Farewell Horizontal

one section of time superimposed over another. As if the lovers had coupled all unconscious of the corpse framed in the same shot with them, tangled in the building’s cables, diagonal from the open air in which they turned and clasped.

Opt Cooder had made the most of the rare chance; no one else had ever gotten so close to one, alive or dead. A certain aesthetic sense that went with his rep, catching the fading light as the sun went over Cylinder and on to the eveningside – so that the red tinge on the angel’s cheek had almost made her seem alive. But sleeping. Because if she had been dead, wouldn’t she have disappeared where all the other dead angels go? And where was that? Something that Axxter still wondered, along with everybody else who watched the scanty archives, over and over. Maybe there was some one spot on an unexplored sector of the building’s surface where all the pretty corpses came to rest. Leaving behind not a whitening layer of bones – those would crumble away like dust, figured Axxter – but of something like tattered silk, gray where the blood had once made the tissue into pink lace.

Or maybe they just fall, he thought. Down through the cloud barrier, and whatever’s below that, if anything. Maybe all the dead angels are still falling.

“So you want me to peddle this stuff for you, or what?”

Axxter refocused, the image resolving back into Lenny Red’s face. For a moment he didn’t speak, then, “Sure. That’s why I called you. What d’you think you can get for it?” Questions like that indict your heart. Sell, you sonuvabitch.

Lenny shrugged, the thin points of his shoulders coming up into the image. “Lemme run it past a few people. I’ll get right back to you.” The face vanished.

He passed the couple of minutes – that’s all it ever took with fast Lenny – looking out across empty sky. The line chirped inside his ear; Lenny’s features could just be made out, light against brighter.

“High quote was two thousand, Ny.” A conspirator’s wink. “But I jacked ’em up to twenty-two-five.”

He stared at the bright, overactive face. “Twenty-two-five? That’s all?” Jeez – now I know I should’ve kept it for myself. “You gotta be kidding.”

“Hey, that’s after my cut, man. That’s all straight to you. Come on,” wheedled Lenny’s image. “You know you want it, you need it – just sign me over the confirm number, and we’ll do the deal.”

The realization hit him. “You’re getting yours on the other end. You’re lowballing me.” Fury welled up in his throat. “Fuckin’ lowballing me.”

That little shrug again. “It’s a fair price, man. None of the scientific data agencies had any interest in it – everybody knows already how angels do it. You’re not making no big contribution to human knowledge, all right? So it has to sell just on aesthetics, I shop it around to Ask & Receive’s entertainment division and their guys go, ‘Ten minutes? Whaddya think we can charge for accessing ten minutes of tape?’” Lenny’s finger, a pink dot, jabbed toward him. “And that’s why two thousand.”

“Twenty-two-five.” It’s what you get, thought Axxter, for dealing with people like this.

“Twenty-two-five was before you pissed me off. Now it’s two thousand.”

“I should’ve gone straight to my own agent.” He looked back out at the sky. Serves me right, I suppose.

In his ear, Lenny’s voice went blunt. “Two thousand is also so your agent doesn’t find out about all this. Non- info costs, just like real info does.”

It’s what I get. Axxter punched out the confirm transfer without looking, screwed it up, then got it right. From a distance he heard some parting shot from Lenny. Should’ve kept it for myself – the thought became bleaker with repetition. To cheer himself, he blinked up his bank account.

The payment had already gone through, zipped in via Lenny. The numbers crawled across his sight, digits kissed by the two thousand wad. He was afloat again, at least for a little while. Maybe that’s what my luck is. The cheerful edge had already worn off the morning’s event. Maybe just getting by, hugging the wall with the wind at the back of my neck. Getting hungry lets you cling even better, spine tight to the metal.

MESSAGE FROM REGISTRY. The words crawled into view. NOTIFICATION, TRANSFER OF OWNERSHIP, FILE BLAH-BLAH-BLAH; YOU DON’T WANT THE REAL NUMBERS, DO YOU?

“No.” Screw it. At least he wouldn’t have to pay to see the mating angels, as everyone else would; the original images were still inside his archive. At least I’ve got that much. “Call up Brevis, okay?”

His agent’s face came up in his sight, in sufficient-enough resolution. In the corner of his eye, the Wire Syndicate’s call charges nibbled away at his bank account.

“Ny – I was just about to call you.” Brevis smiled.

And pay for the call from his end? That’d be the day. “Yeah? Why? – got a lead on some new clients?”

Brevis’s eyes closed above his smile, as though he’d just been nicked by some pleasurable bullet. They opened again. “Working on it, Ny. Promise you – there’s going to be something coming up that’s going to make you very happy. You can count on it.”

“Yeah, right.” Brevis being a smoother, cooler version of Lenny Red; for this he gets ten percent? Axxter heard his own voice harden: “I’ll nip aroundwall to Linear Fair and pick up some supplies I need. When they ask about getting paid, I’ll tell ’em you said they could count on it. How’s that?”

A tilt of the head, acknowledgment of witticism. But still smiling: “Just… be patient a little longer, Ny. You’ll see.”

You’ll starve; for a moment he thought that Brevis had actually said that, until he realized it had been a glitch on the line. Or in his own head, out too long on the vertical. You’re starting to lose it, he warned himself.

“I’m trying.” Axxter kept the hard edge in his voice. It was either that or start whining. “I really am. But I’m cutting it a little thin out here, you know. I’m down to the bone, man. If some money doesn’t come in pretty soon, I could wind up defaulting on my Moon and Wire charges.”

The words emerged from his mouth like all the words before them; in his throat a thick clot of nausea formed.

Pure fear: both of Cylinder’s communications agencies reacted unkindly to defaults. Fat chance of operating as a graffex, or anything else on the vertical, without them. “I need something to come through.” Hard edge gone now, having scared himself.

Brevis’s expression changed to one of woeful sympathy. “What can I say, Ny? None of your holdings have paid a dividend or a bonus in… quite a while.” The smile again, manfully facing up to his client’s imminent ruin.

“Yeah? And whose fault is that? Jesus Christ.” He heard his own voice screeching, worn brake on cable, still unable to stop himself. “Pull up my portfolio.” A quadrant of his sight filled with words and numbers; in the center, Brevis’s gaze shifted to the right, seeing the same data. “Just look at that crap.” The back of Axxter’s hand rapped against the wall, the metal ringing hollow. “That’s why I’m going broke.”

He could watch Brevis’s eyes ticking down the list of holdings. “Ny… what can I say? These are your clients; like you’re my client. I’ve got faith in you; you’ve got to have a little faith in them.”

“These,” said Axxter, “are the flakes you stuck me with. Warriors, my ass. Bunch of wankers, is what they are. They couldn’t rape and pillage their way out of a plastic bag. I mean, of all the tribes in my whole portfolio – tribes that you set me up with – who do you think’s doing the best? Huh? Out of this whole wimpy lot?”

Brevis shrugged. “I suppose… those young guys – what were they called? – Stylish Razorteeth; something like that. They were pretty hot, weren’t they?”

“Mode of Razorback.” Axxter shook his head. “Were hot – precisely. Now they get their butts kicked on a regular basis.” The mention of the tribe’s name grated on his nerves. He had done a full graffex workup for them, from the wall out, all the combat visuals and PR regalia that a brand-new military tribe required. A solid month’s work, without even any upfront money for it – Brevis had sold him so hard on the new tribe’s prospects that he’d swallowed this major inroad into his operating capital. Receiving for his labors a good-sized chunk of the Razorbacks’ initial issuance of stock. Preferred stock, he reminded himself. He’d get his share of whatever loot, ransoms, or other spoils the tribe brought in right at the initial divvying-up, zipped straight into his bank account. A cut of the gross; that was always the condition attached to one of these start-up deals, why the attraction for freelancers – not just graffices like him, but the whole panopoly of caterers, camp followers, tacticians, everything a military tribe needed to operate on Cylinder’s vertical wall. Attractive enough for freelancers still on the hustle – like me, thought Axxter. Hungry for those high returns on the investment of time and labor. Blood and