by Unknown
"D'you think Festus is still alive?"
"I don't know. I don't know of a case like it. Maybe he's got a chance. Maybe the golem will spit him out sometime. Maybe the magical fire of this being will even have healed him then.
I hope so, for his sake. But I really have no idea how big his chances are or whether it's all over for him."
Finally, a resolution seemed to be approaching. The Rabbi was suddenly enveloped in a bluish light. He appeared to be fighting it but the ghostly apparition becaming increasingly pale until only the blue light was visible. Then the light went out, as if someone had touched a switch and cut off the power. Vladek had won the battle.
The mage returned from Astral Space. The spiritually empty look replaced by the mad sparkle of the dappled eyes. Pandur and Jessi expected Vladek's pressure on them to increase. But the mage paid no attention to them whatsoever, seeming to have forgotten them. His crazy eyes contained only the triumph of victory. And his interest was directed solely at the golem.
"I am your master, your only master!" he snapped at him. " And now obey me, golem. Carry out my command! Remove the magic from the cyberdeck and give it back to me!"
The golem moved his knee as if he was trying to get up. At the same time his mighty arms started to move. Pandur thought he was going to attack Vladek. But then he drew back his knee again, dropped his arms and bent his head. He made a bow. A
gesture of subservience.
The golem sat quietly in front of the mage, his head bowed, absorbed with himself. He started to give off a reddish light, then to glow from within, like a tin figure that had just had its mold removed. For a minute or two nothing else happened. Finally, the glow died away and the red shimmer vanished.
The mage looked at the colossus expectantly. Pandur and Jessi gazed on the scene no less enthralled. The golem's chest arched out, changed shape and flowed apart. A grey shock of hair appeared, a face, the upper part of a body. Festus emerged from the golem, slowly, almost gingerly, carrying the cyberdeck ahead of him on his hands. He appeared stunned, in a trance.
Pandur and Jessi caught their breath. They weren't even capable of uttering a sound of surprise or relief.
The rigger had detached himself completely from the golem's body and the gap this created was already closing at breathtaking speed. Festus laid the cyberdeck on the marble slab and pressed a few keys. Pandur saw the screen light up. The deck had apparently withstood the magical fire inside the golem as undamaged as the rigger. It was working.
Pandur wanted to cry out, implore the rigger not to hand the chip to the mage. But his voice refused him this service.
Instead, someone else spoke. From the corner of the room behind the mage came a quiet, hissing, angry command. It was the same voice as before, the same unknown language. The figure of the Rabbi stood there again. But the apparition seemed much paler than previously, like a fata morgana flickering in a heat haze, blurred by the diffuse light in the room.
The golem rose, took a step forward, stopped again. His mighty figure obliterated the rigger.
The mage turned to the Rabbi's apparition. Vladek didn't appear particularly surprised, but annoyed, more scornful than angry. He seemed to be more than sure of himself.
"You just can't get it into your head that your time is past," said Vladek. He came across as arrogant to the tips of his carefully trimmed moustache. He seemed to be enjoying the situation. Perhaps he got a special kick out of humiliating a ghost. "Rabbi Loew, a legend, nothing else. In your time you may have been topdog among the underdogs, but now you're nothing but a pathetic spook. You had a scrap of magic in your hand, okay. Stumbled across a powerful magic formula by accident. Subjugated a spirit and bound it to a ridiculous clay figure to scare your superstitious opponents. Huh! You could have used that spirit in a quite different way. You could have been the King of Kings, could have lifted the Middle Ages off its hinges. You knew nothing! Nothing but religion on your mind, huh? Wanted to make humanity happy, banish evil from the world. Pah! Pathetic. Poor old rabbi. And now get back to your grave!"
Vladek fell silent. Pandur assumed he had gone into Astral Space to banish the Rabbi's ghost forever.
The Rabbi produced a long sentence that sounded like a monotonous chant. He became quieter and quieter, seeming to finish the phrase with the last of his strength.
The same blue-white force field enveloped the transparent figure. Suddenly both phenomena disappeared. But the Rabbi had taken somebody with him.
The golem was gone. The colossus had literally disappeared into thin air.
Festus was visible again. As before, he was standing at the marble slab of the desk, his hands on the cyberdeck, with a non-committal expression on his face as if what was happening was no business of his. The disappearance of the golem had left no apparent impression on him.
When Vladek returned from Astral Space, turned around and saw the golem had disappeared, his arrogance fell away from him. His eyes shot out flashes of light, he lost control of his countenance for seconds but he did not utter a sound. Then he seemed to get a grip on himself again. Without hurrying overly he stepped toward the rigger.
"So ka," he said with a dangerously soft voice. "I want the chip! But first display what's on it!"
With a positively shattering eagerness, Festus bent over the cyberdeck and operated the keyboard. The mage joined him, watching the rigger from the side, staring at the screen.
Pandur struggled with his body, sweating, but the body didn't obey him. He felt wretched. For a moment he believed he heard, from the ground floor, a noise at the door. He couldn't place it. He was probably wrong. He turned back to his disobedient body. But the vise wouldn't let go and even seemed to have paralysed his tongue.
"Excellent," said Vladek eventualy. "Enough. That's the data I wanted. The chip, if you don't mind!"
The rigger entered a command. Pandur saw the lid, which had resisted his efforts so persistently, open. The rigger reached into the console and pulled out a chip.
"N000000000000 ! " The cry virtually exploded from Pandur's lips.
"Don't do it, Festus!" Jessi shouted.
The rigger ignored the two of them. He passed Vladek the chip. The mage smiled and put the chip into a pocket of his cape. "And now..."
"Don't do it, Krumpf!" a cutting voice came from the stairs. "Or Vladek or Jacobi or whatever you're calling yourself right now. The chip shouldn't get too warm in your pocket. Don't you agree, sorcerer?"
Vladek whirled round and found himself staring at the tip of an arrow on the tautened string of a bow. The arrow was pointing at his chest.
"No conjuring tricks, asshole! My arrow's faster than any magic in the world."
The voice had shaken Pandur to his core as much as the mage. He didn't have to see the man to know that it was the ash-blond elven hitman. The names he had used on Vladek sent his thoughts reeling. That just couldn't be! Could it? Krumpf...
That would be a gigantic scam Vladek had pulled, but it would fit in at least. Krumpf was considered an expert on cyberware. Maybe the mad mage with Roberti's face really was called Krumpf. He might have killed Vladek. Or he only constructed this Vladek as a fake identity to gain the trust of the Klabauterbund. But Jacobi? That didn't make sense. What could Krumpf/Vladek/Roberti have to do with the fashion designer?
On the other hand, all the trouble had started with the run at Jacobi's. That was where Roberti had turned up. And an incredibly competent decker with the icon of a wendigo had strolled through the matrix. Perhaps there was a connection even if the purpose of the whole thing remained obscure.
Pandur had only one wish. To pick up a weapon and shoot. But he didn't have a gun. He couldn't even move.
Suddenly he noticed that his hand could be pushed forward. Effortlessly. He felt all the muscles in his body. No longer weary and leaden, but loose and ready for action. The mage's manipulation spell had been lifted. Apparently Vladek needed all his concentration to adjust to the new situation.
&nbs
p; "Leave it be, Walez!" another voice sounded.
Pandur let his hand drop and turned his head.
Ricul. As if he could have expected anything else. A Ceska, cocked. The muzzle was aimed at Pandur. Next to him the killer elf with the bow, the arrow pointing at the mage. In the background, the dark-skinned elf woman with a rifle. Covering. " Where is she, Walez? Where've you hidden her?" Ricul asked, slowly advancing.
Pandur didn't know what the mafioso wanted from him. Did he mean some woman? Was this some mafia slang for data? Did he think somehow he, Pandur, had a copy of the data?
"Later!" Ash-blond snapped at Ricul, who stood still.
The corners of the mage's mouth suddenly began to twitch. Then he giggled quietly to himself. Finally, he burst into shrill laughter, seeming unable to stop. It sounded like naked madness. Pandur felt goose-pimples rise on his back.
The mage took off his slouch hat, threw it on the floor, trampled and danced on it. He was still laughing like a lunatic. The elf shadowed each of the man's movements with the arrow-head, yet scented no danger in the man's behavior. He didn't let fly the arrow. For the first time, Pandur saw the upper part of the mage's head, which had so far been concealed by his hat. Krumpf/Vladek had a cyberjack on each side of his forehead. Apparently what had been claimed was true. Krumpf was competent in magic and cybertechnics. What was more, he was a decker. And he was stark raving mad.
"The asshole's flipped his lid," said Ricul.
"So ka," said the ash-blond elven hitman. "He's been like this for years, ever since he opened up his nut for the cyberware. Thought he was Baron Frankenstein in person. But he's actually just a piece of shit. Ripe for the sewer rats."
"Then why dontcha put an arrow through that ripe brain of his already?" said the dark-skinned elf woman. "We gotta be outa here. Or're ya shit-scared that it's catchin' and ya'll go cuckoo yerself when his brains get splashed all over the place?
Ya want me to finish him off for ya?"
The mage had trampled his hat to pieces and stopped dancing. His mad laughter had fallen silent. There was spittle running down from the corners of his mouth. "I know who sent you!" he said in a voice that was tripping over itself. "There's only one man it could be. That big fat drekhead's dropped me in it real nice. We'll cut out AG Chemie, he said. Hahaha..." He set off laughing again, screaming and stamping his feet. "You want me to tell you who your paymaster is? Yes? Shall I? It's... "
The ash-blond elven hitman loosed the arrow from the string of his composite bow. The point went straight into the wide-open mouth of the mage, nailing his tongue to his palate, penetrating his brain, spitting all manner of grey cells and exiting at the back of his head. The mage crumpled to the floor and made no further movement. However ghastly the man with the arrow in his head, with his grin frozen to a grimace and the half-swallowed arrow, looked like some silly, semi-macabre character in a cheap puppet show at a fair.
"About time," said the elf woman. "His cacklin' was startin' to get on my nerves."
"The chummer seems to have swallowed something that didn't agree with him," said the ash-blond killer elf, grinning. " Should've looked after his health a bit more." He slung the bow over his shoulder and picked up a Predator II. Then he turned to the runners. "We got no reason yet to send you pissers on behind. It'd be better for you to leave it that way. So ka?"
"Sure thing," Festus replied. "Just had a refreshing bath in a golem and I'm back on top form. Had brain maggots, you know? Got rid of 'em. Wouldn't want to put my new-found luck at risk, now would I?"
"You talk too much, drekhead!" said the killer elf with contempt. "I'm not interested if you're a heap o' shit with or without maggots. Main thing is you keep your ass outa this business. Same goes for the other two assholes."
If he'd had a weapon on him, Pandur wouldn't have heeded the warning. Ash-blond and the black woman were Natalie's murderers. Patrick's murderers. Imogen's murderers. The Devil alone knew how many chummers they'd dispatched. A few might have deserved it, Krumpf for instance. But most of them had just got in the way of some megacon or other, or their execs. To send the killer elves - and Ricul, who was in league with them - to Uncle Lucifer's barbecue would be an act of kindness for humanity. To pay for it with your own demise might even be a price worth paying. But to sacrifice yourself without taking them with you would be stupidity. Pandur waited for his chance.
Ash-blond went over to Krumpf and kicked him. Then he searched his cape, finding the inside pocket and taking out the chip. With a triumphant grin he held it up so that the others could see it, and finally put it in his own breast pocket.
For a brief moment Ricul and the black elf woman were diverted. Pandur shot out of the armchair and dived for cover behind the sarcophagus, scrabbling for the Secura that lay there on the floor.
The elf woman fired at him but the shot missed. In the next instant Festus leapt from a standing position to the other side of the sarcophagus, rolled, landed by the wall, grabbed his Combat Gun in one fluid movement and rolled back. Almost at the same time Jessi slid out of her seat, drew her Caveat and took shelter behind the armchair.
There had been too many movements in too many places at one time. Ricul moved the barrel of his Ceska. He hesitated a moment too long, deciding who to give the bullet. When he opted for Festus, the rigger was already a fast-moving target. Ricul's first shot hit the spot where Festus had previously been standing. The second shot hit the wall the rigger had just pushed off from.
The dark-skinned elf woman also shot at Festus. She had a marksman's rifle, a Walther MA 2100. But she had no time to
aim. She fired wide. Then Festus had disappeared behind the marble block along with his weapon.
Ash-blond first had to turn. Then he shot at Jessi. The projectile tore into the syntholeather of the armchair. Jessi was unhurt.
Then came the shadowrunners' reply. Jessi fired first. She had drawn a bead on the ash-blond killer elf, who posed the greatest threat to her. But the elf was as nimble as a cat. He ducked beneath the shot, fired in Jessi's direction and ran to join his companions by the stairs.
It took Festus longer to pick himself up behind the sarcophagus and bring his Combat Gun up to fire. Then he pressed the trigger, aiming at the ash-blond elf. He would have hit him before he could have dived down the steps.
But the Combat Gun just made a hollow click. The magazine had jammed when the golem had hurled the gun against the wall.
Pandur was quite calm inwardly as he rose to a crouching position behind the sarcophagus, put head and arm out of cover and pulled the Secura's trigger. He had his target in plain view. His hand didn't shake. He wasn't a first-class marksman, he knew. He needed just the tiniest bit of luck...
It was granted him. He hit the dark-skinned elf woman in the center of her forehead. With an incredulous expression on her face she dropped her rifle and plunged, clattering and crashing, down the winding staircase.
To Hell with you! You killed Natalie! You and that blond bastard. . .
Pandur looked for the bowman but he had already disappeared down the stairwell.
Festus slapped the jammed magazine and pulled the trigger again. The Combat Gun spewed ammo. Too late. Ricul, the last target, ducked his head and disappeared, thudding down the stairs. The rigger jumped up and dashed after their fleeing enemies. He fired down the stairs but Ricul and the elf were already in the hallway. Festus ran down the stairs. Before the hallway came into sight, a door slammed shut. The hall was empty. The killers were already in the street.
Pandur straightened up and stepped round the sarcophagus. Jessi crawled out from behind the armchair. Pandur went over to her and helped her to her feet. Their pistols still in their hands, they hugged each other. With his free hand Pandur stroked the girl's hair. Then he kissed her on the forehead.
She raised her head and looked at him. He noticed that her eyes were glistening moistly.
"It was all for nothing," she said softly. "The data's lost."
Pandur said
nothing, simply held the girl tight. His thoughts were turning somersaults. They had failed. They couldn't prove to the world that AG Chemie was involved in human experiments. The unknown adversary had once more brought the game home, carried off a victory. Yet, at the same time, the veil had been lifted just a little. Jessi was wrong. It hadn't all been in vain. The elven hitwoman was dead. The mad mage was already dancing on glowing coals. Festus seemed to be healthy again.
Pandur had to find time to think over everything in peace. Apparently there had been a coalition between the mage and the grey eminence. A coalition that had been broken by the grey eminence. Ricul and the killer elves had been commissioned by him to hunt down the runners to secure the AG Chemie's data. The mysterious grey eminence had left a trail. Pandur was almost glad the elven hitman and Ricul were still alive. They knew some of the answers to his questions. He only had to find them and get them to talk.
Festus came back. "They got away. What do we do now?" "
Quite simple, chummer," said Pandur. "We carry on."