Who Hunts the Hunter

by Nyx Smith

  "Certainly.”

  “Thank you, my dear.”

  In the bedroom, his bedroom, Liron pauses to clip and light a cigar, an uncivilized habit, his wife used to say, but his one and only indulgence. Vorteria comes through the physical plane of the door like a ghost, assuming her womanly manifestation as she crosses the threshold. Oddly, Liron does not mind her being present while he undresses, changing from his lab clothes to his ritual robes. Vorteria has seen too much of his soul for the sight of his blighted physical substance to have much significance.

  “You did not visit me at the lab today.”

  “Spirits spoke against it,” Vorteria replies."There is a darkness, Master. It troubles me."

  Not the first time Vorteria has spoken this way. Precognition? Liron knows of no documented cases. None which could survive even the sometimes fuzzy lens of metascience. He is aware, however, that the many planes of the astral are home to myriad entities of which men have incomplete knowledge at best."What spirits were these who spoke? Do they have names?”

  “None I could express to you, Master."

  A familiar reply.

  Liron turns to the mirror and carefully removes the mask and hairpiece that cover his face and head, and then too the theatrical appliances and the lenses that complete the deception necessary to his work. Anyone who could view him as he truly is would see only a horror, a skull shorn clean of any hair, a face laid bare of even the most trivial human features. His nose a hideous blackened pit, his mouth a grisly skeletal grimace, his brow and cheeks covered only be a slender layer of epidermis, stretched tight across his bones.

  His trip to the Middle East, taken many years ago, supported by a foundation long defunct, brought him to this. The affliction is called metamycobacterium leprosis, the

  Sixth World form of leprosy. It’s quite virulent. His tissues deteriorated rapidly, his wife’s even more rapidly. Now he searches for a cure. He has long since affected a means of holding his ground, and of stabilizing his wife as well, but a cure ... The cure still eludes him! He must go to his library, filled with all the ancient and arcane tomes of a lifetime of research, and continue his work on the cure."Victoria calls, ” Vorteria says softly.

  “Oh, of course.” How inconsiderate of him to forget. First, he must visit his wife."Thank you, my dear.” Vorteria replies, “I am pleased to serve you, Master."

  27

  “It’s complicated,” he says.

  Amy shakes her head."I don’t care.”

  “I need to become a person again.”

  Amy waits, and listens. Scottie’s explanations start and stop, and trail away into silence, but there’s always more that needs to be said, and somehow he just keeps on going, finding the words and saying them, till she’s heard more from him in one night than she heard or listened to or ignored up to the day he disappeared.

  Then, despite splashing herself with cold water, and all the willpower she can summon, her eyes are closing and won’t reopen, and she feels herself slumping, nodding off. When she wakes, she’s lying on the sofa with her head in Scottie’s lap, and he’s gazing down at her, and saying, “I have to go.”

  “Stay. Please.”

  “I’ll come back tomorrow. I promise.”

  “I don’t want to lose you again.” The fear of that wakes her up. She forces herself to sit up. She takes his hands, remembers things he said. Despite all that he’s told her, she feels like he’s been here only moments, and she hasn’t had time to explain anything about herself.

  “Scottie, I’m living here by myself, and I make good money. Shell could come, and the kids, too. They’re important to you and I want to meet them anyway. You could all stay here. There’s plenty of room.”

  “I have to go my own way.”

  “But ...” Of course. That’s the point. It’s always been the point and until now she was never mature enough to accept that. What did he say? The shaman’s way is hard. He has to do what he thinks is best, and she must accept that! She must! She should be trying to understand, not telling him what to do. She has to face the fact that she doesn’t know what’s best for him. She can’t know. She barely knows who he is, the man he’s become, the shaman, or anything else. If she wants him to play a part in her life, she’s going to have to stop being the older sister and start being the woman with enough maturity to love her brother without conditions.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, struggling to smile."You’re right. I’m just so afraid you’ll go away—”

  Her breath catches.

  Scottie takes her hands in his.

  “I can’t believe you’re really here again.”

  “I’m here.”

  “Mom and Dad’ll be—”

  “Don’t tell them.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too soon. I need time.”

  Time to adjust, or maybe the time to come fully out of his shell. Maybe it’s got to do with his magic. Many of the things he’s said make it seem like he’s at a crossroads, a point of transition, important in more ways than she can imagine.

  “All right,” Amy says."But I want you to remember that I love you and I care about you. I always have. Even when I was stealing your things and throwing them away. I’ll do anything I can to help you, if you need help. If you want anything. Anything. I really mean that.”

  “I know.”

  At the door, she hugs him one last time and kisses his cheek, and then he’s walking down the hall to the elevator, and she’s forcing herself to smile, to wave, like he’s never really been away.

  She’s sitting on her bed in her underwear, still wiping at her eyes, when the first dusky rays of dawn comes sifting in through the drapes, and then her alarm clock starts bleeping. Oh, god no ...

  How can she possibly get ready for work?

  And ... how can she not?

  28

  In the shadows of the pre-dawn dark, the security car rolls slowly along the tree-lined lane winding through the condoplex grounds. Brake lights flare, but then the car rolls on. Bandit watches from among the bushes leading away from Tower D. He has no permits or passes allowing him to be on these grounds. Raccoon has no need of such things.

  He turns his head to look back at Tower D reaching high into the dark gray sky, and, for a moment, he shifts his perceptions to the astral. The spell he casts is fleeting. He gains a brief sense for his sister, up there in the tower, at a window, now turning away. She seems upset, happy and sad, like she’s crying and also smiling. She did that a lot tonight. It’s almost frightening.

  When they were kids, Amy walked the narrow course. She was always very popular. Her grades at school were upper bracket. She had corporate sponsorship and a place awaiting her at university before she reached her sixteenth birthday. He’d always taken it for granted that Amy would turn into just another faceless clerical or executive level wageslave, another straight suit, just like their parents. Now he finds that she’s become as whole a person as he’s ever known, every bit as whole as Shell. It’s amazing.

  The way she talks, how she acts ... she got right inside him without even trying, enough to move him pretty deeply. To hurt. To make him regret things. Like how they’ve lived totally separate lives.

  Maybe now that can change.

  There’s so much he has to learn.

  In among the trees by the condoplex main entrance, he finds the Hyundai ActionScoot he borrowed and walks it out to the road. The scooter doesn’t go very fast, but it’ll get him back to the subway a lot faster than walking. Assuming nobody notices the scooter’s missing.

  When he gets home, he finds Shell slumped in a plastic chair by the door at the top of the stairs. He told her to go ahead and bolt the door because he’d probably be gone all night. But here she is, sleeping, with the needlegun in her lap. Waiting for him? He gives her shoulder a squeeze and she comes around, moaning, then hugs him around the hips."Did you find your sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “So, do I lose you now?”


  Lose him? “Why would you lose anything?”

  Shell looks up at him with eyes that seem wet."She’s a suit, right? She could set you up. She must have lots of money.”

  Bandit puzzles, then sighs inwardly.

  People are always talking about money, even when money makes no difference, no difference whatsoever. It’s in the way of things, it seems. An inescapable part of nature.

  It makes him tired.

  29

  “Okay, kid. Let’s move out!"

  Brian Guemey forces his eyes to open. How long has he been asleep? Two, three hours, his watch indicates. He rubs a hand over his face, feels the stubble grown thick around his cheeks and jaw, and grunts. When he agreed to tripletime and a half, he figured he’d be getting into action. What he didn’t figure on was spending twenty-four hours plus in tunnels underground. What he didn’t foresee was getting so deep into the tunnels that he’d have to wait for Art to show him the way out.

  Somewhere above his head, it’s morning. Wonderful.

  He drags himself up, suits up, gets ready for action. The tunnel is over three meters across and perfectly round and dank, real dank. A trickle of water forms dark, dingy-looking puddles every couple of steps. The air smells foul.

  There’s a ghostly feel to it all. Maybe the ghost of water that used to pass this way. Brian wonders if maybe he should have become a Buddhist. Don’t Buddhists believe that everything has a soul?

  Up ahead, forty or fifty meters on, there’s a junction, a pair of secondary tunnels coming in from the right and left.

  That’s about as far as Brian can see. His Nightfighter visor casts a grayish image of the tunnel in front of his eyes, but there ain’t much light for the visor to gather, and the only IR sources of any significance are him and Art.

  They’re both ready for Ragnarok, armed to the nines, assault rifles, machine pistols, handguns, grenades, flares, knives, body armor, helmets, visors. Brian wouldn’t mind so much, not at triple time and a half, if only he had some idea of what they might be going up against.

  “So, if all these tunnels weren’t destroyed by the quake in ’05, how come nobody I ever talked to knows these tunnels are still—?”

  “What, are you kidding?” Art interrupts.

  “Kidding about what?”

  “You never heard of security?”

  “Art. Listen.” How can he put this? without slotting Art off yet again."This is a water main. We work for the New York City Department of Water and Wastewater Manage—” Abruptly, Art drops into a crouch, signaling halt with a quick mil-style gesture."You hear something?”

  “Just the sound of my own—”

  “Jam it!” Art whispers harshly, edging ahead."Look! right there! LET'EM HAVE IT, KID!"

  Art’s rifle stammers on full auto. The discharges echo like thunder. Fire flashes from the weapon’s muzzle, streaming straight up the tunnel. Maybe twenty meters ahead, beyond Art’s left shoulder, Brian spots a shadowy figure big enough to be an ork, only it isn’t an ork like any Brian’s ever seen."What the frag!”

  The figure darts out of sight, across the junction and into a secondary tunnel.

  “Art! Art!”

  Art charges ahead. Brian wonders if maybe he should’ve taken the day off, but then runs to catch up. Art stops at the junction, looking down the tunnel to the left. Five meters along, a water-tight door in the tunnel wall stands wide open, only blackness beyond.

  A water-tight door .. ? like on a submarine ... ?

  “What’s the frag is a door like that—”

  “Ain’t you never heard of flow valves?”

  “Sure, but I never seen one like that.”

  Art grunts."This is where the fun starts. You ready?” Brian stares at the door and the blackness beyond, then says in a low, angry voice, “Just what are we facing here? Orks? Does that door lead into the ork underground?”

  Art turns to face him, jabs a finger at his armor-insulated chest. In a voice low, angry and menacing, Art says, “Some of them look like orks, but they ain’t orks. Not anymore."

  "Then what are they?”

  “You don’t wanna know.”

  “Yes, I fragging do.”

  “No, you don’t.”

  “Do I have to repeat myself?”

  “You’re slotting me off, kid.”

  “Not likely.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “You got too big a sense of humor.”

  “Hah-hah. Funny, kid. Real funny.” Art nods, sharply."We’ll see how funny you are when those scummers come straight at you. You know what they do when they catch you? Do you have any idea what those things are capable of?”

  Brian hesitates."You’re telling me there’s more than one of them?”

  Art leans into his face, and whispers, “Good guess.”

  30

  The street is just a hairbreadth beyond the border of the Bronx, in a crumbling district called Pelham. The shop located at midblock looks like a rat hole, crammed into a narrow space between a burnt-out warehouse and a rotting tenement building. Tikki pushes the door of the shop inward. It creaks. The shop’s interior is dim and dusty and crowded with every kind of electronic device: everything from telecoms to comp decks, kitchen appliances, and security devices. Mounted up near the water-stained ceiling, also veined with cracks, is a pair of Ingram SMGs mated with vidcams. One gun silently turns, tracking with Tikki as she walks toward the rear of the shop. The other stays pointed at the front door. The shop owner must be a careful person.

  At the rear of the shop, behind a wooden-tone counter, sits a small male with thin gray hair. A magnifying device hangs before his eyes from the metal band ringing the crown of his head. He wears a white shirt, black suit jacket, and blue felt tie. His right hand holds something that looks like a circuit board. His left hand is pure cyber, some kind of multifunction tool, now a drill, faintly whirring, now some kind of soldering iron, sending a faint trail of smoke drifting up.

  As Tikki approaches the counter, the man lifts the magnifying device from in front of his eyes and lays the circuit board aside. He looks at Tikki blankly.

  “Langkafel,” she says.

  The man nods, and, rising from his stool, lays his hands, such as they are, against his side of the counter. He speaks in an undertone, an almost timid murmur."I am Heinrich Langkafel. Good morning. How may I help you?”

  Tikki puts the telecom from NewMan Management Systems on the counter."Tell me everything it knows.”

  Langkafel nods vaguely, eyebrows rising. He smells less of anxious uncertainty than simple indecision."An unusual request,” he says in his sheep-like murmur."May I ask ... is this your device?”

  “Who carried it in?”

  Langkafel nods again, seeming willing to accept that as his answer, but then says, “You will understand, I think, if I remark that a businessman must be mindful of his reputation. How is it, if I may ask, that you happened to come to my shop with this request?”

  “Number four-two-six.”

  A nervous, sweaty scent enters the air. Langkafel hesitates, watching her. That is a sensible reaction. Number 426 refers to Lau Tsang, a ranking member of the triad organization known as the Large Circle League. Lau Tsang is the “Red Pole” in charge of enforcement for the New York metroplex. Lau Tsang does not hesitate to kill or brutalize people who displease him. Lau Tsang is a dangerous person.

  And powerful.

  “Yes ... yes, of course.” Langkafel nods. He takes the telecom in hand and looks it over."Naturally, I’m happy to assist the friend of a friend. What you ask will not be difficult. A few simple tools. I would ask in return only a modest fee.”

  Tikki’s been to the bank, tapped one of her accounts. She lays five fifty-nuyen notes in Fuchi scrip on the counter.

  This close to Fuchi-town, the corp’s scrip is as good as certified cred.

  Langkafel picks up the notes."That will be quite adequate,” he says."The work will take a few minutes. Do you wish to wait?”
<
br />   “I’m waiting now.”

  “Yes ... yes, of course.”

  Ten minutes later, Tikki’s walking out with five sheets of densely packed information, a hardcopy direct from the telecom’s memory. Included in that info is a list of telecom codes. Those codes identify the originating telecoms used to make the last one hundred calls to NewMan Management Systems. Only one code appears more than once and it’s in the local telecommunications grid.

  The question, then, is this: could O’Keefe have called the telecom at his NewMan Management office, presumably to get his messages—not once, but five times—from the same telecom, such as the telecom in his home?

  And is O’Keefe that stupid?

  31

  The Doc Wagon Crisis Response Team drops from their CRT twin-engine VTOL on rappelling lines to the roof of some grungy squatzone building, and opens up with SMGs. Dr."Hoot” Hoganoff leads the charge to the fire escape. There are fifteen orks and a dozen yakuza killers all trying to cut him down with autofire and grenades, but nobody keeps Dr."Hoot” from the scene of a medical emergency.

  Abruptly, the channel changes.

  CyberRider appears, somewhere in the sprawl, racing through a gauntlet of howling, blood-drenched vampires and groaning gore-splattered ghouls on his Harley Magnum Express, fitted with quad-mounted machine guns and rocket launchers.

  Again, the channel changes.

  This time it’s Taffy Lee, swaying in time to a slow, languorous rhythm and smiling, and opening the front of her neomonochrome dress and baring her fabulous quivering boobies with their thick, jutting ...

  The telecom screen goes black.

  “Yo,” Monk says.

  “Hoi, yo,” Minx says, lying down beside him on his lounge of cushions, blankets, and pillows. She smiles and cozies up against his side and lays her head on his shoulder."You still awake?”

  “Is it late?”

  “It’s morning.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You booty.” Minx giggles."You make me so wiz happy.”

  “Yeah?”

  The idea makes Monk tingle. Minx is the most gorgeous stunning beautiful woman he’s ever known, from her wild frizzled hair, changing from red to reddish orange to reddish gold and back again, to her gleaming eyes and pert nose, her slim, luscious body, and her little girlie feet. He still can’t believe that she actually likes him, much less that she loves him, or wants to be with him all the time. Yet, she lifts her head to nod at him and smile, then kisses him full on the mouth, and briefly exhales into his mouth, his throat, his lungs. They breathe into each other’s mouth a couple of times. It makes him hotter than sex.