“I want to talk to Twelve-T.”
“Crazy ass mother, ain’t no fucker got that handle living here.”
“Listen, shitbrain, this is his public eddress. He’s there.”
“Yeah, so you know him, datavise him.”
“Not possible.”
“Yeah? Then he don’t know you. Any mother he need to rap with knows his private code.”
“Okay, the magic word is Banneth. And if you don’t think that’s magic, trace where this call is coming from. Now tell the man, because if I come calling, you’re going out hurting.”
Dwyer gave another myopic squint at his displays. “He’s tracing the call. Back to the satellite already. Hot program.”
“I expect they use it a lot,” Quinn muttered.
“You got a problem up there, motherfucker?” a new voice asked. It was almost as Quinn remembered it, a low purr, too damaged to be smooth. Quinn had seen the throat scar which made it that way.
“No problem at all. What I got up here is a proposition.”
“Where you at, man? What is this monk shit? You ain’t Banneth.”
“No.” Quinn swayed forwards slowly towards the camera lens in the centre of the console and pulled his hood right back. “Run your visual file search program.”
“Oh, yeah. You used to be Banneth’s little rat runner; her whore, too. I remember. So what you want here, ratty?”
“A deal.”
“What you got to trade?”
“You know what I’m riding in?”
“Sure. Lucky Vin ran a trace, he’s pissin’ liquid nitrogen right now.”
“It could be yours.”
“No shit?”
“That’s right.”
“What’ve I gotta do for it, hump you?”
“No, I just want to trade it in. That’s all.”
The whisper lost its cool. “You want to trade in a fucking Confederation Navy frigate? What the fuck for?”
“I need to talk to you about that. But there’s some good quality hardware on board. You’ll come out ahead.”
“Talk, motherfucker? If your hardware’s so shit-hot, how come you wanna dump it?”
“God’s Brother doesn’t always ride to war. There are other ways to bring His word to the faithless.”
“Cut that voodoo shit, man. Damn, I hate that sect shit you arcology freaks use. Ain’t no God, so he sure as shit can’t have no Brother.”
“Try telling that to the possessed.”
“Motherfuck! Smartass motherfucker! That’s what you are, that’s all you are.”
“Do you want to deal or not?” Quinn knew he would; what gang lord could resist a frigate?
“I ain’t promising shit up front.”
“That’s cool. Now I need to know which asteroid to dock with. And it’s going to have to be one which doesn’t ask too many questions. Have you got any weight in orbit?”
“You know it, man, that’s why you come to me. You might talk like you the King of Kulu’s brother, but here it’s me who’s got the juice. And stink this, I don’t trust you, rat runner.”
“With this much firepower behind me, think how much I care. Start fixing things.”
“Fuck you. A strike like this is gonna take a few days to set up, man.”
“You have forty-eight hours; then I want a docking bay number flashing in front of me. If not, I will smite you from the face of the world.”
“Will you cut that freaky crap—”
Quinn cancelled the circuit and threw his head back laughing.
• • •
It had only taken a few hours for the screen of red cloud to engulf the sky above Exnall. The tenuous beginnings of the early morning had been supplanted by billowing masses of solid vapour sweeping up from the south. Thunder arrived in accompaniment, bass grumbles which seemed to circle and swoop around the town like jittery birds. There was no telling where the sun was now, but its light still seemed to slip through the covering to illuminate the streets in natural tones.
Moyo marched down Maingreen on his mission to find some kind of transport for Stephanie’s children. The more he thought about the prospect, the happier it made him. She was right, as always, it did give him something positive to do. And no, he didn’t want to spend eternity in Exnall.
He passed the doughnut cafй and the baseball game in the park, oblivious to either. If he searched with his mind, he could perceive the buildings around him like foggy shadows; all space was dark, while matter was amended to a translucent white gauze. Individual objects were hard to distinguish, and small ones almost impossible; but he thought he stood a good chance of recognizing something like a bus.
The street sweeper was busy again. A man in a grey jacket and cloth cap, pushing his broom in front of him as he made his way slowly along the pavement. Every day he had appeared. He never did anything else but sweep the pavements, never talked to anybody, never responded to any attempts at conversation.
Moyo was slowly coming to learn that not all of Exnall’s possessed were adapting readily to their new circumstances. Some, like the sports nuts and cafй owners were obsessively filling every moment of their day with activity no matter how spurious, while others would amble around in a listless mockery of their earlier existence. That assessment put his own labours perilously close to the apathetic ones.
A dense collection of shadows at the rear of one of the larger stores caught his attention. When he walked around the building there was a long van parked in the loading bay. It had suffered some damage in the riot; struck by white fire the front two tyres had melted into puddles of sticky plastic, the navy-blue bodywork was blackened, and in some places cracked open, the windshield was smashed. But it was certainly big enough.
He stared at the first tyre, visualizing it whole and functional. Not an illusion, but how the solid matter should actually be structured. The hardened plastic puddle started to flow, amoebic buds swelling up to engulf the naked hub.
“Yo there, man. Having some fun?”
Moyo had been so involved with the tyre he hadn’t noticed the man approaching. At first sight the man looked as if he’d grown a dark brown mane; his beard came down to his waist as did the corkscrew locks of his luxuriant hair. A pair of tiny amber hexagonal glasses which were almost curtained by tresses seemed perversely prominent. The flares of his purple velvet trousers were embellished with tiny silver bells which chimed with each step, not in tune, but certainly in keeping.
“Not exactly. Is this your van?”
“Hey, property is theft, man.”
“Property is what?”
“Theft. You’re like stealing from what rightfully belongs to all people. That van is an inanimate object. Unless you’re into a metallic version of Gaia—which personally I’m not. However, just because it’s inert that doesn’t mean we can abuse its intrinsic value which is the ability to carry cats where they want to go.”
“Cats? I just want it to ferry some children out of here.”
“Yeah well okay that’s cool, too. But what I like mean is that it’s like community property. It was built by people, so all people should share it equally.”
“It was built by cybersystems.”
“Oh, no, that’s real heavy-duty corporate shit. Man, they’ve got into your skull big-time. Here, take a toot, Mr Suit, take yourself out of yourself.” He held out a fat reefer which was already alight and sending out a pungent sweetness.
“No thanks.”
