Shadowplay

by Nigel Findley

  They almost hadn’t made it, not because of any hostile action, but because Nightwalker had barely enough energy to move. His left side was soaked with blood, right down to his leg. The dressing on his right arm was still in place, but it too was saturated, and the arm hung like a slab of meat.

  Falcon had tried to hurry him along, supporting him when necessary. He’d tried to keep him talking, too. Somewhere he’d read that was a way of handling shock: don’t let the victim slip into the darkness. Keep him talking and you’ll keep him alive.

  Maybe it had helped, maybe not. Nightwalker’s voice had been almost lifeless when responding to Falcon’s comments and questions. Sometimes he’d called him by other names—Marci, Cat-Dancing, Knife-Edge . . . They’d made it this far—just!—but it was obvious that Nightwalker wasn’t going to make it any further without a rest. And maybe not even then. The runner had lost a lot of blood—more than Falcon thought anyone could lose and not die—and was losing still more. Falcon had to do something about that, but wasn’t exactly sure what.

  “Who were they?” he asked again, making his voice sharper to cut through the fog that seemed to be invading the big Amerindian’s mind. “Your chummers?”

  Nightwalker opened his eyes, looked blankly at the ganger for a moment as if unsure who he was. Then, with a visible effort, he brought his wandering thoughts back under control.

  “No, not them,” he said slowly. His voice was still flat, numb, but at least his brain seemed to be tracking again. “They caught Cat-Dancing, used him to draw me in. Cat gave me the wave-off, saved my life. Paid with his own.”

  Falcon nodded. That was the way he'd read it, too. But . . . “Then who?” he pressed. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “The corp. Had to be.”

  “The corp you made the run against?”

  “Had to be,” Nightwalker repeated.

  “Which corp?”

  The runner regarded him steadily. His eyes were still clouded with pain and shock, but the spark of intelligence was definitely still there. “Oh, no,” he said quietly. “That’s ‘need to know.’ And you don’t.”

  Falcon snorted. “Drek. I helped you, you owe me. . . .”

  Nightwalker cut him off. “And that’s why I’m not telling you,” he explained. “You know who, and you’ll wind up as dead as Marci and Cat. I owe you my life, sure, I know that. And I’m not going to pay off that debt by getting you greased. So kal"

  The ganger was silent for a moment. “Okay,” he allowed eventually. “But look. Tell me about the run. What happened? What’s it all about, huh? Cat got geeked saving you, didn’t he? That means it’s important.” He leaned forward intently. “What’s important?”

  “You don’t need to know,” Nightwalker said flatly. “End of discussion.”

  “Drek!” Falcon spat. “Fine, don’t tell me the corp you ran against. That I can understand. But tell me the rest. Leave out the names, but tell me what this biz is all about. You owe me that, Walker. You owe me.”

  Fighting the urge to press harder, he watched silently while Nightwalker thought it through. Eventually the runner nodded wearily.

  “Yeah, maybe.” Nightwalker sighed, coughed, his face screwing up with the pain. “Maybe I do owe you.” He rested his head against the wall behind him, closed his eyes again. For a moment Falcon thought the Amerindian had drifted off again, faded away into whatever was going on in his mind.

  But then he spoke. Quietly, so Falcon had to lean closer to hear. “You ever heard of the Concord of Zurich-Orbital?”

  Falcon thought for a few seconds. He’d heard of Zurich-Orbital. Who hadn’t? The oldest and most important of the NEOs—Near Earth Orbit habitats—spinning through space a hundred klicks above the upper fringes of the atmosphere. Zurich-Orbital. Home of the Corporate Court, the ruling and appeals body that handled relationships between the world-girdling megacorporations. Home of the Zurich Gemeinschaft Bank, the financial center of the megacorporate world. But the Concord of Zurich-Orbital? “No,” he admitted.

  “Didn’t think so. Not many have. And that’s the way the zaibatsus want it.” Nightwalker breathed deeply for a few moments, as if accommodating his wounded body’s demand for more oxygen. “You need a history lesson. “Way back, in the nineteen-eighties, I think it was— maybe the nineties ... or the seventies; I’m not slick on ancient history—the world started swinging over to fiber optics for communication. Before then, everything was transmitted by radio or by electrons flowing through copper wires. Barbaric,” he pronounced, “and risky. If you broadcast something, anyone can pick it up, maybe break your code and know what you’re sending. If you put it through wires, people can read the data flow by induction. You scan?”

  Falcon thought he did. A chummer in the First Nation gang was into electronics, and she’d tried to teach Falcon something about physics. “Electricity flowing through wires makes magnetism, right?” he ventured, parroting words he’d heard, but not really understanding them.

  Nightwalker opened his eyes and looked at him in surprise. “Yeah, right,” he agreed. “You can detect the magnetic field at a distance, and by measuring how it changes, you can figure out the electric flow in the wires. If it’s data being sent down those wires, you can read it. And with the right gear you can change it. You following me?”

  Falcon nodded.

  “So when fiber optics came along,” the runner continued, “everybody jumped aboard. Light flowing in a fiber isn’t like electricity in a wire. There’s no magnetic field. You can’t read it, you can't tap into it, you can’t change it. Totally secure.

  “Or so everybody thought. Then some big-dome scientists figured something out. They worked for one of the big corps back then—3M, or 4F, or something like that, I think it was. They figured out there was a way to read fiber-optic communication. You could read it from a distance, you could even diddle a few bits here and there, change the information that’s going through the light pipe.” He chuckled. “’Course, it wasn’t too practical. From what I hear, it took two Cray supercomputers, big electronic brains, the biggest they’d made to that time, plus a semi-trailer full of other high-tech drek, plus a fragging platoon of big-domes to run it all. I don’t know how it works. I’m no technoweenie. But, frag if it didn’t work.”

  “No.” Falcon shook his head. “That’s not possible,” he said slowly. “You can’t read fiber-optic stuff. You can’t. Everybody knows that.”

  “Uh-uh. Everybody thinks that. Everybody wants to believe that. But those 4F guys, they did it.”

  “So what happened?” Falcon asked. “If that’s true, how come the corps all use fiber optics and think it’s safe?”

  “The crash of twenty-nine, that’s what happened,” Nightwalker said. “Some kind of computer virus got loose, got into the global computer network. It crashed a lot of systems, blew away a lot of data, fragging near crashed the whole global economy. Right?”

  Falcon nodded again. Everyone had heard horror stories about the crash.

  “So the way it turned out,” Nightwalker went on, “parts of the viral code had the greatest effect on highly encrypted data, stuff that was protected by a lot of security. It invaded the security systems, so nobody could copy the important data to somewhere safe, and then it corrupted the files the security was supposed to protect. That’s why the crash was as bad as it was. Most of the stuff that went forever, that nobody could ever recreate from the trashed files, was the most important stuff, the most secret. All the corps’ biggest secrets, all the real cutting-edge tech the R and D big-domes were working on.” He laughed bitterly. “Why do you think the world’s not as technically advanced as it should be?”

  That shocked Falcon. You mean we should be more fragging advanced? he wanted to say, but didn’t.

  If Nightwalker noticed his surprise, he didn’t remark on it. “None of the corps talked about the black data they’d lost,” he continued. “Of course they wouldn’t. They didn’t want to give anyone ideas, to have anyone beat the
m to the prize while they tried to replicate all the lost research.” He paused and smiled. “Any guesses about what was in some of the black data that got itself lost?”

  Of course. “That fiber-optic stuff,” Falcon answered at once.

  “Right in one. The guys who'd come up with it in the first place had put a lot of work into it during the fifty years before the crash. Other corps too. They’d got it a lot smoother, so you didn’t need the two supercomputers and the drekload of other stuff. The way I hear it, they got it down so one tech could run it, and all the hardware would fit in one big van. Then poof! The virus blows it all away. Maybe the guys who’d actually done the research were killed in the rioting, or maybe the corps had already ‘vanished’ them. Whichever, they weren't around to tell anybody what they'd done.

  “So that takes us to the year twenty-thirty,” Nightwalker went on. “The crash virus is gone, and the corps are rebuilding the global network into what we call the Matrix. Some of the other zaibatsus get wind that 4F— or whoever’d bought them out—was trying to recreate the lost technology, trying to figure out how to tap into fiberoptic lines all over again. As you might imagine, that idea made a lot of the high-level suits drek all over themselves. They went to the Corporate Court in Zurich-Orbital and demanded that somebody put a stop to it. And the court did.”

  “The Concord of Zurich-Orbital?” Falcon guessed.

  “That’s it,” confirmed Nightwalker. “All the big corps signed it. They agreed that none of them would ever try to reconstruct the technology. And, if any other corp—one of the smaller fry, maybe—tried to do it, all the Concord signatories would come after them and stomp them flat.” The runner laughed. “You can bet that all the signatories were running off to their private labs even before the ink was dry, trying to beat all the others to recreating the tech. But the Concord still did some good. Because of it nobody could put too many resources into the search without somebody else finding out. And then there’d be fragging hell to pay. No corp—not even the big boys—wants to slot off the Corporate Court. Not unless they’ve got a big fragging stick to threaten Zurich Gemeinschaft with.”

  Falcon was silent for a few moments as he thought about it all. It made sense, kind of. . . . But then another concept struck him. “Hey, what about magic?” he asked. “Why can’t you read the fiber-optic stuff with magic? Why do you need the lost tech at all?”

  Nightwalker smiled. “I wondered if you’d pick up on that.” He shook his head. “Magic’s not like that, it doesn’t interact well with tech. If a shaman or a mage is trying to assense astrally, all he can pick up is the emotional content of any communication he taps into. And what’s the emotional content of your typical data transfer?”

  “Zero,” Falcon answered at once.

  “That’s it,” the big Amerindian agreed. “Not particularly useful, right?”

  Falcon nodded, but he was still confused. He’d understood Nightwalker’s story, most of it, anyway, but one thing he still couldn’t figure out. “What’s that got to do with your run?” he asked.

  “Can’t you guess? The guys who hired my team, they’d found out that one of the local megacorps was this close to replicating the 4F tech. Our job was to bust into their research park, get the tech files, toast the lab and all the records, then bring the paydata back to the Johnsons who’d hired us.”

  “So they could use it themselves?”

  Nightwalker shook his head firmly. “No way. This is”—he hesitated, then laughed harshly—“this is Something Man Was Not Meant To Know, you get me? Any one corp gets this, it’s going to destabilize everything. Frag, it’s going to make the chaos after the crash look like a fragging tea party. No, my Johnsons were going to destroy the data, keeping just enough for proof when they ratted the corp doing the research to the Corporate Court and everybody else. Then they’d just sit back and watch the fun. No matter how big and tough a corp is, there’s no way it can survive if every other major megacorp in the fragging world comes after it with knives.”

  Falcon was silent for a moment. What Nightwalker was saying made sense, sort of. But he knew something about the way Johnsons worked. Johnsons were corps, weren’t they? And what corp would spend good credit hiring shadowrunners to destroy data that would make them trillions of nuyen?

  But Nightwalker believed, didn’t he? He bought the idea that his Johnsons were actually doing something for the good of the world and not thinking only of their own bank balances.

  Well, frag, why not? Stranger things happened in the world, didn’t they? And Nightwalker was more experienced with the shadows. He knew the way things shook. Maybe he was right.

  “So what happened?” the ganger asked. “Did you get the data?”

  “I don’t know. Like I told you, I was physical support. We sent a decker into the system, but she didn’t come back. Not before we got bounced by the other shadow team.” The Amerindian shrugged. “We got hosed. I don’t know whether the runner got the pay data or not. That’s why I need to meet with the others.”

  “If they’re still alive.” The words were out of Falcon’s mouth before he could stop them.

  Nightwalker was silent for a moment. Then he nodded. “If they’re still alive. But I’ve got to know for sure. This is too important to just let it hang.”

  Falcon sighed. I knew he was going to say that, he thought. “So what’s your next move?”

  “Another meet, another back-up location.” Nightwalker looked at him appraisingly. “Can you get me there?”

  Falcon didn’t even ask where the meet was. “I can get your corpse there.” he said flatly. “That’s all that’s going to be left unless we do something now." He forced firmness into his voice, deciding on the right course of action at the same moment he spoke. “I’ve got to get you to a street doc.”

  Nightwalker argued. But not too hard.

  7

  1100 hours, November 13, 2053

  Sly thought the stretch of Broadway near Pine had gone downhill noticeably since the last time she’d been there. More chippies huddled in doorways or even squatting out in the steady rain, oblivious to everything but the sim-sense fantasies playing in their minds. More homeless, dossing down wherever they could find space. More orks and trolls swaggering around in their gang colors. If it’s this bad during the day, she thought, what’s it like at night?

  The buildings reflected the changes in the neighborhood as well. Most of the store windows were bolted over with latticeworks of reinforced bars, and the rest were boarded up. One establishment—a little independent stuffer shack—had a rather pathetic sign posted in its front window: “Please don’t break my glass again.” The window was, of course, broken. Graffiti was everywhere, mainly spray-painted gang colors, slogans, or symbols. A rather talented spray-paint artist had covered some walls with abstract, almost cubist paintings, signing “Pablo Fiasco” at the bottom.

  Seattle Community College, across Broadway from Sly’s destination, looked like a war zone. The entire building had not a single intact window. The neon sign that had stood on the corner of Pine and Broadway, advertising the College, was nothing but a twisted and scorched wreck. Grenade? Sly wondered, seeing other scorch marks here and there. Security personnel were about—private guards hired from Hard Corps Inc. But there weren’t many, maybe a half-dozen or so. They didn't look as though they liked their duty, shifting nervously from foot to foot and scrutinizing everyone who came within twenty meters.

  Sly found the changes depressing. From what she knew of Seattle’s history, this area hadn’t been a good place to be after dark around the turn of the century. It was the haunt of drug-users then, not simsense addicts, but the risks were the same—militant kids who’d do anything to get the money to buy what they needed to feed their heads. Then, sometime around 2010, the money had started to flow downhill, north along Broadway. Just a few blocks away was “Pill Hill,” the location of many of Seattle’s best hospitals. The infrastructure necessary to support those hospitals—lab
s, restaurants, good-quality housing, various suppliers, and so on had moved into the Pine and Broadway region, squeezing out the gutterpunks and street apes.

  Sly wasn’t sure what economic changes had reversed the neighborhood’s fortunes—didn’t really want to know; it probably would have been depressing. But the changes were undeniable. The stretch of Broadway between Pike Street and Denny Way had definitely started its slide back down the socioeconomic curve. It had been going on for some time, but Sly couldn’t help but be surprised, and a little disturbed, by how far the area had descended in only a few months.

  Enough of the civics lesson, she told herself as she pulled her bike up outside her destination. It was an old building, maybe as much as a hundred years old—on the east side of the road just north of Pine. A weird, anachronistic shape among the plasteel and construction composite buildings that surrounded it, her destination was built from red and white blocks of stone—real stone, not some ersatz façade—with little towers, or maybe turrets, on the corners, and a central steeple. Graven in the stone over the front door was the building’s original identity— the First Christian Church—but Sly knew that it hadn’t been a place of worship for at least two decades. Now it was the home and base of operations of her friend Agarwal.

  As she killed her bike’s engine and swung out of the saddle, she thought about what she knew of Agarwal. He had a monster rep on the streets and in the shadows, was one of the few shadow deckers who’d really hit it big, then managed to leave the game with most of his black earnings intact. That was obvious from the place he chose to live. Even with property values dropping in this part of town, the church must have cost him a few million nuyen, and that didn’t include the extensive modifications he’d made after moving in.

  Most runners never got out of the biz. Sly knew. Not alive, that is. And those that did either didn’t have much credit saved up or else they took what they’d scammed and faded from sight to avoid unwanted attention from the corps they used to run against. Agarwal was the exception, living happily—and apparently safely—within a few klicks of the corps he’d taken for millions. She wondered how he did it. The buzz in the shadows claimed he’d built himself some unassailable “life insurance” over the years. That he’d gathered devastating information on all the corps who’d like to see him flatlined, all of it set up with a “dead man’s switch.” If Agarwal ever got geeked or if he neglected to communicate daily with his sophisticated computer “watchdogs,” all those terabytes of damaging data would be dumped to public sections of the Matrix for everyone to see. No corp, it seemed, wanted to risk that kind of exposure just to settle an old score with Agarwal. So far, the aging decker had been able to live in relative security.