Spares

Come on guys, I thought to myself. Let's try to act like normal people.

‘Is your friend letting us rest here?’ Suej asked.

I nodded. It was going to be a while before they directly addressed anyone other than me. She beamed, and whispered to Nanune.

‘Is it nice? Is Ratchet here?’ Nanune asked, and I shook my head.

‘No and no, I'm afraid,’ I said, winking at Mal. ‘But at least it's not raining.’

I introduced Mal to the spares by name. Suej and David shook his hand, and I caught him noticing David's missing fingers. Then Mal stood to one side and gestured them into his apartment. They trooped in, Mr Two ducking his head to get under the lintel.

Mal's apartment was pretty much as I remembered it. In other words, I knew what to expect. The spares didn't. Ten years ago he'd knocked down most of the internal walls, so that from anywhere in the apartment you could see the huge window he'd put in. This gave a view straight onto New Richmond. Mal had chosen to live outside New Richmond proper. He claimed he liked to get away from it every now and then, from the dark fizz and spark of the life inside – yet he'd deconstructed his apartment so he could see the building from wherever he stood. The interior decor was about what you'd expect from a single man who spent half his time drunk and the rest painfully sober. It was a mess, to be honest: baroque chaos overlaid with the smell of countless noodle-based meals.

Nanune actually started crying. Mal scowled at her and started kicking piles of stuff towards the walls.

‘Do you still have your display up?’ I asked quietly. Mal looked at me and nodded. ‘You couldn't, like, drape something over it?’

Mal grunted and trudged down the end, towards the window, and pulled a rope which ran down the wall. A sheet dropped from the ceiling, covering what was pinned on the walls – pictures of people who had been murdered in New Richmond. It covered them only briefly, unfortunately, because it carried on falling to the ground. Mal swore softly, grabbed a chair, and set about repairing the set-up.

Meantime, I led the spares into the area which served as his sitting room. I shoved huge piles of crap out of the way until there was enough space for them to sit fairly comfortably. Jenny's arms were wrapped tightly around herself, and her eyes were far away. In a nimbus of light from some partially hidden lamp, she looked beautiful and frail. Nanune still looked terrified, but Suej sat close to her, murmuring something. There were no words in what she was saying, but even I could feel the comfort in it. It was tunnel talk, I guess. Mr Two looked like he would withstand a direct hit by a tactical missile, and so I guess the spare on his lap was alright too. Considering the current circumstances.

‘How long are we going to be here?’ David asked. I realized he looked tired, though like a child trying to prove it was worthy of staying up late, his eyes were still wide open.

‘Not long,’ I said. ‘A couple hours. Just enough for me to go get some money. Then we're going to buy a truck and get out of here.’

‘To where?’ This had been David's constant refrain for the last twenty-four hours.

‘I still don't know,’ I said. ‘Somewhere safe.’ Jenny looked up at me and I winked at her. A ghost of a smile.

‘Florida?’ Suej asked hopefully.

‘Maybe,’ I said. A long time ago I'd told her about a place I knew there, and it had become fixed in her mind as a kind of nirvana. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was very unlikely we'd make it halfway there before we were caught.

I turned to Mal. ‘What's your water like these days? And don't say “wet”.’

‘There'll be enough if they don't all stay in too long.’ Mal had always known what I meant, especially when I was asking favours. I nodded to Suej, who understood, and she started drawing up a rota for the spares to wash. They weren't used to being dirty, and I knew that the one thing I could provide which would increase their short-term standard of living was a shower. It's good that there was that one thing, because there wasn't a lot of everything else, and wasn't likely to be in the foreseeable future.

‘We'll get your clothes washed … later,’ I said, vaguely, and wandered over to the window.

It was still raining outside. It always seemed to be raining in the Portal. In summer it's fat drops of dirty rain, in the winter thin biting lines of sleet – but it generally seemed to be dropping at least something out of the sky. The locals believe that it's rich people on the roof of the city, taking delight in pissing off the edge onto the lowlife below. Judging by the colour of some of the rain, they could be right.

New Richmond looked the same as it always had. Eerily so. That shouldn't have been surprising, and yet it was. I'd seen it in the distance on the way through the Portal, but that had been different. Seeing it through Mal's window was like seeing myself in one particular mirror again after a very long time away. I stared out at the points of light, the studs in the mind-fuckingly large expanse of wall. It still looked extraordinary, still said to me, as it always had, that I had to be inside it.

‘Are you okay?’

I turned to see Mal standing beside me, proffering a cigarette. ‘Yeah,’ I said, lighting one and savouring the harsh scrape of carcinogen on lung. I'd run out that morning, and not wanted to risk going into a store until the spares were safely stowed. He let me stand for a moment, then asked what he wanted to know.

‘Where have you been, man?’

For a moment, in the darkness of his apartment, Mal looked just as he always had. As if no time had passed, as if things were still the same and I had a home to go to after I'd finished chewing the rag with him. I shivered, realizing that I was crashing, that adrenaline was turning sour.

‘Didn't Phieta tell you? I asked her to let you know.’

‘I never saw her again, Jack. No one did. After you disappeared I put the word around, in case she knew something. But she was just as gone as you.’

‘I'm sorry, Mal. I thought about calling you. I just couldn't.’

He nodded, and maybe he understood. ‘I'm really sorry about what happened,’ he said. I nodded tightly. I wasn't going to talk about it. ‘If it's any consolation, the word is Vinaldi's having problems recently.’

I was glad that Mal was still enough my friend to simply say the name out loud. ‘What kind of problems?’

Mal shrugged. ‘Rumours. He's pretty much the man these days. Probably someone's just trying to climb over him. The usual shit. Just thought I'd let you know.’ He shook his head. ‘You really only staying a couple hours?’

I nodded tightly. ‘This shit's too deep to swim in. We've got to disappear and stay that way.’

‘Again.’ He smiled. ‘Something I want to tell you about later, though, before you go.’ Then he clapped me on the back with his massive hand and turned towards the spares. ‘You guys about ready for some noodles?’

They stared at him with wide eyes. ‘They've never had noodles,’ I said.

‘Then they haven't lived,’ he replied, and of course he was right.

I walked a long way through the bowels of New Richmond, my stomach growling, wishing I'd stayed to have some noodles with the spares. There hadn't been time. We had serious people after us, and were only safe for as long as it took them to realize that I'd given them a false name and previous address when I was taken on at the Farm. As soon as that was blown, all hell was going to break loose.

It was about two miles from my entry point to the stage where I started to climb, two miles of textured darkness and muffled sounds. When I saw the familiar shaft in front of me I stopped walking. I rolled my head on my shoulders, wishing briefly and pointlessly that I didn't smoke, then climbed up the metal ladder attached to the wall.

Ten minutes later my arms and legs were aching and I'd reached the horizontal ventilation chute on 8. The MegaMall's original ventilation system is now completely disused, and most of it is filled with refuse, sludge and unnameable crap from a million different sources. It's like a lost river – paved over and diverted and hidden, but still there in the gaps and interstices. All but a couple of the original inspection hatches were welded shut a long time ago. I was hoping that no more had been sealed while I'd been away, or I'd be in trouble.

I swung myself out of the shaft and crouched down in the horizontal corridor, using a pocket penlight to peer into the gloom. The way was still clear, so I walked quickly north for about eight hundred yards until I found the wall panel I was looking for. I loosened the bolts and put my dark glasses on. This wasn't a matter of vanity. I didn't want anyone to make me while I was in New Richmond. It was a small chance that someone would recognize me, but I don't like to take chances of any size unless they seem like fun. The other reason is that the hatch opens into a cubicle in the women's toilets in a restaurant on 8.

I pulled the panel back about a millimetre, saw the cubicle was empty, and clambered through the hole as quickly and quietly as I could. It wasn't easy. I stand over six feet tall and am kind of broad in the shoulders. Ventilation hatches aren't built for people like me. I could hear the thump of music beyond the door to the john, but it didn't sound as if anyone was there.

I replaced the panel, pulled the door of the cubicle open and stepped through. A woman was standing there. Nice one, Jack, I thought. At least you haven't lost your touch or anything.

She was hunched over by the sinks at the far end. She was very slim, had thick brown hair and was wearing a short dress in iridescent blue. Good legs in sheer stockings led to shoes with very sharp and pointy heels.

Uh-huh, I thought, making a guess at her profession. As I glanced at her she shifted slightly, and I saw the mirror over which she was bent, and the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill in her hand. I took a quiet step towards the door, assuming she was sufficiently occupied to miss me.

Wrong. She looked up vaguely but immediately.

‘Wow,’ she said. ‘A big man. Intense.’ Her face was caught somewhere between pretty and beautiful – her nose a shade too big for everyone's pretty, but the bone structure too perfect for beautiful. Her eyes were clear and green, and looked natural.

‘You've got good hearing,’ I said.

‘Yeah. It's a feature.’ She sniffed, and bent to do her other nostril. Then a thought occurred to her, and she peered at me again. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘Pest control,’ I said.

‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘Well I got a licence. I'm allowed to be a pest in here. You, I'm not so sure about.’

‘Is there any way,’ I asked, ‘that I could just walk out of here, right now, and you'd think nothing more about it, ever?’

She looked at me for a long moment, considering. Then she shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ she said, bending back over her mirror, and I turned and walked quickly out of the door.

A short corridor led out into the restaurant proper, and I skirted round the edge of the room toward the exit. With the time now coming up for nine o'clock, the place was in a transition period. The 8th floor runs on a kind of shift system. It romps twenty-four hours a day, but in practical terms this breaks down into three evenings of eight hours each. I once went round the clock twice. I can't recommend it, except as an expensive suicide attempt. The restaurant was about half-full of people from floors in the 60s and 70s, most of them either on the edge of unconsciousness or so wired you could hear their teeth vibrating. The others looked spruce and enthusiastic, rubbing their hands together in anticipation.

No one saw me walk out of the ladies, and no one paid any attention as I walked through the restaurant. Feeling light-headed at seeing so many normal people at once, I escaped into the avenue outside.

Floor 8 is an anomaly in the lower levels of New Richmond. It's fairly civilized. Floors 1 to 7 and 9 to 49 are bad. Each varies, depending on who's got control of it at any given time, but basically they're places you don't want to go, especially the 20s and 30s. They're dead code, cut out of the loop of normal life and left to fester by themselves.

You probably wouldn't actually want to go to the 8th floor either, but at least it has pretensions. Originally, it had been the lowest food court in the MegaMall, and it was still predominantly a place where you came to eat, drink or have a good time. Whatever the focus of your sexual inclination, you can go to the 8th floor and watch it dancing on a very small stage. You can also score recreational quantities of pretty much whatever you want, without danger of being caught in a fire storm. Most of it is only one storey high, and they keep the ceiling lights off, relying on orange street lamps which run along either side of the thoroughfares. If you don't check the corners too closely the floor has a kind of lop-sided charm, like a run-down but cheery portion of some European capital, or the Old Quarter of New Orleans. The ceiling is covered in creepers and foliage, making the roads feel like paths in a forest. Forests usually give me The Fear, but I like 8, and always have. It's full of neon, autumn jazz, the smell of good food and, for some reason, the feeling that it has just stopped raining. It never has, of course, but it always feels that way to me.

I walked quickly down the centre of the street, noticing what was new and what remained. The streets were quiet but music slunk out of most of the open doors, buoying up the desultory strippers who swayed on table tops. A few down-and-outs sat on street corners, stuck in main() with their handleMouseDown() mitts held out, but from the look of them I didn't think anyone's cursor was ever going to find them. It's an image problem, I think. Maybe they should all club together and hire a PR consultant, put out a few TV ads, find some way of making begging seem cool. I'm sure there's money to be made in it somewhere.

I had to be out of here quickly, but I wanted to make my last visit right. I stopped at one corner to catch a few minutes from a news post, just like I always used to. New Richmond has a twenty-four-hour local events feed on every corner. Flatscreen monitors hang like banners wherever your go, twisting and turning to foist information on the unwary public as they approach. It helps the upper floors think they know what's going on. They don't, of course, but they spend so much time talking about the twenty per cent it covers that no one even guesses at all the rest.

Arlond Maxen had opened a new school on 190, I learned. Big fucking deal. The people who lived that high had so much money they had to be sedated every morning to stop them going berserk with glee. The only floors richer than 190 to 200 were the ones built on top of the MegaMall – all owned by Maxen himself, the de facto king of the heap. In the news footage, Maxen looked the same as he always had: distant, a man who was always the other side of an LCD panel or cathode tube. It was some times hard to believe that he was anything more than a pattern of lights, moving across the face of New Richmond, always at one remove.

The next item said that Chief of Police McAuley was lobbying to relocate people out of 100 and fill it with concrete, to finally stop the plebs from accessing the higher floors. Cunning, I thought, and never mind that the real lowlife have fuck-off great houses on 185. The C of P in New Richmond is one of the world's premier dickheads, and also one of the best kickback receivers in the country. Never known to fumble a play.

The new hobby for the young and stupid was wall-diving: jumping out of upper-storey windows without a rope or parachute. And some woman had got psychoed and spread over twenty square yards of 92: the murderer had wrought ‘unspecified damage to her face’, and the cops were hopeful of an early arrest. Yeah, right.

Nothing much had changed.

Passing all the food stands wasn't easy. The one thing Ratchet hadn't been able to cook properly was burgers, and after five years I'd almost turned the idea of them into a religion. I took a turn off Main and walked some sidestreets until I reached the place I was going. The sign outside had been made bigger and more ostentatious, but apart from that the bar looked exactly the same. I stood outside for a moment, looking past the wooden window frames, stained deep brown with polish, at the dim pools of light within. I came here a lot, at one time, when things were different. Seeing it again made me feel old, and tired, and breathlessly sad.

Just as I was reaching for the door, something odd happened. I thought I felt a hand try to wheedle itself into my palm, down where it hung by my side. It was plump and warm, like the hand of an eight-year-old girl. I felt it try to pull me away.

As soon as I noticed it properly the feeling was gone, and though I turned and looked both ways up the sidestreet, there was no one there. I stood still for a moment, breathing shallowly, aware of a small tic under my left eye. So far, I'd managed to blank the things I should be feeling, but I knew I couldn't keep it up for ever. For the first time in years I wanted something which came in small rolls of foil, wanted it suddenly and completely with a need that defied all reason.

I forced myself to push open the door and walk into the bar. It was mainly empty, a few hopheads nodding over their drinks. I went straight through into the back area, which is smaller, cosier, and also where the owner tends to hang out.

‘Jack Randall,’ said a voice, and I turned.

Howie was sitting at one of the tables, piles of receipts and general administrative junk strewn all around him. That kind of stuff makes me want to go back to barter economy, but he lives for it. An unopened bottle of Jack Daniels was at his right elbow, next to a large bucket of ice and two empty glasses. He was slightly rounder, had lost a little hair and gained an alarming scar on his forehead, but apart from that he looked pretty much the same. He grinned at me affably, a picture of relaxation.

‘Guess you're not surprised to see me,’ I said.

‘To see you, no. To see you alive, always, and especially today. Dath? Paulie?’ Howie gave an upwards nod towards the couple of steroid abusers lurking round a table near the back. They rose and split up, one going to cover the front entrance, the other the back. I'm a cautious man, but Howie sleeps with a bazooka under his pillow. Dath nodded at me as he passed. ‘The guys at the back door gave me a call,’ Howie said, dropping a couple of cubes of ice into the glasses, and then filling both with whiskey. ‘Sounded like it had to be you.’

‘That's a big drink,’ I said, accepting a glass.

‘By whose standards? Come on Jack, I've seen you unconscious earlier than this. Time was you thought by nine o'clock the evening was getting old. You want any Rapt while you're here?’

I shook my head, silently cursing Howie for being able to read my mind. ‘I've cleaned up a little,’ I said.

He laughed. ‘You just think you have,’ he said, and lifted one of the glasses. ‘A man who lays it on like you did only ever goes on holiday.’

I chinked my glass against his and drank. Howie drained his in one, leaned back, and patted his stomach comfortably with both hands.

‘How's tricks?’ I asked, looking around the bar.

‘Tricky,’ he said. ‘But what about this? Couples, okay, they're always ringing each other up, inviting each other round for dinner. Sounds like a great idea at the time – some wine, fine conversation, a chance to peek down the other woman's blouse. But then the day starts to approach, and everyone's thinking Jesus H – why did we agree to this? The hosts are dreading all the admin – restocking the drinks cabinet, cooking fiddly food, making sure all the tubes of Gonorrhoea-Be-Gone in the bathroom are hidden. The guests are thinking about getting expensive cabs and babysitters and not being able to smoke. Complete downer all round. You with me so far?’

‘Yes,’ I said, though I wasn't sure I was.

‘Okay. So the idea is this. A Date Cancelling Service. The day before the evening's supposed to happen, the guests ring up and cancel. They call it off, politely, just before anyone has to actually do anything. Everyone gets a nice warm glow about agreeing to see each other, but no one has to tidy up afterwards or schlep baby photos halfway across town. Everyone can just sit in their own apartments and have a perfectly good evening by themselves, and they'll enjoy it all the more because they thought they were going to have to go out.’

‘Where do you come in?’

‘I come up with an excuse for cancelling – won't even have to be a good one, because no one wants to go through with it anyway. You can say, “My head has exploded and Janet has turned into an egg” and it'll be, “Oh, sorry to hear that, some other time then, yeah great, goodbye”.’

‘Where does the money come in?’

‘I take the cut of what it would have cost to buy the food and drink and cabs. In the early days it's nickel and dime, I admit, but wait till it gets into the upper floors. I'll make a pile. What do you think?’

‘I think it's a crock of shit,’ I said, laughing. ‘Even worse than the mugging service.’

‘You could be right,’ he admitted, grinning. ‘But you didn't come here for this – you can wait for the autobiography. What can I do for you, boss man?’

‘Has the word gone round?’ I asked, knowing the answer.

‘The word has gone round and around and met itself coming back. “Jack's in town. Everyone beware.” ’

‘Not any more,’ I said. Howie looked at me soberly.

‘I know,’ he said. ‘And I have to admit, that's not what people are saying. You were spotted out in the Portal, that's all.’ Howie lit a cigarette and looked at me closely. ‘How are you doing, Jack?’

I knew what he was asking. I wasn't ready to go into it yet, not even with him. Possibly not ever, with anyone.

‘I'm okay,’ I said. ‘But I'm in very deep shit.’

‘That I will believe. What can I do for you?’

I reached into my pocket and brought the chip out. It was a small oblong of clear perspex, about four centimetres by two, and five millimetres deep. Along one of the short edges was a row of tiny gold contacts designed to interface the unit to the motherboard of a computer. The number ‘128’ was printed matter-of-factly on the front. I'd found it in my bag after we'd left the Farm. I hadn't put it there, which meant Ratchet must have done. Howie took it from me, peered closely at it, and sniffed.

‘What's this?’

‘I think it's one-twenty-eight gigs of RAM,’ I said.

‘Don't recognize the make. Where's it from?’

‘A friend gave it to me.’

‘You're in luck,’ he said. ‘The market's volatile, and this week it's up. I can probably give you about eight for this without fucking myself up too badly.’

‘I'm in kind of a hurry.’

He reached under the chair and brought up a large metal cashbox. He placed it on the table and opened it, revealing bundles of dirty notes. All of the money in New Richmond is dirty, figuratively at least. There can't be a dollar bill which hasn't been involved in something illegal somewhere down the line, hasn't been handed over in a suitcase at some stage in its life. Howie counted off eight hundred dollars in fifties and held it out to me between two fingers of one hand. ‘You want a loan on top?’

I shook my head. ‘Thanks, but no. Don't know when I'll be this way again. Maybe never.’

‘So pretend I'm your friend and call it a gift.’

I smiled and stood up, slipping the notes into my inside pocket. ‘You are and I'll be okay.’

Howie pursed his lips and looked up at me. ‘You know there's a whack out on you?’

I stared at him. ‘Already? What, an old one?’

Howie shook his head. ‘Don't know, but I think it's new. Heard twenty minutes ago.’

‘How much is it for?’

‘Five thou.’

‘That's insulting. Let me know if it goes above ten,’ I said. ‘Then I'll start seriously watching my back.’