2xs

by Nigel Findley

  She flinched a little, but recovered instantly. "What about Lone Star?" she asked. "They'll be looking for me after . . ."

  "Frag 'em," I snarled, on basic principles. "It's safer. We don't know who X is or where he's tied in.

  Maybe he's got connections into the Star. Will your colleagues cover for you?"

  She had to think about that one, which worried me a little. Then her expression cleared and she answered, "Yes. He owes me, big time."

  Curiosity again, but I bit down on the obvious question. "Okay," I allowed. "But keep in touch. I won't ask for your number, but you take mine." I handed her a business card, the one without the street address.

  "Call me tomorrow. If I'm out, leave a message."

  She pocketed the card without looking at it. "You're not going home?"

  I snorted. "Don't worry about me," I told her. "I've done the fade before. Wherever I am, you can get me at that number. So use it, okay? Tomorrow?"

  She nodded, closed the car door and started to walk away. Then turned back. I powered down the window. "I'm sorry I got you into this," she said softly. She looked upset enough that I didn't shoot back the smartass answer on the tip of my tongue.

  "Null perspiration," I replied smoothly. "I got dragged into this when X first picked me as his shill. You just followed the script."

  She bit her lip, the troubled expression only making her prettier. For a nanosecond I debated suggesting-oh so sincerely-that she'd have a better chance of making it to morning if she dossed down with me. But then I purged that thought and all the other ignoble ones tagging along with it. A quick jam with Jocasta Yzerman would be wiz, but I really was tired. And if I had to ditch her later, for whatever reason, any involvement would only make it harder.

  "I'll call you," she said, then turned away for the second time. The ignoble thoughts returned as I watched her receding rear aspect, but I stomped on them like so many roaches. I ran the passenger window back up and pulled away from the curb.

  Bellevue was a good cruise from Tacoma and from my main base in Auburn, but it was conveniently close to my secondary doss. I got back onto Intercity 90 and pointed the Jackrabbit's streamlined nose east.

  Hitting Route 405, I swung north, then took a right onto the old Woodinville Redmond Road, and finally onto the Woodinville-Duvall Road.

  The moment I left 405, the scenery changed again, even more drastically. I was into Redmond-the Barrens-and anyone who's ever been there knows you can't miss the boundary of that district. The buildings were suddenly lower, as if the graceful giants of Bellevue had been cut off at the knees, while scattered pools of blue-white carbon arcs replaced the yellow brilliance of sodium street lighting. It was back in 2050 when Governor Schultz decided that all the Barrens needed was better lighting. At the cost of uncounted millions of nuyen, the city engineers-with Lone Star and Metroplex Guard units running cover-had installed high-intensity carbon arc lights everywhere they could get to safely. The residents of the Barrens had responded in typically warm Redmond manner by shooting most of them out. The small hills were cut here and there by concrete-lined drainage culverts. I couldn't see the foul and corrosive water, which is usually liberally garnished with dead dogs or worse, and thanks to the Jackrabbit's air filtering, I couldn't smell it either.

  As I passed Cottage Lake, I put my foot down until the tach display flashed warning-red in the HUD.

  Thanks be to Quincy, forever amen, the active suspension took care of the speed-wobble, and the engine howled like a banshee. Muzzle flashes split the night to my left, but nothing unpleasant even came near me.

  The Crimson Crush just weren't shooting straight tonight. Once past Paradise Lake Road I let off on the throttle. The Crush never played east of the intersection, knowing the Rusted Stilettos would eat them for breakfast if they did.

  Left onto High Bridge Road, then left again onto Jasmine Boulevard-no jasmine, and it sure wasn't a real boulevard-and into the area known as Purity. A real nasty part of the Barrens if you're an outsider, but Purity's got a kind of code you don't find many places in Redmond. The code is simple: "Don't frag with me, I won't frag with you (unless somebody makes it worth my while)." If you're a local, that is.

  And in a sense I was. I kept a secondary doss in Purity, paying my protection money to the Amerindian street gang in the area. Our deal was that I pay my nuyen, and they get to use-but not abuse-my place when I'm not in it. With most other gangs, you cut a deal like that and you should have your head examined. Come back after they've used your place and it'll be stripped to the floorboards. A couple of big guys will also probably be waiting to separate you from anything valuable you happen to be carrying-or maybe the fillings in your teeth if they're' feeling militant. But this gang has a sense of honor.

  Maybe it's their tribal background. In any case, once they're bought, they stay bought, at least until somebody else outbids you. My secret is to pay them more than anybody who lives in the Barrens can.

  I parked the Jackrabbit in what used to be a corner store until somebody took out the front wall with a grenade launcher. That's my private garage, covered under the same deal as my doss. Then I made the appropriate courtesy call to the gang's leader, a frigid-looking street samurai whose name I'd never learned, tossed him a certified credstick to cover the next couple of months, and jandered up to my apartment.

  My place in Auburn is small, but my Redmond doss would fit in it with enough room left over for a pool table and clearance to make your shots. The single room was empty, like it always was when I stopped in, but I saw lots of evidence that it hadn't been for long. Again, that was situation normal. After stepping over the empty chip-carriers and used family-planning products, I powered up the telecom. As always, I checked the usage log first thing. As expected, the Amerinds had been making longdistance calls, but at least they continued to have the courtesy to charge them to another number. Governor Schultz's, I was glad to see.

  I keyed in the telecom code for my Auburn apartment. When the other machine opened the line, I triggered a wiz little slave utility that I'd picked up from Buddy, a drek-hot decker of my acquaintance. The utility, which is designed to play merry hell with the local telecom corp, persuades the central switching computer that the two telecoms-one in Auburn and the other in Redmond-are actually one machine, located (electronically speaking) at my Auburn LTG number. Incoming calls ring on both machines. I can access all features of my Auburn telecom from Purity, and I can make outgoing calls from the Barrens while the grid computers would swear up and down that the calls were being placed from Third Street Southwest and D

  Street in Auburn. Slick, and potentially a lifesaver. With the utility running, somebody would have to be more than very good to ever trace me via telephone grid records.

  While the two machines were sorting out the handshaking necessary to cooperatively dry-gulch the LTG computers, I sat back and thought about my next move.

  This business with Lolly, Jocasta, and our mysterious X was understandably high on my priority list.

  But I had other irons in the fire as well, a couple of cases-paying cases-on the go. I couldn't just forget about them without doing irreparable harm to both my street rep and my cred balance. What I could do was back off on the intensity a little.

  The telecom beeped its readiness, so I called up a listing of all incoming messages. The list couldn't tell me a caller's identity, but it did give me the time and date of the message and, in most cases, the LTG number from which the call was placed. That let me flip through and delete junk messages like those from Anwar the fixer. I flagged a couple more whose originating number I recognized, instructing the telecom "to fire off a standard I'm-busy-I'll-call-when-I'm-not to them.

  That left two messages, neither of which showed an originating LTG number. (This piqued my interest, of course. Someone with the right hardware wouldn't have too much problem suppressing the originating number, but it's not a common skill.) The fact that both were identified as voice-only gave me a good cl
ue as to who the caller was. I highlighted the first one and hit Play.

  I had guessed right. The flat, calm voice, with its trace of an accent, was unmistakable. My Mr.

  Johnson from (probably) Chicago. "Mr. Dirk," he said, "I assume that you are proceeding with the issue we discussed some days ago. Your binder and first week's payment have been transferred from the holding account, which, I presume, means you are still standing by our agreement. Please contact me, as per the agreed-upon arrangements, to confirm. Thank you." Pedantic slot. I keyed up the next message. The time/date stamp showed that it had come in earlier that evening, about the time Jocasta and I were dodging debris. "Mr. Dirk," the same voice droned, "the urgency on this issue has just increased somewhat. We believe that our... our asset is in physical danger. I would greatly appreciate it if you would upgrade your efforts appropriately. I would also appreciate it if you could confirm your continued interest in our arrangement. I would prefer not to have to dispatch someone to trace your whereabouts. Thank you."

  I snarled inwardly. I don't like supervision, even remote supervision like this, and I certainly don't like veiled threats. Sure, Mr. Corp Johnson would send another runner after me if he thought I'd skipped with his payment. But he should respect my fragging professionalism enough not to remind me of the fact.

  The slot did have a point, though. I'd been a little dilatory with my status reports. I pulled out the alpha keyboard and pounded in a quick note, which I dispatched to the e-mail bulletin-board system Mr. Johnson had specified. Basically it said, "I'm on the fragging case, and don't fragging call again," but in slightly more cordial language.

  That out of the way, I sat back and considered the case. I'd been hired by Mr. Johnson to track down a corporate employee named Juli Long, who had disappeared from the company and then apparently resurfaced in Seattle. The corporation was concerned, Mr. Johnson had told me, that some foul play might be involved, and they feared for young Juli's safety. My job was simply to find her, extricate her from any dangerous entanglements in the plex, and put her on a plane heading east.

  Stripped of all the drek about the corp's concern, it was a straightforward skip trace. For whatever reason, Juli had tendered her unofficial resignation by running from the corp. From the wording of Mr.

  Johnson's instructions, it didn't sound like a poach or an extraction by another corp. Juli wasn't running to something, like another job, she was running from something. I didn't know what and I didn't have to know.

  I've seen what corp life is like for a wage slave like Juli, and I'd run too.

  A young woman, with little or no financial support-Johnson had been very clear about that-coming to the Seattle metroplex for the first time. No friends, no corporate arms around her. Raw meat for the street predators. It was almost certain that Juli Long would show up in a couple of days, floating off the piers.

  There'd been a lot of that recently.

  I said as much to Johnson, but he demanded that I do the trace anyway. If I was right, and Juli'd bought it, I was to send him incontrovertible proof of her untimely demise. I hadn't done much but set up a routine on my telecom to scan all news sources and datafaxes for the name Juli Long and her description.

  I'd probably have to invest a little more effort in the matter. Eventually.

  I pulled out my wallet and extracted a printout of her dossier picture. Looked like a nice kid. Clean-cut, fluffy blonde hair. Reminded me of Lolly.

  Frag, I was getting morbid. It always happens when I'm bagged. I thought about the early night I'd been planning, and laughed. I returned the picture to my wallet, kicked the telecom to standby mode, and collapsed on the bed. Images flowed over the insides of my eyelids. Explosions, gun muzzles, targeting lasers. But mostly young, blonde women: sometimes Lolly, sometimes Juli Long. They followed me down into the dark pit of sleep.

  Chapter 4.

  Early morning is one of the quietest times in a jungle. Nocturnal predators have called it a night, and their diurnal counterparts are only just stirring. The same thing's true in Redmond, and for the same reasons.

  I don't know what it was that woke me just after 0800 the next morning. Maybe it was the quiet.

  Redmond nights are typically split by sirens, the roar of passing City masters or low-flying Yellowjackets, and even sporadic gunfire. I rolled over in the relative silence, and tried to force myself back to sleep.

  But oblivion remained just beyond reach. After fifteen minutes of trying, I gave it up as a bad job and forced my stiff body out of bed. I was still wearing my duster, and the armor plates had pressed into my flesh while I slept. Running a hand under my shirt, the ridges and depressions I encountered along my ribs felt like some kind of bipedal armadillo. That fit: my mouth tasted like I'd been eating ants. I cursed my way over to the sink, ran a cup of lukewarm water, and rinsed out my mouth. (I didn't swallow, no sir. Real Barrens-dwellers seem to build up a resistance to amoebic dysentery and other such pleasant diversions, but I've never hung around long enough for my immune system to get with the program.)

  Caffeine-based Wake-Ups were the only non-prescription drugs I'd allowed myself recently, except for alcohol flavored to taste. I popped out a couple and swallowed the bitter pills dry. Waiting for the concentrated caffeine to jump-start my central nervous system, I slumped in front of the telecom and flipped it back on line.

  One of the best ways I've got for solving problems is to sleep on them. The truth is, my subconscious mind seems to be a couple dozen IQ points smarter than my conscious mind, and also seems to operate better when I'm not looking over its shoulder, so to speak. More often than not, if I'm trying to puzzle through something, I only need to give my conscious mind a break. I used to do this through exercise, which hurt, or through alcohol, which ultimately hurt more. Now I tend to choose sleep, and I can even justify it as resting up my body to continue fighting the good fight. When I wake up, the answer I've been seeking is often sitting at the front of my thoughts, along with a mental note that reads something like, "Here it is, drekhead."

  When I'd checked out last night, the question was what to do next. The answer my hindbrain had dredged up during the night was a name: Naomi Takahashi.

  I'd met Naomi while both of us were struggling through Lone Star training, undergoing the same mind-bending grind but determined not to get our minds bent. That was about all we had in common. She saw the Star as a way to get out from under the control of her wealthy family, I'd gone into the program as a misguided form of therapy for the guilt I felt after my parents died in some random street violence.

  Despite our differences, we each soon recognized that Lone Star training was an effective form of brainwashing, a program intended to turn all recruits into brutal, compassionless blunt instruments. Naomi, I, and another slag named Patrick Bambra-the chummer who equated women with malaria-swore we would never get our brains washed, and we clung together in a kind of mutual support group. Frag, we even called ourselves the Three Musketeers, which shows how idealistic and drek-eatingly romantic we were.

  Patrick got himself flushed from the program early on, mostly because even the Star's soul-killing brutality couldn't get him to see the world the way it really is. Naomi and I bore down, however, and made it through with our personalities basically intact (I like to think).

  Even though the training was intended to turn us into beat cops and street monsters, it didn't destroy us enough to make us accept that fate. Naomi requested and received a transfer to data processing, I just cut out and ran for the shadows.

  Naomi and I still keep in touch, but only sporadically and very carefully. She's my only remaining friend within the Lone Star system, but she'd be in deep drek if her bosses found out. I've made a few major deposits in the favor bank with Naomi over the past few years, mainly by doing some shadow work to help out friends and colleagues of hers. Now it was time, to pull in a few of those markers.

  I checked my watch. Just after eight-thirty, that meant she'd be at work. I selected voi
ce-only on the telecom and punched in Naomi's direct-access code. A few seconds later, the screen lit up with her image.

  Naomi Takahashi was as beautiful as the first day I saw her. Her brow furrowed slightly under her black bangs as she reacted to the fact that the call was voice-only, but her musical voice gave no hint of frustration. "Lone Star, Records Department."

  I pitched my voice lower than normal and added a gravelly edge. That would be useless against a voice analyzer, of course, but probably enough to fool any supervisor who happened to be listening in. "Uh, yeah," I rumbled, "I want Joe Dar-fag-non. He around?"

  Naomi's expression didn't change, but I saw the flash of recognition in her almond eyes. Even with my disguised voice, the brutalized pronunciation of D'Artagnon, one of the three musketeers from literature, would be die giveaway. "I'm sorry, sir," she said smoothly, "we have nobody here by that name."

  "Frag," I snarled, enjoying her performance. "Later." As I cut the connection I saw her subtle wink, no more than a slight nervous twitch. Message received and understood.

  I stood up from the telecom and stretched. I knew Naomi would take a break at the first opportunity to call me from a "secure" phone somewhere else. I couldn't be sure how long that would be. But knowing Naomi, not long.

  To pass the time, I flipped the telecom into trideo mode and slumped down on the bed. Nothing like a little mindless trid to kill some time. Preferably something with minimal data content and scantily clad stage decorations. Something like "Nuevo Wheel of Fortune."

  But I happened onto a news broadcast instead, and couldn't summon the energy to get up and flip the channel. The talking head, a bottle blonde with capped teeth and enhanced mammalian protuberances, was babbling on about the latest gang war, all the while wearing a smile that would have looked more at home in a bedroom. Oh, well, her appearance was a suitable distraction, as long as I didn't listen to what she was saying.