Robert N. Charrette time in the shadows had toughened him, honing away the fat and softness of his corporate life. He opened the door to the apartment, allowing Inu to scamper in through his legs, and found that Inu's excited yapping had done its work. Sally was awake.

"Get enough exercise?" she asked slyly as shetossed back the covers.

He smiled, knowing what kind of exercise she had in mind. "I thought we were supposed to have a lesson this evening."

"Too much work makes Sam too dull." She stretched, testing his resolve. Seeing that he withstood the temptation, she shrugged and pulled on her shorts.

"I thought we'd try a conjuring tonight."

Sam frowned. "Why? You know I don't want to do that kind of stuff."

"Every magician needs to know how," Sally said, lacing the strings on her halter. "If you don't know the basics of conjuring, you can't banish an enemy's sending. That's too useful a skill."

"Banishing is sort of like an exorcism, isn't it?"

"Give the boy a gold star. Yeah, it's like that but it doesn't have any of the religious nonsense attached."

Knowing it was a sore point, Sam said, "Religion is not nonsense."

"Don't start with me." Sally's eyes flashed with ad- amant heat, then softened. "Anyway, what I wantedto do tonight was to get you an ally spirit."

Sam knew what she meant; he'd done some reading.

Perversely, he played dumb. "You mean like a famil- iar."

"Another star."

"You don't have one," he pointed out. He was sur- prised by the petulant tone in his voice. From the look on her face, Sally noted it too.

"I'm not hung up on learning magic, either. An ally may be what you need to break this block you've got."

33.

She was not going to give up. Well, neither was he.

"I won't deal with the devil."

"Idiot! There aren't any devils but the ones running the megacorps. Spirits may quibble and bargain, but they're not demons. They're just energy forms cast into a particular construct by the intelligence whose energy forces them to coalesce. They don't have any connec- tions with fallen angels or cosmic malignancies oranything like that. All that drek is stories made up by pasty-faced old men to scare impressionable kids into following orders that are too stupid to defend logi- cally. I thought you had a better mind than that."

"You're entitled to your opinion," Sam said huffily.

He knew that most of what was said about spirits being demons was garbagea151he wasn't a total idiot.

"This dealing with spirits just doesn't seem right. Even you say that they talk. That implies sentience, but whether they are free intelligences or not, talking to spirits is just too crazy for me. I had enough of that in those nightmares last summer when I talked to the dog spirit.

I haven't had one of those episodes in months, and I don't want to do anything to start them again. I'm just getting back on track. I've put all the troubles that followed Hanae's death into the past where they be- long. I don't want to wake that kind of craziness again."

Sally shook her head, her expression hardening into contempt. "You'll never learn with that kind of atti- tude.""I'll survive," Sam said defensively. "I've done all right so far."

"Babe, you're in the woods. You're alive 'cause I keep you alive."

Sally might believe it, but Sam knew better. He had learned his lessons. "You weren't there last night."

"And you nearly got smoked."

"We did fine."

50.

Robert N. Charrette ment programs, and subsidized communities, while shipping what they considered refuse to the hell they called Yomi. They had seduced Sam from her. Yes, he would refer to her as a kawaruhito, if he referred to her at all.

In just one month Yomi had taught her more aboutthe world and how it worked than her eighteen years in corporate society. The lessons were harsh, but she had learned. She'd had to. Failure meant death. De- spite the pain, the rejection, and the horrible realiza- tion that she was no longer normal, she had not been ready to die.

She'd learned just how luxurious her former corpo- rate life had been. Renraku menials had a better life than even the self-styled overlords of Yomi. The depths to which the weak and ordinary inmates sank was be- yond rational thought. It was just as well that most of those confined to the island didn't remain rational long.

She had learned how to survive.

Over a year ago her body had changed, and twisted her life into a new pattern. Now, for whatever reason, her body had changed again. Was she condemned to keep changing? God forbid that she was infected with some nasty new type of goblinization that never stopped. She had survived one change and wasstronger for it. Thus far, she had coped with the new change, but she didn't know how much she could take.

What if she changed yet again?

The face she now saw in the mirror was alien. After her first time, she avoided looking in mirrors, having found the asymmetry of her ork physiognomy repul- sive. But her new visage was more regular, though hardly more human. She was finding her new body shape more congenial as well. She had expected to find the fur unbearably warm, but it hadn't been so.

Her long limbs were still uncoordinated, making her every movement awkward. She felt ungainly and frus- .

51.

trated at her lack of control. If Shiroi hadn't found her in the Walled City, she would have been prey for the jackals who scoured that garbage heap.

But he had found her and offered help. She had been scared when she had accepted his offer. Scared of her surroundings. Scared of what had happened to her.Scared of trusting him. So she had taken a chance.

After all, what did she have to lose?

Now, her life was taking another crazy twist. This time it was a dream instead of a nightmare. Her mem- ories of her "luxurious" corporate life were being tat- tered to shabbiness. With Renraku, one had to be at least a vice-president of a regional branch to rate a private aircraft such as the one in which she travelled.

The flight was over now. The craft had taxied to a halt and the vibration from the engines had stopped.

The pilot emerged from the cockpit, nodding and mo- tioning her forward. His smiled was forced. The rest of the crew was nowhere in sight. She'd be seeing Shi- roi soon. Who was he, to command such extrava- gance?

She rose from her seat. With three long, wobbly strides, she reached the pilot's side. Undogging the toggles, he lifted the latch and swung the cabin door wide. Brilliant sunshine flooded through the opening, forcing her to squint painfully. The cabin's climate control coughed and shuddered into high gear tofight the invasion of hot, humid air. For a moment, she was back on Yomi and she shuddered. Remembering to breathe, she sucked in air. It was thin, and she felt light-headed. Even her new, larger lungs didn't seem to have enough capacity.

The pilot stepped through the hatchway and pressed himself against the railing of the stairway. He seemed to want to give her as much room as possible. Up close, she could smell his fear. What did he think she was going to do? Eat him? Ignoring him, she looked 272.

Robert N. Charrette Shidhe's law, her life was forfeit. Only Sam's death at Hart's hands might release her from that harsh judg- ment.It took Hart three minutes to run through the halls to her quarters. Worry nagged at her the entire way, almost disrupting the concentration she needed to maintain her invisibility spell. She knew some of the palace's guardian creatures had marked her passage.

The damned, cluttering leshy seemed to see her too, but none of the elves she passed were aware. That was good.

There were no guards at her quarters. The alarm had yet to be given. She wasted no time packing, only grabbed the working bag she had kept ready out of old habit. Before leaving the room, she used the computer to log a "do not disturb" order and a delayed order for a meal delivery with the palace household staff.

It was a weak ruse, but it might buy a few minutes.

On her way to the outer precincts, she only paused once at a storeroom. The room was supposed to be secure, but she had penetrated better systems. She was in and out at the cost of only a few precious minutes, her bag stuffed with Sam's gear. There were ways to use the items as tracking links.Just before she hit the outer, public section of the palace, she dropped her invisibility spell. There would be mages on watch at the boundary, and her conceal- ment spell would only mark her as someone to be de- tained. To her relief, she found at the gate that her privileged status hadn't been revoked. The guards lis- tened dutifully to her story about a trip to the south- west, and even offered her good wishes as she left the building.

She passed through the park surrounding the palace and entered the rail station without incident. Her good fortune held; a train was in the station. She slipped a certified credstick into the turnstile slot and dumped 273.

enough nuyen for a month's open pass. The gate opened and she made it to the platform in time to board just as the doors were closing.

By the time the train pulled into the main station inDublin and she left the car to mingle with the city crowds, she had worked out the bones of her plan.

Her first step was to contact her decker Jenny and arrange transport to England. As soon as she secured a little backup, she would intercept Samuel Verner. She was very sure she knew where he was headed.

Dodger had never felt so tired. He stared at the da- taplug in his limp hand for a full minute before letting it drop to the idle cyberdeck. He was hungry and his muscles ached from hunching over the cyberdeck.

His meat was failing under the strain. Running the Matrix steadily ground a decker down. Trying to do the work of a whole team of deckers changed the grinding wheel of exhaustion from carborundum to diamond grit.

He was worn down.

The search for Sam and Hart had been a total bust.

The Matrix offered no hints of any operation, and his checks on druid holdings gave no indication that theyhad anything to do with the sudden disappearance of his fellow runners. Willie had come up with zilch as * well. Even Herzog's street contacts had nothing, no matter what price was offered. No avenue Dodger had explored had yielded any information on the platinum- haired lady elf or the brown-bearded American sha- man. Neither should have been able to hide for so long in the London sprawl.

Dodger was frustrated. Hart he could take or leave; something about her flashed a warning mode. But Sam . . . Dodger had gotten him into this mess and now his friend had vanished without a trace. His feelings of guilt were uncomfortable as much for their rarity as 274.

Robert N. Charrette for their strength. Those feelings were exaggeratedevery time he thought about how much time he was spending on the other problem.

The hunt on that issue had turned up only negative clues, but the puzzle drew him like a siren. Driven to look, and repelled at the same time, he haunted the Matrix searching for anything that might tell him more about the Artificial Intelligence that had called itself Morgan le Fay.

Dodger had visited with some of the best deckers in the Matrix, but they knew nothing. The rumor mill at Syberspace was empty. Or rather, it had been when he checked into the virtual club. It wouldn't be now. He knew that he would have started a whirlwind of spec- ulation with his guarded questions. The habitues of the decker club were not stupida151nobody stupid could deck through the ice that armored that exclusive little Ma- trix hideout. His fellow Matrix runners would guess what he had hinted at and begin looking for them- selves. Soon someone would know.

Or would they? Was the AI too good for mortal deckers? Could it hide in the Matrix in ways beyondany decker ability to detect?

He wished he knew.

All he knew was that Renraku still had not an- nounced the Artificial Intelligence's existence to the world. That meant that something in their program had fouled up. If they were sole owners of a functioning AI, they should be media-blitzing. The technological coup was worth too much.

Unless they were using it for shadowrunning. Could the rewards of applying it subversively be greater than the killing to be made on the open market? The AI had been present in the Hidden Circle's architecture.

Dodger's investigations had revealed no significant connection between Renraku and the Circle. There were the usual minor connections between some of the 275.

druids' corporations and the megacorp, but no more than could be expected in the interconnecting world of modern business. Renraku had contracts with the Brit- ish government, but Dodger had been unable to detectany unusual activity or connections there, either.

Nor- mally, he would have assumed that everything was just too well hidden. But with the AI involved, he couldn't be sure. The Hidden Circle's antics just weren't Ren- raku's style.

So what was the AI doing in the Circle's architec- ture?

His first thought had been that Renraku might be moving against the Circle, too. Such criminals might attract the attention of a civic-minded megacorp.

The publicity for squashing murders and terrorists was al- ways worth a few points on the stock exchange. But the AI hadn't done anything to the Circle's system, and Renraku operations were quiet. The fragging local Red Samurai contingent had just been withdrawn for tem- porary assignment on the continent. Dodger's every runner sense screamed that Renraku wasn't involved.

So who was running the AI?

It wasn't the renegade druids. If they had that kind of Matrix power, Dodger would be a vegetable bynow.

The AI was just too much Matrix muscle.

For all its power, the AI was a riddle. It had found him in the Circle's architecture. How? It had even brought him a present. Why? Could it have been fol- lowing him? Again, how and why? What in all the electron heavens and hells was going on?

Dodger had begun to think the only one with the answers was the AI itself. If he met it, he could ask.

That was a concept that burned while it froze. When he was jacked in and experiencing the AI in the Ma- trix, he had no desire to stay in its presence. No ra- tional desire, anyway. But an irrational attraction was there. He could no longer deny it. There weren't sup- 276.

Robert N. Charrette posed to be emotions in the Matrix. The electron world had no pheromones to clog a man's brain and force animal reactions on a rational mind. When he stoodunder the electron skies, in the presence of the mirror woman with the ebony clothes, something called to him in a way he had never experienced before. At least not in the Matrix. He felt very afraid when he realized that the pull was too much like what he felt in Te- resa's presence.

The meat and the mind, enemies ever.

So what was going on?

He was tired and confused and hungry. Knowing he wouldn't be able to deal with any problems if the meat collapsed on him, he rose shakily from his seat and stumbled across the squat toward the refrigerator.

He hoped Willie had stocked the thing before she had re- located her base of operations.

He hadn't thought that was a good idea. Sam or Hart wouldn't know where they had gone, and leaving a message with a map was just as dangerous as staying put if the bad guys tracked them down. More danger- ous; in a new base they'd feel safer than they were.She'd argued that splitting their reduced forces was dangerous, and been incensed that he refused to leave.

But then, she'd already been smoking over the time he spent chasing his Ghost in the Machine instead of looking for Sam.

The refrigerator door didn't rattle when he opened it.

Even as bleary as he was, he knew that wasn't a hopeful sign. The vegetable bin was empty save for a browning, wilted bunch of celery. The shelves held a few soggy pasteboard cartons sagging with the weight of their con- tents and a trio of bottles of Kanschlager fortified ale.

The detrius of their patronage of the local food mer- chants he understood, but Willie's abandonment of some of her booze was a surprise.

He picked up one of the bottles. He squinted his weary 277.

eyes at the label, but couldn't read the fine print.