The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [85]
10.
DEAD LUCKY
WHEN I GET BACK TO MY HOTEL ROOM I FIND BORIS pacing the carpet like a trapped tiger. “What time you are naming this?” he asks, tapping his heavy stainless steel wristwatch. “Am being on edge of calling in Code Red on you!”
Pinky has plugged a PlayStation into the TV set and is making zooming sounds, bouncing up and down on the bed; and from the sounds leaking under the bathroom door Brains is testing a radio-controlled hovercraft in the shower.
“I’ve been running some errands,” I say tiredly. “And then I went swimming.”
“Swimming?” Boris shakes his head. “Am not enquiring. Are giving Angleton the Sitrep yet?”
“Oops. My bad.” I pull out the desk chair and slump into it. My forearms and thighs are aching in unaccustomed places: I’m going to feel like shit tomorrow. “How did you get in here?”
Pinky saves his game and looks round. “Picked the lock,” he says, waving what looks suspiciously like a hotel card key at me.
“You picked.” I stare at it. “The lock.”
“Yup.” He flips it at me and I catch it. “It’s a smartcard, got an induction loop instead of the usual dumb mag stripe on the back. Guaranteed to run through the complete list of makers’ override keys in under twenty seconds.”
“Right.” I put it down carefully.
“Hey, I’ll want it back in a minute—where’d you think I saved my game?”
Boris snorts, then stares at me. “Report, Bob, now.”
“Okay.” I cross my arms. “When I left this morning, I thought I’d check out a hunch. I found out the hard way that Billington’s got a total surveillance lockdown on the French Cul de Sac north of Paradise Peak. Dead birds on Anse Marcel, seagulls everywhere. His people are running zombies. Human ones, too.” Boris looks like he’s about to interrupt, but I keep on talking: “I had a run-in with one of them. Ramona helped me get out of it, and we lost them by going swimming close to the island defense chain. Which has been tampered with, incidentally, compromising the three-mile offshore thaumaturgic-exclusion zone—did you know that? Ramona says her sources say Billington’s going to be back at the casino tonight, so we made a date. How does that fit with your plans?”
When I finish Boris nods. “Is making progress. Please to be continuing it.” He turns to Pinky: “Get Brains.” To me: “Am authorizing contact tonight. These two are being explain gizmos for self-defense. Call me later.” And he leaves, just as there’s a loud toilet-flushing sound and Brains comes out of the bathroom.
“Okay,” I say, pointing at the half-inflated, bright yellow life belt hanging round his waist. “What’s that about? And do I want to know?”
“Just testing.” Brains pushes it down around his feet then steps out of it. “Can I have your dress shoes, please?”
“My shoes?” I bend down and rummage for them in my luggage. They’re horrible things, shiny patent leather with soles that feel like lumps of wood. “What do you want them for?”
Pinky is doing something to the PlayStation. “This.” He flourishes another smartcard, which Brains takes and slides into a hitherto invisible seam in the leather tongue of my right shoe.
“And this,” Brains says, holding up a shoelace.
“That’s a—”
“Miniature 100BaseT cable. Pay attention, Bob, you don’t want to lose your network connectivity, do you? It goes in like this and to activate it you twist and pull like that; it uncoils to three meters and the plastic caps expand to fit any standard network socket. It doubles as a field-expedient grounding strap,