“Airport? Who said anything about a bleeding airport? Since when did a chopper need an airport?” Streak replied pointedly, adding a choice selection of tutting.
“All right, all right,” Michael said, raising a hand as if to ward off an angry hornet. “We’ll get there as soon as we can pick Serrin up and drive down. It’s going to be an early start, then. What time is it now?”
“Half past ten,” Geraint told him.
“I think I can sleep now,” Michael said. “I slept long enough last night, but it wasn’t exactly restful sleep. And as for Kristen…”
They looked at her in the corner. She was curled up on the sofa, one arm bent under her body a little crookedly, already fast asleep. Serrin walked over and, with an effort, picked her up in his arms.
“We won’t be needed then?” Michael said, reassuring himself once more.
“Thanks to your second recent blood donation and that lock of your hair, no,” Serrin told him again.
“Tell me I won’t feel a thing,” Michael invited him.
“You won’t feel a thing. Honestly. Apart from the ever-present possibility of instant but agonizing death evaporating from your aura,” Serrin grinned. With Kristen asleep and wrapped securely in the protection of his arms, he felt able to jest. He was certain that Hessler would be able to deal with the problem. The joking was a way of defusing his own anxieties about the ritual, and what it would cost him.
“Spirits bless you,” Michael said with some feeling. “And now I’m going to get some sleep. Polish up my French”
“Drek, that’s a point,” Serrin said. “How many of us actually speak French?”
“No self-respecting Englishman speaks French, other than deliberately badly,” Geraint pointed out.
“Good job for you I got no self-respect then, ain’t it, mate?” Streak grinned.
“You speak French?”
“I can tell you to rakk off and die or your mother was a no-good alcoholic whore who serviced rottweilers in five different European languages, not counting English,” Streak said with some pride. “S’a legacy from intelops work. Got a gift for languages, I have. I can even handle Languedoc dialect, too. Been down Toulouse and worked in Marseilles, of course. I mean, who hasn’t, in my line of work. Even picked up some Arabic down there.”
“Who’d have thought it?” Michael said incredulously. Serrin grinned and took his burden to their room. A yawning Michael was already shrugging off his tweed jacket as he followed him out.
“That leaves just you, me, and your credstick,” Streak said purposefully to the room’s only other occupant. “You don’t know how refreshing it is to work for someone with an unlimited budget, Your Lordship. I always said the aristocracy was class.”
Geraint was beginning to warm to the elf. The pun was neat enough and his straightforwardness was refreshing, especially to a politician.
“I never said ‘unlimited’,” he pointed out.
“Whatever,” Streak said. “Just tell us when the dosh is about to run out. Now, did you want chemical weapon grenades or will you settle for the ordinary gas and frag varieties on board?”
“Wait a minute. We’re planning on talking to people Streak,” Geraint protested.
“Of course, but I always find backup is so useful when discussions just won’t come out right.”
“Well, anything that’s capable of neutralizing large numbers of the French will be altogether welcome, I must admit,” Geraint joked.
“I’ll see to it,” and the elf was gone into the night. A few minutes later Geraint heard the car speed away. He went to his room and undressed, then opened the small, high window and lit a good old-fashioned candle at his bedside.
He had just a little of the talent himself, though it wasn’t something he knew how to master or make answer to his call. He knew that one or two of his speculative business deals had been startlingly successful because of that old Celtic gift, and he was superstitious enough that when it served him well, a good chunk of the money found its way anonymously to what he considered to be worthy causes. And sometimes, when the gift came uncalled and unhooked for, it guided him to other benefits.
He opened the mahogany box carved with the images of dragons; dragons of Wales, the dragon land itself. Unwrapping the silk bundle, he shuffled the large cards a little awkwardly and his thoughts naturally concentrated themselves on the theme of a dominant image, here and now.
The Hirophant. The open-handed symbol of wisdom and understanding stands as a guardian and advisor to the seeker and initiate. This is Hessler, Geraint thought. The one Serrin will soon be with. I would like to meet with him, sometime. When this is all over, perhaps.
What are we being guided toward? he wondered. We think we know who our enemies are, out there. But of the central figure, this decker. we know nothing. All we have is icon and enigma. Show me something.
A card slipped easily from the oversized deck. Ace of Swords. The brilliant emerald of the runesword glittered at him from the candlelit card, the tip of the blade piercing a crown of yellow rays, the sword bathed in the yellow sun and blue-tinged clouds of the heavens. The beginning of some great new idea; genius. But not a person. An inanimate object revealed itself to him. Of the person he sought, the deck gave him no sign.
What does he want? What is his goal, then? What drives him to the Ace?
Adjustment. In most decks, Justice. The beautiful, grave splendor of the masked female figure, the alpha and omega, beginning and end of all things, balanced in the scales of Justice on each side of her tall, taut body. Her strong hands rested on the hilt of a great sword driven into the ground.
Geraint knew that, for once, the deck’s designer had deeper understandings than most. Justice was not the answer here, not truly. The meaning was deeper, a rebalancing, an establishment of a deeper equilibrium, the revelation of a Truth.
What is this man seeking? he thought, I knew, I knew, early on that this was more than it appeared to be. The interest being taken in us only confirms that. So, it began as a potential hijack of the Matrix and, heaven knows, that would affect me enough, but what it’s leading to…
He wrapped up the deck in its silk and yawned, leaving any further intuitions to insinuate themselves into his mind from the realm of dreams.
They hadn’t known what to expect, not really. Michael had had fanciful notions of bolts of lightning breaking in a great storm around the cottage in the distance, of distant rumblings under the ground and thunder from the heavens. Of the four of them, only Geraint had uneasy sensations as they waited by their car in the pre-dawn chill. Unable to assense the astral, he still registered churnings within his guts from the struggles of power so near and so far from them. At moments he felt like an animal sensing the first dim seismic shocks of an impending earthquake and felt panicky, longing to run from the place. Cigarette followed cigarette into the promise of daylight. He paced up and down like a caged beast.
Serrin came shambling up the driveway a few minutes after dawn began to break. His jacket collar was pulled up around his neck, and his usual limp was more exaggerated. He looked as if he could barely make it as far as the gate. Kristen broke ranks and ran forward, flinging her arms around him, helping him to the car. The others stayed silent, unsure of what to do or say.
Geraint took one look at him and offered him his silver hip flask. Serrin didn’t speak, just raised the flask to lips that seemed as bloodless as his face and Look a huge draught of the brandy. When he had mostly stopped shaking, he drank the rest.
“Are you all right?” Michael said lamely, just to say something. Serrin’s gray eyes looked dully up toward him.
“I will be. I think,” he said in a voice as shaky as his legs. “Yes. Maybe. What are we doing?”
They looked at him blankly.
“He’s disoriented,” Streak said helpfully. “Get him into the back. Roll the window down. Fresh air will do him good.”
“I mean, what are we doing?” Serrin said urgently. Kristen clung to him tightly, gently murmuring words of comfort. He was wild-eyed now, staring around in all directions.