Nosferatu

homework too. No wonder she'd become uneasy toward the end. The scoop had almost everything: his murdered parents, the leg shattered during his stint with Renraku, the Atlantean scam, even the story of how he and Geraint and Francesca had helped solve the gruesome murders in London last year. It was seamlessly stitched together, and what must have gotten her a really fat bonus was the personal poop. No wonder everyone had been staring at him in that restaurant. The media had given the attempted assassination of Mayor Small a barrage of coverage, but Serrin hadn't been watching much trid and so hadn't a clue what else anybody might have said about him by now. But certainly not this intimate, private stuff. Maybe he should be grateful to the tabloid's editors for giving their hungry readers a feast to last them at least until the next three-day wonder showed up. Who knew what they'd do if deprived for too long?

Reading on, he was also grateful she'd spared the revelation of any bedroom secrets amp; then, oh drekWrong again. He just hadn't read far enough. Serrin felt a desperate and wretched sadness, not because the story was savage or brutal, a hatchet job or full of complete lies but because it wasn't. Maybe he'd have found some consolation in cursing her as a lying slitch. But even that she'd stolen from him.

In his impotence Serrin wanted to tear the pages into a million tiny pieces and throw them out the window of the plane. Instead he stuffed the tabloid roughly into his jacket pocket, then wearily sank back against the seat to try and get some sleep.

He hit Frankfurt at ten in the morning, local time, jet-lagged as always after a continental hop, even a short one. Copies of Newsday seemed to be everywhere in the terminal, endless racks of red-edged portraits mocking his attempts at escape. In his over-excited state, the elf decided to keep on moving.

He took a cab to the rail station, which was alive with travelers, all of whom seemed to be either eating or else thinking about it. He saw people ordering croissants stuffed with every filling imaginable, gulping down soykaf and ordering rolls oozing with schinken, pickles, pink beef sizzling fetidly in pools of fat, and salads bathed in mayo

The first train showing was for Karlsruhe. Studying the string of destinations along the way, Serrin settled, for no particular reason, on Heidelberg. He asked the clerk for a one-way ticket first class again, for the isolation and anonymity and headed for the indicated platform.

Crusher 495 was one of the most popular bars in the Barrens, the poorest, most godforsaken district in the

whole urban sprawl that was Seattle. The troll finished his soda water and chuckled over the magazine again, flicking it to and fro in his huge hands. The bar stool beside him creaked as a grizzled, gray-haired ork, weary from another day working the roads, parked his butt down next to him.

"Hey, Ganzer. How ya doin'?" the troll said. "Not too bad, Tom. Same as always. Janus chummer, get me a beer, will ya? Whatcha got there?" The ork turned Tom's magazine over to take in the cover.

"Slot me if that isn't Serrin," he said, looking up with an expression of puzzlement. "Looks like he got some facial work done since we last saw 'im."

"Not likely," Tom said slowly. "Serrin never wanted any metal in the meat. Wouldn't go anywhere near a scalpel. Why would he change now?"

The ork drained half his glass and said nothing. It wasn't tactful to talk much about metal in the meat to Tom. It might only get the troll sermonizing again.

"He saved the mayor of the Rotten Apple from getting shot," Tom said. He knew Ganzer couldn't read.

"That so? Well, as the tortoise said to the army helmet, guess we all make mistakes amp; But, frag, we haven't seen Serrin in what? Five years?"

"Five years and two months," the troll said slowly. "I don't forget."

Ganzer wasn't in the mood for tales of Tom's old shadowru

Tom shrugged, but couldn't help a smile to think that the lot of some of the squatters down there might actually improve. "Yeah, well, getting the mayor to throw some grant money their way made him look good too. Now that the detox has gotten the soil up to growing crops acceptable for animal feed, some of those squatters can start earning enough money to buy themselves somethin' to eat."

Tom gazed reflectively around the dingy bar, with its boarded-up windows, scarred furniture, and murky atmosphere. The ceiling might once have been white, but smoke from an untold number of cigarettes had long ago turned it a brown only a mille

A heavy hand slapped him on the back, and he turned to see another ork, Denzer, smiling down at him. The joke that went around the Crusher was that Denzer was a troll stitched into an ork's skin, and he was almost big enough for it to be true. He flicked the greasy black hair out of his eyes, and Tom gave him a friendly growl.

"Buy you a soda water, Tom? Hey, the mayor's ru

The troll smiled again and let himself feel good about it all. No matter how wretched were the Redmond Barrens, it was his home and he was doing what he could to put something back into it after all those years of being on the take.

He looked around once more at the hard-worked and care-worn faces. Seven years ago, he'd have killed anyone in here for a few hundred nuyen. Now, what was left of him loved these people. From the Plastic Jungles, with their legacy of chemical pollutants all the way down to the street markets of the Bargain Basement. And, down in the Jungles, the seed money grant his group had been able to extract from Redmond's mayor, Jeffrey Gasston, was going to make a real difference to thousands of them. I owe you for all that, chummer, he said silently to the face on the magazine cover. Whatever did happen to you?

He'd chosen Heidelberg almost randomly. Now, after two days, Serrin was begi