Rhodes
Someone is shaking my arm.
Someone is shaking your arm.
Blood seeping out of my palm. She's bleeding. I can't see anything and I can't feel anything and someone is shaking my arm. It tastes like smoke. I want to sleep for five more minutes, please. I'd sooner sleep a thousand years than get up from this. Calling it quits. I'm calling it quits.
I'm shaking your arm. Go away.
It smells like mud. I'm in bed still. I'm in a cot somewhere. I'm falling off a rooftop. I'm holding a—
If she falls asleep with a concussion she'll die.
If you fall asleep she'll die.
If I fall asleep I'll die.
Someone is shaking my shoulder. When I look up I see two beady red eyes like rubies on a face like an insect and I want to go back to bed and I'm tired, I'm finally tired, I'll go to bed now.
She's screeching now.
Someone is shaking your arm.
If I die she'll die.
If you die she'll die.
Just five more minutes.
No, no. You don't have five minutes. Don't call it quits. Get up.
Please.
I need you.
-
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-
The sound of heavy footsteps passing by the door. The sound of a drop-ship outside blotting out everything. Papers and rags all scattered in every direction, and smoke, and fire, but the fire is dying. I try to stand up.
-
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-
I get woken up by a gunshot from somewhere through that door. Eyes heavy-lidded and head as light as a feather. When I look down there is almost no light except for the same two red eyes and I can see myself splayed across the floor of the closet for a few moments. Someone has put a rag on top of my knee where it's bleeding. It feels cold. I go to try and touch it.
-
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-
I enter a peaceful and dreamless sleep for an eternity.
-
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-
When I wake up again I realize, with some frustration, that I'm not dead and I haven't gone anywhere. As with every time this kind of thing happens I come back to my memory of past events very gradually and in reverse order. I am in a closet. You are in a bedroom closet on the thirteenth floor of the Perium Apartment Block of the Finest Seawalk District of Salt Row. Okay. How'd I get here? You were trying to abduct a Tasran woman. That doesn't sound good. You failed. In what way. She's abducting you instead.
I look over at the two beady red eyes in the dark. She is staring at the slice of amber light coming from below the closet door. Her features are unclear without any light but I know that she has a bum leg and a frail body and she couldn't have gotten me here herself. I carried her. She told you to. I remember. It looked safe and hidden. It is safe. I know what I'm doing.
No, I don't.
I sit back and lean my head against the wall and feel something seeping out of my ear and when I go up to reach it my body goes, whoa, Nelly, there's not enough blood in your body to be lifting your arm like that. Fuck you. Okay. I just lean back and wait for time to pass.
Work your way backwards.
I am here to abduct this Tasran woman. A Tasran is a whole new kind of species, discovered by human Pioneers all across the Dust Sector upon our arrival! As natives of the planet Jazid—
I know.
Why am I abducting her.
I look over and she's curled up in the closet and she couldn't be much taller than half my height and like all of these bugs I don't have a clue what expression is on her face. She's hiding with me. Who are we hiding from?
Her world became a flash of brimstone and her body got split open and she bled until she was dessicated. Then she spoke. I'm not dead. I just want five minutes.
Don't sleep with a concussion, Nelly, you'll die.
I just want five minutes.
- 1 -
By the time I had the strength to stand it had been about thirty hours and I was starving to death. The Tasran woman's name is Rhodes. She suggested we wash ourselves under the dock a few minutes from her apartment and then beg for food from a street market. Then she told me she could kill me if I didn't help her, and I didn't ask how. I hadn't said anything in a while.
She leads us out of the closet hidden beside her wrecked bed. Floral sheets and shattered wood furniture. Lots of particle board bits everywhere, and an enormous hole in the plaster and concrete wall separating it from the outside world. I can see a reflective glass-and-steel building across the way. Dust in the air still and four enormous bloodstains on the unvarnished floorboards. I follow her weakly out her door and into a stonelike stairwell with corroded railings.
-
Rhodes is only four feet tall. Her wings are clipped and she walks with a terrible limp and has to sit down constantly to rest. I despise this about her immediately and despite being half-dead I don't sit with her, but she tells me not to go ahead or she'll kill me. She talks a lot and she talks very quickly and frantically. She calls me 'freak woman'. Then she apologizes. She has four antennae and three are tiny nubs and her eyes are crimson gemstones cut funny, with her faint pupils like flaws in crystal.
-
We reach the edge of the city seafront during dusk with the sky alight in auburn and grey. Enormous concrete seawall stretching from end to end many kilometers across, serving as a boardwalk mostly for freight. A piece of old scaffolding takes us down.
The beach here recedes too far into the dock and has no sand, just rocks. Crags and sharp stone aggregate in the shape of a sandbar. I step into the seawater to try to clean myself and my leg hurts badly upon touching an incoming wave and I wail and fall back onto the shore. I wish I could drink this water. I would kill for some water.
She washes her clothes and I sink against the gravel for a while and contemplate falling asleep but she screeches at me until I'm awake, and we clamber back up to the dock.
-
Rhodes explains that we're going to a wet market. She explains that we're in Salt Row and that it's a poor district and I'll have no problem blending in. I don't even know what city we're in. You've got a fever, honey, but that's okay. Look for some sign of where you are, Nelly.
Now I can raise my head up a little and I stop for a second along the harborside. The sunset is behind us, behind a thousand old steel and mooncrete buildings reaching up into the sky in choir formation, and the sea looks terribly unfamiliar. Stretching on forever. A pale green expanse stretching on forever. And past the ocean and past the clouds and past the sky there is some angular tower of dizzying size peering through the firmament. I'm struggling to stay upright and I hear Rhodes tell me, don't drop me if you're about to fall over.
I put her down and then sit as a collapsed pile of limbs.
My eyelids are so heavy still, my body isn't working for me. I feel like I'm getting piloted around by someone else. Knees feel hot against the mooncrete of the boardwalk. It's like concrete, orbit-shipped directly to where you need it! Mix on-site for whatever the situation demands. I can see an enormous harbor to our right—some ten thousand containers there, and ships in the sea all the way to the horizon. From here they look small. I remember getting to port in a ship like that one there, an enormous freighter twenty stories high. Faces of sailors who didn't ask who I was.
"Do you eat fish?" she asks.
I look over. She's as pale as me now. Some sheltered city rat whose entire life is on a computer. Some of her head is cleaved off and replaced with aluminum and wires stretch into her chitin. Her red eyes are blinking rapidly in the evening light.
I nod.
"They give away offcuts to hobos. You look poor," Rhodes explains, "but you need to hide your arm, because it looks expensive."
My right arm is made of metal. I got it when I was younger. When I look down at it it doesn't look particularly expensive and it hasn't served me very well but I don't have the strength to argue.
"And I don't look poor because I got this." She points at her head like I'm a child who needs visual instruction. Maybe I am. "So I can't do the talking."
I nod.
"Can you do any talking at all?"
"Pell," I say. It might be a name. It comes out of my mouth like I'm barfing it up and my teeth feel so dry like they're going to crack. I cough a couple times and it's like fire.
She cocks her head and squints her eyes with doubled eyelids like a frog. "What?"
"Can talk."
For a second Rhodes looks like she's angry at me but it's just the reflection of seawater in her face and shadows casting from her antenna. No expression at all besides the sunken shoulders and defensive posture. "We both need food, to live. And we both got, ah, ah." She winces and it seems like she's about to expel something out of her nostrils but then she loosens up. Sea air is oppressive and I feel like sneezing, too. "Not your friends that shot you, I assume?"
News to me that I got shot. No, it isn't. I remember the guy in the suit pulling the trigger. Was aimed at my head before I grabbed him.
I sit there limp and completely brain damaged.
"No," I say.
"Not my friends either. Don't got friends."
She doesn't look like she has friends, yeah. I reiterate in my mind that I could probably sock her unconscious right here. Where would that get you? Acting impulsively gets you nowhere at all. So I don't. "Okay," I say.
"Remember," hisses Rhodes, "I hacked into your arm and can kill you with it."
Her voice sounds uncomfortable with the language. Or maybe it always sounds uncomfortable. Stilted like her throat is tied up. "Okay."
After a few minutes I go to the fish market and Rhodes hides underneath a piece of cardboard by a dumpster.
-
Stalls made out of stamped sheet metal scattered randomly in front of the Diorin Sailor's Guild. The place is awash with people of the sea, salt-battered and poor and intimate in how they crowd. Some lug little wallets and one has a money card. Cryptocurrency. PiCoin is the future of commerce for the future you. Sailors from Berith and Haraad can now rejoice: celebrate the Palisade Trawling Company's new partnership with PiCoin with Velnias-exclusive benefits and reward points. Your pay is safe with us. I stifle my limp. Not good to limp in front of other people.
There are a couple of men with turbans and a woman heaving around an enormous gilled lizard stuck with a skewer. The sound of heavy conversation from every direction fills the air—this thick accent over spoken Common like everyone has rocks in their throat. The owner of a far stall peeks out from beneath an enormous plastic hat with a false eye, and I can see whiskers protruding from an ugly beak-snout. Baldari. The taste of Confederate rations starts to bubble up in the deep and carnal recesses of my mind. I stand at a middle distance away from him and interrupt the people in front. "Ey," I say, but it comes out like a grunt. "Spare something for a vet?"
"Ba," I hear. He is laughing uncomfortably. "Pal cotta?"
"No money." I wave my hands. Rhodes covered my metal arm in some of her rags and made herself a pretty scant figure in the process. "No Vasthi. Just Common."
He lifts up his head and I can see his narrow face, jagged in places, furred and sleek. The Baldari are an extant species of the Dust who once were known to civilization as only the Hegemony, but in recent centuries the great Migration has—but he interrupts. "Free stuff for friends only. Trade?"
"Oh."
"Trade?"
I retrieve the six-shooter I had in a pocket. There is a scream from the lady with the lizard and she drops it on the ground, and I hear some scrambling from elsewhere in the market. The distinct sense of a gun being pointed at me, from far off. Someone is a quickdraw. Too many people are armed. My throat is so dry but I manage some words. "Trade," I mutter. I fling the gun at him like it's a nasty swamp thing that caught hold of me.
I don't remember where the gun is from. Jarman's Accessories. From the War, after the War, we'll refurbish it without any questions asked.
The Baldari, who has now tossed his hat onto the ground in a desperate attempt to scramble under the counter, slowly raises from his hiding spot. His one good and wild eye is wide open like the fish he's peddling. "Elt, Jameson, jen gora," he wails. "Asshole!"
"Trade." I reach out my hand and rub my fingers together aggressively. "Trade."
"Asshole, asshole."
Something possesses me. I loom over the stall until my hands are planted on it. I'm going to throw up. I'm seasick, Pell. "Trade." The sound of metal against metal.
His wild eye goes stiff.
-
I end up getting two ugly slab-shaped fish and a fishing rod from the market.
-
Rhodes and I are camping under one of the docks as the evening turns to night. She hands me a bottle of slightly murky water from some drinking fountain and it's empty before I can even process it; in a few minutes I've drunk a half gallon and I still feel too weak to stand. She has a little pocket knife and she clumsily tears apart the fish, and when she's done making cutlets I burn them with a heating element embedded in my forearm.
We eat without conversing. I lay down backside against the sharp rocks of the upper shore and try to come up with something to think about for a while.
- 2 -
When I open my eyes again it's nearly sunrise and my body hurts all over. For breakfast we eat the leftovers from the fish. Rhodes asks me where my arm is from.
"Stromm's," I tell her. I am mostly busy eating. The fish is chewy like gum and tastes like red meat.
She is perched up on a tall rock by a pillar, embedded in some shadow, and nibbles at her portion like a feral animal. "Is that where you're from?" she asks.
I nod to her.
"Eh, right, right. But how'd you lose it?"
My eyelids feel heavy. I stare at her a little while. "Was a prisoner during the War. They cut it off when it got infected."
She stares back. Eyes narrow. "Sorry," she says.
"Fine. Happened a long time ago."
"I got this after a concussion." Rhodes points at the section of her skull that has been replaced by aluminum and electronics. It's the most bold-faced cybernetic I've seen, at least. She doesn't have the luxury of blending in, not here or anywhere else. "Was this why you were trying to kill me?"
"No," I say. "Wasn't trying to kill you."
She scrunches her mandibles together and I think she's grinning, or whatever the equivalent is. "Don't lie," she says.
"Not a liar."
"I'm a hacker," Rhodes says. She seems to like the word. "I can make you punch yourself to death with your arm. Already got it hacked. So don't lie."
I glare at her.
"I'm not gonna. I just. Could."
Mostly I want to finish eating. The sensation in my stomach is still a cold and empty chill like frostbite, and I know it'll take some days to pass properly. In the midst of all this I still haven't paused for even a second to think of where I am and what's going on. Like a brain-fog. Maybe I really do have a concussion. It becomes impossible to sort things out.
I tilt my head back down away from Rhodes. The hacker.
-
In November of last year there was a high-profile killing of a diplomat by his own security system. Jericho Arborist, native of Stromm's Landing, landed here—in this city, Velnias—and, shortly after arriving at his hotel, was shot dead by a ceiling-mounted turret in the hallway outside his suite. He was lodged at the Greenview Solutions Oceanside Palace only a few kilometers from where Rhodes and I are hiding right this moment.
Shortly after the death of Jericho Arborist, two things happened: firstly, Greenview Solutions publicly deemed his death to be an accident that they were responsible for. The ultimate insurance payout, which was sent directly to the League of Free Worlds, was enough hard cash to boggle the mind. The League was hurting for money—still is—and getting that much from a corp seemed like, to anyone paying attention, more of a bribe than anything else.
Secondly, Greenview Solutions privately derived the identity of someone they claimed to be the actual perpetrator, had her abducted from her home in the outlands of Stromm's Landing despite a complete-planet blockade, and executed her inside of the Greenview Research & Development Megacenter's 112th floor.
I am remembering now that this person was my wife.
-
It's been some minutes since Rhodes spoke. I've been chasing this moment—face to face with the hacker who knows more than me, who knows more than anyone—for a long few months. I was close. I was close before things went to shit. But I don't have the will in me to freak out right now. It's a quiet fire.
I primarily just want to eat.
"You know anywhere to hide out?" I ask her.
"Yeah, obviously," Rhodes says.
So we get to talking.
-
The next while is a whirlwind of practicalities and explanations and pragmatics. I tell Rhodes that I had a gun but don't anymore. She seems unbothered that we're unarmed and gives her spiel about the situation: "Greenview owns the whole fucking waterfront." She has a rasp for a voice, like a cat's tongue made manifest. "Beh, but not everything, in that way. Just owns all the land mostly, and runs paycheck for a lot of the sub-companies in the area... but not like they have cameras in every building. Just most buildings."
"The market?"
"That specific market I picked is cool. Or cool enough. But people might start talking if a lady with a metal arm showed up and makes a scene."
I sneer at her. "Didn't make a scene."
"Okay, okay." But she doesn't buy it.
The fact we're unarmed is inconvenient but not overall relevant, because we wouldn't last in a firefight anyway. Case in point: I got my leg shot and Rhodes got her apartment blasted open. In broad daylight. The key, she claims, is going to be information supremacy and obscurity. "I'm familiar," I tell her.
"Not, ah, beh, fucking, swamp obscurity. Like, in a city."
"Explain," I tell her. Humoring her, of course.
Salt Row and the general eastern waterfront of the city is enormous—no city in the Dust Sector is larger, and no seaboard has as many buildings. To search for us manually would be a waste of everybody's time, but there are some problems even with places like where we sit at this very moment. "Living leaves evidence," she explains.
"I am aware."
"Like, everything leaves evidence. Rent. Trash. Fish bones. Rumors. Rumors especially. People post on the buoy net..." She goes on a while. The notion here is that we can't be seen, but we have to be seen, because it's impossible to survive in a city without being seen. Thus the longer you are in a place, the worse it gets. "A ticking time bomb," she says.
I tumble a sharp rock between my fingers absentmindedly. "How long are they gonna look for you, then."
"Well you tell me! I-I didn't ask for this."
"Don't know what you did to get their attention."
She has a baffled look in her eyes. "Right."
"...I guess I have guesses as to why." But I roll it over in my head a second and come up mostly blank. By all appearances the corp in question thought they found their culprit. They paid an enormous sum to get that culprit. Why the fuck would they be after her? What did they know?
"Well, skpt, freak woman," Rhodes chitters. "Hacked your arm, so tell me your guesses."
I wave it off. "They're shit guesses. Greenview didn't care you existed, last I knew. We had an insider."
She boggles out her eyes. "YOU had an insider. You don't even fucking speak Vasthi. Explain!"
"It's good to have ears in places." I shrug.
"This is a terrible explanation."
"Okay."
With her threat of killing me with my own arm sort of hanging ambiently in the air, Rhodes huffs, shakes her head, and gives up. We get back to talking strategy.
It is unclear why Greenview wants Rhodes dead. It is completely clear why they would want me dead: I am a rogue element from an extant colony who is obviously seeking retribution for something they did. But when I showed up to Rhodes' apartment, they were already there for her. Or someone was there for her.
Men in expensive suits and facemasks, guns, a dropship hovering out her window. No identification. Could as easily be the League's own people. But we have to assume that the looming threat is the same between us—corpos that own the waterfront.
"So we move away from the waterfront," I suggest.
"No. No! That won't work either," Rhodes explains.
"You are confusing."
She waves her hands. Her perch under the dock makes her look like a nesting bat of some sort. "Okay, so, I just explained that information is everything. Well, I live here, and have, like, all the information memorized here. And hacked into tons of computers here."
"Anywhere Greenview isn't at?"
"Well, I, ah, beh, worked for Greenview. So. I mean, before this. Long before this."
"How long?"
"Year and a half. Before I got this." She taps at the skull-welded cybernetic taking up a third of her face. A year and a half is a long time for this woman. "Places I know, stuff I know, overlaps with them. It is—" She drops into a series of Vasthi curses an octave down her vocal range.
I'm trying not to stare at the cybernetic. "Bad idea to work for a corp."
"They own everything, freak lady. Like saying don't drink water."
"Not my name."
"Don't even know your name."
With a kind of grated sigh, I admit that my name is Nelly.
"'Kay. I am Rhodes. You skipped over my point."
"I get it." I nod to appease her. "Is there anywhere that you know, but isn't owned by them?"
"Yes." And suddenly her mandibles splay out again—I really do think this is her version of a grin. "Barely. But yes. And we'll have to move every couple days."
"Getting off planet eventually?"
She waves that off. "We live in unsold apartments in certain blocks owned by OMI instead of Greenview. OMI is another big player on Salt Row. Make sense? Different corp?"
"Yeah. Heard of them."
"Okay, and you will be the one scouting it out on-foot. Can't rely just on computer sources."
I give her a very incredulous look. "They also know my face."
"At least you can run away! I'm being practical."
I sit up straight to see what it feels like. When I look down I still have a grisly wound on my left leg, all tied up and inflamed and unpleasant. Need to disinfect that soon. "Fine." She wasn't going to volunteer for it anyway.
"Good! Good. Then I plan our next moves once, ah, all is settled. I-I think. I'll start looking up places to go. Will send you scouting first thing."
"No." I'm sure as shit going to mull over her idea first. It sounds bad on instinct. It reeks. But she knows the city and I don't. Need to think. Need a way to think.
"No?"
"Not yet. I'm going fishing."
- 3 -
The offcuts and guts from the market fish make adequate bait. I don't know what's in the Cestabin Sea of the Palisade, I don't know what screwed-up things trawl the shore, but it's all carbon and cartilage and it'll do. Couldn't be much harder than carp. I head to the end of a rickety dock a few minutes from Rhodes' hiding spot and carry the old Baldari's fishing rod over my shoulder like a shotgun. That's Jack. Shows up sometimes to take tithe. Don't go being stupid, fed, he'll blow your head off. I don't recognize the model or how the reel works—some kind of fancy mechanism with a gear that locks up at discrete angles. No lures but two spare hooks.
I cast out into the sparkling green and tilt my head down to not get blinded by the sunrise.
-
I think I have a concussion.
-
After half an hour I manage to catch something that was skimming the surface and pull it up and knock it out with my knuckle. It's brown. Not a lot bigger than a Stromm's herring and with dollish eyes and convalescent fins that droop sadly at the touch. It doesn't look very edible, so I make it into some more offcuts. Wish I had Rhodes' knife. Dirty work.
-
Shoulders starting to ache. I think it's actually a delayed pain from sitting there drooped in the closet. I don't remember if... she picked the hiding spot or I did. It was a wild and completely opaque affair. Why didn't they search her apartment more closely? Did they think we ran?
Heard that other gunshot while we were in there. Trying to remember if I came with anyone.
-
Yeah. I did. Obviously. Fuck's sake. Jed Garcia. Not from Stromm's, not someone I knew closely, but a Palisade outlander with as much skin in the game as me. He found us an insider, he got me the passport to land at Berith, he found the ship to take us here. It was smart. I thought it was smart anyway. I'd never seen so much water in every direction. It made me think, nobody is going to find you out here. That's a reassuring feeling I think.
Must have been Jed they shot. I don't know if he fessed anything up but I doubt it. Seemed solid enough.
I think he was one of those genuine blood-and-land types. The Magenta Rebellion isn't just about the here-and-now, it's about the future of the free planets. Not the League of Free Worlds—not about what we oppose. It's about the people that actually live here. It sounded good coming out of his mouth. Sold me on it anyway. Though now all his kind of people are dropping like flies.
Trying, now, with my head aching, to figure out if I ever earnestly believed in that shit or if it was just convenient. Hey, Jed. You actually trying to do anything for me? Is this about my dead wife or is it about the truth? Can't ask him now.
-
I get a bite finally. Something big and tugging hard and freaked out at the sensation of a hook in its face. For a while I'm convinced this cheap fishing line is going to snap on me but after reeling for what feels like forever I yank upward and something just works—and in a magnificent sail of seafoam and salt I catch something completely beautiful.
At least a meter across, bulky, with iridescent scales in a burnt blue and white checkerboard. A great tail now thrumming viciously against the rotted boards of the dock. Two enormous eyes like chipped shards of volcanic glass, and still it jaws, gnaws, suckles desperately at the distended liver of the dead fish that became its bait.
Today's not your day, buddy.
I kill it.
-
Still fishing.
I think... that thing in the distance is the Kesh. Or the Kesh Ring, something like that. A superstructure wrapped around the planet, the whole Palisade, visible only in clear skies or at night. I thought it was a building at first. It sits peacefully at an off angle like a seam between realities, and its reflection in the Cestabin ripples and warbles dreamlike. All the ships look like they're sailing there.
-
Things get better by noon; I used the pretty fish's tail as chum and the brown 'herring' as bait and by the time the midday warmth sets in I have a few carcasses of various sizes, two that look like deflated green balloons and one shaped like a winged saber of some sort, its nose protruding awkwardly between two clueless eyes. Another one of the brown things which I throw back.
-
I go back to the fish market. Didn't ask Rhodes if it was a good idea. I lug the four fish over my shoulder and keep the rod stuck in the back of my sweatshirt and show up to a similar enough crowd. Sweaty now and kind of exhausted from the walk, but I show up to the old Baldari's stall and show him everything but the tailless beauty fish. "Trade," I say. "Trade?"
"Ba, saik," he murmurs. "Do you have different words you can say?"
"Yeah." I point at his tackle box. "I need some lures."
He eyes me up some more. His odd and gaunt face beneath the enormous hat looks puppeted. "...Just order on buoy?"
"Undocumented," I explain, enunciating carefully.
His shoulders droop immediately. "Ah. Well..." He points a finger at the pair of balloon-looking specimens on the counter. "Poisonous. But other one isn't." He sweeps the poky fish to his side of the stall and pushes away the poison ones. "Hang'd Knight. Ten Vicks."
"Just need some lures. Hate using bait."
"But..." He loosens even further, head dipping down. "My lures..."
I ignore his plea for a moment, and hold out the big fish with no tail. "And is this edible?"
The Baldari tilts his head, and then nods hesitantly. "Not good, but. Yes." I am happy about this information. I like that fish and want to eat it. "Flop jewelfish."
"Okay. Just need a couple lures. I'll owe you."
"Ehhhh..." He is doing everything in his power.
"Please?"
Eventually I am able to convince him to part way with exactly two shiny baubles that look like angry faces, and then I abscond.
-
"Was a bad idea," Rhodes says. By now she's scavenged a big, heavily-stained duffel bag from the garbage, and has loaded it up with five water bottles and a variety of bent metal tools she claims can defeat padlocks. "Was a bad idea, but at least you got food."
"And lures. Don't forget the lures." I am quite proud of my haul. I look like an honest fisherwoman. "Going to need to eat, however long we're here."
She glares at me. "It's bad to show up more than literally once to any person. Much more likely people will remember..."
I wave it away. "Just twice. Promise."
"Better be." Rhodes makes a face. "First spot is going to be while down the bay, anyway."
"Show me."
So, as I get to cooking the fish, she retrieves a piece of newspaper and begins to draw out our route.
- 4 -
It's not like anything I could have imagined, the way the world enters an auburn haze once the sun goes past the apex of Velnias and turns to nothing but a hint of a corona. Earliest sunset I've ever known. The foundations of the city are the black metal buildings of threatening corpos and market supercenters overseeing enormous square structures hewn of stone made to house thousands—five stories at first, then as high as a hundred, rolling along. There are squat buildings and slim ones, sheer glass windows on steel, but then old-seeming angular concrete with burnishing all over, and then something carved from polycarbonate in a pastel color, and further west there are corroded warehouses built beside streets hanging over an endless stacked city called the Gutters which holds up everything. Then, towering above it all are the skyscrapers, these perfect Platonic things, which feel more like they came out of my imagination of a city never imagined, shaped into their forms of aluminum and tungsten and brass and cyan concrete, and coated from sharp corner to corner with enormous indistinguishable screens, hanging or mounted or floating by slowly aboard something with helicopter blades, advertising and flashing and blinking to the stars. These skyscrapers make up the skyline of Velnias, its face from afar, the one I saw on the boat here, I think. They are hundreds of stories tall and there are so many and they stretch on forever in that direction, blotting out the sunlight from sheer scale. Everything drops into shadow all at once. Like someone waking you up from a nice dream. Still dreaming about something, Nelly? I keep my head low and hands in my jean pockets here, and return my mind to ground level, where the quiet boardwalk makes way for a bustling urban bramble where I start to finally see groups of people in summer clothes. Velnias is supposed to be a rainy city. Hope not. Enjoying the clear skies.
Here as I walk there are upright apartments springing up out of nowhere, and city shops with bright lights coming from big windows appear around every corner. Thin roads not made for automobiles here, but some motorbikes idling. Suddenly not unbelievable that Rhodes and I could blend in for a while. Stay still. Most animals are built to detect movement, not identify complex shapes in the brush. But it's not like that at all. Keep moving. Sunlight replaced by hanging lamps over entrances. I pass by J-11 Road and then J-12. There's a lanky woman guiding a motor rickshaw who passes by me and gives me a sharp look, and I'm spun around and nearly run head-first into somebody carrying a large paper bag from a grocery store called MILLIGAN'S. Scooting out of their way and straight into a crowd in an intersection.
Cobblestones suddenly, laid over old concrete with craquelure. North is that way. I'm not being moved by the waves of people but I do feel like I'm flopped over.
West is that way. I reach my real arm out and slice through.
-
J-25 Billet Mother Apartments. Double doors made of synthetic wood and plastic glass which are barely wide enough for my shoulders and they lead immediately into a spiral staircase with tall steps. The outer commotion leaves the air but the inside is thrumming with some bass from one of the upper apartments. A short hallway over there. I proceed upward.
An old-looking lady passes me. I make a sound and she doesn't and she passes by like air.
Fifth floor. I am hoping that 5-A is on a side hallway but the door is right by the staircase and a window and I feel vulnerable. The thrumming bass is coming from the fourth floor—techno or something. I run my metal hand over the doorhandle and try it to make sure it's locked. Give it a knock, then another. Hollow inside, echoey. Another lady from upstairs slips behind my back while I'm facing away.
I crouch down slightly. The plate of the lock on the door reads 'BARGER'. I spend a second remembering and then put my palm on the face. One tap with my middle finger, two taps with my index finger. Then I wait.
After a little while my metal hand starts moving on its own.
It's uncomfortable and weird and I look away. My hand fishes out a flimsy, thin piece of metal from my jean pocket after searching for a while. Taps around, feels the door, finds the deadbolt, finds the keyway. Then it sticks the shim in the base of the lock and jiggles for a while and, like magic, it opens.
I just poke my head in first, but I hear footsteps from upstairs and abandon all caution to sneak inside.
-
The place is dusty. One bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen, almost no furniture. A bed. I check the closets, no vermin. Creaky wood floorboards. I put my palm on my knee and tap with my middle finger to indicate that it's good.
-
Rhodes shows up after a couple hours during the lull in market traffic and looks ready to collapse. Something bad with her legs. Real bad with her motor skills anyway and she's bad at walking on a fundamental level. I get her to the bed.
We eat a little dinner wrapped in newspaper. The flop jewelfish isn't so bad. Tough as hell and muscly and cartilaginous but a little sweet and still juicy despite being so cooked. Rhodes tells me that the scales look pretty. "Think there's an album cover," she murmurs, "like that. Fish. Should've kept the tail."
"Yeah," I admit. "Tail was pretty."
She brought lots of drinking water at least. And there's plumbing. Not the worst campsite. The bedroom has a door and it's next to the fire escape if things get bad.
It'll do for now.
- 5 -
It's raining. Rhodes has taken the bed and I made a little nest on the floor and I'm on my back but I can't sleep. When I told Rhodes I was hoping it wouldn't rain she laughed so much. Giggling, cackling, like some night animal with glowing eyes. My impression is now that it rains a bunch in Velnias. Great. The music from downstairs hasn't let up. I am staring at the ceiling.
I don't think she's sleeping either. When I look, she's sat curled upright.
"Hey, got a question," I say.
"Okay."
"Serious one."
She shrugs. "Sure."
"You know anything about Jericho Arborist?"
Sudden narrowing of the eyes from her. I turn away. "Don't know," she says. "What, you think I did that?"
"Interesting." That's how she responds? "Just asking."
"Might know who did it," she says, almost like an afterthought. "But it's my information to keep."
"Okay."
"Like. Heard from places." She pauses and I hear her nibble at her own chitin. "Can't not hear. What, was he really important for you?"
I hum. "I guess. Diplomat for Stromm's Landing. He was a New Deal guy." I'm frowning now. "Not good or bad for me personally. I didn't live in the big cities." Bring Peace And Order To Chaos. The League Should Have Listened.
"Yeah I could guess that part about you," she laughs.
"You think you know who got him, though."
She lets out a hiss of an exhale. "Maybe... maybe. Greenview said it was an accident..."
"Yeah, but." I wave my hand around, and then wince as the song downstairs falls into a pre-chorus that is enormously loud.
"Yeah, you get it."
I try to close my eyes and make the loud music go away.
-
It doesn't go away. I think this is something called retribution pop. Timpanis slamming away above a chorus of severe-sounding young men.
"You did good with the arm thing," I offer up. I sound pretty groggy.
"Thanks," Rhodes mutters.
I look at her. She's still wide awake as ever. Curled up with eyes looking ahead. "Can you do that with other things?" I ask.
She kind of stiffens up. "Yeah."
"Using the cybernetic? Never seen that kind."
"Yeah. It's, ah." She looks over my way. There's something about her eyes. Always a little shut, like she's trying to see someone just past you. Her silhouette so contorted and runty. I guess those are mean words to describe someone. She is a very odd-looking Tasran. She continues. "After. Um. After some shit happened I had brain damage. So. Greenview hooked me up. But it made things worse."
"Oh."
"It's, like. I can't stop hearing it. The, uh. Everything I'm hooked up to." Her one good antenna flicks around a little. "Just wasn't good at it anymore. Was good. Then wasn't good. And they canned me for it."
I offer up a hand. "But you're in their computers."
"I guess." She holds out her hands to try and grab at nothing. "Can't focus, most of the time. Finding your arm was. Fucking hard. Ahah."
I lay back and try to stretch out my legs a little. It's a little numb in my left. "Like how?"
"Like I'm all over the place. A-A-And... eh. Eh, I dunno. It's been hard." Rhodes has something guttural in her voice. Maybe would have more fight in her if it weren't so late, if it hadn't been as long a week. "Yeah. So. Might have heard something, about that guy, but. Yeah."
I pause for a little while and say something that comes to mind. "I think I might have brain damage."
"Mainly leg damage," Rhodes retorts, instantly. She's pointing at my shot leg now like it's a spider she's trying to annihilate with a finger laser. "Should fix that, actually. Like we should fix it now."
"I guess. I'm beat."
She hops out of the bed. Where did she get hops? I'm bewildered and shoot her a look, but she continues. "Gonna go get you, like, a first aid box. Hydrogen peroxide."
I try to stop her but she's suddenly nimble. "What," I say. "No, man, stop. Why?"
"I can do what I want."
No more words come to me. I guess I'll stay. She gives me some blank expression for a moment, and then hurries out the door into the apartment complex.
-
Didn't kill Jericho Arborist, huh. Sure. Yeah. Okay. I can run with that and believe it for now. But you'd know who really did it. Surely. Not her. She'd know her. Her. You'd know who got her killed. You'd know because you did it. Did you? Did she?
It must be late. The people downstairs stopped playing their music. It smells a little like weed.
-
Hope she's not getting herself killed over me.
-
I'm finally drifting off by the time Rhodes gets back. A sudden torrent of wind and rain starts machine-gunning the window and I struggle to an upright sitting position and she's brought back a bottle of generic-brand disinfectant from who-knows-where. And a roll of paper towels, and a charcoal-ridden hand rag. "C'mon," she mutters. Her legs are wobbly.
"Okay," I say.
She has me roll up my pant leg, but her own bandages from before are getting in the way. I just take the jeans off. Looks worse than I remember. That's because time passed, idiot. Festering and numb and yellow in the wrong places. Not pleasant. "Shit," she says.
"It's fine. Good timing." I take the disinfectant. Taking the rag bandage off is the first step—opens the wound and some black blood seeps from a failed scab. I see now where that round took apart cartilage on the back of my knee, but no bone I don't think. Wouldn't be able to walk if it was bone. Don't break any bones, Nelly, your bones are your friends. Hurts some but not terribly. "Might jolt up. Uh. Hold my leg down."
"'Kay," she whispers, and holds my leg down.
Not fun work. Disinfectant foaming things up and burning and seeping and leaking everywhere. Rhodes sneaks the rag under my leg after the first bit leaks down and it's mostly clean from there but I do spasm a bunch, wish I didn't. "Fuckssake," I say. Wish I didn't.
"Didn't find anything like bandages. S-Sorry."
"S'okay. Sheets from the bed."
She scampers over, but then stops herself. Mandibles tight against her face when I look over. "C-Can't leave any trace, actually. No." Living leaves evidence.
I shake my head and swallow some spit. "Fine. S'fine."
"Okay." She crawls back over. Wings twitching.
"Shit. It just." I'm kind of rambling half-aware now, looking at the damage. "Feels like taking something apart and not knowing if it'll go back together. You know?"
"Yeah," Rhodes laughs. "I-I know. Obviously."
I grumble about something indistinguishable, something about a gun. Don’t babble, Nelly. I clear my throat. "Can you get antibiotics," I ask.
"Maybe."
"Gonna need those some point."
"Okay." Rhodes has just the faintest look of optimism in her eyes. Like it wasn't broken when we put it back together after all.
She rips her other sleeve off and uses it to cover the whole mess of my leg. It covers it mostly. Just need this fucking thing to heal. In the span of a few minutes we mop up whatever has leaked on the floor and she stuffs the dirty rag in the duffel to be trashed later. No trace. No evidence. No trail.
I get to sleep eventually.
- 6 -
In the morning Rhodes calls the apartment 'compromised' and I'm inclined to agree. Something with it feels wrong and I don't want to sleep another night with the loud music anyway. Left too much evidence maybe. "Could chance two or three days with other places," she mutters, "eventually."
I don't know what Rhodes' plan is for the long term. It isn't easy to ask.
She has us stay the morning and suggests our next spot. Goes through a few suggestions actually, not that I have a frame of reference. I'm agreeing with most of them. Trying to stand in the bedroom but, of course, last night has actually made my leg work a lot worse after paying some attention to it. "Spot above a convenience store in Little Baltra," Rhodes says. "Uhh... ah... unsold houseboat..."
"Houseboat sounds good."
She waves her hand around. Staring out the window at the cobblestones getting soaked. "Yes, but will be definitely just a single-night thing. Weekend inspections."
I look over to her and squint. "What day is it?"
"Wednesday," she says.
"Weekend isn't close."
She smiles faintly with her eyes. "Don't wanna chance it."
-
We gather our things. Rhodes has the duffel in her lap, I carry her. She manages to get the deadbolt locked again from the exterior—some mechanical magic with the shim—and I get her out of the building so she doesn't have to manage the stairs again. Keeps itching at her face cybernetic. I don't ask.
We split up at a small bookstore on the way so she can get something for me and I head to the spot on the waterfront she mentioned. It's a longer walk this time and I am resting heavy on my good leg to spare myself the sharp pain that keeps coming from my other knee. Lucky it grazed, Nelly, you'd have a hell of a time. I'm having a hell of a time. It probably hurts worse for her. Probably does. She's got it worse. Yep. Careful of people that look sad all the time. I didn't make a fuss about my arm. You did at the time. It's raining now.
-
I have become rapidly soaked in water.
I wish I had a hood or a coat at all. Getting blown over by the morning chill. I spot a corner store labeled TOM'S on my walk, all this light pouring out the floor-to-ceiling windows. Ground floor of some enormous, cheap row of shops. I duck inside to get out of the rain.
There's heating in here and sterile floors and severe overhead lighting. I ruffle my hair dry for a second and try to find something like an umbrella to steal real quick. A very tall guy behind the counter tilts his head and squints at me and laughs nervously with someone else in back. "Hi lady," he calls out.
"Hi," I say. There are some yellow raincoats folded up in a stand near the entrance. The doors swings shut behind me and some bells ring. "Hi. Rain's bad."
"You need one of those?" He has an accent like Rhodes, thicker and more contorted. His skin is brown, his nose is crooked. He has soft eyes. Not his business what I take though. I lift up the raincoat. Says it costs two Vicks.
"Mhm." I put it on quickly and step outside.
"Have a good one!" he calls at me, laughing harder now.
-
It strikes me walking down one of the main streets near the ports that everyone I see is wearing a raincoat like this now. Must have had it in a purse or a pocket or something. Folds up easily I'd imagine.
-
I have some boots from home which aren't faring very well since things went to shit in Rhodes' apartment. Looking down at them now, keeping my head low. Hair dangling out of the rain hood and making it hard to see. Keeping to myself. Keep to yourself for a while, fed, nobody trusts you. There was a cobbler in Flint Wake a few kilometers from where me and Pell lived. Made shoes and boots out of horse leather and old tires from the War. You'd think the rubber would have gone bad. Nearly forty years now. Walking in some history I guess.
Cobblestones turn to old concrete. So many cracks, visible rebar in some steps. I'm at the dock now.
Lockstone Private Moor north of the OMI Shipping Megaplex. Six long platforms extending far out from shore and housing all kinds of little dinghies and houseboats and yachts. Armed security here, not of any affiliation I recognize. Doesn't look viable until I notice our actual destination a little ways hidden behind the upscale dock, marked only by a sign that reads 'MEERKAT'. I veer right suddenly onto a concrete platform cutting a hundred meters into sea.
Not very hidden. A dozen houseboats and a sailboat that looks old. Ours is the fifth on the left. I'm tempted to walk away but the prospect of finding another meeting spot is...
It'll be fine. Just need to sit down.
I go to have Rhodes pick the lock for me but the door to the captain's seat is unlocked and I get access to the rest from there.
-
Rhodes shows up in a red raincoat and brought an umbrella for me, as well as a generic brand bottle of antibiotics she must've swiped. "Where'd you get that," she asks, when she notices I've already got my own coat.
"Found it," I respond.
I'm fishing again. Rod draped over the railing. It's a good spot, the rain is good too. Can't help but be grinning by the time she's shown up. There's a little bit of dry cover beneath the roof of the houseboat on the port side where I'm sitting, although my legs are soaked at this point, kicked up. Got five mystery fish on the other porch seat. "Getting way too comfy too fast," Rhodes mutters, exhausted.
"Thinking I fish now while it's easy and we won't have to for a while."
She sets down the duffel next to my collection of fish carcasses and settles down on the deck. "I been really, ah, ahhh, worried. All day."
I nod. "Yeah."
"Got your book," she says. After limply dropping the antibiotics into the duffel, she hands me a laminated hardcover copy of TRAWLING IN THE CESTABIN: A FISHERMAN'S TESTIMONY. It's a couple decades out of print but she did her due diligence. "Looks cool."
"Does." I set it in my lap and put the rod aside to make room, and flip it open past the front cover. I've been an honorary Vasthi since my mother took me to the Palisade in search of a better life. I hope this compendium is of some use to those as unfamiliar with this beautiful sea as I once was, and that my records of the life beneath the surface is some small measure adequate in the eyes of those that have taught me. Thank you to Jean cor Corabinn and the Skip on which we sailed. There is a calligraphed drawing of a flop jewelfish above the words. It makes me smile a little.
"Door was unlocked?" Rhodes asks.
"Yeah. Hey, had a question." I lean over to her. Her cybernetic is lit up in green right now. Didn't notice the lights on the back of her cranium til now. "You, uh, hacked computers. Why can't we use 'em to look this stuff up on the net?"
She looks at me defiantly. "Well, book is easier, cooler, don't need me around."
"Fair enough."
"And... would leave evidence," she hisses, contemplatively. "Unfortunately. Computer activity from unknown source, stuff like that. League, ahhh... I mean, like, Greenview..."
Doesn't make sense to me. I squint incredulously. "You're the hacker. Search and then delete the evidence. Rewrite the record."
"That would be nice." She sounds wistful though. Wouldn't it be nice if we could fly away. "Maybe hack a bigger computer..."
"Can't do it now?"
Rhodes shakes her head. "When... you use a computer to do anything, e-even just searching the buoy net, it leaves evidence. Whoever is looking, it would look suspicious." She looks shifty though. Her eyes aren't on me all of a sudden. For all her little twitches she never breaks eye contact like that. "Greenview would see it... f-for sure. Would know I'm still in the system. Send a MONITOR core to lock us out. Or c-call the League."
I'm nodding along, but I'm caught off guard by something. "League shouldn't need to care. Or they'd be on our side. Stupid as it sounds." Hands behind my head now. Not that Rhodes is clueless about galactic policy but I figure I know the story more than her. "Their diplomat is the one that got killed. They got a payout, but... worst case they come asking questions. It won't involve the Peacekeepers, I don't think."
"Sound really sure," Rhodes snarls.
"I feel pretty sure."
She looks back at me. "I live here. I know what the situation is. Not a good idea to do anything online right now." Now she sits up slightly, but only slightly, using the wall of the boat as support for her screwed-up back.
"Okay. Just was asking," I murmur.
"Gimme the book. I'll see which fish we can eat."
I hand it over. For a second I feel her snatch the book and I hold it from her. Something wrong with you right now. Always something you aren't saying. Say the line about killing me with my own arm again. I give it to her. She buzzes with her mandibles and turns away.
- 7 -
Houseboat swaying gently in the night breeze, tide coming up and the rope tying us to the dock weaning gently in the rain. The Palisade has a moon much larger in the sky than the one on Stromm's Landing. Nightlife on the bay blots out the stars but I can see that moon clear as it was daylight. Rhodes is sleeping inside. Or hopefully sleeping. Not sure she can. Too loud, all of it, too loud. If you could hear the city breathing it would be too loud, too loud.
Got lucky with this spot. A working shower, a bigger bed, insulation, a spot to fish.
What do you think, Nelly. Think getting the League involved wouldn't just get you two black bagged and killed?
Rhodes isn't good news, not for Greenview Solutions or the League. Disgruntled former employee with a lot of power. Wonder if they know she's still in their computers—if they think they locked her out. I can look but not speak is the name of the game. Said she sees through cameras sometimes instead of her own eyes. Maybe why it feels like she's looking through me half the time.
And that power is something that would get her killed.
Guess I'm the only one not trying to do that.
But I'm thinking about it. I'm thinking about the League. I'm thinking about giving up, saying, I'm too small for all this. Never did shit for me on Stromm's Landing but maybe you can get the fuckers that killed my wife. Some tiny meaningless victory. Not like they've got any incentive to start knocking heads in Salt Row over just me, though. They'd only care if they had her.
Her.
Hacker. If she did kill Jericho Arborist and they did blame Pell then it's her fault. Her fault. Why'd you do it. Why? What would it get you.
That power is something that would get her killed.
Guess I'm trying to do that, too.
Not tonight. I don't feel like it.
-
I fillet the fish in the kitchen with her knife. Two of the tiny ones I've gotten familiar seeing at the surface; Rhodes said they're just called 'brown gruel' and smell a little like fresh mud. Another Hang'd Knight, bigger this time. I notice looking closer that the Hang'd Knight's mouth is attached to the long, spindly spike on its front. Prehensile. It's fatty and looks pretty tasty. Then the long slab-shaped fish shaped like a spade or a teardrop I found out is called a starlet. The three golfball-sized 'hodags' I caught are poisonous unfortunately. The blobby pink one is edible but it's called a bony slider and is mostly a skeleton, not a lot to eat. Cooking everything that we can eat and charring it black so it lasts a little longer. I get the idea to make a bone broth but Rhodes would cuss me out if we used the saucepan in here so it's just gonna be roast fillets for a while. My palate can handle it but I'm wondering if she'll want to go get fast food one of these days.
Not sure how we'd get money.
We'll have to eventually. Can't keep this up forever. Can barely keep it up as is. If we're only staying in the houseboat for a night then we'll have to move again tomorrow. My leg doesn't like thinking about that. Can't imagine she wants to trudge through the rain again.
What's your endgame, Rhodes?
It's alright if you don't have one. I don't either. I haven't for a long time.
-
I wrap up the cuts in newspaper. Lots to go around this time. Rhodes found a nice-looking backpack on her way here and said she'll grab it early when nobody's around, so I'm on duffel bag duty. Food and water.
Until I sell her out.
Until that happens we'll continue doing this.