Technomancer (39 page)

Rostok generated a rumbling laugh. “Independent? There’s no such thing. You’ve been working for Meng all this time, whether you knew it or not. You’ve been bird-dogging fellow rogues for her for years.”

For years.
I let that thought sink in, and I didn’t like the feel of it.

“McKesson isn’t independent,” the old man continued. “He works for all of us collectively.”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll take that route. Just as long as we are all on the same side.”

Rostok hawked and spat. “You can’t play me like this, Draith. You must be more careful when you are in my domain.”

I stood up, setting my glass on the coffee table. It gleamed a soft, eldritch blue, lit by some source of light that
wasn’t immediately obvious to the eye. I calmly walked to the door.

“I’m sorry if I disappointed you, but I really must be going now.”

I felt something then, as my back was turned to him. A gush of force. It was an odd sensation, but one that I was familiar with. The wall in front of me shook, as if someone had thrown an invisible couch at it. Perhaps that was exactly what had happened. The force didn’t hit me, however. I was immune.

“Some kind of shield, is that it?” Rostok fumed behind me. “I can’t be stopped so easily. I have a dozen objects in my vault, Draith. You can’t insult me like this—”

“Rostok,” I said, turning around with my pistol in my hand. It was at my side, aimed down at the carpet. But it was there, and my finger was on the trigger. “Let’s not have any unpleasantness. Please accept my apologies, but I don’t trust you. Don’t forget, you just sent Robert Townsend to the desert to meddle in my affairs, and he killed a man named Souza, one of my friends.”

“Friends? Are you talking about those crazy cultist rogues? Is that what this is about? You might as well call things crawling under rocks in the desert your friends, Draith. They have many similar qualities.”

I slipped on my shades and forced the office door open. It had been locked, of course. I gave it an extra hard twist so the tumblers would never go back together properly. They would have to replace the entire mechanism.

“We’ll meet again,” I said, intending to step out of his office.

Rostok didn’t shout, nor did he send any of his minions after me. Instead, he spoke calmly.

“All right, Draith,” Rostok said behind me in the gloom. “I respect a man who can turn his back on me and live. What do you want to come work for me?”

“To work for the entire Community, you mean?” I asked. I glanced back, but I could no longer see him. I wondered what he must look like with the lights on.

“If you want it that way. But you’ll take your missions from me.”

I turned toward him. Standing in the office doorway, I was silhouetted by the relative glare coming in from the lobby area.

“I want peace between the rogues and the Community. Stop kicking us around. And I want war between the Community and the Gray Men.”

“Is that all?” Rostok asked incredulously.

“Well, that might be overstating it. What I want is to strike the Gray Men and take out the machine that allows them to come to our version of this universe. I want your help and your blessing to perform this mission. That’s my price.”

Rostok questioned me about the Gray Men and I explained what I’d seen and where I’d been. It was his turn to get valuable information from me. I only held back the nature of the objects I had and what they could do. Those were secrets I’d decided to keep.

Rostok thought it over when I’d finished laying out my case. “What you are proposing is indeed a declaration of war.”

“Let the blame ride on the rogues, then.”

“Pretend I’m not involved, eh? The Gray Men, as you call them, are not fools, Draith. They have been probing for some time now, attempting to estimate our strength and determine how we operate. I suspect they don’t have objects
and don’t understand them. They proceed with caution, but if we hit them, they might move against us more directly.”

I knew that by “move against us” he meant “move against the Community,” which was still the only group he cared about. I decided not to argue further about his abusive treatment of rogues such as myself. I’d given up on arguing for the greater good. I needed him to see a benefit for himself in my actions to gain his cooperation.

“Or,” I said, “they might grow bolder as each day passes and we don’t respond to their attacks. We should stop thinking as disconnected individuals. We should include Earth’s governments as well.”

Rostok gave a rumbling laugh at that. “Who do you think makes up much of our Community? We do have government people, plus billionaires and the like. At any rate, I accept your proposal. In return for your service, I will allow this mission to proceed and I will send aid. But don’t push me like this again.”

I nodded, suddenly regretting I had broken his lock. We were allies now—I hoped. I decided it was best to exit before the damage was discovered. I mumbled my good-byes and pushed the door shut behind me. It didn’t quite latch, but it did stay closed long enough for me to leave.

In the lobby area, I found Robert Townsend had vanished. There were bloodstains on the chair where he’d been and a few droplets led to the elevator. I got the impression he’d been dragged away. I wondered if he was still alive. From Rostok’s hints, I doubted it. In my mind, I was already editing what I was going to tell Jenna about all this.

I took the stairs down.

Things went slowly for a while after that, compared to how fast they’d been going. But a few days later, I once again found myself standing in the desert east of Las Vegas. Under the cover of the falling dusk, McKesson, Rheinman, and Gilling joined me. McKesson was apparently working for Rostok today.

When the rich old man who lived on top of the eastern tower of the Lucky Seven had promised me support, I had envisioned a private army. Instead, I’d received one half-interested detective. I gathered that Rostok still didn’t want anything about this action directly traceable to him.

We’d come in two separate vehicles. Gilling drove the SUV this time, while McKesson followed us, bumping along in his sedan. It had taken us better than an hour to find the shallow depression with the scorched region in its midst. I’d been looking for the cluster of boulders, but of course, those had all come to life and crawled away. When we finally
found the spot in the red light of the dying sun, McKesson climbed out of his car and began complaining.

“I thought you knew where the hell you were going,” he said. “It was sheer luck that I didn’t break an axle.”

“Sorry,” I said without a hint of regret. “This spot doesn’t look the same today.”

We left Rheinman as lookout and guard at the top of the rise, standing with the two vehicles. We walked down into the pit of the depression, which still felt hot under my shoes. The lava slugs had left hot zones here, which still sent up wisps of vapor when we kicked at the sands that covered them. The creatures had applied enough heat to the land to form trails of slag. Underneath the blowing top layer of grit, spikes of glass were everywhere.

“This is just like the blasted desert up north,” McKesson said, toeing the crunchy ground with his black leather shoes.

“The testing sites?” I asked.

“Yeah. Some of the atomic tests were above ground, you know. About a hundred of them. There were big patches of desert turned to glass and slag.”

“All right,” Gilling said, clasping his hands. “Now that we are all here, Detective, please enlighten us.”

“About what?”

“Why did they send you? What have you brought to this—party?”

We both stared at him. I wanted to know the answer too.

McKesson shrugged. “I was asked to help.”

“Excuse me, but we’re not impressed,” Gilling said. “We expected more from Rostok than one mercenary of questionable loyalty.”

McKesson snorted. “Look who’s talking. A couple of rookie rogues with big ideas. By all logic, I should shoot you
both in the back now, bury your corpses, then run back to the Community claiming the Gray Men did it.”

“And why would that be a good idea?” I asked, my eyes narrowing.

“Because this is a suicide mission.”

I gave him a cold smile. “We aren’t turning our backs on you now; you realize that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, well, I kinda figured I’d blown that easy out when I told you about it. So, it’s time to answer your question, Gilling.” McKesson walked to the back of his dusty sedan and popped open the trunk. He lifted something heavy from the back.

I shoved my hand into my jacket pocket and gripped my gun. I realized I’d lost the last shreds of my trusting nature at some point over the preceding days, if I’d ever had such a nature to begin with. By the standards of a normal person, I was paranoid. But as I kept telling myself, I had good cause.

McKesson came back lugging a large metal case. It was about four feet long and made with ugly, green-painted metal. It was unmistakably military in appearance. He put it down at our feet and snapped open the latches. As we watched, he opened it. An even uglier piece of equipment was inside. It consisted of black metal tubes and green conical tips.

“This is what I brought to the party,” McKesson said.

I detected a hint of pride in his voice. For the first time today, I was impressed with him. “Some kind of rocket launcher?” I asked.

“Yeah. An RPG-seven with optical sights and an armor-piercing head. Soviet-made. It’s a bit out of date, but it’ll do the job.”

“What job is that?” Gilling asked.

McKesson looked at him with his eyebrows riding high. “What if we can’t get inside those cubes with Draith’s burglar routine?” he asked. “Or what if this imaginary machine of yours is really big? How were you planning to damage something the size of a house?”

Gilling pursed his lips and nodded. Now we were both impressed.

“Where the hell did you get such a thing?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “Drug dealers have big budgets for toys these days. And sometimes evidence sits around inside a cage in the station basement for a long time.”

I shook my head. “You really like to bend the rules don’t you, Detective?”

“I like to get the job done,” he said. He sealed the case back up again. “We’ve only got three shots. We have to make them count.”

Gilling and I set up the next part of the mission while darkness fell around us. We’d decided to work at night to attract less attention from the road, which was about a mile south of us. Creating the rip down in the depression where we’d met Robert and the slugs seemed as good a spot as any. The glimmer and flash of the rip itself would be invisible from the road down there.

While Gilling was paging through his book, looking for an inspiring bit of poetry to chant, McKesson came close.

“I’ve got something else,” he said quietly.

I looked at him expectantly. He eyed Gilling, then lifted his hand, cupping something within it. I was reminded of a drug deal pass-off. I took the object and examined it. Whatever it was, it was about the size of a doughnut and wrapped in aluminum foil.

“What’s with the wrapper?” I said, beginning to peel it open.

“Don’t,” he said suddenly.

“Why not?”

“It’s an object. Rostok said it’s dangerous.”

“How dangerous?”

“Very. He said not to use it until you wanted to destroy something big.”

I nodded. Another bomb. I carefully crushed the aluminum foil over the object and slipped it into my pocket. I’d never handled an object that was directly destructive before. I had respect for such tools, however. I thought of the rag doll that fired gusts of intense heat. That thing seemed to kill anyone who used it. I wasn’t sure what Gilling had done with the doll, and I didn’t care as long as he didn’t give it to me.

“Did you add the foil?” I asked.

McKesson shrugged. “It used to wrap my lunch. I don’t like touching objects I don’t know how to handle. It’s your baby now, but you have to give it back to Rostok when we complete this mission.”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Rostok said you will.”

I thought about that while we watched Gilling make his final preparations. He used five buckets of organic material to fuel his rip. Each bucket contained a gallon of lard. He’d proclaimed it was almost as good as blood—which was still the best, apparently. Gilling explained the fuel would burn quickly and brightly, but wouldn’t last long. I hoped we wouldn’t need much time, and I liked the idea of our trail closing quickly behind us. With luck, it would be the last chance the Gray Men had to come after us.

Gilling did his chanting and read from his book of Charles Baudelaire’s French poetry. McKesson rolled his eyes.

Quand la Vengeance bat son infernal rappel,

Et de nos facultés se fait le capitaine?

Ange plein de bonté connaissez-vous la haine?…

I listened, catching a few words. The passage was something about angels, armies, and hate. I’d taken the time to look up Baudelaire’s work on the Internet. It had been outlawed in France two centuries ago. Gilling sure could pick an uplifting piece.