As soon as he showed signs of stirring, she put away her meal and bent to check his vital signs. His pulse was steady and much stronger now, and his pupils normal, He winced when she raised his eyelids; that was a good sign. He’d be awake before long. She settled down, out of his immediate line-of-sight. Awakening bandaged and under a sun shade would be disorienting enough without her furry image being the first thing he saw.
It took several minutes, but he did open his eyes, blinking them rapidly in confusion, As he started to sit up, she reached out a hand and laid it on his shoulder to force him to lie still.
“Take it easy, dear,” she said in her most soothing tones. “You’ve had a tough time and shouldn’t be moving about yet. You nearly died.”
Without turning to look at her, he said, “I thought I did.”
“You should have, with those wounds.” She moved around where he would be able to see her. To her surprise, his eyes remained placid, his expression calm. Her size was intimidating enough, but most norms reacted to her fangs and talons as though she might eat them on the spot. She had always found that reaction amusing. This man was acting like he was in shock, though her treatment should have removed any physical reason for his detachment. She hoped his spirit hadn’t fled too far to be healed; he was wanted elsewhere. “You’re lucky I found you when I did. If you’d been exposed much longer, even my healing song wouldn’t have helped.”
“Healing song?” he asked weakly.
“Yuh, healing song. It’s what we shamans do when we attend a sick or injured person. You don’t think someone bounces back like you did just from some antibiotics.” She raised one hand, which held a hypodermic. “Though they help. Lie still now and this will only hurt a little.”
He didn’t even quiver as she inserted the needle. He just lay there staring at her, his soft hazel eyes thoughtful and curious but calm as a mountain lake. “He waited until she had stowed the syringe away in her bag before he spoke, his voice stronger now.”
“Who… what are you?”
“Tactful fellow,” she sniffed. “My name’s Jacqueline. I’m what you would probably call a Sasquatch.”
His brow furrowed. “Never heard of a white Sasquatch. Or one that could talk either.”
“My, my, we are parochial. We Sasquatch were certified as a sentient species by the United Nations Advisory Council on Metahumanity in 2042. That august body did not find our inability to use Human languages to be a barrier, and our delegates still did not have even the Perkins-Athabascan, sign language to rely on. Since then, some of us have taken advantage of the benefits of technology.” She pulled back the mane-like fur around her head to reveal a gleaming data-jack. A permanent skillsoft cap protruded and a pair of wires lay against her dark skin and burrowed through the fur in the direction of her neck. “It’s a custom job. A Renraku speech synthesizer linked to a Mitsuhama expert system capable of translation between symbolic concept and verbal expression. The software has got an idiom-handling subprogram that’s a bit idiosyncratic, but it does help smooth out the rough spots. Still, I think that it’s much more socially acceptable to say ‘Pass the vegetables’ instead of ‘Me food want.’ Don’t you agree?
“As to the fur color, do you think were all black-furred like those yokels from the coastal forests? That would be awfully boring and hardly in keeping with reasonable expectations of adaptive biology. Up north in the Yukon where I was born, white fur is common. Useful for camouflage in the snow, I suppose.”
He seemed satisfied with her answer. Several minutes passed quietly. She was content to check astrally on the progress of his healing.
“What are you doing here?”
“Taking care of you, my boy.”
A flash of irritation crossed his face. “No. How did you come to be here?”
“Pretty much the same answer, really. I was looking for you.” She watched his annoyance shift to suspicious concern. His emotional guard was down, Lowered by her drugs and spells. Reading him was almost too easy.
“Why?” he asked.
She smiled at him, remembering not to let too many teeth show. “Let’s just say it was business.”
“A bounty hunter,” he said acidly.
“Now, that is jumping to a nasty conclusion. As to how I came to be here, I’d rather not get into specifics.”
His eyes went hard.
“Yuh, O.K.,” she said in a conciliatory tone. “I’m just doing my job. Even Sasquatches have to work for a living, you know. I do what my boss tells me, and my boss, he tells me to find this guy calling himself Twist. Says he wants this guy alive and healthy. That he’s got a few words he wants to put into this Twist’s ears.”
“Who do you work for?”
“Genomics.” She smiled inwardly at the confusion that brought to his face.
“But that’s…”
“I know, dear. How do you think we found out about you?”
“What do you want with me?”
“That is a rather complicated matter and I think I’ll let my boss explain.” Sam’s sour look made her decide to add, “Lets’s just say that he is a possessive sort and that your, shall we say, enquiries brought a certain matter to his attention. Before he acted, he wished to know if you had other information he might find useful. He seemed to believe you might have, shall we say, interests coincident with his in this matter. He wants to have a chat, so he sent me to fetch you.
“I was a bit tardy in locating you in San Francisco and, by the time I had identified your, ah, residence, you had departed in Mr. Begay’s panzer. How unfortunate that the feathered worm found him first. But fortune is fickle, and she let me find you before those mercenaries did. They would surely have taken you to Mr. Drake, if they didn’t kill you on the spot.
“So now, once you’ve recovered a bit more, you and I will travel to Quebec. I’m taking you to meet my boss.”
“I look forward to it,” Sam said with a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “But for now, you got any water?”
She fetched a canteen and held his head up to drink. “Not too much at once,” she cautioned.
He was quiet then for some time, but still quite awake, She debated giving him a sedative to make the travel easier, Finally, his eyelids began to droop as he succumbed to exhaustion.
“You going to do your healing song again?” His worth were soft and slurred.
“If necessary.”
“I want to be awake when you do.”
“Yuh, sure.”
He grunted his satisfaction with her answer, then closed his eyes and slept.
That was just as well, for he needed rest. It would be another day before it was safe to move him to the chopper. Besides, she wasn’t sure she wanted him to hear her healing song.
While doing her magic, Jaq had gotten an inkling of Sam’s power. His aura was strong, reacting and shifting defensively during her ministrations. But she sensed that the activity was instinctive and as yet unfocused. The discovery tickled her curiosity because neither the dossier nor the Renraku records she had mentioned him being magically active. More curious still was that he carried a case with instruction chips designed for someone following the path of a hermetic mage. Her sensing of his potential seemed to indicate more a tendency to her own shamanic path.
Satisfied that he was deeply asleep, she gave him another shot, a tranquilizer. She didn’t want him awake until they reached their destination. After making sure he was well-covered, she walked to the edge of the mesa and stared out over the badlands. She wanted to think about this.
She stripped off the bogus speech synthesizer, scratching at the itch the adhesive raised, then groomed her mane smooth. From her satchel, she took the bundle of pics that had been bound to Verner’s chip case. The old photographs were stained and warped from their exposure to storm and mud, but the newer pics on their plastic film were still in good shape. The images were mostly snapshots, with a few formal portraits of varying vintages. They seemed to be ordinary family pictures, a chronicle of people and events that had been part of Verner’s life. They would, of course, have to be analyzed for hidden data.
Stuffing the pics away, she took out the chip case and turned it over in her hands. It too would be analyzed, but she suspected that, as with the pics, nothing of note would be found. At least nothing hidden. Among the instructional chips there was a Bible. Most magicians, whatever their magical tradition, had little to do with organized religion.
Then there was the Narcoject, a pacifist’s weapon. Not a common choice among shadowrunners, but then this one was new to the underside. He was a curious fellow, full of contradictions. Such a personality was rarely predictable or reliably controlled. Verner hardly seemed a suitable pawn for her master’s game.