“And now we’ll take you to the Street Savers shelter,” Anwar announced as he lifted the camera from its tripod and held it at arm’s length. “I’ll be broadcasting live all the way there as Patti tells us the story of how she came to learn the magical skills that enabled her to banish rogue spirits.” He turned. “Mr. Acres? Mr. Chang? This way please.”
He walked Pita toward the exit, Chang and Acres fumed as they followed the two orks out of the lab and into the Street, occasionally turning their grimaces into a smile for the camera that Anwar was carrying. Surrounded by bodyguards, they climbed into sleek corporate vehicles.
Anwar helped Pita into the taxi that was waiting outside the research lab’s door.
“Your friends have told me, Patti, that your talents are entirely self-taught. I understand that you’re a cat shaman?”
Pita nibbed her throbbing temples, then noticed the driver of the taxi. It was the ork woman who had chatted with her-when? only this morning?-about the Meta Madness concert. The woman turned around and gave Pita a toothy grin.
“Hoi kid,” she said. “I found your cat.”
A white bundle of fur launched itself over the seat and into Pita’s arms. Purring loudly, the cat nuzzled against Pita’s chin, then sniffed at the shirt pocket where the Chickstix had been. One yellow and one blue eye peered up at her as the cat let out a questioning mrrow?
Pita stroked the animal, dumbfounded by the turn of events. What a coincidence that the taxi that had come to take her to Street Savers just happened to be driven by the woman she had met this morning! But then she started to mull it through. Even if the cabbie had found Aziz’s cat, she wouldn't have driven around all day with the animal in her car. She’d have returned it to Masaki’s address, and he would have contacted Carla, who would have.
She smiled at Anwar, who confirmed her suspicions with a wink. The lens of the portacam whirred as he shifted the camera to take in both Pita and the cat. “So,” he said into the microphone. “Tell us about your cat. Do you use it to work your magic?”
Pita laughed. She was starting to understand how the news business worked.
31
Carla watched as Wayne put the finishing touches on the Lone Star story. Despite the fact that everyone she’d interviewed had been busy covering their own asses, the story drove one point home. Pita wasn’t just some street-trash ork kid any more-she was the brilliant young shaman who had single-handedly driven the spirit from the Matrix. It didn’t take a genius to realize that, had the cops gunned her down with the rest of her friends that night, the Crash of 2029 would have repeated itself, with devastating results to the world economy.
As a result of Pita’s fame, offers were pouring in from Seattle ork families who wanted to offer her a home. There was even a handful of telecom messages from handsome young orks who saw Pita as their means of escaping the Underground, either as her personal bodyguard-or as her spouse. For now, however, Pita was still living at Masaki’s. She said she liked it there-that she especially enjoyed talking with Blake, Masaki’s burly oak partner. Carla snorted. She wouldn’t be surprised if the two adopted Pita. It would do Masaki good-give him someone else to fuss and worry over.
Carla leaned over Wayne’s shoulder and drew an imaginary box with her finger on the monitor. “Put the image of Pita describing what happened to her that night into a crop box here, and superimpose it over a slow pan of the street where the shootings occurred,” she instructed. “Then we’ll dissolve to the leaked ballistics report that matches of caliber of the slugs found in the bodies with the weapons inside the patrol car. Superimpose the graphics of the squad car’s weaponry over it, and roll the lethality stats beside it.”
Wayne nodded and went to work, cutting and pasting images with a digital stylus and manual commands entered via keyboard and palette-paste mouse. Carla watched as he cut to her interview with the two cops: Corporal Larry Torno, and Private Renny “Reno” Mellor. They looked pathetic, lying in hospital beds with their faces and hands bandaged and intravenous tubes feeding liquids into their arms. Their burns were officially caused by the crash of their patrol car, and the resulting fire. But that didn’t explain the regular pattern of burn marks across their faces and hands, or how the burns had gone to third degree even though the vehicle’s automatic extinguishing system had cut in immediately after the vehicle caught fire.
Carla didn’t for one moment believe their claim that the accident had been caused by extremely bright headlights shining at point-blank range in through the squad car’s tinted and glare-proof windshield. She knew what the real cause had been. But she hadn’t used it in her story.
Both cops claimed to have been nowhere near the spot where the ork kids were gunned down, despite the fact that their on-board computer nav-log for that evening showed clear signs of tampering. Chief of Lone Star Police William Louden was denying any sort of Lone Star coverup, and was claiming that Torno and Mellor were the only “bad apples” on the force. When Carla asked whether any other Lone Star officers were involved in the murders of street kids he shut the interview down entirely. She had hoped that her story would prompt a full-scale investigation into racist elements within the, police corporation. But that had obviously been a pipe dream.
Carla instructed Wayne to cut the officers denials short with a dissolve to the gruesome file pictures of the kids who had been murdered that night. They deserved the air time. Not those lying Lone Star fraggers.
She followed the file footage with the interview she had done with the leader of Seattle’s Humanis Policlub. At least she’d gotten him to admit that the cops were former members of the organization. But then he insisted that they had been tossed out of the group months ago for being “too radical,’ and that they had been acting on their own initiative. More ass covering.
Carla sighed. “Wrap the story with the comment by the Ork Rights Committee member who lost an eye in Friday’s confrontation in front of Metroplex Hall,” she instructed. “That should give Chief Louden something to answer for, at least.”
As Wayne finished the piece by tagging on Carla’s sign-off, Pita entered the editing booth. She hopped up on a table and watched as the completed story was replayed, swinging her feet. The white cat poked its head out of her jacket, where it had been hiding. The kid seemed to take the mangy little creature with her everywhere these days. The cat stared at the screen as if assessing the story, its mismatched eyes darting back and forth as images moved across the monitor.
“Well?” Carla asked, turning to the girl. “What do you think?’
The ork girl tilted her head to rub a cheek across the top of the cat’s head. A contented purring filled the editing booth. Carla couldn’t tell if it was coming from the cat-or the girl.
“We like it,” Pita said softly. “It won’t bring Chen and the others back, but maybe it’ll stop some other kid from getting geeked.”
Carla forced a smile. In the larger scheme of things, it seemed as if nothing had changed. Lone Star still had its quota of had cops, the corporations were denying all responsibility for the spirit and instead reaping the rewards for having saved the Matrix from a repeat of the Crash of 2029, and Carla was stuck under Mitsuhama’s thumb for the rest of her career.
But at least Pita had come out of this all right. One day, the kid would realize that the world was still just as tarnished as it ever had been. But for now-for today at the very least-the future looked shiny and new.
“Yeah, kid,” Carla answered. “I hope so.”