The Machiavelli Interface (4 page)

Venture looked down at his desk, at the read giving him the results of the electronic telemetry focused upon Khadaji. For what seemed a long time, he stared at the small holoproj. "All right."

Khadaji wanted to relax, but he held himself carefully, trying not to show any signs of relief.

"Your mythmaking worked," Venture said. "Despite all our attempts to suppress it, what you did got out. You took out over two thousand Confederation troopers in the six months you operated, all by spasm paralysis."

"Two thousand three hundred and eighty-eight," Khadaji said. His face was serious.

Venture nodded. "You would have kept count."

"Yes."

"That in itself is a remarkable achievement. No single guerrilla ever did that well before. But without missing a shot, according to our tally of your ammunition, that is more than remarkable, it's incredible. Are you really that good?"

Khadaji shook his head. "No. I missed shots. I had a secret cache of darts. I went to it eight times."

Venture shook his head. "Only eight times. It's still amazing." Khadaji heard grudging admiration in his voice. Then Venture said, "But The Man Who Only Missed Eight Times doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?"

"No. Myths need to be larger than life, to work. A man who makes mistakes, if only a few, is not so impressive as one who never fails."

"So you set yourself up as something to strive for."

"Yes."

Venture didn't bother to look at his monitoring screen. "If I had a hundred like you, I could rule the galaxy," he said.

Time to plant a seed. Khadaji said, "There
are
a hundred like me, Marshal Venture. At least three of them can out-shoot me without effort, and the same three could defeat me in fair bare-handed combat. A dozen more will be able to do both within a short time, if they continue to practice. They are the matadors I have been training during the seven years since I left Greaves. The Confed, in its infinite wisdom, recently declared them all criminals."

For a long time, Over-Befalhavare Venture said nothing. When he finally spoke, his voice was charged with fear and respect: "Christus! What did we do to deserve you?"

* * *

Dirisha shifted to her left, firing her spetsdöd as she moved. The weapon coughed, and the dart caught the trooper under the chin. His body spasmed, and he curled into an instant fetus, muscles locked by electrochemical poison.

He wouldn't die, but he'd spend six months in the lock, despite the best medical aid available.

The scene was unreal, lit in multiple shades of ghostly green. To an unaided eye the corridor was pitch dark; to one wearing spookeyes, the available light was amplified millions of times. The troopers were blind, easy targets for the matadors—until somebody could repair the emergency lighting system. They had, Dirisha estimated, seventeen minutes.

Red gestured from the corner, and Geneva and Sleel darted around the bend after him. Dirisha followed at a run. So far, her transceiver was silent—

Bork and Mayli were outside, guarding the exit and maintaining the perimeter against any reinforcements. So far, so good.

"Hey!" A pair of guards, one using a spookscope, ran into the corridor.

Dirisha dropped to a prone position, both hands extended. The roar of a . 177 filled the air as the guard with the carbine sprayed the place where Dirisha had just stood. She returned his fire with a half-dozen darts, three for each man. The two men jerked and hit the floor, hard.

"Dirisha...?"

That was Geneva, coming back to check on her.

"I'm okay, keep going!" Dirisha scrambled to her feet and ran toward the other woman. Geneva turned and sprinted back for the corner.

Ahead, in the eerie green, came the staccato spat of a spetsdöd. Dirisha heard the thrum of a hand wand, then more rounds from a spetsdöd. She and Geneva rounded the next corner.

And went blind. Somebody was waving a big HT lantern, and with the amplification of the spookeyes, it was like looking at a nova. Dirisha shoved her spookeyes up to kill the fire, but Geneva was faster. Geneva's right spetsdöd kicked into full auto, and a shower of darts encircled the light. The lantern fell and shattered on the floor, turning the corridor jet once again.

Dirisha pulled her 'eyes back down. The afterimage on her retinas blotted out anything directly in front of her, and she had to use peripheral vision to see.

"He must have come out after Red and Sleel passed. The shooting was farther on."

Dirisha nodded. "Come on, the clock is running."

They ran. The plans said the center block control was just ahead. Another thirty meters—

Dirisha leaped the downed forms of a pair of troopers as she reached the control room. Red stood guard, arms extended to cover two corridors, while Sleel bent over a panel. He attached a portable power pack to it. Without speaking, Geneva slid to a stop behind Red, covering the remaining two corridors with her weapons. Father and daughter stood back to back, watching.

"Come on, Sleel, give me a heading!" Dirisha felt her tension, but there was no help for it. Her adrenaline ran high, lapping at her logic, insisting that she
move
! Each of the matadors circulated bacteria-aug, and was therefore considerably faster than an unaugmented trooper, but one of the side-effects of the neurological bacteria was the urge to use that speed once it was initiated.

"Sleel—"

"Three, he's on three, the isolation cell! Four, no, five doors down!"

Dirisha ran. With the power down, Khadaji had to know something was going on. He'd be ready to move.

Three, four, there it was, the fifth door. Dirisha skidded to a stop. The manual door pry was supposed to be marked with an emergency symbol—there it was. Dirisha grabbed the lever and pulled it from left to right. The door slid toward her on its tracks, like a block coming from a wall of blocks.

She moved to the side, waited until the opening was just wide enough to squeeze through, and leaped into the cell.

Khadaji stood in the center of the room, unable to see her in the dark, but smiling. He
knew
.

'Time to leave, Emile."

She moved to him and extended the spare pair of spookeyes she had stuck in her belt. Amazingly, he reached for the gear and took it without fumbling.

How could he do that? He couldn't see anything!

Khadaji slipped the spookeyes on, clicked them into life, and nodded. "Your show, Deuce," he said, grinning.

"That's my line," Dirisha said. "People keep stealing it." She turned and moved.

Eight minutes later, seven more troopers cast into the lock ward, and they were out. A military hopper waited at the entrance, with Bork at the controls and Mayli mounting the spingun. It was five minutes past midnight.

The matadors hurried into the hopper. Bork triggered the confounder, rendering the vehicle invisible to Doppler and radar. He turned to grin at Dirisha.

"What say we lift?"

Dirisha shook her head. "No, I think we've danced this dance enough. Geneva?"

The blonde said, "Okay. Stop."

The hopper began to lose its opacity, quickly going from a solid to a phantom around them. The wall of the prison faded, and Renault's night sky lost its moons and stars, turning into a symmetrical net of cast plastic girders.

It seemed as if Khadaji lasted a little longer before he, too, faded away into nothingness, but that was only wishful thinking, Dirisha knew. The simulacrum generator played no favorites with its creations. After a moment, the six matadors found themselves standing in the bare warehouse once again. This was the last rehearsal, and they had done it, they had gotten the ersatz Khadaji out without losing anyone.

Dirisha looked at the others. It might not go that way during the real thing, and she didn't want to think about any of these people not making it. But the reality was upon them. Tomorrow night they would be on Renault and the troopers would be using real ammo, not the tinglers the simulacrum had used. Then again, they would be going for the real Khadaji, and not a machine-made ghost. She had a moment of doubt. "Listen, if anybody wants to walk away—"

"Shut up, Dirisha," Sleel said. Everybody else grinned.

Dirisha felt the tears gather, but she smiled back at them. "Okay, fools. Opening night tomorrow. I love you all."

Five

POWER WAS a wonderful thing: it could be wielded with the delicate touch of a psychoneurosurgeon's laser or with the brutal overhead smash of a poisonball player. Marcus Jefferson Wall lived for the exercise of power in all its myriad forms. As a Factor, he had limited abilities; despite this, he was the most powerful man in the galaxy. He was an uncrowned king, an unelected president. He was, ultimately, the man in charge of anything he wished to control. It had not been an easy climb, but it had been worth it.

Wall's attention was held by a holoproj that danced in the space provided for it in his sanctum. A political debate in the Confederation Parliament was heating up. The whip of the majority party—the Soclibs—was ranting about the failure of the minority party—the Conserves—to unanimously support quick military action during the recent uprising on Ago's Moon. The whip, a muscular man of fifty with stranded-and-dyed hair, punctuated his argument with choppy waves of his arms.

"...very close to treason, in my view! Confederation fortunes are bound up in a strong and instant retaliation toward terrorist action! We cannot allow the slightest resistance!"

The minority whip, a big woman who wore half a kilo of body jewelery—earrings, noserings, and pectoral clips—jumped to her feet and pointed her inducer at the speaker as if the electronic device were a weapon. The amplified voice of the chamber's computer rumbled into life.

"Point of order, minority whip's privilege," the computer said. "Will the speaker yield?"

The majority whip looked as if he would explode, but he nodded tersely.

Failure to yield to privilege was legal, but practically unheard of. It was impolite, and considered a major faux pas for any politician. The majority whip sat in his form-chair.

The minority whip paused only long enough to take a deep breath. "So, rational hesitation is now treason, is it? I think the majority whip overreaches himself! It is bad enough that he endorses moronic displays of expensive military power every time somebody sneezes on some tree-shrouded agroworld; now anyone who disagrees with his one-orbit view of criminal intent is accused of treason! So what if some shrink-dink moon fields a riot?

Are we supposed to tell the taxpayers to dig deeper into their pockets to fund more million-a-minute sorties by troopers looking for live targets for their exercises? The majority whip is using piss for reaction fuel if he thinks we can afford to police every commune in the galaxy! Let the Ago's Mooners insurrect, let them have their rock! A simple—and cheap— embargo would bring them around quick enough, without a shot!"

The majority whip jumped up and angrily clicked his own transponder, to respond, but Wall had seen enough. The woman—what was her name?

Tinglo? Bringlo? Something like that—was dangerous. Wall waved his hand over the sensor, wiggling his fingers, and the holoproj vanished. He thought about it for a moment, then called to his computer. He had recently renamed the device, in honor of an old friend.

"Cteel."

"My Lord Factor?"

"Contact the minority whip of Parliament, I forget her name."

"Madame Hinglow."

"Yes. I would like to see her, at her convenience."

"My Lord," the computer said. It even sounded like Cteel, no large feat, since it had his voice tapes for programming.

Wall considered his intended action. The scalpel or the smash? Both were effective, but which would be the better for this situation? The carrot or the stick? Or both?

"Cteel, while you're at it, get me the psychfile on Madame Hinglow. Vocal and visual."

The computer's answer was to light the holoproj again. A soft female voice began to speak. Wall turned to look at the image, smiling as he did so.

* * *

"Factor Wall, how nice to see you again."

Wall gestured toward the orthopedia facing his own. "Please, do relax."

Madame Hinglow allowed the device to accommodate her large form. She was an attractive woman, wide-hipped and large-breasted, and she had changed her clothing from the conservative suit she wore in Parliament to a clearsilk wrap. The nearly-invisible cloth revealed erotic tattoos on her abdomen, as well as her tri-colored pubic thatch, worn in the currently popular lap-braid style. Wall suspected that she had been dusted with a pheromone pump, but it didn't matter. As an exotic albino, he was immune to such devices.

As she leaned back into the orthopedia, she allowed her legs to part slightly, showing him lips rouged in two shades of red. She was very good, he thought. But it was wasted on him.

"You are looking well," she said.

Wall smiled and nodded. Now the fugue would begin in earnest. She was, he recalled, an excellent player.

"You were very effective in your debate with the majority whip this morning," Wall said. It was a mostly neutral statement, but the fugue sense was plain enough:
I saw you, I heard you, I know what you said
.

"I am honored you took time from your busy schedule to notice our small proceeding." And in fugue, Wall heard,
Why were you watching me?
A bit abrupt, but he could understand that: she was worried.

"The argument has supporters on both sides," he said, "but don't you think you run some small risk in taking what might be—ah—the less popular side?"

I don't like what you said. We cannot allow even one moon to have its way. That
path leads to disaster.

Unconsciously, the minority whip brought her knees together. That body language needed no expert in fugue to read. "I... that is, such things must be taken into account, of course."
What do you want me to do?

Wall smiled. She capitulated quickly. No fool, this woman. A shame, since he would have liked to spin the game out a bit longer; still, the result was important, too.