"And n.o.body at Maas Intertech noticed that this slag Travis had all this drek inside his head."

"Ansell Surikov has numerous cerebral implants. Most scientists do. Michael Travis' implants were simply designed to conceal their personafix functions." A look like surprise pa.s.sed over Farris' features.

"Even I couldn't tell them apart. And I've had more experience with Ansell than merely as a psychologist."

"Which one are you married to?"

"Ansell. The original Ansell."

"So if Surikov was really Travis, why'd you try to kill 'im?"

Farris' expression turned sad, hurt. "I've already explained that. Everything I told you about Ansell applied to Michael Travis. Almost everything. Michael volunteered for the infiltrator program. He did it to spite me. We'd been having an affair. It didn't work out I only referred to nun as Ansell Surikov because, in effect, he was Ansell, functioning as Ansell. I believed that he had hired you to kill me. Ansell is quite capable of that, given adequate motivation, and Michael Travis' implanted persona overrides made him just as capable. I thought that my only chance for surviving would be to kill him first."

Rico almost didn't give a d.a.m.n. He could see he wasn't going to catch Farris in any kind of lie. She had all the angles of her story worked out, whether this was chiptruth or pure fantasy. What worried him was the chance that her story was actually true, what that implied about all he had done, and what he ought to do next. "So if it's this slag Travis who got iced, where's the real Surikov?"

"That's what you and I must talk about."

"We're talking about it right now."

Farris dropped her eyes and shook her head. "We're talking about the past. I want to talk about the future."

"What future?"

"Ansell's future," Farris said. "And your future. And mine."

"I ain't got no future."

"Perhaps you do." she said quietly. "It's conceivable that I could give it back to you."

Rico watched Marena Farris intently. She looked about as uncertain and uneasy as ever, but now he didn't trust it, not nearly as much as before. A minute ago she'd been just a frightened woman telling a story he could either believe or dismiss. Now she talked like a person with a plan and Rico didn't like it. Farris was too smart-and too d.a.m.n good-looking. She looked too much like the conniving blonde biff in every action-adventure flick he'd ever-seen. Biffs like that always had something up their sleeve to match what they had inside their shirts or pants. The words that came out of their mouths always made things perfectlylogical, even if those words were sure to get you killed.

Farris' lower lip quivered. "I can help you," she said. "I'm not just a psychologist."

Hadn't she already said something like that to Piper? I'm more than I seem ... Rico accepted that without question. "I know what you are," he said. "Get to the point."

"Of course," Farris said quietly. "The point is this.

Ansell isn't happy where he is. Fuchi Mult.i.tronics has put very tight limits on his work. He would like to go somewhere else, to another corp. If you were to help him get there, this other corp would reward you generously." Rico sneered. "You're dreaming, chica."

"No," Farris said, shaking her head. "No, I'd already begun negotiating on Ansell's behalf before you carried me away. Only a few days have elapsed. I could finish the deal by telecom. You could come away from this with a lot more money than you've got now, and I could probably arrange to get at least one group of people off your back. I could make that a condition of the deal."

"You're talking about Maas Intertech."

"I believe you've had some experience with Daisaka Security? The Asian woman mentioned that.

Daisaka is linked to Maas Intertech through the parent ent.i.ty, Kuze Ninon. I could arrange for them to be turned off."

"I slotted off Fuchi once this month by busting you out. I figure that's enough of a problem to live with."

"Yes," Farris said, nodding. "You've struck a blow against Fuchi corporate pride. They want you, but they can only hunt for you in so many ways, and the SIN-less are hard to find. But it isn't just Fuchi.

Daisaka wants you, too. Isn't that so? And the more people looking for you, the greater the chance that someone will find you. I'm offering you the opportunity to drastically reduce the numbers of your opponents and to make some money that you might very well need in the days and weeks ahead."

"I should trust you to cut a deal?"

"Yes, you should," Farris said. "I have the most compelling reasons possible for dealing in good faith. I want to live."

"You know people at Maas Intertech?"

Farris didn't answer. She just stared at him. A couple of moments of that and suddenly Rico felt like he was facing the blank stare of a fixer, revealing nothing. It was almost scary. Who the h.e.l.l was this biff really? Why did it seem like she knew more about things than any one person had a right to know? Surikov, Travis, the infiltrator program, details about Fuchi compet.i.tors... It made Rico wonder if she knew even more than she was saying.

Her gaze was like a promise, telling him that she had contacts, contacts that could make a deal, a deal that anyone in their right mind would grab at, if only to better the chances of getting out of this mess alive.

Rico didn't want to believe it.

A voice whispered softly at Bandit's left ear, saying, "Master, look."

Bandit shifted to his astral perceptions.

The bedroom now glowed softly with the radiance of life, the astral forms of Rico and Marena Farris, Bandit's own, and one other, a spirit. The spirit took the form of a large racc.o.o.n, but one that walked erect.

It hovered behind Bandit's left shoulder as if to hide from the other astral forms in the room.

This particular sort of spirit was known as a watcher. It was a simple spirit capable of simple tasks.

Bandit had a.s.signed it to watch the astral terrain in the vicinity of the apartment.

"You've noticed something?" Bandit asked.

The watcher nodded vigorously, and extended a paw toward the wall at the rear of the room. Bandit looked at the wall, but saw nothing of interest. "Come swiftly, master," the watcher said. "Come and look! You said if I noticed anything strange ... Well, this is very strange indeed!"

Bandit shifted to the astral plane, leaving flesh and bone behind. He wondered what the watcher had noticed. Still sitting cross-legged, he rose from the floor, turned and followed the watcher through the rear wall of the room and into the alley behind the building.

The night pulsed softly with primal energies. The auras of hundreds of people glowed dimly through the rear windows of buildings lining the alley. Other subtler gleamings of life showed here and there along the length of the alley-the auras of a rat, several weeds, birds pecking at a sprawling pile of garbage. Bandit took all of this in at a glance, and, seeing nothing of value, turned his attention elsewhere. Something else, something far more significant, demanded his attention. It tugged at his magician's sense with sudden violence-and held it.

Through the alley leading to the next block came tendrils of mana: drifting, flowing. Curling slowlyforward like sinuous snakes, radiant with power. Rising, falling. Flowing up and down. Curving in and out.

As the tendrils neared the back alley, they began turning outward, fanning out left and right, as if to proceed in both directions up and down the back alley, but then they curved back again as if returning to a single course.

Here was magic in the making, a long magic. Nothing else could bind the mana into such form or send it much beyond the limit of sight. Could this appearance be mere coincidence? Bandit doubted it. Long magic built up slowly, over the course of hours. It was a far more exacting magic than the manabolts and fireb.a.l.l.s that fledgling magicians tossed off on the spur of the moment or amid the chaos of a gun battle.

The leading tendrils of the spell seemed to be coming toward the building where Rico and the others had taken refuge. Even now those tendrils were crossing the back alley, slowly, sinuously snaking their way toward the wall through which Bandit had emerged.

A group of armed razorguys pa.s.sing through the alleyways might have been a coincidence. There were hundreds, possibly thousands of razorguys in the plex and they all had to live somewhere. Magic and magicians were far less common. Uncommon enough to be rare.

What was the point of this sending? Bandit spent a short while considering this, a.s.sensing the spell being cast. It appeared to be a spell of detection, one designed to find a particular individual. What individual, he could not tell. Did this have something to do with Rico and the team, Ansell Surikov, or Marena Farris? Bandit wondered.

On occasions in the past, Bandit had in fact observed the sendings of other magicians, sendings that had nothing to do with him or anyone he knew or anything he was doing, but he could count those occasions on the fingers of one hand.

Always, it was best to be careful.

He returned to his physical body. Rico was crouched right in front of him, gazing at him steadily, questioningly. Bandit considered that questioning gaze, then said, "Trouble's coming."

"What trouble?" Rico asked, grimacing.

Bandit replied, "How bad do you want to know?"

Through the rear windows of the van, Shank watched the Asian slag turn in off the street and come hustling up the alley, walking fast, almost breaking into a ran. He didn't look like trouble, but his haste made Shank wonder. He was dressed like a cook: greasy white ap.r.o.n, shirt, pants, sneaks. If he had any weapons, they were under his hide and crammed in pretty tight. He was skinny to the point of skeletal. He might've just climbed out of a grave.

"What's this freaking piece of drek?" Thorvin said.

Shank grunted, wondering, tightening his hold on his compact Colt M22A2.

The slag kept on coming, hustled up alongside the van, then turned to the door of the apartment the team was using as a bolthole. He pounded on the door with a fist. Shank stepped out through the rear door of the van, stepped around the rear corner of the van, took one step further and put the muzzle of the Colt at the back of the slag's head.

"Be real careful," he growled, his voice low and menacing.

The slag froze, except to slowly turn his head. That head barely came up as far as the middle of Shank's chest. From what Shank could see, the slag looked surprised enough to be terrified, eyes open wide.

Abruptly, the door to the apartment swung inward and Piper stepped into view. Shank put a hand around the back of the slag's neck, about to push him inside, just into the hallway, to scope him out, but then the slag was looking at Piper and nodding and bowing the way Asians do, and Piper was bowing, too.

"Okyaku sdma ga kite imdsu!" the slag said. He spoke quickly and quietly, seeming excited. Shank wondered what the fragger was saying.

Piper's eyes went wide. "Doo yuu imi desu ka!" she said, breathlessly.

"Shookdijoo o mdtte indkereba narimasen hi!"

"Ara ma! Osore irimasu! Ddnata desu ka!"

"Nan-no shirushi ga yoroshii desu ka!"

They went on like that for a few moments more.

Shank looked up and down the alley. n.o.body pa.s.sing the street-end of the alley seemed in any particular hurry, no more than usual for this part of town. On the street itself, a sanitation truck rumbled by, workers in black masks, gloves and jumpsuits mounted on the truck's steps. For a night in Little Asia, for any part of the Newark sprawl, things seemed pretty quiet.

"Hai! Wakammasu! Domo arigato gozaimasu!" Piper said."Do itashimas.h.i.te!" the slag said.

Shank lowered his weapon.

Piper bowed and the slag bowed, too. They both bowed again. The slag hurried back toward the street. Shank looked at Piper. She looked at him and said quickly, in English, "Shank, we must go. Get ready to run."

"Null sheen," Shank replied. "Run where?"

Piper stared at him wide-eyed, then suddenly shook her head and hurried back down the hall to the apartment. Shank shrugged.

Behind him, the van rumbled to life.

31.

"A deal has been made, jefe," Piper said rapidly. "Daisaka has approached the oyabun himself. Kobun of Honjowara yakuza and agents of Daisaka Security are sweeping the district together. It is said they make discreet inquiries, but that is just cover. They will find us unless we leave here."

Rico grimaced. "How much time we got?"

"We must go now. Right now."

Piper didn't need to give any extra emphasis to her words. Rico could see the emphasis in her eyes.

She was scared, and probably with good reason. "Somebody sold us out?"

"Not how you are thinking."

"One of your contacts."

Piper shook her head. "Perhaps Honjowara-rama has used us to obtain something he wants from Daisaka. That is most likely. But we have been warned, jefe. Warned to get away. We have been used as p.a.w.ns. That is not the same as betrayal."

Maybe, maybe not. It sounded like the kind of deal that a slag like the oyabun could make with impunity. Rico was in no position to argue about it. What the fragging sama wanted from Daisaka was none of his business. An honorable man might have told Daisaka Security to go slot, but Rico decided to be glad for small favors. Without the oyabun's token consent, they'd never have been able to lay low in this part of the plex, and without the warning that had come to them now ... they might've wound up dead.

"Let's flash."

They gathered their gear. Bandit threw a few handfuls of some sparkling stuff all around the front room of the apartment and sang something too soft to make out. Rico didn't know what it was for and didn't waste time asking. They headed out to the alley. Dok and Piper got Marena Farris into the van. Rico tugged the side door closed and got into the pa.s.senger seat and then they were rolling, turning toward the nearest transitway. "What's our terminus?" Thorvin said. A fragging good question, Rico thought. This run was pushing their limits. They'd used all the presets, contacts, and hideyholes they'd had lined up in advance. They'd stepped beyond the last step of the plan. They could head for the fortified bolthole in Sector 13, but Rico wanted to save that till they had autofire burning their b.u.t.ts and nowhere else to turn.

They stopped in Sector 11, just across the border from Little Asia. Thorvin parked the van in the big parking garage two stories below the Hillside New Jersey Transit station. Rico put a credstick into a public telecom, stabbed the Vid Off key, and tapped in a special number. Momentarily, Mr. Victor's voice came through the handset to Rico's ear. "How are you, my friend?"

"The meet went wrong," Rico said. "The man's trash. The client wasted the merchandise. We had to fight our way out."

Brief silence. "I am sorry to hear that. I am shocked, though I have had certain difficulties myself. We live in dangerous times. Tell me, how did your problems arise?"

"How do they usually arise?"

Another silence. "What will you do?"

Revenge was out of the question, for the moment. Staying alive was the immediate problem, that and what to do with Marena Farris and her proposal. Rico considered mentioning that proposal to Mr. Victor, but decided against it. Mr. Victor's arrangements hadn't been working out so good lately. Rico still trusted him, but right now it seemed enough to trust him with something simple. "We need a new hole."

"Perhaps I can help you with that, my friend."

Mr. Victor knew a slag who knew an address. Mr. Victor would arrange a meet. Rico clenched his teeth, but said that was chill. Mr. Victor then said, "You should know that your former employer has put out the word. Nuyen is offered for information on your whereabouts."

Rico hesitated. "You serious?"

"Quite serious."Incredible.

Mr. Victor had to be referring to L. Kahn, and that was incredible because fixers didn't usually put out rewards, not directly. That was like L. Kahn admitting to the world that somebody had stuck it to him, and fixers didn't like to admit that. Fixers tended to be acutely conscious of their image, no less than corps.