“But he was okay, right? He was weak, and only barely conscious, but he was alive. They sent me home in a car and told me not to tell anyone what I’d seen. I never saw Daffyd again. They told me he was dead, but I always knew they’d killed him. Can’t have orks in the family if you’re a noble, you see.”
“I didn’t tell anyone. Well, I told my father and he told me to keep quiet about it or I’d be disinherited. Daffyd’s family murdered him because of his change. For a long, long time I felt guilty for not telling anyone. Maybe the only reason I have everything I’ve got now is because I didn’t speak up and tell the truth. Maybe, if we can help each other now, it will make up a little for what I didn’t do back then. So, Rani, it’s only money. What does that matter?”
She was defenseless against his brutal honesty. Somehow she knew that not even those other people in there, the elf mage and the smart American woman, they didn’t know about what he’d just told her, and maybe never would. She was an Indian ork, lowest of the low, but here was a member of the British nobility almost begging her to be part of a forgiveness. She felt very strange indeed, thrilled but overawed.
“The car will be here. And here’s my number,” Geraint said, pushing a card into her hand. “Come back Wednesday evening. After seven, yes?” She nodded urgently. “Get them to bring you. I’ll pay for it. They’ll bring you. You can do that?”
Rani nodded again. She didn’t know what she was getting into, but she knew she wanted to come back here again.
He closed the door behind her. Through the security camera he watched her walk down the ball. Serrin came up behind him, putting a hand on the nobleman’s shoulder as he turned from the doorway.
“One thing, Geraint. I want to know who’s responsible for sending me on a wild goose chase, nearly getting killed myself. Rani's got family to avenge. Fran’s had a real bad time and I think those nightmares may start again. But what about you? Why are you investing all this money and effort?”
Geraint sighed and gave a wan smite. He might have said, because it’s real, and I’m tired of nobles I despise, business deals marinated in cynicism, and too much easy living. But one confession was enough for one day. He decided to be facetious instead.
Oh well, it’s something to pass the time, I suppose.” Evading Serrin’s questioning expression he walked off to talk decking with Francesca.
Serrin booked the suborbital to New Jersey’s Newark International. All he could get for the next day was a standby at six-fifteen, unless he was prepared to pay for Deluxe Ripoff Class. At least he had the long-duration residence permit, allowing him a few precious days in Manhattan each year. What the hell, he had a week left on it and Christmas was only a month away. Looking at the huddled pair eagerly discussing the technicalities of decking. he realized that for the first time in a while he had people in his life for whom he might actually want to buy Christmas presents.
24
The neon half-blinded the mage. It was two-thirty in Newark International, and all he wanted to do was get through Customs and Immigration and park himself in one of the coffin hotels around the airport complex. He needed to catch up on the sleep that rising at five in London had cost him.
“It’s a kind of permanent temporary pass,” he explained to the suspicious, gun-toting official who looked like he was missing his sleep as much as Serrin was. It didn’t make him any too helpful. When they wanted to be, New York’s finest could wield the old quadruplicate red-tape routine as well as any Brit. The guy had already scanned the pass twice and come up with approvals on the security checks, yet he still glared at the pass as if it were a rabid dog. Entry into Manhattan required one of at least a dozen different kinds of passes and permits. Serrin’s was the kind the guard was least familiar with.
“Allows me twenty days’ stay every year; there’s a week left on it. Hey, I’m only going to be here two days.” Serrin was beginning to lose his patience, though he knew he shouldn’t. With an effort he calmed himself and was rewarded by finally being waved on his way. Having caught sight of a couple of Hispanics in the queue, the official suddenly seemed more eager to harass them than to detain the elf any longer. Serrin trudged wearily off into the monstrous concrete complex beyond.
As planned he went straight to bed to catch up on his sleep, but awoke feeling slightly worse, if anything. He had slept too long, nearly twelve hours altogether, albeit interrupted by the flight. His head felt thick and he shivered in the cold morning air. He was a bit light-headed from hunger, but Serrin didn’t think he could face real food.
Well, he thought, I’m in Manhattan now. I don’t have to eat real food if I don’t want to. I can live off garbage like everyone else.
Getting through the access points and more checks with his pass, he then took a bus into the city, where he decided to stay at the opulent Hyatt. After the second shave of the day and a steaming hot shower, he began to feel more alive. While dressing he surveyed the contents of his suitcase, feeling some distaste at how tacky and ridiculous were the souvenirs he’d bought in the Heathrow shops. Smiling to himself, he picked up the druid doll dressed in a white robe with the blue insignia and carrying a gilt sickle. The only druid he’d ever seen didn't look much like this. She was for real.
He jump-started his body with a pot of coffee as thick and syrupy as he could get it in the hotel coffee shop, stuffed down a couple of bagels, and then did what he aways did when he First hit Manhattan. He had some people to see, maybe a contact or two to check, but something else always came first.
Grand Central wasn’t far from the Hyatt, one of the reasons he’d decided to stay there. Serrin had been barely three feet tall the first time he’d sat amazed by the sheer scale of the station, its endless spaces and swirling masses of people. Something of that awe remained, always ready to strike a chord in his emotions whenever he was there. He sat down with a magazine and another cup of coffee and just took in the scene.
There were suits, kids, fresh-faced youngsters from out of town come to find out how long their wide-eyed looks would last before the poison of the city destroyed their dreams, a sprinkling of metahumans and Hispanics mostly doomed to suffer indifference or outright hatred, a couple of guys who were obviously racing to find out which they could destroy first, their bodies with steroids or their minds with essence-the usual panoply of folks.
It’s been cleaned up, though, Serrin thought. Security didn’t take long to pounce on any wino or other wretched soul with terminal despair who might still think he could drift in here. Those for whom it all had become too much, who would burst into tears, begging any stranger, “Got a cigarette, oh, any damned brand,” just to have something to say. Just to get a glance, a touch of a hand, a chance word or two in reply.
Serrin hated Manhattan. Its soul was deader than any city he’d ever known. It swept away its poor and hopeless, its disabled, handicapped, troubled people, its blacks and Hispanics and Puerto Ricans into decayed sumps of suburbs-if they were lucky. What about the street shamans? he wondered. How could any totem breathe life into a soul when the very essence of a place was dead?
“A dollar for your thoughts.” Looking over his shoulder at the woman who sat down beside him, he suddenly broke into a broad, beaming smile.
Barbara! What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same! I'm just finishing college.”
“Hey, that’s great!” He was genuinely delighted. “And how is delightful Lafayette? And Judy?”
They had met in Serrin’s birthplace, not long after he’d been shot up bad in the Renraku business. For some reason, he’d decided to use a little of the money they’d paid him to spend a few weeks in the place of his birth. Not that he had any roots there; his parents had traveled too widely and too often for that. It was just to see what the city was like.