City of Golden Shadow

  "Yeah," said her father. "And that's one of the biggest questions, isn't it? Why now? Why not fifteen years ago when we moved him the last time? I just don't get it, Ron. You didn't turn him down for one of his weird requisitions, did you? Piss him off?"

  Christabel didn't understand all the words, but she was pretty sure they were talking about what had happened at Mister Sellars' house, all right. She had heard her daddy on the phone in the morning before she went to school, talking about the explosion and fire.

  ". . . Gotta give the bastard credit, though." Captain Parkins laughed, but it was an angry laugh. "I don't know how he managed to pull it all off, but he damn near fooled us."

  Christabel's hand tightened on Prince Pikapik. The doll let out a warning squeak.

  "If the car had just burned a little longer," Captain Parkins went on, "we wouldn't have been able to tell the difference between the stuff he left on the seat and a genuine cremated Sellars. Ash, fat, organic wastes—he must have measured it out with a teaspoon to get the proportions right. Clever little bastard."

  "We would have found the holes in the fences," said Christabel's daddy.

  "Yeah, but later rather than sooner. He might have had an extra twenty-four hours' head start"

  Christabel heard her father get up. For a second she was scared, but then she heard him begin to walk back and forth like he did when he was on the phone. "Maybe. But shit, Ron, that still doesn't explain how he got away from the base in the time he had. He was in a wheelchair, for God's sake!"

  "MPs are checking everything. Could be someone just felt sorry for him and gave him a lift. Or he might have just rolled down the hill and he's hiding out in that squatter town. Nobody who knows anything will keep their mouths shut once we finish rousting the place. Someone will come forward."

  "Unless he had a confederate—someone who helped him get out of the area entirely."

  "Where would he find someone like that? Inside the base? That's a court-martial offense, Mike. And he doesn't know anyone off the base. We monitor all his household contacts, outgoing calls—he doesn't even access the net! Everything else is harmless. We watched him real close. A chess-by-mail arrangement with some retired guy in Australia—yes, we checked it out carefully—a few catalog requests and magazine subscriptions, things like that."

  "Well, I still don't believe he could have pulled it off without any outside assistance. Someone must have helped him. And when I find out who it is—well, that person's going to wish he was never born."

  Something was making a thumping noise. Christabel looked up. Prince Pikapik had crawled away under the hall table and now the otter doll was bumping over and over against the table leg. The vase was going to fall over any second, and her Daddy would hear that for sure and come out really angry. As she scrambled after the runaway otter, eves wide and heart beating fast, her mother came around the corner and almost tripped over her.

  Christabel shrieked.

  "Mike, I wish you'd take some time to talk with your daughter," her mother called through the closed door of the den. "Tell her that everything's all right This poor little girl is a nervous wreck."

  Christabel had her soup in bed.

  In the middle of the night, Christabel woke up scared. Mister Sellars had told her to put on the new Storybook Sunglasses after school, but she hadn't done it! She had forgotten because she came home early.

  She slid down onto the floor as quietly as she could and climbed under the bed where she had hid them. She had taken the old pair with her to school and thrown them into the trash door outside the classroom during recess, just like Mister Sellars had told her to.

  Being under the bed was like being in the Cave of the Winds in Otterland. For a moment she wondered if there really was any place like that, but since there weren't any otters left that didn't live in zoos—her daddy had told her that—there probably wasn't a Cave of the Winds any more.

  The sunglasses weren't blinking or anything. She put them on, but there was no writing, which made her even more scared. Had something happened to Mister Sellars down there under the ground when the house blew up? Maybe he was hurt and lost down in those tunnels.

  Her finger touched the switch. The sunglasses still did not turn on, but just as she was thinking they might be broken, someone said "Christabel?" very quiet in her ear. She jumped and banged her head against the underside of the bed. When she dared, she took off the sunglasses and stuck her head out, but even with the dark all over, she could tell that there was no one in the room. She put the glasses back on.

  "Christabel," the voice said again, "is that you?" It was Mister Sellars, she suddenly realized, talking to her through the sunglasses.

  "Yes, it's me," she whispered.

  Suddenly she could see him, sitting in his chair. Light was shining on only one half of his runny-looking face, so he looked even more scary than usual, but she was happy to see that he wasn't hurt or dead.

  "I'm sorry I didn't put them on before. . . ." she began.

  "Hush. Don't fret. Everything is all right. Now, from here on, when you want to talk to me, you must put the glasses on and say the word . . . oh, let me see. . . ." He frowned. "Why don't you pick a word, little Christabel. Any word you want, but not one that people say very often."

  She thought hard. "What was the name of that little man in the story?" she whispered. "The name the girl was supposed to guess."

  Mister Sellars slowly began to smile. "Rumpelstiltskin? That's very good, Christabel, very good. Say it yourself so I can code it in. There. And you can use it to call me every day after school, maybe on your way home when you're by yourself. I have some very difficult things to do now, Christabel. Maybe the most important things I've ever done."

  "Are you going to blow more things up?"

  "Goodness, I hope not. Were you very frightened? I heard the noise. You did an excellent job, my dear. You are a very, very brave girl, and you would make a wonderful revolutionary." He smiled another of his raggedy smiles. "No, nothing else is going to blow up. But I'll still need your help from time to time. A lot of people are going to be looking for me."

  "I know. My daddy was talking about you with Captain Parkins." She told him what she could remember.

  "Well, I have no complaints, then," said Mister Sellars. "And you, young lady, should go back to sleep. Call me tomorrow. Remember, just put on the glasses and say 'Rumpelstiltskin.' "

  When the funny old man was gone, Christabel took off the Storybook Sunglasses and crawled out from under the bed. Now that she knew Mister Sellars was okay, she suddenly felt very sleepy.

  She was just climbing back under the covers when she saw the face peering in through her window.

  "It was a face, Mommy! I saw it! Right there!"

  Her mother pulled her close and rubbed her head. Mommy smelled of lotion, like she always did at night. "I think it was probably just a bad dream, baby. Your daddy checked and there's no one outside." Christabel shook her head and buried her face against her mother's chest. Even though the curtains were drawn, she didn't want to look at the window any more.

  "Maybe you'd better come and sleep with us." Christabel's mother sighed. "Poor little thing—that house burning down last night really frightened you, didn't it? Well, don't worry, honey. It's nothing to do with you and it's all over now."

  The technicians wanted to make notes for the cleanup.

  Dread was mildly irritated, since he had last-minute details to attend to and this was not the most convenient time to be forced out of the observation center, but he approved of their thoroughness. He took a small cigar from the humidor and went out onto the top floor balcony overlooking the bay.

  The Beinha y Beinha technical crew had already broken down his office in the city. Now that the project had moved into the final phase, there was no longer a need for it, and once the operation was complete, there would be no time to go back and tie up loose ends, so the crew had emptied it completely, which included sandblasting the top level off
all permanent surfaces, repainting, and replacing the carpets. Now the same men and women were busily examining the beach house which served as observation center. By the time Dread and his team were in the water heading for the target, the cleaning crew, like white-clad scavenger beetles, would be pulling the two-story house to pieces and destroying all clues as to who had inhabited it these past three days.

  He really didn't mind at all being forced out to the balcony on a fine tropical night, he decided. He had not allowed himself a moment's recreation since the stewardess, and he had been working very, very hard.

  Still, it was hard to forget business with the target literally in sight. The lights of the Isla de Santuario were barely visible across the expanse of black water, but the island's various security devices—the drone submarines, minisats, and hardened sites defended by armed guards—were not visible at all, yet each and every one had to be dealt with. Still, barring the kind of major miscalculation that Dread had never yet made. . . .

  Confident, cocky, lazy, dead, he reminded himself.

  . . . Barring miscalculation or criminally negligent intelligence gathering, all were known and prepared for. He only awaited the solution of a few minor loose ends and then the actual arrival of the rest of the team, slated in four hours. Dread had deliberately kept them away until this moment. There was nothing the actual site offered that could not be learned and mastered in simulation, and there was no sense doing anything that might alert the target. The cleanup crew were the one group that did not prepare in VR, but their van was parked in plain sight in the driveway, bearing the name of a well-known local carpet retailer, and of course the Beinhas had arranged for someone on their own payroll to be answering the phones at the carpet warehouse all week, in case someone on the island should spot the van and do that little extra conscientious bit.

  So now, with all the leisurely pleasure of an actual householder enjoying the prospect of handsome new floor coverings, Dread turned up his internal music, then leaned back in a broadly striped canvas chair, lit his cigar, and put his feet up on the balcony railing.

  He had smoked barely half the cigar, and was idly watching the island's perimeter spotlights reflecting on the water like amber stars, when a much smaller light began to blink at the corner of his vision. Dread cursed silently. The soaring Monteverdi madrigal—his favorite music when he was playing a contemplative scene—descended in volume to a sweet murmur. Antonio Heredia Celestino appeared in an open window superimposed on Dread's vision, his shaved head hovering above the dark Caribbean as if he were treading water. Dread would have preferred that Celestino actually were treading water.

  "Yes?"

  "I am sorry to disturb you, Jefe. I hope you have been having a pleasant evening."

  "What do you want Celestino?" The man's attention to meaningless formalities was one of the things that did not sit well with Dread. He was a more than competent gear man—the Beinhas would not hire technical people who were second-rate—but his plodding humorlessness was annoying in itself as well as evidence of a lack of imagination.

  "I am having a few doubts about the data tap. The defenses are complicated, and there is a risk that the preliminary work itself may have . . . consequences."

  "What are you talking about?"

  Celestino bobbed his head nervously and tried to form a winning smile. Dread, a child of the ugliest tin-siding towns of the Australian Outback, was torn between disgust and amusement. If the man had a forelock, Dread decided, he would have tugged it "I fear that these preliminary inspections, the preparation work . . . well, I fear that they may alert the . . . the . . . designate.

  "The 'designate'? Do you mean the target? What in hell are you trying to say, Celestino?" His anger building, Dread turned the madrigal off completely. "Have you compromised the action somehow? Are you calling me to say that, oops, you've accidentally scorched our mission?"

  "No, no! Please, Jefe, I have done nothing!" The man seemed more alarmed by Dread's sudden fury than by the implication of his incompetence. "No, that is why I wished to talk to you, sir. I would do nothing to risk our security without consulting you." He hurriedly outlined a series of concerns, most of which Dread found laughably exaggerated. Dread decided, to his great irritation, that what was going on was simple: Celestino had never cracked a system this tough or this complicated, and he wanted to make sure that if anything went wrong, he would have the excuse that he was following orders.

  The idiot seems to think that just because he's in an apartment a few miles away from the exercise, he'd live through the failure of this action. He obviously doesn't know the Old Man.

  "So what are you saying, Celestino? I've been listening for a long time and I haven't heard anything new."

  "I wished only to suggest. . . ." He obviously found this too forward. "I wondered if you had considered a narrow definition data bomb. We could introduce a hunter-killer into the system and immobilize their entire household net. If we properly code our own equip. . . ."

  "Stop." Dread closed his eyes, struggling to remain calm. Maddeningly, Celestino's pinch-faced image still haunted the blackness behind his eyelids. "Remind me—didn't you spend time in the military?"

  "BIM," said Celestino with a touch of pride. "Brigada de Institutes Militares. Four years."

  "Of course. Do you know when this operation begins? Do you know anything? We are less than eighteen hours away, and you come to me with this kind of shit. Data bomb? Of course you were in the military—if you're not sure about something, blow it up!" He scowled horribly, forgetting for a moment that Celestino, for security's sake, was only seeing a low-grade and largely expressionless Dread sim. "You miserable little poofter, what do you think we're going in for? Just to kill someone? If you had been a foot soldier, or a door-opener, or even the goddamned janitor, you might have an excuse for thinking that, but you are the Christ-save-us gear man! We are are going to freeze and strip the entire system and any remote atachments. Data bomb! What if the thing's programmed to dump everything under assault?"

  "I . . . but surely. . . ." The sweat on the hacker's brow was clearly visible.

  "Listen carefully. If we lose one particle of that data, anything, I am going to personally rip your heart out of your body and show it to you. Understand?"

  Celestino nodded, swallowing hard. Dread cut the connection, then began to search through his files for music that might salvage his good mood.

  ". . . That man has a crack in him a mile wide."

  The shapeless sim that was the Beinha on the left leaned forward slightly, "He is very good at his job."

  "He's a nervous small-timer. I'm flying someone in to keep an eye on things. No arguments. I'm doing you the courtesy of letting you know."

  There was a long silence. "It is your choice," one of them said at last,

  "It is. Damn." The red light was blinking again, but this time in a recognizable rhythm. "Excuse me. I have to take a call."

  The two sisters nodded and blinked off. They were replaced by one of the Old Man's functionaries—a Puppet as far as Dread could tell, dressed in the usual costume-bazaar Egyptian.

  "The Lord of Life and Death, Mighty in Worship, Who is Crowned in the West, summons you to the presence."

  Dread suppressed a groan. "Now? Can't he just talk to me?"

  The functionary did not bat an eye. "You are summoned to Abydos," it said, then vanished. Dread sat for a long moment just breathing, then stood and stretched to release tension—it might prove a very painful mistake to take his frustration and anger to the Old Man—and looked with more than a little sorrow at the cigar, which was now mostly gray char in the bottom of the ceramic bowl he had been using as an ashtray. He sat down again and found a comfortable position, since the Old Man's caprice often extended to hour-long waits, and closed his eyes.

  The massive hypostyle hall of Abydos-That-Was stretched before him, the swollen, skyscraper pillars made even more dramatic by the light of innumerable flickering lamps. He could see the God
's chair at the far end of the hall, looming above the bent backs of a thousand priests like a volcanic island rising from the ocean. Dread grunted in disgust and made his way forward.

  Even though he could not actually feel the jackal ears above his head or see the cur's muzzle he wore, even though the priests kept their faces to the floor as they made way for him and not a single one even stole a glance at him, he felt angry and humiliated. The action would begin in mere hours, but would the Old Man cut through some of his ridiculous ceremony and make things a little easier? Of course he wouldn't. Dread was his dog, summoned to hear His Master's Voice, and would never be allowed to forget it.

  As he reached the front of the hall, and lowered himself to all fours in front of the throne, he harbored a brief but satisfying fantasy of putting a match to the old bastard's mummy wrappings.

  "Arise, my servant."

  Dread stood. Even had he been standing on the dais, he would have been dwarfed by the figure of his employer.

  Always has to remind me who's on top.

  "Tell me of the Sky God Project."

  Dread took a breath, suppressing his fury, and delivered a status report on the final preparations. Osiris, the Lord of Life and Death, listened with apparent interest, but although his corpselike face was as immobile as ever, Dread thought the Old Man seemed vaguely distracted: his bandaged fingers moved ever so slightly on the arms of his throne, and once he asked Dread to repeat something that should have been perfectly comprehensible the first time.

  "The responsibility for this idiot programmer is yours," Osiris pronounced when told about Celestino's call. "Take steps to make sure this is not a weak link in our chain."

  Dread bristled at the assumption that he had to be told. With effort, he managed to keep his voice even. "A professional with whom I have already worked is on her way down. She will watch over Celestino."

  Osiris waved his hand as though this were all perfectly obvious. "This must not fail. I have placed great trust in you despite your many lapses of behavior. This must not fail."