He whirled, the knife bright in his grip. Framed in the kiosk's doorway was a figure-sized disturbance, like a sculpture made of rain. Water poured down what looked like thin air, a haziness that was very nearly invisible. It was a pixie's voice, bright but careful, that exuded from its facelessness. A pixie that he knew.
Walken blinked. "Bobbi?"
Bobbi laughed; the voice seemed like that of a pleasant phantom, disembodied as it was. "Got it in one," she said and her heart-shaped face and cockatiel hair appeared as the cowl of a sniper's suit was swept off of her head. It was an expensive rig, made of adaptive, radiation-absorptive polycarbon, the sort of stuff that usually skinned stealth tanks. He knew the military used it for camo but he'd never seen it in action. "Glad to see a girl can still make an impression."
"Cute." Though he sounded irritable, the surprise did not leave his voice entirely nor did he draw the prog-knife back into its handle. "The Hell are you doing here?"
Bobbi shrugged. "Working," she said and gestured toward the knife. "You can put away your sticker, there, Agent. I'm not going to hurt you."
He hesitated, but he squeezed the knife's handle; it retracted inside with a click. "I'm not an agent now," said Walken and his eyes narrowed faintly in unspoken accusation.
"Not my fault." Bobbi hung the hood of her camo suit from its belt. Now that it was off the suit seemed to lose its power, becoming instantly a plain, baggy coverall of gray plastic swallowing her curvy body. "I'm not the villain, baby, just the messenger. You'll have to take it up with the dead man, you wanna complain."
His brows arched and he shifted slightly, leaning against the wall behind him. His hand slid into the pocket again and his fingers relaxed slightly around the knife. "All right," he said, "What dead man are you talking about?"
She grinned. "Anton Stadil, of course. You didn't see that coming?"
He stared hard at her a moment. A thousand different questions surged at the voicing of this revelation, but he settled for the most obvious: "Why?"
Bobbi's pink crest bobbed as she chuckled at him. "Why don't we take a ride in that junker of yours, Agent and we'll talk about it. The security boys'll be around pretty soon and we ain't exactly tourists. You get me?"
He hesitated, but nodded. There wasn't much choice, after all. "All right," he said finally. "Let's go."
The rain was a constant drum as the two of them left the Market; the vast terrarium shone with its coating in the rearview as they started off down the street. Walken was silent for a bit, letting his thoughts properly congeal. Bobbi seemed just fine with letting him do that, humming some Ascha Nann to herself as they went. Ascha was a hypno-jazz performer, one he actually liked. Her music had a delirious quality to it, swooping and melodic and thanks to the pink-haired girl's rather faithful mimicry he was able to relax a bit.
"You got a pretty voice," he told her, clearing his throat.
"Thanks," she said with a grin. She plucked a package of gum from inside her suit and selected a piece, then offered it to him. "I like Ascha. Smooth trip, you know. Gum?"
He nodded his thanks, took the pale orange square from her and popped it into his mouth. Ginger bloomed on his tongue and he felt his tension begin to relax in earnest. The slightest metallic taste followed, one he recognized and he threw a dark look her way.
"Pranazine," she said, wrinkling her nose. "Just a little tranquilizer, baby, don't worry. Just a trace. Figured you'd need to relax a little."
For a moment Walken wanted to slap her, but the dose was already settling comfortably in his blood; instead he growled a warning. "You do that again," he rumbled, "and I'll toss your sweet ass out directly into traffic."
Bobbi laughed. "No you won't," she chided him, laying a hand on his arm. "But I get what you're saying. Sorry for the unwelcome buzz."
"Yeah," he muttered. Walken's skin twitched under her touch, aware of even the slight pressure of her slim fingers through his overcoat. Chewing gum laced with Pranazine was a decker's trick, something to come down with after the intensity of a hack. "All right." he said finally once his nerves began to cool, "So what's this all about?"
"It's about what I was hired to do," said Bobbi, looking out at the passing city. The lights of the bay swirled in the distance as they proceeded along the tree-lined drive leading to the Market. Here it was like parkland, lanes of corporate-sponsored greenery meticulously tended by servitor drones. Some of them were like Stadil's sentries. The little orange fairy-boxes that flitted among the trees, however, were mercifully armed with clippers and horticultural implements rather than guns.
"And what's that?" Walken glanced at her. She was fogging up the window on her side, writing lazy Japanese in the mist.
Her smile was a wicked arc reflected in the glass, all white teeth and mischief. "Why I'm your sherpa, baby," she chimed. "I'mma lead you up the mountain."
Walken frowned, turning his eyes forward again. "What?"
"I was speaking metaphorically." She looked back at him, smirked. "Man, you Federales don't come with a sense of humor, do you? They take that out when they put the implants in?"
"I don't have 'em," he replied flatly.
"A sense of humor, or implants?"
"Either, apparently." He slowed the car to a stop as a drone gardener rolled across the street, like an orange-and-black caterpillar on rubberized wheels.
"No shit?" Bobbi turned in her seat toward him, grinning. "You all meat? No implants, wires, nothing?"
"Nope."
"Not even a skulljack?"
"Not even that," he replied. "No need for it. I'm straight investigation, no specialization. Anything I need I can get through a terminal." Walken frowned as he urged the car forward again in the wake of the drone. "At least, I used to be able to."
Her face fell a bit. "Yeah," she said, something like sympathy in her voice. "I'm sorry, man. You know what happened?"
"What," he said, looking back at her. "You mean you weren't responsible?"
She blinked. "Why the Hell would I have been?"
"You're the one coming from Stadil," he said. "I figured, you know, he's striking at me from the grave."
"What the Hell for?" Her pink brows arched. "Man, that dude liked you."
"Do what?" Walken wasn't expecting that. He stopped the car again, his foot coming down harder than he meant so that they lurched to a stop. "What the Hell are you talking about?"
Bobbi pitched forward, halted by the seatbelt and grunted in surprise. "Jesus, man," she groaned as she rubbed at her bountiful chest, "Warn a girl before you do that shit, huh?" She frowned down at herself before looking up at him. "I said he liked you. At least, he must have, for what he paid me to do. I ain't cheap, you know?"
"I bet," he muttered.
She grunted. "Not like that. I'm a street girl, you know? I can guide. I know all the places, all the faces. Well, I'm really a datanaut myself — I guess you figured that already — but I got connections all over." Bobbi looked back at him. "The late Mr. S, he hired me to take you where he said you need to go."
Walken turned to her now, an arm draped across the wheel. "And where's that?"
"Down the rabbit hole," Bobbi said with a wink. "Drive on, baby. I'll tell you all about it."
Walken guided the tricar through downtown traffic as Bobbi spun the story for him. Stadil had originally hired her two years ago for a job, cracking the personal systems of a competitor. Not only did she do it, she managed to crack a high-security file that said competitor had apparently acquired and then set aside for later decoding. It was apparently data pertaining to Wonderland — contacts, brokers, the unlovely people that you had to get through in order to start doing business with the black labs and clinics. It was the key to Wonderland business that for an operator like Stadil was worth untold millions.
Now a man like Stadil could have dug this information up himself, but it would have been an expensive thing in terms of cash and contacts. Bobbi had served it up to him on a silver platter. From then on she was his regular
girl when it came to all things concerning digital espionage. Her work in cracking the Wonderland file and her association with a man like Stadil, whose star was on the rise, netted her huge respect and influence in street circles. Those who didn't like it, she was more than able to either buy off or keep in check with Stadil standing behind her. She was living high, she was well-connected and she was very, very happy.
This trend continued until last week, when he called her up to his office at the Ballroom. She liked the club herself — it was where she had met Stadil's people in the first place — and she had made it a regular hangout. He told her that a shipment was coming in the next week, something special from Wonderland. He told her that it would get away from the smugglers before it would hit the tarmac and that the Bureau would get involved. He told her, very calmly and with apology in his tone, that next week he would be dead. He hadn't said who would do it.
"Really Zen shit," she had said as they passed a group of New Victorian girls while trawling through the Waters again, their skirts emblazoned with animated graphics of deep black ivy swirling just above their ankles. "Like he didn't even blink, or even seemed bothered by it. Never met a person not afraid of death before. Not really." She had shivered. "Even crazy fuckers. Even if they want it." Walken had shivered, too, remembering Stadil's bare skull grinning at him. Maybe he had just been crazier than most.
After that, she said, she had worried that her train of respect was at an end — but Stadil had told her that he had one more job for her, one that would cement her position. One more hack, he said, to set her up for life. She would have the Ballroom, if she wanted it and all the money from the liquidation of all Stadil's spotlessly-laundered assets. All she had to do was take someone on a trip.
"That would be you," she pointed out as they paused under a particularly large multi-story mall tower. It glowed with neon and holograms, a temple of light.
"Yeah." He frowned at her; her face was overlaid with a mask of clashing colors. "So what's this 'journey', then?"
Her energy, never breaking, now changed into a kind of girlish excitement; the pixie in her resurfaced. “It's hard to explain. I don't even have all the details myself. I guess it would be better to say that it's a kind of scavenger hunt. D'you ever do a scavenger hunt when you were a kid, Tom?"
Walken grunted. "Yeah," he said again. He thought of Baltimore, of the bland neighborhood from whence he'd come before joining its police. Images of his parents flashed in the back of his mind: his mother, quiet and fragile with hair just like his; his father, the grim laborer with the angry fist. He got his eyes from him. "I did one. What're we looking for? Why? Jesus, I'm gonna get put in fucking cryo just for talking to you, do you know that?"
Bobbi shrugged. "Baby, they're coming for you anyway. Stadil said. You pasted that poor kid, right?"
Walken eyed her, but nodded. Again, the dread came circling round his shoulders like a scanner tech's lead cape. The drumming of the rain filled the sudden silence.
"So they gonna get a line on you — I don't know what it is, so don't ask — that Stadil says will have them on your door any day now. Suspension ain't gonna last long, baby, sorry. I dunno if Stadil put it on you or not, but he says you're better off."
"Fucker," Walken spat. He wouldn't realize just how much of a fucker Stadil truly was until later; right now he just hated his guts for ruining his career and throwing him into homelessness — or at least that's what he assumed was to follow with his only haven now slated for a raid. Death was too good for him.
"Yeah," Bobbi sighed. "Well, so. There you have it. You can't trust a Russian."
"Albanian," he said automatically.
"Whatever. A fucker's a fucker wherever you go, I guess."
"Uh-huh." He took a deep breath. "Listen, Bobbi. You're a sweet girl from what I know about you, class all the way. But at the risk of insulting you I don't believe a word of it. Not the last part, anyway. He's fucking with you. Well, he's fucking with me, definitely, but you as well. He's worth what, millions? Tens of millions?"
"More money than God," she said wistfully. "At least as far as I'm concerned. No corporation's worth of capital but enough to set me up for whatever life comes to mind. Hell, I could retire early, not that it's in me to quit the biz. He told me you'd balk, too — told me to give you a message when you did. He told me to tell you, 'Your instincts were correct.'"
"About what?"
"About the Dolls."
Walken was silent again. He scowled at the windshield. If he were entirely sober he'd be blazing hate-rays all the way into Hell where Stadil was undoubtedly burning. The Pranazine dulled his anger, though and he found it strangely hard to be much more than irritable. Down the rabbit hole it was and whether he wanted to take the trip or not he was already diving in.
They didn't speak again for a while. She didn't show it, but Walken picked up a bit of nervousness under her pixie surface that did not exist there before. He guessed that his reaction, dulled as it was from the Pranazine, had either unnerved her or she knew more than she'd admitted. They'd been driving for an hour in no particular direction, just crawling along the shore of the Sound. It wasn't the most inconspicuous way to spend his time, he knew, but he didn't want to go home and he didn't want to ask her any more questions.
Finally, though, he gave. They passed one of the many public marinas that dotted the waterfront and he pulled the Honda into its lot, stopping it in view of the floating modern-art castles of the yachts moored there. Beyond them the arcologies loomed once more, distant islands of light. They sat there for a while, watching in uncomfortable silence as the flanged pyramids bobbed on the water.
"They're always there," Bobbi said, breaking the silence between them. "Floating in circles."
"Yeah," Walken replied after a minute. "They're tethered to the bottom of the Sound by pillars. They flex, though, you know. Carbon nanotubes. That's why they move that way."
Bobbi blinked a bit at that, looking out across the water with new interest. "Yeah? That's pretty cool... Hell of a thing these days are, don't you think? Ages ago there were no nanotubes. No nano-anything, I guess. How'd you think it changed?"
"People," he replied and in his tone he heard an acrid note. "So let's talk about this scavenger hunt."
"I thought you didn't believe me." The smirk had returned, pink lips plumping again.
"...indulge me," he said after a pause. "Please."
She smiled now, turning toward him in her seat again; she leaned back, wrapping her arm around the back of her seat, resting her head against the window. "All right," said Bobbi, "Well. We gotta start at the beginning, Stadil said."
"Sea-Tac?"
She nodded. "Uh-huh. And that'll give you the next clue."
He grunted. "It's going to be hard, getting out there without being picked up by security."
Bobbi waved his concern away. "Please," she said. "You forget who I am, baby! I got the magic, don't worry. We just gotta stop by my place, get some tools. Can't go into this unprepared, after all."
Walken gave another grunt, but didn't say anything. He wasn't convinced that any amount of preparation was going to save him.
Bobbi lived in a warehouse down in the Field not far from the Ballroom, albeit on the near side. Walken initially balked at the idea of going so close to where Stadil had been killed. The tiered pyramid was visible at the other end of the Field even at this distance, but Bobbi assured him it would be all right.
Bobbi's warehouse had no doors; it was accessible via a maintenance tunnel that had been sealed off from the public veins by a paperwork error she had helped initiate. "Took me forever to move my shit in here," Bobbi was telling him as they climbed the rungs up to the egress hatch. "But I think it works okay."
It had once been an industrial supply barn, Bobbi's place, a warehouse; crates still piled themselves in the corners, their surfaces emblazoned with spraybrushed Japanese made very blurry by the plastic curtains that hung over them. Light filtered down throu
gh the glossy sheets from fluorescent bulbs high above. Walken couldn't read them, but from the dust the plastic crates had gathered whatever was in them was either of no use to her or she just hadn't found a way to move them yet.
"Nice place," he murmured, staring at the sea of plastic tarps that sectioned the warehouse off into various chambers. "Didn't believe in redecorating?"
"What, this place?" Bobbi laughed, striding past him into the mass of pearly walls. He saw her form, blurry and indistinct as the painted Japanese, melt from clumsy and gray into something pale and curvy. He blinked at her, watching as she stripped, the saliva starting in his mouth unbidden before he forced his eyes away.
"Yeah," he said, staring at the floor. "Looks like it hadn't changed since first use."
"It was like that, yeah," she said pleasantly. She emerged and cleared her throat.
He looked up. She was dressed in a pale green tank top and a pair of black jeans, smiling at him.
"A gentleman," Bobbi said approvingly, arms folding over her breasts. "Didn't expect that. Thought you boys were like other cops, always staring holes."
"Only on the scene," he said, hands tucking into his pants pockets again. The knife was ignored. "Evidence, you know."
"Oh, I see evidence," she purred, looking down. He was only then aware of his erection, whose impression was visible against the fabric of his fatigues. He made to apologize but she shook her head.
"No need," she said. "Can't help the meat, baby — I'll just call it a compliment. Lemme get my kit and we can go."
Bobbi disappeared into the forest of curtains again, leaving Walken with his flagging embarrassment and then returned again. She was wearing a ribbed jacket, black leather with matte buckles running down the front and a dull olive satchel hung from her shoulder. It was military surplus, Walken saw, tearproof nylon. The vivid red of a medic's cross stood out on the corner of its secured flap. "Good for what ails you," she chimed and nodded toward the open hatch in the floor behind him. "C'mon, baby. Let's go."
Under the anonymity of the nighttime sky, they drove out to the end of the runway where Walken had met the cargo plane. Bobbi had spliced the cameras in the car via wireless link on the way, plugged into the terminal deck she'd pulled from her medic's satchel by a thin cable running from a socket behind her ear. She was, in that instant, a statue; her pretty face sans expression, a mask with eyes wide open, only the occasional twitch betraying signs of life.
Shadow of a Dead Star (The Wonderland Cycle) Page 13
