Who Hunts the Hunter Read online

  “Out of the way!” a voice bellows.

  Quickly then, Bandit stuffs money and credsticks into the pockets of his long coat, grabs the begging bowl and runs.

  “YOU!” someone shouts."HALT!”

  The guards are close and the crowds are densely packed. Bandit points his flute and whispers a word. Discreetly, a winding path opens before him as people, like currents in a stream, shift just slightly out of his way. And like currents passing around a tree limb or rock, they rejoin into a single waterway to his rear.

  “Above you, Master!” a voice whispers in his ear.

  From out of the neon-stroked night comes the silent form of a helicopter with flashing red and amber beacons. Bandit knows it comes for him. He has eluded the forces protecting this plaza many times before. Experience teaches that it is the way of megacorporations to become annoyed with those who evade their guards, and so they commit more resources each time he comes.

  But Bandit is ready. He’s prepared. At a word, the round golden cover to a utility access shaft jerks from its recess in the tiled floor of the plaza. Bandit climbs down into the shaft, grips the sides of the ladder there with hands and feet, and drops at speed to the floor of the tunnel below.

  “Uh-oh," his watcher whispers.

  The tunnel is about two meters across, lit by panels in the ceiling and lined with conduits and pipes. As Bandit steps back from the ladder, he turns and faces a squad of waiting guards, orks, massive and heavily armed. There are five of them and they stand in a semicircle that backs him against the tunnel wall.

  “Gotcha,” says one.

  Bandit nods, and says, “Don’t shoot.”

  The magic triggers instantly. A cloud of blazing white boils up around him and expands to fill the tunnel. Guards shout. Bandit ducks beneath grasping hands and dodges around turning, stumbling bodies. He slips free and runs.

  Raccoon would be pleased.

  “Where is he?”

  “There! There!”

  “GET’IM!”

  Guards emerge from the cloud and charge along in pursuit. Bandit turns a corner and runs into a secondary tunnel. Barely three meters ahead waits a corp mage in a long black robe marked with mystic insignia. The mage lifts her arms in a posture of spellcasting. Bandit points a finger at her and shoots. The mage sneezes, her magic misfires. Bandit ducks and lunges forward, past the mage’s side. An explosion roars at his back. Someone screams in agony. Bandit feels the heat of the blast on the back of his neck, but keeps on running.

  Magic both simple and fast has advantages over complex sorcery. That is something the mages from the high towers of the corporate over-world never seem to grasp.

  The guards keep on coming.

  Bandit darts around another corner. The new tunnel ends suddenly, three meters in, blocked off by a panel marked with red and yellow warning stripes. This was not here before.

  Bandit puzzles.

  The new panel looks made of steel. It is marked with the logo of Villiers’ security forces, Bandit notes. On the astral plane, magic swirls around it incessantly. The panel is warded and the ward is powerful. It is probably impenetrable in the time Bandit has left, and that is rather annoying.

  “Master, behind you!"

  Boot heels ring loudly, charging near. Bandit looks back to see three massive ork guards rounding the corner behind him. They stop just a meter or two away and point their weapons at him.

  “You’re under arrest, spellboy,” one says, grinning.

  “Mage,” says another, sneering.

  Bandit nods understanding. He is no mage, but mundanes rarely see the distinction. He is a shaman. He follows Raccoon. He has about as much in common with mages as artists have with scientists. He could try to explain that, but would rather not waste the time."Be one with the world.”

  “Huh?” the leading ork grunts.

  Bandit turns and steps to his right. The eyes of a mundane would see him stepping through the wall of the tunnel and disappearing from sight. That is a sort of illusion. The guards gape and exclaim, but hesitate to follow. By the time they figure out what happened Bandit will be long gone.

  Once again, the guards have been outwitted by guileful Raccoon. That, too, is in the way of things. Only now Bandit’s little secret, his secret opening, has been compromised. He compresses his lips and frowns.

  “Damn.”

  3

  The sun is long gone when vision returns.

  Tikki’s fur is caked with dried blood, and the snow around her is splashed with her own gore, but her hide is whole once more, and her bones mended. Her musculature comes to life twitching and flexing. With a rumbling breath that threatens to explode into a ferocious roar, Tikki bolts to her feet, charges the cabin, and smashes through the cabin door. Then no doubt can remain. The cub is gone.

  She roars with the fury burning inside her, but abruptly stops. Experience warns her. She has been in this position before—opposed by two-legs, assaulted by humans, crossed by orks and elves. Confronted by treachery and guile and forced to deal with it. With the rising moon, instinct cries for vengeance, and yet she knows that this is not the way.

  To succeed, to prevail in the world of two-legs, she must face down the savagery of her instincts and use her mind. She must think. Analyze. Consider. Decide what is the best course to follow and what paths to avoid.

  She steps outside, stares into the gray dark of the night. The air is thick with the stink of the Mostrans. The ACV's fans have blasted a clear trail through the snow. The smells and the trail will linger for many hours, perhaps even days. She will follow; but, first she steps back into the cabin. There are things she must examine and things she must decide.

  The cabin is ancient: rough-hewn walls of seasoned wood, a scattering of leaves, and the needles of pines. The stench of elves hangs in the air. Tikki drinks it in, draws the scents all the way into her lungs, for she wants them burned into her memory, remembered so clearly that she will recognize the faintest trace wafting past her on a fleeting zephyr of air. She walks to the low mound of dog hides in one corner and buries her nose in it, smelling the traces her cub has left behind. She will remember that, too.

  She will hunt the elves, hunt them till either she is dead or the cub is again at her side. Should she find the cub dead, she will maul the elves, destroy them, tear them to pieces, then leave their meat for the crows.

  She will repay these elves one way or another.

  Now, to decisions. Raman’s departure has left her without transportation. Tikki had not minded that until now. She had not planned to go anywhere till the cub was old enough to travel and to understand about two-legs. So she has a problem. She has guns and other tools that might be useful in her hunt, but no way to carry them, no hands with which to hold, no shoulders with which to bear, unless she assumes her human guise and travels on two legs.

  Nature designed her four-legged form with all the weapons and tools she might ever need for life in the wild built right into her body.

  And in the world of metahumans ... ?

  It does not matter. Guns and other tools can be gotten anywhere. Time is the essential element now. She must begin the hunt at once, before the elves have gone too far, their trail grown too cold. Before scents fade and traces in the snow dwindle away.

  She must move quickly. Go on four legs.

  Her thoughts are interrupted by quiet noises, distant snarlings and yappings. Smells come with the sounds and together give rise to new thoughts, reminders about certain things, certain basic truths. They tell her of her next move, the very next move she must make. Her belly is gnawing. She burned much in the way of resources in charging the elves. Before she does anything, goes anywhere, she must eat.

  There is nothing in the cabin she needs. She lopes into the forest, charges up icy slopes, races between tall trees. This time it is wolves, large ones with dark fur. Five of them surround her kill. The largest male and the largest female tear at the carcass and snap and snarl at any of the other three
that dare to draw too near.

  As one, they turn their heads and meet Tikki’s eyes.

  She roars and charges. The smaller three wolves scatter, smelling of fear and surprise. The largest male and female hold their ground, snarling, baring fangs, displaying all the savagery they can muster till Tikki is nearly on top of them. Abruptly, they bolt away.

  Tikki comes slipping and skidding to a halt at the butt-end of the dead elk, and now the battle begins in earnest. The pack circles. They slaver with the need for meat and fill the air with desperate anger. The largest female darts back and forth, snarling, menacing. Tikki roars her warning to the female even as the largest male circles in on her rear. Tikki spins, bounding up high on her hind legs, forelegs splayed, fangs and claws bared and flashing, and the largest male darts away while others circle in.

  Again and again, the wolves close in, scratching and biting, harrying her flanks and hind-quarters. They are swift and powerful creatures, and they are many while she is only one, but she is large and strong and her weapons are unforgiving.

  And her bloodied body heals even as she turns and strikes.

  Three times her claws connect and three times a bloodied wolf bolts away howling in terror and pain. The third time, it is the largest male, and that is the end. The pack retreats into the trees till they are nearly out of sight. There they stop and there they wait. Tikki tears at the elk carcass and eats, watching, always watching, ready for a new assault.

  The battle for survival is simple. It is one against all others and it ends only with death. There is predator and prey and nothing else that really matters. This is the lesson her mother taught her and the way of thinking she brought with her to the world of two-legs.

  There is no other way to approach living in the wild, living as her ancestors lived, but she is not sure how well this way of thinking applies to the peculiar world of two-legs. The times she has spent in the human cities have given her much to wonder about. She has even considered whether the dual nature of her own form might not imply that she is somehow something more—better, stronger, standing higher than ordinary creatures—though what this might mean, if true, she has only half-imagined guesses.

  But the elves make everything simple again. The time for idle thoughts is ended.

  Now, she hunts.

  4

  The subway train thunders into the Tremont Avenue station, rattling and shaking, brakes screaming. Bandit watches the crowds struggling to get into and out of the train. When the battle is almost finished, he thrusts his way through the tightly packed bodies and manages to push through the door to the platform before the air brakes gush and the doors battle the pressure of bodies, and haltingly—jamming, unjamming—slide shut.

  The gray concrete of the platform is as tightly packed as the train. People shove against Bandit’s side and back, forcing him ahead or left or right, or they come right at him, right up against his front. The crush only gets worse as he nears the exit. It becomes an inexorable tide propelling him up the grimy graffiti-covered stairwell to the street.

  The heart of the Bronx is like Newark’s Sector 3, only worse. The streets are lined with crumbling concrete and flimsy duraplas structures. Signs and display screens flicker and gleam, but the products advertised are strictly grunge rate: soybran, soykaf, plastiwear, body filler, StreetDocs, Ramboic 14. Most of the people living here are SINless and poor. They live like sardines, packed into plastic tins called coffin hotels and apartments consisting of single rooms. The streets are jammed night and day with those seeking work, seeking food, seeking shelter, seeking all the thousand things they need and the means to get them. Some nights it seems that every person Bandit sees is either a criminal on the prowl, ready to maim or even kill for an easy nuyen, or a victim, soon to be robbed and perhaps bludgeoned to death, stripped of his or her meager possessions. The criminals here are as poor as everyone else. The yakuza and others all have their outposts, their little scams, their gaming parlors, their BTL labs, but the streets are ruled by gangers: elf gangers, Asian gangers, troll gangers. The trolls are the worst. The worst of the worst call themselves the Kong Destroyers and are best avoided at all times.

  Along the fronts of the buildings, in front of the scamshops and stores and simsense theaters, sit those too poor to afford personal living space, the beggars.

  Bandit pauses and selects one of the beggars, apparently an ork, wrapped in many layers of raggedy threadbare clothes and so blanketed with filth Bandit is at first uncertain whether it’s a male or female. Its aura shows it to be a male. Bandit steps near and holds out a piece of corporate scrip in the amount of five nuyen. The beggar grabs it, seizes Bandit’s wrist with one trembling hand, then both hands, and begins crying out for more, pleading, sobbing, wailing. The beggar’s two nearest neighbors join in, also grabbing. Bandit shows them his empty hands. All three beggars lose interest. They sit back against the building front and stare off into nothing. And that, it seems, is the way of beggars. Most of them, anyway. No matter what they are given, they always seek more. When nothing more is forthcoming, they turn their attention elsewhere. Most do not say thank you.

  They are not grateful.

  Perhaps they are degraded.

  Two blocks further on, Bandit turns down a long dark alleyway lined with shelters made of plastic cartons and crates. The people living here seem almost dead. They lie in their poor shelters unmoving. Many do not even look up. They are thin and dressed in rags. Their auras are subdued. Bandit pauses to talk to one or two, but receives no reply. It seems they are waiting to die.

  The alley leads into another, broader alleyway, choked with garbage and junk, cast-off appliances, bits and pieces of anonymous scrap. Devil rats scurry wherever he turns, but only in the periphery of his vision. They are quick to dart out of sight. A cat the size of a small dog lies atop the rusting shell of an automobile, and hisses, baring its fangs as Bandit draws near and walks by.

  A doorway leads into the dark of a stairwell.

  Bandit glances around, checking both the astral and the mundane, then quickly passes inside.

  Things got uncomfortably warm for him over in Newark. Certain corporations have objections to certain things he has done, or participated in, and would like to see him dead; if not dead, then “neutralized.” A change of scenery seemed in order. Too many people knew his name and had ideas about where he might be found. Here in the Bronx he is all but unknown. For the time being, it should stay that way. For the moment, he has little or no interest in megacorps or their divers holdings. More important things concern him.

  The stairway down ends at a doorway. The door suddenly bursts open and a small horde of young kids comes through yelling and shouting, surrounding him. They jump up and down and pull at his sleeves and scream, “Make the ball! make the ball! make the BALL!"

  “Wait.”

  And suddenly they are silent, standing there all around him with eyes wide and round and gazing up at him expectantly. It is a strange thing, the way they seem to respect him, the way they heed his words. As if even a softly spoken word somehow assumes the power of an imperious command. Bandit does not understand it. These children know nothing of magic. They know nothing of Raccoon and the things he can do. Mostly, they only seem to care about the ball.

  Making the ball is a simple thing, trivial magic, but he’s tired now and must concentrate. He cups his hands before him. Momentarily, the energy gathers, slowly coalescing into a softly glowing yellow globe that sits comfortably in the palm of one hand.

  When he lifts that hand, the globe floats upward, and drifts.

  And suddenly the kids are all screaming again, jumping up and down, reaching for the ball, batting it back and forth like a balloon.

  And then through the rickety door comes Shell.

  “Hoi,” she says, with a smile.

  She is young, younger than Bandit, anyway. She weaves her hair into dozens of skinny braids that scatter across her shoulders like twisting vines. Her body is slim and cur
ved in a feminine manner. Bandit supposes she is attractive. In the dark of the stairwell, her skin looks as black as night. In truth, it is like the color of soykaf, light brown. She dresses for the street: jeans, synthleather, and sneaks. Shock gloves dangle from her belt. Tucked into the belt is a Narcoject needlegun. Bandit does not care for guns, but he understands why Shell keeps one. The kids are young and Shell has no magic, or so little it hardly matters, and these spaces around them, hidden in the sub-basement, are worth their cubic space in gold. They have it all to themselves, just him, Shell, and the kids. They must be careful. Were the space discovered, they would have a small army of streetlife fighting to get inside.

  “Jozzie, bolt the door!” Shell says, lifting her voice above the noise of the kids, and one of the older girls run up the stairs toward the door to the outside. They keep the door bolted except when someone goes out. Often, they post a guard.

  Shell smiles and turns and she and Bandit step into the apartment. The main room is nearly four meters on a side. For the Bronx, that’s enormous. The couch faces a Tifun DX-2 telecom with a video screen that plays incessantly. Cushions, pillows, and blankets for the kids to sleep on fills most of the rest of the floor.

  Shell takes a light hold of Bandit’s arm and rises on her toes to kiss his cheek."Did the zonies freak again?”

  “They chased me.”

  “But you slot away.” Shell smiles."You’re the best.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I know.” Shell crosses her arms, smiling all the more broadly."You follow Raccoon and Raccoon is too clever to get caught, right?”

  Bandit supposes that’s so. At least in theory. The point is that Raccoon has many tricks. That is his edge. The greater truth is that Raccoon is clever enough to always go prepared. The right preparations take up the slack when simple tricks and cleverness fail, as occasionally they do.