Never Deal with a Dragon

by Robert N. Charrette

  It was too strange. He turned away in time to catch an expression of nervousness on Ghost’s face. Was something going wrong? He turned to the Ork and found Kham staring in fascination at Sally. His ugly face showed a mixture of awe and lust. The Ork’s elbow gouged Sam in the chest.

  “I love it when she does that,” he whispered.

  Sally’s eyes snapped open and the spell was done. She directed them to gather tool boxes to hide their weapons. That accomplished, they boarded a shuttle cart and rode to the elevators.

  The guard at alpha level received them incuriously. Handing over the passcards, he barely looked at the little group. Sam thought it just as well because Kham stuck his thumb up one nostril and waggled his fingers at the guard as he stuck out his paw to receive the card supposed to be his. Unbelievably, the guard failed to react.

  As soon as they were safely inside another elevator car for the ride to higher levels, Sam leaned over and whispered in Sally’s ear.

  “Kham’s antics were hardly the expected behavior of a workman. Why didn’t the guard react?’

  She chuckled softly. “I’m used to Kham. I just work extra hard on his part of the spell.”

  When the car sighed to a halt, they exited onto a promenade. It was mostly empty. The few late-night strollers ignored them, just as they would a legitimate work crew. The same way, Sam realized, that he had always ignored work crews. He wondered if Sally’s spell was even necessary here. They soon came to another guard station, and Sam was glad of the spell’s effectiveness as Kham stuck out a deep purple tongue in the direction of the woman behind the counter. She only wished them good luck in an uninterested way before returning her attention back to the trid set squawking softly from below eye level.

  Three more elevators and two guard stations later, they reached the Computer Systems Research office. They passed the guard there with no more trouble than before. Once inside, a quick check with the Elf got an all-quiet signal.

  “It’s been too smooth,” Ghost declared. He pulled his Ingrams out of the toolbox, slipping one into his belt and keeping the other ready in his hand. Kham and Sally grabbed their own guns. They seemed to trust the samurai’s intuition more readily than the Elf’s report on the security conditions.

  “Safety first, paleface,” the Amerindian said when Sam made no move to reclaim the weapon they had given him. “You won’t have time to come back for it if we get hosed.”

  Reluctantly, Sam picked up the slivergun.

  “Let’s be quick,” Sally said, passing out the containers of counteragent that Castillano’s biotech had supplied. “Spread it around. We don’t know how much and exactly where the stuff’s been used. I’ll clean whatever’s left of Seretech’s dirty toys out of the closet.”

  They split up.

  Sam was starting to spray his third room, a large work area for the system developers, when Sally joined him.

  “Got them all,” she said before starting to spray the far side of the room with counteragent.

  A minute later, a red-clad guard appeared. The man might have been making an unscheduled patrol, or he might have been on his way to the head. He didn’t appear to be in a hurry, and that encouraged Sam. After so many successes, he was almost comfortable with the completeness of Sally’s spell. He felt almost safe. With Sally in the room with him, little could go wrong. Her spell would keep them from discovery.

  As the guard passed him, Sam raised the hand holding the gun and waved. The man waved back and continued on his way. The guard was halfway through the door when he stopped and turned around, his eyes going wide.

  “Watch yourself, lady,” the guard shouted at Sally as he reached for his weapon. “Armed infiltrator!”

  “No,” Sam stuttered, raising the slivergun.

  The guard ignored him, clearing his holster and dropping into firing stance.

  Sam’s finger tightened on the trigger of the slivergun. The weapon bucked as it unleashed a steady stream of plastic flechettes. Closely grouped needles traveling at slightly subsonic speed stitched a crimson line across the guard’s chest and right shoulder. He tumbled backward, bright blood spraying from his mouth, landing sprawled and still. His gun struck the floor, its metal ringing with a clear note that seemed obscenely pure in the sudden gory disarray.

  Sam’s own gun dropped to the floor with a harsh clatter.

  The sound of Sam’s shot brought Ghost and Kham running.

  “Aw, drek! What happened?” the Ork barked.

  “Guard must have caught a flaw in the spell,” Sally answered.

  Sam was dazed, seeing the last few moments over and over again. He watched the guard turn, a puzzled expression on his face. No fear. No concern. Just puzzlement. Then the brown eyes had widened, focused on the slivergun.

  “He seemed to see the gun.”

  Sally spat a string of syllables that sounded like a curse and stamped her foot.

  “He should have seen it as a tool. The intent wasn’t focused right. Since the slivergun wasn’t something you were used to, the intent couldn’t cover it as well.”

  “It’s done now, Sally,” Ghost said in a placatory tone as he moved to check the body.

  “I shot him,” Sam said. He felt numb.

  “Don’t worry, chummer,” Kham said. “De corp will never know who did it.”

  “But he’s dead,” Sam protested.

  “Nope,” Ghost contradicted. “But he will be—without attention. If he gets that while we’re here, we’ll be dead.”

  “Let’s finish and go.” Sally’s voice was brittle.

  They went back to work, leaving Sam to stare at his victim.

  The fallen guard looked young. A life cut short because a magic spell hadn’t done what it was supposed to do and because a foolish, scared kid not much older than Sam had panicked. It didn’t seem right.

  This guard wasn’t some thrill-seeker from the streets. He wasn’t even one of the faceless Red Samurai, hardened to the harsh realities of life. This was just a kid, doing his job. He had even tried to protect Sally, assuming she belonged to the company and that only Sam was the intruder. What a foolish irony.

  Why had Sam taken a gun from the runners? It had seemed unlikely he’d need it. Had he needed it? Whether or not, he had used it. The result lay at his feet.

  How could good intentions have led him to this?

  Some infinite time later, Sam became aware that Ghost was talking to him. He blinked, realizing that he was no longer in the Computer Systems Research Center. Somehow the runners had gotten him to the car pool on sub-level F. It was supposed to be their last stop inside the arcology. The Elf was to have arranged an assignment for a vehicle to take them away.

  “Come on, paleface. Listen to me,” Ghost was saying. “The Elf has put in an emergency call for the guard. They’ll take care of him. Are you satisfied?”

  “Satisfied?” Sam’s voice seemed distant, as if someone else were speaking. “I need to know if he’ll be all right.”

  “Not likely.”

  “You go on. I’ve got to go back and find out. You’ve done what you needed to do for your reps. You don’t need me anymore. Go on. Leave me here.”

  “We ain’t leaving you behind to raise de troops,” Kham growled.

  “I won’t,” Sam protested.

  “You’re right,” the Ork said, aiming his HK227 directly at Sam’s belly. “’Cause you’re sticking with us.”

  Sam looked to Sally and Ghost, but their eyes were cold. Ghost plucked away the slivergun that had somehow found its way back into Sam’s holster. Sam hung his head and let himself be led along.

  As the van they had liberated pulled onto Western Avenue, Sam heard the wailing of a siren in the sky above. He rocked his head back and caught a glimpse of a DocWagon sky ambulance banking around the arcology, bound for one of the landing pads. He wondered if it was in time to do any good.

  Fragments of sensations and images touched him through the daze into which he had retreated. A dimly lit b
uilding and a grubby pile of white coveralls vanishing into a trash incinerator. Flashes of shadow and light. The Ork’s stink. The howl of a siren. Wind lashing his face and the throb of a powerful engine beneath his seat.

  Abruptly, he was aware that the wind and the hammering pulse of the engine had stopped. He was seated behind Kham, the Scorpion’s roar muted now to an idle rumble. They were somewhere in the Barrens.

  “Dis is where you get off, Verner.”

  Sam swung his leg over the hog to stand in the midst of the three mounted shadowrunners. He faced Sally.

  “What about the others? Will you release them now?”

  It was Ghost who answered. “They’ve been on their own for half an hour. Should be reaching the arcology about now if they weren’t afraid to take the Third Avenue bus through Orktown.”

  “What about you, Verner?” Sally asked softly. “Going to follow them back to Renraku?”

  “Of course,” Sam responded automatically, “I work for the corporation.”

  Kham stifled a guffaw. Sally lashed him with a frown and turned her eyes on Sam. “That might be a foolish move.”

  “I don’t think so. I am confident they’ll understand.”

  “It’s your funeral,” the Ork bellowed, revving his hog and roaring away into the night.

  “Good luck,” Sally called as she gunned her Rapier and screamed in the same direction the Ork had taken.

  “You are very loyal, paleface. I hope they deserve it. “ Ghost tossed Sam the slivergun. “You might need this to get home, but I suggest you find it a nice trash compactor before you meet any badges.”

  The Amerindian’s Rapier squealed as the tires fought to grab the pavement, then it sped away, chasing the echoes of the others.

  Sam was alone on the street save for a mangy mutt scrounging scraps among the garbage and rats. He sat on the curb, laying the gun between his feet.

  He stared at it for a long time before realizing he had company. The mongrel had abandoned its search to sit beside him. It, too, looked at the gun.

  “Don’t you know what to do, either?”

  The dog whined and tried to lick Sam’s face.

  “I haven’t got any food for you.”

  The animal’s tail thumped the pavement, dismissing the gross oversight. Sam stood and so did the dog. It skipped down the street a few meters, then stopped.

  “Shall I run the streets with you, then?”

  The dog cocked its head.

  “No. Not tonight. Life in the shadows doesn’t seem to be for me.”

  Sam turned in the direction he guessed would take him back to friendlier parts of Seattle. The glow in the night sky promised that he had made the right choice. He had taken only a dozen steps when the dog trotted to his side.

  “Coming with me?”

  The dog yipped.

  “Well, friend,” Sam said, as the dog began to pace him. “Loyalty is no easy virtue. But I suppose that doesn’t frighten you. You will be true to your nature, after all.”

  Man and dog walked on in silence. Behind them, drops of rain began to patter down on the gun left lying in the shadows.

  THE OPENING PATH

  2051

  PART 1

  It Takes More Than A Salary, Man

  CHAPTER ONE

  Samuel Verner had never believed the stories about the Ghost in the Machine.

  However bizarre the tale, there was always a reasonable explanation. Some stories were pure fantasy while others were hoaxes by wiz-kid deckers or outright lies by incompetents seeking to hide their mistakes. There was no evidence for a disembodied sentience in the Matrix.

  Now, under the electronic skies of the Renraku arcology’s Matrix, he began to wonder.

  A persona icon had entered the datastore where Sam’s own projection was at work. The core of the icon was the standard Renraku corporate decker, the chromed image of a proper salaryman. The Raku logo pulsed in blue neon on the left breast, shoulders, and back of the figure’s suitcoat. The chrome reflected the swirling numbers and letters that were the datastore’s visual representation. Harsh red lines striped the icon’s surface like angry wounds, rude shadows of the luminous outline that surrounded the humanoid shape.

  That wireframe simulacrum was a caricature of a kabuki clown. Any patron of that bawdy Japanese theater form would recognize this figure of pathos who inspired laughter among those spared the larger-than-life trials of the clownish victim. Sam was familiar with the image in the kabuki, and he was also familiar with it here in the Matrix. The hollow clown and its corporate core was the adopted persona icon of Jiro Tanaka.

  But Jiro had been dead for at least three hours.

  Just before beginning his work for the day, Sam had made an unauthorized access into the arcology’s hospital data bank. Jiro’s file was closed but not yet sealed. Within the file, the patient log recorded the cessation of Jiro’s brain activity at 06:03 PST. Sam was saddened but not surprised; the young corporate decker had been sinking steadily for five days since his accidental fall from the promenade in the open mall. The two-story drop to the concrete had shattered bones and ruptured organs. The doctor’s prognosis had been pessimistic, citing possible brain damage and an apparent lack of will to survive.

  Yet now, Jiro’s persona icon was active in the Matrix, threading its way through the mazes of data. It moved slowly, hesitantly, like a newly freed spirit adjusting to a novel form and abilities. Ghosts made little enough sense in the real world; they had no business in the analog world of the Matrix. This consensual hallucination used by computer operators to manipulate the immense dataflows at incredible computer speeds was not a real “world.” It had no way to trap and hold souls.

  Some of the rogue deckers infesting the datanets claimed that a decker’s soul could be left trapped in the Matrix when some killer countermeasures fried his brain. Sam had seen enough scientific documentation to know that such rumors were fantasies. The persona icon was only a placeholder, a marker that indicated where an operator’s attention was focused in a computer system. It had no existence even though another operator in the same part of the system could perceive it. The icon had no objective reality. It simply indicated where the decker was engaged, an analog for his activity among the datalines, optical chips, and computer architecture that was the Matrix. There was no place for spirits in the electronics world. Souls were the province of God and when the body died, they went on to His judgement. No machine could hold them back.

  There had to be another explanation. Sam’s program continued to run as he pondered the riddle. While his own icon remained stationary among the tumbling alphanumerics, nearly transparent because his cyberterminal was engaged in a “flow-through” search, the Jiro icon passed him. It gave no sign that it noted his presence, no hint of recognition. Sam felt simultaneous disappointment and relief. Even a ghost of Jiro could not have passed without acknowledgement. Whoever was using Jiro’s icon was a stranger.

  Sam’s fingers flashed over the keys of his cyberterminal. The flow-through program disengaged and he activated the program he had named Tag Along. When the terminal brought Tag Along to active status, his icon flashed opaque, resolving into the standard Raku salaryman icon. Sam stood and placed himself behind the Jiro icon, pacing the intruder step for step and turn for turn. Occasionally, Sam’s icon flickered suddenly to a new location, “teleporting” with the power of Tag Along to remain out of the Jiro icon’s line-of-sight and thereby out of the operator’s awareness.

  The teleport was a function of the program that Sam didn’t understand. He knew why it operated, he just didn’t know how. But then, he was a user not a programmer. He didn’t have to know. The ability had proven helpful in the those first few months after the kidnapping incident and that was enough for Sam.

  The death of Jiro’s wife had affected the young decker radically. His behavior had become erratic leaving him surly and solitary where he once had been open and sociable. Renraku Corporation had reacted to the change, solici
tous of its employees’ welfare. When Sam reported the addition the young decker had made to his Matrix icon, the company psychiatrist agreed that monitoring was a reasonable precaution. The physician had authorized company software experts to write and emplace a custom watchdog program that would allow another decker to follow Jiro as he moved through the Matrix. Hardware modifications and custom software embedded in Jiro’s cyberterminal workstation made the watcher invisible to the senses of Jiro’s icon.

  Sam had persuaded the psychiatrist that he was a good choice as a watcher. After all, Sam was one of the few people at the arcology who knew anything about Jiro. The doctor agreed that Sam might have a good chance of noting anomalies in Jiro’s behavior, possibly picking up subtle references to past events. In fact, the doctor had agreed so readily that Sam suspected he might have done so because the plan was good therapy for Sam himself. Sam didn’t care. Therapy or not, he wanted to watch over Jiro. Their experiences at the hands of the shadowrunners who had hijacked their shuttle had created a bond between them. Sam could not abandon Jiro, especially after seeing how easily his friend absorbed the nihilistic attitude of Alice Crenshaw, the other survivor of the hijacking.

  The Jiro icon moved out of the datastore and deeper into the computer system, jolting Sam with a sudden shift in perspective. He was no longer accustomed to the forced movement of Tag Along. It had been months since the psychiatrist had certified Jiro as stable and thus discontinued the Tag Along authorization.

  Sam fought off the disorientation, focusing on the task to hand. If this wasn’t Jiro, then someone had entered the Renraku system illegally. No legitimate user could operate with someone else’s persona programming; they wouldn’t have the codes or know the passwords to unlock the software. Sam had a duty to the corporation to prevent misuse of the system.