by Roy C. Booth
“Yeah, yeah, that’s in the log, that’s a maintenance worker, thirty minutes back. He’ll duck out again on 25.”
“Yeah.” He was breathing hard. Making what time he could. The trail did duck out at 25, in a wider zone of blue, unidentified scents, the smell from the corridor blown into the shaft and fading into the ambient. His track stayed clear and strong, stress-red, and he went on real-view: the transparent stairs were making him sick. “Where’s this let out? Garage downstairs?”
“Garage and mini-mall.”
“Shit!”
“Yeah. We got a call from building security wanting a piece of it, told them to stay out of it…
“Thank God.”
“Building Chief’s an amateur with a cop-envy. We’re trying to get another mech in.”
“We got some fool with a gun he hasn’t ditched, we got a mall full of people down there. Where’s Jacobs?”
“Rummel’s closer. —We got lab coming in. Lab’s trying to get an ID match on your sniffer pickup.”
“Yeah. You’ve got enough on it. Guy’s sweating. So am I.” He felt sweat running under the armor, on his face. The door said 14. The oxy was running out. Violate the Scene or not, he had to toggle to exhaust. After that, it was cooler, dank the way shafts were that went into the underground.
“We got some elevator use,” Sheila said, “right around the incident, off 48. Upbound. Stopped on 50, 52, 78, 80, and came down again, 77, 34, 33, then your fire-call brought it down. Time-over-lap on the 78, the C-elevator was upbound.”
“Follow it.” Meaning somebody could have turned around and left no traces if he had gotten in another elevator-call. “Put Downtown on it, I need your brain.”
“Awww. I thought it was the body.”
“Stow it.” He was panting again. The internal tank was out. He hoped he didn’t need it again. Sheila went out of the loop: he could hear the silence on the phones. “Forty-damn-stories—”
Three, two, one, s-one. “Wire,” he gasped, and got back the schema, that showed through the door into a corridor. He listened for noise, panting, while the net in the background zeed out his breathing and his heartbeat and the building fans and everything else but a dull distant roar that said humanity, a lot of it, music—the red was still there and it was on the door switch, but it thinned out in the downward stairwell.
“Went out on s-1.”
“Street exit, mall exit,” Sheila said. “Via the Arlington lobby. Dave, we got you help coming in.”
“Good.”
“Private mech.”
Adrenaline went up a notch. “That’s help? That’s help? Tell them—”
“I did, buns, sorry about that. Name’s Ross, she’s inbound from the other tower, corporate security…”
“Just what I need. Am I going out there? They want me to go out there?”
“You’re clear.”
He hated it, he hated going out there, hated the stares, hated the Downtown monitoring that was going to pick up that pulse rate of his and have the psychs on his case. But he opened the door, he walked out into the lobby that was The Arlington’s front face; and walked onto the carpet, onto stone, both of which were only flat haze to his eyes. Bystanders clustered and gossiped, patched in like the potted palms, real people stark against the black and wire lines of cartoonland, all looking at him and talking in half-voices as if that could keep their secrets if he wanted to hear. He just kept walking, down the corridor, following the faint red glow in the blue of Every-smell, followed it on through the archway into the wider spaces of the mall, where more real people walked in black cartoon-space, and that red glow spread out into a faint fan-swept haze and a few spots on the floor.
Juvies scattered, a handful out of Parental, lay odds to it—he could photo them and tag them, but he kept walking, chose not even to transmit: Sheila had a plateful to track as it was. One smartass kid ducked into his face, made a face, and ran like hell. Fools tried that, as if they suspected there wasn’t anybody real inside the black visor. Others talked with their heads partially turned, or tried not to look as if they were looking. That was what he hated, being the eyes and ears, the spy-machine that connected to everywhere, that made everybody ask themselves what they were saying that might go into files, what they has ever done or thought of that a mech might find reason to track…
Maybe it was the blank visor, maybe it was the rig—maybe it was everybody’s guilt. With the sniffer tracking, you could see the stress around you, the faint red glow around honest citizens no different than the guy you were tracking, as if it was the whole world’s guilt and fear and wrongdoing you were smelling, and everybody had some secret to keep and some reason to slink aside…
“Your backup’s meeting you at A-3,” Sheila said, and a marker popped up in the schema, yellow flasher.
“Wonderful. We got a make on the target?”
“Not yet, buns. Possible this guy’s not on file. Possible we got another logjam in the datacall, a mass murder in Peoria, something like that.” Sheila had her mouth full. “Everybody’s got problems tonight.”
“What are you eating?”
“Mmm. Sorry, there.”
“Is that my cheeseburger?”
“I owe you one.”
“You are really putting on weight, Sheel, you know that?”
“Yeah, its anxiety attacks.” Another bite. “Your backup’s Company, Donna Ross, 20 years on, service citation.”
“Sheel.” Might not be a play-cop then. Real seniority. He saw the black figure standing there in her own isolation, at the juncture of two dizzying walkways. Saw her walk in his direction, past the mistrustful stares of spectators. “Get some plainclothes in here yet?”
“We got reporters coming.”
“Oh, great. Get ‘em off, get the court on it—”
“Doing my best.”
“Officer Dawes.” Ross held out a black-glowed hand, no blues on the Company cop, just the rig, black cut-out in a wire-diagram world. “We’re interfaced. It just came up.”
Data came up, B-channel. “Copy that.” Ross was facing the same red track he was, was getting his data, via some interface Downtown, an inter-system handshake. He stepped onto the downbound escalator, Ross in his 360 compression view, a lean, black shape on the shifting kaleidoscope of the moving stairs. “This is a MarsCorp exec that got it?” Ross asked in his right ear. “Is that what I read?”
“Deader than dead. We got a potential gun walking around out here with the john-qs. You got material on the exec?”
“Some kind of jam-up in the net—I haven’t got a thing but a see-you.”
“Wonderful, both of us in the dark.”
The escalator let off on the lower level, down with the fast foods and the arcades and a bunch of juvies all antics and ass.
“Get out of here,” he snarled on Address, and juvies scattered through the cartoon-scape.
“Get upstairs!” he yelled, and some of them must have figured shooting was imminent, because they scattered double-time, squealing and shoving. Bright blue down here with the pepperoni pizza and the beer and the popcorn, but that single red threat was still showing.
“Our boy’s sweating hard,” Ross said in one ear; and Sheila in the other: “We got a sudden flash in a security door, right down your way.”
“Come on.”
Dave started to run. Ross matched him, a clatter of Cyloprene on tile, godawful racket. The exit in question was flashing yellow ahead. A janitor gawked, pressed himself against the wall in a try at invisibility; but his presence was blue, neutral to the area.
“You see anybody go through?”
“Yeah, yeah, I saw him, young guy, took to the exit, I said he wasn’t—” —Supposed to trailed into the amped mike as they banged through the doors and into a concrete service hall.
“Sheila, you in with Ross?”
“Yeah. Both of you guys. I got a b&w following you, he’s not meched, best I could do…”
Red light strobed acro
ss his visor. WEAPONS ON, it said.
“Shit,” he said, “Ross—” He stopped a breath against the corridor wall, drew his gun and plugged it in. Ross must have an order too; she was plugging in. Somebody Downtown had got a fire warrant. Somebody had decided on a fire-warrant next to a mall full of kids. Maybe because of the kids.
“What’s our make on this guy, Sheila? Tell me we got a make, please God, I don’t like this, we got too many john-juniors out there.”
“He’s not on files.”
“Off-worlder,” Ross said.
“You know that?”
“If he’s not in your files he’s from off-world. The Company is searching. They’ve got your readout.”
“Shit, somebody get us info.”
The corridor was a moving, jolting wire-frame in the black.
Nobody. Not a sign.
But the red was there, bright and clear. Sheila compressed several sections ahead on the wire schema, folded things up close where he could get a look. There was a corner, he transviewed it, saw it heading to a service area. AIR SYSTEMS, the readout line said.
“We got an air-conditioning unit up there, feed for the whole damn mall as best I guess…he’s got cover.”
“Yeah,” Ross said, “I copy that “
“We’re not getting any damn data,” Sheila said in his other ear. “I’m asking again on that make, and we’re not getting it. Delay. Delay. Delay. Ask if her keyman’s getting data.”
“My keyman asks,” he relayed, “if you’ve got data yet.”
“Nothing new. I’m telling you, we’re not priority, it’s some little lover’s spat—”
“That what they’re telling you?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t know a thing more than you. But a male presence, female body up there…that’s how it’s going to wash out. It always does.”
“Dave,” Sheila’s voice again, while their steps rang out of time on the concrete and the red track ran in front of them. She had a tone when there was trouble. “Butterflies, you hear?”
“Yeah. Copy.” Sheila wasn’t liking something. She wasn’t liking it a lot.
They reached the corner. The trail kept going, skirled in the currents from air ducts, glowing fainter in the gust from the dark. He folded the view tighter, looked ahead of them, didn’t like the amount of cover ahead where they were going to come down stairs and across a catwalk.
Something banged, echoed, and the lights went out.
Didn’t bother a mech. Maybe it made the quarry feel better, but they were still seeing, all wire-display. He was right on Ross, Ross standing there like a haze in the ambiance. Her rig scattered stuff you used in the dark. It was like standing next to a ghost. The Dallas PD didn’t afford rigs like that. Governments did. Some MarsCorp bigwig got shot and the Company lent a mech with this stuff?
Ross said. “IR. Don’t trust the wire. Stay here.”
“The hell.”
Infrared blurred the wire-schema. But he brought his sensors up high-gain.
“No sonar,” Ross said “Cut it, dammit!”
“What the hell are we after?”
“There he is!”
He didn’t half see. Just a blur, far across the dark. Ross burst ahead of him, onto the steps; he dived after, in a thunder the audios didn’t damp fast enough.
“Dave.” Sheila’s voice again, very solemn. His ears were still ringing when they got to the bottom. “Department’s still got nothing. I never saw a jam this long… I never saw a rig like that.”
They kept moving, fast, not running, not walking. The mech beside him was Company or some government’s issue, a MarsCorp exec was stone dead, and you could count the organized crazies that might have pulled that trigger. A random crazy, a lover—a secessionist…
“Lab’s on it,” Sheila said. “Dave, Dave, I want you to listen to me.”
He was moving forward. Sheila stopped talking, as Ross moved around a bundle of conduits and motioned him to go down the other aisle, past the blowers. Listen, Sheila said, and said nothing. The link was feeding to Ross. He was sure of it. He could hear Sheila breathing, hard.
“Mustard,” Sheila muttered. “Dave, was it mustard you wanted on that burger?”
They’d never been in a situation like this, not knowing what was feeding elsewhere, not knowing whether Downtown was still secure with them on the line.
“Yeah,” he breathed. He hated the stuff. “Yeah. With onions.”
Sheila said, “You got it.”
Ross started to move. He followed. The com was compromised. She’d asked was he worried, that was the mustard query. He stayed beside that ghost-glow, held to the catwalk rail with one hand, the other with the gun. The city gave out a fire-warrant, and your finger had a button. But theirs overrode, some guy Downtown. Or Sheila did. You didn’t know. You were a weapon, with a double safety, and you didn’t know whether the damn thing was live, ever.
“Dave,” Sheila said. Totally different tone. “Dave. This Ross doesn’t have a keyman. She’s backpacked. Total. She’s a security guy.”
Total mech. You heard about it, up on Sol, up in the Stations, where everything was computers. Elite of the elite. Independent operator with a computer for a backpack and neuros right into the station’s high-tech walls.
He evened his breath, smelled the cold air, saw the thermal pattern that was Ross gliding ahead of him. A flash of infrared out of the dark. A door opened on light. Ross started running. He did.
A live-in lover? Somebody the exec would open the door to?
A mech could walk through a crime scene. A mech on internal air didn’t leave a presence—nothing a sniffer would recognize.
A Company mech had been damned close to the scene—showed up to help the city cops…
“Sheila,” he panted, trying to stay with Ross. “Lots of mustard.”
Infrared glow ahead of them. A shot flashed out, from the company mech. It exploded in the dark, leaving tracers in his vision. Ross wasn’t blinded. His foot went off a step, and he grabbed wildly for the rail, caught himself and slid two more before he had his feet under him on flat catwalk mesh—it shook as Ross ran; and he ran too.
“She’s not remoted!” he panted. As if his keyman couldn’t tell. Nobody outside was authorizing those shots. Ross was. A cartoon door boomed open, and he ran after a ghost whose fire wasn’t routed through a whole damn city legal department. “Fold it! He gasped, because he was busy keeping up; and the corner ahead compacted and swung into view, red and green wire, with nobody in it but the ghost ahead of him.
“Slow down!” he said. “Ross! Wait up, dammit! Don’t shoot!”
His side was aching. Ross was panting hard, he heard her breathing, he overtook in a cartoon-space doorway, in a dead-end room, where the trail showed hot and bright.
“We have him.” Ross said. The audio hype could hear the target breathing, past their exhaust. Even the panicked heartbeat. Ross lifted her gun against a presence behind a stack of boxes.
“No!” he yelled. And the left half of his visor flashed yellow. He swung to it, mindless target-seek, and the gun in his hand went off on Ross, went off a second time while Ross was flying sideways through the dark. Her shot went wild off the ceiling and he couldn’t think, couldn’t turn off the blinking target square. Four rounds, five, and the room was full of smoke.
“Dave?”
He wasn’t talking to Sheila. He wasn’t talking to whoever’d triggered him, set off the reflexes they trained in a mech.
Shaky voice from his keyman. “If you can walk out of there, walk. Right now, Dave.”
“The guy’s in the—”
“No. He’s not, Dave.” The heartbeat faded out. The cartoon room had a smudged gray ghost on the floor grid at his feet. And a bright red lot of blood spattered around. “I want you to check out the restroom upstairs from here. All right?”
He was shaking now. Your keyman talked and you listened or you could be dead. He saw a movement on his left. He swung around with the gun
up, saw the man stand up. Ordinary looking man, business shirt, soaked with sweat. Frozen with fear. The sniffer flashed red.
Sheila’s voice said, from his shoulder-patch, “Don’t touch anything, Dave. Get out of there. Now.”
He moved, walked out, with the target standing at his back. He walked all the way back to the air-conditioning plant, and he started up the stairs there, up to the catwalk, while nothing showed, no one. Sheila said, “Dave. Unplug now. You can unplug.”
He stopped, he reached with his other hand and he pulled the plug on the gun and put it in its holster. He went on up the cartooned metal stairs, and he found the cartooned hall and the cartooned restroom with the real-world paper on the floor.
“You better wash up,” Sheila said, so he did that, shaking head to foot.
Before he was finished, a b&w came in behind him, and said, “You all right, sir?”
“Yeah,” he said. Sheila was quiet then.
“You been down there?” the cop asked.
“You saw it,” Sheila said in his ear and he echoed her: “I saw it—guy got away—I couldn’t get a target. Ross was in the way...”
“Yes, sir,” the b&w said. “You’re on record, sir.”
“I figured.”
“You sure you’re all right? I can call—”
“I can always call, officer.”
The guy got a disturbed look, the way people did, who forgot they were talking to two people. “Yes, sir,” the b&w said, “All right.”
On his way out.
He turned around to the mirror, saw a plain, sick face. Blood was on the sink rim, puddled around his boots, where it had run off the plastic. He went into a stall, wiped off his rig with toilet paper and flushed the evidence.
Sheila said, “Take the service exits. Pick you up at the curb.”
“Copy,” he mumbled, took his foot off the seat, flushed the last bit of bloody paper, taking steady small breaths, now. They taught you to trust the autos with your life. They taught you to swing to the yellow, don’t think. Don’t ask, swing and hold, swing and hold the gun.