His unusual instructions piqued everyone's attention. Denton and the gang members wandered over to watch the reading. but Jaxxon put his hand on the deck, glared, and said, "Private, do ya mind?"
When I do a good reading, a really hot reading where the cards seem to burn my hands and blaze before my eyes like doorways into another universe, I do more than pick up vague impressions or practice my psychological skills on the mark. Each falling card conjures up a set of mental movies that I perceive in greater clarity than the environment around me. I’ve been told that I go into a trance. But these visions flash by with such speed that I'm hardly ever able to articulate all they contain. I do my best.
Jaxxon split the deck into four uneven piles, I turned up the first card while intoning the traditional chant. "This immerses you. The card was Death, the old skeleton with the scythe riding in black armor into the future while richly dressed folk tumbled at his feet. "Change, great change," I chanted, while in my mind I saw images of Jaxxon dressed in a silk suit and surrounded by a pack of coyotes carrying briefcases, contracts, and guns. That flashed into an image of this black-garbed man skulking in alleyways, fighting with shadows. A fountain burst out of the street, and instead of spewing water, it spewed skulls, but when they hit the ground, they changed to gold. "‘Your old life is finished. A new one begins." How could I tell him about the violent death I saw all around him?
"This counters you." Another Arcanum, Temperance reversed, the card showing only swirls of color in no discernible pattern. "Powerful interests at war. Men of another race wish to destroy you. Keep your weapons handy. You’ll need them. We may all need them. To succeed, you must take chances."
I turned over the third card and put it above the others, saying, "Your goals, your dreams." It showed a lord and a lady secure in their castle while a wizard counted out ten coins. Before my eyes, the lord turned into a turtle that had Jaxxon's eyes, and the lady turned into me! "Wealth, prosperity, a return to power!"
"By Ashante, you got that right," he muttered.
I put the fourth card below the central stack, face-down as he had asked, while saying, "This is the root." I didn’t have to see i; to know that the card was the Three of Swords. I have used my deck for so long that I can recognize every card by feel alone. I saw three enemies in his past, and a broken heart. "I’m sorry," I whispered. He seemed to understand, though I said nothing of what I had seen.
The fifth and sixth cards went down and completed the basic cross. More of the same, with Turtle showing up again as a black man in a loincloth, walking down a path lined with spears and littered with skulls and human bones. The image changed in my mind to a dark place, with flashes of gunfire providing the only illumination. Then fire broke out and obliterated my vision. "Death everywhere, death by fire!" I croaked in doom-laden tones.
I moved on to the Tower of Resolution, placing the seventh card off to the right at the bottom. "This answers you." The Knight of Wands—a blue elfin figure in a bizarre headdress and armor. Different faces, including my own, flitted in and out of the image. "You’ll need a friend, perhaps more than one," I whispered. "Someone both powerful and tricky. Magic is indicated." He looked at me Strangely . . . but every look is strange from a man whose eyes have been replaced with minicameras.
I flipped the eighth card and placed it above the seventh. "This aids you." It was the Lovers.
The ninth card followed. "This defines you." The card showed a young man carrying five swords under lightning-filled skies. "This card tells of five other people who will soon be like parts of your body."
I spread out the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth cards quickly. In the center was the Tower being struck by lightning and going up in flames. A man toppled from one window, screaming as he fell to his doom. In my mind’s eye, the tower sprouted a sign that said "Bob’s Cartage," and the face of the falling man became that of a squatter I know. You needn’t be a seer to read disaster in that card. On the left was the Ten of Swords showing a body in armor on a bier surrounded by swords. It represented the worst outcome—in this case, physical death. When the figure became a turtle, the armor seemed appropriate. Then, to my horror. I saw myself lying on the bier. If Turtle died, my own death wouldn’t be far behind. The last card showed the Chariot, another Arcanum. Before my eyes, the chariot began to move and Jaxxon became the charioteer. "You will face great danger. You may die. You will certainly fight, but combat is not the solution. Motion is the key."
I’m always a little dazed after a reading. When my eyes refocused, I could see that Jaxxon was also somewhat rattled by my reading, though he tried to cover it up.
"This is the grimmest reading I have ever done," I said, almost in panic. The implications for my own future made me feel like giving a scream and running away as fast as I could, but I struggled to control myself. "My ten nuyen. please."
When we touched credsticks, he gave me fifty nuyen instead of ten. which surprised me. Before I could utter a protest, the cowbell jangled again. Four orks crowded through the door and stood dripping on the carpet. They were warty, ugly, and foul-smelling, though the rain must have cleaned them up somewhat. Each one carried a big cudgel. They obviously were not here to buy a talisman or an old book.
"Hey, you warts, get out of my shop!" yelled Denton. Rexo and Binky came to their feet and drew their knives, but being outnumbered, didn’t start anything.
The lead ork smashed his club into a display case full of cheap amulets and medallions, starring the plastiglass. A blow like that could smash a girl’s skull like an eggshell.
"Denton, the big guy ain’t very 'appy wit’ youse," he growled. "Youse ain't been payin’ yer insurance."
"I don’t owe you drekheads anything," said the old storekeeper, remarkably calm for one staring into the ugly face of death. "This isn’t your part of town. I pay the Youngbloods for my protection. Unless you scuzzbrains want a war, you’d better beat it."
"Yeah, blow!" echoed the gangers. I was rewrapping my tarot cards and looking around for an exit. I could smell violence in the air.
"Oooogg, I’m tremblin’ wit’ fear!" sneered the second ork.
"We’ll beat it all right," said the leader, smacking his club ominously against the palm of his hand, "but first we’ll beat you." He started forward.
"That’s enough," said Turtle, his voice low and even. A pistol was in his left hand now and a small dot of ruby laser light had appeared on the trog’s sloping brow.
The ork seemed to notice Turtle for the first time. Just a trace of uncertainty flickered momentarily in his mean red eyes before he decided to bluster it out. "Youse kin leave and youse won’t get ’urt," he offered threateningly.
I don’t think Turtle believed him. "Take your own advice," he said.
The ork had edged a step closer during the talking, no doubt thinking he could nail Turtle with the club before Turtle could pull the trigger. Probably had augmented reflexes.
"Don’t even think it!" said Turtle.
He thought it. "Geek ’em!" the ork screeched and started his move.
The bullet splattered his brains all over the front wall of the shop, and the trog dropped like a stone.
A bookstore isn’t a very good place for wholesale combat, and it got messed up real fast. I ducked for cover, trying to stay low and behind Turtle but not so close that he would trip over me as he came to his feet.
Ork number two brought his club around in a move designed to crush Turtle’s skull, but Turtle parried it with his right arm. Clank! Hearing the sound. I knew Turtle was armored. That explained his name for he certainly didn’t move like a turtle. Shifting his aim, he pumped three bullets into the ork, sending him staggering away, leaking blood, and looking like one very sick frog.
Binky had closed with ork number three, but his knife proved no match for the superior reach of the trog’s club, and he took a blow to the midsection that collapsed him on the floor. Rexo slashed his blade across the ork's jutting chin, making a messy cut, but doing no
real damage. Denton, meanwhile, had reached under the counter for his sawed-off shotgun, and he came up blasting. The fourth ork went down, looking like raw hamburger from the waist up.
In the sixth second of the conflict, Turtle was on his feet and on his way over to the other fight. Catching the ork's club in his hand at the top of the backswing, he ripped it from the ork’s paws and flung it across the room. An instant later, he cold-cocked the trog with the handle of his Colt, and the brute went down like a deflated bag of garbage.
In the silence of the aftermath, we survivors looked warily at one another. Turning to Denton, Turtle quipped, "Sorry about the mess."
"Not your fault," Denton assured him. "I'll clean it up later. Right now, you had all better leave before the badges get here."
"Call a DocWagon for Binky, will ya, Denton." said Rexo. "He's hurt bad. and I've gotta report all this to Zigger, if the orks plan to move into our terra, he’s gotta know, and we’s gotta plan us a war."
"O.K.. Rexo, I’ll take care of him till your own medics can get here to pick him up." Rexo and the girl slipped out the front, and disappeared at a run. Binky just lay there, sort of gasping. A bloody froth had appeared at his lips. Turtle removed Binky’s jacket and shirt, and examined his body while I pulled down a window curtain and wadded it up to serve as a pillow.
"This kid has two or three broken ribs and probably a punctured iung," Turtle announced. "Better get that quacker over here quickly. "
Denton reloaded his shotgun and tucked it away behind the counter again. Then he stepped through the curtains to the back room and autodialed for medical help. Then he made a second call, undoubtedly to the police. Several minutes later, he stepped back through the curtains.
"You still here?" he asked Turtle in surprise.
"Well, yeah," Turtle drawled. "I was kind of hoping someone here could help me find a place to sleep for the night. It’s wet, I’m new in town, and I don’t have much money."
"I’ll get you a place for tonight," I said, taking his arm in a proprietary manner. "Come on!"
Sirens from the street indicated the approach of police.
"Can we leave by the back. Dent?" I asked.
"Sure, but move it."
We scuttled past the counter, through the curtains, past a small bedroom and a kitchenette, and out into the alley. Rain still drizzled from the sky, but it wasn’t the downpour of earlier.
"Why are you doing this for me?" he asked as we hurried into the twilight.
"Your tarot reading ... I was in it." I gave him a quick, uncertain smile. "I think we may be linked. I have a feeling that you may need me ... or I may need you. From the way you handle yourself in a fight, I’d say you’re the kind of friend who could come in handy. Besides, you were generous when you didn’t have to be. I owe you one."
"I’ll take it," he said.
* * *
I led Turtle down by the docks to an industrial district not far from some major truck routes, to a place called Bob’s Cartage and Freight, No. 4, at 401 Squid Street. Bob’s had been my home for the last three months, and a lot of other street people hung out there as well, as many as two or three dozen at a time. People came and went according to their own inclinations or Goob’s arbitrary decisions. It was a huge building, but nothing too different from a score of other warehouses in the district—mostly corrugated tin walls with some stone and wood reinforcements and a few windows in the front. Huge aluminum doors, now shut, showed where semis and other trucks could drive right into the building to unload. A weather-laded sign indicated that business hours were long over for the day. I took him around back to an auxiliary entrance beside another loading dock. I rang the buzzer, and a videocam swung around to focus on us.
"It’s me. Goob, with a friend. Let us in." The door buzzed. I hauled it open, and we went in.
Inside wasn't any brighter than outside. A few flickering fluorescents placed high up on the girders and catwalks just under the rounded ceiling provided a dim illumination that was plenty for my eleven eyes and seemed to be enough for Turtle, too. With its couple of hundred-watt light bulbs, a small loading bay office to one side of the dock shone like a campfire in the gloom. P’kenyo, the dwarf dock supervisor, was in there doing some paperwork. Parked at the same dock was a huge eight-wheeler semi-cab and a single trailer with the Bob’s Cartage and Freight logo blazoned in yellow and red across the weathered aluminum siding. Turtle examined the big rig curiously as we walked past.
"I used to ride in big trucks like this through the deserts of Atzlan when I was a teener," he told me.
The usual assortment of cardboard boxes, wooden crates, and eighty-liter drums crowded the dock area. It looked like the workmen had quit halfway through loading the trailer, and would finish it in the morning. P’kenyo came out of his office, waved at me, then jerked a thumb toward the darkness at the front of the ’house.
"We’ve got to go up front and see Goob." I explained, "He manages this 'house. Snore space is usually ten nuyen per night, and you’ll have to pay, too. If you don’t have any cred left, I kin cover for you tonight."
"That won’t be necessary," he told me.
Once past the dock area, I took him down a wide but dim aisle, the main street of this labyrinth of stored freight. As we moved deeper into the warehouse, a strong, pungent aroma—a cross between dried apricots and simmering chili-filled the stuffy air.
"What’s that smell?" Turtle asked.
"Most of this ’house is full of Natural Vat products."
"Ugh, synthfood!" he blurted before he could stop himself.
"If you’re lucky, we’ll get some for supper," I told him. "If not, we’ll go hungry."
We passed through a door in a fiberboard partition and into a narrow hall with a few small offices on either side. Each office held a cheap Klone work station and sometimes a fax machine and a printer. Cutting straight through all this, I led Turtle to a wide wooden stairway across the front of the building, which led to a large landing about six meters up. At the top was an office with redwood panelling and a heavy, electronically locked, oaken door, all blazoned with Bob’s logo and the word "conTROLLer". The spelling is Goob’s idea of a joke, but no one ever said there was anything subtle about trolls.
You never get used to meeting one. Almost three meters tall, at least two meters wide and thick, a troll is more than 400 kilograms of bone, muscle, warts, spiky hair, and overpowering stench. Everything in Goob’s office had been built to his maxi size. The desk where he sat was as tall as I was. Along one wall was a bank of vidcam monitors showing many scenes both inside and outside the warehouse. Some of the vid-decks had CD platters in them. Goob had to edit what his superiors saw from the security cameras, or he wouldn't have been allowed to run his flophouse racket in the warehouse. He used some of the same plats repeatedly instead of buying new ones. Goob made sure there was no video evidence of his racket, and if the managers of Bob’s Cartage knew about it, they kept quiet.
HAR-HAR HAR, FLUT! GOTTA NEW CHUMMER, EH!" Goob wasn’t trying to be loud. It just came out that way.
As he turned to face Turtle directly, the troll’s coarse features went from what passed for pleasant in his breed to that expression of grim death that meant he was being businesslike. "ARRHH, CHUMMER, YER KNOWS THE RULES? TWENNY NUYEN A NIGHT FER YER TO PARK HERE. YER DON'T MEDDLE WITH THE MERCH, AND IF I SEZ FROGGER. YER JUMPS." He bent down to stick his pumpkin-sized head in Turtle's face while putting furiously on his green Gargasmoke to emphasize his point. I didn’t think it fair that Goob was charging double his normal rate, but I wasn’t going to argue. I just waited to see if Turtle would kill him.
"You got it, big guy!" gasped Turtle. Discretion is the better part of valor, and Turtle obviously wasn't bankrupt yet. They touched credsticks and the deal was done. Goob stuck out a huge paw for Turtle to shake. Not wanting a broken hand, Turtle gave him the fist salute instead, putting so much strength into the blow that he actually jarred Goob’s arm back a little. Goob shook
off the blow and leaned back in his titanium-reinforced swivel chair, then pointed at the door.
"TROG AND THER DIRTY LADS ARE NUKIN' SOME VAT IN THER STAFFPAD IF YER HUNGRY," he told us.
"I am," I said eagerly. "Thanks, Goob, yer a pal. C’mon. Turtle."
I took him out of there and down to the other end of the landing to a large enclosure full of tables and chairs with a sink and a couple of microwave ovens, which served as a cafeteria for warehouse personnel. The regular crew had all gone home for the day, and a verminous gang of skin-painted street urchins were heating some yellowish glop in large plastic bowls. I introduced Troog and a half-dozen of his pals. Troog has this strange idea that he owns me because we've slept together a few times, and I could see that he didn’t like Turtle from the moment they met.
Troog flexed his razors, but I moved between the two men before anything could start. "Now don't start fighting," I told the anxious punker. "Turtle here saved my life this afternoon, and skragged an ork to do it."
"Struth?" Troog asked. "Hey, thass awright then! Long as ya treats Flut O.K., ya kin be a palomino." He retracted his blades, and the two shook hands like civilized men, each flexing their muscles and trying to grind the other’s hand to powder. From the pained expression on Troog’s thin, dirty face, Turtle must have won that contest.
We ate our supper of Natural-Vat multifruit stew, and then I took Turtle around to meet the other twenty-two residents of the warehouse.
He took naturally to the girders and catwalks that made up our domain out where the second-story landing ended. It’s an odd arrangement, but instead of installing a complete second floor and a freight elevator to service it, Bob’s Cartage had crisscrossed the area beneath the ceiling with support girders and catwalks. Where the beams crossed, people had laid down plywood and plastic to build little nests for themselves, but well into the darkness away from the landing and Goob’s office. A few resourceful ones like StrangeDos, the elver, decker, had even constructed rope ladders for use in getting down to the floor quickly.
Into the Shadows Page 16
