Electric Church

XXI THE MOST LIKELY OUTCOME OF THIS LITTLE ADVENTURE

“I’ve heard of you, you know.”

We walked through London, Gatz in the lead with his sunglasses on despite the rain. South to the crumbling bridge with cracks wide enough to require a few heart-rattling jumps, past the sprawling monument to broken glass and twisted steel railings of what had been Waterloo Station-whatever the fuck that was-and finally into the maze of twisty little streets, all the same. I’d thought I’d cleaned up pretty well, but both Gatz and I were unkempt, unshaven, and unsavory-looking compared to our new friends. Marilyn Harper walked with us, Pushed to follow Gatz and keep her mouth shut. Then me, starting to feel a little under the weather, still unarmed, and with some asshole named Jerry Materiel holding twenty of my yen, gone.

And then, shining like a new penny, Canny Orel, the most famous Gunner in history. Or at least of the last twenty years, which was pretty much the same thing.

He looked famous. He looked rich, fat, and sleek, although he still moved with astonishing speed. His skin was dry and papery, with a pink cast. His hair was white, but expensively cut. His hands were so quick he didn’t bother to hold the gun on me as we walked, and I still didn’t dare fuck with him. There was a lush, sick scent of success hanging around Canny Orel.

“You have?” I said.

“Indeed, mate. Heard a few tidbits. Always sounded to me like you were more lucky than talented. Looks like you stepped in it this time, eh?”

His voice was deep and melodious. It sounded like he was subtly singing everything.

“So, just out of professional courtesy, why are you after my Techie?” I asked.

“Out of professional courtesy, mind your own fucking business,” he said flatly, as if he said it five times a day.

As usual, the city felt deserted. Gatz was smart enough to meander a little, buy some time. I didn’t know what I was going to do, since I was convinced I couldn’t deal with Orel-not without a gun, certainly, and even if I’d been packing something more than my sharp wit I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tackle him.

“Your fucking Techie, Mr. Cates, robbed me blind. I’ve been seeking him out for months,” Orel finally growled. “That little piglet can disappear. Say, I could give you a taste of the recovered yen, maybe, for leading me to him. A finder’s fee, we could call it.”

Honor among thieves, I thought. Orel felt bad about making me give up my own man for execution, and he was trying to smooth my feathers. It made me think maybe I had some small currency with the old man.

“He gave me the impression he was hiding from the SSF.” I kept walking.

Orel snorted derisively. “We’re all hiding from the System Pigs, Cates. Mr. Kieth is hiding from me especially.”

I cleared my throat and tried to keep my voice steady, deciding to take a calculated risk. “I don’t think he’s got any money, Orel.”

There were a few steps in silence, rain pattering softly against my face. Then: “Well, he’s your man, Cates. Perhaps you have some money-”

A thrill went through me as a plan began to coalesce.

“-or maybe I’ll just gut the thieving bastard and sleep better at night. Who’s the twist?”

I looked at Marilyn Harper’s back, my thrill of hope fading a bit. “Vid reporter. Recognized me from someplace.”

“Fucking dilettante,” he spat. “They own fucking everything, but they’re bored. Don’t hire someone who needs a fucking job, just play at it until you move on to something else.” I felt him staring at my back for a few steps. “Awful quiet and cooperative, thanks to your friend there,” he said quietly. “But she’ll have to go.”

I frowned. “We can handle her.” I had no affection for rich girls playing reporter while my friends swam through shit every day trying to feed themselves either, but there was something savage about just shooting someone who got in your way. Something primitive.

“Really? How?”

I kept my eyes on the back of Gatz’s head. “We made her see things our way. Didn’t we, Marilyn?”

After a moment, she nodded stiffly. “Yes.”

“She’s going to film my exploits,” I said brightly. “I’m going to be famous.”

Orel grunted behind me. “It doesn’t look like your man can keep her under his thumb for long, the way he’s sweating. Let’s cut the crap and get to your base, so I can resume negotiations with dear old Ty as soon as possible.”

Gatz started to glance back, and my heart skipped a beat, but Orel gave me a shove.

“Eyes forward, Mr. Gatz. I’d hate to have to kill you, but I wouldn’t lose sleep over it either.”

Orel knew more about us than I liked. At the factory, I tried my last play to save Ty as much grief as possible. The place looked sewed up and deserted as we approached. Feeling the familiar buzz of adrenaline and terror, my back to the man I was pretty sure would be my executioner, I pounded on the front door and shouted. “Kieth! Hey, Kieth, let me in!”

Orel was in motion before I could knock a second time, slamming my head into the door hard enough to knock me on my ass for a few seconds and slipping silently into the building. I spent a few moments profitably staring up into the light rain, until Gatz’s sallow face filled my vision.

“Well, you sure handled that like a superhero, Avery,” Gatz said in a strained monotone, most of his attention bent on keeping Harper under control. A light film of sweat covered his waxy skin.

“Fuck you,” I moaned, sitting up and rubbing my head. “It’s Canny Orel. The man was murdering people when I was nursing. He was an assassin for Saoirse, just before Unification. Trained by the Irish government before it Unified. So cut me a break.”

“If that’s Canny Orel,” Gatz said, helping me to my feet, “I’ll eat your shoes.” The front door of the factory suddenly popped open, and Kieth was pushed roughly out. Orel grinned right behind him.

“Come on in, Cates. I am not without honor. Let’s discuss terms.”

I glared at Kieth, who stared at me with wide, terrified eyes. “Fleeing the SSF, my fucking ass. I should let him kill you for not warning me about this.”

Kieth didn’t say anything. Behind him, Orel held a shining, silver-plated gun in each hand. “Don’t worry, Mr. Cates,” he said. “Kill him I shall. But as I said, we can discuss compensation. Step inside, please.”

I felt feverish. Gatz and I sat with Marilyn Harper on the floor. Milton and Tanner-who had allowed Canny Orel to walk in unopposed-sat near Kieth’s equipment, which hummed and beeped randomly, unsupervised. The Droids, after swarming around in a tizzy of excitement giving Kieth endless reports of intruders in the building, had finally been silenced by the Techie. Orel studied the Monk with obvious perplexity, holding Kieth by the scruff of his neck.

Gatz leaned toward me slightly, his face waxy and yellow. “I can’t hold on to her much longer, Ave.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You’ve got something big cooking here, don’t you?” Orel said cheerfully.

I kept my face blank. “I do. I need Mr. Kieth to do it, too. Maybe we can strike a deal.”

Orel looked at me without moving his head, his eyes just sliding in their sockets. I imagined I could hear his eyes moving-sudden metallic scrapings.

“Mr. Cates, I can’t imagine what deal we could strike. I hired this cocksucker seven months ago on a project of my own. I paid him a significant amount of money. This same cocksucker then bought himself every little toy he’d ever wanted off the black market-most of which I see here-and ran out on me. Me! I can still hardly believe it.”

“Let me make you an offer, Mr. Orel,” I said carefully. “If you don’t care for it, well, you put one in Ty’s ear and I start looking for another Techie. But I think I can get back your lost investment, which must have been considerable to inspire such passion.”

Orel turned away from the Monk to face me, pushing Kieth around like a rag doll. The Gunner smiled, his eyes moving easily from person to person without appearing in any way worried. He opened his mouth to reply, but Kieth suddenly spoke up.

“He’s not Canny Orel,” he said.

The hand on Kieth shot to the Techie’s throat and pinched, cutting off Kieth’s voice and breath. I stared at the old man and the old man stared back at me, a slight smile twitching on his face.

“Care to test me?” he said conversationally, sounding bored.

“Care to test all of us?” I said, trying to emulate the smooth, steady disdain of his voice. I failed miserably. Whoever this guy was, he certainly scared the shit out of me, Canny Orel or not. “Let’s hear what he has to say.” I gestured at Kieth.

The old man scanned the room, did some math in his head, and then shrugged, releasing Kieth, who immediately began to gasp and cough.

“Kieth?” I prompted.

He looked up at me with damp, red eyes, rubbing his throat. “Come on, Cates,” he choked out. “There are like fifteen Canny Orels Ty’s seen personally. It’s good marketing, using that name.” He took a deep, shuddering breath, rubbing his head. “He’s possibly Dъnmharъ, but he is not the Canny Orel.”

For a moment I was unable to decide if this was an improvement on my situation. If he wasn’t the greatest Gunner who ever lived, that was good for me. But being faced with, say, the third-best gunner that ever lived… well, it didn’t make me want to do cartwheels.

“It doesn’t matter, does it, Mr. Cates? The fact remains that we have business together. The fact remains that you could not, were you to try, get the drop on me. The fact remains that I can and will kill all of you without breaking a sweat if forced to. However, Mr. Cates, as I said, I’ve heard of you. I’ve heard you play by old rules. I’ll listen.”

Amazingly, he sat down on the floor in one smooth motion, yanking Kieth down next to him. I looked around at my team-all of them useless, it seemed. I wasn’t going to be deterred now. I didn’t think I could outgun Cainnic Orel, or even an Orel-trained former member of the Dъnmharъ. He was right-it didn’t really matter who he really was. I was going to have to make him a partner.

I looked at him as steadily as I could. “I’ve been hired to assassinate Dennis Squalor. The payout is huge. We’ve got a plan to get close to Squalor. I can offer you your money back in a few weeks.”

“Double,” he said immediately.

“Excuse me?”

“Double my investment.”

What the fuck. It was more money than I could ever spend anyway, and the idea of this whole thing falling apart made me sick, my stomach contracting to a spiky ball inside me. I nodded. “Done.”

“Okay,” he said, casually producing one of his shining guns and clearing the chamber, a gleaming bullet springing into the air and hitting the floor with a metallic clink. “Okay, Triple.” He glanced up and grinned at me again.

I blinked. “Excuse me?”

“If you can double, you can triple. If you can triple, you can quadruple. Let’s say quadruple.”

Swallowing burning anger, I forced myself to nod against every instinct I had and every lesson I’d learned-I was getting assfucked on this deal, and instead of beating the bastard silly, I was just looking for something to lean against. “Done,” I growled through clenched teeth.

He winked. “Well, Jesus, if you can quadruple, maybe we should leave the issue open and negotiate later.” His broad smile threatened to turn into laughter. “No? Okay, Cates. Quadruple it is. Give me the details.”

I studied him. He grinned easily, hair perfect, the clothes on his back worth more than me. I shook my head and forced myself to smile back.

“No.”

He raised a thin white eyebrow. “No?”

I couldn’t afford to show any nervousness. The only card I held was the fact that the money moved through me. If Marin found out Cainnic Orel-or one of his infamous protйgйs-was on the scene, I would be out. If the old man found out Marin was the bank on this job, I would be out. No matter what else happened, I couldn’t give this guy any details. Even if it meant Kieth got capped.

“That’s the deal. Four times your initial investment and Kieth gets a pass. You don’t get anything else.” I swallowed. “This is my job. You don’t want to back off, go take the motherfucking Techie out back and get the fuck out of my life.”

The old man stared at me, his smile frozen. After a moment he chambered another round, a nice little piece of theater to show just how little the fucker feared me. He let out a barking laugh, showing his strong, gleaming teeth.

“All right, Mr. Cates. All right. In your position I would insist on the same.”

I tried to hide the relief that hit me like a dose of cold water. “All right. What do we call you, then, if you’re not the one and only Cainnic Orel?”

He shrugged. “I think that name is as good as any, don’t you? Despite what this little turd says, as far as you know, I am the ‘one and only’ Cainnic Orel. Mr. Orel will do nicely.” This with a tight-lipped, smug grin that made me close my hands into fists. “I have one further condition, however: I am now part of your team.”

I blinked. “Excuse me?” To our right, a strident alarm blared, the sound bouncing off the walls. Kieth yelped and leaped up. Orel let him go.

Orel climbed to his feet, grinning. “You won’t give me any info, I have to hang around to protect my investment,” he shouted, somehow still sounding calm. “Put it this way, Cates. Say tomorrow night you get capped behind the ear, which is the most likely outcome of this little adventure. Would naturally put the chances that I’ll ever get my money in a dim light, no? As a result, I’d want to have the little cocksucker on his knees nice and quick. You see? If I’m not here, the little cocksucker might slip away again.”

“Cates!” Kieth yelled from his fortress of servers. He must have hit a switch, because the blaring alarms went to half-volume. “We have a problem!”

I glanced at Kieth, then back at Orel. “Okay. Give me twenty yen.”

He blinked. “What?”

“You fucked me out of twenty yen back there at the Dole. It’s part of your buy-in on this deal. Now, please.”

He laughed, reaching for his credit dongle. “You’re either totally incompetent or a genius, Cates.”

“Oh, he’s incompetent, all right,” Tanner said brightly. “Pretty soon he’ll tell you about the growing army of System Pigs who seem to always know where he is.”

“Cates!” Kieth yelled again.

I turned away from Orel as our transaction went through and walked briskly toward Kieth. “What, for God’s sake?”

The bald man was wide-eyed, his nose twitching fiercely. A fat drop of sweat was hanging impossibly from its tip, and it looked like fresh terror-sweat springing up on top of the dried residue of his previous cycle of terror and relief. “We have a visitor. Or visitors. Not sure yet.”

“I see.” I looked down at the floor for a moment, fists clenched. It never fucking lets up, I thought. This had been my whole life, one crisis after another. Where was I going to sleep, another gun pointed in my face, was someone going to try to slit my throat-it never ended. I spun to face the rest of them.

Words died in my mouth as a distant boom thundered through the building.

“Looks like they’re here!” Milton shouted. “I do hope they’re friendly!”

Orel breezed past me, guns in hand. “Looks like I’m earning my keep on this team of yours already,” he said with a wink, whirling around in midstride and walking backward. “With your permission, of course, boss.”

I stared at Orel. “Ty, who the fuck’s at the door?”

Kieth didn’t even look up from his video screens. “Monks.”