She stank. And mixed in with the basic pheromones of sex and body fluid were darker traces of shit and sweat. But as the Cardinal had once told a teenage Axl before buying him his first whore, if there wasn’t shit and sweat, blood and semen at the end of it then you weren’t doing it right.
Ketzia groaned with each thrust, as his thighs slapped hard against her exposed arse and little shock waves ran up her back. And then Axl came, his fingers roughly gripping her waist as he ploughed deep inside her, spasming.
As he slumped over her back and wrapped his arms round her soft gut, Axl knew one thing only. That the figure he’d started out following was long since gone. Vanished cat-like into the night.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Wolf Patrol
The girl crept down the gravel path into Cocheforet as silently as she could manage, heavy canvas satchel banging against her hip, head hidden by the hood of a grey fleece. Mai still wore the dumb-fuck soulcatcher but her dark hair had recently been cropped tight to her skull and what little she owned was in the satchel. From anything but up close and very personal she could pass for a boy.
It could have been the valley wind Mai was avoiding because it buffeted hard enough to rock her on her feet and dampen the sound of church bells into almost-silence. But the wind wasn’t what Mai was really dodging as she slid out of the night to rest briefly against the stable wall. It was everything and everybody. The village, that weird guy from last night, Kate and Louis from the monastery, but mostly Kate’s pet clone.
‘Fucking freak ...' The girl spat expertly and a black tom exploded into a ball of ragged fur, back arching as hair ruffled around its shoulders and down its bony spine. ‘Yeah, fuck you too, fuck eyes.’
She wasn’t allowed to swear when she was with Kate at El Escondido. Mind you, there were a lot of things she wasn’t allowed to do. Most of them plain stupid, like not eat with her fingers. Others were merely irritating, like don’t spit, don’t skin up, don’t ice…
Chance would be a fine tiling.
The only one of Kate’s rules that Mai didn’t mind was don’t fuck. She’d done enough of that to last a lifetime and probably the lifetime of several Kates as well. And Mai didn’t intend to, unless it was on her terms. Mai still wasn’t exactly sure where she was, she was only certain it wasn’t Spain. The weather was way too cold for summer, the air too thin and the mountains too tall. Besides the heavens were blacker than squid ink and the stars were missing, banished to a speckle of light along one edge of the night sky.
Mai figured it had to be Latin America. Maybe Argentina or Peru. They spoke Spanish there and had weird-shit mountain Indians. And she had to be south of the equator. That was how it worked wasn’t it? If it was hot up North then it was cold down South. Christmas barbies at Bondi and all that. . . She’d watched WorldFaX on CySat 13 with the Judge. He always used to sit with her and watch boring stuff before folding her over his knee.
First time round, she’d expected to get smacked with a shoe or something stupid. But the old perv just brushed her hair for an hour before shuffling her down his lap so she could give him the full il president!.
Mai spat again, blindly and aiming at nothing.
Enough already. She didn’t need to go there. She needed a way out of this valley and was counting on last night’s stranger from the inn to provide it. Louis was frightened by the stranger and anything that upset Louis he took to Kate, like some child running for its mother. And then Kate would sit in that big kitchen and get all sensible while she ‘worked through the options’. Only options didn’t interest Mai and neither did their precious stranger, not the man himself. What interested Mai was the stranger’s horse and that interested her very much indeed ...
Pulling a rusty metal bar from her satchel, Mai slid one end of it into a gap in the stable doorframe and pushed. The crack of wood splintering froze Mai to the spot, but then she was opening the heavy door and shutting it quickly behind her.
The Japanese girl stood, breathing in the hot stink of horse piss, dung and the sweet, wet breath of three animals. All were awake. At least Mai figured they were, unless horses slept standing up which was possible, they had legs at each corner.
‘Okay,’ said Mai. ‘You and me are going to get the fuck out of here, right?’ She knew which animal to choose by its size. The beast was smaller than the other two, not as tall or thick shouldered and it didn’t have crude tufts of hair round its hooves like moonboots.
‘I’m Mai, okay?’ She stood in front of the animal and tried to remember what else Kate had said about making friends with horses. Introduce yourself, and then something about noses and blowing. Kate was happy Mai’d asked about animals, she imagined it meant the girl was settling in.
Mai snorted.
‘I’m Mai,’ she told the horse. ‘Well, I was Mai. Kate says I’m Joan but she’s wrong…’ Mai stared at the animal’s silhouette in the darkness of the stables but its head was lost in shadow and she had no idea if it was listening or not.
Okay, next bit. The girl crouched in front of the animal and then blew out, sending a puff of warm breath deep into the horse’s nostrils. The mare jerked back fast and shook her head from side to side, ears flat back to her skull, long neck shivering. Mai sighed and shook her own head. Apparently no one had told this animal that was how humans said hello.
‘Sorry about that…’ Mai put up her hand and hesitantly brushed the mare’s neck, whispering all the while. That was the other thing Kate had said, keep talking. So Mai did, until the mare reluctantly brought her ears forward and nudged her head against the girl’s fingers.
‘Sweet fuck,’ the girl whispered. ‘At least you can just hotsoft a hover…’
The other two animals were designed to haul things. She knew that from Louis. Mai didn’t need anything hauled, just some transport to carry her off that plateau she’d ridden across and back to the next big town. The only thing was, it wasn’t going to happen ...
* * * *
Mai heard the chink of a bridle first, sharp as glass in the cold night air. Seconds later, someone large pushed open the stable door and a torch swept the stalls, passing through the spot where she’d been standing.
‘Three,’ a woman said roughly.
‘Two drays, yes. Is the other a black stallion?’
The yellow beam flicked over the mare, who lazily turned her head away from the light but kept chewing.
‘No,’ said the original voice, sounding cross. The woman was white, had broad shoulders and a bush hat with a wide brim that hid her face. In her right hand she held a long silver torch, big as a club, and she sounded seriously pissed.
The second woman was whipcord thin and carried a staff. Her tight black T-shirt wasn’t just clean, it was pressed. Either that, or it was straight from a packet. She looked no taller than Mai, with tiny braids that were pulled back along her skull like tightly twisted wire. And she wore gold wireframe glasses. Which looked odd, but maybe that was what she wanted. Rejecting sight correction could be affectation or religious principle. Or it might be poverty, Mai could understand that. Though the thin black woman came across as too secure, too understated for that.
Anorexic all the same. Her small breasts starved down to nipples and nothing more.
‘Not Father Sylvester’s,’ Wireframes said looking at Axl’s horse. ‘But we’ll take it anyway…’
‘That’s probably not a good idea,’ said a voice from outside the darkened doorway, and up in the rafters Mai grinned. Life was finally getting interesting.
‘Hi,’ said Axl, stepping into the stable. ‘I don’t think we’ve met.’ Absentmindedly, he kicked aside a green canvas bag.
Axl’s voice was polite but his Spanish was slum raw. Although Mai didn’t recognise the man’s accent, she could tell when someone had grown up in the projects, no matter what part of the world it happened in.
The newcomer lazily shut one eye against the sudden stab of a torch beam, closing a crude pupil. The black pit of his oth
er eye made Mai shiver just to look at it. There was a steel-bladed knife gripped lightly in his right hand and as Mai watched he dropped the blade to his side and relaxed into a weird crouch, which made him look floppy as a rag doll.
What he didn’t do was open his eye.
It was a Chin Mai fighting stance, but the girl didn’t know that. The heavy woman with the hat didn’t know it either but Wireframes obviously did. Or at least she knew attack readiness when she saw it.
‘You new round here?’
Axl twisted his head slightly, as if listening. And Wireframes took that for agreement.
‘Well, we run this bit of the high plateau,’ she said flatly.
You do? Mai twisted her lips in surprise, If that was true, it was the first she’d heard of it and Kate and Louis did nothing but talk boring shit about how life was in the valley.
‘Isn’t that strange,’ said Axl. ‘And there I was thinking Tsongkhapa ...'
‘Yeah, I know… No police, no army, no guns, only self-governing autonomous settlements,’ the woman recited the wheelworld litany like it was an Ad jingle. ‘Well, we’re none of those.’ She sounded pleased with herself, so much so that Mai wanted to climb down and slap the smile of her face.
‘We’re a wolf patrol.’ Wireframes spun her staff, touching a spot near the middle. Instantly, a blade slid from each end.
‘And that’s a wolf killer,’ said the large woman, nodding at the weapon. That was when Axl opened his eye and blinked in surprise. He’d just recognised the voice of Wireframes’ companion, though the last time he’d heard it the bitch had been wearing a sergeant’s uniform and he’d been tied to a chair.
Which meant that maybe the… No, the Colonel would be tucked up safe in La Medicina and, besides he had things closer to home to worry about, like a kid’s dreamcatcher with a snapped leather thong half-hidden in the straw at the sergeant’s feet.
If Wireframes saw it she’d want to know where it came from and then things would get complicated, and Axl hated it when things got complicated.
‘I think you should leave,’ Axl said, more for something to say than because he really cared. At the same time, he edged towards them both-very slowly-making sure the one thing he didn’t do was accidentally glance up at the rafters. Axl had a plan and item one was to step over that necklace and get it on their blindside.
Managing it proved easier than he expected.
‘Far enough,’ said Wireframes.
Axl shrugged, knife still loose in his fingers and dropped to one knee, ostentatiously retying the ragged lace of one sodden boot. ‘Can’t get the clothes out here,’ he said flatly and stood again, Mai’s feathered charm tucked safely in his other hand. ‘You know how it is…’
Axl yawned. He knew what was coming. They all did…
Blood pumped slowly through his arteries. His heartbeat had dropped even as he stepped forward and the other two tensed up. Cobras and Pitbulls. When the Cardinal chose his tools, he chose wisely. One out of five people have a metabolism that slows before combat. They are those who instinctively go still the way that cobras do. Viral augmentation could provide it. And the skill could be learned—hell, most of bushido was hung around passing on the skill—but it was better to be born that way. Cold in combat, detached, dysfunctional, deadly. . .
‘Now.’ Wireframes nodded and the sergeant swung her torch hard towards Axl’s head, the weighted metal tube hissing as it cut air. Except her victim wasn’t standing there any more. He was rolling in towards the sergeant to finish at her feet, coming up out of the roll hard and fast to slam his hunting knife into the gap between her heavy breasts. Not blade first, but hilt forward so the brass boss split her sternum, cracking free the lower two ribs.
Shock waves radiated into the huge woman’s heart, stopping it dead. Her pig-like eyes exploded in panic and she crumpled, heading for the dung and litter of the stable floor. That was when Axl hit her again, a punch to the gut that echoed round the stable so loud it silenced even the restless horses. Breath rasped into shocked, burning lungs and the sergeant rolled sideways and vomited—but by then Axl was already on his feet.
‘Get it taped right round your ribs,’ Axl told the woman, ‘and don’t pick any fights for a while.’
There was a dry chuckle from Wireframes and the woman took a step towards Axl, stopping dead when Axl nipped the knife round in his fingers and slid back into a Chin Mai slouch. The move was so instinctive that up in the rafters Mai knew the man didn’t even realise he’d done it.
That made him interesting and not just to Mai.
‘Neat move,’ said Wireframes.
‘I like staying alive,’ was all Axl said. He just hoped the woman knew he was being ironic. But she didn’t look the type to be big on irony. Captain, Axl reckoned, maybe even a major. Whichever it was, she was pretty pleased with herself.
‘momaDef.’ Wireframes held out her hand.
Axl ignored it, as Mai knew he would.
‘You know,’ said momaDef as she dropped her hand, ‘I could use a good fighter.’ There was a tightness round her eyes, but no other sign that she’d noticed him reject her greeting.
Yeah, thought Axl clocking the wolf sticker held in her hand, like the pope needs a Koran. He glanced at the heavy woman sat on the floor glaring at him.
‘That’s defMoma,’ said momaDef. ‘Working for me she gets the pick of everything—women, money, food, boys, bodyparts…’ momaDef’s smile held as she spun out the list, waiting to see which one would punch the buttons of the man in front of her.
But so far as momaDef could tell none of them did. Or if one did, the man hid it well because she saw no flicker of hunger in his face, no spark of recognition that flared his nostrils
‘I work alone,’ said Axl.
‘Not when we’re in the area, you don’t,’ momaDef said flatly, dark eyes hard behind her wire-rimmed spectacles.
‘I work better that way.’ Axl nodded to himself, as if the woman had never spoken. ‘Fewer accidents.’ He glanced again at defMoma sat on the stable floor. Injured and furious, but still alive. You could say that for WarChild. He might not know which fork to use but he knew when not to kill. Which was more than most professionals. That it was more than every amateur in existence went without saying.
So why wasn’t he more proud of it?
Backed up, stacked up like sins that he filed away in his cortex and left to gather neural dust was the answer, but Axl didn’t intend to go there. Not now, not ever. Problem was, Axl realised, these days half his mind was taken up with ‘no entry’ signs.
‘Look,’ said Axl, ‘I’m going to be around a while. So I think you should go now and leave the horses. Before someone really gets hurt. . .’
Chapter Twenty-Five
Crazy Wisdom (The Bardo Mix)
The thin bald guy sat cross-legged on a stone altar staring at the sky. The Colt could swear to fuck that the Colt was what the monk was looking at, only the man’s eyes were closed and he seemed to have stopped breathing.
Except he had to have air in his lungs or he wouldn’t be able to manage that low chant which slid between his lips in wisps of warm breath, dissolving into the frozen air. It was the people round him who weren’t breathing, but that was because they were definitely dead. The last time the Colt had seen bodies that ripped had been in Ecuador, after the IMF sent in a team to re-educate a bunch of corporate VPs about capital investment. They’d done that classic remove-the-hands-from-the-arms, the-feet-from-the-legs routine too, only the suits had definitely been alive at the time.
The other problem with the man being able to look at the Colt was the fact the Colt wasn’t so much invisible as not actually in existence, at least not physically…
Up until a few seconds ago the Colt had been skimming the Big Black. Solar winds howling around the Legrange point where the Colt hung. In fact, it hadn’t really been the Colt that hung there, because the gun was piggybacking a derelict soHo—solar and heliospheric observatory.
Next, all the Colt had to do was work up a code-exchange between the soHo and Samsara and his journey would be done, for which many thanks. Bit streaming was fine if you were one of those semi house-trained, limited delinquency AIs that Japanese teenagers found so amusing. But the Colt couldn’t see the attraction.
The Colt had been sentient only in disparate random bursts as every bit of himself caught up with the rest, if that made sense. Which it didn’t, but that didn’t matter, because the Colt was rerunning the fractal equation that confirmed this was what had happened. Somehow it found the non-interfaced crudeness of raw code comforting.
So far its trip had been confined to piggybacking soHos and third-world military comSats, the kind jacked into orbit so generals could say, ‘Hey we’ve got one too ...'
There were a lot of those.
Common sense said the safest way for the Colt to reach Samsara was to get spun round with bleeding-edge fooler loops and stashed in some diplomatic pouch heading for the Papal Nuncio, except the Cardinal wouldn’t take the risk.
‘I mean,’ the Colt thought crossly, ‘how hard could that have been?’
And if direct delivery in a diplomatic pouch was out then what was wrong with normal luggage? Not those canvas sacks ‘fugees got given to hold their few pitiful possessions but the Gucci kind, the leather kind with the reinforced brass edges and recessed wheels. Shit, Vajrayana was thick with B-list politicians ordered by their mandelsons to find some fuzzy warm photo opportunity. Any one of them could have got the Colt into Samsara, without even knowing it.
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