She tugged her jacket down to protect her hand, then smashed her fist into the glass panel that covered the emergency stop button. Grabbing a shard of glass from the floor, she began to saw at the plasticuffs around her ankles. The plasticuffs were tough enough that even a troll couldn’t snap them by brute strength alone. But if they were cut sideways, against the grain…
The elevator slid to a stop at the lobby. Pita sawed frantically with the shard as the doors began to open. All she needed now was to meet the smailer yakuza, who even now might be on his way back from the magic shop. Just as the doors slid open, the last strand of the plasticuffs parted. Pita struggled to her feet, but all she saw was an empty lobby. Whoever had punched the button must have taken the second elevator, which was just closing with a soft ping.
Laughing with relief. Pita sprinted for a side exit. She was free! She burst through the door and ran out into the familiar cover of darkened streets.
12
Carla slid her magkey into the slot and waited for the voice-recognition system to cue her sample phrase. A series of red lights flashed across the keypad, but the system was being unbelievably sluggish. Five full seconds had elapsed, and still the voice prompt hadn’t activated.
Carla waited, tapping her foot. She was tired and just wanted to get inside her apartment. She’d fix herself a double martini, power up the bubble tub, and try to forget about the day’s frustrations.
She’d pounded the pavement all morning and afternoon trying to crack the Mitsuhama story. But every attempt to get an interview with corporate vice president John Chang had failed. The director of the Mitsuhama Seattle Hermetic Research Lab had also refused to meet with her, as had the lab’s project manager. None of the clerical employees whom she’d been able to corner was willing to talk, and nobody would provide her with the names of the mages who worked at the lab. Carla had finally been able to interview Mitsuhama’s public relations officer, but the woman had been pleasantly uncooperative. No, Mitsuhama was not prepared to reveal details of the projects currently underway at the lab-certainly not until adequate patents and spell formula copyrights were in place. And to the “best of her knowledge,” Mitsuhama was not currently experimenting with any spells similar to the one Carla described.
Yeah, right.
Carla pulled her magkey out of her purse and pushed it into the slot a second time. At last the system responded: “Please provide voice sample”
“I’m tired, I’m hungry, and my feet hurt,” Carla said. “Now let me inside my apartment, you stupid machine.”
The lights on the pad cycled to green. “Voice sample accepted. Alarm system is… off.”
Carla pushed open the door. She stepped inside, peeling off her jacket and adjusting the apartment's lighting and temperature controls. Then she stopped. Something was wrong. The cushions on her couch were lying on the floor, and the doors of the cabinet beside it were open. One end of the throw rug in the living room was folded back, and it looked as if a drawer in the telecom cabinet had been tipped upside down, scattering its Contents.
“Damn,” Carla whispered. Letting the door close silently behind her, she pulled a narcoject pistol from her purse. The weapon was small enough to fit in a pocket, and could be carried anywhere since its plastic parts wouldn’t trigger security alarms. Carla raised it to chest level and flicked the safety off. If the burglar was still in her apartment…
She didn’t hear anything except the ticking of her kitchen clock and the low hum of the telecom unit in the living room. The unit’s screen art was on, feeding into the speakers a low-frequency noise that mimicked the tonal harmonies of a Gregorian chant.
Quietly, Carla slipped around the corner, pistol at the ready. The living room was empty. So were the kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, The burglars must have fled, but just to make sure, Carla checked in the closets and under the bed. Nothing.
Lowering her pistol, she began to take inventory. They’d obviously found her personal electronics, but had left them tossed on the floor. That was curious, because the laptop and digital camera were worth a lot of money and were easy to pawn. They should have been the first things grabbed.
Nor had the intruders stolen any of her jewelry, even though they’d dumped the clothing drawer in which it had been hidden all over the bed. They’d also dumped out the jar of coins in the corner, but hadn’t taken any. The intruders had also gone through the kitchen cupboards-and the fridge, Carla noticed, when she rached inside it for a cold drink. She was thankful they hadn’t dumped all the food on the floor.
She pulled a gin cooler from the fridge and sat at the kitchen table, surveying her jumbled possessions. Calling Lone Star would be pointless; the cops would merely take a brief look around, make a few notes on their datapads, and leave again. Break-ins were so common these days that sometimes the police didn’t respond until a day or two later. By that time the victims had usually become frustrated and already cleaned up the mess.
The more Carla thought about it, the less certain she was that robbery had been the motive for this break-in. The intruders had overlooked just about every valuable in the place. Oh, sure, they’d taken all her simsense games and a few of her computer chips as well-the kind of thing kids usually went for. But these hadn’t been kids. They were professionals. They’d gotten past her voice recognition system-and it was a good one, not likely to be fooled even by a digital recording-as well as the motion detectors and sensor unit in the hallway. To get that far and not be detected, the intruders had to be good. And motivated.
Carla suddenly realized what they must have been after. If she hadn’t been so tired, she’d have guessed it right away. While she’d been out knocking on Mitsuhama’s doors, the corporation had come to her. She hurried into the bedroom and picked up from the floor the jacket she’d worn yesterday. She slid a hand into its pockets. Empty. The intruders hadn’t gotten what they’d originally been looking for, but they’d taken the next best thing. The chip onto which Carla had copied the spell was gone.
It didn’t matter that much. Aziz still had the original, and she could always get it back from him. And the cops had a copy; they’d demanded one as soon as they saw the story. In the meantime, the intruders had probably been fooled into thinking they’d gotten the original. One datachip looked much the same as any other, and the one Carla had used for the copy was bronze, just like the original. Since it contained the spell formula the intruders were looking for, they probably wouldn’t be back. They’d taken all her other memory chips, too, even though all they had to do was pop them into the telecom unit to see what was on them. But perhaps they’d wanted to be in and out quickly.
It was annoying to lose the other chips. The simsense games had been expensive, and the home trideo she’d shot of her niece couldn’t be replaced. As for the rest of the chips, they were all blank except…
“Oh, drek,” Carla moaned, closing her eyes. “Not my personal stuff.”
But they’d found it. The drawer where Carla hid her “private” recordings had been overturned. The chips she’d stuffed into the back of it, behind her neatly folded sweaters, were gone.
She sat on the bed, looking up at the ceiling-at the spot where decorative, tinted glass blocks hid the lens of a holocamera. The closed-circuit camera was automatically activated every time anyone came into the bedroom. Carla used it to record her romantic encounters, then later would replay and savor her favorite moments. She wasn’t sure if it was the reporter in her, compelling her to record her affairs, or some weird sexual kink. But it didn’t matter now. Somewhere, somebody was no doubt having a good laugh at her expense, titillating themselves by watching her private recordings. Or perhaps the chips were already on their way to a porn shop. Or perhaps to a rival trideo station for broadcast on the evening news.