Code Noir Read online

  I set the meat shavings on paper, enticing the canrat out of my pack. It sniffed the air, crawled out to gorge, and in a happy fugue limped off to find water and take a piss.

  Relieved of its company, and my guilt, I wandered back to the vendor and bought some damper.

  ‘You heard of Loyl Daac?’

  The woman with grey-streaked hair and studs for eyebrows crinkled her lined face and rolled her eyes. ‘Sure. Who doesn’t round here? He’s one man I’d like a piece of every night.’

  I hid a sigh. Did he have that effect on everyone? ‘What’s his story?’

  She pointed to a nearby stall. Daac’s face glowed an unflattering tinge of green on a damaged advertible tethered above it. Despite the colour, his presence dazzled. Behind it the tenement walls swore graffitied allegiance to him.

  ‘Where you from, girlie?’ She wagged a finger at me. ‘That man’s gonna make things how they were here. Give us back what’s ours. Get rid of the filth. Make us healthy people again.’

  He could start with her food. But I didn’t like to mention it, seeing as her tongue was loosening.

  She leant in close, like I was in her deepest confidence. ‘There’s bad things happening round here now. Shape-changers, bloodsuckers, spirit shit. I hate that spirit shit.’

  You and me both, hon.

  With that off her chest she went back to hacking ragged lumps of meat from a home-made rotisserie. ‘You should get your face fixed. You’d scrub up OK.’

  I choked on my mouthful at the beauty advice, and changed the subject. ‘You seen a couple of women? One wearing a coloured skirt, headscarf and face tattoos, the other a chino-grrl in . . . er . . . feathers.’

  ‘I been asked that twice already. Told them what I’ll tell you. Yes and no. No, I ain’t seen if you can’t pay. Yes, I seen ’em if you can.’ She paused expectantly.

  I took the cue. ‘How much?’

  ‘Three thousand.’

  Three thousand. I didn’t even have a quarter of that on hand. ‘You planning on opening a bank?’

  Her face closed over. ‘That’s the price of things round here to snoops and strangers. Pay up or go home, girlie.’

  I should have shaken the info out of her, but she was on Daac’s turf, one of his protected species, and I had enough to worry about. She’d seen them, there was no doubting that, which meant they were headed in the same direction as me.

  As I trudged on, I started thinking about my face. I hated pretty. In fact I loathed all the crap that went with beauty. It didn’t mean I didn’t appreciate it on others. Hell, Loyl was pretty, handsome and gorgeous in one tidy skin.

  I just didn’t care to change the way I looked - love me or leave me alone, preferably the last. Most of the time, anyway. Occasionally I caught myself in a princess daydream. Usually I wanted to kick her arse.

  Human beauty got in the way of things. Changed things. Muddied people’s minds. More precisely - it fucked with the truth.

  On the edge of Tower Town, I heard a sickly mewling behind me. The canrat, unbalanced by his extra foot, was covering twice as much distance as he needed to. He struggled toward me in a roundabout way, copping an occasional sideways kick from passers-by, just for being there.

  I guess no one saw a deformed canrat as much of a threat. More like sport.

  By the time he got to me his tongue lolled with exhaustion. He flopped across my feet.

  Loser!

  Irritated and guilt-ridden again, I picked him up and tossed him into my pack before anyone could see. At least no one knew me here.

  Eventually the tenement landscape gave way to the concentric villa mishmash I was used to. Excepting that the thoroughfares narrowed and every way south became a blind alley or a pathway that turned back on to itself.

  Too many mods on the buildings. Even the old villa monorail had been wrecked and converted.

  Daac’s face haunted me on walls and crummy advertibles and his voice resonated out of villa’s broadcasting Common Net. As I roved in and around, forced more west than I wanted, I saw less transport. Few Pets and no bikes. Only fuel’n’food ’peds. And people.

  Gen sets purred constantly. Solar panels glinted dully. This part of The Tert sucked energy in its own fashion from hybrid sources. Only lucky ones like Loyl could afford poached mains power.

  I turned my thoughts to Roo. Hopefully he’d gone home with the Mueno contingent.

  That got me thinking ’bout Teece.

  I found a public comm with a dinged plasma interface and spiked a call to him. He came on quick like he’d been waiting for me.

  ‘How’s it?’ I asked.

  ‘I can hardly see you.’

  ‘Sick comm. Are the Muenos there?’

  ‘Larry’s not big on chicken blood. Or the prayers.’

  I laughed. ‘Sorry, Teece. Knew you could handle it.’

  He made a sound like a tiny explosion. ‘And you sent Roo back. He said someone had been making mojo dolls of you and some guy.’

  ‘Loyl.’ I tried not to look sheepish.

  ‘You with him now?’

  ‘I’m not with Daac now, Teece. But I may run into him again.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ he demanded.

  I groaned. ‘It just seems to happen a lot. Look, I’ll be away a while longer. Business is taking me inwards.’

  Even in the dimness of the display I could see his face pale. He knew what I meant by ‘inwards’. ‘Can’t you trust me even a little, Parrish?’

  ‘I do trust you. That’s why it’s better you—’

  ‘Don’t patronise me,’ he snapped.

  I put on my most appeasing smile. ‘Do me a favour, will you?’

  ‘Another?’

  ‘There’s a bim living in my old room. Drop by and check the security in the roof. I’d hate anyone to get in there thinking she was me.’

  He sighed heavily. ‘Nobody could be like you.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s a compliment.’

  I cut the link and walked through the rest of the night, notching enough sightings to tell me Tulu and Mei were still out there ahead of me.

  Around dawn I caught some sleep in a communal laundry until the women woke me coming in to wash. They surrounded me with an assortment of knives and sticks until I reassured them that I worked for Daac.

  At that news they erupted into smiles and sly giggles. The younger ones demanded to know how well I knew him. The older ones went about their washing and pretended not to be listening.

  I took the opportunity to bargain for information: the dirty lowdown on Loyl for a more solid ID on Mei and Tulu. They sent the word out among their own and came back with a confirmation - heading inward still, travelling by ’ped.

  So I gave them a close-up account of their pin-up boy, his beautiful face, toned body and his lightning switches from easy charm to brooding maniac. I told them how strong his prosthetic hand was and how he’d cooked breakfast for me once. I even described the inside of his room with only a couple of embellishments. Then I made a show of sighing hard.

  ‘The thing is . . . don’t spread it around but he’s . . . y’know . . . impotent,’ I lied.

  The older ones scrubbed angrily at their dirty clothes. The young ones groaned in disappointment.

  The whole thing seriously cheered me. I mean a girl’s gotta get even somehow!

  I left them, hiding my immoral grin. It might have stayed on my face for the rest of the day if Tulu hadn’t gotten away from me.

  Late in the morning the sound of prop chop sent my pulse dancing. It sounded like an air raid on the listless breeze, but a quick scout of the sky told me it was just a solitary flier - an ultralight, coming in to land.

  I ran after the sound until I met a wall of discarded poly pipes blocking the end of an alley. Dumping my pack, I burrowed awkwardly in amongst them, searching for a crack to look through. The crack that showed promise was crammed with debris. I poked my fingers through it and paid severely for disturbing an ants’ nest. Time wasted
as I slapped the biters away and gouged their home out.

  When I had cleared enough to ’scope through, the peephole revealed a Tert anyways - one of the precious expanses of space at the hub of dozen villa sets. This one had contained a bunch of different sized swimming pools. A ‘water park’, Teece called the one in Plastique. Now the pools were filled and plascreted over and turned into a makeshift runway.

  My spyhole revealed Tulu strapping Mei to the back of the UL. Lucid memories of my own buzzsaw experience over Viva sent my stomach weightless.

  I stuck the pistol through the hole and fired. It missed. I shot again. This one went wider and pinged the cabin.

  The UL pilot revved the engine. Tulu threw herself aboard as it hopped off down the short runway. For a second it careered wildly off path then steadied.

  I scrambled out of my hideyhole and tried to climb the wall, but a pipe slipped free and sent me tumbling downward and under. I rolled away just as the whole thing collapsed, spreading down the alley. By the time I got up from the pummelling, the UL was disappearing east.

  As I logged its path in my compass memory, a priority icon flashed in my right eye. The Bounty hunter’s coordinates blinked up alongside it. This was the exact spot the Bounty had been told to deliver me to.

  Crap!

  I climbed over the mess and walked down to the runway, kicking pipes around in frustration.

  My annoyance hadn’t even begun to drain away when a Prier swept belligerently into my space, blasting air downward as it hovered low over the runway.

  I dived for the nearest cover and ran a frantic weapons check. Ally? Or Enemy?

  Or maybe the two were interchangeable.

  Had the media finally decided to come and get me? Or were they chasing Tulu?

  I tugged a charm from my bracelet. A stun might work on the ’Terro, but not for long. My best chance was to toss one inside the Prier’s cab when the ’Terro dispatched, which meant getting close enough to see the pilot. At the moment I couldn’t see anyone through the reflective cabin bubble that resembled a set of oversized, outdated mirrorshades.

  Adrenalin spread like a cold knife scraping my skin. With the charm clenched in one hand, I waited for the Prier to make a move.

  But it didn’t land. Or show any interest in me. In fact it lifted higher and headed east, leaving me relieved and indignant.

  Double crap!

  When I got over still being alive, I went in search of my pack. Loser - the canrat - had slept through the whole thing. I woke him and tipped him out to piss and gum bits of damper. He stuck close by in case I had abandonment on my mind. Funnily enough, though, I was starting to think of him as company. He was sure less demanding than most I’d had around me lately.

  When he’d finished his chow I packed him back in the pack and set off doggedly following the UL’s bearing.

  By evening, I noticed a decline of people noise and an absence of people light - an eerie trailing off of life into the encroaching darkness.

  It forced me to use my headband to light my way and turned me into a walking lighthouse. I spent the night with my hands on my guns, squinting into the shadows. By morning my fingers were cramped and clawed and my eyes bulged from strain.

  I wanted to lie down but two things kept me walking: the knowledge that Tulu was way ahead of me now, and the fact that the villascape had radically changed.

  A mutated rainforest had sprung up around the empty villas. Upthrust roots nudged already subsiding buildings, and sharp-suckered vines pierced the porous walls. Brown-blood coloured groundcover clumped like fungus over pavement cracks, and ugly, squat, spiked date palms threatened to impale me if I brushed too close. Overhead Alexandra palms towered too thickly together. Even in the mild breeze they sloughed off boat-sized, empty seedpods and heavy bundles of orange berries. The berries littered the ground making it slippery, the scent of their decay more pungent than a spilled bottle of tequila.

  Not wanting to be clouted by a falling pod, I got neck ache from craning upwards. I’d never seen palms growing so densely or so tall. I didn’t like what it said about the state of the soil.

  The recent war had touched most parts of The Tert. Not so here. Here there were no people to fight, no one to hurt. Only buildings covered with bug-infested vegetation, and the warm, clammy fingers of an early spring northerly eddying through.

  My ignorance astonished me. Only klicks from where I lived was a complex, bizarre jungle and I’d had no idea it existed.

  Did I say empty villas?

  Several canrats appeared and began to stalk me along the plant-strewn pavement. Large, mismatched fur - canine and rattus - chiselled fangs and long skinny tails.

  I tried to lose them by entering a villa and climbing up into the attic. Mistake. I discovered a fresh cemetery - layers of bones and fur of other mammals filling the ceiling in between joists.

  The canrats herded me from behind and I found myself backed into a low corner, overpowered by the stink of dograt fur and foul dog breath. One scrape of one incisor and it would be all over.

  I slipped my pack off and braced against the sloping roof. As I drew my pistols the rotten tiles crumbled away. I slipped, clawed and finally fell down two storeys of derelict villa, landing flat on my back.

  My head thumped so hard I saw comet tails. Every instinct urged me to get up and get running while I had a few seconds edge, but my arms and legs declared a flat, inarguable ‘time out’.

  I got my eyes open.

  Mistake. This was worse. Much, MUCH worse! If I had breath I would’ve screamed, but my lungs hurt so much I suspected they’d herniaed out between my ribs.

  Looming twice the size of a canrat, with a jaw that could dislocate wide enough to swallow my face without a belch, was a bungarra.

  The Big Country’d always been a place for lizards but this ugly reptile made the spiky mountain devil look as pretty as a porn star.

  I stared up at the thick ridges of its neck.

  It took two steps and perched astride me like I was a handy rock in a gully, its long claws stabbing into my shoulders, tail down over my face.

  The shoulder pain took over from the one in my back and lungs. A noise escaped from my lips. A whimper-grunt.

  Above me, I heard the canrats complaining. The bungarra was thieving their meal.

  In answer it hissed and quarked at them. Entirely primitive. Entirely pissed off.

  What now?

  Fok knows.

  Body hurt scrambled my brain. The world got grainy. Then it got black.

  Sometime later it came back.

  Monochrome first. My shoulders ached but the nauseating drill stabs had ceased. One half-opened eye told me I was no longer the bungarra’s pet rock. I rolled on to my side, coughing and spitting phlegm.

  A noise assaulted my eardrums. A few body lengths away the canrats crouched, snarling and growling, tails stiff as erections, hackles raised.

  I propped on to an arm. The bungarra stood between us, motionless. It eyeballed me as if cogging whether I was worth the fuss.

  One, two, three heart thumps . . .

  Not! A caark and it leapt off in the opposite direction.

  The noise stirred Loser who emerged from my pack, groggy from the fall, drool stringing from sloppy lips. I could smell his mange.

  I struggled unsteadily on to my feet and looked for my pistols. They lay close together on the ground near the biggest canrat. As I contemplated how I might get to them, the big one forced its way past the others and stalked toward me.

  Loser stunned me by issuing a blood-clotting growl and leaping straight for it. They met and rolled, teeth hooked into each other’s abdomens.

  Loser raked his extra foot across the canrat’s face.

  The bigger canrat fell back, keening with pain. His tongue swelled and within seconds he was dead. Poisoned.

  It worked a treat on the others. They vanished as if they’d never been there in the first place.

  Loser staggered over to me, wh
eezing like asbestosis. I shook my head in awe. He managed to look smug and pathetic all at once, rattail swishing.

  With a shaking hand, I hooked the stun I’d been ready to use back on to the bracelet. I stared at his extra paw and made a mental note never to get too close to it. Even though he’d probably saved my life, I suddenly wanted to put a lot of space between myself and the Borgia dograt.

  But tenacity was Loser’s only virtue and he pursued me like a disease. By late afternoon, not able to stand his pitiful shadow, I - carefully - threw him back into my pack.

  We walked another few hours, without incident, into a light, annoying drizzle.

  I saw plants that resembled animals, animals whose names I’d almost forgotten, including three species of venomous snake: a red-belly black, the squat, grey ugliness of the death adder and, worst, a western Taipan.

  I trod heavier after that, giving them plenty of time to hear me and go about their biz.

  Soon I’d had enough of Loser’s snoring and his weight on my back. I dumped him out on to a clear patch of pavement, gingerly stretched my shoulders and thought how comfy the ground cover would be if the place wasn’t so infested.

  Loser weaved off down the side of a villa set, hissing like the feline he wasn’t.

  More snakes?

  My hand fell to my pistols. I slipped the pack back on and edged along in among the shadow-thick vines, following him.

  Should I unstrap the Gurkha? It might be more use than a pistol if it came down to a snake and me. When I found Loser, though, his beef turned out to be something else altogether.

  I smelt it first. Saw it soon after.

  Thick, oily and ruined.

  Chapter Eight

  The forgotten canal lapped heavily: a disruption between worlds.

  Like the strip of rainforest jungle, I’d never heard of its existence before, but it explained a lot. Tert punters whispered about Dis as if it was in some way isolated from the rest, even though it was the heart of the villatropolis.