City of Golden Shadow (22 page)

The jackal's tone became petulant. "So you called me away from other things merely to tell me that you have no tasks for me?"

The god swelled until his mummy wrappings creaked and snapped, growing until his deathmask face loomed far above the throne room floor. The thousand priests groaned, like sleepers beset with the same bad dream. The jackal took a step backward.

"I call and you come." The voice boomed and echoed beneath the painted ceiling. "Do not think that you are indispensable, Messenger!"

Howling and clutching at his head, the jackal god fell to his knees. The moaning of the priests intensified. After what he deemed a suitable interlude, Osiris lifted his hand and the cry of pain died away. Anubis collapsed stomach-first to the floor, panting. Long moments passed before he dragged himself up onto his hands and knees. His trembling head bowed until the pointed ears brushed the steps before the throne.

The god resumed his normal size and surveyed Anubis' bent back with satisfaction. "But as it happens, I do have a task for you. And it does, in fact, concern one of my colleagues, but it is work of a less delicate nature than unmasking a secret adversary. My words of command are being sent to you even now."

"I am grateful, O Lord." His voice was hoarse and hard to understand.

The candles flared in the heart of Abydos-That-Was. The Messenger of Death received another commission.

Dread yanked the fiberlink from its slot and rolled off the bed onto the floor. Eyes clamped shut with pain, he crawled to the bathroom and groped for the rim of the tub, then vomited up the vat-grown kebab that had been his lunch. His stomach went on convulsing long after he had emptied himself. When it stopped, he slumped against the wall, gasping.

The Old Man had never been able to do that before. A painful buzzing here, a nasty splash of vertigo there, but never anything like that. It felt like a knitting needle had been pushed in one of his ears and pulled out the other.

He spat bile into a towel, then dragged himself erect and stumbled to the sink to wash the digestive fluids from his lips and chin.

It had been a long time since anyone had made him hurt like that. It was something to think about. Part of him, the squinting child who had first confronted the authorities after hitting another six-year-old in the face with a hammer, wanted to find out the old bastard's true name, track him to his RL hideaway, then razor him and pull his skin off string by string. But another part, the adult creature who had grown from that child, had learned subtlety. Both parts, however, admired the exercise of naked power. When he was on top someday, he would act no differently. Weak dogs became bones for other, stronger dogs.

Helpless rage was a hindrance, he reminded himself. Whoever the Old Man really was, going after him would be like trying to storm hell to throw rocks at the devil. He was a big wheel in the Brotherhood-maybe the biggest, for all Dread knew. He probably lived surrounded by over-armed bodyguards in one of those hardened underground silos so popular with the filthy rich, or on some fortified island like a villain in a Malaysian slash-and-smash netflick.

Tasting his own acids, Dread spat again. He must be patient. For the moment, anger was useless except as carefully-controlled fuel; it was far easier and smarter just to keep doing what the Old Man wanted. For the moment. There would be a day later on when the jackal would rise to its master's throat. Patience. Patience.

He lifted his head into the frame of the mirror and stared at his reflection. He needed to see himself clean again, hard, untouched. No one had made him feel this way for a long time, and the ones who had were all dead now. Only the first few had died quickly.

Patience. No mistakes. He steadied his breathing and straightened up, stretching the kinks from aching stomach muscles. He leaned forward, zooming into close-up, the hero looking back with dark flat eyes, swallowing his pain. Unstoppable. Music up. Coming back strong.

He stared at the puke-stained tub for a moment, then turned on the water, washing the vomit away in a swirl of brown. Edit that-edit the whole tub scene. Missed the point. Unstoppable.

At least this new job would be RL. He was tired of the costumed silliness of these rich fools, living out fantasies that would shame the lowest chargehead just because they could afford to. This task would have real risks, and it would end in real blood. That was worthy of him, at least, and of his special skills.

The target, though. . . . He frowned. Despite what he'd said to the Old Man, he wasn't crazy about being in the middle of one of these Brotherhood feuds. Too unpredictable, like some net thing he'd seen back in school, kings and queens, scheming, poisoning. Still, such things had a hidden benefit. Let them all kill each other. It would just hasten the day when he could make things happen.

He rinsed his mouth again, then walked back to his bed. He needed his music-no wonder he felt off-balance. The soundtrack put everything into perspective, kept the story moving. He hesitated, remembering the agony the implants had so recently brought him, but only for a moment. He was Dread, and his chosen name was also his chosen game. His. No old man was going to frighten him.

He summoned up the music. It came without pain, a firm syncopation, quiet conga drums and dragging bass. He laid a series of sustained organ chords over them. Ominous but cool. Thinking music. Planning music. You'll-never-catch-me music.

Even now, that downtown parking garage must be full of police detectives, dusting, scanning, taking infrareds, wondering why the crime didn't show up on their closed-circuit camera-drones. All standing around examining the rags of white and red.

Poor pussy. And she hadn't wanted anyone touching her stuff.

Another one dead, they'd be saying. All over the net soon. He'd have to remember to watch some of the coverage.

Dread leaned back against the bare white wall as the music pulsed through him. Time to do some work. He summoned the information the old bastard had sent him, then called up some visuals, maps first, then LEOS scans and 3D blues of the target location. They floated in the air before him like heavenly visions against the background of the other white wall.

All his walls were white. Who needed pictures when you could make your own?

CHAPTER 9

NETFEED/ENTERTAINMENT: Concrete Sun Highest Rated for May

(visual: several explosions, man in white coat running)

VO: The series-ending episode of Concrete Sun was the most watched net entertainment for the month of May-

(visual: man in white coat kissing one-legged woman)

-appearing in sixteen percent of homes worldwide,

(visual: man in white coat carrying a bandaged dog through culvert)

The story of a fugitive doctor hiding out in the squatter city of BridgeNTunnel is the highest rated linear drama in four years. . . .

Renie turned her head sharply and the test pattern-an unending domino-row of grids in contrasting colors-jiggled. She grimaced. A touch against one of the dimples on the side of her headset brought up the pressure in the padding. She waggled her head; now the image stayed put.

She lifted her hands, then curled her right index finger. The front grid, a simple lattice of glowing yellow, remained where it was; all the other grids moved a little farther apart from each other, rippling out into the indeterminate distance, one full lockstep into infinity. She bent the finger farther and the distance between each grid shrank. She wagged the finger to the right and the entire array rotated, each a fraction of an instant behind the one before it, so that a neon spiral formed and then vanished as the grids came to rest once more. "Now you do it," she told !Xabbu.

He carefully wove his hands through a complex series of movements, each of which marked different points of distance and attitude from the sensor affixed to the front of his visor like a third eye. The unending sequence of colored grids responded, spinning, shrinking, changing relationships like an exploding universe of square stars. Renie nodded in approval even though !Xabbu could not see her-the test pattern and the all-surrounding blackness were the only visuals.

"Good," she said. "Let's try out your memory. Take as many of those grids as you want-not from the front-and make a polyhedron."

!Xabbu carefully withdrew his selections from the array. As the rest moved to fill the vacated space, he stretched those he had chosen and folded them in half along the diagonal, then rapidly assembled the paired triangles into a faceted ball.

"You are getting good." She was pleased. Not that she could lake too much credit-she had never taught anyone who worked as hard as !Xabbu, and he had a tremendous natural aptitude. Very few people could adapt themselves to the unnatural rules of netspace as quickly and completely as he had.

"Then may I put this away now, Renie?" he asked. "Please? We have been preparing all morning."

She nicked her hand and the test pattern disappeared. A moment later they stood facing each other in a 360-degree ocean of gray, sim to unprepossessing sim. She bit back a nettled reply. He was right. She had been delaying, going over and over her preparations as though this were some kind of combat mission instead of a simple trip into the Inner District in search of information.

Not that, strictly speaking, there was such a thing as a simple trip into Inner District for outsiders like them. There might very well be barriers they could not pass no matter how well prepared they were, but she did not want to be unmasked and ejected because of some stupid, preventable mistake. Also, if there was something illegal and dangerous going on in Toy-town, discovery of her investigation would put the guilty ones on guard and perhaps even lead them to destroy evidence that otherwise might save Stephen.

"I did not intend to be rude, Renie." !Xabbu's sim lifted its simple hands in a gesture of peace; a rather mechanical-looking smile curled the corners of its mouth. "But I think that you, too, will be happier when we are doing something."

"You're probably right. Disconnect and exit."

Everything vanished. She lifted the visor on her headset and the earnest but seedy ambience of the Poly's Harness Room surrounded her once more. The Bushman pushed up his own visor and blinked, grinning.

Reflexively, she began one final run through her mental checklist. While !Xabbu had finished his exams-which, the grapevine told her, he had handled with expected ease-she had created not just aliases to get them into the Inner District, but several backups as well. If things went badly, they could shuck off their first identities like old skin. But it had not been easy. Creating a false online identity was no different from creating one for RL, and was in many ways the same process.

Renie had spent a good portion of her time in the last few days hunting through backwater areas of the net. There were lots of vaguely unsavory people lurking in Lambda Mall's equivalent of dark alleyways for whom setting up false identities was everyday work, but ultimately she had decided to do it herself. If her investigations of the Inner District struck something important, the offended parties would go looking for the bootleg identity merchants first; not a one of them would take a stand for privileged information when their livelihood and perhaps even health was at stake.

So, pumped up on caffeine and sugar, smoking an endless chain of theoretically noncarcinogenic cigarettes, she had set off to do a little akisu, as the old-timers called it. She had worked her way through hundreds of obscure infobanks, copying bits and pieces as it suited her, inserting false cross-check data on the systems whose defenses were outdated or weak enough. She had created a reasonably solid false identity for both of them, and-she hoped-even some insurance if things went very wrong.

She had also learned a few things about Mister J's along the way, which was one of the reasons she had been drilling !Xabbu all morning. The Inner District club had a very dark reputation, and interfering with its operation might have some unpleasant real world repercussions. Despite her initial impatience, she was glad !Xabbu had talked her into waiting for him. In fact, even another week to prepare wouldn't have gone amiss. . . .

She took a breath. Enough. If she weren't careful, she would turn into one of those obsessive-compulsives who turned back five times to make sure the door was locked.

"Okay," she said. "Let's get going."

They made a few final tests of their harnesses, both of which hung from the ceiling by an arrangement of straps and pulleys that would allow their users freedom of movement in VR, as well as prevent them from walking into real walls or hurting themselves with a fall. When the pulleys had hauled them aloft, they dangled side by side in the middle of the padded room like a pair of marionettes on the puppeteer's day off.

"Do what I say without questions. We can't afford to make mistakes-my brother's life could be at stake. I'll give you answers afterward." Renie checked one last time to make sure none of the wires would be worked loose by the action of the harness straps, then pulled her visor back down; the visuals flicked on and the gray sparkle of the waiting net surrounded her. "And remember, even though the closed band is provided by the Inner District, not the club itself, once we get inside you'd better assume that someone is listening."