Chasing the Phoenix (16 page)

As they moved deeper into the armory, the procession occasionally paused so the sappers could cut through a cable or rip out an exposed fuse box. “The less access they have to us, the better,” White Squall explained.

“I have heard it said that it would take a thousand years of concerted effort to dig out the worldwide infrastructure within which the demons dwell,” Darger said.

“All the more reason to get a start on it.”

“We are now entering a run of offices in which scholars documented the expenditures and activities of the armorers,” Exquisite Calculus announced.

They walked on in silence for a while.

“This would be the kitchen … the soldiers' mess … the officers' mess … recreation facilities.”

“What is that tingling in the air?” Darger asked.

“A sign that we are getting closer to our destination,” White Squall replied. “Now hush.”

Exquisite Calculus held up a hand for all to pause. “Security checkpoint. We're almost there.”

“Are those guns?”

“I said hush. Anyway, time has rendered them nonoperational.”

“How can you be sure?”

“We're not dead, are we?” To their guide, White Squall said, “You may proceed.”

They passed through a long corridor lined with black glass windows on either side, beneath which grim metal muzzles stuck out of gun slots at regular intervals. At its end they entered a space so great that the light of their alembics did not reach the distant ceiling. Here and there in the darkness, spectral forms shone dimly, muttering and whispering to themselves.

One of these ghosts floated closer, congealing with proximity into the form of a woman. Her face was as serenely beautiful as a porcelain mask. But malice poured off of her; no one standing in her presence could doubt she intended only evil. White robes and scarves floated restlessly about the specter, as if she were underwater. In a voice rendered utterly eerie by sudden hisses and pops and underlain by a multitude of lesser voices, she said:

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

WELCOME AUBREY DARGER, CHIL

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

D OF THE SLUMS AND DESTROYER

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

OF CITIES. HAS LIFE GROWN SO H

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

ARD THAT YOU HAVE COME TO US

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

SEARCHING FOR DEATH? REJOICE!

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

FOR YOU HAVE FOUND IT AT LAST.

dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome

Darger held his face expressionless. White Squall's people looked elaborately bored.

“I am the leader here,” White Squall snapped. “If you have something to say, speak to me directly, not through a subordinate.”

The ghost underwent a series of distressing transformations involving body parts grown large and drooping or sprouting vivid sores. Maggots dropping from her mouth, she said:

writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld

AGAIN YOU COME TO ROB US, WH

writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld

ITE SQUALL! A SPECIAL HELL HAS

writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld

BEEN PREPARED FOR YOU, ONE

writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld

IN WHICH YOU WILL BE KEPT ALIV

writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld

E FOR CENTURIES, ALONE, ALONE.

writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld

“We have played this game before,” White Squall said.

diesufferdie

SO WE

diesufferdie

HAVE.

diesufferdie

“I have come to retrieve a weapon. You wish me to have it. Just once, I wish we could skip the bluster and threats.”

The apparition said nothing.

“I of course will tell you that the weapon will be used to kill my own kind, even as the weapons you surrendered in the past have been used. You will believe I think it will not be used. But you will also believe that, against my best efforts, it will be deployed anyway. Why are we arguing? You will act on your beliefs, and I will act on mine.”

yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes

WE ARE ARGUING BECAUSE

yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes

WE HATE YOUR KIND SO VE

yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes

RY GREATLY, CAO SQUALL.

yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes

“You've had your fun. Now show us what we came for.”

To one side of the cavern a bank of lights came on, causing all to squint and hold up their hands before their eyes. Against one wall was a line of slim dark bronze cones, somewhat taller than a grown man and, so far as could be seen, featureless.

deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind

THE WARHEADS ARE LOCKED

deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind

ELECROMAGNETICALLY. FOR

deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind

EVERY TEN OF YOUR MEN YO

deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind

U KILL, TAKE ONE WITH YOU.

deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind

“No deal. Release a single warhead and you may be assured we will use it to kill human beings. Many, many human beings.”

fartoolittleandnotenough

NOT ENOUGH

fartoolittleandnotenough

NOT ENOUGH

fartoolittleandnotenough

NOT ENOUGH

fartoolittleandnotenough

“It is all you will get. Take it or leave it.”

The ghost floated silent before them, cryptic and unreadable.

“You cannot force me to sacrifice my own subordinates. In this I am adamant.”

Silence.

“If I may.” Darger stepped forward and addressed the ghost directly. “You know that I was in Moscow when it burned. Release the Phoenix Bride—the nuclear warhead, if you will—and I will tell you all I know of what became of those demons who briefly broke free of their exile and almost seized that city.”

White Squall turned a questioning look on Darger. In response, he shrugged in a manner meant to say,
It's a long story.

The ghost's features grew fuzzy, overlapped, merged. Briefly, it became an egg of light. Then it disappeared altogether. The bank of lights turned off, one by one, until there was but one and, beneath it, a single warhead, gleaming and sinister.

Click.
Something unlocked within or below the warhead.

“Now! Quickly.” At the cao's command, her soldiers rolled the Red Arrow rocket onto the floor, then ran the litter to the warhead's side. With practiced sureness, they lowered the warhead onto it. Six to a side, they cinched straps around the device, then lifted it again.

But when they turned back to the corridor through which they had entered, they found the same ghost blocking their way.

nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies

KEEP YOUR SIDE OF THE BARGAIN,

nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies

AUBREY DARGER. WHAT DO YOU K

nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies

NOW OF OUR KIN WHO DISAPPEARE

nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies

D IN THE GREAT FIRE OF MOSCOW?

nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies

“That is easily enough told,” Darger replied, “for I know absolutely nothing of their fate. Only that they were surely destroyed, for otherwise they would have overrun Russia and freed the rest of your lot in turn. I took a chance that their disappearance was as great a mystery to you as to me, and it paid off.” Taking a deep breath, he plunged straight through the ghost. Every hair on his body stood on end as he did so, and, briefly, his skin stung. But otherwise no harm came to him.

Behind him, he heard the ghost
scream
as the others, following his lead, plunged through its insubstantial form and down the long corridor toward the outside world.

In far less time than it had taken them to go in, they found themselves standing in the back room of Vast Prosperity Import-Export. “Thank goodness that's done,” White Squall said. To one of her sappers she said, “When is the Red Arrow timed to go off?”

“Any minute now, Cao White Squall,” the woman replied.

Behind them, the mountain shook.

*   *   *

THAT NIGHT,
while the sappers rebuilt the wagon to transport the Phoenix Bride across unreliable mountain roads with maximum safety, White Squall rented a pleasure boat to take out onto the Green Silk Ribbon River. Standing at the stern, Darger rowed midway across the water and then dropped anchor. There, the boat bobbed softly, going nowhere and in no great hurry to get there. For a time they admired the city in silence. A full moon shone high among the stars that thronged the sky above its gently glowing buildings. From here, they could smell the osmanthus trees after which the city was named and hear the cries of the street vendors selling food from lantern-lit carts by the waterfront.

“What a ravishing sight. It reminds me of Paris,” Darger said with a catch in his voice, for his experiences in the City of Bioluminescent Light had been romantic in nature and tragic in their outcome.

“We are not here to gawk,” White Squall said. “Close the curtains. We have matters to discuss, and in a city as filled with spies as this one, there may well be a lip-reader training a telescope on us at this very moment.”

Suspecting nothing, Darger did as his superior commanded. The boat was rectangular, with poles at the corners connected by ropes at their tops, from which depended silk curtains so arranged that they could be tied together to erect privacy walls while leaving the boat open to the sky. The transformation was made in a trice. Darger sat down again upon the comfortable cushions with which the boat was amply supplied. It was the first time they had been alone since this journey began.

Now that they were enclosed within silk walls, Darger found that he could almost see through the thin cloth. The city was a rainbow blur to one side. The moon overhead was bright enough that they did not need a lantern.

White Squall produced two cups and a jug of wine. She filled the cups and they drank. When only dregs remained, Darger said, “The time has come for you to come clean with me. You did not need me to retrieve the Phoenix Bride. Nor will it take any great amount of cunning to transport it to the Hidden Emperor. Yet you insisted that I accompany you on this mission. Why am I here?”

“You are here because I want to ask you a favor.”

“Go on.”

“But first I must tell you something of myself, of my history and parentage, and how I came to be the Hidden King's cao.” White Squall leaned back against the cushions. “My father was a mechanic and whatever my mother was, she left when I was so young that no memory of her remains. Since the unsuccessful rebellion of the AIs and the fall of Utopia, a superstitious fear of all machinery has been widespread. Thus, though the engines my father repaired and sometimes improved upon were not at all complex—the threshing machines that farm horses pull, for example—we were effectively outcasts and friendless. I grew up a lonely and bookish child. The same louts who jeered at me for loving to read shunned me for focusing on texts about machinery.

“But I knew that if I were to make a life for myself, I must use the tools at hand. Combining my love for books and my father's gift for mechanics, I read deep into literature no one had glanced at for centuries. From the mechanical sciences I moved on to physics and then the forbidden arts of combustion engineering and electronics. I did not know that I was becoming the sole authority on matters no other first-rate intellect considered worthy of study. But inevitably I created my own specialty, the study of ancient weapons of war.

“From discovering and rehabilitating such devices, I came to realize their potential to change the world. So I wrote a treatise on their resurrection and the tactical advantages of their use. Copies of this book I sent to the ruler of every nation in the fractured remains of China the Great, hoping against hope that there would be among them a single monarch willing to hear me out.

“So it was that I came to the attention of the Hidden King. Two weeks after he read my treatise, his agents kidnapped me and brought me to the Shadow Palace, where he interviewed me at length. I have been his loyal servitor ever since.

“Outwardly, I am a success. However, all my understanding is of machinery: how it fits together, how to repair it, how to make it do things that I want it to do. Human beings do not operate in any manner that I understand. I remain as lonely as ever.”

“I am sorry to hear that,” Darger said.

“Your sympathy is irrelevant. What matters is that I desire things I cannot have. I am beautiful in my way. My manners are correct because I have made a study of the manuals covering such matters—”

“They are called etiquette books.”

White Squall frowned. “I believe it is considered rude to contradict a lady.”