Wyrmhole: Jack Stein #1 New Edition

by Jay Caselberg

  She held the moment, and then finally continued. "So what did you see from Daddy's handipad?"

  Ahh, thought Jack. Now she was getting somewhere. "What makes you think I saw anything?"

  She shrugged. "Well you seemed to think it was awfully important."

  "And it was, wasn't it?"

  She rapidly changed tack. "So what are you working on now?"

  "You really don't think I'm going to tell you that, Tasha. Let's just say it's privileged information. I have a duty to my client's."

  She gave a little pout and stood, wandering behind the couch and letting her fingers trail across its arm. He found his gaze trapped by the motion of her fingers. Come on, Stein. Pay attention. This was important.

  "But, Jack," she said. "What harm could it do? It's not as if it's going to upset what you're working on. I'm just interested." The voice was an almost purr, and she emphasized it by leaning forward over the back of the couch. "I've come all the way to see you, Jack. The least you could do is give me something in return."

  "Right," said Jack. "Right."

  He stood up himself and wandered into the kitchen, leaving her standing there. He wanted to play this out now, see where it went. She must think he was very stupid if she really thought he was going to fall for this studied little performance of hers. Coffee would be good. Displacement activity. Get the obvious little charade out of the forefront of his consciousness. He needed to get a chance to let his brain do the thinking for him rather than his body.

  "Are you sure I can't offer you something?"

  "Well... no, I'm fine ... for now." Her voice was right behind him. He hadn't heard her follow him into the kitchen. And then her hand was pressing up against his back. "Come on, Jack. You can tell me what you're working on."

  Jack swallowed. She was an immensely desirable woman and here it was being laid out for him. For a moment he was torn. It had been a while ...

  No. He turned and in doing so slipped away from her hand. She took a step toward him.

  "Look, Miss Van der Stegen. I don't know what you want. As much as I'm flattered by the implications, and I admit, the prospect is immensely appealing — you're a very attractive woman — I'm not going to play. I don't know if you're here on your own, or if someone sent you, but you may as well face up to the fact that I'm not going to fall for an old routine like this one."

  "I don't know what you're talking about." A slight edge in the voice.

  "Listen, Tasha. You asked about what I do. Because of what I do, the nature of my work, I spend a lot of time alone. A lot of empty hours where I've got nothing much to do, so I kill time by watching vids. Old movies. I know the scenes from a number of them by heart. Have you ever heard of Lauren Bacall?"

  A slight frown. "No, I — "

  "It doesn't matter. But not every man is simply going to throw himself at your feet. You want to know something, ask me. Don't play stupid games."

  She took a step back, raising her hand as she did so.

  "And I wouldn't do that either, Miss Van der Stegen. I'd only slap you back." He wasn't sure if he would have, but the statement helped put things in perspective.

  Her eyes narrowed and she slowly lowered the hand. "All right, Stein. What do you want? Do you want me to pay you? Name your price."

  This was starting to get interesting. Jack leaned back against the counter, crossing his legs before him. He looked down at his fingernails, which needed cleaning, then back up at her now-hard face. "I don't have a price, Miss Van der Stegen. Not as easy as that. You tell me what you want, and then we'll discuss what it might be worth."

  "You might end up regretting this, Stein."

  "I don't think so," said Jack with a snort. "I don't think so at all."

  She stared at him for several seconds, her jaw working, then seemed to give in. "I know my father came to see you. What did he want?"

  "You didn't seem very interested when I saw you up at that big house of yours, Miss Van der Stegen. I returned his handipad, that's all. He wanted to tell me how grateful he was."

  "As if I'm going to believe that. Look, I'm sorry. Listen, can we go back in and sit down."

  "Okay, let’s do that," he said.

  He grabbed his coffee and followed her back out into the living area. She resumed her position on the couch and Jack took the chair again, his mug cupped between his hands in front of him. "Okay, shoot."

  Gone was the coy posture, the sultry voice. In its place was something entirely different, all business and efficiency.

  "I need to know what you discussed, Stein. How much do you know?"

  Jack let his gaze linger on the black swirls of liquid, turning in his mug. Circles again. Around and around.

  "About, what?"

  "About what my father's involved in. That's what. Don't you play games either, Jack."

  He fixed her with a pointed look. "Yeah, right. No games ... anyway, I know that his handipad contained some important stuff, that's about it. He wanted to know how I happened to come by it. That's all."

  "And did you tell him?"

  "It's unimportant."

  "Really. Well it may be unimportant to you, but it's important to me."

  Jack sipped and watched.

  "How much do you know about what's on it, Jack?"

  "Some."

  "How much?"

  He took another sip and continued watching her over the rim of his mug.

  "So, will you tell me?" she said.

  Jack again said nothing, merely took another sip.

  "Well fuck you, Stein. You will tell me, you know, one way or another. I could make things very difficult for you."

  Carefully, Jack placed his mug down on the side table. "I don't think so, Miss Van der Stegen." He really couldn't have played. As nice as it might have been, he really couldn't. You could only take conflict of interest so far.

  "And I think it's about time you left. We don't have anything else to discuss."

  She hadn't been silly enough to give anything away either and it didn't really look like she was going to.

  Anastasia Van der Stegen nodded slowly. "Fine. You're going to regret this, Stein. You will regret this."

  "Time to leave, Miss Van der Stegen."

  She stood, nodded once. "Fuck you," she said and strode from the room. He heard the door slam behind her. He waited a few moments, considering whether he’d done the right thing before making sure the door was locked behind her.

  FIFTEEN

  Later the following afternoon, Jack had already had a fairly unproductive day and he was running over the previous evening's visit in his mind. The implied threat had not escaped him. Okay, so Anastasia Van der Stegen believed she could get what she wanted by threatening him. Easy, you don't get what you want so you stamp your foot. The spoilt little girl was going to have to learn a thing or two about Jack Stein. Granted, there were very obvious things about the woman that impressed him, but the background and the privilege didn't — well, not too much. Tasha Van der Stegen was too used to getting her own way. Her life clearly had nothing to compare with the sort of things Billie had been through. Spoiled little rich kid, she had a lot to learn.

  Her visit had convinced him that she was bound up in this whole net just as much as any of the other players he'd encountered so far. She had an obvious interest in the handipad and finding how it had come into Jack's possession despite her pretence that she didn’t when he’d visited the Van der Stegen place in the Residence. Thinking about that, it was strange that she hadn't made more of a move up at the big house. Or maybe she'd just had to consult with someone first, maybe Warburg, maybe not. One way or another, she was clearly working against her father and that gave further weight to the idea that she was involved with Warburg. Van der Stegen had an interest in Outreach, and Warburg wanted it cut off at the roots. That made a lot of sense.

  Alice had sent him a package of information as promised, but it was all pretty vague. The Van der Stegen family had been one of the first sets of
investor’s in the Locality project. They’d been industrialists from way back, with massive resources at their disposal. There were records of corporate takeovers and ownership, but most of the companies meant nothing to Jack. Most of them didn’t even exist any more. After the Locality’s foundation, information on the Van der Stegen’s trickled away. It didn’t really help that much. But as far as the connections were concerned, things were at last gradually starting to fall into place. Tasha involved with Warburg, and also, somehow to the white-haired, dark-haired man. Okay, the connections were there, but he was still no closer to finding Billie. Back to Gleeson. He had to go back to Gleeson. Gleeson held the clues to Outreach, and Outreach held the clues to where Billie was.

  Jack sighed, grabbed his coat and handipad and headed out into the early evening. Down on the street, he looked up at the ceiling panels, watching dark clouds scud across a moon filled sky. A shuttle up to Gleeson's and then? He wasn't quite sure. He had to find out something more about Ronschke, but asking additional questions would only worry Gleeson, and the little man was as nervous as hell as it was.

  He could discount Anastasia Van der Stegen for now. She was nothing more than a lightweight, meddling in stuff far too deep for her. Just because she had a powerful father, didn't mean she had the same sort of knack he obviously had to have got where he was. However, she was linked to Warburg, and if he could find out what was going on there, he'd be closer to some answers. He had to get to Warburg somehow. As Gleeson lived and worked in the heart of the Outreach, he had to be the key. Joshua Van der Stegen valued the little man's information flow, so time to get Van der Stegen's money working for him, perhaps in ways he hadn't thought it might.

  The shuttle was slow coming, and he was starting to become impatient. From time to time, the shuttles suffered various mechanical breakdowns in the region of Old, and it delayed their schedules. Either that or the problem was with the Locality support systems that simply allowed the shuttles to grind to an inconvenient halt. They would back up all the way to Mid, and then you could spend seemingly endless periods of time waiting for them to get moving again. It looked like tonight was such a night. Finally, he got sick of waiting and headed on up the avenue. Maybe by the time he'd walked a few stops, the shuttles would be moving again. At least he'd kill some time, five his head some space for more free association.

  There were few people on the streets, but then there were rarely many people on the streets at night in this, the lower-middle end of Mid. Normally, he wouldn't worry about walking the neighborhood at night. People were more likely to avoid him than the other way around. He cultivated the sort of bedraggled appearance that meant they maintained a wide berth, especially in the darkness of evening. He grimaced to himself. Somehow, he was starting to become tired of the way everything fell apart. It didn't matter whether it was the buildings, or the transport system, or just people. Everything fell apart one way or another. His efforts to extricate himself from the job, and then winding up here, no one to care about or worry about except for himself. He’d had the organization, the job, and despite there being things he didn’t like about it, at least it had been something solid. It was as if he’d made his own existence fall away, like he simply didn’t want a real life around him any more. Instead he’d surrounded himself with mindless programmed consumption. It wasn’t living. It was pretending to live.

  It was time he started doing something about it. He was weary. Weary of the gradual unraveling that was earmark of his life.

  He'd walked past two stops, and still there was no sign of the shuttle network kicking back into life. Typical.

  After the third stop, something started to twinge at the back of his consciousness. He glanced around, but couldn't see anyone, or anything particularly that might bring on the feeling. A few more meters and the feelings grew stronger. He stopped this time, waiting, listening for some hint of what might be causing the unease. Nothing. The evening was still, just like the buildings around him. No footsteps, no voices, nothing disturbed the blanket of quiet. Maybe he was just being jumpy. He'd been off the stims for a couple of days. His nerves always got frayed when he was easing up. It was a no win situation, really. Either he was on the stims, and his nerves felt like tightly stretched elastic most of the time, or he was coming off them and he was becoming edgy. He shook his head and started walking again. Maybe it was just the lack of the familiar whir and hum of the shuttles that was making it feel too still. He glanced up at the ceiling panels, but the display was unchanged. The moonlight, or pseudo-moonlight, glowed from above, painting everything in shades of gray. He sighed, looked back uptown and continued his trudge.

  Two more stops and there was a chunk and grind. The shuttles were coming back on line. About time. He'd passed a stop about fifty meters back, so he turned and retraced his steps, rather than walking on to the next stopping point. There, off in the distance, he could see the approaching shuttle lights heading up toward Mid Central. Good, he'd had about enough walking for one evening. Out of the corner of his eyes, he caught something move in the shadows across the other side of the street. Jack peered across, trying to see what it was. All he saw were shadowed walls and empty street. No, he was definitely just edgy. There was nothing over there. With a conscious effort, he dismissed it and turned back to wait for the shuttle, only two stops down now. Two stops, but it might have been forever. The ceiling panels were growing denser with purplish cloud, obscuring the moon's surface and adding a darker pall to the surrounding gloom. By the time the shuttle neared his stop where he was waiting, glancing nervously around, Jack felt a touch of relief.

  He slipped inside the doors and headed for his usual corner. The shuttle car was empty, and surprisingly free of crap that people had left behind. Perhaps most of them had simply given up and walked during the outage, just as he had. The shuttle seemed to take forever to get underway, but finally the doors slid shut — almost. Just as they were about to seal, an arm and shoulder forced themselves between the closing doors. Then a torso followed, wedging the doors open. A solid, stocky man wearing a dark jacket and with short-cropped blond hair. He shoved his way into the car, holding the doors open for a companion. He was a tall guy, wearing shades, hair tied back. Okay, it was dark. That was just a bit too much slavery to image for Jack’s taste. Take the bloody glasses off.

  The shuttle was protesting now, with an insistent chiming, registering the obstruction, warning that it was about to get underway. Making sure that his companion was fully inside, the blond man released the doors, stepped inside the car and after a passing glance in Jack's direction, stood with his back to him, masking his companion from direct view. Well, that suited Jack fine. He didn’t have to look at the fashion casualty directly.

  Jack watched them for a couple of minutes as the car slid off up the avenue, and then returned to his thoughts. They seemed engrossed in their own conversation, and the little he could see of them showed him nothing particularly interesting. The next stop came and went. No more passengers boarded and the pair remained in their huddle in the doorway. Another stop, the doors slid open then closed, and the shuttle headed on. The blond glanced over his shoulder at Jack, then turned. Deliberately he strode down the length of the carriage and sat directly opposite. Jack looked him over. What was this? He was not too tall, but big, well built. He took in Jack's scrutiny and returned the stare, but with a slight sneer as well. The guy looked like trouble. Jack averted his gaze and made a show of watching the advertising displays above the man's head. That way he could keep an eye on him without hitting him with a direct and potentially confrontational stare.

  Somebody plopped down in the seat beside him. It had to be the blonde’s companion.

  Studiously, Jack avoided looking at him. This was not good.

  "Well, Jack Stein, isn't it?"

  Jack turned. He knew that voice. The companion removed his shades, pulled the tie from his hair and shook it out. Long black hair, dark eyes, heavy tan. The bottom dropped out of Jack's s
tomach. It was the white-haired man that wasn't. He swallowed before answering.

  "Yeah. Do I know you?"

  "Maybe. Maybe not. But you know some friends of ours and they know you. They're not very pleased with you. You really ought to learn to be more co-operative, Jack."

  The blond one had stood and crossed to stand in front, boxing him in. The guy’s face was plastered with an idiot grin. No, it was malicious. Jack'd seen that look before. It was the look of a man who enjoyed pain — someone else's. He had a nasty feeling that he knew exactly whose.

  "Listen, guys, I don't know what you want, but you're not going to get it from me. So why don't you simply walk away now."

  "Or what?" said Blondie.

  The dark-haired one was leaning close now, right in Jack's ear. "Everything's gonna be alright, Jack. You just tell us what we want to know."

  Jack got up from his seat. The blond one took this as all the excuse he needed. He grabbed Jack's coat and flung him hard against the opposite side of the car. The apparent strength in the blond man's arms made itself felt, and Jack smacked against the opposite window, his cheek slamming up against the resilient plexiglass with a crack. He fell back down against the row of seats reflexively huddled into a ball, his hand cupping the burst of pain where his cheek had made contact. Blondie was over him again.

  "That's just a taster. Now you're going to help us."

  Jack grunted through tightly clamped teeth, grimacing against the pain. The one with black hair was crouched down in front of him at eye level.

  "Did you say something, Jack? I think he said something, Mike."

  "Shit," Jack hissed. This was not going to be fun.

  "Now," said the dark-haired one, right up close to Jack's face so he could almost taste his breath. "You tell us where you got that handipad, why don't you? Then it'll all go away."

  "Fuck you," said Jack. He knew it wasn't a smart move, but he had to say it. Circumstance sort of demanded it. He tried to struggle to his feet.

  Blondie grabbed him and hit him. The blow connected with his damaged cheek and lights exploded behind Jack's eyes. He fell, the back of his head connecting hard with the bottom edge of the window, slamming a fresh burst of light through his brain before he crumpled to the seat. Everything right now was pain. He couldn't think, he couldn’t respond. He should have known as soon as he saw the pair what was on their minds. Sloppy. Very sloppy.