An ebon boy in a glittering cloak of silver danced along the electron pathways, but the pattern faltered. A whirling measure would abruptly end in a few stumbling steps. The dancer was eager, but his steps were constrained, as though the dance floor was slippery. In every direction there were datapaths in all of their myriad multitudes, but none offered what he sought. Following any one only led to frustration, the dance halting as the pathway expanded into a diffuse and indistinct mass of branches. Each branch was a trail of connections that vanished, becoming an array of untraceable links. The only ones that stayed solid led to unbreakable ice or mundane and unimportant data.
He was frustrated. And angry. The ebon boy folded his cloak around himself. Dodger jacked out, and the boy vanished from the Matrix.
Dodger stared down at the datajack. He couldn’t figure it out. There should be more connections than he could follow in a day. The circle of druids they chased were prominent people in England. At least the ones whose names they knew were prominent—highly placed businessmen and -women or members of the aristocracy, whose everyday lives were matters of public record.
The Hidden Circle was living up to its name.
Why couldn’t he make any connections? Secret societies rarely managed to avoid leaving a trail, especially in these modern times when no organization functioned without some computerization. Magical organizations were usually even easier to track down; their members rarely comprehended the intricacies of the consensual hallucination that was the Matrix, that hypothetical pseudoreality that was a second home to Dodger. In the Matrix, a good decker should be able to trace the connections between people and organizations. And Dodger knew he was better than good.
These druids, despite all their magic, were a techno-savvy bunch. There was not a hint in the Matrix that any of them were more than they appeared to be in the mundane world. He had not even been able to learn the names of the unknown members of the Hidden Circle. Without records of the organization, he couldn’t tell who among the contacts of the known Circle members were also members. Looking for registered druids was no real help. Many practicing magicians didn’t bother to comply with the Registration Act, and the members of the Hidden Circle seemed likely candidates for such an act of civil disobedience.
From the absence of data, he might have given up, believing there were no other members. But Sam insisted there had to be more, and Hart had backed him up. They said a druidic circle was three times three. The runners had names for six of the Hidden Circle, and two of those were dead.
The Hidden Circle was too well hidden. Three weeks of searching, and Dodger had gleaned next to nothing. There had to be another way to track them down.
A soft hand slid along his shoulder. He knew that touch, and it triggered a rush of memories he struggled to suppress. The past was the past.
“No luck?” Teresa’s tone made the question a statement.
Dodger didn’t bother to answer. She knew him well enough. Having seen his expression when she entered the room, she would have had her answer. He looked over his shoulder; she had come alone.
“Pray, tell. Where is our chaperone?”
“Chatterjee is downstairs.”
With a slim-fingered hand, she slid away the Fairlight cyberdeck and perched on the edge of the desk. Her slim hips spread slightly under the pressure, edging the hem of her skirt higher on her thigh. In his memory, he felt the exquisite smoothness of that graceful arch. His eyes traced the familiar curves up until he reached the equally familiar lop-sided smile of amusement. Her eyes sparkled.
“Have something in mind?” she asked.
He stood and reached out his hand to caress her cheek. Memory blurred with current perception as if there had been no gap. She slid from the desk and into his arms.
“I thought meat was a drag on the electron spirit.”
“’Tis true.”
“I’ve missed you.”
“And I you.”
“Estios would not approve.”
“Estios can—”
She hushed him with a kiss. The moment seemed an eternity.
“Dodger, why didn’t you stay?”
“Why didn’t you come with me?”
There were no words to say, for they had all been said before. He had no new answers that would mean anything. They held each other closely, entwining the rhythms of their hearts.
Her voice was muffled by his shoulder. “Some things never change. They only fall apart when things around them change.”
“It need not be so.”
“Are you so sure?”
“No.” He wished he were.
“Neither am I. What’s to become of us, Dodger? I thought I’d be able to work with you without remembering. I’m not as strong as I thought.”
“You have more strength than I.”
“Liar.”
“Is our fate to be the doomed lovers, then?”
She hugged him harder instead of answering.
“I would not compromise you with Estios,” he said.
“I would not let you.”
That wasn’t the answer he wanted to hear.
An unwelcome sound intruded on them; Chatterjee was coming down the hall. For an elf, he was making a lot of noise. Did he know?
Teresa heard the other elf as well. She moved almost as quickly as Dodger. By the time Chatterjee walked through the archway, Dodger was back in his chair and Teresa was sitting demurely on the desk.
“The keyboard was quiet, so I came to see what progress you had achieved. You have information?” Chatterjee asked.
The frustration of the flesh was bad enough. Dodger didn’t need to be reminded of how little he had achieved in the Matrix as well. “Nothing new.”
“Estios will not be pleased.”
“Tough,” Dodger snapped. “That slick is never pleased unless he’s got his butt—”
“Dodger!” Teresa’s voice was suitably chastising, but Dodger caught a hint of her quirky smile.
So, the lady has not been totally wooed by the party line.
Chatterjee remained unperturbed. “Your personal evaluation of any member of the team is irrelevant. However, your lack of results is pertinent and distressing. It limits our course of action too much. I had been informed that you were a decker of exceptional competence.”
“’Tis a fact. For the moment, however, ’tis also a fact that there is no joy in the Matrix.”
“You have exhausted all avenues?”
“All? A decker of my ‘exceptional competence’? Hardly. ’Tis true that I have run all of our current leads to ground. Beyond confirming that the younger Neville is dead, we are no nearer to them than we were on the Solstice.”
“Without their full circle, they are weak,” Teresa said.
“Yet not weak enough,” Chatterjee said. “The optimal result would be their complete dissolution, but reduction beyond the ring of three should be sufficient for present purposes.”
“One cannot ‘reduce’ the unknown effectively. We are no closer to naming all of the Circle than we were three weeks ago. And without knowing all of their identities, we dare not move against those we have identified.”
“Precisely,” Chatterjee agreed. “You must intensify your endeavors.”
Dodger folded his arms and stared at the ceiling. “Let Estios intensify his.”
“He already has,” Chatterjee said.
He would have. Always going one up. Fragging slick. “Then when he returns with usable data, I shall use it.”
Chatterjee frowned. “Time passes.”
“What matters time to an elf?”
“Flippancy is inappropriate. Estios prepares for action, and we must all be ready to move if the arcane reconnaissance results in useful data. Even if the shaman learns something of worth, it will be unlikely to have much pertinence with regard to your Matrix efforts. I suggest that you immediately pursue whatever avenues remain open.”
“Verily? Then I suggest you—”
“Dodger,” Teresa warned.
Dodger sighed. Baiting Chatterjee wasn’t worth upsetting Teresa. “Perchance I shall try a blind shunt; some of the data we do have should serve as hooks.”
“Explain,” Chatterjee ordered.
So ho, Squire Chatterjee. Must you now acknowledge that the Dodger may indeed be of exceptional competence? “A blind shunt utilizes a sophisticated series of mask and camouflage programs that render transparent a decker’s presence in the Matrix. Unfortunately, the technique leaves the decker vulnerable as well, but what isn’t seen by intrusion countermeasures is not attacked by such defenses. While cloaked, the decker waits; for to take active measures is to destroy the illusion of transparency. The hooks are data bits to which the decker attaches his invisible persona, waiting for the data to move. The assumption is that the hook will be taken legitimately into a place where the decker cannot gain entry through conventional hacking. The procedure takes time, but I don’t see anything else to do. Mayhap we shall be lucky.”
Teresa reached out and laid her hand on Dodger’s arm. He could feel the electricity through his leathers. She didn’t seem to care that Chatterjee was watching.
“Don’t do that, Dodger,” she said. “It’s too dangerous. A blind shunt could drag you into heavy ice.”
“Fear not, fair maid. The Dodger has not yet met the ice that can trap him.”
He was lying, of course. He had been trapped by ice—once and only once. It was an experience that haunted his nightmares. But he didn’t need to fear a repeat of that experience. The artificial intelligence—if that’s what it really was—that controlled the deadly ice lived locked away in the Renraku Matrix, and he was never going to enter that terrible black pyramid again. No matter how slick these druids were, their deckers couldn’t be playing in the same league as the megacorp that controlled most of the world’s public data structures. He would be safe from anything he would encounter.
Teresa’s eyes bored into his, her expression flickering with an emotion he couldn’t read. Her hand left his arm as she stood. Had she read the lie?
“Yet,” she said softly.
Dodger was sure she hadn’t intended him to hear.