"He Doesn't Even Know What Year It Is"

Afternoon on Avernus, and a thin sour drizzle beading the plastic walls. Main Street, Egerton's Port was poached and muddy. Outside the Boogie Shuffle it was all AdAc habits, mainly onetime port ladies dreaming of the teen-age barbie dolls they had once wanted to be or the fine skinny corpses they would one day make- their eyes fixed on the underside of the lowbrow clouds and the rain falling into their open mouths. Truck went in, past the vapor sign that said GET HER SOME AND WATCH HER BITE YOUR FINGERS OFF, and found a party of engine-room mechanics from some visiting military vessel-haunted by the thought of explosive decompression a thousand light years from home andalready three parts smashed-dancing ap-ishly about to a hologram recording of Tiny Skeffern doing "Eight Star Crawl" at the Palace.

He climbed onto a table.

"Open yourselves to the Universal Principle," he whispered, hoping they wouldn't hear, "my brothers."

Vast appreciative catcalls.

"I have here-"

117.

118.

Openers aren't supposed to fight; so when Legiron Crab-a tube-reamer out from the Knuckle system and shortly to lose his left arm in the gallant wreck of the Seventeeth Susan-decided to have a look under Truck's cloak, Truck went for a pressure point in the neck so as not to make it obvious.

"Oy," said Legiron, quite unperturbed, "get your fingers out of me throat. I haven't got no nerves anyway." (Some weeks before, a bosun's mate-driven past the point of dispa.s.sionate logic by Legiron's talent for messing up anything more complicated than deck-scrubbing-had beaten him repeatedly about the skull with one of the larger wrenches used in shackling down Dynaflow Drivers, and been dragged off ten minutes later by some o^arterdeck officers still screaming "Lie down, you p.i.s.shole, lie down," to no avail, leaving Legiron to scratch the back of his neck reflectively, well on his way to becoming a myth.) "I just want to see what you got."

And he grabbed Truck's wrist, his hairy great forearm distending like one ultimate Universal Muscle. Truck, fearing a fracture, kneed him in the hurdies.

"Now you went too far, matey!" cried Legiorn, ma.s.saging his offended morals.

"Off you go."

Suiting actions to words, he- flung Truck halfway across the bar and out on to Main Street, his Opener tracts fluttering expressively round his head. Which was how he came to find himself down among the lady losers of Avernus, a hard pelvic girdle making inroads into his kidneys, a small breast interfering with one ear, and face to face with Angina Seng, the girl spy from Sad al Ban IV.

"Captain," she said, hands on bony hips and smiting curiously down on him (as if it really was a coincidental meeting), "you must keep doing something n.o.body likes."

Truck nibbed some rain into his face to get the circulation moving in his brain. He thought of going back into the Boogie Shuffle and killing Legiron Crab.

The Centaur? Device 119.

"I dont know you," he said, "and I'm not a Captain"-he accepted her strong hand without grace and added cunningly-"my sister."

But it was his turn for not fooling her. "It won't wash, Captain Truck. I'd like to talk to you." She brushed his cloak down absently, wiped some mud from his cheek. Looking at bis window: "My, you haven't actually got religion, have you?" He fussed about with his cloak, clicked his tongue. "Well, Captain?"

"Oh yes"-scathingly-"at the Israeli Emba.s.sy, I suppose. We could have some nice talks with the General."

"There's no IWG representation on Averaus," she said, now becoming interested in the vapor sign outside the Boogie Shuffle. "And I haven't worked for that cow since you and I last met" Her face was struggling with two expressions at once: the curled lip of disgust or disdain, certainly; but behind the eyes something else-that intimate understanding of vacuum only a port lady has, some remote pain he couldn't quite put a name to. She tugged her wet coppery hah- back from her face, her body slumped sullenly over folded arms. "I hope she--"

A shrug. "Are yon coming?" And she walked off down Maul Street. He was fascinated.

She took him to a shack on the edge of the port and gat a rickety foldingtable strewn with twisted half-empty tubes and hard dried nubs of cosmetic while he mooched about looking for something to eat. They stalked one another hi the rainy lighCShe brushed her hair, examined minutely her face (thin lines of an internal tension too secret to be politics or anything other than running-down clockwork of a port lady's life), looked his reversed image over covertly when he was occupied with the fridge.

"What have you got?" he asked round a mouthful of something local. "Another sponsor, eh? Jesus! What is this stuff?"

120.

"It's off, I think. Here, let me taste it. How did you know, Captain?"

A weary little room. He stared oafishly round it at the cast-off underwear and open cupboards, the scuffed walls. How old was she? Was this all of it? Coming too close to her soul-continually in transit between such rooms and always arriving late-he shivered. He was fooling himself if he thought he knew the half of it.

"It was a joke. I don't want to hear anything about it. Last time was too painful."

"Look, Captain, you obviously don't want to give it to General Gaw. I could put it in safer hands. I could arrange a meeting."

His naivete didn't extend that far; around that point, it degenerated into a sort of sly ferrety awareness. "You don't even know what it is," he told her.

She pursed her lips (a hit, a hit!). "No, wait. Ill meet him." He paced up and down, munching. He could check one or two things at least.

"Good." She dropped the hairbrush. "I'll take you to him now." Got up, smoothed her dress over her stomach, stood too close to him, smiled right at him. He was touched-but "No. Here. Tonight. Fetch him here at eight. I've got things to do."

She frowned. "You wouldn't be working for General Gaw yourself, Captain?"

"You're a bit behind the times, aren't you?" Deep down, something was warning him that losers should never, never make decisions. He ignored it, and it sn.i.g.g.e.red horribly at him. "Just on my terms this time, that's all." It was blatant hubris. At the door he asked, "Don't you ever get tired of being used?" Thinking of poor old-animal Nodes, who also hadn't known what "it"

was-or wanted to.

She stared out into the rain after him, tapping her fingers against one of the Opener broadsheets ("Some Words of Plain Good Sense in a Time of Trouble").

121 After he'd vanished down the dreary street, she went out in another direction.

"I want a gun," said Truck when he got in.

"Christ" Tiny had heard about the incident at the Boogie Shuffle, "Truck, how can you shoot a bloke just because he chucked you out of a bar?"

He put his underpants on, hopping about on one foot; he was entertaining. The lady hi the bed, her voice m.u.f.fled by the blanket, said, "Get that creep out of here. He gives me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s." She raised herself on one elbow, glaring at Truck. "Tiny, how can he live with his breakfast like that? How can you live with him? You're an artist." She shuddered.

Pointedly, Tiny showed Truck the door. "Fix might have left something on the ship," he suggested. He winked and jerked his thumb back over his shoulder.

"Eh?"

Fix hadn't But hi a locker on the bridge, Truck found a set of steel knuckles he'd bought long ago on Morpheus and never used. He put them on and went prancing around on his toes, feinting dangerously at the display panels. He got a couple of hours* sleep in his old bunk then, when it was dark, stuck the steel knuckles in his right boot (under his foot where they'd be safe from a cursory search, if uncomfortable), and left for the edge of Egerton's Port. He had howling colic from Angina Seng's Avemus pasty.

Half past seven saw him shivering hi a pool of shadow twenty yards from Angina's door.

The compa.s.s wind was blowing inside and out, wiping the eyes with rain,buffeting the losers on the port streets (down galleries of one repeated image-a hand to the shaking wall, head down, retching dejectedly from the very brain out), and plastering Truck's cloak to him like wet cement He wasn't sure why he was there: to hold, perhaps, for just this once, a small power over those who have the steerage way to set a 122.

The Cenfaurf Device course despite the wind; to get a look at Angina Seng's new sponsor before whoever it was got a look at him.

Given this, anyone can predict a disaster.

Twenty minutes later, the enigmatic Angina appeared head down into the weather from the direction of Junk City and let herself in, looking round circ.u.mspectly while she fumbled with her key. Off in the prehistoric darkness, Truck sn.i.g.g.e.red to himself. She was bundled op against rain or recognition, but unable to disguise the earthly slouch of the born port lady. Lights came on. Both of them settled down to wait. She had a mysterious trick of turning up at the window moving from right to left then, a minute later, reappearing from the same direction, as if some personal topology applied to the room.

Fifteen of these manifestations took place while Truck shivered and squirmed the sole of his right foot and tried to ignore his griping stomach.

The figure that finally shuffled up to Angina's door might just as well have been Hermann Goring. He discovered immediately that he'd stationed himself too far away to pick out any characteristic (other than, say, a wooden leg) he wasn't already familiar with. He moved idiotically out of his hiding place to get a better look, still saw nothing but waterproof clothing and a white blur of face. Disconcerted by this unexpected anonymity, he raced back into cover-just a shade too late to do anything about the unfriendly movements that suddenly filled the darkness about him.

One of the UASR death-commandos who had been following him since he left Ella Speed rapped him quickly in the biceps to immobilize his arms while the other lugged out a Chambers gun the size of a mortuary and poked it at hifr groin in awful warning. "You put your hands on your head pretty f.u.c.king sharpish," they advised him. Their lean pockmarked faces were wreathed with smiles as they searched him, and then stood back to let him reflect on his obvious future if he insisted on playing by the rules of winners.

The Centaur? Devfce 123.

"Got any good postcards, boys?" he insinuated nastily, because he felt the fool he was. The hashishin exchanged an unpleasant glance, clearly reinterpreting their orders, and advanced on him, "We thought you'd never come in, Captain," said someone from behind him, just in time. "You didn't have to skulk about there in the rain, old chap-didn't Miss Seng make that clear to you? You must be frozen stiff."

Gadaffi ben Barka: second Colonel or executive of the People's Army of Morocco-originally a chip off the old UNFP-and thus the nearest thing to General Gaw's opposite number in the UASR(N). He was tall and slimly built, with a back like a board and a neatly clipped mustache. He tapped Truck's hands with the tip of his little swagger cane. "You could put them down now, I think."

He affected the precise, slightly decayed English of original Arab stock unused to handling it since the cultural revolution of 2184 with its concomitant stress on the speaking of only Arab languages among the bureaucrats of the inner party. His name, which can be spelled some 400-odd ways in the English (from Qua-thafi to Khedaphey), was an ill.u.s.trious one. His hair, shaved to within an inch of its life, had a tinge of gray to match his beautiful military suit. When he smiled he showed a lot of white teeth and one black one. He was a lot more engaging than the General, but that rotten enamel counted for a lot "You seem to have got caught up in my security operation. Sorry about that."

Quite the part, walking with his hands clasped behind his back, he knewexactly what had happened. "But if you'd just come through the front entrance"-ushering Truck through that same door-"as we expected, you'd have been quite safe. No harm done. These mix-ups happen."

Angina Seng ignored him and stared out of the window. He hoped it was because she felt guilty. He limped ostentatiously past her and sat down on the 124.

bed. In fact, his foot did hurt like h.e.l.l, and his queasy gut was generating long gray waves of nausea to break cold and sweaty over his bald scalp. He looked accusingly at the fridge. His cloak fell open. "You've b.l.o.o.d.y poisoned me," he told Angina's shoulders. She shrugged.

Like the commander of some desert terrain poring over his maps, ben Barka sat behind the camp table, sc.r.a.ping idly at its curious reliefs of dried cosmetic; planning, perhaps, fantastic miniature campaigns among its arid wadies and exposed ridges-the wind like emery on the eyeb.a.l.l.s at sunset; the camels sore-footed and refractory; the Maxim-gun bogged to its hubs hi sand again, or jamming just as the train arrived, never quite fulfilling the promises of the Austro-Greek munitions dealer (with his soft fat hands and celluloid collar) who'd smuggled it by motorized dhow from Constantinople-some grim expedition to redeem a heartland lost for centuries under the dust, its cisterns poisoned, its women under a punishment, ash interring its surviving sons. His eyes were full of some violent past-not his own in any sense of the personal, but having greater individual meaning than a mere heritage.

The hashishin, meanwhile, had disposed themselves by the door, where they seemed to fall unto a state of feral languor, giving Truck insolent grins and winks, picking their noses with fanatical concentration. Ben Barka brought his last dawn sortie to its desperate conclusion under the cold desert rimwall and said, '1 see you've been on Stomach lately, Captain. Intellectually, I can hardly credit you as an Opener-it's an unsatisfying notion. Still, faith is a peculiar thing: in the past, we Arabs have had creed enough for a Galaxy, and energy too; but, until now, no-"

He stared past Truck at something on the wall, shrugged. "I presume the girl has told you why I asked you here?"

125.

Truck sneered sideways at Angina Seng. '"What would I know about it? I thought she'd found her level in the IWG emba.s.sy on Sad al Bari." He hardly knew what he was saying. He got a quick sight of his stomach, heaved; drew the sodden cloak about him, blushing miserably and thinking of Grishkin's victorious smile.

"I see. Make us some mint tea please, Angina. The Captain looks cold."

Off by the window, a sudden, impatient movement "Oh, for Christ's sake Gadaffi tell him why he's here and then get out. He hasn't got a clue what he's got bold of. The old cow obviously never told him, and half the time he's so drugged that he doesn't even know where he is. Why should I have told him?

He's never listened to a word Pve said." She watched the rain, lacing her fingers, rubbing one thumb with the other. *Tm sick of both of you."

"Make us some mint tea, please, Angina."

"Oh, come on-"

"Make us some mint tea, please, Angina."

There was a greasy sink in one corner. She began to smash things about hi it Truck swallowed. "Sh.e.l.l seH you out, too, ben Barfca. She'll do it for practice."

The colonel smiled wanly to himself. "There's no need to feel injured, Captain. This is an informal sort of meeting, there was no coercion intended."

The hashishin rubbed their tanned noses. "An exploratory meeting, really."

"I wasn't thinking of myself."

"There will be no betrayal," ben Barka insisted, rapping his stick briskly on the table and looking irritated for a moment or two.

"I told you he was a b.l.o.o.d.y moron," said Angina. "He doesn't even know whatyear it is."

"Our arrangement has certain safeguards built in, Captain, You, of all people, should be familiar with the 126.

The Centaur; Device kind of thing Fm thinking of. The General herself was good enough to inst.i.tute them a long time ago. And, of course, Angina is hardly welcome in that sector any more. Now let's-Ah, thank you, Angina.**

She had slopped two small plastic cups on the table between them, full of something green and steaming. Truck looked dismally into his. A slight glutinous sc.u.m had already formed at its rim, like algae at the high-water mark of an abandoned ca.n.a.l. Something was floating hi there. Something was floating.

Truck staggered to his feet, eyes filling with tears, and headed blindly for the door, thinking solely of relief. The hashishin stepped thoughtfully forward to intercept him, beaming and swinging hands like edged slabs of sandstone. Simultaneously, ben Barka shouted something, kicked his chair out of the way, and came np aiming a Chambers gun in fashionable military style-feet well apart, arms out straight, left hand gripping right wrist. That he could prevent himself from firing after all that, was a minor miracle; but Truck didn't care.

He hardly saw any of it. Somewhere in a limpid personal twilight, he was groaning with fear and revulsion and heaving up the whole contents of the universe. After a while, he felt the Arabs bending over him. Somebody called his name a couple of times. The last thing he properly understood for a while was Angina Seng saying: "He's always doing that. Well, you can d.a.m.n well clean it up before you go.w They dragged him through the drenching rain, dashing along like a night retreat from some El Bira or Ein Kerem of the mind. Sudden vicious squalls of wind groaned between the black violent buildings, flushing up the losers of Avernus (to drive them, mere bundles of rag, feeble impersonations of life, from one cold corner to another, all the long night through). Every time his foot went down, pain lighted him up like a dancing man in a neon sign.

127.

They came to a halt, panting and staring about, some three hundred yards down the street from Angina's shack; pushed him into some sort of ground vehicle; took off into the dark on a wave of mud and transmission noise. Egerton's Port receded but not far. Ben Barka drove nervously, craning forward to peer through the water pouring down the windshield. In the back seat, the fellaheen wiped condensation from the windows then shoved their faces so close to the gla.s.s that it misted up again immediately.

Later, they left the road. Distant thunder smoked from the sky with a smell of cold-drawn steel wire and manganese slag; the car veered and bucked and smashed its underparts repeatedly down against the ruts ancf"cinders of a ruined landscape; flares of white light bleached the faces of the hashishin.

For a moment, hung between sky and waste by a particularly brutal spasm, Truck imagined Earth's war reaching out for Avernus like a bleeding hand. But when he looked for the telltale violet ionization trails of descending MIEV warheads, he could see nothing.

He retched comfortably a couple of times and fell into a doze alternately hag-ridden and beatific. His head lolled onto the shoulder of one of the Arabs. They looked across it at each other with distaste.

ELEVEN.

A Thin Time in "Junk City"

Waking up ten minutes later, he rubbed his mouth and nose, sneezed. Odd silhouettes were forming and shifting somewhere beyond the streaming windscreen. He sat up and looked around. "What do you know?" he said, his respect for ben Barka declining rapidly as the car lurched its way deeper into the mean and soulless night of Junk City."Shut your mouth," suggested one of the hashishin. Junk City, a fair-sized industrial complex that had processed the raw materials for the pit-warehouse quarter of Egerton's Port during the early stages of colonization, was falling apart ten years after the fact in the evil glare of a failing temporary power plant that had somehow never been shut down, its foundries and plastics factories links in a well-established chain of warrens which served the hinterland pushers.

It was a nerve-racking horizon of slag tips and cooling-towers, leaning chimneys and gutted workshops, cold furnaces sadly gravid with congealed ore and fluxes, all linked together by a black etched spider-work of gantried, man-high conduits and precarious di- 128.

129.