Black Steel (2 page)

"Ah, M. Reason," the female voice said. The voice was deep, throaty, and had a nice tone to it. Although the flitter was equipped with full com gear, the transmission was nopix from the other end. "I was just about to call you."

"Officer Bligh. You were going to call for . . . ?"

"The woman who tried the matador at the port. It's the strangest thing. She's dead."

Reason glanced at Sleel. He said, "A pity. Find out what you can about her, would you? I would much appreciate it."

"Surely."

The contact was broken.

"Well, well," Sleel said. Then, "This cool on your payroll?"

"No. I did her a favor once and she is grateful."

Sleel didn't pursue that.

"This is your area of expertise," Reason said. They were floating along past a riot of plant life, thick tropical greenery splashed with bright orange and red and blue flowers. To their right lay the ocean, and a thin line of breakers washed up on the rocky shore below the road. "What do we do now?"

"We go to your house, check it out, and wait until your friend the cool gives us something to go on. You have any enemies you want to tell me about?"

Reason laughed. "I was a thief for more than half a century before I got out of the biz," he finally managed. "After the Confed fell, it wasn't as much fun as it had been. If all the people mad at me for what I took were to line up, they'd probably reach to the horizon. And those are just the ones who suspect I had something to do with it. I expect that the ones who are certain, men, women and mues, wouldn't lose a second of sleep if I shuffled off into the final chill."

Sleel nodded. "Okay. So we have to narrow that down a little. It probably isn't a conspiracy of all of them; we just need to find the right ones."

Reason laughed some more. "You're an optimist, Sleel."

"Yeah, well, dead bosses don't pay real well. You have to look on the positive side."

Sleel grinned. So this one might be hard. That was good. No point in doing easy stuff. He always liked it better when the odds were against him. You couldn't show anything if a job was going to be a walk in the country.

What was the point in being the best unless people could see it?

Chapter TWO

RIFT, IN THE Delta System, lies dozens of light years away from Earth, normally a six-day trip by Bender drive. It is one of three planets in the system, the other two being Lee and Thompson's Gazelle.

Rift is also the least civilized of the trio, exports mainly certain technologies involved in waste-recycling, and has upon it three major land masses, unoriginally called the Greater, the Middle and the Lesser Continents. Upon the Lesser Continent is the old Romantic Enclave, and deep therein a fair-sized hereditary estate known as La Casa del Acera Negro.

The House of Black Steel.

In the main gymnasium Hoja Cierto dodged the simulacrum's cut and V-stepped to his left with his return strike. The lac's parry blocked Cierto's blade with a convincing ring of steel on steel, and the vibration might be ersatz but in the boosted sturz field, Cierto felt it nonetheless. He spun away as the lac stabbed at him with its cutlass. The computer's gain was rigged to illegal standards and turned up to full; should the lac's weapon get through his guard, the pain would be as real as that of an actual sword.

A fatal strike would be just as deadly to Cierto, who wore no protection, and who was in fact naked save for his sword and a groin strap. He danced away from the lac's stab and follow-up four-step attack: head cut, heart stab, back and forth slash, and lunge for the groin. The lac was programmed to the ability of an expert human in superb condition, and would be considered a worthy opponent for a top player in most styles of fencing. The lac used most of the power of a mainframe viral matrix for its moves, and could be adjusted to the rules of classical foil, epee or saber, kendo, the Indo hard-knife, keras pisau, or wojanaz, the Polay war-blade, among others. On open-program as it now was, it was allowed use of any of these techniques. The only requirement was that it alter its appearance if it changed modes, offering a half-second or so of warning.

The lac T-stepped in and shimmered, changing colors, and suddenly it held two blades, one in each hand.

Such was not cheating, since Chinese split-sword was within its programming, but to go from facing an opponent with a cutlass to one with twice the armament was certainly apt to give a man pause. Perhaps fatally so.

Not Cierto. Instantly he dropped to his left side under the lac's whirling figure-eight slicings and whipped his own weapon out in a flat arc ten centimeters above the floor. He felt the muscles of his lat and shoulder burn with the effort. Everything he had went into the cut. So sharp was the zhaverfrayshtol sword's edge that the blade sheared completely through the lac's left ankle. Before the surprised lac could finish its crippled fall, Cierto rolled, came up, and drove the point of his sword up under the lac's sternum, skewering its heart. There was a convincing spurt of blood as the man jerked his weapon free and the lac crumpled to the floor. Were it a man, it would be dead.

The lac shimmered and vanished as Cierto stood. He saluted the fading simulacrum by bringing the flat of his sword to his forehead before snapping the weapon down in the ritual slinging of blood. This was hardly necessary, since the blood disappeared along with the lac, but it was part of the technique. Then he turned to face the fifteen students gathered around the perimeter of the fighting ring. Perspiration rolled down Cierto's muscular body and his heart beat rapidly, but he smiled at his students. The smell of his own sweat was high, and he was tight, especially in the shoulders and arms from swinging the sword, but he was alive.

"Miguel. What have I demonstrated?"

"That you are without peer, Patron."

"This is true, but not the answer I seek. Juanita?"

"You have demonstrated that you can defeat even a man who cheats."

"Also true, senorita, but the wrong answer. Josito?"

"Once the sword is drawn there are no rules."

Cierto nodded. "Ah, at last the correct response. None of the classical styles offer the ankle as a target for the sword; nearly all of the sport styles limit attacks to the upper body. In sport you play by the rules. In combat to the death, there are no rules. Opponents without feet can hardly chase you around and once down, become lesser threats. They might still kill you if they are adept in ground attacks or defenses, but you will have an advantage if you know how to take it."

He wiped sweat from his eyes. "When I was much younger and less skilled, my own left foot had to be regrown due to this very same strike when I dueled with another who also walked the Masashi Flex. I was fortunate to survive. It was not a lesson to be forgotten."

Josito said, "What of this opponent, Patron?"

Cierto's smile thinned. "I was defeated, but my opponent was weak and so allowed me to live. This was a mistake-someday there will be another match."

Cierto's smile returned to full brightness. "Josito, since you have understood the lesson, you have therefore earned the right to be next misionero. You are now Proyectil Sacro."

The young man flushed with sudden joy and pride. "Patron! You honor me!"

"Si. Do not dishonor our house by failure. As the Holy Missile, you have a great responsibility. Other projectiles before you have failed to reach their target and since we have not heard from Karenita, we must assume that she, too, has been unsuccessful."

"I will not fail, Patron!"

"Such is my hope."

When the students had filed out, Cierto wiped the perspiration from his body with a towel, cleaned the oils of his hand from the grip of the sword, and wiped the blade with a small square of cotton victoria cloth. Again, this was unnecessary, since the blood upon the blade had been but imaginary, a computer-generated falsity without substance. Plus the ebony metal of the sword itself, the unique zhaverfrayshtol, was virtually immune to staining. The blade had been folded over and hand-hammered in a manner similar to the old Damascus and Japanese styles of hot forging; the secret formula for the black steel thus worked had been handed down from Patron to Patron for centuries, not too long after mankind had first left the Earth. The body of the slightly curved blade would bend almost seventy degrees without breaking, it was as the finest spring steel, while the edge was tempered by the use of special ceramic clays that made it hard enough once it had been sharpened to score virtually anything less than diamond.

The secret had belonged to Cierto's house for two hundred and forty-five years.

A wave of emotion as black as the sword he cleaned came over Cierto. No longer was the formula the secret of the House of Black Steel. Fifty-five years earlier the method had been stolen, in the time of Cierto's grandfather. The old man had been only a few years away from his death, and it had fallen to his son, Cierto's father, to find and punish the thieves. He had begun the task but had died before it had been accomplished. It had taken Cierto nearly a decade to finish the search. A score of men and women had been killed to uncover the names of the thieves who had dared trespass upon the House of Black Steel.

There had been five of them. Only one remained alive, and he was resourceful; but with luck, he would soon join the others.

Oddly enough, there had been no mention of any usage of this particular kind of black steel anywhere in the known galaxy. There were many ways to make metal dark, of course, from dyes to heat treating to the addition of certain minerals, but no other that produced the weapon-grade material used in the casa's swords. Cierto had a computerfax firm searching, and while the material was best suited for the making of perfect swords or knives, there were certainly other uses for such a substance. The reward he offered for information pertaining to this subject was quite large. As far as he had been able to find out, the secret had never come to light elsewhere. That was good. When the last thief met his end, perhaps the secret would once again belong to none other than the House of Black Steel.

He looked at the weapon he held. The metal was indeed black, but not a flat black. There were lighter and darker streaks, wavy lines, where the folding that made the many hammered layers showed. It seemed to make the blade glow in rich, dark shades from point to guard. The hilt was a broad curved band of nickel-stainless steel, mirror bright to contrast with the blade, and the handle was of curlnose tusk, burnished smooth, the ivory gone a buttery yellow with age and use, fastened to the full tang with chrome-blued bolts. The sword had belonged originally to his father's father's father, had cost a month in the life of a master craftsman to produce, and was priceless. Certain wealthy collectors of such weaponry would give nearly everything they owned for such a piece as this, hundreds of thousands of standards, without a moment's hesitation. And unlike a museum item, this was still an active blade, bathed in the flesh and blood of more than a hundred men and women. A score of those killed had been by Cierto's own hand, weaving a shroud of fatal thickness. Cierto did not think the sword of his great-grandfather had an equal anywhere in the galaxy.

And if he could help it, it never would.

In a small Place of the Way, a dojo on Koji, the Holy World, a woman sat seiza in the middle of a large room. Save for herself, the room was empty of other life; empty too, was the woman's mind as she meditated upon the Void. The floor upon which she knelt was of highly polished zebrawood, the planking chosen and laid in such a way as to create large zigzag patterns. The woman wore hakima, a long split skirt of white silk, and a gi-style black silk shirt with three-quarter sleeves.

Next to her on the floor, handle nearly touching her left knee, was a katana-patterned sword, edge outward, point to the rear, nestled inside a wooden sheath with twenty-three coats of white lacquer upon it. The blade of the curved sword was of black steel, hand-hammered in the old method; the handle was of pebbled ray hide, crisscrossed in the traditional manner with the diamond-wrap turnings of black silk cord, enclosed at the butt with a plain cap of stainless steel; the guard, too, was a circle of solid stainless steel the diameter of a small teacup, bearing a simple etching on one side. The weapon was four hundred years old; it had seen much use and it had dealt in both life and death, sparing more often than it had slain. It had come to the woman from her older sister, who had died during the overthrow of the Confed six years past. Before that, it had belonged to their mother, received as a wedding gift from her mother.

The woman meditated upon the Void. Next to her the sword lay waiting. In a moment she would pick up the sheathed weapon and it would be freed in an eyeblink to move through the intricate motions of Kaji-te, the kata called "Fire Hand." In a moment. But for now, the sword waited as its mistress meditated upon her entrance into the Void-a sword which had been made with such precision and care it had hardly an equal in all the galaxy.

Sleel looked around the house owned by Jersey Reason with grudging approval. He'd seen better private security, but not much better and not at many places. The house sat in the middle of a large lot-that had to be very expensive, given real estate prices on Hawaii-with clear views to the property lines in all directions. To the west lay the sea, to the east the road, and other houses bordered the north and south edges of the lot. A line of banana trees and other tropical foliage partially hid an electric come-see-me fence, but there were no trees close enough to offer a way over the three-meter-tall mesh. A locked gate to the front and one to the rear were the only ways through the fence.

"Here's the security console," Reason said.

Sleel nodded and looked at the setup. Overlapping sensor fields from permanent units buried under the ground covered every centimeter of the property, and any one could be disabled without losing a full scan. Zap fields could be triggered to cover the doors and windows; the house itself was hardwired to note circuit interruptions, motion, infrared or high-speed projectiles, any of which detectors could be combined with the others. On full alert, the house would be hard to sneak up on, Sleel knew. Armored photomutable gel cameras mounted in fifteen locations gave views of the house and all approaches to it, including from straight overhead, and the computer was smart enough to know what it was seeing.