Deathstalker 04 - Deathstalker Honor

interrupt Diana when she was working, without very good reason. Her Jenny Psycho persona could still erupt occasionally if she was annoyed enough. As a result, people walked very softly around the infamous Diana Vertue, and had as little to do with her as possible. Which suited her just fine. She turned slowly in the swivel chair and gave the unfortunate servant at the door her best daunting glare. He paled visibly, and had to swallow hard before he could deliver his message.
    “Beg pardon for disturbing you, most illustrious, revered, and very calm senior esper, but the head of the House asks again if you would be so good as to speak with him concerning the… nature of your current research. He’s sure he could be of help if you would only—“ “No,” said Diana. “I don’t think so.” Her voice was harsh and grating, distressing to the ear. She’d ruined her throat and vocal chords screaming endlessly in the terrible detention cells of Wormboy Hell. Diana could have had her voice repaired, but had chosen not to. It made a useful psychological weapon. She fixed the servant with her best unwavering glare until he started twitching. “I’ll speak to the head of the House when I’m ready, and not before.” “It’s just that… well, you’ve been tying up our computer resources for three weeks now, and the list of people waiting to use them is now so long that some have been asking whether they should make arrangements for their descendants to inherit their position on the list.”
    Diana didn’t smile. It would have undermined her image. “Tell them patience is a virtue. Anyone who doesn’t feel particularly virtuous is always welcome to complain to me in person.”
    “Can I at least persuade you to attend regular mealtimes? Snatching ten minutes to wolf down a hurried meal in here, when you happen to think of it, can’t be good for you. You hardly ever leave this place.
    You’d probably sleep in here if there was room to fit in a cot.”
    “Thank you for your concern,” growled Diana. “Most appreciated. Now get out of here before I decide to turn you into a small hopping thing.” The servant’s head disappeared, the door closing quickly behind him. Diana smiled slightly. She knew she shouldn’t take advantage of her reputation like that, but chances for humor were few and far between in her life of late. He was quite right; she wasn’t eating properly or often enough, but the work was so important she often couldn’t drag herself away until her body forced her to. She had to find her answer before someone sufficiently powerful arrived to stop her.
    She sighed and turned back to the computer terminal before her. The monitor screen buzzed impatiently, waiting for her to put something useful on it. She was using an old-fashioned keyboard, infuriatingly slow
    and tiring, but she couldn’t risk setting up a direct link to the computers through her comm implant. It would have left her vulnerable to all kinds of things. Diana Vertue was investigating the single greatest mystery of the esper age—the nature and origins of the enigmatic Mater Mundi, Our Mother of All Souls. No one knew exactly who or what the Mater Mundi was; ask a hundred different people and you’d get a hundred different answers, all of them equally vague. Some said she was the uber-esper, the single most powerful esper mind ever created. Others maintained she was a group of senior espers in the underground working together. To some she was the God of the espers, and those whose lives she touched were considered Saints. They’d tried to make a Saint out of Jenny Psycho, but it hadn’t taken.
    To those who weren’t espers, the Mater Mundi was a dangerous unknown, a menace all the more disturbing because its nature was so unclear. Diana had her own reasons for distrusting the Mater Mundi.
    The phenomenon had manifested through her once, uncalled and unexpected, boosting and expanding her esper abilities far beyond anything she’d ever been capable of before. She’d blazed like a sun in the dark pit of Wormboy Hell, binding all the esper prisoners together so they could break out of their cells and fight for freedom. Hundreds of espers had been drawn into her focus, guided by her augmented will, fused into a single, unstoppable force. The gestalt hadn’t lasted long, but while it did Jenny Psycho worked miracles.
    Afterward, she’d convinced herself she was the chosen avatar of the Mater Mundi, the permanent agent