Chapter Ten

In the main laboratory room, they crowded around the large talk-box, a quadruple—sound and picture, send and receive. It showed an overhead view of an elevator whose only occupant was Rudi Bergmonk. He had his arms crossed and was glaring at the closed door before him.

Harris consulted a viewscreen set into the wall beside the larger talk-box. This screen showed something like static, with several consistent patches of brightness moving slightly on it—three large, one smaller and dimmer. He gestured, three fingers and then one, to Doc.

Doc stood next to a wall panel of switches on the other side of the talk-box. He thumbed a switch. "Goodsir Bergmonk, grace on you. Might I ask you to pull open the handle behind you?"

On the main talk-box, Rudi started and looked up—toward the camera he could not see but the speaker he could hear. He glanced behind him and tugged at a brass handle on the wall, opening an inch-thick metal door inset in the wall. From the camera view, Zeb couldn't see what lay beyond the door.

Doc said, "Please place your fire in the box."

Rudi waited, shrugged, and pulled a pistol from beneath each arm, placing the weapons as Doc requested.

Doc thumbed the microphone again. "All of them, Goodsir Bergmonk."

Rudi scowled, then pulled a smaller pistol from his boot and added it to the collection.

"And your clasp-knife."

Rudi shut the wall-box with the guns still within, then glared up in the direction of the camera. "If you want me to be tame and safe as a housecat, you'll just have to shoot me," he said. "I always have me fists with me. I might as well keep the knife. I might have to clean me nails."

Doc considered, then pressed two more switches on the panel. The elevator interior wobbled a bit as it began to move.

They stood in a semicircle before the elevator as Rudi emerged. He seemed little the worse for wear, smiling, charming, as he looked between them. "Goodsirs MaqqRee, Greene; Goodladies Lamignac and Greene. Grace on you. I don't know the dusky. No, I do! From the wedding. You knocked me brains loose, a futtering good kick."

"Language, please," Doc said.

"Zeb Watson," Zeb said.

"Goodsir Watson. Well-met. I don't suppose any of you would have a spot of liquor on you. I've had a bit of a day."

They conducted him into the bar, surrounding him like a detachment of guards. "Why are you here?" Doc said. "In coming here, you have turned yourself in."

"Well, there's turning yourself in, and there's turning yourself in." Rudi took one of the smaller tables. "A brandy would be nice. And I'm here for something like turning myself in, but first I wanted to give thanks to Goodlady Greene. But for her I'd be dead." He tipped an imaginary cap at her as she poured his drink. "I appreciate it."

"You're welcome. So long as you don't give me any cause to regret it. Or to shoot you myself."

"I doubt I will." He accepted the glass from her, drank half its contents. "Not bad." He turned his attention to Doc. "Yes, I'm turning myself in. You can have me one of two ways. You can have my silence and try me in court . . . for a few crimes I might have something to do with and a lot I don't. Or you can have my knowledge and grant me immunity from prosecution."

Doc sat opposite him. "You're very confident I'll accept. Otherwise you'd be negotiating from a talk-box."

"True."

"But I think someone needs to pay for what happened to the Kingston Guardian, the Danaan Heights Building, for everything else you've been doing. You might as well be the first to pay."

Rudi knocked back the rest of his drink and stared levelly at Doc. "Well, then, I tell you this. Make of it what you may.

"On my honor—and I have honor, else I'd not be here—I had nothing to do with the Kingston Guardian. Didn't know it was to happen. Since this all began, I've killed no one—excepting Albin, who was trying to kill me." A bleak look crossed his face. "I've killed me own brother. He taught me to play ball and to shoot, and now I've put a bullet in his brain. But there was no bringing him back from where he'd gone. The fireball today was all Albin and his master."

Gaby refilled his glass. He took a solemn sip before continuing. "I want immunity from any charges related to this whole plan. Conspiracy, blackmail, smash-and-enter, smash-and-grab, the works. Oh, yes, and for Albin's death. Self-defense, that was. For it, I'll tell you everything I know. Without it, you can find out for yourself. Certainly, you don't have any reason for haste; I'm sure Albin's master will happily wait for you to track him down."

"There's no need for sarcasm." Doc considered. "I accept."

"In the name of the Novimagos Guard, as well as your Foundation?"

"Yes."

"Good." Rudi slouched back and put his hands behind his head, but the pain in his eyes belied his casual pose. "Just set the bottle down, would you, dear? I'd appreciate it. This will take some time.

"The story goes back, oh, three years or so. That was the first time I went to the grim world."

"How did you get there?" Doc asked.

"My brothers and I were sent by a man you used to know. Duncan Blackletter."

Harris swore, feelingly. Duncan Blackletter, like Doc one of the rare full-blooded Daoine Sidhe, had been a criminal mastermind on the fair world decades ago. Later, he'd found a way to transport himself to the grim world, using his devisement arts to steal a human baby there and replace himself with it . . . and convince the baby's hapless parents that he was their child. After years of work, he'd built up a fortune in the grim world and commenced a plan to cut the existing links between the two worlds, a measure that would have allowed him to bring modern tools of warfare from the grim world to the fair.

Many people on the fair world knew of Duncan Blackletter and his crimes. A few knew of his plan to conquer the fair world with grimworld weaponry. A very few, most of them now in this room, also knew that he was Doc's son—the powerful devisements he'd wielded throughout his life not allowing him to retain youth as Doc had, so that he appeared to be many years Doc's senior.

"Go on," Doc said. His expression had not changed, but Harris saw that his shoulders were tight. Nor had Doc seen fit to caution Harris about bad language.

"Duncan was working with some lads in Europe. Our Europe, not the grim Europe. Helping them get information. We Bergmonks—you'd have been proud of us! No crimes, no taking of scores. We just took gold from Duncan and went to grimworld libraries, book vendors, some special shops, that sort of thing." He frowned for a moment. "No, there was a bit of sticky-fingering. We stole some library volumes. I suppose that's a crime. Trip after trip, we did the same thing."

"What were you researching?"

"Devisement. They call it magic and witchcraft and new age and a lot of names."

Doc shook his head. "The grimworlders don't have a tradition of successful devisement."

Rudi grinned. "Oh, there you're wrong. They have dozens, hundreds of traditions. Most of them are dunderheaded and wrong, too many details lost over the centuries. Some of them are sheerest fiction. But there's truth in others. We recorded them all and brought them back for Duncan's correspondents."

"Who are . . . ?"

"I don't know. We handed the information off to his golden boy, the Changeling; he passed them on. Maybe Albin knew."

Harris nodded. The so-called Changeling, Darig MacDuncan, was the human child with whom Duncan had traded places. Raised by Duncan's subordinates on the fair world, he had grown up a competent criminal lieutenant . . . and had died minutes before Duncan had, killed by Harris.

Rudi continued, "So. We did all that, and then they didn't need us any more. We went back to, oh, other lines of work. Work I won't be discussing. Not relevant. When Duncan died, we figured we couldn't ever go back to the grim world; the Changeling had always said their European friends did not know how to do that.

"Then, just a few moons back, Albin gets word from his old employers and goes to talk to them. He comes back breathless, with eyes gleaming. He says they've learned a lot from the texts we brought them. Tried every technique in all those books, most of them dead wrong or even harmful, a few of them useful.

"He says they can make puppets that walk or grab. You saw one, Goodsir Watson. Make dolls in the likeness of people so whatever harm befalls the doll befalls the people as well."

"Voodoo," Harris said.

Gaby shook her head. "That's not real voodoo, that's movie voodoo. When I was still at the TV station I interviewed a real voodoo priestess. She—"

"Gaby, relevance?"

"Sorry, Doc."

Rudi continued, "And they figured out how to get back to the grim world. They sent us back through once, just to be sure they were right . . . risking our lives instead of their own. But we got the impression they didn't need any more missions there for the time being.

"Until a few days ago, when we were supposed to go through, see if we could find you there," he nodded to Doc, "because there was no sign of you here."

Harris said, "How did you track us down?"

"We had your names and those of some of your friends, information Blackletter had dug up in his final days there. We used that and spread a lot of money about. Albin's master gave him lots of money. `I'm Daffyd Greene from the old country,' I'd say, `and I want to throw a big party for Harris and my other American relatives. But I don't have his address.' You were living out of a little mailbox, it seemed. And one of them said, `Party? Before or after the wedding?' " Rudi grinned. "After that, finding out where and when was inevitable."

"Who told you about the wedding?"

"A cousin of yours. Sheila, was it? Redhead? Loves parties, or so she said, but she likes her men taller than me."

Harris's voice turned cold. "Did you hurt her?"

"No. I'd never hurt a woman who wasn't pointing fire at me. I paid her hush money."

Doc regarded him levelly. "And you were to kill me?"

"No. Albin was adamant. We were supposed to capture you. Anyone who hurt you would be hurt, anyone who killed you would be worse than killed. He really wanted you alive. Wanted something from you." Rudi shrugged. "What, I don't know. I do know we weren't the only crew looking for you. Albin let on that there were other groups, some here in Neckerdam, trying to track you. Since you weren't at their wedding, we were to grab the Greenes and bring them back. I suppose they were to be made to talk."

"You're sure you don't know who Albin's contact was?"

"I'm sure."

"So far, your information isn't that useful."

Rudi smiled. "I think it is. Ask more, maybe I'll recall more. Here's something else. Since my brothers don't know who Albin's contact is, they can't call him to let him know how badly things went today. He may, in fact, think they've run off with all that silver. Until he tracks them down, you may have a little time to breathe."

"Good point. I retract the `isn't that useful' allegation." Doc turned to Harris. "How does this so-called `movie voodoo' work?"

Harris considered. "Well, you make a doll in the likeness of the person you're going to screw up. Then you get some pins . . . no, that's not right. You get stuff belonging to the person and put it on the doll. Then there's chanting and incense and snakes and Lord knows what."

Doc snorted, amused in spite of himself. " `Chanting and incense . . .' Harris, the part you're glossing over here is the most important one. The very art of the deviser."

"Sorry. Anyway, when you stick pins into the doll, the real person hurts. But that's just movie magic."

"Perhaps . . . but it follows certain fundamental requirements of the laws of similarity and contagion."

Zeb asked, "What are those?"

"Similarity. An action enacted on an object or location may be replicated in an object or location that is very similar. Contagion. An object associated with a person remains so even when separated from that person, even across a great distance or for a great amount of time—the more personal the object, the better."

Zeb said, "Well, voodoo dolls and pins sounds a lot like what happened to Ixyail."

Doc straightened, looking surprised. He nodded. "Yes, it does. But Ish is very knowledgeable about devisement. She's as meticulous as any deviser about not leaving personal items, hair, nail clippings, anything behind where a deviser could get at them and identify them with her."

Gaby said, "I'll bet a bucket of libs they used her hair to do it, and I know where they got her hair."

"Where?"

"From you."

Doc opened his mouth to protest, then closed it and gestured for her to continue.

"You were with her the night before you were kidnapped?"

"Yes."

"Slept with her?"

"Yes."

Zeb gave Gaby an I-can't-believe-you're-asking-that look. She ignored him. "When you got up in the morning, did you shower or bathe as though you'd been contaminated? Did you avoid her like the plague, or embrace her?"

"I washed. But of course I didn't avoid her."

"Then odds are good, very good, that you had some of her hair on you. And then you were captured. And no one would mistake her hair for yours."

"A good point. But would they know that stray strands of black hair were hers? They could have been yours, or Noriko's."

"Not mine; her hair is longer. And, yes, they'd have to know you and Ish were lovers, I guess."

"Knowledge that is limited to Foundation associates and a few other confidants."

Gaby nodded. "But you already know that someone told them about your annual devotion to honor your father—something I didn't even know about! Doc, someone has sold you out."

Doc's jaw tightened. "Yes. You're correct."

Harris stood abruptly and began pacing again. He looked off into the middle distance, beyond the walls of the Monarch Building.

"Harris?"

"Give me a second. A few beats."

He paced in silence for several moments, then turned back to Doc, his eyes bright. "I know how they did the fireballs."

"Tell me."

"No. I'm going to make some talk-box calls to confirm a couple of facts first. You take that time and visit Ixyail."

Doc managed a smile. "Is that an order? I thought I was the boss here."

"No, you just pay the salaries. Git."

Doc returned three chimes, less than half an hour, later. Hours of weariness and worry seemed to have fallen away from him.

The associates were still in the bar, though most had taken time to change. Gaby was no longer barefoot, and though Zeb's skin was still covered in small bandages, his clothes were clean . . . and he no longer stank of burned flesh.

Harris was on the talk-box. "But what I really need is to know where it was delivered . . . Yes, I've seen your work. And I'd really like to commission you for an assignment . . . Yes." He began scribbling on a notepad.

Doc stood over Zeb. "Might I have a few ticks of your time?"

"Sure."

Zeb accompanied Doc to the far side of the room, away from Harris. They sat on high stools at the bar.

Doc said, "Ixyail told me what you did for her. I do not know how to express my gratitude."

"Just give me a few minutes in a small room with Bergmonk's boss."

"You might just get it."

"How's Ish?"

"Much better. Alastair says she can be moved, so she'll be here in her own quarters within the bell. He'll see what he can do to defend her from this `movie voodoo doll' while we're gone."

"Listen, since what we've got here is a sort of war going on, there's something else I'd like to know."

"Ask."

"A little while ago, you said you did this sort of thing to help make up for the people you'd failed. But you didn't say why you did it in the first place. Whenever I hear people outside the Foundation mention you, they talk about how spooky the Daoine Sidhe are . . . and then a lot of them say, `Except for Doc Sidhe.' I don't get it."

Doc considered the question in silence; he looked into the long mirror behind the bar as though his reflection might offer to answer. "Daoine Sidhe aren't human, Zeb. We're related; humans and Daoine Sidhe and most other tribes can have children together. But we're different. And I can remember when I was young, well before mechanical carriages were invented, out riding in the countryside on my horse, reveling in those differences, so apart was I from the people I'd see."

"What differences?"

"It's not easy to express." Doc shook his head, trying to find the correct words. "On those rides, I'd often forget my name. I'd forget language. I didn't need them. If I crossed the path of one of my kind, we could exchange a look, and with it, an entire conversation. If I crossed the path of a member of one of the lesser tribes—and among the Daoine Sidhe, all other tribes were considered lesser—their fear of us would compel silence and obedience. I could be out for days, never once thinking in words. Never once knowing empathy. Just appreciation for beauty or pleasure.

"But one day I found workmen repairing a little bridge on my mother's estate. I had to force myself to remember speech so I could tell them they were doing something wrong. I intuitively knew how to improve on their design, and I made them do it my way. Then I grew curious about the art of engineering and studied it. I built things all over that estate—more bridges, stables, a temple—and later I found that whenever I came across something I'd built, language and names and all those human things returned to me, as though memories were imbued in the things I'd made.

"I studied with engineers and architects who were not sidhe. And as I grew to know them, I found, for the first time, that they, that the continued existence of people who were not my kin, had meaning for me. This distanced me from my kin, most of whom did not understand." Doc shrugged. "But I found that I was at my best when I was infected with these human traits. And that meant it was impossible just to ignore matters when people chose to deprive others of their loved ones, of their futures. So if there's an answer to your question, that is it."

"Thanks. I'm sorry to have pried. But I had to know . . ."

"What sort of man you were working with?"

"Basically, yeah."

"I'm not offended. Even if I were, you saved me from a monstrous injury today. Much of what I am is because of the associates, but most of all because of Ish. What would I be tomorrow if I lost her?" Doc was now staring well past the mirror, into a future Zeb couldn't begin to speculate about.

"Got it!" That was Harris, hanging up, tearing the top sheet from his notepad. He waved the sheet. "Here's the name of Bergmonk's immediate boss, the deviser. And here's where the deviser's lab is."

The others joined him. Doc took the sheet, read it, and whistled.

"And one more piece of bad news, Doc," Harris said. "We got a call from Lieutenant Athelstane. They've had another report of lobby vandalism. Dedicatory plaque vandalism. It happened earlier today, but the report was delayed because of all the commotion over the fireball."

"Where?"

"Across the street, the Montgris Building."

"That makes sense. It would be impossible to score the Monarch Building's plaque, with the guards we keep in the lobby. Destroy the building next door, though . . ."

"And it may bring down the Monarch Building as it falls."

Doc nodded. "Arm up. Let's go."

In the elevator down, Rudi said, "Do I get me guns back?"

Doc considered. "No."

"Well, of course you don't trust me. But believe me, I have no love of Albin's boss. He offered rewards that turned Albin from us. If not for him, I would not have had to shoot me own brother." Rudi gestured as though his words were the height of reasonableness.

"No."

"Well, damn it all, pay me something. I've never turned on an employer. You'll be safe from me then."

"You've just turned on your employer. You confessed all against him."

"That was Albin's employer. I never received a penny from him. Albin was my employer, and I stayed with him until he fired me. Fired at me."

Doc considered that. "On your honor?"

"On my honor."

From his vest, Doc pulled a single lib piece and handed it over. It was smeared with white paint.

Rudi burst into laughter. "Oh, the shame! Lawful employ just does not pay. But I'll take it, and serve your ends today. On me honor." Chuckling, he pocketed the coin.

"Keep that as a lucky piece," Doc said. "Your first honest pay."

"If it turns out to be lucky, keep it I will."

Minutes later they piled out of Noriko's touring car and Doc's roadster a block from their objective—an office building in the neighborhood of Drakshire; Zeb calculated that if this were Manhattan they'd be a few blocks east of Central Park's southern end. The day was ending and the sun had set beyond the city's skyscrapers, casting deep shadows along the streets.

"Our objective," Harris said, "is the west-side basement of Number One Seventeen. There will probably be access from the lobby by stairs and maybe lift, and stairs down from the sidewalk to an exterior door. There's no way to tell which accesses they may have blocked off or booby-trapped, so be very careful."

Doc said, "Rudi and I, the lift. Gaby, Harris, interior stairs. Noriko, Zeb, exterior stairs."

They moved out.

Number 117 was four stories tall and half a century old, with sagging courses of red brick reflecting its age and tired condition. A sign in front advertised the business occupying much of the ground floor, a firm manufacturing sporting equipment for the game of crackbat.

Most of the associates went around the block and approached the building from the north so as not to pass the southern basement windows looking out on the sidewalk. Noriko and Zeb waited until the other four were inside the building before creeping up to the stairs descending to the southern basement. Here, the sign above the door read STORAGE, BY APPOINTMENT ONLY, and the barred windows were an opaque green, painted from within.

Passersby who noticed, in spite of the dim light, the odd movement of the two duskies, then the firearms in their hands and the sword sheath across the woman's back, went from a walk to a trot in order to get clear of the area. Zeb knew that guard sirens would eventually approach—brought by reports of the two armed duskies.

"I'm not an idiot," said Rudi as they entered the lift.

"I never claimed you were," Doc said.

"I mean, I know why I've been tapped to go down the most visible way."

"Why is that?" The lift doors closed and the car descended.

"Because I might get admission into their quarters just by knocking."

"Correct. You might also get shot."

"I've been shot before."

The doors opened; Doc pressed himself against the side of the car so as not to be immediately obvious to anyone outside.

Rudi leaned out. "Doors to the south basement left and north right. Stairway door just to the right."

"Eyeholes?"

"Left door."

"Go stand in front and block it."

Rudi did as he was told. As soon as his face was directly in front of the door's peephole, Doc slid out and moved to situate himself beside the south-side door. A slight movement drew his eye; the stairway door had opened a couple of fingerspans and he saw Harris was ready beyond it.

Doc gestured as if knocking. Rudi knocked, an aggressive pounding.

A voice from beyond, male: "We're closed at this bell."

Rudi raised his voice to a bellow. "Open up, you daft eamon! It's Rudi Bergmonk. I need to talk to your boss."

A long delay. Then, from within: "Where's Albin?"

"Dead! I need instructions!"

Another protracted delay. Then: "Step back from the door and put up your hands."

Rudi cheerfully complied. He and Doc heard bolts being snapped back on the other side of the door, saw the knob turn and the door begin to open—

Doc hit the door with all his considerable speed and mass, felt it slam into a moving body, and followed through into a dimly-lit storeroom. He glimpsed shelves and boxes, naked bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The door guard, a tall dark with a revolver, was flat on his back. The man shook his head and tried to bring his weapon to bear on Doc. Doc leaned over and slapped it from his hand, the force of his blow sending the weapon into the wall.

Ahead, a door on the left wall slammed shut . . . and suddenly the air was filled with the roar of a Klapper autogun pumping out deadly streams of rounds.