2xs

by Nigel Findley

  I thought I knew what was coming next.

  "The car came round the corner fast," she said. Her voice was almost a whisper, and I could see the remembered terror in her eyes. "A black Acura Turbo convertible. I can still see it. Low to the ground, it would have looked fast even if it had been standing still. It hit the man, he had no time to react. It hit him full on, so hard it knocked his body twenty meters, and I knew he was dead. The driver started to slow down like he was going to stop. But then he accelerated again and just sped away. I couldn't move for I don't know how long, as the crowds gathered and the police arrived. I knew if I'd kept walking, if Sarah hadn't called my name, I'd be as dead as that man. That scared me more than anything."

  I was silent for a few moments after she'd finished. I could easily picture the young Jocasta, probably quite prim and proper with her copper hair just so, standing on the curb, her gray eyes filled with an understanding beyond her years. "Did you ever figure out what happened?" I asked finally.

  "I never learned for sure," she answered. "I can only guess. I think somehow, without knowing it, I'd summoned a spirit. Maybe it was my need for a friend that called it, the strength of my desire that Sarah be real. But... I don't know."

  "What happened later?" I asked.

  She shrugged. "I grew up," she said simply.

  "And of course I didn't let myself think about Sarah anymore. When I remembered that day, I had all kinds of eminently logical explanations for what happened. You know the kind of thing: I'd subliminally heard the approaching car, and Sarah's 'voice' was just a manifestation of my own instincts. That kind of drek." She grinned. "I'm always amazed at how good we are at lying to ourselves.

  "Over the next ten years, I changed," she went on. "I started feeling this . . . this kinship with the land, that's the best way I can explain it. Like we were . . . connected, my soul and the land." She chuckled.

  "Once I get an idea sometimes I become obsessed with it. I guess I did with this one. Lolita started calling me 'pink-skin,' and Dad . . . Well, Dad got disgusted over the interest I showed in biology and those other 'fuzzy' subjects at school.

  "And that's what led me into neo-ecology at UPS. I got my bachelor's degree, and then went on for a Master's. That's when I met Harold." She'd mentioned that name before. "Who's Harold?"

  "Harold Moves-in-Shadows," she said. "Makah, Dog shaman, and one of the best neo-ecologists around. He was my thesis advisor." From the tone of her voice and the look in her eye, I'd have laid odds that he'd been more than that. But of course I didn't say anything. "He recognized something in me," she continued, "something in my aura. He said I had a touch of the Power and that I had the potential to become a shaman."

  "Did you?"

  "I tried to follow the path," she said slowly. "More to please Harold, I think, than because I really wanted it for myself. I took his totem, Dog, and I tried to learn what he wanted to teach me." She shrugged.

  "I never got far. Probably because it's a road you can walk only if you're driven by the desire, and I never was. I was always more interested in the intellectual demands of neo-ecology than I was in ... well, in magical mumbo-jumbo. And I suppose I eventually resented Harold for trying to make me into someone I wasn't."

  "You broke up over that," I ventured. She looked up at me. For a moment her eyes flashed, then the anger was replaced by wry amusement. "Am I so transparent?" she said. "You're right, of course. We did break up over that. But we continued to work together, and we still do on occasion, and we're still close friends."

  "What did you learn about magic?" I asked. "What can I do, you mean?" She chuckled softly. "Not a whole hell of a lot. Sometimes I can assense astrally. Not always, and usually when I least want to. And that's about it. Once I summoned a spirit, though Harold probably helped me more than he let on. But it stayed around only long enough to scare the drek out of me." She thought for a moment. "Do you want me to talk to Harold?"

  I considered it. "Not now, but thanks for the offer. Maybe if the mundane way comes up dry. I'd rather not involve anybody I don't have to."

  Jocasta accepted that with a nod. "What are you going to do in the meantime?"

  "Wait," I said, shrugging.

  "What about-what did you call him?-X?"

  "The same thing. My Lone Star contact's checking into Yamatetsu as well. When I learn more, maybe I'll know better what we can do."

  "I'm a good researcher," she pointed out. "I can do some digging, too."

  I thought about that for a moment. "Maybe," I said slowly. "You'll have to be very, very careful. If Yamatetsu really is involved in this drek, they'll have watchdog programs on everything even slightly relevant, with ice and maybe deckers guarding the real paydata."

  "I won't touch anything to do with Yamatetsu itself," she said sharply. "I'm not stupid. But it's a tenet of scientific research that you can learn a lot about an unknown process by studying how it affects processes you do understand."

  I held up my hands placatingly. "You're the expert," I told her. "Just don't get yourself killed." I hesitated, then added, "That would be a waste."

  Her hard expression softened. "That's not in my immediate plans," she told me. Her lips curved in a smile that was both tired and warm. "I suggest you take your own advice. Good luck with Theresa." And with that she was gone.

  Chapter 16.

  They say still waters run deep. I'd never really bought into that saying, knowing that still waters are more often stagnant, but it was definitely true of Jocasta Yzerman. She was almost the exact opposite of Lolly, and not just in appearance. The face Lolly had always showed to the world was soft and vulnerable, but the real woman had been as cold and sharp as a scalpel. Jocasta, on the other hand, had shown me a cold and brittle edge when we'd first met over her targeting laser. I'd labeled her a tough corp bitch without much trace of humanity. But now I'd seen behind the mask-no, now she'd shown me what was behind the mask. I saw that she was more human and caring-vulnerable-than Lolly had ever been. Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

  I was lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, willing the clock to run faster. It had been a long morning and an even longer early afternoon. I'd promised myself I wouldn't call Naomi until 1530. Now it was 1500 hours and had been for the past half hour-or so it felt. I finally gave up-frag promises-and rolled to my feet.

  I keyed in Naomi's direct line, and spent the seconds while the connection was being made scripting my approach. No D'Artagnon this time, just in case somebody had realized the significance.

  The screen lit up, but not with Naomi's image. The woman whose image appeared was a decade older, wearing a Lone Star uniform. Naomi's department were non-uniform employees. What the frag?

  The woman's face could have been carved from stone. When she opened her mouth to speak, it looked like her jaw was on hinges. The movement wasn't communicated to any other part of her face. Her eyes were like flint. "Lone Star Public Relations," she said.

  I broke the connection immediately, rechecked the number I'd entered. Yes, it was Naomi's number.

  Maybe the Lone Star phone exchange was having a seizure, I told myself. But I didn't believe it.

  I threw on my duster, fragging near ran down to the street to find a pay phone that worked, no easy job in the Barrens. The one I finally located had a functioning video pickup, so I smashed it with my gun-butt, much to the amusement of two gutterpunks watching the show. Then I re-entered Naomi's number.

  And got stone-face again, plus her "Lone Star Public Relations."

  "Yeah, uh, hoi," I said, roughening my voice. "I'm, uh, I want Naomi Takahashi."

  "I'm sorry," stone-face said in a voice that wasn't sorry at all. "Ms. Takahashi is unavailable. Who is this speaking?"

  " 'A chummer of hers." I searched for a name from the past that wouldn't raise any flags. "Gerry Moore," I said, naming a contemporary of ours who'd transferred to D.C. a couple of years back. "I'm in town for a few days and I wanted to see her. Can you connect me?"


  "Please turn on your video," stone-face ordered. "I'm at a pay phone," I told her. "Somebody's smashed the pick-up."

  The woman reached out of frame, no doubt to trigger a trace on my location. I felt a cold knot of fear in my belly.

  "Look," I said, struggling to keep the tension out of my voice, "can I talk to Takahashi or not?"

  She glanced down, probably reading my LTG number from a hidden display. She'd know I was telling the truth about the pay phone. All public phones in the Seattle region have a nine as their third digit. "I'm sorry," she lied again. "Ms. Takahashi was killed in the line of duty."

  The world seemed to go dark around me. I slumped slowly until my forehead rested against the cool plastic of the booth.

  "Are you still there?" stone-face said. I saw her reaching to break the connection.

  I willed myself back into some semblance of control. "When?"

  "I'm not free to divulge that information at this time."

  I wanted to strike out, to reach down the phone and strangle the fragging tight-lipped bitch. I wanted the battleaxe I'd wielded yesterday. "What the frag happened?" I yelled. "She works in fragging Records. How can you get killed in the line of duty in Records? Killed in a fragging disk crash? In a typing accident?"

  Stone-face was totally unmoved by my anger. "There have recently been terrorist incidents directed against Lone Star and its employees," she explained coldly. "Ms. Takahashi lost her life in such an incident.

  The memorial service will be on Tuesday, but since you're not a member of the immediate family ..."

  I slammed my fist down on the Disconnect button, hard enough to crack the hardened plastic. She was dead, Naomi of the flashing almond eyes and quick laugh. And I'd killed her, I was sure of it.

  I left the booth, and walked the afternoon streets of Purity. I didn't know where I was going, nor did I really care. My mind was ablaze with a churning mixture of anger, sadness, and guilt. My teeth ground together so hard I could feel the muscles of my jaw almost cramping. Walking alone in the Barrens, I knew I presented a temptation for street drek that would be glad to kill me for my boots or my duster. In a way I wished someone would make a move against me. Not out of a death wish, though I suppose my own death would have been a form of expiation. No. I hoped somebody would jump me so I could take out my anger on another, kill someone, just as somebody-X-had killed Naomi.

  It could only be X. Sure, there might have been some terrorist incidents against Lone Star people, and there probably had been deaths. But it was much too coincidental. I send Naomi out to dig up the dirt on Yamatetsu, and coincidentally she gets taken down by random terrorist violence? No. She'd dug too deep, come too close to something important.

  Of course she'd dug too deep. I should have known it. Naomi was a good researcher, the best I'd ever known. She'd have dug as deep as discretion allowed, then gone even deeper, warnings or no warnings.

  She'd have kept on digging until she hit paydata, or until somebody or something- IC, maybe-stopped her.

  Stopped her dead. It might have been X who pulled the trigger or initiated whatever ended her life, but it was me who killed her. Frag!

  Without being consciously aware of where my steps were taking me, I was back on the stairs leading up to my doss. I had to do something, but what?

  Maybe Naomi had found something, I thought, as I shut the door behind me, dropped my duster in a heap on the floor. She might have kept a record of her results, or at least the leads she'd been following. No way she'd have kept records like that on her machine at work, she'd have stored them on her home telecom. Maybe she'd even slaved her home system to the one at work-much the way my telecom here was slaved to the one in Auburn. It was worth a try.

  I sat down at my own telecom, entered Buddy's number. After the beep, I started yelling into the microphone. "Buddy! Buddy, frag it. If you're there, pick up. It's fragging important."

  Nothing, no response at all. If she was decking at the moment, she might not even be aware of the incoming call. What the hell could I do to attract her attention? Nothing came to mind. "Buddy!"I yelled again, feeling an awful sense of futility. Yelling at a blank telecom screen, what could be more pointless?

  Then suddenly the screen wasn't blank anymore. There was an image on it, not a normal video image but some-' thing that resembled medium-resolution computer animation and three-dimensional rendering. I saw a beautiful young woman with ebony hair, wearing an elegant laser-green gown. I recognized it immediately: Buddy's icon from the Matrix. What the frag ...?

  It took me a moment, then I realized what was going down. Buddy had been jacked in, but somehow she'd become aware of my call. She'd decided for her own reasons to answer it, but why go to the trouble of jacking out, then moving her meat body to the telecom? Why do anything so gauche when all she had to do was divert a few electrons here and there along the lines that connected her telecom to the greater Matrix? A neat trick. "What is it?" Buddy's voice snapped from the speaker. The icon's mouth didn't move.

  I guess Buddy decided not to waste computer cycles on animating the image more than was necessary.

  "I'm busy."

  "Naomi's dead," I said. The words almost caught in my throat. "Naomi?"

  Then I remembered, Buddy had never met Naomi. "A close friend," I told her. "Somebody who meant a lot to me." Buddy didn't answer, she just waited for what she must have known would come next. "I need your help."

  "What?"

  "I need to know how she died. The data will be in the Lone Star system."

  "Lone Star again," Buddy almost snarled. "You don't ask for much, do you?"

  "It won't be that tough," I said almost pleadingly. "I want to, know about the cover-up, because there's certainly going to be one. And what's the good of covering up if you bury your lies so deep nobody can get to them?"

  She thought about that for a split-second. "Maybe," she allowed.

  "The stuff I want will be in the Public Relations Department files," I hurried on. "Minimal ice there, if any, right?"

  "Maybe," she repeated. Another split-second pause. "Standard rates?"

  "Double, "I told her on impulse. "But I want it fast."

  The glowing icon didn't move, but I could imagine Buddy shrugging. "Your nuyen."

  "There's something else."

  She snorted. "Of course there's something else."

  "There's a telecom connected to this line." I keyed in Naomi's home number and transmitted it to Buddy. "Can you penetrate the telecom and upload the data files?"

  "Naomi's telecom?" Buddy asked.

  "That's right."

  Yet another pause, even longer-almost two seconds, an eternity for Buddy. "She was helping you out."

  It wasn't a question.

  My eyes burned. Probably from looking at Buddy's high-intensity image, I told myself. "Yes," I said quietly.

  "I'll do it," she answered at once. "Double rate for Lone Star, no charge for the telecom. I'll call." The glowing image vanished.

  I wanted to go hide in the bottom of a bottle and not come out until the world was a better place. I wanted to ride forth on my fragging white horse and run a sword through a few gullets. I wanted to cry on Jocasta's shoulder like a child. I wanted to find some poor sod who would look at me the wrong way so I could pound his miserable bones to powder. And most intensely-and frighteningly-of all, I wanted to lose myself in the pseudo-reality of the 2XS chip.

  Of course I did none of those things. (Not really, except for a solid hit of whiskey to settle my nerves.)

  I just sat and waited for Buddy to get back to me. It was difficult, but I even refrained from calling Jocasta just to talk. Like just about everyone else, I've got call-waiting on my phone, but I didn't want to risk an impatient Buddy hanging up rather than waiting for me to change lines.

  It was just after eighteen-hundred hours when the telecom beeped. Fast turnaround, but those two hours had felt like years. I pounded the Receive key before the first beep had even finished.

>   Buddy appeared on the screen. The real-flesh Buddy, not the laserlight-clad icon. "What have you got for me?" I asked immediately.

  "The report on your friend's death," she replied. "Ready to receive?"

  I opened a capture file and told her, "Send ahead." The report wasn't long, much less than a megapulse of data, and took only a second or two to transmit. I wanted to scan it immediately, but could sense Buddy's impatience. She wanted to have this over with and get back to her own biz, whatever that was. "Thanks," I told her. I slotted my credstick, waited while she made the appropriate-that is, large-deduction. "And her telecom?"

  "Nothing."

  I frowned. "I don't know what exactly I should be looking for," I said slowly. "Maybe you should just transmit everything that was there and-"

  "There was nothing," she snapped again. "The telecom's storage was empty. Totally empty. No programs, no data. Just like a new unit waiting to be loaded with the software. Somebody beat me to it."

  "Somebody deleted everything?"

  "That's what I said."

  "Would you have to do that in person," I asked, "or could you do it over the phone line?"

  "Over the line."

  "How difficult is that?"

  "Not," she said. "Once you've penetrated the telecom's security, just issue a global delete."

  "And how tough is that security?"

  "Not," she repeated. "Any decker worthy of the name could do it."

  I slammed my fist down on the table so hard the telecom jumped. "Frag it," I snarled. "She had found something, then."

  "Probably that's what killed her," Buddy said, echoing the-thought in my own mind.

  "Yeah, well," I mumbled, not wanting to dwell on either that or my own guilt. "Thanks, Buddy."

  "Yeah. Sorry about your friend."

  "So am I, Buddy."

  I broke the connection, brought up the file that Buddy had transmitted. As I'd expected, she'd copied the whole record, Lone Star file header and all. Buddy was never one to do a job by halves, particularly if she was getting double rate for it. The report was very simple, the incident it described horrible in the extreme. Naomi had come to work early, purportedly to catch up on some departmental backlog. At about nine-thirty she'd ridden the elevator down to the staff cafeteria on the tenth floor, and fifteen minutes later caught the elevator back up to the thirtieth floor. Sounded like a standard Lone Star soykaf break. There were two other workers riding the car with Naomi, and their testimony made up much of the report.