From the Street (shadowrun stories) Read online

  "Deal," he said.

  I wasn't about to put my boat in danger, but Skunk was more than happy to put one of his at their disposal. I figured I'd hang around. If they came back alive then they'd paid for a two-way trip. At any rate, I could hardly leave without seeing how it all turned out.

  After they'd shipped out, Arty Skunk walked straight past me and out onto the adjoining roof. "Monty," and a curt nod were all the acknowledgements he could muster. But then he stopped and turned back. "You think they'll manage it?" he asked me, without looking me in the eyes.

  I shrugged. "I reckon they've faced worse."

  They must have because they were back within half an hour, with barely a scratch on them. A large head and some other bodies were heaped together on the prow. But they hadn't just brought back gangers. There was also a traumatized huddle of six victims, and the dead body of a seventh-a little girl. I couldn't comprehend how long those people must have been swimming in their own filth in a cage under King Croc's nest, nor the kind of abuse they must have endured whenever they were actually let out. At that point I would have done just about any favor for Razor and his friends, but they seemed satisfied with just a ride back to Granville Island with their precious blueprints. As I was leading them back to my boat, I glanced up at the roof. King Croc's fat head, still dripping blood from its flabby severed neck, glowered down at me from its new home, and Arty Skunk, teeth clenched in a sick grin, was hard at work sawing the head off the foul-smelling shaman.

  He's had six years to lead Richmond back into the 21st century! I'm lost in memory and gripped by anger, so the boat hits a big wave sideways on and Elf Girl finally gives up her breakfast over the side.

  It didn't take Skunk long to realize he was on to something. And somehow it didn't take him much longer to make himself the go-to guy for Vancouver blueprints. Then the Crash ruined a whole lot of people and destroyed a whole lot of records, and Skunk's stock hit a new high on the black market.

  I've shipped in a lot of shadowrunners since Razor and his friends. I've overheard a fair few arguments. But in the end, almost all of them have paid Skunk's asking price. Sure, he could sell for cash-he always could have done that, I guess-but he gets a much better deal this way. Arty Skunk no longer runs the southwest corner of the Swamps-he runs the whole place, near enough, and everybody's terrified of him. But there are still Gator Gangs in the Swamps. There are still drugs and crime, disease and tormented spirits. The Dyke was never finished, and now it's nothing more than a decaying trophy shelf for the self-styled Man with the Plans.

  The boat plows on through the conflicted sea. The wind is changing, and the haze is lifting. Gulls shriek and squabble over my wake. My eyes keep getting drawn to Elf Girl, draped wretchedly over the railing, staring at the distant fingers of wreckage.

  Only once in my life did I ever take on a business partner: a shrewd young ork woman who loved the sea as much as I did and called herself Sounder. It didn't work out. She was too talkative for my tastes, and I wasn't ambitious enough for hers. We agreed to part ways without any ill feeling, and it was on our last trip together, as she lounged against the side of my boat- just where Elf Girl is slumped at this very moment-that Sounder asked me, out of the blue:

  "What do you want out of life, Monty?"

  I told her: "I'm saving up for a little bar on a hot beach a long way from here."

  Quick as a flash she came back: "How much is something like that worth?"

  Sounder loved to lace her questions with double meanings like that. And somehow that one question keeps coming back to me.

  I drop the throttle and leave the boat lurching to a halt on the tide.

  "Hey, what's going on?" hisses the hacker. "You going to try some funny business, old man?" He pulls out a heavy pistol.

  I come out of my cabin, waving my shaking hands to try and calm everyone down. "I think there's something you need to know about Arty Skunk."

  "And what's that?" says Elf Girl, perking up.

  "Arty Skunk is a shit. And he's got to where he is today by getting folks like you to kill his enemies for a few measly files. He could have fixed all this by now. But he hasn't. And he never will."

  Elf Girl looks at her comrades with piercing eyes, but stops short of saying, "See?"

  "Start up the boat again, old man," says the ork menacingly.

  "Just listen to me. Do what you have to do. Get your blueprints. But when we're leaving the Skunkworks, I want you to do a job for me."

  They laugh and look around the battered old fishing boat.

  I know what they're thinking. "I've saved up a fair bit of money over the years. Twenty thousand nuyen, more or less."

  "Small-time smuggler, eh?" the Amerind punk sneers. "Hide your treasure in a cave through the Crash?"

  "It's yours if you take out Arty Skunk when you're leaving."

  There. It's out. The deal is on the table. My heart feels that much lighter already. Just for having made it.

  "Naughty naughty, old man," the hacker sniggers. "What will Mister Skunk think of you, eh?"

  I feel a chill in my spine. Damned fool. They're going to take your money anyway. Kill you, or threaten to tell Skunk what you've said.

  "Hey, hang on a minute!" pipes Elf Girl. Beautiful Elf Girl. Make me believe in people again.

  "That's a lot of money, old man. More than we're being paid for our current job, in fact," she says looking around the others. They nod slightly, conceding the point. "Are you serious? His death is worth that much to you?"

  She has the most bewitching eyes. I start to feel like she's playing with my mind, plucking my emotions and listening to what notes they produce. It makes me squirm inside, but the truth is that I want someone to know what I've been feeling, what I've been hiding under this beard.

  "It's worth that much to them." I nod toward the coast.

  "We don't care about them," says the ork. But I've been watching him on and off through this whole trip and I don't buy it. Maybe he's playing it tough for the hacker and the Amerind punk? I hang my hopes on that, and try to make it easy for him:

  "So care about the money. Let me care about them."

  It seems I'm not so invisible now. The runners exchange glances for a long time without saying anything. At first I think they're arguing their cases by facial expression alone, but then I remember the newfangled Linked Area Network that all the runner teams have these days. Zeroes and ones are deciding my fate.

  Eventually, all eyes turn to the ork. I guess he really is in charge after all.

  "Deal," he says.

  STREET TALES

  HUMANS THE CYCLE OF MAGIC

  by Tom Dowd

  Speech given by Keynote speaker, Ehran "The Scribe" at the YET (Young Elven Technologists) fund-raising dinner.

  The Humans are confused.

  This is their normal state of being. Their lives are so short, they never have time to think things through. I know this is a gross over-simplification, that there have been many brilliant Human scholars throughout the ages. Even the Da Vincis and the Einsteins, while brilliant enough to see a glimpse of the larger pattern, and imaginative enough to visualize a complex and interconnected world, still did not have the time to analyze their own thoughts. It takes years, sometimes hundreds of years, to get the correct perspective on ideas, even your own ideas. Humans just do not have the luxury of that time. They are also limited by their devout belief in not believing. Since the earliest recorded Human history they have had stories of magic, great unexplained ancient civilizations, and other mysteries. The Humans chose not to believe these and thus, when the mother returned the magic to us, they became disoriented and confused, their normal state of being.

  In all fairness, I must admit that most of humanity was not very advanced when the great mother took the magic away the last time, so it must be hard for them to deal with its return. What I am about to tell you must remain an elven secret. I know that the Humans will eventually discover it, but it should be delayed as
long as possible.

  All things that the great mother gives us, she also takes away. Nature, as the Humans call it, moves in cycles: the rising and setting of the sun, the seasons of the year, the flowing of the tide, it is always a cycle. Magic also runs in a cycle, it comes and goes from the earth, as does the warmth of the summer sun. Its cycle is measured not in hours, as the sun's is, but in thousands of years.

  From a scientific viewpoint, magic, when charted, is a semi-regular wave form moving through the history of the earth. There are slight fluctuations throughout the wave, and the wave itself is not completely uniform.

  The point in the cycle at which the world becomes magically alive or magic falls dormant is called the Threshold Level. Every magical race and, in some cases, each individual within a race, has its own specific magical trigger point for metamorphosis to occur, thus the transformation of the world takes place over a period of time. Traditionally, the Threshold Level has been set as the date of the awakening of the first Great Dragon on the upswing and the hibernation of the last Great Dragon on the down swing. The average time between Threshold Levels is approximately 5,200 years.

  As the last age of magic came to a close, Atlantis was readying itself for disaster. The isle of Atlantis was protected from the forces of nature by the magic of its inhabitants, and thus it could not exist after the magic dropped below the Threshold Level. The Atlantian culture was a racial hybrid that had achieved both scientific and magical wonders, but in its later years, it turned against itself by fighting nature to maintain the island. As the end came near, a migration of technology and culture spread from the isle to the rest of the world. This is the reason mankind's ancient calendars all start within 100 years of each other. The Hebrew, Egyptian, Chinese, and most importantly, Mayan calendars all show the direct influence of Atlantian culture.

  The Mayan calendar is the most amazing, as it contains a complete description of the magic cycles, including this current crossing of the Threshold. The Mayan calendar was created in the year 3372 BC (using the Christian calendar), just at the end of the last cycle. The Mayans described the cycles as "worlds", and stated that only certain life forms made the transition from one world to the next. The calendar, written over 5,000 years ago, predicted the exact day the Threshold Level would be passed. If we convert the Mayan dates to the current Christian calendar, it correctly states that the Threshold would be passed on December 24, 2011. On that day, the first Great Dragon was seen in Japan. The precision is amazing.

  Atlantis sank on August 12, 3113 BC, thus marking the end of the Fourth World and the beginning of the Fifth. The Sixth World began on December 12, 2011 AD, and will end, according to the Mayan calendar, on April 4, 7137 AD.

  We have the intervening time to enjoy what the Great Mother gives us and to use responsibly the double-edged sword of technology that our Human cousins have created. We must use both the energy of nature and the power of technology to try to fix the damage done by our short-lived relatives.

  REX TREMENDAE

  By Tom Dowd, transcription by Ken Web

  The line outside Dante's Inferno was long, mean, and peopled with some of the most alien types I'd ever seen. I been to Seattle before, even to this very club, but the sights never failed to astonish. Sure, I understand dressing for style, for effect, but physical extremism repels me. Home, we run the shadows as hard as any, and our colors show it. We wear clothes that suit us, that make our work and lives easier, simpler. Every policlub has its own look, its special expression, but none of us would consider overt physical mutilation as a symbol of superiority.

  Here in America, especially in this town, it seems you're nobody unless you can get people to notice you walking down the street. Yet for me, whose life is the streets anywhere in the world, to be noticed on those streets is almost certain death.

  How little subtlety exists here. I pass this line of people, all waiting to get into the same place at the same time, knowing full well they're not wanted here. Perhaps they think waiting in line for all the world to see is as good as actually dancing on the glass floors of the Inferno. In Europe, we would simply find another club rather than play the fool by standing in line.

  Reaching the door, I stifled a laugh. Dwarfed by the huge size of the doorbeing, a girl in black and red was trying to talk her way past the Troll. Unlike me, she wasn't known, so she wouldn't get in. Giving the troll a nod, I brushed past, and the gander-girl cursed me for it. The way she mangled City-Speak was startling enough to make me turn and look at her. She was shorter than I, but jacked up by a pair of razor-spike boots. Her long hair, its color moving from iridescent blue to white to black and back again, framed her face. A true looker, by any standards, if you ignored the hot, quick death in her eyes. She glared at me, waiting for an equally venomous response, but I held back. Far too much was at stake tonight.

  I gave her the dead-face and was about to turn and be gone when she surprised me by cursing again, this time perfectly. I smiled in amusement. Her first curse had been sudden, impulsive, and fractured. The second was perfect, even down to the cross-talk inflection. She was chip-trained, no question, but trained only. If she had been wearing, her first shot would have come out like a veteran's.

  I couldn't help but smile even more broadly as I looked her over more closely. The apparel was right: all the proper straps and chains tight or loose as the fashion demanded. Quad-colored earrings danced slowly on her ears, glittering in the lights of the street. Her corneal tint was near- phosphorescent, designed to pull your eyes to hers even in the darkest shag- joint. She was absolutely perfect, the ultimate gander-girl, and therein lay her failure to pull it off. But that was what intrigued me.

  I weighed my options, her paradox versus my purpose tonight, and decided to take the risk. I nodded again at the troll and spoke just loud enough for him to hear, "Say, friend, she's with me."

  The girl apparently heard me, and started slightly at my words, I motioned for her to take the lead. She glanced once at the Troll, but turned just as quickly away from his sudden, feral grin. As she stepped forward, I guided her with the gentle pressure of my fingertips at the small of her back. Once again, she gave herself away. Her jacket was real denim, not the cheap synthetic that a "real" gander-girl would wear.

  We continued on into the uppermost level of Inferno. Though I hated the place, I always found myself becoming a semi-regular out of sheer habit whenever I was in town. I'd first met Dante in London, where I'd done a run for him involving his London club. Now he always made sure I got first class treatment, no doubt because the story of our dealings would leave him cut into little pieces if it ever leaked out. EBM[2] never forgets.

  The band had apparently just taken the upper stage. A staccato riff from the lead ten-string triggered the sync-systems, bathing the levels in pulsating light and liquid noise. Shag-metal was rip in this town, which made my desire to go transcontinental all the stronger. It was enough that I could very well die tonight, but the thought of "Bangin' the Duke" as my funeral dirge was too much.

  I wanted to believe that my people were different than these nighttrippers thrashing about me now. I wanted to believe that things back home were different, that my people had some memory, some honor, for the glory of our cultural past. I wanted to believe that even a shadow of our rich history and traditions still existed. I wanted to believe that we were superior to these Americans, with their all-consuming lust for the new. But I knew that our magnificent past had all but vanished from mind, as though it had never been. Technology had blurred the differences between nations, and chipped languages had destroyed Europe.

  The Restoration may have revived our lands and our people physically, but it had almost totally destroyed us culturally. Worshipping the grail of unrestricted growth, the Euro-corps were the driving force behind this so- called Restoration. Erasing the national boundaries meant no more import/export tariffs. It meant the availability of vast pools of cheap labor. It also meant death to 3,000 years of dynamic socia
l expression. That was why I believed that radical politics and a return to nationalism and radical politics were our only hope for rescuing the individualism, the uniqueness of our many peoples. The Neo-Europe District of the Global Village must never come to pass.

  The policlubs had been born from the urgency many felt for another kind of Restoration. We, too, wanted to rebuild Europe, even if it meant a return to more contentious times. Ours would not be a Europe homogenized for mass consumption. For better or worse, it would be a Europa Dividuus. We alone kept alive the flame of political activism and expression. Without us, Europe would soon become a corporate Disneyverse. The various policlubs did not, of course, agree on the means or even the ends, but was that not just as it should be? The restoration might appear to be proceeding apace, on the surface. Behind the scenes, we were at war. In the streets, on the data-faxes, in the hearts and minds of those alive enough to listen. Europe would not become another Manhattan, not even another Seattle. I'd come to make sure of that.

  I pulled gently on the girl's coat and she turned to eye me quizzically. "Watch the dancers," I said, moving a few steps away to lean against a light- filled pole. Relaxing my whole body, I focused my attention on the pulsating lights of the lasers, letting the rhythm fill me.