by Carl Sargent
He felt Power flowing through her strong hands, into his head and nerves, and a wonderfully cool calm began to radiate through his body. With his eyes closed, Serrin saw his own body in his mind’s eye, a network of cool blue nerves shining over his chest and arms, stretching out over his pelvis and solar plexus, down the length of his legs. He gave a little gasp when the encroaching net met the most ravaged part of his long-damaged leg, and then relaxed after a momentary resistance.
With a long, deep sigh, the mage let himself float gently back down into sleep.
* * *
As the woman showed him around the village, Serrin became uneasy. Much of the place had sunk half-underwater because of the rise in the fen waters created by decades of polar thaw. Some families lived on the top floors of three-story buildings whose lower levels had been lost to the waters, and the whole of which were threatening to sink into the marsh. This barren land offered little in the way of building materials, but a few wooden houses looked relatively recent. He was utterly baffled when they came upon a grove of young willows on one isolated shallow hillock.
“A few trees grow now,” the woman said. “Power is not only for healing people-or elves. Much of this water is almost pure now, but at any time the dead men with their factories may bring more poisons. I must be ever vigilant. The battle is never-ending. But in this place we have a small victory. Look, isn’t she beautiful?”
The druid picked up a small child who had ventured out to peer through the open window of a house they were passing in their boat. The little one had all the mischief mixed with shyness typical of most three-year-olds, and she was lovely, with silky brown hair and big, deep brown eyes. She stretched her small hand away from her mouth and waved at them and then, almost overcome by her own temerity, she ducked out of sight, only to reappear again and stare at the tall, gangling elf.
"She’s a pretty little girl."
"Her parents’ last child was stillborn. Before that, her mother had two miscarriages. Before that, the mother bore a monster, a wailing thing with two heads and skin peeling red raw from its body. It lived for three days. The land and water drip with poisons. Now you must understand why I am here, elf, and why I would die for this place. I have the animals and plants to care for, too, but I do not think you would really understand that.” Only the whiteness of her knuckles gripping the oar gave away the force of her emotions.
“I don’t know what to say." Serrin was ashamed, as if somehow he was part of those who had done harm to these people. Then he realized that every time he bought something advertised by a sanitized, smiling corporate bimbo, he really did become part of it.
Something fractured within him. Why am I affected by this? he pondered. I’ve seen enough streets paved with starving children and beggars with limbs ripped off by street samurai or gang kids who did it for the sheer sadistic pleasure. I’ve been places so polluted it takes round-the-clock work just to keep ‘em from spontaneously exploding into flame. I’ve worked for people who I know damn well dump filth and effluent by the gigaliter. She must have done something to me with that healing. How does her Power flow? What has it done to me?
Still, he recoiled from what he felt and saw. It was simply too painful to embrace. And he knew this place was hardly paradise; the people who lived here would argue and steal just as anywhere else in the world. The thought did not bring consolation.
They were stopped on the way back to her hut by a small punt laden with bales of swamp hay, pushed along by a young man. Serrin’s first thought was that it was rather late in the year for that. Then he wondered, how the hell do I know that?
The man looked up at them as the punts drifted past each other. He had one eye missing and an ugly mass of scar tissue where one of his ears should have been. His face opened in an almost toothless smile as he saw the druid, then he looked away uncertainly from the stranger. Shyly, he looked back again, and nodded in greeting to Serrin.
Serrin didn’t know why, but as he turned away he was aware that his hands were shaking slightly. Then he realized that they hadn’t been shaking all day, something that hadn’t happened for nearly thirteen years.
He hoped the shaman did not see the tears welling in the corners of his eyes.
* * *
"I don’t even know your name,” Serrin said as he hungrily spooned up the stewed grain; it had an edge of spiciness that wasn’t obvious until it hit the throat. It was very welcome to him.
"You don’t need to know my name. Have I asked yours? To some, knowing the name of one with Power is power in itself."
He nodded, feeling foolish. “Of course. I’m sorry.” He shifted tack. "I must find my way home.”
"Of course. But first you will tell me some things. What were you doing among the dead men? Do they pay you with their worthless money?”
He ducked that query. “I sought a man-one of the dead men, you would say. Definitely, very much a dead man. More machine than man, if he ever had a man’s heart. He murdered my father and mother." She nodded in a matter-of-fact way, as if such things happened regularly and routinely. “Over at the Fuchi laboratories, at Longstanton… I was separated from a friend there, a man I haven’t seen in many years. He was helping me out of friendship. I hope he got away. He will be worried about me. I need to get back to let him know I’m still alive, for a start."
"Do you work for those who blaspheme creation?”
The words stunned him. He had no idea what she meant, and said so. His reaction seemed to satisfy her.
"There is a place to the north of where you were found. I do not go close, but I sense the energies there. There is pain inside it, and they keep animals there, and so they will torture them as they always do. But there is an evil there that is different even than that, and a confusion also. I fear that place. I feel the confusion serves to make it easier for the evil and pain to triumph.” She was struggling for words, not certain how to express herself. “I have not been close, as I say. There are many dead men there. I did not think you came from that place.” The shaman allowed herself a small smile of pleasure that her intuition had been correct. "You are not evil any more than you are a dead one.
"But how alive are you, elf?”
Again, he did not want to face her probe. Instead, he was untying the belt of his most precious possessions. Unlocking the sequence of plaques, he handed her one of the stones. It was beautifully crafted, from Tir Tairngire, and it made his heart heavy to part with it. "It brings help in healing. It does not heal in and of itself, but when healing power is used, it makes such work more effective, more assured of success. You heal much in this place. You will use it so much better than I."
She pushed the stone away. "Elf, you are not healed. Your body is well again, but you have a long way to go before you are healed."
The stone would be a real loss to him, but he ached for her to accept it. "Please. For the child we saw. For the man on the punt. For everything this fragging rotten world dumps on you. It was made by one of my people, and it is a true part of me. I don’t have much of me in the world and, uh, sometimes I try to hang on to little things, scraps and papers and possessions, until I get mixed up and leave myself behind with them. But this is Power and I want you to have it. Perhaps it will mean I am remembered here.” Serrin felt embarrassed by the strength of his need. “I don’t usually think about such things."
She took the stone then, quietly turning it over and over in her hands, beginning to fill with the wonder of it. She gestured him to silence as he began to apologize that she would have to bond it, that it would take time, and so he sat quietly looking out into the gathering evening mists. He knew too much and had seen too much of the world ever to be at peace with something as simple as this beautiful, blighted place, and he didn’t know how to deal with that.
As if searching for respite, his thoughts turned again to Cambridge and what the hell he would do when he got back there.
13
Rani had attended too many weeping family s
cenes in the last three days to have much enthusiasm for any more of them, but at Sachin’s wake one of his cousins made himself useful. She had overheard him in the kitchen, berating Imran for having taken the young man on such a dangerous run. Imran had whined that he hadn’t known it would be dangerous. The mission had seemed so simple and straightforward. His angry interrogator had then asked why Imran was not out on the streets seeking vengeance. Rani could not make out her brother’s reply because just then a whole gaggle of cousins had come teeming into the hallway, jostling Rani away from her listening post just beyond the kitchen door.
Imran had evaded her attempts to question him, spending most of his time away from the house, rising early and not returning until late at night. What she had just overheard suggested that he wasn’t making any moves on the street.
He hadn’t even missed his Predator, though perhaps that was not so surprising. It was Rani who had picked it up as they fled to the car. Imran might have assumed he’d lost it. Afterward, they were all in such a state of shock that she’d forgotten about it, too, until its weight jammed into her ribs when she finally collapsed on the bed. What was surprising was that Imran had never asked about it. Perhaps it was because he felt ashamed and powerless. Whatever he was doing with his days, he was lying low, avoiding his usual chums and fellow gang-boys.
When he still wasn’t back by seven o’clock Wednesday evening, Rani changed into her jacket and thick cotton trousers and geared up for a trip to Bethnal Green Road. She took the knife, as usual, and she raided a small can of ammonia complex from the kitchen cupboards. A faceful of that stuff would stop even a troll, unless he had the kind of cyberware that would make him an instant killer anyway.
Shutting the door behind her and then checking the three locks, Rani paused as the November night mist closed around her. This mist would turn to heavy fog before many more hours had gone by. She pocketed her keys, hoping this wouldn’t take long. Knowing Mohinder, he’d probably turn up three hours late on purpose and she’d have to walk home in ten-foot visibility carrying more than a thousand nuyen on her. Maybe no one in the restaurant would notice a package changing hands. Whatever happened, she’d have the gun, knife, and the gas on the way back, none of which would make her an easy mark for anyone.
Rani set off down the street, smiling despite her fears.
* * *
The Toadslab, the East End’s most singular restaurant, was doing a roaring trade by the time Rani arrived and pushed her way inside. A large group of orks and dwarfs sat along the far wall, the trestle tables groaning under the weight of food and tankards of foaming beer. Rani was glad to see as many females as males among them. It made her feel less conspicuous as a female Indian ork out on her own.
The large group wasn’t any local gang she knew of, but a glance around the room showed her the emblems and tattoos of various other gangs of whom she’d heard Imran speak. She saw nose-rings, stapled jeans, rat-tail bracelets, rusted skull badges, the full litany of signs and symbols. Each little group sat in its own area, respecting the territory of the others but making their own presence known. A handful of solitaires strong enough to command respect passed through the crowd. The outsiders didn’t seem to arouse either contempt or dismay among the locals, and she wondered how they had earned such acceptance. Probably because there are forty or fifty of them, she thought; that might do it.
It was a double birthday celebration, she realized. An ork and a dwarf stood up to cheers from their family and friends, and behind the service counter three of the ork waiters were grinning, their huge flat scoops laden with steaming food. As soon as the standing ork at the table seemed ready to speak, food began to fly through the air toward him.
A great cheer and an outbreak of foot-stomping broke out as the waiters pulled out all the stops for this one. With superb coordination, they flung the first volley of foot-square slabs of toad-in-the-hole fully thirty feet to the gathered throng, who grabbed the batter-fried sausage slices and slammed them down on their plates. One of the dwarfs managed the rare feat of impaling a descending slab on his fork, while the standing ork mistimed his grab and got hit full in the face by a greasy serving. The cheers grew louder.
Food continued to fly through the air as a young ork girl came rushing out of the kitchen with another massive flat pan of the sausages in batter. She dropped it onto the serving counter, shaking her cloth-swathed hands to show how hot it was. As one, the waiters spun around, made deft cuts with the honed edges of their scoops, then turned around again and unleashed another volley of foot-square slices.
Rani remembered having once seen synchronized swimming on the trid, but it had absolutely nothing on this. The waiters were poetry in motion, moving as one, their aim perfect, body movements in total harmony with the rhythm of the bhangratech pumping out over the ancient speaker units. It took them less than two minutes to deliver forty portions to their hungry and expectant customers. They completed their act by delivering a steaming pan of glutinous, rich gravy by the simpler method of carrying it across the room. The party managed to spray most of it over the table and themselves as they slam-dunked their slabs of meat into the viscous gunge.
Rani was tapping her feet to the insistent beat of the music by the time her own slab and beer arrived. Perhaps it was her obvious pleasure that made Mohinder frown as he sauntered over, dressed in the heavy synthleather go-gang jacket he favored for evening. It was voluminous enough to conceal a grenade launcher; sometimes it did. She saw his disapproval and stopped enjoying herself so visibly. A good little Indian girl shouldn’t be seen having fun alone in public.
“Imran not showing his face, huh?" Mohinder sat down and helped himself to a chunk of spicy sausage from her slab, swallowing it whole and licking his fingers. She wondered if people with retractable hand razors ever made mistakes when they did that, rather hoping they did.
“He wanted to come, but he’s been out all day and night.”
“I don’t usually do business with women, Rani. Well, not unless they’re selling something besides guns." He leered unpleasantly. From most people, the remark would have had sexual connotations, but from Mohinder it probably referred to street prices for transplantable organs. In most cases, at least.
"But they say you do business when the goods are worth it.” She pandered to his ego, unfailingly the largest part of any chauvinist.
“No complaints, Rani. Nice heat. I might even keep it for personal use.” His expression changed to a crafty smirk. “Show me some affection, lady.” He leaned very close across the small table, and she shuddered in repulsion for a moment until she realized what his gesture meant.
The package was pumped down his arm by the force of contracting muscle, then deposited inside her jacket as he caressed her right breast. He disgusted her, but she had some of what she’d come for. At least the slint hadn’t tried to kiss her; that would have been too much.
He ripped off a great strip of batter and crammed it into his mouth. He was clearly about to leave, looking around at the door, lifting his huge hands off the table and straightening his jacket.
“Mohinder, I’m still trying to find out what happened that night. Who set us up."
“But now that Imran’s spending all his days and nights on the streets he’ll be able to find out, huh? He tell you who hired him?" Mohinder’s brows frowned at her.
"Of course, but he won’t tell me where, nor any of the details.” She had to lie. If Mohinder knew that her own brother hadn’t told her a thing, he’d never trust her with any information he might have.
“I don’t think you’re leveling with me, gopi. You’ve still got the smell of the kitchen about you." He stood up, stretched his arms out behind his back, then folded them across his chest. "But you’re lucky. This afternoon I cut a fine deal. I’m a happy man tonight, Rani, so perhaps I will tell you a little something.”
She stretched across the table eagerly.
“But first you promise to put a word in with your man Mohsin,
huh? Not that he wouldn’t do a good job for me anyway. He knows not to cross me. But family gets best treatment, and I’m not family, so you put in a word, right?”
Rani gave him her most winning smile. “I’ll threaten to dose him with one of old Chenka’s powders if he doesn’t give you the best!” Chenka could make up anything, including poisons and toxins that would send a troll’s guts into spasms for a month.
He laughed contentedly. "Deal.” He placed his huge paws on the table, staring straight into her face. Rani did not flinch from the inhuman stare of his cybereyes. “Well, Imran got a job I should have had. If your family had been working with me, little one, they’d be still alive and safe. Your brother is a greedy fool. Pershinkin hired him. The little rat would be an intermediary for some heavy rollers, yeah? Can’t tell you where to find him, though. He’s vanished. Wouldn’t mind a word with him myself. Not that you’ll see him-but if you do, tell him to look me up sometime.”
Finally he turned to leave. "Don’t you forget to have that word with Mohsin, girl. Now I got to sort out Typhoid Mary. Later.”
Without another word, Mohinder stood up with a howling scrape of chair legs, then shouldered his way through the crowd toward a gaunt young woman. She was dressed in black and wore her hair in a mass of tangles. A datajack showed on one temple, but she sat nervously avoiding everyone’s eyes and playing with a near-empty glass. Mohinder made only the slightest beckoning motion with one finger and she stood and followed him out of the noisy restaurant.
Rani pulled on her jacket and headed out into the thickening fog as the birthday party guests began emptying their pockets to pay the bill. She’d gotten what she’d come for.
* * *
Pershinkin.
A real freak. Part-Ukrainian, part-Indian, part-Italian. Spoke eleven languages, lied fluently in all of them. He drifted in and out of Spitalfields, Whitechapel, Bethnal, even the Squeeze. Chipped to the cybereyeballs and as fast and elusive as a greased piglet on crack.