John Golden: Freelance Debugger (5 page)

“
I...see.” I didn't, but I thought I was getting there.

“
Human sharp cat. Human sharp many I?”

“Not yet,” I said. “I need to think about this.”

~

Falmer sat at his desk, one index finger slowly tapping out a rhythm on the other hand. He shook his head.

“
Mr. Golden”—it wasn't John anymore, I noticed—“I'm not sure I understand.”

Delphi a
nd I stood in front of his desk—no chairs had been offered—like guilty schoolchildren called before the headmaster. I had Sarah's bag over my shoulder.

“
What can I clarify, Mr. Falmer?” I said.

“
You found the fairy burrow,” he said. “You went inside and defeated some sort of monster.”

I nodded, idly stretching my leg where Three-Eyes had clawed me.
The wounds were gone, of course—when you pop out of a burrow, you're always in the same state you went into it, but there's a phantom pain that lingers for a few hours. And, of course, if you get killed, you don't pop out at all, as the roll of my colleagues who have fallen in the line of duty will attest. But with no evidence, it can sometimes be hard to convince people that you've been in a scrap.

“
The burrow was also infested with”—Falmer glanced at his monitor—”pixies, who I gather are not terribly ferocious. But at this point you elected to leave without evicting them or destroying the burrow.”

“
Because there may be more to the problem,” Delphi said, unable to contain herself. “We think that someone—”

Falmer held up a hand to silence her.
“Deli, I'm sorry, but could you give me and Mr. Golden a few moments? In fact, why don't you go home and get some rest. You look like you could use it.”

“
But—” Delphi looked from me to Falmer and back again. “I don't understand.”

“
We'll talk in the morning,” Falmer said, and made a shooing gesture. “Go on.”

“
Yes, Mr. Falmer,” Delphi said. As she turned to leave, I heard her mutter, “If there's anything left of the system by morning.”

“
She has it right,” I said, after she'd closed the glass door behind her. “The problem is that we haven't figured out how these things got in here in the first place. There's no way those pixies just breezed past your outer security. And when I talked to them—”

“
Fairies aren't known for talking sense,” Falmer interrupted.

“
That's true,” I admitted. “But they said they came to this burrow from another one, and I think it has to be somewhere inside your perimeter. There must be another burrow somewhere on the system.”

“
But you haven't been able to find it?”

“
We've mapped everything we have access to,” I said. “It's not there. But there's a connection to another network that we don't have access to, and that's the only place left to look.”

“
So you want to poke around in my research labs.” Falmer's smile was entirely gone now, replaced by a thin-lipped grimace.

“
I'd hardly be poking around, and I won't look at any of your data. But if there is a burrow there, it sounds like it's the more dangerous of the two. We'll need to close them both out.”

There was a long pause.
Falmer shook his head.

“
I'm sorry, Mr. Golden, but I can't allow it. We're at a critical stage right now, and if I allowed an outsider into the lab my investors would crucify me. Please destroy the burrow you discovered, and I'll handle the rest myself.”

“
With all due respect, I don't think you understand the severity of the problem. You can't handle it. If there's a burrow there, then your labs are more in danger from the faeries than they could possibly be from me. How will that look to your investors?”

“
It's not your decision to make.”

“
As a matter of fact, it is,” I said. “I don't want to get legal with you, Mr. Falmer, but you'll find that my contract stipulates I have total freedom of action to deal with the infestation as I see fit.”

“
Excuse me?”

“
It's a matter of reputation. If I do an extermination at a site that is destroyed by fairies a few weeks later, finding future work could prove troublesome. I have my record to think about. So I have to insist that I be allowed to investigate for a second burrow.”

Falmer was quiet for a few moments, reading the contract off his monitor.
Finally, he looked up.

“
You're quite certain I can't change your mind?” he said.

“
I'm afraid not.”

“
Then I am afraid I'm forced to terminate your employment.” He tapped at his keyboard. “The appropriate forms are on the way.”

“
You'll still owe me the balance of my fee.”

“
Of course.” The smile reappeared, but thin as glass. “And I remind you that you are still bound by our confidentiality agreements.”

I nodded.
Falmer glared at me for a moment, then shook his head.

“
As you like. It's been a pleasure meeting you, Mr. Golden.”

He did not, I noticed, offer to shake my hand.

~

A taxi took me to a nearby Sheraton, with a stop at a take-out Chinese place to pick up several pounds of carbohydrates soaking in
grease
[40]
.

—
[40]
The longer I spend as a laptop, the more I am disgusted by ingestion and its associated processes. I don't know how I ever stood it. It doesn't help that John slurps his noodles.—

I took the steaming white containers up to the hotel room and arranged them on the desk, then jacked Sarah into a wall socket and the too-expensive broadband network.

“It doesn't smell right,” I said.

“
The noodles?” Sarah said. “I can't confirm that, obviously, but that place didn't look like it was up to code—”

“Falmer.”
I rubbed my shin again, trying to convince the nerves that the damage they'd suffered was only in my imagination. “It doesn't make any sense. What is he working on in there that's so secret he'd rather let some fairy take his lab apart than show me?”

“Probably the next version of SS
AntiFae,” Sarah said. “According to their website, it launches next month. 'With new UltraBlock technology,' it says.”

I grunted, glanced at the food, and decided I needed a shower before anything else. I always think better in the shower, and there was something nagging at me I couldn't quite put my finger on.
For a moment I nearly had it, but as I broke open the single-use soap and single-use shampoo, I started wondering if Delphi was at that moment climbing into a well-deserved shower herself, and I lost my train of thought
[41]
.

—
[41]
Really, John? Ugh.—

When I got out, though, my mind was clearer than it had been since I stepped off the plane.
I felt like I was at an apogee, the caffeine high wearing off but the crash not quite begun. What I needed, I thought, was help.

“
Sarah,” I said, tossing the towel aside and pulling on the hotel-issue bathrobe
[42]
.

—
[42]
John's carelessness in hotel rooms is one of many reasons I'm glad I don't have an integral camera.—

“
Do you still have that line to Jiiya in Kyoto?”

“Unfortunately.
I wish you'd let me get rid of it. He's a creep
[43]
.”

—
[43]
A 'line', in this context, is a hair-thin connection over the Wildernet to some particular fairy burrow or domain. It means hosting the tiniest part of that burrow on a piece of my system dedicated to the purpose. I'm well-protected, obviously, but every time I'm reminded the things are there it makes
me
feel like I need a shower.—

“Give him a poke and tell him I need his help. Grab a copy of SS
AntiFae and send it over to him, tell him I want to know—hypothetically, of course—if he could get through it without leaving any trace.”

“He's going to want something.”

“Tell him I'll owe him a favor.”

“You're not serious,” Sarah said. “I would have thought you learned your lesson about favors after last time.”

“Just do it, all right? I'll handle Jiiya
[44]
.”

—
[44]
Easy for him to say. He doesn't have to feel the creepy old man's greasy fingers groping his dataports.—

Sarah muttered something I didn't catch, but made no further protest. I sat down at the desk and inhaled the contents of several of the white containers, washed down with a $10 beer from the minibar. What the hell, I just got paid, right?

“Ugh,” Sarah said. “He stinks of those pickled plum things.”

“Is he going to have a look?”

“Yes. He says you owe him a quote ‘really big favor’ unquote.” Sarah sighed. “You realize, of course, that we already got paid for this job?”

“
I know, I know.” I hopped onto the bed and fumbled for the remote. “You can start putting up my availability in the usual places, all right? When did Jiiya say he'd have something?”

“
A few hours.”

I clicked the TV on and
surfed the hotel cable, looking for something mindless and distracting, preferably with explosions. I must not have found it before the jetlag got me, though, because I woke up to Sarah's voice and a documentary about toilet-paper manufacturing.

“
John!” she said. “Don't make me break out the klaxon.”

“
I'm up.” I yawned and glanced at the window, surprised to find it was already full dark. Seattle's warm enough that you forget how far north it is; in winter twilight is at around half past three. “What's happening?”

“
I got the results from Jiiya.” Something in her voice made me sit up and pay attention.

“
Did he find anything interesting?”

“
I'm really not sure,” Sarah said. “But you're going to want to have a look at this.”

~

An hour later, I was behind the wheel of a rental car, poking slowly through a Kirkland subdivision, trying to make out the house numbers.

“
That's it,” Sarah said. “Up ahead, on the left.”

I flashed the high
beams and confirmed that the number on the front door matched the one I'd pulled off a resume-sharing site. That trail was a couple of years old, and I hoped Delphi hadn't moved recently. Tracking down any sort of contact info had been surprisingly difficult.

“
Are you sure you know what you're doing?” Sarah said.

“
Nope.” I cut the engine. “But you saw Jiiya's analysis. I don't think we can just leave this alone.”

“
I mean about her. Are you sure we can trust her?”

I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel.
“I think so. I got a good feeling from her.”

“
Oh, that's a relief,” Sarah drawled. “You don't have anything more concrete to go on than your hunches
[45]
?”

—
[45]
Or urges.—

“Not unless you count the fact that without her, we're screwed.”

She didn't have anything to say to that. I got out of the car and hurried up the walk. It was a small house of the sort you occasionally see blocking traffic on the back of a tractor-trailer, and the small lot showed signs of the classic 'just let everything die' style of geek lawn care; the front door was flanked by an angled window, but curtains blocked any view of the inside.

I rang the bell and, for good measure, rapped a long tattoo on the
wood
[46]
.

—
[46]
I should add that we'd stopped at a Starbucks along the way to top up John's caffeine/sugar/fat tanks, which explains why he was acting like a chimp on meth.—

A minute or so passed, while I continued to make a nuisance of myself. Eventually I heard heavy footsteps inside, and Delphi's voice, heavy with sleep, said through the door, “Unless this is Publisher's Clearing House with a novelty check the size of a surfboard, keep that up and I'm calling the cops.”

“Delphi, it's me,” I said. “John Golden. We need to talk.”

“John? What are you—did you follow me home from work?”

“No, I got your address off the net. Listen—”

“My address isn't on
the net.”

“It is if you look in the right places.” I realized, somewhat belatedly, that I wasn't making a terribly good impression. “Lo
ok, this isn't what you think.”