The Nadian knelt beside the boy. 'We show him marble?' she said. 'Is nice.'
Tomcruise shook his head again.
'Creelich,' she said to the boy. Her nostrils sucked in like irritated anemones. She must have been forbidden to speak Nadian to the children. Quickly she added, 'Come, then.'
She rose. She prepared to walk on with her brood. To Simon she said, 'Is shy.'
She was bold. Many of them never dared to converse. Some could not even bring themselves to answer a direct question. If they were silent, if they were as invisible as they could make themselves, misfortune might be averted or at least forestalled.
'What's your name?' Simon asked.
She hesitated. Her nostrils flared. When a Nadian was unnerved its nostrils expanded and offered a glimpse of green-veined mucous membranes, two circles of inner skin juicy and tender as a lettuce leaf.
'Catareen,' she said. She said it so softly he could barely hear her.
'I'm Simon,' he answered. His voice sounded louder than usual. The Nadians could make you feel large and noisy. The Nadians were darting and indirect. They were quiet as plucked wires.
She nodded. Then she looked at him.
He had never seen a Nadian do that. He had not been sure they made eye contact even with one another. They reserved their main attention for whatever might be just off to the side or creeping up from behind. This one stood holding the hand of a human child with each of her emerald claws and looked levelly into his face without fear or servility. He had never traded gazes with one before. He could see that her eyes were fiery orange-yellow, with amber depths. He could see they were shot through with little flashing incandescences of an orange so deep it bordered on violet. The slits of the pupils implied a calm, regal intelligence.
You are somebody, he thought. You were somebody. Even a planet like yours must have princesses and warrior queens. Even if their palaces are mud and sticks. Even if their armies are skittish and untrainable.
She nodded again. She moved on. The little girl continued to robe herself in the hem of the Nadian's cape. The boy glanced back at Simon with an expression of pure triumph, his treasures unsullied by a stranger's gaze.
As they walked off across Bow Bridge, Simon could hear her soft little song.
He pulled the scanner from his zippie, double-checked his schedule. General menacing until his first client, a level seven at seven-thirty. Followed by two threes and a four. He hated sevens. Anything above a six (or a five, really) was difficult. He had to refuse nines and tens outright. They were beyond his capabilities. They paid well, and he needed the yen. But he knew his limits.
Simon did his menacing until seven-twenty. The time between clients was minimum wage, and most players naturally wanted as many bookings as possible. Simon preferred his in-between hours. The park was green and quiet, strung with pale yellow lights. Sometimes on a slow night a full twenty minutes might pass with no tour groups no one and nothing but grassy twilight, chlorophyll-scented breezes. As mandated, he stayed in character even when alone. He prowled and glowered. He sat on a series of benches with his muscles flexed and his tatts demonstrating their phosphorescent undulations. Sporadic tour groups and their guides skittered by, murmuring among themselves. They never strayed far from the green-gold lightglobe that hovered over their guide's head.
Simon passed Marcus twice on his rounds on the edges of the Ramble. He risked a wink the second time, though fraternization was cause for dismissal. Park thugs were not friendly. You could jive with your brothers if you were part of a gang, but white players weren't eligible for gang work. Because there was a steady if modest demand for Caucasians among the general clientele, Dangerous Encounters Ltd. kept a handful on the payroll but insisted they work alone.
Roving gangs of white men terrorizing Central Park was too inaccurate. Old New York had built its reputation on historical fidelity. So Marcus and Simon and the other white players worked solo, as lone wolves who had gone so the brochure said from drunken and abusive families to this scabrous forest kingdom, where their addictions multiplied as their options dwindled, desperate men who scrounged for whatever easy prey might wander innocently into their sectors. He and Marcus and the other singles were the cheapest items on the menu. Getting worked over by a gang cost five times as much.
His seven-thirty level seven would be at Bethesda Fountain. He headed in that direction.
The plaza was empty when he arrived. He was not sorry, even though no-shows paid only their 20 percent deposit, of which his share would be ten. Still, he'd be glad enough to skip the seven, perform his threes and fours, and go home to bed. Maybe he could make it up with some extra bookings tomorrow.
He had to stay for the required fifteen minutes. He stationed himself off to the side, in the shadow of the colonnade, where the client would not see him when he entered, as arranged, from the western stairs. He snarled at a passing tour group. He eyed their adolescent daughters with lupine appetite, muttered about how Chinese snatch was the tastiest, in case any of them understood English. They usually loved something like that. Maybe they would tip him, via their guide, once they were safely out of the park. Maybe the guide would pass the money along.
Thirteen minutes. Fourteen minutes. Then, just before he was officially entitled to walk off and collect the deposit, his level seven arrived.
He was Euro. He was corpulent, fiftyish, maidenly in his ruddy, well-fed baldingness. He looked nervous. Was it his first time? Simon hoped not not at level seven. Bennie from Dangerous Encounters escorted the client as far as the plaza's edge. They had a whispered conversation at the base of the stairs, and then the client stepped into the plaza, unaccompanied. He had blue Astrohair. He wore a mercury suit. He was German, probably, or Polish. The Germans and the Poles loved their novelty hair. They loved their liquid suits.
He was a strider. He had listened carefully to what Bennie would have told him about walking with purpose, about letting it come as a surprise. Relatively speaking.
Simon let the client get past the halfway point, just beyond the blind gaze and outstretched hand of the angel. Then he took off after him. He could see the man tense up. He continued obeying instructions, though.
The client hurried along. Light from the halogens sparked in his cobalt hair.
Simon got to his position, beside the client but slightly behind. He said, 'Hey, friend. Can I ask you a favor?'
The client kept walking, as a New Yorker would.
'Hey. I'm talking to you.'
Still nothing. He had paid careful attention.
Simon took the client's elbow. A mercury suit was always strange to him that watery quality, that faint heat they put out.
Now the client turned to face him.
'I need a little loan,' Simon said. 'I'm down on my luck right now.'
'I can't help you,' the client answered. Spoke English after all. Good.
'Oh, I think you can.' Simon took firmer hold of the client's elbow, as if he were a dance partner. He took a fistful of suit lapel. They were about twenty feet from the colonnade. Simon partially lifted the client, danced him into the dimness, pushed him up against a column.
Simon said, 'Every kind for itself and its own, for me mine male and female.'
The client said, 'What?' Fucking poetry chip.
Simon got in close. He could smell the man's sweat. He could smell his verbena cologne. Many Euros liked a flowery scent.
'I think you can,' he said again.
'What do you want?' the man asked hoarsely.
'You know what I want,' Simon answered. He decided to push the sex with this one. It was a tricky call, but his instincts were good. Most of them wanted more than pure violence.
'You want my money?' the man gasped.
