Part 46 (1/2)

”Liiiieees,” Rikka snarled, drawing the word out with her best ganga sneer. ”They tell you they got something, something good, but they got nothing. Nothing but lies.”

”They got secrets,” Shenka piped up, and I looked for Rikka's reaction.

”Better they keep they secrets,” Rikka retorted, but she did not deny the idea. ”They secrets na good to me. Fill my belly? Na. Make me rich, ride a hovercycle like them? Na. Bring Pigatzo down on us? Yes, that they do. Let them keep they secrets, I had plenty Pigatzo beatings already my life.”

”She's scared,” I whispered, sure there was more to the Bookali than secrets.

But Shenka took this as an attack on Rikka and came suddenly to her sister's defense. ”Rikka na scared!” she objected. ”You scared, Trabina.”

”You call me scared?” Rikka demanded, turning on me suddenly with a large wooden spoon in her hand. ”You call me scared, little girl?” She was an imposing sight, taller than I would ever be, braids jutting out in all directions, and with a jagged scar under one eye.

”You scared,” Shenka repeated, trying in time-honored fas.h.i.+on to refute the charge by reversing it.

”Am na!” I objected, being very much so.

”When you run with ganga, you na scared nothing,” Rikka boasted, advancing on me with the wooden spoon. ”I na scared some Bookali with stun gun. Pah! You little rat-rot scared.”

”Am na!” I said again, edging my way toward the door.

”Are so!” Shenka taunted, trailing behind her sister.

”Na!” I insisted, wondering if I could bolt and run before that spoon whacked across my skull.

”So, so, so!”

”Na, na, na!”

Suddenly Rikka stopped and the sneer twisted back onto her lips. ”You na scared, little rat-rot? Show us.”

My heart stopped.

”Yeah, show us,” Shenka echoed.

Rikka's sneer stretched her painted lips across her teeth and left traces of color there. ”You go down to Bookali, little rat-rot, if you na scared.”

”Yeah, you go down,” Shenka chimed; then, ”I dare you.”

I hated Shenka for that. I could have run from Rikka, could have run back to my mother and avoided that spoon and that sneer, but not from Shenka. If I ran from Shenka, I might just as well keep running. There is no worse sin in the projects than to be scared in front of your friend. You can refuse a dare from your enemies, but you can never refuse one from your friend.

”All right,” I bl.u.s.tered, fear twisting my insides. ”All right. I show you then. I show you. I dare.” Late, far too late, I turned and ran from the room.

Down the stairs I raced, toward my own destruction, for so I knew it was. Powers-Powers would beat or kill at the slightest provocation. Only at the front door did I stop, stop to catch my breath, stop to let reason strive with madness. Which did I fear more, the Bookali, or my friend's disdain?There was no question; it has ever been so. I opened the door and slid out.

The near guard turned at the sound and zeroed her rifle in on my heart. I waited, eyes clenched shut, for the sound of the shot that would end my life; but I heard only a soft, ”Huh,”

and the sc.r.a.pe of a cleated boot. I opened one eye to see the guard standing in her place, feet wide apart, rifle resting once more in the crook of her arm. ”Jess,” she called to one of her fellows. ”We have a curious one.”

The rhythm of her speech was of a kind I had never heard before. Another guard turned and looked me up and down, and a smile twisted up one half of his face. He was dark, like Shenka, and thick-limbed.

”Curiouser and curiouser,” he said obliquely.

”What you think, child?” the first one said to me, s.h.i.+fting to the lilt of the projects. Her skin was as pale as any I had ever seen, and in the shadow of her helmet shrewd eyes glittered.

My heart pounded, wondering if they were just toying with me the way Tunnel Runners would toy with children before they carried them off. At any rate, I knew I had to answer, for not to answer was to admit weakness, and to admit weakness in the projects was death. ”Heavy boxes,” was all I could think to say.

The woman laughed. ”Heavy, yes. Reason for that. You think?”

”If you say,” I replied cautiously. Two Bookali loading a sled had paused just briefly to glance in our direction. Their s.h.i.+rts were soaked with sweat and they were smiling, too, as though it were some great joke that the boxes were heavy. ”What in them box?” I asked finally.

The woman looked furtively to left and right, then took half a step toward me. ”Secrets,” she said, and nodded knowingly.

Secrets, after all! Shenka's uncle was right. I remembered then that he also said these secrets made people sick. But the Bookali didn't look sick; they looked very fit and healthy, indeed, with biceps bulging as they stacked the heavy boxes one atop another. What kind of secrets could be held in boxes, anyway? And why should they be heavy?

Seeing that they were not going to blast me for being in the street, I edged down the steps, my back ever to the rail. I peered at the boxes from this distance, hoping for one that was torn or open so I could see what was inside. But they were well sealed, with numbers on the outside. I knew numbers because code locks had numbers, and one had to remember them to get back into the safety of a building. ”Those secrets coded?” I asked in a flash of insight. The Bookali guard nodded wisely. ”All coded. You know codes?”

”Just my codes,” I answered, with visions of those boxes exploding if someone tried to use the wrong code to open them.

”You know numbers?” she asked.

”I know my numbers,” I repeated.

”You know numbers, you can learn these codes,” the guard said confidentially.

I stopped breathing. Was the Bookali offering me a chance to learn the codes for their secrets? I started to edge back up the steps. Maybe they were like the Tunnel Runners, who grabbed children that got too close and dragged them down into their lairs, there to do unspeakable things to them and make them crazy. Maybe these Bookali wanted to grab me and make me one of them.

Suddenly a shrill whistle pierced the air. ”Fetts!” someone barked. In a flash the Bookaliworkers inside the truck slammed its gate shut. Another worker powered the half-loaded sled inside their headquarters, and the door sealed behind it. The truck roared off down the street.

The guards covered this retreat, heading the while for their hovercycles, twitching nervously this way and that at any sound. When all the other Bookali had disappeared, the guards mounted their s.h.i.+ning machines, keyed them to life, and flashed away around a corner. In less than a minute the street was deserted as if no Bookali had ever been there.

In the distance was the whine of other machines, of Fetts on hover-cycles or in hovercars.

My curiosity did not extend so far as to wait for their arrival, so I pelted back up the steps and into the building. Inside, eight steps pa.s.sed in four bounds as I hurled myself to the landing and leaped up to brace my arms on the windowsill.

The hovercycles came first, streaking along the broken pavement, banking around corners, darting up and down streets and alleys. They found nothing, and soon were gone in their driving pursuit of a quarry too alert, too quick for capture.

Behind them came the cars, moving slowly, hovering near (but not too near) windows; stopping now and again as a uniformed Fett jumped out and tried a lock here, a lock there.

Some buildings were open, their codes broken, but the Fetts didn't bother to check those. Who would stay in a building that could not be locked? For others, they slapped a small box over the key panel, waited a moment, then toed the door open cautiously.

Across the street several Bookali waited within their new headquarters. In my mind I saw them: rifles trained on the door, muscles taut, fingers sweating on triggers, afraid to breathe.

But when the Fetts came to that building, they pa.s.sed it by. I felt a sudden release of tension, a relief as though I had been inside, waiting in dread to be discovered. This puzzled me. Why should I care if the Bookali were found?

Suddenly I realized that I wanted to know what those secrets were. I wanted to go inside that building across the street and see what it was that made the Fetts and Pigatzo hate these Bookali so. Trembling at my own audacity, I crept up the rest of the steps to my apartment and crawled into my bed, hiding far beneath the covers.

The Bookali did not come back the next day, or the next. The Fetts came through again, and the Pigatzo; the Pigatzo beat up two or three ganga that were hanging around and took them away in a slow-moving cart that rumbled along the broken street on wheels. They promised to be back again soon; we believed them.

Other ganga slinked around the project, muttering about making an alliance with the Tunnel Runners, which we knew was only talk. Ganga sometimes became Tunnel Runners, like Rikka's boyfriend; and the Tunnel Runners would sometimes return a tormented victim; but no one just talked to them and came back all right. They came back dead, or crazy. So mostly the ganga melted away, waiting for things to cool down.

But the Bookali came back. Not in trucks this time, but on hover-cycles, roaring up to their headquarters across the street. They hovered there a moment, engines throbbing; then the door opened and one by one, the hovercycles glided inside. They left one guard standing outside, rifle in hand.