“Cells,” said Gash. “Microscopic organisms. Direct manipulation of molecules and atoms, that was the substrate. Byron wrote the firmware and the operating system and the major application programming.”
“Say what?” It sure sounded like magic to me. I’d never heard anything of the sort before. Except... on some level I thought I might actually know what he was talking about, even though his words had so little meaning to me he might as well have been speaking some extinct language used only by clams. “What are you trying to do, interest Iskendarian enough to wake him up?”
“Is that what was happening?” he said nervously.
“I thought for a second there he might be stirring, when what you said started to make some sense.”
“Hmm,” said Gash. “Perhaps if you work carefully at it you can again tap into Iskendarian’s knowledge without rousing his consciousness; perhaps that is what you were observing.”
“If you say so,” I said dubiously. “But how does this organism and atom stuff relate to magic? Other than sounding like magic all by itself.”
“The idea of magic had been around for ages, of course, as something out of superstition and legend reduced finally to cheap popular fiction. Over all that time did it have observable reality in verifiable fact? No, it did not. But advanced technology is a clever chameleon.”
“You mean Byron figured out how to use this technology to simulate magic?”
“The argument is more subtle than that. If you can simulate something so closely that the details all match and performance is the same, then have you not created the thing itself?”
Rhetoric be damned, all that matters is the result? But rhetoric be damned - none of this lecture was giving me any more of the facts I really might need to know. “Whatever,” I said. “You say you weren’t around when all this actually happened, so who was? Are any of these associates of Byron still on the scene?”
Gash looked up speculatively at the sky. “Turke was the first to go, along with Ram Chandrasingh. Byron’s closest partner - and the one whose clear betrayal may have finally opened his eyes - was Gold. Typically for your own experiences as a detective, Gold may have also been his lover.
She - well, as is the case with so many of us, her fate is obscure.”
“Did Byron kill her?”
“That is one possibility. She certainly has not been seen or her presence felt in... oh, a very long time. But Byron was never known for bloodthirstiness, or even that particular inclination toward violence which so many of us demonstrate. Cunning, and elliptical long-range plans, were his characteristics; after he decided to broaden himself beyond his tinkering, that is. He was rather an inspiration to me, you know.”
“Sounds like you were interested enough in him to make quite a study.”
“Byron left more than his share of secrets. And do we not each of us seek to understand our origins? As I mentioned, I am what I am through the agency of his intervention.”
“What would you do if he showed up again, now, then?”
Gash looked off into the distance. “Try to convince him I could be a valuable ally. Demonstrate to him that my goals and his are largely congruent. That is, assuming his goals are still the same.”
“I’ll have to keep that in mind in case I run into him.”
“Yes, I would appreciate that.”
Was that remark really intended to be serious? Well, the way things were going I suppose I did have as much of a chance of encountering Byron as any of them did, especially considering the number of odd characters who’d been crossing my path or downright seeking me out. Although - “Did Iskendarian know him?”
“Circumstantial evidence suggests it. After all, Iskendarian did build on and extend certain concepts Byron was known to have under development. Some say Iskendarian was his apprentice, although that could have just been Iskendarian’s own propaganda talking.”
“But you think if Byron returned he might be able to settle things? Straighten out whatever stuff is going on?”
“Almost assuredly.”
“Does that mean you’ve been taking all this interest in me because you think I might be able to help lead to Byron? Or that Iskendarian might?”
“Iskendarian is a public hazard,” he temporized.
“But you’re not exactly the most public-spirited guy I’ve met, now admit it. Did you think that taking care of Iskendarian would help you convince Byron you did have the greater good in mind?”
“There is nothing necessarily preposterous in that reasoning.”
“It all sounds like pretty much of a longshot to me.”
“Longshots are not preposterous,” Gash said. “Merely unlikely.”
“And when they pay off you’re a genius. So do you want me to try to wake Iskendarian up and ask him?”
“That would seem unwise.”
“Well, thank you very much for that, anyway.” If Iskendarian came out again I wasn’t sure there would be any way to put him back. And if he came out I had a pretty good idea who he was going to be maddest at first.
But there was something else major still hanging. “You never finished telling me who of Byron’s old pals are still walking around. What about Phlinn Arol?”
“I don’t know how far Phlinn goes back; his origins are also enigmatic. He has been willing to talk about Byron, and it also appears to be true that they were on cordial terms. Without knowing the circumstances under which they parted, though, one has to be aware that the true story may be more complicated. Byron did vanish, we know that. Did Phlinn play a role in that development? Is his talk about Byron now a cover for his own participation in his friend’s disappearance? Did Byron evaporate to escape Phlinn, and is Phlinn now casting forth to get him in his net? You can see he must be approached with caution.”
I’d been led to believe Jardin had gotten rid of Byron, but why should that story be any more accurate than this? The different accounts weren’t necessarily in conflict, either. “Have you already approached him?”
“In fact, I have. He was inscrutable. Have you?”
“I -” Gash was right; there had been something very odd about my last meeting with Phlinn Arol, when he had appeared in my room at the Adventurers’ Club. We had been talking, and then he had appeared to suddenly notice something that made him nervous - quite nervous, and flustered too - and then he’d skedaddled so quickly he’d almost fallen over himself in his haste to get away. For that matter, the first time we’d met he’d brought up Byron himself, and out of the blue too. Some of his various remarks could have been considered to mean that he already knew who I really was, or had a pretty good idea. If -
“What are you thinking?” Gash asked carefully.
I didn’t know if I should be telling him. On the other hand, what choice did I really have? “Phlinn also thought I could lead him to Byron. Then he saw Iskendarian start to emerge and got scared - panicked, really - and bugged out as fast as he could.” ‘I’m on your side,’ Phlinn had said at the end, but he’d sounded particularly plaintive at the time, as though he was casting an especially hopeless defense on the waters. He’d acted like someone scrambling to get out of the way of a lunging sword point. “He said something strange about broccoli, too,” I mumbled.
“Broccoli?”
“He was starting off with some pretty scatterbrained talk; he was probably trying to figure out how to lead up to the Byron stuff. I mentioned that I hated broccoli and he said he used to know someone who hated broccoli. That kind of thing.” Had that been exactly what Phlinn had said? There might have been more... But why was I wasting effort even thinking about broccoli at a time like this? “I wonder what his history with Iskendarian was. I have a feeling we should put Phlinn Arol on our itinerary. Definitely.”