Metrophage

Chapter One Two Three Four Five Six Seven Eight Nine Ten Eleven Twelve Thirteen

You may read these files, copy, distribute them, or print them out
and make them into little hats. You may do anything you like with
them as long as you do not change them in any way or receive
money for them.

I've put METROPHAGE and HORSE LATITUDES into free distribution
on the Net, but I retain all copyrights to the works.

If you have any problems or comments on the works or their
distribution, you can email me at: kadrey@well.com

And remember, if you charge anyone money for these files you are
the nothing but ambulatory puke, and I hope a passing jet drops a 15
pound radar magnet on your hard drive.

Richard Kadrey
May 1995

*****************************************************
METROPHAGE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE ONLINE EDITION

METROPHAGE was my first novel. It came out in the U.S. in 1988, and
was gone faster than bearclaws at a cop convention. Since it was first
published, METROPHAGE has been reprinted in French, German,
Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Hebrew. Surprisingly, we're still
selling rights in various countries around the world.

The protagonist of METROPHAGE is Jonny Qabbala, a drug dealer in
his early 20s. When I wrote the book, I denied hugely that it was in
any way autobiographical. This was, of course, a stinking lie.

Aside from the fact I've never shot anyone or used cobra venom as a
recreational drug, METROPHAGE is a distillation of everything I'd
done, seen, read, heard or thought about up until the time I wrote it,
and is as purely autobiographical as anything I'm ever likely to
write. Which isn't to say you should read the book literally. Some of
what happens in METROPHAGE is straight reportage, and while some
of the events in the book happened to me, some of them happened to
friends. The things you think are the obvious truths probably aren't.
The most ridiculous and unbelievable things are quite possibly true.

Plus, the book is full of lies. It's a work of fiction. I made up a lot of
it. Yet it remains the psychological story of my life up into my mid-
twenties. This is not meant to dazzle anyone with my
accomplishments. If you read the book, you'll quickly discover an
unflattering truth: Jonny Qabbala is a jerk. He's not evil or stupid or
even a bad guy, he's just young and clueless. Jonny finds it difficult
to act decisively or take a stand, and when he does either, he's
usually wrong. Even when I was writing the book, when I was closer
to Jonny's age and temperament, I frequently wanted to crack his
skull with the collected works of Iggy Pop (which is another bit of
trivia: Iggy is in the book, but I won't tell you what character he
plays; if you've ever seen Iggy perform, you'll know).

Time passes, though, and I no longer want to slap Jonny around. I'm
not so far from Jonny that I can see him as my offspring, but I can
easily imagine him as a kid brother. As such, I can forgive him a lot
of his faults because as lame as he is, he's usually trying to do the
right thing.

The ending of METROPHAGE is deliberately open. A lot of people
have assumed that I intended to write a sequel. The truth is, I never
even considered it. However, I can't help but feel a certain
responsibility for Jonny, since I sort of left him in the middle of
downtown Nowhere. In order to settle Jonny's fate in my own mind,
I've written him into several stories and into one abandoned novel.
In the end, I took him out of all of them (and it doesn't get much
worse than ending up on the cutting room floor of a book that doesn't
even exist). Still, he tries to weasel his way into each book I write,
and I always try to find room for him. Sooner or later, he'll land in
one of them. I just hope I don't find him behind the counter of some
asteroid belt McDonald's asking, You want fries with that?"

Richard Kadrey
San Francisco, May 1995

**********************************************************************

METROPHAGE

by Richard Kadrey

Now I lay me down to sleep
I hear the sirens in the street
All my dreams are made of chrome
I have no way to get back home
--Tom Waits

ONE:

The Petrified City

A crip by the name of Easy Money ran the HoloWhores down at
a place called Carnaby's Pit. At least he had been running them the
last time Jonny Qabbala, drug dealer, ex-Committee for Public Health
bounty hunter, and self-confessed loser, had paid him a visit. Jonny
was hoping that Easy was still working the Pit. He had a present for
him from a dead friend.

The ugly and untimely murder of Raquin, the chemist, had left
an empty spot in the pit of Jonny's stomach. Not just because Raquin
had been Jonny's connection (since it was a simple matter for Jonny
to get his dope directly from Raquin's boss, the smuggler lord
Conover) but over the year or so of their acquaintance Raquin had
become, to Jonny, something close to a friend. And close to a friend"
was as much as Jonny generally allowed himself to become. It was
fear of loss more than any lack of feelings on his part that kept Jonny
at a distance from most of the other losers and one-percenters that
crowded Los Angeles.

Overhead, the moon was a bone-white sickle. Jonny wondered,
idly, if the Alpha Rats were watching Los Angeles that night. What
would the extraterrestrials think, through a quarter million miles of
empty space, when they saw him put a bullet through Easy Money's
head?

Jonny caught sight of Carnaby's Pit a few blocks away, quartz
prisms projecting captured atrocity videos from the Lunar Border
Wars. On a flat expanse of wall above the club's entrance, a New
Palestine soldier in a vacuum suit was smashing the faceplate of a
Mishima Guardsman. The Guardsman's blood bubbled from his
helmet, droplets boiling to hard black jewels as the soundtrack from
an ancient MGM musical played in the background: I want to be
loved by you, by you, and nobody else but you... The words
CARNABY'S PIT periodically superimposed themselves over the scene
in Kana and Roman characters.

Jonny pushed his way through a group of Pemex-U.S. workers
negotiating for rice wine at the weekend mercado that covered the
street near Fountain Avenue. The air was thick with the scents of
animal waste, sweat, roasting meat and hashish. Chickens beat their
wings against wire cages while legless vat-grown sheep lay docilely
in the butchers' stalls, waiting for their turn on their skewers. Old
women in hipils motioned Jonny over, holding up bright bolts of
cloth, bootleg computer chips and glittering butterfly knives. Jonny
kept shaking his head. No, gracias...Ima ja naku...Nein..."

Handsome young Germans, six of them, all in the latest eel-skin
cowboy boots and silk overalls (marked with the logo of some
European movie studio) lugged portable holo-recorders between the
stalls, making another in their endless series of World Link
documentaries about the death of street culture. Those quickly-made
documentaries and panel discussions about the Alpha Rats (who they
were, their intentions, their burden on the economy of the West)
seemed to make up the bulk of the Link's broadcasts these days.
Jonny swore that if he heard one more learned expert coolly
discussing the logic of drug and food rationing, he was going to
personally bury fifty kilos of C-4 plastique under the local Link
station and make his own contribution to street culture by liberating
a few acres of prime urban landscape.

At a stall near the back of the place, an old curandera was
selling her evil eye potions and a collection of malfunctioning robot
sentries: cybernetic goshawks, rottweilers and cougars, simple track
and kill devices controlled by a tabletop microwave link. The sentries
had been very popular with the nouveau riche toward the end of the
previous century, but the animals' electronics and maintenance
had proved to be remarkably unreliable. Eventually they passed, like
much of the mercado's merchandise, down from the hills, through the
rigid social strata of L.A., until they landed in the street, last stop
before the junk heap.

There by the twitching half-growling animals, the crew set up
their lights. Jonny hung around and watched them block out shots.
The film makers infuriated him, but in their own way, Jonny knew,
they were right.

The market was dying. When he had been a boy, Jonny
remembered it sprawling over a dozen square blocks. Now it barely
managed to occupy two. And most of the merchandise was junk.
Chromium paint flaked off the electronic components, revealing
ancient rusted works. The hydroponically grown fruits and
vegetables grew steadily smaller and more tasteless each season. All
that seemed to keep the market going was the communally owned
bank of leaking solar batteries. During the rolling brown-outs, they
alone kept the tortilla ovens hot, the fluorescents flickering, the
videos cranking.

Isn't it time you kids were in bed?" Jonny asked, stepping on
the toes of a lanky blonde camera man. Sprechen sie 'parasite'?"

Huddled in the doorways of clubs and arcades, groups of
fingerprint changers, nerve tissue merchants and brain cell thieves
regarded the crowd with hollow eyes, as if assessing their worth in
cash at every moment. The gangs, too, were out in force that hot
night: the Lizard Imperials (snake-skin boots and surgically split
tongues), the Zombie Analytics (subcutaneous pixels offering up
flickering flesh-images of dead video and rock stars), the anarchist-
physician Croakers, the Yakuza Rebels and the Gypsy Titans; even the
Naginata Sisters were out, swinging blades and drinking on the
corner in front of the Iron Orchid.

As Jonny crossed Sunset, a few of the Sisters waved to him.
When he waved back, a gust of wind pulled open his tunic, revealing
his Futukoro Automatic. The Sisters whooped and laughed at the
sight of the weapon, feigning terror. A tall Sister with Maori facial
tattoos crooked her finger and began blasting him with an imaginary
gun.

Coming toward him from the opposite direction was a ring of
massive Otoko Niku. Meat Boys-- uniformly ugly acromegalic giants,
each easily three meters tall. In the center of the protective ring, an
old Yakuza oyabun openly stared and pointed at people. It was rare
enough for people to see a pure-blood Japanese in the street that
they stopped to stare back, until the Meat Boys cuffed them away.
Jonny thought of a word then.

Gaijin. Foreigner. Alien.

That's me. I'm gaijin, Jonny thought. He could find little comfort
in the familiarity of the streets. Jonny realized that by
acknowledging his desire to kill Easy Money, he had cut himself off
from everybody around him. He walked slower. Twice he almost
turned back.

A tiny nisei girl tried to sell him a peculiar local variation on
sushi-- refried beans and raw tuna wrapped in a corn husk--
commonly known as Salmonella Roll. Jonny declined and ducked into
an alley. There, he swallowed two tabs of Desoxyn, hijacked from a
Committee warehouse.

It was good stuff. Very soon, a tingling began in his finger-
tips and moved up his arms, filling him with a pleasantly tense,
almost sexual, energy. Beads of sweat broke out on his hands and
face, ran down his chest. He thought of Sumi.

I might not be back tonight," he had told her before he left the
squat they shared. Uno tareja. Got some deliveries to make," he lied.
Routine stuff."

Then why are you taking that blunderbuss?" Sumi asked,
pointing to the Futukoro pistol Jonny had hidden under his tunic.

Jonny ignored her question and tried to look very interested in
the process of lacing up his steel-tipped boots. Sumi terrified him.
Sometimes, in his more callous moments, he considered her a slip-up,
his one remaining abandonment to emotional ties. Occasionally, when
he felt strong, he would admit to himself that he loved her.

I'll be passing through the territories of a dozen gangs tonight
and then if I'm lucky I'll be landing in Carnaby's Pit. That's why the
blunderbuss, he said. "I should be taking a Committee battalion with
me.

I bet they'd be thrilled if you called them."

I bet you're right."

Almond-eyed Sumi stroked his hair with delicate, callused
hands. He had met her at the zendo of an old Buddhist nun. The Zen
study had not stuck, but Sumi had. Her full name, Sumimasen, meant
variously, thank you," I'm sorry," and this never ends." She had
been on her own almost as long as Jonny. Along the way, she picked
up enough electronics to make her living as a Watt Snatcher; That is:
for a fee she would tap right into the government's electric lines
under the city and siphon off power for her customers.

Jonny got up and Sumi put her arms around him, thrusting her
belly at the pistol in his belt. Is that your gun or are you just happy
to see me? Sumi asked. She did a whole little act, rolling her eyes
and purring in her best vamp voice. But her nervousness was
obvious.

Jonny bent and kissed the base of her neck, held her long
enough to reassure, then longer. He felt her tense up again, under his
hands.

I'll be back," he said.

During the last few months, Jonny had begun to worry about
leaving Sumi alone. Officially, the government's power lines did not
exist. All the more reason the State would like to wipe the Watt
Snatchers out. All the gangs were outlaws, technically. The elements
of the equation were simple: its components were the price of
survival divided by the risks that survival demanded. And in an age
of rationing and manufactured shortages, survival meant the black
market. The gangs produced whatever the smuggler lords couldn't
bring in. And the pushers sold it on the streets.

Jonny had chosen his own brand of survival when he walked
away from the Committee for Public Health and threw in with the
pushers. It was a simple question of karma. Now he worked the
black market, selling any drugs the smuggler lords could supply--
anti-biotics, LSD analogs, beta-endorphins, MDMA, skimming the
streets on a razor-sharp high compounded of adrenaline and
paranoia.

In his more philosophical moments, it seemed to Jonny that
they were all engaged in nothing more than some bizarre battle of
symbols. What the smuggler lords and gangs provided-- food, power
and drugs-- had become the ultimate symbols of control in their
world. The Federales could not afford to ease up their rationing of
medical treatment, access to public utilities and food distribution.
They had learned, long ago, how it easy it was to control vast
numbers of people simply by worrying them into submission,
keeping them busy hustling to stay alive.

Los Angeles, as such, had ceased to exist. L.A., however-- the
metaphorical heart and soul of the city-- was alive and kicking. An
L.A. of the mind, playground of trade and commerce: the City of
Night. Known in the local argot as Last Ass, Lonesome Angels, the
Laughing Adder, Los Angeles existed in the rarefied state of many
port cities, functioning mainly as a downloading point for a constant
stream of data, foreign currency, dope and weapons that flowed onto
the continent from all over the world.

It was the worst kept secret in the street that half the State
Legislature had their fingers deep in the black market pie. Like some
fragile species of hothouse orchid, the city existed only as long as it
had the politicos backing. Without that, the Committee would be on
them like rabid dogs. For the moment, though, the balance was there.
Merchandise flowed out and cash flowed in, blood and breath of the
city.

Jonny understood all this and accepted the tightrope existence.
He knew too, that someday the whole thing was going to crash. It
was their collective karma. Sooner or later some politico was going to
get greedy, try to undercut one of the gangs or simply sell them out
for a vote. And the Committee would move in. Jonny knew that this
knowledge should make a difference, but it did not.

In the alley, the speed came on like an old friend, an electric
hum up and down his spine. Suddenly all things were possible. The
nervous glare of neon signs and halogen street lamps domed Sunset
in a pulsing nimbus of come-on colors. Stepping from the alley, Jonny
barely felt his boots on the pavement. Easy Money was as good as
dead.

There were five or six lepers clustered around the entrance to
Carnaby's Pit, begging alms and exhibiting their wounds to those
willing to pay for a look. An upturned Stetson on the ground before
them held an assortment of coins, crumpled dollar and peso notes
and gaily colored pills. Ever since the lepers' numbers had grown too
large to ignore, odd rumors had sprung up around them. Many
people swore that the Committee was putting something in the
water, while others suspected the Arabs. Some blamed the Alpha
Rats, claiming they were trying to destroy the Earth with Leprosy
Rays from the moon. It was Jonny's opinion that most people were
idiots.

One leper in a nylon windbreaker was reciting in a low
whiskey voice:

The streets breathe, ebb and flow like the

seas beneath a sodden twilight eye.

The sky appears from a maw of rooftops-

Dusk streets, dry fountains

coax the cemetery stars.

Jonny pulled a few Dapsone and tetrahydrocanabinol capsules
from his pouch and dropped them into the battered Stetson. The
leper who had been reciting, his head and face heavily bandaged,
opened his jacket.

Thank you, friend," the leper said through broken lips,
pointing to his freshest scars.

Nodding politely, Jonny left the lepers and stepped down into
the Pit.

The skyline tilted, angled steeply downward, then up, became a
vertical blur of mirrored windows, skyscrapers leading to a hologram
star field. Jonny was in the Pit's game parlor, separated from the bar
by a dirty lotus print curtain. Around the edges of the room, antique
pinball machines beeped and rang prosaically while the air in the
center of the parlor burned with the phantom light of hologram
games. Crossing the parlor, Jonny was caught in a spray of hot blue
laser blasts from Sub-Orbital Commando, showered with fragments
of pint-sized galaxies spinning from Vishnu and Shiva's hands. Rat-
sized nudes swarmed above his head, frantically groping at each for
Fun In Zero G.

One angry pinball player threw a glass and it shattered against
the far wall. Jonny stepped back as two members of the Pit's own
Meat Boys moved smoothly from opposite ends of the room to
intercept the shouting man.

Goddamit, this machine just ate my last dollar!" screamed the
pinball player.

He was still screaming as the two beefy monsters grabbed an
arm apiece and ushered him through the front doors. They came
back alone. Jonny half expected to see them return with the guy's
arms.

Peace! Can't we have a little peace in here?" mumbled a
sweating man lining up Jacqueline Kennedy in the sights of a
fiberglass reproduction of a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. It was
Smokefinger, the pickpocket, fat and nervous, jacked into the Date
With Destiny game by a length of pencil-thin cable extending from
the game console to a 24-prong mini-plug implanted at the base of
his skull. Most of the players in the room were jacked into various
games by similar plugs. Jonny's stomach fluttered at the sight.
Elective surgery, he had decided years before, did not extend to
having little platinum bullets permanently jammed into his skull,
thank you. He could watch the World Link on a monitor and as for
the games, they seemed real enough without skull-plugs.

Smokefinger tracked the ghostly hologram of the presidential
limousine as crimson numbers flickered in the metallic-blue Dallas
sky, reading out his score. Jonny leaned close to pickpocket's ear and
said, How's it going, Smoke?" Smokefinger ignored him and
continued to move the toy rifle with steady, insect-like
concentration. Hey Smoke," said Jonny, waving his fingers before
Smokefinger's eyes just as the fat man pulled the trigger.

No score. Shit," mumbled the pickpocket, still ignoring Jonny.
He had aced the chauffeur.

This wasn't going to be any fun at all, Jonny decided. He pushed
the release button on the plug at the back of Smokefinger's
head. The wire dropped and a spring-loaded coil drew it back inside
the game console.

What the hell--" yelled Smokefinger, grabbing for his neck. He
looked at Jonny dumbly as his eyes slowly re-focused. In a moment,
he said, Hey Jonny, que pasa?"

Not much," Jonny said. I can't believe you're still playing this
game. Haven't you killed everybody in Dallas by now?

Smokefinger shrugged. I pop 'em, but they keep coming back."
Sweat pooled on the pickpocket's glasses where the rims touched his
cheeks.

Jonny smiled and looked around the room hoping there was
anyone else from whom he might get information. However, in the
pastel glare of meteor showers and laser fire, none of the faces
looked familiar. You seen Easy Money around?" he asked
Smokefinger. I've got to talk to him."

Right, talk. You and everybody else." Smokefinger looked back
at the empty hologram chamber and cursed. I almost broke my own
record, you know, he said. He looked at Jonny accusingly. "No, I ain't
seen Easy. Random's tending bar tonight. Maybe you should go talk
to him. To tell you the truth, you're distracting me. Smokefinger
never took his finger from the trigger of the fiberglass rifle. Jonny
pulled some yen coins from his pocket and fed them into the
machine.

Thanks for all your help, killer," he said. But Smokefinger did
not hear him; he was already jacking in. Jonny left Smokefinger,
wishing he could find peace as easily as that, and pushed his way
into the bar.

Jonny always found it a little disconcerting that the main room
never seemed to change. He imagined it frozen in time, like a
scratched record, repeating the same snatch of lyric over and over
again. The usual weekend crowd of small-time smugglers, B actors
and bored prostitutes stared from the blue veil of smoke around the
bar. The same tired porn played on the big screen for the benefit of
those unfortunates not equipped with skull-plugs. Even the band,
Taking Tiger Mountain were blasting the same old riffs, stopping
half-way through their own Guernica Rising" when the crowd
shouted them down. They switched to a desultory Brown Sugar," a
song that was out-of-date long before anybody in the club had been
born. Dancers undulated under the strobes and sub-sonic mood
enhancers as projectors threw holograms of lunar atrocities onto
their hot bodies.

In fact, the only real difference Jonny could see in the place
was the darkness in the HoloWhores bundling booths.

Jonny pushed his way through the tightly packed crowd and
tried the door to Easy's control room. It was locked, and the bar far
too full to force the door. He would have to wait. Feeling relief, and
guilt at that relief, Jonny made his way to the bar for a drink and
some questions.

Random, the bartender, was drying glasses behind a bar
constructed of old automobile dashboards. Tall and thin, his skin
creased like dead leaves, Random offered Jonny the same half-smile
he offered everybody. Jonny ordered an Asahi dark and gin; he put a
twenty on the bar. Random set down the beer and slid the bill into
his pocket in one smooth motion.

The bartender inclined his head toward the dance floor.
Necrophiliacs," he said above the roar of the band. They can't stand
new music. Like it's deadly to them or something. Bunch of assholes.
Random shrugged. Then he looked away, like a blind man, eyes
unfocused. They just nuked Kansas City. The Jordanian Re-
Unification Army, a New Palestine splinter group. They called the
local Net up link. Said Houston's next, he reported. The bartender
shook his head. Those boys must really hate cows." Random had a
passion for morbid news items and stayed plugged into the Net's
data lines constantly, relaying the most worthy bits to his customers.
Jonny thought it was one of his most charming qualities.
He turned back to Jonny as if anticipating his question. Easy split.
Been gone a couple of days now. Left quick, too. Didn't touch his holo
stuff.

I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?" asked
Jonny.

I'm afraid he neglected to leave a forwarding address. A
shame too, so close to Thanksgiving and all.

The band's volume jumped abruptly as they broke from the
song into a tense, rhythmic jam. Saint Peter, the guitarist, stood at
the edge of the stage between soaring liquid-cooled stacks of Krupp-
Verwandlungsinhalt speakers. Eyes squeezed shut, shoulders loose,
Saint Peter pumped walls of noise, his myoelectric left-hand racing
like a frantic silver spider up and down the fretboard. As he played,
a pattern of light glinted off the chrome hand, marking its progress
through the air. Then, just as the jam reached its peak, the song died;
the porn faded and the lights dimmed. Brown-out," said Random. He
casually threw a switch under the bar and the power returned. Tell
Sumi gracias for the watts, he said.

Jonny nodded. Did you hear that Easy had another Flare Gun
Party? he asked.

No, who got burned?"

Raquin."

Random raised an eyebrow in sympathy. Sorry, man," he said.
Although, I must admit, I'm not entirely surprised to hear he's been
up to something. He took a long hit from a hookah next to the cash
register. Looking for Easy Money seems to be the hot new game in
town. Last night the crowd was so thick I had 'em line up and take
numbers. Of course, Easy's not the only one who seems to have
captured the public's imagination. Random smiled at Jonny. "You
appear to have developed a bit of celebrity all your own.

Me?" Jonny asked guardedly. Who's been asking about me?"
Random shrugged. No one I knew." The bartender winked
conspiratorially. Come on, boy-o. Whose ankles have you been
nipping at?

I am pathetically clean." Jonny said. Tell me about them.
Anything you can remember.

Random stuck two nicotine yellow fingers into his shirt pocket
and pulled out a glicene envelope of white powder. Pure as Mother
Mary and twice as nice, he said, giving the envelope a light kiss.
Interesting lads. They didn't try to pay off in crude cash." He
dropped the envelope back into his pocket.

Smugglers?" asked Jonny.

Could be, only what's a smuggler lord doing shooting for small
shit like Easy Money? Or you for that matter.

Who knows," Jonny said. He took a long gulp of his drink.
Maybe he's decided he's in the wrong business."

Hell," said the bartender, everybody in Last Ass's in the
wrong business.

Random set down the glass he had been cleaning and said,
Weather." His eyes shifted. Junior senator on the Atmospheric
Management Committee announced they can clean-up the mess left
by the Weather Wars. Says they ought to be able to stabilize weather
patterns over most of North America in three to five years.

Didn't they announce that same program three to five years
ago? asked Jonny.

At least." And with that, Random gave Jonny the other half of
the smile and moved on to other customers.

Swirling the dregs of his beer, Jonny turned and studied the
noisy crowd moving through the bar. He searched their heads for a
sign of goat horns grafted above a thin face, inset with darting,
suspicious eyes. Or arms thick with tattooed serpents, like the
stigmata of some junky god. Easy Money always stood out in a crowd
which, Jonny supposed, was the idea. If Easy was around, he should
not be hard to spot.

Jonny had met Easy while they were both in the employ of the
smuggler lord Conover. This was just after Easy had made a name for
himself with his first Flare Gun Party.

The party had become something of a legend with the pushers.
It went like this: Easy Money, a human parasite with the unerring
ability to detect the softest, most vulnerable part of his prey, had
acquired a contract to kill the leader of the Los Santos Atomicos gang.
Beginning with a philosophy that later became his trademark (like
the hourglass on the belly of a spider) Easy reasoned that gang
retribution being such a swift and ugly thing, eliminating the entire
gang would be less trouble than the removal of any single member.

It was well known to those who, like Easy, always kept a
metaphorical ear to the ground, that the Los Santos Atomicos gang's
particular vice was free-basing cocaine. Easy located their safe-house
with information from a rival gang. He also found that the Los Santos
Atomicos liked to buy the ether they used to treat the coke, in bulk.
They kept big tanks of the stuff hidden under the floor.

As he was fond of saying, from there it was easy money.

Like some stoned Prometheus, Easy brought fire to the Los
Santos Atomicos in the form of a red Navy signal flare which he fired
into their lab from the roof of a Catholic mission across the street.
The explosion literally ripped the roof off the ether-filled building.
The fireball boiled down onto many of the adjoining buildings,
igniting them, too.

Besides the Los Santos Atomicos, at least a dozen other people,
mainly junkies and prostitutes, died in the fires that engulfed the
grimy neighborhood. And Easy Money moved up a rung in the
hierarchy of the movers and shakers in their little world.
Looking back, none of it had seemed important to Jonny at the time.
When he heard of the deaths it seemed somehow normal.
Just one more senseless act in the long series of senseless acts that
made up their lives. However, Raquin's death had moved events
from the abstract into a personal affront. He knew Raquin.
And he knew Easy had killed him. Jonny would finish Easy Money
simply because nobody else would and because the little prick
deserved it.

Jonny slowed his breathing, counted each intake of breath,
centering himself as his roshi had taught him. Visions of horned,
tattooed Easy swam before him as he hunted for that savage part of
himself he had sought before whenever he had to kill.

But the passion was gone, seemed pointless now. The speed had
been cut with something unpleasant. It was wearing off already,
leaving him feeling numb and stupid. Jonny gulped down the rest of
his beer and tried to get into the buzz from the liquor.

He wondered if perhaps he had figured things wrong. If the
smuggler lords really were after Easy maybe he was not needed,
after all. There was always work to do, money to be made. He had to
establish a new connection. Something bothered Jonny, though. He
could not figure out who, besides the Committee, would be looking
for him. Had he trod on someone's toes in the last few days looking
for Easy? He could not remember.

The bar seemed to tip slightly as Jonny downed his second
Asahi and gin. When he wiped a hand across his brow it came away
cool and covered in sweat. He left the bar, pushing carelessly through
a tight knot of nervous teenagers from the Valley made up to look
like they had grafts and implants. Near the restroom, a Zombie
Analytic flashed Jonny in quick succession: Marilyn Monroe, Jim
Morrison and Aoki Vega. He ignored her.

Inside the restroom, Jonny splashed rusty water onto his face.
The room stank of human waste, and the paper towel dispenser was
empty. On the floor he found half a copy of Twilight of the Gods".
The toilet was full of Nietzsche. Jonny dried his hands with the few
remaining pages. The water made him feel a little better. However,
the come down from the speed had left him jumpy and nervous.

When Jonny left the restroom, a hand clamped on his arm.

Jonny, how's it going?" asked a short man that Jonny did not
recognize. The man's smile was wide and toothy, intended to give the
impression that he was a very dangerous character. He wore shades
whose lenses were dichromatic holograms depicting some cavern.
Where his eyes should have been were twin bottomless pits.

That's a good way to lose some teeth or an eye," Jonny said
evenly.

The little man's smile faded only slightly. He relaxed his grip on
Jonny's arm, but did not release him.

Sorry Jonny," he said. Look, could I buy you a drink or
something?

No."

Jonny shook off the little man's grip and headed back to the
bar to get drunk. But again, strong fingers caught him.

Where are you going in such a hurry?" the little man asked.
Let's talk. I've got a deal for you."

Jonny jammed his elbow into the little man's midsection, spun
and pressed the barrel of the Futukoro into the man's throat.

If you ever grab me again, I will kill you. Do you understand
that? Jonny whispered.

The little man released Jonny's arm and stepped back, his
hands held in front of his chest, palms out. It's cool," the little man
said giddily. It's cool."

Jonny pushed the man away roughly and left him chattering to
himself. He was sweating again. Jonny went back to the bar and
drank cheap fishy-tasting Japanese vodka, thinking as he drank,
about how vile it was and how he wished he could afford the good
stuff. He put the little man out of his mind. Jonny wondered if he
should call Sumi, but that seemed like a bad idea. She would ask
questions he did not want to answer. Eventually, his thoughts drifted
to Raquin. Jonny wondered what it was like to burn to death. He
remembered that someone had once told him that you would not feel
anything, that the fire would consume all the oxygen and you would
smother before you ever felt the flames. That seemed like small
comfort. How much better was it to smother than to burn?

Jonny continued drinking straight shots of the fishy vodka until
the taste disappeared altogether. Taking six of the shot-glasses, he
constructed a little pyramid, but Random took the glasses away and
soon Jonny ran out of money. While he was fishing in his pouch for
more dope, there was a slight tug on his arm. Somehow, when he
turned, Jonny knew the little man would be standing there. His
shades were off and he held his hands up as if to ward off a blow.

Truce, okay? I did not grab you," the little man said. I just
tapped you on the shoulder.

Jonny nodded. I could tell you were a quick study. What do
you want?

The man leaned forward, anxiously. Look Jonny, I didn't want
to tell you before-- I'm working for Mister Conover. He sent me to
get you. If you don't come back with me, my ass is grass.

Sorry to hear that. Tell Mister Conover I'll get in touch with
him as soon as I'm through with the deal I'm working on now.

I can't do that. He wants you now," said the little man.
Hopefully, he added, You know that whatever it is you're working
on, Mister Conover will make it worth your while to drop.

Jonny shook his head.

No thanks; this is personal."

The little man leaned closer. You aren't looking for Easy
Money, are you?

What if I am?"

Well, that's great," said the little man. That's the job-- Easy
Money copped something that belongs to Mister Conover. And Mister
Conover wants you to help him get it back.

Jonny nodded, took a piece of ice from someone's empty glass,
and rubbed it across his forehead. My problem, friend, is that I
know Mister Conover pretty well and I know that he is a
professional, Jonny said. "No offense, but why would he send a hard
guy like you to get me?

The little man looked around, apparently to make sure that
nobody was eavesdropping. This really isn't my job," he whispered.
Jonny smiled. No shit?" he said.

I'm more of a bookkeeper. It's just that Mister Conover's got
all his muscle guys out looking for Easy Money, he said. The little
man looked at Jonny gravely. You know how it is."

Yeah, I know how it is," said Jonny, genuinely amused.

He told me that you always hang out at Carnaby's Pit," the
little man continued. He made a face as if he had just smelled
something foul. To tell you the truth, it's a little bit much for me."

Jonny laughed. Sometimes it's a bit much for me, too," he said.

The little man smiled; for real, this time. Then you'll come with
me? he asked.

Jonny shrugged. That stuff about looking for Easy, you weren't
just being cute again, were you? "No, all that was true, he said.

Good."

Then you'll come?"

I'm not sure. I hate to beat a point to death, but how do I
know you work for Mister Conover? "Oh yeah, said the little man
brightening. He reached into his jacket pocket. Mister Conover said
to give you this.

He handed Jonny a plastic bag containing two gelatinous blue
capsules. The manufacturer's markings were Swiss, the capsules
NATO issue, banded with an orange warning stripe indicating
myotoxins. Jonny had seen the stuff on the Committee. Frosty the
Snowman. It was a necrotic, a synthetic variation on pit viper venom
that killed by breaking down collagen fibers, effectively dissolving
skin and muscle tissue. The NATO variation, he had heard, was
constructed with certain open" segments along its DNA chain,
allowing the toxin to bind with polypeptides in the victim's collagen
and replicate itself there. Rumor had it that Frosty could break down
the skin and muscle tissue of a seventy kilo man in just under
fourteen hours. It was not the kind of drug that many people would
have access to. Jonny stuffed the bag into his pouch.

So, I'm convinced," he said.

Then you'll come?"

Why not," he said. I'm not getting anywhere here."

The little man beamed at him. Jonny thought it might be love.
By the way, have you got a name?" Jonny asked.

Cyrano. Bender Cyrano, like the guy in the old book, you
know? Only I haven't got the nose. Cyrano laughed at his own joke.

Jonny did not know what the hell Cyrano was talking about,
but he smiled so as not to hurt the little man's feelings. When Cyrano
extended his hand, Jonny shook it.

Nice to meet you, Cyrano. Let's get out of here," said Jonny.
When they reached the dirty curtain, Jonny turned and took a last
look at the band. They were burning through one of Saint Peter's
best tunes, Street Prince." The crowd ignored them, utterly.

Random was right, Jonny decided. A bunch of assholes.
Outside, the hot night had cooled somewhat. That usually meant that
the street people would haunt Sunset Boulevard until dawn, but an
uneasy silence had settled upon the street. A scrap of paper, plucked
up by the wind, did a careless pirouette before being carried away. A
quiet crowd had gathered across the street, watching the club. Jonny
took a step back. Cyrano walked on a few steps before he noticed
that Jonny was no longer there.

What's wrong?" he asked.

Jonny was barely six when the first of the Protein Rebellions
took place. That was when the citizens of Los Angeles, inspired by
uprisings in other cities, rose up and wrecked the Griffith Park Zoo in
search of fresh meat. The riots were finally put down, but not until
ten days of fighting left the city little more than an open wound. The
official body count was something like 10,000 civilian and military
dead.

The authorities, however, had not been caught entirely
unprepared. Many in power had seen what was coming. Plans were
pushed forward, timetables scrapped, and those select few, wealthy
enough to buy entrance or powerful enough to demand it, began
their silent pilgrimages deep into the desert, to government-
sponsored havens like New Hope.

The rest of the city remained behind with the rest of the
solution. The rest of the solution, in this case, was a paramilitary
organization known, without apparent irony, as the Committee
for Public Health. And several armed members of that organization
were waiting for Jonny when he left Carnaby's Pit.

Spotlights hit Jonny and Cyrano from across the street.

A adolescent, bullhorned voice called, Do not move. You are
both under arrest.

Jonny dropped to the ground, pulling his gun. Cyrano
awkwardly wrestled a Mexican Barretta from his belt and got off one
shot before a Futukoro blast ripped into his chest. The little man fell
on Jonny, bleeding everywhere, looking horrified. He clutched at the
wound, as if by holding it closed, he could keep his life from slipping
out. Jonny looked up in time to see the leper in the Spacer uniform
peering at him from around the side of the bar.

Automatic weapons fire bit into the front of the Pit as the
Committee opened up. Shattered glass and concrete showered down
on Jonny as he flattened himself on the ground. From behind, the
door of the bar burst open and a phalanx of the Pit's Meat Boys
emerged, armed to the teeth. Jonny wanted very muchto disappear.

Across Sunset, the evening crowds were pinned down in
windows and doorways, watching the fire fight. Occasionally, one or
two kids wearing gang colors would make a break into the open and
run across Sunset, waving and shouting as they reached the other
side alive. A young, fat Gypsy Titan started across behind his faster
friend. It looked as if the fat boy would make it, when a shot spun
him around. He tore at the long scarf knotted about his throat before
collapsing between two parked cars.

Jonny heard orders barked from somewhere in the dark and
the sound of scrambling feet. The Meat Boys were fanning out,
covering the entrance of the Pit. No escape that way. Why the hell
were the Meat Boys fighting the Committee, Jonny wondered. Must
think it's some rogue gang trying to shake them down.

Jonny pressed close to the building for cover. Sounds like
thunder, breaking glass and splintering wood enclosed him. He tried
to crawl behind the Meat Boys, but they were moving all over the
street.

At the side of the bar, Jonny saw the leper again, giving him
the finger with one diseased hand. At that instant, Jonny recognized
him. Even with the bandages and the uniform, he knew the leper was
Easy Money. Jonny took a shot at him, but Easy ducked behind the
building.

Again, the door to Carnaby's Pit burst open and Smokefinger
came running out. He was screaming what sounded like
Motherfuckers" at the top of his lungs. His right arm was a mass of
wet red flesh. Running into the street, he was cut to pieces by
Committee cross-fire.

Jonny made a break for the alley behind the Pit. Moving
quickly to a low crouch, he crawled around the perimeter of the
building. He almost made it when he felt a terrible kick in his
shoulder. Jonny's muscles turned to water.

Sometime later, he was not sure how long, Jonny awoke in the
alley. He had no idea how he had gotten there. He could still hear
occasional bursts of automatic weapons fire. When he tried to stand,
Jonny discovered that his whole right side was numb.

With his left arm, Jonny grabbed the rim of an overflowing
dumpster and pulled himself to his feet. It took him a few seconds
to find his balance, but when he did, he started running to exit at the
far end of the alley.

He almost made it, but somewhere along the way, a boot
whipped out of the darkness and sent him sprawling.

Oh fuck, Jonny thought.

This time he did not get up.

TWO:

History, Payback, and an Unhappy Reunion

in the Belly of the Beast

The Greater Southern California Detention Facility: an ant hill; a
graveyard; a factory where souls were processed, packaged, and
delivered to what some laughingly called justice. At least, many on
the inside (guards and prisoners, alike) had heard rumors to that
effect. Rumors of the search for justice. Memos were circulated about
it. Petitions were signed for it. Statues of Greek goddesses
brandishing scales were erected to it. Still, few had seen any sign of
it.

The prison squatted, blank and huge, by the port in what was
left of the old warehouse district. Built on the bones of an old liquid
natural gas plant, it had originally been envisioned as the location for
the flagship lab of the Pentagon's notorious genetic warfare programs
in the late nineteen-nineties. The building had sat unused when the
government's war plans ran out of steam and money at the same
time. It was not until eighteen months later, with a few billion yen to
back it up, that the order came down to pull out the half-finished
labs and begin slicing up the old storage tanks, refitting them to form
the cell walls within the new facility.

The majority of the prison's bulk was hidden, sunk deep into
the ancient pig iron waste pits. Lichen-streaked, great solid planes of
cracked concrete rose at severe angles to a flat roof studded with
sealed cooling ducts and dish antennae. A damp ocean breeze kept
the walls of the prison perpetually glistening, the concrete stinking
with a thousand dock smells: the ozone residue of synthetic fuels,
over-ripe fruit, rusting machinery, dead fish.

A common joke was that the average prisoner was doing five to
ten while the guards were doing nine to five. They, like the
prisoners, were just trying to get by. They were young men mostly,
Jonny's age and a little older. Primarily recruits from the Committee
for Public Health, at twenty the boys were already considered too old
for street duty, burned-out on the Committee's steady diet of speed
and anabolic steroids.

Two years earlier, with motives as mysterious to himself as
anybody else, Jonny had joined the Committee. Indifference and
boredom seemed to be his main reasons. A few years as a petty thief
and courier for the smugglers left him fast on his feet and quick with
a knife and pistol. Still, he remained naive enough to be surprised
when it was these same criminal qualities that helped land him a
high-paying job with the Committee.

After his training, Jonny was assigned to what was called
Perimeter Maintenance." The mechanics of the job were not too
different from what he had been doing all his life-- meeting with
thieves, tracking down warehouses of stolen drugs and food.
However, the Committee had little patience with prisoners; they paid
him a commission for each smuggler he killed above his quota.
Recruits were encouraged to compete. Body counts were posted at
Committee headquarters. There were bonuses and prizes to be won
at the end of each month.

Jonny tried to make the best of it, telling himself how much
better it was to be off the streets and on the side of power for a
change. But killing for the Committee did not make any more sense
than killing for the smugglers. Sometimes, when he was helping load
bodies into transports after a raid, Jonny would see a face he
recognized: a junky from the Strip, a panhandler, a street musician.
More than once, in the hallucinatory haze of the synth-fuels fumes
and halogen lamps, he thought he saw his own face among the dead.

And he was growing increasingly dependent on the speed. He
simply could not let go. The come down was too awful. Without the
speed he would begin to think again.

Jonny had never known self-loathing before, but there it was.
He had sudden bouts of vertigo, mouth ulcers, cramps in his gun
hand. He found himself growing more sympathetic to the cause of the
smugglers; at least he understood their motives. In the end it simply
grew too ugly, the self-deceptions too obvious for him to continue.
The manner of his desertion, however, was more complicated. It was
generally known that he turned in his uniform, pressed and clean,
and picked up the last of his commissions. But he never turned in his
pistol. That became significant later when his immediate superior, a
one-eyed brute named Cawfly, was found shot through his good eye.

And Jonny, barely twenty one, in his inevitable search for the
point of least resistance, drifted back to the streets. No longer
resisting the flow of events or pretending to chart a course through
them, he existed by luck. But that was before; now it seemed even
that had deserted him.

He awoke, with a small cry, to the stink of vomit and antiseptic
in a damp, gray holding cell. As the sound of his cry died away,
Jonny rolled onto his side where he was distressed to find that the
vomit he smelled was his own. His left hand was resting in a small
pool of the stuff. His mouth burned with bile.

He lay on a bare aluminum cot frame, his head spinning,
wondering where he was. Eventually, he was able to focus on the
wall. GAMMA LOVES RAMON and DEZ were scratched there, and THE
EXQUISITE CORPSE WILL DRINK THE NEW WINE. Much of the graffiti
was in Spanish and Japanese. He was too tired to translate, but he did
not need to. He already knew what it said. Fuck you!" or I didn't do
it or just "Let me out! The international language of the
dispossessed. He grinned; it was almost comforting. Jonny knew
where he was now.

When he tried to sit up, he found that hisright shoulder was
wrapped in gauze and a thermoplastic carapace. For a terrible
instant, he panicked, but relaxed when he felt the reassuring bulge of
his arm, intact under the cast.

Rubbing his injured arm, Jonny tried to figure out who had
turned him. It was clearly no coincidence that the Committee had
been waiting for him outside Carnaby's Pit. It was possible, he
thought, that it had been a routine sweep for all pushers, but that did
not seem likely. Deep shit," he said to the empty cell. Extremely
deep shit.

He was almost asleep when the polarized glass panel on his cell
door blinked to the transparent, then darkened. Jonny lay still on the
aluminum frame as the cell door scrapped open. He heard whispers--
three or four distinct voices. Annoyance and nervousness. He kept
his eyes closed. The door opened further, then closed quickly. The
voices stopped. Jonny was aware of somebody standing over him.

Is that him?" came a low, adolescent voice.

Yeah," I think so, said a different voice.

He's a skinny motherfucker. Looks like a chica," came a third,
huskier voice.

That give you ideas, man?"

Yeah-- I'm gonna cut him."

Hey, don't-- "

Jonny heard the metallic snick of a switchblade opening. He did
not move.

Touch him and we're muy morto. He's tagged, man."

Doesn't look special."

I seen his files. Interrogacion especial."

Man, I'm not going to kill him," came the husky voice. Just
gonna get a knuckle or part of his ear.

No!"

Who's gonna stop me?"

Jonny swung one steel-tipped boot into the gut of a blonde boy
and the other onto the floor, screaming like a lunatic, letting his
momentum carry him up and toward the door. The other boys fell
back without being touched, too surprised to stop him.
He almost had the door open before they came to their senses and
grabbed him. But he kept moving, biting fingers, kicking shins, not
letting them get a good grip. Finally, a boy with some sort of scarring
on his hands and neck caught him with a smooth uppercut to the jaw.
Jonny went down on his face. The scarred boy rolled him over and
dropped onto his chest, bringing the switchblade up level with
Jonny's throat. The other boys crowded in behind him, grumbling
and shaking their injured hands and legs. Jonny realized that the
hands of the boy holding the knife were covered with sores, similar
to leprosy lesions.

You funny, man?" the boy with the knife demanded. What's
your story?

Fuck you, la chinga," said Jonny.

The boy sliced Jonny's cheek. You're dead, man. I don't care
who you are, he said.

You haven't got the cojones."

You got to stick him, now. He'll tell," said the blonde boy.

Jonny twisted around and kicked the blonde boy, again. The
boy on his chest punched his throat.

What are you doing?" came a new voice.

The boys drew back abruptly, staring guiltily at the door. The
boy with the knife stood up and glanced at his nervous accomplices,
then back at the door. All Jonny could see from the floor was a pair
of highly polished boots and a sleeve with lieutenant's stripes.

I asked what you were doing," said the lieutenant.

The boy with the lesions pointed to Jonny. He was trying to
escape. We stopped him.

The lieutenant nodded. What were you doing in this cell?"
The boy glanced at his friends for support. They would not look at
him. I told you, man. He was trying to escape," he said.

Don't lie to me."

The boys in the back of the cell, the blonde and a tall, Mestizo
with bad teeth, stared at the floor. Jonny guessed that they were
about sixteen. The boy with the knife looked to be a year or two
older. The insignia on his Committee uniform indicated that he was a
corporal. That explained it, then. It had all been good, clean fun. An
older boy out to show his young friends a good time.

The lieutenant made a curt gesture with his hand. Get him up,"
he said.

The two younger boys moved quickly. Slipping their arms
under Jonny, they lifted him easily, their steroid thickened muscles
hardly straining. Then they set him gentlyon the cot frame and
stood against the wall, trying desperately to blend with the peeling
paint.

The older boy still held the knife, moving it uncertainly from
hand to infected hand. The lieutenant faced him. You're all on
report, he said. "Return to your duties.

I'm telling you, this man tried to escape," the older boy
insisted.

I understand," said the lieutenant, a flat-nosed young black
who, Jonny could now see, was not much older than the boy with the
jaw implant. That's how it was in the Committee. They worked
mainly with teenage boys. Give them the right stimulants and guns
and they would go anywhere, risk everything. Higher ranking boys
kept them in line, while desk-bound old men ran the rest of the
show. It was cheap and efficient. The Committee never had to pay
much in the way of retirement benefits.

Get out of here," the lieutenant said.

But-- "

One more word and you can explain it to the Colonel."

That shut the boy up. Reluctantly, he closed the switchblade,
tucking it into the top of his boot. While adjusting his uniform, he
gave Jonny a quick, accusing glance, and followed his friends out of
the cell.

So long, guys," called Jonny. Keep in touch." He laughed and
nodded to the lieutenant. The young man's identity tag read
TAUSSIG. Thanks for your help. I thought I was dog food for sure-- "

On your feet, pusher," said Lieutenant Taussig.

Jonny took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. You
mind if I catch my breath first? he asked.

Taussig reached down to examine Jonny's face, turning it this
way and that in the light. He did not look pleased.

If anybody asks, tell them the anesthetic hadn't quite worn off
and you fell on the stairs, the lieutenant said.

Why? What do you care about those clowns?" asked Jonny.

Just do it."

Jonny smiled. Oh, I get it. Afraid someone'll find out you can't
handle your troops?

Taussig pulled Jonny up by his good arm. Let's go," he said.

The lieutenant led Jonny out onto a rusted loading gantry,
through a maze of small-bore piping and frozen transfer valves to
the floor the old processing plant cum prison. Vague breezes and
convection currents kicked up scraps of paper, fluttering them
around the pylons of fifty foot cryogenic tanks.

The floor sloped; the air cooled. They entered a battered hydro-
plunge service lift whose burnished walls reflected the harsh
industrial lighting in jagged bolts and loops. As they descended,
Jonny noticed that Taussig had punched a button in the Yellow
Sector. Jonny was impressed. He had never received clearance to
enter any of the restricted areas.

When the elevator doors opened, Taussig pushed Jonny to a
jerry-rigged desk (a horizontal slab of tank cladding bolted athwart
two enormous shock-coils) and handed a sheaf of documents to a
pale boy whose eyes seemed to have no pupils at all. The red-faced
boy motioned for a couple of pre-pubescent guards to follow them,
and walked Jonny and the lieutenant down a short corridor. At the
end, he unlocked a scuffed yellow door for them.

Inside, it was another world.

The light came from incandescent bulbs, a muted non-
industrial glow. They stood in a small anteroom whose walls Jonny
was sure were real wood, not plasti-form. Between two locked doors
at the far end of the room was a low table, in the Kamakura style. On
the table was a small bowl holding a single bonsai. Jonny coughed
into his fist a couple of times. The sound was flat, swallowed up by
the walls like water on sand. Sound-proofed, he thought.

Taussig walked to door on the right of the table and leaned
over the eyepiece of a portable Haag-Streit retinal scanner. A
moment later, a buzzer sounded. Gripping the ornamental brass
handle, the lieutenant pushed the door open and motioned Jonny
inside. Taussig did not enter. When Jonny turned to look at him, the
lieutenant closed the door in his face.

What the hell happened to you?" came a familiar, avuncular
voice.

Jonny faced the room, seeing only a computer terminal on the
far side of a mahogany table with four matching chairs drawn up to
it. Dragons inset in some lighter wood coiled in battle or play on the
table's surface. In the dim light, Jonny could not see the face of the
man sitting on the opposite side of the table. But that voice. It made
Jonny feel a little sick.

I thought they cleaned you up in the infirmary," the man said.
Jonny could just make out the silhouette. It gestured for Jonny to
take a seat.

I tripped on the stairs," Jonny said. The-- uh-- anesthetic." He
sat in the chair as he was told.

Jonny could see the face now. It smiled at him. The short
cropped hair was whiter than he remembered.

What's the matter, Gordon? Not even a 'hello' for your old
C.O.? The officer, Colonel Brigidio Zamora, set a small pile of
crumpled currency next to a collection of pills and Jonny's tagged
Futukoro.

Captain Zamora--" Jonny began.

Colonel."

Congratulations," Jonny said. He rubbed his wounded shoulder,
reflexively. Look Colonel, you're too late. I know this room and the
ride down here were supposed to mind-fuck me, but you blew it.
Three of your puppies broke into my cell just now and tried to slice
me up. I'm exhausted and my shoulder hurts like hell. Jonny leaned
his good elbow on the table. So tell me, Colonel, what kind of deal
are you prepared to offer me?

For a moment, Zamora did nothing and Jonny found himself
wondering if he had chosen the wrong tactic. The Colonel, he
remembered, liked to have a good time. In a moment, though,
Zamora relaxed, exhaling little bursts of air from his throat. His
version of laughter.

I tell you, Gordon, you kill me," said the Colonel, with good
humor. You beg for it; that's what you do. You beg people to smash
you up. No wonder your life's such a mess.

What's wrong with my life?" asked Jonny.

Well for starters, look where you are."

Jonny could not argue with that one.

The Colonel, Jonny noticed, had put on some weight. The jacket
of his uniform now fit tight across his belly. The creases around his
mouth and eyes had taken on the exaggerated depth of cheap
statuary. Colonel Zamora did not seem to be aging so much as
fossilizing. In his presence, Jonny was always reminded of reptiles,
slow, solid beasts of ancient bloodlines, all muscles and teeth.

Is that why I'm here?" Jonny asked. You're a social worker
now? Gonna fix my life?

Zamora shook his head. No, Gordon; you're going to fix mine."

What does that mean?"

You really have no concept, do you?" Zamora asked. He spoke
slowly, as if addressing someone of less than average intelligence.
See if you can grasp this: you killed Captain Cawfly-- one of my
officers, and then just waltzed away. Do you know how that makes
me look? And then you turn up with these smugglers. Selling their
drugs; giving them Committee secrets. Working for terrorists, Gordon.
I mean, just how much abuse am I supposed to take?

Jonny started to say something, then met Zamora's tired gray
eyes. Thin ice.

The way I figure it, you owe me," said the Colonel.

I don't owe you anything," Jonny replied quickly.

That seemed to amuse Zamora. See, you're doing it again."
Jonny looked around the room impatiently. Look, Colonel, I had
enough of this crap when I was in the Committee. That's why I took a
walk.

Oh, is that the reason?" asked the Colonel. He raised an
eyebrow. Just a case of restless youth, was it? No gestures were
implied? Giving the finger to me, to the Committee?

I didn't even think about it."

Well, you should have," said Zamora.

Fuck you and your disgrace," blurted Jonny. If you want to
deal, fine. If not, charge me with something and let me call my
lawyer.

For the second time, Jonny made the Colonel laugh. You think
I'm going to bother with the courts? I'm not subtle like you, Gordon.
You play this my way or you're dead. That's my gesture to you.

Bueno," said Jonny. He did not even know any lawyers, but at
least he knew where he stood. His throat was dry and raw. Can I get
some water?

Later," said the Colonel. First, you're going to help me out with
some information.

What could I tell you that your agents don't already know?
Raquin was my connection and he's dead.

I know all about Raquin. He worked for the Committee."

Jonny stared at the Colonel. He's baiting me, he thought. It
worked, though. That's bullshit," Jonny said.

Zamora grinned. It's a buyers market, Gordon."

You offer him a deal like mine? Play or die?"

No," said the Colonel with great satisfaction. He came to us."

Balls."

Grow up, Gordon. This city is full of troglodytes who'd peddle
your ass to some organ broker as soon as look at you. That's what
you walked back to.

I don't believe you," Jonny told the Colonel.

Zamora shrugged. You can believe anything you want. It
doesn't change our situation one bit. What I want from you is
information about the smuggler lord Conover, said Zamora. He typed
something on the computer terminal and activated the room's
recording unit. I want you tell me about Conover and his connection
to the Alpha Rats.

For a moment, relief washed through Jonny like a cleansing
wave. Pointing to the pile of pills, he said, Your fingers in the cookie
jar, Colonel? Been taking home samples?

Zamora gave Jonny a look of absolute disgust. What are you,
an animal? I'm giving you a chance to stay alive.

How am I supposed to take a question like that seriously?"
asked Jonny. I don't know anything about Conover and I sure don't
keep tabs on space pirates.

You're a liar, Gordon," said the Colonel. Remember? Your
friend Raquin worked for me. I have videos of you with all kinds of
nasty people, including Conover.

Jonny looked away from the Colonel, wondering how long he
had been inside the prison. Sumi would be worried by now. All she
would hear is that he'd been shot and taken away by the Committee.
Sumi, he was afraid, would not survive long on her own. She did not
protect herself enough; she left herself too open, was too willing to
trust and be wounded. It was that inner calm that had originally
attracted Jonny to her. At the moment, though, it merely chilled him.

All right, so I know Conover," said Jonny. I move merchandise
for him. I help get his trucks though Committee checkpoints, but you
know all that, right? As for this Alpha Rat thing, though, that is
completely out-to-lunch.

Is it? I don't think so."

I can't give you what I don't have."

No, but you can get it for me."

What do you want?"

Conover," Zamora said.

Oh man," said Jonny, why don't you just ask me to bring to
Alpha Rats down here, too? I've got as much chance.
You can't just waltz away from this one, Gordon," said the Colonel.
This hook-up between Conover and the Alpha Rats makes it too big."
Jonny slammed his hand down on the table top. Will you lay-off that
'Gordon' stuff. Nobody calls me that, anymore.
Don't tell me what to do, boy. I own you."
Jonny leaned back in his chair. Just what is it between you and
these spacemen?
Colonel Zamora tilted his head back slightly, scrutinizing Jonny.
Jonny's fingers lightly traced the pattern of the dragons on the table
top. In truth, he wished he had something to give Zamora. Some
innocuous bit of information or rumor that might satisfy him. Jonny's
head was light. He could not even think of a good lie.
Finally, the Colonel nodded. He keyed something on the computer
and turned the recorder off. All right, maybe you are that ignorant,"
Zamora said. Let's try something else. Tell me anything you know
about the Alpha Rats.
Jonny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His mind was still
sluggish from the drugs they had given him in the infirmary. He
found it difficult to concentrate on anything but his anger, which he
was eager to show, and his fear, which he was not. Jonny realized
then that he was afraid of Colonel Zamora, had always been so. That
his fear of Zamora had been another reason he had deserted the
Committee. And that this confrontation had been, in a sense, pre-
ordained. He had cheated Zamora of something when he ran away. Of
what, Jonny was not sure, but he understood that whatever it was,
the Colonel had come to claim it.

Well?" said Colonel Zamora.

The Alpha Rats," he said, Yeah, I saw the news rags. Big ships
from deep space, right? They landed on the moon and smashed up all
the bases, ours and New Palestine's. Flattened everything. Burned all
the techs.

And do you have any idea what was going on up there at the
time?

Jonny tried to remember. It had been at long time ago. Some
engineering. Mostly mining and genetic work, right? The Colonel
seemed impressed. Right, but there was something else going on,
too; something more important, he said. "A war. An economic war
between the New Palestine Federation and the Tokyo Alliance. The
Arabs have always had the oil, the minerals, the heavy machinery.
They've been mining the asteroid belt for decades in those big
hydrogen scoop ships.

But think-- what does the Tokyo Alliance have? We have
software and hardware, sure, but it's the really delicate items:
protein-based data storage, genetics, micro-electronics. That's where
our strength lies, Gordon. And we lost a big piece of it.

You can thank the Alpha Rats that you're in business. A lot of
the drugs you people sell illegally were produced on the moon or in
those circumlunar labs. You need that environment, sterile conditions
you can't get on earth and, above all, weightlessness-- or something
close to it-- to produce some of those items.

The Arabs control over half the earth's land mass. Africa alone
will keep them supplied with raw materials for centuries. Do you see
what I'm getting at?

Sure, The Tokyo Alliance lost its economic balls when the
Alphas moved in on the moon. But I don't see what any of this has to
do with me. Jonny opened his eyes wide. "Honest officer, I was
nowhere near the moon that day.

Zamora ignored him and typed something on the computer
keyboard. A rectangle of glass set into the top of the table glowed.
Rising from the projection plate, a three-dimensional chaos of fractal
points and ice-blue connecting lines flared like a crystalline vascular
system. The angles of the hologram filled in with colors, primary,
then secondary. Jonny thought he recognized a desert. Look at this,"
Zamora said.

Jonny leaned forward, staring hard at the miniature landscape.

What is this?" he asked. Looks like a burned up spring roll."
It's a shuttle," said Zamora. The moon bases used them to send
samples back to the corporate labs on Earth. We picked that one up
in the desert near Anza Borego. Up until a couple of months ago, all
the Alpha Rats were doing was broadcasting a steady stream of
signals to deep space. Some French tech at Tokyo U thinks to the
constellation Pegasus. There's a binary system there called
'Alpheratz'. That's how they got the name.

Jonny nodded. I'm thrilled," he said.

Anyway, a few months ago, the signals changed. The Alphas
started broadcasting to Earth. No shit. To the desert southwest of
here. And you know what? asked Zamora, with more than a touch of
glee. Somebody broadcast back. Is that rich? Now, we've got some of
the best data decryption software available. We've only been to
decipher bits and pieces, but what we got, Gordon, it's tasty. Really
tasty.

Jonny said: All right, so I'm hooked. What was it?"

Zamora looked delighted. A deal," he said. A deal. Between
your pal Conover and the Alpha Rats. But don't stop listening yet,
because it gets better. It seems that you're involved.

Christ," said Jonny. You're too much." He got up and walked to
the back of the room. Zamora did not seemed very concerned; he just
kept smiling. The door, Jonny saw, had a magnetic lock, a device the
Committee was very fond of. You could blow the whole wall away
and still not get one of those locks to move, he thought. He remained
there, though, taking comfort in the small distance he could put
between himself and the Colonel.

Calm down, Gordon. I said you were involved. I didn't say you
were a participant.

What's the difference?"

Willingness," said Zamora. I tell you, boy, if I was working on
a deal of this magnitude I might let you sharpen pencils; hell, I might
even use you as a courier, but I sure wouldn't let you near anything
important. Therefore, I'm willing to accept that you are not a
conscious participant in all this.

Thanks."

But you've got something I want: access to Conover. If he does
have a connection to the Alpha Rats, no matter what the nature of
their deal, it can only end up benefiting the Arabs.

Jonny leaned against the wall, mindlessly working his
fingernails between two strips of paneling. Funny, I never pegged
you for a flagwaver, Colonel.

I'm not. This is simple economics. What they've got, we want.
By the time we found that shuttle, its cargo section had been
emptied, Zamora said. "Whatever the deal is, it's already in motion.

Jonny smiled at him. You know, I don't believe a word of this."
Colonel Zamora glanced at his watch. Well, believe this: As of right
now, you have forty eight hours to deliver Conover to me. If you do
that, you and I are square. Bullshit me and maybe I'll give you back
to those children upstairs. Some of them very vivid imaginations. I
imagine they'd start on your eyes.

Jonny walked back to the table, working the kinks from his
legs. His hands were shaking, so he shoved them into his pockets. If
I go along, how soon can I get out of here? he asked.

Right now," said Zamora. Do you accept my terms?"

Jonny smiled. Colonel, I'm a happy child of the New Rising Sun.
No camel jockey's gonna push me around.

Zamora narrowed his eyes at Jonny. You should take this more
seriously, he said.

If I took this anymore seriously, I'd drop dead."

Good, consider that your new koan, Gordon." Zamora said. He
rose, picked up a leather satchel and pulled Jonny with him to the
door. Meditate on it. At least for the next forty eight hours."

Colonel Zamora took a flat metallic octagon from his pocket and
placed it against the magnetic lock. The door clicked open and Jonny
followed him outside.

Jonny and Colonel Zamora waited in the lobby of the Yellow
Sector for an elevator. Across the plant floor, a recruit with polarized
cornea implants was jacked into a construction masterboard,
directing a bank of plasma torches. Whacked-out on alkaloid
stimulants, he still managed to move a dozen torch-bearing waldoes
in a smooth tidal dance, like a clock-work anemone, simultaneously
slicing four sides of a gutted fission furnace.

That's a neat trick," said Jonny.

Zamora nodded. We have to clear away some of this old
equipment. We'll be needing the space for new cells soon.

Come on, Colonel, no one's recording us now," said Jonny. That
stuff you were saying before, you really don't buy all that space
pirate crap, do you?

Colonel Zamora sighed. Seeing you has depressed me, Gordon.
You remind me too much of the sad state of the world. Paranoia. Self-
centeredness. All the symptoms of information overload. The World
Link's the real enemy. Thirty years ago we didn't have the Link,
plugs in our heads. We had to rely solely on videos and the news
rags. The Arabs were the enemy and we still had a chance to kick
Japan and Mexico in their industrial balls. Now we've got the moon.
The Alpha Rats hanging like Damocles' sword over our heads. The Net
should never have broken that story. I'm telling you, this city, this
country would be a different place if they had kept all that under
wraps. It's too strange to assimilate. Too alienating. That kind of
information invites paranoia and destroys trust.

It's hard to trust, Colonel," said Jonny, when you've got
something like the Committee breathing down your neck.

Bullshit. In a sane world, our presence wouldn't cause a ripple.
As a nation, we've allowed ourselves to behave like animals in a trap,
gnawing off our own legs to get out.

You wouldn't be trying to win me over by telling me this is
some kind of crusade, would you?

Of course not," said Zamora. That would be expecting too
much of you. The Colonel pushed the elevator button again. The boy
directing the waldoes aimed them at the base of the furnace, cutting
at the support structure with long, smooth strokes that reminded
Jonny of kendo strikes. We're at a crossroads," said Zamora. Do you
know that? The next few years will tell the story. Whether we're
going to end up another post-colonial back alley like Britain or
France or whether we're going to take back the dominance we gave
up too easily. To do that, we have to get rid of the Alpha Rats. Until
they're gone we can't even start on the Arabs. The Colonel smiled.
It all comes down to economics. It always does."

A few meters away, a bell rang and elevator doors slid open.
Nimble Virtue, a slunk merchant and one of the least trustworthy
lords in the city, stepped out. She was leaning heavily on the arm of
one of her handsome young nephews." When she spotted Jonny, she
gave him a tiny bow, indicating that she had no time to talk. Then
she and her young man walked down the corridor, awash in the
echoes of insect clicks from the exoskeleton Nimble Virtue wore
beneath her kimono. At the end of the corridor, a door hissed open
for them and they were gone.

A moment later, Jonny found himself being pushed into the
elevator car Nimble Virtue had just vacated. He and Zamora rode up
in silence. Jonny felt a nasty satisfaction at having caught the Colonel
with his snitches down. The look on Nimble Virtue's face had said it
all. She had sold Jonny out.

Now that I can believe," said Jonny. The Great White Whale
would sell her mother for sausage if she thought she could hide the
wrinkles.

Don't let her concern you."

Jonny sniffed the air distastefully. Sorta stank up the joint,
didn't she?

Zamora backhanded him across his injured shoulder. Something
blue and hot exploded in Jonny's eyes, fragments trailing away down
some bottomless cavern. He slid down the wall to the floor.

Don't even think about going after Nimble Virtue. You haven't
got the time, said Zamora.

The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors slid open.
Taussig was waiting, a small grin spreading across his face when he
saw Jonny on his knees.

Help him up," ordered Zamora.

The lieutenant pulled Jonny to his feet and walked him from
the car. When they caught up with Zamora, the Colonel turned to
Taussig and said, Later, you and I are going to talk about what went
on in this man's cell. Jonny had the satisfaction of seeing the blood
drain from the young lieutenant's face.

Zamora lead Jonny out a side exit and left him weak-kneed,
standing in an oily puddle. The Colonel removed a Futukoro from his
satchel and tossed it behind Jonny.

Take that with you. Wouldn't want you getting mugged, now
that you're back on duty. I'll be available to you for the next forty-
eight hours, Gordon. After that, the deal's off. I'll be seeing you, said
the Colonel.

The door swung in quietly, hissing as it sealed itself shut.
Jonny was alone in the alley. He drew himself up and taking a few
drunken steps forward, kicked savagely at the door's heavy riveted
face; he pounded it with his good hand.

Like hell, you bastard!" he screamed. You can't do this to me!"
For a vertiginous second he was insane, turning in frustrated circles,
splashing more filth onto his ruined jeans.

Finally, panting and lightheaded, Jonny stepped away from the
unyielding door, feeling angry for such a stupid waste of energy. He
should be on his way out of town.

Jonny's gaze slid down the damp walls to the thin fog at the
alley's mouth. He stooped awkwardly, protecting his throbbing
shoulder, and scooped up the Futukoro. He walked to the infra-red
scanner that monitored the alley, took aim and blew it off its
mounting. Somewhere, an alarm went off. Jonny hurried away from
the place.

THREE:

The Flight of a non-Euclidean Fly

Shit," Jonny mumbled as he stepped on something soft and
clinging in the doorway of the abandoned hotel. Then, Shit" again as
he recognized the accuracy of his curse. He was somewhere near
Exposition Boulevard, out of breath, a few blocks from the old
Lockheed rocket bunkers. Ancient booster engines and decaying nose
cones displayed their brittle bones behind fences topped with razor
wire.

Gingerly, Jonny scraped his soiled boot on a cracked stone step
and peered from the alcove. Whoever Zamora had following him was
being very cagey. Jonny still had not caught sight of the tail, but he
knew the man was out there. Zamora would never let him just walk
out like that.

He had exhausted himself, running for cover and for the sheer
joy of running, for the momentary sense of freedom it gave him. Still,
he had not been able to spot the tail and that bothered him. Even
now, as he watched from the alcove, nothing on the street moved.
Except for the doorway-bums shifting restlessly with their chemical
dreams.

The hot night had remained hot, was giving way to another hot
day. Jonny's tunic clung to him like a second skin. He relaxed against
the hotel and tried to regain his bearings. His shoulder had begun to
throb within a few minutes of leaving the prison. He desperately
wanted a drink, a snort, a smoke, anything that would transport him
from the pain, the Colonel's obsessions and the old neighborhood in
which he was hiding. Writers had been at work on the old buildings
with their compressed-air canisters of sulfuric acid, burning their
messages, like grim oracles, into the very bodies of the structures.
Over the years, the fronts of the abandoned hotels and shops had
taken on the texture and feel of old candle wax. In the alcove, Jonny
ran his fingers over crumbling letters. DUCK AND COVER. And, ALPHA
RATS ARE SCARED OF CATS.

On an impulse, Jonny pushed on the hotel door. It scraped
across a warped wooden floor and stuck, revealing a bleak interior.
Jonny took a tentative step inside.

It looked to him as if a bomb had gone off in the lobby. The
plaster meat and wooden bones of the place were visible where
sections of the wall had caved in or been torn away. An old-
fashioned wrought iron elevator lay scattered among blistered
Lockheed tail fins and useless landing gear.

But, as depressing as the old hotel was to look at, it was the
smell of the place that got to Jonny. The deadly stink (ammonia, old
cheese, mildew) brought tears to his eyes. But he held his breath and
pushed the lobby door closed. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust
to the darkness, then, tired and leadfooted, his shoulders bumping
into walls that appeared from nowhere, he started up the stairs for
the roof. From there everything would be visible, and he reasoned
that by leaping from rooftop to rooftop, he could lose whoever was
following him.

He had not counted on the smell, though. At the first landing,

Jonny's eyes were watering; by the second, he was having
trouble breathing. Then, on the third floor he abruptly ran out of
stairs. There was a door, labeled ROOF, but it was immovable--
crusted shut with age and grime. Jonny put his boot to it, but that
only brought a pitiful rain of dust from the sagging ceiling.

Outside, he thought, and up the fire escape. Jonny entered one
of the guest rooms that opened off the corridor and headed for a
window.

Inside, the room was large and, empty of furnishings, faintly
echoed his steps. A dim rectangle of street light outlined the smashed
innards of an old telephone-comsat uplink. The place must have been
nice once, he thought, if they could afford to put those in the rooms.
In the middle of the floor was an upturned hubcap someone had
been using to cook in.

Jonny had taken, perhaps, a dozen steps into the room before
the smell got to him. It was a physical presence, twisting in his lungs
like a tormented animal. His nose ran; he coughed. Holding his arm
across his face, he breathed through his mouth. If the Committee had
this stuff, they could wipe out the whole city, he thought.

When Jonny reached the window, he found it swollen in place
from the damp ocean air. Knowing that Zamora's tail would hear it if
he broke the glass, he started back into the hotel to look for a pipe or
board. Something that would help him pry the window open.

A rustle of fabric from the far corner of the room. The flicker of
something small and metallic.

Jonny took a step forward-- and was in the air, falling, his legs
knocked out from under him. He curled up as best he could and came
down flat, protecting his shoulder.

Goddamit," he yelled as shapes closed in from the gray edges
of the room.

Get his clothes," came a voice dry and thin as wind.

Get his shoes," came another voice.

Get him."

A stooped figure in rags lumbered up to Jonny and began
grabbing at his tunic. Jonny cried out at the sudden pressure on his
bleeding shoulder, lashing out with his free arm. Pain exploded in his
wrist as something sharp and wet dug into it.

Jonny kicked out blindly into the dark, noting with satisfaction
a groan as his boot connected. Rolling into a crouch, he propelled
himself up into the stomach of the tunic puller. The figure staggered
back, wheezing horrid breath.

Jonny leaned forward, letting his weight propel him toward the
window. But he was knocked back as someone else jumped him.
He's going to get out...He'll rat..."

Little monster..."

Watch his boots..."

At the window, he was dragged back by a swarm of dry,
reptilian fingers. He screamed. Things like vises and knives, pincers
and broken glass cut into his back and arms.

Christ, they're biting me, he thought.

Jonny managed to loop his leg behind the leg of one of his
attackers. Then, pushing forward with all his strength, he heard a
window crack and shatter. Suddenly, he and one or two others were
on the fire escape. The sudden release of hands and rush of air left
him light-headed, but some animal part of his brain moved his arms
and legs, pushing him up and away. No one followed.

Two flights up the fire escape, Jonny stopped to look at his
attackers. They huddled below, cooing and mewing over their
injured. Though it was cooler outside, the heat still broiled the
streets, baking the old tenements; the whole neighborhood rippled
behind waves of desert heat. Yet, the mob were clothed in layer upon
layer of cast-off coats, moldering lab smocks and vacuum suits. A fat
man in tattered test pilot gear crawled onto the landing and gazed
down at the street. His clothes hung from his arms in strips, little
more than patches all crudely sewn or wired together. The mass of
rags on his thick frame gave him an awkward bear-like appearance,
but his eyes burned with a savage clarity.

Jonny was already backing up the stairs when the fat man
caught sight of him. A scream welled up from the fat man's throat; he
bared his yellow teeth. But not real teeth, Jonny knew, just plasti-
steel implants, sharpened with care to needle points. In the thin
unreal light of the street lamps, the fat man's teeth glowed like a
trap.

Pirhanas, Jonny thought. A whole gang of them. It had been a
stupid mistake, entering the old hotel. It reminded Jonny just how
tired he was.

The abandoned hotels and apartments that fronted the
warehouse district were useless to most gangs, lying just beyond the
lights of Committee headquarters. That is why the Pirhanas,
septuagenarians mostly, for there were no Pirhanas under sixty, held
them. Used for target practice by the younger gangs, lied to and
finally abandoned by the government, the old discards and
defectives banded together to hold some piece of ground for
themselves. Using the few weapons they could find, principally
government issued teeth-- filed and set firmly in angry, withered
jaws-- they were tolerated because they consumed nothing but the
leavings of others. Besides, even in Los Angeles, slaughtering old
people in the streets would have been frowned on.

As Jonny watched, more Pirhanas began to crawl from the
hotel. The fat man started up the fire escape. He carried a sharpened
pipe in his hand. Jonny started climbing, too.

He vaulted the low wall onto the roof clumsily, and sprawled
on his stomach. Gravel dented his cheeks. As Jonny pushed himself
up, he saw a thin, but steady stream of blood running from under his
chest. The fat man was a few yards away. Jonny started running
again.

Behind the fat man, more Pirhanas appeared, running like a
ragged army of the dead. They waved their pipes and broken bottles
wearily, more, it seemed, to remind themselves of the connection
they still had to the flesh they inhabited, than to menace Jonny.

When he reached the other side of the roof, Jonny looked
frantically for a way down. What he found puzzled him more.

An entire network of home-made bridges and catwalks, like
some outrageous model of the neural pathways of the Pirhana's
brains, criss-crossed the roofs, connecting all the buildings within a
dozen blocks. Ribbed conduits, old antennae, the rusted drive shafts
of decades-dead jet turbines were hammered into the surfaces of the
roofs. Secured to these were lengths of rotting rope, pilfered from the
docks. Flattened cans of krill, backs of discarded computer terminals
and insulation tiles from L5 shuttles filled the gaps between rough
planks to form walkways over the street, a hundred feet below.

The bridges did not look all that secure, but the Pirhanas were
closing in. Jonny stepped onto the closest walkway and hurried
across. The support ropes stretched and tightened as things cracked
and shifted under his feet.

He leaped off onto the adjoining roof. The bridge strained
behind him, weighed down by the gang. The fat man was still in
front, holding the pipe before him. Jonny moved in circles around the
roof, frantic for something to throw. He knew that if he used his gun,
Zamora's man would find him and all this would have been for
nothing. In the end, he decided that the situation did not cry out for
subtlety. Fumbling in the folds of his tunic, he pulled out the sweat-
soaked Futukoro and waved it in the face of the fat man, who pulled
up short at the sight of the gun. The Pirhanas bunched up behind
him, growing silent.

That's it!" Jonny shouted. No more games. The first one who
moves is meat for the others.

It was rubbish and he knew it, but it sometimes worked, as it
seemed to be working now. The Pirhanas, including the fat man,
remained where they were. They stared at Jonny with empty, feral
eyes.

Sentiment had always been Jonny's undoing. At heart, all cops
are romantic slobs and ex-cops are worse. A terrible wave of sorrow
overcame his fear as he backed away from the pathetic group. They
were defectives, not unlike the losers and one-percenters that he
knew, that he was a part of. Jonny scanned the faces of the crowd,
wondering if whatever errant gene that had sent them out here to
the wilds was present in his blood. He regarded them with a certain
awe.

From behind, a brick fell and shattered hollowly. Jonny turned
quickly, keeping the gun on the fat man. Dozens of Pirhanas
had crowded onto the other roofs, pipes and heavy connecting rods
in their hands. Many grinned, showing sharp, stained teeth. Jonny
was surrounded.

He shuffled to the edge of the roof, turning in slow circles,
trying to cover himself in all directions. When Jonny reached the fire
escape, the bridges were packed with Pirhanas. When he stepped
onto the ladder, a few were moving toward him across the roof.
When he was straddling the wall, the fat man threw his pipe and
screamed, charging him.

Jonny managed to duck the pipe and dropped over the edge of
the wall, landing hard on the fire escape platform. He rolled onto his
back and pointed his Futukoro. Too late. The Pirhanas were over him,
pelting him with pipes and stones. But even under that hail of debris,
Jonny could not bring himself to kill any of them. He settled for
spraying three sides of the sky with bullets.

The Pirhanas fell back, unaware of Jonny's good intentions.
With his gun straight up, Jonny squeezed off a few more rounds and
clattered down the steps.

When he hit the ground, he hung in the shadows, pressing
himself tight against the building, waiting for the sounds of pursuit.
But there were none. Jonny breathed through his mouth, swallowing
great gobs of hot, wet air.

He was in a blind alley; at the far end lay a vacant lot dotted
with discarded dressing dummies and barbed wire rolls. Jonny
remained against the building, feeling it solid against his back. He
checked the rounds left in his gun and carefully slid down the wall
toward the alley's mouth.

He did not stand a chance.

A gleeful cry echoed from above. Jonny looked up just in time
to see the junk raining down on him: pipes, bottles, jet canopies and
electronic components, all the technological refuse of the city. He
leaped and rolled, groaning at a sharp pain in his shoulder.

The first wave of junk crashed behind him. The second wave
caught him in the open with nowhere to hide. Compassion vanished.
Hunkering down behind a dressing dummy, he opened fire at the
roof, his bullets chewing the head off a sexless stone cherub. Its
companions made no comment and the Pirhanas, who knew better
than to stand close to the edge, just laughed at him. Jonny remained
low in the dirt, cursing himself for not having blown a few of them
away when he had the chance.

DO NOT MOVE. STAY RIGHT WHERE YOU ARE," commanded a
bland, amplified voice.

The Committee hovercar roared by suddenly, like an angry
metal wasp-- all sleek and deadly-- its belly lights casting angry
fingers of brilliance over the empty buildings. Shadows moved like a
year of nightmares across deserted storefronts. Dust and grit
billowed from the roof into the alley, filling it with smoky phantoms.
Jonny coughed, trying to clear his throat. The clamor on the roof
picked up as the Pirhanas turned their anger toward the hovercar,
pelting it with junk. Jonny took the opportunity to move into the
street. His shadow circled him like a nervous cat, then appeared in a
dozen places at once-- thin and diffuse.

Crouching by a gutted lamp post, Jonny found a sewer grating
and gave it a tug. By rocking it back and forth, he worked the grating
loose and pulled it free. Peering down to see if the way was clear, a
sudden attack of vertigo tilted the street toward the dark hole. Jonny
grabbed the lamp post, fighting to keep his balance, and turned back
toward the hotel.

Overhead, the hovercar was hanging in the air like a patient
predator, waiting for an opening. Abruptly, a mechanical whine filled
the air. Jonny squeezed his eyes shut and covered his ears as the
pacifiers kicked in.

The fighting on the roof died away as, much too late, the
Pirhanas realized what was happening. They stood as one, staring at
the whirling pattern of lights, paralyzed and helpless.

Jonny decided that it was time to find the Croakers. He slid
quietly into the sewer and pulled the grating closed.

The sewers were the lichen-slicked relics of another time, a
means of concealment as old as revolution itself. The Croakers took to
them soon after the shoot-on-sight orders became official policy with
the Committee. The Croakers were outlaws, anarchists and physicians
mainly, treating diseases that officially did not exist or could not be
diagnosed without authority of the local medical boards. Their roots
extended back to the early days of the century when the first doctors
went underground, destroying the records of patients with AIDS and
certain new strains of hepatitis, treating these patients (the new
untouchable" caste) in the black clinics hastily thrown together with
whatever those original rebels could carry with them.

Other doctors, mostly young ones back from the Lunar Border
Wars, frustrated by the impenetrable bureaucracy and government
seizures of their patient records, joined them. It took only a few
years for the medical community to split into two distinct camps:
those doctors who remained above ground, working with the powers
that be, and those who walked away from all that, joining the other
gangs of Los Angeles in constructing their own micro-society beyond
the boundaries of conventional law.

Jonny had been a supplier and occasional courier to the
Croakers and he liked them, despite their revolutionary prosel-
ytizing. He cringed when one of them called him brother," but he felt
a silly pride at being associated with them. That was also why he
remained suspicious of them. To be otherwise would demand a
response that he was not prepared to give, was still not sure of. It
implied certain ties, a common heritage, and that made him nervous.

The sewers, laced within the body of the city, were the
corroded veins of a sick addict, shut down from age and abuse. The
only things that moved in them were alien, looking for a way out.
Jonny stood at the bottom of a ladder of steel rungs embedded in a
stone wall. Knee deep in black water, the floor sucked at his legs.

The air was thick with stagnancy; corrupt, buzzing with
mosquitoes. They tickled his face, covering his eyes and hands. They
stung him until he swung out blindly at the curtain of pests, fighting
back an overpowering sense of his own death. But death was not it,
not exactly. It was more a formless sense of great anxiety, a feeling
that he had done something terribly wrong and that if he could just
remember what it was and fix it, everything would be all right.
Jonny knew a little about the layout of the sewers, but he did not
know the location of the Croakers' secret tunnels. Since all directions
were the same in the dark, he started moving straight ahead, into a
faint, sticky breeze. Very soon, Jonny realized that he was no longer
moving through absolute darkness.

He could see the mosquitoes. They seemed to be crawling over
a flat two-dimensional background; a trick of the strange light that
seemed to fill the tunnel. The lichen on the walls were glowing a
weak green. When he ran his fingers over the damp stones of the
wall, he left a black trail where the lichen peeled off. His fingers
glowed with the little plants. Jonny walked on, his legs sluggish in
the oozing mess of the floors.

But he was still moving without direction. Light-headed, he lost
track of the hours in the endless branches and sub-branches of the
tunnels. The water rarely moved above mid-thigh, but a few times
he had to turn back from tunnels when the water reached his chest
and threatened to go higher.

Along the way, Jonny scratched messages on the walls. Crude
serpents, ready to strike; he wrote his name in big block letters and
some obscenities concerning the relationship of Committee boys and
their mothers. He drew the outline of his hands and eyes with wings.

He stumbled more as exhaustion crept into his muscles,
loosening them at the joints. For a time, he walked with his eyes
closed, mechanically trailing his fingers along the wall to keep his
direction. Was it for hours or minutes? When Jonny opened his eyes
again, he staggered back, nearly fell. Jesus Christ," he said.

Slogans, names, and drawings were scrawled over every inch of
the walls and arched ceiling of the tunnel. They screamed down at
Jonny from all directions, black shimmering lightly above green. It
looked like the last record of some tribe or group mind which had
blasted itself, intact, onto the walls. The words seemed to hang in
space around him.
LIFE WITHOUT DEAD TIMES
SOCIETY IS A CARNIVOROUS FLOWER
I AM HERE BY THE WILL OF THE PEOPLE AND
WILL NOT LEAVE UNTIL I GET MY RAINCOAT BACK
BEAUTY MUST BE CONVULSIVE OR IT WILL NOT BE AT ALL
SKID THE KID WAS HERE!
SURREALISM AU SERVICE DE LA REVOLUTION

Humpbacked shadows skittered along the pipes near the
ceiling. Rats, huge and dangerous. Jonny pulled his gun and fired at
them. Rats had caused him enough trouble for one night. He watched
as a couple of them skittered to a wall a few meters ahead, and
squeezed into a small opening near the floor. As each rat
disappeared, its coat was illuminated for a second by a flash of white
light.

Jonny went to the wall, knelt, and pressed his face to the crack.
A steady stream of cooler air. Running his hand around the edge of
the hole, he realizedthat the wall was false, not stone at all, but some
sort of cast polymeric resin. Digging in his heels, Jonny pulled at the
opening. And the wall slid out a few centimeters, stuck, then opened
wider, trailing scabrous fingers of adhesive. Light exploded into the
sewer.

White and agonizingly bright, the light burned Jonny's eyes.
But he did not care. It was beautiful. He squinted into it, trying to
locate its source, but he had to turn away, finally, when he thought
he would go blind. It was several minutes before he could look into
the luminous cavern without flinching. But when he did, Jonny knew
he was safe.

Still, it was a strange sight in the squalor of the sewer. The
transparent plastic bubble-- clean, and brightly lit--glowed like a
dream, filling the tunnel before him. Through a haze of condensation,

Jonny could just make out the hydroponic racks that lined the
walls along both sides of the tunnel. Yage vines trailed onto the floor;
aloe vera, psilicybe mexicana, and other medicinals grew there in
abundance. By pressing his face up to the thick plastic membrane,
Jonny could see the other end of the tunnel where the plastic was
tucked neatly around a weathered access hatch.

Jonny stamped his right foot down sharply, at an angle, so that
the heel of his boot snapped off with a click. Balancing against the
bubble wall, afraid somehow of moving too far away, he felt along
the bottom of his boot until he found the hilt of the hidden knife.
Then tugging at the blade, which slid bright and clean from his
hollow sole, he rammed it into the bubble. Sliding the blade down, he
made a single, neat incision in the membrane wall. Then he pushed
through the tight aperture, into a warm, musky chamber which
pulsed with the regular beating of a pump.

He replaced the knife and snapped the heel back on his boot.
There was a smell of life and order in the tunnel that revived him.
When Jonny reached the access hatch, he gripped the big metal
handle and turning it, was rewarded with a reassuring rumbling
inside the walls as bolts drew back. After that, the door swung open
effortlessly.

Jonny stepped into the darkened room and felt along the walls
for a door. He went blind in the apex of multiple cones of light,
ghostly afterimages tracking his retinas. Someone grabbed his sleeve
and pulled him forward. Jonny could just discern the outlines of
Futukoros and crossbows pointed at him from beyond the light. He
started to say something, but the air, which had seemed so pleasant a
moment before, suddenly went bad. The room tilted back and forth,
wobbling, as his vertigo returned. Then he was on his face on the
floor. Here we go again," he said.

Something moved in front of Jonny's nose. A Burnett crossbow
pistol lowered and a woman-- small, but well muscled, the planes of
her face smooth, as if carved from cool black marble-- took a step
toward him. The woman's name was Ice. She knelt in front of Jonny
and squinted at him. In a moment, her scowl softened to an
expression of embarrassed recognition. She reached out and touched
his filthy face.

Jonny? Oh, my god," she said quietly. We heard you'd been
shot.

He smiled then, too, partly with affection and partly with
surprise. He kissed her cool hand. Not to worry, he said. "The pain
stopped soon after I died.

The