He turned to Eadie. “We should move on. Everybody saw us run out of a burning building. If there’s ever a good time to roll people for their prized possessions, it’s now.”
Old Fart looked around. The crowd was dissipating.
Kel turned away from the fire. “Yeah. Let’s get outta here. Gotta be fuckin’ stupid, standin’ here like this.” He stopped, watching Eadie. Kel’s hair tube had slid down, now pointing more behind him than straight up and making it more obvious that Eadie was easily the taller of the two.
“I’m sorry about your place, Kel,” she said. He shrugged. She held up his notebook. “I managed to save this—not all. Some burned up. But I got this part back for you.”
“Oh,” he said. “Uh, well, you saved it, an’ alla dat. It’s yours now.”
She turned it over in her hands. “Do you have something else to write on? I’d hate to have you stop just because I have this.” Blood had dried in streaks across her face and neck, which in the firelight gave her the appearance of some sort of jungle animal.
“No. I got nothin’ else to … uh, write on. But, you know … I’ll find something.”
“Well, maybe I’ll keep it for a while, read it, and then I’ll give it back. How about that?”
“Yeah. That’d be best, huh?”
(?)
Concrete. Flat, smooth, marbled with stains and filth. A wall?
Brian stared at it from a distance of a few centimeters, watching it spread out away from him in every direction.
A floor. Brian realized he had been trying to push himself up. He let his arms lower him back down, his brain a swirling, lofty calm.
Opiates. Nice of that Patrol Leader to give such a generous gift. I’ll have to thank him right before I stomp his head into lumpy, bloody ooze. Then I’ll squish his brain between my fingers and leave a handprint on the wall to say I was here.
The concrete felt cool against his cheek. Next to him on the floor were the splints Dok had put on his hands, with strips of cloth to tie them back on.
Pain, tearing through everything. His muscles tensed and twitched as the memory emerged from the darkness inside his head. Coming from everywhere, unseen in the mist. Building and building and building, always worse, always more—
The drug dulled the aching and throbbing for now, but the agony of his torture was burned into his consciousness forever.
I was given no choice but to take the pain. Now I have no choice but to give it. A lifetime worth of pain, an eternity of suffering: mine to distribute. No choice but to make the whole world pay.
But for now there was the drug. For now it was all right. The pain would come back, in the varied forms of terrible aches and unspeakable memories and, undoubtedly, some permanent physical damage. But not until the drug left him. And when the drug leaves … He took a breath, his mind floating.
The splints seemed to be in motion, retreating beyond his reach. The concrete was stretching away from him.
When the drug leaves, I’ve got to get back to Dok.
Williams Gypsum Corporation Headquarters, Central Business District
Chairman Williams watched his wife, now suitably humiliated, stumble out through his office door, holding her blouse together across her chest.
“Valerie, call my brother,” Chairman Williams instructed his EI. The computer made the connection. A hologram appeared of Esteemed Medical Doctor Darius Williams, a Statused figure whose blocky, hairless profile was nearly a mirror image of Lawrence Six, except for the tight upper lip that seemed always on the cusp of a sneer. The rest of the family assumed that the difference in expression had resulted from the specialized training Medical Doctors received in lieu of reconditioning, but Lawrence Six couldn’t remember Darius, even from childhood, without this look of condescension.
“Hello, brother,” Darius said.
“Hello, Esteemed,” Lawrence Six said. “I’m sorry to disturb you, sir, but there’s urgent company business that necessitates your involvement.”
“You mean medically, I assume. You know better than to bother me with routine corporate matters.”
“Of course, Esteemed. I’m afraid a rather distressing inconvenience has developed. A problem with our company president.”
Darius nodded his understanding as he stared through the machine. “And the health of our corporation is at risk, I suppose.”
Inside Agent Daiss’s brain
“Yes, sir,” Agent Daiss said. “Everything is proceeding according to plan.”
“Very good, Brother Daiss. I had no doubt that it would be. You’re one of the best we’ve got.”
“Thank you, Instructor Samuelson. It is your vision—and the Lord, of course—that we all serve. I only wish that we could all be working together in this endeavor. It is frustrating to work with Agents who plod through life with their eyes half closed.”
“They’re all too poisoned by the past,” the image said. Like Daiss, Instructor Samuelson had a stocky, muscular build that gave him the appearance of having been constructed from concrete blocks. Statused, uniformed and staunch, Samuelson exuded an aura of invincibility and perpetual youth. He had an easy, comfortable smile Daiss was sure could make even a battle-toughened warrior let his guard down.
“You and your Zeta brothers and sisters know that the new world demands a new philosophy, Daiss. Your actions will have a small and covert impact there, but they will lay the groundwork for all that comes after.”
“Thank you, sir. I am honored and grateful you selected me from your academy class to do the Lord’s work, sir. All of us in Zeta are grateful to you, sir. And, striving separately or together, we will see your vision realized.”
11
Some Zone street
Lawrence leaned forward as he walked, listening to the conversation in front of him. He had managed to unload Kel’s neighbor’s pipe onto the Prophet, who was now carrying it in some deep pocket he’d emptied of sodje bottles.
“If you came all the way down here lookin’ for Brian, I guess there must be somethin’ real wrong with him,” Kel said to Dok. The weather was warming up, and the melting ice left by the sleet storm had turned the ground to gravelly mud that stuck to their shoes and fell as sticky clumps as they trudged on.
“Well, yes,” Dok said. “I think Brian would be better off seeing me. But really, these folks needed a place to stay. Since I had some follow-up business with Brian I thought maybe he’d be a good choice.”
“You got any other people you can go to like that?”
Dok shook his head. “I can’t bring this group to anyone else. Look at them.” He shook his head. “There’s no place.”
Kel was silent for a while, except for the crunch of his glass-bottomed shoes in the gravel.
“Brian gonna die, Dok?”
Dok cocked an eyebrow, giving Kel a curious, sideways glance.
Kel straightened. “‘Cause me an’ Brian, we watch each other’s back. He’s pretty good at it. Don’ wanna find nobody else to do the job.”
Dok nodded. “All I know is that I shouldn’t have let him leave.”
“There’s an open market over there,” Eadie said, pointing. “Let’s head that way.” She stepped past Lawrence, walking quickly and leaving him behind. Kel took a few quick steps to catch up with her. Dok and the Prophet ambled along in the middle, and Lawrence and Old Fart brought up the rear.
“Sir?” Lawrence said quietly. “Did you see Eadie in that fight? The way she kept swinging that stick, even after the guy’s head was already mush? And that howling noise she made. I know she’s under a lot of stress, but … do you think Eadie’s … you know, crazy or something?”
“Remember, Lawrence,” Old Fart said. “People are out to get each other, even in the world you and I come from. Here in the Zone, where there’s so much poverty, people’s actions and motives are simply more transparent. All their energy is channeled into the struggle to meet their most basic needs, and they’ll do whatever they have to do to survive,
to protect themselves and their families. And they know everyone around them is in the same boat, fighting the same fight, every single day. That’s why Eadie seems so different. She lives like this all the time.”
They walked a few more steps in silence. Old Fart chuckled. “So, yes. In our world, Eadie is crazy. But in this one, she’s perfectly adapted to her environment.”
They entered the market, a vacant lot transformed into a warren of vendors where oil lamps and candles illuminated tables of clothes, junk, and food. Eadie and Kel had stopped at a table near the entrance. Most of the objects for sale there had obviously been harvested from old garbage dumps. Displayed on the table in front of Kel were a little bottle of liquid and some sheets of yellow paper.
“Like him,” Lawrence said, indicating Kel. “He’s suited to living here, too, judging from the way he fought back in the building. But he wouldn’t make it in our world.”
Old Fart laughed. “I saw him living in our world, sort of. He proved himself very resourceful … but of course, he’d never survive an office job. He’s too wild to live among people like us and we’re too tame to live among people like him.”
“Bad news for us, then, since we are living among them now. What’s that Kel’s putting on the table, sir?”
“A ring he pulled from one of the attackers. During that fight, Kel took advantage of every opportunity to fill his many pockets. He even managed to collect his lighter and pipe before we escaped the fire. Like I said, very resourceful.”
More customers came to the little stand as Kel haggled with the woman behind the table, shaking his head and pointing to a relatively new-looking sweatshirt. She grabbed it and put it between them, shaking her head and showing him a readout from some machine she’d used to scan the ring. She then shifted her attention to another potential buyer, commenting about the quality of a nearby item.
Kel turned away, curving his arm around Eadie’s back. Lawrence smiled a little as she stiffened and took a step sideways. The crowd dissipated. Kel and Eadie were only a few steps away from the table but it suddenly seemed as if there had never been a crowd there at all. The woman called to them, agreeing to Kel’s offer of the ring, and they turned back.
“Did you see that, sir? The way all those people collected when Eadie was facing the table, and then she walked away and all of a sudden it seemed deserted? Now there’s a crowd gathering again. It’s weird.”
Old Fart put his hand on Lawrence’s shoulder. “Maybe you were focusing more on Eadie when she was facing this way and you didn’t notice the crowd as much.”
Eadie glanced back toward them, her eyes shining in the lamplight.
Annoyed by Old Fart’s insinuation, Lawrence made himself look around the marketplace. It was getting rather late, approaching a time when civilized people would be finishing their work and going to bed, but there were still a lot of shoppers. Moving among them were four men in black suits.
“Sir,” Lawrence said hurriedly. “Excuse me, but I need to speak to Eadie right away.”
Lawrence ran to Eadie’s side. “Eadie? I just saw four Unnamed Executives on the other side of the market. They might be here for some other reason, but not many giant corporations have an interest in this part of the Zone, especially at this hour. We know of one that does.”
Kel sneered, stepping between Lawrence and Eadie. “Oh, get the fuck outta here. Like she’s supposed to believe there’s four fuckin’ gunbugs after her. Shit.”
Lawrence tilted his head, looking around Kel. “Eadie, I think we should get out of this place. Now.”
Eadie nodded, her face blank. Lawrence pointed to an alley off to one side and Eadie headed toward it. The rest of the group followed her.
The dim orange light from the closest lamp made a flickering triangle on the ground at the mouth of the alley. Beyond that, it was completely dark. Kel stopped, squinting into the blackness. Lawrence guided Eadie past him, gently placing a hand on her shoulder, which she shrugged off. Kel grabbed Lawrence’s shirt, stopping him.
“No way outta there,” he said.
“What?”
“No way out. Look at the sky. See? It’s lighter than the walls. You can see the walls all come together up there—there’s no space to show a street or a gap between the buildings. Even if the buildings got doors, they all gonna be locked. No way outta that alley.”
Lawrence stepped backward, jerking his shirt from Kel’s grip. Eadie cautiously made her way into the dark area. “We’ve got no choice,” Lawrence said. “She has to be out of sight right now.”
Everyone slunk into the alley, eventually congregating along a wall on the other side.
“Told ya,” Kel said. “No way out.”
Lawrence felt behind him. “There’s a big trash bin here. We could hide inside it if we could get it unlocked.”
“Old Fart, come over here a minute, would you? I think I found a way.” Eadie was looking upward. Against the lighter sky in that direction, Lawrence could make out the outline of an old fire escape. “Give me a boost, please, sir,” Eadie said.
“Eadie, you can’t reach it. At my school we had fire escapes like that and they’re a lot higher off the ground than you think.”
There was a clanging sound above and then a series of clunks. “Ugh,” Eadie said. “Look out down there!”
Her stick clattered to the pavement next to Lawrence. He reached to pick it up but it zipped toward Eadie before he could close his fingers around it. “Another boost, please,” she said.
She tried a couple more times. “I need someone’s coat. This sweatshirt’s not long enough by itself.”
“Here, Eadie.” It was Dok’s voice.
After a slight pause the stick made its clanging and thumping again, finally lodging itself in the ladder, which came down with a loud, protesting groan. Eadie untied the coat, dropped it onto Lawrence’s head and scrambled up the ladder. Lawrence pulled it off, gagging on its smoky smell.
Everyone climbed up to the roof. Lawrence was last. Eadie was already peering over the short wall along the edge, down into the marketplace. “There,” she said, pointing.
The Unnamed were still moving back and forth through the stands. “See?” Lawrence said. “They’re searching everywhere, even under the tables. But they’re not looking at anything on display. Clearly they are not here to shop.”
On the roof
“That’s some fucked-up story you got,” Kel said. He meant it, too. Not many people had gunbugs and Feds looking for them.
Kel ripped a small section of the paper he had bought and rolled it into a ball.
“Yeah,” Eadie said. “But I knew you’d understand. I think you and I see the world the same way, you know?”
Kel shrugged, smoothing out the ball on his thigh.
“So where did you learn to fight like that, Kel?”
He rolled the paper up again, this time into a tighter ball. “Learned to walk by walkin,’ learned to talk by talkin.’ So, you know, learned to fight by fightin.’ How ’bout you? Where’d you learn to fight?”
“I guess I’m still learning.”
She turned, looking at the others. Kel looked up, too. The student fuck was off in a corner of the roof, talking with Old Fart, probably about how great it was to go to school and kiss ass in an office. The wino they called Prophet was drinking. Dok was lying down, resting, because that made sense.
Kel stuffed the paper ball into his pipe, taking out his new vial of nicotine. This bottled shit was so much better than homemade ’teen, made with clean oil so there was no funny taste or headache. No more homemade anymore since his three jars of bacteria burned up in the fire. He pulled his last packet of THC crystals from his pocket, bent the paper lip of the envelope and dumped them into the vial, recapping it and shaking. Finally he put two drops onto the paper ball.
He set the pipe down carefully, keeping it upright, and took his lighter out from under his shirt, where he had tucked it against his stomach. It was warmer but still not
warm enough, so he rubbed it between his palms.
Eadie started talking again, something about rules and money. She kept showing him his old notebook but he managed to block her out and concentrate on aiming the lighter. He flicked it over and over, producing a few sparks at a time—it lit! He sucked hard on the pipe, pulling the tiny flame onto the paper, puffing to keep it lit. He took a drag and handed it to Eadie, stem first.
“Better to share than to have it go out,” he said.
“Thanks.” She took a drag and gave it back to him, coughing. “Thanks so much for this sweatshirt, too, Kel. It feels really nice, even with the weather warming up.” She coughed again.
He took another drag on the pipe. “You’re not doin’ it right, is why you’re coughin.’ Gotta suck the smoke into your mouth first, then breathe in through your mouth. Mix the smoke with regular air so it’s not so hot, see?” He demonstrated, then handed it over to her. She tried again, this time doing it right. He took it back one last time but there was no more smoke.
He leaned back against the short wall, closing his eyes and letting the ’teen-HC work its magic. Eadie started back in talking about the notebook.
“I can see what you meant here when you said it all had to be destroyed, you know? You’re right. We’re all prisoners, in cells we built for ourselves. Humans live in this totally unnatural world now, sealed off from nature, letting ourselves be fed and clothed and housed by companies … those who are lucky enough, anyway. And since we’re not lucky enough, those other people get all the resources and leave us with nothing. It’s the same thing our species has done to every other living organism on the planet. We’ve killed off everything but a few rats and cockroaches, and even those we trap and convert into sterile nutrients for bacteria farming.”
The Book of Eadie, Volume One of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 18
