Electric Church

V MEN WITH JOBS, THE VANISHING SPECIES

It was too bright, too open. I mashed one finger down on Gatz’s buzzer. I could hear the soft female voice of his apartment’s Shell calling out, “Visitor at the door! Mr. Gatz. Visitor at the door!” Gatz liked to set his Shell to “female” and talk back to it, cursing and calling it names.

The gray mass of people pushed past me in both directions. Millions of people every day in New York had no jobs, they just darted around looking for something to steal, someplace to sell it, and maybe some free grub here and there. I felt exposed, and my head ached. I suspected the Safe Room was the only thing that had saved my life from the assorted other bottom-feeders, most of whom would have slit my throat out of simple fear if they’d been able to see me.

I leaned on the button again. That flirty fake voice was starting to bug me, it was so fucking cheerful. There was nothing to be cheerful about.

Finally, the front door buzzed. I stepped inside quickly and shut the door behind me, scanning the crowd before mounting the broken escalator and humping it upstairs. Gatz shared the room with two other people in shifts of eight hours. It was just a room with a cot in one corner, a couch that didn’t look too moldy, a kitchen module, and a water closet. Grim, but it was off the street and behind a thick metal door, which provided at least minimum security against the sneak thieves, cutthroats, and other desperate creatures.

Gatz opened the door and stepped aside, waving me in. He wore just a pair of shorts, and his thin, wasted body glowed with ghostly pallor. He was wearing his sunglasses, which relaxed me, because Gatz needed to look you in the eye in order to Push you.

I didn’t really understand the Push. I’d only experienced it once, really; Kev Gatz had been a new face around town back then, a skinny asshole with an attitude. Like just about everyone else, I’d become determined to teach him a hard lesson-you had to hit people first, never let them think you were soft. When I came after him he just took off his shades, and the moment he got a good look at me I felt this calm, peaceful feeling spreading over me. I was suddenly content to just stare at Kev. I didn’t feel anything, want anything, think anything. I was just there.

To Kev’s credit, his revenge wasn’t anything terrible. He sent me away relieved of all my money and gave me a task: Write I will not try to shake down Kev Gatz ever again one hundred times on paper. I was on line thirty-three before it wore off, and I stopped in the middle of the word try and just blinked, everything rushing back to me. The motherfucker-he made me laugh, and when I met up with him again I had to admit that aside from being bug-eyed afraid of looking him in the eye even by accident, I liked that about him.

I sat down on the couch and put my feet on the cot. I fished out some precious cigs and offered him one, which he took silently, sticking it behind his ear. He slumped back down onto the bed next to my feet and squinted at the Shell’s screen. “Fuck, Avery, I’ve got forty minutes before the Teutonic Fuck gets in.”

The German. No one knew his real name. He worked freelance security around the city, cracking heads and guarding drug mules. He was obviously augmented, illegal all the way and probably going to die young. Augments bought on the black market were almost always deadly. Currently, however, the German was a mass of rippling muscles and rage, and he’d made it known to Kev that if Kev wasn’t out of the room when he got back, he’d toss Kev out the window, because the German needed his beauty rest.

“I’m in trouble, Kev,” I said, lighting my cig. “I need help.”

Kev nodded. “How much you paying?”

Ever practical, that was my Kev. I did some quick mental calculations. “Forty.”

“Forty,” Kev repeated, liking the number, “for what?”

“I gotta get out of New York for a while, and it might be tricky. I think my face is in the air with both the SSF and the Electric Church.”

Gatz was scratching his eyes under the dark lenses. “The EC? The fucking plastic Monks standing around telling us how great it is to have mechanical brains? You serious?”

I gave him the short version of my evening. It was hot as fuck up in his little room, and rivulets of sweat were burrowing through my body hair. It smelled like three unwashed men had spent the evening farting continuously, and I fought the urge to just hold my breath.

“Holy shit,” was Gatz’s only comment. “You are fucked, Ave. How long you think you have?”

I shrugged. “No time at all, I’d say. I gotta go underground right away. And I’ll need your special talents to make that happen.” I exhaled smoke into the room. “So, move.”

“What the fuck do you expect me to do? I’m not muscle, Ave.”

He was, though, in a way. “Kev, I need you to be my guardian angel. Make people leave me alone without getting into gunplay or such shit.” I also wanted someone I thought I could trust, and there were precious few of those, but I felt a weird affection for Kev. It was like having a pet.

He shook his head. “Fuck, man-Ave, you’re a friend and all, but this is a lot of danger for forty. System Pigs? I don’t know.”

I decided not to tell him the SSF was probably the lesser of two evils here, from what I’d seen and heard of the Monk. I was pissed-I’d done Kev plenty of favors. He owed me, and to find out he had the same short memory as the rest of the shit out there made me angry. I waited a moment, until the gaunt little fuck started stretching, scratching himself. Then I dove forward, pushed him up against the outdated Vid screen on the wall, and had him by the neck, and I made sure he could feel my breath on his face. I used my thumb and kept his face turned away from me-it was dangerous not to control Gatz’s field of vision. No one knew that better than me.

He couldn’t explain it, the Push. Kev didn’t even know how old he was, precisely. He’d always been plagued with headaches, bouts of hysterical blindness-he’d always assumed he had a tumor or some other terrible malfunction and wouldn’t live long. Then one day, he was getting his ass kicked somewhere, and he was just staring at the guy, wishing the guy would stop hitting him… and the guy stopped, just stood there.

“Listen to me, you little shit,” I rasped. “I am in deep shit here. Deep fucking shit. I need help. You won’t lift a finger for me unless I’m fucking bleeding for you? I’ve saved your ass how many times? Put that shit aside. You think I won’t fucking hurt you if you leave me hanging in the wind here?”

His breath whistled in and out of his nose; he didn’t even try to struggle. I knew how to beat him. “Fuck, Avery, fuck, come on! Get off me! Of course I’m gonna help you-of course I am.”

“’Cause normally I don’t mind your bullshit,” I went on as if he hadn’t said anything. “Normally I let your bullshit slide, Kev. You being all fucked up all the time. You acting like just because you got the Push, you can do anything you want. I let it go. Okay? But I am in some deep fucking shit here, asshole, and I will not tolerate being kicked in the balls, all right?”

For a second there was just Kev’s whistling breath. Then: “Look me in the eye when you say that, Avery.”

Kev did not possess what you might call a sophisticated brain, or any desire to plumb the mysteries of his life. Once he determined that he had this power, he accepted it as the way of the universe and just used it as best he could, to survive. If it didn’t leave him a shivering, weakened shell every time he Pushed someone, he’d probably be the biggest fucking criminal in the world right now. As it was, this incredible power gave him just barely enough of an edge to keep him alive a little longer than otherwise would have been possible.

The Joint Council had declared all active psionics property of the SSF, and the System Pigs kidnapped anyone they heard about. Gatz was the only psionic I knew of who wasn’t chained up in some SSF training course or research lab, learning how to keep the System spinning.

I kind of liked that about him, too. When he wasn’t kicking me in the balls, at least.

I gave him one good knee in his balls, just enough to make him cry out in pain, and then I was off him. “Fuck you, Kev. Keep those shades on, or I swear I’ll make you regret it.”

Desperation came off me in waves. I hoped Kev, with his fucked-up senses, might mistake it for anger, or danger.

“Jesus, Avery,” he complained, rubbing his neck. “You could have snapped my windpipe, you know? There’s no need for this shit.”

I took a deep breath and retrieved my burning cigarette from the floor, where it had charred a small black circle in the cheap, sagging floorboards. “Sorry, Kev. I’m on edge.” I’d re-established the natural order between Kev Gatz and me, and now we were friendly again.

“Yeah.” He stared at the ground for a moment. “So, what do you need?”

“Aside from those googly eyes of yours, I think your friend Marcel would come in handy right now. I need to get the fuck out of town and come back as someone else. Someone new.”

He turned his head back to me and pulled a stained shirt from the floor. “Augments? Avery, I would never have thought you’d-”

“Desperate times, mi amigo,” I said, and I meant it: I wasn’t one to be a hardass for no reason. I was exhausted by the performance. “You’ll arrange things with Marcel for me?”

He nodded. “Okay, Avery. I’ll meet up with you tonight.”

And we shook on it, because we were old friends, the Pusher and me.

I didn’t make it five feet out of Gatz’s building before I noticed a pair of cops on my trail, not Crushers but the elite plainclothes officers, arrogant and worrisome. The System Pigs could be invisible if they wanted, if there was a tactical reason to blend, but many times they didn’t give a shit, because what rat was going to go after the mighty officers of the SSF? These two might as well have had signs on their chests that said police, with their dark long coats and their suits, their shiny shoes and their smug faces. They looked prosperous, men with jobs, the vanishing species. Besides, I recognized one of them, a blond with the blank look of a sociopath: I’d seen him outside a raid on the East Side, a while ago, and while he’d never seen my face, he’d come pretty close to killing me.

I marked them and kept walking, steady, slow, because it was always best to know where the fucking cops were. I went over my options: I didn’t have any. They would come, and I would have to take it. Every fiber of me wanted to run, and I stopped myself with effort. It would take a while, because the System Pigs were careful, and cruel.

Half an hour later I was walking, head down, and somehow they were ahead of me, a wall of cop suddenly rising up in the middle of a street that was quickly becoming deserted, the soft breeze of fleeing people ruffling my hair. I actually stopped short and blinked up at them, confused.

“Avery Cates,” the tall, blond one said. “The famous Gunner. Got a minute?”

I shrugged. “Always, for the SSF, officer.” It pissed them all off to be called officer.

The blond grinned. His eyes danced, jittery, not really moving but not really focusing either, and were a bright, electric blue that made me wonder if his parents had had a little illegal augmentation done. His partner was fat and shorter, a lazy man’s scum of beard on his face. He stared at me with steady, dead eyes.

“Captain Barnaby Dawson,” the blond snapped. “This is my partner Jack Hallier.”

I looked at Hallier. He didn’t twitch a muscle. We were on Eighth Avenue, a section of Old New York that was still populated. Every other building was emptied and ruined, a scar from the Riots, but others sported gangs of people hanging out the windows, idle, bored, poor. The street had once been used for vehicles, I remembered, but had been narrowed by enterprising squatters who’d built junk shelters up against the old buildings, some used for selling scavenged shit. When the SSF wasn’t around, it was packed tight with people, but we had two blocks all to ourselves, trash swirling around our feet. Even the Crushers had beat it.

I nodded pleasantly. “Officers.”

Hallier whipped his hand out and slapped me across the face. My vision swam, my head jerked around, and I felt my teeth dig into my cheek, bringing out coppery blood. When I got my head back around, Dawson’s finger-immaculately manicured-was under my nose.

“Watch your fucking attitude, Mr. Cates,” he said, his face still as stone except for his dancing eyes. Great, I thought, a psycho. Just my luck.

I didn’t say anything.

“You know a guy named Nad Muller? Lowlife piece of shit with sticky fingers?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, sure. He’s fucking dead. They found him down on Prince Street, popped.”

Dawson nodded, his eyebrows raised. “Yeah, sure, you were there, shithead.”

I kept my bruised face blank. “No, sir,” I said, and braced for another slap.

It didn’t come. Dawson looked at Hallier in apparent amusement, but Hallier was still just staring at me, dead eyes, mouth slightly open, like he was trying to use his mental powers to lift me off the ground.

“Huh,” Dawson continued, turning back to me. “Avery Cates, aged twenty-seven, born in Old Brooklyn, twelve years of education, suspect in fifteen unresolved homicides, two dozen lesser offenses. Arrested six times, never convicted. Known as a more-than-competent Gunner, good for kills or bodyguarding or other related jobs. Good reputation on the streets as a straight shooter, trustworthy, always does the job and never reneges, reasonable pricing. Well-known even outside New York.” The fucking Pigs and the fucking Monks. They thought having a wireless linkup to huge databases plugged into their ears made them special, and they loved to play mindreader. “Wanna know your shoe size, asshole?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t enjoying this.

Dawson pushed his finger into my chest. “You were there, Cates. We know you were there.” Hallier’s hand was suddenly on my arm, shoving me. “So let’s take a walk and you can tell us all about how you watched an SSF officer get killed.”

“Ah, fuck,” I muttered. I knew how this was going to end, with me kneeling in an alleyway with a gun pressed against my head. Fucking System Pigs. They didn’t fuck around. I tried to think, but the fat cop was pushing me hard and Dawson’s dancing eyes were hard and unhappy.

“Officers!”

We all paused, and I glanced up to see Kev Gatz running toward us. My odds had just improved immensely. Dawson and Hallier stopped and watched the skinny freak approach, and I looked down at my shoes.

“What is it?” Dawson snapped. If Gatz didn’t have something useful to say in a second or two, they’d probably drag him into the alley with me and put one in his head just for slowing them down.

“I have information,” I heard Gatz begin, and then there was silence. Hallier’s hand loosened on my arm, and I looked up at the two cops, who were standing slackly, mouths slightly open. I risked a quick glance at Gatz; his sunglasses were back on.

“They’re Pushed,” he said breathlessly. “What should we do with them?”

I took a moment to collect myself, cold sweat dripping down my back. The two cops were just standing there, vacant. It took a lot out of him; even getting people to do minor stuff left him exhausted, but fuck if it wasn’t a useful little talent.

I looked around. “We gotta get them off the street. Come on.”

He nodded. “Follow us,” he said to the cops. They nodded and lurched after us, heavy and sleepy. I scanned the block for a good location and chose an abandoned building nearby, crumbling old-world mortar and dusty air. With the System Cops, I knew no one was watching us too closely, or would think twice about them apparently dragging us off the street-that was standard procedure for SSF summary executions. A wide doorway had been boarded up in more optimistic times; I kicked the rotted boards out and we herded the piggies into the dark maw of the building. Gatz had our cops sit down on the floor, and I began to pace.

“How long will they be pacified?”

Gatz was leaning against a wall. “Few more minutes, Ave,” he panted. “It’s hard.”

I paced back and forth. “We can’t kill them,” I muttered. You didn’t kill System Cops, at least not after being seen out in the open with them by half of Old New York. It was unhealthy. The good people of New York never remembered a face… until the SSF started knocking heads and taking names.

“On the other hand,” Gatz said slowly, “you’re already fucking famous.”

He had a point. When a pair of SSF show up and tell you your life story, the chances you’re going to be left alone for the rest of your short, miserable life were pretty low. Maybe slitting their throats carried a low risk after all. But I shook my head. “Man, they sent two of them just because they thought I might have seen something. Two of them don’t check in, they’ll send a fucking army after me. I need to get them out of the way without being involved.”

Just beyond the crumbling old brick walls there was the usual noise of the world, and inside there was Gatz, dead skinny and wearing out way faster than was fair, and two comatose System Pigs who had to be dealt with. On top of that, I had an entire religion…

I paused, an idea forming. I smiled at Gatz.

“What the fuck you laughing about?” he demanded.

“Get them up, okay? Get them walking, and follow me.”