by Carl Sargent
Rakk it all, he’d have to go back to London, which meant no motorway travel, not on a motorbike. Forty miles of back roads all the way to the outer orbital. Wonderful, he thought. I hope it hasn’t changed much since my student days. I haven’t driven along here in ten years.
Hitting the roads, Geraint had the impression they hadn’t been repaired in a decade, either. South of Royston he had the sense to turn off the main road and take a detour around the decaying sprawl suburbs. He saw the barricade and the lurking wrecker gang just in time. Had he continued straight on, he’d have already been dead meat.
Cursing his bad luck, Geraint now found himself in a warren of back streets. He slowed the bike while he tried to figure out where he was and where he was going. The street lights had been shot out long ago, and all he had was the weak light of the moon and his own dipped headlight. Realizing that he’d completely lost track of his direction, and had no idea how to get out of here, the hair began to rise at the back of his neck. One thing was certain, though; he had to keep moving. At one point he decided to turn around again, and was making a slow U-turn, when suddenly he saw before him a ragged group edging out of the shadows and blocking his path.
“Nice bike, term," a rough voice called. “Make you an offer!”
There were sniggers audible above the bike’s revving engine. The punk at the front of the pack was hefting a hunk of wood that looked like a railway tie. Some of those hanging further back were carrying rocks, more likely chunks of plascrete.
Geraint began to sweat. How am I going to get out of this one? he wondered desperately. A single hit would wing me. Then I’m off the bike. Then I’m down. Then I’m dead. Got no choice, I guess.
As the punks fanned out around and in front of him, he drew his pistol, hoping it was visible in the glare of his headlight. Their reactions said they saw it, but they were poor enough to have nothing to lose. They no doubt lost a member or two every week in a gang fight, so the prospect of losing a few more now probably didn’t terrify them much. Not if they saw a motorcycle and a gun as the prize to be won.
“Spare me that glop, you wankers!" Geraint made his voice tougher than he could possibly feel right there and then. “Bond and Carrington MC-40, armor-piercing rounds with high-reaction reload. Six of you die, maybe eight. I got a smartgun link, so you could even count to ten if you get unlucky.”
The rabble was shifting uneasily now, but they held their ground. Impasse. Then Geraint had a flash of inspiration.
“In about eight minutes the slint on my tail will come edging round the shadows here. Nice Toyota bike. A real banger. Why not wait for him instead? Set up a sweet little ambush. That way half of you don’t get splashed.
“And since you’ll be doing me a favor,” he added, revving the bike’s engine to make a dash for it, “1 think a little remuneration would be in order.”
He drew a wad of bills from his jacket. Thank the Bank of England for stubbornly refusing to accept that credsticks were the only way to do business these days. He flung the paper into the air, then watched as it fluttered down like a ticker tape parade of fifties and hundreds. The next instant he was scorching away from a dead stop as the snakeboys ran to grab what they could, some even dropping their improvised weapons in their urgency to stuff bank notes into their pockets.
Geraint crouched low over the handlebars and prayed to an obscure Welsh saint that nobody would throw a rock just for the hell of it.
He got lucky. Before the hour was out, he was standing in the service elevator of his apartment house, hoping that no one would see him coming out at penthouse level. Stripping off the jacket and trousers, he bundled them into his carryall and emerged from the elevator feigning a drunken stagger. Muddied nobles in armor jackets might worry security. Half-naked nobles lurching home in a state of terminal intoxication certainly would not.
Breathing heavily, he got the magkey into the lock and half-fell into the hallway, slamming the door behind him.
Time for a bath, coffee, and a good shot of GABA-interactive neuromodulator complex, Geraint promised himself, and it didn’t matter much in what order.
* * *
Imran was still in a state of shock, sitting on the tattered sofa staring emptily into space. When he and Rani returned home, they’d had to rouse a severely doped-up Sanjay to open the door. The place was a pigsty from Sanjay’s rolling with a wretched street girl he’d probably lured back to the house with the promise of opiate oblivion. Rani chased the girl out, barely giving her time to cover her scrawny, eczema-riddled body. Sanjay met Rani’s complaints of disgust with a mere shrug and a blank gaze from his heavily dilated pupils. But the mess gave her something on which to vent her anguish and frustration, and she felt a little calmer after making some tea and allowing herself a shot of the fierce, peppery spirit they kept for emergencies.
Imran was half-catatonic, and there was no one to talk to worth the effort, but still she tried.
“It was a set-up, Imran. They knew we were coming. They knew our exact location. Now you… you… you rakking sod… you’re going to tell me everything you know about who hired you for this job. Where you met them, what they looked like, who gave you the contact. Everything!"
A bead of sweat trickled down Imran’s forehead. He wasn’t listening. Instead he babbled a little about the families they’d have to phone, in whose sitting rooms the women would have to mourn and bewail the dead, who else would have to know. He recited a litany of cousins as uselessly as a nervous Catholic fumbling a string of rosary beads.
Rani slapped him hard, hoping to jolt him back to reality. He looked up at her with total incomprehension, then his face puckered with rage. Leaping angrily to his feet, Imran smashed her across the face with all his strength-not just a slap but a hard punch-sending her flying across the room. Then his anger evaporated just as instantly. He fell to his knees and began to cry.
Rani was horrified, but hurt also, her ears singing from the blow. Something broke between them there and then. She looked at Imran, and though it was only later that she realized it, Rani lost respect for her brother at that moment. She hugged and consoled him, but she was already thinking about what to do next. It wouldn’t be her brother asking the questions on the streets now.
* * *
Geraint decided that it would be safe to cut and run at about five o’clock. He’d ended up falling asleep right after his bath, and the alarm almost didn’t rouse him for an early train back to the hotel. It wouldn’t seem unusual for a noble to have spent the night away from the place, he figured. Some of them would have used personal helicopters to get back overnight, so he wouldn’t be specifically missed.
"Going to the ATT time-series seminar this morning?”
Geraint looked up from his coffee, all he could face this morning, at the puffed red face of the Marquis of Scunthorpe. He tried to hide his dismay.
“Um, looks interesting, yes, yes, I thought I’d go. How’s the lovely Tamsin?" It always pleased the rubicund, bloated Yorkshireman to have noble acquaintances praise his fiery and beautiful wife. You poor bastard, Geraint thought, as he always did. She only married you for the money and the title and you don’t even notice that half your male domestic servants walk around with permanent smirks on their faces.
“Jolly chipper, old feller, jolly chipper!" The Marquis parked his spreading pin-striped posterior on the armchair with a grunt, and preened his handlebar mustache. "Well, I thought I’d take a doze in the British Industrial thing. All that mathematical stuff is a bit heavy on the old gray cells. Have a natter with old Walter over lunch instead. D’you care to join us?”
Geraint couldn’t contemplate a more awful lunch prospect than being closeted with the two Yorkshiremen. Walter Crowther, head of British Industrial’s infamous Foods Division, was renowned for his enthusiasms, All the while totally losing his appetite, Geraint would have to listen to endless details of how factory animals could be stuffed full of synthetic hormones and growth enforcers. Crowther had a
ghastly ambition, and talk of it was always prefaced by “Did I ever tell you…?" This was the signal for a set speech about how he was hoping to breed a rabbit the length of a telephone pole so it could be neatly chopped into Rabburger Bunny Chunks in an endless series of slices. “Length of a cricket pitch I’d settle for,” he’d then say, the cue for him to begin reviewing England’s cricket team for the last sixty years. Geraint just couldn’t face it, but catching sight of a chambermaid hefting a trolleyful of fresh linen into an elevator gave him an idea.
“Tied up, old chap. But I’ll tell you what, I’ll stand you a brandy in the Marlborough Bar after lunch. Like to hear you and old Crowther’s opinion on Sutcliffe batting at number six." The fat face opposite beamed with pleasure.
Got out of that one nicely, Geraint reflected as he reached the fifth floor. Now let’s find that chambermaid. He checked his jacket’s innermost pocket, the one with the fiberseal just below the Gieves tag. The notes rustled reassuringly within it. Don’t know why anyone ever uses credsticks, he mused. Cash certainly seems more useful with the lower classes. Grinning to himself, he turned the corner and strode along the plush pile toward the “Rooms 510-518" sign, all fake gilt on fake hardwood.
The girl was only too happy to do as he asked. She didn’t earn that much in a month.
* * *
Geraint was back in his own flat in London by six-thirty, with the entire contents of Serrin’s hotel room spread out before him. He hadn’t dared risk going out to Longstanton to look for the elf, consoling himself with the fact that the local news had included no reports of trouble at the Fuchi site.
You travel light in the world, old friend, Geraint thought, as he rifled through Serrin’s meager belongings. He didn’t open the sealed electronic book; that would have been a violation somehow, even though he feared in his heart that the elf was dead. Serrin had left behind some of his permits and licenses, though Geraint guessed they were probably duplicates for backup. The mage wouldn’t go out into the bureaucratic British world without every bit of official paper he needed. There were clothes in the suitcase, but they lacked any individuality and identity. Well, whatever the elf’s indifference to style, at least Geraint had retrieved his belongings for him. The chambermaid had his number and instructions to tell Serrin where to pick up money in Cambridge if he came back to the hotel. She was Welsh, so Geraint had figured he could trust her. Hell, he thought. I own the land her family lives on. Guess I’d better be able to trust her.
The beep of the telecom startled him. It was the autocheck, the soft chipvoice asking if he wanted messages from the preceding forty-eight hours retained or erased. He instructed it to play.
There was another summons from Manchester’s secretary, so he paused the playback and made the call, confirming his willingness to serve King and Country by sitting through the tedium of the House of Nobles committee rooms. After that he poured a Chartreuse and let the machine complete its messages. A face he hadn’t seen before appeared on the screen. She was very attractive, and he attended carefully.
“Hello. Lord Llanfrechfa. You don’t know me, but I’m Annie, a friend of Francesca’s. She needs help at the moment and I thought maybe you could. I found your name in her date book, and I think she’s told me you’re friends. Could you stop by here? Francesca’s in a little trouble. I’m not sure what to do this time. Thank you.”
There was a clear edge of distress and uncertainty in the girl’s voice-not really what Geraint needed right now. "Oh God,” he sighed, sitting back and rubbing at his face. ‘‘Serrin’s vanished, maybe dead, and now this. What the hell has Francesca gotten into now?"
He checked the time-date stamp of the call and realized that it had come in more than twenty-four hours before. When he tapped in Francesca’s telecom code, all he got was the ansafone, so perhaps she was still unable to take calls. Annie hadn’t left her number, so he’d have to make the short haul to Knightsbridge in person.
* * *
Francesca was dazed and still sedated, but he got the gist of it out of her. It was hard to tell, though, whether her incoherence was the effect of the IC having ripped through her brain or whether it was the drugs talking. She was shaken, but the damage was not as bad as he’d feared. It certainly didn’t seem irreparable.
Geraint held her hand and sat on the patchwork quilt spread over the huge bed, downplaying the conference, not wanting to mention Serrin. Mercifully, Francesca didn’t know that the mage was in town, so she didn’t ask after him. They talked gently into the late evening hours.
“It was Annie who saved me," she mumbled for the fifth or sixth time. “She pulled the jacks when she saw my face. That’s twice she’s done that now. Good girl, Annie. Well, not what you’d call a good girl, but she is really." She was rambling a little. He thought it was time to tuck her in and leave. The Careline doc would be back in the morning to make another check, and it was the best coverage money could buy.
“Maybe I’ll drop in on the lady and thank her,” he said, rising from the bed. “It’s good to know you’ve got such a friend.”
She made to get out of bed. “She’s just around the corner. Hanbury Court. You know, jus’ round the corner. Call it a court even though it’s just the next floor down. Round the corner, down the stairs and number fifty-five on the circular balcony. I ought to go see her myself. Say thanks properly. Good girl.” She was struggling into her robe.
“Come on, you’re in no fit state,” Geraint said calmly, but she pushed her feet into some slippers and took his arm. “Fresh air will do me good, Geraint.” She grinned up at him, suddenly coherent again. Her face was flushed from the tranquilizers, but she walked fairly steadily. What the hell, he thought.
Geraint checked to see that she had her magkey as they closed the door behind them, then circled around to the mezzanine stairs and toward number fifty-five. When Geraint knocked, he was startled to find the door just slightly ajar. It swung silently open even as his hand rapped at it.
The living room was quiet, the trid on very low. Behind the settee a black lacquered lamp lay on the carpet, the shade tumbled askew. Geraint’s nerves began to jangle. People who lived in a place like this didn’t leave their doors open. Most of them rarely even spoke to the person who lived in the next apartment, and they paid big money for security. Doors did not get left open.
Francesca looked puzzled, dumb, as if trying to focus on the scene. "Where’s Annie?” she murmured.
“Don’t know. This seems a bit odd, but I’m sure there’s nothing to…" Geraint’s voice trailed away as he saw the hint of a stain in front of the door to his left. He couldn’t be sure, it might be no more than spilled wine, but his guts were beginning to churn and he was afraid.
"Fran, why don’t you just, uh, sit down there and I’ll call down to security." He steered her to a plush chair facing away from the far door, and reached for the telecom pad on the table beside it. That way he could open the bedroom door and peek in unobtrusively while pretending to make a call. She’d never see him.
Francesca turned around in the chair and saw his face just as the blood drained out of it. She staggered to her feet and got to him before he was able to react, stunned as he was. Feebly, he clutched at her face, trying to turn her head away from seeing what lay in the bedroom beyond. “Just don’t look, just don’t look," he managed to gasp, but it was too late.
Geraint would never have believed a body had so much blood in it. Great poois of it were congealing on the carpet and the covers, and the far wall looked as if someone had flung a bucketful of blood from one end of the room to the other. The curtains were dappled with it, drops still leaking onto the parquet tiles by the window. The great gash across Annie Chapman’s throat found its hideous, enlarged echo in a ragged, bloody gash across the breadth of her stomach. A ribbon of internal organs had been flung in a ghastly pile around one shoulder of the woman’s body in a horrific parody of modern fashions.
Geraint reeled back across Francesca’s unconsciou
s form, fell before he could get to the bathroom door, and vomited until he thought his heart would burst right through his chest. Scrabbling at the telecom pad he had dropped to the floor, he frantically tapped in the code for emergency. He had just barely managed to regain his self-control when the uniformed troll arrived, hefting his IWS taser and netgun in alarm.
“You won’t be needing those.” Geraint said. “Just call the police.” He gagged again. “I really wouldn’t look in there if I were you,” he managed to add, but the security guard had sniffed the carnage and couldn’t resist taking a look for himself.
Geraint was calling up Careline to take care of Francesca when he heard an unmistakable noise. It was the troll, half-retching, half-sobbing, in the room behind him.
11
Rani knew it was useless questioning any of the neighbors in the faded five-story Victorian apartment house. Imran, like any decent snakeboy with any vestige of self-respect, only hung with those who considered themselves tough, mean types. No way did that include the trancers squatting in the rat-infested ground floors, or the meek and fearful old folk upstairs. Her brother was still sleeping, but Rani would find out whatever she could from his friends.
Being an ork and-worse-a girl, Rani knew the reaction she was likely to get. But with three family members dead, nothing was going to stop her trying to dig up any possible scrap of information. She really didn’t expect trouble, but she decided to pack the long knife anyway. After thinking long and hard about it, she went to get Imran’s Predator too. Partly for extra security, but mostly because she felt tougher with the gun bulging inside her jacket. Today she’d need all the fierceness she could muster.
Passing some kids playing with the remains of a dog in the street, she crossed over along Whitechapel Road. It wasn’t far east to the wooded, gentrified corporate enclave of Limehouse, with its media elves and chardonnay-sipping kens and kylies, but it could easily have been half a continent and half a lifetime away.