Nosferatu

6

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.