Who Hunts the Hunter (36 page)
“I’m sure you’re right,” Amy says. She pauses to sip her tea, which seems oddly flavored, and suddenly feels herself going limp, slumping in her seat, her chin dropping to her breast, the tea cup spilling across her lap. The tea soaks through her pantlegs and it’s nearly hot enough to burn, but she can’t do a thing about it. Her elbows slip from the arms of the chair; her hands fall limply to her sides. Her eyelids droop, nearly closing. Her head lolls.
“Oh, I am sorry, my dear.” Dr. Phalen dabs at her pantlegs with a cloth napkin."How clumsy. I should have realized. I
do hope you’ll forgive me.”
Amy doesn’t care about the tea or stained pantlegs. She feels so weak, so completely enervated, so distant from everything-— including her own body—it’s scary. Why can’t she move?
Is
she
having
a
stroke?
some
sort
of
cerebral
seizure?
She needs help. She needs help and she struggles to get a plea, a cry, anything out through her mouth, but nothing comes, nothing but a vague moan, formed by unresponsive lips and lungs that seem all but empty of air.
From the corners of her eyes, she catches sight of a reddish glimmer, like the reflected light of a gemstone, but magnified, growing stronger, piercing, overwhelming her vision, then, everything.
What’s happening?
What
is
this?
A voice murmurs into her right ear. It drones on for what seems like hours before she gains a sense of what it’s saying. The things it tells her to do are wrong, outrageous, even immoral. No, she won’t do it. She won’t! she won’t! She won’t do what the voice wants. But the words the voice speaks are a tangible force—she can feel it—pressing her down, weighing down against mind and body, squeezing, crushing her down into the chair. It’s like the weight of a planet, trying to mash her flat. She fights it, puts everything she has into an effort to hurl herself up, get out, get away, but she only manages to gulp a deep breath. Her heart thuds. Her resistance crumbles. She hasn’t the strength to fight. She’s too tired, too weak, barely able to cling to consciousness.
An image appears before her. It’s the impassive features of the Tokyo auditor, Kurushima Jussai. She tells him what she must."Dr. Phalen ... can explain. Explain what’s happened. He’s available now. He has the data on his computer. He’d like to ... like to meet with you in his office ... here ... at the Metascience facility.”
Kurushima says, “This is very difficult, Ms. Berman ... for an auditor. What you’re asking ... it is very irregular."
"It is ... essential,” Amy replies.
Kurushima says, “Very well.”
And then everything slips away into blackness.
Incense curls and rises. Bandit fingers the smooth polished wood of his flute and moves his astral eyes around the confines of his medicine lodge, looking over the hides, the bones, the rattles, the drums, other arcana. He has searched his mind for some means of avoiding what must come, but the search has been fruitless.
The spell he has prepared is one of the few he knows that has no purpose but to take a life. It is designed deliberately, specifically, meticulously to kill. He does not want to use it, but he knows that in all likelihood he will have no choice.
It is in the nature of evil to afflict that which is good. It is in the nature of good to oppose this. Though it may be wrong to ever take a life, it seems likely that, in some cases, special cases, that which is good must be defended and that which is evil must be vanquished, no matter what the cost.
Bandit reminds himself that even Raccoon will fight, and fight to the death, when left with no choice.
It is in the nature of things.
And there is one other thing he must not forget. Tonight, when he does what must be done, if he takes a life, he may also give it, give life, or at least return it to its natural state. That is, of course, if he has correctly grasped what he experienced at Old Man’s medicine lodge. Let it be so, he hopes.
His watcher returns, materializing beside his left shoulder."
He
is
there,
Master
.
Just
like
you
said
."
“Good.”
He must confront the mage called Phalen, but he does not want that confrontation to occur at the mage’s home, where the mage keeps his tomes and circles and that one item above all, the
Roggoth’shoth,
guarded over by the familiar Vorteria and other spirits. Rather, he wants the confrontation to occur where the mage is likely to be at his most vulnerable. The only other place Phalen has gone is to the Metascience labs of Hurley-Cooper, so, by default, that’s the place. The watcher spirit’s report means that Phalen is there.
So it’s time to get going.
He stands up. The pockets of his long coat are filled with things he might need, everything he can think of. He steps through the door of his lodge and finds Shell waiting for him in the stairwell, sitting on the floor, huddled into a corner. As she looks at him, he sees something in her eyes, maybe an accusation. Her features are otherwise calm, but her aura is in turmoil. He goes down on one knee beside her. She slips her arms around him and hugs herself close.
“I must go now.”
“Are you gonna come back?”
“Yes.” One way or another, he’ll be back. Maybe not in a physical body, maybe not for very long, but he’ll be back. In death, the spirit is freed and spirits move very quickly. He could go almost anywhere as a dying heart beat its last."Don’t worry.”
“How can I help it?” Shell draws back, looks at him. Emotion twists at her face. Tears stream from her eyes."You won’t tell me what’s going on, what kind of run this is gonna be. What am I supposed to think?”
“Raccoon has clever paws and knows many tricks.”
Shell grunts and then sobs, clinging to him."I don’t care about Raccoon! I care about
you
!”
“I am Raccoon.”
Indeed, he must be, more now than ever.
“I’ll be back.”
“Hold me.”
For a few moments, he holds her tightly, but then he gently disengages her arms and gets to his feet. Shell avoids looking at him then. She rubs and brushes at her eyes. She follows him up the stairs to the back-alley door, hugs him one last time, then lets go. Bandit steps into the morning shade. The door thunks closed behind him.
Bandit looks to his left.
In the shadows there waits Zetana. She is slim and small but has a look more menacing than any woman Bandit’s ever seen. Her hair is a shaggy black mass that spills about her face and shoulders; her eyes are rimmed in koal, and her pupils are like ebony stones gleaming from the amid the hard, dark lines of her face. She is all in black: studded black synthleather vest and pants, boots, and a voluminous cloak that reaches nearly to her ankles. Necklaces and beads hang from her neck; a confusion of bangles and rings surround her wrists and fingers. Her voice is husky, soft and low, like a snarl.
“I’ll watch the woman,” she says.
“And the kids?”
Zetana nods.
That is reassuring, for Zetana follows Wolf. Once Wolf extends her protection to another, nothing will make her betray that responsibility. And there is one other thing, one special quality. It is said that Wolf wins every fight but her last, and in that fight she dies. Bandit does not doubt that when he returns, if he returns, he will find that either all is well, or that Zetana, Shell, and the kids are all dead.
It is in the nature of this day that things will either go very well, or very badly.
“Thank you,” he says.
“Guard yourself, shaman,” Zetana warns. Bandit nods, and turns down the alleyway.
Brian swallows the last of the wintergreen-flavored nutrisoy crackers from his rations and washes it down with a quick gulp of water. All he’s got left now are a couple of Nerps and the few ounces of Soyade swishing around in his canteen. He leans back against the tunnel wall, wishing he could sleep."How long we been down here, anyway?” he says."Seems like weeks.”
“You hear something, kid?”
Brian opens his eyes to find Art already on his feet, bristling with weapons, looking back and forth along the old subway tunnel.
“Coming our way,” Art whispers."Mount up.”
Art lowers his helmet visor. Brian pulls on his own helmet and lugs himself up. He’s at the point where fear of the unknown isn’t enough to overpower fatigue and recharge his batteries. It’ll take a clear and imminent threat to do that. He’s not looking forward to it.
They move up the tunnel, weapons at ready. Art pulls open a metal grille in the tunnel wall. They move into a maze of smaller passages. As they round a corner, two figures come into sight. In the grayish half-light of Brian’s Nightfighter visor, they look like women, ork women, big and solid and clad in dark synthleather. Brian sees them suddenly halt, their eyes flaring wide with surprise, and the sight strikes him like a bullet to the bridge of the nose.
Against the twilight dark of the tunnel, the orks’ eyes burn an infernal red.
“
BLAST'EM,
KID
!" Art roars.
And then they’re both blazing away on full auto. These aren’t orks, not anymore. Brian isn’t sure what the frag they are, but something about Art’s cryptic warnings has helped persuade him that, whatever these beasties be, they’re better dead than with eyes of burning red.
The tunnel vibrates with the thunderous stammering of weapons. The orks stagger around and collapse. Streaks of dazzling white like headless comets blast outward in every direction. A greenish haze, sparking and glinting like some arcane energy shield, swells out of nothing to fill the tunnel ahead. Then, from the fallen orks rise a half dozen semitransparent orbs, orangey, like bubbles, but about the size of melons. The orbs float up like they’re bobbing on currents of air and start drifting all around. A dozen more follow, then more and more. They float into the tunnel walls and ceiling and vanish.
“Okay, kid.”
The bodies are half-melted into the floor of the tunnel. Hollowed out, like melted plastic, fused and congealed and scorched black. They smell like death.
“We’re getting close now, kid,” Art says."Real close.”
Brian looks at him, and says, “Close to what?”
Art puts up his visor, meets Brian’s eyes, holds them for several moments, then scowls, turns and heads up the tunnel."I’m getting low on ammo, Art.”
Art stops, and says, “Tell me about it.”
Kurushima Jussai collects his briefcase, his aide, and a single KFK security operative and takes the lift to the parking garage beneath New Bronx Plaza. The car that awaits him there is a rather customary Toyota Elite. The driver is also a KFK International employee.
Once inside the rear compartment, Kurushima uses the intercom to inform the driver as to his destination. Kurushima’s aide remarks, “It should be interesting, Kurushima-san, to hear how Dr. Liron Phalen will explain the inconsistencies in the Materials Records.”
Kurushima nods."Yes.”
There is, however, a time and place for all things, and proper methods and proper channels. This morning meeting at the Metascience facility offends Kurushima’s sense of propriety. What business has he, an auditor, meeting anyone anywhere but in the full and impartial light of his assigned station at Hurley-Cooper’s administrative offices? He would not have agreed to this meeting had not Amy Berman been the one to request it, and he only agreed out of the fear that, if he refused, she might launch into yet another of her tirades. He has faced these astonishing outbursts more than once and once was more than enough. Amy Berman is certainly one of the most outspoken, aggressive, shrewish woman executives he’s ever met, and he does not consider the acquaintance to be a pleasant one. There are ways in which one can make one’s opinions known, and ways of being aggressive without leaving the finer traits of civilization behind. Amy Berman is obviously unskilled in any of these techniques. She gives weight to the arguments of those who consider all women to be chaotic bundles of hysterical emotion, and all non-Japanese—and especially all Anglos—to be little better than barbarians.
And there is also the matter of the brief confrontation between Amy Berman and one of Kurushima’s junior auditors; specifically, Amy Berman’s remarks concerning “slaves and serfs.” Absolutely astonishing. Kurushima hopes that this trip to the Metascience facility—the fact that he is now going out of his way to accommodate a Hurley-Cooper executive—will serve in some part to dispel such ridiculous notions from Amy Berman’s mind.
Slaves and serfs. Unbelievable.
Could anything be further from the truth?
Fortunately, before such thoughts can completely unsettle his mind, the car pulls to a stop at the entrance to the Metascience facility. Kurushima strides into the lobby and is met there by a tall, pale man in an odd suit that seems some years out of date."I am Dr. Liron Phalen,” the man says."Allow me to welcome you, good sir, to our humble niche.”
“It is my pleasure,” Kurushima replies, briefly bowing, before he can quite stop himself. Being met by the eminent Dr. Phalen personally is something of a surprise. They shake hands. Kurushima hurries to say, “And it is my honor as well, Dr. Phalen. May I say that your standing as a scientist is well-known, both at the North American office of Kono-Furata-Ko, and at our home offices in Tokyo. It is regarded with great pride that a man of your reputation would serve as part of our corporate family, with our subsidiary, Hurley-Cooper Laboratories.”