by Mel Odom
It wasn’t about profit anymore. Not all of it.
14
“Kestrel,” Skater said into the public telecom, “this is Skater. When you get this message, give me a call back.” He read off the number with difficulty because it was sun-faded and weather-beaten. “I’ll be here five minutes, then I’m smoke.” He tapped the Disconnect, then walked down the street to join Duran leaning against the wall around the corner.
The ork looked completely at ease. Dressed in a modest suit and wearing wrap-around Whitelaw sunglasses, he could almost have passed for a corpgeek waiting for an after-work dinner date. Both of them were bone-tired from lack of sleep, and both were using stimulants on top of sheer willpower to keep going.
The telecom chirped two minutes later, and Skater was in motion at once. As he rounded the corner, he spotted two thrillers dressed in the Cutters’ green and gold making for the cube. They were a salt and pepper team, a white female with spiky blonde hair and a shiny cyberarm, and a black male sporting a goatee and an open shirt revealing a pornographic chest tattoo of a troll abusing a sheep.
“Call’s for me.” Skater said.
The two gangers wheeled toward him. The black guy shoved his hand inside his shirt and grabbed something, but he made no move to pull it. Finger razors shot out of the girl’s cyberarm, complete with a long elbow spur.
The telecom beeped a second time.
“I think you got that wrong, wackweed.” the blonde said. “This is Cutter turf. That phone belongs to us. You’d best be on about your business.”
Cars passed on the street. It was getting dark. Even in daylight the inner city was no place for someone to stop unless they had a fragging good reason, and went fully armed.
“Your choice.” Skater said softly, still moving forward in a straight line. He opened the bomber jacket, letting them see the Ares Predator in its shoulder holster under the coat. “I’m prepared to die for that call. How about you?”
The male ganger released his weapon and stepped back. “Chill, Pebbles.” he told the girl. “Let’s pack it in. He’s got a yabo over his shoulder. This drek don’t mean nothing to us.” He caught her flesh and blood arm and gently tugged her after him.
Her face set in angry lines, the girl whirled suddenly and dragged her razors across the window of the collectibles shop next to the telecom cube. The sharp points left scars in the glass.
Keeping one hand on the Predator, Skater tapped the Connect key. “Yeah.” he said.
“I found out it was you who called,” Kestrel said, sounding like he was talking from the bottom of a well, “you could have knocked me over with a fragging feather. I heard about you getting busted by Knight Errant and getting passed over to Lone Star. I also heard you escaped.”
Skater had heard about the escape as well, sandwiched in between more trideo reports of the so-called laughing death disease. An ork woman working at a fast-food restaurant had gone berserk and attacked her own leg with a kitchen knife, then sat on the counter throwing her toes and chunks of flesh at the customers, all the while giggling like a little girl. There was also more footage on the fire at the Montgomery Building in Bellevue, and the terrorist bombing at Sea-Tac International Airport that morning. But not a peep about any dead elves being found in a warehouse.
“I need help.” Skater said.
“If you’re still in town after all the drek that went down,” the fixer said, “you need your fragging head examined.”
“What have you found out about the yak who’s after me? Dokai something?”
“Masaru Doyukai.” Kestrel said. “All I know is that he’s still looking, and he's offering big nuyen to anyone who can finger you.”
“What’s his interest?”
“Still haven’t scanned it, but the guy must be getting desperate. He put the squeeze on some stoolies in the area, killed two of them and put another in the hospital to make his point. Hasn’t exactly endeared himself to the locals.”
“Stick with it as best you can without getting caught in the middle.” Skater said. “I’ll pay for your time.”
“Have you got a stash besides the one you had down in the Caribbean?” the fixer asked.
“Why?” Skater couldn’t be sure the call wasn’t being traced.
“The new idee I fixed you up with?” Kestrel said. “Lone Star got it. I tried to get into the accounts as soon as I heard they nabbed you. I wanted to shift them around so you’d have something if and when you got out. I got some of it, but not much.”
“The rest of it?”
“Evaporated, chummer, absorbed back into Lone Star’s legal acquisitions. Frozen till you can prove you’re not guilty of any infractions of the law.”
Skater felt a cold emptiness swell up inside him, threatening to envelop him. For eight years he’d been running the shadows—and that was a long time to survive in this biz—hustling and dodging bullets on every bit of action he could sign on for. There’d been a vague plan, an amorphous dream of getting out of the sprawl and the biz, but more than anything else, he’d been buying the security he’d never known. Now it was gone, taken away.
“I’ve got some set aside.” Skater said in a tight voice. “What I can’t pay you immediately, I’ll make good.”
“Sure, sure.” Kestrel said. “But I’d feel better if you were on your way out of Seattle right now.”
“Can’t.” Skater said. “Somebody stuck it in me and broke it off. I can’t be sure they’re going to crawl off my back anywhere unless I can get them off. I’ll be in touch.” He hit the Disconnect.
Duran looked at him. “That look on your face, can’t be anything but bad news.”
“I moved my money around, getting ready to shake this town.” Skater said. “But Lone Star seized my accounts. I’ve still got some put by in a few others places, but I’m going to be sucking air real soon.”
“Tough break.” Duran fell into step beside him, sweeping the street with his gaze. “But don’t forget we’re all in this together, kid. We pool our resources, we’ll get by. Bet on it.”
“We already are.” Skater said.
15
“Hi, this is Brynna. I’m either not home now, or I’m engaged in a sexual fantasy come true that you can only dream about. If you’re a chummer, leave a message and I’ll get back to you when I recover. If you’re selling something, frag off and don’t be gentle about it. Bye.”
A beep followed.
Skater chose not to leave a message. He stood at the cube of public telecoms near Renton Mali’s southern entrance, in the wide hallway sandwiched between 2Fast Arcades and Shiloh’s, a specialty costume shop.
“She home?” Duran asked as he walked up with two Sloppies and two big soft drinks.
“No.” Skater took one of the drinks and a Sloppie. “But I got her recorded message.”
“So she’s probably still around.” Duran pointed toward the trideos stacked in the window further down the hallway at Matt & Matt’s Trideo Concepts. “I was standing in line, I heard KTXX announce it was going live soon with some big news bulletin.”
A locally produced syndicated talk show was on in a showcase window a few steps from where they stood. A handful of people were already gathered there, talking among themselves and watching the program.
On the screens, Perri Twyst, the host, was leaning intently toward her two guests. The trideo personality had widely spaced limpid blue pools for eyes, a strong chin, and a lime-green pageboy that emphasized her lean jawline and the earring in her left nostril chained to the ear on that same side. As usual, she wore faded jeans and a plaid Oxford button-down with the sleeves ripped out, emphasizing her street background.
“Knowing the resistance you would encounter trying to establish yourself in Seattle,” Twyst was saying, “why would you be willing to undertake such a challenge?”
Her guests were the same elves Skater had seen on the trid in the Lone Star slam. He couldn’t remember their names. Then, as the camera panned in for a close
-up, block letters flashed onto the screen below the male: Tavis Silverstaff, CEO of NuGene, a biomed corp in Portland. He wore purples today, with a gold brocade that set everything off. His long fingers were wrapped around the head of a glittering cane, and his royal plum cape fell in cascades behind him across the plush chair. His smile was white and generous, totally confident.
“Because I believe we’ve got a good product.” Silverstaff said.
“Fragging elf,” one of the two young men to Skater’s right said, “that’s what he is. Ain’t no man at all. Pointy-eared dandelion sniffer. Needs a little Order to bring him to the light, then he’d see.”
The other young man laughed, clapping his friend on the back.
From the thinly disguised pun, Skater guessed that they were members of the Order, a white human-supremacy policlub. He glanced at Duran, but the ork was ignoring them.
“You’ve yet to unveil that product.” Perri said. “But judging from NuGene’s past work in pioneering tissue transplantation, organ transplantation, and reconstruction through biological agents instead of cyberware, I’d have to guess it must be something along those lines.”
“Yes.” Silverstaff said. “My father was a leader in introducing biomedial services in the Tir. Most elves don’t like the idea of invasive surgeries except as life-threatening conditions warrant. But my father and his R&D teams came up with medical procedures, medicines, and tissue treatments that have saved and improved many lives. At NuGene, we’ve wanted to continue that.”
“And you’re going to try to develop that new market here in Seattle?”
“Ever since Portland shut down as a port city,” Silverstaff said, “we knew we’d have to move on to become viable in the economic community again. Seattle is where the action is. People come here from all over the world. We want to be able to get our products and services to those who need them. Perhaps this will lead the way for other elven corporations. We elves of Tir Taimgire run the risk of becoming stagnant if we wall ourselves off from the world.”
“Keep the pointy-eared little freaks at home if you want them to live.” the other policlubber suggested. His friend high-fived him and they both laughed.
“And speaking of children,” Twyst went on smoothly, “I’m told you’re going to have an addition to your household.” The camera cut to Ariadne Silverstaff, her name conveniently filled in below her picture, too. She wore a conservatively pastel pink dress that echoed some of the purple from her husband’s clothing. She touched her round stomach. “The doctor says any day now.”
Twyst leaned back in her chair and faced the camera, making some glib comment about what a devoted couple these two were.
Silverstaff took up his wife’s hand and kissed it. “Aye, but it is the touch of this fine lady’s fingers that has captured the heart of a rogue.”
“Frag,” Duran whispered, “you can taste the NewSweet from here.”
A caption suddenly appeared at the bottom of the trideo screens, announcing that a live transmission from downtown Seattle was about to be joined.
The policlubbers were more vocal in their denouncements and started yelling for the managers of the trideo outlet to change the channel.
“So what do you want?” Perri Twyst asked. “A son or a daughter?”
“Whatever it is, boy or girl, we will love the child. Our physician didn’t want Ariadne traveling at this time ...”
“... but I didn’t want to be away from my husband’s side.” the woman added. “If the baby should be born here ...”
“... we’ll take that as a good omen for our recent efforts in Seattle.” Silverstaff said.
“That sounds great.” Twyst said. “And you’ll have to come back on the show and let us introduce him—or her—to the world. Please.”
The canned applause was interrupted by the switch from televised show to a street scene. Chelsea Sable, KTXX Action Eye reporter, was dressed in a white low-cut blouse that left her shoulders exposed, and tight purple jeans that left little to the imagination.
The reporter was crossing the street against the traffic with her cameraman following closely behind. Cars had stopped and a few honked in mild irritation. In the background, the warehouse where the elves had brought Skater that morning had been roped off in yellow tape. Lone Star uniforms held the perimeters with automatic weapons.
Sable spoke in her normal tone, a sub-dermal microphone making her voice clear and resonant. “—you’re joining us here live, at the site of what I’ve been told was a major gun battle today at noon.” The reporter kept moving toward the police line. Three Lone Star uniforms broke from their posts and moved in an interception path. “However, investigating authorities declined to mention that in their reports earlier this afternoon.”
The cameraman panned around the street, picking up the crowd that was starting to form. The KTXX mobile van was parked with two wheels up on the curb in front of Esoteric’s
Lore Store & More across the street. Going Out Of Business banners covered the tops of the two plate-glass windows.
“Come on.” Skater said as he looked at the sea of faces the camera was picking up. He led the way into the trideo store.
The sales clerk behind the glass display counter was thin and angular. His hair had been cut to leave three stripes that ran from his forehead to the nape of his neck. All the stripes were done in black and white.
“Something I can do for you, chummer?” the clerk asked. “Can you record that?” Skater asked, pointing to the trideo showing Sable’s telecast.
“I can sell you a recorder, or I can sell you a trideo set.” the clerk said.
“If you’ve got something set up and ready to roll,” Skater said, “I'm sure I can make it worth your while.” He showed a credstick he’d recovered from one of his small stashes. “What do you think?”
The cleric reached up to a shelf behind him and popped a chip into the recorder sitting there. “KTXX, huh?”
"Yeah.” Skater watched the screen, barely registering the security camera that locked onto him from the upper corner of the ceiling. He knew Duran had noticed it, too, because the ork stood with his back to the camera.
Sable was having no luck at all in crossing the police barrier. She talked to a plainclothes detective in the end, though, right before she got the boot. The warehouse was the scene of an ongoing investigation, the groundhound yelled at her. and there was no way the media was going to be allowed access. Sable and her production team retreated to the other side of the street. During all of that, the camera had been busy moving, scanning the crowd that had gathered. partly out of interest and partly because the street was blocked.
In the middle of the reporter’s explanation to the camera that she’d been tipped off about the shooting and that it was possibly related to the jailbreak from Lone Star Security Services that morning. Sable’s transmission was cut short. The channel went to a popular game show, already in progress. “That’s it.” Skater said. “I’ll take the chip.”
The clerk nodded, popping his gum in careless abandon, and retrieved the optical chip from the recorder. “Pleasure doing business with you.”
Skater nodded and pocketed the chip as he headed for the door. Outside, he made straight for the telcoms again. He connected to the illegal line Wheeler had arranged at Archibald’s apartment.
Wheeler answered on the first ring. “Yeah.”
“I need to talk to Archaneel.”
“Done.”
“You want to tell me what’s going on?” the ork said in a low voice that wouldn’t carry.
“Faces.” Skater replied.
“Faces?” Duran echoed.
“That newscast went out live and got pulled.” Skater said. “If the fix is really in, there won’t be any copies of that transmission to be had.”
“So?”
“I’m here.” Archangel said, sounding distant, like she’d just jacked out of the Matrix.
“We’re at the Renton Mall.” Skater told her. “I ju
st got a celebrity spot on a security camera in a shop called Matt & Matt’s Trideo Concepts. I need to know if you can access it and bone the security system’s memory.”
“Shouldn’t take more than a simple sleaze utility to get in and a chaotic crash and edit program to scramble their sec-cam files.” Archangel said. “Does this have to be subtle?”
“No. Duran and I are clear. And if the security memory goes missing, there’s nothing to tie us to the place.”
“Jack.” The decker seemed hesitant, then just pushed the words out. “I checked Larisa’s med records. She had the baby three weeks ago at Harborview Hospital. It was stillborn. I’m sorry.”
Skater felt the cold chill of an unexplained loss drift through him. “Thanks.” he made himself say. He punched the Disconnect.
“What’s this about faces?” Duran asked.
“Let’s make ourselves scarce.” Skater headed for the southern exit. Bright bars of sunlight slashed through the glass doors and lay in straight lines against the tiled floor. “There’s an outside chance that some of the elves we braced today might have been nosing around the warehouse area during the investigation. If we can identify them for Archangel, she might be able to find out who they were.”
“We stand still long enough, they’re going to make a run at us. We could idee them then.”
“If we could be sure we’d live long enough to get it done.” Skater said. “When the time comes to go up against these people, I want some aces in my pocket. I like moving.” Duran nodded. “Something to keep in mind, though: a moving target only has the illusion of being safe. Kind of fades away when you hear somebody yell, pull! And you figure out you’re just another skeet.”
* * *
Brynna Rose lived in the same three-story walk-up apartment overlooking Seattle University that she’d had when Skater had first met her over a year ago. The neighborhood was run-down in places, victimized by the students who haunted the area for cheap housing.
They left the car a block away and walked through a maze of dumpsters, broken and discarded furniture, and makeshift clothes lines that held sheets and other articles. From his two previous visits, Skater knew that, one way or another, the clothing would be gone by the time it was fully dark.
