by John Meaney
“What happened?” asked Maggie. “How did—?”
“It was unbelievable.” Brian stared at Yoshiko, awestruck.
The med-centre dwindled in size. Already, it looked like a child's toy.
“He saw only my weakness.” In memory, it was as though Yoshiko had struck without volition, just letting it happen. “Not his own.”
Cold and grey, the first wisps floated past, then storm clouds enveloped the taxi in darkness.
The vast atrium was eerily silent. Rows of glass display cases stood like military coffins, waiting to be shipped home.
“I don't like this.” Brian's voice was hushed.
In plan view, the conference centre was a linked series of overlapping circles, beneath the hovering wings of the levitating roof. Their taxi had passed over a huge growing crowd of people, a demonstration of some kind, and over the visitors and delegates flocking to the conference here, on the Skein/EveryWare issue.
“Don't worry.”
This part of the complex, obviously not booked for the conference, felt unsettling because of the contrast: empty, while thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people were milling around nearby. In here, dead silence.
“You shouldn't meet her alone.”
“Don't worry,” Yoshiko said again. “She wants to help. We can't risk frightening her off.”
“You should at least have let Maggie come with you.”
Yoshiko shook her head. “Someone had to meet Eric. And we're running late.”
“Well, I'm not going to risk arguing with you.” Brian gave a small, crooked smile. He took a black ring from his pocket, and proffered it. “Please take this. If you press the stud, I'll come running.”
Grateful for his concern, Yoshiko slipped the ring on.
“Thank you, Brian.”
“OK. It was auditorium three alpha, you said?” Using his wrist terminal, he pulled up a schematic of the conference centre. “It's up that way. I'll wait here for you.”
As she walked up a curved and sloping hallway, tension prickled Yoshiko's skin.
Had she truly understood Felice's oblique message? Was Tetsuo really still alive?
He's all right. Don't worry.
It was Ken's dear voice, and for a moment she could see his gentle smile.
Oh, Ken.
To feel his fingertips brush against her cheek once more—
By the sweeping doorway, a holo glowed: 3a.
Yoshiko stepped through, into darkness.
“What's this?”
“Lower your head.” Dhana slipped the ring around his neck. “A present.”
All around them, a sea of people. Many thousands. Every now and then, a wave of motion would pass through the crowd, like a tidal force.
Dhana pressed a stud on the neck-ring. For a moment, everything blurred, and then Tetsuo could see clearly again.
“What is this?”
“A holo-mask. In case the proctors start observing.” A wicked smile formed across her gamine face. “Actually, that's quite an improvement. I've always liked blond men.”
“Very funny.” Tetsuo noticed her shiver slightly as he spoke. “What's wrong?”
“The lip-synch's a bit off. It's kind of scary.”
“Hush,” said someone. “Proctors're comin’.”
Tetsuo stood on tip-toe, using his height to see above the ocean of heads. Beyond the plaza, peacekeeper flyers were disgorging personnel whose jumpsuits were tuned to green, not dark blue.
“What's wrong?” Dhana held his arm and jumped up, trying to see.
“It's the TacCorps.”
Shadows hung like bats in the cavernous darkness. Low shapes ranged across a floor so soft that all echoes were absorbed.
“Please don't move.” The woman's voice played a glissando of fear down Yoshiko's spine.
Someone there. She touched something and spun, stepped triangularly and spun again.
No one attacked.
A seat. She was in an auditorium and had brushed against a seat, that was all.
Copper sparkles in the blackness overhead. Smartatom mist.
“Don't worry.” Three metres above the floor, a cone of white light picked out Felice Lectinaria's haughty features. “I had to check for surveillance. I'm afraid your call-ring has been deactivated.”
As she spoke, Felice descended through the darkness, and Yoshiko realized she was on a lev-platform, used by speakers to point out features on giant holo illustrations.
“I have to know—” Yoshiko was breathless. “Is Tetsuo all right?”
“He was fine when I talked to him yesterday.”
“Oh, my God.” Yoshiko grabbed a nearby chair, and sat down on its arm. “Thank you.”
“I'm sorry. I didn't dare tell you more plainly, before now.” Felice's tone was brisk, though sympathetic. “May I ask whom the call-ring was intended to contact?”
“A friend.” Yoshiko looked up at her. “A trusted friend.”
“One needs trustworthy friends, that's for sure.” As the lev-platform alighted, Felice stepped off. “Many of mine are among the Shadow People.”
“I'm sorry?”
“You saw the demonstration outside? They're representatives of many septs—clans and tribes, if you like—of minorities who live at the edge of what we consider the habitable zones. And often beyond that edge.”
“I beg your pardon.” Yoshiko's heart was thumping hard. “I know nothing of Fulgidi politics. I just want to know where my son is.”
“He's with the Shadow People.”
“Here? You mean he's outside, right now?”
“Oh, yes. I can't speak for his political commitment, but he has at least one special friend out there with him.”
Yoshiko swallowed. “He's not under duress?”
“Absolutely not. And now, in return for that information—” Felice stopped, as though listening for something, then shook her head. “I want you to have this.”
She held out a blue crystal. Yoshiko looked at it without moving.
“It's a comms relay,” Felice continued. “A product of illegal research by TacCorps, using unauthorized copies of Tetsuo's ware.”
“Why—?”
“I'm about to go public in my support for the Shadow People. There are NewsNet reporters all over the other sections of the complex, where the conference is being held.”
Yoshiko accepted the crystal.
There was a scrape of sound, and she whirled, scanning the shadows.
“Don't worry.” Felice smiled grimly. “The lev-platforms touch each other sometimes.” She pointed to a group of disks suspended near the floor, like a giant child's mobile. “They frightened me at first.”
Yoshiko looked down at the crystal in her hand. “Will this show that Tetsuo had nothing to do with that poor man's death? Adam Farsteen, I mean.”
“No, but it's a start. A clone of Federico Gisanthro, a Luculentus, was interfaced with animal minds. Or rather, his mind was partially distributed across their brains, and you need mu-space comms to make that work, to remove the lightspeed delay.” Felice smiled grimly and added, “We can prove that. We can also prove that your son's ware was stolen to do that job. From there, it's a short step to—”
“Stop. Stop right there.” Yoshiko's thoughts whirled, and instinct told her to trust Felice. Rapidly, she said, “Rafael de la Vega has been infiltrating Luculenti minds—at least, Luculentae, female minds—and probably scanning them, absorbing them into his plexcore nexus.”
“What? Rafael?” Those haughty features looked shaken. “You're talking about Xanthia Delaggropos. And Rashella Syntharinova.”
“There are one hundred and two plexcores in Rafael's nexus,” said Yoshiko, as a look of horror crept across Felice's face. “You're talking about research into the same kind of thing…”
The things Rafael had done. The nonhuman thing he might become. Felice obviously saw the implications immediately.
“But the TacCorps research was without extra plex
cores.” Felice was collecting her thoughts. “You can't just buy them from LuxPrime. Perhaps Rafael's found a way to stop them randomizing. I'm talking about grave-robbing—”
A soft, brushing sound. A foot sliding just above the carpet.
“Tell me about plexcores,” said Yoshiko, but she was not listening to Felice's reply.
“After death, the plexcore is powered down, and buried. It's supposed basically to self-destruct if someone were to dig it up and try—”
There were two of them, at least. Possibly three.
“Felice!” Yoshiko whispered urgently. “Call for—”
A beam flicked out of the darkness, and Felice fell.
I can't initiate a SkeinLink.
“Guido's not too happy with you.” A TacCorps agent, a grim-looking man, walked into the light, aiming a graser at Yoshiko. “In fact, he's rather pissed off.”
Try anyway.
Like a child wishing evil ghosts away, Yoshiko concentrated on accessing Skein.
Nothing.
Another TacCorps agent, a short-haired woman, knelt by Felice and checked the pulse in her throat. The woman nodded.
Her colleague kept his graser trained on Yoshiko. He was crouched in a low stance, left hand outstretched, graser held in his right hand close to his body. Aware of Yoshiko's skills, neutralizing any chance of deflecting or seizing the weapon before he could fire.
Anger.
The third shadow moved. For a second, hope leaped as Yoshiko thought it might be Brian, but the figure was far too big.
The thing was to make them angry.
“The trouble with you—” Yoshiko started.
Getting closer.
Make some noise.
“It's not fair!” Yoshiko let all her fear and anger rip. “You bastards set my son up for murder and now you're trying to kill me and I just won't have it, do you hear? I JUST WON'T HAVE IT!”
The TacCorps man looked puzzled, then grim, and as his finger tightened on the firing-stud the shadow moved behind him and something dark and polished glinted as it hammered into the man's skull. He dropped like a stone.
The female agent near Felice was straightening up and aiming when Yoshiko grabbed her weapon's barrel and twisted and it fired into the agent's own torso and her face screwed up in pain as she fell.
“Yoshiko.”
The woman was dead. Yoshiko had never used her art in anger before today, and now a woman was dead.
Something keened inside Yoshiko, a voice crying to the fallen woman to get up. But the body was an extinct shell, its eyes already coated with death's opacity.
“My God, Yoshiko.”
The big bearish man was standing there.
“Oh, Eric.”
Then her face was against his massive chest. Eric's strong arms enclosed her. He was warm and solid, infinitely comforting, and she felt safe at last.
A NewsNet broadcast? Irritably, Rafael put the NetAngel on hold.
Luculenta Yoshiko Sunadomari.
He had failed to kill her in person, and peacekeepers had descended in droves on the med-centre to prevent another attempt. Then she had made herself a prize, plump target. A Luculenta!
The NetAngel bleated another comm-request, and he quelled it once more.
He had never risked striking through Skein, for fear of being tracked through audit logs. Always, he had used untraceable line-of-sight fast-comm links. And yet, and yet—
Through Skein, he could subsume anyone, anywhere, without moving from his home.
A third request, and he nearly banished the NetAngel for good. A NewsNet retrieval was hardly likely to reveal his target. His NetAngels were supposed to prowl more promising infoseams.
Sighing, he gave the insistent ghost-Rafael his attention.
THREAD ONE