Eric Flint's Blog, page 307

The Savior – Snippet 01

The Savior – Snippet 01

The Savior

Tony Daniel & David Drake

PART ONE

The Thrust

Eight years after the events of The Heretic

1

Ingres District

476 Post Tercium

Three moons hung in the night sky. Churchill, the largest moon, was a quarter-sickle to the east. Mommsen and Levot, much smaller, were chips of fire to the southwest. Both were full. It was, as usual in the Land, a cloudless night.

A bonfire burned in a trampled area in the midst of a near-ripe barley field. Although it was dark, there was enough moonlight for Major Abel Dashian to see as he made his way through the barley and toward the fire to check in with one of the platoons of Friday Company.

The tall barley, a few weeks from harvest, swished against his canvas-wrapped legs, until he got to the edge of the cleared spot where the platoon had camped for the night. When the Guardians of Zentrum were on the march, they used no tents. Each man had a thin sleeping roll laid out on a waxen tarp. Beside each sleeping man was his pack. Each weighed three stones and contained rations, gunpowder in two mountain-dak powderhorns, and wicker containers of percussion caps and papyrus-wrapped minié cartridges. Guardians left their personal effects at home. Abel didn’t have many to begin with. The only item that he had any deep attachment to, a lock of his dead mother’s hair, he kept in a box in his officer quarters back in the city of Lindron.

The resting Guardians in the barley were spread out around their rifle tripods. Every squad had a wooden rack, and eight musket rifles stood neatly on butt-end in a circle around each rack, their barrels meeting in the crisscross of sticks above the lashing. Each man was only a few steps away from his weapon. There were four squads to the platoon, forming a rough circular pattern around the central cookfire. Two crosshatched paths for walking divided the sleeping men into quarters.

Abel made his way along one of these paths toward the fire.

Friday Company was on the eastern edge of the encampment. There were pickets out a bit farther, but this was the edge of the camp proper. Abel was walking the line, checking vulnerable positions. As executive officer of Third Brigade and aide-de-camp to the colonel that led it, this was his job each evening during the northward march.

He’d been a commanding officer himself in the Regulars just nine months ago: district military commander of Cascade, with the rank of colonel. Then the call had come to assemble all Guardian reserves from the various districts, and he’d returned to his old rank, major. The fact that he served under a man he respected, and for whom he even felt fondness, lessened the sting of relative demotion. Colonel Zachary von Hoff had been his favorite instructor at the Guardian Academy. For the past months, Abel had served as his adjutant and chief of command staff for the Guardian Third Brigade.

It helped that a good many of the lower ranks in the Third were men who had risen through a special selection program Abel had created in Cascade. The chosen men were sent off to the Special Warfare School in Lindron, the noncommissioned version of the Guardian Academy. Abel had been surprised and gratified to find that von Hoff had been on the lookout for his Cascade men and had snatched them up for the Third the moment they finished their Guardian boot camp. There were, then, transplanted Cascade men throughout the Third, men he knew and who knew him.

Although the platoon corpsmen — all men in their teens and early twenties — were bedded down, seven older soldiers remained around the fire. Abel recognized a staff sergeant he knew. He was with the other squad sergeants, and a couple of specialist master sharpshooters attached to the platoon. All of them wore the braided sash and twisted armband of carnadon leather that marked their rank.

The noncoms spoke in low voices, and Abel presumed that they were discussing, as most men did with a day’s march behind them, company scuttlebutt, women, pay, the possibilities of loot during the upcoming campaign — and what the hell was going on in the Progar District that was so bad it had caused the Abbot of Lindron to send an army of sixteen thousand troops to deal with it.

Correct. There is talk of the march, and there is also discussion of the relative merits of the various whorehouses of Bruneberg, said a thin, high-pitched voice in Abel’s mind.

It was a familiar voice, a voice Abel had heard since he was six years old.

A voice like nightscraper chirps, if they were made of words instead of squeaks, Abel thought. He’d heard more nightscrapers in the past few weeks than he had in years. It was good to be in the field.

These sergeants speculate that there may be a pause near Bruneberg, perhaps an encampment of several days that would be long enough for them to travel into the city proper, conduct experiments in regard to the whorehouses, and compare notes.

The chirping voice belonged to Center, a being who claimed to be an artificial intelligence descended on a traveling capsule from the sky. Center, whom Abel had decided to call “he” long ago, shared a portion of Abel’s mind with another ghostly presence: a man named General Raj Whitehall.

The bastards should hope to march on past or the town will drain them of every barter chit they possess, said Raj in a voice so deep it was almost a growl. If all goes well, on the trip home they’ll have a rucksack full of spoils to spend on a proper leave.

Raj was a rougher being than Center, foul-mouthed on occasion, and most definitely male. He claimed to have once been a conquering general on a planet called Bellevue several hundred years ago and multiple millions of leagues away. Now he was a voice in Abel’s mind, an artificial intelligence construct, the same as Center. As forceful as Raj’s presence was even now — at times threatening to overwhelm Abel’s own will — Abel could only wonder what it would have been like to meet the living general in person.

Abel emerged silently from the barley, surprising the hell out of one of the sergeants who saw a fully armed form materialize from the darkness. Abel might be a commanding officer, but on night duty he carried a rifle himself, slung around onto his back, where it was held by a strap, its bayonet unfixed and strapped in its holder on the underside of the stock. He was also armed with his own dragon, a flare-muzzled blunderbuss pistol held under his belt strap. He carried it on the left side, handle reversed, for drawing. A sword in a scabbard of carnadon leather hung at his left side as well. The sword was a mark of rank, and was generally useless in battle. But it was Abel’s concession to tradition, a family heirloom, given to him by his father when Abel had made captain of scouts in the Regulars.

It had not been entirely useless, either: Abel had killed men with the sword. And so had his ancestors.

“Evening, Major Dashian,” said the startled staff sergeant, recovering himself and saluting.

Abel returned it.

“Evening, Staff Sergeant,” he replied. He knew the man. He came from the Guardian capital garrison and not from the reserve call-ups. What was his name?

Silverstein.

Abel took a knee by the fire. One of the other noncoms offered him a clay cup of steaming hard cider. Abel took it with a nod of thanks. The cider had a burnt taste and was very hot. He held the cup on his upright knee to let the cider cool, and glanced around the fire.

Silverstein was a short man of River Delta stock. The staff sergeant’s jaw moved in a regular motion. He was chewing gum. Delta men substituted such gum for the tobaccolike nesh that Abel had grown up around in Treville District. He did not dip or chew himself, but he did smoke a pipe of nesh weed occasionally.

Abel remembered Silverstein because not many of the enlisted from the Delta ever made corporal, much less moved up to a higher rank. He’d inquired and found that Silverstein had made his mark by fighting in a bloody engagement against the Flanagans, the wild tribe of barbarians who inhabited the coast to the east of where the River spilled into the Braun Sea.

“So, Staff Sergeant, how did we do on the march today?” asked Abel. “Do you think we can get another eight leagues out of them tomorrow?”

Silverstein looked up at Abel with a faint smile on his face. “I think they’ll do all right, Major,” he said. “We have some tired feet and broken sandals, but it’s nothing that a good night’s rest and a bit of stitching in the morning won’t fix.”

“Glad to hear it, Sergeant,” Abel replied. “Because I think we’re going to try for ten tomorrow.”

This caused a low groan from the others gathered around the fire, but Silverstein nodded. “We’ll soon be in Treville District, where the roads are broad and tended, not to mention much safer, what with your father in charge of the Black and Tans there, sir.”

“Yes, should be no need for these whole company pickets in Treville.”

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 08

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 08

Part II: Lawyers, Ghouls, and Mummies

May, 1999

Chapter 8: New Client, Closed Case

For some reason, Syl’s words echoed back to me at odd hours in the next few weeks. I did find myself glancing at shadows out of the corner of my eye more often, looking at mist-fogged streets with a different perception, but for quite a while nothing of any note happened.

The only real reminder of the strangeness in my life was the lack of it when I talked to Renee Reisman. She had volunteered to forget the truth – it would make the deception easier and more convincing – but that meant that she had literally no recollection of the most frightening and bizarre episode in both our lives. It was hard, at first, to go to our usual Thursday bowling session without expecting that subject to come up, and to not bring it up. But after a couple of weeks I adapted to it, and things were back on track.

I glanced at the clock. Four-fifteen. I keep WIS open until five every day, but a lot of the time no one comes in for hours. More than half my clients I hardly ever see, just hear over a telephone or get E-mail or faxes from. I had just looked back down to the package I was preparing for Intra Science Technologies — prior art research on a patent they thought they could get, and probably wouldn’t if they couldn’t get around the prior art I’d found — when the door chimed.

The boy coming in looked vaguely familiar; about five foot seven, looked to be about fifteen, skin with the dark complexion of the Middle East, a narrow face that Syl would have described as hawklike, slender build, and eyes of a startlingly clear grey shade I could see from my desk.

I could also see even darker circles under his eyes, and he was walking with the heaviness I associated with someone near the limit of exhaustion. “Mr. Wood?” he asked.

“That’s me, yes. Welcome to Wood’s Information Service, Mr…?”

“Ross. Xavier Ross.”

Oh, that poor kid. Once he said the name I knew who he was. I’d actually seen him a couple of times in the news before the lastest disaster — he was a star of the local martial arts scene and had just come back from an overseas tournament of some kind with medals. But the big news hadn’t been nearly so cheery. “My sympathies, Mr. Ross. I was familiar with a lot of your brother’s work.”

“Th… thanks.” He hesitated, then sat down on the red leather chair I had in front of my desk for clients. “Um… how much would it cost me to have you do something for me?”

I grinned. “Depends on the something, I’d say. What do you want me to do?”

He looked embarrassed. “Sorry, that was stupid. I…” Xavier sighed, looked down. “You work with the cops, right?”

“Sometimes. I can’t talk about, or give you any information on, whatever they give me to do. Just to warn you.”

“Oh, no, I don’t want that. But you’re not part of the police yourself?”

Well, this is an interesting conversation already. “No. But if you want me to do anything criminal, I don’t do that.”

He shook his head violently, long black hair twitching in the ponytail he wore. “No, no, I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that, Mr. Wood. I just… You know they’ve closed the case?”

I started to get some idea of what he might want. “I’d heard. Drug-related killing, your brother was a freelance investigative reporter and photographer, he must have seen the wrong thing at the wrong time.”

“I don’t think so,” Xavier said, and I was startled by the venom in his voice. The conviction in those words was also impressive. “Sorry. Not your fault. But… they sent back my brother’s laptop.” He reached into a bag he was carrying and brought out a Lumiere ToughScreen 97E – a very nice computer for anyone on the go. “I’d like you to check it out for me.”

I raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure the police went over all the files, and if it boots it should be in good shape. What do you want me to check?”

He looked suspiciously at me, then his gaze dropped. “For anything that might have been wiped. I’ve heard you’re really good.” He rolled his eyes, obviously annoyed with himself. “Okay, look, I’m not … I’ve never done this kind of thing before. My brother, M…Michael, he used this to take notes. He took notes on everything he did and kept it in a very exact format. Like this,” he opened the laptop and showed me a series of files with names that told me the location and date. “The cops didn’t find anything that showed he was in any kind of…” he hesitated.

I decided to wait, see what he had to say.

“Any kind of… strange investigation,” he finally finished. “Something different than the ordinary. They didn’t find anything specifically about drug running, either, but they figured he’d run into his problem while on one of the other jobs. But I knew Mike, you know?” I nodded when he looked at me. “So I knew what his workload was like and how he did things. It just doesn’t look like there’s enough on the computer for those weeks.”

“All right. You want me to see if there’s anything showing that someone erased files in this format, and recover anything I can. Is that it?”

“Yes! That’s exactly it.”

I frowned. Lumiere PCs were pretty good about their erasure procedures, and bringing up stuff someone tried to delete… Maybe. But it’d be a bear. “That’s going to be very expensive, Xavier, and I don’t know if I should be doing this at all. Who owns this?”

“I do. Once they released Michael’s stuff, my mom gave me pretty much everything.” His tone wavered and I could see the effort it took for him not to let that thought start him crying.

Well, if the cops closed the case there’s nothing stopping me from poking around in it. “You want this done the way I’d do it for a top police investigation, I’m going to have to charge you what I would charge them. That’s about three thousand dollars, Xavier.” Actually, for an official investigation it’d be about six thousand, but I was willing to cut him a break — but not too much of one, because this would take some work.

He didn’t hesitate; his eyes might have widened a bit, but he reached into another pocket of the backpack and pulled out a debit card. “You take Virtuoso cards?”

Man, I wish I had that much money to spend when I was his age. “You’re allowed to do this?”

“Mom said I can spend money in that account any way I want.”

“If you say so.” I worked up the job on one of my standard forms with a clear, short statement of work, had him sign it, and ran the card. It cleared that amount without a problem. “All right, Mr. Ross, I’ll get to work on this. It will take some time, and I have other clients, but you can expect to hear something back from me no later than two weeks from now, and possibly as early as one week.”

He stood stiffly and nodded. “Okay.” Xavier stuck out his hand and we shook hands. “Thanks, Mr. Wood.”

I watched him leave, wondering. Then I took the laptop and put it back in my main work area. “Time to start closing up.”

 

Polychrome – Prologues

Polychrome – Prologues

Polychrome: A Romantic Fantasy

By Ryk E. Spoor

Prologue 1.         

The gray Dove, slightly larger than the others, sat silent on the branch, a branch tinged with the color of twilight shadows and pre-dawn sky. Despite the mildness of the day, the perfect time of near-awakening of the world, it did not join with its brethren in the cooing, mournful yet soft and comforting sounds that such birds usually made.

The other doves paid him no heed. They had long since learned that he was not at all like they, and while he took some small comfort in their presence, he spoke little and sang not at all. They cooed and chirruped softly, filling the air with sleepy morning sound.

The large Dove abruptly sat up higher. There was movement there, through the deserted Gillikin forests where few ever came, carrying with it a flash of green brilliance rarely seen in these purple-tinged lands.

For the first time in… years? Decades? He had long lost track of time, but it had been long, long indeed; but now the Dove gave vent to a laugh, a rippling chortle, as the moving creature came full into view.

And it was well worth a laugh or two; shambling through the undergrowth with a rolling gait, sometimes on two splay-footed feet, sometimes making use of knuckles at the end of long arms, was a brilliantly green monkey or ape, covered with soft silky emerald hair, with a face as comical as a circus clown.

But the glint in the dark green eyes was far from amused, especially as the other doves took up the laugh and sent it rustling through the forest, a chorus of mirth. “Oh, now, do I look so amusing, little doves?” The voice was soft, gentle, unexpectedly feminine.

“Coo! Coo! You do, do!” they chorused.

“Then I wonder if you find this amusing, as well,” the Monkey said gently; with surprising speed and viciousness, it began whipping stones and branches from the forest floor up at them. These were not small objects of rebuke, either, but large, well-aimed missiles, meant to knock their targets from their perches, to maim or worse.

Two doves were smashed from the branches with screeches of astonishment and pain; the others took flight in terror and consternation, unable to comprehend the violence which so rarely was seen in Oz.

The large gray Dove, having read those dark eyes in the moment before, had merely moved to the other side of the trunk, and now peered back around, to find the Monkey already regarding him speculatively.

“Now you’re a strange one, Dove,” the Monkey said. “Not only do you not fly from me, you seem familiar with violence, so that it frightens you not at all.”

Seeing no missile forthcoming, the large Dove hopped back onto his accustomed branch and studied the green Monkey curiously. Finally, he said, “Had I been born a dove, it would be otherwise.”

“Oh-HO!” cried the other, and did a short, capering dance. “So you are one transformed as I!”

“Transformed?” The Dove could not quite keep the sound of envy from his voice. “At least your shape leaves you hands, Monkey, hands and a shape which can live something of a civilized life. What of me, bereft of all but speech that was formerly mine?”

The Monkey’s smile was humorless, an unsettling and half-mad expression which made the Dove almost decide to flee. “Oh, how very reasonable that sounds, little Dove-who-is-not, yet how little it shows you understand. Those who did this to me knew well what they did. As a Dove you have no way to attempt anything you did as a Man – for a Man you were, I think? Yes, of course, you were. Yet as a Monkey I have hands, yet not the delicate and sure hands I had once, hands that could weave and sew, and make gestures of supreme power and control. They taunt me, misshapen and useless things, fit only for feeding me… or,” its eyes glinted with sadistic humor again, “throwing missiles at those who mock me.”

The Dove shrugged its wings. “With hands such as those I could manage, at the least, to end this transformation and return myself to human form. Nor do I particularly worry about mocking others, as it is one of the few amusements remaining to me.”

“Indeed? Yet you hid from my little barrage. I think you speak loudly but not so honestly, little Dove.”

For answer, the Dove darted down and grasped the Monkey’s tail in its beak and gave an effort, lunging upward. The Monkey gave a howl of pain and astonishment as it was hurled upwards into the trees by a strength vastly greater than any Dove should possess. “I speak as I wish and act as I wish, within these pathetic limits, Monkey. Now your amusement begins to pall, and I wish you would leave me to myself.”

But the Monkey’s expression had faded from pain and anger to intense interest. “Such strength… even an ordinary human being could not have done that. Who were you, Dove? Who were you, that even in this form you have such power, and who was it that managed to transform you to this harmless-seeming guise?”

“You would know? Very well, I will tell you, for all of this has made it come clear for me again, after years of trying, trying to forget. Once I was a man dwelling in the land of the Herkus, a humble and ordinary cobbler, a shoemaker by trade. But that was a trade I despised, for my forefathers had all been mighty wizards, and that should have been my trade as well. Instead my father, accursed be his name, went wandering away, leaving me behind with no instructions, no knowledge, and nothing to my name but our house. I was forced to find a trade that was both needed and which I could do, and in shoemaking I found it – something requiring attention, and focus, a delicacy of touch, yet strength as well. But I hated it, for I should have been great and respected.

“But finally fortune smiled upon me – or so I thought – and I found a hidden cache of magical instruments and recipes within my own home. I quickly mastered these, and discovered many other secrets known to no others; I thus gave up my old profession and withdrew to a mighty and solid Wicker Castle which I constructed through magic alone. I then discovered that the great and wise Ozma,” and never had words been uttered in so venomous and sarcastic a tone as the Dove spoke the last four, “had decreed all magic save that of herself and her two lackeys, Glinda the Good and the Wizard of Oz, was forbidden. As I recognized that one day they would come against me unless I stopped my practice of magic – and as I had no intention of doing that at all – I resolved to prevent them from acting against me by striking at them first.

“I arranged to steal all of the objects of magical power they owned, and their notes and recipes, so that they would be effectively powerless. Ozma’s power comes from being a fairy princess, and of course cannot be removed, but she cannot use her power for injuring others, and I judged that she could be of no threat to me if I could neutralize the others. By bad fortune she happened to discover me as I was removing all of her mystical treasures, and I was forced to kidnap her – and after she began to drive me to distraction with her insistence that I surrender and be punished, transformed her to a form silent and distant.”

The Dove looked bitter and pensive for a moment. “But all my cleverness was for nothing. Two expeditions, through coincidence and luck – and, I will admit, perseverance and a certain cunning – eventually tracked me down. The Wizard, though bereft of much of his power, was still educated in magic and helped them through my defenses to the Castle.

“But STILL I would have defeated them, for I trapped them in my throne room; but there remained to them one magical device which – having been acquired only recently, as we of Oz tell time – I had known nothing of. That was the Magic Belt of the King of the Nomes, captured by the mortal girl Dorothy Gale, and she had somehow acquired some small control over its vast powers and used it to first undo my enchantment and then to transform me to the shape you see before you.” It glared at the Monkey defiantly.

The Monkey gave vent to a surprisingly lilting laugh. “Oh, my dear Dove, how very entertaining a story! I have heard something of it before, in the rumors of tales that echo back to us from the Mortal world. Yet I had heard you reformed and repented of your evil.”

It gave a screech more appropriate to a diving hawk than a Dove. “Repented? Of being deprived of my birthright and desiring only to ensure I could live as my ancestors had? All I regret is that I had not the knowledge to turn that thrice-accursed Dorothy Gale to stone and all her friends with her, ere she came to my door!”

“Oh, my dear, dear Dove, you cannot imagine how lovely those words are to hear. For know that I, too, am a victim of the mighty Ozma and her so-called justice.

“Once I was a simple housewife – a homemaker with no concerns or interests outside of my little valley. As I was also a Yookoohoo –” the Monkey smiled again as the Dove gave a start of surprise, “—I had no need of anything outside my valley. I kept to myself and invited no visitors.

“So when visitors did intrude on my valley – on my property – I felt it was not at all wrong for me to use them to assist me, since they had intruded upon my privacy without permission or warning.”

“Oh! Oh!” the Dove cried triumphantly. “I, too, have heard rumors of you in the same way, but it seems perhaps those were more clearly translated. You were once the Giantess, Mrs. Yoop, who captured two of the heroes of the realm, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, as well as a mortal boy and one of the Fairies, and when they escaped was herself transformed – into a shape, it was said, that can never be shed.”

“You speak near enough the truth, Dove.” The Monkey studied him intently. “Yet no enchantment is truly unbreakable, and I know of ways it might be done. I cannot work the magic of a Yookoohoo in this form, for I have never taught myself the trick of working that magic in a form not that of a Giant or a Man. But other forms of magic I might, if only I had access to the tools thereof.”

The Dove was silent for long moments. Finally it shifted uneasily on the branch. “And if you had such access…?”

“Then,” the Monkey said softly, “I would be very grateful and willing to assist the one who could give me such access, and thus a form able to work that magic that is mine by right.”

The Dove shook his head. “Many are those who have tried this, including myself – the opposition of Ozma and her champions. They fail. They always fail.”

The Monkey chittered in frustration. “Yes. And Glinda… she would read of it in her Book.”

The Dove suddenly looked up. “Not true. Not true. So long as neither of us wore the form of a man or woman. The Book of Records sees only the actions of men and women, or fairies and such that are very much like men and women. Of beasts it records not a word.”

The Monkey narrowed its gaze. “But as soon as we regained our forms…”

“Yes.” The Dove paused.

After a moment, the Monkey said, and its voice was soft, insistent, urging, “But… if we made plans before we changed back…”

“We would have to repeat my original plan,” the Dove said slowly. “But this time we would have to prevent any from undoing what we have done.” He sounded tempted, but reluctant.

“Could it be done?” The Monkey’s voice reminded him that this had once been a woman. A giantess, but a woman nonetheless.

“Oh, yes.” His voice grew stronger as things became clearer. “Oh, certainly. They looted my castle, of course, but I was no more a fool than my ancestors. Copies I made of instruments and recipes, hid them in secret areas of my castle. They left the castle itself… and with your help, I could retrieve them. And then…”

“And then,” the Monkey said, so quietly it was like the whisper of his own thoughts, “and then we could regain all we have lost… and more.”

Prologue 2.

The door to the throne room was flung open. Framed in that huge portal was a delicate figure of a girl, fair hair wild and tangled in an unwonted manner, cap askew, gossamer garments actually rent, torn, grimy and smeared with red-brown stains that spoke of a grimmer origin.

The Rainbow Lord shot to his feet and started forward. “Polychrome!”

His eldest daughter walked – not danced, walked, with a heavy foot so unlike the tread that normally could leap from a blade of grass and leave the dew on it barely marred. “Father… Iris Mirabilis, my lord… I have returned… from the mission… on which you sent me.”

He caught the exhausted girl as she staggered. Fairy princess or not, she had clearly reached her limits, and his heart was filled with dread. He could see she clasped a bundle to her with one arm, gripped it to her like death. Now he truly knew fear; he had hoped the thefts, so like others in the past, had been something easily dealt with… but now…  “Forget the formalities, daughter mine, are you injured? Be these stains of your blood?” The thought filled him with both rage and horror. None had dared truly injure one of his children for time out of mind – not that many even had the power to attempt it.

Polychrome managed a weak smile. “No… no, Father. Any blood… is from those who pursued me.”

“You fought them?” He knew his daughter was… unorthodox. She danced to Earth often, forgetting the Rainbow, wandering the world below until she wearied of it. Her dances were more than mere dancing, for she had modeled many of them on the training of his Storm Legions, a ballet not merely of beauty but of wind and lightning. But the thought that she not only could, but would fight…

“In a manner of speaking.” Her voice, though now with a touch of humor, rasped faintly, and he called immediately for wine. “I led them on a merry… chase, through angered trees and invisible hazards. And evaded them many times, despite their weapons. They harried me, even to the skies above the Desert, and beyond, Father. Oh, Father!” She suddenly pressed herself into his chest and began to sob. “Oh, Father, it is all too terribly true! The Emerald City… is gone!”

For a moment his mind simply refused to accept the words. Finally he said, “What do you mean when you say ‘gone’, my daughter?”

A servant appeared and proffered a goblet; Polychrome seized the Cloudwine and drank the entire goblet in one long series of swallows – something startling and worrisome, for a fairy princess who could normally subsist on a few dewdrops and mist cakes for a day or more. When she spoke again, however, her voice was smoother, and a touch of color was returning to cheeks that had been pale as morning mist.

“Gray stone, Father.” She shuddered. “Gray, cold stone, all of it. For a mile and more around to the very towers of Ozma’s palace, solid gray stone, and soldiers of stone and metal commanded by those who now rule from that grim mockery of what was.”

He nodded slowly. The disruptions in the very essence of the air had given him much cause to worry, and the rumors had been terrifying. But to hear it from his own child… “Go on, Polychrome,” he said gently. “You did not take so long, or suffer so much, only seeing this transformation. The theft of things magical, that was how this began. Was it as they believed?”

Her violet-blue eyes met his, and he saw the answer there before she spoke. “Oh, yes, Father. But far cleverer, far more dangerous. And not alone.”

“And none resist this… abomination?”

“Why do you think I stayed, Father?” Polychrome’s voice was sharp, angry, and he drew back in surprise. “Many of them were my friends! I sought for them, through the Quadling Country where I found the Palace of Glinda in ruins, to the Munchkins, fleeing in terror from the armies sent to subdue their lands. I saw the Gillikin Forest in flames!” Tears burst out anew. “Most of my friends were in the Emerald City when it happened! A Council of War, to determine how to locate their enemy – something their enemy had already planned upon! Ozma, Dorothy, the Cowardly Lion, the Wizard, Glinda, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, all of them, all of them were there! I…” she almost broke down, but in a show of discipline and strength that almost forced tears from the Rainbow Lord’s own eyes, she took hold of her voice and heart and refused them the chance to retreat. “I saw through the windows of the Palace, Father, saw the gray stone statues of the heroes of the realm, mortal girls and metal men, all stone, dead, dead stone.”

“And Ozma herself?”

She nodded slowly. “Father, she is sealed within a crystal pyramid at the very doorway to the Castle, facing the great Courtyard, where she must have been caught by whatever hideous spell they used.”

He was silent for a long moment; he watched as Polychrome took another goblet and sipped from it. Finally, he spoke. “You say ‘they’, Polychrome Glory.” He rarely used both of her names, saving that for times of great import or great tenderness… and this, he judged, was a time for both, for his favorite daughter was sorely wounded in the heart, if not in body. “Who are they?”

For answer, Polychrome looked down and slowly loosed her grip on the bundle she held, with a wince from the pain that comes when loosing a near-deathgrip. She brought out the oddly-shaped lumpy bundle and looked down at it. With a sigh, she reached in and removed first a long gray envelope, sealed with green wax. On it was inscribed “Iris Mirabilis, Lord of the Rainbows” in a spidery but elegant hand. Wordlessly she extended the envelope to her father.

He regarded the envelope for a moment, then broke the seal and withdrew the letter, which he read.

To Iris Mirabilis, Lord of Rainbows and the Seven Hues of Heaven

Greetings.

As your lovely and accomplished daughter Polychrome has seen fit to visit our realm, newly acquired, of Oz, and as there may be some confusion as to the status of this land, we send you this missive.

Be it understood that all of Oz is now under our rule, and shall remain so; and that we have under our control all of the power of that land and can direct it as we will, even unto the power once belonging to Ozma its ruler, the sorceries of Glinda, the enchantments of the Wizard, and all other manner of power held here.

As Oz was and has always been the core of true Faerie power, since its blessing by Lurline ages agone, you will recognize that we are now a greater power than any other. We do not seek warfare with you or the others of Faerie or the enchanted lands above or below, but make no mistake: we shall tolerate no interference in our affairs. Leave us to ourselves, and all shall be well. Meddle, and whosoever has challenged us shall be destroyed. Each of us was vanquished once; we shall not be defeated again.

We remain, sir,

                   Ugu the Unbowed

                        King of Oz

                             and

                   Amanita Verdant

                     Queen of Oz

The Rainbow Lord knew his face looked like a thundercloud as he set the letter down. “So quickly has it happened… and they claim to control the power itself. But… who is this ‘Amanita’, Polychrome?”

She gave another shudder, and he realized that Polychrome – his brave, undaunted, ever-cheerful daughter – was truly afraid of this unknown woman. “Who is she? I have never heard this name before, my daughter, and yet you seem afraid of her, as though you knew who she was.”

“Oh, I know her, my Father. She it was who captured me once, held me prisoner, stripped me of my form and most of my power, kept me as a plaything and a pet, and would have done so perhaps forever had not others come who gave me a chance at freedom.”

Shock caused him to draw in a breath. “Her? That monstrous Giantess, the Yookoohoo? She has taken a new name? But I thought that Princess Ozma had sealed her powers away in a form from which they could never be recovered.”

“Perhaps… perhaps her old form cannot be recovered, Father. But she has a new one, a beautiful Human girl with hair green as emeralds; but I knew her when she laughed as the letter was given to me, for I had heard that laugh many times.”

He remembered discovering how his missing daughter had been imprisoned. The thought of that monster loose again… “But something still seems amiss. They caught you spying, and sent you away with this letter. Why chase you and harry you near to death?”

Now Polychrome laughed, a laugh as joyful as a sudden ray of sunshine, and at the same time bright as a blade unsheathed; and he wondered at just what sort of girl he had fathered. “Oh, not for that, Father. But for the fact that I sought allies and friends not yet imprisoned, and in the Winkie Country I found a few still fighting; but they were falling, and their King gave to me a final charge… and…” Now, for the first time, she hesitated.

“Polychrome… what is it?”

Her jaw set for a moment, and then her shoulders slumped. “He made me promise to give my charge only to you… but that I must leave the room, and am only to be told… whatever you feel I must know.”

An unnamed dread began to creep over him. He held out his hand; slowly, unwillingly, the girl let him take the bundle. He removed the wrappings.

Within lay a pink stuffed bear, a small crank protruding from one side.

Others might not have recognized the significance, but the Rainbow saw many places indeed. This innocent, even silly, looking object was one of the most potent mystical objects… or beings, depending on how one viewed it… in all of Oz. The Pink Bear was a seer, a prophet, blessed or cursed with the ability to live only whenever the crank in its side was turned, and to think, and speak – and see into some place where the future, past, and present were all one, where distance was meaningless and walls nonexistent, and speak of what it saw there.

“And the Lavender King…”

Polychrome turned her face away. “They torched the forests.”

An appalled silence fell over the throne room. Finally he stood. “You gave your word, my daughter. You must leave the room… while I hear the last words of one monarch to another, on the fall of his allies and the loss of the greatest of the Faerie lands.”

After a moment, Polychrome nodded. He gestured to the servants, who immediately came forward and helped Polychrome out; her sisters, he knew, would help tend to her as well.

He placed the Bear on the arm of his throne and placed his magic upon it; the Little Pink Bear would at least not have the indignity of relying on someone to turn that crank; it would turn itself until the Bear desired it to stop.

The little head turned jerkily, and one paw came up. “Hail, Iris Mirabilis!” the Bear said in a high, childish voice. Then its head sagged, and the eyes sparkled as though with tears. “My King is destroyed. My… father is gone.”

“I know,” he said softly. “And I have no words of comfort for you now, I fear. Your King and father sent you to me, in the hands of my daughter, risking her life and giving his own that she might escape, I would guess. Why?”

Answering questions was what the Bear had been created for; its duty might not be warming, but it was familiar, and easier than feeling and grief. “To guide you, to show you the way.”

“There is a way to defeat these people? To restore Oz to what it should be?”

“It has not been what it should be for a long time. Mistakes were made.” The little Bear’s words were more complex and cryptic than normal.

“Explain, Bear.”

“Much power prevents me from speaking plainly. Some is my own; I am a prophet, prophets speak as they must.” The little Bear paused, then spoke again. “Balance was lost here. Balance is also lost without, in the human world. Both must be regained. Both are needed.”

The Rainbow Lord nodded. The Faerie had always relied on mortals for certain things, and the mortals had in their turn been supported by the Faerie in much of their essence – even though these days they knew it less and less. “Then tell me what must be done.”

“Two paths before, and the way never clear.” The Bear’s voice was cold and hard now, the voice of a speaker of destiny. “One brings you joy, the other filled with fear. All will hinge on the choice of one, a choice only made before it has begun.”

The words continued, and as the Rainbow Lord heard the Prophecy unfold, his face became more and more grim. There were no certainties. Even the best path was fraught with danger and potential for mishaps. And in the end… it would cost him the most precious thing in all the world.

But that was the price that true Kings paid; all that they had. And more.

 

Trial By Fire – Snippet 17

Trial By Fire – Snippet 17

Caine expanded his scan field, found the right blip, noticed that the thermal signature of the shift-carrier’s pulse-fusion engines had grown much fainter due to rapidly increasing distance. “They’re crowding three gee constant. And it looks like they’ve also added a slight delta vector. Meaning what? A change of shift destination?”

“Sure sounds like it.”

Caine nodded. “Then they’re heading to Ross 154.”

“What? Instead of warning Earth?”

“Oh, Earth is being warned–silently. Downing will have set up a no-show code as part of a contingency plan. That way, if Barnard’s Star is hit, the Prometheus can warn Ross 154 instead.”

Trevor’s voice was suddenly in the room with him. “And Earth interprets the no-show of the Prometheus as a warning flag. Sure. Two messages for the price of one shift.” Caine turned. Pressure helmet off, Trevor was already clambering out of the suit. “You’d better pause the salvage survey. Their initial attack group will have refueled by now and they won’t waste any time commencing preacceleration for their next shift. But before they do, they’ll run an advance patrol through this area.”

“Why here?”

“Because it’s the only debris field with metallic elements anywhere within two hundred planetary diameters. If our side managed to sneak in any dormant killer drones while the invaders were wrecking The Pearl or hunting down our shift carriers, this is where they’d expect them to be, mixed in among other objects with very similar sensor returns.”

“You’re sure they got all six carriers?”

“Yeah, it looked like it. Now, jack your commlink into the intercom. We’re not even going to risk using our collarcoms. When you’re done with that, seal your suit.”

Caine did as he was told, and looked over at Trevor–just as the lights went out. “Cutting power?”

Trevor nodded, started tapping commands into the computer’s one manual keyboard. “Everything except the visual sensor arrays and the required computer element is blacked out. We’re running on batteries.”

Caine glanced at the REM level indicator. “What about the EM grids?”

Trevor did not look over. “We have to cut them for now. The meter of water lining the outer hull will take care of a lot of it, but we’ve got to wait until their advance force has swept the area before we energize the grids again. Then we can bring them back up. Slowly.”

“And in the meantime?”

“We take the rads, or get taken by exosapients.”

The smell of old sweat in Caine’s suit was suddenly overpowering. Or was it simply new sweat that had the same tang of mortal fear? He felt a saline drop land on his swollen lip, winced as the salt burrowed into the tender tissue with microfine tines of pain. He wondered how much large particle radiation was similarly digging into and through him.…

*   *   *

“Motion on visual array seventeen-F.” Trevor’s voice betrayed no anxiety. Caine looked over at the zoomed-in image. The streamlined Arat Kur hull appeared against the gas giant’s milky-amber whorls, heading in their general direction at a leisurely pace. They had noticed its emergence from the uppermost layer of the atmosphere half an hour ago, at which point the enemy ship had been retracting some kind of refueling drogue.

Caine turned to his sensors, ran the drill Trevor had taught him. “Establishing range and bearing.” He ran a quick superimposition of the ship’s progressive positional changes over the star field backdrop. The computer chewed through the data, correcting for the module’s rotation and orbital movement. Numbers striped across his screen. Caine read them off. “Range: ninety-six thousand km. Ecliptic relative bearing: 283 by 75. Current vector suggests she’s looking to break orbit and make for our debris field. ETA, thirty-eight minutes.”

“Are they running active sensors?”

“Nothing radiant, but I can’t tell about lazar.” Caine paused, considered the lack of active sensors. “So, will they conduct broad sweeps as they approach the debris, or wait until they’re in the field before lighting up their active arrays?”

“I think they’ll wait until they’re on top of us, and I mean that literally. They’re worried about our drones, so they’ll want to stay dark until the last second, and want to stay out of the field itself. They’ll probably make their run ‘above’ and against the flow of the wreckage. That way, the vector difference between themselves and any doggo drone is going to make them pretty hard to catch. And the enemy is sure to have a few drones of their own out front, trying to lure ours out of hiding.”

“If only there were some to be lured.”

Trevor shrugged. “It would be a waste of equipment. We’ve lost this round.”

Caine sighed. “What a godawful first combat assignment, watching the enemy go through the stately rituals of invasion.”

“Actually, this is a pretty darned good first combat assignment.”

“How do you figure that?”

Trevor’s smile was mirthless. “We’re alive.” He turned back to the sensor readouts. “So far.”

Well, thought Caine, Trevor called it to the letter.Riordan watched as the cursor denoting the enemy hull spawned a growing swarm of smaller signatures, like a fish giving birth to a cloud of almost microscopic fry. “They’ve deployed a screen of small, fast drones.”

Trevor nodded, watched them begin to bore through the heart of the debris cloud, the two foremost lighting up powerful active arrays. Immediately behind them, other drones–presumably hunter-killers–waited for the first sign of hostile response. As this menacing contingent approached within ten thousand kilometers, Trevor shut down even the battery-powered systems.

And so, sitting in the darkness, they waited. Caine closed his eyes, imagined what he had come to call the enemy “shift-cruiser” looming large and shooting past, drones preceding and trailing, like a whale attended by a retinue of hyperactive minnows.

Trevor let a minute pass, in which time Caine’s radiation exposure indicator came on. The classic orange icon blinked urgently at the top center of his visor’s heads-up display. He checked the dosimeter: thirty rem. Well within the limits that a healthy body could repair without sickness.

The red cursor that marked the enemy hull was now well past them. Trevor turned the battery-powered systems back on, then leaned toward the passive sensors, frowning. “That heavy–let’s call it a ‘shift-cruiser’–just deployed a number of retroboosted packages. Dormant drones, probably. But I can’t keep track of them without active sensors. So they’re going to get mixed into the trash with us and we won’t be able to sort them out later. That means we’re not going to be able to undertake sudden vector changes. The drones will be keyed to respond to any new movement other than that explicable by debris collisions.”

“That eliminates at least seventy percent of our salvage opportunities.” Caine envisioned the fruits of his tedious visual sensor labors being flushed down the toilet.

“Probably more like eighty percent.”

Caine sighed and brought the now-familiar passive sensors back online. He glanced at the environmental countdown clock Trevor had started: sixty-eight hours left.

Give or take a few last breaths.

 

Trial By Fire – Snippet 16

Trial By Fire – Snippet 16

Chapter Nine

Adrift off Barnard’s Star 2 C

Rubbing the goose-egg bump on his head, Caine watched Trevor paw through the utility satchel they had filled with burnt-out power relays during their painstaking survey of the damage done to the auxiliary module. The relays clattered noisily against each other. “How bad is it?” Caine asked.

Trevor shrugged. “It’s not good. With this much damage to the control circuitry, the environmental reprocessors are as good as dead. The air we have right now is all we’re going to have. Of course, we can use electric current to crack water and get extra oxygen, but that means cutting into our drinking rations and running the power plant more. Which means becoming a much bigger signal for our enemies to detect.”

“So how much life support do we have?”

“No more than three days, and that assumes that we shut down most of the module and limit minimal life support to a small, sealed area.”

“Great.”

“There’s more good news. We have only fifty percent fuel left in our attitude control system.”

“Fifty percent? Why?”

“We were in one hell of a three-axis tumble after the fusion plant on the cutter went up. Getting this coffee can stable was a pretty lengthy task.”

Caine frowned. “On the other hand, why should we care how much ACS maneuver time we have left?”

“Funny you should ask. I have a plan.” Trevor activated one of the screens. A miniature replica of the Auxiliary Command module blinked into existence, rolling through space on its long axis like a log going down a hill. The image diminished rapidly, shrank until the module was a small blue speck. Trevor tapped another key; red specks appeared, most of them traveling along the same vector as the blue speck and then flowing past it. “The red is wreckage, mostly ours and some of theirs. If we could manage to match vectors with the right piece of junk, the salvage might enable us to hang on for an extra week, maybe a whole month.”

Caine, studying the creeping red stream, rubbed his chin. He immediately regretted the action; the tug on his skin reopened the wound that the door jamb had inflicted on his lower lip the day before. He pressed the back of his hand to the gash, gestured at the screen. “How did you get those vector fixes on the wreckage?”

“Three-second, narrow-field, active sensor bursts. Four of them, over the last ten hours.”

Caine glanced at Trevor. “The OpFor might have left passive sensors behind.”

“Maybe, but that isn’t likely. This area isn’t important enough to monitor, and they’re not going to leave their own hardware behind if they can help it. Every piece of equipment they’ve got with them they had to carry in on their own backs, and they’re at the end of a very long and very narrow supply line.”

Caine nodded. “Okay. So, based on your data, what sort of delta-vee do we need in order to make intercept with the salvage?”

“That varies,” answered Trevor. “Most of the junk is moving in roughly the same direction we are, only a little faster. And the stuff that’s gone past us is already too far away to catch.”

“So we have to assess the trajectories of objects that have yet to overtake us and make intercept in the next two or three days.”

“Right. And then we have to accelerate the combined mass of our module and the salvage toward a reasonable destination. Whatever that turns out to be.”

Caine looked at the red motes. “Sounds like a tough job.”

“Actually, it’s two tough jobs. First, we’ve got to match vectors with whatever piece of trash we ultimately choose. That’s hard enough, given our fuel limitations. Second, our intercept should ideally end in a hard dock, or at least in a solid mooring. But that requires two things we don’t have: a docking ring–which we lost when we blew the jettisoning charges–and fully-fueled terminal navigation boosters.”

Caine nodded. Without navigational boosters, it would be hard to control their final approach. Their reliance on the main thruster made them highly susceptible to errors of over- and under-correction. They were as likely to ram the wreckage, or overshoot it, as they were to make a safe intercept.

“So how can I help?” asked Caine.

“Get out of that emergency suit and hop into the sensor ops spot.” Trevor indicated the appropriate chair. “We’re going to need more precise vector definitions on the pieces of wreckage that we can still reach, and then we’re going to need to get an idea of what the wreckage is.”

“If I remember what my space ops instructor was saying two weeks ago, the only passive sensors that are going to help me with this task are spectrographs and mass scans.”

“Correct. And if you get the chance, make a fast sweep for other approaching objects. Better safe than sorry.”

Trevor was halfway into his emergency suit by the time Caine had strapped into the sensor ops position. “And where will you be?”

Trevor flexed his gloved fingers. “Pressure-sealing the access ways and B deck so we can terminate environmental functions in those areas. I’ll start by sealing off– Damn!” Trevor exclaimed suddenly, grabbing his shin.

–at the same moment that Caine clutched at a sudden spasm in his left arm. “What the–?”

“Coupla old men,” Trevor grinned ruefully, rubbing his left tibia.

“Yeah, but having our recent wounds bother us at the same second?” Caine wondered.

Trevor shrugged. “Ah, I’ve heard of stranger stuff, and we don’t know what kind of sensors or other field effects the bad guys may be playing around with out there. Sometimes, just the right–or wrong–frequency can twinge a break or trouble a tooth.” He smiled, finished sealing his gloves. “Space is funny, that way.”

Caine nodded as Trevor clanked his helmet into place and ran the locking rings home with a sharp, sure sweep of his hand. They exchanged waves, then Trevor took two long bounds and was out of the control room and into the main corridor.

*   *   *

Caine started awake, jerked upright, was not sure where he was for a moment. His hands were still poised on the virtual keyboard of the sensor panel. Like many repetitious activities, what started out as a sequence of challenging sensor tasks had quickly become a mind-numbing routine. And without a high-end computer in the auxiliary module, a detailed search routine was only so automatable.

Two quick lazar bursts at each target would have provided the needed results, but that might have also been enough to attract any nearby enemy pickets. So far, thirty percent of the possible targets for salvage intercept had been eliminated simply because of the low confidence level of the sensor measurements. The module’s limited fuel situation prohibited any intercept attempts that were based on “best-guesses.”

Trevor’s voice in his earbud snapped him further awake. “How’s it going?”

“Fine. Slow. Boring. You?”

“I’m curious. Do me a favor; check on the Prometheus‘ trajectory.”

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 07

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 07

Chapter 7: Unwrapped Wrap-Up

“So what are the police going to do about this?” asked Sylvie.

It was the next evening. I was lying on my bed with my left ankle’s cast propped on a pillow. “I was lucky. It was Renee Reisman who got there first. Between us and the ME we faked up a story that should hold.”

“So what’s the official line?”

“Klein was running a sideline of drugs and protection and was going to set Domingo up to take the fall. The victims like Lewis were connections who knew too much. When I was called in, I got suspicious. Klein decided I had to be removed too, came after me. In the fight, we ended up in the salon, where he swung his gun into one of the lights and electrocuted the crap out of himself.”

Sylvie looked at me like I was crazy. “Are you nuts? No one will swallow that yarn for a second! One look at that body and any layman would know there was something fishy… once he stopped tossing his cookies.”

“First, no one is going to see that body. Second, most of that department are hard-nosed realists. They don’t want to believe in vampires and are not going to reopen the case if that is the direction the investigation will take them.”

“Is that all?”

“Nope, there is one more thing.” I nodded my head in the direction of the door.

Verne Domingo stepped into the room.

Sylvie’s eyes widened.

“Greetings, Ms. Stake. Thank you for inviting me into your home, Jason.”

I shrugged. “I figured I should return your favor.”

“I am the final reason the ruse will work, Ms. Stake… or can I call you Sylvia?”

“Uh… Call me Sylvie; you can understand why.” She looked at me. “Jason, are you sure this is safe?”

“Syl, if Mr. Domingo wants my ass, he doesn’t have to do it himself.”

“Exactly, Mr. Wood.”

“So just exactly what are you doing to make this silly story work?”

“Beings such as myself have many talents, Sylvie. One of them is a degree of mental control. I have exerted this ability so as to make the involved people believe the story as presented.”

“You hypnotized them?”

“Something a bit less crude and far more reliable, Sylvie. It is obviously in my interest to make this story work, as you put it.” He bowed to me. “An excellent bit of work last night, Mr. Wood. Congratulations.” With that, he simply… faded… away.

It was several seconds before we stopped staring. “Wow,” Sylvie said finally.

“Yeah.” I agreed. I blushed a little. “Uh, Syl… I didn’t say thanks. You saved my life twice last night. First with that crazy stunt with the ankh, then with the hammer charm.” I pulled it out and looked at it. “These things are only supposed to work with faith. I don’t have much of that. Yours must have been enough for us both.”

She flushed to the roots of her hair. “Don’t sell yourself short, Jason. It was made for you; any strength it showed came equally from your own spirit.”

“Okay. But still, I didn’t make it, and you were the one who insisted I wear it.”

She smiled. “All right, Jason. I’ll take the credit. And you’re very, very welcome. I just wanted you to come back in one piece.”

“Which I pretty much did, if a little cracked,” I agreed, looking at my cast. Syl laughed.

I looked at the thin air into which Verne Domingo had vanished. “So tell me something, Syl…”

“What, Jason?”

“Do you think… it’s over?”

She smiled… and then her face suddenly went serious, her eyes got that strange distant look as though they were looking through everything around her. “No,” she said after a long moment, and the tone in her voice sent a faint chill down my spine. “No, Jason, it’s not over.

“This isn’t the end; it’s the beginning.”

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 06

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 06

Chapter 6: Fright and Flight

I ejected the magazine from the .45, checked it, returned it to the gun.

“Believe me, Mr. Wood. I have no reason to tamper with your weapon. Your captors were instructed to bring any weapons they might find; not to interfere with them.”

I clicked the safety off. “It isn’t that; it’s just always wise to recheck your weapon before you might need it.”

“Indeed.” Verne Domingo touched my arm suddenly, and pointed.

From our concealment to one side of Tamara’s Tanning, I saw the tall, angular figure of Elias Klein emerge from the Silver Stake. There was no mistaking the long black hair of the person with him. “Sylvie! He’s got her!”

Domingo’s hand almost crushed my bicep. “Wait! Can you not see that she is leading him? Obviously he has not yet revealed himself to her; she is probably trying to aid him. When they enter your office, then will be your time.”

“My time? What about you?”

For a moment I thought I saw conflict on his face, a shadow of a feeling of responsibility. But then his face hardened. “I have done all I intend to. If you fail, then I may have to act more directly. I prefer, however, to let you finish the job at hand.”

I glared at him, but he simply gazed back with expressionless eyes. “Are you sure he can’t sense me?”

“Quite. Any vampire can cloak a limited number of mortals from the senses of other vampires; undoubtedly our friend Klein used that to conceal whatever partners he worked with. Mr. Klein will not notice you until he actually sees you. At that point, my protection will be gone.” He glanced outward. “They have entered. Good luck, Jason Wood.”

I gave his hand a quick shake. “I wouldn’t say it’s been fun… but it has been interesting.”

Carefully, I started for my front door. I slipped inside and walked with great care along one side of the hallway. As I approached my office, I heard Klein’s voice.

“Where else? Think, Sylvie! That negative may be the only thing keeping Jason alive now!”

Sylvie’s voice trembled faintly. “I don’t know, Elias — wait. He kept really important data in a safe, over there behind the wall panels.”

Footsteps as they went from the upstairs towards my workstation; then a rattle as the panel was pushed open. I peeked around the corner from the den.

Sylvie was standing behind Elias, who was bent down over the small safe. “Sylvie, do you know the combination?”

“I don’t know if I should tell you that.”

He turned towards her; I ducked back just in time. “Sylvie, please! Domingo knows that negative is the only hard evidence we have! Without it we don’t have a thing to bargain with.”

She sighed. “All right. It’s 31-41-59-26.”

He snickered a bit. “Of course. Pi.” I heard him turn back to the safe.

My only chance. As quietly as I could, I stepped through the door and snaked an arm around Sylvie, clapping my hand over her mouth and nose so she couldn’t make a sound. Then, as Elias was swinging the safe door open, I yanked Sylvie’s head towards me enough so she could see me. Her eyes widened, then narrowed when I put a finger to my lips. I could see her glance towards Klein as I let go. One nod told me she’d figured out the situation. She slowly started back out the door.

“Sylvie, it’s not there! Where else — you?!” As Elias turned, he caught sight of me. I’d never seen someone’s jaw literally drop before. He stood there for several seconds, just staring.

“Hello, Elias.” I raised the gun.

“Wood? Wood, what the hell are you doing? How did you get away from Domingo? We were worried to death about you!” He started forward.

I gestured with the gun; he stopped. “No, I don’t think you were worried at all, Elias. You were sure that after I called Domingo he’d cancel my ticket for you. Save you the trouble.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Don’t try it, Elias; I can see you thinking about moving. It must’ve been a shock to you when you came in and saw all those vampire books on my desk. You knew right then that I was closing in on you. You saw one chance to send me off on a one-way chase after the wrong guy; that negative. All you had to do was call my attention to it; you could rely on me to imagine the rest.”

I shook my head. “Even then, you almost blew it entirely by pointing out that SLR — Single Lens Reflex — cameras show exactly what’s in the picture. You see, SLRs use mirrors to send that image to the viewfinder. I knew that, but with everything else I didn’t think of it at the time. Anyone taking snapshots of a vampire through an SLR would’ve known something was funny… if, of course, he wasn’t a vampire himself.

“I don’t know if you even realized you’d made a mistake there, but whether you did or didn’t the whole thing was fantastic control on your part; you must’ve noticed the books as soon as you came in, and you never gave a sign. And your shock at seeing them — only after you’d made sure I knew the significance of the photo — oh, that was perfect. But Domingo wasn’t quite the ruthless guy you thought he was.” I clicked the safety twice, so he knew it was ready to fire. “There’s only one thing that puzzles me, Elias.”

He dropped the pretense. “What, Jason?”

“Well, two, really. How’d it happen?”

Klein shrugged. “I don’t really know, to tell the truth. I was on a job a while back, got jumped, put into the hospital, remember?”

Now that he mentioned it, I did. About half a year ago; he’d been taken out of a regular hospital to some rehab facility.

“Yeah,” he said, still watching my hand with the gun. “So I actually don’t remember much after the accident for a while. And when I came back, I knew what I was, and that there was another one here. One that I couldn’t afford to have around. But if I took the right course, I could get rid of Domingo and clean up the streets. Get the drug traffic shut down, and at the same time make sure Morgantown’s undesirable population went… down.”

Undesirable population? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Klein hadn’t ever talked that way before. “What the hell, Elias? Why?”

He sneered. “It just seemed a lot clearer. People like Lewis, and that Corrigan woman — wastes of space. And since I needed something to eat…”

“But you didn’t… I mean, does it have to be human blood? And do you have to kill?”

His hands twitched aimlessly. “Human blood has… more of a kick to it, I guess. And when they die, you get this incredible rush, a feeling of such power …” He’d been looking at his hands. When he raised his face, my guts turned to ice. Deep in his eyes was a hellish red glow. And as he spoke, I saw lengthening fangs. “Besides,” he continued, and now his voice had an edge of hysteria, “besides, they had to die. They saw me, you see. And it wasn’t as if they were anyone important.”

“Not anyone… Elias, they were human beings!”

“You always did take the liberal view, Jason.” His face was distorting, somehow shifting before my eyes. “I really liked you, Jason… But now you have to die too.” He smiled, and there was very little of the old Elias in that deadly smile.

“Don’t, Elias. I don’t want to kill you.”

He started forward slowly. “Let’s not pretend, Jason. You can’t arrest me, and I need blood.”

I backed away, trying to make myself pull the trigger. But, Jesus, Elias was my friend! “Stop, Elias! For God’s sake, you’re… addicted, that’s what you’re talking about! Think about it! A big rush, something you need, something that you’re going after for that rush…”

He laughed. “That’s funny, Jason. Should I go to AA? ‘Hello, my name is Elias, and I’m a vampire?’” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to kill you, but I have no choice. Neither have you. It’s a shame that you can’t do anything about it.” He was barely human now, a Hollywood vampire straight out of Fright Night. “Good-bye, Jason.” He rose straight off the floor, a nightmare of fangs and talons.

My finger spasmed on the trigger.

There was a roar of thunder.

Elias was hit in mid-descent. The force of the round, as it mushroomed within him, hurled him back over my desk. He rose, only a scorched bullet hole in his suit showing he’d been hit.

“So much for silver,” I said as I sprinted out the door. I almost bowled Sylvie over as she came running back. “Go, Syl, Go!” I heard jarring footsteps behind me, whirled and fired the second bullet.

The bullet caught him square in the chest; Elias’ scream shook the windows as white flame exploded from the incendiary bullet.

“Wood! You bastard! That hurt!” As I backpedaled away, I could see the burns healing. “I think I’ll break a few things before I kill you!” He ducked away before I could get another clear bead on him.

“Crap. Anne Rice failed me too. I should have known better than to trust a book with a punk vampire.” I glanced around nervously. If I were a vampire, where would I come from next… ?

I whirled, in time to see Elias coming through the wall like a ghost. I leapt through the doorway to the kitchen, but Elias’ hand caught me just as I reached the side door. “Gotcha!”

I tried to pull away, but I might as well have been pushing on a vault door. He bent his head toward my neck. I screamed.

Then it was Elias who screamed, a yell of utter shock and agony. I fell to the floor and rolled heavily away, looked up.

Sylvie stood there, holding a large ankh before her. “Back, Undead! By the power of Earth and Life, back!”

The incantation sounded silly; Elias obviously saw no humor in it. As he turned away, trying to get around the looped cross, I saw a black imprint on his back where the ankh had hit him. I raised the .45, fired the third bullet.

The heavy shell hit him like a sledgehammer, spinning him completely around, smashing him into the stove. He put a hand to his chest, where a red stain was beginning to spread. His expression was utter disbelief. Then he fell facedown.

“What did you shoot him with?” Syl demanded, face pale.

I looked down at the body. “A wooden bullet. Thank you, Fred Saberhagen.”

“Who’s he?”

“He wrote The Holmes-Dracula File; that’s where I got the idea.” I holstered the gun and started out of the kitchen—I didn’t want to look at the body while I tried to figure out what I was going to say to the cops.

Elias’ hand shot out and grabbed my ankle.

I felt myself lifted like a toy, smashed into Syl, sending her ankh flying. Then there was a crash and I felt slivers of glass cut me as I was hurled out of the window. I remember thinking vaguely that I’d gotten the genre wrong. It wasn’t a mystery novel; it was Friday the 13th, where the psycho never dies.

I landed badly, barely rolling. I heard the gun skid out of the holster. I scrabbled after it; but then a leather-skinned hand closed clawed fingers around it. “You almost had me, Jason,” said the thing that had been Elias Klein. “Too bad you missed the heart. It still might have worked, but you must’ve used an awfully tough wood; most of the bullet went right on through.” He squeezed. The barrel of my gun bent.

I got up and ran.

I didn’t get twenty feet.

Talons ripped my shirt; he pitched me the rest of the way across the street and through a storefront. A shard of glass ripped my arm, and my ankle smashed into the edge of the window. I looked up, seeing Elias approach me, the inverted neon letters above lending a hellish cast to his distorted features.

Neon letters?

I scrambled away from the window, limped towards the back of the store, grabbed the doorknob, ducked inside.

It was a tiny room with no other exit. I was trapped. The door opened. “A dead end. How appropriate.” Elias smiled. No reluctance now, he was happy to kill.

I tried to duck past him; his hands lashed out like whips, lifted me clear of the ground. He turned while holding me. “Trying to get out the door?” He shoved me through the doorway, pulled me back. “It’s over, Wood… and I am hungry.” He bent his head again.

Suddenly the crystal hammer went warm against my chest. Elias cursed and dropped me. “Damn that bitch! She made that, didn’t she?”

I didn’t answer. I hurled myself towards the switch by the door.

Elias caught me with one hand. But I swung my body and kicked the switch up.

The tanning booth blazed to life, uncountable rows of sunlamps flooding the air with concentrated sunshine. Elias shrieked, dropped me, threw his arms across his face. “Shut it off! Oh, God, shut it off!”

I took a limping step back.

“Please, Jason, please!” Elias stumbled blindly towards me.

I swung my right fist as hard as I could.

He was off balance already. He fell backward onto the tanning bed. “Oh God oh God I’m burning alive Jason please!!”

Blisters popped across his flesh. There was a stench like burning meat. I felt my stomach convulse, turned away.

“Oh I’m sorry I’m sorry oh just help me Jason!”

“I’m sorry too, Elias,” I choked out. I put my hands over my ears but I couldn’t drown out the sound of frying fat.

“HELP MEEEeeeee …“

Slowly I uncovered my ears. Then I opened my eyes and turned around.

On the tanning pallet lay a blackened, scorched mummy, mouth gaping wide, revealing the razor-sharp fangs. One hand was frozen above the clouded eyes, clawing the air in a vain attempt to fend off the radiance, blistered skin drawn tight over the bone. As I watched, the skin began to peel away and turn to oily smoke.

I managed to make it just outside the door before I was violently sick.

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 05

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 05

Chapter 5: An Invitation You Can’t Refuse

I knew there was no point in calling Elias in the morning; he was still on the night shift. The police removed the yellow tape that day, and I found myself busy with regular customers until six-thirty; two major research literature searches for a couple of professors at RPI, a prior-art and patent survey for a local engineering firm, and a few simple source searches for a few well-heeled students who’d rather pay me than spend hours in the library. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing people like that a service, but what the heck, they’ll pay for it one way or another. At seven I locked up and called Elias.

He protested at first, but eventually gave me what I asked for: Verne Domingo’s phone number, which was of course unlisted. As I hung up, it occurred to me that Elias had actually not fought very hard. According to regulations, it was illegal for him to hand out that information, so he had to have wanted me to get it. I remembered him looking at the books yesterday. Maybe he just didn’t want to get directly caught in the weird.

I punched in the number. After a few rings, it was answered. Yes, Mr. Domingo was in. No, he could not come to the phone. No, there would be no exceptions. Would I care to leave a message?

“Yes. Tell Mr. Domingo that I have a photograph that he is not in.”

The dignified voice on the other end was puzzled. “Excuse me? Don’t you mean one that he is in?”

“I mean exactly what I say. Tell him that I have a picture that he is not in. I will call back in one half hour.” I hung up.

I booted up a secure VOIP (voice over Internet Protocol) package I’d found and heavily customized, tied my phone into that. Someone trying a traceback on the call would find it going to various service providers, since I’d hacked together an effective anonymizer for VOIP work. The package also included some signal analysis packages for the incoming signal; if they were using conventional phone lines, I’d be able to tell how many lines were in use.

Precisely thirty minutes later, I called back. A different voice, with a faint accent I couldn’t place, answered. “Verne Domingo speaking.”

“Ah. You got my message.”

“I did indeed. A most peculiar message. I must confess that my curiosity is piqued. What, exactly, does it mean?”

I felt a faint tinge of uncertainty. Could I be wrong? I dismissed it, though. The photo was unmistakable evidence. He was playing it cool. I looked at an indicator; there were more than two people on this line. “Are you sure you want me to talk about it with all those others listening?”

There was a fractional pause, then a chuckle. It was a warm, rich sound. “Very good, young man. I suppose there is no harm in talking to you privately. The rest of you, off the line.”

The indicator showed four connections dropping off. Quite a staff he has; unless he called in the cops, but I really doubt that. “All right, young man… what should I call you?”

“Call me… um, John Van Helsing.”

That got a real pause. “Most… intriguing. Go on. Tell me about this picture.”

“I have a photograph that could place you in a very difficult position. A photo of you involved in a felony.”

“You said that I was not in the photo.”

“Indeed. Your accomplice is, but even though you should undoubtedly be in the photograph, there is no trace of your image.”

He chuckled again. “Obviously the photographer made a mistake.”

“Not in this case, Mr. Domingo. You see, even though you do not appear, your physical presence left definite traces, which modern technology could define and discover. I think that you would find life even more difficult if this photo were publicized than if you simply went to jail.”

I heard no humor in his voice now. “I despise clichés, Mr.…. Van Helsing. But to put it bluntly, you are playing a very dangerous game. Vastly more dangerous, in fact, than you may think, and I will credit you with the intelligence to have already realized considerable danger lay in making this call. You sound like a young and, it would seem, impulsive person. Take my advice and stop now. I am impressed by your initiative and resources… not the least of which is your ability to nullify my tracer. But if you do not stop this now, I will have no choice but to… convince you to stop. And no matter the result of that attempt, you will remain in more danger than you can imagine.”

That response confirmed everything. If he hadn’t been a vampire, he would have dismissed me as a nut. “Sorry, Mr. Domingo. It can’t be dropped. This is a matter of life and death. Several deaths. I’ll be in touch.”

I hung up the phone immediately.

Now I had to figure out what to do. I’d verified my guess. Domingo was the vampire, no doubt about it. Now what? I couldn’t just march up to him some night and hammer a stake through his heart. Never mind the technical difficulties like bodyguards and the fact that he’d probably be less than cooperative; I’d probably be arrested for Murder One and put away. But aside from just killing him, what other choices were there? Lieutenant Reisman would believe me, and maybe Elias Klein if I pushed him. But try getting a warrant out for a murderer with no witnesses except a photo that doesn’t show him and some wild-eyed guesses.

I decided to sleep on it. Sometimes the subconscious works out solutions once you stop consciously worrying at it. I had dinner, watched Predator on cable, and finished reading Phantoms before I turned in.

I woke up suddenly. I glanced at the clock; it was 3:30. What had awakened me?

Then I heard it again. A creak of floorboards. Right outside my bedroom door.

I started to ease over towards the nightstand; I keep my gun in that drawer at night.

The bedsprings creaked.

The door slammed open, and three black figures charged in. I lunged for the nightstand, got the drawer halfway open, but one of them smacked my wrist with the butt of a small submachine gun. “Hold it there, asshole. Move and you are history.”

I used to think Uzis looked silly on television, like a gun that lost its butt and stock. There was nothing funny about the ugly black snout with the nine-millimeter hole ready to make a matching hole in my head. My voice was hoarse and my heart hammered against my ribs. “Okay! Okay, I am not moving! What do you want?”

“It’s not what we want,” one said, his voice neither angry nor gloating, but simply factual.  “Mr. Domingo wants to talk to you. Now.”

After a nasty but impersonal frisking, I was dragged out to a large car. My captors made it clear I was to sit down and shut up. The ride was fast and silent. We pulled up in front of a very large house, fenced and guarded; I recognized the location as we approached. I’d actually driven by here a few times, but never realized there was anything like this on the other end of the gated drive.

The three hustled me out and into the hallway. “Ah, very good, Camillus,” said a gentleman with a perfect English accent, dressed in the impeccable formalwear of a Holly wood butler. “I’ll take the young man from here.”

The one addressed as “Camillus” looked narrowly at me. “Don’t give Morgan here — or anyone else — any trouble, Mr. Wood. If you do, I’ll be back with a pair of tinsnips and you won’t ever need to worry about having kids. Got it?” I didn’t doubt he meant it.

“Please, Camillus, this gentleman is not one of our… more obstreperous visitors. I am sure he does not need such crude threats.” Morgan bowed to me. “If you would come this way, Mr. Wood?”

Morgan led me into a library that looked like Alistair Cooke should be sitting in it for the next episode of Masterpiece Theatre. I sat down in one of the chairs to wait. I’m glad it was a cool night; if it had been hot I might have been sleeping in little or nothing, and my captors had shown no inclination to let me change clothes. As it was, a red-and-blue running suit looked pretty silly.

Of course, I supposed that what I looked like was probably the least of my problems. But if I didn’t think about inane topics like this, I’d probably be screaming.

I hadn’t even heard the door open again, but a voice suddenly spoke to me. “Good evening, Mr. Wood. Welcome to my house.”

I guess I was jumpier than I thought. I leapt out of the chair and whirled. “Jesus!” He smiled slightly as I did a double-take. “Son of a… you even look like a vampire!”

He did, too. Not the walking-corpse kind; he looked like a taller Frank Langella. “Fortunate casting on their part, I assure you.” He smiled again, and this time I noticed pointed teeth. Two fangs. It suddenly felt very cold here. “Sit down, please.” He rang a bell; the door opened almost instantly, framing the silver-haired butler who’d guided me upstairs. “Morgan, bring a suit of clothes for my guest here.” He rattled off my measurements in a lightning-fast stream. “And send up some hors d’oeuvres; I have yet to meet a young bachelor who isn’t hungry at all hours.”

What in hell was going on? I expected to be taken out back and shot. Now he’s treating me like a visiting dignitary? This is very weird. “How in the world did you find me?” I asked once the butler left.

He shook his head, looking amused. “Mr. Wood, you are indeed a very clever man. But you are, I am afraid, not an expert in espionage or covert operations. Certainly you left no direct clues, but consider! From my conversation with you, I knew the following: you were a young man — your voice, manner on the phone, and approach left me with little doubt on that score; you were in possession of a photo which, from your description, could only have been obtained from a covert surveillance camera; you were certainly not the police; you had considered possibilities that most people would dismiss offhand; you had either access to someone with the ability to, or yourself actually possessed abilities to, process the images on that film and from them discover the evidence you and I discussed recently.

“In short, then, I had to look for a young man who was on close terms with the police, who worked with computer-enhancements or had access to them, who had an open mind, and, from the tone of your voice, who had had at least one death recently that he was personally concerned with. I think you will admit that the field of choices becomes very narrow.”

I flushed. Nice work, moron! I had set myself up perfectly.

The clothes and food arrived; he directed me to a small alcove to change. I came out feeling almost human again and I was actually hungry. “So what are you going to do with me? I presume that if you intended to kill me you’d already have done so.”

“I do not kill unless in self-defense, Mr. Wood. You are entirely mistaken in your impression of me. I have killed no one since I arrived here three years ago.”

The last thing I expected here was denial. “Entirely mistaken? Are you saying you are not a drug dealer?”

He winced. “I dislike that term. I am a supplier of substances which your government terms illegal, yes.”

“Then you’ve killed hundreds by proxy. That’s even worse.”

He glanced at me; his expression was mild, but his eyes appeared to flame momentarily. “Do not seek to judge me, young man. What your culture calls illegal is its business, but I do not acknowledge its sovereignty over me or others. I walked this world long before the United States was even a possibility, and I will exist long after it has gone and been forgotten in time. If members of your population choose my wares, that is their affair. I do not sell to children, nor do I sell to those who do. Adults make their own choices of salvation and damnation. I supply the means to make that particular choice. I live in comfort on the free choices of these people.”

“Once they’re addicted, it isn’t much of a free choice! And some of them — many of them — turn to drugs because of their dead-end lives.”

He flicked a hand in a negation, red light flashing from a ruby ring on his finger. “Mr. Wood, this lecture of yours is at an end. I did not bring you here to discuss my business affairs. But I will say that I target my wares to those who can afford them. They have both the choice and the resources to make or unmake the choice. I take no responsibility for the idiocy of others.” He held up the hand as I started to answer. “No, that is enough, Mr. Wood. You are a well-meaning young man, and I would enjoy talking with you on other subjects. But this discussion is closed.

“To the point, Mr. Wood. I presume that you believe that I killed your… friend, this Lewis. Would you tell me why I might do such a thing?”

Could he be that dense? “Obviously you were hungry.”

He nodded. “I see. And can you think of any other reasons?”

“Lewis was one of my contacts. Maybe he knew something about you or your operation.”

He began to smile, then he laughed. It was as warm and rich as the chuckle, ringing like a deep bell. “Come with me, Jason.”

He led me out of the library, down a hall, and into his own chambers. He pointed at a cabinet. “Open that.”

I pulled on the handles. The rosewood opened, to reveal a large refrigerator. Inside were dozens of bottles filled with red liquid.

“I can obtain blood legitimately from several sources, Jason. It can be expensive, but I have many millions. I can even warm it to the proper temperature. I can eat normal food, though I derive no nourishment from it, and it gives me what a mortal would call cramps; but thus I can maintain a masquerade.”

I was stunned. I had missed all this totally. How could I be so stupid? “But what if Lewis knew something? You –”

“Really, Mr. Wood, you can’t think that I would personally kill him? I have people — such as Camillus — for that, who can use bullets or their bare hands, or strangle with generic wire, or cause automobiles to go out of control at convenient locations. What earthly reason would I have to kill someone in a fashion so bizarre as to draw just this sort of attention?” He led the way back to the library. “You are a reasonable man, Jason. Unless you believe me so insane that I have lost any semblance of rationality, then you cannot believe I am responsible for these terrible killings.”

I nodded. How could I argue? I should have seen all this stuff without ever having to have it rammed down my throat. “Then what you are saying is that there is another vampire in the city?”

“I see no alternative.”

I cursed, earning me a scandalized raise of an eyebrow. “Sorry. But this puts me back to square one. Now I’ll have to sort him out from a hundred and fifty thousand people in the area.”

“I may be able to help you.”

He sure had my attention. “How?”

He leaned back in his chair. “Normally I do not get involved in squabbles between my other brethren and you mortals. If they are stupid enough to be discovered, they deserve the fate that you weaker but numerous mortals will inevitably dispense. But in this case,” his voice grew hard, “this one’s actions have almost led to me suffering that fate. So I will tell you something very useful.” He reached out, pulled out a drawer, and dropped an envelope on the desk.

I opened it; the negative was inside. “How …” I began, then thought a moment. “Never mind.”

Verne Domingo pointed to the photo. “That is the key, you see. Not in the way you thought, of course. It is the fact of its existence.”

“How do you mean?”

“I have been well aware of my effect, or lack thereof, on photographic film for many years. Therefore, I do not permit myself to be photographed. Moreover, I am always aware of all mortals in my vicinity. If I concentrate — and I always do when outside — I know who is about me, within a large radius.” He shifted his gaze to me. “The only beings I cannot sense — and thus the only beings who could photograph me without my knowledge — are my own or similar kind.”

My appetite vanished and my stomach knotted. It was suddenly as clear as the crystal glass in front of me. Who had taken the picture? Who liked night shifts? Who had argued with me until I realized I had a photo of a vampire? Who had handed over a phone number and practically pushed me toward Verne Domingo?

Lieutenant Elias Klein.

I stood and crossed the room to the desk, reached out. Verne Domingo’s dark-skinned hand came down on mine, effortlessly forced the telephone receiver back to its base. “No calls, Mr. Wood, please.”

“I have to at least let Sylvie know I’m all right.”

“You do not have to do anything of the kind.”

“But –”

“Will you listen to yourself! Think, mortal, use that mind of yours! Why are you here?”

That was a silly question. “Because three thugs with Uzis dragged me out of my bedroom and brought me here.”

He closed his eyes and drew a breath. “That is a simplistic answer, Mr. Wood. It is nearing dawn and I am tired. Now please think about your situation.”

Okay, what did he mean? I thought about it, piecing together causes, effects, Klein… “I’m here because Klein wanted you to come after me; he wanted me out of the way, or maybe if I got lucky, you out of the way.”

Domingo opened his eyes and smiled. “Light begins to dawn. So what will happen if you call?”

“Sylvie wouldn’t tell.”

“Perhaps not; I lack the pleasure of the young lady’s acquaintance, so I am ill-equipped to judge. However, she would very likely not show an appropriate level of worry. Why should you risk your present position when her authentic emotions can serve a better purpose?”

Finally the idea clicked. God I am slow sometimes. “You mean, let Klein think you got me… that I’m dead or removed.”

“Precisely.”

“But then what? I can’t prove a thing against him without coming back out, and even then I’d have to expose you, and I assume you wouldn’t…” I looked at him and his eyes answered the question. “No, you wouldn’t.”

Domingo drained a wineglass of red liquid; I tried not to watch, but it had a horrid fascination about it. He set the glass down and looked at me. “I shall have to help you, Mr. Wood. There are certain things — ‘loose ends,’ as you would say — which Elias must clear up in order to secure his position. One is this negative. He must find it and destroy it; he can ill afford to let evidence of vampires remain. I am, of course, another.”

“Loose ends… Sylvie!”

He nodded slowly. “Yes, she is certainly one. She knows far too much for him to be safe, and moreover she believes… and has psychic resources as well.”

I started to stand, then looked at him suspiciously. “How do you know that Syl’s… psychic? I didn’t think you even knew her!”

Domingo chuckled slightly. “Personally I do not. However, it is in my best interests to determine what people of Talent exist in my vicinity, and it was not long at all before my people had compiled a considerable dossier on the young lady. Your own reaction, skeptic though you are, merely confirms my impression; she is one of the few who truly possesses what she claims to have.”

This time I did stand, and started for the door. “Then I have to go! Her safety’s more important than mine or even nailing Elias.”

Without so much as a flicker, Verne Domingo suddenly stood between me and the door. “Not more important to me, young man. This Elias has dared to use me — me –as a pawn in his games.” For a moment I saw, not a vampire of the modern world, but a man of a far more ancient time, a lord whose honor had suffered a mortal insult. “He will regret that.”

“I don’t give a damn about your stupid ego, Domingo! He could be going after Syl this minute!”

He spread his hands, yielding a point. “Well spoken; if I do not respect your reasons, I cannot expect you to respect mine. But he will make no move until tomorrow night; or rather, tonight, since we are well into the morning. He must have the police — probably through your young lady — discover that you have been taken. He believes me ruthless and willing to kill to protect myself, and will assume you dead. Only tonight will he search your quarters and deal with your Sylvia.”

An idea occurred to me. “Is it true that vampires cannot enter a dwelling unbidden?”

He hesitated a moment. “Yes. It is true.”

“Then Syl should be safe if she stays home.”

“Indeed? Elias Klein, respected lieutenant of police, friend of yours, shows up on her doorstep with news of you; do you truly believe she would have him stay on the porch?”

I shook my head reluctantly. “I guess not.” I thought that Syl’s… talent might warn her, but it might not. Syl had been in an accident or two, so while her power might be a hundred percent accurate it was far from a hundred percent reliable.

“I guess not as well! No, there is only one way to handle Mr. Elias Klein, and this is the way it shall be done…”

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 04

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 04

Chapter 4: Flirting and Clues

Two hours later, I wasn’t so sure. “Funny, Jason… that picture looks the same.”

“Oh, very funny, Syl.” I stared at the screen, willing a faint outline to appear.

“Sorry, Jason. But this is not exactly the most exciting date I’ve ever been on.”

“I’d have thought last night would have been all the excitement you could handle. Besides, we are not dating.”

“Oh? So you kiss your male friends good night too?”

“Okay, then I won’t do that anymore.” I pounded another set of instructions into the machine, a little harder than was really wise. Syl always rattles me when she gets on that subject.

“Oh, honestly, Jason! Don’t sulk like that. I didn’t mean to pressure you. It just strikes me funny.”

“What strikes you funny?”

“You, Jason. You can face down an angry policeman, send crooks to jail, run a business, and you’re calmly trying to track down a vampire… and you just fall apart whenever a woman smiles at you.”

“I do not fall apart!” With dismay I watched the entire background turn a pale lavender. Hurriedly I undid my mistake. “I just… don’t want to get involved. I don’t have time. Besides, we are off the subject here.” I ignored her tolerant smile.

“So what are you doing now?”

I turned back to the screen, then shrugged. “Nothing, actually. I’ve tried everything and it’s no use. Either he simply does not show on any wavelengths or else, more likely, this film just has no sensitivity at all in any non-visible spectra. I can’t bring up something that the film doesn’t have on it.” I slumped back, depressed. I really hate losing.

“Well, then, why not work with what has to be there?”

I looked at her. She looked serious, but there were little smile wrinkles around her eyes. “What exactly do you mean?”

“Well, this vampire’s solid, isn’t he? I mean, you don’t shake hands with a ghost.”

“Right. So?”

She pointed to the area in front of Connors. “He’s standing right there somewhere. So his feet must—”

“– be on the ground there… and he’ll be leaving footprints! Syl, you are a genius! And I am an idiot!” I selected the area in front of Connors that his invisible opposite should be in, started to enlarge it.

A few seconds went by as I searched. Then I smiled and sat back.

On screen, in the gravel of the pathway, were the unmistakable outlines of two shoes. A sprig of grass was caught underneath one shoe, showing an impossible half-flat, half-arched outline. “Syl, I could kiss you!”

“I’ll bet you say that to all the guys.” She looked pleased, though.

I saved the data and hid the disk away. “For that, I’ll buy you dinner.”

 

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 03

Paradigms Lost – Chapter 03

Chapter 3: Contingency Planning

“What in the world are you doing?” Sylvie asked.

I put down the loading kit. “Preparing. I figure that if I’m going to deal with a vampire, I’d better have something other than conventional ammo.”

She picked up a cartridge. “Silver? I thought I read somewhere that you actually couldn’t make silver bullets; something about balance?”

“I heard that too, but it’s a silly statement on the face of it. Lead’s softer and just as heavy, and they’ve been making bullets from lead as long as they’ve been making guns. Yes, you have to make a few adjustments, but nothing prevents a silver bullet from working as a bullet” I checked the fit of another bullet. “Not that I expect those to be of much use. WISDOM only gave a twenty-five-percent chance of a vulnerability to silver. That seems more of a werewolf thing.”

She examined the other kinds of ammo. “Well, I’ll say this for you, you have one heck of an assortment.” She reached into her purse, pulled out a small wooden box. “Here, Jason.”

“What’s this?” I opened the box. On a slender silver chain was a crystal-headed hammer, handle wrapped in miniature leather thongs, the head an angle-faced box. “It’s gorgeous, Syl! Thank you!”

“I remembered how much you like the Norse pantheon — you even named your car after Thor’s hammer — and if you look real closely on the hammer head, you’ll see Mjölnir engraved there in Nordic runes.”

I squinted closely at it, and I could just make out the spiderweb-thin runic lines. “It’s really beautiful, Sylvie. But why now?”

“I was actually saving it for your birthday next month, but with this vampire thing going on, I decided it was best I give it to you now.” She saw my puzzlement. “It’s not just a piece of jewelry, Jason. I made it especially to be a focus, a protection against evil, for you.”

“But you know I don’t really believe in that stuff.”

She gave a lopsided smile. “Jason Wood, how in the world can you believe in vampires and sneer at crystals and spirits?”

“Touché.” I slipped the chain over my neck. It felt cool against my skin. The three-inch-long hammer made a slight bulge below my collar. “This could look a little strange. I don’t wear jewelry often. I think I’ll put it on the wall. Or on Mjolnir’s rearview mirror.”

“No, Jason.” Sylvie had her “feeling” face on again. “Wear it. Even if you don’t believe, it will make me feel better if you keep it on you.”

I wasn’t about to test her accuracy now. I was about eighty-five percent convinced we were dealing with some kind of creature that might as well be called a vampire, and a hundred percent convinced that Syl had some way of knowing things she shouldn’t. “Okay.”

“Now what else has your machine come up with?”

“Nothing good. The problem is that there are so many versions of the vampire legend in myth and fiction that the best I can do is estimate probabilities. Problem with that is that even a low-probability thing could turn out to be real.” I picked up a printout. “But I can’t prepare for everything. So I’ve constructed a ‘theoretical vampire’ using all the probabilities that showed a greater than eighty-percent likelihood.” I started reading. “Strength, somewhere between five and twenty times normal human, with a heavy bias towards the high end of that range; he — or she, let’s be equal-opportunity with our monsters — can probably tip over a minivan like I can a loaded shopping cart and leap small garages in a single bound. Invulnerable to ordinary weapons. What can hurt it is a nice question; Only one thing cleared the probability threshold — fire — with a bunch more clustered at between twenty-five and thirty percent: the movie standbys of sunlight and a wooden stake, running water, holy symbols or weapons as a general class, some sort of symbolic material like rice or salt, and so on. Does not show up on mirrors; after that photo I think we can take that as proven.”

“Maybe he just doesn’t show on film?”

“The legend started long before there was film. Stands to reason the mirror business had something behind it. Okay, where was I? Shapeshifting. This might have started as a blending of the werewolf and vampire legends, but most are pretty emphatic that vampires can either change shape or make you think they look different than they are. Plus what I saw the other night pretty much convinces me our target can either go invisible or turn into mist. Changes those bitten into others of its kind, that’s how they reproduce.”

Sylvie shook her head. “No, Jason, that’s silly. If getting bitten made vampires, we’d be up to our earlobes in bloodsuckers in nothing flat.”

“So I simplified it. Some kind of additional condition has to be met — maybe exchanging blood, maybe some kind of a ritual. As an aside, if that happens, there is a fair chance that the new vampire is controlled by the old one. And speaking of age, the legends also tend to emphasize that the older the suckers get the tougher they are.”

“Anything else?”

“Yep. They tend to be inactive in the daytime, and may have psychokinetic abilities. One other interesting note: many legends state that a vampire, or similar spirits, cannot enter a personal dwelling — house, apartment, whatever — without the permission of a legitimate resident therein. However, once given, the permission is damned hard to revoke. Some of the legends have the idea that there is a particular location the vampire must return to, or carry with them, that old ‘home earth’ requirement.” I put the printout down. “That’s about it. Lower down on the list you get some really odd stuff.”

Sylvie sat in frowning thought for a few minutes. “So fire is the best bet?”

I waved a hand from side to side. “It’s chancy. How you’re going to set him on fire without getting killed isn’t very clear to me. The problem is that while it’s pretty likely that the vampire is somewhat vulnerable to sunlight — most of them do not walk the day, and I have to assume there’s a reason for that — the degree of vulnerability is highly variable. If they’re vulnerable at all, any vampire would die if you could stick it out on a Miami beach thirty minutes from shade, but if it’s not just an instant kill, in the first twenty minutes it could do a lot of damage to anyone in the area. Several of the legends emphasize that an old and powerful vampire becomes more and more able to resist their normal vulnerabilities. Besides, I doubt he’d answer an invitation to a beach party.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“See if I can get a handle on him somehow, so he has to come to me. And I think this negative is the key.”