by Lisa Smedman
“So what are you going to do about it?” Masaki asked. “Air a sensationalistic story that will make everyone in Seattle afraid to touch their trideo sets and computers in case a spirit jumps out and burns them alive?”
“What do you think I am-some tabcast muckraker?”
Masaki gave an embarrassed shrug.
Carla was astonished that Masaki had such a low opinion of her. Yes, she wanted this to be a big story, one that would shake people up. But at the same time, she wanted it to be hard-hitting and accurate, rather than merely sensationalistic, It was the only way to make NABS sit up and take notice of her-and give her that interview they’d promised.
“I want to do a story that will force Mitsuhama to take responsibility for the mess it’s created,” she told Masaki. “A story that will warn Renraku off before one of their wage mages makes the same mistake Farazad did. A story that will prevent a repeat of the Crash of 2029.”
She sat back, arms folded. What she’d just said bad sounded good. She almost believed it herself. But deep down, she was willing to admit that the real rush would come from seeing her sign-off at the end of a really big story and knowing that her name would be a household word for days to come. All over the fragging world.
Masaki grunted, and resumed his rummaging through tile box he held. “Yeah, well, the story is all yours. Carla. It became your story the night those yakuza shot at us.”
“They weren’t shooting at us. They were shooting at the kid.”
“Just leave my byline out of it, O.K.?”
Carla shook her head. “Anything you say, snoop.” She put an ironic emphasis on the last word. “Speaking of the ork girl, did you ever succeed in finding her? Or is she still out scuffing around the streets?”
“I found her,” Masaki said. “In Lone Star’s downtown containment facility. And it’s a good thing I did, too. She was in a tough spot. That story she told you about patrol officers shooting her friends-the one we thought was so far-fetched. I think it’s the truth.”
“What if it is?” Carla asked. “There’s nothing to go on.”
“Yes, there is,” Masaki countered. “She’s got the badge number of one of the chromer cops who did it, plus the name of his partner. The one who pulled the trigger.”
“Really?” Despite herself, Carla was intrigued.
“This could be a hot one. I can hear the lead-in now: ‘The Tarnished Star: Cop by Day, Humanis Policlub Basher by Night.’ ”
Carla could picture it, too. She still had the footage she’d shot of Pita that day she’d first come to the KKRU station. It would look great on trid. If the Mitsuhama story didn’t pan out, Carla could still score a few points by doing the Lone Star piece. She looked at Masaki out of the corner of her eye. “Are you going to pursue the story?”
“I don’t know.” He paused, and Carla thought she saw a guilty look cross his face. “Maybe.”
Drek. She’d have to move on this one as soon as the Mitsuhama piece aired. Otherwise Masaki would scoop it out from under her.
“So where’s the kid now?” she asked. “Still in jail?”
“She’s at my place. I just came down to the studio grab the things she left here.”
“Aziz is awfully keen to talk to her about…” Carla’s eyes widened as she saw what Masaki had fished out of the box. A credstick. And embossed on the side of it, in gold, was a logo. A Mitsuhama Computer Technologies logo.
Carla snatched the credstick out of Masaki’s hands. “Where did you get this?” she asked, her voice rising with excitement.
Masaki shrugged. “It’s Pita’s. While we were shooting her eyewitness take, she kept playing with the stuff in her pockets, making a rattling noise that her body mike picked up. I made her empty her pockets. The credstick was in them. Why? Is it stolen or something?”
Carla showed Masaki the logo, then turned the credstick so that he could see the magnetic keystrip down one side. “This is fragging unbelievable! This has been sitting here in our newsroom all this time, and you didn’t notice. There’s only one place the kid could have picked this credstick up-from Farazad’s body. And there’s only one door it could open. The Samji residence didn’t have a magkey system-just a thumbprint scanner. And you don’t put a corporate logo on a car key. So what’s left?”
Masaki had followed her train of thought. “The place where Farazad worked. The Mitsuhama Research Center.”
“Right.” Carla jiggled the credstick in her hand. “Care to join me in shooting a little unauthorized trid at the Mitsuhama lab?” she asked teasingly. She knew Masaki wouldn’t have the spine for it, but she couldn’t resist. Just as she had expected, his face went pale.
“Are you crazy?” His wheeze was back. “Not only that illegal-it’s dangerous. Mitsuhama’s security guards are rumored to be the toughest in the business, and their magical defenses are layers deep. You’ll be killed!”
Carla tucked the credstick neatly into the pocket of jacket. “Not if I have a good decker and a spirit backing me up,” she answered with a smug smile.
“I think you’re crazy,” Masaki said.
“You’re probably right,” Carla answered. “But if you want to get ahead in this business, you have to be willing to take some chances.”
22
Pita stared out the window of Masaki’s apartment, watching the gray clouds that were scudding low over the city. It was still early in the afternoon, but already the sky was quite dark. The first few drops of rain left thin streaks on the heavy plate glass window.
After a moment of silent contemplation, she turned back to Aziz. The mage was sitting on the couch across from her, trying to took casual. But Pita had enough street smarts to read the tension and anticipation in his slightly parted lips and twitching fingers. What she had to say was vitally important to him. The only thing she couldn’t figure out was why.
“How come you think it was me who banished the spirit?” Pita asked. “All I did was disturb your spell-casting when I tried to cross your magical circle.”
Aziz looked annoyed. “I’ve already explained that to you once,” he said tersely. “Your striking the hermetic circle was only part of it. It had to be that the spirit was affected by something you did or said.”
He leaned forward, pointing a finger at her. “Think, now. Did you say any words that might have sounded like a name? Did you make any gestures or think any thoughts that-”
“I’ve already told you everything I can think of,” Pita said. “I thought the spirit was going to kill you. I wanted to help. Cat led me to you. Maybe it-”
“That’s old ground,” Aziz said. “Your totem led you to me, nothing more. You said it had already fled the shop, which means it had nothing to do with driving the spirit away. It was of no consequence.”
“Why didn’t you go back and get your cat after the shop burned down?” Pita asked coldly. “Wasn’t it of any consequence to you, either?” Part of her anger was fueled by guilt. She hadn’t seen Aziz’s cat since last night-since just before she went downtown to join the sit-in. She hoped it was doing all right. That it hadn’t been run over by a car or anything.
Aziz ignored her question. “If you could just tell me what you-”
“Listen,” she said, cutting him off. “You’re the mage. You’ve done this stuff for years. I’m just a kid who Cat helps out from time to time. I only let you into Masaki’s apartment because 1 figured you wanted to thank me for saving your life, If I wanted to be cross-examined, I’d go back to fragging…” She swallowed, unable to complete the sentence, even though she’d begun it in jest. Not enough time had elapsed since her narrow escape from the jail and the cop who’d killed her friends.
“I am grateful that you saved my life,” Aziz said tightly. “I already thanked you for that. And you’re wrong about your magical abilities. You have a powerful talent-more powerful than you realize. I wish I…”
He made a dismissive gesture with one blistered hand. He didn’t have to say the rest; Pita cou
ld see the envy in his eyes. And that made her pause. Maybe-just maybe-she really did have a unique and powerful talent. If she really had driven away the spirit-something Aziz himself, with all of his knowledge of the magical arts, hadn’t been able to do-she had an edge. Something that made her special-something she could use to survive. Something that made her a better magician, in terms of her natural abilities, than the hermetic mage sitting across from her.
“Just humor me a little longer,” Aziz said. “It’s Important.”
“You promise you’ll put me in touch with that shaman you told me about?” Pita asked. “The one who will teach me to use my power?”
“I already agreed to that.”
“How am I going to get by in the meantime? I don’t nave a single nuyen.”
Grimacing with frustration, Aziz plunged a hand into the breast pocket of his robe. He pulled out a credstick, rose to his feet, and stalked over to the telecom unit. “Do you have a bank account?” he asked.
Pita just laughed. “Who, me? You must be fizzed.” Aziz plugged the credstick into the slot. “What’s your name?” he asked. “Not your street name-your real name.”
She told him.
“Date of birth?”
“July 19, 2037.”
Aziz keyed in a series of commands, muttering as he did. “Hmm. We’ll use Masaki’s apartment as your current address, and I’ll say you’re employed at my shop. That should do it…” He called her over and had her stand in front of the pickup camera, then told her to sit down again. After a moment or two, the printer scrolled out hard copy. He tore it from the unit and handed it to Pita with a flourish.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“A statement from your bank account. Take a look.” Pita’s mouth dropped open. If this was true, Aziz had just opened an account at the Salish Credit Union and deposited one thousand nuyen in it. In her name. When she looked up, he was smiling.
“Let’s call that a deposit. There’s more where that came from, as long as you promise to work with me. All right?”
Pita nodded mutely. This really was worth a lot him. She wondered what his angle was-how he planned to capitalize on it. And whether the transaction was legitimate or just a drekking good con.
“O.K.,” she said at last. “Ask me anything. What do you want to know?”
Aziz cleared a space in the living room, then cast a quick spell with a flick of his hand. A glowing green circle appeared on the carpet. Pita blinked, hoping Masaki wouldn’t get slotted off at the mark Aziz had just made. But the carpet hadn’t looked all that clean to begin with.
“Let’s pretend that this is the hermetic circle I was using when I was trying to find out if there really was a metaplane of light,” he said, lying down on his back at he center of it and stretching out his arms and legs. I’m here, in the middle of it. I want you to approach me at the same angle that you did, yesterday morning, when you were in astral space.”
Pita did as she was told, positioning herself in a line with Aziz’s right foot.
“Now run forward, the way you did before. Hold your body exactly as you did then, and try to make the same gestures.”
Pita looked up at the ceiling, imagining the brilliant tornado of the spirit where the dusty light fixture hung. Then she held up her arm, as if shielding her eyes from it. “Aziz!” she shouted, feeling somewhat foolish. She ran forward and hopped over the green circle. She wondered whether or not she should mime falling over backward, but Aziz halted her before she could make up her mind.
“Stop right there!” He clambered to his feet and grabbed her right arm. He turned it over to inspect the underside of it.
“What’s this mark?” he asked. “It looks like a burn. Did the spirit touch you?”
Pita turned her arm to look at the red line that was painted like a slash across the inside of her wrist. The mark had faded, but the burn itched where the hair was starting to grow back. “Oh, that,” she said. “Yeah, it touched me. But not yesterday. This happened days ago.” Aziz's long, narrow fingers pinched tight around her forearm. “When?”
“The night the guy died in the alley. I was, uh… looking at him, and one of the beams of light coming of his mouth touched my arm.”
“Hmm.” Aziz stared off into space, his eyebrows knitted together in a tense frown. For a moment, Pita worried that he’d figured out she’d boosted stuff from the pockets of the dying mage, and that he’d call cops on her. But his mind was apparently on other matters entirely.
“That was the night the spirit attacked Farazad,” he said, thinking out loud. “The night the spirit became free. Hmm…”
“Are you going to let go of my arm?’
“What?” Aziz glanced down. “Oh. Sorry.”
Pita rubbed the spot his fingers had pinched. Then she looked again at the burn mark on her wrist, “You think this has something to do with it?”
“I do, indeed.”
“You going to tell me or what?”
Aziz gave her a coy look, as if deciding whether or not she could keep a secret. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? I'm going to need your cooperation with this, anyway. There’s no way around it.”
He took a deep breath and began to lecture, sounding just like a high school teaching program: “When a spirit breaks the control of the mage who conjured it and escapes, it sometimes remains in the physical world rather than returning to astral space. The moment of its escape is the moment of its birth as a free spirit. It’s also the moment the spirit attains its true name.
“A free spirit can be controlled by any magician-of either magical tradition-who knows this true name. The mage can use the true name to call, control, banish-or even destroy the free spirit. Or merely drive it away, as you did yesterday morning. The trouble is, finding out a free spirit’s true name is usually an impossible task.”
Pita frowned, completely lost. “I still don’t see what all this has to do with the mark on my arm.”
“I’m coming to that,” Aziz answered. He ran a hand over his hair, smoothing it back. “According to hermetic theory, the true name is imposed upon the free spirit by the astral conditions in existence at the time and place of its birth. It’s just possible that the spirit you saw was intoxicated by its newfound freedom and shouted its true name out loud as soon as it learned it.”
“But I didn’t hear anything. Not any ‘true name,’ anyhow.”
Aziz took her arm-more gently, this time-and touched a forefinger to the burn. “Yes, you did,” he said softly. “The spirit spoke in the only way it could- in pulses of photons. It inscribed the true name, there, in the cells of your skin.”
Pita looked at her arm, uncertain whether to believe him or not. It sounded incredible-a magical spirit writing its name on her arm with a ray of light. But at the same time, it made sense. Somehow she had driven the spirit away. There’d been no one else in the room at the time except the helpless Aziz; Pita had to have been the one with the edge. The more she thought about it, the more her skin tingled. It was like suddenly waking op to find that someone had implanted a cybernetic device in your arm while you slept. Her wrist felt as if it were no longer entirely her own.
“I thought you said the magician had to understand the name,” she said at last. “Well, I didn’t understand it. I didn’t even know about it.”
“But it was there, just the same, when you entered astral space. You carried the name with you. And you used it-albeit without conscious volition-as a tool to drive the spirit away.”
Pita thought about that a moment. “So, according to what you said, I can control this thing now? Can I make it do anything I want?” Visions of revenge danced in her head. She’d show that Lone Star fragger. She imagined the cop twitching on the ground, like a puppet with its strings cut while the spirit burned out his insides. It was a gruesome but satisfying image. One that brought a grim smile to her lips, exposing her curving canine teeth.
Aziz hurriedly dropped her hand. “Ah… yes. You do have the potent
ial to control the spirit. But not without proper magical training. Control over a free spirit isn’t automatic. Once you’ve learned the spirit’s true name, you still have to best it in a test of wills. A battle that pits you against the magical force of the spirit.” He gave her a grave, serious look. “And make no mistake, this is a powerful spirit. It’s not one to be toyed with.”
“Promise me, Pita, that you won’t do anything rash. That you wont try calling it or controlling it without my help.”
Pita saw through him at once. The mage wanted to be part of this. He wanted to control the spirit himself, but he was going to need her to do it. He probably had his own revenge in mind-the yakuza who burned down his shop was a prime candidate.
Well, Pita would show him. If she was the one who could control the spirit, she’d be the one calling the shots. But not yet; she didn’t fully trust her newly awakened magical talents. She sure as drek didn’t want to wind up like the mage in the alley. Dominating a human mind was one thing. Dominating a magical creature of light was something else entirely. For the time being, it looked as though she was stuck with Aziz’s “help.”
“O.K.,” she said. “Deal. As long as you don’t make me call the spirit until I’m ready.”
Aziz gave her a thin smile. “Deal.”
23
Carla stepped out of the tour bus and looked up at the six skyscrapers that made up the Mitsuhama Computer Technologies complex. Setting the camera in her cybereye to wide angle, she began with a shot that included all six buildings. She would have liked to have filmed them earlier in the day-better lighting would have shown off the silver sheen on the plascrete walls and the gleaming black-tinted windows. But the skyscrapers were an impressive sight. even so. They would make a nice establishing shot to intro her story.
She zoomed in slowly on the public entrance to the central tower, gradually losing the manicured lawns and backdrop of Lake Washington, and focusing on the entrance to the Byte of the Future display. On either side of the automatic doorway, neatly groomed security guards watched the people flow in and out. In their peaked cloth caps and trim blue uniforms with the gold MCT logo on the breast pocket, the guards looked like bellhops at a glitzy hotel. They weren’t carrying any weapons or sporting any obvious cyberware, but it was a given that they were in constant touch with the rest of their team via commlink. They could call for heavy-duty backup in an instant if the situation warranted it.