Masque, page 27
He realized he was shouting. He searched the faces surrounding him. Was he getting through?
"Think about that," he said, lowering his voice. "I'm at your service. Use me. If not"—he tossed the pulser to Callin—"use that."
For one bad moment, Callin looked as if he might do just that. But he looked at Krek instead. Tristan noticed that they all were looking at Krek.
But Krek was staring at Tristan. For a long string of heartbeats the mime leader's gaze seemed to bore into Tristan's brain. Then he nodded and turned to the others.
"I'm for taking him. He could mean the difference between success and failure. But we'll have to take a vote. Got to be unanimous." He stepped to the center of the circle. "All those in favor of letting Tristan guide us into the Citadel, raise your hand."
Krek raised his, and slowly, singly at first, then in groups of two and three and more, other hands went up until all were raised...
Except one.
Krek said, "You blackballing him, Callin?"
Callin hesitated, then shoved the pulser back at Tristan.
"Make it unanimous." He pointed at Tristan. "But I'll be watching every move you make."
"Filamentous," Tristan said, and made a stab at détente with the angry mime. "I'll take comfort in knowing you're watching my back."
Callin shook his head and turned away.
"Where you going?" Krek said.
"To see if I can find us some back-up," Callin said. "We're going to need all the help we can get."
"Where's he going to find back-up?" Mung said as Callin moved away.
Krek shook his head. "I don't know. Callin's a good mime, but a strange one. I've yet to figure him out."
*
Tristan was included in the planmaking. Since time was of the essence, they had to make do with the partial maps they had of the tunnel system. What was available indicated that a couple of tunnel branches passed close to the lower levels of the Citadel, and one appeared to have been bisected by the nether regions of the huge complex.
Tristan thought that tunnel might be the key. It would take them right up to the south wall of one of the lower levels. There, if luck was with them, and if the Citadel's designers had concentrated their security measures elsewhere—after all, who would expect a breach from below?—they might find a means of silent entry.
If not, they'd cut or blast their way in.
Because one way or another, they were going in.
As the plans progressed, and as Tristan contributed to them, he sensed a gradual grudging acceptance by the other mimes.
*
Time to move.
Their weapons were maxed on charge, their bodies maxed on concentrate. They had cutting lasers, shaped charges, and satchels crammed with tools of destruction. The Proteans had their most ferocious templates ready, but held them in reserve, preferring to wear more conventional bodies for the trek through the tunnels.
Tristan had decided to stick with his Trev masque—its supple agility wasn't the only reason—but otherwise he was armed like the others: a pulse rifle slung across his back, a compact pulser shoved in his belt, and in his fist a steel pipe liberated from one of the Sibs Proteus had killed yesterday.
He was ready...more than ready.
"Callin?" Krek called, looking around.
Mung waddled up. "He called in and said to start without him. He'll catch up to you."
"Where is he?"
"He didn't say."
"But he doesn't know the route," Krek said.
"Don't worry about that," Mung said. "I'll upload it into his grid when he gets here."
The tunnels were no place for someone of Mung's girth, so he was staying behind.
Krek hesitated. "I don't like it. Callin's one of my best—"
"Go! Go!" Mung said, shooing him off. "Helix knows what they're doing to your mother while you're wasting time."
That did it.
"All right, mimes. Buddy up with your partner and we're off."
Krek had divided the Proteans into fighting units of two—a holdover from the tag-team matches in the arena, no doubt—and Tristan had been paired with Eel.
He looked around now but didn't see him.
"Where's Eel?" Tristan said.
No one knew.
"Look at this!" Mung cried, hurrying from the north end of the main chamber and holding up a pulse rifle and pistol. "I found them at the bottom of one of the stairwells that lead to the surface."
"Mute!" Krek shouted when he saw the weapons. "These were Eel's. He's run off!" He wheeled on Tristan. "You're his partner. Why didn't you stop him?"
"I had no idea! He was ready to go, anxious to fight...or at least that's the way he seemed."
"Well, that's just bloaty! He's going to give us away to Flagge Security, isn't he."
No," Tristan said. "No, I don't believe that. He won't betray us. But I got the feeling he doesn't believe we can win. And maybe he's gotten too used to all the perks and comforts of an arena champ to risk them in a worthless cause."
Tristan felt disappointed….and worried as he thought of Eel scurrying back to his luxury apartment and sitting there in the dark, hoping he wouldn't be connected to whatever Proteus did in the Citadel. Tristan felt personally betrayed. He looked for anger, but found only sadness.
Eel had traded family for a few luxuries.
"Hey!" one of the other mimes shouted. "That lousy trisomy took our universal key with him!"
"Brother or not," Krek said through his teeth, "there's a mime that needs killing. No matter, we have our own ways into the Flagge Glom. We'll worry about Eel later. Let's go." He turned to Tristan. "I'm solo—Callin was supposed to be my partner—and so are you now. Looks like we're a team. Better hold up your end, Tristan."
"Don't worry. Lead on, Krek."
But as Krek opened the hatch that led to the tunnels, Tristan's mind filled with worried questions about Eel. If his plan was to sit out this battle, why had he taken Proteus's universal roam key with him? What possible use could he have for that?
CHAPTER THIRTY
"What about dwellers?" Tristan asked, looking for the tell-tale burrows in the sloping walls.
"Not up here," Krek said. "Dweller realm is pretty much confined to the western tunnels. Don't ask me why, they just seem to prefer it there."
After nearly two hours of trudging through slimy water, fetid air, and deep-space darkness relieved only by their laser torches, they came up against a pile of rubble choking the tunnel's gullet.
"Mute!" Krek said. "What's this? We should be there by now."
"I think we are," Tristan said.
He blinked his Roam Grid overlay into view and checked the tunnel map he'd uploaded earlier. This was the branch that was supposed to dead-end at the Citadel's nether regions. And if the Citadel's builders had had to cut through a tunnel, wouldn't the severed end be filled with...debris?
Tristan climbed the slope of the pile of jumbled granite boulders and crawled through the space between its peak and the arched roof of the tunnel. When he flashed his light ahead and saw the beam bounce off a smooth onyx surface, his heart kicked up its rhythm.
He called back. "We're there!"
Now...how did they get in?
Tristan heard someone approaching behind him. He turned, expecting Krek, but found Callin instead.
"Well, well," Tristan said. "The prodigal son returns. Where've you been all this—?"
And then he saw the pulser pointed at his midsection.
Callin flashed his own light at the Citadel wall ahead.
"I guess you're right," he said, holstering his weapon. "We are there."
"What'd you think I was—?"
"I don't know what to think about you, mime. Especially now that your pal Eel's run off. The two of you could have cooked up a little trap for us here."
"Give it a rest, Callin."
"I'd love to. Believe me, I've got better things to do. But till you prove yourself, I'm watching you. Every move, every step."
"Do your damndest. But in the meantime, we've got to get through that wall."
Callin moved past him. "Well, then. Let's do just that."
*
They weren't so lucky as to find a convenient airshaft protruding into the tunnel mouth, but the Doppler gauges located a relatively thin section of wall—one meter—and they began cutting their way through.
The work was hot, the progress agonizingly slow, and the closer they got to the inner wall, the more important silence became.
Finally, when they'd carved a large, roughly circular depression—big enough for Dr. Dee—and had only a few centimeters of wall separating them from the other side, Krek called a halt and attached an electronic ear to the wall.
"It's quiet in there," he said after a long moment of watching the read-out. "Nothing moving, or even breathing."
"At least we're not stepping into an ambush," Callin said.
"Make me a peep hole," Krek said.
A pinpoint laser drill opened a centimeter hole, but no light shone through. Krek threaded an optical worm into the opening, then checked the image-intensifying display.
He looked up and grinned. "Some sort of store room or utility room. And it's empty. Let's move."
Minutes later they were through the wall and gathered in the center of the room.
"All right, brothers," Krek said, stripping off his jumper. "Fish out your fiercest fighting template. Time to flux."
"Shouldn't we wait?" Tristan said.
"What for? One look at us, even as we are, and they'll know we don't belong here. Might as well shock the cytoplasm out of anyone who does see us—and be ready to rumble."
He had a point.
Tristan stepped back and pulled out the box Mung had given him. The tracker was cued to Okasan's tracer implant. It had been dead while they were in the tunnels, but now that they were inside the Citadel's walls...
A red light blinked in the lower left corner of the three-dimensional display.
"Got her!" he said. "Okasan is—"
The words died in his throat as he looked up and saw the transformations taking place around him.
Amid grunts and groans, the members of Proteus, visible among the long shadows cast by the laser torches rolling on the floor, were fluxing into monstrous shapes more radical than he'd ever dreamed possible, even for arena mimes—shapes designed not only to provide a fighting advantage, but to evoke fear and revulsion as well.
Krek was the closest, lying on the floor, writhing with the pain of his flux. His upper body had developed rippling iridescent scales but was otherwise little changed. His lower half was another story: his legs had fused, and as Tristan watched in horrid fascination, the new appendage stretched and lengthened into a slender, coiling, serpentine shape. Krek had become a snake from the chest down.
To Tristan's left, Callin puffed and wheezed as he lay curled into a naked ball with his legs drawn up tightly against his abdomen. Tristan blinked as the mime's folded legs seemed to melt into his torso and other limbs—long, multi-jointed, and hairy—began to emerge from the sides of his chest wall.
And beyond them, Dr. Dee seemed to be sprouting a long, squid-like grasping tentacle from under each arm; others were becoming part centipede or part leech, and Helix knew what transformations were occurring in the deeper shadows.
Finally, it was over, and one by one the Proteans regained their feet...or whatever they would be using as feet.
Krek reared up on his serpentine lower half and slithered over to Tristan.
"No flux? I thought Eel gave you a fighting 'plate."
Tristan had expected this, and was prepared for it.
"But Eel's run off and I'm not so sure I should trust that 'dragon mode' of his."
Plausible, and perhaps half true. He told himself he wasn't really lying.
Callin stepped closer...on six legs. His arms, shoulders and head were still human, and little changed in structure, but the rest of him was mostly tarantula.
"I don't like this," he said. "You're up to something. You either flux or get back in the tunnel."
"Someone has to look human. We don't know what we're going to run up against, and one of us may have to get into a Security helmet and uniform. You think you could pass the way you look now, Callin?"
Callin didn't have an answer for that, so he pointed to the tapered end of his bulbous spider body.
"See that?"
As Tristan watched, a curved spike slid out of the tip.
"That's no spinner gland. I had it modified. It's poison. And I'm watching you."
Callin moved away, but Krek remained, staring at Tristan.
"It's the datameister, isn't it," he said.
Caught off guard by Krek's unexpected perceptiveness, Tristan stammered. "What? No. I mean, what makes you say—?"
"Save it. I saw you two together earlier, remember? You're not fooling me."
Tristan insides knotted. Lani was somewhere nearby—he could feel it. And if—when he found her, he wanted her to recognize him. He'd come this far. No one was going to turn him back now.
But he had another reason for not wanting to flux into a fighting masque, a reason he'd be ashamed to articulate before this crew. His relationship with Lani was at such a delicate stage. He wanted her to think of him as human and didn't want to confront her as any human but Trev. And he especially didn't want to confront her as a dragon-man.
"I meant what I said about someone—"
"And I agree," Krek said. "Someone should stay fully human-looking—just in case. And that someone might as well be you." Krek moved closer and lowered his voice. "But get this straight, mime: Our primary objective is Okasan. That's why we're here. You don't know if your datameister's even in the Citadel. But if she is and we can get her out while we're here, fine. We'll gladly do so. But Okasan comes first. I don't want you sneaking off looking for your woman until we've saved our mother. Understood?"
Tristan wondered if he could accept those terms. More than anything, he wanted to save both Lani and Okasan. But if it came down to a choice, he knew he'd side with Lani.
But when we find Okasan, she'll know where Lani is.
"Understood," Tristan said. "Okasan first."
"Do I have your word on that? Your word as a mime brother?"
Tristan looked at him closely. "You'd take my word? I've lied to you before."
"I know. But you weren't in the family then."
Family...that word again, that feeling.
Tristan thrust out his hand. "My word then."
Krek gripped his hand and squeezed. "Good! Now where is Okasan?"
Tristan held up the tracker and pointed to the blinking red dot.
"According to this, she's about twenty floors down in the northwest corner."
"Any idea what's there?"
"Could be the Datacenter or the Security post—they're both in the same complex."
"So either way, she's in a nest of redheads."
"Afraid so. I'll have a better idea when I find out what floor we're on. The Datacenter's on S-25."
"Excellent. And I promise you, as soon as we—"
"Look at this!" cried one of the mimes.
Tristan followed Krekthe other to where a mime with a lobster claw for a right hand held a laser torch in his normal left hand and pointed it at a recess in the wall.
"Looks like a power grid server," Callin said.
"For the whole Citadel?" someone asked.
"Naw," Callin said. "Probably just for this floor. Or maybe just this corner of the floor." He looked at Krek. "But a little confusion can't hurt us, can it?"
"Can only help," Krek said. "Do it."
Callin raise his pulser. "Stand back everyone."
A cacophony of shuffling, slithering, rustling, clacking, and clicking, then a red beam lancing out. A brief, white-hot flash, and then...
Two ceiling panels lit with a feeble glow.
"Emergency lights," Krek said, grinning. "It worked. All right, now. We need to get deeper. Tristan's got the tracker. He'll lead. Pack up your gear, ready your weapons, and let's go."
Tristan opened the door and peeked outside. A long, deserted hall, dimly lit by the emergency panels, its inward wall broken by an occasional doorway, stretched away in both directions.
Hoping the security vidplates were powered down as well, he motioned for the Proteans to follow, and led them left. He knew from his VR training for the mission that only the central chutes went all the way down to the Datacenter.
Trouble was, he didn't know this floor or how to get to those chutes from here.
He moved quickly, hurrying ahead to the first corner. He had no doubt that the building's sector computer already had the power problem pinpointed and was trying to reprogram the server. But no one was going to fix that coagulated mass. After a number of failed attempts, it would reroute power from other sources and send an inspector to eyeball the problem.
Tristan wanted to be in the chutes by then.
He turned and watched the Proteans' slithering, crawling, creeping progress along the hall behind him. He smiled as he imagined a Flagger rounding the corner and seeing this.
They'll think they've stepped into an anteroom to hell.
And then someone did just that.
Tristan was two or three meters from the corner when a middle-aged woman strode into view. Her eyes were downcast and she appeared to be lost in thought. She glanced up at Tristan and nodded, then her gaze headed back toward the carpet—but never made it. Her head jerked up and she froze. Her jaw dropped and her mouth worked as she stared wide-eyed past Tristan's shoulder.
"Hello," Tristan said. "We're on a tour and we seem to have lost our way."
She made a strangled sound and began to backpedal. She was halfway into a turn when Tristan grabbed her arm and pulled her close. He clamped a hand over her mouth.
"Not a word," he said. "Answer my questions and you won't be hurt. Understand?"
She nodded, the air whistling through her nostrils as her bulging eyes fixed on the Proteans.
"Good. Now, what's the fastest way to the central downchutes?"
