This Alien Shore (61 page)

He said, “Shit, man, you'll never guess what's happening.”

Phoenix banished the lines of code he'd been working on, that ran across Nuke's face like some weird kaja pattern. “I guess it's a pretty big deal if I get to see your face. And a lovely face it is, too.” He gave it demon horns and little smiley faces for eyes; somewhere behind him he could hear the girl stifle soft laughter.

“Seriously, man.” Nuke squinted for a minute as if looking at something, then shook his head. The alterations disappeared, and in their place for the briefest moment was a fisted hand, middle finger upraised. “No jokes, man, I'm serious. Guess who's on the fucking station?”

Normally he enjoyed talking to Nuke, but right now he wasn't in the mood for games. He'd gotten some new leads on the virus which were sending him in all kinds of different directions, and then there was the girl and ... well... there was the girl. Amazing how hard it was to think of programming, sometimes.

“Just tell me, Nuke, okay?”

The figure drew itself up melodramatically, paused just long enough to build the irritation level to a peak, and then said, “Kio Masada.”

Phoenix could feel his mouth drop open. It was the kind of expression he thought only appeared in books. But there it was, on his own face. He couldn't close his mouth either.

“Phoenix?”

The girl had heard enough to come up beside him, not close enough to the vidcam for Nuke to see her, but close enough for Phoenix to be aware of her physical presence. Finally he managed, “You're kidding me.”

“No, man, I swear it. Came in today on a public transport, under—get this—fake ID. If I hadn't been trolling for data, I'd never have caught the scam. As it is right now, I think you and I are the only ones who know he's here, but it ain't gonna stay that way. Jesus Christ, what do you think he's here for? And in secret? I figured I'd tell the whole crew, but I'm a little worried they'd mob him. Not sure whether they'd fall down and worship him, or tear him to pieces to get a look at his wiring, but definitely they'd do something.

I know why he's here,
Phoenix thought. He couldn't quite believe it, but he knew.

“Probably the latter,” he said. He managed to smile. “Rumors have it he's mod, you know.”

“Yeah, like I believe that. Guerans don't fuck with their own heads, remember? I thought this guy never left his planet, didn't I see that on the news once? What do you suppose he's doing here?”

“Can't say,” Phoenix managed. “What do you think?”

LIVE ONLY,
the hacker had flashed.
BY YOUR OWN CHOICE.
YOU WILL
KNOW WHEN.

He'd traveled here incognito. False ID, imperfectly protected. Only moddies would know he was here. And moddies
would
know he was here.

Shit.
Shit!

Somewhere in his brain he realized he had missed Nuke's last statement. He wasn't really sure that a repeat would help, either, given the weight of data he had just inloaded. “Um, Nuke... listen, thanks for this... I've got something I have to do. . . .”

The holo cocked its head to one side, studying him. “You gonna head out there?”

It took him a second to decide if he was going to lie about it. It didn't really matter much, since Nuke could always tell when he was lying, but there were things it would communicate. Like how much of this he was willing to discuss at this time. “No.”

The figure stared at him for a minute, then nodded. One thing about Nuke, he knew when to back off. “Okay. That's good. 'Cause if you were going to do something stupid like bother him, you'd have a long trip. He's staying at the Waterfall in red sector, room 1214. Not under his own name. But of course you're not going there.”

“No, of course not. I ... that would be bad.” He wiped his forehead, amazed to find that he was sweating. “Thanks, Nuke. I, um ... I owe you.”

“Big time, my boy. And I'll take it in data, as always.”

The holo winked out. The vidcam hummed for a moment longer, then returned to its usual quiescent state.

Masada. Here.

“Michal?”

LIVE ONLY

He shook his head and managed to glance at Jamisia. She had clothes of her own but had chosen to wear one of his shirts.

“What is it?” she asked him.

LIVE ONLY

“The guy I contacted the other night. The one I said it couldn't be.” He shook his head, as if trying to loosen up the tangle of thoughts inside. “It's him, all right. And he wants to meet me. Live.”

There was a flicker of fear in her eyes at that word, and he reached out instinctively to comfort her. “Hey, shh, it's okay, nothing to do with you.” How did she manage it, going from self-assurance to pure vulnerability to ... well, to what happened last night... all in the blink of an eye, as if a different woman was suddenly standing there? She was a weird one, that was for sure.

Not that he was complaining. She was cute, she liked him, and there were all kinds of high tech secrets tucked inside her head. It was hard to say which part of that made her the most appealing.

Nah. Not hard at all.

He put a comforting arm around her waist and said, “You'll be all right here. I won't be long.”

The blue eyes were fixed on him, a flicker of accusation in their depths. “He said it was a long trip.”

Oops.
Damn. He did at that.

She said, “I don't want to be left here alone.”

“I think it's a bad idea for you to go out.”

“Why? You said you got the sniffers.”

“I got the ones I
found,”
he told her. “God alone knows how many more are out there.”

“And I would rather be out there with you taking that risk than sitting here alone hoping something nasty doesn't find me while you're gone. Think about that, Michal. What it's like. Hours and hours of sitting with nothing to do, because if I go online to do
anything,
even order fast food, something can trace my signal back to here. Don't you think I'm safer with you, so that if, God forbid, something happens, at least you know how to do something? And just because ... you know this place better than I do.” Her passionate tone had become exchanged for something softer, that plucked at his heartstrings against all defensive masculine instinct. Damn, she was good at it. He could see it happening and still couldn't put up a good defense. “I just don't want to be alone here. What happens if something goes wrong? You wouldn't even know. You'd just come back and I'd be ... gone.”

She was going to win. He pretty much knew that. He wasn't too strong with women at the best of times, and this one definitely had his number. Jesus, when had it happened? He'd only known her for a couple of days. He'd like to think that not
all
of his brain cells were located below the waist.

“All right,” he said quietly. “But this meeting is really sensitive stuff, you need to—”

She kissed him. His train of thought got lost somewhere.

S
he didn't know why she wanted to go with him.

Yes, she was safer in his apartment. Any sane person would know that. And she wasn't yet so senseless that she'd go running out of a safe place just out of fear of being left alone. That was the stuff of which bad viddies were made, not real life. Not
her
real life, anyway.

Maybe it was the dreams she'd been having lately. Not dreamscapes really, nothing so precise or preprogrammed. But in some indefinable way they had the flavor of her tutor's old programs, and each time she woke up from one, she had the distinct feeling that she needed to figure it out somehow, that its meaning would really matter in the coming days.

The problem was that they were mostly chaotic, and defied all her attempts at waking analysis. One was just a random pastiche of natural images from some planet, ice and water and strange swimming creatures that looked somewhat like fish but were covered with fur. The animals were vaguely familiar, as if she had seen them in a book or a vid at some point, but she couldn't come up with a name for them, or any reason why they would be significant to her life. Then there were several dreams filled with images of Guerans: face-painted, black-robed, fearsome in their power. Strangely, they didn't frighten her in her dreams, but rather she felt drawn to them, as if they had something she wanted. In one dream a man with fierce black face-painting tried to tell her something, but she couldn't make out the words. In another everything looked normal, but there was a high-pitched screaming in the background, as if someone were keening in terror over and over and over again. She ran to one of the Guerans—his uniform proclaimed him to be a Guild officer of some kind—and begged him to make it stop. “It never stops,” he said, and then added, “we don't want it to stop. Do we?”

And then there were the dreams of the crying one. Always the same image, of a naked and forlorn figure curled up in terror on the ground, surrounded by the figures she now recognized as her Others. The most frightening part of that dream was that each time it recurred she began it by hurrying to the spot where she knew he would be lying, terrified that he might not be there. Why did she want him there? What would it mean, if he
was
gone? Try as she might, she couldn't weave the images into anything akin to a meaningful message. Maybe they weren't. Maybe the fear was just starting to get to her, and her brain was being flooded with random data bits, hopes and fears and distorted memories jostling for space in her processing center.

God. Processing center. She sounded like Michal now. What was his hacking nomen, Phoenix? How ironic, that she should wind up in the care of a man with two identities. How completely appropriate.

He had tried to draw her out about herself, there as she lay in his arms that night, and she had ached to have some facts to give him, or even a wild theory he might dissect. She suspected he might be the one person who could actually help her understand what was in her head. But she had been keeping secrets for too long and the habit was too strongly ingrained. Even the little she did know—what her tutor had told her about her brainware's capacity—froze on her lips as the words were formed, and she could not force them out.

Poor, poor little hacker. He lay there curled up next to the woman of his dreams and didn't even know it. What was her processing capacity, ten times that of the next best brainware model, a hundred, a thousand? She could no longer remember exactly what her tutor had told her. But she understood the cause of it now. Oh, yes. Your average run-of-the-mill brainware couldn't service a dozen independent personalities with simultaneous and often conflicting agendas. They had wired her for her condition. They had
intended
it.

If only she knew why.

At least we're safe now,
Zusu crooned. Even Derik seemed much pacified, which was nothing short of amazing when you considered what Katlyn had been doing with their body. And Verina, always practical, said,
Look, at least we have a few days to collect ourselves, and someone to help us cover our tracks, and a little while to think. That's all we can ask at this point.

Was it? Would her life never be more than this, a few stolen hours of safety?

There had to be more. There had to be a reason for all this. The dreams were the key. Dreams full of Guild symbols, peopled with Guerans.

Of course she had to go with Michal. Not until she met a Gueran face-to-face was she going to be able to confront the secrets that were tucked inside her... and this was as safe a chance as she was ever going to get.

She just wished, as they left the cluttered apartment, that she didn't have the gut feeling she was never coming back to it.