"We have work," Maurice said.
"What work?" Jaeger snapped harshly.
Maurice ignored the intemperate tone. He had difficulty enough trying to decide how he might best elaborate, what words would achieve the desired effect. As a general rule, the spoken word displeased him. Speech could be unbearably precarious, intolerably inexact. He much preferred the mathematical precision of the arcane arts, the One True Art. It alone could be trusted.
Quietly, and precisely, he said, "Our client is staging a sensitive operation. We are to back up the back-up, you might say. In case something should go wrong."
Softly, resonantly, Jaeger chuckled. "I would say it in terms very different from those, mage."
Maurice supposed that was so.
10
Unlike the old, three-story brick building on Mott Street, the big CMC stepvan really did belong to the New Jersey Consolidated Light and Power Corporation. It was painted in the corporate colors of blue and yellow, marked with various ID numbers, and loaded with equipment.
New Jersey C.L. P. had lost track of the stepvan for the moment, Piper had arranged for that. According to her, the corp had one of the worst matrix security systems of all the corps in the Jersey-New York megaplex, but whether that was true or the corp just wasn't up to her standards, Rico didn't know. In the end, it probably didn't matter.
Rico took the passenger-side seat, braced one foot against the dash, and gave Shank a nod. Shank hit the remote that set the big bay door in front of them to trundling up, then drove them toward Doremus Avenue, at the north end of the port, where they picked up the Jersey Turnpike.
It was just after 23:30 hours. The truck lanes were laden with heavy, swift-moving traffic-massive two- and three-trailer tandem rigs, container rigs, Roadmaster articulated and straight trucks, cargo vans and stepvans. Rico turned his head to glance back at the trio on the bench seat to his rear: Bandit, Filly, and Dok. Like him and Shank, they were outfitted with day-glo orange hardhats and vests, all marked for C. L. P. The five of them were just another repair crew in a sludge-bloated ocean of technicians and crumbling infrastructure. No one would look at them twice.
The highway carried them across the Passaic River and onto the Kearny Peninsula, one of the most heavily industrialized areas in the plex. Rail yards, factories, storage tanks, and warehouses, all constructed on a mammoth scale, slid past on either side of the highway. The warning lights of factory stacks and the flame-stroked steeples of chemical plants rose high into the orange-phosphorous glow of the night.
Another bridge and the Hackensack River, then into Secaucus, another industrial zone, this one sprawling up the backbone of Jersey and Union Cities, and on up the Hudson to well beyond the G.W. Bridge.
The backside of Union City was far enough.
Shank turned the stepvan down the ramp to Paterson Plank Road, then up West Side Avenue.
North of the sewage plant, the road became a broad boulevard. It was a kind of Executive Row, like a little slice of Manhattan tucked in between chemical and food processing plants and the compacted, decaying streets of Union City's Zone 2, West New York. Broad plazas glowed with light. Fountains glittered and sparkled. Shining towers rose like polished chrome from the halos about their foundations to dominate the skyline.
Just past Sixty-ninth Street, Shank slowed the stepvan, flipped on the amber warning blinkers, and swung the vehicle across the boulevard. He drove the truck, one wheel at a time, up over the curb and onto the gold-lit plaza set in front of the imposing headquarters of Shiawase Compudyne, a division of the Shiawase Corporation of Kyoto, Japan. There was one very important feature of Compudyne's North American operations. Rico stepped from the stepvan to find it right there beside the truck. Set amid the golden tiles of the plaza was the round black insert of a manhole cover.
Shank tugged the cover up and dragged it aside. Dok and Filly began setting up the requisite safety-orange guardrail to surround the open hole and then pulled out the orange-and-red-striped compressor that would pump fresh air into the hole. Rico opened a Sony palmtop computer marked for New Jersey C. L. P., paused to glance around the plaza, then began tapping the palmtop's keys.
Five minutes passed. Shank climbed down the hole and into the utility passage under the plaza. Dok and Filly passed several duffel bags of gear down to him, then began setting up the air compressor. Rico was still tapping the palmtop's keypad when some slag came out of the Shiawase headquarters building to investigate.
The slag wore a suit and a plastic-laminated ID marked for Shiawase Compudyne security. Rico kept tapping keys on the palmtop till the man stepped up beside him.
"What's tox?" the security officer asked. "There a problem?"
Rico paused to look the slag up and down, then went on tapping the palmtop's keys. "Central office says we got a trickle discharge on a Kay-seven quad feeder. Probably just rats, but we gotta scan it. Might take a couple of hours."
"You got a work order or something?"
"That's top secret," Rico replied. "I could tell you, but then I'd have to waste you."
The guard looked at him sharply. "What?"
No sense of humor. Frowning, Rico looked at the slag again, and said, "Yeah, I got an order. What's it to you?"
"Just doing my job, chummer."
"What job?"
"Shiawase security." The slag pointed at the ED slung from his lapel. "Maybe you're really eco-freaks planning to terror-bomb the place. Gotta scope it out. You scan?"
Rico grinned sarcastically and shook his head. "You freaking guys are all alike." He tapped some keys on the palmtop. "You wanna see my order? Here's my order. You can call that number there if you wanna scan it deep."
"Thanks." The slag looked at the palmtop's display, then pulled an ultrathin cellfone out of his jacket pocket "This'll just take a sec, chummer."
"Null sheen. I get paid working or talking."
The line rang twice.
"Thank you for calling the repair bureau of New Jersey Consolidated Light and Power. All our customer service representatives are busy. Please hold the line and the next available representative-"
"Repair operations. Jane speaking. May I help you?"
"Yeah, hoi, my name's Mike Kosaka. I'm with the security department of Shiawase Compudyne. I've got one of your crews on my premises. I'd Wee to verify what they're doing here."
"Whenever repair crews are dispatched, sir, they are issued a work order code. Please ask the crew supervisor for that code."
"Uhh… hang a sec… That'd be gee as in gulf, two-four-nine-oh-seven-five."
"One moment, sir."
"Sure."
"… That is a valid work order code, sir. Repair supervisor Ramos and his crew have been dispatched to your location to investigate a suspected line malfunction. This should not involve any interruption of service to your facility. Estimated time for completion is approximately four hours. Have you any other questions, sir?"
"Ah, nope. That'll do it. Thanks."
"Thank you for calling New Jersey Consolidated Light and Power."
"You happy now?" Rico said.
The security officer smiled and nodded. "Thanks for your time."
"I get paid for working or talking," Rico said. The security officer nodded again and turned to go. Rico looked to Dok and Filly, and said, "Let's get that air line going."
Filly plugged the orange-and-red-striped air compressor's power line into the socket on the side of the van, and the compressor sputtered to life.