Xenoform (15 page)

‘Thanks.’

Debian waited for Jalan to return, trying to make sense of the situation. He knew the AI could not be looking for him, or he would already be dead. At least, when he thought about it logically, he knew this. The problem was that fear kept trying to creep in, to edge logic out of the way and replace it with panic, and the battle to keep it out was like a physical struggle. Debian stared at the gibberish on the terminal screens as if trying to see the image hidden in a magic eye picture. He wanted to just connect directly and find out what was going on, but of course he dared not do it.

He was relieved when Jalan returned with two packets of crisps and a recyc-burger in a bun. Normally recyc – just the thought of it – made Debian feel sick, but as soon as he held the burger his stomach let out a feral growl and he suddenly found himself desperately hungry. Jalan watched with satisfaction, leaning against the wall, until he was done. Then the barman cleaned Debian’s wound with distilled alcohol, sprayed fleshfoam into the hole and bandaged it up. He stood back, looking moderately pleased.

‘Thanks,’ said Debian, gingerly flexing the leg. ‘Listen, Jalan, what do I owe you for all this? I know it could be dangerous for you, my just being here.’

Jalan’s expression became serious. ‘Unless you have hard money, then I think we had better leave it for now.’

‘Oh damn! Man, I’m sorry, I’m so used to doing everything over the net, I…’ Debian clenched his teeth, frustrated at himself. He felt like screaming. If this situation continued, he would have to rethink a great many of his usual habits.

‘It’s fine. You can owe me, okay, if you ever get out of this.’

Debian shook his head, once again lost for words sufficient to express his gratitude. ‘I owe you big time, Jalan. Big time.’

Jalan waved this away with benevolence. ‘It’s fine. When you leave here, which I would like to be soon now, because I have to open, you can avoid the streets most of the way to Tec’s place.’

‘Really? How so?’

‘In the alley round back there’s a hatch into the sewer. The main branch, right below the hatch, runs south almost all the way there. It’s only a couple of miles.’

‘A couple of miles in the sewer,’ repeated Debian, filled with new dread. He could not imagine how Jalan had gained a working knowledge of the local sewer system and didn’t ask.

‘Or if you think the street is safe…’

‘No, okay, the sewer it is.’

‘Good man,’ said Jalan, a little too happily. ‘And good luck.’

‘Thank you,’ said Debian, rising carefully to his feet. With the pressure of the bandage on it and the anaesthetic effect of the fleshfoam, the bullet wound in his leg was feeling a lot better. He paced up and down experimentally, limping only slightly. ‘Bye, then, Jalan.’

Debian tried to shake Jalan’s hand but the barman waved him away saying, ‘Just be careful, young man. I don’t know who or what you are mixed up with, but it sounds bad. Frankly, I don’t want to know. If there really is something seriously wrong in the net, I guess we’ll all know soon enough.’

Debian withdrew his hand slowly, guiltily. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I guess we will.’ With that, he turned and left. Jalan didn’t show him out.

The city outside felt hostile and alien – a jungle in which predators lurked unseen at every corner. He reached a dirty cloth from a bin beside the door, almost amused to see that it was one of Jalan’s expired glass-rags, and wrapped it round his head and mouth, leaving only his eyes and nose uncovered. The stink of the thing was revolting, but it hid his features, albeit it in a slightly suspicious way. Of course, if the beast had seen him do this through a spy-fly, a camera somewhere, a satellite, a robot or whatever then it was as good as pointless. If it chose to inform Hex’s people then he was a goner. Trying not to dwell on this, he made off into the dismal day. Perhaps the enemy would not attack him again out in the open. Perhaps in public, and not seclusion, was actually the safest place. Or maybe he was just trying to think of an excuse to avoid the dreaded sewer journey. He hurried as best he could on his injured leg down the alley that ran alongside the Sunken Chest. Muffled sounds of violence came drifting from a window nearby like snatches of cacophonous music. A man and a woman were shouting, glass was smashing somewhere.

Debian hurried on down the alley, his bare feet splashing through thick and slimy puddles. He ducked under a small bridge that stretched between the first floors of two opposing buildings and, out of the rain for a moment, he took the paper from his pocket and re-read the print on it: TEC, UNIT 13A MOLDER JACKSON COMPLEX, STEVENS STREET. 61619.9.87220.12.33T. An actual address and a less useful net address. Stevens Street. That was in the old Stevens Industrial Estate, a sprawling, run-down warren of factory units mostly disused since the manufacturing crash several decades before. In the southern reaches of the Undercity, due south, as Jalan had said.

‘What’s up, freak?’ demanded a female voice. Debian jumped, almost dropping the paper. He looked up at a soaking-wet young woman wearing a tiny outfit of matt-black plastic that barely contained her huge, modified breasts. She was standing only a few metres away staring aggressively into Debian’s face. The rain dripped from her large golden lip-ring. Her features, though not completely unattractive, looked prematurely aged from drugs or malnutrition. Atop her head was a startling array of small, rotating satellite dishes. She stood and stared at him, awaiting an answer. Debian was aware that he must indeed look like a moderately serious weirdo.

‘I was just going,’ he said, stowing the paper again.

‘That’s what you fucking think,’ she said and brought a large steel kitchen knife out from behind her back. ‘Give me all your money!’

Debian was exasperated more than afraid and frankly he could have punched her. Like he needed this, now! ‘Do I look as if I’ve got any money on me?’

‘You better had have,’ she assured him, moving closer.

‘Look – either you can take your toy knife and piss off back into whatever malfunctioning nanovat you slithered out of, or you can have seven shades kicked out of you by a guy who’s already been shot once in the last twenty-four hours, chased by assassins, mind-raped by the internet, dropped out of a window and then thoroughly bloody drenched. Let me tell you, that guy is way beyond the point of giving a shit.’ He thought this speech had come off pretty well, considering, and he waited for its effect to filter through, his ridiculously wrapped head held high.

The young woman visibly deflated. ‘Fucking loser,’ she mumbled, and wandered slowly away, swishing and slashing at the air with the knife in a slightly depressed manner. Debian was immeasurably glad to see her go.

He tried to get his train of thought back on track. Stevens Industrial Estate. He looked up and around himself, hopelessly searching for some sort of alternative route. Climb over the rooftops? Certainly most of them were close enough together to jump between, but how would he get up there? And he would inevitably pass through areas where there were no scrambler-baits and be spotted by spy-flies. Maybe he actually would be safe in public, though.
Yeah, except for that one time when they already tried to kill me in a crowded street. Wasn’t safe then
. He had stayed below the radar all these years by being unseen and so far it had kept him safe. So if not up, then down it would have to be.

He began to hunt around the alley, smashing bins and rotting boxes aside. After five minutes he found it: A small metal hatch in the ground, surely the one that Jalan had referred to, which would lead him into the sewers, the excretory system of the city. It would take him away from here, away from the prying eyes of enemies. There must be almost no cameras at all in the sewers, and no spy-flies. Were there any people down there? He doubted it, thought that the average citizen pretty much stayed out of the sewers.

Debian wiggled his fingers under the lip of the hatch, painfully tearing a nail. The hatch was either very heavy, or his strength was failing, or both. It seemed to take a long time to heave it aside so he could peer into the small opening. His night vision showed a long, rusty ladder leading down into cold darkness. He carefully swung his injured leg into the hole so that it stood upon the first rung and stepped fully onto the ladder. The bad leg throbbed, but held his weight. South. He could follow the compass readout on his HUD. Half expecting the young woman with the knife to return and catch him at this vulnerable moment, Debian climbed several rungs down the ladder until only his rag-wrapped head protruded. He could not imagine how he would look were a passer-by to happen upon him at this point. The sighting would probably spawn rumours of a tribe of desperate sewer-people, eking out a fringe existence below the city streets, emerging only to snatch children for their cooking pots. He actually laughed a little at this as he reached up to drag the heavy metal plate back into place above his head. He was careful not to let it crush his fingers as it dropped into place, but the sudden release of weight unbalanced him and he almost fell. He clutched at the wet ladder, the surface of which was sharp with thick flakes of rust, and held on for his life, with his cheek pressed against its pitted surface. He waited until his heart rate had returned to something like normal and then began to descend.

Tec, 13A Molder Jackson Complex, Stevens Street. South. Only a few miles.
Yeah
, he reminded himself,
a few miles of sewer. And who knows what’s down here, really
? He didn’t know exactly what he would or could do with access to a lab. Dare he connect to the net, even with help? How could he even pay for that help? This Tec would want paying for such a risky venture, if he would assist at all. So much uncertainty, but Debian was grateful that he had somewhere to go, something to do, and that meant that all hope was not yet lost. The rungs of the ladder crunched and crumbled as he gripped them, but they held beneath his hands and Debian continued to descend – deeper and deeper below the living streets, further and further from his normal life.

Maory relaxed as far back into the driver’s seat as possible, refusing to give in to frustration. He laced his fingers behind his head, just below the point from which the DNI cable emerged. In the back the kids were bouncing in their seats, pushing and teasing each other. Perrin was attempting to tickle his sister with a bright feather that had been shed by some toy or other. Lissa, in return, was aiming a novelty stench-ray into her brother’s face, seeking a nostril or open mouth. Perrin, the elder of the two, was deftly avoiding the stench-ray while keeping up the feather-assault unremittingly. In the front passenger seat Maory’s wife Emily sat dead-eyed, nursing her temples with her head against the window. What could you do but try to shut it out?

The traffic inched forward again, so slowly that Maory let the pod just drive itself. He closed his eyes and hummed a Sharky Dave song under his breath but the chattering of the children’s high voices kept creeping in.

‘Are we nearly there yet, Dad?’ asked Lissa, leaning forward so that she could virtually shout this query into Maory’s ear.

Maory jumped. ‘Lissa, we aren’t even out of the city yet. You know where we are. Look.’ He pointed to the right, across the sea of stock-still gravpods, to where a vast crystalline dome sparkled in the dim sunlight. ‘That’s the Museum of Nano and Bio Technology. You’ve been there a bunch of times.’

Lissa’s face fell in a way that would have been comic to someone who didn’t understand the depth of the childish emotion that lay behind it. ‘
Ohhh...
Will we be there
soon
?’

‘Honey, at this rate we won’t even be at the clock tower soon. I don’t know what we’re all waiting for, but it seems we’re stuck here for now. We’ll just have to sit it out, I guess.’

Lissa retreated into the back again, her lip stuck out churlishly. Perrin leapt on her and resumed the tickle-torture. Lissa squealed in an absurdly high register. Emily winced visibly and snapped, ‘Perrin, leave her alone. Can’t you guys just get on with each other, please? Play a game together or something.’ She shot a dark look at Maory, who sighed resignedly.

The jam of gravpods packed the roadway, bright and dense as a coral reef. Maory could see the drivers of neighbouring pods lolling unhappily in their vehicles. One fat be-suited man in an expensive Suducci actually appeared to be asleep in his seat. Presumably he was a meathead, or the pod would have woken him up. No gravpod would drive itself with a sleeping operator. As soon as enough space became available ahead of the Suducci, a driver from the next lane obligingly filled it with her own vehicle.

The traffic continued to move with geological slowness. The sky began to darken, the certainty of later rain like a secret it longed to tell. A gyrocopter passed low over the traffic jam with holo-cameras jutting like multiple proboscises from its lumpy shell. It shredded the air in great chunks, swooping precisely over the sea of waiting vehicles, stopping to record here and there, and then away towards the scaffold-towers of Central Broadcast. Maory began to enter a state close to self-hypnosis. He became aware that he hadn’t even blinked for minutes and shook himself. He was so bored, stuck here waiting. Man, he hated waiting for anything. He glanced across at Emily and saw with mild irritation that she was actually asleep. He wished he could join her. He checked back on the kids and was pleasantly surprised to see that they had taken their mother’s advice and were quietly playing that timeless classic,
I-spy
. The pod inched itself forwards again. Time passed.