Metrophage

TWO

The Greater Southern California Detention Facility: an ant hill; a graveyard; a factory where souls were processed, packaged, and delivered to what some laughingly called justice. At least, many on the inside (guards and prisoners, alike) had heard rumors to that effect. Rumors of the search for justice. Memos were circulated about it. Petitions were signed for it. Statues of Greek goddesses brandishing scales were erected to it. Still, few had seen any sign of it.

The prison squatted, blank and huge, by the port in what was left of the old warehouse district. Built on the bones of an old liquid natural gas plant, it had originally been envisioned as the location for the flagship lab of the Pentagon's notorious genetic warfare programs in the late nineteen-nineties. The building had sat unused when the government's war plans ran out of steam and money at the same time. It was not until eighteen months later, with a few billion yen to back it up, that the order came down to pull out the half-finished labs and begin slicing up the old storage tanks, refitting them to form the cell walls within the new facility.

The majority of the prison's bulk was hidden, sunk deep into the ancient pig iron waste pits. Lichen-streaked, great solid planes of cracked concrete rose at severe angles to a flat roof studded with sealed cooling ducts and dish antennae. A damp ocean breeze kept the walls of the prison perpetually glistening, the concrete stinking with a thousand dock smells: the ozone residue of synthetic fuels, over-ripe fruit, rusting machinery, dead fish.

A common joke was that the average prisoner was doing five to ten while the guards were doing nine to five. They, like the prisoners, were just trying to get by. They were young men mostly, Jonny's age and a little older. Primarily recruits from the Committee for Public Health, at twenty the boys were already considered too old for street duty, burned-out on the Committee's steady diet of speed and anabolic steroids.

Two years earlier, with motives as mysterious to himself as anybody else, Jonny had joined the Committee. Indifference and boredom seemed to be his main reasons. A few years as a petty thief and courier for the smugglers left him fast on his feet and quick with a knife and pistol. Still, he remained naive enough to be surprised when it was these same criminal qualities that helped land him a high-paying job with the Committee.

After his training, Jonny was assigned to what was called Perimeter Maintenance. The mechanics of the job were not too different from what he had been doing all his life- meeting with thieves, tracking down warehouses of stolen drugs and food.

However, the Committee had little patience with prisoners; they paid him a commission for each smuggler he killed above his quota.

Recruits were encouraged to compete. Body counts were posted at Committee headquarters. There were bonuses and prizes to be won at the end of each month.

Jonny tried to make the best of it, telling himself how much better it was to be off the streets and on the side of power for a change. But killing for the Committee did not make any more sense than killing for the smugglers. Sometimes, when he was helping load bodies into transports after a raid, Jonny would see a face he recognized: a junky from the Strip, a panhandler, a street musician.

More than once, in the hallucinatory haze of the synth-fuels fumes and halogen lamps, he thought he saw his own face among the dead.

And he was growing increasingly dependent on the speed. He simply could not let go. The come down was too awful. Without the speed he would begin to think again.

Jonny had never known self-loathing before, but there it was.

He had sudden bouts of vertigo, mouth ulcers, cramps in his gun hand. He found himself growing more sympathetic to the cause of the smugglers; at least he understood their motives. In the end it simply grew too ugly, the self-deceptions too obvious for him to continue.

The manner of his desertion, however, was more complicated. It was generally known that he turned in his uniform, pressed and clean, and picked up the last of his commissions. But he never turned in his pistol. That became significant later when his immediate superior, a one-eyed brute named Cawfly, was found shot through his good eye.

And Jonny, barely twenty one, in his inevitable search for the point of least resistance, drifted back to the streets. No longer resisting the flow of events or pretending to chart a course through them, he existed by luck. But that was before; now it seemed even that had deserted him.

He awoke, with a small cry, to the stink of vomit and antiseptic in a damp, gray holding cell. As the sound of his cry died away, Jonny rolled onto his side where he was distressed to find that the vomit he smelled was his own. His left hand was resting in a small pool of the stuff. His mouth burned with bile.

He lay on a bare aluminum cot frame, his head spinning, wondering where he was. Eventually, he was able to focus on the wall. GAMMA LOVES RAMON and DEZ were scratched there, and THE EXQUISITE CORPSE WILL DRINK THE NEW WINE. Much of the graffiti was in Spanish and Japanese. He was too tired to translate, but he did not need to. He already knew what it said. "Fuck you!" or "I didn't do it." or just "Let me out!" The international language of the dispossessed. He grinned; it was almost comforting. Jonny knew where he was now.

When he tried to sit up, he found that hisright shoulder was wrapped in gauze and a thermoplastic carapace. For a terrible instant, he panicked, but relaxed when he felt the reassuring bulge of his arm, intact under the cast.

Rubbing his injured arm, Jonny tried to figure out who had turned him. It was clearly no coincidence that the Committee had been waiting for him outside Carnaby's Pit. It was possible, he thought, that it had been a routine sweep for all pushers, but that did not seem likely. Deep shit," he said to the empty cell. Extremely deep shit.

He was almost asleep when the polarized glass panel on his cell door blinked to the transparent, then darkened. Jonny lay still on the aluminum frame as the cell door scrapped open. He heard whispers-three or four distinct voices. Annoyance and nervousness. He kept his eyes closed. The door opened further, then closed quickly. The voices stopped. Jonny was aware of somebody standing over him.

"Is that him?" came a low, adolescent voice.

"Yeah," I think so, said a different voice.

"He's a skinny motherfucker. Looks like a chica," came a third, huskier voice.

"That give you ideas, man?"

"Yeah- I'm gonna cut him."

"Hey, don't- "

Jonny heard the metallic snick of a switchblade opening. He did not move.

"Touch him and we're muy morto. He's tagged, man."

"Doesn't look special."

"I seen his files. Interrogacion especial."

"Man, I'm not going to kill him," came the husky voice. "Just gonna get a knuckle or part of his ear.

"No!"

"Who's gonna stop me?"

Jonny swung one steel-tipped boot into the gut of a blonde boy and the other onto the floor, screaming like a lunatic, letting his momentum carry him up and toward the door. The other boys fell back without being touched, too surprised to stop him.

He almost had the door open before they came to their senses and grabbed him. But he kept moving, biting fingers, kicking shins, not letting them get a good grip. Finally, a boy with some sort of scarring on his hands and neck caught him with a smooth uppercut to the jaw.

Jonny went down on his face. The scarred boy rolled him over and dropped onto his chest, bringing the switchblade up level with Jonny's throat. The other boys crowded in behind him, grumbling and shaking their injured hands and legs. Jonny realized that the hands of the boy holding the knife were covered with sores, similar to leprosy lesions.

"You funny, man?" the boy with the knife demanded. "What's your story?

"Fuck you, la chinga," said Jonny.

The boy sliced Jonny's cheek. "You're dead, man. I don't care who you are", he said.

"You haven't got the cojones."

"You got to stick him, now. He'll tell," said the blonde boy.

Jonny twisted around and kicked the blonde boy, again. The boy on his chest punched his throat.

"What are you doing?" came a new voice.

The boys drew back abruptly, staring guiltily at the door. The boy with the knife stood up and glanced at his nervous accomplices, then back at the door. All Jonny could see from the floor was a pair of highly polished boots and a sleeve with lieutenant's stripes.

"I asked what you were doing," said the lieutenant.

The boy with the lesions pointed to Jonny. "He was trying to escape. We stopped him."

The lieutenant nodded. "What were you doing in this cell?"

The boy glanced at his friends for support. They would not look at him. "I told you, man. He was trying to escape," he said.

"Don't lie to me."

The boys in the back of the cell, the blonde and a tall, Mestizo with bad teeth, stared at the floor. Jonny guessed that they were about sixteen. The boy with the knife looked to be a year or two older. The insignia on his Committee uniform indicated that he was a corporal. That explained it, then. It had all been good, clean fun. An older boy out to show his young friends a good time.

The lieutenant made a curt gesture with his hand. "Get him up," he said.

The two younger boys moved quickly. Slipping their arms under Jonny, they lifted him easily, their steroid thickened muscles hardly straining. Then they set him gentlyon the cot frame and stood against the wall, trying desperately to blend with the peeling paint.

The older boy still held the knife, moving it uncertainly from hand to infected hand. The lieutenant faced him. "You're all on report", he said. "Return to your duties."

"I'm telling you, this man tried to escape," the older boy insisted.

"I understand," said the lieutenant, a flat-nosed young black who, Jonny could now see, was not much older than the boy with the jaw implant. That's how it was in the Committee. They worked mainly with teenage boys. Give them the right stimulants and guns and they would go anywhere, risk everything. Higher ranking boys kept them in line, while desk-bound old men ran the rest of the show. It was cheap and efficient. The Committee never had to pay much in the way of retirement benefits.

"Get out of here," the lieutenant said.

"But- "

One more word and you can explain it to the Colonel."

That shut the boy up. Reluctantly, he closed the switchblade, tucking it into the top of his boot. While adjusting his uniform, he gave Jonny a quick, accusing glance, and followed his friends out of the cell.

"So long, guys," called Jonny. "Keep in touch." He laughed and nodded to the lieutenant. The young man's identity tag read TAUSSIG. "Thanks for your help. I thought I was dog food for sure- "

"On your feet, pusher," said Lieutenant Taussig.

Jonny took a deep breath and leaned against the wall. "You mind if I catch my breath first?" he asked.

Taussig reached down to examine Jonny's face, turning it this way and that in the light. He did not look pleased.

"If anybody asks, tell them the anesthetic hadn't quite worn off and you fell on the stairs", the lieutenant said.

"Why? What do you care about those clowns?" asked Jonny.

"Just do it."

Jonny smiled. "Oh, I get it. Afraid someone'll find out you can't handle your troops?"

Taussig pulled Jonny up by his good arm. "Let's go," he said.

The lieutenant led Jonny out onto a rusted loading gantry, through a maze of small-bore piping and frozen transfer valves to the floor the old processing plant cum prison. Vague breezes and convection currents kicked up scraps of paper, fluttering them around the pylons of fifty foot cryogenic tanks.

The floor sloped; the air cooled. They entered a battered hydro-plunge service lift whose burnished walls reflected the harsh industrial lighting in jagged bolts and loops. As they descended, Jonny noticed that Taussig had punched a button in the Yellow Sector. Jonny was impressed. He had never received clearance to enter any of the restricted areas.

When the elevator doors opened, Taussig pushed Jonny to a jerry-rigged desk (a horizontal slab of tank cladding bolted athwart two enormous shock-coils) and handed a sheaf of documents to a pale boy whose eyes seemed to have no pupils at all. The red-faced boy motioned for a couple of pre-pubescent guards to follow them, and walked Jonny and the lieutenant down a short corridor. At the end, he unlocked a scuffed yellow door for them.

Inside, it was another world.

The light came from incandescent bulbs, a muted non-industrial glow. They stood in a small anteroom whose walls Jonny was sure were real wood, not plasti-form. Between two locked doors at the far end of the room was a low table, in the Kamakura style. On the table was a small bowl holding a single bonsai. Jonny coughed into his fist a couple of times. The sound was flat, swallowed up by the walls like water on sand. Sound-proofed, he thought.

Taussig walked to door on the right of the table and leaned over the eyepiece of a portable Haag-Streit retinal scanner. A moment later, a buzzer sounded. Gripping the ornamental brass handle, the lieutenant pushed the door open and motioned Jonny inside. Taussig did not enter. When Jonny turned to look at him, the lieutenant closed the door in his face.

"What the hell happened to you?" came a familiar, avuncular voice.

Jonny faced the room, seeing only a computer terminal on the far side of a mahogany table with four matching chairs drawn up to it. Dragons inset in some lighter wood coiled in battle or play on the table's surface. In the dim light, Jonny could not see the face of the man sitting on the opposite side of the table. But that voice. It made Jonny feel a little sick.

"I thought they cleaned you up in the infirmary," the man said.

Jonny could just make out the silhouette. It gestured for Jonny to take a seat.

"I tripped on the stairs," Jonny said. "The- uh- anesthetic." He sat in the chair as he was told.

Jonny could see the face now. It smiled at him. The short cropped hair was whiter than he remembered.

"What's the matter, Gordon? Not even a 'hello' for your old C.O.?" The officer, Colonel Brigidio Zamora, set a small pile of crumpled currency next to a collection of pills and Jonny's tagged Futukoro.

"Captain Zamora-" Jonny began.

"Colonel."

"Congratulations," Jonny said. He rubbed his wounded shoulder, reflexively. "Look Colonel, you're too late. I know this room and the ride down here were supposed to mind-fuck me, but you blew it. Three of your puppies broke into my cell just now and tried to slice me up. I'm exhausted and my shoulder hurts like hell." Jonny leaned his good elbow on the table. "So tell me, Colonel, what kind of deal are you prepared to offer me?"

For a moment, Zamora did nothing and Jonny found himself wondering if he had chosen the wrong tactic. The Colonel, he remembered, liked to have a good time. In a moment, though, Zamora relaxed, exhaling little bursts of air from his throat. His version of laughter.

"I tell you, Gordon, you kill me," said the Colonel, with good humor. "You beg for it; that's what you do. You beg people to smash you up. No wonder your life's such a mess."

"What's wrong with my life?" asked Jonny.

"Well for starters, look where you are."

Jonny could not argue with that one.

The Colonel, Jonny noticed, had put on some weight. The jacket of his uniform now fit tight across his belly. The creases around his mouth and eyes had taken on the exaggerated depth of cheap statuary. Colonel Zamora did not seem to be aging so much as fossilizing. In his presence, Jonny was always reminded of reptiles, slow, solid beasts of ancient bloodlines, all muscles and teeth.

"Is that why I'm here?" Jonny asked. You're a social worker now? Gonna fix my life?

Zamora shook his head. "No, Gordon; you're going to fix mine."

"What does that mean?"

"You really have no concept, do you?" Zamora asked. He spoke slowly, as if addressing someone of less than average intelligence.

"See if you can grasp this: you killed Captain Cawfly- one of my officers, and then just waltzed away. Do you know how that makes me look? And then you turn up with these smugglers. Selling their drugs; giving them Committee secrets. Working for terrorists, Gordon. I mean, just how much abuse am I supposed to take?"

Jonny started to say something, then met Zamora's tired gray eyes. Thin ice.

"The way I figure it, you owe me," said the Colonel.

"I don't owe you anything," Jonny replied quickly.

That seemed to amuse Zamora. "See, you're doing it again."

Jonny looked around the room impatiently. "Look, Colonel, I had enough of this crap when I was in the Committee. That's why I took a walk."

"Oh, is that the reason?" asked the Colonel. He raised an eyebrow. "Just a case of restless youth, was it? No gestures were implied? Giving the finger to me, to the Committee?"

"I didn't even think about it."

"Well, you should have," said Zamora.

"Fuck you and your disgrace," blurted Jonny. "If you want to deal, fine. If not, charge me with something and let me call my lawyer."

For the second time, Jonny made the Colonel laugh. "You think I'm going to bother with the courts? I'm not subtle like you, Gordon. You play this my way or you're dead. That's my gesture to you."

"Bueno," said Jonny. He did not even know any lawyers, but at least he knew where he stood. His throat was dry and raw. "Can I get some water?

"Later," said the Colonel. "First, you're going to help me out with some information."

"What could I tell you that your agents don't already know? Raquin was my connection and he's dead."

"I know all about Raquin. He worked for the Committee."

Jonny stared at the Colonel. He's baiting me, he thought. It worked, though. "That's bullshit," Jonny said.

Zamora grinned. "It's a buyers market, Gordon."

"You offer him a deal like mine? Play or die?"

"No," said the Colonel with great satisfaction. "He came to us."

"Balls."

"Grow up, Gordon. This city is full of troglodytes who'd peddle your ass to some organ broker as soon as look at you. That's what you walked back to."

"I don't believe you," Jonny told the Colonel.

Zamora shrugged. "You can believe anything you want. It doesn't change our situation one bit. What I want from you is information about the smuggler lord Conover", said Zamora. He typed something on the computer terminal and activated the room's recording unit. I want you tell me about Conover and his connection to the Alpha Rats.

For a moment, relief washed through Jonny like a cleansing wave. Pointing to the pile of pills, he said, "Your fingers in the cookie jar, Colonel? Been taking home samples?"

Zamora gave Jonny a look of absolute disgust. "What are you, an animal? I'm giving you a chance to stay alive."

"How am I supposed to take a question like that seriously?" asked Jonny. "I don't know anything about Conover and I sure don't keep tabs on space pirates."

"You're a liar, Gordon," said the Colonel. "Remember? Your friend Raquin worked for me. I have videos of you with all kinds of nasty people, including Conover."

Jonny looked away from the Colonel, wondering how long he had been inside the prison. Sumi would be worried by now. All she would hear is that he'd been shot and taken away by the Committee.

Sumi, he was afraid, would not survive long on her own. She did not protect herself enough; she left herself too open, was too willing to trust and be wounded. It was that inner calm that had originally attracted Jonny to her. At the moment, though, it merely chilled him.

"All right, so I know Conover," said Jonny. "I move merchandise for him. I help get his trucks though Committee checkpoints, but you know all that, right? As for this Alpha Rat thing, though, that is completely out-to-lunch."

"Is it? I don't think so."

"I can't give you what I don't have."

"No, but you can get it for me."

"What do you want?"

"Conover," Zamora said.

"Oh man," said Jonny, "why don't you just ask me to bring to Alpha Rats down here, too? I've got as much chance."

"You can't just waltz away from this one, Gordon," said the Colonel. "This hook-up between Conover and the Alpha Rats makes it too big."

Jonny slammed his hand down on the table top. "Will you lay-off that 'Gordon' stuff. Nobody calls me that, anymore."

2Don't tell me what to do, boy. I own you."

Jonny leaned back in his chair. "Just what is it between you and these spacemen?"

Colonel Zamora tilted his head back slightly, scrutinizing Jonny.

Jonny's fingers lightly traced the pattern of the dragons on the table top. In truth, he wished he had something to give Zamora. Some innocuous bit of information or rumor that might satisfy him. Jonny's head was light. He could not even think of a good lie.

"Finally," the Colonel nodded. He keyed something on the computer and turned the recorder off. "All right, maybe you are that ignorant," Zamora said. "Let's try something else. Tell me anything you know about the Alpha Rats."

Jonny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. His mind was still sluggish from the drugs they had given him in the infirmary. He found it difficult to concentrate on anything but his anger, which he was eager to show, and his fear, which he was not. Jonny realized then that he was afraid of Colonel Zamora, had always been so. That his fear of Zamora had been another reason he had deserted the Committee. And that this confrontation had been, in a sense, preordained. He had cheated Zamora of something when he ran away. Of what, Jonny was not sure, but he understood that whatever it was, the Colonel had come to claim it.

"Well?" said Colonel Zamora.

"The Alpha Rats," he said, "Yeah, I saw the news rags. Big ships from deep space, right? They landed on the moon and smashed up all the bases, ours and New Palestine's. Flattened everything. Burned all the techs."

"And do you have any idea what was going on up there at the time?"

Jonny tried to remember. It had been at long time ago. Some engineering. "Mostly mining and genetic work, right?" The Colonel seemed impressed.

"Right, but there was something else going on, too; something more important," he said. "A war. An economic war between the New Palestine Federation and the Tokyo Alliance. The Arabs have always had the oil, the minerals, the heavy machinery."

"They've been mining the asteroid belt for decades in those big hydrogen scoop ships."

"But think- what does the Tokyo Alliance have? We have software and hardware, sure, but it's the really delicate items: protein-based data storage, genetics, micro-electronics. That's where our strength lies, Gordon. And we lost a big piece of it. You can thank the Alpha Rats that you're in business. A lot of the drugs you people sell illegally were produced on the moon or in those circumlunar labs. You need that environment, sterile conditions you can't get on earth and, above all, weightlessness- or something close to it- to produce some of those items."

"The Arabs control over half the earth's land mass. Africa alone will keep them supplied with raw materials for centuries. Do you see what I'm getting at?"

"Sure, The Tokyo Alliance lost its economic balls when the Alphas moved in on the moon. But I don't see what any of this has to do with me." Jonny opened his eyes wide. "Honest officer, I was nowhere near the moon that day."

Zamora ignored him and typed something on the computer keyboard. A rectangle of glass set into the top of the table glowed.

Rising from the projection plate, a three-dimensional chaos of fractal points and ice-blue connecting lines flared like a crystalline vascular system. The angles of the hologram filled in with colors, primary, then secondary. Jonny thought he recognized a desert. "Look at this," Zamora said.

Jonny leaned forward, staring hard at the miniature landscape.

"What is this?" he asked. "Looks like a burned up spring roll."

"It's a shuttle," said Zamora. "The moon bases used them to send samples back to the corporate labs on Earth. We picked that one up in the desert near Anza Borego. Up until a couple of months ago, all the Alpha Rats were doing was broadcasting a steady stream of signals to deep space. Some French tech at Tokyo U thinks to the constellation Pegasus. There's a binary system there called 'Alpheratz'. That's how they got the name."

Jonny nodded. "I'm thrilled," he said.

"Anyway, a few months ago, the signals changed. The Alphas started broadcasting to Earth."

"No shit."

"To the desert southwest of here. And you know what?" asked Zamora, with more than a touch of glee. "Somebody broadcast back. Is that rich? Now, we've got some of the best data decryption software available. We've only been to decipher bits and pieces, but what we got, Gordon, it's tasty. Really tasty."

Jonny said: "All right, so I'm hooked. What was it?"

Zamora looked delighted. "A deal," he said. "A deal. Between your pal Conover and the Alpha Rats. But don't stop listening "yet, because it gets better. It seems that you're involved.

"Christ," said Jonny. "You're too much." He got up and walked to the back of the room. Zamora did not seemed very concerned; he just kept smiling. The door, Jonny saw, had a magnetic lock, a device the Committee was very fond of. You could blow the whole wall away and still not get one of those locks to move, he thought. He remained there, though, taking comfort in the small distance he could put between himself and the Colonel.

"Calm down, Gordon. I said you were involved. I didn't say you were a participant."

"What's the difference?"

"Willingness," said Zamora. "I tell you, boy, if I was working on a deal of this magnitude I might let you sharpen pencils; hell, I might even use you as a courier, but I sure wouldn't let you near anything important. Therefore, I'm willing to accept that you are not a conscious participant in all this."

"Thanks."

"But you've got something I want: access to Conover. If he does have a connection to the Alpha Rats, no matter what the nature of their deal, it can only end up benefiting the Arabs."

Jonny leaned against the wall, mindlessly working his fingernails between two strips of paneling. "Funny, I never pegged you for a flagwaver, Colonel."

"I'm not. This is simple economics. What they've got, we want."

"By the time we found that shuttle, its cargo section had been emptied," Zamora said. "Whatever the deal is, it's already in motion."

Jonny smiled at him. "You know, I don't believe a word of this."

Colonel Zamora glanced at his watch. "Well, believe this: As of right now, you have forty eight hours to deliver Conover to me. If you do that, you and I are square. Bullshit me and maybe I'll give you back to those children upstairs. Some of them very vivid imaginations. I imagine they'd start on your eyes."

Jonny walked back to the table, working the kinks from his legs. His hands were shaking, so he shoved them into his pockets. "If I go along, how soon can I get out of here?" he asked.

"Right now," said Zamora. "Do you accept my terms?"

Jonny smiled. "Colonel, I'm a happy child of the New Rising Sun. No camel jockey's gonna push me around."

Zamora narrowed his eyes at Jonny. "You should take this more seriously," he said.

"If I took this anymore seriously, I'd drop dead."

"Good, consider that your new koan, Gordon." Zamora said. He rose, picked up a leather satchel and pulled Jonny with him to the door. "Meditate on it. At least for the next forty eight hours."

Colonel Zamora took a flat metallic octagon from his pocket and placed it against the magnetic lock. The door clicked open and Jonny followed him outside.

Jonny and Colonel Zamora waited in the lobby of the Yellow Sector for an elevator. Across the plant floor, a recruit with polarized cornea implants was jacked into a construction masterboard, directing a bank of plasma torches. Whacked-out on alkaloid stimulants, he still managed to move a dozen torch-bearing waldoes in a smooth tidal dance, like a clock-work anemone, simultaneously slicing four sides of a gutted fission furnace.

"That's a neat trick," said Jonny.

Zamora nodded. "We have to clear away some of this old equipment. We'll be needing the space for new cells soon."

"Come on, Colonel, no one's recording us now," said Jonny. That stuff you were saying before, you really don't buy all that space pirate crap, do you?"

Colonel Zamora sighed. "Seeing you has depressed me, Gordon."

"You remind me too much of the sad state of the world. Paranoia. Self-centeredness. All the symptoms of information overload. The World Link's the real enemy. Thirty years ago we didn't have the Link, plugs in our heads. We had to rely solely on videos and the news rags. The Arabs were the enemy and we still had a chance to kick Japan and Mexico in their industrial balls. Now we've got the moon.

The Alpha Rats hanging like Damocles' sword over our heads. The Net should never have broken that story. I'm telling you, this city, this country would be a different place if they had kept all that under wraps. It's too strange to assimilate. Too alienating. That kind of information invites paranoia and destroys trust."

"It's hard to trust, Colonel," said Jonny, "when you've got something like the Committee breathing down your neck."

"Bullshit. In a sane world, our presence wouldn't cause a ripple. As a nation, we've allowed ourselves to behave like animals in a trap, gnawing off our own legs to get out."

"You wouldn't be trying to win me over by telling me this is some kind of crusade, would you?"

"Of course not," said Zamora. "That would be expecting too much of you." The Colonel pushed the elevator button again. The boy directing the waldoes aimed them at the base of the furnace, cutting at the support structure with long, smooth strokes that reminded Jonny of kendo strikes. "We're at a crossroads," said Zamora. "Do you know that? The next few years will tell the story. Whether we're going to end up another post-colonial back alley like Britain or France or whether we're going to take back the dominance we gave up too easily. To do that, we have to get rid of the Alpha Rats. Until they're gone we can't even start on the Arabs."

The Colonel smiled. "It all comes down to economics. It always does."

A few meters away, a bell rang and elevator doors slid open.

Nimble Virtue, a slunk merchant and one of the least trustworthy lords in the city, stepped out. She was leaning heavily on the arm of one of her handsome young nephews. When she spotted Jonny, she gave him a tiny bow, indicating that she had no time to talk. Then she and her young man walked down the corridor, awash in the echoes of insect clicks from the exoskeleton Nimble Virtue wore beneath her kimono. At the end of the corridor, a door hissed open for them and they were gone.

A moment later, Jonny found himself being pushed into the elevator car Nimble Virtue had just vacated. He and Zamora rode up in silence. Jonny felt a nasty satisfaction at having caught the Colonel with his snitches down. The look on Nimble Virtue's face had said it all. She had sold Jonny out.

"Now that I can believe," said Jonny. "The Great White Whale would sell her mother for sausage if she thought she could hide the wrinkles."

"Don't let her concern you."

Jonny sniffed the air distastefully. "Sorta stank up the joint, didn't she?"

Zamora backhanded him across his injured shoulder. Something blue and hot exploded in Jonny's eyes, fragments trailing away down some bottomless cavern. He slid down the wall to the floor.

"Don't even think about going after Nimble Virtue. You haven't got the time," said Zamora.

The elevator shuddered to a halt and the doors slid open.

Taussig was waiting, a small grin spreading across his face when he saw Jonny on his knees.

"Help him up," ordered Zamora.

The lieutenant pulled Jonny to his feet and walked him from the car. When they caught up with Zamora, the Colonel turned to Taussig and said, #Later, you and I are going to talk about what went on in this man's cell." Jonny had the satisfaction of seeing the blood drain from the young lieutenant's face.

Zamora lead Jonny out a side exit and left him weak-kneed, standing in an oily puddle. The Colonel removed a Futukoro from his satchel and tossed it behind Jonny.

"Take that with you. Wouldn't want you getting mugged, now that you're back on duty. I'll be available to you for the next forty-eight hours, Gordon. After that, the deal's off. I'll be seeing you," said the Colonel.

The door swung in quietly, hissing as it sealed itself shut.

Jonny was alone in the alley. He drew himself up and taking a few drunken steps forward, kicked savagely at the door's heavy riveted face; he pounded it with his good hand.

"Like hell, you bastard!" he screamed. "You can't do this to me!"

For a vertiginous second he was insane, turning in frustrated circles, splashing more filth onto his ruined jeans.

Finally, panting and lightheaded, Jonny stepped away from the unyielding door, feeling angry for such a stupid waste of energy. He should be on his way out of town.

Jonny's gaze slid down the damp walls to the thin fog at the alley's mouth. He stooped awkwardly, protecting his throbbing shoulder, and scooped up the Futukoro. He walked to the infra-red scanner that monitored the alley, took aim and blew it off its mounting. Somewhere, an alarm went off. Jonny hurried away from the place.