Skinner

by Charlie Huston

  Terrence put it in perspective for her.

  The window of opportunity to save lives down there is closing. But, of course, the same could be said of the window on your own life.

  He was the general contractor for several small and untidy jobs that people wanted done before anything could get especially organized in Haiti. Jae hadn’t listened to him when he’d told her not to take Cross’s contract in Iraq. Perhaps she’d listen now that he was telling her to take this one. His advice being both blunt and more than slightly surreal.

  Get your robots out of storage and get your ass on the fucking plane to Haiti.

  With a further guarantee that the contract would leave more than enough time for her to engage in actual rescue work. Of which there was certainly more than enough to go around.

  And so the plane. And the professional disasterists. And the satellite photos.

  They looked like gravel. Photos of gravel. As if, while crossing a patch of garden that had been covered in the tiny rocks, one had stopped to snap several pictures, straight down, careful to keep feet out of frame. Gravel, twigs. The impression ruined only by the presence of what could be taken for the remains of, perhaps, a few broken toys. Shattered fragments of an old train set, Matchbox cars run over by their full size brethren, crumbs of flesh-tone Play-Doh.

  The safe turned out to be easily found. Large, it created a node within a rubble-filled sinkhole. They had money to pay diggers, and, natural disaster or not, money always produced cheap labor in Haiti. They’d got lucky and found the thing more or less faceup, cleared enough debris to open the door, and sent the workers back to their own searches. Families, entire lives buried. Inside the safe, plastic-wrapped bricks of hundred-dollar bills. She filled a Pelican Cube Case with them, topped it off with the hard drive and papers, sealed it, locked it, and found Terrence waiting for her at the airport when she arrived to ship it out on one of the empty relief planes heading home to reload.

  Taking the case from her, loading it onto a dolly, sweating in his tweed, he’d looked at her, forty-eight hours since he saw her last, and nodded, The world can make sense, Jae. You’ve just been looking in the wrong places. The old man, again promising order in the universe. A future that could be saved from the configuration.

  She watched him go, pushing the fortune in cash and potential blackmail, then she returned to the rubble. Her robots, the ones that still worked after their long layoff, were soon useless. Broken or clogged with dust. She left them where they failed, one by one, and picked up a shovel. Finding the living became almost immediately irrelevant. Impossible. There weren’t any. But the dead had value. One less rotting corpse to breed disease. One less relative uncertain if she had lost her entire family or her entire family but one. One less meal to feed the feral packs of dogs. One less of God’s victims abandoned and unknown.

  Back home, some of the money bought a lease on workspace in a light industrial zone outside Houston. The rest of the money bought her tools and materials. Her relationships at A&M got her access to Disaster City. A year later, when the robots she needed were finished, she got her Land Rover running and started looking for Terrence’s promised future. Taking his contracts for image analysis. Data diving. Finding and seeing. Her specialties. Terrence told her that they were close to the heart of things. But it would take time. And always retreating, the desert, the mountains, away, when the configuration became overwhelming. Too much detail, the particles were like fog she was lost in.

  Now here she is, holding hands with a killer, liking it, very much.

  Terrence likes the future.

  He said. As if Terrence were still alive. As far as he knows.

  She coughs, pulls her hand free of his to cover her mouth.

  Skinner raises the hand that had been holding hers, looks for a moment as if he’s deciding what to do with it now, then lets it go, dangling at his side, and steps to the side of the street, the open door of a gift shop, high-end, she can see reproductions of Viking swords and helmets inside, chocolate bars wrapped like jewelry, cashmere scarves, Pippi Longstocking toys made from organic cottons and merino wool.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  He goes in, nods at the proprietor, a middle aged woman with graying blonde hair and skin both weathered and robust. She looks ready for sculling or cross country skiing, whatever the weather allows.

  There are also axes, leather wrapped handles.

  Who buys a souvenir axe?

  This is a lightly traveled street. The entry of an expensive hotel is several doors up, a man in greatcoat and braided epaulets at the curb. Cars have a special sticker on the window. Resident cars. And livery cars, Volvo sedans. She thinks of her car in Nevada, long term parking at McCarran.

  Fuck, please don’t be buying an axe.

  She can see him at the front of the store, smiling, a tourist smile, impeccably self-effacing but expecting to be helped with the language barrier when paying these prices. Several of the larger kronor bills he exchanged for at the airport currency kiosk are passed. He accepts some change, a receipt, and comes out carrying a walking stick with a heavy brass knob at the end. He holds it in such a way that it almost disappears, not hiding it, but carrying it as an extension, as if he has always used a walking stick. No affectation, this; just what one always has in hand. But she can’t help thinking of the way he held the X-Acto blade back in Oasis Two. Instantly weaponized by his touch.

  He looks up and down the street.

  “Close?”

  She takes her eyes from the stick.

  “This way.”

  Up past the hotel, brief nod from the doorman, and stepping in at an arched tunnel that cuts through the ground floor of a slightly crooked building that has been painted the color of Silly Putty. A sign above the tunnel, Lilla Hoparegränd. An especially tight alleyway beyond, the backs of town houses, locked shutters. First glance suggests a dead end, but a spill of light across the face of the last building betrays a sharp L bend to somewhere.

  They look down the short tunnel. Jae checks her phone, puts it back in her pocket.

  “I’m expecting an empty room. If that. More likely a mailbox. Something someone cleans out from time to time. Paper bills are safer than online billing for these guys. Probably a whole bunch of domains billed to the same address. Could even be a service someone offers. Bill your cyber criminal enterprise’s infrastructure to this address. No questions asked. Service fees payable in advance.”

  Skinner nods.

  “Why I got a stick instead of a broadsword.”

  He looks at the door, old, wood, yellow paint, a keystone above with the date it was set, chiseled, edges worn smooth. 1747.

  He puts a flat palm against the door, pushes a little.

  “Good door.”

  He steps back from it.

  “If it isn’t just a mailbox we may have to leave quickly.”

  He points at her backpack.

  “If so, it will be helpful to know if anyone is waiting for us outside.”

  Jae swings the pack off her shoulders.

  “I have something for that.”

  Skinner watches as she unzips the bag, reaches into Velcroed padded pockets, and takes out two cylinders about the size of twelve-ounce beer cans, rounded at the ends, patterned in the pearlescent metallic black-and-gray checks of woven carbon fiber, a large Oakley logo on each one. Sunglass cases. The ones she took from the robot cases that were left with Maker Smith. She pushes the button on the side of one, definitive click, and it clamshells open, revealing one of her robot spiders in a custom carved nest of polyethylene closed cell foam. She gently works it loose, gives a practiced flick of her wrist, the eight carbon legs that had been folded beneath it springing out. Skinner makes a sound in his throat, and when she looks up he points to the end of the alley. She nods and continues unpacking her creations as he walks to the end of the alley, takes the L bend to the right, and disappears. Jae isn’t watching. Both spiders are unpacked. She puts the Oakley case
s back in her pack.

  She has her Toughbook out and powered up. Control routines for the spiders open. The iPad interface she uses for the worm and some of the other robots is more elegant, more fun, but too fragile for fieldwork unless mounted in one of her travel cases. The Toughbook’s Bluetooth has detected the spiders. She moves the cursor over an icon that looks like a web, clicks, enters a passcode, and windows open showing her the camera views from both spiders. One blurry, too-close view of her left boot, one hyper–low-perspective shot of the alley looking down toward the L bend as Skinner rounds the corner, walking toward her, a looming giant on the screen.

  He points back at the bend.

  “Empties onto one of the big streets that circle the island. Water. Ferry dock. Bridge to Södermalm. Options.”

  Jae clicks another icon, tiny spiders arranged in rows like tiles, and the two spiders on the ground start to skitter over the cobbles. Alarmingly fast, finding and almost instantly rejecting deep crevices between the cobbles that might upset their balance, they move at first like the jumbled plastic pieces on a Tudor brand electric football game. Vibrating haphazardly, directionless, certain to either fall or collide. But the impression is relieved a moment after it is created as the spiders learn their terrain, adjust, receive commands from the software that is interpreting the information from their cameras, and begin to move with a sudden sure-footedness that sends Skinner stepping back as one of them scampers between his feet to a drainpipe, tries several different angles of approach, then straddles it and begins to climb, a vision certain to create a new phylum of nightmares for any arachnophobe who should see it. The second spider has been moving in a zigzag between the walls of the alley, mapping, and now it scales a shutter covering street-level basement windows, balancing when it reaches the top, tiny whirs as the camera darts back and forth for new angles, then skitters and lands on the support of a decorative streetlamp that juts from the side of the building at head height, settling, and looking at a glance, clamped to the black iron, like a small bit of decoration.

  Jae packs the Toughbook away, zips her pack, shoulders it, and rises.

  Skinner is looking at the spider frozen on the lamp.

  “Those are a little freaky.”

  Jae looks at her brainchild.

  “Robot spiders. If there’s anything missing from that concept that will freak people out, I don’t know what it is.”

  Skinner steps to the door.

  “Robot spiders with guns.”

  Jae tightens her shoulder straps, securing her pack for running.

  “That’s what Cross would like to do with them.”

  Skinner touches the door as he did before, palm flat, pushes, finds no give in the jamb, reaches in his jacket and comes out with the steak knife from KGB.

  Jae steps back, looks up. The alley slopes downward toward the L bend, three-story buildings at the high end, four-story at the bend. Even the upper-story windows are shuttered.

  “We’ve been here for a while. Are we being watched?”

  Skinner’s left hand moves, the knife rotates, finds a new comfortable place to fit, held like a chisel.

  “Yes, we’re being watched.”

  He sticks the blade into the slight crack between door and jamb, point just above the knob, angled, applies force, his weight bearing down, blade edging in another half centimeter, opens and closes his right hand, walking stick slipping down, stopping, brass knob twenty centimeters above his hand, raises it, and hammers on the hilt of the knife. Loud, echoing, three blows, and the wood splits, Skinner prying, resetting the knife tip, hammering twice more before pocketing the badly bent knife and applying the brass knob directly to the weakened doorknob, three more blows, louder, and it falls off with a clatter, Skinner stoops to pick it up, forces it back onto its stem, and pushes the door open, stepping in, looking back at her.

  “Come inside where they can’t see us.”

  She steps into the vestibule and he closes the door; crippled, it tries to swing back open, and he yanks it, grinding the twisted latch plate into the splintered jamb.

  Jae is standing before an inner door. She looks at Skinner as he steps past her.

  “Is there any way to do this quietly?”

  Skinner puts his hand on the knob, turns it, and pushes the door open on well-oiled hinges.

  “Yes.”

  Short hallway, one door to the left, floor of hexagonal tiles, several missing, black spots marring the otherwise uniformly dingy ivory, a tight wind of stairs, twisting left and up and out of sight, black painted iron banister. No bulbs in the ornate ceiling fixtures.

  Skinner raises his hand, hang on.

  “Which floor?”

  Jae looks at the door just inside the hallway. Black letter, C.

  “Concierge? Ours is 2B. Europe. This is ground. Then one and then two. A and B. Top floor. Yes?”

  He looks at the stairs.

  “Yes.”

  He doesn’t move.

  Jae looks at the broken door behind them.

  “Are we still being watched?”

  He points at the door marked C.

  “That sounds empty. Sounds empty just above. Sounds not empty up top.”

  Jae listens. Quiet of an old building. A creak. Pop of a wood joint expanding. Her own breathing. And, yes, mumble of voices, footsteps. Could be next door, upstairs, basement, she can’t tell.

  “So no empty-room-mail-drop.”

  She resettles her pack.

  “Do we go up?”

  Skinner touches his earlobe, not looking at her.

  “Your contract is to find things. If you need to go up to fulfill your contract, we go.”

  “And what about your contract?”

  He stops touching his ear.

  “My contract is to protect you. I’m certain I can do a better job of that by not going up there.”

  She steps into the hallway.

  “Let’s go.”

  Skinner’s first step is never completed, becoming instead a pivot as the street door is opened behind them, squeal of protesting brass, Jae turning at the sound, seeing a man on the step outside, looking at the ruined knob that has come off in his hand. Skinner moves fast, very, between her and the man, but not before she sees his swollen red eyes, bent nose packed with wadded newspaper, oozing gash on his forehead. Though her first glimpse is brief and he’s been beaten, the twigs in his beard make him easy to recognize even as Skinner grabs him by the front of his jacket, pulls him into the vestibule, drags him through the inner door, turning him, tangling the shaft of the walking stick into his arms behind his back, forcing him to the floor, a handful of throat, silencing him, looking at Jae and tipping his forehead at the street door.

  “Close that.”

  She does, comes through the vestibule door and closes that, watching as Skinner puts his mouth close to Twig-Beard’s ear, eases his grip on the man’s throat, and asks his most pressing question.

  “Do you have a gun?”

  He doesn’t. The continuing lack of easily obtainable firearms in Sweden seeming to irritate Skinner in the same way that another American might be put out by the unavailability of his favorite candy bar.

  “Polizei!”

  The room holds Jae the moment they go through the door. Holds her so completely that even though she hears what Twig-Beard yells when Skinner pushes him ahead of them as a human shield, she doesn’t panic about the possibility that the room may very well be occupied by the kind of people who could be keeping some of Skinner’s elusive guns and be looking forward to an opportunity to shoot them at supposed police officers. Guns or no, shots are not fired. A teenage boy with a mohawk and ear piercings big enough to shove a thumb through rushes them, but he’s just trying to get past them and out the door. Something Skinner prevents by putting Twig-Beard in his way and letting them both fall down. Someone else, gender neutral hair, baggy jeans, and black t-shirt, seen only from behind, darts into a bathroom and locks the door. The others stay as they ar
e, seated or standing, three of them. The many screens and radios in the room seize Jae’s attention, flicker and crackle.

  Skinner looks at the darkened windows, shutters closed and locked; he peers down a short hall that opens on a bedroom with a couple of cots, stacks of flattened cardboard boxes, and heaps of styrofoam packing-geometrics. Two more windows, also shuttered. One exit, and they are standing in front of it.

  He uses the knob of the walking stick to point at the nearest window.

  “You should have planned an escape route.”

  A very young man, probably no more than twenty-five (twenty-three? twenty?), with rich cocoa skin and thick black curls, stands, his traditional bleu de travail four-pocket work jacket worn a size too small, snug on the shoulders, short at the cuffs.

  “We did not plan to run.”

  Good English, French accent, touch of something North African, though he’s probably never seen the country his parents emigrated from.

  He looks at the boy tangled with Twig-Beard on the floor, the closed and locked bathroom door.