"Got him, too," Rory assured him.

"We'll see about that soon." Grian shook his head. "Too bad about the high-tech stuff in the van. Ehran would like to have seen it."

"You sure it's beyond salvation?"

"Couldn't be in worse shape if a Dragon sat on it."

Rory clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, at least we got a full count on our uninvited guests. Makes it a profitable evening."

"Don't spend it before you get it, Rory. We don't have a full count until we get a confirmation on your second kill."

"Then let's get it. The guy went down over here."

Rory led his companion toward the spot where Sam crouched spying. He feared that the Elves would discover him and cry the alarm, but they seemed not to see where he hid. They stopped near where the sorcerer's spell had overwhelmed Sam. Though they had come closer to Sam's hiding place, their voices were no clearer. A trick of sound the forest was playing on his weakened condition.

"No body, Rory," Grian observed to the accompaniment of Rory's curses. Then he raised his voice. "Bran, get over here! We need a tracker. Our cocksure sorcerer went and missed."

Grian skidded his way down the slope while Rory, more fastidious, followed him carefully. Both Elves moved with a languid, slow-motion grace. Bran arrived in time to find Grian bending over to pluck something from the streambed. At first, Sam couldn't tell what sort of device the Elf was holding. Then he recognized the broken strap and realized it was his discarded watch.

"He went down here, all right."

Rory reached out from where he stood on the bank and snatched the watch from Grian. "See. Good and charred. If he walked away from here, he didn't get far."

Grian ignored him. "Take a look around, Bran. See if you can find us a trail."

Bran nodded and headed upstream. In a quarter of an hour, he was back. He spent several more minutes studying the stream bed near where Sam had fallen. The others watched him, Grian standing patient and confident, Rory pacing back and forth at the edge of the stream.

"Don't think you'll have to worry," Bran announced.

"Why?"

"Found some hoof prints on a mud flat upstream. Looks like a single horse; riderless, I think. No signs of entry or exit from the stream for almost half a kilometer. No normal horse would take that kind of path at night."

"Water Horse, then?" Grian hypothesized.

"Looks like." Bran nodded and pointed out signs as he spoke. "Stopped about there, where our boy fell in. Stood for a while, then took off downstream like a bat out of hell. Should have reached the Columbia by now. Looks like our boy is breathing water."

"Nothing more to do here, then," Grian concluded.

Rory blocked him as he attempted to climb the slope. "What about confirmation?"

"If he took a ride on a Water Horse, there isn't going to be any body."

"Then we'll get credit for the kill?"

"More than likely."

"So I guess there is nothing more to be done here," Rory said cheerily.

Sam saw the sour look Grian gave the sorcerer as Rory started up the slope.

"All right, mark it and we're done. We'll let the regular patrol clean up in the morning."

There were murmurs of approval from the Elves as they left off what they were doing and joined their leader. Bran tapped buttons on a shiny object he took from his backpack before dropping it near the burned-out van. While he was doing that, Rory spent some time staring at the marks his magic had made on the forest. He looked troubled, as though he couldn't remember something that was important to him. When Grian called his name, the sorcerer shrugged and slowly turned away to follow the others. Sam watched the last Elf leave the clearing to follow his companions back to their transportation. They were heading well away from the direction that he had run. He was safe.

Exhaustion swept over Sam. He left the clearing, turning his eyes from the death and destruction again. He had no awareness of the walk to the tree that had felled him, but suddenly he was there again.

Something nagged at him, a sense of being watched. He stretched his senses, pushing back the fatigue that dragged at him, dulling his perceptions. The woods were still peaceful. He caught a glimpse of shadowy shapes loping between the trees.

Dark beasts, canine and at least as big as wolves.

Then they were gone.

Strain as he might, he lost them among the trees. Were they coming closer? He didn't know and almost didn't care. He had pushed himself beyond his limits. His head drooped; he was tired beyond comprehension. Lord, he was tired.

Once more, he felt the pain of the assault gun grinding into his back. All the aches of overused muscles and the small pains of scrapes and cuts swelled. It was deep in the third period of sudden-death overtime and he was an Ice Brawl puck. If the beasts were coming to get him, they could have him. He already felt dead.

Intermittent puffs of hot air beat on the left side of his face and he smelled the fetid stink of a carnivore's breath. Cautiously, he turned his head and opened his eyes. Two slanting, golden-green eyes stared into his.

19.

Marushige was right. Sato considered it uneconomical to undertake a hunt for Verner and his doxy. Crenshaw's lobbying for just such action had almost cost her all the good will she had been building up with the Kansayaku. The only good thing was that Sato had not directly forbidden her to look into the matter. Not that such a prohibition would have stopped her, despite the devastating consequences that disobeying could bring down. Crenshaw figured she had always been able to look after her own interests, arranging for any devastating consequences to fall on someone else, preferably an enemy.

Still, her private investigation had not yielded much. Her network in Seattle was minute compared to the web of contacts and informants she had maintained in the Orient. What little word trickled in all came back negative. It was as though Verner had vanished from the face of the earth. Such cheap-hire runners couldn't be that good. There had to be a connection with some high-rolling player in this shadow game. All she had to do was find it.

To do that, she needed time, time the Kansayaku wasn't letting her have. Whenever she wasn't acting as his bodyguard, he kept her running his errands. As though Akabo and Masamba weren't enough mundane and magical muscle. As though he were trying to keep her from getting out and doing some of her own spadework.

That, she realized, was an angle she had overlooked. Might Sato be involved somehow? She didn't see what he had to gain, but he certainly had enough clout to make a person vanish. A hidden interest in Verner would explain why Sato had gone along so easily with her suggestion about offering the wimp contact with his sister.

If she could just finish her little chore quickly enough, she could get in a call to a certain Tokyo fixer who might know something.

Impatiently, Crenshaw looked through the double panes of Xylan that separated her from the clean room where the AI team was conducting an experiment. Among the anonymous green-coated figures, the tall form of Vanessa Cliber stood out easily. After a few moments, Crenshaw identified the other team leaders among the capped and masked workers.

The strands of black hair escaping from a loosely tied cap and the constant bustle were characteristic of Sherman Huang, president of Renraku America and head of the operation. No one else would dare to be so casual about the room's cleanliness restrictions while at the same time being so passionately involved in the process.

The other leader demonstrated a precision of movement and an economy of motion that Crenshaw admired. She had noted it two days ago while observing Konrad Hutten working in the data center. For a man whose specialty was abstruse microtronic engineering, he had a physical grace that Crenshaw found attractive. When this current business was wrapped up, she just might try to find out if he was equally attractive away from his work. She wondered if he liked aggressive women.

As she watched, the test seemed to conclude. The workers relaxed visibly and all the bustling stopped. Three figures left their associated knots of green coats and headed for the airlock door of the clean room. Only the team leaders would be free to leave before all systems were verified as secure. Crenshaw felt a smug satisfaction at having pegged all three correctly.

Huang was the first through the outer door. He had already stripped away his cap and mask and was trying to stuff them into a pocket. His mind, as usual, was on other things, and the objects fell to the floor.

". . . for a whole hour. It's not like she didn't know there were going to be late nights on this project."

"Even wives don't like being stood up, Sherman," Cliber said.

"It was just a little dinner party. Nobody important was there." Huang shrugged. "She'll get over it. She always does."

"Perhaps if you took some time off," Hutten suggested.

"Time?" Huang was clearly affronted. "That's exactly the issue. Everybody wants my time. I don't have enough for the project now that it's reached this crucial stage. If they'd just leave us alone." His eyes fixed on something only he could see and the muscles around them relaxed from their habitual squint. "Just a little more time and we'll show them."

He reached down and spun a monitor to face him.

"Hah! Just what I thought. Take a look at this."

The other two peered over his shoulder. Cliber uttered a meditative "hmm." Hutten said nothing but reached past Huang to tap keys on the console.

"Good thought, Konrad." Huang nodded in approval. "That configuration should maximize throughput in the beta cycle."

"An obvious extrapolation from the modulator parameters," Hutten observed.

In her business, Crenshaw was sometimes pleased and relieved to be treated as part of the furniture. The lack of attention could even be a valuable asset. This was not one of those times. Deciding that the green coats were going to ignore her until she intruded on their attention, she stepped up and spoke.

"President Huang?"

All three looked at her in unison. Cliber's face immediately settled into its habitual glare of contempt. The other two wore expressions of mild curiosity.

"Yes?"

"Alice Crenshaw, sir. Security division."

Huang's brown furrowed, but Crenshaw noted his fugitive flash of concern. Like a child caught looking at dirty pictures.

"There's no problem, sir. I'm on assignment with Kansayaku Sato. He sent me to convey his apologies and regrets that your dinner meeting must be postponed by half an hour."

"Is that tonight?" Huang asked absently.

"Seven-thirty," Hutten offered. "Now eight."

"Well, I guess we'll be there. With all the bells and whistles." Huang laughed nervously.

Crenshaw groaned inwardly. They had invented the term nerd for this man. She gave him a polite smile "The Kansayaku is looking forward to meeting your team leaders this evening."

Cliber flashed her companions an anticipatory grin. "I'm looking forward to it, too. I've got a few things I'd like to drop into Mr. Kansa-whatever's ears." She turned on Crenshaw. "He's sure enough taken his time getting around to us. The grapevine's been buzzing about how he's in such an all-fired hurry to get the project moving. How come he's waited so long to talk to us?"

"The corporation has a lot more interests than your AI project, Doctor Cliber. Kansayaku Sato must concern himself with them all. He has been looking around, getting a feel for the operation here in Seattle. He has told me that he thought it best not to disturb your important work on the project more than necessary."

"No more than-," Cliber sputtered. "The personnel changes he ordered were hardly necessary. And they were very disturbing."

"As I said, doctor, no more than necessary."

"What does he know about what is necessary? You people are all alike. You have no idea of what we are doing here, but you still think that you can shove people in and out, make schedule changes at whim, and I don't know what all else. Then you expect us to dump results in your laps on order."

"Calm yourself, doctor."

"Calm myself." Cliber's face was flushed. "I haven't gotten started yet."

"I suggest you reevaluate your attitude in light of the Kansayaku's mandate," Crenshaw stated coldly. "He might find your attitude nonproductive."

"Nonproductive!" Cliber tugged her cap from her head, loosing her honey-blonde hair from the pins that had bound it up. She slammed the green cap to the floor. "Sherman!"

Huang looked up confusedly from the monitor he had gone back to studying. "Hmmm?"

Crenshaw spoke before Cliber could launch her tirade. "I was just suggesting to Doctor Cliber that she place some curbs on her . . . enthusiasm. Cooperation with Kansayaku Sato is the fastest way to get your project moving."

Huang blinked, looking from his clearly incensed colleague to the calm security officer and back again. "Vanessa, I'm afraid Ms. Crenshaw is right. You do let your temper get the better of you occasionally and we must be careful around Mr. Sato. If he's satisfied with what he finds and no one antagonizes him, he'll go away and we can all get back to our work. You know how close we are." He gave Cliber a weak smile that seemed to calm her a little.

Then he mumbled, "I do hate all this bureaucratic nonsense."

"Hardly nonsense, President Huang." Crenshaw chided. Cliber snorted, but Crenshaw continued. "But I understand how professionals like your team may find it bothersome to abide by the necessary formalities of operating in a businesslike manner. Kansayaku Sato is only looking out for Renraku's interests. He wishes all departments to work at peak efficiency."

"Then why hasn't he approved our requests for more help?"

"As a matter of fact, he has." Crenshaw produced a chip carrier from her jacket pocket and tossed it on the desk. "These are the files and transfer orders for twelve of your requested personnel. I'm sure you will want to express your thanks to the Kansayaku at dinner tonight. Until then."

Enjoying the stunned looks on Huang's and Cliber's faces, Crenshaw turned and strode for the door. On her way, she noticed that Hutten had seated himself at a cyberterminal and continued to work through all the uproar. A realistic and professional attitude. She liked that in a man.

20.

Sam awoke as his muscles locked into a brief spasm. After a moment of startled disorientation, he lay back, confused. He was indoors and in a bed whose soft quilt lay heavily on his naked skin. The room was dark, lit only fitfully by indirect glow from what seemed to be a fire in the next room. He was surrounded by a vaguely familiar scent at once comforting and strange.

He couldn't remember how he had come to be here. Last he knew he had been in the forest, running for his life from the Tir Tairngire border guards. And there had been a pair of wolves.

The memory was confused, one thing blending into another.

Images of the place where Hanae had died dominated his memories. Flash-lit shards from the attack, tranquil images of the scene as they had bedded down with the shadowrunners, washed-out visions of Elves wandering among the destruction. It all dissolved into whirling impressions of the dark forest and his haunted run through the dark.

Sam remembered falling and hitting his head. A cautious exploratory hand confirmed that memory. He had a very large bump on the back of his head, but he felt curiously little discomfort on touching it. In fact, none of the scrapes and bruises from his run bothered him. They were still there, though, evidence that the nightmare in the forest had been real. His mysterious benefactors must have given him something for the pain.

Faces came to mind. One was a haughty and disdainful male, the other a concerned but faintly confused female. Both were long and thin with slightly slanted eyes. Their ears had just the hint of a point. They could almost be the faces of Elves, but they weren't, they couldn't be. It was Elves that had tried to kill him. Why would they save him? It didn't make sense. He couldn't remember clearly, but Sam was sure that hands belonging to those faces had helped him from the forest, seen to his wounds, and installed him in this bed.

Not knowing where he was or who were his benefactors made him nervous. His state of undress only exaggerated the feeling of exposure. As he sat up to look around the room, a steely glint in one corner caught his eye. Chin Lee's assault rifle leaned against the wall. Whoever had brought him here felt comfortable enough to leave him armed. Or had they?

He crept from the bed and checked the weapon as he had seen the Ork do. It was still loaded. They did trust him. Surely, then, he was not a captive of the Tir Tairngire border guards.

On a stool beside the gun was a pile of clothes. They were not his, but must have been left with the intent that he wear them. He soon found that they fit. He was pulling on the boots that had been tucked under the stool when he heard the soft murmur of voices in the next room. Lacing the footgear quickly, he moved to the doorway to listen.