“No,” said Liaison. “This is one of the risks. Breena told me all about it. It happens. You can’t get this close to magic without things snapping out of your control. You either accept the lack of control, or you get out of the biz.
“Go,” Liaison said. “Go now.”
31
Peter walked quickly up Michigan Avenue. Lacking his troll body to scare off potential muggers, he kept his head up and tried to move with confidence, thinking that if he could look confident, the world would think he had reason to be. Maybe that did the trick, for no one bothered him. But Peter found the whole experience very strange. For so long he’d worn his metahuman flesh as a badge of anger and strength. Now, he felt exposed, naked, and weak, not because of how he saw himself, but because of how he thought the world saw him.
Crossing the bridge over the Chicago River, he pulled the three chips out of his pocket. One was labeled “My Cure,” one “P. Clarris,” and the third, “CW.” He took My Cure and crushed it between his thumb and forefinger, then dropped the pieces over the side of the bridge. P. Clarris he put in his right breast pocket, CW in the left. His father would get one of those two chips.
The area just past the bridge was run-down, but people with SINs worked it. All around him secretaries and suits were arriving in buses they had taken from their homes further north. Women glanced at him. Men sized him up. It had been so long since Peter had been noticed with anything but an undercurrent of suspicion or a strong hint of fear that he didn’t know how to react. He glanced away, afraid. Would he reveal that he wasn’t really pure human? Would they see his fear, his social awkwardness? There had been a safety in being ignored. Before he could afford to be angry at everyone on the street, because no one paid attention to him, or, at least, no one behaved as if they did. And then, as a member of the Itami gang, Peter had been able to vent his frustration with the ultimate fury. He joined the game of death and killed on command. He turned everyone into meat, just as the world had done to him.
Now he was part of the world of pure humans again. An attractive woman caught his eye, giving him a half-smile as she walked on by. Was it really so simple?
Up ahead, he spotted a beat-up Bulldog Step-Van, brown with scratches that revealed silver. He stepped up to it and knocked on the side door. “Hello?” shouted an amused voice. “Zoze sent me,” said Peter.
The door slid open and Peter came face to face with the barrel of a shotgun. “Hoi, chummer,” said a vatjob with a metal right arm. “Alone?”
Peter kept his face expressionless. “Yup.”
The vatjob put the gun down and smiled. “Come on in.” Peter climbed in and the Bulldog sagged to the right. The boy looked at him curiously, but smiled.
At the back of the van was a woman with rigger jacks in her temple. “Morning,” she said wearily, making her way up to the front of the Bulldog. As the rigger took the driver’s seat and jacked in, Peter was surprised to see that despite the van’s worn exterior, the controls were quite fancy. Settling back into her seat, the rigger rested her hands on the wheel, even though she would not be using either the wheel or the gas pedal to move the van. Her thoughts would do all the work. The engine started up and the Bulldog took off for the Westside.
“Here’s our number,” said the vatjob, pointing to a radio built into the wall. Peter set his wristcom so he could punch it up with a single button. “We’re gonna need code names. I’ll let you pick.” The boy exuded a youthful enthusiasm that charmed Peter.
Peter said, “You’re Anderson. I’m Duckling. Got it?”
The boy laughed. “Duckling? Okay.”
The van parked a few blocks down from the ABTech building, and Peter went on foot to knock at the nondescript steel door. Nothing happened, so he tried again, this time pounding on the door.
A few seconds later he heard metal scrape against metal and then the door opened, revealing a man in grease-covered gray overalls. The man looked like something out of a car repair shop, not a biotech factory.
“Yeah?” the man said, annoyed but disinterested in Peter.
“I’m Thomas Waxman. I’m here for a tour of the ABTech plant.”
“Oh, sure,” the man said brightly. “Come on in.” He held the door open so that Peter could step inside. The next moment someone was smacking Peter behind the knees with a thick piece of metal, making him collapse to the floor. Only an hour as a pure human, he thought, and I’ve already given up my guard.
“Frag, this guy’s limbs are tough,” said a voice behind him.
Peter rolled over with a grimace, expressing more pain than he actually felt. The grease monkey and two guards with Predators stood over him. One of the guards held a crowbar in one hand.
“Do you mind telling me what this is about?”
“SHUT UP!” said the grease monkey. He leaned down and rummaged through Peter’s pockets, pulling out the fake IDs and passport Liaison had made up for him.
“I have an appointment. My people…”
“I said shut up.”
The grease monkey looked at the picture ID, then to Peter, then the ID, then to Peter. Fear crept up Peter’s spine. Did the guard know something? Maybe it wasn’t possible, for whatever reason, that Waxman could be in Chicago. What if the guard knew that? Would the illusion begin to waver as the guard’s knowledge fought with the magic?
“Hmmm,” was all the grease monkey said. “Run them through.” He handed the documents to the guard with the crowbar.
Peter knew that the fake IDs wouldn’t withstand top security checks. The plan called for the e-mail letter to anchor visual inspection of the IDs.
“What the frag is going on here!” Peter shouted.
The grease monkey turned to him, his face full of violence. The guard with the IDs stopped, too. “Don’t give me the macho crap. When I report back to Geneering about how you rough up their employees, I think they’ll take a dim view of the whole project. Drek, this is why I left this country!”
Inside he smiled. This was kind of fun.
The grease monkey’s face softened, and he looked at Peter curiously. “Geneering,” Peter said. “We’re lending you the nanotech. We sent you a letter. My visit was announced.”
Without taking his eyes off Peter, the grease monkey said to the guard with the IDs, “Take these to Doc Tumbolt. Get him to confirm this guy.”
The guard left. Peter started to rise. “Can I get up now?”
“No.”
Tumbolt was out of breath when he arrived. “Dr. Waxman!” he exclaimed. “Spirits!” He reached down and helped Peter up. “Please forgive… I don’t know what to…” He handed Peter the stack of fake IDs, and Peter put them away. “We had no idea…. That is, no one noticed the letter. It must have passed by… We would have made arrangements to meet you…”
“Which we would have refused, for security reasons, of course,” said Peter.
“Speaking of security, how did you find this place, doc?”
Tumbolt raised a finger to scold the grease monkey, but Peter shrugged to show he took no offense.
“After all, we went to great lengths to make sure you didn’t know where the nanotech was going.”
“And you didn’t think we’d follow up the shipping route and make sure we knew where the prototypes were at all times?” He turned to Tumbolt. “I’ll be direct, since your guards seem to prefer that tactic. We were content to let things run your way until someone broke into our files earlier this week.” He turned back to the guards. “Now we know that isn’t your fault. And actually, the main purpose of this trip is to ease the minds of my company’s management. They just want to know that everything is proceeding along well.”
“We send you weekly reports—” Tumbolt began.
“Yes, yes. But we decided it was time for an on-site inspection. Now I don’t know who did it, but someone from ABTech wrote back saying it would be all right. I can contact my people and ask them to dig up the letter.”
“Not now. You must be exha
usted. Come, would you like to rest for a while? I can get a room for you.”
“No, actually, I’d like to begin the tour right away.”
“Of course.”
Tumbolt shot a brief glare at the grease monkey, then let Peter through a dirty door that led to a sterile white corridor. The guards remained quiet as Peter and Tumbolt left, and Peter knew that the grease monkey would check ABTech’s outgoing e-mail long before he could fake his call.
Tumbolt led Peter to an elevator that led deep underground. When they stepped out, he found himself looking through a huge pane of glass into a large room filled with operating tables, each contained within a plastic bubble.
“Where are the patients?”
“We often power-down the operating facilities. Nothing is wrong.”
“Doctor Tumbolt, we’ve heard you recently brought Dr. Clarris on board….”
Tumbolt lifted one eyebrow in surprise and awe. “You people do have good sources.”
Peter nodded. “I didn’t want to talk about it in front of the men upstairs, but my real reason for being here is to discuss Clarris’ theories in the context of our nanotech research.” He leaned in, sharing a valuable secret, taking Tumbolt into his confidence. “I’m sure you understand.”
Tumbolt smiled back, honored. “Of course. This way.”
They walked down a long corridor. A huge human with red cyber-eyes and a targeting system cable leading from his right temple to the gun in his holster eyed Peter carefully as they passed.
After they had gone by, Peter commented, “Rather coarse security.”
“Not our doing. Our parent company in Seattle sent them to us after you were raided and our contracted security firm failed to catch the intruders.”
“Hmmm.”
Tumbolt pushed open a door into a conference room. “Is Clarris here?”
From behind Tumbolt Peter saw two women and a man writing out strange symbols on a chalkboard. They wore jewelry like Breena’s.
Mages. Peter held his breath. If they checked him astrally, they’d see through the illusion.
The three glanced briefly over their shoulders for a moment, shook their heads, and went back to work. Tumbolt shut the door.
“That’s the damnedest part of the operation,” he said, leading Peter down another hall. “I’m too old to understand it. I don’t want to understand it.”
“I see.”
“Oh, I don’t mean I ignore it,” Tumbolt said quickly. “I mean, I know what they’re up to. We’ve worked it so the process utilizes magic. The nano-techs go in and clamp down on the metahuman gene-repressors. But the only way we can get the nanotechs to identify the right genes is with magic. It’s a kind of magical dye. They have to build a small spell lock—a little silver star—for the fetus. Horribly expensive. They’re still trying to figure out how to get the material and labor costs down. Between the costs of the nanotechs and the magic, it’s an economic nightmare. A cure for the rich.” He laughed. “And right now it is. But someday… someday we’ll have that price point down, by spirits.”
Tumbolt pushed open the doors to the cafeteria. “Look! There he is,” Dr. Tumbolt said happily. Peter’s back stiffened. His father sat alone at a table.
Peter and Tumbolt crossed the cafeteria, and as they approached, Peter saw that his father looked very, very old. He held a plastic fork in one bony hand, chewing his salad with a mechanical rhythm. And yet, Peter saw, the eyes were unchanged. They held their vague stare and soaked up every detail. Peter remembered waking fourteen years ago to find his father looking down on him. Always looking down. Even now, Peter still couldn’t determine exactly what it was his father looked at. He seemed to be looking at Peter, but his focus could have been on someone to the right or someone far behind Peter. It was as if Peter’s father was unwilling to commit. Or to let the world in on what he chose to see. A secret. A protection from the evil eye.
“Dr. Clarris,” said Tumbolt, “I’d like to introduce Thomas Waxman. Dr. Waxman, William Clarris.”
Peter’s father looked up from his food and grinned. The smile chilled Peter, for it bore no resemblance to anything in nature. It was practiced. “A pleasure to meet you,” said his father.
“The same,” said Peter. He was torn in two directions—one, to stay with the plan, and two, to blurt out his real identity to his father. He got lost for a moment looking into his father’s eyes—it had been so long since he’d seen him. Half his life. The P. Clarris chip seemed to burn hot through the pocket of his jacket. “I did it, dad,” he thought. “I did the impossible.”
Peter shook himself out of these ruminations. “Dr. Tumbolt,” he said, “if you would excuse us. Please.” His father gazed on with apparently disinterested serenity, Tumbolt looked hurt. “Please. A matter of some delicacy.” Tumbolt actually pouted, then waddled away toward the cafeteria counter without another word.
Glancing at the chairs at his father’s table, Peter realized that none of them would support his weight. “Could we go somewhere private to talk?”
Without the slightest change of expression, his father said, “What’s this about?” He seemed neither pleased nor upset.
“Please. It’s very important. I have a message from… Kathryn.”
William Clarris blinked twice, as if Peter had complimented his shoes, then carefully placed the fork on the table. “All right. My room will do.”
They left the cafeteria and took a corridor that turned into a hall lined with doors on either side. Peter noticed that each door had a name on it. When they reached the one marked “Clarris,” his father produced a card key and opened it. “Please,” he said, and gestured for Peter to enter. Then his father followed him in, closing the door behind them.
32
A bed, a desk, a computer system, a rack of chips. Nothing on the walls, nothing to tie to the past. Or even the present. Like father, like son. Peter wanted to say, “Dad, we’ve got to stop this,” but instead he said, “Dr. Clarris. I’m in the employ of Ms. Amij. She hired me to get a message to you.”
“Yes,” his father said plainly, “I thought… I wondered if she would ever find me. The plan… didn’t work out,” and again he smiled that joyless smile.
“Well, I did find you. And she wants you to leave with me now.”
His father’s eyes narrowed, just slightly. “What?”
“Your life is in danger here. We have reason to believe that another faction is on its way to get you.”
The slightest bit of anger flared up in his father’s eyes. “Does everyone know where I am?”
Peter suddenly felt frightened, on the spot, fearful of his father’s wrath, even though his father didn’t know who he was. “There have been complications. But the simple truth is that many people want to get you.”
“The mercenaries from Seattle. They’re here because of you…” his father said.
“And because of the other faction. And because of you. Now, if you don’t mind—”
“No. No, I’m not going.” Peter noticed that his famer’s hand was shaking. He stepped over to the desk and sat down in the chair.
“Da… Dr. Clarris. I don’t think…” Peter was momentarily at a loss for words. “There are professional killers coming to extract you,” he said. “If you don’t come with me, I—”
“They brought in magicians and bodyguards—I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but they look quite professional. I’m staying.”
“You are an employee of Ms. Amij’s.”
“Her company refuses to approve the research in which I’m interested. I’m staying here.”
Peter froze for only half a beat. “Is it going well?”
“What?”
“The research. Is it going well?”
Peter’s father blinked at him. He became carefully guarded once more. “Well enough. It’s a start.”
“Impressive facilities.”
“Yes.”
“I understand you have test subjects.”
His father stared at him for a moment, still apparently indifferent. “Yes. We have test subjects.”
“Lucky that you could get volunteers.”
“What… ? What are you getting at?”
Peter realized that he was coming dangerously close to blowing the whole run. And yet, he wanted to know who he was dealing with. Those women… He reached into his jacket and pulled out the chip labeled “CW.”
“What’s that?” his father asked.
“A bribe, just in case you didn’t want to come. I’ll show it to you in a minute. This metahuman research is very important to you.”
“Yes.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. It’s very important. I have my reasons.”
“Reasons?”
“Yes, reasons!” His father was quite cross now.
“A son? You had a son, yes?”
His father stared at him. “Yes. I had a son. If you know that, why are we playing this game?”
“What happened to him?”
“What business—”
“What happened to him? After he became a troll, what happened to him?”
His father looked down. “I don’t… He died…. I don’t know.”
“So why the work? Why the pursuit of the meta-gene cure?”
His father looked up, eyes cold, a fury behind them. “No one should have to go through what I did. What he did.”
“And what was that?”
“Who do you think you are?”
“A man who brings you an offer from Ms. Amij for you to run your own project at Cell Works.” He held up the chip between his thumb and forefinger. “This stolen research document will put you on a new track.”
“I’m already on a track.”
“But how is it going? Don’t you at least want to see what this chip has to offer?”
His father leaned forward, just a little, a cat waiting to pounce on a piece of fuzz. “Maybe.”
“But before I give you the chip, you have to answer me a question. Why? Why get rid of metahumans?”
05 - Changeling Page 27
