Wolf and Raven

Numberunner
I

I felt like I was trapped in one of those math problems: Wolf, sprinting south through the alley at 40 kph, has 50 meters to the street and safety. The car, going south at 100 kph, is 100 meters from the street in the same alley. How long will it be before a steel-belted massage ruins Wolf's day?

Leaping over a grease-stained box oozing something noxious at the corners, I figured that my speed meant I was traveling 40,000 meters per hour, or 666.6 meters a minute, or 11.1 meters per second. That put me approximately 5 seconds from Westlake and a vague chance at being able to walk home under my own power.

The Acura Toro cruising down the alley behind me, with a piece of newsprint fluttering from its radio antenna like a flag, boasted 100,000 meters per hour. That put it at 277.7 meters per second. Roughly translated that meant it would be through me faster than the curry I'd eaten the night before-a distinctly unpleasant prospect. The calculations checked and left no doubt.

That's why I hate math.

That's why I like magic.

The Old One howled with glee as I let him share his wolf-born speed and strength with me. I stooped in the middle of the alley and yanked up the heavy bronze manhole cover. The driver, thinking I meant to drop into the sewer to escape him, punched the accelerator and centered his slender sports car on me.

Like a matador with a metal cape, I cut to my right but let the manhole cover hang in space where I had been. The lower edge hit the windscreen about halfway down and shattered the glass like it was a soap bubble. The disk began to somersault, end over end, doing its best to turn the hardtop Toro into a convertible. It had better success with the driver, ensuring that while he might have lived fast and died young, he would not leave a pretty corpse.

The Toro hit the alley wall pretty hard. Sparks shot up from where the fiberglass body scraped away to metal, then the scarlet speedster rolled out into traffic. A Chrysler-Nissan Jackrabbit hit it going east while a Honda truck rolled over its nose. Nothing exploded and no flames erupted, but the Jackrabbit's driver did vomit when he yanked open the Toro's door. I think he wanted to give the Toro's driver a piece of his mind, but ended up getting pieces of the driver's all over his white pants.

I took one last look at the Acura as I left the alley and turned down toward the Sound. I didn't recognize it nor the half-second glimpse I'd had of the driver's face while it was still in one piece. It wasn't the first time a professional had come after me with intensive homicidal mayhem on his mind, not by a long shot.

It was, however, the first time it took less than a full day for someone to decide to off me.

New records like that tend to make me nervous.

Cutting back and forth through the streets gave me the time I needed to make sure no one was following me. I did see another Toro, which spooked me a bit, but only because it was white and looked like a ghost of the car I'd killed. Other than that my trip through the heart of Seattle's urban gray jungle showed me nothing I'd not seen a million times before.

My haphazard course brought me into what that had once been my old stomping grounds. Normally I'd avoid that area if I were traveling with anything less than an army because the local gang and I did not get along too well. The Halloweenies-Homo Sapiens Ludicrous-were led by Charles the Red, but he'd been feeling poorly for the latter half of the summer. That allowed me to go where I wanted without being hassled.

As I entered the old neighborhood I suddenly found myself wishing for the return of hostility. A stretch of Westlake from Seventh Avenue to Sixth Avenue had gotten a significant toasting during the Night of Fire. I remember the blaze rather well as I relive that evening in more nightmares than I care to count. Every fragment of that frightful landscape was burned into my memory in exquisite detail.

Standing at ground zero I couldn't recognize a thing.

All the burned-out cars had been moved. Buildings had been refaced and the tarmac was more level and pristine than I'd ever seen it. Old, boarded-up apartments had been refurbished and, if the window decorations were any indication, already occupied by tenants. All the little grotty businesses on the street level had been replaced with sharp-looking boutiques with awnings.

And not a single street light had a hooker grafted toil.

Looking at the place where I'd grown up I finally understood the meaning of the word desecration.

From deep inside me, in that lightless cave where the Wolf Spirit chooses to dwell, the Old One growled deeply.Now you know what I saw in the Sleeping Time. Your people, Longtooth, they destroyed the lands I loved. They crushed my people and savaged my world. And for what?

"So you can complain."

"Excuse me, young man?" An old woman with a dowager's hump stopped in front of me and let her little metal grocery cart come to a rest. "Did you say something to me?"

I smiled at her. "No, I'm sorry. I was talking to myself."

She squinted her eyes and I half-expected her to recognize me. Something did flash through her eyes and I desperately searched for a name to attach to her face, but I came up a blank. She, on the other hand, pointed at my tie. "We owe you a great vote of thanks."

I cocked an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

She jabbed my tie again. "You do work for Tucker and Bors, don't you?"

For at least this week, if I survive it. "Yes-sorry, I just started with them."

"Oh." She smiled in a kindly way. "Your company oversaw the rebuilding of this neighborhood. Did everything very fast. You'd never know it to look at it, but this place used to be horrible."

"I can believe it." I smiled at her, then stepped into the street. "Good evening, ma'am."

My smile grew as I saw a familiar narrow doorway with a pumpkin glaring down at me from above it. Tucker and Bors might have renewed this bit of urbanity after the Night of Fire, but there were some institutions that were too sacred to be touched and too disgusting to die. The Jackal's Lantern was one of them.

I pulled open the door and reveled in the wall of smoke that poured over me. True, I'd never liked the place when I lived here, and the Halloweeners would have cut my heart out for invading their stronghold, but the Lantern was a life preserver to a drowning man. I let the door swing shut behind me and rubbed my hands together. Who says you can't come home again?

Well, whoever said it was right. The Lantern might have been too sacred to touch and too disgusting to die, but apparently it wasn't that hard to buy out.

The smoke didn't cling to my flesh like a toxic fog because it came from a smoke machine. The only light in the place still came from orange and black plastic pumpkins, but the wattage of the bulbs had been upped so you could see more than a few steps into the bar. They'd left the car fenders wrapped around the pillars the way I remembered, but all of them sparkled with a new coat of chrome. Barbed-wire jewelry still adorned various parts of mannequins, but all the rust had been polished off it and the razor wire was duller than your average chiphead's sense of reality. They still used cable drums as tables, but thick coats of epoxy sealed them, fossilizing graffiti left behind from when real people used to populate the place.

A fresh-faced girl walked up to me and smiled. The two dark triangles surrounding her eyes pointed down and an upward-pointing one hid her nose, but they'd been drawn in a dark green make-up, not the black the Halloweeners demanded. Her clothing, while stylishly tattered, had obviously been washed within the last week. Instead of looking like a zombie summoned from beyond the veil to serve in the Jackal's Lantern, she looked like a creature from the Casper-the-Friendly-Ghost school of haunting.

"Welcome to Jack O's Lantern," she smiled.

Something inside me died. "Jack O's Lantern?"

"The very same. Table for one?"

I blinked twice, then shook my head. "I'm meeting someone. A guy, mid-forties…" Her nose wrinkled in distaste. "In the back. He's nursing a beer."

I smiled. "Bring us both another."

Leaving her to traipse through the corpgeeks in synthleather trying to look tough at the bar, I made my way toward the back. Even though I didn't like the changes, I had to admit the added light was an advantage. I'd never noticed how big the place really was, or how tall the scarecrow crucified on the back wall. Of course the smiley face didn't really suit him, but not many people got this far back.

I slid into the booth and noticed my name was still carved into the table top. Even the nine lines beneath it had been left intact. "Hi, Dempsey. How's it going?"

Dempsey gave me a shrug. He's one of those guys who looks like absolutely everyone else in the world- you'd forget him in a second if you had no reason to remember him. That, and the fact that he knows people who know just about everyone or everything in the world, make him very good at what he does. Dempsey is a private eye and for someone who's got no magic and no chrome, he's lasted a lot longer than he has any right to.

"Life goes on."

"Easy for you to say." I laughed lightly. "Dropping cold intathe corp world means I have to wake up during this thing called morning."

Dempsey kept both his hands wrapped around his sweating beer bottle and appeared not to hear what I'd said. "I've done some checking, just like you asked."

"And?"

Another shrug lifted the shoulders of his kevlar-lined trench coat. "There are plenty of folks who'd love to take a shot at Tucker and Bors for what they did to the Lantern here, but no one has anything that suggests TAB is angry at the Ancients. Moreover, there are no anti-metahuman groups with ties into TAB. This city positively stinks with Humanis Policlub members, but TAB is as clean as can be in that department."

I chewed my lower lip. "What are the chances some snake is living under a rock you haven't overturned yet?"

Dempsey showed no concern over my having questioned his ability. "Slim and none. The word whispered in some high dark places is that Andrew Bors had a daughter who goblinized right after the awakening. Her daddy got her out of Seattle and has her staying in a mansion up on Vachon Island. After that, employees were screened for their attitudes toward metahumans through their employment questionnaire. You show signs of being a bigot and you're out."

"Damn." I'd been inserted into Tucker and Bors because the Ancients had gone to Doctor Richard Raven with their suspicions that TAB was backing gangs making attacks on them. As the Ancients are a rather powerful and militarily adroit street gang, the invasion of TAB headquarters was a distinct possibility and Raven started to work on the problem to forestall that from happening. The waitress arrived with our beers, and I handed her some corp scrip. She looked at it and laughed. "You should have told me you were one of us."

I frowned. "Come again?"

"You're a TABbie, just like me. Tabbies get a discount," She scooped up the bill and headed back toward the front.

The Old One did not like being called a tabbie, but I managed to keep him in check. "Dempsey, I need you to keep digging on the policlub angle. This whole thing smacks of race hatred to me. Something has to be there."

He nodded. "Anything else?"

"Yeah. I need you to find out if anyone has a hit out on me."

"You mean besides La Plante?"

"Yeah, besides La Plante." It was an open secret that Etienne La Plante had a contract out on Dr. Raven and any of his associates. It was also well known that hurting a single hair on any of our heads would set Kid Stealth on the assassin-proving once and for all that capital punishment, if applied quickly and without mercy, could be a deterrent to crime. "Some gillette in a Toro tried to interest me in tarmac fusion. I declined, and he flipped his lid and had an accident."

Dempsey took it all in stride. "Do I still relay information through Valerie Valkyrie?"

I thought for a moment, then shook my head. "Takes too much time. If you get anything on the hit angle, call TAB and ask for Keith Wolverton."

"And if Mr. Wolverton is not at his desk and I want to leave a message?"

"Say a relation is coming to visit. The greater the danger, the more distant the relative."

Dempsey's eyes focused distantly, then came back with a twinkle in them. "So if I say Adam and Eve are coming to see you…"

"I'll know Stealth is freelancing again." I glanced at my watch and slid out of the booth. "Stay and have another if you want. I've got to go meet Raven."

Dempsey shook his head and left the booth. "If I stick around here, they'll come by and give me a new trench coat."

"It's hell being a fashion trendsetter." I looked at the refurbished bar and shuddered. "I think this is the first time I've been in here and not felt like taking a bath afterward."

"It's the only time I haven't needed a bath afterward," Dempsey quipped. "Those were the days."

I signed for the tab up at the front, then walked a couple of blocks to the parking garage where I'd left my Fenris. The black coupe waited for me in a darkened corner of the basement like a feral creature hiding from the light. I disarmed the anti-theft devices-you only forget to do that once-and climbed in. I punched in the ignition code and cruised out into the light evening traffic.

The trip to Raven's headquarters took longer than it should have because of the series of turns and cutbacks I used to make sure no one was following me. After Raven and the rest of our crew had done various things to anger some of the more powerful individuals in the sprawl, paranoia had become a survival trait. Just because Kid Stealth would descend like a bloody avenger on anyone bothering us did not mean we were inviolate. Insanity becomes a courtroom defense because lots of folks do irrational things, and I had no desire to have bits of me in baggies labeled Exhibit A.

I parked the Fenris in the basement garage below Raven's brownstone, then took the stairs two at a time as I climbed to the main floor. Adjusting my tie and rolling down my sleeves, I marched straight to Raven's office and paused in the doorway. "Would have been here sooner, Doc, but someone wanted me to play immovable object to their irresistible force."

Raven leaned back in his black leather chair, pressed his hands together and rested his index fingers against his lips. Seated there in a custom-built chair, behind his individually hand-crafted desk, he looked normally proportioned. The pointed tips of elven ears jutted up through his long black hair as the only clues to his heritage. If not for that, his coppery skin, high cheekbones, and broad-shouldered, muscular build would have marked him as an Amerind.

His dark eyes focused above and beyond me, but I found myself entranced by their steady gaze. The blues and reds weaving through them in an aurora-like fashion flickered past in what I imagined was a mirror of how quickly thoughts strobed through his brain. The lights slowed, then he closed his eyes and I felt myself in control of my own mind again.

"Interesting." His hands fell away from his mouth as he leaned forward and stood. "I will want a full report later, of course, but I should introduce you to our clients. This is Sting and her lieutenant, Green Lucifer."

Elven women are often described with plant imagery, but with Sting you'd have to make that an industrial plant. Sure, she was long and lean like most of them, but you could only describe her as willowy if you thought rebar swayed in light breezes. I heard she had a temper to match her fiery mane, and her yellow Opticon eyes certainly reflected none of the warmth in her soul-if she had one. She had an edge to her that made it clear why she was running the Ancients, but likewise told me why, though she was attractive, I didn't find her seductive.

"My pleasure." I smiled but didn't offer her my hand. I knew her street name had been earned because of the metal claws that could shoot from the backs of her hands and rake through flesh like it was water.

"So you're Wolfgang Kies. Makes sense, I guess."

Before I could even begin to work my way through the maze of tone and inference in her words, the nearly imperceptible stiffening of her partner drew my attention to him. Unlike Raven, Green Lucifer had the typical starveling build of an elf. His chin, or under-abundance of it, suggested a character flaw that the burning light in his gray eyes used as fuel. Green Lucifer clearly did not like the fact that Sting had paid me any notice at all, and he was aching for any opening to exert his territorial rights. That told me they were more than just partners in power and that Green Lucifer was the jealous type.

I immediately put him on the list of folks I didn't want in possession of a chainsaw while my back was turned.

"Mr. Kies, or 'Mr. Wolverton,' " he began with mock sincerity, "what have you learned?"

I stared at him for a second, then turned to face Raven. "I spent most of the day getting situated. Valerie's transferring Mike Kant to Shanghai was accepted without question, as was my being sent in to replace him. Ms. Terpstra acts more like a school marm than a supervisor, but Bill Frid is helping me get squared away in Kant's office. In fact, I've not really had to do anything because Frid did it all while showing me what I'm supposed to do."

Raven sank back in his chair again. "Good. What about this attempt on your life?"

The mention of an assassination attempt caused the fourth individual in the room to take conscious notice of the conversation. Kid Stealth, sitting back on his haunches, turned his head to watch me. The light flashed off his Zeiss eyes and his brows nearly touched as they pointed down at his nose. I knew better than to think he was concerned about me-he could see I'd survived-but his concentration came from his desire to hear how a rival assassin had failed in his job.

Having Stealth crouched behind Green Lucifer and Greenie surreptitiously trying to keep an eye on him made me feel loads better.

"I found a couple of things in some files and made copies of them. I tossed them into my trash basket, then bagged the litter and dropped it in the disposal chute. After work I went back around to the alley and fished the bag out." I reached into my back pocket and retrieved the folded-over papers. "They're several pages of receipts Kant got while, as nearly as I can figure, making money drops to the folks fighting the Ancients."

Green Lucifer's face darkened. "That's hardly a substantial amount of evidence, Mr. Kies." Scorn rolled from his words like crude oil off a duck's back.

I continued to speak to Raven alone. "It has to be something because a razorboy in an Acura Toro mistook me for an on-ramp."

"Did you get anything from him?" Raven asked.

"Sorry, Doc. The dead don't like talking to me. Chances are my cover is blown. I think we should consider taking me out of there."

Raven nodded solemnly. "If you think it best."

Green Lucifer hammered a fist into the arm of his red leather chair. "This is too important and has taken too long to set up just to let him drop it like this. We're being systematically exterminated. Order him to remain in place."

Raven leaned forward and rested his forearms on the desk. "Being new here, you do not understand…"

"I understand this human operative of yours has no stake in or concern about elven lives being lost." Green Lucifer gave me a gray-eyed stare that started the Old One growling defiantly in the back of my mind. "He's your employee. Order him back in."

"You donot understand," Raven repeated slowly. The threat arced like lightning in his words and anger reverberated like thunder in his voice. "These people are not my employees. They are my aides, my companions, my friends, and my allies. They work with me, not for me. What they do, they do because I ask, not order. I have never found myself called to doubt their judgment or their courage or their compassion. If Wolf believes his life is in danger, then I believe that as well."

Green Lucifer managed to hold his composure better than the other half-dozen people I'd seen invoke Raven's wrath like that. He settled back into his chair like a steel beam being bent by the inexorable progress of a glacier, but his defiance did not drain away. Still, he knew better than to open his mouth.

His tone lightening only slightly, Doc continued. "Wolf is fully cognizant of your situation. He knows that your alternative to a peaceful solution to this problem is for the Ancients to wage war with Tucker and Bors, and that is not likely to be pretty. It is for the sake of your lives, and the lives of the innocents who might be caught in any crossfire, that we began this investigation. Wolf knows I would not ask him to return there unless I believed the risk was justified, but if he chooses to decline my request, I will think no less of him and my confidence in him will not diminish."

I'd have said I was leaving Seattle for Japan if I thought it would deepen the scowl on Green Lucifer's face, and I knew Raven would back my play unques-tioningly. I started piecing together the perfect way to drop that bit of information on Greenie, but I caught Sting's eye and saw a hopeless determination in her expression and shifting posture.

I knew the Ancients had gone through a nasty battle recently with another street gang. The Ancients, supposedly under direction from someone in TAB, had tried to expand their territory into the turf held by the Meat Junkies. The battle got nasty fast, and looked really grim for the Ancients when an ork sniper killed their leader. At that moment, however, Green Lucifer smoked the sniper and used his rifle to ace the Meat Junkies' top dog.

Both gangs retreated to lick their wounds, but over the following weeks other gangs had taken shots at the Ancients. That wouldn't have attracted any attention except that no one was picking on the similarly weakened Meat Junkies, and the Junkies themselves started sporting very new and very expensive guns and bikes. As TAB had stopped bankrolling the Ancients, anyone with more than two working brain cells could deduce a shift in corporate policy that was not beneficial to the elves. Sting clearly knew her gang had to deal with the problem of TAB's shifting loyalties or the Ancients would become fodder for the "Obits and Old Bits" newsfax files. If Raven couldn't help her-and looking for outside help, even from another elf, showed how desperate she saw the situation to be-she had to go to war. Given that TAB, like any other multinat, had its own army, long odds for betting on the gang were not hard to find.

Even knowing that, she would have no choice. If she didn't go to war, she'd be replaced by someone who would. The outcome would be the same, but when you whisper "I told you so," from inside a grave, very few folks listen or care.

"Actually, Doc, I have Dempsey looking into the contract angle. That could be a shortcut to whoever is ramrodding this campaign. If I bow out, the bait will be gone. I'll just be more careful." I glanced over at Sting. "As I'm replacing Kant and he appeared to be the boss-man's courier of choice, I should see some action soon. If we let it slip that you're bidding on a shipment of arms coming into Seattle, our man should move to procure that shipment before you."

Raven smiled. "If someone wants you dead, Dempsey will find out. Good choice, Wolf."

I painted a wide smile on my face and proudly displayed it for Green Lucifer. He started to get a bit restive in his chair, but Stealth's flesh and blood right arm snaked over the back of the chair and his shoulder. Pointing in my direction, it stopped just short of Gree-nie's face. From the sleeve of Stealth's waist-cut coat, a blocky little derringer slid down to fill his palm. The delivery device retracted silently, then Stealth arced the gun across the room to me.

I caught it gingerly. "What's this?"

Stealth didn't exactly smile, but his expression grew as pleasant as I've ever seen it sans anyone actually dying in the vicinity. "Richard said he found your being unarmed disturbing. I customized a design based on a Remington Double Derringer1.1 expanded the caliber to.50 and have crafted some of your 'silver' bullets to fit it. It is single action. You get two shots."

I turned the pistol over in my hand, then slipped it into my pocket. Getting it into TAB would not be a problem, and I could feel safe even without nearby manhole covers. "Thank you, maestro."

I knew it was loaded because Stealth wouldn't have it any other way. The Old One knew it too and snarled something derisive about my dependence on the tainted and artificial when his tools were so pure and natural. The only problem with the Old One and the abilities he lent me in times of need was that I couldn't always be certain I would remain in control of my actions. In light of that, using a hand-detonated nuclear bomb could be seen to have an up side.

"So what is your next step?" Green Lucifer leaned forward and leaned his chin on his right hand.

"Well, tonight I'm going to go check on a former client, Lynn Ingold. That's a very important part of this case." I saw Raven suppress a smile. Lynn Ingold was a woman we had rescued from La Plante earlier in the summer. She and I had begun seeing one another and I'd been planning to take her out to a Seadogs2game well before the TAB problem came up. "Then, tomorrow, I return to work and wait."

His face screwed down into a sour expression as if

1Because Stealth knows I like using a Beretta Viper and an HK MP-9- both of which he thinks should be in a museum-he's decided I can't really handle any weapon crafted for use in the twenty-first century. Taking the specs for a Derringer from some docudrama about the old, old West (I think it was calledDeadlands), he manufactured the gun for me. I mean, I was glad to have it, and even happier that he had a hobby, but I kind of wished his hobby was more benign, like model trains. Then again, I didn't really want to see what the Murder Machine would do with model trains.

2I had gotten the feeling, at the time we rescued Lynn, that she was special. The fact that she was a Seadogs fan proved it. And I do mean she was aSeadogs fan-I don't think I ever heard her call the team the Mariners. he'd been sucking sulfur schnapps through a straw. "We can't afford to wait long."

Raven looked over at Stealth. "Kid Stealth has agreed to let it be known that he and his Redwings are just waiting for someone to start shooting at you so they can raid undefended territory. Again, this steps up the pressure on TAB and will make it easier to find out who is behind all this."

"Fine, Raven, just so long as you know we won't wait until forever." Greenie leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. "You have until Fri…"

Sting laid her right hand on his left arm. "You have as long as you need at this point. If things change, I'll let you know."

Greenie didn't like that very much, but he and Sting exchanged a pair of glances I can only describe as cobra and mongoose. I smiled broadly at his discomfort, earning myself a big jump on his enemies list, I do not doubt, and nodded to her. "We'll get you results."

"Good, Mr. Kies." She looked me up from my toes to the tippy-top of my head and back down. "Just so you know, if they do get you, Stealth will have all the help he needs in avenging you."

Damn, I just love it when women talk lethal.

Lynn didn't talk lethal to me, but she did say some other things that made me think I'd died and gone to heaven. I was tired enough in the morning that I almost slay-tested Stealth's pistol on my alarm clock. I refrained because I was too lazy to want to patch the hole I knew a bullet would leave in my wall-and that of the other two tenants on this floor-and dropped back to sleep for another half hour.

The Blavatskys downstairs woke me up for the second time with a loud discussion of things that shouldn't be mentioned in daylight. After a quick shower and shave, I headed downtown to Tucker and Bors. I arrived ten minutes late and, as an afterthought, I considered what a good idea that might have been. Whoever had set me up to be killed would probably faint when he saw me come strolling in.

In fact, the only person who seemed to notice me was the matronly Ms. Terpstra. She stared at me hard enough to melt my brain, but I scampered to my cubicle too quickly for her to properly focus her powers. On my monitor I read the note she had sent me at precisely 9:00:01: "Punctuality is a virtue and the virtuous are rewarded. Those without virtue face perdition."

Bill Frid appeared at the doorway to my private domain and handed me a steaming cup of soykaf. "I see you got a perdition memo."

I accepted the soykaf and sipped. "Is that bad?"

"Naw, wait until you get an 'eternal damnation' note. That's bad. She's been in a bad mood since Reverend Roberts stopped doing video." A jovial guy, Bill had a double-chin and curly blond hair that made him look softer than I figured he saw himself. Right from the start I had him pegged as one of those types who's learned all the shortcuts to getting things done. They're workhorses, and no corp could get anything done without them, but contempt for the bureaucracy barred them from ever getting into the power structure.

"You look tired. You feel okay?" he asked me.

I shrugged. "Went to the 'Dogs game last night."

"Extra innings?"

"Yeah." I smiled. "Oh, wait, you mean the game. No, just eight and a half. Mackelroy caught one on the warning track in center, then threw out the runner from third on a one-hopper to end the game. It was great."

Bill sipped his soykaf. "Good, good. We'll have to take in a game some time."

I nodded. "Yeah. Let's do it when we're on some errand for old TAB and we can get them to spring for a 'business lunch.' "

"I like it." He gave me a conspiratorial wink, then looked up and nodded. "The wicked witch of the paycheck is watching, so I'll get back to my work station. If you need anything, just let me know." "Thanks, Bill."

Left to my own devices I had to figure out what I was supposed to do. I really had no idea what Kant's duties had been and even Frid had been fairly vague. As nearly as I could make out, Kant was part troubleshooter, part confidential courier. Even when I called up a log of things Kant had done in the past two weeks, it looked like most of his time had been spent sitting on his hands.

Fully aware that idle hands are the devil's playthings- a concept that I was certain Ms. Terpstra detested-I pulled a blank manila folder from my desk drawer and placed the employment and location policy agreements I'd signed the previous day into it. I labeled the file "Wolverton, Keith" and stuck it behind the Wolcott Trucking file.

Feeling fairly satisfied with myself, I noted, to my chagrin, that I had another two hours to kill before the lunch wagon arrived outside. I looked at the stack of datachips on the corner of the desk, but all of them dealt with statistics, math, and probability modeling, so I just couldn't bring myself to pop one of them into the computer. Making a mental note to have Valerie get me games that would work on this monster, I started exploring the Interactive Building Directory.

By the time the telecom beeped and saved me, I'd succeeded in memorizing the names and divisions for all TAB employees A to J in the building. "Keith Wolverton here."

"I have good news and bad news for you." Dempsey was one of the few people who sounded better on the telecom than in person. "What's your pleasure?"

Seeing Ms. Terpstra glowering in my direction, I raised my voice a bit so she could hear. "Well, Doctor, will the patient live?"

"Mr. Kies is in no danger, beyond those expected for a man in his line of work. Whatever symptoms he thought he had, he was mistaken."

"And the bad news."

"No one's out to ace Wolf, but there's five thousand nuyen on your head, Mr. Wolverton." Someone wanted Keith Wolverton hit? Why? He didn't exist forty-eight hours ago. "Your source was impeccable as usual, I assume?"

Dempsey grunted out a laugh. "The grieving widow was spending the five hundred nuyen down payment to blot out the memory of her late squeeze. Closed casket ceremony, you know."

"At least they could go for a shorter box and save money." I drank some more of the soykaf. "You have a name for the patron of this poor departed soul?"

"Are you sitting down and alone?"

I looked at the monitor and saw a message presenting itself to me, letter by letter. "Only my very wonderful supervisor, Ms. Terpstra, reminding me that I should not be taking personal calls via the wonders of binary magic."

"Probably safe, then. The name William Frid mean anything to you?"

I suddenly wondered if soykaf could cover the taste of arsenic. I assumed I would find out shortly. "Rings a bell. Thanks. Dempsey."

"No sweat, chummer. Tell me, is your Ms. Terpstra heavy-set, first name Agnes?"

I shrugged. "Hit on the first, and an 'A' for a first initial on her nameplate. Why?"

"No real reason." I could see Dempsey smiling like a fox in some dark telecom booth. "Heard that was the handle she'd adopted. Always wondered where she ended up after the Mitsuhama embezzlement scam. Watch your paycheck."

"Got it, Dempsey. I owe you big time."

"You'll be hearing from me."

"Anytime, bud, anytime."

I broke the connection and glanced over at Bill's cubicle. Braving the harsh look on Ms. Terpstra's face, I walked over there and crouched down at Bill's side. "Bill, I need some help."

His smile slowly died as the seriousness in my voice got to him. "Sure, Keith, what is it?" I shook my head. "Not here. It's personal. I'm new in town and there was this woman last night…"

He patted me on the shoulder. "You're right, not here. C'mon."

He led the way past the dragon lady to the men's room. We quickly checked the stalls for lurkers, then flipped the lock. Leaning back against a sink, Bill smiled with mild amusement. "Now, what's the problem?"

I shrugged. "The problem is that this woman is upset because the man you hired to kill me got dead himself in the attempt." I filled my right hand with Stealth's pistol. "That almost ruined my day. Explain to me why I don't want to ruin yours."

Bill's eyes grew wider than the bore of the pistol he was staring at. "No, no, no, you have it all wrong."

"That's correct about one of the two of us." I tore the loop-towel across the back part of the loop and started pulling it down in long lengths.

His blue pupils rolled around like a chalk-mark on a cue ball. "What's that for?"

"You're going to wrap it around your head so the brains don't splatter when I shoot you." I let my smile die except for a nervous twitch at the corner that convinced him I meant business. "No need to make the janitor's job any tougher."

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God." Frid dropped to his knees. "I don't want to die."

"Good, then tell me everything you know about the elves and TAB."

"What?" He looked at me with absolute terror in his eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"The Ancients."

"Who?"

"Dammit!" He flinched as I swore. "Why'd you want me killed?"

"I didn't want you killed. I just wanted you, ah, roughed up." His thick lips quivered in a way that told me he had to be telling the truth. "Offering someone five thousand nuyen to rough me up is a bit much."

He looked crestfallen. "How was I supposed to know? I went down to Damian's and offered a guy five grand to do a job, then I gave him five hundred and the copy of your picture I got from security. I just wanted to have you put out of action for a week or so."

I frowned. "I'm still waiting for a 'why' here, chummer."

"Because I wanted your job. Kant gets all sorts of courier jobs and he gets bonuses." He looked down at the floor and clasped his hands in an attitude of prayer. "You have to believe me."

"No, chummer," I said, tossing him the towel. "You have to convince me. What do you know about Kant's courier actions?"

"Oh, God, you're from Auditing, aren't you?" Frid wilted and his shoulders slumped forward. "Kant said he dealt with shadow projects."

Shadow projects. Anything a corp wanted to do without the shareholders or the government knowing about it. Projects that never showed up on the books, but got money funneled to them through fake projects and promotions. Given all the interlocking directorates and vertical integration within the corporate world, tracking down the source of funding for almost anything was impossible. For shadow projects it was that much more so.

And funding a war against the Ancients definitely sounded like a shadow project to me.

"Okay, Bill, let's take this slowly. Kant made three courier runs recently. One was on the twenty-third of last month. This month he did one on the seventh and the other on the twelfth. Enlighten me."

Sweat poured from his forehead and down his face. "I don't know."

"You'll look good in a turban, you know."

"Keith, I don't know. Honest, I don't."

I dropped down onto my haunches and parked the Derringer a centimeter or so from the tip of his nose. "You've got two strikes against you, you weasel. You fig- ured you'd get Kant's job and his bonuses, and you still think you can swing some sort of deal out of this…" I paused to let him consider how much his greed might cost him. "Well, chummer, you can. I only care about that one job. It involves elves and only local travel."

I tapped his nose with the gun. "What will it be? True Confessions, or die knowing that whatever you had for breakfast was your last meal."

"Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God. Ah, ah…" He screwed his eyes shut. "I don't know for sure, Keith. All those jobs went through Ms. Terpstra. Please believe me."

I'd seen enough men crumble in my time to know Frid's marshmallow center was leaking through all the cracks in him. He had to be telling the truth, which meant I had a new nut to crack. I wouldn't have thought Ms. Terpstra capable of running a shadow project, but with Dempsey's cautionary tale about her, anything was possible.

"Okay, Bill, this is the way things go down. You're going home sick, right now." The man nodded like a child promising Santa he'd be good. "If I find you've been lying to me you can consider our little talk here as the opening scene of the worst nightmare you've ever had." I slipped the gun back into my pocket. "Get out of here."

Back in the office, I leaned forward on Ms. Terpstra's desk. "Agnes, I really need to know who asked you to give courier jobs concerning the demise of the Ancients to Mike Kant."

Ms. Terpstra's head jerked around as if I'd gaffed her in a gill and yanked her from the Sound. "Mr. Wolver-ton, I have no idea what you are talking about. How dare you address me in such a familiar manner?"

I gave her my best I-know-lots-you-don't-want-to-have-known smiles. "Is it that Tucker and Bors has a better retirement policy, or did you just tire of the Mit-suhama corporate grind? Audits after an embezzlement can be so tedious, don't you think, Aggie?" From the sour look that answered my question, I realized who- ever had her running a shadow project was using the same or similar blackmail evidence to keep her in line.

"You play well, Mr. Wolverton, but you will meet your match." She gave me a cold smile. "Benbrook, Sidney M."

"Benbrook?" I frowned as I tried to remember his entry from the directory. "Benbrook is in Marketing! Why would Marketing have a shadow project?"

"Mine is not to wonder why…"

"Yeah, what you do is steal and fly." I shook my head. "Thank you for your help, Ms. Terpstra. You make me proud to be a TABbie."

Sidney Benbrook looked exactly the way you'd expect someone with that name would. The Interactive Building Directory showed me a tall, cadaverously slender man with dark hair so thin that when he combed it from right to left over his scalp it could have been deciphered by a barcode reader. His deeply set eyes remained hidden in shadow and, along with his corpse-like pallor, accentuated the impression that he had died late in the last century.

As I entered the darkened sanctuary of his office, I knew, almost immediately, that no matter how benign or un-salesperson-like he looked, he was at the core of the problem with the Ancients.

Benbrook sat in a big padded chair centered on a raised dais at the end of a narrow canyon formed by walls of computers and other electronic equipment. Little amber and red lights flashed off and on across the faces of the machines, enclosing him in a star field with constantly shifting constellations. Cables crisscrossed the area behind him and one snaked out from the tangle to jack into his skull behind his left ear.

Like a spider aware of a fly's careless tread upon its web, Benbrook swiveled his chair around toward me as I entered the room. I had not tried to be particularly quiet, but his reaction unnerved me. His head came up and his torso came around instantly, but his eyes took their time in focusing down on me.

"You're Sidney Benbrook?" "I know that. Who are you?" His voice came out as a harsh croak, as if he was entirely unused to speaking to another person. "I did not send for you."

I'd seen other wireheads who were tied even tighter to their machines, but never in a corporate setting like this. I held my hands up in the universal sign of surrender. "I am Keith Wolverton. I'm taking Kant's place. Thought we should be acquainted in case you need anything done."

"Done?"

I gave him my best hey-we're-all-in-the-know-here smile. "Aggie told me Kant did courier jobs for you, all vapor, no flash. She says there's bonus money in it and she turned me on to the deal for a rounding error. She told me it could be dangerous, but I told her I wasn't afraid of any dandelion-chewers."

"Dande… yes, elves." Benbrook froze-the only motion from his end of the room coming from the computer light show. "I find it disturbing, Mr. Wolverton, that your computer records appear never to have been tampered with. How do you explain that?"

My smile broadened. "You can figure I've made a career of keeping my nose very clean, or you can assume that I came across Kant's action independently and I decided I would like to milk the cash cow myself for a while."

"Tucker and Bors takes a dim view of extortion, Mr. Wolverton."

"I said 'milk' not 'slaughter.' You've been devoting significant resources to destroying a population of elves. If you happen to know someone who's paying for elven scalps, I might know people who would be willing to create a supply to satisfy that demand."

"You small-minded bigot. Elves and scalps and bounties are not important." Benbrook's eyes reflected the flashing computer lights around him. "Do you think these people might be able to get rid of the Ancients?"

I frowned. "You have me confused. You said scalps aren't important, but you want someone to 'get rid' of the Ancients?"

"That is correct."

"But you do not mean 'get rid of as synonymous with kill?"

He frowned, which was rather scary given the gangrenous pallor of his skin. "I mean it as in move, dispense with, create a decreased population concentration of."

I shrugged. "That says kill to me."

"Whatever!" Fingers clicked and clacked across an illusory keyboard. "I need to affect a ten percent reduction in the elven population of the Denny Park zone by the end of the fiscal year. Is that possible?"

Denny Park marked the southwest edge of the territory the Ancients claimed as their own. Their recent battle with the Meat Junkies was over a piece of turf to the west of that area. That zone was one of the least habitable areas in the Seattle elven enclave, but it was the Ancients' stronghold.

"Possible, yes, but that will be a very tough block of ice to salt." Something was not adding up because I wasn't hearing Humanis Policlub rhetoric coming at me. In fact, Benbrook had accused me of being anti-elf. "If you don't care how I get rid of the elves, why do you want that particular piece of real estate?"

His right hand rose from the arm of the chair and, with index finger pointing down, rotated slowly to indicate I should turn around. As I did so, a huge display screen slid down from the false ceiling, flickered to life and shared computer graphics of Seattle with me. As I watched, the image swooped lower, like a helicopter sailing down through vector-graphic canyons. As it headed north from downtown it hit a block of solid green: the Ancients' turf.

The image dissolved into a series of numbers. They scrolled past fairly quickly, but I caught bits and pieces of things. It looked to be a cost comparison between two programs, and then it shifted over into a point by point comparison of population. Outlined in red, and pulsing in time with my heartbeat, I saw the approximate number of elves living in the Denny Park area of Seattle.

I turned back. "I still don't get it. Why are you paying to have elves scragged?"

"It's obvious." Benbrook stared at me as if I was an idiot. "Demographics."

I remembered the datachips in Kant's workplace, then stared at Benbrook unbelieving. "You're killing them because of numbers?"

The red pulsing light burned off and on in his eyes. "Those are not just numbers, Mr. Wolverton. They are the very lifeblood of this company. Those numbers affect our bottom line. That means those numbers determine how much we can pay you and how much you get in your pension plan and what your profit sharing statement will look like. Those numbers are the most important numbers in the world."

Though to look at him I'd not have thought it possible, Benbrook rose from his chair and pointed a scarecrow finger at me. "You will forever be doomed to be nothing but a slave chip in the engines of industry if you fail to understand how important those numbers are. On the right you have the demographics and psychographics of the group the North American Testing Agency uses to test market our products."

His shoulders hunched and his hands rubbed together like those of a miser aching to fondle credsticks. "They determine what we produce, when we produce it, what it tastes like, what it looks like, what it smells and feels like and how much we can charge for it. The shift of a percentage point or two in the approval rating for a product can cause us to retool a factory or to scrap a line altogether. NATA's test group is a fickle mistress whom we labor to please, yet pay whether our results satisfy or anger."

His eyes went to the screen. "I will free us of our dependence on NATA and their group. The Denny Park District is identical to their area except for one thing. We have too many elves. Once I can eliminate enough of them, we'll have our own captive market here. I can create a division that will perform like NATA and we will wrest the dataflow away from them. Our costs will be a fraction of what they were for research, and we can charge others for using our group, which will reverse a negative cash flow in my division."

I shook myself to clear my head of his missionary message. "You want to kill elves so you can taste-test chocolate bars in the sprawl?"

"Crudely put, but I believe you have a grasp on reality."

"Oh, I've got more than a grasp on reality, chummer." I pointed back toward the flashing red numbers. "You're trying to lower the river when what you need to do is raise the bridge!"

He shook his head. "I tried that. I paid the Ancients to take more territory outside Denny Park. It would have created a more even distribution, but they failed."

"No!" I slowly started drifting toward his silicon altar. "Have you seen what TAB did on Westlake?"

Benbrook paused as if unable to remember the project or unable to comprehend why I would mention it. "That was the construction division. They are not my concern. Irrelevant."

"Very relevant, Mr. Benbrook." I channeled the Old One's growl of outrage into my voice. "You are seeking to destroy something when you could make it all so much better. You are blowing a perfect chance to do more than just develop one new division."

His hawk-stare bored in at me as he slowly sat. "Explain."

As he called my bluff I panicked for a half-second. The Old One came to my rescue as he translated all the demographic statistics into his own view of the world. Suddenly I saw Seattle as it must have been before men set foot on the continent. The Old One and his brothers knew where the deer would drink. They knew what plants would flower or bear fruit when-attracting animals for the hunt. Had it been in their power they would have created more tree stands to keep their animals safe in the winter and more meadows to feed them in the summer.

"It's fairly simple, really," I said. "You can rebuild sections of the Denny Park area. Encourage people who will even up the demographic mix to move in. You'll have your own little population from which to draw focus groups. You can have your own stores where you can test product placement. You can employ some of the people and raise or lower their income to levels appropriate for whatever you want to test. You can create your own little world and it will pump out streams of data for you to analyze, all the while saving money."

His face had begun to become positively animated as I started to talk. I thought I almost had him with the "streams of data" line, but something changed. The light in his eyes died. Settling his angular, skeletal body into his chair, he became an electronic spider again.

"Projections show the cost of building up that area will be more expensive than wiping out the Ancients."

I drew the pistol. "Factor in the cost of your own funeral."

He slowly shook his head. "Employee contract, page two, section six, paragraph three prohibits one employee from threatening another with deadly force."

"I quit."

"Now that I think of it, your suggestion has some merit."

I nodded solemnly. "Those expenses can be charged back against the fees of clients who use your market testing. And you can make the changes through the construction divisions, guaranteeing the head of that division a tidy profit on the construction work, while the work is done at a below market rate for you."

Benbrook's head started bobbing in time with music that I could not hear. "Yes, that could work. As you said, I would have focus groups and store fronts to test product placement." His eyes flicked up at me. "These people would have children and I would have to educate them, correct?"

"You better believe it."

"Excellent. We diversify into children's products."

I winked at him. "You build schools and sports facilities. You improve Denny Park and…"

"And we create sports leagues for employees. We get them exercising, which will cut health insurance costs. And they will all be wearing clothing they buy from us that has our trademark names emblazoned on them."

"Now you're cooking."

He stopped hearing me. "And we create Brandname Loyalty Indoctrination Centers. We inculcate the children in the ways of only buying our products. We can wire every home for closed-circuit televisions that will display our ads…"

His eyes started to glaze over orgasmically, so I cocked the pistol and brought him out of it prematurely. "Hey, Sparky, you also have to pay the Ancients to patrol the area so no one can infiltrate it, right?"

Benbrook hesitated, then nodded. "We can get them uniforms…"

"Do you really want to see what they would do with uniforms?"

"No, perhaps not. Plausible deniability can cut liability." His eyes went blank for a moment, then he smiled. "Yes, I think this has a higher profit potential because of the retail sales and the information development angles. It will work."

"Good for you." My eyes narrowed and became the same silver shade as the wolf's-head pendant I wear at my throat. "Listen, Moses, there's only one more thing you have to do before you can lead your people to the promised land."

"And that is?"

"You want to adjust the environment of a profit center because the psychographics are set to take it into a negative growth curve." I gave him a smile that was all mayhem and arson.

"That sounds unsatisfactory. I'm sure, in return for your service here, I can do something about it." His hands hung in space as if poised over the keyboard. "Explain."

I smiled. "Ever heard of a place called Jack O's Lantern?"

I breathed in and got a nose full of noxious vapor that convinced me someone was burning tires for warmth in the middle of the Jackal's Lantern. Of course I couldn't see that far into the place, but I felt happy enough that I was willing to stumble blindly toward the back. Lucky for me, a blond waitress name Pia saw me groping about and slipped her arm through mine.

"The elves said they were waiting for you, Wolf." Despite the black makeup turning her face into a nightmare pumpkin mask, the smile she gave me made my socks roll right up and down. "I can be softer than she is, and I'm much prettier than he is."

"No disputing that." I returned her smile. "It's business with them, darling."

"All work and no play will make Wolf a dull boy."

"And you're the whetstone that will sharpen me up?"

"We can rub our bodies against each other and see." She laughed lightly as we reached the back of the bar. "A Henry Weinhard's for you, Mr. Kies?"

"In the bottle, no glass." I slid into the booth across from Sting and Green Lucifer. "Anything for you?"

Sting shook her head and Pia vanished into the billowing cloud of smoke. Green Lucifer wrinkled his nose, looked around, then snarled at me, "Why did you demand we come to this dump?"

"I wanted to see you in your natural habitat."I glanced over at Sting."Here's the deal: TAB is going to rebuild some housing in your turf and generally upgrade the Denny Park area. They'll pay you to keep things under control. The new housing will go half to folks already there and half to people they bring in."

As Sting considered what I had told her and Green Lucifer practiced his "I'm mean and nasty" look on me, Pia arrived with my beer. I saw she'd written her number on the napkin she put beneath the sweating bottle and I gave her a wink. I twisted the cap off the bottle with my left hand, drank, then set the bottle down again and frowned at Green Lucifer. "Well, pay her." He blinked his big elf eyes at me. "What?" "And tip her well, too. I'm a big tipper." Pia smiled and gave me a wink. "Thank you, Mr. Kies." Green Lucifer became obstreperous. "If you think…" Sting nudged him with an elbow. Grimacing, Green Lucifer pulled out a couple of credsticks and started to sort through them for one sufficiently big enough to pay for my beer. A light cough from Sting added a pair of twins to it and all three ended up deposited on the tray Pia carried. With a broad smile and a nod of thanks to Sting, Pia retreated from sight. I drank a bit more. "What do you think?" Sting's eyes narrowed into lifeless amber wedges. "Do you think the deal will be honored for a long time?" I shrugged and my left thumb traced the letters of my name in the table. "If they invest in the project as they are supposed to do, yes, they will stay there for a long time. If not, we'll know soon enough to forestall more trouble of the type you've been through. It's chancy, but if Raven thought it was going to blow up in our faces, he'd not have asked you to meet me here. Is it a go?" Sting nodded her assent.

"Good." I started to smile and feel proud of myself, but Green Lucifer went and spoiled it. His face scrunched up as if he were about to throw a temper tantrum, but then the expression eased everywhere except around his eyes. "And now the minority report?"

"I just want one thing from you, Kies." He hissed the last letter of my name like a snake. "Who was behind the plot to kill us?" I shook my head. "Not part of the deal. You hired us to stop them, not mount them on a trophy wall."

"You needn't worry, we'll do our own killing," he sneered at me.

"Hey, Greenie, this is the real world." I let the Old One growl through my throat as I rubbed my right hand over my silver wolf's-head pendant. "Any of us with Raven are willing to do wetwork, but not to salve your ego. So, chummer, you've got what you've got."

"What I've got is an anti-elf racist protecting more of the same." He balled his fists and hammered them down on the table, nearly upsetting my beer. "We've had people dying out there. We've had elven blood running in the streets. Someone has to pay."

My eyes started a slow shift from green to silver, with the black Killer Rings circling the iris. "Someone is paying. TAB is paying a wergeld that will make things better for your people."

"Tell that to the dead."

My right hand contracted into a fist. "I've seen the streets run with blood, chummer, and I've leaked my fair share into them, too. It's damned easy to call for blood when you aren't going to be the one shedding it. And you can't tell me, Greenie, that a single death at TAB will make life better for those who live in Denny Park."

He started to reply hotly, but Sting stopped him. "Your deal is acceptable and, if TAB upholds its part of the bargain, we will let the matter drop." She glared at Greenie, and he nodded his head as much as his stony rage made possible. "We are indebted to you and Raven and even your friend, Dempsey."

"Raven will send you a bill," I said, smiling, "and you probably already have a message from Dempsey waiting for you at your crib." I used the bottle cap in my left hand to scratch a tenth line beneath my name, then snapped Green Lucifer's head back with a right jab. He bounced off the rear of the booth, then his forehead dented the table just before his unconscious form slid beneath it. "I, on the other hand, consider us even."

Designated Hitter

The pitch came screaming in at 153 kph, but the black man's bat whipped around yet faster. With a bone-breaking crack the baseball shot away like a satellite planted on top of an Ares booster rocket. I watched the white pellet sail off on its ballistic arc through the Seattle Kingdome's still atmosphere. It dwindled and disappeared over the top of the Dominion Pizza sign out at the 131-meter mark. The center-fielder just waved at the ball as it flew by.

I clapped appreciatively as the hitter left the batting cage. "Damn, Spike, that was a shot. One thirty-one and it cleared the fence clean."

Jimmy "Spike" Mackelroy smiled broadly. "Yeah, I got good wood on that one." He flipped the bat around and thrust the knobby end toward me. "You should take some cuts, Wolf."

I choked out a gasp-laugh. "I don't think that would be such a good idea, Spike. The last time I hit a ball I was using a broomstick as a bat and we were playing on asphalt, not this fancy astroturf." I toed the plastic grass with my right foot. "Besides, your pitcher's throwing them faster than I like to drive, and his curve practically pulls a U-turn out there."

Spike draped a massive arm across my shoulders and steered me toward the batting cage. "Practice is almost over and there's no one in the Dome here who will laugh at you." He slapped me on the back. "You're in a uniform. You might as well do some hitting."

As much as I wanted to protest that if I was hitting I couldn't be keeping my eye out for trouble, the little kid inside me desperately hungered for the chance to step up to the plate. "All right, you've got a victim. You aren't recording this, are you?"

"Wolf, I wouldn't do that to you?"

As I shucked the navy-blue Seattle Seadogs training jacket1, Jimmy got me a batting helmet. "Strap this on. You're not chromed, are you?"

"Nope. The only chips in me are the nachos we had for lunch."

Handing me the helmet, he flipped a switch on the back that started a little green LED blinking. I pulled the helmet on and noticed the faint green glow tinting the full faceplate. The helmet had been fashioned of high-impact plastics and didn't feel particularly heavy, even though I knew it contained batteries to power the faceplate.

"Wolf, take a look at this." Jimmy picked up one of the baseballs that had squirted under the batting cage's canopy. He held it under a small lamp built into the batting cage. As he rotated it slowly, I saw a purplish grid play like faerie light over its white horsehide. On the helmet's faceplate I saw a nearly life-size simulacrum of the ball, complete with grid, track along with the ball's movement.

"The helmet tracks the ball?"

Jimmy nodded and slowly stood. "Up there, in the roof, there's an ultraviolet light projector that provides the illumination for the grid to show up to our eyes-or, in your case, on the helmet's faceplate. In the case of most jacked hitters, the helmet would interface with the hitter's biosoft and send an impulse that would direct his swing to connect with the ball. In your case you'll get a projection of where the ball will be, but you have to use your own judgment as to when to swing."

1I had actually planned to refer to the Seadogs as the Mariners in this portion of my memoirs, but the word-processing software Valerie set me up with seems to be determined to avoid use of the word Mariner.

I heard some laughter and looked over toward the bullpen. The pitchers had gathered to watch me, no doubt certain they'd see someone yet worse than themselves at the plate. In the two days I'd been around the team, they'd given me something of a wide berth, which I didn't mind. The last thing I needed was a bunch of practical jokers trying to give me a hotfoot while I was trying to figure out how the team was being sabotaged on their pennant run.

Just before I stepped into the batting cage, I looked up at the mound. The practice pitcher had been shooed away by a tall, stocky player with a pug nose and broad grin. I turned back to Jimmy. "You guys have been planning this, haven't you?" I pointed toward the mound in an imitation of a gesture my pitcher had once made famous. "I may not be the world's greatest baseball aficionado, but even I know Babe Ruth had a hot hand on the mound."

Jimmy shook his head. "Don't worry. Ken's not wired from those years."

Babe plucked a ball out of the basket behind the mound. "C'mon, Wolf, they never let me pitch. You aren't afraid of me, are you?"

I let a low growl rumble from my throat as I dug in on the left side of the plate. "I just hate southpaws, that's all, Babe."

He reared back and threw.

The helmet picked up the ball as it left his hand. In an instant the computer dropped a box around it, then drew a line straight from that original box to a point low and tight across my knees. A series of green boxes then plotted the course of the ball as it actually came in. The direct line readjusted itself as the ball began to break, but by the time I'd seen and tried to digest all the information, the pitch thudded into the batting cage.

Up on the Scoreboard someone toted up a strike. Giggling sounded from the dugout, and the outfielders slowly started trotting in. Babe beamed and armed himself with another baseball.

"Don't let it get to you, Wolf." Jimmy's voice soothed some of my embarrassment as I tightened my grip on the bat. "Just relax. When you see the first line, take a cut. You'll get a piece of it. The helmet is tough for all of us."

"Yeah, but you get paid to do this."

Babe's second pitch came in and I knew I'd seen that track before. I stepped into the ball, but I didn't quite manage to get all of my bat on the carbon-copy pitch. My hit popped straight up, then shot back down as the ball ricocheted from the cage's steel skeleton. I jumped back and dodged it.

More laughter from the dugout started my cheeks burning anew. A second strike appeared on the score-board and someone triggered a computer graphic showing a cartoon figure swinging and missing bigtime. One of the pitchers flopped over onto his back as the breeze from my cut reached him.

You do not have to tolerate this, Long Tooth,the Old One snarled in my head.Let me give you my quickness and strength. Then you will show them.

I shook my head. Ringing the practice field, four watcher spirits monitored the area for magic. For me to invoke the Wolf spirit in a real game would result in my being ejected from the league forever. Here, in practice, it would attract unwanted attention, and it had been agreed upon earlier that such a thing was not a good idea.

I held my hand out to Babe and backed out of the batter's box. "Ever have a desire to burn one down the third-base line into those clowns?"

Jimmy chuckled under his breath. "Yeah, back in double-A when I was starting out. Pitchers can be hell on you because they're out in the bullpen without adult supervision most of the time."

"I know. When I was out there earlier they were teaching me how to spit." "Now there's a skill for the Fifth World." Jimmy hooked his fingers through the netting on the cage. "What would you do if Babe was shooting a gun at you?"

"I'd shoot him back."

"Same dif here, only the bullet is bigger and you're sharing it with him."

"Gotcha." I reached up and turned the helmet off. "I think I'm set now."

"Go get 'em." Jimmy waved at the outfielders to back up. "Longball hitter stepping up, boys. Get on your horses."

Babe wound up and delivered a solid fastball. It came straight down the pipe and I swung all the way through the ball. I was late on the swing, so the ball hooked out into foul territory, but it was a long way out in foul territory. That surprised Babe because his next pitch came in high, leaving the count at 1 and 2 on the Scoreboard.

"Wolf, this'll be his curve. Tight, golf-shot it."

Just as Jimmy predicted, Babe's curve arced in and broke down. I stepped out and snapped the bat around, connecting rock solid. The ball exploded off my bat and passed just above Williams' glove as the third baseman leaped up at it. Beyond him it skipped off the turf and tucked itself into the corner of the outfield.

Behind me Jimmy chuckled. "That's a double for sure, maybe even a triple. You've got good wheels."

"You're being generous."

"Never going to fit undercover, Wolf, if you don't brag a bit."

"Just taking my lead from you, Jim."

With the rest of his pitches, Babe kept me honest, but I got pieces of more than I missed. As he began to tire and I got into my rhythm, stroking the ball felt really good. Finally, as we both agreed it was to be the last pitch, I pointed toward the outfield. "This time I'm serious."

Babe laughed aloud. "Yeah, you and every other curb-climber. No mercy, Wolf." "Asked or given, Babe."

Because I'd begun to hit his curve, he came straight at me with a hard fastball. I saw him release it at the top of his arm's arc and I knew in a split-second that ball would be jetting fat and happy through my strike zone. Pushing off with my left foot, I strode forward. Cranking the bat around, I knew the ball was going places.

It was, like right into the backstop as my bat missed it by the same margin Christmas misses June.

With my bat pounding the turf as my swing spun me around, I dropped to my knees. Looking up I saw even Jimmy holding his sides to stop chuckling. "What the hell was that?"

Babe jogged down from the mound and laughed with a low, sinister voice. "Just a reminder, kid. We're the pros in this league, and you're just a promising amateur." If not for the impish light in his eyes, I'd have figured Babe was mad at me. He slapped Jimmy on the arm and headed into the dugout.

I slowly regained my feet and brushed my knees off. "That ball broke like a Ferrari on Pothole Road."

Jimmy nodded and kicked some of the balls back out toward the mound. "Yeah, well, Babe was just having some fun with you."

"What was that pitch?"

He kicked a ball toward me and I noticed that dirt clung to part of it. "Babe gave you a spitter."

I swore. "And what doyou do when somebody pitches you one of those?"

"Miss like you did…" Jimmy shrugged. "Or hit it on the dry side."

Even though I'd not worked up much of a sweat, the shower felt good. I would have lingered, but Jimmy and I had dates for the evening and the woman I was seeing considered punctuality next to cleanliness in the way of divine attributes. As I was definitely considering dedicating a temple or two to her, I knew better than to keep her waiting. A tall, beer-bellied man with a lopsided smile tossed me a thick white towel as I stepped from the shower. "You went after the spitter. 'Sa nasty pitch." He pounded his own chest proudly. "Fzz able to hit that one."

The man's slightly slurred speech and the partial paralysis of the right side of his body made me uneasy, but I returned his smile. "You're a better man than I, in that case."

Jimmy left the shower and fielded the towel line-drive easily. "That you could, Thumper. You could hit that spitter like it had been in the desert for years." He jerked a thumb at me. "Wolfgang Kies, meet Al Grater. He used to play under Ted Williams for Seattle about ten years back."

My smile broadened. "Yeah, okay, I remember now. You were playing Williams' 1947 season back in '39, weren't you? I actually saw you play. You hit a double, a triple, and a homer in that game."

"The Thumper, 'sme." His brown eyes watched me carefully. " 'Sa good year."

The ragged scar tracking back through his black hair on the left side of his head reminded me of what had happened to him. In the 2040 season he'd been hit by a pitch that, as it turned out, had fractured his skull. He remained up at the plate and hit the next pitch out of the park, but collapsed rounding third. The brain damage hit him as hard as a stroke. The Seadogs management tried to put him back together, but could not, so they let him work around the Dome.

"It was a good year indeed." Babe Ruth draped an arm over Thumper's shoulders. He pointed a fat corona's glowing tip at me and grinned. "That was the year I entered the team's AAA Coastal League franchise, and the last year I ever swung at a spitball."

Jimmy rubbed his towel through his closely cropped, kinky black hair. "You had to throw that pitch because you knew Wolf would have hit anything else you threw at him." Babe winked at me. "True enough. A little seasoning, Wolf, and you could play Wildfire Schulte or Footsie Marcum."

"Thanks, I think."

Jimmy rested his left hand on my right shoulder. "Might want to rethink that, Babe. Wolf isn't wired and he turned the helmet off. He was hitting you all by his lonesome."

Babe blanched a bit, but his jocularity only vanished for a nanosecond. "I'll get someone to get me my '16 statsofts2and then we'll give him a real workout."

I nodded. "You're on." I turned to Jimmy. "We'd best get moving. We don't want to be late."

Jimmy fastened his towel around his slender waist. "I hope you're right about this woman you've got me meeting. I hate blind dates."

I frowned. "It's not really a date. Just drinks and maybe dinner. Wouldn't do that to her or you."

Babe seated himself on the bench by our lockers. "Big night? Where are you going?"

"It's a new place." I grimaced. "It's called ParVenue."

Babe smiled wryly. "Oh, I think you'll love that place, Jimmy. Thinking about asking the boys upstairs to get me a membership there as my next signing bonus."

Jimmy grunted, but I was unsure if he was still uneasy about having a blind date or if something about the club Valerie had chosen irritated him. I looked at Babe and Thumper. "If you two want to come along, I think my connection can get you in."

Babe shook his head. "Not me. Seattle's governor wants the Sultan at some reception she's tossing tonight."

Statsofts are what they call baseball activesofts. They're just like normal activesofts in all respects save that they carry with them a bit of a personality overlay-much the way an activesoft of Hamlet for some actor might carry with it data on how the role was played by this actor or that in the past. Depending on the rev of Hamlet you run, you can be Gibson, Branagh, or Olivier.

"Thumper?"

Al shook his head with a herky-jerky motion. " 'Sa not for me. 'Sides, I got work to do around here. I'm changing all the burned bulbs in the Scoreboard. Want it right for when we beat the San Diego Jaguars."

"Another time then." I opened my locker as they left Jimmy and me alone. I tossed a wink at the picture of Lynn I'd taped to the inside of the door-just keeping with my cover, mind you-and pulled on a pair of khaki slacks. The polo shirt I tugged on over my head was navy blue and had the team's logo emblazoned on the right breast. Sheathing my feet in a pair of nylon Armani-Nike3power trainers and pumping them to snug completed my outfit, then raking a comb through my hair finished my preparations.

Jimmy took a sidelong glance at me and whistled. "Look lots better now than you did in the batting cage."

I jingled the keys of my car at him. "And we'll both look better in the Fenris."

"Then lead on, my friend."

The short tunnel from the locker room brought us directly to the parking lot beneath the stadium. Off to the right, the Fenris lurked like a piece of primordial darkness. All smooth and sleek, it reflected none of the garage's meager light because of a radarbane coating Doctor Raven had sprayed on it. Time seemed to slow as you approached the car, but I figured that was relativity in action because the car looked like it was doing light speed when it was sitting still.

The Fenris even impressed Jimmy. " 'Fifty model, with a twelve-cylinder engine, right?"

I nodded. "Seventy-five hundred klicks on her and still not a dent."

Active wear for the chic. I actually prefer Gucci-Puma sneakers myself-despite the Old One's protests-but part of the licensing deal with the team meant we got this stuff for free, which meant I didn't mind slumming my way into it.

Jimmy ran a hand gently over the top. "Doc Raven must pay very well."

I smiled and keyed open my door. The automatic locks snapped open and Jimmy settled into the passenger seat. "Actually this was a gift from a friend, but Raven has been known to be generous." I smiled openly. "You can bet Ms. Lacy-Mitsuto will pay very well if I can solve your little problem here."

"You find out who's been trying to sabotage our drive for the pennant and money will be no object."

I punched in the ignition sequence, and the dozen cylinders beneath the Fenris' hood started hitting like Murderers' Row. The vehicle's headlights rotated up into position and I shifted the car into gear. "ParVenue, here we come."

Again irritation flickered over Jimmy's face, but I didn't know him well enough to guess what the cause might be. He controlled it and forced himself to relax. "Hey, Wolf, that was nice of you to ask Thumper if he wanted to join us."

"No big deal. He seems like a nice guy. I thought he'd like time away from the Dome."

Jimmy frowned. "He probably would, but I don't think he can exist away from the Dome or the circus environment. He's in deep."

"Like Babe?"

"No." Jimmy shook his head solemnly. "Ken Wilson is in deep by choice. Sure, the Seattle organization planned to draft Babe Ruth and use him, so they wanted someone like Ken whose physiology matched the Babe's right down to length of thumbs and space between the eyes. Ken was groomed to play Babe Ruth since Little League, so making it to the show is the fulfillment of a dream for him."

Coming out of the Dome's parking garage I waved at Thumper, then steered toward downtown Seattle. "Wilson's lucky-he looks enough like Babe Ruth to be his clone."

"He didn't when he started." Jimmy began to scowl. "The man's had more plastic surgery than many elf wannabes. Ken's in deep because he chooses to be in deep. He lets the statsoft ride all the time, and he wears the Babe's identity like a mask."

"I take it, from your tone of voice, you've got a problem with what Ken does?"

Jimmy waved me off. "Not really a problem, but a difference of opinion. Look, when I started playing ball, I was just like you. I played in the streets with the kids from the neighborhood, then I graduated to Little League on a team sponsored by Renraku. My father is a district manager for them and the corps take care of their own. A scout saw me and I got pumped into the Seattle organization, of which Renraku owns a big chunk."

From outside, street lights strobed pinkish highlights on the ebony of Jimmy's nose and forehead. Humanoid shadows scuttled through the darkness surrounding Fourth Avenue South as we shot around the Renraku Arcology. Try as I might, I couldn't make out any signs of where the helicopter had crashed during the Night of Fire, but I'd have expected Renraku to clean up fast, so that didn't surprise me much. By the same token I knew the area of Westlake where I'd seen action that same night had long since been patched up by Tucker and Bors, so the power of corps to heal their wounds was never in question in my mind.

Jimmy's lips peeled back from white teeth in a grin laden with irony. "I really love this game. In fact, I have it written into my contract that I can play in pick-up games whenever I want to-unlike others whose playing time is all tied up by contract."

"Having your father as a suit in the corp hierarchy must help."

"Yeah, it has its advantages." He stretched, placing his palms flat against the dashboard. "Ken stays statsoft-operational all the time because he really wants to be Babe Ruth. Whatever personality Ken originally had has been smothered by his statsoft. Me? I realize that baseball is my life right now, but it won't be forever. I only let a statsoft ride when I'm on the field. Other than that, I'm Jimmy Mackelroy."

I nodded. The Old One, the fragment of the Wolf spirit lurking in my brain, likewise had to be segregated out of my life. Yes, his power and abilities gave me, through magic, what Jimmy got through wired reflexes and cybered eyes. Still, the Old One, with his wild wishes for combat and killing and blood, brought with him a dark side that I could not let run riot. Like Jimmy, I could not let the Old One control me, or I would lose my personality and end up hurting many people.

As those thoughts coursed through my brain, I looked out and saw a nearly full moon flashing through the picket fence of skyscrapers in downtown Seattle. The Old One's howl echoed through my mind.Beware, Longtooth, with the moon comes my power. You retain control for now, but invoke me and I will show you the true way of the warrior.

I shivered and spoke to deflect my thoughts away from the path blazed by the Old One's whisper. "So why is Thumper different from Ken Wilson?"

"Ken has a choice, Thumper doesn't." Jimmy's brown eyes narrowed as bitterness entered his voice. "Al had Ted Williams riding him when his skull was fractured. The brain damage was extensive, and the doctors initially thought he'd never be more than a turnip suitable for organ-harvesting. His sister agreed to pull the plug on him, but she demanded he be allowed to die as Ted Williams. League officials agreed and returned the statsoft to him. That brought Al out of it, though through rehabilitation his personality integrated with that of the statsoft, creating the composite personality of Thumper.

"The corp meat-mechanics refer to him as the first Al in a wet chip. Bastards."

"Amen to that." I whipped the wheel around and pulled into the semi-circular drive in front of the ParVenue. "We're here."

An ork valet opened my door and helped me out. "Be nice to my car and I'll be nice to you," I told him with a smile. He glanced up at me, surly, until he met my eyes. The dark ring surrounding my green irises zapped a little respect into him.

"Yes, sir. Not a scratch, sir."

I nodded happily. What's the purpose of having Killer Rings in your eyes if you can't make use of them? A howl from the Old One rose from the depths of my mind, but I stifled it.Not this time, you old tick hound. Nothing and no one to fight here.

The ParVenue Club had some fairly unique architecture. The drive led to a simple three-story brown-stone facade, much like the one Doctor Raven used as his headquarters. The prefab granite looked suitably weathered to give the building an air of antiquity, and the copper awnings glowed green in an advertisement for building fossilizers. In a high-speed, low-drag world where a venerable genealogy means respectability and virture, this building came off like an old-money family with a virgin daughter.

The door elf, nattily attired in a long, scarlet wool coat with gold braid, smiled cautiously as Jimmy and I approached his station. "Good evening, gentlemen." He turned the word into a title that implied his pleasure at seeing us, though his tense stance and sour glance belied his words.

"Evening, yourself." I gave him a hey-everything-is-cool-here-chummer smile. "You'll want to verify our memberships?"

His tension eased just a microvolt. "Yes, sir, I am afraid I must." He reached back and touched a brick with a white-gloved hand. A panel slid up and the hole in the wall extruded a blocky lucite sheet. I smiled and pressed my right hand to it. A light passed under it and back, then the beeped verification of membership. The elf smiled. "Very good, sir. And this is your guest?"

I speared the man with a questioning glance. "Guest? Mr. Mackelroy is a member." Winking at Jimmy, I waved him forward.

The door elf paled-which is quite a feat for an elf anyway. "I am afraid you might be mistaken, Mr. Kies. He can enter as your guest, but…"

Jimmy hesitated and the door elf looked stricken. "Trust me, gentlemen." I smiled. "Mr. Mackelroy is a member."

"Wolf, I don't know about this," Jimmy murmured.

"Don't worry, Jimmy. Just imagine you're running Jackie Robinson's statsoft."

Jimmy pressed his hand to the printscanner, and the elf didn't hide his surprise at the affirmative beep. He smiled as sheepishly as an elf can. "Welcome to ParVenue, chummers." He swept the door open and smiled. "Locker room is to your left. Your lockers will be in berths four and seven. I've made sure they're upper units."

I stabbed a credstick down into a discreet socket beside the door and zapped him a five-nuyen tip. " 'Predate it, chummer. Don't let the corporators get you down."

"Slot and run," he said with a laugh, then let the oak and glass door slide shut behind us.

As we entered the locker room we saw a single bank of twenty-four lockers facing us. Two of the lockers in the upper row, in slots four and seven, withdrew back into the wall. It left the row looking like some gillette's broken grin for a moment or two, then new lockers slid into place. We both exchanged glances, then shrugged and located our appropriate lockers by the little laminated name plates slotted into them.

I opened mine, then sat down hard on the bench. "Oh, Val, whathave you done?"

"Do we have to wear this stuff?"

"Dress code." I groaned aloud. "Your clothes will fit perfectly. Valerie is pretty sharp, but her taste runs a bit odd."

The ParVenue, being the latest word in virtual country clubs, demanded that its patrons attire themselves appropriately when on the premises. This meant I exchanged my polo shirt for a navy one of a lighter weight and pricier designer label. Over it went a yellow cardigan sweater of a hue I've only seen in snow. The knickers that replaced my pants matched the sweater in color and fastened tight right below my knees. My blue and yellow plaid socks got tucked beneath the knickers, and my pseudo-golf shoes were a merciful black without any spikes.

"I'm not wearing my cap," Jimmy growled.

Oh yeah, my cap was a tarn that matched the socks. In silent agreement with him I sent it flying like a Ms-bee into a wastebasket. "Comes a point when a man just has to put his foot down."

I swung my locker door closed, giving Jimmy his first full look at me. "Wolf, my mother used to dress her poodle in that type of outfit."

I growled at him. "Hold your arms out at your sides and in those red togs you'll look like the poodle's favorite fire hydrant."

"Point taken. Hope these women are worth it."

I caught a glimpse of myself in a wall-mounted mirror. "I'm beginning to doubt it, but let's not keep them waiting, just in case."

As strange as it may seem, Jimmy and I were not the oddest-looking individuals at the club. The corridor leading from the locker room to the bar and restaurant had a glass-walled section that let us look into the huge warehouselike structure onto which the front facade had been grafted.

Jimmy paused and stared out at the people gathered there. "Just think, if they were bees, how much honey they'd be making."

I nodded at his apt analogy. Honeycombed stacks of small golfing stalls rose from ground to ceiling. On the bottom two levels the stark white rooms had golfers fitted with simsense helmets. Little mechanical ball-setters placed golf balls on tees or appropriately angled sections of astroturf. As the players swung through the balls, they blasted them into nets at the other end of their golfcave. One guy, at the far end of the row, endured a driving shower and buffeting winds produced by the chamber as he sought the absolute most in sim-golf experiences.

Just above them golfers also wore simsense helmets, but hit no balls. They still swung their clubs with wild abandon, and one man snapped a putter in half and tossed it down into the net protecting the floors below. Other golfers went through the motions of delicately chipping a shot onto a green, and one man stood with driver in hand, desperately waving at an imaginary ball to get over the imaginary trees and onto the imaginary green.

The top level had smoked-gray caps on the hexagonal rooms. Up there golfers were pulling down simsense data directly from the ParVenue's golf course database. These did not need the challenge of weather and balls and perfect posture or square groove clubs. They played solely in their minds. For them the challenge was besting golf courses in places dreamed up by madmen arid physicists and modeled on the fastest decks available. They might play two holes on the front nine from the Sea of Tranquility, then shift to a course imagined for the blazing surface of Venus. Changes of gravity and density of atmosphere were their enemies.

I saw one golfer on the lower level miss his shot and twist around before falling to his knees. "Do they have spitballs in golf?"

Jimmy shrugged. "I dunno. Maybe that was a water hazard."

I smiled and led the way to the bar. We passed two soaking wet guys who were swapping stories about playing the club's simulation of the Burning Tree course during Hurricane Felicia and I spotted our dates immediately. Of course I didn't know any of the half-dozen men watching them from the bar and surrounding tables, but I gathered neither did the women, and they liked that situation just fine.

I smiled at Lynn Ingold and gave her a hug and a kiss as I reached the table. She'd braided her copper hair, and the braid dangled down the front of her white blouse to the tip of her left breast. Her pert nose and quick smile combined with bright green eyes and a scattering a freckles to make her seem full of elven mischief from back in the days when that didn't mean gunfire and magic. The top of her head came up to my nose, and my arm fit around her shoulders as if we'd been designed as a set.

"Jimmy Mackelroy, this is Lynn Ingold and that is probably your greatest fan in all of Seattle. Valerie Valkyrie, meet Jimmy Mackelroy."

Val is normally quick-witted and I expected a verbal jab for my introduction of her, but she was awestruck enough to just ignore me. Like Jimmy, she was of African-American descent, but her blue eyes and cafe-au-lait complexion suggested a liberal dose of other things in her bloodline as well. She wore her brown hair pulled back into a ponytail. Taller than Lynn, but with the same slender, long-legged figure, she was sufficiently gorgeous to make the Pope reconsider his vow of celibacy.

In fact, if not for the barely noticeable jack behind her left ear, she'd have been the picture of the sort of fashion model Jimmy dated, according to the tabloid trid.

Jimmy took her right hand in his. "I am very pleased to meet you, finally."

That shook Val out of her trance. "Finally?"

Jimmy smiled. "Section seven, row five, seat twelve. You've got the whole box, paid for and all. Everyone on the team has been curious, but the team's deckers can't find out who you are." Val blushed and sat down. "Oh, that, well…"

"Jimmy," I said, nodding toward Valerie. "She's the reason we're members here. Could your father's deckers do that?"

"No, I don't think they could." His smile broadened as he glanced from Val to me. "I guess now I'm going to owe you a favor."

"Excuse me?"

Jimmy smiled sheepishly. "Remember when we met you said you'd owe me a favor? Well, introducing me to Ms. Valkyrie here fulfills that and then some. Oh, and dinner and drinks are on me-the team had a pool collected for the first man to learn her name."

All of us laughed, easing a bit of the nervousness Valerie clearly felt. It struck me as funny because I knew she was bold enough to deck her way into even the most secure of corporate databases without even a hint of anxiety. With other deckers, the problem would have been just trying to interface with something that wasn't silicon-based, but Val's never been a social disaster. She was really taken with Jimmy and almost paralyzed because of it.

Lynn clearly sensed the same thing in Valerie and took the conversation initiative before any silence could become awkward. "Jimmy, I've never been able to get Wolf to tell me how you actually met. I know he's helping you now, but I gathered you've known each other since before that."

Jimmy nodded easily and leaned forward onto the table. "You remember the night when the gangs all went nuts and blew up that apartment complex?"

Lynn nodded. She knew of it in die same way that almost everyone else in Seattle did-by what she heard on the trid and read in the newsfax. This meant she had no idea about my involvement in the events of that evening. As she's a pacifist who never seemed too interested in trying to find out exactly what I do in working with Doctor Raven, I never felt inclined to give her a blow-by-blow description of what had happened that night. Not that I repeated stories of that night all that often-describing almost dying leaves something to be desired.

"About a week later, at the Dome, I saw this guy leaning against my car. I wasn't getting a clean read off him, but he didn't seem overtly dangerous. He introduced himself as Wolf and asked if I'd be willing to make a personal appearance at a pizza place downtown." Jimmy shrugged. "I almost referred him to my agent to blow him off, which is what I normally do."

Before Jimmy could continue his story, a man who had managed to create a fashion atrocity within the strictures of the club's dress code sauntered over to our table and lightly slapped Jimmy on shoulder. "Jimmy Mackelroy, isn't it?"

Jimmy nodded and shook the man's proffered hand. "And you are?"

"Phil Knobson. I own the Mitsu dealership over in Bellvue. Ace Mitsubishi. Heard of it?"

Jimmy thought for a second, then shook his head. "Sorry, but I put most things out of my mind during the season, you know?"

"Yeah," the man replied automatically as he waved a woman over. Her outfit matched Phil's and I started looking for a phone to call the haute couture police. "This is my wife, Maggie. Maggie, this is Jimmy Mackelroy. I've told you about him, right?"

Maggie nodded, her blond perm as stiff as an acrylic spider web. "Phil, he never misses your games."

"So, look, Jimmy, I'm thinking we can do some business. You come down to the shop, we cut an ad or two, and I make you a sweet deal on a new car, you know?"

Jimmy stood slowly, continuing to smile as he towered over the salesman. "I think that's worth talking about, Phil, but right now I'm here with my friends, you know."

"Sure, sure, I gotcha. Look, why don't we all go to dinner? My treat." Phil glanced at the rest of us, then looked back up at Jimmy. I let the Old One's dislike of Phil and his plastic wife bleed into my voice. "Actually, we were going to be dining outside the club, Phil. A private party."

Phil didn't get my message, but his wife did and gently tugged on her husband's shirt. "Honey, let's let these nice folks get back to their party, okay?"

Phil looked at Maggie as if her suggestion was a wild pitch, but when he glanced at Jimmy he saw that Jimmy had blasted it out of the park. "Yeah, okay, well, look, can I call you?"

"Just call the team office and they'll direct you to my agent. She arranges all those things." Jimmy shook Phil's hand again. "I'm sure we can work something out."

"Right. Have a good night, folks."

As they departed, Valerie shivered. "When I get home, his credit rating will die."

Jimmy smiled. "If you can do that, I can guarantee you a lot of business from the other players on the team."

Lynn raised an eyebrow. "That doesn't happen very often, does it?"

"More often than I'd like to admit, I'm afraid." Jimmy shrugged and jerked his head in my direction. "When anyone approaches me I have to be thinking 'What does he want me to buy? What's in it for him?' That's really tough, especially when it's a kid wanting an autograph, because dealers are known to use kids to get players to sign holopics they later sell for big nuyen. Most of the time folks are just nervous and genuine, but there are clunkers in the bunch."

Lynn covered my left hand with her right and gave it a squeeze. "So what did you think Wolf wanted when you first met him?"

"He was different. None of this fake camaraderie or an apologetic 'You don't know me, but…' He just introduced himself and asked, explaining he'd already told someone else I'd do the signing. Most folks would have then tried to play on my sympathies, begging me to get them off the hook. Wolf just said, 'If you're willing, great, if not I'll have to think of something else.' "

I grinned sheepishly. "You remember it better than I do, I think. I seem to recall some stammering on my part."

"No, man, you were cool." Jimmy chuckled lightly. "Instead of wanting something from me, Wolf was giving me a chance to do something nice for someone. I asked him what was in it for me, and he just smiled like he is now. He said he didn't have much, but he'd owe me. I got the feeling that being in his debt wasn't a bad thing at all."

Lynn gave me a peck on the cheek. "It's not been for me."

Jimmy smiled, then nodded to me. "At least he treated me like a human being. Too many players get tightly identified with the players whose statsoft they use. I guess it's like trid actors being identified by their roles instead of their true names. For the guys who like that, it's great-Babe being a fine example of that. For the rest of us, it's a pain."

Lynn frowned. "I guess I don't understand why you have to use statsofts when you play."

Valerie's eyes brightened. "It's really not that hard to follow, Lynn. Back toward the end of the twentieth century baseball started slipping in popularity. A devastating players' strike and a number of betting scandals rocked the game. Because players and managers were betting on games and seen as grossly overpaid, fans started deserting. Baseball officials reacted, taking serious steps. For example, one of the greats, Pete Rose, was banned from the game and initially barred from election to the Hall of Fame because of gambling. Baseball also tried expansion, interleague play, and radical realignment to bring the fans back, but it only slowed the slide. They needed something to reverse it and that need, coupled with two other things, set up the current system."

Her earlier nervousness banished as we got into a discussion of baseball, she laid out the thinking behind the current system like a professor lecturing from her dissertation. "When the world changed and magic came back, and with the rise of bioware and cyberware, the potential for rigging games really spiked. Something had to be done to combat that eventuality. At the same time sabermetricians had managed to reduce the game to a stack of stats, and with the proper program you could produce a box score that would be very close to what the true outcome of the game would be."

Val held her left hand open, palm up, then made the same gesture with her right hand. "At roughly the same time a great nostalgia for baseball hit. Old-timers' games and replays of old championship series became very popular. The filmField of Dreams and its holovid sequels made lots of money. Suddenly the corps that owned baseball got a great idea."

She brought her hands together, her fingers interlaced. "The Hall of Fame produces statsofts for all the players who ever played the game. Teams bid for the services of players in certain years of their careers- guaranteeing a statistical level of performance-and the teams play. It's possible to have Babe Ruth from 1916 pitching to himself from 1927, for example, and that makes for a very exciting game."

Lynn shrugged. "But that could be done with a computer simulation. Why do they need players?"

Jimmy nodded. "Good question. They use us mules because we can get broken, which introduces an element into the game that a computer simulation can't really cover."

"Even so, aren't the outcomes preordained- statistically speaking?"

I gave Lynn's hand a squeeze. "They would be except for players like Jimmy here. He's a Legacy player."

"What's that?"

Jimmy hesitated and Val answered for him. "There are some players in the annals of major league baseball who never had the chance to play enough games to pro- vide a solid statistical base to make them a good player. The teams bid a lot of money for the headline players, like Babe Ruth and Tom Seaver, then fill out their roster with lesser known players. Legacy players come after that, and their identities are kept secret. That injects more chance into the game and allows folks to guess at who their favorite players are."

She reached over and gently slapped the back of Jimmy's hand. "Last year I thought you were playing Luscious Luke Easter from 1953, but this year, I don't know. This season you could be Red Lutz in 1922 or Bobby Lowe from 1894."

"Good guesses all." Jimmy smiled at her and I saw Val blush. "Luke Easter was a great player. I'd like to think,if I were playing him, I could do him justice."

So would management, and that was the basic problem I'd been asked to help solve. The team wasn't playing up to their averages. Everyone was off their statistical average and even though a few players, like Jimmy, were doing better than they should have, the overall effect was to take the edge off Seattle and that spelled disaster in the upcoming pennant battle with the San Diego Jaguars.

Jimmy leaned forward and brought his voice down into a conspiratorial whisper. "Look, this place is making my skin crawl. Shall we get out of here?"

"Sure. We can catch something to eat down the street."

Jimmy's face brightened. "You know, I'd just as soon head over to that pizza joint on Westlake you talked me into visiting."

Val looked slightly stricken. "The Dominion place across from the Jackal's Lantern?"

I waved her concern off. "Don't worry, Val. The prevailing breeze blows from Dominion toward the Lantern and not vice versa." I stood and pulled Lynn's chair out for her. "How did you get down here?"

"Val gave me a ride."

Valerie smiled as Jimmy held her chair for her. "Lynn, why don't you go with Wolf. I'll drive Jimmy, if that's okay with you?"

"I'd be delighted," he replied to her and I had no doubts he would indeed.