Into the Shadows
Page 13
The Uruk-hai is now facing 350 kilos of prime, meat-eating predator. There are trolls who weigh less than that.
The Uruk-hai blinks, its world suddenly turned upside down. Tikki roars and drives it back through the shattered door and into the room. Ohara is shrieking and the Uruk-hai is confused. The time for vengeance is now. She shoves with her forelegs and the Uruk-hai staggers. Another shove and it falls. She crushes its head in her jaws, ripping the gory debris right off the monster's shoulders.
Now for the man.
Howling like a madman, Ohara is on his knees beside the desk. He is also popping at her with the gun. The few bullets that actually strike her barely crease her hide. The furrows are healed before they can even bleed. She flings her head around, splashing the walls and floor with the bloody remains of the Uruk-hai's head, then roars so that the man will experience the full ferocity of her power.
But then, her ears are flicking, picking up sounds, new sounds, swiftly arising. A car is racing up toward the mansion, engine roaring and whining, tires squealing. Sirens are wailing in the distance. Other men are coming. Zonies. Danger. It would take only seconds to cross the room and give this man Ohara the death he deserves, but her survival must take precedence. Tikki knows the look and smell of her enemy, she knows his voice and his habits—her vengeance is assured. She will simply wait for another chance to take her prey, this time without risk.
One night soon, little man, I will come for you again, and then you will surely die.
She roars her menace, then turns and is gone.
For now.
WHITECHAPEL ROSE
by Lorelei Shannon
I stepped out the door into the chill night, filling my lungs with the foul city air. Feeling good, I strode purposefully down the street, my black morning coat billowing out behind me. The heels of my shiny black riding boots rang out on the wet pavement. I tapped down my top hat smartly, scanning the empty street with a malicious stare for the benefit of any who might be watching.
An egg hit me in the side of the head. Fortunately, it was boiled. "Hey, Dandelion-eater!" called a drunken voice from the alley across the street. A huge young lout staggered into view, his piggish eyes glinting orange in the glow of neon. I sighed heavily, gripping the silver head of my ebony walking stick. Before I could unsheathe the blade within, two Halloweeners rose up behind the brute like vengeful ghosts. Seizing him by the hair, they dragged him into the alley. I smiled faintly at the sound of his first surprised, anguished howl. Dandelion-eater, indeed.
I am forever being mistaken for an elf, due to my extraordinary height and slender body. (In truth, I flatter myself. I am downright skinny.) Out of pure vanity, I also wear my hair quite long. It is one of my better features, and besides, it covers the datajacks on the side of my head. After all these years, I still don’t like Others to see the metal embedded in my flesh. People assume, however, that the long hair covering my ears conceals the fact that they are pointed. They are not. I am human.
One of the Halloweeners popped out of the alley to grin at me with his raggedly painted mouth. I was sure the blood on his slashed T-shirt was not his own. Tipping my hat to the boy, I bowed slightly, then continued on down the street.
Halloweeners love me. The younger ones emulate me, wearing long black coats and scowls and following me around like packs of jackal pups. They spray-paint the words, "Jack the Ripper Rules" on walls and bridges, which always unnerves me. I used to dislike their attention until I discovered how seriously they take their friendships.
One evening I was out for a walk, thinking deeply of someone, when a trio of brutal young Humanis Policlubbers decided to crack what they thought was my elven skull. They took my walking stick away from me within moments and were beating me soundly with it. Just as one of them discovered the thin steel blade it conceals and was about to surgically alter my face, a half-dozen nasty-looking Halloweeners came raging around the corner. The leader, a husky lad whose blue eyes Hashed viciously, leapt on the biggest Humanis thug he could find and smashed him against the wall. His blue eyes like ice in their triangles of black, he ripped off the other boy’s hood and beat his head against the wall a few times.
"Listen, you stupid drekky poli," he said in a conversational manner, "o'l Jack here’s our chummer. Our pal, get it?" The other boy nodded dumbly. "No, I don't think you do, poli I think I have to pound this info into your stupid, fragging brain." He grinned wickedly, then looked at me. "Better buzz now, friend Jack. Don’t wanna get blood on your boots." When a toothy little red-haired Halloweener tossed me my walking stick, I made my exit. So we are friends, the Halloweeners and I. I read to a group of them from Stoker’s Dracula every Sunday afternoon now, and I hear that two of the little sods are saving up for limb replacements.
Approaching SybreSpace, the trendiest decker bar in the 'plex, I emerged from my thoughts. A grotesque parody of the unearthly beauty of the Matrix, the place is decorated inside and out with neon building-shapes, in every noxious color known to Man. I reached inside my coat and pulled out my antique sunglasses, the ones with the round lenses as black as English jet. Donning my eyewear, I wandered through the door.
The interior was loud and smelled of too many bodies in a confined space. Deckers and decker would-bes lined the walls and filled the tables. There were exceptions, of course. I brushed past a tall, sleek razorgirl, pausing to admire the smooth muscles of her body beneath her tight leather clothes. I nearly jumped out of my boots when she pinched my backside.
The music changed abruptly from canned pop drek to a wild electronic Beledi. With a smile, I looked up at the stage where Yasmine, the belly dancer, had burst onto the stage in a whirlwind of skirts and red hair. Light glistened in a rainbow across the chrome scales of her cyberpython. The metal serpent encircling her waist, she undulated sensually. Just for a moment, I could see the impressive, brilliantly colored dragon tattoo that covered her right shin from ankle to knee. Then she went into a spin so rapid that it became a blur of motion and color. I shook my head in amazement and grinned. I am almost certain she had chipped her reflexes for dancing.
Reluctantly, I turned away and moved casually toward the bar. Taking her time, Andrea Silvereyes sauntered over to where I stood. She was tall and voluptuous and pretty, like a Victorian cameo. Like me, she wore black sunglasses.
"Hoi, Jack," she said with a smile. "You here on business or pleasure?"
I lifted her hand from across the bar and kissed it. "Seeing you is always a pleasure, my dear," I said, "but, unfortunately, I am here to meet with a certain Mr. Johnson."
She looked at me over her glasses, looked at me with those unnerving eyes of silver that are the reason for her name. Those unreadable metallic orbs with neither pupil nor iris fastened on me with uncomfortable intensity. "I saw him. I have a bad feeling about him. Jack. You got your bodyguard tonight?"
"Yes," I said with complete confidence, though I had not yet spotted her.
"Good," Andrea said tersely, and pushed up her sunglasses. I was a little relieved. No one is certain what those eyes are for. It’s said that she got them at an underworld Chinese lab. and that they were specially designed for her.
I’ve heard they do everything from shooting laser beams to seeing through walls. (Don’t believe everything you hear on the street, however. I neither eat children nor drink blood, and I do not keep my mother’s mummified corpse in my linen closet.) Anyway. I don’t believe a word of it. I think those silver eyes are something infinitely more exotic and subtle.
Andrea brought me my usual drink, pear brandy in a large snifter. She stopped me as I reached for my credstick. "On the house tonight, chummer," she said, her smile enigmatic. There is definitely more to that lady than meets the eye.
I jandered through the smoke and haze, and finally located Mr. Johnson. It was no wonder Andrea had spotted him so easily. He stood out like a vulture in a canary cage. His boring blue pinstripes and slicked-back hair were drawing snickers from some of the younger
deckers, who were too inexperienced to realize how dangerous even the lowest-ranking company drone can be. He did look oily as a greased guttersnake.
Suddenly nervous, I looked around for my backup. There she was, in the arcade room shooting dice with an adolescent ork boy. Only Emily, I thought. She was looking right at me with amused brown eyes. She had probably spotted me the minute I came through the door. When she said something to the monstrous youth, he laughed raucously. She slapped him on the shoulder and began to saunter in my direction. Much relieved, I headed for the suit.
He was looking away when I slid noiselessly into the chair opposite his. He turned back around and was so surprised to see me that he spilled his drink. I had achieved the desired effect.
"Ah . . . Mr. Ripper?" he said, mopping up artificial whiskey.
I nodded and took a sip of my brandy. Foul stuff, synthesized from soybeans.
He smiled a large smile, as phony as the teeth it displayed. "As you know, I represent Union Oil." Indeed, sir, I thought, and I am the president of Fujicorp. Don't you recognize me?
"Yes," I said.
"You have been informed of your assignment?"
"Extracting a personnel file from Natural Vat. Whose, I have yet to discover."
He produced a battered business card from his vest pocket. The card was from a junk shop on the west end, but written on the back of it in spidery handwriting was a name: Nadia Marin. He rubbed his pointed nose, and smiled that sickly smile again. "You see, she is engaged to the son of one of our higher executives, who would like to know more about her than just her shoe size. The young man's father is . . ." My attention wandered away from these ridiculous lies with shocking ease. I couldn't imagine who would have sent this fool. Maybe that was the idea. In my opinion, he wasn’t long for the business. He probably wasn’t long for the world.
I looked up at the stage. Yasmine had been replaced by Jenny and the Blast, an audacious young rocker group walking on the razor’s edge of stardom. Though I generally despise rock music, I had to admit this crew was good. Emily loves them. There she was, not three tables away, wolfing chocolate-covered peanuts and bouncing to the music. She looked so young.
Jenny was finishing a song. She whirled around, leapt into the air. and came down on her knees, hitting a high note of silver purity. She has an incredible voice, one meant for Mozart, not "Hot Samurai Lover."
"Mr. Ripper? Mr. Ripper?" The suit was talking to me. I turned toward him slowly, knowing how evil my round black lenses make me look. "Jack . . . can I call you Jack? Is that figure satisfactory?"
"No," I said, though I hadn't even heard the sum he named. He began to sweat and pulled a greasy pen from his coat pocket. He quickly wrote something on his small bar napkin. "I’m not authorized to go any higher," he said, laughing nervously and handing me the thin paper with a number written on it.
I looked at it and managed to conceal my surprise. It was a lot of nuyen.
"Yes," I said. "That will do nicely."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Emily do a little dance with her fingers. As I gave the napkin back to the suit, it disappeared in a flash of fire. He yelped and put his fingers in his mouth, looking at me with frightened, angry eyes. I grinned, displaying my durenamel canines, nearly a centimeter longer than the rest of my teeth and sharp as needles. "Will that be all?" I asked cordially.
"Yes. Yes, that’s all." He knocked over his chair in his haste to get out the door. I watched him leave, winked at Emily, and finished my brandy. Presently, I rose from my seat and languidly left the bar.
I slipped around the corner into the alley to wait for her. Minutes later, she joined me in the shadows. Laughing she slapped me on the shoulder. "We scared the soybeans out that corporate weaselmeat. I bet he has to change his shorts." I kissed her tiny brown hand. "I see you are your usual demure self tonight. Miss Entropy." I looked down at her disapprovingly, shaking my head. She wasn’t fooled.
"You loved it, deckhead." She looked at me closely. "It’s worth a lot, isn’t it. When do you wanna run?"
"Tonight," I said. "Definitely tonight."
"Well, slot and run, Grimley!" she said, kicking my boot, I winced. Emily liked to call me Grimley Fiendish, after some ancient and horrible rock song. She also calls me Jack the Beanstalk and Jack the Dripper. Only Emily. She grabbed my top hat and placed it at a jaunty angle on her own head.
We started off together down the darkened street, and I had time to look at her. Emily Entropy stands about a meter and a half, more than a head shorter than I am. Her long waves of brown hair and huge liquid brown eyes make her look younger than her twenty years. (I just turned twenty-seven, and Emily calls me a dinosaur.) Her body is all soft, smooth curves, which she insists on hiding beneath baggy black pants and her decrepit leather jacket. She is the best young street mage I’ve ever seen. She is also a little demon in a street fight. She has retractable steel claws, long and hooked like an animal’s instead of the flat, double-edged kind. For the times when all else fails, she keeps a revolver in her boot. (She says I should carry one, too, considering the magnitude of my incompetence at street-fighting. I detest the things, however, and just can’t make myself do it.)
Emily Entropy is a legend on the street. Her exploits are gleefully recounted around the ’plex, mutating like a genetic experiment until what was once brilliant and clever becomes Old Testament miracle. Emily finds this endlessly amusing.
There are stories about her past as well, the most common one being that she was put through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Magic by one of the megacorps, and then disappeared. Dropped though the cracks. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I do know she has at least three SINs, and she wasn’t born with any of them. (This amuses me, especially because I don’t have one at all.)
When I ask her about all this, she just laughs. I suppose everyone needs his secrets. I’ve certainly never told her that my real name is Herbert Bunn.
As you may have guessed, I am deeply in love with Emily.
Why does she keep company with me? I don’t really know, but I have always assumed that it is some twisted form of the nurturing instinct. She does, after all, consider me hopeless on the streets. I would prefer to think that it is because I am one of the best deckers ever to jack, but Emily is not easily impressed with such things, and I fear that Freud and I are right.
I heard something, the softest of sounds coming from the blackness of the street behind us. "Emily!" I whispered. "What was that?"
"What was what, Grimley?" she said, idly trying to stomp a monster cockroach.
"Hush!" I hissed. "There's something behind us!"
Emily stopped. She stood absolutely still, her brow knit with concentration. Finally she said, "I don’t hear anything, Jack," and started down the street again.
"Em!" I said impatiently. There it was again, the softest rustle in the darkness. "Em, listen!"
She stopped, and from the attitude of her body I knew she was getting irritated. You see, ever since I took this job, someone has been following me. At least, that is my feeling. Emily thinks I have an overdeveloped imagination from reading too many ghost stories. She turned around. "Tell you what. Jack. It's time I met this bogeyman of yours." She marched past me, heading for the black mouth of the alley behind us.
"Emily!" I called. "No, Em, wait!" I ran after her, but she had already disappeared into the darkness. Drawing my blade, I ventured in after her. Six of the biggest, ugliest, most unsanitary-looking sewer rats in the 'plex came charging out of the alley, straight for my feet. I was across the street before I knew what was happening.
Emily came staggering out of the alley, laughing so hard she could barely walk. "Look out, Grimley," she gasped, grabbing my arm to steady herself. "I think they have a contract out on you!"
As happy as I was to be a constant source of amusement, I was convinced that it was not only rats I had heard behind us. I continued to watch over my shoulder for the remainder of our walk.
Emily caught me. "Um, we’re here," I said brilliantly. She smiled up at me. "I noticed, Grimley."
My flat was dark, as it usually is. I twisted the knob on the wall and flooded the room with simulated gaslight. Its warm yellow-orange glow flattered Emily's dusky skin. My cat. Tansy, slipped out from behind a bookshelf and entwined herself around my ankles like a little black shadow.
"Hairball!" cried Emily, seizing Tansy up in a most undignified manner. The cat narrowed her golden eyes, but purred amicably. My rat, Lucy, squeaked impatiently, standing up on her hindquarters.
Lucy is a lovely little hooded rat, not at all like the horrid creatures of the alley. "Here you are, little one," I said, taking from my pocket some pretzels I had tucked away at the bar and dropping them into her cage. She snatched one up and ran under the Nutrisoy cereal-box home to eat it.
Still carrying Tansy, Emily was looking at my books. Our love of books is one thing I can truly say we share. Not just information or literature, but solid, paper-and-ink objects that one can curl up with on a cold night. Our tastes differ, however. I prefer Victorian literature, while Emily’s collection is mostly late-20th century mystery and fantasy. Fantasy, indeed, I thought, looking at the enchantress in my room. She had paused over a couple of hardbacks.
"These are new?"
"Yes, dearest," I replied. "I got them from Frog last week." Emily made a face. Frog is a truly odious black-market dealer of anything he can get. Nonetheless, he is one of my few sources of the printed word. Setting Tansy gently on the floor, Emily pulled down The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. I smiled. "You can spot a mystery a mile away, Em," She smiled and nodded, already immersing herself in the text.