redRobe

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  ‘Get off the bike.’

  Axl did that too, turning off the engine and putting his hands down long enough to run the bike back onto its stand. He left the tiny ignition chip where it was. Somehow he didn’t think they were going to let him keep the machine. Come to that, he was pretty certain they weren’t going to let him keep anything much, probably not even his life.

  He was kind of glad the Colt was getting a chance to branch out on its own.

  Chapter Three

  The Rules of Migration

  ‘Yo! Rulacho. Shit for brains.’

  Sanchez froze in the seat of his parked car.

  ‘Yeah, you.’

  The cholo with the light-swallowing black jacket tugged one python-skin lapel and turned slowly, his already thin mouth pulled into a tighter line, hooded eyes narrowing as he glared round for the person he was going to have to kill.

  There was no one. No one that is, except for ten lanes of locked-solid, Friday-night traffic and five hookers on tiptoe, leaning in through car windows with their G-stringed arses stuck up in the air as their heads bobbed up and down. 20,000 people in a traffic jam. 19,995 hot, fucked-off and miserable and five of them happy.

  The hookers belonged to Sanchez. He paid $75 a month for them, indentured labour from an orphanage out at Zampango. They were clones mostly, ghost girls. Uneducated, unwanted, running .22 calibre intellects in a .45 Magnum world: but the ones he employed had tits that bounced like baby kangaroos and that was what the punters paid for.

  ‘Hey,’ the voice said loudly, ‘You blind or something-or do you always dress like that? And what’s with that beard?’

  Before he could stop himself, Sanchez put one hand to his chin, touching the fine, neatly-razored streak of dark hair that dropped from beneath his bottom lip to the centre of his pointed chin. An equally fine line edged his upper lip, pimp style.

  Sanchez tried to made it look as if he was thinking, like he’d always been planning to stroke his moustache and adjust the collar of his black shirt.

  The shirt was silk, the kind with filigree-silver points to the collar. Expensive, but not as expensive as Sanchez told everybody it was. Not that people usually argued. People didn’t where Sanchez was concerned. The pimp smiled, showing a row of gleaming teeth inlaid with diamonds and fine gold circuitry.

  ‘Jesus fuck!’ The voice was back, rougher than ever. ‘Get out of that fucking rust bucket.’

  Sanchez looked round again, lazily. As if checking out his working girls, but a small tic was pulling at the side of his jaw and his lips had thinned to nothing. A bad sign, as any one of his girls could have told the Colt, not that the gun would have cared.

  ‘God, finally. Down here. Okay?’

  The pimp stopped eyeballing the nearest drivers, all of whom were nervously looking everywhere but at Sanchez, and at last did what he was told. Bloodshot eyes skimmed along the edge of the paseo, where the blacktop met a builder’s chainlink fence. The voice was coming from down there, amid the buckled wheel trims, dead Marlboro butts and a riot of crumpled wetwipes that covered the dirt like fallen blossoms.

  Sanchez finally spotted the gun, flipped over at the bottom of the fence and already half-buried under dust. One side of it was grit-encrusted where Axl had kicked it across five lanes of road, tiny diodes now opaque and frosted.

  ‘Sweet fucking Nazarene…’ Sanchez was talking to himself, which wasn’t something he did often. This was a man who existed on the absolute surface of life and liked it there. He had his own reasons for not going deeper, rooted in childhood and poverty but then most people in Day Effé did.

  ‘…a gun that talks back.’ Sanchez knew about weapons like that. Every two-bit detective in the novelas had one, that and an Italian suit and a big American car. But this was life and that was tri-D.

  ‘Yeah,’ said the Colt, as the pimp finally opened the door of his ancient white Merc and sauntered casually towards the bank. ‘Clever boy.’

  For a split second Sanchez was tempted to kick the Colt through the fence and into a storm drain beyond. Let the piece of shit see how well it managed to insult him when it was drowning in five scummy inches of untreated sewage.

  But greed won out, as the gun knew it would. Common sense, Sanchez called it. He didn’t have a problem with greed. He didn’t have a problem with it at all. And Sanchez knew just what he was looking at.

  Guns came in three grades, requiring three different types of licence, if you were the kind of person who bothered about what was once called paperwork. There were Nightclub specials, die-stamped out of steel or laser cut from cheap ceramic. These had no chips inside at all, not even for basic voice activation. Next were chipped weapons. They could switch between loads, eject empty clips on demand, adjust their own sights under orders. Neat stuff and the most anyone could hope for, until Colt-MSG/T teamed up with Linux, Gates y Turing and guns went AI.

  Smart guns listened, gave advice. In fact they gave so much advice that Colt were forced to get purchasers to sign exclusion clauses stating they understood their gun wasn’t always right, that it could make mistakes and the manufacturers weren’t financially liable for the results of those it did make.

  Which hadn’t stopped the guns talking or the owners from listening ...

  ‘Hey,’ the Colt waited until Sanchez was leant right over it, ‘you and me, we could be really good together, right?’

  * * * *

  Five lanes away, on the other edge of the southbound, two policemen were laying into a man with riot sticks. That man was on the ground, curled up in a ball out of Sanchez’s line of sight. But even across the lines of idling traffic Sanchez could hoar the rhythmic thud that accompanied the rise and fall of riot sticks as cops beat whoever it was to pulp.

  It was Axl, obviously. And they were hammering the last memories of music out of his head. Kicking the final echoes of soundtrack into red silence. Up above, in a CySat/C3N copter, a woman leaned out of its perspex bubble as she explained what was going on below, talking rapidly into a throat mike. And standing by the central crash barrier was a Japanese tourist vidcaming the violence: alternating between grabbing shots of the falling riotsticks and bowing respectfully to the backs of the two policemen, who were completely oblivious to being filmed.

  By the time an Ishie roared up on a dirt bike, bowed to no one and began uploading live to the Web, feeding the datastream from the Zeisscam set in his right eye, Sanchez was back in his Merc with the engine humming. Seconds later he was reversing his vehicle along the hard shoulder towards a turn-off 200 yards behind him.

  ‘Hey, Sanchez!’

  The pimp saw one of his girls jerk upright to stare in surprise. He ignored her. Later on he’d come back for them, and maybe they’d still be there and maybe not. Either way, he could always get some more. Street kids were two a dollar in Mexico City, literally. Guns like the Colt couldn’t be bought for money alone. And whatever Sanchez liked to tell others he didn’t have those kind of contacts.

  Not yet.

  Ignoring the hostile stares of other drivers, Sanchez ran his white Merc with fins back to the turnoff, cruising past the frozen traffic like a prowling shark in reverse. If he cut up Via Sullivan and then doubled back along Antonio Caso he could be at his bar in the Alameda inside forty minutes, maybe less.

  Chapter Four

  Drowning in an Empty Pool

  ‘War… what is it good for,’ sang the newspaper vendor, badly.

  Sanchez slid his card down the vendor’s slot and yanked out a fresh copy of the Post. It was a crude print-out of the newsfeed, ink still sticky on its surface, the hyperlinks all dutifully underlined but useless, going nowhere…

  The civil war in Spain was almost over. Italy’s national bank was in the hands of the World Monetary Fund. Only the Vatican was refusing to be audited. Holding out politely but firmly under the orders of Mexico’s own Declan Begley, better known as His Excellency Cardinal Santo Duque.

  In London, the Prime Minister was defending the W
orldBank arms embargo that had led to the slaughter of unarmed liberals in Valencia, on the grounds that allowing both sides to be armed would only have extended the war.

  None of that got read by Sanchez.

  The shooting on the Paseo de la Counter-Reformacion was relegated to a two-line snip at the bottom of the sheet, two-thirds of the way down late-breaking news. Sanchez didn’t bother to read that either.

  Half an hour later it would make headlines when an AI at DFPD finally reminded everyone who the dead man was. But at the moment CySat/Mex’s ex-CEO was just another body in the morgue.

  ‘Enjoy your read,’ said the vendor and Sanchez kicked it, his boot ricocheting off its reinforced metal sides. The machine picked itself up with as much dignity as a knee-high cube can manage and shut its front flap with a loud clang.

  ‘Everyone’s a critic’ The vendor stamped off up the road, stopped briefly outside a review bar and then kept going towards a more upscale part of town.

  ‘Coward,’ Sanchez shouted after it. The machine ignored him, but a Swedish girl in a red crop top stopped long enough to give Sanchez a quizzical stare. Then she was gone too, pulled up the sidewalk by a blond boyfriend who muttered something rapidly in her ear.

  She had good tits and an even better ass. Sanchez looked after her, considering. Then he patted the Colt tucked into his silver and leather belt, shook his head sadly and headed towards his bar. For once, Sanchez had better things to do than chase after tourists. Like take a good look at his new toy.

  Between 10 a.m. and 10 p.m., south of Alameda was tourist town. After that, most tourists went back to their high-rise Marriotts or Plazas in the Zona Rosa to eat almost-Mexican food and watch Brazilian porn, while those the quarter really belonged to came out to count that day’s takings and drink cold beer in the cafés the tourists had only just left.

  As an arrangement it worked well, except for the occasional backpacker stupid enough to hang around in search of the ‘real’ Mexico. A quick punch in the gut, a knee to the face and they woke up with a hangover-sized headache, no watch and an empty wallet if they were lucky. The rest never woke up at all.

  Sanchez grinned. He’d rolled his share, back when he was a kid and before franchised vats meant stealing kidneys wasn’t worth the prison sentence. Who hadn’t? But he’d moved on since then, gone respectable. These days he ran five whores and had a major share in nightclub. Hell, he was practically a tax payer.

  And he wasn’t a killer, either. Which wasn’t to say he hadn’t killed. He had, but not for fun, not for a long time and only in the line of business. Sure, some of his donors had died, but only the stupid ones who didn’t bother to read his instructions when they awoke. After they’d donated, Sanchez used to pack their limp bodies in ice and leave them in a bath with printed instructions to call 0800 HELP-HELP-HELP and ask for surgical emergency when they awoke.

  He had a good deal going with the hospital too: including a sliding scale of kickbacks that depended on the size of the donor’s insurance policy. And if the donor went flatline, then the hospital lifted the cornea and anything else in demand, and Sanchez skimmed ten percent of the sale price off the top.

  It had been a good living, until even the not-so-rich started growing their own spares in advance, just in case. Which was enough to kick the bottom out of any market.

  Sanchez sucked at his teeth and kicked his way into La Piscina before the toughened door had time to swing open. The hinges hissed, or it could just have been hydraulics adjusting pressure.

  La Piscina had been a swimming pool before it was a club, until concrete rot had drained it of water and patrons. Now steps cut and welded from steel grating led down into what had once been the shallow end. At the deep end was a small bar for those partying. Chill-outs drank at long bars up on the sides if they could hack climbing the ladders. The place was almost deserted, but that was usual. Nothing real in Day Effé started before midnight.

  Sanchez chose the small bar.

  ‘Dos Equis, cold.’ Without waiting, he headed towards a table in the corner of the pool. It was empty as always. Slumping into a metal chair, Sanchez pulled out the Colt and rested it on the table’s chrome surface. When the barboy arrived, Sanchez looked between the Colt and the boy, waiting.

  ‘Nice gun, senor…’ The boy put the cold beer carefully on the table, then placed a frosted tumbler beside it. Finally, he put down a saucer of freshly salted almonds.

  Sanchez nodded. ‘You know how much this gun is worth?’

  The boy shook his head. He didn’t even dare guess. Not when the patron obviously wanted to tell the boy himself.

  ‘Any idea?’

  The boy shook his head mutely.

  ‘More than you are.’

  The boy’s polite smile revealed the teeth of the poor, the kind Sanchez once had. Worth more than him? Neither of them doubted it. Pietro was one of the empty ones. Condemned to hollowness by il papa, by John Paul II’s pronouncement way back in 1997 that clones had no souls.

  ‘Get me another beer,’ Sanchez demanded, watching as the boy carefully didn’t look at the full bottle already on the table. The kid was learning, too slowly and helped by very public kicks and slaps, but he was finally getting it right. Which was just as well. Sanchez had leased him from Zampango, from the same orphanage as the whores he’d left out on the freeway. And he’d told the manager he wanted a bright one this time: one bright enough not to get himself killed. The girls Sanchez just wanted pretty-and young.

  ‘Hey,’ Sanchez said suddenly, grinning as the kid froze in his tracks. ‘You been messing with my girls?’

  Over by the steel steps someone laughed. Spanish Phillipe probably. Built like an ox and with brains to match, he was what you got if you bred cousins with each other often enough. A Neanderthal brain in a Cro-Magnon body.

  ‘Well?’ Sanchez asked. He was smiling at the small crowd round the bar. Counting off men he’d known since childhood, men who looked up to him, one or two even sliding Don in front of his name like he was some hidalgo. Sanchez kept smiling until he saw how quiet the boy had gone, how the kid’s shoulders had tensed up.

  ‘Turn round,’ Sanchez demanded, ‘look at me…’

  The boy did and Sanchez saw the guilt etched in Pietro’s large blue eyes. Etched there as surely as any retinal pattern, along with slow-burning anger. The hatred of a calf for the butcher.

  ‘Which one?’ The pimp demanded, lifting the Colt hiPower from the table in one lazy move and flicking off the safety catch. He pointed the muzzle at the boy who stared back, wide-eyed. A tiny red dot stood out on the boy’s white apron, just over his heart. The boy couldn’t see it, but he knew it was there right enough.

  ‘Well,’ Sanchez demanded. ‘Which was it?’ He moved the tiny red dot up to the boy’s face, centring it between his eyes.

  ‘Maria,’ the boy said softly.

  ‘Maria?’ The man’s voice was contemptuous. ‘How the fuck do I know which one’s Maria… What does this little slit look like?’

  ‘She’s not a slit’

  Sanchez looked at the boy in disbelief. And then stood up so slowly that the whole club was silent by the time he made it to his feet. Each step he took across the concrete floor echoed off the white-tiled walls. No one even shuffled in their seat.

  It didn’t take much to club Pietro to the floor. About as much effort as it took to slam a heavy door.

  ‘Which one?’ Sanchez demanded, dragging the kneeling boy to his feet.

  The boy said nothing so Sanchez clubbed him again.

  ‘Which one?’

  Even if his lip hadn’t been split Pietro would have found it hard to speak with the barrel of a Colt pushed into the underside of his jaw, but he tried anyway.

  ‘Small, long dark hair. We were…friends back at Zampango was what he wanted to say. Only saying that was one sure way to get hit again. Sanchez’s arrangement with the orphanage might be beneficial to both manager and pimp, but talking about it was off limits. Sanchez didn�
�t want everybody getting the same idea.

  ‘Have you any idea what I do to people who steal from me?’

  The pimp looked into the boy’s frightened face and liked what he saw. Plus everybody else in the club was watching him. That was good.

  Pietro shook his head.

  ‘She’s mine,’ said Sanchez. ‘You want a piece of her ass, you deal with me.’ He said it like he was explaining the obvious to someone too stupid to recognise it. Hell,’ the man looked round the club and grinned. ‘I’ll even give you discount. After you’ve reimbursed me for what you’ve already taken.’

  Spanish Phillipe laughed.

  ‘Well, can you pay?’ Sanchez asked.

  Of course he couldn’t. The boy just stood there, blood trickling slowly down his chin to Rorschach-blot in slow drops onto the front of his white apron. Sanchez would probably charge him for that too.

  ‘Say five dollars a time?’ The pimp’s voice was still amused but it carried an edge now, jagged like glass. There were two ways the next thirty seconds could go-joke or tragedy-and even Sanchez himself didn’t know which way events would stack. Pietro decided it for him.

  ‘No.’ The boy shook his head, but he wasn’t answering the question he’d been asked, because the words still ricocheting round his skull were a response to something Sanchez had said earlier. ‘She’s not yours. You don’t own Maria. No one owns anyone.’ He said it with all the conviction of the very young. As if it that might make it true, even when it obviously wasn’t.

  ‘We’ve been ‘mancipated…’ He tripped over the word, but still everyone in the club knew what he was talking about. Nine months earlier, Pope Joan had issued a papal bull making it a sin to own clones of anyone except yourself. And sat in his villa on the coast near Cancun, his excellency Cardinal Santo Ducque had approved her edict, even though he was a known enemy of the liberal schism.

  ‘Of course I don’t own her, you dumb fuck,’ the pimp said heavily. ‘I lease her ass from the orphanage at seventy-five bucks a month. And believe me, it’s fucking robbery.’