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 next few hours existed only in fragments. Physical sensations. Later, Jonny remembered lying on the floor, wondering distantly if he was going to be sick. He remembered hands moving over him. Objects had taken on a fragile, crystalline quality. Things dripped into his arms through haloed tubes. Ice moved into view occasionally and tried to speak to him. But Jonny was off floating where there was no pain and no need to run. Then there was only the dark.
Jonny awoke on a futon, naked, his arms wrapped in clean bandages. He moved his hands, but only after a considerable effort of will. They slid from under cool sheets as if being manipulated from far away. He felt numb and dizzy, but somehow peaceful. He was in a little room stacked high with milky injection-molded cases and styrofoam packing modules. It did not look at all like part of a hospital.
'It's not. I'm just borrowing it,' said Ice, as she slid a dark arm around Jonny's chest, pulling him closer. Jonny remembered Ice's unnerving talent for verbalizing his thoughts.
'Ice,' he said, rolling to face her.
'For an ex-cop you've got big feet. You set off every alarm in the place.'
Ice, Jonny, and Sumi: the three of them had formed a solid union for a time in the disintegrating city. Then suddenly, Ice had disappeared, leaving only a short, lame note. Jonny recalled the first terrible days after she had gone. He and Sumi walked on razor blades. Each was aware that neither had been to blame for Ice's disappearance, yet each secretly sensed that they were the one responsible. It was days before Jonny could bear to let Sumi out of his sight. The terror of being alone overwhelmed him. Sumi had been no different. They trailed each other from room to room like absurd puppies, only dimly aware of what they were doing.
Seeing Ice now, lying next to her, Jonny ran his hands over the contours of her body. She had changed in subtle ways. There was a new, pleasant firmness to her hips and legs. And her arms were thicker, more muscular, which Jonny was sure pleased her. Her grin still possessed the openness which contradicted her usual detached expression. His fingers traced the old post-operative scar where she had received a black market liver.
'I didn't recognize when you when you came crashing into the storeroom tonight. Then, when I heard your voice I couldn't believe it was you,' she said.
Jonny's throat was dry when he tried to speak. 'I didn't know that you'd be here. That you were a Croaker,' he said.
Ice nodded. 'I've been here a few months now.' She shrugged.
'Sometimes, I'm not even sure why. Groucho recruited me. Do you know him? He's great. He plans a lot of the raids and holds the group together. I'll introduce you tomorrow. He helps keeps the ghosts away.'
The ghosts had been with Ice for as long as Jonny had known her. They were an image she toyed with, but he knew that to her the ghosts of memory were real.
Ice had been working as a prostitute at the Zone Deluxe when Sumi introduced them. Before that, Ice had farmed-out her body to the Boys of Tangier gang, allowing herself to be infected with specific viruses. The gang would then purchase her infected blood, which they used to produce various immunotoxins. These they sold on the street or to the smuggler lords.
