Robert Charrette - Arthur 03 - A Knight Among Knaves (6 page)

Why couldn't things be simple?

A
leaf gusted into the alcove and fetched up against his boot, a fellow refugee from the rising tumult. Another leaf blew in and landed atop the first, clinging to it. A third tumbled
in,
fluttering over the first two and leaping the toe of John's boot to skitter about the alcove in an errant vortex, Joh
n
shifted his foot. The first two leaves joined the third an
d
all three were swept up and tossed back onto the street. John watched them flutter away, tumbling over and around each other. They whisked past a figure moving furtively
along
the street. A slight figure, wearing a familiar floppy ha
t.
The figure wore layered clothing, pure bag-lady fashion, but the jumble of rags couldn't disguise the lithe, lively grace
of
the body beneath them. Spillway Sue.

He watched her approach, waiting for her to notice him. She seemed unaware of his presence in the shadowed entry-way. She had almost passed by the time he realized that she wasn't going to acknowledge him. He stepped out.

And she spun to face him, pulling a pistol from somewhere within the tattered rags. She pointed the weapon at him. Streetlight reflections flashed from the three tiny chrome studs implanted on her cheek, highlighting the smooth curve of the bone and the delicate slope of her nose.

"Tall Jack," she said in a tone halfway between question and statement. Her eyes were narrowed, suspicious.

He couldn't tell if she was glad to see him. "Hello, Sue."

"Ya shouldn't oughta sneak up on me like that."

If a gun had become her answer to anyone approaching her, she was right. He kept his hands clear of his body. She sighed, and the gun disappeared back beneath the rags. He was glad of that. Guns were loud and ugly, not her style at all. "I've been looking for you."

"I know."

"Why have you been hiding from me?"

Instead of answering his question, she scanned the street around them. "Oughta not stand around in the open."

She led him back the way she'd come, back into the shadows from which she had emerged, the darkness was an alley mouth. They traversed several more alleys between the tightly packed buildings before she led him down a short. flight of stairs to a door. Sue unlocked the door and opened
^:
it, gesturing him inside. He went in.

The interior was a rat's warren of trash, its only illumination a fading Bulbstrip™. She led him on a twisting path through the debris to another smaller room, less cluttered but no cleaner. Another Bulbstrip, somewhat healthier, lit the place. A mattress sprawled in one corner. In another, a pers-comp, conspicuous by its newness, sat on a board supported by two sawhorses. A jury-rigged patch connected the box to the building's power line. Another cord, a communications line, snaked up and through a small hole in the construction plastic covering the window. There wasn't much else beyond a box holding a couple of apples, a three-pack of YoHo Choc Drink™, and a few Readi-2-eat™ meals.

"Is this where you've been staying?" he asked. The place wasn't really any worse than his own slump, but he didn't like the idea of Sue staying here. She deserved better.

"It's a place. Guess I'll hafta find another." She shrugged, fiddling with the keys of the perscomp and not looking at him. "Watcha want?"

He didn't want to lose her again. Impulsively he reached out and took her shoulders between his hands. Her muscles tensed under his touch. For a moment he feared that she would tear herself free from his grip, but she didn't. Slowly she turned to face him. She said nothing.

He was drowning in her eyes.

I don't want you to run away from me," he told her when he found his voice.

Her answer was slow in coming. "It's not you."

Then why?"

It's—" She turned her face away. She seemed to be struggling for a way to express the problem. "It's that weird stuff. It's scary, Jack. That winged monster. The creepoid place ya slump. And that elf guy who says he's your father. I don't understand it, Jack. It's like a bad virtual, only it ain't a virtual. It's all too weird."

Sometimes John felt that way himself. Gently he turned her face back to his. "There's nothing to be afraid of."

"Ain't there? Ya telling me ya got it all under control?"

Her eyes were so deep, her warmth so near.

Under control? Hardly.

Mis lips sought hers. After a frozen second, she responded. their hands groped through the barriers of clothes that separated them. His hand found her gun's hiding place. She didn't object when he put it aside; in fact, she helped. There wore more important, more immediate needs. The mattress in her slump was dirty and it stank of mildew, but it was softer than the floor. He basked in her heat, bathed in her passion, and when it was over and they lay in each other's arms, he felt full, satisfied, sated. She curled warmly in his embrace, almost purring.

He would have been content to pass eternity that way, but she wasn't. From beneath the mattress she pulled a headset and put it on. Music, or something resembling it, leaked from the earpiece. John had thought that they might talk. He tapped the headset and raised a quizzical eyebrow.

"Crying Child™," she said, smiling, and slipped the headset onto John. "It's Willie Hunter's new album. I don't know if I like it yet. She's been experimenting a lot since she left Urban Wilderness™. Ya like?"

Experimental was a kind way of describing what John was hearing. The pounding, raucous beat trashed most of the lyrics, but at least it did have lyrics. Most popular sound only used words as another kind of noise, and John had never cared much for music that didn't have a story or theme. Words had always made the music's story clearer for him He tried to find the story in the piece he was listening to. It took a few moments but he finally caught a bit of the tale be hind the music, realizing with surprise that the song had something to do with the legend of Tam Lin. Willie Hunter's plaintive voice was complaining of the queen's "timely tithe to hell."

John was reminded of the passage of time.

"I have to go away for a while," he said.

The suspicion that had been in her eyes when they met on the street returned. To allay it, he said, "I'll come back."

"When?" Her voice was very soft, guarded.

"Soon."

The talk didn't go very well, but in the end, by the time he had to leave, she said that she understood.

"I keep my promises," he told her.

She smiled, and kissed him, and said, "See ya soon, then."

CHAPTER

4

Holger was driving south on the M27 heading for Southampton's old city center when the alarm went up. The agent he'd left active in the facility's computer had detected th
e
signs, watched for and captured the alert, and narrowcast a copy to him. In reaction to Holger's neutralization of gilmore and Chartain, the Department had chosen to break th
e
rules of the test; the alert carried a directive from the big man to all involved agents: converge on the old city center. The free ride was over. Time to watch his back.

He checked the time. Not bad. He hadn't gotten as far as he'd hoped, but not bad.

He was a bit surprised by the directive. Vectoring the opposition in on him was contrary to the rules. Holger hadn't
broken
the rules of the game, just stretched them. Hardly a fair response to break them as a counter, but then it wasn't a fair world. In a fair world, it wouldn't be raining tonight.

At least the big man hadn't gone all the way and revealed Holger's destination point. Not yet, anyway. The game was still on. There was still a decent chance for Holger to come out ahead.

Someone passed him, horn blaring, and sluiced water across the windscreen. The wipers were momentarily rendered useless. When visibility returned to its previous miserable level, the taillights of the car that had passed him were already distant. That driver wasn't allowing himself much

margin for error, given the road conditions. Whoever he was he was in a big hurry. Someone heading to cut Holger off?

He wished he'd thought to have the computer agent primed to survey and relay the messages to his hunters. Even a simple counting function would have told him the number of operatives arrayed against him. Then again, maybe it was just as well he hadn't added any functions to the agent. More muscle would have made the thing more visible to the De partment's safeguards. For all he knew, the agent had been detected and the message he'd just received was what the Department wanted him to receive. Operatives could be clos ing in on him right now. The hurried driver might be arranging a roadblock. Others might be—

Paranoia, he told himself. A useful survival trait, if not overdone. There was no good reason to think his agent com promised. He was ahead in the game. He was doing fine He'd worked to eliminate problems and reduce the trouble he would have in the test, and he'd succeeded. Thinking other wise was just paranoia.

Wasn't it?

Certainly. He'd built a proper fail-safe into the agent. If it had been discovered, its complex of programs would have dissolved and unleashed a code eater to devour the fragments. The only reasonable course was to assume that the agent hadn't been compromised.

He would have felt better if it hadn't been raining.

It had been raining the day of the accident. He didn't remember much about the accident, but he remembered
that,
even though remembering made his head ache. The doctors said that the memory loss and the headaches were to be expected. Typical traumatic stress reaction. They said that in time, when he was better able to deal with it, he might remember. For now, they said, don't worry about it. The doctors had done what they could; the Department took care of its own. Don't worry about the past, they said. Deal with the present. Concentrate on the present.

Good advice, given the road conditions.

He almost missed the exit onto the A33 because he wasn't concentrating. It wouldn't do to miss his meeting with the contact in Southampton. A headache had come out of nowhere to almost blind him. The doctors had said that it might happen. It was mercifully brief; some kind of feedback problem, he guessed. A recurrence at the wrong time could be a real problem. He'd have to speak to the doctors about it.
After
the test was successfully completed.

His agent narrowcast him another alert being sent out on the monitoring system. His testers were putting out a general notice. Case D-23. Holger didn't recognize the code, but the prefix indicated a technical glitch. Not
his
problem if they were having trouble.

The rain let up just before he reached Southampton's old city gate, Bar Gate, but no bar to him. Almost there. Traffic was almost nonexistent as he headed down High Street, doing an impression of a cautious, poky, tired driver, to give himself a chance to assess the site. The streets were empty of people even though the rain had stopped. Given the hour and weather, the only civilians to be encountered would be those caught somewhere by the evening storm—or those who would have even less desire to encounter Holger than he had to meet up with them. That was good.

The Red Lion was ahead on the left. Light showed in the barely translucent old glass windows, advertising the pub remained open, but there was no one loitering in front, nor anyone in sight on the sidewalks. Holger could just stop the car, get out, and walk into the pub. The whole thing could be over in a matter of minutes.

He doubted it would be so easy.

Proof of his suspicion came when he spotted the lurker in an alley across the street. Any attempt at a simple, bold approach would be intercepted. Holger drove on past. He would come back on foot.

He ditched the car in the new carpark built out into Southampton Water next to Canute's Pavilion, a large structure enclosing a maze of restaurants, shops, and entertainment facilities that thrust out onto the Water. Though the rest of the old city seemed asleep there was still a crowd in th tourist attraction; the Pavilion blared sound and light into the night. Tourists, it seemed, didn't care about following the rhythms of the town. He left them to their pointless frolics and set his course away from the light and noise and towar" the quiet city. He headed toward God's House Tower, intending to work his way through the back streets to the rear of the Red Lion. In the Middle Ages there would have been guards awaiting him at the God's House Tower gate; the town had crept out beyond the gate, and the gate itself was gone, and the tower had been made into a museum. A relic— as he would be if he failed the test.

The guns of the two men who stepped out of the shadow thrown by God's House Tower were not relics. They were Smith & Wesson Equalizers™, fourteen-round, semiautomatic, 12mm handguns. Powerful. Expensive. Reputed to be highly accurate, especially when fitted with the TRW Night-fighter™ targeting system, as these were. The muzzle of the weapon thrust into Holger's face was clean, showing very little wear. The weapons were new, their matte combat finish unscuffed except for small laser-cut channels where the manufacturer's serial number and the owner's registration number had been. That last datapoint told him that he was not dealing with run-of-the-mill street toughs.