«You were wrong.» Kemrin rubbed at the plastic shield that covered his injury.
Bodrun looked away, tugged uneasily at his collar. «Yes,» Bodrun said.
«Well. What else did they get?»
Bodrun shrugged. «Everything, actually. They brought in a floater and cleaned the place out down to the floor. Singh Louie didn’t see a thing, he says.»
«And the dreams?»
Bodrun brightened. «Ah, that’s the good news. The courier got there an hour before they did, and picked up all the current Velligon wafers.»
«And my personal dreams?»
Bodrun’s face fell. He didn’t need to speak.
«Damn,» Kemrin said gloomily.
Bodrun patted Kemrin’s leg. «Cheer up. The equipment’s insured. Now you can come back inside the Pale, where you belong.»
Kemrin sat up straight. «No. You know why. Singh Louie’s got the sweet metal. His biocomps are better than anything Central Dreamways can jack me into legally — all that hot black-market stuff. I ’m not good enough without it.»
«Okay. But you don’t have to sleep down there.»
«No, I’m staying,» Kemrin said. «I came to Howlytown to dream my own dreams. No thief is going to run me off.»
All Kemrin could see was the glitter of Singh Louie’s eyes as the studio owner peered from the slot of his armored safety cage.
«A mecheye? You got a mecheye? What’s wrong with meat? You had pretty eyes.»
Kemrin stroked his cheek, just below the new alloy-and-crystal eye, a gesture that was rapidly becoming habit. «Just a reminder, Singh Louie.I don’t want to forget what I lost.»
«Each to his own. What you want?»
«Studio space. Cable to your core processors.»
«Your gear gone. You got more? You got the cash?»
Kemrin tendered his cashplaque through the baffle. Inside the cage a machine purred.
His plaque popped out through the baffle. «Okay,» Singh Louie said. «You got studio, cable. When your new gear due?»
«Today. Listen, Singh Louie. Your security. it’s not so good. Can you make it better?»
Singh Louie’s voice was scornful. «How? I put a guard on the gate; they send in a rat with a stickybomb. Then I got to pay deathdues and rebuild lobby, and they still get in. I put an EEG idplex on the scanner; next time they cut off your head and hook it to a life-support block. They still get in.»
«But…»
«No but. You wear armor, carry a splinter gun, hire a couple of shield-boys, just like the other Pale-bred toffs who come down to Singh Louie’s, you be okay.»
Kemrin turned away, frustrated. «Would that stop Bluedog?» he muttered.
A sudden electrified rustle came from the cage. «Bluedog? Bluedog rob you? You got troubles, boy. Bluedog madbatnik. Best you go home to the Pale, hope he don’t see you go. Never set foot in Howlytown again. Listen to me!»
«But…»
«But but but. Bluedog he chew you up, suck out juice, spit out skin and bone. Run away!»
Kemrin set his jaw. «He’s just a criminal.»
The cage was silent for a while. Finally, Singh Louie spoke a single word. «Idiot.»
But Kemrin bought a splinter gun; he bought a suit of servo-augmented armor, with a self-contained breather and stunrad shielding.
He took shooting lessons. He learned to shred large, slow-moving targets— if they weren’t too far away.
He went to an armor dojo. The armor instructor worked patiently with him for a week; finally, she threw up her arms in disgust and concentrated on teaching him to run fast in the armor.
Kemrin didn’t hire bodyguards. Rumors of Bluedog’s involvement reached the Howlytown security agencies, and the rates they quoted were beyond his means.
For in-house protection, he acquired a seeker-destroyer robot from a DownLevel weaponslegger. At Kemrin’s nervous request, the legger fitted the robot with non-lethal darts. It patrolled Kemrin’s small habitat, rolling constantly from room to room, sonarscans alert for intruders.
Once he got used to the little metal soldier, it was a comfort.
Kemrin lay in the dream harness. The Velligon dream kept slipping away, and finally he lost it completely, fell into a crack down at the bottom of his imagination.
He sees the dark-haired woman who had been with Bluedog. She is naked lying on an immense suicide wheel, the kind end-of-the-liners come to Howlytown to play, in hopes of gaining a new fortune or, fa i l in g that, an interesting death. Her delicate feet point to the sector of the wheel marked Exsanguination her right am points to Flay-and-Salt, her left arm to Auto-da-Fe, her head to Decapitation. Kemrin can’t see the Jackpot sector; perhaps it is obscured by her luxuriant hair, spilling outward as the wheel slowly turns.
Her body fascinates him, slender, smooth, supple, glistening in the pink flitterlights that bum at the wheel’s perimeter.
Suddenly, she is watching him. He glances at her face, and he sees that her eyes are mecheyes, glittering silver balls. She smiles; she seems to have something in
her mouth.
Her smile widens impossibly; her teeth are tiny white hooks, and between them she holds…
He tries to will himself from the dream. She holds his stolen eye between her fish-bone teeth, and it stares at him, accusing him o f something.
He woke from the dream trance, gasping. He stripped the dream harness from his head.
«God,» he said, trying to stop shaking.
Kemrin walked the streets warily, keeping to the widest brightest places, splinter gun ready in his hands.
Somehow the world had turned for Kemrin. Before, he had walked through Howlytown like a happy sponge, soaking up the rich details of life there. The beggars had seemed colorful then, the cutthroats adventurous, the whores mysterious. Before, he had seen the folk o f Howlytown as no more than vivid icons, threads to be worked into the fabric of his personal dreams, not real, in the sense that Kemrin Animoht was real.
But now they stood revealed as living, breathing unreliable creatures with purposes of their own. Who knew what perversities they harbored in their hearts?
Now the crowding beggars were sinister; perhaps they spied for Bluedog. He brandished his weapon at the cutthroats; they laughed and faded away, but he felt their eyes on his armored back. The whores seemed like shoals of bright carnivorous fish, cold, calculating, hungry.
His personal dreams had changed, darkened. Even his commercial work was affected.
An invisible malevolence pressed around him, a pressure he fearfully identified as Bluedog’s attention.
«Kem,» Bodrun had said on his agent’s last timid venture into Howlytown. «The execs are concerned about you. I mean, Velligon’s been languishing in the dungeon way too long, this time. And Sualn’s having much too good a time with Jarn, don’t you think?»
«Don’t worry. I’ll pull it all together,» Kemrin answered absently.
«I hope so, Kemrin. I really hope so. They’re making uneasy noises up there; they’re talking options and alternatives. Are you hearing me?»
Kemrin forced himself to look properly apprehensive. «I understand. I’ll do better. How ’bout this: Velligon escapes, with the help of Sualn’s beauteous chambermaid, Miskette, who’s carrying his illegal clone-child. They’re hiding out in CloudWorld’s Howlytown, right? Meanwhile, Jam’s critically injured in a fiery floater accident, and all seven of his Dilvermoon exbondmates flock to his bedside and throw Sualn out into Howlytown, where her on the street. Just off the top of my head, Bodrun, but… you see where I ’m going?»
«Yeah, yeah, that sounds like the good old stuff, Kem. But, listen to me. It’s a tight dream season.»