Dodger rubbed at the triple row of jacks on his left temple. 'And who is this renegade?' Cat hesitated.
'Come now, Sir Feline. You need not fish for more reward.'
Frowning, Cat quietly said, 'I don't remember.' 'Ah, you speak an unpleasant truth.‹ Perharw voj^ are trustworthy after all.' Relief, and gnawing terror, flooded Dodger. Cat's response put the runner's tale beyond the bounds of artful contrivance. Cat had told' the truth as he knew it. Only he knew so very little. And so very much. 'Your price is paid. Have you sold this tale to another?''
Cat looked as though the idea had never occurred to him, and shook his head. Young in the shadow games, Dodger thought.
' 'If no further word of your tale is whispered in the shadows, I will see that your account grows fatter.'
Cat's expression changed to disgust. 'I have made my sale. What do you take me for?'
A youngster. 'An honest thief?'
Cat grinned.
'Very well, then. Say rather that I shall reward further enlightenment. Is that acceptable to an honest thief, Sir Feline?'
'I think we can do business, elf.' Cat winked at him and popped out of virtual existence.
Dodger remained, contemplating what he had learned. Then he left, too, slipping unnoticed out of the virtuarreality of the Magick Matrix. He was in no mood to chat with the doorman.
This place was desolate, almost completely devoid of life. Sam's astral senses could perceive the pale glow from the lichens and mosses that carpeted the cold ground, but he caught only fleeting glimpses of more complicated life forms. There was no sign of man or his works. It was still cold this far north, but even in the brief summer this near-arctic region would remain mostly uninhabited, for it offered no water.
He hovered at the edge of a zone that seemed more barren yet. Distantly he perceived a faint spark. A familiar spark. He flew toward it.
No time seemed to pass before he stood next to the mound of white fur that was the source of the lifeglow he had seen from afar. He did not need to see the broad, dark-skinned face surrounded by its mane of fur, the taloned hands, the fanged mouth, or the deep-set red eyes to know this being as a wendigo. He had learned to recognize the tints of aura that proclaimed the wendigo for what it was. The aura was fainter than when he had last seen it, weaker. By the aural shadings that were individual to this wendigo, he knew it was the one he sought. 'Janice.'
The huddled form made no move, gave no sign of recognition. For a moment, he was puzzled. Her aura was not so weak that she would be unable to respond. He had feared arriving too late. One way or the other. But her aura allayed those fears. She was still alive, and she showed only a hint of the moldy grayness he had seen in other wendigo auras. So why did she not respond? The silent treatment was not her style. Finally, he remembered. He was astrally projecting. His words and image were unknowable on the mundane plane. He twisted his perception as Hart had taught him and manifested an image that, though ghostly and faint, could be seen by ordinary eyes.
'Janice,' he called again, confident that his voice could now be heard.
The furred mound shifted, enlarging as massive muscles bunched to arch her back. A dark paw whose toes ended in glossy talons appeared briefly before the motion settled once more into stillness. 'Janice.'
The mound shifted again and a dark patch appeared, her face. An eye opened, a sullen ember in a deep pit. 'I heard you the first time.'
The deep pitch of the words startled him. Subconsciously, he had been expecting the voice of the sister he remembered, not the cavernous tones of her changed voice. While the tonality was different, the intonation and grouchy irritability were familiar from long-ago school mornings. Janice had never liked waking up.
Her next words were a growl. 'Who's the fool who disturbs me?'
'It's me, Janice. Sam. Your brother.' The ember winked out and the dark face disappeared back under a furred arm. 'Go away. I have no brother.'
'I won't go away. We're family, Janice. Don't shut me out.''
The face reappeared, both red eyes visible now. 'I have no family. You saw to that. Remember?'
At first he thought she was blaming him for their being orphans. They had been just kids at the time. His own recollections were vague and blurred by half-remembered pain and anguish. She, being younger, could hardly have clearer memories. The accusation didn't make sense. She couldn't really believe that he had anything to do with the riots. Did she blame him, and herself as well, for surviving when their parents and older siblings had died? Her Renraku psych profile hadn't indicated that kind of grief displacement. What did she mean? 'I'm your family, Janice.'
'There's no more Janice. She's kawaruhito, a changeling no more a part of anybody's family than of polite society. What's left found someone to care about her. Someone who didn't run away and hide when he knew what she had become. But that someone is dead now. Remember?' 'Whatever face Hyde-White showed…'
'Dan Shiroi!' she shouted, erupting explosively from her huddle to tower over him.
Sam looked up into the dark face that twisted with emotion. She still clung to her vision of that wendigo as a protector. As long as she did, his influence over her remained. 'Whatever face he showed you, he was evil. He was a killer who sought to enlist others in his villainy. However kindly he seemed to you, he was consumed by his wendigo nature. He was a liar and a deceiver. You know that what I say is true.' 'You killed him,' she said flatly. 'I swore once that I would never take an innocent life. And I don't think that I've broken that oath. He was no innocent; he was a murderer, and he would have made you over in his own image. Killing him was the only way to end the threat he posed to you and many true innocents. It was the only way to free you from his influence.'
'I didn't want to be free. Dan loved me.' Sam remembered the scene in Hyde-White's retreat where the wendigo that Janice knew as Dan Shiroi had come back from the brink, of death, or perhaps from beyond, to keep her from attacking Sam and Hart as they lay wounded and helpless. 'That may be so, but only at the end was he worthy of your love. As a wendigo, he understood the danger to your soul. But it wasn't a wendigo that saved you. It was too late for him, but he knew that you should not be like him. He gave you a chance to change things.
'You say he loved you. I love you, too. I want to see you saved from this wendigo curse, and IVe come to tell you there's hope. I think we've found a way to change you back. We've built a ritual to save you, but you must come to Mount Rainier.'
'Save me?' Her lip lifted to reveal yellowed tusks, but Sam couldn't tell if it was a sneer or a snarl. 'It's too late. Where were you when they sent me to Yomi?''
'I didn't find out you were going through kawaru until it was too late. Then they wouldn't let me see you. I tried everything to find you.'
'But you didn't succeed, did you? Not until you could take away everything that meant anything to me.'
'I did what had to be done.'
She turned her face away. For minutes she was quiet. Then, she said, 'I'm staying here.'
Sam was appalled. 'Staying here? What have you got here? I'm offering you a way to get your life back.'
He reached out to take her by the shoulders and shake some sense into her, but his hands couldn't grip her. She turned at his ethereal touch and glared at him.
'You can't be serious. Nothing could ever be the same. Your precious little sister Janice Verner is dead. She died before you left your cozy corporate cocoon at Raku. She was replaced by ASN1778, who went to Yomi and got a new life, but even that non-person is dead. Abandoned, like the one who had gone before. Why would I want either of those lives back? I had happiness and you took it away.'
'You weren't happy. You were enthralled by the wendigo's false promises.'
'How could you begin to know what I had?'
'I know the sister I grew up with, I know the parents who raised her. I know what they taught us, and what they would think of anyone who succumbed to the wendigo nature. And because I know all that, I know what you must think of what has happened to you. You can't give in, Janice. Don't let despair win. There's hope.'
'I don't want hope. All I want now is peace.'
'You can't have it as a wendigo.'
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly with a rumble that was half growl and half moan. Her eyes left his face and traveled along the distant horizon. ' There is peace here.'
