Tangle Box (2 page)

“Skat Mandu spoke to me,” Biggar said, huffy himself now.

“There is no Skat Mandu!” Horris shrieked.

“Yes, there is.”

Horris’s broad ears flamed and his even broader nostrils dilated. “Think about what you’re saying, Biggar,” he hissed. “Skat Mandu is a twenty-thousand-year-old wise man that you and I made up in order to convince a bunch of fools to part with their money. Remember? Remember
the plan? We thought it up, you and I. Skat Mandu—a twenty-thousand-year-old wise man who had counseled philosophers and leaders throughout time. And now he was back to share his wisdom with us. That was the plan. We bought this land and restored this house and created this retreat for the faithful—the poor, disillusioned faithful—the pathetic, desperate, but well-heeled faithful who just wanted to hear somebody tell them what they already knew! That’s what Skat Mandu did! Through you, Biggar. You were the channeler, a simple bird. I was the handler, the manager of Skat Mandu’s holdings in the temporal world.”

He caught his breath. “But, Biggar, there is no Skat Mandu! Not really, not now, not ever! There’s just you and me!”

“I spoke to him,” Biggar insisted.

“You spoke to him?”

Biggar gave him an impatient look. “You are repeating me. Who is the bird here, Horris?”

Horris gritted his teeth. “You spoke to him? You spoke to Skat Mandu? You spoke to someone who doesn’t exist? Mind telling me what he had to say? Mind sharing his wisdom with me?”

“Don’t be snide.” Biggar’s claws dug into the banister’s polished wood.

“Biggar, just tell me what he had to say.” Horris’s voice sounded like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard.

“He told me to tell the truth. He told me to admit that you had made it all up about him and me, but that now I really was in contact with him.”

Horris’s fingers locked in front of him. “Let me get this straight. Skat Mandu told you to confess?”

“He said that the faithful would understand.”

“And you believed him?”

“I had to do what Skat Mandu required of me. I don’t expect you to understand, Horris. It was a matter of conscience.
Sometimes you’ve simply got to respond on an emotional level.”

“You’ve short-circuited, Biggar,” Horris declared. “You’ve burnt out all your wiring.”

“And you simply don’t want to face reality,” Biggar snapped. “So save your caustic comments, Horris, for those who need them.”

“Skat Mandu was the perfect scam!” Horris screamed the words so loudly that Biggar jumped in spite of himself. “Look around you, you idiot! We landed in a world where people are convinced they’ve lost control of their lives, where there’s so much happening that it’s overwhelming, where beliefs are the hardest things to come by and money’s the easiest! It’s a world tailor-made for someone like us, just packed full of opportunities to get rich, to live well, to have everything we ever wanted and a few we didn’t! All we had to do was keep the illusion of Skat Mandu alive. And that meant keeping the faithful convinced that the illusion was real! How many followers do we have, Biggar? Excuse me, how many
did
we have? Several hundred thousand, at least? Scattered all over the world, but making regular pilgrimages to visit the retreat, to listen to a few precious words of wisdom, to pay good money for the experience?”

He took a deep breath. “Did you think for one minute that telling these people that we tricked them into giving money to hear what a bird would tell them—never mind who the bird said he was getting the words from—would be something they would be quick to forgive? Did you imagine that they would say, ‘Oh, that’s all right, Biggar, we understand,’ and go back to wherever they came from in the first place? What a joke! Skat Mandu must be laughing pretty hard just about now, don’t you think?”

Biggar shook his white-crested head. “He is displeased at the lack of respect he is being accorded, is what he is.”

Horris’s mouth tightened. “Please tell him for me, Biggar, that I could care less!”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself, Horris?”

“What?”

Biggar had a wicked gleam in his eye. “Tell him yourself. He’s standing right behind you.”

Horris sniggered. “You’ve lost your mind, Biggar. You really have.”

“Is that so? Is that a fact?” Biggar puffed out his chest. “Then have a look, Horris. Go on, have a look.”

Horris felt a chill climb up his spine. Biggar sounded awfully sure of himself. The big house suddenly felt much larger than it really was, and the silence that settled into it was immense. The riotous cries of the approaching mob disappeared as if swallowed whole. It seemed to Horris that he could sense a dark presence lifting out of the ether behind him, a shadowy form that coalesced and then whispered with sullen insistence,
Turn around, Horris, turn around!

Horris took a deep breath in an effort to stop shaking. He had the sinking feeling that somehow, once again, things were getting out of control. He shook his head stubbornly. “I won’t look,” he snapped—and then added maliciously, “you stupid bird!”

Biggar cocked his head. “He’s reeeeeaching for you,” the myna hissed.

Something feather-light brushed Horris Kew’s shoulder, and he whirled about in terror.

There was nothing there.

Or almost nothing. There was a faint something, a darkening of the light, a small waver of movement, a hint of a stirring in the air.

Horris blinked. No, not even that, he amended with satisfaction. Nothing.

Outside, shouting rose up suddenly from the edge of the gardens. Horris turned. The faithful had caught sight of him
through the open door and were trampling through the bedding plants and rosebushes and heading for the gate. They carried sharp objects and were making threatening gestures with them.

Horris walked quickly to the door, closed and locked it, and turned back to Biggar. “That’s it for you,” he said. “Good-bye and good luck.”

He walked quickly through the foyer and down the hall past a parlor and a library sitting room to the kitchen at the back of the house. He could smell fresh wax on the pegged oak floors, and on the kitchen table sat a vase of scarlet roses. He took in the smells and colors as he passed, thinking of better times, regretting how quickly life changed when you least expected it. It was a good thing he was flexible, he decided. It was fortunate that he had foresight.

“Where are we going?” Biggar asked, flying up next to him, curious enough to risk a possible blow. “I assume you have a plan.”

Horris gave him a look that would have frosted a small child at play in midsummer. “Of course I have a plan. It does not, however, include you.”

“That is mean, Horris. And small-minded as well.” Biggar flew ahead and swung back, circling the far end of the kitchen. “Beneath you, really.”

“Very little is beneath me at this point,” Horris declared. “Especially where you are concerned.”

He went to a pantry, pulled open the doors, reached in, triggered the release for the panel behind, and stepped back as the whole assemblage swung open with a ponderous effort. It took a few seconds; the panel was lined with steel.

Biggar swooped down and landed on the top of the open pantry door. “I am your child, Horris,” he lamented disingenuously. “I have been like a son to you. You cannot desert me.”

Horris glanced up. “I disown you. I disinherit you. I banish you from my sight forever.”

From the front of the house came a pounding of fists on the locked door followed rather swiftly by a breaking of glass. Horris tugged nervously on one ear. No, there would be no reasoning with this bunch. The faithful had become a ragged mob of doughheads. Fools discovering their own lack of wit were famous for reverting to form. Would they be sadder but wiser for the experience? he wondered. Or would they simply stay stupid to the end? Not that it mattered.

He had to stoop to pass through the opening behind the panel, which was well under his six-foot-eight height. He had raised all the other doors in the house when he had renovated it. He had told everyone that Skat Mandu needed his space.

Inside was a stairway leading down. He triggered the release once more, and the heavy steel panel swung slowly back into place. Biggar flew through just as the door sealed and sped down the stairwell after Horris.

“He was there behind you, you know,” the bird snapped, flying so close he brushed the other’s face with his wing tip. Horris lashed out with one hand, but missed. “Just for a minute, he was there.”

“Sure he was,” Horris muttered, still a little unnerved by the experience, angry all over again for being reminded of it.

Biggar darted past. “Trying to blame me for your mistakes won’t save you. Besides, you need me!”

Horris groped for the light switch against the shadowed wall as he reached the bottom of the stairs. “Need you for what?”

“Whatever it is you are planning to do.” Biggar flew on into the dark, smug in the knowledge that his eyesight was ten times better than Horris’s.

“Rather confident of that, aren’t you?” Horris cursed silently as his searching fingers snagged on a splinter of wood.

“If for nothing else, you need me as a cheering section. Face it, Horris. You cannot stand not having an audience. You require someone to admire your cleverness, to applaud your planning.” Biggar was a voice in the dark. “What is the purpose of concocting a well-devised scheme if there is no one to appreciate its intrinsic brilliance? How shallow the victory if there is no one to hail its masterful execution!” The bird cleared his throat. “Of course, you need me, too, to help with your new plan. What is it, anyway?”

Horris found the light switch and flicked it on. He was momentarily blinded. “The plan is to get as far away from you as possible.”

The basement spread away through a forest of timbered pillars that held up the flooring of the old manor house and cast their shadows in dark columns through the spray of yellow light. Horris marched ahead resolutely, hearing pounding now on the steel panel above. Well, let’s see what they can do with that! he sneered. He wound his way through the timbers to a corridor that tunneled back into shadow. Another light switch triggered a row of overheads, and stooping again to avoid the low ceiling, he started down the passageway.

Again Biggar passed him by, a fleet black shadow. “We belong together, Horris. Birds of a feather and all. Come on. Tell me where we’re going.”

“No.”

“Very well, be mysterious if you must. But you admit we are still a team, don’t you?”

“No.”

“You and me, Horris. How long have we been together now? Think about all we’ve been through.”

Horris thought, mostly about himself. Hunched down in a crablike stance as he angled through the narrow tunnel, legs bent, arms cranked in, nose plowing through musty air and dusty gloom, ears fanned out like an elephant’s, he considered the road he had traveled in life to arrive at this
moment. It had been a twisty one, rife with potholes and sudden curves, slicked over with rain and sleet, brightened now and again with brief stretches of sunlight.

Horris had a few things going for him in life, but none of them had served him very well. He was smart enough, but when the chips were down he always seemed to lack some crucial piece of information. He could reason things through, but his conclusions frequently seemed to stop one step short. He possessed an extraordinary memory, but when he called upon it for help he could never seem to remember what counted.

Skill-wise, he was a minor conjurer—not a magician who pulled rabbits out of hats, but one of a very few in the whole world who could do real magic. Which was because he was not from this world in the first place, of course, but he tried not to dwell on that point since his abilities were somewhat marginal when measured against those of his fellow practitioners.

Mostly, Horris was an opportunist. To be an opportunist one needed an appreciation for the possibilities, and Horris knew about possibilities better than he knew about almost anything. He was forever considering how something might be turned to his advantage. He was convinced that the wealth of the world—of any world—had been created for his ultimate benefit. Time and space were irrelevant; in the end, everything belonged to him. His opinion of himself was extreme. He, better than anyone, understood the fine art of exploitation. He alone could analyze the weaknesses that were indigenous to all creatures and determine how they might be mined. He was certain his insight approached prescience, and he took it as his mission in life to improve his lot at the expense of almost everyone. He possessed a relentless passion for using people and circumstance to achieve this end. Horris cared not a whit for the misfortune of others, for moral conventions, for noble causes, the environment, stray cats and dogs, or little children. These
were all concerns for lesser beings. He cared only for himself, for his own creature comforts, for twisting things about when it suited him, and for schemes that reinforced his continuing belief that all other life-forms were impossibly stupid and gullible.

Thus the creation of Skat Mandu and his cult of fervid followers, believers in a twenty-thousand-year-old wise man’s words as channeled by a myna.

Even now, it made Horris smile.

Horris admitted to only one real character flaw, and that was a nagging inability to keep things under his control once he started them in motion. Somehow even the most carefully considered and well planned of his schemes ended up taking on a life of their own and leaving him stranded somewhere along the way. And even though it was never his fault, it seemed that he was always, inexplicably, being relegated to the role of scapegoat.

He reached the end of the corridor and stepped into a thirty-foot-square room which housed stacks of folding tables and chairs and crates of Skat Mandu pamphlets and reading material. The tools of his trade, enough fodder for a fine bonfire.

He looked beyond the mounds of useless inventory to the single steel-lined door at the far side of the room and sighed wearily. Beyond that door was a tunnel that ran for almost a mile underneath the compound to a garage, a silver and black 4WD Land Cruiser, and safety. A careful planner was never without a bolt hole in case things went haywire, as they had just done here. He had not expected to put this one to use quite so soon, but circumstances had conspired against him once again. He grimaced. He supposed it was a good thing that he was always prepared for the worst, but it was an annoying way to live.