BOOK SIX - !ARBATAX¡
CHAPTER TWENTY - “OVERDOSE!”
Back in Tao City, Turpin lies on the grimy Andromeda bed,
watching pawnshop neon flicker and bathing his mind in the noise and music of
the street and the hotel. It’s hot –
beastly hot – the whole jammin’ planet spinning
towards the yellow dwarf, Yamsu, like a drunk
careening cross a busy boulevard. Die
has three solar cycles: Yamsu, at seventy-nine Soldays, is the shortest.
Midwinter when Aegelweiss touched down, it’s
only a few more days to the summer solstice when, as Rats has told him, the
whole of Tao City goes bool. Something bites him and
he sits up… rubbing his neck… he puts on his shoes and starts down the hall
towards the rawther, where he transacts business,
rinses his hands in one of Gargareeva’s filthy sinks,
and starts back, but lingers, hearing the soft music playing through the open
door of room 640.
In spite of himself, he can't help glancing within. A heather… a plud with long, light brown hair and green eyes… regards
him quizzically; she’s mature, probably ten years older than the snaker, but… a plud!
She’s seated on a plasteen chair,
watching him through the cracked, pitted mirror attached to the wall over a
small chest of drawers and he’s watching her back.
“Sorry,” he turns away.
“Don't be!” the plud encourages
him. “Nothing wrong in looking…”
“Well, thank you, then!
Are you new here?”
She turns away from the mirror, regarding him directly. “You're polite – very, very polite. No, I’ve had this room for… oh… five solyers? Six? But you’re new
here. You're a snaker,
aren't you?”
“Uh… how did you know?” Turp
asks. “Somebody tell you… Al? One of those…
Her face is a pool that he wishes he could dive into. “Somebody native to
“Wouldn't do that…” Turpin blurted out, worrying as he did that
he was making too much noise.
“You can close the door. I meant behind you… if you wanted to
come in.”
“I uh… sure,” he says and then, foolishly, thrusts out a
hand. “Timur
Turpin, ma’am, just an ordinary snaker.
“…and you may sit down, if you want. I'm sorry, there's only the
bed. But it’s clean…”
“Now you're being polite.”
His hand still out, he takes two steps forward and sits on the
bed. The heather briefly clasps it, massaging
his fingers with a smile.
“That wasn’t so hard, was it?
You may call me Lyca,” she says, shaking her
head. The even-numbered rooms look out
over an alley behind the hotel, not the Baawl, and
pulses of white light from the facility across the alley… something medical, Turp has never quite found out… are refracted off her hair
like diamonds. He looks,
closer, sniffs… if she has some of the wolf in her, if she’s not wholly plud, then that particular occurrence is generations old.
“I have another residence,” Lyca
allows, “but I keep this room as a sanctuary and as a sort of… well… a
memento? Is that the word. It reminds me of who I used to be, and who I
am…”
“You’re a native? A…”
He’s about to say the word Die-Hard that danks
use to describe jims born on this God-forsaken planet,
but he bites it off. After all, she
thinks he’s polite.
Lyca
rises from the rickety Andromeda chair, sits down on
the bed next to him. Smells of chocolate
and money, Turpin thinks, briefly. “I
was born and grew up on Terra, Terramerka, if you
will. But now I live in
The question puzzles Turpin.
“About?”
The heather emits a low, throaty laugh. “Anything. You.
Me. Rassoul. Or what about al-Gool, still a running sore?”
“You know it?” Turpin starts.
“But I never…”
She chuckles again. ‘Haven't been back inside for years. Some things, though, they never change. Time here is a sort of a loop – well, three
loops, actually. Events repeat
themselves. All of us players, in a qubelette someone else produced. Never, never change…”
Room 640… nominally the same as Turpin's own, has a scapescreen aligned with the window, so Lyca
waves over the medical facility and its light, summoning up a twilight scene of
a Terran desert which, she tells him, is a place
called Texas, where she was born. She
removes an old, dark bottle from the top drawer and a pair of plasteen cups – Turp starts as he
leans forward for a closer look at the label.
“That’s Terran!” he marvels.
“Sometimes I indulge myself,” the heather admits. “Like they say, life is short and there’s no
purpose to drinking bad khegma.
She digs out the cork and pours a finger of dark liquid into
each of the cups as Turpin shakes his head and points. “That’s expensive!”
“What’s the purpose of having skilk if
you can’t spend it,” Lyca taunts him, and the snaker thinks, again, that she talks too much about death.
They touch glasses and the snaker
takes a sip, then a longer sip. It’s
some sort of brandy that flows down his throat like liquid sunlight and he
shakes his head before pointing…
“You have a ring?”
“As I said, I have another residence. One of somewhat better quality, an estate of a
higher estate…”
“Was that a joke?” Turpin asks, befuddled. The Terran brandy
seems to have suffused his brain with happy, empty thoughts, but, as he frowns,
he thinks that he has met this heather before.
“I think I might have seen you and a man… your husband? At the Yasrick, couple weeks ago? Avian face with long claws…”
“I love my husband,” Lyca settled back
on the bed. “But…
“There's always a but…” Turpin nods.
Lyca
rolls over onto her stomach, hoisting her rear end upwards. “Did you know that's an old Terran word? It means…”
And she slaps her backside and then, if the snaker
hasn’t gleaned her meaning, strokes his thigh.
“I'll bet you know lots of old Terran
words,” Turpin says.
“Lots.” He leans over, as if to try kissing her, but Lyca backs away, saying “Let me change this.” She rolls off the bed and onto her feet,
picks up a clicker from the dresser and clicks through scapescenes
until reaching a rocky Terran beach in light fog.
Crashing waves echo through the moodbox speakers.
When they kiss again, neither lets go.
Some hours later, Turpin rises groggily, as from drugged
sleep – remembering the Terran brandy and then all
that followed. It makes him grin
lopsidedly. Waves
still crash on the scapescreen and Lyca lies across his knees… their clothes a mixed heap on
the floor. Her ring lies on the
bureau as also, an inhaler, the bottle of brandy (empty, he perceives with a
scowl) and another tiny bottle leaking clear fluid…
Time to rise and shine. Rats will be waiting,
the boneship at Tony’s and
perhaps Broonzy will be back from his errand with
plenty of skilk…
“Lyca?” he whispers, touching her
shoulder to shake her awake, then recoils.
Her flesh is cool to the touch, the Regency’s modulators that ration the
light and the temperature having turned both down for the night, although a
thin light creeps through the perimeter of the screen and it’s starting to
warm. As he lifts his knees, she rolls over
on her back… eyes open, froth covering her chin.
“O Rassoul!” Turpin swears in the
vernacular of Die, since an appeal to other deities or devils might not apply
in this place. “Rawth! Rawth! Rawth!”
Safety… his own… follows swiftly on the
heels of surprise and regret. He
snatches his clothes up from the floor, dresses hurriedly, and his eyes sweep
the room for anything left behind. He leaves the ba-roor
but pockets the ring instinctively, placing an ear to the door. Nothing. He opens it carefully, closes it behind him… waves
still crashing on the distant beach of the shapescreen…
and walks stealthily to his own room, counter-clockwise so as to escape the
notice of the ubiquitous Al-from-down-the-hall.
From 613, he returns to the community disinfectionary
with a towel and his old sandals, showers with precious water… five minutes for
two soys… shaves his snout, dresses and goes back,
finding a half carafe of lukewarm caffa before
heading downstairs, where Rats is waiting on the stoop.
“You look like knaferawth,” the little
gambler sneers. “What kept you? Get your ears waxed?”
Broonzy
doesn’t return. The heat of the day only
adds to the labors of transporting some of the ductwork stolen off of Aegelweiss and hidden under cowls by the boneship and Turpin, tired and dehydrated, almost forgets
the horrors of the night before.
Thinking of nothing more than an ale (or five)
at al-Gool, he and Rats drive back into town, only to
find the Baawl blocked off two blocks from their
domicile.
The Andromeda is surrounded by medics and shurts
and pressgangs with their pictureboxes… he
follows Rats to the queue awaiting entry, inquiring of an obviously worried Gargareeva… huffing and sweating an odoriferous black ichor from his skin… on the stoop.
“Wha’ happen?” Turp
feigns innocence, as, with difficulty, the landlord finishes explaining
something to one of the shurts.
“Lady die go cold…” Gargareeva
croaks, “fine lady, most out the town. Long in, you floor. Take bad bah roor!” he adds with an evil smirk.
“There any other kind?”
Rats shakes his head.
The landlord nods to the shurts tasked with
keeping the public away from the hotel, so Rats and Turpin are allowed to mount
the steps and, on the sixth floor, encounter a corridor full of shurts and looky-lous. “Jam-all,” Rateyes
bids him farewell, continuing up the steps as the snaker
recognizes a familiar, if out-of-place face in the hallway. Suddenly his memory snaps back, that old man
is Arbatax,
from the Yasrick Casino… the methane king is on his
knees, weeping… occasionally lunging towards 640, only to be restrained by shurts. A sour-faced killshurt, a swynehyde in an old fashioned double-breasted suit
notices the newcomer lingering at the edge of the crowd and crooks a finger
towards Turpin…
“You…” grunts the shurt,
“you live here?”
“Sir?”
“What jammin' room you in, joe?” the pigman
demands to know and Turpin answers deferentially…
“
“Where you been?
“Workin'…”
An offshurt with the detective kicks
at a puddle of slime on the hall carpet, then laughs
out loud.
“Working?
Nobody in this jammin' rawthouse
works, nobody’s held a job for ten solyears. Where
do you work?”
“Shut up!” the killshurt snaps, “I'm
in charge of this…”
“Sorry, sir.”
Before the swynhyde can ask Turpin
himself, Arbatax… still on his knees… resumes wailing,
"Lyca!… Lyca!…"
and scratching at the filthy carpet with his claws a shurt
leads him off, the detective making brushing motions on his sleeve as if the
methane czar were only more hotel garbage before resuming his interrogation.
“So where were you last night, workin’
jim, early morning – maybe –
round about oh five, Terran?
“Sleepin',” Turp
replies.
“Every dank here was working or sleeping!” the offshurt pipes up again, “You'd think we had a joint full of
regular citizens here…”
“Jam it! You see anything
last night, hear anything? You like bah-roor?”
“No, sir…” Turpin answers, one reply fitting all…
“He's lying…” the offshurt protests…
“They're all lying, here,” says the pigman. “Get the jam back to
go
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