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"Forty-eight damn floors," he muttered: no good to take the elevator. You got professional killers or you got crazies or drugheads in a place like this, fenced in with its security locks, and you didn't know what any one of the three was going to do, or what floor they were going to do it on. He went through the fire-door and started down on foot, following the scent, down and down and down . . .
"We got further on Norton," Sheila said. "Assigned here eight months ago, real company climber, top grad, schooled on Mars, no live-ins on any MarsCorp record we can get to, but that guy was real strong in there. I'm saying he was somebody Norton didn't want her social circle to meet."
He ran steps and breathed, ran steps and breathed, restricted air, Sheila had a brain for figuring people, you didn't even have to ask her. A presence trail arrived into the stairwell, bright blue mingling with the red. "Got another track here," he found breath to say.
"Yeah, yeah, that's in the log, that's a maintenance worker, thirty minutes back. He'll duck out again on 25."
"Yeah." He was breathing hard. Making what time he could. The trail did duck out at 25, in a wider zone of blue, unidentified scents, the smell from the corridor blown into the shaft and fading into the ambient. His track stayed clear and strong, stress-red, and he went on real-view: the transparent stairs were making him sick. "Where's this let out? Garage downstairs?"
"Garage and mini-mall."
"Shit!"
"Yeah. We got a call from building security wanting a piece of it, told them stay out of it. . ."
"Thank God."
"Building chief's an amateur with a cop-envy. We're trying to get another mech in."
"We got some fool with a gun he hasn't ditched, we got a mall full of people down there. Where's Jacobs?"
"Rummel's closer. —We got lab coming in. Lab's trying to get an ID match on your sniffer pickup."
"Yeah. You've got enough on it. Guy's sweating. So am I." He felt sweat trails ru
"We got some elevator use," Sheila said, "right around the incident, off 48. Upbound. Stopped on 50, 52, 78, 80, and came down again, 77, 34, 33, then your fire-call brought it down. Time-overlap on the 78, the C-elevator was upbound."
"Follow it." Meaning somebody could have turned around and left no traces if he'd gotten in with another elevator-call. "Put Downtown on it, I need your brain."
"Awww. I thought it was the body."
"Stow it." He was panting again. The internal tank was out. He hoped he didn't need it again. Sheila went out of the loop: he could hear the silence on the phones. "Forty-damn-stories—" Three, two, one, s-one. "Wire," he gasped, and got back the schema, that showed through the door into a corridor. He listened for noise, panting, while the net in the background zeed out his breathing and his heartbeat and the building fans and everything else but a dull distant roar that said humanity, a lot of it, music—the red was still there and it was on the door switch, but it thi
"Went out on s-1."
"Street exit, mall exit," Sheila said. "Via the Arlington lobby. Dave, we got you help coming in."
"Good."
"Private mech."
Adrenaline went up a notch. "That's help? That's help? Tell them—"
"I did, buns, sorry about that. Name's Ross, she's inbound from the other tower, corporate security . . ."
"Just what I need. Am I going out there? They want me to go out there?"
"You're clear."
He hated it, he hatedgoing out there, hated the stares, hated the Downtown monitoring that was going to pick up that pulse rate of his and have the psychs on his case. But he opened the door, he walked out into the lobby that was The Arlington's front face; and walked onto carpet, onto stone, both of which were only flat haze to his eyes. Bystanders clustered and gossiped, patched in like the potted palms, real people stark against the black and wire-lines of cartoonland, all looking at him and talking in half-voices as if that could keep their secrets if he wanted to hear. He just kept walking, down the corridor, following the faint red glow in the blue of Every-smell, followed it on through the archway into the wider spaces of the mall, where more real people walked in black cartoon-space, and that red glow spread out into a faint fanswept haze and a few spots on the floor.
Juvies scattered, a handful out of Parental, lay odds on it—he could photo them and tag them, but he kept walking, chose not even to transmit: Sheila had a plateful to track as it was. One smartass kid ducked into his face, made a face, and ran like hell. Fools tried that, as if they suspected there wasn't anybody real inside the black visor. Others talked with their heads partially turned, or tried not to look as if they were looking. That was what he hated, being the eyes and ears, the spy-machine that co
Maybe it was the blank visor, maybe it was the rig—maybe it was everybody's guilt. With the sniffer tracking, you could see the stress around you, the faint red glow around honest citizens no different than the guy you were tracking, as if it was the whole world's guilt and fear and wrongdoing you were smelling, and everybody had some secret to keep and some reason to slink aside.
"Your backup's meeting you at A-3," Sheila said, and a marker popped up in the schema, yellow flasher.
"Wonderful. We got a make on the target?"
"Not yet, buns. Possible this guy's not on file. Possible we got another logjam in the datacall, a mass murder in Peoria, something like that." Sheila had her mouth full. "Everybody's got problems tonight."
"What are you eating?"
"Mmm. Sorry, there."
"Is that my cheeseburger?"
"I owe you one."
"You're really putting on weight, Sheel, you know that?"
"Yeah, it's anxiety attacks." Another bite. "Your backup's Company, Do
"Shee." Might not be a play-cop, then. Real seniority. He saw the black figure standing there in her own isolation, at the juncture of two dizzying walkways. Saw her walk in his direction, past the mistrustful stares of spectators. "Get some plainclothes in here yet?"
"We got reporters coming."
"Oh, great. Get'em off, get the court on it—"
"Doing my best."
"Officer Dawes." Ross held out a black-gloved hand, no blues on the Company cop, just the rig, black cut-out in a wire-diagram world. "We're interfaced. It just came up." Data came up, B-cha
"Deader than dead. We got a potential gun walking around out here with the john-q's. You got material on the exec?"