Voice of the Whirlwind (39 page)

“A war of succession,” Steward said.

Griffith shook his head. “That’s another place they’ve got us beat,” he said. The elevator door opened. Beyond was a tunnel painted a pale green and lit by fluorescents. It dipped downward, out of sight. They began walking toward the end.

“Not a war, buck,” Griffith said. “It was a political and economic struggle. There are rules for it. Sometimes it goes on for centuries. And when the head Prime is finally chosen, he can redistribute much of the wealth of the other Primes. Our Prime was on the losing side, and so was Ricot’s. But they’re enemies of each other, see? So the new head Prime gave them territory side by side, so they wouldn’t cooperate. And that’s where they met us.”

“And,” Steward said, “a thousand years from now . . .”

“A thousand years from now”—Griffith’s eyes were shining—“our Prime will have the edge. She’ll have humanity behind her, as well as her own people. She’ll win the succession. And that’ll put us right in the center of power.” His fingers clamped down on Steward’s shoulder. “Gods, buck,” he said. “We’ll be gods.”

“Gods,” Steward repeated. Tasting the word. They passed a heavy freight elevator that apparently connected with the warehouse above.

Ready, Steward thought. He was ready for this. So in sync with the Zen of it that all he had to do was move with it, follow the series of events as they wound toward their conclusion.

The tunnel leveled off. Steward sensed he was under the Pacific. He saw an airlock door ahead.

“We put the Prime in a sunken caisson,” Griffith said. “At first we had to launder a lot of money and Power goods to pay for it. But now the Powers have a base out beyond Pluto, just a big piece of rock they found out there, and they’re sending goods to us in quantity. If they have the right markings, no one knows they don’t go through Vesta or Ricot first. Now we’ve got our own companies Earthside, and they’re starting to make a big profit. We can finance this ourselves now. Soon we’ll be too big for any Earth government to move against. A few decades at the most. And that’s nothing on the kind of time scales we’re talking about.”

The airlock door was a big one, capable of handling cargo. Griffith pressed the code into its lock and the party stepped in. The thick smell of the Powers flooded into the chamber, stronger than on the outside. There was a blissful expression on Griffith’s face as he breathed it in.

The inside of the caisson echoed to the organ-pipe sounds of the Powers. The unpainted supports of the roof curved above Steward like the ribs of a metal beast. Fluorescent lights hung from the ceiling, the wires taped to the beams. Shipping crates were piled on pallets, obscuring vision. The place was as attractive as the interior of the warehouse next door.

Hell of a place for a god to live, Steward thought.

He tried to avoid shrinking back as a Power came rushing out from among the boxes. He had forgotten how fast they were. The Power raised its head, inflating it, the two eyes focused forward. “This is Steward,” it hissed.

“Yes, cousin,” Griffith said.

The spines on the Power’s back arched. Its hands scissored near the floor. “You will come,” it said.

Steward followed the Power, moving fast to keep up with the Power’s four scurrying feet. They came to a cleared space. The floor was spread with dark plastic sheets. Portable heaters and computer consoles were plugged into snaking cables. Three Powers waited there. One of them stepped toward Steward. The others made ducking, shrugging movements. The smell of Power was particularly strong.

“I am the Prime,” the Power said. The muscles on its back twitched in rhythm.

Steward looked down at it and thought of Vesta and Ricot and Sheol and places beyond, places where the Prime’s word was law, where its schemes and plans had set millions of its species dancing to the music of its organ pipes. He thought of the thousands of years of struggle for power, the hordes of ranked Powers marshaled in their chorus, disciplined by chemistry. The gleam in Griffith’s eyes as he spoke of godhood, his bliss as he breathed in his hormones. He thought of Ashraf lying dead in his office, Stoichko bleeding in his armchair while the vid glowed, the Alpha turning toward the bullet that perhaps he welcomed…

“Pleased to meet you,” Steward said. And he took out his handkerchief and sneezed into it.

*

The organ sounds had changed. There was a strange keening in them, something that set Steward’s teeth on edge, and Steward knew the second the airlock opened what it was.

He had been out on the second of his trips to the outside to make his call to Janice Weatherman. Spassky and the goon had driven him at his instruction to a public phone, then stood ten feet away while he transmitted the codes.

Steward had been interviewed twice by the Prime. He talked to the Prime about his qualifications, about how he had penetrated both Vesta and Ricot and could improve the Prime’s own security here and, as the Prime’s base expanded, elsewhere. He talked about the shape of the future, about the Power-human synthesis that was bound to dominate in both spheres. He remembered Curzon’s discourse on the same subject, the way he flushed and gestured and paced, and he tried to imitate Curzon in the way he talked and moved. The Prime had let Steward talk, and watched Steward from its strange goggling armored eyes, its back muscles twitching. Other Powers moved in the background. Steward thought there were perhaps a dozen of them. Groups of humans appeared from time to time, standing diffidently in clumps, breathing their fix from the air. Some of them seemed to live here, in crude barracks in the back.

During the interviews the Zen seemed to do the talking, not Steward. He was latched into it now. He had become the whirlwind, a force larger than himself, moving in self-contained perfection.

Now, as the airlock opened, he heard the high grating overtones in the piping of the Powers, and it sounded like the wail of the whirlwind.

Griffith waited behind the airlock door, panic in his eyes. “Something’s happening,” he said. He wiped sweat from his forehead. “The Powers are getting sick.” He looked at Steward and his eyes widened. His mouth opened.

Steward stepped back with his right foot and drove his right elbow into Spassky’s solar plexus. The little Russian, he thought, should never have followed so close. Steward grabbed Spassky’s nape and swung him around to the left, between him and the tall goon who was only beginning to react as Steward grabbed for the pistol he knew Spassky carried in a belt holster.

The goon’s fist lashed out. Steward swayed back out of reach, and he felt the comforting checkered grips of the pistol against his hand. He closed his fingers, raised the pistol, thumbed the safety. Griffith was moving on the edges of Steward’s vision. Steward drove Spassky toward the goon with a kick, as if the boy were a football.

Steward fired twice: once into the goon’s chest, a second time into Spassky’s neck. The unsilenced pistol boomed loudly in the airlock. An ejected casing bounced off the airlock door. Steward swung the pistol toward Griffith and saw the other man raising a pistol, his wired combat reflexes bringing the weapon into line with unnatural speed….

Steward flung himself backward, his pistol crashing twice. There was a blow in his side, another against the back of his head. Then Steward was sitting on the floor of the airlock, his back to the wall, and Griffith was dropping, his gun clattering on the ground. Griffith sat down with surprise in his watery eyes. Powers were screaming somewhere in the caisson. Steward looked at Griffith and raised his pistol again. He could feel blood pouring like a hot wave down his left side. There was a sad smile on Griffith’s riven face.

“Sheol, Captain,” Griffith said. “Sheol.”

“I didn’t need
you
to tell me that, asshole,” Steward said. Before he could fire again, Griffith was dead.

The Powers moaned like the whirlwind in Steward’s ears. He reached up to the airlock controls, pressed the button that
would seal the door and cycle in the clean outside air. He could hear running feet. The closing door cut them off.

Steward felt cycling air ruffling his hair. He opened his jacket and looked down. Griffith’s bullet had gone into his left side,
smashing at least one of the lower ribs. There seemed to be no exit wound, so probably the bullet had bounced around inside him before it came to rest. Blood was soaking his shirt and pants. The signs weren’t good.

Sheol, he thought, is a thing that does not end. It is a process. It is a choice between betrayal and death.

He pressed his handkerchief to the wound and stood up. There was no pain as yet. He took a full clip from Spassky’s body, reloaded, and waited for the airlock door to open, and when it did, he pulled one of Spassky’s shoes off and jammed it in the open outer door. Whoever was sealed in the caisson was going to stay there.

During the long walk down the green tunnel, the pain came, a hot jab so sudden that it took Steward’s breath away. Tears dazzled his eyes. He began breathing carefully, regularly, filling his lungs and then exhaling thoroughly. He could feel broken ribs grinding together in his side, but he tried to keep his mind entirely on breathing, on walking, on rhythm. The pain faded. Blood trickled down his leg.

He could sense the Alpha’s nearness. His breath, his voice. He wanted to smile.

Griffith’s office was deserted. He could hear movement and shouting in the corridor outside. Steward looked through the closets and found one of Griffith’s tailored jackets, a dark one that wouldn’t show blood. Wincing at the sharpness of the pain, he dropped his own jacket on the floor and pulled on Griffith’s. He put one of Griffith’s handkerchiefs over the wound, put the pistol in his belt, and stepped out into the corridor.

The building was full of panic. Guards were moving up and down the corridors with weapons drawn, but didn’t seem to know where to point them. The head had been cut off and the body seemed not to know what to do. He wondered if Power panic was coming up the air vents, affecting the vee tag somehow.

Steward set himself to walking. It was difficult now, and he had developed a limp. He tried to build a rhythm, breathing and movement, making the limp a part of it. This, he thought, was good Zen. Spittle in the eye of the void.

I have no purpose
, he thought
. Opportunity is my purpose
.

He could taste blood in his mouth. Shit. Nicked a lung.

I have no miracle. Just law is my miracle
.

He was forgetting the rest of the poem except for the end. The Alpha filled his soul.

Bright light dazzled his vision. The glass doors were right ahead. He limped past three secretaries and into the street. LA was hot enough to take his breath, again. The sun was so bright he could barely see. He reached for his shades and came up with the pistol instead. He looked at it for a moment.

Merde, he thought. He moved down the street. One foot in front of the other. He heard people shouting.

He remembered a phone in his jeans and he reached for it. His hand seemed to get caught in his pocket. Blood rattled in his throat and he wanted to retch. He sat down.

There were sirens in the distance. Steward hawked up blood and spat. Another in the eye of the void.

He became aware of people standing around him. Staring. He gave them the finger.

“Écrasez l’infâme,” he said.

*

There was a guard on his door, and outside, Steward could hear police arguing with doctors. “The Powers,” someone was saying. “In a bunker.” He couldn’t hear more because there was something wrong with his IV drip, and the monitor kept making bleating noises that sent nurses scurrying. Finally they replaced it.

He sensed the doctors winning the argument. He smiled and went to sleep.

Steward woke to the sound of a footstep. Somehow he knew the sound was wrong.

He opened his eyes, saw burnished copper hair, tanned skin, a lab coat, a gun. Reese. Covering her tracks, and probably having no choice.

“Sorry,” she said, and raised the gun.

Hey,
he wanted to say,
I owe you one.
But he couldn’t make his throat work right, so he just tried to smile.

The Alpha rushed into him with the force of a whirlwind. He perceived the wail of the Powers. Griffith’s smile. The sound of gunfire on a sunny day. Sheol as the blizzards came. The voice of the Alpha whispering in his ear. Blood on the spinning horizon, growing closer, burning in night….

What he had wanted, all along.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Steward felt the regular rush of the air into his lungs, a tube lax and warm in his nose. Coldness receded as they filled him with warm fluids. He heard the hiss of the machine that was breathing for him.

He knew, from the rush of life into his lungs, that he was dead. He wondered how it had happened, how the end had come. Dead in LA, he thought. The terminus of a very long trajectory.

One life
, he thought.
One arrow
.

He hoped the Beta’s action was right.

*

The first nonmedical he saw was Janice Weatherman. She brought a package of pastry and a packet of very good coffee with a machine to make it in. She was dressed in a soft tawny beige jacket. Silver gleamed around her wrists, her neck. “I wanted to bring the bank’s regards,” she said. “We’re hoping to keep your business.”

“In the afterlife,” Steward said. He had to whisper. The machine was breathing through a tracheotomy and he couldn’t use his vocal cords.

Weatherman leaned closer. “I couldn’t hear you,” she said.

Steward didn’t have much money left, not that he knew of. Almost the last of it had gone into the clone insurance. No point in telling her that.

“D’accord,” he said.

She smiled. She was wearing, he saw, platinum earrings. She took his hand. “The trust’s going well,” Weatherman said. “Andrew is responding to Genesios therapy. His spine has grown and fused. He may have partial use of his legs one of these days. They’re using biofeedback techniques to retrain his optical centers to handle speech as well as the visuals, and he’s learning to use a speech synthesizer. That part’s coming along real well. The music helps.”