Flesh and Gold (28 page)

Ned parted from her at a boutique where he clothed himself in nuvopunque hypersuede and cylon, then had his hair cut butch and gold-dusted, and his chin depilated by a barber who was high-toned enough not to remark on the strange texture of the skin over his jaw.

When he came out from under the flickering lights of this establishment he had to look hard into the shadows under the balcony through the dazzles in his eyes. Zella was not there.

He thought, She went to have her hair done, probably, and was comforted by the very banality of this idea. He slipped through the streams of workers and early revelers toward the escalator, hands in pockets and plastering a look of foolish enjoyment across his face. A movement up on the balcony made him look there and he saw two Security men, a uniformed Solthree and a Dabiri in a leather tabard, standing with hands on the railing. Staring at him.

One bolt of terror hit him and he could feel his jaw tingling, whether to flash white or red he could not tell; two pairs of eyes locked with his, the uniform raised a hand with pointing finger extended like a gun about to fire, and as it came down, Ned saw Zella five steps away from them. She was wearing a little hat on her blond-white hair, a flurry of
black lace or feathers that came down her forehead, and dressed in something long, tight, and sequined black with a froufrou around the shoulders. She was rushing toward them, her red mouth smiling and speaking, her cheeks flushed or rouged, her red-gloved hands—her arms so white—reaching out as if to embrace them, embracing them, fingers touching lightly on the back of the man's neck (Ned felt the touch, its twinge of nerve running up into his scalp and down his spine). How could they not give her their attention?

“Zella!” he yelled or thought he yelled, but the sound was caught and dissipated in a screaming rush of second-class tourists on the down escalator, and he was gathered and swept up in it, no one looked his way, not Zella or Security, and by the time he fought his way up to the balcony they were all gone.

He stood in shock with his hands frozen to the carved serpents on the railing. He could not tell whether she had been saving or betraying him, with that light touch, as she had touched him in the darkness. His mind was awry, he knew that, but he could not set it straight. A man with diamond rings, a head taller than he and wearing purple velvet, was cooing in his ear, but his arm was firm over the thickness of his money belt. Ned blew him a kiss and danced away, shucked off the arms of a woman, a Kylklad or another kind of woman wearing a suit of feathers, yes, buying fancy feathers was a mistake, getting gold-dusted had been wrong, meant nothing, with Zella gone.

It was the smoke dulling his eyes, it was not Zella he had seen with the men, she would be waiting for him down there. No. He had seen Zella and no one else; she was not down there.

She had her I.D. and cashcard, no one would harm her. The Kylklad woman had harmed her already.

She had gone with those Security men in order to save him. She had gone with them because . . .

But she had not given him away. Because she had not seen him.

Ned shook himself out of these riotous thoughts. Unless Zella had taken those men somewhere else he could not find her except by going back to the top floor. Into the jaws of the same monster that had killed Jacaranda. No number of desperate rationalizations could change that, and no good would come of giving himself up no matter what Zella had done. Crowds and noise would hide him for a while, if his jaw did not flash like a neon on a bally.

If I'd been smart I'd have asked that Sziis where to find an outside line. Maybe I'd have been smarter to stay away from him altogether. He might have fingered me
.

He went back down on the same escalator that had led him and Zella into the Labyrinths the night before. Halfway down he saw the two uniforms, Varvani this time, standing at the foot—watching riders boarding the up ramp. He turned his head away from them, looking at the streaming crowds until he hit bottom, then slipped around the pillar and lost himself among them. Those two might have been waiting for someone else.

He and the place had become different within fifteen Standard hours of this twenty-six-hour day. He felt so deeply the absence of Zella's touch at his side it was as if a part of himself had been torn away. The effort of keeping the turmoil of his mind below the boiling point flattened everything that reached his senses; the deep low roar of a thousand chattering good-natured human beings beat threateningly at his ears, he blinked in the flashing lights and the smokes of cooking caught his throat, the song of sweet rain turned bitter:

Savage rain, O savage rain
,

the lutolin player sang:

savage rain stains the city, and
the country where it falls
and the pain behind my eyes
is the rain, the savage rain in
the wilderness, the rain
O the rain
. . .

He stopped in the doorway of a shop to catch his breath and pull himself together. Zella running toward the men and touching, Zella running—

He became aware of the darkness at his back without quite seeing it, and turned. The tiny shop, of less breadth than the span of his arms, was empty; the Lyhhrt, who had hammered thin gold bangles and woven filigrees that were beautiful no matter what the price, had gone, leaving no more than his shimmering gold-leaf world-symbol on the door.

This emptiness—beyond the glass was a blackness deep as space—struck Ned oddly, for no reason he could recall. He had never known this Lyhhrt, though he had bought plenty of Lyhhrt trinkets for women at other places. He had seen no Lyhhrt at all in Zamos's Palace, not even in the doctor's office where the mech had treated him.

It was the chilling emptiness of the place that touched him. He moved away along the walls and shopfronts where the noise ricocheted with multiple echoes above his head against the friezes of news reports and stock prices, looking across the moving thicknesses of bodies in all the colors and textures that thirty kinds of human flesh can show, handed,
clawed, tailed and tentacled, some with eyestalks, some half metal or plastic, one or two double-headed.

He nearly tripped over the beggar.

She was crouched beside him. Not crouched, but sitting against the wall with her back straight, legs folded and head bent to look into the depths of her bowl, her hands were folded in it. One of his own species, dressed in neat blue denims, her hair braided and her mouth surprisingly rouged bright pink. She was thin, strung out probably on more than one drug, nowhere near smiling. Not Zella. The pale hair that shadowed into the braid was not blond but had whitened with age—she was half again as old as Zella. But he could see by the set of her body that she had been strong once, a fighter to begin with, God knew what else after. There was no way for anyone lost in the Labyrinth to find a passage home.

Ned could not keep himself from tearing a leaf from his book and giving it to her. She raised her head and looked at him with eyes like smashed glass, and whispered thanks. He hurried away feeling like the coward he had pretended to be when Jacaranda had let him beat her at the entrance to another labyrinth.

Before he had gone three steps there was a scuttling back of him, and a squeeze-box voice that he recognized said, “Ah-yee, here is that healthy boy again who needs nothing from me, not even work!”

Ned looked around to find the Sziis in the act of circling him like the stripe on a barber pole. “What do you want?” He could not be sure this was the one who had cashed his card for him; he had never seen another.

The Sziis's head was dancing at eye level now with his tongue frilling out through his tiny sharp fangs, four of his little feet jigging to keep balance, tapping their rattling claws.
“He seems me different in his new goodies, but my sharp tongue smells him the same!” The silver scales writhed in the flickering red, blue, and green lights.

“You got your cut, didn't you?” Ned said. “Let me go by!” He kept his arm up but was careful to make no offensive movements. He dared not get into a fight down here, and those little teeth had very sharp points.

He turned away from the dancing colors, half-hypnotized—more than half. He had not kept watch on the crowds, and if the two thugs working their way forward with their eyes fixed on him were not the ones who had punched him up on the gym floor, it made no difference. The Sziis had fingered him.

He grinned and snarled, “Smarted me up, percentnik? Sold me to the bull-chuckers for a grab of my cashbook?” In the instant that the Sziis blinked and listened, Ned thrust out his foot and swept it under the serpentine body. The Sziis flopped with his four hands thrashing and his six feet pumping wildly.

Ned grabbed a handful of tokens from his pocket and flung them over the heads of the crowd at his pursuers, a Varvani who was a half head taller than almost everyone else, and a Bimanda who was taller by a head. They were not uniformed but wearing the same kind of pugs' clothing he had discarded. Those around them, distracted by what seemed a shower of gold, set up a flurry of catching and scuffling, and Ned slipped away.

But the crowd blocked him as well, and the Bimanda, a pale shark-shaped woman with a lot of teeth, swam through the press of it and caught him by the ankle as he was ducking under a bally. There was a mixed troupe from five worlds dancing, and the music and spielers were so loud that no one noticed what was going on beneath.

Ned twisted on his back to face the Bimanda; a flicker of
light from between the bally's slats caught her staring gold eyes and the triple racks of her teeth. He saw in the shadows that she was armed with a knife and reaching for it, but she did not have quite enough space to move her massive arms between her body and the platform, and could not thrust. While dancers thumped and trombones blatted above him he kicked her in the throat with his other foot, and when she let go his ankle and pulled away gasping, he rolled out from under the other edge, then jumped up and dodged away without waiting to dust himself off. His breastbone was as cold as if the knife had lodged there: whoever wanted him now wanted him dead.

He paused in a doorway to take breath and was almost knocked down by a clump of burly customers coming out. He realized that he was in the entrance of the grim tavern he and Zella had come through on their way to the alley. The figures that yesterday had been hunched over mugs of beer and
yoptai
, smoking
jhat
, were the same, or same as no difference. He would not have minded sitting down among them. He had not eaten since the early morning, or paused for rest since he had lounged in the barber's chair for that comfortable few moments.

He did not dare stop for that, but he tossed a brass token and took a handful of dried
kep
seeds while he fought his way through the smoke and made a side trip to the urinal, pausing for a few handfuls of brackish water. Coming out he heard voices raised in the smokedrifts: “Nobody come in here that you want! Sit down and order or get out!”

No one would talk to Security that way. He ran, and hard. Security at least would not fling knives at him. Their justice was rough, but over half their salary was paid by Interpol, and they balked at murder. He pushed out into the alley and did not stop at the cupboard he and Zella had found refuge in the night before. He heard the pounding steps of his
trackers too close behind him and the sound of shattering when the tall Bimanda ran into one of the hanging lamps and swung it against the wall.

The alley seemed to stretch endlessly without branching off, but as soon as he had the thought, he saw not twenty paces away a robot cleaner swinging around a corner to fill the breadth of the corridor and coming forward head-on fast with flashing lights and quivering antennas. He paused an instant to catch his breath, and a stunner bolt hissed over his shoulder and scored the wall. He took three springing leaps and vaulted over the big machine like a Cretan bull-dancer.

After that everything he had was used up and he had twisted his knee landing, but his pursuers were thick-bodied probable wrestlers, who had as much chance of flying as of leaping. The machine would not run them over, but would not let them pass either. They could do nothing but go back and duck into whatever door they found open.

Ned hobbled to the passageway the robot had come from and found a dead end leading to a closet like the one he had sheltered in. Panting he went on half-skipping down the alley, wound up with terror of another machine and afraid to try the latches on any of the doors he passed.

At the very end there was a door with an EXIT symbol straight ahead and to the left a narrow passageway leading to the open doorway of a restaurant kitchen. Clouds of steam were coming from it and he could see the shadowy outlines of bussers scraping food from plates and bowls. The smell was of garbage, too rancid to make him hungrier.

He lingered for a moment, not knowing where the exit led, not willing to cause a stir in the kitchen. A noise of crashing pots and clattering dishes broke out and two tall figures who did not care about making a stir burst through the clouds of steam yelling obvious obscenities in a language Ned did not know.

He pushed the heavy bar of the door. It opened with a hiss and let him into a small square space lit only by a dim red light, and leading only to a similar door. The first one shut behind him with a breath like a sigh. Only an electronic key would open it again. He heard faint laughter on the other side, and the words, “Got him now!” With dread, he began to realize where he was.

One of the thugs was pushing down the latch. Desperately he lunged at the bar of the outer one and fell, he thought, into space. The thin cold air dried his sweat in an instant, and as he rolled down three steps and landed flat on his back on concrete, the white sun Shen dropped beyond the world and the copper rim of the sky turned black and blazed with stars. It seemed to him that their lights were lancing themselves at him while he gasped for air beneath them.