Zinnia

Chapter 22

Nick looked up from his notes when he sensed the hulking figure in the doorway of the hospital room. "Come on in, Feather. It's safe. Zinnia went home to get some sleep."

"Too bad." Feather ambled into the room. "I was going to make my report to her."

"What report?"

"She didn't like me being here in the same room with you last night so she ordered me to go make myself useful." Feather's shaved head gleamed in the glow of the overhead light. He came to a halt beside the bed. "She sent me off to find the twin-snakes that jumped you in the garage."

Nick had a vague memory of an argument that had been waged across his bed sometime during the night. "Any luck?"

"Yeah. Kind of interesting. One turned up in the morgue."

"Don't look at me. I didn't put him there. The last thing I remember, he was on the floor of the garage but he was still breathing."

"He was still breathing when he and his pal got away during the confusion before the cops arrived, too," Feather said. "But he had a real unfortunate accident later. They found him in an alley in Founders' Square about five this morning."

"What happened?"

"Someone stuck his own knife in his chest. The official verdict is that he was just a dealer who got into a quarrel with one of his crazy-fog clients."

"He was carrying far too much crazy-fog to be a street dealer or a fog-head."

"Yeah, that's what Miss Spring said, too. Y'know, she's prickly as a cactus-orange, but she's got a brain on her shoulders." Admiration gleamed briefly in Feather's eyes. "So we have to assume someone paid two street toughs to dose you with the stuff."

"And later that same someone killed one of them to make sure he didn't talk. What about the second man?"

Feather shook his head. "No sign of him so far. I've put the word out that we want him and we're paying top dollar for information. My hunch is he'll turn up in the same condition as the other one."

Nick glanced down at the notes he had been making. "Two more connections in the matrix. Whoever sent those men after me knew that I was a matrix and probably had a good idea of what a heavy dose of pure crazy-fog would do to my kind of talent."

"Shit synergy. You mean whoever is behind this wanted to drive you insane?"

"Yes." Nick mused over that for a few seconds. "But why go to all that trouble? Why not just kill me instead?"

Feather's mouth twitched. "You're a hard man to kill. Easier to hit you with a batch of crazy-fog. Safer, too. The police would probably spend a lot of time looking into the murder of a guy in your position. There'd be a whole bunch of dumb speculation about gangster connections and stuff. Be all over the newspapers for days."

"But it would be easy to label what happened last night as just an unfortunate accident that occurred during a routine mugging. The police wouldn't have any reason to dig for a murder conspiracy."

"Right."

"Okay, the logic makes sense," Nick admitted. "But I think there's something else I'm overlooking in the matrix."

"No offense, boss, but you always think there's more to a situation than meets the eye. Some things are just what they look like."

"Not in this case." Nick hesitated.

"Jeez, boss, don't go gettin' paranoid on me now."

"The bottom line here is that I didn't have these problems before I started trying to get my hands on the Chastain journal a few weeks ago."

"If you ask me, you didn't have any of these problems until you met Miss Spring."

Nick looked at him. "She saved me last night, Feather."

"I ain't arguin' about that. Point is, would you have needed saving if she hadn't walked into your life?"

"Now you're the one who sounds like a conspiracy buff. Concentrate on finding the other knife man."

"Don't worry, I will. Hey, almost forgot." Feather reached into his pocket and drew out a small notebook. "Finally located one of the clerks who used to work in the budget offices of New Portland University thirty-five years ago. Name of Mrs. Buckley. Retired to a little farm in Lower Bellevue."

Nick swung his legs over the side of the bed. The movement caused a flicker of lightheadedness. He froze, but the sensation vanished quickly. He drew a deep breath of relief and stood on the cold floor.

"Did this Mrs. Buckley remember anything about the funding arrangements for the Third Expedition?" he asked as he yanked at the tie that secured the hospital gown.

"She didn't handle that project. Said the clerk who processed the paperwork for it died a long time ago. Heart attack or somethin'."

"Yet another astonishing coincidence." Nick tossed the gown onto the bed. He was still a bit unsteady but everything felt relatively normal.

"You okay, boss?"

"Yes." He made his way to the small closet and opened it. The formal black shirt, jacket, and trousers that he had worn to the ball hung inside. They were badly wrinkled and there was a lot of garage-floor dirt on them but he was not feeling too concerned about presenting a respectable appearance at the moment. He reached for the shirt. "Did Mrs. Buckley have anything useful to tell us?"

Feather chuckled. "Turns out she was having an affair with the clerk who handled the Third Expedition arrangements. He talked a little about it after they got word that it had been canceled. She believes he told her that a chemical or pharmaceutical company of some kind had agreed to underwrite the venture. She thinks he said that the company wanted to remain anonymous in order to avoid publicity."

"A chemical or pharmaceutical company." A tingle of adrenaline shafted through Nick. It had a remarkably steadying effect. The familiar sense of tightness told him that the coordinates in the matrix were starting to form a complete pattern at last. He paused in the act of buttoning his shirt. "Yes. That fits. Did she give you a name?"

"She couldn't remember it exactly, but she thinks the word fire was in there somewhere."

Nick felt more points in the matrix begin to connect. He stepped into his trousers. "Did you check the-"

Feather held up a hand. "Hold it right there, boss. I'm way ahead of you. I checked the phone books, the tri-city-state registry of corporations, and the lists of all business-license holders in New Vancouver, New Seattle, and New Portland. There are no chemical or pharmaceutical companies with the word fire in their corporate names."

"The company probably disappeared along with everything else that has to do with this thing." Nick buckled his belt. "We'll have to go back to the phone books and the corporate registries of thirty-five years ago."

Feather scowled. "Where the hell you gonna find those?"

"The public library, where else?" Cold amusement flowed through Nick. "Even the most obsessive matrix-talent on the planet would have found it impossible to destroy the microfilm records of every library in the tri-city-states."

"Never thought of that."

"Maybe whoever is behind this didn't think of it either." Nick considered that more closely. "Especially if he moves in the corporate world. He would have been focused on covering his tracks from the business and financial angles. Even a matrix makes mistakes."

"You're sure whoever's behind this is a matrix?"

"Zinnia's right. It has the feel of a matrix scheme." Nick yanked his jacket off the hanger. "I'll start with the main branch of the New Seattle Public Library downtown."

Feather surveyed the crumpled black tuxedo. "You going to go back to the casino and change first?"

"No time."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Find the second mugger. By now he probably knows what happened to his friend. He'll be running scared. Check New Portland and New Vancouver and all flights leaving for the Western Islands. Check the freighters, too."

"I've already got people on it."

Nick shrugged into his jacket as he headed toward the door. "I don't know what I'd do without you, Feather."

Feather reached into a pocket and pulled out an object. "Guess this means you won't be needing this, huh?"

Nick glanced at the deadly little blade lying on Feather's broad palm. It was small enough to smuggle into a hospital room but sharp enough to cut the plastic tubing that led to a piece of vital equipment, or anything else that a man facing insanity might want to slice. His wrists, for instance.

"No." A soul-deep shudder went through Nick. "I won't be needing that. And for the record, you can cancel all previous instructions relating to it."

"Glad to hear it. I never did like that part of my job description."

Zinnia knocked a third time, but there was still no answer.

"Professor DeForest?" she called loudly.

Still no response.

"Great. I guess this means the gardens." She had hoped that she would not have to take another tour of the maze.

She walked reluctantly around to the back of the old house and crossed the stone terrace.

The innocent-looking trellised entrance to the vast garden maze loomed at the bottom of the steps. She glanced around, wishing that Newton would appear.

There was no sign of the chubby-cheeked horti-talent.

Zinnia walked cautiously to the gate of the dark maze and stepped just short of the feathery leaves that had woven themselves through the latticework.

"Professor DeForest?"

"Afraid he's busy at the moment. But I'll bet I can help you."

"What?" Zinnia whirled around. She stared at the wiry man who was striding toward her across the terrace. There was something familiar about his voice. And about the way he moved.

"Took you long enough to get here," the man said.

Zinnia did not like the swift way he was closing in on her. She assessed the situation quickly and knew at once that there was no way she could get past him if she chose to make a run for the house. He must have sensed her thoughts because he gave her a cruel grin.

"Not like last night, huh? You haven't got that damned matrix to help you this time. How's he doing by the way? Swinging from the chandeliers yet? Or did he try to cut his own throat or take a hike across a busy freeway? We weren't sure how the fog would get him. Kind of an experiment, y'know?"

"You were one of the men in the garage." The one she had hit with the trash-can lid, she realized.

But he was not wearing his mask this time. In the light of the fading sun she could see his haggard angular face very clearly. The fact that he was allowing her to get a good look at him worried her more than anything else. He obviously did not expect her to be in any position to go to the police with a description at some point in the near future.

"Name's Stitch. Pleased to meet you." Stitch's pale eyes glittered with malice. "Look forward to spending a little quality time together before he gets here."

"Who?" Instinctively Zinnia stepped back a pace, past the feathery leaves that guarded the maze entrance. At that moment the terrible garden of carnivorous hybrids seemed preferable to falling into this man's clutches.

"Never mind. You'll find out soon enough. Come on out of there, now. I got a score to settle with you. My head hurt all night on account of that trash-can lid. I'm gonna make sure you do some hurtin', too."

"Stay away from me." Zinnia took another step back.

"You don't want to play in that garden. I hear it's some kind of maze. If you get too far in, you'll get lost. Be dark in another couple of hours. You don't want to be wandering around in there after the sun sets. No telling what you might find."

Zinnia took one last look into Stitch's vicious eyes and made her decision. Nothing in the maze was as nasty as this creep. Thanks to her earlier visit with DeForest, she knew what awaited her in the garden. If she was very careful, she would survive it. She did not even want to think about what Stitch intended to do to her, let alone what the mystery man had planned.

She dropped her purse, whirled, and ran several steps down the nearest green corridor.

"Damn bitch. Come back here."

The leafy canopy overhead thickened rapidly within a few feet of the entrance. By the time she reached the first intersection it had blotted out most of the waning sunlight.

Things sighed and rustled in the foliage around her. It seemed to Zinnia that there was an air of hungry anticipation in the small disturbing noises. Feeding time at the plant zoo.

She kept her hands close to her sides and watched where she put her feet. The important thing was not to touch anything, she told herself. She must not provoke any of the little green monsters.

"I said, come outa there. Aaah. What the hell? Bat-snake shit. I'm bleedin."

Zinnia realized that Stitch had run afoul of one of the plants. She wondered if the experience would cut down on his eagerness to pursue her.

"Goddamned matrix whore. You're going to pay for this."

Stitch's footsteps resumed. He was moving faster, more recklessly now. Zinnia could almost feel the rage that was propelling him forward.

"Shit." Stitch's voice rose. "What is it with these damned plants?"

She edged deeper into the unpleasant maze. Glancing down, she saw that she was not leaving any footprints on the thick, eerie green moss that carpeted the floor of the maze. Stitch was no doubt using the sound of her own retreating footsteps as a guide.

She tried to walk more softly but she soon discovered that it was nearly impossible to move both quickly and stealthily at the same time. At least it was impossible for her. She had a feeling that Nick would know how to do it.

She inched past a row of barbed leaves and caught a glimpse of something that could have been a green tongue.

A slithering sound overhead made her flinch. She peered into the shadows. A thick meaty-looking vine curled down from a matted stretch of leaves. It appeared to sway slowly, as if in response to a light wind.

But there was no wind. Not even a breeze.

The vine swayed closer. There was something almost hypnotic about the way it swung gently across the width of the narrow corridor. It had uncurled to a point about three feet off the ground.

Back and forth. Back and forth. The longer Zinnia watched it, the more harmless it looked. It was just an ordinary vine. She could brush past it easily.

No. She must not touch anything, she reminded herself.

She froze in place, aware of Stitch's approaching footsteps.

"Where are you, you stupid woman? If you go any deeper, you won't be able to find your way out. Then what will you do?"

Slowly Zinnia sank down to the ground and crawled under the questing vine.

The ropy vine descended a few more inches in response to her presence but she managed to scoot beneath it without touching it.

"All right, bitch. You win. I'm not going to follow you any farther. Five hells. Damn this stuff."

Zinnia whirled. He was too close.

Stitch came around a corner, nursing a bleeding arm. He stopped when he saw her standing on the far side of the swaying vine.

"Well, well, well." Stitch's small eyes brightened with malevolent excitement. He started forward more quickly. "There you are. Come on, we're going to get back out of here before we get lost."

"We're already lost, hadn't you noticed? Don't come any closer." Zinnia stepped back. "I'm warning you. Some of these plants are extremely dangerous."

"I'm not afraid of a few thorns." He rubbed a hand on his pants. The motion left a streak of blood on the fabric. "And this'll slice anything in this damn maze to ribbons." He held up the long-bladed knife.

"Don't count on it." Zinnia turned away from him and walked gingerly down another green corridor.

"Damned fucking bitch." Stitch lunged after her.

Zinnia heard a soft deadly swoosh.

Stitch's ear-splitting scream froze the blood in her veins. There was a terrible thrashing in the bushes behind her. The dreadful screaming halted abruptly on a strangled note.

Zinnia swung around, searching for the entrance to the corridor that she had just exited. But all she could see was a wall of green. She knew that she was only a few steps away from Stitch, but she was completely lost and disoriented.

"Stitch?"

There was no answer.

She waited a few more minutes but there was no further sound.

After a while, she turned and walked slowly down another green-walled corridor, DeForest had told her that the maze was designed to funnel anyone who entered it straight to the grotto. If she got that far without running afoul of one of the plants, she could sit on the stone bench and wait for Nick.

She did not doubt for one minute that he would come looking for her.

A few minutes later she stumbled, unscathed, into the clearing that surrounded the grotto. The stone bench was there, just as she had remembered. It would make a cold perch for the night, but at least it was a safe spot to spend the next few hours while she awaited rescue.

She did not see Newton DeForest until she started to sit down.

A scream rose in her throat.

Newton floated face down in the grotto pool, enmeshed in a net of fibrous water plants.

Even as Zinnia stared in horror, several more tendrils snaked out from the shrubbery that clung to the rocks. They drifted across the surface of the water until they reached Newton. When they reached the body, they twined themselves around his legs.

Demented DeForest was feeding his plants one last time.

Nick gazed at the enlarged frame of the microfilmed edition of the New Portland Corporate Registry and felt the last connections click into place. Fire and Ice Pharmaceuticals, the company that had committed to underwriting the Third Expedition through the University of Portland had gone bankrupt a few months after the expedition was supposedly canceled. But that was not what interested Nick the most.

What fascinated him was the name of the CEO of Fire and Ice.

It had taken him a while to find what he needed but his hunch had been correct. Not even a matrix could successfully wipe out all records of a large business that had existed as recently as thirty-five years ago.

The public librarians of St. Helens took their profession seriously. They could give matrix-talents lessons when it came to one type of obsession, Nick thought. They were a passionate lot when it came to the preservation and storage of information. All kinds of information.

It was more than an obsession for librarians, it was a sacred trust. The First Generation colonists had learned the true value of information storage and retrieval the hard way. Shortly after the Curtain closed, stranding them, they had seen their only hope, their computerized databases, start to disintegrate along with everything else that had been manufactured on Earth.

The colonists had known that without the advanced technology of the home world, they would need the ancient skills of a more primitive time in order to survive. The secrets of those old crafts were buried in the history texts stored in their computerized library.

A scriptorium had been set up to copy as much basic medical, agricultural, sociological, and scientific data as possible before the computers failed. Teams working with rough handmade paper and reed pens had labored around the clock for weeks in a frantic effort to record the most essential information before it disappeared. Everyone had understood that the more that was lost, the less chance there would be for survival.

Technologically, the colonists had been thrown back to a period roughly equivalent to the late eighteenth century on Earth.

When the Founders had crafted their vision of a society that would be strong enough to ensure their survival, they had embedded two values most deeply into their design. The first was the value of marriage and family. The second was the value of books.

Librarians, Nick thought with a sense of keen appreciating, had been zealous in honoring the Founders' trust. Because of their commitment to hoarding every scrap of information, including old phone books and corporate registries, he now knew the identity of the person who had murdered his parents.

None of the library patrons bothered to glance more than twice at the sight of a man dressed in wrinkled formal black evening wear running through the book stacks toward the door.

Half an hour later when he broke the lock of Zinnia's loft and slammed into the apartment, Nick was no longer basking in the rush of satisfaction that had hit him in the library. He was fighting a rising tide of fear.

Zinnia was supposed to be home, resting. But she had not answered the door.

He walked quickly through the airy apartment. The bed was rumpled. The towels in the bath were damp. She had been here earlier but now she was gone.

He paused by her desk and picked up the phone to dial Leo's number. Then he noticed the flashing light on the answering machine. He punched the button.

There was a hum and then a click. "Zinnia? This is your Aunt Willy..."

Nick hit the FAST-FORWARD button.

Another hum and a click. "Zin? It's me, Leo ..."

He pushed the FAST-FORWARD button again.

Hum. Click. "Miss Spring? Newton DeForest here. Say, I did some checking in those old files ..."

"Five hells." Nick ran toward the door.

The connections in the matrix were shatteringly obvious now. Zinnia was not a hapless bystander who had been caught up in the elaborate web of events surrounding the Chastain journal.

She had been the target of the killer all along.

She had to be here. But she was not responding to his psychic probe.

Nick stood at the entrance of the dark maze. Everything in the matrix was designed to draw him into those twisting corridors of grotesque foliage.

He sensed the hunger of the gently rustling plants. He knew that Zinnia was somewhere inside. He could see her purse on the ground near the first turning point. Farther on a bit of khaki cloth dangled from a long sharp spine. A piece of a man's shirt.

Someone had chased Zinnia into the maze.

He shoved the flashlight he had brought with him into the pocket of his tuxedo jacket. He did not need it yet. The sun would not set for another hour. He walked cautiously into the evil green maze.

He was immediately engulfed in a deep perpetual twilight, thanks to the heavy canopy of vines and leaves. An innocent yellow flower caught his attention. He did not see the toothlike thorns inside until he glanced down into the heart of the bloom. A large half-dissolved insect floated in a sticky pool at the bottom.

He went forward, careful not to brush against even the most innocuous-looking leaves. He slipped through the dark halls the way Andy Aoki had taught him to move through the jungles of the Western Islands.

He let his senses expand to full awareness. His matrix-honed instincts for spatial relationships kept him centered in the passageways.

He turned and went along another corridor. Something slithered near his foot. He glanced down and saw a small vine creeping toward the toe of his shoe. He stepped over it and continued on to the next intersection.

It did not matter which way he chose to go, he decided. Zinnia had told him that the design of the maze was such that anyone who entered it ended up at the center.

At each twist and bend in the path, his stomach tightened at the possibility of what he might find around the corner. He told himself that the maze was not deadly so long as one was careful. DeForest had given Zinnia a tour. He had explained to her that as long as she did not provoke the plants, she was safe.

But Zinnia had been fleeing from someone when she had entered earlier. She would have been scared. Her thoughts would have been on escape, not on protecting herself from the foliage.

He rounded another corner and saw the body. It dangled from a vine that was twisted around its throat. Dozens of small spongelike flowers had descended from the canopy and attached themselves to the corpse. They were swollen and dark. They throbbed as they dined.

For an instant Nick could have sworn that his heart stopped. Then he realized that he was looking at the body of a man, not a woman. The person who had chased Zinnia into the maze, no doubt. What remained of the torn khaki clothing matched the scrap of fabric he had seen at the entrance.

There was something familiar about the khaki, he thought. Then he made the connections and realized that he was looking at the second knife man.

Nick got down on his hands and knees and crawled beneath the gently swaying body. His hand brushed against an object lying on the moss. A sheath-knife. He picked it up, closed the sheath, and dropped it into the pocket of his black trousers.

On the far side of the body, he stood and continued along the corridor. He tried another psychic probe. Still no response from Zinnia. She was alive, he thought. She had to be alive. He would know if she were not. And she was here somewhere in this damned maze. Why wasn't she responding?

He moved more swiftly now. The fear that Zinnia might be lying unconscious or hurt somewhere in one of the green corridors briefly overrode his old cautious habits and his natural sense of timing. The sleeve of his black jacket brushed against a leaf. A rustling sound alerted him to his mistake.

Instinct took over. He leaped forward, barely avoiding two long blade-shaped leaves. The leaves snapped together with a sound that was uncannily reminiscent of a pair of scissors.

A moment later the gurgle of water bubbling over rocks caught his attention. The grotto. He was near the heart of the maze.

He walked around the last corner and saw Zinnia.

She was not alone.

Duncan Luttrell stood a short distance away. He had a gun in his hand. His mouth twisted in amused disgust at the sight of Nick's rumpled tux.

"We've been waiting for you, Chastain," Duncan said. "You're a trifle overdressed for the occasion. But, given your notoriously bad taste, I suppose that was only to be expected."