Yet even then, after slogging it out with that person for a quarter of a day in a tiny room, he still might not come up with anything too helpful. Just a handful of useless moments, skating across the edges of his thoughts.
It also meant he couldn’t be in a crowd for more than an hour, as the noise would be unbearable. How it worked was a mystery to him and everyone else. It was just there. Always muttering and eating into him and burning him up. Drink or the pipe were the only things that killed it. Those, and work. The thrill of hunting through the city helped him forget it, or perhaps it drowned out whatever part of his mind could listen. But he’d take whatever was available. Whether it was a drug or a chase, he needed to keep a little flame burning in his head to beat back the murmurings that always followed him.
Cho Lun’s was just ahead. Hayes spotted the three lookouts casually dawdling down the street by the door. He walked up and entered, the darkness and the aroma of the den closing in on him like a curtain. Half-finished legs of stools and chairs made a tangled forest around him in the dark, and a single candle burned on the front desk. Above it Hayes could make out the eyes of Chinese Charlie watching him calmly. Two other men moved somewhere in the room to stand somewhere behind Hayes, but it was Charlie who ran the place. Hayes could only assume his name was meant to be humorous, as Charlie was well over six and a half feet tall and about as red-haired and blue-eyed as they came.
“Hello, Princeling,” said Charlie quietly. He threaded his fingers together on the table.
“Evening, Charles. How are you today?”
“The Princeling’s back quite early today, isn’t he,” said Charlie. “Usually the Princeling doesn’t show his face until midnight. It’s only ten. Isn’t it?”
“It is. I missed the ambience. Didn’t realize we needed a reservation.”
“We don’t. Not usually. It’s just that when little Princelings start coming back more and more their money starts getting smaller and smaller. Ain’t that right?”
Hayes reached into his pocket and took out his winnings. He held them out and one of Charlie’s boys snatched the money away and showed it to Charlie, who looked without touching. He nodded.
“All right, then,” said Charlie, and he stood and crooked a finger and led Hayes to the back, candlestick in hand.
They went down a small wooden hallway. The ceiling got low and the air grew humid and smoky. There was laughter somewhere and moaning and someone kicked at a wall and wept. They emerged into a low, thin room with curtains and veils hanging from every corner, some silk, some no more than rags. Small girls in robes wove and dodged through the silken jungle, trays in their hands and long, curving pipes resting on their shoulders. They walked to nearby booths and swiveled the pipes around like brightly-colored insects maneuvering their antennae, sensing profit.
Charlie called to one in Mandarin, belittling and cursing her. She scurried over and he continued his tirade as she set up Hayes’s booth. Hayes could catch only a few words of it. Chastising her for her laziness. Reprimanding her for her impish whorishness. Not this time, he told her. Not with this one.
Hayes lay down in the booth and the girl set up the pipe. Charlie stood over him, frowning grimly with his arms crossed.
“You don’t like me much, do you, Charlie?” asked Hayes.
“I like your money just fine,” said Charlie.
“Then you must like me very much, as I bring so much here.”
“I like you just as much as you can afford.”
The little girl held his pipe still and Hayes suckled at it as she held the flame to its end. He drew in once, twice, fumes enveloping his head, then filling his lungs. It was just a taste, but its soft, stinging breeze was already wiping the day away. He leaned back, smiling.
“Tell me, Charlie,” he said softly.
“Tell you what, Princeling?”
“What do you know about unions?”
“Unions?” Charlie’s brow wrinkled. His sweat shone and in the dim light he looked like a man made of fatty wax.
“Yes.”
“Which unions?”
“Any unions. Trade unions. The ones they’re trying to make at McNaughton, for instance.”
“I’m no working man, Princeling.”
“You work very hard, Charlie. You’re always here.”
“I don’t think they’re going to make a guild of denners, then. Why you want to know about unions, Princeling? What patch of ground you got your ear to?”
“All of them. I’m just interested. Just curious.”
Charlie cocked an eyebrow. “You sniffing for Mickey Tazz?”
“What?”
“Mickey Tazz. He’s the union man out of the Shanties, or at least that’s the rumor. He’s the man with the shit-stirring stick.”
“No. No, I never heard of Mickey Tazz,” said Hayes. The pipegirl gently took his head and maneuvered it, her little fingers like ice. She brought the pipe up and Hayes sucked at it again. Numbing tendrils worked their way into his chest and then deep into his spine and up into the base of his brain. The light shuddered and yellowed like the soles of a man’s feet and the girl’s eyes were swallowed by inky blackness, some beautiful nocturnal creature with moth eyes and a pouting mouth waiting on his every word.
“I wouldn’t go sniffing for Tazz, Princeling,” said Charlie’s voice from far away. “Tazz is a hard boy. He’ll fuck you up good and proper. Maybe even more than you fuck yourself up, see?”
Someone began laughing, dry, smoky chuckles that rattled deep down in their chest. It took Hayes a moment to realize it was him.
“I see,” he said. “I see.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Samantha awoke especially early to take the trolley from Newton down to McNaughton Southern Regional Office in Infield. She had read all she could about the trolley system, not willing to step on until she absolutely trusted it. After she woke she reviewed the stops and the timing, committed the schedule to memory, and then walked down to the station and reluctantly consented to be a passenger. Her planning quickly disintegrated as the malformed lump of machinery trundled up to the platform and released a rush of people that nearly bowled her over. The trolley did not look like a vehicle for transportation as much as it did a decrepit dance hall organ, covered in peeling gilding and bronze pipes. She clapped her hat to her head and squinted through the sea of bobbing heads to see the line number, and dashed aboard at the last moment. Once inside she shrank up against the wall as the vessel shuddered and lurched forward.
She watched as the dark stone walls began to fly by. It was like they were speeding over black waters. The other passengers took this with no reaction, coughing or fingering newspapers in the low light. From time to time a conductor shambled through the aisle, looking scruffily regal in his porter’s uniform, his epaulettes askew and one brass button missing. A dogend was stuck behind his left ear and he groused and hassled passengers for tickets. When he demanded Samantha’s he studied it and then returned it as though it had personally insulted him.
She came to Infield at eight minutes past six, fairly late by the schedule she had made for herself, and then headed off toward Southern Office, keeping to the route she had picked out the night before. She had taken the map with her, but the streets resembled the map in name only. What were straight lines on paper were meandering, dilapidated paths in real life. Shop fronts and home expansions tumbled off the sidewalk to squeeze roads into spaces just a few feet wide. In some places the streets ended entirely, without warning or explanation. And as she walked she began to realize there was something else wrong with the streets of Evesden, something more fundamental. After a while she realized it: there were no paving stones or cobblestones here. No seams, no cracks, no worn-down edges. The streets of Evesden were all smooth cement, almost like they were one huge piece, and the curbs were all sharp-cornered, having never seen the years of traffic common to other cities. She wondered what sort of machine could make a whole city block in one piece, especially when they were as tangled as this, and soon gave up, feeling somehow she had to be wrong.