Michael A. Stackpole - Dark Conspiracy 02 - Evil Ascending

The scream of utter frustration ripping through her

brain shocked her out of stasis. She felt a jolt run through

her body, then it and the scream dwindled to a tingle at her

spine. That sensation proved unsettling enough that, for

a moment or two, she succeeded in fighting off her body's

desire to slip back into somnolent bliss.

Where?

Why?

Her mind slowly clawed its way to consciousness. In an

instant she knew exactly where she was. Snippets of

memories, all involving shadowy figures bearing her

downward through dark tunnels, strobed through her

brain. Deeper and deeper they had taken her, just has her

mind had retreated deep into itself, to keep her safe. Safe,

and so I could prepare.

As she recalled the need for preparation and the reason

behind it, she felt the tingling in her spine shift to a cold chill

clutching her with sharp talons. At first she imagined it a

reaction to the memory, but then she heard faint echoes

of sinister laughter. The laughter built slowly and she

knew, instinctively, that had the creature causing it not

been multiple dimensions from her, she would have been

forced to return to stasis to preserve her sanity.

It is him. He endures, even after this much time. The

scream, she realized, had come from far closer than the

laughter. That was the reason it had been able to cut

through all the mental shields she had created to protect

herself. He was here, in this dimension, but he was turned

away. He was defeated. How is that possible?

She forced her eyes open and waited impatiently for

them to focus so she could read the chronometric display

above the life-signs monitor in her stasis capsule. Glowing

green numerals reported time as both objective and

subjective, with the latter number causing her more

concern than the former. I have been in stasis for the

equivalent of 3.27144 life-measurement units. My mis-

sion, my preparation, was projected to take 4.978831

LMUs. I am not yet ready.

She looked at the first number again. She frowned,

forcing her brain through the rigors of mathematics.

Twenty-six terrestrial LMUs have passed since I was

placed in stasis. Have they progressed so much that they

can hold him at bay? Has the danger passed? Is it safe?

The laughter drifted in and out of her mind like snatches

of music borne by the wind. At times she heard it with a

deafening clarity, then it faded until she wondered if it had

ever been there at all. The anger in it slowly drained until

she sensed an almost paternal pride or a begrudged

respect in it. Whoever had driven him off had earned his

attention and, with that, she knew, came fearful, crushing

retribution.

I was put into stasis to fight him—and them—to prevent

his exacting revenge. I was to forge myself into a tool that

would end his campaign of terror and domination. She

pressed her fingertips against the soft cloth lining the

stasis capsule and sought in it the peace she had known

before the scream. I am not ready.

From the heart of the laughter came a new emotion. It

shocked and hurt her, but she automatically shunted the

pain away as the defenses she had prepared dealt with the

assault. Once she broke through the wall of physical

discomfort, she saw and smelled and felt and heard and

tasted and sensed him and his thoughts. She had trouble

following his mental processes, for though he had one

purpose and one goal, it seemed as if billions of minds

spoke in unison with his. Like listening for one lone flute

in a concert of all the worlds' orchestras, she caught

tantalizing fragments of his musings, then slowly puzzled

them together.

She consciously overrode the physical lethargy im-

posed by the stasis capsule and let herself smile. Here he

is called Fiddleback, a name in which he revels for its

irony and infamy. He has agents here—many agents. But

there are those who oppose him. Someone turned one of

his agents, his favorite, against him. That pet has joined

forces with the opposition against him, but Fiddleback

has no fear. There is a trap. He will consume his enemies

in this trap, and take away a greater prize in doing so.

The monstrous confidence in Fiddleback's thoughts

threatened to swamp her like a tidal wave. Another

.00001 LMUs rack themselves up on her chronometric

display along with an increase in Fiddleback's certainty

that he would succeed. That sent another jolt through her,

and the metallic taste of fear flooded her mouth.

I am not ready! Part of her brain screamed as her right

index finger flexed and moved upward. Lifting it felt like

moving the mountain beneath which she had been buried.

Had she waited until 4.978831 LMUs had passed, the

stasis capsule would have opened by itself and prepared

her for a return to a world where time flowed unabated.

Part of her very much wanted to wait for that eventuality,

but something in Fiddleback's palpable egotism told her

that to wait was to awaken in a world he had made his own.

Millimeter by millimeter her finger rose until it finally

met resistance. For a half-second, she felt she could not

depress the switch enough to free herself. She let the

energy that her claustrophobic panic freed flow into her

finger. It stiffened, and she heard a faint click.

The hiss of musty air flowing into the capsule buried

that sound. Dim light encircled her as the top half of the

tubular capsule rose four centimeters. She blinked her

eyes twice, not against the light, but because of the swirls

of dust curling in beneath the edge of the capsule. As the

latches on the right side snapped open, the whole lid

rotated up and to the left. In its wake, a drifting blanket of

dust blew free of the lid's trailing edge and settled over her.

She sneezed.

The sound surprised her, especially the way it echoed

within the small stone chamber, then she laughed. That

happy sound likewise rebounded back to her, and she

smiled, remembering that the denizens of this world still

communicated through sounds instead of through telepa-

thy. Although born here, she shared her parents' prefer-

ence for thought transfer to the imprecision of speech.

The incessant chittering of Fiddleback's myriad thoughts

nibbled through the pleasant feelings her memories had

engendered. She frowned and tried to snap shut the link

to him, but found it impossible. Gritting her teeth, she

redoubled her effort. Success came, along with a return of

the pain wall, leaving her exhausted and numb.

Golden highlights glinted from her fingernails as she

outstretched her arms. Reaching down, she grasped the

edge of the capsule and levered herself into a sitting

position, then swung her legs over the edge. Scooting

forward, she hopped down to the floor and landed in a

three-point crouch. She looked left and right, her eyesight

piercing the darkness without trouble, but heard and saw

nothing else in the small room.

Settling back down on her haunches, she brushed her

thumb over her fingertips, savoring the gritty sensation of

the dust from the floor. No one has been here for a long

time. LMUs, perhaps. She straightened up and glanced

over at the wooden bin stacked with metallic debris and

the four padlocked file cabinets next to it. Dr. Chandra

said no one would ever be allowed to see the Corona crash

evidence. Hiding me here was a good choice.

Padding over to the gray metal door, she remembered

something about when she had been sealed in the room.

Dr. Chandra had given her a key and hung it around her

neck on a chain. For the first time, she became aware of

it hanging down between her small breasts. She pulled it

free and looked for a lock in which to insert it—she

remembered having practiced with a key so she would not

be trapped.

The door had no lock.

Reaching up as high as she could, she ran her hands

down each edge of the metallic door jamb. She felt no weld

scars and, at the bottom of the door, she was able to insert

her fingernails beneath it. Straightening up again, she

took a step back to survey the door in its entirety and

noticed the numeric keypad beside it.

She smiled because the doors on the ship had used

similar sorts of locking mechanisms. She covered it with

her hand and gave the mental command to open.

Nothing happened.

A second attempt achieved the same result. She

concentrated, thinking perhaps her skills had atrophied

during stasis. She rejected the thought—the whole pur-

pose of her time in stasis had been to hone her skills, but

part of her preferred that impossibility to the reality of

being trapped.

Her third command failed as had the other two, but her

concentration brought another result. She realized that of

the nine keys on the pad, several of them resonated

differently to her senses. She ran her fingertips over them

very lightly and felt a spark as she touched some of them.

She shook her head. Of course, the humans put this in.

That which we use for manual override is what they have

no choice but to use because the vast majority of them

cannot project their thoughts. Four keys feel special, but

what is the sequence? How many numbers?

With four keys feeling special, she knew the logical

assumption was that the coded sequence involved only

four numbers. Even so, the first key felt so much more

powerful than the others, she suspected it had to be hit

twice during the sequence. That first number centered the

top row of three: She recalled it being called an 8.

The other special keys were arrayed on the keypad in

a roughly geometric pattern. The 6 lay one below and one

to the right of the 8. The 2 sat in the bottom row, located

squarely in the middle. The 4 sat on the other end of the

row with the 6.

A five-number sequence with four possible candidates

is not an insurmountable number of combinations to try.

She stared at the keypad again. Entering a wrong number

could set off an alarm, and with the changes here, I do not

want to do that. There must be another clue.

She frowned and tried to sort through anything she

could remember about her hosts that would give her an

indication of what she should do. She smiled as she

remembered Dr. Chandra and the other humans who had

worked with her, studying her, as she had grown up within

the protected environment of a Federal Liaison Center. It

shocked and surprised her that, as much as she had loved

Chandra and his co-workers, her mother's thoughts about

humans detonated in her brain: Humans are undisciplined,

vain and sloppy.

Sloppy. Instead of forcing themselves to remember

things, they take shortcuts. She looked at the keypad and

smiled. Mnemonics, patterns, tools. Yes, it makes sense.

Reaching out, she hit 8-6-2-4-8, starting with the 8 and

describing a diamond-shape that ended with the 8 again.

A pair of eights and a skip-straight. Not a betting hand.

She wondered where that thought had come from as

the door slid silently into the ceiling. She glanced out and

saw nothing but pale yellow light. Thinking herself safe,

she stepped out of the room, then discovered, in a small

alcove, a desk with a lamp producing the yellow light.

Behind the desk, staring at her wide-eyed over the edge

of a tabloid newspaper, sat a very surprised soldier.

"Jesus H. Christ!" The man pulled his feet from the top

of the desk and sat forward, letting the tabloid spray

across the desk in a blizzard of paper. He looked her up

from her toes to the top of her head and back down again.

"Oh my God!"

His thoughts raced unbridled and bursting with raw

energy. The first thought she picked up from him was one

of happy surprise, because the first thing he noticed was

her nakedness. He then noticed her gold hair, which

heightened his excitement and keyed his active fantasy

life, despite the apparent drawbacks of her being, in his

eyes, petite.

Then reality darkened his fantasy. He realized that no

matter how much he thought he deserved a carnal

adventure, there was no way anyone, naked or not, should

be at his hell-hole post. His job was technically to keep

people away from getting into whatever the Air Force

stored down here, but all those interlopers should have

been coming down from above, not out from below. With

that realization she caught the first tendrils of horror in his

thoughts.

The soldier looked at her again and saw beyond her

nudity and golden hair. She saw herself reflected in his

terror. Her jet-black flesh and metallic gold fingernails

struck him as odd, but not out of the ordinary from things

he had seen at the Palomino in Vegas. Even the golden

stripes running from her fingers along her arms, and up

her legs from her toes were not so radically out of line. He

could have accepted them, but then he saw her eyes.

Large and slightly almond-shaped, he saw them as

sensual—for a heartbeat. Then he saw the vertical lozenge

pupil and that triggered in him an ancient race-fear of

reptiles. In less time than it took for the last page from his

tabloid to flutter to the ground, she had gone from an

object of carnal desire to a monster from the bowels of hell.

She felt his panic and knew there was no way she could

calm him. He is all but gone now! She threw her arms

open, looked him in the eyes and projected an image into

his mind. She forced him to visualize her legs blending

together into 20 feet of gold-bellied snake and her tongue

flickering in his direction.

The soldier's eyes rolled back up into his head as he

fainted dead away. He flopped back into his chair, then

dropped to the floor and lay there quietly. His arms and

legs twitched a couple of time, then he rolled onto his back

and began breathing normally.

She crossed to him and pressed her right hand against

his forehead. Projecting her mind into his, she found his

short-term memory and began to warp it. Plucking a page

from the tabloid, she studied the picture of a dark-haired

actress in a gown that looked barely able to restrain all of

her. I am sorry this Janine Fonda is not a blonde, as you

seem to prefer, but she should do nicely for you.

Rooting around inside his head, she tracked the begin-

ning of his fantasy about her through the cognitive links

that opened his fantasy world to her. In no time at all she

found one of many fantasies he'd had involving a clandes-

tine encounter at this, the base's most forgotten and

despised duty post. She quickly raced through it, substi-

tuting Janine Fonda for Andrea Beatty-Bening, then

retreated from his mind.

She noted the happy smile on his face, then started to

unbutton his shirt. In no time she managed to appropriate

his outer clothing. She had to roll the pants up and punch

a new hole in his belt, but she found the clothes comfort-

able and welcomed their warmth against the chill in the

air.

She realized she would need footwear, so she took his

boots. Because they were far too large for her, she started

to wad up pages from the tabloid to stuff into the toes. As

she did so, she picked up the centerspread and froze. It's

true: He was here.

A grainy photograph, clearly taken at night, showed a

monstrously huge creature towering over a skyscraper.

Though she had never actually seen Fiddleback, he had

been described to her in enough detail for her to know this

blurred photograph had to be him.

She stared at the symbols on the page and forced

herself to remember how to decipher them. Translating

quickly, she rendered the headline as "Genetically defec-

tive arachnid assaults a mythical bird that is reborn of its

own ashes." Knowing that had to be incorrect, and seeing

the bird reference repeated in captions and the body of the

text, she decided the word Phoenix probably referred to a

place.

"Pah-he-o-e-nicks," she sounded out. It sounded de-

cidedly alien to her, but then everything about the world

of her birth was alien to her, as she was to it. Phoenix. This

is where Fiddleback was defeated. This is where his

enemies dwell, dwell in danger. She balled the paper up

and jammed it into the boot. Then this Phoenix is where

I shall go to warn them.

Coyote straightened his tie in the way he thought

Michael Loring would, and stood behind his desk as Lilith

ushered Sinclair MacNeal into his office. He came around

to greet Sinclair, his long legs eating up the distance

easily. "How good of you to come on such short notice,

Mr. MacNeal."

The shorter, dark-haired man eyed him cautiously, but

accepted his proffered hand in a strong grip. "The call I

received indicated that haste was important." Sinclair's

blue eyes narrowed. "We have met before, Mr. Loring."He

glanced at the third man in the room. "At that time you

were in a company of another."

Coyote nodded, then looked up at the stunning blond

woman still waiting in the doorway. "That should be all for

now, Lilith. Let me know when the aircraft is preflighted

and ready to go."

"Yes, Mr. Loring."

As she closed the door to his office, Coyote pointed to

the man seated in one of two wing chairs in front of the

desk. "Sinclair MacNeal, this is Damon Crowley."

Sinclair looked at Crowley but did not offer him his

hand. "I met a Damon Crowley before. He 'entertained' at

a party a year ago, over in Goddard Tower One. He was

much older than you. Your father?"

Crowley's gray-gloved left hand stroked his goatee

reflectively. He ignored the question. "The Deitrich party,

yes. The good doctor always throws such lavish affairs."

Sinclair's gaze turned to Coyote. "The paper back-

ground you constructed for Michael Loring is flawless. I

commend you on it. I also assume, therefore, that you are

Coyote and that this is not some sort of bizarre job

interview."

Coyote smiled. "Sit." Seating himself on the edge of his

desk, he reached back and picked up a thick sheaf of

newsprint. "I am aware of your falling out with your father

and your discharge from Build-more. As you recall, I was

there. And, while Lorica Industries would very much like

to employ a man of your talents, I have a personal job I

need you to perform."

He tossed the tabloid to Sinclair. "Have you read the

story about Phoenix in here?"

Sinclair glanced at the front page and shook his head.

"Midnight Weekly Inquirer is not my kind of reading

material, sorry."

"I know that, Mr. MacNeal. I know you take the Tokyo

Shimbun and Japan Weekly News as well as two Japa-

nese-language newsletters that are printed by the Yama-

guchi-gumi. I know you subscribe to 14 other magazines,

but the only two you seem to read voraciously are

Methods of Industrial Security and Counter-Terrorism

Bulletin. In fact, I found your CTB article on the effects of

minor extortion on executives abroad fascinating."

Coyote felt that Sinclair covered his look of surprise

quite well. "As you have checked on me, Mr. MacNeal, so

I have checked on you. This is why you are here. Now,

back to my original question: Have you read about what

happened in Phoenix two weeks ago?"

Sinclair surrendered with a smile. "I have seen news

reports, but, no, I have not read 'Mutant Spider Attacks

Phoenix.' As for the actual incident," he glanced down at

his hands, "I managed to sleep through it. Then again, I

was never one for sharing the hallucinations caused by

mass hysteria."

Crowley leaned forward. "And what if I were to suggest

that there was fire beneath the smoke that is this article?"

"I would suggest you get in touch with your father,

because his act was much better than yours."

"Good, Mr. MacNeal, very good." Coyote walked back

around and sat behind his desk. "You'll need your skep-

ticism, because what we are about to tell you will be very

surprising. I assure you it is true, as odd as it may seem."

MacNeal tossed the tabloid onto the gold-carpeted

floor, "It gets odder? I can't wait"

Coyote let the sarcasm slip past, knowing he shared

Sinclair's attitude before he had seen and done what

prevented Fiddleback's success in assaulting Phoenix.

"Mr. MacNeal, the creature in the picture that accompa-

nies that article is, in fact, real. The maglev circuit that

connects all of the corporate towers here in Phoenix had

incorporated into its design a highly advanced circuitry

layout. When supplied with sufficient power, as was

present in the thunderstorm two weeks ago, it opened a

gateway to another reality. In that reality, this creature

exists."

Sinclair shook his head. "Another reality? I think you've

been watching too much Star Trek: Captain Crusher's

Log."

"In fact, there are many alternate realities, or dimen-

sions, that exist side by side. The dimension that contains

our Earth is one that is unusual in that it appears to be a

nexus point and, for whatever reasons, Earth creatures

hold a fascination for the creatures from these other

dimensions." Coyote shrugged. "They labor to make our

lives hell for their own amusement."

Sinclair stood. "They may find us amusing, and you

may find me amusing, but I'm not amused right now. I

don't know what you wanted me to do, but if I have to buy

this nonsense to do it, I'm out. Good day, gentlemen."

"Crowley, you were right. Show him."

The man in the gray suit eased himself forward to the

edge of his chair. "At the Deitrich party, you and I ended

up washing our hands side by side in the reception

center's bathroom. You noticed a peculiar scar on the

back of my left hand and commented that you'd only seen

anything similar on dead fish."

Crowley tugged at each finger of the glove on his left

hand. As it slid free, Coyote saw a circular mass of scar

tissue on the back of Crowley's left hand, it looked twisted

and knotted, as if someone had taken a circular sanding

tool to his flesh and had ground on it for a while. Pulling the

glove all the way off, Crowley showed his hand to Sinclair.

"The lamprey scar. I remember it." Sinclair looked up

at the man's face, then back down at his hand. "But the

man with the scar was much older—20, 30 years your

senior. You could have faked that."

"Touch it, if you wish. See if it is real." Crowley extended

his hand to him, but the challenge in the occultist's voice

made Sinclair hesitate. "You will recall that only you and

I were in that room at the time, so only you saw the scar.

You would further agree, I think, that while I might have

faked the scar through some complex make-up or sur-

gery, planning to inflict the scar on myself far enough in

advance to let it heal like this, then springing it on you here,

is improbable."

Sinclair stared at the hand, then looked up at Crowley.

"Believing you planned ahead is easier than trying to

figure out how you became younger."

Crowley slipped his hand back into the glove. "There

are dimensions out there where things...change."

Coyote sat back in his chair. "The easiest explanation

is not always the correct one. In order to defeat Fiddle-

back—the 'mutant spider' in question—Crowley under-

took a dangerous mission to a dimension that formed the

basis for part of mythological Greek hell, Tartarus. In that

pocket dimension, the one in which the titan Tityus

regenerates on a daily basis after having provided a meal

for vultures, he helped a woman regenerate from injuries

caused by Fiddleback's agents. In the process, he also

regenerated from all that ailed him. In his case, this was

the ravages of old age. The scar, which he had gotten

before the age to which he regressed, remained unaf-

fected."

Sinclair sat slowly, his bright eyes flicking back and

forth between Crowley and Coyote. "I'm listening, but I'm

not convinced."

Coyote steepled his fingers. "Good. Stories of things

from yetis and lake monsters to flying saucers and

zombies have a basis in truth. Scholars have, by assuming

the simplest answer is the best one, created scenarios for

describing mythic epics as tales reflecting or explaining in

magical terms concepts that ancient peoples could not

understand. Like you, like them, I did not realize, until my

encounter with Fiddleback, that another explanation

existed: Other realities exist and, at various points in our

history and prehistory, denizens of these other places

have come here and been driven back by our ancestors."

"So, you're trying to tell me that Count Dracula was

really a vampire from another dimension?"

"Perhaps. But more likely Vlad the Impaler was a

human under the influence of a Dark Lord." Coyote

unbuttoned his blue suitcoat and leaned forward onto his

desk. "I do not expect you to believe that everything weird

is a result of Dark Lord action—plenty of human mounte-

banks make a living by spreading pseudo-scientific non-

sense. I just want you to be aware that things, like

Fiddleback, do exist and must be opposed. At the risk of

sounding decidedly melodramatic, what I want you to do

is help us prevent Fiddleback from taking over the world."

"I've got the weekend free, not a problem," Sinclair

quipped sarcastically.

Coyote smiled at him. "I'm glad you have a sense of

humor. You'll need it."

"You said you had a job for me to do."

"So I did. Until recently, Mr. MacNeal, I was an assassin

being trained and maintained by Fiddleback's organiza-

tion. I came to Phoenix to kill Nero Loring. I had my eyes

opened to the nature of reality, or the realities, and now I

have chosen to side with humanity over the whim of the

Dark Lords."

"Fiddleback being a Dark Lord?"

Coyote nodded.

Sinclair's eyes narrowed. "And there are more than just

him?"

Coyote nodded again.

Crowley crossed his legs. "Fiddleback is but one of

many. Pygmalion, Dead Tongue, Baron Someday and a

dozen others all operate here on Earth. Fiddleback has

been the most ambitious to date, but all are effective in

their spheres of influence."

"Fiddleback, as part of his plan to solidify his hold on

Earth, has created a training school for assassins and

other agents. I know its general location, but I want you to

pinpoint it and scout it out for me." Coyote interwove his

fingers and watched Sinclair closely. "This is why I am

sending you to Japan."

Sinclair's head came up as if someone had grabbed his

hair and jerked it back. "Japan? I don't think you want me

going to the Land of the Rising Sun. You may have a

background file on me, but much of what it reports about

my time in Tokyo is wrong, I'm certain."

Michael A. Stackpole - Dark Conspiracy 02 - Evil Ascending

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