die, don't let Stealth find out how I got it.'
That same little boy now disengaged his hand from that of the fourth member of the youth assembly and approached the head of the bed. 'Ah you okay?'
The hurt and fear in his small voice prompted an instant smile of reassurance on my part. 'I'm fine.'
The albino looked over at the other girl in the room. 'Sine, get Cooper away from him. You're supposed to be watching out front.'
The blond flipped her long hair back from one shoulder with a contemptuous toss of her head. 'Load up Reality 1.0, chummer. These are the Barrens. There's nothing out there and no one will find us here. No one but that damned preacherman.' Still, despite her defiance, she held her hand out to the little boy, and Cooper took it. His other hand came up to his face and his thumb disappeared within his mouth.
'Okay, chummers, what's the scan?' I put a nasty7face on and centered my attention on Kyrie. 'You tagged me good and you've got me here. You want something, that's obvious, or I'd have woken up dead. Slot and run. I've got places to go and people to see.'
'You're going nowhere, Kies.' Albion began to get antsy with the gun again. 'We want Raven to do a job for us.'
I shook my head. 'Is that all? A job? Fine, let me call him.'
'Nope.' Albion dropped the gun toward me and sighted a pink eye down the barrel. 'He won't do it on your say-so. He's legal-he's got a System Identification Number. We don't trust anyone with a SIN. The only way Raven will work for us is if your life is on the line.'
'That six-shooter has more bullets than you've got brain cells.' I looked over at Kyrie. 'You're an elf. You could have gotten word to Raven through the Tir and he'd have helped. You must have thought of that.' 'Overruled,' snarled Albion.
I felt my anger rising and along with it came the howl of a wolf in the back of my mind. 'Overruled, Albion, because that was a bad idea or because you couldn't control the situation then?'
'Overruled because we don't trust anyone legal.' He opened his arms wide. 'We're a family. We do for each other and can trust each other because we're all alike. You SIN and all sorts of laws start kicking in. Folks get worried about covering themselves in legalities. Not us. We just want to be left alone, and that's what we want Raven to get for us.'
'Okay, if that's what you want.' I snorted a little laugh. 'I think you're making a mistake, however. I think Doc would prefer working with folks who sought his help openly, not coerced it.'
'My rules, remember?'
'You might want to reconsider.' I pulled my hands from beneath the blanket and shook the frayed hawser from them. 'I think he'd frown on having me tied up, too.' Looking past Kyrie and Sine, I smiled. 'Isn't that true, Doc?'
The kids spun toward the doorway faster than a pedestrian hit by a Porsche Mako going full open. Albion's jaw hit the floor, followed a second later by his pistol. Kyrie leaned back against the bed's frame. Sine sat down hard in the chair with my jacket on it, while Cooper just stared wide-eyed and continued to suck his thumb.
Doctor Richard Raven more than filled the doorway. Tall, even for an elf, his head towered above the top of the door. His broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist, slender hips, and powerful legs in a build more typical of humans than elves. His coppery skin, high cheekbones, and long black hair bespoke some Amerind blood, though his white shirt and khaki canvas slacks were the latest in corp casual.
Somehow, though, his size and mixed Amerind/elven racial characteristics were not what surprised them. His eyes held their attention. Red and blue ribbonsof color wove through their black depths in an aurora-like display. Half terrifying and one hundred percent fascinating, his gaze swept over them, then he nodded solemnly.
'I thank you for finding and taking care of my friend. When the emergency locator beacon built into his belt buckle went off, I became understandably concerned.'
I kicked the blanket off and brushed the remnants of the rope from the sharpened edge of the buckle. 'Did that thing get activated again?' I shrugged. 'Just as well, I suppose, Doc, because these kids want to hire you to do a job for them.'
Raven smiled easily as I crawled out of bed and slipped my holster back on. He looked at Albion. 'How is it that I can repay your kindness to Wolf?'
Albion swallowed hard, bringing a little joy to my heart. 'You know Reverend Dr. Lawrence Roberts?'
I tugged my jacket out from under Sine and recalled her earlier remark. 'The television preacher?'
Albion nodded. 'The same.' He looked around, silently polling Kyrie and Sine. They gave him nods. 'We want you to kill him.'
II
As I headed my Fenris sports coupe out from the garage beneath Raven's headquarters I found myself silently agreeing with Kyrie's final comment about Reverend Roberts-it didn't make any sense. What the kids had told us defied logic in the way only insanity or divine inspiration can possibly manage. Had control of my life suddenly been threatened that abruptly and radically, I'd have wanted the man dead, too.
Reverend Lawrence Roberts, Doctor of Divinity by some ROM-staffed diploma mill, had decided to make that band of kids his own little project. He wanted to re-
1VISL.M* nLILfJVrtFC^V75 deem their lives. Not only did he intend to baptize them into his particular sect of Christianity, but he wanted to get them System Identification Numbers and bring them back into the mainstream of society. He wanted to create in them an example of a way Christians could fight back against Satan's rule on the earth.
Raven had Tom Electric run a sample of one of Roberts' services by me. It was part of a simsense chip package that Roberts' ministry offered. Being a male in my twenties, I got version 20M. The simsense would feed back the emotions of a person recorded observing the service, so matching me with the appropriate version was vital for me to get the full impact of the good Doctor's presentation. I pulled a trode rig over my head and started it running. As the static wall thinned and evaporated and the simsense began to roll, the Old One growled in disgust.
The preacher oozed charisma from the top of his thin, blond hair to the Italian leather loafers on his feet. Clutching a battered Bible, he looked out from his lectern like a prisoner about to confess before a jury. One amid thousands, I felt my heart begin to pound with anticipation.
'Yes, my friends, the things you have heard about me are true.' Reverend Roberts began in low, embarrassed tones, but I sensed he was in control of the whole situation at all times. 'Fifteen years ago I was nothing but a conman, and one of the most vile stripe. My partner and I used to read the newsfax to see who had died, then we'd print up a customized edition of a Bible. It would be inscribed from the deceased to whoever his closest survivor happened to be.' He showed us his well-used book. 'This was the last of the Bibles we ever created.
'We knew no shame. We'd go to the bereaved and ask for the deceased. When we were informed of the death, we would act embarrassed and eventually confess that the deceased had special-ordered the Bible. He had paid only twenty nuyen of the one-hundred nuyen it cost, and had gotten it specially for the person to whom we were speaking. We would say we were sorry for bothering them in their grief and then turn to leave.'
Roberts' eyes flashed down at the ground as a blush rose to his cheeks. He stared at one of the many carnation bouquets surrounding him. 'Of course, the bereaved would stop us and give us the eighty nuyen remaining on the book. We would hand it over, having earned an easy seventy-five nuyen profit. It was an easy life, for anyone would pay gladly for that last piece of their departed loved one, and we talked ourselves into believing that we were really offering them another chance to say good-bye-manufacturing memories the people so dearly hungered after.'
Roberts' brought his head up and steel entered his spine. I knew, aided by the digitized emotional feed coursing in through the trodes, that Roberts had somehow been motivated away from this evil path. He smiled and confirmed my belief.
'Then, one night, my partner and I were heading out for what would be our last attempt. God and the Devil came to us, and each showed us a vision of what we would reap in the afterlife. My partner held his hand out to
