His little hole was no bigger than mine had been, a roofed-in and closed-off space between two older buildings. It’s illegal to do that, but pretty common. I hadn’t built mine; I found it. Someone had died there and it had been abandoned and mostly forgotten. I’m not sentimental and I’m not squeamish, so I moved in. Now I’d have to find a new place. But not Rudolph’s. Among other reasons, it was too close. Odds were it would be burned next.
Rudolph was giving me the eye.
“Yer a scrawny kid,” he told me, “but yer female, and I could use me one.”
“In your poppy dreams,” I said. A knife appeared in my hand. It had a long blade and I kept it sharp.
“Hey, now,” he said, backing away from me. There wasn’t much room. “A simple no would do it.”
“You got it,” I said. “No.” I looked around the dimly lit room. Boxes had been piled, on their sides, against all the walls, creating uneven shelves, filled with objects that looked like and probably were scraps, stolen from dumpsters in the affluent areas — broken appliances, plastic tubs filled with mismatched nuts and bolts, and stuff I couldn’t identify. A battered sofa took up one end of the room. I could see it wasn’t the kind that opened up. I couldn’t imagine sharing it with Rudolph. “You’d have to sleep in the chair,” I said.
“Why don’t you just get the hell on out, then,” he said. “Take your chances with the fire troopers, huh?”
“I think I will,” I said, moving to the door. I could see it was made of planks bolted to crosspieces. I recognized the carriage-bolt heads when I opened the door and saw its outer side.
“It’s yer mistake, missy,” he said as I pulled the door shut.
The alley doglegged just beyond Rudolph’s door, and I moved around the corner quickly. The air was full of smoke, which was a bad sign. The wind could blow embers across the street. This block might be next, and sooner than Rudolph thought. So many old, wooden buildings with tar roofs, crammed together, a tinderbox just waiting for a match. I had to keep going, cross another street, hope for the best.
Dusk was coming. That was both good and bad for me. Good, because I’m stealthy and I can get around without being noticed. Bad, because there’s a whole different crew out on the streets after dark, and my chances wouldn’t be great if I encountered the wrong people. Normally I’m home, holed up, after dark. Now where would I go?
I decided to head for Hooker Street. That’s its real name — I think there was once a General Hooker — but it’s now also a good description. I cut through the alleys that snaked through the blocks. I grew up here. I know them all.
I found Jonny. Or maybe he found me. That prosthetic eye of his has some kind of built-in radar, I think.
“Hey, Shivvy,” he said from somewhere close behind me. That’s his nickname for me, because I’m good with a knife. I didn’t jump. I recognized his voice. “Change ya mind?”
I turned to face him. He’s a kid, like me — but not very much. Jonny got put through the mill when he was twelve and had to be rebuilt. I used to wonder who paid for it. But I figured the reason he started running girls was to pay it off. He looks almost normal, until you realize that all his uninked skin is fake — and that’s his right arm and the right side of his face. Fake skin won’t take tats.
“I been looking for you,” I said. “They burned my block down. I need a new place.”
He grinned at me. “I can fix ya up,” he said. “But wha’choo gonna do fer me?”
“I won’t cut you,” I told him. “How’s that?” I smiled back. Two big guys pushed between us as if neither of us were there, heading for the door of a juice house. Jonny in turn ignored them.
“Choo’know,” he said, “when ya get ridda that scowl, ya don’t look so bad.”
“I’m not gonna work for you, Jonny. You know that.”
“It won’t be work. It’ll be fun.” He laughed, saw my reaction, and held up his hand. “I’m not asking’choo ta work for me.”
“Yeah?”
“Nah. I wan’choo to live with me. Now, hear me out.” His face got serious. “I got respect for ya, li’l Shiv. Ya someone I trust wit’ my back, you know what I’m saying?” He grasped my arm with his left hand, the real one, and pulled me into a barred doorway. I think we both felt exposed on the street.
“I been thinking about’choo. This fire thing just pushed it together. Ya need a place to stay, and I need ya. Win-win, right?”
“Uh-uh,” I said, shaking my head. “Not if you want to sex me.”
“Aw, come on now,” he said, his voice getting all soft and husky, his pimp-voice.
“Not ever,” I said. “No. I’m not one of your girls.”
“Choo breakin’ my heart, girl.”
“You got a crib you’re not using?” I asked. “Some place I can use for a few days?”
“Then what?”
“Then whatever. I’ll move on, quick as I can.”
“Choo don’t wanna crib,” Jonny said, shaking his head. “They trade ’em off, hot beds. One after another. Never empty long.” He squeezed his eyes shut to show me he was thinking. “An’choo not willing to get in my bed, so...” He brightened. “How about a rich man?”
I wasn’t going to tell Jonny that I’d never let any man get my clothes off, nor any woman either. I never had and I could think of no reason why I ever would. But a rich man... that offered new possibilities.
There are two kinds of people in the world: the rich and the rest of us. I think there’s been a genetic drift. I don’t think the rich are quite human anymore. I think they’re a new race.
They think so too. I can read, and I read a lot. Mostly I read books, which I always picked up wherever I found any, but I’ll read anything — even the newscreen captions I spy through windows. And sometimes I sneak into the Closed Zone, where there’s free stuff I catch on my tab. I shouldn’t have had a tab, of course, and now I don’t. It must have been destroyed in the fire. But I had found one somebody lost. They’re useless outside the CeeZee except for what you put in the memory, and basically you can’t access anything to put in the memory unless you’re in the CeeZee, so I used to sneak back in for new ebooks when I got bored with the ones I had. Delete a few, add a few — and then make a quick exit before I was noticed by the cybercops.
But I know what the privileged people think. I eavesdrop on them electronically when I can, and I read all I can. Most of what I read is written by them, for them.
They believe they are superior. They talk about breeding a super race. Past tense. Like they’re already more highly evolved. So “uber.”
Now some of them have decided to get rid of the rest of us. They regard us as vermin, wallowing in filth. They’re exterminating us. They’re burning us out. But there are a lot of us. It’s going to take time.
“They see us as disease-ridden,” old Nellie once told me. “Like we ain’t healthier than them. But we got immunities. So that’s why they use fire and don’t let nobody escape. Disease control.”
“They shouldn’t worry so much about us,” I said. “They should worry about the mosquitoes.”
“The mosquitoes?”
“They’re what carry disease,” I told her. “Like, you know, all those viruses. Zika, dengue fever.”
“Wassat?”
“Tropical diseases. Now that it’s warmer, we got tropical diseases.”
“Yeah? You sure know a lot from them books you reading,” she said, shaking her head. “But that old-times stuff, that won’t do you no good now, here. You gotta get your head outta them books, you want to live to grow up.”
She was shot, out on the avenue, by a block cop who was aiming at somebody else, a few months ago. I hadn’t thought about her since then. But having your block burned down sharpens the memory, I think.