Part 6 (2/2)

I tried to picture these two as scientists. It was an amusing image, these two leathery old broads rubbing their chins wisely, wearing white coats or some s.h.i.+t. It made sense, though; a lot of the best crooks after Unification had been real brains, scientists and economists and s.h.i.+t. Unification had done some weird things to people, people you'd never expect. It had killed my father, who'd seemed tough as steel to me when I was a kid, and it had turned these two freaky twins into thieves, and good ones. It was hard, after twenty years of living life on the streets of New York, to picture these two as fancy academics, but I'd seen stranger things.

”f.u.c.king Joint Council tried to recruit us all,” the first one said with a grin full of shockingly good teeth, yellowed but strong and unbroken-sort of like the women themselves. ”We were living in a commune upstate-remember?”

The second nodded, her eyes on me. ”Sure, sure-Freedom Gardens. Naked f.u.c.king kids, every-f.u.c.king-where.”

”We were living up there with Pick, just watching everything happen, after the schools were all shut down and our funding cut off, and the JC sent a couple of s.h.i.+ny new undersecretaries up there to offer us all jobs. Some project they were all working on, right after the JC formed, something top secret, very hush hush.”

They both grinned. ”We told 'em to stick it!”

They glanced at each other without moving their heads, just eyes sliding to the side. ”s.h.i.+t,” the first one said with a sigh. ”They f.u.c.king raided the place a month later. Pick had a bolthole and we got out, but they tore the place down.”

”We've been making our way off the books ever since.”

”In other words, kid, Pick and us, we go way back. And that's the only reason we're talking to you, okay?”

”So get-”

”-interesting fast. fast.”

I shook my head. ”You're talking to me because you're intrigued. intrigued. Look at you. Sitting here rotting away selling bulls.h.i.+t to people you used to rob.” I grinned. ”Come on. You know me. You know I don't waste time.” Look at you. Sitting here rotting away selling bulls.h.i.+t to people you used to rob.” I grinned. ”Come on. You know me. You know I don't waste time.”

They looked at each other. I could almost hear the static of communication between them. They looked back at me, creepy as h.e.l.l.

”We heard the name, Mr. Cates,” the first one said. ”You call me Milton.”

I winked at the second one. ”Tanner. Let's hear it.”

They may not have bought the act, but they bought the job. When I was done with my high-concept gloss on the whole mess-boiling what was likely months of work and endless complexity into two sentences-they looked at each other with that crazy light of excitement and greed I recognized very well. Every crook got that look when you really got him interested.

Milton-or Tanner, who the f.u.c.k knew?-leaned back and regarded me. ”You're either the most f.u.c.ked-in-the-a.s.s Gunner I've ever met, Mr. Cates, or onto something great.”

”He's f.u.c.ked,” Gatz said lazily. ”Obviously f.u.c.ked.”

”Either way,” the other one said, ”we want to be there to watch.”

”What's our cut?”

I gave them a number, and for the first time since we'd walked in, they were silent, staring at each other, using that twin telepathy to hash it out with waggled eyebrows and dilated pupils, Morse code. Finally they looked back at me.

”We're in, Mr. Cates,” they said simultaneously. ”When do we get started?”

”Tomorrow night,” I said, sliding off the desk and making for the exit. ”I've got a few arrangements to figure.”

From behind, I heard one of them call out, ”Word is there's a System Cop's got your name tattooed on his a.s.s. You still gonna be alive by tomorrow night?”

I didn't look back. ”Probably not.”

XI.

Just Someone We Thought Was Dead 10000.

Outside Tanner's, Kev and I paused a moment. I watched the gray, sullen faces of people who marched to jobs working for people just slightly less poor than themselves. Or thieving and mugging and murdering their way through life. Few of us managed what Pick had managed, a little emperor of information in his back office.

I glanced at Gatz, who looked like he'd fallen asleep standing up. ”s.h.i.+t. I need a drink.”

He nodded. ”What the h.e.l.l. I don't have any appointments or job interviews today.”

We started walking. I felt nervous, exposed. I'd imagined I'd stayed outside the sphere of the SSF's attention because I was smart and careful, but here we'd located several famous people on the SSF's most-wanted list in almost no time. It suddenly occurred to me that the System Pigs might know a lot more than they let on, and just let us all scamper about to see where we'd go, that maybe I wasn't as hidden as I'd thought. After all, we had engaged Pick in fifteen minutes of conversation, paid him a few thousand yen, and had the location of several desperate criminals. I had an uneasy feeling Pick got his info direct from the SSF databanks, and that maybe I was in there, too.

It never took long to find a booze establishment in Old New York, the ancient core of the city. This one looked nicely squalid-a transient, illegal bar, not like Pick's, which was mostly legal and had bribed its way to a truce with the Crushers. It was one of the hundreds of illegal, unlicensed places that sprang up for three weeks, raked in cash selling sewer liquor to anyone with yen, and then disappeared just before the System Pigs took an interest. It was an old bombed-out relic from the Riots that looked ready to fall over in a heap, its windows ragged empty s.p.a.ces. Scavenged tables and chairs had been scattered amongst the debris, and an open fire crackled in a trashcan in the middle of the room. I paused to admire the hand-lettered sign leaning up against the outside wall: live music every night. sitters must drink fast.

I turned to Gatz to say something about this, but the freak had kept shuffling forward and was already inside. I quickly followed him in. The only other customer was an Asian-looking kid, apparently asleep at a table, legs up, mouth open, sungla.s.ses obscuring his face, empty bottle between his ankles. I walked up to the makes.h.i.+ft bar while Gatz took a position near the door and removed his own gla.s.ses. Good lad, guarding my back.

The proprietor was a short, round, red-faced man who beamed at me with alarming jocularity.

”Welcome! Welcome to Rolf's by the Sea.” He winked. ”The Sea of Humanity, that is, flowing by our hallowed windows every day. We serve anything you want, as long as it is potato vodka. But we will call it whatever you wish.”

I asked the obvious question. ”Where in h.e.l.l do you get potatoes?”

He winked one bleary eye. ”We call anything used to make our fine liquors potatoes, sir. It is a generic term.”

I nodded. ”Okay. Give me a bottle.”

He nearly farted in excitement and scurried away, opening a well-locked, reinforced door and disappearing into the room beyond. Real restaurants had fancy delivery mechanisms and Droid waiters, but who could afford s.h.i.+t like that? I drifted to sleeping beauty, pulled out the empty chair, and sat down.

”You have to sit here?” he said without moving.

I blinked. ”No.”

I grinned as the blobular Rolf arrived with amusing pomp and ceremony. The kid straightened and leaned forward, folding his legs underneath the chair with surprising grace, and said, ”I wouldn't mind a blast.”

I looked at him. He couldn't be more than a teenager, maybe eighteen at the most, but he was already ruined. Broken teeth, sallow skin, red eyes-a f.u.c.king waste. You could tell someone's status just by looking at him, because there were only two kinds of people in New York-maybe in the world-these days: Rich and Poor. If you were rich, you glowed with health, you benefited from organ replacements grown from your own DNA, noninvasive life-extension therapies, effective and current vaccinations-the whole deal. If you weren't rich, a.s.suming you made it out of childhood to begin with, you ended up looking like this kid. Like me. me. A walking corpse. You either had more money than I could even A walking corpse. You either had more money than I could even imagine, imagine, or you had nothing. That was it. or you had nothing. That was it.

You sometimes got a slummer in the gin mills, a rich f.u.c.k prowling around in a costume, pretending to be poor. That's all they ever did-pretend. When you're that rich, there's nothing else to do. Everything you did, by definition, was pretend, because you didn't have have to do anything. If you worked a job, it was for fun, because the jobs didn't pay s.h.i.+t. Droids did everything better; humans were just expensive, unreliable, and, to be honest, p.r.o.ne to robbing you blind. to do anything. If you worked a job, it was for fun, because the jobs didn't pay s.h.i.+t. Droids did everything better; humans were just expensive, unreliable, and, to be honest, p.r.o.ne to robbing you blind.

You were either rich, cop, or little people. It always p.i.s.sed me off when I saw some rich f.u.c.k pretending to do a job. There were people shuffling along outside right then who would kill for a job, any job. The only jobs left were in the Vids and the SSF. You could get into the SSF as a Crusher, a beat cop, which was better than nothing, but all it did was make your daily struggle for survival legal. Everything else you had to be rich in order to get the d.a.m.n job. It made my blood boil.

I shrugged and slid the cup over to him, uncorked the bottle, and poured him a blast. He took up his cup, nodded at me, and drank. I took a hit from the bottle and winced. The stuff tasted like p.i.s.s. Warm p.i.s.s. ”How old are you?”

The kid scowled, squinting into the cup. ”What is this, a date date? I'm nineteen.”

I nodded. About right. Hadn't known any world but post-Unification. Had spent his whole life running through the sewers, terrified of the light because it usually turned out to be an SSF hover. I stood up. The booze was eating me from the inside, and I wanted to just puke it all back up. ”Keep the bottle,” I said, feeling tired.

He was already pouring himself another. ”f.u.c.k, man, I owe you one.”

I started for the door. f.u.c.k it, he'd be dead before long anyway, just like everyone else. Behind me, I heard a fussy, chubby little commotion.

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