The Knights of the Black Earth (10 page)

“That
is
the information,” Wiedermann croaked, remaining calm. “Read it, if you don’t
believe me. Frankly, I didn’t believe it myself. But when you think about it—”

Xris let loose,
shoved Wiedermann backward. The cyborg remained standing a moment longer,
glaring, deciding what to do.

Slowly, he
relapsed back into his chair and, grudgingly, picked up the data, including the
photograph. He looked at it again.

Dalin Rowan had
been two meters tall, with dark hair, slender build, brown eyes, and a wide and
infectious smile. Above all, Dalin Rowan had been a he.

The picture Xris
held was of a she.

Most definitely—a
she.

“You have to
admit,” Wiedermann said in admiration, “it’s the ultimate disguise.”

On ne nait pas
femme: on le devient.

One is not born a
woman: one becomes one.

Simone de Beauvoir,
Le deuxieme sexe

“Darlene Mohini.”
Wiedermann had run off his own copy of the data in the file, was reading aloud.
“Thirty-six. Unmarried. No children.”

Xris snorted.

“She has a very
neat little history. All completely phony, of course. Employment record,
college transcript. I’m surprised the bureau didn’t make her homecoming queen.
Her fake history is seamless. Not a gap. As you can see, the bureau was even
able to forge a past realistic enough for her to gain her security clearance.”

“Rowan did that,
not the bureau,” Xris muttered.

He stared at the
photo. It had been taken by a hidden cam as she was walking down a street. He
searched for a trace of his friend beneath the makeup. The jawline, perhaps.
The eyes were a possibility. If he could once see that smile ...

Xris felt slightly
dizzy, as if his internal computer system had gone on the blink, screwed up his
chemical balance, was feeding him too much juice. He popped open his wrist, did
a quick systems analysis. All registered normal.

“A disguise, you
said.” Xris shifted his gaze to Wiedermann. “Rowan goes around all day dressed
up like a woman—”

“Ah, I didn’t
quite mean ‘disguise,’ “ Wiedermann amended. “He’s not merely dressing the
part. Or perhaps I should say ‘she.’ We located the hospital where they
performed the surgery.”

Xris gaped. “What?
You don’t mean— Look, a change in identity means that a guy shaves his beard,
not his legs! He gets a new driver’s license. He doesn’t have certain body
parts whacked off and others added on!”

Wiedermann said
nothing. He merely stared pointedly at Xris’s metal arm. The wrist hatch was
still open, the various lights blinking, the small computer screen scrolling
through its readout on the cyborg’s internal workings. Xris, flushing, snapped
the hatch shut.

“That’s different.
This saved my life.”

“What’s your
point?” Wiedermann gestured to the photo. “Dalin Rowan brought down people who
were worth billions, ruined them financially, sent them to prison. If there is
one person in this entire universe those people hate, it is Dalin Rowan. You
think they can’t touch him just because they’re locked up?”

“All right. Yeah,
I know. But still . ..” Xris shook his head.

“You—his best
friend—didn’t recognize him.”

Xris paused,
thought about that. “You’re right. I
wouldn’t
have recognized him. Her.”

Sure, Dalin Rowan
had been worried about the Hung coming after him. But he was probably a lot
more worried about someone else coming after him. Someone who’d known him so
well ...

Xris stared at the
photo. “It’s starting to make sense,” he admitted. He looked up. “I suppose you’ve
got proof. I wouldn’t want to make a mistake.”

Wiedermann flipped
the papers. “All in here. Including a DNA match—Darlene Mohini equals Dalin
Rowan.”

“DNA match? How
the devil did you get a DNA match?”

Wiedermann
grinned. “I understand that you are the leader of a mercenary organization. You
do odd jobs for people. People who are—shall we say—high up on the social
ladder. It was, in fact, rumored that you once worked for Her Majesty—”

“Okay.” Xris
raised his hand. “We’ve all got our professional secrets. Just curious, that’s
all.” He flipped through the data file, found the information on the DNA, read
through it twice. Again, he shook his head, said silently, You’re a clever
bastard, Dalin Rowan. No wonder I ran smack into a brick wall searching for
you. But I’ve got you now, “old friend.” I’ve got you now.

“And then there’s
the name.” Wiedermann was rambling on. “That, to me, was the conclusive
proof—from a philosophical standpoint, if you will.”

“What about the
name? Darlene?” Xris spoke with a slight sneer. “I think Rowan once had a
girlfriend named Darlene, but—”

“No, not Darlene.
Although the fact that both begin with the letter
d
and have two
syllables, with the accent on the first in each case, is suggestive. No, it was
the use of the name Mohini which I found significant. Your friend was a
scholar, well read?”

Xris shrugged. “College
degree. Advanced. Computer science—”

“Perhaps he
dabbled in Earth religions such as Hindu? Well, never mind. Not important.
According to Hindu legend, the god Shiva was so powerful that the other gods
feared if he sank too deeply into meditation, the resulting energy could engulf
and destroy the world. Therefore, in order to jolt Shiva from his meditative
state, the other gods asked the god Vishnu to distract him. Vishnu did so by
adopting the guise of a beautiful woman. Guess what her name was? Mohini.”
Wiedermann was triumphant. “Interesting, don’t you think?”

Interesting. And,
yes, damn it, it was like Rowan. Always trying to put some sort of cosmic spin
on every ball, whether he sank it or not. Seeing himself as a god. Saving the
world. But he’d gone too far. Decided he was above the law; above the ordinary,
the little people. Above honor, friendship, loyalty.... Yeah, it figured, Xris
tried to tell himself.

Except it didn’t.
Not Rowan.

Xris glared at the
file, frustrated. He’d come expecting answers to his questions. More that,
really, than expecting to find Rowan. If I could just understand...

“So, you know
where he ... she lives . . . his . . . her place of employment?” Xris found
this all very confusing.

“In the file.”

The cyborg glanced
through, gave a low whistle.

“Now you see my
problem,” Wiedermann remarked. “I don’t give a damn about the bureau. I don’t
want trouble from the Royal Navy.”

“You’ve got a
point,” Xris conceded.

Nine years ago,
the galaxy had been under the control of powerful Warlords, who had each ruled
his or her sector of space with enormous battle cruisers, destroyers,
spaceplane carriers, fleets of spaceplanes. Since the return of the king, the
Royal Navy was now the most powerful force in the universe—a force to be
reckoned with, run by a man Xris knew well. Knew and admired. Lord of the
Admiralty, Sir John Dixter.

Xris had worked
for both Dion Starfire—now His Majesty the king—and John Dixter in the past.
The cyborg tapped the paper with a finger, frowned. He didn’t particularly like
crossing swords with either Dion or Sir John on this one. Still, it couldn’t be
helped.

I’ll have to be
extra careful, that’s all.

“Employee of ‘RFComSec,’
“ Xris read. “What the hell is that?”

“Royal Fleet
Communications Security Establishment. We’re not certain, of course, but we
figure it deals with coded transmissions ship-to-ship, and such like. Mohini
lives on base in secure accommodations. The base itself is classified, off
limits to unauthorized personnel. We couldn’t even find out where it was
located.”

“Ideal,” Xris
remarked dryly.

“Certainly. Mohini
has the entire Royal Navy to protect her. And they probably don’t even know
they’re doing it. As I said, she was able to obtain security clearance.
Probably low-level. We couldn’t find out precisely what she does. Her job
description reads ‘CCA-2 FCWing.’ “

“Any guesses?”

“Clerical work,
maybe. We have no idea what CCA stands for, but a level-two employee—if that’s
what CCA-2 means—is usually pretty far down on the scale, wouldn’t be likely to
have top-security clearance, for example.”

Rowan, a clerk.
Xris tried to imagine him ... her crunching numbers, tagging files, maybe doing
a little programming for variety....

He felt
unaccountably sick inside; was almost sorry, at this point, that he’d gone
through with this. He chewed the last bit of twist, swallowed the acrid tobacco
juice, looked for someplace to deposit the wad. Wiedermann indicated a trash
disposer unit on one side of the desk. Xris dumped the wad, picked up his file,
prepared to leave. He needed to be out in the fresh air, needed to be by
himself, needed to think.

“What do I owe
you?”

Wiedermann rose to
his feet. He was taller than Xris had supposed, tall and excessively thin. When
the detective stood, his shoulders slumped forward, his chest caved in.

“We’ll send you
our bill. It was a pleasure working on your case. A real puzzle. Your friend
Rowan was clever, very clever. He didn’t make many mistakes.”

Just one,
Xris thought.
He left me alive.

“Do you know how
we finally got on to him?” Wiedermann was prattling on. “His medical insurance
forms. They’re still on file. By law, you have to keep them on file for a
certain number of years. I don’t suppose you ever thought of looking at those?”

Xris had no
comment, but he made a mental reminder of this slipup. Medical insurance. Why
hadn’t he thought of that? Probably the same company, the same policy that had
covered him, obtained through the bureau. Rowan had never been sick a day in
his life, but still ...

“One of our
operatives noticed your friend had been under treatment by a doctor during the
trial. Could have been stress; probably what people were told. But in checking
through the insurance files, our agent discovered that the doctor was administering
a drug at frequent intervals. Except the drug wasn’t a stress drug. Hormone
shots. Female hormones. They have to inject the hormones several months in
advance of the surgery. Swells the breasts, among other changes. Prepares the
body
and
the mind, you see.”

Xris didn’t want
to see. He wished Wiedermann would shut up. The cyborg edged his way toward the
door.

Wiedermann trailed
along behind. “Once we’d gone that far, the rest was easy. Then we ran into the
death certificate. A nice touch. Almost stopped us cold.”

It stopped Xris.
He turned, stared.

“It was in the
hospital computer,” Wiedermann explained. “Dalin Rowan died on the operating
table. Date, time. We nearly lost him there, but I figured out what he must
have done. Dalin Rowan died the day Darlene Mohini was born. I knew what to
look for and, sure enough, I found it—a woman checking out of that hospital who
had never checked in. I included a copy of the death certificate for you. It’s
in the file. Thought you might be amused.”

A death certificate.
Rowan had written his own death certificate. Well, maybe that made things
easier.

Xris reached the
outer office, negotiated his way around the boxes of ancient, forgotten records
of ancient, forgotten cases. He and Wiedermann shook hands. Wiedemann’s grip
was cold and damp, fishlike. Xris didn’t prolong the good-byes. He stood
outside the closed door. Opening the file, he located the death certificate,
stared at it, not really seeing it.

He was back inside
that hospital. Back inside the nights, inside the terrible pain. Back inside
the days, learning how to walk, talk, see, hear . .. live all over again.

If you could call
it living.

He snapped the
file shut, was about to continue on his way out of the building when the door
popped open.

“Oh, by the way”—Wiedermann
peered out—”when you see Darlene Mohini, you might mention that if
we
were able to find her, so could others. Like the Hung. Her cover’s blown. She’s
in real danger. You’ll be sure to tell her that, won’t you?”

“Yeah,” said Xris,
shifting the file to his cybernetic hand, getting a secure grip on it. “I’ll be
sure to tell her.”

The Way means
inducing the people to have the same aim as the leadership, so that they will
share death and share life, without fear of danger.

Sun Tzu,
The Art of War

The large, private
spacegoing vessel left Laskar at a leisurely speed. The ship—a typical research
model, known as
Canis Major Research I
—was not supposed to be equipped
to make the jump to hyperspace. Such modifications to university research ships
were extremely expensive, generally unnecessary, and would have excited
comment, required the need for explanations. As it was, the killers were able
to slip off Laskar quietly, orbital-traffic control giving them bored
clearance.

Inside a small room
on board the ship, one of the four men— the one who had murdered Bosk—sat in
front of a computer terminal. He was working on the terminal and at the same
time speaking into a commlink. He stopped both when the hatch slid open and one
of his subordinates entered.

“Knight Officer. I’ve
monitored Laskar’s evening’s news, sir.”

“Yes, and—?”

“The fire
destroyed the building completely. A single body was discovered in the
wreckage. The body was burned beyond recognition, but only one tenant remains
unaccounted for and it is presumed that the body is that of an Adonian known as
Bosk. The fire was suspicious in origin, believed to have started in the
apartment of the dead man. He was known to have ties with the mob. Neighbors
reported that four men—armed—paid the deceased a visit shortly before the fire
broke out. They described the vehicle the suspects were driving. It was
discovered abandoned a short time later, stripped and burned.”