The Albino Knife (20 page)

Three months was not so long to wait for a miracle. And in the meantime, he could keep his enemies hopping, dancing to his tune. They wouldn't have a chance.

And as to the man who would become the new Wall?

That was easy. There had never been any doubt as to that, none at all.

Chapter Seventeen

KHADAJI'S HOTEL ROOM was large enough so that even the four additional matadors did not overwhelm it. They had things to discuss. He let Dirisha take the lead.

"We talked to Jersey Reason," she said. "He says the recording we showed him is a computer construct. It wasn't Massey or an old recording of him, nor was it an actor."

"Interesting," Khadaji said.

"It gets more so," Dirisha said. "Whoever did it was the best at it Reason has ever seen. Given that he produced a holoproj that fooled us into thinking it was real, that is saying something."

"It didn't foolall of us," Sleel put in.

"I stand corrected," Dirisha said.

"So what does that tell us?" Khadaji said.

Geneva said, "Whoever is playing this game has big stads and big resources."

"We knew that," Sleel said.

"Can Reason give us any leads?"

"Yeah, we got some names," Dirisha said. "Half a dozen people who can program simulations close to what we saw. He says none of them were that good a couple years back, but they might have had some kind of breakthrough."

"Well, it's another path to explore," Khadaji said.

"We've got Black Sun doing some checking for us," Bork said."Courtesy of Dirisha."

"You do get around, don't you?"

Dirisha grinned and gave a little shrug. "How's thingson your end?"

Khadaji said, "Slow. Veate and I interviewed one of theSoldatutmarkt high-ups. Didn't get much, but we'll poke around in that area some more, maybe."

"Rajeem has his people rolling on it, and we have whatever official help we need."

"None of which is getting my mother back," Veate put in.

"Somebody took her for a reason," Dirisha said. "If she's dead, she's dead and there's nothing we can do about it. If she's alive, it doesn't make any sense for them to torture her, so she's probably being held somewhere in relative comfort."

"This is bigger than just Juete," Khadaji said. "She's one of the cogs but not the whole machine. We'll find her sooner or later."

Khadaji saw his daughter's distress and impatience. She was an Exotic and used to getting what she wanted without having to wait for it. But she also knew she couldn't solve this problem on her own. She would have to learn that sometimes you had to wait and there was no help for it. That didn't make it any easier, knowing it, but there was nothing to be done.

"Okay, we have computer people to check out," Khadaji said. "We'll get started tomorrow."

"They got a gym in this place?" Bork asked.

"Uplevels," Veate said. "I'll show you."

Bork glanced at Khadaji, and it was all Khadaji could do to keep from smiling at the big man. Veate was interested in Bork; Bork felt it, and he was worried about what his old boss would think about that.

And howdid he feel? She had probably slept with hundreds of lovers before he knew she existed, and she was an adult. It was maybe a little late to start getting feelings of fatherly concern, wasn't it? Besides, they didn't come any better than Saval. If anything, he ought to be concerned about what his daughter might do to Bork. The mue was still grieving over Mayli Wu, dead these five years past. He was more likely to get hurt in an affair of the heart—or other glands—than was an accomplished Albino Exotic, daughter or not.

"I'll go with you," Dirisha said. "I could use a workout myself."

"Me, too," Geneva said.

This time Khadaji did smile. Dirisha and Geneva had also seen Veate's interest in Bork. It seemed as if the giant mue hadhimself a couple of chaperones.

He saw a tiny frown pass over Veate's face.

There were other things to which Wall needed to attend, aside from his artificial fantasies and worry about the medical side of his plan. He sent forth splinters of himself to take care of these tasks.

A robot ship carrying several million tons of high-grade uranium ore through the outreaches of the Haradali System garbled a beam-reflect, despite the triple-rendundant navigation gear designed to prevent just that. The ship veered off course and slammed into a city-sized asteroid at speed. The ship was destroyed, the ore scattered, and the asteroid was knocked sufficiently out of its safe orbit so that it would make planetfall on Tatsu within three months. Such an intersection would destroy a fair chunk of real estate on the world, probably killing a few hundred thousand in the bargain. It took a military-engineering unit nearly four thousand work hours and three million standards to correct the course of the asteroid.

A computer error infected the Bank of Spandle's mainframe and backups so that every customer on the planet, as well as any in the four wheel worlds in the Mu System, suddenly had their account balances tripled. Most of the customers reported the mistake. Some of them withdrew their new wealth in negotiable precious and caught ships for other systems. Some of it would be recoverable, when the thieves were caught, but the upfront loss amounted to several hundred million stads.

The air-ground traffic control grid on Mason went into a snarl during rush hour on a busy Firstday, effectively shutting down three fourths of the planet's transportation for seven hours. It was worse than if the system had simply gone completely blank; it was as if some malevolent force had entered the grid.

Landbuses were directed into dead ends; traffic signals on noncontrolled roadways all instructed manual controllers to go ahead; half the bumper magnetics switched polarity. Two hundred people died in accidents, another six hundred were injured, and the property damage was estimated in the ten million stad range, not counting lost work-time.

The leader of a reincarnation cult on Maro, the eldest son of the Martyr of Maro, received a divine visitation, after which he and fifty of his most faithful devotees took to the streets of Notzeerath, armed with ancient temple axes, striking down any who chanced to be in their path. Seventy-three people were ritually decapitated and seventeen more were badly injured before the local police managed to shoot or capture the surviving fanatics.

The galactic edcom channel aimed at Level 1 children (bright T.S. three-year-olds to average T.S. five-year-olds) interrupted its showing of holographic number and counting animations with a broadcast of a hardcore entcom feature depicting a highly graphic multiple-partnered sexual orgy. This was followed by what at first seemed a personal apology by the head of the Galactic Network, until, in the middle of it, the camera flashed a wide-angle view of the man, showing him naked and masturbating.

Tens of millions of parents suddenly found themselves answering billions of questions they had not expected to be asked for some years.

In his computer cocoon, Marcus Jefferson Wall smiled an electronic smile. The lack of flesh had some compensations . Power was one.

The gym in Emile's hotel did not have any free weights, but there were some magnetic piston machines, and full range-of-motion swivel gear. It was better than nothing. Dirisha and Geneva were practicing the Ninety-seven Steps in the area behind the pool, gliding along smoothly in the intricate sumito fighting dances.

Emile's daughter leaned against a wall next to the muscle-building machineries, watching Bork.

Bork was nervous. He'd stripped to a pair of shorts, a workout shirt and slippers, although he kept his spetsdods on. Since the swivel machines had padded grips, he didn't need gloves.

The machine looked something like a big exoskeleton, mounted to thick uprights that ran from floor to ceiling, where they were anchored on structural I-beams. There were several braces, to simulate benches in front and back, and side supports for the more esoteric exercises. The device was simple enough to operate. You stepped into the shoe clamps, stuck your hands into the grips, and were ready to work out.

This was one of the old voice-actuated models; the newer units had myosensors that read impulses and lactic acid build-up and adjusted automatically to take the worked fibers to a preprogrammed percentage of use, ranging from mild to failure, depending on the initial setting. Bork didn't much like the machines, preferring his own biofeedback, but you had to make do with what you had.

He stepped into the machine, adjusted the height and reach, and ran through a fast r-o-m warmup with a few kilos. There were a lot of ways to do a workout, but Bork preferred the old standard of going from the center of the body outward. He usually started with rowing and latpulls for his back, crunches for his abs, pecdeck and upright benches for his chest, then worked his low back, legs, shoulders and finally arms. Thirty or forty minutes a session, four or five times a week, was all it usually took to keep the tone up, three or four sets a body part were plenty, though you had to do more if you wanted to build new muscle or gain strength. He was already big enough and strong enough.

Once he got his joints warm, Bork forgot that Veate was watching him. There was no point in working out if you didn't concentrate on it, and he'd learned how to shut out distractions a long time ago. He'd see somebody come through the door with a gun if that happened, but anything less dangerous would have to wait until he was done.

Lats, first, he decided. Start light and pyramid the poundage. "Lat pulldowns," he said."A hundred kilos."

He felt the muscles under his arms adjust to the strain as the r-o-m gear took up the slack and pulled his hands up over his head. "Wider," he said. The grips moved slowly apart. "Hold."

The motion was the same as if he were doing wide-grip chins when he pulled the handles down. Since it was less than body weight, it was easy enough. Once he kicked the resistance up, he'd have to use the braces and shoe clamps to hold him in place.

He brought the grips straight down until they were level with his shoulders.

Okay. That's one…

Because Bork was calling out the amounts of weight he was using in the exercises, Veate got an idea of just how strong he was as she watched him. She had known some powerful people, men,women, mues of both sexes, but none of them came close to Bork. With his back braced he was currently pushing straight in front of himself to arms' length, something close to four times her weight as if it were no effort at all.

And he had forgotten she was there. She moved several times, in ways she knew attracted sexual attention, but she was wasting her time. He was into this, and she could have been invisible.

Several other people in the gym had stopped what they were doing to watch Bork, and Veate heard one man gasp as Bork ordered the machine's computer to increase the resistance on the squat exercise. His muscles bulged under the thin skin; she could see the ridges and lines of them, the tortuous veins popping up across his thighs and in his calves as he moved. He was pumped up even larger than he had been before; it seemed as if he would burst if the swollen knots got any larger, but they increased and somehow, he did not explode.

His breathing was heavy, sweat runneled down his back and face, and his skin grew redder. When he worked his arms, first the backs, then the fronts, then the backs again, they grew so that they were easily as big around as her head.

The harder he worked, the more excited Veate became. She fought it, because she knew it was unreasoning. Here was one who could protect her from anything and the call was primitive and urgent, built somehow into her genes with her pale skin and sexual self. Seek the dominant male for a mate. It went against her sense of being, ofmindful determination, of her unwillingness to depend on anyone but herself, but it was there nonetheless. She could resist it, but she could not deny it. Mine, she thought, as a two-year-old child will claim all she perceives. Mine, mine, mine!

After a time, Bork began to warm down, using smaller and smaller amounts of weight. Finally, he was done.

Veate tossed him a towel as he disengaged himself from the machine and stood there breathing heavily.

"Thanks," he said, wiping the sweat from his face and neck.

She wanted to leap on him right where he stood.

"Come to my room," she said. She allowed her pheromones to sing, she became the most potent of Sirens,she was totally ready for him. She would make him weak before she finished with him. She had never met her match, and he might be as close as ever she would get.

He took a deep breath and let it out. "I don't think that would be a good idea, Veate."

If he had slapped her she could not have been any more surprised. "What?"

"I'm as old as Emile."

"What has age got to do with anything? Don't you want me?"

If he said no, she would kill herself. She couldn't be that wrong, she could feel him yearning toward her.

"Yeah, I sure do.A whole lot. But it's not right."

"Listen, Bork, if I want you and you want me, what the hell is wrong with it?"

"You don't love me. I don't love you."

She stared at him, still unable to believe it."Love? What are you talking about? You've never been with anybody as good as I am! You never will be!"

"Yes, I have. It isn't about technique. It's about love."

Her rage was too much to bear. She turned and stalked out of the gym, striding past Dirisha and Geneva and the other patrons of the gym. Even in her anger, she could feel the others watching her, was aware of how many of the men and women looking at her would give all they had to possess her in the way she had just offered to that apish lout who had turned her down.

Turned her down! Nobody hadever refused her! Not ever!

"What did you say to her, Bork?" Dirisha asked. "If eyes were lasers, you'd be a grilled slab on the floor."

Bork shook his head. "We, uh, had a disagreement."

"Wait until Sleel hears that one," Geneva said. "He thinks Dirisha is the master of understatement."

Bork twisted the towel uncomfortably in his big hands. Sweat dripped from it onto the floor.