Transmaniacon (25 page)

Ben mentally reviewed what he knew of the Order. It was an order, once benign, devoted to the exaltation of Luciferage Rofocale and the attendant Principles. Rofocale was an excommunicated fourteenth-century English monk who had claimed to be the physical incarnation of the angel Lucifer, Lucifer the Light, the Angel of Mentality, known by the uninitiated as Baal and Dis and Satan and Thanatos. And Crux, God of Mathematics. And this was the sign of the Order: An equal-armed, with a hook emerging from the lower vertical.

It was an ancient sign. It predated the Order. It was a variant on an ancient sign for Saturn.

Rofocale had been an advocate of Monwill, the practice of merging personalities and initiatives of a number of people into that of a single perfect leader; the societal equivalent of the berserker-animus tradition, a group invocation to possession by a patron spirit. The shaman becomes one with the best-spirit, members of the Order become one with their priest, Ipssissimus, and believe they are physical extensions of him, that he is the earthly manifestation of Lucifer, the source of the pure white light of mathematical Truth, Lucifer's wisdom, the revelation of the perfect mathematical order of the universe, the equation whose conclusion is universal subjugation to the Will of Lucifer. A simple equation:
Will
times
Dominance
equals
Submission.

It was then that Ben had an insight. A crucial insight. He could almost hear the click-click-clack of things coming together.

Upon his private appreciation of this insight, he congratulated himself. He considered himself very clever for having deduced most of Chaldin's exploitive role in the overall scheme of the Order. But Ben was drugged, stimulated to sensational peaks of acuity. He congratulated himself, but he should have thanked the white powder. The sensation of the drug was like a cold and jewel-like white light, a sharp and smoldering white heat—in the heart.

And it was this sense of brilliant light, bursting from within, that prompted him to say, “Look at the
light,
Fuller. Why isn't Chaldin transformed?”

Chaldin whirred about, lips trembling. With his left hand he pushed a circuitry drawer back into the wall, with his right he stabbed a finger toward Ben. “Rackey, none of us are going to be sheep for your childish games. We aren't the common herd. We're not like those animals you manipulated in the square. We are the living Will of Lucifer.”

But Fuller was regarding Chaldin with a troubled eye.

“Come, come, Chaldin!” said Ben. “The farce is done. Admit what you are. Are you the priest for the present age of the Order? No, you are a withered old man, with no authority. Do you suppose I fall for your virile villain act? No. That is only the recording. The person behind that role––where is he now, Chaldin? That ambitious young man. He is wasted and all that is left are the symbolic rags hung on the scarecrow. I have asked myself, time and again: Why? Why is Chaldin, a brilliant man, slave to his ambitions with the syndicates, with the Order, slave to the polemics of dominance. Why? Just
because?
Because some people are innately evil? No. Because he was programmed that way. By the complexes of his youth. He had to prove himself, at one time, so he constructed a schema for acquiring power. And power was intoxicating, addictive, because there was no end for his need to prove himself. So he adhered to the schemes as if they were yogas, and year after year after year he devoted himself to this single structure, his formula for dominance—until one day he was no longer a man. He was just a formula, a living scheme, a walking rhetoric that discarded all ethic and regret. He had become—”

“He had become
perfect
,” Chaldin hissed. “But you are quite right, Rackey. I am no longer human. I am a set of ideals. And that, to me, is the very definition of perfection. And you? You are callow, bumptious and insolent!”

“A perfect man could walk without wheels,” said Ben softly.

Chaldin slammed his hand onto the metal case of his prosthesis. His mouth opened, twisted awry. Then he shook, a visible effort at control. He relaxed. He smiled, very faintly. “You will not be permitted to do that to me again, Rackey. It was an astute analysis, and you knew it would infuriate me. But I will not permit you to rattle me. That is why you will always be my subordinate.” He closed his eyes, swallowed, and nodded to himself. He opened his eyes and glanced at Ben, then at Fuller's troubled face. “Now, it's time for you to earn your keep, Rackey. We're keeping you alive because you promise to be useful. Realistically—and if nothing else, a Professional Irritant is a realist—you will admit that from now on, the game is
ours.
We have Security on our side—no one is going to interfere with us. The Fist is going, the Barrier remains.

“Immediately, my concern is the elimination of the Fist with the most efficient means at hand. The thing has to be destroyed. You must know that I can demolish it with bombs if I have to. But it would take more time than I'm willing to invest to bring one large enough from Denver. And the thing must be
completely
destroyed, razed to the ground. I don't want to leave the slightest chance for it to be repaired. So, since you are so thoroughly familiar with this repulsive object, I assume you can offer a suggestion as to the most efficient means of demolishing it. If it works, we'll let your dear Gloria free, after you're safely droned, and you will have the satisfaction of knowing she is well.”

Unhesitating, Ben said, “Certainly. As you point out, I've nothing to lose now. The Fist can be set to destroy itself. Its ram field can be adjusted to reverse and double back halfway up the fire-shaft. It implodes and shatters the whole affair.”

“Good. Now, understand, Rackey, that if you attempt to deceive me in this, I'll know. I personally operate and maintain the central Barrier projector. It was I who designed it. The Fist apparently works on very much the same principle, and while I do not understand its updated control system so well I can operate it alone, I
do
comprehend enough to recognize any deception, should you attempt to set it in some way other than what we've agreed on.”

“I understand. It will be as you say.”

“Good. Now, come here and show me how to set the controls.”

Fuller's watchful eye on him, Ben did as he was asked.

The wires binding his wrists were pinching painfully, his hands were going to sleep. He considered asking that his hands be freed so that he could set the Fist by himself. But Chaldin would only laugh at him. So he stepped forward and quietly directed Chaldin through the dial settings that would generate the total energies necessary for transmission. Chaldin set the dials so that the fist of force would reverse and destroy its own projector. Ben explained why it would take six hours for the Fist to generate power enough to make its own death.

Chaldin listened closely and seemed satisfied.

He rolled down a corridor to issue departure-preparation orders to the crew of the owl-car; they would need another vehicle to transport Ben and Gloria.

Once more standing beside Gloria, Ben spoke to Fuller. “What do you know of the light-renewal principle of Lucifer's Perfect Reinstatement?”

Fuller shrugged and raised his gun. “I know. Now shut up.”

Ben laughed. Gloria gave him a warning look. But the drug was on the rise again. “Fuller, Chaldin is the Order's Ipssissimus Mage for the present age. Right? The Ipssissimus is said to walk the earth in frail human form
until
he is bathed in cold, electric white light. The light...”

Fuller frowned and looked up, at the feeble light coming from the top of the transmission shaft.

“Nah, Fuller. I'm not talking about the light up above, man. I'm talking the Hellfire down below. I'm talking to you, man, about the goddamned Lucifer
Light.
You
know
that Light, you've seen it in daydreams. It's the light that never warms. The light of legend. From below. From the floor.”

As if a small child, compelled by his father's command, Fuller looked at the transparent floor, at the ghost-vaporous cool white light that streamed upward from the generator casings. Ben followed his gaze.

Below, all was seething white like the heart of a galaxy seen through a smoky lens. Frothy, cloudy, the light shimmered up to illuminate their features in spectral starkness as the Fist worked itself into a rage that, like - a sudden release of repressed hostility, would slam the sky in six hours.

Ben spoke rapidly, in Fuller's language.

“When bathed in pure white electric light the Mage—Chaldin—is supposed to instantly change into the Black Angel. But he's still nothing but an old man in a fancy wheelchair, man. Yet you
saw
him bathed in that light. That motherfucker
snowed
you, man. He's told you that he was sixty-eight years old, that he only recently came into possession of the cryogenic chambers that he had you and Gloria and Ranger in, on cold storage. But didn't you
hear
him, man? He said
he was there
when they built the Barrier. He designed it, man. You know how long ago that was, man?”

“A century...” Fuller breathed.

“You bet your sweet ass. And you believe that stuff how he just recently found you people? Gloria told me how the meatlockers they had you in were built into the walls of the basement of his building and they looked like they had been there a long time. Like a century. Not just brought recently. You see, man? He's an old man, a
very
old man. He's kept you on the shelf for more than a century. He could have released you
any time.
Any time. But what's it to him? He ripped you off. He couldn't care less if you were faithful to The Order. The Order's just a tool to him. And you were just a tool that wasn't useful till recently. He kept you on ice a century and he'd never have let you out if he'd had any sense.”

“You're a complete ass, Fuller,” said Chaldin flatly, like a doctor diagnosing a malady.

He rolled to the center of the room, fists clenched against the metal of his prosthesis.

Ben was pleased to see him angry. Let him lose a little control—Fuller would pick up on it, it would reinforce his doubts. Old Thorn had said:
A man who becomes angry becomes uncontrolled. A man without
control is a man very vulnerable.

Fuller's gun was still sighted on Ben, but now it wavered.

Looking into Fuller's eyes, Ben knew he had him. Fuller had been trained by Chaldin to resist the exciter—but only those gross Frequencies with which Chaldin was familiar. Ben, however, had had time to experiment, to perfect his technique. There were subtler levels of empathic inducement—gentle prods, hardly more than psychic tickles. Sometimes a man holding himself flexed to resist a blow to the belly can be made to recoil at the touch of a feather to the back of his neck.

Ben had touched Fuller, inwardly, ever so gently. Fuller, always keyed up, reacted by turning his excess tension against Chaldin. Fuller had been dictator over the Transmania MC and over the twentieth century's west coast chapter of the Order. He was unused to being told what to do. In some part of himself, he would resent it. And, before the Sleep, Fuller had been a young man, bred in a time when young rebels were notoriously suspicious of old men of property. Chaldin epitomized old men of property. The thing that had won Fuller's devotion was his gratitude for Chaldin's reviving him, and this Ben had already undermined, his idolatry of Chaldin as a divine symbol of the Order.

“I told you explicitly not to talk to this con-man,” Chaldin said. “You're, a fool to have permitted him to speak at all, an idiot to have let him speak more than a sentence, and an
ass
for listening. I've spent three months teaching you maintenance of the Barrier. It's very simple, and if you'd paid attention you could have learned in one month. You don't
listen
to me, Carleton. I warned you about trying to rescue Manson. There was no point in risking it! He had served the Order! He was a blunderer! We washed our hands of him! I
told
you it would end in disaster––oh, back then I had a different face. You believed it was Hughes, warning you against the Manson debacle. But, it was convenient for me, then, to travel in that guise—”

“How old are you, Mr. Chaldin?” Ben shot mockingly.

Enraged, Chaldin turned to him and roared, “How
old
am I? You mumbled that Luciferage Rofocale must return in flesh to possess every Ipssissimus bathed in the cold white light? Infidel! Cretin!” He trembled. “Idiot!” His jowls shivered. “Short-lived insect!” He leaked drool onto his chin. “I
am
Luciferage Rofocale! Know that in my diverse arts I am that man, that original and Perfect Mage who walked this dusty plane six centuries ago! How
old
am I?” He stopped shouting. But now his voice was lethal in its softness. “I am six hundred ninety-four years old. The Order? Something I dreamed up when I had illusions about bringing peace to the earth by uniting it under one ruler. An errant artifice, an invention, a squalid trifle. It is a toy! The Order is my own exciter, Rackey! Don't you suppose I had a
model
for the exciter? The exciter's circuitry is patterned after the pattern of the Order's organization—”

It was then that Chaldin must have felt Fuller's eyes on him. For he fell silent and turned to face Fuller. And it was probably then he realized his mistake. He had demeaned the Order in the presence of the Order's most eager acolyte. Fuller was more than eager, he was a lunatic about it.

Chaldin had lost control. Over himself and therefore over Fuller. And that had given Ben access to Fuller.

Fuller's defenses were gone. Ben opened up the exciter. Full.

Now Ben was grateful for the drug Gloria had given him. It was the ultimate link between Fuller and him. Similar stimulants were the chemical backbeat for Fuller's frenetic era, the late twentieth century. Their hearts echoed in the same electric drumbeats, the same drug-accentuated resentments. And when Fuller finally sensed the full incursion of the exciter, its tempo and modulation now oddly familiar, much like that of his own drugged spirit, he came to believe that it was a feeling arising from within himself and not one imposed by Ben Rackey. The unheard, speeding throb of rage filled the room with invisible but tangible presence.