City of Golden Shadow (116 page)

To the extent that his actual body was located in the real world, he was in the southernmost part of the United States. But his mind lived almost entirely in virtual worlds, mostly within his favorite, an imaginary Egypt, complete with a pantheon of gods over which he reigned. So where was he, truly? On the shores of Louisiana's Lake Borgne, in a Gothic fantasy castle built on reclaimed swampland? On an electronic network, in an even more fantastic castle in Egypt's mythical West? Or in some other place more difficult to name or locate?

Jongleur stifled a small sigh. On this day, such maundering was a sign of nearly unforgivable weakness. He was a little anxious, although that was scarcely surprising: what happened in this gathering would affect not only his own life's ambition, but quite possibly the very history of humankind. The Grail Project, when completed, would have almost unbelievable ramifications, so it was critical he retain control: his own determined vision had prevailed for so long that the Project might well fail without him.

He wondered if some of the resistance to his long rule over the Brotherhood might be nothing more than the craving for novelty. For all their wealth and immense personal power, the Ennead had proven themselves to possess many other quite human frailties, and it was difficult to retain patience for a project that had stretched over so many years.

Perhaps he hadn't given them enough showmanship lately.

He was distracted by a movement down the table. A grotesque form with the shining head of a beetle rose and coughed politely. "If we may begin?"

Jongleur was again Osiris. The Lord of Life and Death inclined his head.

"First of all," the beetle-man said, "it is a pleasure to be in your company once more-to be among equals." The round brown head turned to make a careful survey. The god could barely refrain from laughing out loud at the attempts at political dignity, seriously undercut by goggling opaque eyes and quivering mandibles. Osiris had chosen Ricardo Klement's god-persona well: the beetle Khepera was an aspect of the solar deity, but for all that, he was still a dung beetle-a creature that spent its life rolling little balls of shit, which described the Argentinian perfectly. "We have much to discuss today, so I will not take up time with unnecessary talk." Klement bobbed like a shopkeeping insect out of a children's book-a particularly apt simile, since his immense fortune had come out of black market organ-farming.

"Then don't." Sekhmet shot her claws and daintily scratched her chin. "What is your business?"

If the beetle had possessed recognizable facial features, the look he gave her might have been more effective. "I would like to ask the chairman for a progress report on the Sky God Project"

Osiris swallowed another chuckle. The Argentinian had made a complete nuisance of himself about Sky God on the grounds that it was in his own territory, offering bad advice and useless personal recommendations. Osiris had made a deliberate effort to seem grateful for all this help, though. A vote was a vote, after all.

"Thanks in large part to you, Ricardo, things are going very well indeed. I expect to have an update before the meeting is over, so if you will allow me to postpone any deeper discussion until then. . . ?"

"Of course. Chairman." The beetle-man bowed and settled back into his chair.

Osiris watched Ptah and Horus, who were very still. He suspected that the Americans were engaged in a little sidebar communication, and wondered what exactly had made them so eager to push forward the date of this month's meeting.

The normal business went swiftly-a consortium to be organized, the better to bypass certain UN restrictions on the transshipment of precious metals; a newly privatized power grid in West Africa to be bought at an advantageous price; a few witnesses in an Indian court case to be bribed or removed. Osiris was beginning to think he might have overestimated his American rivals. He expected good results from Colombia at any time, and was considering how best to orchestrate the announcement when yellow-faced Ptah abruptly stood.

"Before we finish, Chairman, there is one thing more."

The god stiffened for a practically imperceptible moment "Yes?"

"Last meeting, we had some conversation about the lost subject, if you recall-the one who somehow disappeared within the Grail system. Some information has developed in-house at TMX, so we thought it would be a good time for you to tell us how your own investigation of the incident is going." His smile was tight-lipped but wide. "That way, the Brotherhood will be updated and we can share necessary information."

So. The wire was now visible, which meant that Wells and Yacoubian must think that the snare was unavoidable. Osiris let his mind run quickly through the latest developments, which were few. What was their angle?

"I have agents operating within the system, as you know," he said. "They have made a few incomplete identifications-none of which, unfortunately, has been good enough to trigger a retrieval. It's likely that they were just spikes of statistical similarity." He turned to focus his remarks on Thoth, Sekhmet, and the rest of the Asian contingent: Osiris knew that the Asians liked personal guarantees. "Still, I have every confidence-every confidence-we will have results before too long." He turned back to Ptah, spreading his hands like a father teasing his young and overeager sons. "Now, what have you to add to this?"

"During a TMX security check-about a totally unrelated matter, as it happens-we ran into some anomalies in the access records for the Grail Project. To put it simply, there has been improper access." Ptah said it gravely, and was rewarded by appropriate noises of concern from around the table. "Please note I said 'improper' rather than 'unauthorized.' Yes, of course you're all shocked. You should be. Our chairman will agree that the energy and resources put into protecting the integrity of the Grail Project, not to mention its secrecy, have been immense-and, we thought, unbeatable."

Osiris remained silent. He did not like the direction this was going. For Wells to admit a security breach in his own operation in front of the assembled elite of the Brotherhood meant he thought he had something he could turn to his advantage-otherwise, he would simply have buried it. The escaped subject mattered little to anyone but Osiris.

"This is very bad." Sobek's crocodile head thrust forward. "Very bad. How could this happen?"

"There is only one way to get access to the system," explained Ptah. "And that is with command permission from myself or the chairman. "He sketched a gently mocking bow toward Osiris. "Even those employees of mine or the chairman's who work with the Project every day must still receive permission before they begin their shift, and again if they come back after logging off for a break. This permission is in the form of a perpetually changing code key, generated by sealed black box code generators. There are only two. I have one. The chairman has the other."

Sobek was nodding his long head up and down. The ruler of a West African nation, which he and his family had wrung dry of gold and blood for decades, he understood the concept of centralization of authority very well. "Get to the point. What does this have to do with someone interfering with our project?"

"Just as access to the system is carefully limited, so any adjustment to the system must also come with code authorization from one of the two of us." Ptah was speaking carefully for the benefit of those like Sobek whose place in the Brotherhood had less to do with technical expertise than with available resources, "If the escape of the subject was not a freak accident, then it had to have been directed. If directed, the action itself would have needed approval. The system will allow no outside modification that does not come with approval."

Osiris was still mystified, but he could feel Ptah moving closer to what he seemed to think was some kind of mortal blow. "I think we all have the gist now," he said out loud. "Perhaps you could move from the general to the specific. What exactly have you discovered?"

Horus now stood, golden eyes glinting. "We discovered anomalies, that's what we discovered. Actions taken by two different TMX employees in the week before the subject-or whatever you want to call him-escaped." The American general had all the subtlety of a cattle stampede; Osiris decided that Wells must feel fairly confident if he was going to let his crony handle part of the attack, especially if Wells' own employees were somehow to blame. "Although we can't figure out yet exactly how these two helped to drop the subject off our radar and lose him in the system, we're pretty damn confident that that's what happened. There is no other explanation for the actions they took, no other discernible results, and we can't find any reason for them to have taken those actions, either. Well, that's not strictly true. Actually, there was quite a good reason for them to do what they did."

The Lord of Life and Death was not going to let any upstart garner the benefit of dramatic pauses. "We are all fascinated, I assure you. Go on."

"They were both acting under coded orders from the chairman." Horus turned from the table at large to focus on Osiris. "From you."

Osiris remained absolutely still. Blustering would do nothing to silence the whispers or still the doubts. "What are you suggesting?"

"You tell us. Chairman." This was Ptah, with more than a hint of satisfaction. "You tell us how a subject-a subject that you wanted in the system in the first place, although you didn't bother to share your reasons with us-was cut free and released from surveillance by coded orders that only you can generate."

"Yeah," said Horus, unable to resist grinding the point home, "let us know, would you? An awful lot of people have invested an awful lot of money in this project. They might want to know if you've decided to make it your personal playground."

Osiris could feel the shock at the table, the rising anger and unhappiness, much of it directed at himself. Even Thoth, usually placid to the point of near-invisibility, was shifting in his chair.

"Am I to understand you are accusing me of this? Of engineering the escape of this subject? And you expect me to react to this dangerous nonsense with no evidence for it but your own words?"

"Let's not be hasty," said Ptah silkily. Osiris thought he might already be regretting the slack in Yacoubian's leash. "We have not formally accused you of anything. But we freely make our investigation records available to the Brotherhood, and they do raise some grave questions." He gestured, and a small glowing dot appeared before each of the participants, indicating the available files. "I think the burden of proof is on you, Chairman, at least to explain how your code wound up on orders that have no other visible purpose than to facilitate the subject's escape."

Underneath the permanent half-smile of his mask, Osiris employed the long pause to quickly range through the reports Wells had just made available. The details were uncomfortable.

"There is more here than simply concern over this subject," he said at last. He would have a far better chance if he could inject a note of the personal into things-the Americans were not terribly popular. "Am I right in thinking that you feel my leadership is somehow lacking?" He turned to the table at large. "Surely you have all seen our comrade's impatience with my direction. Ptah the Artificer was the cleverest of Egypt's gods, and our own version is equally clever. Certainly, he must often feel that he could do a better job, that if he could only dislodge me, he and bold Horus could bring a certain vigor to the Brotherhood's leadership." He let his voice drop a bitter degree. "He is a fool, of course."

"Please, Chairman." Wells sounded amused."This is rhetoric. We need answers."

"I am never in as much of a hurry as you are." Osiris assumed his calmest tones. "However, sometimes I arrive at the same positions as you do, even if my pace brings me there more slowly. This is one of those times."

"What are you talking about?" Now Ptah was the one to sound off-balance.

"Simply this. If what you say is correct, then I do not deserve the confidence of the Brotherhood. We agree on that. Neither can the Project go forward without solidarity among us. So I propose that we examine the matter as fully as we can, examining all the evidence, and then put the matter to a vote. Today. If the Brotherhood votes against me, I will step down immediately. Agreed?"

Horus nodded briskly. "Sounds fair." Ptah also agreed, but a little more slowly, sniffing for a trap. Osiris had no trap to set-he was still rather dumbfounded by the revelations of the last few minutes-but he had decided a long time ago that it was better to die with your teeth in your enemy's throat than to slink away. As yet, he had never had to do either.

"First," he said, "while your report seems admirably thorough, I'm sure that the Brotherhood would like to hear from the two employees in person." He received nods from his other guests, which he accepted with a courtly inclination of his own masked head. "You have detained them, of course."

"Of course." Ptah was confident now, a bad sign. Osiris had half-hoped that TMX's earlier, in-house interrogations had been too vigorous. It was hard to convict on the evidence of dead witnesses, even with hologrammatic records-data could be so easily manipulated these days. Not that real-time VR was immune from manipulation, but the process was much more difficult.

"Well, bring them in, will you? Isolated from each other, of course. And since you have brought what is tantamount to an accusation against me, you will permit me to do the interrogation, will you not?"

"Of course," Ptah agreed, but now it was his falcon-headed crony who did not seem pleased. Osiris took some small pleasure from this sign that, at some level, they still feared him, worried about his legendary craftiness. He would do his best to justify that unease.

The Lord of Life and Death waved his hand and the table vanished; the Ennead were now seated in a circle, each in his or her own thronelike chair. A moment later two figures blinked into existence at the circle's center, one stocky and one slender, both immobile as statues. They appeared quite human, and thus seemed strangely out of place amid the avid beast-faces. As befitted mortals in the land of the gods, they were only half the size of the smallest of the Ennead.