“First, I don’t want any liberating or seizing going on at the fair or in Ship Creek. Most hostages are stashed in safe houses in Down Town anyway, and we got our own militia watching ’em, so I don’t think you’d stand a chance of being heroic.
“Second, no killing, looting, or stealing at the fair. That’s pretty obvious, I guess. We’ll want a bond to make sure you don't back out on any deals, and if you cause trouble, we keep your bond and take you hostage. You guys seen Far Island? Take a look; we got a lot of hostages left over from last trade fair. We get a good salmon run up here in the summer, and those guys have put in a lot of work. Any questions? Good. That big blue building”—he pointed down the strip, toward Cook’s River— “is the trading shed. You can find the memors there.”
The trading shed was the focus of the fair, but I soon realized that it was only for big trades. All up and down the strip people had set up booths and were selling all sorts of things. There was a big dog lot, with dozens of dogs staked out on small chains; next to it was a sled builder who had everything from light racing sleds to twenty-foot freight sleds. There was a Japanese woman in silver hair selling Nissan rifles, Subaru pistols, and other guns—in gross violation of the Japanese embargo on the PRAK, Max told me—but no one there was going to turn her in. At another booth someone else sold ammunition, and another person did loading of ammo.
Old crones in rags sold slabs of beef, moose scraps, dead cats, all sorts of formerly living critters. Someone else was selling clothes, boots, hats, and little tubes of make-up and hair dye. A barber was doing a bang-up business of snipping heads into Mohawks and other bush punk coiffures. Down by the trading shed, just outside, were two booths, both with big books hanging from poles. “Naming,” shouted one guy, and “Reading,” shouted a woman. Both the readers wore hoods over their heads.
“Maybe I could pick up a little trade,” I said to Max, pointing at the readers.
He glared at me. “Don’t even think about it.”
We walked down to the trading shed. Though maybe fifty people crowded into the trading shed, it was strangely quiet. Around the edge of the room were long rows of tables, with ten memors seated at each. People sat in wooden chairs before the memors, and the memors talked to them in rhythmic voices in low and hushed tones. Those waiting for a memor milled around the middle of the room in a line that snaked through a maze of ropes, nobody hardly saying a word. Max and I got in line behind a one-armed man. I smiled at him and he smiled back, scratching his stub.
“Gonna see if I can get my arm back,” he said. “You haven’t seen a loose arm lately, have you?”
I wanted to tell him, yes, I saw a loose arm or two in the snow at Kaditali, but I knew that wasn’t the answer he wanted, so I just said, “No.”
On a platform in the center of the room a reader in a mask danced around a chalkboard, scratching names and figures on the board, erasing names, putting new names up. Another masked reader walked from memor to memor, writing things down, and every so often he would hand a sheet with words on it to the reader on the platform. Both of the readers wore shapeless garments, but I could tell by their walk that they were both women.
Each name on the board had two boxes next to it; at the top of the rows of boxes were the words “offer” and “asking price.” Max nudged me and I let my eyes wander down the list, trying to look like I was gazing off into space, while what I was really looking for was the word “Electrolux.” I spotted it in the second column of names, sixth down. Under “offer” the box was blank, and under “asking price” was the figure “KK.” “K” meant “thousand,” I remembered from when I had been down south in Silicon, but I didn’t know a thousand-thousand what.
“What’s the currency around here?” I asked Max.
“Bullets,” he said.
I did a quick calculation. The St. Herman’s Club had sold me a beer for a “dime,” that is, one bullet. So for the price of a million beers, we could liberate old Lucy. I whispered the price in Max’s ear, and he whistled slightly.
“What’s a vial of the hyperdog jizzum worth?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “Ten keys,” he said. “That’s ten thousand bullets a vial. I’ve got ten vials.”
A hundred thousand bullets. We weren’t even close. Whoever was selling Lucy wanted top dollar. Now I could understand why Suz was so eager to get me out of Mond Center. With that kind of price on my head, she must have been real tempted.
I glanced down the list again, seeing if I recognized any names. I stopped at one name: Olive Drab, our man Odey, the guy in the purple flat top who had suckered us into God Weird. Whoever had him—and I thought I knew who—was asking only ten keys. We could afford him easy.
“Bid on a guy named Odey,” I whispered to him. “Double the asking price.” I had a hunch. If we got Odey we might get Lucy, too. “Ask about Lucy, but just make it casual. And leave a memor message. No—” I said. “We’ll leave a written message.”
“What the hell are you up to, Holmes?”
“Trust me,” I said.
Max shrugged. A chair in front of a memor opened up. Max walked to it and sat down. I stood next to him. The memor, a tall, thin woman with gray hair cropped straight at her shoulders, pointed at me.
“Are you together?” she asked. That surprised me; she didn’t speak in rhyme.
“Yeah,” said Max. “It kind of concerns both of us.”
“Very well,” the memor said. “What are you trading?”
“Hyperdog jizzum,” Max said. “I can get 10 keys a vial on the open market, so that’s what they’re worth.”
The memor nodded. “Fine. And whom do you wish to liberate?”
“Well, we’re speculating on two people. What’s the asking on that Electrolux woman?”
The memor shook her head. “Too high for you. There’s a standing offer of a million bullets, and she goes to that bidder at the end of the trade fair if no one tops it.”
“Who made that bid?” I asked.
“Everyone wants to know,” she said. “Big Mac is the only name we have.”
Big Mac, Big Mac . . . when I heard the name again I got the feeling I’d been getting lately, as if I really knew who he was but couldn’t place it. All I could think of was hamburgers, and that was absurd.
“Is this Big Mac holding Electrolux?” I asked.
“I can only give that information to certain people.”
I glanced at Max, took a risk. “This information is confidential,” I said. “You are not to reveal my identity to anyone.” The memor nodded. “Okay. I’m Holmes Weatherby, Aye-Aye-Aye, of the Wonderblimp.”
The memor smiled. “The Bear Baiters have her.” She furrowed her brow again. “But you knew that. The militia told you.”
And why had the militia told a memor about me? I didn’t want to think about that, unless . . . yeah, Suz. Suz honoring her pledge and making sure no one took me hostage.
“They could have lied,” I said. “Okay, how about a God Weirder named Olive Drab, or Odey?”
“Ah,” she said, “I expected you would ask. He’s in your price range: ten keys. And I can tell you that he is being held by—”
“—the Wonderblimp,” I guessed.
“My,” she said, mocking, “don’t we know everything? Yes, the Wonderblimp. They’re standing by at Far Island. Do you wish to bid?”
I glared at Max. He glared back, then nodded his head. “Twenty keys for Odey,” he said.
The memor smiled. “Double bid takes the deal,” she said. “We will get a message to the Wonderblimp and make the arrangements. Check back with us in, oh, twelve hours?” She tapped her wrist, and I held up my watch so she knew I could keep time.
“Twelve hours,” Max said.
“Very good. Do you wish to leave a message for anyone?”
“Yeah,” I said. “To the God Weirders. ‘We have—’ ”
“I’m sorry,” she said “We don’t deliver messages to them.” She spat. “Perhaps a wr
itten message . . . ?” She motioned outside. The readers.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said. We left.
Outside the trading shed, Max pulled me aside. “What the devil are you up to?” he yelled. “How the hell are you going to trade this Odey for your blue-braided bitch? And how the hell is this going to get us to the Wonderblimp?”
I punched him on the shoulder. “Christ, Max, I haven’t the foggiest.”
He groaned, took his cap off, scratched his balding head. “I just hope to hell this leads to my coke.”
“Oh, it will,” I said. “It will.”
He stopped me by one of the reader’s tents. “You want to leave a message?”
I shook my head. “Changed my mind. No, I think we should go right to the source. I think we should go have a chat with the Bear Baiters.”
* * *
The Bear Baiters had their camp on the mountain end of the strip, between the strip and where the Strange Trail headed north. Rindi said they lived up a valley in the mountains, but “thank God, miles from the Redoubt.” We went back to our camp, got Rindi and Nivakti. Max thought we might need some company. We walked east along the strip, toward the mountains, until we found the Bear Baiters’s camp. It wasn’t hard; we just walked down the strip until we came to the place with the human and bear skulls stuck on pikes.
On the strip side of their camp, near where folks might walk by, the Bear Baiters had stuck some of the cages they used to hold hostages in. The cages were made of ten-inch logs, logs thicker than a man’s thigh, and a lot of the logs had been cracked or split. Teeth marks as big as my fingers had been gnawed in the logs, and some of the logs had crusty brown stains on them. I gulped and tried not to think of Lucy cowering in one of those cages, screaming as a big bruin lumbered toward her . . .
“They must get their asking price,” Rindi said.
“Bastards,” Nivakti said. He clutched the grip of his pistol. “It is not a good way to hunt bears.”
“I don’t think they do that to hunt bears,” Max said. “They do it to scare people. Damn Bear Baiters probably hunt more people than bears.”
A crowd of about fifty people hung around one big cage in front of the camp. It was actually two cages connected by a long thin cage, like a hallway. At either end of the hallway were doors. In a small cage out front a woman sat on a stool, staring straight ahead. The woman looked about fifty-five, with hair dyed orange red and teased into an ugly mess. She had a face that looked like someone had slapped her on the back while she was sucking lemons. Her lips were all scrunched up into a garbled mew, but her cheeks were smooth, like elves were yanking on her ears. She sat on a little three-legged stool, saying nothing, looking beyond the bars of her cage, her back rigid, as if she had no idea she was going to die. But she was going to die. Any fool could see that.
The other end of the hallway connected with a larger cage, and in it was a grizzly bear, a big momma of a grizzly bear, about five feet high at the shoulders, seven feet at the hump, and at least ten feet when she stood on her rear legs. The griz’s ribs stuck through her skin, and she paced the cage nervously, poking her paw through the bars. The bars weren’t wood but steel, steel all around. The bear kept walking up to the door and yanking on it, rattling the cage, smelling the fear of the crowd before it.
A man in a black hood stood on a platform before the cage, pacing with the bear, looking at a watch. I glanced at my own watch: 4:58. A few seconds later the man stopped, put his arms out. The crowd quieted.
“It is time,” he said. “Is there a memor here?”
A gray-haired memor—not the one I talked to—came out of the crowd, stepped up to the edge of the platform.
Present I exist,
To take bids and prices for this
Woman who will die.
“Do you have any bids for this woman?” The man in the hood pointed at the cage.
“None,” the memor said.
“Very well.” He looked out at the crowd. “Do I hear any officers of liberation?”
The crowd said nothing, except for a man in the back who yelled, “Feed the griz!”
“No offers?” the man asked. He stared at a young man, almost a boy, in the front row, who stared at the woman in the cage. “You, Malachi?” the man in the hood asked. “No offer for your father’s widow?”
“None,” the boy said. “She has taken all my father’s money and mine as well. Ask her to liberate herself.”
The woman looked up. “It was my money,” she said in a firm voice.
The boy shrugged. “As you like. I have nothing to liberate her with, even should I want to.”
“No offer, then,” said the man in the hood. He turned to the woman in the cage. “Will you liberate yourself?”
The woman glared at him. “With what? I have nothing left.”
“So be it,” the man said. He turned to the crowd. “Let this be a lesson to you: do not cross the Bear Baiters. Pay our price. We ask only a fair price.”
“Kill her!” a woman yelled.
“As you wish,” the Bear Baiter said. He stepped to the long hallway, pulled a rope, and let the grizzly into the hall. The woman stood, turned to face the door, fell to her knees. The griz came to the door, began rattling it. The woman got up, ran, clutched the edges of the bars.
“Mal!” she yelled. “You have the gold! Use the gold!”
The boy glanced up, smiled. “You have the key to the deposit box. Give me the key!”
The woman looked over her shoulder, looked at the bear beating against the door. The Bear Baiter held onto a rope, listening, waiting for her reply.
“Will you liberate me?” she asked.
The boy nodded, and held out his hand. She reached down her shirt, pulled out a steel key looped through a leather thong, slipped it over her neck, and dropped the necklace into the boy’s hand. He closed his fist over the key, stepped back from the cage.
“Well?” asked the Bear Baiter.
“Liberate me!” the woman yelled.
The boy held the key up to the Bear Baiter. “There is a vault in one of the Down Town buildings. This key opens a box in the vault, and in the box is some gold that will pay the price. I will liberate her.”
The Bear Baiter nodded. “We hold her for an hour. If you don’t come back . . .” He tugged lightly on the rope.
“I understand,” the boy said. He walked over to the woman. She still knelt on the floor of the cage, tears running down her face.
“Bless you, Mal,” she said. “Bless you.”
Mal smiled at her, nodded, then walked to where the bruin paced in the cage. “I am sorry, bear,” he said to the sow. “But this death is not for either of us to decide.” The boy walked toward the Rubbler wall on the north side of the strip. The crowd dispersed, mumbling, disappointed that they hadn’t seen the bear feast.
We walked up to the gate of the barricade the Bear Baiters had set up around their camp. “Those guys mean business,” I said.
Max shook his head. “So does the kid. I know him. He came by the Redoubt once. That lady wasn’t your normal hostage. She crossed the kid, but she made the mistake of crossing the only advocate she had left. Man, you don’t do that in the PRAK.”
“I don’t get it. He’s going to liberate her.”
“I don’t think so. He won’t come back, and if he doesn’t . . . That’s the way the PRAK is. Don’t turn on people. Make friends. Keep friends. If someone gets you—” Max drew a hand across his throat. I knew what he meant. I hoped we could be good pals to Lucy . . . if it wasn’t too late.
I pulled the string on a bell on the gate, rang it back and forth. In half a minute a panel in the gate slid back and a big yellowish eye stared back at us.
“What do you want?” asked a low and raspy voice.
Max nudged me. “We want to make a trade,” I said.
“Set it up with the memors,” the voice said. The panel slid shut.
I rang the bell again. The panel slid open and the same yell
owish eye glared back at me. “You try my patience,” the voice said. “Leave us alone. All deals go through the memors.”
“This one is kind of special,” I said. “It’s about Electrolux.”
“Our price is too high for you,” the voice said.
“Not your price,” I said. “Not what you’re getting out of it.” I was taking a chance, but what did I have to lose? The person on the other side raised an eyebrow, slid back the panel, and then the gate creaked open.
She stood in the gateway, a tall, handsome woman. She had high cheekbones, a long chin, and large lips full of promise. Her hair was tucked behind her right ear, and fell in waves over the left side of her face. Only that yellow eye marred an otherwise striking face.
“Come in,” she said, motioning with her right hand. She closed the gate behind us, then walked ahead, leading us to a circular tent inside the compound. She walked with a slight limp, favoring her right side. She held a flap of the tent open for us, and we went in.
We sat down on pillows in front of a barrel-shaped stove in the center of the tent. The woman stood in front of us, and with her left hand swept her hair out of her face and behind her shoulders. Three great white scars ripped the left side of her face, crossing over a knot of scarring where her left eye had been, and ending at her jaw. She leaned forward and let the hair fall in front of her face again.
“You see,” she said. “I am Bear Woman, and so I can speak for the Bear people. What it is you desire?”
I glanced at Max, who glared at me again, that hard-ass glare. I gulped, forged ahead. “We have something, or will have something, that is far more valuable to you than something you already have.”
“Make yourself clear, ” Bear Woman said.
“You have Electrolux?” I asked. She nodded. “You got Electrolux from the God Weirders, right?” She nodded again. “But you did not buy her, did you?”
She looked at me with the one yellow eye, then smiled. “You know Bear, do you? Perhaps you are one of us?” She reached forward, undid the buttons on my shirt, and spread my shirt open. She ran a long fingernail down the pink scar. “Bear marks you, too. You are one of us, like the woman. No, we did not buy the woman. She came to us.”
After the Zap Page 17
