Robert Charrette - Find your own truth

They might try to lock him out of the Matrix and into this finely furnished cell, but he was the Dodger. He could never be confined.

He didn't bother to check the lock before prying open the control plate. Having lived in comfort too long, they had forgotten what could be done with ordinary things. In less than ten seconds he had scrambled the security circuits enough to open the lock. He was reasonably sure that he hadn't set off an alarm, either.

He felt light-headed. The exhilaration, he supposed. The hall floor was cold against his bare feet, and the speed of his motion made a cool breeze across his naked flesh. Ills of the flesh. Unimportant. As unimportant as his nakedness.

Naked. How appropriate. Soon it would be more so. As soon as he reached his goal. He knew the mansion well.

He padded down the back stairs. Two full flights, and three steps of the next flight. He reached down to the floorboard, steadying himself against the railing as' his fragile flesh threatened to betray him. His fingers found the latch and lifted it. A panel rose, revealing a hollow in the wall.

It was there, just as he remembered: a monitor station. A few keystrokes brought him the message that the connections were all active. He smiled. Fumbling open the storage compartment, he drew forth the da-tacord. His fingers were clumsy nothing but weak flesh things but he got one end of the cord into his datajack and the other into the port on the station.

He curled the fingers of his left hand into his palm and gave his wrist the fast double-cock needed to release the prongs. Three tapering cylinders of silver slid from the ectomyelin sheaths in his forearm.

You can take the decker away from the cyberdeck, but you can't take the Dodger away from his key to the Matrix.

Naked he would go forth to find her. They said it was too dangerous to enter cyberspace without the buffer of a cyberdeck. They were right, of course; it was dangerous. But he had done it before. Decker slang called it "jacking in naked" when only the decker's organic brain stood as defense against the dangers of 1C and the navigational peculiarities of the Matrix. An organic brain was a fragile thing to stand between the crystalline fury of ice and the darkness of death.

But what matter danger? A threat to the organic existence was no threat at all, for she was not part of organic existence. She was waiting for him in cyber-space, and Dodger would go to meet her.

He slid the prongs into the station's data ports, and the infinite glories of the Matrix exploded in his head, filling his soul with their wonder. He saw her in the distance, waiting.

"Morgan," he called, using the name she had chosen for herself. "I'm coming."

He flew to her side.

Sato inspected his arm. To all appearances, it was a normal human arm. The doctors had done their job well. He lifted the gown's sleeve to seek the join. The scar was already fading under the influence of fast-healing drugs and skin-regenerative implants. Very well, indeed.

"Akabo."

The enhanced soldier who served as his bodyguard rose smoothly to his feet and crossed the small room. He was still wearing the tight-fitting leathers he preferred for street work.

"Any word from Masamba?"

A slight shake of the head. "Mage is still looking. Matrix team is still hunting as well."

"Then it will be some time before your special talents are needed. I suggest that you pay a visit to the medical team and express my thanks for their work. The usual payment."

Smiling grimly, Akabo nodded. "What about Sori-yama? He assembled the team."

"Leave him alive. The good doctor is too valuable. Though a brilliant man, he is not impractical, as are so many scientists. He will understand the warning."

"Yeah. And he's a bit too tight with Grandmother."

Akabo flinched back at Sato's reaction. Sato held down the impulse to take his bodyguard by the throat and drain him dry. Let the threat of his anger be enough for now. Akabo would not be so bold as to mention the subject again. Intimidation was enough for now. The killer was himself too valuable to lose. For the moment.

Howling Coyote cut off the song in mid-note and put the flute down. "Why am I bothering?"

"Because you promised to teach me," Sam said.

"Hey hey, Dog boy, wasn't talking to you. Don't need you to tell me the answer. I already know it."

"Then why never mind." Sam was tired. He had been working all morning at perfecting the shuffling steps the shaman had shown him, but obviously not hard enough for Howling Coyote. In spite of the simplicity of the dance, Sam continued to lose the pattern after only a few minutes. It was as though he couldn't match the rhythm of the music for more than a short period. Though the music didn't seem to change, Sam continued to end up out of step.

It was all so simple. So why couldn't he get it right?

He wiped a sweaty forearm across a sweatier brow, then held his arm there to shade his eyes as he looked at the sky. No wonder the old man was exasperated. The sun was low in the sky, and Sam had not managed to keep the dance going for more than half an hour. The history chips said that the Ghost Dancers had performed their ritual for days on end, fresh dancers taking the place of the exhausted, without ever a break in the pattern. The power Sam needed to help Janice wouldn't require that level of performance, but Sam knew he was still not going strong enough or long enough.

"Are you going to play some more?" Howling Coyote shrugged, then spat. "Ain't what I want to do at issue here."

"You're the teacher," Sam objected. "I'm here to learn lessons from the master. Seems to me you're not doing your job very well. You promised to teach me." The old man's eyes narrowed, and he stood. "Ya want a lesson, I'll give ya a lesson. Ya gotta strip yourself clean before ya can do the big magics." The laman's hand snaked out and grabbed the pendant nat swung from a thong around Sam's neck. He waved in front of Sam's eyes, then let it drop heavily against Sam's chest. "What's that, Dog boy? What's that thing ou wear around your neck?" "A fossil tooth that I use as a power focus." "Uh-huh. And those things ya got tied onto your aeket?"

"Fetishes. They help with the magic." "Uh-huh. Got all ya started with?" "Of coarse not. I lost a lot of them when Urdli H^ttMed me through the Weapons World window."

"Ti-huh. What's the tooth and the fetishes ya got:: iave in common? Where'd ya get them?" ' 'I found the tooth in the badlands, just before I met ~›og for the first time. I thought it was a dragon tooth the time. Dragons are magical beasts, so I made it into something to help me with my magic. That's what -e fetishes are, magical tools I made to help me." "What about the other stuff?"

P"What other stuff?" "The pictures in the inside pocket, left front." Sam didn't bother to ask how Howling Coyote knew? out that. "They're just pictures. They're not magi-al."

"They show your sister, your brother, and your par-its, right? What's more magical than family? It's real aportant to you, Dog b'oy. Leastways, that's what ya told Urdli. Ya telling me connections ain't important to magic?"

Sam wasn't sure what answer the shaman wanted.

"Ya don't have to answer that. Answer this, though. WhatVe they all got in common?"

Nothing. Everything. Sam didn't know. What was the old man driving at? All he could do was guess. "They're all connected to my magic."

"Think up that answer by yourself?"

"Yes, I did."

"Just yourself?"

Exasperated, Sam snapped, "Yes, just myself."

"Exactly." The old man sat down, took off his reservation hat, and laid it on the ground beside him. From his pouch he took a comb, then he began to braid his hair. The gray strands glinted like metal in the sunset. "Now build a fire."