by Unknown
"In an hour or so, somebody looking for me will know where I am," Pandur informed the other man.
He waved it away. "So what. You're safe here."
"I've heard of raids."
"If the cops stopped coming one day, we'd really miss it. They pick up one guy or another. But don't worry. If I don't want the drekheads to find you, they won't."
Red Cloud led him into the ghetto's interior. The route took them first along a corridor formed by the sides, corners and overhangs of other constructions. The bulky junk lying around tranformed it into a slalom run. They climbed up a kind of gangplank. A patch of sky. Then down again. They passed in turn two prefabs and a two-story shack made of sheet metal welded together. On the walls there were several rows of beds stacked one above the other; they contained norms of all ages, dozing or talking. Some looked to be tripping out. Drugs. Three had headjacks and were wired up to a shared simsense deck. They were probably popping simsense chips. They were speaking Russian. Hardly anyone looked up as the men snaked through the room. In the background a trid film was on at full volume. Some violent war film about the Eurowars. A dozen ragged kids sat around passing comments on what was happening, shouting louder than the men dying on the trid. Sometimes there was a curtained-off recess, but that was rare. Filthy, apathetic toddlers with hungry eyes huddled on the floor. At one point someone was crapping into a plastic bucket in the middle of the corridor. In one bed a naked couple were copulating. Some kids were watching, spurring them on. It didn't seem to bother them.
The men constantly tripped over electrical wires running, higgledy-piggledy, from side to side and up and down, often in thick bundles. Pandur also saw a barbecue grill and a microwave ready for the scrap heap. There was the smell of braised and overcooked soybeans, sourish soymeat, of things whose provenance he preferred not to know. Predominantly, though, there was the stench of unwashed bodies, sweat, urine and faeces. Sometimes, when they came near a ventilation hole, there was a predominant smell of oil-drenched mud, solubles, chlorine, sulphur or organic decay. But seconds later there was the unavoidable stench primarily of the things that were about to turn into mud. Pandur was only able to stand it all by breathing as shallowly as possible.
Up and down, across and back. Ladders, projections, niches, swaying planks, over dwellings, into dwellings, under dwellings. And all the time the same images, mostly in the dim light of low-power low-freqency lamps dangling on wires from the ceilings of windowless rooms. Pandur, who was acquainted with sleeping cubicles and had until now regarded them as the ultimate answer to the most minimal requirements, began to realize what positively grotesque luxury was actually provided by a solid, fully enclosed sleeping cubicle with its, comparatively speaking, huge interior, with its comfortable base to lie on, and the generous supply of air.
Red Cloud plodded on silently ahead, and Pandur had long ago lost any sense of direction. It wouldn't have surprised him if Neugraben's high-rises had suddenly loomed up before him, close enough to reach out and touch. He would have been as little surprised to come out at the spot where he had first entered the maze.
Most people he saw were norms. But there were sections here and there in which ten or twenty elves, dwarfs, ores or trolls lived. They behaved no differently from the norms. Most people in the ghetto gave the appearance of being peaceful, many indifferent, a very few aggressive. There were young people who fought together, in most cases playfully. There were others who drew their knives as soon as they saw strangers approaching. And they very quickly sheathed them again when they recognized Red Cloud. At one point Pandur witnessed a youngster being brutally stabbed by four others, another time two boys were in the process of raping a girl. In both cases Red Cloud reached under his poncho to produce a CMDT Combat Gun, one of the best shotguns on the market. With almost casually-seeming bursts of fire, he served up the four knife merchants and the two penis merchants as meat on the spit in good old Lucifer's cook-shop. Pandur had earlier wondered what the respect people showed Red Cloud was based on. After these scenes the question was redundant.
Pandur had long since lost any power of discernment regarding the physical nature of his surroundings. At the end of the day, it made no difference if the Kafkaesque shoebox world around him rested on the mud or wallowed in the water. Or if it stood on a licensed, state-of-the-art pontoon built by Hamburg's best shipyard. A raft made of roped-together plastic containers fulfilled the same purpose, as long as it didn't go down. The base had not the least impact on the degree of chaos that reigned atop. Just sometimes he registered that the underlay swayed more, or less, for whatever reasons.
Finally the picture changed. Not a thing changed as regarded the unbelievable scarcity of space, the crazily haphazard structure and the ever-present wretchedness. It couldn't be expected that there was a spot in Wildost where even the least of those small freedoms held sway that in other slums, such as the lumpenloch in Zombietown, were taken for granted: enough space for all to maintain privacy, a quiet place to answer the call of nature, a sheltered spot to copulate or masturbate. And yet suddenly there was something approaching this state. They had reached a section that was not solely given over to personal needs, but mainly to the demands of commerce. Foremost, however, was the trade in personal needs. Hundreds of mostly naked hookers in long rows of bunks offered their bodies for perusal. If a deal was clinched, the other party to the contract climbed into the bunk, and a curtain shielded the practical realization of the commercial agreement from the eyes of others. A step forward. The opening and closing of the curtains created a rattling background noise, for business was booming, the transactions short-lived and the next clients were already standing in line. All in all, matters proceeded here as fast as in the offices of a doctor who prescribed the same placebo after no more than a cursory examination of the patients.
It struck Pandur that details of the surroundings possessed a different quality. However much everything was crammed together and every single centimeter served some purpose, there was a little more clearance above and unaccustomed geometric shapes which repeated themselves constantly. The feeling of solid encapsulation as conveyed by a sleeping cubicle. He discovered curves. Finally he espied ribs, once even a porthole. He was in a boat's hull. He wasn't aware of having entered a ship. In the wild confusion of the extended and superimposed boxes of the rest of the surrounding area it had become a segment of the whole so that only an expert could discern its original contours.
"We'll be in my quarters soon," Red Cloud punctured his long silence.
Pandur wondered if Red Cloud was involved in the moist production line transactions going on in the immediate vicinity. He had to fund the ammo for his shotgun somehow. The sperm shooters of Wildost were definitely not in a position to spend a fortune for a quickie, but when all was said and done shotgun cartridges likewise consisted of many components, which only demonstrated the necessary efficiency if they acted in unison.
Maybe Red Cloud also had a stake in the bar attached to the brothel: a three-story, sticky, noise-filled hugger-mugger, full to bursting with topers of both sexes and all age groups, norms as well as metahumans. Pandur had the impression that a tanker carrying soybeer must be lying out in the river, using overburdened, smoking pumps to drive the swill through high-pressure hoses into the ghetto. The old motto of the red-light districts, "Drinking, fucking, BTL, fill your credstick quick as hell", seemed to apply equally in Neugraben's ghetto.
Pandur stood next to Red Cloud in the entrance and looked round. Somewhere in the background he caught a movement, too fast a movement for people drinking themselves insensible in a tavern. He whipped round, for a fraction of a second glimpsing a face that disappeared in the next instant. Along with the body belonging to it. It seemed to have vanished into thin air.
Despite the diffuse, murky light, despite the fact that he had only caught a fleeting glimpse of the face, it still burnt on his pupils, had stamped itself on his retina. Slightly wavy, black hair, a dense moustache, both
trimmed, and much shorter than Pandur remembered. A lot of people looked like that. Dark and, and at the same time, gleaming eyes. Rarer, but common enough. Ritual cross-hatched scars on the cheeks. To be found occasionally. A combination of all these features, however, fitted only one person.
Back then, the man had rushed after him and handed him a fat credstick. A credstick for which Pandur had staked his life. Many chummers had died for the same sticks. He had got that one because he had survived. Thor Walez's credstick. Coded. The other man couldn't do anything with it. Or he would certainly have kept it. By doing that he wanted to get rid of Pandur. Because he didn't want Pandur to return for it.
The face, the hair, the moustache, the scars: the man with the credstick had a name.
Ricul.
What was Natalie's brother doing in a place like this? Why had he disappeared like a phantom when he caught sight of Pandur? They had loved the same person, each in his own way. That should have bound them. But Ricul hated him. Did he fear him, too? There was no reason to. Pandur wasn't out to get him.
Was Ricul acting for the Mafia? That might provide the key to his sudden disappearance. Maybe he was planning to do something Pandur wouldn't like. Perhaps he was afraid that his dead sister's lover could get in his way.
How long is the arm of my enemies? They know everything about me and Natalie, about Konigsberg Castle. Have they involved Natalie's brother maybe even her mother in their plans. Natalie's ex-husband hates me because I was together with Natalie. Ricul hates me because I was together with Natalie and holds me responsible for her death. Hate binds. Hate is a lever for many things. And if Ricul didn't want to join forces with Natalie's true murderer, there were ways and means to persuade him differently. The question remains: what could AG Chemie hope to achieve by setting Ricul onto me?
So, two possibilities: Ricul is acting for the Mafia, Ricul is acting for AG Chemie. Pandur didn't believe in the third possibility, coincidence. Gradually he regained his calm. If Natalie's brother really planned to take some action against Pandur, his best weapon was already blunt: the element of surprise. Pandur was forewarned. He would be watchful. He would bide his time.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder impatiently. Red Cloud had gone on ahead and come back. He had noticed that Pandur had stood still, that his eyes were fixed on a corner of the room.
"Something wrong?"
Pandur shook his head. "I thought I saw somebody I know. I must have been mistaken."
Red Cloud shrugged his shoulders and turned away. He cleared a path through a knot of bodies, beckoned, and this time Pandur followed him. The other man led Pandur along the edge of the tavern and stopped in front of a round, solid bulkhead door. He took a codechip out of his poncho, using it to operate an electronic lock that somehow seemed out of place in these surroundings, stooped, climbed through the opening one meter in circumference, signalled to Pandur to follow and led him into the passage behind. He pushed the heavy bulkhead door back into its lock.
There was instant silence. It was as if the noise from the bar had been cut off. A low-frequency lamp illuminated a narrow corridor about the height of a man, not four meters long and with four wooden doors leading off it, each fitted with ancient, old-fashioned brass knobs worn smooth by tens of thousands of hands. This passage was narrow and primitive and it smelled stuffy. But compared with what Pandur had seen in the last half hour, it was a paradise of seclusion, spaciousness and sweet fragrances. In this environment an unimaginable luxury.
"A privilege," Red Cloud conceded. He didn't sound embarrassed but pleased. "I share it with six or seven other guys who own the remaining cabins, but one cabin is my own small kingdom." Self-confidently he added after a brief pause, without further explanation, "They owe it to me."
Pandur again had the impression the man was a mind-reader. But there was probably not really much to guessing which direction Pandur's thoughts were moving in given the circumstances.
So they found themselves in a ship. It became quite evident when Red Cloud opened the door to the second room on the right after unfastening it with the same codechip. It was a narrow ship's cabin, two meters by three, with a bunk and a thick-framed, verdigris-covered porthole with solid brass tommy screws. The thick glass was painted white. Presumably nothing more could be seen through it than the metal walls of other dwellings screwed, welded, tied, or otherwise attached to the ship. Pandur wondered if Druse was somewhere nearby. He answered the question for himself in the negative. Red Cloud had spoken of the so-called clinic being located in a former shrimp boat. This, on the other hand, seemed to be the more or less intact remains of a motor yacht, perhaps even of a passenger ferry. Or of another ship that had cabins for passengers or a sizeable crew.
The room was spartanly furnished. A small high-legged plastic table, a computer on top, a vidphone with radio adapter, two shell armchairs, also made of plastic, a small, old chest-of-drawers of oak, two shelves laden with cassettes full of data, vid and musicchips, a closet, the bunk. Several guns hung on the wall and, as the most unusual prop, the spread feather headdress of an Indian chief. Red Cloud's entire property was positioned on, in or near the wall. Pandur believed he knew the reason. In the narrow confines of the ghetto, such a room must possess the quality of a refuge. Anyone who owned anything like this would try to retain the illusion of a large, open space and do his best not to obstruct the space or cram it full of bulky objects.
Red Cloud took a seat and invited Pandur to use the other shell chair. Pandur sat down gratefully and stretched his tired legs out to their full length.
"Let me make it clear, chummer," said Red Cloud. "If you stay, you won't be sleeping here but in other quarters. Not as nice but safe, and used by people who are obligated to me." "So ka." Pandur hadn't expected the man to share his realm with him. In his place he would have acted in the same way. " You're a decker," the Irishman stated. "You've got your cyberdeck on you, I see. What sort of deck'd you use? Allegiance? Sony?"
"Fuchi," Pandur replied.
Red Cloud whistled through his teeth. "Not cheap." " Cyber-6 with special features the maker knows nothing about."
"Cyber-6 on its own costs a fortune."
"With the right connections you can get one cheaper. A whole lot cheaper. There're runners that get killed..."
"It happens."
"... or go mad. There're people that inherit from these runners and hate cyberdecks. They hold them responsible..." " Heard of that, too."
"If you know these people, maybe you're friends with them -or something - you can get hold of expensive gear that you wouldn't otherwise be able to afford."
"And you know how to handle it?" "Sort of."
"You're not from the Hamburg megaplex?" "I was on my way there." "Hmm... I think you're my man."
"What for? You want me to do a run for Wildost? You trying to bust into the megabusiness? Market the production of crap real big? Am I supposed to spy on your biggest competitor? Who produces crap the most? AG Chemie?"
Red Cloud fixed him with a look for a while. Then he said quietly, "You're damn good, chummer. Even if you were shooting blind. It actually is AG Chemie."
Pandur had just been talking. Now he froze. The message hit him like a blow from a mallet. Was Red Cloud pulling his leg? It didn't look like it. He had no difficulty in believing the man capable of all sorts of things. For example, that he was recruiting people for a run. So ka. Why not? Pandur wrestled with himself. AG Chemie of all things. They had hunted Natalie and him. Had killed Natalie. Were hunting him again.
Why on earth not? Pay them back! Give them a reason to hate you and hunt you. Maybe it's a run that will really hurt the drekheads. Where the place is blown up. Like it was at Renraku. I would do what Rommel did with delight. Blow AG Chemie's fucking computers sky-high. If necessary jump in myself with the plastic explosives. Like Rommel.
The brief outburst of hate passed. Not a good counselor. Pandur knew that. He wasn't Druse. Druse screwed up because he let his reve
nge dictate the way. He wasn't Rommel. He had also been governed by revenge and finally destroyed by it. Pandur went his way and took with him whatever revenge he picked up. That was his way of doing it. It had helped him to survive. So far.
"Tell me more about it," he said.
"If I cough up the details, you'll have to accept or stay here till someone else has carried out the job."
"Agreed."
"Someone would like to know more about the environmental mess AG Chemie is responsible for."
"Another megacon. What for?"
"Not a megacon."
"GreenWar?"
"Think what you like."
"Forget it, chummer. I want a job to fill my credstick. No politics. No idealism. I did that one time and it gets you nowhere. I don't work for a moist handshake any more." "
D'you call 50,000 a moist handshake"
Pandur was surprised. "GreenWar fills ebbies?"
"The client, whatever his name, has only got a suitable fighter, but no specialist. He's prepared to accept that good specialists cost."
"What're the special features?"
"The only people who'll be considered are deckers who aren't known in the Hamburg scene."
"Why?"
"In the megaplex there are a lot of people interested in AG Chemie's data. The client doesn't want you to listen around first, take on a piggy-back commission and go searching for other special data for another client. The client is of the old-fashioned opinion that for 50,000 and the infrastructure behind you, you should only bring out the data he'd like."
"You're gonna keep me here till then?"
"Only one day. Till the meeting with your Schmidt takes place."
"Agreed. Any more peculiarities?
"Half the megaplex is underwater."
"I know."