Spares Read online

  Mal did a double take which would have done a cheap comedian proud, and then he just stood there, mouth hanging open, hand still holding the door. He was wearing a pair of battered cutoffs which showed off the scars on his legs, and a ragged T-shirt that hugged his new paunch and looked like about five people had lived and died in it without showing it any water other than rain. He was backlit by a bare bulb, and from somewhere deep in the bowels of his apartment came the smell of cooking—noodles, almost certainly. In all the time I’d known Mal I don’t think I’d ever seen him voluntarily eat anything else.

  Finally he got it together, blinked and tried to smile.

  “Jack,” he croaked, eerie calm coming about level with utter stupefaction. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Social visit. Old times.”

  “Yeah, right. The Pope’s due later too.” He closed his eyes tightly for a moment, and pinched himself on the bridge of the nose. “You in trouble?”

  “Yep.” I grinned, trying to keep myself from hopping from foot to foot. Tension, of about seven different kinds. I nodded toward the gloom of the apartment. “What’s cooking?”

  “Noodles,” he said, eyeing me warily. “You want some?”

  “Depends how much you’ve got. I’m not alone.”

  “How many guests are we talking?”

  I took a deep breath. “Including me, seven,” I said. Mal’s eyes opened wide and he shook his head—not in negation, just bewilderment. I tried to make it easier on him. “Well, six and a half, I guess.”

  “That’s a lot of noodles.”

  “Too many?”

  “Not necessarily,” he said. “I buy in bulk.” He turned back toward his apartment for a moment, biting his lip, considering. I noticed he wasn’t wearing his shoulder holster and wondered whether that meant he was out of the Life, or just less paranoid these days. More likely he’d been cleaning his gun when I knocked. The two things I didn’t think Mal was ever going to get were less paranoid or out of the Life.

  Then he turned back to me, eyebrows raised in friendly resignation. In one sighing breath he asked, “Where are these guests now and just how much un-happiness am I risking by letting them into my life, however fucking briefly?”

  “I left them downstairs,” I said, realizing that I ought to get back to them very soon, whichever way this went. Mal’s building is where bad people go to have fun. That’s why he’s paranoid—and also why he likes it. “I just need to leave them with you for an hour, then we’re out of here.”

  “Why didn’t you call ahead?”

  “When I want to ask old friends for lunatic favors I like to do it in person. Also, I didn’t have any change.”

  “And the trouble rating?”

  “What scale are you talking?” I was gabbling, strung tight. I had to let Mal see I was okay, because otherwise he was likely to get freaked. Being freaked would in fact have been a reasonable reaction, but I didn’t want him to know that yet.

  “One to ten.”

  “I don’t know,” I said, suddenly giving in and getting panicky. “At least ten, possibly higher, certainly getting worse by the minute.”

  Mal let go of the door.

  “Get them up here.”

  I let out a short exhalation of relief. “Mal…”

  “Yeah, all that,” he said, brushing my thanks aside. “And then you’re going to go get me a jar of Japanese pickles. I forgot I’d run out.”

  “I’m going into the city. On the way back I’ll get you the biggest jar of Samoy I can find.”

  Mal rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Samoy pickles are from hunger. Get me Frapan or nothing.”

  “For a guy who eats so much you’ve got terrible fucking taste.”

  “You got that right,” he said, shaking his head again. “Look at my choice of friends.”

  I grinned and walked the couple of yards to the shadowy stairwell. I thought I was going to have to shout, but I saw Suej’s face in the darkness, upturned anxiously toward me, and just gestured instead. Suej turned to David and they corralled the others up. Mal and I waited while they trooped upstairs, Mal’s face eloquent with laconic intrigue. Out in the slightly less murky light of the corridor the skin on his face looked a little ruddier than it had, and there were lines around his eyes which hadn’t been there when last I’d seen him.

  We’re getting old, I thought. Suddenly we’re nearly forty and getting old.

  David was the first to reach the landing. He came up with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans, limping slightly from where his leg had been operated on. The jeans had originally been mine, and were inexpertly folded up at the bottoms and belted tight around his waist. David looked younger than his fifteen years, even though his face was still set with the belligerence it had assumed the moment we left the Farm. Jenny came up right behind him, huddled into her coat and still looking frightened and alone. I’d tried to patch things up with her in the last twenty-four hours, but she still thought she was to blame, and I hadn’t really had time to convince her otherwise.

  Suej came up next, leading Nanune by the hand. Suej looked okay, like a normal fourteen-year-old, apart from the scar on her face. Nanune looked scared shitless, and with only one leg was having difficulty climbing the stairs. When she reached the top she caught sight of me, and appeared momentarily relieved, which was nice. It’s been a long time since anyone has looked relieved to see my face.

  And then finally Mr. Two, carrying the bundle in his arms. Mal coped reasonably well with the rest of them, but when he saw a teenager who stood about six five, carrying a small brown bag with a head protruding from it, I did catch a twitch on his face. Mr. Two stood straight-backed on the landing, glared abruptly both ways, and then let his head drop as if he’d been switched off. The spare in the bag said, “Nap.”

  Come on, guys, I thought to myself. Let’s try to act like normal people.

  “Is your friend letting us rest here?” Suej asked.

  I nodded. It was going to be a while before they directly addressed anyone other than me. Suej beamed, and whispered something to Nanune.

  “Is it nice? Is Ratchet here?” Nanune asked, and I shook my head.

  “No and no, I’m afraid,” I said, winking at Mal. “But at least it’s not raining.”

  I introduced Mal to the spares by name. Suej and David shook his hand, and I caught him noticing David’s missing fingers. Then Mal stood to one side and gestured them into his apartment. They trooped in, Mr. Two ducking his head to get under the lintel.

  Mal’s apartment was pretty much as I remembered it. In other words, I knew what to expect. The spares didn’t. Ten years ago he’d knocked down most of the internal walls, so that from anywhere in the apartment you could see the huge window he’d put in. This gave a view straight onto New Richmond. Mal had chosen to live outside New Richmond proper. He claimed he liked to get away from it every now and then, from the dark fizz and spark of the life inside—yet he’d deconstructed his apartment so he could see the building from wherever he stood. The interior decor of his apartment was about what you’d expect from a single man who spent half his time drunk and the rest painfully sober. It was a mess, to be honest: baroque chaos overlaid with the smell of countless noodle-based meals.

  Nanune actually started crying. Mal scowled at her and started kicking piles of stuff toward the walls.

  “Do you still have your display up?” I asked quietly. Mal looked at me and nodded. “You couldn’t, like, drape something over it?”

  Mal grunted and trudged down the end, toward the window, and pulled a rope that ran down the wall. A sheet dropped from the ceiling, covering what was pinned on the walls—pictures of people who had been murdered in New Richmond. The sheet covered them only briefly, unfortunately, because it kept on falling to the ground. Mal swore softly, grabbed a chair, and set about repairing the setup.

  Meantime, I led the spares into the area that served as his sitting room. I shoved huge piles of c
rap out of the way until there was enough space for them to sit fairly comfortably. Jenny’s arms were wrapped tightly around herself, and her eyes were far away. In a nimbus of light from some partially hidden lamp, she looked beautiful and frail. Nanune still looked terrified, but Suej sat close to her, murmuring something. There were no words in what she was saying, but even I could feel the comfort in it. It was tunnel talk, I guess. Mr. Two looked like he would withstand a direct hit by a tactical missile, and so I guess the spare on his lap was all right too. Considering the current circumstances.

  “How long are we going to be here?” David asked me. I realized he looked tired, though like a child trying to prove it was worthy of staying up late, his eyes were still wide open.

  “Not long,” I said. “A couple hours. Just enough for me to go get some money. Then we’re going to buy a truck and get out of here.”

  “To where?” This had been David’s constant refrain for the last twenty-four hours.

  “I still don’t know,” I said. “Somewhere safe.” Jenny looked up at me and I winked at her. A ghost of a smile was my reward.

  “Florida?” Suej asked hopefully.

  “Maybe,” I said. A long time ago I’d told her about a place I knew there, and it had become fixed in her mind as a kind of nirvana. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was very unlikely we’d make it halfway there before we were caught.

  I turned to Mal. “What’s your water like these days? And don’t say ‘wet.’”

  “There’ll be enough if they don’t all stay in too long.” Mal had always known what I meant, especially when I was asking favors. I nodded to Suej, who understood, and she started drawing up a washing schedule for the spares. They weren’t used to being dirty, and I knew that the one thing I could provide that would increase their short-term standard of living was a shower. It’s good that there was that one thing, because there wasn’t a lot of everything else, and wasn’t likely to be in the foreseeable future.

  “We’ll get your clothes washed… later,” I said, vaguely, and wandered over to the window.

  It was still raining outside. It always seemed to be raining in the Portal. In summer it’s fat drops of dirty rain, in the winter thin biting lines of sleet—but it generally seemed to be dropping at least something out of the sky. The locals believe that it’s rich people on the roof of the city, taking delight in pissing off the edge onto the lowlife below. Judging by the color of some of the rain, they could be right.

  New Richmond looked the same as it always had. Eerily so. That shouldn’t have been surprising, and yet it was, I’d seen it in the distance on the way through the Portal, but that had been different. Seeing the city through Mal’s window was like seeing myself in one particular mirror again after a very long time away. I stared out at the points of light, the studs in the mindfuckingly large expanse of wall. It still looked extraordinary, still said to me, as it always had, that I had to be inside it.

  “Are you okay?”

  Mal standing beside me, proffering a cigarette. “Yeah,” I said, lighting one and savoring the harsh scrape of carcinogen on lung. I’d run out that morning, and not wanted to risk going into a store until the spares were safely stowed. Mal let me stand for a moment, then asked what he wanted to know.

  “Where have you been, man?”

  For a moment, in the darkness of his apartment, Mal looked just as he always had. As if no time had passed, as if things were still the same and I had a home to go to after I’d finished chewing the rag with him. I shivered, realizing that I was crashing, that adrenaline was turning sour.

  “Didn’t Phieta tell you? I asked her to let you know.”

  “I never saw her again, Jack. No one did. After you disappeared I put the word around, in case she knew something. But she was just as gone as you.”

  “I’m sorry, Mal. I thought about calling you. I just couldn’t.”

  He nodded, and maybe he understood. “I’m really sorry about what happened,” he said. I nodded tightly. I wasn’t going to talk about it. “If it’s any consolation, the word is Vinaldi’s having problems recently.”

  I was glad that Mal was still enough my friend to simply say the name out loud. “What kind of problems?”

  Mal shrugged. “Rumors. He’s pretty much the man these days. Probably someone’s just trying to climb over him. The usual shit Just thought I’d let you know.” He shook his head. “You really only staying a couple hours?”

  I nodded tightly. “This shit’s too deep to swim in. We’ve got to disappear and stay that way.”

  “Again.” He smiled. “Something I want to tell you about later, though, before you go.” Then he clapped me on the back with his massive hand and turned toward the spares. “You guys about ready for some noodles?”

  They stared at him with wide eyes. “They’ve never had noodles,” I said.

  “Then they haven’t lived,” he replied, and of course he was right.

  I walked a long way through the bowels of New Richmond, my stomach growling, wishing I’d stayed to have some noodles with the spares. There hadn’t been time. We had serious people after us, and were only safe for as long as it took them to realize that I’d given them a false name and previous address when I was taken on at the Farm. As soon as that was blown, all hell was going to break loose.

  It was about two miles from my entry point to the stage where I started to climb, two miles of textured darkness and muffled sounds. When I saw the familiar shaft in front of me, I stopped walking. I rolled my head on my shoulders, wishing briefly and pointlessly that I didn’t smoke, then climbed up the metal ladder attached to the wall.

  Ten minutes later my arms and legs were aching and I’d reached the horizontal ventilation chute on 8. The MegaMall’s original ventilation system is now completely disused, and most of it is filled with garbage, sludge and unnameable crap from a million different sources. It’s like a lost river—paved over and diverted and hidden, but still there in the gaps and interstices. All but a couple of the original inspection hatches were welded shut a long time ago. I was hoping that no more had been sealed while I’d been away, or I’d be in trouble.

  I swung myself out of the shaft and crouched down in the horizontal corridor, using a pocket penlight to peer into the gloom. The way was still clear, so I walked quickly north for about eight hundred yards until I found the wall panel I was looking for. I loosened the bolts and put my dark glasses on. This wasn’t a matter of vanity. I didn’t want anyone to make me while I was in New Richmond. It was a small chance that someone would recognize me, but I don’t like to take chances of any size unless they seem like fun. The other reason is that the hatch opens into a cubicle in the women’s rest room in a restaurant on 8.

  I pulled the panel back about a millimeter, saw the cubicle was empty, and clambered through the hole as quickly and quietly as I could. It wasn’t easy. I stand over six feet tall and am kind of broad in the shoulders. Ventilation hatches aren’t built for people like me. I could hear the thump of music beyond the door to the John, but it didn’t sound as if anyone was there.

  I replaced the panel, pulled the door of the cubicle open, and stepped through. A woman was standing there. Nice one, jack, I thought At least you haven’t lost your touch or anything.

  She was hunched over by the sinks at the far end. She was very slim, had thick brown hair, and was wearing a short dress in iridescent blue. Good legs in sheer stockings led to shoes with very sharp and pointy heels.

  Uh-huh, I thought, making a guess at her profession. As I glanced at her she shifted slightly, and I saw the mirror over which she was bent, and the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill in her hand. I took a quiet step toward the door, assuming she was sufficiently occupied to miss me.

  Wrong. She looked up vaguely but immediately.

  “Wow,” she said. “A big man. Intense.” Her face was caught somewhere between pretty and beautiful—her nose a shade too big for everyone’s pretty, but the bone structure too perfect for be
autiful. Her eyes were clear and green, and looked natural.

  “You’ve got good hearing,” I said.

  “Yeah. It’s a feature.” She sniffed, and bent to do her other nostril. Then a thought occurred to her, and she peered at me again. “What are you doing in here?”

  “Pest control,” I said.

  “Yeah, right,” she said. “Well, I got a license. I’m allowed to be a pest in here. You, I’m not so sure about.”

  “Is there any way,” I asked, “that I could just walk out of here, right now, and you’d think nothing more about it, ever?”

  She looked at me for a long moment, considering. Then she shrugged. “Yeah,” she said, bending back over her mirror, and I turned and walked quickly out of the door.

  A short corridor led out into the restaurant proper, and I skirted round the edge of the room toward the exit. With the time now coming up for nine o’clock, the place was in a transition period. The 8th floor runs on a kind of shift system. It romps twenty-four hours a day, but in practical terms this breaks down into three evenings of eight hours each. I once went round the clock twice. I can’t recommend it, except as an expensive suicide attempt The restaurant was about half-full of people from floors in the 60s and 70s, most of them either on the edge of unconsciousness or so wired you could hear their teeth vibrating. The others looked spruce and enthusiastic, rubbing their hands together in anticipation.

  No one saw me walk out of the ladies’, and no one paid any attention as I walked through the restaurant. Feeling light-headed at seeing so many normal people at once, I escaped into the avenue outside.

  Floor 8 is an anomaly in the lower levels of New Richmond. It’s fairly civilized. Floors 1 to 7 and 9 to 49 are bad. Each varies, depending on who’s got control of it at any given time, but basically they’re places you don’t want to go, especially the 20s and 30s. They’re dead code, cut out of the loop of normal life and left to fester by themselves.