by Kai O'Connal
The lack of insects was pleasant, but it was virtually the building’s only amenity. So when Elijah and Kyrie wanted to unwind a little away from the humid, motionless air of their room, the only available option was retiring to the building’s tar-papered roof. The heat made the surface soft, so that Elijah felt like he was continually sinking, on the verge of dropping right through the roof into the room of some unsuspecting guest.
There were no ledges or chimneys or anything similar to sit on, so they stood. Elijah had a canteen, Kyrie had a flask.
They didn’t speak much for a while. Elijah strolled around the roof, looking for a view he enjoyed, but at nights the brightly painted buildings of the favelas faded into solid lumps of darkness, with scattered lights here and there that struggled to be seen, like stars in the smog. Odors occasionally drifted up from the streets that made Elijah glad that the tar smell here generally overwhelmed everything else. He picked a spot that was relatively odor free and attempted to get lost in his thoughts, but weariness kept his mind in a simmering, unfocused muddle.
He finally received something to focus on when Kyrie spoke.
“What could be there to make it worth all this? What possibly could there be?”
Caught wondering whether Kyrie was asking a specific question or indulging in deeper existential musings, Elijah was unable to craft a coherent response. She saved him by being more specific.
“This tower you think could be in Antarctica. What could it have that would make people chase all over the globe for a chance to find it?”
Elijah exhaled. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? That’s it? That’s all you got?”
Just like that, Elijah had energy, and he spoke with a vehemence that surprised even him. “What do you mean, ‘That’s it?’ That’s more than enough! That’s everything! The map tells us about a mystery buried under the ice, and then tells us how to solve it! A building standing in a place where no one, according to all we know, has ever lived! Who built it? Why? What’s inside it? Do you know how many times the world gives you the chance for pure, unadulterated discovery?”
Kyrie drained maybe a third of her flask in one swig. “I can’t put ‘discovery’ into my bank account.”
“There are things worth more than money.”
“That’s not what my landlord keeps telling me.”
Elijah’s mouth opened and closed several times as he tried to put the thoughts rushing around his head into some sort of order, but he couldn’t find the right words. He felt like a child trying to explain why he liked sugar. How do you explain that? You like sugar because sugar is good, that’s all. That’s something everyone who’s tasted sugar should understand, automatically, no explanation needed.
But maybe, he thought, that’s just what Kyrie needs. More of a taste.
“If we get a chance to go there, let me show you. I’ll show you why we’re chasing it.”
She didn’t respond for a while. Elijah hoped she was thinking it over. When she finally spoke, though, it didn’t give him much reason for optimism.
“When we meet with Mr. Johnson, control yourself. Let Leung and me do most of the talking.”
“Why shouldn’t I—”
“I’m not saying you can’t say anything. Just stay in control.”
Elijah, knowing how easy promises made over nighttime drinks faded in the light of day, just nodded.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Leung had long thought that the most important qualification for the job of being a Johnson was an absolute refusal to be out-cooled. No matter what circumstances came up, a good Johnson reacted like he had seen that sort of thing a hundred times before, and he knew exactly how to deal with it. A knife-wielding, drooling, HMHVV-infected lunatic could come crashing into the middle of a meeting, and a good Johnson would dispatch him with a quick kick in the ass while neither raising an eyebrow nor spilling a drink.
By that measure, the Johnson they were dealing with was excellent at his job. The surroundings weren’t as luxurious as their previous meeting. They were in one of those restaurants where tourists pay extra for a shiny AR interface and English-speaking staff, where they feel like they’re getting an “Authentic Amazonian Experience” without ever having to leave their comfort zone. The staff was skilled at keeping out anyone who didn’t look like they could pay their way, but higher-class grifters flocked to the place like toxic spirits to sludge. Leung had already spotted at least three pickpockets working the crowd, and he had an ARO open that was keeping track of the number of attempted hacks into his PAN since he had arrived. By the time the meeting was done, he thought that number would be at least a dozen.
He knew that whatever was happening to him would be happening to Mr. Johnson more, due to the simple fact that Mr. Johnson looked rich. He wore a dark suit with the reflective sheen of silk, a burgundy cravat, and, of all things, a big, shiny, gold wristwatch. It was a ridiculous bit of ostentation for a man who could immediately check the time on any one of the AROs likely hovering in his field of vision. But that was the point. The watch was a dare, and the fact that Mr. Johnson made that dare wherever he went would do a lot to convince people that they probably shouldn’t take him up on it.
Ever since they had arrived, Mr. Johnson had been putting on a little show, being expansively hospitable, making a point of not talking business until everyone had something to drink and had ordered their food, and acting like he was so excited by what the runners had done that he couldn’t keep himself from jumping on a plane and flying down to Metropôle to hear of their success as soon as possible.
It was all bullshit, of course. Leung knew that Johnsons weren’t his friends, and they never flew thousands of kilometers—or did anything else—just because they wanted to see you. There was another motive that inevitably would come out, and Leung had a good guess what it was.
Now, there was a chance, he admitted to himself, that Mr. Johnson just wanted to get the map in his possession as soon as possible without making the runners take the risk of getting it across international borders. Maybe he just wanted it in his hands before the runners discovered its true value. Maybe that’s all this was.
But Leung doubted it. There was a game being played here, he was pretty certain of that, but he didn’t quite understand the nature of the game, and he didn’t know how he could call Mr. Johnson on it.
In the end, though, he didn’t need to worry about it. Elijah beat him to it.
It happened late in the main course. Mr. Johnson leaned back from his lobster, slowly playing with the remaining pieces with his fork, clearly enjoying what he had left.
“So,” he said. “I understand you had some time to look at the map. What did you discover?”
Elijah snorted. Loudly. It was such an odd, uncouth sound from him that everyone fell silent and stared at him. Leung caught a flash of anger in Mr. Johnson’s eyes, but he quickly put a lid on it, and when he spoke, his voice was level.
“Something wrong, Elijah?”
Elijah harrumphed. “Nothing serious. Just got a bit of your bullshit caught in my throat.”
“Excuse me?”
“That question you asked. It was, pardon my continued coarse language, bullshit. Asking us casually what we found out about the item, as if you didn’t know what it was and needed us to fill you in. But you know what it is. Of course you know. You don’t have a team just up and run to Amazonia on a hunch that they might be after something valuable. No, you send them out because you know what they’re after, and you know how valuable it is, and you know that whatever you spend in recovering it will be worth it. So don’t play games with us. You don’t need us to tell you what we learned.”
“Then, pray tell me, why did I ask the question?”
Leung would have dearly loved to tell Elijah to not answer. Or to slap him in the face once he started talking. But sometimes the need of presenting a unified front was greater than the need of keeping your cards close to your vest, so all he did
was glare at Elijah, subtly, in hopes that he would look his way and take the hint.
But Elijah’s focus stayed on Mr. Johnson.
“Two reasons, as I see it. First, so that you could play your role of someone who doesn’t really know what we’ve been after. Because let’s face it, this is a fairly specialized item, and there is a small group of people who are as interested in it as you are. If you don’t know what it is, you could be tied into a number of different groups, including a few dozen relic hunters I’ve encountered. You’d be doing this on a gamble, knowing there was something good out there but not sure what. On the other hand, if you do know—well, that narrows the field a bit, when it comes to determining who is ultimately behind this mission. Which is something most Johnsons work to conceal.”
Mr. Johnson nodded. “I can’t argue with that.” He was still smooth, still not about to let himself be out-cooled.
“More importantly, though, is your second reason,” Elijah said. “You’re fishing. You want to know what we know, and you don’t want to tell us any more than we already know. Because if we knew too much—if we knew how much this thing might actually be worth—maybe we’d forget about the now-paltry sums you’re offering us and go after something bigger.”
“Selling the map to the highest bidder?”
Elijah leaned forward. “Or going after what you want and getting it first. Because we have the map and you don’t.”
By this point in the conversation, Leung saw that everyone looked a little alarmed—except Pineapple, who only seemed to be alarmed when things were overly calm and tranquil. Leung figured he’d abdicated his role long enough, so he forced his way into the conversation.
“My associate is, of course, not suggesting that we’d go behind your back like that. We are, after all, professionals. You can trust us, just as we trust you to tell us what we need to know.”
Mr. Johnson cocked his head as he looked at Leung. “You trust me? Really?”
Leung gave his most charming grin. “Of course not. But it’s good business to act like we do.”
That seemed to work. Kyrie took a bite of beans, Mr. Johnson smiled, and some of the tension flowed away. Leung relaxed a little, too.
Which was a mistake, because Elijah leapt right into the silence.
“But we can’t just pretend everything is going normally, can we? You hired us to get the map, and we got the map. But instead of flying us back so we could give it to you, or instead of flying down here and arranging a simple meeting to pass it over, you set up a dinner and start playing games. Why?”
The good humor that Leung had worked to bring back to Mr. Johnson’s face vanished. “You seem to know so much about why I’m doing what I’m doing, perhaps you should answer your own question.”
“Okay. You know that if we looked at the map, we might be curious, especially if we saw the tower. Especially if I saw the tower. And you knew that maybe we could help you find what’s there, or maybe we’d become your competition. We’d see the tower, know it’s what you’re after, and we’d understand that if we got there first, we’d get a whole hell of a lot more than you’re offering. You set this up to know if we were friends or competition—and if we were competition, you’d take care of us.”
Leung sat up straight. With a quick thought, an ARO opened on the table in front of him. It was full of lines and squiggles, mostly green and red, but some blue. It was Leung’s custom design, a way to get an abstract visual on the nature of the various wireless signals in the area. There were lots of circles, nice orderly collection of signals, and a few more jagged shapes—commlinks with a loose wire, or jury-rigged pieces of equipment, most likely. Then there was the random noise of the universe, spikes and flashes appearing here and there, surrounding the bits of order with chaos. And then there was, and then ...
There.
Lower right section of the ARO. One second he saw a curve, then two curves, two pieces of two separate arcs, very close together. Then those curves disappeared and were replaced by random noise for a second, then he could make out two more curves, two new pieces of what he suspected were the same two arcs.
If he didn’t miss his guess, there were two people about 150 meters away who were doing a very good job of keeping their PANs running silent. Now, there were a million reasons why someone in Metropôle might want to keep themselves hidden, but finding these two, so nearby, right after Elijah delivered his theory, was unnerving.
He sent a quick message to Kyrie.
Kyrie’s reply came quickly.
In the meantime, Mr. Johnson was walking a delicate balance, where he pretended that Elijah’s assumptions were wrong and hurtful while making it clear with his relaxed body language and bland tones that, in truth, he didn’t really care about much that Elijah was saying.
“I’m sorry if you believed this meeting to be something other than what it is. I’m buying you dinner to congratulate you on a job well done, and to see if there are any more work opportunities that might come from your current success. Any other assumptions you have about what’s going on are unwarranted, I’m sure.”
Elijah opened his mouth, but Leung was quicker.
“What are you offering?”
Mr. Johnson smiled. “To pick up the tab. I thought I had made that clear.”
No one else at the table so much as twitched a corner of their mouth.
Mr. Johnson continued, unfazed. “The next step is quite obvious, of course. What other reason would one have for recovering a map except to go to whatever it reveals? Now, as you of course know, Antarctic explorations cannot be undertaken lightly. This is more than a small team like yours could accomplish. But while you could not do it on your own, you could be part of the larger effort. There are roles for you to play down there, where that tower is, if you’re willing to go.”
Leung again spoke before Elijah could. “How much?”
“How much? Are you implying that your current rate is no longer satisfactory?”
Again, everyone around the table remained expressionless.
And that was the last Leung saw of Mr. Johnson’s casual, easy demeanor. The only wrinkles on his face had been smile lines near the eyes. Those were now gone. He leaned forward, putting him more directly under the lighting fixture above the table, which meant that most of the lower half of his face fell into shadow. His eyes glowed out as two yellow pinpoints.
“Fine. No more messing around. Here it is—go to Antarctica, and I’ll double your pay rate per day. Turn me down, and then make any single move that looks like you’re going to be my competition down there—and I’d probably consider any move, any move at all, that took you out of this country to be a first step in that direction—and I’ll take you out.”
“Or we could just take you out right here.” Kyrie didn’t draw a weapon when she said that, but her voice sure sounded like she had.
“You certainly could. But your gearhead knows I’ve got people watching.”
“Only two,” Leung said, hoping he had read the signals correctly. “Not enough to take us down.”
“They wouldn’t even try. They’d just make sure the right people knew that you’d killed me. Then you’d be nothing more than the walking dead.”
In a small ARO, Leung saw a flurry of messages, going back and forth between Kyrie and Elijah. They thought they were private messages, but Leung had never been fond of other people in his group keeping secrets from him, so he made it a point to monitor things like that.
He could see two things in conversation—one, that Kyrie was not happy with the way things had gone and with the situation they were now in; and two, no matter how unhappy she or anyone else was about it, the group would soon be heading south. No runners like b
eing strong-armed, but the nuyen Mr. Johnson was offering would make that easier to swallow.
Then Elijah spoke and made it official.
“We’ll go. And we appreciate your generous offer.”
Mr. Johnson leaned back, but he still didn’t smile.
“Good. Fine. I’ll fly you down to Argentina, you can get some supplies, then take a boat most of the rest of the way. You’ll have a full itinerary tonight.” He stood. “I’ve paid for everything ordered so far. Ask for anything else, and you’re on your own.” He then stalked out.
The group knew better than to discuss anything then and there. Leung didn’t need to look at his abstract squiggles to know the two hidden blue circles were probably still there. The rest of the meal was silent, aside from Pineapple’s lip smacking.
Leung managed to wait until they were back at their bug-free flophouse before he laid into Elijah. He didn’t bother to pull Elijah aside into a private conversation, and he launched right into a rant that had been building in his head ever since they had left the restaurant.
“You see, that’s why some people shouldn’t talk at a meet. When you’re talking about what you know, Elijah, I’m sure you’re great and knowledgeable. But this is what I do. One of the things I do. Do you have any idea what you did back there?”
Elijah looked oddly focused. He wasn’t distracted, or looking off at something interesting to the side of him, as he often was—but he didn’t say anything, so Leung continued.
“I know it feels good to call someone on their bullshit, but if you get too aggressive—well, look what happened. You backed him into a corner, so he came out swinging. He had to go with a show of force. So you thought you were being clever, but in the end you left us no choice. Mr. Johnson got what he wanted, and we were stuck. We had to take his offer, we had to go to Antarctica. You left us—”
The words died in his mouth. Now he understood. Elijah still was looking right at him, eyes steady, no hint of a smile or anything else in his mouth or eyes.
