Then it happened. In the way that it does, regardless of events, clues or intuition. Your mind just burps it up. Sometimes.
“Where’s your deck?” I asked. Golson pointed and I leaped over to the side of his bed, pulling Mal’s disk from my pocket. I slammed it into the spare slot and slapped the button.
“What?” Vinaldi asked, coming to stand behind me.
“The guy who killed Mal had no rap sheet,” I said, drumming my fingers on the desk as I put it together. “Maybe now we know why.”
“Yo, Jack,” said Mal’s versonality. “How’s it going?”
“Give me the picture of that stiff,” I said, and it popped up onto the screen.
“Hil Trazin,” Vinaldi said immediately. “He was there too.”
“Okay, so all these guys are out of The Gap. Somehow. They’ve got a job—search and destroy for SafetyNet—but these are people with a grudge against you, and so half the time they’re moonlighting trying to fuck you up. One of them, probably Yhandim from what Ghuaji said, is getting way out of hand and not just whacking your associates but climbing through your ex-lays as well. Computer, get me the info on SafetyNet again.”
“I don’t get it,” said Vinaldi. “What’s this got to do with—”
“The homicide files on all five victims are security locked from the top of the NRPD. Which means the real job they’re supposed to be doing is for someone with more power than God. This person bought protection for Yhandim while he was looking for the spares, because one of them was important to him.”
“Company information,” said the computer. “SafetyNet still looks a mess.”
“Trace back every single company with a stake in it,” I said. “All the way back to the bone. I want to know if anyone’s got a majority shareholding.”
While the computer chugged away I lit a cigarette. Golson pointed out that they were bad for me, and I suggested that he fuck off.
“Do you know what the answer’s going to be, and if so just give me in ASCII,” said Vinaldi. “The suspense is giving me hives.”
“Not for sure,” I said, but then the answer burped up onto the screen. The majority shareholder in SafetyNet, through about a billion holding companies and subroutes, was an outfit called Newman Sublinear. Didn’t mean anything to me, but it sure as hell did to Vinaldi.
“That’s a Maxen company,” Vinaldi said quietly. “Administered by Arlond Maxen himself.”
I’d already noticed that the more serious Vinaldi was the simpler his sentences got, so I knew he was telling the truth. “How do you know?”
“I just do.” Vinaldi turned away. “Jesus shits.”
“Either of you guys want coffee?” Golson inquired, baffled but enjoying the show. I yanked Mal’s disk and stood up.
“So,” I said, “Maxen’s behind SafetyNet, which figures. He’s somehow pulled these guys out of The Gap. They must owe him for something, otherwise why’d they be doing his work? In the meantime they’re running after you for old times’ sake, and Louella Richardson gets chopped up in the undertow. Maxen realizes what’s happened, gets guilty, throws money at her Memorial.” But not, I thought to myself, at one for Laverne Latoya, or any of the other girls who died below the 100 line. “It’s Maxen. He’s behind all of it”
“Hey, cool,” said Golson brightly. “Then you guys are in really deep shit. Sure you don’t want coffee? It’s cinnamon apple—”
“Shut up!” shouted Vinaldi and I simultaneously.
“So what now?” Vinaldi asked, deferring for once to me.
“We go see a guy who I think’s going to be hurting by now,” I said, turning to Golson. “And you keep your mouth shut about everything you’ve heard, or forgetting women’s names is going to be the least of your troubles.”
“I believe that,” Golson said with sincerity, and jumped out of the way as we ran for the door.
“What makes you think Ghuaji’s going to talk now?” Vinaldi asked, as we stormed into Howie’s for what—for me—seemed like the twentieth time in two days.
“Three things,” I said, shouldering my way through the people inside. “First, his skin was fucked. It looked and felt funny. I saw something similar a couple of days ago on the body of the guy who killed Mal. Second, the wound in his head seemed to get worse rather than better while we were here this morning. Three, he said something about top-ups, and there were leaves on his boots.”
Vinaldi got it as we were stalking down the corridor. “They have to keep going back?”
“I think so. And Ghuaji’s currently going nowhere at all.”
“So maybe you’re not as stupid as you look. That’s encouraging.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I told him. “I have hidden superficialities.”
There were three people in Howie’s storeroom. Dath, who was watching over the body with sterling vigilance, balancing a chain saw in his hands; Howie, who looked like he was taking the whole thing rather personally and trying to make up for that morning; and Ghuaji himself. I walked straight over to the latter and bent down, keeping well out of the way, just in case.
The hole in his temple looked looser than before, and there was a small pool of blood under the back of his head. His skin seemed the same. Maybe the strange texture was just a result of having been there so long, and not something which got any worse.
“You know what’s happening, don’t you?” I said. There was no reply. “You’ve got that place in your blood. You need to go back there to recharge, and you’re not getting it lying here. Meanwhile, Yhandim’s running around New Richmond with the other guys. He may have a major plan, Ghuaji, but the way things are going it ain’t going to involve you.”
“Fuck you,” he said, predictably. They all say that, don’t they—and probably not even one of them realizes that when it comes to their turn it’s worn pretty thin and isn’t terribly frightening anymore. Especially when they’re taped into immobility and smelling of wet blood from the holes in their head. “Your mother sucks goats in Hell,” he added, hoarsely.
“A telling riposte, I grant you,” I said, “but you know what I’m saying is true. Now listen up. We know that Arlond Maxen got you guys out somehow, so that’s something you can’t tell me.” I ignored the explosion of surprise from Howie and Dath. “So let’s concentrate on where Yhandim is holding the spares.”
“Man, you know I ain’t telling you nothing,” Ghuaji said, coughing up another mouthful of blood.
I pulled away the collar of his coat and saw that the neck wound was also opening up. A flower of blood above the collarbone showed trouble was coming there too. I shrugged.
“Have it your own way. But time’s running out.”
I’d barely lit a cigarette in the corridor outside when I heard a scream from within the storeroom. I opened the door a crack and saw Vinaldi standing over Ghuaji I didn’t know what he could have done to make the soldier make that sound, and I didn’t want to find out. I shut the door on another shriek and finished my cigarette alone.
Suej was my problem, Nearly too, not to mention the rest of the spares; yet it was Vinaldi who was in there doing the wet work. It couldn’t have been any other way. I have no stomach for that kind of thing. It was the same in The Gap. I just did my time and tried to stay alive. I guess I managed it, but sometimes my life feels like a piece of demo shareware, all the key or interesting features disabled, running on a fourteen-day trial period that just repeats over and over again without ever becoming mine.
So I waited there, breathing smoke in and out, hearing the cries and melding them with many others from long ago. Something, either exhaustion or despair, was stripping years off me. I kept expecting to see flashes of orange, to hear beating wings and voices from long ago. I was remembering people I’d killed, and trying to recall why, and failing to see that it added up to anything at all. Maybe it’s impossible to see out when you’re stuck there in the if-loop. Maybe you’ve got to be dead for any of it to make sense. Life and chance write the code which drags you along, and all you can do is watch—alternately saddened, bored and horrified—as they execute their instructions. Emotions run the action, as they always have, and the brain is powerless to intercede.