Code Noir Page 6

  ‘Maybe she’s the one I’m in love with. Someone who I think is you,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Then you’d better go home to your bikes, Teece. Things are gonna get worse here,’ I said levelly. ‘If I can’t take it, they’ll get me. And I’m not ready to go anywhere yet.’

  I waited for him to answer.

  ‘I’ll stay around, Parrish. But you hung me out today because of your own ambitions. That’s hard to forget.’

  It wasn’t forgiveness.

  ‘I promised you nothing, Teece. Except maybe a rough ride.’

  A smile ghosted his lips. ‘On that you could never let me down.’

  He went into the living room, booted Roo off the couch on to the floor, lay down and closed his eyes.

  I got the hint. No sex for Parrish and stale adrenalin aftermath plagued me, escalating the chances of a vision. The visions lingered so close to my conscious state now I feared they were becoming part of my reality.

  Dread kept me from rest. So did my need to flick all this tedious housekeeping and get on with finding the missing karadji.

  ‘I’m going for a run,’ I said and copped the beginnings of a snore in return.

  Torley’s at three a.m. teemed with the backwash of chemical attitudes and tragic karma. Sensil parlours. Cockdog fights. Street sex of the sordid kind. Sights that once had amused or fascinated me suddenly made me heavy with responsibility. I wore my new job like hi-cut concrete boots.

  But night also had a masking beauty. Even in The Tert.

  I jogged past the neon replica of a chained dog on Hein’s roof, along the gen-powered glittery emerald and ruby halo of The Stretch and in amongst the eerie, metallic garden silhouettes of Shadoville. An uninterrupted twenty klick loop if you knew when to duck and weave.

  An alien inner voice dogged my footsteps.

  Not long, human. Not long . . .

  It had wired itself into my thought processes. Sometimes it was a heavy presence, gorging on every fix of brutality. At others, when I starved it of rage, it subsided into a hard knot of discontent.

  The discontent, the denial of what it wanted, was what I sought - whatever the cost. I recognised its presence in the same way that I knew a silent guard of ferals ghosted me now. Tomorrow I would elude them. But how could I elude the Eskaalim?

  Would the Cabal honour their deal and give me what I needed to fight it? Did they really know where the stolen research was?

  A little before dawn I got home. Merry 3#, in niteclub undress, flashed up an incoming from Larry. He looked tired and unusually grim. Mascara smudged.

  ‘News? ‘

  He shrugged. ‘When my snitches started asking questions, one had his throat torn out and the other had his insides messed with. Looked like they were telling futures with it. Some heavy mojo.’

  Bile rose up my throat. Not much upset Larry. But this had.

  ‘Your boys . . . was it anyone I know?’

  He gave me a look. ‘Does it make a difference?’

  Shame stung me. Because it did . . . and it shouldn’t. ‘You get a name?’

  He shook his head. ‘I got something, though. A woman’s been asking about all the local shamans - where to find them. We think the same person’s put up money to snatch you.’ He gave me a rare, brief smile. ‘I guess they don’t know you so well.’

  I nodded, thinking of Riko’s half-arsed kidnap attempt. And then the Bounty. Somehow their acts were connected with the missing karadji.

  ‘An outsider, then?’

  ‘Definitely. ‘

  I pressed my temples tight. ‘Thanks, Larry. Consider yourself Plessis Ventures’ newest executive.’

  He didn’t seem to get the joke. ‘No thanks. You aren’t gonna be around long enough for the first board meeting. ’

  I took his cheerful advice into the den and thought about what I’d just learned. Whoever had kidnapped the karadji also had their sights set on me. Playing cut and paste with entrails wasn’t common, even for The Tert. If anyone could tell who that might be, it was the Muenos. Besides, I couldn’t sit around any longer. The King Tide pulled.

  I keyed the lock on the ’puter, told the lips-and-torso to shut up shop and went to bed, crashing, exhausted, alongside Ibis while the Angel wandered my dreams . . .

  Humming huddled sentience. Us thought. Us thought. Time spread wide, never long. Fanning the tail of the comet. Riding the diamond dust wave . . . hungry for food . . .

  Breakfast was a sullen affair. Ibis nursing a hangover; Teece a bruised heart; and me hankering to cut and run.

  We swallowed shavings of unidentifiable BBQ meat slabbed on bread, washed down with mockoff on the pavement at Lu Chow’s, a block from Hein’s. Since tasting real tea in Viva with Daac, I’d lost my taste for The Tert’s murky caffeine. The food, however, beat the hell out of the pro-subs I’d lived on for the last couple of years.

  It gee-ed me for what I had to say.

  ‘I’m leaving soon. Maybe gone for a while.’

  Teece flinched, then kept stoically grinding the last gristle of his grill. ‘Where? What?’ he asked, picking his teeth.

  ‘Can’t say, exactly. Something I can’t ignore. Teece, can you run things here for me?’

  His fork clattered down and he gave me a sharp sideways. ‘Things?’

  ‘The biz. There’s so much to sort. I’ll let Larry know you’re the man. I’ll swing past Pas and get him to send some Muenos over as muscle. I’ll keep in touch where I can.’

  Pas had just about wrested control of the Muenos from Topaz during the war. Things had quieted some since then. I knew they were waiting for a sign from me - their assumed goddess, Oya. Some people just need something to believe in and the Muenos were big on prophecies and spirits. Whatever about it, Topaz was on borrowed time.

  ‘What about my bikes?’

  ‘I’ve got money now, Teece,’ I said softly. ‘Get someone to run it for you. I’ll pay them. I’ll give you a cut of this. Whadyasay?’

  The entrepreneur in him tussled with the hurt lover. His faded blue eyes sparked up with the economic possibilities. He stuck a finger in my ear like it was a shok-rod. ‘Forty per cent?’

  I scowled and thumped him in the ribs. He’d made his point.

  ‘What about me?’ Ibis blurted.

  ‘You’re going home.’

  His plump face set mulishly. ‘What if I don’t want to?’ he sulked.

  I wanted to laugh. When I met Ibis I’d thought him a soft-arsed neo-nu-age chump. But he proved to be smarter, more resourceful than most people I knew. And a better friend. Not to mention he’d kept me out of a Viva quod.

  Sometimes, though, his pout was pure spoiled brat.

  ‘I don’t need the worry, Ibis. I shouldn’t have brought you here.’

  The pout settled into something less yielding. ‘Get on with your little errand, Parrish Plessis. I’ll make my own arrangements.’

  I sighed. What did that mean?

  I turned to Roo.

  Bored, he flicked burnt globs of meat at the passing trade.

  ‘I want you to come with me.’ My conscience pricked as I said it. A kid guarding my back! Was that right?

  It got his attention. The thought juiced him and he clacked his digits together. ‘For how much?’

  I sighed again. Life was a lot simpler when I had nothing.

  One last thing stood in the way of my leaving.

  It arrived by midmorning, bad-tempered and not a little agoraphobic. Raul Minoj was NOT used to the world outside his four closed walls.

  In person his skin always seemed greasier, his teeth more crooked, his breath worse than I remembered. He’d trekked across The Tert in an armoured Pet, opting not to use the Trans. The Pet, modified by himself no doubt, sprouted weapons like an echidna with a hard-on.

  He fussed around Larry’s servitors, chivvying them as they unloaded crates of tek and hauled them to my place. ‘Gently, gently,’ he bleated. ‘Treat them like babies. Like babies.’

  I sup
ervised the bedding in of my gun case. Nobody would be taking it anywhere without hauling the entire building along as well.

  Minoj had brought a selection of rifles for me to look over. I chose around twenty pieces, sighed heavily over not having enough time to play with them, and sealed them in the case.

  Before I did that I took the little box with the flesh flaps from my pocket. I peered closely at the tattoos on each one, trying to decipher them. A row of decapitated symbols. Without the other segments it might as well have been hieroglyphics. I sighed and dropped it in the corner of the case. It’d be safer there than anywhere else until I figured out what in the Wombat it was supposed to be telling me.

  With my newest sweethearts tucked tight in their case, I went and found Minoj.

  ‘I’ve gotta go,’ I said.

  He shot me a look of undiluted disgust. ‘The first time I do a personal installation in fifteen years and you don’t even have the manners to stay.’

  ‘Teece will look after you,’ I said.

  Minoj and Teece eyed each other. I’d often thought of them as kindred. Physically mismatched - Teece the oversized surfie biker; Minoj the smarmy cripple - but in biz they both burned. The cost negotiation would be a study in shrewd.

  ‘Make sure you get this place tight,’ I demanded. ‘It’s seen more traffic than a Transway station.’

  Minoj dismissed me with a flick of his obscenely long fingernails and went about it.

  Teece grabbed my arm.

  I went to brush him off and stopped myself.

  His blue eyes pinned me, steady and clear. ‘I’ll run this place for you, Parrish. Just come back in one piece.’

  I nodded and grinned.

  Maybe I didn’t deserve the second chance he was cutting me.

  But hey, I’d take it!

  Chapter Seven

  I decided to start with Pas and see what I got. I had business with him anyway.

  Along The Stretch I stopped and bought two spare sets of fatigues and some imitation Raycus from a rag doyen. I stuffed the clothes in my pack and donned the shades. I wasn’t going on this expedition without a change of clothes. My wardrobe used to be full of dressups even when I had no credit. These days I’d settle for something clean that didn’t attract any notice.

  Roo trailed behind me chewing on a shashlik. For a kid who was part mek, he sure could eat.

  Minoj had pressed a Gurkha’s knife on me before I left. I strapped it to the outside of the pack and cast a prayer to the great frigging Wombat I’d have no call to use it.

  I studied Roo as we steered through the alleys toward Mueno territory. A graceless mixture of streamlined titanium limbs and soft child’s body. Dreamy expression on a sweet face. Killer’s instincts. Infested hair. He’d washed it but the critters hadn’t budged. In fact they seemed happier. He scratched every few seconds.

  Note to self: don’t sleep within bug-leap distance of the kid.

  At the edge of Torley’s we passed a building that stopped me short, and stole my breath. Ten shamans had died in there trying to spiritually piggyback me and seek out the Eskaalim. Their brains had unravelled like baling twine. Vayu’s death got to me the most. A strong woman. A good woman. Dead at my persuasion, and for no gain.

  Now here I was searching for the other Tert shaman. What would happen when I found them? Through the blackness of my memory a derisive laugh echoed.

  I forced myself past the building and out of my territory.

  By evening the stink of Muenoville enveloped us. Gaudy rugs and banners decorated the villas. Cooking smells changed from stews and dumplings to shawarmas, beans and mesa spices. Music pulsed into the evening from bootleg satellite taps. Latino competing with some pretty ordinary Tert homebake and some antique rap.

  Mostly, the anger had gone out of music. Punters round here seemed to need balm - an antidote to how they lived.

  On instinct I took the shortest route to Pas, straight through the Villas Rosa. The slums’ slum. I’d met a kid there once. ’Bout eleven years old. No arms. No name. The no name shook me more. She’d helped me and been kidnapped by a media ’Terrogator for her pains. In one of life’s bitching little twists she’d ended up adopted by the wealthy royalty of Viva. King Ban, no less. A publicity stunt. Maybe, for once, someone I’d touched hadn’t come off worse.

  I still thought about her.

  Ibis had scried for info on her as a favour but come up with squat - other than she was alive, well and the figurehead to some spanking new prosthetics company.

  When I’d met her she was surviving on the scraps the Muenos threw away, living under a stairway, trying not to get abused on a daily basis.

  I’d called her Bras.

  Roo moved closer to me in the early dark. I didn’t blame him. If Dis was the black heart of The Tert, the Villas Rosa was the sewer.

  ‘You been this way before?’ I asked.

  The neons showed his eyes wide and alert. The pavements emptied at dusk. Canrat time. ‘Nope. Only Torley’s and Shadoville. And a while back Larry sent me to the perimeter with a sanction.’

  A sanction, in The Tert, was a message. One that couldn’t be trusted to a comm but had to be given face to face. ‘Where to?’ I asked suspiciously.

  ‘The waste. Opp’site Fishertown.’

  I halted in my tracks. Near Teece’s bike biz?

  ‘Who was the message for?’

  Roo’s expression got suitably blank. ‘Can’t remember. Sure stinks out there, though.’

  I swallowed my paranoia down like it was hot food. ‘Yeah,’ I said lightly. ‘They cremated the dead there after the war. Blew away the odour-de-fish.’ Replaced it with odour-de-burnt-flesh.

  We moved on, but my edginess stayed.

  Who could I trust? Really?

  That got me wondering about Daac again. Twenty odd klicks to the east was his patch. The proximity to Mr Tall, Daac and Hormone had me sweating.

  As if the nightsong in the Villas Rosa weren’t enough. In the music lulls, babies whimpered and women screamed. Muenos were big on voodoo and sacrifices. I got a hollow gut every time I thought about it. Then there was the chanting; a nerve-pinching rhythm that got you taking small, tight breaths.

  We crossed a parcel of space where the concentric arcs of a villa set converged. A lifeless, solitary tree poked a craggy finger through plas-sheet roofing.

  I knew the place. I’d wasted bodies here. Animals who thought raping a child with no arms was sport.

  I realised my mistake in coming this way. Too late - my knees buckled and the neons dotted black and grey before my eyes.

  . . . I smelled bloody ichor. Felt the escaped heat of the dying bodies rising like steam around me. My limbs ached with growing pains.

  Why would I need to grow? Why would I?

  Roo doused me with a hatful of water.

  I spluttered and coughed. ‘Where did you get that?’

  He gestured to a puddle under a corroded downpipe.

  ‘C-contaminated,’ I chattered. Shock? Fear? Cold?

  ‘Didn’t know what else to do. You was . . .’ He trailed off, gesturing to my mouth.

  I touched my chin. It was slick with water and saliva. Nice one, Parrish. Frothing at the mouth in front of the children.

  ‘That happens again, you just watch my back. It’ll pass.’

  He nodded, clearly spooked.

  I stood up. ‘You tell anyone, Roo, I’ll cut your processor out. Understood?’

  He nodded again.

  At least he’d lost that bored expression. But what had replaced it?

  I talked to him a bit more after that, trying to gauge the effects of my mind flip. He might be a walking armoury but his heart and head belonged to a child.

  ‘How do you know Larry?’ I asked, slowing until he had to walk alongside me.

  ‘Larry’s always looked after us kids. Gives us work. He reckoned Doc Del Morte must have been pasted. Reckons if he ran into him he’d shoot him.’

  That wasn’t lik
ely to happen. Del Morte had been chased out of The Tert long before my arrival. ‘What do you reckon?’

  ‘I think I’m kinda cool.’ Even in the darkness I could sense his pride in his mek. ‘Larry’s dim. He don’t know what it’s like to be me.’

  ‘What do you remember about it?’

  ‘Not much. The Doc bought us here ’fore we could talk.’

  ‘So you might have family out there somewhere?’

  He shook his head firmly. ‘Nope. My family’s here.’ He banged one artificial arm against the other. ‘Get real, boss. Nobody out there would want me now. Here at least I got respect.’

  I stifled a sigh. I knew what he meant. There was no going back for someone like Roo.

  Or me.

  I wondered how long he had left to live, before the interface between his mek and bio parts rotted his tissue function. From what I’d heard it was a pretty individual thing. No one seemed to know how to stop the chemical bleed, and no one cared to find out. Del Morte had invented a new type of cancer and he wasn’t around to take the rap for it. Roo wouldn’t live to be an adult. I was glad he was proud of himself. It was all he had.

  We found Pas at home some time after midnight. Clad in voluminous, dirty silk pants and a red sash, he sat on the steps outside his villa set holding night court over a ragged line of Muenos who clutched icons and grievances to their breasts.

  Our footsteps brought knives out in all directions. But Pas seemed unphased.

  ‘Oya!’ He gestured exuberantly as if expecting me.

  Perhaps he was. Muenos watched their boundaries closer than anyone else in The Tert.

  A murmur of appreciation went through the crowd. I was famous here for a few things. None of them particularly glamorous. I’d killed a canrat called The Big One. Blown its testes off. I’d also had the sacred feathers land on me while I was trying to get the shite away from a voodoo love-in.

  Somehow both those things converted into an amalgam of their legends. To the Muenos I’d become the human incarnation of Oya, warrior spirit, goddess of this and that, guardian of the gates of death.