Budayeen Nights

by George Alec Effinger

  I’d forgotten religious ecstasy. Sex, drugs, and religious ecstasy. Those were the big sellers in Laila’s shop, and she tested them all out personally. You had her personal Seal of Approval on every moddy.

  “Can I talk now, Laila?”

  She stared at me, swaying unsteadily. Slowly she reached one scrawny arm up and popped the moddy out. She blinked a couple of times, and her gentle smile disappeared. “Get you something, Marîd?” she said in her shrill voice.

  Laila had been around so long, there was a rumor that as a child she’d watched the imams lay the foundation of the Budayeen’s walls. But she knew her moddies. She knew more about old, out-of-print moddies than anyone else I’ve ever met. I think Laila must have had one of the world’s first experimental implants, because her brain had never worked quite right afterward. And the way she still abused the technology, she should have burnt out her last gray cells years ago. She’d withstood cerebral torture that would have turned anyone else into a drooling zombie. Laila probably had a tough protective callus on her brain that prevented anything from penetrating. Anything at all.

  I started over from the beginning. “I’m going out on patrol today, and I was wondering if you had a basic cop moddy.”

  “Sure, I got everything.” She hobbled to a bin near the back of the store and dug around in it for a moment. The bin was marked “Prussia/Poland/Breulandy.” That didn’t have anything to do with which moddies were actually in there; Laila’d bought the battered dividers and scuffed labels from some other kind of shop that was going out of business.

  She straightened up after a few seconds, holding a shrink-wrapped moddy in her hand. “This is what you want,” she said.

  It was the pale blue Complete Guardian moddy I’d seen other rookie cops wearing. It was a good, basic piece of procedure programming that covered almost every conceivable situation. I figured that between the Half-Hajj’s mean-mother moddy and the Guardian, I was covered. I wasn’t in a position to turn down any kind of help, friend or fantasy. For someone who once hated the idea of having his skull amped, I was sure building up a good collection of other people’s psyches. I paid Laila for Complete Guardian and put it in my pocket.

  She gave me that tranquil smile. It was toothless, of course, and it made me shiver. “Go in safety,” she said in her nasal wail.

  “Peace be upon you.” I hurried out of her shop, walked back down the Street, and passed through the gate to where the car was parked. It wasn’t far from there to the station house. I worked at my desk for a little while until Officer Shaknahyi ducked his head into my cubicle. “Time to roll,” he said.

  It didn’t bother me in the least to tell my data deck to quit. I followed Shaknahyi downstairs to the garage. “That’s mine,” he said, pointing to a patrol car coming in from the previous shift. He greeted the two tired-looking cops who got out, then slid behind the steering wheel. “Well?” he said, looking up at me.

  I wasn’t in a hurry to start this. In the first place, I’d be stuck in the narrow confines of the cop car with Shaknahyi for the duration of the shift, and that prospect didn’t excite me at all. Second, I’d really rather sit upstairs and read boring files in perfect safety than follow this battle-hardened veteran out into the mean streets. Finally, though, I climbed into the front seat. Sometimes there’s only so much stalling you can do. He looked straight out the windshield while he drove.

  We cruised around the streets of the city for about an hour. Then, suddenly, a shrill alarm went off, and the synthesized voice of the patrol car’s comp deck crackled. “Badge Number 374, respond immediately to bomb threat and hostage situation, Cafe de la Fee Blanche, Ninth Street North.”

  “Gargotier’s place,” said Shaknahyi. “We’ll take care of it.” The comp deck fell silent.

  And Haj jar had promised me I wouldn’t have to worry about anything like this. “Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Raheem,” I murmured. In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

  5

  A crowd had gathered outside the low railing of the Cafe de la Fee Blanche’s patio. “Get these people out of here,” Shaknahyi growled at me. “I don’t know what’s happening in there, but we got to treat it like the guy has a real bomb. And when you got everybody moved back, go sit in the car.”

  “But-“

  “I don’t want to have to worry about you, too.” He ran around the corner of the cafe to the north, heading for the building’s rear entrance.

  I hesitated. I knew backup units would be getting here soon, and I decided to let them handle the crowd control. At the moment, there were more important things to worry about. I still had Complete Guardian, and I tore open the shrink-wrap with my teeth. Then I chipped the moddy in.

  Audran was sitting at a table in the dimly lighted San Saberio salon in Florence, listening to a group of musicians playing a demure Schubert quartet. Across from him sat a beautiful blonde woman named Costanzia. She raised a cup to her lips, and her china-blue eyes looked at him over the rim. She was wearing a subtle, fascinating fragrance that made Audran think of romantic evenings and soft-spoken promises.

  “This must be the best coffee in Tuscany,” she murmured. Her voice was sweet and gentle. She gave him a warm smile.

  “We didn’t come here to drink coffee, my darling,” he said. “We came here to see the season’s new styles.”

  She waved a hand. “There is time enough for that. For now, let’s just relax.”

  Audran smiled fondly at her and picked up his delicate cup. The coffee was the beautiful color of polished mahogany, and the wisps of steam that rose from it carried a heavenly, enticing aroma. The first taste overwhelmed Audran with its richness. As the coffee, hot and wonderfully delicious, went down his throat, he realized that Costanzia had been perfectly correct. He had never before been so satisfied by a cup of coffee.

  “I’ll always remember this coffee,” he said.

  “Let’s come back here again next year, darling,” said Costanzia.

  Audran laughed indulgently. “For San Saberio’s new fashions?”

  Costanzia lifted her cup and smiled. “For the coffee,” she said.

  After the advertisement, there was a blackout during which Audran couldn’t see a thing. He wondered briefly who Costanzia was, but he put her out of his mind. }ust as he began to panic, his vision cleared. He felt a ripple of dizziness, and then it was as if he’d awakened from a dream. He was rational and cool and he had a job to do. He had become the Complete Guardian.

  He couldn’t see or hear anything that was happening inside. He assumed that Shaknahyi was making his way quietly through the cafe’s back room. It was up to Audran to give his partner as much support as possible. He jumped the iron railing into the patio, then walked decisively into the interior of the bar.

  The scene inside didn’t look very threatening. Monsieur Gargotier was standing behind the bar, beneath the huge, cracked mirror. His daughter, Maddie, was sitting at a table near the back wall. A young man sat at a table against the west wall, under Gargotier’s collection of faded prints of the Mars colony. The young man’s hands rested on a small box. His head swung to look at Audran. “Get the fuck out,” he shouted, “or this whole place goes up in a big bright bang!”

  “I’m sure he means it, monsieur,” said Gargotier. He sounded terrified.

  “Bet your ass I mean it!” said the young man.

  Being a police officer meant sizing up dangerous situations and being able to make quick, sure judgments. Complete Guardian suggested that in dealing with a mentally disturbed individual, Audran should try to find out why he was upset and then try to calm him. Complete Guardian recommended that Audran not make fun of the individual, show anger, or dare him to carry out his threat. Audran raised his hands and spoke calmly. “I’m not going to threaten you,” Audran said.

  The young man just laughed. He had dirty long hair and a patchy growth of beard, and he was wearing a faded pair of blue jeans and a plaid cotton shirt with its sleeves torn off. He
looked a little like Audran had, before Friedlander Bey had raised his standard of living.

  “Mind if I sit and talk with you?” asked Audran.

  “I can set this off any time I want,” said the young man. “You got the guts, sit down. But keep your hands flat on the table.”

  “Sure.” Audran pulled out a chair and sat down. He had his hack to the barkeeper, but out of the corner of his eye he could see Maddie Gargotier. She was quietly weeping.

  “You ain’t gonna talk me out of this,” said the young man.

  Audran shrugged. “I just want to find out what this is all about. What’s your name?”

  “The hell’s that got to do with anything?”

  “My name is Marîd. I was born in Mauretania.”

  “You can call me Al-Muntaqim.” The kid with the bomb had appropriated one of the Ninety-Nine Beautiful Names of God. It meant “The Avenger.”

  “You always lived in the city?” Audran asked him.

  “Hell no. Misr.”

  “That’s the local name for Cairo, isn’t it?” asked Audran.

  Al-Muntaqim jumped to his feet, furious. He jabbed a finger toward Gargotier behind the bar and screamed, “See? See what I mean? That’s just what I’m talkin about! Well, I’m gonna stop it once and for all!” He grabbed the box and ripped open the lid.

  Audran felt a horrible pain all through his body. It was as if all his joints had been yanked and twisted until his bones pulled apart. Every muscle in his body felt torn, and the surface of his skin stung as if it had been sandpapered. The agony went on for a few seconds, and then Audran lost consciousness.

  “You all right?”

  No, I didn’t feel all right. On the outside I felt red-hot and glowing, as if I’d been staked out under the desert sun for a couple of days. Inside, my muscles felt quivery. I had lots of uncontrollable little spasms in my arms, legs, trunk, and face. I had a splitting headache and there was a horrible, sour taste in my mouth. I was having a lot of trouble focusing my eyes, as if someone had spread a thick translucent gunk over them.

  I strained to make out who was talking to me. I could barely make out the voice because my ears were ringing so loud. It turned out to be Shaknahyi, and that indicated that I was still alive. For an awful moment after I came to, I thought I might be in Allah’s greenroom or somewhere. Not that being alive was any big thrill just then. “What—” I croaked. My throat was so dry I could barely speak.

  “Here.” Shaknahyi handed a glass of cold water down to me. I realized that I was lying flat on my back on the floor, and Shaknahyi and M. Gargotier were standing over me, frowning and shaking their heads.

  I took the water and drank it gratefully. When I finished, I tried talking again. “What happened?” I said.

  “You fucked up,” Shaknahyi said.

  “Right,” I said.

  A narrow smile crossed Shaknahyi’s face. He reached down and offered me a hand. “Get up off the floor.”

  I stood up wobbily and made my way to the nearest chair. “Gin and bingara,” I said to Gargotier. “Put a hit of Rose’s lime in it.” The barkeep grimaced, but he turned away to get my drink. I took out my pill case and dug out maybe eight or nine Sonneine.

  “I heard about you and your drugs,” said Shaknahyi.

  “It’s all true,” I said. When Gargotier brought my drink, I swallowed the opiates. I couldn’t wait for them to start fixing me up. Everything would be just fine in a couple of minutes.

  “You could’ve gotten everybody killed, trying to talk that guy down,” Shaknahyi said. I was feeling bad enough already, I didn’t want to listen to his little lecture right then. He went ahead with it anyway. “What the hell were you trying to do? Establish rapport or something? We don’t work that way when people’s lives are in danger.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “What do you do?”

  He spread his hands like the answer should have been perfectly obvious. “You get around where he can’t see you, and you ice the motherfucker.”

  “Did you ice me before or after you iced Al-Muntaqim?”

  “That what he was calling himself? Hell, Audran, you got to expect a little beam diffusion with these static pistols. I’m real sorry I had to drop you, too, but there’s no permanent damage, inshallah. He jumped up with that box, and I wasn’t gonna wait around for you to give me a clear shot. I had to take what I could get.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “Where’s The Avenger now?”

  “The meat wagon came while you were napping. Took him off to the lock ward at the hospital.”

  That made me a little angry. “The mad bomber gets shipped to a nice bed in the hospital, but I got to lie around on the filthy floor of this goddamn saloon?”

  Shaknahyi shrugged. “He’s in a lot worse shape than you are. You only got hit by the fuzzy edge of the charge. He took it full.”

  It sounded like Al-Muntaqim was going to feel pretty rotten for a while. Didn’t bother me none.

  “No percentage in debating morality with a loon,” said Shaknahyi. “You go in looking for the first opportunity to stabilize the sucker.” He made a trigger-pulling motion with his right index finger.

  “That’s not what Complete Guardian was telling me,” I said. “By the way, did you pop the moddy for me? What did you do with it?”

  “Yeah,” said Shaknahyi, “here it is.” He took the moddy out of a shirt pocket and tossed it down on the floor beside me. Then he raised his heavy black boot and stamped the plastic module into jagged pieces. Brightly colored fragments of the webwork circuitry skittered across the floor. “Wear another one of those, I do the same to your face and then I kick the remnants out of my patrol car.”

  So much for Martd Audran, Ideal Law Enforcement Officer.

  I stood up feeling a lot better, and followed Shaknahyi out of the dimly lighted bar. M. Gargotier and his daughter, Maddie, went with us. The bartender tried to thank us, but Shaknahyi just raised a hand and looked modest. “No thanks are necessary for performing a duty,” he said.

  “Come in for free drinks any time,” Gargotier said gratefully.

  “Maybe we will.” Shaknahyi turned to me. “Let’s ride,” he said.

  We went out through the patio gate. On the way back to the car I said, “It makes me feel kind of good to be welcome somewhere again.”

  Shaknahyi looked at me. “Accepting free drinks is a major infraction.”

  “I didn’t know they had infractions in the Budayeen,” I said. Shaknahyi smiled. It seemed that things had thawed a little between us.

  Shaknahyi cruised back down the Street and out of the Budayeen. Curiously, I was no longer wary of being spotted in the cop car by any of my old friends. In the first place, the way they’d been treating me, I figured the hell with ‘em. In the second place, I felt a little different now that I’d been fried in the line of duty. The experience at the Fee Blanche had changed my thinking. Now I appreciated the risks a cop has to take day after day.

  Shaknahyi surprised me. “You want to stop somewhere?” he asked.

  “Sounds good.” I was still pretty weak and the sunnies had left me a little lightheaded, so I was glad to agree.

  I unclipped the phone from my belt and spoke Chiri’s commcode into it. I heard it ring eight or nine times before she answered it. “Talk to me,” she said. She sounded irked.

  “Chiri? It’s Marîd.”

  “What do you want, motherfucker?”

  “Look, you haven’t given me any chance to explain. It’s not my fault.”

  “You said that before.” She gave a contemptuous laugh. “Famous last words, honey: ‘It’s not my fault.’ That’s what my uncle said when he sold my mama to some goddamn Arab slaver.”

  “I never knew—“

  “Forget it, it ain’t even true. You wanted a chance to explain, so explain.”

  Well, it was show time, but suddenly I didn’t have any idea what to say to her. “I’m real sorry, Chiri,” I said.

  She just laughed aga
in. It wasn’t a friendly sound.

  I plunged ahead. “One morning I woke up and Papa said, ‘Here, now you own Chiriga’s club, isn’t that wonderful?’ What did you expect me to say to him?”

  “I know you, honey. I don’t expect you to say anything to Papa. He didn’t have to cut off your balls. You sold ‘em.”

  “Chiri, we been friends a long time. Try to understand. Papa got this idea to buy your club and give it to me. I didn’t know a thing about it in advance. I didn’t want it when he gave it to me. I tried to tell him, but—“

  “I’ll bet. I’ll just bet you told him.”

  I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. I think she was enjoying this a lot. “I told him about as much as anyone can tell Papa anything.”

  “Why my place, Marîd? The Budayeen’s full of crummy bars. Why did he pick mine?”

  I knew the answer to that: Friedlander Bey was prying me loose from the few remaining connections to my old life. Making me a cop had alienated most of my friends. Forcing Chiriga to sell her club had turned her against me. Next, Papa’d find a way to make Saied the Half-Hajj hate my guts, too. “Just his sense of humor, Chiri,” I said hopelessly. “Just Papa proving that he’s always around, always watching, ready to hit us with his lightning bolts when we least expect it.”

  There was a long silence from her. “And you’re gutless, too.”

  My mouth opened and closed. I didn’t know what she was talking about. “Huh?”

  “I said you’re a gutless panya.”

  She’s always slinging Swahili at me. “What’s a panya, Chiri?” I asked.

  “It’s like a big rat, only stupider and uglier. You didn’t dare do this in person, did you, motherfucker? You’d rather whine to me over the phone. Well, you’re gonna have to face me. That’s all there is to it.”