Engineman Part 40

"I'm fine," I lie.

He wants me in ten. He has customers coming. Distraught parents who have evidence their daughter was butchered. "This is big-time, girl. Some high-up in the Wringsby-Saunders outfit. Don't screw it." I feel like telling him to auto-f.e.l.l.a.t.e on a cannibal personatape, but I resist the urge. Maybe later, when I have the funds to fly. He still owns me, still has his fat face stamped on the back of my hand, good as any brand.

But it's only a matter of time now.

I've been out for hours. What I did earlier needed a good hit to help me forget. My head's dead and so are my legs. I stagger through a battlescene of prostrate bodies and make it to the chute.

Outside it's night, and the crowds are beginning to hit the streets. I brazen my way across a packed sidewalk, earning taunts on three counts. I'm a telepath and a junkie - the two go together - and I have no crowd-sense. I admit everything with an insolent yeah-yeah to whoever's complaining and climb aboard the moving boulevard. A breeze, fresh onetime but polluted now with city stench, does its best to revive me. I ride the slide a block and alight at 3rd. Feeling better already, I dodge touts and beggars and home in on the Union towerpile.

"Banglades.h.!.+" The legless oldster grins in my direction, dumped like garbage by the entrance. How does he do it? He gouged his eyes out yearsback and still he knows when I'm coming. Could be he's on to the scent of my hair oil, or even my crotch. His tag's Old Pete, and he's my regular. I slip him creds and he makes sure I'm stocked with 'gum when I see Ga.s.sner. "Any nearer?" he asks now.

I try a probe. All I get is jumblefuzz. He's s.h.i.+elded. We have a game, me and him. He reckons he was someone famous, onetime, and I have to guess who. His face is certainly familiar, disregarding the absent nose and evacuated eye-sockets. He went Buddhist, yearsback. Quit the race and mutilated himself to indicate his repudiation of this illusion. I often wonder what it was that drove him to such extreme action. Maybe he was seeking enlightenment, or perhaps he'd found it. Once again I concede ignorance, pa.s.s him ten and chew 'gum in the upchute.

I'm feeling great when I hit the 33rd. Ga.s.sner has his office shelved this level, though 'office' is a grand t.i.tle for his place of work. It's little more than a cubby filled with Batan II terminals and link-ups and however much of his blubber isn't spilling through the hatch. I enter bright, my metabolism pumping ersatz adrenalin. It doesn't do to let him see me any other way. He'd gloat if he knew how low I was at being his slave.

A metal desk-top, the bonnet of a pre-fusion automobile, pins his fat up against the floor-to-ceiling window. He's scanning case notes and his grunt acknowledges the fact that I got in with about three seconds to spare. The only light in the place is the silver glow from the computer screen. I clamber over this and sit cross-legged in the hammock where Ga.s.sner slings his meat between s.h.i.+fts. Every ten seconds the chiaroscuro gloom is relieved from outside by the electric blue sweep of a misaligned photon display, strobing sub-lim flashes of 'Patel's Masala Dosa' into our forebrains.

I slip my ferronniere from its case and loop it around my head. And instantly all the minds in the building, previously mere distant flickering candles, torch painfully. I strain out the extraneous mindmush, editing the occasional burst of brainhowl from psychopathic individuals, and work at keeping my head together.

Ga.s.sner, of course, is s.h.i.+elded. It wouldn't be good policy for someone who employed a telepath to go about with his head open. I'm shut out, persona non grata persona non grata in his meatball. Times are when I'd love to read my master. Then again, times are when I'm glad I'm barred entry. I read too many screwb.a.l.l.s in the course of a day without Ga.s.sner opening up. in his meatball. Times are when I'd love to read my master. Then again, times are when I'm glad I'm barred entry. I read too many screwb.a.l.l.s in the course of a day without Ga.s.sner opening up.

Seconds later Mr and Mrs distraught roll in.

The guy is Kennedy, and he's playing it cool. I'll be lying if I call him distraught; on the Richterscale of personal upheaval he'd hardly register. He's chewing djamba djamba to calm himself and he carries his bonetoned body with a certain hauteur. Or call it arrogance. Under one arm he has the silver envelope containing the evidence, and under the other his wife. She's Scandinavian, beautiful in better circ.u.mstances, but grief plays havoc with good looks and right now Mrs Kennedy is ugly. I get the impression that Mr Kennedy is embarra.s.sed by the degree of his wife's distress. to calm himself and he carries his bonetoned body with a certain hauteur. Or call it arrogance. Under one arm he has the silver envelope containing the evidence, and under the other his wife. She's Scandinavian, beautiful in better circ.u.mstances, but grief plays havoc with good looks and right now Mrs Kennedy is ugly. I get the impression that Mr Kennedy is embarra.s.sed by the degree of his wife's distress.

They sit down while Ga.s.sner murmurs pleasantries, then jerks a thumb up at me. "Bangladesh," he says. "My a.s.sistant."

My name's Sita, but ever since the invasion I got the national tag. Here in the West they reckon it's kinda cute. I'm just glad I wasn't born in Bulgaria.

My presence, perched aloft, surprises Mrs Kennedy. She flickers a timid smile, then sees the connected-minds symbol on my cheek. She recoils mentally; she has no wish to have her grief made any more public than she can allow. I think rea.s.surance at her, telling her that I have no intention of prying - at least, not too too much. There's no way I'm probing deep into the angst-ridden maelstrom of her psyche. Grief and regret and self-pity boil down there, and I have my own quota of these emotions to contend with at the best of times. much. There's no way I'm probing deep into the angst-ridden maelstrom of her psyche. Grief and regret and self-pity boil down there, and I have my own quota of these emotions to contend with at the best of times.

As for Mr Kennedy... He's s.h.i.+elded, so I don't waste sweat trying to probe. And anyway I already know enough about him, everything I want to know, and even things his little Os...o...b..rn third wife doesn't know.

He nods at me, his gaze coolly observant.

I give him my best wink.

And my presence here is token, now. Ga.s.sner questions them and they answer, and I probe Mrs Kennedy to ensure veracity, not that I really need to. I had the facts of the case even before she crossed the threshold.

Becky Kennedy was s.n.a.t.c.hed inside an uptown gymnasium at ten this morning, her bodyguard taken out with a neural-incapacitator. Their a.s.sailant came and went so fast that the bodyguard saw nothing. Around noon the Kennedys, waiting anxiously in their suburban ranch, received a silver envelope.

Kennedy glances at Ga.s.sner, who nods. He lays the envelope on he desk and amid fresh whimperings from his wife slides out a glossy photograph. I lean forward. It isn't pretty. The still shows a young girl, spread-eagled in a leotard, with a ma.s.sive bullet wound in her p.u.b.escent chest. Here dead eyes stare at the camera, frozen with terror.

"No note or message of any kind?" Ga.s.sner wheezes.

Kennedy replaces the photograph in the envelope. "Nothing. Just this," he says, and adds, without the slightest hint of appeal in his tone, "Can you get my daughter back, Mr Ga.s.sner?"

My boss fingers the folds of fat at his neck. "I'm almost certain we can, Mr Kennedy."

"Within the three-day limit? She's due on the Vienna sub-orbital next month. We'd like her to make it."

And Mrs Kennedy breaks down again. She knows that the majority of missing kids are never found, except after the three-day limit. Despite Ga.s.sner's rea.s.surances, she can't believe she'll ever see her little Becky again.

Ga.s.sner is saying, "The fact that your daughter's abductor sent you this photograph indicates to me that what we have here is no ordinary abduction." By which he means that Becky might not end up as the meat in a necrophilic orgy.

"My guess is that you'll receive a ransom demand for your daughter pretty soon. My Agency will handle the negotiations. On top of whatever ransom demand is made, my fee for the case is two million creds."

Kennedy waves. "Just get my daughter back, Mr Ga.s.sner. And you'll get your fee."

"Excellent. I'm glad to see that someone appreciates how dangerous our line of work can be. We are dealing with criminal psychopaths, Mr Kennedy. No price can fully compensate for the dangers involved."

But two million creds will do nicely, thanks... Two millions that Ga.s.sner needs desperately. Trade is bad nowadays, and Ga.s.sner is struggling to keep his fat head above the choppy water-level of Big-City business.

He arranges to keep in touch and the Kennedys quit. I jump down and squat by the hatch, watching them go. "You got everything?" Ga.s.sner wheezes.

I nod. "Everything I need."

Ga.s.sner catches my eye as I'm about to leave. "Hey - and if you find the body before they get the ransom demand, you know how to work it, girl."

I wink, point a blaster made out of fingers to show that I'm on his wavelength - but his instructions worry me. Does he suspect?

"I'm flying, Ga.s.sner," I say.

"Hey, how's Joe? I haven't seen him around."

The b.a.s.t.a.r.d sure knows how to land a cruel one. "Joe's just fine," I lie. I pray Allah give me strength to make minestrone of his meatball. But what the h.e.l.l? "Ciao," I call, blow him a kiss and quit.

Drifting...

I was drifting monthsback when I found Joe Gomez. Drifting? It's a state of mind as well as a physical act. You can't have one without the other; they're sort of mutually inter-dependent. To drift, get high on whatever's-your-kick, fill your head with some sublime and unattainable goal, and hit the night. Ride the moving boulevard a-ways, alongside the safe-city civvies out for the thrill of slumming, and when their mundane minds become just too too much, quit the boulevard and try out the mews and alleyways. Drift forever and lose track of time. There's something for everyone down there; was even something for me. much, quit the boulevard and try out the mews and alleyways. Drift forever and lose track of time. There's something for everyone down there; was even something for me.

Back then I was a screwed up, neurotic wreck. My past was a time in my head I tried to forget about, and my present wasn't so strawberries-and-cream, either. A second-grade telepath indentured to a fifth-rate, one-man investigative Agency. I worked a twelve-hour s.h.i.+ft and the work was hard: try probing a mind seething with evil sometime. I had another ten years of this hand-to-mouth, mind-to-mind existence ahead of me, and there were times when I thought I could take no more. If I survived the ten years I could leave the Agency, discard my ferronniere and let my telesense atrophy - but even then I'd always be aware that taken as a race we weren't up to much... So I had no hopes for the future and the only way I could take the present was to chew my 'gum and live from day to day. Even so, I neglected myself. I'd go days without eating; I was never fat, but after a stretch of working and drifting and starving I'd be famine-thin, wasted.

I suppose the drifting helped, though. It was part of the day to day routine. My goal? You'd laugh - but they say if you seek long enough, you'll find. And I found. My goal was someone someone.

I had no idea who. I sometimes kid myself I was looking for Joe all along, that I knew he existed out there among the millions and it was just a matter of time before I found him. But that's just old retrospect, playing tricks. Truth is, I was looking for a good and pure mind to prove to myself that we weren't all bad, that hope existed.

So I'd get high at the end of a s.h.i.+ft, ride the boulevard and slip into the tributaries. On the prowl, drifting...

I was a familiar face down the lighted darktime quarter. I'd be given rat-and-sparrow kebabs by the Chinese food-stall owners who wanted to fatten me up. The touts, they left me alone after the first few weeks when I declined to buy. They hawked everything from themselves to pure slash, from spare parts for illicit surgery to the Goodbye Express itself - Pineal-z. The drug from the third planet of star Aldebaran that'd give you the trip of a lifetime and total you in the process. It freaked me, that hit. Onetime monthsback I was drinking shorts in a seedy slouch and through the wall I probed a jaded businessman who'd had his fill of everything and wanted out. He'd paid a cool half million for the pleasure of ending his life, and he went with an extravaganza. Subjectivewise he lived another eighty years and his pineal bloomed to show him the evolution of his kind. I tripped along with him until he died, then I staggered back to my pad. I was zonked for three days following, and for another week hallucinated Pithecanthropus and Neanderthal Man dancing the light fantastic on the boulevard. Only later did I get vague flashbacks, memories of the vast, impenetrable blackness that swallowed the oldster when the drug blew his head. It frightened me at first, this intangible nothingness I could neither experience nor understand. In time, a month maybe, I managed to push it away somewhere, forget.

Then I was back drifting again, seeking.

I'd black my connected-minds symbol and probe, discarding heads by the thousand one after the other as they each displayed the same flawed formulas. Some heads were better than others, but even the better ones were tainted with greed and selfishness and hate. And then there were the really bad ones, the heads that struck me at a distance with their freight of evil, that stood out in a crowd like cancer cells in lymph gland.

Then there were the s.h.i.+elded minds, in which anything anything might be lurking. might be lurking.

I found Joe Gomez in a bar called the Yin-Yang.

It's an underground dive with a street level entrance washed in the flutter of a defective fluorescent. Three figures were standing in the silver sometimes-light that night, and something about them caught my attention. They wore the fas.h.i.+onable greys of rich businessmen, and their minds were s.h.i.+elded. They were discussing something among themselves in a tone which suggested they had no wish to be overheard. And one of the guys had o-o tattooed on his cheek.

Now what the h.e.l.l were three uptown executives doing whispering outside a slum bar at four o'clock in the morning? As sure as Allah is Allah not transacting business, I reasoned.

But I was wrong. They were.

I got close and listened in on their whispers. At the same time I became aware of an emanation from the subterranean Yin-Yang. The two connected. Casualwise, I slipped past the three execs and, once out of sight, jumped the steps two by two. The emanation was the sweet music of violin over din. My quest was almost over.

But not quite. I had to get him out, first.

The bar was a slouch. Felled junkies littered the various levels of the padded floor. I found the barman and asked him if the place had another entrance, and he indicated west.

Then I looked around and probed.

The guy with the harmonious brainvibes sat against the far wall, drinking beer. He wore the blue one-piece of an off-duty s.p.a.cer, and I read with surprise that he was an Engineman. He was good-looking too in a dark, Spanish kind of way.

I glanced at the entrance. There was no sign of the executives. They were no doubt still debating whether this was the guy they intended to sc.r.a.pe. Obviously their telepath was a few grades below me; I knew immediately that the s.p.a.cer was prime material for what they had in mind.

I projected an aura of authority and crossed the slouch. "Joe Gomez?"

He looked up, startled; surprised at being paged by a not-so-good-looking black girl. I realised that the telepath outside would be getting all this, too. So I slipped my s.h.i.+eld from my tunic and palmed it onto his coverall. Then I grabbed his arm and blitzed him with a burst of life-or-death urgency.

As we hurried to the far door and up the steps I caught the tantalizing whiff of flux on his body. Then we were outside and swamped in the collective odours of a dozen ethnic fastfoods. "This way."

I ran him up the alley and under an arch, then down a parallel thruway and up an overpa.s.s. Crowds got in the way and we barged through, making good progress. Years of drifting had superimposed a routemap of the quarter on my cortex. The execs would be floundering now, cursing their lost opportunity. I'd grabbed the golden goose and I could hardly believe my luck. To be on the safe side I took him across the boulevard and up a towerpile into a cheap Mexican restaurant I used when I was eating.

Outside, the city extended in a never-ending, jewelled stretch. The million coruscating points of light might have indicated as many foci of evil that night - but we were away from it all up here and I had Joe Gomez. I could hardly control my shaking.

Then it came to me how close he'd been to annihilation, and I broke down. "You stupid, stupid b.a.s.t.a.r.d," I cried.

"Look, Sita - that's your name, isn't it?" He was bemused and embarra.s.sed. He'd caught bits of me as I rushed him out, and he knew he owed me. "Who were those guys?"

"Who? Just your funeral directors, is who." My tears were tears of relief now. "They were pirates in the sc.r.a.pe-tape industry. I overheard them before I got your vibes."

"So? I could have been a star."

"Yeah, a dead star, kid. Not many ways you can be killed nowadays, but they would've killed you dead dead."

His tan disappeared and he looked sick. "But I thought the industry was legal? I've seen personatapes on sale in the marts-"

His naivety amazed me. "The personatape side of the thing is legal. They makes tapes of the famous, or how they think the famous might have been. But these pirates make personatapes of real people by squeezing fools like you dry dry. You're so good you gave me raptures, and they wanted that." And I was already wanting to s.n.a.t.c.h my s.h.i.+eld away from him, wanting more more...

He stared at his drink. He didn't seem very convinced.

"Listen, kid. You know what they'd've done to you if I hadn't happened along? They'd've killed you and taken your corpse to their workshop. They can sc.r.a.pe stiffs, and they're easier to handle - don't struggle. Then these guys, these pirates... they'd open your skull and go in deep and sc.r.a.pe the cerebellum, leaving your nervous system wrung out and f.u.c.ked up. They'd get more than just emotions, they'd get everything. They'd rob you of your very self just to make a few fast creds, and then dump your body. And there'd be nothing no rep-surgeon could do to put you back together. You'd be dead. The only place you'd exist is on tape and as a ghost in the heads of non-telepaths who want the sensation of experiencing other states of being without having the operation."

I took a long drink then, angry with him. "And keep that s.h.i.+eld. I want you to stay alive. Consider it a present."

"Thanks," he said.

"For chrissake!" I exploded. "Where the h.e.l.l do you usually drop? Don't you know what a s.h.i.+eld is for?"

"I work a line out of Lhasa, Kathmandu, Gorakpur... They're quiet cities. I never really needed a s.h.i.+eld there. This is my first time here..." He avoided my eyes and gazed out at the city.

"Yeah, well - think on next time. This isn't no third world dive. This is for real. Mean City Central where you have to think to survive."

He nodded, sipped his drink.

I cooled. "Where you from, Joe?"

"Seville, Europe. You?"

"Chittagong, what was onetime Bangladesh. China now."

His gaze lingered on my tattoo. Then he saw the face on the back of my hand. "Your husband?"

I laughed. "Hey, Mr Innocent - you never seen one of these before?" I waved my hand around theatrically. "This guy's my boss. He owns owns me. I'm indentured to him for another ten years." me. I'm indentured to him for another ten years."

"I never realised..."

"No, well you wouldn't, would you?" I glared at him, bitter. Then I smiled. I had to remind myself that I had a Mr-Nice-Guy here, who was naive-for-real and wasn't playing me along.

I sighed, gave him history. "My parents sold me when I was four. They were poor and they needed the Rupees. I was one of six kids, and a girl, so I guess they didn't miss me... I checked out psi-positive when I was five and had the operation. I had no say in the matter, they just cut me and hey-presto I had the curse of ability ability. I was taken by an Agency, trained, and sold to Ga.s.sner when I was six. I've been reading for small cred, 'gum and a bed in a slum dwelling for nine years now."

Joe Gomez was shocked. "Can't you... I mean," he shrugged. "Get out?"

"Like I said, in ten years when my indenture runs its course. This makes sure I don't do anything stupid." I held up the miniature of Ga.s.sner, his face stilled now; it'd come to life when he contacted me. "With this he knows where I am at all times. There's nothing I can do about it."

We rapped for ages, ordered tostadas, drank. Beneath the jive-a.s.sed, streetwise exterior I was like a little girl on her first date. I was trembling, and my voice cracked falsetto with excitement.

Joe Gomez... He was short, dark, around twenty. He had a strong, handsome face, but his eyes were evasive and shy. It was what lived behind those eyes that I was interested in, though... He was pure, and I needed pure pure. I wanted to get into him, become one. I was nothing special to look at, but I was sure that if I let him take a look inside my head, gave him the experience... But at the same time I was scared s.h.i.+tless I might frighten him away.

We watched the dawn spread behind distant towerpiles.

My heart was hammering when I said tentatively, "Where you staying, Joe?"

"I just got in. I haven't fixed a place yet. Maybe you know somewhere?"

"I..." There was something in my mouth, preventing words. "You can always stay at my place. It's not much, but..." Sweet Allah, my eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g again.

"I don't know..."

"Give me the s.h.i.+eld," I said.

"I get it. If I don't come with you, you want your present back, right?" He sounded hurt.

"b.a.l.l.s. I might be other things but I'm no cheat. I want to show you something."

He pa.s.sed me the s.h.i.+eld, a silver oval a little smaller then a joint case, and I put it out of range on a nearby table. His goodness swamped me, and I swooned in the glow. I pushed myself at him, invaded him, showed him what it was like to have someone inside his head... Then we staggered from the towerpile and rode the boulevard to the slums.