Come the Revolution: Chapter Twelve

    One on each side of me, they took me out through the hostel lobby and into the broad, open walkway beyond. We turned right.

    “Where are you taking me?”

    “Shut up,” the guy on my left said. I thought of him as Lefty. He was the one who had done all the talking so far, what little there had been, and he looked to be the brains of the outfit. He had one of the local English slum accents, this one kind of a mix between Hungarian and some Slavic languages, which meant he was second generation and probably hung out somewhere near e-Kruaan-Arc, a couple kilometers north of Katammu-Arc.

    Lefty was the larger of the two, although neither one of them was all that big. He had a round face with sharp rat-like features, a scraggly black moustache, and I noticed he was missing the upper half of his right ear. The other guy had two scars on his face, one of which twisted his upper lip slightly. It made him look as if he were sneering all the time. I pegged their ages as mid-twenties. I had a pretty good idea who these guys were — not specifically, but in a general sense. I’d grown up with street toughs just like them. Hell, I’d been them.

    Not that understanding them made my situation any less dire. In Katammu-Arc I had some measure of security. Prahaa-Riz would have been better. Outside of either one and at the mercy of two thugs: genuinely screwed. I needed to make some sort of a move and get control.

    “Tell me where we’re going,” I said.

    “Shut up,” Lefty answered. “or we shoot you here.”

    “I don’t think so. Back in the room, maybe, but out here in a public space? Katammu-Arc, which has the municipal government as well as the national government? Hell, we’re only two levels down from the uBakai Wat chamber. With the Munies trigger-happy as hell and riots going on all over, you start shooting in here and you’ll never get out alive.”

    The guys exchanged a look before Lefty spoke again.

    “So maybe we pull stupid hat off your head and tell everyone here is Sasha Naradnyo. How leatherheads feel right now, will tear you to pieces.”

    “How many Varoki do you think can tell one Human from another?” I asked.

    “Are so mad will not need recognize you,” he said. “Take word for it.”

    I laughed.

    “You don’t get my meaning. How are they going to tell which of us is me? Once you get them going, they’ll kill all three of us, just to be on the safe side.”

    “Yeah,” the guy in my right said in a thick, slow voice, “but you still be dead.”

    “But I’m gonna be dead either way, right? So why not take you two assholes with me?” It was a bluff, but it hit home. His expression flickered as that sank in. I looked back at Lefty.

    “You got no leverage, long as it looks as if you’re taking me to an execution. Die here, die there, what more have I got to lose? Any pressure you try to put on me gets you in jail or dead.

    “Now, might be I’ll go with you anyway if the deal looks right. None of my options sound all that great at the moment, but you gotta make the pitch. There’s a food station with tables up ahead, posted as having Human food too. Let’s have a tea and talk about this. Otherwise I start yelling, first Munies we see.”

    He didn’t say anything but I could see he was chewing it over. He lifted his right hand and he ran his fingertips absent-mindedly along the scar tissue that formed the top of what was left of his ear, as if checking to see if the other half had grown back. When we got up to the tables he stopped, looked around, and then nodded toward an empty one a little apart from the others.

    “Will not hurt talk,” he said. “Pablo, get tea.”

    “I’m buying,” I said. “Just take it out of that cash of mine you pocketed.”

    Sookagrad was what they called the slum district they came from — which translates as Bitch City in English, probably a comment on the quality of life. I’d been right about it sprawling in the shadow of e-Kruaan-Arc. After about twenty minutes of talking I was reasonably sure of the setup.

    They claimed they worked for a Russian thug named Nicolai Stal, who I’d heard of but never met. I tried to keep up on the local criminal underworld but it was hard. There was plenty of information; you just couldn’t tell how reliable any of it was.

    For all their professed distaste over Human violence, a lot of Varoki found it fascinating, and so there was a thriving fan base for different Human criminal factions in Sakkatto City. Of course the stuff that got on the float about it was mostly made up, but even when the Varoki tried to play it straight and sort it all out, they still couldn’t quite get it right. Human organized crime was always simpler than they thought it was, and more complicated at the same time.

    So who was this Nicolai Stal? Well, for one thing that wasn’t his real name unless his parents had a strange sense of humor. Stal was Russian for steel. Nicolai Stal–nikyel stal. Nickel steel, get it?

    Besides, I’d already figured out these two punks didn’t really work for Stal, their big talk notwithstanding. I pegged them as independents who wanted to get hooking into Stal’s organization, and they grabbed me on spec’, to make an impression on their intended future boss.

    I was not clear on why bringing me in would make such an impression. They said Stal just wanted to talk to me, because they couldn’t say someone wanted me dead. That would not be a very successful sales pitch, would it? They were unimaginative liars. I didn’t hold that against them since it was making my life easier. But could I parlay that into my freedom? Maybe so.

    I let Lefty talk until he ran out of stuff and was starting to repeat himself. I was careful not to ask any tough questions which would trip him up and make him realize how stupid his story sounded. I just listened and drank tea. When he started running down and his confident façade looked like it might crumble all on its own I came to his rescue.

    “Okay, here’s the deal. I’ll talk to Stal, and I’ll let you guys take me there so you get the credit with your boss, but I need to stop at Prahaa-Riz first.”

    “Prahaa-Riz–still locked down,” Lefty said.

    “I got my own entrance the Munies don’t know about.”

    They looked at each other, suddenly nervous and suspicious.

    “What you want there?” Lefty demanded.

    “Three things. First, I need to pick up more cash. I got a feeling my negotiation with your boss could get expensive but I can’t use a cash station without showing up on the grid. I got about a hundred thousand cottos in a safe at home. Second, I want to shower again and change clothes. Looking like a bum puts me at a disadvantage in a sit-down. Third, I need to turn on my remote re-transmitters so I can use my commlink without the Munies tracking me. The controls are in my apartment.”

    “You got equipment can make commlinks invisible to Munies?” Pablo said, disbelief clear in his voice.

    “Yeah, don’t you?”

    They didn’t answer. They didn’t need to.

    “I can fix yours to run through my system while we’re up there, if you want,” I said, which was total crap but they didn’t know. I wasn’t sure which would entice them more: the idea of untraceable commlinks or the vision of a safe full of cash, but I figured together they were irresistible.

    Lefty tried to keep his face blank, not let me know what he was thinking, but his hand went up to his ear again, stroking that line of scar tissue. “Okay,” he said after a few seconds, “we get moving, but not try anything stupid.”

    “Nothing stupid,” I agreed.

    They had ground transportation waiting, a beat-up old manual-drive ground car parked in the public garage inside one of the south road access ways for Katammu-Arc. Lefty drove and we all crammed ourselves into the single broad seat. I had the feeling the original plan involved me riding in the baggage locker, but times change.

    We emerged from the base of Katammu-Arc into drifting smoke and the stuttering sound of distant automatic weapons fire. My stomach churned in fear. Not your typical day in downtown Sakkatto, even in the slums. The city outside the arcologies was mostly made up of improvised structures with winding streets, some of them too narrow even for Lefty’s little clunker.

    Some of the buildings were almost substantial: one- or two-story cast foamstone, with the exterior clearly showing the pattern of the improvised mold used to cast it, usually wood planking with gaps between the wood so the foamstone had oozed out a bit in the seams before hardening. A lot more of the structures were discarded metal cargo containers of varying sizes and colors, some with windows and doors cut into the sides, others with flexible plastic or composite sheeting flapping across the original entrance.

    Most of the space in between these was filled with shacks, lean-tos, and improvised tents, all of them looking like they wouldn’t survive a good strong wind. Building materials were almost all metal, plastic, or composites. No wood — wood was fuel. Thin grayish smoke curled up from cooking fires, from a distance looking like the dirty plumes of a hundred cigarettes.

    The ground was covered with garbage and the smell was about as strong as you’d guess. I didn’t imagine there was regular trash pickup. In terms of filth and general dilapidation, it was worse than the Human Quarter back in Crack City on Peezgtaan, where I’d grown up, and that was really saying something.

    I saw evidence of recent violence: structures gutted by fire, merchandise looted from stores and discarded in the street, and lots of flashing Munie hard posters stuck up on building fronts telling people the curfew hours and which areas were under interdiction, all of which lent a grim post-apocalyptic feel to the landscape, made all the more surreal by our having been in the clean and orderly interior of Katammu-Arc only minutes earlier.

    Once we had to double back and go around an area completely cordoned off by barricades manned by armed Varoki civilians. The unarmed Varoki we passed looked sullen and ready for a fight. A couple times groups of them started to crowd around the car but Pablo showed them his gauss pistol and they backed off. The farther we went, the more nervous I got, and I could smell both Lefty and Pablo sweating to either side of me, and it wasn’t that hot a day.

    We passed five Munie checkpoints and I kept the fisherman hat low on my face when we did. Even if Varoki weren’t good at telling one Human from another by sight, the Munies’ facial recognition programs would ID me and bring up the summons flag, but I needn’t have bothered. As soon as they saw the car held Humans, they waved us through. Humans weren’t the problem today. That was the oddest part of the entire trip.

    We drove through a landscape, altered and made unfamiliar, even to Lefty and Pablo, by the growing evidence of mass violence and the responses to it. The situation must have deteriorated just in the time they were inside Katammu-Arc dealing with me. I could tell they were as spooked as I was, although none of us let it show in our faces. We were tough guys, right?

    The two-kilometer drive took almost an hour and there were several times I didn’t think we were going to make it, but we did. I was right about one thing: I’d have never made it on foot.

    Prahaa-Riz arcology looked desolate from the outside, with much of its foliage burned away and many broken windows, particularly on the lower levels. We parked west of the arc and walked to the maintenance access bay I had an illegal key for. I’d set this up as an emergency escape route, not a way in, but doors swing both ways. The streets were wet and slick with black soot and flame-retardant foam from fighting the exterior fires, but all the streets were nearly deserted, at least on that side.

    Once inside we stayed away from the public spaces, instead following the arcology’s circulatory system of air and power and fluid pipelines, making our way up through service elevators and maintenance access ways. We saw some damage, but not a lot and most of it was already repaired. A couple Varoki techs we passed looked at us funny but the gauss pistols discouraged their curiosity. I was half-surprised we didn’t see any Munies, but they apparently had their hands full in the public spaces of the arc.

    I wasn’t sure what I’d find at the apartment. Our address was public knowledge and I half expected to find it vandalized and looted, although someone would have needed a pretty high-powered pulse laser to cut through the armored door and walls. In any case, the upper levels had come through in pretty good shape. Lots of well-off Varoki lived here and the Munies had protected it, contained the trouble down below.

    We had to go through all those layers of security to get it. I doubt that Lefty or Pablo had seen anything like it, even at Munie lockups.

    The apartment impressed Lefty and Pablo at first; then it sort of pissed them off. They knew some Varoki lived this well, but the idea that Humans did seemed more unfair, rather than less. That’s Human nature for you. Actually, this was very austere by e-Varokiim standards, but telling them that wouldn’t make them feel any better.

    I moved the couch to show them the floor safe and then pointed out the gun safe in the corner. It was all transparent composites so it doubled as a display case. I had a neuro pistol, a couple very nice gauss pistols — one of them a big Zaschaan model with custom grips — as well as two old-style slug throwers: a little LeMatt 5mm and the Hawker 10mm I used to carry and which Marr had used to save my life after I was already dead. Long story.

    “I’m gonna take a shower,” I said. “One of you guys want to check out the john before I do?”

    Lefty did the honors, leaving Pablo with his nose almost pressed against the clear composite gun safe. The master bath was through Marr’s and my bedroom, and I imagine the bathroom itself was about as big as this kid’s apartment, which he probably shared with someone, maybe several someones. He checked the shelves and drawers and cabinets, looked for control surfaces, and then just stood looking around for a while, fingering his ear.

    “You trying to grow that ear back?”

    He scowled at me and dropped his hand to his side.

    “Leave doors open, wise-guy, so we see when you get done.”

    He left and I turned on the shower, waited a minute or two, and then went to the sink.

    “Yanni,” I said, which was Marr’s and my security code for the apartment system. It was sort of a joke between us and usually brought a smile, but given our last conversation it made me feel blue instead, and lonely. A verification square appeared on the mirror and I pressed my left palm against it. The smart wall changed from a mirror surface to the default security screen: a layout of the apartment with thermal tags for the three occupants — me in the john and the two punks in the living room. I brought up the control interface and then closed and sealed all the doors to the living room. As the doors snicked shut I briefly heard Lefty and Pablo yell in anger and alarm. I pumped the living room full of gas and then took my shower.