Sea of Silver Light

Titus snickered. "That's a good one."

A

Bat smiled. "The lady has more sense than I do, and more ma

"Damn. Maybe you could lend a hand here, Billy—I've been a bit distracted."

Bat offered him the knife, but Dixon plucked one out of a sheath on his leg so quickly that it seemed to jump into his hand from thin air. "Got my own."

"If you just come and set your eyes on the little charmer we brought back with us," Bat said, beckoning to Paul and the rest, "it will save me a fair piece of explaining." He led them toward the back of the cavern, well away from the fire. A few more hard-faced men looked up at their approach; Paul guessed they were the ones who had accompanied Masterson on his hunting trip.

"These fellows came down on us the day after the earth started moving," Bat said. "There was so much dust in the air we didn't even see them until they were almost on top of us. Then someone came riding down past the Long Branch screaming that a Cheye

The man, lean and with most of the bottom half of his face hidden by an immense whiskbroom mustache, shrugged. "I say ventilate him. He won't tell us nothin' but his name—at least I think it's his name. Keeps saying, 'Me Dread,' over and over. . . ."

"Oh great God!" said Florimel, staggering a step backward. "How can this be?"

"Bastard shot me!" snarled T4b.

"It is Dread," Martine whispered. She had gone deathly pale. "Although he no longer wears Quan Li's body, I could not be mistaken."

Paul stared at his companions, then at the slender, nearly naked man in a breechclout lying on the ground before them, bound tightly hand and foot, covered in bruises and dried blood. The prisoner looked up at them with no sign of recognition. His teeth were bared in a grin of exertion as he writhed in his bonds like a snake. His dark skin and Asian eyes gave him a little of the American Indian look, but Paul could not doubt Martine's senses. He had never met the much-feared Dread, but he had heard more man enough: despite the prisoner's obvious helplessness, he took a step back as well.

The prisoner laughed at Paul's retreat. "Hah! Me kill you all."

Bat Masterson crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, if you folks dislike this one so much, you might want to reconsider your travel plans. You see, this fellow's got himself about a thousand identical cousins, and right now they're all having themselves a hell of a wingding on Front Street down in Dodge."

CHAPTER 21

Handling Snakes

NETFEED/ART: Bigger X—Dead Genius, or Just Dead?

(visual: Coxwell Avenue death scene, Toronto)

VO: The art world is talking about the death of forced-involvement artist Bigger X, killed in a hit and run accident in Toronto, Canada. Already several camps have formed. Many believe X was responding to a "suicide challenge" by another artist known as No-1, and may have arranged his own fatal "accident" both as an acceptance of No-1's challenge and a further homage to a favorite artist of X's, TT Jensen. Others suggest that TT Jensen himself may have arranged the death, either out of irritation at Bigger X's constant citation of him, or (an even stranger alternative) as a symbol of gratitude for Bigger X's praise. Yet another group suggests that No-1 may have engineered the death out of frustration that Bigger X did not publicly respond to his "suicide challenge." There is even one brave group who suggest that X's death is just what it seems—something that happens to people who walk into a busy street without looking. . . .

She had been staring at the wallscreen so long that she had fallen into a kind of dream. When the shouting began, she sat up so quickly she almost fell off her chair.

Dulcie darted a reflexive glance at the coma bed, but Dread had not moved. He had been back online for most of a day. She was begi

Someone screamed in the street below, a shrill but still masculine cry of pain and outrage. Dulcie walked across the loft, legs tingling because she had been in one place too long, and lifted the corner of the blackout curtain on one of the windows.

It was dark outside, which startled her almost as much as the noises had—how had it become night again so quickly? People were moving in the alley below, shadowed bodies performing an aggressive posture-dance. It was a fight of sorts, three or four young men strutting and shoving, but there seemed to be more arguing than actual attacking. Dulcie had spent too many years in Manhattan to be either surprised or concerned, and she certainly wasn't going to waste any time worrying that they might hurt each other.

Men. They're programmed for it, aren't they? Like those little builder robots. Just walk forward until you bump into something, then shove it until it does what you want—unless it shoves harder than you do.

She wandered back across the loft toward the cabinet where, in a fit of bored domesticity while waiting for some of her security-cracking gear to work, she had set a chair and arranged all the squeeze packs, sweeteners, and other related objects into a sort of coffee-break area. As the argument raged on in the alley below she became conscious for the first time that she had no idea what kind of security Dread had in this place. She couldn't imagine him leaving himself open to robbery or assault, especially in a neighborhood as troubled as this one, but she also knew he was highly unlikely to have any of the more common deterrents like an alarm system co

Yeah, and fat lot of good that will do me if he's off in Never-Never Land somewhere when the rude boys come through the window.

Another shout, a sputtering curse that seemed to come from right under the window, made her flinch. By the time you could wake him up, she thought, someone might have already stuck a knife in you, Anwin. She put down her coffee and walked to the room Dread had given her, then dropped to her knees and pulled her suitcase and attache out from under the bed.

As she located and removed the various plastic components, some molded to blend into the corners and roller-wheels of the suitcase, others disguised as ordinary pieces of executive traveling equipment—a set of pens, an alarm clock for those exotic locales where you were occasionally denied net access, a purse-size curling iron—she considered her strange up-and-down relationship with her employer. He had made it pretty clear now that he was physically interested in her, and she had to admit that he in turn was pretty interesting himself. He had come up from his last session in the network bubbling with delight, and she had been surprised to find herself feeding off his mood, hurrying to tell him of her successes with Jongleur's personal files. He had praised her, laughing at her excitement, almost vibrating with that strange hyperactive glee that filled him sometimes, and for a moment she had wanted to have him right then, quick and nasty as something out of one of the paper-book potboilers her mother had left lying around the house in lieu of discussing the boring details of sex and love with her only child.