'Sounds fine to me.'
The Changeling barked a laugh. 'Seriously? No bullshit? One thousand notes?'
'Is that enough?'
'Oh, I'd say so. Wouldn't you, boys? Wouldn't you say a grand was enough to buy these people an escort off the estate?'
The Changelings bellowed in general agreement.
Is held her breath and braced herself. She was quite certain this was when the gang-tribe would weigh in. They were just toying with her and Provender. She was set to retaliate with everything she had - teeth, nails, knee to the groin, whatever it took. The Changelings would come at her expecting a pushover and find a hellion.
'Prognosis,' said their spokesman, 'you have yourself a deal.' He stuck out a hand. 'Shake on it.'
Provender, with manly forthrightness, pumped the proffered hand.
Moments later, he and Is were striding through the estate accompanied by their very own gang-tribe honour guard. As they walked the Changelings amused themselves by coming up with yet more words with a 'Pro-' prefix. Provender, meanwhile, kept darting jubilant glances at Is, which she refused to acknowledge. Her face was set in a scowl of frank incredulity. This couldn't be right. There must be some drawback here, some catch. The Changelings surely weren't going to see them to the gate and then just wave them off, were they? It couldn't be that simple. She and Provender couldn't have got that lucky.
51
The Changelings discharged their half of the bargain and deposited their two-person cargo safely at the perimeter of the estate. Then, in the middle of the road, beneath the arching entranceway sign, the members of the gang-tribe huddled together expectantly, waiting for Provender to hand over the agreed-on sum. It seemed reasonable to them that he must have the money on his person, and although it had crossed their minds more than once that if he was carrying that much cash on him they could simply take it off him by force, there was something oddly satisfying about earning it. Earning it so easily, as well. All that dosh in return for a stroll through their own backyard, ten minutes' work, nothing to it. Maybe their attitude towards Family needed reconsidering, if this experience with Provender Gleed was anything to go by. Maybe there was something to be said for people who were burdened with so much wealth that they could spill it around so casually, so liberally.
'This is so great of you,' Provender said, looking from one Changeling to the next. 'Thank you all, very much. We really appreciate this. What I need now is to take down your names. Or the name of just one of you, if you prefer. You.' He pointed to the Changeling with whom he had struck the deal. 'Why not you?'
'Huh?' said the Changeling, with a slow, nonplussed blink. 'What d'you want my name for?'
'So I can write you a cheque, of course. Which you can then take to a bank and cash and divvy up between all of you. Seven into a thousand goes... Well, I'm not sure. I'll leave it to you to do the maths.'
'No, see, that's not going to work,' said the Changeling. 'Not a bit. Cheque won't do. Cash or nothing.'
'Surely a Family cheque --'
'Cash or nothing.'
'Fine then. Cash. I can always send it registered delivery. But in that case I'll need an address as well as a name.'
'No,' said the Changeling. 'Now. Not later by post. Cash now.'
'But I don't have that much...' Provender's voice tailed off, as if only now was it dawning on him that he and the Changelings had got their wires hopelessly crossed.
'Tell me you're joking,' the Changelings' spokesman said to Provender. 'You're taking the piss, right?' The other gang-members were muttering in low voices to one another, and their various weapons, which had been lowered, began to rise, going from at-ease to port-arms.
'I wish I was,' Provender replied, feebly. With somewhat more force he added, 'But look, I swear you'll get it. First opportunity I have, I'll send it. In fact, let's make it two grand, shall we. Just to show there's no hard feelings.'
'Make it ten, it won't matter. You tricked us. Good as fucking lied to us.'
'I didn't. It was an honest misunder--'
'Get 'im,' the Changeling said, in a grim low growl.
At that selfsame instant, Provender grabbed Is's arm and started running.
It wasn't funny this time. There was no element of absurdity about it, as there had been when they were fleeing from the ClanFans. It was in earnest. It was sheer blind panic. It was a flat-out sprint in order to get away from a foe who was manifestly dangerous and whose reason for wanting to catch them was not, as the ClanFans' had been, overwhelming love but quite the opposite.
The Changelings, as it happened, were not as quick off the mark as they might have been. Provender had surprised them by taking action so abruptly. Catching them on the hop, he gained himself and Is a few seconds' head start.
Once they had roused themselves, though, the Changelings gave chase with a vengeance. Provender and Is heard the clatter of their footfalls behind him and both knew they weren't going to be able to stay ahead for long. As far as Provender could see, their only hope lay in finding some busy part of town, a street filled with passers-by, where either the Changelings would think twice before assaulting them in front of so many witnesses or they could lose themselves in the crowd. Being in a populous public place did not guarantee immunity from attack, of course, and it was by no means certain they would get to one before the Changelings caught up, but it was all Provender could think of to do. He was barely even conscious of thinking it. It was an instinct more than anything, the natural desire of pursued prey to seek refuge in numbers. In Is's brain much the same notion had formed.
Together they hurtled along pavements, turning left, turning right, into side-streets, down alleyways, out into main streets again, weaving through the city's grid pattern but unable to shake off the Changelings at their heels. They soon found themselves beyond breath, beyond tiredness, in a world where the only thing that mattered was to carry on running, running, running. Both felt their lungs starting to rasp, their legs starting to ache. But these pains were far-off, ignorable, needing to be ignored.
On main roads, traffic roared past them. Occasionally a horn tooted, in mockery, in exhortation, who knew? The drivers in their vehicles were faceless entities, irrelevant. The vehicles themselves were irrelevant except when Provender and Is reached a junction and had to cross. Then they were moving metal obstacles to be darted in front of or around. Then, too, the horn beeps were rapid tattoos that more often than not came between a squeal of brakes and an angry out-of-the-window curse.
There were pedestrians around, but only a few, never enough to constitute a crowd, and invariably when they caught sight of Provender and Is running towards them they moved out of the way, not wanting to get involved; they even scurried over to the other side of the street if they had time to. It was early afternoon on a weekday in a more or less residential area. At this hour, this portion of London was hardly teeming.
And the Changelings were gaining. Hard as Provender and Is ran, the staccato slap of the Changelings' shoe soles was getting ever louder, ever closer, their shouts and panting likewise. Neither of the pursued dared look over their shoulders. They dashed onward, dragging each other along.
Then, up ahead, Provender caught a glimpse of something that was as good as a crowded space, if not far better.
He yanked on Is's arm and gesticulated. She peered and saw a chainlink fence, a high-sided enclosure running parallel with the next street they were coming to. She looked harder, not understanding why Provender was so excited about this, and then she got it.
They rounded the corner, and Provender's spurt of hope became a full-blown flood of happiness.
It wasn't just that they had stumbled across the Family tram system.
About half a mile away, there was a break in the chainlink fence. There was a gateway, and beyond it a platform.
He took a tighter hold on Is's arm, dug deep within himself, and gave his all in a final, fraught dash for sanctuary.
52
Tinct,
like any street drug, did more harm than good. For a while after injection it brought euphoria, clarification of the senses, a feeling of near-invulnerability. The metabolism was sharpened, the pain receptors were dampened, and the synapses fired like machineguns. On Tinct, you could accomplish extraordinary physical feats. Your body was on overdrive and refused to acknowledge fatigue. It was a warrior's drug and for that reason a favourite among the gang-tribes.
The downside? The effects were only temporary, and when they went, the drug's absence was felt like a sucking vacuum. Tinct's influence didn't fade, it vanished. One minute you were on top of the world, the next the world was on top of you.
Then there was the physical damage done during the periods when the drug was active. Muscles and joints could suffer excessive wear and tear which, if not allowed time to mend, became a cumulatively worsening problem. Habitual Tinct users invariably became stiff and arthritic in early middle age. And of course the metabolism adjusted. In order for the user to gain the same intensity of result, larger and larger doses were necessary, and in high concentrations Tinct could kill. Hardened Tinct-heads had been known to drop dead from heart attack, pulmonary oedema, deep vein thrombosis, even brain haemorrhage.
None of which occurred with the Changelings who were chasing Provender and Is, for all that the latter pair might have wished it would.
What did occur, though, was that the exertion began to take its toll on the gang members. For a while the Changelings felt as if they could keep going for ever. They could run and never stop. Then, just as Provender and Is reached the street with the tram track beside it, the Changelings started to crash. They had shot up together, using the same needle, so the comedown was pretty much simultaneous. The Tinct had burned through their systems like wildfire, the flames fanned by the adrenal rush of the pursuit. Then, all at once, it snuffed itself out. There was no more.
The Changelings didn't come to a screeching halt but there was an abrupt and marked decline in their rate of progress. To them, it was as though their legs had hollowed out, all muscle gone. They carried on running but it was momentum more than anything that bore them along. Searing pain seeped into their lungs. Their heads went swimmy with oxygen deprivation. One of them, without breaking stride, puked bile down his chest.
A gap opened between them and their intended victims. A half-dozen yards became a dozen, a dozen a score.
Provender and Is failed to notice because they were concentrating on one thing only: the tram stop ahead. They didn't even notice that the racket made by their pursuers was dwindling. All they could hear was their own breathing, their own thumping hearts. Ears, eyes, everything they had was focused on the tram stop's gate, getting to the gate, the swiftly nearing gate...
The gate.
They arrived at it and almost shot straight past. It appeared beside them with such surprising suddenness that they could scarcely believe it was there. Belatedly their brains told them to halt, and they both skidded to a standstill. Provender then bent to the microphone funnel and tried to heave out the two words that would activate the gate opening mechanism: his name.
The first time, what came out of his mouth didn't sound like language, just a muddled mishmash of syllables. The voice recognition system didn't register it as an entry attempt. The small display screen mounted above the microphone funnel remained starkly blank.
Provender sucked in air and had another go.
The second time, what he said was recognisably Provender Gleed but it came out in a garbled splurge, as though a single word. The voice recognition system failed to accept it as valid. The display screen flashed up a curt response:
VOICE UNFAMILIAR
TRY AGAIN
While Provender collected himself for a third try, Is looked left and was astonished to see how far the Changelings had fallen behind. They were still coming, however, white-faced and gasping but still staggering on along the pavement. She shook Provender and told him to stop mucking around and get the ruddy gate open.
Provender ordered himself to be calm, to say the words slowly, clearly and audibly. At the back of his mind lurked the knowledge that the voice recognition system often did not work. The technology was reasonably new and therefore prone to glitches. The waveform-comparison generator was not sensitive to extreme fluctuations in the human voice and so didn't allow for a large margin of difference when matching a spoken name against the recorded version stored in its memory bank. Also, the company which owned the patent on and constructed the system was a Kuczinski holding, and it was believed that the Kuczinskis had arranged for a special design flaw to be installed with the express purpose of inconveniencing one other Family and one other Family alone. The jury was still out as to whether this was anything more than paranoia on the Gleeds' part. No statistical evidence existed to support the theory that the system failed more frequently for a Gleed than for anyone else. Then again, it seemed to certain members of Provender's Family that such sabotage was just the sort of thing the Kuczinskis would do, a suspicion given weight buy the fact that, were the roles reversed, were the voice recognition system a technology owned by the Gleeds, then rigging it so that it gave the Kuczinskis trouble was just the sort of thing they would do.
Ignoring this thought as best he could, Provender brought his lips right up to the mouth of the microphone funnel, close enough for kissing, and uttered his name. He enunciated every syllable of it with an elocution master's precision. There was a pause, during which he could have sworn he heard a tiny mechanical giggle, the system snickering to itself, and the display screen cleared the extant message but seemed reluctant to put up anything in its stead, and he understood that the Kuczinskis had, if the belief about their mischief-making had a basis in fact, just condemned him and Is to a vicious beating and perhaps worse.
Then, like a prayer answered, a new message appeared:
VOICE FAMILIAR
-PROVENDER GLEED-
ACCESS PERMITTED
At the same instant, the gate unlocked itself. Bars retracted. Bolts were unshot. Pistons hissed. The gate eased inward.
Provender thrust Is through and followed right behind, then swung round and grabbed the gate. The gates on the tram network were notoriously slow in closing, which had never struck anyone as a problem till now. He leaned hard on this one to expedite the process. Out of the corner of his eye he could see the Changelings, the frontmost of them now within spitting distance. The gate would not be hurried. The hydraulics did not like to go at anything but their own speed. Is squeezed in beside him and pushed too. The gate groaned in protest. The Changeling, who was the one armed with a cricket bat, drew level and lunged exhaustedly.
The gate clanked shut at the very moment his hand grabbed it. Enraged, he drew back, brandishing his weapon. He swung the bat behind his head and brought it forward. The blow, which was aimed at Provender's fingers, missed, Provender having let go of the gate a split-second earlier. The bat struck ironwork with a resonant, shivering clanggg. Provender and Is drew back as the Changeling dropped the bat and threw himself at the gate, thrusting an arm through and grabbing for them. The other Changelings joined him, reaching through the bars and pawing at the air. Their movements were feeble, desperate, a last flailing effort to get at their quarry. They knew Provender Gleed and the girl with him had escaped, but they could not yet admit it to themselves. One of them made an attempt to clamber up the fence but did not get far, unable to find a decent toehold in the chainlink. Another tugged on the gate as if he truly believed he had the wherewithal to rip it loose from its frame, but there was little strength left in his arms. Eventually all of them were reduced to cursing and hawking gobs of sputum at Provender and Is, and soon they didn't even have the energy for that as the post-Tinct lethargy took a firm hold.
Provender and Is retreated to the tram platform, from where they watched their pursuers succumb to lassitude. Some of the Changelings sagged against the fence and gate while others sank to the ground, looking for all the world like mar
ionettes whose puppeteer had grown bored of conducting the show. It seemed an ignominious finish to such a frantic chase, but Provender and Is weren't complaining. Exhausted themselves, though nowhere near as depleted as the gang-tribe, they settled down on the platform and got comfortable. For a while neither could speak and so they simply looked at the Changelings, who stared stuporously back with eyes that suggested they had forgotten why they were there and who the people on the platform were. During this curious stalemate one of the Changelings even managed to fall asleep, nodding off where he stood, kept upright solely by virtue of his fingers being hooked through the chainlink.
Provender, when his face was no longer such a hectic shade of scarlet, said, 'I never thought we'd manage that. I thought they had us for sure.'
'Tinct crash,' Is replied.
'Oh. What?'
She outlined the pathology of the drug.
'Ah. Still, good for us that we ran so fast, eh?'
'Tell me that when I've stopped feeling so ill. How long till a tram comes?'
Provender glanced both ways along the track. 'Should be soon. The most anyone's ever waited is half an hour. It depends on where the nearest one is when you activate the gate.'
Just as he said this, as if on cue the overhead cables started to crackle and the steel rails began to hum.
53
The tram arrived, coasting to a halt alongside the platform. Accordion doors hissed open, and Provender, with a gentlemanly gesture, invited Is to step aboard, then hopped in after her.
Depressing a brass handle triggered the door-closing mechanism. Provender then ambled to the front of the car where the control console was situated, a sloping bank of switches, levers and lightbulbs. He frowned at it, hesitant.
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