The second set started a little slow, but halfway into the third song we found the groove again. The sound buzzed in my head, the drums echoing a flicker of light at the base of the fx display, and I saw Shadha grinning tightly as she finished the song. Jaantje announced one of the new songs next, Tai’s song, and she stepped back to reprogram her guitar, Jaantje talking amiable nonsense while she worked. With my ear tuned low, I could barely hear—if this was a coolie club, I would have been doing some of the chatter, but here hardly anybody would know sign—and I looked toward the live-service bar, blinking away the thickest parts of the fx display. Bi’ Tobu was sitting there, looking intense, and there was a man slumped on a barstool beside her. He looked like a line-worker, with a metal arm he still didn’t seem to have control of—it was coated in prosthetic skin, a sickly, unnatural brown, weird contrast to the metalheads’ silver—and he had his back mostly to the stage, one shoulder hunched as though the music was too loud. I leaned sideways to catch Timin’s attention.
“We’re not making a hit there.”
“Oh, yeh?”
I nodded toward the bar, and saw Jaantje’s eyes slide toward me, warning me to be quiet. Then Tai had finished her adjustments and stepped back up to the sound wand to give the count. I brought the light around us to red, to the same thick and ruddy twilight I’d seen when she first played it, and Tai hit the opening notes.
That song went off well, and so did Timi’s slow one—even the guy hunched at the bar was still, as though he was listening in spite of himself—and then Jaantje announced his own song. This was the one that asked most of the fx, and I flexed my fingers below the control space, the wires tight and warm, bracing myself for the final dance. That was a sure way to ruin it, anticipating too much; I took a deep breath, trying to get centered again, to be ready not just for the final image but for the entire song, and my display winked out. I blinked, failed to recall it, jabbed at the interrupt on the upper board, and the houselights came on full. I flipped my ear to normal, and heard a buzz of voices rising from the crowd.
“We’ve got trouble,” Jaantje said, suddenly grim, and I realized he’d lost power, too.
“What the fuck—” Tai began, still more angry than afraid, and the doors at the back of the hall slammed open. Security—armored Security, FPG Security—filled the doorway for a moment, then moved on into the hall. People scrambled away from them, and I saw Tai stiffen, a small movement that was almost but not quite a step back. Her expression shuttered, became a mask without emotion, and I remembered again that she was a one-gen coolie, raised to avoid the FPG at all costs.
“All right, people, by the numbers.” The voice was amplified and directionless; I guessed it belonged to the central figure only because that was the one who gestured. “Clear the building.”
“Cave-in?” I said—that was what that drill was for, everybody’s nightmare even if it hadn’t happened in generations—and Jaantje stooped to shut down his system.
“I don’t know. But we’d better grab our gear.”
Tai was already doing the same, and I began flipping switches on the fx. Without a proper shutdown, I’d probably lost half the presets, and unplugging the opticals in that state would only make things worse, but it was better than losing the machine itself.
“And what am I supposed to do?” Shadha began, sliding out from behind her kit, and Security spoke from the door, the booming voice overriding everything else.
“One, my side to the third post. Two, opposite side to the third post. Three, tables, third post to the fifth post. Four, remaining tables. Five, both bars, stage, side wall, anyone left. Move on your number and not before.” The other Security were moving into the crowd, tommy-sticks drawn, and I didn’t doubt they’d use them. “One!”
The first group—Kebe and the rest of his band among them—shuffled toward the doorway, filing not quite orderly but without trouble through the narrow space. The people left behind were talking, a confused mutter of voices, afraid, but not near panic yet, and I concentrated on getting my fx broken down and into its carrier. There was no way I could free the lightpads in time, and even if I did, they’d be almost as awkward to carry as Shadha’s drums.
“What the hell am I going to do?” she said again, as though she’d read my thought, and Tai looked up quickly.
“Take the pads and the sound box.”
“But my ao-shan—” She broke off, biting her lip. That was her big Sironan drum, a cold-carbon cylinder nearly a meter tall and maybe half a meter in diameter: it wasn’t easy to carry into a gig, and it wasn’t something I’d want to try to lug out of here in an earthquake drill, or whatever this was.
“Two!” Security called, and there was a new rustle of movement as the next group began moving toward the door.
I freed the last of the dozen opticals from the machine and touched the hinges to let the keyboards fold in on themselves. I’d built this fx myself, practically from scratch; there was no way I wasn’t going to take it out with me. Luckily, I’d left the carrier by the edge of the stage—even closed, the fx is nearly a meter and a half long, half a meter wide, and thick as my two hands laid fingertip to fingertip—and I wrestled the webbing into position, clumsy with nerves.
“Three!”
“Bi’ Tobu,” Jaantje called, and the manager took a step closer to the stage. “If we go last, can we bring our gear? There’s the drums and all—”
I saw the line-worker look sharply toward us, and winced at the sight of his too-smooth face. He must have been in one hell of a bad accident to need that much reconstructive work. Our eyes met, and I dropped my gaze, embarrassed to have been caught staring, especially at a time like this.
Tobu took a few steps toward the stage, her eyes on the nearest Security, making sure it saw she was only going toward the stage. She stopped when she was close enough to be heard without raising her voice, close enough that even the people who’d been closest to the stage wouldn’t hear. “It’s a bomb threat. You don’t want to stay.”
“Bomb—” Jaantje cut himself off before his voice rose too far, went on more carefully. “It’s not us, is it?”
Tobu grinned at that, without humor. “Don’t flatter yourself, my son. It’s those Realpeace bastards again, out to finish what they started.”
“Finish—?” Jaantje began, but another bellow from Security cut him off.
“Four!”
The people at the tables closest to the stage rose in a rustling mass, chairs and tables scraping on the poured-stone floor as they shoved their way toward the door. A woman who’d been sitting at the bar took a step toward them, but Tobu blocked her way.
“You want to be stunned and left?” she asked, and caught the woman by her shoulder. For an instant, the woman seemed to resist, but then she slumped and let Tobu turn her back toward the bar. The scarred man moved aside for her, without haste, without much emotion at all.
“Bomb?” Tai repeated, but softly. “Not again…”
“My ao-shan,” Shadha said. “I can’t leave it—I can’t afford to leave it.”
“Do you want to risk cracking it?” Jaantje asked.
“I don’t know!” Shadha’s voice rose sharply, and I saw the nearest Security helmet turn our way.
“Hey, people,” I said, and she shook herself.
“Sorry.” She crouched, began loosening the clamps that held the ao-shan in its stand, and Timin stooped to help her. After a moment, Tai reached across to steady the drum.
There was nothing either Jaantje or I could do. I hugged the cased fx to myself, thinking about the funeral, the flame and the smoke and always the cold, slick foam. We were farther down here, well below the surface—almost into the midworld, in fact, the Zodiac was its upper edge. If anything happened, if the threat was real, it would be hard to vent the smoke to the surface, and there’d be smoke injuries as well as everything else. I tried to put that thought aside—tried to be like the scarred man, who was still calmly drinking his beer—but I
could feel my muscles knotting with fear, my whole body starting to shake. I looked at Jaantje and saw both his hands tight on the strap of his guitar, his skin very pale.
“Five!”
For a minute, I couldn’t move, but then I saw the people who’d been at the bars and standing along the far side of the room start toward the door, a few of them almost running. I settled the fx on my back—it’s heavy, the webbing designed to make it easier to get the box from the street to a stage—and turned back to Shadha. She and Tai were wrestling the ao-shan out of its stand, Tai awkward with the weight of her guitar on her shoulder, and even as I started toward them, the strap slipped and she nearly dropped the drum. Timin caught it, his stick-bass slipping forward, and a strange voice said, “Hand it down to me.”
It was the man from the bar—he had metal legs, I realized, as well as the arm and the heavy scars. He held out his hands, one still burn-marked, the other frankly false, and Shadha rolled the ao-shan toward him. He lowered it easily, and she slung her other bag, the one with the pads and the sound box, over both shoulders.
“Let’s go,” Jaantje said, and together we manhandled the ao-shan toward the door.
We came out into emergency brilliance and a Security cordon, Cartel now as well as FPG, all of them in full armor. They hurried us across the plaza, toward a line of barrier tape; there was a crowd behind it, not just from the Oasis, and a pack of newsdogs were already hounding bi’ Tobu. We ducked past them, hoping nobody would notice the instruments, and found a place beside a newskiosk where we could drop our stuff. I looked for the pinlights, wondering if the newschannels had an explanation yet of what was going on, and realized it was dead. All the power was off, I saw—all over the plaza, the signs were dead, the usual brilliant pinlights had disappeared—except for emergency.
The man who’d helped with the ao-shan sank down on the nearest bollard, oblivious to the food cart still tethered to its power point, and rested his hands on his knees. Shadha said, “Look, I really appreciate your help. Are you all right?”
He nodded, not looking up, but didn’t speak. In the bright emergency lights, there was something familiar about him, not his face, too tight, too smooth, but the whole set of his body.
“Are you sure?” Shadha said.
“Yeh,” Jaantje said. “And, really, thanks for the help. You didn’t have to do that.”
This time, the man did look up, a stiff expression that was probably intended for a smile creasing his skin. “I’m all right, thank you. I enjoyed the set.”
I don’t think any of us had expected to hear that, not under these circumstances. Jaantje made a noise between laughter and dismay, and gave a coolie bow. “Thanks very much, then. I’m Jaantje Dhao.”
The man held out his scarred hand, a yanqui reflex that widened his strained smile. “Mays Littlekin.”
I caught my breath, hoping I hadn’t made a sound, could see my shock reflected in the others’ faces. He couldn’t be Mays Littlekin; even allowing for reconstruction, Littlekin had been taller, his face had been a whole different shape, square-jawed, a good ugly, where this was oval and nondescript—totally remade in rehab, I realized, and, stupidly, wondered why.
“I—I’m sorry,” Jaantje said. I’d never heard him stammer before. “I didn’t recognize you.”
“You weren’t meant to,” the man said, still with that weird, uncomfortable smile. It was hard to think of him as Littlekin. “They—we all, the doctors, my wife, and I—thought it made sense to try a new look. After the funeral, I mean. It doesn’t seem to have worked, though, does it?”
“Depends on how you mean,” Jaantje said, and Tai stirred.
“This was meant for you?”
That was what Tobu had meant, about Realpeace being out to finish what it started. I started to swear, and controlled my hands with an effort.
Littlekin gave her an apologetic glance, but nodded. “I think so. Saadi’s an old friend, but nothing’s a secret with her. I’m sorry it screwed up your gig, though. I liked what you were doing. Liked it a lot.”
“Thanks,” Jaantje said, and the rest of us echoed him. A month ago, I thought, any of us would have killed for a good word from anybody in Hati. Now it just made me feel sick and strange.
“I mean it.” Littlekin shrugged then, glanced over his shoulder at the newsdogs. Most of them were still busy with Tobu, but one who had been on the periphery of that crowd had found the metalheads, and others were looking around for something new. “Can one of you give me a hand up? I should get the fuck out of here before anybody figures out what’s going on.”
We all reached at once, of course, but somehow I was quickest. He took my hand, fingers alternately rough and scar-smooth, and I braced myself as he pulled himself upright. He clung to me for an instant, and I remember just how little time he’d had to learn to use the artificial limbs. But then he steadied, and turned away, rolling off toward the nearest Cartel Security. We watched him go, none of us knowing what to say. If anything, I wanted to cry, and I couldn’t have told you why. Timin glared at the kiosk’s blank screens, and Shadha very slowly caressed her drumhead, making it whisper.
“It’s not right,” Tai said, very soft and fierce, and then was silent.
There was a line of music running through my head, music and words together: where were you when the heat came down? Where were you when it all went wrong? I tipped my head to one side, imagining it again, but I knew already it was right, was the beginning of something that could be good. Even if I couldn’t finish it, Jaantje or Tai could, and it would be right, it would make things right again. And then I had to turn away myself because I was wrong, and I was crying.
10
Reverdy Jian
She hadn’t seen Chaandi since before she’d taken the ferry job, still wasn’t fully sure that she wanted to see her, not after their last, angry meeting. She doubly wasn’t sure that this was the place she would have chosen, this long cavern of a newsbar, the north end open to Zodiac Main, the south to Shaifen and the standstill interchange with Lower Zodiac, but she was the one who wanted the meeting, and it made sense to let Chaandi pick the place. She looked down the length of the bar—she had picked a table toward the southern end, guessing that Chaandi would come from the north—to watch a tall woman in a metallic pink sari moving down the aisle between the booths. The light from the media screens that lined the walls above the tables sparked from the bright fabric, and from the mirror bracelets on each of her wrists; Jian smiled in spite of herself, but the woman didn’t see, kept on toward some other meeting. The chronometer on the far wall glowed blue in response to her suit’s query: almost midnight, and Chaandi was late.
Jian glanced down at the menu flashing in the tabletop beside her elbow, wondering if she should order another drink, settled instead for activating the booth’s private screen, the audio carefully scaled and baffled to sound only between the high-backed benches. The menu flashed, adding the charges to her bill, and the small screen lit, filling the wall at the end of the table. A spiral of glyphs appeared, offering a dozen newschannels; she chose at random, ignoring the Criterion that would have let her choose by topic and style of coverage, and tuned the audio to a murmur. In the screen, a dark-skinned newsreader was talking very seriously about fashion, while behind him a parade of models displayed the latest Urban styles, and a series of shop glyphs came and went, showcasing options to buy.
“I’m sorry,” Chaandi said, and Jian looked up to see the other woman sliding onto the opposite bench. “Everything ran later than I thought.”
“That’s all right.” There was an awkward silence, and Jian said hastily, “Have you eaten?”
“I grabbed some noodles at the studio.” Chaandi looked down at the menu, the flickering shadows emphasizing the breadth of her cheekbones. Her long hair was caught back in its usual braid, the wire of her ear woven into it like a child’s ribbon; she had skipped bodypaint, Jian saw, was wearing simple, upperworld clothes, a plain loose vest over a
coolie’s patterned wrap-shirt.
“So what’s the project?” she asked—that was usually a safe topic—but this time Chaandi’s smile was pained.
“On hold, I’m very much afraid.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thanks.” Chaandi looked back at the menu, punched a couple of buttons, then shook her head. “The really frustrating thing is, I know this would be good—it’s a standard thriller form, but most of it takes place in the virtual, and the main players both turn out to be AI. But I had an actor walk today because he doesn’t want to play something that political, and I don’t know who I can get to replace him.”
“Realpeace giving trouble?” Jian asked, and the other woman shrugged.
“Not directly. But it’s in the back of everyone’s mind. You heard about those kids over in Sanbonte, didn’t you?”
Jian shook her head, not sure if she wanted to stay on politics herself, but more certain that she didn’t want to change the subject too obviously. She looked sideways for the service karakuri, but the blocky rolling cart was nowhere in sight.
“Well, you must’ve seen the metalheads,” Chaandi said.
“How could I miss them?” In spite of herself, Jian’s voice sharpened, and she gave a bitter smile. She’d seen them, all right—mostly midworlders, though it was hard to tell under the metallic bodypaint and the shapeless jumpsuits—and the sight had made her shiver, reminded her too much of Manfred’s favorite icon, the serene bicolored face that still stalked her nightmares.
“Five years ago, they’d’ve been Dreampeace,” Chaandi said, with a twisted smile of her own, and Jian sighed.
“Don’t start.”
The other woman had the grace to look away. “Sorry.”
A chime sounded over the general sound system and in the booth, the steady belling that signaled a breaking story. Jian looked up, startled, saw the same orange screen-filling glyph marching in procession down the length of the bar; it flashed onto their screen as well, and the sound of voices rose abruptly, and as abruptly hushed.
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