"To that club—Mister J's. Something happened to Soki there. I'm almost certain that Stephen tried to sneak back in while he was staying at Eddie's."
"If there is something bad there, something dangerous. . . ." !Xabbu shook his head. "What would be the point? What would the people who own this virtual club have to gain?"
"It may be a byproduct of one of their unpleasant little amusements. Eddie said they're supposed to have experiences for sale that transcend whatever equipment the users own. Maybe they've found some way to give the illusion of greater sensory receptiveness. They might be using compacted subliminals, ultrasonics, something illegal that has these terrible side effects." She sat down and began excavating the mess of papers on her desk in search of an ashtray. "Whatever it is, if I'm going to find out I'll have to do it myself. It would take forever to get anyone to investigate—UNComm is the world's worst bureaucracy." She found the ashtray but her hands were shaking so hard that she almost dropped it.
"But will you not be exposing yourself to danger? What if you are affected as your brother was?" The little man's usually smooth forehead was wrinkled in a deep frown of worry.
"I'll be a lot more alert than Stephen was, and a lot better informed. Also, I'll just be looking for possible causes—enough to build a case to take to the authorities." She crushed out the cigarette. "And maybe if I figure out what happened, we'll be able to find some way to reverse the damage." She curled her hands into fists. "I want my brother back."
"You are determined to go."
She nodded, reaching for her pad. She was filled with a high and even slightly giddy sense of clarity. There were many things to do—she had to construct an alias, for one thing: if the people who owned the club had something to hide, she would be foolish to walk in under her own name and index. And she wanted to do some more research into the club itself and the company that owned it. Anything she could learn before going in might improve her chances of recognizing useful evidence once she was on the inside.
"Then you should not go unaccompanied," !Xabbu said quietly.
"But I . . . hold on. Are you talking about you? Coming with me?"
"You need a companion. What if something were to happen to you? Who would take your story to the proper authorities?"
"I'll leave notes, a letter. No, !Xabbu, you can't." Her engine was running now. She was ready to move and this seemed a distraction. She didn't want to take the small man. Her entry would have to be illegal, for one thing; if she were caught, her crime would be seen as much worse if she had dragged a student along with her.
"Exams begin in two days." !Xabbu almost seemed to have sensed her thoughts. "After that, I will no longer be your student"
"It's illegal."
"There would be a presumption that, newcomer to the big city that I am, stranger to modern ways, I did not understand I was doing wrong. If necessary, I would help to support that presumption."
"But you must have your own responsibilities!"
!Xabbu smiled sadly. "Someday, Renie, I will tell you of my responsibilities. But at the moment I certainly have a responsibility to a friend, and that is very important. Please, I ask you this as a favor—wait until exams are finished. That will give you time to prepare, in any case. I am sure there are more questions to be asked before you confront these people directly, more answers to be sought."
Renie hesitated. He was right. At least a few days of preparation would have to be fitted in around her work schedule anyway. But would he be an asset or a liability? !Xabbu returned her gaze with nonchalance. For all his youth and small stature, there was something almost daunting about the Bushman. His calm and confidence were very persuasive.
"Okay," she said at last. Being patient took a tremendous effort of will. "If Stephen doesn't get any worse, I'll wait. But if you come with me, you do what I say while we're in there. Understand that? You're very talented for a beginner—but you are a beginner."
!Xabbu's smile widened. "Yes, teacher. I promise."
"Then get out of my office and go study for those exams. I have work to do."
He bowed slightly and went out, the door closing silently behind him. The displaced air stirred the remnants of her cigarette smoke. Renie watched them eddy across the light from the window, a swirl of meaningless, ever-changing patterns.
That night the dream came again. !Xabbu stood at the edge of a great precipice, examining a pocket watch. This time it had sprouted legs and was walking on his palm like a flat silver beetle.
Something hovered in the air beyond the edge of the cliff, obscured by the mist but moving closer. It was a bird, she thought when she first saw the wings. No, it was an angel, a shimmering, smoke-blue presence with a human face.
The face was Stephen's. As he drifted nearer, he called to her, but his voice was lost in the rush of the wind. She cried out, startling !Xabbu, who turned and took a step backward, then tumbled over the edge and vanished.
Stephen looked down at where the little man had fallen, then lifted his tearful gaze to Renie. His mouth moved again, but she still could not hear him. A wind seemed to catch him, spreading his wings and making his whole being ripple. Before Renie could move, he was swept away into the mist.
CHAPTER 8
Dread
NETFEED/NEWS: Police Kill 22 Cannibal Cultists
(visual: body bags being laid out in front of building)
VO: Greek military police gunned down 22 members of the controversial "Anthropophagi" cult, reputed to engage in ritual cannibalism, in a firefight that turned the center of Náxos into a war zone. One policeman was killed and two others injured in the fierce exchange.
(visual: bearded man holding up bone, shouting at audience)
Pending identification of the bodies, some badly burned, it is not known whether the group's leader, Dimitrios Krysostomos—shown here in footage recorded covertly by a government informant—was one of those killed in the assault on the Sakristos. . . .
He liked the way he was moving—a slow lope, like a leopard just before it sprang. He upped the volume and the shuddering drums were everywhere. He felt good. The soundtrack running on his internal system made it all . . . perfect.
Camera, camera, he thought, tracking the woman with his eyes. She had a rump, that one—it made him smile just to see its purposeful movements, and to accent the smile he called in a trumpet glissando, sharp and cold as a knife. The silvery tones made him think about his own blade, a flatbacked Zeissing tendon-cutter, so he pulled it out for a close-up look as the trumpet wailed, a slow dissolve that brought him up hard as a rock all over.
The woman jounced down the steps to the underground parking lot, hurrying a little. That fine rump bobbed, drawing his eyes away from the knife. Pale woman, rich and gym-slender, hair the color of sand, all trussed up in those fancy white pants. She hadn't seen him yet, but she must know he was following, some animal part of her that, gazellelike, could smell the danger.
She looked back when she hit the bottom of the stairs, and for a brief instant her eyes widened. She knew. As he stepped down into the shadowy stairwell, he accelerated the drums; they bounced around inside his head, battering his skull like boxing gloves against the heavy bag. But his stride did not increase—he was too much of an artist for that. Better to go slow, slow. He turned down the volume of the skittering drums to enjoy the inevitability of the unfolding climax.
A sneaky counter-rhythm crept into the mix, an off-balance wallop like a failing heart. She was nearing her car now, fumbling for the remote. He tuned his vision until the woman and her heat were the only thing that glimmered in the dark garage. He sped up, prodding the music along so that more horns came in and the beats overlapped, building toward a crescendo.
His fingers descended lightly, but the shock of his touch still made her shriek and drop her bag. Its contents spilled across the cement floor—sought-for remote, expensive Singapore data pad, tubes of lipgloss like bullet cartridges. The tumbled bag retained a heat-trace of her han
d, already fading.
Aggression fought with fear across her face—anger that someone like him should touch her, should make her spill her oh-so-private life on the floor. But as he moved to close-up on her face, his own mouth twisting in a grin, fear won out.
"What do you want?" The voice hitched, barely audible above the clamor rattling through the bones of his skull. "You can have my card. Here, take it,"
He smiled, lazy, and the crescendo flattened out and held. The knife flicked up, pausing for a moment against her cheek. "What does Dread want? Your stuff, sweetness. Your sweet stuff."
Later, when he had finished, he slid the music down to a sunset diminuendo—chirping sounds like crickets, a mournful violin. He stepped over the spreading wetness and picked up her bank card, grimacing. What fool would take something like that? Only an outback idiot would fix the mark of Cain to his own forehead.
He lifted the blade and traced the word "SANG" across the card's hologrammed surface in lines of red, then dropped it beside her.
"Who needs VR when you got RL?" he whispered. "Real real."
The god looked down from his high throne in the heart of Abydos-That-Was, across the bent backs of his thousand priests, prostrated before him like so many turtles sunning on the Nile's bank, past the smokes of a hundred thousand censers and the glimmering light of a hundred thousand lamps. His gaze passed even into the shadows at the farthest reaches of his vast throne room and on through the labyrinth of passages that separated throne room from City of the Dead, but still he could not locate the one he sought.
Impatient, the god tapped his flail on the gilded arm of his chair.
High Priest Something-or-Other—the god could not be bothered with the names of all his underlings: they came and went like grains of sand in a windstorm—crawled to the dais on which the golden chair rested and rubbed his face against the granite tiles.
"O, beloved of shining Ra, father of Horus, Lord of the Two Lands," the priest intoned, "who is master of all the people, who makes the wheat to grow, who died but lives; O great Lord Osiris, hear your humble servant."
The god sighed. "Speak."
"O beautiful shining one, O lord of green things, this humble one wishes to tell you of a certain unrest."
"Unrest?" The god leaned forward, bringing his dead face so close to the prostrate priest that the old worthy almost wet himself. "In my kingdom?"
The priest sputtered. "It is your two servants, Tefy and Mewat, who trouble your worshipers with their evil behavior. Surely it is not your wish that they should make drunken riot in the priests' sanctuaries and terrify the poor dancers in such a distressing way. And it is told that they perform even darker acts in their private chambers." The old priest cringed. "I speak to you only of what others already say, O King of the Uttermost West, beloved and undying Osiris."
The god sat back, his mask concealing amusement. He wondered how long it had taken this nonentity to work up the courage to broach the subject. He briefly contemplated feeding him to the crocodiles, but could not remember if this High Priest was a Citizen or merely a Puppet. Either way, it seemed too much trouble.
"I shall consider this," he said, and raised the crook and the flail. "Osiris loves his servants, the greatest and the smallest."
"Blessed is he, our Lord of Life and Death," the priest gabbled, crawling backward. He made excellent time considering the indignity of his posture—if he was a Citizen, he had mastered his simulation skills well. The god decided it was good he had not fed this one to the crocodiles—he might prove useful someday.
As for the god's wicked servants . . . well, that was their job description, was it not? Of course, it was preferable that the pair be wicked somewhere other than in his favorite and most intricately constructed sanctuary. Let them make their holidays in Old Chicago or Xanadu. Then again, perhaps more than mere banishment was in order. A little discipline might not go amiss where the fat one and the thin one were concerned.
He looked up from these thoughts at the brazen cry of a trumpet and the tattoo of a shallow drum from the rear of the throne room. Yellow-green eyes glowed in the shadows there.
"At last," he said, and crossed his emblems on his chest once more.
The thing that stepped out of the darkness, and before which the priests parted like the great river swirling around an island, appeared to be almost eight feet tall. Its handsome brown body was muscular, long-limbed and vital; but from the neck up it was a beast. The jackal head swiveled, watching the priests scurry aside. The lips curled back, showing long white teeth.
"I have been waiting for you, Messenger of Death," said the god. "Waiting too long."
Anubis dropped to one knee, a cursory gesture, then rose. "I had things to do."
The god took a calming breath. He needed this creature and its particular talents. It was important to remember that. "Things?"
"Yes. Just a few matters." The long red tongue emerged and swept over the muzzle. In the candlelight, traces of what looked like flecks of blood showed dark against the long fangs.
The god grimaced in distaste. "Your heedless pursuits. You risk yourself needlessly. That is not pleasing."
"I do what I do, like always." The wide shoulders shrugged; the bright eyes closed in a lazy blink. "But you have summoned me, and I have come. What do you want, Grandfather?"
"Do not call me that. It is impertinent as well as inaccurate." The old god took another deep breath. It was hard not to react to the Messenger, whose every movement reeked with the insolence of destruction. "I have discovered something of great importance. I seem to have an adversary."
The teeth flashed again, briefly. "You wish me to kill him."
The god's delighted laughter was entirely genuine. "Young fool! If I knew who he was and could set you upon him, then he would not be worthy to be called my adversary. He or she." He chuckled.
The jackal head tipped to one side, like that of a scolded dog. "Then what do you want of me?"
"Nothing—yet. But soon there will be dark alleys aplenty for you to haunt, and many bones for you to crack in those great jaws."
"You seem . . . happy, Grandfather."
The god twitched, but let it pass. "Yes, I am happy. It has been so long since I have been tested, since any but the most feeble have opposed me. The mere fact that one has risen against me and has trifled in even the smallest of my plans, is a delight. My greatest test of all is coming, and if there were no opposition there would be no art."
"But you have no idea who it is. Perhaps it is someone . . . inside the Brotherhood."
"I have thought of it. It is possible. Not likely, but possible."
The green-gold eyes flared. "I could find out for you."
The thought of unleashing this rough beast in that particular chicken coop was diverting but unworkable. "I think not. You are not my only servant, and I have subtler means of gathering information."
The jackal's tone became petulant. "So you called me away from other things merely to tell me that you have no tasks for me?"
The god swelled until his mummy wrappings creaked and snapped, growing until his deathmask face loomed far above the throne room floor. The thousand priests groaned, like sleepers beset with the same bad dream. The jackal took a step backward.
"I call and you come." The voice boomed and echoed beneath the painted ceiling. "Do not think that you are indispensable, Messenger!"
Howling and clutching at his head, the jackal god fell to his knees. The moaning of the priests intensified. After what he deemed a suitable interlude, Osiris lifted his hand and the cry of pain died away. Anubis collapsed stomach-first to the floor, panting. Long moments passed before he dragged himself up onto his hands and knees. His trembling head bowed until the pointed ears brushed the steps before the throne.
The god resumed his normal size and surveyed Anubis' bent back with satisfaction. "But as it happens, I do have a task for you. And it does, in fact, concern one of my colleagues, but it is work of a less delicate
nature than unmasking a secret adversary. My words of command are being sent to you even now."
"I am grateful, O Lord." His voice was hoarse and hard to understand.
The candles flared in the heart of Abydos-That-Was. The Messenger of Death received another commission.
Dread yanked the fiberlink from its slot and rolled off the bed onto the floor. Eyes clamped shut with pain, he crawled to the bathroom and groped for the rim of the tub, then vomited up the vat-grown kebab that had been his lunch. His stomach went on convulsing long after he had emptied himself. When it stopped, he slumped against the wall, gasping.
The Old Man had never been able to do that before. A painful buzzing here, a nasty splash of vertigo there, but never anything like that. It felt like a knitting needle had been pushed in one of his ears and pulled out the other.
He spat bile into a towel, then dragged himself erect and stumbled to the sink to wash the digestive fluids from his lips and chin.
It had been a long time since anyone had made him hurt like that. It was something to think about. Part of him, the squinting child who had first confronted the authorities after hitting another six-year-old in the face with a hammer, wanted to find out the old bastard's true name, track him to his RL hideaway, then razor him and pull his skin off string by string. But another part, the adult creature who had grown from that child, had learned subtlety. Both parts, however, admired the exercise of naked power. When he was on top someday, he would act no differently. Weak dogs became bones for other, stronger dogs.
Helpless rage was a hindrance, he reminded himself. Whoever the Old Man really was, going after him would be like trying to storm hell to throw rocks at the devil. He was a big wheel in the Brotherhood—maybe the biggest, for all Dread knew. He probably lived surrounded by over-armed bodyguards in one of those hardened underground silos so popular with the filthy rich, or on some fortified island like a villain in a Malaysian slash-and-smash netflick.