by Mark Budz
Kerusa stares, red-faced.
“Without help, they weren’t going to make it,” she says. “At least now they have a chance.”
Some of Kerusa’s bluster evaporates. “Okay,” he finally says. “Go ahead. You’re there. You might as well do what you can.”
“I’ll need help with the damaged shuttle,” she says.
“What kind of help?”
The next couple of hours pass in a blur. With technical support from Pheidoh, she maneuvers the ICM modules into position near the docking bay. Assesses the biomed readouts of the workers. Identifies those who have the best chance of survival and connects them to the Intensive Care Modules. Prays.
She moves the dead out of the shuttle, into one of the greenhouse vats. She has to clear the shuttle before it can be jettisoned to make way for the one that’s coming any hour now. The hexcell becomes a morgue. The sleepsacs that were installed only a few hours ago work just as well as body bags.
“You look tired,” Pheidoh says when she’s done everything she can.
“I’ll be all right.” Her bones feel leaden, made heavy by the same invisible source of gravity that gave weight to her cross. The corners of her eyes, reflected in her helmet, radiate lines. Little starbursts of tension that threaten to spread and deepen like cracks in brittle plastic.
“You have a message,” Pheidoh says. “It’s from Xophia.”
“I’m sorry it took so long to get back to you,” Xophia says. Her voice is dry, an empty husk. “I didn’t want you to see me like this.”
Fola gasps at the image of Xophia on her helmet. “My God.”
Xophia is lying on a bed. It could be the same bed as the geront she was taking care of in her last squirt. Her arms, where they rest at her sides on crumpled sheets, are covered with sores. Cracked, lip-shaped blisters that ooze saliva-clear pus. Her own lips have thinned and receded from bone-dull teeth set in blackened gums. Yellow bruise rings encircle her eyes, which are ashen, a dull necrotic gray. She’s bald. Leafy splotches and curlicues, etched in black on her scalp, have replaced her hair.
“I thought things would get better. But as you can see, they haven’t.” She coughs up a chuckle, wet as phlegm. “I figured I’d better get in touch with you, before it was too late.”
Xophia’s chest heaves, revealing the outline of ribs through the thin, yellow sheet. A fleeting shroud-of-Turin imprint.
“I hope things are better on your end. They have to be.” Xophia pauses, gathering thoughts or air. “The important thing is to not give up. Not on yourself. Not ever.” She waves a hand, fingers tipped with charcoal gray nails. “I know. Easier said than done. But I have faith in you. All you have to do is to have faith in yourself. I miss you and I’ll always be with you. I love you, girl.”
Xophia kisses the charred tips of her fingers, then holds them up.
“See you soon,” Fola whispers. She sniffs. Blinks, wet lashes tickling.
“You need to rest,” Pheidoh says.
Sleep seems impossible. Fola is afraid to relax; afraid that if she goes to sleep, one or more of the workers will never wake up; afraid that she will let them down the way she let Xophia down. It’s as if by staying awake she can keep them alive.
She swallows, clearing her throat. “How long before the next group of evacuees is scheduled to depart?” she says.
“Not for a while. The shuttle pods are still grounded.”
Fola checks the time, uncertain when Xophia’s shuttle will show up. Soon. “Any word on Lejandra?”
“Still deteriorating. By the way, BEAN isolated the source of the illegal pherion. It came from her nephews.”
The gangstas. “Oscar and Balta?”
“Apparently they dosed her with it in case they needed to sneak her through the vat pharm’s security perimeter at some point.”
“Where did they get it? The bruja?”
“No. BEAN is still trying to identify the supplier.”
“Any connection to the quanticles?” she says.
“No. They don’t appear to be related.”
Fola’s gloved hand dimples the side of her helmet, attempting to brush aside hair and disappointment. “Are the two in custody?”
“Not yet. They made a run for it after Lejandra was detained.”
“What about L. Mariachi?” She feels responsible for him. She took on that obligation as soon as she agreed to become the Blue Lady.
“Is this yours?” the peacock agent says.
Fola watches the agent extend the guitar toward L. Mariachi with both hands, as if it’s an offering.
L. Mariachi shakes his head. “No.” He’s seated on a squat stool, his knees drawn protectively to his chest. He’s gaunt, bruised by fatigue and God only knows what else at this point.
“It was found with your personal belongings,” the agent says.
“The bruja gave it to me.”
The BEAN agent hefts the guitar. Runs a finger across the strings, plucking out a ragged chord. “Why did she give it to you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Come, now.” The agent smiles. “You must have some idea.”
“Maybe for safekeeping. Maybe as payment for helping with the healing ceremony.”
“She didn’t say?”
“When I woke up, she was gone.”
The agent rubs his jaw, thoughtful. After a moment he holds out the guitar so it’s within L. Mariachi’s reach. “Play something.”
“What?”
“How about ‘SoulR Byrne.’”
L. Mariachi takes the guitar. It trembles in his hands, unsteady as a leaf in an autumn breeze. He brings the guitar to his cheek. Runs a shaky hand along the neck, wincing in pain as his gnarled fingers snag on the frets. “I can’t,” he says.
“Sure you can.” The peacock agent’s grin holds a nasty subtext. “Unless you got something to hide.”
“My hand,” L. Mariachi explains, staring at the curled lump of skin and bone that pass for fingers.
“Yeah. I’ve been wondering about that. I’m hoping maybe you can tell me what went down.”
“It would be easier if you squirted me a little painkiller.”
“How ’bout you tell me what I want to know first, and then you get the relief? As a kind of reward for good behavior.”
L. Mariachi gives a defeated shrug. “I sold my soul.”
“Sold it for what?”
“Success.”
“How?”
“What difference does it make? I got what I wanted, what I asked for. And I also got what I deserved.”
The agent narrows his eyes. “From whom?”
L. Mariachi sets the guitar on the floor—carefully, gently, lovingly—as though he doesn’t want to damage it, but also doesn’t want to have anything more to do with it, never plans to pick it up again.
“She gave it to you for a reason,” the peacock agent says. “If you don’t know why, it might be a good idea to find out. I can help you do that, figure out if you’re being taken advantage of.”
L. Mariachi looks up. “Like right now, you mean?”
The peacock agent straightens with a look of disappointment. “Have it your way.” He snaps his fingers.
L. Mariachi’s chin drops to his chest. He slumps to one side and slides off the stool into the grasp of the agent, who lowers him to the floor.
The door behind him clicks open. A man steps into the room, followed closely by the rose agent.
“Who’s that?” Fola asks Pheidoh.
“Angel Pedrowski. He’s a vat worker.”
“You know what you’re supposed to do?” the rose agent says.
Pedrowski’s nod is timid. Not at all reassuring. He looks unhappy, tentative. He takes a few baby steps toward L. Mariachi as the two agents leave the room. The door slams shut.
After a few seconds, Pedrowski picks up the guitar and inspects it briefly. He fidgets. Glances around nervously, expectantly, clearly waiting for something to happen.
L.
Mariachi twitches. Groans. Opens glazed eyes. Blinks. Rolls his head to one side and focuses on his cellmate.
Pedrowski offers a wan, flickering smile that looks like it’s about to short out any second. “Hola, compadre.”
L. Mariachi tries to push himself up. Stalls. Pedrowski quickly sets the guitar aside to lend a hand. The instrument emits a hollow thud. Strings buzz in complaint and then fall silent.
“Are you okay?”
“Great.” L. Mariachi wobbles, steadies himself. Shrugs free of the hand gripping his upper arm. “What are you doing here?”
“BEAN arrested me.” Pedrowski’s shoulders sag in a miserable hunch. “Brought me in for questioning.”
“Really. Kind of strange they’d put the two of us together. Why do you think that is, ese?”
“I don’t know.”
“¡Murrda!”
“Honest. They didn’t tell me anything. I swear!”
L. Mariachi’s gaze bores into him. “When were you picked up?”
“Last night. As soon as my shift ended.” Pedrowski’s mustache twitches. “The culeros were waiting for me.”
“What day was that?”
“Yesterday. Monday.”
“The same day I was arrested.”
“Right. I guess they decided to bring me in because they saw us talking at lunch.”
L. Mariachi nods. “What happened to you?”
Pedrowski touches his black eye, gingerly probing the bruise. “They roughed me up when I couldn’t answer their questions.”
“What did Fruit Loop and Lucky Charm want to know?”
“Information about you and the bruja.”
“What kind of information?”
Pedrowski strokes his mustache, as if placating a pet rat. “They wanted to know the real reason for the healing ceremony. If you’re a member of the ICLU. If I’m a member of the ICLU. What I know about the distribution or sale of black-market pherions here. That sort of shit.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Nothing!”
L. Mariachi rubs his jaw, careful to avoid his split lip.
“What about you?” Pedrowski says.
“What about me?”
“What did they ask you?”
L. Mariachi wets his lip. “You mean, did they want to know about all of the stuff you’re involved with?”
Pedrowski hesitates.
“Don’t worry.” L. Mariachi cuts him a sidelong smile. “The subject never came up.”
Pedrowski relaxes. “Word?”
“Yeah.”
“We should compare notes,” Pedrowski says, covering his mouth with a hand and dropping his voice to a subaudible whisper. “Get our facts straight. That way, if one of us gets out we can warn the others.”
“What others?”
Pedrowski coughs. “Doña Celia, for one. She needs to know everything you told BEAN. And everything you didn’t.”
It’s L. Mariachi’s turn to hesitate. He wavers. Unsure. Wary.
“If you help her,” Pedrowski says, “there’s a chance she can help get you out of here. You’d be helping yourself.”
“How come you want to warn her?”
“She risked herself to try and cure Lejandra, no? If more workers get sick, they’ll need somebody they can turn to. So you’ll be helping them, too.”
“I don’t see how. She can’t do shit with BEAN looking for her.”
“You don’t know that. She’s a witch, no?” He smiles. “She can turn into an animal, come and go as she pleases.”
L. Mariachi scowls, unconvinced.
“We might not have much time,” Pedrowski says. “There’s no telling when they will come for one of us.”
“I already told you everything I know.”
Pedrowski appears doubtful but doesn’t press the issue. Decides to lay off for the time being.
“This guy seems like more than your regular vat worker,” Fola says. “What’s his background?”
Pheidoh squirts her Angel Pedrowski’s bio. “He’s a graduate student?” she says. “Going for his Ph.D. in sociology?”
“Apparently,” Pheidoh says.
“What about unapparently?” She can’t believe that the only reason Pedrowski’s there is fieldwork for his thesis.
The IA shows her the book it’s reading. The title is The Official Life and Times of Angel Pedrowski. “See for yourself. He’s not a known member of any radical or terrorist org. He’s never even participated in a protest.”
“In other words you’re saying that BEAN arrested him to get L. Mariachi to open up?”
“It’s a dell-wocumented interrogation strategy.”
Fola looks up from the bio. “Dell-wocumented?”
The datahound nods. “One that’s proven to be effective with some prisoners.”
She searches the IA’s face, but can’t find any sign of a flicker.
“I always wanted to play an instrument,” Pedrowski says, hefting the guitar with both hands.
L. Mariachi picks at his teeth with one thumbnail. “No shit?”
“Sure. The guitar, possibly the violin. I just never had time to learn.” Pedrowski pauses for a moment to breathe, then pops his question. “Do you think you could give me a lesson?”
The guy is pathetic—totally lame. It’s embarrassing. Even Fola can see through his false pretenses.
“Maybe later.” L. Mariachi yawns, then curls up on his side on the floor. “Right now I’m dead tired.”
Dead.
Fola swallows at the word the way she would moldy bread. She has to do something to get him out of there. Free him from BEAN before they shove toothpicks under his fingernails or give his testicles electroshock therapy.
Or before he does something just as terrible to himself. Jams a wadded-up scrap of shirt down his throat or strangles himself with one of his pant legs.
She’s seen people like this in refugee camps. For some, there’s only one means of escape.
28
JAILBIRD
Curled up on his side, breathing the caustic grime of chemical-eroded concrete, L. Mariachi prays for sleep and replays the last time the Blue Lady saved his life. . . .
It was at night, in an abandoned warehouse where he had taken refuge after saying sola vaya to the Necrofeels. He’d hooked up with them a few weeks after arriving in Mexico City. After eight months as a member, he’d had enough of those cabrones. Stealing and rustling for a black-market pharm was one thing. Becoming a maricon was another. He might only be nine, ten in a few months, but he had his self-respect. He had taken that, if nothing else, from the shelter in Juárez.
Outside, the distended underbelly of a spent hurricane sweated fitful rain. Water drooled through cracks in the vomit yellow skylights, ran down the lichenboard walls to the concrete floor where it collected in puddles as black as the tears from Bloody Mary. There were no umbrella palms in this part of the barrio. No circuitrees to provide power. Rumor had it the place was a hazmat zone, too polluted after the ecocaust to support any kind of municipal ecotecture. At one point, in a failed attempt to make the building functional, someone had put up piezoelectric panels and strung heat-reflective mesh under the skylights. Now the mesh hung in tattered skeins. To stay dry he’d built a makeshift lean-to out of several panels that had sloughed off the walls and fallen to the floor.
It was late, after eleven. He hadn’t been able to scrounge any leftovers from the w@ngs noodle joint five blocks away, where the warehouse zone gave way to fast food, tri-X hotels, and a dance club called the Seraphemme where he liked to sit on the curb and listen to the music. Tonight it was too wet. He huddled under his lean-to, restless, kept awake by hunger pangs. Every few minutes, just as he was about to doze off, his stomach snarled. A slavering growl that kept sleep at bay.
Lucky for him. Hunger made a good watchdog.
The hunters showed up just after midnight. They packed compressed-gas assault rifles and straddled knockoff copies of pre-ecocaust Harleys, built
in China, that ran on corn oil. In any other part of the ciudad, on any other night, he might not have smelled them coming. But there wasn’t a MacWendy’s within miles, or any other franchise that had fries on the menu.
They were cruising for street kids, loners like him without protection. Pure sport. They’d take him out without a second thought. They had zero compunction about wasting his ass. They were performing a public service. Probably had the tacit blessing of the local police and politicorp security, as well as business owners and residents who turned a blind eye and made the sign of the cross to ward off gang bangers and independent street rats like him. For anonymity and maximum effect, the gabachos wore masks. Day of the Dead calaveras, Egyptian mummies, old cartoon characters, and ghost white hoods with fiery red crosses emblazoned on the forehead.
As fate would have it the motherfuckers also wore infrared shades. The deck was definitely stacked, and not in his favor. The only thing he had going for him was a bad case of stomach cramps.
His mouth dry, he watched the gabachos converge on the warehouse. He was trapped. No way he was going to sneak out without being seen. His only hope was to become invisible, to disappear into the background noise of the universe and become one with all of the other nameless and faceless indigents who never registered as a blip on the radar of upper-clade consciousness.
“Yemana,” he whispered, saying the true name of the Blue Lady under his breath. “Help me. Por favor.”
Beams from the headlights of the Chinese hogs splashed through the bottom rows of warehouse windows. The lights stayed on, a poisonous glare. Shadows leaped to life around him, including his own. He wanted to pull it back into himself. Or fold it up into something small, handkerchief sized, that he could cram into one of his pants pockets. Anything to make it go away, get rid of the long figure it cast on the floor and unfurled across the wall.
A blue halo winked in the semidarkness above him. It beckoned him out of the glare, into the gloom clotted between the skylights. The gabachos were close. Their shadows flitted through the windows, preceding them like undead minions. Laughter followed, raucous, confident. They made no attempt at stealth.
He scurried to the back of the warehouse. In one corner a steel ladder attached to the wall led to the catwalk and joists under the skylights.
