Spares

The day is still hot but beginning to cloud over at the edges, a white sheet of haze thickening into invisibility. Couples and small families walk the beach with red shoulders and faces, some fractious and bickering, others soothed into stillness by the sight of the sea and the squawking of wheeling seagulls. Down on the waterline a man drinks soda from a frosted bottle, the glass glittering in the sunlight as he tilts to get the last mouthful, and clumps of women and children bend, their eyes fixed and far away, to pick shells and smooth stones up out of the sand.

I was left sitting on a rock, alone and furious after a shouting match with my mom. I wanted an ice cream, she said I couldn’t have one, and when you’re seven you won’t accept any truth as good enough reason for that denial. When the disagreement started, the ice cream hadn’t even been that much on my mind, but as it went on I began to taste the coolness in my mouth, the crunch of a sugar cone, and I dug my heels right in and began to cry, though even I knew that I was too old for that particular kind of blackmail.

My mother explained that it would be dinnertime soon, and that I would spoil my meal. I know now she was trying to protect both of us from the fact that we simply didn’t have the money. My father would have told the truth and slapped me one to drive the point home, but he wasn’t around because he never came when we went to the sea. Partly because he hated it, partly because he hated us. Mainly so he could sink himself into a weekend of dark futility without real people around to bother him.

It was three o’clock, and hours from dinner, and I raved and she walked away. As I sat there, watching my mother’s back as she walked farther and farther down the shore, an old man came and sat near me on the rocks. He wore khaki shorts and a faded denim shirt, and the skin on his arms and legs was pale and spotted with freckles and liver spots. He had gray hair, cut short and neat, and his face was the texture of handmade paper that had been screwed up and then flattened out again. He sat and looked at me.

I stared back sullenly. I wasn’t afraid of him. I thought I knew how bad things could get, that the world had little else to show me. If I was learning how to dodge my father, then a wrinkly like this old guy would be no trouble at all. In fact, I wanted him to start on me, to say something I could wallop right back at him. Already at that age the reservoir was filling up. Sometimes it yearned for a channel to course through, a town to flood.

The old man turned away and looked out to sea, and for a while I thought that was it. My mother was at the far end of the little bay by then, sitting against the rock wall which climbed away from the water. The argument would not end easily, I knew. My mother did her best with me, always, but we shared a piece of metal in our hearts which made backing down nearly impossible. I realized gloomily that the day was spoiled and that in the evening we were going home. Away from Florida, and the sea, and back to Virginia.

“Calmed down any yet?”

There comes a time when people will start cutting through the childish bullshit you feed them and call your bluff, a time when you’re forced to realize that you’re not unique and you’re not fooling everyone. I was not at that age yet. When the old man spoke, I looked at him curiously. It was, I think, the first time anyone ever spoke to me as if I was nearly an adult.

“Your mama looks tired,” he said then, and I hurriedly looked away and back out at the sea. “Is she?”

“She’s always tired,” I said, without meaning to. My mother’s tiredness was something I hated and held against her, in the same way I blamed her for the bruises that came and went round her eyes. Had I loved my father even a little bit I would probably have blamed her less. The emotions of the powerless don’t always make much sense.

“Maybe she’s got stuff on her mind,” the man said. “Like why she can’t buy ice cream for little boys.”

“We always have ice cream when we come here,” I blurted. “Always.” We did, and as far as I was concerned it was most of the point of being away. I wasn’t just a greedy little boy; the ice cream stood for something in my mind which I was far too young to articulate. Twice a year we got a weekend away from my father—two days when he wasn’t around, forcing us to see the world the way he saw it, cramped and dark and cold. Demons lived in everything my father saw, presences beneath surfaces, evil in mind. He would have understood The Gap very well, but only after it had become strange—life as a mirage, wrapped round horror and preventing us from seeing the truth. Usually, the trips my mother and I took were time away from that. Today, however, it felt as if his shadow was still over us.

“Sometimes you can’t have everything you want,” the man said, a platitude which pushed all the wrong buttons in me.

“My dad send you?” I said tightly, and glared at him. His eyes opened wide at my tone, and he seemed to look at me in a new way. “I can’t have things because I’m’ a kid, and I stop being a kid when I don’t want them anymore?”

“Is that what he tells you?”

“Yeah. That and a whole lot more.” For a moment, I stood on the brink of telling the old man some things, of speaking for the first time about the way life was. I had no friends at the time, because we were kept moving by Father’s endless quest for work. We’d seen most of Virginia by then, and it wasn’t getting any better. My father wasn’t lazy, far from it. One of his most oft-repeated creeds was that a man without a job was fit for nothing but to be fed to animals. He was forever doing something, but to no purpose, with no joy, with nothing but slow-burning hatred of everything around him. Sometimes when he sat you could see his hands tremble, as if his whole body was vibrating with some need to destroy. If he got a job it generally lasted about a week before his fuse burned out and he got himself fired for brawling with someone or messing up because he was shit-faced. Time and again we held a small celebration when it looked like we might be in a town for more than a few days. My mother always tried to mark good moments in the belief that it might make them stay. She would cook a special dinner, and by each plate would be some small gift, carefully chosen from thrift stores. I hated these celebrations for the lies they always told, for the way they smeared her love for us with pointlessness and doom. Even as I unwrapped some new pencil, or small colored box, I would be thinking of the ones I’d had before. Mom would happily stake out the town and find out about local schools, and then within two weeks we’d be on our way somewhere else.

I knew other children for days, maybe a couple of weeks and then they were blown away on the wind and lost up in the mountains. My mother talked to me as if I was a child, because holding onto that belief was the only way she could carry on; and her parents, with whom we stayed at the coast, were not inclined to talk much to the son of their son-in-law.

But I didn’t say anything to the old man; I lapsed into tearful silence instead. The dam was already too strong. To let it break would have felt like a betrayal. I wanted to be happy, as everyone does, and I think I understood that if I started letting things out of the back of my mind they would sour the front forever.

“He’s wrong,” the old man said suddenly. “He’s wrong in a very bad way.” My heart lurched at hearing someone say that, at hearing a grown-up say the words that I believed in every corner of my heart. I wiped my eyes and kept silent.

“When you get older, some things won’t seem so important,” he continued, eyes calmly on the people down at the waterline. “Few years ago, I used to chase a lot of things. Now I don’t hardly even remember why. But then I’m old, and fit to die, so what difference in what I say?” I stirred slightly, embarrassed, and he laughed. “What you gonna do when you grows up, boy?”

“I’m going to have a job,” I said, and he nodded. Maybe he knew what I meant, maybe not.

“What about ice cream then?”

“I’m going to have it all,” I said, firmly and seriously. “I’m going to have it every day, and more than one flavor, and I’m going to have big cones with nuts and fudge.” He began to laugh, and then, at the light in my eyes, stopped. “I am.”

“I hope you do,” he said. “I really hope you do. When I was your size I used to love toffee apples. You like toffee apples?” He raised his eyebrows at me, but I didn’t know. I’d seen toffee apples, but never had one. “They’re good. Maybe even better than ice cream, though I’d admit it’s a close-run thing. My mama would take me to the fair when it came around and I’d always have an apple. They were real hard and I’d have to turn my head on the side to use the big teeth there or they’d all break into little pieces.” I smiled at this, and he grinned, and in his face, behind the paper skin, I saw for a fleeting moment, someone my own age, someone to run and play with.

“Teeth don’t break,” I objected. “They’re harder than stone.”

“Maybe you’re right, but I didn’t know better then. And I’d always say when I grew up I was going to have a toffee apple every day, and I was going to stay up late every night and watch TV until my eyes went square and no one was going to get in my face. I thought that’s what being a grown-up was about. I thought that’s what it was for.”

For a while I didn’t say anything, sensing some dismal news was on the way, some revelation that I didn’t want to hasten. My mother was still down at the far end of the bay. A shadow from the late-afternoon sun crept across the rocks toward her.

“What happened?” I asked, eventually.

“I growed up,” he said, and seemed inclined to leave it there.

“And? What?”

The man’s eyes seemed far away. “I stayed up late, I watched TV, and I had a pretty good life,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ve had a toffee apple in more than forty years.”

“How come?”

“You forget,” he said, and shrugged.

“I won’t. I’m going to do everything. I’m going to do everything and do it all the time and no one’s going to stop me.”

“Good,” he said. “I hope you do. There’s worse ways to live your life than remembering what you want. You remember, son, and take what you want when you want it, and don’t let anyone get in your way. Try to bend the world around you while you still have the time.”

He sat there for a few minutes longer, looking somehow older and further away, and then he gingerly stood up and stretched.

“Are you going?” I asked.

“That I am. Now look. There’s five dollars on the rock beside you. You pick it up, Spend it how you want. But then go down to your mama, and take her by the hand. Okay?”

“Okay,” I said, grinning up at him, eyes squinting in the sunlight. Then he was off, stepping carefully over the rocks, and I watched him until he was gone, I glanced at the rock where he’d been and sure enough there was a five-dollar bill on the next boulder, weighed with a pebble. I looked at it a while and then I picked it up, but I didn’t buy a cone. I made my way down to the sand and found my mother, and when she wasn’t looking I slipped the bill in her purse. She was careful with money, and must have noticed it almost immediately, but she never mentioned it. Or maybe she did, because when we changed buses at Williamsburg on the way home she had both a soda and a coffee, and when I came back from the bathroom I found a small bowl of ice cream waiting for me at the table. That was Mom for you. She always knew how to say things without opening her mouth.

I’ve often thought about the old man, about how chance words can touch people’s lives in ways that are impossible to predict. Bend the world, he said, don’t accept having less than you want and blow a hole in anything that blocks your way. Armed with that notion, many people could have gone on to carve themselves a life that culminated in something approaching peace. It was good advice, and well meant.

I was just the wrong person to give it to.

At two a.m. I was back on 8, stumbling toward Howie’s place. Sitting in a bar on 30 I’d suddenly remembered Mal’s body, remembered it in the form of a line of small maggotlike creatures marching along the bar toward me and holding up little signs, “MAL’S DEAD,” said one; “PROBABLY PRETTY GROSS BY NOW” read another. When I looked more closely I saw that the maggots were in fact spares, limping and crawling with whatever limbs they had left. David was there, and Nanune. Whoever originally synthesized Rapt must have had some sense of humor. I’d only taken a moderate dose, not sure after five years how much I could stand. The news was I could have stood a lot more. I’d lost a couple of hours, but that was all. I was melted and seeing things, but I knew where I was; a particularly ill-favored bar on a dangerous floor, my shirt wet with whiskey that hadn’t made it as far as my mouth, my head burning, and a naked and dying fifteen-year-old shaking her wasted body at me from the top of the next table. I was the only person near her, and I hadn’t even noticed she was there. Everyone else in the bar appeared to be fucked up on Oprah, babbling about their lives to anyone who would listen, too wound up in themselves to tell whether it was day or night.

I didn’t want to be here anymore. I was falling too fast, and I wasn’t Rapt enough not to care.

I settled my tab with the barman, who was uglier than three types of shit in a one-shit bag. Another sixty dollars gone. Tilting my way out into the avenue, I burnt my finger lighting a cigarette from a nearly empty packet which I assumed was mine, and stared baffled at the moving shapes in front of me. Most of them resolved enough to reveal themselves as unimportant, and I made my way as best I could toward a men’s room. Inside, I dabbed at the stains on my clothes, rinsed my mouth out, and stared at myself in the mirror. The Rapt was beginning to fade, and the fog of sound had thinned to a haze. I decided I could cope and laughed hollowly at myself. Calmly appraising how fucked up I was took me back far more than walking into a police station would ever have done.

I took a local elevator down to 8 and walked unsteadily down the main street, buffeted by straight people. My mind was poised too precisely between caring and not caring to make any headway toward deciding what to do about anything at all. One of the things Rapt does is take you to a place between all options, where everything and nothing matters and you can just hide away. Once you’ve been there, snug and dead, you never want to leave. I passed a young couple standing on a corner, arms entwined and lips smacking against each other. The sound made little yellow sparks amidst the general background hum of mustard brown. Either I could hear a conversation which was taking place about a mile away, or my mind was making it up and muttering darkly to itself. It wasn’t a very interesting conversation, which figured. I was also slightly frightened of something unspecific, but that was okay. I don’t mind a little fear; it’s an old friend.

I was a couple of turns from Howie’s when I suddenly found myself crouching down by the side of a building with no memory of having done so. I looked up and saw passersby staring down at me, mildly amused. I let out a heavy, shaky breath, and realized that my hand was inside my jacket and gripping my gun. Maybe this should have reassured me, told me something about reflexes which were still miraculously intact. St didn’t. It-made me feel very bad indeed. For a while the street ceased to exist around me and I slid unthinkingly down the wall, heart beating hard and sweat appearing from nowhere on my forehead and neck. The foliage on the ceiling appeared to shift as one and a sky blackened above it, hot at the edges with liquid orange flames. I heard sounds, distant cries and a siren, and it took me a long moment to realize the sounds were coming from inside my head. Then I realized I was repeating a sentence to myself; something about wall-diving, and a mountain.

I stood up shakily, deciding that the Rapt maybe hadn’t been so weak after all, and lurched round the corner in search of some beer to calm it down. I noticed that I was hungry, and realized I hadn’t eaten in two days. I beguiled the rest of the walk by imagining seventeen different ways of having a cheeseburger, given three sets of variables: the condiments, the relative amounts of lettuce and pickle and tomato and onions, and the number of patties, up to a maximum of three. By the time I got to Howie’s, I had every intention of ordering them all at once.

Howie was standing at the bar, benignly watching the crowds and listening to the band in the corner. For once I’d arrived when the bar was full. It seemed to take me a long time to get to the bar through the hot mass of people being noisy, and I watched Howie all the way. He had a large piece of cheese and a jar of peperoncino rings in front of him, and he was slicing slivers off the former to create something to ladle spoonfuls of the latter onto. Each time he completed this maneuver he popped the result into his mouth and then immediately started again. He was doing this quickly and efficiently, as if under match conditions, and it was doing my head in.

He looked me up and down when I reached the bar. “Bought that truck yet?”

“No,” I said patiently, and waved at the barman for a beer.

“Thought not,” Howie said, through a mouthful of cheese. “And you can stop avoiding my eyes—I clocked your pupils as soon as you walked in. Welcome back, jack. You need some more?”

“No,” I said. I was beginning to like the word. No seemed to fulfill all my current needs. I was about to take a sip of beer when suddenly my mouth dropped open. “What are you doing here?”

I was talking to a woman whom I now saw was sitting a little farther along the bar, behind Howie. Apart from her dress being red rather than blue, she was dressed exactly as I’d last seen her. It was the woman I’d run into in the women’s restroom the first time I entered New Richmond. Helping me to recognize her was the fact she was engaged in exactly the same activity now as then. She was busy cutting a line on a mirror, so Howie answered for her.

“This is Nearly,” he said. “An employee of mine.”

I didn’t ask in what capacity. I remembered my conclusion from last time. The woman looked up and winked at me, and the faint glimmer in the back of her right eye proved me right. It also reminded me how attractive I’d thought her, and that I’d been right about that, too.

“Hi,” I said, and Howie laughed.

“Jack’s not one of the most sparkling conversationalists of our time,” he said, shaking his head, and then took something out of his pocket and slapped it on the bar. “Or one of my most reliable suppliers.”

I picked up the object and stared at it. It was the RAM chip I’d sold him the day before, though in my current condition it looked rather different. I thought I could see old datastreams moving through the clear Perspex, ones and zeros flipping back and forth. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Possibly nothing. But it isn’t RAM.”

“Shit,” I said. “Then I owe you money.” I had about a hundred dollars of it left, mangled into three different pockets. “I’ll pay you back,” I added lamely, slipping the chip into my pocket.

Howie waved his hand, dismissing the idea and making me feel’ about so high. There I was, when I should have been thinking about the spares, worrying about looking like an idiot in front of one of Howie’s girls. I guess I hadn’t been out much recently. She didn’t seem to be thinking worse of me, but then she was probably stoned enough to think that Ebola had been kind of cool.

“Some guy came looking for you, Jack,” Howie said, screwing the top back on the jar of peperoncinos.

I frowned. “Who?”

“Don’t know. He didn’t say. Big guy, blue lights in his head.” Howie looked serious. “He didn’t look like especially good news.”

I remembered the dealer out in the Portal, the one who’d hidden the killer’s body. For no reason I suddenly felt cold. “What did he want?”

“To see you. He left a package instead.” With an upward nod of his head Howie signaled to the barman, who reached below the counter and brought up a cardboard box about one foot square. He put it down on the counter and I stared at it.

“Cool. A present,” said Nearly, voice languorous but loud. “Aren’t you going to open it?”

“Where’s Suej?” I asked.

“In the back,” Howie said. “Eating red beans and rice.”

“Have you checked on her lately?”

“No, why? What’s wrong?”

I picked up the parcel and walked quickly into a quieter area of the bar. The box was heavy, something solid inside. As I opened it I heard Howie in the background sending Dath to check on Suej. Time seemed to be speeding up, rushing toward something that I couldn’t yet see.

I opened the box.

“Holy fuck,” said Howie, who was by then standing behind me. Howie has seen unwelcome things, but I’d never heard him sound like that. At the tone in his voice Nearly teetered off her stool at the bar and headed toward us.

I closed the box, hands shaking. There are many things you don’t want to see on Rapt. This was something you don’t want to see at all. Something so unnecessary, so indefensible, that my eyes seemed to dry as if in a strong wind.

It was Nanune’s head.

Howie kept staring at the box, mouth open. Slowly he turned his head toward me. “Who the fuck’s that?”

“One of the spares. Someone who did no harm to anyone in her entire miserable life.” Without knowing I was going to I lashed out a foot and kicked one of the tables across the room. This left me very calm and still, humming with murderousness. Half the bar stared at me, trying to work out if I was dangerous or just experimentalist cabaret. “Did the fucker who left this say he was coming back?”

Howie shook his head, still dazed. “No, thank God.”

“Then I’m going to go and find him,” I said, lightheaded with fury and remorse. There are times when the higher mind goes on holiday, sensing it’s the reptile brain which is required. The man with the blue head had the spares, and he was going to kill them. Why, I didn’t know. But it was clear that that’s what he was going to do, and likely that he’d killed Mal, too. That was enough for me.

“Jack?” I turned to see Suej hurrying toward us, Dath behind her.

“Howie,” I hissed. “Get rid of that fucking box.” But Suej had already seen it, and seen me. She knew what I looked like when something was very wrong.

“What’s in there?” she asked.

Suddenly, there was a shout from the front door and Paulie entered at the run, hand reaching into his jacket.

“Howie,” he said urgently. “We got trouble.”

“Who?”

“Four of Vinaldi’s soldiers.”

“So? I’ve paid the man.”

“I don’t think they’re coming to collect.” Paulie’s eyes flicked across to me. “Not money, anyway.”

Howie had just enough time to start asking me what the hell I’d done now, before the front window of the bar exploded, showering colored glass over the nearest patrons. In slow motion I reached for Suej, grabbing her and yanking her round so my body was between her and the door. I saw Howie’s and Dath’s hands emerging with heavy guns, and I saw Nearly’s face, mouth hanging open, alone in a moment of truth. Things could get worse than everyday life, and that’s just what they were about to do. Without thinking I reached out and grabbed her, too.

“Go!” shouted Howie. “Out the back!”

The last half of the sentence was drowned by the noise of the other large window imploding. Ten yards away, out in the street, stood a line of Vinaldi’s men. Loving every moment, serious as children playing their favorite game. The bar was chaos, swirling with shouting people trying to get the hell out of the way.

“Fuck off,” I said. “This is my problem.”

Howie pivoted toward me. “Just run, for once in your damn life. And take Nearly with you.” He lashed out an arm and shoved me heavily in the chest before turning to push his way with Dath to join Paulie at the door. At the sight of the three of them, I realized there wasn’t much I could add. I grabbed Suej’s arm.

“You coming?” I asked Nearly.

“Oh, yes,” she said, eyes still on the men outside. “They look like no fun at all.”

I shoved my way through panicking people, dragging Suej behind me. Nearly clattered along in the rear. In the storeroom, I stooped without slowing to pick up what little possessions we had.

“How do you get out the back?”

Nearly shrugged. “Search me. You think I spent a lot of time in here, making friends with the tomatoes?”

Not helpful, and I considered telling her so, but then Suej pointed to a far corner. “There’s a door back there, behind the crates.”

I opened it carefully, gun ready. No one outside. I stuck my head out to check that the service alley was empty, and then stepped out, motioning vigorously to the girls.

Alley for about fifty yards, then a turn behind a burger franchise. I hadn’t gotten the cheeseburgers I’d been planning, but I’d forgotten most of the combinations anyway. Some other time. The suballey fed into a twisting street which had been built as a shopping nest. The stores were mainly closed and we hurtled past windows packed with goodies, me wondering where exactly we were going to go. Off the floor was first priority, but what then? Mal’s was no help—the guy with the blue lights knew exactly where that was.

What if Nanune hadn’t been the first to die? It wasn’t that I didn’t care about her, even love her in some strange way, but I’d spent so much more time with Suej and David and jenny. If anything happened to them I knew I was never going to be able to forgive myself.

At the end of the shopping street came a bigger road, and I strode across it, weaving through straggling pedestrians. There’d been no sound of feet behind us, and I judged that if Vinaldi’s men hadn’t had the sense to watch back doors they weren’t going to have guys posted this far out.

Wrong. As we reached the other side I heard the sound of a shot, and a bullet whined within inches of us. Nearly shrieked and I dragged the two of them into an alley on the other side. I was used to doing this kind of thing by myself, not with a couple of passengers. I debated letting go of one of them and going for my gun; decided that speed was a better option. Footsteps slapped along the alley behind us, the guy occasionally shouting my name. Strange, unless they wanted to take me in alive. Should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. I didn’t want to be taken in at all.

At the bottom of the alley, another short street. At the end of it an elevator. No line, and the door standing wide open—God on my side for once. Ragged breathing on either side of me; Nearly’s high heels hardly an advantage. As we stumbled into the street I shouted for the girls to keep their heads down. Kinks in the alley had protected us from shots. Now the guy had a clear sight. We dived across the road bent double, the doors tantalizingly close now; another shot whistled past and spanged into the metal of the elevator shaft.

“Get in!” I shouted. They jumped into the carriage and I turned to face the man. He was halfway up the street and slowing down, gun held up in a safe position.

“Randall,” he shouted. “There’s nowhere you can go.”

“There’s always somewhere,” I muttered, pulling my own gun out. The guy had stopped completely now, and was standing about ten yards down the street. “You can’t stop me. He wants me in one piece.”

“If I take back your liver he’ll be happy,” the man said, but I knew he was lying. We wouldn’t be having this conversation otherwise. “Come away from the elevator or I’m going to blow your cock off. The bitches can go—they’re no use to anyone.”

Nearly stuck her head out of the door. “Fuck off, maggot dick!” she shouted cheerily. Not helpful, I thought for the second time. Impugning hoods’ masculinity is like poking rattlers with a stick.

The guy aimed at my head, evidently deciding he could just say I resisted too hard. I pulled back the hammer on my own gun, backing toward the elevator. Watching the guy’s eyes, seeing him make his calculations.

“Press a button,” I whispered, still holding my gun steadily on the other guy’s head. I heard a click behind me, but remained still for another moment—before suddenly stepping backward. Not a second too soon: The doors closed swiftly in front of me, nearly taking my hands off—and leaving the guy outside openmouthed and looking stupid with surprise.

Not a very clever trick; but then he hadn’t been a very clever man.

Feeling slightly smug I turned around, and saw that I was standing in a forest. The elevator’s light condensed then diffused until it was only a far-off blue glow, barely visible through the trees. It was cold and yet unpleasantly clammy, as if I was wearing too many clothes in a snowstorm.

No, I thought, in a childlike and horrified whisper. I’m not back here. I can’t be.

I whirled and saw the forest stretching in all directions around me, cold and fetid and dank. The distant light wasn’t trustworthy; sometimes it appeared to be there, sometimes not. The bark of the trees ran like tiny vertical streams, the gnarled surface rubbing amidst itself with sudden slimy hissing sounds. Or perhaps the sound came from the sweat working against my skin, crawling like a patina of tiny liquid creatures. There was no one in sight and I swallowed tightly, feeling as if I was dropping into the center of the earth. I’d gotten cut off, and the unit had run away into the trees, fighting in the only way they knew how: running, howling in silent terror, remembering me for no more than a second as someone else who had been lost. I looked down at a rustle below me to see faces in the leaves, huge grins twisting around my feet, and then—

I was in the elevator, hearing only a slight swishing sound as we shot up through the floors. The elevator was bright, walled with glass, sane: an elevator. Nearly was regarding me dubiously.

“You okay, big guy?” she asked, head slightly on one side. As usual, her attitude toward me seemed to be one of mild amusement.

“I don’t know,” I croaked, turning my head to check that everything was as it seemed.

“Looked kind of flaky for a moment there. I’d offer you a line of coke but you look like you’ve got enough weirdness going on already.”

“Flashback,” I said, shivering. One of the most vivid I’d ever had. I reached for a cigarette, lit it with shaking hands, and pulled deeply, yanking as much smoke as possible into my lungs, I felt truly dreadful, and Suej was staring at me strangely.

“Smoking in an xPress elevator is not permitted,” said a droid voice, and Nearly rolled her eyes.

“Fuck off,” I requested, taking another deep pull. I was having this cigarette if it killed me. The elevator immediately halted between floors.

“We’re not going anywhere until you put that out,” the voice said primly. “Cigarettes cause death, illness and death. And they smell.”

“What do you care?” Nearly said, lighting up one of her own just to be difficult. “You don’t have any lungs.”

“No, but subsequent elevator patrons will have, especially those from the higher floors. Please extinguish all cigarettes.”

“Where are your cognitive centers stored?” I asked, racking a shell into the barrel of my gun with jittery hands. “And can the elevator function without them?”

“Yes, it can,” the elevator said, with an air of slight puzzlement. “And I’m behind the red panel on your left Why do you ask?”

“Because,” I said, “if you don’t shut the fuck up I’m going to blow you to shit and then spend the rest of the journey smoking in comfort. I may even have a cigar.” To drive my point home, I held my gun at arm’s length so that the barrel was aimed straight at the panel it had referred to. “And a tip for the future—think before you answer questions truthfully.”

There was a pause, and then the droid spoke again. “A valuable piece of advice, and in recognition of that I shall permit you to continue your journey as requested. Please stand by.” A slight hum, and then the elevator started to ascend again. “Though I still think you’re very naughty.”

I laughed, a short quavering bark which had nothing to do with amusement I think it was a first for “naughty” in probably thirty years, I turned to Nearly and Suej, and noticed that they seemed to be looking each other up and down. Suej does look as if she’s been through the wars, and in turn I realized Nearly was also probably the first nonspare female Suej had seen at close quarters. But there seemed to be more to it than that: a kind of mutual appraisal.

“What floor did you press?” I asked Nearly, to break the silence.

“Sixty-six,” she said, “it’s where I live. I’m done for the night I’m going home.”

“Where are we going to go?” Suej asked, her eyes firmly on me now. I looked at the floor indicator and saw we were coming up to 40.

I looked at Nearly. “Can Suej come with you?”

“Sure. There’s only a couch, but…”

“No!” shouted Suej. “I’m not going. I’m coming with you. I want to find David and the others. I’m sick of being left places. You never used to be like this. You were there all the time and now you’re never here.”

64.65.

“What’s the address?”

“Sixty-six/two thousand and three—corner of Tyson and Stones.”

“See you later,” I said, jabbing a floor button as the doors opened behind her. “Stay indoors.”

Nearly stepped out and I gently shoved Suej after her. She stumbled backward out of the elevator as the doors closed, her face like thunder.

Then I stood, facing the doors, as the elevator shot up toward 135. I was trying not to think about the forest, and not succeeding. I’d never had a flashback to The Gap before, and in that two-second glimpse had been everything I’d been trying to forget. I was also trying not to think about Nanune, and the fact there’d been something wrong with her head over and above the fact that it was no longer attached to her body.

About the fact that there’d been “unspecified facial damage.”

In my current state I couldn’t work out how this changed things, though obviously it changed everything. I didn’t know where to look for the blue-headed man who’d come asking for me with Nanune’s head in a box, and sensed I wouldn’t have to. In the meantime, there was someone else looking for me. I’d shoved Suej out because I’d decided to save him the trouble and go looking for him instead.