Shadow Knight's Mate (2 page)

Paul Nicholas was amused by the rush of words. When people approached him with problems these days, it was obliquely, and always only after a courtship of ritual and greetings with the obsequiousness factor carefully calculated on both sides, never this baldly and certainly not this rushed. His smile had turned genuine. “But—?” he asked drily.

“Well, yes sir, you get right to the point. But Steve does business with Eddie now, and in fact Eddie's the one with the contacts. I mean, people do like him, they're in the same business, he's not somebody you can piss off just because—excuse me—”

The ambassador was barely listening, the recitation having reminded him of his own problem. Besides that, his eye had been caught by someone much more prepossessing than the young American on his left. A young woman walking straight toward them, looking at Paul not with personal recognition but just as if she immediately knew him as someone important.

In his years abroad Paul had learned to spot Americans, subliminally noting their aggressive walks, the way they held their shoulders, their clothes, their prolonged eye contact, other items of national character he couldn't even describe. With this woman— little more than a girl, really, maybe twenty-one or -two—he wasn't sure. She had the American confident gaze, but the way she held her long neck was somehow European, as were her clothes. She had pale skin, dark brown hair, very noticeable red lips even when she was barely smiling, as now, and unlined complexion, bright
blue eyes under long dark lashes, and a nose distinctive enough in its length to give her whole face character. She walked up to the table, looking right at Paul the whole time, but when she stood directly in front of him, said, “Jack. You're not boring someone else with this wedding business, are you?”

There was a mutter of apology off to Paul's left, but he was standing to take the young woman's hand and say, “It's no bore, Miss—”

“Arden. Arden Spindler.” In French she apologized for her friend's intrusion. She had a charming low voice that required Paul to bend toward her. He answered in French that the intrusion was welcome since it had allowed him to meet her.

He waved a hand, also in French, and she joined them. The table was now a social occasion. The ambassador glanced from the woman to the young man. “And are you two travelling together?”

“No,” Jack said quickly, while Arden rolled her eyes in a way that conveyed a more complicated relationship, enough to make Paul chuckle. “Just one of those chance meetings abroad, you know?” Jack added, sounding sullen.

The young woman's eyes were still on Paul's. “But Jack's been obsessing over this wedding problem so much that everyone who knows him even slightly has heard about it at enormous droning length.” She turned to him. “It's easy, Jack. Just don't invite the bore. And if he finds out about it later you tell him it was inadvertent, the wife's family was in charge of the invitations, blah blah.”

The sullenness of the silence to Paul's left became more pronounced. Paul smiled as if performing counseling. “Doubtful that would work. Because it's not just the wedding, there are the preparations. If as you say everyone who knows Jack knows he's thinking about this, then trust me this—Eddie was it?—is going to hear about the wedding long before it happens and will probably even call up the groom to ask about it, maybe even expect to come to the bachelor party, and so forth.” Paul waved a hand again to indicate complications.

“Yeah, Arden. You just think it's simple because it's not your problem.”

“Well, then, get him a date who'll keep him in line. Or get him invited to something else that weekend that sounds better to him. Mr. Ambassador, I'm so sorry. Come, Jack, let's be off.”

“Not at all, Arden. And call me Paul, please. So you two are here to see the Church of St. Benedicta?”

“I've heard it's nice. Authentic but not ostentatious…” Arden's voice trailed off, her blue eyes fastened on Paul Nicholas.

But he was now staring out the window. Suddenly he smiled. “Not a date,” he said.

“No sir, like I said, Arden and I just happened—”

“No, no. Your boorish friend. You don't get him a date, you invite someone even worse than he is. Someone so outrageous it will make your Eddie not want to appear anything like him. You don't uninvite one, you add one. Someone who'll make the unwanted guest want to appear moderate by comparison. And we know who's got the crazy end of the bench anchored, don't we? Has had it staked out for years.”

Add someone to the summit who would appear crazy and sullen, yet flamboyant. The young prince from Qatar would never want to appear to ally himself with the crazy dictator, nor would he want to appear that man's protege, as he unavoidably would if he took similar positions; he could only look subservient rather than independent. By adding someone even farther out the political spectrum, Paul would drive Qatar toward the moderate. The summit's effectiveness might be damaged, but what was it going to accomplish anyway? It was a show. And even with the craziness factor heightened, the American President would appear more statesmanlike by comparison. Even if the young prince did make noise, the President would appear above it all. And that was the ambassador's job, to create that impression.

“After all,” Paul Nicholas laughed, “it's only a wedding.”

“Brilliant, sir,” Arden murmurred.

“You inspired me,” the ambassador answered. “Thank you. Sorry, I have to run. Things to arrange. Goodbye, Arden. Enjoy your church. Be sure to take the stairs to the choir loft. Goodbye— Jeff, was it?”

Jack only nodded. The ambassador rushed off between the tables, full of energy and purpose. After half a minute Jack turned his gaze on Arden. She smiled at him, blindingly. She really was a lovely young woman. Brilliant, too. With qualities that set her apart from anyone he'd ever known. He quite hated her.

“That was neatly planted,” he said.

“Thank you. You might have gotten there on your own.”

“But what was really impressive was that you didn't even know what I was pitching.”

“It was pretty obvious.”

He laughed. “The fact that you think it was—”

She shrugged. “I caught a few words of what you were saying, I wondered what the ambassador would be doing here, not meeting with anyone, when he had the planning of the summit to worry about, so I guessed—”

“Yeah. Thanks. I guess. I really didn't want—”

“Sorry. I just didn't think you were selling it.”

“Sure I was. I just hadn't—”

“No. He wasn't listening. He wasn't thinking. You hadn't—”

“I think he was. Maybe it was too—”

“No. You know why?”

“I know why. Because he wasn't trying to impress me. Once a beautiful woman was sitting—”

“—i.e.—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Jack looked away from her smile.

“I can't believe I got you to say it.”

“Of course. It may take me a little longer without your obvious advantage—”

She patted his knee. “You could have done it without me.”

He just smiled at her. Not making a rejoinder. She smiled back for a second, then frowned. “Damn. I made your argument for you. How did you—?”

He didn't smile or otherwise acknowledge the triumph of getting her to admit he hadn't needed her help. “There's something else, Arden. I hope we can fix it.”

“What?”

“He doesn't remember me. Not my name, not my face. He'll never even remember he talked to a guy in a bar.”

She didn't answer. She just suddenly inhaled and looked up at the ceiling, at those old beams that had witnessed a lot of scenes, a lot of conversations, few of them memorable. Jack didn't say it, neither did she, but they were both thinking of the rejoinder he could have made:
But he'll remember you.

It wasn't how they operated. They weren't remembered, they certainly weren't acknowledged. Ever. The ambassador should never say to anyone,
I met this charming young woman, and she started me thinking…
All he should remember was that he'd been alone at an out-of-the way spot when he'd had a brilliant idea.

She didn't even say
Damn.
But they both knew. Nor did Arden say,
I'll fix that some way.
They both knew that too.

She started a new conversation. “So, you headed home too?”

When Arden said “home,” it was with invisible quotation marks that Jack heard. She had spent her childhood all over America, then the best years of her adolescence in a Swiss boarding school that in some corners was much more than a finishing school, for the last three years auditing college courses in America and Europe. Home for her was a theoretical concept.

“Sure. I wouldn't miss a meeting.”

“I'm on the 4 o'clock to Heathrow. You too?”

“No, the five.”

“Why don't you come with me, see if you can get on mine, we can fly together.”

“I've got a couple of things to do. Meet you in London?”

For a moment he gave her his undivided attention. Her explanation of how she'd stepped into the conversation with the ambassador didn't satisfy him. He wondered if she'd been spying on him. In fact, he wondered what a lot of his group wondered.

Arden looked back at him, blue eyes shiny, still with a trace of a smile, until her lips twisted in exasperation. “No, Jack, I didn't read your mind…. And I do know what people think about me.” Arden glanced down at the old scarred tabletop for a moment. “Some day, maybe, I'll tell you how you make a person like me.”

“I'm sure it starts in a laboratory.”

She smiled, and for a moment he regretted the insult. But she'd probably manipulated him into that feeling too. Jack stood up abruptly. “See you.”

“Yep.” After he left, Arden let the smile drop. Her eyes were even shinier. She had no illusion Jack would be meeting her in Heathrow Airport.

Jack hurried away, didn't stop outside the door for a cab. He kept walking until he felt sure he wasn't being followed, then headed for the train station. He was headed back to America, all right, but he was taking the long way.

The next morning Jack Driscoll was in Malaysia. His current game company had sent him to what was grandly billed as the OtherWorld Gaming Convention. Jack's company thought the odd blend of philosophy and strategy in his games should have an appeal in this part of the world, and in fact at least two of the games he'd created had large cult followings in Asia. Which hadn't made Jack rich, because the editions were mostly pirated. He was also here to meet dealers in person, hoping that would make them more inclined to include him in their profits. Wishful thinking, Jack thought, but the company was paying.

Jack was a noticeable figure in the throng, though not unique. Contingents of Indians and Brits and Australians, even a few Americans, mingled with the largely Asian crowd. And a crowd it was. Jack was amazed at the numbers this convention had drawn, more than three thousand paid memberships. Game companies had opened their vaults too. The huge convention center was filled with displays, some of them the size of Broadway musicals. At one end a band billed as the hottest pop group in south Asia blasted out waves of sound, with occasional lyrics in English confirming that the words were meaningless. On another stage ninja fighters played by live actors flew through the air, only to disappear behind large screens where their digital counterparts took over the action. The use of live actors was arresting, especially
since many of the people in this room looked as if they went for days at a time without seeing a real human being. Some of the audience members wore costumes themselves, though most just wore jeans and t-shirts, dedicated to favorite games or rock bands. Pink Floyd was unusually well-represented on the t-shirts. For Jack, still a little displaced, the scene seemed hallucinatory. This could have been a similar convention in any big city in America, only with some of the kids' heads digitally replaced by Asian ones.

He was pretty sure the people following him were real, though.

A game convention is no place for a paranoid to begin with, with menacing figures on every hand and company representatives leaping out of every exhibit to grab a passerby's arm. And a few people obviously recognized Jack, especially after his first autographing session. But again he felt that tickle of observation in his peripheral vision, the sign he was being watched. He knew of no good reason why anyone should be watching him, and he didn't like it.

He walked the crowded aisles, both losing himself and looking for someone. Here and there he stopped to chat with another designer he knew. Not conversations that should be recorded for posterity: “Hey, man, ‘s'up?” “Oh, you know—” Eyes gesturing around to show the weirdness of the scene. The other person nodding. “You gonna be in Oakland next month?” “I think so. There's this girl…” “Real girl?” “I'm not sure. That's why I'm going.” “You think you'd know a real girl if you saw one?” “Ha ha, Jack.”

Jack laughed and moved on. At one display he stood respectfully to the side of a line of autograph seekers. The man on the other side of the table was signing copies of posters for a game that bore his name: “Chun Lee's
Deadly Digits.
” The game was about three years old, but still very popular. Chun was Korean, his broader, thicker features distinguishing him from most of the southern Asians here. Like many people in the crowd, he wore a black T-shirt, but Chun's featured Mickey Mouse holding up one white-gloved hand. On one of the white digits was a ring.
The shirt carried no printing, but Jack knew the ring on Mickey's finger very well.

Chun stood to exchange very small bows, only head-nods really, with the man for whom he'd just signed, and when Chun stood he caught sight of Jack. He showed no sign of recognition, but then Jack made a small, odd gesture, touching his temple with his little finger, as if brushing back hair. Chun's eyes lit up. Jack had heard this expression all his life, but never seen it more truly demonstrated. Beams of delight seemed to come from Chun's eyes, holding Jack in place.