The Traveler

11

A Bengali wedding store was at the south end of Brick Lane. If you walked past the gold saris and pink party decorations, you entered a back room where you could connect to the Internet without being traced. Maya sent coded messages to Linden and Mother Blessing. Using the shop owner’s credit card, she placed online obituary notices in Le Monde and The Irish Times.

Died in Prague from a sudden illness: H. Lee Quinn, founder of Thorn Security Ltd. Survived by his daughter, Maya. In lieu of flowers, a contribution should be sent to the Traveler’s Fund.

Later that afternoon she got a response on a Harlequin blackboard: a brick wall near the Holborn station where a message could be scrawled like graffiti. Using a piece of orange chalk, someone had left a Harlequin lute, a line of numbers, and the words: Five/ Six/Bush/Green. That was easy to decipher. The numbers gave the time and date. The meeting location was 56 Shepherd’s Bush Green.

MAYA SLIPPED A handgun into her raincoat pocket and slung the sword carrying case over her left shoulder. Number 56 Shepherd’s Bush Green turned out to be a discount movie house in an alleyway next to the Empire Theatre. That afternoon, the theater was showing a Chinese kung fu movie and a travel documentary called Provence: Land of Enchantment.

Maya bought a ticket from the sleepy young woman in the booth. Someone had scrawled three interlocking Harlequin diamonds near the entrance to theater two, so she walked inside and found a drunk sleeping in the third row. When the lights dimmed and the film started, the man’s head flopped backward and he began to snore.

The movie had nothing to do with rural France. Instead, the soundtrack was a scratchy recording of the American jazz singer Josephine Baker singing “J’ai Deux Amours” while the screen showed news footage and historical photographs taken off the Internet. Any citizen who had wandered into the theater would have decided that the movie was visual gibberish, a mix of unconnected images of pain, oppression, and terror. Only Maya realized that the film presented a concise Harlequin view of the world. The conventional history given in schoolbooks was an illusion. Travelers were the only real force of change in the world, but the Tabula wanted to destroy them.

For thousands of years, the killing was done by kings and religious leaders. A Traveler would appear in a traditional society and present a new vision that challenged the powerful. This person would gain a following and then be destroyed. Gradually rulers began to follow a “King Herod strategy.” If Travelers were more prevalent in certain ethnic or religious groups, the authorities would slaughter everyone they could find in that group.

By the end of the Renaissance, a small group of men who called themselves Brethren began to organize these attacks. Using their wealth and connections, they could kill Harlequins or track down Travelers who had fled to other countries. The Brethren served kings and emperors, but they saw themselves as being above the mundane expression of power. What they valued most was stability and obedience: an ordered society where each person knew his place.

In the eighteenth century the British philosopher Jeremy Bentham designed the Panopticon: a model prison where one observer could monitor hundreds of prisoners while remaining unseen. The Brethren used the Panopticon prison design as a theoretical basis for their ideas. They believed that it would be possible to control the entire world as soon as the Travelers were exterminated.

Although the Tabula had money and power, the Harlequins had successfully defended the Travelers for hundreds of years. The introduction of computers and the spread of the Vast Machine changed everything. The Tabula finally had the means to track down and destroy their enemies. After World War II, there were approximately two dozen known Travelers in the world. Now there were none, and the Harlequins were reduced to a handful of fighters. Although the Brethren remained in the shadows, they were confident enough to start a public organization called the Evergreen Foundation.

Any journalist or historian who began to investigate the legends about Harlequins and Travelers was cautioned or dismissed. Web sites about Travelers were infected with computer viruses that got out of control and undermined the rest of the system. Tabula computer experts attacked legitimate Web sites, and then made up false Web sites that connected theories about the Travelers with crop circles, UFOs, and the book of Revelation. Ordinary citizens heard rumors about the secret conflict, but they had no way of knowing if it was true.

JOSEPHINE BAKER CONTINUED to sing. The drunk continued to snore. Up on the screen, the killing continued. Maya watched television news footage of top officials in different governments, all of them older men with dead eyes and smug smiles who controlled armies of soldiers and policemen. They were the Brethren or their supporters. We’re lost, Maya thought. Lost forever.

Halfway through the film, a man and woman entered the theater and sat down in the front row. Maya slipped the automatic out of her coat pocket and clicked off the safety. She got ready to defend herself, and then the man pulled down his zipper and the prostitute leaned over the armrest and began servicing him. Josephine Baker and the images of Traveler destruction had had no effect on the drunk, but now he woke up and noticed the intruders. “You should be ashamed!” he told them with a slurred voice. “There are places for that, you know!”

“Sod off,” said the woman, and there was a loud argument that ended with the couple leaving and the drunk tagging along after them.

Maya sat alone in the theater. The movie froze on an image of the president of France shaking hands with the American secretary of state. When the door to the projection booth creaked open she stood up, raised her automatic, and got ready to fire. A large man with a shaved head came out of the booth and climbed down a short ladder. Like Maya, he carried his Harlequin sword in a metal tube slung over his shoulder.

“Don’t shoot,” Linden said. “It would ruin my day.”

Maya lowered her weapon. “Were those people working for you?”

“No. They were just some drones. I thought they’d never leave. Did you like the film, Maya? I created it last year when I was living in Madrid.”

Linden walked down the aisle and embraced Maya. He had powerful arms and shoulders and she felt protected by his bulk and strength. “I’m sorry about your father,” Linden said. “He was a great man. The bravest person I’ve ever known.”

“My father said that you have an informant working for the Tabula.”

“That’s right.”

They sat down beside each other and Maya touched Linden’s arm. “I want you to find out who killed my father.”

“I’ve already asked the informant,” Linden said. “It was probably an American named Nathan Boone.”

“So how do I find him?”

“Killing Boone is not our immediate objective. Your father called me three days before you came to Prague. He wanted you to go to the States and help Shepherd.”

“He asked me to do that. I turned him down.”

Linden nodded. “Now I’m asking you again. I’ll buy the plane ticket. You can leave tonight.”

“I want to find the man who killed my father. I’m going to kill him and then I’m going to disappear.”

“Many years ago your father discovered a Traveler named Matthew Corrigan. This man lived in the United States with his wife and two sons. When it was clear that they were in danger, your father gave Corrigan a suitcase full of money and a sword once owned by Sparrow. Thorn was given the sword when he helped Sparrow’s fiancée leave Japan.”

Maya was impressed with her father’s gift. A sword used by a famous Harlequin like Sparrow was a precious object. But her father had made the right choice. Only a Traveler could fully use the power of a talisman.

“Father said that the Corrigans went underground.”

“Yes. But the Tabula caught up with them in South Dakota. We heard that mercs had killed everyone, but apparently the mother and the sons got away. They were lost for a long time until one of the brothers, Michael Corrigan, gave his true name to the Vast Machine.”

“Do the sons know if they can cross over?”

“I don’t think so. The Tabula plan to capture the two brothers and turn them into Travelers.”

“That can’t be true, Linden. The Tabula have never done that before.”

The Frenchman stood up quickly, towering over Maya. “Our enemies have developed something called a quantum computer. They’ve made an important discovery using the computer, but our informant can’t get access to that information. Whatever the Tabula learned caused them to change their strategy. Instead of killing Travelers, they want to use their power.”

“Shepherd should do something.”

“Shepherd has never been a very good fighter, Maya. Whenever I see him, he’s always talking about some new scheme for making money. I’ve thought about flying to the States myself, but the Tabula know too much about me. No one can find Mother Blessing. She’s shut down her communication channels. We still have contacts with a few reliable mercenaries, but they’re not capable of dealing with this kind of problem. Someone has to find the Corrigans before they’re captured.”

Maya stood up and walked to the front of the theater. “I killed someone in Prague, but that was just the beginning of the nightmare. When I returned to my father’s flat, I found him lying on the bedroom floor. I could barely recognize him-just those old knife scars on his hands. Some kind of animal had mutilated his body.”

“A Tabula research team is creating genetically altered animals. The scientists call them ‘splicers’ because different strands of DNA are cut apart and spliced together. Perhaps they used one of these animals to attack your father.” Linden’s massive hands became fists as if he was confronting his enemies. “The Tabula have gained this power without thought of consequences. The only way we can defeat them is to find Michael and Gabriel Corrigan.”

“I don’t give a damn about the Travelers. I still remember my father telling me that most Travelers don’t even like us. They’re floating off to other realms and we’re trapped in this world-forever.”

“You’re Thorn’s daughter, Maya. How can you refuse his last request?”

“No,” she said. “No.” But her voice betrayed her.