Windswept

by Adam Rakunas

  I looked around and saw Nariel had fallen much farther than me. She hung on to the edge of the net, trying to kick her feet up to get a better grip. Whether she just couldn’t find the strength or finesse the move, I couldn’t tell, and, honestly, I was beyond giving a shit. Her eyes were wide in terror. It would be so easy to do nothing.

  The Fear hissed, Do it. She’s everything that’s hurt you. Let her go.

  I held out a hand. “Grab on!” I shouted.

  Nariel reached out, but her fingers slipped out of mine. I grabbed for her arm, but her armor was so covered with molasses that she just slid away. Her look of horror turned to a bitter smile as she made that horrible coughing laugh and fell. She kept falling, still laughing and flipping me the double bird as she got smaller and smaller.

  I half-crawled, half-slipped back to the can, and found the lighter. Its flame was weak, but I shielded it as I held it onto the cloud of gunpowder. It went up with a foomp, and then the rum lit into a massive fireball that threw me off my feet as I ducked away. The flames licked the ceiling of the can, and I kicked my way out the door as the molasses caught fire. The heat bit at my back as I skidded away and leaped back over the safety rail.

  The netting held, and I crawled to its edge and looked up. The flames spread as the heat caused the other drums to auto-ignite. Burning molasses dribbled down the sides of the platform, sizzling holes in the netting. I wouldn’t be able to stay here long, but, as I saw another tender ring approach, I wouldn’t have to. I jumped again, hitting the ring’s deck and rolling. Everything hurt, and it was cold as hell, but I was free of the burning crawler.

  It was now a five-story-tall torch, the heat so intense that pieces of its superstructure began to screech as they cracked away. The platforms groaned, and then, like a felled palm tree, the entire thing hovered in air for a moment before the weakened metal snapped, and all five platforms tumbled straight down. I covered my head as burning debris fell through the ring, some of it smacking next to my body. The crawler fell, smashing into the one below it, its burning bulk snapping free until it came down, and on and on, all the way to the ground.

  I rolled over and looked down. It was going to be a hell of a mess at the lifter port, and I hoped I wouldn’t be named in too many lawsuits. Still, that whole thing had gone better than I’d hoped. I could survive up here for a day or however long it took for a crew to start surveying the damage. I felt in my pockets and realized I still had my flask. I knew the alcohol wouldn’t help with the cold, would actually make things worse, but what the hell. I unscrewed the cap and gagged before throwing it away. I’d forgotten that I’d filled with Saarien’s molasses so I could get a sample to Tonggow. I should’ve held onto a bottle, just on principle.

  The entire tender ring shook and rattled, and a twenty-story-tall tower of burning metal roared upward. One of the crawlers’ grips still worked, and the collection of debris was so big and wide that it snagged my perch. With a screech, the ring tore free of its tethers, and dragged along into the sky.

  Hurray for WalWa engineering, I thought as the sky turned violet.

  It got colder fast, and the fire actually burned itself out. Pretty soon, I’d black out. Too bad. It would have been nice to get a view from topside. Like the one the cable apes got every day when they worked. Better than the views in the treatment plant. Jesus, had I really let Jordan and Bloombeck and all those people work there? They just wanted a better life, and I treated them like they were pains in my ass.

  Just like Soni. She was always pushing me to do the right thing, to forget about upping my headcount and just do something. Easy for her to say, what with her badge and calling and community respect. I shivered and wished I’d had her cat with me, just to curl up with it. She had a cat, right? Where do people get cats? The pet bank?

  Banks. Who would take care of Banks? He’d do OK with Wash, right? Wash could use a lawyer who knew fifty ways to kill. Wash would be cool. Or chilly. I meant Jilly. Fucking hell it was cold, and the sky was so dark. Maybe Banks and Wash would look after Jilly, and she’d look after the airship.

  Airship?

  Yeah, like the one that was closing in on me, the one that was so close I could hear its engines screaming and see Jilly and Soni in the cockpit as it swung around and maneuvered above me. The airship with the loading claw that was reaching out.

  That airship. The one with the sweet, sweet smell of recycled air filled with rust, dust, and enough oxygen to make me think I’d died and gone to pharmacological heaven. I sank to the deck, and Soni, beautiful, bald Soni pulled me into the cockpit and slammed the hatch shut.

  “Don’t talk,” she said as she wrapped me in a blanket and put an oxygen mask on my face. “I know that’s tough, but don’t talk.”

  “OK,” I said, getting even higher as she cranked up the airflow. I felt like I was still tied to the cable, except without the fear of dying.

  “Everything’s under control,” she said as she monkeyed with an IV drip. “For the most part.”

  “Yay,” I said.

  “We got the twins, and they helped us find the can with Bloombeck’s lab,” she said. “And you stopped the traffic, though you picked a hell of a way to do it.”

  “Plus you made it so we could steal this airship,” said Jilly from the pilot’s seat. “No one noticed us take off. I think I like flying better than driving.”

  “Get a license,” I said, then caught my breath as whatever was in the drip hit my system. It was like getting a headful of morning air while having an orgasm. A voice in the back of my head said to relax, and who was I not to listen?

  “You’re in some serious shit, Padma,” said Soni. “I mean, you stopped the bad molasses, but...”

  “S’OK,” I said, melting into the deck. “Got a lawyer.”

  Soni flexed her jaw. “I’m not sure about that.”

  Everything felt wonderful, so very wonderful that I didn’t notice how wet her eyes were until a tear slipped down her cheek.

  “Banks?” I said, not even sure where my own voice came from.

  She shook her head. “He was helping evacuate the platform when the debris came down,” she said. “It’s still on fire down there, and it’s so hot that there might not even be a body...”

  “Hey,” Jilly said, “how do you land one of these things?”

  “Just like taking off,” I said, “only backwards,” and then I was out.

  Epilogue

  “So,” said Odd Dupree. “Glenn wants me to go back to my old job. Turns out having me home is putting a strain on our marriage.”

  I rubbed my temples. “Really.”

  Odd nodded. “Yeah. The less time we’re together, it makes one of those absence makes the heart grow fonder kind of things.”

  “And how do you feel about that?”

  Odd blinked. “Really? You want to know that?”

  “No, but you might as well tell me,” I said, motioning to Big Lily for a refill. She brought me a fresh mug of heavy mint and a plate of kumara cakes.

  Odd shook his head. “That’s OK, Padma. It’s enough that you care. Can you get me switched?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll send you the forms.”

  Odd shook my hand and twitched his way out the door. I reached for a cake, tore it in half, and popped a piece in my mouth. It was fluffy and sweet, and it burned like hell. I opened my mouth, curling back my lips to keep the cake inside, and sucked fresh air in. I was so busy trying to put out the fire that I didn’t notice Soni take the seat next to me.

  “You will never learn,” she said, putting her patrol cap on the bartop. Her captain’s bars had been replaced with a gold star. A whole lot of chiefs had been sacked when Saarien talked about payoffs he’d made. I hadn’t seen Soni on the street in weeks.

  “It tastes better when it’s fresh,” I said around the kumara.

  “And molten.”

  “That’s part of the experience,” I said, reaching for my tea. The heavy mint was soothing, though m
y tongue still prickled from the steam burns.

  “Well, it’s a good thing you’re into masochism,” said Soni.

  “You work as a Union recruiter for long enough, you have to be,” I said, looking out across the lanai. Two weeks ago, lifter traffic had finally started again, though there weren’t as many loaded crawlers making their way up the cable. The stoppage had put a massive dent in the local economy, and the mad rush to contain the black stripe had made an even bigger dent. Fortunately, there was enough of Saarien’s molasses left over on the ground to keep everything rolling along, and the lawsuits that sucked his accounts dry had helped, too. Still, it would be a long time before Santee was back on steady footing.

  Soni reached into her breast pocket and produced an envelope. She set it down on the bar and nudged it toward me.

  I looked at the envelope like it was a dead seagull. “What’s that supposed to be?”

  “Open it, and you’ll see.”

  “If I don’t open it, does that mean I can ignore it?”

  “You never used to be afraid of paper before,” said Soni.

  “That’s because I was never this broke before,” I said. “If it’s a bill, I can’t pay it. If it’s a summons for another inquiry, I can’t pay for a lawyer. If it’s a request to pony up for the Peace Officers’ Picnic and Rum Tasting, then you can forget it. I always crash that, anyway.”

  “That’s stealing,” said Soni. “The picnic pays for our Widows and Orphans Fund.”

  “How many police widows and orphans are there, anyway?” I said.

  “A lot more, since those Ghosts showed up,” said Soni.

  I sighed. “What’s the latest count?”

  “Nothing new, thank God,” said Soni. “There are still a few stevedores missing, but I’m following a few rumors that they were never at work that day.”

  “Where were they?”

  “The kampong, with their Freeborn lovers.”

  “Is there a fund for that?”

  “Only for their funerals when their spouses catch them,” said Soni. “Now, are you going to open this damn thing, or what?”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “I have to get to work in fifteen minutes, and I don’t really want any bad news ruining my shift.”

  “You’re mucking out the mains,” said Soni. “I don’t see how that could get any worse.”

  “It leaves me plenty of time to think.”

  “You couldn’t have passed that Slot on to someone else?”

  “I treat it like a kind of penance for what happened to Bloombeck,” I said. “Besides, no one else wants the job, and it’s gotta get done.” I pointed at the envelope. “Can’t you give me a hint?”

  “Nope,” said Soni, “’cause I have no idea what it is.”

  “Really?” I said, giving the envelope a closer look. It was small, plain, and white. My name was written on the front in neat, tight letters. “Don’t your magical cop powers let you see through paper?”

  “Sure,” said Soni, “but your little friend, the kid from the kampong, dropped it off on the way to flight school. The whole package was wrapped inside a dozen writs that threatened all sorts of legal doom to anyone who reads this envelope’s contents and isn’t you.”

  “Since when has that stopped you?”

  “Since never,” said Soni, “but it also came with fifty hundred-yuan notes, each of them with my name written on it.”

  “Nice touch.”

  “I thought so,” said Soni. “Widows and Orphans certainly appreciated it.”

  I picked up the envelope and cut it open with a nearby table knife. Inside were two pieces of paper.

  The first was a receipt, dated yesterday. It was for a one-way ticket to some planet I had never heard of. I blinked it up; the place was right on the edge of Occupied Space, a Union-run world used as a jumping-off point for idiots who wanted to go to the Beyond.

  Idiots, or people who needed to run away.

  I looked at the second piece of paper and my heart stopped. It was a deed for the Old Windswept Distillery, lock, stock, and carefully charred barrels. I looked over the thing twice and blinked all the bar codes into the Public. The deed was legitimate.

  There was no signature on either one, no way to tell who’d sent it. But I didn’t need that. I knew where they’d come from. Banks had made it after all.

  “Good stuff?” said Soni, nodding at the paper.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I think they’re going-away presents.”

  “What, are you leaving?”

  “Who, me?” I said, putting the papers into my pocket. “No, I’m here for good. Besides, I got a trillion-yuan debt to pay back.”

  “I thought that was a bit excessive, sticking you with the bill for rebuilding the lifter.”

  “I was the one who blew it up.”

  “Yeah, but it was to stop that Ghost. It was to protect us.”

  “I suppose that’s why they knocked two trillion off the original judgment.” I patted the deed. “I’m going to be OK, Soni. Really.”

  Soni stared at me, and then someone outside Big Lily’s tooted on a trumpet. A clarinet answered back, then a harmonium spun up, and a chorus of voices began to sing, “Oh, great is her might, and strong is her fist...”

  “Oh, God,” said Soni. “Not this again.”

  “What?” I said. “You don’t like my theme song?”

  “I’m still not sure what you did to deserve a theme song,” she said.

  The Brushhead Memorial Band reached the chorus, and everyone joined in. “Oh, Padma, Sky Queen of Justice, we raise our glasses to you!”

  I waved, then sipped my tea, washing the heavy mint around my mouth. The air drifted in off the ocean, carrying the smell of lamb stew and dead bicycle tires and molasses. Soni rolled her eyes, but she sang along, the whole place swaying back and forth to the band. It was five o’clock. Time for Happy Hour. And in an hour I would go home, light my candle, and have my sip of Old Windswept.

  I still haven’t dreamed yet. But as I breathed in the evening air, I figured, hell, this would do.

  Acknowledgments

  I started this book on July 27, 2007, at a hotel bar in Waikiki, Honolulu, Hawaii, pecking away at a tiny Bluetooth keyboard that propped up a Nokia e61. I finished that first draft in a motel room in Lakeview, Arkansas, on July 6, 2009 on an Apple MacBook Pro. A lot happened between me stumbling into the bar and loading up on eight-dollar glasses of pineapple juice, and me sprawling on a bed, finishing the last lines before going trout fishing. Even more happened between wrapping up that first draft and delivering the final version to your hands. Most of it was good, and the good stuff happened thanks to the following people:

  Ken Brady and Yuki Sakai, who asked me to officiate at their wedding and then had the ceremony in Hawaii, which lead me to that hotel bar. This book wouldn’t have happened without them.

  David Ivory, Jason Stoddard, S Ben Melhuish, Derek Powazek, Christopher East, and Daryl Gregory, who read versions of Windswept and took the time to tell me what worked and what didn’t.

  The gang at Starry Heaven ’10: Brad Beaulieu, Deb Coates, Brenda Cooper, Kris Dikeman, Robert Joseph Levy, Jenn Reese, Bill Shunn, Greg Van Eekhout, Rob Ziegler, and our fearless leader, Sarah K Castle. Special thanks and extra rum rations to Bill and Brad, who read the whole thing and very politely tore it to tiny, tiny pieces. Super special thanks and a Mojito of Merit to Sarah K Castle, who organized the whole thing. The patio at the Zane Gray is calling to us, people. We should do that again.

  Magdalen Faith Powers, whose copy editing skills are unparalleled. Thank you for keeping me from looking like a jackass when it came time to submit this book to agents, Maggie.

  Joshua Bilmes, Right Hand of Doom Sam Morgan, and everyone at JABberwocky Literary.

  Phil Jourdan, Caroline Lambe, Penny Reeve, Mike Underwood, and Cybernetic Overmind Marc Gascoigne at Angry Robot.

  My parents, who taught me how to read and write and did not sell me into indentur
ed servitude.

  My brother, Chris, because why not? Also, you should totally buy his books, too.

  Grace, who took really long naps and let me finish, and Anne, who wouldn’t let me quit. Man, I love you both.