Svaha, page 2
"Come with me," she said. "When they show up here…"
Kaoru shook her head. "I can't. It's suicide. You ever hear of anybody surviving the hike? I've seen rats go out with twice your equipment and—"
"The only reason we don't hear about them is because they made it and they didn't bother to send a transmission back."
"Lisa—"
"I met a guy in the Market just last week who hiked up from the Osh Plex."
"I can't, Lisa."
"I can't stay."
"What's he going to do?" Kaoru tried again. "It's not like—"
"I'm desperate," Lisa said and left it at that.
She picked up her personal com and hooked it to her belt. Like every messenger, she'd immediately torn out the chips that would let Adder pinpoint her position in the squats, replacing them with bootlegged ones that let her catch OTA casts—over the air broadcasts from the Plex's entertainment channels. Once she was out of the squats, it'd be useless as a com-link—too far for Adder's range—but she'd still be able to pick up the OTA casts for twenty klicks or better.
Shrugging into her jacket—a synthetic leather number with a built-in hood specially designed to withstand the acidic rains—she turned to Kaoru, looking for something to say. You didn't just throw away ten months of a partnership without saying something, but her mind was empty and all she could visualize was Goro's yaks—
The metal fire door leading from their squat out into the third floor of the warehouse reverberated with a sudden pounding. They both stared at the grey metal. Kaoru took a step towards it.
"Kay, don't."
"It's too late," Kaoru said. "Don't you see that now, Lisa? We can't get away."
She went to the door and worked free the metal holding bar just as a new thunder of pounding shook it. When she stepped back, the door was flung open and she was facing three of Shigehero Goro's augmented yakuza. Some yakuza had exoskeletons to heighten their already finely tuned reflexes and musculature; most had been genetically tailored from birth or had internal implants.
These three were clean-shaven, dressed in long grey kevlar overcoats and grey bodysuits. She could almost feel the hot breath of the dragons tattooed on their backs. The black plastic of automatic Steeljacks filled their hands.
"Are you Lisa Bone?" the foremost asked. He spoke in the patois of the squats—a mixture of French, English, and Asian languages—but on his lips the patois held a clipped accent.
Kaoru shook her head numbly. "N-no…" she said and turned to where Lisa was standing, but the room was bare.
Lisa was gone. The ragged flap of tuiron cloth at the window was still moving. She'd left through the window. Down the fire escape. Was there another yak waiting for her down there? Kaoru wondered.
"Where can we find her?" she was asked as she turned back to the intruders.
"I… I don't know…"
The foremost yak regarded her steadily. His metallic eyes unnerved her, although she knew they were just infrared contacts that allowed him to see in the dark. She wanted to blink, pull her gaze away, but couldn't move. When he finally looked away, releasing her gaze, she let out a breath she hadn't been aware of holding. Then the Steeljack in his hand spat and there was a hole in her stomach, the small fléchette exploding…
She reached out a hand towards the yaks, but they were no longer concerned with her. As she dropped to her knees, they stepped past her and began to tear apart the squat. The burning pain in her stomach spread. She held a hand to the wound, drew it away, and stared at her own blood with an uncomprehending expression.
I…I should have…run with you…Lisa…she thought as she fell face forward and the last of her life fled.
* * *
There were two yaks waiting in the alley behind the warehouse when Lisa crawled out the window onto the fire escape, but she hadn't been planning on going down anyway. The fire escape was too obvious. A born paranoid, she had yet another escape route prepared. She went up onto the roof, moving cat-quick, charged with adrenaline and fear.
When she reached the lip of the roof, she hauled herself up, then peered back down into the alley. No alarm. The yaks were still standing down there, one leaning up against the side of the other building behind the warehouse, eyeing its back door, his partner standing beside their black and chrome Usaijin three-wheelers, speaking into a com-link. The sound of the scooters rose up to the roof, a whisper-soft sound as their Stirling engines idled. Crawling back from the edge, Lisa rose lightly to her feet and ran across the roof.
If she'd been clever, she would have had her stolen Steeljack encoded to herself long ago. With the smart circuits in its handgrip adjusted to her palm, she wouldn't be facing Goro's men empty-handed. If she'd been really clever, she would have done that and been carrying the Steeljack when making her last delivery. The chinas would have thought twice about jumping her then.
The chinas.
She wasn't even that sure that they'd been genuine. Her messengers' stripes should have given her safe passage through their territory—the chinas needed messengers too. No, someone had known what was in that package—how much it meant to Goro, perhaps, or its actual value—and thought the risk worth taking. That meant inside information. Something the chinas wouldn't have. But one of the tongs might.
Not the triads—they were almost respectable now, still as racially pure as Goro's yakuza, and unlikely to start a new war. But the tongs…they had evolved into a mix of various Asiatic peoples whose one goal was to take down the triads and yakuza, replacing them with their own organizations. One of their groups could have hired the chinas. Easily.
She'd been through it all before, ever since she'd been set upon, the package stolen. Thinking about it just gave her a headache, the center of pain emanating from the blue-black bruise on her temple where she'd been hit when she was knocked down and her satchel snatched. It was time to stop thinking about it. Even if she figured it all out, there was nothing she could do about it. A rat didn't go waltzing into the headquarters of one of the tongs, demanding recompense. Didn't go crying to anyone. Who'd listen?
As she neared the far side of the roof, she speeded up and launched herself across the ten-foot gap between the buildings. The old futon she'd salvaged and dragged up to the other roof broke the force of her fall, though it left her a little breathless. No time for weakness. Not with yaks on her ass. On her feet, she set off again, across another roof, another gap between buildings, another rotting futon breaking her fall.
This roof had a door leading down into its darkened interior. She took the steps in the stairwell two at a time, hand trailing along the rusted banister for balance. She was almost blind in the dark, but she'd run this escape route more than once. Just for practice. A born paranoid all right.
When she reached the ground floor, she eschewed the front and back doors, making her exit through a side window, runners greased, window sliding open silently. Out of the building, she stood absolutely still, listening, testing the air for sound, watching for movement, every sense alert.
Stars and moon were something one only saw on the vids; the smoggy skies were too thick with carbon particles to let their light cut through the night's shadows. But there was a dull glow coming off the towers of the Plex. Enough to see by. The streets appeared empty. Nothing in sight. Nothing stirring. No sixth sense prescient feel of being watched.
Too bad she didn't have her own wheels—the salvaged twelve-speed she used on deliveries belonged to Adder and she only had the use of it. Rats didn't own much. If they did, they'd be living in the Plex.
She gave it a few more moments, then sped for the far side of the street where she vanished, swallowed by the shadows of the squats.
It was time to find the Ragman.
3
Phillip Yip stared at his desktop display, an irritated frown creasing his smooth almond skin.
He was a small compact man who ignored the current trend towards snug bodysuits in favour of baggy rose tuiron trousers and a grey shirt. A plastic ID badge was affixed to the right breast of his shirt by a velcro tab. Its digitally encoded information bar contained his retina, voice, and palm prints, as well as pertinent personal information. His name and rank appeared above the bar in standard script and ideographs. Above that was a photo of a smiling, neatly attired security officer in his dark green Ho Anzen uniform that bore little resemblance to the picture Yip presented at the moment—slouched in his chair, clothing rumpled, dark eyes darker still with a combination of frustration and anger.
Leaning forward, he overrode the voice-activating mechanism of his system by working the keyboard. Fingers tapping the keys, he called up the data a second time, hoping for a mistake, but the program dove into the laser-based information storage system and enthusiastically filled the screen with the same data, cursor smugly pulsing at the end of the body of print.
"Don't you ever get tired of that manual keyboard?"
Yip looked up to see Huan Som smiling in the doorway to his cubicle. His partner was nattily dressed in a pale blue bodysuit and a new dark jacket, the latter hiding some of the overweight shape that his bodysuit merely accentuated. His black hair was cut within a quarter-inch of his pate, round face beaming under its receding hairline. They'd been partners for close to five years now. In the mostly Nipponjin security firm, the few Sino and Indochinese usually worked together, in and out of the office complex.
"I get tired of voices yapping constantly in my ear," Yip replied. "Even my own."
Huan shook his head. "You just can't stand to sit idle when you could be moving, even if it's just your fingers."
Yip shrugged. There was no gain in denying the truth.
"Are you ready to go?" Huan added as he came into the cubicle.
Their shift had been over for fifteen minutes. Huan had tickets for the first theatrical showing of Shinoda's Angry Love, based on Gaho Ota's best-selling litdisc of the same title. It was a multigenerational romance set in Chinese Mongolia during the Food Riots of 2053. Apparently the period costumes were superb. It started at twenty-one hundred, which left them just enough time for a relaxing dinner before the show. But only if they left now.
Yip sighed, glancing back at the screen. Huan wasn't going to like this any more than he did, though not necessarily for the same reasons.
There was just enough space in the small box of a room for Yip's desk and two chairs. Huan removed a foodbar wrapper from the empty chair and tossed it into the mouth of the disposal unit on the wall beside the desk. Settling down in the chair, he carefully adjusted the folds of his new jacket. Up close, it proved to be an intricate weave of blue and purple threads. A Bijin design, Yip realized. Worth about three days' salary.
Huan caught him looking at the jacket and grinned. "If I didn't need to wrap this elegant body in only the best," he said, fingering the silk-smooth material, "I could afford to get married."
"Who'd put up with you?"
"You do."
"My fiber's too coarse."
Laughing, Huan shook his head. "You're married to your job, that's the problem. What are you working on now?"
Yip's gaze went to the screen, then back to his partner. "How do we arrest a computer?" he asked.
Huan's eyebrows arched quizzically.
"It's an old DMC in Sector Five. Its energy-conserving circuits got fouled up and it decided that the best way to save a few credits would be to ice up a couple of floors."
Huan went pale. Most of the old Decision-Making Computers had been replaced by Artificial Intelligence systems, both for convenience and for situations just like this. The older the DMCs got, the less they could sustain their workloads. There'd been a few small problems before, most of which were still in litigation, as no one would take responsibility for the errors. The Kaisha running the sectors placed the blame on the Megaplex since the Megaplex controlled maintenance; the Megaplex argued that since the DMCs were in the various Kaisha's holdings, the responsibility was theirs. It was an old argument, made worse in the present situation due to the data Yip had coaxed from records storage.
"Casualties?" Huan asked.
"We got off lucky. It was during an off-shift, so there were just skeleton crews working. Fifty-five bodies. Plus three crashed systems with all records irretrievably lost."
"Lucky?" Huan's tone spoke volumes.
Yip nodded. "If they'd been on-shift, we'd be talking in the neighbourhood of five hundred dead."
"Chiksho!" Huan breathed. The curse lingered between them, then Huan asked, "Whose systems crashed?"
"This is where it gets worse. One was Combank, an affiliate of Ininzi/Bell Northern. Imagine what that's going to do for IBN's honour, on top of last week's hearings."
Ininzi/Bell Northern and its affiliates made up the major corporation in the Trenton Megaplex—a conglomerate that squeaked by with 52.1 percent of the Megaplex's holdings. Charges of system crashings had recently been leveled against them, backed with enough hard evidence to go into litigation. Bringing them to court were Shiken Sciences and Exxon Technics, with 9.3 and 17.6 percent in Megaplex holdings respectively.
Last week, the hearings saw an IBN manager testifying that he'd been ordered by his board to investigate the viability of crashing Exxon's systems, thereby allowing IBN to pick up Exxon's biochip laboratories at rock bottom prices. Hotly denied by IBN's lawyers, who subsequently proved that the witness had enough of a grudge against the company to make up any story, it still wasn't enough for IBN to regain its current lost face. Today's disaster, when picked up by the media, could be all too easily construed as IBN's attempt to show that they were the victims of system crashing as well.
"I can't imagine the Megaplex without IBN in control," Huan said. "If this gets out…"
Yip nodded grimly. "The other two systems belonged to Guwa Publishing and Fax Vid—both of which are listed as sub-companies of Shiken."
"I don't follow."
"It gets worse. Although they're a part of the Shiken group, their main shareholder is Oitsuku Holdings, which is apparently owned by one Fumiko Hirose."
Understanding dawned on Huan. "The Goro clan's lawyer. So it's the tongs that are to blame, not IBN."
"The tongs or the triads. They both want what Goro's rumoured to have—Enclave Technology."
Huan nodded. "A priceless commodity."
It had been whispered for weeks that Goro had acquired a disabled Enclave flyer and was now beginning to bring the technology into the yakuza-owned tech labs. Because his own people were being so closely watched, he was moving it through the squats, using non-citizen messengers unaffiliated with any underworld connections. The first shipment was due to be moved any day. It might already have been shipped and be in the Megaplex at this moment.
"There's nothing we can do about the Claver technology," Yip said, "but when IBN discovers Shiken's connection with the yaks…"
"It'll mean war," Huan said. He wiped his sweating brow with the back of his had. "Not just skirmishes, but an all-out war."
"And the decision we have to make is, do we speak to our own supervisors, or do we go directly to IBN and try to forestall it?"
"Go to IBN? Have you gone mad? Takahata will have our hides."
Yip sighed. Tomiji Takahata, the owner of Ho Anzen Securities, was not known for his leniency—that was true. But there was more at stake here than corporate loyalty.
"Think for a moment, Som," he said. "Who will Takahata side with? IBN, already partially in disgrace and riddled with gaijin, or the yakuza, who are at least Nipponjin?"
"Goro is a criminal!"
"But he is Nipponjin."
"He…" Huan met Yip's steady gaze and rubbed his temples. "It's too confusing."
Yip nodded. "I work for Takahata," he said, "but my loyalty lies with the Megaplex. And you?"
"This makes my head hurt," Huan said.
"Where do you stand, Som?"
"Why bother asking? With you, of course. What do we do?"
Yip stared at the screen. "If this information becomes unsecured, IBN will have no other choice but to attack Goro—it's that or lose even more face. But if we can keep it secure, they might listen to reason."
"A war will serve no one," Huan said. "Surely they will see the sanity in that?"
"When," Yip asked tiredly, "has sanity ever mattered in a situation like this?"
His fingers moved on the keyboard and his system dutifully erased all the pertinent data it had stored. But that data still existed in the master storage, there for anyone to call up as would be done all too soon—by the media as well as other investigators.
"There is another solution," he added. "We can try talking to Goro, or at least his lawyer. There might still be time for them to erase their connection with Oitsuku Holdings."
"Now I know you're mad," Huan said.
TWO
1
Gahzee roasted the rabbit that had been caught in the snare he'd set the night before. He sat on his haunches in front of the small, almost smokeless fire, his back to the wall of a deserted workers' barracks, and studied the surrounding terrain while he waited. When the rabbit was cooked, he ate it slowly, then buried his fire and the rabbit skin. The bones and guts he left on the cracked stoop of the barracks for the scavengers.
Two days into the Corridor, he'd spied more wildlife than he'd expected. Gulls and crows. Rabbits, squirrels, mice, and rats. The only large life forms were the coyotes he spotted from time to time, solitary grey shapes that kept their distance. One had been following him for the past day and he'd taken to thinking of it by the name of the great uncle manitou Nanabozho. A trickster.
Like the tribes, the coyote had used its natural wiles to survive all the changes since the white men first came. The coyote people had suffered at the hands of the whites as the tribes had, their numbers decimated simply because they didn't fit into the whites' false view of the structured order of the world. But they hadn't suffered the reservations and broken treaties, the lies and the false hope found in a whiskey bottle. They hadn't known the despair that made so many young braves see no other solution to the emptiness of their lives except suicide.
