Then I headed for the airport, Hamster tagging along. In my mind, I was already spending the EC money Geneva was going to pay me.
Once at Logan, I headed straight for the cab stand. I was betting that a plug with von Bulow’s tastes wouldn’t have taken mass transit.
Sure enough, the third cab I questioned was the one he had ridden in. It was a Turing Level Two and had all the quirks of its kind, including a high redundancy factor.
“I must see authorization first. If you have authorization, I must see it. Please show your authorization.”
I fed my credentials into a slot. The cab seemed satisfied and spat them out. “Yes, sir, I picked up the human you describe. Here is his picture.”
The cab flashed a view of von Bulow that matched the digitals Geneva had shown me: dirty blonde hair atop a craggy profile and dangerous lilac eyes. Handsome the way a purebred basal dog like a Borzoi is and likely just as neurotic and skittish. Some of those frigging European aristocrats are so inbred, especially now that they can fix up any little congenital trouble like leukemia or hemophilia, that they make the king of England look like a mongrel. This was not going to be an easy boot, I could feel it all the way down to my mitochondria.
“Here is his pedigree, as read by my chromosniffers, sir.” Wave after wave of numbers and metagrafix rolled across the screen.
“Okay, give me a hardcopy of both.” The pedigree would be handy if von Bulow changed his looks. But I wasn’t betting on that, as he seemed a self-satisified type, too obsessed and complacent to imagine anyone might be after him.
“Where’d you drop him?”
“Drop, sir? I am not allowed to injure humans—”
“What was his destination?”
“The Copley Plaza.”
I should have guessed. It figured he’d vector for the biggest casino in town.
I drove so fast back into the city that my car’s shell could barely keep up with the aerodynamic changes, shifting shape a dozen times a second. A metro dirty-harry in his fan-lifter buzzed me, but I transmitted a priority code that made him veer off. This case looked like it was going to be wrapped up sooner than I could have hoped.
At the Copley I went straight to the registration console. It was actually being manned by a human, but that’s just the Copley’s policy: no splices on their staff, and all the ones owned by guests kept discreetly out of sight (except, of course, for bodyguards). I had to check Hamster at the stable.
The clerk was a piebald black man wearing a topknot laced with gold wire. I flashed him my card. “Mass Pee Eye.” He blinked twice, without expression. I looked at my own ID. The stupid cab had left Siouxsie Sexcrime uppermost when it had read the card. I flexed the plaz back to the right creds.
“Yes, sir, how may I help you?”
Slipping my left hand into my vest pocket, I palmed the boot. “Do you have a guest named Jurgen von Bulow?”
The clerk ran a mental eidetic. “He just checked out this morning, sir.”
Bugshit! “Let me guess. He broke the bank, wired his winnings to Paraguay, and caught a suborb south.”
“No sir, not quite. Mister von Bulow lost heavily. In fact, had we not taken the precaution of pre-debiting his proxy—as we do with anyone who intends to play the games—he would not have had enough to pay his bill. As it was, he left here very much down on his luck. As I might phrase it, were I off-duty, ‘His lily-white ass was dragging.’”
That didn’t make sense. Either the casino games were rigged worse than a Fourth-World election, or the stolen trope was junkbond. Neither alternative seemed likely.
“Did he happen to mention his plans?”
“No, sir, he did not.”
Dead end. I turned ruefully away.
Something bumped my ankles.
I looked down.
It was Flipper.
Flipper was a fishboy I knew from around town. He was a Fuser, a member of a sect that sought personally to atone for the extermination of the dolphins. (They claimed humanity’s
Once at Logan, I headed straight for the cab stand. I was betting that a plug with von Bulow’s tastes wouldn’t have taken mass transit.
Sure enough, the third cab I questioned was the one he had ridden in. It was a Turing Level Two and had all the quirks of its kind, including a high redundancy factor.
“I must see authorization first. If you have authorization, I must see it. Please show your authorization.”
I fed my credentials into a slot. The cab seemed satisfied and spat them out. “Yes, sir, I picked up the human you describe. Here is his picture.”
The cab flashed a view of von Bulow that matched the digitals Geneva had shown me: dirty blonde hair atop a craggy profile and dangerous lilac eyes. Handsome the way a purebred basal dog like a Borzoi is and likely just as neurotic and skittish. Some of those frigging European aristocrats are so inbred, especially now that they can fix up any little congenital trouble like leukemia or hemophilia, that they make the king of England look like a mongrel. This was not going to be an easy boot, I could feel it all the way down to my mitochondria.
“Here is his pedigree, as read by my chromosniffers, sir.” Wave after wave of numbers and metagrafix rolled across the screen.
“Okay, give me a hardcopy of both.” The pedigree would be handy if von Bulow changed his looks. But I wasn’t betting on that, as he seemed a self-satisified type, too obsessed and complacent to imagine anyone might be after him.
“Where’d you drop him?”
“Drop, sir? I am not allowed to injure humans—”
“What was his destination?”
“The Copley Plaza.”
I should have guessed. It figured he’d vector for the biggest casino in town.
I drove so fast back into the city that my car’s shell could barely keep up with the aerodynamic changes, shifting shape a dozen times a second. A metro dirty-harry in his fan-lifter buzzed me, but I transmitted a priority code that made him veer off. This case looked like it was going to be wrapped up sooner than I could have hoped.
At the Copley I went straight to the registration console. It was actually being manned by a human, but that’s just the Copley’s policy: no splices on their staff, and all the ones owned by guests kept discreetly out of sight (except, of course, for bodyguards). I had to check Hamster at the stable.
The clerk was a piebald black man wearing a topknot laced with gold wire. I flashed him my card. “Mass Pee Eye.” He blinked twice, without expression. I looked at my own ID. The stupid cab had left Siouxsie Sexcrime uppermost when it had read the card. I flexed the plaz back to the right creds.
“Yes, sir, how may I help you?”
Slipping my left hand into my vest pocket, I palmed the boot. “Do you have a guest named Jurgen von Bulow?”
The clerk ran a mental eidetic. “He just checked out this morning, sir.”
Bugshit! “Let me guess. He broke the bank, wired his winnings to Paraguay, and caught a suborb south.”
“No sir, not quite. Mister von Bulow lost heavily. In fact, had we not taken the precaution of pre-debiting his proxy—as we do with anyone who intends to play the games—he would not have had enough to pay his bill. As it was, he left here very much down on his luck. As I might phrase it, were I off-duty, ‘His lily-white ass was dragging.’”
That didn’t make sense. Either the casino games were rigged worse than a Fourth-World election, or the stolen trope was junkbond. Neither alternative seemed likely.
“Did he happen to mention his plans?”
“No, sir, he did not.”
Dead end. I turned ruefully away.
Something bumped my ankles.
I looked down.
It was Flipper.
Flipper was a fishboy I knew from around town. He was a Fuser, a member of a sect that sought personally to atone for the extermination of the dolphins. (They claimed humanity’s
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