motorbike putted by, mom, dad, three kids and a baby heaped on top.
We looked at one another, the same questioning faces all around. Now what?
We turned right-why the fuck not? — and passed in front of a market, blue tarps stretched over tables of piled fruit and spice. Chickens and ’guanas squawked inside cages hanging above butcher blocks. I recognized the market from some of Mota’s pictures. He’d spent a lot of time here.
“You need a guide?” I looked down at the voice. A young girl, ten, maybe twelve, pinned-back hair, grunge- stained pants, jellies on her feet with dirt-blackened toes poking through the cracked plastic.
“You know an offworlder with long hair? Says he’s a doctor.”
She put a finger on her cheek, drew a circle. “Snakes?”
I nodded.
“He has a clinic in the jungle. He comes into town sometimes. I can take you.”
Just at that moment, an older boy came out from the market and stepped in front of her. “I know the way. Half hour on foot.”
The girl slipped around him, wedged herself between us. “I saw them first!”
He grabbed her by the shoulders and tossed her to the side. “Come, I’ll take you.”
She threw a punch, fist bouncing off his arm, her follow-up swing catching him in the ribs.
I liked her already.
“Cut it out.” He geared up to give her another shove.
I put my hand on his shoulder. “She asked us first.”
“But-”
I squeezed down, fingers digging in, words slowing. “We have our guide.”
He backed up and ducked out of my grasp. “Don’t fucking touch me!”
I took an aggressive step his way, and he darted off.
The girl stood tall, posture proudly erect. “Are you cops?”
Were we that obvious? “Why do you think that?”
“Some cops from Koba come to visit the doctor a lot.”
“Do you know their names?”
“No, but one of them has a big scar.” She drew a line across her forehead.
Wu.
“How many cops?”
“There’s the one with the scar, and then there’s the bald one with the same snake tattoo. And sometimes they come with a captain.”
Wu. Froelich. Mota.
“What do they do here?”
“They go out to the doctor’s to get a cask they take home to Koba.”
“What kind of cask? The kind they put brandy in?”
She nodded.
“Do you know what’s inside these casks?”
“No.”
“So how do we get to the doctor’s clinic?”
“If you want to pay for a car, we can drive halfway, but the hills get too steep after that. Too muddy after it rains. Or we can walk the whole thing.”
I exchanged glances with my traveling partners.
Maggie bent down to the girl’s eye level. “What’s your name?”
“Evangeline, but everybody calls me Evie.”
“Okay, Evie, I think we’d rather walk. It’ll do us good after that boat ride.” She didn’t mention that we wanted to make a silent approach. Our goal was simple: figure out what the hell was going on up here and go home. No confrontation. Not here.
Evie started down the street, and we fell in line-me in back-keeping to the narrow channels between puddles and clumpy mud. I took a look over my shoulder and scanned the sparsely lit street for a panama hat. This was his turf.
Warlord territory.
We strode past food counters and refurbed tech shops, a clothing store with broken mannequins in the window, amputees sporting sundresses. Somebody called to us. I spotted him up ahead, sitting on a tire, trying to wave us down: a beggar in rags.
I looked away. If you don’t want to give, you don’t make eye contact.
I heard him call again and chanced another glance his way. He was off the tire now, crab-walking. Something wasn’t right about him, the way he moved, crawling backward, his head twisted uncomfortably around so he could see where he was going. Curiosity got the better of me. I stopped and pulled a bill from my pocket and waited for him, his out-of-whack crab-walk striking a freaky chord inside me.
He came closer, his bare feet too short, toes too long. What the fuck? Hands. I realized they were hands.
I bent over and held out the money, waiting for one of his four hands to come off the ground and take it. Something snaked around the bill, wrapped it up tight and pulled it from my fingers. I jumped back, heart kicking. What the hell was that?
He smiled and laughed softly as he crabbed away, the money held up high with his tail.
“Juno,” Deluski called. “You better get up here.”
My legs obeyed and started moving to catch up, my gaze slow to unlock from the beggar. What are you?
I stumbled over a clod of mud and forced my attention forward. Evie was standing next to another young boy with a lase-rifle hanging across his chest. Maggie and Deluski faced them, Maggie digging into her wallet. “He wants money.”
“Who is he?”
Evie said, “You have to pay to leave town to the north.”
The kid waited with crossed arms, one elbow resting on the weapon’s butt, the other on the barrel. His shirtsleeves were cut off, a scar tattoo of the letter Z raised on his arm, the scar tissue too perfectly lined to be made by anything other than a branding iron. I looked left, through the open window of a dance hall. Music played loudly, and a dozen armed boys sat at long tables with longer stares.
A pair of boys not much older than Evie came out squaring berets on their heads. General Z’s soldiers. They joined ranks with the first boy.
Maggie handed the kid a bill. He looked at the denomination and shook his head. Maggie added a second. And a third. He still shook his head.
Maggie pulled out yet another bill but Evie stopped her. “That’s enough.”
The soldier boy stayed where he was. Hand out. Waiting for more. Evie took his hand, closed his fingers around the money, and told him to quit. She put her hands on his hip and pushed. He resisted with a straight face and rigid body. She drove with her legs until he finally tipped. He caught his balance and swung the gun around. “I want more money!”
We froze. Maggie, Deluski, and I were caught in the sights of a pubescent punk playing soldier.
Evie took Maggie’s hand and told her to come. “You paid enough. He’s just playin’.”
Didn’t look like he was playing.
Evie pulled Maggie’s arm, “C’mon.” Maggie took a tentative step, and another, me and Deluski following in her cautious footsteps. I felt an uneasy sickness in my chest. We were foreigners here. Didn’t know the players, didn’t know the rules. Foreigners.
Another beggar approached, this one a child, a protruding bump under his shirt, head shaved bald with some kind of input jack embedded in the center. Christ. Where the fuck were we?
My head swam, anxiety creeping up from my chest and settling around my throat. I pulled the lase-blade handle tucked into my belt, held it tight in my fingers, thumb perched on the button. Deluski paused for a moment to give the kid some money, put it in the kid’s pincer-claw hand.
With my nerves now on razors, I kept moving, eyes bouncing left and right, watching, waiting for the next mind fuck. An occasional truck passed, workers standing upright in the truck bed, their clothes stained from a
