“And let’s not forget the law is just one way of the Huhsz getting what they want,” Zefla told Sharrow. “I’d guess what Geis would really have to worry about if he sheltered you wouldn’t be a legal maneuver, it’d be simple betrayal. One disgruntled employee, one spy, one Huhsz convert in the right place, and all the law in the system wouldn’t make any difference; they’d get you and destroy Geis.”
Sharrow nodded. “All right, but the alternative is to take to the trail again, and ask you guys to come with me.”
“Shar, kid,” Zefla said. “We never wanted to give it up.”
“But I feel I’m being selfish; especially if I could just run to Geis and everything would be all right.”
Zefla sighed exasperatedly. “Geis is a pain, Sharrow; the guy has a kind of charming facade but basically he’s a social inadequate whose real place in life is out mugging pensioners and cheating and beating on his girlfriends, and if he had three more names and been raised in a rookery in The Meg rather than the nursery at house Tzant, that’s exactly what he would be doing. Instead he jumps out of the commercial equivalent of dark alleys, strips companies and fucks their employees. He’s got no idea how real people work so he plays the market instead; he’s a rich kid who thinks the banks and courts and Corps are his construction set and he doesn’t want anybody else to play. He wants you the way he wants a sexy company, as a bauble, a scalp, something to display. Never get beholden to people like that, they’ll piss on you and then charge irrigation fees. You crawl under that scumball’s skirts and I’ll never talk to you again.”
Sharrow grinned and sat on a small chair by the glass wall. “So, do we go back on the road?”
Zefla drank, nodded. “Just point us to the on-ramp, girl.”
“You’re sure?”
Zefla made a pained expression. “Shar, I’ve been lecturing law at Capitaller for the last five years; I’ve said all I’m ever going to say and I keep hearing the same old fucking questions; a really smart student comes along now and again, but it’s getting harder and harder to wait during the fallow times in between; an exciting day is when a hunky student bends over or one of the male staff starts growing a beard. My brain’s atrophying. I need some excitement.”
Sharrow looked at Dloan, who was sitting back in the gently swaying hanging-chair and sipping at his drink, the sarflet snoring at his feet. “Dloan?” she said.
Dloan sat looking at her for a while. Eventually he took a long deep breath, and said, “I was watching some screen a few days ago.” He cleared his throat. “Some adventure series. The bad guys were firing bi-propellent HE rounds from FA 300s, fitted with silencers.”
Dloan fell silent.
Sharrow looked at Zefla, who rolled her eyes.
“I’m holding my breath here, Dloan,” Sharrow said.
Dloan looked down at the animal at his feet. “Well, obviously there’s no point fitting a silencer when you’re firing bi-propellents; the rocket stage makes…lots of noise.”
“Oh, yes,” Sharrow said. “Of course.”
“Come on, Dlo,” Zefla said. “That sort of stuff always annoyed you. So what?”
“Yes,” Dloan said. “But it was the third act before I realized.” He sucked his lips in and shook his head.
Zefla and Sharrow exchanged looks. Dloan reached down to stroke the sleeping sarflet.
“I think,” Zefla said, “he means he’s get–hic!–ting disgustingly rusty and it’s time he saw some action before he forgets which end of a gun goes against your shoulder.”
Sharrow looked back to Dloan, who just sat there being blond and nodding wisely.
“Fine,” Sharrow said.
Zefla drank again. “So; via the Book to the Gun. Think the Huhsz really will call off the hunt if you get them the Lazy Gun first?”
“So It Is Written,” Sharrow said with sarcastically emphatic pronunciation.
“And Breyguhn’s clue—whatever it is—is it going to work?”
“It sounds semi-plausible,” Sharrow said, shrugging. “These days that’s about the best I have to go on.”
“The Universal Principles,” Zefla breathed. She looked thoughtful. “Supposed to be somewhere midsystem, if you can believe thousand-year-old rumors. This just an excuse to put some vacuum between you and the Huhsz?”
Sharrow shook her head. “Like I say, I have a lead.” She glanced at Dloan, who was stroking the sarflet. “Gory details to follow,” she told Zefla.
“Can’t wait,” Zefla said, waggling her dark blonde brows and flexing her perfect toes.
Sharrow raised her glass. “Think team,” she said.
Zefla raised her glass. “Yo to that.”
Dloan raised his glass. “Team,” he said.
Zefla frowned at her glass as though it contained something disgusting. “This calls for something stronger,” she said. “And I’m getting too sober anyway.” She put the glass down under her seat, felt around and pulled out an inhalant tube with a look of victorious anticipation on her face. “Let’s get into something mindbending!”
She stood in the doorway and looked out, shivering, at the night. It was raining and the wind was hurrying down the dimly lit street, filling the air with paper scraps like a flock of palely fluttering injured birds. The water in the gutters was thick and black and smelled rancid, washed from some of the hillside tip-mines further up the slope.
She was average height and dressed cheaply but gaudily; high heels, a micro skirt and a figure-hugging top. She clutched a small, shiny black fake-hide purse, and wore a little pillbox hat with a black lace veil which even with the heavy make-up couldn’t quite hide the mass of ridged, twisted scar tissue that covered the left side of her face. She held a little transparent plastic parasol over herself, but some of its spokes were broken and the wind kept gusting, sending rain spraying into her face every now and again. It smelled like somebody had used the doorway as a urinal earlier in the evening.
The street was fairly quiet for this time of night. The occasional car crawled past, windows mirrored. A variety of civilians splashed along the pavement, huddled under cloaks or umbrellas. There were few punters. The ones that were around mostly knew her already; you could always tell the new ones because they’d pass by the doorway she was standing in, do a double-take—or just stare—then come forward, looking her up and down and grinning that big grin that said, My lucky night!
It was only when they looked beneath the veil that they backed off, embarrassed, apologizing, as though the Incident had somehow been their fault…But there had only been a couple of those this evening.
The wind shook the scrawny wires strung between the low tenements, producing a whistling noise and making the dim yellow streetlamps sway and flicker.
A trolley car went clanking up the street, its skinny whip-mast scratching at the wires above, producing crackling blue sparks. Two boys were hitching a late-night ride on the back fender; they had to keep quiet in case the conductor heard them, but when the blue flashes revealed a girl standing in a doorway, or up an alley with a client, they pointed and waved and made thrusting motions with their groins.
She hoped the trolley wouldn’t make a spark when it went past her, but it did. She flinched at the harsh burst of light and the sizzle of noise. She waited for the boys to make some obscene gesture at her, but they were looking at somebody standing in the alleyway directly across from her. The trolley’s power line flashed again and she caught another glimpse of the figure in the alley opposite. Somebody in a long dark coat. For a moment she had the impression she was being watched. Her heart started to beat faster; oh, not police, not tonight!
Then the figure—medium height, face hidden by a hat and a filter mask—left the alleyway and walked down the pavement on the far side of the street, walking slightly oddly, stiff-legged, like somebody trying to disguise a limp.
Just then two uniformed policemen walked past her doorway, their long capes dripping. She shrank back, but they weren’t on a round-up, not to
night. Probably they were intent on getting back to the precinct station and hitting the canteen. She relaxed again.
Suddenly the figure was in front of her.
She drew her breath in.
“Hi,” the man said, pulling his mask down.
She relaxed. It wasn’t the person from the other side of the street; it was a regular, the one she’d been hoping would turn up. He wore a short, pale cape and a broad hat. He was a smallish, thin man with muddy-looking skin and intensely blue eyes you couldn’t look at for too long.
“Oh,” she said, and smiled. She had slightly prominent teeth, already spotted with decay. “Hi, sweetie.”
“Sweetie…” he said, sounding amused. He stood in the doorway with her, and gently put his hand up underneath the lace veil to her face and stroked the rough surface of the old radiation burn. His fingers were delicate and slim. She tried not to flinch.
“You smell different this evening,” he said. His voice was like his eyes; sharp and demanding.
“New perfume. Like it?”
“It’ll do,” he said. He withdrew his hand from her ruined face, and sighed. “Shall we go?”
“Okay.”
They left the doorway and walked down the street together, not touching; she had to walk quickly, teetering on her high heels, to keep up with him. A couple of times, glancing at their reflections in shop windows, she thought she saw the figure she’d seen earlier in the alleyway, following them with that odd, stiff-legged gait.
“Here,” he said, entering a narrow alley. It was dark, and she almost tripped on rubbish left on the dark, uneven bricks underfoot.
“But, doll,” she said, following him down the alley and wondering what was going on. “This isn’t your—”
“Shut up,” he told her. He started up a flight of rickety wooden steps. She looked back, and saw the stiff-legged figure enter the alleyway behind them, silhouetting against the marginally brighter street behind, then disappearing into the shadows. “Hurry up!” her client hissed from the top of the steps. She glanced back at the darkness where the figure had vanished, and then ran as fast as her high heels would allow, up the creaking wooden steps.
There was a broad wooden gantry at the top of the steps, dotted with small sheds and ladders; it stretched along the side of the dank, bow-sided tenement. She couldn’t see him, but then a hand came out of the shadows and pulled her into the shelter of a small lean-to. A hand went over her mouth and she let him pull her against him, his breath warm on the back of her neck. Something glinted in his other hand, pointing out to the deck of the wooden gantry. Her eyes were wide and her heart thudded. She clutched the little black purse to her chest, as though hoping it would protect her.
She heard a creaking noise, then slow footsteps. The hand over her mouth clamped tighter.
The figure in the long dark coat came into view, still walking lopsidedly, then stopping and standing directly opposite them. The figure reached in through the coat, and from what must have been a leg-holster, pulled out a very long gun with a slim sight on top of the barrel. The man holding her tensed.
A creaking noise came from behind and beneath her.
The figure spun toward them, the gun coming up.
The man behind her shouted something; his gun fired, a burst of light and sound that lit up every grubby cranny of the alley and filled its length with a terrible barking noise. The figure with the rifle was blown back, folding in two; the great long gun made a quiet roar and something flashed overhead as the figure went straight through the hand rail at the edge of the wooden gantry to fall flaming to the stones of the alleyway.
She looked up; above the wooden gantry a small net swung from a piece of broken guttering. The net swayed in the wind, making a fizzing, sputtering noise and glowing with a strange green light.
The man followed her gaze.
“Prophet’s blood, it was only a stun-net,” he whispered.
She tottered to the broken rail and looked down to see the figure lying torn almost in half and burning amongst the packing cases and trash against the wall of the tenement opposite. A smell of roasted flesh wafted up from the body, making her feel sick.
The man grabbed her hand. “Come on!” he said. They ran.
“God help me, I almost enjoyed that,” he said, stumbling into the service entrance of the quiet apartment block. He took out his key, then paused, breathing hard, looking at her. “You’re still keen, I hope, yes?”
“Never say no to a man with a gun,” she said, trying to get out of the bright light shining near the laundry baskets.
He smiled and took off his short cloak with a flourish. “Let’s take the service lift.”
She busied herself with her make-up in the lift, turning to the corner and squinting into the little mirror, leaving the veil down while one hand worked behind it. She caught a glimpse of his face; he looked amused.
They entered his apartment. It was surprisingly plush, lit by subdued but expensive wall panels, full of ancient art works and pieces of fancy-looking equipment. The rug in the main room—patterned after the fashion of an early electronic chip—had a deep, luxuriant pile. He lit a cheroot, and sat down in a big couch. “Strip,” he told her.
She stood just in front of him, and—still determinedly holding the little purse—slowly pulled her veil away and let it fall to the floor. The radiation burn looked livid and raw, even under the make-up. The man on the couch swallowed, breathing deeply. He drew on the cheroot, then left it in his mouth as he folded his arms.
She took hold of the pillbox hat and removed it too. Her hair had been gathered up under the hat; now it fell out, spilling down her back.
He looked surprised. “When did you—?” he began, frowning.
She held one hand up flat toward him and shook her head, then put the same hand to the side of her face. She gripped the top edge of the radiation scar and slowly pulled it down, tearing it away from her cheek with a glutinous, sucking noise.
His eyes widened and his jaw dropped. The cheroot fell from his mouth onto the chest of his shirt.
She dropped the black purse from her other hand, which now held a small stubby pistol with no muzzle aperture. She spat out the fake teeth; they bounced on the printed-circuit rug.
“Hello, Cenuij,” she said.
“Sha—!” he had time to gasp, before the gun in her hand buzzed, his eyes closed and he went limp, sliding slowly off the couch onto the floor.
She sniffed, wondering what was burning, then took two quick steps toward him and removed the cheroot from the hole in his shirt before it burned any more of his chest hair.
He woke to the sound of spattering rain; he was sitting slumped in the rear seat of a tall All-Terrain and it was dark outside. Sharrow sat opposite him. His whole body was tingling, his head was sore and he didn’t think it wise to try speaking for a while; he looked around groggily.
Through rain-streaked glass to the right he could see a giant open-cast mine lit by dotted lights. The mine had eaten away half of an enormous conical hill and was continuing to shave away the other half. Looking carefully, he could make out a motley collection of trucks, draglines and lines of people with shovels, all working the canted gray face of the floodlit, sectioned hill. At least he wasn’t having trouble focusing.
“Cenuij?” she said.
He looked at her. He decided to try speaking.
“What?” he said. His mouth seemed to be working all right. Good sign. He flexed the tingling muscles in his face.
Sharrow frowned. “Are you okay?”
“She fries my synapses with a neurostunner whose insurance warranty ran out around the time of the Skytube, then she asks if I’m okay,” he said, attempting to laugh but coughing instead.
Sharrow poured something brown and fragrant from a flask into a cup; he took it and smelled spirit; he sipped at it, then knocked it back, smacking his lips. He almost threw it up again immediately, but held it down and felt it warm him.
“You once
told me,” she said, “that if you had to be knocked unconscious, that’s the way you’d like it done, with one of those.”
“I remember,” he said. “It was the morning after Miz nearly rammed that Tax destroyer. We were in a tavern in Malishu and you were whining about your hangover; you wore a low-cut green scoopneck and Miz had left a line of lovebites like footprints leading down your left tit. But I didn’t think you’d treat an innocent observation as a definite request.”
“As you see,” Sharrow grinned, “the stunner has totally scrambled that perfect memory.”
“Just testing,” Cenuij said.
He stretched. He didn’t seem to be tied up in any way, and Sharrow wasn’t holding the stun gun.
“Anyway,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
“Indeed. I can see contrition oozing from your every pore.”
She nodded toward the open-cast mine. “Know where we are?”
“Mine Seven; a little west of the city perimeter road.” He rubbed at his leg muscles; they still felt tingly and weak.
“We’re right on the city limits,” Sharrow said. She nodded. “I step out that door and I’m outside the jurisdiction; you step out your side and you’re back in Lip City.”
“What are you trying to do, Sharrow? Impress me with your navigational skills?”
“I’m giving you a choice; asking you to come with me…but if you won’t, I’m letting you go.”
“You kidnap me first, then you ask me?” Cenuij shook his head. “Retirement’s addled your brains.”
“Dammit, Cenuij! I didn’t mean to snatch you; I just wanted to get to you. But that enthusiast with the stun-net rattled me. I wanted to get us both out of there.”
“Well, congratulations,” he said. “What a spiffing plan.”
“All right,” she said, raising her voice. “What was I supposed to do?” She got her voice under control again. “Would you have listened to me? If I’d tried to contact you; would you have given me the time to say anything?”
Against a Dark Background Page 7
