said. "You wanted to talk. Let's start with what the hell you're doing here."

What was he doing? He wished he knew. If she meant what had brought him to Providence,
that
he could answer. "They sent me to bring you in. They told me you were a renegade, that you deserted the Department."

"I resigned. If they're calling that desertion, they don't have a good grasp on reality. And if you believe everything they tell you,
your
hold is pretty tenuous as well."

Holger had a good idea of just how tenuous his hold on reality was.
Never show weakness to the enemy,
Mannheim had advised him. Spae might or might not be the enemy, but the advice was sound just the same. "I'm no starry-eyed recruit, to believe my superiors are beyond reproach."

"But do you believe what they told you?"

"You admit that you no longer feel yourself bound to the Department. Do you also admit that you work for Lowenstein Ryder Priestly & Associates?"

"That doesn't make me a criminal."

"Are you aware that LRP is subservient to Metadynamics?"

"Half the companies in this country are connected to Metadynamics. What's your point?"

"Are you saying you didn't know?"

"I haven't looked into their corporate connections. That kind of garbage isn't, important to me. I'm working for a legitimate firm. I'm doing research, the kind of research that the Department, in its infinite wisdom, kept interrupting.
That's
what's important to me. The Department doesn't own me. They never did. Magnus and his people have a little problem understanding that sort of thing."

"What about your oath?"

"What about it?" she snapped. "That oath was a contract. I was doing my part. I came back from the otherworld with more practical knowledge about how magic works than I had gotten in ten years with the Department. I wanted to get a handle on what I'd learned. That takes time. So do I get lab assistance, support of any kind, or even a goddamn pat on the head? No! I get interrogations, innuendo, and suspicion. They treated me like some kind of traitor. Hell, they even threatened to
drug
me, to verify the truth of what I told them. It looks like I got off lightly.
You
they treated like a laboratory animal and made you like it."

"Laboratory animal? You know about the experiment?"

"Is that what they called it? An experiment? Didn't they
even
give it one of their fancy code names? Code Cyborg, maybe? Or Machine Man? How about Implant Operative? What the hell did they tell you to get you to go along like a good little soldier?"

"How do you know what they did?" He didn't even know all of it.

"Your aura is corrupted," she said as if that explained everything.

Aura
was specialist jargon. Weird shit. If that was the kind of answer she was going to give, he didn't want to talk about it. "Let's forget me for the moment. I need to know, Doctor. Do you consider your resignation from the Department to be irreversible?"

"Hell, yes."

"And are you working with Metadynamics?"

"I'm doing my own research with funding from LRP. If that money ultimately comes from Metadynamics, I don't know about it. If the Department has a problem with what I'm doing, they could have sent someone to talk to me. But rational discourse is not their style. You're the proof of that."

"I'm talking to you, Doctor." Rationally, he hoped.

"Look, I've been doing nothing that is contrary to the Department's interests. I haven't released proprietary information, and I haven't told them anything about the Department's programs, capabilities, or goals. As far as I'm concerned, the Department doesn't exist. I'm on my own. There's nothing illegal about that, and nothing that the

Department has any legitimate control over. The Department is just a piece of my past that I'd rather forget. Got it?"

"I hear you, Doctor."

"If I understood what went down back there correctly, you're on the road away from your past as well. If that's true, I might know a place for you."

"Recruiting me, Doctor?"

"Look, Kun. I've got reason to be grateful to you, and not just for today. I pay my debts, when I can."

Pay the debts you can. That's what an honorable man does. Don't worry about the rest. That's what a practical man does. Know the difference between the two kinds
of
debts. A wise man does.
Mannheim's advice.

"I'm not looking for work just now, Doctor."

"Okay, then. Just remember one thing, and you can repeat it to anyone you think might be interested: I don't take kindly to people sending bullyboys to kill me just because I'm not doing my research in their laboratories. Don't start a war you're not ready to fight."

With that she left the car.

Holger slid over and tugged the door closed. His head buzzed too much with it open. Watching her walk away, he considered that his caution had been appropriate. Spae was only one woman, even if she was a specialist; she couldn't take on the Department all by herself. But her threat of war implied allies, which suggested that she was perhaps not entirely truthful about her connections with Metadynamics. They had the resources for a war with the Department, and the Department knew that, and feared it. Or did she refer to darker, more sinister allies from the otherworld? Though he had not set out to do so, he had broken with the Department. Though he would now need allies himself, he was not about to turn in that direction.

He didn't like being adrift. What Spae had told him suggested that the Department had deceived him on more than one score. She alleged a legitimate departure and recounted their continued interest in her with honest, forthright indignation. It had felt true to him.

Assuming he could trust his judgment.

And what about him? The Department had done something to him, something more than the simple enhancements the doctors had told him about. But how much more? And had they used magic? The thought of that possibility made him shudder. But whatever they had used, whatever they had done, who had given them the right? He had accepted the enhancements because he was loyal. He had thought that they would make him better at his job. And he had needed reconstructive surgery anyway, or so they'd told him.

He couldn't remember any accident. They had said it was traumatic memory loss, but now he found himself doubting that statement. How much truth had he been told? Spae was right: oaths were contracts, to be upheld as much by one side as the other. What
did
the loyal man do, when his loyalty was used as a weapon against him?

He didn't like the dark waters he was navigating.

He didn't like the dark streets, either. Time had passed and full night had fallen while he had wandered, pondering his predicament. There were pieces missing, gaps in his understanding, but one thing that he understood too well: he couldn't use the car indefinitely. Its location could be monitored too easily. He hated giving up the peace that its security systems had offered him, but peace wasn't safety. He took what he thought might be useful—and safe—from the vehicle and abandoned it.

He hadn't gone ten meters before the voices started in again. Whispers in his mind, warning him, suggesting that he wasn't doing the right thing, advising him to be careful, to think about seeing Dr. Gilmore. Gilmore could help him.

Could Gilmore make the voices stop?

Report.

If he reported to Gilmore, Chartain would know, and Chartain wouldn't be happy about what had happened to Pankhurst and Linkwater.

The bastards got what they deserved.

Pankhurst is loyal. Linkwater is loyal.

Pankhurst pulled the gun! Pankhurst shot first.

Pankhurst is loyal.

Pankhurst turned on him.

Report!

Maybe he ought to. Wouldn't that be the easiest course? They would sort everything out. He could say that he had become confused, which was true. That he hadn't intended to kill Linkwater, to shoot Pankhurst. A mistake. Maybe even a malfunction with the implants. Such things were possible. Hadn't he demonstrated that he was capable of extreme violence motivated by reflexive response? The report had said that. Reflexive response. He had responded reflexively, hadn't he? He did that when provoked unexpectedly. The incident with Barkins had proven that.

Bar—

The troll. He remembered its hairy, horrible face. He remembered that it hadn't been one of the more terrible things, one of the untouchable ones. He remembered how good it had felt proving that it wasn't one of the untouchable ones. He—

He was crying.

Why in hell was he crying?

God help him, he was on the edge. Over it more likely.

Report!

No, there was no need to report. He was done with the Department. Having killed Department agents, he was more of a renegade than Spae. How long did he have before they came after him? They would, he was sure of that. They couldn't afford to let him run loose, with who-knew-what secrets implanted in him, knowing as much as he did about their operations. They had already shown how much they trusted him; they wouldn't believe that he would not trade on such secrets.

No trust.

Where was the loyalty when there was no trust?

He was loyal to the Department.

But was the Department loyal to him?

Loyalty is the greatest virtue.

He wasn't feeling virtuous.

Loyalty to the Department sometimes demands sacrifice, he would sacrifice himself if needed.

He had believed that. Mannheim had taught him that.

But his sacrifice hadn't been self-sacrifice. Pankhurst had decided to sacrifice him. That wasn't part of the contract. The contract was broken, but the voices wouldn't admit to that. They still urged him on as if nothing had happened. Maybe it was him. Maybe nothing
had
happened. He had bad dreams sometimes, very bad dreams that felt real. Maybe this was one of those dreams.

Pankhurst's eye, behind the Arisaka's sight, was very clear. His face was calm, committed.

Pankhurst. Familiarity training. On a firing range.

No! That was not the view Holger would have seen on a firing range.

Except maybe in a dream.

He was confused.

On the firing range.

No, not a dream, not a faulty memory. Real. He was sure.

Wasn't he?

Report!

He had to go somewhere.

The voices told him otherwise. Could they be trusted? He realized that he'd only heard them so clearly here in Providence. Were they a part of the place, some kind of magical perversion of the city, an arcane pollution that affected his mind? He knew that creatures of the otherworld could play odious games with his mind. They had in another place. Another place...

Somewhere else—anywhere else—he'd be able to think more clearly. That's what he needed. He needed to think more clearly. He needed to be somewhere else. Soon.

Afoot he wouldn't get very far, very fast. He had abandoned the car. The cabs waiting for business folk to depart

the downtown were long gone. But there was a train, and it had service to the airport. That was the answer! From the airport he could go anywhere, somewhere where the miasma of magic wouldn't be rotting his brain.

He found the train station deserted. That was fine. He didn't need anyone observing his departure. The third ticketing terminal he tried was working, and he checked the schedule of commuter runs. Twenty minutes till the next one with a stop at the airport. He could afford twenty minutes. He went out to the platform and sat on one of the benches. It had a good view, commanding both the entrances to the platform and the track in the direction from which the train would come.