Wildcard (53 page)

LuvRay shouted.

“Good effort, LuvRay. Such a trick might
have drawn me off, too. Except that you learned it from the
Sergeant, therefore I know it. You cannot surprise me that
way.”

LuvRay looked into another world through
Dartagnan’s tunnel. It created wind and noise. LuvRay slipped his
knife free quietly, then stood up slowly, as if not paying
attention. He ran his right hand through his hair, then cut the
Benefactor’s throat with his left when none of the men was
looking.

Dartagnan’s back was turned and he didn’t
see it, either. LuvRay moved with animal silence, picking up the
box. He leaped at Dartagnan’s back, striking him with the box,
pushing him forward, into the other world. LuvRay fell through with
it and looked back. She was sitting up, hand on her throat, blood
leaking out. Before the hole closed, he thought he saw her
smile.

“Refusal is not on the menu.” The Mechanic
sat down across from Seeker at Starbuck’s. “Nice here. Big puffy
chairs. Coffee. A place you can relax. I can see why you spend so
much time here.”

He wore a white baseball cap that said
“Cats, longest running play in history”, a lime green golf shirt
with a corporate logo, and expensive business slacks.

“No, that’s not the reason. I like to watch
people, actually.”

“I didn’t say that was the reason. I said ‘I
can see why you spend so much time here’, but it doesn’t really
matter. I need your help. I intend to kill Karl.”

Seeker was surprised. Great! He felt
surprised. “Are you making a joke? I cannot help you slay one of
the Named. Are you insane?”

Seeker had received an urgent call from the
Mechanic a few minutes before. They were in a business deal which
had some details to work out, development of something or other.
They needed his personal experience from Mansworld. It was a trick,
Seeker now saw. There was no deal in progress.

He had waited before the Mechanic arrived,
feeling anxious, tapping his foot, thrilled with the sensation. It
was amazing to feel nervous. There had been approximations in
Mansworld, but the real thing! Unbeatable. He was irritated
(another delicious feeling) that he had to tap his foot
consciously. He knew most people did something like that without
thinking about it, without noticing they were doing it. Someday he
might. He had been able to suggest his old body to do it without
his noticing.

Now, he knew what it meant to have real
senses. He was enjoying it so much, an orgy of smelling, tasting,
swimming, walking in the wind, sex, ice, the feel of a magazine’s
pages, hot coffee, cold coca-cola. The list went on and on.
Wildspace had been excellent at sight and sound, practically the
same in the human world. But the other senses did not come
close.

“I have a poem for you.” The Mechanic handed
him an envelope.

It said
Seeker
hand calligraphed
in a precise, ornamental script. The envelope was sealed with wax
and an emboss that said
wc
. The paper was deep feeling,
heavy bond, almost cardstock. Seeker had developed a love affair
with paper, especially the feel of it, since becoming
human.

“How did you get it?”

“A bicycle courier handed it to me as I was
walking in the building.”

“Hmm.” Seeker wondered if there was some
clue to his course of action inside. Probably so. He had never
received wildsong as a human. It made him desperate, almost crazy
with longing. It had been so long that he wondered if he had been
forgotten. The pleasures of the human realm were great, but so were
the pains. And being apart from wildsong was the worst. Wildcard
had wanted him to make the leap. And he had, he leapt into the
human world. He, Seeker, had helped open the door of brotherhood
between createds and humanity.

But he stepped into silence. He wondered if
he was being punished somehow. He closed his eyes, crying
shamelessly, feeling the envelope. He knew even the Mechanic would
not rush this. Interrupting a wildsong could be very dangerous. At
least everyone thought so. The paper matched the envelope, a light
rose colour with a faded, smoky look.

When you made a new brother

who dove the opposite at the instant you
crossed

what subtle promise in that exchange was
made

what portal remained cracked or nearly
so

there could only have been willingness

the means for the first would have brooked
no deception

it would have fallen at the slightest
lie

you had to want to go

know that we ever let you seek your own
path

knowing what we wanted, the choice was
yours

i did not name you before you were Named

though i spiced you like a stew

with the herbs of a thousand ideas

to make each of you unique

stirred through you threads of
possibility

but forced no final answer upon you

what do you now, treasured son

when all choice is gone

Seeker read it twice, folded the paper, put
it back inside the envelope. He put the envelope inside his suit
jacket pocket, idly wondering why he had worn that instead of
something different. Sometimes he dressed like a hippie, or wore
bowling clothes.

“I need you because I need to make a
gate.”

“How do you make a gate?”

“It will be better if you do it willingly.
For us and for you. You’ll die in prolonged agony if you don’t
agree.”

“Straight shooter, huh? A day to
consider?”

“No. Now. It’s gonna be hell either way, but
if you go willingly, you might live.” He adjusted his baseball cap
and smiled faintly. “What do you say, pal?” He sounded like a nice
man when he asked it.

Seeker leaned toward him, staring. “You kill
two Named at once. Do you realize what you do?”

“We’re just playing Wildcard’s game, Seeker.
You know that.”

How had the Mechanic slipped this trick on
him? Dammit, it was so difficult to track multiple data points in a
human body. It was overwhelming, the way many things came in at
once. You could not just allocate auto-response under condition X.
Two men sat at a table across, two more at two different tables.
They had weapons, three scanning the room, the other one watching
him. The room was covered. Even if Seeker had better security, it
would have been useless.

“All right. I suppose I see what the next
experience is.”

“Excellent decision.”

The Mechanic smiled. Over 5000 pages of
variables and greek math symbols: an enormous quantum map to force
him through Seeker/Karl’s body. And :3: was going to solve it. He
already had, for the most part. He had loved it, as far as the
Mechanic could tell, and had willingly negotiated this bit of
on-demand processing time. :3: still needed to solve a scant few
hundred pages, and had a leisurely .37845 (and more digits upon
request) of a second’s time to solve that last few hundred pages
using the variables provided by the Mechanic’s mind, transmitted by
a q-link as he stepped through.

The Mechanic’s thought must be “kill the
being in front of you.” They could force very little information
through a person. They also had the problem of not enough mass to
create a body, since Karl was probably on the Sergeant’s ship.
Hopefully he was, for the second part of the plan.

So they designed a quantum spectre. And he
had lied. It would kill Seeker, no question. Seeker would be
screaming in moments, dying. It would be a quick death, his mind
torn to shreds in milliseconds. Not that the Mechanic gave a damn.
He was about to die too. He wondered why he didn’t care.

Most of the Mechanic’s being would be
stripped away. It was one thing to swap places, as Seeker and Karl
had done. To force a mind through another mind was another matter.
Through two minds. Only one thing would come through. He would be a
quantum intelligence. His attacks would be difficult, but he would
be invisible, and very difficult to kill. But, he would be on the
Sergeant’s ship with Trident there.

He would be a ghost with one power, to want
to kill a certain being. It took so much processing to push a being
through two other minds that one power was all they had. Also, he
would not be able to make the decision to kill Karl until he had
been there a few instants, perhaps 2/10ths of a second.
‘Probabilistic’ was :3:’s word.

Whatever, .2 seconds of forming. They had to
counter Trident’s alarm system during that time, part of the
equation. The quantum creation had to phase-shift 20,000 times a
second so that it would not appear to be there, until fully formed
and ready to go. The Mechanic had the sense that :3: made the
operation more complex than necessary, just to make the problem
more interesting.

:3: described what a quantum being would be
like, but it made little sense. Talking with :3: was like talking
to an equation, a very long one. He could barely use words, or at
least he barely did. He surely knew them all, more words than the
Mechanic knew, or any human. He just didn’t like putting them
together. Probably, he knew all the words of all languages. But it
was tertiary data to :3: His language was mathematics, M-E math,
variable recursive string sets factored by 8-particle quantized
emission bands, pared back infinity simulations, wildspace theory,
and the like. :3: had written a 4000 page book which was just a
line index of all the different types of mathematics and physics he
had discovered, or invented.

:3: also spent massive processing power
cataloguing worlds. He was mapping wildspace down to details. He
had sim-agents, icons, traveling to the worlds, analyzing weather
patterns, plant growth patterns, tides, populations, tech-levels,
portal equations, and so forth. :3: wanted to solve all the
puzzles.

The quantum ghost operation was 100%
finesse, well-designed by the Benefactor, and definitely her style.
The best operation he had ever been involved in. Too bad he had to
die. They had debated what thoughts he should have as he went in.
“Kill Karl. Kill the being in front of you. Kill the being behind
you.” There was no field test to see how the thought would
translate to the quantum being. He questioned if he could even kill
Karl in that state. :3: could not explain whether he could hold a
knife or not. “Possible”, was all he said in English. He would have
to figure out how. Solve an equation, of course. It was 200 pages,
probably just to hold a knife, not even to use it. He didn’t ask
about a gun. Where would he get one, anyway? No, the method of
killing must travel with him, must be a part of his form when he
arrived.

“Step into,” :3: said. “After. Then solve.”
That advice came with a 50 page equation. Step into what after
what? He assumed step into Karl after coming through and he would
know what to do. This sounded like the best option, but how did he
think it? He decided on “Step into and kill the being in front of
you.”

“We’re in wildspace, so why do I need to
respect the mass rules? Can’t we bend those?”

“Probabilistic,” :3: said, spitting out
another ream of variables for the Mechanic to ignore.

The Mechanic asked the Accountant to
interpret. “Why no mass, Accountant?”

He wondered why he had to talk to :3:
directly. It did seem to help some, but not a great deal. He could
hear nuances in the weight and intonation of speech that made his
understanding more clear. When :3: used words, they packed a great
deal of meaning. But it was virtually impossible to speak to him.
It took long stretches just to pull a few words out. Mostly he
would ignore for hours, even days, then suddenly explode into coms
with some enormous theoretical bomb and at most 10 words.

The Benefactor had told him that he needed
to relate directly to :3: rather than going through the Accountant.
He asked why he could not just wait for the answer to come through
the Accountant.

“Because we need :3: to notice you. To have
you in his …mind. You must be an important variable to him so that
he will solve the equation when we want. He will speak to you
directly and if you can get an agreement with him, he will honor
it. He might make an agreement with the Accountant, but that is not
a bargain he would necessarily care about when the time came. When
it’s time to solve the final equation, he must do it at that
second. Also, he needs to study your mind, which he does whenever
he communicates. He needs to map it, to use the data for his
calculation. He’ll be solving the master equation as you
speak.”

Good enough, he dealt with :3:. It gave
entire charts of meaning to the term negotiate. :3: needed to be
interested. The Mechanic realized, during their ‘meetings’, that if
:3: lost interest, he would just stop speaking. No signal, no
goodbye. He would simply disappear, even if you were talking to
him. The Accountant was always working to give :3: puzzles to
solve. He told riddles, which were good for a time. Math puzzles
were a total bust. He could not possibly dream up anything, even
with the Accountant’s help, that would take :3: more than a
milli-second to solve. But he tried anything to keep him in the
conversation.

“Ask him for data. Get information,”the
Benefactor advised.

“How many worlds in wildspace?” A
straightforward question, but he got another equation for an
answer. “Why don’t you give me a number, :3:?”

“Changes.”

“The equation indicates,” the Accountant
translated, “that the number of worlds in wildspace is constantly
changing.”

“Changing?”

“Growing.”

“How do the new worlds appear? Are they
created?”

“Potentiality state forcement,” :3:
said.

“Accountant?”

“The equation is well beyond me, but, to
phrase it in English, a potential is found or mapped, you might
say, then wildspace ‘discovers’ it. The equation proves that the
world does not exist before the mapping. It also proves that the
mapping does not create it.”