by Unknown
"Shit's the only thing there's plenty of around here," said Freda. "And you know what they say, shit brings luck. Maybe it's kinda Russian magic that keeps the whole thing in place. Storms and tides they come and go but Wildost goes on forever."
Pandur looked up at the platform skeptically. There was no one to be seen, but he felt as if hundreds of eyes were on him. The ghetto residents were apparently mistrustful of anything that approached Wildost. They didn't show themselves but they watched and waited, seeking a chance to take advantage of the situation.
Druse moaned. A wonder he had held out so long. Pandur patted the sweat from his forehead. With the slum dwellings in plain view, Pandur doubted more than ever that Druse could expect any kind of help here.
"What're we waiting for?" he asked.
"Somebody'll be along soon," Freda confidently asserted.
It wasn't the first time she'd been here. Pandur wondered what kind of small, or big, deals the orc had going as a sideline when she drove the north German swamp for AG Chemie.
He gestured to the bizarre mountains of recycled cast-offs. " There's supposed to be high-tech in these filthy hovels? Medkit and endoscopic microlasers?" he said. "You sure you're not getting Wildost mixed up with Frankenstein's lab?"
"They got all those things," the orc woman maintained. " Hidden somewhere in this labyrinth is the most expensive electronics and micro-technology. Ya gotta believe it. I know."
"How are they supposed to pinch anything if they're not allowed to go anywhere?"
Freda pointed to the tracks in the silt. Their Manta wasn't the only vehicle that had driven up to the ghetto in the last few hours. "Hamburg needs cheap labor. Who d'ya think pedals the Russian rickshaws? And once the boys're over there, they don't leave empty-handed. Or they fence for their slave traders. That's one wild scene."
Pandur gathered together his memories. Russian rickshaws were pedal boats. They jostled in Hamburg's canals in their thousands and were used as cheap cabs and cargo carriers.
"Most of the rickshaws belong to emigre Russian gangs," Freda continued as if she had read his mind. "They ferry the Wildosters over the Elb and back. The drivers're treated like concentration camp inmates and a few of them act as trusties. Those guys have it better - comparitively speakin'."
"It's the same crap wherever you look. One or two are good at eating shit and thrive on it. The drivers ought to seize the opportunity and do a bunk."
"Some of 'em try, but the gangs don't let their slaves get away with it so easy. They hunt down everyone that tries to escape and then just send the heads back to the ghetto."
"Why that?" Pandur asked. "'Cause they've got aspirin here for headaches?"
"Wise guy. As a warning to others of course."
"Got ya, chummer. That sort of thing ain't nice. Taking off other people's heads could develop into a nasty habit. Sometimes has serious consequences. Like, you don't get invited to parties as often."
"Chummer, ya really didn't oughta make jokes about it. Far as I been able to piece together, your head ain't exactly bolted on tight."
"That's why I make fun of it. So ka? You don't get it? Thought so. Forget it." Pandur was in no mood to tell the orc that his black humor helped him to survive.
"All-in trips for rickshaw drivers and travelling heads. Call this a ghetto? I thought the Border Protection Force had the waterway all taped up."
"Sure they do, against refugees. Not against slave runners. That's a nice little bonus for the patrolmen, so ka?"
"I just can't believe that. German officials don't do things like that. It's against the conditions of service."
"You nuts? Ya just sounded off about the cops yourself!" Pandur sighed. "Suhrkamp's zombies sure ruined your sense of humor, chummer."
Freda mumbled something unintellible.
The first Pandur saw of the ghetto dwellers was a naked backside. A small backside with a small appendage that showed the rump to belong to a small boy. The backside was sticking out of a hole in one of the upper hovels. Then Pandur further saw a hand that went under the backside. The backside was withdrawn, a rapid movement followed, and in the next instant the product of the incident splattered onto the Manta's windshield.
"The fucking little shit!" cursed Freda.
"Wildost says hello to the rest of the world with a small promotional gift," was Pandur's offering. "Clay to clay. On target and apt."
Suddenly a flap in one of the side walls was opened. In the opening stood a lean, big-boned man in his mid-forties whose most striking feature was a mohican haircut. The individual tufts stood up from the head like the spines of a hedgehog. Each of them was dyed a different color. The man wore a kind of poncho. Despite the brash, multifarious colors, the man gave off an aura of peace. Casualness. In a manner that was hard to define, something like dignity.
He beckoned to Freda and indicated that they should maneuver the Manta nearer to the entrance.
"That's Red Cloud," said Freda. She gave the jets some thrust and inched the hovercraft up to the opening. "He's got a lot of influence in the ghetto even though there's no gang behind him."
"He doesn't look like an Indian," said Pandur. "Not much like a Russian, either."
"He's Irish, but he lived with an Indian tribe in the UCAS for a few years."
"Shaman?"
"No. "
"What's he doing in the ghetto? On the run from something and somebody?"
"Could be. Don't know what he does exactly. Business. At the same time he's also a kinda social worker. Tries to help people. Can't tell ya if it's 'cos he's unselfish or calculatin'. Probably a bit of both."
A loner, but not necessarily an egoist. A man who liked the Indians. Pandur thought of his Indian icon, his identity in the matrix. Red Cloud seemed like an interesting man.
Freda had driven to within one and a half meters of the opening. She didn't dare come any closer to the shaky-looking platform. She leant out of the side window of the cockpit and called, "We got a man on board with a knife in his chest. Can ya help him?"
Red Cloud raised his bushy eyebrows. Otherwise he showed no surprise. He turned his head slightly and spoke to someone behind him. Then he looked at the orc again.
"We have ways and means for many things," he said, oraclelike. "Someone who has knowledge of such matters will look at the man."
Then he studied Pandur. "New around here, chummer?"
"This here's Pandur," Freda answered for him. "Only made acquaintance today. One or two misunderstandin's. I'd kinda like to make that good. Guess he could use a bit of help."
"Did you bring the man together with the knife, Pandur?" asked Red Cloud.
"Not that I know of."
"It was me," Freda admitted.
Red Cloud raised his eyebrows once more, this time a whole lot higher than before. "An orc who wanted to rape you, Freda?"
"Whaat? Fuck, no! Where d'ya get that idea?"
"Don't know myself. No matter." He turned back to Pandur. " Are you a runner?"
Could Red Cloud read minds? Or did he have an eye for the bulges under Pandur's jacket that hinted at a cyberdeck and a gun?
"Could be."
"Looking for work?"
"Could be."
Red Cloud twisted his face into a slight smile. "The world's round and if it was square it wouldn't surprise you, would it, chummer? Might have something. Might be looking for someone... Your answer can keep, chummer. We'll talk about it later if you're interested."
Pandur was surprised. Gradually the man was becoming eery. He seemed to be able to read people very well. At the same time the old shadowrunner's mistrust awakened in Pandur. Red Cloud didn't look like a Herr Schmidt who sought runners at the behest of megacons. He was hardly likely to find them in the ghetto. Could it be that someone had put Red Cloud on to him? Did AG Chemie know where he was? Was someone again wanting to play games with him?
Seen soberly, Pandur had to admit though that Red Cloud's reaction could be quite normal. He lived in the
ghetto, obviously had influence and good contacts, was out for his own advantage. What was more natural than to take a look at interesting newcomers and sound him out on his capabilities? If Red Cloud had contacts to the ouside world, then they were illegal contacts. Pirates, thieves, fences, shadowrunners. Contact with this man might well turn out to be a piece of luck. He not only seemed to know the world was round, but also seemed to understand a lot about why it revolved. Who was turning his hand to what, where and when. Pandur knew a similar man, who also lived among misery even though he didn't have to: Rem. And Rem was his friend. Pandur might one day count Red Cloud among his friends. He hoped so. Somehow he liked him.
A spindly woman appeared next to Red Cloud. She wore a filthy, grey robe, a sort of kaftan, and was of a remarkable ugliness. Matted, unkempt, spiky ashblond hair, a long, pointed nose, a pallid, unhealthy complexion, pimples, burst blood vessels. She possessed sinisterly glowing, red cybereyes, probably second hand and much too big for the narrow, angular face. Her eyes looked like old-fashioned glasses with particularly thick, curved lenses. A female Dr Caligari.
Red Cloud shoved a plank through the opening. It was just long enough to bridge the gap between the platform and the substructure of the hovercraft.
"Doc Sitkayev's coming over to you," he said.
The woman pushed past Red Cloud and crossed the swaying bridge in a few strides. In her right hand she carried a big, black doctor's bag.
Pandur opened the door of the cockpit and made room for the woman by moving back to the rear of the cab. She settled on the rear seat, bent over Druse and palpated him. Druse hadn't groaned for some time. He seemed to be unconscious. Or he was already dead.
As the woman was examining the pirate, Pandur saw her hands. Sinewy, narrow hands with incredibly long-jointed fingers, highly sensitive. Blue veins shimmered through the pale skin, creating a harmonic design. The hands were the only thing about the woman that appeared clean and cared-for. The woman seemed to know where her capital lay.
She cut the remains of the anorak from around the wound. Then she opened her bag, slipped on a hood, face mask and rubber gloves, attached several probes to Druse's body, took a laser scalpel in her right hand and a kind of spray pistol in her left. Tubes led from the pistol to the bag.
It took a while before Pandur realized she intended to operate on Druse here and now. He doubted her tools and her other implements were clean, not to mention germ-free. The Manta certainly wasn't - as an operating theater. But that didn't seem to bother the woman much.
"Knife... pull out," she spoke broken megaplex slang with a Russian accent. She had a rough, smoky voice as if she had puffed her way through fifty papirossy a day for thirty years.
Watch out, Druse! If you're still alive: good old Doc Ripper's on her way to snip away at you a bit. God help you!
It was clear to Pandur that Druse wouldn't be helped by delaying the moment. Secretly he even thought the woman was right. In this condition, Druse certainly wouldn't survive being carried into the labyrinth of the ghetto. So it was better to expose him to all those germs. It was the only chance he still had. If he had one at all.
With no more ado, Pandur grasped the handle of the knife and pulled it out with a violent jerk.
Druse wasn't dead yet. His body pumped blood into the hole. It spilled over with so much force as if it were determined to re-dye the Manta's already ruined upholstery from beige to red in a matter of seconds.
Freda stared at the blood with bulging eyes. Though she must actually have been used to worse from her beloved splatter-punk horror films.
Doctor Sitkayev elbowed Pandur aside and descended on the wound. She whirled her instruments around like a fury, spraying medkit into the wound, at the same time sealing its lips with the laser, cutting deeper with the laser, spraying, sealing, cutting, spraying, sealing...
Pandur was close to vomiting. He looked away.
At some point the doctor leant back and switched off the equipment.
"Will... unsure live," she said with her rough, throaty voice. "Maybe... when lucky... you say like that?" She took off the protective clothing, put them away in the bag with the instruments, bloody as they were, and closed it. "We... get man... in clinic... There workin'... with endoscope. Lotta workin' at... mmh, lung and..." She used some Russian words, some Latin. Pandur interpreted it all to mean that Druse's gorgeous body would need a lot doing to it before he would be available to the women of this world again. Maybe he could then even pay Doc Caligari in his own inimitable way.
The woman crawled out with her bag and disappeared without a word. Red Cloud appeared instead, glanced at her handiwork and grinned.
"Our doc's the tops," he said, satisfied. "You can take a piss on it. If anybody can get some life back into this guy, she can."
Pandur had the hollow feeling he would have to address the fact that cash and debitable credsticks were in short supply with him, Freda and Druse. He didn't think Freda's thousand ecus would be sufficient to satisfy Red Cloud. He probably spent that much on his hair-do and dyes.
Before he could get round to taking up the point, the matter took care of itself.
"Settlement with the next shipment?" Red Cloud asked the orc.
"So ka," came the reply.
Whatever Freda delivered to the ghetto, it seemed to have its value.
Right then, two sinister figures appeared who looked like Russian mafiosi and maybe were, slid Druse onto a stretcher and disappeared with him over the swaying bridge and into the ghetto.
"The doc said something about a clinic," said Pandur, to whom the whole thing wasn't so much Russian as Greek.
"Oh, yes," replied Red Cloud. "That's where she's going to set about your chummer. Everything she just stuck down provisionally here she'll solder together properly there."
"Seriously?" Pandur refused to believe it. "You've got a clinic in this heap of rubble?"
"The docs out there would more likely describe it as a shambles in a garbage skip," Red Cloud returned. "It's only three meters by three. Used to be the mess in a half-sunk shrimp boat round about the center of our neat little town, but we've got the most up-to-date endoscope with the best micro-instruments available. They can slice open each individual cell and put it back together again. From inside the body or through the belly-button or whatever. And we've got a doc that can handle the stuff. She was once chief surgeon at the best clinic in St Petersburg. That was quite a while back but she hasn't forgotten a thing."
"Why's she here?" Pandur already regretted the question as he asked it.
"Why are you here?" Red Cloud asked back. "Anyone looking for reasons soon gets the opportunity to ask the worms in the tomb why they're nibbling away at him."
"It just kinda slipped out," said Pandur. "I don't want to know really."
"Wise decision." Red Cloud looked at him with an expression on his face that was hard to figure. "Believe me, chummer - if you knew, you'd prefer you didn't. She's a good doc, and that's the end of the matter."
Freda had an extremely unusual day behind her that she was sure to think about for a long time. She had been attacked by people who belonged to her own camp, had been in danger of being killed, and had herself almost killed a man. She sat at the controls of a hovercraft whose upholstery was drenched in blood, whose bodywork and window were riddled with bullet holes, whose lower parts were encrusted with mud and, to put the icing on the cake, whose windshield was adorned with a heap of shit. She had put up with everything more or less patiently and without complaint. But now, condemned to inactivity, and without the pressure of immediate danger, she'd had all she could take.
"Chew the fat somewhere else," she said. "I want outa here."
Her face showed that she not only wanted to get away from here but preferably from everything, so that she could finally have her precious peace and quiet again. At the same time she was concerned that her hovercraft could be identified from the air and then she'd be in for more trouble than was already facing h
er.
"What're you going to do?" Pandur asked. "How're you going to explain the whole business to AG Chemie?"
"First of all by shooting the vidphone to pieces," Freda replied. "That'll save me having to give long, complicated explanations about why I didn't get in touch with my boss."
"Wise girl," Pandur said. "And then?"
"Gonna drive to Neugraben, report that I was threatened by the men I took along on instructions from on high, and was forced to obey their orders. I'll also report we were shot at by a private helicopter of unknown origin. Then the mist came, the men had a quarrel, one of them plunged a knife into the other one's chest and forced me to drive to Wildost. But I'll say I dropped you off further east. Don't want them to start investigating this place too much. I still need it. In short, I'll stick to the facts. Ain't got much choice. They'll check the computer and know more or less where the Manta was and when. "
"You're working on my legend," Pandur stated. "Now, on top of everything else, I'll go into the megacons' data banks as a knifeman."
"Sorry, chummer, but. . . "
"It's okay," Pandur reassured her. "But get one thing clear: I'm Pandur, a pirate, quick to go for the gun and the knife. Nothing else, so ka? If you heard any other name, then forget it straight away. Once again: my name is Pandur - P-A-N-D-U-R. Anything else and it won't agree with you. Nor me, either."
"I understand, chummer."
"Good. Stick to your version." Secretly he feared that AG Chemie would use drugs or magic to get her to sing. In that case, Freda was as good as lost. However, he didn't want to recommend her to sell the Manta and its cargo on the black market and go underground. She seemed to have her little scams on the side, like most people on the road did. But she wasn't fitted for a professional life in the shadows. With AG Chemie she at least had a chance. In the shadows she had none.
He gave her a wave and with Red Cloud left the blood- and shit-smeared Manta. He helped the Irishman to pull in the plank and looked back at the hovercraft, which was pulling away from the ghetto at moderate speed for the moment. Then Freda gave full thrust from the jets. Mud fountained up. The Manta began to round the ghetto in a wide arc and set course for Neugraben. It disappeared out of sight. Pandur kept his fingers crossed for Freda.