by S. C. Jensen
“Ghost?” Hammett twitched. “You don’t think she’s—”
“I don’t know.” I tried to get the upgrade to do something, anything, that might be useful if things got ugly. I was sure they’d be getting ugly soon. “I’ve got a bad feeling about that space-walking corpse.”
“You’re not going to get yourself in any trouble, are you?” The pig’s brown eyes watched me warily, and its nose scrunched up.
“That doesn’t sound like me.”
“‘Straight forward cases,’” Hammett quoted at me. “‘The pissant stuff the HCPD can’t be bothered by but that might make a difference in some poor sap’s life.’ That’s what you wanted to do.”
“If I’m right about this, we’re going to make a difference in a lot of lives. I just hope it’s not going to make the big difference in mine.”
“Why did you head for the beaches when you did?”
“Just testing a theory,” I said. Then my tattler pinged and Weiland’s ugly mug hovered in front of me. I blew a long breath out through my teeth and answered the call.
“Marlowe?” The wide orator’s mouth was pulled down in a frown, and his grey eyes fixed on me. My ’gram would be tough to see on his end, hidden as I was in a dark room with only the dim pink light of Hammett’s skin to illuminate me. Once he spotted me he let loose a barrage of words I hadn’t heard used in earnest since grade school.
“Easy on the ear canals, Tommy Boy.” I shook my head to knock some of the really foul ones into my long term memory. “I’m having regrets about this call already.”
“You’d better have regrets about more than that.” A fat vein pulsed over his left eyebrow. “What’s the big smoke, here? I told you to back off.”
“I did back off,” I said. “I backed right out of your jurisdiction.”
“You said you were keeping your nose clean.”
“I remember.” I tapped the end of my nose with a metal finger. “You offered to rearrange it for me if I didn’t.”
“That’s not what I—”
“Listen, Weiland. I don’t want to have anything to do with you any more than you do with me. Your own limbs probably have expiration dates stamped on them just for being my ex-partner. So what do you gain by calling me up and haranguing me? I took this job based on false information provided by the client. I’ve tried to uphold my end of our deal. But I can only do so much looking the other way when I’m getting strung up for murders I didn’t commit and dodging bullets from HCPD and tripping over headless corpses left, right, and centre.”
“You’ve got the wrong idea, Bubs. I—” He blinked and rubbed at the vein with a thick, neatly manicured finger. “How many corpses are we talking about?”
“The left and the right at least.” I folded my arms across my chest, suddenly remembering I was still in the deconstructed wet suit. “If we’re only counting headless ones, but the centre is around here somewhere.”
Weiland closed his eyes tightly and rubbed his face with his mitts like he was trying to erase some image behind his eyeballs. “You’ve got to get out of there. Swain’s gunning for you with everything he’s got. I mean on both sides of the law.”
“Swain’s going to have to cool his heels until I get back to Terra Firma unless he’s got connections up here,” I said.
“He’s got more connections than sense,” Weiland said. “And I can’t get a hold of him to test the waters. I don’t know what he’s up to anymore. It’s making me nervous.”
“Well he’s got some stiff competition to get to me first. Tell me, when’s the last time you saw our friend Whip Tesla?”
“What happened the last time you started nosing around about that low-level grifter? Lay off, already.”
“I’ve got him pegged for our benevolent beheader,” I said. “I knew I recognized that gym-rat swagger, but his voice clinched it. I know it from our bust. What were you doing at techRose that night, anyway? Was Swain behind that set up?”
“LeRoy Lemieux called to complain about someone bothering his girls,” he said. “I didn’t know it was you. Your name didn’t come up with Swain until after the fact.”
“Isn’t that convenient.” I gave him a good sneer, one I’d been working on for a while. “You always work undercover for greasy club owners like LeRoy?”
“I wasn’t undercover,” he sighed. “I was off duty. A personal favour.”
“Well he’s dead now,” I said. “You might as well spill the beans. LeRoy was in with Tesla, wasn’t he? They didn’t like me asking questions. Do you know why?”
Weiland ground his teeth the way he used to when I’d had too much to drink and he was trying not to say something I’d make him regret. Like then, he said nothing.
“Know who Tesla played for before Swain recruited him?” I pushed some more. “Chief is in way over his balding pate on this one.”
“You’d better not be in bed with Punch Blanco, Bubbles.”
“My bed is none of your business, Weiland. But it’s sweet of you to care.”
“Sweet, my hairy—” He undid the top button of his uniform grey shirt and ran a finger under his collar. “Just lie low and let me handle this, would you? I’m trying to help you.”
“Is the loyal dog about to bite the hand of its master?” I leaned toward the ’gram and eyed the sweat on his forehead. “You’re a wily son of a bichon, Weiland. But you’d be cuter with a bowtie. Are you up for promotion?”
“You are an infuriating woman.”
“That’s one of my better qualities,” I said. “You really want to help me out? Go check in on Dickie Rho and make sure he’s okay. If he is, give him a kiss on the teeth from me. It’s one of his bright ideas that got me into this mess.”
“I’ll check on him.” Detective Tom Weiland leaned back in his chair and sighed heavily. “If you’ll promise me something.”
“I can make promises,” I said. “But at this point, I’ve made a few too many to keep them all.”
“Don’t get yourself killed, Bubbles.” His big shoulders slumped and for the first time I noticed the bags under his deeply set eyes. “Swain isn’t worth it.”
“That much we can agree on,” I said. “Swain’s a mutated guppy in this cesspool, Weiland. And if my life’s going to be worth more than a fart in the undercurrent, I have to square up with the big fish.”
The corner of his mouth curled for a second before he remembered he didn’t like me anymore. He cleared his throat. “Just don’t get to thinking you’re one of the sharks when you’re only the bait.”
I gave him a mock salute and killed the transmission. Hammett blinked its big cartoon eyes at me from the other side of the closet and shook its head. “Completely incomprehensible.”
I wiped the stupid grin off my own face by letting it slide into a grimace. “I didn’t lie to him.”
“If either of you believes half of the things you say to one another, you’re both lying to yourselves.”
“Self deception. One of the many perks of being human.” I jumped off the box and rummaged in my backpack for another set of clothes. “Where’s the challenge in playing it straight?”
Hammett snorted. “You’re both plenty challenged.”
“I knew I should have put a limit on that adaptive personality upgrade.” I pulled on a pair of shiny pink pants that had too many zippers and not enough pockets and unfolded my boots from the bottom of the bag. I opted to keep the bathing suit top and shrugged my old jacket, fuzzy side out, over it. “What kind of security do we have at Fortune’s Favour?”
“Whyte didn’t give us that kind of clearance.” Hammett wiggled its curly tail.
I put my fists on my hips and narrowed my eyes at the pig. “But …”
It projected a holomap into the darkness with pale-blue dots marking guards patrolling the corridors outside the game rooms and stationed at each
entrance. A silver dot glimmered at on of the tables. Other dots, black, milled around the various rooms and hallways, probably leaking a steady stream of cred behind them. I sent the map to my glasses and set Hammett back on the floor.
The pig said, “I think I’m getting better.”
“Better.” I gave one last look at the jumble of smooth metal limbs hanging from the walls of the bot storage closet and pursed my lips. “But the tail wiggle was a dead giveaway.”
“Humph.”
I experimented with the hydraulics in my new upgrade and got a feel for the range. Then I grinned. “Time to play with the new toy.”
“It sounds like fun.” Hammett squeezed its pink rump through the door and into the hallway. “But I guess you wouldn’t have that look on your face if we were going to have a tea party.”
I squeezed my own pink rump through and kicked the door closed behind me. “Now you’re catching on. We might make you a P.I. Piggy after all.”
“I suppose it’s better than the hockmarket,” Hammett grumbled. Then it led the way into the synthetic flotsam of the Island Dreamer, cesspool extension in the stars.
The game rooms occupied their own half-level on the ship. It was the only area of the Island Dreamer that hadn’t been painted with the same slick brush of comforting pastels and glossy neo-synthetics. The entire level had been done up like an ancient casino, as if the ideal environment in which to gamble had been discovered a thousand years ago and it obstinately refused to change again.
The floors were a writhing sea of black and gold and bright green with no place for the eye to land. Glowing signs and shiny machines covered in blinking lights plastered themselves to every available perpendicular surface. The ceiling was a labyrinth of grotesquely outsized chandeliers and mirrored tiles set at off-kilter angles so that the entire level felt like the inside of a broken kaleidoscope. Customers stumbled about in a razzle-dazzled daze of flying credits and assault by sensory stimulation, leaking cush from every hole in their bodies. Dinging and pinging and ringing, catchy little electronic tunes, and the relentless ka-chinging of tattlers’ ceaseless one-way-only drain on holocred accounts flooded the ear canals. It oozed into the brain, sing-songing the mantra of gamblers throughout time and space across the entirety of the universe, ‘One more time…’
A small balcony looked out from the gaming level, the only concession to sanity that I could find. Huge mirrored pillars hung from the ceiling here, breaking up the tranquil view of the rest of the ship with the reflected scenes of saturnalia, meant to both distract patrons from the outside world and to lure them back if they got too close to the edge. I stood there with the frenetic cush carousel spinning behind me, sucking in deep breaths as if I could compress and take the pastel calm with me like an oxygen tank for deep sea diving.
“You’re going to hyperventilate if you keep breathing like that,” Hammett said from between my feet. The pig stared into the chaos with wide eyed fascination, reflected lights gleaming in its cartoonish gaze. “I want to explore.”
“You have to keep an eye on that silver dot,” I said. “Tell me if she moves. If I try to read the map and navigate this zoo, my brain is going to explode.”
“What about security?” Hammett spun in an impatient figure eight over my boots and through my legs.
“What about them?”
The pig stopped. “These guys are staring at us.”
“They’re probably suspicious of all the money we’re not spending.”
Hammett flashed the map at me, and I turned back to the sprawling white canvas below so I could see it better. The security guards were lit up in blue. There seemed to be more of them than when we’d checked at the beach. “Do we want to avoid them?”
“For now, we’re just going to find the girl. Whyte should have told his team to expect me. But if you notice any one of them paying too much attention—”
“Can we have a code word?” Hammett snapped to attention.
“Sure,” I said. “If you see anything funny, just say ‘I’d like a bacon sandwich.’”
The pig glared up at me. “I’m not sure that’s appropriate for a—”
“We don’t need a code word, Ham.” I reached down to pat its little white capped head. “You have a direct line to my ear tubes.”
“You never know. We could be monitored.”
I gave a final, fleeting look at the lucidity of the real world and then laughed. Real world? Less than 48 hours ago, the Island Dreamer represented a high-cush world of luxury completely beyond my metallic grasp. Nothing on the ship was real. The only real thing I had was the promise of a slow and painful death if I didn’t wrap this business up in a such a way that put me in the clear with Chief Swain and his army of criminal hopefuls. I shook my head and prepared for my dive into chaos. “Let’s go. Before I decide to forget the whole thing and go back to my room and take a bubble bath in Lucky Bastard gin.”
Hammett killed the map and trotted beside me, speaking into my cochlear implants. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“Everything about this place makes my skin crawl, Ham.” I scanned the sweating, blank faces of the virtual lottery terminal zombies—what I could see of them beneath their headsets—feeling sick at the disjointed way their arms and hands floated in front of them, pulling and twisting and grabbing at knobs and leavers and credits that weren’t really there. Out on the floor, similar wet-putty looks plastered the faces of people slumped around tables, laughing and chatting up their neighbours with as much heart as taxidermied sea-slugs. “At least down in the Grits we know we’re a bunch of down-and-out zeros dragging our way through life on ragged fingernails. Up here, the highbinders are flying and credits are pinging. But it’s the same sorry organisms peering out of those soul-dead eyes. They don’t have it any better than we do. Worse maybe. They don’t even know why they’re unhappy.”
Hammett pranced along in front of me with the curly pink tail of its pig skin bouncing along, and big eyes reflecting the dazzling lights. “I think it’s great!”
“Enjoy it while it lasts. If I survive this trip, we’re not leaving my apartment for at least a year.”
Security didn’t pay us any special attention once we had entered the fray. I didn’t look cushy enough to be a mark or frazzled enough to pull something stupid, I guessed, so I blended into the background noise like a fuzzy pink shadow. I kept my opalescent glasses over my eyes to fit in with the other card sharks and made my way toward Game Room Twelve, Fortune’s Favour, the sink hole dedicated to blackjack and poker and whatever variations on the theme were playing those days.
The main artery of the casino was a sprawling cathedral dedicated to cardinal sin. Luxury prizes spun on huge, glittering discs at strategic locations across the floor with half-naked hawkers flashing ticket machines and uptown accessories and exotic food and drink like their lives depended on it. Depending on who ran the admiral’s casinos, maybe it did. Lorena Valentia had bought an entire holowall to advertise their copycat-chic “Stargazer” boutique line. Cosmo Cosmetics “Big Bang” didn’t rate up here, surprise, infinite surprise. I turned left at a revolving display of a state-of-the-art gaming console complete with suspension tank and life support systems. It looked more like a space ship than the bangtails had. From there, I followed Hammett into one of the tubular corridors that sluiced off of the heart of corruption and deeper into the body of the beast.
As we approached Fortune’s Favour, Hammett came to a sudden stop. Skin scanner cameras pointed down at the crowd but here, no one’s outlandish outfits flickered or glitched for security. The high-stakes tables were skin-free zones, so players had to rely only on their carefully neutral faces or the distraction of their natural assets. There were a lot of natural assets on display. Hammett sat in the middle of the corridor with its pink ears drooping almost to the floor.
“Skin-banned again?”
The pig’
s little round head nodded morosely. Even its perky white cap seemed to sag beneath the glare of the cameras. “It’s not fair.”
“Tell you what,” I said, keeping an eye on the door to Fortune’s Favour. “Why don’t you take the VLT vouchers that came with the Lucky Bastard prize package and play some slots for me. I’ll check on the girl and be right back.”
Hammett’s ears flicked up so quickly one of them flipped inside out. It whipped its head around to look at me. “Do you mean it?”
“Sure,” I said. “You aren’t banned from the chance games as long as your winnings are deposited into a registered account. Go play your heart out. Just don’t spend any actual money.”
“Not even my winnings?” The pig deflated a bit.
“If you have any winnings, they stay in the account. I can’t afford an AI with a gambling habit.”
“Okay.” Hammett nuzzled my shin. “You’re not so bad, you know. I don’t really mean most of the things I usually think about you. Thanks, Bubbles!”
“Hey!” I called after the little pink bottom hustling through the crowd. “What do you usually think about me?”
But the pig was long gone and, despite our comm link and my aural implants, was ignoring me completely. I muttered something churlish and hoped the traitor could hear me. Then I turned back to the problem at hand. The sooner I found the girl and verified my suspicions, the sooner I could get out of the glitter hole and back to my normal life, circling the drain in the Grit District gutter. I had just crossed the high-stakes boundary and was pointing myself in the direction of Game Room Twelve when a flash of iridescent sequins caught my eye. I turned my head just in time to see a now-familiar silver dress slip into the crowd in a different corridor. Cursing, I shoved my way past the horde of sweaty brows and glazed eyes clogging the corridor, and followed the girl.
She stayed just at the edge of my vision, flitting in and out of the crowd like a wraith. I pawed and clawed through the thickly packed bodies with my upgrade. The method earned me a few scowls, a couple of winks, and at least one angry tirade as I fought to keep up with my mark, but I had her by the tail. Somewhere behind me, a jackpot klaxon blared and the onslaught of bodies pushing toward the main floor seemed to swell with vicarious excitement and the anticipation of the next big win. Everyone rushed to see which game had paid out or which table had found the luck and headed toward the electronic beat throbbing from the centre.
