Dreams of gods and men, p.1
Dreams of Gods and Men, page 1
Dreams of Gods and Men W.T. Quick
This book is dedicated to:
Sarah Mitchell, Aunt Sally
and
Ernest E. Quick, Uncle Ernie
You are missed…
And
Tracy Cogswell
Teacher and Friend
1
Spread out in the narrow valley below, the cabin was a smoking ruin. The sharp miasma of spent high explosive filtered up to the niche where Toshiro Nakasone clamped his hands to the sides of his head. His fingers knotted against the insidious trap he’d unwittingly triggered in what should have been a straightforward assassination. But who could have predicted this awful, pervasive mental attack? Particularly from a victim whose body was now bloody shreds? Finally, by sheer, teeth-grinding will, he forced his throat to work.
“Ahhh!”
“Hang on, Tosh,” Levin said. “I’m working on it.”
Toshi stared at a tiny figure picking its dainty way through the rubble of the God’s retreat, moving slowly toward the fifty-meter wall of rock which sheltered Toshi’s hideaway. He knew that form. Blades of God, they called themselves. He squinted at the little yellow killer, trying to estimate how much time he had left. Not much, probably. Those fragile-looking samurai were unbelievably effective at search and destroy.
“Levin?” Toshi mumbled. It was hard to subvocalize. His mouth was filled with peanut butter, his tongue a swollen sausage of rigid flesh.
“Try to relax,” Levin said. “When you fight, you make things harder for me.”
“I killed that God. I know it. Nothing could have survived inside the lodge, and that’s where it was when the bombs went off.”
“Well, you got its body, I think,” Levin replied slowly. “But something is still with us. There’s got to be a source for that control process. I’m trying to analyze now—it’s either autonomic or psychomatic, but I can’t tell yet. That God was one of the newer entities. I haven’t been able to find out as much as I’d like about the Church’s latest engineering techniques.”
“That’s nice, Levin. Very encouraging.” Toshi took a deep breath. Levin was partially controlling his respiratory system, exerting a psychonomic calming effect. The air smelled clean and cool. There was a taste of pine to it, and damp earth and still water: a fine mishmash of odors, heavily spiced with the charring tang of Hyundai number four industrial-grade explosive.
“I think I understand,” Levin said suddenly. “Arius didn’t retreat to the metamatrix when his avatar was destroyed.” His clear tenor voice turned puzzled. “But that’s impossible, too. At least we thought it was.”
The Blade moved alertly across the base of the cliff, head swiveling like a good hunting dog on a scent. Short lemon man with death in his chromosomes.
“Listen, old friend,” Toshi said. “It may be impossible, but it’s happening. And we don’t have a hell of a lot of time. That Blade down there is gonna find me pretty quick—and if I’m still in my present condition, he’s gonna rip me into small bloody chunks with his delicate little fingers. You do understand that, right?”
The soft breeze shifted slightly, carrying with it the sudden stench of burned God and scorched rock. Toshi decided he’d done a good job on the building. It was just bad breaks that his intended victim seemed unexpectedly immortal and that one Blade had remained outside on guard duty when the shatterbombs went off.
“We’ve never tried a full feedback loop, Toshi. But the theory’s okay, and you’re wired for it.”
“No!” The harsh suddenness of his reply startled him. It betrayed levels of fear he had never investigated, some dangerous lapse in the web of controls by which he governed the disciplines of his life. He was replying to logic with emotion, and that might be the worst thing of all.
Down below, the Blade froze, his face toward the cliff. Then he smiled and slid forward into the underbrush like a sword drawn suddenly from a sheath.
Nervously, Toshi tried to raise his right hand to wipe sweat from his burning eyes, forgot about the mandrakes and, but for the slow freezing of incipient paralysis, almost blinded himself. “Damn it!” He paused, then swallowed heavily. “Uh, Levin, I take it back. Whatever you’re gonna do, you better get started. I don’t think there’s much time—”
He didn’t finish the sentence. Levin took control of his vocal cords. And everything else.
It was an eerie sensation. Toshi felt as if he were watching himself from a distance, slow and dreamy, but without connection. Yet he was still in his body. Levin was pushing buttons, pulling all the nervous wires.
The implants which connected him to Levin were modeled on some very nasty wrinkles in mind control the NASA-INTEL people dreamed up in the late nineties and later discarded as too dangerous for even their arcane purposes. Levin actually used him as a remote input-output unit. He watched from Toshi’s eyes; heard from his ears, shared his enthusiasm for the taste of dark beer and the smell of fresh bread. In their strange relationship, Toshi functioned at times as an ultimate Waldo. Berg said it was safe. Toshi trusted Berg. And Berg had designed Levin. But, he thought uncomfortably, we’ve never truly put it to the test—and when the Blade flowed into his rocky nest like a striking bushmaster, all his emotions clamored blindly against the prison of his skull. Toshi’s hands, covered with electrified, razor-studded mandrakes, moved suddenly, a blur faster than he could follow. The unbidden movement shocked him.
Amazing, Toshi thought. Nice set of reflexes.
The Blade sported his own set of jumped-up nerves and muscles, backed with genetic memory grafts. The Church augmented Blades as bodyguards and assassins, and the resulting samurai were the best ever known at those poignant trades. A single Blade was perfectly capable of chopping a battalion of ordinary troopers into prebreakfast snacks. This one grinned flatly as he flicked a pair of steel-spiked nerve balls at Toshi’s eyes. As part of the same fluid motion he raised his left foot, toes inward, for an immediate killing strike.
Toshi watched this with an intense concentration. Two score answering moves jittered through his shrieking brain, but the synapses weren’t passing on any messages. Time slowed down. A deep hum began to pulse at the base of his spine. The Blade’s foot came up and up. Toshi’s left hand rose slowly, batting the nerve balls away as he turned. His right knee blocked the foot strike, moved forward to drive at the Blade’s groin. The little man backed away, beginning a roll, but Toshi’s fight hand, ’drake buzzing and spitting power, brushed his face.
The Blade convulsed. His spine arched like a broken bow.
Toshi’s left hand came down. The Blade screamed once, but it was too late. He was already dead.
That fast? He felt himself go numb at the ease of it.
Levin broke the loop. Toshi found his voice.
“Jesus, Levin, what was that?”
“I told you it would work.”
“Yeah.” Toshi stared at the body crumpled at his feet. He had always wondered if he could take one of them even up. He still didn’t know. Had he done it? Or Levin—or both of them?
The God was still at work somewhere. Free of the feedback loop, Toshi felt ghostly tendrils of control begin to surge again at the walls of his mind. Certain problems were now painfully evident. The efforts of the dead God were almost immobilizing him. Sooner or later the situation would turn fatal. He had to get out, and only Levin could do that for him. He carefully considered the logic of it, but the deep levels still recoiled at turning over control once again.
Yet the word had to get out. The interminable war with Arius and New Church, Inc., had probably been futile from the start, but he still fought. And so did Berg, and Calley, and all the others. They had to know about this new mind control weapon—it was deadly in itself. But perhaps only Berg could truly gauge the threat embodied in the system itself—that Arius could somehow function in the real world without a body, or at least a brain, for physical support. He recalled Berg’s often muttered question: What is real? He shook his head. It was Berg’s question. Let him answer it.
At the moment it was all beside the point. The contract was definitely busted. He had to get the hell away. And do it now, he reminded himself. Nevertheless, he asked the question again. Maybe there was a different answer.
“Okay, Levin. Now what?”
“I can put you out while I take over.” Levin’s voice was soothing. As always, he answered the unspoken words first.
“That would be better.” Toshi exhaled slowly. “I don’t like it much the other way.”
He could almost see Levin nod agreement. Then came the sudden dark, and Levin marched him out of there like a big, blind baby.
When he opened his eyes he saw night. He shook his head and watched faint starbursts flicker at the back of his eyeballs. The medicinal odor of fir trees and pine cones enveloped him as he inhaled sharply. A sharp, chill breeze ruffled his dark hair and tugged at his earlobes. In the distance he heard the thin whine of tires on concrete. A road, then, not far away, and big enough to handle freighters.
“Levin?”
“What?”
“Where the fuck are we?”
“Flip down your shades.”
“Huh? Oh, yeah. Here.” He groped for the mirrored silver lenses which were attached to his headband, and almost ruined himself with the mandrake again. “Motherfucker!”
“Be glad you’re not powered up,” Levin observed.
“Asshole,” Toshi muttered. He carefully removed the monomole mesh gloves and folded them into a pouch at h
is waist, working slowly so he didn’t slice his fingers to rags on the razors. Then he lowered the lenses, making sure the opti-fiber cable from the socket beneath his left ear was securely plugged into the edge of the frames around his eyes.
“Well?”
“One second,” Levin said.
Suddenly the lenses glowed with sharp green lines. A map. A tiny red star pushed near one heavy green line, marking their location.
“Expand, please,” Toshi said. Obligingly, the map suddenly widened. The effect was as if he’d suddenly risen to a much greater height. A faint wave of nausea thumped his heavy stomach.
“Not so fast!”
“Sorry. I told you not to eat that second pizza.”
“I’ll worry about my own diet, thanks,” Toshi replied. “Looks about forty klicks north of San Francisco. That right?”
“Forty one point two.”
“And… let’s see. The car’s almost twenty more back up the road.”
“Yes.”
“So, you want to tell me why you walked us here and not there?”
“Certainly. About a dozen Blades are between what’s left of that lodge and our car. Of course, if you’d rather—”
“No, thanks,” Toshi said hastily. “This is just fine. I’d rather walk. Really.”
“Thought you would,” Levin said.
Toshi sighed and stared up at the night sky. The map faded away from his lenses as Levin kicked in the light-gatherers. A canopy of dark leaves moved slowly, far overhead. Redwoods.
“Picturesque,” Toshi said. He checked his bearings one more time, then moved slowly off toward the road. After a time his lips moved silently.
“Hey, Levin,” he said.
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
“Oh. Sure.”
A fucking awful day.
The sun, rising over Montclair in the Oakland hills, cast Toshi’s shadow across the hard black rocks overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge from the north side of the Bay. Far across the water, the towers of the city glittered in needles of steel and ice. He stared at bubblecondos strung like neon pearls from the lower level of the bridge as a freshening breeze whipped at his long black hair. The upper levels of the bridge still carried some traffic, mostly huge, low-slung freighters hauling food into the city. Their giant tires made a thick, throaty hum on the morning air. Brilliant needles of blue-green light danced above their cabs as they sucked laser power from the grids, orbiting far overhead.
“It’s gonna be a bitch,” he muttered slowly.
“We have to get back into the city,” Levin replied.
“I know. You got any ideas?”
“They’ll be watching the toll areas. I can fool a portable retinal analyzer. Maybe you can bluff it.”
“My face is different than last month. But my profile is pretty much unmistakable. There’s enough assorted carbon and metal inside me—and my hand can’t be missed by anybody with a scanner. Like I said, a bitch.”
“Perhaps they won’t be as vigilant as they might be.”
“Are you kidding? I tried to kill a God. And I missed. The New Church knows I ran into that mind control thing, and they also gotta figure I’ll be trying for the city. I would guess there’s a platoon of Blades spread over all the obvious places, and probably half the Wolves in the country down there waiting for me.”
“They can’t be sure it’s you, Toshi.”
“Yeah? I hate to sound pompous, but they’ve had me tagged as Berg’s number one hit man for at least the last two years. Before your time, even. Somebody takes a potshot at one of their bubble gum saints, their computers spit up my profile before anybody else.”
“You do,” Levin said.
“I do what?”
“Sound pompous.”
Toshi licked his lips and glanced at the deserted parking lot behind the overlook point. Soon enough the first tourists would appear, laughing and waving cameras. No doubt some of the cameras wouldn’t be cameras. And some of the tourists wouldn’t be tourists. He exhaled slowly.
“Nobody likes a smart ass,” he said. He turned around and walked slowly away from the rocks, his eyes squinted against the sun.
He made a strange figure, a short, pudgy Oriental man with long black hair and a peculiarly graceful, rolling gait. There was a harmlessness about him, a roly-poly joviality only accentuated by the robelike Hawaiian-print shirt which descended to his knees. He carried a tattered green backpack slung over his right shoulder, and moved as if the pack was filled with feathers—but he’d loaded the pack himself and knew there was at least thirty kilos of gear inside.
He had the kind of face strangers smile at without thinking.
It took him a minute or so to trudge through the parking lot and climb back to the road leading down to the bridge. He paused at the edge of the road for a few seconds, until another gigantic freighter whined past. Then he shrugged and started walking.
“I’ll think of something,” he said.
The trucker was named Joe. He had a wife in Kansas City, an ex-wife in Baltimore, and a girlfriend in San Francisco. He was winding down the final few miles of a cross-country run, and his eyes, hidden behind mirrored sunglasses, were bulging from two hundred milligrams of tailored methamphetamine he’d chewed for breakfast. Six speakers placed strategically about the cab of his freighter blared sym-rock—PetKillers—at a decibel level guaranteed to cause hearing loss. He didn’t give a shit. He hadn’t heard well for years.
He barely noticed the small figure in a godawful red shirt walking along the edge of the road, but as he blew past, the sudden heavy thump down low behind his cab was impossible to miss.
“Oh, fuck,” he said. “Oh, Mother of God, jeezus.” Something bright bounced once in his rearview mirror and disappeared beneath his wheels. “Oh, fuck,” he moaned again, and slammed on his brakes.
As he raced to the back of the freighter a wave of dizziness slammed into him; his heart tried to climb up and kick his teeth out.
He skidded to a stop and peered into the darkness beneath the big wheels, almost puking with the certainty of what he would find crushed there.
Yes. He saw the silent lump and turned away for a moment, retching. Finally he turned back. Have to pull the guy out. Shit. No time for San Francisco Sheila now. Maybe no job. They’d test him for sure—and DUI meant hard jail time.
His chest burned until he wanted to scream, but he stooped over and began to tug, at the crumpled body. He was too buzzed to notice the man seemed very heavy for his size. Finally he pulled the body out into the light.
Strange. No blood. Maybe—
He reached down to touch the man’s neck, trying for a pulse.
Toshi’s eyes popped open. “Hi, there,” he said.
Joe felt a stinging sensation in his right calf. Then his eyes rolled back into his skull and drank darkness.
“Now what?” Toshi had finished pulling the huge freighter off to the side of the road. He stared at Joe’s comatose form slumped on the seat next to him. The bony trucker’s eyelids flickered rapidly, then subsided. His breathing was harsh and irregular. “You think I gave the sucker a heart attack or something?”
“Get me a sample,” Levin said briskly.
“Huh? Oh, right. Good idea.” Toshi gestured once and a small, sharp blade magically appeared in his right hand. After making a small cut in the ball of Joe’s left thumb, he put the thumb in his mouth and sucked.
“Enough?”
“Yes. That will do.”
Toshi nodded and replaced the trucker’s hand on his lap. He gazed stolidly at the tiny red ball of upwelling blood while he waited for Levin to finish his analysis. He knew that Levin monitored his physical indexes constantly, but it still seemed like witchcraft when the AI program inside his skull was able to dissect changes as minute as a few drops of blood on his tongue.
“Got it,” Levin said. “He’s pumped full of speed.”
“Is he okay?”
“Yes. Use a mild hypnotic. He’ll last long enough.”
Toshi nodded and withdrew a small kit from his backpack. He loaded a silvery hypospray with the required drug, then leaned over and pressed it against Joe’s neck. A sharp, low-pitched hissing sound filled the cab. After a moment the trucker’s eyelids flickered again, twice, then slowly fluttered open. Toshi raised one hand, said, “Wait,” and while Joe stared at him in amazement, placed a bright purple derm on the man’s neck, below his collar where it wasn’t readily visible.
