Carl Sargent
Nosferatu

Marc Gascoign
1

Why the frag is Knight Errant swarming all over the place? Serrin wondered, rubbing his sleepy eyes and squinting into the June sunlight. Uniformed security had sprouted up on the grass around the campus library like mold on a rotting peach. Not breaking stride, the elf headed straight for the group blocking his path to the building's entrance.

"I'm sorry, sir," the security goon said indifferently. "No one is admitted to this area today."

"I've got all my passes," Serrin offered, halfway toward reaching into a jacket pocket for his plastic. His hand froze in mid-air as one look on the goons' faces told him not to put his hand anywhere near any of his pockets. "I'm sorry, sir," the man repeated in a bored tone of voice. "Block C is closed today. Haven't you heard?" "Haven't I heard what?" the elf said irritably. "The Beloff Research Laboratory is being inaugurated at two o'clock this afternoon. By Andrew T. Small in person." The man's voice betrayed just the merest hint of contempt at mention of New York's mayor.

"Great," Serrin muttered, turning on his heel. He wandered off to the nearest canteen, bought a garishly headlined Times from the vending machine, and sat down to read it over a cup of soykaf and a Danish. No one read a cheap tabloid like this for news in 2055, but even its wild sensationalism couldn't distract the elf from his irritation. The grimoires he needed to consult were under the most highly restricted access, and this was the only place in the world that had them. The most he'd been able to get was permission for a week's access to the magical collection

here at Columbia, and now he was going to lose a whole day of it.

His gray eyes meandered over the top of the newspaper to the girl who'd parked herself down across from him. She had the fresh-faced look of the typical university student, but Serrin wondered about the brief flash of something hard in the brown eyes gazing at him from beneath her dark curls. Her datajack was silvered and her nails were polished to match, but the metallic lip gloss was a little too flash for his liking. Yet he could also see that on her it looked good.

"You a mage?" she asked abruptly. He nodded. "One of the parapsych profs?"

He smiled and shook his head. "No, just doing some research." He reached into a pocket for his cigarettes, offered her one.

"You can't smoke in here," she said, with a little laugh. "We social outcasts have to take it outside." She picked up her cup and headed for the door. Stealing a brief look at her long, smooth legs, Serrin got up and went limping after her.

"What're you working on?" she asked as he sat down beside her on the grass. She'd already lit up, the smoke from her menthol cigarette rising lazily into the already warm morning air.

"Um, magical defense," he said, adding his own plume of smoke to the humid, heavy air. Her eyes narrowed a little and he regretted having given himself away so readily. Not that anyone couldn't have figured out what he was after simply by scoping out the grimoires he'd been consulting in the library.

"Against who?" she asked, leaning back on one arm as she watched his face.

Serrin shrugged. "No one amp; Or at least not that I know of. Let's just say I'm a little bit paranoid."

"Then New York's just the place for you. But you're not a native, are you?" She cocked her head and studied him for a moment. "I'd say your accent is West Coast, somewhere north maybe? Seattle?"

Smart girl, he thought, enjoying himself thoroughly. Despite the heat, it was a beautiful summer morning and

she was almost as lovely. The mage barely noticed the passage of time as she gradually drew him out like a fisherman reeling in a difficult catch. The security goons twitched from time to time, perhaps wondering why the elf and the young woman lingered so long doing nothing while the sun rose high in the sky toward noon and then beyond.

The mayor's official cortege arrived on schedule, even a bit early at five minutes to two. By then, the stars of Columbia's parapsychology department had begun to assemble in front of the new research building on a dais festooned with ribbons of red and silver. The stairs leading up to the new building gleamed as if they'd been scrubbed twenty times during the night.

Serrin and the girl wandered across toward the gathering, which apparently hadn't attracted much of a crowd. Despite the fact that the mayor of the city was making an appearance, the Rotten Apple's media snoops obviously had more exciting stories to cover.

"What's he doing here?" Serrin wondered aloud. "I mean, the mayor can't be too worried about the parapsychology vote."

She grinned. "I've heard that some of the money to construct these new buildings came from foreign sources including one that's megatight with a vote he does need."

That caught Serrin's interest, and he was just about to ask what she meant when Mayor Small, surrounded by a phalanx of grim-faced bodyguards, emerged from the safety of his Phaeton and advanced toward the applauding academics.

Long afterward, the mage still could not pinpoint what had alerted him. It wasn't his spell lock to detect enemies, which wouldn't have homed in on an assassin whose target was somebody else. Nor was help from any other magic, for Serrin had no spells going. Trying to run spells in the middle of a place crawling with Knight Errants wouldn't have gotten him more than an abrupt but efficient escort straight off the campus.

No, the way it happened was like a smooth tracking shot in slo-mo. The hazy-edged tan whirl of an Arab face,

a gleam of metal, a masked aura, and a rush of adrenaline. The Knight Errant goons must have caught Serrin just as he was casting his spell for a magical barrier, because all at once several of them were pointing their Predators straight at him. It was at that moment other magical energies swam into focus along with his own.

The bullet never did hit Mayor Andrew T. Small, but deflected away as Serrin's spell defeated its course, sending it shattering into a high window of the new research building. The sound of breaking glass came slowly, as if from a long way off. Small hit the ground while three of his bodyguards piled on top of him like three linebackers sacking a rookie quarterback. The goons staring at Serrin seemed unable to focus, confusion written all over their faces. The Knight Errant mage who'd stopped them from filling the elf with lead barked an order, and they slowly let their raised weapons fall.

Serrin watched the terrifying, unstoppable line of their aim drop from his own body, then, in a sudden burst, everything resumed normal speed in a great rush and roar of noise. The lone gunman had been overpowered by street samurai among the crowd. A squad of Knight Errant's finest leapt for him, eager to save what little face they could.

Serrin was first bundled to the ground, then hauled to his feet again and forced into a tinted-window limo. A coat was clumsily flung over his head as the car sped away. The elf huddled in his seat, barely breathing, barely moving. All he could do was hope and pray that his reflexes hadn't gone and got him into deep and serious drek.

"I apologize for any rough treatment, Mr. Shamandar," the man in the sharp suit told Serrin. "It's just that we were trying to optimize your debriefing. You'll appreciate the need for a full security-implication assessment of events."

Yeah, sure, Serrin thought Wearily. 1 stop the mayor of New York from getting smoked and all I get for my trouble is eighteen hours of nonstop interrogation. I don't

even know where I am. He crossed his arms and gave the nameless suit his best "Well, what now?" look.

"I am authorized to make you a discretionary payment on behalf of the mayoral office as a reward for your public-spirited actions," the suit said as he produced a credstick with the imprint of City Hall. As the man handed it over to Serrin, he gave the elf one of his oiliest smiles.

Serrin was slightly mollified. Just how much more mollified he was prepared to get depended on the size of the reward. And, well, ten thousand nuyen ought to buy a fair to middling degree of mollification.

"We do not believe there's any risk to you of reprisal," the suit continued after Serrin had examined the stick. "The department is confident that we're dealing with a lone assassin."

Serrin almost laughed. With all the powerful magic that had obviously been masking the gunman, he'd been acting alone about as much as had William Springer, the man who'd assassinated President Garrety and never been caught. But that was apparently what the mayor's office and Knight Errant wanted him to believe, so he pretended to buy it.

"I'm just glad to have been of help," Serrin said blandly. Pocketing the credstick, he turned to leave the blindingly lit, windowless interrogation room. Flanking him now on either side were two Knight Errant trolls, each one holding one of his arms as they marched him to the limo parked in front of the security installation. Beside it, a dark-haired girl was arguing with a few more Knight Errants who were about to manhandle her off the premises. It was the same girl he'd met the day before, sun gleaming off the silver jacks in her temples even at this hour of the morning. Jerking his arms free of his burly escorts, the elf rushed forward to intervene.

"Hey, it's chill!" he said as one of the Errants poked her in the ribs with a nasty-looking Predator. "I mean, we were just leaving anyway."

"Let's go," she said simply and opened the door of her Jackrabbit. Something told him just to get in and let himself be driven away. Her smaller car simply looked more human, more inviting, than the corporate limo. It was only later that Serrin realized how little a night without sleep had done for his instincts.

"The vidcasts didn't get your face," she said when they were settled into her apartment somewhere in suburban New Jersey. "I think you got lucky, Serrin Shamandar. I doubt the Damascus League got enough of an ID to come after you even if they wanted to, which isn't my guess they don't."

"Damascus League?" What in slot did they have to do with this?

"That's the word on the street. Maybe Small's been getting too chummy with the Jewish vote lately. Standard hazard for a mayor of New York."

Serrin tried to remember what had happened in those split seconds in front of the beribboned dais. Through the blur of images, he realized he'd forgotten something else.

"Look, I'm really sorry," he said sheepishly. "I can't even remember your name. They didn't let me sleep and I guess my brain's temporarily on hold," he apologized.

"Julia. Julia Richards," she smiled, seeming not at all offended.

"Uh, why did you come to pick me up? I mean, what's it to you?"

"You're very welcome," she said tartly, then turned and flounced away into the little cubbyhole of a kitchen, from which the pungent aroma of coffee soon announced that it wasn't soy, but the real thing. Still feeling churlish, Serrin got up to follow, grimacing at the familiar pain stabbing all the way down his damaged leg. Turning, she saw the look and her irritation changed immediately to concern.

"Forgive me," he said. "My manners seem to have gotten as rusty as my brain. I appreciate your turning up. But you can't blame me for wondering why."

She filled two cups and set them a tray, which he gallantly took from her. Accompanying the coffee were bagels, and Serrin thought the smoked salmon and cream cheese slathered over them might be as real as the coffee.

"Well, it's not that often that I get to meet the man who saves the mayor of New York from being assassinated," she said teasingly. "If that didn't make me interested in you, I don't know what would. I also wondered what kind of person could see something Knight Errant couldn't. I figured you must be a real wiz mage. Someone special." Her tongue flicked across her perfect lips. "That good enough for you?"

Serrin couldn't reply for a large mouthful of chewy bagel. Swallowing it with a hefty gulp he managed to mumble something about not being special at all.

"Maybe amp; maybe not," she said lightly. "Where are you staying?"

"The Grand Hudson," he told her. Julia's eyes widened a little at the mention of such an expensive hotel.

"Why not lay low here for a few days? Just in case. Going back to Columbia might not be a good idea just now. I could get what you need from the library. I've got all the necessary passes and I know some of the librarians."

Sensation ran down his spine, part-thrill, part-fearful distrust. Everything had been happening so fast, so out of the blue. He was too exhausted to stop and think. Julia Richards was young and pretty and he was probably safer here in the wilds of suburbia than back in Manhattan. Anyway, what did he have to lose? Not much, he knew. Doing things because there wasn't much to lose had been Serrin's modus vivendi for some time now. It made decisions so much easier. True, he was a shadowrunner, with the same well-honed instincts for danger and survival as any other of his kind. But even a veteran runner and elven mage could make mistakes when suffering the effects of extreme fatigue.

"Uh, you sure?" She nodded; no pressure. "Well, uh, that would be great," Serrin said. Then quickly added,

"I've only got a few more days in New York." He was trying to let her know he wouldn't become a burden, but also wanted to make sure she understood he didn't stay anywhere too long. He tried his best to stifle a yawn, and failed wretchedly.

"What you need now is some rest," Julia said, giving him another of those smiles. "The spare room's that way and to your left," she told him.

Serrin bid her good night, even though it was only ten o'clock in the morning, then made his way toward the back bedroom, limping even more than usual. The little room was dark and deliciously cool, furnished simply with a bed, a bedstand, and a chair. Not even bothering to remove his clothes or his boots, Serrin sank gratefully onto the bed, punching the pillow up under his head just the way he liked it. He fell asleep almost instantly, and didn't wake until five that afternoon and only then because Julia shook him gently awake to the sight of more freshly brewed coffee on the bedside table. He was halfway through his first cup when she slipped into the bed beside him. Real coffee or not, the other half-cup was instantly forgotten.

Serrin stayed for three days. By day Julia was away from the apartment, returning later with the books he wanted, having somehow won permission to take them out overnight. At night they drove back into town, wandering mostly around the East Riverside neighborhood, where she took him to the Metropolitan Opera and to restaurants where they dined well and expensively. She always paid her half of the tab, a fact that should have made Serrin wonder, but didn't.

Meanwhile they talked as endlessly as on that" first day in the morning sun outside the library. In the course of their conversations Julia confided that she dabbled in writing and was an aspiring actress. From what she described, he made her as one of those eternal hopefuls hanging round the fringes of the arts, doomed to disappointment like most of the rest.

The only thing that seemed other than wholly harmless about Julia Richards was her collection of books on the

occult. Possessions, hauntings, apparitions, all the standard themes plus a good few more. She'd taken some courses in parapsych, and showed him the working version of a ghost tale she was writing. Surprised to find it so readable and well done, Serrin thought the girl had an old-fashioned knack for creating scenes with the disturbing hint of unseen, unknown, unknowable presences lurking just on the edge of the reader's perception.

"This interest in ghosts amp; You intending to hunt them professionally?" he asked, more jesting than serious.

"Oh, just an old hobby," she said, waving her hand to show how minor was its importance, and left it at that.

But from that time on Serrin felt that everything changed. It wasn't anything in particular that was different. There were no scenes, no major misunderstandings,, just a shift in mood, in tone. Even when they made love, he knew her heart wasn't in it. Though he tried to paper over the subtle rift between them with friendly conversation, the mage grew uneasy.

"I think I'd better be heading back home," he said at last, thinking of the Chinese proverb that both guests and fish stink after three days. If he left tonight, he'd avoid that fourth day. "It looks like I'm done with my research, which I couldn't have finished without your help. I won't forget it." He was scrupulously trying not to get too personal.

"Yes, well, it's been fun having you here," Julia replied, sounding as if she genuinely meant it. Serrin was confused, unsure of what deeper emotions might be roiling beneath the surface. He kept the rest of his goodbye short, trying hard to avoid her eyes.

She offered him a ride to the airport, but he declined. A lift to the library, however, he did accept, because he still needed to follow up on one or two final points before returning to Seattle.

"Thanks again," he said, climbing out of the car on a street near the library. "And don't forget. You've got my number. If you ever need anything, don't hesitate. Call any time."

Julia looked away for the merest split-second and he wondered what on earth he had done wrong now. "Sorry,"

was all she said, before jerking the car out of neutral and pulling off. He shook his head, picked up his carrying case, and headed toward the library.

Two hours later he was just finished copying out some of the material he'd come for when he heard the announcement for closing time. After hurriedly checking the flight schedules on one of the library computers, he decided on the midnight shuttle, which would give him time for a decent dinner somewhere downtown. He didn't feel like pressing his luck in Chinatown, so he chose a Thai place off Times Square. Hell, he thought with amusement, maybe I could tap the shoulder of one of those Knight Errant slags who hang around down there and get him to pick up the tab.

Within five minutes of sitting down at his table in Little Home Thai, Serrin suddenly felt like everyone in the place was watching him. Glancing around furtively, he saw two men in suits appear in the doorway, press a wad into the head waiter's hand, and stride across to his table. He almost panicked, but forced himself to reason that these couldn't possibly be a couple of avenging assassins. You don't get iced for preventing someone from being killed, he told himself. Or do you? At least these two didn't look like Arabs amp;

"Mr. Shamandar," one of them said with a heavy dose of fake sincerity as he sat down uninvited at the table. "I'm Dan McEwan of the Times and this is my cameraman, Randy Simmons." Simmons, grinning like an embarrassed hyena with an outdated mustache, nodded a greeting and hefted a camera from around his neck. "We'd really like to take some pictures for a feature on you while I just ask a few questions. We'll try not to interrupt your meal at all."

Serrin was about to growl, "Frag off," then realized he wanted more in the way of explanation. "What's this about anyway?"

"Why, your act of heroism, of course," McEwan said, almost leaving a visible trail of slime on the carpet. "The whole city is still buzzing with it, even after three days. You know, the mystery mage with the haunted eyes?"

The vidcasts didn 't get your face, Julia's voice said at

the back of his mind. In panic he shielded his face with a red napkin and ran for the door. Haunted eyes, my ass, he thought.

"Just get me out of here!" he snarled to the troll driver as he leapt into the back of a yellow cab two minutes later. By now, it seemed like at least a dozen photographers and media reptiles had appeared on the scene. He tried hard not to think about how foolish he must look with the sweaty, ragged remnants of a paper napkin pasted onto various parts of his face. "JFK. Take some detours. Don't worry about the meter."

"I love people who say that kinda stuff, chummer," the troll grinned, then shot off like a devil rat chipped up on BTL.

There didn't seem to be anyone waiting for Serrin at the airport when they arrived, but he guessed that somewhere there had to be a hungry stringer roaming around looking for him, just in case. A quick check of the flight board told him there wouldn't be another domestic flight going out for another thirty-five minutes. And nothing to Seattle for two hours.

"What's the first plane out of town?" he snapped at the woman behind the British Airways desk.

She gave him a startled look and said, "What? Anywhere!"

"You scan it, lady," he said, looking around.

"You in some kind of trouble?"

"I'm not going to hurt you," Serrin said wearily, his eyes tracking her hand as it ducked under the desk, probably reaching for the security button. Then he noticed the tabloid sitting there.

"I'm just trying to escape the reporters," he said, pointing to his face plastered all over the cover. She looked at the picture, then back at him, her eyes widening and her jaw dropping open.

"Frankfurt or Cape Town. Ten minutes," she said as he swiped her Newsday up for a better look. Julia had somehow managed to take some photographs of him seated on her little balcony, relaxed and almost smiling. One of the pics had suffered the attentions of a talented image transformer; the sleazy tabloid apparently had no scruples

about polishing up the drek it published. Serrin Shaman-dar might not be looking too good, but the picture was still recognizable.

All his shadowrunner's instincts were screaming that it was time to get out of town and stay out until the whole thing died down some. He just wished he'd brought along his phony ID so that he could have reserved a ticket for Cape Town as himself and then actually made for Germany under the false name.

"Frankfurt, I think." From there maybe he'd make another hop on to Heathrow, where he'd be able to look up some of his Brit friends; it was certainly a more inviting prospect than a visit to the Azanian city. "Can you get me out of here in time?" he pleaded.

"If you run like crazy, you might just make it. The last call just went out; gate seventeen."

"Lady, I can run like crazy when I need to, trust me." He flung her the City Hall credstick and dumped his suitcase on the conveyor belt. Then he was off, head down, sprinting for the departure gate. Halfway there, he almost tripped over a light metal briefcase, which went spinning away. He glanced up at its owner, an iron-faced man with short hair as gray as his own and a triangular scar on the left side of his chin. Shades concealed cybereyes. Serrin mumbled an apology and something about a terrible hurry, but left the task of retrieving the case to its owner as he continued his dash for the boarding gate. Reaching the gate, fumbling for his passport, the elf had no way of knowing that the man's cybereyes were equipped with a state-of-the-art cyberoptic portacam, which had already shot thirty frames of him.

Serrin just made it to the last boarding bus. As it crossed the tarmac he gazed out over the gray and distant skyline; the coming rain promised to cool New York's hellish humidity to within tolerable limits long enough for the city's denizens to sleep. He stepped into the plane, found his seat, and sank back against the plush upholstery, unrolling the tabloid as furtively as if it was pornography.

Julia of the dark eyes and lovely smile had used just about everything he'd ever said to her, and she'd done her

homework too. No wonder she'd become uneasy toward the end. The scoop had almost everything: his murdered parents, the leg shattered during his stint with Renraku, the Atlantean scam, even the story of how he and Geraint and Francesca had helped solve the gruesome murders in London last year. It was seamlessly stitched together, and what must have gotten her a really fat bonus was the personal poop. No wonder everyone had been staring at him in that restaurant. The media had given the attempted assassination of Mayor Small a barrage of coverage, but Serrin hadn't been watching much trid and so hadn't a clue what else anybody might have said about him by now. But certainly not this intimate, private stuff. Maybe he should be grateful to the tabloid's editors for giving their hungry readers a feast to last them at least until the next three-day wonder showed up. Who knew what they'd do if deprived for too long?

Reading on, he was also grateful she'd spared the revelation of any bedroom secrets amp; then, oh drekWrong again. He just hadn't read far enough. Serrin felt a desperate and wretched sadness, not because the story was savage or brutal, a hatchet job or full of complete lies but because it wasn't. Maybe he'd have found some consolation in cursing her as a lying slitch. But even that she'd stolen from him.

In his impotence Serrin wanted to tear the pages into a million tiny pieces and throw them out the window of the plane. Instead he stuffed the tabloid roughly into his jacket pocket, then wearily sank back against the seat to try and get some sleep.

He hit Frankfurt at ten in the morning, local time, jet-lagged as always after a continental hop, even a short one. Copies of Newsday seemed to be everywhere in the terminal, endless racks of red-edged portraits mocking his attempts at escape. In his over-excited state, the elf decided to keep on moving.

He took a cab to the rail station, which was alive with travelers, all of whom seemed to be either eating or else thinking about it. He saw people ordering croissants stuffed with every filling imaginable, gulping down soykaf and ordering rolls oozing with schinken, pickles, pink beef sizzling fetidly in pools of fat, and salads bathed in mayonnaise thicker than a troll's arm. Such a diet didn't seem to produce many thin Germans, and Serrin worried that his tall elf slenderness would make him too conspicuous. About the best he could do was pull his collar up around his neck and duck his head down into it while he stood waiting in the ticket queue. So preoccupied was he with trying to hide his face that it wasn't until he was almost to the front of the line that Serrin realized he had no idea what would be his destination. Frantically, he looked up at the huge, ever-changing indicator beneath the concourse clock, an enormous thing of iron and brass.

The first train showing was for Karlsruhe. Studying the string of destinations along the way, Serrin settled, for no particular reason, on Heidelberg. He asked the clerk for a one-way ticket first class again, for the isolation and anonymity and headed for the indicated platform.

Crusher 495 was one of the most popular bars in the Barrens, the poorest, most godforsaken district in the

whole urban sprawl that was Seattle. The troll finished his soda water and chuckled over the magazine again, flicking it to and fro in his huge hands. The bar stool beside him creaked as a grizzled, gray-haired ork, weary from another day working the roads, parked his butt down next to him.

"Hey, Ganzer. How ya doin'?" the troll said. "Not too bad, Tom. Same as always. Janus chummer, get me a beer, will ya? Whatcha got there?" The ork turned Tom's magazine over to take in the cover.

"Slot me if that isn't Serrin," he said, looking up with an expression of puzzlement. "Looks like he got some facial work done since we last saw 'im."

"Not likely," Tom said slowly. "Serrin never wanted any metal in the meat. Wouldn't go anywhere near a scalpel. Why would he change now?"

The ork drained half his glass and said nothing. It wasn't tactful to talk much about metal in the meat to Tom. It might only get the troll sermonizing again.

"He saved the mayor of the Rotten Apple from getting shot," Tom said. He knew Ganzer couldn't read.

"That so? Well, as the tortoise said to the army helmet, guess we all make mistakes amp; But, frag, we haven't seen Serrin in what? Five years?"

"Five years and two months," the troll said slowly. "I don't forget."

Ganzer wasn't in the mood for tales of Tom's old shadowrunning days right now. The stories always seemed to end up with the interminable saga of how the troll quit boozing for good, and the ork didn't want to hear about temperance. He wanted a bellyful of beer. Ganzer decided it was a better idea to change the subject. "Say, I hear you're a real hero over in the Jungles these days."

Tom shrugged, but couldn't help a smile to think that the lot of some of the squatters down there might actually improve. "Yeah, well, getting the mayor to throw some grant money their way made him look good too. Now that the detox has gotten the soil up to growing crops acceptable for animal feed, some of those squatters can start earning enough money to buy themselves somethin' to eat."

Tom gazed reflectively around the dingy bar, with its boarded-up windows, scarred furniture, and murky atmosphere. The ceiling might once have been white, but smoke from an untold number of cigarettes had long ago turned it a brown only a millennium of sunshine could have achieved if sunlight had ever found its way in here. The Crusher was still enough of a meeting-place for orks and trolls to get hit by Humanis policlubbers now and then, though it had been six months since the last firebomb attack by the anti-metahumans. Tom knew about every one of the attacks, since he always got called in to help out afterward. A Bear shaman was often the best many folks too poor for medical insurance could hope for.

A heavy hand slapped him on the back, and he turned to see another ork, Denzer, smiling down at him. The joke that went around the Crusher was that Denzer was a troll stitched into an ork's skin, and he was almost big enough for it to be true. He flicked the greasy black hair out of his eyes, and Tom gave him a friendly growl.

"Buy you a soda water, Tom? Hey, the mayor's running around like he just won the next election. Nice work, chummer."

The troll smiled again and let himself feel good about it all. No matter how wretched were the Redmond Barrens, it was his home and he was doing what he could to put something back into it after all those years of being on the take.

He looked around once more at the hard-worked and care-worn faces. Seven years ago, he'd have killed anyone in here for a few hundred nuyen. Now, what was left of him loved these people. From the Plastic Jungles, with their legacy of chemical pollutants all the way down to the street markets of the Bargain Basement. And, down in the Jungles, the seed money grant his group had been able to extract from Redmond's mayor, Jeffrey Gasston, was going to make a real difference to thousands of them. I owe you for all that, chummer, he said silently to the face on the magazine cover. Whatever did happen to you?

He'd chosen Heidelberg almost randomly. Now, after two days, Serrin was beginning to think the choice had been inspired. The city was quiet, even now, in the tourist season, and looked as though it had barely changed in more than a century. Small white boats still drifted lazily down the Neckar, and people still shopped at the street market where he'd bought a sample of neckarfroschen, one of those hand-made green ceramic frogs, a curious, goblin-like creature with a quizzical expression on its face. The market with its jars of homemade preserves, stalls of feathered hats and drinking steins, fish and fruit and schinken, the ever-present dried ham that was obviously a local specialty was as straight out of the nineteenth century as the rest of the town.

Wandering the streets, Serrin stopped on his way up the narrow one leading to the hilltop castle and gazed idly into the window of a confectionery shop. Some colorful little boxes caught his eye and he bought one, only to find a distressingly heart-shaped chocolate biscuit inside. Accompanying it was a tiny piece of paper, which said that these were "Student's Kisses," sweets sent by one student to a potential sweetheart whose chaperone prevented any more direct expression of ardor.

We've come a long way, Serrin thought bitterly. Nowadays, your sweetheart boffs your brains out for three days, then sells you to the tabloids. He turned left into the Marketplatz and idled on to the Haupstrasse, hunting coffee and fresh-squeezed juice in one of the innumerable cafes.

Maybe I should visit the university, he thought idly. Finish some of that work on masking techniques I was trying to do at Columbia. Oh, what the hell, I've had enough work for a while. Let's go see what Frederick of Bohemia left us on top of that hill.

Kristen ran like crazy away from the multi-colored markets and stalls of Strand Street to disappear into the crowds of Lower Adderley, where she picked her way toward Heerengracht and the waterfront with her scavenger's prize. Today she'd gotten lucky, coming upon the

scene just as the police surprised the steamers in the act of grabbing the wallet from a man they had doubled up on the ground.

Kristen wasn't given to thieving, the police were too hard on that, but she knew when something could be had for nothing. While the police took up the chase in the opposite direction and a couple of bystanders bent down trying to help the groaning victim, she'd gone straight for the shoulder bag still lying on the ground where it must have gotten flung in the scuffle. Snatching it up, clutching it tightly to her chest, she was sure nobody had seen her as she made like a devil rat for the Sisulu Markets. But with her height and headful of tight curls, Kristen wouldn't really feel safe until she got there. All she could do was pray that the effects of her morning's dagga weren't too obvious; the weed had been strong, flighty, brightly mellow.

The builders had modeled it on San Francisco and Sydney, or so they'd said when developing the derelict industrial wasteland of Cape Town's waterfront. And maybe it hadn't turned out too badly after all. The waterfront was her home, one of the few places in all of the Confederated Azanian Nations where you really weren't likely to get shot just for being the wrong skin color, religion, or meta-type. For Kristen, being half-Xhosa, half-Caucasian, that meant a lot. Down here, all she had to worry about was racial prejudice, and not murderous intent.

She gazed idly out at the huge rusting hulk of the oil tanker beached permanently on the sands of the shallow coastline. Some twenty thousand people lived in the gutted remains of that ship, a ragged army of homeless. Many of them labored on the breaking crews that went out each day to work over the junked ships towed into the bay, huge derelicts whose faceless owners had sold them for scrap to the city council. Using nothing more sophisticated than hammers, the tanker people broke their backs pounding up those hulks for the metal. They got peanuts for the scrap just enough to subsist while the city fathers reckoned the price they paid for the abandoned ships cheap if it kept twenty thousand social misfits from

preying on the tourists. Kristen knew one or two of the wreckers, but still hadn't fallen so low herself.

Kristen grinned as she sat down with some kaf and a plate of blatjang, picking at the chicken with one hand while going through the bag with the other. Eighty UCAS dollars, fives and small change; the man must have been using it for small purchases in the markets. No doubt he'd left his plastic and most of his documents back in the hotel security box. Standard tourist precaution, she thought. But eighty bucks suited her just fine. It would feed her for weeks, even buy her a hotel bed. Better still, she could also get high on it for a month.

She looked around to see if anyone was watching, if it would be safe to leave the bag and leave. Uncertain, she pretended to be searching for something, a recalcitrant lip gloss maybe, in its obscured depths. The first thing she pulled out was a magazine, which she dropped carelessly onto the table, and had just begun to fish around in the bottom of the bag when the picture on the magazine's cover caught her attention.

Kristen suddenly felt very cold in the seaside warmth, an unusually balmy, twenty degrees Celsius on this winter day. She wasn't acquainted with more than a handful of elves dangerous, proud-crazy Zulus come to bad times in this city people she knew well to avoid, with their doubled contempt for her mixed race. She had never seen anyone like this elf in her life, of that she was sure. But the image seized her, and wouldn't let go. She flicked the tabloid's pages, saw him seated smiling in the sunshine, then turned the magazine sideways to look at him another way. She knew she'd never seen the bugger. She was also certain she'd known him all her life.

Maybe she'd seen him on a movie poster or on a plug-ger for a rock concert, or maybe on a police poster or something amp; Frag it, she thought, I wish I could bloody well read. Who is he?

As if on cue, the Javanese man rounded the corner of the waterfront, the white of his flowing clothes drifting in the breeze like the clouds scudding toward Table Mountain, and gave her a cheery wave of the hand. She gestured him over, waving the magazine rather foolishly above her head.

"Nasrah, you want to earn a few bucks?" she asked brightly. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.

"You trying to sell me something again, Kristen?" "No, all I want is for you to read to me." He gave her a slightly sideways glance, drew a pair of battered glasses from a pocket, and barely had them perched on his nose before she almost pushed the magazine straight into his chest.

"Here. Start here. Tell me about him."

The wine shop was open late.

Serrin remembered that his Welsh nobleman friend, Geraint, had told him that if ever in Germany, he should try to find eiswein, the extraordinary yellow wine made from grapes rotted on the vine after the first frost had crystallized their liquid into a supremely concentrated fermentation. He took the bottle back to his hotel room, which suddenly filled with the scent of fruits and flowers the moment he uncorked it. Serrin poured himself a glass, then raised the cold wine to his lips and tasted the delicious sweetness as the nectar slid down his throat as smoothly as water dripping from an icicle. He was astonished; nothing he'd ever known had tasted like this. One glass would never be enough.

He woke with a start just after midnight, knocking the empty bottle away as he stretched his arms and yawned wide enough to almost crack his jaw. Hungry now, and sure he would need some exercise before being able to sleep again, he used his night key to let himself out onto the street, passing by the church, making his way through the scattered university buildings toward the bars, where he would still be able to find food at this hour.

The tiny alleyways around the university were deserted, barely lit. Suddenly, panic gripped him as his spell lock screamed with its knowledge. Looking around wildly, the elf was sure only a threat to his life could set off such a warning. He threw up a barrier spell just as the

first heavy dart struck the wall behind him with a brutal crunching sound.

A red spot had also appeared on his chest, an IR rangefinder, and Serrin risked an instant of astral perception to find its source. High on the roofs above he glimpsed a second figure, shadowy and silent, melting out of the shadows to his left. He slipped out of astral in double-quick time and decided to try to take out one of the fraggers with some heavy hitting. No sense in doing things by halves.

As he cast the spell, hellfire lit up the roofs above and a curtain of flame roared around the gunman, ruining his second shot. The man screamed and toppled, his burning body hitting the cobbled streets with a ghastly thud. The rifle that fell from his hands clattered along the street, and a cascade of ammunition also rattled down the rooftops and onto the street. Serrin heard voices in the distance and someone shouting, "Polizei! Bitte, polizei!" The second man was a meter away from him. Serrin could see hand razors snaking from his fingers, discolored blades glittering even in the faint light around him. Jerking himself backward, he found himself suddenly backed up against a wall.

The man grinned. He was almost anonymous in his long, shapeless coat, and Serrin guessed there must be cybereyes under his shades. There was a grim appropriateness about his hunting hat, but another feature clawed at something in Serrin's memory: a triangular scar stamped into his chin. He knew he'd seen it somewhere before, but had no time to wonder where.

The razor claws ripped the mage's arm just as Serrin hit his assailant with a mana bolt, pushing hard with the force of it at the man's psyche and being. His attacker grunted and doubled over as if someone had just kicked him in the guts, but Serrin knew the force he'd put into the spell should have done a lot more than that. He leapt past the man and ran like the wind for the Haupstrasse. Just as he as about to round the corner, the sound of running feet coming at him from the front made the elf halt and back into a shadowed dotirway to cast an invisibility spell. Despite the danger and the adrenaline pumping

through his veins, Serrin felt weak and drowsy, a sign that he was burning up far too much magical energy. Half a dozen drunken students teemed past him, advancing on where Serrin had just left his assailant.

Waiting frantically for them to pass, he noticed something small and metallic gleaming faintly on the ground. He picked it up, thinking he'd dropped it. Then came the wail of sirens from the west of the town, and Serrin had to wait for them to pass before tottering unsteadily back to his hotel. His arm stung like crazy, although there was little blood on his jacket. The wound was barely a scratch. Spirits, he thought, the bastard poisoned me!

He barely made it back to his room, he couldn't call BuMoNa, because he hadn't bought any health care coverage upon arriving. Neither did he want to call the German police, who were sure to wonder about poisoned wounds and blazing bodies in the streets of peaceful Heidelberg. The elf cut a strip of cloth from a spare shirt and bound his left arm with a tourniquet so tight the arm was white within seconds. Then he stuffed everything he could into his suitcase and called a cab. He knew this was crazy, that he was taking an absurd chance with his life, but with the venom making him unable to think straight, his actions were born out of sweating, pallorous fear.

"Hauptbahnhof, danke," Serrin managed to say to the taxi driver, waving enough nuyen in the man's face to buy himself salvation from the sirens, or so he hoped. He got lucky; the ork just grunted, and the car began to slip quietly along the riverside, left through the Bismarck Platz and west into Bergheimerstrasse, leaving the flash of blue lights behind.

Arriving at the train station, Serrin stumbled out of the cab, hoping the driver would take him for just another drunken tourist. Dragging one foot after another, he approached the big board showing the train schedules, and studied it briefly before slotting his credstick into the automatic ticket dispenser. His brain raced: Get the Essen express, change at Mainz for Frankfurt or go through to Bonn. Buy a ticket for Essen in case the police track me. Get off halfway there. The machine must have exhausted

its misanthropy for the day because it finally coughed up his ticket without any of the usual harassment.

Serrin just barely managed to get into the first class car before finally passing out. The wound burned like fire and his throat was dry as dust. Horribly, he felt his muscles stiffening, his breath ragged and gasping. Spirits, he thought, I'm having a seizure. They stuck me with some fragging paralyzing neurotoxic or something. He tried to get to the door of the car and shout for help, realizing too late that death wasn't the smartest way of avoiding the German police, but his leaden limbs refused to obey his brain and he slumped helplessly into the corner seat. His eyes rolled backward in his head and he collapsed.

Serrin was awakened by the conductor as the express pulled out of Koblenz. His arm throbbed and his mouth felt like a parakeet had been living in it, but his heartbeat seemed normal and the only other lingering symptom of the attack was a tight, knotted stiffness in the muscles of his arms and legs. While fumbling in his pockets for the ticket, Serrin's hand rattled something metal and he hurriedly coughed to cover up the sound. Once the conductor finished looking at the ticket as if it were something he'd been unlucky enough to step in, the elf waited for the man to move on up the aisle before pulling the metal object from his pocket. It was a cartridge, the kind used for medical injections. Empty now.

Trank shot, Serrin thought. Odd that I don't remember picking it up, but it explains why I only feel as stiff as hell. Those claws must have been full of tranquilizer too. That means they wanted me alive.

Though the thought should have been reassuring, Serrin found it even more terrifying than someone wanting him dead.

He stared wretchedly at the oncoming glare of the glittering Rhine-Ruhr megaplex and wondered who the hell could be after him. His head swam with images from dozens of Z-grade movies of killers on trains, but his spell lock wasn't giving him any warnings of immediate danger. He tried to figure out what someone might now expect him to do, to second-guess anyone trying to track him. With a start, he remembered the scarred man from JFK and realized that the hit must have been ordered while he was still in New York; from there they'd followed him to Heidelberg. That had taken some doing,

surely; tracing him to Frankfurt would have been easy, but on to the university city?

It has to be a magician, he thought. Someone who could trace me astrally. A magician who wants me alive. The thought hit him like an ice-cold shower.

He got off the train at Bonn and took a taxi directly to the airport. Pushing coins desperately into one of the battery of concourse telecoms, he cursed the broken slot that should have taken a credstick for the call. The number he called was in the heart of London.

"Yeah?" The screen showed the face of a sleepy blonde rubbing her face and peering back at her caller's gaunt visage. She didn't like the look of him at all.

"Is Geraint there?" he pleaded.

"Hey, whoever you are, term, it's five in the morning and "

"It's urgent. Tell him it's Serrin."

"He's not here," she said smugly. "He's in Hong Kong on business. He'll be back in two days. Can I take a message?"

"I'll call back," the elf said curtly and hit the Disconnect. London was close, and a friend who was a member of the House of Lords might be protection worth having. But for the moment he was still alone and twitching in the middle of the night in an unfamiliar airport thousands of miles and an ocean away from home. His hands were shaking even worse than usual. No one seemed to pay him the least attention, however. Looking around, Serrin saw the standard fare of all airports at five in the morning: the beginnings of the business commuter traffic headed for Brussels or Strasbourg; jilted lovers red-eyed and morose; sleepless and angry people denied their flights by some incompetent engineer or air-traffic controller; drunks and chipheads laid out on benches airport security hadn't yet gotten around to cleaning up. Dimly, Serrin remembered some phrase from an English poet: Isn't life a terrible thing, thank God? But God, if he exists, couldn't have created airports, the elf thought glumly. Drek, I should just get on the next plane back to UCAS, to anywhere they can take me. So what if what somebody's probably expecting me to do? What other choice have I got?

He approached the British Airways desk, getting ready for his standard "first plane home" spiel. He was getting good at it by now. But even as the thought came, Serrin felt the beginnings of a smile tugging at his lips. Seattle! Home of sorts.

He pushed his suitcase onto the conveyor at a gesture from the girl yawning behind the desk.

"Mr. Shamandar," she said suddenly, while routinely checking his documents. "There's a message for you. It was delivered a couple of hours ago I nearly forgot."

He took the envelope, then made a hash of trying to open it neatly with his shaking hands, almost tearing the single sheet of white paper as he pulled it out.

Mr. Shamandar, it read, you would find it profitable to investigate the identity of the instigator of your meeting with a certain party this evening. Especially if you studied others in the same position.

It was written in Sperethiel, the elven tongue. Which gave his guts another quick loop-the-loop. "Who gave you this?" he demanded gruffly. "I'm sorry but I don't know," the girl replied, stifling another yawn with her elegantly manicured hands. "I wasn't on the desk at the time. You'd have to ask Frieda, but she won't be back on duty until tomorrow night and your plane is boarding in fifteen minutes."

As he trudged to the departure gate, trembling hands groping for his ID, Serrin felt like a pawn in the midst of some dangerous cat-and-mouse game. In itself that wasn't so unusual. He'd already been scragged royally by life enough times before, but this had a certain starkness to it that he was beginning not to like at all.

Slot, he thought, I'm just getting old, that's all. The elf ran his fingers through his short graying hair and wondered what kind of protection he could buy once he got back to Seattle.

Squinting at the magnificent bloody sunset and the black clouds whipping in from the Atlantic, Kristen stretched her legs and pulled the wrap tighter about her

shoulders against the rapidly cooling air. She was happy with life right now: dollars in her pocket and dagga and drink in her bag, a smile spreading over her face at the thought of dancing at Indra's all night. This couldn't last, of course, it never did; but her luck tended to come in runs and maybe the mugged tourist's bag was the start of such a run.

She meandered down Main as the dull glow of the streetlights grew into a glare, past the plastic and chrome tourist traps of Vesperdene and into the warren of streets between Main and High. The first few big drops of rain sloshed against the sidewalk, promising Cape Town's usual evening drenching. All day Table Mountain had been wearing a shroud of hazy clouds that must have concealed the fifty-kilometer view it offered from its peak on a clear day. Hissing at the rain, she ducked into one of the malls, a whirring blur of neon, trid, video, and colorful humanity.

To her dismay, she walked straight into some lekker-boys laughing their way out of a bar. Cheaply dressed and absurdly proud of their garish clothing, they were as vain as peacocks and unpredictable as hell. The slag who seemed to be at the head of the pack looked at her disapprovingly while preening the lapels of his jacket. The others formed a circle around her before she could react.

"Don't like kaffirs dirtying up my threads," he snarled. Kristen winced at the insult, once spat at blacks by whites and now directed at mixed-race people, usually in one of history's little ironies by blacks.

"I'm sorry. Didn't mean it. Didn't see where I was going. Let me help." She clumsily reached out a hand to wipe at his jacket, but he gripped her wrist painfully and stared deep into her eyes. Kristen had the horrible certainty that this bugger was high on something not very pleasant, then she heard a metallic click behind her. She didn't need to turn around to know it was a knife.

"I ain't got nothing'," she whined, then suddenly remembered the money she was carrying. Even worse than the physical danger was the prospect of losing her treasure so soon after finding it. "Only some dagga. I give it to you, you leave me alone."

The man sneered. "She give us dagga, boys!" A faint swell of derision rose around her. The grip on her wrist tightened and the ganger twisted it a little. Kristen had to bite her lip to keep from yelping in pain.

"Maybe we want something else," he leered, dragging her close and opening his mouth in a broken-toothed smile. His free hand was rising to grab at her breast just as a much larger one seized his shoulder. The world-weary face of a black troll loomed above him.

"We don't want no trouble here, boys," the troll boomed in a deep voice. "Police were round last week and we don't want to see them back again so soon, do we? Run along and play somewhere else, you skollies." The lekkerboy turned and with a cool gaze took in the stun baton in the troll's other hand. Slowly he released Kristen, then made an obscene gesture as he led the rest of the gang off into the night rain, shoving aside anyone in their way.

"Thanks, chummer," Kristen managed to say, shaking worse than she should have. She got in and out of a dozen scrapes like this every week. Maybe that dagga was a little stronger than she'd thought or maybe it wasn't strong enough. "Hey, Muzerala, is that you?"

"You betcha ass," the troll said, not given to much in the way of polite conversation.

"I thought you were working at Indra's. Thought I'd see you there tonight," she replied. "Hell, I need a drink." "I guess you can come in," the troll told her, gesturing to the little bar whose entrance he'd been guarding. Then he shrugged and said, "I had a little disagreement with Indra. She owes me something like three hundred rand in back pay and wouldn't pay up. So I did a little damage cost her that much and more. Won't be seeing me around there for a while."

Kristen parked herself on a bar stool and ordered a beer. With a chaser. The barman looked dubious until Muzerela gave him a nod. "She just had a mess-up with some skollies. Needs a drink," he said. Scowling, the barman rudely pushed a glass across the bar. She didn't waste any precious dollars on him, paying instead with

what was almost the last of her rands. She needed to find Nasser and cut a deal on the bucks.

"Any chance of work?" she said rather pathetically to the troll. The bar was almost empty, which just might make the humiliation of rejection not quite so painful. A place like this wouldn't hire a mixed-race girl any more than it would normally serve one. Still, the troll just might have something, somewhere. But all she got was the offer she should have expected.

"Your face wouldn't fit," the troll said. "Nothing personal. My brother could always find you work, though." "Huh. Thanks but no thanks. I'm not down to that yet," she said, gulping down the beer fast. If the bar owner appeared, it might not be healthy for Muzerela that he'd let her in, especially since he hadn't been working here long. Kristen finished her drink too quickly and headed for the rest room.

Three minutes later she was back on the streets. She'd smoked the joint even faster than usual, and it hadn't been a good idea. She had to get to Indra's, dance away the effects, find Nasser on his late-night rounds and change her money. Then pull a fade fast before word got around and someone decided to slice her up for the money.

Looking up at the street sign, Kristen didn't have to read it to know that the street was named High. She was just chuckling at the appropriateness of it when the face of the American elf drifted into her mind. She was still disturbed by seeing it on the tabloid, and she longed to be able to read the words and try to figure out who he was and why he could seem so significant to her. It was then she saw the two men in the shadow beyond the streetlight, collars raised against the rain that had driven most people off the street. Something told her she wasn't going to be walking any further along High.

By the time the suborbital landed in Seattle, it was late afternoon. Serrin awakened from his doze and stared out the window at the haze shimmering all the way from the runway to the terminal. Great, he thought, limping his way toward customs, that's all I need. Sweltering heat.

By the time he picked up his bags, he'd decided to get a room at the Warwick. Last he'd heard, that luxury hotel had begun to specialize in unobtrusive security for corporate clients who expected a little more than the norm. The rates would be exorbitant, of course, but he was too

exhausted to care.

After a taxi deposited him at the hotel's elegant entrance, Serrin had no difficulty getting a room even without reservations. He asked to have his bags sent up, then took the elevator up to the small suite. Once inside, the door safely secured, he sat down on the edge of the perfectly made bed to work out his next move. But rubbing his chin reflectively only made him realize how badly he

needed a shave.

In the bathroom, Serrin tried not to look too closely at the face staring back at him from the mirror as he wet his skin, then he stopped suddenly and laid the razor down on

the sink.

Maybe a beard wouldn't be a bad idea, he thought. Even with the stubble, I don't look much like that Newsday photo anymore. No one seemed to recognize me down in the lobby. Why should they? New York's week-old news isn't going to raise much of a fuss in Seattle. No, scratch the beard. He made a first pass with the cool steel of the blade, the familiar act of shaving relaxing him enough to ponder the situation calmly.

I need some muscle around me, at least for a while, Serrin reasoned. Then I can try to find out who's after me. He toweled his face, ran a bath, and ordered some sushi from room service.

Stripping off his clothes and rubbing at his painful leg, Serrin wondered why he thought of Seattle as home at all. He hadn't lived here for more than a couple of months at a time in the last five years. And the number of people he could call friends wasn't more than a handful. Besides, he realized guiltily, he hadn't made much effort at keeping in touch with them. Worse, a few calls soon informed him that his two best hopes were, in one case, out of town, and in the other, had upped and relocated to Nagoya.

He'd just bundled himself in the hotel bathrobe when his food arrived. Staring glumly down at the white and pink chunks of fish resting on their bed of rice and hints of vegetation, the elf wondered why he'd ordered it. "Um, wine too, I think," he mumbled. "Red or white?" the waiter asked. "Bring me a bottle of anything red from Australia," Serrin told him, then laughed just for the hell of it. "And two packs of Dunhills." He searched his pockets for some money, then handed the man a twenty. The waiter shrugged; it wasn't a bad tip. The elf was obviously some kind of chiphead or dope freak, but he didn't seem likely to offer any trouble.

After the food, mostly uneaten, and the wine, wholly consumed inside thirty minutes with a side order of three hungrily consumed cigarettes, the elf considered making some more phone calls but decided to sleep instead. Pleasantly lulled by a haze of alcohol, he checked the news service pages on the trid, but the index contained no entry for Serrin Shamandar. That was enough for now. He yawned prodigiously and just managed to crawl under the covers before falling fast asleep.

"Where did you turn this up, Magellan?" Jenna asked, her gaze turning pensively out across Crater Lake, her long elven ringers poised like mantis legs on the sheaf of paper in her lap.

"One has contacts," the male elf sitting opposite her said casually. He knew the green eyes turning to him from the splendors of the Tir Tairngire countryside were hard and cold, but by now he'd learned how to face them down and keep some secrets to himself. He also knew she considered him too valuable to be pressed too hard.

"You have eyes and ears in the councils of the O'Briens?" she said, astonished. Jenna paid Magellan well, but he was going to deserve a bonus for this. If he'd somehow managed to worm his way into the secrets of the elves of Tir na n6g, he was a priceless resource to her. The elves of that faraway country held most of their Tir Tairngire fellows in contempt, and it was almost impossible to learn anything of what they were up to. Unless one was Ehran the Scribe, of course. But he wasn't about to circulate whatever he knew to the other Princes of the Tir Tairngire High Council. Especially not to her.

"It cost me," he said simply, evading her question. "Call it a hundred thousand."

"Agreed." She wasn't going to quibble about the price. This was dynamite if the SES scientific evaluations were correct.

"You will not breathe a word to any other Prince," she said, her tone almost brutal. "I have to think hard on this."

"Have I ever betrayed your secrets?" he said, finding the courage to shoot her a challenging look.

She looked away quickly. "No. Forgive me. It's just that we can't risk a fool like Laverty finding out about something this big. He'd send a squad out to destroy this precious thing. That would be unthinkable."

"There is more, Jenna," the male ventured. "The intelligence report on the German is correct. He is exactly what they say he is. I have made other inquiries." His little finger crooked itself around the long flutted stem of his glass, and he swirled the red liquid around inside the wide, deep bowl.

"No doubt that cost you also," she smiled. The warm glow of what this magical discovery might mean was beginning to permeate her now. The ultimate power of life and death was being offered to her and the thrill was almost too strong to bear.

"Another thirty thousand for research," he said, making a dismissive gesture with his free hand. "Cheap at twice the price.

"I've also learned that he has certain special requirements that aren't easily satisfied. That have led him to kidnap certain rare individuals who can meet those requirements. Apparently his agents botched one such attempt very recently. It looks, of all things, as if the local police stopped two of his hit squad for some minor traffic violation and so they never got to the right place at the right time."

The two elves laughed at the absurd irony. "The target was a mage, as before. I haven't had time to do much research on him, except that he was the one who recently rescued the mayor of New York from being killed by some mad Shi'ite. Three-day wonder stuff. He's disappeared for the time being, but he's got to re-surface again one of these days."

"Find out more about him," Jenna ordered. "We don't want any loose ends."

"There's one complication," Magellan said slowly, realizing that Jenna must not have heard or read about the mage, or else she'd know this one important fact herself. "He is an elf."

"Ah," she said, her hands tightening for just an instant into fists. "Now that does rather complicate matters. Maybe. All right, but we must still find out everything we can about him. Maybe he'll just be glad to have gotten out of this alive, and won't do any snooping around."

"I'll get on to it right away," Magellan said, draining his glass and getting to his feet. He was about to turn toward the door when her expression stopped him.

"Later," she ordered. "You should know by now what the scent of power does to me."

"I was wondering about that," he said with a sly smile. "Let me make two calls to get the other matter started. Then, uh, the water pool?"

"I think I'd prefer you as my servant," she said drily. "Make your calls later."

Serrin woke at seven in the morning after thirteen hours of sleep. He felt less hung over than he had any right to, but it wasn't until he'd drunk half a liter of the steely mineral water on his bedside table that he paused to take a breath. His eyes caught the red winking of the telecom as he set the bottle down. A few taps on the console told him that a call had been received at his message-forwarding number and relayed through to the hotel. For a moment he couldn't even recall having made those arrangements, but then he gave up trying to remember. When he saw who it was had called him, he returned the call right away.

The suave features of the Welshman smiled back at Serrin from the screen. "Good morning, Serrin," his friend breezed in his BBC English accent. "I hear you've been to Germany. What's up?"

"I'm back in Seattle now, or I wouldn't have gotten your message. But they told me you were away for a couple of days."

"Got back a day early. Business concluded earlier than expected," Geraint said simply. "A doddle, old boy. Now, what's the problem?"

The elf paused for a second, not sure where to begin.

"Look, do you want me to call you back with a sampling monitor? To check whether your number is compromised, as I think you might say. We prefer bugged over here."

"I don't think so," Serrin replied uncertainly. He hadn't even contemplated the possibility until Geraint mentioned it, but the thought was evoking all the paranoia of the previous days.

"Come now, aren't you a hero in your native land these days? Read it all in Newsday. Hope there was a decent payoff in it," the Welshman joked.

"No, it's more serious than that," the elf said, then quickly ran down a summary for Geraint.

The Welshman listened carefully, waiting until he was sure Serrin was finished. "How can I help?" he asked finally.

"I don't know," Serrin's usual early-morning mental constipation was refusing to budge. "When I was in Frankfurt, I thought of hopping over to London, until I found out you weren't there."

"Only the delicious Elizabeth," Geraint said mischievously. "Don't worry. She's at Harrods buying some ghastly floral material or other. It won't last, it never does. It's doomed, thank God.

"Look if you need some help tracing the source of your problems, I've got a friend over there could help. His name's Michael Sutherland. Brilliant decker. He could find out the exact value of Fort Knox in less than five minutes." Serrin gave the Welshman a look of disbelief.

"Well, all right," Geraint conceded, "I exaggerate; maybe it would take him seven. We knew each other at Cambridge. I heard our friend Francesca is away in Saudi, so he's the best option. I can call him and make sure he charges you only the minimum. Hell, I can do better than that; I owe you."

Serrin couldn't quite figure that one out. He hadn't seen Geraint face to face since their extraordinary experiences in London the previous year. They'd unmasked a Jack the Ripper clone and got themselves deep into an unholy mess. Everything had worked out all right in the end, but Serrin had noticed something strange about Geraint afterward, an evasiveness, even a faint air of guilt. Serrin trusted Geraint with his life, so it didn't worry him. He guessed that anything strange in his friend's behavior must have to do with the infinitely subtle and treacherous web of British politics. Indeed, Serrin was just as happy not knowing about it if Geraint didn't want to tell him.

"I'll give you a number," the nobleman said, reciting off a telecom code that indicated a classy Manhattan address. "Wait a few hours, though. I'll call him first and remind him of a few favors he owes me. How about getting yourself some muscle? I can't really help you in that department, not Stateside. Or do you want me to send Rani over maybe?"

Serrin smiled. The Punjabi ork was someone you could count on if things came down to the wire. But it hadn't got that bad yet.

"First let me check out some more faces and names here," the elf said. "But thanks. I really appreciate this."

"It's the least I can do. Look, if you get into really deep drek there's always my castle in Wales, right? I'll make sure the staff is on permanent alert for you until I tell them otherwise. Hire a fraggin' private jet and I'll pick up the tab," the Welshman said. The curse words sounded almost comical in his accent.

"I hope it doesn't come to that. But thanks again. And I'll give this guy Sutherland a call after I've done a little checking around locally," the elf said. The smiling face of his friend evaporated as the connection was broken.

Serrin tapped in a local number, and the sleepy face of an ork swam into focus on the screen.

"Hey, Gulrank, I need some protection," the elf said simply. Subtlety would be lost on the samurai.

"Can't help you," the ork said in a tired voice. "Got a month's fee up front from an Intelligencer guy doing research on some lowlife stories. Sorry, chummer." He was about to hit the Disconnect when Serrin spoke urgently to catch his attention.

"Gulrank, I've tried John and he's out of town. Torend too. He moved to Japan. I'm running out of names, chummer, and I need this."

The ork paused for thought. It took some time.

"You could try Tom," he said slowly.

"Spirits! You mean Tom's still around?" The possibility hadn't even occurred to Serrin. The troll had been so hell-bent on self-destruction that Serrin had almost given up on him after the last of his endless binges. It had been so long since anyone had seen or heard of him downtown, that Serrin had simply assumed his friend was dead. In that instant, he realized that he'd deliberately avoided trying to find out about Tom because the thought of his death had been just too painful.

"He's changed," the ork said. "I don't know if he'd do muscle work anymore. Walks the way of Bear these days. Dried out, the works. Still down in Redmond, but I hear he's doing the green number and saving people from the

machine. Hell, you ain't seen him since way back, right? You don't know this stuff." "I had no idea," the elf said, astonished. "He talks 'bout you sometimes," the ork said slowly. "I guess you kept him going long enough for him to save himself. Or so he says. You could do a lot worse, chum-mer. You got a friend there, which means you don't have as many worries as you think."

With that the screen went blank. Serrin immediately called down to the desk and ordered a cab for Redmond for nine sharp. That gave him time for breakfast, the first cigarette of the day, and enough spare minutes to figure out what the hell he was going to say to Tom after all these years.

Feeling that the luck was still with her, Kristen retreated into the darkness on her side of the street, her mind racing as she watched the two unmoving figures across the way. The men had their hats pulled down over their faces, but the shadows hid them even better. It was obvious they were up to no good, but Kristen thought maybe she might profit from whatever it was. Didn't her luck always come in runs?

Minutes passed, with almost no passersby braving the rain to change the scene, and she began to wonder what the frag she was doing. Her head spun with the effects of the soft drug and she had to make a special effort from time to time to keep her vision focused.

"How much, honey?" a well-oiled voice leered from over her shoulder. "You do special services?"

She turned to the man, his acne-ridden whi'e face garish in the shop lights to his left, the edges of his repulsive grimace hidden in the shadow that also hid the hand seeking to curl itself around her rump.

"Frag off or I'll suck you in and blow you out in bubbles, you brainwipe," she spat out, sending him scuttling off in the direction of one of Carrag's pornotoriums. On her way down to Indra's, Kristen must have wandered closer than she'd intended to the edge of Cape Town's red light district. But now Indra's could wait. Something was about to go down right here. Every one of her instincts was screaming at her. The air was almost unbearably still, ear-splittingly quiet. And even on such a rainy night there should have been more people on the streets. It was almost as if some trid director had given orders to clear the streets.

Then it happened. As two men came striding down Chepstow, one slightly ahead of the other, the rear man suddenly fell soundlessly, only a muted airy hiss from somewhere above and behind him giving away the location of the assassin. The other two men, the one's she'd been watching, moved in perfect synchrony, one slamming a fist hard into the leading man's guts as the second brought a balled fist up under his jaw. Doubled up and then sent flying backward, the man didn't stand a chance. With precision timing a limo purred up Ocean View, the door opening as the two men dumped the body into the back and then piled in after it. They knew what they were doing; the limo fired up again immediately, then moved smoothly up the street and turned onto High, headed no doubt for the Strand.

It was perfect, like a scene from one of her favorite vids. Feeling like a player in a drama, Kristen walked across the almost deserted road and looked down at the body they'd left behind. She had his wallet in seconds, then saw the small metal box lying on the sidewalk glistening with rain. A couple of other pedestrians had just appeared, but with no gangers in sight, Kristen had all the time she needed. With the night's spoils safely in her bag, she continued on toward Merriman.

Serrin had had to cool his heels for hours after his arrival in Redmond. Word was that Tom was down in the Jungles, but somehow the elf didn't want to meet him there. It seemed almost like an invasion of privacy. The elf passed the time browsing through the bazaars of the Bargain Basement, avoiding the more obvious manifestations of Mafia and yakuza business enterprises, buying a pair of clamshell brooches as much out of boredom as anything else. Come five in the afternoon, he made his way to the old haunt.

"Well, well, whatddya know?" Janus said when Serrin came through the door of Crusher 495. "You some kinda bad penny, turning up again?"

The elf smiled ruefully. "Been a long time, chummer."

"Sure has. But we been hearin' all about you on the trid," the barman said, his smile making his face curl up like a cat's after cream.

Serrin shrugged, looking around at the old familiar places. He recognized some of the faces and the place still smelled the same too, a pungent, not unpleasant scent of beer and sweat.

"Hear you're some kinda hero these days," came an ork voice from the shadows. It was only partly a challenge.

"I'll make you guys a deal," Serrin said. "I get the beer, you forget the drek, okay?" The hubbub of enthusiasm aroused by his offer told Serrin he was even more at home than he'd expected.

He was halfway through his beer when the sudden hush told him that Tom had arrived instants before he felt the ham-sized hand on his shoulder.

"Hear you been looking for me," the troll said in the same tone he might have used with a friend he'd last seen yesterday instead of five years ago. Serrin swiveled round on the creaky bar stool and looked up at his old friend. It was a moment of great wonderment as the elf sensed almost viscerally that Tom was changed, utterly and irrevocably. A kind of transformation Serrin had never experienced and reckoned he never would, though he had the power to recognize it. He picked up his glass and ordered a beer for the troll.

"Nan. The usual, Janus," Tom said cheerily. Wrapping his huge fist around the glass of mineral water the barman served up, he guided Serrin to the seclusion of a quiet corner.

"I guess we got a lot to catch up on," he said for starters.

The ID in the wallet said the slag was from the Loop district. Nothing special, not the real money of Castle or Buitenkant, just a company man. The plastic told her he worked for Kruger, drove an Elektro, was smart enough not to carry an organ donor card, and had managed to talk his way into more parking permits than seemed reasonable. Normally, Kristen would have taken the credit card and sold it to some tsotsi at the docks, but not this time. The police would be investigating this murder and she didn't want to find herself sitting in a jail cell waiting for the special treatment they reserved especially for a mixed-race suspect.

After removing the rands from the wallet, she wiped the synthetic leather and the plastic cards clean of any fingerprints, then tore some pages from the tabloid and wrapped them around the wallet. She dumped the soggy pages in a trash bin at the junction of Merriman and Ocean View, making sure no one was watching, and then headed west. But Kristen didn't feel much like dancing anymore, and she cut back through to High, toward Western Boulevard, where she could find a coffin hotel for the night. Even with her newly acquired wealth, she begrudged the handful of rand she had to dish out, but that was just her old survival instincts.

Sitting down on the creaky bd, she realized how terribly tired she was. She pulled up the coverlet to inspect what was underneath, finding clean sheets and no more than the usual quota of stains on the mattress. Best of all, there didn't seem to be any bugs, though that didn't mean she wouldn't be visited by the usual roach or two. Somehow, it wouldn't have felt right without them, though Kristen hoped they'd be the smaller variety. Pulling off her leggings and blouse, she was about to try to get some sleep despite the flickering of neon through the thin curtains when she caught the glint of light on the metal box lying among her things on the floor. She picked it up and examined it.

It looked like a pocket computer, a miniaturized laptop, though it wasn't any bigger than her own hand. There weren't any numbers or obvious symbols on the tiny keys, but she had no idea how to use such a thing anyway. Idly, she pressed a few keys out of sheer curiosity, hissing as she caught two with one fingertip touch.

The small screen on top of the box suddenly lit up and a message appeared on it. She couldn't read the words telling her that a deletion process was in operation, but she guessed that something bad was happening from the tiny skull-and-crossbones icon at the left of the screen. Then she pressed the entire keypad, desperately hoping that she wasn't ruining the thing. A string of identical symbol-pairs ran across the screen left to right and the light behind the screen winked out.

Frag it, I've broken it, she thought miserably. It might have been worth hundreds. But, what the hell. I can't complain. This hasn't been such a bad day.

She threw the inert box into her bag and took out some long cigarette papers and the last wrap of dagga, then smoked herself some immunity against the wake-up effects of the glaring neon blinking on and off outside her window.

"I did come back a couple of times," Serrin said defensively. "You know amp; afterward." He didn't know what to expect from Tom, but the quietness of the huge figure seated opposite was as startling as the mineral water he

was sipping. Back in the old days, the troll would have been finishing a second pitcher of beer by now.

"I know. You came down in June and September of 'fifty, but I hadn't changed," the troll said gently. "Guess you thought it would be a mistake to try to pick up the pieces. Shock treatment doesn't work if you're not prepared to go through with it."

"Something like that," the elf said. Somehow, he didn't want to let himself off the hook. He could remember the scene as if it were yesterday, the troll lying almost senseless with drink in a vomit-splattered room, Serrin standing over him, screaming impotently at his friend. Then the elf had walked out and slammed the door, never getting close in person again except to pass through now and then to inquire after Tom. At first it was because he couldn't take the pain of seeing his friend destroy himself, but later it had been the shame of having abandoned him.

"Don't worry, chummer. It's not that heavy. You couldn't save me. Nobody could have. But I think you kept me alive long enough for it to happen." The troll grinned suddenly. "Frag it all, nobody else would have carried me off and locked me up in some hellhole to dry out for a month. Craziest dumb thing I've ever known anyone to do."

"It was the best I could think of at the time, apart from buying you a new liver but you were too full of implants and metal anyway," Serrin said, then realized the clumsiness of his words. If Tom was now a Bear shaman, every piece of cyberware in his body would be hateful to him, an alien presence reminding him of a past he'd rather forget. Wouldn't it? The troll seemed to read his mind.

"It's all still there," he rumbled. "The smartgun link, the reflex job, the muscle implants. Never had the money to remove 'em, and it's dangerous anyway. I just gotta live with it. I'll never be able to run with Bear; more like limp along. But it don't worry me too much."

Serrin saw a ghost of pain in the troll's eyes and knew damn well that Tom lived with it every minute just like

the well-oiled old blues beginning to crank out from the battered speakers around the bar.

"But how did it happen? Do you want to talk about it?" Serrin had half-forgotten he was here to hire someone who'd saved his neck in the Barrens years ago. It was a different person before him now. He wanted to know who Tom had become.

"It's hard to describe… Don't have those fancy words," the troll said slowly. "You remember Anna?"

The elf nodded. Tom had been head over heels for the crazy, wild troll woman who fought for the folks in the Jungle day and night and then one day been caught in the crossfire of some senseless gang fight. That was when the troll's drinking, always heavy, had exploded into binges of days at a time when he'd go through enough beer and whiskey to kill half a dozen men. Most people had figured he'd stop sooner or later. After all, it wasn't like they'd been a hot item or anything. Anna had never been anything more than friendly to Tom, who was quite a bit younger. But the drinking didn't stop. Instead it got worse and worse.

"Once I thought I saw her again. Early in 'fifty-one. I went ape, chasing after her, thinking she'd come back from the dead. I had a belly full of booze and a heart full of desperation and when I sobered up, I saw things awful clear. Anna never loved me, and I'd been drowning myself in drink over a dream."

"Anna cared for you," Serrin muttered. "That ain't the same thing. I realized I'd been a fool, and there wasn't anything left. Worse than that, I'd killed a lot of people for the money."

"Not when I knew you, you didn't. I never heard of you icing anyone who hadn't taken a shot at you first," Serrin said, surprised.

"Some things I don't get public about. Anyways, you know how bad it got. After you left, I stayed barely alive for a few months, and then it got real bad. You don't want to know the details." The troll hunched forward over the table and looked Serrin in the eyes. It was desperately uncomfortable for the elf, but he was spellbound by the troll's whispered words.

"Found myself face down in a gutter in the Jungles

without a cent in my pockets. I got up and killed someone

for the small change in his pockets the price of a bagful

from a liquor store. Chummer, I drank so much I didn't

have DTs; they had me. Back in the gutter somewhere, I

don't remember. I do know, damn well, that I was going

to die. I was falling down a black tunnel and didn't see

no light at the end of it. It was hell, chummer. Now, you

know and I know we got some fancy words for what's out

there in the astral, and there ain't no demons or devils.

But there's something we might as well call hell, 'cause

you know that's what it is if you ever go there. That

what's left of your soul will burn there forever."

At that moment Serrin felt that Tom was a shaman, that he had at least something of the Power. It was there in the look on his face, in the unmistakable aura around him. The troll had changed indeed.

"That's when Bear appeared. Between me and hell. Took me into her arms before I died. Like I say, I don't really know how to talk about it. I pick up fancy words from smart folk now and then, but I can't stitch them together into something that does justice to it somehow.

"Let me try to put it so you can feel a piece of it," the troll went on slowly. "In a way that would make sense to you. Imagine you get wrapped up in someone huge, and warm, and simple and kind. Imagine she says to you, you have pain in you because your parents were blown to bloody pieces out of the blue when you were eleven years old. You got to ID them in the morgue because state law says ID gotta be done by a blood relative if possible, and you were the only one to hand. You got pain every day because your leg's mangled up. And you don't forget about that blind girl in Lafayette when you went back there hoping it could be home again, and you got pain from that too."

"How the hell do you know all that?" the elf said almost angrily. He was sure he'd never told Tom the whole story about his parents or anything about the one love of his adult life.

"Don't matter. Important thing is, you're feeling the hurt right now, so you can understand me. Now, these

pains you're always going to carry around. You don't have any choice. But imagine this presence says to you, you know you can't change these things. You might try to forget, but if you do, you're just impoverishing yourself. And lying to yourself. And it don't work anyway. But then she says to you and you know it because it pours into you like a flood that you don't have to hurt so bad. You know you can trust yourself a bit more than you do. And you don't have to hate yourself so much anymore. "But it's scarier than anything you can think of. Because you have to open up to her, chummer, and there's every little lie and deception coming back to you, everything you ever did to someone because you were cowardly or afraid; that, mostly, rather than when you really used someone deliberately, because Bear doesn't often take someone really into that. Every humiliation you ever suffered, every time you were vulnerable and got fragged over, every time you tried to use your sensitivity and love and it went to waste, just like it does so often, and you ended up with nothing but yourself and it seemed like another piece was chipped away and lost forever. You fall into Bear's arms on an ocean of hurt, Serrin. It's too much for anyone to handle, I promise you.

"Then she holds you tight and it heals you, brother. I don't really have any fancy words for that at all."

The troll's huge hands wrapped themselves around those of the elf. "And, you know, I see you need something of that. You wouldn't shake like you do if you didn't. But I ain't no preacher and I ain't gonna push you," Tom said with an edge of sadness to his voice.

Serrin couldn't speak. It was all he could do just trying to keep his emotions under control. He wasn't used to having everything brought to the surface so quickly.

Tom leaned back and finished the last of his mineral water. "But it ain't that you turn into a perfect specimen or nothin'. I still got some of my illusions. These days, I do a lot of work for the folk down in the Jungles and beyond. Just like Anna used to. So I suppose there's still some drek in my head, chummer. The thing is, if you're not so damned hard on yourself all the time it's a lot easier to be worth something to someone else."

"Yeah," the elf replied, slowly, still shaken. "There might be something in that."

"Well, that's my life in five minutes." The troll suddenly broke into a grin. "Now it's your turn. What are you doin' looking me up after all this time? Mind, I can wait if you don't feel like saying right out. We can just chew the fat awhile if you'd rather."

Serrin found that prospect too intimidating. "It's pretty simple, Tom," he said. "Someone's got a hit out on me. I'm almost certain it's a magician. Among other things, I need a bodyguard, and someone suggested looking you up. But I guess that's not your kind of work these days."

The troll rubbed his chin and stood up. "Hmmm. Maybe, maybe not. The money could be useful to a lot of folks down here; I live cheap. Pass on anything extra. I owe you one, I reckon. Let me buy you a beer and you can tell me more. I ain't going to say no to an old friend before he's said his piece. Anyway, I want to hear about you these past five years. We been hearin' some weird drek, Serrin. All about you bein' a hero and last year hangin' with them kings and queens in England amp; "

Tom ordered two more of the same and was halfway back to their table when the doors opened and someone who obviously had never been in Redmond before walked through them. Every head turned to look at the man.

He was just over six feet, very lean, with tanned skin and the kind of mop of bleached blond hair that had gone out of fashion in the days when people realized that sunlight gave you cancer. It was the clothes that had everyone really staring, though. Legs the length a fashion model would have killed for were encased in perfectly creased gray flannel pants, ending at real leather shoes that must have cost more than anyone in the bar earned in a month. The silk shirt was perfect, and the tweed jacket combined eccentricity with elegance. The silk cravat, with its gold pin, topped the whole thing off. Everyone gawked and wondered where this creature could possibly have come from.

"Good evening," the man said in an impossibly perfect English accent. "Such a charming place. Barman, I'd be most grateful for a cold beer, and can you tell me where I might find Mr. Shamandar?"

No one spoke for a few seconds. Then Tom looked at Serrin and laughed.

"Hell, I'd better go and get him before someone else does," the troll chuckled. "It's a miracle he made it this far alive. We'd better make sure he gets out that way too." He went over to the newcomer and put an arm around his shoulder, pointing to Serrin's table.

"Over there, chummer," he said. "Man, you are one crazy fragger coming in here like that. They must be lining up to mug you on the way out."

"Really?" the man said, seeming wholly unconcerned. "It wouldn't have been very wise of them, old boy. I possess a truly awesome reaction speed with a Predator."

"Are you for real?" came an ork's snarl from somewhere behind them.

"No, dear fellow, of course I'm not for real. I'm an Englishman from Manhattan. What could be more preposterous than that?"

Ignoring the continuing stares, he shook the hand of Serrin as the elf stood up. Then he sat down while smoothing his pants to preserve the creases. That done, he placed his hands palms-down on the table with the air of someone for whom everything in life is a business meeting.

"I'm on a retainer. You forgot to call, so I tracked you down. That way, you don't lose my exceedingly expensive time. So, let's see amp; you need help with a problem. Someone trying to kidnap you. Give me the details and we'll sort it out tonight."

"How the hell did you find me here?" Serrin asked, amazed.

The man gave him a boyish grin. "You don't want to know. Let's just say it's my way of showing that someone's on board who knows what he's doing."

"This is a thoroughly charming place, of course, but might I suggest something a little more private?" Michael proposed. "How about supper in my suite at the Madison?"

Serrin looked at Tom and nodded. "That might be best. Tom, will you come with us? Please?"

The troll drank up his second glass of mineral water and shrugged. "Ain't got no pressing business tonight. I'm kinda hungry after a day's work, too."

"That's going to cost you," Serrin grinned to the Englishman.

"Not me, term," he smiled back. "Our mutual friend Lord Llanfrechfa is picking up the tab. He told me he'd just made a killing in some talismonger trading on the Pacific Rim, so he's feeling well-disposed to magicians in difficult circumstances. My cab is still waiting. Shall we go?"

With a final thank you to the bemused barman, the Englishman turned and led them out into the last of Seattle's daylight.

Over dinner, Serrin gave Michael the full story. The Englishman didn't eat much, but he was clearly amused, even pleased, as Tom polished off enough for all three of them. Serrin watched the man's eyes, which were never still, their gaze constantly shifting from one point to another. Michael looked like the kind of person who wouldn't understand the meaning of the word relaxation if he looked it up in a dictionary.

"Not a lot to go on," he volunteered as Tom plunged into a heaping plate of meringues. "But there are some obvious things I can check right now. First, we can see if the Damascus League is displeased with you for your public-spiritedness in saving the mayor. For starters, I think I'll try German military intelligence, if that isn't an oxymoron. The Israelis tend to be rather difficult to crack, so I'll move on to them only if I have to."

Serrin looked at Michael with newfound respect. From what he'd always heard deckers say, Israeli security was an invitation to brain-fried suicide. No decker in his right mind would want to try to penetrate their matrix.

'Then we'll put through some calls to Bonn to see if we can learn something about how that message got to you at the airport. Let us hope the mysterious Frieda can provide some startling revelation. Frankly, I'd be very surprised if we came up with anything there. Next, I'll check on the incoming flights to JFK just before you left there."

"Why?" Serrin asked as Tom stuffed the penultimate meringue pastry into his mouth and chewed it noisily.

"Because of the scarred man. I'd say it's more likely that he had just arrived himself than that he'd followed you there. Checking incoming flights might narrow the range of possibilities. Even allowing for connecting foreign flights expanding the field of possible foreign embarkations, looking at the incoming flight schedules may tell us something. At the very least, we could provisionally eliminate some possibilities."

"Um, what exactly is it that you do?" Serrin asked him. The way Michael was virtually taking over the whole operation was almost alarming. He was going to have to learn more about this Englishman before he would feel comfortable with that.

"My dear boy, I'm a facthound. I am paid disgustingly large sums of money by various persons and organizations to discover things that their own personnel haven't been able to."

"Sounds dangerous," Serrin said dubiously.

"Not at all. I'm too valuable for my employers to consider killing me. Of course, they do know that from time to time I might crack something they wouldn't want known, and pass it on to other employers, but I don't

have anything to worry about for at least a couple of years yet."

"Why's that?" Serrin was starting to feel like his mission in life was to pump out ever more questions.

"Because that's when I'll probably be over the hill and less valuable than I am now," the man said serenely. "Then I'll probably retire to some ghastly little country estate in Scotland, grow conifers, marry someone called Morag, and produce two-point-seven horribly over-intelligent children. Possibly." He sat back and rubbed at his lips with his index finger, half-concealing a sardonic smile.

"Anyway, that's not important now. Let's get back to the matter at hand. We know as far as anyone can know that someone wishes to abduct you. It does not seem likely that this is for ransom, right?"

"I don't have that much money. I don't have relatives with any money, either," the mage replied.

"So there's some other reason. If we want to take this message seriously, then that reason applies to other people also. The message referred to 'others in the same situation.' The question has to be, what does your mysterious informant mean by that? I would be inclined to take the most obvious thing about you: the fact that you're a magician. Of course, it could be because you're an elf, but then that's less statistically discriminating. We'll keep that as a back-up option. But it might be both: that you are an elven mage. Which greatly narrows the field. So, I'll have to get to work looking at cases of elven mages kidnapped in, say, the last year. Then work further backward if I get too few positive cases."

"Surely that will take you an age," Serrin wondered.

"Oh, hours" Michael replied, quite seriously. "I'll have to get back to Manhattan to do it. I have a remote here, and I can fire up the smart frames for the obvious stuff, but I need my Fairlights for this. As I'm sure you'll appreciate, I don't move them around."

"Fairlights?" Serrin was astonished, not least by the plural. Any decker he knew would have killed his own mother to get his hands on just one of the most advanced cyberdecks on the market. To even dream of owning more than one was somewhere between hallucinatory and criminal hubris.

"Not the standard variety," Michael replied airily. "I had to spend a year upgrading them. Excuse me a moment." He headed for the bathroom of his suite.

"He's too clever," the troll grumbled as the door clicked behind the Englishman.

"I need that cleverness," Serrin said defensively, thinking that the troll felt inferior to the racing-car speed of Michael's thoughts. Again, Tom sensed his feelings.

"I mean that he doesn't have much of a heart, that one," the troll said quietly. "I'm not sure I would trust him. It's all a game to him."

"Tom, if he finds out who's trying to get me, I don't care too much how he does it." Serrin replied drily. The troll shrugged his shoulders and picked up his porcelain coffee cup, scowling in disdain at its ridiculously small size. Very carefully, he filled two cups and set them out for Serrin and Michael. Then he flipped up the top of the silver coffeepot, poured some milk into it, and raised it to his lips.

"Will you come with me, Tom?" Serrin asked again. "I'll probably have to go back to New York with him, but I'm still shaken up and scared. It's not that I distrust him, but I've only just met him. You, I know. Please."

The troll finished the contents of the coffeepot and licked his lips. "You gonna pay me?"

"Three hundred nuyen a day. If we get into real danger, we can renegotiate."

"It's not for me," the troll added. "It'll all go back into Redmond."

"I know. Thanks."

There wasn't time to say more before Michael re-emerged, fastidiously wringing his freshly washed hands.

"There is a problem with going back to New York," Serrin said to him. "I mean, I'd like to, but "

"Definitely," Michael interrupted him. "I'll need you there to answer all kinds of questions when the data starts coming in. You're worried about being recognized, right?"

"Maybe it won't be a problem. Hopefully, I'm not news anymore," the elf said.

"Well, no. But with all that stuff in Newsday, think of the options! The book! The trid! The smisense well, no, not that, I shouldn't think. But we can't ignore the New York media's desire to wring dry every last dollar from something before they go on to exploit something else. Some little chancer may still find you a worthwhile target for harassment, but I've got an idea." He beckoned and Serrin followed, uncertainly. Michael threw open the doors of an absurdly large closet.

"I only have what I threw into a suitcase," Michael said apologetically. Staring at the number of suits and shirts, Serrin thought that this was excessive if Michael thought he was only going to be gone from home for a single day. This collection looked more like the traveling wardrobe of some bubble-brained simsense star.

"I know," the Englishman grinned. "It's my only vice. I can't be bothered with fast cars, I don't fry my brain with chips, drink, or dope, and since you seps think Englishmen don't know how to have fun, I don't bother with women either. Better for the image, old boy. Now, I must say I think you would look ritzy in those tweeds. You're the same height as me and even thinner. And, I think, the fedora would be a nice eccentric touch. The deerstalker would be a safer bet, though. No one would ever recognize you in that!"

A deep rumbling chuckle came from the huge frame lurking in the doorway behind them. By the time Serrin had placed one uncertain hand on the lapel of the tweed jacket, Tom was almost helpless with laughter.

Kristen was awakened at ten, having seriously overslept. Thundering blows on the door told her she'd have to pay fifteen rand for another night if she didn't get her butt out of the room within five minutes. She also realized to her dismay that she wouldn't even have time to wash up before getting kicked out. She pulled on her sweaty clothes and hissed at the ork as she opened the door. He raised an arm as if to cuff her, but she ducked under and scooted into the street.

As she started on her way, the first thing she remembered was the little computer, or whatever it was. She hoped she hadn't totally slotted it up while playing around with it, but all she could do now was try to get it to Manoj. She bent down to rub at a bug-bitten ankle, yawning in the sunshine. She needed kaf and this would, after all, be a good time to scrounge some from Manoj. He wouldn't be busy yet.

By the time she reached the Longmarket warren, the streets were crawling with tourists. Walking here, she'd done a lot of thinking about what had happened the night before. There were certainly enough maybe's. Maybe she'd left a fingerprint on the wallet before dumping it. Maybe the police already had a lock on her for the killing. They'd certainly fingerprinted her enough times. Oddly, it wasn't the uniformed police who worried her. It was the plainclothes stinkers hunting pickpockets and muggers among the crowds who did. Keeping her head down among the throng, she shuffled down the refuse-strewn back alley to the rear door of Manoj's shop. She knocked once, then pulled at the doorknob and stuck her head around the side of the door.

The usual mix of smells greeted her: sweat, incense, the residue of the oil lamps Manoj burned to save electricity, a bundle or two of lemongrass or drying proteas. The shop's owner was behind the counter, using his mix of subtle harassment and persuasion to extract a few extra rand for some trinket or other.

"From the San people, the real bushmen, madam. They exist in only a few enclaves near Namibia these days and it's very difficult to obtain such fine work now. They allow so few of these fertility charms to leave their lands."

The obese white woman in the horribly inappropriate pink-checked gingham elbowed her equally overweight husband, who was mopping sweat from his lobster-complexioned brow. "Oooh, Chuckle," she cooed in an American accent. "Look it's a fertility charm!"

Kristen smiled and slipped past them, heading for where Manoj kept the kettle and coffee in a tiny room no bigger than a wall cupboard. He wouldn't be able to bag her out now, not in the middle of a sale that was obviously going well, so she got cheeky and slid a hand across his rump as she went by. His eyes widened a little, but otherwise he didn't react at all.

By the time the couple had waddled to the door and squeezed their way out, clutching their worthless piece of junk, Kristen had two cups of scalding soykaf ready. Manoj had probably paid some sweatshop worker a few rand to stitch up the fertility doll as part of a batch of fifty or so, which he'd then sell for forty, fifty rand apiece. He was clever, yet he never managed to get rich. His shop was always being broken into, three times in the last year alone. And who could get insurance in this district? Once, the premiums had simply been too high, but now the insurance companies simply refused to issue it. That was why Manoj was careful not to leave any money on the premises after he closed up for the night. And after the last beating, he'd found himself a cheap room where he slept rather than risk being here when the tsotsis called.

"You got a nerve, girl," he growled at her, accepted the offered cup and taking a sip of the dark bitter liquid.

"Got something this morning," Kristen said brightly.

"Huh. Is it curable?"

She chuckled and took the tiny computer from her bag. Manoj looked interested in spite of himself.

"Can I go upstairs and wash up?" she asked as he turned the little box over in his hands. Taking his grunt for a yes, she clambered up the rickety steps to the dusty, disused room with its cracked washbasin. The pipes groaned as they always did whenever anyone turned on the faucet. Manoj had been letting Kristen use the place for freshening up ever since he'd quit living here, and so she kept some clean clothes here as well. He wouldn't let her sleep in the shop, though, but she didn't blame him for that. He'd never be fool enough to let someone stay here who could just as easily run downstairs to unlock the door for any thieves who might slip her a few rand for the favor.

By the time Kristen rejoined him downstairs, fresher and feeling much better, Manoj had the guts of the thing dismembered on a table top in the back of the shop.

"Huh. Can't find anything wrong with it," he said, putting the pieces back into the case in a way that suggested that they were going in exactly in the same way they'd come out. "It's slotted up, though. First it spewed out a list of names and some IDs, but now it won't do a fraggin' thing."

She picked up the small coil of paper that had scrolled from the tiny printer he'd connected to the device.

"Look, girl what you getting me into?" he said almost angrily. "One of these names here, it's the guy who got kidnapped last night down by Ocean View. What do you know about that, honey?"

Kristen wanted to bluff her way out, but she paused just an instant too long trying to look innocent. She'd hosed it.

"Look, Manoj, I just picked it up off the ground, yeah? It was lying by the other guy's body. The one who got scragged. Frag it, you know me better than to think I'm into scragging people. Me?"

He looked at her s'uspiciously. "Who else knows about this?"

"No one. I brought it straight to you," she said miserably.

"Well, I ain't gonna buy it. You know there ain't much I won't handle in the way of stolen goods, but if it's been within a whiff of a stiff, then you can forget it." He almost slammed the last small screw into the casing and shoved it roughly back at her.

Kristen was almost to the doorway on her way out when his tone softened.

"Look, maybe we can do each other a favor. I was on the lookout for somebody to run me an errand anyway. Get the bus to Simon's Town and fetch something for me, yeah?"

She turned round and looked at him with a wide-eyed smile. There was going to be money in this.

"Take that to my half-brother John. The white one, you've met him," Manoj said with only a little bitterness. Like her, he was of mixed race, but being half-Indian rather than half-Xhosa, he didn't face quite the same

scale of problems as she did. He still got more than enough to be resentful, though.

"Here's the address," he said, scribbling something on the top leaf of a notepad. "Oh, frag it, I forgot you can't read. Look, get a cab at the bus station and show the driver this, got it? No, better still, I'll tell you and you memorize it, yeah?"

"I can do that," she said happily. Being illiterate, she'd had to learn to.

"He might buy this for junk value. The parts might be worth something to him, I don't know. Anyway, he'll give you something to bring back with you, you got it? Fifty rand for you when you get it back here. If you don't come back, girl, you end up in the harbor after I've dealt with you. You scan?"

Drugs, probably, she thought. It wasn't much money for risking five years in Parliament. The city had converted the old Houses of Parliament into a prison twenty years ago, but that irony did nothing to make the idea of spending time there any more pleasant.

When he'd finished reciting the address to her, and she'd proved that she could parrot it perfectly, Manoj mused over the printout for a moment.

"Strange collection of names here. Some big cheese from Vienna, someone from London, England, some weirdo with an elven name from Seattle. All over the place. Huh." He was about to crumple up the piece of paper when, on impulse, Kristen stopped him. It was impossible, obviously, but she had to know.

"The elf. What's his name?"

"Serrin Shamandar. What's it to you?"

Kristen felt like she'd been kicked by a Ramskop buck.

"Jack squat," she managed to lie, picking up the piece of scrunched paper. "I'll get this to your brother. Be back by nightfall."

"You'd better be," he growled.