"Tom."
He had been sitting in the shadow of the crumbling office tower for ten minutes, his hands shaking. It had been twenty minutes since the battered Honda had escaped the feral mob and he had somehow managed to make it to their destination without further incident. Perhaps they had been the only evils in the area that night, or perhaps the noise and the sight of the crazed vehicle hurtling down the empty streets had been enough to keep other predators at bay. Now, however, he sat in the cramped cab of the Honda, his hands shaking, trying to will his heart to slow down while his hearing slowly returned.
"Tom." It was Bobbi's voice, a gentle croaking coming from the passenger's seat. "Tom, baby. You all right?"
Walken blinked, his eyes slow and drunken in the aftermath of the moment and he turned his head to face her. Bobbi had collected herself, half-sitting, half-lying in the corner made by the seat and the passenger door. A weak smile crossed her lips as she sat there. "Fucked myself up for a minute, baby," she said with a soft laugh. "S'my fault."
"No," he murmured, "No, you were fine. I..." He blinked again. Confusion still spun around in his mind but with Bobbi up and moving he found himself able to will it into the corners, banishing it away. "I wasn't sure what had happened to you."
Bobbi's smile turned into something of a smirk as she eased herself upright. "Sensory overload," she said with a sigh. "I was trying to analyze that thermal profile when that thing came roaring in. This car's piece of shit sensor doesn't have safety interlocks built in for 'riders." She shook her head and sighed. "That's what you get for getting corporate surplus, baby. Nothing ever works."
"Easy for you to say," he said with a sigh. He found himself suddenly very awake, the adrenaline crash staved off by the need for awareness. "Jesus. Are you gonna be all right?"
"Snatched us from the jaws of certain fucking death all by his lonesome," she chuckled thinly to herself, "And he's worried about me. No, baby, I'll be all right. Don't worry about me." And while he sat there, staring at her, she moved to open the Honda's door.
"Where are you going?" His mind registered the weight of the empty C-J in his lap. "What about the ferals?"
"They don't move that fast," she called to him, looking now at the gory mess that had drenched the hood of the car; the gray surface had been stained black by cooled blood and more. "Fucking hell, Tom, what the hell did you do to those poor bastards?"
"Killed them." He slotted another magazine of depleted slugs into the gun, putting a few more into the pockets of his coat. "Motherfuckers."
"I guarantee that'll make 'em think twice before trying to hit another Honda," she muttered. "At least, that pack of 'em. Ferals are like that. Any of 'em in the area will be drawn to the noise, you know, see what's left of that group and then they'll probably just scatter off."
Walken got out of the Honda then, examining the car for himself. Its front end, besides being gory, was dented and scourged as if he had driven it through a field of hammers. "Serves them right," he rumbled, then nodded toward the building. "Let's just get the fuck in there, Bobbi and get whatever it is that fucker left for us."
"Aye-aye," she said softly, still in awe of the moment. She gave the battered Honda one last look. "Lead on."
The two of them entered the ruined building the way he had before, through the blast hole that Special Tactics had made two nights previous. The bodies were gone, as were the tables and the gear that went with it, but the towering heap of ruined office furniture and the junk that coated the floor still remained. Walken had his palm-lamp out, while Bobbi had extracted a headlamp from her bag; she wore its thin flexible band like a tiara, shining a lance of pale light through the dimness that suffused the space around them.
"Should be close," she said, looking down at the tracker in her palm, its light throwing more shadows upon her face. "Ten meters ahead. Looks like it's in the pile, there."
"Of course it is," he said bitterly to himself. He walked up, guided by her lamp's thin beam, to the side of the pile. He quietly looked over the column of flotsam, frowning as he tried to perceive if anything had been recently disturbed. Some had, of course, but only in the cursory way that police do when they want to get out of a scene quickly. He didn't blame them, thinking again of what they had just left behind.
Walken skirted the near edge of the pile. He peered at the plastering of yellowed newsprint as he moved around to where the tables had been, streaked with the dried blood of the dead Koreans. Then he saw it. Hidden under a fallen carton, where the eyes of the CivPro techs had missed, an extrusion of packing foam lay disturbed. Walken tucked his gun into its holster, bent down and pushed a block of the stuff aside.
Lying there, illuminated by the pale beam shining from his palm, was the hand of a little girl. Tiny fingers with painted nails clutched tightly around the arm of a familiar teddy bear. 'Daddy' winked up at him, the lapel on which it had been sewn now streaked with dark blood.
"Jesus," Bobbi breathed, following him with her own light; its own beam fell and pooled there, paling the girl's already ashen skin further until it was as white as the concrete beneath.
"He's got nothing to do with it," Walken muttered grimly. "Let me get her out."
Unearthing the Doll had been more of a chore than Walken had expected. Though her body was light, the press of the trash had been enough that he had needed to try twice again to pull her from the tangle of furniture. She was dead, the poor thing; crawled under the mess and died, from everything that he could see, suffocated by the weight pressing down on her. She must have buried herself so deeply into the mountain of trash that the forensic techs didn't find her, only to be uncovered later.
They put her thin body in the trunk. Walken dearly wished that the Honda had a backseat, but he was able to at least put her into the car's battered nose with as much grace as he was able even with the sensor node taking up a quarter of the usual space. He'd covered her up with his coat after digging the magazines out of its pockets and then they had started off home again.
They were silent for most of the trip back. They had agreed that the car couldn't be driven any further than the edge of the Verge, lest the heat be on them for sure. You can't go driving around civilization in something that looked like it had just been driven out of a warzone without being noticed, after all. Bobbi had called a friend of hers, a rumbler by the name of Scalli, to come and collect the two of them. They drove the Honda into the remnants of an old garage, just on the eastern edge of the Verge and waited in the dark for her friend to come.
It was Bobbi who first spoke. "I wanted to thank you," she said, her voice devoid of its usual swagger.
"No need," he replied, too quickly. "Shit happens to everybody."
She was quiet for a moment. "Maybe so," she said, "But I wanna say it. You saved our asses but good. I'm sorry I didn't do anything."
"No need," he repeated. He wasn't trying to be evasive, really. It was more that he didn't have the proper words to reply. The Doll was still spinning in his head, the fragile, dry-sticks weight of her, as if she were made of wood. The techs had always collected them in the past, to make sure they came out intact. He hadn't been prepared for the lightness of her, the paleness of her face, the peace that seemed to rest on her pretty face in death.
Was it always that way with them? It was as if nothing had been done to her at all, as if she had just fallen asleep. He thought of her, whatever there was left of her that was human, sweating and dying alone beneath all that trash. Trash is what everyone else would have thought of her as being, after all. Just another unit to be collected and disposed of. Hot tears sprang to his eyes and Walken sobbed softly in the dark. This time, Bobbi did not speak.
Deliverance came in the form of an ancient transport truck scrubbed free of corporate markings, a hydrogen refit of an older hydrocarbon job. Scalli was an enormous, handsome black man, juiced up and monstrous with grafted muscle, dressed in German urban fatigue pants and a shirt so tight it seemed to have been sprayed over hi
s body's topography. When he saw Bobbi emerge from the darkness he gave her a wide, winning smile, arms outstretched.
"Baby girl," he called in a warm tenor voice, "The cavalry is here!"
"Hey, Scalli." Bobbi's hair was a fine sign of her mood, crumbled and deflated; strands of pink had fallen to her eyes, which were rimmed with red from her own tears. "Thanks for coming."
Scalli frowned faintly to see her that way, looking past her a moment at what little of the Honda's battered nose was visible. "Sure, baby girl," he said, his voice dipping into a low, soft tone of concern, "But you all right? You look like you seen some shit."
"We're all right." Bobbi gave him a weak smile. "Little trouble with the natives, you know?"
"Yeah..." Scalli looked between Bobbi and the Honda again. "Must be some rich biz, sending you out there." Scalli paused; Walken had emerged from the greater shadows, standing there in his fatigues and bloody t-shirt with the C-J clinging to his ribs. "You sure he's all right? He looks kinda... I dunno. Wrong."
In an instant Bobbi's smile had vanished and she planted her fists on her hips; the same shift in her mental gears that Walken had witnessed before now occurred again and she frowned up at him in her uncommonly fearsome way. "Well he just blew through a pack of ferals with a gun he ain't even had time to test-fire," she informed him, her voice frigid. "So if that's wrong I don't want him right. What've you been doing, anyway, jerking off?"
The assault took Scalli by surprise; Walken was a bit gratified to see him take a step back, hands held up. "All right, all right," said the giant, looking vaguely stricken. "I got it, girl, don't gotta get all tiny terror on me. Jesus." His eyes wandered back to Walken, who was busy opening the trunk. "So where'm I taking you?"
"Home, Scalli. Only I gotta see Lionel first." Bobbi flicked a glance back as well. Walken had gathered up the shrouded body of the Doll, cradling her in his arms.
Scalli blanched. "Baby girl," he started and looked down at Bobbi with a look of grim surprise. "You ain't started rolling for Lionel, have you? Because that is shit I don't wanna deal with — I owe him enough, I don't wanna get under his thumb any more that I have."
"Relax!" Bobbi lifted a hand, her tone impatiently calming. "Relax, baby. Ain't nobody got rolled for parts. This here..." She jerked a thumb back to Walken and his burden, "Is the daughter of a client got lost in the woods, is all. Turns out she didn't make it. I gotta get her to Lionel, get a cause of death. For the client, see? Asians, baby, they wanna know."
Scalli gave her a dubious frown. "I figure she was out there, cause of death is pretty clear." He shook his head. "You ask too much of me, girl."
Bobbi's lips flattened into a hard line. "Oh," she said coldly, "You wanna talk about asking too much? You wanna start with me even with some of the shit I've done for you in the last few years, baby? Maybe I let slip just where you got the money to get all that extra hamburger of yours."
Whatever threat was behind Bobbi's words, it had hit home. Scalli's eyes widened slightly and he leaned back just the smallest bit. "Hey, now," he started, his voice stung, "Hey now, baby girl. You ain't gotta go that way, you know? Sure, get in the truck, shit."
They loaded up the Doll in the back. Walken rode with her while Bobbi, no doubt prepared to further lash her reticent friend into doing her will, rode up front. Never get between that girl and money, he thought. Or maybe it wasn't the money, he considered, sitting in the dimly-lit box of the cargo truck with the Doll laid out on a pallet in front of him. They were similar, after all. Could it be that Bobbi actually saw the Doll as more of a living thing, a person, like Walken did? He hadn't thought to ask her, not when the emotion of finding her dead had still welled up inside him.
He looked at the Doll, so small in the bundle of his coat. The folds had come open so that her face was exposed, the look of pale peace visible again. He sat there, meditating on that look as the truck rumbled along, wondering about the peace drawn from death, until Scalli's truck finally ground to a halt.
The back doors swung open. Scalli's bulk framed the exit, his exaggerated shoulders like mountains on his back. "We're here," he said, looking entirely beaten.
"Thanks," Walken said. He looked back at the dead Doll, his expression grim. Scalli would have to look for sympathy elsewhere.
Lionel Knightley operated an underground clinic at the edges of the New City, where the anachronism of the Verge merged into modernity. His building was a low, anonymous office block, an example of Modern Revival in curved aluminum with ribbons of frosted glass rising vertically at intervals all the way to the roof. They were met at the loading dock by an orderly, a very polite Japanese girl in plain red scrubs whose English bore only the vaguest accent. "Please come with me," she told them as more orderlies came out to collect the Doll's body. They handed Walken his coat as he watched them wrap her up in a mylar sheet then carry her inside. His mind went with her, still pondering the afterlife.
"Tom?" Bobbi's elbow lightly bumped his own. "You with us, baby?"
He blinked at her, pulling himself out of his reverie. "Sorry," he said. "I'm here."
In the time since she'd gotten into the truck, she'd combed back her crest of hair into something akin to a bob. She looked almost like a different person, although she'd lost none of her loveliness. She looked up at him. The green eyes had changed since they had left the Honda, or perhaps before — they were no longer the glittering facade, having been replaced by something different that he could not read.
"Hey," she said gently, "It's okay. I already called Lionel on the way. He's expecting us. When we get this done, we'll go home, okay? Gotta sleep sometime."
"'A dead man will wait forever'," he sighed softly. "Right."
They left Scalli looming grimly by the side of his truck and followed the orderly down white corridors lit with fluorescent light fixtures tucked behind bands of metal grille. It reminded him of Hunt's place down in the Waters, sterile and stylish, but with black textured no-slip tile instead of the burgundy carpet. Hospital chic.
The orderly led them through a pair of heavy swinging doors into a large white room. It was much like the forensic suite back at the Bureau office, spotlessly clean, jammed with tables and banks of diagnostic equipment and glowing with the steady pulse of steel and light. It was twice the size as the Bureau's suite, however and in Walken's exhausted state seemed as vast and silent as a cathedral nave. A man whom Walken took to be Lionel stood toward the center of the chamber, where the Doll's shrouded body lay upon a surgical table cradled by the long jointed tendrils of manipulators. It was an altar for the church of black medicine in which he stood and, like any good high priest, the man was surrounded by orderlies like a flock of adepts. As Walken and Bobbi arrived they broke and left the room.
Lionel was a handsome Jamaican in his forties, with angular features and light coffee skin. His salt-and-pepper hair was twisted into dreadlocks. He wore it back, secured into a stiff tail with black silk ribbon, which ensured his eyes were visible; they were hard, gray flint, pretty and cruel.
"Bobbi," he said, his light patois coated with a veneer of professional warmth, "Good to see you, little sister. Me hearin' you bring interestin' tings to my clinic."
"That's the word," Bobbi said, arms crossed over her chest. "Got a Doll here, Lionel, fresh outta Wonderland. You game?"
Lionel's brows arched. "So you said when you called," he replied, tone professionally light. "Depends on what you want me to do with it, little sister. Me be plenty curious, no lie." He paused. "But... dis be some deep Babylon technology. Expensive to deal with, or get rid of, even dead..."
Bobbi frowned a bit and glanced over her shoulder at Walken. "Baby," she said, "You wait outside, huh? Lionel and I, we gotta talk business."
"But I..." Walken began tiredly.
"Tom." Bobbi's voice was hard again and for a moment he felt like a child. "Seriously, just let me do the biz, 'kay?"
He hesitated, but nodded. This was Bobbi's territory and he had already pu
t his trust in her the moment he had stepped through her door. No point in welshing now, though he didn't like it. "Yeah," he murmured. "All right." He backed out into the hall and stared at the swinging doors, at their blank steel faces and waited for the pixie to emerge.
Bobbi came out into the hall a little later. Walken had lost track of how long, as tired as he was. She gave him the slightest little smile. "C'mon," she told him, taking hold of his arm and leading him down the corridor. "We're gonna get some sleep, get up and get a decent breakfast."
"I'm a wanted man," he pointed out. "I pop in somewhere local, they'll have me in the lockup inside an hour. And anyway, what happened in there?"
"You just leave it to me," she said cryptically, leading him on. "I'll tell you all about it when we get home."
Scalli left them at the edge of the Field; they only entered the maintenance canal once he had left. The two of them had walked in silence, entered the warehouse and had moved as if on automatic straight into the little room where her futon was set up. They landed at once on their backs, him spread-eagled, her straight beside him, staring up into the struts of the warehouse ceiling and the soft glow of the overhead bulbs.
Walken spoke first. "Jesus, what a night," he breathed, closing his eyes. "Is it all right if I have a heart attack now, or should I wait until I'm asleep?"
"Oh, I dunno, baby," Bobbi said, propping herself up on one arm to look at him. She wore a soft smile and her eyes shone with some of her old amusement. "You did all right."
"Not bad for a fugitive." Walken grunted, scratching at his stomach. "Glad you're all right, though. You had me scared for a minute."
"I've been through plenty worse." She shrugged and then, to his surprise, curled up next to him. Her head lay on his shoulder, an arm draping across his stomach where his hand had just been. "Never had someone to back me up like that, though. Thank you."
Shadow of a Dead Star (The Wonderland Cycle) Page 16
