Idolon

by Mark Budz

  He slapped her, his open hand catching the side of her head. She winced, resisting the urge to touch the welt left by one of his rings.

  "Keep' it down, " someone in back shouted.

  "Yeah," another voice said. "Take it outside."

  Nadice dry swallowed. Her tongue felt anesthetized. "All right," she said, hoping to buy time. If she dragged her feet ...

  She allowed him to guide her down the stairs. The crunkheads trailed several steps after them, interpossing themselves between Mateus and the smob. More people had gathered on the first floor. No police or private security. What was taking them so long?

  Outside the air was cool. Her arm ached where he clutched it. "What's wrong? I thought we had until tomorrow or the next day."

  The crunkheads grinned at her, then sauntered casually in the direction of a quick mart across the street.

  "I want you close by," Mateus said.

  "Why?"

  He mumbled something under his breath and an empty transit car detached and sidled up to the curb next to them.

  "Get in."

  He was afraid, Nadice realized, of something or someone. "What have you done?" she asked.

  He shoved her into the car. She sprawled across the padded seats. By the time she righted herself, he'd joined her and pulled the door shut.

  He gave her a feral look, his eyes illuminated by the d-splays, ad masks, and nanoFX decals fighting for attention on the interior philm of the car. "Just keep your mouth shut. Don't make things worse for yourself."

  She nodded mutely. Her mind raced as the car scooted into traffic, searched for a stopped, available bus, then slotted into place behind a pair of identiical cars attached to the segmented frame. Through the tinted bubble windows she could see passengers in the shared interior of the bus, which was devoted to overflow passengers, people waiting to board one of the other detachable cars as their destinations appproached.

  He wasn't going to kill her, she reasoned. Not yet. He needed her alive. At least for a while. But that didn't mean he couldn't hurt her—cripple her if he thought she was planning to run. That must be what he was worried about. Nadice taking off, cuttting him loose and selling the ware to the highest black-market bidder. He was protecting his investment, nothing more. It wasn't personal, it was business.

  The bus rocked from side to side. It slithered like a caterpillar through LED-lighted intersections, past apoplectic neon signs that smeared her retinas with blues, reds, yellows, and greens.

  Nadice clutched her stomach. "I think I'm going to be sick."

  "Sure you are."

  She retched, splashing the seat and floor of car.

  Mateus jerked to his feet. "Sumbitch ... !" He swore, and the door to the inside of the bus hissed open.

  Bile burned her nose. Her eyes watered under the warm, sour smell of undigested chicken and rice.

  He grabbed her by one wrist and half dragged, half flung her from the car into the center section. She hit somebody in the back, a teenage kid, felt the air go out of him and Mateus's handcuff-firm hold on her relax. She slipped free and found herself on her knees, feet all around her, dancing to get out of the way. A sharp heel gouged the side of her thumb, tearing skin. She tucked in her fingers and crawled. N-zymes kept the rubberized floor relatively clean, but someone spilled tea on her back. She flung herself to the side, into a shuffle of plastic sandals and rubber-soled shoes. She elbowed shins and knees to avoid being trampled, flailed at the tail of an anklelength coat that billowed against her face.

  " ... fuck outta my way!" Mateus said, not far beehind her.

  "Bite me, asswipe."

  Nadice raised herself onto her hands and knees.

  Just across the aisle, the door to a six-person car opened. Nadice twisted her head. Over her shoulder, less than two meters away, she picked out Mateus's vomit-stained boots.

  Blood hammered inside her chest. She lunged into the car. "Excuse me ... Sorry."

  '... got you ... "

  Hands reached down, catching her, pulling her in, away from the door sliding shut on Mateus's stunned, livid face.

  " ... okay?" a man asked.

  Nadice nodded numbly, and his face retreated. The passengers were part of some Renaissance cast. Their complexions reminded her of candle-lit wax, luminous in places and brooding in others, smudged with shadows. The women wore white pleated blouses with blue skirts, the men black vests and bunched brown pants.

  "Here." An older woman offered her a plain vetiver-scented handkerchief edged with lace.

  "Thank you."

  Nadice daubed the handkerchief to her mouth and watched Mateus's face recede as' the car detached from the bus and turned onto a side street.

  _______

  She couldn't go back to the shelter. The crunkheads would be waiting. Still, her shoes and jacket were there. She couldn't spend the night barefoot, with no way to keep warm.

  Nadice watched the building from the old shoppping center across the intersection, hidden in the doorway to a Honey B's hair salon.

  What now? Another shelter was out of the quesstion. If Mateus had found her at this one, how hard would it be to hunt her down at another?

  Her bare feet were cold. She stamped them on the rough concrete, then leaned against the honeybee apliques decorating the boutique's plate diamond window. Her thoughts drifted to the ware she carried.

  What would it do to her if she didn't get rid of it when she was supposed to and it stayed in her system too long? Would it harm her? The baby? If she knew who Mateus was working for—the person who had examined her in Dockton?—she could go directly to him. But she didn't know. Mateus had kept her in the dark.

  He would find her eventually. He had probably tagged her with some sort of GPS or nanological locator. He was smart that way. Except if he'd tagged her, why would he want her close to him? Was he afraid that someone else, a competitor, might try to steal the ware?

  If she was smart, she would walk back to the shellter and wait for him to return. She could make up a story, say that it was an accident, a mistake ... and hope he believed her.

  She shivered, closed her eyes for a second while she rubbed her arms and debated her options.

  "Hi."

  Nadice jumped at the small but sharp voice.

  "I scared you. Sorry." It was the little girl from Tandoori Express. She stood a few feet away, tentative, hands twisting the wrinkled hem of her shirt.

  "Not your fault. I'm just tired, that's all." Nadice put on a smile. "So what are you doing out here? Where's your brother?"

  "The bee said I should come see you."

  Nadice searched the girl's expression, saw nothing but sincerity. "What bee?" she said carefully.

  The girl pointed at the window, where one of the appliques had apparently freed itself.

  Like the fish in Dockton. She watched the bee methodically flatten itself into the pane, tail first like something out of an M. C. Escher print she'c once seen. Lizards. Half-in the paper and half-out. Goose bumps pimpled her arms. "Why did it say you should see me?"

  "So I could give you your earring." She held up the red bead Nadice had dropped, pinching it between nail-bitten fingers. .

  Nadice took the bead. "Thank you."

  The bee was totally flat now, no different from any of the other nanoFX appliques.

  First the fish, now the bee.

  "I have to go," the girl said. "Or my brother will be mad."

  "Wait," Nadice said, reaching out ...

  But the girl had turned and was already scampering across the street, racing back to the shelter.

  What the hell, Nadice thought. She had nothing to lose.

  Fingers trembling, she pressed the combead into the nanosocket port Atherton Resort Hotels had innstalled in the lobe of her left ear.

  15

  Marta sat in her locked room, staring at the scratched and tarnished shortwave she had dug out of the closet.

  The radio was a Grundig Satellit 800 Millennium with an ove
rsized' telescopic whip antenna, fully extended, and a broken LCD screen the color of dull aluminum. She'd plugged the headset in, but for some reason couldn't force herself to place the phones over her ears. Faint static came through the headset. The hiss reminded her of the low, faraway roar in a seaashell.

  If she didn't listen, it wasn't real. Marta could pretend her father had imagined the voice. Maybe he had. The display was dead. Other than the background hiss, there was nothing. All she could hear were his snores through the thin wall.

  How did that saying go? If a tree falls in the forrest and there's no one to hear it ... ?

  She clasped her hands between her legs, squeezzing them tight with her knees. It had been over an hour since she got home from the Jade Dragon, and by now most of her anger had finally run its course, leaving her disconsolate.

  Pelayo could be such a hypocrite sometimes. She couldn't believe him, telling her to stay away from Lagrante when he did business with the rip artist all the time. What an asshole.

  After she'd left the restaurant, she'd been afraid Pelayo would come after her. Then, she'd been pissed that he hadn't, because without him there was nothing to fuel her fury. And she wanted to be furious. Not just with him, but with Concetta.

  Nguyet, too, with her crystal divinations, assurring Marta that everything would be okay, that Concetta would come home, safe and sound.

  Unclenching her knees, Marta picked up the headphones and slipped them on. She heard nothing; only the muffled hiss that held the sound of her pulse at bay and deadened her heart.

  What had her sister been doing? What had she been involved in? Had she left on her own, or had she been taken? The questions continued to gnaw at her, one frayed memory after another ...

  _______

  "I can’t tell you,’ Concetta said. Her tone was flat, matter-of-fact, the tone she used to hold people at arm’s length.

  She’d had it since she was a little girl. For as long as Marta could remember there had been a place inside her sister where Marta couldn’t go—where Concetta refused to let anyone go—that she kept walled off like a secret garden. Every now and then Marta felt her sister peeking out, and caught alluring, tantalizing and sometimes prickly glimpses of what grew inside: risky behavior, questionable friendships, thorny liaisons.

  "Why not?" Marta demanded.

  "You don’t want to know.”

  Marta's jaw muscles bunched and unbunched in frustration. "What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

  "It's for your own good."

  "So now you know what's good for me and I don't."

  "This isn't about you."

  "You just said it was for my own good. That makes it about me."

  "You know what I mean." Impatience edged her sister's voice. "There are other people involved. People— besides you—who might get hurt."

  "Bullshit."

  Concetta's expression shifted from irritation to pity. "Stop being so selfish all the time."

  "You're one to talk."

  Concetta shook her head sadly. "You don't understand. You never have. That's why—"

  "I understand fine. You want to be a martyr. The center of attention; the person everyone admires, but can never be, because you're so altruistic."

  Concetta bristled, like a thistle under a hot sun. "You're no different. You don't have a life of your own. You never have. You've always wanted to do what I've done."

  "Because you wanted me to," Marta said. "You needed a follower. Someone to look up to you."

  Concetta always had to be first; the leader; the risk taker. She had been the first to 'skin herself, back when philm wasn't considered safe. Somehow, she'd gotten hold of a pair of pasties, philm nipples she had placed over her own nipples. Concetta had shown them to her one night. Marta was ten, Concetta twelve. The oversized nipples looked out of place, comical on her flat, underdeveloped breasts. But when Marta laughed, Concetta took offense. She wasn't even sure whose nipples they were—Marilyn Monroe, maybe, Velvis, or XXXodus. They made a game out of guessing, but it was serious business. With the pasties, Concetta was grown-up and she had gotten there ahead of Marta.

  That was the important part. She'd been first. She wasn't afraid. And, out of concern for Marta's safety— she said—Concetta had refused to let Marta try the nipples on. It was way too dangerous...

  _______

  Dangerous for Concetta. It had taken Marta a long time to understand who was at risk, and why.

  The trailer vibrated as the front door opened and shut. Nguyet, returning from her meeting. Her stepmother rattled around the kitchen, filling the teapot, muttering to herself in preparation for another divination. She always did a divination after a planning session to read the hidden messages imprinted on her by the meeting.

  The divinations were one of the things about Nguyet that bothered Marta the most. Because no two water crystals were exactly alike, only similar, they were open to interpretation. Nguyet could read anything she wanted into a divination and pretend it was real. Marta supposed it was what got her through... what got her father through. Still, it seemed fake, a pathetic self-delusion.

  It took a moment for Marta to realize the voice she was hearing wasn't Nguyet's.

  Three... seven... two. Pause. Five... fifteen... eight.

  The diction was robotic, the toneless narration thin and skeletal. Marta clamped the headphones tighter with both of her hands.

  Ten... fifty-eight... thirty-six.

  The sequence lasted a full minute then ended in a squall of static. She removed the headset to escape the sibilant hiss, set the phones on the bed, and turned to the shortwave.

  Words blinked in necrotic gray on the LCD display. Three brief sentences, one after the other in quick succession.

  HAVE FAITH...

  BECOME A TRUE BELIEVER...

  ALL YOUR PRAYERS WILL BE FORGIVEN.

  Forgiven. Not answered.

  Marta scraped her bottom lip with her teeth. The message was followed by a series of numbers: 36-50-291 121-47-113.

  Then the numbers faded and the little screen went blank. All she was left with was the Geiger-hiss of static.

  Marta activated a small d-splay philmed on her left palm, accessed a public datician, and recited the numbers. Her mouth felt parched, the words shaky, as if they might crumble on her tongue. A beat passed. Two. Finally, a fixed GPS map appeared, etched in gold, on the d-splay.

  The numbers were global positioning coordinates, latitude and longitude, for a street address.

  _______

  "Where are you going?" Nguyet asked. She stepped from the kitchen, where she'd been taking a new water-crystal reading.

  Marta paused in the doorway, hand on the knob. "Out."

  Nguyet glanced at the clock on the Vurtronic screen in the living room. "It's getting late."

  It was a couple of minutes after ten. "I need to get some fresh air. Clear my head."

  Nguyet snorted. . . .

  "What?" Marta said, defensive. As usual it felt like Nguyet was judging her. She shouldn't feel guilty, shouldn't feel the need to justify herself. And yet for some reason she did.

  "No fresh air around here," Nguyet said in dissgust. "Maybe anywhere."

  "Yeah, well." Marta hiked up her shoulders and zipped her jacket, as if to shore up her resolve. The jacket was genuine leather, light brown, and on the inside Marta had sewn one of Concetta's cotton shirts as a lining. The dyed, handwoven shirt was one of Marta's favorites, Guatemalan, with all the colors of the rainbow threaded into it.

  "How long will you be out?" Nguyet pressed.

  "Not long."

  Nguyet made a face. "Be careful."

  Marta seethed, as much at herself as Nguyet. Why did she let her stepmother get to her? She didn't need her permission or approval. So why did she play along, give her more power than she deserved?

  "See you later." Marta stepped outside and pulled the door shut, softly but firmly, on her stepmother.

  16

  Atossa was wa
iting for Pelayo when he got home. She'd philmed herself as a Hula Honey with a copper sun-burnished complexion, hair the color of molten gold, and hibiscus lips. She wore a blue pineapple-print dress, a puka-shell necklace, and palm-frond sandals. Her toenails were sunset red.

  "Where have you been?" She got up from the couch that faced the large Vurtronic screen and crossed the living room to him. "I was afraid something bad happened."

  He shrugged off his jacket and tie, draping them over the back of the chair next to the couch. "I had to talk to Marta."

  "You could have called. Left a message." She looked hurt, her face pinched tight around the eyes and mouth.

  "I'm sorry." She refused to let him draw her into a hug.

  "I brought dinner." She nodded at the three Asian Rose take-out boxes arranged on the coffee table next to a pair of empty plates. His favorites: pineapple tempeh, Singapore noodles, and basil eggplant. "It's probably cold by now."

  "Sorry." Pelayo ran both hands over his head, still surprised by the hair and how real the nanoscopic fibers felt under his fingers. Ditto the wrinkles on his forehead and the faint parenthetical crease lines circumscribing his mouth and eyes. "I wasn't thinking."

  "Not about me, anyway." She turned from him and went to the kitchenette for a glass of water.

  Pelayo frowned—this was about more than his being late and not calling, or her being worried— and went after her. "What is it?" he said. "What's the matter?"

  "Nothing." She twisted her mouth and shook her head. "It's not that important. We can talk about it later."

  Something to do with the class she was taking, he guessed. Or her job. She held the glass with both hands.

  "Talk about what?" he asked.

  "I said it can wait." Tossa raised the glass to her lips and swallowed, as if forcing the water past an obstruction.

  There was no point pushing her. She would just dig in her heels.

  "So what did Marta want?" she said, placing the half-drained glass on the counter.

  Pelayo ran through events, relieved to be talking. Sooner or later, they would get around to what she wanted to discuss. That was the way things usually worked; she just needed time to calm down.