2xs

by Nigel Findley

  I waved her off. "We'll talk about it later," I said. "I don't know if there's anything I can do."

  She accepted that with a nod, returning the credstick to her pouch. Then she pulled out a card and handed it to me. "Here's my phone number," she said, smiling again with what looked almost like a real smile this time. "Call me if you get anything." She stood, smoothing the sides of her pants with her palms, and took a breath. "Now get to bed. You look like drek."

  "Thanks," I said, perhaps a bit sarcastically. "Shut the door on your way out." I started to settle back onto the bed, then a thought struck me. "How did you get here?" I asked.

  "By cab."

  "Is he waiting for you?"

  "No."

  Drek. "You're expecting to flag a cab?"

  "Sure," she shot back. "Why not?"

  "You don't know Auburn after dark." I levered myself to my feet. "I'll drive you home." I grabbed my duster off the hook and started readying myself to go outside.

  She wanted to argue, but seeing that my preparations included checking the action on my Colt Manhunter, she shut up. Smart girl. I shoved the massive chunk of metal back into the duster's built-in holster, and opened the door. "After you," I said chivalrously.

  One of the only reasons I like the La Jolla Apartments is that it's about the only building in Auburn that has its own secured parking. Sure, the gate and the locks won't keep out the real pros, but at least it's some protection from the street apes who'll chew up a parked car just to pass the time. The pros wouldn't waste time on my wheels. The body's a standard 2047-vintage Chrysler-Nissan jackrabbit, beat to hell and gone and looking like a piece of drek. All the mods that make the car worth owning are well out of sight.

  I thumbed the doors open, and lit up the engine as Jocasta struggled to get her long legs into the passenger side. You know what a normal petrochem Jackrabbit sounds like: a pair of boots in a tumble-dryer. Well, the engine in my baby sings. From the look Jocasta shot me, I knew she'd noticed the difference. I just smiled, and turned on the control systems.

  Quincy, the same slag who'd done my apartment's security system, worked on the car as well. (It's a great deal Quincy and I have. Thanks to some gray contacts, he buys tech toys at wholesale price minus. I pay for them, and he installs them for free. It's symbiosis. I get some cutting-edge tech for next to nothing, and Quincy gets to play with all the neat hardware.) Jocasta just stared as I fired up the Head-Up Display and the navigation subsystem. "Where do you live?" I asked casually.

  "South Fifty-sixth," she said. "The cross-street's Yakima."

  I raised an eyebrow- Tacoma, yet- but didn't say anything as I punched the destination into the nav system. The screen flashed up a map showing the most direct route. As I'd guessed, just hop onto Route 18 over to Highway 5, then south till you smelled the "Tacoma aroma."

  Jocasta watched, fascinated, as I told the nav system to transfer the waypoints to the pilot. "Amazing," she said, shaking her head. "I've only seen anything like that on a Nightsky." I just grinned, even though I'd never seen the inside of a Nightsky. "Does it have rigger controls, too?"

  My turn to shake my head. "No use to me," I told her. I brushed back my hair to show a metal-free forehead. "No datajack. I'm off-the-rack."

  That surprised her. "Isn't that a drawback in your. . . your occupation?"

  I shook my head, and slipped the Jackrabbit into gear. It was a topic I didn't like to think about much.

  Sure, most of the runners I know have some kind of cyber mods. Datajacks, at the very least. I suppose there've been times when I've wished for a smartgun interface or enhanced optics. But I've always found some reason not to get myself metalled up. It just doesn't seem right. Maybe I'm just insecure, but the idea of losing even a little of myself-of Dirk Montgomery-just doesn't sit well.

  We made the trip in silence. As we traveled through the apartment-blanketed hills west of Auburn, the sprawl that is Greater Seattle was glowing like fairy-lights-or maybe a convention of chipped-up fireflies-a spreading sea of light that seemed to reach to the horizons. Its brilliance leeched up into the sky, so thick with chemical smoke and its normal devil's-brew of toxins that the air itself seemed to glow with a sullen red light. The city shone on the underside of the solid cloud deck, which in turn reflected the light back to the earth. Highways were radiant rivers, and the taller buildings were pyramids, ziggurats, or talons of multicolored illumination reaching upward as though the corps wanted to own the clouds, too.

  It was easy to tell when we'd entered Tacoma. The buildings were taller, the lights brighter. Even the cars on the freeway were more expensive. Toyota Elites replaced Jackrabbits, and Mitsubishi Nightskys took the place of Westwind 2000s. Even the air seemed cleaner, fresher, but I knew that was just an illusion.

  Historically, Tacoma's a weird place. It used to be a sleepy little bedroom community. From pictures I've seen, it looked like small-town U.S.A. around the turn of the century. Then the money rolled in, and Seattle's poor cousin got to go to the ball.

  The Taco Dome was a ways behind us on our right when the nav reminded me to take the Fifty-sixth Street exit. I hung a right, flashed around the cloverleaf, and cruised east on South Fifty-sixth, a broad, well-lit street. The buildings on both sides were tall, probably eighty-plus stories. Another difference between Auburn and Tacoma. I'd have known I was out of my neighborhood and rather out of my element even if I didn't see the rich types strolling along the sidewalks. (Strolling? At night?) South Fifty-sixth hit Yakima, and I turned right on Jocasta's instruction. Nice neighborhood she lived in, and quite different from what we'd passed on Fifty-sixth. Tall buildings seemed to be out of fashion here. The structures flanking the road were low, no more than three or four stories, and they looked for all the world like century-old brownstones. (All make-believe, of course. The "brownstones" were construction-plastic and ferroconcrete jobs, with textured façades that probably included some kind of armor. And if they were more than ten years old, I'd be really surprised. By now, real brownstones would have been turned into piles of sand by the corrosive nasties in the air.)

  "That's my place," Jocasta said, pointing. She smiled at my reaction. "Not the whole thing, just half of the top floor." I estimated the building by eye. "Just" half the top floor was maybe four times the size of my doss. Money. Definitely money.

  I pulled over and hit the button to pop the door. "I'll call when I've got something," I told her.

  But she wasn't paying attention. She was looking, a little dismayed, at a gunmetal-gray Westwind parked two cars up from us.

  "What's up?" I asked.

  She shook her head. "Tony," was all she said.

  "Tony? Is that trouble?"

  She shook her head again. "Not the way you mean." She was silent for a moment. "It's Tony DeGianetto. We were ... we ..." I let her off the hook by nodding understandingly.

  "I broke it off a week ago," she said. "I thought it was amicable enough on both sides, so I didn't change the lock codes." She looked irritated but maybe a little worried, too. "I guess he's come back."

  I waited for her to go on, but she didn't seem inclined. She also didn't seem inclined to get out of my car. I sighed. "Do you want me to come in with you?"

  "Well . .." She hesitated. "Tony's not dangerous. But I really don't want to talk to him. I don't want to go over it all again. Would you mind?"

  I did mind. I was tired, and I wasn't in the mood to run cover for Jocasta Yzerman. But what the frag? "Sure," I said as sincerely as I could fake.

  As we got out of the car, I looked up at the top floor of the brownstone. No lights. I pointed that out to Jocasta.

  She shrugged. "Maybe he just got here." Right on cue, a light went on in the top-right window.

  Followed by a much brighter light. A fireball blossomed, and the window leaped into the street. I tried to fling Jocasta to the ground, into cover, but the Shockwave beat me to it. Something hard slammed into the back of my head-my car, I think it was-and out went the lights.<
br />
  Chapter 3.

  I couldn't have been out for more than a few seconds. When I opened my eyes, miscellaneous drek was still raining out of the skies onto the sidewalk and parked cars. My ears were ringing, and my head was pounding as if somebody were using the insides of my tympanic membranes as, well, as tympani. The whole front of my body felt tender, as if I'd run head-on into a wall, and the back of my head throbbed bloody blue murder. But I was still alive, and that made it all okay.

  Jocasta was sprawled on her back beside me. Her eyes were open and moving, but they were glazed and definitely weren't tracking anything in the real world. I looked around, expecting to see a crowd of spectators gathering.

  No crowd. Then I remembered where I was. Tacoma isn't Auburn, where people usually head toward trouble, just to see what's going down. Here, the pedestrians who'd been on the street only seconds before had pulled an admirable disappearing act. Besides Jocasta and me, the only person still on the sidewalk was literally on the sidewalk. Sprawled bonelessly on the cement. And the chunk of something that the blast had driven into his skull seemed to imply he wouldn't be moving, at least not under his own power.

  Jocasta's brownstone was still standing-a testament to modern building techniques-and even the false stone façade didn't seem much worse for wear. The two windows in the top-right corner were gone, though, and a fire was blazing merrily in what had been her apartment.

  Jocasta stirred and said something, but I couldn't hear it over the ringing in my ears. Then I did hear something else. The sound was faint but unmistakably that of approaching sirens. Logical. Not a soul on the street, but every PANICBUTTON within three blocks was probably sending out its signal.

  PANICBUTTONs and sirens mean Lone Star, and that meant it was time to move. (I myself wasn't tracking all that well yet, but enough to figure that one out.) I grabbed Jocasta's shoulders, pulling her to her feet. Thumbing the passenger door open, I shoved her inside. Then I was in the driver's seat, lighting up the engine and booting out of there. (Sure, I know leaving the scene of a crime is bad news. And making a fast getaway like that could definitely start people wondering if the guy in the red Jackrabbit might be involved somehow, but I honestly didn't give a flying frag.)

  My equilibrium was shot, probably because of the shock to my ears, and my depth perception kept doing strange things, neither of which helped my driving. The steering wheel kept shifting in my hands as Quincy's ungunned autopilot intervened ("More to the left, drek-head") to keep us from piling into buildings and other immovable objects. Jocasta was watching me with wide, frightened eyes, but she had the sense to keep quiet. Or maybe I just couldn't hear her.

  By the time we were back on Highway 5 and heading north and east again, the ringing in my ears was starting to fade. As normal sounds began to come back, the wild panic and paranoia twisting in my chest also began to fade. Loosening my death-grip on the wheel, I let the speedbar on the HUD creep down from outrageous to merely excessive.

  As for Jocasta, she was still looking a little shell-shocked, but she had herself under control. Not knowing what to say, I tried to play it safe. "I'm sorry," I told her.

  She shook her head slowly. "I should feel bad," she said softly. "Tony's dead." Her gray eyes fixed on me, silently asking for understanding. "But I can't feel bad. I'm too busy being glad it wasn't me."

  I smiled comfortingly. "It's always like that," I reassured her. "You're not being cold or callous. You're still alive after somebody else didn't intend you to be. That's reason enough to feel good. You'll have time for grief later."

  Jocasta nodded, but remained silent for a few minutes. As she turned to gaze toward the lights passing outside, I let the speed drop down another few klicks. Now wasn't the time to get nailed with a speeding ticket. Then I felt her eyes on me again and I glanced over.

  "Why?" Her voice was quiet, but virtually crackling with tension.

  I shrugged, putting off giving an answer she wouldn't like.

  But she wasn't accepting that. "Why?" she repeated.

  "Loose ends," I said with a sigh. "You don't leave your tools lying around after you've used them."

  Her brow furrowed as she thought about that. It was only a couple of seconds before I saw the comprehension in her eyes. (Smart Lady, I thought again.) "Explain what you mean," she told me.

  I shrugged again. I knew she'd already figured it out by herself, but maybe she just wanted to hear somebody else say it. "Somebody killed your sister. Let's call him X," I said, then quickly corrected myself.

  "Or her. Anyway, X sent you an e-mail, supposedly from Lolly, and generally set things up so you'd come to my place and dust me off. Then you go home and conveniently blow yourself to pieces. I kill Lolly, you kill me, and then-poetic justice-you lose your life in an accident."

  She cut me off there. "Accidents don't blow up apartments."

  "Sure they do," I shot back. "Particularly since you were playing around with explosives in your kitchen-just in case you had to wire my car."

  She stared into my grinning face.

  "Oh yeah," I confirmed. "Want to bet that the forensics find evidence that you had a stash of C6 plastique or something like that in your kitchen closet?"

  "Anyway," I went on, "I murdered Lolly, you murdered me, and then you were hoisted by your own petard. Case closed. We're all out of the way, and X is totally in the clear."

  She didn't answer for nearly -a full minute. I could almost hear her brain ticking as she thought it through. "You've got to be right," she said at last. "I was programmed, then sacrificed. You were merely sacrificed." She scowled. "I can't believe it. This just doesn't happen."

  "Maybe not in your world." I could see that she wanted to ask about my world, but then thought better of it.

  We were approaching Meridian Avenue. Time to decide where the hell I thought I was going. And then there was Jocasta to worry about, too. Drek. "You'd better lie low until I know what the frag's going on here," I told her. "I can find you a safe doss if you need it. Not what you're used to, but-"

  "I'll handle that," she cut in. "I can stay with colleagues."

  "Where?"

  She thought about that a bit more. "You can drop me on One hundred-and-eighth," she said. "The south end."

  Bellevue. Beaux Arts, to be exact. Even more a money neighborhood than Tacoma. Curiosity got the better of me. "What do you do?" I asked. "What corp?"

  She smiled a little. "No corp. I'm a neo-ecologist at the University of Puget Sound."

  I glanced at her tailored synthleathers and snorted. "UPS must have upped its salaries."

  "No, they still pay drek. But KCPS pays better than scale."

  KCPS. I recognized the call letters of one of the metroplex's educational trid stations. Something tickled in the back of my memory.

  Then I remembered. "The Awakened World," I blurted.

  Jocasta was smiling broadly now. "You watch it? I wouldn't think it was your kind of thing."

  I ignored the subtle jab. "I've seen it a few times." Moody to watch you, is what I didn't add. Call me narrow-minded, but I'm much more interested in mammals that look like Jocasta Yzerman than in novopossums or metapedes.

  Well, that explained the money. Trid presenters, even on ratings dogs like "The Awakened World," get paid a drekload. It also explained the feeling of familiarity that had been nagging at me ever since I'd set eyes on Jocasta. Okay. Beaux Arts it was.

  I cruised straight up Highway 5 to Route 99, east into the relatively quiet bedroom community of Renton, and then north on 405 through Newport Hills. As we blew toward the Intercity 90 exit, the buildings flanking the highway began to change. They were still mostly apartment blocks, except bigger, cleaner, and newer than the ones in Renton and Newport. Where the two southern districts were home to low- and mid-level wage slaves and managers, Beaux Arts was where many upper-level corp execs had their penthouses. I remembered the security rating catalog I'd scanned when I was still with Lone Star. The Star rated Beaux Arts luxur
y class, security rating triple-A. It doesn't come any higher.

  I slowed down some more, and swung west onto Intercity 90, heading toward the East Channel Bridge, then cut right onto Bellevue Way. Right again onto 113th Avenue South East, then jog over to 108th, into deepest, darkest Beaux Arts. Bright lights rose into the sky around me. Mentally comparing the signs of the good life with my own doss in Auburn and with my final destination this evening, I let out a sigh.

  It was fragging hard to believe all these places were in the same city. "Where now?" I asked Jocasta.

  "You can drop me here."

  I was about to protest, but caught myself. Bellevue's Bellevue, after all, and Beaux Arts is one of the few neighborhoods where someone who looks like Jocasta can walk the streets without becoming the unwilling joy-toy of some thrill-gang. It rankled a little that she didn't trust me enough to let me know exactly where she'd be staying, but only a little. There are times when I don't completely trust me, and I know myself a lot better than did Jocasta Yzerman.

  Then I got to thinking, and realized the Beaux Arts Village was up the street from here. The Village is a little enclave, with walls and gates guarded a lot better than some banks. The houses are separated by big trees- real ones-most of them with a great view of the East Channel or down onto the heavily secured yacht harbor just south of the bridge. I smiled benignly at Jocasta. "The Village it is," I said mildly. She twitched slightly, and I knew I'd got her.

  I didn't drive up to the Village, however. Not wanting to draw attention to either my car or myself, I just pulled over. "Remember," I told her as she swung her long legs out of the car. "Lie low, zero out. Don't let anybody know where you are or even that you're still alive. Both of us are supposed to be meat right now. X might not slot up twice."