‘How likely do you think that is?’ I asked.
‘Kindosh has her suspicions.’ She stabbed a button on her palmerlog. Oddly shaped dataspheres containing charts appeared in my apartment, rippling at her touch like the surface of water. ‘We know there’s been a steep growth of stormtech on the market. More are infected every day, and hardly a fraction of them come to us for rehab or substitutes. They’re too proud, too guilty, or think they’ll kick it on their own. Meanwhile, stormdealers have been getting more organised.’
‘Because of the Suns?’
‘In some cases, definitely. Drug trafficking’s rarely a solo operation. It’s too high-risk for that. They’re not hustling it on street corners like the idiots who sell grimwire do. They’ve started operating behind firewalls, and on darkmarket servers. Others sell within exclusive circles. And then there’re the stormdealers who work themselves into neighbourhoods. Get friendly with the locals. Maybe set up a front, work themselves into the social infrastructure. Deal stormtech out the back, giving out free samples of bluesmoke and synthsilver, selling cheap to the locals. Letting people know they’re a legitimate seller. Build their workforce; get people on their side, spread the word. Before you know it, they’ve occupied the entire neighbourhood, then the whole floor. They use children as foot soldiers and mules. Start buying out businesses to occupy their territory. Anyone who objects, anyone who tries to rat them out, gets silenced. Often by their own neighbours.’ A grainy edge came into her voice. ‘We’re seeing it most in the toughest areas. Working classes. People looking to get ahead after life’s kicked them into the gutter. The stormdealers know they’re easy targets.’
She hid it well. But I know what barely supressed guilt sounds like when I hear it. The oblate dataspheres scattered and vanished like burst soap bubbles. ‘It’s still a work in progress. Give me a day or two and I’ll have something we can link to the suppliers. We’ll go from there, see what the connection is to the House of Suns. If Kindosh tries to chew me out for this whole business with the Kaiji, I’m sending her your way, deal?’
‘Deal.’
‘You look after yourself, Vak. You too, Grim.’
Grim nodded but remained passive even after she’d left. He’d barely spoken a word about the whole arena incident. He knew we had bigger things to deal with. It’s so easy to see the big picture that you lose sight of the smaller things that make it up. I know that better than most people.
‘How you holding up?’ I asked him. He shrugged but didn’t look at me. Outside, the pixelsheeting swirled with darkened cloudbanks, the sprinklers activating. The windows pattered with rain. ‘Did the Suns hurt you?’
Grim pulled his knees up to his chest. ‘No. They just grabbed me off the street and tossed me into a carrier-pod. They wanted to, but they didn’t. They said you’d do that for them.’
‘Did you believe them?’
Grim shook his head, but I could see a part of him had believed it. I placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘You’re like my brother, Grim. I’d never hurt you, no matter what they did to me.’
‘I know, Vak. I know. But being taken like that, having you look at me the way you did, scared me, Vak. I haven’t been that scared since I left Harvest, you know?’ He stared out the rain-streaked windows, as if expecting to see something lurking there.
‘Do you want to move in here?’ I asked.
Grim glanced over at me. ‘Seriously?’
‘I don’t want you going back home, Grim. Not anymore. You hang here, at least until we sort this out. If they try anything again, they’ll have to go through me first.’
I expected him to break out into a zany, toothy grin. Start cheering at how he’d finally wormed his way into my apartment, even if it meant getting kidnapped. Instead, he sniffed and thumped me on the back, muttering his gratitude. He was more shaken than I’d realised. I was going to have to watch him. I returned the gesture, pushing out vivid images of me stumbling towards my friend, teeth bared, hands reflexing with the urge to rip him apart.
That would never happen. That would never happen.
Grim insisted on celebrating the occasion the way he always does: with drinks. I wasn’t about to complain.
He whirled me away to yet another bar that did space-themed cocktails while actual footage of space played around you in a broad spectacle. The bar, designed to look like the revolving endcap beneath a giant space station, was outfitted with large dome shielding, displaying an elliptical galaxy full of etiolated young stars known as the Asamotah Cluster. The screen zoomed in to show the ever-changing surface of a small hydrogen-helium gas-giant. The debris from shattered moons had given it an extensive ring system, like a soot-black belt. We watched as fast-forward footage showed the heat of a nearby star slowly blasting the gas-giant’s atmosphere away. By the fifth round, I called it a night on the drinks, not in the mood to carry Grim home after last night’s incident. It was a wonder he could even stand after how much he’d drunk.
Kowalski was right about the stormtech blooming, as we found out on the return trip. There were more skinnies wheezing in the alleyways, coughing as they shielded themselves from leaking pipes. Scratching furiously at scabs and wounds as they rifled through the trash for a hit. Twitching under bundles of rags. There was a woman with sunken eyes wrestling with a protesting sweeperbot, trying to claw the bags back in hopes
