robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (22 page)

The two men before him had the fervor of true believers. They had ambitions for themselves, certainly, but that was no crime. Rather, it was the fuel to excellence, the strength of the Dragon. Their strength could be harnessed now that he was awake again.

"Gather the circle. I will choose companions."

"When the breath of the Dragon is upon the land, the Strong One will arise and lead the faithful," Jeffries intoned.

"He shall uncoil from his sleep and raise his head to the sun, who shall tremble and grow dim in the glory of his radiant plumage," Nakaguchi rejoined.

"Hail the Awaited One," they said together. "Hail the Lord of Change."

Quetzal basked in their belief, feeling the heat from their faith in the secret canon. He was sure that both of them believed that they would be among the chosen companions. Faith was a tool, an especially important one to a mage. He would use it and use it well, for he was a skilled craftsman. Hut knowing the temper of a tool was as important as knowing its proper use. A flawed tool could mar even the greatest craftsman's work.

"Go now. Do as I have bidden you."

Jeffries insisted on more burbling and more recitations from the secret canon, but Quetzal did not have to repeat the order to depart—barely. Once they were gone, he summoned Kurita. The security chief arrived almost immediately.

"Your desire,
tono?"

Having taken Kurita as a bond servant, Quetzal had thought il wise to immediately increase his knowledge of the man's native language; words were the boundaries of thought. There had only been time for a brief lesson before the meeting with Jeffries, but he had learned the word "tono." It meant liege lord. How charming to have Kurita use the term without his ordering it.

"Bring today's offering immediately."

"Yes,
tono."

Kurita did not depart, clearly sensing that Quetzal had another matter on his mind. A good rapport. Quetzal's impulsive taking of Kurita had been an unforeseen wisdom; Kurita promised to be a good tool. Now it was time to test
his
temper.

"William Jeffries is an obstacle," he said.

"Wakarimasu."

Do you truly understand? Unlikely.
But Kurita did understand his role and that was sufficient. Most bond servants showed little initiative, but Kurita was so well versed in his role that he could be counted on to act within that role without Quetzal's constant attention. Kurita was the sort of man who had been good at his job, and his servitude would do little to affect that; the cold, precise mechanism of the security chief's mind promised admirable results. Quetzal could dismiss Jeffries from the picture.

"Wait until he has arranged the meeting I desire."

"Wakarimasu."

Quetzal smiled. It was comforting to know that there
were
good servants to be had in this new age.

Nakaguchi returned from bidding good-bye to the doomed Jeffries just as Joel was removing the husk of the offering. Nakaguchi stepped out of the way, giving the burdened servant only the barest of glances. His attention was on Quetzal.

"This is a great day for the order," the man crowed.

"One for the annals," Quetzal agreed. "Is it not nearly time for the board meeting?"

Pamela kept being drawn back to the occult files. She noted that Quetzal had accessed them first, then ignored them. Why? Was it all old news to him? Probably. But how could Quetzal know five hundred years of occult theory if he had slept through it all? Could there be another reason he was ignoring the files?

Could they be flawed? Could Nakaguchi be working from a faulty base? Could that be why he was working with a monster like Quetzal?

Good questions, but she wanted answers.

She ran a comparison between Nakaguchi's occult history files and the ones she'd gathered in her database. The editor noted strong correlations, but highlighted some significant differences. She set the editor to sift for any common threads in data exclusive to Nakaguchi's files and got a large number of references and passages from a single source: a book called
The Hidden Splendour.
One of the passages proclaimed it a watershed work of occult philosophy.

She didn't recall the title.

The public library database responded to her request for a download with a "not available." There were no other works by the author, either. She checked her file of occult works, and though there was no copy, which was not surprising, there was a notation about it.

From Sorli. She understood why she didn't recognize the title when she read Sorli's commentary. He dismissed the book's author, W. E. J. Magus, as a lunatic and the book's contents as the ravings of a madman. He must not have thought the book important to her education in things arcane. Why? So many of the occult references that Sorli had insisted she read had seemed the ravings of madmen. What made this one different?

On the theory that the author would be easier to find than a

single title, she consulted Gemmatics, one of the Keiretsu's publishing companies. Among the variety of services Gemmatics offered was a database of pseudonyms; it was an extensive database. Her check revealed that the name "W. E. J. Magus" belonged to William E. Jeffries. No date of death was listed for Jeffries, suggesting that he was still alive.

She set a dossier trace on Jeffries and sat back to await the results. She had a feeling she was getting close to something. Knowing who Jeffries was, and learning more about his take on the occult, would tell her things about Nakaguchi; the hatchet man had clearly been a student of Jeffries and his occult worldview.

To know the student, learn about the teacher.

A madman, Sorli had said. Such a description might well be applied to Nakaguchi. She needed to know more about the sort of madness that was corrupting him and making a bid to corrupt the Keiretsu.

Her perscomp announced departure time for the Cytronics board meeting.

Jeffries would have to wait. She reconfigured the data dump from on screen to her "immediate" file. The Keiretsu's computers were the best in the world. She'd have what she sought by the time she returned.

Charley made it to the Settawego Building with five minutes to spare. Good thing he'd been working out of the Need-ham office to be nearer the ongoing investigation at the Hilton. The building was a black rectangle thrust out of a I mige of Sandcrete™, a not particularly noteworthy example of early-century architecture, but he felt stupid when he realized it was his destination; the tower of the Norwood Hilton stood only a block away. He'd been back and forth past this place for a week.

The place was definitely corp, but like a lot of buildings of its vintage, it had no logo plastered on the upper stories to advertise the building's ownership. He didn't see any ownership marks until he walked up to the main entrance, where a discreet Mitsutomo Keiretsu logo was inlaid into the marble facing over the doors.

Hadn't Kravatz said somebody showing the Mitsutomo logo had 'napped Lancaster?

Mitsutomo was one of the biggest of the big; messing with them would make life miserable for him. He hoped that whatever Caspar thought was here was really connected to one of the remora clinging to the public floors of the corporate shark's building, rather than the shark itself. Charley wasn't big enough to survive getting stepped on by Mitsutomo.

As he entered the building, Charley slipped on his Tsurei Seeing Eyes™. The photosensitive glasses contained a fiberoptic camera and a short-range microphone that could transmit image and sound to his belt unit. Clean recordings were admissible in court and had helped put more than one rapist into psychochemic therapy. Not that he had a court order permitting him to record. And not that he'd be likely to get one for recording on corp property. But using the glasses for private purposes wasn't illegal; they made a great memory aid.

The lobby was the bottom of a yawning pit of an atrium, a six-story barn. A mezzanine made a second deck of public space and filled a small fraction of the vertical space. Stores and kiosks and restaurants made up most of the tenants, but there were a few small business offices too; most of those were on the mezzanine. Several banks of elevators to the corporate eyrie dominated the northern end, defended by a glassed-in security area. The transparent barrier extruded a tentacle to a private entrance; Charley saw several limousines waiting there. The rest of the place was open and lively and crowded with people.

Couldn't Caspar have been more specific?

Charley was still checking the layout when a full bank of < levators opened their doors with drill field precision. Compiler-coordinated precision, more likely. A phalanx of suits Hooded out of the elevator cars. Some formed up in a double
iow
, an honor guard of sheep awaiting the vips of their flock. The rest bustled on down to the waiting limousines.

Big show.

Charley recognized the honcho when she emerged from the central elevator. Pamela Martinez. This wasn't the sort of turf the head of Mitsutomo NAG usually hung out in. Clearly something was up with the corp.

Business for the Special Investigations Unit? Charley hoped not.

The parade of suits got more interesting when he saw that Martinez wasn't the only one in her elevator car. Two guys exited after she did, a sharply dressed Japanese and a frail-looking Black with white hair. Etiquette among corps with Asian ancestry had the top dogs coming out last. Who were l hese guys, to outrank the head of Mitsutomo NAG? They were ciphers to Charley. He tapped the
record
stud on his belt unit; if he was interested he could research them later.

The flunkies swarmed around the Mitsutomo bigwigs in I he usual way, escorting them to the waiting vehicles. Nothing strange there. Although there were a few odd fish in the shoal; Charley noted a dwarf in the Japanese's wake, and a pair of suits with black leather medical bags tagging along behind the Black. Not typical suits, but not SIU strange.

After the limousines pulled away, the lobby seemed quieter, as if a storm had just blown through. Charley waited, keeping a lookout for whatever strangeness Caspar expected him to find. To blend in, he took a seat in the lounge near the elevator banks, where he had a good line of sight to the main entrance and a couple of the side ones as well. Occasionally he'd fake a call on the house phone as if he was trying to reach somebody upstairs. While he played his blend-in game, 1400 hours came and went. He gave it another ten, and then another, just because Caspar hadn't steered him wrong yet. He still didn't see anything that fit the spec for an SIU investigation.

Modus 112, huh?

The closest thing to a streeter he'd seen was an independent vendor checking in at the desk guarding the entrance to the Mitsutomo preserve. Her clothes were too offbeat to be corporate, but she was far too clean and well-heeled to be streetlife. No Unregistereds here. Especially no
dead
Unregis-tereds here.

The answer, huh?

Right.

What was Caspar thinking about?

"He's not... well," Kranekin said in a warning tone as they slopped before a door no different than a dozen they'd passed.

John gave the dwarf a sharp look. "What do you mean?"

"Perhaps it's best that you see for yourself."

Kranekin nodded to Wilson, who placed his hand on the frame of the door. Silently, the door slid open to reveal a well-lil room that John immediately classified as a hospital room despite the stone and wood of the walls; it had that kind of smell. A scattering of odd machines gave an undertone to the lighting from their flickering readouts. Bear was in the center of the room, but he wasn't lying in bed. He was in some kind of fluid-filled tank like something out of
Stellar Wars: The final Generation
^EM
.

They had shaved Bear's beard to fit a respirator mask. The newly exposed skin showed an ashen color that was hidden by the darker tone of his tanned cheeks. He had lost enough weight that John wondered if he'd be able to stand. How long had he been in the tank?

John entered the room under Wilson's prodding. Neither of l lie dwarves said anything. They let John stare undisturbed.

Intermittently Bear's voice came from a speaker on the side of the tank. It was weak, his words strange. He was speaking in the tongue that John had heard him use when the crazy sorceress Nym had called him from his sleep. John still didn't understand a word of the babble.

John felt numb and confused. In deciding to accept the recorded invitation to meet with Bear, he hadn't really known what to expect; but this wasn't it. One thing was clear: Bear was in no shape for a conversation.

"He never made that disk, did he?" John turned on Kranekin. King or not, the white-haired dwarf seemed to be the one in charge around here. "He didn't send for me. You did."

"A necessary deception. We did not expect you would trust the word of our agent alone. Although the message was a construction to gain your confidence, the heart of the message remains true. Artos needs your help."

He certainly needed
somebody's
help. "What did you do to him?"

Wilson answered. "We were attempting to help him adjust to the present times, through the use of an accelerated learning process. Even though it's a new tech, we'd never had problems with it before. Unfortunately, there were some unexpected complications. Arthur has slipped into a delirium wherein he knows no fixed time or place. We had hoped that you might anchor him."