Streetlethal

by Steven Barnes

  "Burned-out. Cold. Lonely. You know—a lot like it is in here."

  Promise glared at her. "Time for the sermonette?"

  "Is that what you call it when someone tries to give you some friendly advice?"

  "No. That I call meddling."

  Mira met her eyes, watched Promise's shift away nervously. "If you're going to stay here with us, there are some things you'll have to learn. One of them is that we need each other, and every part of this family exists because the other parts take care of what they're supposed to be doing. It doesn't work too well when one part is sitting up feeling bad for herself, unless she realizes that there's pain everywhere around her too."

  "You're saying that he needs me?"

  "Something like that."

  "Why? Am I the only woman here?" She pulled the blankets up to her chin, almost hiding behind them, and squeezed bunches of the cloth between her fingers so tightly that her knuckles whitened. "I'm damned tired of being needed. Being needed is just the flip side of being royally screwed, you know that?"

  "Is that what you think?"

  "That's what I know, honey." She burrowed deeper into her sheet, and hissed her breath out in a long, tired sigh. "That's what I know. He doesn't need me, and I don't need him." . "You don't?"

  Promise's voice was becoming sleepy. "I've got everything I need."

  Mira shook her head. "If you're all that you've got, I feel sorry for you, because right now, you're not very much."

  Promise sank into her sheets, her face full of pain and betrayal. She tried to find something to say, something bitter and clever, but it just wasn't there. Finally she said, in a very small voice, "I used to be."

  Mira shook her head and left the room.

  The shadows of the stubby buildings were lengthening in the twilight. Down in the street a few furtive shapes combed through the wreckage for the thousandth time. Mira watched them, feeling old, and tired. The figures moved with the halting shuffle-step that marked the deteriorated Thai-VI victim.

  She wished there was something, anything, that she could do to help, to ease their suffering, even to quicken the inevitable; but there was nothing, and she didn't bother trying to find some ways to make the impossible possible.

  Sometimes it just hurt, that was all.

  "You bleed for them, Mira," Warrick said softly behind her.

  She turned, smiling sadly. "Silly of me?"

  "Silly perhaps, but very Mira." He reached out to trace the edge of a finger along her jawline, and the sadness welled into tears at the corners of her eyes. "How are our patients?"

  "We're... going to lose Conners."

  "The crushed chest. Yes, I know." He touched Mira's face, tracing a deep wrinkle line. "There's something else, isn't there?"

  "It's really nothing. I don't want to concern you with it."

  "Then it's Aubry, who lies about his name, and the woman Promise."

  "Damn you, Kevin Warrick. I can't hide anything at all from you, can I?"

  He took her hand and led her over to the side, sitting her down. He took her hand in his and placed it gently to his hollow cheek. "Now, tell me—what is it about them that troubles you?"

  "It doesn't really make sense, but I feel that they're... dangerous somehow."

  "Yes," he said sadly. "I feel... that they are in the grip of something they do not understand."

  "What is it?"

  "I don't know. The dreams come, and they go, and they leave bits and pieces of things for me to understand later. What do we know of these people? That they were running from something. Trouble with the law? That doesn't bother me.

  There is something else " He pinched the bridge of his nose, and gazed out down the hall, his eyes filling with shadows. "I don't know. Not sure. What about their personal possessions?"

  Mira got up heavily, fished in a series of boxes piled up near the supplies, and returned with a water-stained bodypouch. "Aubry was carrying this."

  There was nothing in it but a few concentrated fuel bars, a micro-thin poncho, and a letter, which Warrick examined curiously. "I think I'll be rude," he said, and opened it. It was completely waterlogged, the ink smeared so that barely one word in three was fully legible. He chuckled to himself, and started to fold it back up again. Then he stopped, unfolded it, and looked closely at the watermark at the bottom. "Odd—"

  He rubbed at it with his thumb, and it smeared. "Hmm ... I wonder."

  "Wonder what?"

  "Do you know what this 'watermark' looks like? What it reminds me of? A spore print. A mushroom spore print. See how it used to be roughly symmetrical?"

  Mira took the sheet of paper from him and held it up to the light. "Mmmm... you might be right." She shrugged. "And if it's true? We have plenty of mushrooms. Our farms hardly need any new strains to work with."

  "No " He took the paper back from her, and crinkled it in his hands, thinking. "No, not food mushrooms "

  Suddenly he seemed hollow, as if his mind had drifted somewhere far away, and when she touched his arm, it felt cold. "What is it?" she whispered, startled by his lack of response.

  His face was glassy, emotionless, and when he spoke, it was as from a far-off place, somewhere that she could not follow. "This is the thing," he whispered. "This piece of paper is the danger."

  Mira wanted to laugh, then saw the deadly seriousness in his face and backed off.

  "I will take it to Emil. He will grow it for me."

  "This thing, this sporeprint, is dangerous to us?"

  "Yes," he whispered, "many will die."

  "Die? Then destroy it!" She snatched at the paper, but his wrist turned in a movement like a butterfly's wings, and it fluttered out of the path of her hand.

  "No, we have no right. It was meant to exist. It is more important than any of my works. Certainly more important than my life."

  "Kevin—"

  He smiled down at her with bemused resignation. "What will be will be, Mira. My place in this drama is to give them a chance to grow."

  She held out her hand for the sheet again. Calmly, he handed it to her. She studied it, the splotches and wet marks, then shook her head. "No. It's too contaminated. You'll grow twenty kinds of mold and fungus before you see anything of this strain. It can't work."

  "It will work." He held out his hand for the sheet, and reluctantly, she handed it over to him.

  He folded it and slipped it into his pocket. Then he kissed his sister gently on the forehead, turned, and left.

  Mira watched him leave, hoping that he was wrong, that the mushrooms would not grow, or that if they did, they would be totally harmless.

  It was not the first time she had hoped her brother was wrong. But she prayed that this time, for once, her wish would come true.

  11. “Love for Sale"

  For his size—his dark pullover and elbow-length cloak tended to decrease its impact. But it was utterly impossible to mistake the strength and control in every movement.

  His sloping brow and the tight, wiry curls covering his head reinforced the image. He had few friends, used no drugs, took no women. In some ways he seemed to be part of a sidestream in human evolution, something that had been bred purely for physical intimidation.

  Tomaso drummed his fingers, noting for the tenth time the two empty chairs at the far end of the table. As he did, his eyes flickered past Sims, and he noticed that the greenish-yellow hair was tinted blue. He cursed under his breath and fiddled with the control in his right armrest, correcting the color in the hologram. Sims, the communications man, was a cold point in the room. If Wu was nervous concern and Mirabal lazy anticipation, Sims gave off no emotion at all. He was a lean man with a thin face under a mop of dyed hair. His contacts ranged from the military to the inside of the federal penitentiaries, from Europe to Asia, and Luis had often boasted that Sims could acquire anything, given the time and money. Now he seemed like a humming motor in neutral gear, uncommitted, waiting for a purpose.

  His image was pumped in from Santa Barbara
, as theirs was beamed to him.

  Mirabal's flat voice rumbled next to Tomaso. "It's a game," he said. "We know why Gibbs is stalling."

  Tomaso nodded agreement and tapped Gibbs's code into the computer. A grid of the San Jose area appeared on a projection field in front of him. It disappeared and refocused twice, each time zeroing in on a smaller area until Tomaso was looking at the schematics of Gibbs's house. There was the blip—in the communications center.

  The heartbeat was fast, but otherwise perfectly healthy. Tomaso opened his mouth to curse, and the air around one of the empty chairs began to sparkle as Gibbs came on line.

  The master of the West Coast prostitution division smiled nervously.

  "Greetings, Tomaso." The trace of a smile flickered out and died. "My condolences once again on the death of your brother. My report—"

  "Shall wait until Margarete has joined us."

  Gibbs opened his mouth and then closed it, gulping like a beached fish. Almost on cue, the chair at the end of the table began to glimmer, and an image began to form.

  Margarete was old. It seemed that her skin had been stretched and dried to a leatherlike texture that had no life in it at all. Even her small dark eyes were dead and unfocused. Although she appeared to be sitting up at the table, Tomaso had the impression that she was actually lying down, the image rotated to an upright position. When she spoke, her voice was an electronically augmented crackle.

  "Tomaso," she said, ignoring the other men at the table. The voice was so flat that the t sound could easily have been mistaken for a d.

  "Margarete. I trust that you are well?"

  "An asinine question. What news of Luis's murderers?" She pronounced each separate syllable with painful care, as if her voice were the only firm tool remaining to her.

  Tomaso looked into the sightless eyes, and nerved himself. It was like staring into total darkness, wondering if the next step would find firm ground, or a back-breaking fall. "Yes, Grandmother. We know that the assassins worked as a team, and that a woman was infiltrated into the social gathering held a week ago last Friday. She, in turn, assisted the man with his entry."

  Margarete held up a skeletal finger. "What happened to your security?" She paused, sucking air. "I wish to know everything."

  "Of course. Mirabal?"

  The security chief closed his eyes and recited as if a tersely worded scroll were parading down the inside of his lids. "The woman's name is Promise. Exotic dancer; first known contact, Vegas in '12. Worked L.A. as a courtesan, first for the Gibbs agency, then as an Indy. The day before the assassination she rejoined the agency." He opened his eyes and fixed them upon an uneasy Gibbs. "Apparently, their screening process was inadequate."

  "I can explain," Gibbs said nervously. Tomaso waved his hand sharply. "Don't interrupt, Victor. You'll have your chance to speak. Go on, Diego."

  Mirabal continued as if he were a recording device clicked off "pause." "After she gained entrance to the house, she unraveled her purse, which was constructed of braided nylon. She then lowered the makeshift 'rope' out of the window." Mirabal almost allowed himself a smile there.

  "It must have been very thin," Margarete mused. "The assassin must be an unusually powerful man. A man such as yourself, Diego?"

  "No. Not a NewMan. A nullboxer. His name is Aubry Knight."

  "Your voice says that you know this man."

  For once Diego's machinelike concentration wavered T and he carefully subdued a smile. "I did, once. Years ago. Luis sent him to prison. He escaped recently."

  "You are suggesting a revenge motive?"

  Mirabal scratched a thick fingernail against the top of the table, leaving a mark in the hard plastic. "It would fit him."

  Although blind, Margarete was facing Mirabal, scarred and cloudy eyes boring into him.

  "Could this man plan all of these things?"

  "He has intelligence, but has never learned to direct it. I find it more likely that the woman is using him."

  "Why?"

  "It seems she was peripherally involved with the last operation Luis established before his death. She was wanted for questioning. There may be an element of self-defense here."

  Margarete's face twisted. "And this woman entered your household unchallenged?" In that instant Mirabal swore that her eyes were alive after all. He felt himself pressed back into his seat by the force behind them, and felt an alien emotion tickling his gut.

  Tomaso filled in the gap. "The weekly parties were conducted at Luis's insistence. I told him over and over that we couldn't provide proper security, especially with the turn-over rate of the party girls. He assured me that the arrangements with Gibbs—" Here Tomaso tore his eyes away from Margarete and fixed them on the cringing man at the end of the table. "—were satisfactory. In my estimation, Mirabal discharged his duties with full competence."

  The attention of the entire table turned to Gibbs, who seemed to wither before it like an insect caught in a torch flame. "It wasn't my fault," he bleated. "I'd known this woman for years, and—" He looked at Mirabal with venomous hatred. "I don't care what anybody says. Maybe this woman slipped past me, but how the hell did this man Knight get past your security, Mirabal?"

  "I was going to ask you that, Gibbs. This seems to me like a very carefully planned operation. Knight is not a devious man. The woman shows no evidence of technological capacity, and yet they defeated our security system. We don't know how, except that we can be sure that your agency was a weak link. Once she was in—" He paused and leaned forward, hands folded into a thick mat. "Once she was inside, with what we must assume was a sophisticated means to beat our code implants, she was within our defenses, and could do as she wished. I feel certain that our intensive investigation must begin with you."

  Gibbs roared, his handsome face distorted with rage. "I'm not going to let you put this on me. Forget it. I don't need any of this—"

  "Gibbs," Tomaso said softly. "I would appreciate it if you would make the trip down here. Just a few days. I feel that your presence might—expedite the investigation."

  "To hell with you! I know what you want—"

  "You are under contract, and you must know that all of our contracted employees are treated fairly—"

  "I'm not under contract any longer—" he said, starting to reach forward. "I'm putting an end to this right now—"

  "Victor—" There was nothing soft in Tomaso's voice; Gibbs stopped before he reached his control panel. "Do you realize how serious it is to cancel your contract without notice?"

  "Do you realize I'm being set up by that ape of yours? I'm sure he'd love having me for one of his 'intensive investigation' sessions. I've seen his trick with the ribs. You listen to me. San Jose is my turf. You just try prying me loose from it—"

  "I don't have to," Tomaso said.

  Gibbs was trembling, even while making an heroic effort to remain calm. "What do you mean, you won't need to? Tomaso, I warn you—" Tomaso thumbed down the sound on the transmission until the man was ranting in silence.

  Tomaso's voice had only a bare crackle of command in it, but it was enough to stop Gibbs in mid-syllable. "Are you certain that you have no interest in cooperating with this investigation?" Tomaso's fingers were already busy on the computer console built into the chair's right arm. QUERY. GIBBS DESTRUCT CODE.

  The computer read the code back to Tomaso: GBBS-XX2573TRMN8. He paused for a moment before typing it back in.

  "Very well," Tomaso said finally. "Would you raise your left arm please?" Gibbs shook his head, startled at the request, but his arm started to rise. "Thank you," Tomaso said, and swiftly typed EXECUTE.

  Gibbs had time to shape one silent syllable: "What—"

  The smoke and flash of light that blossomed four centimeters beneath the exposed armpit, the way Gibbs's body jerked sideways in his chair—both seemed to indicate that he had been shot with an explosive round. Gibbs's right hand flew to the gushing hole in his side. His mouth gaped in shock, more blood flowing from his n
ose and choking his throat. He blinked once, hard, and seemed to be trying to speak. Only one mouthed word made it past the pain: "Implant —" Then he fell, his body spasming with decreasing violence.

  Sims's hand was feeling his own side, for once his emotions reaching the surface. "The implants. Do you mean that any of us—?"

  "Tomaso!" Margarete's voice cracked like a whip in the room. "What is happening?"

  "A traitor, Grandmother." He said, wiping the image from the room. "We have just eliminated a traitor."

  Margarete sat back into her chair, the momentary surge of energy gone. "A traitor," she said, sightless eyes scanning the darkness, "and also a possible witness. Tomaso, I want you to find the killers. Bring them here, to Terra Biiena."

  "To the Island?"

  "Yes. This is family business. You have temporary leadership of the West Coast until they are found, or until we are dissatisfied with your efforts to find them. Be swift, Tomaso. I want an answer, and quickly."

  Tomaso opened his mouth to speak, but Margarete was already fading away.

  There was silence in the room; then Wu cleared his throat. He seemed even paler, eyes still locked on the empty chair where Gibbs had been. "Your... brother had these bombs within the tracers all the time?" He turned to Tomaso accusingly. "And why do you show us now? Do you need to control us through fear?"

  "No. As you said, this was my brother's idea. I will have no such need, and the transceivers will be removed immediately. If I cannot trust my officers without such methods, I cannot trust them at all. Things will be very different under Tomaso Ortega."

  "Immediately " Mirabal said slowly, rubbing his side.

  "That would probably be best, yes."

  Tomaso had a sudden chill as Mirabal's hooded eyes slid by him, almost as if the momentary contact were accidental. But there could be no mistaking the danger in them.

  Could Mirabal really reach him, and kill him, even with a hole torn in his side? It wasn't an experiment he cared to conduct.

  Sims was nodding to himself, as if confirming a private suspicion. "I'm finishing my business here," he said. "I'll be in the Palisades tomorrow. Have the surgeon standing by."