“So ka,” Ghost said with a knowing nod. “I can understand loyalty to your friends.”
“They’re not my friends,” Sam blurted. To the samurai’s raised eyebrow, he added, “We’re all Renraku.”
“So ka. The bond to the tribe is even stronger.
“My people here would never be called a tribe by those fancy ethnologists who wet their pants over the back-to-the-land dreamers out there beyond the plex. Those white-coats would call my kin a gang. But that doesn’t make them any less a family, a tribe that takes care of its own.
“We’re not like the Reds that live out in the Salish-Shidhe. Those dreamers can’t see that life in the world these days means life in a city. Red Men have to take to the concrete the way they took to the horse, or we will pass from the land entirely.
“Since the Whites came, some of us have fought them, some have welcomed them. Didn’t make much difference in the end. We lost control of the land and ended in misery, despair, and poverty. And then they threw us into the camps, where they tried to strip away our souls.”
Sam could see the pain in the man’s face. Ghost was too young to have been in those death camps that had been President Jarman’s attempt at a final solution to the Indian problem, but he seemed to feel the anguish of the camps as his own.
“When Howling Coyote came down from the hills with his Great Ghost Dance, he sure handed the Whites a surprise. Made the Man realize that Reds weren’t going to take it anymore. Broke their technology with his magic, he did. But that was then. The Whites have magic now, too, but some of my people don’t want to face it.
“The old men who led the Dance don’t understand what it did for us. It didn’t banish the White Man, as advertised, or the Black Man, or the Yellow Man. They’re still here. And so are their cities and works-weakened maybe, and pushed back by the magic and the power of the Awakened-but far from beaten. What the Dance really did was give us breathing room. It gave us a chance to beat the others at their own game.
“It ain’t going to be easy. It’s going to take real warriorship, but my people are ready for that challenge. We’ll show them. In the end, we will win. But to win, we have to survive, and surviving means nuyen. You ain’t got the bucks, the Man don’t listen. There’s lots of loose creds waiting around for shadowrunners to liberate.”
Ghost fell silent, seemingly exhausted by the long string of words. Sam didn’t know what motivated the man to speak so, but the speech gave him hope that these were not bloody-minded thugs who would as soon kill them as look at them. He began to think it was possible he might get out of this predicament alive.
Ghost’s next words startled him even more than had his confidences.
“Why am I talking to you?” the Amerindian snorted.
“I don’t know. Maybe you needed someone to listen to you.”
“Don’t need no drek from some soft Anglo corporate,” Ghost said gruffly. Giving the darkening skies a last look, he ordered Sam back inside.
The samurai’s sudden mood shift left Sam again unsure of what he faced among these shadowrunners. Nothing they said was exactly as Sam understood it to be. It made sense one minute, only to become totally alien the next. They seemed to live in another world. Confused, he climbed awkwardly back into the squat.
An Elf had arrived while he had been on the balcony. He sat cross-legged in a corner, his attention on a data-reader in his lap. From the jacks on his left temple, Sam surmised that the Elf was the decker who had been riding Matrix cover on last night’s shadowrun.
Sally still lay on the foam pad that was the room’s only furniture, but she was awake. She looked rested now, the hollow circles of exhaustion gone from her eyes. Ghost shouldered Sam out of the way and passed through a doorway hidden by a curtain that Sam had taken as a decorative wall hanging. The samurai returned with a tray of cold tofu and steaming soykaf, which he brought to Sally. She thanked him with a sad smile.
“I’m getting too old for this, Ghost.”
It seemed an old story between them.
“Drink your soy.” Ghost waited while she drained half the cup. “You haven’t told us yet what you plan for the Raku.”
“Avaunt, Lord Muselebrain,” the Elf ordered from his corner. “The fair Lady Tsung needs her rest before pressing on with this sordid business. You street samurai are all alike-no proper sensibilities, no understanding of delicate persons or sense of timing.
“All you want to do is flex your muscles. Once you impress us with your hyped resources, you only stay long enough to grab your blood money before scurrying back to your squalid dens.”
Thin, sparkling needles slid from beneath the fingernails of Ghost’s right hand. Sam guessed the Elf was pushing the limits of the Amerindian’s tolerance, imposing on his hospitality. Sally laid a hand on the samurai’s back, out of sight of the Elf. The needles vanished.
“Can it, Dodger,” she said. “Ghost’s not pushing. A decision has to be made.”
The Elf huffed his annoyance at the rebuff. Satisfied, Ghost walked to the window and stared out while Sally put her tray aside and sat up straighter. “So what’s on the disks we pulled?”
“Quite a bit actually, Fair One.” All trace of annoyance was gone from his voice, and was replaced by cool professionalism. “Production schedules. Some personnel files. A couple of patent applications. A fine swag, which would have considerable street value if the run had not terminated so noisily. As is, we shall have to wait until cooler weather before safely disposing of it.”
“Meaning we lost a lot of value?”
“Of course.”
“Well, at least we’ll get paid for the plant.”
Sam was confused. He understood that their stolen data would be less valuable on the open market if they waited to sell it, but he had thought they were simple thieves. “What plant?”
Ghost started to say something, but closed his mouth when Sally spoke.
"We made a little donation to the cleaning supplies of the computer systems research office. An aerosol generator disguised as cleaning spray. It will dispense a little bug called Vigid along with its cleaning solvent. In a few hours, a lot of Renraku wageslaves will be going home sick. The next few days will be somewhat uncomfortable for them and most displeasing to the Renraku management, what with the inevitable schedule disruption. While they limp along, our client, Atreus Applications, gets the jump on the competition. It should allow them to hit the Matrix with a new software package a full week ahead of Renraku.
“That was the real job. Atreus wanted us to snatch some prototypes to hide the nature of the operation. We picked up the disks as a fringe benefit.”
It all sounded straightforward-making allowances for the basically devious nature of shadowruns. But something nagged at Sam. Something about the delivery system of the disruptive bioagent. He ran Sally’s words over in his head. Why not simply spread the agent around? The runners could have been given an antidote beforehand. Why combine it with cleaning fluid? Simply to delay implementation? A tailored time-decay capsule could do that effectively enough. Why cleaning fluid, or was that important at all? Somewhere deep in his brain a synapse fired and a memory awoke.
"Excuse me,” he said tentatively, “But the solvent in the cleaning fluid. Was it acetone-based?”