Semaphore
- 15 -
During the lunch hours the Hang'd Knight gets abuzz pretty quickly. Turns out a bunch of prostitutes and the like from Baultriel in midtown have come in a group. I spot lots of Tasran and humans and one lanky Neriak in all sorts of garb, edgy and then skimpy and then tight and then flamboyant. The mood is good and the Baldari from down in Little Hegemony are having a hell of a time, but I also spot some rough looking guys in the back I recognize, local cops and ex-cops, and I remember that Baultriel is the red light district where they've been working on an offensive. As before there aren't any accidents in Ceder's business; I imagine between dances and flirting and screwing under the table there is a lot of militia talk.
The kitchen heat gets to me pretty bad. I've got a lot of things to hand Cup the bartender, and haykays to make quickly, and Maxine's special with the gulper ends up being lots of little sushi cutlets in the style of a Baltra buffet. My metal arm doesn't get tired of the chopping but it's a little stressful. Her and I don't speak much at all but it's not the worst thing to be in tandem with someone. When I row one way, you follow that motion exactly. Don't deviate.
The night goes mostly as planned. Ceder is in and out a lot with luggage and boxes and bags. He goes in for ten-some minutes to pray, then out again in a flash. At some point I'm refrying some haykay filling and Rhodes tap-tap-taps me on the leg a bunch with my index. Hey there, it means. I tap back with my middle. All clear.
-
It came from that trawlerman book, partly. The first night we communicated by taps just in a code we made up for different kinds of deadbolts or padlocks, but from then on we had a little system like semaphore, which is a kind of language of flags used by ships for centuries and counting. Check in. All clear. Clarify. Need immediate assistance. That last one is indicated by thumb-taps. We worked a little over the days before we met Ceder to try to invent more complicated semaphore, combinations of taps, but it became too much of a headache with all we had to think about. Now I know we can write one another, in a way.
It stopped being so weird after a while.
-
I go on break at the usual time after the evening rush. When I get in back, Ceder and Rhodes are sat hunched around the little table and already laughing about something. They pause only slightly when I come in, but Rhodes has her little grin plastered on her face. Datapad stuffed in the back of her tall slacks I bought her, and the two of them are playing cards.
I shut the door behind me. "Already, huh."
"Got to get a head start," Rhodes says, sticking her weird bug tongue out at me.
Ceder speaks. "I wish we were playing for cash, or—and that you had cash, Rhodes, I'd be making better off than I do with the speakeasy."
She giggles again, but then a ferocity erupts in her. "I'm good at mahjong, just so you know," she explains. "Not my fault my luck is bad in this one."
"Could hear the laughing just barely from outside. Careful," I say, "just a little more careful."
"Of course," Ceder says, nodding. "Thank you. Sit?"
"Sure." I go to sit.
The deck of cards is a full fifty-five strong and resembles one like I saw an odd Tasran named Pitchin use for playing back on Stromm's, with a faced Biztram being used to depict each of the five suits. I become dealer the first round, and Ceder sets me up with some meaningless chips, and we play five card.
I played a lot with Pell. And others, of course. Swamp militiamen like cards a lot because it can be played silently and under very little light. In the time after I turned coat there was still a lot to worry about on the surface, and even after the War there was the League to worry about, to beat back, among other things. One of our purposes, or I guess I say purpose to indicate that it's what we did without knowing exactly why, was to be some of the bushmen that killed and disappeared folk that wanted to destabilize or infiltrate or tax the outland swamp villages. Protectors I guess would be the really charitable term, but in reality it just felt like there had to be some counterbalance, some counter-influence, to what was happening in the cities. Except for the tithe men, the Lohmanites, who took tax just like the League. Corporations and speculators very much like Greenview Solutions saw so much potential in Stromm's that I never did. Guess that would make me a bad suit.
Anyway, in that time which stretched forever, we would do a lot of camping in obscure places playing poker by moonlight.
You can do poker like it's exercise. Draw, redraw, bluff, bet, fold, repeat. Like moving an arm back and forth. Luck flows in and out of you like water does.
Of course Ceder plays it like every hand is life and death and spends some extra time considering his moves with an excellent (but not perfect) poker face, and Rhodes plays it more fiercely and intensely and unpredictably, and as a result, I find myself getting pretty drained of chips from underestimating her play. I want to say beginner's luck but maybe my mind's just elsewhere.
I keep giving her little grins.
Five card and seven card and seven-two-up and holdem and baseball and so on, and a few Tiborian variants I learned as a little kid, and Ceder has plenty of very strange ones from Haraad which require clarification of the rules and get us laughing a little. Rhodes suggests several times we play mahjong but it's just too much bullshit to keep track of so we pass, of course. Not like we have a set handy anyway. But we do play a few rounds of 'Rhodes poker', which is some shitty and hilarious variant we make up on the fly to satisfy her constant crowing about a different game.
We play til my next shift in the dark hours of the night.
-
I've gotten a light familiarity with some of the shady types doing business at this time. The ones who are just common customers and are just buying a gun or buoy burner or custom datapad are usually one-and-done, never to be seen again, but there are a few who buy or sell things constantly, one single half-cylinder of some big artillery piece at a time contained in the thin of a backpack or underneath a haykay container. The risks are low, says Ceder, a thousand times lower than in someplace like the city-state of Baltra, but there are nosy cops and petty thieves in both the Undercity's many parts and the rest of Velnias, where law comes from whatever source happens to be nearby, often Guilders with their own interests. And getting caught and processed with an anti-tank rifle is not a great idea anyway.
That is what's going around, though. A couple eclectic types with funny glasses were talking to Ceder earlier about their study and ideas about Peacekeepers and their armor, and what it might take to defeat it at close range for cheap. Lots of little ideas of shaped charges from old mining efforts, or recreating railgun drives that can run on an automobile battery. Nothing beats 12.7mm for how cheap it is from Flint Wake. Powder propellant is king out here.
Then some more fancy stuff—Faraday cage bags, polymer firearms. They got concerns about surveillance and a MONITOR core, which is something I only ever hear Rhodes talk about. Big plans elsewhere and not my business at all.
I zone out a little bit, to be honest. My mind is elsewhere. I am tapping my knee at a constant pace and getting replies in equal quantity. I eventually turn in early.
- 16 -
It happens quickly. I didn't want to break the magic by waiting for a better opportunity and it was long overdue. I was embracing Rhodes, which I hadn't done much before, and then in one motion we were in the obscure corner of the room under an enormous blanket clutching each other again, more closely. I have my real hand underneath her button-up shirt and her fancy slacks down and aside. She doesn't have breasts but her soft, interlocking chitin feels good to the touch, and her hands against my stomach and groping my chest rile me up plenty. From this position I can rub at her wings, which are clipped but not immobile, and which buzz softly against the cushion below us. I kiss her, and her mandibles grip softly against my lips.
It's quiet. Just little whispers for 'yes' and 'no' and sometimes more complicated questions and answers. But not complicated like things have been. Just 'can you do this for me'. For a little while the whole outside world and the shit about Greenview and Jericho Arborist leave my mind, maybe for the first time in a very long time, and I just loom over her and caress her and fuck her. Her weird bug smile is warm. Her ruby eyes are pretty. I've grown to like these things about her.
-
Eventually we're done and the warmth is overwhelming and I don't care and I just lay beside her with her in my arms. The tiredness comes to me pretty fast. I feel more tired than in a long time. Can't stop smiling with her chest rising and falling beside mine. I have my hand clasped around hers. Her thin clawed fingers don't scratch me.
We sleep like this. Or I sleep, at least, for a few hours, even after Ceder comes in and does his thing in the office and prays and turns in on the cot behind his chair.
-
At some point very early in the morning, Rhodes wakes me up and I'm slow to open my eyes. She's looking off. She takes a little while to confirm I'm conscious before asking, out of the blue, "Was your wife's name, uh, Pelleratz Karinger?"
"Uh," I grunt. Takes me a second to realize she's speaking, and then longer to realize what she's asking. You shouldn't bother with my full name, though. Just call me Pell. I feel vulnerable. "Yeah."
"I know," she whispers, "that she died because of what happened. To Arborist. That's why you came, and... and came looking for me."
I nod. Something wells up in my face and suddenly I'm tempted to fling Rhodes against a wall for bringing it up. "Uh-huh."
"I wanna try, ah, and figure out who did it. I will," Rhodes says.
This particular idea, right now, doesn't spur me to move. Just want to go back to sleep.
She speaks again, even softer this time. "I'll work on it."
I drift off uncomfortably.
-
The answer is that Greenview Solutions 'did it'. Isn't it, Rhodes? Isn't it? Or is there something more you're not fucking telling me, like there always has been?
-
My dreams are nasty and uncomfortable and when I wake up Rhodes is drinking a mug of foreign tea without looking at me, and during the whole morning I don't speak to her and get to my fishing spot without having thought a thing.
- 17 -
She apologizes, of course, for mentioning Pell, but she's got not a lot to be sorry for on that front. Once I've cooled off fishing for a few hours and return, head clear, I tell her she doesn't have to be sorry. Just killed the mood and made me all sad. But it's good to bring it up. "You'll work on it?" I ask her.
"Yeah," she says, "already looking stuff up." She waves her datapad at me. Her eyes are droopy.
"Okay," I say. "Following up on leads?"
"Gonna prolly need to do some in-person scouting," Rhodes explains, though her voice lilts a little. "If..."
"Can make time. Just let me know after my shift." I pull Ceder's tackle jacket off and hang it on the chair I've taken to using.
Then she pauses, and I pause there, and just as I'm about to drift back into the kitchen to start with the haykays, she catches my eye. Narrowed gaze. Like she's got something to say about 'after my shift', or maybe 'in-person scouting'. But neither bubble up as words for her, and she just nods, and turns down to the datapad, which is rapidly becoming her whole world.
"See ya in a bit," I say. I leave the back room.
-
After the shift, which gets pretty rough as Ceder's late to come back and direct things and Maxine is replaced by Linda, Rhodes does indeed have a follow-up on a lead. Why not any earlier? We convene around the table and although I'm kind of lousy with lack of sleep I'm excited, from somewhere deeper down, to finally be doing the fucking thing I came to do: ask the hacker what happened to get my wife killed, whether she did it or not.
"There's a person," Rhodes explains, gnawing on some of the haykays I brought her for dinner but speaking anyway, "called Jean Jacket, she is like me, she is online all the time. In holding at a local cops place for something not related. She turned coat on a corp."
"Greenview?" I ask.
"Yeah. Kinda. I-I mean, sorta, it's a subsidiary. She stole from 'em some info and also some raw cash."
Now my gaze lightens a little. I don't want to call it hope but it's something. "You think she was behind the Greenview hack?"
"Prolly not. But she stole info. Data. See what I mean?"
I frown. "Not sure how stealing data works. Is it... on a computer?"
"Encrypted hard drive," she says. "In the station."
"How do you know this? Thought we weren't supposed to leave tracks." I reach forward and poke her cybernetic, and she recoils slightly.
"I'm not, I'm not." A faint grin with her mandibles, then it's gone again. "Um. I mean, like. Well. What she's doing is she posted on forums what happened to her, what she has, her location, and everything."
I roll my eyes and sit back, exhaling. "Rhodes, I would have assumed you would be able to see a honeypot from further off, given you're a 'hacker'."
"I got reason to trust her. I got good reasons! Shit, you think I'd bring it up?"
"Just seems stupid risky to try to spring someone because of some intranet story."
Rhodes sits back, plants her hands on the desk, and begins a spiel. "Okay. So I know her, anyway, I know her shit. She doesn't need to be sprung either. She's being moved offworld, by the cops, 'cus she did the right thing. Basically boasting about it. All we gotta do is get put in as security detail and ask her to search the drive for info, then do the job as normal. Won't even leave a trace."
My brow is pretty low here and my forehead is sweaty from the kitchen. "How do we do that."
"Hacking," she says, and now she smiles big-time, and as she starts to explain, I can see the barely-perceptible flick of her faint pupils as they roll to either side, pause, and jitter—and she goes back through her endless fleet of cameras to exposit.
-
I get to do the first part of the gig that same night in the darkest and most neonlit hours of Velnias past midnight. I head up through the subway station into Laudenberger Square, this huge park of rolling astroturf and food trucks and buskers and concrete made into wild patterns, which is still bustling even at this time. I forego my mask in my bag and wear a baseball cap instead, low to my eyes and plunging them in shadow. Even though it's crowded nobody is really looking at each other. By this time the big bars and the automat, which dispenses alcohol for cheap past eight PM, have converted the witty and quick-moving masses of Velnias into drunks all over, and the expensive spirits from Jazid similarly turn the Guilders into easy things to avoid.
After glancing at a security camera I go over to a nearby parking lot and tap my index finger. I get a quick response—three fingers press my thigh, then my middle twice. Easy pickings. There's an electric moped in the third spot from the left, and when I step on, the suspension seems to respond pretty nicely. Seat could fit her. Good enough. By the time I'm on that seat, my arm is already set to work on the keylock with a shim.
-
Velnias should get smaller, or seem smaller, when you've got a vehicle, but the enormity of it actually gets a lot more daunting when—despite going fifty kilometers an hour—it still feels like forever to get anywhere. The moped is clearly for someone smaller than me and the motor whirs pretty angrily going uphill, but I've got to use the freeway if I want to get anywhere, so it's gonna have to put up with me. Gotta use the rightmost lane for slow, shitty, electric vehicles. Even at top speed and passing a building every few seconds I get the feeling like I'm still out in the country somewhere on Stromm's, kayaking through the Outhe or on an airboat in the wetland south of Harbaugh, or even riding in my parents' car after a dust storm. Going so long the travel starts to feel like staying still. Thirty minutes to get from one district to another. I head on a ramp going down to a part of the Gutters.
It doesn't open up like I thought it would, based on all the maps. Instead it closes off. Narrow between two sheer gray apartment blocks that could each house a thousand people. I buzz toward a split-off in the narrow ramp, then another, then another, and I'm trailing a slow-moving yellow cruiser clearly as intimidated as me. Rhodes gave good directions and I'm repeating them in my head but now I'm getting distracted in the heavy stench of smoke and trash.
This lower level I reach, Bermonde Flat, isn't even the bottom of the Gutters, just a transitory level more or less on the same height as some of the richer districts, but hanging—a sheer fifty-meter drop—above a lower street completely saturated on every angle by mass housing complexes and a system of shops and manufactories that could rival the entirety of Flint Wake in one little block. Don't think too hard about it. I come to a stop in an empty parking lot beside an uninteresting, and unblemished, mega-block building which also stretched above the road and stretches below me still. BERMONDE CIVIL, it reads, in corroded metal lettering.
I adjust my hat a little, take a deep breath, and head in the plastic glass doors.
Haven't seen a police or militia station in person since back home, and those were pretty rugged affairs, with lawmen being essentially whoever the League could pin a badge on and could look normal. Not necessarily corrupt but easily intimidated by anything that wasn't internal. Order-keeper, not cop.
This place is well-worn, if a little nauseating from the harsh overhead lights with exposed wiring going into a plaster compartment along the wall. I see someone at the desk and shoot him a very large smile, and tip my cap at him. "Ho," I say.
"Morning," the man says back, flatly. He has dim eyes with deep shadows under them and well-cut hair. "Night, I mean."
"Can I have some help with something?" I ask, leaning forward like I'm somehow in the middle of something more important. I'm exaggerating some parts of my Stromm's accent, more even than I did when meeting Rhodes.
He beckons me over with a hand, and I come over. The linoleum is stained a solid coat of yellow, and an assortment of empty halls and opaque doors surround us. He has a lamp over him like a doting bird, turned off. "Sure. You from around here?"
"No, I weren't," I say. Too exaggerated, fed. "Uh. No, I just tried to get some work, got a construction gig around here, uhh... four-two-six central..."
The guy's eyes light up. "Don't say."
"Yeah, and I can't find the site, and I'm worried."
A look of empathy on his face suddenly. But also amused pity—like watching a kid dunk themselves into a puddle. "I can get you some papers. Did you give out any information to the construction company?"
I nod, cautious on purpose. I think he's disarmed enough that I can play it cool from here. "Uh, just my identification, uh, hours available, bank card so I could start getting paid..."
He grimaces. "Yes. Er, you're going to find that card is already disabled by the League, most likely. People have a scam set up around here."
"No shit," I say, enunciating the 'shhh' to really sell it. I make an angry face and adjust my cap.
"There's consumer, um, protections," he stammers. "Thank god you didn't try with a PiCard. They can, um, fish, phish, or phreak, I forget..."
Now my angry face becomes very sad and afraid. "What do I do?"
"Listen, they probably will call you, but maybe they haven't. Can you wait a second?"
I point at the door nervously. "I got to get to the bank, then."
"Yes, of course, I—"
"Like, now. Could I get, um, could I get something to e-mail—"
He stammers. He's got paper all over his desk now, pulled from everywhere. "Yes, yes, we've been having a problem with them, these people. Go if you, uh, need to, datapad mail me here, this is my work mail." He scribbles frantically on the back of a business card and slaps it on the desk. "During hours, of course."
"Uh. Oh. Thank you, I guess," I say. "Um, I'm Sammy," I also say, like I'm remembering how to have a conversation, or else took the card to be a flirt of some kind.
He nods very awkwardly. "Marko," he says. "It says on my shirt." Indeed it does. Wasn't part of the rehearsal so I didn't notice. "Call back? This could actually be helpful."
"Okay."
So I take the card, give Marko a nervous farewell, and part with what I needed.
- 18 -
In the morning when I report back, Rhodes tells me we'll need to sit on it for a while, which makes some sense to me. Apparently her hacker compatriot Jean Jacket isn't necessarily being carted off soon and we'll have some warning, since there's the worry that this corp Greatest Industries Velnias will try something funny in spite of the fact that whistleblowers are supposed to have protection under League law. Cops have got to prove in a local court that she's a whistleblower before they can be sure they're safe transporting her, so she's sixty layers of defense deep in the Gutters for now, and we are on standby.
I tell her how it went in the precinct and show her the card, and she's pretty delighted. Her research was good, I did well by her metric, I got a good mark. "A good mark-o," she says, cackling softly.
"Guessing he works late very often. Probably tired by that time."
"Easy pickings, I hope," Rhodes hums, wistfully.
I shrug. "Also got the impression he cares about his job, though. Cared about these scammers pretty good."
Now she's twirled around in her seat to tap on her datapad. "Well, if it doesn't work, not a big fear, ah, yeah? Just one wrong email about scheduling."
"He clicks on the file, his computer's done?"
"Yeah." She is very proud of this fact. "Done for. But also opens a real schedule document in its place from somewhere on his computer, makes it look redundant."
I nod at that. Sounds good to me, too. I slip on Ceder's jacket, which has started to be my jacket at this point, and the old Baldari's rod, which is definitely my rod at this point. A little worry strikes me. "Hey, Rhodes?"
"Ah-huh?" She doesn't even look up, but her antenna flails in my direction.
"Why are local cops escorting her, why not Peacekeepers? Thought this was a big deal."
A very slight pause. "Peacekeepers is for if the corp shows up to take it on. Then they get called."
"Uh-huh. Shit." Pit in my stomach all of a sudden. "Fair enough."
"Won't happen," Rhodes says.
I lug my bucket underarm and glance at her, but she doesn't glance back. "Okay, then. See you."
"See ya."
-
It's a humid day and raining heavily. The yellow raincoat I stole a couple months ago is holding up just fine, even fits over Ceder's jacket, but there's still something nasty in my gut as I'm fishing. Being idle, with the rod up on the stick I bought, keeps my mind racing for no real benefit. Wild how the sea calms down in this artificial bay, because I would have imagined the rain to turn it chaotic in seconds. Scanning the horizon, counting the superfreighters going in and out, exhausted in my mask while sat still. Hoping that listening to music will drown out my thoughts a little, but the bluetime station keeps playing old sad ballads.
No big catch yet, despite the rain. Six brown gruel excited to come to the surface. Shit knows how these things live when they're so gullible.
-
I don't know if I love her. Maybe I do. I got this affection in me like I've met something that felt impossible to exist, some oasis of things, somebody who I didn't expect to like at all. Maybe it's a... rebound is what they call it, but it's been some time since Pell got taken. Besides I don't think Pell would have given a shit. Her view was pretty strictly that living people are living and dead people are dead. Still. Sometimes feel her words nibbling at me like I'm good bait.
Don't think I'm good enough to still deserve her words. Or that she's got any business sticking around. Dead is supposed to stay dead. Stop lecturing me.
If I like Rhodes it's earnest, I think, or at least as earnest as I'm capable of. She is charming in a different way than other folk I'm drawn to. And in spite of everything, she did right by me when I was half-dead, or mostly dead, in her apartment. Maybe could've held her own without me, waddled around and survived, but I also don't get the feeling that she was living for much, not at that time. Don't got friends. I wasn't living for much either. Now I am. Now it seems like she is. When I shut my eyes and let the roar of the rain and the crash of the waves overwhelm everything, and pretend I'm outside myself looking in, it's hard to picture Nelly as anything but alive, now. Felt dead for a long while. Even with Pell.
If I think about it, those endless fucking hours in the swamp shooting at shadows and not speaking for days, I don't see a living person. Just an outlander in the shape of whatever she needs to be.
If you'd asked me then I'd say I had no future. Then it got complicated.
-
The clouds are parting a little over the horizon, and the Palisade's sun is shining at an unpleasant angle to my eyes, but it's still pouring hard on the dock. Getting kind of uncomfortable and the facemask isn't helping. Ache in my shoulder. I go to scratch it, and notice the old Baldari fisherman is sat on an upturned bucket, fishing behind me.
His wild eye is calm like the storms of his little fish stall have passed, and he seems serene, facing just at an off angle from me. The clouded sunlight reflects ambiently under his big plastic hat and makes him look friendly. "Ho," he says.
"Hi again," I tell him. Ruins my disguise, but I couldn't help replying, and figured he'd recognize my voice anyway.
"Ah," he snarls, but it's not an angry snarl. "You. Undocumented fisherwoman. Thought was my rod, heh heh."
I nod and tip my hood further over my head to keep out some of the rain. He is honestly kind of difficult to hear through the downpour, so we've both got our voices raised, and I lean over to quiet down my Universal Audio Player a few ticks. "Treating me well," I tell him.
"This spot good?" he asks.
I shrug. "Treating me well, as well. Lonesome."
"Ah. Sorry," he says, and starts to get up. "Leave to it, friend."
He calls me friend? All I ever did was throw a gun at him and trade for his precious lures. But he seems to mean it. I reach up and brush his arm. "No, it's fine," I tell him.
"Sure?"
"Yeah."
His beak-snout contorts into a broad toothy smile, and his whiskers splay out. Caught him in a nice mood I guess. "Great. Always like new spots."
So I fish back-to-back with the old Baldari.
-
We chat very minimally but amicably. He seems to fish like I do, seems to like the peace, seems pacified dull by the waves lapping against the dock, much like I am. I learn his name is Pivvik and that he bicycles around. I ask him if it's a good way to get about. He says it is. I tell him I figured he had a boat of some kind, and he says he's repainting it.
-
We part around noon when I have a good haul and the rain has partly let up. He's mostly given me all the brown gruel of his own catch, having no interest, and asks about it. "Good when chopped up," I say.
"Tshh, sure," he says, and he grins again. He has something else to say as I'm turning around. "Mad if I come back for more fishing, sometime?"
I think about it just a second and respond. "Probably won't see me again."
"Aw. Shame."
He seems to accept it without fuss. I reckon I will actually have to find a new spot, or else wait for him to get done repainting his boat so I don't see him again. Rhodes' advice rattling around in my head. Don't meet someone more than once. Thrice is beyond pushing it.
Then again I've had to meet Ceder a hundred times now, and the kitchen staff, and passing glances with all those coming to the bar. Wonder if it's a ticking time bomb too.
I wave goodbye to Pivvik for good.