The Persistence of Memories - A Novel of the Mendaihu Universe (19 page)

Saisshalé fidgeted in his chair, and said
nothing for once.

“Thank you, Saisshalé. That will be all.”

Janoss Miradesi stepped into the office
minutes after Saisshalé had left it. Janoss was repeatedly glancing
at the door, as if expecting the man to come rushing back into the
room to tear things apart. They had passed in the anteroom and said
nothing to each other, but the fire in the man’s eyes sent Janoss
reeling. His belief in the older deities was stronger than
Natianos', and he had regarded Saisshalé with reverence and
trepidation ever since Natianos had summoned him.

Janoss was looking a little disheveled, as if
he'd been running around multitasking all morning. His suit hung
from him like he'd slept in it for the past two days, his body was
hunched over in visible exhaustion and defeat, and there were heavy
circles under his eyes. This was not the same man that attacked
Nehalé Usarai, nearly destroying a church in the process. Something
was wrong but Natianos said nothing; Janoss would come around soon
enough, given time and a reason for doing so.

“Good afternoon, Dahné,” Janoss said, bowing
slightly.

“Good afternoon, Janoss. Please, have a seat.
What can I do for you?”

Janoss glanced at the door again before
answering. “Forgive my intrusion, but do you really think it's a
good idea for Saisshalé to be moving around down there?”

Natianos frowned at him. “Why not? It would
keep him out of trouble.”

“But sir —”

“Trust me on this, Janoss,” he said. “I have
a very good reason. If he gets out of hand, there are more kiralla
down there than in any other sector combined, and they’ll know when
something is up before anyone else.”

Janoss stopped in mid-breath and stared at
him. Natianos felt a brief wave of fear wash over the man and fan
outwards. He hid a smile behind a hand held to his mouth. After the
frustrating and multi-layered conversation with Saisshalé, talking
to Janoss was a relief. Everything was in black and white terms and
with simple emotions. His face was pale, his hands shook, and many
different levels of anxiety were rushing through him, all fighting
to be on top.

“Did you say
kiralla
, sir?” Janoss
said, his voice barely audible.

“That I did,” Natianos said calmly, playing
at the man's fears. “I've been aware of their presence for some
time now, Janoss. Just as I've visited Trisanda as frequently as I
have. I'm surprised you don't know more about those wonderful
spirit creatures.”

“I...I did,” he managed. “I mean, I do. I
know they're here, sir.”

Natianos smiled. “Good. Then you know that
they've been going through their own unique awakening process over
the last few months.
Months
, Janoss! They knew about the One
of All Sacred much earlier than anyone else around here.”

“They're not here to fight,” Janoss said,
regaining some of his courage to speak his mind. “They've never
been here to fight, just observe and keep everything from getting
out of hand. They’re just overseers.”

“Very good, Janoss,” Natianos smiled. “Let's
just hope that they don't appear in their spirit form, eh? It would
be a pity for us angels and demons to be trampled to death by the
true fire breathers.”

Janoss bristled. “That's not even a joke,
sir.”

Natianos studied the man for a moment before
answering. “No, I don't suppose it is,” he said. “I apologize.”

Janoss nodded ever so slightly.

Natianos continued to watch him. He’d changed
over the last few weeks, ever since the failed Ascension. At first
he thought he’d been afraid, since he had purposely not told him
about summoning Saisshalé. Keeping Denni Johnson from ascending had
been imperative to the survival of the Shenaihu nuhm'ndah. And in
the process, Janoss now regarded him with a mixture of subservience
and fear, two things he did
not
want in an assistant. First
Saisshalé's disobedience, now Janoss' fear. What had happened?

“You're planning to overtake corporate, sir?”
Janoss asked, breaking the silence. “Are you sure that's a good
idea?”

“I’m not doing anything of the sort,” he
said. “I’m just having him keep an eye on the area. Have him
establish a bit of a presence there.”

Janoss frowned. “What good would it do? The
workers have remained loyal to you and the company, regardless of
their awakening. Begging your pardon, sir, but what are you really
doing down there?”

“All in due time,” Natianos said. “The most
important thing here is that everything
stays
according to
plan.”

Janoss stared at him, the unasked question
flashing across his face.

“There
will
be a convergence, Janoss.
There's no avoiding it now. But there will be no eradication of
Shenaihu, now that the One has not ascended. There will be no
simple battles, as the One has not called her Mendaihu forces
together. Most importantly, there will be no simple
end
to
it. The Shenaihu will be victorious, and the cycle of death and
rebirth will start again.”

Janoss shivered again, but said nothing.

“I plan to be there at the rebirth,” Natianos
added.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Vigil

She felt the familiar twinge just behind her
right ear, an itch like a misplaced hair irritating the skin. A
second later she heard his gravelly voice, slightly tinny and
crackly through the implant.

“HQ to Madin,” Matthew said. “You in house
today?”

Jenn Underwood shook her head in amusement.
It wasn't often that Matthew called her up in this manner, but when
he did it had to be important. Her amusement was aimed at his
strict use of code names and words when he was jacked in. She
tolerated it only because she knew it was his way of asserting his
role as leader of Vigil while throwing a little levity in there at
the same time.

She sub-vocalized her voice in return. “Madin
is currently waiting for a client to access some files today, thank
you very much. What's up, my esteemed Dahné?”

Matthew
hmmphed
in response. “Go
visual and I'll show you.”

She winced. “Kind of a bad time. I'm at work,
remember?”

“This will only take a few moments.”

She grunted quietly and shook her head. She
hated using her eyecam implants in reverse mode. It gave her a
migraine if she used it for too long. Additionally, focusing
between visual and realtime was always a problem, and her facial
expression often turned into something of a scowl.

Regardless, she settled herself down at her
desk. She flicked on the vidmat and called up the Data Research
Library search engine. Her department encouraged netsurfing,
especially during work hours, as there was never an end to the data
in this world that could be captured and saved for reference. She
began typing random phrases like
mandarin oranges
and
Carl Jung
while accessing her eyecam at the same time.

Matthew Davison’s image popped into sight in
her right eye. Dressed conservatively in a buttoned shirt with his
longish dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, he looked a bit
nervous and tired, but that was his normal appearance. He was the
leader of Vigil, one of the most feared jacker gangs in Bridgetown;
when he wasn’t at his day job as a communications tech programmer
at Khema-Jamison-Shimura, he was often instilling just enough chaos
in all the corporate networks in the Sprawl to, as Vigil’s
manifesto said, “keep the playing fields even.” Their current
focus, however, was not on corporations but on the Mendaihu and the
Shenaihu.

“Confirmed, visual,” he said, his image
captured by the low-tech miniature camera mounted above his main
monitor. He had a strangely comforting grin on his face, which
could only mean that they had a big job on their hands. Something
that would mean more than just the usual shenanigans. Something
with more
meaning
.

“What do we have?” she asked.

“Check this out...” A second window popped
open beside him, sharing the same cramped space. “I think I found a
lead on the ‘here lies fate’ tagging. Watch this.”

Jenn let out an angry grunt. “You called me
up for
that
?”

“Hold it,” he said, and reached somewhere off
camera. “Watch the lower left corner.”

Judging from the grainy wide-focus view, the
image must have been picked up by a nearby security camera. The
timestamp revealed it had been shot only yesterday, around noon, at
the northeast corner of Guyton Street East and Holgate Street, just
across the street from St. Paul's Church in the Waterfront Sector.
It was lunchtime for quite a few business people from just down the
street, many of them doing their shopping or stopping at the
restaurants that dotted the Guyton Street East strip.

“See that man, brown frizzy hair, dark green
sweatshirt, B-Town Saints ball cap, about six-three?”

The man was standing at the end of a line of
people waiting for a transit bus. “Yes...”

“Keep watching him. Ready?
Three...two...one....boom.” The man had disappeared into thin
air.

Jenn caught her breath. “Where did he go? Did
he just step into Light?”

“Others would have felt it,” Matt said,
shaking his head. “They would have heard the snap of air, and the
visual would have caught the light flash.”

“So how...?”

“Watch that lower left corner.”

Five seconds went by. Ten. Fifteen. Then
there was an obscurity of...light? A bird flying by? Something
happened in that corner of the screen, and then the words
here
lies fate
appeared, freshly painted at the exact spot the man
had vacated. A pedestrian stepped onto the words, apparently
unaware of them, and kept walking. It already dry.

Jenn stared at the image within her right eye
and felt weak. “What the hells is going on?” She shook her head,
blinked twice to regain her sense of balance. “What just
happened?”

Matthew shut down the second window. “I don't
know, but I probably should find out.”

Jenn nodded uncertainly. “You do that,” she
said. “Any idea who he was?”

“Our
fadin
is looking into it,” he
said, referring to Shirai — the Mirades Tower’s resident AI, and
Vigil’s priceless connection to the inner workings of the corporate
Sprawl — by calling her
mother
in Anjshé. It was creepy but
in a funny, very Matthew sort of way. “She's running face
recognition, and she's narrowed it down to about a dozen hopefuls.
She should have a definite in an hour or so.”

Jenn exhaled, gathering her thoughts.
Matthew’s revelation had surprised her to the point that she'd
stopped entering search topics over a few minutes ago. She cursed
and hoped no one had wandered by to see her staring blankly at
nothing, typed out
Shirai
without thinking, and entered it
before she could stop herself. “So how do I fit in?” she asked,
while absently scrolling down the links related to the AI. “What do
you need?”

“An opening. Once Fadin finds out who that
guy is, I'm going to need at least a half hour of digging. Won't
bore you with the details, but I know
exactly
what I'd be
looking for. I'd do a download and cut the connection as soon as
I'm done. That a problem?”

Jenn huffed in frustration, this one
deliberately loud enough for Matthew to hear. If all he needed was
a tiny sliver of research time, he could have come out and asked on
a landline instead of distracting her with a light show. She
glanced at the schedule board posted next to the vidmat for
research time and what openings she could use for him, and
immediately swore.

“Might be a problem,” Jenn said, tapping at
the schedule board. “We just had a last minute person call in and
take my last available opening, and I can't turn her away. I could
always give you a call as soon as there's an opening.”

Matthew looked crestfallen. He could not get
a simple hack into the DRL database, despite the wealth of
technology in that back room of his. “What about now?” he said. Not
asked.

“
Dahné,
” she sighed. “I can't just
—”

“Look,” he said gruffly. “Just one fucking
item. That's all I need, once Fadin gets the name to me. You know
it's important.”

Goddess,
she bristled, shaking her
head. “Let me see what I can —”

The buzz of the office intercom interrupted
her words. That had to be Christine. “I’ve got company,” she said.
“Let me call you back with the time. Promise.”

Matthew
hmmph
ed again and logged off.
She blinked her eyes rapidly to regain proper focus, all the while
battling the growing migraine. The intercom buzzed again, followed
by Christine's voice calling out.

“Just...” she cleared her throat, hiding a
grunt of pain.
Damn that eyecam. Kills me every time.
“Just
a sec, Chris. Let me buzz you in.”

Christine Gorecki stepped through the door
with a half-grin on her face and an overstuffed satchel slung
across her shoulder. She closed the door quietly and took a seat on
an uncluttered corner of the desk. “Hey there, eichi,” she said,
touching her on the shoulder. “Long time no see. How are you?”

“Headache from hell,” Jenn managed, “but
otherwise okay. Day's lasted a little longer than it's supposed to.
You all set with your research, or do you need a tutorial?”

“All business,” Christine said, cracking a
smile. “I've trained you well. I'm all set with the tutorial. So
honestly — how are you, Jenn? I mean, I haven't seen you in six
months. Let down the guard and talk to me.”

Jenn relented with a grin. “Let's set you up
while we talk,” she said, and led her to a narrow hallway at the
far end of the office. The Mendaihu Archives had been stored in a
spacious but ultimately lonely room in one of the inner offices,
its databanks lining the west and south wall. The archives
themselves could be accessed by any of the terminals at any of the
public kiosks lining the main floor, yet some of the more scholarly
researchers preferred the private booth terminals on the third
floor, near Jenn's office. Still others, whose research stretched
towards the higher limits of sensitivity, chose this office and its
four privacy booths.