Pawn’s Gambit Read online

  “Don’t worry,” Eleni said as I muttered something evil under my breath. “No Thwokerjag performer ever goes out on time.”

  “I hope they goof up his body paint and have to do the whole thing over,” I growled. “No telling how long this is going to take.”

  “Jaivy,” Eleni said after a moment, “if the Demonflute really is some sort of Peacekeeper, why did Customs let Spars bring it here?”

  I shrugged. “Customs is so overworked these days that about all they can look for are drug smugglers and tariff jumpers. Spars probably just walked in, waved the thing under their noses, and walked back out again. He’d never get away with that on Earth or Vega, but out here in the boons everything’s a lot slacker.”

  “Yeah.” Abruptly, she stood up. “I’m going to go talk to the librarian, see if he can speed things up any.”

  I gazed at the viewscreen for a long minute after she left as new and unpleasant possibilities began to multiply in the back of my mind. What if it hadn’t been simple incompetence that had turned the Demonflute loose on Haruspex? Could Customs have learned of its function while examining it and deliberately let it through? It seemed crazy … but there were a lot of people who missed the days when Haruspian Thwokerjag dominated music in the Great Republic … people who might be willing to do anything to see that power regained. If Eleni was right—if it turned out that only the uppersonic carrier remained of the Demonflute’s original programming—then the hardcore fans at Moiy’s tonight would leave there with Thwokerjag just a bit more firmly a part of their psyches. A few more profit-making concerts—some publicity—revived curiosity—and Thwokerjag would indeed be on its way back to the top.

  And if some of the recorded Algolite messages did remain, the whole audience could wind up the evening by painting each other’s feet orange.

  Which, for all I knew, might add that much more to Thwokerjag’s appeal.

  Abruptly, the standby symbol vanished from the screen. I glanced around quickly without spotting Eleni, then hunched forward to read. The Algolite language, I was informed, wasn’t completely deciphered yet; but the probability was greater than ninety-five percent that the word on the Demonflute was ezt’ghic, a verb-adjective form meaning—

  Maker/causer of death.

  I stared at those four words, listening to my heart thump and my theories crumble into kitty-litter. This was no simple opinion swayer—Spars had dug up a bona fide lethal weapon.

  And brought it to the stronghold of Thwokerjag.

  To play in front of Thwokerjag’s most ardent followers.

  My suspicions about official collusion did a fast and frightening backflip. Far from secretly supporting a Thwokerjag revival, could someone in power have decided to end it once and for all? And if so, what would happen to me if I got involved any deeper than I already was?

  For that matter, where did my own sympathies lie? Didn’t I, too, want to see Thwokerjag wiped out?

  And then Eleni appeared around the corner a few booths away. “Anything yet?” she stage-whispered, hurrying toward me.

  My finger was bare centimeters away from the erase button. The screen could be blank before Eleni was close enough to see. …

  “It’s even worse than we thought,” I told her. “Take a look.”

  She did, and her jaw dropped. “Maker of death? Jaivy—does that mean what I think it does?”

  “Yeah,” I said, snapping off the terminal. “And we’ve got to stop Spars before he wipes out Moiy’s whole place. Do you have the number for anyone in his group?”

  She was already punching phone buttons. “I’ll try Ryla. … Come, on; come on … They must already be on stage, Jaive. We’ll have to call the cops.”

  Practicalities—and lingering questions about official involvement—forced my decision. “No. We can be at Moiy’s faster than we could explain this mess over the phone. Come on.”

  We ran the entire five blocks and arrived at Moiy’s gasping for breath. One of the least seamy of the cheap-food-ditto-entertainment type of places favored by Thwokerjag adherents, Moiy’s covered nearly half a block and I had to pause just inside the foyer to orient myself. Spars would be performing in the main dining room, just ahead of us. One of the side doors might get me to the stage without having to run the entire maze of tables. Eleni beside me, I headed toward a likely-looking corridor.

  “Tickets?” Like magic the ticket taker appeared in our path. From his size, I guessed he also doubled as a bouncer.

  There was no time to explain, even if I’d had the breath to do so. “Gotta stop Spars,” I gasped; and as he frowned, I ducked under his arm and tore down the hall. Reaching my target door several steps ahead of him, I yanked it open and dived into the cacophony of Thwokerjag at its worst.

  And found I’d miscalculated. The door I’d come through was still ten meters from the stage, with several tables between Spars and me. But even as I started to thread my way through the screaming fans, I saw I was too late. The back-up men on chirper, Omni-Chord, and xyloplane had brought the music to a fever pitch and Spars was raising the Demonflute to his lips.

  There was no way I could get back out of the room in time. I froze in place, my eyes riveted to that swivel flare—adjusted, I saw, to sweep the audience at eye-level—and with a sick feeling in my stomach watched Spars start to play.

  It was the most hideous sound I’d ever heard. Eleni had called the Demonflute a shrill chirper, but she’d been entirely too charitable—the damn thing sounded more like a banshee in heat running cats through a paper shredder. Spars played over a whole unearthly scale, hitting notes that must’ve grounded every bat for fifty kilometers. The noise went on and on … and suddenly I noticed I was still alive.

  I looked around the room, dumfounded. Everywhere the Thwokerjag fans were swaying and clapping with the beat, just as they always did. Unless the Demonflute killed by inducing St. Vitus’s dance it didn’t seem to have any effect on them at all.

  I was still standing there like an idiot when the bouncer finally caught up and carried me unceremoniously from the room.

  The bouncer was pretty casual about the whole thing, and once he learned that Eleni was an acquaintance of Spars’s he even let us wait in the foyer for the end of the concert.

  “I just don’t understand,” Eleni complained as we collapsed into chairs. “Did the computer goof?”

  “I doubt it.” I felt like a ribbon-winning moron. “The engraving was probably a pet name the original owner had for it—you know, like the way you call your cycle the Boneshaker.”

  “Or a model name, like the Nissan-Lockheed Sunjammer.” She giggled with released tension. “Imagine some alien trying to make sense out of that.”

  “Uh-huh.” But the issue wasn’t settled yet, I knew; not by a long shot. If the Demonflute wasn’t a killing weapon, then maybe we were back to the Peacekeeper idea—and if that blipped out, it would just mean looking somewhere else for the answer. Because the Demonflute wasn’t just a musical instrument, and I knew I wouldn’t rest until I found out what else it really was.

  Eleni broke into my musings. “You could’ve gotten killed in there,” she said quietly, taking my hand. “You risked your life to try and save people whose music you don’t even like.”

  I shrugged, feeling a little uncomfortable in the role of hero. “People are people, no matter what their tastes are.”

  “Hard to argue with that,” she conceded.

  A motion off to the side caught my eye, and I looked up to see old man Moiy himself wander into the foyer. He was bent over strangely, his eyes on the floor, and for a moment I wondered if he was sick. But just then he noticed us and bounded over, beaming happily.

  “Good evening,” he said. “I trust you’re enjoying the show?”

  From his words and attitude it was obvious he’d mistaken us for paying customers who were taking a breather. Eleni
apparently shared my thought that there was no point in disillusioning him. “Uh, the Demonflute’s an unusual instrument, isn’t it?” she said.

  Moiy nodded vigorously. “A remarkable sound; just remarkable. That boy is welcome back any time he wishes. Remarkable!”

  “You mean you like that racket?” I blurted without thinking.

  “Just between us, the music makes my teeth hurt,” he confided, winking. “But who cares? The kid and his whasis have done something me and City Health have been trying to do for years.”

  “Oh? What?”

  “Why, look around,” Moiy said, waving toward the corners of the foyer.

  Where he pointed, I noticed for the first time, were some black spots scattered on the floor. With a strange feeling in my stomach, I looked back at Moiy.

  Still beaming, he nodded. “Greatest little exterminator I’ve ever seen. Killed every single cockroach in the place.”

  The President’s Doll

  It started—or at least my involvement in the case started—as a brief but nasty behind-the-scenes battle between the Washington Police and the Secret Service over jurisdiction. The brief part I was witness to: I was at my desk, attention split between lunch and a jewelry recovery report, when Agent William Maxwell went into Captain Forsythe’s office; and I was still on the same report when they came out. The nasty part I didn’t actually see, but the all-too-familiar glint in Forsythe’s eyes was only just beginning to fade as he and Maxwell left the office and started across the crowded squad room. I noted the glint, and Maxwell’s set jaw, and said a brief prayer for whoever the poor sucker was who would have to follow Forsythe’s act.

  So of course they came straight over to me.

  “Detective Harland; Secret Service Agent Maxwell,” Forsythe introduced us with his customary eloquence. “You’re assigned as of right now to a burglary case; Maxwell will give you the details.” And with that, he turned on his heel and strode back to his office.

  For a second Maxwell and I eyed each other in somewhat awkward silence. “Burglary?” I prompted at last, expecting him to pick up on the part of the question I wasn’t asking.

  He did, and his tight lips compressed a fraction more. “A very special burglary. Something belonging to President Thompson. All I really need from you is access to the police files on—”

  “Stolen from the White House?” I asked, feeling my eyebrows rise.

  “No, the doll was—” He broke off, glancing around at the desks crowding around us. None of the officers there were paying the least bit of attention to us, but I guess Maxwell didn’t know that. Or else mild paranoia just naturally came with his job. “Is there some place a little more private where we can go and talk?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, getting to my feet and snaring my coat from the chair back as I took a last bite from my sandwich. “My car. We can talk on the way to the scene of the crime.”

  I was very restrained. I got us downstairs, into the car, and out into Washington traffic before I finally broke down. “Did you refer to this burglared item as a ‘doll’?” I asked.

  Maxwell sighed. “Yes, I did,” he admitted. “But it’s not what you’re thinking. The President’s doll is—” He broke off, swearing under his breath. “You weren’t supposed to know about this, Harland—none of you were. There’s no reason for you to be in on this at all; it’s a Secret Service matter, pure and simple. Left at the next light.”

  “Apparently Captain Forsythe thought differently. He gets like that sometimes—very insistent on having a hand in everything that happens in this town.” I reached the intersection and made the turn.

  “Yeah, well, this one is none of his business, and I’d have taken him right down on the mat if time wasn’t so damn critical.” Maxwell hissed through his teeth.

  “So what files do you need?” I asked after a minute. “Professional burglars or safecrackers?”

  He glanced over at me. “Nice guess,” he conceded. “Probably both. We’ve checked over security at the—office—and it took a real expert to get in the way he did.”

  “Whose office?”

  “Pak and Christophe. Doctors Sam and Pierre, respectively.”

  “Medical doctors?”

  “They say yes. I say—” Maxwell shook his head. “Look, do me a favor; hold off on any more questions until we get there, okay? They’re the only ones who can explain their setup. Or at least the only ones who can explain it so that you might actually believe it.”

  I blinked. “Uh …”

  “Right at the next light.”

  Gritting my teeth, I sat on my curiosity and concentrated on my driving.

  Dr. Sam Pak was a short, intense second generation Chinese-American. Dr. Pierre Christophe was a tall, equally intense first generation Haitian. Pak’s specialty was obvious; the lettering on their office door proclaimed it to be the Pak-Christophe Acupuncture Clinic. It wasn’t until the two doctors led us to the back room and opened the walk-in vault there that I found out just what it was Christophe supplied to the partnership.

  Believing it was another matter entirely.

  “I don’t believe it,” I said, staring at the dozen or so row planters lining the shelves of the vault. Stuck knee deep into the planters’ dirt were rows of the ugliest wax figures I’d ever seen. Figurines with bits of hair and fingernail stuck on and into them … “I don’t believe it,” I repeated, “Voodoo acupuncture?”

  “It is not that difficult to understand,” Christophe said in the careful tones and faint accent of one who’d learned English as a second language. “I might even say it is a natural outgrowth of the science of acupuncture. If—”

  “Pierre,” Pak interrupted him. “I don’t think Detective Harland came here to hear about medical philosophy.”

  “Forgive me,” Christophe said, ducking his head. “I am very serious about my work here—”

  “Pierre,” Pak said. Christophe ducked his head again and shut up.

  I sighed. “Okay, I’ll bite. Just how is this supposed to work?”

  “You’re probably familiar with at least the basics of acupuncture,” Pak said, reaching into the vault to pluck out one of the wax dolls from its dirt footbath. “Thin needles placed into various nerve centers can heal a vast number of diseases and alleviate the pain from others.” His face cracked in a tight smile. “From your reaction, I’d guess you also know a little about voodoo.”

  “Just what I’ve seen in bad movies,” I told him. “The dead chickens were always my favorite part.” Christophe made some sort of disgusted noise in the back of his throat; I ignored him. “Let me guess: instead of sticking the acupuncture needles into the patient himself, you just poke them into his or her doll?”

  “Exactly.” Pak indicated the hair and fingernail clippings on the doll he was holding. “Despite the impression Hollywood probably gave you, there does seem to be a science behind voodoo. It’s just that most of the practitioners never bother to learn it.”

  I looked over at Maxwell, who was looking simultaneously worried, tense, and embarrassed. “And you’re telling me the President of the United States is involved in something this nutzoid?”

  He pursed his lips. “He has some pains on occasion, especially when he’s under abnormal stress. Normal acupuncture was effective in controlling that pain, but it was proving something of a hassle to keep sneaking Dr. Pak into the White House.”

  “‘Sneaking’?”

  He reddened. “Come on, Harland—you watch the news. Half of Danzing’s jibes are aimed at the state of the President’s health.”

  And whether or not he was really up to a second term. Senator Danzing had played that tune almost constantly since the campaign started, and would almost certainly be playing it again at their first official debate tonight in Baltimore. And with the election itself only two months away … “So when the possibility opened up
of getting his treatments by remote control, he jumped at it with both feet, huh?” I commented. “I can just see what Danzing would do with something like this.”

  “He couldn’t do a thing,” Maxwell growled. “What’s he going to do, go on TV and accuse the President of dealing in voodoo? Face it—he’d be laughed right off the stage, probably lose every scrap of credibility he has right then and there. Even if he got the media interested enough to dig out the facts, he’d almost certainly still wind up hurting himself more than he would the President.”

  “He could still make Thompson look pretty gullible, though,” I said bluntly. “Not to mention reckless.”

  “This wasn’t exactly done on a whim,” Maxwell said stiffly. “Drs. Pak and Christophe have been working on this technique for several years—these dolls right here represent their sixth testing phase over a period of at least eighteen months.”

  I looked at the dolls in their planters. “I can hardly wait to see the ads when they have their grand opening.”

  Maxwell ignored the comment. “The point is that they’ve been successful in ninety-five-plus percent of the cases where plain acupuncture was already working—those figures courtesy of the FBI and FDA people we had quietly check this out. Whatever else you might think of the whole thing, the President didn’t go into it without our okay.”

  I glanced at the tight muscles in his cheek. “Your okay, but not your enthusiasm?” I ventured.

  He gritted his teeth. “The President wanted to do it,” he growled. “We obey his orders, not the other way around. Besides, the general consensus was that, crazy or not, if the treatment didn’t help him it also probably wouldn’t hurt him.”

  I looked at Pak and Christophe, standing quietly by trying not to look offended. “Did it help?”

  “Of course it did,” Christophe said, sounding a little hurt. “The technique itself is perfectly straightforward—”

  “Yeah. Right.” I turned back to Maxwell. “So what’s the problem? Either Dr. Pak moves into the White House until after the dust of the election has settled, or else Dr. Christophe goes ahead and makes Thompson a new doll. Surely he can spare another set of fingernail clippings—he can probably even afford to give up the extra hair.”