Streets of blood

2

Serrin woke with a start.

Seven-thirty. The familiar and unchanging BBC voice, anonymous for generations, was reading off the mundane litany of disaster that comprised world news. The only good thing, the elf thought groggily, was that the BBC was less parochial than the American broadcasts he was used to. You actually did get world news and not just what happened in your city, tribe, or state in the previous twenty-four hours.

He yawned and stretched his whole body until his hamstring gave him a twinge, reminding him not to push it too far. That thought had distracted him from the first part of what the BBC voice was saying about some five murders in London last night, somewhat above the average. The part he caught was about a particularly messy murder of a prostitute in the East End, hardened policeman turning white or green or similar implausible shades, blah blah, blah. Serrin reached for the remote and ran his fingers over the buttons to switch to trideo. The picture shimmered into focus instantly-not bad for an average hotel box-only to show some airhead prancing around a weather display that suggested Britain was doomed both to rain and garbage breakfast entertainment for some months to come. He eased his long legs over the edge of the bed and creaked to his feet.

"Message for you, Mr. Shamandar,” the telecom crackled with a cheerfulness utterly unsuited to such an hour of a British morning.

"Thanks, go ahead,” Serrin wheezed, spluttering back his thick, early-morning cough.

"Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones cordially invite you to a business breakfast in the Chippendale Suite at nine o’clock. They politely request that you be prompt. Thank you for taking this message." The voice squeaked into silence.

Serrin headed for the bathroom opposite the bed, and wrenched the tub’s brass hot-water tap into life. One of the few things he appreciated about Brits was the ambivalent quality of hotel baths: lots of towels, excellent, subtly perfumed soaps, and appalling plumbing and cold bathrooms. The chill guaranteed that you’d want to stay in the hot water of the bath purely to survive. The plumbing, however, guaranteed that every bathtime was something of an adventure; would you get enough hot water to fill the respectably large tubs before it ran lukewarm?

Francesca had told him that it was solely the principle of the thing that made Brits refuse to use decent chiptech in their hot-water systems. Baths, they seemed to think, shouldn’t be enjoyed too much. It offended their puritanical asceticism. At the time he’d assumed that it had more to do with plain, old-fashioned British inefficiency. Strange that thoughts of Francesca should cross his mind now. It had been five years since they had last met.

With a tug at his heart that he hadn’t felt for a long time, the elf remembered holding a terrified young woman outside a restaurant full of corpses in San Francisco. Closing his eyes, he sank into the welcoming warmth of the water as a wave of memory brought back the sweet smell of her fresh-washed hair against his face. Serrin rarely thought about women, nor did he linger on the topic now. He leaned back against thedeep tub, turning his thoughts to business and to the fact that the accommodations the suits had chosen for him did not reveal much about them. The Crescent Hotel was neither real class nor the fake kind for Americans and Japanese with more money than true discernment; it was simply a reasonably good place to stay. He guessed that the pair would not give much away in the breakfast meeting, either, that there might be some cat-and-mouse about this job. I’ll worry about that later, he thought. Right now, it’s time to soak these bones and get out some of the jet lag.

“Thank you for being so prompt, Mr. Shamandar.” The pudgy hand gripped his with routine corporate strength; not weak, not strong, just an in-between reassurance.

The Chippendale Suite could have seated twenty in ample comfort, so whoever was behind Messrs. Smith and Jones wasn’t worried about their expense credsticks. The serving table groaned under the weight of a very traditional British breakfast: bacon, kidneys, smoked herring in butter, scrambled eggs in a great silver bowl, poached eggs in salvers, acres of toast that would be as cold as the chill gray morning, yellow butter in white dishes, thick and distressingly dark marmalade, preserves, urns of tea the color of boot polish, and silver pots of Colombian coffee, enough to feed an army of the urchins roaming the streets of the South London Squeeze zone. They’d have died young from gamma-cholesterol furring up their arteries, but then those urchins had a very low life-expectancy anyway.

Serrin turned his mind back to the matter at hand and heaped a Wedgwood plate with bacon and eggs, hoping that the steam rising from the yellowed eggs would live up to the promise of some residual heat in them. The suits settled for coffee, toast, and what the jar label claimed to be Scottish raspberry jam. The mage vaguely recalled some blight having wiped out Scottish fruit-farming several years ago, but maybe the druids of the Wild Lands in the Grampians had restored the land of late.

The leaner suit, Jones, saturnine and with an almost polished skin, interrupted Serrin’s meandering thoughts. "We require a skilled operative to conduct some low-risk surveillance, sir."

The opening gambit was not unexpected: nice and vague. Serrin nodded without speaking. Let them come to the point.

"Our client has an interest in a certain key area of research," Jones went on. “And such research is being conducted in facilities in a city not far from London. Naturally, our client observes the proprieties, while aiming to conduct multimodality surveillance.”

Serrin winced mentally, hoping it hadn’t shown on his face. Where did these people learn to speak like this? He nodded once again, gratified to find that the eggs had retained just enough heat to warm the toast.

“It would not be frank to fail to apprise you that our client has initiated observations in the cybersphere.”

Cybersphere? Come on, chummers, cut the gibberish. I know what computerized snooping is and I’m sure you’ve hired a good decker. But what do you want from me?

The other man, Smith, took up the patter. As he began to speak, Serrin was intrigued by the small ruby embedded into one of the man’s teeth. Not exactly standard-issue for a faceless British corporate mouthpiece.

"Our client is anxious that these observations be enhanced by magical surveillance," Smith was saying. “Our client is aware of your reputation in such matters. He has heard among the knowledgeable that you are one who can deal with watchers. If I may put it so, those spirits who exist in the etheric plane in astral space. At least, this is what I gather that philosophers on such matters say."

Smith and Jones exchanged token smiles and then turned back to face Serrin. They’ve got their act down pat, the mage thought. They should be exchanging banter with Barry Dando on whatever the lame Brit equivalent is of the late-night talk show, not pushing this crap. Who do they think they’re kidding with watchers? Anyone into serious research will have hermetics, mages on the company payroll, who’ll make damn sure nothing so simple can crack anything that matters.

"Of course," Jones continued slickly, as Smith smoothed an errant strand of hair over his balding head, “those corporate interests that are developing research along the lines in which our client has a primary interest will be vigilant regarding the possibility of watchers being used as observers. Our client would regard such vigilance as a positive sign that those very corporations are developing research along lines in which our client is interested. In short, we want you to use watchers as a lure to test the defenses of certain corporations."

Jones sat back, then lunged forward to grab the coffee pot. There was a twitchiness about the gesture that told Serrin coffee wasn’t the only Colombian export Jones had ingested that morning. It had been so long since his last visit to this country that he’d almost forgotten people here still got high on drugs rather than dreamchips. It amazed him that people were so willing to destroy their bodies and minds.

Smith took up the conversation again in an oily, ingratiating tone. “This is not a demanding task, Mr. Shamandar. However, you must be aware that the unfortunate official restrictions under which we live in Britain require that we look beyond our own shores for able operatives to carry out the tasks requested by clients such as ours.”

Serrin was growing more annoyed by the minute. Why had they brought him all this way just to beat around the bush? Looking down, he saw that he’d dolloped marmalade onto what remained of his eggs. He decided to brazen it out. It didn’t taste good.

"Our client offers one thousand nuyen per day, plus expenses.” The fat man sat back, looking smug. The tiny gem glittered in his mouth, adding fake glamour to his crocodile smile.

“Fifteen hundred,” Serrin said curtly. ‘‘The work may seem easy, but experts don’t come cheap.” Serrin thought he might be pushing his luck, but he wanted to test the responses of these unflappable suits. To his surprise, Smith agreed at once.

“Very well. You drive a hard bargain, sir. Fifteen hundred was the limit allowed by our client. You will begin work tomorrow. At five o’clock this afternoon, we will have delivered to you a list of the sites we wish you to survey. You will spend an initial period of one week conducting surveillance and then report to us, both orally and in writing, in nine days’ time. We are authorized to give you this.” Smith handed Serrin a roseate hard plastic rod that he’d retrieved from the recesses of his immaculate Saville Row suit. “This is good for twelve thousand nuyen, plus three thousand for travel and other incidental expenses. You will not need to provide receipts unless you exceed that sum and wish to claim the balance from our client. Your hotel bill will be covered by our client, who wishes you to stay here each night rather than in Cambridge, where your research will be conducted. That will help prevent detection of your work. You can confirm the sum the credstick authorizes in the credit analyzer in the hotel lobby if you wish.”

The suits were rising to their feet now, Smith sweeping away some toast crumbs from the expanse of waistcoat stretched over his ample belly. Jones shook Serrin’s hand with exactly the same pressure Smith had applied. “Please enjoy your day. We look forward to seeing you again.” With that, the men swept out of the suite.

Serrin drained the coffee pot, adding just a little of the slightly yellowed cream from the jug, which spilled some of its contents over the starched linen tablecloth each time it was used.

This was too easy. The fixer had agreed too readily to a fifty percent increase; the credstick had already been cut on that basis. They knew him, they knew watchers were his specialty. Serrin had the feeling that somehow he was being used. But for fifteen hundred nuyen and for a job that couldn’t possibly present any danger, he couldn’t imagine that it was a sucker deal.

Could he?

Jones rubbed his chin as he leaned back in the passenger seat of the Toyota Elite. He looked over at the fat man hurriedly tapping the scrambling code into the portacom link, holding his thumb tightly over the scanner as it checked his thumbprint ID. Smith jacked in the electrodes from the link so the portacom could make the backup brainwave-scan ID check, then fumbled the telecom code into the pad. The screen flickered and registered entry of the code.

With a grunt, Smith checked off the portacom and reached for the ignition. As the car began to purr gently, Jones reached into an inside pocket and drew out a small plastic case.

“They got the confirming code, so we’re done with work for the day. A little boost?"

“Don’t mind if I do,” Smith smirked as a bead of sweat ran down from his pallid forehead. His bulbous nose twitched slightly in anticipation, emphasizing the tiny broken red veins. He took the tiny chip greedily, turning it over and over in his hand. "Morpheus hallmark. That’s what I like, a little class."

Back in the hotel, Serrin wrapped a muffler around his throat and buttoned up the baggy woolen coat he always brought with him to London, even in what the Brits laughably termed summer. Striding through the hotel lobby, he hailed one of the voluminous black trollcabs, London’s finest, yanking open the passenger door as the grinning driver screeched the vehicle to a halt.

"Serena’s, and be sharp about it," Serrin snapped as the cab jerked into motion. Inside his coat he clutched his credstick for comfort. As long as he was in London he was going to get some decent talismongering out of this deal. Liverpool Street station and tickets for Cambridge could wait.