Streets of blood

8

“What did you get?” Serrin was eager to hear, stubbing out the last of a string of cigarettes that bore witness to his impatience.

Geraint frowned slightly, dumped a pile of papers on the table and smoothed back his dark hair. He fussed over the gold fountain pen in his pocket, sighing in frustration. It hadn’t been a good morning, and to top it all he’d returned to find a missive waiting for him that was definitely unwelcome. The Earl of Manchester’s personal secretary regretted that Lord Powys was unable to sit in on the committee stage of the Gwynedd Demarcation Bill next week, and since a trustworthy and reliable Welsh man would be needed…

Wonderful. Now he could look forward to being bored silly in a debate with aggressive Gwynedd elves over small print, while trying to politely kick some government lord under the table to keep him awake. At least he’d gotten something for Serrin, though he wasn’t so sure how the elf would take it. Geraint decided to play it down for starters.

“Next to nothing, my friend. The Communication Management people are apparently here for the specific purpose of observing this afternoon’s seminar on biomolecular technology in comm systems. They aren’t talking to anyone, and the brief they submitted has been printed in the program. It doesn’t say much, so far as I can see. But a little bird did whisper something in my ear.”

Serrin edged forward. "What kind of bird? As long as it wasn’t a blood kite, I want to hear what it said."

“It was one of Nakatomi’s boys from Fuchi Industrial UK. Drunk as a skunk at ten in the morning." Geraint’s face crinkled slightly with disapproval. "Chap reeked of brandy and bimbo at a frankly disgraceful hour of the day.”

“Spare me the jazz,” Serrin said with a shrug. “I know places back in Seattle where no one will believe you can cut it at all if you don ‘t smell like that, know what I mean? What did you get?”

“Just this: Kuranita is supposed to pay a call on Fuchi’s labs out at Longstanton this evening. CMS is a Puchi subsidiary, after all, so it wouldn’t look odd. If I read my contact right, that’s Kuranita’s real motive for being here. The seminar’s just a convenient cover.”

Serrin was satisfied. It was impossible to get anywhere near Kuranita in the hotel, and if he tried any more magic around the place it wouldn’t just be hotel security knocking politely at his door. Next time, they’d have an official from the Administrative Bureau of the Lord Protector’s Office along with them. If Serrin was carrying any permit not perfectly in order, they’d deport him instantly and confiscate his precious magical gear. And even if all his permits were up to snuff, they’d probably still find something in the small print anyway. And that was before they found the Ingram…

So he would wait. He’d been out to Longstanton, north of the city’s sprawl, and it was easy to hide out there. The labs weren’t far from the Stinkfens, the polluted miasma of marshland and waters that befouled most of old East Anglia, so there wasn’t exactly a high density of population and homes to worry about.

Serrin looked around the room, taking in the scattering of foreign faces, many Asians among them. “I thought this was Nobles in Business, Geraint. You can’t tell me that these chummers are all scions of Britain’s blue-blooded aristocracy.”

“My dear fellow, you misunderstand. An event like this brings together two groups of people who need each other. On the one hand, a selection of British upper-crust, a bit short on cash, but who badly want to believe they can succeed in business. Most of them haven’t a prayer, of course, since they’re swimming with sharks. On the other hand, you have greedy foreign fat cats who have money and power, but who can’t buy that elusive quality, style. So they buy the presence of the nobles, hoping some of it will rub off on them.

“Both sides are doomed to disappointment, obviously. The nobles usually have as much business acumen as a lobotomized troll, and the greed merchants wouldn’t know style if it sandbagged them. Still, at least the chaps who pay the tab get traditional British room service, with butlers and valets on tap, and a carefully planned percentage of forelock-tugging and ‘by gad, you are a card, sir.’ Nobody in Britain actually speaks like that anymore, of course, but you seps seem to think we do, so we maintain the pretense to keep the rich tourists happy. Bentinck, the Tourism Minister, is an absolute past master at it. He’s probably got the entire works of Dickens in head-ware memory and a skillwire in advanced groveling. Still, it’s all good for the economy. End of lecture."

Geraint waved away the oncoming threat of the hors d’oeuvres trolley. “I think I’d better stick to something green and safe. Too much gamma-cholesterol in the bacon strips this morning. Must have fed the factory pig the wrong goo.”

“But, Geraint, what about your Conservationists?” Serrin said. “They seem pretty much the traditional old Brit to me. And what you’re saying about class and style, that’s very British too. I think the folks back home know they can’t buy class, no matter how much we pay for implants or the loveliest cybereyes or clonal facelifts or any other cosmetic trick of the modern age. But we recognize it in you guys. That’s real."

“Granted. But you’re missing something,” Geraint gestured with his fork.

“What’s that?”

"Humor. We don’t take this terribly seriously. Deep down, British people know that life’s tawdry tapestry is something you have to get through with a certain decent detachment. Look, I spent hours this morning listening to some Swiss corporate mercenary drone on about the role of speculative finance in the development of viral agents to counter the diseases of old age. Medicine? No, it was all about money."

"What his arguments came down to was this. Stuff the poor countries, because their per capita income is too low to pay for the drugs, and no one lives long enough to need them anyway. Ignore the richest countries, because the smart money there is on clone-tech and tissue replacement banks. In the future the very rich will never grow old anyway. His position-and this is where he got really excited for just a few minutes-is that smart investors will focus on the middle group. That group can’t afford the real cutting-edge work, but who has enough money and enough crumblies to become a sound market for the cheaper viral repair agents."

“My friend, what medicine comes down to is, where is the best market? And not even the best market now. That’s not enough. We need venture capitalists with the foresight to know who will be able to afford to delay death in the right way in years to come."

"Oh, and there was a nice little rider in the next presentation. Some people might think that developing clonal technology-the thing that really works-for the very rich and then letting it trickle down to the rest would benefit everyone. Producers get economies of scale, consumers get what they need. However, it turns out that you can’t dispense the new products to the mass market because then the corps wouldn’t have big enough production runs for their simpler, cheaper products. Long-term profits would drop, discouraging further research."

“It’s political, of course, as well as economic: we can’t allow those with less money to enjoy the same advantages of those with more. Dear me, no. Can’t have billions of little Indians and Chinese running around with extra-long life spans. Think of the pollution from overpopulation. And all this from men living i" n the most destroyed and polluted countries in the world."

Geraint gestured with his hands, palms out before him, fingers extended across the table toward the elf. “That’s why the nobles and the moneymen are in there. They’re protecting each other’s inalienable right to scrag the rest of the world. I mean, what else would be freedom, democracy, and the Anglo-American way? Not to forget the Swiss and Japanese, of course. Actually, they’re rather better at it than we are these days."

There was a long silence after that tirade. Serrin had never heard anything like this from Geraint when he’d been a fresh-faced young student in California.

“Spirits, boy, you sound like one of those goldarned Commies.” Serrin made a limp attempt at humor. He wasn’t sure what to make of his friend’s outburst.

"Serrin, you know the other side of the coin. There’s little more decency between these people than they show the rest of the world." Geraint paused, mouth tight. “That’s why you want to hunt the person who killed your parents.”

The blow struck home. The elf’s hands balled into fists and his face contorted with tension. Silence descended heavily between the two men.

“What are you going to do, old friend?" Geraint’s voice was almost tender.

“I don’t know. I’ve been out to Longstanton. I’ll stake the place out to see what opportunity turns up.”

Geraint had known Serrin would try this, and had his reply well-scripted. “You can’t know exactly where Kuranita’s headed. Longstanton isn’t the whole Fuchi complex, but it’s three rakking square miles and that’s a lot of entrances to cover."

“There are only two main gates, and he’s sure to head for the security complex.” The elf twisted his gaze, avoiding Geraint’s eyes.

"Serrin, you don’t have the weapons to hit the guy. You’d need an expert sniper with an MA 2100 or better and every trick you could build into it. You’d need infrared, APDS to get through the ballistic armor, and you’d need smoke, flare, and heaven knows what else to have a cat in hell’s chance of getting out alive. And even if you didn’t care about that, and you got lucky and hit the guy in one chance in a hundred, you know as well as I do that a man like Kuranita will have a couple of doubles running around as safeguards. Sure, he’ll be going for the security complex-almost certainly by an indirect route, while a doppelganger takes the obvious one. Unless he’s going to double-bluff, of course.

“How can you know what someone like that will have planned? You’re no street samurai, friend. You couldn’t even get close to him with what you do have. You know there’ll be corporate mages checking the astral for miles. You wouldn’t even get within range before they fried you.”

Serrin shook his head. "I took precautions against that. Don’t forget, I’ve been earning my nuyen by snooping around here all week. Got a little something to help on the masking front.”

“So that’s what you got from Serena," Geraint blurted. The mage looked astonished. “You been probing my mind, you bastard?" He was angry and threatened by the possibility. Geraint waved away his anger with a smile.

"You should know I don’t have any talent in that department. Much simpler: I got pretty much the same thing from her myself, only yesterday. She said you’d been in. And no, she didn’t say what you’d bought there. She just said it was an interesting coincidence that you’d stopped by just before I did. Nothing more to it than that.”

Serrin relaxed, slowly, but remained slightly on guard. Geraint pounced on his uncertainty with a final warning.

“Fine, so you’re masked and you manage not to get noticed by any of the-five or six? — mages who’ll be there. The lab will have a couple in the security department, I guess, say two more covering the perimeters, and Kuranita’s retinue will include another pair. Call it four. Do you really think they won’t be protecting him with enough sustained spells and spell locks to guard a Swiss banking satellite? Come on, don’t be foolish. Take any kind of shot and we won’t be chewing the fat over breakfast tomorrow. Let it go. You can’t touch this man. Not here, not now.”

It was the truth, and Serrin knew it. “But I have to go."

Geraint nodded sadly. He’d known this was something beyond reason, but he had to try. There was only one thing left to do.

“Of course you do, you dumb sod. But you can’t go alone, and I don’t want you getting us both killed by doing anything silly.”

The elf’s eyes shone brightly as he looked at his friend. When he spoke it was with an almost childlike naivete. "You’ll help me?"

"What are friends for? I have a little more skill these days.” With the fingers of his left hand Geraint drew the skin on his right palm tight. The implant beneath was well-disguised, scarcely visible even now. It was a beautiful job, and Serrin admired the near-perfect concealment of the smartgun link.

“I felt I needed it after what happened. If I’d been a better shot all those years ago we’d both have someone still alive today."

"It wasn’t your fault. It was dark, raining. She should never have run down that-”

“I don’t blame myself. Not now, anyway. But I thought some personal enhancement in that direction wouldn’t be amiss. I got myself a skillwire too. I’m not bad, either. I’ve yet to fire a sniper rifle in real action, but I can bring off a head shot nine times out of ten at eighty yards. I don’t think we’ll get that close, but I’m bound to be a better shot so you should stick to covering my backside. And I hope that bike of yours is bloody quick.”

Geraint drummed his fingers on the table, planning his moves. “Look, I’ve got to get back to the Smoke. We’ll need rather better resources than we’ve got here, and I don’t really fancy getting a two-thousand nuyen Gieves suit covered with fenland muck. I can’t leave until four, but there’s the non-stop express shuttle at four-twelve and I can be back here by, oh, seven. I’ll bring whatever I can lay my hands on. Ideally, we could use a rocket launcher, but it’s probably too short notice.”

The mage was open-mouthed. Geraint’s eyes twinkled back at him. “Only joking. We’d have to raid an Integrated Weapons Systems armory to get one of those, or maybe the Ministry of Defense. Not enough time.” He chuckled, his mind shuffling through the contacts he could chase down, hoping that Haughtree, at least, would be at home. Haughtree was the one man he could be sure of in this kind of situation. Thirty thousand nuyen for the cancer op in Zurich made Haughtree a very trustworthy friend.

"Meanwhile, Serrin, you can go check out those Optical Neotech guys. Got something for you on that one; the senior, Peter McCumber, has an extremely shaky cred balance. File a report stating that your sources inform you that he’s taking bribes from a subsidiary of British Industrial. Tell your employer to check transactions at the Chartered Imperial Bank. That should earn you a nice bonus. Buy me dinner at the Carlton sometime."

Geraint made to leave, but Serrin grabbed his arm and looked hard into his eyes. "Why are you doing all this?” It wasn’t mistrust in his voice, only a little wonderment.

Geraint opted for fatuity. “Because I’m a bored, decadent, minor noble looking for a little excitement in a humdrum life, old friend."

Serrin still looked baffled. Geraint laughed softly and clapped the elf on the shoulder. "Catch you later,” he said.