Blood Ocean (16 page)

Instead of sporting equipment, the entire room had been cleared, revealing a flat space the size of most ships. A raised round stage stood in the middle, atop which danced a naked fat man. He moved slowly to unseen music, his glacial gyrations sending him back and forth across the stage to the ebb and flow of the music. She tried to place the instrument but couldn’t; some sort of mouth organ, perhaps.

Arrayed around the stage in ever-widening circles were plush red couches, the kind she would have imagined finding in one of the dining areas before the plague, when people spent money to travel and engorge themselves. Strange multi-limbed figures reclined on the couches.

No...

Now she saw it. Monkey-backs. Her hand went to her mouth. She’d never seen so many at one time; never in such numbers. She counted roughly sixty monkey-backs.

The orange-robed monks were going to each of them, massaging their muscles, wiping them clean. Some fed them, but it seemed only the monkeys were being fed. And here and there she saw a monk picking a flea from the chest of one of the monkeys eating it.

She realized she’d been holding her breath, and blew it out. “Jesus.”

And there, in the far corner of the room, among a group of administrators, stood the only Tao woman in the room. It had to be her.

Lopez-Larou made her way down the stairs and across the room without bringing attention to herself. It wasn’t hard. Everyone kept their eyes on the monkeys.

“Bituin?”

The woman turned. Her eyes flashed; she was unhappy to be disturbed.

“I need to speak with you,” Lopez-Larou pressed.

The woman shook her head and glanced at her fellow administrators, who in turn were looking at her. “What are you doing here?” Lopez-Larou was a
Tiburón
; they could tell by looking at her. Her presence could only mean one thing.

“Please. In private.” Lopez-Larou gestured to a space a few feet away.

The woman seemed ready to argue, then gritted her teeth and balled her fists. She shook her head as she made her way over. “What is it?”

“You bought something recently,” Lopez-Larou said.

“I did nothing of the sort.”

“Sure you did. We all know you did.” The fat man drew her attention. She couldn’t look away.

“Please—you have the wrong person.”

Lopez-Larou wrenched her gaze away from the nude abomination. “Your name is Bituin. You purchased three hundred grams of Waffle Dust. And by the looks of it, I know who it was for.”

She watched the woman closely, but she didn’t bat an eye.

“I came because of the problem we have with that batch. Wrong chemistry. Just don’t use it.”

“What?” Bituin shook her head as if to clear it. “What?” she repeated.

“If you give it to someone, it will kill them.”

The woman’s gaze moved to the man on stage.

Just as Lopez-Larou expected.

The monk took a step towards him.

Lopez-Larou put a hand on her arm. “Who gave it to you?”

“I don’t know his name.” Tears formed in the corners of her eyes. She pointed at the fat man, “Will he be all right?”

Lopez-Larou pulled a pouch of white powder from her waist. She’d used the ruse a couple of times before, but it always worked. “He needs to have this within the hour to counteract the chemistry.” She handed it to the woman. “What did he look like? The man who sold you this?”

She stared at the pouch in her hand. With her other hand she traced a line from her chin to her navel. “He had a tattoo along here,” she said.

She seemed about to say something else, when a group of orange-robed Taos entered the room from the landing. Two by two they descended; between each duo they carried a monkey-backed. All in all three new monkey-backed were brought into the room and placed on couches.

When the third one was laid on the couch directly opposite her, Lopez-Larou was stunned to see it was the Pali Boy. Gone was the eager, dancing gaze of the young man she’d met, replaced by the dull stare of one forever connected to a monkey.

What a shame.

What a goddamn pitiful shame.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

T
HEY WERE ONE.

Kavika didn’t know where his thoughts ended and the other’s began.

The smell was different. No longer were they inhaling the stench of The Hole. Gone was the cloying smell of oil. Their slick, greasy bodies had been washed, leaving his skin flowery, like memories of the jungle, and of the rooftops of Hindu temples.

Gree-gree-gree!

Music filled his mind. From somewhere it came, like the whisper of a desert wind, breezes slipping through a mountain pass, and the bending of trees after a summer monsoon. The notes lifted and carried him past his childhood, into a borrowed memory of buildings and temples and auburn skies, to a place where his new being swung free, serenaded by the sound as he pulled and swung forever in a breeze filled with love.

Gree-gree-gree!

Orange clouds of love touched them, running their hands and arms across their bodies. A touch here. A touch there. A long line of adoration slid down one arm, across their backs, ending at their chin; whose, he couldn’t tell. The orange-clouded beings were everywhere, wrapping them in glorious devotion, billowing, billowing, billowing, like the breaths of a family of lovers, trapped in an orange-veiled universe.

And at the end of his milky vision undulated a great white being. Round and long and thick and strong, it moved with the grace of a heartbeat. From one side of heaven to the other, the being rode the unseen notes of the wordless lament.

They were fed through one mouth. Food entered one part of them, but both felt the surge of energy. Both moved their jaws. Both felt the satisfaction of sustenance course through cells new and old.

Gree-gree-gree!

Gree-gree-gree!

Gree-gree-gree!

They both murmured happy happys to the universe.

Content to be one.

Ready to be less.

Wanting to just be.

I
VANOV BLEW SNOT
out of his nose, wiped it with the back of his hand, and poured himself another glass of vodka. He watched the grue slide down the wall, then chased the outrage with the cool clean liquor. He grimaced, not from any effect from the Vitamin V but from the knowledge of a man who’d lived a life less than what he’d dreamed.

Once he’d been the captain of the
Stalingrad
, an Akulu Class Submarine from a Russia rising above the cesspool it had become after the collapse of the world’s most powerful socialist union. He’d had the firepower to turn stern gazes into fearful ones. With a finger hovering over the launch button, he could convince third-world dictators and rulers of the free world to do anything he desired; the alternative being wrapped in a nuclear cloud-shaped bow.

He’d had power beyond power. Rasputin never held so much potential in his miserable dwarf fist. Not the sort of power Captain Victor Ivanov of the Imperial Russian Navy had once wielded.

And now?

Now
?

Now he was the caretaker of a submarine attached to a floating city in the middle of nowhere. One at a time, the missiles had ceased to function until he had less than a handful with any chance at operational probability left. His reactor was at less than thirty per cent efficiency. His men had dispersed to fuck and suck the Asian men and women who called this extended scow home. And he was left with the ball of twine that was his friendships, partnerships, contracts, loves, likes, hatreds and responsibilities. He couldn’t touch one without touching another. He couldn’t unwind it without unveiling what he’d had to do to survive. What had began as a glorious appointment on the docks of Vladivostok, twenty-nine years ago had liquefied into the role of Japanese fuck-puppet as he prostrated himself for the Nip bastards to inject him with their desires and crazy machinations as they positioned themselves to be the next rulers of the universe in this sad, ruined world, which had once held the promise of unlimited caviar eaten from the velvet pudendums of Ukrainian virgins.

“Fuck!”

He swept the table clear; glass shattered and vodka dribbled down the walls.

A burly man with a snake tattooed on his bald head rushed to the doorway. “Okay, boss?”

“Egor, get me another bottle.”

“Yes, boss. Want me to clean up?”

“
Nyet!
Leave it.”

Victor stewed in his misery for five minutes as his bottle was replaced. He unscrewed the cap and took a deep swig. It burned, but not enough; it had been a decade since he’d been able to lose himself in the booze. One thing about vodka was that one could become adept at drinking it. You could become a professional. Just as the capitalist West had had professionals who played golf, badminton and lacrosse, and the East had had professionals who played ping pong and poker, Russia had experts in the consumption of vodka. Thankfully, the ability to make the vile substance was something learned by every young man and woman before they reached the age of maturity. In the old country, everyone drank it. Victor remembered sitting on his grandmother’s lap in front of a roaring fire, his grandfather telling stories about wolves and snow, and deliveries made late or not at all. His grandmother would sip her glass and raise it to his lips. He still remembered the first acidic slide of the white liquor into his gut, and the nuclear explosion that consumed his inner core afterwards. In the deep cold of the old country, the fire did a little to warm the soul. That was one reason the old Soviet Union had made certain its people had bread and vodka, the two ingredients of a satisfied life.

A knock came at his doorway.

“Captain, it’s Mr. Nakihama.”

Victor started and turned to Valeri. He must have slipped into a half-sleep. “What? He’s here?”

“No, in the coms center.”

“Oh.” His vision sharpened. “I’ll be there. Tell him.”

Valeri nodded and left.

Victor stood. His feet balanced themselves somewhere, a thousand feet below his head. He strangled the bottle in one hand, and dragged it with him as he ricocheted down the galley.

In the coms center he found a seat and fell into it. Valeri was there. He pressed a button and a small black and white screen filled with the wide face of a Japanese man.

The man began to speak. Like always, he had something to say, which meant that Victor had something to do.

God, how he hated to be alive.

He felt himself nodding as the Nip brought him to heel.

Then like a good dog, he smiled. If he’d had a tail, he’d have wagged it. If he’d had a pistol, he’d have stuck it in his mouth.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T
HE KNOWLEDGE BURNED
in her head, catching everything it touched on fire. She hadn’t many friends; she’d never had a mother; she’d never had any brothers and sisters. She’d scraped and clawed and begged until she’d gained the attention of La Jolla. The old kingpin had taken her under his wing and become more like her father than her real father. He’d called her
daughter
. He’d taught her the business. He’d taught her how to read people, how to survive. He’d also taught her to trust no one. She’d never thought to have any friends, happy to climb the ladder until one day she, too, would be kingpin and raise up a waif like he’d done, plucked from the gutter, her stomach so thin two hands could be wrapped around her waist.

That is, until the night she’d fought and befriended Spike. Kavika had come later, and although she’d always consider Spike to be a closer friend, the broken and beaten Pali Boy’s sullen vision of the universe had made her wonder if that wasn’t what her real brothers were like. It wasn’t just him, but what he represented: a life not lived and a brother not known.

As she neared the Hawaiians’ ship, the activity above her increased. She’d long ago stopped noticing the Pali Boys leaping from cable to cable. She might just as well watch the clouds, or the birds; what they did had nothing to do with her.

But she began to glance skyward now, because there was one she was searching for. A Pali Boy with a tattooed line running from chin to navel. She knew who it was. She probably wouldn’t have to look far. Still, she kept her eyes open.

Her presence aboard affiliated ships normally caused some sort of disturbance.
Los Tiburones
were as universally known as Pali Boys or Water Dogs. Where she went, drugs followed. Her footsteps were filled with the full spectrum of emotions as she catered to the needs of the lives adrift in the floating city. Yet no matter how well she served, the affiliated saw the opportunity to tax her. Moving aboard or through one of their ships cost, which was why she used runners. The easier and cheaper she could get product to its destination, the higher her profit margin.

She’d had this crazy idea running through her head since she’d seen Kavika yesterday. She could end his miserable existence by slipping him something swift and powerful. She could end his misery and walk away and no one would be the wiser. Or she could do something else. She knew enough to do do just about anything with the right ingredients. She might even be able to save his sorry Pali Boy ass.

She was a ship’s length from the
Hawaiian Legacy
when she spied him. Other Pali Boys orbited him like he was the center of a brown-skinned typhoon. He barely even moved. She saw him watching her. If he knew that she realized she’d been seen, he didn’t make any indication. Then again, he probably didn’t care. He was a Pali Boy. His version of the world was from the perspective of a child with an unbreakable toy.

So like them.

She made it perhaps ten meters closer before he swung down with one of his boys to intercept her.

She barely glanced at the tattoo, watching instead his hands and eyes. He was at ease. He didn’t register his followers. Instead, all his attention was on her. She gave him points. La Jolla had had that ability as well.

“You circling, shark?”

“Always.”

“Who you trying to bite?”