by Carl Sargent
“You get killed, I don’t get nothing—while I sit here for an hour like a devil rat just waiting for the trap to snap,” the ork replied.
Michael handed him another bill. “Down payment. Where will you be?”
“Two blocks back, before that last robot. That’s as close as I’ll get. Anyone takes a pot-shot at me and I’m gone.”
“Deal.” Michael opened the back door and Tom and Kristen piled out with him. The cab sped off, wheels screaming as it careened around the corner.
“He doesn’t much like it around here,” Tom joked. “Me neither,” Michael said, only partly reassured by the SMG in the troll’s hands. “Kristen, if this doesn't work out, we’re going to have macro trouble here.”
“I told you. Indra has a cousin who has another cousin and the money was enough. They’ll be here.”
Exactly on cue, a group of figures began to take shape from out of the darkness of the surrounding street. There were a dozen of them, more or less. They weren’t armed with weapons of any real quality, but they had enough. It was the assault cannon that finally reassured Michael, and the pistol under his nose that made up his mind for him.
“Ten thousand, buttbrain,” the dwarf snarled at him. “Everything up front. You pay for any street doc work afterward. Anyone gets scragged, that’s five thou per. For the family.”
Well, it’s the family that got us this crew, Michael thought. Even if I have to pay for it twice over, it’s probably worth it. He handed over the envelope.
“Every last cent,” he said evenly. The dwarf counted it slowly, his expression saying that he’d have loved to find it short of the full amount.
“So, where is this place?”
“This way,” Tom said. He was drawn to it as easily as if someone had marked it with a neon sign.
* * *
“Let’s say, let’s just imagine,” Magellan waxed on, “that there’s someone who can make it happen. Let’s say he’s got a way of guaranteeing we elves can have it all. Let’s just imagine that for a moment.”
“I can’t,” Serrin said. He rubbed his hands together as if anguished by the disappointment of it. “I mean, how? That’s what matters, isn’t it?”
Magellan’s eyes flared with suspicion for a split second. Serrin stared directly at him, as if desperate to say, yes, yes, it’s good, it’s what I want, I just wish I could believe in it, and I could if only I knew how it could be done. Believe me.
“Let’s say,” Magellan said slowly, “that there’s a way of changing humans. Making them quieter. More docile. Easier to control. Something that could eliminate the stupid violence in them. A pacifier. No more war. No more destroying everything we build. Let’s imagine that.”
“A drug,” Serrin wondered aloud.
“Better. A permanent fix. Forever, in the genes, brother.”
“But I can’t see—”
“You don’t have to see! All you have to do is believe,” Magellan cried out. “It’s true. It’s real.”
“I do believe you,” Serrin said fervently, thinking it wiser not to express any more doubts. “But why am I here? What has all this to do with finding out who tried to kidnap me? I mean, that’s all I was after.”
Magellan nodded, biting his bottom lip, obviously trying to decide what to say next.
“Look. The elf who tried to kidnap you ... he has certain needs. Special requirements. You know all that. Do you think he likes what he does? Do you think he wants to kill his own? Oh, brother, it pains him. It’s the last thing he wants to do. But he has no choice. He’s burning up, he’s got to feed, and there aren’t many left. It’s his last option. God, how he must suffer.”
Serrin didn’t know whether to laugh or scream with rage. Him suffer, whoever he was?
“But why try to stop me from—”
“Because you want revenge. But that you can’t have. Mustn’t have,” Magellan whispered, his face centimeters away. His eyes had a wild look, his face now a grotesque mask. He had underestimated Serrin; he’d thought that Luther could easily dispose of the elf mage if he got too close, but Serrin and his friends had moved too fast. What else had they arranged? “He’s the wonder, brother. He’s the one who did it, don’t you see? He’s so close now, it’s only another day or two more. It’s nearly time . . . He’s the one who’s got—”
The detonation threw Serrin against the wall and sent Magellan flying across the floor. Serrin’s head slammed against the concrete so hard that his vision blurred; he could just barely make out Magellan dragging himself to his feet and stumbling for the door. Too groggy even to stand upright, Serrin was powerless to stop the red-haired elf as he grabbed the door handle and staggered out into the darkness. Gunfire crackled outside, and another cannon round hammered into the building somewhere behind him. Serrin half-rolled, half-fell off the bed and tried to drag himself underneath the metal frame for cover.
Then he heard a familiar voice screaming “No!” just as the Zulu samurai appeared in the doorway. The Zulu had a machine gun in his hands and was looking around wildly, any moment about to spray the room with fire. Serrin tried to cast a barrier spell around himself to ward off the hail of lead, but the pain in his head wouldn’t let him. Frag me, I’m dead, he thought dully.
The Zulu had his finger three parts back on the trigger when the side of his neck suddenly exploded into a bloody flower, the red petals of flesh lazily unfolding themselves as his blood gushed up onto the wall. The gun rose upward in an unsteady arc, some of the bullets striking the ceiling, then ricocheting around the room. Serrin covered his head and prayed. When he heard the smack of the body hitting the floor, he opened one eye and looked out at the carnage.
This time it was a dwarf in a flak jacket who was forcing his way into the room. Nut-brown, grim-faced, he too was looking around for Serrin. Even more startling was that the dwarf was obviously Indian. By now, though, it wasn’t the dwarf Serrin was seeing anymore. It was the girl slumped in the doorway, beginning to shake violently and still holding the pistol limply from her right hand.
“Here,” Serrin called to the dwarf who pivoted to point his Roomsweeper at him. Serrin knew he wasn’t going to get shot. He just wanted to get to her.
Kristen fell half to her knees, dropping the gun and starting to vomit just as he came up alongside her. Lifting her under the arms, Serrin hauled her up, hugging her so tightly he could hardly breathe. She couldn’t speak. A trickle of vomit dripped from her mouth onto his sleeve.
“It wouldn’t make a smash-hit movie,” the Englishman observed to the troll as the pair of them also entered the little room. Tom’s huge hands were already busy getting a tourniquet around Michael’s half-useless arm, which had saturated his sleeve with blood. The troll was sure he could heal it up pretty good, though. Better than he ought to be able to, maybe.
“But ain’t romance wonderful?”
Tom just managed to get his arms around Michael before he fainted.
* * *
Michael got a slap patch to make sure Tom’s healing did its work fully, and then their new allies told them it was time to get out of town fast. The gang that had brought Serrin here had chummers, and they’d come looking. But they found no further clues in the building where Serrin had been held—and not an elven body in sight.
“Bastard got away,” Serrin muttered.
“Like we’re going to. Word is probably already out at the club,” Michael said faintly. “Not to mention on the streets. A cab, James, and take me home. To the airport anyway. We’ll send a messenger for our things from the airport. I don’t think it would be too smart going back to the hotel ourselves.”
“No,” Serrin said, “That would be too suspicious. Tom and I will go. The gangers won’t be able to trace us there.”
“It was more that Magellan guy I was thinking of,” Michael said.
“I’ll take my chances,” Serrin said grimly.
“Well, we’ll all go together then. I don’t think splitting up is a good idea eithe
r. Haven’t you figured that out after tonight?”
“Will you be able to make it?” Serrin asked him.
“Sure. I’ve just lost a little blood, that’s all. My arm’s fine, really. Crikey,” Michael sighed, “those ‘family’ guys cleaned me out of every last cent, but they were worth it. It’s been a while since I’ve been in a real fight. It’s as much fun as you can have without a datajack.”
“Yeah, but where are we going to find a cab around here?” Serrin said. The derelict house where the team of Indian samurai had left them wasn’t exactly a premium pickup point for any money-seeking taxi driver.
“Good question,” Tom said. He ducked his head away from the glassless window frame as headlights headed up the road outside. Inching his head back up again, he peered over the rotting wooden window sill.
“We just got lucky,” he said and walked outside. A minute later the rest of them had also staggered out to the car.
“What the fragging hell made you come along here?” Tom asked the ork.
“Well, I saw the Maharana boys heading out this way. Guessed maybe they were coming to give you some help.
Reckoned you’d get out in one piece if they took care of business. I wanted my five hundred,” the ork grunted.
“It’s sitting in hotel security at the Imperial,” Michael said. “Look, get us there and to the airport and you can double it.”
A thousand nuyen for a cab ride, Serrin thought wonderingly. But what the hell; it would get the cab moving.
“We can clean up at the hotel,” he said. “We can’t just try and catch a plane out of here looking like this.” His own clothes were torn and dirty, while Michael’s jacket was splendidly technicolored with blood. “You won’t even get into the hotel lobby looking like a portable massacre.”
“Just go in, clean up, and bring me my stuff. I’ll change in the cab,” Michael groaned. He leaned painfully forward to look at Kristen, who was seated on the other side of Serrin from him. She seemed to be sleeping, tucked into the elf and not moving.
“I guess we’re taking Kristen,” he said quietly. “Her IDs aren’t going to be much use getting her into New York, but somehow I don’t think you’ll want to go without her.”
“No.” That was final. “But why risk New York?”
“Point one: I want my Fairlights. Point two: I think I’d kill for a delivery from the all-night deli by now. Point three: you’ve got a friend there who just might know the mysterious elf Magellan was talking about. Your occult-freak lady snoop, remember?”
“Two out of three isn’t bad,” Serrin said affably as he fumbled around for a cigarette. The streetlights flashing by bathed his gaunt face in sodium streaks. The cab was back into civilization by now.
“Not to mention the fact that we’re now dealing, apparently, with two sets of people who have an interest in kidnapping or killing you. Or maybe three, actually, if you consider that a small race war is probably about to break out down here. And Magellan’s still loose out there. You said he sounded Stateside; he may have tracked us from there. No going back to Cape Town, term. It’s a direct bolt all the way home to the Rotten Apple, old boy.”
“But what about Kristen’s passport? Will it get past immigration?” Serrin already knew the answer.
“About as much chance as a snowball in hell,” Michael said grimly. They fell silent. The solution had already occurred to the Englishman, but he wasn’t sure how he was going to sell it to Serrin.
“There’s one thing we could do,” Michael said slowly. “She’s got her own ID, amazingly enough. The real thing. You need it when the police hassle you on the streets, she told me. No passport, obviously. And that’s the problem. It would take days to get one and we just don’t have that time. But . . .”
Then he finally told the elf what he had in mind. “Look, you can’t be the one to do it,” the Englishman argued when Serrin protested. “I mean, it would be too difficult under the circumstances. A bit, um, premature. No, I didn’t mean that. You know what I mean. I think. But I could do it. I’m naturalized. Dual nationality.” Serrin stared at him, wide-eyed.
“This is going to cost Geraint a bloody fortune,” the Englishman lamented. “I mean, I never thought it would happen like this.”
Serrin still stared furiously at him.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Michael snarled. “Think of the favor I’m doing you, you ungrateful swine.”
Serrin still didn’t say so, but he knew Michael was right. There was no other way. Attempted bribery wouldn’t get them any further than a hefty jail term back in New York. And it would, indeed, take far too long to wait for official paperwork in Cape Town. Only a day or two more, Magellan had said.
“But how are we going to manage it?”
“Bet you Indra will know someone,” Michael said. “She seems to know everyone. Let’s just hope she does.”
When they got to the hotel, Serrin took off his filthy jacket and handed it to the Englishman before he and Tom went in.
While he waited, Michael shook the sleeping girl. “Wake up, Kristen. This is important.”
“What? Where are we now?” she said sleepily. He went on shaking her, ignoring the protest from his bad arm.
“Listen carefully to me. I have a proposition for you.”
* * *
“Let’s pray the Dutch Reformed Evangelical Church is good enough,” Michael said as they staggered out onto the runway in Manhattan’s late dawn.
The last eight hours had been a blur. It had been so long since they’d had a good night’s sleep that they hardly knew what day it was. Later, the frantic phone calls, the paperwork, the endless wait at the airport, the bizarre scene hurried through almost under the noses of immigration, getting their photos lacquered onto the cards, the restlessness of the suborbital flight.
“God, that plastic had better get us through here.” Michael took a deep breath and put his arm around Kristen, the pair of them heading for immigration just ahead of Semn and Tom. The bored official took one look at Michael’s ID and ushered him away into a side room.
Michael had thought the only way to be sure about getting Kristen back into New York was to use his real, genuine, documents. His ID would be scrutinized too closely for him to risk a fake, no matter how good it was. Now he had to sweat for twenty minutes before the official even arrived to speak with him.
“So you married a distant cousin, huh?” the man said, not looking at the Englishman, holding the identity card as if it might communicate leprosy if kept too long. “George, put this drek through the analyzers. And his passport. Hit them with everything we’ve got.
“You don’t sound much like an American to me,” the inspector said flatly, folding his arms across his chest and glaring at Michael.
“Dual citizenship, my friend. Qualified two years ago. It’s absolutely kosher.” Shattered with fatigue, Michael held on to the optimistic thought that they were checking him, and the card, and not Kristen’s ID. At least, so he hoped.
The man just grunted and waited. It was another fifteen agonizing minutes of silence before George, the other interrogator, returned. He handed Michael’s passport and the car to his superior.
“It checks out. Visual ID on the girl; that’s her. It’s all in order,” he said.
“Fine. Now work the girl over,” the first man said nastily.
“Please,” Michael said desperately, “I want to get my wife home. We’re distant cousins and our families are very close. I’m an American citizen. I’ve been traveling a long way and I want to get home. Also, maybe you noticed that one of my traveling companions is Mr. Serrin Shamandar. Maybe you’ve heard about him saving the mayor’s life down at Columbia the other day. We’ve been waiting more than half an hour while you checked on all this, and now you tell me you’re going to keep us even longer. I’m sorry, officer, but I must demand the opportunity to put a call through to the mayor’s office. And might I also have your name?”
The man looked at
him with utter hatred.
“It’s true about Shamandar,” George muttered. “The elf came in right behind him. I recognized him.”
Michael could have kissed the man for that, though George’s superior looked more like he wanted to kill him. “Okay, Mister Sutherland, I suppose you can go now.”
Michael walked out of the room with his heart hammering in his throat, then grabbed the hand of Kristen, who’d been kept waiting outside. In the distance, they saw a troll sitting with his fourth cup of coffee and an elf with far too many cigarette butts in the ashtray beside him.
* * *
The little group staggered wearily out of the terminal and found a taxi. As Michael gave another driver another set of instructions, he felt dissociated, as if his own voice were a robot croaking through its voxsynth.
“Home. Crikey, I never wanted to be back so bad,” he muttered to no one in particular. He glanced over at Serrin as if trying to focus his eyes.
“I guess I should say thanks,” Serrin said. “Hell, no, I do say thanks. You’re full of surprises, you know.”
Michael sat back and fixed the elf with a glacial stare. Then, in a perfectly pompous, truculent English accent, he said, “I say, old boy. Get your hands off my wife.”
23
Niall had always known that, one day, he’d be glad for his flying lessons. The Fiat-Fokker Cloud Nine amphibian had sat disguised for months, looked after by one of the handful of people the elf could trust. Upon arriving early that morning, he recognized the man through the heavy mist.
“Thank you, Patrick,” Niall said wearily. “You have watched here awhile. You can go as you will now. You’ll be looked after, though.”
“Take care with you. I know what is at stake. That is, I know something,” the man said quietly. “I know what the wrongness is. I don’t understand why it is being allowed to happen.”