Street level. Cracked pavements dark with drying rain, humidity high, the heat already uncomfortable. An endless stream of traffic that ran like a ribbon throughout the city, always moving with a stop-start, never seeming to arrive. There was elbow-room here, and he could stride out to the pedestrian crossing. The lights changed as he approached, and the cars parted as if for Moses. The crowd of bowed-head, hunch-shouldered people shuffled drably across the tarmac to the other side and, in the middle, a shock of white-blond hair.
Wong’s was on the corner. Wong himself was kicking some plastic furniture out onto the pavement to add an air of unwarranted sophistication to his shop. The windows were streaming condensation inside, and stale, steamy air blew out the door.
“Hey, Petrovitch. She your girlfriend? You keep her waiting like that, she leave you.”
“She’s a courier, you perdoon stary. Where is she?”
Wong looked at the opaque glass front, and pointed through it. “There,” the shopkeeper said, “right there. Eyes of love never blind.”
“I’ll have a coffee, thanks.” Petrovitch pushed a chair out of his path.
“I should charge you double. You use my shop as office!”
Petrovitch put his hands on Wong’s shoulders and leaned down. “If I didn’t come here, your life would be less interesting. And you wouldn’t want that.”
Wong wagged his finger but stood aside, and Petrovitch went in.
The woman was easy to spot. Woman: girl almost, all adolescent gawkiness and nerves, playing with her ponytail, twisting and untwisting it in red spirals around her index finger.
She saw him moving toward her, and stopped fiddling, sat up, tried to look professional. All she managed was younger.
“Petrovitch?”
“Yeah,” he said, dropping into the seat opposite her. “Do you have ID?”
“Do you?”
They opened their bags simultaneously. She brought out a thumb scanner, he produced a cash card. They went through the ritual of confirming their identities, checking the price of the item, debiting the money from the card. Then she laid a padded package on the table, and waited for the security tag to unlock.
Somewhere during this, a cup of coffee appeared at Petrovitch’s side. He took a sharp, scalding sip.
“So what is it?” the courier asked, nodding at the package.
“It’s kind of your job to deliver it, my job to pay for it.” He dragged the packet toward him. “I don’t have to tell you what’s in it.”
“You’re an arrogant little fuck, aren’t you?” Her cheeks flushed.
Petrovitch took another sip of coffee, then centered his cup on his saucer. “It has been mentioned once or twice before.” He looked up again, and pushed his glasses up to see her better. “I have trust issues, so I don’t tend to do the people-stuff very well.”
“It wouldn’t hurt you to try.” The security tag popped open, and she pushed her chair back with a scrape.
“Yeah, but it’s not like I’m going to ever see you again, is it?” said Petrovitch.
“If you’d played your cards right, you might well have done. Sure, you’re good-looking, but right now I wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.” She picked up her courier bag with studied determination and strode to the door.
Petrovitch watched her go: she bent over, lean and lithe in her one-piece skating gear, to extrude the wheels from her shoes. The other people in the shop fell silent as the door slammed shut, just to increase his discomfort.
Wong leaned over the counter. “You bad man, Petrovitch. One day you need friend, and where you be? Up shit creek with no paddle.”
“I’ve always got you, Wong.” He put his hand to his face and scrubbed at his chin. He could try and catch up to her, apologize for being… what? Himself? He was half out of his seat, then let himself fall back with a bang. He stopped being the center of attention, and he drank more coffee.
The package in its mesh pocket called to him. He reached over and tore it open. As the disabled security tag clattered to the tabletop, Wong took the courier’s place opposite him.
“I don’t need relationship advice, yeah?”
Wong rubbed at a sticky patch with a damp cloth. “This not about girl, that girl, any girl. You not like people, fine. But you smart, Petrovitch. You smartest guy I know. Maybe you smart enough to fake liking, yes? Else.”
“Else what?” Petrovitch’s gaze slipped from Wong to the device in his hand, a slim, brushed steel case, heavy with promise.
“Else one day, pow.” Wong mimed a gun against his temple, and his finger jerked with imaginary recoil. “Fortune cookie says you do great things. If you live.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Destined for greatness.” Petrovitch snorted and caressed the surface of the case, leaving misty fingerprints behind. “How long have you lived here, Wong?”
“Metrozone born and bred,” said Wong. “I remember when Clapham Common was green, like park.”
“Then why the chyort can’t you speak better English?”
Wong leaned forward over the table, and beckoned Petrovitch to do the same. Their noses were almost touching.
“Because, old chap,” whispered Wong faultlessly, “we hide behind our masks, all of us, every day. All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. I play my part of eccentric Chinese shopkeeper; everyone knows what to expect from me, and they don’t ask for any more. What about you, Petrovitch? What part are you playing?” He leaned back, and Petrovitch shut his goldfish-gaping mouth.
A man and a woman came in and, on seeing every table full, started to back out again.
Wong sprung to his feet. “Hey, wait. Table here.” He kicked Petrovitch’s chair-leg hard enough to cause them both to wince. “Coffee? Coffee hot and strong today.” He bustled behind the counter, leaving Petrovitch to wearily slide his device back into its delivery pouch and then into his shoulder bag.
His watch told him it was time to go. He stood, finished the last of his drink in three hot gulps, and made for the door.
“Hey,” called Wong. “You no pay.”
Petrovitch pulled out his cash card and held it up.
“You pay next time, Petrovitch.” He shrugged and almost smiled. The lines around his eyes crinkled.
“Yeah, whatever.” He put the card back in his bag. It had only a few euros on it now, anyway. “Thanks, Wong.”
Back out onto the street and the roar of noise. The leaden sky squeezed out a drizzle and speckled the lenses in Petrovitch’s glasses so that he started to see the world like a fly would.
He’d take the tube. It’d be hot, dirty, smelly, crowded: at least it would be dry. He turned his collar up and started down the road toward Clapham South.
The shock of the new had barely reached the Underground. The tiled walls were twentieth-century curdled cream and bottle green, the tunnels they lined unchanged since they’d been hollowed out two centuries earlier, the fans that ineffectually stirred the air on the platforms were ancient with age.
There was the security screen, though: the long arched passage of shiny white plastic, manned by armed paycops and monitored by gray-covered watchers.
Petrovitch’s travelcard talked to the turnstile as he waited in line to pass. It flashed a green light, clicked and he pushed through. Then came the screen which saw every-thing, saw through everything, measured it and resolved it into three dimensions, running the images it gained against a database of offensive weapons and banned technology.
After the enforced single file, it was abruptly back to being shoulder to shoulder. Down the escalator, groaning and creaking, getting hotter and more airless as it descended. Closer to the center of the Earth.
He popped like a cork onto the northbound platform, and glanced up to the display barely visible over the heads of the other passengers. A full quarter of the elements were faulty, making the scrolling writing appear either coded or mystical. But he’d had practice. There was a train in three minutes.
It became impossible even to move. He waited more or less patiently, and kept a tight hold of his bag.
To his left, a tall man, air bottle strapped to his Savile Row suit and soft mask misting with each breath. To his right, a Japanese woman, patriotically displaying Hello Kitty and the Rising Sun, hollow-eyed with loss.
The train, rattling and howling, preceded by a blast of foulness almost tangible, hurtled out from the tunnel mouth. If there hadn’t been barriers along the edge of the platform, the track would have been choked with mangled corpses. As it was, there was a collective strain, an audible tightening of muscle and sinew.
The carriages squealed to a stop, accompanied by the inevitable multi-language announcements: the train was heading for the central zones and out again to the distant, unassailable riches of High Barnet, and please—-mind the gap.
The doors hissed open, and no one got out. Those on the platform eyed the empty seats and the hang-straps greedily. Then the electromagnetic locks on the gates loosened their grip. They banged back under the pressure of so many bodies, and people ran on, claiming their prizes as they could.
And when the carriages were full, the last few squeezed on, pulled aboard by sympathetic arms until they were crammed in like pressed meat.
The chimes sounded, the speakers rustled with static before running through a litany of “doors closing” phrases: English, French, Russian, Urdu, Japanese, Kikuyu, Mandarin, Spanish. The engine spun, the wheels turned, the train jerked and swayed.
Inside, Petrovitch, face pressed uncomfortably against a glass partition, ribs tight against someone’s back, took shallow sips of breath and wondered again why he’d chosen the Metrozone above other, less crowded and more distant cities. He wondered why it still had to be like this, seven thirty-five in the morning, two decades after Armageddon.
BY PHILIP PALMER
Debatable Space
Red Claw
Version 43
Hell Ship
Artemis
1 A beaconspace edition will also be available, but the editor’s original hyperlinks are no longer valid.
1 Very heavily edited in fact. My goodness! By the time I excised the worst of the scatology and the extremest of the rants, this shrank from nearly half a million words to just slightly more than one hundred thousand words. – Ed.
2 Artemis was indeed awarded a PhD in History and Politics from the University of Rebus at the age of fourteen. – Ed.
3 Professor John McIvor is a great hero of mine; please disregard the slighting references to him in this text. – Ed.
4 I have been asked by the author to issue the following warning: “If you are reading an illegal download of Edited Highlights from the Thought Diary and Beaconband Blog of Dr Artemis McIvor please stop. OR ELSE.”Considering the contents of the story which follows I would, if I were you, heed this advice. – Ed.
1 I met the author several times during the editing of this book, and I can confirm the accuracy of this self assessment. She is, indeed, exceedingly cool. And courteous too. I recall how she complimented me on the niceness of my cardigan, which was at that time almost brand new. I also admired her lustrous blond hair; but I did not, however, thankfully, witness the “scary stare.” – Ed.
2 I can, I fear, also confirm this! – Ed.
3 Professor John McIvor, with whom I have a beaconspace friendship of long duration. – Ed.
4 All true. Rebus is aeons ahead of other planets when it comes to the accessing of data. – Ed.
5 The latter hypothesis is correct. – Ed.
6 From this it may be deduced that the no drinking rule was not strictly enforced. – Ed.
7 In a long digression, which I have deleted, Artemis explains the origin of the Clan hierarchies, which date back to nineteenth century Naples. (Naples is a city on Earth.) In brief: Capobastone is the boss of bosses, the equivalent of capo di tutti capi in the non-Neapolitan “Mafia” clan. The cardinale is the religious adviser to the capobastone, and will generally possess psychic powers, or will at least claim so to possess. The next in command are the five quintini, who report directly to the capobastone. At the next level are the vangeliste, who are senior gangsters of extraordinary ruthlessness, who have to swear by their personal god (as allocated by the cardinale) to dedicate their life to crime. Below this is the rank of santista. These are often elderly Clannites, who have a largely supervisory role. It’s possible to go from cammorista to vangelista in one step, if you earn enough money or kill enough people. Then cammorista. The cammoriste will run all the street rackets and in the old days would deal directly with fabricator staff who were stealing from the Corporation. And finally, piccioto, or more formally piccioto d’onore, the lowest rank. A piccioto is sometimes called a “button man,” whether male or female. Their main job is to beat, bully, murder, intimidate, or make coffee. (Coffee is taken seriously in the Clan; it is rumoured Clannites have 400 different words for “coffee,” the only one of which I know is “latte.”) – Ed.
8 Elsewhere, in one of the other sections I have deleted, Artemis explains that kissing the finger stump is a sign of respect from a junior to a senior Clannite. – Ed.
9 As decreed by the SNG Parliament, in its Human Rights Acts Section 445, paras a) to v). – Ed.
10 I’ve just told you about this. – Ed.
11 Tomas Macinley, formerly a fighter pilot in the Corporation Navy, occupied a cell on Artemis’s tier, and this was without a doubt he. Tomas was released after the riot, in which he played no role, and is now a school teacher on Gullyfoyle. – Ed.
12 Names and addresses of prison officers at such facilities remain confidential. – Ed.
13 True. – Ed.
14 Despite extensive research, I have not been able to identify this magazine. There are, however, many like it in the marketplace. – Ed.
15 Prison hospital records confirm that Marshall Jo Shane, an extremely tall felon who was a diagnosed psychopath, was admitted with these injuries on the day to which Artemis refers. – Ed.
16 Prison hospital records confirm this. The five other prisoners were: Lucius Mantian (black skinned, depilated scalp), Jana and Jora Priash (ninja-trained Noirs who were sisters), Andrew Jones (a large man of little aesthetic appeal, with a skin condition), and Jonjo Jesus, a three-eyed Golgothan. – Ed.
17 No, it’s not. – Ed.
18 Prison financial records confirm this. – Ed.
19 There’s no documentary evidence for this, but it is doubtless true. – Ed.
20 I have not detected a single significant factual error in Dr McIvor’s account, much as I have striven to do so. Her opinions, however, are often extremely tendentious. – Ed.
21 This is a digression within a digression – de trop! – so I’ve edited it out. – Ed.
22 I’ve edited this out too. It’s quite an enjoyable but rather bloodthirsty and graphic account of Artemis’s arrival on Gullyfoyle, as a naive sixteen-year-old girl (not counting the two years in hiber). The gist of her tale, which I’ve excised, is that she’d gone into a bar, bright eyed and bushy tailed, and had become extremely drunk. Then she fell in with some bad company and got even drunker. And then a very bad man had taken her back to his room where he attempted – with the assistance of several large companions – to rape her. This was a mistake because Artemis, possessed as she was of exceptional augments and remarkable martial prowess, killed them all with her bare hands. The would-be rapists were however Clan-connected, so Artemis was subsequently arrested and convicted of murder and spent a year (the maximum term for murder in those days) in a Gullyfoyle jail, where she learned about prison hierarchies and how to play the system, which is the point of this anecdote. To clarify the chronology for the benefit of
inattentive readers: on her release from prison at the age of seventeen, she became a barmaid, and that part of her story will be recounted later. Since none of this is directly relevant to the main narrative I have junked it all and picked up the story at the point where Artemis survives an attack by some thugs in prison, namely on the line: “I killed three piccioti in the ensuing brawl.” If you don’t read footnotes but had merely continued reading the text, you might have found that segue somewhat confusing; but that does rather serve you right! – Ed.
23 Not so. Artemis feels remorse for some (though not all) of her many killings, which psychopaths would never do. – Ed.
24 It’s a band, famous briefly on Shalco’s home planet of Gorbachev, of very little musical merit, but Shalco had a sentimental attachment to them because she had copulated with both the guitarists whilst she was a young and impressionable “rock chick.” Prisoners at Giger Penitentiary were not of course allowed to wear their own clothes, so Shalco’s adoption of the T-shirt was an infraction of the prison rules. Mano a mano fights to the death were also banned, under Prison Regulation 4 a (iii). – Ed.
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