“I’m glad you are here,” the figure said in English, in a quiet voice that struck them all with the unstated force of its serene dignity. Seated simply in his chair, there was an aura about him that stopped wisecracks and levity in their tracks.
“Why are we here?” Michael asked, hoping to get the edge by doing the questioning.
The elf regarded him levelly, unblinking. “For different reasons, actually. In your case, because I expect to deal with Renraku through you. I also hope you may come here on a more permanent basis, but we can talk about that later.”
Michael ignored that last, surprising gambit. “Who are you?”
“You can see who I am.”
“I can see who you appear to be.”
“You can see who I am,” the elf repeated, without any impatience, but with a slight sadness instead. “I am who I appear to be.”
“No. Impossible.”
“Why?”
“Leonardo da Vinci has been dead for more than five hundred years.”
The elf smiled slightly. “We’ve grown used to such subterfuges,” he said simply. “There are times when it becomes necessary.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Perhaps at the moment you can’t,” the elf said sadly. “It doesn’t matter at this time. Are you interested in this?”
Michael looked longingly at the deck the man indicated with a wave of his slender hand.
“Come and see,” the elf invited him.
“I don’t see any hitcher ‘trodes,” Michael said uncertainly, his curiosity struggling with his fearful confusion.
“You won’t need that. Shall we see what your friends are doing in Chiba?”
“Are you serious? No, I’m Sorry, that was a stupid question. You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”
“Very simple,” the elf said. “Anyway, you need no jack. Just sit down.”
Michael sat in the chair next to the elf while the others, unsure of what they should be doing in this ritual, kept quiet and waited to see what would happen.
Michael had heard of the otaku, of course, the cybershamans who needed no deck to run the Matrix, but claimed some mystical communion with it, a union that let them use strange, singular skills in their autistic minds to work within it. And the elf worked in the same way, but he also channeled whatever he was doing through the deck, save that he used no physical link with it. He guided Michael’s persona-in itself an impossibility since Michael’s own deck was still in their plane, back at the airstrip-deep into the very heart of the Renraku Chiba core system. Everything within it, the icons of company deckers and reactive ice, was moving at a snail’s pace. They traveled through the system and the elf accessed some personnel records of Renraku’s top executives and danced back out of the system as easily as he’d penetrated it. To Michael, leaving it was like waking from a dream.
“How is this possible?” he said in utter wonder. “Are you otaku?”
“I have their skills,” the elf said. “though they aggregate with this deck. It works on paraoplical principles. It interfaces with the mind more or less at the speed of light.”
“Impossible,” Michael said, knowing he was wrong.
“You seem to be saying that a great deal, Michael Sutherland. Do you not believe your own senses? No matter. I will go into the details with you later,” the elf promised. “However, unless my information is much mistaken, we have some rather urgent business at the moment which is more pressing. In about eight minutes a missile is due to hit this building and, unless I am much mistaken, it will probably bear a tactical nuclear warhead.”
“What?” Geraint almost exploded. This was all too much to take.
“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” the elf said calmly. “It will be shot down automatically. However, one of the reasons I wanted you here was to witness the event. You can go and take a look at the wreckage and verify the details for me. Actually, it means that the military men who accompany you will be useful additions to your number. I hadn’t expected them, but the unexpected can be rewarding.”
“Whose missile is it? And why?”
“The nuclear missile belongs to the Vatican,” the elf said. “And they hope to prevent me letting the world know a great many things they don’t want anyone to know.”
“I simply do not believe this,” Geraint protested. “This must be some kind of illusion or lie.”
“Which is why I very much want you to go and see what’s left of the wreckage when it’s shot down,” the elf said very earnestly. “I want independent witnesses to prove to the world that the Vatican took what I knew seriously enough to try to murder several thousand helpless, innocent people around this place in order to keep it all from reaching the ears of this hungry world.”
“I’ll scan it out,” Streak said, “And I’ll find out where it was manufactured and whose it was. He can’t con me on that kind of thing.”
“That’s what I hoped,” the elf said, really in earnest now. It struck home. He needed them for this, and they had to take him seriously.
“But why? What do you know? How can it possibly be worth a nuke? And what does it have to do with your running the Matrix and threatening every corp out there?” Michael asked in a flurry of queries.
“As to that, I just want the money. I need it. I have work to do on a scale beyond what I can manage to earn from what I do quietly here and there. Such funds got this place built, but now I need much more.”
“Twenty billion each from eight megacorps?”
“Well, I didn’t think I’d get it From all of them. Actually, twenty billion would be a good start. I think I can persuade Renraku to accommodate me,” the elf said. “On balance, I deemed them the best option for negotiations. They’d get a lot in return.”
“They’d bloody well have to,” Michael said, amazed.
“Well, there is this,” the elf said, indicating the deck. “Is this worth twenty billion?”
Michael was stopped in his tracks. He stared wildly at the elf, his breath coming hard.
“Frag me, it is. I reckon it is.”
“Well, it’s only a toy,” the elf said, “so perhaps I can hold out for more than that.”
“Isn’t this eight minutes getting a bit, well, shorter?” Streak suddenly asked. He ignored Michael’s expression of sheer disbelief at the elf’s comment that the deck was only a toy.
“Yes, yes. Salai will deal with it,” the elf said impatiently.
“Antimissile rockets can’t be counted on with a nuke if it’s smart,” Streak insisted.
“It won’t be done with such primitive things,” the elf told him.
“So, how?”
“Well, as I think they put it these days,” the elf said with a slightly sad smile but a smile nonetheless, “it’s all done with mirrors. Focused lasers. The warhead will be vaporized. The man casing will remain intact, though, for you to inspect and identify. There will also be sufficient radioactive material for you to collect a sample of and trace. I have suitable protective clothing available, I believe. That’s the kind of thing Salai handles.”
“Who is Salai?” Kristen asked suddenly, her tongue working at last.
“You’ll have to forgive the name,” the elf said. “An affectation when I adopted him. He’s oraku, but a very versatile young fellow and far less antisocial than most of them. He does, however, have some of the more negative traits of his historical antecedent.”
“He gambles, spends too much, and is rude to his master,” Serrin said, almost smiling. He’d studied the biographies carefully.
“Yes, all of that,” the elf said. “You have done some homework. I expected that of you from the reports. I could not be certain that Mr. Sutherland would recruit you, but when he did. I was pleased. Merlin thinks well of you, I know.”
“You know Hessler.”
“Oh, very well. We have known each other for, shall we say, some years. I must add, though, that he did not tell me anything of what passed between you. He simply allowed me to know that you were someone who could be worked with. That was important knowledge. I very much hope he is right. We shall all have to.”