A direct confrontation with the cl.u.s.ter's awesome mainframes would only get her killed. She had to find another way.

She shot herself into Saganville, the heart of the Newark grid. Here, the gleaming white pyramids of system constructs, thousands upon thousands of them, crammed the datalines and rose a thousand levels into the electron night. Amid this megalopolis of constructs, Piper found a particular network address and pushed her signal inside.

Her iconic self stepped into silent darkness. Scents like sulfur and methane wafted past her. A voice, immeasurably deep and resonant, like the. voice of a G.o.d, demanded, "WHO ARE YOU?"

Piper replied, "I am Arielle of Avalon."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?".

"I want information."

"YOU WON"T GET IT!".

"By hook or by crook, I shall."

"Oh, really? Well, maybe you will. Then again, maybe you woo-OOOONNNNNNNTTTttttt!!!"

The final word rose suddenly into a cry, then a long, drawn-out scream that faded slowly away. As the scream faded, the voices of a thousand crows arose chattering, rasping, and ranting, raucously laughing.

The darkness before her resolved into a rickety bridge of vines and wooden slats just wide enough for one person to cross alone. The bridge spanned an immense creva.s.se, infinitely deep and filled with a boiling sea of fire. Piper took hold of the viny guide-ropes at waist-height and began walking across the bridge.

Abruptly, the vines parted and the bridge swung downward toward the roaring flames. Piper pulled a knotted cord from around her waist and hurled one end toward the far side of the creva.s.se. The hook on the end of the cord caught on a rocky prominence. Hand over hand, Piper pulled herself up.

Beyond the cliff-edge of the creva.s.se was a forest, shining darkly with menace. From the stunted,twisted trees, gnarled like monstrous creatures, hung the skeletal remains of those who had come before her, the persona icons of the doomed. Immense black birds chittered from the tree limbs and pecked at the tattered remains of the skeletons. A hideous smell like corruption hung heavy in the air. A thick grayish fog flowed slowly along the ground. Piper considered how to proceed.

Many paths led into this horrific electron forest. Danger lurked everywhere, in the trunk of a tree, in the stagnant waters of a malignant bubbling pool, in the huge black figures that loomed everywhere in the darkness, in things unseen, rustling softly through the undergrowth. Disease and death seemed to flow through the air and along the ground just as tangibly as the fog.

Piper found her way to a small thatched hut with a single rounded opening. She ducked her head down and stepped inside. The interior of the hut was gloomy. A small fire flickered at the center of the hard-packed floor. Smoke curled through the air. On the far side of the fire sat a dark figure wrapped in a ragged cloak and hood. This, Piper knew, was the icon of a decker known as Azrael. No one knew his real name.

Back in 2029, a virus of unprecedented power had swept through the world's computer systems, scrambling data and frying hardware. To fight the plague, the government of what was then called the United States created a special top-secret group known as Echo Mirage. The team did eventually beat the virus, but few of the special cadre survived with their sanity intact. They were deckers at a time when a direct neural interface produced sensory overload, and, often, incurable psychosis.

Azrael was reputed to be one of the few to survive Echo Mirage. If that was so, if he really had been with the project, he had not survived the ordeal unscathed. No program he wrote was without eccentricities, and he had a maniacal hatred of governments and corps that often seemed to surpa.s.s Piper's own.

"What is your quest?" he rasped.

"I seek information."

Azrael laughed and laughed, breathlessly and harsh, as raucously as the crows, then suddenly blurted, "I know this, woman. You said it once already. Am I deaf? Do you think I'm deaf? What is it you really want?"

"Personnel and security data from Fuchi Mult.i.tronics."

"You quest the Black Towers?" Azrael laughed again, uproariously, hysterically. He laughed till he wheezed for breath, then he leaned toward the fire, peering at Piper from under the black shadow of his hood. "You will die."

"I think not."

Azrael shouted, "No one has ever penetrated the Black Towers' security processor and LIVED to TELL the TALE!"

"That is untrue."

Azrael laughed again, then whispered, "Maybe you're right. Maybe not. Maybe I can help you. Maybe not. How much are you willing to pay?"

"What do you offer?"

"I have secret information, very secret. Many deckers have died trying to sleaze my secrets from me.

How many have died? I can't remember. Many more have gone away wounded and b.l.o.o.d.y. I have unraveled a mult.i.tude. I have infected legions. I have dumped whole hordes. My code is great and my vengeance terrible. Terrible! What would you pay for the secret to the Black Towers? Tell me. What would you pay?"

"What do you offer?"

Azrael cackled, then rasped, "An access node that no one living has ever found. Special code that may make the difference between life and lethal feedback, specially attuned to the Black Towers' frequencies and security subroutines. A key, I offer you a key. Do you doubt it? No one has this key but I. Such secrets, such special code. What will you pay? Define your life in cred."

"What is your price?"

The price was high, as Piper had known it must be, and she had little with which to bargain.

They were somewhere in Sector 15. Shank had seen a sign a while ago that read "Scotch Plains", but he wasn't sure if that was a district name or a street name or what. He hadn't seen much besides that sign, a few trucks, some steel and ferrocrete warehouses that looked abandoned, and fences. The fences were usually of the chain-link variety, three or four meters high, and topped by coiling razorwire nasty enough to discourage almost anybody. The only things Shank had seen inside those fences were piles of sc.r.a.p, mountains of sc.r.a.p: crete, steel, autos. And a h.e.l.luva lot of junk.

Abruptly, Thorvin veered the van across three empty lanes of roadway and slowed them to a halt facing a chain-link gateway."What're we stopping here for?"

"Need some parts, you freaking frag."

"What for, halfer?"

"Gotta build something for Rico."

Shank looked again at the gates. The sign there in red and yellow. "That says 'toxic waste.'"

Thorvin snorted. "Don't believe everything you read, fanghead."

"Who says I can read, s.k.a.n.kface?"

The gates swung open, the van rolled through.

Into a junkyard like the Grand Canyon.

Clad entirely in non-reflective black, Claude Jaeger moved through the darkness like a darker shade of night, a shadow, a ghost, perhaps a trick of the eye, an illusory image without form or substance, as silent as the night.

The place was in Sector 7, amid the jumble of streets between Stuyvesant and Grove, just over the line from center city. It was called "Meat City". The buildings were old and crammed together, with coffin hotels and cubies filling the side streets. Every kind of scalpel mechanic and medtech had an office or clinic here. Some of the docs were frauds, some dealt exclusively in transplants or contraband chrome. Few were legally licensed. Few cared if a person had any kind of SIN or if the implant a client desired was on the federal government's prohibited list.

This was also where a person came if they just couldn't live with that armor-piercing slug stuck under their ribs or if they wanted to trade body parts for money.

The alleys were lined with chipheads and other derelicts, human refuse, squatting in plastic shelters or just lying on the concrete ground, all short a couple of organs and any number of limbs. Corpses went into the ferrocrete Ditch of the Garden State Parkway. Black-clad sanitation crews swept the Ditch clean every day at dawn and dusk. Claude had good reason to know of that. The art of the physical adept often compelled him to contribute to the carnal chaff disposed of in the Ditch.

Tonight, though, he had other business. A small matter by which he would collect some nuyen. The nature of the business concerned him little, so long as it gave him the chance to express himself through his art.

The little night-glo red-on-white sign on the back alley wall, read, CyberDok: Top Chrome, Vat Organics, Primo Rates ...

This was the clinic and residence of John Dokker, former mercenary, and his friend, Fillecia Antonucci, ex-cop. Both were members of the team hired to bust out Ansell Surikov. That made them important. It might eventually make them dead. Precisely what happened depended on events, Claude knew, and on the wishes of Maurice's client, who had provided the data on John Dokker and the other runners.

Next to the small sign, a black metal door. After a pause, it slid aside, letting Claude step into the dark s.p.a.ce beyond. The door slid shut behind him. Momentarily, the tall, gangly form of the mage Maurice came into view, coalescing as if out of the empty dark. "This way," Maurice said, pointing with his walking stick.

Doors opened before them. Claude sensed the magic Maurice used to defeat the mechanisms of locks, but didn't know or care about the spells. Such were the province of technicians.

Two stories up, they entered a room subtly lit like a birthing chamber, crammed with hi-tech equipment, a veritable jungle of cables and tubes, consoles, control panels, and numerous transparex tanks, both large and small, filled with discreetly bubbling fluids.

As Claude stepped forward, he saw clearly what hung inside the fluids of the transparex tanks: a human hand, an eye, a leg, a ma.s.s of tissue like blubber. Various internal organs. These would be cultured matrixes, bioclonal secondaries, and a potential source of DMA-matched replacement parts for John Dokker and Fillecia Antonucci, should they ever require replacement parts.

A remarkable achievement for a former mercenary. Claude had never seen a setup like this outside of a corporate lab. He could only guess at what all of it must have cost. It was, however, largely irrelevant as far as tonight's work was concerned.

Maurice tapped the keys of a comp terminal. With a soft gasp of air, a small rectangular port opened in the side of the gleaming metal container standing beside the comp terminal. On the tongue that slid out through the port was a metal disk, briefly awash with swirling vapors. Inside this disk, and the second that soon appeared, would be the original tissue samples from which the clonal matrixes had been grown.

Properly handled, and properly utilized in ritual sorcery, these samples would provide a material link to their original hosts.

And that suggested the point of tonight's business.

17.

The meet came down in Sector 4, Newark International Airport. The heaviest security zone in the plex. You couldn't even get into the sector with a weapon unless you met the right guard at the right entrance with the right amount of nuyen. Rico put Filly onto that. She had contacts with the Port Authority cops, and she knew how to talk cop lingua and how to pa.s.s the cred.

Thorvin had the driver's seat, Filly the pa.s.senger side. Rico had the bench seat in back to himself.

Piper, Dok, Shank, and Bandit were waiting back at the Rahway bolthole with Ansell Surikov. Every one of the six of them had agreed to go on with the job as Rico intended. Only Piper and Filly had raised any serious objections, and here was Filly riding shotgun and greasing palms to get them into the airport. Had simple loyalty bought that? Rico could hardly believe it. He had seen so much of the world's treachery that he had trouble believing that such loyalty even existed. Then again, he couldn't think of any other explanation.

It had seemed odd to him that the two women with the crew should be the ones to argue, to object the loudest and clearest to the madness he had in mind. Until he thought about it. Until he realized that most women he had known-even as a kid-seemed somehow more closely tied to life and living than any man could ever hope to be.

The van halted inside the short-term parking lot of the airport's extensive South Terminal complex.

Two minutes later a gleaming black Toyota limo pulled up alongside them. "Weapons armed and locked on,"

Thorvin growled. "Say the word and I'll freaking shred-"

"We're here to deal," Rico said. "Not punch tickets."

The rear door of the limo swung open. Ravage, dressed tonight in a matte black bodysuit, stepped out first, followed by L. Kahn. Rico tugged open the side door of the van and stepped out to meet them. Filly stayed inside the van, but pushed open her door to show off her weapon, an Ingram 20t submachine gun.

That was according to plan. Minimal exposure, ready for a fast breakaway.

The side of the van was barely two meters from the side of the limo. One step put Rico almost within an arm's length of Ravage and L. Kahn. If anyone did the wild thing at that range, people were going to get hurt. Rico gazed steadily at Ravage. Impenetrable black shades covered the violet pits of her eyes. Rico remembered those eyes very well. Here was a woman with ties only to death.

"I'm impressed," L. Kahn said flatly, his voice a monotone, "Your fixer has influence. Now that you've gotten me here, what have you to say?"

"We got a problem."

"I have no problems whatsoever. You have my package. Your next step is to move that package, as per my instructions."

"Wrong," Rico said. "That ain't the next step."

Ravage's head shifted just slightly, as if she were flicking a glance at L. Kahn from behind her black shades. Rico couldn't help the tension that suddenly shot through his gun arm. His nerves were jumping. L.

Kahn remained impa.s.sive, icy. He said, "I suggest that you explain."

Rico nodded, slowly, and said, "The man wants a.s.surances. -He wants to know where he's going."

"That is irrelevant," L. Kahn replied. "You were informed that this job is a recovery. I'm sure that by now you've confirmed the background history I provided, so you're well aware of where the subject was employed prior to being kidnapped by the compet.i.tion. Need I say more? Do the math. Have the subject do the math himself and he'll see quite plainly where he's going."

"That ain't good enough. The man wants proof."

"What sort of proof would he like? A banner hung over Manhattan? A notice on the newsnets? This is absurd. You're scamming for more money."

Rico clenched his teeth. "Money's got nothing to do with it, hombre. The man wants direct communication with his old boss. He wants the word direct. Proof positive."

L Kahn's expression seemed to harden. "That is impossible. As you well know."

"That's what the slag wants."

"At our first meeting, you accused me of playing dangerous games. I now say the same to you. The price for the run is fixed. If you bargain any further, you're bargaining for your life. And you will lose the negotiations. That is a promise."

This was going nowhere. Rico saw that clearly. L. Kahn had as much as told him that Surikov was bound for Fuchi Mult.i.tronics. But that was as much as he'd get. No one would provide proof. That might serve as incriminating evidence should anything go wrong.

This was the Sixth World. Image was everything."The other problem is time," Rico said. "The heat's on. I got the man in a safe place. I don't wanna move him till the sec forces're off the street."

"You find corporate posturing, intimidating."

"Maybe you want me to spit on you again."

Ravage tensed visibly.

L. Kahn lifted a hand, as if to hold her in check. To Rico, he said, "I'm prepared to accord you a degree of lat.i.tude on the basis of your connections and your reputation. You're now pushing at the limits of my patience. I will admit that the safety of the package is paramount. If you want time, I will grant it.

Twelve hours. By the end of that period, the streets should be clear of corporate forces. That is when we will conclude our business. There will be no further delays. Do you understand?"

"I got it, amigo."

"Very good."

L. Kahn got back inside the limo. Rico waited, watching Ravage. The cutter shifted half a step toward him but Rico had his Predator II hi hand, the red dot of a targeting sight centered on Ravage's chest before she could finish the movement.

"Be seeing you," she whispered.

Rico bared his teeth in a grin.

The atmosphere inside the Command & Control vehicle was hushed. Colonel Butler Yates stood at the head of the control section in the rear of the vehicle. He had been there almost twenty minutes, silent and glaring, rapping his swagger stick against his leg, as if to remind everyone of his presence.

Doubtless, he also stood there to remind everyone that the Executive Action Brigade could not afford another frag-up. They had lost track of their targets twice already. A third such incident would likely cost them their contract.