“So what are we going to do about it?”
“We? I’ll follow the will of the people through the instructions of their duly elected representatives.”
“Sure. And if I bring you proof that OCI is rotten?”
“Then I bury them,” Hoover answered maliciously. “If you are innocent as you claim, then my Bureau never made any mistakes at all, and that will simply have to be made public, that the OCI was barking up the wrong tree. I can see how an exchange of information could be mutually beneficial for both of us. I believe that we can come to an agreement . . . though if questioned, this meeting never occurred.”
Sullivan extended one big hand. Hoover looked at it distastefully, then finally shook on it. Sullivan had to resist the urge to break all his fingers. “Welcome to the conspiracy, Mr. Hoover.”
Fairfax County, Virginia
ALL ASPIRING IRON GUARDS had to read Okubo Tokugawa’s personal history. He was their leader and their inspiration. An Iron Guard was to emulate the Chairman in all aspects of their life. Whether it was courage on the battlefield, artistry on the canvas, or cunning in the courts, Okubo Tokugawa was all that an Iron Guard should aspire to be.
He had also been a ronin, Toru reasoned.
The Chairman had been born into one of the greatest families in Nippon, but when the Power had chosen the young man to be the first Active, his sudden manifestation of magical abilities had been a great cause of confusion. This was before man understood anything about magic, and the young samurai’s miraculous skills were frightening to the unenlightened. There could only be one Child of Heaven. The Shogunate was shamed by this development, and political rivals used his uniqueness as an excuse for war.
Seppuku was not an option for someone who could not seem to die, so he had been exiled for the good of the empire. Thus he had become a wave man, a ronin, carried about by the dark ocean of fate. It was only through this wandering time that the man who would go on to become the Chairman would learn true wisdom.
Toru clung to that idea. He was following in the footsteps of his father.
He would not obey the false Chairman’s orders. The imposter deserved no loyalty. He did not speak for the Imperium. In fact, by disregarding Okubo Tokugawa’s final message from beyond the grave, the imposter was putting the entire Imperium in jeopardy.
If the imposter would not fill the Chairman’s final order, then Toru would. He did not yet know how, but once the Pathfinder was defeated, then Toru would turn his attention to the imposter. Until then, however, pursuit was inevitable. No Iron Guard had ever forsaken his place before. Hatori should have fled, but he had been old, tired, and afraid. Toru would atone for his mentor’s mistakes as well.
The marines were still unaware of what was coming. He had gathered his belongings, a bag of gold coins, a supply of American money, along with his favorite weapons, and then gone to the garden to meditate and to wait for the Iron Guards that were supposed to take his life. He could have just run, but then they would have given immediate chase. He would need time to plan his next move, and that would be difficult while being hounded by his tenacious brothers.
In winter the garden was as grey as his soul. The chill wind kept his mind sharp as he waited. He did not yet know how he would fulfill the real Chairman’s command. He was not strong enough by himself to destroy a Pathfinder. He prayed to his father’s spirit for guidance. He would need the wisdom of the Chairman to accomplish this mission.
One of the men disturbed his mediation. “Iron Guard, I have news.” It was the Finder and he had a map in hand. The wind was whipping it about. He bowed deeply. “As you ordered, the spirits have followed the American woman. She has located the Grimnoir. They are hiding in a farmhouse not far from here.”
Toru stood and took the map. There was an X drawn on it to the south of them. “Was the large one there? Sullivan?”
“Yes, Iron Guard. It was the same two that came here. She arrived as they were leaving in a red pickup truck. The spirit was not strong enough to follow them because of their ring wards. But from the looks of it, I believe they will be returning shortly. The woman is hiding, watching the place now.”
The flash of inspiration was so clear that he had no doubt it was divine. The marine was not nearly as big as Toru, but he was rather tall. “Have you told any of the others?”
“No, Iron Guard.”
Toru carefully folded the map and put it inside his clothing. “What is your name?”
“Okada Hiroshi,” he answered proudly.
“You have done a great service to the Imperium today, Okada Hiroshi,” Toru said solemnly, and then he bowed. The marine was shocked at the display. It was rare to receive a compliment from one of the mighty Iron Guard. “Thank you.”
“Thank you, Iron Guard,” Hiroshi stammered.
Toru drew his sword and struck so quickly that the marine never even saw death coming. It was completely painless. Toru had already cleaned the blood from his sword and put it back in the sheath before the body toppled. He gently carried the body into the garden and hid it. He then put on his most distinctive kimono and went back to the house. He made sure to greet a few of the staff, and then snuck to the basement to carry up a crate of explosives.
After returning to the garden, he dressed Hiroshi in his kimono and set the body next to the bomb. It was enough to make a mess, but would still leave plenty of big pieces. Toru bore eight kanji, Hiroshi only bore one. A careful inspection of the body parts would reveal what he’d done, but they probably wouldn’t even check until they realized Hiroshi was also missing. His brothers would not search for him if they thought he was dead, and by the time they realized the truth, his trail would be cold.
Fuse lit, Toru escaped over the back wall into the woods. His Brute speed had gotten him a quarter mile away by the time the explosives detonated and thunder rolled through the trees. He turned for one last look at what had been his home and watched the smoke rising from the garden. For the first time in his life, he was truly alone.
The life of an echo.
Perfect sky and mountain firm.
Fires of purity burn.
On a dark ocean.
The Iron Guard understood it now. The meaning had become clear.
New York City, New York
“BUCKMINSTER FULLER. Heard of him?”
“Nope.” Francis looked up from his drink, and then suspiciously down the bar. None of the other customers seemed to be paying attention to Francis and Chandler. It was a low-rent speakeasy and since technically nobody was supposed to be here, customers pretty much minded their own business. For whatever reason, Chandler seemed to be the expert on out-of-the-way dives like this around the city. Francis kept his hat pulled low and his overcoat collar up so no one would recognize him. Luckily, it was cold out, and every time the door opened another blast of cold air would come shooting into the dark bar, so at least he wasn’t the only one dressed that way.
Chandler looked around the room, then lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I’m enjoying this detective thing. Much more interesting than accounting. Fuller’s a Cog. He’s got a little shop in Greenwich Village.”
That wasn’t particularly fancy for a Cog. “What’s his magical brilliance in? Musical theater?”
“For a rich guy, you sure do look down your nose at the arts.”
“Hey, I’ve donated piles of money to . . . stuff.” Francis wasn’t in the mood for witty banter. He’d told his secretary to hold his calls and then he’d slipped out through the UBF mail room and had run for his life. He’d gone from millionaire to fugitive in less than five minutes. Which was about as fast as he’d gone from nobody to millionaire in the first place. He sighed. “So what’s his deal, Ray?”
“Fuller’s a big idea man, but his thing is domes.”
“Domes?” UBF employed several Cogs who specialized in useful things like engines, electronics, or aerodynamics. “No wonder I’ve never heard of him. Who’d pay good money for a dome? Eskimos?”
/>
Chandler finished his drink and then signaled the bartender for a refill. “The Office of the Coordinator of Information.”
“Fuller owns Dymaxion?”
“One and the same. Fuller’s come up with some sort of geometric design that chases away magic. Ten minutes after he announced it, OCI swooped in and told him to shut his trap. They have been buying everything he’s turned out since.”
Finally, some good news. “We need to buy him out.”
“Already done, chief. Congratulations. You own a company that makes domes and a funny-shaped car.”
“Just what I needed. When can I talk to this guy?”
“I told him to meet us here at seven p.m.” Chandler looked at his watch. “So about three minutes.”
“Anybody ever tell you that you’re the best accountant ever?”
“My mom did once, but I think she was lying to make me feel good about myself.” A cold wind struck as the door opened. Chandler leaned around Francis to see. “I do believe that’s our Cog.”
He was a handsome fellow in his late thirties, wearing a brown wool suit and a dark vest. Chandler waved and he came over to greet them. Confident, he looked Francis over. “Good evening, Mr. Stuyvesant,” he said. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Francis shook his hand, a little perturbed that Chandler had let slip his name.
Chandler caught the look. “I didn’t tell him.”
“I recognize you from the papers.” Fuller took the barstool next to him. Francis noted that he was wearing multiple wristwatches. Sheesh, Cogs and their odd habits . . . Francis was thankful that Browning was relatively normal compared to most of them, and he was a wizard when it came to guns, so that was saying something.
Fuller continued. “The transference of such a massive sum of funds occurred so rapidly that I’m not entirely surprised to see that it was a company with as many resources and as well-informed as United Blimp and Freight, that would be so interested in my spheroidal research.”
“What?”
Chandler interpreted. “We paid a lot of money, very quickly.”
“Indeed,” Fuller replied, happy as a calm. “A truly accommodative sum.”
“How much money, Ray?”
“More than I’ll ever make.” Chandler grinned. “Let me get you two a table.”
Francis’ head hurt. He’d dealt with many Cogs in his relatively short life. They were all geniuses, even before their brains were boosted by magic. He’d heard about a few people that the Power had come upon later in life, and they’d gone from relatively normal communication to absolute incomprehensibility as a result. He was guessing Fuller was one of those. Cogs tended to be eccentric, but this man was either the smartest or the densest one of the bunch. “Wait . . . Wait, I need you to try to explain that again.”
Fuller was very proud of his Dymaxion nullifier. “Tensional integrity, or as I call it, tensegrity, is a structural relationship principle in which structural shape is guaranteed by the finitely closed, comprehensively continuous, tensional behaviors of the system and not by the discontinuous and exclusively local compressional member behaviors! The nullifier is based on tensegrity. The Power, itself existing omni simultaneously as a geometric construction, is driven from the area of spheroidal influence upon operation of the nullifier.”
“Jesus . . .” Francis rubbed his temples. “Okay, let’s try this. If somebody had a nullifier, and an Active wanted to be able to use their Power around it, how would they beat it?”
“Beat it?”
“Say I’m telekinetic, and that guy over there”—Francis pointed at a random drunk—“was about to shoot me with a gun. He’s got a nullifier though, so my Power doesn’t work. So, how can I pick up this glass”—Francis lifted his scotch—“and hit him in the face with it?”
“Hmmm . . . You could throw it.”
Francis sighed. “I’d prefer to throw it with my brain.”
“Magic as weaponry? Mr. Stuyvesant, I’ll have you know my life’s work has been based in livingry, not killingry.”
“Are those even real words?”
Fuller seemed offended. “Absolutely. They are now.”
The Cog seemed like a decent enough sort, his brain was just running on a different track than Francis’. “Let me level with you, Mr. Fuller. You’ve already sold some of these to a group called the OCI, correct?”
“Why, yes. I’ve created and sold a total of seven of the devices.”
“Really?” Francis was surprised. “That’s it?”
“Each one takes months of effort. The interaccommodative housing is simple enough, but the geodesic device is rather complex in its manufacture. Currently, I am the only individual capable of crafting the nullifiers, though I have tried to train others; their crafting requires almost an individual artistic touch rather than a replicatable construction methodology.”
“It’s hard, so you’re the only one that can make them?”
“That is what I said.”
I’m getting better at this. “Okay. The OCI has been using your inventions to do some very bad things. Like depowering Actives so they can assault them.”
“Why would they do such a terrible thing?”
“I don’t know. Every time we’ve met they’re too busy trying to kill us to ask.”
Fuller was confused. “Us?”
“Us . . . Actives.” Francis concentrated on his glass. It rose off the table, hung there for a moment, and then floated gently back down. “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to be able to use my God given magical Power to make this glass go up and down without asking the government’s permission first.”
Fuller corrected him. “Up and down are archaic terms, when in reality you mean in and out based upon the object’s relation to the gravitational center of the Earth . . .”
“I bet you and my buddy Jake would get along swell.”
“But I can see what you mean. I did not know my inventions were being used to cause harm. I do not approve.”
“Well, first and foremost, now that you work for me, you’re not making any more of them for the OCI. Will the other ones break or wear out?”
“They are very resilient and as long as the interaccommodative housing is unharmed and the spheroidal nullifier is in motion, then it will retain magical cohesion, even with minor maintenance. The first one I created was large enough to be motorized for continual operation and had a greater range, while the later six were portable but had to be spun by hand, which gives them only a few minutes of usage at a time, and a limited range.”
“Gotcha. So smash it or stop it from moving. So getting back to my original question, how do I get around a nullifier?”
“As in the theoretical application of your glass of alcohol against that individual’s face?” Fuller pointed at the same man Francis had.
“What’cha looking at, asshole?” the drunken construction worker growled. “Got a problem?”
“Nothing, sir,” Francis answered happily. “Let me buy you a drink.” Chandler was sitting at the bar near the entrance and had caught the exchange. He signaled the bartender to send the big fellow another round. Good man. “Lower your voice. Are you trying to get us beat up?”
“Sorry, Mr. Stuyvesant. There is one hypothetical answer to your question. Fuller produced a pencil and a notepad from his coat. “The Power is made up of thousands of individual geometric constructs.” He quickly scribbled a complex design onto the paper. “This is what yours, as a Mover, looks like.”
Francis took the pad. It was the design for a spell, only much more complex than anything the Society had cobbled together in the Rune Arcanium. This was closer to some of the things that Sullivan was playing with. He had never seen what his own looked like before. It was strangely familiar, like a half-remembered dream. “Where’d you learn this?”
“Learn it?”
“Who taught you this spell?”
“I’m looking at it right now,” Fuller explained. “I can see the Power. I ca
n always see magic and its many complex connections. That was how I was able to design the spheroid’s repellent omnialternative correlation for the nullifier.”
That blew him away. “You can see the Power? All the time?”
“Why, yes. Of course.”
However much money Chandler had spent to pick this guy up was well worth it. Sullivan’s few minutes dead and hanging around the Power had given them several new spells, and Fuller could see everything right now! Francis was going to be rich . . . well, richer. “Wow. I really wish I had more time. Back to the business of beating your nullifier . . .”
“In my travels I’ve come across two types of connections to the Power: those that are chosen by the Power directly, and those that man has created through his own experimentation. Their appearance is drastically different, as if the original was created by a master sculptor and the others are a copy done in chalk on a bumpy sidewalk by a fat-fingered child. The nullifier will repel either. However . . .” Fuller took back the notepad and flipped to a new page. This drawing was much more complicated. It was shape on top of shape, using various points as starting areas for new lines and circles, until half the page was filled with a garbled mess. “This is the one Power-related geometry that not only resists the repulsion of the nullifier, but will actually destroy the omnialternative correlation.”
“So if this spell comes close to a nullifier?”
“A catastrophic release of energy,” Fuller answered. “Far greater than the interaccommodative housing can—”
“Boom?”
Fuller sighed like he was talking to a particularly idiotic subject. “Yes. Boom.”
“Big or little? We talking hand grenade or Peace Ray?”
“Well . . . maybe grenade. Probably smaller than that. I would assume more like a very large firecracker . . . except perhaps for Dymaxion Nullifier Number One, which would be roughly equivalent to ten pounds of TNT.”