Give my regards to any of the old gang you still see.?
?Of course.?
?And fall downstairs and break your neck while you?re doing it. The next time I drop in, I?d love to see you in a persistently vegetative state.?
?Felix!? I walked out on that tone of reproach?identical to the one I?d walked in on. I didn?t want to see the expression that went with it.
What I did see, on my way back to the guard post, was one of those alarm points with its sternly worded notice. It gave me an idea that was hard to resist. I smashed the glass with my elbow and hit the button. A deep, two-tone
There was. Turning into it, I saw a whole lot of people running toward me, some of them in the dark blue uniforms of the security staff. I braced myself, but they ran on past me without giving me so much as a glance. A second wave followed a hundred yards farther on, and then I turned into a short side corridor with just the one door at the end of it.
It was locked. I hammered on it and yelled ?Open up!? as loud as I could over the continued mad-cow mooing of the alarm. There was the sound of a bolt drawing back, and a surprised face appeared in the gap as the door was pulled open. It was another man in uniform, two inches taller than me and a lot heavier.
?She?s got to be moved,? I shouted, pointing past him into the ward.
?Moved?? He looked surprised and alarmed. He didn?t budge out of my way, though: he wasn?t going to buy the bridge without looking over the design sketches. ?Where to? What?s going on??
?Out into the yard. There?s a fire.?
He looked less convinced than ever. ?A fire? That?s the breach alarm, not the??
Enough is enough. I brought my knee up into his stomach, and then as he went down I spun on my heel and gave him a roundhouse punch behind the ear that laid him out on the floor. There was a fire extinguisher in a niche to the right of the door. I hooked it out and held it ready in case he got up again, but for now he was in dreamland. I felt a little bad about it, because he was only doing his job, but on the other hand, anyone who sticks around in Jenna-Jane?s company on the basis of that excuse has got to be skating on ice so thin you could melt it with your breath.
I pulled him inside and closed the door, after glancing back up the corridor and finding to my relief that it was empty. It wouldn?t be for long.
Rosie grinned when she saw me?a lazy, wicked grin.
?Felix Castor,? she said. ?I had a dream that we were married.?
?I?d give you a dog?s life, Rosie. I?m not domesticated.?
?Ah, but in the dream, I was the man and you were the woman.?
?It would still hold. I?d whore around. I know my own weaknesses.?
I pulled a chair up next to her bedside. The body she was wearing right now was a new one on me, but that wasn?t surprising; like I said, it had been a while. It was a young lad with dark, curly hair and a volcanic spill of acne across his left cheek. He was fully dressed, lying on top of the covers: maybe on some level he was listening in on the conversation, but Rosie was in the driving seat. She usually is.
I reversed the chair so that I could rest my arms on the back of it as I sat. ?That?s probably where the dream came from,? I said, indicating her body with a nod of my head. ?You?re cross- dressing again, you dirty mare.?
Rosie was still grinning: my visit seemed to have really cheered her up. Or maybe it was the bellowing alarms and what she?d seen of the fight at the door. After seven years in this place, she relished anything that was a break from routine. ?I like the boys best,? she confided to me. ?I stroke them, sometimes, to see if I can make their manhoods stand.? She sighed wistfully. ?But it?s like trying to tickle yourself with your own fingers: it never quite works, somehow.?
?I wish I?d met you when you had a body, Rosie.?
?So do I, my love, so do I. There was treasure there, and I?d have given you a charter to keep all you found.?
?Rosie, I set the alarms off so I could have a quick word with you. Jenna-Jane was trying to keep me out.?
?The noisome bitch!?
?Couldn?t have put it better myself. And the clock is ticking: when she twigs that it was me, which will be in about half a minute, she?s going to be in here with all guns blazing.?
?You?d better be brief then, Felix.?
?I will. I?m looking for another friend of yours?Dennis Peace.?
She frowned. ?Ah, Dennis,? she said. ?The wildest of my boys. He?ll do himself a mischief someday, if he hasn?t already.?
?When was he here last, Rosie??
?A few days ago. Sunday, perhaps, or Monday. He told me that it might be a long while before I saw him again, but that I wasn?t to worry. He had things to do. Debts, he said, that had to be paid, and some of them were bad ones that had to be paid with blood rather than with money. But he knew what he was doing, and he was safe.?
?Safe where??
Rosie looked at me strangely, out of the young man?s eyes. ?What?s your interest in knowing, Fix? You?re not one of those he needs to pay out, are you? I?d hate for the two of you to fight.?
?I?m not looking to fight him,? I assured her. ?But I do need to talk to him. I?m in almost as much trouble as he is, and my trouble is tied up with his in a lot of complicated ways. Maybe we can help each other. Maybe we?ll just swap information and go our separate ways.?
She was silent for a long time. ?I don?t know where he is,? she said at last, and my heart sank. Then she held up a finger as if she was asking me to wait. ?Not in so many words. But he said??
There was a loud bang from behind me. Turning my head, I saw Jenna-Jane and three guards standing just inside the doorway. ?Remove him,? Jenna-Jane snapped, and the guards squared their shoulders as they advanced on me. There was no point in making a fight of it: they would have folded me into a paper plane.
Rosie brought her mouth up close to my ear. ?He said he was staying with Mr. Steiner,? she whispered quickly, just as their hands clamped down on my shoulders and hauled me backward off the chair. They spun me round to face J.J., who was staring at me with an expression of baffled sadness.
?You?ve really disappointed me, Felix,? she told me.
?J.J.,? I said, ?you?re only saying that to make me feel good.?
One of the guards punched me in the stomach to show willing, and as I doubled up on a painful whoof of air, Jenna-Jane chided him as gently as she?d chided me. ?No violence,? she said. ?This is a place of civilized discourse. Just show him out, and bring me the tapes from this session, when they?re changed. I want to know what they were talking about. I?m sorry you were disturbed, Rosie.?
?It was all rather exciting,? said Rosie. ?Come again soon, Fix.?
?I?m afraid Mr. Castor isn?t in our good books anymore. It?s not likely he?ll be back.?
?Count on it, Rosie,? I wheezed.
The guards gave me a bit more civilized discourse on the way to the front door, but nothing that would leave any marks.
As I walked, a little shakily, back to the car I played Rosie?s words over in my mind.
And maybe?you?ll have to pardon the expression?I could kill two birds with one stone.
Fifteen
WHAT DO I LOOK LIKE?? NICKY DEMANDED, THROWING out his arms indignantly. ?A fucking flophouse? Beds for all, extra blankets on request??
?It?ll just be for a day or two, Nicky. Maybe less than that. She could just wake up of her own accord, anytime, and walk out of here.?
?Take your demon slut somewhere else, Castor. You already fucked my life up more than enough for one week.?
We were in the main auditorium of the cinema, where Nicky keeps the pump and the generator for his air-conditioning rig. I?ve never been able to work out the intricacies of his power-swapping and volt-laundering, but somehow he manages to keep about a thousand cubic meters at a well- chilled four degrees Celsius without making a needle tremble anywhere in the whole national grid. I think there?s a hamster in a wheel somewhere, running its little heart out.
But tonight there was some kind of a hiccup somewhere in the system, and Nicky was on his back underneath the pump mechanism tending to its innards with a wrench and an oxyacetylene torch. The torch looked like a frilled lizard, because Nicky had fitted a reflective collar to its neck to minimize the heat splashing back against his body as he worked. He was fresh from Imelda?s healing hands, but still?a degree or two here and there, it all added up in the end in terms of life expectancy. Life-after-death expectancy, I should say.
I tried a different tack. ?Look, she can probably afford to pay you. Let?s say a hundred a night. I?ll get her to settle up as
