Edge

by Blackthorne, Thomas

  Then they filed out, and were gone.

  Good.

  Except that part of him thought the opposite, that it was an aching shame they had denied him the opportunity of the dance, to let loose the reptile inside, the lizard-brain that fought with logic, and the primate layer that knew the joy of blood because a smile and a scream are predator's expressions, the baring of teeth and the spurting ecstasy of ripping and rending, hitting and twisting, smashing knee-joints, slamming skulls into red oblivion.

  He wanted to tear them apart.

  [ TWENTY ]

  The guy behind the till was called Gopan. After thanking Josh, he called out all his family so they could give thanks, too. Three people came out from the kitchen: a large man called Uncle Rajesh, skinny brother Sanjeev, and the tired girl who served the food: Gopan's sister, Mina.

  "You're all welcome," said Josh. "And look, you've already got spyballs. Why don't you get two more cams, and rearrange them there and there."

  "Ah." Sanjeev's eyes were bright as he nodded, understanding the geometry. "Very good idea."

  "Add an alarm that you can trigger," Josh pointed at Gopan's phone. "Then buy a monthly call-out plan from one of the local security firms. Except check at the police station before you deal with anyone."

  "Will you be there?" asked Gopan.

  "I'm not a police officer. They were mistaken."

  "Ah. But you were looking for someone."

  "I'm working for the boy's father, who's worried."

  "Oh. Would you show us the picture again?"

  Josh brought up Richard's image, and turned the phone to Gopan. This time Gopan frowned for a long time before shaking his head.

  "I'm really sorry. Uncle Rajesh?"

  The big man took a look. "No, sorry."

  Sanjeev had been peering at it over the others' shoulders. "I don't think so."

  But Mina gave a tilting nod.

  "You recognise him?" said Josh.

  "With Opal." Her voice was less dull than before. "Walking with Opal."

  "Who's–?"

  "Local girl," said Sanjeev. "Comes here sometimes, not often. Chats with Mina."

  "When did you last see Opal?"

  "Days ago." Mina looked down at the floor. "A few days."

  "You know where she lives? Or which school she goes to?"

  Mina shook her head.

  "Sanjeev?" asked Josh. "Any ideas?"

  "Sorry."

  "That's OK. I've got a name. You probably don't know her surname?"

  "Afraid not."

  "OK. Thanks, everyone."

  "Thank you!"

  Smiles and nods and waves carried him to the door. He went out onto the street grinning, remembering to check for signs of the gang waiting in ambush, but seeing only a clear ordinary street, safe to walk along. After some eight or ten paces, he stopped, remembering Viv at the shelter, and what she had said just a few minutes back: "The lad might be friendly with some gekrunners."

  He turned and went back in. The family were still standing among the tables, discussing what had happened.

  "Mina, I don't suppose this Opal is a gekrunner, is she?"

  Mina's smile was big as she nodded.

  "Jumps," she said. "Somersaults and things. She's brilliant."

  "So are you," Josh told her. "So are you."

  Uncle Rajesh hugged her, and her grin reminded Josh of Christmas and getting just the present you wanted, and had thought you would never have.

  Josh waved a salute and left.

  Richard looked up from the floor, sponge in hand, as Opal entered the shop, unhitching a backpack from her shoulder.

  "Whoah, bad smell," she said. "Who threw up? Cal told Brian to keep out the winos."

  "It was me. Again."

  "Oh."

  "Brian's getting some sort of spray, says it'll clear the air."

  He rinsed the sponge in the bucket, and wiped some more. There was nothing left to clean up, nothing visible, but Opal was right: the stench remained.

  "Hey, Opal." Brian came in from the back, a huge yellow aerosol in hand. "Stand by for some biochemical warfare. This is powerful stuff."

  "Maybe I should open the front door."

  "Probably." Brian looked down at Richard. "You must have started wearing a hole in the floor. It won't get cleaner than that."

  "Sorry."

  "That's the seventy-seventh time he's apologised," Brian told Opal. "I've been counting."

  "Not that many," said Richard.

  Opal asked, "What did Cal say?"

  "He hasn't been in, thank God." Brian waved the aerosol, sloshing the contents. "Let's keep him none the wiser."

  "Oh, right. He's probably at South Bank."

  "And you're here about tonight." Brian pointed at her backpack. "Equipment check, right?"

  "Uh-huh. So, you want me to open this door? Cause I'd like to breathe."

  "Sorr–" Richard stopped himself.

  "I've a better idea," said Brian. "Opal, close up, and we'll go in the back room."

  She locked the shop door and tapped the buttons on the door frame. The glass shone with the word CLOSED, in reverse.

  "Come on." She took hold of Richard's sleeve. "Let's get out of here."

  He picked up the bucket, dropped the sponge inside, and let her lead him out of the room. From behind came the sound of Brian sucking in a breath, followed by the prolonged hissing of the spray. Then Brian was pushing him into the back room and slamming the door shut.

  "That is evil, evil stuff. But when it blows away later, it'll take any other stink with it."

  Opal tapped Richard on the forehead. "Don't say sorry again."

  He grinned and shook his head.

  "All right," said Brian. "Take out your gear, and let's take a look."

  Around the workshop stood several wooden workbenches with clamps and tools, covered with bits of bicycles and other equipment, not to mention sawdust, metal filings and the heavy smell of oil, currently contaminated with sharp chemical scents leaking through the door. Opal made room on the least cluttered bench, then laid her backpack on top. From the pack, she extracted a pair of goggles and what looked like an ordinary white sweatshirt.

  Brian used a clamp to hold a spyball camera in place behind the goggles. Then, even though there were four wallscreens in place, he unfolded a small display and positioned it in front of the goggles. Then he tapped his phone, and the screen lit up, showing a rotating abstract pattern.

  "Test pattern. Opal, let's have the blackout cloth."

  She rummaged on a shelf, then backed out bearing a folded black cloth. It looked flimsy as she opened it out, spreading it with Brian's help over the workbench, forming a tent over spyball, goggles, and the screen with the test pattern.

  "The cloth's one hundred percent opaque," said Brian. "Lightweight but optically dense."

  "Oh." Richard looked at the wall screen. "You're testing the goggle's response."

  "Bright lad." Brian pointed his phone at a wallscreen, causing it to show numeric data plus a copy of the changing test pattern. "Now we cross-check the calibration."

  "It's all right, isn't it?" said Opal.

  "Your long-wavelength response is a little skewed." Brian pointed. "So it ain't perfect. But safe enough to use."

  "Good."

  Richard looked from one to the other. "Use for what?"

  "Night run," said Opal.

  "Tonight." Brian grinned. "You'll see."

  "And the shirt." Opal laid the sweatshirt on the bench, clipped a thin cable to the fabric, and held out the other end of the cable. It had a phone connector. "You got the downloads ready?"

  "Uh-huh. How's it working at the moment?"

  "All right, I think."

  "Let's see."

  Opal did something, then star-shaped splashes of sapphire blue and glimmering emerald radiated from the centre of the shirt, pulsing over and over. After a moment, the red outline of a gekrunner began tumbling through extreme gymnastics across the blazing
background.

  "Wow," said Richard.

  "It's so old." Opal looked pleased anyway. "Need something new for tonight."

  "I've got just the thing," said Brian, taking the cable. "Switch it off, and I'll run the download."

  "Lots of bright colours?"

  "Absolutely."

  "None of your political slogans?"

  "Not for you."

  "But no pink, right?"

  "Wouldn't dream of it." Brian looked at Richard. "I hope you're memorising all this. If you buy her a present, it can be anything but pink."

  "I don't–" His face was warming. "Er…"

  "Maybe a pink face is all right."

  "You're both stupid," said Opal. "I'm going. I'll be back later."

  She started towards the main shop, then stopped, perhaps remembering the noxious aerosol spray, and headed for the back door, which she slammed open, stormed through, and hooked backwards with her heel. "–ing boys," floated back as the door banged shut. "Something I said?" asked Brian.

  Bright sunshine. Stinking black bags filled with household refuse, stacked outside houses, waiting for services that would not come until the strike was over. That would mean the union and management sitting down to negotiate, pulling their thumbs out of their butts and talking to each other like actual human beings, abandoning the chip-on-shoulder resentment that was the national pastime. Josh had fought in Zimbabwe, in the former Somalia, and on the ice-covered steppes of Siberia. Every conflict was awful; each had provided glimpses of ordinary people, sometimes working heroically to keep their families or neighbours from starving, often amid surroundings that made Britain a paradise in comparison, every house an imperial palace.

  People should have some fucking gratitude.

  In a small park with pollution-stained grass, Josh sat beneath a tree, working his phone. His new querybots were popping up a richness of data, hits tagged gekrunning, freerunning or both. Among the surveillance data, none crossmatched exactly with the search argument Opal, but among the myriad currents of microblogs, he found something related – an avatar called OpalKid273, who had posted today:

  nite run *2nite* ru up 4 it? nu route nu shirt nu

  trx!!!

  Most of her subscribers were in the run_gek_run forum. Hyperlinks had been bidirectional since Semantic Web, but few users realised the ease with which querybots could heuristically backtrack. Philip Broomhall had asked how it was that Josh Cumberland could do more than the police; the truth was that it did take many eyes to search for a missing youth, but Josh had an army of observers – they just weren't human, they were code.

  In the gekrunning subculture, night runs were a feature; and tonight's run, according to the forums, was an unofficial part of the Mayor's Festival, set up years ago by some politician called Boris Livingstone, or something – he didn't bother checking. Perhaps, if OpalKid273 was the right person, she would have Richard Broomhall in tow tonight. His best inductivereasoning bots were searching for links between the avatar and real images, ready to notify him in near-realtime if she appeared.

  Bringing himself back to the real world, he scanned the park, the stunted trees and rust-patched playground, noting shadows and geometry, angles of movement, and the thirteen people currently here, none paying attention to him or close enough to attack. Then he raised the phone.

  "Call Big Tel."

  "Hiya, mate," Terry answered in a second. "How's tricks?"

  "Usual. Are you free tonight?"

  "Had a busy morning, loads of legit fares, plus a little observation job at the same time. Putting my feet up now."

  "So if you and your taxi were on standby for a callout, that'd work?"

  "Depends where it is you're talking about."

  "South Bank, or close to it."

  "Easy enough from the Old Kent Road. Give us a buzz and I'll be there. Prep for trouble?"

  "A fourteen year-old lad. I might be able to handle him."

  "Watch out for him squeezing zits at you. The old pus-in-the-eye trick."

  "Jesus, Tel. You were a kid once yourself."

  "Yeah, I had a strong right hand and poor eyesight, from all that puberty."

  "And look how you turned out."

  "Suave and sophisticated. A gentleman, like."

  "Pretty much what I was thinking."

  "Later, pal."

  "Later."

  He wanted to phone Suzanne, but her phone was bugged. Except that he could always introduce a little misdirection. In his phone's Favourite Apps, he opened a hotel and pub guide, then tapped an improbable series of keystrokes on the pad, stared at the lens so it could read his retina pattern, and placed the call. His signal now carried sneakware that subverted the GPSID system, changing the coordinates of his phone as logged in the data tier. So long as he and Suzanne were careful with their words, it was safe.

  "Hey," he said.

  "Josh. You're doing OK?"

  "Yeah."

  "Any luck on… you know." She was being circumspect, but if the police were monitoring the case, they knew what he was working on.

  "Maybe Richard has a friend, maybe not. If I can find this person, it might help."

  "That's good."

  "Suzanne? Are you OK?"

  "Disciplinary hearing. I've been served notice."

  "What do you mean, disciplinary hearing?"

  "Mr Broomhall has taken legal action through the

  professional association I belong to. Apparently, that does not preclude the possibility of further action through the courts, it says here."

  "Shit. Are you suspended?"

  "No, but they tried for that. The review board agreed that the case was serious, but not that the initial evidence was so strong that I needed to be kept from seeing clients in advance of the hearing. They advised me to let my insurance company know what was happening, and not take on any new clients."

  "You'll be all right. I'm sure you will."

  "Thanks, but Broomhall has expensive lawyers, and I don't. The army with the biggest guns wins, isn't that how it works?"

  Josh stared at her in the phone.

  "You know, when Thatcher was prime minister forty years ago, a full-blooded Marxist coup clamped down on the Gambia republic, taking their prime minister's family hostage. Said prime minister was visiting Britain at the time – he was an ally – so old Iron Maggie didn't take too kindly to that."

  "I know where the Gambia is. I don't know this story."

  "Three – count 'em – three Regiment guys went in country to investigate, and discovered that the rebels were holding the family in a hospital. The guys went in openly and without weapons, knowing they would be searched."

  In the phone, Suzanne nodded, though her expression remained unhappy.

  "But they didn't need weapons," he went on, "because once inside, they beat the bejesus out of some of the guards, took away their guns, and proceeded to extract the family. Spirited them away in the night. In and out like ghosts."

  "You mean like ninjas?"

  "Yeah, like that. The thing was, that was all it took for the coup to collapse and the government to reinstate itself. Three quiet guys."

  Suzanne bit her (very kissable) lower lip.

  "You're an interesting man, Mr Cumberland."

  "And you're not so bad, Dr Duchesne."

  "You want to meet up for lunch tomorrow? In Victoria would be best for me."

  "If I can. I'll ring you in the morning to confirm. Say, ten-ish?"

  "Yes. Good luck."

  He rang off, checked the surrounding park again. Three people had left, none had entered, and all appeared quiet. A boomglobe played music. Outside the railings, a group of youths was passing. Suddenly, one guy leaped up, hit the railings and flipped over backwards to land in a crouch, then threw himself into a shoulder roll and came up to his feet. The others laughed, one clapped his shoulder; then the group continued onward, joking about something.

  The gekrunners are gathering.

  Or maybe they w
ere freerunners, but two of them wore backpacks that might contain gek-gloves and boots. He could jog after them, catch them up and ask about Richard or Opal, but it might have the opposite effect to what he wanted. They looked like lads who would be suspicious of the law, or someone who acted halfway official – witness the thugs in the café who had assumed he was a police officer, simply because of the way he stood and used his voice.