Be My Enemy (27 page)

“Alamo, Everett.”

“Sen.”

“What?”

“I lied.”

“I lie all the time,” Sen said, leaning comfortably against Everett, swinging her booted feet. Then she realized that Everett wasn't Airish and wouldn't understand who you could lie to and who you could never lie to. “I mean, it's a
so
thing, Everett…”

“There was power, Sen. There was enough power. The board was green. I lied. I wanted you to think I had no choice, that there was no way for me to do the wrong thing. Because that would then make it all right. I didn't have a choice. But there was, and I almost did. I had a choice.”

“You chose right, Everett.”

“Yeah, I did. But I'm scared that next time—and there will be a next time—I won't do the right thing.” He glanced at her “You called me Everett. Three times.”

“Three times is the magic time,” Sen said, sing-song. “Tap the deck three times. Oh!” She remembered why she had come tappy-scratching at Everett's latty. “Here. Something to show you.” She slipped a card from inside her jacket and laid it on top of the Panopti-thingie. The stars went out. “Just finished this. What you think of it? Bonaroo, eh?”

The card showed an airship, not a sleek, streamlined sky shark like
Everness
, but an old-school one, the kind you saw in the airship museum at Cardington. One like a big silver sausage. It flew out of the card, prow pointed upward. At the bottom of the card, at the air-ship's
tail, was a burst of sunrays. She had found the sunburst in an old magazine they had picked up on the last run to Atlanta. They had this retro-future thing going on there, like everything was supposed to look futuristic but old-fashioned at the same time. The airship came from a history book. The chest under Sen's hammock was full of out-of-date make-up and savaged books and magazines she had cut up for card ideas.

“Nice,” Everett said. “I like the sun. Really 1920s.”

Sen tutted in exasperation.

“That's not the sun. It's a gate. An Ein…Heisenberg Gate.”

“Oh, wow,” Everett said. There was light in his eyes now. Bona. “What's it called?”

“Oh. I haven't finished that bit yet.” Sen took a pen from her pocket and carefully, slowly wrote one word in silver ink. She waved it and blew on it to dry the ink. Stars briefly filled the cabin, then vanished as she set the card down again.
Everness.
“There. Said I was good with names.”

Everett reached for the card. Sen slapped his fingers away.

“You got yours. This is for me. My card.” She kissed it. It smelled of ink and just-dried glue and old newsprint and futures only guessed at.

“What does it mean?” Everett asked.

“Don't know,” Sen said. “I'll find out.” She took the deck from her jacket and folded the card into it. Once again the latty filled with the stars that weren't stars, but points of hope in the Panoply of All Worlds. “Everett, can I?”

“What?”

“Move the stars around.”

He smiled. He did not smile much, but he was one of those omis who, when they did, lit up rooms and hearts and lives.

Sen put her hand into the glowing star field, moved it this way and that way, pulled it in and pushed it out, eyes wide as the soft thistledown balls of light that spun around her.

“So where are you taking us next?” she asked.

“Like you said, don't know. One place's as good as any other. You choose.”

“Me?”

“Why not?” Everett's breath steamed in the chilly cabin. “Pick a world. Any world.”

The car was black, polished, shiny as oil. A Mercedes S-class. He was learning about these Earth 10 cars. The S65 AMG, with a 5,980 cc biturbo rocking 604 horsepower. Hydrocarbon engines might be resource-guzzling environment trashers, but when they let rip they made a mighty noise you could feel all the way to the pit of your belly. The car was black, polished, shiny. Like Nahn.

Tearing up the motorway from the Heisenberg Gate at Folkestone, now crawling in evening traffic down through Edmonton and Tottenham. A thaw had set in during the two days he had been on other earths. The Mercedes splashed through black slush. Grey snow was piled up in the gutters; pedestrians picked careful paths over half-melted slicks of rotting ice. Welcome to planet Hackney.

The lights were going on down Stamford Hill. The plastic shop signs were bright and gaudy, the bus windows steamed up. A woman with five dogs on leads was leaving Abney Park Cemetery. The dogs all pulled in different directions. The woman was fighting to keep her beanie hat on and keep the dogs under control. Here, in another world, he had run out of this gate for a number 73 bus and a car like this had run him down. The woman beside him had been sitting where she sat now, in the back seat, smartly upright, hands demurely folded in her lap. The man behind the wheel of this Mercedes S-class had probably been driving the one that had cut Everett M down.

As the car passed the bus gates, Everett M felt an itch at the back of his neck. A tickle that he could ignore at first, but it grew fiercer and fiercer. He had to scratch it. It would kill him if he didn't.
He tried to ease the itch on the collar of his school blazer. No good. Finally, he reached up and scratched until he felt his skin must tear, his fingernails splinter. As the Mercedes swept past the gates of Abney Park and the struggling dog-walking woman, he felt something slip from his neck into his hand.

Charlotte Villiers shot him a disapproving look.
No way are you ever going to convince Roding Road you're Social Services
, Everett thought. Not with an S-class and a real fur coat. He waited until she looked away to glance at the thing in his hand.

It looked like a tiny spider. Black, of course, shiny oil black. Nahn black. Too many legs for a spider, and no real front end or back end. It clung to the palm of his hand. The tiniest invader.

For a moment he thought of slapping it onto the back of Charlotte Villiers's hand. There was a tiny oval of exposed skin where her glove was buttoned over. He would enjoy the look of surprise in her eyes as she felt it sink through her skin, her eyes going black as the Nahn ate her from the inside. No. He needed her to get him off this world, back to his real family. The driver had a beautiful five centimeters of targetable skin between the collar of his chauffeur's jacket and the bottom on his chauffeur's cap. No. He was driving. Two car accidents outside Abney Park was too many. Wait. A whole world was his.

Everett M closed his fist as the black car turned onto Northwold Road. Left into Roding Road, up between the bright houses with the melting snow shushing beneath the wheels, and the Nahn spider in his hand. He was still cold, so cold. He knew he always would be.

P
alari (polari, parlare) is a real secret language that has grown up in parallel with English. Its roots go back to seventeenth-century Thieves Cant in London—a secret thieves’ language. It's passed through market traders and barrow-mongers, fairground showmen, the theatre, the Punch and Judy Show, and gay subculture. Palari (“the chat”—from the Italian
parlare
, “to talk”) contains words from many sources and languages: Italian, French,
lingua franca
(an old common trading language spoken across the Mediterranean), Yiddish, Romani, and even some Gaelic. It's taken in words from Cockney rhyming slang—“plates” for
feet
, from “plates of meat” = “feet”; and London back-slang—“eek” is short for “ecaf,” which is “face” backward. Many words from palari/polari have entered London English. In Earth 3, palari is the private language of the Airish. In our world, polari still survives as a secret gay language.

GLOSSARY OF PALARI:

ajax: nearby (from adjacent?)

alamo: hot for her/him

amriya: a personal vow, promise, or restriction that cannot be broken (from Romani)

aunt nell: listen, hear

aunt nells: ears

barney: a fight

batts: shoes

bijou: small/little (means “jewel” in French)

blag: pick up/beg as a favor/get without paying

bod: body

bona: good

bona nochy: goodnight (from Italian—
buona notte
)

bonaroo: wonderful, excellent

buvare: a drink (from old-fashioned Italian
bevere
or Lingua Franca
bevire
)

cackle: talk/gossip

capello: hat (from Italian
cappello
)

carsey/khazi: toilet.

charper: to search (from Italian
chiappare
, to catch)

charver: to have sex

chavvie: child

chicken: young male/boy

clobber: clothes

cod: naff, vile

cove: friend

dally/dolly: sweet, kind.

dinari: money

dish: ass, bum, arse

Divano: an Airish ship's council.

dona: woman (from Italian
donna
or Lingua Franca
dona
), a term of respect

dorcas: term of endearment, “one who cares.” The Dorcas Society was a ladies’ church association of the nineteenth century, which made clothes for the poor.

doss: bed

drag: clothes, especially women's clothes (from Romani
indraka
, a skirt)

ecaf/
eek
: face (back-slang).
Eek
is an abbreviation of
ecaf
.

fantabulosa: fabulous/wonderful

feely: child/young/girl

fruit/fruity: in Hackney Great Port, a term of mild abuse

gafferiya: Airish tradition of hospitality and shelter for travelers (from Thieves Cant).

gelt: money (Yiddish)

kris: an Airish duel of honor (from Romani)

lacoddy: body

lallies: legs

latty: room or cabin on an airship

lilly: police (Lilly Law)

luppers: fingers (Yiddish
lapa
, a paw)

manjarry: food (from Italian
mangiare
or Lingua Franca
mangiaria
)

measures: money

meese: plain, ugly, despicable (from Yiddish
meeiskeit
: loathsome,

despicable, abominable)

meshigener: nutty, crazy, mental (from Yiddish)

metzas: money (Italian
mezzi
: means, wherewithal)

naff: awful, dull, tasteless

nante: not, no, none (Italian:
niente
)

ogle: look, admire

omi: man/guy

omi-polone: effeminate man or homosexual

onk: nose

Palari-pipe: telephone/in-ship communication system (“talk pipe”)

palliass: mattress or place to sleep.

polone: woman/girl

riah: hair (back-slang)

sabi: to know (from Lingua Franca
sabir
)

scarper: to run off (from Italian
scappare
, to escape or run away)

sharpy: policeman (from “charpering omi”)

sharpy polone: policewoman

shush: steal

shush-bag: hold-all/backpack

slap: make-up

so: to be part of the in-crowd/Airish (e.g. “Is he so?”)

strides: trousers

tober: road

todd: alone (from rhyming slang
Todd Sloanne
—alone)

troll: to walk about looking for business or some kind of opportunity

varda: to see/look at (from Italian dialect
vardare = guardare
—look at)

yews: eyes (from French
yeux
)

zhoosh: style, make a show of, mince (Romani:
zhouzho
—clean, neat)

zhooshy: flashy, showy

I
an McDonald has written fourteen science fiction novels and has lost count of the number of stories. He's been nominated for every major science fiction award, and has even won some. Ian has also worked in television in program development—all those reality shows have to come from somewhere—and has written for screen as well as print. He lives in Northern Ireland, just outside Belfast, and loves to travel.
Be My Enemy
is the second part of the Everness series.