I’ve seen elf women before, of course. Who hasn’t? But never one like this. She’s tall—probably more than two meters in bare feet (oh, what a thought . . .)—about as tall as me. But she looks much taller, and it’s not just because of the silver-capped heels on her shoes. She’s thin and willowy and long and lithe, and she moves like quicksilver—fluid and effortless. Long, pale face with eyes that gleam like bright gold. Her hair’s fine and straight, so pale it could almost be white, and it falls free to just above her butt. She wears a biz-style jacket of severe cut—black velveteen over a synthsilk blouse of faintest jade-green. Her skirt’s the same fabric, calf-length, but slit up the side to just below the point of her hip.
Politeness be damned, there are some times you’ve just got to stare. I do, she notices, and she likes it.
I
get a speculative glance from the corner of one of those gold eyes, and the hint of something that couid be a smile, and suddenly I want to run in circles howling, or dragging a wing, or some damn thing. (No, be honest, what I really want to do is investigate the degrees of freedom allowed by that split skirt.) I watch her receding rear aspect until the group is into the ops room and the door closes behind her. Then I grin over at Box.
The big troll’s shaking his head sadly, apparently feeling yet another aspect of the tragedy of goblinization. I can commiserate: I’m not going to get my hands on any of that either.
* * *
It’s a long meeting, and I’ve got plenty of time to think things over. Mainly, that means, to put the elf woman in perspective. The big question is, since there’s no way I can hear what Blake and the Tir reps are discussing at the moment— what can I provide the Star that they’ll want to know?
The answer is, the best descriptions I can give them of the reps. Obviously, verbal descriptions aren’t as good as holos or vids—and why, I ask myself again, didn’t the Star ever upgrade my headware so I could download actual images into a datachip?—but they’ll be better than nothing. If the three people meeting with Blake always work together, even incomplete descriptions of all three could be enough to idee them.
Okay, so I had a good mental image of the woman, a very good image. Not as much on the elf talking to Vladimir, though, and nothing at all on the human aide (if that’s what he really is). So that’s my task when the meeting’s over.
And finally—
finally,
thank the patron god of bladder
control—it’s over. The door opens with the whir-click of maglocks disengaging, and the delegation begins to emerge. Springblossom and Vladimir first, followed closely by the elf woman. We make momentary eye contact, but—biz before pleasure, frag it—I glance away quickly and focus my attention on the male elf who’s walking out alongside Blake.
This time I give him the full once-over. A centimeter or two taller than the woman, similar slender build, but while she’s all speed and grace, he looks like there’s steel-hard muscles in there as well. Aquiline nose, dark eyes, olive skin. Black hair cropped short on top, but collar-length at the sides and in the back—a typical conservative corp style. No jewelry, no distinguishing marks that I can spot. Not much, but it’s the best I can do.
Taking up the rear of the group is the human aide/whatever. Not as tall as the other two and weighing eighty to eighty-five kilos. Medium height and medium build, basically what I picked up the first time out. He’s wearing a conservative-cut biz suit in muted maroon, with black accessories and accents. Dark hair, short all over and subtly spiked. Dark olive complexion, dark eyes . ..
Those eyes meet mine, and there’s a flash of recognition that hits me like a needle in the base of the spine. I’ve seen him before—don't know where, don’t know when. I don’t know who the frag he is, but I know I’ve seen him before— whether in person, in a holo, on the trid, or whatever.
And fragged if he doesn’t recognize me too! I can see it, I can feel it—and I’ll bet my last nuyen that he knows the recognition’s mutual.
His eyes widen a little, and his face goes blank, totally expressionless. I’m sure my reaction’s exactly the fragging same. It’s like when you pass someone on the street that you know you’ve met before, but you can’t for the life of you remember their name, where you met, or why they might—or might not—be important. So instead of making an ass out of yourself, you let your gaze just slide off them—give them the neutral scan—like you didn’t really see them in the first place. It’s like that, but it’s worse, because we both know we both
did
see each other.
So what the frag am I supposed to do now? From the other slag’s reaction, he’s in precisely the same position. I know him, goes the brain, I met him—but where? And who
is
the motherfragger anyway?
We’re both doing the neutral scan, trying to pretend to each other that we didn’t see nothing. And we keep doing it
until he’s up the stairway to the main floor of the safe house
and out of sight.
Okay, honesty time: I’m drek-scared.
Call it enlightened self-interest, call it the necessary paranoia of the deep-cover asset, call it whatever the frag you want. I just know it as a tightness around the heart, a churning, watery feeling in the guts.
Theoretically, nobody in Seattle knows who and what I really am. That’s the idea, at least. That’s why the Star had me transferred out west from Milwaukee. Except for my direct controls and various cut-outs within the Star—and their lovers and confidants and anybody else they happened to shoot their mouths off to—everybody in Seattle knows me solely as Rick Larson, gang-banger extraordinaire, Cutters soldier, and member of Blake’s Praetorian guard.
Any attempt by official channels to dig up deep background on me would lead to Milwaukee, where the local Lone Star franchise has built me a bulletproof cover story. If the search is done unofficially—through the Milwaukee gang scene, for example—they’ll run into the same cover, because Rick Larson Gang Hero was active there as well. So the only people who’d recognize my face in Seattle are my Lone Star superiors or people who’ve met me in my Cutters persona. Nice and logical and reassuring, right?
Yeah, well, that’s in theory, and we all know what happened to the theories that man could never fly and that a nuclear chain reaction would never work. Consider the fact that I flew from Milwaukee to Seattle aboard a new generation of suborbitals launched along linear induction rails that draw their electricity from a fragging nuke plant, and you’ll understand my unwillingness to depend on theories. My cover is watertight and bulletproof only as long as a single, base assumption remains correct: that nobody (except me, of course) ever moves from Milwaukee to Seattle.
Okay, granted, Seattle isn’t one of the garden spots of the universe, but have you visited Milwaukee lately? “A Great City on a Great Lake,” according to the Chamber of Commerce, but in reality it’s a great place to get geeked on a great toxic waste dump. But people do relocate. Hell, take Cat Ashburton, the pneumatic redhead from my meet at the kissaten. She got transferred from Milwaukee to Seattle. Sure, she’s part of Lone Star and thus is no risk to me, but her transfer was totally independent of any assignment of mine, and that makes her—for the purposes of my catastrophizing, at least—just another megacorp wage slave. And if one megacorp wage slave can get bumped to the West Coast, why not another? And just as easily someone who knew me while I was going through the Lone Star Academy, before I found my way into deep-cover work.
Let’s let the old overactive imagination chum away at that for a moment and come up with a worst-case scenario. Maybe the elf’s aide—the guy I’m obsessing about—knew me when we were both young punks in Milwaukee. Maybe we went to school together or met over beers at some college watering hole. In a drunken stupor, I told him I was thinking about joining the Star.
No, make it worse. I met him while I was in the Academy—over the same liter of beer, probably—when I was so adamant about getting into the Star and changing the world. Our career paths thereafter diverge. I go undercover, he goes into the corporate world and ends up cutting shady deals with gangs for a Tir-based outfit. What’s he going to think when he spots good old Ricky Larson, the goof who used to be an Officer Friendly wannabe flashing his Lone Star Fan Club decoder ring to all and sundry, suddenly looking like he’s a top soldier for the fragging Cutters? What’s he going to think? Yeah, that’s
exactly
what he’s going to think. He’s going to be dead fragging right, and I’m going to be right fragging dead. Ah, isn’t symmetry wonderful?
Yeah, well, that’s the worst-case scenario. Best-case? We passed each other on the street yesterday, and for some reason our faces stuck in each other’s minds. Or maybe he was
one of the suits in the Coffee Bon when I was doing my gig
with Cat. If that’s the case, then I’m safe. When he finally places me, his reaction is going to be more, “Hey, small world,” than, “Infiltrator! Call out the dogs!”
And what’s the most likely case? Somewhere in between. Maybe we do know each other from Milwaukee, but met after my cover was at least on the way to being established. In which case I’m at minimal, if not zero, risk.
So what do I do now? “Grease the guy” comes immediately to mind, but that carries its own set of risks and consequences. No, obviously the smart thing to do is wrack what I use for brains to figure out who the slag was, is, or whatever. If I can beat him at figuring how and where we’ve seen each other before, then I’ll know which way to jump. Until I get that brain wave, though, about all I can do is obsess about it, and stay drek-scared.
And I’m doing that just fine.
* * *
I’m still at it a couple of days later, and it’s turning into a real pain in the fragging hoop. I still haven’t placed the guy’s face, no matter how hard I strain. I’ve tried all the little psychological tricks, all the mental judo that’s supposed to help you remember. Go through your memory chronologically (Did you see him in 2049? No? Then how about 2050?). Or geographically (Remember the faces of everyone you hung with in Milo’s Bar, Milwaukee. No? Try the U of W student union building . . .). Or how about associationally? (Who have you ever met who has associated closely with elves?) The only results are headaches, difficulty in sleeping, and disturbing nightmares when I do manage to get to sleep. Not productive, chummer. Not productive at all.
So, like a good little mole, I tried another channel. Using all my wiles and wits and lies and machinations, I put out feelers throughout the Cutters to find out if anyone knows anything about my mysterious Mr. X. Null program there, cobber.
Oh, sure, I got a name, but it was one Mr. Nemo. I don’t think the ganger who leaked me that gem ever figured out why I looked like I was tasting something sour when he told me. Apart from something like “I. M. A. Sudonim,” l can’t think of anything that’s more obviously an alias than “Nemo”. (Doesn’t anyone read the classics anymore? “Nemo” means “nobody” in Latin. Our guest had billed himself as Mr. Nobody.) Pretty fragging useless.
Well, no, let’s be fair, there was something else, but it didn’t do much but raise more questions. From what some of the soldiers had heard—and Great Ghu knows how they heard it—Mr. Nemo wasn’t from the same Tir-based corp as the elves. That’s all they could tell me. No clue as to whether that meant he was from another Tir-based corp or a corp from somewhere else in the world ... or whether he was even a corporator at all. Drek, with a pseudonym like Nemo, he could well be a shadowrunner. (But no, frag it till it bleeds, he’s not a runner, I know it, and I don’t know
how
I know it, and that terrifies me even more. What a bloody nightmare.)
Anyway, I’ve got my report all cued up and dictated into the chip in my secondary slot, including everything I know, guess, and wonder about the elven delegation. I’ve got verbal descriptions of everyone, but for the nth time over the last couple of days I wish I could draw worth squat or that someone had seen fit to equip me with chips for skills other than the violent.
So, yes, I’ve got the report ready to go, but go where? Blake’s been working my hoop off as aide/gofer/bodyguard. I've been playing close-cover on him, making drops and running courier, and just basically sitting around waiting for him to figure out what he wants done next. I haven’t been back to my doss in two days, crashing instead on couches, cots, or floors at one or another of the Cutters’ safe houses. I’ve had one and only one chance to log onto UOL with my pocket computer. Of course, I took that opportunity to post the innocuous message that means, “I need a meet now. C’mon back good buddy, y’hear?” or some drek. But I haven’t been able to check for replies.
Up until a little while ago, that is. About an hour back, close to 0130 in the middle of what looks like Seattle’s worst overnight rainstorm of the year, Blake came out of his private doss to find me propped up against the corridor wall, catching some zees. I guess I felt his presence—or maybe I heard the door. Anyway, I popped to my feet like I was on springs, expecting royal drek for sleeping on the job.
Any other boss would surely have had my head for dereliction of duty. But Blake never does what any other boss would do. Instead of barking, he just chuckled quietly. “Take twenty-four,” he told me. Then, glancing at his watch, he amended, “Well, make it twenty-two-thirty. Be back here by midnight tomorrow. Got me?”
So I told him “Gotcha,” and I headed downstairs and out to my bike.
I wanted sleep, I craved sleep. But what I needed was to log onto UOL to see if a meet could be scraped together in the next twenty-some hours. Of course, I couldn’t see to that need in the safe house. Blake knew I was bagged to the bone, and what does someone who’s bagged to the bone do when he’s given time off? Not log onto a Matrix BBS, that’s for sure. Word would get back to Blake that for some reason I ranked connect time as more important right now than sack time, and he’d start wondering why. That kind of wondering I don’t need. So it was out to the bike, fire up the engine— after checking for surprises, of course. It wasn’t that I was expecting trouble, but I had tended to be more cautious after seeing some grunts washing remnants of Ranger off the walls of the building. Then I cruised back toward the Wenonah.