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Sixteen

 

Peter Shark's stony eyes were directed at the juncture of ceiling and wall, focusing on nothing in particular. He appeared to be alone, but in fact, three others were with him psychically—one of them actively, the other two as passive listeners. By their standards, it was turning into a long conference.

Shark popped another cigarette from the silver dispenser that his secretary filled twice daily on his desk. "So what happened then?" he asked silently.

Kurt Hardman's reply was likewise soundless, spoken flatly into his mind. "They hiked up out of the canyon and went back to Merlin's place in the desert. But remember: based on what I got out of the two ghosts, they definitely know about the chaos generator—they call it 'the surprise generator.' They know it's accelerating, and they know what's going to happen.

"So we know damn well why they went to the gate, even if I couldn't follow them in with the grid. They wanted more information. But now I can't tap any of them to find out what they learned there; they pick me up at first touch, and then Merlin or his wife jumps in, even from a distance."

Hardman's thoughts were rational enough, but the mind producing them was testy, even angry. "Those are the two most dangerous people on the planet," Hardman continued, "and we never even knew about them! It's hard to believe they just now crawled out of the woodwork."

Peter Shark frowned. Apparently these people had become what Leif Haller might have, if the Seven Lords hadn't stepped in and queered Haller and his operation. Now, with The Seven gone, it was up to the four of them. But it shouldn't be difficult. Merlin didn't have Haller's personnel, organization, or money.

"We need to know what they learned from the guardian," Shark said. "What have you done with the ghosts?"

Hardman replied with a sardonic mental chuckle. " I softened them up by zapping them back and forth between two terminals for a while before I questioned them. Before and after. Right now they're sort of smeared around inside a holding bottle, nice and apathetic. But I can revive them if we want them for anything."

Shark filed the information mentally. "You said that two of the group returned to their home in Flagstaff."

"That was before the others visited the gate; I already told you that. They seemed to pull out of the action, even though they're still connected."

Mentally Shark tried to examine that, but his attention just now was like an eye with a clouded membrane; it was hard to examine details. His mind swelled with irritation, and he shook it off; his special strength was his calmness and rationality.

"How would it work to just monitor their routine thoughts, without actually prodding around?"

"No damn way, Shark. They're like a lot of psychics—they've got a kind of automatic alarm against eavesdropping. I never could read Sigurdsson, and now that Merlin and his wife have worked on the others, none of them are accessible. When I tried to prod the woman in Flagstaff, just nice and light, she yelled, and she and Merlin's wife burned my ass. Clobbered me, actually. Later, when I only sniffed around her old man a little bit, Merlin jumped in. I was ready for that one, though, and bailed out quick.

"So I can't mindread them—can't safely contact their minds at all. If you want me to predict what the hell they're going to do, I'll have to actually watch them on the remote, analyze their movements, and extrapolate, which is going to tie me down; I need some help on this."

Shark scowled, his lips pursed. "The guardian may have told them where the generator is. He could probably interpret that as neutral information without getting nailed."

"Well, of course he did, if that's what they asked him. That's obvious, for chrissake! If they asked him, the sonofabitch told them."

Shark felt irritation surge. Hardman's surly response to everything he said wasn't helping his concentration. He reached deeper for self-control. "What makes you so sure he told them?"

"I checked him out with the idiot kid. The guardian's name is Gandy. The bastard worked cheek to cheek with Leif Haller in the early Noetie days, and when The Seven came down on Haller and his cronies, Gandy was one of them that got killed. He's only neutral because he has to be—and no more than he has to be."

So, thought Shark, there was little doubt that the guardian, this Gandy, had told Merlin where the chaos generator was—assuming Merlin was smart enough to ask; and it appeared that he was. On the other side of reality, Gandy might be above anger or vengefulness, but he'd still have enough emotional polarity to care who won.

Mentally, Shark backed away and examined the situation. What was needed now was effective action. If you struck effectively in present time, covering all the alternatives, you forestalled future problems. He would assume that Merlin knew about Isle Royale and would try to do something about it, so they'd kill him now. If they were wrong, that was Merlin's hard luck, not theirs.

This was nothing to fool around with. They could afford to take no chances. To continue as the proxies of The Seven during the next cycle, they had to ensure the on-schedule dissolution of the present cycle. That had been made clear, years ago, and till now it had seemed simple.

"There are direct and forceful actions you could take personally, today," he said to Hardman, "that would finalize this situation."

Kurt Hardman's emotional response was angry exasperation. "Jesus Christ, Shark! If I was dumb enough to jump Merlin, the rest of them would be all over me like a nest of fucking scorpions! I'd be a basket case for a month—maybe even dead! You'd still have the rest of them running loose, and no gridman."

Hardman, never stable, was really upset now. "If the grid makes you ten times as sensitive as otherwise, it damned well makes you ten times as vulnerable, too! You don't know what it's like, riding the grid on a job! That little training stint The Lords gave you wasn't even a sample; that was patty-cake. Try busting a witch sometime! If she has a chance to fight back, it's like a bout with the flu; a really tough one can be like dengue fever. It's bullshit like that that makes my body look sixty when it's forty-three.

"Tell you what, Shark," he went on sarcastically. "You come out here and ride the grid. I'll take me a vacation and you can be the gridman."

Shark's response was both conciliatory and vaguely sinister. "Sorry, Kurt. I won't try to make you do something that's too much for you. But consider my position: I have to see that this situation is handled. Each of us has his principal talent and consequent responsibilities. The Lords selected you to ride the booster grid. I'm not sure what I'll do with you if you can't function as needed."

"Nobody said anything about 'can't function,' for chrissake! The point is, why be stupid? All we need to do is set up an ambush near the gate. That's simple enough."

"Simple isn't the word for it, my friend. Gates and their surrounds are neutral ground."

"I'm not talking about shooting them at the gate, Shark! I'm talking about near the gate!"

"How near?"

"I don't know. How far away is neutral?"

"I don't know, either. That's part of the problem. We need to stop them along the way somewhere."

He's right about one thing, though, Shark thought privately. The situation could be handled by mundane methods and proxies without risk of losing their gridman. When all was said and done, connections, money, leverage, and unboosted psi were all the power they really needed for most actions. And they had plenty of those—those and professionalism. The booster grid could be damned useful and sometimes essential, but those were the basics.

And when this affair was over, maybe he'd see about finding a replacement for Hardman; the fat toad was losing his grip. Meanwhile, he'd have to make do with him.

Shark changed the subject. "If you were going to the island from Phoenix, how would you go?"

"From Phoenix?" Hardman shifted from combative to contemplative. "If I was Merlin? Hmm. The quickest way would be to fly—take a major airline to Chicago or Minneapolis, then a regional line to Duluth. From there I'd charter a small ski-mounted plane to the island."

"Do you think that's how they'd go, then?"

"If they're in a hurry—but they're probably not. And Merlin's no dummy; he'd know a plane would be easier to destroy, even if he or Sigurdsson flies it personally—which is unlikely, although I need to watch for something like that. No, what they'll probably do is drive to the lake."

"You weren't successful at stopping Sigurdsson when he drove to Arizona. Why was that?"

"Well look at it! I didn't know what we were up against then! I was using the equivalent of ballistic missiles on a mobile target evasively driven and of comparable speed. The old man dodged and the missiles didn't change course. I had no way of knowing the old fart was so alert!"

Hardman wondered momentarily if Shark had twigged on how he'd opened the tailgate—knew and just wasn't saying anything, saving it to hit him with later. He'd used grid-boosted TK—a small pressor beam, actually—to push the latch that allowed the office furniture to dump onto the freeway. That one small use of a pressor beam had set off alarms on the other side of reality, and instantly he'd felt a referee behind his shoulder. He didn't care to speculate on what might have happened to him if Sigurdsson hadn't dodged successfully.

"The way we need to go now," Hardman continued, "is to use intelligent, self-adjusting, target-seeking missiles: assassins, not accidents."

If there were just a way to use some of the ancient technology, Hardman thought to himself—technology from one of the wizard-war cycles, maybe. Even the Lords hadn't been able to get away with doing that, but it was nice to think about.

As Hardman privately thought this, an image formed in the mind of Peter Shark, an image of black night, enclosed by hills and reeking with archaic power. A tower stood on a hill, and from it, something utterly brutal watched. Inadvertently Shark's hackles raised, and Hardman chuckled sardonically.

"Looking at my mental pictures, eh?" Hardman said. "Heavy, huh? What you got there was the robot sentry I told you about, at the toll station—the one Sigurdsson got tangled up with. When the sentry activated, it rang a different alarm in the grid, one I never heard before, and probably a bunch more on the other side. That's what drew my attention to Sigurdsson in the first place. When he got out alive, I figured he might be a problem. Not that he powered his way out, but somehow or other it just didn't waste him. The robot mind—unpredictable if you don't know the program.

"Who knows? Sigurdsson might have been its master in some lifetime way to hell and gone back, when the rules were different. Maybe that's why it let him go. It doesn't make that much difference, because if he wasn't a powerful old sonofabitch in this life, he'd have been a grease spot right there, regardless. That thing is hot! As soon as I got a good whiff of it, I backed away and watched on remote.

"I was just wishing we had something like that; that's what pulled the picture out of my memory files."

Shark was glad they didn't need something like that. He'd known about the tollgate since back when he'd done his grid training, years ago—had known about it because when it took a car, its free-terminal tractor beam set off an alarm in the grid. He'd found it a bit amusing, and had wondered what legal loophole allowed it to persist. But this sentry! The toll-gate was impersonal, while the sentry felt ... evil. It gave him the creeps.

He pushed it out of his mind by shifting his attention to something else. "Speaking of relicts, Kurt, what about using elementals?"

There was a lag of seconds, then a plaintive, "Jesus, Shark, you've got to be kidding! Once you juice them up, they're impossible to control, and you know what kind of a job it is to get them suppressed again! And it's my job! The goddamn gridman's job!"

Shark could feel Hardman's emotion, something between outrage and grief. Maybe the fat toad would be more courteous next time.

"All right, Kurt, okay now. I'm not telling you to use elementals yet, but there may be a time when we'll need one. We may want a blizzard or tornado or earthquake somewhere before this is over.

"And as far as getting them suppressed again—if it takes too long, I'll cover for you with the referee. I'll take full responsibility."

It'd almost be worth taking the heat, Shark thought behind his psi screen. I could say mea culpa all over the place and still make sure the blame fell on you. 

"You're right, though," Shark went on. "Ordinary means should be enough. I'm turning the Merlin group over to you to handle, and you do whatever it takes. I have to work pretty much full time on the Arab project, but I'll try to be available if you need me urgently. What resources do you need that you don't have?"

When Hardman answered, his hostility had disappeared, and he sounded almost docile. "Right now I'd like both Gracco and Sordom," he said, "to contact the muscle and supervise them as necessary. I'll stay here in Dallas on the grid, keeping track of things and coordinating."

Shark decided he didn't want Hardman too subdued; the man needed some spunk. "Fine, Kurt," he said. "And let me add that you've done very well in uncovering all this. Very well, indeed. I also appreciate that in some respects you have the most demanding job of any of us. So both John and Vincent are yours for this project."

Shark shifted his attention to the other two presences there. "Did you get that, Vincent? John?" he asked. "Any comments?"

They'd gotten it, and there weren't any comments. They were solid pros, and neither was a prima donna.

"Good," Shark said. "Do it."

 

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