The Enemy of My Enemy

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

Copyright

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It was the Hour of the Dog, midway between midnight and dawn, and even in swarming, pullulating Pemath Old Port, things were quiet. That is, they were as quiet as they ever got. Somewhere not very far off a harlot tirelessly tinkled her bronzes in hopes of attracting a customer. The thick, evil smell of
partripes
frying in old oil advertised at least one all night cook-stall was still open for business. The incessant
thud thud thud
of staff upon stone warned of a patrolling old watchman. Someone sang mad nonsense in a high, thin voice; voice, as it broke off into an unmistakable retching cough, giving notice that the
kip
dens were still open despite all the pious support given the Suppression Campaign by the junta of civil and military thieves making up the current Pemath government. A dull, dancing glow from the walledoff Ruins, and the sound of noisemakers, advertised to any who cared that a party was in progress … some would call it a kiddy fair … some, blunter, a child hunt … but not many would bother to call it anything. Consciences were not tender in Pemath. And, periodically, from the north, the boom and light flash of some dirty old freighter announced cargoes bound for Tarnis, Lermencas, Baho, or other on-world ports. The beggar cripple asleep in his kennel on the corner did not stir. Exceptions here made no rule: Old Port, still, was — for Old Port — still.

The building which gave niche-space to the beggar as indifferently as a tree might lodge a bird was typical Old Port construction: massy, filthy, ancient, indestructible, its huge halls and lobbies, relics of a more prosperous age, long since divided and subdivided into small and smaller rooms. Only in front of the elevator did more space remain unfilled. There was no immediate reply from it, and the man waiting pressed the signal panel impatiently two or three more times. After a while the slight sounds of machinery moving within the shaft appeased his annoyance a bit, but the panel remained dark. Broken, probably, and likely to remain so forever more. Presently, the cage set down and a tiny, withered hand thrust out through the hole in front; he dropped a coin into it; the hand withdrew; the door slid open.

It was an old granny of a lift-woman, huddled on the stool beside the control board. The rest of the family lay snoring behind the screen along one side. There was room enough. It was long since the large hydraulic elevator had carried the bulk freights it had been designed for. A faint wail came from a little box on struts; the granny immediately reached out a bare and dirty foot, gave it a swing. The baby gave a tiny grunt, subsided. An early breakfast had already been started, steamed thinly on the small stove. It was entirely possible the baby had never left the lift since it was born, might never leave it for years. “Twenty-three,” the passenger said.

Granny shook her wrinkled apple of a head, started the cage up. “Twenny-tree, not stop,” she said. “Stop twenny, you go-walk sout-side, go-take local a twenny-tree.”

The man wrinkled his face at the smells, shook his head. “Stop at twenty-five,” he said. “I’ll walk down.”

“Affa midnight, cos’ a ticky,” the granny said. He gave his head a slight shake, repeated, firmly: Twenty-five. The granny did not bother to shrug. The gambit almost never worked, but she tried it every time nonetheless. Why not? Words were free, and a ticky was not to be despised. Three of them bought a mouth piece of bread.

The dim cage slid up its spoke. Once, through a much patched but still (or again) broken part of the rear cage, the man saw the weary and slack-mouthed and besmeared face of a greasy who had crawled into her tween-floor’s hideyhole as the cage passed by. Maintenance was evidently not being totally neglected. Brief wonder what price the lift operators farmed the concession for passed through the passenger’s mind. No use to ask. Pemathi didn’t incline to give out that kind of information. If the granny were to tell and her tax to be increased seven years later, she’d remember and blame it on that. Odd patterns of light and sound filtered in as they swam up the elevator shaft. At floor eleven the faint green glimmer conveyed to his eyes the same message as the yammering and coughing of the
kip
heads there did to his ears. Floor fifteen, the discordant and assonant hymnody of a back-country cult conventicle. Floor seventeen blazed with light and echoed with the
chick chick
chatter of a 3D camera making porno shots. From the far, or south, side of floor twenty a man’s voice echoed in bursts of insane staccato rage, while a woman screamed shrilly and without pause. The other floors were all dim and still.

At twenty-five he got out and walked towards the stairs. The elevator door slid shut and the whole works — snores, smells, screens, granny, baby, breakfast, sustenance and slavery — sank from sight. The grimy walls were thick with signs and diagrams advertising an infinity of commodities and services and showing how to get there from here. The man paused to read, passed on, got lost, retraced his steps, went nowhere near the stairs, and finally opened, then closed behind him the translucent shutter of a three-dish diner. A limp-looking, gray-faced waiter lurched up from the bench where he’d been lying, made a wide-sweeping, weary gesture. “You go-sit any down you like,” he muttered. Cleared his throat, spat tidily under the bench.

The man sat with a grunt and a glance at the shutter he’d just come through. “What’s three for tonight?” he asked.

“Tonight tree, go-eat roas’
par
leg, hot soup, sweety bowl.”

“Mm. Might have
par
. No leg, though. How about head? Stuffed.” The waiter started to shake his head. “With old-fashioned green sauce,” the man added. “South Coast style. You know.”

The waiter bowed his head instead, considered, with his lip stuck out for a second. “I go-as’ cook.” He started away, his feet going
plop plop
, old waiters’ feet, like they had no bones in them. Turned his head, slowed down: “How you go-like sauce? Smoot?”

“ ‘Smooth?’ No no. Sharp as it comes.”

Plop plop
. The limp figure vanished away into the shadows at the back. The customer glanced around. Obviously an old,
old
established three-dish place — and never been painted or decorated — no attempt to attract the foreign or nouveau riche trade, or even the bright coins some swaggering shop-boy had abstracted from the till to lavish in hopes of impressing his first whore. The customers’ tickys went nowhere but into the contents of the big, the little, and the middle-sized bowl which constituted the traditional and staple Pemathi meal. And the customers would be those and only those who lived or worked on or visited the twenty-fifth floor for business or pleasure in its eighth of a mile of rabbit-warren rooms and halls: they either ate the daily three or they went without or went elsewhere. It was reasonable to assume they ate.

Pemathi were realists — all the swarming, corrupt, charming, brutal, tolerant, indifferent, cruel scores of millions of them. Indeed, it was their own proverb which had it that
The Ocean-Serpent engirdles the whole world … but its fundament lies in Pemath
.

And still the waiter didn’t come back and then he did and paused to rest his poor flattened old feet. “You go-come a cook.”

The customer nodded and got up and walked across the pitted floor. The waiter’s eye rolled just a bit. The man stopped short. The waiter’s eye rolled away. He made a slight, jerky motion — as if involuntarily. The customer seemed in one second to rise from the floor and hurtle through the air — the waiter gave a frightened gasp, and was gone — the other landed, spun around, and was out past the shutter before it shattered into smoking shards.

• • •

His pursuers would hardly want to set the whole floor on fire, though, and he knew this and counted on it, too. He could smell the charge, feel his back tingling. It would hurt, horribly, later. But if he stood still to reflect on this, there would be no later. His eye lit on the symbol for a two-ticky public pissoir, and he had dodged inside the half-folded shutter in a second. The gaffer huddled in his corner half-looked up from sleep, a coin fell in his lap, he engulfed it, grunted, returned at once to his frowsty old dreams, neither noticing nor caring that his customer flitted out the other door without pausing to use bowl or booth.

Rapidly, the fleeing man tried to orient himself. The elevator — the one he’d come up on — was back
that
way — the other one, the local, and the stairs, were over
that
way: south. Then
this
way, the way ahead of him, was …

Something came hissing through the air, hit the wall just above and before him, bounced off, and … The man danced madly, his hands and feet flying, dodging, dodging, all the while trying to get by and past the looping, twisting, thrashing band of light which jerked and flung itself about and about, always coming nearer and nearer to him along the floor like some insane serpent; insane, nonetheless purposeful: a leeri, created in the instant of its expulsion from the small tank-gun in the hands of who? behind, there. A half-life thing, and that life low and primitive, the outer layer calorotropic, desperately and forever seeking warmth … any warmth … that of the human body, for example; the inner layer almost pure energy. If the leeri were to reach his ankles, it would instantly wind round them like a moebius strip, trip him, bring him down, cutting deeper and deeper into his flesh.

And if his neck — ?

He dodged, he danced, he got by, he ran, lightly and on his toes, arms out for balance. For this while along that aisle he was safe, for the leeri, that while longer which it lived, barred the way behind him, like the other edge of the sword.

He turned off into another alleyway; still keeping his destination in mind, he thought now to reach it via knight’s rather than rook’s move. If he could. He heard nothing but the
pad pad
of his feet in their thin-hide shoes. Doubtless those behind him could take him in quick enough time if they sounded an alarm. And, doubtless, they had their reasons for sounding none. The air in here was thicker than ever, and in a second he saw the source, bale after bale of badly-cured
ort
hides, salt crystals oozing out between the layers. Some leather merchant had his lair hereabouts; the man squeezed by the packs of skins; something squeezed by the man — who hissed in his breath, pressed himself against the bales. Then let out his breath. A rat. Fortunately not a hungry rat or a fierce rat, just a rat. A soon-vanished rat. His eyes went towards the direction he’d been fleeing. He cocked his head, listened. Winced. And at once began to climb the pile of packs of skins.

Fortunately for him, it had not been piled snugly. Here, a bale was loose enough for foothold but not, thank the stars! loose enough to fall and give him away. And here, luckier yet, a bale had been prised out … and not replaced. He began to wriggle into the space it had left, crouching, sideways and backwards. In caution and in haste, which turned to horror as he saw a flash of light and heard the thud of another and then another and then another leeri. One hit a projecting bale and fell, thrashing to the floor. Another rebounded from the opposite wall, and joined its writhing fellow. But the third fell from above, like a caterpillar from a tree, landed on the protruding edge of a hide halfway between niche and floor, and then began to make its way inexorably upwards … inching, sometimes, like a worm … writhing, sometimes, like a serpent … crawling, sometimes, like a lizard … slowly, for the most part … but, slowly or otherwise, shining, shining its cold and its hunger, upwards. Always upward.