Stephen Kenson - Technobabel

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SHADOWRUN
TECHNOBABEL
Stephen Kenson
A ROC BOOK
ROC
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane,
London W8 5TZ, England
Penguin Books Australia Ltd,
Ringwood, Victoria, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road,
Auckland 10, New Zealand
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England
First published by Roc, an imprint of Dutton Signet, a member of Penguin
Putnam Inc.
First Printing, May, 1998 10 9876543
Copyright (c) FASA Corporation, 1998 All rights reserved
Series Editor: Donna Ippolito Cover: Peter Peoples
SHADOWRUN, FASA, and the distinctive SHADOWRUN and FASA logos are registered
trademarks of the FASA Corporation, 1100 W. Cermak, Suite B305, Chicago, IL
60608.
Printed in the United States of America
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this
publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission
of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
BOOKS ARE AVAILABLE AT QUANTITY DISCOUNTS WHEN USED TO PROMOTE PRODUCTS OR
SERVICES. FOR INFORMATION PLEASE WRITE TO PREMIUM MARKETING DIVISION, PENGUIN
PUTNAM INC., 375 HUDSON STREET, NEW YORK, NY 10014.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book
is stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher
and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this
"stripped book."
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
There are many people who helped in the creation of this book who I would like
to thank. Thanks go to Bob Silverman for helping me make the jump to doing
this novel; Mike Mulvihill for giving me a shot and developing some great
Shadowrun storylines to work with; Donna Ippolito for giving an untried
novelist a chance; my fellow authors Mel Odom and Jak Koke for their
invaluable advice; FASA's extraordinary editorial staff for making me look
better than I am; my family and friends for putting up with me and encouraging
me; and, lastly, Tom Dowd, Paul Hume, and Bob Charrette for creating such a
cool world to play in. Thanks, everyone, I couldn't have done it without you.
Prologue
The year is 2059 . . .
Magic has returned to the world after an absence of thousands of years. What
the Mayan calendar called the Fifth World has given way to the Sixth, a new
cycle of magic, marked by the waking of the great dragon Ryumyo in the year
2011. The Sixth World is an age of magic and high technology. The age of
Shadowrun.
The rising magic has caused the Earth to Awaken. The ancient races have
re-emerged, throwing off their human guises. First came the elves and dwarfs,
born to human parents. Then came the orks and the trolls, some born different
like the elves and dwarfs, others transformed, twisted from human form into
their true selves as the rising magic activated their DNA. Dragons and other
creatures out of fantasy appeared in the skies and in the wilderness. Unknown
to the people of the twenty-first century, some of these folk and creatures
out of fantasy recall an earlier world where magic reigned supreme, long
before the earliest of recorded history. They know secrets that make them
powerful in this new Age of Magic.
The Sixth World is a strange blend of the arcane and the technological. The
march of technology has become a race. The distinction between man and machine
is blurred by the power of cybertechnology. Machine and computer implants are
commonplace, a mating of flesh and machine. People of the Sixth World are a
new breed; stronger, smarter, faster. Less human.
The Matrix has emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the old global
computer network. A virtual world of
computer-generated reality, a universe of electrons controlled and manipulated
by those with the fastest cyberdecks and the hottest new code. In this world
is stored all of the information hidden behind powerful data fortresses just
waiting to be liberated by pirate computer users, deckers, who glide like
shadows through the corporate and governmental databases.
It is an era where information is power, where data and money are one and the
same. Multinational megacorporations have replaced governments as the true
superpowers. In a world where cities have grown together in sprawling
maga-plexes of concrete and steel, walled-off corporate enclaves and
arcologies are the modern castles from which corporate executives control
masses of wageslaves for the profit of a lucky and ruthless few.
But in the shadows of the corporate giants there are the SINless. Those
without System Identification Numbers are not recognized by the machinery of
society, by the bureaucracy so massive and complex that nobody understands it
completely. Among the SINless are the shadowrunners, traffickers in stolen
data and hot information, mercenaries of the street-discreet, effective, and
untraceable. They are the agents of the corporations that battle for power and
control in the concrete jungles.
In the depths of the Matrix, strange new forces stir, beyond the knowing of
any of the millions of people who access the vast network each day. The
dealings of a powerful inventor from a forgotten age of magic and a
multinational corporation with dreams of domination over the world market draw
the attention of powers unknown to either. A new faction has entered the
struggle of the Sixth World that is neither magic nor machine, but something
else entirely ...
The Matrix is a computer-generated, symbolic representation of the grid, the
world information network. Instead of dealing with messy manual commands and
procedures, the cyberdeck lets the user perform apparently real actions in
cyberspace and then translates them into system operations. A person in the
Matrix reaches out and touches the symbol representing a file. The deck's
software knows the user wants to open that file. The machine performs all of
the operations, freeing the user from the tedious task of having to enter
those commands manually. Matrix imagery is imposed on the user by the grid in
a "consensual hallucination," to use Dr. Hikita 's term. It's no more an
ultimate reality than an animated vid-chip. These are computer-generated,
graphic images. The systems and the functions those images represent are real,
but the images are just that. They have no reality.
-Dr. William Spheris, noted expert on Matrix design, from a tridcast interview
on People to People,
June 12, 2049.
Not real? Not real!? Looks to me like the doc's never done a run. I'm
tellin'you, when you're dartin' through the peaks of Mitsuhama's L.A.
mainframe shaggin' combat systems that are doin' their bangest to roast you
alive, plus you 're prayin' to Ghost your deck doesn't melt in your lap cause
you got stupid, and you looks up and there in front a you is Death himself
jacked in by the corp to rip your soul . . . babes, that's reality.
-Decker "Sandman" commenting on Spheris' statement in the People to People
interview
1
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was
without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the
spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.
-Genesis 1:1
Think back. What is the first thing you remember?
My life begins in an alley-a dark, hidden place in shadows of the city. I
awaken there like being born: weak, blind, and helpless, new to the world and
all of its strange sounds, smells, and experiences. And alone, but not for
very long. The first thing I become aware of is the darkness and the noise. I
cannot see, but I can feel and smell and hear.
I can feel the ground beneath me. It is hard and cool. The roughness of it is
not unpleasant-like someone scratching your back-and I lie there for I don't
know how long, just enjoying the sensation of being supported by the ground,
feeling its cool and strong embrace. I can feel the air stir around me, a
gentle breeze brushing across the bare skin of my face and hands and ruffling
my hair. The breeze brings smells and sounds to me as I lie there.
I smell the harsh smell of the city: a smell of burning. Burning fuel, burning
trash, burning wood, and people burning with hope, despair, misery, and joy
make up the smell, mixed in with the slow decaying scent of the city as metal,
mortar, and stone slowly crumble to rust and dust,
ground down beneath the force of the elements. I smell my own sweat, cooling
on my skin.
I hear the distant sounds of the city, the constant rumble of noise that most
city-dwellers ignore almost completely in their daily lives. I hear the voices
of cars, from the bass rumble of diesel engines to the high whine of electric
motors powering small commuter cars. From time to time a horn blares out its
distant cry of anger or warning. The voices of the city whisper and speak to
me, and I know there is danger.
Then I hear another voice, much closer, which is speaking to someone else.
"There he is," the voice says and I know he is talking about me.
Then another voice, deep and gravelly. "Just like Crawley said he would be.
I'll give him that, Weizack, that freak may be weird, but his information is
right on the money."
Weizack laughs, more like a humorless bark. "You should talk, chummer. You
ain't winning no beauty prizes yourself."
Weizack's partner growls, a low, throaty sound. "Watch it, chummer. I may look
like something outta somebody's nightmare, but at least I ain't no fragging
ghoul. Let's just do this job and get the frag out of here. This place gives
me the creeps."
A rough hand grabs my jaw, and I feel a jolt of fear and surprise shoot
through my nerves. I want to push away the hand touching me and filling my
nostrils with the stench of overripe sweat and the smell of decay, but my body
refuses to obey me. My muscles remain limp and I lie like a dead fish on the
cool, hard ground as the hands turn my head to the side and blunt fingers
brash against the side of my neck.
"Hey," I hear Weizack's comrade say, his hot, rank breath blowing past my
face. "He's still jacked in."
"So unplug him. What's the big deal?"
The fingertips brush my neck again. I hear a faint metallic click and feel an
immediate and yawning sense of loss open up within me. He has taken something
from me. Something very important, my connection to something larger and
greater than I am. I am truly alone now, and helpless against
these strangers. I try to move, or even open my eyes, but I can't. It feels
like my brain is detached from the rest of my body. Like I have forgotten how
to use it somehow. The part of me that is awake and aware floats somewhere,
detached, unable to make the connection to make a move or a sound.
"Fragging chipheads," the deep voice grumbles. "Why they wanna burn out their
brains beats the drek outta me. Feedin' stuff straight into your brain is
totally fragged up. All of that techno-trash, just for the sake of gettin'
high."
"You ever try slottin' sims, Riley?" Weizack asks his partner.
"No way. Those things'll frag you up for good. Not even the beetles, just the
soft-core drek. My cousin was a sim-chipper, and all he did was spend the
whole day sitting around slotting chips and living in a fraggin' fantasy
world. Couldn't hold down a job or nothin'. Finally cooked his brain slotting
something he shouldn't of. Cheap Hong Kong trash. You wanna get trashed, I say
do it the old fashioned way-with a bottle or something. These brain-burners
frag you up but good."
"What about all of this stuff?" Weizack says, his voice coming from close by
and above where I lie. He must be standing near my head, looking down at me.
"Leave it," the one called Riley says. "Said you don't wanna mess with this
drek. It's bad biz."
"Why not? As long as we're here ..."
"No." Riley's tone flat and cold. "Bad enough we're comin' here for him, but I
ain't messin' with some of the weird-ass mojo that goes down around here.
Beetles are bad enough, but this place gets used for some real magic. Once
we're done with him we're out of it, but if we mess with this place we could
end up cursed or worse."
"You really believe in that hoodoo curse drek?" Weizack asked.
"Take another look at my face, drekhead, and tell me there's no truth to
curses. Ever since the magic came back, it's been nothing but trouble for the
whole world." Riley's voice was heavy with bitterness. "It mighta made some of
the elves and their wannabes happy, but it's just another
way to slot over the rest of us. Proof that mother nature is a slitch with a
sense of humor. Now shut the frag up and give me a hand here. We need to move
this guy before somebody finds us here."
A strong pair of hands grips my ankles and, a moment later, another pair
slides under my shoulders and grips me under the armpits. They lift me off the
ground like a limp rag, all of my muscles still stubbornly refusing to respond
to my mind's demands to move. Just a little movement, a twitch or a blink, to
show these two I'm awake and aware. That's all it would take. But I can't seem
to figure out how to do it.
I feel vaguely sick and dizzy as I'm carried a short distance, swaying gently
between my two porters. They set me down again on a surface that is slick and
soft over the hardness of the ground.
"All set?" Weizack asks, and for a moment I think he's talking to me. Riley
grunts in response and Weizack says, "O.K., let's get going. Crawley doesn't
like to be kept waiting."
"Frag him," Riley says. "I don't take drek from any frag-gin' ghoul."
I hear the sound of a zipper and feel the slick vinyl-coated cloth close
around me like an embrace. The zipper passes up over my head and I'm
completely sealed in ... oh no. They don't think I'm unconscious. They think
I'm dead! But I'm not!
I feel panic grip my heart like a cold hand as my mind frantically screams at
my body to obey. I just need to move, to make a sound, something to tell these
men I'm really alive, that they've got the wrong guy. Dammit, move! I feel my
breathing begin to quicken and I hope the sound will penetrate the heavy
vinyl, but there is no response from outside it.
Two pairs of hands lift me off the ground and swing me like a sack a couple of
times before releasing me. There is a moment of cold, stark terror as I fly
through the air with no sense of balance and no idea where I will fall. Then I
drop
onto something firm but yielding, and roll just a bit before coming to rest on
my side.
There is a clunk of metal on metal and the retreating footsteps of the two
men. Then the sound of doors opening and muffled talk from somewhere ahead of
me. That's when I realize I'm lying on top of a stack of bodies, all of them
wrapped up for delivery just like me. But delivery to where? And are they dead
or like me, trying desperately to gather the strength to cry out, to yell "I'm
alive!" in hopes someone will hear them?
The thought hits me: is this what death is like? Maybe I really am dead and
just don't know it. Maybe when you die all you really do is become a helpless
prisoner in your slowly decaying body, aware of the world around you but
unable to move or communicate in any way. Maybe your mind hangs around until
your body rots away in the ground or you get the quick and merciful release of
cremation. The thought of this paralysis as the afterlife nearly makes me
scream and collapse in terror, but another thought bubbles up into my mind
from somewhere. I know I'm not dead. I just know it somewhere deep down
inside. I know I've been dead before and this isn't what it was like. I'm
alive, reborn, and I have to figure out how I'm going to stay that way. Be a
shame to start my new life only to end up dead again.
An engine rumbles to life and we start to drive. The meat-wagon slowly pulls
away from the place of my awakening and heads out into the city.
2
The initiatory experiences of shamans the world over are remarkably similar,
which we can now account for in the universal nature of magic itself. The
proto- shaman falls into a trance or profoundly deathlike state, often as a
result of an illness. While in this state, the candidate's spirit leaves the
body behind and travels or is taken into the other world. In this spirit
world, the candidate's spirit-self encounters and speaks with the various
spirits dwelling there, learning certain secret words, names, and songs. The
candidate's spirit form is then torn apart or devoured by the spirits, reduced
to nothing more than a skeleton. The spirits introduce something new to the
shaman's skeletal form, something symbolic of the shaman's awakened magical
talent, like a magic stone or bone. The spirit-body is then reconstructed
better than ever before. This death/rebirth experience awakens the shaman's
magical potential and the candidate returns to the physical world with an
awareness of the spirits and the power of the spirit world. This traditional
form of shamanic initiation continues even into our modern magical age.
-from the lecture "Shamanic Traditions in the
Twenty-first Century," by Nobel Prize winning
shaman Dr. Akiko Kano, Cal-Tech, 2044
I lie on top of a pile of corpses for I don't know how long. Time seems to
drag without destination or origin. We sway and weave through the traffic like
a funeral barge slowly
making its way downriver to the sea. I try to let the gentle movements soothe
me instead of making me sick to my stomach while I concentrate on trying to
find a way out of this situation. The smell inside the meat-wagon is awful.
The hot, organic smell of death mixed with the sharp bite of chemical
cleansers and overlaid with the strange smell and taste of the rubbery vinyl
of the body-bag surrounding me like the cocoon of some kind of strange insect.
A thought passes through my head about how body-bags are not exactly designed
with comfort in mind, and I have to force down a bout of hysterical laughter
at the idea.
I know I've got to find some way to get out of here. Buried in the hot
darkness and the smell of decay and disinfectant, I take stock of the
situation. I cannot make my muscles work the way they should, but I can still
feel my hands and my feet, the sensation of the vinyl body-bag against my
skin, the way I rest on top of the bodies supporting me, the motion of the van
as it moves. My mind is a jumble of thoughts and images. I was expecting to
see someone else. Someone else was to come and find me, not these
body-snatchers looking for corpses.
Why can't I move? I try to figure out what could have happened to cause this.
I can still feel everything. Neither my limbs nor my skin are numb. I dismiss
the possibility of injury causing my paralysis. The idea makes me ill, and, if
it's true, there's not much hope of getting out of here. I push the thoughts
aside. No point in dwelling on what I can't change.
Drugs? I don't think so. I don't feel sedated or drugged. My mind is sharp and
awake. It might be a drug I don't know, but, again, there isn't much I can do
if that's the case. Best to consider the other possibilities.
Magic? It's possible. There are spells to paralyze and control people. I know
something about the theory behind them. Magicians have the ability to do such
things, but I can't recall ever having been under a spell. Thinking about
magic makes me feel strange. There's something I don't remember about it.
Something important, but it doesn't help me with my present problem.
There's the possibility of the BTLs Riley talked about. Better Than Life
chips-beetles-were things plenty of people plugged into their brains to
experience feelings and sensations more pleasurable and intense than anything
real life had to offer, supposedly. I dimly recall a feeling like that,
feelings deeper and broader than anything I thought a human body and mind
could contain. A sense of being so large, so vast, but it slips away from me
even as I try to grab hold of it. Was I using chips in the alley? Is my
current condition the result of neural damage to my motor centers? I can't
remember.
The way I'm lying on top of the stack of bodies is giving me a painful pull at
the base of my neck. I long to raise my head or to roll over to a more
comfortable position. I focus on the pain, let it fill my thoughts. I pour all
of my effort into making my body roll over to the side. Just a little
contraction of the muscles. Just a slight change in position. That's it.
Should be easy. Nothing to it.
I start to sweat inside the confinement of the body bag, and I can feel the
air getting hot and stale. The sound of my own breathing is loud in the
confinement, but I focus on it to remind me I'm still alive and I try to
quicken its pace. I need more air, more oxygen to my muscles and my brain to
try and speed their recovery. If they can recover, that is ... No, I can't let
myself think that way. I have to be able to move or there's no chance at all.
The meat-wagon takes a corner hard, and I throw all of my strength into
rolling with the movement. There! I manage to roll onto my back on top of the
other bodies, and I think I can feel someone's arm under my lower back, as if
it were holding me in an embrace. It isn't much, but I moved.
I start concentrating on my hands and my feet. They are tingling a bit and,
with some effort, I can almost move them. The paralysis gripping my body is
starting to fade, I can feel it. I concentrate on trying to move, trying to
find my voice, to bring my mind back into synch with my body. That's it. I
feel like my mind has lost touch with my body, like I've only forgotten how to
use it properly. If I
could only open my eyes. Of course, all there is to see right now is the
inside of a dark body bag. I just need to try a little harder.
We slow to a stop, and the driver kills the engine. We've arrived somewhere. I
start to work feverishly to regain some movement, any kind of movement. I have
to tell them I'm not dead, that they've made a mistake. I have to get out of
here. I hear the doors of the van clunk open, and I can hear the men talking
again. Weizack is saying something about the Urban Brawl game he lost some
money on last night. His partner Riley just grunts in response to his
ramblings.
Rough hands lift me out of the back of the van, and I try to squirm or
struggle inside the body bag to tell these two they're not handling a corpse.
I manage to flex my hands a bit, curling the fingers in to form fists, but I
still can't move my arms. The thought of Weizack and his chummer dropping me
in fright and cracking my skull on whatever is under me if I move flashes
briefly through my mind. I could end up needing a body bag for real then, but
I have to try and make them aware of me.
Then I hear a new voice speaking.
"Is this him?" the voice asks, barely audible through the thick vinyl body
bag. The sound of it is low and whispery.
"Yeah, right where you said he would be," Weizack says, his voice gone flat
and cold. The newcomer is obviously not a friend.
"Let me see," the other whispers.
I am lowered to the ground, and someone unzips the body bag. There is a rush
of cool night air, and a foul stench assaults my nostrils. It is the smell of
death and decay from the meat-wagon, but much worse and without the acidic
tang of the disinfectant to cover it. The touch of the cool air and the
terrible smell send another surge of adrenaline through my system, and I fight
to move or see what is going on.
"Good, good," the new voice whispers, and I shiver a bit at the sound. Did
they see that? "He's still in good shape, his aura is still bright and
strong."
A dry hand gently caresses my cheek and I nearly gag at the touch. It's like
the touch of a corpse. I can feel sharp nails like claws just barely grazing
my skin.
"Ah, fresh meat," the same voice whispers again with a sigh of pleasure,
sending a whiff of hot, foul breath wafting across my face. Hearing those
words, I regain some control over myself. My eyes snap open and I stare up
into what looks like the face of death itself. The figure crouched above me is
pale and hairless, with skin tinged the gray of the grave and drawn tight over
his bones. Thin lips curl back in a cruel smile, exposing sharp teeth that
remind me of a small, meat-eating animal. A narrow tongue of a darker shade of
gray emerges to lick his lips like a man sitting down to a feast. His hands
are bony claws tipped with sharp, rending nails, and his eyes are the worst of
all. White and blind, they seem to focus on my face, and yet look past my
flesh as if they were peering straight into my soul.
"Good evening," the gray figure whispers to me, and I realize it is night, the
dark sky covered with a gray shroud of clouds. I also realize neither my two
"handlers" nor the creature crouching above me are surprised or shocked to see
me awake. They know I'm not dead, and the implications break over me like a
wave. If they knew I was alive the whole time, then I haven't been taken for
disposal like some kind of rubbish off the streets but for some other purpose.
The ghoul's comment about "fresh meat" comes to mind and I shudder again and
try to move. My limbs jerk spasmodically this time, causing the creature to
stop smiling and back away a bit, even as he waves the two handlers in closer.
"No, no," he whispers in his low voice, "don't try to move. You'll be better
off if you stay still. We wouldn't want you to injure yourself." His words are
intended to sound comforting, but they only make my skin crawl. I look up at
his pinched, gray face and his sightless eyes and see no pity or sympathy
there.
"Bring him," he tells the two handlers. "You can come back for the rest later.
It's not like they're going anywhere." Chuckling a wheezing laugh at his own
joke, the
creature turns and moves off as the handlers each grab one of my arms and lift
me up. I notice that Weizack is a man with a bit of a paunch and red-rimmed
eyes. He wears a scuffed leather jacket and a faded and stained denim shirt. I
also notice the butt of a pistol protruding from the side of his belt
underneath the jacket.
His partner is a tall, hulking figure with a broad, flat face. Two short tusks
protrude up over his upper lip and his ears are longish and pointed, lying
back against his skull. He looks like a goblin or ogre out of some fairy tale,
but I realize he's an ork, one of the metatypes who assumed their true forms
when magic returned to the world. He is right about one thing; his face is
ugly as sin, but it's nothing like the hideous visage of the creature they
work for, the ghoul. I catch the thing's face out of the corner of my eye as
they lift me off the ground, and he almost looks sorry for me. That worries me
more than anything I've seen so far.
The two handlers carry me away from the meat-wagon, my feet dragging on the
ground, toward a low brick building. The van is parked in an alley alongside
the building, and there's a side door nearby. The weathered brick walls of the
building are smeared with years of accumulated graffiti; the signs, scrawls,
and symbols meshing together like the secret writing cities use to communicate
with those who know how to read it. The symbols are strangely familiar to me,
but then I notice something else scrawled in vivid red near the door of the
building: "Beware the Tamanous."
I'm dragged through the door, down a corridor lit by the blue-white light of
flickering fluorescent tubes, a glow to make a healthy person look dead, which
only emphasizes the ghoul's pallor. He leads us into a room and turns to
Weizack and his partner.
"Put him up on the table," he says, "so I can get him prepared for delivery."
Delivery to whom? I wonder, as the men drag me toward a flat, steel table in
the middle of the room. Next to it I see a tray of shining, polished
instruments: scalpels, needles, tubes, wires, and gleaming hypodermics.
"It seems like such a waste," the creature sighs softly
somewhere behind me. "The parts are always best when they're fresh."
When I hear those words I feel the adrenaline rush into my body like a dam
breaking. Synapses fire and connect, newfound energy shoots through my nervous
system and I find the strength to plant my feet on the floor and shove Weizack
away. As he stumbles back with a yell into the tray of instruments, I grab for
his gun. Time goes strange and everything seems to be moving in slow motion to
me.
Weizack crashes to the tiled floor along with all of the sharp and shining
surgical gear as I flick the safety off on the gun and spin on his partner. I
faintly hear the gray creature cry out not to damage me too much as I level
the gun at the ork.
A look of total and utter surprise on Riley's face makes him look almost
innocent and comical for a moment before I fire and the rounds from Weizack's
gun erase his face in a blur of red. He topples back toward the floor with the
top of his head blown off.
Before I can turn toward the ghoul, he is upon me, slamming into my side with
surprising speed and strength. His skin is like leather and his eyes are
hideous, wide and staring. The smell of him is as overpowering as the charnel
smell of the meat-wagon, and he sends us both crashing to the cold tile floor
near the steel table. The gun flies from my hand and slides across the tile
floor just out of reach. I struggle to get to it, but too late.
The creature is hideously strong and I am still weak and moving too slow. It
grabs me and throws me down onto the floor on my back, pushing the air out of
my lungs with a whoosh and sending pain lancing up my spine. A blow to my
stomach makes me want to retch, and another upside my head has me seeing
stars. I struggle to throw the thing off me as it straddles my legs and
strikes at me with its wiry arms, but it is too strong, too heavy.
The gun is out of my reach and Weizack is stirring and cursing, bleeding from
several cuts and gashes the surgical tools have given him. The hot, metallic
smell of blood is everywhere in the room, and it seems to drive the creature
pinning me into a rage. It smiles and licks its thin lips, revealing a
mouthful of sharp teeth and an animal-like tongue.
I shrink back in fear. Something cold and primal uncoils inside me and seems
to take over, a basic instinct. There is a metallic click, and I strike out at
one of the wiry gray arms pinning me down. The ghoul arcs back, howling in
pain, a scream that scratches against my brain like a monofilament edge parts
flesh and bone like water. Blood spurts out in dark gouts from the stump of
the ghoul's arm. I kick the screaming thing off of me and scramble onto my
hands and knees toward the gun. The dark, carbon-fiber blade slides silently
back into my forearm, shedding the blood and gore from its slick surface as it
goes, my skin sealing perfectly over the opening with only the slightest mark
to reveal its passage.
Grabbing the gun from the floor as Weizack begins to get back to his feet, I
shoot him in the leg, shattering his thigh bone and leaving a exit wound I
could fit my fist through. He goes down yelling "Frag!" over and over again at
the top of his lungs as the ghoul also continues to howl and roll on the floor
in agony. I have to get out of here before I find out if they've got
reinforcements nearby. I move over to where Weizack is leaning against the
wall and clutching at his leg.
"Keys," I say as I level the gun at him. He looks for a moment like he's going
to tell me to go slot, but then glances again at the gun I'm holding and
reaches into the pocket of his jacket. I grab the key-ring in the shape of a
little plastic dragon without taking my eyes off him and then back a few steps
away.
Turning from the carnage in the room, I head out the door, my head still
ringing from the ghoul's strike and my ribs and legs aching. I burst out into
the hallway to see a man wearing a pristine white lab coat over his street
clothes. He is studying the flat computer pad in his hand. He looks up as I
rush out of the room, all bloody and wild-eyed, and there is a long instant
where we seem to just stand and stare at each other. I raise the gun and shoot
him
without a second thought and keep moving down the corridor. He drops the
computer pad with a clatter and stumbles back from the impact of the round to
his chest. The look of surprise is frozen on his face, and he leaves streaks
of blood where he slides down the pale gray wall. I have no idea who he is.
I run down the corridor and out the door to the van parked in the alleyway,
still loaded with its macabre cargo of corpses. I yank open the door, jump
into the driver's side, and gun the ignition, body-bags scattering from the
meat-wagon's open rear doors as I peel out of there. A horn blares at me as I
swerve onto the road and accelerate away, but there is no sign of pursuit from
the charnel house. Only when I'm several blocks away do I notice the blood
spattered on my clothes and skin. I look down at my arm where the terrible
curved blade emerged, seeing the faint, pale line on my skin near my wrist
that is its sheath.
I didn't even know it was there.
3
Now the whole earth had one language and few words. And as men migrated from
the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they
said to one another, "Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly." And
they had brick for stone and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, "Come, let us
build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us
make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the.
earth." And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons
of men had built. And the Lord said, "Behold, they are one people, and they
all have one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do;
and nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let
us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one
another's speech." So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face
of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was
called Babel, because the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and
from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of the earth.
-Genesis 11:1-9
It had been a long time since God felled humanity's last attempt to build a
tower to the heavens, but humanity had now toppled heaven from the sky and
raised up a new heaven to replace it. A heaven of glittering satellites and
low-orbital factories singing their electronic choruses in praise of commerce
and free enterprise, looking down on the Earth with their watchful eyes,
seeing all.
In the highest throne of the new heaven sat the Zurich-Orbital, home of the
Corporate Court. The Court arbitrated the disputes and laws of the vast,
multinational mega-corporations straddling the globe and holding the power and
prestige once reserved for the nations they had eclipsed. Granted
extraterritorial status by the weakened governments of the world, the
megacorps answer to no law but their own, embodied in the form of the
satellite orbiting high above the mundane concerns of Earth's teeming
populace. From their heavenly headquarters, the thirteen justices of the
Corporate Court pass their divine judgments on the world below and the
megacorporations controlling it.
Justice David Hague of the Corporate Court floated in his small office space
on board the Zurich-Orbital like an angel sitting on a cloud, but the
Justice-a paid employee of Fuchi Industrial Electronics-was anything but
serene. Fidgeting in the loose harness keeping him tethered to one wall of the
small room, Hague did his best to simulate pacing in a zero-gravity
environment. Floating gently back and forth while looking out the room's small
window at the vast blue sphere of the Earth below, he was alone for the moment
with his worries and concerns.
Despite his unease, Hague was very much the image of an angelic figure. His
rosy cheeks and wide blue eyes gave him a boyish air that made him look years
younger. He'd cursed the "baby face" in youth, but now that he was past fifty,
his youthful looks worked to his advantage. Where most of his colleagues were
spending huge sums on cutting-edge treatments to keep them looking young and
vital, David Hague could still pass for a man in his thirties. Oh, there was a
touch of gray in the golden curls, but his hair was so fair most didn't notice
it anyway. He sighed and thought wistfully of his native Amsterdam again,
wishing he were back home, or at least back on Earth.
He longed to be standing on solid ground and wished the whole matter he'd come
here for was over. The trip up to
the orbital had been exhausting, as usual. The Z-O operated on Greenwich Mean
Time, which meant it was something like four a.m. here, whatever meaning that
had for a station in low-earth orbit. Hague's personal body clock wasn't far
off, and he wished for the hundredth time that the whole thing was over and
done with so he could at least get some sleep.
Although Hague, like all of the Corporate Court justices, was no stranger to
confrontation or conflict, he felt a deep uneasiness about the events that had
brought him to the Zurich-Orbital station. A serpent had entered the Corporate
Court's economic and legal Eden, and he feared it might topple their tower to
the heavens just as God had toppled humanity's last attempt. The balance of
power between the megacorporations was delicate in the extreme, and the Court
was entrusted with maintaining it and keeping the peace.
An electronic chime drew Hague's attention away from his brooding. He gently
pushed off from the wall to grab a padded handle, which let him turn toward
the door of the room.
摘要:

SHADOWRUNTECHNOBABELStephenKensonAROCBOOKROCPublishedbythePenguinGroupPenguinPutnamInc.,375HudsonStreet,NewYork,NewYork10014,U.S.A.PenguinBooksLtd,27WrightsLane,LondonW85TZ,EnglandPenguinBooksAustraliaLtd,Ringwood,Victoria,AustraliaPenguinBooksCanadaLtd,10AlcornAvenue,Toronto,Ontario,CanadaM4V3B2Pen...

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