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zzambrosius_02
“People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.”
—Raoul Vaneigem
Ambros’ return to Eugene in his own Line did not occur until almost a week after his post to the Kyklo. On his return from the scouting-and-sabotage mission, he’d found Voukli waiting with a series of RNA training sessions, interspersed with lessons on the practice field. Then he spent most of a day answering inquiries about his short essay; he repeatedly sent lower-ranking Warriors off with assignments to research and document whatever doubts they had about his suggestions. When at last he shook off all of that, he announced his intent to return to Line Seventeen: “That’s where I am supposed to be working most of the time, right?”
Voukli had to admit the truth of that.
When he dropped into the main room of his Salon, he immediately found himself swarmed by the women. Marie dragged him towards the bedroom while Luisa lectured him about such long absences. Kim unbuckled his red leather belt as they hauled him into the back room where his large tourney bed awaited them.
Quite some time later, he lay on his back with his eyes nearly closed.
“Catch me up, please.”
Kim rolled over and snuggled against him: “Well, your friend Arlen is keeping his people mostly in line. They stay in plain sight, but they are very orderly.”
“That guy O’Malley on the other hand...?” said Luisa, acidly: “He doesn’t even seem to try.”
Ambros chuckled a bit: “He’s got a tougher job. Controlling Borderers is inherently more like herding cats.” Luisa lay down and snuggled him on the other side.
Marie said: “Well, that bunch is causing chaos in downtown. They sleep in the open, they set up lean-tos against the side of buildings and attach tarps to the parking meters and...”
“They fight among themselves, constantly,” Kim finished.
Ambros shrugged, a gesture mostly held in check by Luisa’s and Kim’s rather assertive embraces. He said: “I told them, Arlen told them, even some of the liberal side of the City Council told them...breaking up the campsites in the Swamp didn’t make the people disappear.”
“No, it certainly didn’t,” Marie agreed: “Anyway, Arlen left you a map, so you can find your way to his latest camp. He’s got about twenty of the Camp Arlen people with him...they are just outside the City limits, on overgrown County parkland near the Willamette.”
“The County says they have no money or personnel to spare to move anybody, so the City is pouting and boycotting County meetings,” said Luisa.
“Because that solves the problem, right?” Marie said sarcastically.
“I might be able to solve part of the problem,” said Ambros: “I could get them some tarps that would make their camp invisible.”
“Like camoflauge?” Marie said.
“More like really invisible. Commonwealth tech. I think it wouldn’t cause Line-splitting trouble as long as we were careful.”
“Hmm,” said Marie: “That could help. You going to visit Arlen today?”
Luisa straddled him: “Maybe tomorrow.”
“Maybe,” he said, muffled by Kim’s kiss.
No one spoke coherently for some time.
Arrenji, Voukli and Averos sat at the other cardinal points of a circular table. Ambros sat at the north side. The walls of the room
shone with a cold white light. It seemed as if the floor and ceiling puffed out a white fog.
Averos looked at some telltales on the holographic control panel in front of him. He said: “Okay, go. No one can possibly hear what we say in this room. It can’t be recorded.”
Arrenji said: “Is everyone up to date on Ambros’ missing-time incident?”
“Yes,” said the other two at once.
“Endaxi, piyet’,” said Arrenji.
Ambros nodded: “Not long ago, I took a little trip on para-psylocybin. I’ve used the stuff before.”
“Something different happened this time?” Voukli appeared serious, and concerned.
He sat nodding. The others glanced at one another.
Finally he said: “In the past, this stuff would make me hallucinate, for maybe three or four hours. I’d get way more in touch with my own emotions...like a shortcut to an unusually deep meditation...except with pretty colors and kinesthetic effects...and at some point I’d experience what Leary called ‘Ego Dissolution’. I’d see the world, and myself, without the filters that one’s sense of self inevitably places in the way of enlightenment. I’d come down with, maybe, insights into my behavior. Sometimes, I’d...I guess you’d say I’d see through some propaganda narrative or lie, one that I’d missed seeing when straight.”
They all waited, silent.
“This time...”
A long silence ensued.
Finally he began again: “This time, some stuff happened. Stuff doesn’t usually happenon this drug, if you catch my meaning. Usually I just see, or perceive things...”
The others remained silent.
He said: “I seem to remember a long talk with a man I once knew, who has been deceased for ten years. He was a wise man, and a wise guy, and that conversation was way too realistic to be part of a shroom-dream.
“I also hallucinated an encounter with another old, dear friend. Because of what he said and all, I came to the conclusion, within the hallucination, that he was dead. Turns out, he is.” He sat staring at his hands for a few minutes.
Then he said: “There is no way I could have known that. He also told me a couple of other things.”
“Such as?” asked Arrenji.
“Such as: ‘Hector Miller’ apparently had plastic surgery, and he’s out to get me. I can see why...”
Arrenji nodded: “You fucked that operation up, all right.”
‘And you let me...”
“Think about it,” Arrenji said, gazing critically at him.
It took him a good five minutes of silent self-criticism bordering on flagellation to get where she wanted him to go, but he got there.
At last, he nodded: “The fire teaches you not to get burned. Hector should never have been able to connect me to his downfall.”
Arrenji said: “Good. You got it.”
“Lesson learned,” said Voukli.
Arrenji said: “If you need help dealing with the guy, call for it. We won’t criticize you about it any more.”
“Okay,” said Ambros: “But there’s no real-world way I could have known that part either. For that matter...there’s no particular
reason that Grim should have known, even if he’d really been there and not a figment of my fungally-augmented imagination.”
They all nodded. He frowned.
“Anything else?”
“Yeah.”
After a minute, Averos said: “Let’s hear it.”
He described his experience with the ridiculously tall trees that called to him, and the Gate, and the Multiverse: “That is absolutely not the...sort of hallucination that one gets under the influence of that mushroom sporoid. I felt, I mean it really seemed like
I was, for a moment...a nanosecond...”
“One with everything.” Arrenji said, resignedly.
“Yeah,” he said looking up: “One. With. It. All. The usual effect of ego dissolution, but intermittent—which is totally wrong—and way more profound.”
Another long silence ensued. Arrenji got up and paced around.
Ambros got a little nervous.
She sat down and glared at him: “That experience is not unknown. It’s a rite of passage in the senior ranks of the Sacred Band. No one should experience it unless the Master’s Councils agree by global consensus that se is ready.”
It seemed to Ambros that it was his turn to prompt: “Go on...”
“You’ve described a real place. It’s in a semi-Quiet Timeline near the...edge of known reality. We—the very few Magistrae who have leave to act on Obligation alone—are the only ones who have the coordinates, and we are the only ones who ever go there.
Normally, an initiate needs a guide to find the place.”
Voukli looked at Arrenji with awe.
Ambros looked at her with irritation: “Continue, please.”
She got up and pretty much stomped around: “I’m...speechless. What’s that idiom in American? ‘Beside myself’?”
“That’s it.” Ambros felt some amusement, seeing her in that state.
She sat down, drew a deep breath, and let it out with a whoosh. Then she said: “You keep surprising me. No Spathos should be surprising me like that. You not only ‘hallucinated’ a super secret, more or less sacred place, you took the Gods-and-Goddesses bedamned test and PASSED it.” She thumped the table with both fists, exasperated: “It’s so ridiculously impossible that I just may become religious!”
Averos spoke: “No need to go that far.” He projected a set of equations into the air above the table.
Arrenji muttered as she stared at them: she made handsigns, moving various premises around and swapping one equation for another. She glared at Ambros.
He shrugged. “It’s all Greek to me,” he said, deadpan.
Voukli was amused, almost laughing aloud. Arrenji began to grin, but with real sarcasm.
She growled: “It balances. It all fits. There’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
Ambros leaned back and said: “Translate.”
Averos banished the video: “What it comes down to is: your Shifter activated. You went there, you did that. You’re an anomaly...”
Ambros responded: “What?”
Arrenji said: “Yes. You are a Spathos Five who is technically—technically, mind you—qualified to act by Obligation alone. A ‘License to Kill’, among other things, as one of your mythological icons has. And not tell anyone about it...because you have been ‘one with it all’ and thus are presumed to know as much about the...the purposes of the Multiverse as a human can know. You’ve gotten a hundred years ahead of yourself, endaxi?”
It sank in then: “Oh hell.”
“It’ll be hell, all right, if you use that qualification badly. Do me a big favor and don’t.”
“At this point I don’t intend to use it at all. I still have a dozen hidey-holes that I can stash dangerous or inconvenient people in. Quiet Lines, right?”
“I do. Use them. Create more. Don’t...”
“...fuck up. I get it. I won’t. I’m learning lessons by the minute, these days. I’m way more leery of just offing people...”
“You were appropriately leery from the start,” said Arrenji. “One reason you kept getting promotions: you killed no one who wasn’t actively threatening your life. You even showed mercy to some of them, like that Lt Grandson.”
Ambros nodded at that. It jibed with his suspicions.
Averos spoke again: “Here’s another lesson, Spathos,” he said, emphasizing his (much) higher Commonwealth Status: “Be really cautious about that hallucinogen from now on. Endaxi?”
“Yes, Magistros: all trippy stuff, acid, whatever...absolutely cautious. You bet. Turn the Shifter off, stash it a league away.”
Averos nodded: “At least.”
“Okay. At least a league.”
Arrenji narrowed her eyes: “You have more to talk about?”
“I do.” Ambros drew a deep breath: “I was talking to an associate of mine...” He switched to American: “Dan Samuelson, a Deputy Sheriff in my Home Line.”
The Hellenes knew him.
“I tried to tell him several things that he sorta needed to know. I found that I couldn’t do it. I could feel, in my brain, that things I was about to say would—or might—lead to Line-spitting sometime down the road. It made me wonder how close I’d come to splitting Line Seventeen before I became aware...”
Arrenji sighed: “That mushroom trip, the hard training Voukli put you through so soon after, the advanced RNA courses you took by your own choice, and the connection you made when you Saltated to...that place, that Gate. Looking at the last couple seasons that way...I should have anticipated this.”
Averos agreed: “It’s not magic, Spathos. It’s just how the Multiverse works.”
“Part of it is that knowing makes your actions more consequential,” said Voukli.
He waved his hands in disbelief: “Wait, hold on...something I told Dan a month ago with no problem, would cause a Split, maybe, if I told him today? Because I know more about the Multiverse? Even if I can’t articulate what I know, or explain what’s different about me now?”
Arrenji shrugged, apologetically: “More or less.”
Averos said: “It wouldn’t necessarily cause a Split, or not right away anyhow.”
“But you’d distort the...” Voukli shook her head: “How did you put it in class the other day? The underlyng quantum something?
Averos nodded: “The underlying thirteen-dimensional quantum field of the Multiverse. You’d cause...I guess you’d say, a tiny ripple in that field. Then sometime down the road, an otherwise innocent action or remark...by almost anyone...”
Ambros closed his eyes. Silence ensued. “Eleven dimensions aren’t enough?” Ambros then asked, somewhat plaintively, eyes still closed, visualizing what he could.
Averos smiled wanly: “Eleven is plenty to explain easily obsevable everyday phenomena. Even Sardonic Synchronicity, up to a point. But the eleven-D matrices only make sense when projected to an eight-D lattice...and the re-projection of that into seven and then four...that seems to require ‘thirteen’ as a minimum base for a Multiverse that has Timelines that mesh and separate...”
Ambros opened his eyes and looked right at Averos, waiting him out.
Finally Averos continued: “The Psycho-physicists say that thirteen is the minimum number of dimensions required to explain the more bizzarre manifestations of Synchrony. They also say that beyond thirteen dimensions there may be pseudo-dimensional lattices...I can’t even follow their logic or their math. Nothing is yet proven, not by experiment anyway.” He smiled wanly: “Consciousness itself is part of the equation, though. Something has to be making choices...even at the levels below the quantum.”
“At any rate,” Voukli said: “The way I look at it is, sentience, and powerful sentient beings, affect things at a deeper level than ordinary reality does.”
“Nothing your cat does could cause a split, or even a ripple.” Arrenji’s wry good humor had returned.
“But I could screw stuff up big-time, huh?”
Nobody answered. They didn’t need to.
After a while, Arrenji said: “Aaaand...anything else?”
“Not that I can think of at the moment,” said Ambros: “Isn’t this enough?”
“Quite,” said Averos: “Remember, be careful with hallucinogens.”
“Got it.”
Averos waved his hand and the whiteness vanished, leaving a plain room with a table and chairs and dark wood-paneled walls.
The Magistrae rose and left, together. Ambros sat there staring at the tabletop, his mind full of things to consider.
‘Here’s something,’ he mused: ‘The lesson of the Akkaleuten. If the near future plays out as I fear it will, how likely is it that someone unexpected will join the fight against the Authoritarians...or for them?” Possibilities rippled across his mind; he felt an answering ripple in his perception of the Multiverse, though he could not have described the experience.
He sighed.
He drew a deep breath and held it, then began to meditate: “Calm, relax...”
Ambros dropped in to the desert outside of an oasis in a Quiet Line.
He wore Commonwealth scale armor set to “desert camo” and he dropped in prone, already hidden from his prisoners. The sun set behind him as he approached the oasis from the west.
He crept slowly over the dune in front of him. He eyes moved to the top right corner of the display projected onto his face shield; it zoomed in on his target.
‘Way better than binoculars,’ he thought
He could see the woman, Angela d’Angelo, drawing water from the pond. She wore desert nomad style robes, cadged from the (now dead) occupants of the several houses within the oasis.
“Makes sense,” he muttered.
She swiveled her head in his direction and he hunkered lower into the sand. After a bit she carried the bucket off towards the temple at the far fringe of the settlement.
He moved backwards until he was off the face of the dune, and then began a slow circuit of the oasis. He used dunes and boulders to make sure that neither d’Angelo nor Miller would spot him: ‘I’m pretty much bullet proof in this outfit, but I’d rather just make sure of the two of them and disappear again.’
He glanced behind. The swirling wind did a good job of obscuring his footprints almost as fast as he made them.
‘That’s good,’ he thought.
He used his MPS to track the ‘locator’ he’d implanted in Miller’s thigh.
‘That’s weird. He’s nowhere near the temple...’
He became a lot more alert and suspicious, looking around and searching the deepening murk for his enemy.
He nearly missed him.
“Oh, hell,” he said aloud. He knelt by the grave—it was clearly a grave, though the mound that marked it had been smoothed by the wind—and considered his options.
‘That locator beacon is right here,’ he thought, putting his hand on the mound more or less where Miller’s thigh would be: ‘...if he’s in this grave.’
He felt reluctance to disturb the site: ‘I gotta know, though. If they sliced deep enough they might have got the thing out, and set this up...’
He cursed and began to dig in the sand, at the level where a corpse’s head would be. He had just revealed Miller’s mummified features when he heard the whistling sound of a missile of some sort flying his way. He dropped to the ground, reflexively, and looked up to see the stone as it flew by overhead.
He rolled to his feet. Officer D’Angelo stood there grimacing with an old-fashioned shepherd’s sling in one hand and a rock in the other.
“Shit,” she said, shuddering. She dropped the weapon and the stone and said: “Please don’t hurt me.”
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Ambros said: “If I was, you’d be dead already. What happened to Miller?”
She reached within her robes and drew a bronze knife: “He started thinking he was lord of the manor and I was his cook and fuck-toy. He hit me in anger...once.”
“I get it. You want to be left alone here, or would you like some company? I could bring you some company.”
“Huh.”
“Well?”
“I don’t know. Who would it be?”
He shrugged: “Sadly, my enemies are mostly gonna be people like Miller. Nazi swine. White supremacists. Authoritarians...and Government bureaucrats with delusions of superiority.”
“I guess you think that about me, huh?” She sounded depressed: “And you are the judge and there’s no appeal...”
He stared at her. He lifted the visor on his helmet and so she could see his expression. He took a more “fight-ready” stance, just in case: ‘She does have a knife...’
He said: “Would you rather be dead?”
He held her eye until she shuddered: “How is this even fair?”
“It’s not,” he said: “Your late paramour,” he gestured at the grave: “was planning to kill me. Probably the rest of my family, too...I kinda thought that was unfair. Did you know he was a Nazi? An actual, Posse Comitatus made-man type Nazi?”
Her eyes dropped. “No...”
“Are you?”
She paused: “...no.”
“How do I know that? You must have known about your sister’s connection to Posse Comitatus. So she’s a Nazi.”
She jerked, startled. Then she stared at him again, defiantly: “My sister and I don’t speak.”
He said: “It’s more fun being the interrogator than the interrogated, isn’t it?”
She didn’t answer. The wind blew, driving sand into his face. He lowered the visor.
“Listen...” She trailed off, looking at him desperately: “...you gotta...take me back home...”
He could see her thinking it through as she said it.
He spoke more gently: “You know I don’t haveto do anything like that.”
“Why won’t you?”
“Arturo Hernandez.”
She flinched: “The investigation cleared me! He was...”
“Shalondra Watkins...Alejandro Suarez.”
“Those records are sealed!”
He kept staring: “Not to me.”
He turned then, as if to leave.
“Wait! You gonna come back now and then?”
He turned halfway back: “Yeah. I gotta check on you; you’re my responsibility.”
“Okay. Ask me again later. About the company...”
“Fine. I gotta go.” He activated his Shifter and Saltated to his next task.
Ambros stood behind a Spathos Three who operated one of the subsidiary machines in the War Room. He watched everything she did very intently; soon he would be running the machine himself.
The moment came: “You’ve ghosted me long enough. Step into the holo...”
She moved outward and he stepped in. She said: “Notice how the two-dimensional displays that you see from the outside become 3-D when you are inside.”
“Yeah. Whoa!”
“Don’t get distracted! My shift on this board is scheduled for four Commonwealth hours, which is six hours in the usual barbarian time system. You may operate this board until I detect signs of fatigue, and I will then take it back.
“The function of this board is to monitor the power flow from the primary power modules to the Main Controller. That’s the person who dances and signs and sings commands to the satellite around Planet Zeos. Can you feel the power flow?”
“I can,” he said.
“The flow will ebb and swell. Your job is to become one with it, and make absolutely certain that it never drops low enough to cut the Controller off.”
“I can see—and feel—how it moves. That slow increase...”
“She’s moving a large group. I think that she’ll pass them to Megálos and he’ll send them to one of the cargo bays...”
Ambros felt the shift when it happened.
“That’s wild,” he said. He ran his hands along the outside of the illusory river of gold that represented the immense quantities of electric power needed to operate the machines that ran the War Room.
“You are now nearing minimum flow. You must encourage the power flow and keep it above minimum.”
Oddly, Ambros understood exactly what she meant. He used his hands and his mind to ‘talk’ to the electricity as it passed from the gigantic battery to the operation of the machine. The ‘river’ of electricity in his holographic machine was an illusion of course, one that relied on ‘quantum entanglement of seven dimensional fields’—whatever that meant—for its realism. He recognized the explanation: ‘That’s how they say their “radios” work...’ but he had no leisure to ponder the similarities.
“It feels kinda like tai chi,” he said.
“That’s why it takes an advanced Spathos to operate. You are doing well enough. Pay heed to that swell, don’t let it split, it will short!”
He smoothed the flow with hand movements, like a ballet dancer’s.
“Well done.”
In the end she drew him out of the machine, and out of a trance-like state, just in time for her relief to take over.
“You did very well,” she said: “You are going to need food and rest, though. This job is draining...”
“Yeah,” he said, reeling a little: “Listen, next time, pull me out a little sooner, endaxi?”
“Ah,” she said: “I apologize. I should have noticed how tired you got. In the future, whether there is a teacher behind you or not, if you feel yourself losing control, simply say ‘Front’ and a Master will take your board.”
“Uh. Right, I’ll keep that in mind.”
He staggered over to the seating area and fell into a chair.
“You okay?” asked an Iatros—a Master Physician—who sat nearby.
He shook his head: “I‘m not sure. Physically I’m just tired, but something is going on in my mind.”
“Can you describe it?”
“Hmmm. When I had my first medical and RNA treatments here in the Commonwealth, I got home with a sort of ‘absolute direction’ sense. If I think about where I am, I can see and feel a sort of ‘sense’ of how far I am from various places that I frequent, and what direction they are. It’s weird, because the distances aren’t being read or translated in my brain into miles or kilometers or leagues...”
He looked the Medical Master in the eye and said: “I have that feeling now. I’m not losing it. I...I feelmyself in a four-dimensional matrix, like...”
“Yes?”
“I can’t yet describe it. It’s not amenable to language.”
He tried to let that feeling sink in: ‘There’s no sign of this feeling of placement going away. If this is me now, I need to let it become natural. Meanwhile, I’m hungry...’
He staggered a bit as he walked. He cleared the force-field entrance to the War Room and ran into some acquaintances from Red Skolo. They walked along together for a time, chatting, and he began to feel better. The sense of where he wasin four dimensions changed as he interacted with others: ‘It’s like it ratchets down, like a quantum thing; from knowing “where in the galaxy” I am to solar system to planetary to “just in this building”...’
He staggered again: ‘Okay, thinking about it brings the wider range feeling back. Don’t think, just chat...’
“You okay?” asked one woman, a student in Anni’s class.
“Just exhausted,” he said: “I ran a board in the War Room for the first time.”
“Cool,” she said. “You ought to eat.”
“Yeah...”
An hour later he felt much better. Food, and ordinary conversation, and not moving very much for a while, all seemed to help. When he got back to his feet, the effect stabilized. He could ignore it if he wanted to.
‘That’s a relief,’ he mused.
He arrived back at the War Room, intending to hitch a ride home to his Salon.
He’d no sooner passed the energy curtain than alarms went off. He looked around, seeing nothing out-of-the-ordinary, then concentrated on the landing pad. Aristogatos cursed in between speaking in controller-jargon. Warriors drew their weapons and Techs fled to adjacent control rooms, raising barriers in the doorways to protect themselves.
The energy screen behind him pushed him further into the room and then froze, barring that exit.
Suddenly, he understood: ‘Someone or something is trying to hijack the equipment here...’ He drew his own weapons.
A small Gate manifested right on the landing pad. It flickered and blinked into and out of existence for a bit, then became firm for a moment.
A creature of some kind stepped into the War Room. Alarms blared, people cried out.
Ambros realized: ‘...that’s a sentient of some kind!’ It stood about four ells tall, on stubby, powerful legs. It had huge triangular ears and a short snout, full of sharp teeth. Its eyes had vertical pupils, like a lizard’s. Its shoulders sat forward a bit from the hips, but this was balanced by a short, thick tail that rested on the ground like a third leg.
It pulled a short stick from its belt and shook it, by that means deploying it as a weapon: a handle as long as the thing was tall, with a black-light glowing ball at each end.
Ambros had no doubt that the business ends of the staff were plasma: ‘A double ended plasma mace?’
The Gate disappeared and the alien screeched on a falling note. There were words in the screech, but nothing that Ambros could comprehend.
The thing grinned, and leaped at Ambros. It’s legs and tail worked together to send it high and far.
Ambros fired his Commando pistol at point-blank range and then swept the staff aside with his APS. He dropped the firearm and took his sword in two hands.
He noticed, idly, as if watching a river flow, that the APS did not slice the staff in two. He ducked beneath the attacker’s weapon, and struck at its back as it banged into the wall behind where Ambros had just been standing.
It wasn’t there.
‘Behind me,’ he realized, spinning into an outward circle and watching one of the blacklight mace-heads sizzle past his shoulder. He made a cut at the thing’s head, missing clean as it leaped to one side, and then at him again.
‘That thing is scary quick,’ he thought, dodging.
He kicked at its ‘knee’. It fell forward and to his right, and he cut at its head again.
This time his sword cut off a bit of the lizard’s ear. Blue-gray blood spurted from the wound.
The thing paused. It shook its weapon at him; Ambros noticed its hands: four digits, but a thumb on each side of two long, clawed fingers .
“Oh hell,” he said aloud. He thought: ‘That explains the oddball angles of the thing’s blows...got two thumbs on each foot, too!’
“Shit!” he cried, dodging. The lizard leaped again, and Aristogatos threw himself at its knees, like a footballer’s chop-block. The enemy fell forward, rolling, and transferred its staff from hand to foot, twirling the weapon like a baton and aiming blows at Ambros and Aristogatos both.
Ambros changed tactics, eyeballing the thing’s hands. Every time it moved them, he struck at them. He kept his feet moving, circling, staying away from corners.
The lizard did not like that, judging from its shrieks.
The landing pad activated. Ambros saw from the corner of his eye a terrified Tech standing at Aristogatos’ station, manipulating the controls.
Arrenji dropped in on the pad. She shrieked on a rising note and the lizard spun to meet her.
“What in the name of all the Hells in the Multiverse are you doing in this neck of the woods?” Arrenji said, sarcastically.
The beast howled and then let loose a series of grunts and growls. The only sensible thing Ambros got from that was a word: ‘giklik’.
Arrenji shook her head: “You got a bug-out route?”
For answer the creature leaped at her, spinning its weapon again.
The next five seconds were a blur of improbably rapid attacks and parries that ended with the lizard half-decapitated, bluish gore oozing thickly from its neck.
Arrenji sat down on the floor, cradling her left arm. The thing’s weapon deactivated, become a five ell long staff.
“I really hate those people,” she said. She looked up at Ambros: “Good job.”
“The fuck?”
She shrugged: “Giklos. From a long way off. Vicious and ultra-violent. They don’t usually work in groups, so maybe this one found us on its own. I sure hope so, because we have enough to do as it is. Don’t need to be mixing it up with those guys.” She shook her head: “I need to get to Combat Med.” She rose and said: “First let me see the recording...”
Aristogatos limped over to his board and a holo-tank lit up. Arrenji led Ambros over.
Ambros stared in amazement at the action: “Wait, is that real-time speed?”
“Sure,” said Aristogatos: “Why?”
Ambros watched the fight again: ‘That whole fight took only...twenty-two lepta? About nineteen seconds my time?’
“How in the world did I ever live through that?” he asked aloud.
Arrenji patted him on the back with her unwounded hand: “You’re quicker than you realize. Again, good work.” She turned around as Meds and Laborers came through the once-again permeable screen: “Giklos,” she said: “Do a necropsy, and see if it was using catnip or one of their other drugs. And be careful with the blood, it’s toxic.”
Iatri Alaisi led Arrenji over to the seating area, laid her on a couch, and went to work.
Ambros sat in a nearby chair. The adrenaline began to leave his system and he felt chilled, and exhausted, and weak. He grumbled and muttered under his breath for a while, until Arrenji said: “Out with it, Spathos!”
“I. Was. Never. That fast.” He sat staring at his boots, running the fight over in his mind. He saw it, then: “I get it.”
Arrenji said, with exaggerated mock-patience: “Clue me in, endaxi?”
He sighed: “We were just talkig about all the strange stuff that’s happened to me lately. Then today, I had a kind of physical satori while working on the power-modulator.” He moved his hands as though gathering all those things together: “I think something has changed about me.”
“For the better,” Arrenji said.
“I don’t know,” he retorted, shaking his head.
“For the better,” she repeated, catching his eye.
He stared at her: “I have you to thank, if it is for the better.”
“Fair enough,” she conceded: “I did my part. And I’ll continue to do it. But you did most of it yourself. You’re jumping ahead again, but that does not seem to be something we can control.”
He grinned: “But I’m only keeping up with myself because of your training. I don’t know how bad off I’d be if not for you.”
“Sure. But...it’s not so much that I train you as that you train. I offered you a way out of a small existence in a backwater Timeline. You grabbed with both hands, and worked, and labored. So, keep up the good work. I’m going to start training you to the next level.”
She got up then, saying: “You need more equipment, right Alaisi?”
Alaisi agreed: “Let’s head down to Combat Med. I’ll get that bone fused and on the way to healed...”
They left, chatting as if no toothy eight-thumbed lizard with toxic blue blood lay on the floor behind them, surrounded by Meds and Techs and their equipment.
Ambros wondered what ‘the next level’ was going to be like: ‘It doesn’t bear thinking about. And I don’t have to think about it right now...’
He stretched, and realized he was hungry again.
He laughed and said aloud: “I guess one good thing about burning up so much energy is, the re-fueling process is mighty tasty.”
Days passed, full of busy-ness. Friday came and went...
‘An ordinary Saturday in Eugene,’ Ambros thought: ‘and I’m going to Samuel B’s early, in hopes of getting a little writing time in.’
He was still feeling cocky from his recent progress in the martial arts, not to mention having a couple of arcane psycho-scientific epiphanies: ‘It’s all cause for worry, but it’s cool stuff, too.’
It being early in March by the US calendar, the drizzle came and went, as did the freezing breeze. His hooded cloak kept him mostly dry and warm.
He walked along Benham Avenue, feeling cautious. He glanced behind and saw a man following.
“The exact distance that a tail would be at,” he muttered. He stopped at the fence southwest of Samuel B’s and made a show of reading the handbills and graffiti scattered across it. From the corner of his right eye he saw the tail slow his pace.
‘There’s no apparent reason for him to stop,’ Ambros thought: ‘...so he has to keep walking.’
After a half a minute or so, during which time Ambros noted several announcements of interest to him, his tail caught up.
The fellow stood next to him, also pretending an interest in the damp and tattered papers festooning the fence. His overcoat looked old but not worn out, his fedora the same. His dark tan suit and muted red tie seemed meant to say ‘Ignore me’. He turned to Ambros and said: “Can I buy you a drink, Mr Rothakis?”
“I don’t believe we’ve met, Mr...?”
“You can call me Roberts. Or Burt.”
“Mr Roberts. I wonder what would cause you to want to buy a drink for a stranger.”
Roberts chuckled: “You are pretty strange. But you’re less of a stranger to me than I am to you.”
Ambros pondered: “Obviously, since you knew my name...all right. One drink.”
“You won’t regret it. I have information which will be of use to you.”
“Really?” Ambros led the way into Samuel B’s.
Roberts handed the barmaid a twenty: “Vodka and tonic for me, Stoli, and a Jameson’s neat for Mr Rothakis.”
Ambros’ eyebrows went up a bit more. They carried their drinks to his favorite table, near the back door. Ambros said, as he sat down: “Kindly tell me which agency you work for. Don’t lie or BS. I can—and will—verify your bona fides.”
“I believe that,” the man said: “I’m compelled to believe it, by the things you’ve already done.” He smiled: “Technically, I am an assistant director at the FBI.”
“But you work for other people, too,” Ambros nodded. He gazed at ‘Roberts’ critically: ‘He’s good at this. His appearance helps; there’s absolutely nothing distinctive about him.’
He spoke aloud: “You are here about ‘Hector Miller’ I expect. I fear I didn’t cover my tracks on that operation anywhere near well enough.” He accidently used the Commonwealth handsign for scare quotes, then added the US version, absently.
Roberts gestured dismissively: “Unimportant. Jack Piccolo has outlasted his usefulness anyway.” He pointed at Ambros: “You are way more interesting to me...to us, I should say, all of the people I work for.”
“Really...”
“That news is not all bad, in spite of your prejudice against law enforcement...”
“And espionage.” Ambros prompted.
Roberts laughed: “But you are engaged in espionage yourself!”
“Do tell.”
Roberts sipped his drink: “Sure. My problem is that I don’t know whom you represent, if anyone. We—all of the various agencies I work for or am in touch with—we’ve pretty well eliminated every possibility we could think of.”
Ambros sipped his drink, cautiously, even though he’d watched Molly pour it and kept his hand on it since: “Interesting.”
“It is. Freelance spies are in short supply in the world today. Oh, you’ve made contact with a lot of fascinating people since you appeared on the scene. Liberal do-gooders. Anarchists. The IWW. That jackass John Masters. The teenage kid in Japan, and that other one—the girl—in Iran. But none of the people or organizations you’ve contacted could possibly be paying you the kind of money you obviously have. None of them could have constructed your current identity. None of them could have erased your former identity as totally as it has been erased. We can’t even figure out who you used to be. It’s a puzzle...And this person Arrenji...she is even more opaque than you are.”
Ambros stared at the man, a bleak expression on his face: “Why are you here? If you think you know so much about me...? Why am I not under arrest? The US government arrests people for far less than what you’ve said you know...”
“Ah, but we don’t know that much. We know so very little about you—almost all of it negative: you’re not this, you’re not that—that it piques our—in this case my—curiosity. As for arresting you: that would be pretty futile, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, probably,” Ambros conceded.
“This contact is on my own initiative, since all of my various...employers have come up empty when fishing for information about you. That alone is a bit uncanny, right?”
Ambros laughed aloud: “I’m sure you don’t mean supernatural...”
Roberts just stared at him.
Ambros stared back.
After half a minute, Roberts said: “Define ‘supernatural’.”
After another long pause, Ambros said: “Point to you.”
“Ultimately, it doesn’t matter,’ said Roberts. “Since you are clearly not working directly for any foreign government, nor for any large foreign corporation, nor directly for any known radical organization that poses a security threat to the US or our allies, I am ordered to leave you be. Ignore you. Cease-and-desist on the operation to seize your properties. Wait for you to do something, anything that illuminates matters. Get to work on other problems.”
“Is that what you are going to do?”
“Obviously not. I want to keep watching you, to the extent that I can. You’re shifty...hard to keep track of. You appear and disappear...
“But we may be able to help each other. As a token of that, I have something for you.”
Roberts reached into his suit coat pocket and produced a photo: “This is a current photo of Jack Piccolo, whom you knew as Hector Miller. As you can see, he’s had extensive plastic surgery and looks very different than he did.”
Ambros took the photo and gazed at the image. It was indeed the “new” Piccolo, as he’d seen when he researched him with Commonwealth tech.
He concealed that knowledge and asked: “Why does this concern me?”
Roberts said: “He’s coming after you. He’s gotten emotionally involved—even vengeful—in the course of his last several assignments. One guy he arrested was acquitted, and he blew his stack. He hasn’t been the same since. It makes him a security risk. Now he’s on a mission...an unofficial, unsanctioned mission...to do you in.”
“What do you suggest I should do about that?”
“Whatever you want to do. He’s useless to the FBI, the DEA, the CIA, or to any other acronymic organization you want to add to that list. If he takes a pull at you and you deal with him somehow...well, you’ll be saving the government money.”
Ambros finished his drink: “Why are you telling me this?”
“Good question,” Roberts said: “I need to get going soon. But just so you know, there’s no quid pro quo here. You don’t owe me anything specific. But I may need some help someday. I’d like you to be predisposed to offer me such help. So...maybe I’ll see you again.”
He offered a hand; Ambros shook it, eyes narrowed: “That’s calculated to appeal to my apparent ideology, isn’t it?”
Roberts looked more closely at him: “It is.”
“All right,” Ambros said: “I’ll keep it in mind. See ya.”
He saluted Roberts French-style, and left-handed, just to muddy the waters a bit more. Roberts waved and headed for the door, then paused. He turned and returned the salute in the same palm-forward style, then left the pub looking thoughtful.
In spite of the worry engendered by the meeting with Burt Roberts, Ambros remained pleased with himself. He laughed inwardly at the feeling: ‘Hey, none of this weird shit was my idea. It’s not like I went on a purposeful quest to far-off Xanadu and came back with the Holy Grail or anything. It’s one accident after another that got me in touch with...the Multiverse...and my own capabilities. But...Arrenji’s right, I suppose. I did do a lot of the work.’
Thus, he conceded to himself, as he had conceded to Arrenji, that his own efforts were a good deal of the reason for his progress. He thought: ‘Modesty, especially false modesty, is not considered a virtue in the Commonwealth.’
Ambros then had leisure to look around a bit, seeing who among the usual denizens of the pub was and was not already in the room. To his surprise he spotted Kim’s brother-in-law Eddie Roth.
‘A corrupt defense attorney, who spied on his clients and betrayed their defenses to the DA...what the hell is he doing in my local? Not in his ordinary stomping grounds, I would think.’
Eddie saw him staring. He gestured for Ambros to join him, seeming reluctant but resolved. Ambros wondered what was up.
He crossed the room, cradling the shot glass with the last bit of his drink in it: “What’s up Eddie? Slummin’?”
Roth showed anger for a moment, then his face fell into resignation: “Okay, I deserve that. I’m trying to do better, okay? Have a seat, if you want.”
“Endaxi,” said Ambros, sitting across from Eddie: “I mean, sure. Not that it’s my affair, but what brought on this quest for improvement?”
Eddie shrugged, a worried look on his face: “I don’t want to lose my wife.”
Ambros raised his hands, palms open: “Hey, I get it. Enough said.”
Eddie sat silent for a while, his features working such that Ambros could nearly read his mind.
“Pursuant to that,” Eddie said in a lawyerly tone: “I apologize. I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
Eddie shrugged again: “Sophie made it clear that I need to apologize to anybody I insulted, or yelled at, or ‘lorded it over’ as she put it. She made me think about what an ass I’ve been all my life. And Clementine...my great-aunt Clem...”
“I know her. A very admirable person.”
“Yeah I’m figuring that out. I know, I know...a bit late for that, but I’m getting there. She gave me a very thorough ‘dressing down’, a week after Sophie did. Aunt Clem made it abundantly clear to me whose side she’d take if Sophie divorced me. And all of the family’s money goes through Clem.”
Ambros remained silent.
Eddie said: “And there I go again, making it all about the money.”
Ambros stared at Eddie, trying to figure out how sincere the man was.
Eddie shifted nervously in his seat, then said: “I took a job with the Public Defender’s Office. Now I’m neck-deep in a bad case...”
Ambros raised an eyebrow: “I bet. Let me guess. You’re the new guy, so they put you on Jonny Horton.”
“Yeah, I guess it wouldn’t take much insight to figure that out.”
“Tough assignment. The Public Defenders probably should have put their most experienced lawyer on that job. Is the DA going for the death penalty?”
“Hasn’t said yet. I guess he has conflicting accounts of the fight. He’s trying to figure out whether either of the victims started the fight. If Horton was the aggressor...” Eddie shrugged again: “It’s not like I don’t have experience in defending felons. I just...”
Ambros narrowed his eyes, wondering whether Eddie would confess to his earlier corruption.
In the end, Eddie did not: “...I just never really gave a shit before, you know? But I guess I get it now. Horton is an ass, and an absolutely evil piece of work. But he deserves a defense, because anyone does. They drilled that into us, in school. I mean, from pre-law all the way through law school, and after. Until now, I never really thought that was true.”
Ambros sat nodding. After a pause he said: “Well, good luck, I guess. I don’t want Horton walking the streets again, though.”
“No chance of that. It’s my job to keep the man off Death Row.”
Ambros nodded: “Okay, I accept your apology. And I tender my own in return.”
“For what?”
“I thought some nasty thoughts about you. I didn’t believe you capable of the turn-around you are making. I was wrong, I apologize.” Ambros held out a hand.
Slowly, uncertainly, Eddie took it: “I accept your apology.”
Eddie gathered the papers he’d been perusing and slid them into a briefcase: “I need to get home...”
“Sure. See you around,” said Ambros.
An hour later Ambros still sat there, staring alternately at the ceiling and the big window across the room from where he sat.
He’d written a report on the encounter with Roberts, careful to forget no word of the conversation. He’d drunk a glass of water and ordered another whisky. It sat in front of him, barely touched.
The first of the “usual suspects’ entered the pub. To his surprise, Allie and Gustav and their parents were in that first bunch: ‘They usually arrive somwhat later.’
He closed his Newest Pismo and slid the machine into his bag. He picked up his drink and moved to the communal table.
Gustav disappeared into the back, by the restrooms. He returned with a board game of some kind; Ambros could hear pieces rattling around as Gustav sat down across from him.
“Hey, teacher, let’s play a game!” Gustav seemed wickedly amused at the prospect.
“I’m not much into board games...” Ambros said.
“Oh, but you’ll like this one.” Gustav opened the box and removed the board.
“Looks a bit like Go,” said Ambros.
“Yeah. Put down one piece at a time, capture by jumping, if you can capture, you gotta, the one with the most of the opponent’s pieces captured is the winner. C’mon, play me!”
‘All right, sure.”
Ambros was still distracted by his earlier encounters, and Gustav won the draw for first move. Before Ambros knew it, Gustav had parlayed that slight advantage into a dominating position on the board. He proceeded to mop up a lot of Ambros’ pieces, headed for what looked like a certain victory.
That drew the attention of several of the folks around the table. Ambros shook off his troubles and concentrated on the board. He played the next few turns defensively, preventing any further losses. With two markers still in hand, he shook his head: “I feel like Ishida Matsunari at Sekigahara.”
Gustav looked puzzled. Ambros said: “We’ll talk about that guy in History class, soon. Your move.”
Gustav set a piece upon the board and grinned.
Ambros sat up straighter. He stared at the board, then made another defensive move, one that required Gustav to capture one of his pieces.
Gustav said: “Uh-oh.”
The board lay before them, covered in white and black tokens. Gustav’s white pieces outnumbered the black by two-to-one.
Ambros took one of his few remaining moveable black pieces and began jumping across the board, capturing his opponent’s ‘men’.
Gustav stared at the board, apparently stunned. He placed his final piece, and Ambros followed suit.
“Game over,” said Patrick: “Count the men.”
“...Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen...” Gustav looked across the table.
“Eighteen. Tie.” Ambros smiled, wanly.
“Huh.” Gustav stared at the board, and at the captured tokens on each side. “Right.”
He gathered up the pieces and put the game away. When he returned, he sat by himself at the other end of the communal table. He sat there, arms crossed over his chest, seeming very thoughtful.
Ambros looked at the boy’s father, raising an eyebrow.
Patrick grinned: “That’s the toughest game anyone ever gave him. That’s the first time he didn’t win.”
“Oh.” Ambros sipped his drink, now thoughtful as well.
Next morning Ambros woke in the big bed in his bedroom at the Salon. Marie and Luisa were both already up, and the teakettle was whistling. He rose and stretched.
“Ambros, you need to come out here and let us out!” Marie sounded peeved.
“Okay, just a sec...” He got some pants on and padded through the door into the office. “Here, let’s fix this.” He put his hand on the palm lock and spoke a passphrase: “Aftó eenay foní mou.” The thing beeped.
“Put your hand here,” he said: “Now you, Luisa.”
“Now we can go in and out on our own?” Marie asked.
“Yeah. Kim has stayed here a lot more often, so I set her up already. Shoulda got to this before.”
“What are you up to today?”
He spoke calmly, hiding his worry: “Gonna go see Averos and work with some powered armor.”
Luisa laughed: “What, Starship Troopers stuff?
“Sorta,” he grinned: “No rocket assists, but otherwise similar.”
“Sounds cool.” Marie put her coat on: “I am meeting the guy who is buying the fabric store, and when we settle I will need everyone’s signatures...”
He escorted the two of them out the main door, and then headed for the shower. He stood for a while under the endless rain of hot water, loosening his shoulders and hips. He let it go on until he could feel himself sweating.
He rinsed in icy-cold water, to jump-start his metabolism. Then he went shivering back to his bedroom for clean clothes.
Averos watched as Ambros examined the suit.
He lifted the helm up and slid it over his head: “Okay, that’s better. Dialled all the way down?”
“Yes. The control is at the very bottom of the visor,” Averos indicated it with a finger: “Here.”
“I see it. So...?”
“I altered the programming,” said Averos. “It’s in Commonwealth code now, and the strength amplification is indicated in percent, rather than being a logarithmic progression. The body harness is now in scale, rather than being a hard suit, so it can be fitted to different people more easily. It’s fitted to you now.”
“All of that should make it easier to control,” Ambros nodded.
He donned the suit: heavily re-inforced boots that obviously had weighted soles, leg harness, breast-and-back, arm harness, gorget. When he put the helm on, the telltales lit up and showed him the wireless connections and force-fields that let all the parts work in tandem. He put on the gauntlets: fingered instead of mitten-style, and with less flare to the cuffs than he liked.
They left the lab and took an elevator up to ground level, crossed the street and entered a disused area of the Red Warrior Skolo grounds.
Ambros cautiously increased his overall strength by two percent. He hopped and felt the extra pop in his hop.
Averos said: “If you increase the overall by ten percent or more, the entire harness will stiffen and then sag as you land, after a leap.”
“Right,” said Ambros: “So if I leap tall buildings in a single bound I won’t break my legs when I hit the ground again.”
“That’s about it.”
“Well, here goes nothing...” He cranked the suit up to twelve and went for a run.
At first he had trouble: he had a tendency to bounce while running. His gait was not unlike an astronaut’s moonwalk. He had to lean his weight forward so that his momentum moved him parallel to the ground.
He stopped by Averos: “You topped out at thirty leagues per hour,” said Averos.
Ambros did the math: ‘Thirty leagues per Commonwealth hour is twenty per USIT hour, and a Hellenic league is about two miles...’
“Forty MPH, my style,” he said: “But that’s at twelve percent!”
“Indeed,” said Averos.
“You have any memory-RNA on you?”
“I do,” said Averos: “Here...”
Ambros swallowed the caspule, and then said: “Just a minute or two...”
He gazed around, waiting for the rush of peculiar alertness that the drug—four-strand memory RNA—always brought him: ‘Without a hypnotic, I am reliant on muscle memory and verbal instruction to master this suit...’
“Endaxi,” Ambros said: “Tell me everything you’ve discovered about this rig.”
The Commonwealth “radio” that Averos had installed let him listen while he worked out. He made mnemonic notes as Averos droned on, while Ambros tested the attributes of the armor.
“The helm, gorget, and body armor work together to prevent neck injuries...”
He dialled his strength up to twenty and jumped easliy over a twenty-ell olive tree. The suit cushioned his landing as designed.
“The gauntlets’ individual plates co-ordinate to protect your fingers from crushing or shearing forces...”
He pushed the setting up to fifty and punched the tree, just to see what would happen.
“Any joint that ‘feels’ too much force on it will freeze momentarily, protecting you from sprains or strains...”
The tree rocked away from him and back, and some of its roots popped free of the soil.
“The energy will, in that case, transfer to any item in contact with the plates at that time...”
“Sorry,” he said, to the tree. The tree growled inaudibly. “Really sorry...”
“The suit is currently set to top out at two hundred percent of your own natural strength...”
He ran the setting up to two hundred percent and tested his vertical leap.
As he passed two hundred feet upwards he regretted his rashness; he regretted even more the lack of rocket assists as he dropped like a rock towards the ground. It took a real effort to land on his feet, even with the weighted boots to aid him. He didn’t scream as the ground rushed at him, but it was a near thing. The force fields expanded and slowed his fall at the last second.
“The pads should support your trunk such that you feel no abnormal stresses, even landing at near terminal velocity...”
“That’s not quite true,” said Ambros: “But it’s within the limits of stress I am accustomed to.”
“Very well.”
Ambros set the suit to thirty percent and ran toward a boulder. He realized (too late) that it took a person the same amount of time to stop at sixty-plus miles per hour as it did an automobile. He slowed as much as could, but...
He slammed face-first into the rock and bounced off.
He lay there for a moment, assessing the damage: ‘That’s a shock to the innards from the sudden stop,’ he thought. Then he said aloud: “I did that on purpose. Right?”
“If you say so.” Averos suppressed his amusement.
Ambros got to his feet, re-set the amplification at five percent and ran over to the Tech Master.
“Let’s get me out of this thing,” Ambros said.
“If you are finished...”
“I am.”
“Well, I think you should keep the suit. I have all the specs...when we have ten or so manufactured, you can start teaching the Magistrae how to fight in them. Meanwhile, you might want to practice braking.”
Ambros laughed: “Right! I’ll do that!” They headed for the Command Complex. Averos took readings off the suit as Ambros walked it home.
