Topic: Mercator Arc
Mil Kariden threw open the gull wing door of his putter and pulled himself by the ledge of the roof out of the small, hard-angled, wedge shaped car. The vehicle was essentially a control cabin for a spid, but instead of articulated hydraulic legs mounted at each corner, a suspension cradle had been framed to the chassis, supporting four large off-road tires. It was great for getting around town and it hadn’t cost him a lot of cash. A real deal, and if he lost it in the course of doing business, so be it. No great loss. He made sure he had his gear with him and closed the door, locking it with a weave signal.
He walked down the aisle of vehicles crowded under the covered parking deck. The sheets of tin above were silent. The day promised to be better than most, the low cloud deck thinning and scattering, the rain shy and tentative, when it blew in at all. The sun’s scorching rays blasted through long, wide rents in the high altitude clouds, staining the city and the jagged slope of the crater in rose watercolor. Blue and white streetlamps glared, but Kariden ran color correction filters in his visual field to make up the difference in the ambient light.
Turning onto the street he saw thick ropes of sticklers climbing up the building walls, the imported vines that gave the district its namesake. The rootless plants ate minerals and drank diminished sunlight, and crawled slowly in their hunts. The bordello was a block away, to the south, up the gentle grade of the street. With everyone away working, the lane was mostly empty, lined with shops and cafés, with larger corporate headquarter buildings looking over the rows of worker commorancies and low rate hotels, and, of course, the doxy houses. The place was quiet with infrequent road traffic, and he had not noticed any Raven patrols driving through. No one loitered under the covered boardwalks, no reason for vice dealers where there were no customers. There were few people across the street, but he passed no one on the board walk. An occasional camion would rumble along, laden from the nights extraction of minerals heavy in gallium and yttrium.
The brothel huddled forlorn between abused saloons, its optophonic sign dark as it hung on rusted chains from the rafters of the raised sidewalk ceiling. The foundation had been blasted out of rock a storey down. A steep flight of stairs of chipped and cracked stone lead down into gloom. Trash had blown in against the heavy slab of door, and on the steps tiny bottles—some broken, some not, and some smashed to dust—huddled against the walls, the venom vials. There was only enough room in the stairway for two people to stand facing one another backs pressed to the wall. Kariden descended the dank stairs, heady with mildew. The walls held the faint, exhausted lines of orange paintlight, sprayed in simple cartoons depicting explicit sexual acts. Ghostly layers of graffiti saturated the brickwork, prankish humors and guildsign. And mysterious sigils. The door had once served in the bulkhead of a starship.
Sensing his presence, columns of optic arrays the full length of both walls came alive, growing in brilliance. From somewhere a seductive female’s prerecorded voice asked him to come inside and enjoy himself. Kariden opened the door. Get her location and get the hell out.
The lounge spread out in rich golds and reds, with filigreed square-wave patterns in the worn carpet. A bar welcomed visitors from the back of room, its stools empty and its mirrors dark. The musky scent of a Pavonan tropical wood lay heavy in the air, as if it kept everything trapped in the amber of its essence. Warm light accompanied the wood aroma, backlighting the empty couches. No one was here save himself and the clattering, ceiling tracked robot lurching toward him from the shadows on the right.
It was a ball of machine parts, of patched repairs and lose trunks of wire and optic cables suspended in a clamp-like armature. Two framework arms hung under it, partially folded like the lazy limbs of an ape. It met the end of its track, something inside of it whining. It saw its world through a fish-eyed lens in the middle of its body. “Jacket. Sir.” The voice as beaten as the body.
Kariden paid it no mind. His attention was to the hard clap of a door in the shadows of the back room to the left of the bar. The woman stopping under the light was older than him, on the cusp of middle age, maybe beyond if she used rejuvenations. Her eyes were puffy, her chestnut hair disarrayed. A thin green robe, cinched at her waist by a loose knot, hung open off her slouched shoulders and exposed the waxy skin of her modest cleavage as if some part of her remembered she was a whore and had something to sell.
“Kind of early, ain’ cha?” She played with the hair hanging at the back of her neck.
“Early shopping.” Kariden stepped into the room, the wood musk enticing his senses. “Can I see your browser?”
She turned her head down to the other end of the bar, held it there before looking back at Kariden. “My girls are sleeping . . .”
He followed her gaze to the placard laying atop the counter. “It’s for tonight.”
“Then come back tonight.” Her hand fell into a pocket in the robe and he wondered if she were armed, some little popgun if he were here for trouble. A woman could not be too careful. Especially if someone was running around carving them up.
He reached inside his coat and saw her tense, pulled out a roll of slips. He peeled a few off, letting her see what he had. “I’m having a party tonight. Just want to see what you have.”
She eyed the money as if she were famished and it a promised fruit. She didn’t move. He could see her hand bunching inside the pocket.
Kariden leaned forward and dropped a few slips onto an end table. He waited. The whirring, clattering robot was the only sound in the room as it gave up its task and retreated.
Her bare feet took measured steps, her eyes never leaving his face. Kariden ignored her weave’s hailing pings and her expression said she expected as much. Deals were made here, not friends. As she neared, the reek of alcohol and venom baked off from her, carving a space out of the redolent wood musk. She noted the high denominations as her fingers pinched around the bills. Her furtive eyes locked onto his jaw, questing. There was nothing for her to find behind the salve of make-up. “It’s on the counter,” she said with a quick jerk of her head in the browsing plaque’s direction.
Kariden nodded and proceeded to the bar. The browser came alive in his hand. He slashed his finger across its surface, scrolling through the images of young women trying to look their best and their sexiest. He knew he would not find the girl he was looking for in these pages. She no longer worked.
The madam had come around the other side of the bar. She put two shot glasses on the counter and filled them with dascoe. Kariden thought it best to oblige her to put her at ease, so he accepted the drink. He downed the burning, woodsy beverage with her, and went back to the browser.
“Anything else you want?” She leaned on her arms across the bar, on review. “Maybe something quick?”
“I’m good for now,” he said off-handed. Smiles and pouts beamed up at him from the tablet.
The madam said nothing, figuring as much. She pulled away from the counter and leaned against the icebox in a cone of sallow light. It wasn’t a weapon her hand clutched in her pocket, but a pack of smokes. She tapped one out and clamped it between her lips, crushing the tip between thumb and finger, igniting it.
Kariden pretending to be engrossed in his search. He tagged a random girl, and scrolled through to another that caught his interest.
“Find anything you like?”
“I’m not sure,” Kariden answered with a disappointed frown. “You have another list? Something for special clients?”
She regarded him with cautious eyes veiled behind a rising curtain of smoke.
Kariden reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the money roll. He dropped a few bills on the table. The madam studied the slips and stepped away from the icebox. She palmed the money, the bills crinkling in her fingers as she shoved them into her pocket.
“What are you looking for . . . exactly,” she asked, leaning on her elbow, facing him. She was respectful not to blow smoke directly at him.
“Girls who are more receptive to their client’s more . . . discriminating tastes.”
She searched his face for a hint of dishonesty. The madam didn’t find any. “They cost more.”
Kariden dared to brush back a vagrant lock of her hair from her face, hoping to misdirect her of his intentions. “As well they should.”
She took the browser, hiding the interactive panel from him. Her finger moved on its surface and she handed it back. These women were rougher around the edges with a vacancy in their eyes. The look of addiction. He did not like that they had to make these choices. Sad, pitiful things. He didn’t think these doxies worked here; they had their private cribs. Kariden shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m actually looking for someone specific—”
“Special type of girl?”
“No.” He grinned and chuckled as if embarrassed. He laid the plaque on the counter. “I’m looking for a girl who might work here, or might have. I didn’t see her listed.”
“Then she doesn’t work for me.” Hard and clipped.
“I was told she does.” He reached into his inner coat pocket, fingers nudging past the money roll to a folded slip of paper. The madam’s eyes followed his hand expecting money. Her face fell when she saw it was something else.
“I don’t have time for this. You need to leave.”
“I’m just looking for someone,” he said unfolding the paper and holding it up. He had altered the image of the assassinated man’s daughter back to her unscarred beauty.
The madam stumbled backward. “She never worked here. Now get out.” She took a hard drag of the cigarette.
Kariden cycled the image over to the one Dessero had shown him. “Take another look.”
Recognition crossed the madam’s face with a ghost of shame. She pointed at the exit with her cigarette. “Get the fuck out!. You have some nerve—”
He should have let her finish her sentence, but instead the picture had served its purpose and disintegrated into ashy motes. His weave had prepared the muscles in his arm for rapid response and he lashed out and gripped her above the wrist before she registered his movement. His arm would be one sore bastard come this evening, but he needed to get information out of her head, one way or another.
She yelped as he yanked her up onto the bar, a loose breast fell out the robe. “You part of Hasco’s ring?” he shouted.
The cigarette fell to the counter as the madam reached her slender fingers for the neck of the heavy dascoe bottle. They slipped off its smooth glass surface as Kariden jerked her forward, then found purchase. She swung out but he easily blocked her, striking his free knuckles against the her elbow. The bottle tumbled out of her jolted hand and thudded like finality on the floor. He pulled her kicking and struggling over the bar. He tried to grab a hold of her free arm, but she snatched it back, snarling at him. Instead he twisted his arm around her waist and lifted her from the bar, trying to keep his face down as her hand beat and slapped about his head and neck.
He dropped her down to the carpet and folded a leg over her chest to pin her in place. Upstairs came a commotion, but he had no time to worry about it. Let what may come. He only needed a few seconds. The madam arced her back repeatedly trying to throw him off, legs flaying. She opened her mouth to scream some warning or cry for help, but he clamped a heavy hand across her gaping lips. He thought of telling her he didn’t want to hurt her, but he knew it was a lie.
Her eyes were wide with hate and fear. Her breath was ragged, hot, and wet against his palm. He tried to capture her beating fist with his other hand. A high pitched scream steam-whistled behind him. He jerked his head toward the sound. A little girl had stepped out of the same back room as the madam had, screaming as only little girls could scream. She clutched a stuffed animal to her chest, her hair pulled back in twin tuffs.
Am I really doing this, Mil thought.
The madam jerked her head to side after feeling the pressure of his hand lessen. “Run!” she coughed, and the little girl broke out of her frozen posture and spun. Kariden jerked his head back around. The woman managed to smack him hard across the face, smearing the applied makeup. She gasped when she saw the dark marks beneath, and her face became a mask of terror. She saw the anger redden his face as if it were about to burst. He felt the muscles in his jaw as hard knots, his teeth clenched.
Banging from above. The thuds of footsteps. The muffled, frantic calls of uncertain and frightened young women.
A battering, clattering robot. A generator moaning a familiar hum. Capacitors charging. Power relays clacking. A laser preparing to fire.
He hadn’t the necessary time to ping her weave and sniff out her defenses and discover a means to slip past them, or to camouflage his presence like he had with Syvanda. Kariden had no other option but to launch a brutal attack. With terrifying swiftness, he clamped a hand across the madam’s forehead, his weave sent microscopic tendrils spiking through her flesh, slipping through her skull, and entangling with her own weave. Infiltrating. Overriding.
Commanding.
Kariden yanked the proprietor of the brothel—Juildi, that was her name—into the white infinity of his cyberscape. She lay there under him, as in reality. Time slowed to a crawl as his thoughts shifted into the pace of his weave’s. The external world began to bleed into the blank cyberscape: the little girl was lifting a foot during her run, flaxen hair lifted as if floating; long, droning sounds filled the air, the warbling generator of the robot’s laser system off to the side of him, and below him the beginnings of Juildi’s scream, pitch-shifted to the bellow of a beast. Then . . .
Vertigo. A wave of nausea. The sound of fear and anger fountained from his mouth. A hand clamped across his forehead, crushing. He looked up into his own face, grim and frightful, seething with purpose.
Where is Alys?
The room seemed to spin. He was Mil. He was Juildi. Faster and faster. He felt like he would fly apart, every atom sent on its own trajectory. There was something else. Someone else. A ghost. A shadow. A thing without form. Like his reflection standing behind him.
The cyberscape stabilized, the external inputs ignored. Kariden stood in a white formless world. Juildi poised before him like a hanging puppet. Between them a glob of silvery metal grew at a rapid pace, split off into a nest of cylinders. Ropes like quicksilver spooled from them extending into the recesses of the nothingness— that whiteness dying into darkness. Motes of light like tiny stars sparked into life, running along the ropes and tendrils and bridges like mad traffic.
Then they were the mote, falling toward a cylinder as if dropped from a height over a dark city spangled with lights. Into the fluid cache. Into a dizzying array of crisscrossed scaffolds, mesmerizing patterns. Alys, Alys. Where is Alys? Then there she was, Juildi’s memory unreeling. Candid images of Alys doing mundane activities. Alys talking. Eating. Parties. Clients. They came flying at him. Kariden reached out as if to touch her. To Grab.
To save.
Alys bleeding. Slash . . . slash, slash.
Where are you. . . .
There! A building. An apartment? No, a hotel. A small inn. Not far in the Vine’ by the water. A place called Sea Breeze. Kariden snatched its location and pulled it into himself.
A cold, feral recognition came from Juildi. You! . . . you! . . . you!, like a gong being struck as if someone were trying to dent it.
The Raven didn’t have time to ponder this. He was about to be killed by a mechanical idiot.
He snatched his hand from the screaming madam’s forehead and jolted forward into a shoulder roll as the hanging robot spat a white-hot pulse of energy that seared a smoking hole through the tail of his overcoat and burned itself through the cheap pressed wood of the bar. The robot banged and clattered into a new position. Ozone pierced the tropical wood musk.
On his haunches, Kariden swept his Mekmore from the shoulder rig, drawing his aim to the armed coat-checker. A door banged like a pistol shot behind the little girl as she made her frantic escape. Juildi scrambled to sit, bare feet kicking into the carpet. The robot was rotating to bring its aperture to bear. Mil’s weave halted the aim of his revolver over that deadly eye. The fired pulse of brilliance blinded it. His heart pounded, his nerves hot and jittery. A shot of dascoe would do him fine.
A scream from the staircase and Kariden jerked his arm toward the sound. A crying whore who had come down to investigate lurched out of her surprise and turned, slipped on the step and banged her knee. The doxy bound up the stairs and out of sight where muffled sobs and questioning voices fell from the ceiling like dust.
The sound of heavy panting brought his attention to the madam. Juildi pressed her back against the counter, chest heaving, breast hanging out of her thin green robe like sacks. She rubbed snot from her nose with the back of her hand. He jerked the Mekmore at her. She failed to flinch. Hate was in her eyes, deep and red. She deserved no reward for this aggravation.
Kariden got to his feet and they carried him to Juildi. He held the gun pointed at her chest. He kneeled, and without saying a word reached into the pocket of her robe and took back his money. Juildi spit on him, nothing more than another drop of rain. He kept the gun on her and backed away to the door, breathing deeply to calm his nerves. He wanted to punch and beat something just to exhaust his adrenaline.
He pulled the door open, stepped through, and pulled it shut. The dascoe bottle exploded against it from the other side. Kariden leapt up the stone steps thinking he should have said something witty in closing, maybe something like “that quick enough for you?” He never thought of anything like that while it was happening. He chuckled, breathing heavy.
Fearing retaliation, he slowed and put his back flat against the wall opposite the hinges of the door below. Should anyone open it, his line of sight remained clear. No one opened it. For that he was grateful. Praise Iman he could go this day without killing an innocent bystander. Or getting killed himself. It was close back there. Before his head popped up over boardwalk level, he seeped into the local security network, using his own secret infiltration. So far no one had been alerted to his actions. The district’s guild security teams would yield to a Raven in their midst, but they wouldn’t be happy about it. Kariden preferred no one wised up to the fact a Raven had been here messing about in their business. He especially didn’t want Ganton to know he was backtracking a hit.
However, Juildi saw something after she struck his face. She might suspect. If so, he’d have to deal with it if it came to it.
Kariden had an uneventful walk back to his putter, and while driving north, the clouds remained at bay, the day unusually bright and tinted. He felt rushed, and now that his blood was up, didn’t much feel like playing nice to anyone who knew anything or stood in his way.
Find Alys.
Find out who hurt her.
Find that person.
Adjudicate.
* * *
Out the back door of the brothel and into the tight alley, the little girl ran and ran, her child’s weave transmitting a danger and distress beacon, her voice choked silent by terror. At the intersection of another tight alley, a man in a dark coat that brushed the ankles of his rockboots stepped out and crouched. She collided into him before she was aware he was there. She might have leapt out of the way had seen him in time. But then his long arms would have snatched her toward him, as they did as she stumbled against him.
“Easy now,” he cooed, “the bad man won’t get you. You’re safe now.”
She blubbered about someone hurting mommy and he thought, of course, mommies are always getting hurt, given the business they do. It’s to be expected. Venom, booze, and prim always lead to pain of some sort. The little girl sobbed against his upper arm, so trusting of strangers. Yes, he thought, here’s one that will grow up molded by life’s agonies. At the hands of brutality. Such a beautiful child. Full of promise.
He stroked her soft, fine hair, locks reflecting the orange and yellow hues in the sky. “Let’s get a look at who’s hurting mommy, shall we?” He had an idea who. As his weave melded with hers he saw Mil Kariden straddling Juildi. Of course. Who else could it be but Mil Kariden. It was almost too easy. Leave a trail and he tracked it like a faithful cur.
He disengaged and saw that she carried with her a stuffed animal, a mimicry of nothing that roamed the high woodlands of either Pavona or Cenestra. Here was the mythical bear, cartoonized, humanized. There were no bears anymore. The jautoc saw to that. Funny how humanity clung to familiarity, the same patterns, the same icons, the same things. Here was a teddy bear whose bright colored fur was sheathed in smart materials to make it waterproof, and dirt-proof, bacteria- and virus-proof. It would bring no harm to the child that played with it.
But harm it could bring. Another crumb on the trail for the old cur. He knew Kariden well enough to know how to direct the young naïve man. It had to be done. It would fix everything and leave him free.
Then maybe he would settle a score with Juildi. Then Syvanda, that meddling bitch. Teach her to put her long nose where it didn’t belong.
He made a call to a friend, executed a prearranged plan, a special something in the event this very thing happened.
Juildi’s daughter—who without doubts had a safe place to run to in the event of danger—whined to go back to her mother. The man hefted her up and spoke in a calm voice, “Let’s go see a friend. Then we’ll see mommy.”
Part 3
