The Machiavelli Interface (16 page)

Impossible! The technology for repairing the kind of damage the cuntmaster had sustained had been available only on a few worlds back then.

And, even if it had been in that stinking small town on Rim, nobody would have wasted it on Artemis. He was scum, and even a half-hearted attempt to patch him would have been amazing.

Shaken, Wall circled his orthopedia and settled into it. It wasn't Artemis. It was only somebody who looked like him. In a galaxy with billions of people, there must be doubles of almost everybody, maybe dozens of people who looked exactly like each other. It was reasonable to expect such things; Wall was a reasonable man. It was somebody else. A coincidence.

Finally, the most obvious difference registered. Artemis would be a middle-aged man of eighty by now. This frozen figure was no more than thirty. Wall smiled. It meant nothing. No one knew his background; it was merely a loop of his own memory that had snared him, no more.

"Cancel the projection, Cteel. Give me back my flowers." As the picture faded, Wall nodded to himself. So much for old ghosts. Banished by his command of another electronic ghost. He found that amusing.

* * *

Khadaji was being a Black Butterfly.

When men had first landed on Rangi ya majani Mwezi, the so-called Green Moon of the Bibi Arusi System, they had discovered
Svart sommerfugl
, the Black Butterfly. In fact, the creature was not black, nor was it a butterfly. It was closer to reptile than insect, and ranged from pale to dark gray in color.

It was named for what it did as much as for what it looked like. The kiss of the Black Butterfly was worth death. The thing spat a complex protein that behaved like a neurotoxin; contact with improperly protected skin resulted in complete muscular shutdown, within ten seconds. Where the creatures nested, almost no other native animal would venture; where the butterflies flew, no man or beast was safe. The most obvious solution was for the new settlers to wipe out the killer creatures as soon as possible. There was, however, a problem. The Black Butterfly had a mimic, the Pseudo Black, a harmless creature which looked identical to the deadlier flitter. And the Pseudo Black was catalystically responsible for the pollination of the
Bindodo
vine, which produced a key chemical component in the adaptogenic used on all civilized worlds to extend human and mue life spans. The chemical had thus far eluded scientists trying to duplicate it artificially. It was the
Bindodo
vine or nothing.

Blacks and Pseudo Blacks often flocked together, nested in the same areas, and fed on the same plants, which made for an interesting dilemma. Blacks weren't wanted, but Pseudo Blacks were invaluable. And Pseudo Blacks were such perfect mimics, only a trained zoologist could tell them apart, and then only in the lab.

As Khadaji sat in a small pub in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula staring at the Straits of Juan de Fuca, he smiled at the analogy. Butterflies all around, but which was the dangerous one? They all looked alike.

To a muscular man seated two stools down from him, Khadaji said, "I hear they're about to lay off all timber operators."

The man nearly choked on his drink. "Where'd you hear that, floman?"

Khadaji shrugged. "I got a brother works for the Confed Admin in Seattle. He says they think machines can do it better and cheaper, so they're gonna zap everybody and replace 'em."

The man's nostrils flared. "Yeah, well any jobs get zapped and them fucking machines ain't gonna have anything
to
cut, they get here, your com receiving that? You might pass the word, floman, to your brother in Seattle."

"I'll do that," Khadaji said. He had no brother there, of course but he did have a paid informant who knew that some workers were about to be laid off.

Not to be replaced by machines, but merely because of a timber surplus.

Nobody in this town would believe that, not after the rumor got around.

* * *

In San Diego, a militant splinter group of religious fanatics suddenly found themselves with a benefactor who was willing to supply them with weapons.

Non-lethal ones, but hey, it was better than nothing.

* * *

In Port Moresby, a dissident writer suddenly had access to holoproj replication equipment, so a hundred thousand copies of his latest work detailing Confederation atrocities could be duplicated. And distributed.

* * *

In New Orleans, where graft and bribery were part of everyday life, several high-ranking Confed officials were pressured to supply very secret Confederation information. Where money didn't work, blackmail sometimes did.

* * *

Flying the short-range hopper from Rome to New Baghdad, Khadaji felt very much like a Black Butterfly. He had never had much hope that Wall would capitulate, but he had learned something very valuable from their meeting. And he had had to try, of course. How odd that his own experience would come in so handy now. Juete, the woman he had loved so long ago, had given him a weapon to use against Wall. It was a small thing, his knowledge, but sometimes big victories were won with enough small things.

Sometimes.

* * *

The obvious places to hide were out, Dirisha knew. It was tempting to run to a cargo bay, to find a nest among the freight canisters, but that would be a stupid move. A couple of men with Doppler and bioseekers would quickly find a human where there wasn't supposed to be one.

And trying to blend into a collection of other people was out, too. She didn't know her enemies by sight, save Massey, and exposing herself to people exposed her to the unknown hounds.

So, she had to be someplace they weren't apt to look, or couldn't get to for a couple of days. The best place was also the simplest: she needed another room, one occupied by somebody else.

Dirisha headed for computer operations. She needed access to the ship's register of rooms. Given more time, she could have found a sympathetic lover, concocted a story, and had help. Sure. And given more time, she could have made her own Bender ship from wire and dead bushes, and flown off into the dark. Might as well wish for wings. No, she'd do it the fast way.

There were small consoles for passengers' use here and there on the ship, but Dirisha needed specific information. And for that, she needed a programmer, or at least somebody with the codes for the passenger list.

Outside the computer operations room, Dirisha found her helper. He was a tall young man, ship-pale and dressed in operator's coveralls. Dirisha fell into step beside him, and smiled.

" 'lo," he said. "You looking for a little action?"

"Yeah, you could say that."

He grinned, sliding his gaze over Dirisha's tight body. "My room is this way—"

"Why wait? There's a privacy booth just ahead." Dirisha took his arm, and kneaded the muscle suggestively.

"Anything you say, chocolate." He draped one hand over Dirisha's shoulder and squeezed her breast lightly.

Inside the privacy booth, Dirisha hooked her right ankle behind the man's knees and shoved. He lost his balance and sprawled on the padded floor. He grinned. "Get right to it, hey? Let me get my clothes off—"

"Don't," Dirisha said. She turned her right palm so that it faced him. A flat metal disk with a short rod protruding from it lay on her hand. "You know what this is?"

The man's eyes widened. "It—it I-looks like a slapcap."

"That's what it is, Deuce. If you know what it is, then you know what it does. Let's you and me have a little talk."

He nodded. "S-s-sure."

Three minutes later, Dirisha stood in front of a terminal that would connect her to the ship's computer. Her programmer was asleep, and would remain so for several hours. When he awoke, he would scream, and Massey would know what she had done, sort of. She had gotten a dozen codes from the programmer, only one of which she wanted. Massey wouldn't know what she had in mind, since several of the items were a lot more interesting. She had the codes for the weapons' room, the drive hatch, the escape ships, and the crew list, as well as the passenger manifest.

The laser printer fed her the sheets of hardcopy rapidly, and in another five minutes, Dirisha had what she needed now, and more she might need later.

The right way for Massey to do it would be to examine each room on the ship physically; Dirisha didn't think he had enough people to do that before they reached the next port. That he wanted her alive was obvious; otherwise, she'd already be dead. She needed two days. And in two days, she had to figure a way off the ship.

She found a public fresher, entered a stall, and lit the privacy diode. She sat on the bidet and began to read the passenger manifest.

Eighteen

WALL WAS IN HIS AIRCOACH traveling to Manchester. He had made his choice, and he wanted to speak to the parents personally, to assure them of how well their daughter would be treated. There would be no objections from them, he was certain. It was not every girl who had personal instruction from the most powerful man in the galaxy. Upper-middle-class parents would kill for the right to say as much to their friends: "Shelly? Why, she is in Australia at the Prep, didn't I mention that? Yes, Marcus Wall deemed her worthy of a full scholarship. Well, of course I call him Marcus. We're friends, after all. Yes, I spoke to him just the other day, and he is so pleased with Shelly's progress. So pleased."

How easy it was to despise them, Wall thought.

There was an admiring throng at the pad, and Wall smiled and waved to them from behind his densecris shield and moving wedge of bodyguards.

Holocameras caught the carefully staged show of respect, to repeat it on newsfax casts. With the troubles on the out worlds, it paid to keep reminding everybody how normal things were where it really counted. Wall smiled and waved.

Amidst the admiratory walls, there came a word that killed Wall's smile and caused him to stop as though he had hit a thick post.

"Tavee! Hey, Tavee!"

Wall spun, his robe flaring, and frantically searched for the source of the voice.

Thirty meters away, standing near the entrance to the. underground tube, stood Artemis. The same youthful man Wall had seen in the holoproj of Hawaii.

Before Wall could speak, the man turned and walked calmly into the tube's entrance, out of sight.

"That man!" Wall yelled. "Get him!"

"Where, my lord?" the nearest bodyguard said, drawing his weapon.

"There, at the tube! He just went in!"

Half a dozen guards sprinted for the tube's entrance. Wall stood as if transfixed, waiting.

Five minutes later, the guards were back. Without the man Wall had seen.

Wall turned and went back to his aircoach. "My visit here is cancelled," he said.

Inside the coach, Wall kept shaking his head. It was no coincidence. There were only two explanations he could think of, and neither brought him any joy. Either he was mad, and being haunted by the shade of a man dead fifty years, or somebody was privy to knowledge to which they could not possibly have access. Not possibly. He could discount the first explanation, he was sure. And who could know about Artemis?

That the first time he had seen the facsimile had been while viewing a recording of Khadaji's hideout on Hawaii was not lost on Wall. There was no way, and yet the man
knew
!

Even protected by the thick walls of his coach, Wall suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable, as much so as when he had faced Khadaji personally in this same enclosure only a few weeks before.

Marcus Jefferson Wall, the most powerful man in the galaxy, rode in the lap of luxury, dry-mouthed and afraid.

* * *

Khadaji moved through the dark, a part of the shadows. Aside from his spetsdöds, he was armed with his martial skills, not the least of which was a practiced ninj-ability to blend into almost any background. That alone would have shielded him from most human eyes; the class-one shiftsuit he wore, a miracle of viral electronics capable of focus matching the nearest background within a quarter second, hid him from any other organic notice. A confounder nestled against his belt shrouded him from electronic eyes and ears. It would take a very good guard indeed to spot Khadaji, and where he was going, the guards were apt to be no more than competent.

Where he was going was the hangar in which Wall's personal aircoach was housed.

The hangar would be guarded, of course, but not heavily. Wall was not in the vehicle, and it was routinely inspected before each use for possible sabotage, inspected very carefully, especially since the "assassination" attempt in Brisbane. No matter. Khadaji was not after Wall; he merely wanted to make a point.

What had worked for entering a not-too-secure warehouse on Greaves should also work on Earth. The essential ingredient was rain, which was due to start falling in a few minutes. Soldiers hated rain and usually avoided standing in it, if they could. That would buy him access to the building's roof.

On Greaves, he had deliberately tripped inside alarms of a warehouse several times until the system had been shut down by angry troopers. Once that was done, the inside of the building was easy. Through the roof, in and out, and he was gone.

Earth soldiers were no less cooperative than those on Greaves. It took an hour, but after six false alarms, the inside system bioelectrics were turned off.

Khadaji used a wire ladder to reach the floor. He attached the shaped-charge to the aircoach, used a buzzpoint to etch a message onto the hatch of Wall's salon, and left.

A kilometer away, Khadaji stopped, part of the night. He thumbed the transmitter into life. The roof of the hangar blew out in a bright flash, followed a couple of seconds later by the sound of the explosion. The charge would have blown the coach in two, leaving the message on the hatch intact for Wall's inspection.

Khadaji laughed softly, flattened himself against a corrugated green plastic wall as four quads of troopers went running past, toward the noise. When the soldiers were gone, he had a brief moment of nostalgia for the days of guerrilla activity on Greaves, when it had been one against all.