Stix dropped the comb and put a hand on her arm. I felt his disapproval like a slap against my face. ‘You endanger her,’ he said to me.
Ness shook his hand off gently. ‘Choice is a gift. Do not take my gift from me, love.’
He blushed. Both at the endearment and the rebuke.
‘Come here, Parrish,’ she said.
I crawled over to her uncertainly. What was she risking?
‘Our mind-bond still holds. There is no need to drink the juice. You will have to work harder, though, without the hallucinatory aid.’
She took my hand in hers and a tingling warmth seeped into every corner of my mind and body.
For the first time I could remember I felt loved and safe. I curled into it like a child.
A small gift for you. But we cannot linger.
Gently the warmth unfurled and we were flying high above The Tert.
I sighed as the warm feeling seeped from me and the clear chill of spirit travel replaced it.
‘What do I look for?’ I asked her.
‘Look for what you can’t see.’
‘Jeez, Ness, less of the cryptic—’
I squinted against the whiteness of the sunlight and into the thousands of dwellings. Gradually I began to pick out landmarks. The border of Dis. The Slag Piles. The long silver snake of the Trans heading for Plastique.
‘I see zip.’
‘Don’t try so hard.’
Trying again, I took what felt like a breath and let my eyes defocus.
A different Tert revealed itself; a maze of colours, some pulsing, others static - much like the spirit circle that Leesa Tulu had drawn me into. Auras. A welter of browns in most of the villas - people energy.
In other places - bars and dens - the colours bled together.
Then some stood out fiery red or sparkling white.
‘Shamans,’ said Ness.
One bright golden arc, beating strong and steady.
‘Mei Sheong. I know her.’
‘And she knows you. The bond is still strong there.’
‘Mei?’ I called.
‘What you up to this time, Parrish? Where’s my man?’
‘Daac is still in Viva, Mei. I need your help.’
Sneer. ‘Got any sort of good reason?’
‘The Cabal and Muenos are going to war on the city. I have to find bio-ware to help them.’ Not strictly true but I had no compunction lying to Mei.
‘War. Loyl’s gonna be pissed off with the Cabal doing this.’
‘Billy Myora drives it.’
‘We should have left him behind in Dis.’
‘Maybe . . . will you help?’
‘What you looking for?’
‘A colour . . . different from the rest.’
‘You’ll owe me.’
A statement. ‘OK. What?’
‘You stay away from my man.’
I thought of Loyl and knew my answer. ‘Yes. Deal.’
Ill-concealed relief. ‘Let’s fly, grrl.’
Her mind slid over mine and Ness’s like crude oil on sea water and we flew the spirit winds in layers. Viscous hunters.
With the strength of the triple mind The Tert unfolded to us. A map of information energy, its flow marred by tiny whorls of black.
The parasite was spreading.
‘Hurry,’ I told them.
We left the main energy throngs and began to roam the life-empty corridors outside.
Then, finally, the waste.
It was there, buried in swirling shadows of ironstone, the smallest glint of fire in a hostile darkness.
‘Are you sure?’ Ness said doubtfully.
‘I can’t see anything,’ said Mei.
Like an opal best viewed wet and in the sunlight I tilted our mind-view this way and that until they saw with me. The aquamarine, cobalt and sienna of hidden intelligence.
‘Clever.’ Mei.
‘A jewel.’ Ness pondered. ‘Shall we speak with it?’
‘Can we?’ asked Mei.
‘I sense so,’ she said.
‘No.’ I was curt. ‘The rest is for me to do.’
‘Yes,’ said Ness.
Her tiredness engulfed me - and her wish to be back with Stix. ‘Perhaps that is best.’
‘Just don’t go messing up this time, Parrish. Remember our deal.’ Mei peeled off and slid away.
I came out of it to find myself with my head in Ness’s lap. Embarrassed, I rolled away and sat up.
She watched me, amused and weary. Stix was already giving her a warm drink and massaging her neck.
His chlorine-coloured eyes flashed a clear message.
You have what you want. Now get out.
I didn’t go back to my rooms in case something or someone got in my way. Ness’s warning that my time had come had me more than a bit fevered. But then I figured that I had a sufficient supply of painkillers and enough of an arsenal to see this out.
I said goodbye to Glida and Link and hired a strong-looking Pet to take me through the Slag to Plastique. Going back via the Fishertown trans station wasn’t really an option.
As we laboured through the myriad of gaudy Mueno alleyways I went over my mind-map. The bio-ware was somewhere out past the edge of Plastique, across the river, deep into the waste.
When we reached the Plastique border I told the Pet to stop while I paid toll and purchased a double layer of boot protectors and a dust mask. Wouldn’t do for my boots to disintegrate on me before I kicked some bio-ware butt.
The Pet refused to go past the border. I didn’t blame it. I didn’t like the look that the Plastique toll boys were giving me either.
Plastique punters were a different breed to the rest of The Tert: they didn’t care about the world. They cared about the success of their skin cosmetics and their profit margin. No one was singing Parrish Plessis’s praises down this way.
I hiked alone towards the edge of the habitable villas, stopping only to derm some of my painkill.
My feet burned now and daggers stabbed my ankles. My fingers tingled as if they might go numb. My body was doing some weird stuff and it hadn’t bothered to share the reason with me. I don’t think I really wanted to know, anyway.
Dust, dark mould and cobwebs decorated everything. I checked my compass implant and kept a steady course west towards the waste.
A few minutes from the Plastique bank of the Filder River, the alley I was in suddenly got crowded.
‘Parrish. How nice of you to visit.’
I tried really hard not to look bothered. ‘Road. Small world.’
‘Only when you’re on my turf.’ Road Tedder sucked his smoke like it might give his cadaverous body some energy.
Road figured he had a score to settle with me over the finer details of drug distribution.
I could cop that.
But not now.
Any time but now.
‘I’m a bit busy,’ I said and moved past him down the alley. He followed me to the end where a dozen pumped-up Plastique types were waiting, spread in a semicircle.
‘Bit of overkill, don’cha think, Road?’
‘Not for a dangerous media-killer like Parrish Plessis.’
I sighed. ‘The Muenos and the Cabal are planning to go to war against the city, Road. I’m here to do something that will make sure that they stand a chance.’
He frowned and lit another smoke from his dog-end. His hands and forearms looked jaundiced. ‘And?’
‘Can we settle this later?’
Road laughed then. And coughed some. ‘They tell me Teece Davey is the one running your affairs. They say you’re just the . . . pretty face. I asked them if they’d actually seen what you look like.’
I resisted smashing his tobacco-stained teeth. Road Tedder might be the King Provocateur but I was the Queen of ‘I’m over it.’ He could even call me grrlie if he got the freak out of my face.
Something of my lack of interest must have penetrated his awareness.
‘I’m sure Teece will agree to much more prudent business terms after you are dead,’ Road said and turned, making his way out through the circle of buff flesh.
The buffs waited obediently for his dramatic exit, but I wasn’t so respectful. I jerked the Colt free and pumped out a stream of hot lead. Half of them went down before the magazine jammed.
I dumped the gun and took the closest buff left standing with a wire.
No niceties. Jugular through to vertebrae and twist.
Then I had a second wire out and looping around a hand of the next one, who was fumbling with a pistol.
Good thing about buffs. Too much time spent
building
the bod - not enough time
using
the bod.
I accounted for nearly all of them before the last one got it together to shoot me. I threw a knife at him after I went down.
He fell dead on top of me.
I lay under his warm, bleeding body and wondered how alive I was. I didn’t have the energy to move or feel.
Just to wonder.
I wondered lots of things . . .
What would happen now? Where was Loyl? What would Teece and Honey’s baby look like? What was that scraping noise in my ear?
It registered louder than the Apocalypse in the dead-buff quiet.
I inched my head sideways from under the corpse’s armpit. Something was moving nearby, sampling flesh with a probe.
I strained to see, intrigued in a detached sort of way.
It capered right up to the dead buff on top of me and scraped mucus samples from inside his mouth.
I held my breath. Could it sense that I was alive?
No. I didn’t think so.
But what would a robot like that be doing out here?
Wonder became a trickle of hope.
I began to squirm, trying to shift the dead buff’s weight. I rocked and groaned until I got an arm out. Then a leg. The effort hurt my chest and I rested for a while. I still wasn’t sure where I’d been shot because so much of me was numb.
The robot scavenger busied itself around the other bodies, taking bits of hair and sticking its probe up their nostrils and in their ears.
When it got to the last one I knew that I had to move or lose sight of it. As it trundled down the alley towards the river I used whatever strength I had left to heave the stiff off me.
I sat up and stared at the hole in my shirt. Most of the blood was on my shoulder. It seeped blood slowly, not gushing like it should have.
I
should
have bled to death by now.
But I hadn’t. Bonus.
Spitting the buff’s armpit hair and blood from my mouth, I decided, as before, that it was better not to know why.
With laborious care I unwound the garrotting wire from the throat of the first cadaver I’d felled in that way. His head came away from his shoulders, draining fluids all over my boots.
I shuddered and spat some more.
One thing at a time.
The scavenger was disappearing.
I got to my feet and lurched after it.
The only pain I felt was the burning in my feet and the stabbing in my ankles. My shoulder felt . . . nothing. I just couldn’t use it.
Keep going.
I’d clung to that mantra before. Sometimes movement was the only way to keep death at bay.
I made a clumsy job of tailing it but the robot didn’t seem to notice me. Designed for only one thing, it scuttled home across a walk-bridge and out onto the wasteland on the other side.
I stopped to rest for a few seconds, and to convince myself that I had enough strength left to manage the climb. The river wavered in my vision, a ripple of dull, noxious water lapping the pylons of the old bridge.
Oxygen had become a priority. I couldn’t get enough of it to clear the dots that came and went in front of my eyes.
It seemed safer to crawl, so I set to it.
Hands first, then knees. Hands first, then knees.
Every so often my hands, wet with blood, slipped out from underneath me and I banged my chin. The water hurt my eyes as well, reflecting a blinding new-summer sun up at me. The heat rose from the waste, warm with smells of decay.
It’s just plant-rot
, I told myself.
Not people.
But I couldn’t get Roo out of my mind. He called to me from the water.
I might have slept for a while on the bridge. It was hard to say.
Consciousness only returned as I began to roll down the other side, my feet sliding over the edge.
I grabbed the railing on instinct, remembering where I was.
Who I was.
Check shoe guards. Get upright. Walk.
I staggered and lurched out onto the waste, directionless under the sun.
Thirsty now. So thirsty.
Over there. Cool rocks. A place to sit.
I staggered a long way towards the low granite outcrop, delirious. A crunching noise underfoot.
Roo walked next to me, scratching his head and arguing.
‘Wash your hair, Roo,’ I told him.
‘I said I don’t get involved with older women, boss.’
‘Wassat got to do with it?’ I was mad at him for not listening. ‘Wash your DAMN hair.’
‘Aww, ease off, boss. Why don’cha ever worry about the important things? Like that guy.’
‘What guy?’
‘There.’
Roo pointed then walked back towards the water.
‘Don’t go. Don’t.’ I was crying, wasting water. ‘Come back, Roo. I won’t hassle you.’
‘Gahhh.’
I glared at the sound. Not Roo. That damn kid had run off.
Someone else?
Someone else, over there, standing in the shade of a rock overhang, in front of a dark hole. A small cave and a small . . . man, hunched shoulders, eyes under heavy brows, sloping skull, grizzled hair.