Shadow Box, page 8
“My orders are to protect the city-kingdom,” Ibis told him hotly, “though I don’t see that it’s any business of yours.”
Across the tent, Smarts’s head lifted as he heard the angry words of the Incarnate and for just a moment a smile creased his thin lips.
Decard held his outstretched arms between Ibis and Kane making them step back from each other. “I called Kane’s team in,” Decard told the ibis-masked Incarnate, “and he will benefit from knowing all of the facts.”
Kane shrugged and put on a gleeful, innocent expression. “Just following orders, same as you,” he said, looking at the ibis-masked Incarnate.
Brigid addressed Decard and the others. “We need to look at this site, examine the bodies, see where those tracks lead.”
“Agreed,” Decard said firmly. “We have some dried fruit with us. What say we breakfast, then move out in an hour?”
“Sounds civilized,” Kane acquiesced as he made his way across the floor of the tent. Crouching beside Domi’s rucksack, Kane attached the spare Sin Eater and wrist holster that his albino colleague had brought him. “One hour.”
THE CAMPSITE WAS much as the Incarnate guard had described it: the ashy remains of a fire pit in the sand, two wagons that had been left untended, disturbed sand here and there that obliquely suggested some frantic movement.
The Cerberus field team and their prisoners traveled to the site using the chariot-like vehicles that the Incarnates drove. There were ten of the vehicles in all, large enough to carry two men comfortably, four if they didn’t mind being cramped. The chariots were carts with two large wheels on a single axle and no visible means of locomotion. Using an array of mirrored panels, the two-wheeled vehicles converted solar power into electricity and could run indefinitely as long as they had a charge. Elegant and functional, while the chariots traveled at a fairly low speed, they made the journey across the great swathes of desert that much more palatable.
Kane had considered it most prudent to split the prisoners on the journey to the campsite, and he sat in one of the little buggies talking with Smarts while Grant sat with Rosalia on the back of another chariot while the Incarnates ferried them across the sand.
Smarts showed irritation as the wind of their passage blew his lacquered hair about his face. “This is kidnapping, Señor Kane,” he said in a low voice. “It seems a little beneath a Magistrate like yourself.”
Kane looked at the man sternly, but he was tired of constantly correcting the man. Smarts was only doing this to get under his skin, Kane knew. “Things have moved a bit faster than I’d have preferred,” Kane told the man, “but you can get yourself free passage as soon as you’re ready to hand over the hybrid DNA.”
“Which I don’t have on me,” Smarts argued, “so your offer is worthless.”
“Where’s it being kept?” Kane asked. “You have got to know that much, right?”
Smarts smiled enigmatically.
Kane glanced at the clear blue sky overhead as the flotilla of chariots progressed across the dunes, then he turned back to Smarts. “Look,” he said, “neither of us is in a great negotiating position here, but I am not going to let you or the girl go until I have a decent lead on the location.”
“So, we’re stuck together,” Smarts concluded.
Kane’s eyes flicked to their driver for a moment before he spoke again. “I’m willing to make you an offer, Señor Smarts,” he said quietly, “safe passage, a vehicle—whatever it is you need. We can negotiate the details and I’ll be as amenable as possible. I need this information and you have it. You think about what it is you want and we’ll go from there, okay?”
Smarts smiled and nodded. “You are a generous man, perhaps?” he said.
“This baron DNA could be a lot of trouble,” Kane told him. “Not just for me. We get a whole new spate of baronies growing up, and operations like yours will be seized upon in an instant—you’ll all be thrown in the Tartarus Pits. Carnack should have taken up my colleague’s offer when he had the chance—you’d have all been rich men right now.”
“Is that so, Señor Magistrate?” Smarts asked, a tinge of sarcasm in his tone.
Kane’s gray-blue eyes locked with the Mexican’s. “Figure out a way to make this work,” he said, “before I get impatient.”
As Kane finished, the group of chariots pulled to a stop a short distance from two parked wagons and the remains of the campfire, and the Cerberus personnel disembarked to take a closer look, leaving the Incarnates guarding their prisoners.
Brigid and Kane walked over to examine the wagons while Grant kicked through the ash of the fire, looking to see if anything peculiar had been burned. Domi stood with Decard by the parked chariots, a little way from the main camp, her eyes on the two prisoners while Decard’s Incarnates patrolled the surrounding area.
The wagons were old-fashioned carts pulled by a raggedy mule and a tired horse with bowed legs and a swollen belly that sagged almost to the ground. The animals seemed bored, although Kane could see where the horse had become tangled in its reins, probably when whatever disrupted the Roamers appeared. The wagons were covered by simple canvas sheets, uncolored but dirty-looking from age and travels. One of the coverings had a rent across it, running the whole length of the mule’s wagon.
Kane pointed it out to Brigid. “That looks new,” he observed.
She nodded. Roamers were used to making do, and they would repair such a tear immediately, even if the fabric they used was a poor match.
“Reckon it has something to do with this?” Kane asked her.
Brigid took a closer look, pulling at the torn material, examining the length of the rip. “Hard to say for certain,” she told him. “Are you thinking the Roamers did this themselves in a fit of madness, or that something attacked them? Because that depends on whether this is some airborne plague or something else.”
“Well, little Miss Mom-to-be back there wasn’t in much of a ripping-cloth mood by the time we saw her,” Kane reminded Brigid.
“Decard said that his men came across her and the others just wandering aimlessly, remember?” Brigid told him. “Could have had a flurry of activity before they reached the state of catatonia that resulted in death.”
“Lot of coulds,” Kane grunted.
“Be a few more before we’re done,” Brigid lamented.
They checked inside the wag and found the usual supplies for long-distance travel—pots, pans, a kettle, a sealed tin of fire lighters and another full of dried strips of meat, blankets, unwashed clothes, a little collection of children’s books full of once bright illustrations that had been pawed to dullness by many hands. As they looked around, Grant came over to join them, standing beside the mule outside the open front entrance to the long wagon.
“You guys need any help?” he asked.
“No.” Kane sighed. “There’s nothing here.”
“Same story with the ash, I’m afraid,” Grant told them.
Brigid glanced up at the sun—a colorless orb in the sky out here in the desert—as she stepped from the back of the wagon and into its fierce light once more. “Guess we go look at the bodies,” she said.
Kane agreed. “Next stop—corpse central.”
While the Incarnates started up the electric motors of their chariots, Kane and Grant released the mule and the swollen-bellied horse from their reins and shooed them off away from the site. Left tied up, they would just starve—at least this way they had a fighting chance at survival.
THE ROAMERS HAD MADE it almost three-quarters of a mile farther, though whether they had been running from something or after something it was impossible to say. A flock of scrawny-looking vultures had appeared to pick over the corpses of the five people, and Kane and Grant fired a salvo from their Sin Eaters into the air to scare them away before Brigid and the Incarnate field medic examined the bodies.
The vultures and sand-dwelling insects had already made a feast of the tender parts of the dead, and peck marks and burrowed holes speckled their open flesh.
While Brigid was busy examining the corpses, Grant and Kane paced around the area along with Decard and the two scouts who had alerted them to their location. The scouts pointed out what they had noticed, and the three ex-Mags evaluated everything they saw.
“The sand’s pitted and kicked up all over,” Kane observed. “Like someone was wrestling.”
Decard agreed. “The wind’s tossed new sand over the area here and there, but it’s still pretty clear that something happened here. If I saw this on one of my patrols, without the corpses, I’d assume it had been a campsite the night before and I’d be looking out for Roamers.”
“What do you think happened?” Grant asked as he sifted a handful of sand through his fingers.
“Big prints around this way,” the ibis-masked Incarnate said, showing tracks that led off to the north.
Kane led the way, taking in the tracks and tracing them with his finger to way over the horizon. The two tracks were side-by-side, like footprints, deep indentations that had packed the sand tight. In some parts, the evidence had been covered by new sand picked up by the wind, but there was enough evidence to assess the basic direction that their maker had taken.
“Something big made these,” Kane said as he bent to study the closest of the prints. “That’s a shoe size of—” he rested his forearm on the ground beside the track and saw that the print stretched almost the whole length, from elbow to his second knuckle “—massive.”
Grant whistled in astonishment. “Size extra-extra-large,” he muttered.
There had been occasions where the Cerberus warriors had faced huge creatures, time-lost dinosaurs, vast mechanical monsters and even ancient creatures whose size and endurance far outstripped that of man. Whatever had left these prints was not in that league. And yet it sent a disquieting shiver down Kane’s spine as he considered the implications of the large footprints embedded in the sand.
As the three ex-Mags pondered the vast markings, Brigid and the medic walked over to join them. As they did so, the circling vultures squawked and cried, flapping their wings and rushing earthward to return to their feast.
“Find anything?” Decard asked.
“Nothing we hadn’t already seen in the girl,” Brigid admitted, irritation in her voice. The Incarnate beside her nodded his assent to her summary, saying nothing further.
“We have ourselves a set of tracks,” Grant told Brigid, pointing off into the distance where they led. “I’m guessing we follow them and see what shakes out of the trees.”
Kane glanced up from his crouching position beside the closest print. “We bury the dead first,” he decided in a tone that brooked no argument.
While the others discussed their plan of action, Smarts got Rosalia’s attention and indicated off to the side of the group while Domi’s back was turned. Rosalia followed his gesture, masking the move as though trying to shield her eyes from the bright sun, and she saw the little carrying case for the interphaser, left unguarded about thirty feet from the dead bodies and their attendant birds, resting on the floor of one of the open-topped chariots. Silently she turned to Smarts and shook her head just a fraction of an inch. It’s not the time. Not yet.
Smarts assented with a long, heavy blink of his eyes, saying nothing. He trusted Rosalia. She would know when the time was right.
AS THE GROUP of solar-powered chariots traversed the sandy swells of the California desert, Kane engaged his Commtact and sent a call to the Cerberus redoubt. He had left Domi guarding Smarts for this run, securing what little privacy he could for this conversation.
“Kane to Cerberus. Come in, Cerberus,” Kane said quietly.
Because of the way in which the vocal pickup was embedded into its user, the Commtact could operate clearly from the lowest of whispers. Often, caught in tight situations, Kane and his team had switched to subvocalizing commands into the Commtacts, keeping in touch with one another despite the need for silence.
A few moments passed before Donald Bry’s voice responded. “This is Cerberus,” Bry said confidently. “How is everything going?”
Kane gave a concise sitrep. “We’re out in the desert now,” he concluded, “and it’s hot and getting hotter. Currently traveling in a northwesterly direction following the tracks. Any chance you can scan the area up ahead of us, Donald?”
“Affirmative, Kane,” Bry responded. “It’ll take a few minutes to get our eyes in position. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Bry was referring to the Vela-class satellite that Cerberus controlled. With it, Donald Bry could monitor the Earth from orbit with just a few instructions to his desktop computer.
Kane glanced up at the rising sun, pulling the collar of the shadow suit away from his neck for a moment as though to relieve himself of the increasing heat. In actuality, the shadow suit’s artificial environment was keeping Kane and his team wonderfully cool, but there was something subliminal about being in the desert as the sun approached its midday zenith that made one feel too hot, Kane realized. The power of persuasion.
“We’ll be making a stopover shortly,” Kane said into the Commtact, “give everyone a chance to cool down some.”
“Understood,” Bry replied. “I’ll get whatever information I can glean before you take off again.”
“Acknowledged,” Kane said.
Kane shouted for Decard’s attention and signaled that they should pull over for a while. Steering his jostling chariot over the humps of the dunes, Decard scowled for a moment until he saw Kane give the okay signal, thumb to forefinger, before repeating his instruction to pull the chariots to a halt.
As the engine of his chariot powered down, Decard stepped from the open rear and walked swiftly over Kane’s chariot. “What’s going on?” he asked urgently. “You see something?”
“No,” Kane replied, stepping from his chariot, “I just figure it’s approaching midday and maybe some of these folks will want to find some shade and take a rest for an hour or so.”
“My Incarnates don’t mind this heat, Kane,” Decard explained patiently. “They’re used to it and they’ll keep on mission until I tell them differently.”
“Well, I’m sure your royal command is good,” Kane said with a friendly laugh as he ribbed his old friend, “but I’m guessing my charges are starting to flag.” He gestured toward the two prisoners who sat on the rear steps of their respective chariots as Domi and Grant watched over them.
Decard scanned the horizon for a moment before pointing to a tan-colored outcropping a little way from them, to the right of the heavy footprints. “Shady spot,” he suggested. “No need to set up the tents that way.”
Kane nodded. “I like your thinking.”
The group of little vehicles started up once more and traveled over the rough sand until they reached the shade of the low mesa. They would continue the hunt once the sun had passed its peak.
Chapter 7
Concealed within the rocky clefts of Montana’s Bitterroot Mountain Range, tucked beneath camouflage netting, hidden uplinks chattered in their continuous electronic conversation with two orbiting satellites that provided the Cerberus redoubt with a wealth of information about the outside world. Within the redoubt itself—a foreboding three-story structure of concrete and metal, hidden by the mountains—communications expert Donald Bry was studying their data feed on the screen of his computer terminal. A round-shouldered man of small stature, Bry wore a constant expression of consternation beneath his curly mop of unruly, copper-colored hair. A long-serving and trusted member of the Cerberus team, Bry acted as lieutenant and apprentice—in all things technological, at least—to Lakesh.
Bry’s computer was one of more than two dozen arranged in twin aisles inside the vast operations room of the military redoubt. The control center was the brains of the Cerberus operation, and the room was constantly manned by scientists and communications experts. A number of these staff members had come to Cerberus from cryogenic stasis in the Manitius Moon Base, and the redoubt could now boast some of the sharpest scientific and military minds of the late twentieth century, time displaced and awoken to fill its swelling ranks.
Back when it was first operational, Cerberus had been called Redoubt Bravo, adhering to the standard military convention of using the phonetic letter of the alphabet in naming. The huge complex had undergone a number of changes since then, but it still retained something of its original purposes—to safeguard the freedom of humankind.
As Bry scanned the feed from the Vela-class satellite’s camera and thermal sensors, he was unaware that he was being watched by Lakesh. Though he looked to be a man of perhaps fifty years of age, Lakesh was in fact much older. Having spent over a century in cryogenic suspension, Lakesh was truthfully a man of 250 years, and until quite recently he had looked to be exactly that. A contrivance of circumstances had seen a would-be ally of the Cerberus exiles court their favor by reversing the aging process and granting the physicist and cybernetics expert a new lease on life.
With studied politeness, Lakesh quietly cleared his throat to get Bry’s attention.
Bry looked up from the screen as the satellite scanned the California desert for the coordinates that Kane’s subcutaneous transponder was broadcasting. The transponders provided the Cerberus nerve center with a constant stream of information about a field operative’s health and well-being, monitoring heart rate, blood pressure and brain-wave activity.
“How’s Kane?” Lakesh asked.
Bry pointed to the screen as the satellite zeroed in on Kane’s transponder. “Kane’s squad is in Death Valley, chasing footprints in the sand. He’s asked me to look ahead to try to clue them in on what’s making those prints.”
Lakesh nodded thoughtfully. “I see. That’s quite close to where the quake hit, isn’t it?” he asked.
Bry turned in his swivel chair and pointed to the large Mercator-relief map that spanned one whole wall of the ops room. The Mercator map included dozens of tiny lights, each indicating a point where a known operational mat-trans unit was located. A plethora of colored lines linked each of these lights, somewhat in the manner of an old-fashioned flight plan, showing the many connections between gateways. The map was a legacy of the time when the Cerberus redoubt had been dedicated to the exploration of the viability and military application of a mat-trans system. Dominating the vast operations room, the map was a handy reference that the personnel often examined. Bry’s extended finger traced along the West Coast of North America, a coastline that had been remade by quakes in the past two hundred years.
