Authors: Steve Perry
In the city many of the wheels of Temple business would be rolling to a temporary halt. The authorities would find nothing more than ashes and frustration when they arrived to seek the Few. Kifo was ahead of them, as he had always been ahead of them; whether it was merely one step or five, it mattered not in the end.
The vouch hummed behind him as he alighted. The fresh air and plants smelled glorious this day. The sun had already cooked up a mass of fat purple clouds for the day's lunch of rain and wind. Not that it would matter to Kifo.
There were a few loose ends that needed to be tied off. The hostage taken by the bumblers in Roach Town would have to be eliminated. Certain computer systems destroyed. All bridges were not to be burned because Kifo planned to return to this world of men-the full implementation of his plan-no, of the gods' plan-was not quite ready. But one step at a time, one step at a time.
"Brother Mkono."
"Yes, my Unique."
"You have your instructions."
"I do."
"Attend to them."
"I shall."
There was hardly any worry about other tongues wagging, not at this point, but Mkono had leeway to silence any he might find worrisome. In a few minutes, Kifo would be beyond human justice, but did he return-no, when he returned-he would prefer it to be a place where the gods' enemies were befuddled. It hardly took much to do that, given their normal states of mind; still, they had managed to stumble into things and upset a few tables and chairs by sheer luck. Sometimes the gods did that, smiled on their enemies. Kifo did not pretend to understand why they did so, but it was enough to realize that they did, and therefore he should prepare accordingly.
Perhaps when he got to be a god such things would be made clear to him. Surely they would.
The other coaches began to arrive. The sense of anticipation flowed through him as might a high-voltage electrical current. It was not every day that a man crossed into the land of his gods. He was quite looking forward to it.
The temple was, as the insertion team had indicated, empty. As Bork and Taz went through the place behind the team wielding its electronic scanners, it was apparent that the inhabitants had left in a hurry and chosen to travel light. There were clothes, personal items, readers, even drying laundry still in evidence.
The building was pretty impressive, fine woods and other materials used in its construction, and it had a pleasant, somewhat spicy odor to it.
"Computers are wiped," one of the men said to Taz.
Bork wandered around, trying to get a feel for the place. He found himself in a fresher. Nothing special about it, a shower, bidet, notions cabinet. He started to leave, then spotted a bit of cloth stuck to the back of the bidet's bowl. The cloth was the size of a thumbnail, torn raggedly around the edges, hard to see unless you were looking for something like it. Blue. He didn't touch the tiny scrap.
"Taz, you want to come in here?"
She arrived a few seconds later.
"Take a look at this." He pointed at the cloth.
She squatted, peered around the back of the bidet. Sucked in a quick breath.
"Yeah, that's what I thought," Bork said. "Could be from the jumpsuit Ruul was wearing."
"It is," she said. "He was here. He left it here for us to find. He knows we'll look for him."
She raised from her crouch, pulled her com. "This is Assistant Chief Bork. Put out a national pickup on any member of the Chosen Few, see the file this op code. They are wanted for the kidnapping of Ruul Oro, see the file for stats and pix; murder, attempted murder and probably a few other things we don't know about yet. They are to be considered armed and dangerous, approach with extreme caution and notify me immediately."
As she and Bork waited for the labbos to come and collect the spot of cloth, Taz said, "Now, the question is, where did they go? And how did they know it was time to leave?"
"At least we know who they are," Bork said. "That's a good start."
Taz nodded. "But we don't know how they did it."
"We catch them, I bet we can persuade them to tell us."
"Oh, you can bet your ass on that, brother."
Chapter TWENTY-THREE
THERE MIGHT BE further clues to be gained from an empty temple, surely the labbos thought so, but there was nothing more useful there for Taz or Bork.
They went back to her office. While Taz was in the lab trying to hustle up the techs, Bork decided to call home and see how things were going. The last time he'd talked to his wife, she'd said her parents were coming back for another visit.
Once again, White Radio did its magic and Bork found himself facing a holographic projection of Veate.
He grinned when he saw her. Little Saval was asleep, she said. The boss and Juete had arrived.
Across the light-years of space, Bork explained his frustration about the problem of opponents who could appear and disappear at will. Her mother and the boss sat in the background, listening. Maybe they could offer something he was missing?
When Bork finished, Juete cleared her throat.
"You say these people are connected somehow to the Zonn Ruins?"
"Yeah, we think. We found a chunk of one of the walls in a truck, dunno what they were doing hauling it around. Taz has a couple of men on their way to the ruins to check it out."
Khadaji looked at his wife. "The Cage?"
She nodded. "Could be."
Bork said, "What, something?"
Juete smiled. "Well, though it's never come up in conversation, you might as well know that your mother-in-law has something of a past. A long, long time ago, I spent some time in prison. In the Omega Cage, actually."
Veate said, "Mother!"
"Oh, yes. There were those who would do anything to own an albino. I . . . killed one of them and wound up the personal property of the Confed warden who ran the Cage. Back then, it was a one-way trip to be sent there."
"Then how did-?" Veate began.
"I escaped. Along with a few others. Very dramatic. In the end most of the escapees died, but three of us got offworld."
"I thought the Cage was supposed to be escape-proof," Bork said. .
"So they said. But my lover was something of an expert on such things. And he knew something of the Zonn."
"The Zonn?"
"Yes, Saval. You see, we escaped from the Cage by walking through their walls."
It was raining in the city, a tropical shower replete with high-voltage cracks and ship-lift thunder.
"Anything from the guys you sent to the ruins?"
"Not yet. They should be there by now."
Bork explained it to Taz as she drove them toward her cube. "So Juete's lover, a smuggler named Maro, learned from some scientist or the other that the Zonn walls weren't really material at all, but force fields that were some kind of doorways to another dimension. He found a way to breach the fields and to pass through and into the place beyond."
"Sounds unlikely," she said.
"Yeah, I thought so, too. Then again, it would explain a lot. Clarke's Law."
The flitter zipped past a stalled hovertruck. The driver made an obscene gesture as the backwash spattered him with mud. Clarke's Law said that a highly advanced technology might well appear to be magic to a less advanced society viewing it.
"Maro built something like a Bender drive. With it, they walked through the Zonn dimension until they found a way out of the prison."
Taz shook her head. "Even if that's true, how does it help us? These jobbos are supposedly walking through normal walls, not the Zonn stuff."
Bork shrugged. "I dunno. But those chunks of Zonn material in the trucks we found, they might have something to do with it. Maybe the Few have gotten hold of some device that lets them do the same thing to stone or everlast that Juete and the others did to the Zonn walls. We're dealing with technology we don't understand here; a lot might be possible."
"So unreal," Taz said.
"Yeah, but I don't have any better ideas. You?"
"Not at the moment, no."
"Anyway, Juete and Maro split up a long time ago, but the funny thing is, I know the guy."
"You do? How?"
"While back the matadors had some trouble with an old enemy. I knew somebody who had an in with Black Sun. Turned out the guy we wound up with was Maro. He runs a big sector of the organization."
"Jesu, Saval, you trust Black Sun?"
"Not particularly, but Maro did us a favor and we returned it. We're even, but he knows he can deal with us."
"I don't like it," Taz said. "You can get burned real crisp playing with a crime syndicate like the Sun."
"Right now I'd talk to the Devil himself to stop these people," Bork said. "And to get Ruul back."
"Yeah."
They got to Taz's place. Saval checked the wards, found them clear, and they went inside. The call came a few minutes later.
The man on the proj was gray-haired and fit-looking, somewhere in his late sixties, Taz guessed. He looked tough, hard.
"M. Bork," he said. "How is it you know Juete?"
"She's the grandmother of my son."
Maro chuckled. "Hard to visualize Juete as a grandmother. I guess time defeats us all in the end. What can my . . . organization do for you?"
"Nothing. But you personally can, M. Maro. We have a problem here with some folks who have apparently gotten some kind of control of the Zonn artifacts."
Maro shook his head. "The Zonn. Jesu, I haven't thought about them in years. The super race who went away."
"M. Maro, I'm Tazzimi Bork. Why is it I've never heard anything about all this voodoo stuff before?
There are Zonn ruins all over the galaxy, aren't there?"
"Yes. But after we broke out of the Cage-Juete told you about that, right?-the Confed got nervous and quashed all research on the Zonn. Cleaned every file they could find. I guess they thought it had some military application, probably it does. But before they could do much with it, the revolution came. I suspect it got lost in the shuffle. Lot of records were destroyed rather than allow them to fall into the hands of the rebels."
"Sounds as if you checked this out."
"It's my business to know things. I had a personal interest but it was a while back. Life moves on."
"We think a local group of fanatics have figured out a way to move through walls," Saval said. "You know anything about that?"
Several billion klicks away, Maro nodded. "I had some information I brought with me to the Cage when I knew I was going there, but it was a long time ago. The technical stuff was mostly beyond me. I had a droudman whiz who could get his brain in a lot of files; he did the actual work on the device we used.
Maybe he could tell you more. Here."
Maro tapped a keyboard. A long series of numbers lit the air.
"He goes by the name of Scanner," Maro said. "He's on Mtu, or was last time I checked. Tell him I sent you. He'll want something to make sure you aren't lying. Tell him he still owes me my cut for what he got for Karnaaj's ship."
"Thanks," Saval said. "I owe you."
Maro nodded. "Another thing. I don't know where the Zonn went, but they left something behind. Echoes, energy patterns of some kind. Ghosts, maybe."
"Ghosts?"
"There was a torture chamber in the Cage. Prisoners got put into it, they came out damaged mentally, real blitherers. The condition was permanent. The room was enclosed by Zonn walls. Whatever they were, spirits or recordings, they took over anybody who stayed in the place more than a few minutes."
"Sounds like firsthand knowledge."
"Yeah. I went into the Zonn chamber."
"You don't sound insane to me."
"When I was young and stupid, I spent some time in a minor religious cult, the Soul Melders. I learned a pretty fair meditation technique while I was there. Part of it was a mind shield; they had a real paranoia about empaths. It got me through. If you are going to play around in the Zonn space, you'll need to be careful."
He started to discom. Stopped. "You're a lucky man, Bork, if Juete's daughter is half the woman her mother is."
"I am and she is," Saval said.
The air cleared abruptly.
"We might as well call the techie," Taz said.
Saval initiated the com.
Scanner wore an old-style droud, the plug over his ear covered neatly by a remote caster that rainbow-gleamed like oil on water against the man's white hair. He apparently ran some kind of investigative service on Mtu, according to the ID pattern on screen while they were waiting for him to answer the com. Mtu was a fair distance from Tembo; the transmission delay was therefore short. The infamous White Radio Skip-nobody had figured out yet why the delay was shorter the farther away you got between stations.
"M. Scanner, I'm Saval Bork. Dain Maro, said you might give us some information."
"The Saval Bork? I've certainly heard of you. I don't believe I know a Dain Maro, though."
"He said to tell you you still owe him for Karnaaj's ship."
The old man laughed. "Oh, that Maro. Hold a second."
Scanner closed his eyes, opened them almost immediately. "The connector wave is clear. Zap away, citizen."
Bork explained the situation.
"Hmm," the old man said when Bork finished. "I dunno how they manage that. I have the specs for the device we cobbled together in the Cage; I can download those. You got access to a decent E-lab, and a couple techs with good hands, you can build it pretty quick. It should open a hole into the Zonn dimension through their walls. You want to be sure you get everything boarded and harmonized right, though. There's a chance you could blow up half the planet if you do it wrong."
Saval looked at Taz.
"I poked around in it a little since, but I can't say I've added much to what we did back then. I wasn't ever much on theory; I'm a tinkerer."
"We appreciate the help."
"Another thing. I couldn't make complete recordings while we were messing around during our escape, but I remember it okay. The Zonn dimension is spatially weird, really weird. You get in, take five steps and return to normal space, you might be half a klick away from where you started. Or you could move a meter to the left and then back to the same spot and still be a long way from your departure point when you step back over. Physics does some fancy shifting in the Zonn space. They breathe the same air, but that's about all. It's like going into an alien nightmare. It's a scary place to visit."