Jytte nodded stiffly. "Please explain."
Crowley smiled, then looked around the room, finally settling his gaze on Sinclair. "The first thing I will do is get Coyote to a place where he can recover. As you may be aware, a number of proto-dimensions have properties that are not at all like this world. One of these is a place that folklore has relegated to the Greek Tartarus and, in fact, a giant creature that answers to the name Tityus does reside there. Chained to a rock, he is devoured by giant vultures during the day, then he regenerates so the torture can continue. This regeneration is not a property of his, but of the place in which he has been imprisoned."
Sinclair nodded. He recalled Coyote having told him of that dimension, and Crowley's apparent physical youth stood as proof of its effectiveness. Until he had seen creatures from other dimensions, like Vetha, the Yidam and the things Fiddleback had created, Sin had not believed the story he had been told. Now he found himself desperately hoping, for Coyote's sake, that the place existed and worked even better than imagined.
"I will get Coyote from the hospital, and take him there. The time differential between there and here is such that he could heal very quickly, but foreign fragments in his body could complicate things." Crowley shrugged. "And I do not know how his being in a coma will affect or be affected by Tityus' dimension."
Sin frowned. "Can the nerve damage be regenerated?"
Crowley nodded. "That dimension regenerated a full brain, so the holes he has there and his severed spinal cord should not be a problem."
Crowley's green-eyed gaze shifted to Bat. "And after I have done that, I will kill the Warriors of the Aryan World Alliance."
"No!"
"Yes." Crowley's voice dropped into an icy whisper that sent a shudder through Sin's gut. "They are my problem, and I will deal with them. If you want a piece of me here and now, Mr. Kabat, I'll take you and still have enough left over to do them."
Bat shot to his feet, but Crowley did not even seem to notice. "They killed Natch."
"Indeed they did and, for that reason, at least one of them deserves to die. That is not the reason they all deserve to die." Crowley tugged at the cuff of his gray gloves. "They are a bomb just waiting to explode. I will defuse them. Permanently."
"I demand the right..."
Crowley shook his head. "No, Bat, you have no rights in this case. In fact, there is only one other person here who could do the job the way it has to be done. That's MacNeal."
"MacNeal?!" Bat barked out a harsh, derisive laugh. "MacNeal?"
Sin felt a jolt run through him at the mention of his name. "Why me?"
Crowley met Bat's disbelieving stare openly. "What would the Aryans say if you attacked them, Bat? They'd point out you're a Pole. You're not one of them. You're a subhuman that rose up against the superior race. They will point to you as a precursor of the great race war in which the unworthy will attempt to destroy God's chosen people. Hal would be denigrated because of his race, Rajani and the Yidam as well. Jytte would lose because her name is the Danish variation of Judith, a Jewish name."
Crowley pointed at Sin and then himself. "MacNeal and I are just like the Aryans. We are part and parcel of the superior race. We can exterminate them, and it's just pest control, not Gotterdammerung or the overture to Apocalypse."
The pit fighter shook his head. "They will say you were duped. They will say you were a traitor to your race."
"Sure, but that means that those who try to organize another group are always going to have to be looking inside for the traitor. They're going to have to direct their suspicion on their own members, and that leads to paranoia and anarchy. It makes them feed on themselves."
Crowley smiled wolfishly as his eyes narrowed. "None of us can ever wipe out the sort of fear and ignorance that breeds hate groups. All we can do is confront them to make sure people find the flaws in their logic. We educate people so their membership does not grow, it stagnates. And then we trim them back and force them to remain dormant."
Bat's nostrils flared. "I don't like it..."
"But you will abide by it," Jytte finished for him.
"Crowley can have them. I can wait."
"Good." Jytte smiled tentatively, then let her expression retreat to blankness. "We all know what Coyote asked us to do. We will continue doing our jobs. Hal and Tadd will need help at Sunburst to process applications. Nero Loring has adapted one of his early scanning devices to serve as a window into another dimension. It will be incorporated into a vision-testing device and will let us determine if a candidate will be sighted or blind outside this dimension. We cannot afford to have those who will go on the expedition be blind, but we do have some positions here for people who cannot see in other dimensions."
Jytte blinked twice. "I believe that is enough for now. We need to accomplish our work as quickly as possible. While a delay might give Coyote time to heal, we cannot afford to give Pygmalion time to train Ryuhito."
Sin smiled. "Don't worry, we've got the construction plan under way, Nero is scouting for any sign of Ryuhito, and the Japanese are putting together the equipment we'll need. If hiring goes well and we can pick out a site, we'll be on Pygmalion before he has any clue we're hunting him."
"My master hopes you are correct, Mr. MacNeal." Vetha bowed her head. "Surprise is an advantage we do not want to surrender, for any Dark Lord, no matter how insignificant, is not a foe you want lying in wait for you."
Will was three hours waiting in the line at the Sunburst Foundation. The first hour had been the worst because he had been standing outside the Sunburst building. For someone who was born and raised on the Reservation east of Phoenix, having the sky made out of black panels and only a hundred feet overhead was intolerable. He wanted to run away from the artificial and dark world the white man had created, but he kept to his place in line.
Each time the urge to bolt came to him, two sharp memories pinned his feet in place. The first was of two Aryans being poised to kill a man lying in a hospital bed. Will, though he would have thought he could have remained apart from the white man's conflicts, had intervened to save their target. Whether or not he wanted it, he was part of the world in which such problems lived and died.
The second memory, the one that brought a smile to the Native American's lips, was of his grandfather dandling Will's infant son on his knee. "Will, if you want the world to be a place where your son can flourish, you must do this. I would go but I am an old man. You have the skills, you have the heart. The responsibility is yours."
Up to two months ago, Will had considered those "skills" a bunch of superstitions that were an artifact of a lost time. He had learned what his grandfather had taught out of respect for the old man, yet every time he saw something that hinted at a reality beyond that accepted by consent of the population at large, he pulled back. He had enough schooling to know that the laws of science dictated all that was real and true.
That had all changed when he met the man he now knew was Michael Loring. Loring had hinted to him that there might indeed be things that existed outside reality. Will realized that if a man who ran a multinational corporation could succeed while functioning in a world containing dark comers of unreason, acknowledging the limits of his own experience could not hurt.
As his perspective shifted, a number of things began to flow together for him. In devoting himself more seriously to the things his grandfather taught him, Will found himself less at odds with the world. He still had difficulty accepting his grandfather's assurances that a hitchhiker they picked up outside Flagstaff was a visitor from another planet, but she had been yet another data point he could plot well outside two standard deviations from reality.
Now others of the Aryan group he had fought had crippled Michael Loring and killed his associate, but only after Loring had announced a hiring campaign through the Sunburst Foundation. The man he had saved from the Aryans was the man who ran the Sunburst Foundation, and in that coincidence both Will and his grandfather found a sinister signifi
cance. With his grandfather promising to take care of his son, Will set out to offer his services to Hal Garrett and Lorica Industries.
Once inside, he found himself in a large, brightly lit room that had the back third cut off by a low wooden wall. Behind it sat a number of desks with individuals locked in deep conversation with applicants. In front of the half-wall some long tables had been set up. The Sunburst people there worked one-on-one with applicants, helping them fill out the necessary forms before they were passed back to the desks. A large number of orange plastic chairs had been set up in the center of the room, but by silent and mutual agreement, they had been reserved for the spouses and children of applicants standing around the periphery of the big room.
He waited patiently, number in hand, while the staff processed volunteers. He even saw Hal Garrett directing things from behind the scenes, but Will did nothing to call attention to himself. He realized that if he had any doubts about his being accepted by Sunburst and Lorica, he might have tried to do something special. Because he did not have doubts, because he knew they would hire him, he waited contentedly.
Someone called his number, and he started to move in the direction of the voice, but Hal Garrett's strong voice intervened. "I'll take number 1337 over here." As Will turned toward him, he saw the tall African-American man smile and open a small gateway to the rear area of the room. "Good to see you again, Will."
Will took the hand Hal offered and shook it. "And you, sir." He followed Hal to his desk and sat down in the chair facing it. "You are looking much better than when I last saw you."
Hal nodded as he pulled a form from a desk drawer. "I feel much better, thanks to you." Hal smiled as he started writing. "You saved my life, and I don't even know your last name."
The Native American laughed lightly. "Raven. It's the shortened form of my grandfather's tribal name." Will gave Hal his address and the other information needed to fill in the first portion of the form. "No allergies, no medications, no drugs, no outstanding warrants, no arrest record."
Hal checked things off and turned the form over. "This work is going to be a long way from here. You don't have any problem with travel?"
Will shivered. "No, none." He hesitated, then met Hal's steady gaze. "My grandfather suggested I tell you that I have special talents that will allow me to go where most cannot."
The big black man laid his pen down and clasped his hands together. "Your grandfather struck me as a very interesting man. I think, given what you told me just now, we can dispense with the rest of this stuff." He glanced at the form again, then his head came up, "Your grandfather is your next of kin?"
Will shook his head. "No, I have a son. He's 8 months old. My grandfather is taking care of him. If there are insurance benefits or whatever, they should go to him."
"What about his mother?"
The Native American looked down. "She decided that responsibility wasn't her thing. She took off. I don't know where she is. Doesn't matter because the boy is in good hands. My grandfather raised me, he can raise my son. My aunts will help as well."
Hal sighed slowly. "I can't hire you, Will. The one stipulation we had was that we were not going to put people in a position where their children could be orphaned. I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do."
Will's eyes narrowed. "Then you are not going as well?"
"What?"
"Your wife was killed in the attack that wounded you. You have children. If you go, they could become orphans. If your rule is absolute, then you cannot be part of this."
Hal sat back. "There are times the rules don't apply."
Will leaned forward. "Then let this be one of those times. My grandfather told me that I had to come here, that I had to participate if I wanted to make sure that my son would have a world worth growing up in. I don't know you well, but I think you are part of this for the same reason. We have to act to drive evil from the world — no matter the cost to us personally, because if we do not, the evil will consume both us and our children."
Will sensed from Hal a genuine respect for what he was saying, but the underlying reluctance still remained. "Let me also point out that my special skills include things you will never find among those who dwell in the Grand Dark. I have lived outside shelter. I know how to track and hunt. I know how to survive under adverse conditions. I am aware and at home in a whole world these people will be blind to."
The big man nodded. "Follow me." He stood and led Will to a door set in the back wall. Hal knocked twice, then waited for a response. When none came, he punched a combination code into the lock panel and the door buzzed open. He ushered Will into the small, dark cubicle with another door in the far wall and pointed at a chair.
Will sat and found himself in front of a machine that looked very much like a vision-testing device. A bulky circular device with a viewport that jutted toward him, it looked like an over-large model of a referee's whistle. Will saw a number of switches and dials on it, and two cables running out the back, but could make no sense of any of it. It didn't look Russian, even though its blocky form suggested manufacture outside the States.
Leaning forward, he put his forehead on the headrest and looked through the lenses. As he expected, he saw a normal vision chart. Instead of letters it had icons, but that did not surprise him. Will knew a number of the people applying for positions had to be illiterate, so differentiating a dog from a pineapple was easier than telling a D from a P. "
"Which line do you want me to read from? I can manage the 20/10 easy. Moose, car, bean, pen, coin and cat."
"Good. Now tell me what you see."
Will heard a switch click, and the scene changed abruptly. Instead of a static chart, he found himself peering at a purple and pink scene that seemed to be a random distribution of colored circles. At first he thought it was a pattern meant to check him for color-blindness, but he knew he was not color-blind already. Then he saw the dots shift and divide. They attacked each other as if engaging in a race war on a cellular level. He would have thought he was watching a microscopic slide of a drop of water, but nothing in it looked like it had evolved on Earth.
"I see, I see... I see purple and pink circles killing each other." Will hesitated as a chill ran down his spine. "The pinks are losing, and I can feel their panic."
A sharp snap sounded and the light in the device died. Will pulled back and looked up at Hal Garrett. "That wasn't a vision test, was it?"
"It was, of sorts. The fact that you saw what you did confirms your ability to be functional at our destination." The African-American rested a hand on Will's shoulder. "The fact that you felt what you felt means I can't turn you away no matter how much I think I should."
"I'm in?"
Hal nodded. "You're in." He crossed behind Will and opened up the other door. "You're in for the long haul. You'll get your shot at that evil you mentioned and I hope, for all our sakes, you make it a good one."
The entity known to Coyote's allies as Fiddleback stretched out his mind and swept up the weak impressions Vetha had communicated to him. He learned through her the full meaning of Fiddleback and took pleasure in the image of a creature feared because of its power and choice to remain hidden. The name showed they feared him and that, in and of itself, could be an intoxicant for him.
The name did not make him happy because he did not allow himself happiness. Arrogance, yes, and pride in his invincibility, but never happiness. That was a weakness that would both cut at his source of power and, even worse, make him careless. Carelessness, he reflected in a dimensional void, was terminal.
His pet, Coyote/Jaeger/Caine, had learned about carelessness. Even all the years of training Fiddleback had lavished upon him had not prevented his injury and near death. Coyote — Fiddleback could no longer consider him Jaeger-pet in clear conscience — had gone unarmed and had advertised his presence. Those two mistakes had been multiplied, producing a disaster of a proportion that threatened the effort against Pygmalion.
Fiddleback turned Vet
ha's impression of Crowley over and over in his mind, like a fly being wrapped in a spider-silk cocoon. Crowley — or El Espectro or The Ghost That Walks or any of a legion of other names — had been an annoyance before. Lacking the power of a Dark Lord, he had succeeded in avoiding detection and slipping into places where he could do a great deal of damage. Crowley had forced changes in plans before, but Fiddleback found himself pleased that Crowley intended to repair Coyote.
The Dark Lord knew that Coyote, like himself, would benefit from the mistake. Creating Pygmalion without establishing a check on his ability to assume power had been a gross blunder. In creating Coyote, Fiddleback had built the weapon to make up for that first mistake while implementing measures that would guarantee his new pet would not be able to oppose him. While Coyote had been instrumental in — doubtlessly because of Crowley's malign influence — preventing Fiddleback's conquest of Earth, his efforts would ultimately be for naught.