Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, the Official Pirate Edition (19 page)

They underestimated the Ghosts, though, who later hired me to do a redundant, third check on the system. Finding the back door was just my job, of course, and wouldn’t have earned me a favor, just a fee, but here is the cool part. What I could show, using some advanced data-tracking techniques, was that Guarantee Guard’s techs had actually 
scanned
 the back door. In other words, I could prove that they knew about the hole in the system, but they’d falsified their results to pretend that they hadn’t found it. In practical terms this meant was that the Ghosts could actually take legal action against the two companies, getting back their fees and a substantial amount as a penalty.

You might think that a judge would balk at giving a large award of damages to a criminal gang. The Ghosts sued through their corporate holding company, which they used to run legal front businesses, but everyone knew who was really involved. The thing is, from the judge’s perspective that wasn’t the point. The point was that personal security companies had to be taught not to leave back doors because if they were doing it to a dangerous outfit like the Ghosts they were sure as hell doing it to the judge himself, and his judge buddies, and their bankers, and all their clubby friends. He made an example of the two firms for the benefit of the industry. The fact that the Ghosts got a wad of money was, to him, just a side effect. Later, of course, the Ghosts made an example of the firms in their own way—a lengthy, protracted, pitiliess procedure carried out in a disused factory building, with many dead and no prisoners.

Anyway, the Ghosts owed me one for that. They offered me a cash bonus, but I demurred, figuring that at some point I might need their help. They understood perfectly what I was up to, so when I show up this warm evening at the very building where the fiasco took place and press the buzzer at the gate, they are not surprised to see me on the monitor. The gate unlocks and swings open, closing again behind me. As I approach the front door I hear its lock click and it, too, swings open, allowing me into a front hall. I take off my boots and put on one of the sets of 
uwabaki
 slippers that have been placed there for visitors.

At that point an inner door opens and admits me to a large space which serves as their all-purpose hanging-out room. There is a holo on one side of the room where several members are online, reviewing news items about other L.A. gangs. From time to time they tag an item that seems important. Another member is in sim in the corner, showing no sign of life beyond REM and some residual twitches in her fingers.

The Ghosts all affect a look that combines leather and 
kawaii
, a notion which roughly translates as “cuteness.” They look like characters from an anime sim come to life. Surgery has rendered them all attractive, in a little-girl kind of way, with their hair usually worn in braids or pig-tails. Some dye their hair blonde, or put in a blonde streak, others prefer their natural color, while still others opt for plastic-looking purple or green dye-jobs. Their outfits build on a black leather foundation, over which they accessorize with bangles, cartoon figurines hung from belt loops, stickers, and candy-like plastic necklaces. It's not unusual to see a Ghost with shit-kicker boots, her footwear fully armored and fitted with extensible blade attachments, but worn over frilly striped socks.

Anime styles have affected their entire aesthetic, including body modifications. They all have large eyes—some artificially rounded by surgery on the epicanthic fold, some natural-looking, and others surgically slanted and slitted to the point that they virtually parody the typical Asian form. Their mouths are uniformly small, although some pout more than others, and almost all have their breasts enhanced. Although each has an individual look, the one thing they share without exception is their elaborate tattoos, usually covering the entire torso and sometimes the entire body. The tats are based on ancient Yakuza customs, but the designs are updated for the Ghost’s tastes, so that traditional carp and geishas are blended with sim heroines and stylized science fiction weaponry.

I’m greeted by Machiko, a high-ranking member whom I met during our previous dealings. She’s changed her hair since I last saw her. Then it was pig-tails, now it’s a spiky mass of brilliant yellow points that look like you could cut yourself on them. Her clothes are a little different too –more leather and fewer of the girlish accessories. My guess is that she has risen in the ranks and has opted for a less 
kawaii
, more commanding appearance. We bow, and she insists on bowing a little lower and a little longer than I do, giving me my due as a guest. Then the hostess pretence drops and she gives me a lop-sided grin.

“Gat-san. Long time no see.”

“Good to see you Machi. New tattoo?”

I indicate the left side of her neck with my finger, tracing the line of a serpent that didn’t live there last time we met.

“Good eye—for a 
gaijin
.” The last part is added playfully.

“Thanks. It’s so striking even an amateur like me couldn’t help but notice it.”

She laughs.

“You’re flattering me Gat. You must want something.” Another Ghost appears behind her and stands there, silently looking me over while we talk. She can’t be more than fifteen, and her outfit leans toward the kittenish end of the 
kawaii
 spectrum, but I’ve learned not to judge the Ghosts by their appearances. They are ranked third or fourth in L.A. in terms of their status, and along with other factors, status comes from violence, the more extreme the better. After the Tics come the Crips and the Bloods, a double threat since they signed a truce years ago and effectively became a single unit. Then it’s either the Shadowboys or the Ghosts, depending on how you calculate things. If the Tics are more than a match for my old Forces buddies, with the Ghosts it would probably be a dead heat. That’s despite the fact that each of us would weigh almost twice as much as each of them.

“I’ve come to ask a favor.”

Now Machiko eyes me a little more coolly. The other girl drifts slowly into the background, acknowledging that junior members aren’t privy to this kind of discussion.

“You’re owed one,” she says cautiously. “Something appropriate to the excellent work you did for us.”

This is not meant to compliment me, although it’s couched in those terms. Her real message is in that one word: appropriate. She is cautioning me that I will get what I’m due and no more.

“I need a meeting with Vicente Suarez.”

A small smile plays across her face, but it’s not a kind one.

“I’m not sure I’d be doing you any favors.”

“I’m a big boy. I can decide if it’s a favor or not.”

She eyes me for a moment, then seems to shrug a little, as though nothing could matter less to her.

“Well, it’s awkward, but not impossible. I can arrange it.”

“Thank you,” I say plainly. “When will I hear from you?”

“Go home. I’ll arrange safe passage. In the meantime, you get some rest. You’ll need it. I’ll call you in the morning.”

Safe passage is what kings and queens used to grant to negotiators and messengers as they traveled through enemy territory. A letter of safe passage said that even though the person carrying it would normally be considered an enemy, they should be left alone to get on with their business because it served the interests of both sides. Before telecommunications it was the only way that warring factions could talk, working out compromises or settling on terms of surrender. Now that scooping is common and telecommunication is correspondingly insecure, both the Enclaves and the gangs have resurrected its use in dealing with delicate matters.

“Thank you Machiko. Am I in your debt now?”

I might as well ask. If she thinks she has done me a bigger favor than I did for her she’ll collect on it one day. I had better know in advance.

“Hard to say. Let’s call it even. We part without debts or enmity.”

And without friendship, but she hardly needs to add that. The Ghosts make friends only with each other, and with the lovers they take from other gangs.

We both bow, and I am led back to the door. In the vestibule I retrieve my boots and place the 
uwabaki
 back where I found them. I leave, but Machiko calls to me from the front door.

“Gat.”

I turn and see her silhouette in the doorway.

“The 
Suerte
 never give something without taking something, Gat. Not ever.”

“Thanks Machi.”

She doesn’t answer, doesn’t smile, doesn’t speak again, just withdraws into her home. The open door casts a yellow rectangle of light. As she closes it, the shape turns oblong, then thins, and then disappears. I take her advice and go home to get some rest.

LAX is bigger now than it was when I was growing up, but it has the same feeling that it had then of being a neverland -- something that exists in the interstices 
between
 actual places.  It isn’t part of L.A., or even California.  It’s really an outpost of Airportlandia, like JFK International or Berlin-Tegel.  It’s part of a land that lies somewhere between departures and arrivals.

I watch security go through my shoulder bag.  I have no luggage to check.  When they’re done, I board, then wait while the plane taxis and eventually abandons the ground entirely.

I've always loved flying—the sense of adventure, and that wonderful feeling of dislocation from the events and people you deal with every day.  I love 
living
 for a while in Airportlandia.

When first I mustered out of the Forces there was a period at the very beginning when my nightmares never really stopped, awake or asleep.

In the waking world people on fire walked past me on the street, nightmare creatures hiding behind human faces spoke in tongues on the subway, and my own body refused to obey me, first energized to the point of trembling, then slow and torpid, then so sensitive to the touch that I couldn’t stand the friction of my own clothes.

And while I slept?  I watched couples who were already dead make love one last messy time before they would let themselves rest forever, I heard a riot of noise erupt from a burning stable full of horses caught in their stalls, I saw a family of corpses sitting in a darkened living room in front of a television that played garish colored light across their faces.

Every ten or twenty days I’d dose myself with Nightshade and drop like a rock, then remain unconscious for three or four days.  If I dreamed during those times, I never remembered it.

Then I discovered that the one time the nightmares stopped was when I was on a plane and I fell in love with flying all over again.  At 10,000 metres above the Earth, no ghost could reach me.  Up here, the world was no longer complicated—it was reduced to this plane, these five-hundred people, and the clouds outside the window.  Bad things might wait for me back home, might even lie ahead when I landed, but they weren’t right here, right now, beside me on the plane.  It was the first peace I’d had in ages.

I started flying a lot.  I didn’t need a job yet—I’d rarely spent much of my pay while I was in the Forces, so I had a sizeable nest egg.  I could coast for a year or two if I needed to, just flying from one place to another.  I didn’t care where I went, making stops in Moscow, London, Sao Paulo.  I became addicted to the relief of being in the sky.

One day, I decided to challenge myself and booked a ticket to Mexico.  Not Tijuana—that would have been a bridge too far—but Mexico City, just like the flight I’m on now.  I happened to be seated next to David Halldórsson.

I didn’t know him then, but I noticed him right away, mostly because amidst the pre-flight jostling and scurrying he was uniquely composed.  We weren’t off the ground yet, but he already seemed to project that sense of calm that I could only find once I was up in the clouds.  At the same time, he was clearly wearing a military shell, so he had to be Forces, which wasn’t a common path to serenity.  I introduced myself and asked him what pharmaceuticals he could recommend.

“Oh, I never use them these days,” he said lightly.  “I take medicine for physical stuff, antibiotics or whatever, but I don’t mess around with anything psychoactive anymore.”

I didn’t think much of it until he started to get comfortable, taking off his jacket, balling it up, and using it to give himself some lumbar support.  He sat back and crossed his arms in front of him and that was when I saw his tattoos.  One of them said “Tijuana” in bright red ink, with a stylized death’s head to the left, a skeletal version of the Mexican eagle to the right, and dates that I knew all too well underneath.

I waited while we slowly made our way to cruising altitude, covertly stealing glances at the tattoo as though it might disappear, but there it was every time.

The flight settled into the groove that every flight eventually gets.  You’ve reached altitude, people have gotten comfortable and started watching holos or reading, everyone settled in for the trip.  At that point I was working up the courage to ask David about the tattoo.  He was resting with his eyes closed, his face placid.

Then, without opening his eyes, he said “You were in Tijiuana.”

I thought I’d been discreet, but he had Forces training and a Forces shell just like I did, and the preternatural perceptiveness that went with them.

“Yeah, I was.”

Now he opened his eyes.

“Let me guess.  The Brace worked and the Erase didn’t.  You turned into a monster and you weren’t supposed to remember, but you do.”

“Exactly, but I guess you’d know.”

He nodded, looking serious.

“Oh yeah.  And you can’t forget.”

“Doesn’t matter what I take or how hard I try.”

He smiled at that.

“Sorry,” he said, “I wasn’t clear.  What I meant was: you 
musn’t
 forget.”

“Are you kidding me?  Because I’d seriously do just about anything to forget.”

He shook his head.

“It won’t work.  What might help is a suggestion or two on how to engage constructively with it.  If you want.”

I actually laughed, something I hadn’t done in a while.