by Carl Sargent
Her reverie was broken by the sound of Imran giving his signal at the front door. She ran to unbolt the chains and locks, eager to see him. He bundled roughly past her, carrying a heavy aluminized case.
"It’s been a good day, sister!” He grinned, but barely gavt her a glance, intent on fumbling with the heavy catches and maglock of the case.
"What you got there, Imran? A body?" She was nervous, her attention skipping between the suitcase and the faintest smell of jalfrezi beginning to burn in the kitchen.
“Much better. I have work with the family for this weekend, and this little beauty will be just the ticket."
Rani’s face fell, knowing exactly what work with the family meant.
"The real thing, you know?” He caressed the sleek steel barrel of the heavy pistol, handling it with as much love as if it were a newborn baby. “The Ares Predator II, perfect smartgun link,” he beamed, holding out the handle to show her the interface. “And a fifteen-clip of armor-piercing! Real UCAS stock, none of that spamming East European imitation.” He flourished the vicious APDS bullets with an air of triumph. “You could knock a rhino over with this." He laughed humorlessly. “Yeah, if you could find a zoo that had a rhino left, you know? I’ll be busy this weekend, so you’re going to have to stay behind the bolts and chains and wait for your brother to bring back serious money!"
Rani did not reply. The moment he glanced up at her from his precious hardware, he saw by her crossed arms and the firm set of her jaw that she was prepared for a showdown. He decided to be reasonable first, insistent later.
"Let’s talk about it over dinner. You should honor your brother for doing his work. Where’s my dinner, woman?” He was trying to be jocular, and Rani acquiesced with the appearance of a real smile, but only for a fleeting moment. Imran knew that Sanjay wouldn’t be any help in his present state, so he scurried to the telecom while she went to the kitchen to dish out his food. He had just finished tapping in Aqib’s telecom code when Rani pressed the cancel button.
“No, brother. This one we will talk about alone.”
He had tried the standard appeals and tactics, praising her cooking beyond remotely plausible limits, telling her that handsome Ravi wanted to call on her this weekend, and then finally serving up his usual trump card of tradition. “We survive as family," he had pleaded. ‘‘Our customs and traditions keep us together. You bring me honor when you care for me in our home, which is your workplace. But the world is my domain. I am a man and that is my place. We survive because we hold to what is established, safe-real. Our father would not wish it otherwise.”
That had been unwise, and Imran regretted it immediately. Appealing to the authority of their dead father was a low blow. Tears formed in Rani’s eyes at the mere mention, but she would not budge.
“Imran, brother, if I were only a nice little sari-wearing gopi in the kitchen I would have been dead two days ago. I would have walked up the street to buy chicken and fish and they would have ripped me apart. I’m alive because I am not like that.”
"If you had stayed at home where you belong, you would not have been walking the streets at night at all! Perhaps they were the sort of men who attack the kind of filthy women who do that. One of them was killed that very same night, did you know that?" His disapproval was strong, but she had a crushing rejoinder.
“Me? Take me as a streetwalker? Who’d have me? I’m an ork. Who’d pay to have my body?" As she shook with anger and hurt, his arguments evaporated instantly. They had transformed together, brother and sister, and that bond was too close for him not to register her pain. He rose and took her gently into his arms, hugging her gingerly, but he sensed the strength in Rani that allowed her to express hurts he’d never been able to face within himself.
"I want to go with you," she said softly. “I want to help.”
“Rani. Sister. I fear for you, you know that. If you come with us. I will be so worried about you that I won’t be able to do my own job. Please, stay with Sanjay. You’ll be safe here." It wasn’t going to work, and he knew it.
“No. I’m coming. I can use a gun as well as you can. I’ll stay out of trouble, but I want to be there. Who could you trust more?"
He accepted defeat gracefully. “It will be family; Aqib, Wasim, and Sachin, maybe Rajiv if he can get away from that wife of his.” That broke the tension, leaving them laughing together at the thought of poor Rajiv and his huge, domineering wife who ruled the home as tyrannically as any corporate CEO.
"All right, then," Imran said finally. "The job is set for tomorrow. We’ll be using a friend of Mohsin’s for wheels, because the place is somewhere sixty miles north of here. All we have to do is take potshots at a suit visiting a laboratory. We don’t even have to hit him to make our money. I suppose they just want to put a good scare in him."
Rani was curious to know more. “Why you? Why not hire some slints from the Squeeze? That would be the obvious thing to do.”
“I guess it’s because the people racking up the nuyen know better than to do the obvious. They’re smart. I think I like working for smart people, judging by the size of the credstick. And we got a slice upfront plus the hardware. Rani, go see Old Chenka tomorrow. Ask for her blessing and a little something, huh?”
His sister smiled ruefully in reply. Chenka, ancient and toothless, always knew whenever the family was involved in a run because they always came to her for a blessing and one of her paper-wrapped herbal tuixtures. As always, they would sit in silence, drinking steaming green tea, the old woman rocking slightly in her chair and gazing fixedly at them with squinting, half-closed eyes. Seeing everything, most likely.
Imran had not told Rani the exact target of the run. He figured she didn’t need to know until they were well beyond the Smoke, safer because they’d be traveling by night. Otherwise, she might ask too many questions, and he wasn’t sure he’d have enough of the answers.
6
Geraint pushed his way through the bead curtain, past the main shop area, and sat down opposite the tiny elf. Skita, the long-haired black and white cat, strolled over, his splendid tail held proudly aloft, and parked himself on Geraint’s lap. The Welshman smiled, curling his fingertips around the cat’s ears and under his chin, the animal responding by closing his eyes and purring in pleasure. Serena returned his smile, sitting with her hands folded in her lap, the spell focus on the table between them.
As always, she had crafted it so lovingly that it was a thing of real beauty. She had chosen crystal, roseate quartz, and set it within a silver dragon’s claw. It also had a small clasp that would let him wear it on a silver chain or as a brooch. Serena always attended to such fine points whether in her work or in her appearance. Today she wore a flowing silk blouse and cotton skirt in tones of dark blue and ivory, the lines classically elegant. She also wore her azure spinel earrings. The deep blue of the stones matched her beautiful eyes, and flashed with tiny points of magical golden light. Serena’s head was tilted slightly to the left as she looked at him, and he wondered if she was using her magical skills to probe his mind.
“You’re looking tired, my lord." She used the formal term, without any mockery, when reproaching him. “There’s gray under your eyes. You’ve been spending all your time in the world of false power. You will have to let go of that or you will suffer."
She handed him a glass of sparkling iced liquid, cloudy apple juice settling in pure spring water, wonderfully cold and refreshing. He took a deep draught and relaxed back against the pile of cushions. Skita moved slightly, too, stretching out his front legs, licking the side of one paw to wash his ears. The animal seemed to especially enjoy cleaning himself when Geraint was wearing a dark suit, all the better a carpet to deposit white belly hairs. The cat purred with a deeper tone, but then seemed to think better of rolling over to have his belly rubbed. Skita preferred to hold on to his dignity until he was fully relaxed.
"It’s just that time of year, Serena. Lots of corps are finalizing the third-quarter turnovers an
d announcements, and it’s been busy in the House. But then you’d know that." More than a few elven nobles counted Serena as a good friend, and it was probably their influence that allowed her to operate beyond the rigid legal constraints of the Lord Protector’s Office. She didn’t always need to fill out the quadruplicate paperwork or obtain the full array of permits most registered talismongers needed in Britain’s highly regulated society.
Serena waved away his words with a tiny, bird-like shake of her head. “You can always find a rationalization, Geraint. There is always the pressure of work, if you choose that. But I see you are not at ease. There is a blockage in your aura. Your left side”-she touched her left temple with her index finger-"has been flaring. You won’t accept it, or you don’t want to face it, and you tell yourself that you are too busy, perhaps. You have a block there, and your energies do not flow properly. You’re creating tension within yourself, and you have been trying to calm it with poisons.”
Her expression was almost stem, almost like one his mother had mastered to perfection. If he’d been allowed, he would have lit a cigarette to calm his irritation and to give his restless fingers something to do now that Skita was clearly not to be disturbed in the acme of his relaxation. Serena would not allow tobacco to even enter her premises, let alone be smoked here.
“Serena, I came for business. It’s fortunate that I asked for the mask when I did, for there’s an important business meeting this weekend and I’m sure there’ll be the usual gaggle of corporate mages and opportunistic freelancers trying to probe a mind or two here and there.”
The comment doubled as a warning to her not to probe his any further. Geraint reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew the credstick with the monogrammed silver top. It was a little joke between them, an ostentation that went beyond the bounds of his normal vanity, but one that pleased and amused her. He held it out to her, opening the palm of his free hand to receive the quartz focus in exchange. She took the stick and pushed the focus toward him, but would not relinquish the line of query.
"And they will know, as I do, that you are an adept. You would be a better one if you had not defiled your spirit.” Serena disapproved strongly of the little cyberware Geraint had implanted: his datajack, the headware memory, the cannula implant just above the first vertebra for swift administration of psychoactives. Poisons, she called them, and she would not budge on that interpretation. “It is not a common gift, yours, to see the future.”
This, at least, gave him the opportunity to attempt to divert the direction the conversation was going. “It’s not true precognition, my mother would say. Predicting the future is only extrapolating the present. It is merely clairvoyance and some intuitive guesswork that works out from time to time.” He took an almost perverse pleasure in denigrating his talent, a carefully imposed “merely” making it seem more domesticated, less an intrusion into a well-ordered life.
“Call it what you will, Geraint. It isn’t something you can stop, or control, or subdue. If you will not accept it, then it will break through in ways that will haunt and disturb you.” She was silent for a moment, then turned to put the credstick away. "Well, that’s done,” she said. "Will you have your cards read?"
“No. Thank you.” The first word was too swift, the second following a pause just too long. His response had been almost panicky, and they both knew it. Geraint hid his embarrassment by lifting up a complaining Skita and depositing the cat on the warm cushion he was vacating, then brushing the cat’s fur off his lap with exaggerated motions. As he was leaving, Serena had a final word for him, as always.
“Then, they have been speaking to you themselves. Listen, Geraint. Listen! If you do not, they will force you to hear. Take care.”
For some inexplicable reason, Geraint managed to knock a small trinket off the counter on the way out of the shop, diluting the impact of her words somehow. He hurriedly picked up the bracelet and replaced it in its wicker container on the polished glass counter. Serena stood with arms crossed, watching him half-seriously, half-amused.
"Acquaintance of yours was in the other day,” she said.
“Hmm? One of the elven nobles? Haven’t been seeing-”
“No, an elf from across the waters. Serrin Shamandar. I would not tell you what he was seeking, of course, but it was an interesting little coincidence." They both knew that neither of them believed in coincidence. Geraint shrugged, smiled away her raised eyebrows, and then headed into the flow of the faceless on Frith Street.
His bags were already packed as he held the focus within his hands. It would take a couple of hours for the bonding, to draw the magic of the thing into himself. He had handled and meditated upon the crystal and metal during its making, of course, and now he needed just a little time with the finished item. It was three-thirty in the afternoon, and within four hours he would be back in Cambridge, five or ten minutes from his old college, shaking hands with the rich, the fat, and the titled. He laughed, his good spirits returning, and sat down with the focus.
Within minutes, he was oblivious to the world, and he did not even register Francesca’s call on the telecom. Besides, she was only calling to wish him a prosperous weekend.
* * *
Serrin frowned as he parked the hired bike in the hotel’s underground garage. It didn’t help his mood to have baleful sodium-molybdenum lighting winking at him from the walls, with their flaking white-painted arrows pointing toward the elevator.
The morning had been tedious, as usual. Down in Grantchester, a couple of miles to the south, his watchers at the Renraku labs had chattered their reports to him. The barrier created by the hermetic mages inside was as thick as a troll samurai’s skin, but that was to be expected. The Corp’s watchers were observing his without undue concern. The little buggers probably leg it as soon as I’ve gone, doing whatever they do to amuse themselves, he thought.
It had been the usual routine: concentrating on his magical masking and camouflage, perceiving astrally from a safe distance, prowling around the seamless magical barriers, testing gently for any unusual responses or activities. But nothing unusual ever turned up. No combat mages returning the astral surveillance, no body-armored goons roaring forth in APVs. But then, this was England, nothing like what Serrin was used to back home.
Just for the hell of it, he decided to break the speed limit on the flat, straight road back to the heart of the sprawl. Roaring along the riverbank, he seriously startled some students poling flat-bottomed punts along the River Cam, but none actually fell into the stinking water. Serrin had read in his guidebook that ingesting a mouthful of the river water gave you a flat 10 percent chance of death by chemistry, while sometimes a puntful of students got swallowed by one of the paranimals that wandered downstream from the Stinkfens to the east. But the students still went on punting, as if the simple tradition of it all could defy the realities of a ravaged earth. People just went on: punting on rivers of filth, buying demitech that’d kill them more times than it’d work, going to butchers to get questionable cyberware implanted in street clinics, believing in another green guru with a smile on his face and a corporate credstick stuck up his ass.
Serrin had not been feeling his best that afternoon, but getting away with speeding had lifted his spirits some. Wandering into the hotel foyer, distinctly more grimy and unappealing than most of the clientele, he grinned in spite of himself. Maybe it was time for some late lunch and a decent bit of protein.
Striding toward the maitre d’ in the restaurant overlooking Parker’s Piece, the one patch of parkland left in Cambridge’s central zone, Serrin saw the first of the suits and goons arriving for the weekend seminar. Credsticks were flashing at the reception desk, and the troll chauffeurs looked stereotyped to perfection in their light gray uniforms and visors. Every bulge was in the right place, from the biceps to the licensed pistols secreted at hip and armpit.
Heading up the stairs toward the Churchill Suite were a pair of elves, their spell fetishes in plain view. Securi
ty was going to be obvious and strict. Serrin could understand why his employers had asked him to do a little tailing out of town if he was supposed to be checking out a couple of the participants here. From a purely logical point of view, he’d never doubt that this was the real purpose of his expensive jaunt at his anonymous employer’s expense. But that unknown something that hovered beyond logic wouldn’t let him rest with that.
He picked at his food, gripped by restlessness. He hated having a definite job to do and then having to wait around to do it. He amused himself with crazy ideas of bluffing his way into one of the laboratories by claiming to be a corporate exec or some university science whiz, or of rustling up a fake ID and doing something outrageous purely for the hell of it. Not that he ever did such things, but fantasizing about it passed the time.
He was staring gloomily down the hallway, dawdling over the remains of a creme brulee that had resolutely failed to ignite his appetite, when he saw the hint of a face vanish into the elevator. His heart missed a beat, damn nearly missed a second, and he had to swallow hard to keep from throwing up right there in the middle of the restaurant.
Mustering as much nonchalance as he could in his shaken state, Serrin strolled to the reception desk. Having dressed for lunch, and looking more respectable than usual, he thought he just might get away with it. Besides, he was booked for the whole weekend, so he really was the part, whether he looked it or not.
“Excuse me. The gentleman who just arrived,” he breezed to the receptionist, “he’s an old friend of mine. Which is his suite?" He took a chance that Kuranita wouldn’t have taken an ordinary room. The receptionist might be fooled by that little touch, and thus give it away.