Mona and Ditto shared a look. Cosmo caught it.

'I get it. I'm not part of the group yet.'

Mona draped an arm over his shoulder.

'You know what, Cosmo. You're too tense. You need to get out for a walk.'

Cosmo thought of Ziplock suddenly. 'I haven't been out for a walk in fourteen years.'

'No time like the present,' said Mona, grabbing her jacket. 'I can stay awake for a few more hours if you can. Vamos.'

Cosmo followed her to the lift. 'Where are we going?'

'Wait and see.'

'Ditto, you coming?'

The tiny Bartoli Baby settled back in bis chair, flicking on the TV.

'Am I coming? No thanks, I went for a walk with Mona once. I was lucky to make it back with all my fingers.'

Cosmo grinned weakly. 'He's joking? Right?'

Mona pushed him into the elevator cage.

'No, Cosmo,' she said, closing the grille. 'He's not joking. But hey, who needs ten fingers?'

Mona led Cosmo through the maze of supply pipes and abandoned a.s.sembly lines to a large loading bay on the ground floor. A hulking panel truck sat heavy on its suspension on the parking ramp. Mona slapped the fender, scattering a swarm of rust mites. Rust mites were a new breed of insect that had evolved in Satellite City. The TV brainers said that they were nature's new superbug and would outlive even the c.o.c.kroaches.

'The Pigmobile. This old heap has saved our hides more than once.'

Cosmo kicked one of the tyres.

'We're not actually going to ride in this, are we?'

Mona popped the bonnet. 'Don't be fooled by the exterior; I prefer drab to stolen.

But we're not riding today, Cosmo. The engine's manifold is shot. We need a new one, or at least one that's not too second-hand.'

'I thought we were just going for a walk.'

'We are walking,' grunted Mona, yanking the tubular manifold from its clips. 'No choice in the matter. I just need to do some business on the way.'

'So what do you need me for?' asked Cosmo, although in truth he was more than happy to accompany Mona anywhere she wanted to go. After all he was fourteen years old, and Mona was the first girl he had ever spoken to unsupervised.

Mona wrapped the manifold in a rag. 'Cosmo, I need you for backup.'

Booshka was Big Pig slang for car theft. There were so many stolen automobiles in this region of Westside that the entire area was nicknamed after the pastime.

Teenage booshka pirates popped BMWs, Kroms and Benzes right out of their racks in the uptown parking lots and refitted them for off-road racing. Every night, groups of youths gathered in abandoned warehouses for illegal drag races.

Booshka. Mona Vasquez's home turf.

It took almost an hour for the pair to walk from Abracadabra Street down to Booshka. South along Journey, then across the river to the old police Blockade. Once past the line of burnt-out cars, the pair were living on their wits. No police would respond to an alert from Booshka.

Cosmo tried to make himself invisible; it was a trick he'd learned at Clarissa Frayne. Shoulders hunched, small steps and don't make eye contact with anybody.

Mona did not subscribe to the invisibility theory.

'Down here, Cosmo. You gotta walk tall. Any of these vultures smell weakness and they'll mess you up faster than sugar in a petrol tank.'

The vultures in question were groups of adolescents on their way home from a night's drag racing. They lounged on the sidewalk, or bounced their automobiles along the street on enhanced suspensions. There was no Satellite guidance down here, everything was manual.

Most of the vultures seemed to know Mona.

'Hey, chiquita,' shouted one of a large group, a muscular youth with a bandanna tied over one eye. 'When are you coming racing again, Mona? We miss you.'

Mona grinned. 'Hola, Miguel. Maybe I'll come race when you build something worth racing against. I could walk faster than that last piece of junk.'

Miguel moaned, placing one hand over his heart as though he'd been shot.

'You got me, Vasquez. But someday I'll get you.'

Mona kept grinning, but also kept walking. 'In your dreams, Miguel. In your dreams.'

When they had rounded a corner, Mona shuddered. Her bravado was all for show; beneath it the girl was worried.

'I thought they might ask me to come back. Miguel is a Sweetheart.'

Cos...o...b..inked. 'You think so?'

Mona punched him on the shoulder. 'No, estupido, not that kind of sweetheart. The Sweethearts are the biggest gang in Booshka. I used to run with them. I was their mech girl, looking after the hot rods. You check under those bandannas they wear and you'll find a tattoo just like mine.' Mona pointed to the DNA strand over her eyebrow.'That's a gang tattoo, isn't it? What does it mean?'

Mona leaned close so Cosmo could get a better look at the ink over her eye. 'It's a DNA strand made from car parts. You see the wheels and the pistons? It means that deep down all Sweethearts are the same. We live to race.'

They walked on for several blocks, past the rows of pig-iron housing and barricaded shops. Vendors were warming up their street burners, protecting their wares with large dogs or visible side arms. Several other gang members called out to Mona. And not just Sweethearts. They pa.s.sed Celts, Anglos, Slavs, Africans and Oriental groups. Mona explained as they went along.

'Those are the Irish I's, they specialize in truckjacking from the docks across the bridge.' She pointed at a pair of Africans in black suits. 'Those tall guys are the Zools. Bodyguards mostly; they all learn some kind of African martial art. One of those guys throws something sharp at you and it's all over.'

Cosmo tried to make himself look even more invisible.

'Those men with the piercings are the Bulldogs. They can strip a bike down in seconds. You turn away to tie your bootlace and when you turn back, your bike is just a skeleton.'

'How did you get out of the Sweethearts?' asked Cosmo. 'I thought gang membership was a for life kind of thing.'

'Stefan saved me. Eighteen months ago I was in a drag crash, a bad one. One of my lungs had collapsed and I was bleeding to death. The Parasites were settling in to suck me dry and, of course, my brother Sweethearts scattered as soon as I hit that pylon. Stefan was out on a night patrol and heard the explosion. He came down here and blasted those monsters right off my chest. Ditto inflated my lung and they dropped me at General. On the way I was babbling about blue creatures sucking my life away, so a week later Stefan showed up at the hospital and offered me a new life.

I took it. There was nothing to stay in Booshka for. My parents are gone and Stefan is eighteen, so he sponsors me. You can't believe how good it feels to be a legal citizen.

I don't have to spend my life waiting for the state police to toss me in some inst.i.tution.'

'And the Sweethearts just let you go? Their best mechanic?'

Mona stopped at a stall and bought a couple of Zakuska. They sat on upturned bins, eating the hot bread.

'It wasn't that easy. Miguel turned up at Abracadabra Street one night with a bunch of muscle. Stefan let them get into the loading bay, then he turned on the spotlights. He told Miguel that the Sweethearts had forfeited their right to my services when they left me to die.'

'And the Sweethearts left it at that?' said Cosmo sceptically.

'No,' admitted Mona. 'Stefan offered them a Myishi Z12 prototype nitrous racer in return for my ticket out of the gang.''Stefan bought you?'

Mona punched him on the shoulder again. 'No, Cosmo. He bought my freedom.

That's why we're riding in the Pigmobile these days. And that's why we're down here looking for an ancient manifold.'

Mona finished her snack, throwing the wrapper in a street incinerator. 'Let's go.

We have some negotiating to do.'

Cosmo followed Mona down a narrow alley that reeked of raw sewage and motor oil. Rats tussled over food sc.r.a.ps, and rust mites burrowed into exposed patches of girder on the pig-iron walls. Mona pulled aside a lank, oil-stained cloth. Behind it was a steel door with a security camera.

Mona tapped on the safety screen.

'Hola, Jean Pierre, open up.'

Nothing for a moment, then a crackle of static.

'Mona Vasquez, you're still alive. Who's the kid?'

'Cosmo is with me. I can vouch for him.'

The locking bars were remote opened and the door swung aside.

'Come on in, but don't touch anything.'

They stepped into a mechanic's dream. The very walls appeared to be constructed from car parts. Everything from the latest plasma converters to ancient combustion engine components. They pa.s.sed a maze of auto part walls and several cars in various stages of repair.

A tall, slender man was buried to his waist in the engine of a Krom six-wheel drive. His fine blond hair was tied back in a ponytail and every exposed inch of skin was blackened by oil and exhaust fumes.

'Hey, Jean Pierre, what's happening?'

The man extricated himself from the engine, pulling off magnifier goggles.

'Vasquez, ca va? What's happening is that you are about to pay me the hundred dinars that you owe me for that exhaust box.'

Mona laughed. 'Vaya al infierno, Jean Pierre. Go to h.e.l.l. That exhaust box was full of filler. It blew up after a hundred kilometres. What I should do is kick your French behind all over this shop.'

Jean Pierre shrugged. 'Tres bien. OK, you can't blame a man for trying.'

'You owe me one and I've come to collect.' Mona threw the manifold on a workbench. 'You get me one of these and we'll call it even.''Even? You're kidding me, Mona. These aren't easy to come by. Eighty dinars, if I can find one.'

Mona folded her arms. 'Thirty dinars, hombre. And you already know whether you have one or not.'

Jean Pierre smiled broadly, his teeth bright against the oil.

'Mona, I have missed you. OK, thirty, but only because you make me laugh.'

Jean Pierre disappeared between two metallic aisles.

'He's the only half reliable parts man in Booshka,' Mona told Cosmo. 'Whatever you need, Jean Pierre can get it or make it. The gangs leave him alone, because without him their rides would fall apart.'

Jean Pierre returned, twirling a replacement manifold like a baton. There was a Parasite perched on his shoulder. Cosmo reared backwards, knocking over a tower of hubcaps.

'Mona! Look! Can't you see it?'

The Frenchman frowned. 'Hey, mon ami, watch the merchandise. What's the matter with you?'

Mona didn't bat an eyelid. 'Ignore him, Jean Pierre. He's crazy. He swallowed too many fumes at the drag meets. Sometimes he sees things.'

Cosmo couldn't take his eves off the creature crouched there, waiting.

'Can't we do something? Kill it?'

Mona picked up the hubcaps, glaring at him. 'Shut up, Cosmo. There's nothing there! Nothing, get it.'

Cosmo tried to read her brown eyes. She saw the creature, he was certain of it.

'Nothing. I get it.'

'Good.' She counted out the dinar chips on to the workbench. Outside the Blockade, most people used credit cards, but in Booshka cash was king.

'Here, thirty dinars.'

Jean Pierre flicked the chips into a drawer. 'The full thirty? Are you going soft on me, Vasquez?'

Mona took the manifold, resolutely ignoring the wide-eyed Parasite on Jean Pierre's shoulder.

'No, I just know a deal when I see it.' She paused, eyes on the floor. 'How have you been feeling lately?'

Jean Pierre started. 'Funny you should mention it. My chest feels tight. Just for the past few weeks. It's probably nothing. I should go to a doctor in the city, but who trusts doctors, n'est ce pas?'

Mona looked the Frenchman in the eyes. 'Get it seen to, Jean Pierre. We'd all be lost without you.'

'Certainement. The customer is always right.' He pulled open a basket drawer on the wall. 'Here, a set of plugs on the house, for my favourite customer.'

Mona pocketed the plugs, then kissed Jean Pierre on the cheek. The Parasite casually moved out of her way.

'Goodbye, Jean Pierre. And thank you.'