Shadowplay

by Nigel Findley

  Sly nodded. “Where?”

  “Reservoir Park, at the Roundhouse. Head east out of town, you’ll find it. The man’s name is Hal.” He hesitated. “You sure you got the nuyen for this? Your shopping list is going to cost you a hundred-K nuyen and up.”

  “I’m good for it, Moonhawk.” She paused, drew her ninja icon’s lips back from her teeth in what could— almost—be called a smile. “Your chummer better have the goods, slag. Or next time we meet it’s going to be in the flesh.

  “Get my drift?” she said before jacking out.

  26

  2320 hours, November 15, 2053

  Falcon could smell the troll’s foul breath even over the reek of the dumpster as the sec-guard’s massive hand closed on the edge of the metal lid.

  The young ganger ducked lower, heart pounding in his ears, stomach in knots. He thought wildly about firing a long burst from his pistol into the troll’s face the moment he opened the dumpster, but then what? There would still be three more of them.

  With a creak, the heavy lid began to rise.

  “Hey, you slots! Over here!” The taunting voice echoed from the concrete walls of the surrounding buildings. A male voice, young and dripping with scorn.

  One of the troll guards cursed, and the lid banged down again. The chunk of garbage that Falcon had used to wedge the lid open was still in place, so it didn’t close all the way. Confused, he peered out through the narrow slit.

  The trolls had turned away from the dumpster, were starting off in hot pursuit of a figure heading back the way Falcon had come. A familiar-looking figure with straight dark hair, leather jacket, and velcro-strapped runners. It could have been Falcon's identical twin.

  But there was something strange about the figure. Not just his appearance. He just doesn’t feel right, Falcon thought, then realized he was shivering, and not only from fear. Something crazy was going down here.

  One of the trolls snapped off a couple of shots at the fleeing figure. From his angle of vision, Falcon thought the shots had gone true, but the figure showed no reaction. A mocking laugh rang out—not Falcon’s voice. Then the trolls were out of sight, the crash of their boot heels on the concrete soon fading.

  Just what the flying frag was going on here?

  Falcon pushed the lid open. He climbed out cautiously, dropping silently to the ground where he crouched in the shadow of the dumpster.

  “It’s okay, they’re gone.”

  He spun at the voice sounding beside him. Dragged the machine pistol from his pocket, brought it to bear.

  The weapon’s sighting laser painted the face of a woman standing near another dumpster. She hadn’t been there a second ago, he told himself, I know it! She squinted her eyes against the glare of the laser, but made no other move.

  She was Amerindian, with straight black hair gathered into a braid that hung halfway down her back. She wore what Falcon considered traditional Plains-tribe garb: a deerskin tunic over wrapped leggings and beaded moccasins on her feet. Feathers, beaded fetishes, and other talismans covered her clothing. Though she was small, almost tiny, something about her demeanor made Falcon feel more like she was looking down at him from some superior height. Frag that drek. I’m the one with the gun, he reminded himself.

  He tried to guess her age, found it very difficult. Her hair was lustrous black without a trace of gray, her face unlined. And very attractive, he couldn’t help but notice. Judging from those clues, he’d have guessed her to be about twenty. But again he came back to her manner, her obvious self-possession. Taking that into account blew his estimate out of the water. She could be any age at all.

  Realizing that he still held his gun levelled between her eyes, he didn’t lower the weapon, but backed off on the trigger so the sighting laser died. “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “My name is Mary Windsong,” the woman answered, her voice light, almost lilting. She dropped her gaze from his eyes to the weapon. “That isn’t necessary, you know,” she added. “I don’t mean you any harm.” Then she continued to merely watch him calmly.

  Falcon felt his face begin to get hot. Was he blushing? He felt vaguely ludicrous, a big, tough shadowrunner pointing his heat at this unarmed, harmless-looking woman. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He lowered the gun to waist-level, but didn’t put it away. It stayed in his hand, the gun barrel not quite pointing at her.

  “You know my name,” the woman said pointedly. The ganger hesitated, then thought, What harm would it do? “Falcon,” he said, then went silent before asking what he really wanted to know. “What the frag was that a minute ago? I saw ... I saw me running away.”

  Mary Windsong laughed, and Falcon was forced to knock a few years off his original age estimate. She’s not much older than me, he realized.

  “It was the best I could think up on short notice,” she answered lightly. “I saw you duck into the trash, and I knew the OMI goons would look in there. So . . . just a simple illusion spell, but it did the trick.”

  “You’re a shaman, then?”

  She nodded. “I follow the path of the totems,” she acknowledged.

  “Which totem?”

  “I sing the songs of Dog.”

  Falcon wanted to pursue that line of questioning further, but first he had to know some other things. “Why did you help me?” he asked. “What’s in it for you?”

  She shrugged. “Nothing, directly. But when I saw those OMI goons about to grab you”—she smiled broadly—“I figured, what the hell, eh?”

  “What’s with OMI, anyway?” he wanted to know. “Who are they? What’s their game?”

  Mary chuckled again. “You want I should give you a political science lesson right here and now?” she asked. “The trolls will have lost the illusion by now; they might be back any time.”

  Falcon hesitated. His first impulse was to get the frag out of there, to save his own hoop and let Mary go about her business. But, he had to admit, the young shaman probably had information that would be useful to him and Sly. Like, what was the connection between Knife-Edge and this OMI thing?

  “Is there somewhere we can go and talk?” he asked.

  * * *

  The tavern was called The Buffalo Jump. A small, smoky place, no tables, just a long bar, scarred and carved here and there with initials and bits of graffiti. There were only five patrons present, not counting Falcon and Mary. Amerindians all, and every one a tough-looking hombre, much more interested in their beers than the other patrons.

  Mary led Falcon to two rickety stools at the far end of the bar, away from the front window with its flickering beer signs. The bartender, a mountain of muscle with a face that looked like a boiled red fist, apparently knew Mary. He greeted her with a warm smile—or his best approximation of same—and brought them each a halfliter of beer. He then lumbered down to the other end of the bar, and continued his task of using a gray rag to redistribute the grime on the counter top.

  The shaman took a healthy pull on her beer. Then, “You want to know about the OMI, right?” she said. “How much do you know about Sioux politics?”

  Falcon shook his head. “Not enough.”

  She chuckled. “You got that straight, particularly if you’re on the bad side of the OMI.

  “OMI’s military intelligence,” she went on. “They’re supposed to work closely with the Sioux Special Forces— the Wildcats, you heard of them?”

  Falcon nodded slowly. He’d heard stories about the Wildcats, the ultimate military hard cases, experts at black ops. A unit of heavily cybered warriors leavened with a platoon of shamanic commandos. “Real bad news, right?”

  “Good understatement, chummer,” she said. “OMI also works with the rest of the military doing threat estimates, intelligence on troop movement, other support functions like that. At least, that’s what they’re supposed to be doing.

  “Couple of years back, OMI got a new director, a real hag from hell called Sheila Wolffriend, who everybody just calls ‘the Wolf.' Well, the Wolf started buildin
g OMI into her own private little empire. More assets, more resources. Looser ties with the Wildcats and less supervision by the Sioux Military Council. Instead of merely using them to get information and provide support for the other forces, she started running her own black ops from time to time. People kicked and screamed at first, particularly the Wildcats; they expected her to frag up big time, leaving them to clean up the drek afterward. But Wolf didn’t just think she was good, she was good. All of her ops ran smooth as silk.

  “The Wildcats approached the Military Council,” Mary went on, “and tried to get OMI shut down. But the Council didn’t go along. They backed the Wolf, and even cut back on the Wildcats’ authority.” Mary laughed softly. “A lot of people decided right then that the Wolf knew where some real important bodies were buried.”

  “Hey, wait a minute.” Falcon held up a hand for silence. “How the frag do you know all this?”

  “Where do you think OMI got its assets?” the shaman asked. “From the Wildcats? They’d like to see the Wolf burned at the stake. So where?”

  Falcon thought for a moment, then smiled grimly. “From the shadows,” he guessed.

  “Right in one. She recruited some of Sioux’s hottest runners. So of course some of the background leaked out into the ‘shadow telegraph,’ you know what I mean?” Falcon understood. The shadow telegraph was the underground grapevine that carried the buzz about almost everything that happened out of the light—if you knew how to tap into it. “So what happened then?”

  Mary shrugged. “That’s when the telegraph kind of dried up. The Wolf’s got something pretty heavy going on. What some people are saying is that OMI wants to mount a big operation against the UCAS. Other people say they’ll be going after Pueblo. Me, I don’t know: either one sounds like pure suicide.”

  “Do you know any of the people the Wolf recruited?” Falcon asked.

  “Some. Anybody in particular?”

  As accurately as he could, Falcon described the runner who called himself Knife-Edge.

  When he was finished, Mary shook her head. “No bells,” she said. “But you could have been describing any number of players in Sioux.”

  Falcon nodded, finished off his beer. “Yeah. Well, thanks, Mary. I owe you one.” He started to get off the bar stool.

  “Hold it.” She grabbed his forearm in a surprisingly strong grip. “I’ve answered your questions; maybe I’ve got some of my own.”

  He resettled himself on the stool. “Shoot.”

  “What totem do you follow?”

  He grimaced. “None.” Then added fiercely, “Yet.” Mary looked perplexed. “No? But ...” Her voice trailed off.

  “But what?”

  “But I felt ...” She paused, apparently trying to order her thoughts. “I felt the power of the spirits.”

  “Huh? When?”

  “When I cast the illusion of you running from the OMI guards. I felt the power in you, I felt you sense my song."

  He stared at her. He remembered his reaction at the sight of his magical double across the alley. He did sense something strange about it. It wasn’t right, he recalled. I felt it. Is that what she’s talking about?

  “I felt . . . something,” he said quietly.

  “You sensed my song,” she repeated firmly. “Only one who has heard the spirits could do that. But”—she looked puzzled again—“you say you don't follow the path of the totems.”

  “I tried," he told her, then quickly explained about the book by H. T. Langland, about his attempts to hear the call of the spirits. “I . . .” He hesitated, embarrassed. “I was on a vision quest.” He glared at her challengingly, daring her to laugh or contradict him.

  But Mary Windsong didn’t do either. She just scrutinized his face. “A vision quest,” she said slowly. “Yes.” She paused again. “Do you want to complete your vision quest, Falcon? I think I might be able to help you.”

  He didn’t answer immediately, just stared at the young woman. Is she serious? he wondered. Or is she just stringing me along, taunting me because she does something I can’t?

  But Mary’s face showed no hint of a mockery. She only sat there, calmly watching him, waiting for his answer. “How?” he asked huskily.

  Mary shrugged—a little embarrassed. Falcon thought. “There are ways to ... to aid a vision quest,” she said. “Techniques some shamans have developed. You can help someone along, be their . . . their ‘spirit guide,’ I call it, but that’s not quite right.”

  “How does it work?”

  She met his gaze, and he felt a tingle run through his body—almost an electric shock. “I’ll show you, if you like,” she said quietly.

  He hesitated. “Does that mean I have to follow your totem?”

  Mary shook her head. “Not necessarily ... All the guide does is take you to the plane of the totems. Whatever happens after that”—she shrugged again —”that’s up to you and the totems, not me.”

  “But how does it work?” he asked again.

  She was silent for a moment, seeming to order her thoughts. “Sometimes the totems are speaking to you,” she said slowly, “but your own mental walls keep you from hearing. A spirit guide can help break down those walls—help you hear the voice of the totems—if the voices are there to be heard.”

  “It’s safe?” he asked.

  She smiled grimly. “Safer than some other techniques people use,” she answered.

  “So it’s safe," he pressed.

  “I didn’t say that,” Mary corrected him. “The technique itself is safe. But sometimes people use it to hear the call of the totems when the totems aren't calling . . . if that makes any sense. Then there can be . . . problems. Do you want to try it? It's your decision. I can guide you, to the best of my abilities, but—”

  “But if I’m wrong, if the totems aren’t calling . . . what can it do to me?”

  She looked at him steadily. “It can kill you,” she said softly. “But I don’t think that’s a danger with you. I felt the Power in you, and I’m not usually wrong about these things.”

  Falcon stared at her. It sounded so enticing, so simple.

  Should he try it?

  Walking the path of the shaman—it was what he’d always dreamed about. And here was this girl—this shaman—offering him a chance to realize that dream. She said I sensed her song, he thought. Did I? I sensed something. Do I risk it?

  And what about Sly? Could he really make the decision in isolation? He and Sly were chummers, comrades.

  If he died, she’d be alone. (And I’d be dead! he reminded himself.)

  But what could he really do to help Sly anyway? She had to deck into Zurich-Orbital, and he couldn’t follow her into the Matrix. She didn’t need him to do what she had to do. If he failed—if he died—it wouldn’t alfect her that much.

  And if I succeed, I’ll be a shaman, Falcon thought. And as a shaman, I could help Sly a lot more after she’s made her Matrix run. Afterward, when things are winding down. I’d be able to help her more, wouldn’t I?

  And I'd be a shaman.

  He glanced at his watch. Midnight, or close enough. What had Sly said? That she needed to get some utilities and some tech toys before making her run on Zurich-Orbital. That would take some time, wouldn’t it? Time enough for me to do this. . . .

  Turning to Mary, Falcon swallowed through a throat suddenly tight. “Let’s do it,” he said hoarsely.

  * * *

  Mary led Falcon into The Buffalo Jump’s back room, an airless, windowless broom closet furnished in Early Squalor. Following Mary’s instructions, the ganger settled himself on the floor, forcing his legs into an approximation of the full-lotus position. The young shaman crouched facing him, placed a small metal bowl between them. Wordlessly, she opened the beaded pouch on her belt, pulled out various kinds of leaves and what looked like dried herbs, all wrapped in small swatches of velvet. Some she tossed right into the bowl, others she crushed between her palms before adding them to the mix. Sharp odors stung Falcon�
�s nose, caught in the back of his throat.

  From the bag, Mary also extracted a small fetish with a feather tied to it by a slender leather thong. It was the skull of a tiny animal—a mouse probably, Falcon thought. She closed her eyes, passed the fetish over the bowl. Then she set it down on the floor, opened her eyes again.

  Mary looked searchingly into his face. “Are you ready?” Her voice was quiet, but intense enough to give him chills.

  Falcon only nodded, not trusting himself to speak.

  “Close your eyes,” she instructed. He did, a moment later feeling her palms cool against his cheeks. They smelled strongly of the herbs she’d crushed between them. “Breathe deeply,” she said. Her palms were soft but firm, cool but alive with some kind of energy Falcon couldn't have named. The feel of her flesh against his was reassuring, comforting.

  Then the hands were gone. “Keep your eyes closed until I tell you to open them,” Mary told him softly. He nodded, then heard a click, a quiet hiss. His nostrils filled with pungent smoke, probably from her burning the leaves and herbs.

  “Breathe deeply.”

  He did so, drawing the warm smoke deep into his lungs. At first the membranes of his nose and throat burned and stung, but numbness quickly replaced the pain. The vapors seemed to fill his head; he could feel them billowing through his mind, mingling with his thoughts. Then Falcon felt as though he were pivoting slowly backward—just like being too drunk. He wanted to open his eyes, to stop the dizzying movement, but he kept them tightly shut.

  “Breathe deeply,” Mary repeated, her voice sounding so far away. “Breathe steadily.”

  He nodded. The sense of movement became more intense, yet less disorienting. He felt himself growing warmer, more comfortable and reassured, as if cocooned and sheltered from anything that could harm him. He felt his lips curve in a smile.

  There was a sound in his ears, a quiet, musical humming. It was Mary, he realized. His fingertips and his lips began to tingle. Mary’s humming took on a faint ringing tone. Falcon took another deep breath. . . .

  And the universe opened up around him. He heard himself gasp.