Lone Wolf

by Nigel Findley

  So, “Acknowledged,” I spit back at Drummond. Understanding his reasoning doesn’t mean I have to like it, or him. “When?”

  Again the three suits exchange glances, and it’s Layton who replies. “Thirty-six hours at the outside,” she tells me. “More likely twenty-four.”

  “Things’ll be stable by then?” I want to know.

  Maybe it’s a smile that quirks her lips a fraction of a millimeter, or maybe it’s a bad bit in the datastream. “Stable enough,” she says flatly. Okay, so they’ve got some counter-op going to combat the penetration, that’s what it’s got to mean. Go to it mightily and with a fragging will, say I.

  “Keep in touch,” Drummond says (like I’m not going to). “Make it every six hours, give or take five minutes.”

  I glance at my watch—1134—and mentally log the next callback for 1730. “Got it," I tell them. “This relay?”

  Again the exchange of glances, then McMartin gives me the LTG number and security code for another relay and cutout. “It’s a priority override,” he tells me. “Your call will reach us no matter where we are or what we’re doing.”

  “Got it chipped,” I tell them. “Later.” And I break the connection.

  * * *

  Six hours, from 1130 to 1730. A blink of an eye, priyatei, right? Just kick back and drink a couple of soykafs. Hit a bar and get blasted. Get a fragging massage, maybe. The afternoon’s gone like that.

  Except when you know the Cutters have every fragging asset on the street out looking for you, not to mention some unidentified corp with lines deep into the Star’s data fortress. That changes the situation pronto. Every fragging move turns into a brain-buster: Do the Cutters know I’ve got a tendency to hang in a certain kind of place? Does my Star personnel file mention I’ve had contacts with thus and so fixer? If the answer is “yes,” forget it. Someone could be on the spot watching and waiting, ready to blow my brains out. Makes for one long fragging afternoon, omae.

  I end up spending most of the early part tooling up and down Highway 5, on the theory that the odds are real fragging slim that somebody’s going to spot me there. Gives me plenty of time to think, but it feels like my brain’s stuck in a groove, going around and around a limited cycle of thoughts. Like, for some reason I can’t shake the thought that Mr. Nemo—the whole Tir-corp delegation thing—is an important piece of the puzzle. Frag knows why, but my gut keeps telling me that’s the way it’s got to be. If I can find out more about what’s going down there—which corp it is, why they’re interested in the Cutters, what the deal is, that kind of drek—I might better understand just what the frag is going on. That’s the way it feels, at least, and I long ago learned to trust my feelings.

  But how the frag do I dig up that kind of scan? I’m no technomancer—I’m more at home on the physical streets of the sprawl than the virtual highways and byways of the Matrix. Oh, sure, I can use a ’puter, who can’t? But logging onto UCAS Online, instructing a telecom to transfer calls, or using a pocket ’puter or a phone with a data port to buy Seahawks tix is very different from digging up covert dirt on corp activity, trust me on that one. It takes very special talent. Since I don't have it, I’ve got to hire it or acquire it elsewhere.

  Check the biz listings under “Research Consultants” next time you’re online, and you’ll find a drekload of people who claim to have that talent. Phone up one of these slags, tell ’em what you want to know, transfer cred, and just wait for them to come up with something, null persp. Works just great if what you’re digging for is stuff that nobody wants to keep secret—like the current, up-to-the-minute population of Seattle, or the price of tea in China, or whatever. Hire a competent researcher and let ’em rip.

  It gets more fun when the data you’re after is more on the shadowy side of the street. Obviously, that kind of drek is tougher to find and takes a more talented datasnoop to snag in the first place. (Like, say, the same slag who got you a current quotation on Chinese tea futures might get himself brain-cooked trying to dig up deep background on MCT’s exec veep.) Plus you’ve got to start worrying about the reliability and motives of the datasnoop you hire. I know for a fact that Lone Star has “personal agreements” with an indefinite number of datasnoops out there, and every other corp worthy of the name has got to be doing the same thing.

  What do these personal agreements entail? It varies, probably. Some datasnoops will, as a matter of course, provide wrong answers to anyone asking questions about the corp that’s got them on the string. Others will simply stall while they pass the word back to the corp that someone’s asking prying questions about them. I can’t believe that every registered datasnoop is on every corp’s string, and there might even be one or two out there not on anyone’s string, but finding someone who will give you straight answers and not rat you out to the corp you’re interested in becomes a real crapshoot.

  That’s why personal relationships are so important in this kind of deal. If it’s “black” data you’re after, you don’t just go to the LTG listings and pick a name at random. You go to a decker or datasnoop or researcher or whatever who you know and trust—somebody you’ve got a relationship with, a relationship you’ve built up over time. If you don’t have a relationship with a decker, you go through a fixer you trust. Networking, omae, it all comes down to networking.

  I’ve got a network, a good one: a couple of fixers, a fence or two, a decker, even a shadow doc. Or, more like it, I had one. Some of them I met through the Cutters, the others through the Star. And that means that one or another of the two “agencies” out to get me—the Cutters and my IrreleCorp—know about every single fragging one of them. I might get answers to the questions I ask, but is somebody paying the people giving me answers big cred to lie to me? The conclusion’s simple, no matter how much it sticks in my craw: I don’t have a network I can trust. Frag this paranoia drek, it’s bad for the health.

  But, as I rumbie back and forth along Highway 5, I’m getting more and more obsessed with the idea of tracing the Tir connection. Time seems to be moving even more slowly than before. If the span from 1300 to 1330 felt more like a couple of (subjective) hours, then 1730 seems a fragging lifetime away. I can’t shake the conviction I’ve got to do something.

  So I go over it again, and again, and again. What resources can I use? Is there someone I’m forgetting, someone not in the Star’s computer and not known to the Cutters who I can trust and who’d be willing to do me a favor?

  Or maybe it could be someone who is in the Star’s computer, but who’s got the jam to conceal the fact that they’re helping me. Someone like Cat Ashburton. Yeah, she could do it with one cerebral hemisphere tied behind her back.

  I know I’m grinning, because the cold air on my front teeth makes them feel like they’re about to split. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Cat Ashburton’s got the skills, the access to the necessary equipment, and the jam to hide this kind of inquiry from outside scrutiny. The one question is, will she do it? Like they say, there’s only one way to find out.

  I lean the big bike over and roar down the next off-ramp into the heart of South Tacoma, scanning for yet another fragging public phone.

  12

  I really need to sit down on something that’s not a bike for awhile, and that’s why I decide to take the risk and use the pay phone in this greasy-chopstick noodle house on South Sixty-fourth Street and Fife. The lunch crowd—mainly construction workers, seriously chromed and bulging grotesquely with vat-job muscle, who spend their days on the high steel of the fast-growing skyrakers—are on their way out, and I have to squeeze past them to get in. (Not push past them; your typical heavy-duty construction worker could reduce me to a spot of grease with one finger.) The pay phone’s at the back, in a small transplas-fronted cubicle with a door and a seat.

  The air’s heavy with the reek of recycled frying fat. As it fills my nose, my brain gets the message, my stomach starts twisting and clenching, and I could suddenly eat one of the tables. How long since I’ve last ea
ten? Coming up on twenty-four hours, I’d guess. Considering how fast stress burns energy, I’m probably already digesting muscle tissue.

  A waiter—a little Chinese guy in a jumpsuit that used to be white—approaches tentatively. “Yah?”

  I glance at the list of specials on the wall. “Yakisoba and gyoza,” I tell him without breaking stride. “Make that two gyoza. Back here.” And I point to the phone booth. He nods quickly and scurries off.

  The phone’s all in one piece, I’m glad to see. I slump down in the seat and shut the door firmly behind me. There’s a polarization control for the electrosensitive crystals in the transplas, and I set it for one-way. I can see out—not too well, because the calibration’s way off—but (theoretically) nobody can see in. (I read somewhere that far infrared isn’t affected by the crystals, but if someone packing that much tech’s close enough for it to matter, I’m dead anyway.) I take a deep breath to calm myself, to slow down the pulse that’s racing in my ears, and check my watch again.

  Where’s Cat Ashburton going to be at 1346 on a Tuesday—no, Wednesday—afternoon? She’s in the Management Information System side of things, which at the Star is a round-the-clock every-day-of-the-year department. The senior suits work banker’s hours—1000 to 1630, with at least an hour for lunch—but the middle managers like Cat get ground hard, doing shift-work. In other words, there’s no way of knowing if she’s in the office or not.

  I’m gearing myself up to do battle with the Star’s receptionists—all part of some conspiracy to misdirect all important phone calls, I’m fragging sure of it—when I decide to try her at home. The odds are much longer, but it’s one less hassle if they pan out. I key in 114 for directory assistance, then when the synthesized voice starts yammering, I enter the “special functions” code known to all Lone Star employees (and to most of Seattle’s shadow community as well). With “special functions” engaged, the directory search engine looks through more useful files than just the standard name-LTG-address drek 114 usually gives you. I key in my search string—in English, “Get me the number for one Ashburton, Catherine, age range twenty-five to thirty-five, employed by Lone Star, and make it snappy”—and hit the XQT key. A second later the screen flashes, “I hit(s)”, and asks for a second code, this one an authorization to reassure the poor machine that it’s okay to give me what I want. I rattle in the character string, and see Cat’s number displayed. LTG 5206 (15-2534)—that’s Tacoma, Menlo Park to be exact. Cat must be doing well for herself. Dossing down in that part of town isn’t cheap.

  There’s a knock on the transplas door. My reflexes are jazzed so high that I’ve got my H & K out, and damn near almost squeezed off a burst before I see it’s the waiter with my lunch. He doesn’t twitch or faint or go for his own heat, so at least that’s some reassurance the one-way polarization works. The H & K goes back into its holster; I slide open the door and grab the fiberform tray covered with steaming food from the waiter’s hands. He opens his mouth—to ask for payment, probably—but I slam the door shut before he can get out the first word. Through the one-way transplas I see him shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, apparently trying to decide whether to knock again. Then maybe he figures discretion is the better part, and all that drek, and off he slouches.

  I take a minute to cram some gyoza and noodles into my face—hot enough to scorch my tongue, but who gives a frag, it’s (synthesized) food—then I tell the pay phone to call Cat’s number. The vidscreen shows the normal shifting colors and patterns, supposedly designed by psych-wonks to calm people down so they don’t trash the phone while they’re waiting for the connection to be made. Then the status bar along the bottom of the display flashes CONNECTED. The screen clears, and there’s Cat—copper hair that looks like it’s polished, big round eyes, a polite if distant smile. “You have reached...

  I don’t listen to the rest of the spiel. Frag, a recording. I reach for the key to disconnect . ..

  And the image changes. The perfect, glossy image of Cat vanishes, to be replaced by a darkened room, A head moves into the shot, too close to the pickup and slightly out of focus. The same copper hair, but now it looks like a bird’s nest. Same eyes, but puffy with sleep and barely open. “Mam,” Cat says. Her voice catches in her throat. “Hoozit?”

  “It’s me, Cat,” I say, confirming that the pay phone’s vid pickup is on.

  Her eyes open a little further, maybe even enough to see out of them. “Mmm,” she repeats. Then, “Rick, ’choo?” I nod. She moves a little further from the phone pickup, and I see a little more of her, in better focus too. I guess she sees my grin, because she glances down and mutters, “Drek!” Then I see a pale-skinned arm reach for the phone. The screen’s filled with shifting colors and patterns again, and I chuckle. Some things never change, and one of those is that Cat Ashburton sleeps in the raw.

  Less than a minute later the screen clears again. Cat’s got on a fluffy white bathrobe, and her hair looks a little less like a Medusa’s head. Her full lips are quirked up in an embarrassed smile, but her eyes are warning me not to push things too far.

  That’s chill with me; I’m not in the headspace to play the double entendre game anyway. So, “Late shift?” I ask.

  “Mmm, midnight to noon,” she tells me. Which means she’s been down less than two hours at the most. Make it an hour. I’ve got to keep that in mind. She might not be tracking as well as normally.

  “Twelve hour shifts?”

  She nods. “It’s new, some out-of-house consultants say it’ll improve efficiency.” Her voice tells me all I need to know about her opinion of that.

  “Tough.”

  She gives the kind of low, throaty chuckle I remember and still replay from time to time in my dreams. “Tough? They're ball-busters, cobber.” She pauses, and I see her eyes grow a little clearer. “What’s down, omae?” she asks, a hint of concern in her tone. “You’re not calling just to be sociable. Or you’d better not be . .

  I smile, but I know the expression’s as tired as I am. “Not a social call,” I confirm, “I’m in some heavy drek here.”

  Cat runs a hand through her hair, a gesture I remember as clearly as the chuckle. “Tell me.”

  “I’m blown,” I admit. “Big-time, priyatel, bolshoi big."

  "You got made by a random contact?”

  I’m glad that’s her first assumption, not that I slotted up somewhere along the line. “Maybe, but I’m starting to doubt it.”

  “Tell me,” she says again.

  So I do. From the start, in all the gory detail. Frag, I know Drummond would have my nuts for cuff links if he knew, but Drummond can eat drek. It’s my hoop that’s out here hanging in the breeze, not his. Anyway, Cat’s Star. And our past history probably isn't in the Lone Star Seattle computer system—if anywhere, it’s back in the Milwaukee files. (Does it sound like I’m trying to rationalize something? You got that, omae.)

  Cat’s a good listener, but she doesn’t let that get in the way of asking what she needs to refine her understanding or of firing out comments that force me to elaborate or look at things from a new angle. While I’m babbling, I also manage to cram the gyoza and yakisoba down my yam. By the time I’m reaching the end of the story, I see the Chinese waiter doing the old approach-avoidance thing outside the phone booth. So I tell Cat, “Hold one,” blank the screen, open the door, and shove the empty plates out into his hands. “One more plate of gyoza,” I tell him, both to get him out of my hair and because I’m still ready to eat my own flesh. As he races off, I bring Cat back from limbo.

  When I'm done with the story, she doesn’t say anything right away. I know she’s sliding the pieces of the puzzle around, trying to get them to make different shapes. Cat’s good at that, always was. Eventually she shakes her head with a wry grin. “How come every time you get yourself into drek it’s up to your eyeballs?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Talent, I guess.”

  “Huh.” She pauses again. “You’re assuming the Tir corp and the penetra
tion of the Star are connected?”

  Again I shrug. “Yeah, of course . ..” And then I stop, because I see what she’s thinking. I’d automatically assumed there was a link. An unstated, unexamined assumption, based, I suppose, on the fact that Nemo and I recognized each other and that my cover was blown relatively soon after the delegation’s visit. But now that I think about it, there doesn’t have to be any link at all. Frag, this kind of drek is too much of a mind-bender for a simple soul like me.

  I give Cat a slightly embarrassed smile. “Search me, Cat,” I say. “I don’t know anymore.”

  She smiles back. “Zero it. I’m just playing with ideas.” Her face goes dead serious again. “What do you want me to do, omae? You're not calling just to bounce ideas off me?"

  "You got that,” I tell her. “I need a nova-hot datasnoop. and one I can trust not to sell me out or frag me over."

  "The Tir connection?”

  “That’s it,” I tell her. “What’s the buzz on the Matrix? Which Tir corps are trying to increase their presence in the sprawl? And which ones have a rep for dealing with gangs and organized crime? And what’s their biz?”

  Cat chuckles. Then, “You’re not asking much, are you, omae? But why not just let it slide?” she asks in a different tone. “You’ll be pulled in soon, and then you can do this kind of drek in sanction. Why push it now?”

  Yeah, well that’s a fragging good question. All I can do is shrug. “’Cause my gut tells me to, Cat,” I say slowly. “That’s all I can tell you. Something’s telling me it’s important, and anyway ...” I trail off.

  “And anyway,” she finishes for me, “it’s your case. Right?”

  “I guess.” I glance away. Looking at it logically, it doesn’t make sense to do any digging now. Come into the light, then use everything the Star’s got to search for the connection.