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“Got you, motherfucker,” Drexler snarled, thereby increasing, again, the number of times he had sworn in his life by an actually measurable percentage. “Fuckin’ hurt your ass!”

  The moment of incongruous puzzlement passed. The skin of the creature liquefied and flowed over the hole and knitted.

  The creature brushed at itself momentarily, and somewhat fussily, with a claw.

  Then it reached in, clamped its talons around Drexler’s head and hauled him out of the HumGee, snapping his neck in the process.

  This was probably more fortunate than otherwise for Thomas Marlon Drexler, since it meant that he could not feel what the creature did next.

  From his immobilised point of view, past the foreground spray of various fluids as the creature went to work with a vengeance, Drexler could see the night sky. The stars burned brightly, in a wide range of colours due to suspended atmospheric pollutants.

  The last thing Drexler saw was one of the stars visibly move and expand. Something coming.

  Big light coming down.

  “Oh shit,” Eddie muttered, increasing the number of times he had sworn in his life by no particular increment at all. “Here comes the backup.”

  Hunched up in the lee of a caterpillar-treaded hoist, which he had operated years before under the instruction of Little Deke, life had become quite simple, containing a grand total of two possibilities. Either the thing that had once been Trix Desoto would tire of amusing itself with the NeoGen troops and come sniffing after him, or NeoGen reinforcements would arrive to shoot him in the head.

  The latter, it seemed, would be the case.

  The big VTOL carrier hung in the air stitching fire into the junkyard. Eddie had scrambled for cover before realising that the VTOL was merely firing tracer-flares to provide snapshot-illumination, maybe for some variety of photosensor-system. This inference gave him no impetus to come out from cover, though, on account of (a) a direct hit from a tracer-flare wouldn’t do him much good, and (b) the little fact that if NeoGen saw him they were gonna shoot him in the head.

  As the carrier banked and descended, however, Eddie caught sight of the illuminated logo on its side:

  GenTech

  This wasn’t reinforcement for the bad guys, Eddie Kalish realised belatedly. This was the cavalry.

  A drop-hatch opened and a score of impact-armoured troopers hit the dirt. Each of them toted a big MFG, and it would have been more to Eddie’s taste if they hadn’t looked more or less identical to the NeoGen operatives he had seen, but then you can’t have everything.

  One of them, presumably the squad-leader, carried a small flatscreen readout, which he was busily consulting.

  “Primary target is forty metres south-southeast,” he ordered through a miniature amplifier. “Carter and Trant, secure the package.”

  A pair of troopers peeled off and headed in the direction that Eddie vaguely remembered leaving the comatose old guy.

  ”Track-and-tranque detail, see if you can’t find the silly bitch. Try to take her alive. Try and shock her into latency. The rest of you clean up the area. Standard track and pop…”

  Eddie decided that, on the whole, it would probably be better if he made his presence known rather than wait for the troops to come across him. Moving slow and trying to make himself look as unimpressive and unthreatening as possible, which wasn’t hard, he walked from the cover of the hoist and gave the troops a small wave. “Hey, guys ..?”

  Those of the squad who remained here, maybe ten in all, swung their MFGs toward him instantly.

  “You!” the squad-leader bellowed. “Give me your clearance!”

  “What?” said Eddie.

  “Security key-code clearance! Now!”

  “What the fuck?” said Eddie.

  Automatic fire from maybe three sources stitched into him, and that was the last thing Eddie Kalish remembered.

  Second Quadrant: Section in the Sky

  From behind me a roscoe belched “Chow-chow!” A pair of slugs buzzed past my left ear, almost nicked my cranium. Mrs Brantham sagged back against the pillow of the lounge… she was as dead as an iced catfish.

  “Veiled Lady”

  Spicy Detective

  October 1937

  Supplementary Data

  The conurbation that would eventually become known simply as the San Angeles Sprawl was built on the processes of overexpansion and of dying back, both happening simultaneously.

  That isn’t the oxymoron it might first appear. Population-pressure had been well along the way of thickening up the developments along the routes forming an irregular and somewhat elongated triangle formed by Los Angeles, San Bernardino and San Diego, turning any last vestiges of natural landscape into an urban-landscape, when the ultimate collapse of petrochems as a global source of power had forced human populations to collapse and congeal in a specifically structural manner.

  The vast majority of the urban population now subsisted in what were basically corporate hives—fortified and monolithic compound-blocks, resource-regulated and microclimatically controlled, amongst the rubble and wreckage of what was almost literally, now, an urban jungle.

  It was, in a sense, as if humanity itself had split itself in two. Those with the ant-like temperament to survive in corporate-controlled culture had holed themselves up in these arcologies; those who were essentially nomadic, or indeed bandits, took to the roads… but when the world splits in two, whatever the sense, there are always those who fall through the cracks.

  Sometimes these people gravitated toward settlements, like the ill-fated Las Vitas in New Mexico, and eked out a living on sufferance, servicing those who truly lived out in the wide-open spaces on the simple basis that there has to be somebody who does.

  For the most part, though, they ended up crawling through the tenebrous wreckage of cities cannibalised and consolidated into the corporate hives, living in the ruins of the No-Go Zones. Living the best they could, like maggots on the rotting corpse of the old world.

  Of course, even amongst the society of maggots on a corpse, or any other parasite or scavenger, there were differing degrees of devolvement and ferality.

  There are some who wax fatter than others… and some who don’t.

  These had once been the tunnels of the Los Angeles Transit Authority Subway. Never particularly well-regarded or frequented when they had been operational in the first place, years of dereliction had left them choked with the recycling detritus of the ruins and their punctuating corporate compound-blocks above.

  Things lived down here in the mix of garbage and toxic sludge, some of them human, some of them not.

  A variety of okapi, for example, released by animal rights activists years ago from the Los Angeles City Zoo, had managed to gain purchase here. Turned nocturnal in this endless subterranean night, surviving while all manner of other released creatures died, subsisting on the fronds of a similarly incongruous fungus that had proliferated through the tunnels on escaping from some or other biolab in the world above. Such coincidental survivals might give the more thoughtful pause for thought on the indomitability of biological life.

  Not in the case of this particular okapi, though. As it delicately finished its fungus-frond meal and prepared to leave, a meticulously sharpened blade that had once served as one half of a pair of garden shears sliced through its neck and it fell.

  Dogboy Who Waits yanked the blade back on the nylon lanyard knotted to the little hole on the tine, which had once served to secure a polypropylene handle. The lanyard itself consisted of woven lengths of fishing line. Dogboy Who Waits, of course, had not the slightest idea of what the origin of these items was; putting them together like this had just, somehow, felt right.

  Dogboy Who Waits wasn’t even his real name. Indeed, he had only the barest rudiments of conceptual language. He merely knew, in some basic nonverbal sense that he was a Boy, that he felt akin to what he knew as a Dog, and that Waiting was one of the things he did most of. He had been lying patiently in wait for his prey,
under the cover of a discarded maintenance pallet, for what those who reckon time in the usual sense would reckon more than thirty-six hours.

  Such people who reckoned time would also consider Dogboy Who Waits as maybe fourteen years old, but of course he didn’t think in those terms. He was simply there and alive in the faintly fungus-phosphorescent dark that was all he had ever known.

  Now the time had come for movement and speed, even urgency. It would not be long before others sensed and smelled the kill.

  Working quickly with his blade, Dogboy Who Waits gutted the okapi, identified those lights that were best to eat by touch and wolfed them down. This was the quick nutrition that needed no cooking. Then he began the less hasty business of jointing the carcass and laying up the choicest cuts of hock and haunch in his salt sack.

  The kill had been an adult, and large enough that Dogboy Who Waits could countenance leaving some proportion of it for others; the impulse to claim it all and defend it to the snarling death was surmountable. And this was fortunate, because torchlight was winding its way cautiously through the debris strewn through the tunnels.

  As the torches drew closer, Dogboy Who Waits recognised those who were holding them: three boys of roughly his own age, a slightly younger girl trailing behind. A stable and viable breeding-group—insofar as stability and viability had any meaning down here in the tunnels. An actual tribe.

  And to the extent that he could know anybody, Dogboy Who Waits knew them, and knew their rituals.

  The leader of them—of middle-size, but with the alert look of one who led by resource rather than by means of sheer, mere physical bulk—grunted in what passed for the sub-language peculiar to his tribe, and gestured with his torch to the small pile of entrails which Dogboy Who Waits had, with some consideration, left to one side when butchering his kill.

  It is possible that some practices and rituals are basic to human beings, ingrained and dormant in the backbrain and only resurfacing when some imposed and overall patina of “civilization” is absent. On the other hand—and far more plausibly—people just do stuff. All kinds of stuff.

  People do certain things in the past and then, quite by chance, they’ll do something similar a thousand years later. It’s just what people do.

  In any case, it just so happened that this particular tribe had evolved an interpersonal ceremony in common with that of plains-dwelling Indians from several centuries before. The leader of the tribe planted his torch in the accumulated mulch of the tunnel floor.

  Dogboy Who Waits picked up the entrails, and slowly drew them through the flame. The partially-digested fungus within cooked with a strangely pleasant small, like frying mushrooms.

  Dogboy Who Waits and the leader of the tribe hunkered down, facing each other. Each took an end of the length of cooked intestine in their mouths, and then they began to swallow. And swallow. And swallow until their faces were no more than inches apart.

  Now would come the actual test of strength—and Dogboy Who Waits had the uneasy feeling that he didn’t have it in him. Or, rather, that he had too much. He was beginning to wish that he hadn’t filled up on fresh lights after making his kill.

  Dogboy Who Waits risked a glance at the other two members of the tribe, the boy and the girl, who were watching the contest expectantly, hungrily. They might fall on him in anger if they saw him cheat—but it was certain they would fall on him, and tear him limb from limb, if he lost.

  Dogboy Who Waits decided to risk it, and do what the leader of the tribe, immured in ritual to the point where doing so would never so much as occur to him. He bit down hard on the length of cooked intestine in his mouth and heaved…

  And later.

  Dogboy Who Waits clambered over a twisted mass of scaffolding and swung himself up onto the sagging remains of what had once been a maintenance gantry. From here it was a clear run to the place he called, in his nonverbal way, home—a ruptured and ketone-reeking tank that had once fuelled the electrical back-up generators of a Transit Authority depot.

  The tribe had tracked after him, angrily, for the better part of half a mile, but there had been a sense of squabbling half-heartedness about the pursuit. Their leader had, after all, suffered a lapse in authority—he might have lost the ritual contest by way of trickery, but he had still lost. He might not end up with the others falling on him and tearing him limb from limb, in much the same way as they would have done to Dogboy Who Waits, but the sense of dissention had given Dogboy Who Waits the edge he needed to escape.

  Now Dogboy Who Waits made his way along the gantry, senses alert for the slightest evidence of movement or danger—and all unaware that others were hunting, waiting in a manner that would put his own skills to shame…

  The explosion set Dogboy Who Waits on fire and knocked him from the gantry to fall thirty feet and hit a loose pile of garbage and concrete scree crumbled from the tunnel walls. Free hydrocarbons, produced over years by the decomposing garbage, briefly and fitfully ignited under the body’s immolation.

  The pain was immense, impossible to bear—and then it was simply gone. It had reached the point of overload, where the neurosystem could not recognise it as such. Dogboy Who Waits lay sprawled on the rubble and smouldering garbage, breathing in flame. The mucus in his lungs converted instantly to steam, expanded catastrophically in his lungs and burst them. In the salt-sack slung from his body, choicest cuts of nocturnal okapi meat roasted merrily alongside his own.

  “Aw, fuck!” came a somewhat irritated voice to one side. “Why’d ya have to use an incendiary round, Karl? Is there any way we can at least save the fuckin’ head?”

  Radio None

  “This is WWAXZY News, every hour, on the hour—sponsored by Balls of Joy Premium-brand Profiteroles. Mm-mm. Just taste that creamy biotextured soy-milk goodness! Balls of Joy is a property-division of GenTech Industries SA and Creamy Goodness is a registered trademark. All rights reserved.

  “And our top story is, of course, that Freak-E has officially announced her split, both romantically and professionally, from manager, Slee-Z. In an official statement she said: ‘You nothing but a scrub, Slee-Z. All you ever done is cash in on my talent, motherf_____r. Well you can kiss my round black a__ if you think you ever gonna make another cent out of me. I’m Big Master X’s b____h now. Word to your motherf______g mom!’

  “The rest of Freak-E’s statement is unfit even for broadcast on this station but highlights included allegations that Slee-Z has one of the world’s largest collection of porcelain teapots and isn’t adverse to the use of a strap-on when it comes to bedroom fun.

  “Big Master X is CEO of Big Black Beats Inc and a self-made multi-billionaire. Born in the Brooklyn No-Go in 2007, Big Master X—real name Justin Jones—overcame the combined handicaps of having a pronounced stutter, being massively obese and hitting every branch of the ugly tree when he fell out of it, to record his first number one single by the time he was nine. The following year he set up his own record label and within six months accepted an eight-figure offer from Eidolon Corp to buy out Big Black Beats. Freak-E is the latest in a string of female recording artists signed to BBB with whom Big Master X has been romantically linked following high profile affairs with Russian teen rap sensation Ivana Sukayov and all three members of Afghan agit-pop trio, Bombs Not Burkas.

  “Slee-Z was unavailable for comment but sources close to the music, clothing and prostitution mogul have told this station that Slee-Z is unlikely to take Freak-E’s defection, especially to his biggest rival, lying down.

  “In other news, aspiring Independent presidential candidate, William Hicks, has announced that he has proof that the information linking the Democratic Confederation of the Congos with the Basque Reunification cell who took out the Washington Memorial last spring to be entirely fabricated.

  “What kind of President, asks Hicks, could be so addled and opportunistic as to confuse two entirely different and separate world powers purely on the basis that he considers them both to be dangerous foreig
ners with guns?

  “A White House source, speaking off the record, sez: ‘William Hicks might once have had a first-class mind, but these latest statements show that he’s now completely delusional—delusion evidenced by his belief that he could ever become President in any real world.’

  “And if the independent candidate is delusional then it looks like these things are catching. We here at WWAXZY have been receiving some very strange reports today.

  “In Tokyo, more than a hundred subway commuters have spontaneously developed symptoms consistent with that of a Sarin attack. Physical traces of any kind of contaminant has yet to be found.

  “The images of ghost-like and gigantic women have been glimpsed floating over several of the world’s most isolated communities, variously described as resembling the Angel of Mons, Winged Victory of Samathrace and, in the New Hegonomy of Bangkok as that of Rati, Ragalata the vine of love, Kelikila the Shameless, Mayarati the Deceiver—a multiple deity currently appearing in her aspect of a huge-breasted woman who drives all who might behold her mad with carnal lust. To which, all WWAXZY can say, is that some godless savages get all the luck.

  “And speaking of massive goddesses who drive all who might behold them mad with carnal lust, we now return you to our back-to-back marathon of Freak-E hits. Here’s the hot new mix of ‘Be My Pimp’…”

  6.

  He was:

  Caught and killed and falling through darkness, tumbling head-over-heels with his heart in his mouth; boogiemen in the dark, their juju light shining bright behind the ragged holes of their eyes; still he continued to fall and it was heard to breathe… razor-shards in his lungs and blood on the walls and sick, slick mucus on the walls and something was happening to his—

  He was:

  Plunging through a cavern of membrane, tubular clusters of matter clinging to the sides and small lights flashing among them in a manner reminiscent of readouts. Here and there the membrane walls were ripped open to expose a darkness in which hideously distorted images of human faces were projected: white circles with black-circle eyes and screaming yaws of mouths.