We did both and wound up in Vicksburg.
The Texas-Chicago border turned out to be closed from both sides all the way, so I decided to try the riven route first. Of course Vicksburg is still Texas but, for my purpose, its situation as the major river port just outside the Imperium was the point that counted-especially that it was the leading smugglers' port, both directions.
Like ancient Gaul, Vicksburg is divided into three parts. There is the low town, the port, right on the water and sometimes flooded, and there is the high town sitting on a bluff a hundred meters high and itself divided into old town and new town. Old town is surrounded by battlefields of a war long forgotten (but not by Vicksburg!). These battlefields are sacred; nothing may be built on them. So the new town is outside this holy ground, and functions through being tied to old town and to itself by a system of tunnels and tubes. High town is joined to low town by escalators and funiculars to the city barricade.
To me, high town was just a place to sleep. We punched into the Vicksbung Hilton (twin to the Bellingham Hilton even to The Breakfast Ban in the basement) but my business was down on the riven. It was a happy-sad time as Georges knew that I would not let him come any farther with me and we had quit discussing it. Indeed, I did not permit him to go with me to iow town-and had
warned him that any day I might not come back, might not even stop to punch a message to him to record in our hotel suite. When the moment came to jump, I would jump.
Vicksburg low town is a lusty, evil place, as swarmingly alive as a dunghill. In daylight city police travel in pairs; at night they leave the place alone. It is a city of gnifters, whores, smugglers, pushers, drug wholesalers, spivs, pimps, hire hatchets, military mercenaries, recruiters, fences, fagins, beggars, clandestine surgeons, blackbirders, glimjacks, outstanders, short con, long con, sting riggers, girlboys, you name it, they sell it in Vicksburg low town. It's a wonderful place and be sure to get a blood test afterward.
It is the only place I know of where a living artifact, marked by his design (four arms, no legs, eyes in the back of his skull, whatever) can step (or slither) up to a bar, buy a beer, and have absolutely no special attention paid to him or his oddity. As for my sort, being artificial meant nothing-not in a community where 95 percent of the residents did not dare step onto an escalator leading to the upper city.
I was tempted to stay there. There was something so warm and friendly about all these outcasts, no one of whom would ever point a finger of scorn. Had it not been for Boss on one hand and Georges and the memory of places that smelled better on the other hand, I might have stayed in (lower) Vicksburg and found a scam that suited my talents.
"But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep." Master Robert Frost knew why a person keeps on going when she would rather stop. Dressed as if I were a soldier out of work and shopping for the best recruiting deal, I frequented river town listening for a riverboat skipper willing to smuggle live cargo. I had been disappointed to learn how little traffic there was on the river. No news was coming out of the Imperium and no boats were coming down the river, so very few skippers were willing to risk going upriver.
So I sat in bars in river town, drinking small beer and letting the word filter around that I was prepared to pay a worthwhile price for a ticket up the river.
I considered advertising. I had been following the Opportunity Ads, which were considerably more outspoken than those I had noticed in California-apparently anything was tolerated as long as it was limited to low town:
Do You Hate Your Family?
Are You Frustrated, Tied Down, Boned?
Is Your Husband/Wife a Waste of Space?
LET US MAKE A NEW (WO)MAN OF YOU!!!!!
Plasticizing-Reorientation-Relocating Transsexualizing-Discreet Wet Work
Consult Doc Frank Frankenstein
Softly Sam's Bar Grill
This was the first time I'd ever seen murder for pay blatantly advertised. Or did I misunderstand it?
Do You Have a PROBLEM? Nothing is illegal-it isn't what you do; it's the way that you do
it. We have the most skilled shystens in the Lone Star State.
LOOPHOLES, Inc.
(Special Rates to Bachelors)
Punch LEV 10101
With the above it helped to know that "LEV" call codes were assigned only to locations under the bluff.
Artists, Ltd.
Documents of All Sorts, Negotiable Instruments, Money Of All Nations, Diplomas, Birth Certificates, IDs, Passports, Photognaphs, Business Licenses, Marriage Licenses, Credit
Cands, Holograms, Audio/Video Tapes, Commissions, Pardons, Wills, Seals, Fingerprints-All Work Guananteed with warnanty underwritten by Lloyd's Associates-LEV 10111
Certainly all of the above services were available in any large city but they were rarely openly advertised. As for the warranty, I simply did not believe it.
I decided not to advertise my need because of doubt that anything so public could help in a matter essentially clandestine-I went on relying on chandlers and barkeeps and madams. But I continued to watch the ads on the chance of spotting something of use to me. and came across one probably not of use but decidedly of interest. I froze it and called it to Georges' attention:
W.K.-Make your will. You have
only ten days to live.
A.C.B.
"What about it, Georges?"
"The first one we saw gave W.K. only a week. More than a week has passed and he now has ten days. If this keeps up, W.K. will die of old age."
"You don't believe that."
"No, my love, I do not. It's a code."
"What sort of a code?"
"The simplest sort and thereby impossible to break. The first ad told the person or persons concerned to carry out number seven or expect number seven or it said something about something designated as seven. This one says the same with respect to code item number ten. But the meaning of the numbers cannot be deduced through statistical analysis because the code can be changed long before a useful statistical universe can be reached. It's an idiot code, Friday, and an idiot code can never be broken if the user has the good sense not to go too often to the well."
"Georges, you sound as if you had done military code and/or cipher work."
"I have but that's not where I learned it. The most difficult code analysis ever attempted-one that still goes on today and will never be complete-is the interpretation of living genes. An idiot code all of it... but repeated so many millions of times that we can eventually assign meaning to nonsense syllables. Forgive me for talking shop at meals."
"Piffle, I started it. No way to guess what A.C.B. means?"
"None."
That night the assassins struck the second time, right on schedule. I don't say that the two were related.
They struck ten days, almost to the hour, after their first attack. The timing did not tell us anything about which group was responsible~ as it matched the predictions of both the so-called Council for Survival and their rivals the Stimulators, whereas the Angels of the Lord had offered no prediction about a second strike.
There were differences between the first wave of terror and the second, differences that seemed to tell me something-or us something, as Georges and I discussed it as the reports came in:
a) No news at all from the Chicago Imperium. No change here, as no news had come out of the Imperium since the initial reports of the slaughter of Democrats... then nary a peep for over a week, which made me increasingly anxious.
b) No news from the California Confederacy concerning a second strike-routine news only. NB.: a few hours after the initial news reports of a second wave of assassinations elsewhere a "routine" news item came out of the California Confederacy. Chief "Warwhoop" Tumbril, on the advice of his physicians, had named a three-person executive regency with plenipotentiary powers to govern the nation while he underwent long-postponed medical treatment. He had gone to his retreat, the Eagle's Nest, near Tahoe, for this purpose. Bulletins would be issued horn San Jose, not from Tahoe.