Merovingen - Fever Season Part 2

Soon the old man would die, and even if he designated a successor, the war for power here would break into the open. If the war between Nev Hettek and Merovingen didn't break out first, helped along by Nev Hettek's agents provocateur in Merovingen, a "terrorist" group called the Sword of G.o.d, of which Dimitri Romanov, dead on Chamoun's boat, had been a member.

Of which Chance Magruder was another. Of which Michael Chamoun was a third, brought in here at great expense and under painstaking cover for the express purpose of marrying into the Boregy family, as close to Anastasi Kalugin as the Sword could get.

Or as close as it had thought it could get, until Chance Magruder found a way into Tatiana Kalugin's bed. Certainly it was Chance who was protecting Chamoun from involvement in the investigation of Romanov's death. Probably it had been Magruder who'd ordered the hit-a disagreement between rival Sword factions. Magruder wouldn't say- wouldn't admit it to Chamoun.

And that worried Michael. It worried him every day. It worried him at night in bed with sweet Ca.s.sie Boregy, the girl he'd married for the Cause, who loved him with an innocent love he didn't deserve. It worried him especially when he was out of Boregy House, abroad in Merovingen as he was now, crossing the treacherous heights of the Signeury where the Kalugins had total and autocratic control. There HEARTS AND MINDS.

31.were fates worse than pretending to convert to Revenantism to legitimize his marriage.

There were dungeons in the Justiciary; interrogation cells, it was whispered, in the Signeury itself. To land in one of them, you only needed to make a Kalugin nervous. And Mike Chamoun had already done that, in spades.

His booted feet slapped hollowly on the cold stone of the Signeury's outer walk. The Grand Ca.n.a.l was on his left, the rock of the Kalugin's administrative fortress on his right. He was taking the long way around because his skin crawled every time he crossed the private bridge to the Justiciary. He didn't want to end up there. He prayed he wouldn't.

So he went the long way, and he went his circuitous way among the Boregys who'd taken him as a son-in-law, and he went his own way less and less frequently these days.

It had been a good plan, the plan of Karl Fon, Nev Hettek's governor, and Chance Magruder and others of the veteran revolutionaries who'd come to power in Nev Hettek. It had been a plan to open diplomatic and trading relations with Merovingen, to infiltrate and conquer, to start a war on Nev Hettek's terms.

The plan might have worked, even with young Mike Chamoun as its fulcrum-worked although so much depended on a poor boy from Nev Hettek. A boy who knew little of society matters and less of destabilization strategies mounted by governments but knew very clearly when he and his Nev Hettek family were caught in a trap lethal to ail if complete obedience was not given. ... It might have worked, bui for a traitor named Mondragon, an ex-Sword agent under the protection and in the employ of Anastasi Kalugin and Vega Boregy.

Vega Boregy, the father of the girl named Ca.s.sie whom Chamoun had married, had called Chamoun into his marble study, the very night of the 24th Eve Ball-mere hours after the wedding and the merger had been announced, and the Sword disrupted the proceedings. There, in that room, Mike Chamoun had met the fabled traitor, Mondragon, for the first time. And Mondragon had fingered Chamoun as Sword of 32.Chris Morris HURTS AND MINDS.

33.G.o.d, fingered him before Boregy's eyes, declaring Chance Magruder another Sword agent, and Dimitri Romanov a third. Then the two men had demanded from Chamoun the most impossible things: a Sword connection, a conduit to Karl Fon back in Nev Hettek . . . a conduit other than Chance Magruder.

If Magruder knew the truth of it, Magruder would say that Chamoun had doubled, been turned by the enemy back upon his masters, the Sword of G.o.d, Karl Fon, and Magruder himself.

But Magruder didn't know. Chamoun had found no way to tell him. Magruder was sleeping with Anastasi Kalugin's mortal enemy, his sister Tatiana. Anastasi had sent Karl Fon a message, through Mondragon arid Boregy, and via Michael Chamoun, that he'd be willing to help an adversarial Sword faction-against Magruder and Tatiana.

The whole convoluted mess was beyond Mike Chamoun's capacity for understanding, except in very simple terms: he knew he was a traitor twice over; he knew Anastasi would have him killed if, he failed to run his messages to Megary and back; he knew Mondragon was in no better a position and would cut out Chamoun's heart at the slightest balk. He knew Magruder would kill him quicker if Chance ever found out that there was a faction of the Sword now working hand in glove with Anastasi Kalugin-against Magruder personally- and that this arrangement had been facilitated by one Michael Chamoun, thrice-compromised agent of the Sword of G.o.d.

He knew, because Magruder had promised Chamoun, on the night of the 24th Eve Ball when the Sword had attacked Nikolaev House, killing Kika and wounding her sister Rita, that Magruder would "take care of Romanov," the a.s.sumed culprit. So the gutted corpse on Chamoun's Detfish shouldn't have been a surprise.

But it had been. Magruder wasted no motion, no energy, no emotion. Magruder was here ostensibly to protect Chamoun-or had been. Thus, upon first seeing the corpse, Chamoun had thought that Magruder couldn't have done it-wouldn't have done it. Filleting Romanov and leaving him on the Detfish just wasn't Chance's style.

It was a warning, since it hadn't been a frame-up. And there was no reason Magruder would send Chamoun such a warning, unless Chance had known, somehow, about the meeting with Mondragon and Ca.s.sie's father-known even while the meeting was taking place.

But he couldn't have; he just couldn't have. Magruder had been closeted with Tatiana all that night, while Chamoun stumbled through a strange city alone, looking for the slaver's stronghold called Megary and a Sword contact he didn't know by name or face, only by pa.s.sword and location to be sought and used in the direst emergency.

That night had been such an emergency. It still was one, in the heart of the young Adventist commoner from Nev Hettek thrust suddenly into a strange culture among his Revenantist betters, a pretender and an enemy in their midst.

Mike Chamoun stopped suddenly, having walked blindly all the way around the Signeury and over the bridge to the Revenantist College. Stopped before the wide and intimidating stairs to wipe the back of his velvet sleeve across his mouth. It came away damp with sweat, even though the day was cold with the surety of autumn and the promise of winter to come.

Up the stairs, on either side, were impossible statues: whales bearing wheels of fire, tails in each others' mouths; great, many-armed women with ornate crowns; the effigy of an angel with a sword, much smaller than the one guarding the harbor or the bridges. That sword, the sword of retribution, was partly drawn.

The angel's name was Michael, according to the ancient lore Chamoun was now learning by rote-the only pan of it which made sense to his stubborn Adventist soul. His new wife and her family and all of these believed in karmic debt and punishment befitting all crimes, meted out by an angry and nit-picking universe, as if G.o.d and all his minions were accountants of the soul.

Michael Chamoun believed that the enemy sharrh, the aliens who'd destroyed all tech on Merovin and isolated the world from the stars, would come again. All Adventists knew that punishment had already come once, with the arrival of 34.Chris Morris the sharrh and the destruction they'd wrought. Adventists knew that the sharrh would come again, by which time mankind on Merovin had best be ready to fight to the death. Under that imperative of doom, all lesser imperatives paled. There was no right but the right of preparedness for the awful day of battle coming; there was no wrong but the possibility of failing to be ready to defend Merovin.

Two philosophies, incompatible, at odds. Mike Chamoun, caught between them, was now expected to mount these seemingly endless stairs each day and learn the Revenantist catechism of unending punishment on earth for misdeeds done in previous lives.

And in current lives. If his tutor at the College, Ca.s.sie's uncle the cardinal, should find out about Romanov, or Magruder, or even that Mike Chamoun was Sword of G.o.d, not all the Boregys in Merovingen could protect him from swift and didactic Revenantist retribution.

Before his eyes once more rose Romanov's shade, as the corpse did daily, haunting him. Romanov's death had been a warning, he knew. But he wasn't really sure from whom, and thus he didn't know why.

Trembling and sweating on the College steps in the chill wind, Mike Chamoun bit his lip and forced his legs to begin climbing. Into the monster's den, fool, he told himself, blinking dead Romanov's ghost away. You're no safer anywhere else than here. Not now. Not ever.

At that moment, if Chance Magruder had appeared, swinging down those steps as if he owned all of Merovingen, above and below, Chamoun would have told Chance all about Romanov and Mondragon and Vega Boregy and Megary: about the whole mess that Chamoun was in. He'd have thrown himself on Magruder's mercy and taken his chances, just to be freed of Romanov's ghost.

But Minister Magruder wasn't there, so Chamoun couldn't. He could only climb the stairs and pull the silken rope that rang the College doorbell. Which was a good thing, in its way. Throwing himself on Magruder's mercy was a fine and honorable thought, but a foolish deed. His Excellency Chance HEARTS AND MINDS35.

Magruder, Minister of Nev Hettek Trade and Tariffs and strategic officer for the Sword of G.o.d in Merovingen, had no mercy, none at all.

Halfway into today's lesson. Cardinal Ito Tremaine Boregy still couldn't keep his mind on the student or the ritual, although this was a private lesson and his pupil was his nephew-in-law, Mike Chamoun.

He said to the student, an Adventist to his irredeemable core, "And now, m'ser, we shall begin to contemplate the rules of conduct as they are known to the lower tiers. The Revenantist theology that makes us relevant to the everyday lives of Merovingians." The cardinal walked to his blackboard, chalk in hand.

The single student's eyes followed, his young sharp-faced head turning slowly above its mud-colored velvet as if Chamoun were no more than a puppet.

Ito noticed that he had chalk dust on his claret velvet sleeve, and brushed at it absently as he said, "A religion must have something to offer its proponents and pract.i.tioners, day by day. It must prove itself in the world. It must, in short, ring true. In the language of the streets, Revenantism reaches its finest moment."

Ito began to write: /. What goes around, comes around.

2. Play today, pay tomorrow.

3. Evil is as evil does.

4. What you give is what you get.

5. No bad deed goes unpunished, if not in this life, then in the next.

6. No one gets out of here alive.

7. Be here now until you're there then.

8. The punishment fits the crime.

9. G.o.d doesn't give free throws.

36Chris Morris 10. The only iking worth saving is your soul.

And when he'd finished writing, he added, "To these axioms that sustain the lower cla.s.ses, we have added the unwritten one, for men like yourself-foreigners, skeptics, unredeemed of every sort: A mind blown is a mind shown.

The student shifted in his seat. Ca.s.sie Boregy's husband was a creature of mercantilist opportunity, as well as an Adventist sloth from Nev Hettek. His sharp features, so clearly un-Merovingian in their virility and their boldness; the gleam in his unrepentant eyes; the set of his shoulders-all showed this was a man in need of humbling. Nowhere in Vega Boregy's newest p.a.w.n (and affront to the laws of G.o.d) did Ito Tremaine Boregy see anything more than a piece of walking karma.

But that was precisely the reason Ito had undertaken the boy's conversion personally: Michael Chamoun could be a manifestation of Instant Karma, the only sort that worried Ito, a cardinal, not a mere priest.

Ito was a pragmatic man, and he knew trouble when he saw it. Instant karma was the sort that tumbled ruling houses into the sea, and why Vega couldn't see beyond his own aristocratic nose into the danger that this youth represented was beyond Ito's understanding. Therefore, in some way or another, the youth's presence here was an act of G.o.d.

Not the Httle, mean G.o.d who tortured the waifs in Merovingen-below, keeping them poor and hungry, but the great G.o.d of the n.o.ble bouses, who determined fate by more temporal means: the quality of one's maneuvering, the depth of one's ruthlessness, the insight of one's planning. This was the real meaning of karma: do unto others before they do unto you. Because they would. And did, daily among Ito's flock, the well-heeled and the conscienceless.

For these, Ito devised expiative punishments: fines payable to the College that, when paid, negated a sin before it became karmic debt. Ito was the best fundraiser in the College, and HEARTS AND MINDS37.

his sense of the monetary value of a piece of potential karmic evil was unsurpa.s.sed.

Therefore, he'd taken on the conversion of Michael Chamoun, and he was going to do it right. When he finished with Ca.s.sie's husband, the boy was going to have the fear of G.o.d-or at least of the Revenantist College-in him. And Vega would have a son-in-law broken to his will.

The young man was looking at Ito blankly, as if his face were carefully arranged to show no emotion. Doubtless, the hidden emotion was hidden for a reason: outrage, amus.e.m.e.nt, or skepticism could not be tolerated here.

Well, the lesson Chamoun would learn today would wipe all his carefully contrived sophistication away.

"Come up here, my son." Ito walked to his desk, over in the corner of the small, red-linened room. The youth stood up and came to the other side of the desk, away from the blackboard whose instructions meant nothing to him yet. Beside the desk, catty-corner, was a long couch, which Chamoun would soon need.

The young man awaiting instruction stood easily, not understanding enough to be worried. This would soon change.

"Now, m'ser," Ito explained in a silken voice, "you are about to receive the sacrament of the inner circle. This is a privilege not available to most." Ito reached behind him and from the sideboard took a small, covered silver tray. He put it on the desk and lifted its lid. On the platter were three wafers, each topped with a fillet of deathangel that had been augmented with certain other psychotropic drugs. Once the boy had eaten them, he was going to be devoid of will, though completely conscious-a good student at last.

And that student was going to get the lesson of his life-of his lives.

"Take the sacrament and devour it," Ito said formally.

"Yes, m'ser Cardinal," Chamoun agreed meekly, and took the first wafer in hesitant fingers.

When the Adventist youth had choked it down, Ito felt a thrill of relief. Even one would do the job. "Now the next,"

38Chris Morris said Ito, watching the widening pupils and the loosening muscies of his prey.

Automaton like, without a blink or a hesitation, Chamoun ate the two remaining wafers.

"Go sit on the couch with your hands on your knees," Ito commanded. The drugged youth obeyed without question.

Knowing the boy would remember only what he was told from this moment onward, Ito sat on his desk and crossed his legs in less than cardinal dignity as he said, "Now, Michael Chamoun, look at your feet. Stare at them even though you feel your body rising. And do not be afraid, for you are floating to the ceiling. You are floating through it. Your mind and your limbs are under my control ..."

Slowly, repet.i.tively, Ito shook his subject loose from the temporal lock of the here-and-now. The young man's body sat limply on the couch, fingers spread on knees. His unblinking eyes stared at his shoes so that, eventually, tears streamed down his face.

Chamoud could neither speak nor move without a command from Ito, such was the power of the hypno-sacrament.

". . . you are floating high in the air, floating through time and s.p.a.ce. And now, you are beginning to drift downward. As you descend, you must keep looking at your feet because it is your feet which will take you back, back, back into a life of yours which you will now remember. This previous life of yours will be the one most pertinent to your life among us in Merovingen; it will be the life whose karma you are discharging here. It will be the life that teaches us both what we need to know about you, Michael Chamoun. Nod if you understand me."

The boy on the couch nodded through his tears.

"Close your eyes, now, Michael Chamoun. When you open them, you will see your feet in the shoes of a previous life. Around you will be the greatest moment of that life, and you will tell me everything you see and everything you know which is relevant to your karma and your purpose here."

Chamoun seemed to quiver; then his eyes closed.

Ito started counting the seconds absently, seconds he knew were necessary to wait before he asked the youth questions.

HEARTS AND MINDS99.

In those seconds, his own mind drifted to a cardinal's temporal concerns. The Janes had dumped something in the water, and that something had changed even the smells of the ca.n.a.ls. Fever season was upon them differently, this year, and a Jane priestess had shouted from a bridge that there would be no plague. It felt, it seemed, like chemical warfare of some sort, and everyone in the College was worried.

They were even more worried because, at just the wrong moment, old losef Kalugin had decided to show his teeth-a reaction conceived during the aftermath of the Ball's disruption by Sword of G.o.d terrorists, no doubt. losef had clamped down with every governmental agency he controlled, policing everything-including the power-hungry militias of Anastasi and Tatiana; overseeing all of Merovingen personally as he hadn't done for years. Making changes and issuing decrees. Overstating the importance of the opening of Nev Hettek's trade mission in Merovingen, for instance (and the importance of Nev Hettek's amba.s.sador), without even consulting the College for guidance. losef had begun decreeing right and left.

He had decreed, among other things, that a census be taken. A census of every living soul in Merovingen. A census of all citizens. A census of all foreigners-in-residence and foreigners visiting. He had decreed that all Nev Hettekers must have alien-identification cards and that every one of those must get their cards at Nev Hettek's new emba.s.sy. He had done this (Vega Boregy and his patron, Anastasi Kalugin were sure) at the behest of Tatiana Kalugin, to further advance her new lover, Chance Magruder.

But the cardinals did not think that was the reason. losef had done what he had done to throw a wrench in all his children's plans. And to demonstrate once again that absolute power rules absolutely.

The results of this-a census, a numbering of the Janes and Adventists and Revenantists in town-were unforeseeable. There would be, for the first time, a list of who was who, and where. Nev Hettek's new emba.s.sy would have a head count of all the Nev Hettekers in Merovingen; Chance Magruder, if 40.Chris MOTTO HEARTS AND MINDS.

41.Vega was right, would have an unconscionable advantage over other Nev Hettekers. if he wished to do them harm.

And the Sword of G.o.d faction that Anastasi and Vega had fallen in with would be at the mercy of the Nev Hettek Amba.s.sador, unless they refused to be counted. Either way, there was potential here for renegades and infighters, for evil of the first order. And the College didn't like it.

This boy, this spy, this asp whom Ca.s.sie Boregy had married, might be of some help, if the College could account him loyal. Thus, the sacrament that no other Boregy had ever received.

A secret sacrament, unknown outside the College-except in the interrogation cells, where its power was used not to explore previous lives and previous transgressions against the law of G.o.d, but current lives and current transgressions against the ruling Kalugin hierarchy.

"Michael," Ito said gently, "you will listen only to me; you will hear only my voice." The cardinal, pulling his long nose, caught a glimpse of a man much older than he felt in the mirror behind the desk. He looked away from himself; a man is no older than he feels; a cardinal is no weaker than the call of duty upon him; G.o.d would work through Ito Tremaine Boregy, if G.o.d there were. If not, the College was^strong enough, and worthy enough, to take the place of a Deity.

Long ago Ito had decided that, if there had been sharrh, there must have been G.o.d. He wasn't sure either existed any more, but he had overseen enough regressions of the sort Michael Chamoun was now undergoing to know that there was . . . something.

Something behind the pageantry and ritual. Something behind the crowd-control axioms and the customary reverence that allowed some men to rule over others. Something inherent in a social order that validated its tendency to make some men slaves, some masters; some rich, some poor. ~As something more than mindless chance decreed that one child was lame and blind from birth, and another hale and destined for high estate.

Ito had sired an infirm child, and drowned it on the spot.

His status among the College cardinals would have been undermined if he had not: such horrid karma could only be Retribution for crimes unexpiated, of a degree that a cardinal should not be subject to. Therefore, it had not happened. The wife and the child both died to make that fiction true.

And now, before him, was the piece of trash to whom Vega had decided to marry Ca.s.sie. Sweet Ca.s.sie, who should have been Ito's wife, by rights. What was forty years, between great houses? The blood-tie was thin enough; the benefit should have been clear enough. And the cardinal needed a young wife of high estate right now, to replace the one he'd had to murder, because of her imperfect child.

But before negotiations could be consummated, in came Chamoun, with Magruder backing him, and the deed was done in such a hurry that there was no time to object. No way.

Ito began gently guiding the helpless psyche of Michael Chamoun down from its perch above its body. Down and down and down, into the body and into a previous time.

Chamoun went rigid as Ito told him to raise his eyes from his feet and look around. Then the boy's face contorted, his hands came up to shield his eyes, and he screamed: "Sharrh! Captain, look out! Sharrh ship, six o'clock!"

And he fainted. Keeled over before Ito could ask the first of many prying questions, designed to compromise and ensnare the young husband of the woman who should have been die cardinal's wife.

Michael Chamoun was on the bridge of a ship, only his name wasn't Chamoun and the ship was like nothing he'd ever seen afloat on Merovin. It wasn't a yacht; it wasn't a riverboat; it wasn't a seagoing vessel.

It was a s.p.a.cegoing vessel, the memories that weren't Chamoun's were clear on that. On other things, too, though the body was damaged beyond repair, dying on that bridge amid the smoke and the sirens and the emergency lights blinking while panels of electronics shot sparks arid other men who could still move screamed for breathing apparatus and emergency procedures.

42.Chris Morris The lower half of his body's face was gone; the pain was a white blanket. The edges of his vision were dark and that dark was encroaching toward the center. As if looking through a telescope, he could still see, though. He could see clearly through a pinhole in the middle of his failing sight. He could see the stars!

He saw them as Michael Chamoun had never seen them, clear and bright and oh so close. There were so many, and among them, the enemy sharrh. He could see those too, because he was staring close-up at a targeting array. He was lying on his stomach across a smoking control console as his blood shorted circuits beneath him.

He had a vocabulary, in this body, that knew the names and purposes of all these things. It knew the crosshairs and the changing numbers below and beside certain moving stars, stars that maneuvered as no star should be able to. He knew his name was Michael, here, too-but everyone called him Mickey. He knew he was an electronics specialist in the Merovin Defense Force, and he knew that they were up against an enemy they weren't prepared to handle.

He knew the patrol ship around him was dying, and that everybody on it-the men he'd shipped with, the friends who made up his extended family-was doomed. The sharrh weren't just a legend, then, one of his minds told the other.

The sharrh weren't just an anomalous sea story, the mind of Mickey corrected the mind of Michael. The sharrh were very real and very near and very sure to win.