The Lucifer desk (s-2)

by Lisa Smedman

  Pita rapped on the door of the shop, then waited for the clerk to buzz her in. It was a tiny store, just a couple of meters wide and deep. The shelves on either side were lined with home entertainment equipment, most of it second-hand. Large yellow price tags hung from each item. The center of the store was taken up with bins of off-the-rack electronics: fiber-optic cables, datachips, mini-amps, and interface plugs. Glass counters held cheap knock-offs of designer watches and electronic toys, made in some Third World sweat-shop.

  The shopkeeper was a female dwarf who sat on a tall stool behind one of the counters. She was hunched over a cyberdeck, her short legs dangling. Half of her head was shaved, revealing multiple datajacks. A cable stretched from one of the jacks to the deck. On the other side of her head, her hair hung down in a thick braid. Her fingernails were covered in a thin layer of polished metal, making light clicking noises as she drummed them against the counter. Her eyes were unfocused at first, but then she blinked and looked up at Pita.

  “Can I help you?” she asked, gently tugging the jack from the slot above her ear.

  Pita started to shake her head. What would a dwarf clerk from a crummy little shop like this know about ork trideo pirates? But she’d come this far, Might as well ask.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Pita said. “Yao Wah. Yao is the first name. He’s a pirate who shoots trideo for Orks First! I thought you might know him. He’s my friend’s brother and I need to tell him someth-”

  The dwarf’s eyes narrowed. “What makes you think I know this Yao?”

  Pita shrugged. “I don’t know. I thought maybe he came in here to buy equipment.”

  The dwarf stared at her impassively.

  “Guess I was wrong,” Pita said, reaching for the door.

  “I know him.”

  “You do?” Pita turned around quickly.

  “Yeah. He’s a class-A slot,” the dwarf said, wrinkling her nose. “Stifled me for a signal booster. Owes me five thousand nuyen. But is the fragger going to pay me? I doubt it. He’d rather deal with his own kind.”

  Pita waited, sizing up the dwarf. “Do you know where I can find Yao?”

  “You could try posting a message on the Matrix. Orks First! runs a bulletin hoard on the Seattle network.”

  “I don’t even have enough nuyen to use the public telecom,” Pita said. “Besides, I need to see him in person.”

  “You need to meet the meat,” the dwarf said. “Why?”

  “Something’s happened to his brother. I need to tell Yao about it, face to face.”

  “This brother’s important to him? You think Yao would answer if I posted something about the kid?”

  Pita nodded. “Tell him it’s a message about Little Pork Dumpling. Then he’ll know it’s for real. He used to call his brother that because he was so fat when he was little.”

  “Right. Wait one.” The dwarf slotted the jack back into her head and closed her eyes. After a second or two she opened them again. “It’s done. A friend of his is passing the message along.”

  “That’s great!” Pita said. “When can I meet him? And where?”

  “Right here,” the dwarf answered. “But not until he pays his bill, plus interest for the three months it’s overdue. And don’t get any ideas about going off to find him yourself. The door’s locked and armed. If Yao wants the meet, he’ll come. We’ll see if his ‘little pork dumpling’ is worth five thousand nuyen to him.”

  5

  Yao was shorter than he looked on trideo. He was about Pita’s height, but had broader shoulders and a thicker neck. He looked like an older version of Chen, with the same straight black hair and Asian eyecast. He wore his hair “high and tight-shaved over the ears and spiky on top. It was starting to gray a little, although he was still probably only in his mid-twenties. Life on the streets had given his eyes a hard, wary look. But he was good-looking, for an ork. His jaw was narrow and his nose straight. He wore jeans torn off at the knee and a black leather vest over a loose-fitting sweatshirt-probably to deliberately contrast with the carefully groomed reporters of the legitimate news stations.

  Yao sat on the other side of a small plastic table, watching Pita scarf down her second plate of noodles. There was no way to tell whether he had anything so fancy as an cybereye cam, but there a datajack showed in his temple and a mini-radio was clipped to one earlobe. When Pita asked what it was, he told her it was a Lone Star scanner and decryption unit. “Keeps me one step ahead of the cops,” he explained, one arm draped across the back of the bench. She noticed he always kept one eye on the doorway, where his friend Anwar lounged.

  The second pirate wore jeans, a muscle shirt, and cowboy boots. He leaned against a wall next to the door, one arm cradling a bulky trideo camera whose size gave it away as being more than two decades out of date-nearly an antique. He grinned at Yao and gave him a thumbs-up sign indicating that none of the Underground’s security goons were in sight.

  Pita finished her noodles and drained the last of her soda. She toyed nervously with one of her chopsticks until Yao gently touched her wrist. The back of his hand was covered with a mass of spiky black hairs; he didn’t shave his hands to look morn human the way some orks did. “Well?” he asked. “Are you going to tell me something about Chen? Or do you want to soak me for another plate of noodles first?”

  The chopstick in Pita’s hands snapped in two. “He’s dead,” she blurted.

  “Yes?”

  Pita looked up. “You knew?”

  Yao shook his head. On his trideo broadcasts, he was animated and expressive, but now his face was strangely still. Only a faint wince of his eyes betrayed what he must be feeling. “I didn’t know. But I could guess. I can read people. I can see that Chen meant a lot to you.”

  Pita stared at the tabletop. Its edge was scatted with cigarette bums. The brown stains reminded her of the dried blood she’d found on her jacket the morning after Chen had… After the cops had…

  Tears dripped onto the bright yellow plastic. Yao reached across the table and lifted Pita’s chin with one massive hand. “What happened? How did he die? Was it a fight? An overdose? How?”

  “The Star,” Pita answered. She had to swallow before she could go on. “They shot him. And two of his friends, Shaz and Mohan. We were hanging out, trying to boost a trideo feed to catch one of your broadcasts. Lone Star stopped us and-”

  “And Chen pulled a weapon. Stupid fragger. You’d think he’d know better.”

  “No!” Pita protested. “It wasn’t like that at all. At first all the Stars did was smash the ‘trode rig you gave him. But later, they came back in their patrol car. Shaz threw a rock at them, and they opened fire on us. But none of us had a weapon. Not in our hands. Mohan had a knife, but it was still in his pocket. The cops never even got out of their car or gave us a warning. They shot before we even had time to run.”

  “But you escaped.”

  Guilt washed over Pita like ice water. “Yes,” she muttered, looking down at the tabletop once more. “But I came back, later, to see if the others were all right. That’s when I saw the cops cutting them up. And writing the Humanis slogans on the wall.”

  “Humanis Policiub?” Chen leaned forward, a hard glitter in his eyes. “You mean fragging cops belong to that drek-eating hate club?’ A muscle worked in his jaw. “Well, it figures. Orks represent sixteen percent of Seattle’s population, but nearly fifty per cent of the prison population is ork. Not only are we arrested and thrown in jail more often, we’re also under-represented as cops. Only one fragging per cent of the Lone Star cops patrolling Seattle are ork. Nearly eighty per cent are human. Those figures have been documented by the Orks Rights Committee. And their numbers don’t lie. Prejudice against metahumans runs long and deep in the Star. Chief London’s going to have a lot to answer for the day the coalition takes over the city. And that day is coming-soon.”

  Pita was impressed by all the facts Yao had at his fingertips. He was informed. He was determined.

  He st
opped talking as the waitress came to clear the table. She was a pretty girl-human-a little older than Pita. But Yao looked at her with open contempt. “Wait until we’re finished eating, drekhead,” he snapped at her.

  Pita pushed her bowl away. “I’m done,” she said quickly. But the waitress had already scrambled away.

  Yao stood up, motioning his friend forward. He took the trideo camera from him, then spoke quietly to him. Anwar grinned, then loped out of the restaurant.

  “I want you to take me to the spot where it happened,” Yao told Pita. “I’ll interview you there, on location, while Anwar monitors the uplink. We’re using a portable dish to go live. Save your story until we get there. That way it’ll sound less rehearsed. When I give you the sign, you start from the beginning and don’t leave anything out.” He smiled grimly as he motioned for Pita to follow. “This could be just the story we need to spark the uprising.”

  “Uprising?” Pita echoed, trotting along behind Yao. He walked quickly, threading his way through the crowded corridors. She had to hurry to keep up.

  “Look around you,” Yao said, lowering his voice. “The overcrowding, the condition of these tunnels. You don’t think we orks are going to be penned up in the Underground forever, do you? The day isn’t far off when we’ll rise up into the city and push the weaker races aside. When we’ll take what’s rightfully ours and pay the fraggers back for what happened in ‘39. The Night of Rage is going to look tame compared to what’s coming.”

  “My parents told me about the Night of Rage,” Pita said. “I was only two, but Mom used to tell a funny story about how Dad made us hide in the basement, then sat at the top of the stairs with his shotgun to protect us. It wasn't until the next morning that he realized he’d forgotten to load the gun. When I was little, I didn’t understand what could have sent him into such a panic. But now I realize he was afraid of the-”

  Pita stopped herself. She’d been about to say, “of the metahumaus.” Thinking back on it now, she wondered at her father’s extreme reaction. Seattle’s metahumans had responded with violence to the city’s attempt to forcibly relocate them outside of its boundaries, but that violence had been tightly focused. Their rage-and the burnings, lootings, and attacks it sparked-was triggered by a series of explosions in the warehouses being used to hold the deportees. A militant wing of the Humanis Policlub was rumored to be behind the bombings. Pita knew her father sympathized with the Humanis Policlub, but now she wondered just how deep those sympathies ran. Was her father a member of the racist group, and thus a potential target for the metahuman retaliation?

  “Yeah, the Metroplex Guard were even worse than Lone Star,” Yao said, interrupting her thoughts. He glanced at Pita. “You weren’t at the warehouses? Then your family hadn’t been rounded up yet by the Guard when the trouble began.”

  “Uh, no.” Pita realized that Yao assumed her entire family was ork. Given the arrogant, hostile tone he’d used when speaking to the waitress in the noodle bar, she was afraid to tell him she’d once been a member of the “weaker races” herself.

  “You were lucky, then,” Yao continued. “My father died when the first explosion hit the waterfront. My mother was never the same afterward. She tried to reverse the confiscation order on our house, but the city appealed every court decision, and eventually our money ran out. After that, she didn’t have the strength to do much but sit and cry.

  “Governor Schultz glosses over the whole thing now, and talks about our current ‘racial harmony.’ She seems to think the Night of Rage could never happen again.” Yao’s smile tightened. “Well, she’s soon going to find out just how wrong she is. When your interview hits the air, the sparks will fly.”

  6

  The Street kids were clustered near the base of the Space Needle, listening to a simsense deck, and it looked to Carla like a Sony Beautiful Dreamer. Two of the teenagers were simming the music directly, via datajacks slotted into their temples. They jerked in time with the music, eyes focused on some distant point as the deck pumped sights, sounds, and other sensory input directly into their brains. The rest of the kids heard only the music that blared from the speakers. Some lounged about, smoking, too chill to acknowledge the driving staccato beat. Others danced, arms flailing, occasionally knocking foreheads together like wild rams. One of the kids-a troll dressed in black leather pants and a Japanese kimono hacked off at the waist-even had the curling horns necessary to complete the picture. Overhead, the night sky was a solid black, devoid of stars.

  Carla shouted over the din from the speakers. “Do any of you know an ork girl named Pita? She came looking for me at my office the other day, but left before I had a chance to really talk with her. The last bunch of kids I talked to told me she hangs somewhere down here, at Seattle Center. Have any of you seen her? This is what she looks like” She held out a playback imager. Its flatscreen showed a still of Pita sitting in the KKRU lobby.

  The teenagers stared at the imager, their eyes a mixture of boredom and suspicion. “You her social worker?” one asked. By the way his nose flared as he looked up and down Carla’s expensive Armante jacket, he wasn't impressed with her corporate image. Maybe she should have dressed down before trying to interview street kids. But the Armante was bullet-proof as well as stylish.

  “I’m not a social worker,” Carla answered. “I’m a reporter. Carla Harris of KKRU Trideo News. Pita had a story for me. A story we’re willing to get behind. Be sure to tell her that if you see her.

  The troll stopped dancing and ambled over to stand behind Carla. He loomed over her like a building, throwing her into shadow. She resisted the urge to back away, even though he reeked of sweat. Never let a dog see that you re afraid of him, she thought. It only encourages him to bite.

  “Unless you got some credit to spend right here, lady, you’d better just frag off,” he grumbled.

  Across the parking lot, a car horn beeped twice. That would be Masaki. He had cut the tint on the windows of his car, and was gesturing frantically inside it.

  Carla met the troll’s eyes and smiled. “I’d love to stay and chat,” she told him. “But my father doesn’t like it when I stay out late, and he’s quite particular about which boys I talk to. That’s him in the car over there. Perhaps you’d like to meet him?”

  Carla almost hoped the troll would call her bluff and say yes. If Masaki saw the huge brute shambling toward his car, he’d wet himself. He’d been working the lifestyles beat too long, and had gone soft. He'd rather spend the evening behind the multiple locks of his apartment door than chasing down stories. Carla had practically dragged him out tonight. She would have gone on her own, except that Masaki knew more about the background to the piece, including the background of the mage who’d wanted to spill the beans on Mitsuhama’s special project. But the way Masaki was acting, she wasn’t sure if her fellow so-called “reporter” still deserved a byline on the story.

  The troll shifted his kimono slightly so that Carla got a good look at the Streetline Special pistol tucked into the top of his pants. She knew better than to flinch.

  “You got cojones coming out here at night, lady,” he said grudgingly at last.

  Carla smiled sweetly at him. “Ovaries, actually.” Behind her, Masaki honked the horn twice more. “Remember,” she told the other kids as she turned to go, “if you see Pita, tell her Carla Harris of KKRU Trideo is looking for her.” She handed the kid her business card.

  Carla strode across the parking lot and wrenched open the car door. She and Masaki had been trying all that afternoon and evening to find Pita, but none of the street kids would admit to seeing the girl. She’d disappeared into thin air-and taken the Mitsuhama data-chip with her. Their producer had given Carla and Masaki one day to dig up some proof that there really was a story. So far, all they had were dead ends. And now Masaki was acting like an idiot, honking the horn like a frightened kid. He even had the engine running, as if fearing that a fast getaway would be imminent.

  “What the hell are
you doing?” Carla asked Masaki angrily. Trying to wake up all of Seattle? If you weren’t such a timid-”

  Masaki didn’t wait for the insult. “Look at this!” he said, pointing urgently to the compact trid built into the dash of his car. “I was channel surfing and stumbled across this pirate broadcast. Looks like they’ve found Pita for us.”

  Carla climbed hurriedly into the car, thumbing the volume key beside the tiny trideo screen. Pita’s voice crackled from the speaker and her image wavered. At first Carla thought it was just the trideo unit acting up. but then she saw the channel display. The broadcast was coming in on Channel 115-a channel that should have been carrying nothing but a blank blue field. This was clearly a pirate broadcast, fed illegally through a cable booster into a “dead” channel. The pirates were probably transmitting via remote feed to avoid getting caught, should their input be traced. The resulting distortion had caused the color to shift; Pita’s face was distinctly green. But her voice was coming through, loud and clear, despite the occasional pop of static.

  “This is where it happened.” she said in a quavering voice. “This is where my friends were killed.”

  The camera pulled back from Pita, revealing the wall behind her. The words that had been painted in the orks’ blood were faint but still legible, thanks to an overhang that protected them from the rain that had been falling steadily throughout the day: “Human Power!”, “Goblin Scum Must Die!” and “Keep Our Human Family Pure!”

  Carla jabbed a finger at the screen. “That’s Rainier Avenue South, the spot where those three orks were killed by Humanis Policlub. I shot trid there a couple of days ago. If this is a live broadcast, that’s where Pita is right now.”

  “It’s live all right,” Masaki said, wheezing with excitement. “But the pirate would be a fool to broadcast from an identifiable location. Lone Star would be all over him before he’d even finished his intro.