The Forever Drug

by Lisa Smedman

  "That's the trouble with living so long," he added bitterly. "Everyone you care about dies before you."

  "What tests was the doctor performing?" Dass asked.

  "Medical tests. She was curious about me, because I'm so healthy for my age, and was trying to figure out why I'd lived so long. I'm ninety-nine years old, can you believe it?"

  I couldn't. But that didn't matter. My mind was still reeling at the fact that he knew Jane.

  "Have you seen her since?" I blurted.

  He was silent for a moment, and I wondered if he'd answer. I looked at Dass and raised my eyebrows, silently asking if her mind-probing spell was still active. She nodded.

  "I never thought I'd see Jane again," John said at last. "But after she came back, I decided to start sculpting her."

  "When was that?" I held my breath.

  "Two days ago."

  "And ..." I kept my voice as neutral as I could. "And where is she now?"

  "I don't know."

  I shot a look at Dass. She nodded, confirming that the old guy really didn't know. Then she scratched her ear—the signal we'd agreed to previously that meant we needed to debrief.

  I was standing behind John, where he couldn't see me. I jerked a thumb at the ceiling and made a clawing motion with my hand, silently asking if we were still going after the blackberry cat.

  Dass gave a slight shake of the head.

  I grinned. Obviously we were going after something more important. Which meant that Dass had a lead on the folks who were smuggling the paras. I was at least one step closer to Jane.

  I pretended to glance at Dass's watch.

  "Frig!" I said. "Would you look at the time? We'd better get going, honey, if we're going to make it to Yarmouth before the antique store closes."

  It was as good an excuse as any. Taking my lead,

  Dass started babbling about grandfather clocks and antique rocking chairs. We beat a hasty retreat back to the car, leaving the old guy with his wizard's tower, his mind-controlling cat, and his sculpture of a woman who reminded him of the daughter he'd lost, years ago.

  12

  The abandoned freighter was our target, after all. When Dass had used magic to eavesdrop on Crazy John's thoughts, she picked up a mental image of a large, watertight chamber in the hold of the ship, kept dry and livable by a series of battery-operated heaters, lights, air filters, ventilation systems—and bilge pumps, which John had helped to repair.

  The smugglers had allowed sea water to fill the rest of the ship's hull, which was then sealed and fitted with UV lights and water-circulating systems. The water wouldn't stop an astral intruder from getting into the freighter, but it would slow them down and make it uncomfortable for them. Most mages would do what Dass had done—assume that the entire hull was filled with water, and turn back.

  The freighter was a holding pen, a temporary storage for exotic paras that were smuggled to the UCAS coast by ship, then delivered up and down the coast by smaller boats. Which explained the distribution pattern on the geographic profiling map. The smugglers were delivering to coastal cities on the mainland of Nova Scotia—the areas that south shore locals would be most familiar with—and to major UCAS cities across the bay.

  We weren't sure whether any of the smugglers were on board the freighter, or whether the animal holding pens in its hull were empty or full—or whether Jane was on board. Dass's mind probe spell only picks up what a person is thinking about at the time, and we couldn't very well ask Crazy John to think about something that we weren't supposed to know about.

  Instead we had to resort to an old-fashioned police procedure: the stakeout.

  Fortunately, we didn't have to do it in person. Lone Star's Division of Paranormal Investigation has a number of magically active personnel who are capable of entering astral space. While Dass and I sat in the Yarmouth offices of Lone Star's Department of Shore and Water Patrol, waiting for the call, these mages maintained a twenty-four-hour astral surveillance of the derelict freighter in Short Beach while their physical bodies lay on beds in Lone Star's Halifax headquarters.

  They liaised regularly with Dass, who also took a rotation on astral surveillance. Meanwhile the rest of us cooled our heels and waited. There were five of us on Dass's hand-picked team: myself, three combat mages attached to the Division of Paranormal Investigation, and Hunt, the officer who'd piloted the hover out to Georges Island on the night I'd met Jane. Dass had requested Hunt specifically; he was the best rigger the Magical Task Force had, and we'd need his skills to chase down the smugglers.

  The combat mages—two males and a female, all human—were edgy at having to wait, but I could see that they were used to working together and were a tight unit. They spent the down time playing endless rounds of Randomizer, a fast-paced poker game that used cards that randomly changed their suit and numeric value according to a pre-set pattern. By memorizing the pattern of each of the fifty-two cards, you could predict the suit and value that was coming up next. If you didn't get a headache first.

  I watched their game for an hour or two, and when I thought I had the gist of it, I asked if I could sit in. I lost fifty-three nuyen on the first hand and twenty-seven nuyen on the second. It was an expensive lesson in not trying to beat experts at their own game.

  I didn't mind losing the money nearly so much, though, as the comment I overheard one of the males make when I left the game. Something about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks. I'd heard the joke dozens of times before, but never with the same sarcastic inflection that was placed on the word "dog."

  I got my revenge by chewing up the handle of his taser baton. Then I realized what a stupid move that had been, and cajoled Hunt into helping me swap the damaged baton for one from the equipment room.

  After that I mostly hung out with Hunt and watched the trid in the off-duty lounge. I had to get my mind away from endlessly speculating where Jane was somehow, and mindless trid seemed the best way. Hunt and I argued at first over what to watch: he liked the high-speed VTOL races on one of the sports channels, and I preferred the nature shows. We eventually compromised on a medical special report that talked about the cybernetic augmentation of guard dogs. That show got the rapt attention of both of us.

  Although the combat mages lounged about in civilian clothes inside the Yarmouth DSWP offices, they came with all the trimmings. When the call came, they would suit up in armored pants and jackets with magical task force stenciled across the back in bold yellow letters, and helmets with low-light vision enhancers built into the visors. Although they were armed with Uzi III submachine guns with laser sights, taser batons, and tranq guns, they had an even greater arsenal of spells. They could use these to take down criminals in any number of different ways: by paralyzing their muscles; by overstimulating their nervous systems until they were unable to differentiate horizontal from vertical, let alone aim their guns; by manipulating their emotions until they collapsed in fear and despair; by weaving a web of confusion around them until they were unable to tell friend from foe; or by simply blasting them with a bolt of magical energy, as Jane had done to the elf Galdenistal.

  I hadn't forgotten the golden boy. I also used the time we spent waiting to do a bit of digging in an effort to find out more about him. Dass obliged me by authorizing some time on the Lone Star computers. I wasn't able to get much more on Galdenistal Tathem, but what I did find out was interesting. His father was Lord Shen Tathem, head of the Information Secretariat, the government body in charge of internal security for Tír Taimgire. Galdenistal himself was a paladin, a noble who had formally sworn allegiance to a member of elven royalty: Sean Laverty, a member of the Council of Princes of Tír Taimgire.

  None of which told me why Galdenistal had come to the UCAS to kidnap Jane. When they were arguing on the container pier, golden boy and Jane had mentioned Laverty's name several times. But I still had no idea what her connection was to Laverty. And without a decker to crack the Tír government's formidable databases, I wasn't goin
g to get much more.

  We waited a total of two days before the stakeout produced any results. The call came late at night, when I was napping on a pile of blankets in the corner of the off-duty lounge. I woke up to hear Dass speaking excitedly into her cell phone. As usual, the combat mages were playing Randomizer. But they were suited up and ready to rock in less time than it took me to shift into human form and pull on my clothes.

  We scrambled into a Surfstar Marine Seacop, a high-powered patrol boat. It was a hydrofoil with jet turbines, capable of cruising comfortably at 200 klicks. The boat rode on blades that caused it to lift out of the water in much the same way that an airplane's wings provide lift: the greater the speed, the greater the lift. And it maneuvered like a hot damn, turning sharply while remaining perfectly level, without any of the roll experienced by an ordinary boat.

  Hunt would be piloting the hydrofoil through his vehicle control rig—plugged into the Seacop via datajack and "feeling" every wave and current. He was already jacked in when we climbed into the closed cabin of the boat. "Buckle up!" he shouted over the roar of the jet turbines. "It's going to be a rough ride."

  Then he winked a chromed eye at me. "Hey, Romulus! This beats chasing cats, eh?"

  I grinned back at him.

  He was right about the rough ride. Although it was a clear night with only patches of fog, a wind was blowing up and the sea was choppy. An ordinary boat would have plowed its way through the waves, but the hydrofoil had too much speed, too much lift. It "porpoised" from one crest to the next, skipping across the tops of the waves with a series of bone-jarring crashes and stomach-churning leaps.

  Had there been a siren going I would have been howling by now. I wished I could have hung my head out a porthole to feel the harsh wind and salt spray on my face. I loved every minute of the ride. But Dass, who was sitting in the front seat next to Hunt, was having a tough time of it. I didn't think it was possible for skin as dark as hers to look green, but somehow Dass managed it. I hoped she wasn't going to be sick. In the closed confines of the hydrofoil and with my keen sense of smell, that would have been difficult to take.

  Dass swallowed hard, then turned her seat to brief us as we made the run out to Short Beach. "Surveillance has spotted a boat approaching the freighter," she shouted as she hung tightly onto her restraining straps. "It's disguised as a lobster boat, with a capstan and lobster traps on the deck, but it has a gasoline engine. All of the lobster boats around here use diesel, so the mage on astral surveillance went in for a closer look. He spotted paranormals on board: four Merlin hawks in cages hidden among the lobster traps, under tarps on the deck."

  Dass paused to fight down her nausea. "The Merlin hawk is an endangered species," she cautioned the team. "We've been instructed not to allow any harm to come to them, if at all possible. Kufahamu— understood?"

  The three combat mages glanced sidelong at each other. They understood that this was an order, but it was clear to me that they weren't going to put themselves in danger for the sake of mere animals. I growled softly to myself.

  Dass gulped as the hydrofoil launched itself off another wave. I wondered if the ride would be better or worse for her if she were to leave her body and enter the astral plane. Probably better: I'd heard that while the consciousness is jandering about in astral space, the physical body is almost comatose. But Dass had a briefing to give, so she soldiered on between hard swallows.

  "There are three individuals on board the boat," she continued. "Two males, one female, all armed with submachine guns. There's also an assault cannon mounted on a firmpoint that's hidden inside the cabin.

  "We're going to intercept the smugglers as they're offloading their contraband onto the derelict freighter. That's when they'll be the most vulnerable. They'll be busy with the cages, and we can approach from a direction that won't allow them to use the assault cannon. Lim, McKenzie, and I will concentrate on the three smugglers, disabling them with spells. Once they're down, Berthiaume and Romulus will board the freighter and perform a sweep for other smugglers."

  The combat mage named Berthiaume—the larger of the two males, the one who'd made the "dog" crack earlier—gave me a look that told me exactly what he thought of going in with an unarmored partner who didn't even carry a handgun, let alone cast spells. But he was too professional and well disciplined to protest.

  "Once the smugglers are under arrest, Romulus's job will be to sniff out any paras on board so we can prepare them for containment," Dass continued. "If the lobster boat makes a break for it, we'll pursue it in the Seacop and call in backup as necessary.

  "Swalima? Any questions?"

  We shook our heads.

  As we neared Short Beach, Hunt launched the Sea-cop's drone. The high-speed surveillance drone looked like a flying manta ray as it whizzed off into the night. Its low-light and thermographic video cameras would keep a bead on the smugglers, giving Hunt an eye in the sky as he piloted the hydrofoil in. He was plugged into the drone's sensors directly, getting a datafeed through his jack even as he piloted the boat. But there was also a small monitor screen beside the helm. Dass kept an eye on this, and gave us a running update as we approached the freighter.

  "The lobster boat is tying up over freighter's aft deck," she said in a tense voice. "The tide is high and the deck of freighter is slightly awash. A hatch over rear cargo hold is opening—it looks like that's their entry point. There are two persons inside—too far away for details. The smugglers are getting ready to lower the contraband through hatch. We should be there in less than a min—"

  Dass leaned against her restraining straps, trying to get closer to the monitor.

  At the same time, Hunt tensed. "Drek! Who the frig is that?" he said.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  "Someone else has crashed the smugglers's party," Dass said quickly. "On a jetski, no less. He's armed and is mixing it up with the smugglers. The two in the hold are down and—uh-oh. The lobster boat has untied and is leaving. Who the frig is that guy?"

  I was as baffled as Dass. Was this an attack by a rival smuggling operation? Just how much did a Merlin hawk sell for?

  "Get on the radio," Dass told Hunt. "Upesi—be quick! Find out if Drug Enforcement has anyone in the area. Officially or unofficially."

  Now that was an unwelcome possibility. The attacker on a jetski could be an irregular asset from Drug

  Enforcement who'd heard there might be corpselights on board the freighter and hoped to make a drug bust. The DED paid its stringers by the amount of drug seized, just as the DPI paid per paranormal animal contained. Seizing a shipment of corpselights—the "drug" Halo—would net an irregular asset a credstick full of nuyen. Assuming he lived to make the seizure.

  By using an irregular asset as their front man, the DED could deny intentionally getting in the way of our arrest. And at the same time, they could frig up the DPI's bust and make us look bad—payback for stealing a potentially high-profile case away from them.

  The fellow on the jetski could be friend or foe. There was no way to tell. But either way, he wouldn't be happy to see us.

  Hunt whispered into his subdermal microphone, then shook his head. "He's not DED."

  "Right," Dass said. "Slight change of plans. We'll drop Berthiaume and Romulus on board the freighter to deal with the intruder and keep the hatch open, then we'll pursue the smugglers."

  Dass turned to me. "We'll be back as soon as we can, Rom."

  I nodded. "Don't worry," I told her. "I'm getting the easy job." I thought of the assault cannon on the smugglers's boat. I had faith in Hunt's ability to out-maneuver the lobster boat; with the hydrofoil's speed and ability to make tight turns, it would run rings around a conventional boat. But there was always the chance of a lucky shot. While the hydrofoil had enough armor to stop a machine gun bullet, a round from an assault cannon would punch a hole the size of a window in it, sending it to the bottom pretty quickly.

  "Good luck, Dass," I added.

  Then we were at
the freighter. The smugglers's boat had already sped away—we saw red and green running lights heading rapidly up the coast through the fog. Then these blinked out.

  The hydrofoil skidded to a stop as Hunt suddenly cut the jet turbines and threw the blades into a turn, allowing them to dig deep into the waves and build up water resistance. His aim was dead on—the open hatch of the freighter was right beside us as we coasted to a stop. Hunt flooded the area with light and aimed a camera that was mounted on the side of the hydrofoil down into the cargo well. A closed-circuit video monitor sprang to life, showing a roomsized space whose floor was maybe three meters below deck level. Water was slopping in over the edges of the open hatch, and had filled this space to a depth of a few centimeters. Two bodies floated facedown, in the water, trailing streams of red. The only way out of the space was through a large hatch on one wall, currently dogged shut.

  The jetski had been abandoned up on the water-covered deck; the waves nudged it against the hydrofoil with dull thumps. The fellow who'd ridden it to the freighter was nowhere to be seen. But it was a safe bet that, since he wasn't floating in the water beside the corpses of the two smugglers he'd shot, he was somewhere behind that hatch.

  It took only a second or two to take all of this in via the video monitor. While we were doing this, I pulled off my clothes so they wouldn't impede me when I shifted. Berthiaume flicked a glance my way, half rolled his eyes, then returned his focus to the monitor.

  "Ready?" Hunt shouted.

  "Ready!" Berthiaume and I answered at once.

  Berthiaume snapped his visor down and pulled out a spell fetish.

  Hunt opened the door.

  Berthiaume's posture told me that he'd muscle me out of the way if I tried to go first. I normally would have challenged him with a growl and exposed teeth, but there wasn't time. Instead I stepped aside, shivering slightly as the night wind whipped fog into the hydrofoil's open door.