Read The Knights of the Black Earth for Free Online

his
head.
    “Good luck, sir.
Have a seat. Say your name a couple of times, just to remind him you’re here.”
    Baldwin left,
shutting the door behind him.
    Xris looked at Mr.
Wiedermann, the younger.
    A thin man with a
pale face and a shock of uncombed sandy blond hair sat behind what might have
been a desk. It was completely covered over, hidden by various assorted
objects, some of which had apparently been elbowed out by others and were now
lying on the floor.
    Mr. Wiedermann not
acknowledging his presence, Xris glanced around the room. It had no windows,
was lit by a single lamp on the desk, and by the lambent light shining from
twenty separate computer screens that formed a semicircle behind the man’s
chair. The rest of the room was in shadow.
    Wiedermann sat
with his chin in his hands—his hands bent so that the chin rested on the backs,
not the palms—perusing a document of some sort, studying it with rapt,
single-minded intensity. He breathed through his mouth. A bow tie—clipped to
the open collar—slanted off at an odd angle.
    Xris removed a
stack of files from a chair, kicked aside the clutter surrounding the desk,
dragged the chair over, and placed it on the newly made bare spot on the floor.
    Wiedermann never
looked up.
    Xris had just
about figured this seeming abstraction was an affectation and was starting to
grow irritated, when the blond-haired man lifted his gaze.
    He stared at Xris
with watery, very bright green eyes, said, “I’ve been expecting you.”
    The glow of the
computer screens behind him cast an eerie halolike effect over the man. That
and the darkened room made Xris think he’d accidentally broken in on some weird
religious service.
    Xris opened his
mouth to introduce himself, but Wiedermann had shifted his attention to his
desk. He made a sudden dive at a pile, snagged and pulled out—from about a
quarter of the way down—a thick manila folder. The removal of the folder sent
everything that had been stacked on top of it cascading to the floor. Xris
leaned down to pick them up.
    “Don’t touch them,”
Wiedermann snapped.
    He opened the file
folder, flipped through the contents quickly. Satisfied, he returned the
green-eyed gaze to Xris.
    “A gatherer,”
Wiedermann said.
    “I beg your
pardon?” Xris blinked.
    “I’m a gatherer.
As in hunter/gatherer. Racial memory. Our ancestors. Men were hunters, women
gatherers. Men went out, hunted food. Women foraged. Men could find game almost
anywhere. Women had to remember where the berry patches were located from one
year to the next, even after the tribe had moved from one hunting ground to
another. Nature gave women the ability to remember the location of various
objects that would guide them to the food.
    “Take a woman.
Show her unrelated objects scattered at random on a desk. Remove her from the
room. Thirty minutes later, ask her what object was where and odds are she’ll
be able to remember. A man, given the same test, won’t have a clue. I’m a
gatherer, myself. I suppose, over the centuries, some of the gentler lines have
been obscured.”
    It occurred to
Xris that a lot more than Wiedermann’s gentler lines had been obscured, but the
cyborg kept quiet. Wiedermann did not expect a response, apparently. He was no
longer paying attention to his client, had begun flipping through the myriad
documents in the file.
    Xris shifted
restlessly. Tiny beeps from his cybernetic arm and the faint hum of his battery
pack blended with the hum of the various computers behind Wiedermann. The
detective continued to peruse the file, but Xris had the impression that
Wiedermann’s thoughts had drifted off somewhere else.
    Xris decided it
was time those thoughts returned to him.
    “Uh, look, Mr.
Wiedermann—”
    “Ed. Ed
Wiedermann. The younger.”
    “Fine. You sent
for me, Ed. I take it that means you’ve made some progress on my case?”
    “Yes. Yes, we
have.” Wiedermann nodded, continued to study the file. “We’ve completed