Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (16 page)

The second one was simpler, but from her point of view almost as important.  Much later I accidentally came across Jocelyn and her lover, Marina, in each others’ arms. No one gives a damn about homosexuality in the Forces, but Marina was Jocelyn’s superior officer, and that made any relationship strictly forbidden. It could have compromised the judgment of either of them in a critical situation if the other one was threatened. I kept my mouth shut and that was favor number two.

I meet Jocelyn at her store, a large space full of the Force’s detritus. She’s a wiry woman, muscular in a hard, thin sort of way. She stands behind the counter, and I take in her slim physique—I can’t help it, I love the tautness of her. Her Forces T is more revealing than it is concealing, showing off her tight torso. It’s not the first time I’ve wished she was straight.

The musty smell of the place reminds me of the Forces, of supply rooms and staging areas. Of human sweat and the smell of fear. Stacked everywhere are the tools we used, the shelters we huddled under, the clothes we wore. The smell alone is enough to bring on a slew of memories, but I force them back, back, back into the basement of my mind. I can’t let them interfere right now. Still, very distantly, I hear howls, screams, the whine of turbos and the thrum of chopper blades. I hear bullets loosed on their targets, the muffled thump of distant mortar fire, the close-up concussion of mines, and prayers spoken in quick, desperate Spanish.

Along one wall is a display of guns and other weapons, most of them not surplus at all, simply the guns that Californians are legally entitled to own, brand new from the manufacturers. The Forces, after all, require that you return your arms upon being decommissioned. Still, there’s plenty to choose from. There are handguns of all calibers, rifles, shotguns, flechette launchers, and some old model machine guns.

Jocelyn’s giving instructions to one of her employees. When she turns toward me she smiles, though it has an edge of both sadness and wariness, as smiles so often do between vets.

“Gat,” she says quietly. Now the memories are intruding on my senses despite my efforts to keep them out. Her voice has taken on the sketchy, staticky sound of a comm link gone bad. She seems to me to be at a distance, even though she’s standing right in front of me. The smell of the place isn’t helping. Dust. Fungus. Dirt. Sweat.

“Jocelyn,” I answer. I see the muscles in her arms and shoulders tense a little. Her belly too. We remind each other of too much bad stuff for this to be comfortable, no matter how much we like one another. We have had to jettison each other just as we have our old uniforms and equipment. She’s not unhappy to see me exactly, but she can’t be completely happy about it either.

I wonder how I sound to her, what memories she has carefully hidden away that are coming up on her now. Maybe the harrowing adrenal rush that came with being trapped by that sniper, mixed inextricably with the crisp, clean air of Boulder.  Maybe the brilliant flowers in the flowerpots in front of the Mountain Sun, their fragrance carried to her on the breeze while she swears in the language of her ancestors and wonders if she’ll die today.

“Tell me what you need,” she says, knowing I haven’t come by to say hello. I hear her as though she’s talking from a ‘copter, her transmission full of cracks and snaps and pops.

What few people know is that Jocelyn has some supplies that weren’t so much cast off as stolen. I use up one of my favors in return for the illicit merchandise I need. The two of us speak in riddles and codes to defeat any listening devices, a delicate linguistic minuet. Evasion and dissembling are talents the Forces instill whether they mean to or not. Now I’m down to one favor. With everything that’s happening, I wonder if I’ll get the chance to cash it in.

On the way downtown the dreams harass me again. They blend with the scenery as I ride my cycle, fire erupting where there is no fire, people dying in the streets where, in fact, they walk along calmly, going about their business. One set of images is overlayed on top of the other, and the hell of Tijuana imposes itself on Los Angeles, blurring reality, making it hard to follow the traffic lights. I hear the thump thump thump of chopper blades as I idle my bike at a red light, but there’s nothing in the sky. I look, believe me—it’s that real. I smell the distinctive odor of Angelfire tearing up human flesh, but around me there’s nothing but calm. I realize I’m sweating despite the bit of cool wind that makes its way under my faceplate. When I arrive at the Mega, I park, a little shaky. I stay on the bike for a full five minutes, focusing on my breath, working toward that point where my dharma practice takes me—where the bad things are still there, but I can function nonetheless—and eventually I succeed, more or less. I dismount and take the small box Jocelyn gave me from my saddle-bag and make my way toward the mall.

Entering the Mega through the east doors, I’m immediately hit with a blast of mall air. There is something comforting in that air—a combination of artificial coolness and familiar food smells that brings back memories of my youth. We had nothing like the Mega when I was a kid, but we had malls and the air in them was just like this. I fall in with the gait of the crowd, letting its tides pull me along for a while. There is an omnipresent murmur of voices that never stops, like the sound of a human ocean. Every few meters it’s interrupted by blasts of music emitted by stores trying to lure customers inside. The songs they play are all popular and all current—there is no such thing as history in a mall.

Above me I can see the concentric rings of the upper floors, with teenagers leaning against the railings in groups. Teenagers are everywhere, in fact—running, making out, dancing, play-fighting, scoping the merchandise, scarfing the food, talking in groups or on kaikkis, yelling at one another, and sitting around on the floor as though they were in their own living rooms which, in a sense, is truer here than in their homes. Also above me are a multitude of holos playing out ads for clothes, concerts, banks, sims, computers, cars, and everything else you can think of. Over two-thousand years ago Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple—eventually they washed up here.

Discreet prostitutes circulate. There are males, females, and some of indeterminate gender. They come in a variety of ages, races, and sizes. They never approach you directly the way they would on the street, though. There are security guards here and closed circuit cameras. Instead they let their clothes speak for them: revealing, garish, and suggestive, usually accented with heavy make-up. Apart from the clothes they wear sultry expressions, make lots of eye contact, and allow their hands to casually touch strategic parts of their own bodies, drawing attention to their lips, breasts, groins, and asses. If you make a connection with one of them there are always the disused upper floors where you can consummate the deal.

The Mega has a total of sixteen floors. Four are below ground, twelve above, but the top five were abandoned long ago. It turned out that, no matter what inducements you used, people would only disperse to a certain extent within the mall once they entered, and retailers near the top found themselves lacking customers. To make matters worse, despite an expensive air circulation system, the large enclosed space makes for congested air near the roof. Body heat, human breath, smog from outside, and ambient moisture collect more quickly than the circulators can disperse it, making the atmosphere swampy. Most of the time the roof is actually lost in mist when you look up from the lower floors, as though there was no roof at all.

Some upper-floor stores went out of business, while others were lucky enough to relocate lower down. As the population of the top floors thinned, the Mega’s management eventually decided to seal off the top five floors entirely. No elevators, escalators, or stairs will take you there. The only people who go there are maintenance crews and city inspectors, ensuring that the upper structure doesn’t deteriorate.

At least that’s the way it was supposed to work, but in L.A. a plan like that was doomed. Homeless people, sensing an opportunity, broke or picked locks, cut holes in fencing, or had their kids squeeze between the bars of the barriers and then open them from the other side. Teenagers looking for a place to hang out, screw, or get high, did the same. The prostitutes claimed retail spaces and installed their own locks, dressing up the former stores and turning them into lavish sex suites. Some people brought up small generators, while others brought battery-packs, so that they could have light, electric fans, sims, music, and whatever else suited them. Everyone who uses the area is careful to ensure that it still 
looks
 abandoned, but a rich life goes on up there. Lovers meet, children are born, people die. At first Mega security tried rousting the new residents, but they were outnumbered and usually came away bloodied. No one wanted to bring in the P.D. Doing that would invite a massacre and a lot of bad publicity. Eventually a tacit agreement was reached—the squatters wouldn’t bother the shoppers, and management would look the other way.

Despite this, only the lowest three of the ‘abandoned’ floors get any significant traffic, while the top two are generally avoided. The reason for that has nothing to do with security, or even with air quality. It’s pure spider. There are rumors about her, legends built up over time about her appetites. Occasionally people disappear inexplicably, sometimes two or three in a day, and as far as the squatters are concerned the spider is the reason for it. There is seriously bad juju up in the top floor where the spider lives, and everyone wants at least one floor of insulation between them and her.

Once you’re into the squatter’s territory, getting to the spider is easy. All the security barriers, functional or not, are below you at the seventh above-ground floor. The only thing stopping anyone from going beyond the tenth floor is fear, though for the most part that works well enough. I begin climbing a service ladder that even the homeless refuse to use.

The real obstacle to seeing the spider is getting past the Tics, one of the city’s many youth gangs. Their handle is an abbreviation of the word Frantic, their drug of choice. Like Dogware, it was a military creation that eventually leaked, although Frantic leaked a lot further than Cloud City, all the way down to the street. Designed for combat, it increases reaction time, coordination, balance, and sheer bodily speed and power, all without impairing perception or judgment. There are no intoxicating side-effects.

What Jocelyn had given me in exchange for that killshot in Boulder was a box containing fifty cannules of Forces-grade Frantic. The entire supply was supposed to have been incinerated when hard-wired shells began to be produced in significant numbers that could produce the same results, but Jocelyn is no fool. You never know what’s going to come in handy, so she incinerated some innocuous crap instead and stashed the Frantic for a rainy day. I doubt I’ve even dented her supply, but the amount I’ve got is worth a fortune on the street, especially considering its purity.

Frantic makes the Tics formidable fighters. What makes them 
beautiful
 fighters is a technique they call Tarantella. A blend of dance gestures and fighting moves, Tarantella turns a street brawl into a ballet. Centuries ago slaves in Brazil developed a similar discipline, called capoeira. They pretended it was a form of dance, since slaves weren’t allowed to learn combat skills, and it 
can
 look like dance, but it’s also a deadly martial art. Tarantella is like that, mixing Karate and Tae Kwon Do with salsa, classical ballet, gymnastics, and a myriad of other influences. With the chemical enhancement of Frantic, though, it is far more dangerous and difficult than any ordinary martial art, requiring abilities which no unenhanced capoeirista or kung fu practitioner could possibly possess.

Apart from Tarantella, the Tics’ other distinguishing feature is their dress. Many gangs dress in a paramilitary style, using colored patches, crests, berets, and bandanas to distinguish one rank from another or one gang from the next. The Tics don’t look like that 
at all
. They are colorful peacocks straight out of a Sunday Best hallucination. Their outfits are bright and garish, combining elaborate make-up, tattoos, and clothing styles pillaged from a variety of cultures and historical periods, or dredged up from the depths of their imaginations. Unlike most gangs, each member’s look is entirely individual, and is a source of particular, preening pride. Watching these human rainbows fight, using elaborate dance moves at the incredible speeds that only chemicals can provide, is a spectacular visual display that should not be missed—unless you’re their intended victim.

In that respect—their violence—they are not only similar to the city’s other gangs, they are preeminent: they are 
the
 most utterly ruthless. Their loyalties lie exclusively with each other, and no hint of sympathy exists for anyone outside the group. You are unlikely to see a Hungry Ghost fall in love, or hesitate to kill, but it has happened once or twice. I have never heard of a Shadowboy showing emotion for anyone outside his gang, but I know that one of them died when he swerved his motorcycle to avoid hitting a dog. Maybe it was an automatic reaction on his part, or maybe he actually felt something for the dog, but if it had been a Tic I wouldn’t have to ask myself that question because the Tic would simply not have swerved. Their reactions are under the most complete control I’ve ever seen—even beyond what I witnessed in the Forces—and their feelings exist only for other Tics.

Maybe that’s what attracted them to the spider in the first place. Like them it is impressive, intelligent, and utterly amoral. It is perhaps the only thing I’ve ever heard of that can move faster than they do and kill more efficiently. Despite its great size—at least ten meters in length—I’ve been told that when it kills it moves with almost invisible speed and with an accuracy that can be measured in millimeters. For this, I think, the Tics respect it, even revere it. The spider is what they wish they were, perhaps what they aspire to evolve into one day. In any event, for the time being they pay her their respects, feed her, and help guard and keep her eggs.