"Try this in your deck," she said. "It's a one-shot can-opener. I've been saving it for a special occasion."
Dodger took the carrier. Unable to contain his curiosity behind the thrust and parry of shadowtalk, he asked, "Why are you doing this?"
"Let's just say I've got an inquiring mind." The lure of using her toy did not keep him from running diagnostics on it before slotting it into his deck. Slipping into the Matrix soothed him; in the electron world he had no worries. Well, only one; and it hadn't shown its mirror face in weeks. His meat was already at her mercy, but he would be safe enough until she got what she wanted.
He was amazed at the beauty and elegance with which her can-opener cut the OWN ice and slipped him into their files. The hunt was short and successful. He dumped his swag back to the deck and exited the GWN architecture. As he cleared the boundary, the can-opener evaporated. He jacked out.
Janice Verner's name was on a list of special consultants for GWN that he scrolled onto the display screen of his cyberdeck. Most of the other names meant nothing to Dodger; they had never before appeared in all his searching through portions of the Matrix associated with the members of the Hidden Circle. The one name he recognized was that of Karen Montejac. Unfortunately, Hart noticed his reaction to the name.
"You know her?" she asked.
"The, ah, lady works for a… a former client."
"So, what's the connection?"
"There isn't one."
Hart wouldn't let it go. "Guessing, or do you have evidence?''
' 'I have deferred the evaluation of connections to a higher authority who has ruled out the possibility.''
The look on Hart's face told him that she didn't like his answer. From her earlier threat, he suspected that she knew he was referring to the professor. She finally nodded in acceptance, apparently willing to concede to the professor's judgment.
"What is in the Verner file?" she asked. Dodger brought it up on the screen. It took only a little manipulation to crack the lock. The first entry was a transit pass for a corporate flight from Hong Kong to Mexico City.
"Not Yomi?" Hart asked musingly, then she smiled. "There's your answer to your problem. The date on that flight is after Sam's sister's exile. If Hyde-White recruited her, it would have been at the gulag, and she would have been whatever she had turned into by then, no longer a norm woman."
"The painting may have been done from an old picture."
Hart snorted. "Even if it were, what reason would he have for wanting it? She wouldn't, if she's like most people who go through the change. No, Sam was meant to see this painting. The fat druid's a manipulative bastard and likes playing mind games." "How do you know that?"
"Personal experience," she said bitterly. "Trust me. The portrait's got to be a fake, a ploy to throw him off stride."
Something seemed out of place to Dodger. "How would Hyde-White have known Sam was going to see it?"
Shrugging, Hart said, "Maybe he was going to plant it somewhere else."
Her explanation still seemed to be missing a chip.
"Why do it at all?"
"I don't know. But I do know that the fat man's a devious bastard and a class-A manipulator. He's the one who really started the Circle, you know. Even led the research that got them the wicker man ritual. He's the real power behind the Circle."
"As Merlin was behind Arthur," Dodger said, remembering the imposed imagery of the Circle's computer architecture.
"What?"
"Nothing. Just a literary allusion. So, what to we do about this?''
"You tell Sam, and then keep me posted. I've got other things to do."
Dodger's suspicions flared again. "More trouble to cause?''
"You betcha," she replied jauntily. "When you see him, give him these."
Hart dug a wrapped packet out of her satchel. The bundled had filled most of the bag's volume and, when the soft sides collapsed, Dodger could see the outline of a gun. He took the offered bundle. From his weight and balance, he suspected a second weapon was wrapped within its softness.
"Why should I?" he asked as she headed for the door.
She kept walking, saying over her shoulder, "He'll need them."
Sam didn't know what he expected to see, but he kept rerunning the tapes Willie had made from the trideo monitors in Hyde-White's residence. Willie watched them with him, getting twitchier with every repetition. The copy spun to an end and Sam reached for the controls to rewind the tape.
"Ain't ya seen enough?"
"One more time, Willie."
"Jeez. Ya been through through it a billion times.
Look, Twist. I'm not a forensic expert, but I am a woman. I'd say there was a woman living in that residence. Ain't that what ya want to know?"
Sam nodded abstractedly as the tape clicked over and started to play again. "But what kind of woman, Willie? A norm, or something else?"
"Do I look like a parabiologist?" Willie bounced up from the floor, grabbed a half-full bottle of Kanschlager, and downed it. "The blowups show a lot of hair scattered around, but, frag it, that don't tell us anything without chemical analysis. The fat druid and his woman could have a dog; there's enough gnawed bones in the kitchen."
"It didn't smell like a place where a dog lived."
"Well, then, a cat! Jeez, Twist, what do you want?"
"I want to know about my sister. They told me she had goblinized." Would Sato have lied about that? No, the doctor had said she was in the kawaru ward, so it had to be true. But what about later? Maybe she had died, been killed by Hyde-White and his flunkies. Maybe that was why Renraku had never let him communicate with her.
Sam didn't want to believe it. He felt sure he would know if she was dead\a151he was a fragging shaman with fragging mystical powers! If he couldn't sense the death of his own sister, his only living relative, what good were those powers? Still, he had been a reluctant shaman and had avoided a lot of what he needed to know about his gifts. He couldn't be sure that the magic would let him know if she was dead.
The portrait in Hyde-White's sanctum didn't have to be his sister. It could be a coincidence. So why didn't he believe that?
He tried to picture the painting in his mind. He wanted to remember a detail, any detail that would confirm or deny the subject's identity. All he succeeded in doing was calling up the horrid smell again.
That awful stench seemed somehow… familiar.
In his memory, it had another quality that was absent in the chill confines of the sanctum. Sam knew he had smelled the odor before; suddenly, he knew where. It had not been in the mundane world, but in the realms of the spirits where the Man of Light had worn fire like fur, and exuded that stench.
Sam remembered what the Man had said about manipulating his emotions and meddling with his memories. Had Dodger seen the same woman in that portrait?
"Hyde-White, old man. Good to see you," Glover exclaimed. "Recovered from your injury?"
"Almost."
Janice knew better. Though Hyde-White still wore bandages and limped, Dan Shiroi had long ago recovered from the injuries dealt him by a ravaging band of shadowrunners. She disliked the fat shape Dan wore. She was not skilled enough to pierce his mask and so, like his coconspirators, she could only see the obese bulk of Hyde-White even though she knew Dan's lean, furred shape hid within it. His obsession with masks no longer bothered her. She understood and embraced the necessity. She looked forward to the day when he would teach her enough to mask her own shape as effectively as he did his own, and she would be able to deceive the slimy Glover and his like.
"Your pet appears as ravishing as ever," Glover said archly.