When Gravity Fails

by George Alec Effinger

  Someone screamed.

  I took the money and turned to see what was happening. Two of Chiri’s girls were throwing themselves down on the floor. I started to get out of my chair. I saw James Bond, an old pistol in his hand. I was willing to bet it was a genuine antique Beretta or Walther PPK. There was a single shot, as loud in the small nightclub as the detonation of an artillery shell. I ran up the narrow aisle between the booths and tables, but after a few steps I realized that I’d never get near him. James Bond had turned and forced his way out of the club. Behind him, the girls and the customers were shrieking and pushing and clawing their way to safety. I couldn’t make my way through the panic. The goddamn moddy had taken his little fantasy to the ultimate tonight, firing a pistol in a crowded room. He’d probably replay that scene in his memory for years. He’d have to be satisfied with that, because if he ever showed his face around the Street again, he’d get jammed up so bad he’d have to be modified to hell and back just to pass as a human being again.

  Slowly the club quieted down. There’d be a lot to talk about tonight. The girls would need plenty of drinks to soothe their nerves, and they’d need lots of comforting. They’d cry on the suckers’ shoulders, and the suckers would buy them lots of drinks.

  Chiri caught my eye. “Bwana Marîd,” she said softly, “put that money in your pocket, and then get back to your table.”

  I realized that I was waving the three thousand kiam around like a handful of little flags. I stuffed the bills in a pocket of my jeans and went back to Bogatyrev. He hadn’t moved an inch during all the excitement. It takes more than a fool with a loaded gun to upset these steely-nerved types. I sat down again. “I’m sorry about the interruption,” I said.

  I picked up my drink and looked at Bogatyrev. He didn’t answer me. There was a dark stain spreading slowly across the front of his white silk Russian peasant blouse. I just stared at him for a long time, sipping my drink, knowing that the next few days were going to be a nightmare. At last I stood up and turned toward the bar, but Chiri was already there beside me, her phone in her hand. I took it from her without a word and murmured Lieutenant Okking’s code into it.

  2

  The next morning, very early, the phone started to ring. I woke up, bleary and sick to my stomach. I listened to the ringing, waiting for it to stop. It wouldn’t. I turned over and tried to ignore it; it just kept ringing and ringing. Ten, twenty, thirty—I swore softly and reached across Yasmin’s sleeping body and dug for the phone in the heap of clothing. “Yeah?” I said when I found it at last. I didn’t feel friendly at all.

  “I had to get up even earlier than you, Audran,” said Lieutenant Okking. “I’m already at my desk.”

  “We all sleep easier, knowing you’re on the job,” I said. I was still burned about what he’d done to me the night before. After the regular questioning, I’d had to hand over the package the Russian had given me before he died. I never even had a chance to peek inside.

  “Remind me to laugh twice next time, I’m too busy now,” Okking said. “Listen, I owe you a little something for being so cooperative.”

  I held the phone to my ear with one hand and reached for my pill case with the other. I fumbled it open and took out a couple of little blue triangles. They’d wake me up fast. I swallowed them dry and waited to hear the fragment of information Okking was dangling. “Well?” I said.

  “Your friend Bogatyrev should have come to us instead. It didn’t take us very long to match his tapes with our files. His missing son was killed accidentally almost three years ago. We never had an identification on the body.”

  There was a few seconds of silence while I thought about that. “So the poor bastard didn’t have to meet me last night, and he didn’t have to end up with that red, ragged hole in his shirt.”

  “Funny how life works out, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. Remind me to laugh twice next time,” I said. “Tell me what you know about him.”

  “Who? Bogatyrev or his son?”

  “I don’t care, either or both. All I know is some little man wanted me to do a job. He wanted me to find his son for him. I wake up this morning, and both he and the kid are dead.”

  “He should have come to us,” said Okking.

  “They have a history, where he came from, of not going to the police. Voluntarily, that is.”

  Okking chewed that over, deciding whether he liked it or not. He let it ride. “So there goes your income,” he said, pretending sympathy. “Bogatyrev was some kind of political middleman for King Vyacheslav of Byelorussia and the Ukraine. Bogatyrev’s son was an embarrassment to the Byelorussian legation. All the petty Russias are working overtime to establish their credibility, and the Bogatyrev boy was getting into one scandal after another. His father should have left him at home, then they’d both still be alive.”

  “Maybe. How’d the boy die?”

  Okking paused, probably calling up the file on his screen to be certain. “All it says is that he was killed in a traffic accident. Made an illegal turn, was broadsided by a truck, the other driver wasn’t charged. The kid had no identification, the vehicle he was driving was stolen. His body was kept in the morgue for a year, but no one claimed it. After that . . .”

  “After that it was sold for scrap.”

  “I suppose you feel involved in this case, Marîd, but you’re not. Finding that James Bond maniac is a police matter.”

  “Yeah, I know.” I made a face; my mouth tasted like boiled fur.

  “I’ll keep you posted,” said Okking. “Maybe I’ll have some work for you.”

  “If I run into that moddy first, I’ll wrap him up and drop him by your office.”

  “Sure, kid.” Then there was a sharp click as Okking banged his phone down.

  We’re all one big, happy family. “Yeah, you right,” I muttered to myself. I laid my head down on the pillow, but I knew I wasn’t going back to sleep. I just stared at the peeling paint on the ceiling, hoping that I’d get through another week without it falling on me.

  “Who was that? Okking?” murmured Yasmin. She was still turned away from me, curled up with her hands between her knees.

  “Uh huh. You go back to sleep.” She already was back to sleep. I scratched my head for a little while, hoping the tri-phets would hit before I gave in and got sick. I rolled off the mattress and stood up, feeling a pounding in my temples that hadn’t been there a moment ago. After the friendly shakedown by Okking last night, I’d gone up the Street, knocking back drinks in one club after another. Somewhere along the line I must have run into Yasmin, because here she was. The proof was indisputable.

  I dragged myself to the bathroom and stood under the shower until I ran out of hot water. The drugs still hadn’t come on. I toweled myself mostly dry, debating whether to take another blue triangle or just blow off the whole day and go back to bed. I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking. I brushed my teeth and that took care of the terrible taste in my mouth. I started to brush my hair, but it seemed like too much effort, so I went back out into the other room and pulled on a clean shirt and my jeans.

  It took me ten minutes to hunt down my boots. They were under Yasmin’s clothes, for some reason. Now I was dressed. If only the goddamn pills would kick in, I could face the world. Don’t talk to me about eating. I’d done that the day before yesterday.

  I left Yasmin a note telling her to lock the door on her way out. Yasmin was one of the few people I trusted alone in my apartment. We always had a good time together, and I think we really cared about each other in some unspoken, fragile way. We were both afraid to push it, to test it, but we both knew it was there. I think it’s because Yasmin hadn’t been born a girl. Maybe spending half of your life one sex and half of your life the other does something to your perceptions. Of course, I knew lots of other sex-changes I couldn’t get along with at all. Well, you just can’t ge
t away with generalizations. Not even to be kind.

  Yasmin was fully modified, inside and out, body and mind. She had one of those perfect bodies, one of the ones you order out of a catalog. You sit down with the guy in the clinic and he shows you the book. You say, “How about these tits?” and he tells you how much, and you say, “This waist?” and he gives you an estimate for breaking your pelvic bones and resetting them, and you have your Adam’s apple shaved down and you pick out your facial features and your ass and your legs. Sometimes you could even go for new eye color. They can help you with your hair, and the beard is a matter of drugs and one magical clinical procedure. You end up with a customized self, just like restoring an old gasoline automobile.

  I looked across the room at Yasmin. Her long, straight, black hair—that’s what I thought was her best asset, and she was born with it. It was hers all the way. There wasn’t much else about her that was original equipment—even, when she was chipping in, her personality—but it all looked and functioned real nice. There was always something about a change, though, something that gave her away. The hands and feet, for instance; the clinics didn’t want to touch them, there were too many bones. Female changes always had big feet, men’s feet. And for some reason, they always had this slight nasal voice. I could always pick that up, even if nothing else told the T.

  I thought I was an expert on reading people. What did I know? That’s why I stuck myself out on a limb and handed down an ax to whoever felt like taking a whack.

  Outside in the hall, the tri-phets finally flowered. It was like the whole world suddenly took a deep breath, expanding like a balloon. I caught my balance by grabbing at the railing, and then started downstairs. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do, but it was about time to start hustling up some money. The rent was coming due, and I didn’t want to have to go to The Man to borrow it. I shoved my hands in my pockets and felt bills. Of course. The Russian had given me three big ones the night before. I took the money out and counted it; there was about twenty-eight hundred kiam left. Yasmin and I must have had some wild party on the other two hundred. I wished I remembered it.

  When I hit the sidewalk, I was almost blinded by the sun. I don’t function very well in the daytime. I shaded my eyes with a hand and looked up and down the street. No one else was about; the Budayeen hides from the light. I headed toward the Street with the vague idea of running a few errands. I could afford to run them now, I had money. I grinned; the drugs were pumping me up, and the twenty-eight hundred kiam lifted me the rest of the way. I had my rent made, all my expenses paid for the next three months or so. Time to lay in supplies: replenish the stock in the pill case, treat myself to a few luxury caps and tabs, pay off a couple of debts, buy a little food. The rest would go in the bank. I have a tendency to fritter away money if it sits around too long in my pocket. Better to salt it away, turn it into electronic credit. I don’t allow myself to carry a credit charge-card—that way I can’t bankrupt myself some night when I’m too loaded to know what I’m doing. I spend cash, or I don’t spend at all. You can’t fritter bytes, not without a card.

  I turned toward the eastern gate when I got to the Street. The nearer I came to the wall the more people I saw—my neighbors going out into the city like me, tourists coming into the Budayeen during the slack time. The outsiders were just fooling themselves. They could get into just as much trouble in broad daylight.

  There was a little barricade set up at the corner of Fourth Street, where the city was doing some street repair. I leaned against the posts to overhear the conversations of a couple of hustlers out for the early trade—or, if they hadn’t yet made enough money to go home, it might still be last night for them. I’d listened to this stuff a million times before, but James Bond had got me pondering moddies, and so these negotiations took on a slightly new meaning today.

  “Hello,” said this short, thin mark. He was wearing European clothing, and he spoke Arabic like someone who had studied the language for three months in a school where no one, neither teacher nor pupils, had ever come within five thousand miles of a date palm.

  The bint was taller than he by about a foot and a half, but give some of that to the black spike-heeled boots. She probably wasn’t a real woman, but a change or a pre-op deb; but the guy didn’t know or care. She was impressive. Hustlers in the Budayeen have to be impressive, just to be noticed. We don’t have a lot of plain, mousy housewives living on the Street. She was dressed in a kind of short-skirted black frilly thing with no back or sleeves, lots of visibility down the front, cinched around the waist with a solid silver chain with a Roman Catholic rosary dangling from it. She wore dramatic purple and pink paints and a beautiful mass of auburn hair, artfully arranged to frame her face in defiance of all known laws of natural science. “Lookin’ to go out?” she asked. When she spoke, I read her for someone who still had a masculine set of chromosomes in every one of her refurbished body’s cells, whatever was beneath that skirt.

  “Maybe,” said the trick. He was playing it cagey.

  “Lookin’ for anybody special?”

  The man licked his lips nervously. “I was hoping to find Ashla.”

  “Uh uh, baby, sorry. Lips, hips, or fingertips, I don’t do no Ashla.” She looked away for a second and spat. “You go by that girl, I think she got Ashla.” She pointed to a deb I knew. The trick nodded his thanks and crossed the street. I accidentally caught the first whore’s eyes. “Fuck, man,” she said, laughing a little. Then she was watching the Street again, looking for lunch money. A couple of minutes later another man came up to her and had the same conversation. “Lookin’ for anybody special?”

  This guy, a little taller than the first and a lot heavier, said “Brigitte?” He sounded apologetic.

  She dug in her black vinyl purse and brought out a plastic rack of moddies. A moddy is a lot bigger than a daddy, which usually just chips right into a socket on the side of the moddy you’re using, or onto the cory plug in your skull if you’re not wired for moddies or if you just feel like being yourself. The girl held a pink plastic moddy in one hand and put the rack back in her purse. “Here she go, your main woman. Brigitte, she be real popular, she get a lot of airplay. She cost you more.”

  “I know,” said the trick. “How much?”

  “You tell me,” she said, thinking he might be a cop setting her up. That kind of thing still happened whenever the religious authorities ran out of infidels to persecute. “How much you got to spend?”

  “Fifty?”

  “For Brigitte, man?”

  “A hundred?”

  “An’ fifteen for the room. You come with me, sugar.” They walked off along Fourth Street. Ain’t love grand.

  I knew who Ashla was and who Brigitte was, but I wondered who all the other moddies in that rack might be. It wasn’t worth a hundred kiam a throw to find out, though. Plus fifteen for the room. So this Titian-haired hustler goes off with her sweetheart and chips Brigitte in, and she becomes Brigitte, and she’s everything he remembers her being; and it would always be the same, whoever used a Brigitte moddy, woman, deb, or sex-change.

  I went through the eastern gate and I was halfway to the bank when I stopped suddenly in front of a jewelry store. Something was gnawing at the edge of my mind. There was some idea trying to burst its way into my consciousness. It was an uncomfortable, ticklish feeling; there didn’t seem to be any way to help it, either. Maybe it was only the tri-phets I’d taken; I can get pretty carried away with meaningless thoughts when I’m humming like that. But no, it was more than just drug inspiration. There was something about Bogatyrev’s murder or the conversation I’d had on the phone with Okking. There was something wrong.

  I thought over as much of that business as I could remember. Nothing stood out in my memory as unusual; Okking’s bit had been a brush-off, I realized, but it was just the standard cop brush-off: “Look, this is a matter for the police, we don’t need you sticking your nose into it, you had a job last night but it blew up in
your face, so thank you very much.” I’ve heard the same line from Okking before, a hundred times. So why did it feel so wonky today?

  I shook my head. If there was something to it, I’d figure it out. I filed it away in my backbrain; it would stew there and either boil away into nothing or simmer down into a cold, hard fact that I could use. Until then, I didn’t want to bother about it. I wanted to enjoy the warmth and strength and confidence I was getting from the drugs. I’d pay for that when I crashed, so I wanted to get my money’s worth.

  Maybe ten minutes later, just as I was getting to the bank’s sidewalk teller terminals, my phone rang again. I plucked it off my belt. “Yeah?” I said.

  “Marîd? This is Nikki.” Nikki was a crazy change, worked as a whore for one of Friedlander Bey’s jackals. About a year ago I had been pretty friendly with her, but she was just too much trouble. When you were with her, you had to keep track of the pills and the drinks she was taking; one too many and Nikki got belligerent and completely incoherent. Every time we went out, it ended up in a brawl. Before her modifications, Nikki had been a tall, muscular male, I guess—stronger than I am. Even after the sex change, she was still impossible to handle in a fight. Trying to drag her off the people she imagined had insulted her was an ordeal. Getting her calmed down and safely home was exhausting. Finally I decided that I liked her when she was straight, but the rest of it just wasn’t worth it. I saw her now and then, said hello and gossiped, but I didn’t want to wade into any more of her drunken, screaming, senseless conflicts.

  “Say, Nikki, where you at?”

  “Marîd, baby, can I see you today? I really need you to do me a favor.”

  Here we go, I thought. “Sure, I guess. What’s up?”

  There was a short pause while she thought about how she was going to phrase this. “I don’t want to work for Abdoulaye anymore.” That was the name of Friedlander Bey’s bottleholder. Abdoulaye had about a dozen girls and boys on wires all around the Budayeen.