Shadowrun: Streets of Blood Part 8

"What it means is one of two things. If they weren't expecting anything else and didn't want to check the package you sent from the Crescent, they made the payment by electronic transfer. Or else they collected the package and then paid you. If so, they collected it within, oh, say, ten minutes. No way would Registration Services have been able to deliver it that fast. Someone must have been there waiting."

"Maybe Registration Services checked it for them, then notified them and paid me."

"No way. These people get paid precisely because they don't check packages. Strictly monkey see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. For one thing, checking the package would risk having to deal with the official licensing ha.s.sles." Geraint stood again and strode back to his console. "Let's have a look at the record."

The printout took two seconds, since he knew exactly what he was looking for in the data. "Well, I never. Package is recorded as delivered by hand and received at eleven forty-four. Same time receipt and dispatch. Someone was there to collect it. Now, don't tell me they were hanging around all day on the off chance you might come up trumps after a no-show at yesterday's meeting. Seems to me like someone knew when you would be delivering."

There was a long silence, broken by Serrin's next query. "Is there an address in the file, a forwarding address of any sort?"

"No forwarding address. They have to give a home address, though, for administrative purposes." Geraint sounded almost scornful. "Good old-fas.h.i.+oned British red tape has its uses for deckers sometimes. All that admin needs a lot of data storage. Unfortunately, it's somewhere in Goiania."

"Where the frag's Goiania?" Serrin said.

"It's a tiny oasis of, oh, about six million down the road from Brasilia." He remembered it because he'd gotten lucky with transactions on some of the last of the minerals down there. "Did, um, Smith and Jones strike you as, ah, South American in any way?"

"Are you kidding? About as much as your old granny." Francesca joined in the smiles at that.

They were stymied for the moment. Geraint suggested that one of them could visit Registration Services with a hefty bribe, but that probably wouldn't work. One whiff of indiscretion and such an agency was dead. On the other hand, their ilk sprang up like weeds every day. If one got a bad name among the corporations, all they had to do was relocate somewhere else in the city under a new one. Maybe there was a chance after all.

The one final worry was that Serrin's employers must, at the very least, have had a spy at the Crescent Hotel. Seeing the elf arrive there, or maybe just bribing a hotel clerk to alert him to that fact, the spy could have gotten over to Registration Services by the time the package arrived.

They were stuck again, and sat looking at each other blankly for a bit. Finally Serrin shrugged and began to ask Francesca what she'd been doing while he and Geraint were getting shot at over the weekend. After a long pause, she described her encounters with the bizarre figure in the Matrix, but she was obviously avoiding the details.

"I've never seen anything like it before. After the first time I thought about hunting him down, but after the second, I think I'd prefer not to see him again. " She gave a little s.h.i.+ver. "I haven't a.n.a.lyzed my deck to find out where he went the second time. I was so busy hunting I didn't really register the SAN I'd pa.s.sed. My deck will have the information, though. The first time the b.a.s.t.a.r.d went into the Transys Neuronet subsystem, which is not somewhere I really want to stick my pretty little nose."

Just then Serrin had a moment of complete illumination, almost an epiphany. Slapping one hand to his forehead, he shushed Francesca, then leaned back dramatically in his chair. Spreading his arms wide, he managed to avoid falling backward solely by the expedient of getting his feet stuck under the table. As he struggled to regain his balance and composure, the other two broke into gales of laughter. When they finally stopped, the mage revealed what he'd understood at last.

"Look, this is important. I just realized something. I told you that what I was doing at Cambridge was a waste of time, yes? Astral checks, watchers, detections around all the places-Fuchi, Renraku, ATT, Parawatch, blah di b.l.o.o.d.y blah. But why was I watching those people? What I should have seen was who I wasn't watching.

"Transys Neuronet is out at Over, just north of Longstanton. I wasn't asked to check them."

The druid shaman's words floated back into Serrin's mind: bad energies, a place north of the Fuchi complex. Same place?

It didn't take Geraint long to download maps and files. They spread them out across the table, pus.h.i.+ng the swath of greasy plates onto a service trolley and rolling back the linen tablecloth.

Serrin pointed out various locations on the first map. "Look at this other stuff. Strictly small time. And right on the edge of the Stinkfens and who the h.e.l.l would want to be there? Cost a fortune in detox if you wanted anything serious. Fly-by-night places. Probably making demitech and dodgy cyberware." Serrin's mind was beginning to race now. "Transys is the only important target I wasn't asked to check. Now I'm beginning to wonder."

They each chased their own thoughts for a time, trying to put it all together. After a while, Geraint slapped his hands on the table. "What have we got?" he said. "Francesca chases something wild into the Transys subsystem here in London. But it was something she met purely by accident. So what?"

Francesca disagreed. "Who says I met it by accident? And don't forget, the second time I was specifically asked not to enter any other system apart from the Fuchi subsidiary where I was virus-dumping."

"Fuchi?" Serrin hadn't heard any of the details of Francesca's run. There hadn't been time yet. "But we were out at a Fuchi installation."

"Unbidden. No one asked us to go," Geraint observed dryly. "But let's say, just for the sake of argument, that it was Transys paying you. That's why they didn't want you snooping around their place."

"Yeah, okay, but why? They have mages a darn sight fancier than me. So why bring me all the way from Seattle to snoop somewhere just down the road from one of their own research labs, and in a totally pointless way?"

"I don't know the answer to that," Francesca said, "but just as you were told, implicitly, that Transys was a no-go area, so was I, indirectly." Francesca was beginning to look more alive and alert. "What about that?"

"And we all ended up with something related to Fuchi." Serrin was chasing that theme again. "So, is Transys hiring us to shaft Fuchi? Poisoning a Matrix system and taking pot-shots at a big wheel at Longstanton?"

"n.o.body asked us to get Kuranita," Geraint insisted. He just couldn't see a way past that. "And what about those other poor sods who got burned at Longstanton?

Did Transys hire people for a raid that hadn't a hope in h.e.l.l? Strange thing to do, paying people to make a complete hash of everything. Francesca was hired to make a real hit, which she did. It just doesn't match up." Geraint retreated to the coffee maker.

The argument went on for at least two more hours, but they just kept treading over the same territory and running into the same blocks.

By the time the sky had washed from gray to black over the rain-lashed streets of London, Francesca had begun to stifle a series of yawns. Serrin, meanwhile, had begun to cough heavily, getting almost red in the face.

"You need something for that," Geraint said, heading for the bathroom.

"Yeah, it didn't get any better in the Stinkfens." Serrin turned his chair around to face the departing figure. "If it hadn't been for that lady I'd probably have died of pneumonia."

When Geraint returned he was carrying a big gla.s.s bottle filled with viscous brown liquid.

"What the frag is that?" the mage complained as he took the bottle. "Dr. Jerome Browne's Original Victorian Cough Syrup. This some kind of joke?"

"No, dear boy. Most a.s.suredly not. Prescription only. Works like a charm. Uses a tried and true recipe from East Anglia. That land has always been thick with mists and general unhealthiness, and this stuff was all the rage two hundred years ago. The original mix came back on the market a few years back. I swear by the stuff."

"Swear at it more likely. It smells like some monster with killer gut-trouble got this bottle stuck up its-"

"Shut up and take a good mouthful, you coward," Geraint taunted.

The elf complied, spluttering and pulling a disgusted face at the filthy taste. "Oh, that's evil. Are you sure it works? "

"Just wait and see." The n.o.ble did not think it prudent to tell Serrin that the original recipe included laudanum and a nice shot of opium to soothe the inflamed membranes of the lung lining. By the time Geraint had put on his overcoat to go check out the contact address, his two friends were both sound asleep in the chairs where they sat.

The man flicked at a grease spot on his tie with a vestige of irritation as his subordinate pa.s.sed through the automatic door. The waiting game was almost over.

"What was in the report?"

"Oh, very punctilious. Dates, times, places, expenses. He'd make a wonderful bureaucrat."

The figure lounging in the recliner snorted derisively. "Doubt it. Indeed, we're hoping that's precisely what he wouldn't make. Did they make checks?"

"Uh-huh. Checked the Registration Services system. We triggered the Jones file when the Welshman came browsing. He grabbed it from limbo, thinking he was being real clever."

Sniffing and exhaling, the older man brought his hands together in his lap, a study in concentration now.

"Well, there really shouldn't have been anything in there. I think it would have been too much to leave any trail in that file. They'd have smelled a rat."

"What do you think they'll do?"

"They've got lots of avenues to explore, but I doubt Ms. Young will be doing much Matrix-hopping. We sit tight. It won't be long now anyway."

"We could take the kidney option." They shared an unpleasant laugh.

"No, I think we were right to reject that one. Someone in the Met police might have begun to wonder if we'd dished up that little item to the Chief Superintendent. We can't be sure they'll try the police again anyway. Besides, maybe Swanson wouldn't dispense the information. No, let's wait. The pot's stirred and they're resourceful enough. After all, that's why we chose them."

Now the wheels begin to turn more swiftly. Elizabeth Stride does not suspect what is going to happen to her, but it will be swift, final, and terribly messy.

16.

Rani felt weak and shaky when Smeng unlocked the door and brought her a bowl of soup and a cracked paper cup dripping soykaf. Draining the cup, she found that the powdered soya milk had formed a disagreeable sludge at the bottom, but at least the stuff had been hot. Following it up with the thick soup, Rani felt a whole lot better. She'd have preferred solid food, but her stomach gurgled with satisfaction anyway. The belch she stifled with a hand over her mouth.

He grinned, looking down at her. "No need to watch your manners here, girl."

Rani smiled, but she had some questions. "Why did you help me last night? What's it to you? And what were you doing in the Toadslab anyway?"

He shook his head to halt the torrent of questions. "Hey, not so fast! Don't rush me, girl. Two of our blood had birthdays so we went out on the town. We also had a little business up there, something to collect and deliver, remember?" She nodded and he went on. "We don't get out too often. Six of us hadn't ever been above ground in their lives. It was an interesting time for them.

"As for you, well, we were just on our way home. We can smell the fascists a mile away. Sometimes the skins, White Lightning and their friends, learn about one of our little jaunts up to the surface and lie in wait for us. We've lost blood to those slints a few times. It's always good to have a chance to settle the score. You're an ork, ain't you? We got the same enemies."

She smiled sadly. Growing up meant learning the ways of the world, but when those ways included crazed fascist street thugs, learning the lessons wasn't much fun. She decided to pursue other queries.

"Who lives down here? I mean, I've always wondered, ever since I was a kid and my uncle Ravi used to tell me about the Undercity. He used to sit me on his knee at Sat.u.r.day tea-times and we'd have chapatis and bhuna, and he'd go on about India and the dust and heat and the sacred places and buildings, and then he'd talk about the city beneath the city. He'd never seen it, of course, and I used to think he was making it all up to entertain me. But I didn't care. It was swell."

Smeng looked at her as though weighing something in his mind, as though trying to decide whether he could trust her.

Finally he gave her a smile and held out one hand. "Well, come see a little of it then. I can't show you much, Rani, because it's not safe to let spitsiders know too much about the place. You understand?" It wasn't really a question. "Some of our people believe that overgrounders who find out too much should never be allowed to leave. But without your help some of us would be dead now, so we owe you. Strictly speaking, I guess we're quits, but I wouldn't hear a word about keeping you here." His tone suggested that some of the others might have demanded that precaution.

"Anyway, come on. Work to do."

Smeng ducked his head under the door and headed back into the first tunnel complex, leading her by the hand. Both of them had their pistols readied. Rani would have thought it was safe here, but maybe having your weapon ready for use at any moment was the trick to staying alive in this new existence she'd discovered. Not that life expectancy was ever ensured.

Eventually they came to a connecting pa.s.sage, and Smeng pointed out the various routes they could take.

"More Civil Defense that way," he growled, pointing sharp left. "Most of the dwarfs hang out down there. They strip stuff out of the tunnels and service ducts. Last year they even got a half-mile or so of copper cable, the lucky b.u.g.g.e.rs. Bought them enough beer to keep them sozzled for a month. You get a power failure overground, and I bet you fifty-fifty it's because of a crack team of dwarf cable-strippers." Smeng laughed and it sounded like distant thunder.

"Down that way," he said, indicating another direction with a sweep of his right arm, "well, that leads to other territories. We got all sorts down here. There's a great network of mail tunnels below the old sorting office complex, but it's too much of a warren for anyone to live there. We guard some of the exits, and so do the Ratskinks. They've been allies of ours for a few years now. More of us stay alive that way. They're good kids, most of 'em, though there's the odd trancer and crazy. But then you get that kind anywhere."

"Who are the Ratskinks?" Rani asked. Something small and dark scuttled away down one of the tunnels accompanied by a high-pitched squeaking.

"Street kids, mainly. Dumped into the streets and back alleys by East Enders too poor to feed 'em. Mostly, they die of exposure or starvation, or they get picked up by the meat hunters looking for fresh tissue to sell to the body shops. Feed 'em up, whack 'em full of vitamin shots. When the scans say the body's okay, it's time to cash in." He drew a finger across his throat with a grimace.

"Some of 'em get picked up by agencies supplying n.o.bles with young flesh as pleasure slaves. There's a racket like that at the London Hospital, right on your patch. Pediatrics give 'em prefrontal implants to dull awareness and some heavy motor conditioning for the right reflexes. Unofficial, of course, but everyone knows about it."

Rani was aghast. Mohsin worked at the London Hospital; did he know about this? Good G.o.d, did he even partic.i.p.ate? His headware implants were the best street doctoring available in the area. She shuddered at the possibilities.

"Anyway, those who don't end up that way may get picked up by a Ratskink and brought down here. They look after their own. The older ones, they protect the kids. The clan leaders, King Rat and his bodyguards, they're old men by anyone's standards here. Clazz, some of 'em must be in their early twenties. They're poor, but they're great scavengers. Corner 'em and they'll fight like demons. Got nothing to lose."

She was silent. To someone from her background, the idea that a family could abandon their young to such horrors was intolerable, and her mind rebelled against it.

Now it was time to move on again. They walked a long way down the central tunnel, until it opened out into a great arched vault with curved and flowing pillars supporting the ceiling. Rani stared in awe. She'd never been in a Christian church, and wondered if that's what this was.

"Not quite. Church crypt-or at least it used to be. Built by the Templars around 2030. Word is they did some heavy magic down here and then never came back. We've blocked off all the routes to the surface. Hi, term!" This was said to a limping dwarf toting an archaic shotgun as he stomped across the chamber toward the far door.

"Yo, plazzman!"

"Ho, stumpy!"

They traded jocular insults for a bit, then the dwarf hefted the gun barrel over his shoulder and continued on his way. "Hilda and Stan comin' for tea. See youse." Smeng turned her around. "He means-"

"Trolls, yeah, I know. You got them down here too?" It was a rather pointless question, but he was happy to answer it.

"Troll gang down in the old sewer complex west of here. They're not happy folks. The sewers are really jazzed down there and they get flood waters in from the river. There's seepage from the deep dumps, too, so they also get chemical shock epidemics from time to time. I hear say they're hunting new territory, but they're slim guys for trolls and they ain't got much to bargain with. We ain't gonna let them in, but we may decide to join with them to open up some new areas. Never did like the Blindboys much, so we might get something arranged there. Trolls get the living s.p.a.ce and we get the booty. Everyone says the Blindboys got some good stuff. They steam on the surface from time to time. Seem to know how to pick the right targets."

It sounded like the Blindboys were muggers, but Rani wasn't up to asking for more details. She was still overawed by the enormity of this incredible unknown world.

"We better go now. You've seen some of it, more than most overgrounders ever will. You'll keep your mouth shut about it, right?"

"Safe." Rani hardly used street slang in her everyday life, but this wasn't everyday life. Anyway, Smeng's language was odd enough; half the time he talked about complicated matters such as prefrontal lobotomies, the other half he talked like he'd had one. Guess life down here changed a person.

As they trudged back through the tunnels, Smeng asked Rani what she'd been doing out alone so late the night before.

"It wasn't that late. And I had no reason to expect any trouble."

"You kidding? Fog as thick as a troll's skull, well past anyone's bedtime, and you an Indian girl to boot?"

She bristled a little at that, then calmed herself down. By now she should be used to hearing what being an Indian girl meant, but she probably never would.

"I was doing a little business of my own. The gun, for a start." She emboldened herself with the lie. "Got people to meet and things to collect, yeah?"

He laughed quietly as they pa.s.sed the first check, three dwarfs with pistols and a series of beautifully concealed tripwires. He showed her how to avoid the mantrap with the triggering plate locked into the narrow rails of the mail wagon tunnel.

"Rani, you ain't no runner I've ever met. You're too young and your face gives you away too easily." He patted her on the back to rea.s.sure her he meant no insult or offense.

"Well, no, it's not a regular thing. But I went on a run recently and it was a set-up. Three of my cousins were killed. My brother, he organized it, and now he's hiding his face. He's not going to do anything. Me, I want revenge. I could have been killed myself. You going to tell me that if White Lightning killed a bunch of your people, you wouldn't start making moves to pay them back?"

"No." He sighed. "No, we always try to do what we can. Sometimes we set up a lure and draw them to the bait. And yes, when we get revenge, it always tastes sweet." He stuffed a hand into his pocket. "Sorry, Rani, time for the blindfold again."

Once she was sightless, Smeng led her along by the hand again, whispering pa.s.swords or other rea.s.surances to unseen others as they went. It was a ways before they stopped and he untied the rag from her eyes.

They were standing at the bottom of a twisting, narrow duct that they had to navigate on all fours, clambering with gasping breaths. It led upward, taking them to a main tunnel. Feeling a current of air flowing through it, Rani knew she was near the surface again.

Her words about her brother had also brought important questions to the surface. She made her play in the deserted Tube station.

"I didn't have much luck trying to locate who hired my brother for a sucker job that left so many of us killed. All I got is a name. Man named Pers.h.i.+nkin or something." She tried to conceal the fact that she was watching Smeng for a reaction.