ONE
Arrie…Arrie was something else: an iridescent-skinned lizard, a bit over two meters tall, wearing bellbottoms, a tie-dyed tee shirt, and rose tinted granny glasses. Pretty odd getup for a Human these days, let alone a Varoki, but Kako Arrakatlak—Arrie to his pals—was deep into that whole retro-Haight-Ashbury scene. I figured that was how he romanticized mainlining Laugh. Well, that was his business.
His shining hairless head looked small on that long body and, if you weren’t used to looking at Varoki, there were things just wrong with it: the ears as big as your hands—leaf-like, delicate, and constantly moving—the narrow slitted eyes, broad, flat nose, and the big brow ridges that made his forehead look smaller than it was, made him look stupid—which he was not.
He had me listening to his latest “classical music” acquisition. I could have told him Yanni being dead a little over a century don’t make his stuff classical, but when your best customer wants to impress you with how hip he is to Terrakultur, you don’t spit in his eye; you sit there and you listen to the over-produced, soulless crap as if it meant something. The color and pattern of the walls around us changed in time with the music, the smart surface keyed into the audio data stream, and Arrie had his system rigged to look like a back-projected psychedelic light show. Only thing missing was a lava lamp.
Finally it was over, and Arrie took a slow, gurgling pull on his water pipe, ears quivering, smiling in dreamy pleasure. He held the mouthpiece in his long, bony lizard fingers—too long for the number of joints, so they looked awkward and graceful at the same time, like spider legs.
“Beautiful, Sasha, you agree?”
“A remarkable piece of music,” I answered honestly, feeling no need to share the precise remark I had in mind.
“Do you know why I find your music—Human music—so fascinating? Because it is a window to your souls, and your souls are amazing!
“We found you—what?—less than seventy standard years ago, and already Human composers, architects, designers are everywhere. Your music and visual arts have thrown the aesthetic sensibility of the Cottohazz into turmoil. But this other side of you—this delicious, savage darkness…Your soldiers are the most feared in the Cottohazz, second only perhaps to the Zaschaan. And Humans are taking over organized crime everywhere. You are such brilliant criminals!”
“Well now you’re makin’ me blush,” I said. I shifted my weight and put my left arm up on the back of the couch, and my jacket fell open a little to show the chrome-plated automatic in the shoulder holster. I hardly ever wear the damned thing, but Arrie gets a kick out if it, and what the hell—a little theater never hurts.
“So if we’re so smart, how come you guys own everything?”
He smiled and tilted his head to the side a bit, the equivalent of a shrug.
“Give yourselves time, Sasha.”
“Oh, tha’s good advice, Massa Arrie,” I drawled. “Meantime, we jes’ keep choppin’ cotton.”
He smiled again, knowing enough Human history to appreciate the reference. Like I said—very into Terrakultur. He took another slow pull on the pipe and studied me, ears twitching playfully. Arrie likes to play the fool, but he has to stretch his acting chops to do it.
“Speaking of brilliant criminals,” he said, “how is Mr. Markov these days?”
“Still a homicidal sociopath. How’s your boss?”
He laughed—that creepy barking honk of a lizard laugh, ears fluttering like butterfly wings.
“Still far away, and not very interested in me—the best sort of boss.”
“Amen to that, brother.” I didn’t know a lot about Arrie’s organization, except he liked to refer to it as his Brotherhood. I figure he picked that up from Terrakultur as well, even though no Human criminal I knew of had used that term for maybe a century.
“Speaking of business,” I said, “you got something for me.”
He rose, unfolding like a pocket stiletto, and glided to a small table—rattan and wood, simple but elegant. It looked like Sung Dynasty to me—reproduction, of course, but a nice one. I used to be a second story guy, and you can’t make money at that without an appraiser’s eye.
He opened a black lacquered box on top of the table, took out a neat stack of Cotto flexichips bundled together with plastic, and tossed it lightly across the room to me. I caught it with my left hand and put it in my jacket pocket without counting—I trusted Arrie and besides, if it was short, I knew where he lived.
“Tell me,” he said, his eyes more serious, “how confident are you and Mr. Markov in the continued…reliability of your supply.”
“If there’s a problem, I don’t know about it. Hell, Kolya wants me to lean on you to up your volume.”
“Interesting,” Arrie said thoughtfully, his ears open but folded slightly back—alert but cautious. “Mr. Markov tells you to encourage me to increase my purchases, but you choose not to. Why?” He walked back and settled into his formachair, waiting patiently for an answer while it readjusted to his shape.
It was a good question. I just wasn’t sure he was going to like the answer.
The thing Arrie and Kolya Markov have in common is both of them are dangerous enough to get me killed, but that’s about the extent of the similarity. The big difference—aside from the whole lizard thing—is I figure the worst move I can make with Kolya is to tell him the unvarnished truth; the worst move I can make with Arrie is to bullshit him.
“Well, I see it like this. We get pretty good cover from your people up the food chain, but sooner or later, enough high-end leather-heads are going to get themselves dead on Laugh, there’s going to be serious heat, more serious than you’re going to want to handle. On that day, as we like to say, the shit hits the fan, and I figure all the shit is likely to hit our fan. You’re gonna walk away clean, Arrie, and just find yourself another hobby, while we’re gonna be up to our ears in Co-Gozhak provosts.”
I took a chance, calling him and the other Varoki leather-heads, and his ears had folded tightly back against his head when I did, but he’d relaxed into a smile by the end of my little speech. If you insult someone, they may not love you for it, but they’ll give you points for honesty—that’s kind of a cross-cultural truism.
“Did you share this insight with Mr. Markov?”
“Sure, for what it’s worth. Kolya fought on Nishtaaka, so he says he’s not afraid of the Co-Gozhak.”
“Markov fought in the Nishtaaka campaign?” Arrie asked, his ears fanning wide again.
“Yeah, so what? Yesterday’s news. It’s not like he was the only guy there.”
He shook his head and drew on the pipe, his ears settling back.
“Sasha, Sasha. You are too hard on your friends. Veterans of Nishtaaka speak with admiration of the two Human rogue brigades they fought there.”
“Nobody ever said Kolya didn’t have steel teeth,” I answered, and Arrie nodded his agreement.
“So what do you plan to do, my friend?” he asked, and the pipe went back into his mouth, eyes narrow and unreadable, ears motionless. Of course, he hadn’t said I was wrong. One of the things I like about Arrie is he doesn’t waste your time denying the obvious.
“Don’t know yet,” I answered truthfully.
He leaned his head back and studied me for a moment in unguarded curiosity.
“Then why share this with me?”
“I knew it would entertain you.”
For a second he said nothing, and then he broke into laughter.
That same creepy honking laughter.
* * *
It was a good question, though. What was I going to do? I thought about it as the teardrop-shaped auto-cab hissed out into the Riverside Traffic Trench and insinuated itself into the tail-end tatters of the evening commute.
“Clear top,” I commanded. The roof went transparent and I leaned back, taking in the view up the canyon walls, stars twinkling in the narrow ribbon of black sky way up at the top, kilometers overhead, like a diamond necklace hopelessly beyond your reach. Glowing traffic ramps snaked up the sides of the canyon, linking apartment blocks and crowded market clusters, hanging from the canyon walls like glass and concrete moss. The leather-heads had a name for the city, something that translated as Capital of Peezgtaan—about as creative a name as they ever thought of. Humans came up with our own name, and now that’s what everyone called it, even the leather-heads: Crack City.
Climb all the way up to the top of the Crack, climb all the way up and walk on the surface of Peezgtaan, and you die in maybe a minute, your lungs failing in near-vacuum, the yellow-orange light of Prime burning your skin off. But way down here, down at the bottom of the Crack, people can live. All kinds of people: leather-heads like Arrie, Humans like me.
At least until the shit hits the fan.
I loaded some Tom Waits in the audio and let him scour the lingering aftertaste of Yanni out of my ears.
Misery’s the river of the world.
Misery’s the river of the world.
Misery’s the river of the world. Everybody row!
Everybody row.
Boy, ain’t that the truth?