Kevin Anderson - Resurrection, Inc.

Underhanded, Jones tossed the cobblestone into the deceptive patch of grass. He expected to see a flash of light, to hear some sound, but the stone simply fell through the grass, swallowed up without a trace. A second later, he thought he heard a muffled thunk as it struck something below.

Jones stood up and withdrew his heater-knife, suddenly wishing he had something longer, a stick or a pole. He looked around, but saw nothing else. Resigned, he leaned over the low barbed fence, stretched his arm out as far as it would go, and touched the tip of the knife to the shimmering grass.

The dark helmet hid his unconscious cringe. With his fingertips he held onto the pommel, ready to let go at any second. The blade vanished into the grass up to its hilt. Looking closely, Jones could almost see a shadow of it through the grass blades. He pulled the knife back out, completely intact.

Final test. He looked back at the other Elite Guard, who had taken one reluctant step closer to watch.

Jones reached his hand out in front of him—the left hand, just in case—and touched the grass. He felt a strange disorientation as he watched his fingertips disappear, but he felt nothing, no pain, not even any change. Hesitant, he withdrew his hand, flexed his fingers, and then recklessly pushed it back through the grass patch up to the wrist.

He stood then, holding his hand up like a trophy and showing the other Elite Guard. “Let’s go. I was right.”

“Hooray for you.”

They anchored their ropes to the street above, and threw down the ends, watching as the strands vanished into the imaginary grass—but now it only looked odd, not frightening. They uprooted the barbed fence from the stones and tossed it aside. Jones grasped the rope and eased himself backward until the green illusion and the darkness below engulfed him completely. As he hung, hooked onto the ropes with special clips on his armor, he looked back up and had the eerie sense of staring through the other side of a mirror.

“I’m all right,” Jones called, “but I can’t see anything.”

He flicked on the vision enhancers embedded in his visor as he continued to descend. The rope twitched a little from above, and Jones saw that the other Elite Guard had begun his descent. As Jones looked around, the night sensors turned the dimness a greenish color.

A few feet below them, a net had been strung out, anchored to the widely separated pilings. A net… to catch anyone who might go through the “maintenance openings,” accidentally or on purpose? The strands were new, not more than a couple years old.

Jones scrambled the rest of the way down to the end of his rope and stepped off onto a crossbeam. Beyond, deeper under the Metroplex, he could see strings of mysterious lights, but he waited for the other Guard before going to investigate.

Together they made painfully slow progress on the narrow walkways; Jones heard his companion swearing to himself. Only occasionally did they encounter a catwalk wide enough for them to move at a steady speed.

“How do they walk on these things?” Jones commented after he had tottered, off balance. “Or maybe these are just for the repair-rats?”

The other Elite Guard grunted and made no further comment.

When they reached the lights, both of them stopped in puzzled amazement. A network of sunlamps dangled down, tapping into the main electrical conduits of the city above. Platforms were scattered about in a complex hierarchy. Boxes and crates of supplies hung suspended from the overhead girders. Small amenities such as books, jewelry items, and treasured knickknacks implied that the place had been inhabited for some time.

But they saw no one. All around them stood the forest of pilings, crossbeams, girders; he heard the sounds of creaking ropes and the lapping of the ocean below. But everything was completely deserted.

“How many do you think live down here?” Jones whispered.

Looking around, his companion paused a moment as if assessing. “Fifty. Maybe a hundred.”

They searched but found only more silent clues—nothing conclusive. Jones checked his chronometer and signaled that it was time to go back.

As they emerged again onto the street, Jones turned and watched the other Guard crawl up through the hologram. Jones fought to contain his pride and enthusiasm. Some of the excitement crept into his voice. “Wait till we report to Nathans! He’ll be very interested in all this.”

The other Guard finally broke his silence and stiffened in frustration, “Don’t feel too smug that you’ve got Nathans’s ear, smartass. You think you’ve been selected for the Elite Guard? Big deal!

“You’re not here because of any special talent, not because you’re the best. You’re here—like we all are—because Nathans holds us over a barrel. He can do anything he wants. But he doesn’t like killing unless it’s absolutely necessary—that’s his big flaw. If someone’s in his way, he doesn’t just get it over with. He finds a new way to use you instead.”

Jones felt as if he were falling off a cliff into ice water. His tongue dried all the way to its root, and he could not answer. No! What did the other Guard know? He was too cynical, too pessimistic—Nathans probably didn’t trust the other man as much, and he felt slighted. That must be it. He had to get back at Jones—it was all so petty. But another part of him admitted that the information was no surprise, no matter how meaningful Jones wanted his work in the Elite Guard to be.

His companion continued, “You’re not important to him. You’ve been duped.”

Jones stood like a statue. He kept denying it to himself, but the knots in his stomach grew larger and larger; the thin ice of security began to crack under his armored feet.

The other Guard reached forward as if to touch Jones’s shoulder, but he stopped himself and let his hand fall back to his side. “Now that I’ve got that off my chest, let’s go and make our report, like good little soldiers.”

Sluggishly Jones followed, devoid of all self-confidence again.

“Where is he?” Nathans demanded of the empty room.

He blanked the Net screen and paced in a furious circle as Jones entered the High Priest’s private chamber. Nathans turned to the Elite Guard and spoke in a distraught voice. “Less than an hour before the greatest Sabbat in history, and our High Priest isn’t here! I haven’t spoken to him all day, and now he won’t acknowledge my direct messages!” He pounded three times on the keypad as if knocking on a door, then turned away in disgust.

Out in the adjacent main grotto, the neo-Satanists had begun to crowd in expectantly. Most of them wore robes that had been freshly cleaned and pressed. A week before, Nathans had transmitted a message describing the vital importance of the Walpurgis Night Sabbat, signing himself as “High Priest Van Ryman.” But he had warned that only “those with no doubts, those with the most unshakable faith” should come—on peril of their own souls.

The response had been overwhelming.

Nathans made a distasteful noise of dismay and then sat down again, putting his elbows on his knees. He looked up at the Elite Guard, and Jones could see that the man’s eyes were etched with red threads.

“At least you’re here,” he said, frustrated. He got up, paced again, burning off nervous energy. “Well, what did you find? And take that damned helmet off!”

Jones answered, but his doubts about Nathans’s ethics, his true reasons for choosing the Elite Guard, diminished his enthusiasm. He didn’t want to look Nathans in the eye, afraid he might be tempted to demand answers to the accusations. Were they true? No matter how much Jones tried to convince himself, it all fit too tightly together. And if he did voice his doubts, Jones feared that Nathans would laugh at him.