Cormorant Run

by Lilith Saintcrow

  Her eyes itched too. The linoleum landscape blurred.

  The Cormorant, Ashe whispered in her ear. We’re gonna get it, you and me. And we’ll live forever.

  Now, at last, Svinga could let her eyes leak hot salt water. Silently, her nose getting full and finally trickling out onto the pillowcase, she stared until her body, twitching slightly every once in a while, decided it was safe enough to sleep.

  PART THREE

  BASE

  13

  FEW ANSWERS

  … Skorczeny takes another route, assembling what he calls a “constellation” of qualities rifters tend to share. Resistance to authority, paired with a high chart curve on the Faulkner free-association series, are matched with an equally high score on the Poulsbo critical-thinking scale (Relics, 151–212). Alcohol and caffeine use are almost universal, but the use of other drugs or substances is extremely low (Relics, 89–103). Attachment disorders and paranoia are common, as are extremes of impulse control. Skorczeny cannot decide whether rifters have excellent capacity for delayed gratification (Relics, 214–238) or none at all (Into the Rift, 125–146). Even the taciturn among them show a great deal of verbal aptitude and ability, and an overwhelming percentage (hovering between 80 and 90 percent, depending on which factors you wish to adjust the numbers for) report they prefer traveling to staying in one place. Remarks such as “Got to visit all the Rifts,” or “It don’t matter which one you go in, they all the same,” pepper the narrative.

  Their casualty rate, habits of emigration, and the necessity for a certain secretive cast of mind make even so dedicated a data-gatherer as Skorczeny rely on a great deal of guesswork.

  They are one of the few discrete subgroups that seem truly egalitarian—female rifters are as common as male (Relics, 80–112). Promiscuity is higher among male rifters than female, with some notable exceptions, but most tend to be serially monogamous and indeed to prefer non-rifter partners (Case Studies, vol. 3). Despite this, the birth rate for these unions is very low, and further affected by what Skorczeny calls the Third Wave—various quasi-deformities or strange talents the children of rifters and their partners overwhelmingly display. The Third Wave will be treated later, in Chapter 8.

  Most rifters are highly intelligent but resistant to school, unless it is for a trade or something similar. Mechanics seem to make good rifters, while scientists, no matter their drive to gather data, do not seem to fare nearly as well. Strugovsky, the father of Rift sciences, dismisses all rifters as criminals, but as pioneers in a highly lucrative and quasi-legal trade, it would be a wonder if none of them ever came into conflict with law enforcement. Their convictions, however, tend to cluster at the petty end of the enforcement spectrum—drunkenness, small theft, vagrancy, or vandalism. Copley’s work suggests rifters are comfortable with interpersonal violence but strikingly reluctant to use it until other strategies to de-escalate a situation have failed (Fights and Flights, 409–553).

  The most intriguing assertion Skorczeny makes is that rifters can tell, with a high degree of accuracy, who else might survive regular trips inside what they call “the blur,” if they’re guided properly. The evidence for this is more anecdotal than many researchers would like, but even Skorczeny’s detractor Morley agrees that they recognize potential rifters and that a successful rifter is usually right when he or she predicts the advent of another successful rifter. However, when pressed to answer why a certain person might succeed and another might not, very few answers are forthcoming.

  —Who Are They: A Compilation of Current Research on the Phenomenon of “Rifters,” by Garden, Horry, and Blake

  14

  SPRAY OF PINE

  The Tumbledown had once been a barn. When the Event hit, far-flung suburbs and semi-rural slices were flooded with refugees; the shacks went up as fast as you could say “motherfucking aliens.” Dislocation, sudden concomitant poverty, and governmental crisis all tangled together; the biggest lifesavers were community organizers on the ground trying to get at least some of the people fed and sheltered. You could see it in the tired frames and lean-tos slumping against the more solid pre-Event structures. What was temporary in the smoking chaos had since become accretion, slowly solidifying. Near some of the more active Rifts, slum-clearings were beginning; the major cities that had been swallowed by larger Rift-pimples were still in prime geographic locations, with infrastructure built about them. New skyscrapers thrust upward, fingers raised in defiance of the interruption. If the rich survived, they grabbed the best of what was left; those who became rich helped. Within eighteen months of the Crash the social strata had firmed.

  Humans are resilient.

  A heavy old-fashioned neon sign in the shape of a fiery mythical bird stuttered over the Tumbledown’s double doors, the upper story full of blind, darkened windows. None of the glass was broken anymore, not since the rifters had started drinking there. Nobody knew why they picked certain places, some close to the blurline and others on the other side of settlements or towns, as far away as they could get. The Tumbledown was about ten klicks from the base gates, and word was joyriders or nubas* used to juice up there before catching the railroad tracks a short distance away, following them straight into the Rift.

  Most of them died on impact with the blurline, not knowing how to cross. Others vanished inside and didn’t return. A few came back out, and either drank or drugged themselves to death—or apprenticed to a professional rifter. Though professional was a very loose term. If you survived going in without a guide, you were already lucky enough to make any other rifter nervous. Around here, with the Rift locked tight and sardies patrolling with flamethrowers as well as rifles, nubas no longer used the tracks.

  The rifters, even though the slugwall was off-limits, stayed. If there were ways in past the deeze patrols, nobody was stupid enough to advertise them. New ones came into town, too, and sometimes one of the local rifters disappeared, either to another city or past the blur.

  All part of the game.

  Svinga stamped on an ancient, tattered mat woven of tak-fiber† and strips of ancient tires made almost obsolescent by the advent of leavs. The poor to middling still drove earthbound rigs, but more and more cars were coming standard with leav cells instead of wheels. Man made the wheel, but they made the Rift, the proverb ran.

  She ducked her head a little, one eye closed as she hit the swinging doors then snapped open and the other closed so the sudden dimness didn’t completely blind her. The lid-flicker, just like a lizard, turned her face into a mask, generous lips barely closed over her teeth. Outside, the shiny black leav from the base rocked slightly on its springs, its smoked-glass cockpit closed but the dillybotter* gun at its crest turning in lazy, random increments. A regular junker would be stripped to bones unless it was a known rifter’s ride; an armored springer meant live ammunition just looking to take an arm off a petty ride-thief. There could even be a sardie driver in the temp-controlled cabin, bored but comfortable as he waited for his passenger—or for someone to give him an excuse to shoot.

  Svin hopped down the half step, landing cat-light as if she had just gone over the blurline, braced for anything. A quick scan of the interior showed two occupied booths, an old, crack-faced Wurlitzer playing a pop-hissing anthem in a corner, a full table near the window with the shadow of the safety grille making a curling pattern over the tented-together inhabitants; there were two slumped forms at the bar and a ’tender the size of a Jukou ’56, with just as much chrome in his grille. The teeth were a custom job, polished metal lit with tiny speckles of thermaglit,* and they peeped between a black mustache attached to muttonchops that continued around the back of the skull, leaving the proud high dome of the scalp bare and oil-gleaming. Hard muscle padded with fat had not yet degenerated, and the white apron tied around the barkeep’s capacious belly hadn’t achieved a last-call state of spill and wipe.

  The bartender’s tiny coal-dark eyes fastened on the new arrival, and as Svinga eased across the rough lumber floor he visib
ly considered asking for ident. By the time she reached the tables, though, he was already reaching for a glass, polishing it with a snow-white expel cloth.

  Bartenders got to know the look, and you didn’t ask a rifter how old. It wasn’t good business.

  “Pine,” she said, when she got close enough. “Two, full.” She slapped a crisp fifty-mark onto the bar’s glossy, afternoon-clean surface.

  You also didn’t ask if they were sure when they asked for borderline-illegal booze, or enough of it to knock four strong men down.

  “Yes ma’am.” The ’tender hurried along the bar, ducking into a small alcove behind a beaded curtain. One of the two lumps at the bar lifted his matted beer-blond head a little, peering through a haze strong enough to drop passing fruit flies with alcohol saturation. For all that, those eyes were gleaming, and unsettlingly lucid.

  Even the purest ethyl couldn’t take the Rift away. But it sure as hell blunted the edge.

  The bartender came back, each step rumbling through the floorboards and communicating to Svin’s boots. “Two pine.” He carried a bottle sloshing with venomous green, and his wide paw scooped up a second tumbler as he passed shining ranks of them arranged on gleaming wooden shelves. The mirror behind the liquor shelves was darkened just enough, so you didn’t have to watch yourself drink if you didn’t want to. If you did want to, you could peer at your own ghost.

  Svin didn’t look. Gray from prison, a monkey face and her huge teeth, it didn’t matter. She nodded as the barkeep set the second tumbler down next to the first.

  “Crystal?” he asked.

  Svin shook her head. Neat, that was the only way to drink it. Hard and fast, without ice knocking at your teeth. He poured, and when he slid the first one her way, she dipped two fingers in the oily liquid and flicked them at the floor.

  “Ah.” The barkeeper nodded, a slow, ruminative movement. Svin couldn’t decide whether he was more walrus or bovine. “You here for Rory?”

  “Rory?” In other words, no.

  “Headed down the tracks. Got past sentries, but the blur killed him on impact. Changed his nuts with his head, stupid kid. Chalke told him not to go.”

  “I’m not here for Rory.” Chalke? That sounds familiar. She kept her left fingertips on the bill. “Chalke’s got an ocular in his left, and a limp?”

  “That’s the one.” The barkeep poured the second pine, a generous measure, and slid it toward her. Svinga lifted all but one finger off the fifty. “You lookin’ for him?”

  “No.” She lifted the first glass, weighing it. Touched it to her lips. “I’m here for the Rat.” Ashe wouldn’t stand here and drink, she’d take it to a booth and settle where she could watch the door.

  Even the static-wheezing Wurlitzer in the corner paused for breath. Svin took the first mouthful without exhaling, threw the second as far back as she could, did not gag on the third, and when she popped the glass down on the bar with a heavy, confident sound the ’tender’s mouth closed with a snap.

  “Pig?” His tone was low, confidential, and his eyebrows could have been braided into his muttonchops if he’d a mind for it.

  Svinga suppressed a belch, nodded. Waited for her stomach to figure out what the fuck she’d just done. Pine was supposed to taste like an ancient industrial solvent, and it was a hell of an accelerant. There were stories of rifters fighting off scuttles or pinchoks* with a spray of pine and a spark.

  The bartender nodded back. “I’m Rafello.” His ham-hands rested, one on the counter, the other loosely clasping the bottle of pine. His knuckles held pads of scarring, boxer’s mitts. A good one, if his skullmeat wasn’t completely decoupled by repeated pounding. “Put your paper away. I got something for you.”

  Svin didn’t argue. She whisked the fifty back into her pocket, a darting sideways glance daring the blond, watching rifter down the bar to add anything to the conversation. He just blinked, blearily, focusing not on her but past her, peering into memory or the mists of expectation.

  Her stomach exploded from the fierce warmth, a nova dropped into her middle, and she pulled the second, full tumbler toward the edge of the bar until its bottom peeked over. She swallowed pine-scented, burning saliva, hard, twice.

  Ashe had left her something after all.

  15

  IN HIS FAVOR

  In a frigid wooden-walled room with a polished metal desk, a pen scratched against one of the endless requisition-and-report forms. The ancient black tetherphone, its cable snaking to the wall, buzzed viciously, and General Kopelund reached for it without looking up, his weary dark eyes peering from flesh-pouches.

  “Uh, General, sir?” The voice on the other end of the patchy connection was familiar, but the note of hesitation was new. Bechter was not the indecisive type. “She’s been in there for four hours.”

  “So?” She’s been in prison for years; of course she’s going on a bender. Kopelund glanced at the atomic clock attached to his office wall, a small blue marble rotating easily in its three-pronged cenestat setting. It would continue ticking when he was dead and gone, unless someone pried the popper out to use in something else.

  As far as the scientists could tell, the energy from the little blue globes was clean and infinite, or so close as to be indistinguishable. They could even divide the goddamn things in a C-stat engine, each marble the same size, same weight, same mass, and emitting near-infinite energy in packets that adapted to whatever small appliance it was attached to. They couldn’t make them bigger, couldn’t run cars or large equipment off them, but the scientists were so fucking proud of themselves you’d think they’d solved time itself.

  “So should I go in and get her? The place is filling up and it’s getting dark.”

  Kopelund suppressed a sigh, leaning back in his wide, cushioned, very expensive Ygraat chair. His window was half open, and damp almost-spring chill stole in with the sound of parade drill in the courtyard, boots smacking and yells so familiar he barely heard them anymore. He liked his office cold, barely using the thermagrate in the winter but dialing up the frostweave in summer’s swelter. You just thought better with a cool breeze or two. His uniform jacket was hung on the wrought-iron stand near the closed door, he was in his undersleeve, and small curls of steam sometimes lifted from his hairy bare forearms when the draft from the window freshened. “Negative, Bechter.”

  “What if she slipped out the back?”

  Then I’ll burn that fat fuck Rafello’s place to the ground and send you to the front lines in fucking Guyana. “She hasn’t.”

  “… Sir?” Was that a whine in the man’s voice?

  What the fuck? Kope had chosen one of the real hardasses to go with her, just in case. Or, at least, he’d thought the man was a hardass. Looked like a drastic revision of Bechter’s personnel file was in order. “What, for fuck’s sake?”

  “She just came out. She’s got a … a bag with her, a big one. Sir, she’s drunk.”

  Now that was interesting. The Tumbledown’s owner would likely have a full report on whatever deal she’d made inside, but getting it out of him would likely call for more than Kopelund wanted to trade. It wasn’t necessary, especially since Rafello refused to touch guns. For that, she’d need more than a kilo and a visit to the most visible rifter watering hole. “Well, it’s a bar. What did you expect?”

  “Sir … she just … she just vomited. On the leav.”

  “Well, get her inside with a bucket, soldier. What the blue fuckbuckle you calling me for?”

  “I just …” Muffled thumps. “She’s banging on the door.”

  “Then let her in and quit wasting my time!” Kopelund slammed the receiver down. He felt around on his desk for a small black notepad, flipped it open, and scribbled down a reminder to put the man on shithole-cleaning duty for the foreseeable future, as well as slip a note in his personnel file.

  As for the rifter, well, if she stepped out of line before stepping into the blur, there was a hole back in Guan ready for her. Even if she did do the impossib
le, going in and returning with the one thing Kope wanted, it would be … impolitic … to keep her around for long. If she managed to bring out something profitable, the risk of keeping her for another run wasn’t one he liked to take.

  Kope’s chair squeaked a little as he bent back over the paperwork. All he had to do was keep everything quiet for a few more days. Then the team would be in the Rift, and they could second-guess him all they wanted before this brat Svinga came out with the thing Ashe the Rat couldn’t catch. If she didn’t, he was laying his groundwork now to make it seem someone else’s fault. There was never any shortage of patsies around.

  Stacked in his favor, like a gamble should be. Kopelund kept working.

  16

  LIGHT OR HEAVY

  Nightfall brought them into the Tumbledown, bright- or bleary-eyed, thin and quick or stolid-thick. A year ago there would have been a double score of them, but tonight there were only twenty-two, and their hush filled the entire bar with a strange, charged expectancy. The lundies who came in—a grupper* or four, some nubes, a few spinsoaks† the rifters could tolerate or had even adopted as mascots in their sideways way—were the only ones talking or laughing. A group of stick-thin, bright-haired pollypleeths‡ with gold-toned Aurovoxes in their pink ears and expensive Chaboflot trainers was downing a pitcher of mimosas in one of the booths, aghast and amused in their affected way by their own daring.

  Sabby the Pooka was at the bar, sobering up after a long day spent nursing one smokzkey§ after another. He’d even napped at dusk, but as soon as the sun slid down, he began to wake up, just as usual. He unfolded like corktape grass after a hard rain, shoving dusty hands through his blond mane, and didn’t look up when a familiar bulk settled on the stool just to his left.