Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (17 page)

Because of my Forces wiring, my reaction times and physical strength are a match for any Tic—the wiring I have is exactly what made Frantic obsolete. But the question of whether I could win a fight with one Tic is irrelevant since there is no such thing as one Tic—they always move in groups. As I reach the summit of the ladder and step onto a small steel platform, I am faced with a pair of them. Without question there are more out there in the murky darkness, all around me most likely, ready to move in should a fight start. Not that the first two would need help, the others would simply want a piece of the action.

It’s the female Tic who speaks first.

“Hm,” she says. It’s the sound of someone assessing something. “Food.”

She means me. She says it with an almost robotic lack of emotion that seems out of synch with her colorful appearance, although I think I can sense a kind of inhuman amusement slithering beneath her apparent absence of emotion. She is wearing pink tights, and below that, pink bootlets that resemble ballet slippers. Her slim, muscular torso is bare except for its elaborate tattoos: a mass of overlapping and intertwining flamingos that entirely covers her belly and breasts and even rises up her neck, though it stops somewhere on the underside of her chin. Her face is unadorned except for a scar above her right eye that bisects her eyebrow. Her hair is dyed blonde and spiked.

“I didn’t come here to be food,” I say “I came with a gift.”

The male behind the flamingo-woman turns to her and speaks with mock seriousness.

“Oh, 
gifts
. Well, then 
friends
.”

He cackles a laugh. As he laughs I can see that his teeth have been replaced with mock-feline implants. His upper and lower jaws have been augmented as well, forming something like a snout, and his entire head is covered in what appears to be very soft, blue-black fur.

He wears an outfit that shows off his very impressive physique—muscular but very lithe. His light jacket is the turquoise of Caribbean seas, but in a lamé that shimmers and glistens. Underneath it he wears a darker blue T-shirt, skin-tight. His pants are silver, and are made of the same glistening material as his jacket. On anyone else his outfit might look laughable, but I find nothing funny about him. He is wearing the same ballet slippers as his companion, but I don’t doubt that he has claw implants where his nails ought to be, both in his feet and hands. I can picture him licking my blood from his paws and purring, which is just what he wants me to see.

“Frantic,” I say, and reach inside my pouch to remove the padded shipping container. “Military grade.”

A third Tic drops with a quiet plop from the girders above us, but remains in the shadows so that I can’t see what it looks like. I just see its head rise, nose aloft, as it sniffs the air.

“True. Frantic,” the distant figure says, showing off his or her olfactory augmentation. It’s impossible to tell from the silhouette or the voice whether it’s a male or a female.

“I know it’s truth,” says the cat-man quietly “he’s still breathing, hey? Smell it fine from here.”

“Whatta you want?” flamingo asks.

“I want to talk to the spider.”

She laughs at this and lets herself fall backward. She drops off the girder she’s been standing on, and at the last moment catches it with one hand, swinging underneath it, then arcs up on the other side, and lands on its neighbor. It looks effortless.

“You don’t talk to spider. You talk to us, we talk to spider, then we talk to you.”

It sounds as though I’m making progress, although with the Tics you can never be sure.

“How do I know you won’t just take the drugs and kill me?”

She smiles. In contrast to her tattoos and her athletics it’s a very human smile, almost cheerful.

“You don’t.” She lets me think on that for a moment, then shrugs as though to dispel the thought. “Hey,” she says “you know anyone else come here?”

“Yeah.”

“And they brought presents like you?”

“Yeah, they did.”

“And we kill them?”

“Nope.”

She spreads her arms in the age-old gesture that says 
voilà
—there is your answer. She snatches up the box of Frantic and tosses it behind her, where someone catches it.

“Come with,” she says, gesturing for me to follow her, and with those words the Tics drop the pretense that the area is abandoned. Music suddenly surges to life—an electronic version of Handel’s Messiah I think, but remixed and set to an electronic beat—and lights erupt up and down the length of the area. We are in a lattice of steel beams, struts, wires, and occasional platforms. In that moment every inch is illuminated by a blaze of multicolored spotlights, showing the many—so very many—Tics who were there and whom I didn’t even realize were present.

Both the flamingo-girl and the cat-man fall backward into perfect layovers. Their bodies are so limber as to seem unreal, like something from a sim. There is nothing in the pallid Olympics to compare with this. They allow their torsos to fall backward, then land on their hands and pivot on the axis of their pelvises, drawing their legs over them. It takes a long time to explain the motion, but no time at all for them to execute it. What it amounts to is a backwards cartwheel, executed as quickly and naturally as walking. As they start to move, the other Tics, now revealed by the lights, move with them 
en masse
, like an army advancing through dance.

There are some who spring from girder to girder like squirrels. Some execute an entrancing combination of salsa and ballet, while others are more given to jazz moves. Some seem like orangutans in the fluid way they swing and lope and swing again, while still others use each other as platforms from which to spring and vault, like circus tumblers. One pair runs through a Tarantella routine, sparring with each other with punches, kicks, and throws. Every one of them moves independently, but each keeps time to the music nonetheless. All of this goes on as they move further into their territory with nothing beneath them but girders ten centimeters wide. One misstep would mean a deadly fall to the mall basement far below, but being Tics they make no mistakes. With a preternatural ease they 
cascade
 across their natural habitat with utter confidence, executing every move to perfection. I follow them easily enough—my Forces shell gives me perfect balance—but without years of practice I could never move the way they do.

Each one is outfitted in a unique style, although they all wear thin-soled, slipper-like boots for optimum traction. All in all it’s a profoundly majestic display—both impressive and beautiful. I don’t know if the show is for my benefit. Maybe this is how they always move, even when strangers aren’t around, but in any event I’m definitely put on my guard. With their speed, agility, power, balance, coordination, and numbers there is no way I can do anything to save myself if they decide to attack.

Hell, to be honest there is no way an entire Forces squad could take them. They may lack the sophisticated weaponry, the satellite systems, the floating mines, and the Angelfire, but they move like air, like nothing. Like the Dogs they can appear behind you before you know they have disappeared from in front of you. Fuck, they’re dancers—not some street assholes or even foreign soldiers but 
dancers
—and the Forces are not used to that, wouldn’t know what to do with it. They can move around you, approach you from angles you would ever expect, and 
kill
 from positions that you thought were secure.

That is the nature of the Tics. On the streets below, innumerable gangs compete with each other. The P.D. are, in many ways, just the biggest, best-armed gang of all. The gangs vie for turf and money, for weapons and sex and drugs, for status and glory, for bragging rights and reputation. Many are called, but few are chosen, and the truth is that the Tics are 
the
 few, period. Everyone else is a distant number two at best.

As we approach one corner of the mall, the already heavy air is permeated by a stale smell that intrudes on the cheerful atmosphere created by the Tics’ bright costumes, the colored lights, and the beautiful music. Soon the staleness is joined by something more rank. The nearer we get to the corner, the more overpowering the odor becomes, but there’s still no other sign of the spider. Then I realize that the two walls I thought formed a corner don’t actually meet. Instead they form the entrance to an offshoot of the Tics’ playground. As we turn into it I finally come face to face with what I’ve been seeking—and a whole lot more.

The spider’s retreat is an alcove about forty meters square, but with a ceiling almost twice that height. I can tell from the pattern worn into the floor that some large machinery once stood here, now made unnecessary by the absence of commerce.  Her nest fills the entire back half of it, an intricate, tightly woven web of grey silk within which lie hundreds upon hundreds of eggs. Normal spiders’ eggs are millimeters across, but these are the size of grapefruit. Clinging to this mass of silk and fecundity is the spider herself. She is easily ten meters long in the body, and her legs extend that by another three meters in either direction. Her black body looks like taught rubber, while her legs are barred with alternate stripes of black and ash grey. When we arrive she is working on the construction of her nest—repairing it, tending it—and shows no sign of noticing our approach. Someone lowers the volume of the music until it is nothing but a subtle rhythm, sensed rather than heard.

What captures my attention the most is not the spider or the core of her nest, but the loose array of silk that spreads outward from the nest itself, trailing along the floor like lichen and hanging from the walls and ceiling like Spanish moss. Caught in it are shopping bags, shoes, clothing, purses, and emaciated, mummified bodies. A cocoon shape on the wall to my right suddenly twitches, then is still again.

I’m not sure what the Tics get from the spider—perhaps she shares her wisdom with them, or maybe she simply seems to them so awesome that the only right thing to do is to serve her—but it’s clear what she gets from them. Presumably she prefers not to leave her alcove and venture down into the populated areas of the mall, risking discovery. Despite her considerable skills and power, she could probably be killed with enough troops and weaponry and, worse, her nest could be eradicated. Instead it’s the Tics who harvest for her. Maybe they lure victims here with charm, entice them with Frantic, or compel them with force. Maybe they do all three. Whatever means they use, they bring back human fruit for her and she sucks it dry. I have seen some evil things, perhaps even more evil than this, but it’s enough to make even me pause. The Tics come to a stop around me with a soft patter of footfalls, hands and feet slapping girders as they land.

“You asked for spider,” the flamingo girl says, obviously sensing and enjoying my discomfort. It takes me a moment to find my voice.

“Yes, I asked for spider.”

She walks leisurely toward the nest and I follow her a few paces behind.

“So? Questions.”

Flamingo looks at me as if she’s sure I won’t speak. Just then the spider moves. She is so fast, so lithe, and so quiet, I can barely believe it’s happened, but there she is. Not a meter from us, suspended in the outreaching silk, stationed beside a small gold T-shirt with a butterfly logo on the front, the size and style a teenage girl would wear. From there she could easily pluck me up and add me to her collection.

“I’m looking for someone,” I say, hoping to go a little at a time. Flamingo makes a series of chittering noises in the spider’s direction. The spider does nothing, but flamingo turns back toward me, waiting for me to go on.

“A man has hired me to protect him. Someone recently tried to kill him. Later they tried to kill me.”

Flamingo translates again. Then the spider chitters for the first time and I realize what a tame, human imitation flamingo’s spider-speak has been. The spider’s own speech is utterly alien. Flamingo turns to me with the spider’s question.

“Who hired you?”

I’m reluctant to give out the name of my client.  It’s simply not done, and that applies doubly when it’s someone famous, but I don’t see that I have much choice. “His name is Max Prince.”

This produces no visible reaction at all amongst the Tics, but the spider stretches one long foreleg forward and slowly touches me on the cheek. I have to fight not to shrink back from her. Or lash out at her. Either reaction, I think, would be fatal. The spider chitters again and the sound is worse now, the vibration of it transmitted down her leg to my cheek.

“You suspect someone. Who is it?” flamingo translates.

“I have two suspects at the moment. One is his granddaughter, Porsche, who’s his heir. The other is the 
Suerte
. They may want to steal his luck.”

This time the Tics respond. There is a buzz of whispered comment at the mention of the 
Suerte
, and I think I see flamingo’s eyes open a little wider. It’s the only thing that has made any impression on them so far. The spider, however, does nothing.

I stand, waiting, for what seems an interminable length of time, the spider’s foreleg resting on my cheek throughout. finally, when I’m almost ready to risk breaking protocol to ask what’s happening, the spider chitters again. Flamingo, who has been watching me intently, swings her head around to catch what is being said. When the spider finishes, flamingo nods once. Then the spider retreats to her former position and resumes work on her nest. Flamingo’s gaze remains turned to her goddess.

“So,” I say prompting her “what did she say?”

Flamingo turns back to me and for a moment I see the lust of worship, even love, in her eyes, before she catches herself and adopts an expressionless façade. I think she sees that I noticed, though, because her voice is colder than before and her manner is more abrupt. I’ve embarrassed her.

“We leave now.”

She steps back the way we came, but I step in front of her. It may be suicide, but I’m worried that having caught her in a vulnerable moment of private emotion, filled with spider-love, has made her hate me. She may refuse to tell me what the spider said, or she may lie about it. Confrontation, aggression, seems like the only thing likely to throw her off-balance. She stops abruptly in front of me and the other Tics freeze. In her eyes I see the purest hatred, but killing a client is bad business, even for the Tics. They want the supply of Frantic to keep coming, after all, and it’s people like me who provide it.