"Why?"

"Surikov doesn't wanna go home."

"Why not?"

"He says he don't like Fuchi Mult.i.tronics any more than Maas Intertech. He thinks he'll be more welcome at Prometheus Engineering. Thinks he'll be free to do things his way."

"Corps and freedom are mutually exclusive."

"The slag don't see it that way."

Piper shrugged. "We have our down payment Our expenses are covered. Let Surikov fend for himself."

"We're responsible."

"No one's responsible for a corporate but other corporates."

"The slag's a scientist."

"That makes him nothing more than a sophisticated form of product designer. He's a suit. We owe him nothing."

"We busted him out, querida."

"Yes, and that was a favor."

"A slag like him won't never cut a deal on his own. He's a babe in the fragging woods.".

"Then let's give him to L. Kahn and be done with it."

"He doesn't wanna go."

"I don't care what he wants."

People who lived the life defined by the corps deserved the same ruthless brand of indifference the corps accorded the rest of society. The corps had proved that a thousand times over: defiling the Earth, poisoning people, wrecking whole economies, condemning entire nations of people to lives of poverty, disease, and abject misery-whatever suited corporate objectives.

A wise man once said, "Let us drink the blood of the enemies of humanity." Foremost among those enemies, in Piper's view, were the corps. Not even the treacherous swine of Tir Taimgire equaled the corps, in terms of sheer villainy. Elves at least had some respect for the Earth.

"You're talking like a real killer," Rico said.

"I should weep and sympathize?"

"I know you better than that."

"We'll be s.h.a.gged if we don't turn Surikov over. Fuchi has long arms. They'll find us and kill us. Or use us as test subjects in their biotech labs."

"There's worse things to die for than a man's freedom."

"Jefe, I don't want to die for a d.a.m.n suit."

"What about honor?"

"I don't want to talk about honor."

"We took a man's life in our hands. You're saying we should just walk away."

"I'm saying we should complete our contract."

"And the h.e.l.l with honor."

"We agreed to turn Surikov over."

"We didn't agree to a s.n.a.t.c.h. And that's what we're doing if we make Surikov go back to Fuchi.'Cause that's where he's probably going if we give him to L. Kahn. We're forcing him against his will."

Piper leaned her head back against the cushions of the recliner. Her lover's code of conduct, his honor, his morals, would get them killed one day. She'd known that for a long time. She accepted it because acceptance was part of love and she could not help loving Rico. She had always hoped to someday subvert him, take some of the self-righteous shine out of his moral code, if only for the sake of survival, but her influence in that regard had been negligible. It was a testament to Rico's wit and savvy and his ability as a leader that they'd been able to stay alive as long as they had, despite his code. "Talk to me, chica."

"I should give up everything for a suit?"

"I ain't asking you to give up anything. If you want out-"

That made her angry. Rico knew better than to talk like that. "Where you go I go," she said sharply.

"If you want to get yourself killed, then I'm dead too." Rico smiled. "You got cojones, corazon." Love talk at a moment like this. It twisted her insides.

It made the hidden truth that only she and Rico knew ride up to the forefront of her thoughts on a tide of foaming emotion. The money she earned from runs like this gave her the means to fight the real fight, the war against the corps, the war to save the Earth before it was totally destroyed. She could face the prospect of death in that cause-had already done so and would do it again, and willingly-but to risk dying for something as despicable as a suit, a man like Surikov, whose life work only made the corps more money, that was almost too much to bear.

Rico came and perched on the arm of the recliner and drew her into his arms. She welcomed his embrace. She admired his courage. She wished she had his strength. Now, she could only think of all the things they would be giving away in trying to accommodate Surikov, and it brought her grief.

Where Surikov found his home was not the only issue. There was another problem that had to be fixed if the man was truly to be free.

Any fool could see that.

16.

The rain started at four a.m. By five past the hour, the torrent from the sky became a deluge, crashing onto streets that soon turned into lakes. Rico turned up the collar of his long black duster and walked down Treadwell to the brownstone at mid-block. Five razorguys stood beneath the awning there, three on the porch of the house, two on the sidewalk before it Two of the cutters held submachine guns barely concealed by their long, dark coats.

Rico was admitted at once, escorted through the house, then into the garden at the center of the house. Mr. Victor waited at the round transparex table in the middle of the garden. Tonight he wore a black smoking jacket and held a long fat cigar in one hand.

With a brief wave, he invited Rico to sit. "How are you, my friend?" he said. "I take it all is not well."

"You take it right," Rico replied. "Indeed, there are many who would agree," Mr. Victor said. "You have roused the giants from their slumber. The corps have sent their forces into the streets and there is '

much animosity being worked out, even as we speak. The great father of the Honjowara yakuza is particularly displeased at those who trespa.s.s on his territory. Fortunately, the metro police have seen fit to remain strictly neutral, by which I mean uninvolved. I think it is safe to say that by this time tomorrow, the giants will withdraw their forces from the streets. At least, their uniformed forces."

That much was good news. Rico had enough to worry about without having to consider the prospect of shock troops from Daisaka Security. Covert forces he could deal with. Probably.

"Before you say what you are here to say, let me tell you this," Mr. Victor continued. "I have word that several parties are keenly interested in hiring the team that made the run on Maas Intertech. Word is out that the run was very clean, very precise, incurring no loss of life. You have done your reputation a great service. In the future, I will be able to ask a considerably higher price for your services."

"a.s.suming we're still alive."

"Is that not always the a.s.sumption?"

The question was mostly rhetorical. Rico nodded understanding, then waited. Mr. Victor took a long drag on his cigar, then, with a look and gesture of the hand, he invited Rico to speak. "I need somebody to make contact with Prometheus Engineering."

"For what purpose, my friend?"

"Recruitment. I need to know if they got any interest in a certain individual."

"An individual whom you have recently met, perhaps?"

Rico nodded.

"This can be arranged," Mr. Victor said. "However, I feel I must ask what makes you desire such athing. Have you encountered complications?"

"Serious complications."

Mr. Victor took another long drag on his cigar. "The job has turned out to be other than what it first seemed?"

"I don't know that."

"Perhaps you would care to explain."

Mr. Victor might have no contractual involvement in the job, but that did not mean he had no interest.

He had directed Rico to L. Kahn. He had made the first contact. For a man like Mr. Victor, a man of honor, that was enough. That minimal involvement made him at least partly responsible for the job, in as far as it affected Rico and his team.

Rico spoke briefly of the complications. It came down to this: he'd been hired to pa.s.s Surikov on to L.

Kahn. It looked like Surikov was bound for Fuchi Mult.i.tronics, but Prometheus Engineering was where he wanted to go.

"A difficult situation," Mr. Victor remarked. "Naturally, you are not content to simply give your man to L. Kahn."

"I ain't gonna force him into anything. I don't work that way."

"You made this clear to L. Kahn in the beginning."

The meeting back at Chimpira was clear in Rico's memory. "I told him I don't do s.n.a.t.c.hes, and if the subject wasn't willing, the deal was off. He told me he don't accept refunds, that not completing the contract was a killing offense."

"Perhaps this is open to negotiation."

"I doubt it."

"As do I, but there is no percentage in placing you and the lives of your team hi further jeopardy until the facts are known. It is conceivable, is it not, that Prometheus Engineering is in fact the party behind the contract? In that event, there is every reason for you to complete the contract as arranged."

"Surikov's wife is supposed to be with Fuchi."

"Even so." Mr. Victor paused, smiling faintly. "You cannot a.s.sess the odds, my friend, until you know the facts. If you wish, I will arrange for you to discuss the situation with L. Kahn. Perhaps you can arrive at some mutually satisfactory solution."

Rico had serious doubts that any negotiating would help, but he had too many lives depending on him to refuse the suggestion. "That's a real generous offer," he said. "I owe you."

"On the contrary, my friend," Mr. Victor replied. "I owe you. I owe you a great deal."

The sword was black and it gleamed with the brilliant electron radiance of the matrix. It appeared in Piper's hand as if out of thin air and moved with the mercurial speed of thought.

The gray-armored warrior icon before her lifted its ma.s.sive battle axe even as her sword slashed through the axe's shaft, and then whirled, finding a c.h.i.n.k in the icon's armor and slicing through, piercing the icon, which dissolved into a cloud of fading silvery pixels.

A small, bitter victory over blaster IC. Piper released her sword, allowing it to vanish into the nothingness of inactive memory. The walls of the node around her pulsed red. The system, she knew, was going on active alert There was no point in even attempting to continue. She'd be lucky just to get out alive.

Now, from further up the corridor, came a pack of killer IC in the form of burning orange wolves.

They charged, snarling, fangs flashing. Piper hurled a handful of gleaming black stars at the beasts, then turned and ran.

The race was on. Barrier IC like ma.s.sive portals- glaring with electron fury-crashed down to block the corridor only milliseconds behind her. If she faltered, if she slowed her pace by even half a step she would be trapped, sealed into the consensual hallucination of the system construct and as good as dead.

She was in the Gauntlet, the maze of nodes and subsystems surrounding the mainframes of Fuchi's Manhattan cl.u.s.ter, which had been designed to protect its most vital elements. The CPUs lay at the cl.u.s.ter's heart, surrounded by data stores, immersed in the sea of subprocessors and slaves that served not only the cl.u.s.ter's data operations but the whole of the Fuchi complex, the Black Towers of Fuchi-town, located in lower Manhattan.

A blazing orange portal slammed down two steps ahead of her. She tugged a small fan from her sleeve, snapped it open and dove, thrusting the open fan out before her.

The portal parted like a ripe banana, splitting down the middle.

Jacking out was not an option. It was too late for that. In the time it would take her flesh and blood fingers to hit the Disconnect key or to wrench the datajack from her temple, she would be caught, traced, and brain-fried by nanosecond-swift IC.In the next System Access Node waited a red and yellow clown. The icon for a smartframe or perhaps a Fuchi decker. Piper had met the clown icon before. The big sunflower on its chest fired acid IC.

The big white custard pie in its hand worked like a trace and burn program. Piper hurled a handful of marbles. In mid-flight, the marbles swelled into silvery globes. As the clown moved to evade, the globes flew into orbit around it, immobilizing the icon with a dazzling storm of red and green program code.

The clown's blazing orange hair stood up on end.

I Piper slammed through the node and streaked out across the Manhattan telecommunications grid, free of the Fuchi cl.u.s.ter. The cl.u.s.ter's icon dominated the grid representing lower Manhattan, its form that of an enormous, five-pointed black star, slowly rotating, surmounted by a gigantic tower with five distinct facets, like the facets of a diamond. There was no more dangerous icon in the grid.

She fired herself into the electron-gridded darkness above, seeking the SAN to the regional grid. That led her to the Newark grid and back to where she had begun, and to her original fears and doubts.

Going up against Fuchi, even a subsidiary like Mult.i.tronics, was madness. It would make the run against Maas Intertech seem like a stroll through a sunlit meadow. Only a ramjamming neophyte would even consider it, and only because little baby deckers had no conception of the power contained in the Fuchi cl.u.s.ter. They thought sheer enthusiasm, combined with a knack for program code, would see them through anything. It didn't work that way. Piper knew. She had seen with her own electron-surrogate eyes what happened inside the Black Towers. She had heard the screams of deckers who tried to sleaze one too many Watchers or play smoke and mirrors with killer IC one too many times. She had breathed the malodorous fumes from a Mona Lisa jammer hit by so much lethal feedback that the decker's brain began to boil and pour out through her eyes.

If not for Rico, Piper wouldn't even have considered going up against Fuchi. Her lover left her no choice.

They had to do right, never mind that it might get them all killed. It wasn't enough to just turn and walk away, let Surikov do as he would. They had taken "responsibility" for Surikov. They had to see him safely to whatever corporate home he wanted. They had to make contact with the appropriate corporate agent.

They had to cut a deal. And even that wasn't enough. They had to get Surikov's wife, too, or the man would remain a p.a.w.n of the megacorps.

A man with Rico's convictions didn't belong in the Sixth World. Piper only wished there was some finer' place where they could go, a place where doing right wouldn't get them killed.

Fuchi had developed the first desktop cyberdeck, the first neural interface. The corp had all but written the matrix out of whole code. Fuchi's advances in intrusion countermeasures had few rivals, and no real equals. Sleazing anything out of its cl.u.s.ter of mainframe computers was going to take miracle work.

Surviving the run would require intervention by the G.o.ds.