He tightened his grip on the cue.
‘Try to hit me with that thing,’ said the black man softly, ‘I will kill you.’
Dougie’s heart kicked in his chest. He felt the rage flicker, over-stoked, held too long, suddenly unreliable. Tiny, rain-drip voice of caution in the gap. He drew breath, forced the knowledge down.
‘Door’s over there,’ he said. ‘Just walk the fuck away.’
‘My feet are tired.’
So Dougie just swung that fucking cue like he’d always known deep down he’d have to. Lips peeled back off a snarl and the shaky lift of the held-too-long adrenal surge.
Situation like that, what else was he going fucking do?
Even as the fight bloomed, Carl could feel the small seep of disappointment at the back of it all. This swaggering low-grade gangster in front of him, a little more spine than most pimps maybe, but in the end no competition, no real threat.
Yeah, like you expected anything else out here, black-walled bunker bar in a derelict neighbourhood on the edge of an all but fully automated navy yard. Not like he hadn’t discussed it carefully enough with the autocab, walked the deserted streets for long enough looking. Face it, soak, this is exactly what you’ve been prowling for. This is what you wanted. Enjoy.
The fight was so mapped out in his head, it was almost preordained. He already had his weight braced off the stool he’d been using, some in the forearm where he leant on the bar, more in his legs than he showed. He saw the intention tremor down the other guy’s arm, grabbed a leg of the stool and yanked the whole thing savagely upward. The leg ends hit and gouged, face and chest. Swing momentum on the seat end hooked the thing round and blocked out the cue completely - the strike never made it above waist height. He let go, stepped in as the pimp reeled back, hand up to the rip in his face. The stool tumbled away. Carl threw a long chop, hard as he could make it, into the unguarded side of the throat. The pimp hit the floor, dead as far as he could tell. Elvira shrieked.
At the pool table, the pimp’s shaven-headed friend stood shocked and motionless, cue held defensively across his body in both hands. Carl stalked forward a couple of steps, proximity sense peeled for the rest of the room.
‘Well?’ he rasped.
It was half a dozen metres at most, if the skinhead had a gun he wasn’t going to have time to clear it before Carl was on him. Carl saw in his face that he knew it.
Peripheral vision, left. The barkeep, fumbling for something, phone or weapon. Carl threw out an arm, finger raised.
‘Don’t.’
On the floor, the pimp moaned and shifted. Carl checked every face in the room, calibrated probable responses, then kicked the downed man in the head. The moaning stopped.
‘What’s his name?’ he asked of the room.
‘Uh, it’s Dougie.’ The barkeep. ‘Dougie Kwang.’
‘Right. Well anyone here who’s a big friend of Dougie Kwang’s, maybe wants to stay and discuss this with me, you can. Anyone else had better leave.’
Hasty shuffle of feet, graunch of chair legs jammed back in a hurry. The thin crowd, scrabbling to leave. The door swung open for them, he felt the cold it let in touch the back of his neck. The barkeep snatched the opportunity, went too. Left him with Elvira who’d started grubbing about on the floor next to Dougie in tears, and the skinhead, who Carl guessed just didn’t trust getting safe passage to the door. He gave him a cold smile.
‘You really want to make something of this?’
‘No, he doesn’t. Look at his face. Stop being an asshole and let him go.’
Control and the mesh stopped him whipping round at the voice, the cool amusement and the iron certainty beneath. He already knew from the tone that there was a gun pointing at him. That he wasn’t on the floor next to Dougie, shot dead or dying, was the only part that didn’t make sense.
He shelved the wonder, stepped aside with ironic courtesy and gestured the skinhead to pass him. Momentary flashback to the chapel in South Florida State, the sneering white supremacist walking past him up the aisle. Suddenly, he was sick of it all, the cheap postures and moves, the use of stares, the whole fucking mechanistic predictability of the man-dance.
‘Go on,’ he said flatly. ‘Looks like you get a free pass. Better take Elvira there with you.’
He watched Dougie Kwang’s friend drop the pool cue he was clutching and come forward a hesitant step at a time. He couldn’t work out what was going on either. His eyes flickered from Carl to whoever the new arrival was and back. A numb failure to catch up was stamped across his face like a bootprint. He knelt beside the off-duty whore and tried to manhandle her to her feet. She wriggled and wept, refused to get up, hands still plastered on Dougie’s motionless form, long dark-curling hair shrouding his eyes-wide, frozen face. She keened and sobbed, half comprehensible fragments, some Sino-Spanish street mix Carl couldn’t follow well.
Enjoying our handiwork here, are we?
He wondered momentarily if, when the time came, there’d be a woman, any woman, to weep like this for him.
‘We don’t have all night,’ said the voice behind him.
Carl turned slowly, fear of the bullet prickling at the base of his neck. Time to see what the fuck had gone wrong.
Right. Like you don’t already know.
There was a tall man at the door.
A couple of others too, neither of them small, but it was this one who drew attention, the way you vectored in on colour in a drab landscape. Carl’s mesh-sharpened senses fixed on the heavy silver revolver in the raised and black-gloved hand, the bizarre, consciously antiquated statement it made, but it wasn’t that. Wasn’t the oily, slicked-back dark hair or the slight sheen on the tanned and creased white features, tell-tale marks of cell-fix facial and hair gel for an assassin who had no intention of leaving genetic trace material at the scene of his crime. Carl saw all this and set it aside for what really mattered.
It was the way the man stood, the way he looked into the room as if it was a stage set purely for his benefit. It was the way his dark clothes were wrapped on his body as if blown there by a storm, as if he didn’t much care whether he wore them or not. The way his tanned face had some vague familiarity to it, some sense that you must have met this person before somewhere, and that he had meant something to you back then.
Thirteen.
Had to be. Paranoia confirmed. Merrin’s back office crew, come for payback. It wasn’t over.
Beside Carl, the pool player spoke urgently to Elvira, finally succeeded in getting her to her feet, and shepherded her past Carl with an arm round her shaking shoulders. The same dazed mix of shock and incomprehension on his face as before. Carl nodded him past, then turned slowly to watch him half carry Elvira to the door. The new arrivals stood aside to let the couple out, and one of them closed the door firmly afterwards. All the time, the silver gun never shifted from its focus.
Carl gave its owner a sardonic smile and moved a few casual steps forward. The other man watched him come closer, but he didn’t move or make any objection. Carl breathed. He wasn’t going to get shot just yet, it appeared.
But it’s coming.
He took the bright flicker of fear, broke it and folded it away. The mesh, and a sustained will to do damage pulsed brighter.
Push it, see how far it goes.
It went almost to touching distance.
The tall man let him come on that far, even gave him a gentle, encouraging smile, like an indulgent adult watching a child in his charge do something daring. Close enough that Carl’s assessment of the situation began to flake apart, to leave him abruptly uncertain of how to play this. But then, a couple of metres off the muzzle of the revolver, the tall man’s smile shifted on his face, never quite left it, settled into something hard and careful.
‘That’ll do,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not that careless.’
Carl nodded. ‘You don’t look it. Do I know you from somewhere?’ ‘I don’t know. Do you?’
‘What’s your nam
e?’
‘You can call me Onbekend.’
‘Marsalis.’
‘Yes, I know.’ The tall man nodded towards a nearby table. ‘Sit down. We’ve got a little time.’
So. Cool gust of confirmation down the back of his neck, down the muscles of his forearms.
‘You sit down. I’m fine right here.’
The revolver’s hammer clicked back. ‘Sit down or I’ll kill you.’
Carl looked in the eyes and saw no space there, not even for the snappy one-liner - looks like you’re going to do that anyway. This man would put him down right here and now. He shrugged and stepped across to the table, lowered himself into one of the abandoned chairs. It was still warm from its previous occupant. He leaned back and set his feet apart, as far off the table edge as he thought he could get away with. Onbekend glanced at one of his shadows, nodded at the door. The man slipped quietly outside.
The remaining back-up stood immobile, fixed Carl with a cold stare and folded his arms. Onbekend checked him with another glance and then moved across and seated himself opposite Carl at the table.
‘You’re the lottery guy, aren’t you?’ he said.
Carl sighed. It wasn’t entirely faked. ‘Yeah, that’s me.’
‘The one who woke up halfway home?’
‘Yeah. You looking for an autograph?’
He got a thin smile. ‘I’m curious. What was it like, being stuck out there all that time, waiting?’
‘It was a riot. You should try it some time.’
Onbekend didn’t react any more than a stone. The sense of familiarity grew - Carl was certain it was specific. He knew this face, or one very like it, from somewhere.
‘Did you feel abandoned? Like when you were fourteen all over again?’
Fourteen?
Carl grinned. The tiny piece of advantage felt adrenal in his veins. He cocked his head, elaborately casual.
‘So you were a Lawman, huh? Fortress America’s final set of southern fried chickens coming home to roost.’
Just there, just as tiny, but there nonetheless, there in the corners of Onbekend’s eyes. Loss of poise, siphoned sip of anger. For just that moment, Carl had him backed up.
‘You think you know me? You don’t fucking know me, my friend.’
‘I’m not your fucking friend either,’ Carl told him mildly. ‘So, there you go. We all make these mistakes. What do you want from me, exactly?’
For a moment so brief it was gone before he even registered it, Carl thought he was dead. The barrel of the revolver didn’t shift, but it seemed to glimmer with intent in the lower field of his vision. Onbekend’s mouth smeared a little tighter, his eyes hated a little more.
‘You could start by telling me how it feels to hunt down other variant thirteens for the cudlips at the UN.’
‘Remunerative.’ Carl stared blandly back into the other thirteen’s narrowed eyes. One of them was going to die in this bar. ‘It feels remunerative. What are you doing for a living these days?’
‘Surviving.’
‘Oh.’ He nodded, mock-understanding. ‘Playing the outlaw, are we?’
‘I’m not working for the cudlips, if that’s what you mean.’
‘Sure, you are.’ Carl yawned - sudden, tension-driven demand for oxygen, out of nowhere, but it played so fucking well he could have crowed. ‘We’re all working for the cudlips, one way or another.’
Onbekend set his jaw. Tipped his head a little, like a wolf or a dog listening for something faint.
‘You talk very easily about other men’s compromises. Like I said, you don’t fucking know me at all.’
‘I know you bought food today. I know you travelled here in some kind of manufactured vehicle, on city streets built and paid for in some shape or form by the local citizenry. I know you’re holding a gun you didn’t build from the raw metal up in your spare time.’
‘This?’ Onbekend raised the gun slightly, took the muzzle fractionally out of line. He seemed amused. Carl forced himself not to tense, not to watch the wavering weapon. ‘I took this gun from a man I killed.’
‘Oh, well there’s a sustainable model of exchange. Did you kill the guy who served you breakfast this morning as well, so you wouldn’t have to pay for that either? Going to murder the guy who sold or rented you your transport option, and the guy who runs the place you sleep tonight? Got plans for the people who employ them too, the ones who run the means of production, the managers and the owners, and the people who sell for them and the people who buy from them?’ Carl leaned forward, grinning hard against the cool proximity of death. It felt like biting down. ‘Don’t you fucking get it? They’re all around us, the cudlips. You can’t escape them. You can’t cut loose of them. Every time you consume, you’re working for them. Every time you travel. On Mars, every time you fucking breathe you’re part of it.’
‘Well.’ Onbekend put together another small smile of his own. ‘You’ve learnt your lesson well. But I guess if you whip a dog often enough, it always will.’
‘Oh, please. You know what? You want to pretend there’s some other way? You want to escape into some mythical pre-virilicide golden age - go live in Jesusland, where they still believe in that shit. I was there last week, they love guys like us. They’d burn us both at the stake as soon as look at us. Don’t you understand? There is no place for what we are any more.’ Sutherland’s words seemed to rise in him, Sutherland’s quiet, amused, bass timbre voice like thunder, like strength. ‘They killed us twenty thousand years ago with their crops and their craven connivance at hierarchy. They won, Onbekend, and you want to know why? They won because it worked. Group co-operation and bowing down to some thug with a beard worked better than standing alone as a thirteen was ever going to. They ran us ragged, Onbekend, with their mobs and leaders and their fucking strength in numbers. They hunted us down, they exterminated us, and they got the future as a prize. And now here we are, standing in the roof garden of the cudlip success story, and you’re telling me no, no, you didn’t take the elevator or the stairs, you just fucking flew up here all on your own, all with your own two fucking wings. You are full of shit.’
Onbekend leaned forward, mirroring, eyes flaring. It was instinctive, anger driven. The revolver shifted fractionally in his hand, to allow the shift in posture. Angled minutely to one side. Carl saw, and held down the surge of the mesh. Not yet, not yet. He met the other man’s eyes, saw his own death there and didn’t much care. There was a rage rising in him he barely understood. The words kept him alive, warmed him as long as he could spit them out.
‘They built us, Onbekend, they fucking built us. They brought us back from the fucking dead for the one thing we’re good at. Violence. Slaughter. You, me.’ He gestured, slashing, open-handed disgust. ‘All of us, every fucking one. We’re dinosaurs. Monsters summoned up from the deep dark violent past to safeguard the bright lights and shopping privileges of western civilisation. And we did it for them, just like they wanted. You want to talk about cudlips, how they bow and fold to authority, how they let the group dictate? Tell me how we were different. Project fucking Lawman? What does that sound like to you?’
‘Yeah, because they fucking trained us.’ For the first time, Onbekend’s voice rose almost to a shout, was almost pain. He flattened it again, instantly, got it down to a cold, even-tempered anger. ‘They locked us up from fucking childhood, Marsalis. Beat us down with the conditioning. You know that, Osprey must have been the same. How were we supposed to-’
‘We did, as we, were told!’ Carl spaced his words, leaned on them like crowbars going into brickwork. ‘Just like them, just like the cudlips. We failed, just like we failed twenty thousand years ago.’
‘That was then,’ Onbekend snapped. ‘And this is now. And some of us aren’t on that path any more.’
‘Oh, don’t make me fucking laugh. I already told you, everything about you is part of the cudlip world. If you can’t come to some kind of accommodation with that, you might as well fucking shoot yo
urself-’
A ghost grin came up across Onbekend’s face. ‘It was your suicide I was sent to arrange, Marsalis. Not mine.’
‘Sent?’ Carl jeered it, leered across the scant space between them. ‘Sent? Oh, I rest my fucking case.’
‘Thirteens have had an unfortunate propensity for death by their own hand.’ The other man’s voice came out raised, words rushed, trampling at Carl’s scorn, trying to drive home a winning point he hadn’t embedded quite as well as he’d hoped. ‘Violent suicide, in the tracts and reservations. And a thirteen carrying as much guilt as you-’
‘Guilt? Give me a fucking break. Now you’re talking just like them. Variant thirteen doesn’t do guilt, that’s a cudlip thing.’
‘Yes, all the ones you’ve hunted down, murdered or taken back to a living death in the tracts.’ But Onbekend was calmer now, voice dropping back to even. ‘It stands to reason you couldn’t live with it for ever.’
‘Try me.’
A bleak smile. ‘Happily, I don’t have to. And as for the suicide, you’ve made it easy for me.’
‘Really?’ Carl looked elaborately around him. ‘This doesn’t look much like a suicide scene to me.’
But under the drawl, he already saw the angle and something very like panic started to ice through him. He’d played all his cards, and Onbekend just hadn’t loosened enough. The other thirteen was watching him minutely again, back to the cold control he’d walked in with. Awareness of the place they were in congealed around him - ancient grimy fittings, the long arm of the bartop, scars and spill stains gleaming in the low light and the piled-up glassware and bottles behind. The worn pool tables in their puddles of light from the overheads. Dougie Kwang face up on the floor, head rolled to one side, eyes staring open across the room at him. Waiting for company, for someone to join him down there in the dust and sticky stains.
The Complete SF Collection Page 252