Fools

by Pat Cadigan

  For my convenience. That’s a new one, but I could get used to it. I wave at her and go over to see what the carriage trade gets for free.

  No hard stuff, according to the panels in the wall—three kinds of coffee, half a dozen teas, soft drinks, fortified water, prehangover treatments, and all fancy-label. I’m getting more impressed by the second.

  I decide to see if free Brazilian coffee out of a vending wall has more going for it than the poison I usually drink. When I press the panel, a screen lights up right in front of me and shows a little home movie of an antique silver pot levitating and pouring coffee into a commuter cup. A moment later a chamber below the screen opens up and I smell it even before I reach in for it. The commuter cup is identical to the one on the screen. Nice touch.

  The screen says, Enjoy the Royale’s private blend often! Come again soon!

  “Beg me,” I say. And then I taste the coffee and I think, fuck it, cancel the taxi, I’m going to live here, right here in the taxi stand. Maybe I can work the booth, calling rides for privs and making polite announcements about only human-driven air-taxis available. Us killers can do polite as well as anybody else.

  Then the taxi sets down on the landing pad and I’m impressed all over again—it’s running in whisper mode, so as not to bother the privs with too much noise. The driver pops the rear door for me and I climb in, clutching my coffee with one hand and still holding on to one of my wads with the other.

  Kind of a letdown here, because the interior of the cab is slightly on the shabby side. Privs are hard on their toys. The clear plaz panel between me and the driver is open—I guess there aren’t too many priv stick-up artists, at least not in this part of Commerce Canyon.

  “Destination, please,” says the driver politely. Yah, I can definitely get used to this. Without thinking, I give him my address.

  He turns around and looks at me so hard that I get scared. Maybe. I’m a publicly wanted killer, with my name, address, and description all over the dataline.

  “That’s a Downs address,” he says, like he’s telling me there’s shit on my shoes. I just sit there thinking it figures, humans won’t go to the Downs.

  He sighs and takes off his overdecorated livery cap. Underneath, his black hair’s been knitted into a dizzy herringbone design now mostly flattened from the headgear. “There are only eight rooftop pads in the Downs that serve air-taxis,” he says, talking real slow, like I might not understand one word in three, “two in each quadrant. Four are clustered near the center, four are spread out on the perimeter. If you tell me where that address is located, I can let you off at the pad closest to it.”

  “Oh,” I say. I’m supposed to know this, except I never had any reason to, till now. “Northwest quadrant. Um, inner.”

  But he’s still glaring at me. I try my impression of a polite smile on him, but apparently that’s not what he’s been waiting for.

  “I have to charge you fare-and-a-half,” he says sourly, “because I’ve got to come back from there empty.”

  “Oh,” I say again. Yah, that figures. It’s not like he’s just going to happen on a bunch of privs looking for a ride back to uptown after a sleaze-along. I finish the coffee and toss the cup in the suckhole. “That’s okay,” I tell him. “Fare’ and-a-half, let’s do the thing right.”

  Now he gives me an up-and-down, waits like he wants to ask me something else, then shrugs and turns around. As we lift, the partition between us slides shut. Maybe he thinks he’s got the first ever priv stickup artist in his back seat. Nah, just a killer. In spite of myself, I feel like a rich kid on National Greed Day—the only time I ever get airborne is if I’m strapped into a showboat on my way to a court appearance. This way is definitely better.

  He swings the cab around to get into the correct flight path and I have a farewell view of the Royale from the back window.

  A small group of people who have just come out of Davy Jones’ are hurrying across the roof to the taxi stand; one of them points up at the cab and they all look. Guess they think I took their ride. Just as they’re turning toward the glassed-in booth, the taxi rises and levels off and I see only the jeweled summit of Commerce Canyon getting smaller behind me.

  * * *

  “… of the line. We’re here. Hey! Second time, end of the line!”

  The driver’s rapping on the partition. I didn’t even know I fell asleep. Groggy, I dig around in one of my wads and find a smaller bill in the center, which I push through the fare slot. This does not make him happy.

  “What is this?” he says.

  “What is what?” I’m still all full of this crazy dream about an old guy falling out of a sky island.

  “What are you, somebody’s pet bank robber? I’m set up for fare strips and bearer chips. What is this currency?”

  Was there some kind of banking coup while I was asleep? “What’s the matter with it?”

  “You want to buy shoes, it’s great. But I don’t have an accounting system that works with it.”

  I start getting scared and then all of a sudden, this weird calm comes over me out of nowhere. He’s telling me about his accounting system like my life depends on it? “I don’t know accounting, I’m paying fare-and-a-half. I’m paying you. You work it out.”

  He looks like I just spit on his upholstery. Then, when I think that maybe he’s going to slide back the partition and punch me, he takes the currency. “This was a lot more trouble than it was worth.”

  “Your accounting system is more trouble than it’s worth,” I say, and pop the rear door myself.

  “Wait a minute!” But I’m already out and walking away. The downshaft to the street is closed, I’ll have to take the outside stairs, but walking ten flights down isn’t so bad. Besides, the idea of being shut up in a downshaft is enough to bring on a case of the short-breath tonight. I get to the fake wrought-iron stairs when the driver takes off. Guess he decided he didn’t feel like pushing it any further in the middle of the night on a Downs rooftop. Maybe he’s afraid I’d kill him; us people who use currency are probably capable of anything.

  I’m halfway to the street when I think to ask myself where I’m going. It’s such a good question, I have to sit down on the steps and come up with an answer worthy of it. Go home, sure, crawl onto the futon, pull a blanket over my head, and hope I wake up knowing everything-and-a-half. Except I do not want to be alone with that picture in my head. Now that I’m out of the club and back in the Downs where I belong, it’s starting to give me a case of impending short-breath. Impending doom. And me without a banana.

  Oh, hell, I think, getting up and going the rest of the way down to the street. I’ll just go to Anwar’s. His place is only about a block from where I am right now. I’ll tell him about it and he’ll give me a banana, or at least a place to spend the night while I try to unkink this thing and figure out who I threw over that cliff, and when, and why.

  Which begs the bad old question, do I really want to know any of this?

  Jeez, but I wish my mind would make up its mind. Ha, and ha.

  I’m halfway to Anwar’s when I’m about to pass a twenty-four-hour pawnshop.

  Cause for pause. I want to get off the street as fast as possible, but I know I’ve done business with this place. Something of mine might still be in the inventory, and for once, I’ve got enough money to buy it back.

  I’m thinking about going in … and thinking about it …

  … and when I come to, I’m hanging on a parking meter at the curb, about to topple over into the gutter.

  Dizzy spells now, for chrissakes. I’m getting to be a real hazard to navigation here. I’ve got half a mind—ha, and ha—to forget the pawnshop and just run off to Anwar’s, get indoors before I pull a really big blank and wake up in a crib or worse.

  And then I think, hell, I’m here, I might as well go in. It’ll save me a trip later.

  Behind the counter, the pawnbroker raises an eyebrow at me and goes on combing her white hair.

  �
�Can’t stay away, eh?” she says. “What’s the good word?”

  Far back in my mind, something jumps, and I hear a small voice say, Tell her.

  Tell her? Tell her what? For a moment it feels like my head is full of cotton fuzz.

  “We’re having one of those nights, are we?”

  We’re having one of those lifetimes is what we’re having. But at least I can remember her name. “You got anything of mine, Ofrah?”

  She looks at me for a long second before she runs one hand over the screen sitting to her right on the counter, moonstone eyes going side to side, then rolling up in her head while she consults deep inventory. This goes on for almost too long before she says, “Nothing but what I had.”

  “Who took it?” I ask.

  Her look says I’m the craziest thing since eyes first popped. I start to reach into my pocket and something tells me very strongly that I shouldn’t bother; she’s not going to tell me who bought my stuff while I was off in uptown adventureland.

  She notices the movement and her mouth twitches. “Void again, are we?”

  I open her mouth to tell her, no, I just won the lottery or something, but I stop again. Instead, I take my hand out of my pocket and shrug. “Even an uptown priv gets financially embarrassed from time to time.”

  “Privs have credit ratings. You don’t even have a good word.”

  I give her another bad word, wondering if I have finally achieved the early stages of complete mental meltdown; there’s some block that won’t let me tell her for once I am holding more money than memory. I want to ask her what I said the last time I came in, what I was doing, what I was like, and why I didn’t put in for a call-back-and-retrieve, but somehow I know she’s not going to tell me even if I beg. She’ll just keep giving me that bored look.

  I turn away to leave and catch sight of a pair of bald heads just outside the door. Great, this is just what I needed—a pair of onionheads with insomnia, looking for someone they can claim violated their marital space and then stomp into blood pudding. For all I know, they’ve been following me since I left the cab on the roof. Onionheads’ll do that when they’re bored enough.

  They spot me and grin at each other. Yah, they’re ready. They can’t come in and get me because they can’t claim a challenge in a public space less than ten thousand feet square; that’s the law. I turn back to Ofrah.

  “So,” I say, feeling humble, “can I go out the back door?”

  Ofrah gives a short laugh; she’s seen the onionheads, too. “Yah, sure enough. For you, that’s free. You don’t even need a good word.” She jerks her head at the curtain behind her. “Run like hell. Onionheads got long memories, even if you don’t. Come back when you’ve got a good word.”

  Grind my nose in it, Ofrah. I give her one last bad word by way of farewell. The curtain takes me right out to a back alley and I run like hell. Exactly like hell.

  * * *

  “Ah, Christ,” says Anwar. “Do you do this just to torment me, or are you now a practicing psychotic?” In the tiny security screen, his face looks like an unmade bed, probably as much the fact that I woke him as the low-res. But he buzzes me in and he’s waiting with a cup of coffee when I get up to his apartment. Sort-of coffee—after the uptown Brazilian, I can taste every chemical and additive they put in those instant cubes. But it’s the thought that counts.

  “You’re true,” I tell him, sipping and not making a face. “You’re the truest of the true, and the truest one I ever knew.”

  He scratches himself through his robe. “Yah. But—” he yawns—“one time, Marceline. One goddam time only. You either give yourself up or you don’t come here anymore, because I don’t need this kind of trouble.” He yawns again and plumps down next to me on the broken-down framework of cushions that passes for a couch.

  My heart sinks. With the picture of that cliff in my head, this can only mean I’m a known killer now. “Maybe I can plead amnesia,” I say. “Or being fugued out. They give you a break for that, don’t they?”

  He smears his dark hair back from his forehead and peers at me through slitted eyes. “Whol Who gives you a break for amnesia? You must be psychotic, because nobody on Bateau’s payroll is that stupid.”

  I pause in the act of taking another sip of poison. “Bateau?”

  Anwar throws both hands up and claps them over his face. “Mother of God, she’s forgotten she works for Bateau. Shit, I might as well wake up all the way. If I go back to sleep again tonight, I might never wake up again. How could you do this?” He gets up and marches toward the bedroom. “Finish that,” he calls over his shoulder. “We got a fast date in a memory lane.”

  Jee-zuz, it just gets worse, I think unhappily, pouring the rest of the coffee down the sink in the kitchenette. I work for Bateau. I see the cliff again in my mind and I know what I do for him. That’s a real balls-up throw-up. Anwar comes out of the bedroom buttoning a faded orange shirt and finds me leaning over his sink, spitting out the taste of vomit.

  “Ah, shit,” he says. “I want to tell you it’s not that bad, but we both know that’d be a lie. Or we’ll both know when you get your mind right with the lord.”

  “Debts got that bad, did they,” I say, wiping my mouth on my sleeve, forgetting it’s too good for that. I grab a rag off the counter and try scrubbing the spot I made. “Debts got so bad that I work for an Escort service. Is that right?”

  Anwar takes a breath. “You’d better hope so.”

  I think I ruined the frigging sleeve. “Huh?”

  “You’d better hope you’re Escorting for Bateau. Still Escorting, that is.” He comes over and flicks one of my lapels. “Because this is not what you were wearing a week ago when you disappeared.”

  “I didn’t disappear,” I say, but I don’t know if I did or not. It feels like I’m lying but I can’t tell for sure. That’s wild.

  “Oh? Vacation in Tahiti, perhaps? Or just a bender at the shore? You been nowhere for a solid week, and when somebody’s nowhere for that long right after a job, Bateau assumes the worst.”

  I have to swallow before I can speak. “And what is the worst?”

  Anwar looks at me hard under the kitchenette light. “You’re really asking me that,” he says. “You’re really and frigging truly asking because you don’t frigging know. Jesus wept, Jesus wept a fucking river.”

  “If I didn’t know I worked for Bateau, how could I know what the worst is?” I ask; reasonable question.

  “Look at you!” He grabs my jacket and shakes me. “You’re dressed like a—like a—a friggin’ taxpayer, like some goddam day-wage priv! The clients tip, but they don’t tip wardrobe, and you don’t get enough to buy rags like this, not unless you skip and go into business for your self!” I think he’s gonna hit me; instead, he does something a lot stranger. He wraps both amrs around me, tight.

  Something goes beep. At first I think he’s squeezing me so hard I popped an eardrum or something, but then there’s another beep, and I realize it’s him. Still hanging on to me with one arm, he reaches down and fiddles with something at his waist. “What’s that,” I say into his chest, “Bateau’s first-alert system? Is he coming over to get me now?”

  “No. It’s a pump. Shut up.”

  “A pump? What’s it beeping for?”

  “Overloaded capacity. I had to turn it off. Shut up.“

  I manage to pull away from him so I can breathe. “Look, I didn’t know I disappeared. I didn’t know that I was supposed to appear anywhere. If I’ve been out for a week, someone took me out and kept me out. And what the hell are you wearing a pump for?”

  “The only way you’re gonna convince Bateau is to get your bad old ass to a memory lane and come up with the goods from the job. You’d better have them. Floating a deal yourself and then crapping out on the memory and claiming hijack is an old dodge. Bateau hasn’t bought that one for ages.”

  “What if it’s not a dodge?” I say, thinking about the wads in my pockets. Christ, if that’s how I got them,
I must have been psychotic and no wonder I can’t remember a thing.

  “Then you’re twice fucked. He assumes the worst, remember? You got to get to a memory lane now, pull up everything you can remember and offer it to him on a silver platter. He’ll still pop you out himself and take his own look inside, and that ain’t gonna be the best day you ever had. But at least you’ll have everything right up where he can get at it the easiest way.”

  He’s telling me I’m gonna have Bateau running barefoot through my mind; I can’t believe this. I don’t want to believe this, I don’t even want to think about this. I rewind a few steps. “What’s the pump for?”

  Now he looks as mad as some onionheads I know of. “What’s it for, she says. What does anybody wear a pump for?”

  “I know what a goddam pump is goddam for. What the hell are you pumping out?”

  He makes a noise that might have been a laugh in its former life. “You,” he says. “I’m pumping you out. And every time I come face-to-face with you, the motherfucker goes off the scale and I have to shut it down.”

  I’m still trying to get my mind around that one when he drags me out of there.

  Predawn in the Downs is dead time. The curbside parking spaces are full of illegal doubles and triples, mostly rooster-boys and gofers, it looks like. Later, the meterheads will clear them out, hauling them off in wagons for the grievous offense of exceeding the two-hour limit. They’re not supposed to do that, they’re supposed to clear them out around the clock, but the meterheads get a cut of the fines, which increase with the time, and I guess that improves the quality of their shitty meter-reading lives. The offenders get several hours of sleep and free use of the jailhouse lavabo before they go to court. So maybe every’ body’s just doing everybody else a favor after all.

  And who am I to criticize? An Escort is not exactly in a position to watchdog the public morals. And I’m not exactly in a position to be critical about Escort services, either. I can see how I’d end up like this. I can’t name an addict, any addict, who didn’t end up doing something hinky to feed the beast. Escorting is about as hinky as you can get, and if I didn’t know that before, I sure as hell know it now by the way it’s so solidly gone out of my memory. Like I deliberately threw it out.