by Jeff Somers
To my surprise, the door opened without incident, and a short, bald, unshaven man stood smiling in the doorway; not a care in the world. His nose was abnormally long, and I wondered if he had trouble hitting things with it as he moved about. As he spoke, it wiggled hypnotically.
“Hello hello. You must be Avery Cates, Gunner Extraordinaire, come to interview me. Don’t be shocked, mate; I’ve got my eyes and ears in the air and watching at all times. If you were coming to kill me you would have brought more iron, and if you were bringing me some Piglet tracking device I’d have sussed it out of your magnetic field, trust me. Come on in, then. Let’s talk.” His voice was vaguely accented and precise; he enunciated every word and spoke very fast.
He disappeared into the room, leaving the door open. I glanced at Gatz but he just shrugged. We stepped into Ty Kieth’s hideaway.
It was a small room, but the entire far wall was covered by stacks of electronics. Monitors showed us six different camera angles, starting with Charlton Street and working their way up to right outside his door. Black boxes with no obvious purpose hummed, red and black wires running between them. One small corner of the room boasted a creaky cot with a bare, thin mattress. Otherwise the place was empty and humming with electric radiation, black noise that cut through me, mutating cells and raising the hairs on my arms. Fucking Techies, knew everything but they were all racing against the tumors in their heads from the black noise.
“Word is you’ve got a job for Ty, eh?” Kieth said cheerily, punching buttons and making gestures near his equipment as he studied a green-on-black screen, lines of code streaming by his amazing nose. “Ty’s hiding, of course, you know that, eh? But he’s poor. Poor old Ty, he needs money. So maybe we can work something out.”
I watched him for a moment. “You always do that?”
“Eh?” he said without looking up. “Do what, then?”
“Talk about yourself like that.”
He shrugged. “Guess so. Never think about it. Spend a lot of time alone.”
“Huh.” I considered being stuck with this guy for weeks, months. “What’re you hiding from?”
“Pigs,” he said simply. He turned his twitchy nose toward me. “You want to see all the Pigs on the street?”
I frowned. “Huh?”
He beckoned me to a small, ancient monitor you had to lean forward and put your face against, cupping your hands around your face to amplify the dim image. “Take a gander, Mr. Cates.”
I moved up and leaned over. A grainy black-and-white image of Charlton Street came into focus. It was poor quality and I could just make out the rough details. Most of the people were a dull, muddy gray, but three-two men lounging together against a wall, and a woman sitting at a street cafй, smoking a cigarette-glowed with a sickly green aura.
“SSF uplinks operate on a specific frequency and radiate a signature, chum,” Kieth said happily. “They fucking glow if you know what to look for. I think these three know I’m here, actually. They’ve been hanging around the past few days.”
I straightened and laughed a little. “Kieth, this street probably has a dozen fugitives hiding out. Why think it’s you?”
He grinned. “Yer right, of course, Ty’s unimportant-a speck. Lord knows he didn’t have to flee Fortress Europa for a fucking reason, lord no. Only important fucks like Avery Cates get sucked up into SSF hovers like royalty and spat out a few days later with all his fingers and toes.”
I reached out, fast, and pinched him just below the Adam’s apple. It was huge, and tempting, and you practice shit like that in my business. Cut off his voice, his breathing, nice and neat. His eyes bugged out and the room was suddenly filled with a low hum and nothing else. Techies: They always forgot they were flesh and bone.
“Listen to me, shithead,” I said easily. “I can just wait ten minutes and you’re dead. Okay? I can twitch my hand, and crush your windpipe, and you’re dead faster. Okay? I’m going to let go, now, and when I do, take a moment to get your breath back, and then tell me why the fuck you’re on the run, okay?”
He stared at me, his mouth working. I waited.
“You know I can do this, right?”
He nodded.
“Okay.” I let him go. He dived backward, coughing, and found a resting point against a stack of his equipment. He massaged his throat and glared at me.
“No call for that, eh?”
I settled myself casually. I was dancing, playing my part. “I need to know what baggage you’re bringing. I’ve got enough attention coming my way, okay? I don’t need your minders piling on with my minders, and making this into a fucking SSF party.”
Kieth smoothed himself with elaborate ceremony and seemed to have completely regained his equilibrium, which was impressive. “Listen, mate, it won’t be any worries, you understand? I can lose my little escort any time I want. Why do you think they’re hanging around instead of cracking heads? Because word on the street is, I’m here, but they can’t fucking find me.”
“Dig,” he said, gesturing at one of the black boxes he had piled around. “See this? I can make this whole room disappear. They walk right by, every time. And this.” He gestured at a smaller box. “Jams everything they throw against me. They’re not stupid, you understand, they know I’m probably here. They just can’t figure it out. Illegal, of course, every chip and nano-chain. No civilian supposed to even know this stuff exists.”
This was interesting. I was beginning to regain my faith in Pick’s recommendations.
“A Safe Room, huh? There are ways around Safe Rooms, Kieth, if the SSF has the energy and the motivation. You get blueprints, you do soundwave imaging, compare the holes you get on the screen with the holes you can see.”
He sneered. “Safe Rooms-I’ve seen the rooms you folk in this godforsaken city call safe. Amateurs. Two-year-old tech, my friends. The only thing keeping you alive in those rooms is the fact that the SSF has a shrinking budget these days and the JC won’t vote ’em enough skag to buy the necessary equip, see? If the Pigs are really searching you out, they could find you in a blink. This building,” he swept a hand around impatiently, “is pre-Unification. There aren’t any plans left. Ty checked. It’s been burned, ruined, and rebuilt out of rubble. Our friends the Pigs would spend days digging into the walls of this place investigating every single anomaly.”
I nodded. “Okay. I believe you. You interested in our work?”
He glanced at Gatz and then back at me, feigning relaxation. The way he watched my hands, though, I knew I’d at least made an impression. “Now, that depends, don’t it? How about you give us a few details, then, and Ty can make his decision about that. Just the basics, nothing that could gum up the works.”
“Assassination. Deferred but large payment. Very difficult. The target is Dennis Squalor.”
Kieth became quite still, his nose oriented on me like an antenna. “The fucking Monks,” he murmured. His watery eyes unfocused, going soft and dreamy. His nose quivered. “Who’s hiring, then, mate?”
I considered. Having my employer common knowledge would be problematic in so many ways it was dizzying to contemplate. I was with Marin: No one would suspect-or possibly believe-that the SSF was behind it all. I shook my head. “Need to know,” I said steadily. “Mate.”
Kieth grinned. “I get it, I get it. Ty’s not stupid, but it never hurts to ask. We’ll just assume it’s the highest levels and leave it at that.” He seemed suddenly calm and cool again, happy. “The fucking Monks. Oh, I’d love a crack at them. Cyborgs. Highly advanced. I’ve read specs and some papers, but the actual wiring is secret, you know. No one gets a gander. Secret, secret. Too many secrets.” He appraised me again. “What’s my end?”
“Large,” I said. I gave him a number, and enjoyed they way his nose quivered. “But I can’t promise anything. All deferred to after the job.”
He nodded like he wasn’t concerned. “Yes, yes, but what Ty wants to know is, can he have a Monk? I want a model for examination. Lots of tast
y stuff in there, lots and lots of interesting tech. A man could get famous, publishing something with those specs in it, yeah? Don’t you ever wonder?”
“Wonder what?” He spoke so fast I was having trouble keeping up. My hands twitched with the urge to slow him down.
“If they’re really true believers, or if they’re fucking robots, mate! Give me a few hours with one, and I’ll tell you. I’ll tell the world.”
Kieth was a True Believer, a fanatic in the Church of Tech. I decided it wouldn’t hurt to have one floating around. “Mr. Kieth,” I said carefully, “I can almost guarantee you a Monk of your very own.”
“Plus my share of the profits, yes?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
Honor among thieves. He studied me for a moment, and then glanced at Gatz. “And what’s his role in this little theatrical put-on, eh?”
“Kev Gatz, Ty Kieth,” I said by way of introduction, keeping my eyes on the Techie. “Kev’s with me, and he’s going to be very useful.”
Kieth glanced back at me and winked. “Need to know again, eh? Well enough.” He held out his hand. “Good to meet you, Gatz.”
Kev stared at the hand like it was covered in sores, and then slowly unspooled a cadaverous hand to take it, shaking listlessly. Kieth looked back at me as he pumped Gatz’s dead arm.
“I’m in, Mr. Cates, no worries. I’ve got enough info for the beginnings, see, so I can start scaring up skag we’ll need. Let me know if you have any specific requirements, and if you have any cashola to get the gears started. I assume you’ll be covering my expenses?”
I shook my head, trying hard to conjure up some simulation of regret. “Sorry, Ty. Your end is your end. I can’t help you.”
He scratched his head. “Eh? Well, there’s a bit of a sticky nit, isn’t it? Since I’m flat broke myself, having put most of me rainy-day funds into these luxurious accommodations in order to, you see, avoid the long-if-easily-befuddled arm of the law.” He nodded. “All right then, it’s back to basics: Ty’ll steal what he needs. What’s the good word, then, Cates? When do we start?”
I gestured and began following Gatz out of the room. “I’ll be in touch, Kieth.”
I could almost feel him grinning behind me as he said “Naw, you won’t, Mr. Cates. Step out that door you’ll ne’er find me again, eh? I’ll find you.”
And the motherfucker was right-the moment I stood in the hallway with Gatz again, I turned to look at the door we’d just passed through, and it was gone. I put a hand against the wall and it felt solid enough.
“Looks to me like you just hired the right guy, Avery,” Gatz said laconically.
“You were a shitload of help,” I said, running my hands flat against the wall. It was fucking gone, and all of a sudden I was in total agreement with Gatz. Whoever the fuck Ty Kieth was-and his anonymity spoke well of a Techie-he was fucking good.
“Yeah, well.” He shrugged. “I don’t know shit about this shit.”
I turned away from the wall, imagining Kieth laughing at me inside, watching me pressed up on a plasma field with my nose squashed against invisibility. Fucking Techs. They thought they ran everything, and it was galling, because they did.
“Come on,” I said, pushing him toward the escalator. “We’ve got more people to dicker with.”
“Come on, Ave,” Gatz said with a crooked, crazy grin. “Everyone wants in on this.” He shook his head. “Everyone. They’ll fucking pay you.”
X
YOU ARE NOT A BAD MAN. I AM A BAD MAN
00000
Gatz and I got out on the street and I looked for Kieth’s three cops. Even though they’d been clear as day on his little monitor, I couldn’t find them. It freaked me out. System Cops are not subtle; they do not deign to fucking worry whether we see them coming or not. Seeing three of them do the undercover thing made sweat pop out on my forehead, because the only thing that made it possible to deal with them was their arrogance.
I swallowed hard. Gatz trundled along behind me, and who knew what the fuck that freak was thinking?
Your whole view of the world changes when you’ve killed someone for money. You can solve anything through murder. Someone shoves you in the street, you can follow them all day until they’re alone in a darkened stairwell-and pop! Problem solved. Someone shortchanges you or doesn’t pay up, you could wait for them, and pop! Problem solved. When you killed someone for money, you realized that the world was just a fucking machine. Push here, something happens. Pull here, something happens. Push and pull in a coordinated sequence, and you could make just about anything happen.
Your behavior changes, and thus everyone’s reaction to you. I walked with Kev Gatz through the crowds, hundreds of people just like me and him, nothing better to do, lean and hungry. But everyone got out of my way. Everyone made room. When you killed someone, you were a god, if only for a few moments. It clung to you afterward, the faint scent of godhood. All the gray people around me could smell it, and they shied away.
You didn’t just walk in Manhattan, not these days. You performed. You did a little performance just to get across the street. I scanned the crowd, hardassed, trying to project complete disdain. The thieving, roiling mass of arms and sticky fingers was my enemy and they were all looking to get over on me. You couldn’t let that happen, because if you let one of the bastards get over on you the rest swarmed.
Gatz and I made our way on foot like all the other shlubs, pushing and shoving our way through the wall of meat. The problem with being hardassed all the time was everybody was hardass all the time. And I had a rep that inspired people to be twice as fucking rude to me just to show they weren’t afraid. Fuckers.
So it was pretty obvious what was going on when the crowds kind of miraculously began to thin, and Kev and I found our way much easier.
I glanced at Gatz. “Fuck me. We’re going to start getting a reputation.”
Gatz looked like he’d swallowed a stone. “Start?”
By the time the cop cleared his throat behind us, the street was deserted except for a trio of Crushers who lounged against a crumbling wall, looking unwashed and grubby in their ill-fitting uniforms, their faces careful and stiff. Otherwise, we owned the street. I could have set up a table and had high tea with the Pig and no one would have bothered us.
I turned. “Colonel Moje,” I said. He was about three feet behind us as we turned. He almost shone in the dirty gray light of Manhattan. The man could wear a suit. It was dark purple, pinstriped, with stylishly flared lapels and cuffs. He carried a dark black walking stick like a scepter, waving it unnecessarily. “How fucking delightful.”
He grinned, his beard trimmed expertly, the flashes of gray in it giving him a distinguished, professorial look. Then he tossed the stick in the air, caught it deftly, and swung hard, hitting me in the stomach.
I exhaled my kidneys and went down to my knees like a sack of shit. I tried to breathe, experimentally, but it felt like a small rubber cork had been shoved down my throat.
“Mr. Cates,” Moje said, breathing hard. “My name is Elias Moje, please don’t ever forget it, because you have been brought to my attention.”
Oh, fuck. I thought. This guy takes himself pretty fucking seriously. At my altitude all I could see were his shiny, shiny boots.
“I was inspired by certain parties to pull your file, Cates, and spent an afternoon reading it. You think you’re world-class. You think you’re a bad man. Let me tell you something, Mr. Cates: You are not a Bad Man. I am a Bad Man.”
With a large rock lodged somewhere in my windpipe, I could only stare at his incredibly shiny shoes while dark red spots crowded in on my vision. I thought, Shit, who’s paying this son of a bitch to run me off this job?
“I know that you’re working for Marin, that fuck,” Moje hissed. “I’m telling you to back off. Don’t get into shit with the Electric Church, got it? I’m telling you to go away. Go hide somewhere.”
A pinhole opened in my throat and I sucked hoarse, whee
zing air through it. Moje nudged me roughly with his boot. “Got me, shithead?”
I put my hands palms-down on the pavement and panted, the pinhole getting wider. “Yeah, I got you.”
“I’ll be watching you, Cates. Behave yourself.”
I watched his boots scrape their way off, and Moje receded into a smaller version of himself, and was then swallowed by the suddenly returned crowd. Gatz eventually helped me up, and I wiped spit off my chin and watched where Moje had been, burning with a shameful fury.
“He doesn’t like you,” Gatz offered.
“Lots of fucking help you were,” I snapped. “And it has nothing to do with me, fuck. That bastard’s getting paid.”
It was pretty common for corporations or very rich private citizens to hire System Cops as bodyguards or what have you-officially illegal but the DIA winked at it, usually, if they even knew about it. Whoever’d paid Moje had obviously cheaped out and not gone full-price to just have me murdered. Or maybe they just thought I was your typical street rat, and easily scared. Or maybe they had paid Moje to kill me, and he was just trying to rip them off, take their yen without breaking a sweat. Or maybe Moje was too terrified of Dick Marin to just kill me-who knew? And if that was the case, who would terrify Moje enough to even get him to go this far against the King Worm? Thinking this, it hit me: If Moje wasn’t collecting a check from the Electric Church, I’d eat my fucking shoes. If the stupid motherfucker thought his sad display of power would somehow make me less terrified of Dick Marin, the stupid motherfucker was in for a lesson.
We blended again, becoming just another pair of unhygienic assholes in the mass. Milton Tanner were living a straight life up in Old Chelsea, running what, from all reports, was a profitable store selling artistic little bric-a-brac to rich fucks. I hadn’t heard much about Milton Tanner, as they were before my time, and were over forty, to boot, adding a layer of unbelievability to it all. I didn’t know anyone over forty, except Pick. It was like Gatz and I were going to meet a leprechaun.
