Metrophage

ONE

A crip by the name of Easy Money ran the HoloWhores down at a place called Carnaby's Pit. At least he had been running them the last time Jonny Qabbala, drug dealer, ex-Committee for Public Health bounty hunter, and self-confessed loser, had paid him a visit. Jonny was hoping that Easy was still working the Pit. He had a present for him from a dead friend.

The ugly and untimely murder of Raquin, the chemist, had left an empty spot in the pit of Jonny's stomach. Not just because Raquin had been Jonny's connection (since it was a simple matter for Jonny to get his dope directly from Raquin's boss, the smuggler lord Conover) but over the year or so of their acquaintance Raquin had become, to Jonny, something close to a friend. And close to a friend was as much as Jonny generally allowed himself to become. It was fear of loss more than any lack of feelings on his part that kept Jonny at a distance from most of the other losers and one-percenters that crowded Los Angeles.

Overhead, the moon was a bone-white sickle. Jonny wondered, idly, if the Alpha Rats were watching Los Angeles that night. What would the extraterrestrials think, through a quarter million miles of empty space, when they saw him put a bullet through Easy Money's head?

Jonny caught sight of Carnaby's Pit a few blocks away, quartz prisms projecting captured atrocity videos from the Lunar Border Wars. On a flat expanse of wall above the club's entrance, a New Palestine soldier in a vacuum suit was smashing the faceplate of a Mishima Guardsman. The Guardsman's blood bubbled from his helmet, droplets boiling to hard black jewels as the soundtrack from an ancient MGM musical played in the background: I want to be loved by you, by you, and nobody else but you… The words CARNABY'S PIT periodically superimposed themselves over the scene in Kana and Roman characters.

Jonny pushed his way through a group of Pemex-U.S. workers negotiating for rice wine at the weekend mercado that covered the street near Fountain Avenue. The air was thick with the scents of animal waste, sweat, roasting meat and hashish. Chickens beat their wings against wire cages while legless vat-grown sheep lay docilely in the butchers' stalls, waiting for their turn on their skewers. Old women in hipils motioned Jonny over, holding up bright bolts of cloth, bootleg computer chips and glittering butterfly knives. Jonny kept shaking his head. No, gracias…Ima ja naku…Nein…"

Handsome young Germans, six of them, all in the latest eel-skin cowboy boots and silk overalls (marked with the logo of some European movie studio) lugged portable holo-recorders between the stalls, making another in their endless series of World Link documentaries about the death of street culture. Those quickly-made documentaries and panel discussions about the Alpha Rats (who they were, their intentions, their burden on the economy of the West) seemed to make up the bulk of the Link's broadcasts these days.

Jonny swore that if he heard one more learned expert coolly discussing the logic of drug and food rationing, he was going to personally bury fifty kilos of C-4 plastique under the local Link station and make his own contribution to street culture by liberating a few acres of prime urban landscape.

At a stall near the back of the place, an old curandera was selling her evil eye potions and a collection of malfunctioning robot sentries: cybernetic goshawks, rottweilers and cougars, simple track and kill devices controlled by a tabletop microwave link. The sentries had been very popular with the nouveau riche toward the end of the previous century, but the animals' electronics and maintenance had proved to be remarkably unreliable. Eventually they passed, like much of the mercado's merchandise, down from the hills, through the rigid social strata of L.A., until they landed in the street, last stop before the junk heap.

There by the twitching half-growling animals, the crew set up their lights. Jonny hung around and watched them block out shots.

The film makers infuriated him, but in their own way, Jonny knew, they were right.

The market was dying. When he had been a boy, Jonny remembered it sprawling over a dozen square blocks. Now it barely managed to occupy two. And most of the merchandise was junk.

Chromium paint flaked off the electronic components, revealing ancient rusted works. The hydroponically grown fruits and vegetables grew steadily smaller and more tasteless each season. All that seemed to keep the market going was the communally owned bank of leaking solar batteries. During the rolling brown-outs, they alone kept the tortilla ovens hot, the fluorescents flickering, the videos cranking.

"Isn't it time you kids were in bed?" Jonny asked, stepping on the toes of a lanky blonde camera man. "Sprechen sie 'parasite'?"

Huddled in the doorways of clubs and arcades, groups of fingerprint changers, nerve tissue merchants and brain cell thieves regarded the crowd with hollow eyes, as if assessing their worth in cash at every moment. The gangs, too, were out in force that hot night: the Lizard Imperials (snake-skin boots and surgically split tongues), the Zombie Analytics (subcutaneous pixels offering up flickering flesh-images of dead video and rock stars), the anarchist-physician Croakers, the Yakuza Rebels and the Gypsy Titans; even the Naginata Sisters were out, swinging blades and drinking on the corner in front of the Iron Orchid.

As Jonny crossed Sunset, a few of the Sisters waved to him.

When he waved back, a gust of wind pulled open his tunic, revealing his Futukoro Automatic. The Sisters whooped and laughed at the sight of the weapon, feigning terror. A tall Sister with Maori facial tattoos crooked her finger and began blasting him with an imaginary gun.

Coming toward him from the opposite direction was a ring of massive Otoko Niku. Meat Boys- uniformly ugly acromegalic giants, each easily three meters tall. In the center of the protective ring, an old Yakuza oyabun openly stared and pointed at people. It was rare enough for people to see a pure-blood Japanese in the street that they stopped to stare back, until the Meat Boys cuffed them away.

Jonny thought of a word then.

Gaijin. Foreigner. Alien.

That's me. I'm gaijin, Jonny thought. He could find little comfort in the familiarity of the streets. Jonny realized that by acknowledging his desire to kill Easy Money, he had cut himself off from everybody around him. He walked slower. Twice he almost turned back.

A tiny nisei girl tried to sell him a peculiar local variation on sushi- refried beans and raw tuna wrapped in a corn husk- commonly known as Salmonella Roll. Jonny declined and ducked into an alley. There, he swallowed two tabs of Desoxyn, hijacked from a Committee warehouse.

It was good stuff. Very soon, a tingling began in his fingertips and moved up his arms, filling him with a pleasantly tense, almost sexual, energy. Beads of sweat broke out on his hands and face, ran down his chest. He thought of Sumi.

"I might not be back tonight," he had told her before he left the squat they shared. Uno tareja. "Got some deliveries to make," he lied. "Routine stuff."

"Then why are you taking that blunderbuss?" Sumi asked, pointing to the Futukoro pistol Jonny had hidden under his tunic.

Jonny ignored her question and tried to look very interested in the process of lacing up his steel-tipped boots. Sumi terrified him.

Sometimes, in his more callous moments, he considered her a slip-up, his one remaining abandonment to emotional ties. Occasionally, when he felt strong, he would admit to himself that he loved her.

"I'll be passing through the territories of a dozen gangs tonight and then if I'm lucky I'll be landing in Carnaby's Pit. That's why the blunderbuss", he said. "I should be taking a Committee battalion with me."

"I bet they'd be thrilled if you called them."

"I bet you're right."

Almond-eyed Sumi stroked his hair with delicate, callused hands. He had met her at the zendo of an old Buddhist nun. The Zen study had not stuck, but Sumi had. Her full name, Sumimasen, meant variously, "thank you," "I'm sorry," and "this never ends." She had been on her own almost as long as Jonny. Along the way, she picked up enough electronics to make her living as a Watt Snatcher. That is: for a fee she would tap right into the government's electric lines under the city and siphon off power for her customers.

Jonny got up and Sumi put her arms around him, thrusting her belly at the pistol in his belt. "Is that your gun or are you just happy to see me?" Sumi asked. She did a whole little act, rolling her eyes and purring in her best vamp voice. But her nervousness was obvious.

Jonny bent and kissed the base of her neck, held her long enough to reassure, then longer. He felt her tense up again, under his hands.

"I'll be back," he said.

During the last few months, Jonny had begun to worry about leaving Sumi alone. Officially, the government's power lines did not exist. All the more reason the State would like to wipe the Watt Snatchers out. All the gangs were outlaws, technically. The elements of the equation were simple: its components were the price of survival divided by the risks that survival demanded. And in an age of rationing and manufactured shortages, survival meant the black market. The gangs produced whatever the smuggler lords couldn't bring in. And the pushers sold it on the streets.

Jonny had chosen his own brand of survival when he walked away from the Committee for Public Health and threw in with the pushers. It was a simple question of karma. Now he worked the black market, selling any drugs the smuggler lords could supply-anti-biotics, LSD analogs, beta-endorphins, MDMA, skimming the streets on a razor-sharp high compounded of adrenaline and paranoia.

In his more philosophical moments, it seemed to Jonny that they were all engaged in nothing more than some bizarre battle of symbols. What the smuggler lords and gangs provided- food, power and drugs- had become the ultimate symbols of control in their world. The Federales could not afford to ease up their rationing of medical treatment, access to public utilities and food distribution.

They had learned, long ago, how it easy it was to control vast numbers of people simply by worrying them into submission, keeping them busy hustling to stay alive.

Los Angeles, as such, had ceased to exist. L.A., however- the metaphorical heart and soul of the city- was alive and kicking. An L.A. of the mind, playground of trade and commerce: the City of Night. Known in the local argot as Last Ass, Lonesome Angels, the Laughing Adder, Los Angeles existed in the rarefied state of many port cities, functioning mainly as a downloading point for a constant stream of data, foreign currency, dope and weapons that flowed onto the continent from all over the world.

It was the worst kept secret in the street that half the State Legislature had their fingers deep in the black market pie. Like some fragile species of hothouse orchid, the city existed only as long as it had the politicos backing. Without that, the Committee would be on them like rabid dogs. For the moment, though, the balance was there.

Merchandise flowed out and cash flowed in, blood and breath of the city.

Jonny understood all this and accepted the tightrope existence.

He knew too, that someday the whole thing was going to crash. It was their collective karma. Sooner or later some politico was going to get greedy, try to undercut one of the gangs or simply sell them out for a vote. And the Committee would move in. Jonny knew that this knowledge should make a difference, but it did not.

In the alley, the speed came on like an old friend, an electric hum up and down his spine. Suddenly all things were possible. The nervous glare of neon signs and halogen street lamps domed Sunset in a pulsing nimbus of come-on colors. Stepping from the alley, Jonny barely felt his boots on the pavement. Easy Money was as good as dead.

There were five or six lepers clustered around the entrance to Carnaby's Pit, begging alms and exhibiting their wounds to those willing to pay for a look. An upturned Stetson on the ground before them held an assortment of coins, crumpled dollar and peso notes and gaily colored pills. Ever since the lepers' numbers had grown too large to ignore, odd rumors had sprung up around them. Many people swore that the Committee was putting something in the water, while others suspected the Arabs. Some blamed the Alpha Rats, claiming they were trying to destroy the Earth with Leprosy Rays from the moon. It was Jonny's opinion that most people were idiots.

One leper in a nylon windbreaker was reciting in a low whiskey voice:

"The streets breathe, ebb and flow like the seas beneath a sodden twilight eye.

The sky appears from a maw of rooftops Dusk streets, dry fountains coax the cemetery stars."

Jonny pulled a few Dapsone and tetrahydrocanabinol capsules from his pouch and dropped them into the battered Stetson. The leper who had been reciting, his head and face heavily bandaged, opened his jacket.

"Thank you, friend," the leper said through broken lips, pointing to his freshest scars.

Nodding politely, Jonny left the lepers and stepped down into the Pit.

The skyline tilted, angled steeply downward, then up, became a vertical blur of mirrored windows, skyscrapers leading to a hologram star field. Jonny was in the Pit's game parlor, separated from the bar by a dirty lotus print curtain. Around the edges of the room, antique pinball machines beeped and rang prosaically while the air in the center of the parlor burned with the phantom light of hologram games. Crossing the parlor, Jonny was caught in a spray of hot blue laser blasts from Sub-Orbital Commando, showered with fragments of pint-sized galaxies spinning from Vishnu and Shiva's hands. Rat-sized nudes swarmed above his head, frantically groping at each for Fun In Zero G.

One angry pinball player threw a glass and it shattered against the far wall. Jonny stepped back as two members of the Pit's own Meat Boys moved smoothly from opposite ends of the room to intercept the shouting man.

"Goddamit, this machine just ate my last dollar!" screamed the pinball player.

He was still screaming as the two beefy monsters grabbed an arm apiece and ushered him through the front doors. They came back alone. Jonny half expected to see them return with the guy's arms.

"Peace! Can't we have a little peace in here?" mumbled a sweating man lining up Jacqueline Kennedy in the sights of a fiberglass reproduction of a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. It was Smokefinger, the pickpocket, fat and nervous, jacked into the Date With Destiny game by a length of pencil-thin cable extending from the game console to a 24-prong mini-plug implanted at the base of his skull. Most of the players in the room were jacked into various games by similar plugs. Jonny's stomach fluttered at the sight.

Elective surgery, he had decided years before, did not extend to having little platinum bullets permanently jammed into his skull, thank you. He could watch the World Link on a monitor and as for the games, they seemed real enough without skull-plugs.

Smokefinger tracked the ghostly hologram of the presidential limousine as crimson numbers flickered in the metallic-blue Dallas sky, reading out his score. Jonny leaned close to pickpocket's ear and said, "How's it going, Smoke?" Smokefinger ignored him and continued to move the toy rifle with steady, insect-like concentration. "Hey Smoke," said Jonny, waving his fingers before Smokefinger's eyes just as the fat man pulled the trigger.

"No score. Shit," mumbled the pickpocket, still ignoring Jonny.

He had aced the chauffeur.

This wasn't going to be any fun at all, Jonny decided. He pushed the release button on the plug at the back of Smokefinger's head. The wire dropped and a spring-loaded coil drew it back inside the game console.

"What the hell-" yelled Smokefinger, grabbing for his neck. He looked at Jonny dumbly as his eyes slowly re-focused. In a moment, he said, "Hey Jonny, que pasa?"

"Not much," Jonny said. I can't believe you're still playing this game. Haven't you killed everybody in Dallas by now?"

Smokefinger shrugged. "I pop 'em, but they keep coming back."

Sweat pooled on the pickpocket's glasses where the rims touched his cheeks.

Jonny smiled and looked around the room hoping there was anyone else from whom he might get information. However, in the pastel glare of meteor showers and laser fire, none of the faces looked familiar. "You seen Easy Money around?" he asked Smokefinger. "I've got to talk to him."

"Right, talk. You and everybody else." Smokefinger looked back at the empty hologram chamber and cursed. "I almost broke my own record, you know," he said. He looked at Jonny accusingly. "No, I ain't seen Easy. Random's tending bar tonight. Maybe you should go talk to him. To tell you the truth, you're distracting me." Smokefinger never took his finger from the trigger of the fiberglass rifle. Jonny pulled some yen coins from his pocket and fed them into the machine.

"Thanks for all your help, killer," he said. But Smokefinger did not hear him; he was already jacking in. Jonny left Smokefinger, wishing he could find peace as easily as that, and pushed his way into the bar.

Jonny always found it a little disconcerting that the main room never seemed to change. He imagined it frozen in time, like a scratched record, repeating the same snatch of lyric over and over again. The usual weekend crowd of small-time smugglers, B actors and bored prostitutes stared from the blue veil of smoke around the bar. The same tired porn played on the big screen for the benefit of those unfortunates not equipped with skull-plugs. Even the band, Taking Tiger Mountain were blasting the same old riffs, stopping half-way through their own Guernica Rising" when the crowd shouted them down. They switched to a desultory Brown Sugar a song that was out-of-date long before anybody in the club had been born. Dancers undulated under the strobes and sub-sonic mood enhancers as projectors threw holograms of lunar atrocities onto their hot bodies.

In fact, the only real difference Jonny could see in the place was the darkness in the HoloWhores bundling booths.

Jonny pushed his way through the tightly packed crowd and tried the door to Easy's control room. It was locked, and the bar far too full to force the door. He would have to wait. Feeling relief, and guilt at that relief, Jonny made his way to the bar for a drink and some questions.

Random, the bartender, was drying glasses behind a bar constructed of old automobile dashboards. Tall and thin, his skin creased like dead leaves, Random offered Jonny the same half-smile he offered everybody. Jonny ordered an Asahi dark and gin; he put a twenty on the bar. Random set down the beer and slid the bill into his pocket in one smooth motion.

The bartender inclined his head toward the dance floor.

"Necrophiliacs," he said above the roar of the band. "They can't stand new music. Like it's deadly to them or something. Bunch of assholes."

Random shrugged. Then he looked away, like a blind man, eyes unfocused. "They just nuked Kansas City. The Jordanian Re-Unification Army, a New Palestine splinter group. They called the local Net up link. Said Houston's next," he reported. The bartender shook his head. "Those boys must really hate cows." Random had a passion for morbid news items and stayed plugged into the Net's data lines constantly, relaying the most worthy bits to his customers.

Jonny thought it was one of his most charming qualities.

He turned back to Jonny as if anticipating his question. "Easy split. Been gone a couple of days now. Left quick, too. Didn't touch his holo stuff."

"I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?" asked Jonny.

"I'm afraid he neglected to leave a forwarding address. A shame too, so close to Thanksgiving and all."

The band's volume jumped abruptly as they broke from the song into a tense, rhythmic jam. Saint Peter, the guitarist, stood at the edge of the stage between soaring liquid-cooled stacks of Krupp-Verwandlungsinhalt speakers. Eyes squeezed shut, shoulders loose, Saint Peter pumped walls of noise, his myoelectric left-hand racing like a frantic silver spider up and down the fretboard. As he played, a pattern of light glinted off the chrome hand, marking its progress through the air. Then, just as the jam reached its peak, the song died; the porn faded and the lights dimmed. "Brown-out," said Random. He casually threw a switch under the bar and the power returned. "Tell Sumi gracias for the watts", he said.

Jonny nodded. "Did you hear that Easy had another Flare Gun Party?" he asked.

"No, who got burned?"

"Raquin."

Random raised an eyebrow in sympathy. "Sorry, man," he said.

"Although, I must admit, I'm not entirely surprised to hear he's been up to something. He took a long hit from a hookah next to the cash register. Looking for Easy Money seems to be the hot new game in town. Last night the crowd was so thick I had 'em line up and take numbers. Of course, Easy's not the only one who seems to have captured the public's imagination." Random smiled at Jonny. "You appear to have developed a bit of celebrity all your own."

"Me?" Jonny asked guardedly. "Who's been asking about me?"

Random shrugged. "No one I knew." The bartender winked conspiratorially. "Come on, boy-o. Whose ankles have you been nipping at?"

"I am pathetically clean." Jonny said. "Tell me about them. Anything you can remember."

Random stuck two nicotine yellow fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a glicene envelope of white powder. "Pure as Mother Mary and twice as nice", he said, giving the envelope a light kiss.

"Interesting lads. They didn't try to pay off in crude cash." He dropped the envelope back into his pocket.

"Smugglers?" asked Jonny.

"Could be, only what's a smuggler lord doing shooting for small shit like Easy Money? Or you for that matter."

"Who knows," Jonny said. He took a long gulp of his drink.

"Maybe he's decided he's in the wrong business."

"Hell," said the bartender, everybody in Last Ass's in the wrong business.

Random set down the glass he had been cleaning and said, "Weather." His eyes shifted. Junior senator on the Atmospheric Management Committee announced they can clean-up the mess left by the Weather Wars. Says they ought to be able to stabilize weather patterns over most of North America in three to five years.

"Didn't they announce that same program three to five years ago?" asked Jonny.

"At least." And with that, Random gave Jonny the other half of the smile and moved on to other customers.

Swirling the dregs of his beer, Jonny turned and studied the noisy crowd moving through the bar. He searched their heads for a sign of goat horns grafted above a thin face, inset with darting, suspicious eyes. Or arms thick with tattooed serpents, like the stigmata of some junky god. Easy Money always stood out in a crowd which, Jonny supposed, was the idea. If Easy was around, he should not be hard to spot.

Jonny had met Easy while they were both in the employ of the smuggler lord Conover. This was just after Easy had made a name for himself with his first Flare Gun Party.

The party had become something of a legend with the pushers.

It went like this: Easy Money, a human parasite with the unerring ability to detect the softest, most vulnerable part of his prey, had acquired a contract to kill the leader of the Los Santos Atomicos gang.

Beginning with a philosophy that later became his trademark (like the hourglass on the belly of a spider) Easy reasoned that gang retribution being such a swift and ugly thing, eliminating the entire gang would be less trouble than the removal of any single member.

It was well known to those who, like Easy, always kept a metaphorical ear to the ground, that the Los Santos Atomicos gang's particular vice was free-basing cocaine. Easy located their safe-house with information from a rival gang. He also found that the Los Santos Atomicos liked to buy the ether they used to treat the coke, in bulk.

They kept big tanks of the stuff hidden under the floor.

As he was fond of saying, from there it was easy money.

Like some stoned Prometheus, Easy brought fire to the Los Santos Atomicos in the form of a red Navy signal flare which he fired into their lab from the roof of a Catholic mission across the street.

The explosion literally ripped the roof off the ether-filled building.

The fireball boiled down onto many of the adjoining buildings, igniting them, too.

Besides the Los Santos Atomicos, at least a dozen other people, mainly junkies and prostitutes, died in the fires that engulfed the grimy neighborhood. And Easy Money moved up a rung in the hierarchy of the movers and shakers in their little world.

Looking back, none of it had seemed important to Jonny at the time.

When he heard of the deaths it seemed somehow normal.

Just one more senseless act in the long series of senseless acts that made up their lives. However, Raquin's death had moved events from the abstract into a personal affront. He knew Raquin.

And he knew Easy had killed him. Jonny would finish Easy Money simply because nobody else would and because the little prick deserved it.

Jonny slowed his breathing, counted each intake of breath, centering himself as his roshi had taught him. Visions of horned, tattooed Easy swam before him as he hunted for that savage part of himself he had sought before whenever he had to kill.

But the passion was gone, seemed pointless now. The speed had been cut with something unpleasant. It was wearing off already, leaving him feeling numb and stupid. Jonny gulped down the rest of his beer and tried to get into the buzz from the liquor.

He wondered if perhaps he had figured things wrong. If the smuggler lords really were after Easy maybe he was not needed, after all. There was always work to do, money to be made. He had to establish a new connection. Something bothered Jonny, though. He could not figure out who, besides the Committee, would be looking for him. Had he trod on someone's toes in the last few days looking for Easy? He could not remember.

The bar seemed to tip slightly as Jonny downed his second Asahi and gin. When he wiped a hand across his brow it came away cool and covered in sweat. He left the bar, pushing carelessly through a tight knot of nervous teenagers from the Valley made up to look like they had grafts and implants. Near the restroom, a Zombie Analytic flashed Jonny in quick succession: Marilyn Monroe, Jim Morrison and Aoki Vega. He ignored her.

Inside the restroom, Jonny splashed rusty water onto his face.

The room stank of human waste, and the paper towel dispenser was empty. On the floor he found half a copy of "Twilight of the Gods".

The toilet was full of Nietzsche. Jonny dried his hands with the few remaining pages. The water made him feel a little better. However, the come down from the speed had left him jumpy and nervous.

When Jonny left the restroom, a hand clamped on his arm.

"Jonny, how's it going?" asked a short man that Jonny did not recognize. The man's smile was wide and toothy, intended to give the impression that he was a very dangerous character. He wore shades whose lenses were dichromatic holograms depicting some cavern.

Where his eyes should have been were twin bottomless pits.

"That's a good way to lose some teeth or an eye," Jonny said evenly.

The little man's smile faded only slightly. He relaxed his grip on Jonny's arm, but did not release him.

"Sorry Jonny," he said. "Look, could I buy you a drink or something?"

"No."

Jonny shook off the little man's grip and headed back to the bar to get drunk. But again, strong fingers caught him.

"Where are you going in such a hurry?" the little man asked. "Let's talk. I've got a deal for you."

Jonny jammed his elbow into the little man's midsection, spun and pressed the barrel of the Futukoro into the man's throat.

"If you ever grab me again, I will kill you. Do you understand that?" Jonny whispered.

The little man released Jonny's arm and stepped back, his hands held in front of his chest, palms out. "It's cool," the little man said giddily. "It's cool."

Jonny pushed the man away roughly and left him chattering to himself. He was sweating again. Jonny went back to the bar and drank cheap fishy-tasting Japanese vodka, thinking as he drank, about how vile it was and how he wished he could afford the good stuff. He put the little man out of his mind. Jonny wondered if he should call Sumi, but that seemed like a bad idea. She would ask questions he did not want to answer. Eventually, his thoughts drifted to Raquin. Jonny wondered what it was like to burn to death. He remembered that someone had once told him that you would not feel anything, that the fire would consume all the oxygen and you would smother before you ever felt the flames. That seemed like small comfort. How much better was it to smother than to burn?

Jonny continued drinking straight shots of the fishy vodka until the taste disappeared altogether. Taking six of the shot-glasses, he constructed a little pyramid, but Random took the glasses away and soon Jonny ran out of money. While he was fishing in his pouch for more dope, there was a slight tug on his arm. Somehow, when he turned, Jonny knew the little man would be standing there. His shades were off and he held his hands up as if to ward off a blow.

"Truce, okay? I did not grab you," the little man said. "I just tapped you on the shoulder."

Jonny nodded. "I could tell you were a quick study. What do you want?"

The man leaned forward, anxiously. "Look Jonny, I didn't want to tell you before- I'm working for Mister Conover. He sent me to get you. If you don't come back with me, my ass is grass."

"Sorry to hear that. Tell Mister Conover I'll get in touch with him as soon as I'm through with the deal I'm working on now."

"I can't do that. He wants you now," said the little man.

"Hopefully", he added, "You know that whatever it is you're working on, Mister Conover will make it worth your while to drop."

Jonny shook his head. "No thanks; this is personal."

The little man leaned closer. "You aren't looking for Easy Money, are you?"

"What if I am?"

"Well, that's great," said the little man. "That's the job- Easy Money copped something that belongs to Mister Conover. And Mister Conover wants you to help him get it back."

Jonny nodded, took a piece of ice from someone's empty glass, and rubbed it across his forehead. "My problem, friend, is that I know Mister Conover pretty well and I know that he is a professional", Jonny said. "No offense, but why would he send a hard guy like you to get me?"

The little man looked around, apparently to make sure that nobody was eavesdropping. "This really isn't my job," he whispered.

Jonny smiled. "No shit?" he said.

"I'm more of a bookkeeper. It's just that Mister Conover's got all his muscle guys out looking for Easy Money", he said. The little man looked at Jonny gravely. "You know how it is."

"Yeah, I know how it is," said Jonny, genuinely amused.

"He told me that you always hang out at Carnaby's Pit," the little man continued. He made a face as if he had just smelled something foul. "To tell you the truth, it's a little bit much for me."

Jonny laughed. "Sometimes it's a bit much for me, too," he said.

The little man smiled; for real, this time. "Then you'll come with me?" he asked.

Jonny shrugged. "That stuff about looking for Easy, you weren't just being cute again, were you?"

"No, all that was true", he said.

"Good."

"Then you'll come?"

"I'm not sure. I hate to beat a point to death, but how do I know you work for Mister Conover?"

"Oh yeah", said the little man brightening. He reached into his jacket pocket. "Mister Conover said to give you this."

He handed Jonny a plastic bag containing two gelatinous blue capsules. The manufacturer's markings were Swiss, the capsules NATO issue, banded with an orange warning stripe indicating myotoxins. Jonny had seen the stuff on the Committee. Frosty the Snowman. It was a necrotic, a synthetic variation on pit viper venom that killed by breaking down collagen fibers, effectively dissolving skin and muscle tissue. The NATO variation, he had heard, was constructed with "certain open" segments along its DNA chain, allowing the toxin to bind with polypeptides in the victim's collagen and replicate itself there. Rumor had it that Frosty could break down the skin and muscle tissue of a seventy kilo man in just under fourteen hours. It was not the kind of drug that many people would have access to. Jonny stuffed the bag into his pouch.

"So, I'm convinced," he said.

"Then you'll come?"

"Why not," he said. I'm not getting anywhere here."

The little man beamed at him. Jonny thought it might be love.

"By the way, have you got a name?" Jonny asked.

"Cyrano. Bender Cyrano, like the guy in the old book, you know? Only I haven't got the nose." Cyrano laughed at his own joke.

Jonny did not know what the hell Cyrano was talking about, but he smiled so as not to hurt the little man's feelings. When Cyrano extended his hand, Jonny shook it.

"Nice to meet you, Cyrano. Let's get out of here," said Jonny.

When they reached the dirty curtain, Jonny turned and took a last look at the band. They were burning through one of Saint Peter's best tunes, Street Prince. The crowd ignored them, utterly.

Random was right, Jonny decided. A bunch of assholes.

Outside, the hot night had cooled somewhat. That usually meant that the street people would haunt Sunset Boulevard until dawn, but an uneasy silence had settled upon the street. A scrap of paper, plucked up by the wind, did a careless pirouette before being carried away. A quiet crowd had gathered across the street, watching the club. Jonny took a step back. Cyrano walked on a few steps before he noticed that Jonny was no longer there.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Jonny was barely six when the first of the Protein Rebellions took place. That was when the citizens of Los Angeles, inspired by uprisings in other cities, rose up and wrecked the Griffith Park Zoo in search of fresh meat. The riots were finally put down, but not until ten days of fighting left the city little more than an open wound. The official body count was something like 10,000 civilian and military dead.

The authorities, however, had not been caught entirely unprepared. Many in power had seen what was coming. Plans were pushed forward, timetables scrapped, and those select few, wealthy enough to buy entrance or powerful enough to demand it, began their silent pilgrimages deep into the desert, to government-sponsored havens like New Hope.

The rest of the city remained behind with the rest of the solution. The rest of the solution, in this case, was a paramilitary organization known, without apparent irony, as the Committee for Public Health. And several armed members of that organization were waiting for Jonny when he left Carnaby's Pit.

Spotlights hit Jonny and Cyrano from across the street.

A adolescent, bullhorned voice called, "Do not move. You are both under arrest."

Jonny dropped to the ground, pulling his gun. Cyrano awkwardly wrestled a Mexican Barretta from his belt and got off one shot before a Futukoro blast ripped into his chest. The little man fell on Jonny, bleeding everywhere, looking horrified. He clutched at the wound, as if by holding it closed, he could keep his life from slipping out. Jonny looked up in time to see the leper in the Spacer uniform peering at him from around the side of the bar.

Automatic weapons fire bit into the front of the Pit as the Committee opened up. Shattered glass and concrete showered down on Jonny as he flattened himself on the ground. From behind, the door of the bar burst open and a phalanx of the Pit's Meat Boys emerged, armed to the teeth. Jonny wanted very muchto disappear.

Across Sunset, the evening crowds were pinned down in windows and doorways, watching the fire fight. Occasionally, one or two kids wearing gang colors would make a break into the open and run across Sunset, waving and shouting as they reached the other side alive. A young, fat Gypsy Titan started across behind his faster friend. It looked as if the fat boy would make it, when a shot spun him around. He tore at the long scarf knotted about his throat before collapsing between two parked cars.

Jonny heard orders barked from somewhere in the dark and the sound of scrambling feet. The Meat Boys were fanning out, covering the entrance of the Pit. No escape that way. Why the hell were the Meat Boys fighting the Committee, Jonny wondered. Must think it's some rogue gang trying to shake them down.

Jonny pressed close to the building for cover. Sounds like thunder, breaking glass and splintering wood enclosed him. He tried to crawl behind the Meat Boys, but they were moving all over the street.

At the side of the bar, Jonny saw the leper again, giving him the finger with one diseased hand. At that instant, Jonny recognized him. Even with the bandages and the uniform, he knew the leper was Easy Money. Jonny took a shot at him, but Easy ducked behind the building.

Again, the door to Carnaby's Pit burst open and Smokefinger came running out. He was screaming what sounded like "Motherfuckers" at the top of his lungs. His right arm was a mass of wet red flesh. Running into the street, he was cut to pieces by Committee cross-fire.

Jonny made a break for the alley behind the Pit. Moving quickly to a low crouch, he crawled around the perimeter of the building. He almost made it when he felt a terrible kick in his shoulder. Jonny's muscles turned to water.

Sometime later, he was not sure how long, Jonny awoke in the alley. He had no idea how he had gotten there. He could still hear occasional bursts of automatic weapons fire. When he tried to stand, Jonny discovered that his whole right side was numb.

With his left arm, Jonny grabbed the rim of an overflowing dumpster and pulled himself to his feet. It took him a few seconds to find his balance, but when he did, he started running to exit at the far end of the alley.

He almost made it, but somewhere along the way, a boot whipped out of the darkness and sent him sprawling.

Oh fuck, Jonny thought.

This time he did not get up.