Shadowrun 45 - Aftershock

by Jean Rabe, John Helfers (v1. 0) (epub)

  He opened the fridge, grabbed a milk bottle and scowled. The holostamp showed that its shelf life had passed two days ago. He popped the top and sniffed, finding it not too objectionable. Then he grabbed a package of imported almond cookies from the top shelf of a cabinet (where he knew the others couldn't easily reach), and opened it, reading the package for a moment. “Suggested serving size: three cookies. My hoop it is.” Shaking his head, he emptied the bag’s entire contents into his mouth, and followed them with all of the milk, chewing noisily, then swallowing with a belch.

  His hunger pang temporarily mollified, he turned to the kitchen’s large, granite-topped island, where he’d arranged a half-dozen of the more interesting-looking plants. He started with the stunted vine with dark green leaves and purple “hairs” everywhere. Hood’s fingers tentatively brushed the largest leaf, finding the purple follicles ever-so-tickling. He’d never seen such a specimen before, not even on any of the numerous nature trideo programs he owned, and he was fascinated by it. He bent down until his chin touched the hairs and inhaled deeply. The scent of the potting soil was predominant, a rich mixture that the common gardener probably couldn’t afford—or find. It had eggshell colored granules in it, a few of which Hood plucked out with his fingernails and made a note to study later.

  The plant itself gave off the odor of fresh-cut grass, and he wished it wasn’t so subtle. “I’d have me a few of these, I would.” He raised an eyebrow at his comment, then raised the corner of his mouth. “Indeed, I think I will have one of these.”

  “What did you say?” This came from Sindje, who was somewhere in the cavernous living room.

  “I was talking to myself.” Hood knew the elf couldn’t physically see him, but he suspected she was watching him magically. A whisper: “You’re far too curious for your own good.”

  “What are you doing?”

  He didn’t answer that, certain he didn’t need to. “You know what I’m doing, Sindje.” He reached into a cabinet beneath the island and retrieved a salt-glazed ceramic pot, an antique from an old pottery sale. A sack of potting soil and a small box of rooting powder followed.

  “You should leave the plants alone, Hood. You said they should be as close to perfect as possible for the Johnson. He’ll know you’ve been tampering.”

  “He won’t know. Why don’t you relax, meditate with your brother or something?” Hood measured out some potting soil and mixed it with a few pinches of the rooting powder, added some water and then took a cutting of the purple-green plant. He followed this with three cuttings from other plants he found interesting, and made a mental note to buy some more old, but pretty, ceramic pots in the event the cuttings prospered. Hood knew a fixer who could probably find a few salt-glazed containers that would come close to matching—and would no doubt set him back more than a few nuyen. “Be worth it, though, for displaying these beauties.”

  “What?”

  “Still talking to myself, Sindje, nothing to worry about.” Hood placed the salt-glazed pot on the center of the island and turned on a grow light. The cuttings were small; he’d selected little more than healthy leaves with stems attached, and he knew the Johnson wouldn’t have a clue the plants had been disturbed.

  “One more, I think." A pause: “Still talking to—”

  “I know.” Sindje made a huffing sound. “Yourself.”

  The troll took one more cutting from the purple-green plant and put it in the salt-glazed pot. “Wonderful plants.” But just how wonderful? he mused. Most of the varieties they’d snatched looked like run-of-the-mill houseplants. Looked like, he corrected himself. There were subtle differences. For example, the plant next to the purple-green vine resembled a golden pothos, and it also had some similarities to a common philodendron. It didn’t look especially valuable. And even though the nuyen promised for this job was good, Khase might have been right, it was a little too good for . . . these plants.

  “Or is it?” Hood carefully felt the stems of the one that looked like a pothos. It had heart-shaped leaves, jade mottled in places with yellow-white splotches. The leafstalks grew upright, straight as a candle, but the longest ones showed signs of drooping, like a pothos should, taking on the aspect of a vinelike houseplant. “Why does the Johnson want these?”

  Sindje cleared her throat, that simple sound expressing a world of irritation. “It doesn’t matter why the Johnson wants them, Hood. It never matters. You’re the one who’s always repeating that phrase like a Gregorian monk.”

  “Gregorian chant.”

  “Drekkin’ whatever. What does matter is that you stop messing with them.”

  Hood peered around the corner and into the living room. Sindje was stretched out on the couch, appearing child-small on the massive cushions. She locked eyes with him. Max was still in the massage chair, his commlink plugged into her ear, and eyes staring into space—jacked into something or listening to gossip from one contact or another. No jumping eyelids, so the ork wasn’t involved with Beetles. Hood would kick her back into rehab in a heartbeat if he thought she’d returned to her old addiction.

  At first the troll didn’t spot Khase, and he growled low in his throat. But another glance through the room and he saw the elf. Khase was indeed meditating, doing a one-armed handstand, legs tucked in a lotus position, neatly sandwiched between tanks of pearlscales and orandas. He might have been a decorative statue, he remained so still.

  Hood returned to the plants. The pothos was a hardy plant, he knew, and a fast grower. It didn't require much care, just a reasonably warm atmosphere and moist soil. But what were these granules in the mix? And why did it matter what the granules or the plants were? And why was he “messing with the plants,” as Sindje had coined the phrase?

  Call it my need to know, Hood thought. He dampened a soft cloth and wiped the upper and lower sides of the leaves, leaving them shiny and healthy-looking. It was how one took care of such plants, he knew. He couldn’t use the same technique on the purple-green vine with the “hairs,” only on the plants with slick leaves. If he had a cosmetic brush, he could clean the purple-green plant, sweep away the loam that had spilled on them in the chase. Max wouldn’t own such a thing as a cosmetic brush, and Sindje probably had one—but he knew better than to ask. So he gently blew on the purple-green leaves, watching the edges flutter.

  “Fertilizer!” That’s what the granules were. A mix of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium, no doubt. Balanced, certainly, he decided, noting that the granules were larger and darker in the soil of the flowering plant. “Twenty-twenty-twenty in the pothos.” Hood knew that was the best percentage by weight of nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium in the fertilizer for the green plants. Likely fifteen-thirty-fifteen for the plant that flowered. “Well cared for, definitely, which is to be expected.” Hood used a liquid fertilizer for his houseplants, a costly mix made to his specifications. He plucked out a few more granules and put them in an empty food container, and used another container for the larger crystals from the flowering plant so he could have them tested later.

  “Granules must be water-soluble and slow-release. Have to be.” Hood knew that if they didn't use something that wasn’t water-soluble or heavily diluted, the plants could be subject to “fertilizer burn.” So the people at Plantech knew what they were doing. “But that’s just it, what are they doing?”

  “What are you muttering about?” Sindje was on her feet now, pacing across the chocolate-colored carpet and leaving a trail in the nap as she went. “What are who doing?”

  The troll released a great sigh and didn’t bother to answer, though for a moment he thought about again telling her to meditate with Khase. The elf was still in his one-armed handstand, a pose Hood suspected he took up an hour ago. Maybe Sindje would unwind a bit if she let the blood rush to her head.

  “Something about these plants. There’s something special about them.” Hood was referring only to the pothos look-alike and the purple-green vine. “But what?”

  “It. Doesn’t. Matte
r.” Sindje raised her voice.

  Max’s eyes refocused and Khase came out of his trance, though he didn’t alter his position.

  “Doesn’t matter one fraggin’ whit,” she went on. “We were hired to steal them. We stole them. Now all we have to do is wait for the Johnson to call with the drop spot. You’re not taking any more cuttings. Hood. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing in there. You’re leaving the plants alone. Understand?”

  Khase moved while she spoke, leaning forward and landing silently on the balls of his feet, centimeters from the edge of the low table that was covered with plants. Hood sucked in a breath and lowered his head, glaring at the female elf.

  “You’re not costing us any nuyen. Hood."’ Sindje stopped pacing and continued her rant, ignoring her brother, who moved up behind her.

  “We don’t have any nuyen yet, chwaer.” Khase’s voice was calm as he tried to deflect his sister’s ire.

  “We will, assuming nothing else goes awry.” Sindje ground her heel into the carpet as Hood sucked in another breath. She leaned over the tableful of plants. “Nuyen on the table, right here. We’ll drop these this evening— provided Hood doesn’t cut them all up into garnishes first—get our creds and get onto the next run.”

  “Lower your voice.” Hood was in the living room now, staring at Sindje, whose nose brushed the top of what looked like a calathea. It was a striking plant with pointed oval dark green leaves with silvery stripes down the centers. He noted a scalloped stripe on the sides of the leaves, near the margins, a red tint on some of the undersides. “Shouting isn’t good for plants. Besides that one’s rather delicate. You’re blocking the light, and it requires about one thousand foot-candles for optimum growing conditions.”

  He came closer, and Sindje retreated behind the couch, pacing again, her brother following. Hood looked down at the calathea, noting a different mix of granules. “This one should get fertilized about every other month. So I suspect these constitute a very slow release mixture.”

  The air whistled out from between Sindje’s clenched teeth. She spun and would have bumped into Khase were he not so nimble. He vaulted over the back of the immense couch and landed on a cushion, legs crossed lotus-style again and looking nonplussed.

  “However, I do agree with Sindje, Hood. Please stop messing with the plants. Stop jawing about leaf scorch and potting media and humidity. I like it warm myself, tad, but you’ve cranked up the heat in this place for the plants, and I’m starting to sweat.”

  Sindje had a smug look on her face. “Doesn’t matter if you’ve got a drekkin’ horticulture addiction, Hood. Probably what interested you in this low-end run in the first place. What matters is—”

  Hood made a fist, his thick nails digging so hard into the palm of his hand that he felt it. “What matters, Sindje, is that you and your brother beat your proverbial feet for a little while. Your negative energy is not good for the plants, especially the fancy-leaved caladium, the emerald ripple peperomia and the exotica perfection dumbcane. Now go. get out of here for a while. Buzz. Max’ll let you know when the Johnson calls.”

  Color rose in Sindje’s face, and she opened her mouth to protest. But Khase was instantly at her elbow and guiding her toward the door, snatching a keycard off the table as he did so. “I assume the doors are maglocked.”

  “They are. Don’t go too far.”

  “We won’t. Stairs go to the roof?”

  Hood nodded and the door slid shut behind them. He then returned to studying the two plants he considered special. “All that negative energy, bad for the fuchsia, the La-grimas de Maria, the injurious Amapalo Amarillo, and especially bad for me.”

  Max closed her eyes and leaned back, letting the chair massage her tense muscles. She’d thrown off the link she’d been perusing when Sindje went into her tirade. Time to go back for another look.

  The ork drummed her fingers against a tusk, then picked at a piece of bacon caught between her teeth; Hood had the decency to feed them a little less than two hours ago. The bacon had tasted like the real thing, and she wondered what else “real” he might have in the refrigerator.

  “Later,” she muttered to herself. “Got things to do. Surf’s up.” Max took a deep breath and prepared to go back online. She imagined the commlink as an antenna, able to transmit and receive info to and from the matrix right from where she was sitting, with no one else the wiser that Max was doing anything, since the uplink she was using wasn’t hers. The image made her feel secure and comfortable, the trickle of power was as soothing as the massaging chair. Mebbe oughta get me one of these for sleazin’ the matrix. Frag, I could get used to this. The electrons danced in her skull and started spinning so fast, like horses racing at the Preakness.

  The fingers of her right hand flinched and the electrons moved erratically. Her tongue tingled from the sensation and her eyelids grew warm. In her mind pictures flashed, advertisements and news stories, real enough to touch. Without leaving her chair, she walked along a street in downtown Seattle, looking up at billboards, glancing at placards in shop windows, deciding if anything caught her interest.

  Nothing so far.

  In her mind, she turned down another street, dark like the one from the early-morning chase, but there were state-of-the-art holographic projectors in some of the shop windows, one showing the site of a new building that was going up on Pier 63. Another held the image of the light rail system, the train frozen between University Street and Pioneer Square, where someone had been murdered. Not the news items she was looking for.

  Max was in her element here, relating better to the matrix than to people. She spent most of her nuyen on advancements, the leftover on whatever she was driving at the time. Metal and wires were her friends ... they couldn’t hurt your feelings.

  There was an alley to her mind’s right, and she took a peek. A shadowy figure opened one side of his longcoat, neon-light threads of green and pink in the lining displayed his wares.

  Chips.

  Max swallowed hard.

  Beetles. Better Than Life chips. Better-than-anything chips.

  The fingers of her left hand tapped faster against her tusk.

  They weren’t the real chips, not the kind she used to slot, the kind that would take her . . . everywhere and nowhere. But what the shadowy figure offered would be close.

  Just a taste.

  One little taste.

  Not the real chips, she told herself, not the ones you could feel in your fingers, ones that would take you to heaven before rudely depositing you in hell. But hell was a brief visit if you could get more chips. Not the real chips, so not the real danger.

  But a danger nonetheless.

  The figure beckoned with a glinting hand, arraying a vast display of chips in his nimble fingers.

  She took a mental step in that direction, then stopped herself. Mebbe later, she sadly decided. Mebbe when Hood isn ’t so close, and when the elves ure out of sight. Mebbe not at all if I’m lucky and keep my head on straight.

  Max turned away from the alley and headed toward a large storefront that had lots of posters in the windows. She was here on a self-imposed mission, after all.

  Things to do, news items to read.

  The first poster showed a petite human woman in a tailored red suit. She was pointing at a map of the West Coast. As Max watched, little rain clouds appeared above Seattle, and curving lines with jagged teeth radiated toward the city.

  “Onara. She’s a fraggin’ weather girl, and I ain’t interested in the weather.” Max shut out the petite voice and moved to the next poster and the next and the next.

  The posters represented all the news broadcasts the ork was picking up through the commlink:

  A fire in an abandoned apartment in the Barrens, declared arson-for-profit. Like that’s some news item.

  A Lone Star crackdown in a white-collar neighborhood in Bellevue near a metroplex.

  Go-gang activity on Route 520 along the lakeshore.

  A memori
al at the Crying Wall in the Bickson Building in Tacoma.

  Onara! What the frag? Where are we?

  Max went from one building to the next, one street to the next—staying away from the temptations of the dark alleys. She looked through all the posters, up at the billboards, and was finally reduced to studying the little sheets of paper tacked to light poles and garbage cans.

  We’re not fraggin’ mentioned anywhere.

  The ork was certain she’d spent an hour searching the recent news files, maybe more. With each block she wandered she grew increasingly puzzled that she couldn’t find a single mention of the early-morning theft from Plantech. Granted, they stole only plants, nothing very exotic looking, and therefore nothing seriously valuable. But with the chase through the streets and all the bullets and streetcycles flying, she thought she would have picked up something on the news.

  She was at the same time relieved and disappointed— what they’d done apparently wasn’t worth even the space of a classified ad. But the lack of news also meant they got away clean.

  Safe.

  Max retraced her steps down the streets, checking the news items one final time . . . just in case she’d missed something. The shadowy man was still in the alley, green and pink neon wares lighting up the grimy lane. She shook her head and focused on the plug in her neck and the electrons dancing in her head.

  A moment more and she was staring at the table of plants and still feeling the soothing massage motion of the chair. Judging by the muttering and muffled noises, Hood was obviously still in the kitchen.

  She felt a gentle vibration in her ear and activated the borrowed earpiece, adjusting it as she did. “Yes?” The corners of her bulbous lips turned down; she’d expected the Johnson on the other end.

  “Who? Oh, you’re looking for Hood. He’s busy.”

  She paused and snarled, considered hanging up.

  “No, I’m not his drekkin’ secretary. No, he’s not going to be here this afternoon.” We’ve got a Johnson to meet. “No, I don’t know if he’s going to be here tonight.” Depends how long the drop takes. “Yes, he’s going to be out for at least a few hours. What’s it to you anyway?”