Shadowrun - Wolf And Raven Part 12

Jimmy's lips peeled back from white teeth in a grin laden with irony. "I really love this game. In fact, I have it written into my contract that I can play in pick-up games whenever I want to-unlike others whose playing time is all tied up by contract."

"Having your father as a suit in the corp hierarchy must help."

"Yeah, it has its advantages." He stretched, placing his palms flat against the dashboard. "Ken stays statsoft-operational all the time because he really wants to be Babe Ruth. Whatever personality Ken originally had has been smothered by his statsoft. Me? I realize that baseball is my life right now, but it won't be forever. I only let a statsoft ride when I'm on the field. Other than that, I'm Jimmy Mackelroy."

I nodded. The Old One, the fragment of the Wolf spirit lurking in my brain, likewise had to be segregated out of my life. Yes, his power and abilities gave me, through magic, what Jimmy got through wired reflexes and cybered eyes. Still, the Old One, with his wild wishes for combat and killing and blood, brought with him a dark side that I could not let run riot. Like Jimmy, I could not let the Old One control me, or I would lose my personality and end up hurting many people.

As those thoughts coursed through my brain, I looked out and saw a nearly full moon flas.h.i.+ng through the picket fence of skysc.r.a.pers in downtown Seattle. The Old One's howl echoed through my mind.

Beware, Longtooth, with the moon comes my power. You retain control for now, but invoke me and I will show you the true way of the warrior.

I s.h.i.+vered and spoke to deflect my thoughts away from the path blazed by the Old One's whisper. "So why is Thumper different from Ken Wilson?"

"Ken has a choice, Thumper doesn't." Jimmy's brown eyes narrowed as bitterness entered his voice. "Al had Ted Williams riding him when his skull was fractured. The brain damage was extensive, and the doctors initially thought he'd never be more than a turnip suitable for organ-harvesting. His sister agreed to pull the plug on him, but she demanded he be allowed to die as Ted Williams. League officials agreed and returned the statsoft to him. That brought Al out of it, though through rehabilitation his personality integrated with that of the statsoft, creating the composite personality of Thumper.

"The corp meat-mechanics refer to him as the first Al in a wet chip. b.a.s.t.a.r.ds."

"Amen to that." I whipped the wheel around and pulled into the semi-circular drive in front of the ParVenue. "We're here."

An ork valet opened my door and helped me out. "Be nice to my car and I'll be nice to you," I told him with a smile. He glanced up at me, surly, until he met my eyes. The dark ring surrounding my green irises zapped a little respect into him.

"Yes, sir. Not a scratch, sir."

I nodded happily. What's the purpose of having Killer Rings in your eyes if you can't make use of them?

A howl from the Old One rose from the depths of my mind, but I stifled it.Not this time, you old tick hound. Nothing and no one to fight here.

The ParVenue Club had some fairly unique architecture. The drive led to a simple three-story brown-stone facade, much like the one Doctor Raven used as his headquarters. The prefab granite looked suitably weathered to give the building an air of antiquity, and the copper awnings glowed green in an advertis.e.m.e.nt for building fossilizers. In a high-speed, low-drag world where a venerable genealogy means respectability and virture, this building came off like an old-money family with a virgin daughter.

The door elf, nattily attired in a long, scarlet wool coat with gold braid, smiled cautiously as Jimmy and I approached his station. "Good evening, gentlemen." He turned the word into a t.i.tle that implied his pleasure at seeing us, though his tense stance and sour glance belied his words.

"Evening, yourself." I gave him a hey-everything-is-cool-here-chummer smile. "You'll want to verify our members.h.i.+ps?"

His tension eased just a microvolt. "Yes, sir, I am afraid I must." He reached back and touched a brick with a white-gloved hand. A panel slid up and the hole in the wall extruded a blocky lucite sheet. I smiled and pressed my right hand to it. A light pa.s.sed under it and back, then the beeped verification of members.h.i.+p. The elf smiled. "Very good, sir. And this is your guest?"

I speared the man with a questioning glance. "Guest? Mr. Mackelroy is a member." Winking at Jimmy, I waved him forward.

The door elf paled-which is quite a feat for an elf anyway. "I am afraid you might be mistaken, Mr.

Kies. He can enter as your guest, but..."

Jimmy hesitated and the door elf looked stricken. "Trust me, gentlemen." I smiled. "Mr. Mackelroy is a member."

"Wolf, I don't know about this," Jimmy murmured.

"Don't worry, Jimmy. Just imagine you're running Jackie Robinson's statsoft."

Jimmy pressed his hand to the printscanner, and the elf didn't hide his surprise at the affirmative beep. He smiled as sheepishly as an elf can. "Welcome to ParVenue, chummers." He swept the door open and smiled. "Locker room is to your left. Your lockers will be in berths four and seven. I've made sure they're upper units."

I stabbed a credstick down into a discreet socket beside the door and zapped him a five-nuyen tip. "

'Predate it, chummer. Don't let the corporators get you down."

"Slot and run," he said with a laugh, then let the oak and gla.s.s door slide shut behind us.

As we entered the locker room we saw a single bank of twenty-four lockers facing us. Two of the lockers in the upper row, in slots four and seven, withdrew back into the wall. It left the row looking like some gillette's broken grin for a moment or two, then new lockers slid into place. We both exchanged glances, then shrugged and located our appropriate lockers by the little laminated name plates slotted into them.

I opened mine, then sat down hard on the bench. "Oh, Val, whathave you done?"

"Do we have to wear this stuff?"

"Dress code." I groaned aloud. "Your clothes will fit perfectly. Valerie is pretty sharp, but her taste runs a bit odd."

The ParVenue, being the latest word in virtual country clubs, demanded that its patrons attire themselves appropriately when on the premises. This meant I exchanged my polo s.h.i.+rt for a navy one of a lighter weight and pricier designer label. Over it went a yellow cardigan sweater of a hue I've only seen in snow.

The knickers that replaced my pants matched the sweater in color and fastened tight right below my knees. My blue and yellow plaid socks got tucked beneath the knickers, and my pseudo-golf shoes were a merciful black without any spikes.

"I'm not wearing my cap," Jimmy growled.

Oh yeah, my cap was a tarn that matched the socks. In silent agreement with him I sent it flying like a Ms-bee into a wastebasket. "Comes a point when a man just has to put his foot down."

I swung my locker door closed, giving Jimmy his first full look at me. "Wolf, my mother used to dress her poodle in that type of outfit."

I growled at him. "Hold your arms out at your sides and in those red togs you'll look like the poodle's favorite fire hydrant."

"Point taken. Hope these women are worth it."

I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall-mounted mirror. "I'm beginning to doubt it, but let's not keep them waiting, just in case."

As strange as it may seem, Jimmy and I were not the oddest-looking individuals at the club. The corridor leading from the locker room to the bar and restaurant had a gla.s.s-walled section that let us look into the huge warehouselike structure onto which the front facade had been grafted.

Jimmy paused and stared out at the people gathered there. "Just think, if they were bees, how much honey they'd be making."

I nodded at his apt a.n.a.logy. Honeycombed stacks of small golfing stalls rose from ground to ceiling. On the bottom two levels the stark white rooms had golfers fitted with simsense helmets. Little mechanical ball-setters placed golf b.a.l.l.s on tees or appropriately angled sections of astroturf. As the players swung through the b.a.l.l.s, they blasted them into nets at the other end of their golfcave. One guy, at the far end of the row, endured a driving shower and buffeting winds produced by the chamber as he sought the absolute most in sim-golf experiences.

Just above them golfers also wore simsense helmets, but hit no b.a.l.l.s. They still swung their clubs with wild abandon, and one man snapped a putter in half and tossed it down into the net protecting the floors below. Other golfers went through the motions of delicately chipping a shot onto a green, and one man stood with driver in hand, desperately waving at an imaginary ball to get over the imaginary trees and onto the imaginary green.

The top level had smoked-gray caps on the hexagonal rooms. Up there golfers were pulling down simsense data directly from the ParVenue's golf course database. These did not need the challenge of weather and b.a.l.l.s and perfect posture or square groove clubs. They played solely in their minds. For them the challenge was besting golf courses in places dreamed up by madmen arid physicists and modeled on the fastest decks available. They might play two holes on the front nine from the Sea of Tranquility, then s.h.i.+ft to a course imagined for the blazing surface of Venus. Changes of gravity and density of atmosphere were their enemies.

I saw one golfer on the lower level miss his shot and twist around before falling to his knees. "Do they have spitb.a.l.l.s in golf?"

Jimmy shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe that was a water hazard."

I smiled and led the way to the bar. We pa.s.sed two soaking wet guys who were swapping stories about playing the club's simulation of the Burning Tree course during Hurricane Felicia and I spotted our dates immediately. Of course I didn't know any of the half-dozen men watching them from the bar and surrounding tables, but I gathered neither did the women, and they liked that situation just fine.

I smiled at Lynn Ingold and gave her a hug and a kiss as I reached the table. She'd braided her copper hair, and the braid dangled down the front of her white blouse to the tip of her left breast. Her pert nose and quick smile combined with bright green eyes and a scattering a freckles to make her seem full of elven mischief from back in the days when that didn't mean gunfire and magic. The top of her head came up to my nose, and my arm fit around her shoulders as if we'd been designed as a set.

"Jimmy Mackelroy, this is Lynn Ingold and that is probably your greatest fan in all of Seattle. Valerie Valkyrie, meet Jimmy Mackelroy."

Val is normally quick-witted and I expected a verbal jab for my introduction of her, but she was awestruck enough to just ignore me. Like Jimmy, she was of African-American descent, but her blue eyes and cafe-au-lait complexion suggested a liberal dose of other things in her bloodline as well. She wore her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Taller than Lynn, but with the same slender, long-legged figure, she was sufficiently gorgeous to make the Pope reconsider his vow of celibacy.

In fact, if not for the barely noticeable jack behind her left ear, she'd have been the picture of the sort of fas.h.i.+on model Jimmy dated, according to the tabloid trid.

Jimmy took her right hand in his. "I am very pleased to meet you, finally."

That shook Val out of her trance. "Finally?"

Jimmy smiled. "Section seven, row five, seat twelve. You've got the whole box, paid for and all.

Everyone on the team has been curious, but the team's deckers can't find out who you are." Val blushed and sat down. "Oh, that, well. . ."

"Jimmy," I said, nodding toward Valerie. "She's the reason we're members here. Could your father's deckers do that?"

"No, I don't think they could." His smile broadened as he glanced from Val to me. "I guess now I'm going to owe you a favor."

"Excuse me?"

Jimmy smiled sheepishly. "Remember when we met you said you'd owe me a favor? Well, introducing me to Ms. Valkyrie here fulfills that and then some. Oh, and dinner and drinks are on me-the team had a pool collected for the first man to learn her name."

All of us laughed, easing a bit of the nervousness Valerie clearly felt. It struck me as funny because I knew she was bold enough to deck her way into even the most secure of corporate databases without even a hint of anxiety. With other deckers, the problem would have been just trying to interface with something that wasn't silicon-based, but Val's never been a social disaster. She was really taken with Jimmy and almost paralyzed because of it.

Lynn clearly sensed the same thing in Valerie and took the conversation initiative before any silence could become awkward. "Jimmy, I've never been able to get Wolf to tell me how you actually met. I know he's helping you now, but I gathered you've known each other since before that."

Jimmy nodded easily and leaned forward onto the table. "You remember the night when the gangs all went nuts and blew up that apartment complex?"

Lynn nodded. She knew of it in die same way that almost everyone else in Seattle did-by what she heard on the trid and read in the newsfax. This meant she had no idea about my involvement in the events of that evening. As she's a pacifist who never seemed too interested in trying to find out exactly what I do in working with Doctor Raven, I never felt inclined to give her a blow-by-blow description of what had happened that night. Not that I repeated stories of that night all that often-describing almost dying leaves something to be desired.

"About a week later, at the Dome, I saw this guy leaning against my car. I wasn't getting a clean read off him, but he didn't seem overtly dangerous. He introduced himself as Wolf and asked if I'd be willing to make a personal appearance at a pizza place downtown." Jimmy shrugged. "I almost referred him to my agent to blow him off, which is what I normally do."

Before Jimmy could continue his story, a man who had managed to create a fas.h.i.+on atrocity within the strictures of the club's dress code sauntered over to our table and lightly slapped Jimmy on shoulder.

"Jimmy Mackelroy, isn't it?"

Jimmy nodded and shook the man's proffered hand. "And you are?"

"Phil k.n.o.bson. I own the Mitsu dealers.h.i.+p over in Bellvue. Ace Mitsubis.h.i.+. Heard of it?"

Jimmy thought for a second, then shook his head. "Sorry, but I put most things out of my mind during the season, you know?"

"Yeah," the man replied automatically as he waved a woman over. Her outfit matched Phil's and I started looking for a phone to call the haute couture police. "This is my wife, Maggie. Maggie, this is Jimmy Mackelroy. I've told you about him, right?"

Maggie nodded, her blond perm as stiff as an acrylic spider web. "Phil, he never misses your games."

"So, look, Jimmy, I'm thinking we can do some business. You come down to the shop, we cut an ad or two, and I make you a sweet deal on a new car, you know?"

Jimmy stood slowly, continuing to smile as he towered over the salesman. "I think that's worth talking about, Phil, but right now I'm here with my friends, you know."

"Sure, sure, I gotcha. Look, why don't we all go to dinner? My treat." Phil glanced at the rest of us, then looked back up at Jimmy. I let the Old One's dislike of Phil and his plastic wife bleed into my voice.

"Actually, we were going to be dining outside the club, Phil. A private party."

Phil didn't get my message, but his wife did and gently tugged on her husband's s.h.i.+rt. "Honey, let's let these nice folks get back to their party, okay?"

Phil looked at Maggie as if her suggestion was a wild pitch, but when he glanced at Jimmy he saw that Jimmy had blasted it out of the park. "Yeah, okay, well, look, can I call you?"

"Just call the team office and they'll direct you to my agent. She arranges all those things." Jimmy shook Phil's hand again. "I'm sure we can work something out."

"Right. Have a good night, folks."

As they departed, Valerie s.h.i.+vered. "When I get home, his credit rating will die."

Jimmy smiled. "If you can do that, I can guarantee you a lot of business from the other players on the team."

Lynn raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't happen very often, does it?"

"More often than I'd like to admit, I'm afraid." Jimmy shrugged and jerked his head in my direction.

"When anyone approaches me I have to be thinking 'What does he want me to buy? What's in it for him?' That's really tough, especially when it's a kid wanting an autograph, because dealers are known to use kids to get players to sign holopics they later sell for big nuyen. Most of the time folks are just nervous and genuine, but there are clunkers in the bunch."

Lynn covered my left hand with her right and gave it a squeeze. "So what did you think Wolf wanted when you first met him?"

"He was different. None of this fake camaraderie or an apologetic 'You don't know me, but. . . .' He just introduced himself and asked, explaining he'd already told someone else I'd do the signing. Most folks would have then tried to play on my sympathies, begging me to get them off the hook. Wolf just said, 'If you're willing, great, if not I'll have to think of something else.' "

I grinned sheepishly. "You remember it better than I do, I think. I seem to recall some stammering on my part."

"No, man, you were cool." Jimmy chuckled lightly. "Instead of wanting something from me, Wolf was giving me a chance to do something nice for someone. I asked him what was in it for me, and he just smiled like he is now. He said he didn't have much, but he'd owe me. I got the feeling that being in his debt wasn't a bad thing at all."

Lynn gave me a peck on the cheek. "It's not been for me."

Jimmy smiled, then nodded to me. "At least he treated me like a human being. Too many players get tightly identified with the players whose statsoft they use. I guess it's like trid actors being identified by their roles instead of their true names. For the guys who like that, it's great-Babe being a fine example of that. For the rest of us, it's a pain."

Lynn frowned. "I guess I don't understand why you have to use statsofts when you play."

Valerie's eyes brightened. "It's really not that hard to follow, Lynn. Back toward the end of the twentieth century baseball started slipping in popularity. A devastating players' strike and a number of betting scandals rocked the game. Because players and managers were betting on games and seen as grossly overpaid, fans started deserting. Baseball officials reacted, taking serious steps. For example, one of the greats, Pete Rose, was banned from the game and initially barred from election to the Hall of Fame because of gambling. Baseball also tried expansion, interleague play, and radical realignment to bring the fans back, but it only slowed the slide. They needed something to reverse it and that need, coupled with two other things, set up the current system."

Her earlier nervousness banished as we got into a discussion of baseball, she laid out the thinking behind the current system like a professor lecturing from her dissertation. "When the world changed and magic came back, and with the rise of bioware and cyberware, the potential for rigging games really spiked.

Something had to be done to combat that eventuality. At the same time sabermetricians had managed to reduce the game to a stack of stats, and with the proper program you could produce a box score that would be very close to what the true outcome of the game would be."

Val held her left hand open, palm up, then made the same gesture with her right hand. "At roughly the same time a great nostalgia for baseball hit. Old-timers' games and replays of old champions.h.i.+p series became very popular. The filmField of Dreams and its holovid sequels made lots of money. Suddenly the corps that owned baseball got a great idea."

She brought her hands together, her fingers interlaced. "The Hall of Fame produces statsofts for all the players who ever played the game. Teams bid for the services of players in certain years of their careers- guaranteeing a statistical level of performance-and the teams play. It's possible to have Babe Ruth from 1916 pitching to himself from 1927, for example, and that makes for a very exciting game."

Lynn shrugged. "But that could be done with a computer simulation. Why do they need players?"

Jimmy nodded. "Good question. They use us mules because we can get broken, which introduces an element into the game that a computer simulation can't really cover."

"Even so, aren't the outcomes preordained- statistically speaking?"