Metrophage

ELEVEN

"Good evening," said the little hovercraft as Jonny stepped aboard. "For your safety and comfort, please hold onto the handrail provided. The trip across will take two minutes." Under normal circumstances, Jonny would have ignored the synthesized voice, but for some reason, tonight, the obsequious tone of the warning annoyed him.

"Fuck you," he told the machine.

"Very good, sir," it said. The non-skid rubberized matting on the passenger platform vibrated softly through the soles of his feet as the craft's engine rose faintly in pitch, lifting him and the vehicle out and over the water. A light mist of warm water blew up from the sides of the craft, settling on his skin. The feel of Sumi's fevered body, Groucho's theories on art and revolution came back to him as he skimmed toward the bright pagoda in the distance. Flashes of carp and fat prawns below the surface of the lake. His thoughts of Sumi disturbed him. The images revolved around plastic tubes and pumps, dumb machines that could never know or understand her, that might, in their ignorance, fail, not perceiving her value, the absolute need he had for her to be alive. Revolution, when he considered it, was a phantom pain, nothing more. Like his eyes. He felt them itch, but he knew that they were plastic and unreal, and therefore, they could not itch, yet his desire to rub them was constant. Revolution was like that. A delusion, a pipe-dream that when the lid closed over the eye, it could be rubbed and the itch would go away, that the flesh would be restored, the machinery vanished.

Before he had run into the Croakers, Jonny had known a number of revolutionaries. Bomb-throwers and pamphleteers, graffiti artists and assassins. Some of them had meant it, others were revolutionaries of fashion, of convenience. In the end, they had all failed. Jonny had already spotted a dozen of the old faces in the corporate crowds of Little Tokyo. Maybe they were the smart ones, he thought. The ones who went over. Maybe they were the ones who were dead before they started. He could not decide.

The crystal trees at the base of the pagoda grew in detail and complexity (molten glass light webbed through with burning diamonds) as the hovercraft approached. A battery of white-gloved attendants shaped the trees, carving the branches and leaves from a base of modified aluminum sulfate crystals. Easy Money was somewhere in the structure beyond, Jonny knew. He would get the second vial from Easy, kill him if he got the chance (because he had not forgotten Raquin's murder). That was all the revolution he could expect. As for the other, Groucho's anarchist dreams, there wasn't a chance in hell for those. The best that could be hoped, Jonny decided, was for Sumi to get better and for Ice to come back, to not get hurt for delusions, for dreams of old eyes.

Once inside the Forest of Incandescent Bliss, he went straight to the bar. It was a low affair, horse shoe-shaped, attempted art deco, with gilded mirrors behind the bottles and ridged tiles that glowed with a soft internal illumination. The two bartenders, an Asian male and a blonde caucasian female, were each under a meter tall, but perfectly proportioned. Everything behind the bar, bottles and corks, sponges and mixing utensils, was scaled down to their size.

Everything except the glasses in which they served the drinks; these were meant for someone Jonny's size and looked absurdly large in the bartenders' child-like hands.

Jonny ordered gin and tonic, watched as the little man retrieved a hundred year old bottle of Bombay gin that had been sealed, at sometime in its past, in dull blue wax. Jonny sipped his drink and handed the man his ID chip. It failed to register the first time the bartender tried to call up the account, and when it failed a second time, Jonny started to get nervous. On the third try, though, the transaction went through, the computer deducting the amount of the drink and a large tip from the dead man's company account.

Swirling the cool antiseptic-tasting gin in his mouth, Jonny swallowed one of Conover's endorphin tabs. His new eyes were hurting, a constant pain cutting right through his head to the back of his skull.

Something was moving in the gilded mirror behind the bottles.

Jonny turned to the darkened lounge which took up most of the pagoda's ground floor. Aged oyabuns playing endless games of Go, moving with the ancient and deliberate grace of mantises, younger men talking earnestly, toasting each other, skull-plugged into tabletop translators. Mostly Japanese faces, but many American and Mexican, too. Jonny knew a few, had seen others in the newsrags.

Many of the Japanese were missing finger joints. Yakuza. Must be their hang-out, he thought. Neutral ground. Mafia, the Panteras Aureo, Triad families, they were all there, criminals in a league beyond anything Jonny had ever known or experienced. They were like him, but, he understood, their immense wealth had insulated them, enabled them to live far enough removed from ordinary life that they were almost mythological figures, shaping the course of nations with their wealth.

Kaleidoscoping in the air above the gangsters' heads was a crystalline holographic light display, like a sculpted cloud. It seemed to follow the shifting mood of the room, colors brightening when the voices rose, muting when the talk was low. The man next to Jonny addressed the bartender in Portuguese. He wore an Irezumi jacket-tanned skin of a heavily tattooed man, cut bomber-style, with fur around the collar, one of the most expensive garments in the world.

He was not the only person wearing such a jacket.

In the end, Jonny thought they were not very much like him at all. So where the fuck was Easy Money?

He turned, seeing her at the same moment she saw him. Quick eyes, face the color of night.

"Hey gaijin-boy, you lookin' for a date?" she said.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" he asked. Ice smiled, looped an arm in his and drew him away from the bar. She wore a tight brown pin-striped dress, cut like a man's suit at the neck, tapering to a pleated skirt that fell just above her knees. Her legs were bare. On her feet she wore rolled-down white socks and strap-on Mary Janes. "Jesus Christ, you turning tricks for the revolution?"

"Relax," Ice said, holding the smile. She took him to a corner of the bar below a spiral staircase whose railings were mahogany dragons, curled around each other in battle. Soft quarter-tone melodies came from a wall-mounted Klipsch speaker above their heads. "Now," she said, apparently satisfied that no one could hear them. "Keep smiling, babe. I'm not turning tricks for nobody. See?"

She showed him the cork-bottomed tray she carried. "I just serve drinks. These Yakuza boys like to be around gaijin girls. 'specially us dark exotic types."

"But- " he began.

"But that doesn't mean they can have us."

"Fuck," he said. He could not pinpoint who or what he was angry with, the club, Ice or himself. "So what are you doing here?"

"I was going to ask you the same thing," she said. "Where's Sumi?

He touched her shoulder, smiled for the first time. "She's fine," he lied. "I left her up at Conover's. I'm supposed to meet Easy Money here."

"Por que?"

"Deal I made with Conover," he said. "I've got to get some of his merchandise back for him."

Ice looked at him and her smile wavered. "You okay?" she asked.

"Fine."

"Something's wrong. Is it Sumi?"

"She's fine." He bit off the sentence abruptly enough that he knew Ice could tell he was lying. "You shouldn't be here," he told her.

She shrugged. "I'm undercover," she told him. "There's other Croakers and some Naginatas, too. We've staked this place for months. Zamora comes here sometimes."

"Zamora?"

"Yeah. This is where we first got wind of the raids. Figure the next time he comes in, she pressed two fingers into his ribs, boom! — Buenos noches, Colonel." She pulled a wad of bills from her pocket.

"Besides, the tips are great."

He shook his head in wonder. "I'm glad to see you."

"Ditto, babe."

"I know this is sick," he said, "but you're making me incredibly horny."

"It's the club," she said. "Subliminals in that holo display. They pump some kind of sex pheromone-analog through the air conditioning system." Her hands were up before he could stop her.

Later, when he was alone, he would replay the picture of her face, studying the emotions there as she saw his new eyes: fear, bewilderment, concern.

"Oh baby," she said. Jonny felt her hand on his cheek. He turned his head, caught a distorted image of himself in the upturned lenses of the aviators. Yellow eyes. Vertical pupils glinted chrome green. He had forgotten about them, unconsciously adjusting the exteroceptor's photo-sensitivity to compensate for the mirror shades. He took the glasses from her and started to put them on, but she reached out and stopped him. "Oh baby," she repeated. Then abruptly: "What's wrong with Sumi?

Seeing right through me, Jonny thought. He took a breath. Not wanting to lie, he chose to remain silent. She would not let go of his hands. "I have to see Easy Money," he said, finally.

"Tell me about Sumi."

"Please," he said. "She's going to be all right." Ice's face changed with that. Rigid. He knew she understood. "Easy has the cure," he offered.

"There's a cure?"

"That what Easy took when he killed Raquin. Conover didn't know what it was. He was moving it for some third party."

She shook her head, releasing his hands at the same time.

"Hard to concentrate sometimes," she said. "Makes you wonder what we're doing here."

A particular head in the crowd caught his eye. "You going to be all right?" he asked her.

She nodded, her jaw silently working, trying to contain the rage and frustration. Jonny had felt it often enough to recognize it. "Yeah."

Then: "Liked your eyes, I did. Your eyes and Sumi's hands. She has these calluses. Gives her character. I liked that."

"Yeah, me too," Jonny said. He looked past her. The head was moving. The one with the horns. "He's over there."

"Get moving," she said and kissed him, deeply, biting his lower lip as she released him. "Against club rules, you know, but what the fuck- It's probably my last night here anyway, right?" She smiled at him.

"I'll get you on the way back."

"You better."

He left her then, feeling lousy at abandoning her full of half-digested, half-understood information, but he concentrated on the head moving through the crowd before him. It was odd seeing Easy in a suit. The tuxedo jacket fit him badly across his narrow shoulders.

Jonny caught up with the man and tapped him on the shoulder.

"We've got business," Jonny said.

Easy turned at the sound of his voice, curling his lips in the distant approximation of a smile. "Love the new hardware, Jonny," he said. "I never thought you had it in you. We could get you a job upstairs any time."

Jonny looked at his hands and realized that he was still holding the mirror shades. He slipped them on and followed Easy up the spiral staircase.

Upstairs were the prostitutes. The Water Trade, a tradition in Japan for a thousand years, had provided for their presence. They were part of the decor, like the dwarf trees and the straw mats; an accepted style, part of the Floating World. And, as the pleasure girls had reflected their own time in the previous centuries of the trade, so the prostitutes in the Forest of Incandescent Bliss reflected theirs.

They lounged about the halls on benches covered in thick brocades depicting double helices. They waited in doorways and on the railings of the stairways. Some of them were clothed in kimonos, most were partially nude, showing off their tattoos and grafts. A few wore nothing at all and those were the ones that disturbed Jonny the most. "Don't bother trying to guess their sex," Easy advised him. "Half of 'em can't even remember which way they started out."

At first, Jonny saw nothing special about the prostitutes, but that, he realized was because he had not been prepared to understand them. Mouths like vaginas, vaginas and anuses like mouths. Hands that sprouted silicone elastomer penises instead of fingers. Each of the prostitutes seemed to have at least one extra set of genitalia, most (apparently) had moved or replaced their originals.

Easy giggled and stroked the odd breast, the occasional scrotal sac as Jonny followed him. At one point, Easy snorted something from a plastic inhaler. Jonny caught a glimpse of the label: It was a cheap mass produced interferon nasal spray, Oki Kenko- Big Health- a common cold preventative.

Sniffing loudly, Easy said; "Now what was that deal we were talking about?" They were on the upper floor of the pagoda.

"The second vial you took off Raquin," Jonny said. "Conover's authorized me to pay cash for it."

"Oh yeah. That." Jonny wondered if Easy was stoned. The horned man made a vague gesture with his hands, laughed drowsily.

There were two other men in foreign-cut suits at the far end of the corridor. "Funniest damn thing, man," said Easy. "Remember back at the meat locker when you and me, we first talked about the deal?"

"Well, the bitch had the place wired. Ain't that a scream? Heard every word of it. She's smarter than I thought." By now, Jonny had stopped in his tracks and Easy was holding a Futukoro on him.

"I'll take you apart, man." Easy reached behind Jonny, took his gun, then pushed him down the corridor. "Nimble Virtue's got the stuff now. I had to give it to her, you know? Get back on her good side. It's not like I can go back to Conover." The two men ahead (actually boys, Jonny saw; in different clothes they could have passed for Committee recruits with no problem at all), Jonny recognized the cut of their suits now. Like the Pakistani broadcaster on the restricted Link channel, long, almost knee-length jackets and baggy wide-waisted pants. Neo-Zoot, a current Arab style.

"Anyway, you've got to deal with her now," Easy said. The Arabs never took their eyes off Jonny. The younger one, a handsome boy of about fifteen with black eyes and hair, gave him a wide feral smile and opened the door before him. "Muchas gracias, boys," said Easy, pushing Jonny through.

Inside, Nimble Virtue looked up, a tiny glazed tea cup poised before her lips. "My goodness," she said, her respirator sucking the words back down her throat. "We have a visitor." She sat behind an oversized desk constructed of opaque sheets of black glass supported by a frame of etched gold cylinders. An older man with salt and pepper hair was sitting across from her, also sipping tea and eyeing Jonny skeptically, as if contemplating the purchase of a used car.

"This is the man?" the gray-haired man asked Nimble Virtue.

He was quite handsome, with hard, angular features, long graceful hands and the easy manner of someone used to being listened to. His suit was of better material than those of the boys in the hall (he had the same restless dark eyes as the one with the feral smile), but the style and the cut were definitely Arab.

"Yes," Nimble Virtue said, pouring more tea, her exoskeleton whirring softly under her kimono as she raised and lowered her arm.

Easy set Jonny's gun on the dark glass before her and leaned on an elaborate air purification system: ionizers, charcoal filter rigs, dehumidifiers. The room was very cold. Jonny thought of Nimble Virtue in the abattoir, the orbiting sandakan, unconsciously recapitulating her childhood in her office, constructing within it a low-key approximation of the frozen vacuum of space.

"So whose little doggie are you?" Jonny asked the Arab.

"Jonny!" hissed Nimble Virtue.

The Arab smiled, turned to Nimble Virtue and laughed. "You were right. His mouth works much faster than his mind," he said. "Still, this is no problem. It is his presence we require, not his intellect."

"You don't say. Who is this guy?" Jonny asked Nimble Virtue.

"Jonny, please," she said. "Sheik al-Qawi is a guest in my house. More than that, he and I have entered into certain business arrangements on behalf of the New Palestine Federation, of which he is a field representative." The words were clear, but her inflection was sing-song. An act for the new money, Jonny thought. Helpless geisha-girl.

"I thought it smelled funny when I came here. That bad meat-political smell." He looked at Nimble Virtue. "You've finally found your place. You, Zamora, this clown, I hope you'll be very happy together."

Nimble Virtue's hand came to rest on a squat lacquered box that stood open on its end near the far corner of her desk. "Not political at all. Just the opposite," she said. A single jar sat in each side of the ox. Embalmed things floating there, surrounded by dark purple velvet. Fetuses. Her unborn sons. "Sheik al-Qawi made me a very generous offer for the acquisition of- what? — an artifact. A bauble. I am merely acting as his agent in this matter."

"Right. And tell me those boys in the hall aren't hashishin," Jonny said. "These people consider going to the toilet a political act."

"It's funny that you should raise the question of political philosophies, Mister Qabbala," said al-Qawi, "since yours seem rather vague."

"That's because they don't exist," Jonny said. He checked his watch. The passing of time had begun to weigh on him. Sumi was back on the hill. He thought of the second virus moving through her blood, waiting there like a time bomb. "You know, you guys slay me. Corporate types. Politicos. If I put a bullet through your fat face right now, they'd have you in a vat in ten minutes. And they'd keep you there till they could clone or construct or repair a body for you. That's the difference between your people and mine. We don't get a second chance. We're just dead."

The sheik brightened. "Then you are political!" he said. "Those are not the sentiments of an amoral man. Your manner and the company you keep bespeak a strong sense of purpose, even if you refuse to name it."

"Look pal, I'm just here to pick up some dope-"

"But surely you must agree that the imperialist forces now at work in Tokyo and Washington must be shown that plotting against the peoples of other sovereign nations cannot be tolerated."

"You want to deal or not?" Jonny asked Nimble Virtue. She turned her eyes up at him, still doing her little-girl act. "Not now," she said.

"Then I'm out of here." Jonny headed for the door. Easy had his gun at the back of Jonny's head before he had taken two steps. "Hey, just a joke. I'd love to stay." al-Qawi stood and slammed his fist down on Nimble Virtue's desk. Her hand moved reflexively to the case containing her sons, steadying it. "I cannot believe such behavior," the Sheik yelled. "That you can make jokes in the face of the hideous conspiracy in which your government is embroiled. That you, yourself, are a part of."

"Jonny-san," Nimble Virtue purred, "what Sheik al-Qawi is referring to are diabolical plans hatched by certain war-loving officials in Tokyo and Washington to launch a sneak attack against the united Arab nations and bring about a terrible third world war."

Jonny looked at the two of them. He almost smiled, certain he was being gas-lighted. Nimble Virtue was not above setting up such a game just to confuse him and drive up the price of Conover's dope.

However, there was something in al-Qawi's manner, a weariness around the eyes that was either very good acting or genuine anxiety.

"Do you actually have the drugs?" Jonny asked.

"Yes," right there, said Nimble Virtue, pointing to a spot on the floor before a screen inlaid with mother-of-pearl cranes.

"Let me see it."

"No!" shouted al-Qawi. "No more drug talk. As a man of god, I cannot permit it." His long hands cut the air in tense, rapid bursts. "Thanks to the good work of Madame Nimble Virtue, my trip to this sickening city has been a short and fruitful one. As you may have inferred, sir, you are the artifact I came here to find."

He pushed a finger in Jonny's face. "Mister Qabbala, it is my duty and honor to arrest you in the name of the New Palestine Federation and the people of all oppressed nations everywhere."

"Great. Swell." To Nimble Virtue, Jonny said: "Did you sell this idiot my dope?"

"Do not play the fool with me, sir!" shouted al-Qawi. "Surely even you cannot endorse so mad an adventure as your government's alliance with the extraterrestrials!"

Jonny looked at the Sheik, blinked once and inadvertently scrambled the resolution of the exteroceptors' pixel display. When the Sheik's face came back, it had been reduced to a moving matrix of black and sand-colored squares. Easy Money sniffed loudly from his interferon inhaler. "I'll tell you exactly what I told the last lunatic that tried to tie me to the Alpha Rats: I don't know what the fuck you're talking about!"

"I do not believe you. I have studied your records, however. You live in the drugged ignorance of a man with a heavy burden," al-Qawi said. "It may interest you to know that the New Palestine Federation has intercepted a series of communiques between broadcast stations in southern California and the moon. We now know that using you as a go-between, your eastern masters plan to link forces with the Alpha Rats (as you callthem) and launch a sneak attack on Arab territories simultaneously from the Earth and the moon."

"Look, I've heard this moon-man song before," said Jonny wearily. "The last time it was about dope. Now it's war. Why don't you people get your stories straight?" He shook his head, finally correcting the pixel display. Easy Money was behind him, sniffing and laughing to himself.

"What's your story? You suddenly develop a political conscience?"

Easy shrugged, the hand with the gun resting by his side. "Don't ask me. You're the one hangs out with anarchists."

"I am, Mister Qabbala, prepared to offer you a deal," al-Qawi said.

"A deal?"

"Yes. Negotiate with the extraterrestrials on behalf of the New Palestine Federation. Convince them to turn their weapons on your puppet masters in the east. For this, the Federation will grant you a full pardon for crimes against the Arab people and-" He smiled at Jonny, "- return to you a reasonable profit for your services."

"You're crazier than Zamora," Jonny said. "He only accused me of being a gofer for a smuggler lord. You think I'm hanging fast and true with the Alpha Rats myself."

"Aren't you?"

"No!"

The Sheik shook his head. "This world is an unkind place, Mister Qabbala. I am attempting to extend to you the hand of friendship."

"Why? So you people can finish that stupid war?" asked Jonny.

"Don't get me wrong- I don't think this place would be any worse under Arab rule, but any dirty little wars you guys start, it's the people in the street- we're the ones that get hurt." He pointed out the window. "Not your people, mine." al-Qawi nodded gravely, hands clasped behind his back. "In that case, Mister Qabbala, you are my prisoner. You have obviously deserted your own government to work for terrorists and anarchists, however, you will not shirk your responsibility to the New Palestine Federation."

Jonny, knowing Easy was watching him, kicked his boot into Nimble Virtue's desk, knocking off the false heel. The Futukoro went off precisely where Jonny was not. He was rolling across his shoulders away from Nimble Virtue's desk, scooping up his own gun on the way. He kept it low, sending a round into the floor near Easy.

A sheet of flame hit the ceiling as the shell exploded in the hyper-oxygenated air. Easy landed in a heap across the room, over by the air purification set-up. Jonny sprinted to the door and threw the security bolts, then he turned his gun on Nimble Virtue. "Give me that dope, goddammit!"

"What have you done?" she screamed. Shaking, Nimble Virtue rose from behind her desk and went to where al-Qawi lay, his legs twisted under him, his neck bent at a peculiar angle. Her respirator was clicking rapidly beneath her kimono; Jonny could hear the air being forced in and out of her withered lungs. "He was taking me with him!" she shouted. Then quietly: "He was taking me with him. It was part of the deal."

Jonny moved over to the floor safe. "Give me the dope," he said.

Someone was pounding frantically on the office door.

Nimble Virtue ignored him, touching the stretched-out body of the Arab, attending him with quick bird-like movements. "I was going away," she said, covering her face with her hands. No act this time, Jonny knew.

"Listen to me," he told her. "A friend of mine is sick. She needs this stuff badly."

Nimble Virtue turned and looked at him. "Good!" she said. "I hope she dies. Rots and dies like me- like I have to stay here. In this city." She stood and walked to the far side of the desk, rubbing at her red-rimmed eyes. "Zamora will kill me."

"Please, give me the dope."

"No."

The pounding on the door got louder. Jonny grabbed one of the bottles from the desk and held it over his head. The little fetus, disturbed in its fluid, bumped gently against the side. "Give it to me."

"Go to hell."

His arm snapped out and Nimble Virtue screamed. There was no crash. Jonny held out his hand, showing her the palmed bottle.

"All right," she said, and moved shakily toward him, dropping stiffly to her knees, her exoskeleton whining with the unaccustomed motion.

Jonny held his gun on her as she removed a segment of polished wood from the floor and entered a code on a ten-key pad.

The soft hiss of pneumatic bolts withdrawing. As Nimble Virtue reached into the safe, Jonny stopped her. He pushed his hand past her's and found the old pistol lying near the top. A tarnished Derringer two-shot, yellowed ivory grips with over and under barrels, each holding a single. 38 hollow point shell. He pocketed the gun and reached in again, coming up this time with a brushed aluminum Halliburton travel case. Inside was a small black vacuum bottle. Taking it, he backed away from the safe, keeping his back to the wall. Nimble Virtue was standing over al-Qawi again, staring down at the Sheik, her eyes flat and dull, like blank video monitors.

Over by the air purifier, Easy Money moaned.

A shot, then two more from the hall splintered the wood and metal of the office door. Jonny took a wide-legged stance and fired at it twice. What was left of the door exploded, peppering the room with burning wood and metal. He heard Nimble Virtue breathe in sharply. Over by the safe, the velvet-lined case lay on the floor, the two little bottles shattered amidst the glassy black wreckage of the collapsed desk, old alcohol reek filling the room. Nimble Virtue's mouth was open; a moment later, she screamed- a single note, high and keening. Running down the stairs, Jonny could still hear her.

Pour gasoline on an ant hill; light it. Watch the insects pour from the mound, crazed and sizzling: That was the main floor of the Forest of Incandescent Bliss. At the sound of the first shot, paranoid gangster reflexes had kicked in. Half the club was making for the doors, sure the cops or the Committee (somebody in uniform) was raiding the place. Old frightened men threw wads of cash and drugs at anybody who came near them.

The other half of the club had stubbornly stayed where they were, convinced that they had been led into a trap. Yakuza and Panteras Aureros lay bloody and dying across Go boards and tea pots where they had blown holes in each other at point blank range.

Prostitutes, orifices flexing in silent convulsive screams, scrambled down the stairs. Jonny fell into step with them, hitting the main floor behind a curtain of manufactured flesh.

Ice was by the bar, signaling to someone. Rapid variants of Amerslan, fingers on lips, brushing the back of a hand. She spotted him when he waved and ran over. They huddled by the spiral stairs.

"You got the stuff?"

He held up the vacuum bottle. "Right here."

"Great. Zamora never showed. We gotta rendezvous with the others." She looked over his shoulder- "No!" — and pushed him to the ground as the gun went off.

There was a smoking hole on the center of Ice's chest, but no blood, the Futukoro shell having cauterized the wound even at is made it. "Give me the dope, Jonny." He swore the voice had come from inside his head. He looked at Ice, insane for that moment, and knew he had killed her. A black metallic wind blew through his bones and he heard the voice again. "Hand it over like now, man."

Outside him that time. Easy Money. He was above them on the stairs, one satyr horn broken off at the scalp, his left elbow stiff, dribbling blood down his arm.

"I need that dope, man." Down a step. "The bitch's gone nuts. Gotta have Conover's juice to stake myself. Comprende?" This time Jonny did not aim for the feet, but Easy's head. He missed anyway.

The explosion brought down a good portion of the staircase, and Easy jumped clear on the far side.

Jonny kicked at the wreckage of carved wood, dragons in splinters, pig iron reinforcement rods sticking like bones from the pile. He knelt beside Ice who was staring down at the hole in her chest, gingerly touching the blackened skin around the edges.

"I always wondered what this felt like," she said, drunken wonder slurred in her voice. He cradled her head in his lap, gangsters, gunsels and hangers-on still massingfor the door, clawing at each other. She looked at him and a shiver passed through her body. "You're a big boy now, Jonny, whether you like it or not. Sumi can't cover your ass like I can." Blood, through tiny cracks (like miniature lava flows) was beginning to seep from her wound. "You gonna help us, Jonny? You're a Croaker. Always have been. You walk away, though, you're one of them. And they'll do us like this forever."

She looked at her wound, touched a bloody hand to his cheek. "Sweet Jonny. You and Sumi- my babies-"

He let her still head slide off his lap and stood, trembling and crying. His new eyes did not permit tears, but kept flashing him stored images of the last few hours. The dead fetuses. Dogs, massive and terrified, tearing at each other. The clockwork movement of multi-colored muscles. Feral smile of the hashishin.

Illusion, he thought. Folly. Maya.

For the first time in his life, shaking and blubbering in the club, Jonny had a clear mental picture of what the Alpha Rats looked like.

They looked like al-Qawi, like Zamora and Nimble Virtue, the pimps, the politicians, the wheeler-dealers. The Alpha Rats were the perfect excuse, the ultimate evasion. It had been that way for a thousand years; Jonny knew that much of history. The powers that be required enemies as much as they needed friends, and they could not live without scapegoats to keep their propaganda machines working. In earlier centuries it had been the Jews, the blacks, the homosexuals, the Hispanics. But the closed economic systems of their world had made old fashioned bigotry impractical. Like technology, commerce and travel: the big lie had expanded outward to embrace the rest of the galaxy. And why not, Jonny thought. It's in our blood by now.

He looked at his hand and to his horror, realized that the vacuum bottle was no longer there. Sometime after Ice had been shot, he had let it go. He dropped to his hands and knees, moving frantically between the gangsters' running feet. And spotted it across the room-wedged under the skirt of a Link screen showing Aoki Vega in a Kabuki-porn version of "Casablanca."

Between the shadows and the feet, the angry voices and breaking glass, Jonny dove for the bottle, surprising himself when he felt it in his grip. And then as quickly, it was gone. Shattered in his hands, a clear sticky liquid dripping onto his lap, gray fragments of industrial glass all around him.

In the hills, machines skipped a beat. Sumi convulsed.

Jonny looked up at Easy and the smoking gun as the one-horned man said: "Now nobody has it." And limped out the door.

Jonny followed him, pushing his way through the thinning crowd, the German pistol before him. Easy was just turning the corner at the far end of the pagoda. The Forest's private security was out. Two men moved through the crowd to intercept Jonny. He waited until they were a few meters away and calmly blew them to pieces. At the lake's edge, he took a hovercraft and headed back to shore, ran until his sides ached, filthy and red-eyed, to La Poupee. In the air re-circulation plant, he collapsed beneath two enormous filter cylinders and retched. Outside, he found a motorcycle in the employees' parking lot. A lithium battery powered BMW. The owner had hooked an air compressor to the exhaust outlet; the bike roared and sputtered like an old-style piston engine model. Jonny gunned the bike and took off.