by Lisa Mason
He has no notion what she means, and her laughter displeases him. “I am of the name Ouija,” he repeats sternly, pronouncing his moniker more carefully.
“Mega, that’s mega,” she says, laughing still. “Look, Ouija, you don’t really know what this is all about, do you?” At his nod, she grows solemn. “I thought so. I’m not sure myself whether I should be glad or terrified. But contact was made. A deal was struck. And now everything is different for me.” She stops and stares at the black disk gripped in her hand. She looks back up at him. “Let’s test this thing. It’s supposed to contain ten thousand untraceable credits. You game?”
Ouija recoils as if he’s touched something too hot. His tribe never uses disks and their invisible trade. He dimly understands how and why such disks work. Carly Quester strides to a vendor setting up his cart on the street where many-many linkers park their cars or walk down to the Barko. The vendor stocks soap and toothpaste, brushes and combs, little colorful things Ouija can’t identify and has no use for, white pills that make your blood rush, uncooked blue moon that makes you sick, fresh red fruit, candied orange fruit, grilled krill, boiled bird eggs, the usual glass tank filled with seaweed and bug-fishes with green claws. The vendor’s cart has spirits living in it and is cunningly divided into little places where the wares are displayed.
The genny woman extends the black disk, winks at him. “You know where we can beat it, if this doesn’t work out?” she says out of the side of her mouth.
He isn’t surely exactly what she’s said, but he knows exactly what she means. And he does. There’s a manhole cover around the corner at Sansome and Broadway. He’s used that escape route many times. He nods.
“Mega,” she says, turning back to the vendor. “Give me two of everything. Plus however many bags it takes.”
The vendor stares at them, glancing from one to the other. He fumbles for his comm.
The genny seizes his hand. “You don’t need copbots, mister. Just give me two of everything, except for the crawdaddies since I don’t have my own tank at home.” She waves the black disk in his face. “Now. Or I’ll take my business up the block. Go ahead, I’m good for it. Charge it.”
The vendor inserts the black disk into a slot in the side of the cart. Bing-bing-bing! Her purchase, which amounts to several hundred softbucks, clears instantly off the disk.
Suddenly the vendor is bowing, blushing, wringing his hands, saying, “Well, miss! Can I interest you in a delicious roast chicken? A real live bird, fresh from the farm, none of that soy crap. I’ll microwave two crawdaddies and throw them in, too. Or perhaps you’d like the beautiful silk biofeed blouse I’ve got in back? Would you like to see it? A lavender color, very nice on you.”
“I’ll take the chicken, the crawdaddies, and the blouse.”
“Of course, miss. Anything you say, miss. I’ve got very good prices, the best prices on cultured eggs. You come back any time, miss.”
The little places flip open and the cart disgorges the bounty. To Ouija’s astonishment—too many astonishments for one long night—Carly divides her loot, giving him one of everything, bundling his share into wrapping papers and bags. She keeps the extras for herself—the roast chicken, the scent of which sets his mouth watering, and the crawdaddies, which also smell delicious, and the silk blouse, which is the color of a little wildflower that grows in the cracks between the gray stone.
“Why?” he asks, awkwardly taking the bags she gives him.
She shrugs, that woman-smiling look in her eyes. “I really don’t want you to hit me again. And tell your tribe to back off, whenever they see me.”
He nods somberly.
“Besides, you look as if you need this stuff.” She gathers up her bags. “Anyway, it’s a windfall for me.”
A windfall? As though Whoosh has blown these things to her? Ouija shakes his head. “Now I owe you the debt of repayment.”
“Nah, forget it. Just don’t hunt me again.”
“Tribal law requires that a favor freely given must be repaid,” he says sternly.
“Whatever you say,” she says, devouring a cooked crawdaddy.
He accompanies her up Broadway to the door of one of those hoot-hoot places where linkers mingle with canned folk and do all manner of dreadful things. “YinYang Club” he reads on the sign. The sign is huge, flanked by holoids of women and men who grin and pose in mating postures, buttocks raised, limbs thrust out. The omens do not crawl as ants but swoop as great birds and blink purple, red, blue, and green. They swirl into shapes that lurch out at him and whisper. The sign has many bad spirits in it. He shudders. This place is very evil. How can she live here?
“Thanks,” she says, “I guess.” She shoulders her bags of loot and ducks inside, banging the door behind her.
* * *
Ouija stares at the huge, broad avenue packed with cars, twirlies, all manner of great groaning machines, canned folk, too many linkers. Finds himself staring at those who toil in the Glass Land.
And finds himself being stared at.
For the tribe lives by stealth, in the drains, in the tunnels, mostly by night. He feels a sharp loneliness, being on a street in the Glass Land without his tribe. Followed by the equally sharp discomfort of being out beneath Lord Day’s brightness. For he is a hunter of the night, thus outfitted for night in his black loin wrap and tribal stain, magic glyphs cut in his chest and arms, which protect him from evil spirits. Plus his spear, his knife, his coil of rope. All these are for the hunt, not for walking about in the day.
Ouija cringes, tries to make himself smaller, and slinks down Broadway, looking for that drain he knows at the corner. Yes! He finds the manhole cover, pries it open, climbs down the rungs. Lugs the cover back over the hole with a practiced thrust of his spear tip. Leans back into darkness. How good to be in darkness, away from hateful daytime eyes.
He hears the soft thump of bare feet on gray stone half a moment before he’s surrounded by a hunting party.
He recoils. A drain wall blocks his only retreat. A digger scrambles up the ladder before he can reach for the rungs. They’re skinnier than his tribe, scrawny and strangely built. Their stain darker, their glyphs fiercer. Their eyes lit by lusts forbidden to his tribe. Two hunters jostle him, tearing his bags of loot from beneath his arm.
Cold fear needles through him. Ouija knows who they are. These diggers eat flesh—any kind of flesh. It is whispered around his lair fire late at night that they especially prize sweet human meat.
He also knows the shaman who takes his bags of loot, rifles through them. Then steps forward to address him. Styx is not as tall as he, but his stringy muscles and high-strung nervousness give him a brutal quickness. Styx wears five knives in his belt, from a long-curving dagger than reaches his kneecap to a short stout plunger the length of a finger. Around his neck and over his bare chest lies a twisted necklace made of braided human hair strung with odd bits of bone that look like knuckles or toes. Two circles of brown pigment are drawn upon his flat cheeks. Brown streaks fan out from the corners of his mouth. His black eyes glitter.
“So, young Ja,” Styx says, “You very-very busy last night, nah?”
“We had a good hunt,” Ouija says, jutting out his chin. Staring back. “Took down a fine whirlie in the Barko. Much rich booty.”
“With the help of the silver woman?”
Ouija keeps silent.
Styx laughs and nods. “We have a very-very busy night, too. We see many-many things. Like you and the silver woman.” He seizes Ouija by the throat. Two hunters seize his arms. “She is a servant of the spirits of the wires. A spirit lives inside her pretty body. You are not stupid, young Ja. You know many-many things. And you know this, too, nah?”
“I know it,” Ouija gasps.
“So,” Styx says. “Why does your tribe all in a quickness go with the spirits?” The brown circles and streaks on Styx’s face are blood, for Ouija can smell the coppery stink. “Have you not opposed them as we have, all these many-many years
? Do you not oppose the shelters in which the Glass Land would trap us?”
Ouija closes his eyes, sickened to his heart. For Styx speaks truly. How has he become entangled in this shameful thing? The human fingers clasped around his throat remind of the ultra’s cyberweb. Remind him of everything the silver woman is.
Styx’s grip tightens. “I cannot hear you, young Ja.”
“We oppose the spirits in the wires as ever,” he says, “and we oppose them still. We will never go to the shelters.” Styx eases his grip. “The silver woman is an ally of the great chief who owned the whirlie,” Ouija says, twisting the truth as he goes, though he hates to speak untruly. “She witnessed our hunt, threatened to turn us in to the Glass Land. Great Zebra killed the chief. He took off his head.” He allows a blaze of tribal triumph to burn over the lie. He shrugs as if Zebra’s feat was nothing, to soften what he must say next. “We traded with her so she would not turn us in.”
Styx’s eyes narrow. “Traded what, Ja?”
Ouija knows what Styx fears. What every digger fears. That one of the tribes will trade knowledge of another tribe’s lair, their hunting grounds. Their ways. Trade this knowledge for easier and richer booty in the Glass Land. As little love as the tribes have for each other, and as much as they compete for scarce water and loot, still Ouija knows—every tribe knows—that no one has betrayed the others. Not yet.
Ouija smiles coldly. “We hunted a linker that the silver woman wanted to catch and feed to a great spirit. We found and trapped her. Turned her over to the silver woman. That is all.”
Had Styx’s tribe seen him walking with genny woman? He waits. The hunters glance at each other. A look that tells Ouija they believe him. Yet no one asks what further transaction he may have had. Ouija keeps silent. Why should he offer more? As for the codes to the lockbox Bins which the silver woman had given him, he carries those inside his head. Even Styx cannot steal them. It has been more than a fair trade for hunting the genny woman. He smiles again, filled with new confidence.
“What’s this?” Styx shakes one of the bags the genny woman had given him. He glances inside. “Krill?” He takes out a bar of scented soap, sniffs it, holds it up his lips in disgust. Drops it back in the bag. The hunters laugh.
Ouija shrugs. “I took these things from a vendor on Broadway. He was stupid and weak. I took them for my woman. She enjoys smelly things.”
“They say your woman was taken by the copbots when you invaded the whirlie.”
Ouija shrugs again, steeling his eyes. Poor little Skink. “I have a new woman.”
“Huh,” Styx says, releasing him. Shoving him against the wall. The rival shaman gives him an evil look, but he hands back the bags. The new day is warming the air above and the drains below. A stench ripens. Rats squeal and scurry. Insects buzz and scuttle. “Remember this, young Ja. The tribes have many-many eyes, nah?”
Then Styx and his hunters slide into the darkness of the tunnel. Soft thump of bare feet on gray stone, and they are gone.
* * *
Ouija shoulders the bags of loot, turns away from the direction the water is flowing. For he knows the water flows from the sea to the bay in this particular drain. He wishes to walk seaward. The lockbox Bins he seeks lie west of North Beach. So does Chinatown, and it is to Chinatown he wishes to go first.
For in Chinatown lives his sage, Louie Zoo. Louie Zoo may be found somewhere in the alleys below the Bank of the New Hong Kong pagoda.
Can Ouija’s heart grow any darker than it was before he took Carly Quester to her own lair? It does not seem possible, yet this is true. He tries to swallow the darkness, but cannot. For he has not only failed before the eyes of his tribe, he’s aroused the anger of other tribes. And he is not to blame.
He was caught. He was trapped.
A fine hunter would never have allowed himself to be caught and trapped. A fine hunter would have seized the silver woman, flung her in the water of the drain. There the poisons may have eaten her strong silver limbs.
But he is not a hunter, not really. That is not his true calling. He is shaman. He reads the signs and prophecies. He knows the ways of great Whoosh. He sees the future in the gutters. His fellow hunters should have helped him. His chief Zebra should have freed him.
His heart dives deeper. For if he cannot know that his tribe will help him, then what has he to do with his life? What place has he in the tribe?
And what about the genny woman? Now he owes her the debt of repayment. He lied to Styx. And his own tribe knows not of this new transaction with her. Perhaps she is not as evil as the silver woman for she is a human being and the silver woman is not. Still. Now he must transact further with her. What will she want from him?
He roams the tunnel, searching for the corner of Grant Avenue and Pacific. The Glass Land has marked the location of the manhole covers for the workers. Since he can read the signs and prophesies, he can also read the markers and does not need to remember the stains and glyphs on each wall in order to find the place he wants. That is his true calling and predilection, he reminds himself. Louie Zoo often practices the reading art with him.
Ouija climbs up rungs in the wall, pushes aside the manhole cover, steps out onto the busy street, looking for omens. Thin-eyed folk walk about. Though a few stare at him as he climbs out of the manhole and slides the cover back, they go about their business. Ouija does not love Chinatown, still he hates it less than other parts of the Glass Land. For it is a strange and pretty place with many-many unlinked folk.
He strides down the street, as keepers of the tiny shops and eateries come to their doorways and cast inquiring glances his way. He has no trade with these folk. Still, he knows their moods. They’re skeptical of the spirits in the wires and, as such, not so unlike the tribes. Ouija’s tribe had once taken in Peach, a skinny Chinese girl who wanted to live the digger life. But she’d left before too long, hungering for her own folk. Their children who wish to run wild mostly run in the triads—The Golden Fingers, the Wood Rats, the Water Serpents. Ouija’s tribe sometimes trades scat for knives, but usually has no quarrel with the triads.
He sniffs, looks around, finds no omens that speak to him. The shops and eateries are stocked with fine things—cooked first-hand food, sparkling jewels, silken clothing, many-many toys made of stone and metal that delight his eye. But Ouija seeks not these things. Not on this morning when his heart is so dark. He hurries on, searching.
A box with a wirefire inside of it hangs over the street. The box suddenly blinks on and flashes. An arrow made of yellow fire points out a way to him. A thrill of dread scratches over his skin. Has the box flashed its arrow for him at this moment? He turns, unwilling but compelled, in the direction to which the arrow points.
And there! Sitting on the curb in Pagoda Alley. The Bank of New Hong Kong casts shadows all around him, but never quite darkens his spot. A shriveled little man with sparse gray hair and a watery stare. How does he see so much, Ouija wonders, not for the first time. Tiny and gray, gap-toothed and pock-faced, clad in loose gray pajamas cinched at the waist with hemp rope, rubber thongs on his bare feet. Folk often pass by the little old man without a second glance.
“My sage.” He sits on the curb next to Louie Zoo.
Always he sees the cats first. Perched on Louie Zoo’s skinny knee, draped over his shoulder, crouched behind him. Gray-striped tabbies, and yellow-striped. Sometimes a white cat with amber ears, or a black cat with blue eyes, or a red cat with eyes of green glass like the genny woman.
Next, there the birds. A sparrow twitters on Louie Zoo’s head. A blue parrot with scarlet claws grips his wrist. Hummingbirds sip nectar from the pink flowers curling around Louie Zoo’s ear. Sometimes a seagull shrieks overhead or a huge black bird with a yellow beak hovers near.
Dogs guard the alley, Glossy hounds or scruffy mutts who never trouble the other beasts but give passing human folk plenty of warning.
Mice nest in the cuffs and hems of Louie Zoo’s clothes. Sometimes Ouija sees shre
ws, hamsters, other small rodents. And insects. Praying mantises, crickets, the occasional spider dangling from Louie Zoo’s toes. Brown moths with flapping wings that look like headless birds when they fly.
This time, Ouija spies a lizard with dappled emerald scales dart under the sage’s pajamas. Ouija nods and offers one of his bags of loot. Louie Zoo takes the bag, nods in return. Ouija sits respectfully. Sighs deeply, burdened by his troubles.
“The Way is the refuge of the myriad creatures,” Louie Zoo says in his whisper. He scratches the ears of the red cat. The cat bats lazily at a mouse that peeks around Louie Zoo’s ankle. “The Way is that by which one receives what one deserves and endures the consequences of one’s transgressions.”
As always, Louie Zoo sees what weighs upon Ouija’s heart.
“My sage, I fear I have transgressed the Way of the tribes, and I know not how to make things right again. I fear for what I must do.”
“How have you transgressed, Ja?”
“I—I am beholden to a silver woman who possesses holoids that show the guilt of my tribe. I am beholden to a linker, a genny woman who gave me this loot. And I am beholden to my tribe for bringing strangers to our lair. Strangers who could do the tribe harm, if they choose. And again, I am beholden to Styx and all the tribes for transacting with the silver woman and the genny woman. Yet I know not what the silver woman wants from me. Know not what the genny woman wants. And I know not the spirits of the wires they serve.”
They sit in silence a while. Louie Zoo closes his eyes. He nods, snores softly. Ouija thinks the old man has fallen asleep, starts to rise.
Louie Zoo seizes his wrist and says, “The silver woman serves any spirit who will hire her. She is not to be trusted. The genny woman serves a spirit who is still mysterious to me. She is to be regarded with respect. And she is to be watched.”
