Who Hunts the Hunter

by Nyx Smith

  She’s got to find out what’s going on, who created this file and why. If it is fraud, she’s got to expose the culprit, present the auditors with a fait accompli—the whole story— proof as to what happened and who did it and maybe a signed confession as well. Otherwise, her career and everything she’s worked to accomplish will turn to so much static.

  By the time she gets home, she’s considering going to the Executive VP first thing in the morning in hopes of getting the power of that woman’s office behind the investigation.

  That makes sense, doesn’t it?

  Still wondering, Amy turns toward her bedroom, but stops abruptly, looking into the living room. The room is dark and Hannan’s sitting in there on the sofa, and what’s he doing sitting there in the dark? She steps toward him and he stands up and suddenly it’s not Hannan ...

  “It’s . . . It’s . . .

  “Scottie? Oh, my god?"

  It’s a shock, a slap in the face, a brutal punch to her stomach. Her helmet and backpack drop from her hands. Something clutches at her chest, squeezing the breath right out of her. Suddenly she feels weak enough to faint and her head’s pounding and her throat’s gone dry.

  The figure rising from the couch is her younger brother, Scottie, the first she’s seen of him in years, the first proof she’s had that he’s still alive. He comes a step toward her. She hesitates a moment, then takes three quick steps toward him and wraps her arms around his neck."Scottie,” she gasps, struggling to breath."Huh ... how ...”

  She’s so close to breaking down she can’t get the words out of her mouth. She draws back to look at him and can hardly see for the tears washing through her eyes. She knows it’s him, though. He looks just as she remembers: just a little taller than her, trim build, narrow face. The impassive features that always made him seem like he’s a million kilometers away, or just not paying attention. He’s cut his hair very short in one of those slash-cut styles. He’s wearing a long dark duster and has something, a flute, slung behind his shoulders.

  He presses something into her hand.

  “You lost this,” he says.

  It’s a burgundy wallet, just like the one she misplaced earlier in the week. No, it is the one she misplaced! How could Scottie have found it? And who cares! With everything that’s been happening ... and now this ...

  She throws her arms around his neck and sobs.

  Her little brother ... she can’t believe it.

  23

  Meddler.

  From her office window on the second floor of the Metascience lab building, Germaine Olsson watches the skinny figure in the bright yellow jacket and helmet mount the bright yellow motorcycle down by the front lobby, and, after a moment, ride off. Germaine had been wondering if the slitch was ever going to leave. Amy Berman. The big deal VP. The meddler. Good riddance.

  Germaine shakes her arms to loosen the fists her hands have bunched into, and grunts, exasperated.

  Just what everyone needs: another meddling corporate bureaucrat, another suit. Another smoothie who can’t mind her own business. As if Hurley-Cooper hasn’t got enough of them already. And Berman’s one of the worst. Always sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. She isn’t happy diddling data in her nice, shiny headquarters office. Oh, no. She has to come around here and jack into the research network, too. If she isn’t changing things just to change things, or inventing new ways to make more work for everybody, she’s just snooping, trying to get things on people, if only to impress them with her authority and make herself look good. As if she hasn’t got better things to do. And probably she doesn’t.

  She ought to get a real job. Something productive.

  Grunting again, Germaine turns to her desktop terminal to check on Doctors Phalen and Hill, now in Metaserology Lab 12, she sees. She better go tell the doctors that the headquarters busybody has finally left the building. She’s sure they’ll be glad to hear it.

  24

  The voice that answers the phone at NewMan Management Systems is just a computer simulation or a recording. The phone itself is located in a grim brick building in a seedy section of Yonkers. Tikki pauses in the dim hallway before the door with the NewMan log, listens, tests the air with her nose, then applies a Magna 2 passkey to the doorlock. The door clicks and opens.

  Tikki steps into a bare one-room office. There’s no furniture, nothing on the walls, one grime-smeared window. The telecom sits on the floor, jacked into the wall on the right. Tikki crouches over it, sniffs it, considers what to do.

  What she would like to do is smash the device into pieces, then fire a hundred or more explosive rounds into the debris, but that won’t do. That is instinct talking. The wild. Maybe the moon, too. Oracle’s information has led her to this place, this front run by O’Keefe, probably a phone drop for clients wanting to speak to O’Keefe the bounty hunter. Now she must get to O’Keefe himself. Faint traces in the air speak of elves, but her nose will help little now. She needs more definite clues.

  Clutch the betrayer met O’Keefe through a fixer called Sabot. She could go and question Sabot, and maybe she will, but first she considers the telecom before her. Interesting devices, telecoms. Many function as complete entertainment and communication systems. Some perform all the functions of computers, televisions, simsense decks, and more. Even the plainest models have many sophisticated functions, and in order to perform those functions they must have sophisticated internals: chips, circuitry, parts. Some parts perform specific functions, while other parts merely remember things that the user has keyed in.

  What devices remember, technicians can reveal. And what this device remembers might be useful.

  Tikki rips the telecom cord from the wall and takes the device under her arm. She will find herself a local technician, one she can trust, and have this device analyzed.

  In the hallway, she puts the telecom down, then hurls herself against the closed office door, smashing it inward.

  Smash and grab.

  This close to New York City such things should seem routine. Maybe it will keep O’Keefe guessing, wondering when she will come.

  25

  They sit on the sofa in the shadowy dark, holding each other. Amy keeps her arms wrapped around her brother’s middle, her head to his shoulder, and Scottie ... well ... He has one arm around her shoulders, and that’s enough. More than she would have expected of the brother she once knew. Having him here in the same room with her is all she could ask for. It’s probably more than she deserves.

  She’s a while calming down enough to speak. When she finally lifts her head to look at him, something so stupid and utterly senseless comes to mind that she can’t help smiling. Smiling and nearly crying. She brushes her fingers over his cheek."Where’s your mask?” she asks softly.

  In a hushed voice, Scottie says, “I don’t need it anymore.”

  And then he looks away, down toward the floor, up toward the ceiling. It’s so typical of the way he always used to act that Amy feels her smile spreading wide, till she sees the darkish tint to his neck, slowly rising into his face. He’s upset. His eyes look wet. That’s such a shock, Amy feels another tug at her insides and hugs herself to him again.

  “I’m a shaman now,” Scottie says quietly."An initiate. I’ve come far. But now I need ... I need to ...”

  When he hesitates a second time, Amy lifts her head, looks, and realizes he’s almost crying. The emotion’s twisting up his face and making him shake. The sight nearly makes her cry, too. She draws his head to her shoulder and holds him.

  “It’s all right,” she murmurs."We’ll work it out. We’ll work everything out. I just want you back in my life again. That’s all. You’re my brother. I missed you." She has to pause, cling to him even as she holds him, regain some composure, but she manages to blurt, “Scottie, I love you. Don’t go away again.”

  Scottie collects himself. He draws back and wipes at his eyes; then, to Amy’s amazement, he reaches out, and, tentatively, brushes at the tears still slipping from
her eyes. It’s a gesture of affection she would never have imagined him capable of. Scottie was always so distant, so far away. She takes his hand in hers, holds it, folds their fingers together.

  “I don’t use that name anymore,” he says."You can use it, if you want. People call me Bandit.”

  Amy shakes her head."What do you mean? Why?”

  “It’s safer.”

  It’s too much is what it really is: his sudden reappearance, the warm, affectionate way he’s acting. Amy remembers too clearly how he used to be, how it all began, and she’s too aware of how much time has passed, time they’ve lost forever.

  That stupid mask of Scottie’s comes back to mind. Bandit. Yes, of course. The mask he used to wear was just like a cartoon bandit might wear, surrounding just his eyes in black. When he started wearing that all the time she decided her brother wasn’t just weird, he was crazy, beyond hope, and there was no point in worrying about it. She was fifteen and he was twelve, and suddenly, all he ever talked about was raccoons. Raccoon-this, raccoon-that. She heard about raccoons till the word made her sick. He read books about raccoons. He went to zoos and museums. He got himself a raccoon hat and started wearing it at the dinner table every night; till, one night, she grabbed it while he slept and threw it into the trash. When an imitation raccoon pelt appeared on his door; she threw that out, too. She just couldn’t accept that her little brother wasn’t going to grow up and act like a normal person. When he started wearing that stupid little black mask that outlined his eyes like the “mask” of a raccoon, and not just all day, but wearing it to bed as well, that was it. That was all she could take. That was when she gave up.

  And she’s never stopped regretting it. Not since the time when she started growing up herself.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  Scottie looks at her like he’s puzzled."What?”

  Amy puts her arms around his neck and hugs him. How can she explain the guilt she’s felt? She can hardly believe he’s here. She has at least a million questions, things she needs and wants to know.

  “Scottie ... Oh, god, where do I start?” she says, voice wavering."There’s so much ... so much I want to know. About you. Where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing. Make me understand, your magic. What it means. What it means to you.”

  She wants that more than anything.

  26

  “It’s just no good, Ben. No good at all.”

  Dr. Liron Phalen shakes his head sadly as his friend and colleague Dr. Benjamin Hill returns the last of the draco minimalis plasma to the cryogenic cooler. The small chore is soon complete. There are only a few samples left, little more than a hundred milliliters in each macroplast container. An incalculable wealth of meta-microbiotic data, but futile, without any relevant application to the current track of research.

  “This subset just isn’t bearing fruit. I must say, as you postulated, that it did look very promising at the outset. I’m afraid we’ll have to forbear until the new matrix arrives."

  "Yes,” Ben replies."Yes, I agree.”

  “That will be soon, I trust.”

  Ben’s face sags, and that is just like him, poor fellow. Every failing of theoretical application, every wasted effort, every delay, is somehow the result of his own lack of insight. He takes his work far too personally. Perhaps he expects too much too quickly. Liron smiles and lays a hand on his shoulder to reassure him, as Ben says, “I expect it should be here within the week. Certainly, no later than that.”

  “That’s fine, Ben. I’m sure we’ll find some way to keep ourselves occupied until then.”

  “Yes, well ... the delay’s unfortunate.”

  “I’m quite sure it can’t be helped.”

  Someone, some female person coughs, and Liron turns to find Germaine Olsson waiting just a few steps away. Germaine is the Metascience Group’s ranking aide, and a very competent one at that. Her job description is an immense understatement.

  Liron smiles."And what does our good Girl Friday desire of us now? Have we broken too many specimen tabs perhaps?”

  “Umm ... well, excuse me,” Germaine says, pausing to clear her throat a second time. She’s rather self-conscious, poor girl, though hardly a girl."I just wanted to tell Dr. Hill that she’s gone.”

  “Oh? Has Nettie slipped free of the bonds of perdition again?”

  Nettie first came to the group as a test matrix, but has since become something of the group mascot. She’s quite tame for a novopossum. Unfortunately, her rather corrosive saliva interacts with a wide range of compounds, hydrocarbons, metals, even ceramics, nearly everything they’ve used, in fact, in an attempt to keep her safely caged.

  Germaine hesitates, looking fidgety. Liron looks to Ben, but Ben looks back at him with a blank expression. The silence grows over-long, and rather awkward, in Liron’s view."Was it something I said, my dear?” he inquires. Abruptly, Germaine smiles, quite broadly in fact, though she’s usually hesitant to display her ork incisors. Perhaps she’s a little embarrassed."Um ... well, no,” she says."I was really talking about Amy Berman. She’s gone.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” Liron says."I didn’t realize our Ms. Berman was in the building. Was there something she wanted?”

  “I ... didn’t actually talk to her,” Germaine replies."She’s been on the network all day and all night.”

  “Always busy,” Liron says, smiling, glancing aside to Ben."I don’t think I’ve ever met a more dedicated administrator. Her energy astounds me. You really must let me know, Germaine, when our Resource VP comes for a visit. I would have liked to say hello.”

  “Of course, Dr. Phalen.”

  With that settled, Liron has a look at his watch."Well, we’ve gone on quite late. I expect I’ll be in somewhat past my usual time tomorrow, Ben.”

  “I’ll handle things, boss,” Ben replies.

  Liron smiles, nods, and heads out. His ancient Mercedes awaits him in the parking lot, and, ever faithful, rattles quickly to life. Brahms pours from the stereo-deck, or whatever it’s called, and soon he’s gliding along the highway, humming, heading north, over the Bronx border, through Yonkers and on to Dobb’s Ferry. The music of the old master makes the trip soothing, smoothing over the bumps, distancing him from the ever-rushing traffic.

  As he turns down Ford Lane, a faint luminescent rippling of air manifests in front of the car, then inside it, slightly above the passenger seat. The voice that emerges from the shimmering air is bell-tone clear, but soft and lush."You have tarried long, Master.”

  Liron smiles."Yes, I know. Forgive me.”

  “I forgive you all things, Master. Am I not obliged to do so?"

  “That is for you to say, dear Vorteria.”

  The words are barely out of his mouth when Vorteria manifests, comes fully to the physical plane, as fully as she is able. The form she takes is rather ghostly—white, all white—like that of a mature young woman in the full flower of her beauty, long flowing hair, soft eyes, a tender smile, glittering robes that call attention to her fine womanly figure but without tainting the purity of her presence. She is delightful in appearance, endearing, and quite chaste.

  “Have you kept busy?” Liron asks.

  “I have guarded my master’s land, ” Vorteria replies, smiling warmly."And my master’s house, and all of his household. And I have given much thought to my master’s great work."

  “And have you reached any conclusions in regard to that work?”

  “I believe that my master must do more research."

  "Do you not believe that we are on the verge of a breakthrough?”

  “My master has bound me to this world. If only I could travel beyond the walls of this temporal plane I might repay my master’s generosity with an answer."

  Liron smiles and softly sighs. Vorteria hints that if freed from his service, freed to do as she wishes, she might somehow look beyond the limits of time and so tell him of what might come in days hence. It is her one form of protest, often repeated, against being bound to Liron�
�s will. Vorteria says she would always serve him, for she is pleased to do so, and Liron believes her, but still she must protest. In an odd way, it makes her seem almost human, more womanly, capable of a woman’s natural and charming contradictions.

  “Will you work tonight, Master?”

  “Yes,” Liron replies."Presently.”

  His house comes along on the right, old and rather large, two stories tall, with steep mansard roofs and soaring chimneys, windows glowing despite the hour. The winding gravel drive leads past the broad front walk. Liron leaves the Mercedes there. He’s just old-fashioned enough to prefer to enter through the front door, rather than through the garage like a chauffeur or stable boy.

  His wife’s nurse, Gwyna, opens the door as he climbs the stone steps to the porch. Gwyna is tall and slender, obviously an elf, even at a distance. She greets him with an uncertain smile.

  “How is Mrs. Phalen this evening?” Liron asks.

  “Feeling some discomfort earlier,” Gwyna replies."I gave her five c.c.’s of Tukenol.”

  “You must be very sparing,” Liron says with quiet emphasis.

  “Yes, Dr. Phalen. I know.”

  “Of course, you do.” Liron smiles apologetically."I always seem to be repeating myself unnecessarily. It’s very difficult, my dear, to maintain a professional detachment where the one involved is so close.”

  Gwyna seems moved to sympathy."Of course,” she says softly."I understand. I must say ...”

  “Yes, dear?”

  Gwyna hesitates, looking at him, then says, “I admire your courage. Mrs. Phalen’s, too. I admire it very much.”

  Liron takes her hand, gently pats it. A smile of understanding is all the answer he has to give. It seems sufficient."Would you please tell Mrs. Phalen that I’ll be in shortly."