Mahom Alazahad looked Kieran up and down with a wide, approving grin. It was getting late in the afternoon. "Well, I'll be . . . It took me a second to be sure, but, yep, it's you all right, Knight. So what's going on? Looks like you decided to come over to the sophisticated side of the race."
"Special effects, Mahom. I've taken it on as a new vocation to become the spiritual savior of the chief of Zorken Consolidated."
Mahom looked appalled. "The big construction outfit? You're kidding! But, no . . . you're not kidding. Don't tell me you're thinking of taking on a Zorken army with those troops you asked me to rustle up. I thought they were supposed to be just standby protection for these friends of yours out at Tharsis."
"Don't worry," Kieran told him. "I'm not into the interplanetary war business yet."
"So what gives?"
As they walked to the office, Kieran added as much as was pertinent to what he had told Mahom when he called from the Oasis the previous evening. Mahom poured two coffees from the pot by the window while he listened. Kieran finished with a summary of the latest developments, including what had happened to Leppo and Casey.
"Sol has this way of rushing into things, like a lot of kids with ambitions," Mahom said. "But he's okay. Do I take it our first priority now is to find where he's at and bust him out?"
Kieran nodded. "The light wasn't too good, and I was at the wrong angle. I couldn't get the car's registration."
"Probably fake, anyhow," Mahom grunted. "But that shouldn't be a problem. There aren't that many snazzy black Metrosines in this city. And if these are guys from some off-planet syndicate looking for a wad of loot that went missing like you think, it'll either be a rental, or registered with an owner on a pretty narrowed-down list. If we come up with a probable, we can find it if we get its locator code out of the security company's database." Mahom winked. "Otherwise it might depend on eyes out on the streets."
There was little Kieran could do but wait. He had thought that after the wedding party left, he might risk showing himself at June's, but with the syndicate out and almost certainly looking for him he decided against it. He was on his way back to the Oasis, when Pierre called to say he had obtained a multiplex modulator of the kind Kieran had specified, and they needed to get together to rehearse how they would use it. Since there was no point in advertising Pierre's involvement by having Kieran go to where he was, they arranged to meet at the hotel.
Pierre had with him an artificial culture of cells containing the assembled protein synthesizers and molecular-circuit receivers for activating them, along with portable equipment to analyze the codes picked up by the receivers and how the synthesizers responded. Through several hours of trial-and-error testing, they called the room's number from a pocket comset fed by the muxmod and established the settings needed to generate the required external field pattern. By the time they had gotten it right, they could call the room, and under cover of an innocuous regular connection, transmit a protein-director code to the synthesizers inside the cells of the culture sample placed close to the receiving screen. To be sure it wasn't an accidental result due to all the equipment being in the same room, Kieran took the muxmod down to one of the public booths in the lobby and made several calls from there, which proved successful. As a finale, he routed a call through Pierre's comset, with the muxmod attached. Hence, they could piggyback the codes onto a call from a third party being routed through to the called number. The call carrying the code to the target didn't have to originate from the phone that the muxmod was connected to.
By this time, a new possibility had suggested itself to Kieran's ever fertile mind. "Let's put it to a live test before we go active with Asgard," he said to Pierre upon returning to the room. "Can you set up codes to deactivate the synthesizers that we initiated among those guys out at Troy?"
"Deactivate them?" Pierre looked mystified.
"Yes. I want to test the effectiveness in selecting a target subject." Kieran meant the individual who would be actually at the receiving screen, as opposed to others who might be close by. "And it will add to the image. Hasn't one of the best ways of turning nonbelievers around always been a demonstration of mystical healing? We're about to expand the business."
A half hour later, Kieran was looking at the frightful, green-purple visage of Justin Banks at the Troy site. Banks was still in the Mule transporter but outfitted in a lightweight suit as if he were about to leave; also, there were figures in the background who looked like medics. It seemed that Kieran had caught them just as they were about to be moved to the hospital at Lowell.
"Who the hell are you?" Banks demanded, taking in the garish, smiling form that had appeared on an incoming message screen.
"Profoundest greetings to you. I am he who is known as the Khal of Tadzhikstan, at present in Lowell, who only as recently as this morning had the honor of an audience with your Lady Marissa." Kieran glanced across the room at Pierre, who was juggling numbers on a screen plugged into the muxmod, which in turn was feeding into the room system's data port.
"Oh God, not another one," Banks groaned.
"Who is that?" Kieran heard one of the doctors mutter in the background.
"I'm not sure. I haven't seen him before. We've been having trouble from"
"I have come at the behest of the seer Keziah, who is with the party nearby to you in the desert. Deserts are no stranger to me. Neither is the affliction that you suffer. But the tidings I bring you are joyous! Your transgressions were committed out of ignorance and not malice, and are therefore to be forgiven. I bring to you the healing powers from our Earthly home of the spirit."
"Isn't there ever going to be an escape from you people? Look, for the last time . . ."
Pierre was nodding and sending a thumbs-up. Kieran responded in kind, his hand below the viewing angle from the screen's pickup. "Whether you believe or not at the present time is immaterial. You will." He pointed a quavering finger, at the same time fixating with a mystical stare. "To give proof, I have selected you, Justin Banks, to be the sole receiver, for now, of relief from the curse that is known as the Plague of Akhnaton. Thy skin shall henceforth be restored and its blemishes vanish. The sickness shall be gone from thy stomach and thy bowels. The aches that have blighted thee shall ease and fade. Thy"
"Bullshit," Banks snarled, and cut the connection.
"It seemed to go through okay," Pierre told Kieran.
"We'll soon see," Kieran said.
Minutes later, Trevany called from the Juggernaut out at Tharsis. "Bravo," he complimented when Kieran answered.
"What do you mean?"
"We just watched your performance with Banks." Kieran had talked to Trevany from his hotel room after becoming the Khal that morning, so Trevany was familiar with his new appearance.
"Like it?" Kieran said. "It looked as if they're just leaving for Lowell."
"That's right," Trevany confirmed. "Lowell sent an airbus to collect them. Their own vehicles are staying there for the time being, until they've been checked over. Now would you mind filling us in on the rest of it?"
"As I just told Pierre, who's here with me, we're going into the mystical healing business."
"You're going to make them better?"
"Just Banks."
"How can it be that selective?"
"Pierre and I think we've figured out a way. So this is a test before trying it with Asgardbut think of the impact it could have on Hamilton if it works. Also, it might have the very real effect of changing Banks into a convertor at least, give him a lot to think about." Just then, a call came in on Kieran's comset. He flipped the unit out and accepted to find that the caller was Mahom. "Look, Walter, I've just got another call that might be something I've been waiting for. Can I get back to you on this?"
"Sure." Trevany disappeared. Kieran redirected Mahom to the room's larger screen.
"Mahom. What news?"
"I think we've got it. It's owned by a city hire franchise, on lease to a guy called Lee Mullen, who organizes local muscle and does caretaking."
Kieran nodded. It sounded like the kind of person he'd expect the syndicate to mobilize until their own people arrived to take over. "Where is it?" he asked.
"At an address in Embarcadero. The people I've put there have counted seven bodies coming and going who aren't Sol or Casey."
"You haven't positively identified Sol and Casey there?" Kieran checked.
"Not as yet. But they have to be there. It's going to be a tough one to crack, though. No clear plan of action right now. The troops are checking it out and going through the options. The best thing for now is just to keep watching the place for a while longer to see what comes up."
Kieran nodded reluctantly. "Do we know where Sol and Casey's flymo is?" he asked.
"The skylock at Cherbourg." Mahom meant the upper-level flyer parking area with locks out to the atmosphere. Flyers weren't used within the covered-over confines of Lowell itself. When Leppo and Casey wanted to work on it in their shop, they moved it there by road.
"Okay, well I guess I'll have to leave it with you," Kieran conceded. "It's been a rough day here, too. We'll be wanting to turn in after we've eaten something. Let me know if anything new develops, okay?"
"You've got it, Knight," Mahom promised.