American Craftsmen (31 page)

“Liar.”

“You’re boring me with your chant, little Sword. Leave me. Quickly now, my simultaneous distractions are failing.” Roderick’s head faded as the surface of the box silvered over again. “I’ll see you again soon.”

Endicott fled from Chimera.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-ONE

Had Eddy been forgotten? Probably. It was one of his particular skills.

Eddy Edwards (real name) sat in his office in the Langley Underground Annex, aka the Peepshow. He wore studio headphones to listen to the domestic reports of three farseers from their sensory deprivation cubicles, before the analysts could screw them up. In singsong voices, like an English version of Chinese tones, the farseers murmured the news.

“Small-craft disturbance in Pennsylvania.”

“Spike in black-box radiation from the Sanctuary.”

“Spiritual assault on the Pentagon.”

The Peepshow had only minimal domestic farsight, more limited since the advent of the Pentagon’s Chimera. The legality of domestic craft spying at the CIA and C-CRT was dubious, but nobody on the right or left trusted the FBI with craft—a legacy of Hoover.

Eddy slept on no particular schedule. When he was awake and the farseers silent, he listened to Wagner, which the reports interrupted with odd synchronicities. For days, the farseers watched and whispered, and nothing else. The Peepshow did nothing, because Eddy did nothing. Eddy was not a genius of craft theory, but knew the straightest line between any two points. That meant acting on info, and not playing psychic voyeur to the world. But Eddy was also as loyal as an American bulldog; when Sphinx had given him a hint, he had always taken it.

Eddy did nothing because Sphinx had left a note. It was her suicide note, really, hidden even from herself in the mirrored passages of conscious thought.
Let the valley run with blood
, it began.
And watch
.

The oracle was simple by Sphinx’s standards. “Valley” meant “Dale.” “Run” referred to his flight from Rhode Island, and “blood” referred to other Mortons. But “run with blood” also meant casualties.

The rest of the note gave the coordinates for action: a date, a time, and a very difficult-to-visit place. Oh, and the note also had a bit more about Sphinx’s love life than Eddy ever wanted or needed to know.

The farseers fell silent. Eddy listened to
Götterdämmerung
, which was better than it sounded, and looked again at his watch. The date was today, the time two hours from now, the place only a short drive and long fight away. His squad and their armed protection were ready. What his bunch of oracles and illusionists could do against that ugly strength, only Sphinx may have known. But if Eddy’s loyalty became a funeral pyre, it would be worth it for one transcendent chord of truth.

*   *   *

We parked the car at the Rockville Metro station. A couple, romantically entangled, shared our inbound platform. I hoped the Pentagon would also be quiet. Tuesday post–rush hour, and a calm day for the U.S. military in the mundane world. By the time we got there, only security and late workers would be in the building. I didn’t expect collateral damage, but if it came, it would be minimal.

Scherie looked up at the ceiling of the station. “Cameras,” she said.

Good, she was still thinking. Pentagon security cameras would also catch us, but what mundanes saw on video was no great concern. What mattered was what craft security would see.

I spoke in a low, casual tone. “When we exit the train, you’ll follow ten feet behind me. Don’t bring out your badge unless you see me pass through the outdoor checkpoint, because I’ll only be trying to fool a few people for a very short time. Now this is important. If there’s any trouble for me, stand aside, look impatient, turn around, leave. Go back to the Sanctuary. You’ve been welcomed there; you’ll find it eventually. You’ll get another shot later.”

I expected protest, but instead her face set in a soldier’s emotion, clamped mouth and dagger eyes, a silence that might be consent but was far from pleased. Perhaps she was closing on another soldier’s epiphany—she was the valuable asset, and I was just the grunt who guarded her.

We waited for the train. I itched for a gun, and we were unarmed. An instinctive discomfort hit me like a bullet coming for the back of my skull.

My instinct responded. I pivoted, keeping my eyes fixed and letting the corners of vision show me a discordant blur. The blur knew it was made, and moved. The runner was quick; I worked with his quickness.

“
Slip and fall
,” I said.

“Whoa!” The blur landed on its ass. “Yippee ki-yo ki-yay, pardner.”

I had grown to hate that Eastern European cowboy accent. “Roman. I thought you said you were going home. I thought you wanted to live.”

“Roman,” said Scherie. “You’ve been a sweetie. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.”

“Ah. Fledgling finally gits it.” Roman came into our focus as he rose, brushing off his designer slacks and picking up his large travel case. “One advantage of being stealth cowboy is that I spot young ’uns.”

“So nice of you to tell us now,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” said Roman, smiling like a mischievous icon. He held up his hand. “You don’t get close enough to five-sided death trap alone. Pretty strong anticraft alarm shit went in with renovation.”

He hadn’t mentioned the probability defense. Didn’t he know?

“Let me guess,” I said. “You tracked the car all this way because you want to play tourist.”

“I pay my way,” said Roman. “I walk with you. You get close. After that, you’re cowboy fucked, but least you get that far.”

“And what do you get?” I asked.

“End of a threat, or least peek at it. Other things not worth mentioning…” He must have seen my irritated doubt. “No harm to your land—that, I swear as magus. Oh, almost forget.” He reached for his jacket pocket, but slowed as he perceived my readiness to hit him. He pulled out two lanyards. “For you.”

I snatched the lanyards. Two perfect-looking Pentagon IDs dangled from them, glowing radioactive with craft.

I looked at Scherie. “You’re feeling picky?” she asked.

*   *   *

Every office and conference room around Chimera conformed to procrustean Euclideanism, save one. The Office of Technical Management occupied a suite of two rooms on the inner angle between SCOF and C-CRT. OTM techs were practically invisible to the other staff, like all good servants in all ages. So no one had ever thought much about how “technical management” included Chimera’s operation.

In the inner room of the OTM suite, the woman who had been Sakakawea embraced Abram Endicott, Chimera’s technician and the man inside the Red Death. The woman held sway in a new body, this one Scandinavian with nearly white hair, but tall and ghastly thin as always. She would take a new code name, but for this man, the veil was always lifted. She was and ever would be Madeline Ligeia Morton, life without end, amen.

Madeline and Abram sat clutching each other on a field operating table made up as a bed, surrounded by occult horrors and exposed chip motherboards. Tanks of glass and copper alloy lined the walls to the left and right. They held the bodies of snatched-and-grabbed Central Asians, pickled for Roderick’s energy, and Euro bodies being drained as replacements for Madeline’s and Abram’s. Alchemical tinted crystal and brass-colored tubes lay around the floor or stuck out, half-attached, from some other unfinished tanks.

A panoptic hive of screens covered the far wall, ceiling, and other exposed surfaces; they showed every room and person in H-ring. From here, they could edit the direct feed from Chimera before it went out to the general and the others of the Five. From here, they could watch Roderick and all the machines that surrounded him. From here, a hidden door led directly to Chimera.

The few others with Chimera clearance believed that the machines enhanced the craft of the brain at their core even as it gave them sentience. Some of the machines did augment magic, but most kept a firm leash on Roderick’s tremendous power, and tapped it for Abram and Madeline’s use.

Where did Roderick’s power come from? Where it had always come from. Left-Hand magic savored the energy of others. Roderick absorbed much of the life force around him in greater Washington, a small slice from each soul. As with any black hole, this generated tremendous energy.

A priority task for the machines was detecting the level of Roderick’s deception. Chimera had the best lie detector in the world, but Abram and Madeline had to watch it carefully. Oracles had been working the truth for thousands of years. An old artificer, Roderick held his horde of raw truth against his iron will of deceit. Something was inevitably lost in the friction between such cosmic millstones. Those losses worried Madeline more than she would say.

Besides the tank dwellers, another body, a woman’s, sat hunched on the floor, a meat puppet with its strings cut. The former Colonel Hutchinson was too old and bulky to serve as Madeline’s vessel. Abram just needed enough possessive presence to pull the body’s strings for the puppet shows, and wasn’t in the mood for gender-bent antics. Madeline enjoyed having it watch them like a mirror. The woman was a naked patchwork of bruises and bandages. Eyes open, whatever awareness still lived there was forced to watch, not as voyeur, but as victim of violation.

Madeline clawed at Abram’s flesh, and the human marionette twitched.

“We don’t have time,” he said.

“I need you,” Madeline cried, like a small bird pretending a broken wing.

Abram gripped her stalking hands by their wrists. “Chimera says that they will be here soon, and that we can kill young Morton.”

Smiling, she exposed her long neck. “And young Endicott.”

He’d forgotten. Was he supposed to care?

“Where are Morton and Rezvani now?” she asked.

“Chimera can’t see them,” he said.

“Then they’re still in the Sanctuary,” she said. She could discuss her doubts later. “We have time. Talk to me. Help me stick here.” She moaned. “Oh, I’m so young again.”

Young, fragile, beautiful. She always had another body like her original ready, though sometimes she made do with a thin white duke. She had prepared this new body a long time before her spirit had fled the Sanctuary to find it. She had imprinted its brain over many months like a cancer overwriting the synapses. Full transfer was extreme craft, as strenuous and difficult as anything, and imperfect. She lost details in the Xerox, and picked up small bits of the other. This one had been a good little soldier; the residual sparks of horror at the body’s new agenda added
frisson
to Madeline’s experience.

It was worse than murder. Any ousted spirit like Colonel Hutchinson’s that maintained its integrity was pathetically disoriented. Something further would have to be done to that old marionette’s rebellious soul.

But enough about that woman. “Talk to me,” Madeline insisted. “About me.”

“I tried to kill your brother.”

She kissed him deeply. “Thank you for trying.”

*   *   *

People thought that the secret of the Left-Hand Morton twins was how much (how often, in what positions) they loved each other. But the true secret was their profound hate. Or at least, how much Madeline wanted to destroy Roderick.

In his obsession with immortality, Roderick used his sister as an experimental animal. The key was either to make the flesh immortal, or allow the spirit to move from body to body. His sister was not his first subject. He captured lone mundanes and craftsmen, and tried through many tortures to encourage their souls to transmigrate. No use—they seemed almost comfortable passing on to their spiritual families. Roderick knew only one person beside himself who would grasp at life with sufficient will and power.

So he buried his sister alive.

He placed an appropriate emptied vessel next to her tomb in the family vault. She struggled for a long time; the noise disturbed his meals and studies. But final necessity forced her to transfer.

When she recovered, she said, “I shall never do that again.”

But Roderick wasn’t done with his experiment, so he found ways to encourage her to switch again, and again. During their love-makings, he’d find a small mark on her skin and say, “This body has a blemish.” And he gave her treats. One time, they possessed two children, and drove a governess mad.

She wanted to be grateful for immortality, but her more primal parts resented these multiple deaths. She fled the House; but first, she caused the crack in its defenses that let the besiegers in. It wasn’t difficult, for the House resented them as monsters, and the very land revolted against their deathless state.

*   *   *

Surrendering as always to Madeline’s passions, Abram asked, “What story do you want to hear?”

“Do you remember,” said Madeline, “when I first came to you, how weak I was? How vulnerable?”

“I remember.” Even though Abram had jumped bodies fewer times than his beloved, some details of memory still suffered. He remembered every prayer and blow he had aimed at the Mortons in the siege of Roderick’s house. But he couldn’t remember why he had taken Roderick’s head as a trophy.

*   *   *

After the siege, young Joshua Morton, conscious of Abram’s anger, didn’t try to stop him from taking his prize; he only made big sad eyes at Abram like the whipped puppy he was. Abram brought the head home and placed it in a chair at a safe distance from the fire. No one minded this display—his living children grown, his wife dead along with the youngest.

His actions against the Mortons were righteous, but would the righteous receive any reward? A fear gnawed at his mind. Over the years, he had dispelled his family’s ghosts, the spirits of his children and wife, as demons, but he had known better. Surely his good wife and innocent children had been saved, so how could their souls remain bound to earth? Closer to his end than his beginning, Abram was doubting the promise of eternal reward. Without heaven, what was the point of an upright life?

So Abram watched the head with obsessive theological interest. Already a grotesque thing, how long would the head’s evil craft sustain it against natural decay? Days passed. The head oozed a bit, and became more cadaverous. But it did not rot, and Endicott felt another twinge of doubt.