“I imagine so,” Serrin said weakly, still trying to orient himself. Hessler’s presence was so powerful that it rendered him utterly passive, almost unable to speak.
“However, you did not come for my help with that, at least not initially,” Hessler observed. He took up an old-fashioned quill pen from his teak desk and toyed idly with it.
“That is so,” Serrin said, at last beginning to gather his with about him. “Though now that I know how serious that is, it’s the most important thing to me.”
“I think we can deal with it,” Hessler said pleasantly. “So, now, why don’t you tell me why you came in the first place?”
He knows, Serrin thought, but for once, he was wrong. The old elf did not know in every respect, but by the time Serrin had finished, he certainly did.
“So you came to ask me about the Priory of Sion,” Hessler said thoughtfully, turning the quill over in his fingers as Serrin’s story trailed off. “That’s a very large question, Serrin. We could be here for a week and, from what you’ve told me, you don’t have a week to stay and listen to the answer.”
True. “We wondered why they’d be interested in what we were doing, why they’d have sent the spirit to warn us off.”
“Go on.”
“I can’t believe that a hermetic organization can have any direct interest in Matrix activities and computer-system sabotage,” Senmn said slowly. “Perhaps some individual member or members might. But not the organization. At least, I can’t see how they could.”
Hessler’s eyes were glinting slightly. “That seems reasonable.”
“So I thought,” Serrin said tentatively, the pieces beginning to fit together even as he spoke them, “that they must be taking an interest on one of two counts. One, they know the decker who’s threatening to bring down the house of cards. Or two, the icon he left is some kind of danger to them. Perhaps it threatens to implicate them. I can’t really understand the logic there, but that’s because I don’t know exactly what this organization does. There’s a hell of a lot of books, a huge mass of data! but there are a dozen different stories, and without detailed knowledge we can’t know which is true.”
“So you come to me,” Hessler said, and waited. “Yes,” Serrin said simply and, in return, waited. “Well, then, I can tell you that the Priory wouldn’t care a damn if every computer system in the world disappeared into thin air overnight,” Hessler told him. “Completely irrelevant to them.”
“Then it’s the decker,” Serrin said at once. “They know…” He stopped. “What do they know? Do they want him? Are they afraid of him? They must know who he is.”
“Logical,” Hess!er said with the hint of a smile.
“Then why are they afraid that we might find him? They must be, surely, to have warned us off.”
“Perhaps,” Hessler said, “they want to find him themselves, and they don’t want anyone else to do so first.”
“And the Jesuits?”
Hessler’s eyes hardened. “That might apply to them also.”
“An awful lot of people seem to want to find our decker.”
Hessler laughed, a soft, musical peal of sound. “Including a lot of very wealthy corporations, by your account.”
“He must be one hell of a guy,” Serrin said, the older elf’s laughter becoming infectious.
“Makes one wonder how he hasn’t been found, doesn’t it?” Hessler said it almost as if the statement were no more than a throwaway observation. Serrin looked up at him and his mind was suddenly completely concentrated. It was as if he were suddenly sober after an evening of intoxication.
“You know who he is,” he said, just managing to keep it from sounding like an accusation.
“I might,” Hessler said evenly. “That is, I might have my suspicions.”
So how does this mage know who an exceptional decker is? It cant be because he’s a decker, he must be more… Serrin’s mind was racing.
“Michael’s employers would pay a fortune to know,” Serrin said.
“Come now,” Hessler said in a gently reproaching voice, “You must know that money isn’t the kind of thing that matters to me.”
“And you won’t tell me,” Serrin said miserably.
“It’s not as simple as that,” Hessler said. “If my suspicions are right, then I want to know why he’s doing this. It’s not really like him.”
“So its a him” Serrin said. “Well, that eliminates half of the population at least.”
Hessler laughed again.
“Why won’t you tell me?” Serrin’s voice was urgent now.
Hessler looked gravely back at him. “Serrin, it really isn’t as simple as all that. I’m not the only one who’ll be interested in why he’s doing this. There are certain… certain rumors I have heard, that others of us have heard, which might explain it. I need to know for myself about those things. The matter of the Matrix is unimportant to us.
“Unimportant?” Serrin was incredulous. “Every business system on the planet might crash overnight. The consequences are unimaginable. The Great Crash of ‘Twenty-nine all over again but magnified a hundredfold. Thousands bankrupted, millions thrown out of work-unimportant?”
“Relatively, yes,” Hessler said quite firmly.
“Relative to what?”
“I don’t think I can really discuss that,” Hessler continued. “The decision is not mine to make.”
“Thanks so very much,” Serrin shot back. “My friends and I are getting attacked by spirits, traced and tracked, drugged and dumped in crates, and our associates killed because we’re stumbling around in something, and it would really be good to have some idea of what that might be, you know.”
“You have enough leads to follow,” Hessler said. “Judging by what you’ve told me.”
“You can give me something, surely,” the younger elf said plaintively. He was almost begging.
“Then keep away from the NOJ,” Messier said sharply. “They, too, have an interest, which is obvious. But they’re killers pure and simple, as they have always been in their various guises over the centuries. Avoid them. Consider some form of understanding with others. That will suffice.
“Now there is another matter. There will be ritual magic needed. I must send a spirit to destroy the tokens taken from your friends. It will have to be strong to breach the defenses of the enemy, and must not be traced. This will not be easy.”
“Don’t I know it,” Serrin said uneasily. He’d never been much at practicing ritual magic, but the scale of the enterprise was clear enough to him.
“I can do it for you,” Hessler said, “but there will be a price”
Serrin nodded. “Of course.”
“It’s not for me, you understand, but for Merlin,” Hessler said.
“Merlin is… an ally?”
Hessler sat back in his chair and laughed loud and long. When he was done, he wiped at an eye with his right hand, and smiled almost forlornly.
“Ach, dear me, no. It would amuse him to hear you call him that. Merlin is a free spirit. He has simply chosen to be my companion. He is curious and loves this world and the people in it. That is why he will help you too. The reward should be his.”
Hessler paused and gave Serrin a long look before speaking. “I want karma from you, for him.”
Serrin had half-expected it. It would drain him, for weeks even into months. Some of his own spiritual strength and power would be gifted to the free spirit, who would use it to develop its own powers and talents. It was the price free spirits always required for their services. And while mundanes could yield a little for such assistance, a magician was always the most effective donor of such energies and power.
“Whatever it takes,” Serrin agreed. It was for Kristen, after all. After a winter of cold, snowbound Scottish nights spent around warm log fires with her, walks into a gray, almost Arctic horizon, after uncounted thousands of words shared and spoken or not required to be, he would have given up anything that was demanded of him. And he trusted the older elf.
“It should be soon,” Hessler suggested.
“Soon as possible,” Serrin said fervently. “We’ve got less than a week.”
A black cat strolled into the mom, tail raised to the heavens, and leapt into Hessler’s lap. Absentmindedly, he stroked under the cat’s chin, where felines have oil-secreting glands and love to be cosseted. The cat purred and closed her eyes.