She didn't have much time before the Lady learned what had happened. Hart herself could tell Deigh, but she didn't know if the Lady would have her killed before or after they shot down the helicopter. When aroused, the Seelie Court could be every bit as ruthless as their less seemly cousins of the Unseelie Court. A violated parole and a stolen aircraft would certainly anger the Shidhe.
Hart had taken responsibility for Sam and the priest.
Their escape was her failure, her responsibility;
Sam moved down the aisle, checking faces. The craft swayed as it continued its taxi. Fringes on his jacket's arms brushed across the tops of the outer seats as he passed, occasionally flicking into the face of one of the seated passengers. No one complained.
Was Sanchez really on-board? The passenger manifest Dodger had boosted had said that he was. The man should have reacted to the code words, but he hadn't. Maybe he was scared, getting cold feet now that his escort away from cozy corporate security had arrived. Sam was annoyed. What did Sanchez have to be afraid of? His corporate exile would only be temporary. Mr. Johnson had a comfy hideyhole all ready, and in a week or two Sanchez would be back at work, safe and sound in his new corporate home.
Three rows from the forward bulkhead, Sam found Sanchez. He was staring fixedly ahead, sweating. The corporate's hands were rigidly gripping the arms of his seat. Sam spoke the man's name, but was ignored. Reaching out a hand to shake Sanchez, Sam was surprised when the man shrank away,
"Come on, Sanchez. We don't have time to fool around."
Sanchez finally turned his head to look at Sam. The man's dark eyes stared, wide and full of terror. He swallowed convulsively before saying, "Please. I have done nothing."
Sam didn't know what to say.
"Frag it, Twist. If that's the suit, get him moving." Jason moved up the aisle as he spoke. Reaching the perplexed Sam, he stretched an arm past and pulled Sanchez to his feet. "Last thing we need is getting hosed cause the suit's gone limp."
Jason shoved his gun muzzle under Sanchez's chin, forcing his head up. "You don't jerk us. Comprende, chummer?"
"Please, senor. Do not shoot," Sanchez pleaded.
' 'I do not know what you are talking about. I am only a technician. I am not a ahman. I have no access to secrets. I am nobody."
"You'll be nothing but a corpse if you don't get your ass out of here."
Sam reached out to touch Jason's arm but the samurai shifted, placing Sanchez between them. "Jason, I think Settor Sanchez knows less about this run than we do."
"I don't care what he knows. We're taking him out."
Sam frowned. There was more going on here than they knew, and he didn't like what he was thinking. "Otter, check outside. Dodger, anything moving on the air traffic grid?"
"Negative, Sir Twist," the elf replied instantly. He must have been monitoring the conversation through Sam's microphone. When she ducked back in, Otter gave the same report.
So much for his first thought. "Well, whatever the screwup is, it doesn't seem to be a trap. Still, we'd better buzz."
Otter nodded and started to undog the cabin door. Fishface looked as blank as usual, but remained standing where he was, his eyes fixed on Jason. The Indian still gripped Sanchez.
"It stinks. It's got to be a trap and this pedro's a part of it." Jason leaned into his gun, forcing Sanchez's head even further back. "Ain't that right, pedro? Sure it is. You're too nervous. Don't like being the bait when the fish have teeth, do you? I don't like being fooled, pedro."
"Chill it, Jason," Sam snapped. "You've got a gun in his throat. Of course he's nervous. Let's just get him out of here. The sooner we're gone, the better." Jason slowly turned his mirror eyes on Sam. "I say we smoke him. It'll be a lesson."
He himself self will not accept that he has a shamanic calling. He clings desperately to his scientific view of the world."
"Then he has abandoned investigations into his magic?"
"Quite the contrary. He struggles to learn. It's driving Lady Tsung crazy."
Laverty actually looked surprised. "Ms. Tsung is attempting to teach him?"
"Attempting is the right word. Were Sam not so stubborn, he'd see that he and Lady Tsung have incompatible magical orientations."
"Given what you have said, his lack of vision now seems unsurprising. Try to bring him back."
"He won't come. He wants to find his sister first."
"Such loyalty is admirable. And very valuable. But do what you can to bring him here."
With that, Laverty turned and left the library. Estios and Chatterjee followed. Teresa remained standing at the door, making no move to leave. Estios aborted his own exit, and they exchanged a few words, speaking too softly for Dodger to hear. After a few moments, Estios straightened and threw a hostile look in Dodger's direction. Dodger returned a smile, which only infuriated the elf even more. He said one last thing to Teresa before striding angrily through the doorway. Dodger was left alone in the room with Teresa. He waited and she made the first move, walking softly across the carpet to the desk where his cyberdeck lay. Dodger stood as she approached.
She reached a hand past him and took the chip that the machine had extruded. She weighed it in her hand and said, "You seem very fond of this Samuel Verner."
"I have told him that I will help him find his sister."
"You've set yourself another task?"
"A noble quest. We have learned that she was sent to Yomi Island. 'Tis a foul place where the Japanese
send those unfortunate enough to be inflicted with metahuman genes. We would liberate her from such vile durance."
"Once you would have gone charging in." "Yomi is not the sort of place where one could do that easily. There must be preparations. We will go when we are ready. First, we must gain information and credit because transportation, equipment, and muscle are not cheap. While we gather what we need, we hone our skills with shadowruns. Were Sam less fastidious about the runs, we would be further along." She made a tentative motion, almost reaching out to touch him. "You would have made a wonderful paladin."
The old pain seared. Dodger turned his shoulder to her; he did not want her to see the emotions her words had wakened. "I am no paladin. I never will be. I refuse to be twisted to serve any person's will."
"Yet you serve this norm," she said softly.
"I do not serve him. I help him." Dodger turned to look at her, but her face was shadowed under her hair. His hands hung uselessly at his side. "There is all the difference in the world between those two words."
"You always did worry about words." Teresa toyed with the chip. She would not look him in the face. "Why are you helping him?"
"We are friends."
She tilted her head slightly. He could see her pensive expression now, achingly beautiful in its somber composure. Her serious mien shifted into a wistful smile. "We were friends once."
Dodger swallowed hard, "/thought so."
At last she met his gaze. Her eyes were pure emerald and as bottomless as he remembered. He had lost himself in those eyes long ago. He found himself ready to do so again.
"But you left," she said.
Time in the shadows had toughened him, honing away the fat and softness of his corporate life. He opened the door to the apartment, allowing Inu to scamper in through his legs, and found that Inu's excited yapping had done its work. Sally was awake.
"Get enough exercise?" she asked slyly as she tossed back the covers.
He smiled, knowing what kind of exercise she had in mind. "I thought we were supposed to have a lesson this evening."
"Too much work makes Sam too dull." She stretched, testing his resolve. Seeing that he withstood the temptation, she shrugged and pulled on her shorts. "I thought we'd try a conjuring tonight."
Sam frowned. "Why? You know I don't want to do that kind of stuff."
"Every magician needs to know how," Sally said, lacing the strings on her halter. "If you don't know the basics of conjuring, you can't banish an enemy's sen
ding. That's too useful a skill."
"Banishing is sort of like an exorcism, isn't it?" "Give the boy a gold star. Yeah, it's like that but it doesn't have any of the religious nonsense attached." Knowing it was a sore point, Sam said, "Religion is not nonsense."
"Don't start with me." Sally's eyes flashed with adamant heat, then softened. "Anyway, what I wanted to do tonight was to get you an ally spirit."
Sam knew what she meant; he'd done some reading. Perversely, he played dumb. "You mean like a familiar."
"Another star."
"You don't have one," he pointed out. He was surprised by the petulant tone in his voice. From the look on her face, Sally noted it too.
"I'm not hung up on learning magic, either. An ally may be what you need to break this block you've got."
She was not going to give up. Well, neither was he.
"I won't deal with the devil."
"Idiot! There aren't any devils but the ones running the megacorps. Spirits may quibble and bargain, but they're not demons. They're just energy forms cast into a particular construct by the intelligence whose energy forces them to coalesce. They don't have any connections with fallen angels or cosmic malignancies or anything like that. All that drek is stories made up by pasty-faced old men to scare impressionable kids into following orders that are too stupid to defend logically. I thought you had a better mind than that."
"You're entitled to your opinion," Sam said huffily. He knew that most of what was said about spirits being demons was garbagea151he wasn't a total idiot. "This dealing with spirits just doesn't seem right. Even you say that they talk. That implies sentience, but whether they are free intelligences or not, talking to spirits is just too crazy for me. I had enough of that in those nightmares last summer when I talked to the dog spirit. I haven't had one of those episodes in months, and I don't want to do anything to start them again. I'm just getting back on track. I've put all the troubles that followed Hanae's death into the past where they belong. I don't want to wake that kind of craziness again."
Sally shook her head, her expression hardening into contempt. "You'll never learn with that kind of attitude."
"I'll survive," Sam said defensively. "I've done all right so far."
"Babe, you're in the woods. You're alive 'cause I keep you alive."
Sally might believe it, but Sam knew better. He had learned his lessons. "You weren't there last night."
"And you nearly got smoked."
"We did fine."
Programs, and subsidized communities, while shipping what they considered refuse to the hell they called Yomi. They had seduced Sam from her. Yes, he would refer to her as a kawaruhito, if he referred to her at all.
In just one month Yomi had taught her more about the world and how it worked than her eighteen years in corporate society. The lessons were harsh, but she had learned. She'd had to. Failure meant death. Despite the pain, the rejection, and the horrible realization that she was no longer normal, she had not been ready to die.
She'd learned just how luxurious her former corporate life had been. Renraku menials had a better life than even the self-styled overlords of Yomi. The depths to which the weak and ordinary inmates sank was beyond rational thought. It was just as well that most of those confined to the island didn't remain rational long. She had learned how to survive. Over a year ago her body had changed, and twisted her life into a new pattern. Now, for whatever reason, her body had changed again. Was she condemned to keep changing? God forbid that she was infected with some nasty new type of goblinization that never stopped. She had survived one change and was stronger for it. Thus far, she had coped with the new change, but she didn't know how much she could take. What if she changed yet again?
The face she now saw in the mirror was alien. After her first time, she avoided looking in mirrors, having found the asymmetry of her ork physiognomy repulsive. But her new visage was more regular, though hardly more human. She was finding her new body shape more congenial as well. She had expected to find the fur unbearably warm, but it hadn't been so. Her long limbs were still uncoordinated, making her every movement awkward. She felt ungainly and frus trated at her lack of control. If Shiroi hadn't found her in the Walled City, she would have been prey for the jackals who scoured that garbage heap.
But he had found her and offered help. She had been scared when she had accepted his offer. Scared of her surroundings. Scared of what had happened to her. Scared of trusting him. So she had taken a chance. After all, what did she have to lose?
Now, her life was taking another crazy twist. This time it was a dream instead of a nightmare. Her memories of her "luxurious" corporate life were being tattered to shabbiness. With Renraku, one had to be at least a vice-president of a regional branch to rate a private aircraft such as the one in which she travelled.
The flight was over now. The craft had taxied to a halt and the vibration from the engines had stopped. The pilot emerged from the cockpit, nodding and motioning her forward. His smiled was forced. The rest of the crew was nowhere in sight. She'd be seeing Shiroi soon. Who was he, to command such extravagance?
She rose from her seat. With three long, wobbly strides, she reached the pilot's side. Undogging the toggles, he lifted the latch and swung the cabin door wide. Brilliant sunshine flooded through the opening, forcing her to squint painfully. The cabin's climate control coughed and shuddered into high gear to fight the invasion of hot, humid air. For a moment, she was back on Yomi and she shuddered. Remembering to breathe, she sucked in air. It was thin, and she felt light-headed. Even her new, larger lungs didn't seem to have enough capacity.
The pilot stepped through the hatchway and pressed himself against the railing of the stairway. He seemed to want to give her as much room as possible. Up close, she could smell his fear. What did he think she was going to do? Eat him? Ignoring him, she looked Shidhe's law, her life was forfeit. Only Sam's death at Hart's hands might release her from that harsh judgment.
It took Hart three minutes to run through the halls to her quarters. Worry nagged at her the entire way, almost disrupting the concentration she needed to maintain her invisibility spell. She knew some of the palace's guardian creatures had marked her passage. The damned, cluttering leshy seemed to see her too, but none of the elves she passed were aware. That was good.
There were no guards at her quarters. The alarm had yet to be given. She wasted no time packing, only grabbed the working bag she had kept ready out of old habit. Before leaving the room, she used the computer to log a "do not disturb" order and a delayed order for a meal delivery with the palace household staff. It was a weak ruse, but it might buy a few minutes.
On her way to the outer precincts, she only paused once at a storeroom. The room was supposed to be secure, but she had penetrated better systems. She was in and out at the cost of only a few precious minutes, her bag stuffed with Sam's gear. There were ways to use the items as tracking links.
Just before she hit the outer, public section of the palace, she dropped her invisibility spell. There would be mages on watch at the boundary, and her concealment spell would only mark her as someone to be detained. To her relief, she found at the gate that her privileged status hadn't been revoked. The guards listened dutifully to her story about a trip to the southwest, and even offered her good wishes as she left the building.
She passed through the park surrounding the palace and entered the rail station without incident. Her good fortune held; a train was in the station. She slipped a certified credstick into the turnstile slot and dumped enough nuyen for a month's open pass. The gate opened and she made it to the platform in time to board just as the doors were closing.
By the time the train pulled into the main station in Dublin and she left the car to mingle with the city crowds, she had worked out the bones of her plan. Her first step was to contact her decker Jenny and arrange transport to England. As soon as she secured a little backup, she would intercept Samuel Verner. She was very sure she knew where he was
headed.
Dodger had never felt so tired. He stared at the dataplug in his limp hand for a full minute before letting it drop to the idle cyberdeck. He was hungry and his muscles ached from hunching over the cyberdeck. His meat was failing under the strain. Running the Matrix steadily ground a decker down. Trying to do the work of a whole team of deckers changed the grinding wheel of exhaustion from carborundum to diamond grit. He was worn down.
The search for Sam and Hart had been a total bust. The Matrix offered no hints of any operation, and his checks on druid holdings gave no indication that they had anything to do with the sudden disappearance of his fellow runners. Willie had come up with zilch as • well. Even Herzog's street contacts had nothing, no matter what price was offered. No avenue Dodger had explored had yielded any information on the platinumhaired lady elf or the brown-bearded American shaman. Neither should have been able to hide for so long in the London sprawl.
Dodger was frustrated. Hart he could take or leave; something about her flashed a warning mode. But Sam… Dodger had gotten him into this mess and now his friend had vanished without a trace. His feelings of guilt were uncomfortable as much for their rarity as Robert N. Charrette for their strength. Those feelings were exaggerated every time he thought about how much time he was spending on the other problem.
The hunt on that issue had turned up only negative clues, but the puzzle drew him like a siren. Driven to look, and repelled at the same time, he haunted the Matrix searching for anything that might tell him more about the Artificial Intelligence that had called itself Morgan le Fay.
Dodger had visited with some of the best deckers in the Matrix, but they knew nothing. The rumor mill at Syberspace was empty. Or rather, it had been when he checked into the virtual club. It wouldn't be now. He knew that he would have started a whirlwind of speculation with his guarded questions. The habitues of the decker club were not stupida151nobody stupid could deck through the ice that armored that exclusive little Matrix hideout. His fellow Matrix runners would guess what he had hinted at and begin looking for themselves. Soon someone would know.
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