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  She turned and plopped down into the chair.

  That got a reaction out of her. I'd neglected to turn off the massage system, and it was still running full-blast. As her back and bottom touched the chair, I saw all her muscles spasm, and she virtually levitated a couple of centimeters above the seat. Then gravity reasserted itself, and she fell back into the chair's embrace. This time she didn't fight it. Her whole body seemed to go limp, and her eyelids drooped to half-mast, Her eyes were still on me, though. I watched her for a few moments, then went to sit down on the edge of my bed. "I'm sorry about Lolly," I told her quietly.

  Again, no response. I sighed. I'd seen people strapped up this tight before. Usually they'd come out of it on their own by suddenly cracking-sometimes at the worst possible moment. A few, though, would never let themselves go. Jocasta had broken down, just for a few minutes, lying on my floor. That had been cathartic, but it obviously wasn't enough. The fact that it had happened at all gave me some hope that she could go all the way. All she needed was the right kind of push.

  Why am I even thinking this? I asked myself again. It wasn't my problem. It was she who'd decided to kill me, and she could fragging well live with the consequences of that decision. I should just leave her to it, and to hell with Jocasta Yzerman. But, for various reasons, that wasn't acceptable.

  I'm no idealist, an idealist couldn't last very long in the world of 2052. In fact, I'm as cold and hard as the next man when necessary. But that doesn't mean I feel good about turning my back on a situation where I might be able to help. There was another reason, too, of course. I'd known Lolita Yzerman. I think I might even have loved her. Now she was dead. It was too late to help Lolly, but I could help her sister Jocasta.

  "Do you have a picture of Lolly?" I asked softly. Jocasta nodded. She reached into her pocket and brought out a palm-sized holo. She reached out to hand it to me. "Uh-uh," I told her, shaking my head. "You look at it."

  She hesitated, perhaps realizing what I was doing, but then she did as I told her. She stared at the holo for a moment before her face began to twist with grief. The holo dropped from suddenly nerveless fingers.

  With a soft keening sound, she slumped down and forward in the chair. Her forehead was touching her knees and she was gripping the sides of her head as if to keep her skull from exploding. Once again, her body was racked with gasping sobs.

  I turned away, a little embarrassed. Not wanting to intrude further on the grief of this weeping woman, I picked up the forgotten picture.

  Chapter 2.

  Lolita Yzerman. The holo was obviously an amateur job, slightly out of focus and the perspective a bit off. But it was good enough. It was unmistakably Lolly who smiled out from the holo.

  On the surface, Lolly and Jocasta did not show a striking family resemblance. Jocasta was tall, where Lolly was short, with wavy blonde hair and bright blue eyes. And Jocasta was slender, somewhat sharp and austere, where Lolly was attractively rounded in all the right places. Looking closer, though, I could see the resemblance. The same cheekbones. The same mouth-a little small for the face, with good teeth. And, of course, both had datajacks high on their right temples.

  Lolly Yzerman. She'd told me a little of her story. I hadn't automatically believed all of it, but some parts had the unmistakable ring of truth. Her father, David Yzerman, had been a big-rep freelance computer designer. Lolly's own brilliance in math and science had shown up early, so it was only logical that she follow in her father's footsteps. She'd entered the University of Washington's - Computer Sciences program at the tender age of fifteen, graduating less than three years later, U-Dub's youngest honor grad. I suppose her father had been supplementing her training as well. Even while still a student, Lolly was doing hired-gun programming work for a drekload of local outfits, all the while building an extraordinary track record.

  Predictably, she decided that she needed a datajack to really progress, but her father refused to even consider letting his daughter go under the laser until she was twenty-one. Just as predictably, Lolly didn't give a frag what her father said. She took on a few more contracts to earn enough nuyen, then ran away to get the operation done. She was still only seventeen, I think. Lolly's father had punished her when she returned home, the shiny new jack in place, but Lolly was sure he was secretly very proud. She laughed when telling me about it.

  The contracts kept coming from all over: Matrix programming, system analysis, hardware design and maybe even a few shadowy Matrix runs, but she never talked about that. Until now a generalist, Lolly began to specialize. She'd always loved solving puzzles, she'd told me, and soon she found her niche in signal-enhancement and "washing." Washing was the half-art, half-science of picking out the true signal from background noise, and then cleaning it of distortion. Her goal had always been to work for UCASSA-the UCAS Space Agency-enhancing signals from deep-space probes, improving the signal-to-noise, or S/N, ratio. But she was still young, and would need to gather more experience before she could get the job she wanted. And that was why she signed on with Avatar Security Technologies, one of the Lone Star subsidiaries-to get experience.

  Lone Star needs signal-enhancement specialists, too, but for a very different reason than UCASSA.

  When Lone Star conducts an investigation, standard procedure is to tap the telecoms of everyone even peripherally involved with the subject of the investigation. That's right, everyone, whether or not he or she is suspected of a crime. An infringement of personal rights? Morally and ethically speaking, you've got it, chummer. But according to the letter of the law, if not the spirit, it's kosher. As long, that is, as Lone Star notifies everyone whose line has been tapped . . . within four months of the tap's removal. But can't Lone Star get around that restriction by leaving the tap in place forever? Again, you've got it, chummer. Lone Star officers are notoriously absent-minded when it comes to notification.

  Anyway, somebody has to handle all the data that comes out of the tap. In Seattle, that somebody is Avatar, and that's where Lolly ended up. Taps and bugs are notoriously noisy. The signals get fragged up by all the electronic drek just about everybody's got at home these days, and the S/N ration is fragging awful. Sure, contemporary signal-enhancement software and automatic filtering algorithms are sophisticated and wiz, but sometimes they're just not wiz enough. What's needed is that indefinable something, that purely human artistry that some people seem born with. Lolly was one of those people, and the signal-washing job might well have been created especially for her. She told me that she never listened to the contents of the taps. She didn't give a frag about what the subjects were saying. The only thing that mattered was tweaking the data stream to give that last boost to the S/N ratio.

  That's how Lolly and I met. It was while doing some shadowy work for a Lone Star employee that I found out, purely by accident, that little Lolly had gotten herself into deep drek. Seems that Lolly, who was only twenty at the time, was involved in some Machiavellian political infighting, with her blackmailing some guy who was trying to block her advancement because she'd rebuffed his sexual advances. Lolly had gotten in way over her head. Because of some leverage I'd developed during my own case, I was in the perfect position to help her out, which I did, pro bono. When her opponent moved on to another company, Lolly was in the clear. Meanwhile we'd slipped into a torrid affair that lasted five exhausting weeks.

  I learned a lot about Lolita Yzerman in that short time. Because of her looks, a lot of people's first impression was that Lolly was a bubble-headed blonde, with nothing weightier on her mind than getting a blast out of life. Wrong. That was a mask she wore, and it was a good one. If you did manage to see through it, however, you found a calculating person, someone ruthless about getting what she wanted. Part of me hurt bad when Lolly broke off our relationship, but another part recognized that perhaps it was a lucky escape.

  Her tattoos probably said it best. On each ankle was a delicate tattoo that glowed baby-blue under UV light. The left one read, "Good girls go to heave
n", the right one said, "Bad girls go everywhere." Lolly Yzerman went everywhere.

  And now she was dead. I set the holo down and looked over at Jocasta.

  She was starting to pull herself back together. Though she still had her face down on her knees, the heaving of her shoulders had stopped. Tough woman. The second break had been bad. Some people might not come back from something like that for a couple of months-and then only if they found a good head-shrinker.

  I felt the need for a drink. I didn't feel like sleeping anymore-amazing what a laser sight between the eyes will do for you-but my brain was leaden with adrenalin hangover. The bar was within easy reach of the bed (convenient), so I didn't even have to stand up. I poured myself a good clout of synthahol masquerading as scotch, hesitated, then poured a second drink for Jocasta.

  When I turned back, she was sitting upright and gazing steadily at me. Those cool gray eyes were clear and focused. Still emotionless, but watchful and fully aware. That last catharsis seemed to have straightened her out, at least on the surface. (I wouldn't want to share the dreams she'd probably have, though.) Like I said, tough woman. Wordlessly I handed her the drink.

  I watched her hand as she took the glass. Steady, no visible shake at all. She inclined her head minutely in what might-just-have been a nod of thanks, and took a sip. She screwed up her face a little at the taste, either because she didn't like scotch or because she liked real scotch, but she took another mouthful. Then she lowered the glass.

  Her silence and her steady gaze, still fixed on my face, were making me uncomfortable. I took a swallow of my own drink, mainly for something to do. Then I asked, "Can you tell me what happened?"

  "Lolita was shot, point-blank, in the face." Her voice wasn't the dead monotone it had been earlier, but it was dispassionate, as though describing a downturn in the stock market instead of the murder of her sister.

  "It happened in her apartment. The police said she apparently opened the door to someone she knew, someone she trusted. And he shot her." Her words said "he," but her eyes were still saying "you"-meaning me.

  "How did you connect me?" I pressed. "How did you even know my name?"

  She shrugged slightly. "I'd known about you all along," she said. "Lolita told me about your ... involvement." For the first time Jocasta was showing a little discomfort.

  "We had an affair," I told her flatly. "But you also know it lasted less than two months, and we haven't been in contact since."

  "Until she started blackmailing you."

  I sighed. Blackmail again. "For what? And how did you get that idea anyway?"

  "She sent me an e-mail message two days ago, the day before . . . before she died." Her icy control almost slipped there. I found that somehow reassuring. Tough she might be, but she was human.

  "And how did you know where to find me?"

  She looked at me like I was an idiot. "Lolly told me."

  Interesting. As far as I knew, Lolly didn't know where I lived. She had my phone number, sure, but I'd moved several times since we'd been together. "Go on about the message," I said.

  "She was scared, and was just starting to realize how dangerous you were. That's why she told me all about it."

  Something occurred to me. "A voice message?"

  She shook her head, and her copper hair swung. "No, text only."

  Even more interesting. But I'd follow up on that later. "What did she say? What was she supposedly blackmailing me for?"

  "She didn't say," Jocasta said slowly. "She only told me you'd done something wrong. You'd stepped over the line-those were her words. And if she let it out, it would destroy your ongoing relationship with Lone Star."

  I barked with bitter laughter, making her flinch. "Oh, drek," I almost snarled. "Do you know what my 'ongoing relationship' with Lone Star is?"

  I didn't wait for her to answer. "They're looking for me. They're trying to track me down. I went through their training program, I was going to be a cop. Then I found out just what that meant, and I skipped. Lone Star doesn't like that. I think my continued existence offends their delicate corporate sensibilities. My 'ongoing relationship' is that they're trying to find me and I'm trying not to be found."

  I swallowed back my anger-talking about Lone Star always slots me off-and took another gulp of near-scotch.

  Her eyes were still on me, but now I could see the wheels turning as she thought it through. "But you worked for Lone Star," she said slowly. "That's how you met Lolita."

  "Yeah, sure, I've done some work for individual Lone Star employees, but it's all been shadow stuff, all out-of-the-light. For Lone Star itself? Frag, no. My only payment would be a holding cell or a nine-millimeter migraine." I snorted. "But I suppose you don't believe me. "Look," I went on, a little quieter, "it's been a rough couple of days, and I feel like drek. I'm going to check my messages-now that I'm awake-but then I'm going back to bed. Feel free to finish your drink, then feel free to use the door. If you want to talk about it again, call me back in thirty-six hours or so."

  I turned my back on her, slid down the bed until I could reach the telecom, and shifted the flat screen so I could see it better. Then I keyed in Message Replay. Instantly the screen lit up with the weasel-like face of Anwar the fixer. "Dirk," he began, but I hit the hold key, I checked the time/date stamp in the bottom-right corner. Wednesday, November 13,2052-six days ago. Probably a demand for a status report on the case. Well, I'd given him his status report a few hours ago-case closed-and picked up my payment.

  Frag Anwar. I hit Delete and keyed for the next message. Anwar again, Friday, November 15. Delete.

  Next. The screen lit up once more. Another weasel, not Anwar but another of his kind. "Montgomery," the weasel snarled, "the credstick you sent me is short. I'm very displeased."

  "Oh, yeah?" I snarled back at the image. The payment from Anwar would be more than enough to cover outstanding debts, including this weasel. He could wait till tomorrow. Frag him. Delete. Next.

  This time the screen remained blank. Voice only. I could guess who this was. The familiar voice from the speaker just confirmed it. "Mr. Dirk," the cultured voice said smoothly, "this is Mr. ... Johnson. I just wish to confirm that you are indeed working on..." I hit hold. There was no need to let Jocasta hear about biz. This particular Mr. Johnson had called a week ago from somewhere back east-Chicago, I guessed from the accent- with a simple trace job. A missing employee, and the great benevolent corporation wanted to confirm that nothing bad had happened to her (like drek). And now Johnson, like everyone else and his fragging dog, wanted a status report. Tomorrow. Save, this time. Next.

  The next image, and the voice, galvanized me like a laser hit. Instinctively I glanced over my shoulder.

  Jocasta was bolt-upright in the chair, staring at the screen. No wonder. The big blue eyes of Lolita Yzerman looked back at me from the telecom. In place of the familiar twinkle was a shadow I knew very well. Fear. Lolly was terrified out of her wits. I glanced at the time/date stamp: Saturday, November 16, 2052. The day before yesterday. The day before little Lolly was blown away. I leaned forward.

  "Derek," Lolly's image said quietly, "if you're there, answer, please. I need to talk to you." She paused for a few moments, then her normally steady gaze dropped. When she looked up, the shadow-in her eyes was darker. "I guess you're not there," she went on sadly. My heart went out to her. Poor little girl, now a dead little girl. "When you get back, call me. My number's the same. It's . . ."-she hesitated-"it's really important. I think I'm in deep drek." She forced a smile onto her face, but it was a sorry attempt. "Call me," she repeated. "I'll be waiting. Catch ya, Dirty Dirk."

  I hit the key to cancel the rest of the message queue, and sat back, still staring at the blank screen.

  "Catch ya, Dirty Dirk." One of Lolly's phrases, words from the past. I felt the urge to bring up a freeze-frame from her message, to drown one last time in those deep blue eyes. But I resisted the temptation, I knew how much it would hurt. I remember a line from one of my
old Lone Star chummers.

  "Some girls are like malaria, Derek m'lad," Patrick Bambra used to say, especially when he was into the whiskey. "And once you get 'em in your blood, you're never free of 'em." I wondered idly if Patrick had known Lolly.

  With an effort, I pushed back at the depression that threatened to settle over me. I turned toward Jocasta.

  And found myself staring down the muzzle of the L36 again, dazzled by the targeting laser. Frag it, I'd left the slotting thing on the table, right by the armchair. I can't have been thinking straight. If I hadn't been so bone-fragging tired, I'd never have done anything so drek-headed.

  Before I could say anything, Jocasta took her finger off the trigger, and the laser died. Then she let down the pistol's hammer and snapped on the safety, all in a very businesslike manner. She extended the weapon toward me, like a gift. "I'm sorry," she said. "I was wrong. That wasn't a blackmailer talking to a victim ... or to a murderer." I looked down at the pistol and shook my head. With a nod, she concealed the small weapon in a pouch on her belt.

  Silence stretched between us for half a minute. I was feeling too emotionally drained to strike up a conversation, and she was too busy scrutinizing my face. She must have approved of her conclusions, because she gave me a tight, businesslike smile. "You said you do shadow work?"

  I nodded.

  "Will you take my nuyen?"

  I was very tempted to tell her just what she could do with her money. I didn't think I particularly liked Jocasta Yzerman, but that might just have something to do with her pointing a gun at me twice in twenty minutes. But then I looked into her eyes again, and saw the hurt that was still there and would be for a long time to come. She'd lost a sister. What had I lost? An ex-girlfriend? Not even that, not even a real friend.

  Just a few hours' sleep and a bit of pride.

  I nodded. "Sure." Neither of us had to say what the job was.

  She smiled, just barely. "What's your rate?" she asked. She rumbled in another belt pouch, and pulled out a credstick, A three-ring certified credstick. I bumped Jocasta Yzerman up one notch on Montgomery's Socio-economic Ladder and down one notch on Montgomery's Intelligence Scale. A certified credstick is pure money, no ID needed. And I've got some neighbors who'd happily geek her for a one-ring credstick.