Talon thought the comment strange coming from a being who would have been considered "magical" not so many years ago. Then he thought about what it must be like to be a troll or an ork. For them, magic might be more of a raw deal than it was for a magician like Talon, and not something they'd want to put their trust in.
"That's pretty much it." Trouble said, blanking the viewscreen and pulling the plug from her datajack. "You've all seen the rest of the file on Goronay and there's not much else to say. He was married, but his wife's been dead for eight years. They have no children, no other living relatives. He's not political, which is typical for most academics. His papers haven't stirred up any major controversies, except maybe among a few fellow academics. No shady past, no indications of any skeletons hidden in his closet."
"What about medical records?" Talon asked. "Anything that might suggest why he'd go crazy like that?"
Trouble shook her head and rolled the cyberdeck's viewscreen back into its case. "Nada. I managed to get hold of his medical files through the University's insurance provider. He's in good health, goes for regular checkups. Doesn't smoke, drinks moderately, and keeps in shape. No history of psychological problems of any kind, apart from the fact that apparently he's not terribly social. Nothing out of sorts for an elderly university professor."
"Damn." Talon said quietly. "That doesn't make things any—" The sound of the door opening carried into the room, and every member of the team was immediately on his or her feet, hands hovering close to their weapons.
"Its okay, guys, it's just Val." came the voice of Aracos from out of the air.
"I wish he wouldn't do that." Hammer muttered to Talon, who ignored the comment and silently told the spirit to do the same.
"Thanks, Aracos." he said aloud.
Val came into the room and glanced over at Talon. Her face was tightly controlled, not showing any sign of what she was feeling, and Talon resisted the urge to use his magical senses to read her aura to find out.
"Well?" he said.
"She'll see us." Val said. "I set up a meet for two hours from now."
"How many?"
"Just you and me. If it's more than that, she won't come."
Talon nodded. "All right then. You guys keep working on the other angles while Val and I talk to her . . . contact, okay?"
"Check in after the meet." Trouble said. "If we don't hear from you, we'll come looking."
Talon tapped the side of his head and grinned.
"No problem. I'll give you a buzz on the commlink when I've got something, and I'll bring Aracos along to keep an eye on things. He can always come back and let you chummers know if something happens." "Like you could leave me behind." his ally spoke into Talon's mind.
"What's it called again?" Talon asked as Val drove them along the winding road out of Diisseldorf, toward the outskirts of the plex.
"Zombietown." Val said. "That's what most people call it."
"Sounds charming."
"Oh, it is." she said with an ironic smile. "But it's also pretty lawless, at least in the lower levels. There's not much chance of running into any unexpected problems with the local law down there."
"So it's something like the Ork Underground in Seattle?"
Val shrugged. "Couldn't say. I've never seen it."
"It's an interesting place." Talon said. "Remind me to tell you about it sometime."
Val took a moment before she spoke. "You know, we haven't really talked much since you got us together." she said.
It was Talon's turn to shrug. "My loss. It's just that you never seemed all that interested in talking, and I try to stay out of people's personal business. Force of habit."
"I understand." she said. "It's not a criticism. I just wanted to say . . . well, thank you for the talk we had at the Avalon, and for letting me come on this run."
"Null sheen." Talon said. "I appreciate your help."
"This will be a good thing." Val said, almost to herself. "It's something I've needed to do for a long time."
Talon wondered who she was trying to convince, him or herself. There was a moment of uncomfortable silence in the car as Val guided it smoothly along at speeds that probably would have gotten them pulled over immediately in Boston (assuming such speeds were even possible on any of the city's congested roads).
"So, tell me more about this 'zombietown' place." Talon finally said.
"Its real name is Wuppertal, built up around the Wupper River. About forty years ago or so, the government decided to handle the area's overcrowding by simply building right over the whole river valley. The city covers the valley, and the river runs under it. Concrete pillars and support structures divide the undercity into four levels that descend down to the old riverbank. The lower levels have artificial light and ventilation systems to bring in clean air from above, but it still tends to stink down there.
"Because the undercity only has artificial light, it's attracted a lot of metahumans who can't take natural sunlight. They live down there, along with a lot of norms who come for the cheap rents and whatever work is available. The ones who don't find jobs get pushed down to the lower levels, where things are even cheaper. The lowest level has a lot of squatters and cast-offs, who probably don't have much chance of finding their way out again."
Talon shook his head sadly. "Like I said, sounds charming. And your friend is going to meet US there?"
Val nodded. "There are plenty of places to meet in Zombietown where we won't be overheard. Estelle prefers it that way."
"Do you really think she can help us?" Talon asked.
"I don't know if she will," Val said, "but if anyone knows the ins and outs of the Alliance and all the policlubs, it's 'Stelle. She's respected by a lot of people in the shadows."
There was a note of pain in her voice that made Talon want to ask if Val was all right with this, but he decided to leave it alone. Val would deal with things in her own way. If she wanted to talk about it, she would.
* * *
The Krystalnacht Club was near the lowest level of the underground city, reachable through a rat's maze of narrow corridors lit by flickering electrical lights, its stagnant air pushed slowly around by giant ventilation fans. The entrance led down several steps into the sunken club floor. A bar curved around one side of it like a coiled snake, while tables filled the rest of the establishment. There was a small stage where a pair of scantily clad elven dancers gyrated slowly, almost trancelike, and a few tables where various dice and card games were going on, to considerably more interest than the dancers.
The whole of it was lit by neon signs adorning the walls and by dim track lighting on the ceiling. Tall panels of glass glazed in a cracked, spider web pattern broke up the walls and refracted the colored light from behind them, casting strange shadows over everything.
Talon let Val lead the way into the club as he had through most of Wuppertal. The undercity was a maze, but Val navigated it as if she had lived there all her life. Talon wondered how much time she'd spent here before deciding to leave Germany, but she wasn't making any more small talk. Talon, too, preferred to keep alert for anything that might be lurking in the shadowy alleys and dark corners of the underground.
Val stopped at the top of the stairs leading down into the club and slowly scanned the room. Then she descended the steps, with Talon close behind. The pair of them drew curious glances from the various club-goers, who almost instantly turned back to their drinks, their games, and the gyrations of the dancers. Like anywhere else in the shadows, too much curiosity in a place like the Krystalnacht could be dangerous.
Val led Talon to a corner booth where a woman sat, alone. She looked human, with blond hair pulled back into a thick braid at the base of her skull. There were a few streaks of gray in it, worn like proud badges of a life hard-won. Her face was handsome rather than pretty, with solid features, a firm mouth, and blue eyes like the depths of a frozen lake. There were a few crow's feet around her eyes, some lines around her mouth, giving her an air
of maturity. She wore a dark, heavy cloak of forest green, almost black in the dim light of the club. Underneath was a sturdy-looking tunic and leather vest. Both hands rested on the table in front of her, the fingers long and slender, the nails trimmed short. A gold ring carved in the shape of twining vines and leaves gleamed from her right hand.
"Estelle," Val said to the woman, "this is Talon." She spoke in German, which the language chip downloaded into Talon's headware translated for him. "Talon, this is Lady Estelle."
Talon nodded to the woman and felt the force of her gaze.
"She's definitely a mage, boss, and she's got some pretty serious mojo." Aracos said in Talon's mind. "She either isn't bothering to hide it, or she's even tougher than she looks to me. She's also got some company close by. There's an air elemental hanging over the table. Looks pretty tough, too."
"Could you take it out?" Talon thought.
"If I have to, but I'd rather not have to find out."
"Hopefully, it won’t come to that."
"Your spirit is powerful." Estelle said by way of a greeting.
Talon wasn't sure whether she meant Aracos or his own spirit, so he simply nodded politely. "Thank you."
"Please sit." she said. Talon and then Val slid into the booth opposite Estelle. "Whatever you want must be quite important if it brings Val back here." she said, turning her attention to Val for the first time. "I recall you saying you never wanted to come back."
"I didn't." Val said. "But like you said, it's important. As I told you on the telecom, we need some information."
"What kind of information?"
Talon took a folded sheet of paper from inside his long coat, unfolded it, and held it out to Estelle.
"Information on either of these two men. The one on the right is Dr. Alexi Goronay. We've heard that the man on the left is a member of Alt Welt."
Estelle took the sheet of paper and looked at it for a while. According to Val, the people Lady Estelle worked with weren't terribly fond of nationalist policlubs like Alt Welt, so Talon hoped she would be willing to tell them what she knew. If not for old times' sake where Val was concerned, then to frag off a rival policlub.
"You've been misled, then." Estelle said, dropping the paper on the table. "Alt Welt isn't a real power in Germany. It's little more than a sham, a front used by other policlubs to hide their activities and give the government and the authorities somewhere to focus their investigations. A few years ago, it was der Nachtmachen who were using it, now it looks like someone else is.
"This man," she said, pointing at the paper, "is a member of der Runenthing. Do you know of them?"
Talon shook his head.
"They're a sort of policlub." Val told him. "Actually, they're more of a magical lodge. They're devoted to worship of the Aesir, the old Norse-Teutonic gods, and to the preservation of ancient Aryan styles of magic, especially rune magic. They're also racist neo-Nazis who are against women, metahumans, foreigners, and pretty much anyone else who isn't a white Aryan male."
"Very good." Estelle said. "I'm surprised you remember so much."
"I've got a good memory." Val said.
"So I see. Must be all those computer chips you've had put into your brain."
Talon felt Val tense next to him and gently laid a hand on her knee. She relaxed slightly as he brought the talk back to the matter at hand.
"Do you know his name?" he asked, jerking his chin toward the printout.
"Ja." Estelle said. "I do. The question is, how much is that information worth to you?" She looked from Talon to Val and back again.
"Five hundred nuyen." Talon said quietly.
Estelle snorted in derision.
"Six hundred." Talon countered.
Eventually, they settled on an even thousand. Talon had been willing to go higher, but not much. After he took the money, in mylar hardcopy bills, from his coat and passed it quietly to Estelle, she counted it, then stashed it away under her cloak.
"His name is Heinrich Zoller. He is a zauberer, a mage, with der Runenthing. I know little else about him, apart form the fact that he is fairly wealthy and active politically in various neo-Nazi causes."
Talon nodded to Val, and the two of them slid out of the booth.
"Pleasure doing business with you." he said, and they began to walk away.
"Valkyrie." Estelle's voice called after them. "It was . . . nice to see you again."
Val didn't turn back as they continued to walk out of the Krystalnacht, but Talon could hear her muttering under her breath.
"Likewise, sister." she said.
8
"A mage, huh? That makes things more interesting."
Trouble slid onto the bed on the side opposite where Talon sat. She had just jacked herself out of her deck, where she'd been doing additional research on Runenthing and Heinrich Zoller.
"It always does." Talon mused aloud, keeping his eyes on the viewscreen folded out on the table in front of them.
Val sat in the middle, oblivious to the conversation going on around her. A slim optical cable ran from the jack behind her ear to the compact remote-control deck in her lap. Another cable ran across the floor to the small transmitter dish clipped to the windowsill. Val's eyes were closed, but open on the inside to the data being fed to her by her remote drone.
As they watched the screen, the drone was hovering over a neighborhood kilometers away, keeping watch on a residence registered to Heinrich Zoller. According to Trouble's Matrix research, Zoller used the apartment infrequently, but he'd been there recently. That made it the most likely place to start surveillance. The drone's video and audio pickups provided a clear picture of the whole area, capable of zooming in on any fine details as needed. It kept an internal high-resolution recording of everything it saw, beaming back a simsense signal to the control rig, which Val routed through the monitor so the others could watch the drone's progress. So far, things had been quiet.
"So, anything more on Zoller or the Runenthing?" Talon asked Trouble, leaning back on the bed. He thought surveillance and stakeouts were some of the worst parts of shadowruns, but they were necessary.
"More of a profile on the Runenthing," she said, "or the Verband für Völkische Zauberel, as they are officially called—the Association for National Sorcery, or something like that." Trouble stumbled over the pronunciation, but she wasn't currently using a language chip and didn't speak German. Talon had decided to shut his chip off for a while; the translations back and forth were starting to feel like having a linguistic tennis match going on in his head.
"Val's right, they're not nice folks. About the only good thing about them is that they recycle. They're strongly eco-conscious, big on protecting nature and things like that, but they also want to get back to the good old days when men carried swords and axes, women stayed at home and made babies, and the only trolls around came up out of the water to try and rip people's arms off and get slain by heroic warriors."
"Boom'll love that." Talon said. The troll and Hammer were currently out getting something to eat. Talon tried to picture his friend the cockney club owner as a mythological troll in some re-make of Beowulf. He couldn't imagine it without laughing.
"It gets better." Trouble said. "Like Val said, they're also into magic big time, but only a strictly Norse-Germanic brand of shamanism following the old Norse gods—no goddesses, of course—and they think every other spell-slinger on the planet is beneath them. Nice bunch of mages, according to the stuff on the German shadow nets."
"They're not mages." Talon said.
"Huh? Come again?"
"They're not mages." Talon repeated, propping himself up on his elbows. "You just said they were shamans. A shaman is a magician who follows a shamanic tradition of magic. A mage is a magician who follows a hermetic tradition, like me. If they're shamans, then they're not mages." It was a pet peeve of Talon's. Mundanes used the terms "mage" and "magician" like they were interchangeable.
"Okay, okay, whatever." Trouble said. "They
still sound like trouble."
"Are they involved in anything shadowy?"
"Not that anyone can say for sure. In fact, they're pretty clean for a group of misogynist racists. There are rumors connecting them to some things, natch, but all anyone can say for sure is that the Runen thing really hates this other group, SIE, which is some feminist secret society based around witchcraft and goddess worship. Sort of the kinder, female version of these skags."
That certainly made sense. Talon suspected that Lady Estelle was a member of SIE, and that Val had been one too. But Val didn't offer any information either way, and Talon saw no reason to press her for it. She trusted Estelle's word, and that was good enough for him.
"What about Zoller himself?" Talon asked.
"There I've had a little more success." Trouble slid across the bed next to Talon and called up a file on her deck, unrolling the fold-out screen so he could see it.
"Zoller, Heinrich." she read. "Born August 29, 2023, in Frankfurt. Family involved in the Frankfurt Bank Association, which pretty much runs the city these days. Hennie was born with a silver wand in his mouth. His magical talents showed up as a teenager and he attended Heidelberg on the family money, doing very well as a hermetic studies student. See? He was a mage, so there." Trouble stuck out her tongue at Talon, and he rolled his eyes. Then she continued.
"However, it seems that Hennie got involved in some pretty radical causes while he was in college. Guess he wanted to rattle Mommy and Daddy's cages. That's when he started to get into the Runenthing-thing. He changed his major in his third year to study 'nature magic,' whatever that is, and did pretty well at that, too, although it's not considered nearly as prestigious as mage-stuff."
"Nature magic is what a lot of Europeans call shamanism." Talon said. "It's a combination of old paleo-pagan beliefs, modern shamanic techniques, and a healthy dose of 'nouveau witch' for good measure. Basically the stuff the Runenthing does."
"So they're like the spell-slingers up around Salem?" Trouble said, referring to the large active witch community near Boston.
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