Cormorant Run

by Lilith Saintcrow

  “Not mutual.”

  Vetch. Not a name Aleks knew; he stole small glances at the man’s pants. Heavy denim with flexarmor patches, those boots much larger than hers but queerly similar, the dungarees fraying where the heels hit them, slightly too long. The newcomer walked differently, heel-first and rolling through, but both of them seemed to only step where the cobbles were clear of trash, mud, or other substances it was best to avoid stepping in.

  These cobblestones were older than the Event. Were there any inside QR-715? Maybe he should ask her. He’d requested, in writing, that Kopelund put him on the team going in. Even if he didn’t officially, if Aleks just showed up, maybe he could wriggle onto the team. He already had a brand-new backpack, better than the battered one he’d taken to uni.

  The rifter—Svinga—stopped. Aleks almost ran into her.

  “I’m letting it go.” For the first time, she spoke above a flat, disinterested mumble. Now each word was enunciated clearly, and she actually had a very clean, sweet alto. “Old history, time done, blur gone.”

  The man spat, a juicy wad of saliva. No brown-tea in the splatter, which meant he didn’t chew bacca. Maybe he had yellow teeth anyway, and probably a stubble-hard jaw. “Ha.”

  “Serious.” As if she ever sounded anything else. Aleks was beginning to think this woman had never joked in her life, never laughed. Vetch. He hadn’t heard the name, but something about the boots triggered a fuzzy memory. Had he seen this rifter in the Tumbledown before? Could he look up now?

  “Come off it.” The man jabbed one heel down on a clear cobble, as if he’d seen a bug that needed killing.

  She was unimpressed. “I’m not going to shiv you, and you can keep your part of the payoff. It’s fucking spent already, if I know you.”

  “I invested. Fifty percent’s yours, for the trouble.” The stranger shifted a little, leaning subtly toward her.

  The dim memory wouldn’t surface, no matter how hard Aleks concentrated. She’d been in prison for two years, right? He hadn’t heard that she’d ever been around QR-715 before. Rifters moved around a lot, though. Itchy feet, some said. Wanderlust. Others said they were all criminals anyway, hopping away when things got hot.

  She didn’t move, even to lean away. Just kept her weight balanced easily on those small, oddly delicate feet. “I don’t want it.” Slow and patient, as if speaking to a not-terribly-bright child.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  There was a long pause, the chaos of sellers and buyers around them a dark surfroar. No sunlight got down here, the leaning buildings blocked out everything but a narrow slice of gray, drizzly cloud overhead. Aleks’s cheeks felt hot and damp. Only another rifter would say something so insulting, right? And especially in that angry tone, the words sharp as a Harrison spike in a short-term measure of radiation fluctuations.

  “Keep it.” Svinga finally turned, neatly, her heels placed just so. She would be peering up into the man’s face, if he was taller than her, and based on the size of his shoes and shadow, he was. “You worked for it. For once.”

  They stood like that, toe to toe, and Aleks burned with curiosity. He kept sneaking glances further and further up the man’s legs. Thick, strong thighs, and a pair of callused hands hanging by his sides, opening and closing as if this man felt Svinga’s throat against his palms.

  Or someone else’s.

  “Bitch,” the new man said, thickly. “Did she teach you that?”

  “She didn’t teach me anything I didn’t already know.” One step back, two, the small rifter hopping just like a tiny drab bird.

  Aleks peeked a little further up. The man’s belt buckle was a large round piece of pig iron, twisted in strange dollops and whorls like the slugwall itself. Yes, he knew that buckle—a dark-haired rifter with a big nose, thermabonded teeth, and a set, disdainful face. Aleks began trying to guess how one could make a buckle exactly like that. If he studied the contours, he could probably reproduce it, and—

  “Come on, kid,” Svinga said, and he moved to obey. There was a wet splorching, and something cold immediately seeped past the flexfoam on his trainers. He should have worn boots. Like her.

  The other man just stood there, but he wasn’t done yet. “Tani.”

  For some reason, the single word made the blood rise to Aleks’s cheeks again. Like standing in front of the ancient potbellied oven at his grandmother’s while his aunt made samda* the old-fashioned way. It was the caressing of the vowels, the way the man lingered over the name. Just two small syllables, but there was something in them—a poisonous longing, a strange possessive inflection.

  “She’s dead, Vetch,” the small rifter replied. “Over the blur and into the hole.” Back to that small, colorless tone, but distant. Like a shout from a faraway hill.

  She set off again, and Aleks followed in her wake, his palms sweating and his ears burning too, as if he had just heard his parents moaning in the middle of the night, their bed’s springs creaking.

  19

  HASSLED ANYMORE

  The canteen went quiet again as soon as Svin entered. Maybe the kid had been yammering that the rifter had business in Deegan Alley, and maybe not. In any case, Kopelund had to expect she would be making connections or picking up necessaries. If Ashe hadn’t left all Svin’s gear with Rafello, she wouldn’t have let the kid trail her into the Alley. The little snotnosed chaser had all the brains of a mipsik,* she should have left him in there to rot. It might even have been interesting to watch the predators circle him.

  On the other hand, if he was all Kopelund had watching her, it was better to leave him in place. If forced, the older man might actually put someone competent on her tail, and in her current half-starved condition, that just sounded like too much trouble. A half-grown nube was only dangerous inside the blur.

  She glanced over the big empty space and decided she didn’t like it. Too many eyes pointed her way, and the air didn’t feel usual. Off to her right, in what was the blind spot for an ordinary person, there was … something. Svinga kept moving, but every fine hair on her body rose, her pulse spiking and settling into a hard thumping just below fight-or-flight. Her pupils dilated slightly, the room brightening.

  He probably thought he was quiet. He also probably thought that, because he was bigger, he had the advantage.

  Svin turned, very slowly, keeping her grav-sink * nice and low. Her knees were loose, her hands too, and the only surprise was that it was the sardie who had flown the leav out to the Tumbledown. She could barely remember the end of that ride, hugging the bag Ashe had left her and feeling the sawtooth metal in her chest spin and spin and spin, digging through meat and bone alike. What was his name?

  She hadn’t asked, or cared.

  Svin exhaled softly, measuring him from toe to top. Yeah, regular off-duty sardie with a wheat-colored flattop. Grablee boots, with their soles capable of gripping the slickest of surfaces, fatigue bottoms, regulation-issue belt, and he’d probably chosen the T-shirt because his muscles showed through the thin blue cotton. Looked like he lifted, probably on the gravflex machines standard in every installation built before the post-Crash budget crunch. His arms had the look—the biceps bulked and the triceps merely defined, not actually used.

  He was posturing for someone. Did it matter who?

  Her feet were already in the right place. She regarded him curiously, all of her loose and ready, her mapbag hitched further back on her hip and buckled to her belt. It wouldn’t be moving while she fought, and everything inside was tamped down the way she liked it. A familiar friend, but it sat differently because she was skinnier these days. The sardie stood far enough away, for now, and his chest puffed up a little.

  “Hey, rifter bitch.” Loud enough to carry. He wanted this to be public. She hadn’t pegged him as one of the big dogs, the ones you had to challenge immediately when you walked into the yard just to keep your ribs unshivved and your ass unpeddled.

  “Hey, sardie scum.” She didn’t even have to think of the ri
ght insult. It was so stupidly easy. The only thing that puzzled her was why.

  The ride back from the Tumbledown was a blur, her entire body rejecting the amount of pine she’d poured down her throat, and she hadn’t been the one to tell him to stay in the leav while she drank anyway. That was Kopelund’s order. It didn’t look like this asshole cared. Tables full of sardies behind him—more than there should be, he’d been working himself up to this, and word had spread. Bored out of their minds, they would welcome a good bit of violence. One of those male communal rituals, like a Zeeland splash* or a chunnit.†

  Why was this particular man the one, though?

  Well, again, it didn’t really matter. What did was getting out of this with as little damage as possible. There were few of the science staff around at this hour, and one of them was the older bald man—Barko—who had stood next to her while she watched the slugwall that morning. His rumpled lab coat had pockets crammed with a paperback book and a couple anonymous bumps that were probably forgotten items, he had that distracted look. The nube who worked with him wasn’t at late lunch, probably a good thing. Barko, in the canteen line with his tray half full, had turned to see what the whispers were.

  “You fenched* all over my leav,” the sardie said, this time not loudly enough to really carry. “You know what they do with dogs?” He grinned, his left top incisor glittering gold. Which was a waste of good thermabonding, but some went for flash like that. Mostly dumbass Tarnes† boys. He didn’t look quick enough to be from that slice of the world, but she braced herself in case he was.

  “I don’t go outside my species.” She made each word nice, and crisp, and clear. “Dogfucker.”

  He stopped dead, the confident smile falling so fast it was amazing it didn’t shatter on the floor. It took a few seconds for reality to work through his ears and batter its way into the meat masquerading as brains between them.

  Wouldn’t last long in the Rift. She could even request him for the team and tip him into the blur, if she wanted. Easy as breathing.

  “Bechter!” A short, commanding bark. “What’s going on?” The bald scientist had left his tray; his heels made black marks on the floor as he hurried toward them. Svin tilted her head, considering this, watching the blond man. He was going to be trouble, no matter what, and if she didn’t take care of it now the next thing might be an ambush somewhere else.

  Or a shot from one of the towers while she watched the slugwall.

  Once you’ve made up your mind, Ashe said, dimly, in the close steaming burrow of one of their many rented bedrooms, don’t give the motherfucker a moment more to breathe.

  It was academic anyway. Bechter lunged, arms spreading, probably meaning to get her in a bear hug. Svin held her ground, waiting, weight dropping into her right knee, and when he had plenty of momentum she pitched herself aside, landing hard enough to lose her own breath. Her left leg pulled up, then jackhammered out as soon as her right hip hit the battered, blue-and-yellow-flecked linoleum, and Bechter’s knee gave sideways with a terrific splintering crack.

  Svin rolled forward, gaining hands and knees with a quick catlike movement, monkeying after the falling meat on slapping palms and bootsoles, not bothering to stand up, just scrambling.

  He didn’t shout until he hit, and then it was the bellow of a wounded beast. Svin was on him in a moment, a tiny creature leaping onto the back of a downed buffalo, one boot grinding down on his outstretched wrist, the pop of an elbow dislocating as she grabbed his left arm and levered it up, back, and at precisely the right angle; and just as he finished screaming and was whooping in another breath to yell again she had her left arm across his throat and her free hand squirming around his face, fingers turned to sharp vicious claws even though her nails were bitten down. Getting so hungry you chewed your own fingertips robbed you of a lot of things, but it left you with the habit of nibbling. Not a fair trade, but what was, in this fucked-up world?

  Screams. Chairs and tables falling, shoved aside. Svin’s left arm tightened, a skinny iron bar across Bechter’s throat while he choked on blood and snot and terror. This was not how he had expected the fight to go.

  Her fingertips sank into something soft, and he screamed afresh. Everyone else was yelling, Bechter thrashed, they couldn’t get close enough to pull her away with him moving that much. She made one last convulsive effort, wrist aching and her entire arm tensed, and when they could finally pull her off her bloody fist was clenched.

  It was Barko who pulled the fire alarm to get reinforcements, and Barko who dragged Svin off Bechter despite getting a blow to the stomach that brought up his morning coffee in a hot acid rush after things had calmed down. The sardies might have clustered the rifter and stomped her with their own heavycatch boots—not grablees, they had only intended to be spectators—if she hadn’t begun to laugh, a high-pitched crazy sound, and lifted what was in her right hand.

  It was deflated but recognizable, a long tangle of nerve and bloodstrings widening into a pale orb slimed with blood.

  Svin popped Bechter’s right eye into her mouth and began to chew. Fluid spurted between her strong white teeth, and she lifted her lips in a blood-grimed snarl that forced the collective sardies back on their heels. One of them let out a little moan of disgust, and by the time Kopelund arrived shouting, “What the fuck is going on here?” Svin knew she wouldn’t be hassled anymore at this facility.

  It was a welcome thought, even if her lunch had to wait.

  20

  STAMPED AND SIGNED

  For Christ’s sake.” Kopelund slammed his hand on the polished metal desk. His pen-cup rattled, and the molten ball of ammo he used for a paperweight—someone had fired into the slugwall with a machine gun—jumped a fraction of a millimeter. “Just like kids. I look away for two goddamn seconds.”

  Morov shrugged, his hands behind his back and his boots solidly planted in parade rest. At least Kope didn’t have to deal with mothering the assholes daily, that was his job. And they wondered why he smoked. “She threw up in his leav, and he was pissed about it.”

  “So he decided to do a beat-down on a woman a quarter of his size?” Kope spread his ass more firmly in his squeaking, expensive chair. Sooner or later that piece of engineering was going to fail spectacularly, and anyone unlucky enough to witness it would get busted too, even if they kept a straight face. “And got his eye torn out? Help me out here, Morov.”

  There was no help to be had, and Morov knew it. He just shook his dark head, aware that as the commanding officer in the canteen he should have done something before Bechter got his ass handed to him by the rifter. As it was, only skinny-ass Barko’d had the brains to do anything.

  The old man could move, when he had a mind to. Which was interesting. “Look, just tell me what to put on the paperwork.”

  “Industrial accident. Blurline duty’s full of shit, we all know that. He’ll go to Viflis and get an ocular. Then he’s coming back here and I’m going to have him scrubbing toilets until the Return.”

  “Ocular’ll disqualify him for frontline, sir.” It was a faint defense, but all Morov could offer. He didn’t like Bechter, never had, but still. Kope had a vicious streak in him, and he bit downward. There were precious few higher officers who didn’t.

  “I’ll pull a string or two. I’m busting his rank down anyway, his goddamn stipend’s going to be candy money by the time I get done.” Kopelund sighed. His nose twitched once, twice, again. A bad sign. “Should have known better, rifters are fucking crazy.”

  “Yeah, well, this one’s not making any friends. She ate his eye.” Nobody would mess with her now. Which was, Morov suspected, the point. The bitch had some brains, first getting the transport 70 who brought her a beating, and now this. He longed for a fresh cigar, and for a nip of something strong enough to undo the way his neck was already throbbing with tension.

  “What did they expect? Christ.” Kopelund now massaged at his temples with one broad, spatulate hand. “He wasn’t on your list to go in
, was he?”

  No use in lying. “Not now.”

  “Better rethink everyone else too, then. I don’t want anyone trying to fuck with the cunt before she brings out something juicy.”

  Morov almost opened his mouth, thought better of it. Fortunately, Kopelund didn’t notice. Instead, Morov looked at the half-open window. Dust grimed its corners and the thin late-winter sunshine had turned the frost on the glass into condensation, a spider-pattern of warming. It would freeze over again tonight, but not as hard as usual. The ground was softening, and there was even some greening in the packed dirt around the drillyard. It would turn to knee-deep mud soon, but that wasn’t Morov’s problem.

  No, right now his problem was getting the paperwork right so Kope wasn’t breathing down his neck all the damn time. Figuring out who he could take into the blur now who wouldn’t try something funny with the rifter once they were offbase. And, not so incidentally, trying to find a way to get out of having to go past the blur himself.

  Well, fuck, Morov decided. Can’t make him any madder than he is now. “We’re sitting on QR-715. Town’s full of rifters. They have to be getting in somehow. Why not just put a few of them on payroll?”

  Kopelund didn’t stop rubbing at his temples. “Are you an idiot, Morov?”

  “Not sure, sir.” On a good day he would answer yeah, it’s why I got promoted.

  This was not a good day.

  Kope’s piggy little gaze flickered over him. “I never had you pegged for one. Don’t act like it now.”

  “No, sir.” Which made it obvious, since Morov was well aware he was not the sharpest knife in existence, but he could work his way through some cutting if he had to. “So the stories are true. About it.”

  “Not necessarily. But even if they’re only fifty percent … even if they’re only thirty, well, there’s something to be said for getting in there. The Rat was no fool, and she wasn’t a liar either, when you could get her to talk.”