“Absinthe,” Jay said. What the hell, it wasn’t going to drive him mad here.
The bartender shook his head and went to fetch the bottle.
“Hot day, no?” Jacques said.
“Hot enough.”
The bartender returned with a dark green glass bottle. He poured a small bit of the liqueur, which was also as green as an emerald, into a glass. Then he poured a shot glass of cold water over a perforated teaspoon full of sugar and allowed it to drip into the container. The absinthe’s green turned a smoky, opaque white as the sugared water mixed with it. Without the sugar, it would have been too bitter to drink, and even so, it still bit the tongue pretty hard.
Jay knew from his research that the drink, which was partially made from wormwood, was illegal most places, and was traditionally used by artists and writers. Van Gogh had used it, and the theory was that absinthe was what had driven him mad enough to lop off his own ear. It was supposed to eat holes in your brain with regular use. How charming.
Jay raised his glass to Jacques. “Good fortune,” he said.
“You have some information for me?” Jay said, after they put their glasses down.
Jay raised an eyebrow. “Whatever it costs, I’ll pay it. Tell me.”
But before he could speak, there was an explosion. A gunshot, Jay realized, as he saw the blood blossom on Jacques’s chest, over the heart.
Jay dropped to the floor in a deep squat and looked around in time to see a native dressed in one of those funny Shriner hats and a white-and-blue striped robe run out of the club.
Jay got up and sprinted for the exit, chasing the man. Who was this? How had he breached Jay’s VR construct?
In the alley, Jay saw the assassin running away. Bull
Jay took off. Whoever he was, he wasn’t nearly fast enough to outrun Jay Gridley in his own damned scenario!
But even as Jay gained on the running man, he realized he wasn’t going to catch him. The reason — reasons, actually, at least six of them — appeared right in front of him.
Half a dozen men, bare-chested, in basketball shorts and shoes, holding baseball bats, chains, knives, and what looked like a pitchfork, stepped out of the shadows between Jay and his quarry.
“Yo, yo,” one of the basketball players said. “What’s your hurry, baby?”
These guys were anachronisms — they didn’t belong here, weren’t right for the time, even if they’d been Jay’s constructs. And they weren’t.
What the
As they moved toward him, Jay realized he didn’t belong here, either. He didn’t have time to come up with any kind of effective defense. The scenario was blown.
He bailed.
Jay pulled the sensory gear off and threw it at the computer console.
There hadn’t been any real danger, of course, only to his construct. After the business with the mad Brit, he had made damned sure there was no way to turn his computer into what was effectively a capacitor that might be able to deliver an electric charge through the sensory connections. But it was galling anyhow, to be forced out of your own scenario!
How had this happened? Somebody would have to know where he was, be able to get past his wards, and be good enough to reprogram the input without Jay spotting him. For all practical purposes, it ought to be almost impossible — well, at least with a player of Jay’s skill it ought to be. That it had happened was irritating — and scary.
It had to be one of the guys who had bollixed the net and web. They’d already shown how good they were, and now they were putting it right in his face.
Now it was getting personal.
He swore again. He needed to figure this out. And, as much as he hated the idea, he also needed to let the boss know. If nothing else, it meant they were getting closer. You didn’t get that kind of response if you were wandering around in the woods lost somewhere. He must be trampling awful close to somebody’s hidden marijuana patch.
Toni listened to the music with one ear, and Alex’s conversation with the other. It didn’t take long for her to figure out it was Jay Gridley on the other end of Alex’s virgil.
After a minute, Alex broke the connection.
“What’s up?”
He shook his head. “Jay thinks he’s getting closer to the bad guys who screwed the net.”
“That’s good.”
“Maybe not. He says they must have set him up. Gave him a place that he thought he could get some information, then when he went in, they jumped him — electronically speaking.”
“Yes?”
Alex explained it to her. Apparently Jay had been rousted from his own scenario. Which must have really bent him out of shape, Toni knew. She’d never met a computer geek who didn’t think he was God’s gift to electrons.
“But other than a bruised ego, no harm done, right?”
Alex nodded. “That’s how I see it. But as he pointed out, whoever did it must know he’s looking for them. And they knew where he might be apt to look. Which means he’s maybe on the right path.”
She nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe they just set a whole bunch of snares and one of them snagged Jay. He gets his foot out, goes charging down the trail, and maybe he’s heading exactly opposite of where they are.”
“Could be. I don’t have Jay’s expertise to say.”
“But it sounds as if the bad guys do. Not good.”
“No.”
“Do we need to go home? Or to the office?”
“No, no reason for that. Jay was just giving me a heads-up. I asked him to keep me in the info stream.”
“So, you wanna dance?” She nodded at the band.
A few couples were up, moving to the music.
He grinned. “Might as well. Can’t get any work done here, can I?”
Keller leaned back in the form chair, stretched his neck and shoulders, removed the sensory head- and handsets. He smiled. “Well, Jay, old son, that must have been a shock, hey? About to download a juicy bit of information and
He stood, bent at the waist, touched his toes, bounced a little. He straightened, sat back in the chair, took a couple of deep breaths, and let them out, then reached for the wireless headset. By now, Jay would have had time to think about what had happened, figured it out, and gotten pissed off enough to jump back into the net to hunt down whoever was responsible. Keller knew he would have done the same thing in Jay’s shoes.
So. Now we give old Jay a new place to look. But carefully. He won’t hit the next trap as easily. It needs to be… more subtle.
Keller slipped the gear on. Boy, this was gonna be fun.
Jasmine Chance was not a fanatic about it, but she did do enough exercise to stay in shape. It was harder to be a femme fatale if you were built like an overripe pear — a size six on top and size fourteen on the bottom. She used the stairclimber and the weight machines in the ship’s gym for forty-five minutes a day. She wasn’t going to be
