Caine Black Knife

Kollberg shifts his weight backward in the comfortable looking chair and lets his thick lips flap their way through a long, slow sigh. “I’ll take that tone from you once, Michaelson. But you’re not on Overworld now. Mind your place.”

You close eyes that burn and sting. *From the air,* you tell yourself in silent monologue. *Something in the air.*

Already you narrate your life.

“Sorry, Administrator. Sorry. It was the meds talking. But please, sir, if you would only let me-”

“Entertainer.” The plump Administrator rises and folds his soft pale hands in front of his crotch. “As I have explained, Businessman Vilo has already signed off on your new contract. He’s a very busy man.”

“Please put a call through, Administrator. Please. He’ll take it. He will.”

“He may. But he won’t change anything. He can’t; Studio operations are sacrosanct. Now. Here’s your escape.” Kollberg takes a few steps toward the head of the table. One of those soft pale hands unhitches itself from his crotch and clicks a pen-size control.

The schematic of the vertical city dissolves into a new view, from the upland plateau side. One bright red star shines well away from the exit tunnel.

“This is where you will retransfer. Once you have removed the spikes from your arm and your ankle-”

“How am I supposed to have gotten all the way up there?”

Kollberg looks at you.

You swallow, and drop your eyes-a conditioned reflex? Or is the empty malice in his colorless gaze too much for the nerves of a mere Hari Michaelson? “Sorry. Sorry, I don’t mean to interrupt. Please, Administrator. Continue.”

“Well.” Kollberg clears his throat: a cough delicately indulgent as a cautious pedophile’s. “Actually, it’s a fair enough question. After you retransfer, you’ll cover the continuity gap in your Soliloquy. It doesn’t take much-just a phrase or two about the struggle to crawl all that way, and something about the confusion of the battle against Pretornio’s zombies covering your escape-”

“But-” You shake your head, your face twisting to mirror the twist of sick anticipation in your stomach. “-but, well, I mean, first they’re not zombies-”

“Oh, whatever, Michaelson, please don’t quibble-”

“And there’s just no way I could have crawled that far in that kind of shape. Hell, I don’t think I could crawl that far now, meds or not-I don’t think I could crawl that far if I were healthy-”

“It’s a silly objection, Michaelson. No one will care. After all, that ogrillo bitch practically healed you on the spot, didn’t she?”

“Not exactly healed; I mean, look at me-”

“Now, as you struggle away from the city, you’ll find a saddlebag just here-”

He clicks the control again, and a new pinpoint lights up a few hundred virtual meters from the first.

“-which you will theorize must have fallen from one of the horses during Kess Raman’s abortive attempt to flee-”

“Are you serious?”

“In that saddlebag are four canteens of water, as well as jerky and flatbread. There are also several vials of a cream which you will identify as a medicinal salve; when you rub it on your wounds, this will cover the effects of the intra-dermal time-dissolve antibiotic and steroid capsules we’ve injected along your spine. They’ll release over the next seven days, though you’ll hardly need them that long, as you shall see.”

The twist on your face becomes a full wince; nausea thickens below your throat, and it can hardly all be from the antibiotics and steroid injections, can it? “Um, Administrator-?”

Kollberg again clicks the control, and the virtual city shrinks into a vanishing perspective; a new star appears virtual kilometers away. “Roughly here-where you can easily arrive before daybreak-you’ll find two horses, which you will identify in Soliloquy as from the company’s remuda and theorize that they must have escaped from the others during the raid. Make up whatever names you like; it’s not important. One will be fully tacked and will have saddlebags of its own, also containing filled canteens and provisions, as well as some spare clothing and boots, so that you can dress yourself and bandage your wounds. Don’t worry about having to find them-we’ll transfer them in near enough your location that you’ll be able to hear their tack jingle-”

“Administrator, please.” You duck as though you would bob and weave if you weren’t strapped to the motorbed. “Isn’t that a little . . convenient? I mean, come on, sir-finding the saddlebag with exactly what I need-then a horse, with clothes and boots-not to mention that ogrilloi don’t let horses just wander off; horsemeat tastes like-”

“Michaelson, this is a fantasy.” Kollberg sighs with exaggerated patience.

“No one expects it to make sense. It’s not supposed to be realistic.”

He clicks the control again, and the wall view dissolves to a colorfully illuminated map of the eastern Boedecken. “Now. You’re only seven days’ ride from the Khryllian outpost at North Rahnding; by switching horses and sleeping on horseback, you could make it in less than five-”

“Five days? Sir, please-if you’ll only make the call to Businessman Vilo-”

“Wait, wait; you haven’t heard the best of it, Michaelson.” Kollberg’s voice heats up, and a sheen of sweat slickens his upper lip. His eyes go squirrel-bright. “We will arrange for a Khryllian reconnaissance-in-force to be moving out into the fringes of the Boedecken; though I cannot guarantee the actual makeup, there is a strong chance that you should see at least five Knights, possibly as many as ten, and up to one hundred fifty armsmen-”

“What good does that do anybody?”

“You’ll encounter them less than three days out from the vertical city. You’ll tell them that the Black Knives have a captive Knight of Khryl. .”

Kollberg leans closer. His breath smells of lavender and orange mints.“Imagine the rescue, Michaelson. Imagine. Ten Knights. One hundred fifty lancers. Falling upon the Black Knives like a steel thunderbolt. . with you as the advance scout, having received a Khryllian Healing for all your wounds. With you penetrating the camp to locate the prisoners, to prepare them for rescue. With you finally using all the skills of the Monastic assassin you are, to eliminate pickets and preserve the element of surprise. .”

“I can see why you like it.”

“And this is why you’ll like it, Michaelson. This is why I went to Businessman Vilo; this is why I risk my career on an emergency transfer for an unknown Actor. A never-was.”

Kollberg leans even closer. Under the sick-sweet pastilles, you can smell on his breath the blood-sugar problems that are bringing on his type 2 diabetes.

“Can you say: first-handers?”

And now you can’t breathe at all, and I’m sure it’s not from the smell. “Are you serious?”

“Oh, yes. Oh, I am. I’ve been showing clips of your Adventure to a few. . select connossieurs. . already. As soon as you make contact with the Khryllians, we’ll be putting you on live. For the whole rest of the Adventure. Live.”

“Live. .” you echo. Your lips hang. You can no longer feel your toes, or your fingertips.

“Because I see something in you, Michaelson. I saw it from the moment that buck stood up on the badlands. I know star power. You have it. And I saw it first.”

As you stare at him, all you see now is the sweat beginning to collect in droplets on his face. “If you only knew how long I’ve been waiting to hear somebody tell me that.”

If he only knew how what should have been the sweetest moment of your life somehow leaves your mouth full of dust and bitter ash.

“I’m going to make you, Michaelson. I’m going to make Caine the star you deserve to be. And in the process, I’m going to make myself into the top Administrator in the whole damned Studio System. It all starts right here. But you have to play, Michaelson. I can make you go back, but I can’t make you be the Caine you need to be to make this work.”

You lower your head and stare again at the spike. And I can only guess what you are thinking.