Streetlethal

by Steven Barnes

  He crawled over to it and pried a slat loose, knocking it cautiously with the side of his hand. When there was no answering hiss or rattle, he fished around inside, pulling out a handful of slender cartons.

  He laughed delightedly, the sound emerging from his throat as a croak. They were concentrated food bars, and he set them aside and dug deeper into the box. He found a flashlight, a compass, a knife. . . .

  He lifted the box up and found that it was sitting on a twenty-liter jerrycan of water.

  It was cold and quenching. He tried to drown himself in it, washing away the dust in his throat with deep, satisfying gulps.

  He lay back, peeling one of the food bars with his teeth. Some amateur prospector was going to be mighty surprised and disappointed when he came back to claim his cache, Aubry decided. He ate another bar and curled onto his side, fatigue eroding his iron endurance at last. His eyes closed drowsily, his fingers curled around the hilt of the knife. He would hide and rest. And then he would set out for Los Angeles to complete some unfinished business. At the moment, though, he was so tired that it was difficult to remember exactly what that business was.

  He did know, however, that it had something to do with tombstones.

  5. Knight Takes Pawn

  Something that she couldn't remember learning, then died away. She gave up and leaned into the spray, feeling the water drizzle down her face.

  Remember Osato. His hotel room had been opulent, his champagne crisp perfection. He treated her with the utmost respect, discussing his pharmaceutical firm with sober enthusiasm. She danced for him, making her plastiskin burst into a concert of pulsing colors, Osato clapping along with childish glee. But there had been nothing childish about his appetites after the drinks had been downed and the dancing and polite conversation ended. As always, there had only been the brutal softness of his bed, the driving urgency of his body, and whispered endearments as false as the diamonds on her wrap.

  He had been easy—a steady customer, with his preferences and needs on file in her date log. Only with a regular like Osato could she dare to schedule another man later in the evening.

  A man named Cushing. The Grand High Immortal Ghoul-master of some alphabits lodge or other. Convention business. Instinct had warned her to turn the assignment down, but the hotel manager had done Promise many a good turn. Last night the debt had been paid in full.

  Cushing met her at the door of his room, dressed in a tight robe and a light sweat. An iced tumbler was in hand, and judging by his eyes and spotty coordination, it had already been filled several times that evening. He joked about how pretty her mouth was before he took her to the bedroom. Then he told her again how pretty it was. So did the two friends who waited there.

  She felt sick now, and tired. As she stood leaning against die wall, she watched the suds swirling down the drain, wondering idly how water feels as it floats out to sea.

  The shower dribbled to a stop. She stepped out and walked through the drying screen, feeling her skin tingle as the water evaporated. She ran a comb through her hair and pulled it back into a puff of fine wire, half black and half transparent filament. She clicked her teeth and watched an arc of light flex through it.

  She wrapped a towel around herself and walked out into the living room, pulling the curtains back to look out at the morning. The smog was no more than a light haze, only about half of the L. A. basin totally obscured.

  Exhausted, but too tense to sleep, she rolled herself a joint from the humidor by the wall video, wetting it with her lips and plopping down into a chair. She inhaled deeply and felt the sweet smoke warming away her tension. The anticipated high smoothed the lines out of her face. She sprawled in the chair, her eyes closed, deliciously limp. She opened one bleary eye.

  "Playback, please," she said sharply, and the screen cleared. There was a momentary hum, and Osato's moon face filled the wall. His clipped accent hissed from the four corners of the room.

  "Miss Promise," he began, composing himself, "I am very grateful for the evening's entertainment. I regret that I must leave your country tomorrow evening, but I am planning to be back in a month. If it would be possible to see you on the first of March, I would appreciate it greatly. If this is to your satisfaction and convenience, please leave your response on my exchange. Thank you." Promise sighed as his image faded to black. Pleasant enough man, very wealthy. Of course she'd see him again, give him another taste of flesh and fantasy in exchange for some of his nice solid Service Marks.

  The screen blipped clear again, and Victor Gibbs's face appeared. His face was thin—too thin for his generous mouth. His perpetual smile lines softened the severity lurking just behind the bland green eyes. He had all of the clothes and cars and protection that a smooth-running pimp agency could afford. "Promise, Darling, listen." He grinned broadly, his reconstructed teeth lighting up his face with megawatts of concern. "I hope you got my note. I was just wondering why you haven't called?"

  She remembered the note. It had arrived with a bouquet of butterfly orchids and mimosa. The note had been burned unopened: She already knew what it would say.

  "We both know you're going to come back to me eventually, so why fight it? I knew you when, sweetheart. We go back. You and I both know that you need somebody. You can't make it alone. You need a man, and you know it. Liven up, Honey. I can get you work on Orbit H. Service Marks, not dollars. You could be making two or three times what you're earning now, and with protection. You can trust me. I knew you back when Jamie—"

  "Cut it!" Promise snarled. She took a nervous drag on the joint. "You blew it again, Vickie. Should have left Vegas out of it."

  The screen cleared again. The face was unfamiliar. "If I am speaking to a Miss Promise, I have a message for you. My name is Doctor Patricks." The face was rather nondescript, an oval topped with wavy brown hair, a tight mouth with a ghost of a friendly smile playing on it, and pale blue eyes. "It concerns Maxine Black."

  The smoke gushed out of Promise's mouth in a cloud and she canted forward in her chair. Patricks continued, "She wanted me to get in touch with you. I'm afraid that she has had an accident. Her condition is stable at this time, but there are... complications. She is in the security ward at County General. The ward will be open to receive visitors between noon and three. We would appreciate it if you could come in to help us resolve this matter. Thank you." His face faded out and Promise sat alone in the room, deathly still, then stubbed out her cigarette.

  Promise glanced at the digital clock pacing off the minutes at the upper corner of her wall video. "God. It's eleven already." She closed her eyes and saw red-tinged darkness, felt the swelling in her lids. "Oh, Mouse—couldn't you have waited a few hours?" Still in darkness, she sighed, then stood and headed for her closet.

  When you can count your friends on the thumbs of one hand, there are some things more important than sleep.

  Promise took the tube to County General. She watched the crowd at the tube station warily. There were always gangs. Sometimes Spiders snuck out of the Maze. They called themselves Spiders because of the facial tattoo that warned others of Thai-VI, the lethal, incurable venereal disease they carried. Instead of huddling in their hovels or in the isolation camps, they wore their tattoos as badges of honor, running the streets until the police force, or the disease, brought them down.

  Spiders took a particular delight in rape, passing the disease on in a bizarre game of tag.

  Promise was dressed simply, a knit shift with pale leather boots, her hair flared out in its natural puffball, her face unmade. In a back corner of her mind a tiny bit of consciousness kept the plastiskin flesh-colored and camouflaged. None of the women on the tube looked at her twice. Many of the men did more than glance, taking in the gentle swell of her calves, the rise of her breasts, the noncommital quiet of her expression. A couple of them sidled up to her and tried to start conversations, but she warned them off or cut them dead with a look, and soon they left her alone. Silent, she watched the city whiz by as the
tubecar sped along the rise of Baldwin Hills east to the central connection, then north to the old downtown area.

  It was easy to remember when there had been skyscrapers here. The Great Quake, and the even more ruinous firestorm that followed, had razed the city, sending business fleeing to the valleys and peripheral areas. Already decaying by the turn of the century, no one cared about central L.A. anymore. The slums remaining in the area were simply referred to as The Maze, and only the hopeless made it their home.

  The tube dropped around a long curve and slid to a halt at the side of the hospital.

  County General had stood in this area for over a hundred years. Federal emergency funds helped rebuild and repair it after the Quake, a token effort soon abandoned in an avalanche of federal tax reforms. But it was all that the Maze had, and at least it was something.

  Promise steadied her breathing, patted a nonexistent hair into place, and walked in.

  The receptionist at the front desk was a white-haired Latina whose face was grooved with age. "Excuse me," Promise asked quietly, "could you tell me where the security ward is?"

  The woman looked at Promise with polite disinterest. "And whom do you wish to see?"

  "Maxine Black, please."

  The woman's gaze lasted an irritating moment too long. "I'll have the attending doctor come down for you. Take a seat over there, please." She pointed the way, and Promise found herself taking pleasure in the dowager fat hanging from the woman's arm like flesh-colored cottage cheese.

  She sat watching the stream of people feeding through the doors into the waiting room: mothers with children, old people, the broken limbs and contusions, and those who looked as if they just needed a good meal. A Chinese lady fixing a zipper on her little boy's pants smiled at her, and Promise nodded in return. A man in the opposite corner...

  That's odd, she thought. He had been looking at her— and not with the kind of look she usually got from men, either. As if she knew him, or he knew her, or something. He was a large, Black man, perhaps thirty-five, with inexpensive but neat clothing covering what looked like one hell of a body. Now his gaze was back on her again, almost casually, except that contact with those dark, expressionless orbs was somehow frightening. She was glad when a hand fell on her shoulder.

  "Miss Promise?" The voice was friendly. The face was Dr. Patricks's familiar bland oval.

  She nodded, rising to shake his hand.

  "Please come this way. We'll need to get a picture of you before we can let you into the prison ward." He shunted her into a side room where she stood briefly in the focus of a simple holo setup. The light brightened momentarily, and Patricks stepped back toward her. "That will be ready in a moment. Is that a first or last name?"

  "It's what I'm called." Her face was expressionless. "My parents were too busy fighting to name me. When the nurse asked them to make up their minds for the birth certificate, they 'promised' that they'd get around to it."

  He frowned. "You expect me to believe that?"

  "No. But then I didn't expect you to ask the question, either."

  "Oh." He seemed unsure of himself. He cleared his throat to try again when the timer rang. He pulled her badge from the ID machine and pinned it to her blouse.

  "There you go, young lady." His eyes lingered on the swellings beneath his hand.

  "Why, thank you, doctor. I certainly couldn't have managed that by myself." He laughed uncomfortably, and they left the room. He led her to a battery of elevators.

  "Until recently," he began, "I headed County's detoxification program. As you know, Miss Black was an inpatient of that program about two years ago. We thought she was doing well, until this." The elevator door opened, then closed behind them. He continued as the car began to move. "Naturally, I became interested in her case."

  Promise shook her head. "I still don't know exactly what happened."

  He ran a hand over his thinning hair, slicking beads of perspiration into a sheen that reflected light more evenly. He faced her with his thin lips drawn into a line. "Apparently she entered into some kind of drug deal with one of the therapists in the Rehab program, a Larry Ornstein." He looked at her questioningly. When there was no reaction, he went on. 'This is a very unpleasant business. Much of it is conjecture, but the authorities seem to be satisfied with it. The two of them were evidently sampling the—ah—drug..."

  Promise winced and bit her lip before asking, "Are you talking about grub-toasting?"

  He nodded expressionlessly. "I'm afraid so. We found over a thousand Marks worth of grubs on the premises." He watched her grimace and continued, licking his lips with the tip of a pink tongue. "Well, the way—" The elevator stopped, and the door slid open. "Follow me, please. We figure that they were both high on grubs and got into some kind of argument. They fought. She killed Ornstein and panicked. She tried to escape, forgetting all about the grubs that had started the argument."

  "Forgot?"

  "Yes. She also evidently forgot that the glass doors on the patio were closed. She ran right through them, fell down the embankment, and slid about twenty meters before landing in somebody's backyard. The neighbors called the paramedics, who brought her here. The police investigated, and they found her dead lover and the grubs, some of them thawed out and crawling."

  Her studiedly calm face became contemplative. "I knew Mouse was in trouble, but I had no idea."

  "It's worse. She seems to be suffering from amnesia." As they turned a corner, a guard stopped them and passed a small monitor over her badge, waving them on when it beeped.

  When they were out of earshot, Promise whispered, "What do you mean?"

  "She doesn't seem to remember much that has happened to her in the past few days."

  "And you think I can help?"

  He looked at her and shrugged. "Can't hurt. She's in trouble either way."

  They had reached room 1732, a plain blue door with a small white card set at eye level: "Maxine Black." Under the card, attached to a metal clip, hung a clipboard with scribbles of words and numbers covering it. Patricks thumbed it open. "Go right in," he said. "You'll have ten minutes." The room was small, made smaller by the wire-grid windows and the security camera in the corner. Patricks preceded her to the bedside.

  Within a collage of bandages and plastic was what had once been a very pretty girl. Patricks gazed at Maxine for a long time, then sighed, moving closer to the bed. "Maxine?" he called softly. "Can you hear me?" Most of Maxine's long, soft hair had been shorn, the bare scalp stitched together like a quilt. One eye opened, and the head nodded. "This is Promise.

  You asked to see her, and she's here. She's going to talk to you for awhile, then she has to go." He looked at Promise significantly. "Okay. Ten minutes." He left the room and shut the door behind him.

  Promise looked around the room. The ceiling radiated a pale light. There was a single chair near the bed. Promise moved it close to the head and sat. She looked at the swollen face of the girl she had befriended. "Oh, Mouse " she said finally, just to break the silence. Maxine's hand stirred from under the covers and rose a fraction. Promise took it, hand in cool hand, and they stayed that way for a time.

  "Did you do it?"

  There was no response. Promise felt worse than useless. She tried again. "Is your name Maxine?" There was a slight pressure against her hand. "Is my name Maxine?" She could have sworn there was a smile tugging at the bandages on that ravaged face. There were two squeezes.

  "Did you do it?"

  Maxine squeezed twice, and there was a very faint sound: "No."

  Promise's heart leaped. "Do you know who did?"

  Maxine's eyes grew frantic as she struggled to speak. "Drug," she said, the word a painful effort. "Find drug."

  Promise nodded soberly. "Yes. They found the grubs. My God, how could you go back to burning those things after we fought for so long to get you clean?"

  Weakly, Maxine shook her head. She coughed, and her voice grew a little stronger. "No.. .grubs. Different. Better. Much
better, but..." She closed her eyes, gathering strength. "Love drug. Needs two. Worth... God, I don't know how much."

  "Better than grubs?" Promise tried to keep the skepticism out of her voice. "Who has it?"

  Maxine's good eye looked around the room frantically. "I did... we. Larry and me. You have. Don't let anyone find out. Take it. Try it with... with someone you could love. Grow print..."

  Promise nudged her gently. "Where is it?"

  "Fright wig...oh, Christ. I hurt. Listen. Don't trust ... anybody. We got it here. The leak was... here." She tried to sit up in the bed, but the attempt was both futile and painful to watch. "I couldn't have killed Larry. Couldn't. You try it. You'll know " Her voice was slipping away into delirium again. "It would have been so good. It would have..." Her voice drifted again. Promise was tempted to shake her gently, then thought better of it and let her lie. She rose from her chair and watched quietly. Maxine's smooth dark skin was ashen with weakness, the muscles in her face slack and lifeless.

  Promise hadn't heard the door open, but suddenly Patricks was in the room. "Time," he said quietly.

  "What did she say?" he asked as they walked back to the elevator.

  "Nothing, really. There isn't a whole lot working in her head yet. She just mumbled a lot."

  Patricks nodded thoughtfully. "Well, thank you for coming down, anyway." He paused. "You're sure she didn't say anything important?"

  Promise looked at him levelly. "Absolutely. But if I think of anything that might help you, I'll be in touch."

  "Thank you. I'll need that badge back."

  She plucked it off her blouse and bent the corner back, ripping off her holo. "I don't like the picture," she said, handing it back to him.

  She stepped into the elevator, the door shutting silently behind her. Patricks looked at the closed door, frowning. Then he turned and walked away, her torn ID badge in his hand.