Finn's Golem (3 page)

From the rooftop
where we stood, you could just s
ee the green of the park beyond
the Greyside Gates. We had traveled quickly out the back
of the Golden Spider,
along
a
winding alleyway and into a derelict shop
th
rough
a shattered front window.

It had just been
a short hop up the stairs to the roof via the fire escape and over two more rooftops to where we now stood, behind an old brick chimney that hadn’t seen use in more years than I cared to imagine, with our pauper’s view of the treetops that less industrious tourists would have to pay thirty credits and
pass through the Gates to see.

I felt a little silly climbing and hiding from what might have been
just
a rat in the kitchen. A kitchen that had no doubt seen many generations of such interlopers. My breathless associate did not
appear
to agree, and for the moment it
seemed
appropriate to let him have his way.

So far I’d been getting by with the tough guy routine, or at least I hadn’t played myself so far into a corner that I couldn’t lie my way out. But if small, dark and ugly ever figured out just what a pile of Swiss cheese my head still was, we’d never get anywhere. And aside from the fact that there seemed to be a decent payday somewhere in the back of all this idiocy, I was of the opinion that it might be easier to talk my way out of a murder conviction if I could explain just exactly why I’d shot... whoever it was that I’d shot. I had no radical plans to confess, mind you, but if asked nicely I thought it might be best to know
why
, and hope the answer was some flavor of self-defense.

Five minutes passed before Felco had well and truly caught his breath and another five before he seemed satisfied that we had not been followed. He peeked around the crumbling bricks of the chimney one last time. This bird was spooked. Maybe it was time to make nice. Or at least, nicer.

“Listen, Mister Felco,” I began, “I can come off as a hard-case, I know. But that’s my business, and that’s just why I’m the right man for you.”

Felco nodded, glumly. This point did not appear to be in debate.

“You and I have been getting by on a wink and a nudge up to now, but if I’m to get us through this, I’ve got to have the whole story.”

Felco’s eyes narrowed. “I though you understood the nature of my request-
,
” he started to protest. This was no good.

“Let’s have it from the beginning, and this time without all the doubletalk. Plain and simple so there’s no misunderstanding. What do you want from me?”

He hesitated, and for a moment I was uncertain if I’d blown it. Had I guessed wrong? Had Felco been straight with me from the beginning, or was he just look
ing for another way to play me?

I took off my hat and Felco’s eyes grew wide at the sight of the wound on my head. I couldn’t see it, but the band of the hat seemed to stick to it as I pulled it away so I imagined that it was still oozing.

“We are not without some dangerous competition, you said. Well, for the record, I believe you. I’m up to my neck in this, same as you. If that isn’t a good enough reason for us to stick together, I don’t know what is.” I had him and I knew it.

“Plainly then, Mister Finn,” he sighed
.
“Your client Claire Marsland is on her way to Bountiful in search of an item that was in her late father’s possession. Apparently he took the precaution of sending it here shortly before his unfortunate accident.” The small pause before the word
“
accident
”
was not lost on me, nor was it meant to be. “She has retained you to assist her in this endeavor. I have retained you to subsequently see that the item is brought to me.”

“By any means necessary?” I asked without offering an opinion.

Felco smiled and opened his fingertips in a brief dismissive gesture. “In any event,” he smiled, “with discretion.”

“Is cutting the gi
rl in on the score an option?”

Felco’s eyebrows knit. “As you say, Mister Finn, everything is an option. Some options are more desirable than others. But you strike me as a man of ability and nice judgment, and I would be prepared to take your lead on such a matter, were it necessary. In any event, it seems to me unlikely that Miss Marsland would be willing to negotiate.”

“Why is that?”

Felco smiled again and said nothing. He was feeling more and more like himself. I considered smacking him around some more. His smile faded as if that thought ha
d been easy to read in my eyes.

“If your reports are accurate, Mister Finn, your client is very earnest. If so, she may seek to right a wrong, to protect her father’s memory. If all that is the case she may be less motivated by pure commerce than you or I.”

“That’s fair
,”
I said as much as possible as if it weren’t all new information and pulled the hat back on my head with a grimace
.
“Did you kill the girl’s father?”

Felco seemed shocked
.
“Most assuredly not.”

“Who did?”

“That
,
sir
,
I do not know and will not speculate,” he said with a gleam in his eyes that told me one or both statements were lies
.
“I only know that if we fail, we may very well share his fate.”

“Swell. And if we succeed?”

“Wealth, sir,” Felco said as if I were a dull boy. “More than you can possibly imagine.”

I thrust my hands into my pockets and leaned against the brick
.
“Fine,” I said. “This dingus that’s going to make us both rich – what is it and how will I know it when I find it?”

Felco hesitated. “For your purposes, Mister Finn-”

I shook my head. “I like to know what I’m dying for.”

“If I were to double your retainer?”

“I’d have twice as many reasons to need to know.”

He paused a moment and looked at me. I looked at the tops of the trees in the park beyond and pretended not to notice. He sighed.

“As to its appearance and location, sir, I am hopeful that your client Miss Marsland will prove... helpful. I only know that somewhere in this city of twenty million souls there is a mini-drive that contains the last known copy of an Omnilink access protocol called E2-476.”

“Catchy,” I deadpanned. “You mean we’re up to our necks over a damned computer program?”

“Not a program, sir. A fiendishly clever bit of code. Almost a living thing. Miss Marsland’s father was a career man with Omniframe Internal Security. He devised new threats to the master system in order to protect against similar attacks. He was decorated three times for exemplary service above and beyond. Had he not been steadfastly loyal to Omniframe, he could have been the greatest criminal of his generation.” Felco looked almost wistful at this.

My guts churned.
’
Frame Internal. How could this get worse? I said nothing and tried to look hard as nails. It must have worked because Felco didn’t miss a beat.

“Five years ago, Viktor Marsland was assigned to the Master Identity Records. They have always been considered the Holiest of Holies. Unassailable.”

“Until now?”

“Until now. They say E2-476 can run on any terminal in the world. That it not only allows one to access the entire Omniframe MIR, but to
alter
them.”

I looked unimpressed.

“Don’t you see?” Felco said, waving his hands in excitement
.
“That would be... would be like hypnotizing God himself. The MIR is where Omniframe defines each and every man, woman and child. If Omniframe says you exist, you exist. Who it says you are
,
that is who you are cradle to grave. This is no hack and slash erasure worm... this is the subtle manipulation of fine details. All of creation is laid open before you, and best of all, Omniframe says that such an attack is impossible.”

“So it isn’t even a crime,” I said, liking this less and less.

Felco, on the other hand, liked this more and more. “It isn’t even a crime
,” he
almost giggled.

“Swell,” I said. “How does it work?”

Felco rolled his eyes. “That, sir, I neither know nor care. All I know is where I can sell such a magnificent bauble of raw power, and for exactly how much. And like you, I begin to see the price in human life that some seem to attach to it. I must have E2-476, Mister Finn. Everything depends upon it!”
He was practically salivating.

I nodded. It wasn’t enough, but it was all I was going to get.

“How do I contact you?” I asked.

“By Interlink. There are a series of redirects on the address, it should be untraceable,” he smiled.

I smiled back
.
“Good thing there’s no chance of any computer geniuses being involved in this case.”

His smile fell. My work here was done.

I was twenty feet away when I heard his voice again.

“Mister Finn? May I have my gun back please?”

I stopped. He said please and everything, how could I say no? I took the Monitor out of my pocket and looked at it closely. It was a -29 after all. No sense taking chances.

“I’ll leave it on the fire e
scape,” I lied and walked away.

I kept to the back alleys for as long as I could, at least until I was sure that I hadn’t been followed. The late afternoon shadows were staring to spread
–
even if you knew how to handle yourself it was better not to let night find you in some of those places, but
for the moment
I moved t
hrough them quickly and easily.

As I walked I shifted through my pockets to find all that I actually knew about Claire Marsland. Two slips of notepaper with three flimsy leads. The number for a telephone that she almost certainly wouldn’t answer unless she was still in New Coast Prefecture, in which case I was screwed.
This girl, whoever she was, might be my only lead, and I wanted her here, not half a continent away.
The time 19:44, which was less than an hour
from now
if it meant today, and I had nothing but the fact that it was at the top of the pile of crap on my desk to suggest that it did. And that flight number, if it was a flight number at all.

I shoved the rest of the papers from my office back into various pockets and looked at the number again. Thirty-two characters, eleven of them letters, the rest numbers. What had made me think it was a flight number? I squinted at the paper in the bad light and forced my feet to keep moving in spite of themselves. The sequence ended in WM8181, which meant Whitburn Memorial Shuttle Pad. Jackpot.

I glanced at my watch. I needed some wheels and I needed them now. A taxi could have me there in five minutes if I had the scratch to spring for the top lane. Ten in regular Hov traffic. But that wasn’t going to happen until I could get my act togeth
er and get my ExStick replaced.

I spotted a rickshaw moving surprisingly well along Messenger Ave and whistled for him to stop. As I was climbing in, I could see why he was plying his trade so far off the top routes. He was a Synth, his skin the green-grey of those designed for factory work and never meant to see the sun, much less bear the
scrutiny of the general public.

“Where to, Boss?” he smiled, his voice coming as a husky growl in sp
ite of his cheerful demeanor.

“Whitburn. With some legs.”

The driver grinned. It was a good fare, with the promise of another one. The
s
huttle
p
ads were Guild territory, but any licensed hack could pick up when he was dropping off. He made time, all right. His thick legs were strong, built for endless days on the factory floor, or hauling loads a damn sight heavier than a broken down private eye.

He made no chit-chat. Probably knew his voice wouldn’t win him any prizes, and was used to the distaste in people’s reactions when they saw him. It gave me time to think.

Vicktor Marsland had done his duty. He’d cracked the one system that was supposed to be unbeatable
,
and unless you believed in the power of coincidence, he’d got himself killed for his trouble. If Daddy’s little girl was coming all the way to Bountiful, there had to be a good reason. Was she out to clear his name, settle old scores... or did she just want to cash in? Did she know what her father’s legacy wa
s? Could be. Or maybe
she
was
walking blind into a whole pack of trouble
.
If that was the case, a
t least I’d have some company
.

One thing was for sure, if she was trying to keep Pandora’s
Box
out of the wrong hands, it sure looked like those included mine. Seemed like I had already made a deal that Claire Marsland wouldn’t like.

I rubbed my eyes. My head was throbbing, and it wasn’t just the damn good bashing
-
in my brains had taken that was giving me grief. I had to get my feet under me and fast, and that meant trying to figure out what side I was supposed to be on.

My best guess was that Felco had come to me. If there was any truth in the yarn he’d spun me just now, it wasn’t the sort of thing Claire Marsland was likely to have discussed over the telephone. Mind you, that was a pretty big
“
If
”
.

Assuming
Felco had known about Marsland’s discovery, it wouldn’t have been that hard for him to have traced the girl’s call to me. And he would never have told me that whole story if he’d thought that I knew any of it already.

So if I was right about the way this had gone down, Drake Finn, private investigator and all-around swell fellow
,
receives a call in his palatial offices from a potential client in New Coast. He makes arrangements to represent her when she arrives in Bountiful. There is at least one other call with the flight arrangements, which may or may not have come after said Drake Finn is approached by an industrious scumbag with a hard-on for my answering machine and a fabulous offer to sell out my new client sight unseen. So what did I do? What was my take on this before my brains got scrambled? I shook my head as the blocks passed and the steady beat of the driver’s
shoes pounded on the pavement.

What would I do under the same circumstances now? Act tough, play smarter than I was and hope that I figured it all out before I got dead. That felt oddly reassuring. So the odds are that’s exactly what I had been doing right before...

...
b
efore someone had nearly killed me. Suddenly this felt less reassuring. I decided that I knew all I needed to for the next half hour anyway, and pulled
Murder, Sweet Murder
out of my coat pocket and read the rest of the way to the Pad.

“Twenty credits, boss
,” my
driver said, just as cheerfully when we arrived. I thrust the paper money at him and watched his face fall. He started to protest and looked around for someone
who
might help him out, but he was up against it and he knew it. If he’d been a Guild driver, he could have called some of the boys over to help me find my pockets. But the Guild drivers were already staring at him darkly, and no cop in Bountiful was going to side with a Synth over a person, even a damned shady person like me.

His shoulders slumped as he realized all of this. Poor bastard. I felt for him in spite of myself. I pulled two more ten-credit notes off the stack and added them to the twenty-five in my hand. He nodded, but didn’t look directly at me. He’d have more trouble passing that crap than I was, but there was enough there to make it worth his time.

I pushed my way past the crowds into the terminal. I liked places like this
–
full of people all completely self-absorbed. If there was ever a place where you could be invisible without trying
,
it was a
s
huttle
p
ad. I checked the arrivals board. Sure enough, the number in my pocket matched the 19:44 direct
flight from New Coast Central
Station
.

I didn’t like that. I’d been bluffing when I told Felco that my client wasn’t on a direct flight because it would have been careless. I had just wanted to keep him or any other little helpers he might have from camping out at, say, 19:44 when the next flight got in.
If I understood that now, why had I got it so wrong when Caire Marsland booked her flight?
How could I have been this stupid? I settled onto a bench with a decent view of the whole arrivals concourse and pretended to read my book.

It took a while to get used to the ebb and flow of the crowd. Most people passing through the terminal were focused on a purpose, which often involved luggage, usually involved taxicabs and always centered on getting away from the Pad as quickly as they
could
. They came and went. A slightly slower moving tribe were waiting to meet various passengers. They arrived a few minutes early and soon disappeared after a flurry of hugs or handshakes, only to be replaced moments later by the next set.

Buried beneath these layers were the staff. Almost invisible at first glance, they moved at a pace that was comparatively glacial. They gave directions, sold magazines, swept up. They were used to the place and unaffected by its energy.

It took a few minutes to be able to see the different groups, get used to their patterns and learn to edit them out of my visual field. The fact that I was trying not to look like I was paying any attention slowed me down. It took
a little
while, but it came. And when it did, the giant room was, to me, empty but for three people. Me, supposedly buried in
Murder, Sweet Murder
, a Latino in a black windbreaker nursing a cup of coffee
on
the far side of the arrivals gate, and a big man with a brown sweater on the catwalk in the upper level. If you just saw him in passing he looked like an interested tourist, trying for a nice overhead shot with his camera. But he stayed
too
long and I spotted him.
At this distance it was hard to
be sure, but it looked for all the world like he saw me
and
acknowledged me with a nod.

Swell. The competition was well-mannered anyway. At least in a building with about three hundred John Laws in easy reach they were. They couldn’t have followed me. Did they have the terminal staked out? I could only assume that they were here for Claire Marsland, but since she was my next best hope in finding out what I was in the middle of, I’d be damned if they were going to get their hands on her before I did.

Which raised a problem.

My rat’s
nest
of an
office had made it clear that I didn’t do a lot of my business face-to-face, and it was a fair assumption that I was about to meet Claire Marsland in the flesh for the first time. So how exactly was I supposed to know her? I could only assume that we’d covered this at some point, but as the PA
a
nnouncer called the arrival of the 19:44, I could only sit stock-still and watch
Black Windbreaker
and
Brown Sweater
for any sign of movement. They didn’t budge.

The crowd thinned down as the arrivals broke for taxis or met their loved ones, and after forty or fifty seconds it was clear there was only one candidate. And what a candidate she was. At a distance I’d have said that she was maybe five-ten, five
-
eleven. Her hair was blonde, but not the harsh yellow or near-white that came from bottles these days.
The
locks fell down in a loose wave, as if her hair might be genuinely curly when it was wet. It hung down past her shoulders, but without giving her the look of a little girl. There was a neat grey cap upon her head which she adjusted slightly as she peered at the emptying concourse.

Windbreaker and
Brown Sweater
hadn’t moved. If anything, they seemed to be waiting for me, possibly so they could pinch us both at once. I stood and slid
Murder, Sweet Murder
back into the pocket of my coat. I heard the loose papers from my desk crumpling under the weight of the paperback like dried leaves. I walked towards the woman in the travelling suit that matched her cap perfectly, trying not to look like it was my intention to approach her, which is a hell of a foxtrot to try and do when you’re walking across a big, empty room in the general direction of the only human being.

I took in more detail as I got closer. The woman in grey was a knockout. She was athletic in build but not what you’d call muscular, or at least not mannish, not in the least. Her legs were long and her stance was confident, even if her clenched fingers betrayed the fact that she was anxious. She looked at me as I grew close. I couldn’t have told you what color her eyes were. Even now, after everything, I still couldn’t tell you. They seemed at
times
as grey as her outfit, other times a pale, reflective blue. There were flecks of gold in them that burned like sunlight when the light caught them, and I’ll fight the first man that says there wasn’t. In that instant they showed more than a little green as I approached, and full of fear in spite of herself.

“Miss Marsland?” I said as much as possible as if I was certain.

“Yes?” she said, fighting for calm and almost pulling it off.

“Drake Finn
,”
I said with what I hoped was a winning smile.

“Oh
,” she
said, without meaning to. Her voice carried the smallest hint of a purr buried somewhere down deep, and I tried not to let it excite me as much as it did.

“Is everything okay?” I deadpanned.

Her cheeks flushed and she covered her lips with her hand for a moment
.
“I’m sorry. You don’t look at all how I expected you would.”

I nodded
.
“You look just exactly as I expected you would.”

A smile played about her lips. “I’ll take that as a compliment if I may.”

“I wish you would.” I couldn’t see Brown Sweater
from
where I was, but Windbreaker hadn’t moved. I thought I could hear footsteps on the catwalk above and felt we should keep things moving along. I reached for the small black suitcase beside her. “Just the one bag?” I asked.