robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (46 page)

"I see that he needs to be stopped."

"At least we agree there."

"But I can't go around breaking the law myself every time I stop a criminal."

"Quetzal is more than an ordinary criminal."

"Well, lady,
I'm
just an ordinary cop."

His resistance was unexpected. Had Hagen been right about him? She'd see; there were still more cards to play. "Even an ordinary cop is still expected to protect the innocent, is he not?"

The suspicious look he gave her was answer enough.

"What happens if you discover a crime in progress, Detective? Do you go to a judge and ask for a warrant to arrest the criminal?"

"You know the answer to that," he said sullenly.

"Even off duty?"

"Yeah, yeah. Even off duty. What's your point? Putting an illegal Seeing Eyes monitor on this guy and busting him when he steps over the line ain't gonna last a minute in court."

"I did tell you that we do not wish to be involved in this. You need not mention the Seeing Eyes. You need only be in the right place at the right time. Mitsutosmo security personnel seeking the escaped Mr. Lee can be present, providing you the backup you will need to deal with Quetzal. The right place and time, Detective. It will save lives."

"I can't involve civilians in this," he objected.

"All field-grade employees of Mitsutomo's Yamabennin Security Services are fully licensed constabulary operatives. Section 232 of Yamabennin's incorporation papers states that, in case of a civil disturbance, all personnel are expected to operate under the command of duly authorized personnel. A police officer in the performance of his duty is a duly authorized person. There is in fact a precedent of a police officer in Paris leading a squad of Yamabennin troopers in the storming of a barricade in the '03 riots. The principle is sound."

"You're quite the boardroom lawyer, Ms. Martinez."

"I respect the law, Detective."

"Which is why you're working so hard to get around its letter, no doubt."

"I am working to see that the community is saved from a very dangerous threat without causing unnecessary panic. I was given to understand that such a goal was not dissimilar to the mandate for the Special Investigations Unit."

"Our mandate doesn't include murder." "Killing Quetzal is not murder, but justice. The monster is a killer. So far the number of victims is small."

"Small?" Gordon sounded appropriately appalled. "According to your file, he's killed twenty-five people!"

"Quetzal is capable of far greater crimes; so far, the number of his victims is small, but the death toll will grow soon. Quetzal is planning something . . . greater." So Nakaguchi had believed. "The monster must be stopped soon."

"You got proof of whatever it is that Quetzal is going to do?"

"No."

"Then I can't help you."

Last card. "Did you have proof of the Barrington Slasher's plan?"

He looked at her through narrowed eyes. "What do you know about that?"

"Enough."

"I don't like to be pushed, Ms. Martinez."

"We are
all
being pushed, Detective. I like it even less than you. But the monster will kill again. I am offering you a way to stop it."

Gordon stared into Joel Lee's room for a long time without saying anything. Pamela knew she had him even before he turned and said, "When are you letting this guy go?"

"Mr. Hagen will act as liaison for me. He will arrange things."

Charley left Martinez's presence a lot more unhappy than he had gone in. A lot more worried too. Martinez's Quetzal had been the third person in the elevator car; Charley knew now that
he
was Caspar's "answer" to Modus 112.

Whatever Mitsutomo had been up to, it had gone sour. The computers wouldn't show it, but Martinez was in this up to her armpits. Now that things had started to stink, she wanted it cleaned up, and she'd picked Charley to be her janitor.

He wanted to let her stew in it, but if she was right about Quetzal's planning something ...

He couldn't stand by and let the bastard kill any more people.

And he didn't have anything substantial enough to bring in the Department. Not yet anyway.

They took him to security central for their Brookfield operation; the place was going to serve as the command center for the cleanup. He sat in the back of the room, too busy trying to figure the angles to watch the techs do their work. He left that to Hagen; like a lot of short guys he seemed to need to prove he was in charge.

The wallscreen came to life. Joel Lee had left the Brook-field facility.

"We're running," Hagen announced.

On the fast track to hell,
Charley thought.

"Dr. Spae?"

Faye's voice was faint, almost a thought, but it startled Spae; she'd been half-asleep. On the verge of bad dreams.

The Faery girl sounded worried. What did her kind worry about? Spae tried to sound kindly and concerned, rather than clinical.

"What is it, Faye?"

"You sounded disturbed."

Sounded? Had she been talking in her half-awake state? She must have been. "What did I say?"

"You're worried about the darkling mage."

"Quetzal?"

Spae sensed affirmation.

"Yes, I'm worried about how we're going to deal with him."

"Do you know where he is?" Faye asked.

"I wish. I was going to try a scrying with John tomorrow."

"Tomorrow may be too late."

Too late? What did she know? "What do you mean? Do you have some source of knowledge, some kind of elven sense?"

"I—I'm not an elf, Doctor." She sounded embarrassed. "I know I'm not important, so you don't really want to talk to me, but I just have a feeling that there will be trouble. Soon. I think you should look for the darkling mage
now."

"Why now?"

"I don't know."

Spae didn't like the fear she heard in Faye's voice. A creature of Faery would have to have senses people didn't; Faye might not understand what she was feeling, but the feeling couldn't be discounted because of that. There was little that was coincidental when magic was involved.

"All right. I'll go wake John and we'll get started."

As she started to stand, Spae felt the lightest of touches on her arm, little more than a breeze plucking at her shirt sleeve.

"John's not a seeker, Dr. Spae. He won't be much help. Besides, he needs his sleep. Please, Doctor, do not disturb him. I will help you."

A thousand questions tumbled through Spae's brain, but the ones that fell out were, "Can you do that? Are
you
a seeker?" Whatever a seeker was.

"I think I can help once you are in trance," Faye said.

"All right. Let's give it a try." Remembering to be polite, she added, "Thank you."

"You are a good person, Dr. Spae."

What brought that on ?

Faye started to croon a song, so softly that Spae couldn't make out any of the words. Still, she had a sense that they were not English nor any other language Spae knew. The song was soothing, relaxing, almost soporific. Spae drifted into it.

She sat down, too unsteady on her feet to remain standing. The song went on. Spae noted distantly that she had unconsciously adopted a full lotus position. Faye was still singing, more clearly now, but the words remained elusive. Spae followed the melody, slipping into trance state.

Faye became a somewhat more palpable presence. Spae could see her as a gossamer image of smoke. Spae, a glowing image herself, stood. They joined hands and flew into the sky to search for the darkling mage.

CHAPTER

27

Quetzal stood at the corner of Hopkins and Benefit Streets, contemplating the house there. A bronze plaque proclaimed it to have been the residence of one Stephen Hopkins, a man of some historic import locally. The white clapboard colonial structure was considered old for the city, and the city itself was old for this continent. He had slept through almost all of their existence.

He continued up the hill, taking George Street. After a block he was walking along the great black iron fence that separated him from his goal. He passed four of the great brick pillars into which the iron was set before stopping to gaze at his destination.

Headlights swept over him. He flinched before he realized that the light contained little to disturb him. The light's influence was fleeting in any case. A local resident, a student, a visiting family member, a campus patrol? No matter. None of them had any interest in him. He was just a pedestrian, coated and hatted against the wind and cold. No one of consequence.

He let the car pass.

The well-tended green on the other side of the fence sloped up to a row of buildings. Most were old—for this city—but not so venerable as the Hopkins house. He only had eyes for one of them, the nearest, a small, pseudoclassical monstrosity of concrete. Van Dieman had provided him with much information about this building, its history, the city in which it resided, and
its
history. Useful information. He was about to use some of that information.

He lifted himself over the fence on the etherometric lines. It would have been easier to walk to the gate and open it, but he had no desire to; not when he was so near. He walked up the slope.

The building had a door facing toward the city, which was situated on the river plain below, even though the building's principal door was on the far side, facing the main college green, where the students would pass. The student traffic on this side went only down the hill and through the gate, to the great library and other less important facilities outside the fence.

That principal door might still be unlocked—the graduate students here were supposed to be forgetful—but again he had no desire to deviate from the most direct route. He placed his hand on the lock. It was more complicated than those with which he was familiar, but no more an obstacle; still less the heavy bolts securing the top and bottom of the door.

He entered the building.

The hallway ran straight to the front door. Despite the darkness, his mage sight allowed him to see that the door's locking mechanism was engaged. Faint light leaked around the curve of the stairway to the upper floor. Someone was up there. No matter. He was interested in the basement, not the upper floor. He took the stairway down.

The lower hallway was as narrow as the upper but more cramped, because of the boxes and crates and loose specimens shoved haphazardly against the walls. This building had once been the home of the geological sciences department of this university. For truth, it still belonged to the department, but the center of activity had moved away to the more spacious and modern facility on the eastern side of the campus. Unlike some of the other departments, geological sciences understood time and tradition; chairman after chairman had refused to part with the old hall even when it was clear there was little use for it. Offices that had once housed eminent professors were now shared by groups of lowly teaching assistants. The building was now a repository of the unimportant and the neglected.

Neglected, yes, but unimportant?

Not if what Quetzal suspected remained here was truly here.

He found the room he sought, knowing it by the feel of the air. Only a mage would have known that this office was different from any other.

There had been a writer of fiction who had once lived in this city, a man who had known much that he should not have known. For truth, he'd had a part in exposing some of the followers. But mostly the writer had hidden the terrifying truths under the cloak of his tall tales. One of the things that the writer had so disguised was the history of a university expedition, a trek to the south polar wastes. Much had been discovered in those frigid wastes that the university's rational scientists could not understand. Someone had whispered of those things to the writer. Afraid to speak the truth, the writer had couched what he had learned in a fictioneer's lies, going so far as to invent a fictional university to sponsor the fictional expedition.

But the expedition had been real. What they found had been real. And this room—this room had once been the office of a young professor who had gone on that expedition and was still carried on the university's rolls as a Professor Emeritus. The young professor had made wise investments and grown rich—rich enough to endow a chair at the university. The holder of the chair was supposed to maintain this office as his own. Dust on the furniture and books said that the current holder did not take his responsibilities seriously.

The false wall behind which the young professor had hidden his secret things would have fooled any ordinary visitor, but Quetzal was no ordinary visitor. What would be hidden from a mortal eye could not escape his magesight. It took but a few minutes to clear a space so that he could open the hiding place.

The compartment was small, no more than a closet, and filled with shelves. Quetzal looked over their contents. One shelf held an assortment of ritual implements, suggesting that the young professor had been a student of more than geology. The rest of the shelves held objects of carven stone, wood, bone, and ivory. Most were irrelevant, mere fetishes, born of superstition rather than knowledge. A handful were something more. Sharing the shelf with those objects were a linen-wrapped book and another object—wrapped in dried rawhide, and bound with strips of hide whose loose ends were gathered and embedded in a hardened clay seal. The signs and sigils of the opposition had been cut into the clay of the seal while it had been still wet.