Trent kept his features expressionless. No visible trace of jealousy or surprise touched him.
Reverend Andy shrugged out of the long coat he'd worn against the cold outside, and turned to Jimmy Ramirez. "James," he said severely, "aren't you going to introduce your friends?"
It wasn't a question, it was a commandand, second surprise in a row; Trent saw that Jimmy was visibibly nervous, though he stood his ground. Trent had never seen Jimmy intimidated by anything.
"They're not my friends, Reverend. They're my family. This is my brother Trent, my sisters Milla and Jodi Jodi, and my brother Bird."
Reverend Andy said gently, "I see your education suffered somewhat after I got through with you. You ever get past the second grade?"
"Third gradewell, part of it."
Reverend Andy nodded. "I see. Well, genetics. Genetics makes the statement you just gave me unlikely. You got a white girl and a white boy," he said, looking at Trent and Milla, "some kind of mixed race kids over here," which was Jodi Jodi and Bird, "and you're a mix yourself, James, but a different mix. So the genetics don't work."
Jimmy stiffened noticeably and the muscles in his neck tightened. "I'm not damaged and I'm not stupid. My first family died during the Troubles. Now this is my family. And don't you insult them."
Reverend Andy patted Jimmy on the shoulder, gently, and turned, finally, to the young man who would change his life forever. Trent smiled at him and Reverend Andy said, "And you'd be Trent, the young man who disrupted my service this morning and left me with a body to deal with. I've heard of you."
Bird said under his breath, "He did too know who you were."
Trent's smile widened. "What have you heard about me?"
"You're a man of low morals. A thief and a criminal and a corrupter of others."
"Well, we're all criminals," Trent said slowly. "There isn't one of us who hasn't broken some law, somewhere. Even you have, Reverend. Question is, what kind of criminal are you? I'm the steal from the rich, keep it and go dancing and have a good time kind. I'm telling you, it's great to be me. Everybody likes me, because I only steal from people who truly, deeply deserve it."
"That's rationalization."
"People are rationalizing creatures...and I plead guilty to being a personI suspect that even you're a person."
Jodi Jodi said solemnly, "A person's a person, no matter how tall."
Milla corrected her. "That's 'no matter how small.' "
Bird said patiently, "Joke, Milla."
Milla didn't hear him. She burst out, "Why are you here?"
Reverend Andy smiled at her. "Reverend Pena got a visa for the Patrol Sectors."
He would not have gotten a stronger response if he'd told them that she had ascended bodily into heaven. The five of them stared at him, visibly stunned. Trent opened his mouth, then closed it again. Milla said, "But"
Jodi Jodi said, "She got out?"
Milla whispered, "Out of the Fringe?"
Reverend Andy nodded. "The Temple Elders needed a replacement and they couldn't find one in the Fringe. They did find one who was willing to go into the Fringe, though. That used to be my Temple, before the Troubles began. I'm pleased to have it back."
Trent could hear the flat skepticism in his own voicehe hadn't intended to put it there. "The Unification is willing to let you stay."
"They gave me a one year visa."
"And they let Reverend Pena leave."
The big man shrugged. "They've done it beforewhen the politics were right."
Jimmy burst out, "Why haven't we heard about it?"
"There are four million people in the Fringe," said Trent, still staring at Reverend Andy. "I don't suppose they want to advertise."
Reverend Andy held Trent's gaze. "You know, I've had people walk out of my sermons beforebut never had one get applause doing it. I admit it's a new experience for me."
Trent shrugged. "I said everyone likes me. When you get to know me," he assured Reverend Andy, "you'll like me too."
"What are you doing?"
"Wrong question."
"What do you want?"
Trent couldn't stop the the smile from touching him again. "Better question. The greatest thief of the twentieth century, a man named Voleur, said the second rule of being a thief was to never steal anything you didn't want"
"and that the first rule was to start by knowing what you wanted."
Trent said mildly, "I think you'd make a good thief."
"...I suppose you mean that as a compliment."
"Suit yourself."
"What did you steal today?"
"None of your business."
Trent did not look away from Reverend Andy, but he did not miss the shocked looks that touched both Milla and Jimmy. Reverend Andy's expression turned grim. "When Lamont Newman broke the 200 meter world record, that record had stood for thirty years. People wanted to test him and see if he was really a geniehe wasn't a genie, just a very fast man. He retired about '59 or '60. He was a millionaire a couple times overCredit Units, not old Americans. It makes me wonder...what sort of person could make it worth his while to play nursemaid to whatever it is he wants you to return? A powerful person, that would be my guess. People like thatthey don't take being stolen from lightly." He held Trent's gaze a moment longer, then shrugged his way back ino the coat he still held in one huge hand. "You don't need to show me out."
Trent said quietly, "Wasn't going to."
Reverend Andy glanced at Trent in disgust, and turned and left without saying anything further. Milla sat down on the couch nearest the fireplace, almost a collapse, and sat staring at Trent. "I can't believe how rude you were to him."
Jimmy Ramirez said, "You have to be more polite to him."
Trent looked back and forth between them, and then asked what seemed to him a reasonable question. "Why?"
Milla said gently, "He's a good man."
Trent thought about it. "It can be hard to tell, sometimes," he said finally. He glanced at Jimmy. "I'll be ready in five minutes."
In the fourth-floor room Trent lived in were a bed, a shower, a closet, and nothing else.
Trent slid aside the closet door and stepped through the hanging clothes, into a small cold room with crumbling brick walls. Power cables hung down the walls and power strips ran along the baseboard of the dirty wood floor.
Along the walls, computer equipment was stacked up toward the ceiling. In the center of the room, a clean, modern desk was dimly visible.
"Command, lights."
With the lights up the room was even more dismal. Trent picked up a pair of small gray electrodes from the desk's surface, licked their surfaces and stuck one at each temple, and closed his eyes.
He did not go Inside. He did not call up his Image. Not for this.
Encryption protocols negotiated with one another. Thousands of passwords were exchanged, veryifying Trent's actual identity, the actual identity of the man he wanted to speak with.
A holofield bloomed in front of Trent. In it, Booker Jamethon appeared, his appearance mercifully obscured by the holo's low resolution.
"Lamont Newman works for Randall Getty Cristofer. Sun-Getty Oil."
It hit Trent like an actual blow. "Oh, great… How about Strawberry?"
"Temples of Eris, 22 years. Non political, no involvement with the Erisian Claw. Member of twenty charities, on the board of directors of...this and that."
"And the other thing?" Trent asked grimly.
Booker's amusement was obvious. "That too."
Trent sighed. "Thanks, Booker."
"I don't normally do research for other Players."
"I was busy."
Booker said, "You owe me." He waved a hand and the holo faded into nonexistence, leaving Trent alone in the small brick room.
Trent said to the empty room, "I don't owe you nothin'."
In the shadows across the street from McGee's, the most popular restaurant in the Fringe, half a dozen men stood with laser rifles, dressed in
the black and red, the colors of the Gypsy Macoute. The group's leader said, "You all know this guy."
A holo appeared in midair. "Trent. Temple Dragon. They want an example madebut they want the rock more. So we get the rock first. Then kill him."
McGee's was not merely one of the few good restaurants in the Fringe; it was Trent's favorite. Good food, clean, reliable enforcers, one of the few restaurants that catered to the street trade and the only one about which all those things could be said. You could get falling-down stoned and know you'd live to see the morning, and the drinks and drugs were honest enough that getting falling-down stoned wasn't hard.
Trent and Jimmy were led to their usual table, toward the back. McGee's had booths lining the walls, and round tables set out in the large central area. Trent didn't like the booths; they were quiet, intimate, and he'd twice seen men die in them because they couldn't get out of them quickly enough. The round table he and Jimmy had reserved seated six or seven people comfortably, and was located roughly equidistant from the restaurant's three ground-floor exits.
The museum's agentthe agent had never offered Trent his name, and Trent had never bothered to learn itwas already waiting for them. He was a short, soft-featured man whom Trent had never actually seen angry or happy about anything, before this. Trent wondered if he was about to see that change.
It was a busy night for midweek and Trent felt a flicker of annoyance; a boy and girl, teenagers, had been seated at the table next to theirs, close enough to hear if anyone at Trent's table raised his voice.
The agent said, "Gentlemen."
Trent seated himself facing the agent, able to see the rear of the restaurant from where he sat. Jimmy sat on the other side of the table, looking out over the restaurant's front, the large windows that let out onto the street.
Trent took a deep breath, and still could not entirely keep the anger out of his voice. "You lied to me."
The agent looked startled. "The property wasn't where you were told it would be?"
"It was. That's not the problem."
Jimmy said grimly, "The problem is who we stole it from."
"You've heard of Randall Cristofer."
"Eighth richest person in the world."
"I'm thinking we sell it back to him."
"He's got plenty of Credit."
Trent said, "I was thinking a quarter million Credits. I think Cristofer would go a quarter million to get this back."
A long day full of firsts; the agent's alarm was palpable. "My...my principals...I don't think I can go that high."
Trent smiled at him. "Bummer."
"Rough."
The agent gestured at his briefcase. "I brought the fifty thousand with me. Hard Credit, SpaceFarer gold"
The girl at the table next to them lifted turned around in her seat to stare at them. Trent stared back at her until she turned around.
Jimmy, looking over Trent's shoulder at the front entrance, focused on something out in the street.
Trent told the agent, "It's two-fifty now."
"You're breaking your contract!"
Trent leaned forward and lowered his voice. "You broke our contract." He waved a hand and a holo document appeared in mid-air. The contract. "Clause 3a. You may not misinform or fail to inform me, if you possess the data, of the identity or employers or associates of the targeted party. Your failure to fulfill the terms of your contract has caused me to piss off one of the most powerful people in the System, has"
Jimmy Ramirez said softly, "Company."
Trent broke off abruptly. From his shirt pocket he pulled his traceset free, ignoring the agent now, and put it on, settling the trodes onto his skull, closed his eyes and looked down, through the Orbital Eye, toward the Earth. Found New York, found the Fringe, found McGee'szoom in:
The image is grainy, black and white, the gain set very high. Heat sources are bright blobs against a darker background.
Trent counted five…six shapes hidden across the street from the restaurant. Without opening his eyes he said "Six of them. Across the street."
"Macoute?"
"Best guess." Trent sent a command off through the traceset. "I've put in a call to our boys. They'll be here in a few minutes." He opened his eyes, shook his head slightly. To Jimmy he said, "Go meet them. No shooting, all we want is escort out of here."
Jimmy nodded, stood up and walked calmly toward the restaurant's back entrance. Trent watched him go, knowing Jimmy would run the entire way back to the Temple to get reinforcements once he was out of sight.
"What are we doing?"
He had almost forgotten the agent. Trent turned back to him, still wearing the traceset. "Sitting here," he said. "We're just going to sit here."
"I'm leaving."
"I wouldn't do that," said Trent. "McGee's got treaties with the Gypsy Macoute. And the Temple Dragons, Old Ones, Syndic, Retribution Tong...everyone. No murders in the restaurant. Well, no murders within a block of the restaurant, but I figure why tempt them? Hey, you want some coffee? They have great coffee here." He waved at a passing waiter. "Two cups of the Jamaican Blue."
The agent stood. "I don't want any damn coffee, and you are not raising your fee on us."
Trent said calmly, "They'll shoot you if you go outside." The man sat back down abruptly. "And I'll give the damn thing back if you don't pay me. Two-fifty. You want cream with that?"
On the roof of a deserted building in Flatbush, a Gypsy Macoute, wearing Temple Dragons colors, watching the Temple and the Dragon House next to it through a pair of PKF-issue combat binoculars. When the lights came on at the Dragon House, when a dozen armed men came swarming down into the streets, he whispered through his earphone.
"Dragons moving."
Two kilometers away, the six Gypsy Macoute waiting outside of McGee's stepped out of the shadows, into the street.
Trent put down his coffee.
He said softly, "Oh, no."
Through his traceset, through the Orbital Eye he was still monitoring, he could see the Macoute crossing the street, six bright ovals advancing on the even brighter structure of McGee's.
"Oh, no," he said again. "This is bad." He looked at the agent. "This is so bad. The last time the treaties broke down over five hundred people got killed"
The agent turned to look. "They're coming in?"
Trent snapped, "Don't look! Don't move until I tell you toand then you run like a pack of Peaceforcers are behind you...three..."
Trent grasped the edge of the table with both hands, spreading his hands out to get the best grip
"…two…"
There. Rock the tabletop back and forth. It's made of wood and it's bolted to the base, which in turn is bolted to the floor. Hope the wood breaks. Hope the tabletop comes free of the base, and not the base from the floor, and not your arms from your shoulders
"…and one, go."
The agent lurched backward out of his chair, falling to the floor, scrambled for his briefcase
Trent surged upward with the edges of the tabletop in his hands, heard the sound of the bolts being torn free, turned with the tabletop in his hands and threw it, spinning, toward the front entrance, toward the six men in red and black who had reached the entrance and were stepping inside, laser rifles leveled.
Two of them had time to open fire. One managed to get out of the way. The spinning tabletop crashed into other five, knocked all of them from their feet and two of them backwards through the windows and into the street. Glassite shattered, sprayed over the Macoute
It was the Fringe. It had only been a second since the agent had stumbled backward out of his chair, and already the crowd was on its feet, men and women charging for the exits. Trent had his gun out, the beam set for wide dispersion, fired toward the entrance, a blast of light so bright the Macoute who were caught in it were heat-scalded and temporarily blinded. The boy and girl who'd been sitting next to Trent were on their feet, running toward the kitchen; a Macoute beam caught the girl and she fell, screaming as th
e beams tracked around her. Trent charged toward her, scooped her up in one arm and ran through the laser fire, barreling through the double doors leading into the hallway that led to the kitchen.
A Macoute had secured that exit. From the other end of the long hallway, laser fire scored the walls around Trent. He hit the ground with the girl, rolled over on his back as another Macoute came through the double doors right behind him, and squirted him oncc in the face. While the Macoute was still standing he caught a laser blast from the other end of the hallway, and toppled forward on top of Trent and the girl.
The girl was screaming, "Oh God, they burned me, they burned me"
Trent pushed the body off of them, hauled the girl to her feet and pulled her with him into the kitchen proper.
It was empty. The kitchen staff had fled already.
The hysterical shriek: "they burned me"
Trent ignored her. He saw in a second that the kitchen had no exit but onto the hallway in which the Macoute were waiting for them. He pushed the girl through the kitchen and toward the back, into the storage room, as the Macoute burst into the kitchen firing.
The storage room had no door, only an entryway. It was full of racks, heavy with cans and boxes; Trent threw two of the racks over in the storage room's entry and pulled the girl down the long row of storage racks, toward the room's back, threw down another three racks on top of one another and pulled her down behind it.
He figured they had a minute, maybe. It would take the Macoute that long to get the doorway cleared. Maybe another minute or two after that before they Macoute got up the courage to come in after a man who appeared to be armed.
The girl was still screaming. "Command," said Trent. "Lights off."
The darkness seemed to shock her into some semblance of sense. She was completely silent for a moment. "I'm hurt," she said after a beat. "How bad am I hurt?"
Trent's vision was adjusting quickly. It was only dark by comparison to the brightness of a moment ago; light from the kitchen spilled in through the storage room's entrance.
"Quiet," he said after a moment. "You're burned. We'll get you to a medbot, I've got people coming."
Emerald Eyes Page 26