The Age of Scorpio (43 page)

‘Excuse me, love.’

Beth was slowly getting used to the mangled cockney of the Pompey accent. With her broad West Yorkshire vowels, sometimes conversations sounded like they were being held in two different languages. This voice was the most Pompey she had ever heard: she had to play it back in her head to decipher it.

‘Yeah?’ she finally said. She didn’t like the look of him. Weasel-faced, lank, shoulder-length blond hair, looped earrings. He looked thin but she was guessing that under the shell suit was a wiry frame. He was leaning on a bizarre-looking cane that looked like it was made out of leather. His mouth moved with the constant chewing movement of the habitual speed freak. It was the eyes, though. She’d seen them before, working the doors. This was a man who didn’t feel anything and so liked violence. A proper psycho.

Two large men dressed much more smartly, in suits and overcoats, flanked the weasel-faced man. Massively built, their pronounced jaws suggested steroid abuse. Beth had seen their like before in the gym.

‘You looking for me?’ the thin man asked. Alarm bells were ringing.

‘Don’t think so.’

‘Sure? Jaime said you was. So did William. You do that to his fingers?’ he asked, sounding casual. If there was anger there, it was because someone was playing with his toys, not because someone had hurt his people.

Beth got off the wall. ‘You know my sister?’

‘Probably be better if we asked the questions, love.’

‘Who are you?’

‘You’re not very bright up north, are you? We’re going to go for a bit of a ride. Have a bit of a chat, okay?’

‘I’m a bit old to get into a car with strange men.’ Beth turned to walk away.

‘I don’t think you want to do that.’

Beth made the mistake of glancing behind her. The big guy on the psycho’s right had opened his coat to show the pistol stuffed in his waistband. Beth knew she should have kept walking but stopped. The man with the gun was trying to look hard but he had to be scared. The city was crawling with armed police and even soldiers. Battery Row was pretty open and he was carrying a shooter.

‘You going to use that here?’ Beth asked. She tried to sound casual, but her hand went into the pocket of her leather jacket, fingers curling around her brass knuckles. She didn’t fancy her chances of crossing the distance before he drew the gun. These guys being mown down by trigger-happy police was little consolation if she was dead.

‘What are you doing?’ Ted was behind her, staring at the psycho.

Beth swore to herself. She didn’t doubt that to run an arcade you needed to be hard, but she didn’t think Ted was anywhere near this psycho’s league, and he was old, fat and really unhealthy. The last thing she needed was to drag him into this, particularly with a gun involved. ‘I asked you a fucking question, McGurk. You know better. You don’t fucking come down here and hassle my people.’

Beth turned to stare at Ted. He was an easy-going guy. This was a new side of him. Fat or not, he suddenly came across as more than capable of defending himself. She wondered how many other people had underestimated him in the past.

‘Hello, Ted, and watch your fucking mouth. That agreement was made a long time ago, and you’re not quite the Jack the Lad you once were, if you know what I mean.’

‘I stay out of your business; you stay out of mine.’

‘I’m thinking of renegotiating. Besides, little missy here has been messing in my business. Beat up one of my boys, cut another. Something has to be done. You know that, Ted.’

Ted turned to Beth looking less than pleased.

‘Do I look like a fucking little missy to you?’ Beth demanded.

McGurk looked her up and down, an expression of exaggerated distaste on his features. ‘You’re too fucking ugly to rape. Your sister, on the other hand, she was proper rape material.’

Beth went for him. Ted, moving surprisingly quickly, grabbed her and managed to hold her back. McGurk just laughed.

‘Enough . . . Beth, not here . . . That’s enough!’ Somehow the words got through, made their way through the red, and Beth started to calm down. ‘Isn’t that what they call overcompensation, McGurk? Didn’t think you liked the ladies.’ He glanced at McGurk’s two minders.

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?! What are you trying to say, you cunt?!’

‘Just hear you like to break your boys in,’ Ted said, still holding on to Beth. Ted looked at the minders one after another. Neither of them would meet his eyes. McGurk’s face was red and furious. Ted whispered to Beth, ‘I’ve got to let you go. You go for him and you’re on your own. Understand? Now get a grip.’ Beth nodded and he let go of her.

‘They need to know who’s boss, that’s all! It just establishes, you know . . .’

‘Dominance?’ Ted asked innocently.

‘Yeah, like a wolf! You’re not a fucking faggot if you’re doing it to them!’ McGurk screamed. ‘I’m happily married and plenty on the side! You go around saying things like that and you could get yourself badly hurt. Know what I mean?! Now give us the bitch.’

‘That’s not going to happen, and this isn’t a good time to be doing this. The city’s crawling with plod.’

‘Either she’s one of yours, in which case we come back mob-handed, or she’s not and you give her over. Save yourself the fucking trouble.’ McGurk moved closer to Ted, leaning in towards him. ‘Look, I get it. You were a big man when I was coming up, a hard man. I had to show respect. But look at you now. Too many fags, too many doughnuts, you got high on your own supply. Well, fat anyway. We can just take her now – you know that – but I’m still trying to show you some respect, okay? Let you get out of this with a bit of dignity.’ Beth looked at Ted. She was about to go with McGurk. This wasn’t Ted’s problem; she’d brought this down on him. Then she saw how angry he was. The big man was shaking with rage.

‘For a piece of shit like you to think you can even talk to me like that . . .’ he managed. McGurk backed up. Shifting posture. Beth decided she was going to go for the guy with the gun first. Ted didn’t know about the gun.

Then they came, everyone who worked at the amusements. Many were not physically impressive but some of them were. A lot of it was hard physical work. Men and women. The youngest to the oldest, a lot of them carrying whatever makeshift weapon they could lay their hands on.

‘That supposed to scare me?’ McGurk asked, sneering at the show people’s approach.

‘Go now while you still can,’ Ted managed, his voice shaky, that of a man barely controlling his temper.

‘I will fucking deal with you, you fat cunt,’ McGurk told him, and then he and his two muscle-bound minders turned and headed back towards Old Portsmouth.

Ted turned to Beth. ‘You need to go home now.’

At first Beth thought he was angry with her. Then she realised. ‘What, do you think he . . .?’

‘Go now!’

She turned and ran, so intent on getting back to the flat that she didn’t hear what McGurk was shouting after her.

Beth sprinted across the common, cursing herself for not getting to know the city better. Her lungs felt on fire by the time she crossed on to Osborne Road, making a car brake suddenly, heading for the centre of Southsea. She turned into Palmerston Road, the ugly concrete shopping precinct. She wasn’t sure how she was breathing. She just didn’t seem to be getting enough oxygen but she didn’t stop. Past the church, the cafes on Marmion Road and right into Victoria Road South, wishing she owned a mobile phone. She had passed a number of roads she was convinced would get her there quicker but couldn’t risk getting lost. People got out of the way of the powerfully built woman sprinting down the pavement. Beth’s chest was agony now. Nearly there. Crossing Albert Road, she ended up on the bonnet of a skidding car, providing the terrified occupants with a freeze-frame image before she slid off. On to Campbell Road. She was amazed her run hadn’t resulted in police interest.

As ever, Campbell Road was lined with parked cars. She tried looking for ones that didn’t fit. A waste of time. Gasping down air as she fumbled with the lock. She was seeing stars in front of her eyes now. Into the hall. Up the stairs. Heart sinking as she saw the door to the flat was open.

Beth looked into the lounge. Maude was curled up on the sofa looking terrified. Uday was next to her, arms around her. Even in the moment that Beth had to take it in, Uday’s look said it all.
You brought this down on us.

McGurk was in the armchair playing with his cane. One of his minders stood next to him; the other was towering over Uday and Maude.

‘Now where were we? Oh yes. Trevor, give this fucking mouthy bitch a bit of a slap, will you?’

Trevor was the one standing next to McGurk. He was across the living room with surprising speed, although if she hadn’t just sprinted two miles he probably wouldn’t have connected. He caught Beth in the jaw and she hit the carpet.

Beth reached under the sofa and grabbed the bayonet from its hiding place with her left hand. As she moved, she saw the look of surprise on Maude’s face. Trevor cried out, surprise first, then pain and fear. It was an awkward left-handed stab, but she left the blade in his leg as she pulled the brass knuckles out of the pocket of her leather and hit him hard in the chin and then again with less force on the nose. Trevor’s nose broke, blood spurting down his face, but he was already on his way down to the floor.

Uday flung himself at the other piece of muscle. He might as well have thrown himself at a concrete wall. He was easily batted aside. To Beth’s amazement, Maude was trying to hit him as well. It didn’t look like much of a contact but he cried out and grabbed his eye as Uday picked himself up and grabbed the big man’s legs.

‘Come on then, you southern cunt!’ Beth screamed at McGurk. But he had a gun now. It was pointed at Uday’s head.

‘Now if we’re all through playing silly fucking buggers,’ McGurk said.

Uday was looking furious. Glaring between Beth and McGurk. Maude seemed appalled by what she had done. The minder had blood pouring out from under his eye. As Beth watched, he pulled the nail file that Maude had stabbed him with out of the wound. Beth couldn’t believe that both of them had had the courage to fight.

Trevor was moaning, one leg of his trousers dark with blood. Beth stood on his leg so he couldn’t move and tore the bayonet out. He screamed.

‘Here! Any more of your nonsense and you’ll get to see your two little friends make a very special film. Do you understand me? Now drop the shiv.’

‘What the fuck’s wrong with you?’ Beth asked as she dropped the bayonet.

‘Never you mind what’s wrong with me, you cheeky slag. You just do as you’re fucking told.’

‘Where’s my sister?’ Beth demanded. Maude looked up at her, shock all over her face.

‘You see the gun, yes?’ He turned to the muscle that Maude had stabbed. ‘Are you all right, Markus?’

‘Yes, Mr McGurk.’

‘Right. Well why don’t you cuff her, take her downstairs and put her in the boot of the Beamer.’

‘Yes, Mr McGurk.’

‘I can’t see that happening,’ Beth said.

‘Then I break both your arms and legs and you get to watch me rape your friends to death.’

It was too much for Maude. She broke down. Uday looked angry enough to charge a gun.

As subtly as she could, Beth dropped her knuckles back into the pocket of her leather. Markus cuffed her and then put his overcoat over the cuffs to hide them.

McGurk stood up. He looked down at Trevor with disgust and delivered a vicious kick to his wound. Trevor screamed. Then he turned to the furious Uday and sobbing Maude.

‘I can find you any time I want. You understand me.’

Beth saw Uday swallow hard, bite back what he was going to say and nod. Then the three of them left, leaving the bleeding Trevor on the carpet.

Scab had described it as an anal tract but Vic had put that down to his partner’s natural unpleasantness. Vic preferred to think of it as walking down a massive bioluminescent artery. The translucent nature of the flesh of the floating city allowed him to see its internal workings, which looked like muscle, tissue and organs on a massive scale. He understood that felines, hairless monkeys and to a lesser extent some lizards could find this sort of thing uncomfortable, but he’d grown up in the chitinous environments of star hives which prepared him for this sort of biomechanics writ large.

They were moving along the artery/sphincter on the edge of one of the Living Cities. They did not know which one. They did not know how to differentiate or indeed if they could be differentiated.

The Living Cities were one of the most celebrated sights of the Monarchist systems and indeed Known Space, considered a triumph of bioengineering, though it was suspected that they had been built using illegal – under Church law – applications of Seeder tech.

Vic reached out to touch the flesh-like wall of the artery, running one of his upper hands down it, enjoying the sensation fed back from the tactile sensor on the mechanical appendage. Through the glowing translucent wall he could look down through the cloudless sky to the scarred grey rock of Pangea’s surface.

Tendrils hung out of the bottom of the city as it floated on massive gasbags supported by redundant AG systems. The tendrils burrowed into the surface of the ruined planet like parasitical insects. Vic knew that the tendrils would be breaking down and sucking up the very surface of the planet itself for conversion and processing as raw material. Deeper burrowing tendrils would be harnessing geothermal energy from the planet’s core. Frequent tectonic events would sever tendrils, spraying rock, heat or even lava into the sky, but the living city could always call on its massive carbon reservoirs harvested from the very matter of the planet and grow more.

Eventually Pangea would be exhausted and the Living Cities would either somehow have to move to another world or die. Other worlds were in short supply due to the limited number of systems that the Church allowed access to with their bridge technology, and the rapacious, exponential, almost viral level of expansion and colonisation of the sentient races. In other words, space was crowded, and almost every bit of it was claimed. On the other hand, even with Vic’s limited knowledge of geospatial politics, and allowing for his near-total lack of interest in the subject, he realised that breaking the Church’s monopoly could lead to the opening-up of more space to colonise.