Suddenly, Vaideeki turned sharply, one arm shooting up. “Go ahead, Control,” he said in his smooth, advertisement voice.
His partner continued to kick around the cabin, but you could tell from his movements that it was just for show, just to look busy. I wanted to stretch so badly I thought a bullet in the head might be worth it. This was how people ended up dying, I thought. It was a choice. You were lying there, suffering, fighting something, some black cancer in your gut or a bullet in your chest or a tumor like a rock in your brain, and you fought and fought until you couldn’t fucking stand it any longer, and you just gave up and let go, for that one small moment of happiness, worth it, worth everything.
“Copy that, Control, on our way.” Vaideeki half turned, legs spread awkwardly to keep his balance. “We got an all-hands situation midtown. Old Pennsylvania Hotel.”
“What about this mess?”
Vaideeki started climbing down toward the cockpit. “Fuck, it’s the DPH’s brick. Let them come up here and clean it up. We’ve been ordered back into the city. You want to wire the King Worm and tell him no, you got higher priorities?”
“Shit, no,” Sanjay muttered, following his partner.
“Fucking animals downtown,” Vaideeki said as he planted one foot square on my upturned wrist, crushing it under his weight as he pulled himself over me. I almost stabbed him in the calf out of sudden reaction, pain shooting through me and lighting up all the other broken parts of me like a pinball hitting every damn bumper in sight. “What we need is a fucking natural disaster, clear everything out below Twenty-third. Don’t know why we don’t just go down there and clean that shit up.”
“You said it,” Sanjay agreed, and then Vaideeki’s foot was off my arm, the pain burning down into the muscle, into the bone. Their voices faded as they went chatting through the cockpit and back out into the snow. I started to shake but kept my eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, tears leaking down into my hair. I kept as still as I could until I heard the displacers kick in, roaring into life, splitting my ears, the whole hover rocking gently in the field as they lifted off. I sat up and whimpered, moving every muscle spastically, dragging my sleeve across my watering eyes. I sat for a moment or two, stretching out, and then slowly climbed weakly to my feet and went back into the cockpit. I scanned the transmitter again, seeking out our frequencies, but on each and every one all I got was the hollow, empty sound.
I jumped down into the snow and turned to face south. Well, I thought, this isn’t the worst day I’ve ever had. Hell, I’d been dead once, not so long ago, in a box pulled by a Monk. The city, distant, gleamed dully in the snowy light. I replaced the blade in my boot, pulled my coat around me, and started walking.
VII
Day Four: It Sure Gave me the Warm Fuzzies
Energized somehow, I headed for the river’s edge and hired one of an endless supply of skiffs, one hundred yen to get downtown without having to deal with SSF checkpoints or any of the upright citizens who lived above Twenty-third. We were barely afloat, me and two scrawny black girls who pulled on their oars like champions, water slopping over the edge and soaking into my pants. It smelled overpoweringly like fish, probably because only the crazies ate anything out of the toxic river, and even then only once. Neither one said a fucking word, just staring back at me while they worked. The entire boat felt slimy to the touch, like it was dry-rotting beneath us.
I stared back at the girls and thought about Glee. I should have done something. I should have done whatever it took, killed every last motherfucker in the place, torn the fucking building down around me-gotten her the fuck out of there. Every time I thought of her my whole body ached, but I kept coming back to her, to the sound of glass shattering.
I was near the old stadium in twenty minutes, wet and shivering and in an evil mood. The old stadium was started before Unification, back when the world had been divided into different nations, and had never been completed. It remained untouched on the river’s edge, a bowl of concrete with a single huge letter Y attached to the facade, dangling by a rusty bolt. It was a huge squatter’s paradise, always filled with the near permanent camps of pickpockets, snuff gangs, and other assorted nuisances, all banded together for protection. These were not the hardasses of the System; these were people who nibbled on the edges, who prospered by staying out of sight and avoiding direct light.
As we floated to the riverbank, no noise but the faint lapping of water and the soft grunts of the skinny girls, I could see the dim form of a tall, well-built man in a long coat, standing there burning a cigarette. I didn’t have a gun on me, but I still had my blade, and I gripped it low in my palm and out of sight. So far today just about everything had gone wrong, and one more surprise would not, in fact, surprise me.
When the skiff was still a foot or two away from the bank, the figure spread his hands for me, his coat hanging open, in the international symbol for not going to kill you. I realized I knew him.
“Mistah Cates,” he said, cocking his head at me, his huge and improbable hair swaying gently in the wind. “I’m here to be your fucking valet or some shit.” Around us the soft sound of the water kept its own time. He was a tall black guy with the biggest goddamn Afro I’d ever seen. It towered up from his triangular face and swayed in the wind, a reddish brown color.
“I remember you,” I said, pointing at him. “Jabali, or some shit like that. A Taker, out of Baltimore, right?”
He grinned and gave me a graceful little bow. “Charm City, all right,” he said. “Last few months I been hanging about Pick’s, and you gave me a couple odd jobs to do.” He squinted and scratched his head as I pulled myself gracelessly from the damp skiff onto the deep mud of the bank. “Your whatya-callit, the chip, in your hand, whatever, they saw you on the grid and shit, and I was the only one still standing, so I was sent to escort you.”
I panted my way up next to him and gestured for a cigarette. Behind me, the girls paddled away wordlessly, heading back up the river in search of another desperate soul looking to get around Manhattan. As he fished for his smokes I took the opportunity to look Jabali over. I’d hired him a few times to track down a few people and he’d done fair work. I’d used a lot of Takers in my time to track people down; Gunners needed to know where their contracts were, after all, before we could kill them.
I smiled at him as he flicked a lighter open for me, keeping my eyes on him while I lit up. I could tell he was terrified, and good thing; the System was all about your image. All Jabali knew was that I’d killed a lot of people, a lot of System Cops, and I’d never been touched. And I was rich, and I worked with Canny Orel-or so rumor had it. And here I was covered in dirt and blood after word had gone out that I’d been snatched by the fucking Department of Public Health of all things, and grinning at him just like I would if I was in the mood to murder someone in order to let off some steam.
Then Jabali offered me a wide, sloppy grin. “Well, Mistah Cates,” he said, stressing the last syllable of mister to make it a little less a sign of respect, “what’s your pleasure? Seeing as I’m your entire entourage this evening.”
I grimaced. I couldn’t fuck with someone this cheerful. I looked out into the night. The boat was already invisible, the two miserable girls gone. “Take me to Gleason,” I said, swallowing. “I want to see her.”