by Robert Reed
No one is talking anymore.
The whores have quit their game. She can see them looking at her while they sit around the chessboard, the playing pieces silent on their pedestals and the empty pedestals set in two ragged lines. The barmaid is standing beside a pretty-faced male whore. He’s wearing flashy clothes and the cock-on-the-trot posture of a proud stallion. He says something to the others. Then he stands and starts to walk in Chiffon’s direction, a little bit of a swagger showing, and he gives her a sly smile before he sits at her table and stares at her face and the smile turns into a challenging frown. He has no true hair on his head. The glass skullcap is a local fashion, or a legal requirement, its colors and patterns changing while he sits facing her. The whore’s face is lit by the skullcap and the soft moonlight. The patterns within it are curling and complex and absolutely senseless.
She does nothing and says nothing.
He asks, “Why don’t you get up and leave?”
She takes a long breath and starts to lift her glass, forgetting it’s empty, and then she sets if down again and unconsciously licks her clean upper lip.
“I’ll tell you why you won’t get up and leave,” he says, one fist knocking at the tabletop. “You know why?” His voice is a little drunken and careless. He looks older than she would have guessed at first, a fine net of wrinkles radiating out from his eyes. She has to wonder how many years he has been holding court in drab little places like this place. Probably for more than a century. Sure. “Do you know why you won’t?” he asks.
She says, “Tell me.”
“I won’t let you leave.”
“And why not?” she says with her voice cool and level.
“Because you’d go somewhere else and if you weren’t stealing our business here, you’d likely steal business from our friends.” He waves at the other whores, one or two of them nodding in response. “So you see, we’re not letting you go, darling.”
Inside her snow-white purse, hidden, is a small pistol carrying a full charge. She stole that from Dirk, too.
He says, “A shit-fed Flower.”
She can feel the gun inside her purse and wonders what kinds of noise that would make around Brulé. A Flower pokes holes in some working people, killing several, and the police are hunting night and day to find her. Lord, she tells herself, that’s not what she needs. Things just keep getting worse and worse.
“I’m sitting with a shit-fed Flower.”
“Please just let me go.” She works to make her voice sound helpless and confused, a little, and she says, “I’m not here to steal anyone’s business.”
“Then why?”
“To meet my owner. I’m supposed to meet him soon,” and she shrugs. “But fine. I’ll go.”
The whore is profoundly disgusted. He snorts and spreads both hands on the tabletop and presses downward. “What would you cost someone?” he asks. “No, no. Don’t think of standing. Just sit and tell me what you’d cost.”
For an instant she has a foolish thought about charming him. She tries a weak, beguiling smile. The smallest expressions on Flowers are enticing. A good Flower’s smile can melt the sternest countenance, and she shows her small perfect teeth and makes a delicate purring sound designed to steal away tensions and a person’s will.
“Don’t fuck with me, precious.”
She lets the smile melt away, feigning injury, and she squeezes the purse and decides where she will shoot him.
“So maybe you’re special. Maybe we’re nothing.” He nods toward the back of the bar, saying, “We were talking between ourselves and decided that maybe someone’s trying to press the rules, putting something special into the marketplace, and maybe they won’t stop pressing until we stop them. Do you see what I’m telling you?”
She waits.
The whore’s face shows blood. He breathes through his teeth and begins to stand, glancing over a shoulder and gesturing. “I bet you’re worth a fortune. Huh? We’re talking about what? Artificial genetics, sure. A brain that learns quick. Tutors and taxes up the butt and the etceteras. Well,” he says, “too fucking bad.”
She’s gotten up out of her chair. Her legs are telling her not to try outrunning him. She can’t. And the cut on her thigh is all flames and razors.
The whore’s coming around the table. “An artificial cunt,” he says. “Brulé is clean and simple, and people are people. You see?” She has a hand inside her purse, feeling its natural warmth and the cool butt of the gun. He is reaching towards her without hurrying, without concern, unaware of the gun’s barrel as it noses out at his crotch. Then a stranger’s hand takes the whore by a shoulder and turns him. The whore mutters, “What—?” He is completely turned. He says, “Who the fuck—?” and starts to wrestle with the strange sudden man, grunting and growing madder by the moment.
She sees a sharp dark face and the leggy body keeping the whore at arm’s length. The pretty-boy muscles look marvelous but they can’t connect. The whore swings and the tall man lets him take his swings, ducking them without really working. Then the whore rushes him and the tall man grabs a wrist and turns him and jerks the arm up and twists and puts the whore’s face to the floor, delivering pain so fast that there’s only a muttered cry before the body goes limp. The glass skullcap, sensing injury, starts to flash red. The bar is filled with blood-faced whores who come at them, and the tall man stands over the unconscious whore and looks at Chiffon, saying, “Can you run like the wind?”
She shakes her head, stepping away from the table and taking her hand out of her purse.
“Okay,” he says. “Relax.” The other whores are furious but uncertain, their mouths open and fists clenched. They glance at one another, trying to decide on what to do and how, and the tall man looks at them and says, “How are you going to make livings when you’re broken? Huh?”
The whores form a half-circle. One of them throws a chess piece, and it comes at them spinning, hitting the bar and screaming louder than the pawns. Chiffon sees the smashed piece laying on the floor, leaking a sweet alcoholic sap. The big male whores are coming at them, encouraging themselves with glances and harsh words. Chiffon gets behind the tall man, thinking of the gun again, then the whores rush them, keeping low, and the man puts his foot into their faces and throats and cuts several of them down. But others get close, shouting. They swing and connect, and they curse and move and swing again, and the tall man works hard on their faces. He uses closed fists and crisp swings. She hears the skulls pop and each of them goes down with a strange sudden grace, then he puts one of his big hands to Chiffon’s neck and squeezes gently, the grip light and dry.
“Come on,” he says. “Walk slow and easy.”
The whores are melting away. Skullcaps are throbbing with the bright red light, coloring the smoke and washing out the old-fashioned holos. The two of them leave the bar, walking, no one daring to give chase, and they find themselves in a strip of parkland sandwiched between tall buildings. There are trees around them and streams threading their way through the darkness, and the moon throws speckled beams down through gaps in the canopy. She can smell the rain drying. She turns and turns. A couple Morningers are in the distance, huge and dark and shiny black. They mean nothing. They work in the mantle mines and they mean nothing, and no, she can’t see a willowy man or a rainbow-colored man. No Dirk. No Minus. And the boy is still nowhere. She doesn’t know where to look, or how, or even if she should.
“You know, you shouldn’t go into a place like that again. Not in this town.” The tall man sounds like an adult instructing a child not to trust spiders. It’s a common voice for people who have never been in the company of a Flower. “It’s not particularly safe.”
She thanks him, smiling in a large way and telling him that he saved her life. No doubts. “I was stupid and I know it. But lucky,” she says. The man’s face is stained by the moon, and he seems a little angry even when he sounds patient and knowing. His eyes are narrowed and his breathing is deep and slow, and he regards this
odd Flower while the two of them walk together. “Anyway,” she says, “let me pay you for your trouble. I should.”
They’re walking beside a little stream, half-exposed.
“Anything of mine is yours,” she says. It is one of the greatest lies ever told, she imagines. And again her thigh begins to ache.
He says nothing.
She says her full name.
He says, “Indeed?” He repeats, “Miss Luscious Chiffon,” and seems to halfway laugh.
“You’re a brave man,” she swears, wondering why he did it. Maybe it was his glands making him do it, except he doesn’t seem the kind to be won so easily. “What’s your name? What do I call you, Brave Man?”
He is wondering what to do. She reads it in his face.
“I can pay you. I have a little money, plus these pearls.” She strokes her necklace and says, “Real ones. Garden made.”
He says, “Steward,” with a simple flat voice.
“Steward?” She repeats it several times, working for that perfect cadence and color. “Why don’t you take me home, Steward? I’d let you. I’d like you to, or something.” She touches the back of an arm and opens ducts in her fingertips, extruding a crazy mix of pheromones and assorted subtle potions. They’re absorbed through the skin and make the humid hot air intoxicating. “Please,” she says. “Please?”
“Who’s to miss you?” he asks.
“Pardon?”
“You mentioned an owner. Before.” He pauses. “Were you waiting for your owner?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“No one.” She wonders what she can say and succeed with now. “I’m not waiting for anyone,” she tells him.
He blinks. His face is tough to read. He’s not going to be easy to win, and that’s good. Difficult is best. Difficult means he is a man accustomed to being strong, in charge, full of conviction and security with everything in his life. Very good. If she handles everything right, making him her ally, then he won’t even realize what has happened. Like she did with Dirk. It will be the first time in his tough-minded life—
“All right,” he says. “Payment. It was a tough situation. I got you out. I think…oh, five hundred is cheap. Okay?” He stares straight at her eyes and gives a little shrug, pretending not to notice the cocktails running through his bloodstream. “Is that fine?”
“I’ll give you these,” she says, one hand touching the Garden pearls, and her leg feeling awful. No more painkiller, she thinks. She thinks about the depth of that cut, bandaged and treated with clotting foams, and it’s amazing to think what she is carrying inside herself. She wants to shiver. She wants to cry out for joy, telling the world. “Is that enough?” she asks.
“Too much,” he answers. “One pearl and I’ll give you change. Okay?”
An honest man. She coos and agrees to the terms.
“So where’s your owner?” he persists.
“It’s complicated.” Putting on a needing face, she works with the moonlight and sounds strained and tired, all of those qualities true, and she tells him, “I’d love to go with you, Steward. For tonight. If I could.” She says, “I can be very good with you.”
He says nothing, tempted by the proposition.
“The two of us and such pleasure,” she promises. She smiles brightly and bravely and touches him once again.
Steward resists. They walk and he shakes free of her hands once, then again, and finally he pauses and says, “There’s a floater pad ahead. I’m going home and I guess I can’t stop you from following me.” He smiles, his face and all of his body suddenly shy.
She has won. She knows she has won, and she follows. They go up the pad’s stairs and she thinks again of the Quito boy, wondering if he is waiting here for her. There might have been a mistake. Several Terran women come down past them and giggle among themselves and then pause to watch Chiffon, simply curious. The boy isn’t waiting here, either. She knew he wouldn’t be waiting, she tells herself, and she looks into the shadows for anyone odd or out-of-place. It’s critical not to be followed. She has to get away without complications…if only to the other side of Brulé. They’re alone on the pad, its glass surface rough and rubbery and damp from the hard rain, and a little wind comes up and they turn their backs to it and she asks Steward what it is that he does for a living. He doesn’t seem like the sort of person who lives on investments.
“I do this,” he volunteers.
“What?”
“Troubleshoot,” he says with that matter-of-fact voice.
She asks, “What? Are you some kind of professional…what?”
He says nothing.
“A professional hero? Is that it?”
He admits, “I’ve got some skills,” and in the fashion of all good heroes, he gives a humble shrug and says no more.
A floater is descending.
He looks up at it and she looks at him, wondering what he could mean to her, her hero, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if everything worked out for the best? It might. It just might, she thinks. And while her leg aches to the bone, and while they stand together and wait, she tells herself that this might be her chance to find something sweet and lasting. That’s all she’s ever wanted. At least during this lifetime, she thinks.
The Old Quarter is directly below—an assemblage of archaic buildings and the crosshatched patterns of old streets. The Earth is famous for its relics and the tangible sense of history, and Brulé City does what it can to preserve what it can with tax breaks and rent supports. Nonetheless, the Old Quarter tenants are mostly low-profit or low-profile businesses like the smoky bars and brothels, plus some cheap hotels and tiny secondhand shops. Most of its permanent residents are entities like the AIs and Ghosts—things that appreciate cheap, stable housing and don’t particularly care about their surroundings.
AIs live everywhere, in truth. They are the miniscule descendants of old-fashioned computers, sophisticated and tirelessly quick. They exist within World-Net and System-Net. They are the various Nets, in truth, each of them linked with every other AI and all of them serving mankind in an endless array of ways. Like now, thinks Steward. This particular floater is piloted by an AI. He has entered into a contract with it—service in exchange for a small fee—and it will do its job efficiently and gladly, no doubts in its mind as to who is servant and who rules the System. Me, thinks Steward. And he laughs without sound.
Ghosts are tied into World-Net and depend on it utterly. They are people whose bodies have died for whatever reason, but their minds have persisted as so many hard crystal chips and encoded patterns and memories and maybe the human soul, too. It’s their humanness that stirs controversy. Some people consider them odd AIs, while others pretend they are nothing more than complex tombstones meant to mimic dead souls. Certainly they aren’t alive, whatever their state. At least most flesh-on-blood people believe they’re something else. The Ghosts below—and Steward knows more than a few by name—depend upon World-Net. They employ banks of AIs that work hard to build them lifelike sensations, creating a vague kind of reality out of nothingness, and normally Steward will look down on the buildings and feel sorry for them. He does. Alive or not, Ghosts are smart enough to know what they’re missing. All the AIs in all of World-Net couldn’t produce a true Brulé City. It’s too complicated and crazy and fickle and beautiful for mere machines to generate. It is.
Tonight, however, he doesn’t feel so sorry for them.
He halfway wishes he could be Ghost so he wouldn’t have to breathe every so often, sucking in the heavy scent of the Flower beside him. He feels his body tingling and his glands being teased, and some voice deep inside him warns him, reciting just some of the capacities attributed to Flowers.
Steward mistrusts pleasure.
Pain he knows. Torture and suffering he can manage in a host of ways, but he isn’t even sure how to stay wary with Miss Chiffon. Their little floater is climbing up into traffic and heading east, and she is staring at all of Brulé City, sayin
g nothing, Steward breathing and watching her ample body and the delicate face, thinking back to Yellowknife again. When he was growing up, day after day, the Elders spoke of suffering and survival. They swore pain wasn’t just their means of waging war, it was a great instructive force too, and to prove the sanctity of their philosophy they stuck talons into Steward’s chest and burned his toes and fingers with hot metal brands. Everyone underwent the same training, male or female. It was an essential part of their education. Pain can be channeled and focused and used for a variety of tasks, from defeating enemies to bolstering your own resolve. It was a question of understanding its usage, the Elders maintained. With practice and more practice a person won skills and the iron-hard discipline required.
Chiffon? he thinks. What a preposterous name!
A Flower’s name, sure. Right-sounding in Quito, sure, but not in little Brulé.
The Old Quarter has dropped behind now. The rest of the city is dark and low by comparison, built from rounded living shapes looking smooth under the moon. There are no streets, just paths intended for walking and bikes. Floaters move commuters when feet and pedals are unwilling. And underground, at several spots, stations exist where the tubetrains pause, the tubes empty of air so the trains can run at supersonic speeds—linking Brulé to the populated lands in the south.
The city began as a dirt-and-wood hamlet where farmers came to sell crops and trade gossip. That was a couple thousand years ago, or more, and Brulé was just as remote as it is today. In a relative sense. The seaports were the hubs of the world in those times. Times change. Now the hubs are built around the skyhooks—towers of hyperfiber rising to the lucrative geosynchronous orbits—and some ninety-plus percent of the Earth’s population is shoulder to shoulder on the equator. Quito and Jarvis and Singapore are some of the hubs. New York and Havana and Cairo are drowned and eroding under the deep warm sea. A billion people live in the smallest hub city. Industry and commerce are centered some forty thousand kilometers over their heads. Brulé City, by comparison, is a baby with two million citizens. Plus the Ghosts, of course. And the ever-present AIs.
