Shadowplay

by Nigel Findley

  A memory nagged at Falcon, something he’d read in that book by H. T. Langland. This style was never worn by the real Mohawks, he recalled, but by the Creek and some other tribes. According to Langland, the traditional Mohawks had traditionally shaved the tops of their heads, leaving a fringe around the sides and back. At the corner of Pershing and Logan he spotted someone with that shaved-top style: a big slag in a uniform that fairly screamed “cop,” and with a huge fragging gun that looked almost a meter long in the holster on his belt. He hurried on by, averting his eyes, feeling the cop’s gaze leaving cold trails down his back.

  Strolling down another street of girlie bars, Falcon wondered what he was doing out here. The truth of the matter was what he’d told Sly: he had to get out or in another hour he’d have been chewing up the place. Besides, getting a feel for the city was worth something.

  And what about Sly? Part of him was glad she’d confided in him, told him what was slotting her up. But another part didn’t want to know that Sharon Louise Young, the competent, experienced, professional shadowrunner, needed to psych herself up to face something that scared her, just the way Dennis Falk had to. Firmly he put both thoughts aside. Worry about that drek later, he told himself.

  He paused outside a particularly seedy-looking dive. Either it didn't have a name or else just didn’t bother to advertise it. Its sole claim to fame, according to the holo outside, seemed to be a duo act, featuring two startlingly endowed blonde Anglos who apparently had a strange penchant for vegetables, flutes, and Ping-Pong balls.

  He drifted inside, only to be stopped at the door by the bouncer from hell—an Amerindian troll whose asymmetrical head brushed the high ceiling of the entranceway as he demanded some ID. Falcon slotted his credstick, silently grateful for Sly’s decision to make David Falstaff twenty-one years old, handed over a crumpled five-nuyen bill for the cover charge, and jandered inside.

  The salad show was in full swing, the two blondes on stage looking cosmically bored by the whole production. There were a couple of vacant seats down in “gynecology row” bordering the raised stage, but he chose a small corner table near the rear, giving him a more strategic view of the whole establishment. When the waiter came by, Falcon ordered a shot and a beer, then continued splitting his attention between the show and the audience.

  The place was busy but not packed. The guys down in gynecology row were paying rapt attention to the goings-on not two meters in front of their noses, but the rest of the crowd seemed more concerned with their own biz. The feel of the place reminded him of Superdad’s, a real hole out in Redmond that catered about equally to blue-collar voyeurs and to street operators looking for a safe meet. With a quickening of interest, Falcon scanned the faces of the crowd a little more intently. If this was like Superdad’s, a good percentage of the “audience” would actually be shadowrunners, trying to score some biz. (How active is Cheyenne’s shadow community? he wondered. Then wondered some more about how to find out. Go up and ask someone? Excuse me, sir, but are you a shadowrunner? Are you planning anything illegal in the near future?)

  When his drink order arrived, he paid with a fistful of coins. The waiter watched with exaggerated patience as Falcon had to hold up the individual coins to the stage lighting to read the denominations. Then, with a mutter of, “Tourists,” the slag wandered off.

  “Hoi there, honey. New to town, huh?”

  Falcon turned. There was a woman standing behind him. Short and pleasantly rounded in all the right places, with frizzed auburn hair. She wore a short, low-cut dress in emerald green, off the shoulders, prevented from coming all the way off only by a generous expanse of bosom. Subtle face paint, in colors that accentuated both her hair and the color of the dress she almost wasn’t wearing. Broad smile on a face that looked only a couple of years older than Falcon’s. Bright green eyes, steady and appraising, that made him up his estimate of her age by more than a decade.

  “Feel up to buying a lady a drink, huh?” she asked. Her voice had a musical southern lilt to it.

  “Uh ...” Falcon hesitated for a slow five-count. Then, “Why not?”

  She pulled up a chair, settled herself comfortably close to him. Crossed her legs, showing a goodly expanse of pale thigh. Another Anglo, he couldn’t help but notice. Falcon started to wave for the waiter, but the woman put a surprisingly large hand on his arm. “I’ll get it, honey.” And then she whistled between her teeth, painfully loud near his ear. When the waiter looked over, she pointed to the table. The waiter nodded and headed toward the bar. “Sammy knows what I drink,” she explained needlessly. I bet he does, Falcon thought.

  They waited in silence until the waiter delivered her drink—a fruity-looking thing with a small paper parasol standing in it. She watched as Falcon fumbled with the bills, paid the waiter the ten nuyen he demanded. Only when Sammy had departed did she speak again.

  “Have you got a name, sugar?”

  “David Falstaff,” he answered. “And you?”

  “Bobby Jo Dupuis.” She pronounced it “Doo-pwee," the second syllable pitched a major seventh above the first, and almost piercing enough to make his fingernails split. “Good ol' Bobby Jo.” She laid a hand on his arm again, squeezed gently. “So, where you from?”

  “Bellingham,” he answered, “up in Salish-Shidhe.” The woman’s hand on his arm made him a little uncomfortable, but he was too embarrassed to move it.

  “Going to be in town long?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Business or pleasure?” She began to massage his arm gently.

  “Biz,” he answered quickly. Then he hesitated. Maybe this was a chance to find out something useful about the shadows of Cheyenne. “I guess how long I stay in town depends on whether I find something to make it worth my while, you know what I mean? Something to keep me here.” He shrugged, tried to sound nonchalant. “That’s kind of why I came in here. Am I in the right place to find something that’s going to keep me busy?” She squealed with laughter. “Sugar, you sure as hell found yourself the right place. And you found yourself the right person, too. Good ol’ Bobby Jo’s sure enough the girl for you if you want to keep yourself real busy, you get my drift?”

  This was definitely not going the way Falcon had expected.

  “Ya know,” the woman went on conversationally, “I really like this place, but . . . well, maybe it’s not the best place for conversation, you know? Like, for two people to really get to know each other.” She began to stroke his calf with the side of her foot. “You got a place around here where we could, you know, talk, sugar?” she purred.

  A sudden feeling of panic bubbled up inside Falcon’s chest. He looked around wildly for some way out, for some kind of help.

  And that was when his eyes lit on a familiar face. On the far side of the room, a big man with broad, bulging shoulders was making his way through the crowd toward the front door. Apparently he’d just emerged from some back room behind the stage. He wasn’t looking around him, apparently hadn’t spotted Falcon. Frag it, Falcon thought, it’s Knife-Edge. The leader of the Amerindian runners who’d tried to ambush Sly, the ones with whom Nightwalker had been working in the sprawl.

  Falcon snapped his head around, away from the big runner. Ducked down low toward the table, grabbed his untouched shot glass and sucked back the contents. He tried not to choke at the fire in his throat. Keeping his hand, holding the glass, in front of his face, he watched Knife-Edge from the corner of his eye. The big man still didn’t look around him, just worked his way through the crowd to the door, then disappeared outside.

  Falcon jumped as Bobby Jo squeezed his leg, high up on his thigh. “Honey, you look like you done seen a ghost.”

  Not quite, he thought, remembering how the hidden sniper’s shot—the one that had blown Benbo’s chest apart—had cored Knife-Edge front to back. I wish he was a ghost. . . .

  The runner was gone, the door swinging shut behind him. Falcon jumped to his feet. Bobby Jo, thrown off-balance because of her crossed
legs, teetered for a moment, eyes wide, grabbing at the table to keep herself from pitching to the floor. "Hey!” she squealed in a teeth-hurting soprano.

  “Sorry, Bobby Jo,” he mumbled. “Gotta go.”

  Falcon hurried toward the front door, heard the woman hissing viciously behind him, “Pudlicker! Pudlicking hoopfragging pansy kid ...” Then, thankfully, he was out into the night, the cold breeze blowing away the alcohol fumes, leaving his head clear.

  Knife-Edge was already half a block away, heading east on Pershing, back toward Twenty-third Street. The big runner was walking quickly, but Falcon thought he could detect a trace of a limp. (Only a trace? After the hit he took? There had to be healing magic involved.) The ganger started after him, trying to look casual while also using knots of pedestrians to shield him from view in case Knife-Edge should glance over his shoulder.

  It wasn’t as easy as it looked on the trid, he decided, after catching the third hard elbow in the ribs when he accidentally bumped a passerby. Trying to keep concealed was slowing him down, and the large figure of Knife-Edge was already almost a block ahead. At this rate, Falcon would lose him before they’d gone another two blocks. What the frag should he do?

  Knife-Edge didn’t seem to be watching for tails. Since leaving the bar, Falcon hadn’t seen him glance over his shoulder once, and the angles were wrong for the runner to use store windows and other tricks. After thinking about it for a moment, he changed his tactics, closing the distance until he was only about a half-block behind his quarry. At that range, it probably didn’t matter that he wasn’t sheltering behind pedestrians. If Knife-Edge ever did glance back, what were the chances he’d recognize one face in the crowd at a distance of fifty meters? Not good, he figured. On the other hand, Knife-Edge’s size and his distinctive gait—thanks to the unknown sniper—made it unlikely that Falcon would lose sight of him.

  They passed the Sioux National Theater again. A performance had apparently just ended, and a flood of men and women looking much better-dressed than the pedestrians further west on Pershing were crowding the sidewalk, signaling for taxis or retrieving their own cars from valets. For a single, tense moment, Falcon thought he’d lost Knife-Edge. He pushed through the crowd, winning some curses and another elbow in the ribs. Where is he? Falcon thought, then spotted his prey again. He wasn't more than forty meters ahead, still heading east.

  On the other side of Twenty-third Street, the number of pedestrians began to diminish. A mixed blessing: the odds of losing Knife-Edge were greatly decreased, while the chance that the runner would spot his shadow were increased. Falcon backed off as far as he dared, pretending to look in a store display until Knife-Edge had opened the gap by another twenty or so meters.

  As the traffic on the sidewalk changed, so did the buildings that flanked it. The grotty bars were replaced by high-tone stores and boutiques, all closed at this time of night. Then, as Falcon hit a cross-street called Windmill Road, the buildings changed again to become tall office complexes mixed together with what looked like governmental structures. He glanced over at a large building across the street. Bureau of Justice, read the big brass letters beside the door. Yep, he thought, we’re into government-land. He swung his gaze back to the figure of Knife-Edge ahead of him.

  And couldn’t spot him. The runner had vanished.

  For a moment Falcon panicked.

  Then he saw the large figure. The samurai had left the sidewalk, was climbing a shallow flight of steps to the door of a blocky-iooking office building just ahead. Two large bushes flanked the bottom of the stairway, which explained why Falcon had momentarily lost sight of the man. He dropped to one knee, pretended to busy himself adjusting the velcro fastener of his runner, while actually keeping his eyes on his quarry.

  Knife-Edge stopped at the door, reached into his pocket and extracted something too small for Falcon to see. With whatever it was in his hand, he reached out to the door. Then, with the other hand he pulled the door open. A passcard. Falcon thought, what else? The big man stepped into the building, the door shutting behind him, and that was that.

  Falcon didn't move immediately, still “adjusting” the shoe’s fastener. He couldn't imagine what he was supposed to do now. All Falcon knew was an overwhelmingly important need to find out where Knife-Edge was going and what he was doing in Cheyenne. But how could he do that? He saw the runner disappear into an office building, sure, but how many businesses would you find in the average office building?

  Was there any way of narrowing it down? It was obvious Falcon couldn’t get into the building itself if Knife-Edge needed a passcard. . . .

  Maybe it would help to learn to which floor the runner had gone. Which would require looking in through the glass front door of the building, watching the indicator over the elevator.

  Which meant he had to hurry. Falcon jumped to his feet and ran, stopping only when he reached the large bush at the bottom of the stairs. Cautiously, he looked around the bush.

  Yes, this was the perfect vantage point. He could see into the lobby, and had an uninterrupted view of the bank of elevators. Even better, it looked like an elevator car hadn’t yet responded to Knife-Edge’s call. The big runner was standing there, waiting, his back to the front door and to Falcon. The ganger checked: yes, there were indicators over each of the elevator doors, and yes, they were big enough for him to read from this distance.

  What building was this anyway? He glanced away for a moment, checked the logo and the big letters mounted over the door.

  The logo was a stylized intertwining of the letters O, M, and I, the words explicating what those letters meant.

  Sioux Nation Office of Military Intelligence, they read.

  Office of Military Intelligence. Oh holy frag. . . . For a single instant, Falcon stood frozen there.

  An instant too long. As if cued by some kind of instinct, Knife-Edge glanced back over his shoulder for the first time.

  Falcon felt the runner’s gaze on him, saw his eyes widen in recognition. Saw the man’s hand come up holding something. No, not a gun: a tiny radio. Saw him start to speak into it.

  And suddenly Falcon was un-frozen, could move again. Move he did. He turned and sprinted back the way he’d come, back toward the crowds and the tacky neon and the girlie bars and Bobby Jo Dupuis. Away from the Office of Military Intelligence and the runner who wasn’t a runner after all and the official, uniformed skull-crushers he must have at his beck and call.

  He heard something behind him, the crash of boots on concrete. Running footsteps—heavy running footsteps. He risked a quick look over his shoulder.

  And wished he hadn’t. There were four of them after him, Mohawked trolls in semi-military uniforms, heavy-duty handguns out. Where’d they come from? Falcon wondered. Had they been fragging summoned? But of course it didn’t matter where they’d come from. They weren’t more than twenty-five meters behind him, armed to the tusks, and coming like bats out of fragging hell. “Stop!” one of them roared. “Stop or we shoot!”

  In your dreams, I’ll stop. Falcon poured on the speed.

  A gun boomed behind him, then a bullet smashed off the sidewalk at his feet. Fragments of concrete flayed his legs through his trousers. Warning shot? he wondered. Or trying to wing me? It didn’t matter anyway, he realized. With Knife-Edge back there, capture was as good as death, wasn’t it? Something went whirr-thup past his ear, the gunshot itself sounding an instant later.

  Ahead he saw a narrow passageway between two boutiques. He took the corner at maximum speed, scrabbling for traction and almost losing it. Then accelerating for all he was worth down the narrow, echoing lane.

  He had to get out of here now, he realized. With the unbroken walls on either side of him—ferrocrete, construction composite, or maybe something even more resilient—any bullets shot down the alleyway would ricochet wildly back and forth. Which, of course, increased the chance that they’d strike something valuable—namely, Dennis Falk a.k.a. David Falstaff.

  Behind him, t
he parallel walls amplified the thundering bootsteps of his pursuers. Two guns spoke simultaneously, the bullets whining off into the darkness. Neither shot was close enough for him to feel or hear the passage of the actual round. But that wouldn’t last, he knew. All the odds were with the trolls behind him, and nobody lasted long betting against the house.

  But what were his options? Judging from the sounds, he thought he was opening up the gap. The troll guards were like greased hell on the straightaways, their long legs eating up the ground. But when it came to any kind of maneuvering, even their strength couldn’t overcome their bodies’ almost ludicrous inertia. When Falcon had taken the turn into the alley, he’d extended his lead by at least ten meters, maybe a lot more, which the trolls were currently regaining with every step they took.

  So, was he supposed to turn now, try and gun them all down, the way the hero does it in a trideo show? Forget it! That might work on the trid, but in the past three days Falcon had learned a lot about just how much relationship the trid had to real life. Slim and none. If he stopped, if he tried to return fire, he might crease one or two of the trolls—if he was real lucky—before they reduced him to a cloud of airborne blood droplets and a smear of tissue on the ground. No, thank you.

  A wider opening to the right. Without even looking, he blasted around the corner at full bore.

  Another alley, wider, stretching off into the distance. This one was wide enough for trucks to drive down to collect garbage from the dumpsters that sat like sleeping beasts every block or two.

  For a moment, Falcon could easily have convinced himself he was back in Seattle, back in the part of the sprawl he called home. The Kingdome would be that way, the Renraku Arcology over there.

  And then, suddenly, time seemed to telescope, to collapse on itself. He wasn’t in Cheyenne. The span of time that had taken him from Seattle to here might never have existed. He was back in the alleys of Seattle, with a pack of trolls on his tail, trolls who wanted to kill him. Sure, part of his brain knew they were military sec-guards. But, by the spirits and totems, they might as well have been the Disassemblers dogging him near the docks. For some reason, the sense of familiarity energized his body, gave him the juice to run even harder.