Never Deal with a Dragon

by Robert N. Charrette

  It should have come as no surprise that the touted Tir border patrol had muffed it even worse than she had thought. That they should miss her was understandable. That had happened often enough. But to miss that corporate pigeon made them look like noids. It was a fluke, a bad toss of the dice. Pure good luck for that suit Verner and bad for her.

  The messenger was still there. “Get out of here,” she snapped, still caught up in her annoyance.

  “Do you wish to make a response?”

  “To your nameless principal? Get serious.”

  “He has the continued health of your reputation at heart.”

  “But won’t let himself be named? I’m touched.”

  “His name would be quite familiar, I assure you. It would only be unwise for you to know it at this time. I was told to say that you would find his favor most useful in the future. His good will is easy to earn. All he asks in return for the information I have brought is a general outline of your plans.”

  “Smoke and mirrors.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Tell him that. Smoke and mirrors.”

  The messenger drew himself erect with indignation. “Very well.” He turned and strode from the cabin, his expensive leather loafers squishing slightly with each step.

  Got through the shine at last. A petty victory but better than nothing. Let the Elf take her answer back to his Mr. Mystery. Two could play at the confusion game.

  Whoever sent the messenger could have any of a dozen reasons for passing the information to her. Mr. Mystery could be playing on just about any side in the conflict. Or he could be someone not directly involved but using the opportunity to turn things against a rival or to twist them in favor of a friend. Without more information, she could not tell. Whatever someone’s reason for giving her the information, now that she had it there was no time to look into the source. The only source she could rule out was the ornery old worm that was her own contractor. Had he known of Verner’s survival, he would have sent an army of goons to convey the message that she had failed in her contract.

  Tessien needed to know; it had the same contract. Hart shrugged on a jacket against the cool night air. She didn’t bother to lock the cabin; there was nothing to steal and no one here to steal it. She took the trail further up the mountain to the dry cave where Tessien lay coiled and dozing. The feathered serpent awoke as she entered its lair.

  “Bad news, Tessien.”

  “Anything that disturbs my rest is bad.” Annoyance washed through the cave.

  “Well, rest time is over.”

  She felt the serpent’s curiosity even though it said nothing.

  “Verner, that suit we pulled out of Renraku as cover for the doppelganger plant, is still alive. The Tir border guards didn’t get him, and he’s popped up in San Francisco in the company of a runner called Dodger. This runner is some kind of wiz decker and the two of them are snooping around the Matrix. Sounds like their search is still mostly random, but they’ve got our names and will follow that up sooner or later.

  “They’ve got Drake’s name, too.”

  “Does he know the suit is alive?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “We must take care of this quickly.”

  “My sentiments exactly. I hate fragging loose ends.”

  The serpent growled its agreement.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sam woke to the smell of soy sauce and hot broth. He opened his eyes and turned his head. The source of the odor stood on the rickety table by the window. Dodger must have been down to the noodle shop on the corner, because two foam containers sat steaming, while a third empty one rolled back and forth in the fitful breeze from the open window. Sam was halfway through what remained of the soba when Dodger returned from a trip to the only functioning john in the semi-abandoned tenement where they had set up shop.

  “Ah, Sir Twist, you are awake.”

  With a mouthful of noodles, Sam mumbled a garbled reply.

  “No need to offer such effusive thanks for the food. Think nothing of the expense or time involved, for are we not in this run together?”

  Having swallowed the last recalcitrant noodle, Sam was free to reply. “It was your turn to get the food anyway.”

  Dodger’s wounded look was pure mockery, but the Elf’s light mood didn’t quite mesh with a sudden seriousness that Sam felt. Maybe it was the mention of expenses.

  “Dodger, I’m grateful that your friend the Professor arranged to get us here, but won’t he expect some kind of repayment.”

  The Elf shrugged. “The passage was no strain on his resources. Mayhaps in the fullness of time, he will command a reckoning, mayhaps he won’t. I would find it no surprise were he to rely on your own conscience to weigh the balance of benefits and services, and to repay his efforts as you see fit. He is quirky that way.”

  That didn’t make Sam feel any better. “My conscience is weighing a little too heavily lately. I wish you hadn’t stolen that money.”

  “Operating capital, Sir Twist. Can’t run without it. The funds were ill-gotten gains anyway, lost long ago to their true owners. We merely prevented some unscrupulous corporate defilers of the landscape from the profit of their crimes.”

  “It’s still theft.”

  “Liberation.”

  “Semantics.”

  “Necessity,” Dodger laughed.

  Sam found himself grinning along. The Elf’s mood had finally infected him, despite his misgivings about their actions. They had arrived in San Francisco with only a hundred nuyen on Dodger’s credstick, ten more in corporate scrip, and another fifty in UCAS currency. The last was mostly paper and next to worthless in the Free State of California.

  They had to live while they sought justice. Was it not also justice for them to subsist off criminals?

  Money was a problem for them, but it was their hope as well. The world’s banking was mostly electronic now and money transfers left a trail that they could follow through Matrix. The trail had already connected Hart and the serpent Tessien to Drake, the man who was pulling the mercenary runners’ strings. Dodger had made no secret of his relief when Sam agreed they should concentrate on the man behind the Elf runner and Dragon. He had seemed impressed by their reputations and reluctant to tangle with them.

  So they hunted Drake now, but so far he had proved to be a mystery man. They knew he was often seen with Nadia Mirin, president of Natural Vat foods. That information had come during a general data search of the news networks, and from the society section, of all places. Calling up a datapic had confirmed that the Mr. Drake who escorted Ms. Mirin was the same man Sam had met in the abandoned car lot. The connection stubbornly remained a random data point. Nothing they tried ever linked Drake to Mirin in any way other than socially. He was not connected with Natural Vat, its parent company Aztechnology, or any of the subsidiary or sibling companies that Sam and Dodger managed to check. That was unusual and intriguing. Executives of Mirin’s stature usually kept their romances within the corporate family.

  “Are you ready to crack those files we hooked on the last run?”

  “I think so. The nap and the food have pretty much taken care of the headache.” The files in question were filched copies of transaction records from Transbank. The run through the bank’s security had been exhausting, with even Dodger admitting that he might not be able to crack the locks on the files and extract the data safely. By now, Sam knew that for the Elf to make such an admission meant the task at hand was extremely tricky. These files must be heavily protected.

  The files turned out to be just that. It was hours before they determined that Drake had certified several credsticks through Transbank. It seemed hardly worth the effort and new headache to achieve such a dead end. A certified credstick was the electronic equivalent of cash. The money could still be traced once it reentered the financial network, but there would be no record of who had received the credstick.

  “‘Twas a small hope that he would be so careless.”<
br />
  “Maybe if we can find some other transactions of the same monetary value as were assigned to Drake’s certified sticks, we can pick up the trail by following it from wherever Transbank sends the funds. Sure, some of the matches will just be coincidence, but some might actually be the recipients of Drake’s generosity. If we’re lucky, some of the names attached to those transactions might mean something.”

  After two more days of data slogging, they had eliminated likely coincidences. That left three names. Each one connected to at least three transactions whose amounts equalled one of Drake’s credsticks.

  The first, Nadia Mirin, was no surprise. In her case, the amounts were the smallest, suitable as gifts to one’s paramour. The second name was totally unfamiliar, but the pattern of intervening transactions was interesting. Each amount went through a series of transfers, all for the exact value of Drake’s credstick. Each thread led to a sealed account in a Denver data haven. Dodger pronounced the data trail to be a record of the laundering of Hart’s payments. At Sam’s suggestion, they traced a similar trail from deposits made by a known client of Hart’s and got the same sealed account number, confirming the Elf’s supposition. The last name sat at the end of a similar, but much less well hidden, trail. The destination account was registered to A.A. Wilson.

  “A. A. Wilson.” Sam shook his head. “Why does that name seem familiar?”

  “Familiar or not. ‘Twould seem that Mr. Drake finds something about Squire Wilson worth a lot of money. But what?”

  “If we knew who A. A. Wilson was, we might have a clue.”

  “How many people can there be with that name?”

  Dodger sighed. “We don’t know that it is a real name. Whether it is or not, there could be quite a few. ‘Twill be another time-consuming task.”

  “So?”

  “I thought you would say that, but it would help if we could narrow things down.”

  Sam thought about it for a minute. There really was something familiar about the name. “What if Wilson is a Metahuman?”

  “‘Twould help, if ‘twere true. How have you come by that revelation?”

  “I don’t know. Something in the back of my mind says Metahuman when I hear the name. Maybe I read it somewhere. Something medical.”

  “Mayhaps Wilson is a doctor specializing in Metahuman physiology?”

  “Could be.” Sam shook his head in puzzlement. “It’s a place to start.”

  The AMA files for Seattle yielded no A. A. Wilson. A check into the complete database for the UCAS did no better.

  “Try the Salish-Shidhe Council,” Sam suggested. “Let’s not go too far afield yet.”

  An hour later, Dodger had something. “A. A. Wilson is licensed to practice in Salish-Shidhe. He is listed as residing in Cascade Crow lands on an extraterritorial reservation belonging to the Genomics Corporation.”

  “Genomics? Run a check on medical literature. See if Wilson has published anything.”

  Dodger hacked into the public datanet and pulled the files in a flash.

  “Squire Wilson appears to be an accomplished man of letters. He is principal or subsidiary author of several papers.” Title by title, Dodger began reciting the list. “‘Variational Effects of Albinism...”

  “In Metahumans’” D. Nyugen, M.T. Chan, and A. A. Wilson, Biophysiology, 2049,” Sam finished for him.

  “Verily. How did you know that?”

  “I scanned it as part of the research I was assigned in setting up the arcology’s Metahuman medical library. That project was how I knew about the medical files when we did the run to see if Tessien worked for Renraku.”

  “An amazing memory, Sir Twist, but it gains us little.”

  “Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t.” Another memory prodded him. “Dodger, there was an albino with Hart’s team in the arcology.”

  “Coincidence?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I believe an investigation into Squire Wilson and Genomics is in order. But first,” Dodger said with a grin, “it’s your turn to get the food.”

  Sam acquiesced with good humor. They had a lead now, their first hope of penetrating whatever had set off the chain of events that led to Hanae’s death and his own exile from corporate society. Knowing what Drake was really involved in would make a difference. They would bring him down to pay for the murders he had arranged and all his machinations with him.

  The noodle shop was closed. They had worked so hard and long that night had become early morning. The only thing that would be open now was a Stuffer Shack, and Sam found one three blocks over. The selection was dismal, but he thought a couple of packets of self-warming Nutrisoy soup would at least offer some nutritional value. By the time Sam got back to their squat, Dodger was finishing a run on the public datanet. The Elf looked glum.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

  ”Genomics. As the name might suggest, the corporation is a cutting-edge biotechnology firm with a specialty in genetic manipulations. As such, one would also expect a cutting-edge security system. I checked with some runners who have reason to know about their ice, and it sounds like only a lengthy siege could get at their corporate architecture from the Matrix. The only way to get the information quickly is if we can get physically inside and then use a corporate machine within the intrusion shield to get the data. Even if we had the force for an assault, without a Matrix overwatch, it could be too risky.”

  “But an accredited cyberterminal user could take a side trip and deck into the files.”

  “Most likely. But that does not surmount the other difficulty. The firm is headquartered in Quebec.”

  “Guess I’m going to Quebec, then.”

  Dodger sighed. “What will you do there? You no longer exist, remember? When you were reported dead, your System Information Number was frozen. Without a SIN, you are a nonentity in the corporate world. No air travel to get there. No passport to get in. No cushy corporate job from which to subvert their data.”

  Sam would not let this lead escape. “You’ve survived for years outside the corporate structure. That means you’ve found some way around the problem. False identities or fake SINs. Something that gets you past checkpoints.”

  “‘Tis a necessity.”

  “Then I’ll need one set up for a researcher. That’s the work I did for Renraku. A busy company like Genomics will always be on the lookout for good researchers.”

  “An identity patched together on short notice will not withstand much scrutiny.”

  “It won’t have to. Background checks on low-level workers can’t be that thorough, even in Quebec. A day or two to get system codes. Then once inside the IC, I’ll deck into Wilson’s files, get what I can and leave. With what you’ve shown me, I shouldn’t need more than a week.”

  “Parlez-vous français?”

  “Good point. I’ll need a language chip, too.”

  “Incroyable!” Dodger shook his head, in amazement. “Pray tell, Sir Corporate Spy, how are you planning to get there? The free and proud Dominion of Quebec is almost as sensitive about its borders as the Tir.”

  “You’re the hot shadowrunner, Dodger. You make the arrangements.”

  “Your faith is greater than your bankroll, Sir Mastermind.”

  “Then I’ll have to owe somebody some favors.”

  “A few days ago, you were bemoaning unknown debts. Today you profess yourself eager to plunge into more.”

  Sam tossed their forgotten meal onto the table. He was no longer hungry. “This feels right, Dodger. I just know that Genomics is part of this mess. I’ll get something there that will make sense of what has happened.”

  “A premonition? How mystical.”

  Sam grimaced. “It’s nothing like that. It’s just a hunch.”

  “Then we shall play it out.”

  Dodger started to get up, but Sam reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. “No. Not we. After you make the travel arrangements, I want you out of it. I owe you enough already.”r />
  Dodger continued to stand against the pressure of Sam’s hand. He stood erect and looked down at Sam, his eyes glittering with emotion. “Sir Twist, you wound me. I am not a shylock to count each penny. You will need me to do the decking.”

  “I’ll have to manage. Genomics won’t hire both of us, so there’s no need for both of us to risk our necks.” Dodger started to object again, but Sam cut him off. “Besides, there’s another line to be traced. Drake’s got enough money or backing to hire expensive mercs like Hart, while we’ve only got ourselves. The longer we take finding out what we need to know, the more likely Drake will squirm beyond our reach. If I go to Quebec, I’ll be tied up checking out Genomics. Somebody has to keep on trying to learn some hard facts about Drake.”

  “Why then do you not do it? You have named him as your foe, after all.”

  “If Drake’s not based in Seattle, he’s at least working this operation from there. I can slot a chip that will let me speak French, but nothing can make me know the shadows of Seattle like you do. You’re the best man for that job.”

  The Elf relaxed his belligerent stance, and a new light entered his eyes. “You trust me to do that work for you?”

  “I trust you.”

  “Ah, the fierce faith of necessity.”

  Sam couldn’t tell how much of Dodger’s comment was companionable jest and how much mocking irony. He didn’t care. He knew the Elf wouldn’t betray him to Drake; Dodger was too committed to the underdog. Sam wanted to believe that their time together had forged a real bond and that the Elf was a friend. His own growing affection for the rogue was real enough. Before this was over, Sam knew, he was going to need all the friends he could get.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  The service monitor station was cramped and smelled of old sweat, ozone, and the battling forces of mildew and disinfectant. When the aquaculture tanks it monitored had gone on line a month ago, the overwatch had transferred to the main control consoles, leaving the station virtually unused. Crenshaw jiggled the louver of the climate control vents, but the sluggish flow of air did not improve. For all its discomforts, this place offered a quiet and privacy rare anywhere in the arcology. With an active computer console, the station was useful enough to her. And Crenshaw liked it here in the dark.