by Lisa Smedman
When the door was at last open, Pita reluctantly followed Masaki into the apartment. It was a little on the sloppy side—jackets that had been tossed on a coat rack had spilled onto the floor, and dirty dishes were piled in the sink—but it was a nice place, all right. Nicer than her parents’ low-rent condo, and certainly nicer than the streets. It must have cost him some serious nuyen. The furniture was a bit sparse; this place probably ate up most of his salary.
Masaki tossed his jacket on the pile and palmed a sensor in the wall, illuminating the bathroom. Then he turned to Pita. "I thought you might like to take a shower before . . . That is, to clean up a little." He gave a lame shrug. "Not that you look dirty, but after being in jail, and everything, you probably want to freshen up. Ah . . . while I get the bed ready."
Pita tried to keep her lip from curling. She’d barely walked in the door, and already he was propositioning her. And he wanted her clean. Given his cautious nature, it was a wonder he hadn’t asked her to take a test for VITAS too. "All right." she said, stepping into the bathroom. He didn’t have to tell her to clean up—she couldn’t wait. But she flipped him the finger after shutting the door anyway. She’d show him, all right. She’d take a shower. Not a long one—she didn’t particularly enjoy getting wet any more. But she’d let the water run for a good long time.
Twenty minutes later, she cracked the bathroom door and peeked through the gap. Lying in the hallway outside was a pair of men’s pajamas—sloppily folded, but clean. Pita snagged them with a hand, shut the door, and tried them on. She’d thought they’d be too big; Masaki had quite the pot belly on him, after all.
But they fit. And that only served to remind her of how large and ungainly she was.
She took a moment to comb her hair, not bothering to wipe the condensation from the mirror. Looking at the hazy reflection, she could imagine herself as she used to be. A big girl, yes. But with a narrow jaw, square white teeth, and without the pointed ears that poked out of her hair at odd angles. The only good part about her transformation had been the fact that her breasts had grown along with the rest of her. From the neck down—if you discounted the overly long arms and extra hair—she had the body of a grown woman rather than that of a teenage girl. Chen had always told her how beautiful she looked. But he was an ork, born and raised. How would he know what a real woman should look like?
Drek. There she went again, running Chen down. Running herself down. Pita silently chastised herself for what she’d been thinking. Real woman—hmph. Human, she meant. That was her father talking. She’d spent too many years listening to the hate that spewed from his mouth.
Wiping the mirror clean, she took a good long look at herself, trying to imagine what Masaki saw in her. Then she sighed. "Time to pay your dues, girl. All five hundred nuyen of them."
Masaki was in the apartment’s living room, staring out of a floor-to-ceiling window. The view was of Lake Washington. Across the lake were the lights of downtown. It was easy to pick out the distinctive pyramid shape of the Aztechnology Pyramid and the towering Renraku Arcology.
Masaki had changed into pajamas, and as Pita entered the room, was yawning widely. Noticing her reflection in the window, he turned and cleared his throat.
"That was a long shower." he said.
Pita was immediately on the defensive. "Are you worried it will run up your fragging electric bill?" she asked. "I’ll pay you back. For that, and the bail, too."
Masaki laughed. "Don’t worry." he said. "The hot water is included in the rent. You can use all you want."
Pita glanced down the hall, bracing herself for what was to come. "Which one’s the bedroom?" she asked sullenly.
"Last door on the left. If you need anything, don’t be afraid to wake me up. I’m a light sleeper, anyway." He moved toward her, then gestured toward the couch. "You can sleep here. I’ve made up a bed for you."
Pita peered over the back of the couch. He was telling the truth. The couch was piled with blankets, and a pillow had been placed at one end of it.
Masaki touched a sensor in the wall, dimming the lights. "Well, good night. I’ll see you in the morning."
He walked down the hall to his bedroom, shutting the door softly behind him. Pita shook her head in disbelief. Amazing. Masaki really was a nice guy, after all. Either that, or he found her so repulsive that. . .
She turned off the light, then burrowed into the blankets on the couch. Lying with her cheek on a pillow that smelled of fresh laundry soap, she stared out at the Seattle skyline. She liked the sensation of being above things, of looking down on the streets from a height. Of feeling clean, of curling into a tight little ball and snuggling down into blankets.
Sighing with contentment, she closed her eyes and fell almost immediately into a deep sleep.
***
Pita stared across the kitchen table at Masaki as he tossed two instant-breakfast packets into the microwave and set the timer. As they warmed up, he fished a carton of real milk out of the fridge. He sniffed it, made a face, then dumped the chunky white liquid down the sink. Turning to the cupboard, he pulled a packet of instant orange drink from the shelf and mixed up two glasses with water from the filtration unit.
"Not much of a cook, huh?" Pita observed. But she wasn’t really complaining. Not with the rich smell of reconstituted eggs and RealMeat bacon wafting through the air, making her mouth water.
"I don’t usually eat breakfast." Masaki explained. "I just grab a Poptoast and a cup of soykaf, and eat them on my way in to the station. But since I have company, I thought I’d better get domestic and prepare a home-cooked breakfast."
Pita had to smile at that one. Home-cooked? Still, it would be a better meal than she’d had in weeks.
The microwave timer pinged. Masaki took the breakfast packets out of it, peeled off the plastic film that sealed the top of each, and set one on the table in front of Pita. He handed her a fork, then sat down to eat the other one while it was still steaming.
Pita ate until the edge was off her hunger. Then she paused, trying to phrase the question she wanted to ask. She at last decided to be blunt.
"How come you didn’t try anything last night? Is it because I’m . . ." Pita was going to say ugly, but deliberately sought another word. ". . . because I’m an ork?"
Masaki chuckled and activated a holopic that was held to the fridge with a magnet. "See him?"
Pita nodded, looking at the three-dimensional image. It was of a middle-aged ork, a burly fellow with blond hair and a full, curling beard. "Yeah."
"That’s a picture of my partner."
"Your what?"
"My boyfriend."
"Oh." Pita blushed. She’d been thinking of Masaki as a loser who didn’t rate a permanent companion. Now she realized that she’d judged him by appearances, something she’d just accused him of doing to her. It was funny, thinking of someone his age having a "boyfriend."
She had one other question to ask.
"Carla’s not going to do the story on how Lone Star killed my friends, is she?"
"No." Masaki admitted after a moment’s silence. "She’s not."
"Will you?"
Masaki sighed and laid his fork on the table. "No, Pita, I won’t."
"Why not? Don’t you believe me?"
"I do, actually." Masaki said. "I believe what you told me over the phone last night. About recognizing the cop who gunned down your friends. He probably is a member of the Humanis Policlub. But we don’t stand a chance against Lone Star. You can’t take on a big corporation like that—not even with KKRU to back you up. They’re just too powerful. They’d find a way to spike the story before it even aired."
Pita’s nostrils flared. "You’re a coward." she told him.
Masaki kept his eyes on his breakfast. "Maybe." He stood up and cleared the empty breakfast packets from the table.
"It’s useless trying to avenge your friends by taking a swing at Lone Star—even a verbal one." he told her. "That corporation would erase you fast
er than yesterday’s data. The important thing now is to make sure that bad cop doesn’t get his hands on you again."
"And what if he gets his hands on another ork kid?" Pita muttered. "Or on your boyfriend?"
Masaki ignored her and tossed the platters in the trash. "I’ll try to arrange a spot for you in a group home in Portland; I’ve got a contact down there who owes me a favor and who can probably put your name at the top of the placement list. Until the visa application comes through, you can stay here."
"A group home?" Pita curled her lip. She wanted desperately to find a safe haven, but the thought of living m a city full of stuck-up elves and being bossed around by social workers repulsed her. Portland was part of the elven nation of Tir Tairngire, and she’d be even more aware of her physical size among that delicate and slender race. She’d rather stay in Seattle—right here, in Masaki’s comfortable apartment. What did he want to do, get rid of her? He had a boyfriend; maybe he was worried she would cramp his style.
Masaki was still rambling on. ". . . and don’t leave the apartment. You won’t be able to get back in through the door, and the guard in the lobby won’t let you back into the building if you don’t have a passkey. But feel free to make yourself at home. Use the telecom unit as much as you like, but keep your net browsing confined to the local telecommunications grid and don’t run up any long-distance charges."
Masaki picked up his magkey and scooped his jacket off the floor. "I’ve got some errands to run. I’ll be back this afternoon. See you then, O. K.?"
Pita didn’t acknowledge his goodbye or look up when the door closed. She was still burnt about the fact that he’d refused to do the story on Lone Star. If only Yao were still alive. He’d have run the story, then gleefully spat in the eye of any cop who tried to mess with him.
Pita went into the living room and powered up Masaki’s telecom. It didn’t take her long to find confirmation that Yao was indeed dead. On the Public Service Channel, she found a police bulletin, dated three days ago, that noted the shooting death of one ork, male, named Yao Wah. The cops speculated that it had been a mugging; Yao Wah was known to be a pirate broadcaster. It was thought that he’d been killed for his portacam; witnesses saw a troll carrying it away from the scene of the crime. The bulletin wound up with a short description of a suspect that would have matched ninety-nine percent of the trolls in Seattle. The bulletin made no mention of the real killers—the two yakuza who’d actually geeked Yao.
Pita stared at the telecom screen, tempted to dial Tokyo or Paris and chat for an hour or two with whoever answered the phone. She’d show that grumpy old fragger. Not run up any long distance calls, huh? She could bankrupt him in a single morning if she wanted to.
But she didn’t want to. Despite his cowardice, Masaki had been kind to her. He’d been kind to her last night, without any ulterior motive she could think of. He’d let her have the run of this wiz apartment with the awesome view. He’d trusted her. And Pita hadn’t been shown much trust. Not in the past two years of living on the streets. Shopkeepers stared at her, security guards watched her suspiciously every time she walked into a megamall, and pedestrians quickly stuck their hands in their pockets to make sure they still had their wallets when they passed her on the sidewalk. It felt good to have someone look at her without wariness and suspicion. It also felt so good to be clean and dry.
Pita switched on the trideo component, set it to the local broadcasts, and began flipping channels. She crossed to the couch, sank into it, and propped her feet up on the coffee table. She decided to enjoy the good life while she could. You never knew how long it would last.
21
Carla sat at a data display in the KKRU newsroom, scanning the stories that the Scan ’n’ Sift program had selected. She’d broadened the scope of her search to include anything to do with Renraku Computer Systems. No telling what the cops had stirred up overnight.
She’d come downtown to the station’s offices. She could have uploaded the information onto her home deck, but she liked the feel of being in the newsroom, even on a slow Saturday, her day off. She found it difficult to work without the hum of the studio’s equipment, the overlapping chatter from the banks of the trideo monitors, and the ebb and flow of reporters’ voices in the background. In the quiet of her apartment it was hard to work up the adrenaline needed to chase down a good story.
And this would be a good story; she had no doubt about it. The system errors and data corruptions had spread, and were hitting different parts of the Matrix all the time. The crashes were increasing in frequency. They were no longer limited to systems that could logically be expected to contain files that included the word Lucifer.
The spirit was infiltrating the Matrix with increasing frequency, and seemed to be drawn to it on some sort of preordained schedule. Judging by the timing of protocol problems, configuration discrepancy problems, and system crashes, it was making its presence known once every hour. According to Aziz, the spirit wouldn’t like being inside the Matrix. In fact, it shouldn’t even be possible for it to enter the Matrix at all. The rigid organization of a computer’s light-encoding hardware would confine it, would twist it like a four-dimensional pretzel, then spit it out again. But like a moth to the flame, the spirit kept going back. It was in and out again in a mere nanosecond. But in that nanosecond, it could wreak a lot of damage.
So far only Carla, Masaki, and the young decker Corwin knew what the source of the "virus" really was. But it wouldn’t be long before other reporters guessed, too. Carla ached to be first with the story. And to prove that Mitsuhama—the proud purveyor of the latest computer technology—was responsible.
"I said hi, Carla!"
Carla looked up as the voice finally registered as Masaki waving at her from the entrance to the newsroom. He crossed to his work station, still talking. "I didn’t expect to see you in here on a Saturday. I thought you had the weekend off."
"I do." she told him. "I just came in here to scan the . .
She bent over the display as a Department of Vital Statistics report flashed across it. She read only a few lines before whooping with delight. "Got it!"
"Got what?" Masaki asked. He rummaged through a cardboard box that he’d rooted out from beneath the piles of hard copy and datachips that littered his work station.
"Another piece of the puzzle." Carla answered. "It’s Renraku. It looks like they’re experimenting with spirits and the Matrix too. And not doing too good a job of it, by the look of things."
Masaki bent over to peer at the monitor. Carla showed him the file the scanner program had tagged and downloaded. It was an obituary for one Gus Deighton, an employee of Renraku Seattle. He’d died suddenly yesterday evening at work. The obit contradicted itself, at one point noting that Deighton had died in a lab fire, but elsewhere attributing his death to "magical causes." It wound up with a tribute from his boss, Dr. Vanessa Cliber, and mentioned that Deighton had been employed for seventeen years in the corporation’s Exploratory Sciences Division. He’d been just two months shy of retiring.
"I don’t see the connection." Masaki said.
Carla gestured toward the graphic that accompanied the obit. It was a head-and-shoulders still of Augustus Deighton—a distinguished-looking elf with a high forehead, intense eyes, and a full head of hair.
"Exploratory Sciences is Renraku’s magical research division." she explained. "And this woman—Dr. Cliber—is the director of computer operations for the whole of Renraku. Conclusion: the runners who broke into my apartment must have sold Renraku the incomplete spell. And now it’s cost another mage his life." Masaki was quicker on the uptake this time. "Does that mean there’s another of these spirits loose in the Matrix?"
"I don’t know." Carla said. She quickly scanned the rest of the Renraku-keyword files. "Assuming the spirit was conjured within the arcology and that it got away from its handlers, the closest entry point to the Matrix would have been through one of Renraku’s system access nodes. But I haven’t seen a
single report of any Renraku system crashes. Of course, that doesn’t mean anything; the corp would hush it up, and fast, if data was getting corrupted or parts of their system were shutting down. The last thing they need is a bunch of deckers storming the infamous black tower through some hole in the system."
Carla stared at the display, thinking out loud. "Aziz said that most spirits that escape from the mage who conjured them return to their place of origin—they vanish back into astral space. Perhaps one in a hundred remain on the physical plane as free spirits. But if we do have another spirit like ‘Lucifer’ on the loose, the Matrix won’t be able to stand up to it. It’ll be the Crash of 2029 all over again."
"So what are you going to do about it?" Masaki asked. "Air a sensationalistic story that will make everyone in Seattle afraid to touch their trideo sets and computers in case a spirit jumps out and burns them alive?"
"What do you think I am—some tabcast muckraker?"
Masaki gave an embarrassed shrug.
Carla was astonished that Masaki had such a low opinion of her. Yes, she wanted this to be a big story, one that would shake people up. But at the same time, she wanted it to be hard-hitting and accurate, rather than merely sensationalistic. It was the only way to make NABS sit up and take notice of her—and give her that interview they’d promised.
"I want to do a story that will force Mitsuhama to take responsibility for the mess it’s created." she told Masaki. "A story that will warn Renraku off before one of their wage mages makes the same mistake Farazad did. A story that will prevent a repeat of the Crash of 2029."
She sat back, arms folded. What she’d just said had sounded good. She almost believed it herself. But deep down, she was willing to admit that the real rush would come from seeing her sign-off at the end of a really big story and knowing that her name would be a household word for days to come. All over the fragging world.