Striper Assassin (18 page)

“I’d say that’s probable.”

The original Matrix mon and cyberjock—Kidd Karney—what a shock, and a good one, too. Kidd Karney was one of the first real ramjammers she ever met, and they’re still friends, good friends too. Kidd Karney helped her escape from Miami. He taught her what real Matrix-running was all about. Now she finds that the very same decker almost certainly wrote the code that created Striper’s bogus Fallon Sontag ID.

Her luck is definitely on the rise.

24

Neona wastes no time exiting the Exchange, pausing only to make Book blush a strobing orange and red by giving him a kiss and a hug. She’s on through the Bazaar and Hassan’s Arch in no time flat. Kidd Karney’s node is just a flash and a half away by satellite. She hurtles down into the LTG for Reno, Nevada, and starts hunting through the constructs blazing to the horizon with garish lights. Along one narrow alley she finds a neon carnival tent bedecked with a dozen flashing signs advertising the “meanest decker in the Matrix”. A construct like that is easy to miss in the Reno LTG, all the more so because half the deckers on the local grid imitate Kidd Karney’s style.

A squeeze of the big fat red nose of the animated clown standing in front of the tent puts her through the door.

And into a cage…

The bars of the cage are black and sizzling with code-red security IC. Sizzling too are the chains and manacles that seize the golden angel’s wrists and ankles and tug her spread-eagled up off the floor. The whole node takes on a reddish hue as the color encompasses her icon. It feels like a swarm of little bugs with creepy-crawler legs are skittering all over her meat body somewhere a billion klicks away to her rear. The feeling makes her squirm. The virtual effects may be red but the ice is pure black, the blackest. It’s a virtual trap with electron teeth. Kidd Karney has been known to brain-fry the occasional corporate decker who finds the datapath to his tent. There’s nothing to do now but wait, wait and twitch.

“Dammit, Kidd!”

And exclaim.

Momentarily, a bullet-shaped roller coaster car with a leering demon mask of a front-end comes roaring out of one of the two black sculptured datalines at the rear of the tent, screaming to a halt in front of the sizzling cage. Kidd Karney likes dramatic entrances. Tonight, he’s in his sheik get-up, wearing a hat like a golden pillow with tassels, a flowing robe, all kinds of sparkling jewelry and funny shoes with curling toes. With him in the rear of the roller coaster car is a bevy of absurdly voluptuous bimbos garbed in bellydancer outfits and fawning over him like slaves.

“Hoi, Angel!”

“Hoi yourself!”

Kidd Karney points a remote. The sizzling stops, the manacles release, and the front of the cage swings open.

Neona skates over to the roller coaster car. Kidd Karney waves her into the rear-facing seat, which she hates, but there’s no room to spare on the front-facing seat, even though it’s as big as a bed, because of all the bimbos. Neona barely has time to sit down before Kidd Karney shouts, “Here we
goooooooooo!”

The car hurtles ahead into blackness, looping upside-down and around, whipping through curves with a demon’s fury, turning backward, spinning like a top. It’s heart-attack city. Neona screams. Kidd Karney screams louder. The bimbos scream even louder. The car hurtles around a curve and suddenly they’re all flying right out of the car, landing on massive pillows in a room like a desert sheik’s tent. Neona takes a moment collecting herself. Kidd Karney and the bimbos of course land in a luxurious sprawl. The bimbos shift from screaming to fawning without missing a beat.

“Glad to see you’re still in the trons, Angel.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Neona replies, just a bit breathlessly. “I need your help with something.”

“Heavies still coming on?”

“From Miami? No, this is new. I’m on a run.”

“Spreading some nuyen around?”

“Yeah, I got a little to play with.”

“Zero sheen, muchacha. I just slotted mucho dinero with my Johnson. Took a run down Yucatan way. Got coin to spare. What kinda goose you lookin’ t’douche?”

Kidd Karney had a way of phrasing things sometimes, ranging from the genuinely weird to the monumentally disgusting. Sometimes, it was cute. Other times, it was just odd or disgusting. “I need some data, jammer to jammer, you know? You wrote some code, made this Striper babe a bogus ID?”

“I did?”

“No question.” She runs her fingers across her keyboard guitar, cuts a few quick riffs. Kidd Karney lifts his head like he’s taking in pure ruby tunes from the alphanumerics that spiral down to encircle him.

“Nova code,” he says finally. “But it ain’t my One-Oh, Angel.”

“You gotta be yakking.”

“Uh-uh,” Kidd Karney replies. “I never even heard of X. Striper? Whoever. But I’ll tell ya who did write the code.”

“Who?”

“The ebon boy.”

“Who?”

“Jammer called the Dodger.”

“Yeah?”

“Ain’t you heard the handle?”

“Should I?”

“Well, he’s only a silicon god, a ram-jam-thank-you-ma’am coded-to-the-max cyber hero, coming on with lightning fingers and killer chips from hell! Are you a Mona Lisa or what? You never heard of
the Dodger?
Where you been living, lady?”

“Well, how would I find him?”

“Find the Ghost in the Grid? You don’t find him, babe. You post bulletins. Dear Dodger, I’m a teeny-weeny decker doobie. Please write home. End of message.”

“He must be slick.”

“If you gotta ask, don’t ask.”

“Where do I post?”

“Try Seattle.”

That again. It’s beginning to look to Neona like Seattle might be the key to this crazy puzzle of tracking down Striper. By the end of another frenetic roller coaster ride, she’s more or less convinced of that.

Satellite links to Seattle RTG.

She takes a wide sweep of the local grids. Kidd Karney clued her in about the most likely virtual hangouts, networks, and bulletin boards to try. She leaves messages for the Dodger.

Nothing much happens.

She runs down a few leads on her own. What little she uncovers merely confirms that Striper’s Fallon Sontag identity originated in Seattle about two years ago. Sontag comes complete with SIN, address, telecom number, social security, med plan, et cetera, et cetera.

Time keeps slipping by.

What she really should do, Neona decides, is check out the Philly LTGs for references to Sontag. It’s the best lead she’s got for the moment. She blasts through the links, up and down, and hurtles down into the Central Philly grid. As she streams past the mammoth, pulsing disk of the SmithKliner system construct, she spies an unusual figure, a little black boy in a sparkling cloak of silver, standing right there on the datalines in front of SmithKliner. Isn’t that supposed to be the Dodger’s icon?

The ebon boy?

It’s too much of a shock for her to react in time. She streaks on down the lines, then doubles back. As she rounds the curving façade of the SmithKliner disk, a voice speaks to her from behind, from right behind her shoulders.

“Thy voice is loud, yet sweet in my ears. Angel with an axe. Yea, dear lady, I have come to hear thy song.”

She stops, turns around.

Nothing’s there.

“What…?”

Suddenly, the voice is coming from right behind her again. “Fair lady, have thee no music to play for me?”

“Where are you?”

She turns again, and again there’s nothing to be seen, no icon, no clue as to who or what she’s talking to. The voice again comes from her rear. “Prithee, play for me, Angel. Play and explain thy summons.”

This is incredible, unnerving. “What are you doing? Stop it!
Stop it!”

She turns and suddenly he’s there, right in front of her, facing her, the ebon boy in his silver cloak. He bows with a flourish of his arm. “Forgive me, dear lady.”

“What?” That’s all she can think of to say. She blurts it. She’s too busy wondering how this small iconic figure came to be in the Central Philly LTG. That’s the impossible part. The messages she left for Dodger requested a meet in Kansas City. How could he have traced her to Philly? Through satellite links and everything? That was more than just wiz decking. More like magic.

“How… how did you find me?”

“Modesty forbids the necessarily complex explanations.”

“You’re… you’re the Dodger, right?”

With another bow the ebon boy replies, “At your service.”

Neona opens her mouth to reply, but then a thought occurs. She doesn’t want to play this like she played with Book and Kidd Karney. Dodger’s not a chummer of hers. He’s an unknown quantity. Who knows what connections or secret agendas he might have? She should play it careful, maybe just a bit cagey. Just in case.

“Ummm,” she says. “I guess you don’t know me…”

“A lady of such dazzling electron beauty could not long escape the notice of any true gallant of the Matrix.”

“Yeah?” What a concept. She wonders where the slag learned his lingua. It’s like nothing she ever heard before. “Well, I’m a chum of Kidd Karney.”

“Verily.”

“Yeah. Yeah,
right!
And Kidd Karney said, he thought… well, maybe you can help me out. I’m trying to contact this wiz runner called Striper. I’m working go-between for somebody… who wants to hire Striper.”

“Why come to me, lady Angel?”

“Well, I heard Striper’s based in Seattle. And so are you. And, I mean, you’re
the Dodger,
right?”

A little bare-faced admiration never hurts. From what Kidd Karney said, and what she’s seen for herself, Neona figures that the Dodger could find just about anyone he might want to.

A few moments tick past.

The ebon boy just gazes at her. There’s nothing about the icon to suggest what the Dodger might be thinking. “At last,” he says.

“Huh?”

“Fair lady, allow me to guide your search.”

“Oh… well, great!”

“Pray, take my hand.”

She hesitates over that, but what choice does she have? Search the Philly LTGs for a connection she may never find? Better to take the ebon hand of chance in hopes that the Dodger will lead her right to the source, directly to Striper.

One touch and it’s like they’re welded together.

For a moment, it’s panic time. She realizes she couldn’t pull free even if she tried. She feels a tug and suddenly the grid’s hurtling past, becoming a blur that resolves into blackness. She has no idea where they’re going, but it’s faster than she’s ever gone before. She’s helpless and squirming. She feels like a billion creepy-crawlers are running all over her body, only this time they’re on the inside, all throughout her insides, even inside her head, behind her eyes, and she can’t stand it. She’s twitching convulsing, crying out…

And suddenly she’s in a node, a sculptured node. It looks like a small square room with bare plastiwood walls and a matching floor. A bare bulb hanging down out of the darkness casts a stark white sheen over the pulsing brownish hues of the virtual room. A tall iconic man with black hair and heavy brows and wearing a casual black suit comes in through the only door, closes it, then pauses facing her, hands at his sides.

“You want Striper?” he says.

His voice is like a low, raspy whisper, like a voice gone too raw for speech. It makes Neona nervous. This whole biz is making her nervous, more than nervous. She can feel the sweat streaming down her meat body. She better be really careful. “Uhh, yeah… I, I got a job for Striper. I’m contacting for a Johnson. You know?”

“What’s the job?”

“I don’t know that. I just know it’s hot. And the pay’s wiz. I’m supposed to set up a meet.”

“I can smell lies.”

“What?”

“Your lies.”

“Hey, it’s no lie!” She turns to look to her rear, for some way out of this node, but there’s nothing back there but another blank plastiwood wall. She sends her fingers flying over the keys of her guitar, but before she can initiate even a single prog, two more iconic men appear, like they’re coming right out of the walls. Neona catches a blur of movement from the corners of her eyes and suddenly the two iconic men are right there, on either side of her. They seize her arms, tug her hands from her keyboard guitar, hold her like they’re welded to her, becoming a part of her program.

And now she can’t get her hands to her keyboard.

A whimper escapes from her lips.

“Please…”

The man in front of the door steps toward her, and now his face is changing, darkening, turning black, like he’s growing fur, and swelling, growing huge with eyes that burn like fire and fangs that flash like ice, and his massive snarling maw comes closer and closer, then swallows her whole.

Switch off, lights out.

She’s gone.

25

The main entrance of the Wanamaker Mall just off Market Street soars atrium-style to seven stories, and echoes with the voices of the hundreds passing across the main floor. Tikki joins the crowds taking the escalators to the sublevel concourse. A broad passage leading off the northern end of the concourse connects directly with the Thirteenth Street subway station. Telecoms line the walls. Tikki makes calls from places like this, at the heart of the metroplex, to minimize the chance of police or other security agencies picking up her conversations in random scans of telecom lines. She picks a stand, puts a wad of chewing gum over the visual pickup, then checks her wrist chronograph. When the time hits 20:05:00, she starts dialing.