Choose your enemies carefully s-2 Page 7

  Had the political leaders listened to those wiser and less avaricious heads, Britain's honor would not have been sullied by participation in the multinational megacorporations' schemes that ultimately resulted in their control of Hong Kong. Britain had been used. The multinational corporations funding the rebellion had also funded dissident warlords, using the breakup of the repressive Shui regime to grab and hold Hong Kong and the New Territories for themselves. Those corporations renamed their corporate state the Hong Kong Free Enterprise Enclave. When Britain stepped forward to claim control, there had been laughter in the boardrooms. The corps had already obtained grants to the disputed territories from a dozen warlords in trade for arms and supplies. It wasn't strictly legal, but they had possesion. The few British ambassadors to Chinese leaders who hadn't had "accidents" were sent away in shame. Liaisons to the corporate consortium waited for appointments that never materialized.

  The whole dishonorable episode was over and done before Glover had been born, but he felt the pain as if he had been one of those embarrassed ambassadors. Growing up, he had heard the stories from veterans of the expeditionary force, and had wondered why they didn't match the official histories he was taught in school. It wasn't until he was at university and under the tutelege of druids that he learned the true story. The duplicity and betrayals were so much like what he himself saw in Britain today. He had become certain that the megacorporations would very much like to see Britain dead, and that certainty had crystallized his belief that Britain could only be restored to glory by a return to the old ways.

  They crossed the strait without incident and turned northward along the coast. Within an hour they would reach the inlet where the aircraft was hidden. Then, he would be on his way home with the prize that would make possible the first steps in restoring the glory that was Britain.

  He looked back across the dark water. The glittering spires of Hong Kong were alight with the dazzle of false promises. They were ugly. This place made him feel soiled; he set his thoughts to the future.

  Sam stared at Dodger. The elf sat slumped in the padded armchair he had appropriated, lost in the world of the Matrix, his fingers occasionally tapping a staccato rhythm on his Fuchi cyberdeck. Dodger looked relaxed, which was annoying. Sam poked him. "Find anything yet?"

  "By all that's good on the earth! Do you want to do it yourself?"

  The elf's annoyance triggered Sam's own pent-up frustration. "Maybe I should!"

  "Maybe you should just ask our host to shoot you. Glover's system is tough; it's a lot better protected than it should be. You may have been a hotshot researcher but you never were much of a decker. Besides, you're months behind the SOTA."

  The elf's harsh appraisal of his abilities stung. "I don't need to be state-of-the-art to bust his hincky system."

  Dodger laughed scornfully. "You're so hot! So sure! This 'hincky system' has got protection that has fried deckers better than you could ever dream of being." "Well, if you're not getting anywhere, somebody has to."

  "I've been working the deck for three days now.

  There are layers of this system that are glacial with 1C. Positively cryogenic. You want to fry your brain? Do it with somebody else's hardware. I won't have you getting my chips iced just because you can't wait for a professional to do his job." Dodger was right, of course. The elf was a pro at unauthorized computer access. Even with the elf's guidance, Sam had been a barely adequate decker when they had run against the Renraku architecture last year. With all of his magical study and firearms practice, Sam had found no time to pursue Dodger's peculiar technomancy. Besides, the computer interface still gave Sam headaches, and the awakening of his magical powers had made the Matrix an even more uncomfortable place. His brash assertions and challenge of Dodger's competence were just manifestations of his frustrations.

  "I'm sorry, Dodger. You're right. Do what you can."

  " 'Twould seem my own patience is frayed as well, Sir Twist. I like this enforced guesting no more than you. 'Twould be best not to disturb me whilst I work, for I spoke truly of the devilish complexity of the system. Were you to distract me at the wrong moment, you would learn nothing more than how to care for an elven vegetable."

  "That's not something I want to do, Dodger. Just let me know when you get something."

  "I shall. But wander not too far lest you not be available should their ice lock me in." "I'll be here," said Sam.

  Dodger smiled with confidence. "I shall count on it."

  The elf returned his attention to the Matrix, leaving Sam to contemplate their position. Glover had brought them to England, alleging that he needed them to protect Corbeau now that Burke was gone. Some need! The flight had been uneventful, Corbeau being delivered to a minor ATT installation without incident. Glover had told them to wait at his mansion, offering a handsome retainer. That had been four days ago. Four days in which they had not seen or heard from Glover.

  Sam had already been suspicious of Glover's motives. He didn't like the man's attitude. Why had he let Dodger talk him into continuing to work with the man? Why? Because of the chance to find Janice. That slim hope had dwindled to nothing. Janice was on Yomi; she couldn't be further away from England.

  But leaving wouldn't be simple. The mansion's population seemed to consist only of a handful of servants, who knew nothing. They were polite and efficient, but totally unhelpful. There were uniformed guards with guns as well, but he and Dodger only saw them when they tried to go beyond the immediate grounds. So far everyone had remained polite, but he was sure that the guards had orders to prevent Sam and Dodger from leaving the estate. Sam had tried an astral survey of the place and found many of the rooms blocked to him. He hadn't tried to get through those blocks, for there were half-world presences drifting around the mansion, hostile spirits that threatened him when he attempted to probe in certain directions.

  As much as he disliked his surroundings and the treatment they were receiving, he knew that he couldn't just leave. He had seen the thing Glover had summoned in the Mihn-Pao warehouse. All of his senses screamed that it was wrong. His hair had stood on end when he had seen it form, his head throbbing with a warning howl. Glover had called it, and the list Dodger retrieved from Glover's computer said that he wanted a woman who might be his sister Janice. Now, whether or not the woman Glover sought was Janice, Sam wanted to know just who he had been working for. He had to know more about Glover and his organization. It was hours before Dodger jacked out. His eyes were sunken and rimmed with the bruising of exhaustion.

  " 'Twould seem that Rene' Corbeau is not now nor ever has been connected to ATT."

  "You're sure?"

  The elf quirked his mouth up in annoyance.

  "Sorry." Sam ran his fingers up through his beard until his palms cradled his jaw. "Then Glover is a rogue."

  " 'Tis a strong possibility."

  "What about Burke?"

  "The man is a shadow. There are tracks here and there, the occasional oblique reference, but all vanish if followed. Naetheless, the pattern is similar to one I have seen before. That shadow was a covert operative for the British government. By all the signs, I would venture that the late Burke was a special agent of some kind."

  "A government agent?"

  Dodger sighed. "You have been unbearable for days.

  Have you gone deaf now, too?"

  "Sorry, Dodger." The apologies were becoming a habit. Sam's nerves were frayed, but Dodger's must be worse. The elf had been doing all the hard work.

  "Apology accepted, Sir Twist." Dodger massaged his forehead, then stared down at his hands. Without looking up, he said, "I fear that I have not helped matters, either. I wish I had never gotten you involved in this."

  "I got myself involved. You may have found the list with a name that might be my sister's, but I was the one who decided to chase that phantom. Going to the Orient was supposed to get us closer to her trail. We were supposed to find out what Glover was doing and who the woman was. Now look at us. We're in Engl
and and practically under house arrest. We still don't know anything."

  "Not entirely true. We know that Glover, ATT rogue or not, is part of an efficient organization. While we were helping him acquire Sanchez and Corbeau, someone else has been completing the rest of the list.

  At the rate they are moving, whatever plans they have are coming to a head soon.''

  "You've gotten an update on the list? Let me see it."

  Dodger furrowed his brow as if the request was an annoyance.

  "Wait a minute," he said, tapping keys. He snapped open the back of his cyberdeck and rolled out the monitor screen. After locking it, he turned it so Sam could see. "Here it is."

  Sam read it quickly. Five out of the seven names were listed as acquired. Janice Walters, still last on the list, was unacquired. Reason enough to stay. Her acquisition might be why Glover had retained them. "So what do we do now?"

  "Wait. With time and additional endeavor, I shall uncover more details."

  Sam shook his head. "You've done more than enough for today. If you decked now, you'd trip over the first node you encountered. You need a rest."

  " 'Tis true." Dodger stretched. Sam could hear his joints crack. " 'Tis also true that I need to get some exercise. Mayhap a walk in the garden would get the blood flowing again."

  The late afternoon sun slanted across the garden, throwing chill pools of shade from the carefully trimmed evergreen trees and shrubs. Winter had stripped the massive oaks of their leaves, leaving their shadows a net of enmeshing branches. Oppressed by the image, Sam guided their walk into the topiary maze. Within its walls, the grasping oaks were only visible near the outer edge.

  The curving paths went from shadow into sunlight and back again, alternately chilling and warming them. They took turns at random, not caring whether they reached the maze's heart, simply satisfied to be moving. After a while, they found themselves at the edge of a clearing. The grass was brown, withered into dormancy by the season. In summer, the circle would have been lush, a quiet, pleasant place to laze in the sun. A quartet of stone blocks, apparently seats, were set at the cardinal points.

  Dodger headed for the one bench still touched by the sun and stretched out on it. The block was long enough that only the elf's feet hung over the edge. Sam sauntered over to join him. When he reached the stone, he crouched.

  "What do you make of this?"

  "A popular place to look at the scenery?"

  "No, these symbols. There's something carved along the side of the stone."

  Dodger rolled over onto his side and ran his fingers along the carving. "Hmmm. Writing. Most of the letter forms seem to be roman, but the frequencies and juxtapositions are not English. 'Tis not a language I know."

  Sam stared at the words, if they were words. Most of the letters were familiar, but they were not ordered into words he knew. Silently, he tried sounding out the syllables he knew. There seemed to be a rhythm to the sounds, an interlocking cadence. Like the locking spell Sally had taught him.

  "Didn't you once tell me that all mansions had secret passages?"

  Dodger chuckled. "You don't think that this is some kind of hidden entrance to an underground tunnel complex where Glover and his fellows plot the overthrow of all who stand in the way of their re-establishment of the British Empire? Speak the incantation and the stone shall rise?"

  "Since you put it that way, why not?"

  "Because this is not some cheap piece of fiction." "But there does seem to be a crack. Like the top of the stone is a lid."

  Dodger slid from the stone and examined the shadow

  Sam pointed out. "Mayhap."

  "Give me a hand to lift it." Lifting didn't work. Nor did sliding, pushing, pulling, or twisting. Sam knelt in front of the stone, frowning at it. Dodger sat on the grass, leaning back on his hands.

  "A trick of the light. A crack in the rock."

  "I'm going to try something," Sam said. He stared at the symbols, clearing his mind of his frustration. He focused his magical energy, using the rhythmic mnemonic by which he., recalled the counter to Sally's locking spell. Into its steady but broadening cadence, he wove the rhythm he had discerned in the carved symbols. Nothing happened. He tried again, working at smoothing the flow of his thoughts, forcing them deeper into the pattern of the spell. This time he felt something in the stone relax.

  Tentatively, he reached out his hand and pressed on the top of the stone. The upper surface slid back slightly, revealing a dark hollow wide enough for fingers. Sam stood and slipped his fingers into the gap. He braced himself, ready for the weight, and found the stone swinging up far more easily than he expected.

  Visions of concealed stairways and torch-lit underground passages flashed through his head. With a final heave, he swung the slab back. It rocked up, but instead of sliding free, stayed upright as if hinged to the back of the bench. He looked; it was.

  The bench contained no entrance to secret places. It seemed filled with carefully folded white cloth. Sam tugged on one pile. It unfolded to reveal that it was a robe. Complex swirls were embroidered on its chest. "Tacky rags," Dodger said. He was standing too, looking over Sam's shoulder. "Wizard stuff."

  " 'Tis hardly a surprise. We saw what he did to that

  Mihn-Pao gunner."

  "I've seen these symbols somewhere."

  "Mayhaps Friend Glover is Merlin Ambrosius reawakened to save the world."

  "Merlin?" Sam asked thoughtfully.

  "Sir Twist, I jested."

  "But you jogged my memory. When I was studying about magic, I read some about the different kinds. A lot of sources suggest that Merlin, if he existed, was a druid. These are druidic symbols."

  Dodger poked at the bundles of cloth still in the bench. He disturbed the piles enough to reveal a golden glitter. Careful not to snag the cloth, he removed a small sickle. Its blade glittered a ruddy gold in the sunlight.

  "A sacrificial knife?"

  "A ritual implement for the cutting of the holy mistletoe. Druids are nature magicians, shamans of a peculiar breed. They were very prominent in the restoration of the wild lands in Ireland before the Shidhe took control."

  "Driven out like the snakes before Padraigh's wrath." Dodger tossed the sickle back into the bench. "There are enough robes here to clothe a dozen or so people. 'Twould seem Friend Glover is part of a circle of druids. Mayhap he acts in their interests and, if so, he might even be a government agent."

  "How so?"

  "Know you not that the Lord Protector is a druid?"

  "I didn't."

  " 'Tis true. His Green Party is a coalition of members of both Houses of Parliament."

  "I didn't realize the Greens were druids. I remember hearing how they ousted the last Conservative government after the restoration of the monarchy."

  "They were instrumental in the restoration and have yet to face a serious challenge to their control of the government. England has not seen such a powerful interest group since Cromwell's Puritans."

  "Well, I hope that the druids are more open-minded than the Puritans. With the power they have in this country, they'd better be," Sam said. "Everything I read about druids makes them out to be benevolent sorts. Of old, they were lore keepers and law speakers, prominent and worthy members of the community. In modern Britain, they are active in the recognition and training of magically active persons as well as taking a prominent role in higher education."

  Dodger prodded at the robes. " 'Twould not be wise to expect more tolerance than the Puritans offered. Was not druidism a sort of a religion and druids its priests?"

  "Before the Awakening, maybe so. The cults subscribing to druidism built their belief systems on idiosyncratic reconstructions of old Celtic paganism. They had more than their share of egotistical false prophets. Nobody really knows exactly how the old druids operated, since they kept no written records.

  "The druids of the Sixth World are the inheritors of that tradition, but I'm not sure that any of them are direct descendents. When the magic c
ame back, some magicians built their focus parameters around what they believed to be druidic tenets and rituals. Their totems were things like Sun, Oak, Zephyr, Stream, and Stag. Forest and growing land stuff. Naturally, they called themselves druids. Maybe it's their mindset or maybe it's the way the magic works, but mostly they have confined their activities to Europe. Although they were quite active in the restoration of the land in the isles and on the continent, they weren't aggressive like the tribal magicians in North America. I hadn't known they were so involved in British politics.

  "England has been prospering under the Greens. If Glover is a druid, we're probably being paranoid about his motives; the delay may be nothing sinister at all. He may just be waiting for the right phase of the moon or something to undertake the next part of his operation. Druids worry a lot about astrological cycles."

  Dodger rubbed his fingers together, switching his gaze from them to the contents of the bench. He said thoughtfully, "Let us hope that he is not a fanatic about this stuff.''

  Glover was uncomfortable in the closeness of the room, finding the scent of the many bouquets oppressive. Some of the flowers were wilted, some fresh cut. The mixture of floral perfume and organic decay was an olfactory confusion. How did Hyde-White stand it? Or was the old man no longer able to smell the blossoms with which he surrounded himself?

  Hyde-White sat enthroned behind an ancient oak desk whose top was eccentric, the shape of a crosscut bole. His massive gut was wedged into a concavity that allowed him easy reach of the telecom on one hand and the bank of internal intercoms on the other. The grey light of the telecom monitor, the brightest source of illumination in the room, lit his face from below, reversing the normal pattern of highlights. The lighting roughened the softness of the broad face and made his eyes a glitter in pools of darkness.