Falling (19 page)

Now that she was certain of her surroundings – the meandering trunk route pretentiously christened The King's Waterway, decades after anyone laid claim to any kind of kingship – Jude stopped in the middle of a vandalised picnic area to finish breakfast.

The area must have been pleasant, once. The dilapidated houses had long, thin gardens that straggled down to the towpath, full of lime-leaved trees that showered her with tiny white blossoms. Beyond, unfamiliar buildings were rising on the skyline. Greens or cultists were the only people who actually built in the cities any more, but these looked far too professional for them. Maybe the gangs were going respectable, investing in property. It had been five years, after all. Anything could have changed.

Except by the canals. Frozen in time by the neglect of the gangs controlling them, they were falling prey to time and small-scale predations. Here and there, looters had cut archways through the fences and, on departing, left breadcrumb trails of rusted tools or dropped and discarded junk.

Among the damp paperbacks and torn stockings, she found a copy of
St James Infirmary
, rotting in the leaf litter. The Louis Armstrong version, hardly his kind of material. Still, everyone makes mistakes.

She crouched to pick it up. One side had melted onto the tarmac, and it snapped as she lifted it, leaving her staring in annoyance at a jagged fragment of history.

She gave it a sea burial in the canal, trying not to think about the dog.

The bread rolls were still faintly warm and she'd had the foresight to finish off the minibar. A couple of mouthfuls of neat vodka, and a few moments dozing in the sun, and Jude began to feel that she had everything figured out.

It wasn't more than a couple of miles to Deep Ground. She had friends there. Big, dangerous, gene-engineered friends with bad reputations. She'd pulled an illicit job for them, accompanying their leader to a gang meeting, then ReTracing to just beforehand to tell him which trick clauses to look for and what his enemies really wanted. They'd really made a killing, the second time round. They owed her.

Certainly a change of clothes, and maybe an escort for protection while she went over to Fitch's apartment, just to find out –

Fitch. The subject she'd been avoiding all this time, the ghost at the edge of her vision.

It was five years since Fitch had decided to switch back. She could be a man, a woman or a Tyrannosaurus Rex by now. She had five whole years of memories that didn't contain Jude – as a lover, an ex, an enemy, anything. Probably thought Jude was dead, actually. And now the ghost of her dead lover was going to waltz in the door and spout ReTracer jargon to explain a five year absence.

And what if she's still a guy, Judey? What do you do then? Close your eyes and think of England? Get her to change back – maybe now and then as a birthday treat, dressing in female flesh like it was sexy lingerie?

Can you live with that?

Something vast and silent descended from the heavens behind her, blocking out the sun.

She was running, instinctively, blindly, before she'd even registered the downdraught and the monotonous clip-clip-clip of the rotors. The first thing she took in consciously was that it was her name the loudspeakers were blaring – stay where you are, you will not be harmed – and that was all the impetus she needed.

‘Jude!' Warner's voice screamed over the rotor noise. ‘It's me! Don't be a fool!'

Hell, she thought, plunging into the nettle-filled ditch that bordered the gardens, why break the habit of a lifetime?

Something shattered on the rubble behind her, spraying the backs of her legs with a cold acrid liquid. In the split second before the brisk wind flicked the gas away into the canal, her eyes filled with tears.

The wire fence to her right was ripped along most of its length – welding torch, the looters round here didn't piss around – and the lower half had long since collapsed into a tangle of steel and ivy. Ducking under the long strands of melted and resolidified metal that trailed from the top half, metal lianas in an urban jungle, Jude threw herself headlong into the nearest garden.

The ground dipped sharply, a brief slope barbed with thorns and broken glass, and she crashed head-first into a heap of rotting vegetation. Pain lanced through her shoulder. Gasping, she recoiled, spitting dust, scraping leaf-mould from her eyes.

And froze.

Hydrangea leaves, forced vertical by the helicopter downdraught, shivered against her cheek. The silvery underbelly of the pseudo-helicopter was almost close enough to touch. Looked like GenoBond had finally got that budget increase. Brushed metal, sleek and brand-new, peppered with inactive jet nozzles. Better hope they didn't fire those up while she was underneath…

Huddled over to muffle her heartbeat from their sensors, she waited.

The undergrowth was thick, woody, heavy with leaves. It would take more than a helicopter's undertow to flatten it and reveal her. Of course, the disturbance might not be enough to mask her if she started crawling for the house. But if she stayed here, they'd start on the tear-gas and trank bombs and all their other toys, and they'd have back-up troops headed here by now, ground-pounders to flush her out.

In the narrow, echoing sound-trap of the canal, the rifle shot echoed like a bomb blast.

Jude jumped like a scared kid; froze again, feeling sweat forming between her shoulder blades. Dammit, they weren't supposed to be shooting at her. She wasn't a danger, so why…?

Two shots later, she realised that they weren't.

The echoes gave it away. Too sharp, too far from the original retort. Whoever was firing that rifle was a considerable distance away, firing towards her. Which probably meant they were firing at the helicopter. The prospect of having a ton of blazing metal come down on her head didn't cheer her significantly.

Swallowing curses, Jude began edging forward through the shrubbery. The stench was appalling. A lot of things had died in here, recently, and she didn't want to consider exactly how. There was a thick layer of something wet and slippery under her right knee, inflicting further atrocities on the suit. She didn't dare investigate. Her stomach felt quite delicate enough as it was.

The next couple of bushes were thick with long, dry thorns. This was all going to get very unpleasant.

‘Jude,' the loudspeakers blared. ‘Think about this. This area is full of crazies. Gun-freaks, drugged-out gangs, all kinds. Your only way out of here alive is to come with us.'

More shots. Two or three guns now, coaxing a symphony of echoes from the houses and the high crumbling walls bordering the canal.

‘Come on, Jude. You can't sort this out alone. You need our help to get home. We can cut a deal, whatever terms you want. I've always kept my word, Jude, you know that.'

Easing through a man-trap of thorns, Jude was wishing that she'd paid more attention during Comparative Religion and Philosophy classes. This seemed like a good time to take up praying.

‘Damn you, Jude,' Warner's voice crackled, mere inches overhead. ‘You just can't make it easy for yourself, can you? All right. Have it your way.'

The loudspeaker cut out with an audible snap, and the pressure on the shuddering canopy began to ease. The helicopter was pulling out.

Or pulling up, at least, out of range of the sharpshooters. Which ought to keep them occupied for long enough –

Doubled over, keeping herself at least level with the vast mutated rhododendrons, Jude ran.

She hit the rear door still running; cheap plywood rotted by the pervasive canalside damp, which caved in under the impact, spilling her into a gasping heap on the cracked red floor-tiles.

It was a kitchen. Or it had been, a long time ago. Blinking, she could make out the play of sunlight across a cheap tin draining board, the shimmer of condensation on flaking emulsion. A child's picture, faded beyond recognition, was still pinned above the stove, inscribed with damp blurred letters, MUMMY.

Picking her footholds carefully, Jude eased herself upright. The furniture had been overturned in the scramble for loot, and the floor was encrusted with tiny brittle shells of pasta, a random mosaic set in a plaster of rats' droppings.

Clinging to the table legs and drawer handles for stability, she managed to negotiate her way through the filth and out into the hallway, where there was less guano, more light, and more destruction.

Most of the stairwell ceiling had come down, vast chunks of plaster smashing through stairboards or exploding into delicate flowers of white powder on the hallway carpet. The front door stood slightly open, admitting a shaft of the peculiar yellow light that always precedes a storm. The decorative panel at its centre had been smashed in, but the frame was still edged with fragments of coloured glass, chartreuse and cornflower blue.

Keeping flat against the hallway wall, presenting as little of herself for a target as possible, Jude peered out into the street.

Houses. Just like she'd expected. Inner-city suburbs, rotted and forgotten. Broken tumble-down houses and burned out corner stores and –

Rising defiantly above the rubble scattered across the next crossroads, the low Art Deco hump of an Underground station.

Even gun-crazies respected the Underground. And Warner's people wouldn't follow her down there. Not unless they were feeling certifiably suicidal. All she needed was something to trade.

Like the watch currently weighing down her left wrist.

Oh, and there was the small matter of getting there alive. But, as Schrader might have said, little hiccups like that were all part of the excitement of being alive.

Schrader, she was beginning to think, didn't know shit.

Thunder rumbled in the east and a sudden brief rush of cold air announced the arrival of the rain.

TWELVE

‘How are you paying?' the eyeless man seated behind the improvised ticket barrier asked her, scratching absently at a shaving cut under his chin.

Glancing round the white-tiled emptiness of the Underground ticket hall, Jude dropped the watch into his outstretched palm.

‘Hmmm,' he said, paying the strap between his fingers like a rosary. ‘Nice.'

‘I thought so.'

‘Steal it?'

‘It kind of fell into my possession.'

One of the black-clad muscle boys loitering at the entrance to the Excess Fares booth strolled forward, heels clicking on patched concrete, summoned by some signal she'd missed. Jude tensed, wondering how good a weapon the almost empty briefcase would make. But the muscle boy just accepted the watch from the ticket man and strolled away to hand it in over the counter. Safe keeping.

Turning the white scar tissue of his eye sockets towards her in a gesture that was obviously supposed to repulse her into accepting the offer, the blinded man murmured, ‘Five tickets.'

‘Oh, come on. Eight, at least.'

He blew air through his teeth, already bored by the ritual. He was young, for this job. The ferrymen were pretty crazy, even by the standards of post-Migration gangs, but they didn't usually accord their soldiers the honour of blinding until they were too old to carry a gun. Maybe skinny here had shown a real talent for surfing the tangled currents of the spirit world, or whatever bullshit they were spouting these days.

Lucky him.

‘Six,' the blind man said wearily, extracting a sheaf of pale green tickets from under the desk and fanning them like a card-sharp.

‘Deal.'

‘Rip-off' would have been closer, but she didn't have the time or the energy for the normal process of prolonged haggling. She wanted to be well away from here before Warner persuaded any of his people to change into civvies and tail her. Assuming he employed anyone that reckless.

At least she'd bought herself some time. They wouldn't try anything down here. But then they wouldn't have to. All they need to do was follow. She'd have to emerge sooner of later.

Preferably sooner. Travelling by Underground got right on her nerves.

‘So what's it like, then?' she asked, as he counted the tickets for the second time. ‘Being a servant of Sharon?'

‘Charon,' he corrected tonelessly. ‘I am a humble seeker who serves the dark ferryman to the best of my ability.'

‘Ripping off travellers? You're too humble, you know. You're actually pretty good at it.'

‘The security boys at the booth sighed and rolled their eyes heavenwards, as if asking forgiveness for this infidel's ignorance.

‘The journey is a reflection of human life, sister. If you wish to make the journey, you must negotiate, and then pay, the appropriate price.'

Thinking about a woman falling out of a high building, many, many years ago, Jude murmured, ‘Well, I can't disagree with you there.'

‘Additional ticket thrown in, free and gratis,' he offered, lifting it to the light as if booking her, ‘if you could spare a moment to discuss the doctrines of the Ferrymen of Eternity?'

‘Sorry. In a hurry.'