Cog (13 page)

“A little,” Chris said.

“Good. If you don’t know it, make something up. They’re always looking for something new, like the Greeks.”

“Greeks?”

“In the Bible, when Paul went to preach in Athens, it was said they were always looking for the latest thing.”

“A piece of advice. Try not to use obscure biblical references with Tuma. You’ll probably just piss him off.”

“You don’t even know Tuma.”

Chris looked at the naked women dancing next to the slot machines on display in the window.

“Just a hunch,” he said.

The doors opened onto a huge casino. People sitting on stools lined the front of the store, their right arms jerking an unseen handle. Their consciousness and bank accounts were connected directly to the House. Play until you ran out of money. Or passed out.

Along the side wall were the mechanical machines where one actually inserted coins. Two elderly men were playing those. Their arm movements were slower than the wiho gamblers, who didn’t need to reach for coins. Topless women and bottomless men crossed the floor, bearing drinks. A garish red, gold, and green rug tied the room together in a nauseating style.

People from all walks of life—or so it seemed—crowded the game tables. Exec types, trap rats, pros, housewives, alkies, pimps, users. Tuma didn’t care. As long as they had a black bottom line and behaved themselves, they were welcome. Some had been customers for years, working for what they could spend there.

They made a left at the craps table and walked up the escalator. The thing hadn’t worked in years. At the top, a guard scanned them for weapons, then motioned them to a pair of double wooden doors. She steeled herself as she took hold of the glass knobs and opened the doors.

A Great Dane chased a naked woman past the doorway, almost bowling Nicholle over. Several people in the right corner lay naked on large pillows, limbs intertwined as they undulated to rhythmic gasps and moans. The dog jumped on the woman, knocking her to the ground. She giggled in delight.

A statue of King David stood in an alcove in silent witness.
Poor David.
Quite a different setting than what his holographic counterpart had. She wondered if she would see her museum again.

A large chandelier, hung with crystals, glowed with a low light in the middle of the room. Tuma sat on a red chaise lounge against the far wall, attended by barely clad women. He was in his male form. His eyes shone orange with diagonal slits for pupils. A mop of purple hair hung across his forehead and swept down his back. His skin had a sallow, yellow tone, which Nicholle feared would look even more yellow in brighter light. She approached him, undaunted by his changed appearance. A slender, forked tongue licked out, toward Nicholle. She drew back in surprise.

“Hello, Tuma. You’ve changed.”

“For the better?” His voice was smooth, sounding both male and female, with the ability to enrapture listeners.

“Depends on your point of view. The tongue is definitely an advantage, though,” she said.

A throaty laugh escaped Tuma, causing his attendants to smile. Sharpened canines glistened. Tuma arose and walked toward her, all six feet five inches of him. He walked like a ballet dancer, graceful for his height. Tight black leather pants and a shirt opened to the waist with a gun stuffed down the front. She wondered if the slit eyes were permanent, but nothing was quite permanent with Tuma. He went through phases, reinventing himself according to the current fashion trends. When she had left him, he’d been in a superhero stage. An overlay of bulky muscles shimmered over his skin, a cape attached to his bare shoulders. Nicholle hadn’t minded the muscles, but the cape had kept getting in the way.

He circled her now, his tongue flicking over her face. She tried not to flinch.

“It’s funny what I can sense with this tongue. Blood pressure, temperature, heart rate. Our friend the snake seems to have an inborn lie detector, at least with some enhancements. So…why are you here?”

Nicholle froze. The swirl in her chest tensed, coiling around her lungs. Two guards flanked Chris, sandwiching him between bulging muscles.

“Like I said, I can help you. Legitimacy. It’s what you’ve always wanted.” She could do it, if she had control of her company, but it’d be difficult. Difficult to get her company back, difficult to legitimize prostitution and drug use. Perhaps a reverse corporate residency in Las Vegas. Anything went there. She’d have to consult with the legal department, once she hired new attorneys. There’d be a housecleaning when she got back.

Think positive
.
Not if
.
When
.

“Just like that?” His tongue licked at her ear, which was strangely erotic, strangely repulsive.

The purple of his hair evoked the scent of lavender; it misted the back of her throat. Fragrance enhanced. She coughed.

“Well, I’d have to consult—”

He cut her off. “Why’d you leave?” The hollow of his neck deepened as his neck muscles stiffened. He towered over her, pressing against her shoulder. This was the crux of the matter, why she left.

“I was taking off the top to pay for my skeemz habit. Krank found out and blackmailed me. But he kept wanting more and more. I was afraid to come to you, and it all finally came crashing down. My brother had blocked my accounts. I owed more than I had, so I went to Wills. He said he’d give me the money if I came in. So I did. Went through detox. Got clean, got a job. Some stuff happened. And here I am.”

“I told Krank to blackmail you.”

His words hit her like raw electricity.

“You did what?”

“I wanted to test you. See how far you’d go in stealing from me.”

She should’ve known. Gangsters like Tuma didn’t stay in business long without knowing who had their hand in the till. Which could be anybody.

“So
you
drove me away.”

“Oh, don’t blame me for your habit. I was just a dumb
bozi
to you.”

“It wasn’t like that.”

She hadn’t wanted the addiction. It had been all part of ‘the life.’ The need to belong drove her to that first hit, that first trip into perfect skeemz reality where wishes were Beemers and everyone rode. Rode the avalanche of kaleidoscopic colors that bent around your inhibitions and detoured suppressed secrets, honing in on harbored desires and suppressed neuron firings. Psychotropic euphoria.

“I guess you were just another addict.”

That hurt. As much as she had done for him. “I was a loyal racker who brought in a hundred k a night and who saved your ass from Lydo. You’d be skinned alive in some back alley pakz house if it weren’t for me.”

“Don’t flatter yourself.” He clicked his thumb and pinky nails together. Things were looking up.

“What I want is respect for my contributions.”

“I thought you wanted help,” Tuma said.

“I deserve both,” she said.

“Cocky, aren’t we?”

“You used to like that.”

“Times change.”

“But people rarely do. The fact that one of your minions hasn’t killed me yet tells me you want something. Something other than what I’m offering.”

Tuma tensed, his jaw muscles flexing. Whenever he wanted something badly, he would click his nails together, and tonight they’d been going like a dominatrix’s whip on a politician’s back.

“You always were clever.” He drew out the last word like a piece of taffy, as if savoring the sound on his lips.

“Maybe we can work something out.”

“Maybe you can give me a bill and I’ll think about it.”

Ribbons of queasiness fluttered in her chest and a sensation of weightlessness came over her. She would have to lie her way out of that one.

“Tuma. The company’s going through hard times right now. Most of my cash is tied up in investments. I can’t float a bill…yet. Soon, though.” She’d be more than happy to forfeit that, and more, if she could get her father back, her company back, out of the clutches of her brother.
Brothers.

“Wait until when?”

“Until—”

“Until you clear your name with the Feds?”

“So. Been keeping up, eh?”

“Yeah, I watch the news now. Mostly to check on my stock. Couldn’t help but notice your face burnt to the verso. Tsk, tsk. Embezzling money.” He lifted a slender finger and waggled it back and forth.

“It wasn’t me. Wills embezzled the money and left town.”

“Oh, yes. I heard he was on the run, too. Must run in the family.”

Red flashed across her vision. She reached out and grabbed Tuma’s gun in the front of his pants. She pressed the weapon to his face. The two guards left Chris’s side and stepped forward.

“Back off! Or the back of his head gets a hole,” Nicholle said.

The guards did as they were told. Tuma began to chuckle.

“Now you’re going to kill me?” he said.

“I just want to talk.”

“We’ve been talking.”

“No, we’ve been bullshitting.” Nicholle forced him over to the chaise lounge and ran her hand along the wood to feel for the button. Top right, under the trim.

The latch to the door behind the chaise clicked open. A shaft of light scalened the floor. She pressed the weapon in Tuma’s throat in the direction of the door, pushing him backward. Once through, she closed and locked the door behind them and retracted the gun.

“Sit down,” she said, motioning toward the swing. Tuma’s sex dungeon resembled a Torquemada confessional room, replete with cages, spanking horses, bondage tables, whipping racks, slings, bars, and a table spread with catheters, enema equipment, and neck braces—tools of a medical fetish.

She took up a seat on a bondage table, brushing aside the leather straps. This part of his life she had avoided as much as she could. Pain was not her thing. She hadn’t minded the body sling, though. It had reminded her—in a weird, dark sort of way—of the hammock in her grandmother’s back yard.

Oma.

“What?” she said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“I thought I heard—. Never mind.” Must’ve been her nerves, she thought. “So what is it you want me to do?”

“You remember Lydo.”

“Of course.”

Tuma’s eternal thorn in the side. Lydo led a squad of skeemz writers and rackers on the other side of Baltimore, in Owings Mills. They worked out of the basement of the mall. Nothing like Tuma’s operation, though. They were connected. Really connected. His programmers just sat, wearing fryers, writing skeemz for weeks at a time, their medinites monitoring and patching the effects of inactivity, nourishment forced into them intravenously. They looked like hollowed-out corpses, skin and flesh sagging on their bones, but man, the end product seemed worth it.
Groundbreaking, visionary shit.
Everyone wanted a Lydo skeemz. Best in the business.

“What about him?”

“He’s working on something new. Rumors, yeah, but rumors with teeth and a tail. Rumors I don’t want bitin’ me in the ass down the road.”

Tuma’s business had already taken a hit from Lydo’s skeemz. Why risk disease and even death if you could have a virtual prostitute? Sure, some still liked the danger element of live action, but as skeemz got more sophisticated, more chose to partake.

“So what do you want me to do? Get it from the horse’s mouth, then shut it down?”

“As I said, clever. Should be easy with your skeemz guy. They’re always looking for the latest and greatest.”

“Funny, I said the same about you,” she said.

“Apparently they’re more choosy than I am. If your skeemzer’s on drugs, they won’t take him.”

“Don’t worry.”

“Is that all he is to you? Just a programmer?”

His words took her aback. Sure, they had been lovers, but they always compared notes on other conquests. There wasn’t jealousy between them, at least not before now.

“You’re…concerned about my relationship with Chris?”

“Don’t flatter yourself. You weren’t that good.”

“But better than most. That’s neither here nor there, though.” She switched gears, changing the subject, trying to avoid confrontation. “So how do we get in? Just show up on his doorstep and ring the bell?”

“That’s one way. The other way takes a bit of time, though.”

She thought of her father, languishing in the hospital, about to be euthanized. “Time is something I don’t have.”

“What do you mean?”

She contemplated whether to tell him about her father, Wills, Perim, the company. They had been through thick and thin together, for a while, and he had given her advice in the past. But if there was one thing she had learned, it was not to put all your cards on the table unless you were out of options. So she decided just to tell him about her father.

“Shit. I mean, what a sac job. Uh, I mean, sorry.”

“It’s all right. I know what you meant.”

Tuma started playing with the ring on his left hand, a silver skull biting a dead rat. The rat hung limp between a set of sharpened teeth, blood trickling out in a thin ruby stream, courtesy of solar nanites. He pulled it part way off, then twisted it round and round with his pinky. The skull spun around like an amusement ride, the rat along for the thrill.

“So if I do this for you, you’ll help me?”

“Anything.” His full lips spread into a crescent, but the effort left his eyes untouched.

“Two things,” she said.

“What?”

“First, a mill each, nonnegotiable.”

“That all?” Sarcasm blanketed his voice. “And the other?”

“A sepsis.”

“What kind?”

“As you said, the latest and greatest. Something Lydo’s never seen before, no countermeasures.”

“That can be arranged,” Tuma said. “Anything else?”

“Yeah, but I’ll explain later. Still need to work out a few details.”

He stood up and walked over to where she sat, his body a serpentine arc, gliding as he went. The slow, sinuous movements conveyed dominance and sensuality, the things she remembered most about him. He lifted his hand to her cheek and traced the outline, then paused at her jaw, his palm hovering underneath.

“Ah, the coy Nicholle.” He leaned in close, putting his weight against the edge of the table, between her legs, brushing his lips against her ear. “I missed that,” he whispered. Hot, shallow gasps fluttered down the length of her neck, tickling the hair on her nape. She had to restrain from hunching her shoulders to dispel the tickling sensation.

“Remember when we used to stay in bed all day?” he said.

“Unforgettable.” She tried to sound convincing by catching the sound in the back of her throat, the words barely escaping her lips. Her drug trips were a giddy collection of colors, sounds, and tastes, more so than usual. She barely remembered Tuma during those episodes, never mind any movement beyond lolling her head from side to side.

She leaned back, brought one leg across, and slid off the table, leaving the gun. Now pressed against Tuma, the musky scent of Q3 cologne triggered her flirtatious sensibilities, but she dampened them. There were, however, tendrils of a different scent. Something…off-kilter.

She lifted her chin and placed it on the edge of his shoulder.

“It’s late. I’m going to get some rest before we go to Lydo’s.”