Touch of the White Tiger Read Free Page B

climbed into the cab, whose blades whooshed overhead, the driver’s sidelong glance looked like one he reserved for a con artist who was going to shake him down after takeoff.
    “Don’t even go there,” I said, pulling out my CRS identification card. Then I held out my cash chip. “And, yes, I can afford it. Chicago and State. Pronto.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” he said with a faint East Coast accent. “Buckle up, please.”
    Like I had a choice. He pushed a button and two belts crossed over my chest and battened me down. While we zoomed up and over the sprawling north side of Chicago, I tried not to imagine the worst and found myself reading the cabdriver’s certificate.
    Herbert Banning IV. He was a Harvard grad. So many of them flew chopper cabs these days. Ivy League degrees were quaint relics of a past when a well-educated human could still outthink a computer. While a Harvard pigskin looked impressive hanging on the wall, it was no guarantee of a job, as was, for example, a certificate from a Vastnet Nanotechnology program.
    I was hoping to help Roy and get back to my place before the clock struck day seven. And Herb was fast, God love him. He’d put his philosophy degree to good use. We flew well above the old-time skyscrapers, like the Chicago Tribune building and the Sears Tower, but below the executive level of the newer 200-story buildings, like the AutoMates Starbelisk and the Morgan’s Organs Surgery Center. Fortunately, only taxis and emergency vehicles were allowed in the downtown skyways, so we didn’t face too much traffic. Before I knew it, Herb settled his small, yellow chopper on a taxi pad in the heart of the Loop. I zoomed down the building’s outer elevator and ran hard to Chicago Avenue and State Street.
    The buildings were so tall in this quadrant that city officials kept the streetlights on around the clock. Like Victorian gaslights, they did little to quell the canyonlike darkness of the streets. And since this once fashionable part of town hadfallen on hard times—with free rangers sleeping in well-appointed cardboard boxes, methop junkies shooting up as if they were in the privacy of their own bathrooms, and emaciated hookers lurking in the shadows—it had a vaguely Dickensian aura.
    When I reached the entrance to the alley that led to the Cloisters, I called out, “Roy?” as I stepped through the trash-strewed passageway. Rotting food and urine assailed my nose, which I covered with the back of one hand as I tiptoed through a brackish liquid I didn’t want to identify. It had rained earlier, and a trickle—blessedly fresh and silvery—still flowed down a drainpipe, spilling over the broken asphalt.
    I focused on the cleansing overflow as I made my way toward the end of the alley. I’d almost reached the open courtyard, where I suspected Roy awaited my help, when I was greeted by the one thing in this world that could make me want to turn and run.
    “A rat,” I whispered. Not just any varmint, but a rad rat. Rad as in radiation, not trendy. Rats are never in style.
    About twenty years ago some idiot Director of Public Health decided the city’s rat problem had reached apocalyptic proportions and solved it by feeding the nasty critters radiation pellets. A few—the toughest and smartest—survived, mutated, and spawned offspring so large they could have registered with the American Kennel Association.
    One of their descendants stood ten feet away from me right now, the size of a pit bull, daring me to pass. That’s what I hated about rats. They had attitude, in addition to beady eyes, creepy tails and vicious teeth.
    “Get out of my way!” Out of habit, I reached for the Glock that wasn’t there. I seldom used it and had never killed anyone, but it was a menacing weapon to wave around. Instead, I pulled out my whip and cracked it in the air. The rat flinched, but waddled closer.
    “What do you think this is?” I shouted. “Showdown at the OK Corral? Go on! Get out of