Synners by Pat Cadigan Read Free Book Online Page B

heard a faint sizzling sound.
    "Son of a bitch," she said, looking at her palm. "It buzzed me."
    "I call that blatant hostility," said Marly. She produced a small card from her breast pocket. "I'm glad I thought to get the key from Costa."
    Gabe looked the door frame over. "Yah, but where do you put it? I don't see a slot."
    "You gotta look." Marly reached up to the top of the frame and pushed the card in. It disappeared, and a moment later the door swung open. Caritha went first, holding the projector up and ready. Marly followed, pulling Gabe after her. He glanced behind; just before the door swung shut again, he saw a small figure standing in the middle of the street, a child holding up a hand in a strange gesture of farewell. The sight gave him a brief flash of superstitious dread. He shook it away. It could have just been the clinic playing games with holo, trying to spook them.
    They were standing in a murky entrance hall that had been painstakingly antiqued. The highly polished woodwork looked both slippery and cold. Marly tugged his arm, and they followed Caritha down the hall.
    Caritha stopped at the first doorway and waved them back. Marly flattened against the wall, throwing one arm across his chest. Somewhere far above he heard muffled footsteps. They stumped the length of the ceiling and then stopped. Gabe waited for the sound of a door opening and closing, but there was nothing. The silence seemed to press on his ears.
    "I know you're there," said a woman's voice suddenly. Gabe jumped. Marly patted his rib cage, but he could feel how tense she was.
    "You might as well come in and introduce yourselves like citizens," the woman went on. "And if you're burglars, you'll find out you've got a lot more of value to us than we have to steal. Come on, now."
    Caritha swung around and stood in the doorway.
    "That's right. Now your two friends. Two, I think. One of them is awfully big."
    Marly joined Caritha in the doorway, and Gabe moved to her side. In the old-fashioned parlor an older woman in a straight black floor-length dress was standing near a round table arrayed with bottles, open pill cases, and several shiny, sterile-looking metal boxes.
    Caritha swung the projector up. Half the woman disappeared. "Thought so," she said, and widened the beam to include the table. The bottles vanished. "Cheap holo show. They're buried in the heart of the house, they'd never get so close to an outside wall."
    "Wait," Gabe said, looking at the table. The holo of the woman had frozen with a hand to her high collar. A moment later the transmission broke up completely, and the image frayed into nothing. "Not all that stuff on the table is a magic-lantern show." He took a cautious step forward before Marly could yank him back.
    "Floor's mined," Caritha said offhandedly.
    He kept his eyes on the one metal box that hadn't vanished from the tabletop. "You wanted that program. I'll bet it's locked up in that set of implants."
    "Think, hotwire," Marly said urgently. "Why would they leave a set of implants out like that?"
    "Maybe they didn't. Maybe it's a sign from your friend."
    A moment later he felt Marly behind him. She hooked one hand in the waistband of his pants. His underwear started to ride up.
    "Dammit, Marl," he whispered. "Ease off."
    "You'll thank me for this," she whispered back.
    He reached the table and put one hand on it carefully, reaching for the metal box with the other. His fingers closed on it, and he dropped through the floor, pulling Marly down after him.
    He was sliding down some kind of long chute with a lot of twists and turns in it; his shoulders banged roughly against the sides, and he could feel Marly coming down just above him.
    "Push out!" she yelled. "Wedge yourself in!"
    It took him a few moments, but he managed to apply his elbows and knees to the sides of the chute, bringing himself to a stop.
    "Gabe?" Marly called from somewhere above him.
    "Did it," he said a little breathlessly.
    "You think you can inch