Streets of blood

26

Heading northeast, the Saab purred along the expressway. It had been a good morning. While waiting for Francesca to finish her software shopping and bag-packing, Geraint happened on a glitch in currency transactions across the major banking centers of three continents that netted him four thousand nuyen for about fifty seconds’ work. He’d learned that he could usually put one over on the Swiss satellite banking system by keeping his eyes on the South American and smaller Far Eastern markets. Even a gain no bigger than small change gave him that glorious feeling of bucking the system.

He’d decided not to bring his Tarot deck with him. No matter that he was a magical adept, the Oxford location was daunting. Being a center of English druidic magic, certain spots might be heavy with magical interference. Background count, the scholars termed it-places where powerful residues of emotion or repeated magical operations made most magical, or adept, work difficult. Ii was said that the druids knew how to harness the background count for their own purposes. Geraint deliberately avoided contact with most English druids, and wasn’t about to do anything that might alert them to his presence and activities now. Most of all, though, he never knew what the Tarot might reveal, so how could he guess what someone magically snooping might detect?

Still waiting for Francesca, he’d meditated awhile at his desk then shuffled the cards and spread them out for a reading. So engrossed and absorbed was he in his thoughts that he didn’t hear her open the front door with the magkey, only becoming aware of her presence when she crept upon him.

“Do I cross your palm with silver?” she said with a grin. She got a frosty glare in return.

“Don’t trivialize this, Fran. You know me well enough that I wouldn’t use it if it didn’t work.”

That chastened her. Eager to placate him, she asked Geraint to tell her what the spread meant, pointing to the first card with its explosion of yellow-red plumes surrounding a crackling pillar of energy.

“Ace of Wands. I wanted to know where we stood at this point. It doesn’t tell me very much. An ace is a starting point, wands are intuition, energies in a general sense. So the card says energies are unleashed, we are all expending energy in different directions. It’s vague, but it fits; we’re all in different places, and we’re all chasing leads, not sure where we may end up.”

“Who’s the old geezer?” she asked, moving onto the next card. Geraint turned to her with the hint of reproach in his expression.

“The Hermit. Me, actually. I asked where I was in all this. He’s rather solitary, introspective, detached from the world. I think he’s telling me to back my own judgment and not depend too much on others. If we get into an argument, my dear, I’m afraid you’re going to lose.”

She laughed and tossed back her hair. “You’re just saying that to intimidate me so I’ll give you your own way. I know you.”

“No, really. See,” he said. “This is you.” The card showed a green-cloaked figure seated atop a stone pedestal, waving a sword in the air in a defensive posture. Princess of Swords. The card shows you’re going to be very practical and down-to-earth, but you just might be missing something. Smart but not creative, the Princess. No offense meant, Fran. Bear with me.” He moved to the fourth card lying on the desk.

I asked how our part of things would go. I asked for two cards: one to show the most important problem we might face, a second to show the final outcome. In this context the Five of Coins says that something is unsettling and worrying. The foundations of what we’re doing aren’t quite right somehow. But the Six of Swords, that looks good. It says that our little trip will be successful, but we may encounter some unforeseen difficulty. It’s all right, though,” he continued, catching her look of uncertainty.

“I’ve just asked about Serrin. The Magician, of course. He’s doing what he’s good at. We’ve got no problems there. Since it’s his own personal symbol in the deck, it also tells me this reading is working. I was just about to ask about Rani, how she’s going to figure in what we decide to do next.” He turned the next card face-up.

Francesca whistled in admiration. “Oh, that’s a fabulous design.” A great red and silver rod stood strong against an azure background, with a glaring sun at one end and a crescent moon encompassing a darker blue sphere at the other. Crisscrossed behind the rod stood eight arrows, red-shafted, with silver fletching and silver crescent moons for arrowheads.

Geraint nodded gravely. “Nine of Wands. Strength. Looks like she won’t let us down.”

“Strength? Isn’t there another card called that? The one with the woman and the lion? Haven’t I seen that?”

“Yes, but this card was given the same title by the original designer of the deck. Different meaning, too. Maybe he ran a bit short on names after a while. Nine of Wands says final success, a moment of glory.” He felt a little uncertain. The card was a good omen, pure and simple; it was powerful, radiant, victorious.

Geraini felt a sudden twinge in the left side of his brain, urging him to see something else in that card, something related to him. His own response to it. He flipped up a final card.

The Hanged Man.

Ankh and wise serpent at his feet, the dancing, swaying figure was head-down on the card, an inversion that caught Francesca unawares, as it did most people the first time.

“Hmm. Looks like I have something to learn about her. I won’t find out by making any effort, either. It'll come in its own good time.” He drew the cards back into the deck, shuffled it once, then swathed the deck in its black silk.

“Time to go, Francesca. You ready?”

Geraint remembered the Hanged Man as they checked in at the Imperial, or rather the Hanged Man nagged at his own mind. He put it out of his consciousness as he limped to the elevator, Francesca taking the magkeys and walking imperiously before the baggage-trundling porter. No sooner had they arrived at their suite and shut the door than Geraint was tapping a number into the telecom.

“Russell? Great. We’re here now.” On the way here he’d used the car’s portacom to make a provisional appointrnent. “When can you fit me in?”

The cheerful, fresh-faced man on the screen looked down at something on his desk and waved nonchalantly. “Let me see. Old churn, helped us with the Mitsuyama grants two years back, never comes up to a college feast with me, might have run off with my wife if I hadn't been such an attentive husband… oh, how about next March?”

“Russell, what do you mean? Amanda’s far too good for me. And the last college feast I came to gave me food poisoning.” Francesca glanced at Geraint joking at the face on the screen and decided to take a shower.

“Oh yes, nice little strain of salmonella that one. Half of Oxford was down with it for a week or two. Well, Geraint, how about seven this evening? Come round to the Radcliffe, old boy. I should still be sober then.”

By the time Francesca had showered and changed, Geraint had his evening arranged. Seven o’clock at Oxford’s famous infirmary, nine o’clock at the research laboratories of the Biotechnology Department complex. That took care of both Geraint’s leg and the pharmacological helpers he needed, and in that order. Francesca began setting up the Fuchi decks, attending to the most important part of their business.

They worked in virtual silence for half an hour, reconfiguring the decks to change the ID chips installed by the Lord Protector’s officials. It wasn’t desperately difficult, but it was delicate. Any mistake would set off an alert that would scream its way to the local Administrative Bureau, calling officialdom down on their heads in a matter of minutes. With all that done, they demolished the first pot of coffee.

The next pot was sunk as they planned the general tactics of their hit on Transys Neuronet’s London system. Francesca had the SAN number, so they knew where to get in. In broad terms they also knew what they wanted to get at. The problem was figuring out how to deal with what stood in their way. After half an hour of discussion they’d sketched out a plan.

This was Francesca’s specialty, so she took the reins.

We’ll use evasion mode as long as possible and your smartframe to deal with any IC. If the system alerts, our reaction depends on where we are at the time. If we’re into the storage systems, you switch to bod mode and fight like hell while I go to sensor mode and get as much as I can. I’ll use a dumbframe to handle it if I can program it fast enough. That way we’ll have a few extra seconds if we have to fight when we get close to what we’re looking for. Stay together at all times and put the emphasis on system analysis while we’re getting into the damn thing. I think my sleaze program is powerful enough to get us through the system’s access and barrier defenses. We’ll just have to use scrambling IC for the decrypt programs. Right?”

Francesca was in her element now, scribbling down notes at a furious pace, already high on the anticipation of the run. She had a look of utter determination on her face, a look that made Geraint ruefully reflect that he didn’t see how his careful, cautious Hermit would be able to hold off her Princess of Swords if they had to change plans halfway through.

“Sounds good. The question now is, what do we want to do about our Matrix personas’?”

It was a crucial question. They knew the Transys Neuronet system would have a sculptured Matrix, an individually designed set of icons and representations that would try to force its own reality on to them. Unfamiliarity with it would make their mental operations slower, unable to react in a split-second if necessary. That obviously gave their enemies within the system-both the IC and the corporate deckers-just the slightest edge in combat. What to do about it was the question.

“I don’t think I want to use your filter, Geraint. I know it’ll help, but I won’t be able to get used to it fast enough. Trying to operate with an unfamiliar filter against a sculptured system would only double my handicap.”

Geraint had a reality filter, which was what deckers laughingly called the powerful representational program. It allowed him to see any Matrix constructs through his own selected set of images, which consisted of knights, warriors, warhorses, the Wild Hunt, and the whole panoply of Welsh and Celtic heritage. The filter balanced some of the disadvantage of being in an unfamiliar system, giving him an edge that the sculptured system might not be able to overcome, It would be an interesting struggle between his filter system and the power of Transys Neuronet’s system sculpture. Francesca, however, wouldn’t have the same advantage.

“Well, we’ve got to have representations of each other within our own systems when we travel together, and we need ones that aren’t out of sync with the Transys sculpture. That way. it’s all smooth, and neither of us has a major disadvantage.” He sighed. “Trouble is, even if that works I’ll be seeing them differently from the way you do. You’ll see black IC in their terms, probably, and I’ll see it as a hostile knight or chimera or some such, if I’m lucky.” Then something dawned on him.

“But hold on, Fran! You’ve been in their system. haven’t you? What did it look like?”

She shook her head in reply. “I hardly saw anything apart from that thing. If I suffered any disorientation from being in a sculptured system. it was part of the general trauma. Hell, Geraint, make damn sure you protect me with your attacks and whatever you’ve got in that frame of yours. Are you sure we don’t want my frame on attacking options?” It was something they’d been arguing about in the car most of the journey. Francesca was understandably paranoid about meeting the murderous persona that had nearly killed her once before. Geraint disagreed with her.

“We've got enough punch. Anyway, the flatlining jackout options you’ve been working on really should handle that. The only way we could get total insurance now would be to wait for Serrin to get back or have a friend of mine here sit around to pull the jacks if we get toasted. Besides. I really don’t want to risk anyone else knowing what we’re up to, and it’s too long to wait for Serrin. Or Rani. First sight of anything that looks like that thing of yours and we’re out of there. Promise.”

They went over every last detail again and again, reviewing the possibilities for IC constructs opposing them, how to deal with hostile deckers. contingency arrangements, and finally they ran some simulations. Though ii wasn’t the real thing. it made them both sweat and showed that they could work together well enough. By the fourth run they’d gotten good. They jacked out together, full of smiles.

“Geraint. you really creamed that IC construct.”

“The Black Knight? What did he have up his sleeve?”

“I'll check. It’s a quasi-random IC construct with, let’s see. Red-4 node, killer, blaster, jammer. Oh. well, maybe if he’d had an acid program instead of a jammer. you wouldn’t have fared so well.”

“My dear lady, I didn't even need the frame.” Full tilt with a simple attack program had gone right through the Black Knight’s shield and chain mail, skewering him. All Geraint needed was to ride over him to keep the IC suppressed.

They had one final, tricky decision to make. Should they head straight into the System to carry out their mission, or should they go in for an initial snoop first? The advantage of the former was that it preserved for them the clement of surprise. The advantage of the latter strategy was that they’d know better what they were getting into, and would be able to configure their own personas accordingly.

Francesca was arguing hard for the second option.

“Look, we both go in using evasion mode. Heavy on masking and deception. We just see what the sculpture is like. We don’t go near IC, we invade almost nothing past the SAN. We analyze and download and look it at our leisure. Our chances of triggering even a passive alert are minimal if we use the right operational modes.” This made good sense and Geraint had to agree with her.

“We’ve done all we can,” Francesca said. Tonight at eleven, then. “Absolutely no alcohol at all until afterward. Not even a sherry with your old college friends.

She looked almost stern. “Come on, we’ve got an hour before I have to wheel you over to the infirmary. I'm hungry. We may not be able to drink, but we can sure get something decent to eat.”

“Exactly what’s in those vials?” She was suspicious, looking askance at Geraint as he gleefully pored over the small case of multicolored liquids and oily emulsions. He grinned conspiratorially. He was feeling great.

At the Radcliffe. he’d gotten deep laser treatment and growth stimulators, differentiation regulators, modulated hemostatic complexes and a dozen other agents Francesca couldn’t even remember the acronyms for, let alone their full names. All that mattered was that within an hour Geraint was walking on a leg that would be as good as new by the next morning. save for a need to avoid straining it for a few days. He had gladly downloaded charitable contributions to the hospital’s welfare and research funds-all tax-deductible, of course.

Francesca had politely declined the lecherous attentions of Geraint’s medical friend, whose hands had shown as much interest in her as in his patient. Somehow, in the guise of showing her what he was doing, the octopus seemed to get an arm around her waist or fingers fluttering along her arms. She had hidden her distaste and allowed her accumulated irritation to explode in anger at a smug and healthy-looking Geraint in the parking garage. He suffered the onslaught quietly and then they’d moved on to the research labs. It was the fruits of that visit he was reviewing with such glee now. Another charitable donation had been in order, of course, but that was the price one had to pay for cutting-edge experimental materials that got mysteriously used up in the cause of science. That, and another expensive dinner at Oxford’s best restaurant for Professor Michaels the following evening.

“Oh, this is Lovely, Fran. Perfect dopamine agent here, colloidal, and the slow gamma-aminobutyric acid modulators in the complex keep you from crashing afterward. Slight effect in the nigro-striatal ascending fibers, keep it to the D4 large neurons, but the major hit is in the ascending mesocortical, in the DA3 subcomplex, the vesicular…” He stopped in mid-flow as he saw she wasn’t taking in a single word.

“Sorry, Fran. It’s not jargon, really. What this stuff will do is the question. Some of it makes you smart, some of it makes you fast, some of it makes you alert, some of it keeps fatigue at bay, and if you keep the doses sensible, you won't have to pay for it later. I want to use the association cortex agents myself during our decking runs. It’ll definitely boost my awareness of threat and the ability to respond to it. For those poor souls like you who can’t whack this stuff straight into your brain,” he said, fingering the cannula implant on his neck, the options are more limited. Mind you, Edward did give me a peripheral that is absolutely guaranteed to enhance your enjoyment of, er, certain acts. He’s been supplying me with that for years. Not that I ever, not with, I mean…”

“Not when you were bedding me?” She was half-amused and half-livid. Who wanted to think that desire and its consummation were the playthings of some academic pharmacologist?

“No.” He smiled, ever so slightly apologetic. “Anyway, he gave it to me because I think he fancied you some.”

She scowled; two lechers in one day. That was annoying.

“Forget it, We’ve got work to do. I need ten minutes.”

He applied the yellow vial to the cannula, triple-clicked the security seals, and felt the steely rush begin to spread over his scalp. The slight edge of paranoia that followed was normal, and soon he could feel the sounds and colors and vividness of it all. She was already setting up the decks.

“All right, Viviane.” He grinned at her lack of understanding. “In my reality, I’m Taliesin. and you’re going to be Viviane. That way we both look like harmless folks in simple robes. We should be able to get away with that, no matter what form the system sculpture takes.”

“Away to London!” he called delightedly, and they were off.