I could see only one way to hurry things up.
Start a real fire. My idea had been brewing. I just didn’t know how I could pull it off. ‘Does James Monk celebrate the opening of the Pan-Sats?’
Merv nodded.
‘Who goes to that?’
‘Traditionally, all the m-media heavies.’
‘Including Laud and Sera Bau?’
Another nod. ‘I worked the p-pyrotek sequences on it a few years ago. They were all there. And their s-security.’
‘What are you thinking?’ asked Mal.
‘I’m thinking of a little extra aggravation. Something that Brilliance won’t be able to ignore. Something that will really tangle her wireless. How do I get to that party?’
The room fell silent at my ridiculous question.
Only Merv seemed to give it serious consideration.
‘You could p-put yourself up for auction at the m-meathouse, ’ he said. ‘Monk entertains a lot of people at that party. He’ll be hiring for it, and he wanted you b-before.’
NO.
The thought of playing the Amorato again frightened me more than my dreams of Marinette. More than meeting all my phobias on a dark night in a small space.
I twisted the ring that Glorious had given me. I didn’t want to have to use it. I didn’t want to go back to the place where she’d taken me.
There was nothing good there.
‘When’s the next one?’ I forced myself to ask.
Merv dipped into his data-stream. He resurfaced tugging his ear and wiping his nose nervously. ‘Ttonight. ’
I stood up and looked at Mal. ‘Looks like we’d better go clothes-shopping.’
Bras followed me out of the main room to my bunk.
‘This is not in our plan, Parrish. Even if you get there the place will be so saturated with security that you won’t be able to do anything.’
I’d been waiting for her. In as few words as I could, I told her about Wombebe. ‘Someone working for Monk is jerking my strings. It’s a safe enough punt that Monk will bid for me at the auction, whatever the reason behind it,’ I said.
‘What about our plans?’
‘I didn’t come after you when you were taken from The Tert. Maybe I can make up for that by finding Wombebe.’
Bras flushed with anger. ‘You’re going to ruin everything on a whim.’
I rounded on her. ‘There won’t be an everything if we don’t melt Brilliance’s wires by the time the Pan-Sats screen. We’ve got one chance. That’s all. If what I’m planning comes off, then great. If it doesn’t, find yourself another leader. And another cause.’
She wanted to hurt me then, for not seeing things her way. I could see it in the way her fingers clawed the palms of her hands. The way her eyes darkened. She fought it by turning away from me.
I waited for her to swap shifts with Merv.
He staggered wearily to his bunk.
I sat down alongside him before he could lie down.
‘Thanks,’ I said.
He rubbed his forehead. ‘W-what for?’
‘You took a chance coming with me.’
‘N-not really,’ he corrected me. ‘Delly would probably have killed me s-soon enough. He knew I’d helped you. And you blackmailed m-me anyway.’
I grinned. ‘I need one last favour. I’ll probably have to go into vreal again sometime. Even if it’s just in a LAN. I need a portable connection.’
Merv sighed. ‘You’ll f-fry if you go on your own, Parrish. You’re not very good at it, y-you know.’
‘I’m already fried.’
He shrugged his agreement.
Merv and I weren’t all that different. He had his sinister shadows following him. I had mine.
He took off the mystic star and handed it to me.
‘I can send Snout sniffing around the p-portals. She should be safe doing that. If you make enough waves she’ll c-come - if she can.’
I took the charm and slipped it around my neck, knowing what it meant for him to part with it. ‘I was kinda hoping you’d say that.’
In return I handed him a pistol from the cell’s stash. His eyes wide, he handled it like it had a disease.
‘This is how you use it,’ I said.
I showed him how to load and point and fire.
Merv listened obediently. Only when I was finished did he ask the question. ‘W-what’s it f-for?’
I lowered my voice and jabbed the barrel in his abdomen, near the adrenal glands. ‘If Bras turns werewolf before I get back, shoot her right here. If I don’t come back, shoot her. Go to The Tert. Find a guy named Teece. Tell him I said I owe you. He’s a good man. He’ll help you out.’
‘You m-mean you’re not going to hold me t-to this?’
‘Keep Snout in the system until just before the party - no longer. Then get the hell out of here and get a life.’
‘You s-said the s-same thing to Glori.’
I stared at Merv, trying to remember when I’d said that to her. Did that mean she was still alive? I dared not let myself hope but I couldn’t bring myself to ask him outright.
Some things are best not known.
I climbed up to the top bunk and went to sleep.
Mal and I left the hide at dusk and trudged for two hours up and down transit tunnels before Mal reckoned that it was safe to surface. My still-healing legs ached so hard that I winced with every step.
I found myself getting angry with the Eskaalim. Can’t you do something useful - like fix it?
It didn’t respond, lurking somewhere underneath the pain and frustration. It had been so dormant since the bridge that I wondered whether I’d imagined its presence over the past few weeks.
Maybe the voices in my head were my own.
But then Gerwent had said I was right in the things I’d said.
And how did I explain Bras? Her symptoms had worsened. I watched her constantly for signs of the dark whorls that came before the change.
‘We must avoid public transport. Sera Bau records everything,’ said Mal. ‘That’s how she gets her Priers out so quickly.’
‘What about the FlashHawk?’
Mal shook her head. ‘The Intimate has instructions to hide it and remain with it for an emergency.’
‘How do I contact it?’
She gave me a Mal look. ‘You don’t.’
‘Well, you’d better stay alive. Because I’ll be betting that we need it. What about the Polity he talked about? Can they help us?’
She puffed and I winced as we walked out of one wheelport spoke into the ’pede park.
‘An organised polity was just Gerwent’s dream and is the reason why the Royals have become so powerless. There isn’t a backbone among them. Only Gerwent. That’s why Mel and I stayed even when his ideas got so wild. At least he has some. I’ve grown to believe that his is the way to start again. Only we don’t have him driving it any more. We’ve only got you.’
Great.
The grimace that Mal gave me was deprecating. So far she’d saved my life twice. She was telling me that I hadn’t done enough to impress her in return.
I changed the subject.
‘Was Mel related to you?’ I didn’t show any sympathy for the other woman’s death in the destruction of the palace because I didn’t know that Mal needed it.
She sighed. ‘I am her genetic copy - the younger version. I’ve - we’ve - been Royal servants for a long time. My genes condemned me to loyalty. I’ve been cloned to ensure their reproduction from someone who already had that character trait.’ She rumbled a loud, derogatory laugh. ‘We’re like the eunuchs of old, only you didn’t have to emasculate us. Our genes did it for us.’
I wasn’t going to argue with her on that.
I watched a group of athletes boarding a private ’pede.
‘Can Sera Bau tap into the private ’pedes?’
Mal saw where I was looking. ‘Not that one. See the Running Man emblem? Those athletes are sponsored by James Monk.’
&nbs
p; ‘Even better.’
Mal strode in front of the transport as it crawled toward the channel for the downtown traffic stream. Somehow she bluffed us a ride with a story that I was an athlete and we’d missed our own ride.
The driver checked me out. I tried to look flexible and toned and chokked on whatever the latest enhancers were.
‘ID?’
Mal gripped the window frame like it could be his neck.
‘You’re jerking me, right? This is Jales Wyzconkski.’
I bit my lip at her retro-hip lingo and the absurd made-up name, and scowled at him.
Athletes were always pissed off about something.
‘See if there’s room,’ he grumbled and released the door lock.
I wedged in among some cricketers heading in for a night out on Brightbeach.
Stoned and excited, they ribbed each other over which Amorato they’d end up with and who among them had the most staying power.
A week ago their chatter wouldn’t have bothered me but tonight I found it depressing. Glorious could have been one of their jokes.
And Glorious was probably dead.
A sunburnt guy whose receding hair circled a pink scalp and who had the beginnings of a soft belly ran his hand along my thigh.
I dropped my fist down hard between his legs.
The others roared with laughter as he yelled. He threw me sulky glances for the rest of the trip.
Stupid, Parrish. Casual enemies I did not need.
Mal and I parted from the cricketers at an intersection a couple of blocks away from the Fair.
I worked my way back into a Jales Belliere persona as we walked. Merv had registered me ahead of time for the meat tray. By now my forged pedigree would be bouncing all over the auction bid-bay for pre-buyers.
The shopping trip, without Gerwent Ban’s credit, had fielded only a cheap, ill-fitting, short flared skirt, a loud satin tank top and some slightly wonky heels. All I had to do now was walk out on the dais and act like meat.
With luck, James Monk would do the rest.
The risk, of course, was someone else taking a fancy to a badly dressed Amorato from the Interior. If you believed the flesh merchants, there was always a market for exotic meat.
Merv said he’d attempt to keep out the wrong sort of bids from his end by pushing the price. But nothing was certain.
The other risk was Lavish. Merv hadn’t been able to find out if he’d survived the bridge episode. The Luxoria wasn’t taking calls.
And Leesa Tulu. If she was there . . .
My registration numbers got us into the lift, which stopped automatically a floor short of the Fair. We walked down a short corridor to another registration check. Behind it was a crowded body shop.
That’s what it reminded me of, anyway.
Meat being moulded, primped and corseted. Pubic-hair exfoliations. Cosmetic sculpting like the sort I’d had in Plastique. All shapes and all sizes of genitalia and physique. Air thick with pheromones.
As soon as I scented the dizzies, the Eskaalim swelled.
‘I thought the Fair’s rules said no pheromones?’ I gasped.
‘The Produce can use them. Not the Buyers.’
I found myself automatically seeking out a Primp station, right next to a pair quietly fucking.
Mal followed me and grabbed my shoulders, giving me a shake, her nostrils flaring. I hadn’t noticed before how smooth her skin was, almost girlish.
She slapped my ear and shoved a mask over my nose and mouth. I fell off the chair and came up cocked and ready to fight her.
She blocked my fist with one hand and held me still.
‘Save the sex for the stage.’
My face got hot with all kinds of emotions. Mainly humiliation.
I grappled for some semblance of self-control and let a Primp-er come and look me over.
‘Who dressed this bitch?’ he said to no one in particular. He wore a mask like the rest of the workers that sucked in every time he breathed. He got busy programming the beauty nanos to rouge my face and eat any dry skin and unwanted body odours. They skittled over me while the Primp-er squeezed my breasts into something impossibly narrow and high.
Boy, was I getting tolerant. In fact, it felt kinda . . .
‘My - er - luggage was stolen by the border Militia. I think they liked what they saw in it,’ I said, forcing myself to think.
‘Typical. Those border boys are such grrlie wannabes.’ The tight suspicion around his mouth eased a little.
His touch was tantalising. The dizzies leaked in around the edges of my mask and set my skin afire with sensations.
I tried to think about Leesa Tulu.
Bitch-doctor. Enough bad karma to dampen anyone’s ardour.
Instead, my thoughts strayed off-track to Loyl. If Monk bought me, I might wind up seeing him. I planned to kick his arse for lying to me about the fact that I’d shape-changed.
‘OK?’ Mal brought me back to the present.
I nodded. A high-pitched ring told us that the market was in interval and an exotically tall, thin man in a full-length leather coat wove among the Meat and the Primp-ers. He flexed an electric probe in his hands as if it was a whip.
‘Custodian,’ Mal said.
‘How come you know so much?’ I asked.
‘Underestimating people is dangerous,’ she replied, refusing to be drawn further.
The couple in the next station heard the ring and pulled up sharp on their antics, smoothing down their clothes.
I felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed that they’d stopped.
‘Is he a big deal?’ I asked the room at large.
‘Don’t stare or he’ll come over here,’ said the girl next to me as she shoved her breasts back into her corset. ‘If he thinks you won’t raise a high enough bid he’ll on-sell you to the quods. You earn squat in quod.’
Quod. Was this the thing Gerwent Ban had talked about - the way Ike got all that meat to experiment on: buying criminals? ‘He can do that?’
She gave a quick, fearful nod and turned her back on me.
As if he’d heard us, the Custodian stopped and swivelled.
As the Primp-er bitched on about the size and state of my skin pores, I let my gaze casually slide in another direction until the Custodian had disappeared into his own booth.
I checked the wall screen for my number. I was first up after the interval.
How the freak was I going to walk out there and keep my froid? To my mind meat markets were on a par with rape and murder. Yet I was still horny.
I noticed that Mal had left my side. Then I heard a commotion.
I located Mal’s broad back to the left of the main door. Above the entrance a ceiling-mounted semi-auto had descended and begun a whirring scan of the room.
The Meat and Primp-ers saw the hardware out and started screaming and running around.
I pushed my Primp-er off me and hit the floor, crawling behind the line of chairs to get a better view.
From between a whole lotta legs it looked like security had some non-meat baled up in the corridor.
The leather-coated Custodian stepped from his booth, bearing his own spectacular piece of hardware: a twelve-gauge shotgun with a modified-choke barrel. Old but immaculate - ultimate close-range stopping power.
The place went into hush mode.
‘I want to pre-buy her,’ a voice demanded.
I recognised the deep guttural.
Bitch-doctor.
I had more than a few scores to settle with Leesa Tulu, but if she got in my face before the parade I might not live to see my plan out.
I kept my head down and prayed that the bouncers didn’t like her attitude.
‘Mad-dame Tulu, as a frequent buyer you know that the regulations of the Fair are quite clear. No one may procure stock from the green room before the parade. No matter who they are. Otherwise we would cease to be able to operate a fair system,’ said the Custodian. ‘The rules of bidding are immutable.’
<
br /> ‘If I lose her because of this, Listrata—’
‘If you lose her it will be the result of equitable bidding,’ the Custodian interjected. ‘Happy Pan-Sats, Mad-dame Tulu.’
I could see the relief in Mal’s profile. She backed away from the corner of the door and returned to where she’d left me.
I made sure that the door had closed in Tulu’s face before I stood up.
‘Why did she want you?’
‘Long story,’ I said. ‘And grisly.’
‘Jales Belliere?’ My Amorato name pinged off the walls of the green room like gunshot. I adjusted my expression to innocent and approached the Custodian, my head lowered.
‘We don’t like troublemakers at our Fair. If you cause the slightest problem during bidding I will sell you privately.’ He slapped the shotgun painfully against my ear. ‘Comprends?’
I didn’t doubt him at all. He had no respect for the people he sold off like cuts of meat. Not surprising, really. Most of them didn’t have respect for themselves.
But then they were here for practical reasons. If you could get a regular income and better working conditions, who’d be stupid enough not to take them?
Me, probably.
I stood mute in front of him, fighting down the anger. The Custodian took my reaction as fear and moved off, satisfied.
My number chimed and another Primp-er hustled me straight to the service lift. I didn’t get to speak to Mal. There was only time enough to snatch the mask from my face.
In the lift the Primp-er squirted a vial of diz up my nostrils. I stared at his bare shoulders and hairless, over-painted face, wondering what he might look like naked.
Thankfully the partitions lifted before lust overpowered sense.
Showtime.
Chapter Twenty
The spotlights warped my view of everything except Listrata, the Custodian, who stood centre stage, his stance provocative and arrogant.
The man surely dug what he did.
His honeyed voice was a lure that he used to maximum effect as he talked up the success of the markets.
I made three trips up and down without generating a single bid.
I felt naked under the lights. Not the bare-skinned kind of naked. The unsafe kind.
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