Duel Identity

Chapter 16

Megan found herself back in the burning parlor car. She called to P. J. to come and join her, but this time things didn't turn out so well. As P. J. darted forward, he was surrounded in sudden sheets of flame.

"P. J.!" Megan screamed in horror.

He came staggering out of the flames, his clothes already ablaze. Megan could smell the terrible stench of burning skin.

Megan tried to beat out P. J.'s flaming clothes, but she was hampered by the way he clung to her. Then dancing flames appeared on her own heavy wool skirt. She wanted to drop and roll, just as she'd been taught in school, she wanted to get out of there, but she couldn't. P. J.'s grip had turned into an unbreakable stranglehold. The flames were a roaring inferno now, roasting her alive, and she couldn't get free-

Megan awoke to find herself struggling against her own pillow. She lay very still for a moment, letting her racing heart calm down a little.

A nightmare, she thought. My stupid brain processing what happened in the sim and editing it into a more scary version!

She took a deep breath, exhaling it as a long sigh. Yesterday's adventures in Latvinia had really put her through the wringer. Although she hadn't suffered in real life any of the bruises and scrapes she'd picked up in veeyar, Megan had been dog-tired when she synched out. She hadn't had anything to eat. Her energy had lasted just long enough for her to get out of her clothes and get into her bed.

One quick look at her alarm clock, and Megan groaned. She was up ridiculously early even for her early-rising household. Stretching, she padded down the hall to the bathroom to take care of some business followed by a shower to get rid of the film of cold sweat left over from her nightmare.

She was still yawning and feeling unpleasantly out of it when she emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a terrycloth robe. Maybe some food…

Standing in the kitchen doorway, she scanned the room in dismay. Obviously her brothers had ravaged through here last night, searching for snacks. The package of English muffins she'd hidden in the cupboard behind a row of soup cans lay empty on the kitchen counter. To add insult to injury, the boys had left the cans out for her to tidy up. Even though she loved her brothers dearly, they made her understand why the phrase "Oh, brother" had come to be used as a universal and everyday curse.

Megan went to the stove and began heating a kettle of water. Well, at least Michael, Sean, Paul, and Rory didn't like tea. She found a scone she'd wrapped in plastic and foil and hidden under the potatoes, put a bag of English Breakfast tea in a cup, and filled it with hot water.

While waiting for the tea to steep, Megan unwrapped her scone, cut it in half and toasted it lightly, got out the butter, and found an untouched jar of imported marmalade. The butter melted on the hot, crumbly scone. She could hardly wait to cover it with orange preserves-manna from heaven.

Now the tea was ready. Megan spooned in some tur- binado sugar, then went to the refrigerator for milk. There was only a single container there, which contained a tiny dribble of liquid, barely enough to change the color of the tea. Brothers!

Wellt I'm a bit more awake now, she thought, able to enjoy my annoyance to the fullest.

Megan sat at the counter, doing her best to enjoy the scone and ignore the not-quite-right taste of the tea. Then she cleaned her dishes, stacked away the soup cans, and added several items to the family shopping list. Finally she headed back to her room.

Might as well warm up the computer, she thought. See what-I missed when I conked out so early yesterday evening.

No sooner did she synch in, however, than she was confronted by a virtmail message, blinking the word urgent at her. A little concerned, she called up the holo- text.

Exciting new discoveries have been made overnight in Latvinia, she read. I hope you'll be linking in as soon as possible-

Another one of Alan's not-so-subtle attempts to get the kids to come out and play, she thought.

Megan was in the middle of erasing the text when her system announced an incoming call. At this hour? she thought, quickly moving to intercept the message before the system started waking up the household.

Alan Slaney's image appeared in the air before her. His hair was slightly mussed, and Megan could detect bags under his eyes.

"Did you get any sleep last night?" she asked.

He glanced away from the pickup-apparently at a clock. "Oh, man, I was just working. Didn't realize what time it was-sorry for calling at such an hour. When I saw that you were reading your virtmail-"

"You sent virtmail with strings on it?" Megan interrupted. It was technically feasible to send someone a message with a subapplication tacked on so that you'd know when the mail was being read. But it wasn't considered good Net manners-more the type of thing pushy salespeople and control freaks would do.

"I just thought you ought to know as soon as possible," Alan said apologetically. "One of Colonel Vojak's scouts came back. Princess Gwenda has been located."

"Where?" Megan asked, interested in spite of herself.

"She's in an old watchtower, converted into a hunting lodge," Alan replied. "Vojak and von Esbach are holding themselves in readiness. If you and your friend P. J. can link in, you can start making plans-"

Megan shook her head decisively. "Not now, and not for a while," she said. "If I go through another day like yesterday, I'll be of no use at fencing class tonight. You've seen me like that-I don't like it."

"It's just the planning," Alan cajoled. "You won't have to do anything-yet."

"Alan-," Megan rolled her eyes in exasperation.

"Not right now. No way am I going to roust P. J. out of bed at this hour for a planning session. Besides, I have things to do."

She glanced over at the shopping list. Like getting a couple of quarts of milk in the house before my parents get up and then get cranky.

"Maybe later, when you've finished?" Alan pressed.

Megan sighed. "Sure," she finally said.

Splashing water in his face, Leif looked in the bathroom mirror and grimaced at his bleary-eyed reflection. He stuck his tongue out at the image-

Yuck! It was coated with something!

No wonder his fencing connections-all early-rising, health-conscious types-had been giving him such concerned looks as he called them this morning.

They were all up with the lark, ready to go running, or do some other torturous conditioning exercises.

Leif, on the other hand, had gotten about two hours' worth of sleep. He'd synched in to the Net early in the evening, trying to talk to some of his less reputable friends up in New York. The result had been a virtual tour of some of the city's wilder night spots. But that's what he had to do to chase down some of these party animals. They played hard, ran wild-and simply loved gossip, the weirder the better.

The stories he'd collected from both sets of sources were… interesting, to say the least. They wouldn't appear in the news databases or police records his Net agents had scoured during his initial search for information.

But one thing was sure-the tales Leif had heard painted a very different picture of Alan Slaney from what he had seen.

Leif still had to verify these reports-he had enough personal experience to know that gossip rarely shrinks in the retelling. But his fencing connections had confirmed some of the stories. Even better, some of those friends had even given him numbers for people in the Association for Historical Fencing.

He took another look in the mirror and groaned. Maybe a shower and some cold compresses would be in order before he started cold-calling complete strangers.

Running a hand through his still-damp hair and clicking his now-clean tongue against his teeth, Leif cued-up his computer and began the calling process.

The first person he got hold of had been a student in the same salle where Alan had first gotten into historical fencing. She was a petite young woman with a slight foreign accent.

"Alain?" she said, giving his name the French pronunciation. "He was… brilliant. To watch him in the salle-he picked up every move as soon as Maitre Duchamps demonstrated it. And he listened, too. When the Maitre suggested a book, Alain went out to get it immediately."

She shook her head, short black hair flying around her like a halo. "Somehow, he even managed to get copies of rare fencing treatises from the seventeenth century." She smiled self-consciously. "He must have had lots of money."

"I sense a major but coming up," Leif said.

The young woman nodded. "He was very… impatient. Among historical fencers, you know, the more advanced students are expected to take the ones with less experience under their wing. Alain-he was so sarcastic-"

She bit her lip. "He mocked my fencing. And that was gentle, compared to what he did with some of the other, more clumsy ones. It was simply unacceptable. Finally Maitre Duchamps had to bar him from the salle."

Another call, and Leif got a young, muscular guy who looked more like a halfback than a fencer. "Slaney? Brilliant fencer. Knew his stuff, both academically and physically. Too bad the guy had a personality that made Atilla the Hun look like the king of mellow."

He shook his head at some sort of memory. "I got on his bad side-for what reason, I don't even remember. Anderson-you're the guy who won that junior championship? Yeah, saber."

Leif nodded.

"I compete, too," the guy said. "And you know how it is when you're bouting with someone you don't like? You put out a little extra effort to beat them. In saber, that means beating them up."

He ran his hands down the sides of his ribs. "Whenever I worked out with Slaney, I would be all black and blue. He would whale away at me, and I'd try to return the favor-but he had the edge on me. We ended up going corps-a-corps all the time. It was more like wrestling than fencing."

"What happened?" Leif wanted to know.

"Hey, I wasn't the only one getting the rough edge of Slaney's tongue-or blade," the beefy guy said. "In the end they canned him from the salle."

"I heard that," Leif said. "Maitre Duchamps-"

"Who?" the other guy said. "I'm talking about San- torelli's up on the West Side."

"Oooooo-kay," Leif replied. "Guess I got that wrong." * * *

Leif succeeded in catching a couple of other historical fencers before they set off for work. They also came from different salles, but they were unanimous about Alan Slaney-he was a primo S. O. B.-talented, but so nasty and overbearing that in the end the fencing masters in charge had to tell him he was no longer welcome.

By this point the office of the Association for Historical Fencing had opened. "Good morning," Leif said to the woman who answered the call. "I'm inquiring about the credentials of a member, Alan Slaney-"

"I'm sorry, sir. Mr. Slaney is not a member of the association."

Leif didn't have to fake his confusion. "I–I don't understand," he stammered. "I was given to understand Mr. Slaney received his training in New York and belonged-"

"He is a former member," the association's representative admitted.

"Is he terribly no good?" Leif asked. "How do you know he's out of the club? What did he do?"

"Mr. Slaney's case is unfortunately quite well-known to the administrators of the association," the woman said carefully. "His expulsion was not a case of academic knowledge or fencing ability." She looked uncomfortable. "It was a question of attitude. Members complained that his approach was incompatible with the aims and ideals of our group."

"So he was a real creep?" Leif said.

"Sir," the woman replied, "we do not comment on Alan Slaney."

David looked as though he'd been awake for some time when Leif called.

"Cartoon duty," he explained. "The little guys are only allowed to watch so much holo entertainment. And I get to supervise-you know, make sure it doesn't get too intense for them. But one of their favorite shows is at the crack of dawn."

"Can't you just record it and play it back for them?" Leif asked.

From the look David gave him, this argument was obviously a sore spot. "But then, when they go out to play, the other kids will have seen it already." He shook his head. "I'm sure that's not what you called up to talk about. Have you dug up more dirt on Alan Slaney?"

"I've talked to some people up in New York," Leif replied. "From what they tell me, Slaney left town about two steps ahead of a lynch mob. The guy was such a pain in the butt that, despite a bias toward blades, his fencing partners figured shooting was too good for him."

"Not like the well-known, well-loved Alan Slaney we've encountered." David frowned in thought. "Well, there are some possibilities. Maybe he's had his identity stolen-"

"By an impostor who just happens to be an expert historical fencer," Leif said. "Stop yanking my chain, Gray."

"So I guess you're not going to buy the pod people theory, either," David said with a grin. "Have you checked how he traveled down here? I envision an airplane almost crashing, a near-death experience that made Slaney completely reevaluate his life-"

"You are bad," Leif accused. "Once you start, you won't stop. But I'm afraid we have to get a little more serious. Here's a guy who loves fencing, but makes such a nuisance of himself that he has to leave New York. He comes to Washington following his other big interest, politics, but can't even hold on to an internship."

David nodded. "He's got an advanced degree in political science, and he's dusting computers in some corporate backwater. If I had those credentials and that happened to me, I'd be pretty damned bitter."

"Instead, he goes around like the male version of Little Mary Sunshine," Leif said. "I don't think he's had some great spiritual conversion. The stuff we've seen him pull in Latvinia pretty well contradicts that scenario."

David raised his eyebrows. "I think you may have put your finger on a motive for why he changed his behavior."

Leif frowned in sheer confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"No, it's what you were just talking about," David replied. "Latvinia. Slaney put a lot of time and effort into creating it."

"His perfect universe, which can only exist in virtual reality," Leif scoffed.

"It may be his private world, but he wants other peor pie in it," David pointed out. "So he hooks up with the appropriate local AHSO special interest group, and becomes a professional nice guy."

Leif slowly nodded. "Okay. But why?"

David shrugged. "It's like the old saying. You draw more flies with honey than with vinegar."

"I know that, thank you," Leif said irritably. "I mean, why does he have to have people in Latvinia? What does it prove? In what way could it possibly pay off for a pretty intolerant control freak?"

"You'd have to drill a hole in his head to get any sort of answer-" David broke off his words suddenly.

"What?" Leif leaned forward eagerly. "You just had another thought. Spill it."

"I thought of one other place where we might get answers," David unhappily admitted. "It's a stunt you or Megan might think of. Captain Winters would definitely disapprove."

"Slaney's computer system," Leif said in disbelief. "You're suggesting we hack into the guy's personal computer! I can't believe it! When do we start?"