“Very, very nice,” he said approvingly.

“Modular Fairlight,” Michael said. The cyberdeck was worth well over a million nuyen, and it had taken him some months to modify it to accept the vicissitudes of travel. The cases had traveled on their own first-class seat during the flight. The idea of putting them in a cargo hold simply never entered his head.

“It’ll take me an hour or so to set up” Michael said. “Then we should go a-prowling.”

“Oh, thank you so very much,” Geraint said dryly. “So that your work can be traced from here. What an ungrateful guest I have.”

“Come on, you know me better than that,” Michael said swiftly. “We’ll be operating from a different location every thousandth of a second, unless there’s someone specific you’d like to be nasty to. so that I can leave a traceable signal from their location instead.”

“Now that is tempting,” Geraint said with a clear intake of breath. “Perhaps young Jenkins…”

Michael laughed, the cork was drawn, and the deck components began to take shape on the teak table white the light port was decanted and left to stand for a while. The Englishman and Welshman began to talk, of old times, college days, drunken sorties, shared acquaintances, and all the things friends say when they haven’t seen each other in many years.

Midnight approached. Outside, in a car bearing diplomatic plates and therefore not subject to the irksome parking restrictions of the ultra-exclusive neighborhood, an Italian took his first sip from a flask of a coffee far humbler than that his Lordship could offer, and settled back to keep an eye on the place. He was understandably nervous, as all in his organization were tonight, and he didn’t know what to expect.

He certainly wasn’t expecting to be shot by the Inquisition before the week was out, but then, as any Englishman with a sense of humor and history could have told him, nobody ever expects the Inquisition.

3

“Very, very nice,” Geraint said again. “Can’t get these on any market I know of.”

“Cute, isn’t it? I got the personamorph program from certain corporate contacts. Lets us slip into their sculpted system and become an absolutely integral part of it,” Michael said as he worked to complete the cyberdeck coupling. It wasn’t easy connecting his Fairlight to Geraint's humble Fuchi Cyber-7, and there would be delays in communication, but it was a far better option than his friend just jacking in for the ride.

“I think that’s done,” he said finally standing back to admire his handiwork. “Now for the monitors. Green lead on the datajack, blue lead over your heart, old man.”

“What are these for?” Geraint said, somewhat apprehensively.

“Cardiomonitors. We’re headed into IC thick and deep enough to sink a whole flotilla of Titanics, and if you get zapped by bad black stuff this will jack you out before your brain can fry or the T’n’B rips your heart out of your chest,” Michael replied with bloodthirsty relish. “Saved my skin a couple of times.”

“I’m not really sure I should have let myself in for this,” Geraint said disapprovingly. Good job we kept the port down to two glasses.”

We’ll finish the bottles later,” Michael replied, settling himself down in the Chippendale chair and flexing his arms.

“Let’s get down to it, Hello, Chiba.”

“What the frag is this?” Geraint said unenthusiastically. “What a ghastly, tacky pinstripe suit you have there.”

Michael checked out his own persona, the icon that et him navigate the Matrix even as his own meat body sat jacked into his deck. He looked rather like a cheap gangster from a bad black-and-white trid from way back, the kind where the main character calls everybody ‘Blue eyes’ or ‘Sweetheart’.

“We appear to be someplace like Nebraska,” Geraint said disapprovingly “That is, somewhere entirely devoid of interest or value.”

Michael peered up the long gray road ahead of them. “This is more fascinating than it seems,” he mused. “We’re not even into their system yet and there’s a radiating sculpted effect. This shouldn’t happen. Renraku’s been doing some very interesting things.”

“Never mind the interesting things they’ve been doing, let’s find out about the interesting things someone’s been doing to them,” Geraint retorted, adjusting his fedora and setting off down the highway. There was a roadblock before them, a gaggle of 1930s black American autos and a group of policemen awaiting them at the system access node.

“Since when has Renraku sculpted their system to look like an old gangster movie?” Geraint whispered.

“Since now,” Michael replied. “This must be a direct response to the system invasion.”

“A bit tacky, if you ask me,” Geraint said. “Oh, well, get that sleaze program working.” They advanced on the police squad.

“Ain’t nobody goin’ up that road without authorization, bud,” the harrier program instructed. Michael put a hand into his pants pocket with exaggerated slowness, so as not to activate any alert IC, and flourished a badge with the symbol of Chicago’s finest on it.

“Authorization from the mayor himself, Mac,” he said. palming it again swiftly. The policeman looked a little dubious and then waved them past the platoon of armed goons standing behind him.

“That was easy,” Michael chuckled as they headed down the road and on to the dataline junctions.

“Great when we have to go back and get past that attack IC,” Geraint said plaintively. The goons had been carrying disagreeably large heavy machine guns. Renraku had gotten heavy since the system invasion.

“Not to worry,” Michael smiled. “We’ll be leaving in an armored car, old boy.”

They sidled into the outskirts of town, and down the narrow road saw a series of fortified buildings.

“The bank, I would think,” Michael said. “Time to send off a browsing probe.” He opened his violin case and a slightly mangy pigeon circled out into the skies above, coming briefly to rest on a distant roof, then hopping from one to the next. From one of the buildings in the middle distance, a sheriff emerged, wearing his badge of office and wielding a machine gun that made the weapons of the SAN IC look like popguns.

“System decker.” Michael said dismissively. His armor program, and that of Geraint, had already equipped them with bulletproof jackets, and the Englishman had other surprises in store for the Renraku decker prowling the system. What worried him was whether this was just a random appearance, or whether the system was already alerted to their presence, and how long it would take the decker to alert it now.

As the sheriff leveled his weapon to fire, smoke exploded around him and a harmless burst of gunfire chattered off somewhere into the skies as the two intruders ran down the other side of the Street to the bank. The stumbling figure barely emerged before they’d shot the locks off the bank doors, and above him the pigeon had already been replaced by Geraint’s eagle, a scanner program searching for reinforcements Michael’s smart frame had already given the sheriff something else to worry about as they ran into the building.

“Hold it right there, lawman,” the frame-persona drawled, “or your guts will have more holes than a Swiss cheese.”

“Love it,” Michael grinned as he activated the evaluate program and switched to sensor mode. Geraint covered his back, gun leveled at the swinging bank doorway. “Now, Tracey my dear, crack that code,” Michael said.

The second smart frame got to work on the encrypted barrier, decoding and analyzing, Michael desperate to get at the data in the vaults. He got through just as the evaluate program gave him the final feedback.

“Bugger, it’s not here,” he growled. “We’re going to have to wait for the dove to fly back. Well, let’s face it-it would have been too easy to find it here.”