Saga (10 page)

“Come on, Ghost,” pleaded Milan. “Just imagine the scene. We could paint the tank with anarchy signs. You know, the rebel entry, the pirates! I can see it now—skull and crossbones fluttering as we storm the track, blowing away the luxury entries. The four of us can take off as soon as the tank is over the line. Arnie can get the glory and the prizes. It’ll be like, ‘Who were those cool guys?’ Everyone will want to know, but no one will.”

“Please, Ghost.” Now it was Nathan’s turn. “I know it’s risky, but we can’t pass this up. What are we living for if we don’t take a chance like this? Are we just going to live in a tiny room, away from the heartbeat of the world? Or are we going to get stuck in when the chance comes?”

“Yeah! Go Nath!” Milan held out a fist, and they banged their knuckles together.

“Arnie, are you really willing to have your tank go out racing covered with anarchy signs?” I asked him, hoping sobriety would return through his abhorrence of politics.

“You can paint it yellow and call it ‘the Giant Banana’ for all I care. Just come and fire the guns and I’m happy. Give me a chance of getting that green card, and the outside of it is yours to fool around with.”

“That settles it,” Athena announced firmly. “We’re in. We won’t ever get a chance like this, to get a message onto the major networks. We can put the Defiance tag on the tank, get some publicity for the guild.”

Over the previous three days, Nathan and Athena had been busy with the new guild: she, through the computer, completing the registration form; he with his paints. Athena had enjoyed filling in the questionnaires, especially with regard to aims and goals; the membership charter read like a collection of punk lyrics.

Meanwhile, Nathan had come up with the design for the tag that would identify the guild, whether on official forms or the walls of the streets. He had kept it simple, the word “defiance” in black, set against a green background of leafy plants, like a gate holding back an overgrown garden. All around and through the letters curved vines and leaves. The beauty of it was that when you looked closely, you saw the interesting details. Just like the design in our den, it had many little animals and birds peeking out of the vegetation. The only measure of insubordination in the tag, though, was the word itself and the fact that the A of “defiance” was the anarchy sign. I thought it beautiful; it was certainly different from any of the other guild tags, with their lightning bolts or stars or blasts of fire.

Nathan and Athena were beaming at each other, delighted at the prospect of an entry in the aircar race bearing their colors.

I sighed in capitulation. “Well, at least let’s do it right. With plenty of planning to minimize the risks.”

Full of energy now, Arnie got up, an expression of concentration on his face as his thoughts turned back to the engineering work needed on the tank. He headed into the workshop without another word.

This was a crazy idea, but I suppose that was the price to be paid for not living alone. You had to go along with your friends if you couldn’t persuade them of their mistakes.

 

Friday was party night. Thanks to Nath, our ubiquitous red-mall clothes had been transformed into unique designer items. I went for an undead theme and watched with delight as Nath sketched again the ♥ inside a wraith that he had done for my old airboard. He carefully inked the paper, his mouth tight with concentration. At one point, he looked up, and when he noticed I had been watching, he blushed slightly. It was good that he was with us, and I suddenly got all protective, swearing to myself I’d look after him as well as I could.

When the sketch was complete, Nath fed it into his tattoo machine, set now for cotton and negative imaging. Slowly a glistening, semitransparent, living version of his design emerged out the other side, curling around itself. I peeled off the backing and rolled it out over my black tank top. The image spread out across the material, like a white ink stain, a Rorschach pattern that revealed a face of horror. Just as with his car design, Nath had the flowing white hair reach all the way around the back of the top. I scooped it up and hung it by the window while it settled down. With such an extraordinary top, I didn’t need to go overboard with the rest of my party look. Just black eye shadow and a studded belt. For temporary tattoos, I had Athena put a ♥ on my right shoulder blade and a skull on my left.

Athena’s hair was down. If my hair could grow as straight as hers, I’d have done exactly as she had, in dying it raven black and growing it long. With pale makeup and her snake-eye contacts, she looked deadly, literally. Nath gave her trousers serpent coils, so that to look at her you saw a medusa: half woman, half snake.

Considering that Milan was basically going in his usual combats, it was a long wait for him to come out of the bathroom, which now reeked of aftershave. “We set?” I asked through the door to where the lads were changing in the corridor.

“Yeah, ready.” Milan came in, strutting, his broad shoulders held back. He didn’t have to get tattoos made for the night; his were perma-tats. Nath was dressed simply in a blue T-shirt and navy cords. But the design on his chest was a writhing scarlet-and-orange sun, which changed colors as he moved. It was very eye-catching. Those scintillating evolving designs were pretty popular with the psychedelic crowd. Over his shoulder, he had a satchel filled with cans loaded with the new Defiance tag.

“Listen, before we go partying, what are we going to do about Jay?” I asked them.

Milan just shrugged. “See what he has to say. But even if he did drop us in it, I say let’s just play it cool. We don’t need him, and we don’t need the grief of a fight with him.”

“I agree,” responded Athena immediately. “That’s surprisingly wise of you, Milan.”

“I have my moments of sanity. Let’s try to get hold of him before things get too crazy. Then we can enjoy the party!”

Left to my
own devices, I was inclined to be a solitary creature. I preferred to spend my Saturday nights infiltrating a high-level government building to see if I could learn anything about my past rather than go dancing. But I made exceptions for events my friends were going to, especially events organized by the Anarcho-Punk Collective. Not that we knew much about the APC—they were very secretive—but we did know that they ran wonderful parties.

We boarded through the cool evening air, staying low, occasionally pausing to fire a Defiance tag onto a suitably inviting wall. After an hour, we turned in to Nightingale Avenue to glide alongside the railings of the old hospital grounds. There was over a mile of disused garden between the hospital and us, but already we could make out a deep regular bass beat, pounding out into the sky: the pulse of a party, issuing its summons to those of us who lived in the nooks and crannies of the City.

Around us now were not the usual street inhabitants. No suits and ties here, but a growing crowd of punks, street boarders, and ravers. There was an irony about this. In their effort to be different from the City, the punks dressed to shock. But there was near uniformity in their display of spiked colored hair, violent facial tattoos, black leather clothes, studs, and chains.

“Hey!” I wanted to share the thought and glanced over my shoulder at Athena. “Wouldn’t it be more punk to come to one of these raves in a business suit?”

Athena laughed as she put on a burst of speed to come alongside me.

“That would be class. Next time, let’s do it. Bring clipboards and headsets, and pretend to be doing market research or something.”

“Brilliant.” I could picture the scene. “Imagine asking: which of the following breakfast cereals do you shop for? Or, what aircar do you drive? Everyone would think we were nuts.”

“Young man,” intoned Athena in a mock-serious voice, “we are researching the use of hair dyes for our product. Which of the following categories would you say your hair came into: dry, medium, greasy, or kick-ass fluorescent pink?”

The flow of partygoers thickened as it reached the huge pillars of the hospital entrance. We dropped off our boards and joined a queue that moved steadily into the building; we were surrounded by a hubbub of good-humored chat.

The building itself was pretty grim, even for a former hospital. It was built four stories high from somber, dark-gray stone, with unadorned windows set regularly into the walls. I felt it had the character of an old woman whose mind had just been taken over by the APC. Already we could see the shadowy interior coming alive. Beams of blue and red were sweeping around the third floor. A strobe was flickering somewhere inside the second, making the windows of that floor blink with surprise. And, of course, music was filling the sky above us, expelled from the great entrance like a cadenced scream from an open mouth.

“Don’t you think the building is like a senile woman? Gone mad with all the strange activity in her head?”

“Blood and thunder, Ghost, are you trying to freak me out already?” Milan rolled his eyes. “It’s not as if I’ve taken any psychs yet.”

We went through the doors now, into a huge reception hall. A big black-and-red flag hung down from an upper balcony. Below it were some serious-looking heavies. Although they were smiling, the men and women holding buckets were intimidating. They were much older than everyone entering the building, with faded perma-tats and weatherworn faces, suggesting they’d been traveling and living outdoors for years. Involuntarily all the young ravers and punks fell quiet as they passed the APC equivalent of a nightclub bouncer. I threw a red chip into a bucket.

“That’s covered us four.” I circled my friends with my finger to show them to the woman we faced. She smiled, the lines around her eyes deepening, her eyebrow piercing glittering. “Go on in, and have a good night.” She handed us a flyer with a map of the hospital on the back.

Now we approached another loose line of men and women; beyond them was the blare of music coming from the interior of the building. Unlike the security in their dark utilitarian clothes, these people were dressed to party. I wondered what they were doing, but Milan was ahead of me.

“Wow, this is class, no need to worry about meeting your dealers; they’ve laid it all on.”

He was right. These were sellers.

“Jeebies? Psychs? Rush? What would you like?” A tall guy with a long plaid shirt smiled at us. I shook my head. Jeebies were pretty harmless and it was tempting to get a couple, but maybe later when I’d got my bearings. I was confident I looked good; Athena and I were already getting interested looks from guys in the queue, but there was something unsettling about the scale of this rave. Plus I wanted to have my head together for our chat with Jay.

“I’ll have half a dozen jeebies.” Milan looked at me with a momentary hangdog expression. “You don’t mind me using that chip?”

“No, go ahead. It’s yours to use as you please.”

“Sweet, thanks.” He turned back to the drugs seller.

“What alcohol have you got?”

“I don’t mess with that. But she’s got some.” Mr. Plaid nodded at a woman farther along the row. She was slightly older than the other sellers and, although her dyed-black hair looked good, there was something slightly sad about her. The trousers that were hitched a bit too high, perhaps, or the fact that they’d been pulled a bit too tight. It didn’t help her that her nose had been broken at some point also and was no longer straight.

“All right?” she asked Milan.

“Hi, what have you got?”

“Whatever you want, honey. Wine, beer, gin, vodka, even whiskey.”

“Wanna share a bottle of whiskey?” Milan offered us.

“No,” replied Athena crossly. “First of all, it doesn’t mix well with those jeebies you got. Secondly, you will end up losing basic motor functions, and will tread on other people while you try to dance, and finish the night throwing up. Come on, Milan; show some sense for once.”

She had him. That’s exactly what had happened last time.

He rolled his eyes as if inviting the seller to laugh with him at the fact of his being nagged. But I was glad to see he bought just four cans of beer.

We went inside, Nath and Milan swigging their beers. It suddenly dawned on me that half the story was that Milan wanted to be seen carrying banned drugs.

The rooms of the ground-floor corridors had been converted to little emporiums for the night, selling food, drink, shirts, music, books, candles, and jewelry. There was even a perma-tat stand. We glanced into them as we strolled along. All around us, merry groups of young partygoers ran amok, shouting to each other over the thunder of a distant band.

“What are we doing?” asked Milan.

Athena was studying the flyer we had been given on our arrival. “The ground floor has a board course. First floor is punk, second rave, and third is ambient. I’m going to check out the boarders. Coming, Ghost?”

“Sure.”

“Punk stage for me,” announced Milan.