Voice of the Whirlwind (38 page)

“I had it almost right, friend,” Steward said. “I was being used as cover to run a mission into the Power Legation at Ricot. I thought Reese was working for Group Seven—that would make sense. But then I realized there was no truth to that scenario at all.” Griffith was wheezing for breath. Steward looked at him. “You want a cigarette or something? Go ahead.”

Griffith closed his eyes. “Jesus.”

“Are you paying attention, buck? See, a real Group Seven agent approached me on Charter, trying to recruit me for a similar mission. His name was Stoichko, and somebody shot him dead just as he started getting close to me. I never worked out why he died until just now.

“Reese killed him. She was staying in the same hotel as Stoichko. She told me that she’d changed her plans after she met some old friend of hers, but I never saw that friend. So I decided that what must have happened is that Reese saw Stoichko following me and that she recognized him. She knew he was trying to recruit me for something, but didn’t know what. She reported to her superiors, and they told her to put an ice jacket on him.” Steward laughed. “You must have had to pay her a bonus for that one, right?”

Griffith swallowed. “You’re wrong, man. You’ve got…the wrong angle.”

A chill hurricane of anger rose in Steward. “Don’t insult my fucking intelligence,” he said. Griffith froze again, hearing the edge in Steward’s voice.

“I remembered some things,” Steward said. His voice fired syllables like bullets. “I remember meeting with you in Flagstaff, how your health got worse the longer you stayed there. You said you had the flu. But it wasn’t influenza, right? It was withdrawal. You had the shakes, the running nose, all the symptoms. You’ve got the vee tag, and you’re a vee addict.”

Griffith’s face drained of color. His terror was palpable. He shook his head. “I . . .” he began.

“You had your inhalers with you—I remember the way you kept going to the bathroom and running the water to cover the sounds of the compressed air—but the Power hormones broke down fast, the way they do. Your inhalers weren’t the new type, with the refrigeration unit, and you were out of luck. You must have been glad to see the last of me.”

Griffith pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Jesus,” he said. His voice was a sob. “This can’t be happening.”

“You were behind the whole damn thing,” Steward said. Bitterness rose in his throat. “You knew me well. You knew my attitudes about loyalty, about trust. You know the way we were trained, and you had access to de Prey’s program, the keys to the way he manipulated us. You cut up Dr. Ashraf to make him talk about me, tell you where my loyalties were. He told you I had an unhealthy interest in my Alpha, that I could be manipulated through my image of the Alpha. So you concocted that recording, that audio. You weren’t sure you could pull the video off, not with me, so you just did the voice. And it worked just like you thought it would.”

Griffith’s head rolled back against the doorframe. He had caught his breath, and now his eyes were bright with calculation. “But why the hell would I do it? I don’t have any”—he swallowed—“any reason to kill a bunch of Powers. And how would I find out that the Captain was dead in the first place? We hadn’t been in touch for years.”

Steward barked a single, angry laugh. “You found out from your source, Griffith. From the same place you’ve been getting your vee hormones, and your money.” Griffith’s eyes were showing stark, yellow terror.

“I’ve been following you for a week, buck,” Steward said. “I know the building down on the waterfront where you go every night. I know your source is there.” He smiled, feeling the carnivore in him baring teeth. “Prime-on-the-Right, Griffith,” he said. “He’s here on Earth. Building his organization, his troops. Making his plans for what he’s going to do with the largest population of humans in existence. That’s the plan that Ricot was trying to forestall with its attack. And that’s why he doesn’t care if Ricot retaliates with another attack on Vesta. Because he’s here already, right where he wants to be.”

Griffith closed his eyes. Tears ran down his cheeks.

Steward laughed again. “I’ve got it, don’t I?” he said. “And I’ve got
you
,
buck. Fellow veteran.”

Griffith fumbled for his inhaler. “What do you want, man?” he asked. He fired hormone up his nose. “If you’d wanted me dead you would have killed me. So just what the fuck do you want?”

A smile blossomed on Steward’s face. He could feel the power in him. “I want to join the team, old friend,” he said. “I want to meet Prime-on-the-Right. And then I want to go to work for him. Just like my old friends. Just like you and Reese.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Griffith looked at him for a long moment. “You want to join us,” he said. He looked as if he were saying the words for the first time, exploring the way they sounded.

“I want to work for a winner, and Prime-on-the-Right is going to win,” Steward said. “He’s smart, he’s got the right moves. I’ve seen his opposition up close and they haven’t got a chance.”

Griffith brushed a hand over his eyes. “This is weird,” he said.

“Prime-on-the-Right uses people who don’t have the vee tag,” Steward said. “Reese doesn’t have it. He needs people who aren’t addicted to him for use in long-distance errands.”

There was color in Griffith’s face again. He took a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “The people without the tag don’t know about the Prime. We can only trust tagged people not to tell.”

Steward grinned at him. “You can trust me. I found out and I haven’t told anyone. And I won’t—so long as I get a piece of the action.”

Griffith’s look was sharp. “What do you mean?”

Steward barked another laugh. “You sure you can’t figure it out? Let’s say that I’ve got a friend in an orbital habitat who will release certain information to the scansheets unless I make contact every few hours and give the proper code. The code changes every time, and only I know how it changes. You won’t be able to get to my friend in time to prevent it—it’s many hours to where he lives. And he won’t release the stuff to anyone but me, in person. That means that even if you, ah, do an Ashraf on me and get the codes, you still won’t get the information my friend is holding, just delay its release. And eventually it’ll be released, because there’s a time limit on the codes, and if I don’t appear in person within a certain time, they get released anyway.”

Satisfaction welled in Steward’s mind. The best part of this was that it was true. Only the pronoun
he
was a blind—Steward had gone through Janice Weatherman in the trust office of the Stone Bank on Solon. They’d shared a piece of cream pastry while setting up the deal and calculating her commission. Weatherman acted as if she performed similar tasks every day. Possibly she did.

There was a muscle working in Griffith’s cheek. His gaze was stone. “You’re dangerous, buck,” he said quietly.

“That’s why you wanted me to run your mission for you,” Steward said. He laughed. “Hey, I’ve already done a good job for your boss. Why should he mind if I want to do a few more? I just want to get better wages next time.”

“I have to think.”

“Let Prime-on-the-Right do your thinking for you. He’s better at it.” Steward reached into his pocket and took out a portable phone, tossed it in Griffith’s direction. “I’ll call at nineteen hundred tomorrow night. You can tell me what your source has to say.”

Griffith looked at the cheap plastic device that had fallen to the floor near his legs. He reached out with nicotine-stained fingers and took it.

Steward stood up. “I’ll be going now. Talk to your boss.”

Griffith was still looking at the phone as Steward stepped over him, keeping the pistol trained at Griffith’s head.

“I don’t know how I’m going to explain this,” Griffith said.

“That’s easy, comrade,” Steward said, moving for the door. “Just tell him you fucked up.”

*

The revolving searchlight was visible from Steward’s hotel room on the waterfront, flashing in mute time to the rhythm of his thoughts. He listened to the telephone purr. Griffith answered on the second ring.

“Steward?”

“That’s right, comrade.”

The sound of a cigarette being inhaled. “You’ve got your meet.”

“When?”

“Right now, if you want it.”

Steward smiled. The searchlight strobed at the edge of his vision. “D’accord,” he said. “I know where it is. I’ll meet you there.”

He hung up before Griffith could object, then reached for the freeze-dry canister on the table, the one he’d picked up from the safe-deposit vault on Charter the same trip he’d arranged things with Weatherman.

Warning
, it said.
Biologic seal. Open only in sterile environment
.

Steward peeled back the foil that protected the seal, then twisted the cap off. The seal broke with a hissing sound. He raised the flask and poured the brown dust over himself, brushing it into his clothing. He put some in his pockets, then rubbed powder on a pair of handkerchiefs and wadded them into his pants pockets. He checked the pistol in his shoulder holster, then put on his jacket and took his car keys from where they waited on the hotel dresser.

He left the room to the silence and the flare of the searchlight.

*

Entire moth nations danced in the halogen glow above Lightsource, Limited. The building was prefabricated, two stories, built next to a warehouse on a piece of landfill sealed from the Pacific by a seawall. As Steward walked toward the entrance, he saw Griffith standing by the entrance with a cigarette in his hand. The tattooed boy, Spassky, waited with him, smiling from behind his video shades. Spassky’s tall goon waited like a malevolent lamppost in the shadows behind.

Steward had left his rented car on another street, with a hand-drawn map on the seat showing the way to get to Lightsource. A clue for the local police in case he disappeared.

He walked toward Griffith, his skin tingling, alert, waiting for the breath of violence on the back of his neck. It didn’t come.

He stopped in front of Griffith and smiled. Griffith was expressionless. “Hi, comrade.” Steward looked at Spassky. “Where’s your girlfriend, buck?”

Spassky’s video shades stared back. “She died,” he said.

“Easy come, easy go.”

Spassky grinned with his metal teeth. “You said it.”

Griffith ground his cigarette underfoot. “Let’s go.”

The office tasted lightly of the organic smell of the Powers, a maintenance dose filtered up through vents. The hair on the back of his neck prickled.

Steward followed Griffith through armored doors studded with sensors and security cameras, down a long hallway patrolled by armored guards. The guards all were in their mid to late thirties, Artifact War veterans. Spassky and his goon walked in step behind, moving a little too close for Steward’s comfort. The corridors featured deep carpeting and closed paneled office doors. Their footsteps were muffled on the carpet. Griffith came to a door with his name on a brass plate, then opened it with his thumbprint. Steward and the others followed him inside to a large office. There was a desk, plush chairs, a computer, a one meter inflated world globe. Griffith went to the desk and picked up a portable detector.

“Take off your clothes,” he said. “We’re checking them and you for weapons.”

Steward shrugged. “Whatever you say.” He took the pistol by two fingers and handed it to Spassky. “This is all I have.”

While Steward was being searched, Griffith told him the rules. “You’ll be staying in a dorm downstairs while we check you out. You will be allowed out to make your phone calls to your friend. You will have an escort during that time, but you can choose any phone you want.”

“Just so long as this doesn’t go on too long,” Steward said.

“The Prime’s a good judge of character. It shouldn’t last…beyond what’s necessary.”

“The Prime. So his highness got a promotion, when the other Prime was killed on Vesta, right?”

“
She
got promoted. The Prime is currently female. Biologically inactive right now, though.” Griffith seemed stubbornly insistent, as if Steward had invaded his sense of rightness. “And it wasn’t a promotion, it was a succession. The Powers have worked it all out decades in advance. The Prime is the descendent of a ten-thousand-year genetic manipulation program. She could be nothing other than what she is.” He looked up at Steward, and there was resentment in his eyes. “And she’s not a highness. Just a Prime. That’s how you address her.
Prime
says everything that needs to be said.”

Steward shrugged. “D’accord.” He began putting his clothes back on.

“They live for
centuries
,
Steward. The Power elite. So can we—and not through cloning, either. We can have life in our natural bodies indefinitely prolonged.”

“Sounds good.”

Griffith gazed at him. Steward wanted to flinch from the
intensity in his eyes.

“It’s better than good,” Griffith said. “It’s like being God.”

Steward leaned toward him, showing teeth. “Being God sounds good,” he said. “I want it.”

I have no strategy
. A flicker of thought from nowhere
. Freedom to kill and freedom to give back life—there is my strategy.

Uncertainty flickered into Griffith’s expression. He turned away. “You don’t know how good it is.” He took a spike from his pocket and put it in his computer console. He tapped in a code and a piece of the wall paneling slid back to reveal a private elevator.

“Down we go,” Spassky said. There was a smirk on his face as he tossed Steward’s gun from hand to hand.

Steward moved into the elevator and the others followed. “The Powers,” Griffith was saying. “You know why they left Sheol and the other planets?”

The elevator’s descent was silent. Steward looked at Spassky’s leer, the goon’s stolid lack of expression, Griffith’s eagerness. “Tell me,” he said.

“They were picking their leader,” Griffith said. “Not the Prime, but the head Prime. The head Primes rule for thousands of years, and when they die, all the Primes come to the center of the empire to choose the next, and they bring all the people with
them they can spare.”