By the time Raven helped me to my feet and we then picked our way through flaming debris to the edge of the wharf, Stealth had managed to awkwardly haul himself up out of the water. His left arm hung limply from his shoulder and showed where most of the working parts had been crushed when the sphinx had batted him out of the air. Water poured from the arm compartments where he carried plastic explosives, and his talons gouged their way into the decking to steady him.

Raven and I exchanged smiles while Stealth turned and nodded grimly at the burning ally spirit.

"Underwater I could see no props or jet nozzles-the ship had no natural way to move. I figured that made it very special, therefore I resolved to destroy it. Then a grunge corpse strapped to a flamethrower drifted down from the surface, so I improvised a bomb. Not much can stand up to napalm and Semtek."

His mention of the flamethrower brought my earlier encounter with it back to mind in full sizzling detail. I shifted my shoulders around to ease the soreness in my back. "By the way, that was pretty tricky shooting you did when that grunge popped up with the torch gun."

Stealth nodded solemnly. "He was half hidden so I couldn't go for a head shot. A body shot would have ruptured the tank, and that would have roasted you alive." He shuddered and glanced at his tattered left arm. "Burning to death isn't something I'd wish on anyone."

I turned to Raven. "You should have seen it. He nailed me in the back and knocked me forward into the woman I was trying to save. That blasted us out of the way of the flamethrower." I looked back at Stealth. "It's a good thing you remembered I was wearing kevlar." The look of surprise on his face took a second or two to die. I felt a chill pa.s.s between us, but it drained away as Kid Stealth punched me lightly in the shoulder and gave me a genuine smile. "Yeah, I'm glad I remembered, too . .."

Digital Grace I.

Given that I didn't know where I was when I woke up, I figured still having my clothes on was a plus. I mean I can remember similar incidents when I thought otherwise, but I hadn't been tied up in those situations. I also didn't have a kid sitting on the end of the bed pointing a pistol with a bowling-ball bore at me.

"Kyrie, he's awake." The little albino showed me his teeth in a feral grin and held the heavy revolver with pale, unwavering hands. "Do anything, Kies, and the last thing going through your mind will be a bullet."

Great,I thought,I'm being held by some psycho punk who's been downloading intimidation lessons from Kid Stealth. "No problem, ace."

I took a moment or two to a.s.sess my situation. Because of the thick blue and red Amerind blanket drawn up to my neck, I couldn't see my hands, but it felt like the kid had used hawser to bind my wrists together. The cable had been knotted tight, but my hands weren't tied behind my back. Whatever spark of hope that little gift inspired died in the railroad tunnel at the end of the gun barrel staring at me.

The old, metal-frame bed had been painted enough times for me to see a rainbow of colors where chips cut through to bare metal. Off to my left, just on the far side of the doorway, I saw a table and two chairs. My leather jacket hung over the back of one of the chairs and my shoulder holster, complete with pistol, lay on the table itself. The room, from the cobwebs in the corners to the cracks in the plaster, had seen better days, but it was still habitable. The bedding looked fairly clean, but the scent told me it had been a week or two since it had been washed.

Using my elbows and heels, I slowly pushed myself back and up into a sitting position. I clamped down on the blanket with my chin, pulling it up with me. Bending my knees and digging my heels in, I popped the blanket up into a little tent and watched the albino over the artificial horizon stretched between my knees.

"So, tell me, do you have a 'Preferred Guest Rate' or am I being soaked for full fare during my impromptu stay?"

The albino's pink eyes watched me without blinking. His white hair had been shaved into a mohawk and stiffened with glue into a bristle of porcupine quills. Aside from the reddish cast to his eyes, the only color on him came from the dirt beneath his fingernails and the little creases at the corner of his thin-lipped mouth. His jaw showed white wisps of beard-to-come. His Maria Mercurial t-shirt and synthetic pants matched the dingy gray walls in hue.

Before he could answer, or pull the trigger, a second person entered the room. She was a pretty little elf, if a tad on the lean side. She had fire in her dark eyes, though she seemed to take care to hide it when she looked at the albino. She wore her black hair very short in a boyish cut. That, and her slender figure made it easily possible for her to pa.s.s as a young man-a wise thing to do if, as was my guess, we were in the Barrens and this was where they lived. She wore mostly synthleather-standard for the sprawl-though hers was of browns and tans that would have seemed more appropriate out in the Tir.

"How are you feeling?" Kyrie leaned on the foot of the bed as she asked the question. "Are you hurt?"

I shook my head casually. "Tongue feels thick. I could use some water."

She turned to leave, but the gunboy snarled at her. "Overruled. You'll get water when I say you get water."

"Albion, he's not an enemy." "He's not a guest either, Kyrie. He's a hostage." Albion locked his serpent-stare on me again. "You're Wolfgang Kies, right?"

My eyes narrowed. "Cut to the chase."

"My game, my rules, my speed."

"Okay, if that's the way it is. Yes, I'm Wolfgang Kies." I pulled my head up and back, pressing it against the wall behind me. "Next?"

"You work for Dr. Richard Raven, right?"

That question, combined with calling me a hostage earlier, started alarm bells going off in my head. I knew that Etienne La Plante, a big Seattle crime boss, had a standing reward for the delivery of Raven's head in a sack. I didn't think these kids were setting a trap for Raven with me as bait, but anything was possible in the sprawl. As desperation finds plenty of prey in the Barrens, that might be exactly what was happening.

"Yeah, I work for Raven."

Immediately Kyrie's expression brightened. Albion remained stone-faced, but tipped the pistol up toward the ceiling. Some of my anxiety drained off as the pistol ceased its violation of my personal s.p.a.ce, but I knew lots more was going on than I could read.

Two more kids entered the room, and the second I laid eyes on the smallest of them, how I got involved in this mess came flooding back with a clarity that caused me to blush. I'd just come out of Kell's over between First and Second, down by the Market. I'd been drinking a bit, but not much because I was more interested in watching the Seadogs1in their fight for the pennant than I was in getting drunk. Jimmy Mackelroy salted 1The Seattle franchise for major league baseball is officially still called the Mariners, but pretty much everyone who isn't under contract to them calls them the Seadogs. About ten, fifteen years ago they had a really bad streak-stats just weren't clicking the way they should, so everyone started calling the team the Dogs. Then this guy-an ork related somehow to Plutarch Graogrim, another of Doc's chummers-gets this idea about turning out Seattle Seadogs merchandise, including caps and shirts, and all with a great pirate-hound logo. Everybody started getting into the game away with a three-run homer in the ninth, so I left and headed out toward Stewart to get my Fenris.

I should have known better, but in the alley between Kell's and the Gravity Bar I heard someone crying.

I pulled my Beretta Viper 142and thumbed the safety off, then glanced around the corner of the alley.

Aside from two rats perched on the rim of a dumpster and the usual acc.u.mulation of trash, I saw nothing out of the ordinary except a tiny humanoid form.

Its head came up and revealed the most cherubic little face I'd ever laid eyes on. Because of the multiple layers of clothing swathing the child I couldn't tell if it was a boy or girl. It took one bold step toward me with its left foot, men hesitated and let its right leg drag shyly in behind the left. With the length of cuff overhanging its right hand, the child swiped at the tears on its grimy face, then smiled at me.

"Ah you Wolfgang Kies?" it asked in an innocent, mush-mouth voice.

I slipped my Viper back into the shoulder holster I wore under my leather jacket. "Yes." I stepped into the alley and approached the child.

"And do you wook for Docto Waven?" it followed up in a voice rising with expectation.

I dropped to one knee and held out my left hand. "Yes. Are you lost?"

It smiled as agelessly as a Buddha. "No." It held its hands out to me. As it did so, a mist sprayed out from its left sleeve, while the little figure clapped its right sleeve over its own nose and mouth.

The neurotoxin stung my eyes, but before I could even think of running, I'd pulled enough in through my open mouth to drop me on my tail. I coughed weakly, whole charade, with a local radio station even doing play-by-play of fantasy dog-day games. The Mariners tried to sue, but when fans stopped coming to games in protest, the suit was dropped and the Seadog name has been a thorn in their sides ever since, even though the team has gotten good.

21 hasten to note that even some newer, wizzer gun wouldn't have kept me out of this situation.

then lay back. As consciousness drained from me, I remember praying one thing over and over: "Please, G.o.d, if I have to die, don't let Stealth find out how I got it."

That same little boy now disengaged his hand from that of the fourth member of the youth a.s.sembly and approached the head of the bed. "Ah you okay?"

The hurt and fear in his small voice prompted an instant smile of rea.s.surance on my part. "I'm fine."

The albino looked over at the other girl in the room. "Sine, get Cooper away from him. You're supposed to be watching out front."

The blond flipped her long hair back from one shoulder with a contemptuous toss of her head. "Load up Reality 1.0, chummer. These are the Barrens. There's nothing out there and no one will find us here. No one but that d.a.m.ned preacherman." Still, despite her defiance, she held her hand out to the little boy, and Cooper took it. His other hand came up to his face and his thumb disappeared within his mouth.

"Okay, chummers, what's the scan?" I put a nasty7face on and centered my attention on Kyrie. "You tagged me good and you've got me here. You want something, that's obvious, or I'd have woken up dead. Slot and run. I've got places to go and people to see."

"You're going nowhere, Kies." Albion began to get antsy with the gun again. "We want Raven to do a job for us."

I shook my head. "Is that all? A job? Fine, let me call him."

"Nope." Albion dropped the gun toward me and sighted a pink eye down the barrel. "He won't do it on your say-so. He's legal-he's got a System Identification Number. We don't trust anyone with a SIN.

The only way Raven will work for us is if your life is on the line."

"That six-shooter has more bullets than you've got brain cells." I looked over at Kyrie. "You're an elf.

You could have gotten word to Raven through the Tir and he'd have helped. You must have thought of that." "Overruled," snarled Albion.

I felt my anger rising and along with it came the howl of a wolf in the back of my mind. "Overruled, Albion, because that was a bad idea or because you couldn't control the situation then?"

"Overruled because we don't trust anyone legal." He opened his arms wide. "We're a family. We do for each other and can trust each other because we're all alike. You SIN and all sorts of laws start kicking in. Folks get worried about covering themselves in legalities. Not us. We just want to be left alone, and that's what we want Raven to get for us."

"Okay, if that's what you want." I snorted a little laugh. "I think you're making a mistake, however. I think Doc would prefer working with folks who sought his help openly, not coerced it."

"My rules, remember?"

"You might want to reconsider." I pulled my hands from beneath the blanket and shook the frayed hawser from them. "I think he'd frown on having me tied up, too." Looking past Kyrie and Sine, I smiled.

"Isn't that true, Doc?"

The kids spun toward the doorway faster than a pedestrian hit by a Porsche Mako going full open.

Albion's jaw hit the floor, followed a second later by his pistol. Kyrie leaned back against the bed's frame. Sine sat down hard in the chair with my jacket on it, while Cooper just stared wide-eyed and continued to suck his thumb.

Doctor Richard Raven more than filled the doorway. Tall, even for an elf, his head towered above the top of the door. His broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, slender hips, and powerful legs in a build more typical of humans than elves. His coppery skin, high cheekbones, and long black hair bespoke some Amerind blood, though his white shirt and khaki canvas slacks were the latest in corp casual.

Somehow, though, his size and mixed Amerind/elven racial characteristics were not what surprised them.

His eyes held their attention. Red and blue ribbonsof color wove through their black depths in an aurora-like display. Half terrifying and one hundred percent fascinating, his gaze swept over them, then he nodded solemnly.

"I thank you for finding and taking care of my friend. When the emergency locator beacon built into his belt buckle went off, I became understandably concerned."

I kicked the blanket off and brushed the remnants of the rope from the sharpened edge of the buckle.

"Did that thing get activated again?" I shrugged. "Just as well, I suppose, Doc, because these kids want to hire you to do a job for them."

Raven smiled easily as I crawled out of bed and slipped my holster back on. He looked at Albion. "How is it that I can repay your kindness to Wolf?"

Albion swallowed hard, bringing a little joy to my heart. "You know Reverend Dr. Lawrence Roberts?"

I tugged my jacket out from under Sine and recalled her earlier remark. "The television preacher?"

Albion nodded. "The same." He looked around, silently polling Kyrie and Sine. They gave him nods.

"We want you to kill him."

II.

As I headed my Fenris sports coupe out from the garage beneath Raven's headquarters I found myself silently agreeing with Kyrie's final comment about Reverend Roberts-it didn't make any sense. What the kids had told us defied logic in the way only insanity or divine inspiration can possibly manage. Had control of my life suddenly been threatened that abruptly and radically, I'd have wanted the man dead, too.

Reverend Lawrence Roberts, Doctor of Divinity by some ROM-staffed diploma mill, had decided to make that band of kids his own little project. He wanted to re-

1VISL.M* nLILfJVrtFC^V75 deem their lives. Not only did he intend to baptize them into his particular sect of Christianity, but he wanted to get them System Identification Numbers and bring them back into the mainstream of society.

He wanted to create in them an example of a way Christians could fight back against Satan's rule on the earth.

Raven had Tom Electric run a sample of one of Roberts' services by me. It was part of a simsense chip package that Roberts' ministry offered. Being a male in my twenties, I got version 20M. The simsense would feed back the emotions of a person recorded observing the service, so matching me with the appropriate version was vital for me to get the full impact of the good Doctor's presentation. I pulled a trode rig over my head and started it running. As the static wall thinned and evaporated and the simsense began to roll, the Old One growled in disgust.

The preacher oozed charisma from the top of his thin, blond hair to the Italian leather loafers on his feet.

Clutching a battered Bible, he looked out from his lectern like a prisoner about to confess before a jury.

One amid thousands, I felt my heart begin to pound with antic.i.p.ation.

"Yes, my friends, the things you have heard about me are true." Reverend Roberts began in low, embarra.s.sed tones, but I sensed he was in control of the whole situation at all times. "Fifteen years ago I was nothing but a conman, and one of the most vile stripe. My partner and I used to read the newsfax to see who had died, then we'd print up a customized edition of a Bible. It would be inscribed from the deceased to whoever his closest survivor happened to be." He showed us his well-used book. "This was the last of the Bibles we ever created.

"We knew no shame. We'd go to the bereaved and ask for the deceased. When we were informed of the death, we would act embarra.s.sed and eventually confess that the deceased had special-ordered the Bible. He had paid only twenty nuyen of the one-hundred nuyen it cost, and had gotten it specially for the person to whom we were speaking. We would say we were sorry for bothering them in their grief and then turn to leave."

Roberts' eyes flashed down at the ground as a blush rose to his cheeks. He stared at one of the many carnation bouquets surrounding him. "Of course, the bereaved would stop us and give us the eighty nuyen remaining on the book. We would hand it over, having earned an easy seventy-five nuyen profit. It was an easy life, for anyone would pay gladly for that last piece of their departed loved one, and we talked ourselves into believing that we were really offering them another chance to say good-bye-manufacturing memories the people so dearly hungered after."

Roberts' brought his head up and steel entered his spine. I knew, aided by the digitized emotional feed coursing in through the trodes, that Roberts had somehow been motivated away from this evil path. He smiled and confirmed my belief.

"Then, one night, my partner and I were heading out for what would be our last attempt. G.o.d and the Devil came to us, and each showed us a vision of what we would reap in the afterlife. My partner held his hand out to the Devil and was taken to h.e.l.l right then and there. I looked upon the face of G.o.d and chose the path of light. Praise Jesus, I was saved!"

Thunderous applause washed over me and I found myself mouthing the word "Alleluia!" I pulled the trodes off in disgust and let the Old One's growl rumble from my throat. Raven looked over at me and smiled. "What do you think, Wolf?"

I patted my Beretta Viper. "I've got a love offering for the good Reverend, right here."

Raven decided that might be a bit extreme as our first effort at contact. He gave me the address for Roberts' ministry headquarters. I changed into a corduroy suit jacket, b.u.t.ton-down shirt, and tie before I headed out, deferring to Raven's sense of decorum, not mine. The clothes hid my silver wolf's-head pendant and my Viper, but I didn't so much mind that. When entering the lion's den, it's best to dress like a lion.

Ill Roberts' personal secretary was pretty enough that I would have considered converting were she willing to do some missionary work with me. She flashed me a smile as I came up the stairs to the third-floor foyer, but she kept getting distracted by the big goomer seated on the edge of her desk. He was clearly intent on ministering to her, but she looked like she wanted him exorcised faster than you could say "Amen."

I cleared my throat and quickscanned her nameplate. "Evening, Miss Crandall. I'm Wolfgang Kies. I called ahead for an appointment with Dr. Roberts."

The big man moved off the desk as she positively glowed at me. "Yes, Mr. Kies. Six forty-five and you're exactly on time." Her smile carried right on up into her blue eyes and clearly irked the other man.

"Do I get points for punctuality?"

"With me you do, Mr. Kies." She looked up at the man. "Brother Boniface will take you to Dr.

Roberts."

Boniface looked like an ape that had been given one of those all-over bikini waxes or a troll that had been cold-hammered into a smaller shape. Either way, he did not look happy to be in a suit and sent on a mission that would take him away from the charming Miss Crandall. As a result of his discomfort, somewhere inside his tiny skull one electron collided with another and all of a sudden he had a thought. It was too much for him to contain and he made his move to frisk me.

The Viper's barrel made athunk as I drew it in one smooth motion and poked a Mark of Cain in the center of Brother Boniface's forehead. He retreated a step and raised both hands to cover the bruise.

"Ask and ye shall receive, Boniface. Presume and I'll make a martyr out of you."

I let the gun slip forward and hang from my index finger by the trigger guard. Boniface made a grab for it, but I ducked it under his hand and slid it onto Miss Crandall's desk. "Keep it warm for me."

"My pleasure," she cooed. The gun slipped from sight beneath the level of her desk.