Nylon Angel (8 page)

‘No offence.’ Then a flash of intuition hit me. ‘You’re not Mueno blood, are you?’

She smiled sadly. ‘Not Mueno.’ Then she brightened a little with her next thought. ‘Bras know who Parrish is. Parrish is Oya.’

Oya?
I’ve been called a lot of things before but Oya . . .

‘Bras, I need to find the red-haired one, soon. Can you help me?’

She smiled and beckoned me out into the night with a wave of her foot.

Bras moved expertly through the darkness and with an energy that surprised me. Even half-starved and handicapped, she was travelling faster than me, accepting her life, moving forward, surviving. I suddenly wanted to get her some decent food, maybe even some prostheses. I wanted to clean her up, wash her hair.

 

Bras’s route amongst the darkened villas cut the distance I would have travelled without her in half. For the amount of people I knew lived here, the dark was strangely deserted. ‘Where is everyone?’ I whispered.

‘They scared of Big One. Stay inside. Bras not scared.’

She stopped and nodded toward a villa outline. It looked so like all the others around it that I wasn’t convinced.

‘Are you sure, Bras?’

She clicked her tongue impatiently. ‘Yes. Sure.’

The front facade was indiscernible from the next one, and the next. Only a thin stream of light from the first-storey window confirmed the likelihood of inhabitants.

Without warning, Bras scuttled off across the courtyard, like a crab without its pincers, stopping frequently to listen. I figured her caution was from habit, till I noticed movement in the deeper shadows of a retaining wall that had once bordered a garden bed in front of the villa.

‘Bras. Wait!’

But she ignored me, worming along to the high end of the wall, where she stopped. Whoever stood concealed there froze. A ripple up my spine told me that they’d seen Bras.

I had no way to warn her, outside causing a major commotion. I watched and hoped that the shadower had other things on their mind than a feral kid in the dark.

Since when did things ever go the way I reckoned?

The brief unmasked flicker of a LED display was the only warning before something reefed Bras bodily over the wall into the blackness.

My stomach banged painfully into my lungs when my brain made the connection.

The ’Terrogator had Bras!

I didn’t wait to think about it. Fear for her spurred me. I let it drive my legs across the courtyard in a blur of speed. Then I launched feet first over the wall at the spot Bras had disappeared and aimed a high kick. If I got lucky I’d take out its CPU with my titanium insert. But I kissed air and nearly flipped flat on my back on to the jagged ’crete.

Hauling up into a less than copybook crouch, I flicked on my miner’s light and performed a clumsy three-sixty.

The ’Terro had vanished. But a set of baleful, green eyes caught in the light.

Canrat!
Huge, pissed off and hungry.

It leapt straight for me, drool swinging like wet ropes from its massive canine jaws. Twice the size of a large Doberman with a long rattus tail, it caught me square in the chest.

We toppled backwards. One of its legs slipped down between my arm and body. Instinctively I clamped my arm to my side, trapping it. With my other hand I yanked my pistol from under my flimsy coat.

As it bared its teeth ready to slash deathly furrows in my face, I shot its balls off.

With an unearthly howl the canrat staggered off me, its tail furled protectively under its bleeding torso, and crawled away. By the time I climbed shakily to my feet, I could hear ferals - animals and human - squabbling over carcass rights.

So much for being inconspicuous, Parrish!

But where had the ’Terro taken Bras?

As if on cue, a zigzag of lights spilled on to the courtyard. Muenos crowded into doorways the length of the circular villa set, jabbering in excited voices. Some hung out of windows.

I caught the drift of their excitement.
The Big One is dead,
and,
Oya killed the Big One
.

Oya?
The name Bras called me.

The door immediately in front flung open and Sto hurled down the stairs. A deputation of Muenos followed him out but kept their distance.

‘Parrish. You came back for me.’ His smile, even in the shards of doorway light, was a beam all of its own.

I punched him sharply on the arm. A warm, fuzzy reunion with a naive redhead while generously spattered in gollops of canrat teste, surrounded by an audience of heavily knifed Muenos calling me Oya, I could live without! Anyway, now that I’d seen him, I was more worried about the ’Terro and Bras. Other than being a bit shaky, Sto looked fine.

‘What’s down?’ I said. Casual.

He caught my mood. ‘After the blood and feathers thing . . . well . . . they think you’re their warrior witch or somethin’. They watched me, but nobody hurt me.’ He glanced over his shoulder then back. ‘They’ve been waiting for you to come. Singing.’

‘They’re weren’t the only ones waiting,’ I said more heavily. A stale, after-adrenalin ache burned in my muscles. ‘The ’Terro’s found us.’

I didn’t bother to check Sto’s reaction to the news. Instead I switched my olfaugs to maximum sensitivity. ’Terros had a smell like meaty bones and were quicker than any augmented human. If it was coming back for Sto, I wanted to know.

Somehow, though, I didn’t think it would just yet. ’Terros cammed their experiences back to their pilots - who then fed the stuff on to the networks for the twenty-four-seven Kick shows.
Kick Arse
,
Get your Kicks
,
Kick ’em While They’re Down
,
Kick and Whack
- the names changed, but they were all the same. Net, dedicated to real-time violence.

Reality viewing was nothing new, but Priers and ’Terros gave it a vigilante edge that juiced most viewers and sent ratings stratos. By now three quarters of the world had probably seen Bras kidnapped, and my pitiful attempt to rescue her. Perhaps that live feed would keep the ’Terro off Sto’s back for a while.

Sorta like foreplay.

I swore softly to myself. Next time, audience or not, no titanium-wrapped microchip was going to make an idiot out of me on pay TV!

‘Oya?’

An obese Mueno, blood-red silk pants clinging to his enormous thighs, stepped forward into the arc of my light. His long braided hair shone faintly and he smelt almost clean. Compared to Bras he was obscenely overfed.

‘Oya? We have heard that you have come.’

‘What have you heard, Mueno?’ I hedged. It seemed likely they’d somehow worked me into some old myth. Punters needed heroes - didn’t matter what religion they gigged to. Muenos were worse than most. It had something to do with their particular mash of Catholic, voodoo, tek worship. God’s in the heavens, the animals
and
the machine! Crowded, huh!

‘Oya comes to lead the battle.’ He bowed his head. ‘Muenos follow, Oya.’

My world got crazier by the second! ‘What’s your name?’

His thick face folded in a mixture of uncertainty and pleasure. I worried for a moment he was going to fall on to his knees before me.

‘Named Pas, Oya.
Houngan
and Rate Keeper.’

A
houngan
was the Muenos’ equivalent of a witch doctor.
But Rate Keeper as well? In this stink hole? Talk about extreme free enterprise!
‘You do this for Topaz?’

He spat expertly, in disgust, and nodded. ‘Topaz was a strong leader. Now he deals
mojo
with the Dis man.’

Mojo
with the Dis man?
Mojo
was black magic. The Dis man had to be Lang. I thought back to Jamon’s surprise dinner and suddenly wished I’d known more about its purpose.

‘Well, Pas, Rate Keeper. I need to get to Tower Town, pronto,’ I said.

He nodded thoughtfully. ‘We can take you to the borders, Oya. Further than that and they will fight us. Is that what you want?’

‘No, Pas,’ I said, hastily. ‘The border is fine. Let’s go.’ Thoughts of the ’Terro prickled me.

But Pas hesitated as if weighing something important. ‘Then what do you want from us, after you leave?’ A band of tension tightened around the crowd, as if he’d voiced everyone’s unspoken question.

I wanted to shout, ‘How the frig would I know?’ But what do you say to a gathering of knifed-up Muenos who are worried about you leaving them behind without a cause? You adopt your most sanguine look and say . . .

‘I’ll send for you when the time is right, Pas.’

He seemed happy with this. A ripple of murmurs signalled he wasn’t alone.

Then inspiration hit me. It wouldn’t help Bras but there were surely others like her, so I added it in for good measure. ‘Pas? While you wait for my word, I want you to do something.’

Predictably, his chest swelled with importance. ‘Anything, Oya.’

‘I want
you
to feed all the feral kids without families.’

Even in the shaft of doorway light I could see his shocked expression. ‘B-but there is barely food enough,’ he spluttered.

I smiled ferociously, hopefully in the manner of a good Oya. ‘I know, you’ll find a way.’

 

Sto and I and four Muenos headed north-east towards Dis. As we walked, I fretted for Bras’s safety but knew it was fruitless trying to track the ’Terro.

It would find us.

It would also find that using Bras as hors d’oeuvres had been a bad call. When it showed its skeletal face again, I planned to pulverise it, viewing audience of millions and all.

How?

Well, I was still working on that.

 

Sto stuck so close to my heels through voodoo town, I could feel his breath fanning my armpit. I stopped myself from decking him by taking regular deep breaths. Call me Parrish Patience.

The Muenos that Pas selected as escort were nearly as corpulent as him. Their hair fell loose though, like slick veils.

Mueno women wore crew cuts. Much more practical to my mind. Long, loose hair is like jewellery in a fight - disastrous. I knew a guy on the north side who swore by his lucky ring. Better’n any knuckle dusters, he reckoned. One time he got it hooked up on a ’Terro. Tore his finger right off. Loose hair was the same sort of liability. That’s why I wore my dreads tied.

By dawn, I was so tired my teeth ached.

Sto couldn’t have been much better but he kept up, spurred, I think, by fear that I might leave him behind again.

By mid-morning the crush of people on the pavements and the narrow walkways was suffocating. Heat trapped under the makeshift roofs radiated like micro-ovens. The breath-holding stink of unwashed bodies; the babble of everyday troubles.

I could only guess how far we’d come. But my compass read a comforting north-east, which I reckoned would take us into the heart of The Tert.

I began to worry about my reflexes if the ’Terro came for me now. Fatigue and crowds and heat. My head swam. I called to the nearest Mueno.

They’d fanned out to form a loose guard around us.

‘I need to eat,’ I said, reaching into my pocket for my last credit. The one I’d offered to Bras.

He approached me, pushed my hand away, and disappeared for a minute. Then he returned with two enormous tortillas stuffed full of greasy meat and unrecognisable lumps of other matter.

When you live on pro-subs seven days a week, the taste was awesome. My stomach bucked at the assault but I toughed it out.

Sto was less hardy. Three quarters of the way through he threw the lot up on to his bare feet.

Wastage.

We walked on, heading steadily north-eastward, until the fading intensity of light told me that it must be late afternoon. Several times I’d been tempted to jump a ’ped or a Pet. But pride kept me walking.

One time a Gas-gas growled past at low revs. It caught my eye because you didn’t see many true bikes in this deep. And because the rider stared hard at me before nosing the bike off into the crowd. For a brief second I wondered if it might be the Cabal, but I was too worn out to dwell on it.

Sto hung between two of the Muenos like a slaughtered animal on a pole. Occasionally he moaned. I promised myself as soon as the Muenos left us I’d find a hidey-hole for us both to sleep. I wasn’t far off falling down myself, but I didn’t quite trust Pas’s deputation to watch over us while we slept.

As it turned out we didn’t have much further. I’d noticed a slight change in the architecture - if you could call it that - over the last half an hour.

Most of The Tert had been built in circular groups of buildings connected by walkways, courtyards and small areas that had been pools or parks. Those ‘gaps’ were usually a patchwork of shanty tents or dongers. Some were left vacant - like the one I’d discovered Bras in - usually because the surface or pavement had cracked and let the poisoned soil through.