She turned to get a bottle from the tray, and he lunged forward. He had the datacord back in his temple jack and was tapping on the keyboard of his cy-berdeCk before she had gotten over her surprise that he would wish to dive right back into cyberspace. By then, she thought it unwise to interrupt him. The backup's job was to pull the decker out if he got into trouble with ice. Normally there was no problem, because the decker's sanity outweighed the abandonment of the objective. Normally, the backup had a good idea of where in the Matrix the decker was, and who would know if their system had been penetrated. Dodger hadn't given her an itinerary for this unscheduled run; he could be anywhere. Without knowing, she couldn't be sure that forcing him to jack out wouldn't complicate matters by leaving traces of his passage. She put the bottle back on the tray and sat down.
She had to wait only ten minutes before Dodger was back in the real world, unplugging the datacord himself. His face was drawn with sadness.
'She's gone,' he announced in a woeful voice. 'Who?'
He turned stricken eyes on her, wetting his lips with a tentative tongue. When he spoke, his voice held a hint of something she thought was guilt. 'Never mind.'
She gauged the time inappropriate for pushing her questions. He took the bottle she offered with a glum 'thank you' and sank down into his chair. He drained the juice in long, slow pulls.
'Well, Dodger, did you get anything useful?' In reply, he reached across to the deck and picked up the chip he had ejected just before she had thought it necessary to jack him out. He shrugged and tossed the chip to her.
She frowned at his uncommunicativeness, unsure whether he was ignoring her open displeasure or was too lost in his own funk to notice. She slipped the chip into her data-reader and scanned it. Dodger's run had gathered scant information for Sam. Not much more than a few names. The record of Dodger's run made it clear that even those meager bits of data had been protected. It seemed nobody was to know anything about Howling Coyote. She hoped Sam would be more careful than was his wont.
'Tough ice,' Dodger said, startling her. She looked up to see that he was still staring at the cyberdeck. But something about his posture indicated that he was now wholly back in the real world. 'Meaning it's not going to be easy for him.'
'Not at all.' The decker shook his head sadly. 'Think that will stop him?'
'No.' Hart knew Sam was far too stubborn. 'Think it will do any good to tell him to be very careful?'
'I doubt it.' He turned bleak eyes to her. 'He could use help.'
Better help than he was getting. 'You're right. Want a ticket to Denver?'
'No connections. I'll run the Matrix cleaner from here. What about you?'
'He wanted me to watch your butt,' she replied, letting her growing irritation slip into her voice. 'And you would never go against his wishes.' There was a challenge in that statement, which she ignored. She knew Dodger didn't trust her, but this was the closest he had come to bringing it into the open. With Sam alone in Denver and the mysterious hunter on their trail in Seattle, this was no time for dissention in the small circle Sam had remaining to help him. She might not feel able to join him yet, but she wouldn't cost him his support by quarreling with the decker.
Dodger prodded again. 'Unless, of course, the pay was better elsewhere.'
'You don't trust me, do you?' A sardonic half smile was his answer. 'Well, the feeling's mutual. Neither of us did a lot to earn his trust in England, but at least I didn't send him in harm's way as somebody else's stalking horse.'
The smile was replaced by a frown, 'I went myself as well.'
'Compounding your stupidity doesn't make you any less guilty.'
'I didn't sell him to the Shidhe. Is that what draws you now? Have they put another price on his head?'
Heat burned her face. 'You're in no position to judge. Not that you'll believe me, but I'm done with the Shidhe and they with me.'
His cockiness returned. 'How could I doubt you? But you and I both know the answer to that question. Naetheless, I shall take you at your word. The Shidhe are not involved. So what then? What draws you away from aiding the man who thinks you love him, to go hating after something unconnected to his dilemma?'
'Don't try second-guessing me, Dodger. If I knew this business was unconnected, I wouldn't give it a thought. I'd be in Denver right now. As it is, I think I'd better find out what I can and I don't think anybody can do the looking for me.'
Dodger sneered. 'And should it come to pass that there is no one to return to, 'twould be a pity. The great shadowrunner would grieve for an appropriate period of time. One must put on a brave face if one is to survive in the shadows. How long before you make a new conquest and replace all thought of a foolishly trusting norm?'
Hart suppressed the urge to slap the decker's face. 'Listen, chiphead. I don't need your trust. You want to keep watching for me to slot him, you go ahead. But if you cost him anything, anything, because you're too busy watching me, you'll wish you'd stayed in the Tir where your important buddies could cover your ass. He wants me watching you while you deck. Think I like that? It's clearly a waste of my time. I save your brain from an overload when you freeze up, and all I get is complaints.' 'But you didn't…'
'Case made. Bitching is all you do. He's counting on you, and all you want is to make trouble.'
A sly look crept onto Dodger's face. 'Maybe I'm being useful enough to him by keeping you from making more trouble for him.'
She closed her eyes, hoping to short-circuit the frustration rising within her. He didn't understand. But then, how could she expect him to? If she told him her suspicions he might think more kindly of her, or he might not. His suspicion was deeply ingrained. She wasn't ready to tell anybody anything yet. If she were wrong, she'd be betraying confidences unnecessarily. Now, if Sam had asked her directly… But he hadn't. ~ And she didn't owe Dodger drek.
The decker took her silence as a retreat from the conversation. For all she knew, he took it as a victory for himself. She held to her silence, and eventually he got up and fixed himself some food from the store in the kitchen. Very free with her hospitality, he was. When he was finished, he jacked in again. She watched for a while, but monitoring a working decker was inherently boring. She set the monitor to alarm mode and sacked out on the cot next to the table.
Dodger was still haunting cyberspace when she awoke. She tapped his shoulder until he acknowledged her presence, then signaled him to jack out. He prepped a data chip while she toasted some wheat bread, set out some jam, and heated the kafc They ate a sullen breakfast together, and he jacked in again as soon as he finished. That set the pattern: deck and eat. For two days it went on, with the decking sessions becoming longer and the meals shorter.
Through all the third night, she watched him. He seemed dedicated to Sam's cause. Or was he spending most of his time pursuing his own goals? There was no way to be sure. Jenny's attempt to tag along the second night had come to nothing. Hart didn't know of any other decker, certainly none she could reach in Seattle, who might be able to track Dodger.
Time was dragging on, and her own concerns were becoming gnawing fears. Since the first night there had been no alarms. Maybe Dodger didn't need a watchdog. What, after all, did she owe him? Nothing, though he might think otherwise. Or maybe she, and Sam, owed the decker more than he expected. But she wouldn't know one way or the other while she was stuck here in the Salish-Shidhe. Certainty required the sort of information- gathering that needed the personal touch. With all the tools available to modern technology and magic, it was hard to guarantee that a conversation was not overheard. Keeping a telecommunications conference secret was harder.
Right or wrong, trusting or not, Dodger was indirectly responsible for awakening her fears. He had been the one to order his Far East contact to dump all data on Grandmother's operations. The decker was looking for clues to his private obsession, but he had gotten more than he knew. The last data Noguchi had sent had raised an uncomfortable specter that, so far, only she had seen.
She was torn. Sam would be in Denver now. They had gathered some data to help him in his search for Howling Coyote, but he had no one to help him carry out that search. She was here, stuck watching the decker when she wanted to be elsewhere doing something useful. The paucity of information, and the resistance Dodger had encountered on the first run, worried her. Dodger's results weren't all Sam had hoped for. If he decided he needed to check on Dodger's data he might jack in himself, and that would result in disaster. Sam was, at best, a
