Chapter 3
Prime Scotch Beef
Six hours of sleep had done wonders for Fulcrum's jet lag. He also enjoyed the complimentary breakfast the hotel provided. So he didn't complain too much when Remy pushed seven people, including a very big troll, into a cramped cab and drove to the other side of Edinburgh. Not too much...
"Remy, perhapes you could have, I don't know, called two cabs?" Fulcrum questioned.
Remy was sitting up in the front seat with the driver and Sharon and Michael. He seemed happy with the arrangements. He had a window seat. "It's only for this one ride, then we're renting us a vehicle of our own. Sharon did good this morning by exchanging most of our currency in the hotel lobby.
"By the way the exchange rate was..."
"1 nuyen to 2.50 pounds." Sharon supplied.
"Right, and with what we learned last night at Hamish's Bar, we can get us a vehicle."
Fulcrum sighed again. "But all the way across Edinburgh?"
Remy shrugged. "I guess so."
Fulcrum groaned his discomfort.
It took nearly twenty minutes to drive to Stewart's Hyperdrive. By the end of the ride, several of the back seat riders where ready to get off. Having been stuffed in with a big troll did wonders for the claustrophobia. Remy and the front seat passangers enjoyed the trip a little better, but by not much. Fulcrum was going to be happy when they finally rented a vehicle of their own.
"Remember, Remy, we have to be back at Cameron's flat by one for the decking session." Lori reminded, her Cyberdeck strung across her shoulder.
"I never forget, Lori." Remy added.
The showroom on Leith walk is smaller that what Kyle was expecting. Sure they had cars and bikes and a limo even as a centerpiece. But what Kyle wanted was something offroad and big enough to carry the seven of them. A land rover or a hovercraft, maybe. That would be ideal.
"Let's take a peak around the back." Kyle suggested as he walked off in a uniquely dwarf like manner. Waddling, almost, on his short, stumpy legs.
"Kyle, you look like a freakin' penguine." Shannon yelled.
Kyle turned back and smiled, adding a little Scotish accent as he spoke. "Aye, and you--ye--look like a big, dumb ox." He added as he dissappeared around the corner. The rest of the team was not far behind.
The back of the shop was actually a busy garage. It hummed of vehicles and mechanics. After a few minutes of standing around looking at particually nothing, an ork mechanic walked over sporting a greasy pair of overalls and lang-hair reching down to his shoulders.
"Visitors," He greeted. "I see. Jackie Stewarts the name. Best autos in the whole of Scotland. We've got the wheels if you've got the credstick. Want tae talk business?" Kyle replys wholeheartidly. Jackie greets them and ushered the runners into his cramped office and demanded cups of tea from his dowdy, paper-swamped secretary. "Driving license?" He asked expectantly.
"Right here, Jackie." Kyle said as he handed him his lisense. As a rigger, Kyle pocessed a perfectly legal IDL. "A friend of yours sent us, Jackie, a person by the name of Duncan from Hamish's bar."
"Did he, now? Sounds like Duncan to do something like that. Up to be himself these days again." He commented as he looked over the license. "You going to be staying within the Scotsprawl or will ye be going to the Highlands?"
"We need something off-road, big enough to carry the seven of us and some spare gear." Kyle answered. "You get?"
Jackie nodded. "Have anything in particular in mind?"
"We need either a Landrover or some kind of hovertruck."
Jackie nodded and rubbed his chin. "I got a Landrover outside. A 2046 Model?"
Kyle refused. "To slow, we need something that can at least make a hundred and ten."
"Perhapes you'd be better off with bikes." Ha suggested. "Now I don't rent bikes, ye see, but I do sell them."
Kyle started, but caught a look from Remy.
"We'd rather have a signal vehicle." Remy said. That and he could not afford to purchase hlaf-a-dozen motorcycles.
"I have an idea. Did Duncan ever mention a chap by the name of Angus MacNab?"
Kyle nodded a yes.
"Well he's got a Hovertruck, ye see, now if you tell him who sent you, I think he would let you rent it as long as you stayed outside the sprawl." He smiled. "He charges two-thousand five-hundred pounds a day. Plus you have to pay a week in advance and make a fifty-thousand pound security deposit in a holding account."
"As long as we stay outside the sprawl?" Kyle repeated. "That's good, we plan to be heading to Skye anyway."
"Skye? Ye see that most roads and such don't get many repaier crews up that way. I recogmened you take the A9 to Drumgask and the A86 to Spean Bridge. Then go by the A82 to Invergarry and finally the A87 to Skye." He sounded off the numbers like he had taken the times to memorize every street in Scotland. "Most of the roads don't get repair up there, as I said. So I tend to remember what's working and what's not to tell my customers. This way they keep coming back for business. By the way the Hovertruck is modified to carry two extra fuel tanks."
"Well, fill them all up, Stewart, and add it to our bill." Kyle said. Stewart wrote down a pieces of information on a rent-contract including Kyle's current phone number in Edinbrugh.
"Aye, now for one week prepayed will run you....17500 pounds. And I'll throw--" Jackie paused as he handed Kyle back his IDL lisence and tilited his head to listen to an unusual sound outside in the garage. "Hey, any of you here that?" He asked as he opend the door to his office. He grimaced as he found the source of the sound. "I thought they'd be back." He sighed.
Stewart had been refusing to by a local gang working the Leith Walk area for 'insurance money'. So the gangers, naturally, came by to inflict a little damage. Through the office window Remy and the others can easily see six gang member smashing windows on the building and on the vehicles. All of the gangers wear a leather jacket with a emblem of their gang on the sleave. One of them had a dog.
"What do you think, Remy?" Shannon wondered as Jackie grabbed a metal pipe and moved for melee combat. "Should we lend a hand?"
Remy seemed, to think about it, then picked up his staff. "Why not? I could use the exercise."
The troll smiled, and popped his hand razors and spurs. "Too bad we don't have any guns. It would have been easier on them."
Kyle walked outside and grabbed a metal pipe from the ground as Remy and Shannon approached the gangers and their mean pit bull that the leader had brought along. A few of the mechanices darted away. Jackie Sewart seemed to have his hands full dealing with two of the gangers. The other four jumped Remy and Shannon almost at the same time. Fulcrum and Sharon gave them an edge though. Michael distinctly knew when to fight and when not to. Being without a favored weapon, he found a large wrench he could use as a club and stayed low.
The first ganger to approach Remy with a metal pipe as a club got his nose broken with one swift movement of Remy's staff. The ganger coughed up a little blood and pulled a knife. With a stabbing motion he lunged toward Remy who kindly moved aside and struck the ganger in the mid-back. This seemed all to easy to Remy who didn't barely try hard enough. He buckled under the pressure, dropped the knife, and fell. Before he hit the ground, Remy planted his knee firmly into his opponent's ribs.
"Having fun yet, Shannon?" Remy asked as he made a check of the others. Keeping an eye on that pit bull that seemed to be doing the same to Remy.
"What?" Shannon replied, holding the gangers head in the plam of his hand and striking another with his cyber-implants. "You say something?"
Remy nodded his head as the dog nearly knocked him off his feet as he tried to jump over it, avoiding that mouthful of teeth. "Not a thing."
Sharon was having less problems than either Shannon or Remy. The same for Fulcrum for that matter. Though neither of them used any true combat spells, both used a series of illusion and distractions. Fulcrum had no problem in holding back when the fight became physical, though. He was well skilled in Martial Arts.
"Hey, you hiding from the rest of us?" A ganger asked Michael who was on his knees behind a car, waiting.
Michael looked up. "Nope, I'm just an oppertunist." He added with a smile and rolled past the ganger and planted his club dirctly behind the gangers knee. Without a word, the ganger collapsed on the ground. "Look like I find an opertunity, would ya' say?" He added, swinging the wrench and connecting at the base of the ganger's neck. Almost as if by notion, Michael noted a knife stuck in the gangers boot. In one swift movement he grabbed the knife and slugged the ganger one more time as he turned.
The ganger went down and stayed down this time. Blood leeching out from his temple. Michael was tempted to see if he had any money on him, but, hey, when was the last time ganger carried money around?
Jackie Stewart was handling the ganger like he had done it hundreds of times before. Occasional placing his knife in between the ribs of his opponent as he swung his club over their head.
Remy, on the other hand, was having less fun with a mutt that seemed determined to rip his throat out. Even if it meant eating through a stainless steel staff to do it. The pit bull was almost chewing on Remy's hands as Remy kept the staff planted in the dog's mouth.
"Heh, Shannon, I could use a hand here." He asked, almost unsure of himself. But Shannon was busy putting down his second opponent. "Never mind, I'll do it myself."
He groaned as he used his forearm to brass the staff and his newly freed hand to pop his cyberspurs from thier housing in his forarm into the dogs gut.
The pit bull yiped and jumped off Remy as quickly as it had attacked. Remy didn't want to be back in the same sitituation as before with the animal. So before the dog could get far enough away, he knocked it unconcious with his staff.
"They won't be back after that." Jackie said as he watched the gangers that could dart out his garage door. "Now ye better get away before the police arrive."
"What about our vehicle?" Remy questioned.
"Don't worry about that. You know where to find Angus?" Kyle and Remy nodded, Duncan had told them. "Go down and tell him that Jackie sent you. Tell him that and he'll give you the Hovertruck. Plus any kind of, ahem, special gear you might need. Come back later when the police clear out and I will have a better deal on the fees for ye. I'll call Angus meself and tell him some of my new mates will be seeing him." He nodded to his mechanic who brought a limo around. "Get in, tell the jocky where ya want to go."
Remy was the last to get into the limo. This would be a better ride than they had coming here. No one had been seriously heart and Michael managed to gain two knifes off the gangers. Both of which he kept for himself. Kyle told the driver to go to Angus's and the driver didn't ask any questions. Remy made sure to drop Lori, Fulcrum, and Michael off at Cameron's for the decking session. That was an appointment that they had to keep without question. Then they headed for Angus in lower Edinburgh.
Arbroath Smokie
The Arbroath Smokie doesn't have a meat bouncer outside the door. It doesn't need one. Everyone inside looks more than capable of taking care of themselves. Remy recognized this because everywhere he looked he could see extra-heavy body armor, cyberware, and hard attitudes. No doubt a few pistols here and there that were carefully hidden from view. Of course, Shannon fit right in.
When Remy moved over to the bartender and asked for Angus MacNab, it was like the whole room suddenly fell silent. The laughter and the shattering glass and splitting wood stopped for what had to be an eternity to Remy.
The bartender gave a broken smile and pointed to a table where a huge troll had his weight planted. He was easily as large as Shannon. Remy nodded and walked over to the table. Sharon was somewhat unsure with all the stares she was getting. And Kyle was happy he was short enough to keep from being noticed too much. Several of the orks and trolls eyed Shannon.
Remy walked up to the troll at the table. "Angus MacNab?"
Angus let his hand slip below the table. "What do you want?" He snarled.
Remy was about to sit down, when he remember the best way to make friends in a bar. "How about a round of drinks, eh, Angus, I pay?" Remy looked over at the bartender. He wasn't about to say 'drinks on me' because he knew better. After a series of mugs arrived, Remy took a seat with Sharon and his friend Shannon on either said. Kyle stood on the opposite side of Shannon.
"You buy me a drink? So what, I don't know you. I don't owe you nothing." Angue added as he emptied the first mug and started on the second. Fortunatly for the runners, Angus's usual entrouage was not here at the moment. "But I'd like to know why a bunch of foriegners decided come all the way down here to my corner of Edinburgh just to buy me drinks."
Remy made sure the troll had enough to drink before he started. It ended up costing him nearly two-hundred pounds to pay for it. "Two, er, good friends referred us to you, Angus. One was a little rat-faced man by the name of Duncan. The other, you might know better, Jackie Stewart. The guy who owns Sewart's Hyperdrive up on Leith."
"I know who Stewart is, you wouldn't be his new mates would yer?" The troll questioned. The drinks obviously had no affect on his reasoning or his speech. "Jackie get's kinda particular about who he calls his mates. I here ye must've pulled him out of a brawl with some gangers. He says you rented the Hovertruck."
Remy nodded. "He also said that you might be able to provide some, special gear for the right price."
"That I could, but let me warn you about double crossing me." The troll grunted. "If you have any thoughts about backstabbing me, turning me in, you better ferget it. My clan never forgets treachary. My Uncle Murdo got boxed by a bunch of seps who took his weapons and cyberware. My Americaon cousins, good old boys from the Confederated States, trapped them like rats. They pulled the head right off the pixle, sent it to me in one of them nice Federal Express boxes." Angus leered meaningfully at Sharon.
Sharon backed up a little.
"Wouldn't think of treachary, Angus." Remy continued. "We need gear and they say you are the best place to get it without going through the blasted red tape."
Angus smiled a ghoulish grin. "Red tape is a pain. But I don't take forgien currency. I tell you that now."
"We have pounds." Remy made a quick calculation on how much was on that credstick now that Sharon had converted it from nuyen.
"What kind of gear do you need?" Angus questioned
"Around half-a-dozen heavy pistols, SMGs, a few assualt rifles and melee weapons. Maybe some tech stuff." Remy replied. "And some armor piercing rounds to go with some of it."
Angus grimaced. "Jackie said that he would take care of the rental fees." He got up. "Come on, I take you to my place and get the gear you need. The Hovertruck is parked aroud back."
With a small, second thought, they followed. Wary of the troll's reputation.
Alasdiar Cameron's Flat
Lori felt comfortable again inside the Matrix. She had just entered the SAN system that connected Transys to the rest of the Matrix. In this plane of information, Lori's persona appeared as a silvery female shape. There were two things that made this trip different from any other decking session she had been on, though. One was the fact that she had the access codes. Noramly it would take and hours to get past all the fail-safes in a Coporate Matrix system. Second, there was a second persona with her. It appeared as a gray-robed man. It was Cameron.
Alasdair had insisted to come along to handle the security mearsures while Lori investigated the system. At this time, Lori wished she had a hitcher jack on her deck that way it would make her run much easier. That way Cameron wouldn't be much of a problem if she decided to turn this into a very lucrative run. But she didn't. She had a feeling that he would not use it anyway.
"Really, Cameron, I can do this myself." She told the other. "If you just gave me the passcodes."
The gray-robed man floated closer to her. "Transys Matrix can be a dangerous place. I know how the passcodes work and how to call them up. I will handle the security measures while you explore the Matrix safely." A featureless face replied.
Lori held back an insult as Cameron used the proper codes to move them to the connecting SPU in the system. Lori made a mental notes of the connecting nodes. She knew that it would come in handy later.
"Which way, my dear?" Cameron asked. "Both connecting nodes are SPUs."
"Which one has datastores?" Lori asked. A Datastore is where most, in fact all corporations, kept their information. Their paydata.
Naturally Cameron was uneasy. But still, he lead her through a connecting node. This node had more relative light from the thousands of megapluses of information that passed through in an arc.
Alasdiar pointed to another node that looked like a datastore in the distance. "That DS node contains basic records. I have disabled the IC measures so you can enter safely."
"Your not coming?"
Cameron was glad that Lori could not see his expression. "There are other passcodes I must upload, I will wait here, if ye don't mind."
Lori didn't say anything as she passed to the datastore. She was just about to call up a browse program when she noticed that her persona had been altered ever since she entered the SAN. She must look like something out of the medieval ages. But now that she thought about it, most all of the Transys system had a bio-organic construction.
Most of the system was designed that way. Lori and Alasdair spent nearly two hours shifting through countless files and datastores. All they found was general information that could be gotten from any one of a hundred contacts. Except that there was a small file dealing with the viruses that Cameron mentioned the day before. Most of it neither Lori or Alasdair could begin to understand. Near the end of their search, however, they stumbled across a file in one of the back datastores.
Lori took considerable time in understanding and downloading it into her deck. She was sure that Cameron was becoming more and more aggravated the longer she took. But her deck had an I\O link to Cameron's, so Lori could not leech any quick nuyen without him knowing.
Finally Cameron breathed a sighed of relief when she finished. But as Lori turned to accompany Alasdair's persona, her peripheral vision. Like a little surge of light that seemed to origionate from the datastore behind her.
Lori turned to face this source to see another persona configured so that it look like a small child with exceptionally large eyes for it's mass. Just another decker, Lori thought at first. Or maybe an IC made to look like a persona because she would have known if another decker besides Cameron was present within the node.
The elven child materialized right in front of her. The child, upon clearer studying, had short silver hair and silver-blue cybereyes that look strange in his sad face. He gazed at Lori rather than at her, reaching out with his small hands.
"Amelia," He pleads. "Help me. Bring me to Amelia."
Amelia?
Before Lori can give the situation another look, the child is gone. His persona didn't leave, it simply vanished right in front of her. Lori knows that there is no way for this to happen. But, it just did.
"Cameron, did you scan that?" over he shoulder, not taking her eyes off the place where the imago had vanished.
Alasdair persona floated up beside her. "Techincally something the likes of that cannae happen inside the Matrix."
"I know that." She snapped.
"Perchance did ye notice the eyes?"
"Yes, silver-blue cybereyes and short, silver hair." Lori answered. "Quicksilver, wasn't it? But no, a persona cannot do that. No decker can!"
Alasdair was mentally rubbing his chin. "Aye, but what just happened then crashes all the rules to the Matrix if it Quicksilver was really that imago."
Lori nodded in complete agrement and headed for the exit to the SPU she was in. "I've seen enough, Cameron, it's time to go."
Cameron agreed with her.
Unfortunely in the next node, which was another SPU, another persona appeared before Lori and Alasdair. This time it wasn't the child that they previously encountered. It looked like a man in cloth and a hood over his persona's face.
"Now what's this?" Lori said, mainly to herself as Cameron entered the node.
The persona raised a what looked like a crossbow. Lori knew, from years of experience, that this was the Matrix's version of an attack program as seen from the business end. She had to act fast or the decker would take her down. Alasdair panicked at the sight and darted for the SAN port. The opposing persona completely ignored Alasdair and went for Lori.
Cameron, obviously to Lori, wasn't use to seeing or being in a decker dogfight. The opposing decker's crossbow--attack program--fired more than a simple tangiable arrow. In Lori's eyes, it was more like a bolt of burning fire. She barely had time to activate a shield program which almost crashed the second she brought it up under the strain of the attack.
Her opponent was moving closer now, closer than Lori would like. She would have to do this the hard way. There was no way to get out. Yet she needed to avoid a direct head-to-head dogfight for at least the first round. So Lori silently through up a modfied version of a smoke program that work around the discharge of enough interference to at least make it easy for her to avoid any major damage to her deck's MCPC rating chips for a while.
Lori watched again and braced herself as the decker before her launched another fireball. But it missed her by a good dozen clicks and impacted into the virtual wall that made up the node.
The second part of Lori's smoke program kicked in and the static engulfed the the enemy decker, reacting to the source of the attack. She had to act fast. The resistance the decker was putting out would make her move useless in seconds. Now was the time to strike.
Lori sent a burst of feed-back through the decker's persona. The feed-back again was designed as a simple one-shot compared with Lori's regular attack program. It was designed to fill the deckers brain cells and any headware memory with static electricity. Effectively stunning him. But the results were not limited to Lori's opponent. Her smoke program would be fryed and she didn't have the time to reload it. Nor did she have a spare copy with her her in Scotland.
She was able to make two more successfull attacks with her standard attack base before the decker's mind cleared and allowed him to return fire. By then, it was far too late. Lori was sure she had managed to seriously damage her opponenets deck to the point where it would dump him with a few more hits. Ironically the decker launched another tangable fireball and fled through the nearest access node. Lori immeadately followed her enemy. Shooting through nodes of the Matrix like pulses of light. Alas she came to a stop when the hostile decker dissappeared beyond the CPU into a node she nor Cameron had an access code for.
She cursed herself mentally, but forced back her thought. needless to say she was upset and angry with herself that her enemy had escaped. She was even more angry when she checked the condition moniter on her deck. She had taken some damage, though it was nothing she couldn't repair or the deck could. Blankly, she scanned the node that she was in, seeing Cameron enter, made her feel like dumping him out of the system. The fool had actually left her to fight alone. But she thought of another way to get to him. Without a word, she stepped into the nearest datastore and began downloading paydata.
"What are you doing?!" Alasdair demanded.
The datastore she was in contained Red-level info. That should get a good price for Lori's troubles. "Look, Cameron, I thought you said that there would be no danger to my safety as long as you were around to handle the ICs. But then a hotsile decker with a bad attitude comes in an starts making trouble. Do you realize what kind of damage he could have done to my body as well as my deck? I think you owe me a little hazard pay."
"Stealing from my company is something I wished we would avoid, lass." He replied. "But I--I do see your point in the danger. Your deck has an I\O speed of 20? Take 20Mp of data, but no more! I'm already sticking me neck out way to far on the chopping block."
Lori thought about, then figured it would be best not to have their employer fired so he couldn't afford them. But she still frowned at the fact that the access codes she had this time would be no good the next time she decided to enter the Transys Matrix. "Alright, Alasdair Cameron, you have your way and I got what I needed." She floated over to Alasdair's persona. "I'm ready to jack-out."
A few minutes later, Lori's muscles tensed up, then relaxed swiftly. With that, she was back in the real world. Her senses had returned. She could hear the glass being sit on the table, see the room in full detial, and smell the unmistakable scent of Scotish whiskey.
"Welcome back, Lori, have fun?" Remy asked by second hand.
Lori was shocked to see Remy here. How long did she stay in the Matrix? Hours? She quickly looked out the nearest window and saw the sun low in the sky. She looked back to the room and saw that everybody was there with Kyle and Shannon holding glasses of whiskey and an empty bottle. Immediately, however, she forced herself to confront Cameron about what happened in the Matrix.
"Cameron, what do mean not telling me that there was another decker in there?" She snapped, half-stratling Cameron as his concious slammed back into his body.
"I--" He studdered. "I dinnae think that there would be anybody else in there, lass."
"Well it's obvious that he was with the company cause he had codes to go beyond the CPU. Someone within Transys must be on their own initiative. Who attacked us and why?"
Cameron nodded his head from side to side sheepishly. He took a few minutes to think it through. "The system IDs had not been changed, the chap that jumper us could roam freely, but the company itself did not have the standard measures against expected intruders in place."
Lori remained unconvienced, but she said nothing. She had heard enough of that Scottish accent to begin with. But, for the first time, she noticed that Remy had a Predator II strapped to his thigh. "I hope I've been as lucky as you, Remy in finding information as you have been at finding weapons." She commented in a much calmer tone than she had use to snap at Alasdair Cameron.
Cameron frowned at Remy and a few others namely Shannon and Kyle who carried pistols. "Ye want me to remind you that it is an offense to carrying visible weapons?"
Kyle touched his Browning Ultra Power inside his jacket. A small pistol, to begin with, that could be easily hidden. "That's why we got us some conceable holsters in the Hovertruck we rented."
"Cameron," Lori started. "Do you remember what the child, the imago, said? Something about Amelia?"
"Amelia." Cameron repeated like a trained parrot. "Yes, he said, 'Bring me to Amelia' or something like that. He could mean Amelia Richardson. She works over at the University, I may have mentioned. I think she is some kind of mage, or something. Maybe a shaman, but I'm not too sure on that."
Lori looked at Sharon who had a watch. "What's the time?"
"A little after five."
Remy pondered. "I wonder if it'd be too late to pay Amelia a visit?"
"You forgetting something, fearless leader?" Kyle questioned. "Like maybe a little elven named Fionnghuala?"
Remy paused, Fionnghuala was the girl that Quicksilver had met in Hamish's bar. At the same time he was supprised that kyle knew how to pronounce her name. Duncan had told them that she should be at the bar tonight. "I haven't forgotten." He lied. "Fact is I'm gonna have Fulcrum and Sharon with me this time. Duncan said she was a nature-lover, remember? Now having another elf and a shaman with a rural totem might help her to say something about Quicksilver."
"What about Amelia?" Shannon was curious.
Remy rubbed his chin. "It'll be later by the time we get to the University. We'll take care of it in the morning before we leave."
"I don't suppose you got us any weapons, Corllien?" Fulcrum asked Remy in a friendly manner.
"I remembered, fact is I went as far to get your favorite piece." Remy said, exchanging glances with Sharon.
"Where are you going, tommorrow?" Alasdair Cameron asked.
Remy didn't reply right away, but Kyle did.
"We were planning to head up to Skye, see Quicksilver's friends." The dwarf answered, he leaned forward in his seat. "I don't suppose that there's a little something about Skye that you could tell us?"
Cameron looked at Kyle, at the floor, then back to Kyle and nodded his head a no.
Later
Remy settled back again into the same table he had the night before in the bar. He kept pondering over the same questions in his mind. Lori had told them what she and Cameron had encountered in the Matrix. It puzzled him, not because that Remy didn't know anything about the Matrix in general, but that fact that another decker from within the company had attacked her. Of course Cameron naturally dismissed such an idea. He mantained that it was just a freelancer that was seeking paydata. Remy wasn't so sure about that. Though nothing had happened yet to point to another corporation behind the attack. Nothing yet anyway. At least he felt better being armed.
"Hey, isn't that the girl, what's her name?" Shannon wondered, pointing to a small-built, female elf that entered the door. He remembered the discription that Duncan had provided the night before.
"Fionnghuala." Sharon replied. "She looks like what Duncan said she would. Even though she looks kind of young. Duncan said she was twenty-eight."
Remy waited a moment while his cybereyes corrected for the low-light vision that the bar provided. "We should talk with her, but I think that the all four of us might make her uneasy." he said, referring to himself, Shannon, Fulcrum, and Sharon. Lori was back at the hotel in the middle of another decking session while Kyle and Michael were taking care of the rental fees with Jackie Stewart across on the other side of Edinburgh.
Fulcrum watched as Fionnghuala pulled up a seat at the bar. There were two empty seats on either side of her. "I think that Sharon and I should have a word with her. Perhapes get her to trust us. I have a feeling that having Shannon stand up behind her would make her feel uneasy." Fulcrum and Shannon exchanged glances. "No offense."
Remy nodded. "We'll just stand around like we don't know you then, eh?"
Sharon smiled. "Come on, Fulcrum, and let me do the talking." She added as she got up from her seat next to Remy and walked over to Fionnghuala.
Fulcrum took a seat to the elf's right while Sharon on the left. She made sure the Fionnghuala would know that they came together, that way there would be no un-needed surpprises. Besides, Sharon was counting on the fact the Fionnghuala would say very little to them. Making Sharon to improvise. To win the girl's trust. Then perhapes there might be a chance for Fionnghuala to say something about Quicksilver.
"Excuse me, Fionnghuala, isn't it?" Sharon started.
The elf looked at her. "Yes, but I don't know you. An American? Now why would an American come all the way to Edinburgh?"
"Oh, I just wanted to get out of the sprawl."
"Funny, you seem to be right back in one." She retortted.
"Yes, but I had heard so much about the English country side. I thought that I could at least see it before I die." Sharon said. "An old friend has told me that you know an elf by the name of Quicksilver. I met him once when I visited here before on business. I need to speak with him about..er..some of the work he had been doing involving organic datachips. I was told that you had a drink with him occasionally."
Fionnghuala was immedately quiet when it came to Quicksilver. "He had a very, very occasional drink with me. I'm sorry, what was you name?"
"Sharon."
"Sharon, I haven't seen Quicksilver in weeks." She explained. "And I'm not sure I should be talking about him."
"Surely you must be concerned about his safety, Fionnghuala. I don't know how you knew him, but you must have a heart for him."
She smiled again, careful still not to reviel anything.
"Have you ever been to the country?" Sharon wondered. Trying to get on the 'nature lover' side. "I hear it is beautiful this time of year. I would like very much to see it."
"No, but I suppose that you are like me." She added. "We both have seen enough of the concrete jungle of the sprawl. I plan to get out of the sprawl on my vacation."
"Where do you work?"
She smiled again. "My father holds a chair of neurophysiology at the University of Edinburgh. That's how I met Quicksilver. My intrest in the subject made me become my father's research assistant. It's just that, well, I-" She hesitated. Pausing to get a drink. "I liked Quicksilver because he was like me. He wanted to get out of the sprawl. Only thing was that he had more of a chance than I did. Oh, how I loved to hear his stories of what it was like out in the country." She begain to daydream. "How much I wanted to experience it all for myself. Perhapes, with someone. Now my father is an a subatticl to the Univesristy of Johnannesburg. Leaving me with even less time to myself. Much less a vacation. But Quicksilver--the times I saw him--was always good to me."
"How so?"
"Well, he worked as a programmer. We talked endlessly about medical aspects of cyberware research besides about the country. I was impressed to know of his knowledge about both nature and technology. You would love to meet him. To simply be around him. Quicksilver worked on astrology and mystical traditions in depth, I found out. His intrest in reincarnation and the fate of the soul, after death, bordered on obbsession. Recenlty, Quicksilver spoke of life after death."
Sharon sighed idly. "I've always kind of feared death. The end of everything for me."
"Quicksilver was different." She was defending him. "He spoke about life after death with an extrordinary passion and intensity. He talked a lot about it with a friend of his in the Univesity of Edinbrugh."
"Did he know her well? What happened to you?"
"Her names was.." She paused again in thought. "Richardson, I think. Richards or Richardson, I can't remember, but she's a woman. A human." Foinnghuala's voice turned mournful. She found it hard to answer Sharon's second question. "He told me he had found someone, a girl. I think he only saw me as a friend he could talk to. He played with a silver ring when he spoke of her. I guess she meant a lot to him."
Sharon stopped. She did not want Foinnghuala to go on. She begain to realize that Foinnghuala was partially in love with Quicksilver.
"There's one other thing I remember. He once mentioned druid with whom he'd talked about astology. Fiona something, her name was, but he didn't speak of her as if she was a friend. More like a passing acquaintance, or colleague. I know he spent time on the Isle of Skye, and I think this Fiona person lives there." She looked puzzled. "He said something really weird. He told me he might leave his feelings there. He had a premonition that things would soon go wrong. He looked half-crazy when he said it. I guess he was always half-crazy, in a kind of special way."
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