Accidental Creatures (4 page)

“I don’t -”

“Know what you want. I know. So don’t look at it as a career, look at it as a stepping stone.”

Helix thought about it. Actually, it had a certain appeal. Of course the drawback was that she’d have to be around people, but Night Hag was right, she needed to get over that, too. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life in this apartment, living off the generosity of a man who had already given her more than anyone could expect. Helix imagined herself floating in a great vat of growth medium, swimming through the viscous liquid, scooping out impurities and gently harvesting sheets of living polymer. It was dangerous work. Tales of vatsickness were detailed and grotesque, but it was practically the only unskilled labor you could get paid for, these days, and if she just did it for a little while, until she figured out what she wanted to do with herself, then she’d probably be okay. Vatsickness mostly struck people who’d been diving for ten years or more. “But you know,” she said, giving voice to her fears, “I don’t like people to see me.”

“I know. But you shouldn’t care. There’s nothing wrong with you. That bad time you had, before, when you were younger, that was kids, Helix. Grown people aren’t that bad, and besides, fuck them. You have to live your life.”

“You’re probably right,” she said with more conviction than she felt, “I’ve got to go now.” Helix switched off her holotransceiver and paced the living room floor, absently scratching her ribs. She went into her bedroom, threw herself onto her unmade bed and stared at the ceiling. She was bored, she realized, bored and itchy, her skin acting up again like it did when she got this way. Maybe she should go to school, as Hector suggested, but the thought of sitting in a classroom made her blood run cold. Besides, there was nothing she really wanted to do. She took the tax law seminars because Hector had suggested it, and she felt she owed him something. He had been more than kind to her, opening his home to her, becoming her father. She could never repay that, but she could, at least, refrain from being a burden to him for the rest of her life. She got up, went into the bathroom and started running a bath, but the rushing water was not what she wanted either. She turned off the taps and wandered into the living room again, switched on the holotransceiver again, but this time she opened Hector's directory, instead of her own. She accessed his personal records, called up the adoption files, and opened her birth certificate. The document hung in the air roughly two feet from her face. She was born at 10:19 AM on March 12, 2022, in Harper Hospital. Her biological parents were Mabel and Owen Harvey. Of course she'd heard the story. Hector had told her. She was the child of vatdivers. But Owen had died in an industrial accident while Mabel was pregnant, and economic necessity had forced her to give up her daughter. Helix knew all about that, but somehow, it didn’t answer the question of who she was. That was when she left. She switched off the transceiver, took Hector’s coat from the hook by the door, and went out.

oOo

By afternoon, the weather had soured, and Chango, who had dallied the sunshine away at the Russell and in Palmer Field, found herself driving her old Chevy down to the hectic, gaudy streets of Greektown, where she parked under an overpass to protect the eternally top-down convertible from the rain. She stood under the awning of a pachinco parlor, studying the street from beneath the rim of her second-hand biopolymer rain hat. It was bad weather for scanning, but she was out of cash, and Mavi had just yesterday mentioned how she was running out of food. She planned to crash there tonight, and she felt like something a little better than peanut butter and rice for dinner. Besides, as often as she was over there, Mavi could charge her rent, but she never did, never hassled her to get a real job either. They’d known each other forever, ever since she was a kid, and Mavi was her big sister’s lover. But this street-corner hanging was getting nowhere. With the rain, people were just moving too damn fast to scan them. She'd have to go inside somewhere and hope that the swiper in her coat pocket would go unnoticed.

It was one thing to stand out in the street, catching whatever came your way and dodging the eyecard carriers, but if you went in someplace, and got caught, then you had to deal with the proprietor and the police.

Chango crossed the street and went into the Pegasus Hotel and Casino. She stood in the foyer, dripping wet and fumbling with the clasps of her raincoat. The door man scowled at her. The Pegasus pretty much let anybody in, that's why she was there, but they let you know they weren't happy about it. Chango shrugged off his glare and went down the steps to the casino, losing herself in the crowd. The scanner in her raincoat pocket bumped lightly against her side as she wove her way through the throngs of gamblers clustered around the tables. The air was a warm, hazy soup of reefer smoke and damp bodies. She made her way to the bar, lit a reefer, and ordered a coke. Swiveling in her stool, she leaned back against the bar and took in the action. Someone was on a roll at table five, black jack. The crowd there was denser than at the other tables, and stiff with expectancy. Hungry eyes surveyed the table as the dealer laid down the second round. The focus of their attention was the player second to the right of the dealer. Over the craned heads of onlookers Chango just made out a head of feathery blond hair, but that was all. She couldn't see the pile of chips on the table — she didn't need to. The eyes of the spectators told her it was big, and growing. Chango examined the fringe of the crowd. An elderly woman in a gold lame turban sipped vodka from a fluted glass and glanced periodically around the room — security, the turban was armor. A young man watched the dealer with the patience of a veteran. Two women in matching glitter body suits whispered to each other and laughed. And there, beside them, a middle-aged man, his mouse-brown hair receding at the temples, stood rapt, following the deal of the cards, licking his lips as the players called their bets. Chango set her glass down on the bar, half drained, stubbed out her smoke and walked towards him at an oblique angle, her body facing the main flow of the traffic, not looking at him, but moving sideways with each step, her body language damped to a minimum, which was almost as good as being invisible, especially in a crowd like this. Each step brought her closer to her mark as he stared with desperate concentration at the winning player. Chango pretended to lean around him for a better view as she slipped her hand into his overcoat pocket and withdrew his wallet. She slipped it into her own pocket, the one with the scanner, her knowing fingers picking the cards out of their slots and swiping them. The codes could be sorted later, one of them was bound to be his cash card. She bumped against him as she went past, using the distraction to slip the wallet back into his pocket. “Sorry,” she smiled at him, and moved away. Glancing over her shoulder she saw him check his pockets, and smile, relieved at finding his wallet still there, his cards still in it.

She didn't like to do more than one scan per place, so she moved on, to Rhoda's, the Laikon, Trapper's, Parthenomicon. That was where she saw her: A reasonably tall woman in a battered grey raincoat, her dark brown hair short and spikey with rainwater. She glanced about the crowded room with blank alarm. She was scared, but not in a focused way, only in the what-am-I-doing-here, what's-going-on kind of way that made for an easy mark. Chango began to circle in towards her. As she did she noticed that the woman's eyes were a startling shade of blue, her olive skin smooth and even. If she kept up this noticing, she wouldn't be able to make the score. She stopped looking at her, and focused instead on the pockets of the raincoat.

Chango moved up beside her and slipped her hand into a pocket, very softly, very slowly, as if she wasn't moving at all. She wrapped her fingers around a slim, smooth square and then bumped into the mark, actually pushing her away from her card. As Chango jostled her, she felt something beneath the raincoat, something long and rounded. She was carrying a shotgun under there. The last thing Chango wanted to do was mess around with somebody packing heat, for any reason.

“Sorry,” Chango said, bending over and pretending to pick up the card. “Did you drop this?” she asked, but she got no answer, the woman was through the door before she had a chance to straighten up. “Shit,” Chango glanced at the square in her hand. It wasn't a money card. It was a data card. Chango stared at it for a moment, and then she was out the door herself, glancing up and down the street. She caught sight of the woman almost a block away already, practically running and heedless of the disreputable figure that detached himself from a shop front to tail her. Chango fell behind him, following him follow her failed mark.

oOo

Helix fled down the street in a blind panic. There were so many people in there, and someone had bumped into her and felt — they had to have felt it. Helix swerved, barely avoiding collision with a heavily made up transvestite. People, so many people. Suddenly she felt as if she’d crawl out of her skin in order to get away from them all.

It was almost night now, the rain soaked streets glistening into darkness, reflecting the colors of the neon signs like the rainbow oil slicks of old.

Soon, she'd have to find someplace to spend the night. She couldn't just keep walking forever, despite what her inner urging prompted her to do. She sighed, glancing up at the windows of the Old Laikon Hotel. She had no money for a room.

Suddenly Helix was struck with a longing so powerful it stopped her in her tracks. She wanted... what?

To find her mother? Maybe. It was the only thing she could think of. She wanted something, badly, but her life with Hector Martin had been comfortable, safe. So what else could she be lacking? Only her mother, surely, and yet, just then, all she could really think of was a large tub of warm water. The thought distracted her and she nearly bumped into a man with orange hair sticking out from under a polyweave cap. He grinned and stepped even closer to her. Panicking, she darted down an alley on her right. The lights and music of the casino district faded into shadows and the distant drip of a leaking gutter. She walked past hulking waste modules, the peppermint smell of garbage eating microbes seeping from their seals. Ahead of her, leaning in the shadows of a service entrance, was a man, the faint red glow of his cigarette a beacon to his presence. As she approached he stepped away from the crates, flicking his cigarette into oblivion. Behind her, she heard other footsteps. She walked on stiffly, as if she hadn't noticed there was any one back there, but they undoubtedly had noticed her, and as she approached the man with the cigarette he called out to her, “Where you going, honey?” She didn't answer, she kept on going, but they were closing in behind her too. Finally, after seconds stretched out by the rasp of her breath, her footsteps stuttered to a halt and she turned to see the two who now stood, side by side, in the middle of the alley, blocking her exit. They were lean young men, with old faces and dirty t-shirts. One of them was the guy with red hair she’d nearly collided with earlier. The other one held the glimmering threat of a knife at his side. From behind her, a hand fell on her shoulder. “Hey, lady, you got some spare change?”

“No,” she said, and turned halfway to face him. She stepped back, trying to keep all three of them in view.

“No?” the one with the knife queried, “you better be lying.” She shook her head and took another step back, but Red Hair grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her. She gasped at the sudden flash of pain. “I don't-” she paused, “I don't know, let me see.”

“Yeah,” laughed the one who'd been smoking, “that's more like it. Why don't we see what you've got. I'm sure we can use it, whatever it is.”

“My wallet's in the inside pocket,” she lied, “let me open my coat.”

“Aw, don't strain yourself, darlin', I'll do it for you,” said Cigarette, and he proceeded to slowly unbutton her coat.

Her breath sounded harsh and loud as he worked his fingers over the buttons, undoing them one by one. He was standing close. So much the better, she thought, as she waited for him to finish with the third button, at waist level.

He undid it, and looking up at her smiled. “I think that's enough, for now anyway.” She smiled back at him, widely, baring her fangs, and shot her lower right fist through the opening of the coat and into his midsection while she stomped on the instep of the assailant behind her with her left foot. Cigarette doubled over from the force of her blow. “What the fuck?!” Meanwhile, the grip on her upper right arm had loosened momentarily. It was enough for her to wrench it free, and shrugging her shoulders, she let the coat fall to her feet. She stretched out her four arms, so there could be no mistake, and turned, so she was facing all three of her attackers, revealed for what she was.

Their faces registered shock, but Knife only hesitated for a moment before he was upon her, driving his blade towards her belly. She grabbed his hands in hers and pulled him towards her, forcing his arms up as she kneed him in the groin. He sagged in her arms and she released him, pushing him from her to fall to the ground, curled into a tight ball of pain.

Redhead ducked to one side, dived and rolled and with a quick jerk, yanked at the coat still lying around her feet. The next thing she knew she was on the ground, and Cigarette, recovered, rushed up and delivered a vicious kick to her head. Her vision blurred momentarily, and her head sang with pain. She rolled away as he was winding up for another kick, but Redhead was there. “I don't know what you are, but you just made a big mistake,” and he kicked her too, in the stomach. More kicks came, sharp punctuations of pain in her ribs, her abdomen and her head. She rolled onto her back and grabbed somebody's foot with all four of her hands, twisting his ankle and knocking him off balance. In that brief and partial respite she forced herself to her feet. Redhead closed in again, grabbing for her arms. She let him have the lower two, and with the others grabbed his head, bent it back and with her jaws stretched wide she sank her teeth into the side of his neck. He screamed and something sharp sank into the small of her back. She released Redhead and turned, snarling, her mouth smeared with blood, to face Knife. His eyes widened with fear and she used his moment of hesitation to smash a fist into his face.