Who Hunts the Hunter (16 page)

“
Will
you
work
tonight,
Master
?”

“Yes,” Liron replies."Presently.”

His house comes along on the right, old and rather large, two stories tall, with steep mansard roofs and soaring chimneys, windows glowing despite the hour. The winding gravel drive leads past the broad front walk. Liron leaves the Mercedes there. He’s just old-fashioned enough to prefer to enter through the front door, rather than through the garage like a chauffeur or stable boy.

His wife’s nurse, Gwyna, opens the door as he climbs the stone steps to the porch. Gwyna is tall and slender, obviously an elf, even at a distance. She greets him with an uncertain smile.

“How is Mrs. Phalen this evening?” Liron asks.

“Feeling some discomfort earlier,” Gwyna replies."I gave her five c.c.’s of Tukenol.”

“You must be very sparing,” Liron says with quiet emphasis.

“Yes, Dr. Phalen. I know.”

“Of course, you do.” Liron smiles apologetically."I always seem to be repeating myself unnecessarily. It’s very
difficult, my dear, to maintain a professional detachment
where the one involved is so close.”

Gwyna seems moved to sympathy."Of course,” she says softly."I understand. I must say ...”

“Yes, dear?”

Gwyna hesitates, looking at him, then says, “I admire your courage. Mrs. Phalen’s, too. I admire it very much.”

Liron takes her hand, gently pats it. A smile of understanding is all the answer he has to give. It seems sufficient."Would you please tell Mrs. Phalen that I’ll be in shortly."

"Certainly.”

“Thank you, my dear.”

In the bedroom, his bedroom, Liron pauses to clip and light a cigar, an uncivilized habit, his wife used to say, but his one and only indulgence. Vorteria comes through the physical plane of the door like a ghost, assuming her womanly manifestation as she crosses the threshold. Oddly, Liron does not mind her being present while he undresses, changing from his lab clothes to his ritual robes. Vorteria has seen too much of his soul for the sight of his blighted physical substance to have much significance.

“You did not visit me at the lab today.”

“
Spirits
spoke
against
it
,” Vorteria replies."
There
is
a
darkness,
Master
.
It
troubles
me
."

Not the first time Vorteria has spoken this way. Precognition? Liron knows of no documented cases. None which could survive even the sometimes fuzzy lens of metascience. He is aware, however, that the many planes of the astral are home to myriad entities of which men have incomplete knowledge at best."What spirits were these who spoke? Do they have names?”

“
None
I
could
express
to
you,
Master
."

A familiar reply.

Liron turns to the mirror and carefully removes the mask and hairpiece that cover his face and head, and then too the theatrical appliances and the lenses that complete the deception necessary to his work. Anyone who could view him as he truly is would see only a horror, a skull shorn clean of any hair, a face laid bare of even the most trivial human features. His nose a hideous blackened pit, his mouth a grisly skeletal grimace, his brow and cheeks covered only be a slender layer of epidermis, stretched tight across his bones.

His trip to the Middle East, taken many years ago, supported by a foundation long defunct, brought him to this. The affliction is called
metamycobacterium
leprosis,
the

Sixth World form of leprosy. It’s quite virulent. His tissues deteriorated rapidly, his wife’s even more rapidly. Now he searches for a cure. He has long since affected a means of holding his ground, and of stabilizing his wife as well, but a cure ...
The
cure
still
eludes
him!
He must go to his library, filled with all the ancient and arcane tomes of a lifetime of research, and continue his work on the cure."
Victoria
calls,
” Vorteria says softly.

“Oh, of course.” How inconsiderate of him to forget. First, he must visit his wife."Thank you, my dear.” Vorteria replies, “
I
am
pleased
to
serve
you,
Master
."

27

“It’s complicated,” he says.

Amy shakes her head."I don’t care.”

“I need to become a person again.”

Amy waits, and listens. Scottie’s explanations start and stop, and trail away into silence, but there’s always more that needs to be said, and somehow he just keeps on going, finding the words and saying them, till she’s heard more from him in one night than she heard or listened to or ignored up to the day he disappeared.

Then, despite splashing herself with cold water, and all the willpower she can summon, her eyes are closing and won’t reopen, and she feels herself slumping, nodding off. When she wakes, she’s lying on the sofa with her head in Scottie’s lap, and he’s gazing down at her, and saying, “I have to go.”

“Stay. Please.”

“I’ll come back tomorrow. I promise.”

“I don’t want to lose you again.” The fear of that wakes her up. She forces herself to sit up. She takes his hands, remembers things he said. Despite all that he’s told her, she feels like he’s been here only moments, and she hasn’t had time to explain anything about herself.

“Scottie, I’m living here by myself, and I make good money. Shell could come, and the kids, too. They’re important to you and I want to meet them anyway. You could all stay here. There’s plenty of room.”

“I have to go my own way.”

“But ...” Of course. That’s the point. It’s always been the point and until now she was never mature enough to accept that. What did he say? The shaman’s way is hard. He has to do what he thinks is best, and
she
must
accept
that
! She must! She should be trying to understand, not telling him what to do. She has to face the fact that she doesn’t know what’s best for him. She can’t know. She barely knows who he is, the man he’s become, the shaman, or anything else. If she wants him to play a part in her life, she’s going to have to stop being the older sister and start being the woman with enough maturity to love her brother without conditions.

“I’m sorry,” she says, struggling to smile."You’re right. I’m just so afraid you’ll go away—”

Her breath catches.

Scottie takes her hands in his.

“I can’t believe you’re really here again.”

“I’m here.”

“Mom and Dad’ll be—”

“Don’t tell them.”

“Why not?”

“It’s too soon. I need time.”

Time to adjust, or maybe the time to come fully out of his shell. Maybe it’s got to do with his magic. Many of the things he’s said make it seem like he’s at a crossroads, a point of transition, important in more ways than she can imagine.

“All right,” Amy says."But I want you to remember that I love you and I care about you. I always have. Even when I was stealing your things and throwing them away. I’ll do anything I can to help you, if you need help. If you want anything. Anything. I really mean that.”

“I know.”

At the door, she hugs him one last time and kisses his cheek, and then he’s walking down the hall to the elevator, and she’s forcing herself to smile, to wave, like he’s never really been away.

She’s sitting on her bed in her underwear, still wiping at her eyes, when the first dusky rays of dawn comes sifting in through the drapes, and then her alarm clock starts bleeping. Oh, god no ...

How can she possibly get ready for work?

And ... how can she not?

28

In the shadows of the pre-dawn dark, the security car rolls slowly along the tree-lined lane winding through the condoplex grounds. Brake lights flare, but then the car rolls on. Bandit watches from among the bushes leading away from Tower D. He has no permits or passes allowing him to be on these grounds. Raccoon has no need of such things.

He turns his head to look back at Tower D reaching high into the dark gray sky, and, for a moment, he shifts his perceptions to the astral. The spell he casts is fleeting. He gains a brief sense for his sister, up there in the tower, at a window, now turning away. She seems upset, happy and sad, like she’s crying and also smiling. She did that a lot tonight. It’s almost frightening.

When they were kids, Amy walked the narrow course. She was always very popular. Her grades at school were upper bracket. She had corporate sponsorship and a place awaiting her at university before she reached her sixteenth birthday. He’d always taken it for granted that Amy would turn into just another faceless clerical or executive level wageslave, another straight suit, just like their parents. Now he finds that she’s become as whole a person as he’s ever known, every bit as whole as Shell. It’s amazing.

The way she talks, how she acts ... she got right inside him without even trying, enough to move him pretty deeply. To hurt. To make him regret things. Like how they’ve lived totally separate lives.

Maybe now that can change.

There’s so much he has to learn.

In among the trees by the condoplex main entrance, he finds the Hyundai ActionScoot he borrowed and walks it out to the road. The scooter doesn’t go very fast, but it’ll get him back to the subway a lot faster than walking. Assuming nobody notices the scooter’s missing.

When he gets home, he finds Shell slumped in a plastic chair by the door at the top of the stairs. He told her to go ahead and bolt the door because he’d probably be gone all night. But here she is, sleeping, with the needlegun in her lap. Waiting for him? He gives her shoulder a squeeze and she comes around, moaning, then hugs him around the hips."Did you find your sister?”

“Yeah.”

“So, do I lose you now?”

Lose him? “Why would you lose anything?”

Shell looks up at him with eyes that seem wet."She’s a suit, right? She could set you up. She must have lots of money.”

Bandit puzzles, then sighs inwardly.

People are always talking about money, even when money makes no difference, no difference whatsoever. It’s in the way of things, it seems. An inescapable part of nature.

It makes him tired.

29

“Okay, kid. Let’s
move
out
!"

Brian Guemey forces his eyes to open. How long has he been asleep? Two, three hours, his watch indicates. He rubs a hand over his face, feels the stubble grown thick around his cheeks and jaw, and grunts. When he agreed to tripletime and a half, he figured he’d be getting into action. What he didn’t figure on was spending twenty-four hours plus in tunnels underground. What he didn’t foresee was getting so deep into the tunnels that he’d have to wait for Art to show him the way out.

Somewhere above his head, it’s morning. Wonderful.

He drags himself up, suits up, gets ready for action. The tunnel is over three meters across and perfectly round and dank, real dank. A trickle of water forms dark, dingy-looking puddles every couple of steps. The air smells foul.

There’s a ghostly feel to it all. Maybe the ghost of water that used to pass this way. Brian wonders if maybe he should have become a Buddhist. Don’t Buddhists believe that everything has a soul?

Up ahead, forty or fifty meters on, there’s a junction, a pair of secondary tunnels coming in from the right and left.

That’s about as far as Brian can see. His Nightfighter visor casts a grayish image of the tunnel in front of his eyes, but there ain’t much light for the visor to gather, and the only IR sources of any significance are him and Art.

They’re both ready for Ragnarok, armed to the nines, assault rifles, machine pistols, handguns, grenades, flares, knives, body armor, helmets, visors. Brian wouldn’t mind so much, not at triple time and a half, if only he had some idea of what they might be going up against.

“So, if all these tunnels weren’t destroyed by the quake in ’05, how come nobody I ever talked to knows these tunnels are still—?”

“What, are you kidding?” Art interrupts.

“Kidding about what?”

“You never heard of security?”

“Art. Listen.” How can he put this? without slotting Art off yet again."This is a water main. We work for the New York City Department of Water and Wastewater Manage—” Abruptly, Art drops into a crouch, signaling halt with a quick mil-style gesture."You hear something?”

“Just the sound of my own—”

“Jam it!” Art whispers harshly, edging ahead."Look!
right
there!
LET'EM
HAVE
IT,
KID
!"

Art’s rifle stammers on full auto. The discharges echo like thunder. Fire flashes from the weapon’s muzzle, streaming straight up the tunnel. Maybe twenty meters ahead, beyond Art’s left shoulder, Brian spots a shadowy figure big enough to be an ork, only it isn’t an ork like any Brian’s ever seen."What the frag!”

The figure darts out of sight, across the junction and into a secondary tunnel.