robert Charrette - Arthur 02 - A King Beneath the Mountain (29 page)

Surely this episode fit his boss's definition of "unusual."

There might be some decent profit in it. He hadn't destroyed the thing's head as he intended; and heads were high on his boss's list. "Heads are very identifiable," his boss had said. Looked like his boss was going to get one that would need identifying.

Benton went into the back of the truck and got out one of the small preservation bags. The big ones wouldn't be large enough for the whole carcass, so he'd have to be selective. He bagged the snouted head. Seen up close the mix of animal and human features unnerved him, but those disturbing features also told him that he was doing the right thing collecting it.

His boss had said to be sure any specimens were bagged and sealed before dawn. He hadn't said why. What difference did dawn make?

Well, dawn wasn't that far away.

He stowed the head in one of the refrigerated bins, and dosed up the truck before walking back to the cab. He could report in and be ordered to head to a pickup point at once or he could wait awhile. He decided to wait. Leaning against the front fender he settled down to wait. He kept the pseudo-Hawkeye near to hand.

When the first rays of sunlight touched the carcass, it began to smoke. In a matter of minutes it was nothing but fine ash blowing away on the morning breeze.

Benton began to wonder if he was being paid enough.

CHAPTER

15

Spillway Sue's head snapped up as the door slid open. She relaxed when she saw John was alone; Wilson had allowed him to find his own way back to his rooms, which he had managed pretty well. His sense of well-being evaporated when he saw what she was up to. Sue had the perscomp pried open and several components scattered around on the table. As the door closed behind John, she went back to poking around in the computer's interior.

He shook his head. "They're not going to like that."

"Their problem," her muffled voice returned.

"I'm surprised someone hasn't been here already."

"Been here already." She hoisted a thumb over her shoulder, directing John's attention to a smear of something dark and greasy-looking on the wall behind her. John noted three other smears, one on each wall of the room. "They didn't like what I did ta their vid pickups, so they came ta check it out. I told 'em / didn't like being watched all the time."

"And they said you could tear their equipment apart?" Wilson had said they'd find something for her to do. Letting her tear up their perscomp seemed a strange sort of hospitality. "Didn't they tell you to stop when they came?"

"I wasn't doing nothin' then. Just sitting. Told 'em, they wanted ta watch, they could do it here. They declined." A loud snap wrenched a curse out of her. John smelled ozone. Sue pulled her head and hands out of the casing. She slumped into a chair and sucked her finger, staring disconsolately at the guts of the computer. "Damn! I don't know enough about this shit."

John picked up a circuit board. He knew a little about computers, but this was not quite like anything he'd ever seen before. "Can you put it back together?"

"Sure."

He was certain that she was lying, but he didn't say anything. "Wilson said he'd be down in a little while with some food. He won't be happy with you if he finds the console like this."

"What's he gonna do, lock me up?"

"Have you been locked up here all day again?" John was sure he wouldn't have been able to stand it. No wonder she'd taken to trashing the cage.

"Nah. They let me outta the cell today."

"That's good. Maybe they're beginning to trust you." Though what she'd done to the perscomp would reverse that.

"Trust me? What a guffer. They opened the door. Stupid, I thought. Good for me, though. Leastwise that's what I thought till I went walkabout. All they got around here is corridors and more corridors. Most of them ain't got any doors on 'em, but sometimes their interior decorator goes wild and tosses in a couple of doors that ain't got no handles, buzzers, pads, or nothin'. All ya can do is go where they want ya ta go. This whole damned place's like a low-mem vid maze."

John had felt like that himself on his first excursion. Today he'd been too anxious to get to Bear in the morning to notice, and too tired tonight to be interested. Thinking about it, he realized that, except for the audience room, he still hadn't seen anything more than corridors between here and the place where they kept Bear.

Sue was still talking. "And ya know what? You were right, Jack. This place is full of half-liter gene-lacks."

"They're dwarves."

"What I said. Mein freund, they are shor-ort! Ain't seen nobody wasn't a midget like Wilson. It was nerco, absolutely n eeping. Made me feel like some sort of giant freak type."

So Sue had seen some of the dwarves. Maybe that explained why she wasn't acting stir-crazy as she had yesterday.

Wilson said they were going to find something more interesting for you today."

She snorted. "They did. Oh, they did. If ya call lunch at a cafeteria and a workout in a gym
fun.
Course, there's fun and there's fun." She slipped a short metal rod out of her pants pocket. "Left one too many bars lying around the weight room." She hefted the heavy rod and made a tentative swing with it. "Got a good feel."

"They won't let you keep it."

"Let 'em try and take it away." She swung it again in a snapping blow, bringing the follow-through around and thrusting with a jab. "Just let 'em try."

"Dinner in ten minutes," the speaker announced.

Sue started scrambling to repack the computer parts into I he console. Seeing her fumbling in her haste, John helped her. She gave him a sidelong look when he picked up the first circuit board and handed it to her, but she didn't say anything. Just as they managed to get the casing closed, John heard the faint click of the door's lock mechanism. They both slid into seats and tried to look nonchalant.

It was a wasted effort.

The door opened on a cart. No attendant, just a cart. The laden dinnercart rolled forward under its own power and stopped just short of the table. "Please return all glasses, tableware, and crockery to the cart," it said. "Soiled linen may be placed in the slot on the port side." A green bulb glowed to clarify which of the cart's sides was "port." "Please press down on the handlebar to indicate that the cart is loaded and ready for return to the kitchen."

"Where do we put the tip?" John asked.

The green light switched off, but the cart didn't answer him.

They ate, Sue demonstrating that she had little in the way of table manners. They didn't talk much during the meal.

When she finished, she fiddled with the perscomp and, to John's surprise, brought up the video player. John finished his meal to the raucous laugh track of
The Trials and Tribulations of Martin A. Felloe
^EM
,
a long-running, early-century sitcom about a software geek who had become a billionaire with his first program. John had heard of the show but never seen it; he wasn't really seeing it now because Sue turned the screen to face her. He was left to assume the humor was visual; none of the jokes were funny. Sue didn't lift a hand to help John pile the debris from their meal onto the cart. He supposed she wasn't used to having to clean up after herself, so he didn't complain. If they were going to be here for a while, though, she'd have to learn. He sent the cart on its way and turned to find that Sue had abandoned her position in front of the monitor and lay sprawled on the couch, staring at the ceiling. Martin A. Felloe's predicament continued to draw guffaws from the digital audience.

Sue looked different somehow; he wasn't quite sure why or how. Maybe it was the lighting, but she looked calmer than she had. John could have pictured her cruising the mall at Rezcom 5 or studying in a lounge at the university. She could have been just an ordinary girl. Except for one thing: Sue had her stolen weight bar out again and was idly smacking it into her hand. That wasn't the sort of thing a mainline straightline girl would be doing.

"Ya know what I want?" she asked wistfully. She didn't wait for him to respond. "I wanna see sunlight. The sky, ya know? I wanna be back on the streets, out where there's people. People, for God's sake, instead of these damn munch-kins."

"They're dwarves."

"I don't care if they're Martians! I want out."

It wasn't as if John could open a door and send her on her way. "Talk to Wilson."

She heaved herself up and slipped the rod back into her jeans. Her demeanor shifted once she was on her feet, got softer. Her voice got softer, too. "Ya know, I really don't like it here and that Wilson guy, he don't like me much. I can tell. But at least he's talked ta me. Them other munchkins, they just stare. They don't want me here. I can tell. So why don't they just let me go?"

"I don't know. Ask Wilson."

"We both know Wilson ain't calling any shots around here. I don't know anybody else here. This were the streets, 1 could go to a fixer, ya know, and find out what I gotta do ta make things straight. I don't know nobody here, don't got no connections."

John looked into her dark eyes and found himself wanting to help her. "You want me to talk to Wilson?"

She smiled, showing surprising bright teeth. "Like I was thinking ya could talk ta whuz hiz name, ya know, their boss guy."

"Kranekin."

"Yeah, whatever. Him." She had closed the distance between them as she talked. Now she laid her hand on John's arm. "I'd be grateful."

There was a promise in that statement. John knew what it would mean on the streets; he was sure she did, too. From what little he knew of her rep on the streets, it wasn't the sort of promise she made often. It wasn't the sort of thing he took lightly, either; he didn't much like the feeling that he had bought someone's affection. Surprisingly, he found that he didn't want to disappoint her.

"I'll ask," he said.

"Would ya really?"

Sure. All Kranekin could do was say no. What did he have to lose? He felt the heat of her palm through the fabric of his shirt. And he might have something to gain.

The next day he did as he said he would, asking Kranekin before he began his next session with Bear, but all Kranekin would say about releasing Spillway Sue was, "In time." It wasn't much of an answer, but Kranekin made it clear that it was all the answer John was going to get for the moment. Later, John passed the word on to Spillway Sue and she took it stony-faced.

"Ya asked like ya said ya would," was all she said before retreating to her bedroom and shutting the door. She didn't come out to eat when the dinnercart arrived. John ate alone.

When he was finished, he put his dirty things back on the cart, but he left her untouched stuff on the table; she might be hungry later. He sent the cart off and retired to his room.

His head was still buzzing from the sim, and he was tired; not as much as he had been after the first sessions, but enough to make crashing out sound really attractive. He let his clothes fall where he stripped them off, used the toilet, and headed for the soft embrace of the bed. He realized that he had forgotten to close his door when Sue spoke from the doorway.

"Not a bad bod, if ya like 'em pale."

John started, turning at her voice before recollecting that he was naked. He glanced around frantically for something snatchable. He grabbed a pillow from the bed to hold in front of himself.

"And shy, too. Chill down, mein freund. Ya ain't got nothin' I ain't seen before."

She sauntered into the room, running her eyes up and down his body in a frankly evaluating way. He backed away from her until his calves came up against the bed. She came into the room, straight toward him. Her hands lifted and began unbuttoning her shirt. That done, she slid her arms back and sent the shirt to the floor with a shrug. She stood before him naked from the waist up. Her body was lean, sleek with toned muscle. Her breasts were small but well-shaped globes and their nipples were crinkling to hardness. John swallowed hard. Swallowing wasn't the only thing that was hard; he felt the pillow resisting his rising interest. She was very close.

It might have been a dream, but he could smell her. Then again, in a dream, she would have been smiling.

This wasn't right.

"I didn't get you what you wanted," he managed to say. "You don't have to do this."

"I don't do nothin' I don't wanna," she said with a shrug.

The movement drew John's eyes to her breasts. He felt hot.

She finally smiled, but it was an ironic one. "Ya didn't say ya'd get me out. Most guys woulda. Ya just said ya'd ask, and ya did what ya said, and I appreciate that."

And now she was here to pay off. John's hardness slipped a little. "You don't have to show your appreciation this way."

"A deal's a deal." She popped the top fastening on her jeans and started slowly sliding the zipper down. John could see the top of her panties in the crack; they were deep blue and shiny. He caught a new whiff of her scent. "Only got one commodity here ta trade with."

"Pretty high price when you don't get what you want."

"It ain't worth as much as yer making out."