Out of the Black (20 page)

"Have a seat, Detective." Rae said, "We thought you'd never wake up."

"How long have I been out?" Ping said, moving toward an empty chair. "And where exactly are we? ... and who took my clothes off? ...that just makes me feel creepy."

The shark raised his hand, smiling. "I'm used to making people feel creepy."

"Figures... that was my favorite suit."

"Sorry 'bout the alterations," Alex said, "but I had to do some work on you."

Ping gave him a dubious look, thoughts returning to keys.

Alex elaborated, "Four broken ribs, shattered patella in your right knee- man, that was messy, the kneecap was in three pieces and a lot of splinters- hairline fracture of your left tibia, right radius... bit of internal bleeding."

"Don't forget the pre-arthritic spurs on three of his knuckles." Rae said.

Alex shrugged with mock arrogance, "Well, as long as I was in there..." He stretched his arms, cracked his knuckles. "Hey, by the way, did you know you've got a lot of healed microfractures in your hands, arms and lower legs?"

"Our detective is a pugilist, Mr. Ahmed." The Unnamed said.

"Actually, I'm a Capricorn." Ping replied with a shrug.

The Unnamed spoke again. "You're lucky that Alex isn't as bad with the Loom as he thinks."

"I'm lucky you forgot your recipe." Ping ran his hand through his hair. "A loom? You're saying he wove me a bandage or a potholder or something?"

"Not
a
loom-
The
Loom." Alex said as if that should mean something to Ping.

"
The
Loom." Ping gave a knowing nod constructed from the fabric of sarcasm.

Rae spoke. "As to when and where you are, it's been about thirty hours since the library. We're at Roy's house on Lake Geneva."

Ping stared down at his clothes, feeling creepy again.

Guessing his thoughts, the shark spoke again, "Don't worry Detective, you are welcome to them... he'd have given them to you if he still could."

"So what is '
The
Loom'?" Ping asked.

Alex got melodramatic: "No one can be...
told
what the Matrix is..." his eyes darted about, looking for laughs and knowing winks, presumably. What he got was a grin from the shark and blank stares from Ping and Rae.

Frustrated at being the only one inside his inside joke, he continued. "It's like what you keep calling my pot of gold... the engine of 'magic', but it's just a tool like pliers or a quantum microscope. Well, not really a tool so much as a key abstraction that allows your mind to work with otherwise incomprehensible forces..."

"Thanks for clearing that up." Ping interrupted.

Rae nodded, "Yep, that was pretty bad, babe." She turned to Ping, "You should see him trying to tutor history... I'm telling you, there's no way Lutine hired him for his teaching skills." She gave Alex's knee a squeeze and finished. "Now, you know I love you, but you couldn't explain dinnertime."

"It's the time when dinner is eaten." Alex muttered, looking a bit self-conscious.

Rae turned to Ping, "It's his pot of gold."

"Gotcha." Ping nodded.

The shark smiled, his eyes darting back and forth between the speakers, his face a window into almost childlike amusement. At times like this it was almost possible to forget the blood and shattering blades as five knife-wielding killers met their end in less than two seconds. It was almost possible to forget the look on his face as he stepped toward poor, evil Good Cop. Almost.

The shark's clear eyes settled on Ping. The amusement didn't depart, but his gaze seemed to focus- to bore into him in an offhand way. It took only an instant for Ping to shift from examining the shark, to feeling like a frog on a high school lab table.

Ping blinked. "I didn't get your name, mister...?

"Call me Dek."

Another connection. "Of course. Do all of the... whatever you guys are... get their handles from
Blade Runner
?"

"Nope, just Roy and me. It was our game. Even Ivo's other children thought we were a bit daft. You know the movie?"

Ping nodded, "So there are other...?"

"Replicants?" Dek nodded. "Most in the trade call us 'Torpedoes', but Ivo never called us anything like that. He thought of us as his children"

"You're saying that you and Roy are brothers? Android brothers?" Ping asked with much less irony than he'd intended. All eyes turned to Dek.

There was a pause as Dek considered, then finally, "There are a lot of labels that could describe us. I think 'Lost boys' is a lot more accurate, but you have to give Roy some latitude in the naming... he really loved that movie." Dek's lips twisted into a bitter smile. "We could both identify with being apart from humanity, different, disconnected."

"So, you're saying that Lutine was like Tinkerbelle Tyrell," Ping said, "All fairy dust and genetic engineering?"

"Well, that's not incredibly inaccurate. Before he found us, we were both orphans, completely alone, quite unwanted. He definitely changed us, but I don't understand the Loom well enough to say how much genetic engineering went on, if any."

He paused, so Ping asked, "So Lutine adopted you both?"

"Nope. He sort of collected Roy. You've got to understand that back then if an orphan with birth defects just disappeared, anyone who noticed would be mostly relieved."

"Back when?" Ping asked.

"1676 for Roy- in St. Petersburg." There was a moment of silence for temporal improbability.

"Peter Sieberg?" Ping grinned, remembering Roy's alias, "I can see why he wanted to pick his own name."

Dek's eyes sparkled with pleasant memory. "When I was a kid, Ivo used to call him Peter, I think it was his real name. If he had a last name, Roy couldn't remember it."

"You said birth defects." Rae said.

"Trisomy 21. Down's Syndrome. Roy and me both."

There was a subtle mental disorientation as understanding settled on the three of them. "What did he
do
to you?" Rae asked.

"Gave us balance. Clarified our minds, reworked our bodies- aligned us with the Loom. I can feel it you know, sizzling always around and through my thoughts. I can't use it consciously like Alex or Ivo, but it's always there, burning."

Ping fell silent, thinking. The conversational disjunction seemed to be shared by Rae and Alex, who were lost in their own thoughts.

At last, Dek broke the silence. "Ivo made me in 1989. He plucked me out of an orphanage for kids with disabilities after my parents died in a car crash. He made me for another Savant named Issak Kaspari."

"Kaspari?" Alex recognized the name.

"Who's Kaspari?" Ping asked.

"He's one of Ivo's friends. Major Savant from the east coast. I've met him twice, when he came to see Ivo. Very... self-contained guy. During both meetings, I think he said a total of six words. The last time was just a few days ago."

Dek nodded, "That's why I'm in town. My father got an urgent call from Ivo a few days back. The next thing I know, we're rushing to Chicago. Then Ivo and Roy..." he trailed off, face hardening.

"Father?" Ping asked.

"Sounds better than 'Master', doesn't it?" Dek gave a wry smile that quickly warmed, "...also more accurate. Issak has always been good to me. He raised me since I was about eight. He and Ivo are my fathers, Roy was my brother."

"What was the emergency?"

"No idea. Issak was very closed about it... even more than usual. But I could tell he was really bothered, maybe even scared... which says a lot."

"Why?"

"Because Savants, especially the old ones like Ivo and Issak, don't scare easy."

"Do I want to know how old they are?"

"Don't we all? I know that Issak was pretty definite that there had never been a King Arthur, but that's about it."

Ping sat back, too many questions. His mind felt numb with the implications, too many to map out, to understand. "I need to check in at the station..."

"I don't think that's a good idea." Alex said quickly. Both he and Rae were shaking their heads.

"Remember the library." Alex said. "If anyone finds out where we are, it's all over... those guys have eyes and ears everywhere."

"Who? Who has eyes and ears everywhere?"

"Our friends from the library." Dek said.

Ping had an unbidden vision of the five knife-wielding killers' last moments. Eyes and ears and lots of blood everywhere. He winced "And just who are 'they'?"

Alex and Rae exchanged glances, then looked to Dek for help.

"We don't know." The shark said at last. "It's not like the clans brand themselves with easily recognizable tattoos."

"Did Good Cop provide any enlightenment?" Ping said.

"He did a lot of screaming..." Rae trailed off, her expression darkening with memory.

Dek looked uncomfortable, angry- then finally sorrowful, "He was not cooperative, and far too dangerous to leave alive."

Ping had an irrational flash of pity for the sadistic Fed- it must have been terrible for him. Terrible that he didn't get to finish squashing him and Rae before torturing Alex to death. And now his 'nefarious plan' would go forever unexplained. He'd have to lay a wreath at Mussolini's tomb for Agent Garvey someday.

With a mental shrug, he moved on. "So, do we have any idea why 'they' killed Lutine?"

There was a pause. All heads shook.

"How did you get to the crime scene under the bridge so quickly? I'm assuming it was you the officers took a shot at." Ping asked Dek.

He nodded. "I was talking to Roy when it happened."

Dr. Ivo Lutine sits in the near quiet of the car. It's only near quiet beca
use Roy is chattering excitedly. Kaspari doesn't come to Chicago often enough, so Roy's got a channel open with his brother, trying to make some free time together work.

Ivo had asked Roy to damp the car so he could have some silence in the back seat, but that's not part of Roy's plans. He'd engaged the noise damper, obedient little guy, but dialed it down so that Ivo can still make out the conversation.

In spite of the weighty matters that need to occupy his mind, Ivo smiles as he listens to his son work. Nearly every sentence in his conversation with his brother contains some manipulation, subtle and not, aimed at Ivo. Because Ivo loves him, because there's clearly some time this evening, because they never get to Chicago anymore, because family is important, and Roy doesn't need sleep and they've fought plenty of demons before and Ivo is just being paranoid... perhaps his brother could meet them at their hotel, yeah he'd try to float that by Ivo later... of course Ivo would be reasonable enough to allow that... on and on.

"Roy, perhaps the damper isn't fully engaged." Ivo shouts into the noise-canceling field between him and the front seat. Roy pretends not to hear, though they both know that he could hear even if the field was at maximum and Ivo whispered. "Roy!"

"You say something, dad?" Roy's shout comes through the damper at the level of a quiet conversation. After a few more seconds with his hand cupped dramatically at his ear, Roy switches off the damper and repeats, "You say something?"

"I asked if perhaps the damper isn't at full power."

"I just turned it off so I could hear you."

Exasperating. For what seems like the twelfth time today, Ivo tries to marshal enough energy to get angry with his son. No use. He ends up laughing. "All right, if Issak is crazy enough to let him go, you guys can hang out at my house tonight."

"You hear that? Movie night!"

Oh no, not
that
again. "Maybe you should go to Issak's penthouse?"

Those two and a movie could mean only one thing. Ivo would end up stuck between his sons, watching Roy Batty crush the head of his creator, a mad genetic engineer type named Tyrell. During the uncomfortably long scene, his two sons would steal partially concealed glances at him and each other, it would be a big menace-off, replete with sneers and winking until one, then both of them started laughing like the loveable buffoons they were.

The things we do for love.

"No
Blade Runner
!" Ivo decrees, gesturing emphatically.

"You hear that, Bro'? Dad says it's
Blade Runner
night!" Roy laughs, steering the car left and reaching for the damper, mission accomplished.

The end of the world- you'd thik it would crowd everything else out of his mind, yet here he sits, mind lingering on his wonderful, frustrating sons. Ok, he's glad they could spend some time together tonight. Together, they will save the world somehow, but Ivo is only concerned with saving it for them. What's a world for without those you love?

Ivo uses the remote to kick up the music in the back seat- just in case Roy's got any more plans. The Ganja rock resumes with an unfamiliar and jarring crash. Glass and some type of dark powder fill the air. There is an instant of Disneyland-abstract uncertainty, followed by the steely reassertion of his disciplined mind. He dives sideways toward the floor. He also dives inward and feels the lightning filigree of the Loom stretch up from the Underworld, branch out through his clothes, and out into the Overworld.

The two-shot salvo has left gossamer ripples of power in its wake. The Shield that should have protected them was dissolved by the chaos the bullets carried. Cracks extend from the bullets down through the Underworld, through the Loom. No Cast could have stopped them. Ivo recognizes this chaos, knows things are about to get much worse.

Tracing the bullet trails back, he finds that a round has missed his head by less than three centimeters. There's something else that he knows, something he can't think about because now is the time for action, not for...

He moves his Vision away from the slowly rolling car, back along the path of the bullets until...
there!
In a tuft of Otu on the side of the hill next to the road are two shooters with military sniper rifles. Not for long.

The two fly through the air, their rifles wrapping around their necks, not too tight though- he wants them to feel what comes next. Up three meters then down as hard as Ivo can will. The bodies yield far more than the pavement, which craters under the impact.