Ambient (20 page)

"Shameless," Avalon panted, "what the fuck-"

A fellow in the apartment had hung another one from the ceiling; the dangler was draped in chains and resembled a chandelier.
The fellow standing flogged merrily away with a long braided
whip. He looked up, hearing Avalon's voice. Distracted from the
moment's heat, he turned and ran toward us.

"We're bigger than he is," she said as we ran up the stairs.

"I don't care," I answered, crashing against the door that led
to the roof; it fell away. We lost him, a few buildings over. We
missed the roof's weak spots as we ran; he stepped onto a sag.
The sound of crashing reached our ears as he plummeted through
the floors. Slowing our pace, we made our way along. With short
leaps at appropriate intervals, we reached the other side of the
block.

"Down that fire escape," I said. "Be careful."

We climbed down, Avalon going first.

"What street is this?" Avalon shouted up to me.

"Avenue B," I said.

"This thing keeps shaking," she said, clutching the railing.

"We're lucky it's here," I yelled back. Fire escapes hadn't
been required for years, having been long ago ruled an infringement on the rights of property owners; when old originals were
scavenged, they were never replaced. Rusted support bolts pulled
from the crumbling wall with our every step. "Throw yourself
out of the way if it goes down."

The fire escape shook like a Vibrabed; a rumble-the sound of
bees aswarm, and nearing-grew louder. When we reached the
second floor landing we discovered that someone had borrowed
the ladder to the ground. The fire escape kept moving even after
we had stopped, and from its shuddering bones rose an unpleasant creak.

"Jump," I said.

"Where?"

"Garbage," I said, hurtling over the rail; Avalon wasn't far
behind. We just hit the stack of bags at which we'd aimed.

"You all right?" she asked as she stood up.

"Yeah," I said. "We need a plan-"

"Look out!" she screamed, throwing herself across me; we hit
the ground again. In my confusion I marveled at her passion's
wildness; then her true motive showed. The fire escape, weak ened by our prancing, dropped from the building, bringing half
the structure's facade down with it; I was reminded of vids showing icebergs breaking away from glaciers in the cold south seas.
Screams filled the air as the innocent were crushed. We were
showered only with brick dust; for long moments we lay there,
attempting to recover.

"You still all right?" she asked.

"Barely," I said. "How about you?"

"Great," she said, coughing and brushing dust away. "Fucking great. You were saying-"

"A plan," I repeated, rising. Uninjured passerbys were at work
pulling the shoes from the feet sticking out of the bricks and iron.

"What?"

"We've got to act nonchalant," I said.

"Nonchalant," she said, pointing down the street. The black
Redstar turned the corner onto B, entering the narrow street's
heavy traffic.

"Follow my lead," I said, taking her hand. An old man with
a bag of candy bars attempted to sell us one as we passed. We
stepped beside a food wagon; a woman there sold lumps of akee
and chunks of ice soaked in coconut milk.

"That's our only choice?"

"It'll have to do. Let's go." We edged between a fruit cart
and a peddler hawking wallet-sized calculators.

"Looking nonchalant," said Avalon. The Redstar came closer.

"Naturally," I said, "But be ready for anyth-"

The grenade fired from the Redstar hit the woman's cart; coconut ice fell from the sky like hail.

"Move!" I yelled, and we ran up the street; a block ahead, a
cab had paused, stalled by the passage of people walking across.
At once I saw what to do and nodded to Avalon; she'd already
seen. She ran around; hopped into the front passenger seat. I
rushed over, opening the driver's door.

"Sorry," I said, heaving him into the street. Another missile shot past us, hitting a restaurant across the way. I was sure that
this bunch had to be Home Army undercover, for their aim was
so bad. As I sat behind the wheel, it occurred to me that there
might be a problem, but I had no time to fret. The cab was an
ancient overdubbed Mustang with what I thought was a shift and
clutch-driving was something I never had to do in my daily
work.

"Get outta here, Shamey-" Avalon shouted. I judged that if
I worked the pedals like a bicycle's we might move, and so began
jerking the cab ahead. Lurch, jump, stop; lurch, jump, stop. By
accident I slipped the shift into the right gear and we took off.
Another blast sounded behind us. The path ahead was reasonably
clear; the crowd scrambled to get out of our way.

"Come on. O'Malley, drive!" Looking in the rearview I saw
the boys coming furious-fast in their Redstar.

"I'm trying," I mumbled, attempting to shift into another gear;
the car's engine groaned, and we swerved into a clump of peds
that hadn't yet found security, bowling them over; it didn't seem
wise for us to stop and offer apology. At Eighth Street I turned
left; our car wasn't picking up speed.

"You know how to drive a shift?" Avalon asked, calmly.

"I've watched Jimmy," I said.

"The limo's automatic."

I pulled, by accident, onto the sidewalk, avoiding a ditch, and
we smashed through a cluster of street vendors, scattering their
wares. We almost stalled; awful grinding noises came from the
shift as I tried to force it into place.

"You know how to drive?" Avalon asked.

"Sort of-"

"E!" She reached out, grabbing the shift knob. "Move over,"
she said, scooting over, taking the wheel. "Get," she said, lifting herself past me. "I can't drive sittin' in your lap." I pulled
myself over to the passenger side. In admiration I watched her
rush through the gears.

"They still back there?" she asked; we took off through the
old park and then down Ninth as if we'd been kicked.

I looked. "Forty back," I said. "They're crossing the avenue. "

"What avenue?"

"A. The exit's at Third and Fourteenth. Let's break and fly
uptown. "

"Why?"

"They won't shoot at us in Secondary Zones," I said. "I hope."

We reached Third in a matter of minutes. She cut right overfast, bumping over a shallow excavation, skidding onto the sidewalk, then pulled the car back into the street. A kid stepped into
our path, pulling his box behind him on a wagon of rude construction. We didn't hit him but we did hit his box, scattering the
components. Speakers and knobs rained onto the sidewalks. I felt
sorry for him, remembering the box I'd had as a child; it took me
two years to steal all the parts.

"When we get up there," I said, "drive onto the sidewalk.
It'll be easier to get through the ped turnstiles and they aren't that
well built. There should be room enough."

"There'd better be," she said."Duck under the dash."

We were going forty or so, approaching the barricade. As I
dove to the floor I saw the Army boys raise their rifles; massive
steel plates sprouted from the street's roadbed, looking like flowers blooming. Avalon held tight to the bottom half of the wheel
as she slid down in the seat, keeping her foot full on the gas. The
windshield shattered under fire as we hit the turnstiles; we kept
going.

"Keep going straight," I shouted. I rose and looked behind
us. No one fired at our pursuers; they rolled down the IA lane as
if going to a funeral.

"Shit," Avalon said, slowing as traffic thickened. "I don't
know how Jimmy does it."

Traffic was quite heavy in the Murray/Gramercy Secondary Zone, and we had to go much more slowly. We'd gained enough
distance to have left the Redstar ten lengths or so behind. She
pulled the cab ahead as she could, scraping along, stopping two
or three times in every block; our followers, luckily, had to do
the same. It seemed safer, just then, to stay in the car and not
stop to run for it.

"Something burning?" I asked sniffing the air.

"The car," she said. "Musta knocked something loose when
we crashed through. We gotta do something quick."

Wispy smoke drifted from beneath the hood as we passed Thirtyfourth. Our stalkers neared and attempted to pull closer to us; an
Entenmann's van blocked their approach. They were so near that
I thought I might be able to size them onceover better. I was more
than surprised to see one of the lads ready his bazooka.

"Floor it," I shouted. Avalon roared ahead, pushing through
a break in traffic; the van that saved us shattered as it blew, spraying dessert fragments blockwide.

"I thought you said they wouldn't shoot at us up here."

"They're not supposed to."

Avalon pulled in front of another cab, cutting it off. "Culo!"
the cabbie shouted as we passed. "Fuckin' asshole!" Speeding
up, he rammed against our side with his cab.

"Fuck off!" Avalon yelled back, slamming back against him.
The smoke coming from our engine grew darker, and richer. The
boys behind us fired again, blasting the attack cab.

"They're going to get us, next-"

"Maybe not," she said. "Look." After Thirty-seventh Street,
Third Avenue had been closed to traffic; there seemed to have
been a blast from a different source. Glass rang like wind chimes
as it showered the street from above; black smoke billowed from
what had been the penthouse of Conbroco. Strikes were common
enough in Secondary Zones; this event was no more than a hiccup, and the blockades were haphazard.

"We can get through, I think."

"I got an idea," she said, breaking the police barriers. "I saw
it in a movie, once."

"What movie?"

"Robert Mitchum was in it. Drug runnin', I think. Out in Kentucky or Tennessee somewhere. "

Cutting the wheel, she simultaneously stepped on the emergency brake. It might have been a good idea had we been driving
a different car. We spun in a tight circle in the middle of Third; I
knew how Crazy Lola must have felt. Following our whirl, I
judged that the plan was to take off in the opposite direction, but
when she hit the gas once more we slipped into reverse.

"Hold on," she shouted, shaking the gearshift; it wobbled
loosely, as if unattached. Shooting backward at twenty per,
smashing the barriers at the far end of the blast zone, we entered
traffic less heavy than that through which we had previously driven,
coming to rest against a storefront on the west side of the avenue.
The boys in the Redstar sighted and sped toward us, apparently
certain that head-on would do us fine.

"O'Malley, "she screamed, seeing them near, "get out."

"The door's stuck," I replied, pushing. She started shoving
me as I shoved at the door. I looked up. A Fun City tour bus
filled with business travelers (required by their employers in the
outback to see New York and be grateful) turned a corner, blocking us off as it paused to let traffic move ahead. The Redstar-a
solid, plated vehicle-struck the bus broad. The bus tipped slowly
toward us; the passengers within surely wondered if this was part
of the tour.

"Got it," I said, feeling as if I had broken my shoulder. The
door swung open; we fell out. The store against which we'd crashed
was some sort of booty; we pulled ourselves inside, finding that
the gates were open and the entrance unlocked. The bus fell onto
our cab; a clerk within the store leapt forward, pressing a button
to raise the store's steel shield. There was time enough for it to
rise halfway before the vehicles blew.

We were flung to the far end of the shop, sailing down the side
aisle's floor as if on a slide. The shield fell inward; the store's
fixtures tumbled. The blast's wind spread the fire throughout the
front half of the establishment; sprinklers showered water over us
as the alarms rang. We suffered nothing more disabling than lacerations and minor burns. Opening my eyes I vizzed what at first
I took to be the crushed plaster chest of a mannequin. A charred
I CI Love New York banner was wrapped around her waist.

One clerk survived, emerging stealthily from behind the former checkout. He looked at us through the black smoke and hazy
rain. Forget your receipt, the register repeated. Don't forget. Your
receipt.-

As we ran out onto Forty-first Street, a fresh Redstar turned
the corner toward us.

"Well?" she said. "Now?"

"In here," I said, rushing across the street as I took her hand,
dashing between cars. "Quick."

At Third and Forty-first was a grand old hotel built in pre-Ebb
heyday. Its mirrored skin shone scarred gilt; raw plywood covered half the windows. A sign near the lobby entrance announced
the arrival of the Beach Boys for one week in the Metrolounge. I
suspected we could avoid our latest fans by cutting through the
lobby. We flashed the guards-pox-scarred fourteen-year-oldsour IA cards and were allowed in; we maneuvered into the atrium.

"Should we run?" she whispered.

"No," I said. "Those guards are paid to suspect. The little
bastards all use superstars." I referred to the razoredge pentagrams they tossed to deter. "Look as if we're meeting someone."

"Here?"

Judging from the crowd the place remained popular. Eighty
tons of marble covered the atrium walls; graffiti intensified the
stone's natural patterns, close to the floor, where inscribers needed
not to stretch that they might scrawl and carve. The twenty-story
escalators-none working-resembled girders dropped acciden tally from above; the hanging gardens had hung and gone to dust;
colored lights made cheery the trash clogging the fountains. Pigeons fluttered through the atrium's free air and caucused on the
floor; their guano whitened the balconies. Vidiac played over half
the monitors; on the others, the images rolled and flapped as if
for art's sake.

"Business trade stay here, probably," I said, peering about.

"Let's get out of here, Shameless."

"There's probably an exit this way. Let's check."