Part 45 (2/2)

”Why not me?””Because I'll always have you, Jimmy, just like you'll always have me.”

Her timing was perfect. She drove into his driveway and kissed him good night.

”I thought you were coming in,” Jimmy said.

”No, you go to your race.”

”Where are you staying, I'll call you when I get back.”

She gave him her generous lightbulb Marilyn smile and backed the car out of the driveway. ”Maybe I'll call you from Monte Carlo.”

Apparently, Catherine Wells decided that she wanted to be a writer when she was ten years old, and that was that. A novelist and librarian, she has only recently begun writing short fiction. Her novels include Beyond the Gates and Mother Grimm, which was a finalist for the 1997 Philip K. d.i.c.k Award.

If ” 'Ba.s.sador” is any indication, she should definitely devote more of her time to the short stuff.

'Ba.s.sador.

Catherine Wells.

We could hear the rumble of their hovercycles echoing through the concrete canyons long before they arrived. My mother seized my hand, terror in her eyes, and dragged me out of the street. ”Trabina! Hssht! Come!” I resisted, dragging my feet, craning my neck toward the throaty sound of power.

A morbid thrill shot through me, a curiosity/dread, as the time I had seen the Pigatzo beat up a ganga outside my window. Only Powers rode hovercycles, sweeping down through the projects from the north, flaunting their wealth and their strength with their beautiful machines. I had seen three different Powers in my project: the Tunnel Runners, the Pigatzo, the Fetts. But rumors had been circulating all week that a new Power was coming, one that brought more trouble than all the others combined. I was seven years old; I wanted to see it.

My mother yanked at my arm, jerked it nearly from its socket, and hauled me up the steps of our building so that I fell and sc.r.a.ped my bare knees on the eroded cement. ”Trabina! Come!”

she snapped. ”They almost here!” She caught me round the waist with one arm and ran for the door.

Suddenly the street was filled with the thunder of half a dozen hover-cycles retroing to a stop in front of the building. My mother turned like a cornered animal, back braced against the door. From her protecting arms I saw them dismount, six helmeted figures in worn leather that winked with metal studs.

”Bookali,” my mother whispered.

Four of them stood guard over the hovercycles, faced in four directions, rifles carried in the crooks of their arms. Another threw a disinterested glance toward my mother and me, then turned and nodded toward the empty building across the street. He and the sixth Bookali strode toward it, cleated boots ringing on the paving.

They tested the door, found it code locked. One produced a small box, long and flat, which he attached to the key panel. After a moment he removed it, touched the door handle, and the door sprang open. Powers, indeed, who could pick a code lock without triggering the building's defenses. Three ganga had tried to force that door once; two had died for theirfoolishness.

My mother keyed our own building now, quietly, carefully, not to attract any attention. The door gave a soft buzz and suddenly four rifles were trained on us. We froze, afraid even to breathe; then slowly, cautiously, Mother pushed the door open a crack and we melted inside.

Even as the door shut off my view, the four rifles had not moved.

As soon as it was sealed, I wriggled from my mother's arms and ran for the landing, braced my arms on the windowsill and drew myself up to look out at the scene below. The four guards again faced four directions; their two comrades had gone inside. The hovercycles rested on their gravfoils, gleaming in the occasional ray of light that filtered through clouds and past concrete towers to play across the canyon floor. The bikes were black and silver, like their riders, and I thought they were the most beautiful things I had ever seen.

”Trabina!” my mother hissed. ”Na! Come away!” But I would not, though I heard her clatter up behind me and knew my backside would pay the price for my disobedience. But I watched as the two Bookali came back out and sealed the building behind them. They were mounting their hovercycles as my mother seized me around my waist and hauled me away; but she, too, paused to look out as the six bikes coughed to life, hovering just off the ground. Then, almost as one, they engaged thrust and roared down the street, leaving only their echoes behind.

”Curse be,” my mother muttered after them. ”Stay away from my project.” But it was not to be.

No one wanted the Bookali in their neighborhood, for it inevitably drew the attention of the other Powers. The Pigatzo were said to burn Bookali headquarters whenever they found them, and the Fetts to do worse. Anyone who a.s.sociated with the Bookali could expect to come under scrutiny as well, and dire tales were told of innocent children who had been lured inside a Bookali headquarters somewhere.

My friend Shenka and I watched as the Bookali returned to our project with truckloads of boxes. Shenka was older than I by at least a year, and dark to my light. She was taller, as well, and stood on her tiptoes on the fifth-floor landing to see out the window and down to the street below. I, of course, braced my spindly arms on the sill to attain such height, strong from much practice of this particular exercise.

I looked at the featureless building below, its dull gray face blending with all the others in this concrete canyon. Awnings were long gone, painted signs obliterated, everything covered with the universal grime of the projects. I had seen that building every day of my life and thought nothing of it; now suddenly it was mysterious.

My mother pa.s.sed by on her way to the laundry. ”Outlaws,” she muttered, pausing to peer over my shoulder. ”Now be trouble.” She yanked my twisting braid for no reason and continued on her way.

Outlaws. It was a strange condemnation. There was not much of law in the projects; Powers kept the law where Powers lived, and only came to the projects to visit retribution on those who dared to venture outside them. So what was this new Power doing here?

”What are Bookali?” I asked my friend as the dark-clad figures loaded the heavy boxes onto sleds. Sweat gleamed on their foreheads, and occasionally one would strip out of his leather jacket. Some of the Bookali were women, but most were men, and clearly accustomed to thishard labor.

”Trouble,” Shenka replied, but I thought it was her mother's opinion. Shenka herself had little imagination.

”But Pigatzo make war on ganga, and Fetts chase Tunnel Runners- what Bookali do?” I persisted in the clipped speech of the projects. ”Keep secrets,” Shenka replied with authority.

”That what my uncle say.”

The answer seemed silly to me. I did not know Shenka's uncle, and I was not p.r.o.ne to trust any man. When a boy turned ten, he went to the ganga; he was not given an option. Then he died, or became a Tunnel Runner, or simply disappeared. Few men stayed in the projects, and those who did tended to sleep by day and forage by night, so I did not see much of them. I had no reason for trust.

Below us, the power sleds loaded with boxes glided smoothly over the pocked paving and into the building across the street. Other things were carried in as well: gridwork, planking, unidentifiable jumbles of metal and plastic collapsed together. There was some furniture, all of it spartan; but mostly there were the boxes.

And through it all the four guards stayed at their posts, alert for any movement, any sign of trouble. They got none from us; the people of the project-even the ganga-stayed away. But I would not help but notice that the Bookali made no trouble, either: they searched no buildings, yelled no abuse to people inside, fired no weapons through open windows.

”Why Pigatzo hate them?” I wondered aloud, for they did none of the things the ganga did, that I could see.

” 'Cause they tell secrets to people,” Shenka replied. ”My uncle say. Say they tell people things they shouldn't know, and it make them sick.”

”But why Pigatzo hate them for that?” I asked, puzzled. ”Pigatzo na care if people sick; then people na make trouble for Pigatzo.”

Shenka shrugged. ”Maybe they tell secrets about Pigatzo,” she suggested. ”Or maybe-” She strained with the effort of speculation. ”Maybe the secrets make people crazy, as well as sick.

Pigatzo na like people be crazy.”

That was true. Tunnel Runners were all crazy, and Pigatzo would shoot them on sight. I wondered if the Bookali told secrets that turned people into Tunnel Runners. The thought made me shudder.

”Trabina, come from window,” my mother admonished, on her way back upstairs again.

Reluctantly we both turned away.

”Let's go my parmen,” Shenka suggested. ”Rikka's home.”

Rikka was Shenka's older sister who had run with the ganga for a while. But when her ganga boyfriend went to the Tunnel Runners, Rikka had had enough; she came back home. Still, Rikka had seen and done things the rest of us could hardly imagine, so we liked to listen to her talk, even if she had the sharp edge of a ganga.

”Bookali, pah!” Rikka spat when we asked her about them. ”Not so tough. See those big rifle they carry? Pff! Stun rifle only. Ganga is better armed, not to say Pigatzo. They na so tough, these Bookali.”

”Then you go down there,” Shenka challenged, unwilling to have this new terror diminished.

”Me? Na, I don't go. Who needs? Like a smashed head, I need Bookali. What they got?”It was a question that still bothered me. ”What do they got, Rikka?” I asked.

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