Runaways

said 'This is good to see. Will you follow me?'

He headed toward the restaurant, as he had done before. Leif got up, leaving his drink, and followed him. A moment later they were in the swirling 'default blue' space again. Once again there was a chair set on one side of the table, but this time there were three chairs set on the other side. Vaud sat down in one. A moment later a couple of other men entered the space as Leif and Vaud had, and seated themselves.

'My associates,' Vaud said. 'Mr. Tessin, Mr. Grau.'

They didn't give Leif the slightest sign of personal acknowledgement. They simply looked him over as if he was merchandise. One of them was a small man, round, balding a little on top, dressed in a more modern business suit than Vaud's; he had extremely blue eyes, and a face that had a fair number of smile lines in it, none of which were being used at the moment. The other man, tall and slender, seemed somehow to have his face in shadow even though the lighting in here was even enough. Part of his seeming, Leif thought. This gave him the shivers, for some reason. There was no reason the man couldn't have manifested a face that was normal, but just not his… That's the point, then. It's meant to give me the shivers. Very cute.

'I would like to pick up where we left off yesterday,' said Mr. Vaud, looking at the man whose face was in shadow. 'There was some question about fluency.'

'Whose, mineV Leif said, genuinely outraged.

'Who else's?' said the slender man, Mr. Grau, in Moscow-accented Russian. 'I am interested in your technical vocabulary.'

Why, for courier work? Leif thought instantly… Unless this isn't about courier work at all, now.

They suspect something. They think maybe I'm a plant. The idea assaulted him, all at once, and suddenly simply seemed true.

Great. Which way do I play this?

Leif's mind raced. There were two possibilities. Hide some of his own acuity, make it seem like he wasn't so strong on the tech side. Or let it shine-for technical vocabulary in all his 'primary' languages was a matter of pride for Leif. No way to tell which will work better… not by myself not right this minute. Let it shine.

And so he did, for Grau began firing electronics and comms jargon at him, first in Russian and at high speed, then in German and even faster, sentences that were phrased as hard questions full of three-foot-long German 'portmanteau words,' big compound structures some of which were familiar to Leif and some of which were plainly being composed on the fly. Leif translated and answered as quickly as he could, consonant with using the words correctly-once or twice he had to use terms with which he wasn't familiar in a way that suggested he understood them even when he wasn't absolutely sure of the meanings.

And it went on that way for nearly another half-hour, grueling, veering without warning from language to language until Leif started to sweat. But shortly he realized that this test was not so much about his linguistic acuity, any more, but about his reaction to stress. Then he relaxed a little, and started to answer, purposely, more slowly, and with a little more arrogance. These guys were going to have to do better than this if they thought they were going to upset him.

Finally Grau stopped and looked at the others. 'Well?' Tessin said.

'Adequate,' Grau said.

And now I'm supposed to get mad. Yeah, right. Leif folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and simply looked back at them casually.

Tessin nodded, looked at Vaud.

'Well,' Vaud said. 'The Russian in particular is good. And we have a delivery that needs to be made out that way. Gentlemen?'

The three of them looked at one another. Then Tessin and Grau nodded.

'Very well, Mr. Dawson,' said Vaud. 'We wish you to collect a package from someone who will meet you at Reagan International. Details of this will be virtmailed to you-but you must not use the Breathing Space account to access the information. Go find a public booth and access the address we are dropping into your Breathing Space virtmail now.' Tessin nodded, the gesture of a man who has just seen to some matter. 'You will be leaving tomorrow.'

'So what's the pay?' Leif said.

Tessin smiled slightly. 'The eagerness of the young,' he said. 'Well, this is your first time out, so it is lower than usual. We will see how you do. The price goes up somewhat with continued successful deliveries. Six thousand on departure… six thousand on return with the package that will come back.'

Leif thought about that. 'I'm not sure it's enough/' he said.

The men all looked at him in open astonishment. 'Goodness,' said Vaud, 'I would think you might feel that we were already doing you enough of a favor.'

'So you might,' Leif said. He thought for a moment, then said, 'Fifteen thousand. Split half and half, as you say.'

Vaud's expression went back and forth between annoyance and a kind of skewed admiration. 'Oh, go on,' Tes- sin said, 'we can well afford it.'

The other two paused, then nodded. 'If you will pass us your account information,' said Vaud, 'we will have the system pass the funds to whatever cash card you use.'

'It's a BlueChip card,' said Leif, and rattled off a twenty-digit number. 'I'll wait.'

'My, what a young mercenary,' said Vaud, genuinely annoyed now, but Tessin laughed. 'Give me that again,' he said.

Once more Leif recited the numbers. Tessin repeated them softly, under his breath, and then added something else that Leif didn't hear. 'The transfer is being made now,' he said.

Leif pulled out the virtual 'twin' of his BlueChip and thumbed it on, touching in his PIN number and then glancing at the little screen which contained his balance. Even as he watched, it went from three digits to four before the decimal point.

He looked up, smiling happily. 'Okay, Mr. Winters,' he said.

The three men looked at each other. 'Winters- ' said Vaud. Tessin and Grau were already on their feet, fleeing out of the blue space and into the sunlit plaza. Leif lost sight of them as they went out. Vaud followed them fast. Leif went after.

Vaud was hurriedly threading his way among the tables, like a man constrained by Breathing Space's own virtual structure so as not to be able to simply vanish, but to have to leave via a prearranged 'emergency exit.' He should have put it closer, Leif thought with some amusement, as one of the people sitting at one of the tables he passed now stuck a foot out and simply tripped him.

Virtual experience may filter pain, and did so in this case, but not actual physical motion, which obeys the laws set up by the local programmer. Vaud scrambled to his feet and started to run again…

… and someone else jumped up from another nearby table and straightarmed Vaud right into the table opposite: he crashed into it, went down.

Vaud was good. Even as glasses and plates and cutlery went crashing to the pavement, he came up rolling, bounced to his feet again and started to dash off through the crowd in the plaza…

… only to discover that it was not a crowd as such, as yet another person bodyblocked him to a stop. Vaud stood there, panting, as the group of 'diners' nearest surrounded him. Suddenly all their clothes showed an astonishing sameness-the primary 'seeming' they had all adopted for this particular online intervention, under the 'secondary' street clothes: the light blue, midnight blue, and silver of Net Force uniform. The whole expanse of Barenplatz was full of Net Force operatives, all now suddenly having reverted to their proper day wear after having been in disguise a little earlier, and all looking grimly cheerful.

Vaud stopped where he was. Over his shoulder, among other Net Force operatives, Leif caught sight of Megan… and saw what she was wearing. He grinned, and changed his own seeming to match.

James Winters sauntered into this group.

'Well, we've been looking for you for a while,' he said. 'Nice to see one of these operations pay off, though God knows it took long enough.' He shook his head. 'And wouldn't Dickens just have loved this? Take the innocent kids, use them, throw them away. Or turn them not-so-innocent any more, farming them out to the nastier intelligence organizations and criminal gangs. Pay them a pittance, keep the big bucks yourself… ' He shook his head. 'Well, I don't think you're going to be harvesting the 'orphanages' of the world anymore. We have about twelve different law enforcement organizations looking at your people's work right now. I think this is a scam that's