Black Steel (16 page)

Geneva, always less flip, looked more serious. She was on the edge of tears. "You should have called us for help, goddammit!"

Dirisha put one hand on Geneva's arm. "The brat's right, deuce. That's what friends are for. We don't have so many we can afford to lose any, even a piss-poor one like you. Get well, Sleel. Listen to Kee Wu. Give us a com when you wake up."

Sleel touched the control. He'd been out for three weeks; Dirisha and Geneva had come to see him less than a week after he'd been boxed. Must have left for Rift the same day he'd crashed the flitter. Damn.

Apparently they trusted Mayli's sister.

He started the holoproj again, scanning through the messages. Bork had called. So had Emile and Juete.

There was a com from Rajeem Carlos, former President of the Republic. He had spoken to some people about the matter, and Sleel needn't worry about criminal charges. Ah. Calls from Grandle Diggs, Tork Ramson, plus half a dozen members of his matador class-Christo, it was like old home week here.

Sleel shut the messages off. He'd have to watch and listen to them later. Something was wrong with his good eye at the moment; he couldn't see too well. Must be something in the recirculated air making him tear up so bad. Somebody looking at him would think he was crying.

Chapter FIFTEEN

IT WAS NOT Hoja Cierto's habit to admit strangers into his sanctum. If men or mues were unknown personally to the master of the house, research was done. By the time he sat across from any new visitor to his domain, Cierto would know as much about them as possible. In some cases, more than a sister would know about her brother, or a father about his own son.

The man who sat stiffly upon the genetically grown dinosaur-leather couch went by the name of Ricard Ells. He was a kind of bounty hunter who survived by tracking down small-time felons who had jumped bond, finding runaway spouses and children, and locating odds and ends. Ells had spent a week recently in a medical kiosk having repaired injuries sustained in a fight on Koji, the Holy World.

Not all that unusual, for despite its name, some religions tended toward the way of the old god Mars. Ells had been tight-lipped about the source of his injuries and there was no existing record of who had nearly killed him by driving what the medics had described as several large splinters of bamboo nearly into the man's heart. Ells had come to claim the reward posted for information on black steel. He had brought with him a small recording sphere which purported to contain images of a sword made of the material.

"Show it to me," Cierto commanded. Several had claimed to have discovered this before; thus far, none of the claims had proved valid. One man had come across a sword made here that had somehow become lost. Others were either outright fakes or similar, but not the true material. The reward for information was somewhat less than that for an actual example. Cierto wondered if perhaps this man had attempted to steal a weapon and had met resistance.

Ells moved somewhat stiffly to the computer console and slotted the infoball.

Cierto leaned back in his own form-chair, a custom orthopedia designed for him alone. The soft machineries hummed with soothing sonics as they molded the special fabric to his contours.

The holoproj lit. The resolution was clean, the colors sharp, even though the camera had obviously been hidden upon Ells's person and must have been quite small. The picture was only a little jerky, and Cierto, who knew something of such things, determined that the compensation system for the virtualcam work was less than the best available. Still, the image was adequate. There on a polished wooden stand was a Japanese-style sword, katana pattern. There was nothing obvious to give the uninitiated a scale, but from the size of the tsuba, Cierto guessed that the weapon was larger than a medium-sword, a wakizashi, or a short-sword, a tanto. A daito, then, over two shaku in length. An ancient measurement, a shaku was about thirty centimeters, if Cierto recalled it right. The ensheathed weapon wore a lacquered white scabbard, the guard was stainless or nickeled steel, and the handle appeared to be white ray hide in black silk diamond-turning pattern, with a butt cap to match the tsuba.

The workmanship on the parts he could see appeared excellent, but one could tell little from a recording.

The trust test of a sword was in how it felt in one's hands.

"Very nice," Cierto said, "but the blade could be purple under the scabbard."

"Just a moment."

The picture fuzzed and refocused. Now there was a woman kneeling, the angle showing her back. She was dressed in split skirt and gi. The camera panned down to the woman's left and zoomed, framing the sword lying on the mat next to the woman's left hip. The woman picked up the sword and blurred into a kata, the sword flashing darkly into the dojo's air. The camera operator widened the angle, trying to keep up, but missed the next move. By the time the recording caught her, the woman was whipping the sword furiously through a complex series of attacks and defenses, thrusts and feints and cuts. The blade ghosted through the moves like the prop of a copter, so fast it seemed like a dark sheet at times.

Definitely black. And wielded with considerable skill, even though it was merely a kata.

"Stop picture," Cierto said.

The computer obediently froze the image.

"Reverse play, quarter speed."

The recording tracked backward. When the blurry sword slowed for a high block, Cierto said, "Freeze frame. Quarter screen, left upper, full enhance, true colors."

The comp augmented the image, moving in tight on the sword.

Well, well.

Handmade swords were never exactly alike; had this one been a duplicate of any from the House of Black Steel he would have known for certain that it was a fake. Cierto knew the whorls of the folded metal and the temper lines along the edges of the three dozen weapons produced here as well as he did the lines in the palms of his own hands. Even those that had belonged to the students who had failed would eventually be returned here, when enough stads found their way into the right pockets.

This sword was not one of his.

It was a katana, and save for one, the casa had never made the style. They were more cutters than piercers, and that lacked a certain finesse in Cierto's mind. The single one such blade produced here was safe in the underground vault thirty meters below where Cierto sat-or it had been this morning.

"Push in," Cierto said to the computer.

The sword grew larger. The tempering along the cutting edge was done by using special clays, and after heating and polishing, left a distinctive pattern of lighter metal where it was harder. The patterns had names, and this one was either a flame or perhaps a three-cedar; the computer could not make it clear enough to be certain. In any event, the temper line was not one of the more common ones. Would the maker of a fake blade bother with something so esoteric?

Hmm. This might just be what Cierto had always feared. Someone else with the family secret; worse, someone who knew how to use it. He had to have this sword, to determine its age-and everything else possible about it.

"And where is this place?" Cierto said to Ells.

The man smiled, a thin, cagey expression. "There was a matter of a reward."

Cierto wanted to laugh, but held it. What a fool. He had no understanding of his position. "Of course."

Cierto waved his hands at the compute. "Give me your credit cube number and it will be transferred to your account." The amount was nothing; he would have paid ten times as much if this sword was what he felt certain it was.

The image hung in the air. And what did the woman look like who moved so well with his family's secret? "Computer, wide angle, normal speed."

The image altered and began to move again. When the woman spun and faced the camera, Cierto said,

"Stop, enhance still image."

When he saw the woman's face, he did laugh. Ells did not understand and Cierto did not bother to enlighten him.

Truly, Cierto thought, truly there must be gods and they must have warped senses of humor. How else to explain such a thing?

When the lid of the Healy fanned open, Sleel sat up slowly. Even though the machine had stimmed his muscles to hold their tone, he wanted to give his heart a chance to keep the blood flowing to his brain.

His knee was virtually healed, the new eye was mostly formed and only a few weeks away from being fully grown, and the left hand was well past bud stage, with small but perfect fingers. He would be fitted with the first of a series of robotic glove prostheses to give him useful function until the hand reached normal size. That would take about two months. He was as well physically as this machine could make him.

"You look better," Wu said from the doorway.

"I don't feel any better."

"I brought you something," she said. She held in her hand a single spetsdod with its plastic flesh backing.

Sleel shook his head. ;Keep it. I don't deserve to wear it."

The woman nodded, as if to herself. "What will you do now?"

"Why should you care?"

"Because my sister did."

Sleel slid out of the Healy through the egress slot and stood, testing his weight on the new knee. Weak, but no problem.

"Yeah, well, that was a long time ago. She's not here and you don't have to take her place."

"You know how she died?"

Sleel nodded. "Yeah. I was there."

"Will you tell me about it?"

"It's old stuff, better to let it lie." He took a couple of tentative steps. Never know the knee had been blasted into organic goo from the way it now worked. The flesh was hairless, brighter and unscarred but that would eventually fade and change until it looked like the rest of the leg. If he lived that long. He was still naked, but the woman had seen him that way often enough in the last few weeks. It was a little chilly, though.

She opened a cabinet and pulled a robe from it, tossing the garment to Sleel. He caught it with his good hand.

"She was my sister. I want to know."

Sleel put the robe on, tabbing it shut. After the weeks of nudity, even the soft material felt rough against his skin. "All right. I'll tell you. Let's take a walk."

Wu listened as Sleel told her the story, trying to picture it. "It was on Earth, during the last push of the revolution. There was a power station on the small continent, Australia, just south of a place called Lake Disappointment. We were supposed to knock the grid offline, to cut the juice. There were six of us: Mayli, Dirisha, Geneva, Bork, Red-he was Geneva's father-and me.

"We got into the station okay, even though it was heavily guarded. We got it done, set the explosives, and were leaving when it went sour. Everybody started shooting. Mayli, Red and I, we got hit. Bork-you know about him and Mayli?"

"Yes. They were lovers. Mayli thought he was the most gentle man she had ever known."

Sleel managed a half smile at that. "Bork could tear off your leg and beat an army to death with it, if he wanted. Anyway, Mayli got hit first. Autocarbine, firing explosive antipersonnel rounds. She took one right in the heart, she must have died instantly. We didn't leave our own behind. Red gave covering fire and Bork picked Mayli up. Then Red caught it. Bork grabbed him, too."

Sleel stared down the medical center's corridor. His stare was unfocused. Wu watched his face, feeling the power play in him.

"I lost it," he said quietly, as if from a great distance. "I went dead-brain stupid." He shook himself, as if shaking water from his face after a shower. "I took a couple of hits, lost a foot and the prosthetic arm I was wearing at the time. I went down, should have died there, but Dirisha covered us, took out the rest of the troopers, and then Bork came back for us. Picked me up like a baby and threw me into the back of the escape vehicle. We had a vouch, but it was too late for Mayli or Red. They died. I didn't. "

A long moment passed. "You think about it a lot," she said.

"Yeah. Yeah, I do. If I'd been a little bit faster, if I hadn't been wearing that stupid fucking slow arm, maybe I could have saved them."

She touched his shoulder. "That's a big weight, Sleel. You couldn't have won the revolution by yourself.

The others had to have known the risks. Mayli certainly did."

"Yeah, maybe." He didn't sound convinced of that.

The two of them continued to walk. An old woman wearing a pair of plastic exolegs hobbled past, going in the opposite direction, the hydraulics in the supports humming softly with her steps. She smiled at them. Wu smiled back.

"What will you do now?"

Sleel shook his head. "I don't know. I lost my client. I can't be a matador anymore."

"They wouldn't kick you out because of that."

"It's not them. It's me. I can't do it. I fucked it up, just like I fucked up the rest of my life."

Wu stopped. Steel managed another step before he came to a halt. He looked at her.

"Come with me," she said.

"Where? Why?"

"Does it matter?"

He laughed, a short, sharp sound, almost, she thought, a sob. "No. I guess it doesn't matter."

"Fine," she said. "Then we'll go home to Koji."

Chapter SIXTEEN

SLEEL SAT IN a tiny, mostly artificial park, listening to the calls of fake birds. The sounds could have been recorded from real birds, though they were probably computer-generated copies. Birds and calls and park were inside a starship, The Skate, the same one that had brought Kildee Wu to Rift, so she had said. And so here he was, traveling through Bender space on a vessel named after a fish, in the company of a woman named after a bird. Kee, she had asked him to call her.

His new eye itched. It worked now, though he still had to wear a droptac lens to correct for astigmatism and myopia, both of which would supposedly clear up when the eye was fully matured. He'd never had an eye done before, but it seemed to work as well as the old one. It was interesting to have binocular vision again after the one-eyed flatness of the last few weeks.

The left knee worked fine, and was actually in better shape than the old right one, there being no wear on the ligaments and new bone.