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man was dead.
Oranson grinned. The cattle, bred to kill and armed with steel teeth and
hooves, had been his idea. Nakamura had scoffed, but
Oranson remembered the look on the assassin's face when the steer had him for
lunch. Dogs might have made him more cautious in his attack. But who was
frightened of cattle?
He grinned one more time, not really feeling mirth or anything else. Then he
climbed over the low wall and began to trudge up the hill. The cattle wouldn't
bother him.
After all, they knew their creator.
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"You really shouldn't be out here," Oranson said.
Nakamura poked one shiny boot toe at the oleaginous stain on the trampled
grass. Technicians in white coats clustered on the scene like maggots,
scraping, testing, bagging.
"I won't be a prisoner in my own house, Fred."
"As you will."
Nakamura turned and gazed up at the dark trees which shadowed the upper
portions of the mountain. "You found his flyer up there?"
"Yes, sir. He must have come in during the night, evaded the sensors, and
waited for you to come out."
Nakamura nodded slowly. "Was he very good, or were we very bad?"
Oranson shrugged. "A little of both. We don't own that ground up there. I did
what I could, but you told me to be discreet."
"Yes. I did." Nakamura blinked. "That's over now. Move the perimeter out to
include the hill. Whatever you need to make the house secure. Begin
immediately."
"Yes. That's government ground. Not ours."
"Just do it."
"Yes, sir."
The two men considered their private demons, each in his own way. Finally
Nakamura said, "He knew my habits well."
Oranson didn't say anything.
"Perhaps it was an inside job."
Oranson remained silent.
"Somebody very close to me, who knew my most personal routines. What do you
think, Fred?" Nakamura's voice was almost jolly.
"It could have been."
They stared at each other. The Japanese man's features were bland, the
Caucasian's empty. The moment held.
"Well, yes," Nakamura said. "You look into it your way, and I will seek in
mine. Something will turn up."
"Yes," Oranson said. "It usually does."
Nakamura began to walk away, paused, and looked over his shoulder. "Anything
on Arius?"
"No, sir."
Nakamura scraped a bit of shiny pink phlegm from the tip of his boot onto the
grass. "Maybe this."
"Anything's possible."
"I'm afraid it is," Nakamura said.
The great room was silent. He had killed all the audio inputs. The blast
shields were retracted now, and a watery yellow light filtered through the
drapes. Bizarre scenes played themselves out on the many screens in ghostly
soundlessness. All over the world revolution was feeding on itself. He had
built the New Church better than he'd realized. When the uprising had begun,
at first scattered, then a rolling wave of shattering violence that wrecked
corporations and toppled governments, even he had been surprised at the
thoroughness of the destruction. He glanced at one screen and recognized the
silhouette of the Golden Gate Bridge, its rusty orange towers wreathed in
smoke from the smashed bubble condos hanging below. Scattered fires burned
themselves out on the misty hills of the city by the Bay. He felt a moment of
sadness. San Francisco was one of his favorite places. He'd flown in hundreds
of armored troops from secret camps in Mendocino, and over a three-day period
they'd broken the back of the rioters. But at such great cost. San Francisco
had waited more than a century for another great quake, but when the ruin
came, it was the work of men.
As ever, he thought tiredly.
Similar stories played themselves out all over the earth. Arius -- how he
hated that name! -- had planned well. The slow creation of the New Church, the
nurturing of fanatics, the deep roots sunk into the corporate infrastructure
itself. What had the Communists once said? That the capitalists would sell the
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rope for their own hanging. It was true. Frightening how easy it had been to
convince his fellow plutocrats of the usefulness of a tame religion.
But no religion was tame. All gods demanded blood at one time or another.
He smiled at one screen, a slow, contemplative expression full of what might
have been pride. One island of serenity remained in the torn and bleeding
world. Japan itself, ever suspicious of the outside barbarian, had rejected
the new religion. Thus, while fires burned in the night elsewhere, Tokyo,
Kyoto, all the great cities of the Rising Sun were quiet.
The Japanese cartels were safe in their island hearts, even though investments
overseas had been heavily damaged. But Nippon endured, as it always had, a
rock in a heaving sea.
He allowed himself to savor that pride for a while. The white Western cultures
would never understand it. No more than they would understand that even as he
felt the emotion, he considered other ways to conquer the island of his birth.
Finally he switched off all the screens. The story was old, and would only
repeat itself. He got up and walked over to an ancient carved chest that
balanced on four sturdy legs. Inside was a bottle of Macallan's
eighteen-year-old scotch. He poured a short crystal glass half full and
dropped in two ice cubes made from distilled water. The sudden burst of aroma
tickled his nose. He sipped lightly and smiled.
There had been nothing from Arius since the beginning. He wondered if anything
of Bill Norton existed anymore. It didn't matter, he decided. The scotch
warmed his belly. Things might yet work out.
He drained the glass in a single swallow, turned, and threw the heavy chunk of
crystal across the room. It smashed the screen where San Francisco burned in
the afternoon.
Nothing from Arius, nothing at all.
Perhaps the king is dead, he thought.
Then --
Long live the king.
Oranson felt most like a king in his command center, where he sat in a large,
padded, thronelike chair and surveyed the hundreds of inputs that monitored
his domain. Here at the estate, under his direct command, were over a thousand
men and women. He had technicians and soldiers and assassins and machines, all
poised to carry out his least command. Within the walls of his domain the
tiniest movement of his fingers carried life and death. And now Nakamura had
given permission to enlarge that kingdom.
Although he understood normal emotions were no longer for him -- his ravaged
brain, sustained only by the drugs Nakamura doled out in gossamer molecular
chains, was unable to support what most men called feelings -- there were some
odd stirrings. The assassination attempt had been a disaster, a direct slap at
his own abilities and responsibilities. Yet it had turned out okay. Nakamura's
rage -- and he had no doubt the man was bursting with it -- had not fallen on
him. In fact, he'd been given permission to swallow a mountain. Did the
cryptic Japanese trust him? He niggled at the question, trying to define his
terms. It wasn't trust in the purest sense, he decided. More a kind of
confidence in the destruction of his own brain, in the certainty of the deadly
tightrope he walked.
Nakamura trusted death and the threat of it. He trusted ultimate control.
But did the Japanese have it? That was a question.
Oranson watched the busy monitor screens and spoke softly into surrounding
pickups while he thought about it. Arius was the key. Arius and the man
Nakamura seemed to have overlooked.
Nakamura dreamed of royalty. He was a man who would be king. And what would
his faithful retainer be? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]