The Lucifer desk

1

“Pita! Hoi, chummer, have you made the patch?”

Pita lay on her back, screwdriver clamped between her oversized teeth. The service shaft was narrow, just wide enough to accommodate her broad shoulders. She’d had to strip off her jacket and worm her way in, her arms stretched out ahead of her. Now she shivered in the cold.

Working by the light of a cheap Brightlight rip-off with a rapidly depleting power cell, she pried open the protective plastic covering the trideo cables. Feeling along one of them, she located the splitter that branched the cable off to individual apartments. Then she smiled as her blunt finger found a free port.

“Hoi, Pita!” One of the other kids kicked her feet, the only part of her that remained outside the service shaft. “Is this going to take all night?”

“Yeah, yeah. Nearly there,” she growled back. She popped one end of the cable feed into the port and then plugged the other end into Chen’s electrode net. “I gotta test it, first.”

The trode net was the poor person’s version of a datajack-a means of translating raw electronic data into a multi-sensory experience without the need for expensive cybernetic implants. She snugged the headset’s electrodes around her temples, closed her eyes, and broke into a wide grin as an image sparkled to life behind her closed eyelids. The upper-right corner was a mess of white static, probably due to the worn cladding of the fiber-optic cable she’d used to patch in. She should have boosted a new cable from the local Tridio Shack outlet, but for now, this dumpster-diver’s special would have to do. At least the rest of the image was sharp.

She’d tapped into an infomercial for the Yamaha Rapier. The sleek, wasplike body of the motorcycle burst out of a shower of chrome confetti and screamed past on a strobelit highway that looped across the flame-filled sky. “Ride the wind. Feel the fire. The ‘54 Rapier. Just ten thousand nuyen.”

Pita snorted and winked to change channels. Ten thousand nuyen? Not in ten of her lifetimes.

She skipped over a nostalgia rock channel and then past Name That Logo, a game show in which children from the Aztechnology arcology competed with each other for expensive simulator sets. The first station catered to sludge-minds who’d been born before the millennium and the game show was kid stuff. At seventeen, Pita was too old for that drek. She curled her lip as she caught a few seconds of a rerun of a speech by Governor Schultz, in which she promised to clean up Seattle’s streets. Didn’t she know that some people had to boost the odd package of Soygrits, just to get by?

She flipped past a Salish-language station and devoted a few seconds to an advertorial by the Church of Sorcerology. “Is your child among the one per cent of the population with natural magical ability?” an overly enthusiastic announcer asked. “In this Awakened world of 2054, can you really afford to let your child’s magical abilities slumber? Our free stress test can reveal your child’s hidden talents. Just call our office at-” Pita changed channels.

Her attention was caught by a local newscast. A snoop who looked vaguely Native American was jamming on about another brain-bashing by the local chapter of Hnmanis Policlub. The trid zoomed in on an ork, a little younger than Pita, whose head had been laid open like a smashed fruit. Then it panned down to the globular red spillage on the boy’s shoulder and the letters scrawled on his chest: “One meta-freak down. Half a billion to go.”

Pita tore the “trode rig away from her temples and fought to keep from heaving. Simsense made everything seem so real. So close. She could practically reach out and touch the spilled brains, could smell the blood that had soaked his shirt. The bashing had taken place just a few kilometers from here, in Seattle’s downtown core. Like the boy who had died. Pita was an ork too. What happened to him could have happened to her.

The aural trode was still in contact with her scalp. A tinny voice squawked in her right ear as she held the goggles in her hand: “KKRU Trideo. The station that puts ‘U’ in the picture”

Pita thumbed the headset off and called back over her shoulder. “Hoi, Chen. I’ve got a patch! Now all we gotta do is scan for the broadcast. What channel do you think they’ll tap into this time?” Funny. It was awfully quiet out there. Then she noticed the flashing blue light.

Something wrapped tightly around one ankle. Before Pita could even shout in alarm, she was hauled roughly out of the service shaft. The fiber-optic cable pulled taut, then popped from the port. Then she was out on the sidewalk, her elbows scraped and hurting like drek, staring up into the barrel of an automatic rifle. The Lone Star cop behind it didn’t look happy. Behind him, a blue light flashed in regular circles on the roof of a patrol car. Lone Star was the private corporation hired to provide Seattle with police services.

Pita’s three friends had assumed the position against the apartment block’s wall and were being patted down none too gently by a second Lone Star officer, this one female. Pita glanced down at her chest where the red dot of the rifle’s sighting laser was targeted and groaned. They were in some serious drek now.

“What’s that in your hands, kid?” the cop behind the rifle asked. “A stolen simsense unit?” His chromed cyber eye whirred softly as he scanned her face.

Chen, the oldest of Pita’s three friends, turned his bead away from the wall. “It’s not stolen,” he gritted through oversized teeth. “My brother gave it to me so I could watch his broadcasts. He’s a-”

The cop behind Chen kicked savagely at his ankle and Chen collapsed. gasping in pain.

“Nobody asked you, porkie,” the cop hissed. “Keep talking, and you’re only going to get iced. Now get back into line.”

Stun-stick in hand, the Star watched as Chen climbed painfully back to his feet. Even though he was just seventeen, Chen was twice the size of the cop. Unlike Pita, who had only goblinized two years before, Chen had been born an ork, and had the broad shoulders and huge hands to prove it. Yet he also had the laser-straight black hair, flat face and eye folds of his Asian ancestors. Aside from his bulk and jutting Canines, he looked almost human. Pita, on the other hand, had a face as coarse and ugly as any true-born ork. No wonder the cop glared at her. She tried in vain to close her lips over her snaggled teeth.

The cop above her plucked the ‘trode rig from Pita’s grasp. He turned it over, inspecting it. “Frag it, Doyle, this is old tech. Nobody in their right mind would boost it. The kid probably lifted the unit out of a trash ‘pacter. You really want to waste time inputting a report for this crud?”

The female officer stepped back from Chen and the two smaller orks, still keeping her stun stick aimed at Chen’s back. Then she shook her head. “Not really. Trash it.”

The cop standing beside Pita dropped the headset on the cement, raised his booted foot, and slammed it down hard. Metal and plastic splintered and circuits crunched, leaving a shattered mess. After wiping the heel of his boot against the pavement, the cop stepped back. The thin red line of his weapon’s sighting laser winked out. “Get up, boy.”

Pita cringed. Was she really so ugly that they couldn’t tell she was a girl? She felt even worse when she saw the look on Chen’s face. His eyes were locked on the broken goggles. Behind him, the two younger orks, Shaz and Mohan, looked stunned. Like Pita, they’d never seen Chen cry before.

Pita rose to her feet, shaking, as the cops backed into the shadow of their patrol car. The first cop still held his weapon ready, hut it was no longer trained on them. While the female officer clicked her teeth, activating her radio headware to call building maintenance, he jerked his head to one side. “Scatter,” he told the orks.

“Disappear.”

They did.

Twelve blocks later, puffing from their run, Pita and her friends slowed. Chen had been running with a peculiar hop-step, and now he settled into a limp.

“Fragging goons,” he panted, surreptitiously wiping the last of the tears from his cheeks.

Shaz and Mohan walked a pace behind him. They were brothers, twelve and thirteen years old. They’d only been on the streets a year, and looked to Chen, with his six years of city smarts, for leadership. They had shaved their heads, thinking it would make them look tougher, and wore matching black T-shirts emblazoned with the grinning face of the ork rocker and go-gang leader who fronted Meta Madness. The group’s logo was stitched across the T-shirts in silver wire.

“Yao gave me that headset,” Chen muttered. “He said I wouldn’t be able to talk to him once he went underground, but that I could use it to watch his broadcasts. Now I won’t even be able to see him on trideo.”

“I know.” Pita untied her black synth-leather jacket from around her waist and tugged it on over her sleeveless flannel shirt. Her threadbare sneaks, cheap like everything else that came out of the Confederated American States, scuffed the sidewalk. Knobby knees poked out of the holes in her jeans as she walked. “At least you know he cares about you. My sister never even…”

Chen jerked to a halt. He turned toward Pita. “I’m sorry.” Wrapping his massive arms around her shoulders, he hugged her close. She felt Shaz and Mohan touch her back with gentle fingers.

Bitterness gnawed at her with sharp teeth as her mind flew back to when she’d first begun to goblinize. She’d hidden it from her family for a week, mumbling into her hand to conceal her expanding canines and wearing baggy clothes to hide her sudden growth. Then her sister had caught her in the bathroom, shaving the curly brown hair that had started to sprout from her shoulders. The next day, Pita came home from school to find the front door locked and her clothes jumbled into foamboard boxes on the lawn. Her old clothes. They’d saved the good ones for her sister.

She’d wound up in downtown Seattle without a credstick. Like so many kids before her, she decided to sell the only thing she had. Herself. She hadn’t been prepared for the jeers, the mocking laughter. Fleeing down an alley, she’d run head-first into Chen, knocking him flat on his ass on a broken bottle. Later, she’d discovered the blood on the seat of his pants. And found out why he gave her the nickname Pita. From that day on she answered only to it, instead of to Patti, the name her parents had given her.

Now he lipped her head back and kissed her cheek. “Hey, there, Pain In The Ass. Null perspiration. We still got each other, don’t we? That material drek is just stuff, eh?”

“Just stuff,” Mohan echoed.

Beside him, Shaz was making a low, throaty grumble. “Fragging goons,” he growled, his voice cracking. “Why can't they leave us alone?”

Just up the Street, a patrol car was rounding the corner. Its blue light washed the buildings in rapid sweeps, chasing the shadows from the streets. A voice crackled out over a loudspeaker. “This is Lone Star Security. Freeze.”

“Leave us alone!” Shaz shouted. Suddenly stooping, he scooped up a broken piece of concrete and hurled it at the patrol car. It bounced harmlessly off the armor plating with a dull thunk. The car braked to a screeching halt, and the front port slid open. The dark tube of a gun barrel poked through.

“Frag it!” Pita yelled. “Run!”

Chen was still turning to look at the car when the first of the shots ripped the night. Pita had barely begun to run when she heard the wet meaty sound of bullets hitting flesh. Chen grunted in pain.

“Run!” Shaz screamed.

Behind her, Pita heard another burst of gunfire. Mohan groaned, and then Shaz began to scream. “Mohan, get up! Get up, frag you! Get-”

The automatic weapon opened up a third time, just as Pita reached the corner. A spray of concrete dusted her jacket as she rounded it. Gulping back sobs, she pounded down the block. Somewhere behind her, she heard an engine rev and the squeal of fires. Lone Star Security was going to make sure there weren’t any witnesses.

Pita rounded another corner, feet skidding to find purchase on the pitted sidewalk. The blue flash of the patrol car’s lights washed her shoulder as she leaped into the shadows. Feet pounding. eyes blurry with tears, she gulped in great lungfuls of air and ran as hard as she could. Around another corner. Over a parked car and across an intersection. Down a side street. And at last into an alley. Spotting a rusted fire escape ladder she leaped, caught the bottom rung. The ladder creaked in a slow descent and she scrambled up it, hand over hand. She could hear the patrol car getting closer, coming down the side street.

With a shrieking groan, the ladder gave way. Suddenly Pita found herself tumbling. She grabbed for a handhold, missed-and fell into an open dumpster. Squishy bags of garbage broke her fall and a rank smell filled her nostrils. The ladder clattered to the ground beside it. She was just about to scramble out when she saw a blue flicker on the dumpster’s open lid. Deciding to stay put, she eased bags of garbage on top of her, burrowing deeper into the pile.

A bright light swept across the alley, searching its shadows like a sniffing dog. Pita heard the thud of a car door, the footsteps of an approaching cop. She crouched rigid as death, trying not to breathe. Please, she begged whatever fates would listen. Don’t let him find me. Don’t let him see me. Her ragged breathing seemed to echo loud inside the dumpster, giving her away. She heard the footsteps approach, saw a flashlight beam linger on the open lid of the dumpster. She closed her eyes, focusing every effort of her will on becoming motionless, on becoming invisible. It was too late now to move, to worry about whether the trash covered her completely. She heard the faint rasp of the cop’s gloved hand on the lip of the dumpster, saw a flash of light sweep across her closed eyelids. Any second now, the cop would point his gun and…

No. She forced the image out of her mind. He doesn’t see me, she chanted, over and over like a mantra. He doesn’t see me.

The flashlight beam swept away, leaving her in darkness. Pita heard footsteps departing and the slam of a car door, then the soft purr of the patrol car’s engine as it motored slowly up the street. Relief flooded over her in a cold, shivering rush. She wasn’t sure who to thank for protecting her, but someone or something must have been listening.

At last she allowed herself to cry. Shaz, Mohan, Chen. She hadn’t seen them go down, but what shed heard behind her as she ran from the cops hadn’t sounded good. Instead of trying to help them, she’d run away. Turned her back on her friends and bolted, Her stomach clenched with guilt. Gnawing her lip until she tasted blood, Pita at last heaved herself out of the dumpster and jogged cautiously back in the direction of her friends.