The Weapon

  Anyway, I was at a local food store with a cart, buying what appeared to be a typical load of bland, pre-cooked, frozen, microwaveable shitmeals, cardboard bread, instant mix-with-chunky-tapwater glop and overpriced packages of flour and stale spice to mix with the two kilos of real food, or rather, soy protein and vat grown pseudomeat that I picked up. We had to look typical. We also couldn't eat most of this stuff and stay in shape. The carbohydrate load would bloat us into well-marbled chairwarmers. So we gritted our teeth, held our noses and choked it down.

  I mindlessly drove the cart along the aisles, grabbed things as if comparing prices and appearing confused at the difference, occasionally snagging something seemingly on impulse, and doing my best to appear typical. I had a bored, vacant stare on my face as I rolled through the checkout and waved a cash card over the sensor, then unloaded the food from the store cart and into my little wire mesh pushcart. I was just turning to leave.

  I saw a man shake, drop a bundle of boxed meals that scattered across the floor like tiles, then sag back against the front wall.

  "You okay, guy?" I asked. It was obvious to me he was not okay. His face was gray, he was panting in pain and clutching at his left chest and shoulder. I was thinking "Myocardial infarction" as he dropped his remaining bag and collapsed.

  In a second I was alongside, easing his fall and getting him laid out. I ripped open his jacket to relieve pressure on his throat and chest, pressed his neck to check his carotid pulse and said loudly and clearly, "Someone call an ambulance. Heart attack."

  It was pretty severe, but he could be saved if they were quick. His eyes were rolling back in his head and his blood pressure obviously dropping as he went into V-fib, but he was still gasping for breath. I started chest compressions at once. All this was pure trained reflex. I've rehearsed similar scenarios so many times I could do it in my sleep.

  I was so focused, I didn't notice what has happening around me until hands clamped on me and dragged me to my feet. An angry voice demanded, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

  I snapped back to my surroundings to realize they were cops. Two of them. Burly. Brown shirts, armor underneath, helmets and belts of gear that were appropriate to tank crew, not public safety officers. The one who had questioned me was wearing the practiced snarl that thugs learn to intimidate people. "Administering CPR to a heart attack victim," I replied.

  "Are you a doctor on duty, wearing some uniform I don't recognize? Do you have proper authorization or a waiver? Or did you just decide to have a whack at playing doctor on this guy?" he asked.

  "I'm— " I started, then my brain locked my mouth down. The only people here authorized to render medical aid were doctors or medics on duty, in uniform, usually after getting a waiver signed. There was no first aid certification, no emergency rules of succor, no Good Samaritan defense. As I remembered this, the victim curled up tighter and gasped. He twitched and died, just like that. Had I been able to stay on him, I might have kept enough blood flow to hold him for the ambulance crew, just now pulling up outside. He might still be revivable, depending on how fast they got him into a stasis box or hit him with drugs, but they'd have to "routinely" check his ID first. They'd killed him with their assinine rules.

  "You killed him!" the other cop shouted. "Just because you interfered."

  I just hate the way these sheep think. "If it's not in your training, don't try to do anything in case you make it worse." No one is allowed surgical tools, weapons or fire extinguishers in their homes or cars because "such things are best left to professionals."

  The medics were crowding through the door in a hurry, but were going to be hindered by the circle of gawkers. I swear, people who stand around and stare at accidents should just be exterminated on the spot. "Heart attack, V-fib," I said to them.

  They looked confused, then one smiled condescendingly and said, "We'll find out shortly, sir." It was that type of smug expression you just want to smash.

  The cops were hassling me, spinning me around and preparing to slap on cuffs. Those would be followed by a locking belt, ankle shackles and a hood, and I'd be wheeled out to a van on a dolly. It takes time to break out of even a half-assed jail, and I couldn't have them running my ID. Holes would show up eventually. So I had to break out right now.

  I Boosted even though most of this would be over before it kicked in, and took charge of the situation. I went limp enough to let them start tugging at me, then shoved in the direction they were pulling. My left arm went across the throat of cop number one, and I kneed him in his groin armor hard enough to break the plastic against the tendons of his thighs. Pain shot through my leg but I ignored it. As the second one tried to wrestle my arm down, I turned and punched him in the face. I danced my feet into a good stance and shot out a knife-edge foot to crack his rear ankle, then threw his front one out from under him for good measure. His face had that pained look people get as a hundred kilos drops onto a broken ankle. He fell. I continued the turn, dropped into a sweep that put my leg through those of number one, now bent over and gasping, who fell backwards and landed fat ass first on his partner. I swung the foot up and back and drove the heel into his face as hard as I could. I rolled back onto my shoulders and went into a back somersault with a half twist, landing on my feet and facing the crowd just as Boost kicked in. Everything took on that lengthened focus and the sharp edges that are symptomatic of the drug. Bliss! I enjoyed it far more than was healthy.

  I didn't smash the face of the medic who'd given me that grin that deserved to be smashed. He just might save that poor bastard's life. I did elbow a couple of gawkers in the ribs and kick a couple of shins. It served two purposes; it got me through the crowd and it might teach them not to do that. Once through, I sprinted, dodging and hurdling obstacles. I cleared a baby stroller while doing a lovely ballet-like turn around the father pushing it, slipped between him and the mother and kept going. I went through the "In" door as it opened, cut through the incoming mob and ran faster than any out of shape wimp on this low-gee ball of mud could crank. Barring an Olympic sprinter, I was free of the local crowd. I changed pace to a walk as I hit the corner and turned left, hoping to confuse anyone watching by camera. I found a cab, climbed in and said, "Fourteen hundred block of west Sixteenth Street," swiped my card as I opened the other door and stepped out. If they were tracking electronically at that point, I hoped the cab would cool my trail.

  But I couldn't count on it. This was the most intrusive society in history, and I was wearing a tracer. I touched my phone and said, "Dial Jim Four," which gave me a one-time use connection we'd prepared for cover. On the second chirp, Tyler answered "Hello" and I said, "Trash, locations five or nine, now," and disconnected. The cab was pulling away and I crossed the street through the traffic, risking a jaywalking ticket. Either this ID would cease to exist in a few minutes, or I'd be captured. The ticket wouldn't matter. I got into an alley and sprinted—alleys are less monitored, and thank God and Goddess I was on the surface rather than above or below or in a box. It was dark, stank of urine and rotten trash and was a perfect place to toss the phone, behind a trash container where it would take a few seconds to find and a few more to approach with their police procedures. The alley T'ed, I turned left and heard that odd echo steps make in such corners. I slowed as I neared the next street.

  I turned right and walked two blocks, recovering from the endorphin rush of Boost. It, adrenaline from the fight and the instinctive thrill of action were an almost sexual flood. A part of my brain thought of Deni for a moment until I pushed it back. A few deep breaths and meditation got me to a normal state again, except for a slight chromatic aberration around the edges of images and a thudding of my pulse in my ears.

  I saw another line of cabs and pulled out my emergency cash card. Climbing into one, I gave it directions and swiped the card. It took off.

  Here's where I was tense. Had they traced me? Had they IDed the vehicle? If so, it would lock me in and head for a police station, and we'd play
this game all over again. But I needed the vehicle to get me a few blocks away at least. As it stopped at a traffic point, I stepped out. I grabbed the nearest slideway and took it one block back the way I'd come from, just to confuse any human watchers, then walked through another alley and took a different one.

  It must have worked. I wasn't captured. Twenty minutes later, ready to have my own heart attack from exertion and fear, I was at Location Five. It was the corner of an apartment block in a neighborhood safe enough to be out in, trafficked enough by soft criminals for us not to be noticed. Cameras here were random, so I should be safe. No need to use backup location Nine.

  It was a bit dirty by Earth standards, meaning the ground was littered in stale food packages and other drifting trash with dust ground into them. Graffiti was minor, only six gang "codes" and a halfway decent mural. A small strip of what had been grass had been abandoned to weeds and mud. And a rustle indicated someone approaching. Tyler.

  She didn't say a word, simply came out from under stairs and nodded. I started walking. She'd follow a few tens of meters behind to keep me covered. Had the tracer been an immediate threat, she had an EMP device to burn it out.

  Thirty minutes later we were back in our main safehouse. Everyone gathered around. I gave a brief rundown and everyone looked serious as I concluded, "So let people die. We have a cover to maintain."

  Kimbo asked, "What are you going to do about your tracer, boss?"

  "Stay here until we find out if I need a new one," I said. "I need you to try to find out how hard they'll be looking for me. I may have fucked the dog for all of us." If they took my fingerprints off any of the food packages, they'd get a null there, too.

  "I'll look," he said. "Don't we have some spare tracers?"

  "Yes," Tyler said, "but we have to match physiques and jobs closely. And Marquette will have to disappear if they come looking. Luckily, he won't show up on a DNA trace, as he isn't actually Marquette."

  "So a lack of perfect cover will protect me," I laughed, mostly in relief. It also might arouse suspicion as to why I didn't show up on file. We couldn't have many incidents like this. I couldn't fathom how anyone could live in this shithole, or why they weren't killing cops, politicians and political scientists out of hand. I'd been secretly cheering the whole time when one of the overclass got gapped on the headline news. I'd stop doing it now. Being secret about it, that is. They deserved to die. Preferably slowly and painfully. The junior flunkies working for them I had mixed feelings about. Some of them had joined the gang just to keep themselves safe. On the other hand, if they had enough moral courage to refuse to help the masters, it wouldn't be as bad as it was.

  I was still tense. My face couldn't be changed without surgery. Yes, there are nanos that can do that; I would be taking some. The effective change is small, however. I understood that the chances of them IDing me by face were very slim, but that still left a miniscule chance they would. That tiny risk grew in my brain and would continue to haunt me. I growled at the idea already. And what if they showed up here looking for Marquette?

  Hell with it. I needed a drink and I didn't dare have one in case we had further repercussions that evening. I needed a blowjob and Deni was off limits, Tyler even more so and I couldn't waste the cash or risk a local. I'd have to settle for food and sleep.

  I had a sandwich, bland as our covers required, and lay down. As I started to doze, I recalled an old joke: "Don't tell my mother I work for the UN government. She thinks I pimp six-year-old boys to spacers at Breakout Station." I chuckled myself to sleep.

  Chapter 21

  After determining that my ID was still good and I wasn't wanted, we did more recon and learned the difference between the fairly normal (from our view) cities and the megacities. The megacity dwellers referred to those from smaller towns as "Wides." Wides referred to their opposites as "Cubes" who lived in "Boxes."

  Tyler and I made a reconnaissance tour of the Boxes in Washington-Baltimore. It's easy to visualize a 300m square building 1000m tall. It's not hard to calculate the materials and strengths.

  Have you ever been in one? To borrow a phrase from Kimbo: "That's a huge fucking building. It doesn't even make any sense."

  We entered at ground level late one night. Two sliding doors created an airlock, ostensibly to save energy. It also slowed people down. I made note of that. I could use it.

  "Impressive," Tyler murmured. She had her hair trimmed into a crest with hanging tiny bells, short at the sides and dyed purple, which was the style at the time. It and her snug gray outfit made her look even smaller. The skates she wore affected her proportions even more. I probably looked just as goofy in a T haircut with a slashed black shirt over a T-shirt.

  I made a barely perceptible gesture and we rolled off to our right, holding hands. We looked like a flirting couple as we dodged and wove carefully among the crowd, which even at this hour was heavy. Escalators were there, and we kicked the skates back onto their retaining springs on our calves so we could step on.

  This place was a rat maze. Corridors ran north and south, east and west, a few diagonally, some sloped between levels, depending on where tall rooms and facilities might be. Open atria were crossed by slidewalks and escalators. Elevators and occasional dropshafts ran up and down skeletal frames in those atria, within hallways and outside the structure. Viewing platforms and windows clashed with each other. I was keeping a tactical map as we went, there were local screens with directions, and I was still lost in minutes. It was nuts. Each one of these monstrosities was a microcosmic city unto itself. Its residents might leave only to work in another, returning later. To that end, tubes like hamster trails linked them to each other, hundreds on a side. The streets below ran through tunnels, for all practical purposes.

  It was remarkably quiet in our current location, two floors above a section where dance clubs and bars predominated. The music echoed up to us, the beats muffled to thumps and the highs sibilant whines. I made another signal to Tyler and we turned down a side passage. About five meters down was a sign that read "authorized personnel only." Service corridors. That's what I wanted.

  The door was locked. Fifty meters away was another one. Locked. The one after that wasn't. We slipped inside.

  I sped up, barreling down the hallway. Heavy tools and cleaning gear stood against the walls, in gross violation of building codes. The walls were cracked, with a sheen of age and occasional scribbles of notes from workers, to act as reminders or as messages to other shifts. There were occasional low-value personal items left around, like staff jackets and battered cases. All stuff that no one would bother stealing. We took it all in as we played chase, until we stopped near another door to grope and kiss before heading back out into the public areas, giggling and grinning as we did so. Any observer would assume I was interested in her skinny body, which would make me a freak by Earth's soft standards, but they wouldn't question it. It would never occur to them that I'd noted four different service elevators, one for heavy maintenance gear, two for moving household goods and store merchandise and one for the staff who cleaned the main areas. I'd gauged the locks, the apparent traffic flow from the wear on the walls and floor, the capacity of the elevators and the uniforms that were worn around here. Tyler nodded slightly. She'd seen what she needed to, and we'd compare notes later. We skated on.

  Even within this microcosm were good and bad areas of different types. We came into a wide open space, built on several levels, that was devoted to entertainment. Different types of music and crowd noise echoed out to us, calling at the social animal within to join the festivities. I looked for and found the tiny logo that declared the entire complex the property of Universal Entertainment. Every arcade, every theater, every bar, club and restaurant within view plowed money into one huge conglomerate, that then plowed it into the government in taxes. So the 30% or so of income that people actually kept after taxes and thought of as "theirs" they were indirectly using to support the very mechanisms they resented. Ironic, and
a weapon to be used against them.

  We kept moving as crowds brushed past us. It was amazing. One of the clubs had "glass" fronts that slid open, allowing customers within to stare out at the passing crowds. In this case, all of the tenants were young women, dressed as custom dictated to show off their assets. Of course, they couldn't actually show them off by law. They could only hint. Sometimes blatantly. The scene made me laugh. I had a momentary vision of walking up to one, handing her a M500 cash card and asking, "Three-twenty a kilo?" Yes, it was that kind of meat market.

  They had an odd morality here. Women would show off their tits, almost but not quite entirely bare, but it's socially, morally and in some cases legally offensive to mention the fact. One is supposed to pretend not to see her body, while being attracted to it. I found it safer to simply not get involved. And really, pale, low-G types are not my thing anyway.

  "I see a dozen places that look good," Tyler said.

  "Yeah," I agreed. We were thinking of places to cause mayhem, not places to be entertained. We wandered slowly through, spotting exits, service corridors, all our usual targets. Our jabber was meaningless after weeks of practice. Occasionally, we'd pretend to talk to someone on the phones built into our jewelry.

  "Hey, that sounds like Weinrib singing," I commented.

  "Yeah. Total do, man," Tyler replied. "Liddy. Catch the sparkly," she said, indicating a woman in a reflective ultraviolet lit dress, one of the few people with any color.