Street Freaks

by Terry Brooks

  “Ash stays here,” Jenny Cruz declares. “With us. At least until the Shoe gets back and can tell us what he thinks. That okay with you, Ash?”

  It is not okay, but at this point nothing is. Every hope he had of sorting this out depended on his father meeting him. Even in the darker moments when it occurred to him that his father might not be coming, he kept telling himself he would. But now there is no doubt remaining, and he must accept that his father is gone. He must begin looking for another solution.

  “It’s okay,” he says.

  They begin to file out of the office, but Jenny calls him back. “Wait a minute, Ash. Don’t leave just yet. Close the door.”

  He does, and she motions for him to sit across the desk from her. “What?” he asks. “Did you find something out?”

  She shakes her head. “Not yet. But I’m not finished looking. I need to try a different approach. After listening to you, I think I’m going to shift my search to BioGen. I want to take a peek at their corporate records.”

  He starts to ask how she can do this, but she holds up a hand in warning. “Don’t. What we do here requires that we know more about those we do business with than they know about us. It’s my job to find a way to make that happen, but

  I can’t tell you how I do it. So let it be. Understand?”

  He nods. Those we do business with? Street Freaks does business with BioGen? But he leaves these questions unasked for now. “Whatever you can find . . .”

  “I know,” she interrupts. “I’ll pass it on to you. Just so you know, I don’t think it was suicide either. From everything you’ve told us, it doesn’t sound to me like that’s what happened. But what do these people want with you?”

  Her narrow face is stern but encouraging too. It is her eyes that trouble him. They seem veiled, fixed on him with the kind of look that suggests she already knows the answer to that question but wants to find out if he does.

  “I don’t know,” he says finally. “Everything my father told me, I’ve told you. I don’t know anything else.”

  “Then we have to find out another way.” She leans back in her chair and studies him. “The Shoe is gone until tomorrow; the others don’t know this because I haven’t told them. It helps to keep T.J. and Holly in line if they think he might return at any moment.”

  Not for the first time, Ash is struck by the fact that she sounds so much older than she looks. He pauses before answering, thinking about what she has just said. “Okay, so why are you telling this to me?”

  “Because I think maybe you belong here with us. Don’t ask me to explain. Not just yet, anyway. Just accept it for now. But whether I’m right or not, you have to find a way to fit in. So I want you to take these next few days to get to know the others better. Spend time with them, work with them, and then see how you feel about being here. Or do you have somewhere else you can go?”

  Ash considers telling her about Uncle Cyrus but decides not to. He knows his uncle only slightly. His father hardly ever even talked about his brother. Even if Cyrus agreed to take him in, he couldn’t be certain where he would end up. An old phrase occurs to him: Better the devil you know than the one you don’t.

  “I’d rather stay,” he says.

  She nods. “So let’s talk a little about what you can do while you’re here.”

  But then the door flies open and T.J. rushes in. “Trouble, Jen.”

  She stands at once. “What sort?”

  “We have visitors coming up on the gate. They’re all over the Straightaway, working up and down both sides. Looking for something.” He glances at Ash. “Or someone.”

  “Who is it?” Jenny asks.

  T.J. flashes his trademark smirk. “Achilles Pod.”

  - 7 -

  Go into lockdown,” Jenny orders. “Make sure all the places we don’t want them going into are sealed. I want everyone to look like they’re doing what they normally do. Everything out in the open and visible, just like always. Except for Ash. Put him in the loft. Give him a com unit so he can listen in.”

  She begins shoving the files off her desktop and into drawers. As Ash follows T.J. out of the room, he sees the computer she has been working on recede into the top of her desk and then the entire desk disappear into the floor. A final glance back shows the office is bare save for Jenny and her chair, log books shelved against the walls and a few flat work surfaces.

  T.J. shouts to the others, relaying Jenny’s instructions, then quickly ushers Ash to a stairway at the back of the building and up the steps to the second floor. There is an open space with assorted equipment and furniture at the top of the stairs, but he takes Ash down a short hall that dead-ends at an empty wall. He touches the heads of several nails that secure the wallboard, and the entire wall swings open to reveal a small room beyond.

  “Clever, huh?” T.J. says. “Look over here.”

  He leads Ash inside and over to one of several windows with darkened glass that overlooks the front gates and the Straightaway.

  “From the outside, you can’t tell these are windows. You probably noticed coming in. But from here you can see everything that’s happening out there. So pay attention, okay? You might learn something. Take this.”

  He hands Ash a small device with a speaker grid and a pulse knob. “You can listen in with this. The knob controls the sound level. Don’t put it up too high; this room isn’t soundproof. And don’t move around either.”

  He starts to leave, but just before closing the door, he turns and grins. “Don’t look so worried, fish. You’ll be fine. We’ll take care of you.”

  The door closes.

  Achilles Pod. Ash escaped them once, but what are the odds he can do it again? He peers out the window cautiously, unable to stop worrying he might be seen. The black-clads are all over the Straightaway, silver wolves’ heads glittering in the sunlight as they conduct their search. There are dozens of them, far more than there were at substem #23. Closer in, the gates to Street Freaks stand open, as if inviting entry. But entry is impossible because horizontal lasers shimmer in narrow bands across the opening.

  Ash spies Jenny Cruz as she walks out of the building. There is an Achilles Pod unit standing on the other side of the lasers waiting for her. Ash remembers the listening device and turns it on, keeping the sound low.

  One of the black-clads is speaking.

  “I’m ordering you to remove the force field. We need to search every building on this street.” His voice takes on a decided edge. “Right now!”

  “I can’t do that.” Jenny’s voice is calm but firm. “These premises are exempt from any form of entry by police or military units. You’ll have to move along.”

  “What a load of crap!” The speaker is enraged. “We’re Achilles Pod, lady. We have authority to search anywhere we choose, no exceptions.”

  “I have it in writing that your authority doesn’t extend to these premises,” Jenny interrupts. “You may read it for yourself.”

  She does something with a control box she holds in her hand and passes a document through a narrow opening in the force field. The black-clads crowd forward to look over the speaker’s shoulder. To Ash, peering down from his hiding place in the loft, Jenny Cruz seems awfully small standing in front of them, force field or no. She is a slender tiger facing much bigger black panthers. Where are the others?

  The leader of the Achilles Pod unit shakes his head. “This doesn’t countermand our orders. It doesn’t even apply. We have the right to enter any and all businesses and dwellings . . .”

  “You don’t,” she interrupts. “Not here. It says quite clearly in paragraph six—and I quote, in case you missed it—‘any and all situations.’ That’s what this is, isn’t it? An ‘any and all situation’? Look again. See it, right there near the top of the second page? In bold letters, for the sight challenged.”

  She is not quite mocking him, but she is definitely in his face. He reads and tries once more. “I don’t know who you think you are, you ’tweener garbage,
but no one shuts out an Achilles Pod unit when it . . .”

  “It doesn’t matter who I am,” she says sharply, stopping him once again midsentence. “What matters is the signature at the bottom of the page. Did you bother to take a close look at it?”

  He pauses, looks down, reads carefully, and mutters something. The others in his squad glance at each other. A few step back at once.

  “How did you get this?” the speaker demands. “You must have stolen it! No one has this sort of exemption! We’re coming in! How about I just use this on you?” He holds up his weapon for her to see. “How about I just blow you to pieces and then we come in? Think that might do the job?”

  Jenny Cruz shrugs. “That’s your choice. I can’t stop you. In fact, you don’t need to bother with weapons.”

  She holds up the control, and the air between them shimmers and the laser bars disappear. The way in is open. Ash can hardly believe Jenny has done this. She is allowing them inside!

  They start to crowd forward when she holds up her hand.

  “Not so fast. I am denying you the right to enter. If you ignore me, you do so in defiance of the written order of exemption you hold in your hand. I have noted your badge and unit number on my vidview, Unit Commander Cray. In sixty seconds a message will be dispatched automatically to the gentleman who approved and signed this order, to tell him you have willfully disobeyed it. Whether or not I am dead. I suggest you have your excuses for whatever you choose to do fully prepared.”

  Long moments follow in which no one moves. They will enter now, Ash thinks. They have to. They will lose face if they don’t. Besides, who could these men be so afraid of that they would back off?

  But back off they do. The unit leader draws himself up, gives Jenny a smirk. “There’s no reason for us to force our way in. There are other ways. I can promise you, though, you little freak, I will be back, and I’ll tear up your little piece of paper and feed it to you.”

  Jenny steps forward again. “You do whatever you feel you have to. It won’t change anything. Good day.”

  She turns and begins walking back toward the building. She leaves the laser bars down, an indication of her confidence. The black-clads hesitate, and Ash clearly hears a few of them use “freak” and “’tweener” among other, less pleasant words before the entire bunch begins moving down the street to the next set of buildings, muttering among themselves.

  Jenny Cruz lets them go. She never looks around. She never flinches at the words they speak; there is no change in her expression. Her courage in the face of such threats is astonishing. Ash doesn’t know if he has ever seen its like.

  T.J. reappears. “Did you see that?” he asks, grinning from ear to ear. “Was she not wonderful? She’s never afraid, that girl. Not our Jenny. She’ll stand up to anyone. She never backs down.”

  Ash is impressed; there’s no denying it. He finds himself smiling along with T.J. They leave the safe room and descend into the bays where the others are grouped around Jenny, congratulating her on the way she handled herself.

  “Are you all right?” she asks Ash at once.

  “I should be asking you,” he responds with a grin.

  She pulls a face. “We’ve had this happen before. The Shoe saw it coming years ago when he first started Street Freaks. So he got the exemption. I don’t know how he managed it, but he did.” She looks past him to the others. “Let’s get back to work. T.J., find something for Ash to do. Teach him a skill.”

  She moves off. Ash follows T.J. over to a panel with a digital readout and a bank of response nodes and watches him maneuver his way through a set of stations and commands until he reaches one marked FRONT GATES. It takes him seconds to do this, his movements so fast that Ash can barely follow them. Although follow them he does.

  “You stick around long enough, one day I’ll teach you to operate it,” T.J. says in what seems to be an attempt at suggesting Ash might have a future at Street Freaks.

  But Ash is not sure he wants a future with these people. He’s not sure this is where he should be. He is still conflicted about what to do now that his father is dead. Just thinking about it causes him to cringe.

  “Let’s go,” T.J. says.

  He leads Ash into Bay 2, where a snow-white racer with fins and massive air scoops sits up on the lift. The racer is the opposite of Starfire. It has protrusions and add-ons everywhere, a muscular, dangerous-looking vehicle with little regard for sleekness.

  Ash walks around it, taking a closer look, as T.J. lowers it onto the composite. “What are the air scoops for? Does the engine need cooling?”

  T.J. smirks. “Naw. This one’s for some rich guy who thinks he knows what a racer should look like but hopes never to have to prove it. He just wants something to show off. Fancies himself a stud, thinks the car will prove it.” He shrugs. “A weekend warrior. Took him out for a drive in the Flick a while back. Begged me to let him find out what racing was like. He crapped himself. Literally. Worse wuss than you, fish.”

  Ash says nothing, just stares at him. T.J. shrugs. “She’s ready for pickup after a final polish. That’s your job for today. But it isn’t as easy as you might think. A proper polish requires some skill. I’m here to teach you how it’s done.”

  He does so, introducing Ash to a series of small handheld polishing and buffing machines with attachments, each suited for use on certain parts of a car—body, tires, chrome, leather, carpet. After a few experimental tries and a few corrective comments from T.J., Ash is left to complete his task.

  The best he can say, when he is finally done, is that it has helped pass the time. But T.J. seems happy with his efforts, and that provides a much-needed sense of satisfaction. By then it is nightfall, and the others are closing up shop for the day. No one has come by for Starfire, even though Jenny said the racer needed to be ready.

  But Ash has other more pressing concerns. Jenny Cruz has decided he needs a makeover.

  “You can’t leave the building looking the way you do,” she says. “Reader boards all over the city are still showing your face. You can still be found on vidviews too. ‘Has anybody seen this person? Where, exactly?’ You look entirely too much like yourself to go anywhere. We have to give you a different look.”

  She and Holly take Ash into one of the bathrooms and make some changes to his appearance. They dye his hair brown and give him tinted contact lenses. The lenses aren’t magnified and his vision remains unaffected, but the feeling of something in his eyes is uncomfortable. Holly laughs when he complains, telling him he can’t begin to know about real discomfort.

  They take away his clothes too, replacing them with a gray work uniform bearing the Street Freaks logo. The clothes are loose fitting and well worn from previous use. More will be provided later when they can scrounge them up. They take away his expensive shoes and give him a pair of work boots, the leather scuffed and cracked. They pierce his ears and fill the holes with rings and studs—seven of them in all. They shave portions of his newly dyed hair along the sides with parallel lines above each ear. Racing stripes, they tell him.

  When they are done, they let Ash have a look in the mirror. What stares back at him is a metalhead wannabe caricature that makes him cringe but is at least different enough to suggest he won’t be recognized.

  He sits down afterward on a bench in the bays, watching T.J. and Woodrow install a voice-sentient navigator in a new vehicle that has mysteriously appeared during the time of his makeover, and tries to get used to his new look. Holly is working on placing the steel exoskeleton of a Viper 80 over in Bay 1. She does this by simply lifting it up and adjusting it in midair before setting it down on the lift. He stares in disbelief, not quite believing what he has just witnessed. He has never known anyone with such strength.

  A few minutes later, she comes over to sit down beside him.

  “Cool look, fish,” she says, giving him an approving nod.

  He shrugs. “If you say so.”

  “How you holding up?”

&nbs
p; “Okay.”

  “I’m sorry about your father. I need to say it again. Losing a parent is the worst.”

  “Guess you would know. T.J. told me how you lost yours.”

  “Does require some adjustments. Especially when they chose not to want me anymore. Just gave up and let me go.” She makes a face. “But I’ve had time to get past it. You haven’t. You’re still in the middle of it. You have to stay strong.”

  “I’m working on it. Being here helps.”

  He says this because he thinks it will make her feel good, and he wants that. After all, she saved him from Ponce and the Razor Boys, and she’s been looking out for him ever since.

  “Is T.J. still giving you a hard time?” she asks.

  “Not really. At first, yeah, but he pretty much let it go after we took that drive. He talked about how he was made, how he was a genetic experiment. He’s pretty bitter. But he says it was harder for you.”

  “Yeah, he likes to think so. It gives him some sort of emotional uplift thinking someone has it worse than he does. But he’s not fooling anyone. He’s emotionally crippled by what was done to him. He hates it that he wasn’t made like most kids. Even Woodrow had parents. T.J. was a test-tube baby. His parents don’t exist. That’s why he leaned on you about your father. He’s just unhappy about not having one himself.”

  “He was good about showing me how to do stuff with the racers.”

  “Well, he’s a good guy when he wants to be. Very talented. Physically, he can do anything. He’s got all the skills.”

  “He doesn’t think so.”

  “That what he told you?”

  “In so many words.”

  “He would. Didn’t explain, I bet?”

  “Not really. Just stopped talking.”

  “Okay, then.” She leans close. “He talks about me, I can talk about him. Genetic engineers conceived him and his fellow test-tube babies to be perfect soldiers, the first of a new army for the U.T. It all worked out just as everyone expected except for one thing. Almost all of them lacked the sort of killer instinct their makers were looking for. T.J. was one of those who never found it. They threw him out once they knew. Threw all of them out in the end, I guess. The Shoe found T.J. on the street and brought him here. He was good enough for Street Freaks.”