Robert Charrette - Arthur 01 - A Prince Among Men (2 page)

He walked around to her side of the cab.

She was gone.

Just great. Just fucking great.

Maybe she just stepped out to take a leak? He called her name and listened to his voice echo hollowly in the fog.

No answer.

Not from her, anyway. Something went skittering off in the brush beyond the guardrail, but it was too small to be a person. Al jumped at the sound, and cursed himself for it. He flashed the light in that direction, but the fog ate the beam. He couldn't see anything but mist. What was he worried about? It was just a rabbit or something.

He was wasting time. There was no point in waiting in the truck. He wasn't gonna get any help out here tonight. Not in this fog.

He turned to the Toyota. Unhooking the tarp, he threw it clear of the Suzuki.

"Come on, baby, at least you still love me," he said aloud as he dropped the back gate and climbed in. Unfastening the tie-downs, he freed the Suzuki. He filled the tank before running out the ramp and rolling her to the roadway. He patted the bike. At least he'd be riding to Skowhegan. She'd have to walk.

Hope you get lost, you ungrateful cow.

He set his helmet on the tank and went to the cab to get his bag. He'd need a change of clothes for the morning, especially after riding around in this soup. As he pulled the bag from behind the seat, someone grabbed him by the collar of his jacket and yanked him backwards into the air.

He landed hard on his rump and skidded a foot or so. He felt the gravel dig into and through his jeans.
Shit!
He looked around for his assailant and found him, a hulking silhouette against the wan light from the interior of the truck's cab.

Where had this gorilla come from? And gorilla seemed a reasonable description; the guy was huge. A dark wool cap made his head look even more pointy than it undoubtedly was, and it looked as if his arms might actually hang past his knees, though A1 couldn't see for sure since the gorilla was wearing some kind of heavy overcoat, something like a navy greatcoat that hung almost to the ground. A sailor? They didn't like people messing with their chippies. The guy took a step forward and something clanked under the coat. Weapons?

What have I done to deserve this?

Could this be the boyfriend?

The guy took another step forward, planting his foot in the small patch of light illuminated by Al's dropped flashlight. The foot was bare and broad, with splayed toes tipped in grungy nails. Sailors ain't gone barefoot for more than a century. If this was the boyfriend, the chippie was weirder than he'd thought.

"Now look, sailor. I just gave her a ride, okay? Nothing happened, okay?"

The guy growled. He actually
growled.
Weird. Too weird for Al. He groped for the light. The flash was heavy, useful as a club, and he'd need something against this ape. His hand closed on the barrel. Feeling a little more in control, he scrambled to a crouch. He held the light before him, its beam thrusting up, a forlorn beacon vanishing into the night after only a few feet.

Too bad it wasn't one of those sci-fi laser weapons. You should never have come back, big man. Still, it was weapon enough; Al had done fine with less in bars. He pointed the light at the gorilla, figuring he'd club the guy while he was light-blinded.

The gorilla turned his head away, snarling, but not before Al saw his face. No,
its
face. This was no sailor. This thing was not even human.

Al stood open mouthed in shock.

A paw swept out, hitting his arm and numbing it. The flashlight fell from his grip. The paw closed on his arm, squeezing with bone-crushing strength. A second paw wrapped his shoulder and he was lifted bodily from the ground. When the flashlight hit the ground, it went out. Al hit the ground almost immediately after. He felt something snap, lots of somethings. Pain shot through him, lighting the night with false stars.

The thing bent over him and picked him up again. He might have been a child for all the burden he was to this monster. It shook him and something, something inside him, lanced through his chest. He choked as he flew through the air again. Something hard hit his back, and his face slammed into the gritty surface of the road. He smelled burned rubber.

Shit, he'd never make the race now.

The monster leaned over him, grinning to display yellowed teeth. It might have been Buzz Tadasuke bending over him, but for the foul breath. Couldn't be Buzz; sponsored types always had flower breath. A1 tried to spit in his eye, but his mouth was full of something that tasted metallic. Like blood.

No race tomorrow.

No race. No tomorrow.

No...

The monster hunched over the body, prodding it with a meaty, taloned finger. It grunted satisfaction. The monster rolled the man over on his back, tilting the head to one side and baring the neck. A deft slash of its claws opened the throat. Blood oozed up. Humming, the monster tugged its cap from its head, thrust the wool into the gore, and kneaded the fabric until it was thoroughly soaked. When the cap was fully impregnated with the man's blood, the monster held it up and croaked, "Be it so."

It stood up, pulling on the cap. For a moment it just stood there, twisting its head back and forth and snuffling. Undecided. Nym made herself very small. The monster shuffled off down the road. Nym waited until it was out of sight.

Then she waited some more.

At last she slipped both her arms into the straps of her knapsack and trotted to the bike. Mounting it, she tapped the instrument panel on. Everything showed ready. She put on the helmet. Kicking the engine to life, she throttled up and roared off.

An hour later, free of the fog, she turned on the headlamp.

Part 1

• WE COME TO THE CRUX
  
• 7
  
• 9
  
• 13
  
• 23
  

WE
COME TO THE CRUX

CHAPTER

I

John tapped in the entry code and mashed his thumb against the recognition plate. Nothing happened, so he wiped the plate with his sleeve and tried again. This time the sensor registered his thumbprint and the mechanism gave its usual annoyed buzz, acknowledging his right to enter. Security could be such a pain.

He could have entered Benjamin Harrison Town Project Rezcom Cluster 3 through the commercial entrance and avoided beeping his own way in, but that would have meant a walk around half the building, a waste of the shortcut up the hill through the park zone. He opened the inner door, waited his habitual half-second, and walked in and across the hall to the elevators. A glance at the mail dispenser showed the light on the Reddy box dark. Either nothing had come today or his mom had already cleaned it out. He hoped that it was the latter. He punched the call button, wishing for the car's instant arrival.

A soft chuffing noise announced the arrival of the lobby's cleaning 'bot. The toaster-sized cart wheeled out of its dark alcove and headed straight for John's muddy footprints. It gurgled happily to itself as it spit out soapy water and buffed the tile back to its original luster. Print by print, it advanced on him. When it was two away, he deliberately made a wall of fresh prints around himself. He hated the way the thing whined and hung around when it ran out of dirt on the floor and could still sense the mud on your shoes. He hoped the elevator would arrive before the 'bot finished with his impromptu defense.

It did.

John escaped the deranged and almost certainly dangerous 'bot with an astonishingly agile leap into the waiting car. He landed in a crouch, then rose on one toe, turning as he did. His jacket spread out around him like a swirling cloak. Without pause, he snapped a single finger out to spear the desired button as it flashed past. He stopped, facing out the transparent outer wall of the car, and dipped his head in acknowledgment of his audience's wild applause for his outstanding athletic prowess.

That was when he realized that he actually did have an audience.

Mister Johnson harramphed at his performance.

"Hello, Mr. J." Geez, why did it have to be one of their neighbors to catch him cavorting about? Why couldn't it have been one of the billion strangers who shared the rezcom? And why Mr. Johnson, of all people? The old guy was so old that he probably couldn't remember how to
spell
young, let alone
be
it. John hoped his face wasn't too red. A tinkling sound in his ear, which might have been laughter or might have been distant machinery, turned up the heat and ensured that he was glowing enough to give off light. -

Mister Johnson's mouth twitched, his usual grumpy hello.

"Nice night," John said, eliciting another twitch. "Or it will be, anyway."

Outside the lights of the city were beginning to wink on, to join the always-lit advertising banners and signs. Off to the east the first stars were showing in the sky, where the glow of the sprawl wasn't drowning them out. At least you could still see stars here in Worcester. Phil said you could really see stars where he came from, but John doubted he'd ever get out to Montana.

Then again, why would he want to? Other than to see the stars, that was? Phil's back-home tales made it really sound boring, aside from the Wild West history and all that Native American stuff, but there wasn't any
real
history. No kingdoms and empires, no armies marching proudly in their steel armor, no pyramids, no parthenons, no musketeers and no legionaries, no crusades—just miserable, coldhearted geno-cidal campaigns and resource exploitation, embarrassing rather than uplifting. And cows. Phil wouldn't like it if he forgot the cows. Like cows were important to anybody but Phil. Geez, you'd think he was from Vermont.

But even Vermont could seem exotic and far away to a guy who'd spent his whole life in one town. An "old-time safe haven," according to the Mitsutomo Keiretsu prop. John could see it all spread out beneath him as the elevator car rose: the old city, the Worcester Polytech campus, the Benjamin Harrison Project, the southwest hills where the old money still held out against the changes, the rebuilt commerce zone, and the Turnpike slicing through it all on its snaky way between Boston and upstate New York. It might not be an exciting place to live, but it didn't have the problems of, say, the Boston-Warwick corridor or the New York 'burb sprawl. Maybe those places should have had a Mitsutomo Keiretsu to look after them the way Worcester had.

John had scanned some of the old newscasts and seen how a lot of people had been upset to learn that Mitsutomo and its trading partners had bought up most of the land and businesses in the area. The biggest gripe seemed to be that Mitsutomo had done it secretly. But the old Disney Corp had done the same thing down in Florida when they were setting up their empire, and they had
made
the Orlando economy. And it wasn't like Mitsutomo was turning the town into some kind of
daimyo
fief. The prop said they wanted to make Worcester a real American town, and for once the prop hadn't been a lie.

Mitsutomo had a right to be proud of the work they had done in rehabilitating this old steel town. Their idea of "quin-tessentially American" was a little odd at times, but what could you expect from foreigners? Important thing was that they did something while the native governments sat and twiddled their thumbs. They had kept Worcester and much of western Massachusetts from tumbling into slum sprawl and urban blight zones like most of the East Coast cities. The old town might be a little kitschy for the mainstream these days, but old-fashioned didn't necessarily mean unfashionable. And what was wrong with old-fashioned, anyway?

Nothing,
a little voice said.

John could only nod in agreement; some of the best things in life were old-fashioned.

He bolted the elevator before the doors were fully open and was around the corner before old Mr. Johnson was out of the car. He took the turn, and it was a race down the corridor. He lost, but he did reach the door to the apartment he shared with his mother before Mr. J made the corner. He popped his card and slapped the plate, tapping toe beating a nervous rhythm while he chanted, "Come on, come on, come on." The door finally recognized him and he bounced through just as Mr. J turned into the corridor.

Safe.

Of course, John. No threat.

So what? Speed and quickness. Dash and style. Ever ready, never lost

Pointless platitudes.

He shrugged.

When he stepped out of the foyer, the first thing he noticed, as always, was the vid wall.
Happy Lifestyles
was running in time shift. Perish any thought of Mom missing that mainline straightline. How would she know how to decorate the apt? Marianne Reddy wouldn't be happy unless her place was the way it should be. Nothing else would satisfy.

His mom was planted on the couch, taking in the latest and most proper corporate style. She had a half-dozen sub-screens running through catalogs, looking for matches to the furnishings shown on the main screen. A seventh subscreen was running an interior design program on which their apartment plan hung, halfway through a metamorphosis into something like the one in the main screen, and she was absorbed inputting commands into the remote on her lap.