"Image up to one-third."
In the mist ghostly figures were shaping themselves around the green stars. They were too faint, however, for Mansard to make out any details.
"So far so good. Bring in the base structure nice and slow. We don't want any overload this early in the game."
The ghostly figures began to solidify until they were static sculptures of white light. Now it was possible to see exactly what they were. The four mounted figures of horror on their equally terrible steeds stood motioness in the mist: War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death, each over fifteen feet tall and perfect in every detail – the cowl of Death, the ornate armor and plumed helmet of War, the outstretched arm and rotting flesh of Pestilence, and the hollow skull eyes and sunken cheeks of Famine. Mansard rubbed his hands together. The design was holding together very well. About the only blemish was the tip of the spear that War brandished aloft. If flickered and wavered. The image came and went.
Mansard spoke urgently into the communicator. "Jimmy, what's the story on that spear?"
"It's too long. It's projecting beyond the effective apex of the fog generators."
"Will we have the same problem on the full-size version?"
"If anything, it'll be worse. We can't expect the same fog apex on the real thing."
"Damn."
"Do you want us to rerig it?"
"No. We can fix it on this end by simply lowering the figure's arm."
Mansard walked over to Bono at the masterboard. After a short discussion, the engineer put up a schematic on the main function monitor and nursed a simple joystick. In a perfectly natural movement, War dipped his lance until the tip came into sharp focus.
"That's good. Let's color the matrix."
It was like the dawn of some medieval hallucination. As the color came up, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse took on a ghastly solidity. The colors vibrated into the night.
Jimmy Gadd whooped through the communicator. "How's that, boss? Right on the master drawing or what?"
Mansard grinned. "Close enough for rock and roll."
The colors were, in fact, perfect: the graveyard, damp earth brown of Death's robes, the glowing red coals that were his horse's eyes, the sheen of orange fire on War's blue-black armor – it was all there, just as Mansard had dreamed it, and it was awesome.
"Okay, here comes the big test. Run the animation up to fifty percent speed."
Bono nodded. "Running them nice and easy."
The Four Horsemen slowly started to move. The horses raised one foot and then another. Their heads nodded ponderously, their nostrils flared, and their manes fanned out behind them. It was as if they were attempting to gallop through some thick heavy liquid.
"How's the power load holding up?"
"Everything's in the green."
"Let's ease it up toward normal. Pull back immediately if anything starts to redline."
"Stop sweating it, boss. It's all going fine."
Mansard knew that Bono was right, but he would never admit it. "Just watch out for an overload."
The Four Horsemen began to gather speed. Mansard was transfixed. When those images were scaled up to nearly a hundred feet tall, they would blow the city away. There had really been nothing like it before.
"Up to normal motion."
The horses' hooves pounded the empty air in eerie silence. Their necks stretched and strained; their glowing eyes bulged from skull sockets. Death swung his scythe, and the outstretched arm of Pestilence broadcast contagion across the Earth.
Mansard rubbed his hands together. "How's it holding up?"
"It's holding. Quit worrying."
Mansard started to walk toward the shining images. He glanced back at the lighted apartment windows of the Tribeck Tower. What the hell would they think of this apparition on the landfill? Not that he particularly cared. The general population had become so goddamn weird that they deserved all they got. He stepped carefully over the snaking cables that connected the laser banks and the massed fog generators. Jimmy Gadd and his crew crouched beside the bulky equipment, watching tensely. Gadd straightened, weary but grinning, as Mansard approached.
"I think we got it."
"It does look like it."
"Now all we have to do is build the big one."
Mansard made a dismissive gesture. "Just a detail."
Gadd sniffed. "Tell me that on the day."
Winters
"Have you heard about the sub-basement?"
The suspect from Fifteenth Street had stopped being truculent and was becoming genuinely frightened. She inspected her fingernails. They were bloodred and as long as claws. She was avoiding his eyes.
"I've heard about it. There's a few of your buddies who just can't stop talking about it."
"We have our own dungeon down there."
"I said I heard about it."
"It's not one of your fantasy games. It's the real thing down there."
"I said I heard."
"I have the power to send you down there."
The woman looked frantically at the clerical auxiliary who was chaperoning the interrogation. The CA remained stone-faced. The suspect turned back to Winters. "You can't do that to me."
In fact he could not. The instruction had been very simple. The deacons assigned to each of the women brought in from Fifteenth Street were to scare the hell out of them, but there was to be absolutely nothing physical. "If you so much as breathe hard on one of those whores, you're dead. You got that?" Those assigned to the job were all junior deacons. Too many of the senior officers had been regular customers at the house. Dreisler and his headhunters were all over the building. The working girls from the house were rapidly becoming an embarrassment. Even though Dreisler had managed to keep away the media, the matter of the house on Fifteenth Street was still a loose cannon in the department. A cover might have been put on it if the PD had not burst in there first, but, as it was, the thing was so close to being public that the hookers had to be handled with kid gloves. Carlisle was walking around like a man who had the world by the balls, and without a doubt, if the women simply disappeared, he would blow the story to the more hostile elements in the press. The deacons had reacted by falling into a holding pattern. Junior deacons like Winters would keep the women in a state of shock, off balance, and malleable, until some upper echelon decided what to do with them.
"I can do pretty much anything I want with you."
The woman was looking at her nails again. "I want a lawyer."
"This is nothing to do with the law. We aren't policemen. We're the spiritual guardians of society. What happens here is a matter between you, me, and God."
The woman's face twisted. "God?"
"Don't add blasphemy to the rest of your crimes."
Winters was starting to enjoy himself. The woman was small, with black hair, green eyes, and spectacular breasts. Although she had been in the Astor Place complex for close to half a day, she had not been allowed to change out of her working clothes. She was still half-naked in a leather twopiece, black latex stockings, and alarmingly high heels. It was extremely exciting to have even illusionary total power over a creature who, in almost any other context, would have completely intimidated him. In the interrogation room, the costume put her at a positive disadvantage. She kept shifting around in the hard, high-backed chair as if trying to hide or protect her considerable expanses of bare flesh. A bluebird was tattooed on the outside of her left thigh. She caught Winters looking at it and covered it with her hand.
"I don't understand why you're doing this. I haven't done anything. I haven't committed any crimes."
"You're a first-degree common harlot. That, on its own, would be worth a year in Joshua."
"This is ridiculous. We were working for the goddamn deacons. We had a deal and we kept up our end of it."