A Few Good Men (5 page)

It reminded me of when I was seven and Mom had insisted to my father that I be allowed to attend a big party the estate was giving for all the children of retainers, functionaries and servants. It had been a fateful party, in a way, because at that party I’d met Ben, who was exactly my age, and we’d found out that we lived a stone’s throw from each other, since his family’s relatively modest mansion was just across a side avenue from the palace. As it should be, since Ben’s much older brother and guardian, Samuel, was the main manager of my father’s properties and general factotum of his business and household. From there to one or the other of us studying how to get over the wall with the complicity of guards who had doubtless been told by my mother to leave us alone, was a matter of days, and after that we’d been inseparable.

But part of the reason that Ben and I had taken to each other initially was that we’d both been hugging the fringes of the crowd, feeling strange, out of place and more than a little scared in the middle of that crowd of shrieking, running, talking children.

I was then an only child, and would be for another eleven years, before Max was born. Given my birth status and the care that Father had with me—which even then seemed to be more concerned with keeping me alive than with keeping me in any way happy, or well educated, or even obedient—I was rarely allowed to see children, and I’d never been in the middle of a large group of them. Mine was a solitary childhood, carefully watched by nannies, and more exactingly educated by Mother, who taught me herself, as well as hiring tutors to teach me what she didn’t know. I’d enjoyed myself, in my own way, with reading and virtus programs, and playing in the garden, and I didn’t realize it wasn’t normal to have no friends beside a rather dumb blond setter dog.

Ben, in turn, was younger than his brother by more than twenty years, the last child, born of a second marriage, in a family of hereditary retainers to the Keevas. His life probably wasn’t as solitary as mine. He was allowed to play with a few of the better born children in the city. But like me he didn’t attend learning programs, and he didn’t meet up with any large number of children at one time.

Entering that room, with a hundred and some children screaming and running and fighting and laughing, had given me an instant panicky feeling of being outnumbered. I’d ensconced myself at a corner, with my back protected from any sneak attacks and stood there, shaking, terrified that anyone would try to fight me or, even worse, talk to me.

No one did. I guess they’d all been warned I was the Good Man’s son. No one even got near until Ben had come, sidling along the wall, his back against it, looking about as scared as I felt. And because he looked scared, I could talk to him, and eventually find out he wasn’t the frightened mouse he looked.

I hadn’t felt so scared since. Eventually I’d found my way out into the world beyond my father’s walls. No matter how little he liked having me out of his sight (and he didn’t like it at all), I’d not only learned to navigate occasions of state, banquets of Good Men, and the company of their heirs, but I’d on my own—with Ben’s complicity, of course—found my way to the lowest dives in most seacities: the hangouts of working men, and the hangouts of men who didn’t work at all. Pubs and taverns, diners and broomer lairs, fences and dealers of smuggled goods. At one time, if the place opened off a narrow street populated by workers and those who labored in the gray and black economy, it would have been my natural habitat and I’d have moved through it as contentedly as a fish in the sea.

But now I clung to the walls and walked looking straight ahead. I wasn’t bothered, anyway. Men my size rarely are, and I suspected my fear was translating itself into a death-glare, threatening bodily harm to anyone who came near or even looked at me twice. People gave me embarrassed looks, or glanced quickly away.

The first fence I knew in Liberte was gone. The place where it had been had become a restaurant, advertising “cheap steak,” so I didn’t think they still operated. And if they did, I wasn’t likely to know how to go about signaling what I wanted.

The next one I remembered, Lupin and Sons, was still the same dive I remembered, a narrow hole in the wall of a shop, the shop window filled with dusty bric-a-brac, in a pile and in no particular order, antique candlesticks and modern cheap power pack holders mingling with old clothes, boots that looked like they were walked into holes before being put on the shelf, and, disconcertingly, a stuffed squirrel, which had been there at least sixteen years. Its little beady glass eyes glared resentfully from under a layer of dust and cobwebs. For reasons known only to someone I hoped never to meet, it had been outfitted in miniature broomer kit, and was holding a tiny toy burner in its clawed fingers.

The operators didn’t recognize me as I came in, which was odd since the man behind the counter was old Francois and his helper was his son Louis who was about my age and now had a receding airline. I knew they hadn’t recognized me because they both stared at me and I saw Louis’s hand move beneath the counter, doubtless reaching for the burner he kept there. The stories I’d heard was that no one tried to rob old Lupin’s twice. And since they kept the police properly bribed, their business remained profitable and stable.

I said the words I had learned eighteen years ago, and which I hadn’t had to use since, since after the first few trades they’d known me. I’d sold clothes here, as well as some minor pieces of jewelry. My own jewelry, my only source of money, since Father kept me short of cred gems. “Robespierre sent me.”

Louis didn’t relax, or move his hand from under the counter, but Francois stared at me, with a slow intent look, then held onto his son’s arm, as if to prevent him drawing, and said something quickly in the old French patois that is still used
en famille
in Liberte.

Then he said, looking up at me still, “It’s been a long time.”

I swallowed hard. “Yes,” I said. “But I’d like to do some business.”

He inclined his head. For a moment I expected him to tell me that they didn’t want my business. I wondered if the wanted bulletin for me had already gone out, and if no one, not even the demi-monde, would trade with me. But then Francois looked up and said, “Show me.”

I showed them. Four of the brooms and about half the burners. I don’t know what it says about their business that they didn’t even ask me where I’d got those highly unusual brooms, or those weapons of such high range of fire, and so completely blank of all identification. Instead, they looked each piece over carefully, noted the dents where I’d disabled the tracking chips, and then old Francois made his bid, higher than I expected, “Five hundred narcs.”

I was so shocked, as I’d been expecting something closer to fifty, that I almost forgot I was supposed to bid him up, which of course I did. You wouldn’t want to take the first price he offered. You couldn’t, without making him suspect there was another tracking chip in there, one designed to get proof of his misdeeds.

I bid in at twelve hundred and we settled at eight hundred. I had no idea what prices were like now, but this should allow me to get other clothes, if I weren’t extravagant, and to get myself cleaned, and probably to live for a good week. I doubted I had a week with Father on my trail, but if I were still free by then, perhaps I’d have a better idea of what I could do with myself.

At any rate I made a mental note that Francois paid a lot more for brooms and weapons than for jewels.

I half expected to find that the price of the things I needed had crept up and out of sight too, but when I bought a used but in good condition suit from Francois, he charged me only five narcs, despite its being good material and Francois knowing how much I had in my pouch. I kept the boots, which were seawater stained, but in good condition and nondescript. The broomer suit to go over my street clothes was only fifteen narcs, despite being leather and insulated. I rented a cube and fresher in the next building—by the hour, no questions asked, but the fresher was a water-powered one, the soap was good and if the building was mostly used by prostitutes, they were clean prostitutes—the whole cost me only two narcs for the hour.

The steaming hot shower felt like heaven on my salt-covered body, and I washed as I hadn’t in years. I decided that I didn’t care if vibro fresher sessions made you as clean or cleaner than water, they didn’t feel that way. And I liked feeling clean.

I opened the sterile toiletries pouch that came with the cube, and got beard-cream, and a comb. There was a mirror just outside the fresher, and for a moment I felt like I was staring at a total stranger. Oh, I’d seen myself before, of course. But not my face. Not face to face. Not to stare myself in the eyes. And seeing my face and my body, facing me, realizing it was me was an odd experience that brought with it a sense of disconnect.

I hadn’t grown since I’d been in jail. My height was the same, or just about. Everything else was different. I knew my body had changed a lot since then, mostly because of my rigorous exercise program. I’d acquired definition and slabs of muscle, but my mental image of myself was still of a tall, lanky young man who’d grown too fast to fill in. A twenty-two-year-old with ribs you could see through his skin and a thin face with terrified eyes. Which didn’t look at all like the thirty-seven-year-old in the mirror, facing me.

I’d untied my hair before climbing in the shower, and now, as I combed it free of tangles, I was glad it hadn’t started to recede yet. It had been fifteen years since I’d seen myself in the mirror, and a receding hairline might have killed me. There might be white in the hair, though I couldn’t find any. At any rate, it wouldn’t be too visible among the golden blond mass.

I found a proper tie for it this time, a scrap of black ribbon that had tied together the toiletries in their pouch.

The biggest difference in me was the scar that went from just under my right eye, cut across my nose and all the way to the left ear lobe. That had been from the suicide attempt in which I’d tried to crush my face in with the cot. It had worked so far as to crush my nose. I remembered gasping desperately for air as I drowned in my own blood. But when I’d awakened my nose had been regened. I never figured out why they couldn’t regen away the scar. Regen sometimes failed to work on some things, and perhaps that was all that had happened. I’d known it was there, because I could feel it with my fingers before. Mind you, it wasn’t very obvious, just a faint pinkish line, but it made me look vicious and battle-hardened. The other scars that couldn’t be regened, a mass on my right wrist, from when I’d managed to gnaw through to the vein, the low, semicircular jagged scar in my lower abdomen from my previous encounter with Scrubbers, and the myriad small, odd scars from the tender mercies of Never-Never torturers would be hidden by the suit, which I pulled on.

It was a little tight. Not too much. My mental image of myself might be that of a twenty-two-year-old stripling, but I’d guess that old Francois had only shown me what might have fit me—and fit me it did, a well-made tunic and pants in serviceable blue cloth, which hugged my body like a second skin. I slipped on the new broomer suit—another five narcs—not that I intended on flying just yet, but it would keep me from being asked too many questions. I’d made sure it was black with no markings, so no rival lair could take offense at my being in their territory. After I’d put the boots on, I was ready to face the world. Well, at least that part of the world outside the doors, which I navigated by clinging to the walls, and sliding from hole-in-the-wall shop entrance to hole in the wall shop window, until I came to a diner.

It was the sort of cramped place that serves all meals at any time. They catered to working people who worked in shifts on the few algae farms nearby, and who might well be having breakfast at sunset. This being neither sunset nor sunrise, nor the noon hour, the clientele was sparse and quiet, mostly one or two people per table, and a few at the counter that ran the length of the diner, facing the automated kitchen. I’d heard some of these programmed the robots to carry on conversations with the customers, though it had always evaded me why anyone would want to carry on a conversation with a thing that looked like a metallic column with arms that ended in pincers and spatulas and whatnot.

This wasn’t that sort of establishment. The tables didn’t even have an interactive surface. Ordering was by means of punching buttons on a little plaque beside the table and popping your credgem into the little circular slot, then out again. And the drinks didn’t arrive via a chute on the table, but by one of columnar robots delivering it. And the robots didn’t chatter, so the customers had to provide their own conversation.

I sat at the corner table, my back to the wall, and listened to the desultory conversations, mostly from those sitting at the counter. They were the conversations people anywhere will have. Jobs and love affairs, how good or bad the food is, and how expensive things had got. Not that my meal was that expensive, though certainly, guns and stealth brooms seemed to be out of sight—though those weren’t mentioned by anyone.

My food was decently cured ham and eggs, cornbread muffins, and coffee black as my soul. I ate and drank with relish, since the food provided in Never-Never might be nutritious and have all needed vitamins and minerals. Certainly, I’d never gotten ill because of any lack in it, but a man does get tired of green salty mush and pink sweet mush with no other taste.

After a while I started feeling as though I must have a target on my back. It wasn’t what anyone said. It was what no one said. No one mentioned the break out of Never-Never. Fine, I could even understand that, to an extent, since after all Never-Never was a secret prison. I mean, even I hadn’t been sure it existed, even if I’d heard rumors, until I found myself in it.

But still, the Usaian kid couldn’t have been the only one who’d escaped. The broomers had penetrated it, and I suspected even though any number had been recaptured, surely a good number of prisoners had made it out. Many of these men would have been put away for a decade or more. How could they reappear whether their story was believed or not, without its being in the news, somewhere? By now, surely, some of these people would have heard of it. Particularly since most escaped prisoners, like me, would make a beeline for this sort of neighborhood.