Chasing the Phoenix, page 12
“Believe it or not, this is only a secondary access. The main entrance was far too effectively armored for us to hope to breach it.”
The metal looked like nothing Darger had ever seen. “You will not find this an easy nut to crack,” he observed.
“Stand back and watch.”
A pair of sappers applied explosives to two corners of the door, inserted fuses, lit them, and then scurried to the far side of the room. Darger, perforce, hurried after them.
Whoomp. Smoke puffed up and the door opened on its hinges.
“It’s simple when you know how,” White Squall said.
* * *
IT SEEMED to be Darger’s fate to have unpleasant adventures underground. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of your coming to your senses at the last minute?” he said to White Squall as her team formed up in the anteroom of the subterranean armory.
“Break the oath I swore to my liege lord, give up all hope of wealth and glory, and spend a lifetime fleeting the Hidden Emperor’s assassins, you mean? No.”
“This is a more perilous enterprise than you realize.”
“I have dealt with demons before,” White Squall reminded Darger. “Though honesty compels me to admit that normally we disable all electrical cables before opening a site where demons are likely to be. That will not be possible here.” Lifting her voice, she said, “You may light the torches now.”
Up and down the line, sugar was poured into glass alembics containing water laced with metal salts. Hyperactive bacteria began feeding, and in the process releasing hydrogen gas. Friction lighters were touched to the spouts, and flares of yellow light sprang to life. The alembics, hung from poles, were hoisted into the air.
“Who’s got the map?” White Squall asked. “Exquisite Calculus? Talk us through.”
“We are at the opening of a transport garage,” Exquisite Calculus said. “Those shadowy shapes were once trucks. Of no interest to us today. There should be a set of stairs not far from here.”
Eight soldiers had been left behind to secure the entrance against their return. Those proceeding into the depths of the ancient armory were now about evenly divided between sappers and combat-hardened archaeologists. First went two light bearers, followed by the map reader, White Squall, and Darger. Then ten soldiers carrying a litter on which rested an HJ-73 Red Arrow antitank guided missile, another pair of light bearers, and the remaining personnel trailing behind them. It had been Darger’s idea to decorate the missile with varicolored ribbons and paper flowers in such profusion that it looked like a piñata, and, once the foreign word had been explained to her, White Squall had readily taken him up on the suggestion.
“The mad intelligences and posthuman minds of the Internet don’t really understand us,” Darger had said then. “Oh, in theory they know everything there is to know about human beings: what we fear, and what motivates us. But our logical processes are as opaque to them as theirs are to us. A visual reminder of this fact will cause them unease and uncertainty.”
As they moved deeper into the armory, the procession occasionally paused so the sappers could cut through a cable or rip out an exposed fuse box. “The less access they have to us, the better,” White Squall explained.
“I have heard it said that it would take a thousand years of concerted effort to dig out the worldwide infrastructure within which the demons dwell,” Darger said.
“All the more reason to get a start on it.”
“We are now entering a run of offices in which scholars documented the expenditures and activities of the armorers,” Exquisite Calculus announced.
They walked on in silence for a while.
“This would be the kitchen … the soldiers’ mess … the officers’ mess … recreation facilities.”
“What is that tingling in the air?” Darger asked.
“A sign that we are getting closer to our destination,” White Squall replied. “Now hush.”
Exquisite Calculus held up a hand for all to pause. “Security checkpoint. We’re almost there.”
“Are those guns?”
“I said hush. Anyway, time has rendered them nonoperational.”
“How can you be sure?”
“We’re not dead, are we?” To their guide, White Squall said, “You may proceed.”
They passed through a long corridor lined with black glass windows on either side, beneath which grim metal muzzles stuck out of gun slots at regular intervals. At its end they entered a space so great that the light of their alembics did not reach the distant ceiling. Here and there in the darkness, spectral forms shone dimly, muttering and whispering to themselves.
One of these ghosts floated closer, congealing with proximity into the form of a woman. Her face was as serenely beautiful as a porcelain mask. But malice poured off of her; no one standing in her presence could doubt she intended only evil. White robes and scarves floated restlessly about the specter, as if she were underwater. In a voice rendered utterly eerie by sudden hisses and pops and underlain by a multitude of lesser voices, she said:
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
WELCOME AUBREY DARGER, CHIL
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
D OF THE SLUMS AND DESTROYER
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
OF CITIES. HAS LIFE GROWN SO H
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
ARD THAT YOU HAVE COME TO US
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
SEARCHING FOR DEATH? REJOICE!
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
FOR YOU HAVE FOUND IT AT LAST.
dieinexcruciatingpainpleadinginvainformercythatwillnotcome
Darger held his face expressionless. White Squall’s people looked elaborately bored.
“I am the leader here,” White Squall snapped. “If you have something to say, speak to me directly, not through a subordinate.”
The ghost underwent a series of distressing transformations involving body parts grown large and drooping or sprouting vivid sores. Maggots dropping from her mouth, she said:
writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld
AGAIN YOU COME TO ROB US, WH
writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld
ITE SQUALL! A SPECIAL HELL HAS
writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld
BEEN PREPARED FOR YOU, ONE
writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld
IN WHICH YOU WILL BE KEPT ALIV
writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld
E FOR CENTURIES, ALONE, ALONE.
writheinagonyforeverandeverbeggingfordeathtoolongwithheld
“We have played this game before,” White Squall said.
diesufferdie
SO WE
diesufferdie
HAVE.
diesufferdie
“I have come to retrieve a weapon. You wish me to have it. Just once, I wish we could skip the bluster and threats.”
The apparition said nothing.
“I of course will tell you that the weapon will be used to kill my own kind, even as the weapons you surrendered in the past have been used. You will believe I think it will not be used. But you will also believe that, against my best efforts, it will be deployed anyway. Why are we arguing? You will act on your beliefs, and I will act on mine.”
yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes
WE ARE ARGUING BECAUSE
yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes
WE HATE YOUR KIND SO VE
yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes
RY GREATLY, CAO SQUALL.
yourbodywilldielongbeforeyourtorturedbraindoes
“You’ve had your fun. Now show us what we came for.”
To one side of the cavern a bank of lights came on, causing all to squint and hold up their hands before their eyes. Against one wall was a line of slim dark bronze cones, somewhat taller than a grown man and, so far as could be seen, featureless.
deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind
THE WARHEADS ARE LOCKED
deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind
ELECROMAGNETICALLY. FOR
deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind
EVERY TEN OF YOUR MEN YO
deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind
U KILL, TAKE ONE WITH YOU.
deathtorturedespairwillbeyourfateandthatofallyourkind
“No deal. Release a single warhead and you may be assured we will use it to kill human beings. Many, many human beings.”
fartoolittleandnotenough
NOT ENOUGH
fartoolittleandnotenough
NOT ENOUGH
fartoolittleandnotenough
NOT ENOUGH
fartoolittleandnotenough
“It is all you will get. Take it or leave it.”
The ghost floated silent before them, cryptic and unreadable.
“You cannot force me to sacrifice my own subordinates. In this I am adamant.”
Silence.
“If I may.” Darger stepped forward and addressed the ghost directly. “You know that I was in Moscow when it burned. Release the Phoenix Bride—the nuclear warhead, if you will—and I will tell you all I know of what became of those demons who briefly broke free of their exile and almost seized that city.”
White Squall turned a questioning look on Darger. In response, he shrugged in a manner meant to say, It’s a long story.
The ghost’s features grew fuzzy, overlapped, merged. Briefly, it became an egg of light. Then it disappeared altogether. The bank of lights turned off, one by one, until there was but one and, beneath it, a single warhead, gleaming and sinister.
Click. Something unlocked within or below the warhead.
“Now! Quickly.” At the cao’s command, her soldiers rolled the Red Arrow rocket onto the floor, then ran the litter to the warhead’s side. With practiced sureness, they lowered the warhead onto it. Six to a side, they cinched straps around the device, then lifted it again.
But when they turned back to the corridor through which they had entered, they found the same ghost blocking their way.
nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies
KEEP YOUR SIDE OF THE BARGAIN,
nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies
AUBREY DARGER. WHAT DO YOU K
nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies
NOW OF OUR KIN WHO DISAPPEARE
nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies
D IN THE GREAT FIRE OF MOSCOW?
nopainsaretoogreatnotorturetooviletobeinflicteduponyourbodies
“That is easily enough told,” Darger replied, “for I know absolutely nothing of their fate. Only that they were surely destroyed, for otherwise they would have overrun Russia and freed the rest of your lot in turn. I took a chance that their disappearance was as great a mystery to you as to me, and it paid off.” Taking a deep breath, he plunged straight through the ghost. Every hair on his body stood on end as he did so, and, briefly, his skin stung. But otherwise no harm came to him.
Behind him, he heard the ghost scream as the others, following his lead, plunged through its insubstantial form and down the long corridor toward the outside world.
In far less time than it had taken them to go in, they found themselves standing in the back room of Vast Prosperity Import-Export. “Thank goodness that’s done,” White Squall said. To one of her sappers she said, “When is the Red Arrow timed to go off?”
“Any minute now, Cao White Squall,” the woman replied.
Behind them, the mountain shook.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, while the sappers rebuilt the wagon to transport the Phoenix Bride across unreliable mountain roads with maximum safety, White Squall rented a pleasure boat to take out onto the Green Silk Ribbon River. Standing at the stern, Darger rowed midway across the water and then dropped anchor. There, the boat bobbed softly, going nowhere and in no great hurry to get there. For a time they admired the city in silence. A full moon shone high among the stars that thronged the sky above its gently glowing buildings. From here, they could smell the osmanthus trees after which the city was named and hear the cries of the street vendors selling food from lantern-lit carts by the waterfront.
“What a ravishing sight. It reminds me of Paris,” Darger said with a catch in his voice, for his experiences in the City of Bioluminescent Light had been romantic in nature and tragic in their outcome.
“We are not here to gawk,” White Squall said. “Close the curtains. We have matters to discuss, and in a city as filled with spies as this one, there may well be a lip-reader training a telescope on us at this very moment.”
Suspecting nothing, Darger did as his superior commanded. The boat was rectangular, with poles at the corners connected by ropes at their tops, from which depended silk curtains so arranged that they could be tied together to erect privacy walls while leaving the boat open to the sky. The transformation was made in a trice. Darger sat down again upon the comfortable cushions with which the boat was amply supplied. It was the first time they had been alone since this journey began.
Now that they were enclosed within silk walls, Darger found that he could almost see through the thin cloth. The city was a rainbow blur to one side. The moon overhead was bright enough that they did not need a lantern.
White Squall produced two cups and a jug of wine. She filled the cups and they drank. When only dregs remained, Darger said, “The time has come for you to come clean with me. You did not need me to retrieve the Phoenix Bride. Nor will it take any great amount of cunning to transport it to the Hidden Emperor. Yet you insisted that I accompany you on this mission. Why am I here?”
“You are here because I want to ask you a favor.”
“Go on.”
“But first I must tell you something of myself, of my history and parentage, and how I came to be the Hidden King’s cao.” White Squall leaned back against the cushions. “My father was a mechanic and whatever my mother was, she left when I was so young that no memory of her remains. Since the unsuccessful rebellion of the AIs and the fall of Utopia, a superstitious fear of all machinery has been widespread. Thus, though the engines my father repaired and sometimes improved upon were not at all complex—the threshing machines that farm horses pull, for example—we were effectively outcasts and friendless. I grew up a lonely and bookish child. The same louts who jeered at me for loving to read shunned me for focusing on texts about machinery.
“But I knew that if I were to make a life for myself, I must use the tools at hand. Combining my love for books and my father’s gift for mechanics, I read deep into literature no one had glanced at for centuries. From the mechanical sciences I moved on to physics and then the forbidden arts of combustion engineering and electronics. I did not know that I was becoming the sole authority on matters no other first-rate intellect considered worthy of study. But inevitably I created my own specialty, the study of ancient weapons of war.
“From discovering and rehabilitating such devices, I came to realize their potential to change the world. So I wrote a treatise on their resurrection and the tactical advantages of their use. Copies of this book I sent to the ruler of every nation in the fractured remains of China the Great, hoping against hope that there would be among them a single monarch willing to hear me out.
“So it was that I came to the attention of the Hidden King. Two weeks after he read my treatise, his agents kidnapped me and brought me to the Shadow Palace, where he interviewed me at length. I have been his loyal servitor ever since.
“Outwardly, I am a success. However, all my understanding is of machinery: how it fits together, how to repair it, how to make it do things that I want it to do. Human beings do not operate in any manner that I understand. I remain as lonely as ever.”
“I am sorry to hear that,” Darger said.
“Your sympathy is irrelevant. What matters is that I desire things I cannot have. I am beautiful in my way. My manners are correct because I have made a study of the manuals covering such matters—”
“They are called etiquette books.”
White Squall frowned. “I believe it is considered rude to contradict a lady.”
“That is true. I was, however, not contradicting but merely elucidating.”
“Ah.” White Squall said. “This is an excellent example of why I am not more successful socially. I lack subtlety.”
When she did not resume speaking, Darger said, “Yours is a moving story. But what does it lead up to?”
“Simply this. When we first met, I seriously underestimated you. I thought you a mere adventurer, and in private I laughed at your calling yourself the Perfect Strategist. Now I see that I was wrong. You may or may not be an immortal—I still have serious doubts in that regard—but you are unquestionably a man of a thousand shifts and stratagems.” White Squall leaned forward to top off Darger’s cup, then leaned back against the cushions again.
“Thank you.”
“With but a deceitful conversation, you overcame Prince First-Born Splendor’s perfectly valid objections to letting our armies pass through Southern Gate and also, impossibly, turned him into a willing ally. In a single hour, you overcame an army that had fought Powerful Locomotive to a standstill. At your direction, the Dog Warrior took the city of Peace with twenty soldiers and a scrap of red cloth. In minor matters, as with that dreadful woman whose house we needed, and in major ones as well, as in your deception of the ghost-demon beneath the mountain so that we did not need to sacrifice even a single soldier, you invariably get your way. I begin to think,” White Squall said, “that you can do anything you set your mind to.” Again, she filled Darger’s cup.
Darger was as susceptible to flattery as any other man, and perhaps more so, since he so rarely was on the receiving end of it. “Perhaps I can,” he said, pleased.
