Black Uniform slid the file drawer shut. The hollow ring of his bootsteps circled behind Axxter. He heard the man’s soft voice, interrupted by the old warrior’s guffawing laughter, retreating down the catwalk. The tent’s silence was broken by the scratching of the general’s pen.
“There.” The general shoveled a stack of papers into one of the metal bins on the desk. “What a fucking pain in the ass.” The same ingratiating smile came up on the round pink face. “You cannot
believe
the amount of work that comes with a job like this.”
Axxter made a little clicking noise at the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, must be tough.” Who
is
this guy? Must’ve got sent to the Havoc Mass’s pussy unit. Not gonna be easy working up hot graffex for somebody this mild.
“Care for one?” A bottle had emerged from the desk’s bottom drawer. General Cripplemaker dangled two glasses in his other hand.
“Sure . . . thanks.” He sipped cautiously. A gentle warmth slid down his gullet. A small sense of disappointment; he’d had more potent brew when he’d still been on the horizontal. Some hard-ass. He sipped again, and leaned back in the chair.
“Yeah, screw it . . . kick-back time.” Cripplemaker leaned back in his chair and balanced his own glass on the round curve of his stomach. “You know, Axxter . . . Ny, is it? – fine . . . you know, Ny, I want you to approach this job in a . . .
relaxed
fashion. You know what I’m saying?” He knocked back half the drink and gestured with the glass, slopping the remainder over his hand. “I know sometimes people get a little . . . nervous when they get put in a situation like this.”
Axxter shrugged. “Yeah, well . . .”
The general patted a folder on the desk. “I’ve had the complete scoop given to me. About
you
, Ny.” Magnified damp wink above his smile. “This is a big step for you, isn’t it? I mean, from those diddly-ass little gangs you’ve had to work with in the past.”
The warmth had spread to his stomach and went about unlocking doors along his spine. “Oh . . . some of ’em weren’t so bad.” Sipping again. The general extended the bottle and splashed in more.
“Well, we all have to start out small, don’t we? I remember . . . I go back a long way with the Mass, you know.” The damp gaze focused beyond Axxter, lost in reflection. “All they way back to the ol’ Romp & Stomp days . . . I was personally recruited by one of the original Tin Can brothers – old Bobo himself . . . what a character he was.” The wetness in the general’s eyes brimmed over. He dabbed at their corners with a single knuckle.
Shit. Embarrassed, Axxter looked into the bottom of his empty glass. He had noted, for the first time, the fine network of wrinkles on the round, pink face, the gray film behind the glasses. This poor old duffer . . . what kind of old folks home did Brevis get me into? Romp & Stomp . . . good ol’ Bobo Tin Can . . . ancient history . . . fat chance of getting anything juicy enough to work up a decent design set.
“I’m probably boring you.” Cripplemaker refilled his own glass. “The impetuosities of youth.” The chair creaked as he swiveled back around to look at Axxter. “Enough of this. Let’s get down to business.” He leaned forward, planting his elbows in the muddle of papers on the desk. “You know why we wanted you to come here. We’ve seen some of your stuff; we think you may have what we’re looking for.”
“Well . . . I’ll give it my best shot.”
“No, no; you’ll do better than that, Ny. We want you to deliver the goods. We want the real thing.”
Loony old fuck. Pep talks, I gotta hear. “What the fuck
is
this shit?” He realized that he was drunk. Incredible – not
how
drunk he was, but that it had happened fueled by so little drink. As if it had unlocked some deeper, darker reservoir inside him, a more volatile substance ready to be ignited. And, incredibly, that he had let it happen to him at a time and place like this,
mucho
dangerous territory. These military tribes were nobody to fuck with, at any time. You had to keep your guard up, not get shit-faced and likely to cause trouble. But he’d conspired with himself to get into exactly that position. Because I just don’t give a fuck sometimes. That was the real intoxication of danger. A bad position to be in.
There’s
incredible for you – you can know that, and
still
not give a shit. “I mean, what is it you
want?
”
“Now, now. Simmer down. I just wanted to get everything started out on a nice, friendly, personal level. But I can see that you’re a man who doesn’t like to waste time. I admire that.” Cripplemaker brought his pink face closer to Axxter’s. “We’re gonna start you right out on something important. See how you do. We need a new ikon.”
“Yeah? What kind? I mean, if you want a new corporate logo – I mean, for like the whole Havoc Mass . . . or do you mean, just for your division here?” Axxter rolled the empty glass back and forth in his palms. Half of his brain kept his mouth moving; the other half searched through the mental archive of the stuff in his working files, for something he could plug into this situation. “And are we talking about a battle ensign? Formal parade regalia? Um . . . real blood-and-guts working stuff, or just for PR use? It makes a difference.”
Cripplemaker folded his arms on top of the desk, breath close enough for Axxter to feel. “Ny . . . we want the big one. We want you to do a new
death ikon
for us.”
Bingo fucking
City
. Axxter closed his eyes and leaned back in the chair. Previous anger dissolving in elation. Right on the money. That, I
got
. Somewhere in the camp outside, muffled by the intervening layers of the tent, came the sound of a military band, all thumping drums and skirling horns. He took it for his personal, synchronic fanfare. Smiling: I can deliver, Jack. You came to the right man.
“We’re retiring our old megassassin.” Cripplemaker spread his hands wide. “He’s up at the main encampment right now, getting de-opped; takes a long time to slice off all that armor, and those prosthetics . . . Hah. Always thought it’d be funny if they peeled away all the fighting gear and found nothing inside at all. Like the gear had been walking around and raising hell all by itself for the last twenty years. That’s how long he’s been the tribe’s hitman. He was a good one, too; just a
scary
motherfucker.” The general rummaged around on his desk, then handed some photos to Axxter. “Here, take a look at these. Since he’s been decommissioned, there’s no harm in you seeing them now.”
He took the photos and looked at them. Something big and black, squatting down, as wide as it was high, with little red dots for eyes; a megassassin. He’d seen one before – on tape, that had been bad enough – but this one was different. Its chest panels were open, revealing the death ikon inside. A corny but effective design, typical of DeathPix, all daggers and teeth. But then again, it didn’t have to be the world’s most memorable design; it was meant to be the last thing you saw before you got your head ripped off. To see the ikon was to have the last few seconds of your life snuffed by grim inevitability; that was the whole psychology of it. Fear of the image being somehow greater than the fear of what would follow.
But this one’s history now. “I think . . . I’ll be able to give you what you want. Something really . . . special.”
“Well, good. I’m glad to hear it.” The general patted the desktop, catching the tempo of the distant music. “’Cause the new megassassin is also going to be something special. I’ve seen the designs for the battle gear; the grafting surgery’s supposed to start any day now. He’s going to be a a hundred percent bad-ass piece of fighting hardware. And we want
your
ikon on him.” A wobbling finger jabbed toward Axxter’s chest. “
Your
design is going to be the last thing a whole
bunch
of people ever see.”
“Yeah . . . great. Can’t wait to get started.” He found himself rising from the chair. Looking down, he saw a grizzled hand cupping his elbow. The old warrior had returned, summoned to guide him back out. The audience with the general had ended.
“That’s the ticket.” Cripplemaker rocked back in his own chair, hands clasped behind his head. “I’ll be talking to you. There’ll be more jobs than just this one. That’s a promise.”
† † †
They gave him a pass to go in and out of the camp. The noise level outside the muffling layers of the generalissimo’s tent had swelled to the deafening point; in the sprawling compound of the machine shop, the clatter and snarl of engines crescendoed over the hammers’ ostinatic beat. The lounging off-duty warriors compensated by increasing the ferocity of their revels. Heading for the camp’s exit, Axxter squeezed past a mock battle, scarred, sweating forms stripped down to ribbons of chiming bells, all thwacking each other over the head with aluminum poles and laughing in demented glee. One of the watching camp followers snaked a hand around his thigh and tugged him toward the rope sling she sat on, meanwhile barking an invitation drowned in the general hubbub. The woman pantomimed her intent; startled, Axxter pulled his arm free and quickly scrambled down to a point where he could regain his pithon-assisted stance on the building. The uproar, on top of Cripplemaker’s booze, had his head throbbing in sync with his crawling pulse.
The guards at the exit took a bored glance at his pass, then waved him on through. “Comin’ back in later?” The sun had already passed over the top of the building, setting the wall into shade.
He shook his head, immediately wincing and regretting it. “No – I got some stuff to do. Things to get. I’ll be back in the morning.” Really just needed some place he could hear his own thoughts. “That okay?”
A shrug as the big hands looped the chains back over the gate’s bar. “Suit yourself.”
He found the Norton grazing a half-kilometer from where he’d left it, climbed into the sidecar, doused a rag with water from a canteen, and plastered it to his forehead. What a bunch of fuckin’
animals
. The feeling he always got when he left the lonesome purity of wandering – and going broke and starving; that had to be admitted – out on Cylinder’s emptier wall sectors, and had to get down to the actual business of his trade. Maybe after this job, all those wandering and starving days would be over. A depressing thought, in some ways.
Leaning his head back against the sidecar’s rim, he looked up into the dimming sky. The speck he’d seen before was there again, floating in the air.
“Aw, Christ.” He knew; no zoom lens necessary. By now some invisible link had been set up between them, a kite string by which he could detect her presence on the other end. She followed me here. The stupid thing. This being no territory for angels . . . especially one who’d already been winged once, by
somebody
. Or something.
He stood up in the sidecar, holding onto its windshield for balance. “Get out of here!” The shout smeared in the wind; he knew she couldn’t hear him. But shouted again, waving his arms. “Go away!”
The angel, the little speck, hung at the limit of his vision. And didn’t go away.
“So we had these guys, see, all rounded up, and we were all still pretty revved up from the battle – you know how you get? – and we were sitting around wondering, well, you know, what could we do with ’em? What could we do with ’em that’d be
fun
, I mean. So we had the engineers bring over this spool of cable, see, this real heavy-duty stuff, and we –”
“Excuse me.” Axxter held up his hand in front of him, trying to stop the old warrior’s monologue. “Hey . . . I’m just going to go outside for a minute.” He had to wave his fingers in front of the rheumy yellow eyes to get the man’s attention. “Okay?”
“– and we put it through the first guy’s
neck
, but that didn’t work, you see, ’cause it just ripped right through when we lifted it up, so we –” The old warrior’s gaze focused on Axxter’s hand as he came back up from memory time. “Huh? Where ya going?”
“I just, uh, need to get some fresh air.” Axxter pointed with his thumb over his shoulder to the tent flap. “We been going at it for a couple of hours now; I just need to clear my head a bit. That all right?” He didn’t like the way the warrior was looking at him.
“Don’tcha want to hear the rest?”
The warrior’s jaw poked forward far enough to hook the points of his bottom teeth over his straggling gray mustache. His eyes burrowed under his lowered brow, leaving just two glints of red.
Axxter reached out and patted the recorder hanging on one of the tent ropes. “No problem. Getting it all right here.” The little box swayed on its knotted strap. “Great stuff – just great.” He felt his stomach rising into his throat again; it had been threatening all the time he’d been listening to the war stories. “You just keep right on talking; I’ll listen to it later.” He turned away and ducked under the tent flap before he got any more argument.
Outside, he climbed over to the closet transit cable and anchored his hip belt to it. He glanced down to make sure he had a clear shot downward, in case he lost it completely; all he needed now was to upchuck on some Havoc Mass sentry posted at the camp’s downwall boundary. Even if he did have privileged artisan status with General Cripplemaker – these bastards were all touchy as hell. Affronts to honor could get you drilled, with no thought given to what brig time they might pull for it. Drilled, or given the big step – or something even worse, along the lines of what that old bastard back in the tent was still gassing on about. Axxter shook his head as he relaxed against the cable, as though he could shake the veteran’s grinning words right back out. Judging from his anecdotes, the guy must have risen in the Mass’s ranks not from any military prowess, but from his bent imagination regarding what to do with any unlucky POWs after a skirmish.
What a sick sonuvabitch
– Axxter gazed down at the clouds; at the atmosphere’s bonding edge, they roiled up into guts and skulls, tangling around each other. He closed his eyes for a moment, but could still see them, and hear the old warrior’s voice, leering with fond violent memories.