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FIVE

Karl slides onto a stool next to Villar at the counter.

Villar grunts, runs a hand over a stubbled skull, "I was beginning to think somebody took you deep sea fishing." Looking up into the mirror, catching a closer look at the cut lip, the bandage behind his ear, he whistles long and low, "Jesus, you're looking better. That why you were in such a hurry yesterday?"

The big Negress comes over to take their order, sees Karl and is none too happy about it. Karl makes a note to tip well. With his problems, an irritated waitress he doesn't need.

Thinking over where he stands, Karl decides he's got little to lose by trusting Villar—up to a point—and fills him in on the last two days. When he gets to the part about Swindlehurst, Karl's not sure how to read his face.

"He did it? You're sure he did it?"

Karl nods.

Villar whistles low, "That's not the Mr. S we know and love."

"Half expected them to pick me up on the way over."

Villar shakes his head, "I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. If you're right about him arrest is the last thing you should be worried about."

"Thanks, I feel better already."

He fixes Karl with a hard glance, "What, then you're saying Mr. S and this guy you cut both think they were taken over by something, same as the guy we picked up on the last one?"

Karl hears how it sounds,"That's what I'm saying."

Like a dog with a burr in its ear Villar shakes his head. The fry cook, pencil-thin Cuban cigar stuck behind an ear, sings When The Saints Go Marching In as he works the grill. White teeth against horse chestnut skin.

"I know how it sounds, but you heard that guy. You're a cop, you know men, you know a lie when you hear one. Was he lying?"

Villar meets his eye. It's obvious he doesn't like the question. He lifts his mug, signaling for the waitress' attention, waits as she fills it. "Aaah, I don't know, man, that's a little far out there in left field for me."

Karl doesn't blame him for not believing. If he hadn't seen inside him, he wouldn't believe it either. If he could only lay it all out for him. He can't.

"I've got to know something," Villar says. "What you did the other day for the Sisters, what you did for Romy, that's not something a man does because he's getting paid."

Karl lifts his arm as the girl slides their plates, hot from the lamp, in front of them. "Enjoy...and listen, Sweetie...." She leans close, voice a whisper, "If the lights go out don't get a wedgie over it, huh? It happens out here a lot."

Villar casts him a quizzical look and he runs a hand over the tablet, tips her precisely one centavo, slides it down the counter to her. Wedgie that, Honey.

"Thanks," Villar says. "I asked you a question—why?"

Karl remembers. Why? Good question. The last twenty four hours a lot of things have changed. How Karl's not sure, but they have. When a man's ideas about things melt like sand castles under surf, that's change, even before he knows how they'll congeal. Sipping Java, he looks at Villar and sees, not a spick, a man, a friend maybe, who can know, but a man, an equal. For him, that's something new. "I don't know."

Villar watches him, thoughtful. "Okay, I'll tell you why. You come here thinking like most people do, they're freaks, some kind of walking mannequin, and you found out you were wrong. You found out they're as human as we are, maybe more, that's why."

The words are lemon juice in a paper cut. "Sorry, try again."

"I'm right, I know because I was the way you are."

"Oh, yeah, what changed you?"

Villar smiles. "You wouldn't be the first man to fall for a Sister, you know, happens all the time. Seen them, rich men, spend every dime, all on a Sister who couldn't care if he lives or dies."

Karl's got to know. "And what about the other way round, the one-in-a-billion shot they hype so much...ever happen?"

Villar grimaces, drops it, "It happens."

He'll bet it does. "And they live happily ever after."

"Ten years I've seen it happen three times. First time was a salesman out of the valley, had a family, wanted a night to remember, not a recombinant soul mate. She came back after two days. They parted her out before she could develop any antibodies—just in case."

"Happy ending."

"Second wasn't much different. No fairy tales out here. There was one, though, artist I think he was, sculptor if I remember right. Shaved her head, got her off the plat made up to look like a netpunk. Didn't realize we locate them by GPS—the eye in the sky, right? Tailed him on the douche bag over, rode right next to them at the rail." Villar's eyes focus on nothing as he remembers. "He was smitten, all right, could barely stand he was hit so hard. You should have seen them, barely keep their hands off each other. If anybody had a chance, they did."

Karl looks at him with new understanding. "You let them go, didn't you."

Villar pushes away his plate, slides his mug close, motions for a refill. Resentful, the waitress fills it, glaring at Karl as she goes. He gives her a pleasant smile.

"Lost me at the dock."

Karl has to laugh. Sure they did. "They make it?"

Villar cocks his head, "Never heard anything, never came back. Somebody must have clued them to ditch the chips. They came up on the bottom where the main sewage line dumps off the coast. Company line was double suicide. I say they flushed them. They're out there somewhere, Mr. and Mrs. Anybody, Anytown, USA."

Karl tries to picture a Sister blending into Anytown, USA, and can't. "What about that face, that hair?"

He shrugs, "Some cheap hair color from the corner nickel and dime, Mexican make up, a bulky jacket and you wouldn't look twice. Just another skinny broad. No, they made it. I know they made it."

It's obvious Villar wants to believe it. Karl does, too. Thinking of something, he slides off his stool, "Be right back."

Wedging himself into one of the three wooden phone booths that line the back wall, he forces shut the squealing door, settles onto the shelf seat in the corner, air stinking of stale smoke. The phone hefts good and heavy in his hand, a curiosity now, these old dinosaurs.

The voice on the line asks for his number and he dials it with an index finger, waiting for the mechanism to spin slowly back. So clumsy, he wonders how anyone ever used them and not die of boredom waiting for the damn thing to climb back around. Maybe they used to be faster.

When the com asks for payment he passes his hand over a sensor. The Bakelite receiver clucks contentedly as the light turns green.

Tate answers.

"It's me."

"Just a minute," he says, and a low hum comes over the line, telling them the line's secure.

"So, how are you?"

Karl runs a hand gently over cracked ribs. "Swell."

"And?"

"She won't come."

"Why not?"

"Doesn't like me much," Karl says, taking his temples between thumb and forefinger. Karl can picture Tate pacing the office impatiently. Tate's anger is conducted over the silent line like a charge.

"So, when?"

"Don't know yet, have to see."

"I heard about the others, how many, now, five, six in what, three days? Wouldn't take too long if I were you."

Karl doesn't need reminding. "How's Auri?"

"Fine." After a pause, "Can you use some help over there?"

Anger iced with embarrassment heats his face. Never in ten years has Tate suggested he couldn't handle a job. Karl smiles out the glass at the wall and Harpo smiles back, tipping a cigar. Karl wonders if he's gone broke in the market crash by the time the photo was taken, wonders if he'd yet mortgaged his home, borrowed against future salary to meet never ending margin calls. Don't do it, Harpo. Don't listen to them. You were right, Harpo, it's all just a bunch of hoonga-doonga. At least that much hasn't changed.

Karl doesn't care whether Tate has any faith in him. Why should he? "I'll get her out, you just have somebody ready. I'm not bringing her out to drop her into a meat grinder."

Karl hears him take a breath and without waiting for an answer, cuts him off, dialing a second number. At last the line rings.

Melvin answers. "Yeah?" He sounds older, more mature than he is. The implant transmits not what he says, but what he thinks, express from speech center, no detour via mouth.

"Melvin, Karl."

"Hey, Unc."

"You feeding the animals, Melvin? You remembering to do that?"

Melvin sighs, disgust plain through the synthesized voice. "Yeah, yeah, sure. Mom!"

Karl holds the receiver away from his face, wincing at the volume. Mary comes on, picking up the old phone behind the counter, sounding like herself, voice familiar as the smell of flapjacks. "How's things in the big city, little brother?"

"Lousy, rather be home."

"Oh, don't say that, I'd kill to be where you are. It's pouring up here. What's it like there, sunny, I bet, huh, warm as toast?"

He remembers the sky outside, gray and chill, with a chemical edge from the refineries up and down the coast. "Yeah, little too warm. I miss the fog."

She laughs, "You're nuts, too, you lucky duck."

He can see her at her place at the counter, frizzy hair gone silver drawn back. Pretty at sixteen, with hair like a halo, twenty years later she's thickened, rose become a hip, gross with seed. Her eyes, though, haven't changed, still just as kind as they ever were, kinder maybe. Mary. His only sister. His only family.

"Listen, Melvin feeding the chickens and pigs, putting them in every night? I've got a weasel up there that'll kill my hens if he doesn't."

"I chase him out of here every night and every morning, and he drives off up there, but with Mel, who knows?. I'll go up and check on them myself with him tonight, okay? Now don't worry, you're in LA, you're supposed to live it up, go shopping, not worry about this stuff. Enjoy life, eat out more often."

Alone in the booth a thousand clicks from her, he smiles.

Saturdays he comes in for his mail right about sundown. Mary sees him drive up, pulls a couple tall ones out of the wash tub she keeps filled with ice, and in folding beach chairs out under the big cedar they watch the sun as it drops out of sight behind a layer of cloud out over the Pacific. They don't say much, just sit. Mary's quiet is better than most people's words. He never misses a Saturday he can help.

They have an understanding: He understands that with her husband gone, she wants them to be more of a family, and she understands that right now it's what little he can give or nothing.

"Karl, you okay? This is costing you money."

Three men come in out of the drizzle looking heavy under long coats. Karl thinks body armor, and laughs at himself. He won't be fooled again. He examines names scratched into enamel. Hector loves Ana. Jaime y Maria 4/ever. The usual. Scrawled half a century before. Where are Jaime and Maria now? "Yeah, I just want to be home, that's all."

A nagging itch at the back of his skull drags his eye to the door. These guys didn't come for the food. They're working. It's obvious from the way they stand, the way they hold themselves, hands deep in pockets. He's seen it before, the abortoire look, he calls it, the casual look of men who kill for a living.

"Karl," she says again, "you sure you're okay? You sound worried."

He reaches up, switches off the light in the booth, unzips his jacket, freeing the cut down Remington, "Not me, I don't worry." Balancing the receiver between chin and neck, he nearly drops it.

Two of the three stroll through the restaurant, eyes combing, right hands in overcoat pockets, swaggering, cats among mice. One goes down the counter, one back to check out the booths. The third sticks by the door, one hand in the deep pocket under his coat. He unbuttons it with a big left hand, nails polished to a sheen. Right then Karl knows who he's looking at. It takes a lot of dough to keep a paw manicured like that. That means he's good. Very good.

"Karl," Mary says, "I hope you're telling me the truth. You know when you lie to protect me it only pisses me off."

This is no random search. They're here for somebody, and they're not guessing—they know. That means they have his number and are locating him by GPS. Very, very bad. He glances at his hand, and not for the first time wishes he could rip his chip out from under the skin. Too late, now.

The shotgun is a toy in his hands. He might get one, maybe two—three never. They won't be using twelves. In the darkened booth he cracks the action, making sure there's a round in the chamber, slides it shut again. There's got to be a way out. He's got to think.

"Karl, what's that sound?" Panic rises in her voice. "That wasn't a shotgun, was it?"

He reaches into his jacket pocket to jumble shells. Not many. Five in the gun, as many more in his pocket. Each one of his new friends can put out ten times that. When he runs dry, any one of these horses can probably break him between their fingers like a stale ficelle. He's hard, but from sawing, from splitting. He hasn't been out on a mat in five years, and right now he feels like a teacup smashed into small pieces and held together with chewing gum. Here comes the firehose spouting steaming tea. Rotsa ruck.

"Karl," Mary says, sounding like she does when she's run out of patience.

Mind racing, he remembers the passage to the kitchen and the door out back. He might, he just might make it. It's a chance. Throat dry, he strains for the spit to swallow.

"Look, Mary," he says, talking fast, eyes on the big man's hand, the one he can't see. "In the chicken coop under the roofing there's a piece of PVC capped both ends, big one, four incher. There are some papers inside I want you to have—account numbers, cusips, deeds. I'm not home in a week go get it—just do me a favor and don't let Melvin piss it away. It's a lot of dough."

The man at the door looks his direction, face curious, maybe wondering why the light's off in the booth. Karl's stomach drops like a medicine ball.

"What are you telling me for? I don't want to hear that, you hear me?" she says, fear edging her voice. "Now I don't know what you've gotten yourself into down there, little brother, but whatever it is you can just get right out of it and get your ass back here!"

Karl lays the gun on his lap, angling it so he can shoot from the hip. His hands twitch. Death is close. So, Swindlehurst wasn't bluffing. These are the guys who save the legal department the effort of working up a case. Maybe they're even lawyers—the ones with too many scruples to practice.

"Karl!"

He can feel himself draw up tight with fear, feel his sight narrow down so all he can see is the man across the room. It's a while before he realizes Mary's still talking.

"Karl, listening to me? I've got a tall one on ice for you, Karl, you hear me?"

The snout of a 5mm bullpup noses out from under the man's coat as he starts for the back. The sight's a relief. To know he's right, to know he still has his instincts. "Be seeing you, Mare, got to go."

"Karl, you take care, you hear?" He hears her distant voice, as gently he sets the receiver in its cradle. Karl tries to swallow and can't. Bad sign, gun out in the open, no masks—means there won't be any witnesses. Karl thinks about the crab of a waitress with her big behind in that brown skirt with a white bow, about his hotcakes and mug of coffee cooling on the counter, about Villar. He'd call him if the dump weren't damped. Will he see them in time? He will or he won't, either way he's on his own. He can't help him. If he had to bet, he'd bet he'll land on his feet. Like a split-eared old tom.

Here he comes. Couple more steps he'll make Karl out inside the booth. So close to annihilation, Karl feels only calm. Finger along the receiver of the twelve, he waits. Mary will be all right. Mel...well, kids grow up, he supposes. He did. The ridge—it'll go on in spite of anything the Greens can do to it, the potash from the bonfire of cabin and house will be just a green place in the meadow in a year. The earth? She endures. He remembers the towns abandoned downwind of Chernobyl. Uninhabitable, they slid back to Eden. Him? Who would miss him? Besides Mary, nobody.

Shockingly sharp, Romy's face and eyes come to him. The way she looked at him over the dying Sister in the bombed-out lobby, the way her mind felt to him, the need he felt in her—if that's what it was—shaft of sunlight in a darkened room. A need for him, no one else. For him.

The shotgun bucks on his lap, deafening in the closed space, glass door shattering into diamonds scattered across the floor.

Forcing open the squealing door, sending chunks of tempered glass scattering, Karl racks in another round as the man hesitates, dazed, eyes on the hole in the middle of his overcoat. Then as if he just realizes what happened, he lays on the trigger and the suppressed carbine, nose down, hums, emptying a magazine into board flooring, sending up a fog of dust, splinters and sea water as screams echo through the Derby like the rings in a stone-tossed pool.

From one meter Karl puts the bead at the base of his neck as he goes by, turns his face away to avoid splatter, and shoots him a second time—there's one he won't see again. Hearing more bursts from the dining room, he doesn't wait to see him fall. Around the corner into the kitchen, 12 held muzzle up, past the fry cook, open mouthed, egg poised ready to crack in a dark hand, Karl hustles.

His waitress sees him come and, dropping a tray, ducks into the pantry, calling after him, "Stiff me, Honey, I hope they get your ass!"

Scrambling, slipping on broken crockery, egg slime and syrup, Karl catches himself, raking a hand along a sharp edge as he goes out the back door and sprints a hundred meters down the boardwalk. Cringing from the fire in his ribs, he slows to an inconspicuous saunter, lets the shotgun hang on its sling back out of sight under his arm, signals for a taxi.

As one pulls up, he hears firing from behind. Vaulting the rail on an arm, rounds cracking overhead at three times the speed of sound, loud as a .38 going off behind his ear, Karl kicks the throttle as far forward as it'll go, and takes the wheel as the hack lies huddled in the bilge. A few long seconds later they're out of range, and Karl throttles back, merging them into the flow of traffic. When he's sure they're not being followed, he gives back the wheel, perching on a seat to catch his breath. Fishing a couple rounds out of his pocket, he slips them in the trapdoor of the 12 as he waits for his heart to slow. Close.

He wonders if Villar made it, guesses he did. The Walther he wears under his arm like an ornament would have been more than adequate—if he saw them in time. Breeze in his face, Karl closes his eyes. All that because of a lousy three bills. These guys take their responsibility to stockholders seriously.

Again Karl peers over the stern to see if they're followed. Nobody he can see. At the dock the hack's still shaking. He tips a C note and the kid smiles, babbles some Mex back. For the 100th time since they turned half the state back to Mexico he wishes he'd picked up the lingo. Whatever the kid's saying, it sounds like he's happy. He waves, smiles as he goes.

Mex—what a lingo.

Shaking his head, Karl waves back.

Grassy ass to you, too, kid.

* * *

 

Three dozen Sisters fill Vici's flat, Romy among them, Karl's glad to see. At the door, a servant meets him, leads him to his room, past more beautiful women than he's seen in his life, him splattered in egg, pants soaked from the bottom of the taxi.

Head down, he follows, noticing Romy casts him an evil look. He guesses he deserves it. He is crass. He is a killer. About both she's right, so where's his gripe?

Among them he spots Willy, serenely oblivious, Bink asleep in the crook of an arm. Karl feels a prick of jealously. Little traitor.

As he shuts the door behind him, Karl feels nothing but relief. The room's okay, small but not cramped, with its own shower and toilet. Peeling away the dressings from over his eye, lip, the back of his head, he douses them with peroxide, enduring the itching sting as it penetrates, sterilizing the wounds. Showered, confident he can do no more, he curls up on the bed.

Aching all over, tired as he can remember being, Karl sincerely hopes that Vici is right about his arrangements insuring his own safety. If he is, maybe he can keep Genie off his neck long enough for him to get off this stilted hell.

Gun in hand, he casts himself into a surf of troubled sleep.

 

 

 

* * *

 

Headset waking him at dawn, Karl follows his nose to the kitchen.

He ladles himself a bowl of oats from a burbling cauldron on the stove. Milk he finds in a walk-in. The next twelve hours he spends working the kinks out of his muscles in the deserted roof spa, working his way through Lloyd's puzzle book. Duffel never far away, Bink and Romy in Willy's care, he dozes, stretches, exercises submersed in steaming water under a drab, drizzling sky.

As light fades, Karl slips on his headset.

"Tate."

He sounds discouraged, tired, something. "You sound like your kitten died."

Tate ignores him. "Enjoying your vacation?"

"Having a lovely time, wishing you were here."

"Instead of you, yeah, I know, glad to hear it. Any news?"

"Tell Aunt Celia we'll make the wedding tomorrow after all." Karl's not sure how he'll get Romy away from Vici, or off the plat either, but something will come along. He'll just have to wait for it.

"She'll be thrilled. When shall I say you're coming?"

It's been a while since Karl's used the open-line schtick. Weddings are noon, funerals midnight. "Two hours before should be enough, don't you think?"

"Oh, I should think, is this a definite, then?"

"A definite maybe." Karl's not sure they'll make it by ten, or at all, but he'd rather Tate be ready in case. Of course, to get her there he'll have to convince her to come. Then again maybe he'll just roll her up in a rug.

"You remember how to get to the church?"

Pick up points alternate according to month. April is the mall out on La Brea, if it hasn't changed. "Same church?"

"Same one."

"I remember."

"We'll be expecting you," says Tate and is gone.

Aching all over, Karl slips into his jacket and plods down the stairs to his room. Too soon to go back to the Derby, he plans a run at the pantry to get him through the night. At the lounge, he hesitates, wishing there were another way to his room. Running that gauntlet of eyes is not something he wants to do again, but he's tired, sweaty, needs a shower. Deep breath and in he goes, moving quickly, head down, painfully conscious of himself as an ordinary man. So much beauty in one place he's never seen. Being near them is like being near a bonfire. Each radiates. Together they're overwhelming. Halfway through, a gong sounds, and they're up and moving, excited. As he passes the balcony he's surprised to see a shaved head at the rail.

Silently, Karl comes up behind Villar as he watches the sun squeeze over the edge of the world.

"A day gone." Villar cocks his head, barely turns, vision like a gecko. "Just when we are safest," he says, facing out to sea, "there's a sunset-touch." He turns, breathes as if casting off melancholia. "So, you got out. With all the blood, I wasn't sure."

Karl pauses at the rail beside him, chill air raising goose bumps on skin overheated from the spa. "I got out."

"Surprised to see me?"

Karl laughs, "Not at all."

Villar watches him, eyes bleary, " Picked them up in the mirror soon as they came in. You want to know what gripes my ass? They were going to wipe the whole place and burn it after—the only decent place to eat this side of the hills, The Derby! Things just aren't what they used to be around here. Something's wrong when they send in that much muscle to hit a guy in a public place like that. No finesse, no class, you know? Swindlehurst's slipping."

Villar raises his glass in salute to the setting sun, "And there she goes. I Never get tired of that."

Karl doesn't watch sunsets. He watches the sea after sunsets, watches it turn iron gray, watches fading light bring fish to feed. Like they're feeding on Sara and the others a kilometer below them right now. Like they'll feed on him, like they'll feed on Romy if he makes another mistake like he did on the quay. "What are you doing here?"

Villar smiles, looking proud of himself. "Celebrating. Tonight's my last night." He smiles at the puzzlement on Karl's face, "That's right, I'm going over with them."

As this sinks in, the redhead he's seen with Romy comes to whisper into Villar's ear. Hand on his arm, she watches Karl as she speaks. Not like she's showing off, like she has something to say and doesn't care who sees her say it. Villar whispers an answer, and with an affectionate stroke of her hand over the stubble on his head, she's back inside.

Karl watches her go.

"I told you it happened, didn't I?" Villar looks down at himself, laughs. "Who could believe it, huh? Erin and a guy like me?" He leans close, juniper strong on his breath, "I'll tell you what, man, she's like no woman I've ever known, and I don't give a damn about her genes."

Skeptical, Karl listens. "How long?"

Villar smiles, "Has this been goin' on?" He shrugs, serious, "Month, maybe. Let me tell you, you don't know a thing about them. You think you do, but you don't." Villar raises a glass, drains it. "What do you think, can a man change, really change?"

Thinking of home, Karl watches the last of the light bleed from the sky, turning the sea to ink. "Maybe, if he wants to bad enough."

Villar nods, pushes off, "Got to go."

Karl turns and Vici spots him. "Ah, Karl, there you are at last. I hope this means you intend to dine with us."

The smell that reaches him from the dining room jellies his knees. He opens his mouth to answer and catches Romy's glare. Vici follows his look, "Romy, tell him to stay and eat with us."

With only a moment's hesitation, she smiles as if she's bitten her tongue, "Yes, do." Vici turns and the smile fades.

He's not that hungry. "Thanks, anyway."

"Oh, no, you don't." Hand whipping out, Vici hooks him, finger through an epaulet, drawing Karl after him. "You're not getting away with that," he says, calling over two Sisters who twine their arms with Karl's, towing him into the hall.

Karl allows them to lead him, conscious of Romy turning away in disgust. Long table centered in a longer room, Vici at its head, Romy opposite Karl.

With them seated, servants descend, ladling steaming chowder heaped with carrots, potatoes, celery, not an hour off the cutting board. A little woman glides to his elbow, filling a glass the size of a thimble with what might be orange juice. Curious, Karl tosses it off.

With an index finger and thumb he picks a pip from the tip of his tongue. God, yes, it's real—the tongue-teasing piquancy of fresh valencia hits him a physical blow after a day in the spa. Motioning her back, he turns his empty water glass up and waits for her to fill it.

Vici looks on, amused, "Like it, do you?" He nods to the girl, "Leave the pitcher for Diamond Jim, here, and fetch another."

Around him, Sisters eat, chat, laugh. Inconspicuously as he might, he props one elbow on the table, back of his thumb pressed to his forehead. It's a gesture he's made since he can remember. Eyes closed, the dark opens up, endless, before him.

Me again, God. Where do I start? Been a while.

He sighs, suddenly more tired than he's been in a long time, not sure how to go on.

I know you brought me here for a reason, but I'm damned if I know what it is. I want to go home, that's all I want. I'm not asking for help....

Asking for things is not why he prays; he's got a rule about that. He never asks for things. The way Karl sees it, God's not there to be a wish catalog.

I'm not telling you your job, I'm just letting you know, that's all.

Alerted by silence, Karl looks up to find Vici and the Sisters watching.

"You pray?" Vici says, amusement brimming his eyes.

Ignoring the insult in his tone, Karl tears a hunk out of a sourdough cannonball with his teeth, chews, swallows. Aside from a meal at the Derby, it's been a week since he's had more than bennies, jerky, and vender crud. At the first taste of it on his tongue, his hands tremor. This is food. The chowder's good, clams and carrots giving his teeth something to work on, not like the mush they serve in the casinos.

He swallows, soup burning as it goes down. For five years, he's eaten alone. If he could, he would grab up his food and run like a dog with a hock to eat in solitude. He can't. If he would eat, he must do it under these eyes.

And he will eat.

"Wasn't trying to make a show of it. I made you uncomfortable, I'm sorry."

"Oh, nonono, I'm just surprised, that's all."

Karl finishes the bowl, and a woman comes to ladle it full. "Surprised—why?"

"Well, you seem intelligent to me," he says, looking around him for support, "hardly the type."

If he won't let this affect his appetite, neither will he run from it. His voice he keeps low, soft, "What type's that?"

Sisters watch, soup cooling, curious what to make of this.

"Provincial, rustic, I don't know." Vici stalls, and from the corner of his eye, Karl sees Romy watching.

"What Vincent's trying to say is that he doesn't expect his guests to be worshiping a savage god at his dinner table."

He's not surprised to hear her voice, less to hear the vitriol in it. Across the table and down, he's almost sure he sees Willy smile as he stuffs his mouth full of bread.

Vici, not looking too happy about what he's started, raises his hands, commanding truce, "Romy, dear, I think it's best we left the man's religious beliefs unsavaged. Karl, I hope you will forgive me for bringing it up. I misspoke. A man's beliefs are his private affair." This he says like a man capping a well.

Karl barely hears him. Soupspoon halfway to his mouth, he holds her gaze. "And what makes God savage?"

"What makes your Judeo-Christian God bloodthirsty? Is that your question?" Romy laughs with scorn.

"Not too bad, eh?" Vici says, fighting a loosing battle, but still trying. "There's nothing like fresh clam chowder to give a man appetite."

"Oh, please," Romy says, ignoring Vici as if he hadn't spoken. "Can you be that ignorant? Can you really? Might it be the countless millions slaughtered on the altar of a religion convinced of absolute superiority? The crusades, the intrigues, the exploitation, the slaughter, the inquisitions, the slavery, the papal corruption... If Jesus could see what became of his teaching he would cry—he would vomit!"

Attempting to distract the table, Vici half stands, "I want you all to know who we have with us this evening. This is Karl Latte, the man who carried Romy out of reach of the bomb, and saw to it Lia and Kara didn't suffer as they died."

Karl can feel million candlepower eyes on his face. Willy, entertained, watches, doing his best to look disinterested. Karl is hungry, and he will eat. Almost imperceptibly, the Sisters either side of him have moved closer. Their arms brush his and gratitude seeps through, but that's all. Nothing else. It's so close to what he was used to feeling from Sara, it makes him want to scream.

Romy's eyes glare contempt. "Did you hear me?" Like a terrier with a rat in its jaws, she worries him.

How it is she can possibly dislike him so much? In the two days she's known of his existence, all he's done is keep her alive.

Watching her, dislike plain in her eyes, he wonders—can that be it?

Vici, fairly frothing at the mouth, is out of patience. "Romy!" His voice at once a command, a calling to heel, a threat.

"I heard you," Karl says, voice low, "and you're right."

The table holds its breath. Eyes clouded with doubt, Romy's mouth opens, shuts, confusion plain on her face. "I am?"

Between bites of grilled swordfish, crust barely holding juices in seared white flesh, he nods, "What's religion to do with God? Nothing. Any more than most of the slop they serve out here has to do with food."

Looking lost, she sputters, "But...you pray."

"I say what I have to say—to my God—no one else's. I don't need anybody's approval for that, not yours, not anybody's."

Sails gone slack for lack of resistance, she stares, mouth agape. The others have resumed eating, if hesitantly. But not Romy. She sits frozen, staring, knuckles white on mauve tablecloth by an untouched plate. As he eats, he watches her. Only partly to see what she will do, just as much because she's the best-looking woman at the table. The others, attractive, miss. Where she burns, they are cool. About this he's sure Vici told the truth. Romy is unique. The closest he's ever come to feeling her fire in another woman is Sara. And where Sara is, she's not much competition.

She casts him a fragile look. "Then why do it?"

He's not sure, but he thinks that maybe she really wants to know. Which is too bad because he's done talking about it. There are things better left unsaid, things too personal to share—God is one.

Karl lays down his fork to take up the glass of juice. "I'm sorry, I don't talk about God. What's there to say? Either you know him or you don't. Talk doesn't change it. Tell you what, though, play your cards right and I'll take you to my church some time."

Something gives in her face. "No thanks," she says, and she's gone.

Karl eats, feeling the table relax around him. Methodically, reveling in the sheer luxury of it, he works his way through hothouse green beans, new potatoes in parsley and butter, a second slab of swordfish—fuel.

He can operate another two days on this.

More than he needs.

 

* * *

 

Karl drains his glass.

Meal done, he thanks Dr. Vici, begs off further conversation, heads for his room. Door shut behind him, he lets out a long breath of relief, going slack. Time is short. They leave tomorrow. Good news—if every instinct he has weren't screaming Genie would never let them go.

From under the bunk he pulls the duffel, emptying it on the bed. He looks over what he's got. A box of buck and a couple sabot for the twelve, and a couple strips for the .44. Pitiful.

Unclipping the shotgun from under his arm, he tosses it on the bed. He sits, leaning back against the wall, unloads the magazine through the trapdoor, strips the gun. Reeling a swab down the barrel with a chain, he debates whether he wants the pea-size buckshot alternated with sabot. It's a habit of his, fiddling with ammo. It calms him. He can do it for hours.

The door opens and he looks up to see Romy, frown creasing the perfection of her face. "What are you doing?"

He goes back to work on the shotgun. This he doesn't need. "I forget to shut that?"

"Playing with your guns, so typical..." She sputters, angry enough to make speaking difficult. "Can't you get it through your head that we don't need them here?"

"Ah," he says, feigning enlightenment, "I forgot. Genie security protects you, don't they?"

He watches her pour the power to her eyes, deciding the hatred in them makes her, if anything, more beautiful.

"I don't like you, you know that, right?"

He sets the barrel back into the receiver, drops in the magazine spring, seats the cap. He knows. "No kidding?"

Anger translating into movement, she paces, "Why don't you just go away? Hovercraft pull away every hour on the hour. You could be gone that fast. Why don't you go?"

He watches her move, enjoying it like he would watching a horse, a cat, a cloud, any wonder of nature—in her case, creation. "I'm here to keep you alive, that's why."

She laughs, frustration warping her face, her voice, "I don't want your protection, don't you get it? I don't want you here at all."

He nods, slipping shells into the magazine, spring pinging as it compresses under load. He's not at all sorry she came in. Being this near her gives him the same feeling he gets when he stumbles on a fawn hiding in waist high fern on the north slopes of the cape—stomach aflutter, a sense of awe keeping his breathing shallow. She reminds him of a deer, too, the way she moves, the wary look in her eyes. "I get it."

She raises fists, tendons standing out on slender arms, and shakes them, sending hair writhing about her face. "Then why are you still here?"

He looks up. "I'm here because what you want doesn't matter. I need to keep you alive and that's what I'm going to do." Now if you don't mind too much...." He looks meaningfully at the door.

"You need to...what's that mean, you need to? If Auri's paying you to protect me, I'll pay you not to. How much?"

This is getting interesting. He's never thought of Sisters as having money. "More than you've got."

She watches, unperturbed, "Million a day, two, what? I'll pay you twice that to stay out of my sight."

She wants him gone pretty badly. Tempting... If only he could take it. "It's not about money."

Her face turns ugly. "Oh my, yes, I get it, now. You're another one of Auri's friends." Lip curled, she laughs. "Do you know she's old enough to be your mother?"

He doesn't believe it. The woman is so cynical she takes his breath away. Her mother's daughter, all right. "Not about sex either."

She sighs, frustrated, "Well, then, what is it about?" She holds up a hand, "Never mind, you wouldn't tell me the truth anyway." Jaw clenched in a hard smile, she leans back against the door frame, crossing graceful arms. "There's no way I can convince you to stop bothering me?"

"I'm doing just that."

"You bother me just by being here."

He's only willing to take so much battering, even from this wildly beautiful thing. "Me bothering you? I'm not bothering you. You're the one who started the inquisition over dinner, and right now you are the one in my cubicle. I've known contract killers with better manners than that."

Bitterly she laughs. "I'll bet you have."

She watches him as if she's won, as if his anger confirms everything she's always thought about him. And now he sees it, sees how prejudice works, how it finds its own justification. He's been damned with her since her first sight of him—why he can't guess. It's not fair, her judging him before she knows him. It makes him mad. Worse, it hurts.

And, in that instant, as if from outside himself, he sees his prejudice against her, against Willy, against Villar. It's an ugly portrait of himself he sees, worse for having felt it from her. "If you don't mind, what I'd like to do is take a shower." Karl shrugs out of his shoulder rig, wrapping the .44 tightly in its nylon sling. Back to her, he lays it on his jacket, giving her time to go.

She stays put. "So, I can't convince you?"

He's had it. "The answer is no. Now will you please go wherever it is you go?"

Distaste on her face, she watches as he draws his shirt over his head. "Can't you see I don't need you? Vincent's taken care of everything. Why can't you see that? What is it about you that you think you're so damned essential?"

Karl turns on the shower and at once it runs steaming-hot, scalding his hand. "Damn, I'll never get used to that. Where I come from..." Seeing her lack of interest, he catches himself.

When will he get it through his thick head she can't stand him, doesn't want to hear anything he's got to say? Stiffly, he reaches for the clasp on the bandage binding his ribs, not quite reaching it.

"No," she says, "leave it on, it won't soak up water. Now, will you answer me?"

He hesitates at the buckle to his pants. "Why do I think I'm necessary? Self-importance, what else? Why are you so anxious to have me go? You've only known I existed for two days. I've been here a week and I never bothered you." He turns away, steps out of his trousers, leaves them where they fall. "So what's the big deal? I'm nobody, ignore me. You're pretty good at that."

"I can't ignore you," she says, voice dark as charcoal. "Death follows you. Why is that?"

He shrugs, steps into needle spray, wishing the shower had a door he could shut in her face, groaning as hot water searches out cuts and bruises. On the tender wound behind his ear it's heaven and hell both. After the last few days, he's happy to be alive, whole, and hurting. Maybe she's right, maybe he should leave. Over his shoulder, he says,"It's not something I plan."

She comes to lean against the doorway of the stall, watching him with those goddam eyes of hers, hair behind elfin ears, lips—no damned way he's going to start thinking about those.

He pauses lathering his arms, anger and embarrassment welling. It's been years since a woman's seen him out of his clothes, and he doesn't want Romy watching him now. "Privacy—heard of it?"

"Yeah, I've heard of it." She stays where she is. "Primitive need for a primitive man."

"Okay, so I'm a knuckle walker. I'd still like some, if you wouldn't mind."

"We don't always get what we want, do we? I'd like you to go away, but you won't."

He moves close enough to feel heat off her skin, anger and something else humming inside him, a dynamo building rpm. "Let me explain it to you, honey," he says, having heard enough of her sarcasm, needing to be alone, needing her jade eyes off him, her scent out of his lungs, out of his head. This mockup, this fake, this thing—why can't he remember that's what she is?

Karl looks back at her and realizes how hopeless it is. No word can change what she does to him, maybe nothing can. "I may have to stick around to keep your heart pumping—things like you do have hearts, I guess, huh?" He sees the hurt he hoped for in her eyes, its reflection a stab between his lungs. Afraid his body will betray him, reveal what he feels, he drives himself on. "But I don't want you around me anymore than you have to be. You give me the screaming-meemies. Now, go on, get lost."

"The what?" Her eyes cloud with confusion, with pain that makes him want to draw her to him. God help him he wants to so bad. She cries and he's done.

"The creeps, the willies, you know, the heebie-jeebies."

"Yeah, okay," she says, eyes half closing, "I get it."

"Okay, then," he says, waiting, irritated enough to hit her, "will you go?"

She raises her eyes, smile growing slowly on her lips. "If I won't, what will you do, shoot me?"

He doesn't believe it. "You won't?"

"That's right, go ahead and shower, I won't get in your way. And how did you know to come to my rescue anyway?"

The sarcasm in her voice infuriates him with a suddenness that frightens him. Without thought, he reaches out, takes her wrist, jerks her in with him. Squalling with surprise, writhing in his arms, she struggles. He holds her clinched against his chest. "There, like that?"

No longer struggling, she watches him as water courses over and between them, wetting her dress, her hair, her face. Hair plastered to her ears, she looks a fast fourteen. A drop runs down her nose to hang there. More than he's wanted anything in a long time he wants to take it with his tongue.

The scent of her wet comes to him, strong, decent, satisfying as summer rain on pavement. Holding her fast, he breathes to get more of it inside him. "You want to know how I knew?" He runs a hand under her hair to the nape of her neck, finds it, tears the cell from her hair, dangles it in front of her face, "That's how."

Her eyes accuse, but what he feels through the length of his body as he presses her to him is a surge of attraction so overwhelming it leaves him mute, a need so great it scares him.

Along with it comes the certainty that if he wants her, he can have her right here, right now, against the wall under the spray. He can spread open her dress and have her as he likes—violently, gently, as he will. She'll comply. With anything. Anything he wants—and he does. He does want.

He sees he's not better than she is, not above her, not anything but like her. Freaks the both of them. Mouth dry, head reeling, stomach heavy, he drops the cell, lets her go, backs away. "Get out."

She stays where she is, reaches back to cut off the water, leaving the room silent. Arm braced on his shoulder, she sheds her dress. Back to the wall, unable to turn away, paralyzed, every nerve humming, he waits for her to touch him.

From the wall she takes a hit of body gel, spreading it over his chest and shoulders, slick hands sliding gently, slowly, eyes on his.

He can't think, can't speak—not with what's coming through her hands. Not with the current he feels in his spine. He's losing control and doesn't like it—he's never liked it.

She turns him, "Let me get your back."

Letting her move him, he rests his forehead against the wall, mind blanked of everything but the feel of her hands. This isn't good. This isn't good at all.

Her breasts tickle his back as her hands move over the part of his chest not covered by bandage, sending currents through him as they go. "I've never touched a man before, not like this."

Her hand drops and he catches her wrist, reaches back to open the shower valve, water pelting them both. "Take off."

Face cracking as if he'd slapped her, she backs out, finding a robe, forcing her arms roughly into it. "I repulse you."

Rinsing, Karl nearly laughs out loud. He's been powerfully attracted to women before. He's had it sandbag him, had it jerk at his guts. Felt it from plain women, all kinds of women. Felt air turn to syrup, his tongue to lead, brain to mush. Never has it hit him harder than this. Facing her, the answer would have been painfully obvious. "That's right, you do."

Wrapped in a robe she finds on the back of the door she bends at the waist, drying her hair at the wall dryer. "Maybe now you'll go away."

Drying, he watches her, unable to turn. He understands what she feels, the confusion, the hurt, but things are bad enough now without this. If either of them is going to make it off the plat, he's got to keep his mind off the way she moves, the way the hair comes to points just in front of her ears, off her eyes—and on keeping them alive.

Back to her, he dresses in his last clean clothes, unwraps the revolver and sets it by the pillow. If only he were another man, a man who could think about her shoulders, about the feel of her under his hands. But he isn't. He never was. "Not just yet."

"Because I don't need you here," she says from the door, "I don't want you."

Seeing her go, knowing she lies, unwilling to be alone just yet, he gropes for a reason to make her stay. "Yesterday, in my cubicle there was a sister. I saw you with her once before, tall, black hair."

Her eyes flash. Is there jealously in her face? "Sasha in your room? She hasn't come in yet. Did she say when she would?"

"She didn't say much." Not that he can talk about.

Her face changes, braggadocio leeching away. "She dead." A statement of fact.

He nods, and sees what it does to her face.

"Mole here?" she says, tracing a line behind her ear.

He nods.

She closes her eyes, and he watches her take it in. No big show. She must have cared, that's all, must have cared a lot. Lover, maybe. He needs to ask her about what she told him, but can't without revealing himself, and that he won't do. "Trust her?"

She turns on him like he's slapped her. "She was my sister. A friend. We were..." Romy's eyes dive. "I was expecting her, she was coming with us tomorrow."

He sees no reason to tell her differently. "Any reason for her to think she'd betrayed you?"

Now he's got her. "Betrayed me? I thought you said she was dead."

"There was a note, just a scribble."

"Where is it?"

"Had to leave in a hurry, didn't get it."

She frowns, not believing, "What did it say?"

"I'm sorry."

"There was nothing for her to be sorry for."

Karl's sure she's lying. "Nothing?"

"No."

"Might she have told where you are?"

"They already know that."

"When you're leaving, then, something to compromise you."

"No." She says it as if he's suggested something obscene.

"Then why was she sorry?"

"I don't know," she says, sagging, fight gone.

If Karl could have any wish right now, right here, this second, it wouldn't be to be home. It wouldn't be for health or wealth or peace on earth. It would be to take her into his arms and draw her down with him on the bed, to tell her everything that he can tell no other woman, to show her she's wrong about him.

He lies back, drawing his jacket over him, .44 under his hand. "Lock the door on your way out."

Hearing the lock seat, knowing she's gone, he exhales long and slow, letting tension go with it.

His last thought before sleep is that Vici or no Vici, tomorrow's little outing will be anything but sweetness and light.

* * *

 

Karlwakes to a buzz in his ear.

Muscles tense, hand tight on the grip of the .44, he mutes the idiot chime. A dream, broken now, haunts him still. He had kept Romy under the shower. He had kept her there and felt no revulsion at all. Their coupling was homecoming. Sitting up, he dismisses it.

He sits up. He looks down at the bed, linen still warm, wipes his eyes trying to clear the fog from his head. How long before he has another shot at a bed like this? Do they sleep in beds in Chi-com labor camps?

He aches all over, feels like he's slept two hours and not the eight he programmed in his com. Can he be getting sick? The swordfish, maybe? Food poisoning is all he needs. Insides lead, throat boot leather, he loosens gummed eyes with a fist, trying to read the hour hanging on the vacant air in front of him. No good. At forty, he's not so quick to clarity. Can it be morning?

The set hums again, no alarm, it's a call. It can only be Tate, probably with bad news.

"Something's not right." Only Villar.

"Tell me something I don't know or let me sleep."

"I mean it."

Karl's much too tired to want to hear about it. "What time is it?"

"Almost four, I'm telling you something's wrong."

Damn! No wonder he feels like he does. "It's called a hangover, you must have had them before. Eat some soda crackers and you'll feel better."

"Shut up and listen. Medical's a madhouse, techs everywhere."

"So, why bother me about it? Find out what's going on."

"No dice. Chi's are here from the mainland, full reactive armor, not even a little bit friendly. They've got us three deep out here guarding the douche bag they came in on. Keeping us out of the way is what they're doing, keeping us from seeing anything."

Still drugged from sleep, Karl batters his brain to get it to work. With them leaving in only a few hours with 100 bills of Genie's merchandise, the timing looks bad. Giving up hope of sleep, he leans forward, stretching out a stiff back, careful not to jar aching ribs, "Okay, what are they doing?"

"Priming stasis carts, getting ready for something, something big. It's like they expect a hundred donors to fall into their lap."

For a moment, neither speaks. Karl puts it together, feeling in that frozen instant the shrinking impotence of nightmare wrap him in clammy arms.

"Madre de Dios," Villar says, voice a croak, "I'm coming up!"

Adrenalin nearly blinding him, Karl's up, working to force his arms into a tangled shoulder rig. "No you're not. Get us taxis and wait off the north side, we'll be there."

"I'm coming up."

"You're holding the goddam taxis, I said!"

"Erin–"

"I'll bring her."

"You will."

"I will."

"You better."

"I said I will, just get us a way off."

"Bring her," Villar says, more threat than command.

"Just you be ready."

Karl cuts the com.

It seems Vici gambled wrong.

 

* * *

 

Dead quiet.

Ear to the door, Karl senses no movement. The living room is a sleep over, lights dimmed, Sisters sprawling, spooning, spread wall to wall. Karl picks his way quietly between them as they sleep, mouths wide in unconsciousness, muffled breathing the only sound. He thinks he spots Romy among them.

In the dim light, he can't be sure. He gets down, knee grinding berber, taps an arm. Disentangling herself from the dark haired Sister spooned against her, she raises her head, blinking. Suddenly he's not sure at all. It's her, but not, something's lacking from the eyes, the expression. "Romy?" he says, whispering.

The head shakes, already sinking back. An arm lifts to point, and she's gone with a sigh. Rising painfully, he picks his way through to her. He finds her plied against the redhead. No surprise. Jealously an ice pick under his sternum, he squats, knees popping. Tate tried to talk him into new knees, but would he? No.

Knowing he may have only a few seconds, he takes his time. Hurrying gets people killed. He forgot that on the quay. He won't again. Seeing her face from up close, he knows it's her. Something is there, even in slack-jawed slumber, something makes him wish the redhead weren't there beside her. What is it makes him want what he can't have?

He reaches out to touch her, hesitates. Her dreams in this colleen's arms he doesn't want to know. Her name he aspirates close by her ear.

Romy squints up at him, and he backs away, conscious of the intimacy of what he's just done. He wishes he could help them all. He can't. They may not get out themselves.

"What?" she says, voice furry.

"Get dressed, bring Erin out on the balcony."

"Why?" She rubs her eyes, looking unhappy. "What time is it?"

There's no time. "Vici wants to talk to you."

She rises, nearly falls. He reaches out to steady her elbow and she pulls away. "Don't," she says quietly, "I can do it."

Outside, he waits, feeling lousy not warning them all, but he's only one man. One man and he wants to live, at least long enough to get home. He paces. It's cold, stars out. She's taking too long.

In a sheath the color of taupe, Romy comes, Erin in tow. The dress, clingy as nylon, seems an odd choice for a four a.m. bolt, but then he reminds himself she doesn't know that's what it is.

Rubbing one eye with the heel of a hand, she watches Karl curiously as he shakes out a rope from his duffel, hitches it to the rail. It nettles him, beauty like that and not real, not human. What perversity, what waste.

"Playing games again?" she says, an edge to her voice.

Karl reaches out to shake Willy. Instantly his eyes open, dangerous as a snake. "We've got to go." Comprehension is instantaneous, and for a moment Karl sees him as what he is—a killing machine.

Easily, Willy sits, chaise squeaking as he shifts his bulk. Slipping on shoes, he stands, comfortable as if he'd been awake for hours. Bink pokes his nose out into the cold, snorts, retreats back into the warm security of his coat.

"You said Vincent was here, I don't see him."

"I lied," he says to Romy, leading her by an elbow to the rail, out of line of sight from the wide door. She jerks free and he sees her eyes, black in starlight and wash from LA. "I don't know where he is," he says, stepping into rappelling harness, cinching it tight. "Do you?"

"In his room, I'll just bet, sleeping. It is the middle of the night. And that's just what we're going to do. Come on, Erin."

Karl touches her arm and she whirls as if about to strike out, left foot falling back. Maybe she is more than a kitten. "Is there another way out of here?"

She looks from him to Willy, then back at him as if he's the village drooler. "There's the elevator."

"Stairs?"

"By the elevator." She steps back, wary, "Look, I'm not going anywhere except back to sleep. Willy, don't let him take me anywhere."

Karl's hand flashes out to close on her wrist, surprisingly small and delicate. He gets the feeling he could lift her, no problem. She fights to get free, much stronger than he would have guessed.

"No! Willy!"

Slowly, Willie's blunt head swivels to look at him, not happy.

"Willy," he says, not worried about him—not yet. "Can you get down that rope to the next balcony?"

Brow furrowed, he understands, nods, mouth open, eyes on Karl's hand on her wrist. "Why?"

Karl senses he's on the balls of his feet again. He can't afford to wrestle him now, can't afford to shoot him either. With an effort, he captures her other hand. Under her skin, through the block he throws up he senses something puzzling. It's almost as if she's letting him hold her, consenting to his overpowering her. He cuts her off. "Willy, you trust me?"

"Willy,"she says, "don't listen to him."

Something's coming, Karl can feel it on the back of his neck. He's got no time for this. "Do you?"

Like he's not too thrilled about it, the big man nods.

Mouth falling open, betrayed, she gasps, "Willy!"

"Then listen—they're coming, we don't have a lot of time to talk." Karl sees Erin come fully awake and take a step backward. "Erin, Villar wants you to come with us. He's holding a taxi right now."

She nods, though frightened, stays put.

Eyes wide with disbelief, Romy laughs in a whisper, "What? You're insane! Vincent told you we're safe here, don't you listen?" She cocks her head over her shoulder, "An army couldn't get in here. Willy, can't you see, he's—"

The howling of an alarm from inside cuts her off. Karl moves, taking her with him to the wide glass doors. At the lift, security men wait. Lights flash above the elevator. Now she's afraid, now she believes him. A little late. Vici's bodyguards shake themselves, rising from UR stupors. Arrogantly, they stand in the open, annoyed by the interruption in their private Edens. Roller bolts lock up as Eric opens a panel in the wall, cutting off power to the elevator. They laugh. "Gotcha!" Eric says.

Another of the team turns cocky clown, dances up to rap on the metal door with a burly knuckle, "Hey, how you like it in there, huh?" .

Doubting himself, Karl hesitates, letting Romy slip free.

Vici shows up wrapped in a robe. "What in bloody hell is going on?"

"Nothing to worry about, Dr. Vici."

"Of course there isn't, you moron. That must be Sasha. She's the only one that knows the code. Switch it back on, Eric, switch it back on."

Karl moves for the door, to tell him it's not Sasha. Romy blocks his way, glares, "Oh, so we have to run away." She taunts, lip curled in disdain.

Karl sets her aside only to see he's too late. Security men scramble back, only Vici keeping his place. The lift doors open, and from inside erupts a wall of violet gas.

"Sasha?" Vici says, voice uncertain. "Sasha, that you?"

Either side of Vici, six smg's erupt at once, rounds sparking off reactive armor. As mist rolls over them, their guns quiet. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, Vici's head tilts back, and like a diver, he arches, sinks into rising mist.

Fog surges with impossible swiftness over Sisters who sit up only to fall back, overcome. Wave of fear rising in his gut, Karl watches as the gas eats up the distance to the door.

Back of his throat itching, Karl slides the door closed on the doomed women inside. It's quiet now, all guns, all voices silenced. It must be strong, whatever it is, very strong. The tang of it burns his throat even out here.

"Let me in," Romy says, drawing him back, to the door, to the gas, to death.

He pulls her away, turns, hits a wall—Willy. Karl sends him to the rail. No argument this time. Easily, Willy levers himself over, sliding to the balcony below, heels slamming the deck as he lands. Karl holds his breath, lowers the redhead, Romy helping. He lets her go, and, rope pinched between legs and hands, she slides down into Willy's waiting arms.

The smell's stronger now, a tickling coughing won't clear. He wonders how long they have before the men inside find their way to the balcony. Inside, violet haze skims the ceiling. "We're next."

Warily Romy backs, "I won't leave them."

He yanks her to the railing. "Yes, you will." Straddling the rail, Karl hooks the carabineer with a free hand, the reek making him dizzy.

"No!" Romy cries out, voice laden with grief and self-loathing. "I promised them they'd be safe. I can't run, I can't." She yanks hard enough to draw him off his hard perch on the rail and suddenly he's had enough. Viciously, he jerks her back, delicate wrist locked in his hand, whipping her arm so hard she cries out.

"They're gone, they won't wake up. The Chicoms'll be on the balcony any second. I want to live, do you?"

She turns her face away, and he jerks her to him, hair at the nape of her neck in his gloved hand, screaming in her face. "Do you?"

A thump at the door draws their attention. Inside, a stocky figure in black gropes for the handle. Karl knows reactive armor, knows nothing he has will touch it, won't waste his time trying.

She cries silently, face a mask of pain—no answer his answer. He lifts her by her hips to straddle his lap, the Remington cutting into his kidney as she rides him. The glass door rumbles as it slides wide. Hands numb, tingling, Karl kicks off, drops. Just above the deck, his hands slip. They hit hard. The jar to his ribs takes his breath. The bruise behind his ear throbs, turning his knees to rubber. He sags and it's Romy who tugs him to his feet.

Willy forces the door and Karl backs in after them, shutting the door as heavy mist cascades off the balcony above like a sheet of water. The apartment's dark, empty. Base of his skull pulsing like a second heart, lids pig iron, he surrenders, flops back on the bed. Mind uncoiling slowly, tea-colored cypress water rising over him, he sinks into the muck, the deliciously warm, evil smelling muck at the bottom.

* * *

 

Fear hangs metalic on Romy's tongue.

In the bathroom, she tears through a closet, draws out jeans and a shirt for Erin. She hurries her into them, goes back to see Willy, the fool, playing with the dog. Bit of cloth in Bink's teeth, they fight over it, Bink tugging at the prize, growling low in his throat. Even now, he can play. Turning, fear knifes through her.

Hands open, palms up, mouth gaping, Karl sprawls on the bed. Without him, they're dead, she knows that. Kneeling by him, she hears something, shushes Willy and the dog with a wave of her hand. Frozen, Romy listens to boots barely a meter over her head. Terror pulsing through her, she yanks Karl up, slaps him hard on his unshaven face—so odd a man's face with its bristles—talks to him, coaxes him back.

Slowly his eyes focus."What?"

"You were out," she says, dragging him to his feet. "Come on, we have to go!"

He looks at her blankly, "Go," he says, threatening to drag her down, breathing as if he's just run, "go where?"

"This isn't going to work, Willy, help me." They get him to his feet, Willy holding him erect by the hair on his head, one arm circling his chest. She raises a hand, hesitates, slaps him hard yet again, sees awareness come into his eyes, points upward. Afraid to talk, she whispers, "Listen."

Boots—a lot of them, and a sound like bodies being dragged over carpet. His eyelids sag. She slaps him again."Wake up, dammit!"

"Hey!"

"Hold him, now." In the bathroom she finds Benzedrine, puts them in his mouth one at a time, makes him drink water.

He nearly chokes, swallows, rubbing his eyes hard with the heels of his hands. "You can let me go now."

Willy releases him and only has to catch him once before he stays up. Romy watches him closely. Any second now they should hit him. She knows how it feels, the tightening when they kick in, the rush of lucidity.

He looks around, "Had a nap, huh?"

Throat tight with fear, with relief, she nods.

"They'll be looking for us," he says, checking his gun, snapping it open, then closed.

"Willy can get us to the stairs." She reaches for his arm and he pulls away. How can anyone live without touch? It's more than she can imagine.

"I'm fine." He opens the door to the hall, checking outside, "Let's go."

Trying not to think about what's happening over her head, she follows Erin out. Sisters she's known all her life. They trusted her. Now they are dying an arm's reach over her head, and she runs. Guilt, self-loathing well, bitter as bile in her throat, leaving her sick. Weak, wanting to vomit, she follows blindly down the corridor.

Karl... She hates the name. Also the guns, the way he talks, acts. So tough, so cold. Why do men have to be that way?

Him she can't hate, him she wants, maybe the way women want men in books, in vids, she doesn't know, has no way of knowing, no way to judge. There's something inside her he sets aglow. Some place she never knew existed until she saw him, smelled him. A well of feeling he was the first to tap. Now, he's given her back her life a third time. What she has to know is—why? Auri's money, maybe, but she doubts it. Despite the way he talks, his eyes say something else.

At the stairwell he stops, handing his heavy bag—more guns probably—to Willy. She watches him as he takes the big gun, whatever it is, it's ugly with an end big as an open mouth, and moves into the stairway. She's glad he's there, it makes her feel safe that he's here. Though she doesn't want it to, it does.

A bang overhead. She jumps, shivers as she thinks of what might be happening to her right now if he'd let her go back, if he'd slipped away without her. Her hand runs down the flat of her belly, assuring herself she's whole.

Karl waves her forward at the stairwell door, black snout of the gun by his face. How can he hold it like that, so close? She pushes Erin forward. Willy follows.

So, he was right. All along he was right. Somehow she's not sorry. It does no good to be sorry for what is. That she learned long ago. When they took her sisters she learned that.

One thing only she feels.

With every breath, every pulse of her veins, every step she feels it—content to be alive.

 

* * *

Karl hates stairwells.

Always has. So many angles, so many opportunities for ambuscade. Nooks, slits, overhangs—a lousy place to be alone with no one to cover your ass. A worse place to be carrying baggage like these three.

He stops them, listens, letting his ears see around bends for him. The rules are simple. Stay away from walls—a round bounced off a hard surface, seemingly defying natural law, hugs it. Here everything's hard, everything's close.

Hearing nothing, he heads down, leading with the muzzle, nosing around corners. They make good time. Steel gray walls and rails. Down, around, down, and back around. Over and again. Steel fire doors with the number 59 in puke green. Soon he no longer sees them. The world is three meters by two meters by two meters. Gray. Silent. Stinking of PVC and paint.

Move.

Stop.

Listen.

Move again.

Round and round, metal treads clanking, past after door, dizzying work. Karl's tiring—they've come a long way.

"Thirty," Willy says.

As Karl pushes off down the next flight, a door, no different from any of those they've passed, slams open behind him. Karl spins and stares into the surprised face of the medtec from the bombing. A smaller technician runs into the first from behind as the door slams shut. Fast as a dream, the big man snatches Romy by the hair, jerking her back to wrap a forearm around her neck, scalpel prodding just under her jaw.

For one frozen second no one moves.

"I'll cut her," he says, edging back to the door, taking her with him. "Leave the Sisters and you can go."

The second tech, stunned, watches slack-jawed, eyes roving from Romy to Karl to Willy to the shotgun muzzle, and back to Romy.

"Can I?" Karl says, wondering if he's serious. "Can I really?"

"Set it on the stairs. Give it up or she's dead."

Now the big tech's got the door at his back, but no hands to open it. He bellows at the smaller tech to open the door.

Uncertainly, eying Karl, he edges back. Karl keeps the muzzle on his kill zone, "Hold it just a minute, I'm still thinking here. Willy?" Karl points, and Willy's on the second tech, big hand coming up into his jaw, slamming his head back into the steel door. Out, he slumps down the wall to the landing.

"Goddam it!" The one has Romy roars, voice echoing off the walls. "Keep him away! Keep him the hell away from me!"

He backs off and Karl follows. One stair at a time the tech drags her up after him, thick arm a noose about her neck. Karl looks for a head shot, but the tech's cagey, dodges, stays behind her.

Times getting short, and Romy's eyes he thinks he can read. To her he says,"I want you to be sure, now. You want to live, even if it means killing? Is that what you're trying to tell me? "

Eyes brimming, hands locked on the thick forearm around her throat, she nods short and quick, squawking in a try at yes.

"Shut up!" the tech says, tightening the crook of his arm, then to Karl, "I'll open her." He yanks her off her feet up onto the next landing, her shoes off the steps, all her weight on her arms and neck—halfway to the next door and out. He makes it, he's won.

Karl paces them, trying for an arm, a foot, anything, not able to get a shot. "I want you to understand something. One—I'm not leaving here without her. Two—the second you cut her you're dead."

As he talks, the tech moves. Door 32 looms. "Stop!"

The tech keeps moving.

Karl tries again. "Let her go, I'll give you five long breaths to get out of my sight. That's the deal."

"Keep away from me," he says, bellowing, blade tenting the soft skin of her neck. Blood wells around it—nothing arterial. Not yet.

"So, you're sure," he says to her.

Somehow she is able to whine through a constricted throat. "Yes!"

Good girl.

Two more steps and he'll be at the door. Karl opens the action, buckshot shell clanking on the step behind him, racks a shot shell into the chamber, lowers the muzzle halfway to the floor. "Well, you're the genius."

For an instant she doesn't get it, then, taking the blade in a bare hand, she kicks up, raising her legs. Karl puts a dove load into his knee, knocking his leg out from under him. He goes down on his back, Romy's neck still in the crook of his arm, skidding hard down the stairs to stop at Karl's feet. Karl racks the slide, empty shell clattering down the stairs behind him as the tech yammers in a rage of panic and pain.

"Let her go." Karl moves in close, presses the muzzle to his top lip, feels it slide over teeth, "If you please."

Mewling, he lets her up. She scrambles away. Karl backs after her, hesitates at the landing, bead held on the tech's face. Again, he smells the women upstairs as they slept, the sharp stink of the gas as it rolled along the floor, felling them as they rose. They're all gone. All dead. His finger tightens on the trigger and the tech raises his hands to fend off buckshot.

Romy hangs on his arm. "No!"

Karl imagines a scalpel's travel along an exquisite curve of back, blood welling up in ruby tears. So much beauty, so much intelligence gone—for a buck.

Hand cool on his neck, on his face, she raises the muzzle. "Karl, no, I want to go. I'm ready."

The tech moans, blubbers, hands clamped above a ruined knee as Karl lets her drag him away.

 

* * *

 

They emerge on a deserted quay.

Tourists gone to bed or back to LA. Netpunks lie huddled against walls, in corners, wherever they can get shelter from wind and mist. Blind, roused by a peripheral alarm, still realities away, one raises a wasted arm in mindless solicitation as they pass.

Willy leads them to where Villar waits with a swarm of taxis. When Karl shakes his head, he waves the others away. With shouted curses for time wasted, they roar off. The five of them board the last and the hack noses them east to LA.

Romy and Willy go into the forward cabin out of the wind. Erin comes to press her head over Villar's heart, arms wrapped tightly around him. A peculiar pang in his chest, Karl searches astern, alert for lights moving to intercept them, sees none.

Chop makes it a rough ride. Mist whips Karl's hair as Villar, sending Erin forward, works his way over to him along the rail. "Smooth ride," he says, yelling into the wind.

The pounding feels good to Karl, every bone-rattling jar proof that he's off the plat and on his way home.

At last—home.

Soon it will be lambing time. Mel will be no use if there are problems. The thought of his animals suffering he can't abide. A glance at Villar tells him he chews something bitter.

"Thanks."

"For what?"

"For getting her out." Villar says it like it hurts.

He debates the possibility Villar's still working for Genie, and goes through the mental motions of stepping in, palm strike up as he turns the muzzle of the Walther and levering him over the low rail and into the wake. If he's going to make a move it'll be now. "Thank Romy."

Villar shakes his head, marveling, weight on the rail, "You, hombre, are like nopal, prickly as cactus." He sees the Remington, reaches to open Karl's jacket with a single finger. "Uh, uh, you'll have to ditch those," he says, yelling over the roar of the engine. "They'll pick you up right away in LA with that much hardware."

Nothing Karl doesn't know, he nods, giving the horizon one last scan. They could be closing without lights, but he doesn't think so. Why should they be in a hurry anyway? His face he lifts to a hazy sky, rubbing the back of his hand. Where can they run? They're being read right now. He can sense an invisible fiber leading from him to the LEOS overhead, and wants to bring his hand to his mouth, to tear his chip out from under his skin with his teeth.

Karl slips the twelve under his jacket, zips up.

Villar edges close. "That won't make any difference, they'll pick them up from a block away."

Karl shakes his head no. "Opaqued, walk right through a scan, they see nothing."

Villar nods, impressed, "They can do that?"

Suddenly curious, Karl says, "Where will you go?"

"Us?" He nods a shaved head at the horizon. "Iramos a México. I've had enough, time to find a place to raise some chickens. What about you?"

Karl sees again the gas spread along the floor like a living thing, silencing everyone it touched. Up ahead towers twinkle as they turn north into the traffic lanes off Palos Verdes. The first glow of dawn rises over Mount Wilson. Tate will have men waiting. Any luck at all and he'll be rid of them both by ten. After that, he's got to see someone—if he's still there. "I'll take her where she needs to go, and then home."

"Where's that?"

Karl watches cold light stream over the hills as the taxi pounds below a dirty scud of cloud. He doesn't distrust Villar—doesn't trust him either. "Far."

Cold wind a drumming ache in his ears, Karl remembers Romy struggling to go back in with vapor dropping them like wheat before a scythe, and wonders what it is makes someone human.

Is it a marching code of peptides?

Or is it something else?

Does he know?

Has he ever?

 

* * *

 

Santa Monica taxi terminal, stinking of sewage and propane exhaust.

Amid the noise, the hurly-burly of tourists, Romy and Erin embrace. Humbled by the the dry-eyed intensity of their emotion, Karl looks away, imagining what it must be like to say goodbye to your only family, to a sister you will never see again. He can't. When at last they break apart, the three of them watch the taxi carry Erin and Villar away, Villar giving him a smile that says he thinks something's pretty damned ironic, and a little wave of his hand. "Seeya," Karl says into the noise of the terminal. Though he expected to feel relief, he feels instead, surprisingly enough, regret.

The three catch a water bus to Hollywood, and as he scans his hand to pay the fares, he knows he's just given them an update on where to find him. Right then he decides on a change of plans. They'll ditch their chips before he does anything else.

LA is dirty. Worse, much worse than it was, more kids on the streets, more garbage, graffiti a mange over everything, over every square inch, like a jungle vine imported from the south run wild to bury them, kudzu-like tendrils strangling everything, catching hold of them all, dragging them down into the filth. He hates it. It scares him. It's the end, the red pucker on the wound, the bloating of the carcass. More than ugly, it's putrefaction.

The ride is slow, bumpy, a caravansai across the waste of a blasted LA, evidence of the 2012 quake everywhere. They stop often. The bus fills, soon grows hot and stale with sweat, the acrid tang of cannabis heavy on the air as people pack in tight. They sway as the bus jolts its way across a washboard of countless wakes. Engine reversing with nauseating power, they come up short at lights, as if each one surprises a driver paying more attention to his dreadlocks than the water ahead.

The riders are okay. Karl looks them over and sees nothing to worry about. Kids on their way to school, whores on their way home, punks riding the circuit, going nowhere, just to be out of the rain.

Nothing much to think about, he reckons he'd better tackle the newscasts piling up on his set. This time he checks the volume. "Uninet News..."

The news babe with the turned under hair again. Thinks it's her, he's not sure. How can he tell? Is it margarine or is it butter? Is there a difference?

"La Guardia Civil blames radical Christians for the deaths of more than fifty first generation Sisters on Genesistems' plush resort, Platform 66 early this morning."

Dazed, Karl shakes his head—well, then, it must be true.

"The group known as The Army of God executed them while they slept last night on Genesistems' platform off Long Beach. A Genesistems spokesperson says the terrorists smuggled weapons aboard the plat in luggage posing as tourists, forcing their way into apartments. The loss to the corporation has been cited at over one hundred billion."

Sure it was. Karl will bet they lost nothing. With organs harvested, they came out just about that much ahead. Again he wonders at the myth of unbiased net reportage. As myths go, pretty far-fetched.

The Net babe purses her lips, shakes her hair, evidently deeply troubled. One second later a thousand candlepower smile explodes onto her face.

"Genesistems wishes to remind you that despite the minor inconvenience, with new security measures already in place, the island is now open for your enjoyment."

Karl looks up to find them well into Huntington Park, sees what he's looking for, taps Willy on the shoulder. They follow in Willy's wake through the crush and into the cool stink of the wharf. If the neighborhood was bad five years ago, it's worse now. Karl finds the address, stomach clenching as he sees the sign gone. A punk lying on the stairs nearly trips him—dead maybe. Can't tell and not about to check.

The man he's come to see he's missed, maybe by years—about that there's no question. The only chip dealer Karl knew in LA. He has no idea how he'll find him, now. They aren't listed on the net, men like Raj.

"What is this place?" Romy asks.

Karl turns away, "An old friend, somebody that might have helped us."

"Might have?"

"He's gone, must be."

Willy descends the short well, reaches up to knock. Before he can, an alarm screams loud enough to drive them back with the force of its sound. Covering his ears, Karl nearly stumbles over the kid again. Still he doesn't stir. Got to be dead for this not to move him.

When it shuts up, Karl kicks the door hard just to let it know he's still there. Again it blares. This time a voice cuts it off. "Get your ass off my stairs!"

The voice is different, but it's Raj, he can tell. "It's Karl," he says to the grill above the door.

Silence.

He kicks the door again, and right away the voice: "That's it, I'm calling La Guardia!"

"Raj, it's Karl, Karl Latte!"

He waits for an answer. Still nothing. Draws back for another kick.

"What'd you call me?"

He can imagine Rajvinder, the tall, plump Punjabi with his boyish face greeting them in his paisley silk robe. All he ever wore, that robe, a cravat and a pair of deerskin slippers. Karl can picture him as he saw him last, as he would see him again in just a moment. With his love for beautiful things, rugs, sculpture, furniture and an income that might have given him the Palisades, he chose to live in the most squalid section of L.A.

"It's Karl, Raj. Open up!"

His stock was always clean, expensive, and so he said—Karl chose to believe him—from netpunks who sold them by choice for the month of carefree escape they brought in paid meals and satcom time. Other dealers sold chips cheaper, but Karl wouldn't have wanted to carry the chip of a man whacked for it. Raj could withdraw an old chip and insert a new one just under the skin leaving no scar at all in under a minute. They'd done business often. It was good to hear his voice after so long, even if it was over filament. At least now he has someone he knows, someone he can trust.

"Stand back so I can see you."

Willy lays a heavy hand on Karl's shoulder and he turns to see six, eight kids, mostly guys, hovering, eying them from the walk across the canal. As if of one mind they seem to decide, fanning out to cross the footbridge, hands in pockets, eyes on Romy. Having a Sister down here is like trolling for shark with a side of beef.

"Well what do you know? Karl come to see his old friend, Raj. Damn, it's really you! I thought you were spare parts by now."

"Not yet," Karl says, "but if you plan on taking very much longer here, I may be soon."

They're getting close. Romy reaches under his arm for the Smith, hand cool against his skin. She grips it in two-handed isometric, surprisingly relaxed. He opens his jacket, cycles the Remington, the sound pitifully inadequate.

They see the shotgun, hesitate, eyes on their prey, mumbling back and forth, talking it over, debate bouncing up to LEO's and back—with their technology still feral children. Karl nearly smiles—progress.

Something changes in their eyes. They spread out to outflank them just as behind Karl the door clicks open. "Come in, Karl, and mind the garbage."

Giddy with good fortune, Karl backs in giving them a wave and a smile. Prey down its hole, they halt, faces blank.

Careful to step over the body on the stairs, Karl follows Romy inside to safety.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Inside, Raj's shop is cool, dark, elegant, exactly as Karl remembers it.

Rising to meet him is a girl, maybe twenty, dressed in a loose robe, small, darting eyes, black as opals, set in a fine dark face. She smiles broadly, teeth glowing, coming to offer small hands one above the other the same as Raj always had. The sight gives Karl a twinge of doubt as he reaches to take them. Her skin cool and dry, Karl gets—nothing. He thinks of Swindlehurst, of the men on the quay, and is on his guard.

"Ah, Karl, my friend, it's good, so good to see you. >From what I heard, I guessed I should never lay eyes on you again. Ah, yes, I know what you must think—how my old friend has changed, eh?" Looking down at herself, she laughs, the same laugh, higher in timbre, but the same. "It's true, I am different. The meat's gone the way of all flesh, I'm afraid. My little friend here has been kind enough to offer me use of hers for a while. We have a good relationship the two of us."

"Raj?" Karl's not ready for this. "This is you?"

"Nobody else."

Mind bound in ice, Karl stutters. "What...I mean...who—"

"Killed me? That what you want to know?" A raucous laugh—Raj's—erupts from the girl's mouth. "Pancreatic cancer—like a sledge between the eyes, almost six years ago now."

Karl doesn't know what to say. "I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"That...that you..."

Her hand wags impatiently under his nose. "No, no, no, Karl. I'm not dead—I'm digital, a pattern in a server."

Understanding breaks over Karl like surf. "You're DMI."

She smiles, delighted, "Why, Karl, I didn't know you kept up on such things."

"Do you know where?"

She shakes a delicate head. "What does it matter? Van Nuys, Kansas City, Calcutta—it makes no difference. I exist in cyberspace, nowhere and everywhere. And insofar as I prevail upon my friends to allow me a physical existence in what some still call the real world, I exist here—as you might say, in the flesh."

She raises a small brown hand, "And don't you dare pity me! I've evolved into the next stage, the next plane of existence. The wheel has turned. If you must pity someone, pity yourself. I'm immortal, couldn't die if I wanted to. Come, sit," she says, tucking delicate bare feet under her. "What a boor you've become, Karl. Where are your manners? Who is this lovely creature you've brought me?"

Karl introduces Romy and they sit opposite on a long couch, Willy hanging back by the door. A pair of boys, maybe seventeen, dressed in silk robes, bring them tea. Karl doesn't like their eyes. He brushes against one purposely as he sets his cup before him and it's the same as with the girl—empty.

"You've come to do business, am I right?"

Worried, Karl nods.

She throws back a lovely head with overdone abandon. "You see, I know you. There's been some trouble and you and your charming companion will be wanting clean chips won't you?"

She rubs her temple in thought just the way Raj used to. Uncanny, this girl with mannerisms of a dead man.

She rises. "First let's get rid of those filthy chips, shall we?" Karl and Romy follow into the back room, where it is quickly done. The size of a grain of rice, they are extracted with little pain. Distracted, Karl barely notices her as, smiling, she raises another instrument, slightly larger, to the nape of Romy's neck. Karl reaches out, clamping her wrist in his fist, the maw of the pistol-gripped device a centimeter from the base of Romy's skull. "What're you doing, Raj?"

She looks up, mouth open, all innocence, "I thought I might as well take care of an implant at the same time. No extra charge. Genesistem's latest version, fresh out of shrink wrap. New, no repos, remotely updatable, still under warranty."

Karl meets Romy's eye, sees they think the same. "Not right now, thanks, anyway."

"Ah, Karl." She laughs. "Still superstitious about anything that came along after the cotton gin, I see." She racks it. "Must be a bore muddling along without an implant in a modern world."

"I manage."

"I don't see how," she says, on her way to the toilet. Wrapping the chips in a length of paper, she flushes. "There, that's done. On your way to the Pacific—let them track you now."

They return to the larger room where the boys take their places behind her, faces vacuous.

Deep in elation, Karl rubs the back of his hand. A fresh start, but with no chip he's a nonentity. He can buy nothing, do nothing but beg for tokens, like a vacant.

"You're lucky you came to me, now," Raj says. "Within a year they'll track DNA. A bit harder to change."

They sit, and one of the boys brings a box the size of a kilo of cheese. Raj opens it, searches inside, removes two tubes the size of small cigarettes, slips each into its own tablet, smiles, closes her eyes. "Ah," she says, and a holo appears in the air between them. A man Karl's age, hair a shade darker, but face and build remarkably similar. "Meet Idwal, forty, clean as a whistle, missing three years, no family, no record." She raises an arm in triumph.

A girl of Romy's height and build materializes nude at his side. "And this little thing, though she doesn't nearly do your friend justice, is Leela. You'll want to see files of course." A boy brings them each a tablet. "I've called them up. See what you think."

Karl scrolls through, and it's just as he says; they're prime, just what they need, worth at least ten million per. What's in Latte's account should just cover it. "They'll do." He slips Leela's tube from its slot in the tablet, holds it up to the light, "Opaqued?"

"Might look just a little odd, don't you think, if the eye in the sky were to see several hundred people, all missing, occupying the same cubic decimeter?"

Karl gets the point. "Can I see the others?"

She shrugs, hands the box to the boy, who brings it over. Karl finds it filled with bar coded tubes. He doesn't like the feeling it gives him to touch them, like pawing through personal effects of the dead. What he needs to do now is to get the money straight, get them put in and head out the door. He suspects he shouldn't ask, but he has to know. "What are their stories, Raj?"

She smiles, a cynical, world-weary smile. Not the smile Raj used to smile, the kindness, the understanding for human flaw gone—in its place chill calculation. "I don't see why I shouldn't tell you. They were a couple of my first."

Karl thinks he knows what she means, and he's worried. It sounds like a Don Juan numbering conquests, a predator reminiscing kills.

"Not easy, dying. At first all I felt was fear. So alone, you can't imagine it. Don't try. No matter how alone you are, you have yourself. You can see yourself, touch yourself, talk to yourself. I couldn't.

I came to in nothing, as nothing. Think about that. Everything I knew was gone, all of my belongings, even my body. All I had were my thoughts."

Karl is not comforted.

"Oh, I got used to it. It didn't take long for me to rejoin the multitudes in their dabbling. Only I wasn't—dabbling. For me it was life, my only life, my avatar my only existence. It wasn't enough. That surprises you, I should think, coming from me. You know how I loved my cyber playthings, but it's true.

"The avatars I met in the scape might spend every hour they could there, but sooner or later, they had to leave. Had to go home. Even netpunks—and there are more every day—even they have to eat, drink, eliminate, sleep, though some are sleeping out of body now, sharing their dreams. I had nowhere else to go. They wore masks; I was a mask.

"Can you imagine what that does to you? Can you? To live in a dream, in a play where the other characters are real people, and you are nothing. Where, when the curtain falls, they go home to their lives, and you stay behind on a darkened stage. Oh, it changes you. And I did change. I became a spider. A venomous spider with long sensitive legs spanning the web. And came the flies.

"Stuck fast in the trap I'd set, they could only wait for me to come. At first I was slow, clumsy. Many died while awaiting my ministrations. You've heard of them: vacants. The netpunks with fried brains they scoop off the streets. Hundreds of them—I'm not the only one hunting. There are others, many others. No one wants to die.

"Alone, no one to guide me, teach me, at first I wasted them in my gross attempts at control. They died of shock. My fumbling is what killed them. It isn't somehting you can pull up on a search, you know—how to possess. Like any learn-as-you-go proposition, it takes practice.

"Oh, I got them to come to me here, easily enough, but after that, what? So fragile, they died, and what could I do? I couldn't move them, I had no hands. All I could do was crank the refrigeration up, keep it working twenty four hours a day. I kept the place like a meat locker, which, after all," she says, smiling an ugly smile, "it was.

"At last I broke through. It was great, I can tell you." She runs hands over her arms, reveling in the feel of her skin. "What a job cleaning up after my bumbling the first few had." She motions at the box. "Salvaged their chips, after all, why waste them?"

Karl turns to see Willy still at the door. "And the girl?"

"She's in here with me right now."

"This can't be what she wants."

"Ah," Raj says, "but it is."

He's lying, he has to be. "Why would she?"

"I give them what they want, freedom from their bodies, escape, a life uninterrupted by mean necessities. Oh, yes, they do it willingly."

She reaches out and the blond boy comes to draw a long tongue across her palm. It's as if Karl's seen a cottonmouth slide out of her sleeve. He can't let what he feels show in his face.

"Can you imagine experiencing congress as a woman? I had no idea how rewarding that could be. Can you imagine it from the vantage of two minds? More?" A slow smile twitches its way across her mouth, across the mouths of the boys with her. "Love, in all its many possible forms—and there are many—experienced through all participants. I'm telling you, Karl, it's like nothing you can possibly imagine." Jaded eyes move to caress Romy, "I could arrange for you and your friend to join me if you like."

Karl turns back to check the door. He wants out—right now. A dead man staging zombie orgies with himself. Jesus, just how sick have things gotten in five years?

"Not right now, but we'll think about it." He turns to Romy, "We will, right?"

She gives him a look, smiles at Raj, "Yeah, we'll let you know."

She's not doing a very good job of acting. Raj doesn't buy it, but that's not important. What is important is that they get the hell away from here.

"You don't approve."

"Raj, you've read us, there's over twenty million on Latte's account. Leave us a few bucks to eat on, the rest is yours. How you live...." Karl scrambles to say what he means using words that no longer apply. "...is your business. Trade us straight across for the two clean chips and we'll be out of your hair."

She looks hurt. "Why Karl, I hope you're not suggesting that I would pull anything on an old friend."

"No," Karl says, more worried by the second, "Course not."

She smiles. "The problem is that you're in a very weak bargaining position. You see, what you've done is receive a service without specifying cost. Twenty million credits are all well and good, but I have no trouble finding what money I need these days." She crosses slender legs, examining nails bitten short. "A sin what they do to their nails, don't you think? No, what money I need I can get. I'm sure you can see that."

Raj is sounding too calm, too reasonable. Karl doesn't like it. "I don't get you."

She laughs. "Well let me help you, old pal. She stays— that's my charge for your chip."

Karl checks on Romy, finds her ready to bolt. He reaches out a hand to keep her where she is, and even through the block he throws up, gets a jolt of revulsion that rocks him. "Want her to stay, ask her yourself."

Raj laughs, a sound like wind in quaking poplar, "Ask her? This is between you and me. She's no more human than I am. The law says it. You know it. Look at her, created in a lab, some hacker's wet dream, she's not even yours. Several bills in corporate property, stolen's my guess. Tell me I'm wrong." She smiles, smug, "Come on, Karl, tell me."

Karl's not getting into that—arguing what's human and what's not with an encoded personality. "It's her choice, Raj, not mine."

The girl's languid eyes turn on Romy, and she moves closer to Karl on the couch.

"Okay," Raj says, annoyed, "you'd like to stay here with me wouldn't you, Sweetheart?"

Karl can feel her answer rise from her gut, a font of fear, of loathing. He braces himself for it. Whatever she does, it won't make getting a deal any easier.

"I've heard about creatures like you. I never thought I'd meet one. Now I know my instincts about you were right: you shouldn't be."

Raj prickles, smile turning hard. "Thanks honey, for the sage opinion, but what I asked was if you'd care to stay on. I can make you a rich woman, you know that."

Romy laughs, taking her head in her hands. She looks up. "I've spent the last fifteen years a whore. I'll never be one again. Not for anybody, not for anything. Not for my life."

Good girl. He just hopes to God that's all she has to say. He's still got to try to get some of that money out of Raj.

"And I want you to know something else...."

Here it comes.

"You sicken me. You're an aberration, a cancer."

Karl keeps his eyes on the girl, sees her mouth tremble, her eyes grow hard as Romy speaks, a rage building inside her. The boys shift on their feet, betraying the anger behind the girl's serenity. He understands. Raj controls them all.

Enough of this. Karl reaches out to hand back the box, fumbles it, sending vials scattering over the Persian, "Oh, damn, here, let me help." Before he can, the boys gather them.

"What about it, Karl? You get your new chip, keep your money, and I implant this impudent thing."

Romy watches, ready to sense betrayal. He prays she'll give him time, won't use the .44 she has a hand on in her bag. "I want to talk to the girl you're riding now before I decide."

Raj smiles.

Romy recoils as if he'd struck her across the mouth. Resentment sharp as brine jolts him through the skin of her arm.

Hold on, will you just hold on?

"You're considering it, that's good," Raj says, "but I fail to see what it is you hope to learn. She's really a most uninteresting type." Then her eyes light up. "Ah, so that's it. She is attractive, isn't she? Of course we can work out anything you'd like along that vein." Her eyes give him the once over. "I'd rather fancy that, I think."

Sickened by the perversity of the thing in front of him, keeping it out of his face, Karl pulls up a chair before her, takes her small foot in his hand, finds it cool.

"Oh," Raj says, squirming, "Are we starting already?"

"I talk to her, then I decide."

"Of course, but you won't like what you hear. Once the deal is made, sometimes they have second thoughts, become peevish, infantile."

Romy watches him, horrified, "What are you doing? She's a child."

Keeping his eyes on Raj, Karl silences her with a hand. "Come on, Raj, let her go and maybe we can do business."

The two boys linger either side, eyes hungry.

Her eyes close, open. "What do you want? I'm busy!"

Still he gets nothing from her foot. To throw him, he peers into her topaz eyes. "Cut the sham, Raj, I want her. You don't trust me that much, no deal, we're out of here."

The girl's eyes narrow. She smiles, a cagey smile. "Sorry, it's not easy after so long. I'll try again."

A tingle of growing amperage, he feels it. Hand curled over the baby-soft instep of her foot, a fluttering starts, then, as she's freed, a thawing. Her face loses its serenity. She gulps, terrified, nearly chokes as her eyes flood. "Oh, God! Oh... God!" From her Karl feels the horror of a dreamer awakening to find nightmare reality.

She looks down at herself lifting brown arms as if not recognizing them, looks at the two boys hovering over her, cries out in pain, in despair, a sound like the dying scream of a rabbit, owl's talons deep inside it. Whining, she kicks him away, stands, looks for somewhere to run.

Karl rises, arms out to catch her, "Don't run away, talk to me."

"I've got to go."

"There's nowhere to run, talk to me."

Her eyes catch his, stick, "What, what?"

He sits her down, arms small as a child's in his hands, "We've only got a minute, so pay attention." A whine starts deep in her throat. Karl shakes her and she quiets. "Tell me what it's like."

She looks at him, confused. "Like? What it's like? You've got to be kidding." She laughs, stopping her mouth with a fist. With an effort at control, she goes on. "I was just netting, you know, and he took me, made me do what he wanted, pushed me away from the way out. I've been stuck in there, it seems like forever."

"Where?"

"UR. I can go anywhere I want, but nowhere real. He won't let me contact anybody, no one alive, won't let me tell." Eyes wild, she freezes. "Oh, God!"

"What?"

"He's coming, he's coming back."

"Not yet, Raj, we're still talking."

"I don't see what this—"

"Out!"

"Oh, go on then," Raj says with a sigh. "have your fun."

She relaxes, sags, breathes, eyes squeezed shut, arms clamped over her belly, "Oh, God, thank you." She searches him with her eyes, "Who are you?"

"Nobody, but I want you to do me a favor. I want you to hang on. Will you do that?"

She looks at him, incredulous, "Hang on? I can't hang on! I want my life back. My parents, my friends, they must think I'm dead."

"I can't help you now, but I will."

Eyes suddenly desperate, she says,"You mean I have to go back?" She shrinks from him, searching for a way out. "I won't, I can't."

"Don't fight, don't even try. I'll convince him to let you go."

"You will?"

"I will."

"You promise?"

Karl sees a faint spark of hope in her eyes, and hopes he's not lying. "I promise."

She inhales sharply, as if she's been knifed, goes dead under his hands. Suddenly composed, a cool, ironic smile spreads over her face. "Judas Priest, Karl, you can't be that naive," Raj says, holding lovely arms to touch the boys, "I did hear."

Of course, he sees that now. "She's suffering, Raj."

She covers her mouth melodramatically, "Oh, tell me it's not so!"

Karl ignores the sarcasm, "Let her go."

A bitter smile and she leans back, "Troublesome little bitch, if I wasn't so fond of her, I'd get rid of her now. I don't know who you think you are, butting in like that, Karl. I only gave in to you because I need you to help me manage your little wildcat there until I can implant her."

Karl hesitates. Romy sits erect, hand in her bag, on the .44, ready to use it. Can she hit anything, he wonders? Who would she do first? He gives himself even odds with Raj.

The two acolytes come around to wait behind Romy, one at each elbow, eyes sharp as a circling dog's. He wonders what they've got under their robes. Guns were never his style. Monomolecular blades most likely. Were they decent kids before Raj got hold of them?

He pictures sweeping aside his jacket, finding the pistol grip of the shotgun, turning, bringing it up as he racks it, one fluid movement, one he could do in the dark, natural as scratching an itch. Too close to get both. Karl stands, drawing Romy after him. They move with them and he raises a hand, "Don't try it, Raj."

They hesitate.

Watching all three, now, speaking to them all, "So, what do you say, Raj, twenty million, even trade for two chips."

The girl smiles bitter and hard under half-closed eyes. "Oh, no, she's the price, the only price."

Karl nods, disgusted with himself for not getting this straight at the start. "You win, Raj, but I'll tell you, the man I knew would never have pulled this, never."

To this, she smiles. "Finished? Then you can get out. And Karl, take her, she's yours."

Karl halts, dry ice crystallizing in his stomach, burning him numb. He can't have heard right, but her eyes tell him he did. No coincidence. A network of evil, a confluence, one he can't fight.

"I can see you know," she says, "and I want you to know something else, Karl. I was hoping you'd find me. I've owed you for way too long. On the quay, if it hadn't been for that bull by the door, I'd have finished with you."

Mind frozen, at last he sees it, sees it all.

God he's stupid.

The men on the quay, Swindlehurst—they'd read just as dead as the girl in front of him, and never once had he put them together. Then there was the patsy in the interrogation cell and his story about not doing what he so obviously had. And the change that came over the one he'd cut on the quay. Skier in avalanche country, Karl feels the ground tremble.

"Five years ago, you blew my brain out the front of my face as I was driving out my own driveway. Ring a bell?"

Romy watches every move he makes. What can she think?

The girl bares small teeth. "I was surprised to see you, there, Karl. I had no idea they'd send somebody like you after just one kid. One lousy kid, so what, who would care, right? They disappear everyday. "

He can see Kat's face, feel her thoughts in his mind. "Her name was Kat, she was the governor's daughter. That's why I was there."

The pretty girl who is Raj shakes her head, fingers a nose ring thoughtfully. "What I never could figure out was how you found us." She looks at Karl, sees he doesn't intend to answer, shrugs. "Never mind, I was new at it. I used to worry what happened to my little marionettes. Sentimental of me, I know, but as I say, it was all so new. That was my first taste of forbidden fruit, and you know, I rather fancied it."

"With as many bodies as you could possibly want... use... why take a little girl? Why, Raj?"

She shrugs, already bored, "Why not?" Delicate brown hands flutter, "You're so limited, so... prosaic. How can I talk to you? Philistine that you are, you probably believe that fairy story about an enduring soul."

Karl doesn't deny it.

She aims a thin finger at his heart, "See, what did I tell you? Me, I've rid myself of baggage. I believe what I see," she says, reaching out to rattle the box of vials like a gourd, "what I feel, hear, smell, taste. And the tide is with me."

Raj is right, Karl knows, but if the thing astride this girl is really what's left of the man who was his friend, he has to try to reach it. "You used to, you were one of the godliest men I knew. Punks came to you to sell their chips to get the money to push off on a last slide into oblivion, and what did you do? You sat them down, right here, fed them, got them their first shower in weeks. You talked. I was here, I saw you. I remember thinking it was hopeless, that you were nuts to try. Some you were able to convince to come back. Not many, but a few. They were lives you saved. No man who only believes in what he sees does something like that."

Her eyes cloud, almost as if struggling to recall, then clear as she laughs, "Oh, please, my superstitious past is neither here, nor there. All of this—what you call reality—to me is no different from UR. Nothing I do matters, nothing counts, it's just a game, just a way to pass the endless hours. I've nothing to fear. I can't be hurt, can't be punished, can't be stopped. Kill every one of my hosts and I'll ride as many tomorrow."

A chill demon wags its tail down Karl's spine.

"I'm a new form of life, Karl, a more advanced form, all of you—my toys."

Eyes welded to those of the lovely girl seated across the carpet from him, dread pulls at the pit of Karl's belly. He knows she's right, it's the truth, all of it, and it seems to him he's heard the death sentence for anything decent in the world. A thought pricks. "Why kill Kat, Raj? She was nobody, a kid, you'd done what you wanted with her, why not just drive away and let me have her? What would have been so goddam hard about that?"

She tilts her head on a slender neck, considering, "Not sure, really, just thought it'd be the smart thing to do." She clears her throat, a high gurgle like a bird's warble. " Worried about getting caught, you see. Didn't realize all I had to do was pull out. But then, coitus interruptus has never been easy, has it? Ah..." she says, shrugging graceful shoulders, "live and learn. Now I want to know something—would you have let me?"

Karl glances at Romy, sees her watching, listening. He won't lie, not even for her. He looks Raj in her dark eyes, "No."

Raj laughs, "Oh, Karl, we're more alike than we are different, we two, why can't you see that?"

Fear like nothing he's ever known takes Karl in its talons. Hay hooks dipped in liquid nitrogen find the gaps in his ribs and sink through to the heart of him, freezing everything they touch. Sure he was going to be kicked to death on the plat he wasn't this afraid. He's killed this thing twice, and here it is, still here, still taking lives, taking bodies.

This is evil—absolute evil. Real as sunlight, solid as a fistful of gravel. Evil he can't argue or reason away. Evil aggressive as a starving dog, clever as only the insane can be, with a cigar box full of glass rice grains burbling together—each one a life gone.

One thought in his mind—to get out, to get away, Karl edges to the door. Romy he brings in tow. And as she comes, one of the boys moves to cut her off. Karl's waiting for this, pivots, the twelve coming up, suspended on its strap, bead centered on the kid's sternum.

Raj smiles and the boys fade to her side. "You misunderstand me, my friend, I'm no threat. I'm well aware of your penchant for destructive playthings. The last thing I want is my home sullied, and I'm sure the last thing you want is to hurt these innocents, am I right? No, no, no, continue, continue, go your way. I'm sure you have far to go."

They wait at the door as, thinking it's all way too easy, Karl backs away. Why would Raj let them walk out? Why, when he has them here? What waits for them outside?

"I want you to know what it is you're beginning, Karl. From the instant you walk out that door, you must watch for me. I'll follow. Every moment, day or night. I'll track you, hunt you. And when the time is right, I'll take what I want. You see, you could have had it all, I would have given her back to you when I was done.

"Now all bets are off. When I get her, and I will, I'll use her up, Karl, use her until there's nothing left to use, until she couldn't sell herself for a tube steak on the quay. And you, I'll have you, too, you know I will, have you doing things you'd never imagine yourself doing, things that make your friend Darrell look like a prince, and I'll make sure you know all about it, every minute of it." She lifts the pistol-like implant tool as Karl backs out the door, covering their backs. He considers dropping all three of them right now, but the girl on the couch he can't kill. It's hopeless. He sees that now.

"Know how easy it is to use this, Karl? "

He knows. A child could do it, anybody could. Once implanted they'd be his.

"Sleep well," she calls after them.

Once on the street, Karl leads them a serpent's course up alleys, in and out of office buildings, doing what he can to sever any tail. As they run, Karl wonders...

Can they ever get far enough?

 

* * *

 

Five to ten.

From the roof of one of the new Chinese office buildings down on La Cienega, they look down on the pickup point as Willy lets Bink down for a walk in the rooftop park.

Romy leans at the rail. "Some friends you've got."

Numb, Karl watches traffic slide past. "I've been out of town."

The dark water of the canal below foams, churned by the wakes of countless boats. Walks along both sides swarm with people.

"So, you can go home now, at last."

He finds the thought doesn't appeal to him as much as he thought it would. "That's right."

"And I'll go into protective custody until I can testify for Auri. That's the plan, isn't it?"

He wishes she would shut up. "Then you want to?"

Her gaze drops to the water as a long barge docks, unloading. "I guess I always did. Someone has to make them pay for what they've done. Someone."

He thinks he hears an accusation in her voice. When he turns, she looks away.

"The girl you were talking about—what happened?"

His stomach falls when he hears her ask. He doesn't want to talk about it, has never talked about it, not to Mary, not to anyone, but a look at her face tells him she wants to know, and for some reason he wants to tell her. "It was the last time I worked. Kidnapped. Two days in a basement. She lived through everything they did to her. If I'd killed him when I first saw him she'd be alive today."

She watches him with an interest he hasn't seen in her before, "And why didn't you?"

Brown foam dances in the chop of crossing wakes as boats sprint by, engines droning. "Don't work that way."

"You did what you could. That is true, isn't it?"

He hasn't noticed her moving closer, but it's as if she has, as if the space between them is less. It's been a very long time since he 's had anyone who would listen and not judge. "I almost had her—almost."

"Raj killed her?"

He nods, "I thought at least I'd stopped them. I didn't." He's curious. "What about after the trial?"

She takes a long breath, "After, Auri will get her money and Willy and I can go where we want."

Knowing what he knows about Genie, he deems that unlikely. Let her have her little fictions. He has his. He's going home—what's that if not fiction? And short fiction at that? He calls up the time: ten ten. "They're late."

"You're sure this is the place?"

He turns, scans the walk behind them, sees nobody to worry about—old woman with a kid, couple kids sucking face in the corner. "I'm sure."

Her look is thoughtful. "Where will you go?"

He watches the water for the detail come to pick her up. "Home."

"Home," she says as if tasting the word, savoring it. "What's it like?"

Irritated by her chatter, he sighs. Five minutes she'll be gone. For that long he can put up with anything, with anybody. But it frightens him, too—five minutes. Not long. "It's near the sea."

"Is it big?"

"Big enough."

"How big?"

A swarm of hornets stirs in his gut. What can be holding up Tate's crew? "Thousand hectares."

Slowly, she turns, "That's what...nine square kilometers, isn't it?"

"Close."

"Trees...are there trees?"

Karl takes a deep breath. It's not like Tate to be late."There are."

"Oak, willow, fir, what?"

"Alder, sitka, madrone, some Port Orford, some oak, not much."

She sidles closer, so that the downy skin of her arm brushes his hand on the rail. Excitement comes through her skin.

"Near the ocean, you said?"

He looks at her, curious, "It runs to the sea."

"Touches it, you mean? For how far?"

Through her arm comes a vision, a fairyland of mist, mountain, forest. "Hair short of a klick."

She exhales as if she's been punched, "Is there a beach?"

He watches her as she stares out over the LA skyline, not seeing any of it."Not much of one, a few pebbly coves, mostly cliffs."

"There is pasture, and a spring where you get your water, and there are deer, and apples, filberts, grapes in the woods."

How can she know that? Can she be reading him? He doesn't think so. "Yeah."

"How long have you lived there?"

"You tell me."

He can feel a small tendril of sadness wind itself about her thoughts as a smaller smile deflects the curve of her lips, "Lifetimes."

Could be a lucky guess. Could be. He nods.

"You keep chickens and live in an old farmhouse with a sway-backed ridge beam, am I right?"

At once he feels naked before her. He doesn't like it. "Maybe."

"I'm right." Lovely shoulders hunched, she shrugs, "And now you're going home."

Once she's in Tate's hands he can do that, he can go home. Home—where he lives alone. "Right again."

"Your woman, your children will be glad."

"There's a woman, a boy."

A river—the despair he feels in her—rises, dark and cold. He knows what she thinks, and lets her feel it as he basks in her misery. Because of what it means.

Two Zodiacs pull up that might as well have FEDERAL AGENTS spray-painted on them in neon pink. He frowns. Not like Tate either.

"Your neighbors, are they very close?"

Eight agents swarm the walk. Way too many to bring one woman in—too many by six. What the hell does it mean?

"Couple klicks."

She looks at him, wonder in her eyes,"Is it lonely?"

This is not right, not right at all. Tate would never do this—unless he were trying to tell him something. "Not for me it isn't."

She thinks of his family. "Of course not."

Still, he says nothing to right the mistake. Why?

"Here we go," she says, raising a hand to wave.

Karl clamps her wrist, draws it down to the rail, "Don't."

"Why not? That's them, isn't it?"

Voice in the back of his head blaring, there's no time to argue."Trust me?" He keeps hold of her to feel her answer. What he gets is confusion, even amusement as she smothers a smile. She does—as much as she does anyone, as much as Willy, and he's not at all happy to know it. It's a responsibility he doesn't want. Not now when it's nearly over, when he's about to dump her and head home. Not needing her reply, he doesn't wait for it, "Then, don't fight me."

She glares, angry eyes moving between his face and her wrist in his hand, not wanting to give him what he wants, but afraid to go downstairs alone, knowing she needs him, needs what he knows, what he can do, wishing she didn't. "All right."

"Don't do anything, don't say anything. Be just another tourist, understand?" A joke with her looks, her hair, but there are so many imitation Sisters on the streets, it might work. For a while it might.

Not understanding why they must be so careful now when it's all over, she nods, "I understand."

Karl releases her and turns his attention to the detail ten floors below. One agent directs traffic. The others search for them. Six of the eight he's never seen. One, small with long hair, wavers behind a pole just out of sight. The last is familiar, but from so far he can't be sure.

From the old woman he borrows a pair of binoculars. When he sees the face, frost crystallizes on his spine. Pug goes out when somebody dies. Never on a pick up like this. No bodyguard, he's a killer, all brawn, with the tenacity of a pit bull. Loves using his blade. They'd worked together—once—that was enough. Never again. Magnus should have known not to send him. At that instant a thought breaks through cloud in the back of his mind. He returns the binoculars, checks to see Willy's still walking Bink.

"Can we go down now?" she says, "I'm cold."

Seeing her standing in the wisp of a dress at the rail, he realizes she must have been freezing ever since he dragged her out on the balcony. Never once had she complained. Hard to dislike somebody that can take it and keep their mouth shut about it.

He moves close, lowers his voice, "Not yet. Stay here. Make conversation. Hold them here if you can. Pretend you're the kid's mom. I don't know, tell them a story, but keep them here as witnesses. They're your best protection."

"Protection? Why do I need protection? Where are you going?"

"Got a call to make."

"Why not use your headset?"

"Don't want them tracking me. The booth I can leave."

Sighing in frustration, she scratches the top of her head, "This is getting awfully melodramatic, can't we just go down?"

He doesn't want to explain, wants to get going. "You see that big guy by the Zodiac? "

She does.

"Saw him stomp a kitten once, to hear its skull pop. Shouldn't be here, this isn't what he does."

He turns away and she grabs for his sleeve. Impatient, he turns.

"Coming back?"

He can read the fear in her eyes, hear it in her voice. It surprises him. Something's changed; she doesn't want him to go. "If I can I will. Give me an hour. I don't show, it's your call. You're on your own. Go with them if you want. I wouldn't, but you can. If you decide not to, Mary's code's on the bottom of the duffel, tell her you're a friend of mine. She'll take care of you."

Romy regards him doubtfully, "She helps everyone who says that?"

He smiles. Good question, but easy to answer. "Nobody says it."

Her mouth curves upward in a cynical smile. "I won't lie."

Meeting her eyes brings them closer than a full body clinch with any other woman he's known. "You won't be lying." He motions to Willy and he lopes across the lawn to be near her. For an idiot, not so dumb. "Stay close."

Severing her gaze with an effort, he heads for the stairs.

 

 

 

 

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