"That won't be a problem if you can find ten thousand nuyen," she said cheerfully, sashaying past him into his room with a grin. He closed the door behind her and lounged against it, looking at her intently.
"What have you done?" he asked. She told him.
"You don't seem to like Humanis much," Magellan probed. "I hear you helped out in a few paybacks."
Serrin tried to work out where this sudden change of subject was leading. And he was also still cogitating over that phrase: someone like you. An elf. Me. Him. The kidnapper at the top of the pile. Elves.
"Got to protect your own," Serrin growled.
"Damn straight," Magellan said, with just a little too much wine in his voice. Then he again made an abrupt shift.
"Let's see what else you know. Sutherland's identified the ownership of the Umfolozi plant by now?"
"Ninety-nine percent," Serrin lied. "It was the British connection. The medical databases not on official computers. That's what helped him narrow down who had ready access." Another point scored. Another way of
tricking Magellan into believing he knew much more than he did.
"Clever. I hadn't thought of that," Magellan mused. He got up from his chair, stood up as if to pour another glass of wine and suddenly whipped around, grabbing Serrin by the lapels of his jacket.
"Who else knows?" he hissed.
Serrin had expected that. "We've made arrangements," he said coolly.
"Which are?"
"Do you honestly think I'm going to tell you? Suffice it to say the information is filed away for transmission to interested parties should anything unforeseen happen to us."
Magellan spat, muttering something that sounded like "drek." He'd bought it. For the first time in this long night, Serrin believed that he was actually going to get out of here alive.
"Who? How?" The red-haired elf shook Serrin bodily.
The mage faced him down. "So I'm supposed to sign my own death warrant by telling you? Michael isn't just good. He's brilliant. You won't find any trails. Anyway, what makes you think we're foolish enough to leave it only in electronic form?" he said calmly.
Magellan let go of Serrin and it was obvious he was thinking hard. Probably thinking it was worse than he'd feared. That Serrin knew almost everything and maybe even did know everything. Killing him even killing all of them would be futile now. What Serrin had told him was enough. Them searching through non-official databases that was Sutherland's brain at work. Magellan had only one card left to play now. But he would take a long time working himself up to being able to do it.
"Well, then, let's talk about our people, Serrin."
The plex was just so fragging big, and the troll had no idea where to search as he roamed astrally through the sprawl. Sure, he knew what he was looking for, but the haystack was so huge and the needle would be well-hidden. To find the elf, Tom's astral body would actually have to enter the very room where Serrin was. He couldn't just try to magically assense his location through whatever walls were hiding his friend from view. With a million buildings in the city, that would take forever.
There had to be a trace, he knew. From the spell lock Serrin used for detecting enemies. But, try as he might, hovering inside Serrin's hotel room attempting to pick up a trace of the locked spell got him nowhere. Serrin was simply a far more powerful magician and his masking hid the trace from the despairing troll.
An astral visit to the club had been equally useless. The auras of the people there were the same unpleasant mix the troll would have expected in a similar place anywhere in the world; aggression, lust, violence seething under the surface. That was never all, of course, and so Tom tried to seize the rare good energy; excitement, joy, a little love here and there, but there was nothing of Serrin. He began to work his way around outside. Still nothing.
Serrin, where are youl Tom felt a bleak sadness come over him. It wasn't just that the elf was gone, lost to him. The troll had also sensed the bond between the cynical, troubled spirit of the mage and the forlorn girl. He saw that they loved each other, but just hadn't figured it out yet. That Serrin might be dead, dying, that the possibility of love would be destroyed before it ever blossomed hurt Tom deep, deep down.
In the midst of these mournful reflections, the troll suddenly and to his utter astonishment suddenly felt a bite at the nape of his neck and he remembered Shakala. His astral body froze. He let himself become completely empty, just waiting, not feeling anything much except an awareness of himself.
It was pure instinct that led him now, led him straight to the dead zone.
22
Michael was just about to knock on Tom's door, which opened even before his knuckles made contact with it.
"I know where he is," the troll said, but he didn't look particularly elated or pleased with himself.
"Me too," Michael said slowly. "We're on our way downtown now. To pick up some heat."
From the way the girl was smiling, Tom knew she must have been the one to fix it. He wasn't going to ask how any more than Michael had demanded details of him.
"You guys take more rides than Karoo jockeys," the ork driver said as they piled into his cab. Then he studied the address written on the scrap of paper Michael shoved in front of him.
"Hey, I get triple rate for going there," he growled. "And you pay for any damage done to the engine, right?"
"You got it," Michael said and waved some money at the driver as the cab sped off into the night.
"You know our people are special," Magellan urged. "You were born knowing that."
"Depends on exactly how you mean it," Serrin said, still playing for time.
"Come on. You're a mage. You know perfectly well that magical talent is more common among our people than any other race on earth."
Serrin nodded. He also knew that in some places the percentages were even higher; the ancient lands of Tir na nOg, for one. But by now he'd figured out where this train of thought was heading. To get out alive, he would have to tell Magellan what he wanted to hear and then
figure out a way to feed it back to him later as his own opinion.
"And the places we control amp; they work. The Tirs, right here in the Zulu Nation, and everywhere else where our people are running the show. We protect the land, the environment. We've even used our magic to restore it from the ruin in which humans left it in so many places. Our technology's cleaner, safer, better. We know how to do all this for everyone's benefit. Everyone, right?"
"It would be hard to argue with that," Serrin said.
"And we elves have been here before, and most of all, we know that. Or some of us do. We take care of the world better because we know we're coming back. Not like humanity. They think they can poison the water, poison the air, dirty everything up because they don't care about the future. Just the here and now. They figure they've only got this one time around and so they'll use and abuse everything they can and frag everyone else, frag the future."
Magellan was practically shouting now.
He's obsessed, Serrin realized. He won't be able to tell illusion from reality, lies from truth, at this point. All I have to do is agree with him.
"It's true. You see it every day," Serrin said with some feeling, though he didn't think any particular race had a monopoly on thinking the world was made for them and the rest of creation be damned.
"Just think, Serrin, if we elves had control of the whole business. The whole wide world. We could really start cleaning it up, really make it work right. Like it used to be. Serrin, it's what the world needs and, and as elves, it's our destiny."
"I've always wished it was so," Serrin lied, knowing it was what the other elf wanted to hear. Magellan was kneeling on the floor beside him, virtually seeming to beseech him.