Spares

by Michael Marshall Smith

  “How do you get out the back?”

  Nearly shrugged. “Search me. You think I spent a lot of time in here, making friends with the tomatoes?”

  Not helpful, and I considered telling her so, but then Suej pointed to a far corner. “There’s a door back there, behind the crates.”

  I opened it carefully, gun ready. No one outside. I stuck my head out to check that the service alley was empty, and then stepped out, motioning vigorously to the girls.

  Alley for about fifty yards, then a turn behind a burger franchise. I hadn’t gotten the cheeseburgers I’d been planning, but I’d forgotten most of the combinations anyway. Some other time. The suballey fed into a twisting street which had been built as a shopping nest. The stores were mainly closed and we hurtled past windows packed with goodies, me wondering where exactly we were going to go. Off the floor was first priority, but what then? Mal’s was no help—the guy with the blue lights knew exactly where that was.

  What if Nanune hadn’t been the first to die? It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her, even love her in some strange way, but I’d spent so much more time with Suej and David and jenny. If anything happened to them I knew I was never going to be able to forgive myself.

  At the end of the shopping street came a bigger road, and I strode across it, weaving through straggling pedestrians. There’d been no sound of feet behind us, and I judged that if Vinaldi’s men hadn’t had the sense to watch back doors they weren’t going to have guys posted this far out.

  Wrong. As we reached the other side I heard the sound of a shot, and a bullet whined within inches of us. Nearly shrieked and I dragged the two of them into an alley on the other side. I was used to doing this kind of thing by myself, not with a couple of passengers. I debated letting go of one of them and going for my gun; decided that speed was a better option. Footsteps slapped along the alley behind us, the guy occasionally shouting my name. Strange, unless they wanted to take me in alive. Should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. I didn’t want to be taken in at all.

  At the bottom of the alley, another short street. At the end of it an elevator. No line, and the door standing wide open—God on my side for once. Ragged breathing on either side of me; Nearly’s high heels hardly an advantage. As we stumbled into the street I shouted for the girls to keep their heads down. Kinks in the alley had protected us from shots. Now the guy had a clear sight. We dived across the road bent double, the doors tantalizingly close now; another shot whistled past and spanged into the metal of the elevator shaft.

  “Get in!” I shouted. They jumped into the carriage and I turned to face the man. He was halfway up the street and slowing down, gun held up in a safe position.

  “Randall,” he shouted. “There’s nowhere you can go.”

  “There’s always somewhere,” I muttered, pulling my own gun out. The guy had stopped completely now, and was standing about ten yards down the street. “You can’t stop me. He wants me in one piece.”

  “If I take back your liver he’ll be happy,” the man said, but I knew he was lying. We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise. “Come away from the elevator or I’m going to blow your cock off. The bitches can go—they’re no use to anyone.”

  Nearly stuck her head out of the door. “Fuck off, maggot dick!” she shouted cheerily. Not helpful, I thought for the second time. Impugning hoods’ masculinity is like poking rattlers with a stick.

  The guy aimed at my head, evidently deciding he could just say I resisted too hard. I pulled back the hammer on my own gun, backing toward the elevator. Watching the guy’s eyes, seeing him make his calculations.

  “Press a button,” I whispered, still holding my gun steadily on the other guy’s head. I heard a click behind me, but remained still for another moment—before suddenly stepping backward. Not a second too soon: The doors closed swiftly in front of me, nearly taking my hands off—and leaving the guy outside openmouthed and looking stupid with surprise.

  Not a very clever trick; but then he hadn’t been a very clever man.

  Feeling slightly smug I turned around, and saw that I was standing in a forest. The elevator’s light condensed then diffused until it was only a far-off blue glow, barely visible through the trees. It was cold and yet unpleasantly clammy, as if I was wearing too many clothes in a snowstorm.

  No, I thought, in a childlike and horrified whisper. I’m not back here. I can’t be.

  I whirled and saw the forest stretching in all directions around me, cold and fetid and dank. The distant light wasn’t trustworthy; sometimes it appeared to be there, sometimes not. The bark of the trees ran like tiny vertical streams, the gnarled surface rubbing amidst itself with sudden slimy hissing sounds. Or perhaps the sound came from the sweat working against my skin, crawling like a patina of tiny liquid creatures. There was no one in sight and I swallowed tightly, feeling as if I was dropping into the center of the earth. I’d gotten cut off, and the unit had run away into the trees, fighting in the only way they knew how: running, howling in silent terror, remembering me for no more than a second as someone else who had been lost. I looked down at a rustle below me to see faces in the leaves, huge grins twisting around my feet, and then—

  I was in the elevator, hearing only a slight swishing sound as we shot up through the floors. The elevator was bright, walled with glass, sane: an elevator. Nearly was regarding me dubiously.

  “You okay, big guy?” she asked, head slightly on one side. As usual, her attitude toward me seemed to be one of mild amusement.

  “I don’t know,” I croaked, turning my head to check that everything was as it seemed.

  “Looked kind of flaky for a moment there. I’d offer you a line of coke but you look like you’ve got enough weirdness going on already.”

  “Flashback,” I said, shivering. One of the most vivid I’d ever had. I reached for a cigarette, lit it with shaking hands, and pulled deeply, yanking as much smoke as possible into my lungs, I felt truly dreadful, and Suej was staring at me strangely.

  “Smoking in an xPress elevator is not permitted,” said a droid voice, and Nearly rolled her eyes.

  “Fuck off,” I requested, taking another deep pull. I was having this cigarette if it killed me. The elevator immediately halted between floors.

  “We’re not going anywhere until you put that out,” the voice said primly. “Cigarettes cause death, illness and death. And they smell.”

  “What do you care?” Nearly said, lighting up one of her own just to be difficult. “You don’t have any lungs.”

  “No, but subsequent elevator patrons will have, especially those from the higher floors. Please extinguish all cigarettes.”

  “Where are your cognitive centers stored?” I asked, racking a shell into the barrel of my gun with jittery hands. “And can the elevator function without them?”

  “Yes, it can,” the elevator said, with an air of slight puzzlement. “And I’m behind the red panel on your left Why do you ask?”

  “Because,” I said, “if you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to blow you to shit and then spend the rest of the journey smoking in comfort. I may even have a cigar.” To drive my point home, I held my gun at arm’s length so that the barrel was aimed straight at the panel it had referred to. “And a tip for the future—think before you answer questions truthfully.”

  There was a pause, and then the droid spoke again. “A valuable piece of advice, and in recognition of that I shall permit you to continue your journey as requested. Please stand by.” A slight hum, and then the elevator started to ascend again. “Though I still think you’re very naughty.”

  I laughed, a short quavering bark which had nothing to do with amusement I think it was a first for “naughty” in probably thirty years, I turned to Nearly and Suej, and noticed that they seemed to be looking each other up and down. Suej does look as if she’s been through the wars, and in turn I realized Nearly was also probably the first nonspare female Suej had seen at close quarters. But there seemed t
o be more to it than that: a kind of mutual appraisal.

  “What floor did you press?” I asked Nearly, to break the silence.

  “Sixty-six,” she said, “it’s where I live. I’m done for the night I’m going home.”

  “Where are we going to go?” Suej asked, her eyes firmly on me now. I looked at the floor indicator and saw we were coming up to 40.

  I looked at Nearly. “Can Suej come with you?”

  “Sure. There’s only a couch, but…”

  “No!” shouted Suej. “I’m not going. I’m coming with you. I want to find David and the others. I’m sick of being left places. You never used to be like this. You were there all the time and now you’re never here.”

  64.65.

  “What’s the address?”

  “Sixty-six/two thousand and three—corner of Tyson and Stones.”

  “See you later,” I said, jabbing a floor button as the doors opened behind her. “Stay indoors.”

  Nearly stepped out and I gently shoved Suej after her. She stumbled backward out of the elevator as the doors closed, her face like thunder.

  Then I stood, facing the doors, as the elevator shot up toward 135. I was trying not to think about the forest, and not succeeding. I’d never had a flashback to The Gap before, and in that two-second glimpse had been everything I’d been trying to forget. I was also trying not to think about Nanune, and the fact there’d been something wrong with her head over and above the fact that it was no longer attached to her body.

  About the fact that there’d been “unspecified facial damage.”

  In my current state I couldn’t work out how this changed things, though obviously it changed everything. I didn’t know where to look for the blue-headed man who’d come asking for me with Nanune’s head in a box, and sensed I wouldn’t have to. In the meantime, there was someone else looking for me. I’d shoved Suej out because I’d decided to save him the trouble and go looking for him instead.

  Club Bastard was an explosion of thrashing groovesters, contained within a barnlike building in the middle of a party floor. You couldn’t have gotten anyone else into the club without first compressing them to the size of a pea, and I suspect that when I pushed my way into the club someone must have been popped out of a window the other side. Music crunched out of massive speakers along every wall, competing with the cacophony of five hundred people all shouting at once. The music was Predictive Trance, the notes and words all fresh-minted in real time by a bank of computers on the far wall. The algorithms used for generating the lyrics are keyed to the effect of various recreational drugs, and thus the more out of it you get, the better you become at predicting what the words will be.

  I shouldered my way through to the bar, buffeted on every side by bright young things. The line at the counter wasn’t very deep, probably because everyone in the place was bombed on happy drugs. Dying tendrils of the Rapt I’d taken were sparkling periodically in parts of my brain, and being surrounded by glittering eyes and expensive highs was not what I needed. I was grimly conscious of the fact that what I did need was more Rapt, and that I shouldn’t allow myself to have it. I was also still shouldering thoughts of the spares away as hard as I could. I knew I had to find them soon. Nothing had changed—including the fact that I didn’t know where to start looking. I wasn’t in a great state, to be honest, and had no high hopes of ever feeling better.

  The gorilla behind the bar stared at me impassively when I got there, waiting for me to speak.

  “Is Johnny in?” I asked, trying to look tough.

  “Who wants to know?” the man said. He was trying even harder than me and succeeded only in looking like two types of shit in a one-shit waistcoat.

  “I do, obviously, you stupid fuck,” I said, not impressed. “Or I wouldn’t have asked. Is he in or not?”

  Huge hands closed around my arms. A Vinaldi goon stood on either side of me, two jabs in my back making it clear they were armed as well. The barman grinned.

  “He’s expecting you,” he said.

  The two goons steered me through the crowd toward a glass wall on the other side of the club. The glass was chroma-keyed to reflect only flesh tones, creating a shifting mirage of disembodied arms and heads. As we approached, a door opened to one side making it clear that the wall was one-way glass. I was bundled unceremoniously through the doorway and into the space behind.

  Up a short flight of steps and into a large room, stretching the length of the wall. Sofas, bookcases, full AV rig; points of red and green LED’s in the semidarkness. Jaz Garcia stepped out of the gloom, gripped me by the throat, and pulled me forward.

  “Careful,” said a voice. “I want to hear his explanation before I let you remodel salient features of his body. Though trust me, that will be an upcoming presentation.”

  Garcia punched me solidly in the face, to promote cooperation and let me know the score. Then his other hand loosened barely perceptibly as he swung me round and let go. I was thrown accurately into a large chair facing the glass wall, and I had to admire his technique.

  I knew what was going to happen. Maybe Nearly would look after Suej. Beyond the one-way mirror I could see all the happy youngsters below, dancing for their lives. Have fun, I thought to them. Shout those lyrics. You won’t even hear the gunshot when it comes.

  Another man thrust his hands into my jacket and came out with my gun, which he placed carefully on a table. Then he waved some kind of detector over me. Nothing bleeped, and the man stepped back out of sight. Garcia had disappeared to stand behind me, and the scene was almost set. I heard a chair being scraped along the floor in front of me, and then set down, back toward me.

  Vinaldi sat himself down in it, arms folded over the back of the chair. I wondered if guys like him had to go to some orientation class when they started out, to make sure they got things like that just right. I made a mental note to ask Dath in the unlikely event of my ever seeing him again.

  He didn’t say anything for a while, so I started the ball rolling. “You wanted to see me,” I said, striving for a tone of friendly interest.

  Johnny didn’t say anything again, or rather continued not to say anything. He kept that up for long enough that my remark disappeared as if I’d never made it. This was obviously to be his show, and his alone. I decided to just wait and let him have it his way.

  “Randall,” he said eventually, “you ought to be congratulated. There should be statues to you. You are truly a very stupid man.”

  “I try,” I said, and Garcia struck me across the back of the head with a gun. It hurt like fuck.

  Vinaldi smiled thinly. “What made you think you could do this?”

  “Do what?” I said, blinking my eyes against the pain in my head. “Tell me, Johnny, what is it you think I’m doing?”

  “In a way it is reassuring that all my problems come down to you. It is reassuring to me because I thought I had some kind of miniseries-sized revolt on my hands, and now I find all I have is some stupid ex-cop with a death wish. I see you’re fucked up again, which is no surprise to me. Your life is no use to you, is your problem, and tonight Jaz will put you out of your misery.”

  I stared back at him then, something beginning to strike me as wrong with this picture. Partly it was what Vinaldi was saying, mainly the atmosphere around me. Grimly celebratory. These guys thought they were putting an end to something here. I didn’t know what that might be.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked Vinaldi, genuinely interested. “I haven’t even started trying to take you down. When I do, you’ll know about it and you won’t have time for this kind of conversation. You’ll be too busy digging bullets out of your face.”

  I was expecting another blow from behind, but it still surprised me with its force. My head was thrown forward and I resolved to pace myself a little better. Two more like that and I’d be out, and I hadn’t been really rude yet.

  “Five of my closest associates have been killed,” Vinaldi said. “And you’re trying to
tell me you’ve got nothing to do with it?”

  I stared at him for real, then. “Nothing at all,” I said, genuinely astounded.

  Vinaldi laughed humorlessly. “Jaz said you’d say that. Me, I thought you’d have the sense to realize the position you’re in and tell the truth, but Jaz, he says you’re stupider than that.”

  “Jaz would know,” I said. “He’s the yardstick, after all.”

  Another crunch from behind, and this time a firework of stars went off above my right eye. So much for pacing myself. I shook my head and glanced through the glass wall for a moment, trying to refocus on something. It took a while. The crowds outside were still dancing, though there seemed to be some sort of confrontation happening far off at the main door.

  I tried to reorient myself around what was going on. It seemed to come down to this: Vinaldi thought I was the guy who was whacking his associates. He had to be fucking crazy.

  “You’ve got to be fucking crazy,” I said. “You think I’m going round clipping your friends?”

  “I know you are.”

  “As you keep pointing out, I’m not a cop anymore. I’ve got no problem with your associates. My only problem is with you.”

  “So you try to take me down from the outside. Slow death. I frankly admire the ambition.”

  “So do I, but it isn’t me. I wasn’t even in town when the first guys were killed,” I said.

  Vinaldi smiled, with real humor this time. “You think I’m going to believe a word you say?”

  “You’d better, because it’s true. And if it isn’t me trying to take you down, then it must be someone else.”

  Without taking his eyes off me, Vinaldi signaled into the gloom behind him. The henchman who’d frisked me padded out of the darkness, carrying something. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that something was still going on in the club beyond the glass, but then my attention was utterly taken.

  On the floor in front of me had been placed a cardboard box.