Black Madonna

28

“I must commend your plastic surgeon,” Michael said. “It’s a magnificent job.”

“Shut up,” Serrin said swiftly. He knew, although the others-including Streak-had not realized it, that the figure was an elf. The long, flowing hair concealed the most obvious distinguishing feature, the ears, and the Looseness of the figure’s simple robed garment hid his body shape. But Serrin could tell instinctively that the man was elven, and that he was not the kind of person to trivialize himself with cosmetics. And all the implications of that made Serrin very worried indeed.

“I’m glad you are here,” the figure said in English, in a quiet voice that struck them all with the unstated force of its serene dignity. Seated simply in his chair, there was an aura about him that stopped wisecracks and levity in their tracks.

“Why are we here?” Michael asked, hoping to get the edge by doing the questioning.

The elf regarded him levelly, unblinking. “For different reasons, actually. In your case, because I expect to deal with Renraku through you. I also hope you may come here on a more permanent basis, but we can talk about that later.”

Michael ignored that last, surprising gambit. “Who are you?”

“You can see who I am.”

“I can see who you appear to be.”

“You can see who I am,” the elf repeated, without any impatience, but with a slight sadness instead. “I am who I appear to be.”

“No. Impossible.”

“Why?”

“Leonardo da Vinci has been dead for more than five hundred years.”

The elf smiled slightly. “We’ve grown used to such subterfuges,” he said simply. “There are times when it becomes necessary.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Perhaps at the moment you can’t,” the elf said sadly. “It doesn’t matter at this time. Are you interested in this?”

Michael looked longingly at the deck the man indicated with a wave of his slender hand.

“Come and see,” the elf invited him.

“I don’t see any hitcher ‘trodes,” Michael said uncertainly, his curiosity struggling with his fearful confusion.

“You won’t need that. Shall we see what your friends are doing in Chiba?”

“Are you serious? No, I’m Sorry, that was a stupid question. You’ve done it before, haven’t you?”

“Very simple,” the elf said. “Anyway, you need no jack. Just sit down.”

Michael sat in the chair next to the elf while the others, unsure of what they should be doing in this ritual, kept quiet and waited to see what would happen.

Michael had heard of the otaku, of course, the cybershamans who needed no deck to run the Matrix, but claimed some mystical communion with it, a union that let them use strange, singular skills in their autistic minds to work within it. And the elf worked in the same way, but he also channeled whatever he was doing through the deck, save that he used no physical link with it. He guided Michael’s persona-in itself an impossibility since Michael’s own deck was still in their plane, back at the airstrip-deep into the very heart of the Renraku Chiba core system. Everything within it, the icons of company deckers and reactive ice, was moving at a snail’s pace. They traveled through the system and the elf accessed some personnel records of Renraku’s top executives and danced back out of the system as easily as he’d penetrated it. To Michael, leaving it was like waking from a dream.

“How is this possible?” he said in utter wonder. “Are you otaku?”

“I have their skills,” the elf said. “though they aggregate with this deck. It works on paraoplical principles. It interfaces with the mind more or less at the speed of light.”

“Impossible,” Michael said, knowing he was wrong.

“You seem to be saying that a great deal, Michael Sutherland. Do you not believe your own senses? No matter. I will go into the details with you later,” the elf promised. “However, unless my information is much mistaken, we have some rather urgent business at the moment which is more pressing. In about eight minutes a missile is due to hit this building and, unless I am much mistaken, it will probably bear a tactical nuclear warhead.”

“What?” Geraint almost exploded. This was all too much to take.

“Oh, there’s plenty of time,” the elf said calmly. “It will be shot down automatically. However, one of the reasons I wanted you here was to witness the event. You can go and take a look at the wreckage and verify the details for me. Actually, it means that the military men who accompany you will be useful additions to your number. I hadn’t expected them, but the unexpected can be rewarding.”

“Whose missile is it? And why?”

“The nuclear missile belongs to the Vatican,” the elf said. “And they hope to prevent me letting the world know a great many things they don’t want anyone to know.”

“I simply do not believe this,” Geraint protested. “This must be some kind of illusion or lie.”

“Which is why I very much want you to go and see what’s left of the wreckage when it’s shot down,” the elf said very earnestly. “I want independent witnesses to prove to the world that the Vatican took what I knew seriously enough to try to murder several thousand helpless, innocent people around this place in order to keep it all from reaching the ears of this hungry world.”

“I’ll scan it out,” Streak said, “And I’ll find out where it was manufactured and whose it was. He can’t con me on that kind of thing.”

“That’s what I hoped,” the elf said, really in earnest now. It struck home. He needed them for this, and they had to take him seriously.

“But why? What do you know? How can it possibly be worth a nuke? And what does it have to do with your running the Matrix and threatening every corp out there?” Michael asked in a flurry of queries.

“As to that, I just want the money. I need it. I have work to do on a scale beyond what I can manage to earn from what I do quietly here and there. Such funds got this place built, but now I need much more.”

“Twenty billion each from eight megacorps?”

“Well, I didn’t think I’d get it From all of them. Actually, twenty billion would be a good start. I think I can persuade Renraku to accommodate me,” the elf said. “On balance, I deemed them the best option for negotiations. They’d get a lot in return.”

“They’d bloody well have to,” Michael said, amazed.

“Well, there is this,” the elf said, indicating the deck. “Is this worth twenty billion?”

Michael was stopped in his tracks. He stared wildly at the elf, his breath coming hard.

“Frag me, it is. I reckon it is.”

“Well, it’s only a toy,” the elf said, “so perhaps I can hold out for more than that.”

“Isn’t this eight minutes getting a bit, well, shorter?” Streak suddenly asked. He ignored Michael’s expression of sheer disbelief at the elf’s comment that the deck was only a toy.

“Yes, yes. Salai will deal with it,” the elf said impatiently.

“Antimissile rockets can’t be counted on with a nuke if it’s smart,” Streak insisted.

“It won’t be done with such primitive things,” the elf told him.

“So, how?”

“Well, as I think they put it these days,” the elf said with a slightly sad smile but a smile nonetheless, “it’s all done with mirrors. Focused lasers. The warhead will be vaporized. The man casing will remain intact, though, for you to inspect and identify. There will also be sufficient radioactive material for you to collect a sample of and trace. I have suitable protective clothing available, I believe. That’s the kind of thing Salai handles.”

“Who is Salai?” Kristen asked suddenly, her tongue working at last.

“You’ll have to forgive the name,” the elf said. “An affectation when I adopted him. He’s oraku, but a very versatile young fellow and far less antisocial than most of them. He does, however, have some of the more negative traits of his historical antecedent.”

“He gambles, spends too much, and is rude to his master,” Serrin said, almost smiling. He’d studied the biographies carefully.

“Yes, all of that,” the elf said. “You have done some homework. I expected that of you from the reports. I could not be certain that Mr. Sutherland would recruit you, but when he did. I was pleased. Merlin thinks well of you, I know.”

“You know Hessler.”

“Oh, very well. We have known each other for, shall we say, some years. I must add, though, that he did not tell me anything of what passed between you. He simply allowed me to know that you were someone who could be worked with. That was important knowledge. I very much hope he is right. We shall all have to.”

“Look,” Serrin said, “we’re almost totally in the dark. We have to know what’s going on. You say too much we can’t understand.”

“You had to start from the icon in the Matrix,” the elf told him.

“Yes. It identified Leonardo. It’s also heretical, and in some sense fraudulent. The Shroud is a fake.”

“Of course it is,” the elf said. “Pope Innocent wanted it done. Innocent! Hah! It had a history, entirely superstitious and unconfirmed, but he thought it would make an excellent inspiration for the gullible. He really was an unprincipled old bastard, even by the standards of the times, and that’s saying something. Since it seems some, many, still believe in that ridiculous cloth, it’s plain that he knew what he was doing.”

They all realized the elf was talking as if he’d dealt with a Catholic pope dead for more than half a millennium, but Serrin didn’t seem fazed at all. He continued with his line of thought, each question marking another faltering but significant step in his reasoning.

“The Shroud’s face is Leonardo’s. So is that of the Mona Lisa, and you put her on the Shroud icon, except that you made her black.”

“Forgive me,” the elf said. “I never could resist a little self-advertisement.”

“You’ve come among a heretical cult that believes John the Baptist is the true son of God. Why?”

“They’re wrong, of course,” the elf said evenly, apparently unaware that he wasn’t answering Serrin’s question. “But they’re one step closer to the truth.”

“Why is the Magdalene the real focus of the Last Supper?” Serrin suddenly shot at the elf. Gray eyes met him firm and full, and the elf looked as if some weight had fallen from his shoulders. Serrin was suddenly shot through with a chill, a realization and understanding that hit him full in the heart and guts.

He is Leonardo.

And that is not all he is.

“So, now we come to the truth,” Leonardo said, rising to his feet. He had a sweep of grandeur about him that impressed itself even on the samurai, who stood stock-still looking at him with near-awe on their faces.

“You must understand, the Mandaeans were not taken in by the Pauline propaganda. They knew all the reasons why the older stories were true; the significance of Paul arriving in Corinth and Ephesus claiming himself to be the first Christian missionary and finding churches already there, as the Acts of the Apostles so foolishly gives away, and the churches were those of John. They also grasped the deep significance of baptism, and the Muslim people hereabouts regard their long adherence to that practice as very, very strange. The central significance, of course, is that the baptizer always initiates the baptized. He is senior to him, more initiated, more acquainted with the mysteries. He is no follower. He is the bearer of the knowledge, not the acolyte in search of it. How that managed to turn into a tale of John being little more than a spiritual warm-up act is one of history’s more endearing little tales.

“John, indeed, was a messenger and a prophet, but not for who most people think. The politics of what ended up as what are laughably called the canonical gospels is, again, an intriguing historical study. For he served someone quite different. As I do too, in my way. And that way grows very important now.”

“This is madness,” Michael said. “You speak as if-”

“I know, as if I’d been there,” the elf finished impatiently. “You won’t believe me so I won’t bother with that. Not now. Theres an easier way to let you know.”

“The Magdalene,” Serrin said insistently. “The Magdalene figure. The face on the Shroud. The face at the supper.”

“Yes,” the elf whispered. “Now, Serrin, I could tell you to go to the cathedral at Notre Dame, or in a hundred other cities throughout Europe and Asia Minor-though Notre Dame is the best example because Paris is the city of love-and gaze on the Black Madonna looking out over her people. It is an image they have never been able to replace with their wretched medieval Virgin, no matter how many times they mistranslated that one, simple little word. Because a virgin is barren and joyless, a symbol only of fear and body-hating revulsion, and the true Madonna is close to the lives and hearts and souls of all people and her spirit infuses them instead of denying the rightful wholeness of their souls. The Magdalene was her priestess, and John her initiate. That’s the heresy. That’s what’s worth a nuclear warhead bearing the Papal seal. And it’s the secret I seeded into all those designs, and I laughed at the popes and their venal servitors who paid me to create those idols of false worship. The secret has always been there for anyone with eyes to see, right in front of the noses of those who would deny her.”

The air in the chamber started to acquire the tang of metal and ozone. A figure began to manifest behind him. Tall as the elf seemed to be, risen with exaltation, the woman behind him seemed to be of unearthly height and fullness, richly dressed in satin and pearls and the gems of an ancient potentate’s treasury of pillage of far-flung, exotic lands.

Serrin knew from experience that it was the materialized form of a Great Spirit, but it seemed to him to carry an emotional charge far greater even than that he’d known on the very, very few occasions he’d met such a being.

“She is Isis.” the ancient elf whispered, the only one able to speak at all. This is my mistress and my passion. This is the truth. What you have been told until this day is lies, It is now time that this truth be known by all the people of this world, and many people are very, very afraid of that.”

The woman was impassive, the ebony of her skin perfectly smooth, her eyes closed, her hands folded into her lap. She stood utterly still, and when they looked upon her they felt an indescribable yearning, a longing for her presence to stay with them and for much more. The incarnation faded, impassive to the end, giving no recognition of either their presence or their existence.

“There is an occult belief that has persisted, though it has never been widely held,” the elf said finally, once they were alone again in the chamber, “that Biblical events are merely a retelling of the story of Isis and Osiris. In such beliefs, Osiris is identified with Christ. There is a darker understanding and knowledge of this.

“If you want the simple translation, for Osiris read John; for Isis read the Magdalene; for Salome read Nephthys; the rest you can fill in for yourselves. if you don’t know, you’ll learn, soon enough.”

“If you go to the world with this,” Serrin said slowly, trying to regain some composure, you’ll be regarded as simply another nut.”

“I think not,” the elf said evenly. “For a start, it’s time I showed them all how I made the Shroud for Innocent. There will be the debris of the missile you are here to verify. Then again, I do have something of an advantage when it comes to dealing with the lies history has told us.

“After all, I was there.”

“I can’t take this in,” Michael said, shrugging in helplessness. By the looks on the faces of the others, neither could they.

“You doubt? I can identify with that,” the elf said, suddenly grinning. “The gospels do manage to record my presence with that tag, after all.”

“But what are you going to do here? Why so much money? For what?” Serrin pressed him.

“Because of the Works,” the elf told him. “I want to bring some of the better minds of the world here. I remember the old times, all those great artists and engineers at the behest of the Medicis and the Borgias. Ah, such times! I want that again.

“Indeed,” he continued, suddenly almost humble, “I hoped that I might invite some among you to join me. I think you, Mr. Sutherland, would enjoy working here.”

Michael looked at the cyberdeck and wondered. Fine, he’s glitched, but by hell whatever that thing is I wouldn’t say no to looking into it. Just a few weeks, maybe…

“And you, Serrin, you I would be glad of for the Great Work.”

“And that is?”

“That is something deeper and darker, a greater mystery,” the elf said without the pretension such words might well have carried from anyone else. “There are times in the history of the world, Serrin, when mana rises and falls. When it is potent and strong, many wonders and glories arise. An Awakening, some have called it. We are in such a time now. But dangers come with such limes, dangers all but beyond imagining. I must work with others to counter those dangers.”

“That sounds both vague and paranoid,” Serrin told him.

“It may, but you are noted for your paranoid nature and at times you, too, are rather vague,” Leonardo said tartly. The sharpness of his voice was so unusual that Serrin almost startled, and his mouth formed into a smile for an instant before he reassumed his usual grave appearance.

“You know of astral quests, of the threshold, of the dangers of the metaplanes-or you think you do.”

“I know something of such things.” Serrin wasn’t sure where this was leading.

“There are dangers beyond which are very great and real. At this time, the barrier between us and those dangers is eroding and must he shored up. To do so will take immense effort. That is the Great Work. However. I ask only that you spend a month, perhaps, learning of such things and deciding whether you are willing. Then you may-”

The elf broke off without warning. He cocked his head to one side for a moment, as if listening to something inaudible to anyone else.

The moment’s respite gave Streak the chance to tell Serrin about something whose significance he’d finally realized. “You know, I saw something in that book you had on the Shroud,” he said. “Did you realize the face doesn’t have any bloody ears?”

Serrin had missed that. He’d seen the presence of things that had remained hidden or at best obscured, but he’d missed an absence of something. If this elf was really who he said he was, or rather if the face of Leonardo’s was one he’d worn, then the missing detail was perfect. A self-portrait with the identifying characteristic carefully omitted.

And, of course, what irony there must have been in the gullible of the centuries worshipping an image of himself.

“There may be some trouble,” Leonardo informed them. “Several military aircraft have landed at the airstrip. I think that Renraku may have been overenthusiastic in their approach to potential discussions with me, which is not wholly unexpected. Michael, I would very much appreciate it if you would mediate here. I am very eager to speak with them. I had hoped we could come to some arrangement, as I suggested to you. Will you help me?”

“I’ll do what I can,” Michael said nervously.

“By the way, Salai tells me it is now time you went out into the desert with him,” the elf said to Streak. “The missile has been brought down safely, and we have the protective clothing and measuring instruments you will need.”

“Show me to it, unless you’d rather I took up a position in the bunker and helped you blow away these yobbish gatecrashers for you,” Streak said cheerfully, his good humor recovered after seeing Serrin surprised by his insight.

Michael and Streak got into the elevator with the young man, and as they ascended Michael wondered what he was going to say. Outside the building, the Renraku military had taken up their positions and were clearly ready to begin any bombardment deemed necessary.

Michael thought about it, and walked out into the hot air of the afternoon with his palms out, announcing who he was and the fact that he was working for Renraku too. Johanssen told the commanding officer to hold fire, definitely and absolutely.

“Em, hi, guys. Look. I don’t know how to say this, but you really don’t want to blow up what’s in there.

“Frankly, at twenty billion you’ll be getting a bloody bargain.”

Johanssen looked at him, reconsidered his order, then picked up the phone to Chiba.