Chapter #41In Which Cards Get Shown ... by: Seuzz   "Oh God," you gasp. "Rick, I--" You close your eyes and swallow. What can you possibly say? "I'm not Julian Dey. I'm--"
"So I'm not Tomlinson and you're not Julian Dey," Rick sniffs. "Well, that's a start. So you've told me who I am. Shall I tell you who you are?"
You sag in despair. "You'd never guess."
"Oh, I dunno. I'm pretty good at these things, Prescott, and it's not like there's an awful lot of suspects."
"You won't believe me, but-- Huh?"
He smiles briefly, mirthlessly.
"Are you shitting me, Rick? You know I'm--?"
"Oh yeah." He glances around. "Got anything to drink?"
You sink into a chair opposite him--the same chair, you realize, that you'd occupied when Hyde-White interviewed you five years ago. "I'm not wearing a mask, Rick," you say in a near whisper. "I can't show you that--"
"You don't have to."
Your mouth is very dry. Why is this being so easy? "What's going on?"
"We're having a friendly chat without refreshments, that's what's going on. Next question."
Your mind is reeling. "What happens now?"
"A drink order would be nice."
"In the cabinet." You point, and he calmly pours himself a tall tumbler. "I'm trying to get back to the States," you say. "I've got--" Your spirit quails.
"You got what?"
"Frank and Joe. Sort of. Rick, the Frank and Joe that were with you, they weren't the real guys."
"No?" He doesn't sound surprised.
"No, they were fakes. No masks, but they were fakes. Puppets, under Fane's control."
"Clever." He takes a long, deep drink. "But they're back now, right?"
"No. Actually, I've got them here." You fumble at the discs. "The real stuff. Their souls, I guess you'd call them. Their bodies are at an airfield, waiting for me take back home."
"How come?"
"So you can put them back together."
"Can't you do that yourself?"
The question hangs in the air like a challenge. "No," you whisper. "I can't. I mean, I could, but-- Rick, they'll kill me! It's all my fault!"
"Why? You were working for Fane all along but then had a change of heart?"
"No, not exactly. But-- It all goes back five years ago, Rick. To those months I can't remember. I don't remember them, I've still got that big blank spot. But this guy--" You point to your face. "He knows. He knows everything I did."
"So enlighten me."
You hang your head. "I found the Libra Personae," you say in a low, measured voice. "I don't know when or how, but I found it. I played with it, me and some other guys. We copied people, pretended to be them. Had some sick fun." You swallow. "I caught Frank and Joe, trapped them. I even pretended to be them, for a little while. And Braydon Delp had nothing to do with it. That was a total lie, something Fane invented."
Rick raises an eyebrow.
"Yeah," you continue. "Fane invented that story about Delp. They even killed him to make it look good." You shudder. "But that was later, after Fane caught me and Steve Patterson. They had spies in Saratoga Falls, and Patterson and I accidentally ran into them. And when they caught us, they caught Frank and Joe too. Fane wanted us to work for them. Steve took their offer, but I refused. So they wiped my memory and put me back in Saratoga Falls.
"But it's my fault Fane caught Frank and Joe, and changed them, and sent them back to--" Fear rises in your throat.
"To do what?"
"To infiltrate the Stellae. To turn more of them into puppets. To take it over, if they could." Your lips twist. "To make it a wholly owned subsidiary of Fane."
"And here you are looking like one of their executives," Rick says. He raises his glass in a mocking toast. "You could have taken them over, continued their plans, but with you--."
"No, I couldn't!" You put your face in your hand. "I thought about it," you murmur. "Forgive me, but I thought about it. But I couldn't. I'd have had to do something to my brother. To his girlfriend."
"To me?"
A hard tremble passes through you. "I'm sorry, Rick. That's not the reason--" You breathe heavily. "I don't think I could've tried it with you, turning you into--"
"If you'd given yourself time, you could've. Could've tried, at least. Well--" He toasts you again. "Here's to your brother and his girlfriend. Invite me to the wedding so I can kiss the bride and groom."
"This isn't funny, Rick."
"It's hilarious. But then, I've got a unique sense of humor. Now explain to me again why you can't fix the kid and cadet."
"Would you go with me? Talk to them, sit on them, keep them from--?"
"Keep them from painting London with your blood and guts? Sure, nothing easier. I don't got a return flight I gotta catch. Shall we do that now?"
"Sure," you stammer after a stunned pause. "I guess that'd be best." You get heavily to your feet. "They're at that airfield. I'll have to call to--"
"Nah, they're still at Fane. Their whole fleet's having trouble moving."
You gape. "How do you--?"
"Same reason I knew to find you here." He points at you with the handle of that knife before tucking it back in his jacket. "You underestimate me, but I forgive you. I'll tell you what I don't forgive, though."
"What?" Your sphincter tightens.
"Underestimating yourself. If you can confess all this to me, you can confess it to the kid and cadet. Come on." He grips you by the arm. But it's a grip that reassures, rather than restrains.
* * * * *
"I told you my story," you say after you're on the road. "Tell me yours, Rick? It sounds like you already knew all this. How? I mean, if it's not a trade secret--"
"It's not a trade secret, but this ain't one of those drawing room murder mysteries either. We're not sitting in some old country house, and I'm not Sherlock Holmes explaining things over a glass of port-- Uh, you don't have a bottle of port in this coupe, do you?"
"No. Pay you back later?"
"Mm." He rubs his mouth. "Never done this kind of thing before," he grumbles.
You wait patiently.
"So, I get handed a mystery," he says after a few minutes. "You know that. The kid and the cadet disappear a few years ago, and when they come back, everyone wants to know what was going on and who was responsible. Well, it looks like a simple case, because there's a mask of Aubrey Blackwell that's got all the answers in it. So and I put it on and watch it all. Watch Delp knock on Blackwell's door, watch him find the Libra, watch him swan around pretending to be you--"
"That all happened later," you interject. "Fane set it up to hide my involvement. They got rid of Blackwell and Delp and put their own agents in for them, then staged stuff that would be recorded in the masks."
"Yeah, I figured that out pretty quick. You told me you were out of the hospital by Thanksgiving, but all the Delp scenes were set around Christmas. Timing made it impossible, so I knew the stuff I saw in the mask was staged.
"My question then was why?" he continues. "Why was I being asked to swallow an impossible story? So I think about it a little while, and decide its impossibility was the whole point."
"I don't understand."
"Misdirection, kiddo. If you don't want someone fiddling with a breakable lock, what do you do? Distract him with an unbreakable lock. Same principle when you got a secret you wanna hide. It's a kind of sleight of hand. Show the audience something impossible, and while they're straining to see through the impossible they won't notice the real trick being played someplace else.
"That's what I decided was going on with that crazy Blackwell mask. Someone wanted to distract me. So they gave me an unsolvable mystery—how could Delp and Blackwell have given you amnesia after you'd already recovered from the amnesia they supposedly gave you? While I worried about that, I wouldn't pay attention to the real mystery. See, the real puzzle wasn't How did the kid and the cadet disappear?' It was 'Why did they come back?'"
"I'm still not sure what you mean."
"No? Their story stank, because it smelled far too sweet. It felt like a fairy tale. Two beautiful, innocent boys disappear. Then they come back. There's a joyous reunion, and the wicked are punished. It felt like a set up. But you know all this, right?"
"Sure, I just didn't understand how you could figure it out. I mean, Fane was careful all the way around. They even arranged for that woman's house to burn down, and for a Delp lookalike to be under a mask of her."
"Using the same kind of surgery that gave you Julian Dey's face?"
"Yeah. Delp really did die a couple of years ago. They hid the real Delp while an agent was playing him, and when they needed that agent for another job, they brought Delp out of storage and killed him." You grit your teeth. "I managed to fuck up so many people."
"It's a terrible thing, Prescott--"
"I know!"
"I mean seeing these consequences. We do things, trivial things, usually with the most innocent of motives. And we never see the remote consequences. If you hadn't run that red light three years ago, a school bus wouldn't have been hit by a train yesterday."
"What?"
"Making up an example. You run a red light, scaring a man. He settles his nerves in a bar, goes home with a blonde. She's married, her husband finds out, they divorce, he starts doing drugs. Two years later, his nerves are shot and he drives the bus in front of a train.
"And you never know it was because you ran that light."  You have the following choice: 1. Continue |
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