Stackpole, Michael A - Dark Conspiracy 02 (2 page)

Then reality darkened his fantasy. He realized that no matter how much he thought he deserved a carnal adventure, there was no way anyone, naked or not, should be at his hell-hole post. His job was technically to keep people away from getting into whatever the Air Force stored down here, but all those interlopers should have been coming down from above, not out from below. With that realization she caught the first tendrils of horror in his thoughts.

The soldier looked at her again and saw beyond her nudity and golden hair. She saw herself reflected in his terror. Her jet-black flesh and metallic gold fingernails struck him as odd, but not out of the ordinary from things he had seen at the Palomino in Vegas. Even the golden stripes running from her fingers along her arms, and up her legs from her toes were not so radically out of line. He could have accepted them, but then he saw her eyes.

Large and slightly almond-shaped, he saw them as sensual—for a heartbeat. Then he saw the vertical lozenge pupil and that triggered in him an ancient race-fear of reptiles. In less time than it took for the last page from his tabloid to flutter to the ground, she had gone from an object of carnal desire to a monster from the bowels of hell.

She felt his panic and knew there was no way she could calm him.
He is all but gone now!
She threw her arms open, looked him in the eyes and projected an image into his mind. She forced him to visualize her legs blending together into 20 feet of gold-bellied snake and her tongue flickering in his direction.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The soldier’s eyes rolled back up into his head as he fainted dead away. He flopped back into his chair, then dropped to the floor and lay there quietly. His arms and legs twitched a couple of time, then he rolled onto his back and began breathing normally.

She crossed to him and pressed her right hand against his forehead. Projecting her mind into his, she found his short-term memory and began to warp it. Plucking a page from the tabloid, she studied the picture of a dark-haired actress in a gown that looked barely able to restrain all of her.
I
am sorry this Janine Fonda is not a blonde, as you seem to prefer, but she should do nicely for you.

Rooting around inside his head, she tracked the beginning of his fantasy about her through the cognitive links that opened his fantasy world to her. In no time at all she found one of many fantasies he’d had involving a clandes-tine encounter at this, the base’s most forgotten and despised duty post. She quickly raced through it, substituting Janine Fonda for Andrea Beatty-Bening, then retreated from his mind.

She noted the happy smile on his face, then started to unbutton his shirt. In no time she managed to appropriate his outer clothing. She had to roll the pants up and punch a new hole in his belt, but she found the clothes comfortable and welcomed their warmth against the chill in the air.

She realized she would need footwear, so she took his boots. Because they were far too large for her, she started to wad up pages from the tabloid to stuff into the toes. As she did so, she picked up the centerspread and froze.
It’s
true: He was here.

A grainy photograph, clearly taken at night, showed a monstrously huge creature towering over a skyscraper.

Though she had never actually seen Fiddleback, he had been described to her in enough detail for her to know this blurred photograph had to be him.

She stared at the symbols on the page and forced herself to remember how to decipher them. Translating quickly, she rendered the headline as “Genetically defective arachnid assaults a mythical bird that is reborn of its own ashes.” Knowing that had to be incorrect, and seeing the bird reference repeated in captions and the body of the text, she decided the word
Phoenix
probably referred to a place.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“Pah-he-o-e-nicks,” she sounded out. It sounded decidedly alien to her, but then everything about the world of her birth was alien to her, as she was to it.
Phoenix. This
is where Fiddleback was defeated. This is where his
enemies dwell, dwell in danger.
She balled the paper up and jammed it into the boot.
Then this Phoenix is where
I shall go to warn them.

Coyote straightened his tie in the way he thought Michael Loring would, and stood behind his desk as Lilith ushered Sinclair MacNeal into his office. He came around to greet Sinclair, his long legs eating up the distance easily. “How good of you to come on such short notice, Mr. MacNeal.”

The shorter, dark-haired man eyed him cautiously, but accepted his proffered hand in a strong grip. “The call I received indicated that haste was important.” Sinclair’s blue eyes narrowed. “We have met before, Mr. Loring.”He glanced at the third man in the room. “At that time you were in a company of another.”

Coyote nodded, then looked up at the stunning blond woman still waiting in the doorway. “That should be all for now, Lilith. Let me know when the aircraft is preflighted and ready to go.”

“Yes, Mr. Loring.”

As she closed the door to his office, Coyote pointed to the man seated in one of two wing chairs in front of the desk. “Sinclair MacNeal, this is Damon Crowley.”

Sinclair looked at Crowley but did not offer him his hand. “I met a Damon Crowley before. He ‘entertained’ at a party a year ago, over in Goddard Tower One. He was much older than you. Your father?”

Crowley’s gray-gloved left hand stroked his goatee reflectively. He ignored the question. “The Deitrich party, yes. The good doctor always throws such lavish affairs.”

Sinclair’s gaze turned to Coyote. “The paper background you constructed for Michael Loring is flawless. I
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

commend you on it. I also assume, therefore, that you
are
Coyote and that this is not some sort of bizarre job interview.”

Coyote smiled. “Sit.” Seating himself on the edge of his desk, he reached back and picked up a thick sheaf of newsprint. “I am aware of your falling out with your father and your discharge from Build-more. As you recall, I was there. And, while Lorica Industries would very much like to employ a man of your talents, I have a personal job I need you to perform.”

He tossed the tabloid to Sinclair. “Have you read the story about Phoenix in here?”

Sinclair glanced at the front page and shook his head.

”Midnight Weekly Inquirer
is not my kind of reading material, sorry.”

“I know that, Mr. MacNeal. I know you take the
Tokyo
Shimbun
and
Japan Weekly News
as well as two Japanese-language newsletters that are printed by the Yamaguchi-gumi. I know you subscribe to 14 other magazines, but the only two you seem to read voraciously are
Methods of Industrial Security
and
Counter-Terrorism
Bulletin.
In fact, I found your CTB article on the effects of minor extortion on executives abroad fascinating.”

Coyote felt that Sinclair covered his look of surprise quite well. “As you have checked on me, Mr. MacNeal, so I have checked on you. This is why you are here. Now, back to my original question: Have you read about what happened in Phoenix two weeks ago?”

Sinclair surrendered with a smile. “I have seen news reports, but, no, I have not read ‘Mutant Spider Attacks Phoenix.’ As for the actual incident,” he glanced down at his hands, “I managed to sleep through it. Then again, I was never one for sharing the hallucinations caused by mass hysteria.”

Crowley leaned forward. “And what if I were to suggest that there was fire beneath the smoke that is this article?”

“I would suggest you get in touch with your father, because his act was much better than yours.”

“Good, Mr. MacNeal, very good.” Coyote walked back around and sat behind his desk. “You’ll need your skep-ticism, because what we are about to tell you will be very
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

surprising. I assure you it is true, as odd as it may seem.”

MacNeal tossed the tabloid onto the gold-carpeted floor, “It gets odder? I can’t wait”

Coyote let the sarcasm slip past, knowing he shared Sinclair’s attitude before he had seen and done what prevented Fiddleback’s success in assaulting Phoenix.

”Mr. MacNeal, the creature in the picture that accompanies that article is, in fact, real. The maglev circuit that connects all of the corporate towers here in Phoenix had incorporated into its design a highly advanced circuitry layout. When supplied with sufficient power, as was present in the thunderstorm two weeks ago, it opened a gateway to another reality. In that reality, this creature exists.”

Sinclair shook his head. “Another reality? I think you’ve been watching too much
Star Trek: Captain Crusher’s
Log.”

“In fact, there are many alternate realities, or dimensions, that exist side by side. The dimension that contains our Earth is one that is unusual in that it appears to be a nexus point and, for whatever reasons, Earth creatures hold a fascination for the creatures from these other dimensions.” Coyote shrugged. “They labor to make our lives hell for their own amusement.”

Sinclair stood. “They may find us amusing, and you may find
me
amusing, but I’m not amused right now. I don’t know what you wanted me to do, but if I have to buy this nonsense to do it, I’m out. Good day, gentlemen.”

“Crowley, you were right. Show him.”

The man in the gray suit eased himself forward to the edge of his chair. “At the Deitrich party, you and I ended up washing our hands side by side in the reception center’s bathroom. You noticed a peculiar scar on the back of my left hand and commented that you’d only seen anything similar on dead fish.”

Crowley tugged at each finger of the glove on his left hand. As it slid free, Coyote saw a circular mass of scar tissue on the back of Crowley’s left hand, it looked twisted and knotted, as if someone had taken a circular sanding tool to his flesh and had ground on it for a while. Pulling the glove all the way off, Crowley showed his hand to Sinclair.

“The lamprey scar. I remember it.” Sinclair looked up
Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

at the man’s face, then back down at his hand. “But the man with the scar was much older—20, 30 years your senior. You could have faked that.”

“Touch it, if you wish. See if it is real.” Crowley extended his hand to him, but the challenge in the occultist’s voice made Sinclair hesitate. “You will recall that only you and I were in that room at the time, so only you saw the scar.

You would further agree, I think, that while I might have faked the scar through some complex make-up or surgery, planning to inflict the scar on myself far enough in advance to let it heal like this, then springing it on you here, is improbable.”

Sinclair stared at the hand, then looked up at Crowley.

”Believing you planned ahead is easier than trying to figure out how you became younger.”

Crowley slipped his hand back into the glove. “There are dimensions out there where things...change.”

Coyote sat back in his chair. “The easiest explanation is not always the correct one. In order to defeat Fiddleback—the ‘mutant spider’ in question—Crowley under-took a dangerous mission to a dimension that formed the basis for part of mythological Greek hell, Tartarus. In that pocket dimension, the one in which the titan Tityus regenerates on a daily basis after having provided a meal for vultures, he helped a woman regenerate from injuries caused by Fiddleback’s agents. In the process, he also regenerated from all that ailed him. In his case, this was the ravages of old age. The scar, which he had gotten before the age to which he regressed, remained unaf-fected.”

Sinclair sat slowly, his bright eyes flicking back and forth between Crowley and Coyote. “I’m listening, but I’m not convinced.”

Coyote steepled his fingers. “Good. Stories of things from yetis and lake monsters to flying saucers and zombies have a basis in truth. Scholars have, by assuming the simplest answer is the best one, created scenarios for describing mythic epics as tales reflecting or explaining in magical terms concepts that ancient peoples could not understand. Like you, like them, I did not realize, until my encounter with Fiddleback, that another explanation existed: Other realities exist and, at various points in our history and prehistory, denizens of these other places have come here and been driven back by our ancestors.”

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Conv
erter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

“So, you’re trying to tell me that Count Dracula was really a vampire from another dimension?”

“Perhaps. But more likely Vlad the Impaler was a human under the influence of a Dark Lord.” Coyote unbuttoned his blue suitcoat and leaned forward onto his desk. “I do not expect you to believe that everything weird is a result of Dark Lord action—plenty of human mounte-banks make a living by spreading pseudo-scientific nonsense. I just want you to be aware that things, like Fiddleback, do exist and must be opposed. At the risk of sounding decidedly melodramatic, what I want you to do is help us prevent Fiddleback from taking over the world.”