Hindian. Sunken eyes, pools of sullen shadow. Blood oozing in a sheen of droplets from his face. One hand was raised to shield his eyes from the light; more blood rose from a raw stigmatum on the palm. Limbs, joints, fingers as sharp-edged and angular as origami protruding from his torn clothing. The soles of his feet had been sprayed with plastic in lieu of shoes.
The ocean hemmed him in on one side; strippers looked on curiously from all others, keeping clear of the halogen pool. Every segment of the stickman's frame was tensed, poised between equally-futile options of flight and attack
"Relax," Perreault said. "I only want to ask you some questions."
"Ah. Questions from a police robot," he said. Thin lips drawn back from brown teeth, the cracks between bloody. A cynical rictus. "I am relieved."
She blinked. "You speak English."
"It is not an uncommon language. Not as stylish as French these days, though, yes? What do you want?"
Perreault disabled the translator. "What happened back there?"
"There is no cause to worry. None of your machinery was harmed."
"I'm not interested in the machinery. There was an explosion."
"Your wonderful machines do not provide us with explosives," Amitav pointed out.
"There was a woman, a diver. There was a child."
The stickman glowered.
"I just want to know what happened," Perreault told him. "I'm not looking to give you any trouble."
Amitav spat. "Of course not. You blind me to test my eyes, yes?"
Perreault killed the floods. Black and white faded to gray.
"Thank you," Amitav said after a moment.
"Tell me what happened."
"She said it was an accident," Amitav said.
"An accident?"
"The child was—Clarke had this, I am not sure of the word, this club. On her leg. She called it a billy."
"Clarke?"
"Your diver."
Clarke. "Do you know her first name?"
"No." Amitav snorted. "Kali is as good a name as any, though."
"Go on."
"The child, he—he tried to steal it. While we were—talking."
"You didn't stop him?"
Amitav shifted uncomfortably. "I believe she was trying to show the child that the billy was dangerous," he said. "In that she succeeded. I myself flew. It left marks." He smiled, held up his hands once more, palms up. Flayed flesh, oozing blood.
Amitav fell silent and looked out to sea. Perreault's perspective bobbed slightly in a sudden breeze, as though the botfly was nodding.
"I do not know what happened to the child," Amitav said at last. "By the time I could stand again he was gone. Clarke was looking for him, though."
"Who is she?" Perreault asked softly. "Do you know her?"
He spat. "She would not say so."
"But you've seen her before. Tonight was not the first time."
"Oh yes. Your pets here" — looking at the other refugees— "they come to me whenever something requires initiative, yes? They tell me where the mermaid is, so I can go and deal with her."
"But you two are connected somehow. You're friends, or—"
"We are not sheep," Amitav said. "That is all we have in common. Here, it is enough."
"I want to know about her."
"That is wise," Amitav said, more quietly.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because she survived what you did to her. Because she knows you did it."
"I didn't do anything."
The stickman waved one dismissive hand. "No matter. She will come for you anyway."
"What happened? What was done to her?"
"She did not say, exactly. She says very little. And sometimes, when she does say things, she does not say them to anyone here, yes? At least, no one I can see. But they get her quite upset."
"She sees ghosts?"
Amitav shrugged. "Ghosts are not uncommon here. I am speaking to one now."
"You know I'm no ghost."
"Not a real one, perhaps. You only haunt machinery."
Sou-Hon Perreault looked for a filter to tweak. She couldn't find one that fit.
"She said you caused the earthquake," Amitav said suddenly. "She says you sent the wave that killed so many of us."
"That's ridiculous."
"And you would know, yes? Your leaders would share such things with the drivers of mechanical insects?"
"Why would anyone do something like that?"
Amitav shrugged. "Ask Clarke. If you can find her."
"Can you help me do that?"
"Certainly." He pointed to the Pacific. "She is out there."
"Will you see her again?"
"I do not know."
"Can you let me know if you do?"
"And how would I do that even if I wished to?"
"Sou-Hon," Perreault said.
"I do not understand."
"That's my name. Sou-Hon. I can program the botflies to recognize your voice. If they hear you calling me, they'll let me know."
"Ah," Amitav said.
"Well?"
Amitav smiled. "Don't call us. We'll call you."
An Invitation to Dance
In South Bend, the mermaid killed a man.
Willapa Bay ruptured the Strip like an ulcer twelve kilometers across. Official surveillance of that gap had not been designed to catch people for whom breathing was optional; now the coast was fifteen klicks behind her. This far in, the wave had been thwarted by headlands and a thick stubby island, clogging the inlet like a cyst. The Big One had merely trembled here. The wreckage and desolation was all of local origin.
She emerged past midnight onto a dark, corroded segment of waterfront, long since abandoned to a creeping blight of premillennial toluene. Nervous late-night pedestrians glimpsed her on the edge of the city core and increased their pace from A to B. The last time Clarke had wandered civilized streets there'd been free wristwatch dispensers on every second corner, a half-hearted sop to those who'd have empowered the masses through access to information. She could find no dispensers in this place, only an old public phone standing guard in fluorescent twilight. She interrogated it. She was here, it told her. Yves Scanlon lived there, three hundred kilometers to the northeast.
He wouldn't be expecting her. She faded to black. Indifferent security cameras reduced her to a transient assemblage of infrared pixels.
She clambered back down concrete scree to an oily waterline. Something called to her as she retrieved her fins: muffled, familiar sounds from an abandoned customs office.
It could have been the splintering of rotten pilings. Maybe a boot against ribs, with flesh getting in the way. Something knotted in Clarke's throat. There's no end to the things you can slam into a human body. She'd lost count of the different sounds they made.
Almost too faint to hear, more whimper than words: "Fuck, man…" The muted hum of an electrical discharge. A groan.
A walkway extended around the derelict office; junk piled along its length waited to trip anyone not gifted with night eyes. At the other side of the building, a dock jutted from the waterfront on wooden pilings. Two figures stood on that platform, a man and a woman. Four others lay twitching at their feet. A police botfly slept on the pier, conveniently offline.
Technically, of course, it was not an assault. Both aggressors wore uniforms and badges conferring the legal right to beat whomever they chose. Tonight they'd chosen an entrée of juveniles, laid out along the creosote-stained planks like gutted fish. Those bodies twitched with the spastic neural static of shockprod discharge; beyond that, they didn't react to the boots in their sides. Clarke could hear snatches of conversation from the uniforms, talk of curfew violations and unauthorized use of the Maelstrom.