I stuck my tongue out at her, but she'd already started beating out a harsh staccato on her keyboard. I left the room and mounted the stairs to the first floor. In the kitchen I grabbed two cups of kaf and exchanged a series of uninformative grunts with Tom Electric. He had his eyes glued to a Bookman and was doing his best to upload some self-help book into his gray-ROM.
"Annie's coming back to town, eh, Tom?"
Grunt and nod.
I looked at the container that had carried the book chip."All I Need to Know to Understand Women I Learned In Catholic School? Are you sure that will help you, Tom?"
Hopeful grunt and emphatic nod.
I shrugged and carried the dual mugs of soykaf from the room. Tom's ex-wife comes to Seattle every six months or so, whether Tom's recovered from the last visit or not. I wondered at his choice of scanning material because Annie struck me as about the most un-nunlike woman I'd ever met. Then again, I couldn't rule out the possibility that she'd found a convent out there that catered to macrobiotically nourished, politically correct, archeo-feminist, neo-retro splatter-metal enthusiasts with bipolar disorders.
Valerie silently forgave me for taking so long when I handed her the brimming mug. "Got your prey."
"It was thateasyT
"No, love. I'm that good." She shook her head, her thick brown braid flopping from shoulder to shoulder. "What does Lynn see in you?"
"She knows, deep down, I'm just a real sensitive guy." I gave her a crocodile smile, then leaned against a mainframe cabinet. "Who is he?"
"She. Selene Reece is her name. She's a great granddaughter of Harold Reece. He was a newspaper tycoon before the Awakening. He diversified and left everyone a lot of money. She's a black sheep of the family, the illegitimate daughter of a granddaughter who used a lot of recreational chemicals at a time when it was thought LSD could keep one from goblinizing."
I nodded. Orks and trolls usually bred true, but some folks in the general population are tagged with "monster" genes. They tend to kick in around puberty, causing embarrassment somewhat greater than having your voice crack or your face break out. In essence, their whole body breaks out, and they shift from being normal human kids to orks or even worse.
It's not pretty and usually very confusing. There are plenty of orks who don't make it through the transformation with their psyches intact. There are even more con artists making a fortune selling everything from sugar pills to votive candles to prevent kids from undergoing the change. While kids might not fully understand the problem, their parents do and will do just about anything to avoid the humiliation of having a child "run away."
"This Reece recommended Albion to the Club as a hire? I have a hard time placing Albion and his porcupine coiffure in that kind of place."
Val shrugged and sipped her soykaf. "Cheap thrills for the elite without their having to go slumming. The club's computer didn't have any record of his employment, but the tailor who made his uniform still had a copy of the employment record. Selene Reece is listed as his sponsor."
"Checks with what Cutty told me. Where is Reece now?"
"You're expecting a lot in exchange for a kafcup. Tom Electric would have brought me donuts."
"I owe you. Do you know where she is?"
Valerie nodded her head. "According to the club schedule she's up in the Yukon. She won a lottery and is going after a snow moose. Won't be back for a week."
I smiled widely enough that Valerie knew I was getting myself into trouble and wanted her to set it up. "Can you crack back into their computer to confirm a dinner engagement for me with her there, tonight, about six? Make it look like it was on, then got scrubbed by the lottery win."
She looked hard at me. "You're seeing Lynn tonight, Wolf."
"I know, I know." I set the mug on top of the computer. "Set the dinner thing for six. I meet Lynn at eight. I just want a chance to look around. I'll be in and out, fast. I want to reconnoiter so I can report to Doc when he gets back."
Valerie drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. "I suppose, but if you stand Lynn up, you'll regret it."
"I wouldn't dream of it, Val, honest."
"Good." She smiled wickedly. "Because if you do I'll make sure you're on every boiler-room investment househot list from now until the collapse of Western civilization."
III
This is the part of the story where most narrators would mention that they slept fitfully and had prophetic dreams about the past and future melding together. I'm supposed to tell you all about the dreams, using cryptic terms that will confuse you until things come together later. It's the way you know the stuff you're reading isart.
I've got no dreams to share. That doesn't mean I didn't dream, mind you, but just that I don't want to share the dreams. From the second my head hit the pillow in the spare room Raven has allotted to me, I dreamed of Lynn. The dreams might have been prophetic-in fact, I was hoping they were-which explains why I'm not going to share them.
I had fully intended to sleep until the sun was so far over the yardarm they'd have to use a satellite link to communicate, but Stealth whooshed and creaked on into the room I use. My eyes came instantly open, but my Viper stayed under the pillow. No sense in wasting a bullet on a target that could have taken an Exocet hit without denting his hide.
"No new toys to show me?" I sat up in the bed and let the frivolity drain out of my voice. His armor is better against humor than it is against bullets. "What's up, Stealth?"
"Valerie Valkyrie says you're asking about the Pacific Northwest Hunting Club."
I nodded. "Albion had a job there for the past week. He was recommended by a member. I thought I would check it out this evening."
Stealth remained absolutely still for a moment. He didn't so much as breathe, which he really didn't need to do anyway. To help in the assassination work he used to do before he became claw-abled, Stealth traded a lung lobe for an internal air tank with a slow-release oxygen system. Saved his life once-gave him enough time to free his feet from a block of cement at the bottom of the Sound.
At last the Oracle spoke. "You will be armed?"
Stealth lives by that fragment of wisdom that says "No problem so large that it cannot be solved by the suitable application of plastic explosives." He proved that, both in his professional and private life. In fact, to get out of the cement block, he blew the lower parts of his legs off. That is why, when wedo have casual conversations, I don't tell him about hangnails or hernias.
"Actually I expected this to be a soft recon. I have to meet Lynn later…"
"Ms. Ingold."
"That's the one. She doesn't much like guns-she's still hinky about the grunges who grabbed her, so I thought I would travel light."
"I see." He froze for another second, then turned and started out of the room.
"Hey, Stealth, wait!"
He slowed and looked back over the shoulder at me.
"My change from the cab?"
His Zeiss eyes blinked at me once, then he turned and left.
Stealth's silent departure didn't bother me as much as it might have someone else. He's weird enough that if having him owe me money meant he would try to avoid me, I could live with that. Then again, for all I knew, he had gone off trying to figure how to give me change in bullets of differing calibers.
The Old One gave me a salutary yip as I looked in the mirror at the results of a shower, shave, and the suitable application of sartorial accouterments. I appreciated the sentiment, but I'd wait for Valerie's opinion before deciding whether I was comfortable with my choices. Not that I was that comfortable in the clothes-neckties and nooses have more in common than both starting with the letter N.
Valerie gave me a full 1000-watt smile. "Oh, Wolf, if I had an icebreaker as sharp as you, I'd be in the Aztechnology database and gone running on a kiddie-deck. Double-breasted blazer of blue, good choice, gray slacks, dark socks, white shirt, TAB tie, nice, and the wing-tip shoes." She gave me the hairy-eyeball. "You fixing to make this datereal special?"