Carla studied Aziz a moment, then nodded briefly. "All right." she replied. "If you think you can dredge up more information on this, go ahead and try. But be careful. And don’t try casting that spell yourself. I don’t want to see you wind up like Masaki’s friend, burned to death from the inside out."
Aziz nodded solemnly, and drew a cross pattern over his heart. But Pita caught the greedy gleam in his eye. Carla might be a smart lady, but she was a sucker for a handsome face. Pita wouldn’t trust this guy as far as she could heave him.
Carla rubbed her temples with her fingertips. The night without sleep had drained her; only the double-strength kaffetamine pills she’d taken were keeping her awake now. She resisted the urge to catnap in the back seat of the taxi, and decided instead to review the file footage from the interview Masaki had conducted, five years ago, with the mage who’d died in the alley. She jacked into her playback imager, then slotted a datachip into the handheld unit. Focusing on one of the icons that appeared in her cybereye’s field of view, she initiated the playback.
The story was a standard puff piece, describing the opening of a new thaumaturgical supply store. The owner was Farazad Samji, a young entrepreneur from India who was trained in the hermetic tradition. The store specialized in talismonger’s supplies from the Far East—rare herbs, vials of water from the Ganges, raw silk cocoons, polished gemstones, and cobra skins. But its main draw had been glazed bricks inscribed with cuneiforms. They were said to have come from a ziggurat of ancient Babylon. Whether or not this was a legitimate claim, the bricks had proved a popular item with mages who wanted to build their own alchemical kilns. A single brick was said to be enough to increase the magical potency of a kiln by a factor of ten.
Farazad Samji was an affable man with dark hair and a square jaw. Despite the exotic nature of his shop, he dressed conservatively, in a double-zip suit and solid-tone pants. He was keen about his craft, earnest and bright. Although he came from a rural background, he had interesting ideas on the modern technological applications of magic. Carla could see why Mitsuhama had offered him a job in their R&D division.
Although the puff piece had been no more than a minute long, the unedited trideo footage ran over half an hour. Carla muted the video portion, and, while half-listening to the audio, ran over in her mind what KKRU’s researchers had learned about the mage thus far. Farazad was married to a woman named Ravinder and had two young children—Jasmine, age seven, and Bal, a boy of three. He lived in a tiny condominium in
Farazad had sold his store and joined Mitsuhama three years ago, back when the company was aggressively hiring for its magical research division. The advertised starting salary for the position had been 120,000 nuyen—twice Carla’s current wage. What Farazad’s salary had been when he died was anybody’s guess; the IRS databanks certainly weren’t telling. But given the value of his home and the small balance outstanding on his mortgage, it must have been plenty.
Carla looked out the window at the passing traffic. As far as she could tell, there weren’t any vehicles following her. But if the Mitsuhama goons were on her trail, a taxi was the safest place to be. Not only was the vehicle bulletproof, but it was also warded against magical attack.
The driver, a heavyset man with a round face and wearing a black beret decorated with a Celtic pin, caught Carla’s eye in the mirror. "Weird weather we been having lately, eh? You see that lighting flash last night?" His voice crackled through the speaker that was set into the plexiglass partition that separated the front and back seats.
"No." Carla answered. "I was inside all night, working."
"Well, it was tremendous." the driver continued. "It lit up the whole sky. I’ve never seen—"
His commentary was cut off by the beep of Carla’s cel phone. "Excuse me." she said. "I’ve got a call. It may be personal. You mind turning off the intercom?"
"Sure thing." the driver answered. He touched an icon on his dashboard, cutting the com, then reached into a pouch that lay on the seat beside him. He pulled a chocolate from it and popped it into his mouth, then munched happily, staring straight ahead at the road. Carla thumbed the talk button of her cel phone. "Yes?"
"Hi, Carla. It’s me."
Carla recognized the voice of Frances, one of the deckers at KKRU.
"Yes?"
"Our subject just accepted a delivery of flowers." Frances answered. "She’s home, all right."
"Did you get a digital sample?" Carla asked.
"You bet." Frances sounded smug. "I’m going to work on it right now."
"Perfect. And thanks."
Carla thumbed the phone’s Off button and smiled. She was taking a risk, coming to the Samji house unannounced. But although it was possible to do a pickup straight off the telecom line during a phone interview, face-to-face interviews always looked best on trid. Of course, when Carla confronted her, Mrs. Samji might just shut the door in her face. On the other hand, she might open up and tell Carla everything she knew about her husband’s work. All Carla had to do was find a subject that would get her talking. Children, maybe. Carla could always pretend that she had children the same age as the Samji kids. Or pets, perhaps. People always warmed up when you asked them questions about something they loved. It was then just a matter of easing them around to the more difficult questions. Like why her husband wanted to divulge corporate secrets. And whether Mitsuhama might have killed him because of it.
Carla gazed out the window, reviewing what she knew about the mage’s employers. The Mitsuhama corporation specialized in computer technologies such as neural interfaces and guidance systems for autonomous robotic vehicles. It also did a substantial business in defense contracts, particularly smart guns and computer-controlled targeting systems.
From its headquarters in Kyoto, Mitsuhama Computer Technologies had expanded rapidly in the few years since its founding and now was truly multinational. Its multiple branches and divisions encompassed the globe, and its net worth was said to rival the GNP of a moderately sized nation like the Confederated American States. MCT North America had hundreds of offices, labs, and manufacturing plants in the continent’s various nations. In Seattle alone the corporation had a set of posh executive offices, a factory that produced data processors, and two separate R&D labs—one devoted to cybernetics, the other to pure magic research. Heading them all up was Tamatsu Sakura, vice-president of MCT’s UCAS division.
Once she had a better grasp on her story, Carla would try to arrange an interview with Mr. Sakura. The job at hand, however, was to establish—on the record—the links between the Mitsuhama Corporation and the spell formula Farazad had intended to hand over to Masaki. Carla could speculate all she liked about the possible applications of a spell to conjure the ultimate stealth weapon. But what she had so far—a formula on an unmarked datachip that could have originated anywhere—was hardly conclusive evidence. If only the mage had lived long enough to be interviewed by Masaki, the uses to which the corp had intended to put the new spell could have been documented on trideo.
Pita would provide an eyewitness account of how the mage had died, but once again, that wouldn’t prove anything. It merely implied that a mage—who just happened to work for Mitsuhama—had died at the hands of a weird spirit, probably one that he had conjured up using the speli on the chip. The fellow hadn’t even had the courtesy to the outside the Mitsuhama offices. Instead, he’d been found in an alley behind the brokerage firm where his wife used to work. It was hardly the incriminating tie-in to Mitsuhama that they needed.
Carla drummed her fingers on her lap, hoping Masaki wasn’t so bagged that he’d blow the interview with Pita. It was to be a straightforward take, a head-and-shoulders shot of the kid repeating her account of what she’d seen in the alley that night. They would run it as a picture-in-picture over the trideo that Masaki had shot when he found the dead mage. The trid was underexposed and jumpy; Masaki had only captured a ten-second clip before a DocWagon arrived on the scene. Rather than answer their questions, he’d scuttled away. But Wayne could probably enhance the image and use pixel splicing to stretch the clip into half a minute or more. If the story went to air tonight, Carla would use the interview she was about to shoot with Farazad’s wife. Then tomorrow she’d chase down Mitsuhama Seattle management for a reaction. She’d probably get a "no comment" or a denial, but if she barged into the corporate offices during a live feed, the story would wrap with a bang.
If only Masaki had arrived at the alley a few seconds earlier, he might have gotten a shot of the mage’s death. Now that would have been some take, to hear the kid describe it. In hindsight, it was a wonder Masaki had set foot outside at night to meet with the mage in the first place. Maybe there was some reporter left in him yet.
If so, it certainly didn’t show in his interview with the young Farazad. Restoring the video and watching the unedited footage, Carla was amazed at all the loose ends Masaki didn’t pick up on. If it had been her doing the interview, she’d have quizzed the shop owner about the bricks, which had a distinctively modern-looking glaze. And there, when Farazad called himself a "parsee." she’d have asked what that was. It was probably some obscure Indian caste, but Carla wouldn’t have just let it slide the way Masaki did.
She focused on the icon that switched off the playback imager, then pulled her Encyclopedia Cybernetica data-pad from her purse. Pressing the icon for a dictionary-format keyword search, she spoke the word "parsee" into the unit. A second or two later, text scrolled across its microscreen.
Parsis
.
Literal
translation:
"
People
of
Persia
. "
A
name
given
to
Zoroastrians
who
emigrated
to
India
in
the
7th
century
A
.
D
.
Carla looked out the window. They had nearly reached the Samji home. She tried again, this time keying the unit for full encyclopedia mode.
"Zoroastrian."
Zoroastrian
.
A
follower
of
Zoroastrianism,
a
monotheistic
religion
founded
approximately
four
to
nine
thousand
years
ago
by
the
Persian
philosopher
Zarathustra
.
Traditionally,
both
lay
membership
and
membership
in
its
priesthood
were
hereditary;
the
religion
did
not
accept
outside
worshippers,
nor
did
it
admit
children
whose
parents
were
not
both
members
of
the
faith
.
In
2047,
the
religion
had
fewer
than
20,000
practitioners,
most
of
them
in
the
Indian
city
of
Bombay
.
The scroll of words paused for a moment as the screen showed a graphic of a flame, burning in a silver chalice. It slowly dissolved into another graphic: a human figure with outstretched wings, which the encyclopedia identified as a
farohar,
or angel.
With
the
increase
in
inter-faith
marriages,
it
was
thought
that
the
Zoroastrian
faith
would
die
out
in
another
generation
or
two
.
But
in
2048,
the
religion
opened
its
doors
to
outsiders
and
the
first
conversions
were
sanctified
.
Today,
the
membership
is
slowly
increasing,
but
it
remains
to
be
seen
if
this
relatively
obscure
faith
will
survive
into
the
next
century
.
The
Zoroastrian
god,
Ahura
Mazda,
is
worshipped
in
a
temple
that
contains
an
eternal
flame
that
repre
—
Carla shut off the encyclopedia as the taxi came to a stop outside a brick wall fronted by a heavy, wrought-iron gate. The wall completely encircled a number of ultramodern condominium units designed to look like terraced pueblos of adobe brick. The dun-colored condos looked strangely out of place against the gray Seattle sky.