I felt a little edgy actually goin’ inside city hall. But I told myself, What the hell, they got nuthin on me. I’m not wanted for any crime or anything. I don’t even exist, as far as their computers are concerned. Still, when I saw these guys in suits and ties and all I felt pretty crummy. Like I should have found a shower someplace or at least a comb.
I didn’t like to ask nobody for directions, but once I was inside the Hall I didn’t have a [deleted] idea of where I should go. I picked out a woman, dressed real neat in kind of a suit but with a skirt instead of pants. Even wore a tie. No tits to speak of, but her hair was a nice shade of yellow, like those girls you see in TV commercials.
She kind of wrinkled her nose at me, but she pointed up a flight of stone stairs. I went up and got lost again right away. Then I saw an oink—a woman, though—and asked her. She eyed me up and down like she was thinkin’ how much fun it’d be to bash me on the head with her billy. But instead she told me how to find the courtroom. She talked real slow, like I was brain-damaged or something. Or maybe she was, come to think of it.
I went down the hall and saw the big double-doored entrance to the courtroom. A pair of oinks stood on either side of it, fully armed and helmeted. A lot of people were streamin’ through, all of them well dressed, a lot of them carrying cameras or laptop computers. Lots of really great stuff, if only I could get my hands on it.
Then I saw a men’s room across the corridor and I ducked inside. A couple homeless guys had made a camp in the stalls for themselves. The sinks had been freshly cleaned up, though, and the place didn’t smell too bad. I washed my face and hands and tried to comb my hair a little with my fingers. Still looked pretty messy, but what the hell.
Taking a deep breath, I marched across the corridor and through the double doors, right past the oinks. I didn’t look at them, just kept my eyes straight ahead.
And then I saw Jade.
They had her in a kind of a pen made of polished wood railings up to about waist-level and thick shatterproof glass from there to the ceiling. She was in there with maybe three dozen other pros, most of ’em lookin’ pretty tired and sleazy, I gotta admit. But not Jade. She looked kind of scared, wide-eyed, you know. But as beautiful and fresh as a flower in the middle of a garbage heap. I wanted to wave to her, yell to her so she’d notice me. But I didn’t dare.
You gotta understand, I was in love with Jade. But she couldn’t be in love with me. Not in her business. Her pimp would beat the hell out of any of his whores who took up with anybody except himself. I had known her since we were kids together runnin’ along the alleys and raiding garbage cans, keepin’ one jump ahead of the dog packs. Back when her name was still Juanita. Before she had her eyes changed. I had kissed her exactly once, when we was both twelve years old. The next day she turned her first trick and went pro.
But I had a plan. For the past five years I had been savin’ up whatever cash I could raise. Usually, you know, I’d get paid for my work in food or drugs or other stuff to barter off. But once in a while somebody’d actually give me money. What? Naw, I never did much drugs; screwed up my head too much. I usually traded whatever [deleted] I came across. I seen what that stuff does to people; makes ’em real psycho.
Anyway, sometimes I’d get real money. That’s when I’d sneak out to the housing tracts where they had automated bank machines and deposit my cash in the bank. All strictly legitimate. The bank didn’t care where the money came from. I never had to deal with a living human being. All I had to do to open the account was to pick up a social security number, which I got from a wallet I had found in one of the junkyards when I was ten, eleven years old. Even that young, I knew that card was better than gold.
So I had stashed away damn near a thousand dollars over the years. One day I would use that money to take Jade outta the city, out of her life. We’d buy a house out in the tracts and start to live like decent people. Once I had enough money.
But then the [deleted] Controllers had arrested Jade. What I heard about the Controllers scared the [deleted] outta me. They were bigger than the city oinks, bigger even than the state police or the National Guard. They could put you in what they called International Detainment Centers, all the way out in Wyoming or Canada or wherever the hell they pleased. They could scramble your brains with some super electronic stuff that would turn you into a zombie.
That’s what they were goin’ to do to Jade. If I let them.
I sat in the last row of benches. The trials of the pros were already goin’ on. Each one took only a couple minutes. The judge sat up on his high bench at the front of the courtroom, lookin’ sour and cranky in his black robe. A clerk called out one of the girls’ names. The girl would be led out of the holding pen by a pair of women oinks and stood up in a little railed platform. The clerk would say that the girl had been arrested for prostitution and some other stuff I couldn’t understand because he was mumblin’ more than speakin’ out loud.
The judge would ask the girl how she pleaded: guilty or innocent. The girl would say, «Innocent, Your Honor.» The judge would turn to a table full of well-dressed suits who had a bunch of laptops in front of them. They would peck on their computers. The judge would stare into the screen of his computer, up on the desk he was sittin’ at.
Then he’d say, «Guilty as charged. Sentenced to indeterminate detention. Next case.» And he’d smack his gavel on the desktop.
I remember seein’ some old videos where they had lawyers arguin’ and a bunch of people called a jury who said whether the person was guilty or innocent. None of that here. Just name, charge, plea, and «Guilty as charged.» Then—wham!— the gavel smack and the next case. Jade wouldn’t have a chance.
And neither did I, from the looks of it. How could I get her away from those oinks, out from behind that bulletproof glass? Where was this commotion Big Lou promised, whatever it was supposed to be?
They were almost halfway through the whole gang of girls, just whippin’ them past the judge, bang, bang, bang. Jade’s turn was comin’ close; just two girls ahead of her. Then the doors right behind me smack open and in clumps some big guy in heavy boots and some weird kind of rubbery uniform with a kind of astronaut-type helmet and a visor so dark I couldn’t make out his face even though I was only a couple feet away from him.
«Clear this courtroom!» he yells, in a deep booming voice. «There’s been a toxic spill from the cleanup crew upstairs. Get out before the fumes reach this level!»
Everybody jumps to their feet and pushes for the door. Not me. I start jumpin’ over the benches to get up front, where Jade is. I see the judge scramble for his own little doorway up there, pullin’ his robe up almost to his waist so he could move faster. The clerks and the guys with the laptops are makin’ their way back toward the corridor. As I passed them I saw the two oinks openin’ the glass door to the holding pen and startin’ to hustle the girls out toward a door in the back wall.
I shot past like a cruise missile and grabbed Jade’s wrist. Before the oinks could react I was draggin’ her up the two steps to the same door the judge had used.
«Vic!» she gulped as I slammed the door shut and clicked its lock.