Fever Season Page 3

  His booted feet slapped hollowly on the cold stone of the Signeury's outer walk. The Grand Canal 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 all if complete obedience was not given... It might have worked, but 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 Cassie 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 God, 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 God, 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 and 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 God.

  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 assumed 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 Cassie'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 password 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 part 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 God 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 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, Cassie's uncle the cardinal, should find out about Romanov, or Magruder, or even that Mike Chamoun was Sword of God, 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 Magruder, Minister of Nev Hettek Trade and Tariffs and strategic officer for the Sword of God 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 ev
eryday 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 practitioners, 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:

  1. 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. God doesn't give free throws.

  10. The only thing worth saving is your soul.

  And when he'd finished writing, he added, "To these axioms that sustain the lower classes, 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. Cassie 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 pawn (and affront to the laws of God) 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 God.

  Not the little, mean god who tortured the waifs in Merovingen-below, keeping them poor and hungry, but the great God of the noble houses, 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 his sense of the monetary value of a piece of potential karmic evil was unsurpassed.

  Therefore, he'd taken on the conversion of Michael Chamoun, and he was going to do it right. When he finished with Cassie's husband, the boy was going to have the fear of God—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, amusement, 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," said Ito, watching the widening pupils and the loosening muscles of his prey.

  Automatonlike, 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, repetitively, 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.

  Chamoun 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 space. 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.

  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 canals. 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 Iosef Kalugin had decided to show his teeth—a reaction conceived during the aftermath of the Ball's disruption by Sword of God terrorists, no doubt. Iosef 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 ambassador), without even consulting the College for guidance. Iosef 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-i
n-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 embassy. 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. Iosef 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 embassy would have a head count of all the Nev Hettekers in Merovingen; Chance Magruder, if Vega was right, would have an unconscionable advantage over other Nev Hettekers, if he wished to do them harm.

  And the Sword of God faction that Anastasi and Vega had fallen in with would be at the mercy of the Nev Hettek Ambassador, 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 Cassie 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 God, 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; God would work through Ito Tremaine Boregy, if God there were. If not, the College was strong enough, and worthy enough, to take the place of a Deity.