Crash Deluxe (13 page)

My time at Luxoria had nearly run out.

‘I am waiting for an order to be filled and then we will leave.’

As Lavish spoke Tulu left the booth behind us, swaying, wild-eyed. Stoned or possessed - it was hard to say.

Two bodyguards flanked her as she weaved along down towards the stage where spotlights roved and glitter motes spouted from the air plumes.

‘What happens down there? Fashion show?’ I asked.

Lavish threw me another suspicious look. One that told me I’d said something too stupid for my own good.

‘In a way,’ he said carefully, and moved towards Tulu.

Muscle Massive came and pressed a hand against my back, herding Merv and me ahead of him without a word.

‘What is it?’ I hissed at Merv.

He drew away from me, silent and still unhappy about my threat to Snout.

Lavish found us seats a few rows behind Tulu. She was at the front, in an armchair, drinking Pernod straight from the bottle. A waiter appeared with a bidding slate for her. She slotted it into the armrest and tapped in some numbers. Another waiter came and offered her a glass. She cuffed him away.

Lavish curled his lip. ‘Vulgar bitch.’

‘Friend?’

‘With Madam Prime-Evil?’ He raised an eyebrow and sniffed, insulted.

The music pumped up, ending our conversation. The glitter motes changed colour and a tall, unreasonably emaciated man took centre stage.

‘I am the Custodian,’ he whispered. ‘Welcome.’

I was still thinking fashion right up until the moment when the first walker removed her coat and I saw a credit insignia tattooed on her thigh.

That - and the fact that the leather-clad Custodian used an instrument to expose her more secret attributes.

The catwalk was a slave market. Meat market. Call it what you like. This was flesh for sale.

I wanted to leap up there and shove the instrument down the Custodian’s throat. I wanted to scream at the grrl to get some dignity. But I was pretty short of that myself.

Instead I sat rigid and silent.

Lavish sensed my distress and enjoyed it.

I included him in the list of things I wanted to damage.

The surge of anger fried away any remaining residue of dizzies and my head cleared properly for the first time in days.

I began to think.

Yet nothing . . .
NOTHING
could have prepared me for the next item in the meat sale.

He strolled down the catwalk, naked and glistening. Face impassive. Prosthetic arm gleaming with bandit appeal.

 

 

 

 

I
snatched Lavish’s catalogue slate. ‘What are you doing?’ he demanded.

‘I . . . er . . . fancy this one.’ I stumbled over the words. ‘How much is he?’

I knew I was acting strangely, that my shock was too palpable, but I couldn’t contain it. In the front row, Tulu’s reaction was similar. She scrolled frantically through the slate. Her name flagged instantly as a bidder.

As I requested a look at her price, the bidding chimes went psycho and the whole display dropped out, to be replaced by the image of a semi-naked couple sipping martinis on a secluded beach.

‘What’s happened?’ I gasped.

Lavish prised the slate from me. ‘See over there, in the chair next to the Voodoo bitch? An Intimate. I would guess that Monk or Laud’s bidding for him.’ He pointed at an icon flashing on the slate. ‘Look. The bidding price is already withdrawn. Once an IO’s bid high . . . the bidding goes off-line. No one can contest them.’ His fingernails raked across the skin on the back of my hand. ‘That’s why I need him to be seen at Luxoria. You had better perform suitably tomorrow, or I’ll hand you straight over to the Militia . . . Ms Plessis.’

It had been so long since I’d heard my own name that it took a second to register. A flush of adrenalin followed. I was half out of my seat, ready to run or fight or some damn thing.

Lavish’s fingernails hooked into me and Massive jammed both his hands down on my shoulder.

‘Sit down and behave,’ Lavish snarled.

My desire to damage him turned into something much more ominous. My fingers ached for a wire to whip across his sneering face. But I did what he said because a security buzzard had started recording right above us.

Like the rest of the audience my attention fell to the man on the stage. I wanted to look away when they made him stroke himself but I found it impossible to do so. I stared at his masculine perfection and listened to the voice-over reciting his pedigree. The women he’d ‘serviced’ read like a media-star roll-call.

A confusion of emotions beset me. Repulsion. Desire. Sadness. But mostly suspicion. What the freak was he up to?

He was sold quickly to James Monk for an undisclosed sum and the bidding display returned to normal after the sale was announced.

The Custodian drew him away from the spotlights, back to a dark wing of the stage, before loping back to introduce the next sale.

Daac scanned the crowd keenly from the shadows, his gaze abruptly halting on my section of the seating.

My body warmed. Had he recognised me?

Tulu noticed Daac’s fixed stare, traced his line of sight and reached her senses into the crowd. The force of her energy curled around me. As I tried to repel it, something stronger reared. Tulu often channelled a powerful voodoo spirit who went by the name of Marinette. Marinette and I had met before. The creature got hot over human sacrifice and when she rode Tulu, the pair scared the jees out of me. Marinette knew me in a second and, like half the universe, we had some old scores to settle.

I gripped Lavish’s arm.

‘We need to leave.’

He saw the commotion as Marinette jerked Tulu upright, overturning her seat, bottle smashing. ‘What’s the problem?’

I gave him my most matter-of-fact Plessis stare. ‘If we go now, we’ll all be alive for me to explain later.’

He nodded, annoyed but not stupid enough to ignore me.

He quickly threaded a path for us down the Immoral Aisles to the lift. As we reached the doors, Tulu waded into the crowd in demolition mode. The Fair security swarmed in to defuse things. A security buzzard swooped.

The lift doors pinged open to reveal new buyers, an expensively dressed couple in matching suits, gloves and shades. Lavish jammed his foot in the door and I hauled one of them out by her velvet lapel. Massive launched the other into the air at the buzzard.

I had a second to be impressed. Sometimes there was no substitute for sheer grunt.

We made it up six floors before the lift shut down.

‘Get the freaking thing open,’ Lavish snarled.

Lam was muttering in rusty Korean.

Prayers, I hoped.

Massive broke off a handrail and rammed it in between the doors. He wedged them open with force, sweat funnelling from his face. I was beginning to love him more by the second.

We crawled out and onto the floor into complete darkness.

‘Stay with me.’ I moved automatically to a wall and began feeling my way. The place smelled of dust and stale air.

No one had been in here for a while.

On the far side a crack of light suggested a fire escape. We tripped over each other until I issued another order, to grab the next person’s shoulder. That worked better, despite Massive’s anguished, ‘Delly, pliz, that’s not my shoulder.’

His laboured breathing told me that the airless dark had made him jumpier than the rest of us.

‘Easy, Freddy,’ I whispered to him. ‘There’s a stair-well over the other side.’

His huge hand tightened gratefully on my shoulder, crunching my bones. When we got within a few steps of the outlined door he rushed past me, opening it.

I started after him, mouthing a warning, but the automatic burglar device detected him immediately. He pushed me back into the doorway out of harm’s way and dived. The projectile splintered the wooden grip along the top of the rail and sprayed splinters into Freddy’s shoulder and arm.

The impact of his recoil shook the railing all the way up and down the well. I grabbed him before he could topple over, my feet wedged against a step, knees locked, back straining.

‘For chrissakes - help . . .’ I bellowed.

Lam danced around, useless with his broken arms, but Delly rallied, seeing his bodyguard about to tumble to his death.

‘I’ve disabled it.’ Merv’s voice came from behind the door panel.

Delly and I dragged Massive back from the edge. The huge man was ashen, trembling with pain and shock.

I whacked him up with the derm of painkill I’d been saving for myself. It barely touched his pain but his expression told me that now he could at least think a bit.

‘Up and out,’ I said. ‘NOW.’

He nodded.

I climbed on to the step above him and hauled. From behind, Merv pushed and Delly swore ceaselessly.

Eventually the stairs came out behind the patisserie.

I steered Massive around to the front and down the gap between the surf-originals shop to the second lift, ignoring the terrified shoppers’ stares. Delly and Lam and Merv trailed. Sweat streamed off all of us except Massive.

Blood streamed off him.

 

The atmosphere during the ’pede trip back to the Luxoria was sullen at best. Lavish hunched in the back seat, his face pinched with fury.

I wasn’t much better. The whole withdrawal thing and then half-carrying Massive had drained all my energy. I managed to strap up his shoulder with strips from my cheongsam before I fell back exhausted.

Next to me Merv hugged Snout to his face, trying to block out Massive’s moans.

Lavish leaned close to my ear. ‘Whatever you’re up to here,’ he said, ‘your time is up.’

I had the rest of the trip back to contemplate what that might mean.

Glorious came to me when I got to my room. ‘Lam said you saved Freddy’s life.’

‘No,’ I said, too tried to be anything but short with her. ‘He saved mine.’

‘Oh.’

‘Monk’s call is tomorrow. Keep away from me until then.’

She flinched. ‘I’m sorry the withdrawal was so rough on you. You’re different to anyone I’ve taught before. And for what it’s worth, it probably happened because I was enjoying myself too much.’

‘I thought you
always
enjoyed yourself,’ I sneered.

‘Not like that,’ she said, and left.

I kicked the door shut behind her and reminded myself that she was
Amorato
. They didn’t care about anything but the next pleasurable sensation.

I had a shower and lay down fully clothed, asking the alarm to wake me before dawn when the club closed.

When it woke me I went down to the club and stood facing the dark mirrors. The smell of spilt spirits in the drip tray made me wet my lips and swallow hard - stale whisky at dawn belonged with memories of Jamon.

‘Merv?’ I called.

He opened the mirror door, 4.30-in-the-morning pale.

I went in and waited for him to speak.

He climbed tiredly up on the deck and twirled his charms in sequence.

‘I’ve only f-found out one thing for sure. Brilliance has a s-snoop program out hunting information on Slipstream. Snout had to play dead to avoid being f-found. ’

‘What’s that mean?’ I asked, impatient.

His voice dropped so low I found myself lip-reading. ‘It means that Slipstream must be working f-for the Banks.’

I didn’t understand the nuance - wasn’t able to make the right leaps. ‘Explain.’

Merv rubbed a rabbit’s foot for comfort as he gathered his thoughts. ‘Brilliance edits all the raw footage for the media s-so she s-sees everything that is c-cammed. If she has to s-snoop out information on Slipstream then they must be working outside the normal c-c-corridors, otherwise sh-she wouldn’t need to be watching them.’

‘You mean they’re collecting information for
Common Net
and
OffWorld
?’

Merv shook his head. ‘No . . .
Common Net
and
OffWorld
are j-just Brilliance in a couple of her guises. She likes to m-masquerade as an independent s-source. You c-can’t trust anything from them.’

‘So you’re telling me
all
our viewing,
everything
we see is controlled by Brilliance.’

‘C-close. Enough to make you sleep b-bad, anyway.’

‘So where do the Banks fit in?’

Merv frowned and interlocked his fingers to stop them shaking. I sensed that he was almost frightened to say what he was thinking. ‘Snout thinks . . . I - I think Slipstream is working for the Banks.’

My head hurt. Viva politics, beyond my understanding yet controlling my life.

‘Clear as mud, Merv,’ I said tiredly. ‘Why would an organisation that tracks illegal genetic operations be working for the Banks?’