Farewell Horizontal

He nodded.

“Christ almighty.” Felony rolled her eyes upward. “Is that what you’re all freaked out about? What if he is? You’re spooking yourself for no reason, man. Those Dead Center folks aren’t anything to worry about. They’re harmless.”

Proves she’s nuts. Or ignorant – she hadn’t seen some of the things that he had, such as the burned-out sector over on the other side. “Well… I know different.”

That got a derisive snort. “There’s a bunch of stuff you think you know. And none of it’s true.”

Irritated, Axxter looked away from her, scanning the building’s surface. The last of the twilight was fading, the clouds ebbing to a darker red. He wanted to get well clear of the entry site, but still close enough to keep it in view; if Sai and his Dark Center buddies came swarming out, he wanted to have as much warning as possible.

Plus, there was other business he needed to take care of. His fright at discovering Sai’s true nature had also ebbed away. “You know where I can find a plug-in jack around here?”

“Gotta make a call? No problem. I know where all the jacks are.”

He followed her on a diagonal upwall; she seemed much clumsier moving with her pithons, as if she’d spent little time with them on the building’s surface. A kilometer away from the entry site, he spotted the jack’s concentric yellow markings.

“Here you go.” She secured herself close to the jack.

A taped call was waiting for him as soon as he inserted his finger. NY – YOU CAN GET MEGASSASSIN LOCATION INFO DIRECT FROM A & R. KEEP IN TOUCH. BREVIS. That was cool; his agent had known exactly what he needed to find out. The Havoc Mass was probably making the megassassin’s progress public, just to work up audience interest and add to their reputation: You can run, but you can’t hide – that always played well.

Ringing up Ask & Receive revealed that the megassassin was only a little ways out from the Left Linear Fair, having crossed through the day before.

That’s weird. Axxter broke the connection and leaned back against the pithons. He’d figured the megassassin would’ve been much closer than that; he wouldn’t have been happy to find out that it was just about to clear the curve of the building, spot him, and come barreling across the wall to kick his ass, but he wouldn’t have been surprised. Weren’t those big fuckers supposed to be faster than that? He’d always heard that once they got going, they were unstoppable, building up speed, creaming their target as much by force of impact as by all the other goodies grafted into their formerly human bodies. This one seemed to be taking some kind of tourist route to get to him.

“So what’s the problem?” Felony had managed to listen in. “Just means you got a little breathing space.”

Axxter worked at a fingernail. “It just doesn’t make sense. If the Havoc Mass wants to dramatize their lethal effectiveness, they’d want that thing to be on top of me fast. Not sauntering around out there on the wall somewhere.”

“And you’re the guy who knows so much. You didn’t get filled in on this one, did you?”

“Meaning what?”

She spread her hands out, palms upward. “Hey – maybe these megassassins aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Or maybe they are rough, but they’re deficient in some other skills. Like they’re not the world’s greatest trackers, maybe. It might be having a hard time picking up your trail – you arrived on this side by air, remember.”

He shook his head. “It should’ve had my last location pinpointed by the plug-in jack I used. Still doesn’t make sense.”

“Sense, shmense; you gonna worry about every little thing, good or bad? Just consider yourself lucky. For the time being, at least.”

Easy for her to say – Axxter regarded her. “Hey, how long were you trailing along after us?”

A shrug. “Long enough.”

“Did you hear what we were talking about?”

“You mean, did I hear what that Sai character said about me? Yeah, I heard. So what?” Her smile broadened. “The guy’s right. I’m not crazy – but I could be trouble.” She reached out, grabbing a new hold. “I got business to take care of. I’ll see you around.”

† † †

Through the night, he debated calling up Ask & Receive again, in case any more handy info had come in. Finally deciding against it – he already had enough to go on; anything else would probably have confused him even more.

As soon as it was light enough to see, he headed back toward the entry site. Through the hours of waiting in the dark, he had listened for any sound of Sai or the other Dead Centers, their high-pitched wailing calls to each other; there had been nothing but the building’s eternal silence. Now, leaning over the lip of the site, he peered into the darkness, searching for any sign of movement within.

Still nothing. Go on. The rounded metal edge grew slick with his perspiration. Go on in and see what you find.

Maybe the girl Felony was right; maybe the Dead Centers were nothing to be afraid of. She seemed to know more about what was going on around here, on the eveningside, than he did. Her ‘business’ brought her here, brought her – maybe – to a lot of places around Cylinder; she was in some ways an authority. If she’s not crazy – the other possibility. He only had Sai’s word that she wasn’t crazy, that all of her wild talk wasn’t just the wind whistling through the cracks in her skull. But if Sai was a Dead Center, then how much of what he said could be trusted? Maybe Sai had his own weird reasons for wanting him to believe that Felony could do those things; some spooky mindbend that he hadn’t figured out yet. And if you didn’t trust what Sai said about Felony – and why should you? – then you couldn’t trust what Felony said about the Dead Centers…

It went around and around, not in a circle, but more of a spiral, into a darkness as deep as the entry-site hole. He’d have to either trust both of them, Sai and Felony, or neither of them.

He was wasting time, he knew, trying to work it out. Either way, he was still on this side of the building, and everything he wanted – his whole life – was on the other, with a long walk in between. Worrying about who was lying to him – as if that were some novel state of affairs – was just a way of avoiding climbing into the entry site’s shivery black. Out of the light, as much of it as there was at the this hour of the eveningside’s half-dawn, and into the night inside the building, which never ended. Heavy spook territory.

Or he could starve to death out here. Axxter sucked in his breath and pulled himself into the entry site. He slowly got to his feet and stood up, feeling a solid horizontal surface under his feet; it had been a long time. The constant tension of moving around in the vertical world ebbed out of his spine, a sensation so pleasant that it sapped away most of his fear.

Cautiously, he walked forward, away from the circular light of the opening. Whatever the intentions of Sai and the other Dead Centers might have been toward him awhile ago, he probably hadn’t improved the situation by chasing Sai off with the travelhooks. That sort of thing could piss off the friendliest person, especially when it came in return for various favors performed. He’d have to watch out.

That worry aside, it wasn’t so bad inside the building. There was even light, parallel rows of faint blue radiance up on the ceiling; he hadn’t been able to see them from outside.

Maybe I’ll make it. He thought about that as he walked. Maybe he just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep going; maybe he’d find some Dead Center cache of groceries, a big pile of those round loaves, or Sai or one of the others would take a liking to him again and drop off little presents while he slept. He rolled that thought around as the entry site’s opening grew smaller and smaller behind him.

He smelled it first, coming from a smaller tunnel branching off the main one. Like gasoline, sharp and pungent. Pushed into the air by a wave of heat. Some kind of machine; he only had a second to consider what that meant, when it came out of the dark beside him and hit a blow straight to his chest. He fell backward, flying for a moment, until the back of his head and his shoulder struck the floor of the tunnel. He shook his head, dazed, eyes refocusing. In front of him was the megassassin.

He didn’t know it could smile.