Part 8 (1/2)
”What it means is one of two things. If they weren't expecting anything else and didn't want to check the package you sent from the Crescent, they made the payment by electronic transfer. Or else they collected the package and then paid you. If so, they collected it within, oh, say, ten minutes. No way would Registration Services have been able to deliver it that fast. Someone must have been there waiting.”
”Maybe Registration Services checked it for them, then notified them and paid me.”
”No way. These people get paid precisely because they don't check packages. Strictly monkey see nothing, hear nothing, say nothing. For one thing, checking the package would risk having to deal with the official licensing ha.s.sles.” Geraint stood again and strode back to his console. ”Let's have a look at the record.”
The printout took two seconds, since he knew exactly what he was looking for in the data. ”Well, I never. Package is recorded as delivered by hand and received at eleven forty-four. Same time receipt and dispatch. Someone was there to collect it. Now, don't tell me they were hanging around all day on the off chance you might come up trumps after a no-show at yesterday's meeting. Seems to me like someone knew when you would be delivering.”
There was a long silence, broken by Serrin's next query. ”Is there an address in the file, a forwarding address of any sort?”
”No forwarding address. They have to give a home address, though, for administrative purposes.” Geraint sounded almost scornful. ”Good old-fas.h.i.+oned British red tape has its uses for deckers sometimes. All that admin needs a lot of data storage. Unfortunately, it's somewhere in Goiania.”
”Where the frag's Goiania?” Serrin said.
”It's a tiny oasis of, oh, about six million down the road from Brasilia.” He remembered it because he'd gotten lucky with transactions on some of the last of the minerals down there. ”Did, um, Smith and Jones strike you as, ah, South American in any way?”
”Are you kidding? About as much as your old granny.” Francesca joined in the smiles at that.
They were stymied for the moment. Geraint suggested that one of them could visit Registration Services with a hefty bribe, but that probably wouldn't work. One whiff of indiscretion and such an agency was dead. On the other hand, their ilk sprang up like weeds every day. If one got a bad name among the corporations, all they had to do was relocate somewhere else in the city under a new one. Maybe there was a chance after all.
The one final worry was that Serrin's employers must, at the very least, have had a spy at the Crescent Hotel. Seeing the elf arrive there, or maybe just bribing a hotel clerk to alert him to that fact, the spy could have gotten over to Registration Services by the time the package arrived.
They were stuck again, and sat looking at each other blankly for a bit. Finally Serrin shrugged and began to ask Francesca what she'd been doing while he and Geraint were getting shot at over the weekend. After a long pause, she described her encounters with the bizarre figure in the Matrix, but she was obviously avoiding the details.
”I've never seen anything like it before. After the first time I thought about hunting him down, but after the second, I think I'd prefer not to see him again. ” She gave a little s.h.i.+ver. ”I haven't a.n.a.lyzed my deck to find out where he went the second time. I was so busy hunting I didn't really register the SAN I'd pa.s.sed. My deck will have the information, though. The first time the b.a.s.t.a.r.d went into the Transys Neuronet subsystem, which is not somewhere I really want to stick my pretty little nose.”
Just then Serrin had a moment of complete illumination, almost an epiphany. Slapping one hand to his forehead, he shushed Francesca, then leaned back dramatically in his chair. Spreading his arms wide, he managed to avoid falling backward solely by the expedient of getting his feet stuck under the table. As he struggled to regain his balance and composure, the other two broke into gales of laughter. When they finally stopped, the mage revealed what he'd understood at last.
”Look, this is important. I just realized something. I told you that what I was doing at Cambridge was a waste of time, yes? Astral checks, watchers, detections around all the places-Fuchi, Renraku, ATT, Parawatch, blah di b.l.o.o.d.y blah. But why was I watching those people? What I should have seen was who I wasn't watching.
”Transys Neuronet is out at Over, just north of Longstanton. I wasn't asked to check them.”
The druid shaman's words floated back into Serrin's mind: bad energies, a place north of the Fuchi complex. Same place?
It didn't take Geraint long to download maps and files. They spread them out across the table, pus.h.i.+ng the swath of greasy plates onto a service trolley and rolling back the linen tablecloth.
Serrin pointed out various locations on the first map. ”Look at this other stuff. Strictly small time. And right on the edge of the Stinkfens and who the h.e.l.l would want to be there? Cost a fortune in detox if you wanted anything serious. Fly-by-night places. Probably making demitech and dodgy cyberware.” Serrin's mind was beginning to race now. ”Transys is the only important target I wasn't asked to check. Now I'm beginning to wonder.”
They each chased their own thoughts for a time, trying to put it all together. After a while, Geraint slapped his hands on the table. ”What have we got?” he said. ”Francesca chases something wild into the Transys subsystem here in London. But it was something she met purely by accident. So what?”
Francesca disagreed. ”Who says I met it by accident? And don't forget, the second time I was specifically asked not to enter any other system apart from the Fuchi subsidiary where I was virus-dumping.”
”Fuchi?” Serrin hadn't heard any of the details of Francesca's run. There hadn't been time yet. ”But we were out at a Fuchi installation.”
”Unbidden. No one asked us to go,” Geraint observed dryly. ”But let's say, just for the sake of argument, that it was Transys paying you. That's why they didn't want you snooping around their place.”
”Yeah, okay, but why? They have mages a darn sight fancier than me. So why bring me all the way from Seattle to snoop somewhere just down the road from one of their own research labs, and in a totally pointless way?”
”I don't know the answer to that,” Francesca said, ”but just as you were told, implicitly, that Transys was a no-go area, so was I, indirectly.” Francesca was beginning to look more alive and alert. ”What about that?”
”And we all ended up with something related to Fuchi.” Serrin was chasing that theme again. ”So, is Transys hiring us to shaft Fuchi? Poisoning a Matrix system and taking pot-shots at a big wheel at Longstanton?”
”n.o.body asked us to get Kuranita,” Geraint insisted. He just couldn't see a way past that. ”And what about those other poor sods who got burned at Longstanton?
Did Transys hire people for a raid that hadn't a hope in h.e.l.l? Strange thing to do, paying people to make a complete hash of everything. Francesca was hired to make a real hit, which she did. It just doesn't match up.” Geraint retreated to the coffee maker.
The argument went on for at least two more hours, but they just kept treading over the same territory and running into the same blocks.
By the time the sky had washed from gray to black over the rain-lashed streets of London, Francesca had begun to stifle a series of yawns. Serrin, meanwhile, had begun to cough heavily, getting almost red in the face.
”You need something for that,” Geraint said, heading for the bathroom.
”Yeah, it didn't get any better in the Stinkfens.” Serrin turned his chair around to face the departing figure. ”If it hadn't been for that lady I'd probably have died of pneumonia.”
When Geraint returned he was carrying a big gla.s.s bottle filled with viscous brown liquid.
”What the frag is that?” the mage complained as he took the bottle. ”Dr. Jerome Browne's Original Victorian Cough Syrup. This some kind of joke?”
”No, dear boy. Most a.s.suredly not. Prescription only. Works like a charm. Uses a tried and true recipe from East Anglia. That land has always been thick with mists and general unhealthiness, and this stuff was all the rage two hundred years ago. The original mix came back on the market a few years back. I swear by the stuff.”
”Swear at it more likely. It smells like some monster with killer gut-trouble got this bottle stuck up its-”
”Shut up and take a good mouthful, you coward,” Geraint taunted.
The elf complied, spluttering and pulling a disgusted face at the filthy taste. ”Oh, that's evil. Are you sure it works? ”
”Just wait and see.” The n.o.ble did not think it prudent to tell Serrin that the original recipe included laudanum and a nice shot of opium to soothe the inflamed membranes of the lung lining. By the time Geraint had put on his overcoat to go check out the contact address, his two friends were both sound asleep in the chairs where they sat.
The man flicked at a grease spot on his tie with a vestige of irritation as his subordinate pa.s.sed through the automatic door. The waiting game was almost over.
”What was in the report?”
”Oh, very punctilious. Dates, times, places, expenses. He'd make a wonderful bureaucrat.”
The figure lounging in the recliner snorted derisively. ”Doubt it. Indeed, we're hoping that's precisely what he wouldn't make. Did they make checks?”
”Uh-huh. Checked the Registration Services system. We triggered the Jones file when the Welshman came browsing. He grabbed it from limbo, thinking he was being real clever.”
Sniffing and exhaling, the older man brought his hands together in his lap, a study in concentration now.
”Well, there really shouldn't have been anything in there. I think it would have been too much to leave any trail in that file. They'd have smelled a rat.”
”What do you think they'll do?”
”They've got lots of avenues to explore, but I doubt Ms. Young will be doing much Matrix-hopping. We sit tight. It won't be long now anyway.”