“It does?” I said.
“Yup. That one and the one the other guys were in. Both of ‘em registered to Trident Overland.”
Surprise quickly gave way to understanding. Trident Overland was Parsec’s ground freight company. Yup, the bastard had a claw in the trucking industry, as well as a sideline in used flying cars. Thinking about it, all the taxis in the Mujin Inc. garage probably came from Trident Overland. He would have sold or leased them to Canuck, i.e. to himself. The mismatched nature of the fleet reflected the opportunistic, cobbled-together ethos of Parsec’s operations: something old, something new, something stolen, something smuggled. Someone else’s wife …
“Can’t you just steer clear of him, Mike?” d’Alencon said, with exasperation in his tone.
I thought for a minute before answering. “I’m sorry for today’s incident. I’d apologize to him, as well, if he was standing here in front of me.” Mentally, I had my fingers crossed behind my back. I’d apologize to Buzz Parsec when hell froze over. “I wish to God he’d leave me and mine alone. But if he can’t leave me alone, I’m gonna have to defend myself. And that’s what happened today.”
D’Alencon half-smiled, but not in a good way. That was the response he’d expected, not the response he’d wanted. “You’re killing me here, Mike. After what happened the other day, I was ready to recommend you for a citizen of the year award. Then you gotta pull some shit like this.”
I hung my head, scratched the back of my neck. Dolph nibbled his fingernails. We were playing up to the Shifter stereotype, not as blatantly as I’d performed for the first officer I spoke to, but checking all the boxes nonetheless. Unreliable. Chronically violent. No trust in the authorities. Hopelessly prone to fighting among ourselves. We were collaborating in our own humiliation, to escape justice and the duties of friendship. You don’t question wild animals. What would be the point?
An officer walked away to take a call, then pulled d’Alencon aside. When Bones came back, the tension dropped by a notch or two. “Kaspar Silverback is refusing to press charges,” he said.
Dolph let out a jackally cough.
“And Tomas Feirweather, alias Canuck, is refusing to say one word to us.”
I kept my face blank. Inside, I was beaming.
“So we got no option but to let this go,” Bones said with pretend severity, although I could see that part of him, the part that wasn’t a police captain, was pleased. “On that understanding, do you want to change your mind?” He crooked a finger at his lieutenant, who tossed our phones back to us. “Talk to me, Mike. Tell me about that business up in Bonsucesso Tower, the taxi company. If Parsec’s getting into the VIP chartered car market, the VIPs of Mag-Ingat need to be warned.”
I smiled, but shook my head. A part of me felt regret. The thought of Ponce de Leon’s finest raiding Mujin Inc was attractive. But on what grounds, anyway? We had not seen anything illegal. We had not even seen anything unusual … except my ex-wife. And although I owed her nothing. I couldn’t sic the cops onto her.
Thus I justified my refusal to talk, which was actually founded on a much simpler rationale. Much as Parsec’s bears detested me, they hadn’t squealed on me, so I could not squeal on them.
“Sorry, Bones,” I said. “There’s nothing to say,”
“What you mean is you can’t say nothin’,” d’Alencon said with weary asperity. “Shifters. All right, get the fuck outta my volume.”
*
Dolph and I did as we were told, keeping our gait to a relaxed stroll until we were out of the officers’ view. Then we walked fast through the funfair. We kept walking until we reached Snakey’s, on the Strip between 60th and 61st. We stumbled into the dim, dusty afternoon coolness, and slumped at the bar. Vipe’s eldest daughter brought our drinks without being asked: a double shot of bourbon for me, beer with a shot for Dolph.
“Jesus fuck,” Dolph said. “I thought we were screwed there.”
“Me, too.”
“Those fucking bears.” Dolph’s knuckles were white on his shot glass as he tipped it into his beer. I nodded.
It’s considered low-class among Shifters to posse up with your own kind—that’s why we looked down on the bears. But we did it, too. We just had different tribal markers.
“I wish I knew how long she’s been working for him,” I said. I couldn’t get my head around the possibility that Sophia might have been living in Mag-Ingat for years, never coming near me and Lucy. Not even curious.
“It wouldn’t take long for her to feed him a bunch of bullshit about us,” Dolph said grimly.
“She wouldn’t do that,” I said. “She wouldn’t bother. You saw how she was.”
“Yeah.” Dolph sounded unconvinced. “But what happens if Bones busts them?”
“He won’t,” I said. “This is Shiftertown.” I held up my glass to catch the sunlight coming through the window. It made the bourbon glow like amber. “We solve our own problems.”
“Damn straight,” Vipe’s girl said, drying glasses.
Dolph laughed hollowly. He took out his phone and began to manipulate the graphical interface of the AI assistant. I couldn’t follow what he was doing. The information environment of Ponce de Leon is dense, fast-paced, and slippery, constantly in flux as vast swathes of data are hidden and restored by warring privacy protocols. Neither Dolph nor I had grown up with this. San Damiano is a whole different kind of place, where information in general stays put, like people. But Dolph had developed a gift for finding gold in the zettabyte-scale rivers of data flowing around Ponce de Leon.
I sat there sipping my bourbon. It was a woodsy, well-rounded spirit from Alvarado, but its heat did not dispel the coldness inside me. I was thinking about what came next. Maybe I could go back to Mujin Inc. Try and have a civil conversation with her. Apologize. I would surely never apologize to Parsec, but to her, I could …
“Look at this,” Dolph said. He seemed more cheerful now. I soon understood why. He, too, had been thinking about what came next, and had found his own answer to the question. He showed me a picture on his phone. It was a wide-muzzled handgun.
“Koiler?” I said.
“Mark Three. Threaded for a suppressor. Some guy down on Armstrong and 5th is selling it.”
“Nice. Does it come with ammo?”
“Five hundred rounds.” Dolph made kissy lips at the screen. “I might go down there and have a look at it.”
On Ponce de Leon, the sale of firearms is illegal, but possession of them isn’t. Yeah, I know, it makes a whole lot of sense.
“See if they have anything else as well,” I said, remembering the gun under Sophia’s desk.
“Will do.” Dolph finished his beer. “Matter of fact, I think I’ll head down there now.”
I swirled the dregs of my bourbon around the glass. “How are you getting there?”
“Walk. I’ll pick up my bike tomorrow.”
“I’ll give you a ride.” I had already summoned my truck back from uptown.
Every human city of size in the Cluster—indeed, in all space from here back to Earth—has its Armstrong Street, named for the first man to walk on the moon. Mag-Ingat’s Armstrong Street was a particularly pitiful example of the contrast between our mythologized past and our reality. Junkies obstructed the sidewalk, some of them human and some in wolf, leopard, or lion form. I pulled over in front of the tenement where Dolph’s gun guy lived.
Dolph tossed me a salute as he leapt out the cab. I watched him step over a homeless addict’s legs and disappear up a flight of stairs half-choked with garbage.
This is Shiftertown. We solve our own problems. Right?
I drove home.
To my surprise, I found Robbie, my new admin officer, sitting on the front porch. Under Nanny B’s watchful eye, he was playing a game with Lucy. He had a fancy phone with a holo projector. It lay on the stoop between them, shooting little colorful butterflies into the air. Lucy squealed with laughter as she and Robbie competed to catch the butterflies,
their hands battering each other.
“Daddy!” Lucy bounded down the front steps. I picked her up and swung her around, relishing her weight in my arms. She was mine. Mine. Not Sophia’s. And what she didn’t know couldn’t hurt her.
I set her down as Robbie came down the steps. “Hi, Mr. Starrunner,” he said abashedly. “Rex told me where you live. Since we kind of got cut off earlier, I thought I would come over and see if there was any instructions you had for me?”
I forced my mind back to the topic of work. “Well, we’re gonna have to train you,” I said. “But you can’t really use our systems until you’re familiar with the standard accounting AI interfaces. So the first thing you need to do is finish that course. I see you met my daughter,” I added. Lucy was pulling on Robbie’s arm, trying to get him to come back to their game.
“Yeah, she’s a couple years younger than my littlest sister,” Robbie said with a grin. “I like kids. I hope it’s OK to let her play games?”
“As long as she’s done her homework,” I said.
“Nanny B said it was OK, so pffft!” Lucy made an exuberant spitting noise at me.
“Pffft,” I spat back at her.
“Galactic googleplex pffft!” She was in high spirits. Robbie’s company seemed to be good for her.
“I’m gonna go to a café and study after this,” Robbie said, gesturing at the backpack he had left on my porch.
I shook my head. “There’s no need for you to waste your hard-earned on those overpriced drinks. Why don’t you study here? You can sit on the porch, or indoors. And if Lucy interrupts you, just tell her pffft.”
“Really, sir? That would be amazing! It’s just, at home there’s nowhere to sit or anything—”
I forestalled another installment of the Wolfe family’s woes. I knew the kind of place they probably lived in. Two concrete rooms with a pile of stinky quilts in the corner. Animals don’t need furniture. “It’s fine,” I said. “Just get that certification.” I hesitated. “Oh, one thing.” I stepped closer to him and lowered my voice. “You don’t have any bears in your family, do you?”
His nostrils widened. I realized he was smelling the booze on my breath, and I leaned back. “No, sir. Bears? Nuh uh. Wolves, a coupla seals, and my mom’s a rat. No cheesy jokes, if you don’t mind.”
“To each their own,” I said. “Well, that’s good to know.”
“Was there any specific reason you asked?”
“Just checking,” I said with a wink.
For the next couple of hours Robbie studied in our living-room. I liked having him there, and Lucy was already fond of him. He was a good kid. I wondered if he knew how to use a gun.
25
We ate upstairs with the Seagraves again. I had promised Lucy a table-top barbecue, but I had forgotten to go shopping for the meat, and anyway I needed to tell Irene and Rex what had happened today.
To make sure of their undivided attention, I asked Nanny B to come up and help out with Kit. His beleaguered parents appreciated the extra pair of hands, or rather manipulators.
While we prepared spaghetti bolognese, with the kids safely occupied in the other room, I told them about our skirmish with the bears. I couldn’t avoid mentioning Sophia, but the topic was mercifully cut short by Lucy and Mia charging into the kitchen.
“She got her name wrong?” Irene said in disbelief.
“What?” Lucy said.
“Nothing, sweetie,” I said, giving Irene a level stare over Lucy’s head. She got the message.
Dolph joined us after supper. He’d come to show Irene his new piece, and the one he had bought on spec for me. It was a Machina .22 with a slide-mounted safety and adjustable sights, which would take the soft points I still had for my late lamented Midday Special. They all made fun of my new popgun, and Irene pronounced her professional approval of Dolph’s new Koiler Mark Three. Dolph said, “Wanna hit the range tomorrow?”
The range was a Shifter-run business, way out in the jungle. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
“God, I wish I could,” Irene said. “I have to go to that thing for their school.”
We were sitting out on their balcony. It was just a shelf above my front porch, which we shared with a laundry carousel and an ineffectually juddering A/C unit. Traffic noise seeped up from Shoreside. The children’s voices drifted out of the apartment. Lucy and Mia were playing some kind of complicated make-believe game. Nanny B was umpiring a Kit tantrum.
“So, about this uber-bitch,” Irene said.
I cut her off. “There’s something else I have to tell you guys.” I related the story of Pippa’s fatal diagnosis and my trip to the detention center.
That shut down the topic of Sophia, all right. The tragic tale left everyone quiet and thoughtful. Rex stretched himself out further on the cool concrete. He was one of those Shifters who spend as much time in their animal form as possible. “That’s a hell of a thing,” the lion rumbled. “Poor kids.”
Irene clapped her hands together on a mosquito. These whining pests are not really Earth mosquitoes—they come from somewhere in the Cluster—but that’s what we call them, constantly harking back to our native soil. “I think it’s bullcrap,” she said.
“I wish it was,” I said. “I’m assuming they don’t diagnose a teenager with a terminal disease unless they’re pretty sure they’re right.”
“No, I’m sure the diagnosis is right. I mean it’s bullcrap that they’re going to deport her.”
“Kuru is bad shit,” Dolph said, uneasily. “We should probably all get tested, just in case.”
“Waste of money,” Irene said. “We’re immune to that kind of stuff.”
“Yup,” I said. I knew of no scientific backing for our belief that Shifters have superior immune systems, but on the other hand, thousands of us had served on Tech Duinn without catching the rot, while normies dropped like flies around us.
“She shouldn’t have to be deported,” Irene resumed. “She’s got years to live. They might as well be good ones. And there would be no actual danger in letting her stay. It’s just that this disease is on their list, so too bad, out she goes.”
“Welcome to the kakistocracy,” I said.
“I know,” Irene said. “But here’s the thing. These decisions are made by idiots, so all you have to do is get to the idiots and get them to reverse their decision.”
“It’s all about who you know,” Rex said.
“Exactly,” Irene said. “They can always find some loophole to make an exception, if they want to.”
I looked at the Seagraves with respect. Shiftertown natives, they had a healthy contempt bred of familiarity for the government. To me, trying to go through the back door to save Pippa from deportation seemed audacious, but to them it was the obvious next step.
“Well, that’s dandy,” Dolph said. “Why didn’t you ever mention you’ve got a friend in immigration?”
“I don’t,” Irene said. “The person I’m thinking of is the student life coordinator at Mia and Lucy’s school. She’s done some work placing refugees with families. Bet you she knows someone in immigration.”
“Oh, the one who organizes the events?” I said, vaguely recalling an auburn-haired blur of perpetual movement.
“Yeah. Christy.”
“Could you talk to her?”
“I could,” Irene said. She went quiet for a moment, her gaze far away. Then her large blue eyes focused on me like shotgun barrels. “But I think you should do it, Mike. You’re the one who talked to them. Plus it’s your name on the forms and everything.”
I sighed, and privately acknowledged that I had been trying to push it off onto Irene. I just had so damn many things to worry about. But she was right, it was my job. “OK. I guess if I call the school tomorrow they can put me through to her.”
“No, no, you gotta do these things in person,” Rex said, raising his chin off the floor. “Here’s what you do. I was going to go to this thing tomorrow, but you can go instead of me. Irene’s goi
ng, too. Christy’ll be there, so you can talk to her, and I’ll stay home and watch rugby.”
I started to say that I couldn’t take the time off, but the lion’s gaze said it was non-negotiable. I owed Rex at least this much for all the time he spent looking after Lucy when I was away. “OK. I’ll do that,” I said. “Speaking of rugby, I’m ninety percent sure I’m going to hire Robbie. He seems like a good kid.”
“He is,” Rex said. “He needs to get better at showing up for practice, but hey, look who’s talking.”
Irene leaned back against her husband’s soft, pale-furred belly. “Listen to that,” she said. We could not hear anything except the traffic and the next-door neighbors’ music. “The Kitster’s wrath has been stilled. That bot of Mike’s is worth her weight in antimatter.”
“Which is approximately what I paid for her,” I said.
Rex slung a heavy paw over Irene’s thigh. “I do what she does and I don’t cost a penny.”
“Hark at you,” Irene said lovingly. “My kept man.”
“Kept busy, you mean,” Rex said. He slid his paw higher up her thigh.
I smiled, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t jealous of their easy, committed togetherness. Even Dolph may have felt the same, because he drained his beer and started to make noises like he was going.
“So what is this thing tomorrow, anyway?” I said.
“It was on the school’s feed,” Irene said. “Which I know you didn’t look at. It’s the zoo trip.”
“Ridiculous,” I said. “I take her to the zoo every other weekend, feels like.”
Irene propped herself up on Rex so she was looking straight at me. Being looked at by Irene in this way always made me feel uncomfortable. Even when tipsy and sleepy, she had clearer eyes and a clearer head than any other person I knew. “Mike,” she said. “today you got in a car chase, bullshitted your way into some super-secret front corporation, had a fight with your ex-wife, got shot at, got in an aerial car chase, and shot one of Parsec’s sidekicks. Am I missing anything?”
“Yeah,” Dolph said. “The part where we got patted down and handcuffed, until said minion decided not to press charges. Insult to injury, we even had to pay for the taxi.”
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