Metrophage

'What is your profession?' Nimble Virtue asked.

'Dealer.'

'When did Colonel Zamora tell you to expect the raids?'

'He didn't.'

'Liar!' yelled Nimble Virtue. She pressed the ends of the Medusa into Jonny's stomach and held them there. 'You stupid boy, I can keep you up alive for weeks! Cut off a piece everyday and sell you in the mercado!'

When Jonny came to, he realized that he had blacked-out again.

Nimble Virtue was muttering in Japanese and making unpleasant sucking sounds as the exoskeleton breathed her. Jonny's arms and shoulders had gone numb. He thought he could hear music in the next room. When Nimble Virtue looked at him, he said, 'I can't tell you what I don't know. Zamora just wanted to talk about the Alpha Rats.'

Jonny saw something flicker over Nimble Virtue's face. 'Take him down,' she said. Easy and Billy moved under him, lifted Jonny off the hook and laid him out on the floor. Nimble Virtue moved closer and put a hand on his leg. The fur of her coat tickled his stomach. 'Say it again. Say it or I'll have them put you back up.'

Jonny looked at her eyes. Fear or relief, he wondered. His head swam. He wondered when the dream would be over and he would wake up next to Ice and Sumi. 'There's a deal,' he said and his head fell back.

'Wrap him up,' Nimble Virtue told one of the men. 'But leave his hands bound.'

Jonny lay on the cold steel, hoping it had worked. Fear kept him still, but he was satisfied that they had bought the fainting act. A trickle of relief washed through him. He could hear the purring of Nimble Virtue's exoskeleton as she moved around the abattoir. 'Get the Arab back here,' she said. 'Tell him we can deal.'

Jonny listened to the foot steps. Billy's heavy and flat-footed, his cowboy boots coming down like open- handed slaps; Nimble Virtue's, rapid and light, with insect hums and clicks. Easy Money moved in quick bursts, his club foot dragging behind him. Jonny knew he would have to wait at least until Easy or Billy had left the room before he could make a break. He willed himself to remain still, to use what time he had to rest and collect himself. The sweat on his right arm was freezing to the slaughterhouse floor. Just as he was beginning to worry about frostbite, he felt Billy (he caught a whiff of chew) wrap a rough woolen blanket around his shoulders.

'Don't want you croaking out on us, now,' he heard the cowboy say.

There was a loud buzz from the far end of the room. Jonny kept his eyes closed, his breathing shallow. Movement, machine-like and delicate. 'What is it?' came Nimble Virtue's voice.

Static. At first Jonny could not understand the voice. '-spotter picked up police vans headed this way. Looks like a raid,' the intercom sputtered.

Nimble Virtue cursed in Japanese. 'Not now. I'm not ready,' she said.

Jonny heard Easy Money: 'It's the cops, not the Committee. No sweat.'

'Perhaps,' she said. The coldness came back to her voice, the hard suggestion of efficiency. 'Stay with him. You come with me.' A confusion of footsteps, all three of them moving around the room at once. The abattoir door opened and closed. Then there was nothing.

Jonny could not stand it. He opened his eyes.

At the far end of the room, Easy Money was leaning against the cryogenic pump, grinning at him.

'Ollie, ollie oxen free,' Easy said. He chuckled and steam from his breath curled around his grafted satyr horns. 'Watching you's like watching porn. I mean, you're so fucking trite, but I can't help it. I still get off. Twisted, huh?'

Jonny got up from the freezing floor and pulled the blanket tight across his shoulders. 'You gonna tell the teacher I was bad when she left the room?'

Easy shook his head. 'Hell no,' he said. 'You think I care about the bitch? I'm just watching the parade go by. Besides,' he said, strolling toward Jonny, 'I know what you really want. You want the stuff I took off Raquin. It's Conover's dope, isn't it? What is it? No, don't tell me, you'd only lie, and I'd get pissed. Anyway, after we're clear of this, maybe you and me, we can work out a deal. Meet me at the Forest of Incandescent Bliss in Little Tokyo.' Easy nodded toward the door Nimble Virtue had just used. 'That's one of Yokohama Mama's clubs.'

'The Forest of Incandescent Bliss. Right,' said Jonny.

'I assume you're in contact with Conover, and can get me a fair price.'

'No problem.'

Easy moved a little closer. He spoke to Jonny softly. 'Tell me the truth, you were gonna blow me away that night at the Pit, weren't you?'

'Who me? I was just stopping by to watch the movie stars.'

'Liar,' said Easy Money. He smiled, 'We're gonna have to work that out, too.'

'Whatever you say.'

'But later,' Easy said. Through the slaughterhouse wall came the muffled sound of automatic weapons fire. The lights in the abattoir went out. A few seconds later, emergency flood lamps flared to life over the doors throwing the room into brilliant arctic relief.

'They'll be back in a minute. You better get back on the floor.' Jonny reluctantly lay back down and Easy bent over him. 'One more thing,' he said. 'I'm not helping you, understand, but if I were you, I'd make a real effort to get out of here. You don't want to deal with the bitch's Arab friends.'

Jonny nodded. 'Thanks.' The meat locker shuddered. Nimble Virtue and Billy hurried through the door.

'Bring him!' shouted Nimble Virtue. 'It is the police, but I don't want him found.'

Jonny smelled tobacco again. He went limp as Billy grabbed him around the chest and began hauling him toward the door. When they hit warm air, Jonny dug his heels in and drove an elbow into Billy's midsection. The cowboy groaned and fell back against a wall of yellow fiberglass packing crates. Jonny spun, put a boot to Billy's chin (just for fun, that) and took off running, Nimble Virtue shrieking behind at him.

He made one corner and hid between a cluster of rubberized storage cylinders and the angled steel wall supports. Men armed with Futukoros ran past him. Jonny's hands, when he looked at them, were blue and swollen. Running again, he saw police wearing breathing apparatus, moving among the long rows of crates. Down another row, and he was gasping and stumbling, knee-deep in carbon dioxide foam. He tried to climb out over a wall of crates, but lack of oxygen muddled him. Black things with glassy eyes and tubes for mouths grabbed him. He swung his bound hands weakly, but missed.

His feet could not find the floor.

And the foam swallowed him.

It seemed to him that he was always waking up in strange places. As if his whole life had been a series of dull, terrifying discoveries- trying to find some point of reference, finding it and having it swept away at the next moment. The feeling frightened and infuriated him even as he nursed it along, believing that if he ever lost his terror and rage he might lose himself, flicker and disappear like an image on a video screen.

Jonny woke up to a hot pain that extended from his shoulders, across his back and down into his hands. When he moved his fingers, pins and needles stabbed him. The familiar smell of prison (human waste and disinfectants) turned his stomach.

'Christ,' he said, opening his eyes. 'Don't they know any other color but green?'

The door of his cell scraped open and a balding waxy-faced young man peered at him from the hall. Evidently he had been waiting there for some time and Jonny's voice had startled him.

Jonny was relieved to see that the man was wearing the blue uniform of the police department, and not Committee black.

'Hello?' said the cop.

Jonny swung his feet onto the floor and sat up on the pallet.

The cop tried to cover it, but Jonny saw his head snap back in surprise. 'I was just commenting on the accommodations,' said Jonny. 'They suck.' Pain, like a tight cord, cut through his middle.

The cop frowned and closed the door. Jonny listened to his footsteps as they faded down the corridor. Alone again, he pulled up the stiff gray paper prison shirt and probed his ribs with the tips of his fingers. Bruises and tender flesh there, but nothing seemed to be broken.

Surveying the cell, Jonny felt relief and a quiet kind of joy.

Dealing with the police, he knew from experience, would be no problem. They were wired for failure, ridiculed even by the city government that supported them; in the street, they were considered a notch below meter-maids as authority figures. Most of the department was staffed by boys who could not cut it in the Committee, had blown