'A deal?'
'Yes. Negotiate with the extraterrestrials on behalf of the New Palestine Federation. Convince them to turn their weapons on your puppet masters in the east. For this, the Federation will grant you a full pardon for crimes against the Arab people and-' He smiled at Jonny, '- return to you a reasonable profit for your services.'
'You're crazier than Zamora,' Jonny said. 'He only accused me of being a gofer for a smuggler lord. You think I'm hanging fast and true with the Alpha Rats myself.'
'Aren't you?'
'No!'
The Sheik shook his head. 'This world is an unkind place, Mister Qabbala. I am attempting to extend to you the hand of friendship.'
'Why? So you people can finish that stupid war?' asked Jonny.
'Don't get me wrong- I don't think this place would be any worse under Arab rule, but any dirty little wars you guys start, it's the people in the street- we're the ones that get hurt.' He pointed out the window. 'Not your people, mine.' al-Qawi nodded gravely, hands clasped behind his back. 'In that case, Mister Qabbala, you are my prisoner. You have obviously deserted your own government to work for terrorists and anarchists, however, you will not shirk your responsibility to the New Palestine Federation.'
Jonny, knowing Easy was watching him, kicked his boot into Nimble Virtue's desk, knocking off the false heel. The Futukoro went off precisely where Jonny was not. He was rolling across his shoulders away from Nimble Virtue's desk, scooping up his own gun on the way. He kept it low, sending a round into the floor near Easy.
A sheet of flame hit the ceiling as the shell exploded in the hyper-oxygenated air. Easy landed in a heap across the room, over by the air purification set-up. Jonny sprinted to the door and threw the security bolts, then he turned his gun on Nimble Virtue. 'Give me that dope, goddammit!'
'What have you done?' she screamed. Shaking, Nimble Virtue rose from behind her desk and went to where al-Qawi lay, his legs twisted under him, his neck bent at a peculiar angle. Her respirator was clicking rapidly beneath her kimono; Jonny could hear the air being forced in and out of her withered lungs. 'He was taking me with him!' she shouted. Then quietly: 'He was taking me with him. It was part of the deal.'
Jonny moved over to the floor safe. 'Give me the dope,' he said.
Someone was pounding frantically on the office door.
Nimble Virtue ignored him, touching the stretched-out body of the Arab, attending him with quick bird-like movements. 'I was going away,' she said, covering her face with her hands. No act this time, Jonny knew.
'Listen to me,' he told her. 'A friend of mine is sick. She needs this stuff badly.'
Nimble Virtue turned and looked at him. 'Good!' she said. 'I hope she dies. Rots and dies like me- like I have to stay here. In this city.' She stood and walked to the far side of the desk, rubbing at her red-rimmed eyes. 'Zamora will kill me.'
'Please, give me the dope.'
'No.'
The pounding on the door got louder. Jonny grabbed one of the bottles from the desk and held it over his head. The little fetus, disturbed in its fluid, bumped gently against the side. 'Give it to me.'
'Go to hell.'
His arm snapped out and Nimble Virtue screamed. There was no crash. Jonny held out his hand, showing her the palmed bottle.
'All right,' she said, and moved shakily toward him, dropping stiffly to her knees, her exoskeleton whining with the unaccustomed motion.
Jonny held his gun on her as she removed a segment of polished wood from the floor and entered a code on a ten-key pad.
The soft hiss of pneumatic bolts withdrawing. As Nimble Virtue reached into the safe, Jonny stopped her. He pushed his hand past her's and found the old pistol lying near the top. A tarnished Derringer two-shot, yellowed ivory grips with over and under barrels, each holding a single. 38 hollow point shell. He pocketed the gun and reached in again, coming up this time with a brushed aluminum Halliburton travel case. Inside was a small black vacuum bottle. Taking it, he backed away from the safe, keeping his back to the wall. Nimble Virtue was standing over al-Qawi again, staring down at the Sheik, her eyes flat and dull, like blank video monitors.
Over by the air purifier, Easy Money moaned.
A shot, then two more from the hall splintered the wood and metal of the office door. Jonny took a wide- legged stance and fired at it twice. What was left of the door exploded, peppering the room with burning wood and metal. He heard Nimble Virtue breathe in sharply. Over by the safe, the velvet-lined case lay on the floor, the two little bottles shattered amidst the glassy black wreckage of the collapsed desk, old alcohol reek filling the room. Nimble Virtue's mouth was open; a moment later, she screamed- a single note, high and keening. Running down the stairs, Jonny could still hear her.
Pour gasoline on an ant hill; light it. Watch the insects pour from the mound, crazed and sizzling: That was the main floor of the Forest of Incandescent Bliss. At the sound of the first shot, paranoid gangster reflexes had kicked in. Half the club was making for the doors, sure the cops or the Committee (somebody in uniform) was raiding the place. Old frightened men threw wads of cash and drugs at anybody who came near them.
The other half of the club had stubbornly stayed where they were, convinced that they had been led into a trap. Yakuza and Panteras Aureros lay bloody and dying across Go boards and tea pots where they had blown holes in each other at point blank range.
Prostitutes, orifices flexing in silent convulsive screams, scrambled down the stairs. Jonny fell into step with them, hitting the main floor behind a curtain of manufactured flesh.
Ice was by the bar, signaling to someone. Rapid variants of Amerslan, fingers on lips, brushing the back of a hand. She spotted him when he waved and ran over. They huddled by the spiral stairs.
'You got the stuff?'
He held up the vacuum bottle. 'Right here.'
'Great. Zamora never showed. We gotta rendezvous with the others.' She looked over his shoulder- 'No!' — and pushed him to the ground as the gun went off.
There was a smoking hole on the center of Ice's chest, but no blood, the Futukoro shell having cauterized the wound even at is made it. 'Give me the dope, Jonny.' He swore the voice had come from inside his head. He looked at Ice, insane for that moment, and knew he had killed her. A black metallic wind blew through his bones and he heard the voice again. 'Hand it over like now, man.'
Outside him that time. Easy Money. He was above them on the stairs, one satyr horn broken off at the scalp, his left elbow stiff, dribbling blood down his arm.
'I need that dope, man.' Down a step. 'The bitch's gone nuts. Gotta have Conover's juice to stake myself. Comprende?' This time Jonny did not aim for the feet, but Easy's head. He missed anyway.
The explosion brought down a good portion of the staircase, and Easy jumped clear on the far side.
Jonny kicked at the wreckage of carved wood, dragons in splinters, pig iron reinforcement rods sticking like bones from the pile. He knelt beside Ice who was staring down at the hole in her chest, gingerly touching the blackened skin around the edges.
'I always wondered what this felt like,' she said, drunken wonder slurred in her voice. He cradled her head in his lap, gangsters, gunsels and hangers-on still massingfor the door, clawing at each other. She looked at him and a shiver passed through her body. 'You're a big boy now, Jonny, whether you like it or not. Sumi can't cover your ass like I can.' Blood, through tiny cracks (like miniature lava flows) was beginning to seep from her wound. 'You gonna help us, Jonny? You're a Croaker. Always have been. You walk away, though, you're one of them. And they'll do us like this forever.'
She looked at her wound, touched a bloody hand to his cheek. 'Sweet Jonny. You and Sumi- my babies-'
He let her still head slide off his lap and stood, trembling and crying. His new eyes did not permit tears, but kept flashing him stored images of the last few hours. The dead fetuses. Dogs, massive and terrified, tearing at each other. The clockwork movement of multi-colored muscles. Feral smile of the hashishin.
Illusion, he thought. Folly. Maya.
For the first time in his life, shaking and blubbering in the club, Jonny had a clear mental picture of what the Alpha Rats looked like.
They looked like al-Qawi, like Zamora and Nimble Virtue, the pimps, the politicians, the wheeler-dealers. The
