The Eyes of the Rigger

by Unknown

  "Are you sure MCT has something to do with your eyes?" Pandur asked.

  "Dead sure. The eyes come from the Czech Republic. So does the software. That'd have to be one hell of a coincidence. Only a big megacon's got the power to develop something like that."

  "But presumably the software was stolen. It could have been contaminated by any quack."

  "I'll tell ya the details when I get the chance, chummer. But ya better believe me - only a megacon could be behind this business. It doesn't matter a damn whether the stuff was peddled deliberately or illegally."

  The rigger fell silent. He was probably already thinking about how he could get at Krumpf. You didn't meet megacon execs at Aldiburger. If you wanted anything as definite from them as Festus did, you first had to take out the bodyguards.

  "What else is in the deck, Pandur?" Jessi looked him as straight in the eye as the rigger had. But her eyes were light-blue, warm, expressive. They dominated her face, made the tattoos pall.

  "The data our client wanted. I'd still like to hand it over to him. I'm broke, you see. I didn't run the shadows for my health."

  "If we can free the data, you'll get your ebbie. I know who's responsible for the caper now Patrick's dead. If necessary, Red Cloud'll take care of things."

  She would have turned away but Pandur wasn't finished. "I've still got data about the company's logistics in the deck," he said. "For me personally."

  Jessi's eyes widened, incredulous. "For you? So there is some deal on the side?"

  Pandur shook his head. "I don't know why I took the data. I saw the list and found it interesting. I've got no idea if it can be sold. But I'm offering both of you a share in the proceeeds if we find any takers."

  "Hmm..." went Festus. "Maybe this data is more important for AG Chemie than the information on the experiments."

  "I don't think so." Pandur was far from being so sure. Besides, it had just occurred to him what he had dreamt in the night. He was an AG Chemie exec. This data had Interested him. He wondered if this dream was the cause of his sudden interest in data on company structures and links, in statistics on sales trends and returns. He had once had a dream that got him into trouble later. Roberti. He had dreamt of him and then seen him in Jacobi's matrix. Roberti had turned up when the runners were fleeing the security people. And Roberti had proved to be the true face of the mad mage, who organized the Renraku run. Pandur wondered if there was a connection.

  Pandur could still not bring himself to hand over the cyberdeck. Without it he was just one of the many sprawl rats who had no prospects and who tried one way or another to get hold of some miserable place to spend the night and a paltry soyburger. With a magically blocked deck, though, he wasn't much more either. In any event, he had pursuers breathing down his neck. Without the deck perhaps one or two fewer.

  "Can the Klabauterbund be trusted?" he asked Jessi.

  "You find traitors, wheeler-dealers and drekheads in any grouping below the Holy Trinity, probably starting in the choir of angels," the girl replied. "But among the Klabauter there're a whole lot of good sorts, from the ecologically committed simsense rocker to the anarchist lawyer. If anything unites them it's the struggle for a life in harmony with nature and opposition to the megacons. You won't find better conditions for unselfish help. You worried about your cyberdeck?"

  "I'm worried the data will mysteriously disappear, end up with AG Chemie and we'd be dead anyway. And, of course, my cyberdeck's important to me as well."

  "You've got to have trust, Pandur. Besides, neither of us would let the deck out of our sight. You don't have to hand it over. All you have to do is permit it to undergo a magical process in the presence of others."

  "You're staying with me then?" Pandur hadn't taken it for granted.

  Jessi smiled. "You're not gonna get rid of me so easily." The rigger snorted. "Don't fool yourself, chummer. That sort of thing can happen faster than you think."

  "That's something I want to make clear," said Jessi to Pandur. "In his rage, Festus is trying to make me out to be some kind of floozy. But I'm not. I finished with Festus a week ago. Not the other way round. He just refused to accept it and laughed it off when I told him. So ka?"

  The rigger stayed silent. Pandur felt sorry for him somehow. But he couldn't help him. Even so, he was relieved he hadn't been the cause of the split. Now he could appreciate better why the rigger had held back from him. It had hurt him for his former lover to go to bed with another guy and he'd probably hoped to win her back. That was understandable. And naturally it had hit the man hard: maggots in his head and the boot from his girlfriend. Pandur could understand him only too well.

  "You'll need help," he said spontaneously. "Hold off on your revenge till the Klabauter have freed the deck. Let's do MCT together."

  "I can manage that on my own," Festus retorted curtly.

  Who's the lone wolf here? Pandur wondered.

  "Forget your pride, chummer," he said. "We really shouldn't split up. The hitmen are out to get all three of us, not just one alone. They take what they can get: one ass, two asses, three asses. It's obvious they'll have a harder time if we look out for each other. What odds do you have against two hitmen, a rogue mafioso and whatever the fuck else they let loose on us? Imagine, your maggots start doing the samba at the crucial moment. D'you think you could pass on your personal words of thanks to Doc Krumpf then?"

  He didn't know if these were the right arguments for a man who was probably bound to die anyway. But nothing better occurred to him.

  "Pandur's right," Jessi was supporting him. "You've got to take that leap of faith. I like you in spite of everything and you know that. I wouldn't like to see you go to the dogs."

  The rigger deliberated for a while.

  "Okay, fine," he said. "You two help me and I'll help you. We stay a team till the data's been delivered. Provided my head holds up. As for Prague, we'll talk about that when it's time."

  Pandur and Jessi breathed a sigh of relief.

  "How're we gonna go about it?" The rigger picked up his fiber-optics lead and prepared to jack into the Delphin's onboard computer.

  "Music Island, as planned," Jessi answered. "In the Reaktor or wherever we get the first opportunity, I'll get onto the Klabauterbund on the vidphone. They'll send some people along to pick us up and take us to safety. Then we'll see."

  "So ka."

  Festus jacked in. The HighPower 12 storage batteries commenced to hum quietly. The Delphin got underway. Festus was silent. He needed all his concentration to guide the boat among the shallows and obstacles of the canals and former streets.

  The Delphin dived into the sunken part of Music Island. Several times the boat threatened to get stuck in the jumble of shattered pilings and crumpled steel girders, and at times Festus had to turn it on a penny or inch it back and forth to get through the confines of the labyrinth. Without rigger control the passage wouldn't have been possible. Or the rudder would have been damaged. Or the sharp steel and concrete edges would have slit open the hull. In any event, the crew would have drowned wretchedly sooner or later.

  After sheer endless turning, twisting, inching forward and reversing, they had made it. Festus took the boat to the surface and pulled his fiber-optics lead out of the rigger control and forehead jack. He smoothed down his grey hair and grinned. "Didn't think myself we'd get through. I once swam this route in diving gear but wasn't sure if the gaps were big enough for our floating coffin."

  "Drekhead!" The girl shot him an angry look. "Why didn't you tell us that before?"

  "What for? So you could shit your pants? Couldn't use any panic on board. It's enough that the skipper flips out now and again, right?"

  "You could've taken a different route. We only said Music Island because you sold us on the route. You described it as safe."

  "What d'you want? Anybody been spitting ammo at us? Was so safe, was so easy on the stomach. You can't have any complaints."

  "What's the big idea, Festus?" said Jessi. "You used
to only take calculated risks."

  Festus shrugged his shoulders unconcerned. "So what? The risk was calculated. The route just had to be tried out. Sure, could be I set the risk threshold a bit higher. Dunno. Might be. Maybe I don't value my lousy ass like I used to."

  The girl said nothing.

  Pandur also stayed quiet. There was no sense in pointing out to the chummer that he wasn't the only one on board. He decided, though, to take this attitude of the rigger into account in future. Besides the danger that Festus's brain maggots could make him freak out, this was one more reason to put their reliance on him and his cybersenses only in an emergency.

  They found themselves in a hall with leaning, buckled walls. Moonlight and flickering laser light came in through cracks and window apertures that had been fitted with metal grills or blocked up at a later date. The ceiling sagged at 45 degrees, the floor too. The Delphin was floating in the part of the hall that was awash with water. Only the rear third of the hall floor was dry.

  When Festus opened the vehicle's dome, stinking but cool air reached them. Despite the chemical vapors, it was refreshing compared with the hot, sticky air in the Delphin. With the air came sounds. Engines, turbines, generators, pounding rock music. From overhead and from all sides, from the Island and from outside. It was four in the morning but that made no difference. The Island was humming around the clock. Boats were moving on the canals. In the bars, people were busy drinking, getting doped up, enjoying the stimulation of better-than-live electronics. Only in the later morning hours did the place quieten down a little.

  Getting out of the boat was tricky. They had to wade up to their knees in pestilent water and had trouble working their way up the sloping floor to a door opening at the top. Pandur slid down at one point, landing up to his stomach in water. He spared Jessi a similar fate by grabbing hold of her quickly. Only Festus climbed up with the soreness of a sleepwalker, the case containing his precious spares, and the Combat Gun, slung over his shoulders. His synthmuscles and cyberboosted reflexes adjusted for any false steps. Apart from that he had excellent climbing boots. When the other two had finally made it, he had been sitting on the door's threshold for a while and had submerged the Delphin with the remote control.

  "Just in case," he said. "Though I don't think anyone could find the tub here and then pilot it back to open water. It'd probably go to the bottom sooner or later."

  "The Warriors'll have a lot to thank you for." Jessi put in. " The Warriors can kiss my fanny," Festus came back. "I'm freelance, not like you."

  Pandur shook the water out of his clothes and checked the cyberdeck and his Secura. Neither of them had suffered.

  Festus led the chummers into the adjoining room, which proved to be big and just as empty. It lay a ways above the water and had subsided less badly. The next, smaller room had gaping cracks in it but the slope of the floor was far less pronounced. As in the other rooms, the windows had metal grills over them. The exit was likewise blocked.

  The rigger didn't let this stop him. He didn't even think it worthwhile squandering ammo on it. He examined the grill briefly, seized it in two strategically important spots and lifted it cleanly off its hinges.

  They were standing in a windowless stairwell. Broad steps led upstairs and down. The lighting down here had stopped working or been switched off, but enough light percolated through to them from the upper stories.

  The music had grown louder and more droaning.

  Festus pointed upward with his thumb. "The Reaktor, as promised. Further up are the shithouses. You're back home, chummers."

  "You might be," retorted Pandur sarcastically. "I sleep in a proper bed."

  The rigger skipped a reply and stomped up the stairs. Pandur and the girl a few steps behind.

  One floor up, they encountered the first three characters. Young men with rainbow-colored dreadlocks, facial tattoos, synthskin sprayed onto their naked bodies, one in bright red, the others in garish green. Glazed eyes. They seemed to be a trio, had shot some stuff as a trio and as a trio were setting about ridding themselves of it.

  They paid absolutely no attention to the runners, weren't even bothered by the Combat Gun the rigger carried openly. They were probably used to sights like that. They disappeared from the corridor through the door of a room whose odor left no doubt as to the functions performed there.

  The walls were covered from top to bottom with graffiti, either daubed on or sprayed on.

  GreenWar symbols, swastikas, the A of the anarchists, SS runes, arabic and cyrillic characters, the Christian fish symbol, hammer and sickle, any number of erect phalluses.

  WAR ON THE MEGACONS... FUCK THE NAK... FREE THE CYBERWARE SLAVES... FUCKING FOR VALHALLA... WITCH MIGHT ALL RIGHT... MORE EDJUCAYSHION FOR ALL... DON'T SHOOT THE BREEZE, JUST SHOOT... DEATH TO THE ANARCHIST RABBLE... MEN STINK... EVERYTHING'S NOTHING... THERE'S NOTHING NEW ANYMORE... HATE-SS... CRYPTO CYBERWARE CHEAP AT JEDDI'S...

  The light became darker, more colorful, more flickering. Festus pushed open a wood swing-door. Noise. Throbbing music.

  They were in the Reaktor. Blind, misted aluminum, waste drums bearing the symbol for atomic radiation as stools and tables, filth-encrusted stroboscopes only capable of dull flashes of light, the walls imitating control boards, but with most lights not working anymore. About a hundred characters, women and men, norms and metahumans, were standing or sitting in a five-hundred-meter-square hall. A mixed clientele: from the chic sararimouse in fashionable duds to an almost naked elf woman with a slung, one-and-a-half-meter-long, wired laser ax; from members of a street gang all looking as pale as if the turf they controlled was a cemetery to long-haired guys in pink kaftans; and a one-time street samurai in a wheelchair, half his body missing, including his face. He still had his shooter, with or without ammunition. He'd probably been given the wheelchair by his health insurance company in lieu of a fee for a trid commercial. "And now we're going to show you what you health insurance company doesn't pay for if you're foolish enough to lead a health-endangering life."

  On the stage up front, a band was playing. Synthesizer-guitar, two digitally distorted flutes, a kettle-drum, a girl singer. The drum bore the name of the band: Sparkling Furuncles. Two norms and a dwarf were on the instruments, a troll banged away frighteningly on the drum, but rarely kept in time with the others. Except for him, the band wasn't especially loud. Their amps had probably been castrated so that the people in the hall could talk. The scrawny singer, a consumptive-looking, pimply punk kid, was singing something about a chummer called Ferret Charly, who had eyes of amber, a cock of plastic and a cyberass.

  The song was mediocre, and so was the band. But what could you expect if you gate-crashed a place at four in the morning.

  The runners didn't risk radiation sickness, choosing instead the direct path to the front entrance. Nobody stepped in their way. Soon they were in a passage with a multi-colored plexglass domed roof. There was tons of trash on the floor. Apparently the place was only swept on high days and holidays, and they were unknown here. To left and right winked the laser-light facades of other bars, simsense centers, brothels and cheap eateries. A few characters who might have been carrying their vibroknives or snapclaws loose were hanging around. But at both ends of the passage there were two raised, armor-glazed booths. In each of them there were two guys in black and yellow outfits, the symbol of a clenched fist on their chests, armored like turtles, imitation German Army helmets pulled down low in the nape of the neck, artillery in their arms. Some local security service.

  The unsavory characters that stank of mugging either put their trust in their quick legs or in a sudden series of heart attacks among the helmeted gentry. When they saw Festus with a chipped-up Combat Gun, they cast off all hope and turned away.

  One of the distinct advantages of the passage was the presence of a vidphone, which even proved to be working. While Festus and Pandur took up position outside, Jess' took out her chipcard and punched in a number.

  The conversation t
ook about two minutes. Pandur could only catch snatches of it and a glimpse of an old woman with snowy white hair and a high-necked black robe on the vidscreen. She had large, piercing eyes. Even without being able to make out the sparkling objects woven into her hair - they were presumably magical artefacts - Pandur knew immediately that there was a mage at the other end of the line. Finally the conversation ended and Jessi left the booth.

  "I spoke with Irdina," she said. "The mage the water nymph has contact with. She has a great deal of influence in the Federation and is going to make all the necessary arrangements. We're being picked up in ten minutes."

  "Is she gonna come riding up on a witch's broomstick?" asked the Rigger skeptically.

  "She's not a witch, but a shaman who worships the Great Mother," the girl replied impatiently. "Anyway, she's not coming herself, she's sending a few reliable people. In a copter. Hey, what're you two waiting for? We've got to get up to the heliport on the roof."

  They hurried past the security men, who goggled at them with frogs' eyes under the army helmets without stirring from their raised chairs. Indolent eyes followed them as they crossed the foyer of the building and finally reached the open-air staircase through a glass tunnel. It was only then that they turned their attention back to their clients in the passage.

  The staircase was a steel structure attached to the outside of the building, leading from the quays to the individual galleries and ending at the uppermost platform of the Island, which served as the helicopter port.

  All around, the lights of the megaplex shimmered. Like Christmas tree lights, the facades of the pyramid-shaped company strongholds twinkled across from the business district; in the distance, the scurrying laser reflections of St Pauli beckoned enticingly; while nearby St Georg glowed a dim red, promising pleasure in all its perverse and bloody variety and shying away from the light.

  On the Island's quays, mega-bright spotlights glared, lighting up every last centimeter of concrete. Several groups of visitors got into motor boats and Russian rickshaws. Electric engines purred quietly. A boat was just casting off, another heading for the anchorage it had vacated. Pandur eyed the newcomers attentively. Aboard the dome boat there were nine or ten young people, all with wayout heads of hair and facial tattoos, half of them female. They were laughing and goofing around. The party was escorted by three security men with slung rifles.