by Tim Scott
“Hey! Sit still, okay? Forget the signs.”
“All right. All right. ‘My antitank weapon is jammed and I need a big mallet.’ In case you were wondering. My dog brings me a ball when I do that. Dogs are good at picking up this stuff. I tried it with the hamster as well, but the attention span of a hamster is pretty low. Are you thinking about joining my army now?”
“No. What about the girl?”
“What about her?”
“Did you talk to her?”
“Yeah, I talked to her. She was tired.”
“The girl in room fourteen? You’re sure it was her?”
“Sure I’m sure.”
I held the gun on the guy and for a moment his eyes came into the light, but they didn’t match his voice. They had a depth to them, not a flighty insecurity that should have gone with this character. “She paid me forty dollars not to plug her feed into the register. I’ll show you the money if you don’t believe me.”
The guy went for a drawer and I knocked him out. There was a sickening crack and he crumpled to the floor.
“Something is wrong with that guy,” I said. “Just wrong.”
Gabe walked over and looked in the half-opened drawer and took out a gun.
“Yeah. This’ll be what it is. Very wrong.”
“You think he was a cop?” I said. “This wasn’t the guy I saw yesterday.”
“Could be.” Gabe went through the man’s pockets. Nothing.
Then he plugged into the back of his neck with the motel Handheld Feed Reader and scrolled through his details.
“History is way too clean and neat. This looks forged. I think he’s a cop.” Gabe played his mood, and it came out as a short piece of heavy metal. He let the man’s head fall back to the floor. “Which means we don’t have much time.”
chapter
THIRTY-THREE
I pulled back the trapdoor.
Then I led Gabe down the steps into the cellar. Damp musty air. Sunlight dropped through a small window in the ceiling and then swam through a gauze of cobwebs before falling quietly on the floor. The giant boiler sat sweating. I looked up through the duct that I had squeezed down the night before and it seemed impossibly small.
“I’ll check out her room. You keep an eye on our friend in the lobby.” There was no way Gabe would make it with his bad leg, and it was better someone stayed with the guy, anyway.
“Sure. Have fun up there,” he said, giving me a lift as dust showered down. The boiler shuddered and then began yammering away with an overexcited chatter.
I scrabbled at the pipes, hauling myself up until I was jammed against the dirt-caked sides of the duct. I steadied my breathing and then struggled up a few more inches, wedging my body into the tiny space. My shoulder hit one of the scalding pipes and I jerked it back. It was dark. What little light that had filtered up from the cellar was gone now. Cramped spaces always made me feel utterly alone. A pipe juddered in a squall of noise. I waited until the sound echoed away, then forced myself on until my head broke into the heavy, dead air of the roof space.
Somewhere, a shower was running. I hauled myself out and crawled along a beam, trying to work out which way Nena’s room had been. A patch of light speared through the ceiling to my left and I guessed that was the spot she had fallen. I squirmed over and found the hole had been hurriedly patched up with tape. I squinted through a gap.
But there was nothing.
I listened for a moment, and then jumped feet-first off the beam. I broke through the flimsy ceiling with a tear of tape and cardboard and landed amid a shower of debris. Whoever was watching from across the street would have seen only a confusing blur.
I rolled back onto my front. The room was empty. Everything was smeared with red residue. It streaked the walls and the floor was covered in spent smoke canisters. I crawled to the window and peeked out.
The lot was quiet.
I made a quick search of the room. There was the usual clutter to support life on the road, clothes, a few books, and leaning up by the hangers was a plastic bag. I emptied it and found some brochures and bottles from a local herbal fair, along with some name badges with Nena’s name. I stuffed one of the brochures in my pocket.
Then I crawled forward and checked the front window again. A moment before it happened I sensed it. Then something caught my eye to the left and the front door of the motel lobby opened. Gabe staggered out and the undercover cop followed with a gun in his back. A group of cops began running across the lot.
I bolted through the front door and out into the back alley. I took a right down and then another, coming out on a street that was bustling with drongles.
I dived into the crowd on the sidewalk and was sucked along for a block. I looked back but couldn’t see anyone following. As we approached the corner, I heard a voice crying:
“These are the phone numbers of the beasts. Goat: eight, zero, zero, seven, eight, nine, eight, three, seven, one, one. Tortoise: eight, zero, zero, seven, nine, four, four, three, two, two. I have all the phone numbers of the beasts…” the woman began and then her voice was absorbed by the body of the crowd as I cut across the traffic and pushed my way through the throng on the opposite sidewalk, before cutting down another couple of streets. Then I stopped retching for breath and eased into a coffee shop.
I had a good view through the window and ordered coffee and a pastry. Across the street, a huge Health and Safety poster proclaimed: “When you’re walking along the sidewalk, don’t suddenly stop, turn around, and start going the other way. People will bump into you.” Underneath it concluded: “A strong Health and Safety means a strong city.”
A couple of workmen came in, one releasing a cloud of curly hair as he took off a woolen cap.
I berated myself for not trying to help Gabe. They would head hack him, and probably get a picture of me. Maybe they would link that to my escape last night from Head Hack Central. Then they would have Gabe for aiding and harboring a criminal.
I felt sick but I knew that now was not the moment to wallow in remorse.
I pulled out the herbal fair brochures I had collected from Nena’s room. There was an address on the back page that was on the other side of town. If she had been working there, maybe I could get a lead. Maybe I could get some help.
I pulled out the wad of head hack pictures from my pocket as the waitress brought me my coffee and pastry.
“Can I get you some yam and goose waffles, or cakelike snacks with those?”
“No, thank you,” I said.
“What about some wonker?” Her hair was swooshed back with a hair band that had the effect of making her face look constantly surprised.
“No, just the coffee and pastry is great. That’ll do me.”
“You’re sure about the wonker? It’s like water, but not as good. It’s popular with the youngsters.” The waitress hovered.
“No, thanks.”
She shrugged, put her pencil away, pulled a smile that said “fuck off, then,” more clearly than if she had shouted it, and left wiping her hands on her apron.
Why does the whole of New Seattle think I want to drink wonker? I thought.
A police drongle rumbled to a stop outside the window. I hunched over my coffee as two cops came in, brushing past my table. One knocked some of my head hack photos onto the floor.
“Beg your pardon, sir,” said a cop reaching down to pick them up and hand them to me.
“Thanks,” I said. The picture of Nena was right on the top. The cop held my gaze a moment longer than he needed to as he handed them back, but I knew that kind of behavior was second nature to the cops.
The other cop returned with a bag of doughnuts and they were soon on their way. I looked at the photo of Nena. She was probably just a criminal who had stolen something or killed someone.
Across the street, three large birds perched motionless on the top of the Health and Safety sign.
“More ravens,” I said to myself as I picked up the mug of coffee. “Wh
y does the city have all these ravens?”
chapter
THIRTY-FOUR
I walked.
There are only so many Health and Safety announcements a man can sit and listen to in a drongle before ten o’clock in the morning.
But if reincarnation turns out to have some basis in fact, I’m making it clear now that there’s really no point in my coming back as a mountain goat. I simply wouldn’t put in the miles to make a go of it. I’d be the goat sitting at the bottom of the mountain having a snooze and imploring the other goats to bring him back some nice bits of grass.
I passed a massive city health alert sign. Ticker tape letters ran busily across it warning of the illnesses sweeping the city that day. A flu virus was running amok with an epicenter on Capitol Hill, and there would be a bad hair day on Thursday in and around Yesler Terrace for people with light brown hair.
The bad hair forecasts had become prominent a few years before, when a well-known singer had refused to perform at a major concert because her hair forecast was bad for that day, and the concept had been adopted as part of the public services in many cities. But there was no evidence that they were accurate, and a good many scientists got angry about the very mention of them, which just made everyone snigger because they seemed to have bad hair all the time.
I made it a few more blocks along the sidewalk before I got some hassle from someone trying to sell me advertising space on his head, which he had shaved for the purpose. He had one advert for a pizza firm tattooed there already, but he soon lost interest.
Another twenty minutes and I caught sight of an advertising balloon with the words: “National Herbal and Healing Fair. Healing with Feeling.”
People were heading up the steps en masse, and they jostled me toward the building until I was squeezed in through the doors.
A rich burning bouquet of herbs hit me like a wall.
The crowd fanned out and I found myself some space at the side to take it all in. Stalls stretched as far as the eye could see.
“Complimentary Healing Rock?” said a man, approaching me. He was struggling to walk because he had a large rock clasped to his chest.
“Actually, not today,” I said, and headed down the first aisle. A minute later, I heard a commotion behind me. When I looked back, an elderly lady had collapsed on the floor.
“It’s a healing rock,” the man was saying as he bent over her. “Collapsing under its weight is good. It’s part of the healing process.”
I headed on. Nena could have been working at any one of these booths, but asking about randomly didn’t seem ideal. If the cops had staked out the motel, they might be staking out this place, too. A girl approached me from a huge tentlike stand with long hennaed hair, smelling of a rich musty perfume that could have been described as the smell of a secondhand bookshop mixed with horse liniment.
“You really should try a diet with borage and woodruff. It would give you more energy and more connection with the world. You look like all your yin has gone into your left foot,” she said. Her eyes were sunken around the edges, as though she was living in such a deep place inside her head that the darkness had seeped out.
“Yeah, perhaps it has, but borage and woodruff? That’s not a regular pizza topping, is it?”
“Pizza topping?” She repeated the words but without any kind of meaning attached to them.
“Yeah. That’s going to be a problem,” I said. “I don’t know how I would fit it into my diet. Unless you can add them to a mojito?”
She didn’t say anything more but simply nodded, and her eyes glazed over. I sensed she was living in a place down so many twists and turns inside her own head, it would be hard to be sure you had ever truly reached her. And even if my words did finally find her, the time delay would be too great to make conversation a practicality.
I wove my way past the tent and saw it was filled with a swath of women who all looked exactly the same.
The aisles were overflowing with stall after stall selling infusions and herbs, which filled the air with an aroma that had cleared out my sinuses so effectively you could have driven a truck down them. Around me, people were buying this stuff like crazy. And it was not just middle-aged women trying to recapture a youth they’d never had in the first place, but the general population as well—as though these things were the nectar of life, and they would make them not just well, but better people.
Everywhere, liquids and potions and small heaps of seeds or twigs were being measured and packaged and sold, sometimes with small gestures of sincerity—a touch on the arm, a smile and a laugh—and at others with a perfunctory nod. This place was the front line between the cynically commercial and the sincere but mostly poor. Maybe it encapsulated the struggle for the city itself between those who valued the land for its spirit and soul, and those who wanted to bleed it dry.
After ten minutes of being offered a chance to cure myself of everything from an unwashed aura to housewives’ knee and a fractured skull, I decided I’d have to start asking around whatever the risk. I took out Nena’s photo as I browsed past another stall that was selling an infusion that was supposed to help vegetarians tempted by the smell of bacon sandwiches.
An older woman with a shopping bag on wheels browsing next to me thrust a leaflet at me. “I went on a spiritual weekend with these people about getting in touch with my inner self. And after a while I felt this calmness. But the people in the next yurt were doing shamanic journeying, so I couldn’t sleep, and that’s when I began to see their whole approach to health and safety was disgusting and I left. What’s the use of reaching nirvana if the next thing you know you’re tripping over a guy rope and breaking your wrist?”
“No use at all,” I said and then, after she moved away, I asked the woman working behind the stall if she recognized the photo, but she shook her head.
I walked on down the aisle asking at the smaller stalls about Nena, sensing they were likely to be more independent, and less likely to be suspicious. But none of them seemed to have any idea who she was, and I was beginning to think this was going to be a dead end when I was pulled aside by a young girl.
“Put that away,” she said pushing the head hack printout into my jacket.
“You know her, then?”
“What do you want? You shouldn’t have come.”
The girl was young with long dark hair and I saw she had a nametag saying “Chloe.”
“I need to see her. You know where she is?”
“I can give her a message. That’s it.”
“Tell her it’s Huck. Tell her I need to see her.”
“That it?” The girl looked around, and I sensed I was losing her interest.
“No, tell her I have her fridges.”
“Her fridges?”
“Yeah. She didn’t want to lose them. I got them out of the Cold Compound. I have her four fridges and a spin dryer.”
“Okay, I’ll pass the message on. Go to this bar,” said the girl, writing something on a card. “If she wants to see you, she’ll come within the hour. If she doesn’t, don’t come back here, okay? Now go. Go. Wait! Take this. It’s a free sample of healing balm. It might make you stand out a little less. Now go.”
I took the small bag and headed off, dodging between stalls, toward an exit, feeling upbeat. Maybe she would help me spring Gabe from Head Hack Central.
At the end of the aisle a man in a suit abruptly stepped out and stopped me.
“Hold it,” he said.
“What is it?”
“Can I interest you in some bombs?”
“Bombs?” I looked around. “Who are you?”
“Pulitzer’s the name. What about a nice Howitzer shell?”
I realized his face was glistening with enthusiasm and his eyes shone like fairy lights.
“Are you shitting me?”
“Oh, no, I’m selling good-quality bombs.”
“At an herbal fair?” I said, incredulity lacing my voice. “In fact, don’t answer that.
I don’t need to know.” I began to walk away.
“They’re not just any bombs. Not just your normal ones that go bang,” he said, chasing after me through the crowd. “These do go bang, obviously, or they wouldn’t be bombs, but these ones leave the rich after-aroma of lavender so that anyone hit by shrapnel dies in a calm and relaxed environment.”
“That’s great, I guess.”
“I can do you a job lot.”
“No,” I said, and I began walking quicker, but the man followed, bobbing at my shoulder.
“What about a land mine, then?”
“No. I really don’t need any explosives. There are no large objects I need to break down to their constituent parts.”
“But wait! Listen. After you tread on it and it goes off, it leaves the aroma of ginger and ginseng. How about that? If you’ve just had your leg blown off, you’d really appreciate a touch like that.”
“Do I look like I need a land mine?”
“Okay, no problem. Sure. I understand. What about a trebuchet?” He had circled around and was standing in front of me.
“What?”
“A trebuchet. It’s a huge wooden medieval contraption for hurling rocks. I haven’t actually got one, but if I had, would you be interested?”
“No.”
“’Cause I think I know where one is. I’ve had my eye on it. It can probably hurl a lot of things—potted plants, furniture, even a small dog. I’m guessing it has a range of somewhere around half a mile. Yeah, I’ll bet you could fling a dachshund half a mile. Not that I would condone you doing that, but, wow!”
“I don’t have a dachshund and if I did, I wouldn’t want to fling it across the city.”
“Oh. No. Well, if you’re sure? But think about it. Can I slip a card in your pocket just in case you change your mind? Think about the dachshund rolling through the air when you have a moment, its paws tucked in, and its ears whipped by the wind. It might change your mind.” He pushed a card into my top pocket and his eyes glistened again with enthusiasm. “Stay safe for Mother New Seattle.”