Shadowrun: Streets of Blood Part 14

"Rani, you had family die, yes?" Geraint asked. They were in the hallway, out of earshot of the others.

She shrugged, as if to say, what's it to you?

"When I was a kid, my best friend died. I was an only child, and at the time I had no other friends, really. He was a n.o.bleman's son, too. When he was twelve, he transformed. It happened while we were out fishing, him starting to scream and me thinking he was having a fit. I ran for help and when I got back with his father, he was beginning to change his form. I'd only seen pictures of orks, but I knew what was happening to him. We were out on the edge of the Dragon Lands, that's in Wales, west beyond London, Rani." He could see that she had no idea where the h.e.l.l Wales was.

"A long way off. When we got him back to his father's castle, his home, he was almost fully changed. Less than six hours. I gather that's pretty fast, yes?" She nodded, remembering how long her own agonies had been.

"But he was okay, right? He was weak, and only barely conscious, but he was alive. They sent me home in a car and told me not to tell anyone what I'd seen. I never saw Daffyd again. They told me he was dead, but I always knew they'd killed him. Can't have orks in the family if you're a n.o.ble, you see.

"I didn't tell anyone. Well, I told my father and he told me to keep quiet about it or I'd be disinherited. Daffyd's family murdered him because of his change. For a long, long time I felt guilty for not telling anyone. Maybe the only reason I have everything I've got now is because I didn't speak up and tell the truth. Maybe, if we can help each other now, it will make up a little for what I didn't do back then. So, Rani, it's only money. What does that matter?"

She was defenseless against his brutal honesty. Somehow she knew that not even those other people in there, the elf mage and the smart American woman, they didn't know about what he'd just told her, and maybe never would. She was an Indian ork, lowest of the low, but here was a member of the British n.o.bility almost begging her to be part of a forgiveness. She felt very strange indeed, thrilled but overawed.

"The car will be here. And here's my number," Geraint said, pushing a card into her hand. "Come back Wednesday evening. After seven, yes?"

She nodded urgently.

"Get them to bring you. I'll pay for it. They'll bring you. You can do that?"

Rani nodded again. She didn't know what she was getting into, but she knew she wanted to come back here again.

He closed the door behind her. Through the security camera he watched her walk down the hall. Serrin came up behind him, putting a hand on the n.o.bleman's shoulder as he turned from the doorway.

"One thing, Geraint. I want to know who's responsible for sending me on a wild goose chase, nearly getting killed myself. Rani's got family to avenge. Fran's had a real bad time and I think those nightmares may start again. But what about you? Why are you investing all this money and effort?"

Geraint sighed and gave a wan smile. He might have said, because it's real, and I'm tired of n.o.bles I despise, business deals marinated in cynicism, and too much easy living. But one confession was enough for one day. He decided to be facetious instead.

"Oh well, it's something to pa.s.s the time, I suppose." Evading Serrin's questioning expression he walked off to talk decking with Francesca.

Serrin booked the suborbita! to New Jersey's Newark International. All he could get for the next day was a standby at six-fifteen, unless he was prepared to pay for Deluxe Ripoff Cla.s.s. At least he had the long-duration residence permit, allowing him a few precious days in Manhattan each year. What the h.e.l.l, he had a week left on it and Christmas was only a month away. Looking at the huddled pair eagerly discussing the technicalities of decking, he realized that for the first time in a while he had people in his life for whom he might actually want to buy Christmas presents.

24.

The neon half-blinded the mage. It was two-thirty in Newark International, and all he wanted to do was get through Customs and Immigration and park himself in one of the coffin hotels around the airport complex. He needed to catch up on the sleep that rising at five in London had cost him.

"It's a kind of permanent temporary pa.s.s," he explained to the suspicious, gun-toting official who looked like he was missing his sleep as much as Serrin was. It didn't make him any too helpful. When tht anted to be, New York's finest could wield the old quadruplicate red-tape routine as well as any Brit. The guy had already scanned the pa.s.s twice and come up with approvals on the security checks, yet he still glared at the pa.s.s as if it were a rabid dog. Entry into Manhattan required one of at least a dozen different kinds of pa.s.ses and permits. Serrin's was the kind the guard was least familiar with.

"Allows me twenty days' stay every year; there's a week left on it. Hey, I'm only going to be here two days." Serrin was beginning to lose his patience, though he knew he shouldn't. With an effort he calmed himself and was rewarded by finally being waved on his way. Having caught sight of a couple of Hispanics in the queue, the official suddenly seemed more eager to hara.s.s them than to detain the elf any longer. Serrin trudged wearily off into the monstrous concrete complex beyond.

As planned he went straight to bed to catch up on his sleep, but awoke feeling slightly worse, if anything. He had slept too long, nearly twelve hours altogether, albeit interrupted by the flight. His head felt thick and he shivered in the cold morning air. He was a bit light-headed from hunger, but Serrin didn't think he could face real food.

Well, he thought, I'm in Manhattan now. I don't have to eat real food if I don't want to. I can live off garbage like everyone else.

Getting through the access points and more checks with his pa.s.s, he then took a bus into the city, where he decided to stay at the opulent Hyatt. After the second shave of the day and a steaming hot shower, he began to feel more alive. While dressing he surveyed the contents of his suitcase, feeling some distaste at how tacky and ridiculous were the souvenirs he'd bought in the Heathrow shops. Smiling to himself, he picked up the druid doll dressed in a white robe with the blue insignia and carrying a gilt sickle. The only druid he'd ever seen didn't look much like this. She was for real.

He jump-started his body with a pot of coffee as thick and syrupy as he could get it in the hotel coffee shop, stuffed down a couple of bagels, and then did what he always did when he first hit Manhattan. He had some people to see, maybe a contact or two to check, but something else always came first.

Grand Central wasn't far from the Hyatt, one of the reasons he'd decided to stay there. Serrin had been barely three feet tall the first time he'd sat amazed by the sheer scale of the station, its endless s.p.a.ces and swirling ma.s.ses of people. Something of that awe remained, always ready to strike a chord in his emotions whenever he was there. He sat down with a magazine and another cup of coffee and just took in the scene.

There were suits, kids, fresh-faced youngsters from out of town come to find out how long their wide-eyed looks would last before the poison of the city destroyed their dreams, a sprinkling of metahumans and Hispanics mostly doomed to suffer indifference or outright hatred, a couple of guys who were obviously racing to find out which they could destroy first, their bodies with steroids or their minds with essence-the usual panoply of folks.

It's been cleaned up, though, Serrin thought. Security didn't take long to pounce on any wino or other wretched soul with terminal despair who might still think he could drift in here. Those for whom it all had become too much, who would burst into tears, begging any stranger, "Got a cigarette, oh, any d.a.m.ned brand," just to have something to say. Just to get a glance, a touch of a hand, a chance word or two in reply.

Serrin hated Manhattan. Its soul was deader than any city he'd ever known. It swept away its poor and hopeless, its disabled, handicapped, troubled people, its blacks and Hispanics and Puerto Ricans into decayed sumps of suburbs-if they were lucky. What about the street shamans? he wondered. How could any totem breathe life into a soul when the very essence of a place was dead?

"A dollar for your thoughts." Looking over his shoulder at the woman who sat down beside him, he suddenly broke into a broad, beaming smile.

"Barbara! What are you doing here?"

"I could ask you the same! I'm just finishing college."

"Hey, that's great!" He was genuinely delighted.

"And how is delightful Lafayette? And Judy?"

They had met in Serrin's birthplace, not long after he'd been shot up bad in the Renraku business. For some reason, he'd decided to use a little of the money they'd paid him to spend a few weeks in the place of his birth. Not that he had any roots there; his parents had traveled too widely and too often for that. It was just to see what the city was like.

"Oh, I moved from there not long after you went to j.a.pan. Figured I couldn't stick around much longer. I met a good man in Syracuse, he looked after us real well. John and I were together five years, but after he got sick with cancer, I drifted around awhile before ending up here. Put myself through college. And Judy's doing real well. She sells some of her stuff in the Village. She's a really bright kid."

He was glad. Trying to get by as an unmarried mother with a half-caste child in Louisiana hadn't exactly been a bed of roses for her. The child had been clever, sensitive, vulnerable, and he had feared for her. Serrin hadn't been in much shape, physically or emotionally, to do much about it himself, but it was good to know Barbara had picked up the pieces.

He studied her as she sipped her coffee. Pa.s.sing through her thirties had been good for her; she wasn't so painfully thin, the lines around her eyes and mouth looked like they came from laughter and smiles. At least, in fair measure. Her hands were the same as ever, great knuckled fingers more like a man's, well-suited to sculpting the pots, ceramics, and oil burners, all the little things she made.

"What about you?" She wanted his news, but he hardly knew where to begin.

"Well, I'm only in town a couple of days, but I always like to come here whenever I am," Serrin replied, gesturing around at the huge station. "Just like to sit and watch it all. Watch the world go by. I guess I've been doing that a lot, one way or another. Hey, I got something for Judy!" He reached into his pocket and brought out the little toy. He pressed the small control panel in its back and placed it on the ground.

It was a Beefeater, a toy soldier with black pants and a red jacket and the impossibly large, furry black hat of a real Tower of London guard. The toy jerked into life and began to march, high-stepping it along the floor while holding its ceremonial rifle over one shoulder, swinging the other arm along to the marching rhythm. After a dozen steps it swiveled in a perfect U-turn and marched all the way back again. Barbara burst into delighted laughter.

"Oh, that's priceless!" She picked up the hand-sized doll, giggling with pleasure. "Thank you. Jude'll love it."

"It has an optional feature. You can get it to sing G.o.d Save the King while it marches if you like. I guess Judy's too old for this stuff now, but it's genuine Olde England." He chuckled.

She grinned, clasped the toy and hugged him. "Got time for some conversation during your stay?"

"You betcha. Hey, you want to show me Judy's stuff?"

Most of the day had gone by the time they finally said their goodbyes, Serrin taking Barbara's number and promising to call. Judy had remembered him. She was fifteen now, painting cards and murals and even getting a commission for a couple of posters. She had her mind set on compgraphics and Matrix sculpting. She still had the same gifts and sensitivity Serrin remembered, but now she was worldly for a kid of fifteen. Somehow that disappointed him. It was as if Manhattan was already beginning to take her over. He hoped she would hang on to what she'd started out with. The disappointment made the goodbyes less difficult, though.

Thus it was after dark when he started making the calls from his hotel room. It was a long shot, and he had called Seattle, Philly, DeeCee, and half of California Free State by the time he roused Kerman.

The bleary-eyed face stared unhappily at him through the static. "You fraggin' pointy-eared SOB. What you wake me up for?"

"Wake you up? Are you kidding, it's five-fifty."

"Yeah, well it's only three-fifty here, you sc.u.msucker. When did I ever get out of bed before five?"

Serrin grinned. "You missed a beautiful day. Here I am in the Rotten Apple, walking in the winter sunshine and admiring the poseurs and wannabees in the Village. And you just sleep your life away."

"Look, chummer, life starts at midnight. Spare me the drek. What you want?"

"Kerman, I'm involved in something in Britain. Old London town. Funny thing is, it rings a bell and I can't place the connection. I had to get out of the Smoke for a couple of days so I flew over to see if I could check out a few things with some people. I didn't think of you till the last moment, or I'd have come back just to see your sweet smiling face in the flesh."

The man was yawning affectedly. "Yeah, yeah. What do you want?"

"All right. What do you know about Jack the Ripper? "

Kerman was not amused. "What the frag should I know? You're the one who's been in London. Didn't he go a-merrily butchering over there a century or two ago?"

"Yeah. But it may be that someone's getting into some very accurate re-creations. That's NFP, so keep it to yourself for now, please. Funny thing is, I seem to remember some crazy Jack stories in Seattle two, three years ago. I was only in and out of the city then, didn't pay any attention, and missed the full version. You remember anything?"

Kerman rubbed his chin, avoiding the unpleasant spot on it, and screwed up his face in concentration. "Yeah. Got it. There was some madman serial killer around. Nothing special in that, but I remember mutterings about the Ripper. Story wasn't around long. There was a big Mitsuhama/yakuza story that broke right after, if I remember right, and that pretty much took over. Look, can I get back to you on this?"

There was a whining "Hun-ee, come back to bed" from somewhere behind and to the right of Kerman, clearly audible over the phone.

Serrin grinned at Kerman's wince of discomfort. "Sure. But make it this evening. I haven't got long."

It was three and a half hours before the return call came. Serrin was eager for it; tracking down the Manhattanites on his list had yielded little more than some desultory invitations for drinks and the usual litany of polite "how ya doin's."

"Pointy!" Shaven, bathed, and resplendent in a dinner jacket and bow tie, Kerman beamed at the elf over the telecom screen.

"Hi, there, chummer. Hey, you're looking good."

"Naturally. But no time to waste. Here's how it pans out. Know about Global Technologies?"

Serrin recalled the small skillsoft and simsense corporation in Seattle, but couldn't remember any details. "Yeah. What of it?"

"They're the only lead I could get. Rumor a.s.sociates them with the Ripper thing, but who knows if that's just a little bit of street slander. If I believed ten percent of what I hear about Renraku, I'd have to believe they were run by baby-eating Satanists who drink nuclear waste for breakfast and p.i.s.s it out in the water supply. But my source is good on this. For a little something, I could give you a name and address in Manhattan that might get you farther. Can't make any cast-iron promises, but it's interesting."

Serrin groaned audibly. His credsticks were running low uncomfortably fast. "Hey, you sleazeball, what about that Atlantean business? h.e.l.l, you ripped me off big-time on that one. If we'd split it, we'd have made fifty thou apiece for that fake drek we sold 'em." The Atlantean Foundation probably still believed the "artifacts" were genuine. That scam had been a real joy.

"That's business, ear-features. Five thousand gets you a name and something to check out."

"What? You fraggin' vampire," Serrin squealed, and they got down to some serious haggling. By the time Serrin had cleared a credit transfer of three thousand, he got a name he should have remembered himself, and cursed his corrupted-disk memory.

It was past ten at night, but SoHo only really came alive around then anyway. He had never seen Her Ladyship, and the telecom got a pre-recorded from a troll who looked more machine than meat. Okay, what the h.e.l.l, Serrin decided, the security rating's good. Let's give it a whirl.

25.

Serrin found the place easily enough. The house looked like an architectural impossibility; narrow, seeming to lean a little on one side, its five stories looking like almost too many to stand upright. The ground-level floor was a florist's shop, but it was closed now. Didn't find too many fresh flowers in Manhattan these days. There wasn't much to indicate what went on in the floors above the shop. Serrin rang the ancient intercom by the side door. It buzzed into life.

"I'm here to see the Lady. Name's Serrin Shamandar. She doesn't know me personally, but I need some information and I can pay."

There was a long pause. "Just a minute," the distorted voice boomed. "I'll have to confer with Her Ladyship. She don't take many visitors."

The link clicked into silence.

It was ten minutes before the voice was back again. "You may come in to discuss the possibility of an appointment, but be warned that we take serious precautions against any form of magical a.s.sensing or spell use. Any action suggesting active spell use will be construed as a hostile act and you will be dealt with accordingly." Well, of course I know there are countermeasures, Serrin thought. Think I didn't try a.s.sensing already? He was about to voice a curt rejoinder when he realized he'd been listening to a pre-recorded message. The door swung open before him, and an array of cameras tracked his long and painful pa.s.sage up the five flights to the top floor. Spirits, hadn't these people ever heard of elevators?

When he finally dragged himself up the last set, he was breathing hard. Before him was a heavy steel door; he touched the detector panel to trigger it into scanning mode and stood back. Within seconds, the door opened. Most serious runners in Manhattan knew of Her Ladyship, but few had ever seen her or set foot inside her domain. She never left this place, existing as an information sponge, soaking up everything and anything. Even top corporations came to her when desperate for a lead from her deranged mind. Her information was so vast and so valuable that no one dared harm her, for fear of what tidbit she might have stored away only to be revealed if she were killed. The place was said to be the weirdest cybercomplex outside of the really heavy corps. In Manhattan that had to be very weird indeed. Serrin was braced for the expected, but not to encounter anything like the troll.

Looking upward from the metahuman's enormous feet, which had to be at least size eighteen, Serrin didn't register anything too odd about the steel-reinforced boots or the heavy olive-green pants. It was only when the troll took a step forward that he heard the hiss of the hydraulics. Across his chest, looking for all the world like a row of military medals, a row of sensor panels and lights blinked a neon mantra.

Heaven only knows what's chipped into his autonomies and respiratory systems, the elf thought. The troll's arms looked as if they were made of liquid chrome, shiny and unbelievably flexible metal. It was a touch of absurdity that he had one fleshy hand and one of the same flowing metal.

But it was the metahuman's head that really startled Serrin. It wasn't the cybereyes that were strange, but the filamentous network of fine, intermeshed metallic strands and what looked like monofilament optical fibers radiating out from them and flowing around the troll's facial musculature and forehead. His mouth gleamed with metallic lips and his voice betrayed the existence of a fine voxsynth at work in his throat. The troll had no external ears, but concentric rings of carbonized steel and monofilament that suggested a level of chipping and cyberware that Serrin would never have dreamed existed.

All that was enough to startle the mage. What really scared him, though, was the gun in the metal hand. It looked like a taser, but was linked to a pack bulging with chiptech on the troll's hip. Once those hooks were in you, who knew what they might do to your body? Serrin was so scared he began to put his hands up.

"Just a standard precaution," the troll said in a husky voice. "If you have any weapons, please hand them over now." Serrin gave up his little hold-out, apologizing that he felt safer on the streets with it. The troll ignored him as he took the pistol away. It was a comical moment, a thin elf handing over a puny little hold-out to this gigantic troll arrayed in armor and defenses, but Serrin wouldn't see the humor in it for many hours.

"Please sit down."

Now that he had edged through the doorway Serrin could see a little more of his surroundings. The decor was a bizarre clash: oil paintings behind security gla.s.s-a Rembrandt, if he wasn't mistaken-and more anonymous Dutch landscape works, a cabinet stuffed with elven crystal work from Tir Taimgire, and a Ming vase on a pedestal. Truth be told Serrin didn't know whether it was a Ming vase or not. He'd tagged it that mentally because Ming was the only dynasty name he could remember. Interspersed with the art were surveillance vidcameras, sensor systems, sprinkler systems, and a pair of wall-mounted autofire crossbow pistols that swiveled to face his chest as he sat down in the room's only chair. None of it made him feel very safe and secure.

The troll wasn't saying anything. Serrin began to ask timidly about an appointment, but the troll put a hand up for silence and the elf obeyed. Time ticked by and Serrin began to squirm in his chair as an eyeball-shaped sensor swiveled smoothly out from the wall beside him on a long, flexible metal arm. It scanned his face and thorax and, despite his best leg-crossing efforts, showed a definite interest in the more private areas of his anatomy. It scanned down, then up at his face, before finally returning to its wall socket.

When nearly half an hour had elapsed, Serrin began to get up, very slowly, and addressed the troll, who had remained motionless the whole time.

"Um, it's getting very late and I really would be very grateful if-"

What happened next was utterly bizarre and confusing. The troll broke into an operatic aria, then got up, twirled a pirouette, and spread his hands wide, grinning with steel teeth. He flicked out a disturbingly large tongue and pointed to the other door in the room, which opened slowly. Serrin had no idea what the troll had been singing, but he thought it might have been Italian. Flipping his tongue back like a frog, the troll clicked his teeth when Serrin entered the darkened corridor beyond. This is good luck, he thought. They say she rarely agrees to see anyone, let alone lets them walk right in out of the blue like this.

Coming to four doors, he decided to knock at the one with a red light glowing above it. At his touch it swung motionlessly open, inviting him into Her Ladyship's sanctum. With a mixture of hope and trepidation, Serrin walked through.

He gawked at the sight that greeted him on the other side of that door. Wall to wall, endless viewscreens, trideo, telecom, and satellite links, all downloading everything imaginable. He saw commodity price lists, air travel schedules and pa.s.senger IDs, corporate accountancy reports, a chat show with a nude female psychiatrist as host, a wildlife doc.u.mentary, a cartoon squirrel smashing a cartoon dog on the head with a baseball bat, a film on Inuit society, slo-mo replays of football touchdowns, gruesome surgical operations in living color, shots from s.p.a.ce satellites, everything in humanity's full range of information flow. He had to shield his eyes from the constant flicker and glare.

The other elf was alone in the room, a ghastly figure in the center of a great netted web of fiber cabling, pumps, pipes, feeders, and inputs of every imaginable type. A multi-stranded feeder cable pumped an endless supply of data into the middle of her forebrain. Meanwhile, fluids pulsed and pumped into myriad tubes, pipes, and filters of an I/O port complex into her hindbrain. The elf herself had only the vestiges of a body, shrunken and virtually embalmed alive. Her muscles were wasted, fingers hopelessly knotted and shriveled, but the eyes were alive, and they were real eyes. It was perhaps the only part of Her Ladyship that betrayed any functioning vestiges of her original body.

Very slowly she lowered her eyelids, with their inch-long, heavily-mascaraed eyelashes, and the flow of information through the forebrain diminished just slightly. The screens in the room dimmed.