Catspaw

by Joan D. Vinge

  His thin mouth quirked. Slowly he lifted a hand, pulled off his studded glove. There was a white band of scar ringing his wrist, just like there was around my own. “Now?”

  I shut my eyes for a second, listening to the voice of his mind. Mikah. I looked up at his face again, with a kind of disbelief. The last time I’d seen that face we’d both still worn the bond tags that had left those scars. “Mikah.” I’d never seen his face whole and healthy, when it hadn’t been stained blue with radioactive dust, or wasted with sickness. We’d been work partners, never friends; in the Mines it didn’t take long before there wasn’t enough left of you to make any effort at all. But he’d seen me escape, leaving him behind wearing a death sentence. And the look on his face had eaten into my memory, until I’d had to do something to get it out of my dreams. “What are you doing here?” I said, my voice sounding like something squeezed out of a child.

  “Haven’t you figured it out?” he asked, like I’d missed the punch line of a joke. “Shit, kid, I’m here to save your ass.” He came forward, handed the light chip to one of the other men as he looked me over. “Got your pupils fixed, huh?” His smile stretched a little wider at my grimace. His hand caught my wrist in a loose grip, lifted my slashed hand, not even seeming to notice as my blood began to run down his arm. I swore as I got a real look at the wound. The knife was still jutting out of my palm. It had gone clear through. Suddenly the light seemed too golden; I felt like I was sinking into honey.

  Mikah’s dark eyes came back to mine, but they weren’t expressionless now. His smile disappeared. “You…” he said, shaking his head. “It was you bought off my contract, and sent money for the meds to clean out my lungs, and enough left over to let me make a start—” His grip on my wrist tightened. “And you never told me why. Why? Why’d you do that—?”

  I winced; his hand loosened suddenly. I didn’t say anything, because I couldn’t think of an answer that would have made any sense.

  His free hand rose, closed over the knife hilt. His grip on me tightened again as I flinched. “Look at me,” he said. I looked up, and he jerked the knife free.

  My vision went red, and I cried out again; choked it off, because half a dozen men who did this to strangers all the time were staring at me. I took long, shuddering breaths while he peeled the glove off my bleeding hand.

  When I could focus again I saw Mikah nod slightly, saw a faint smile pull at the corners of his mouth again. He dropped my blood-soaked glove on the floor. Then, silently, solemnly, he took the blade he’d pulled out of me and laid it down across his own palm. “Nobody ever did anything for me,” he whispered. His eyes never left my face. “Not my own family. Nobody except you.” His jaw tightened as he pressed down with the blade, and blood welled out suddenly, pooling in his cupped hand. He lifted his palm and pressed it against mine, folding his fingers over my hand until the wounds met, and our blood flowed together. “Anything you ever want—anything—you can ask me. You understand, brother?”

  I nodded slowly. He let go of me. Pulling loose one of the long colored scarves he wore around his throat, he wrapped it tightly around my palm; wrapped his own hand with another one.

  I looked at my hand. “I want to sit down,” I mumbled.

  He grinned. “You got it.” Shoring me up with an arm around my waist, he led me back out to the main street and down a few doors to the entrance of a bar. The other men followed us, flanked me, easy but watchful in the way they moved. It finally began to sink into my brain that they were all his men, following his orders. “Somebody’s trying to kill me—” I said, shaking my head, as Mikah tried to force me toward the bright, loud doorway.

  His razor smile came back. “Not any more.”

  “Not them—” I jerked my head back the way we’d come. “Somebody else.”

  He snorted. “You don’t waste much time, do you?” He pushed me forward into the open arms of light and noise. “Not any more,” he repeated, as I dropped like a sack onto the bench in the closest empty booth. “You got Family now.” He signed to the soldiers with him; they nodded and faded into the background noise.

  He sat down across the laminated tabletop from me, propped on his elbows; spoke an order for drinks into the waiter on the wall.

  “Jeezu,” I said thickly. “Where the hell did you come from?” It wasn’t cold here, but I was shivering.

  He waved a hand. “Hey. I was born here. I work here now. I used the credit line you left me to buy into a Family.” He laughed. “What did you expect me to do, join the FTA?”

  My mouth twitched up. I shook my head.

  “Good prospects for advancement.” He nodded away into the room, where his men were sitting around a table, tossing Cubes. “Got my own squad already.” The drinks he’d ordered flipped out of the wall. He pushed one of them at me. I shook my head, watching whitish froth form a crust on its rim. “Drink it,” he said. “It’s only bicarb.”

  I drank it, grateful. “What’s your specialty?” Wondering if I’d be sorry I asked.

  “Whatever makes a profit this week.” He shrugged. “Mostly security and protection.”

  I thought about it. “All that still doesn’t explain how you just happened to be there in time to protect my ass. I don’t have that kind of luck.”

  He laughed again. “Saw you on the Morning Report, hero.” He gulped down half of his own drink. “When I found out you were on-planet, I had you traced. I wanted to … square things. I didn’t figure I’d get to start this fast.”

  “Who were those crazy bastards?”

  “Rippers … a cult gang. Eat your heart out—literally.”

  I looked away, feeling my face get clammy. “Argentyne told me I was being an asshole.” I cradled my throbbing hand inside the good one. The shock was wearing off; I felt like I’d picked up a handful of hot coals. And couldn’t put them down. I damped out the pain receptors in my brain with an effort. “I thought I knew the rules.”

  “Argentyne? The symbplayer? You know her?”

  I looked up as I felt the flash of unguarded excitement run through him, before his control dropped on it again. With the part of my mind that was still functioning, I realized that I’d impressed him. “A little.”

  He leaned back, trying to look like he hadn’t just let me know that. “She puts me on overload with her socketwork.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She’s a nova.” I made a picture of her in my mind, letting it warm me up.

  He shrugged. “I like her work. She’s not my type.”

  I glanced up again, surprised. “You don’t look dead to me.”

  He laughed.

  “You don’t like women.” Realizing half a beat late what the total lack of heat when he thought about her meant.

  “Not in my bed.… You got a problem with that?” His face hardened over at the expression I felt spread across my own.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I’m a freak, who am I to criticize anybody?… I was just wondering how come you never tried to hit on me down in the mines.” I realized again, more strongly, what total strangers we were. I didn’t even know his last name—if he even had one. I looked down at my hand, at the blood oozing through the layers of cloth. Blood brother. I started to shiver again.

  “I was too fucking tired and sick.” He looked at me, a slow smile coming out on his face again. “Besides, you’re not my type either, freak.” There was no sting in it; the truth, and nothing more. But he trusted me—that I wouldn’t try to touch him with my mind—because I’d never hit on him, either. “So, this is where I am, now,” he said. “What the hell are you doing down under, besides trying to commit suicide? You looked like you had everything you needed, up there on the wall this morning. Bodyguard to a vip—nice work, if you can get it.”

  “I got a drug problem. Not the usual kind—” I said, as his eyebrows rose. I explained it again. And I couldn’t help thinking how much easier it would all be if I could just set it whole into someone else’s brain; if only there wasn’t so m
uch fear.

  “And Venk tried to null you, when you told him Daric taMing sent you?” Mikah frowned.

  I nodded. “He recognized me, from the news.” Trying to make that make some kind of sense with the rest of it, because somehow it had seemed to be a step on the path. Nothing at all made much sense to me right now.

  Mikah rubbed his head. “Beats the crap out of me. He’s not crazy. If he tried to kill you, he had a good reason.…” He stared at his half-empty cup, glanced up at me again. “You want me to find out what it is?”

  “Yeah. Especially if it’s a good one.” I hesitated. “And—”

  “Get you the drugs.” He grinned. “How’s that for mindreading?” He finished his drink, swept the cup into the dump along the wall of the booth. “Come on. That’s not a drink of water you’re looking for. I’d better take you to see the Doctor.”

  “I don’t need a—”

  “He’s not that kind of doctor.” A thin smile. “Doctor Death. Runs a black lab.”

  I grimaced.

  “His real name’s DeAth. Fits him better this way, though.” He stood up.

  “I’m not looking for poison,” I said sourly. But maybe I was.

  “Too bad. He’s got the best. He supplies most of the big Families with the specialties they need for their hire business.” The Lack Market had its combines too; but working for them was a lot more personal. Mikah signaled his soldiers. “He’s got the best of everything. He can fix you up.”

  I followed him toward the door, stopped as he stopped by the public phone in the entryway. He touched in a silent code, got a query symbol on a blank screen. He fed in another code. This time he got a single line of letters: THE DOCTOR IS IN. He glanced back at me. “You don’t see him without an appointment.”

  We took the Tube a couple of stops deeper into the Deep End, and a tram to a quiet streetcorner. The buildings wore more flash here, the streets were cleaner and had a more exclusive feel than the ones around Free Market Square. The only people who came calling here knew exactly where they were going. Mikah led me on down the street to the sixth rowhouse. Its door was black; ornate grillwork crawled like a vine up the walls, covered with black iron leaves.

  Mikah stepped up on the porch, signaling me to join him; his gang sauntered away down the street, back the way we’d come.

  I watched them go, wishing they’d stayed. Mikah stood motionless in front of the black door, his hands held out and open, away from his sides. I did the same, figuring we didn’t need to knock to let anybody know we were here.

  After a minute the door opened, letting us in. There was nobody waiting. We walked down a long hallway with mirrored walls. “Getting sanitized,” Mikah said. By now I was almost beyond caring who or what was on the other side.

  The doorway opened at the end of the hall, and we were in the black lab of Doctor Death.

  “Hello!” a cheerful voice called, and somebody came toward us through the maze of scopes, electronic cookers, and data screens that covered an entire building floor. I watched a good-looking woman disappear through a doorway at the far side of the lab. The man was squat and round-faced, wearing lab pastels, his bald head gleaming in the brilliant light. He had two sets of eyes. The extra set looked like they belonged to some albino insect—two glittering, faceted rubies. He stopped in front of Mikah, beaming up at us, his gloved hands clasped and shining like water. “What can I do for you boys?” he asked, with a shopkeeper’s eager smile. “Some Family business?” It was Doctor Death.

  I stared at him, trying not to. I realized I’d come expecting somebody who lived up to the name. Not somebody who looked like he ought to be minding a bar somewhere, telling jokes. Except for the eyes. “Uh…” I said.

  “He wants topalase-AC.” Mikah said. “You got any of that?”

  “Topalase-AC?” DeAth said, with his invisible eyebrows going up. “What in God’s name does he want that for? He wants to become a mass murderer, but he hasn’t got the nerve?”

  Mikah didn’t say anything, so finally I said, “I want to be able to act … human.”

  DeAth looked back at me, doubt furrowing a notch between his bug-eyes. “That’s an ambiguous response, if I ever heard one. So, well, I know, ‘it’s none of your business, old man.’ It’s just a shame, when a kid comes in here looking to ruin his life. But I just make the stuff, how you use it is your business.…” His hand was already dancing over a touchboard while he spoke, calling up data. “I have it on hand, if you’ve got the price.” I could tell it really broke his heart to sell it to me.

  I winced at the price I saw on the screen. But I nodded. I put in a clearance on my databand, transferring the sum to him.

  “I’ll be back.” He turned, trotting away toward the door that the woman had disappeared through.

  I took a step, half afraid he was going to leave and never come back. But Mikah caught my arm. “He’ll be back. Don’t touch anything,” he muttered, “the lab’s armed.”

  I stayed where I was, and waited. DeAth came back, in less time than it seemed like. He held out a sheet of stick-ons to me.

  I put my hand out, so eager to get hold of it that for half a second I forgot what I’d done to myself.

  DeAth’s arm jerked back in a startle-reflex. “Yik,” he said, his lip curling as he saw the bloodsoaked cloth wrapping my hand. I wondered how he’d react if he ever got to see what his chemicals did to other people. Like the kind of thing that had happened at Elnear’s party last night.… He slapped the paper into my other palm. “Please go, before you contaminate my rug. Goodbye.” He herded us back out into the mirrored hallway; the inner door sealed shut with a hiss behind us.

  There was a rushing in my ears as I peeled one of the blood-red dots off of the sheet, and put it on, one-handed. Mikah watched me like he’d watch a junkie, but all he said was, “You better get that wound fixed.”

  I shrugged, hardly thinking about it as I stuffed the sheet of drugs inside my jacket. “Don’t worry about it, everything’s fine now.…” In a few more minutes all the walls in my mind would be down at last, and I’d be able to see forever.

  He stopped, pushed me up against the mirrors. I stared at the two of us reflecting back and forth into infinity as he shook me once. “You hear what I said?” His voice was as hard as a fist. He took my wounded hand and slammed it back against the mirror; I gasped with the pain of it. “That’s a bad cut. Get it fixed, freak.”

  I grunted and nodded as the pain cleared out my head. “I hear you.” I took a deep breath, looking him in the eye until he believed me.

  He let go of me and turned away as the front door opened, like an impatient arm urging us out.

  When we were out in the street again I said, “What happened at Lady Elnear’s party last night looked like a hire job to me. That the kind of thing DeAth does?”

  Mikah nodded. “Yeah. That was slick. He could have supplied it.” He looked ahead, not taking it past an idle guess. His soldiers were around us again, from somewhere, nowhere.

  “Can you find out?”

  He glanced at me. “Maybe. I’ll work on it.”

  “I want to know why somebody down here wants her out. Or who’s paying them.”

  He nodded. “Right.” We walked on in silence.

  “I’ll be in touch,” he said, as he left me at the Tube again. “Take care of yourself, brother.”

  I lifted my bloody hand, a promise and a goodbye. People around me edged away.

  I couldn’t remember when I’d felt better.

  TWENTY

  “YOU LOOK LIKE a spotlight. I guess you got what you wanted,” Argentyne said, her gaze locked on my face as she opened the door. She stepped back, stared at my bloodstained clothes as she let me past into the club. The ends of her mouth pulled down. “Mother Earth … I guess you got what you were asking for, too.”

  I shook my head; not denying it, just trying to shake loose the feeling that I was really everybody within a hundred meters of me. I focused on her relief
turning into disgust, relief, worry, disgust.… damped it down further until I was only myself again. “Yeah,” I said, following her back inside. There were a few customers hanging out already, scattered in clumps around the room, but at least I’d made it back before the evening really started. I wasn’t sure I could have handled that, the way I felt right now.

  “Is that all you’ve got to say?” she asked, too sharply, when that was all I said.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled. “This takes some getting used to. Strong stuff.” I touched my head. “Gotta get my clothes and go.”

  “They’re upstairs. I’ll put some sudoskin on that hand for you; it looks pretty shitty.”

  “Thanks.” Now that I was back inside my body, I was discovering again that it hurt like bloody hell in a couple of places. I followed her upstairs, into the long, wide room that was her private apartment. It was almost large enough to hold everything she wanted to have around her, stuffed into dressers and chests. The rest of it was sorted into vague heaps on top of pieces of furniture. Some of the furniture looked like it had been around a lot longer than she had. Clothes and ornaments hung from everything that would hold them, and a whole lot of plants squatted in pots on the floor below the windows. Some kind of animal with reddish fur scuttled off the bed and into a closet as we entered the room.

  “Don’t mind the mess,” she said, because I was probably staring. “I just can’t seem to throw anything out. I guess it’s because for a long time I didn’t have anything to throw out.”

  I nodded, feeling in my pocket for the markers I’d given away. “Hard to break old habits,” I said.

  “Sit down.” She smiled finally, picking a pack of camphs off a dressertop and putting one into her mouth. She held out the pack to me. I hadn’t had one in years; not since Dere Cortelyou had died. They always made me think of him. But tonight all my memories seemed far away. I nodded, grateful, and she flipped me one. She was wearing loose gray pants now, tied at the ankles; a blue shirt with a loose gray jacket over it, the wide sleeves rolled up. Her earrings were the size of eggs, and silver.