The doorman, however, didn’t. Instead he flicked a glance to the rod, nodded, and waved her in. “Have a nice time,” he said in his stern tenor voice, and Bobbi felt herself being dismissed the moment she passed through the open door. She liked that, especially since it dawned on her that for someone who was paranoid about being identified by the wrong people, she had just brought attention to herself.
The New Standard was, like so many other clubs, a vault of instant debauchery ready to be re-heated and served upon request. Dark and opened up on a wide balcony that circled the establishment, beneath which sprawled the club’s dance floor. The rails were lit with liquid-crystal runners, glowing brightly with colors and images that suggested people get the fuck up and dance, or so they said. Holographic projections of dancing figures hung in the center of the space, directly over the floor below – they cycled between various people, whom Bobbi took to be particularly interesting specimens from the writhing throng.
Bobbi found the bar in a hurry, a wraparound construction that cradled the far eastern corner of the club like a chrome-plated serpent. She bellied up to it, keeping her shades on as she socketed her credit chip into one of the bar’s payment terminals and waited for the bartender to come down her way. She felt the last of her fear ebbing as the crowd surged around her, believing herself cleansed of notoriety by the anonymous mortal tide. When the bartender came by and got her order for a rum and cola, it took him very little time to fulfill it, cash priority be praised, and she found herself a little table off in the corner that was far enough from the bar not to invite cruisers but near enough to the exit to let her flee with reasonable expediency.
She sat there, sipping her drink and wondering what the hell was wrong with her. Even if it had been one of those people, what had she to fear? Wouldn’t she have been tracked down and killed a long time ago if the Genefex conspiracy had known about her? It was not as if she had not spent time in public since then – she could have been seen, she could have been tracked down and disappeared like Tom had been. But had there been something at Orleans that she had missed, when she was cutting into its security system? There had been stiff opposition in the form of counterprogs and barriers, but nothing lethal; had there been a trap laid there that she had not detected? Perhaps it was then that whatever presence had hacked her after Tom vanished had detected her. But she had not moved into the Temple yet. Perhaps it was not known that the woman who had done the Orleans raid and the one who had taken over Stadil’s resources were one and the same. She hoped that was the case. She wanted the paranoia she felt to be just that, unwarranted and irrational fear – and yet …
Bobbi shook her head and took a deep drink from her rum and cola, and made a face when she realized that it had been made with bitter-ass Nutrivia and not Coca-Cola like she liked. Damn it, some things were sacred traditions. The taste distracted her from her reverie; she reached into her pocket and dug out the little palm computer she had decided to start taking with her when she didn’t carry her portable terminal, a tiny Matricomp M187 that had an entirely holographic interface. The little thing looked like a ribbed puck with a rubberized coating, a compact some glamazon would take into battle in her web gear, with just the tiny eye of its projector showing; with it she could Awaken, but the traffic would be damned slow indeed. Bobbi waved her hand over the eye with a prescribed gesture and it kicked on, producing its small displays in blue fairy light. First the connection window, that let her use the little machine’s wireless link to connect up with Paracelcus back at the Temple. Then she called up a mail window to check her messages – and found, much to her surprise, that Freida had not yet contacted her. Even more to her surprise, however, was that she found that Pierre had. Well, that was quick. Bobbi frowned at the entry, hovering in space like a sleeping snake, and she reached out to prod the little subject line with all the caution due one.
< I have your information. Come here tomorrow night at 21:00 and you may collect it. >
“Well, shit,” Bobbi said, staring at the words. It usually took Pierre a day or two to collate data – there were phone calls to make, network queries, that sort of thing. Hell, Bobbi could do the net stuff herself, but it would never pull the same kind of results that Pierre’s resources could conjure. She didn’t have Stadil’s contacts, after all, just his money. Well, she had something to do tomorrow at least. The information train was really starting to move. Bobbi felt a brief flash of irritation; it had apparently required two years of sitting on her ass to accumulate sufficient karma to finally get things going. She took up her rum and cola and took another deep drink, having forgotten all about the possibly silver-eyed woman on the train and the paranoia which she’d summoned. Information would be the only thing to do such a thing to her at this point. Another potential piece of the puzzle had arrived.
Bobbi conjured up a new message and set about it with the keyboard that hovered in front of her. She had gotten used to virtual keys; there was something satisfying about dipping your fingers into the tiny squares of light, like you were playing in a pool of water. For a portable hack rig, however, she wanted physical keys. She liked the sensation of physical feedback when conjuring up physical programs. The message was to Freida, of course. < Hey girl, > she wrote, < down here at the New Standard at Pioneer Square. Haven’t heard from you. You doing okay? > Sure, she was being paranoid. She was allowed.
After finishing her rum and cola, she ordered another from a passing waitress. She waited for it to arrive, the little Matricomp killed its monitors to retain battery life but still hummed serenely at her elbow. Bobbi watched the dancers writhe below, each one briefly venerated overhead in holographic glory. The next rum and cola came, this time made with Coke like she asked, and she sipped it gratefully. Still nothing. She waited for another thirty minutes before she thought that perhaps she should go – and then the little puck computer sang out. Bobbi signed over the machine’s projector eye, summoning the alerts window, seeing that she had a message there. It was from Mysteron, Freida’s hack tag, with no subject or originating address. Well, Bobbi knew that trick of course, and it gave her some hope – Freida may have picked up on the same paranoia that Bobbi had been feeling about their hack job, and wanted to cover her tracks. Well, if that were so, maybe Bobbi had been too harsh in her estimation of her fellow datanaut. She certainly hoped so.
When she opened the message, however, her blood froze. The body of the message was simple. It said, in tiny glowing capital letters,
< MEET ME IN THE USUAL PLACE. RIGHT NOW. WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY LIMITED. >
And then, two lines down,
Bobbi killed the display and picked up the little puck computer. She didn’t leave the bar. Instead, she hurried to the restroom, where some immediate privacy could be found. The walls seemed to bend in toward her as she walked toward the restroom door, ignored the eyes of the women that did touch-up work in its ladies’ lounge, and parked herself on the closed seat of a toilet in one of the several that lined the wall, closing the door and locking it. Thus seated, the computer balanced on her knee, she called up the little machine’s holographic display. She took a deep breath and expanded the display to maximum size. Now much bigger, the glowing frame of blue light filled the space before her, and a keyboard summoned itself roughly at level with her stomach.
She took a deep breath, made difficult with the wrenching feeling currently occupying her insides, and taking out her dustplug linked herself to the spring-loaded interface cord drawn out of the little machine’s bottom. Bobbi closed her eyes and hit the link.
Instantly she knew how it felt to swim in aspic. Compared to the near-superlumninal sensation of reaction and movement that usually came with the Awakening, moving through the chain of proxies was slow and laborious. Latency through the wireless connection, especially compared to the urgency of the message that she would take the risk. Suspended in darkness, moving slowly toward her goal, she practically felt the passing of electrons as
she projected herself toward the system. Bobbi felt the thick membranes of the slow-box’s walls as she pushed through into it, and then …
Her blood froze. It wasn’t Freida. It wasn’t anything, and that was the problem. It was simply words, unattached to any name and without any trace of presence, appearing in her mind. And more importantly, those words had a voice. It was not a synthesized sound coming from a computer’s speaker. The words that came into her mind through the network connection were not coldly known but rather heard. The voice rang down upon her, generically masculine, loud and reverberating as that of God Himself.
Bobbi rushed to call up defensive programs, groping in the slow dark. Her shields sprang up, but with the lag it was as if she were mortaring the walls by hand – all the while this silent presence seemed to look on like the Leviathan, idly watching as the ants attempted to shore up for the Last Flood.
She was as protected as she was going to be. She was the equivalent of an armadillo with a diamond shell, layers of data walls and encryption gates and counterviruses swirling around her projected consciousness. When she was certain that she could at least defend herself, she found her thoughts and made reply.
This, of course, only served to cause her steadily soaring anxiety to skyrocket. Bobbi double- and then triple-checked her defenses. So many questions raced through her mind – how was it possible that she heard a voice in her mind, when even Awakened mental communication was usually only the knowledge of words? Her mind rattled around in the augmented shell of her brain, grasping for some kind of purchase. Finally she recovered, and with caution arranged her reply.
Bobbi fought to keep focus; the spike of elemental fear and confusion which had stuck itself in her heart upon hearing that voice threatened to dissolve her concentration entirely. Her brain made the tiniest leap – tentatively, as if she were attempting to jump between two nearly-spaced platforms over an abyssal cavern.
Of course he is, Bobbi thought to herself.
In the distance, Bobbi felt something cold on her palm and was dimly aware that she had reached out and braced herself against the bathroom stall.
Bobbi felt the tingle of her faraway muscles clenching.
Switches clicked on and off in her brain.
Bobbi felt her palm sting where she pushed against the stall even harder. Cagliostro! The phantom himself, come to find her? Wearing the voice of her dead employer? The anger bit harder and she found herself lashing out.
Bobbi took a deep breath.
Happily, an assault didn’t appear to be in the cards quite yet.
Bobbi clenched virtual teeth and rage boiled through her mind.
There was a long silence, milliseconds turning over like the passing of seasons. Finally, Cagliostro replied.
But there would be no relief for Bobbi, for Cagliostro’s words rang a stone gong in her head.
And of course, the hateful thing was right. Of course she wanted to know. Every cell in her body sang in a wailing chorus of caution, or danger, and yet even this primordial terror did nothing to change this. Bobbi allowed herself the dignity of showing affront, but the words that traveled down the line from her brain and into Freida’s slow-box transcended any bullshit front.
But the phantom presence yet denied her.
The list flashed through her mind, the name and its associated address. she said.
The voice invoked an impression of irritation that Bobbi felt shuddering through her. She flinched inwardly.
Redeye (The Wonderland Cycle Book 2) Page 9
