Windswept (28 page)

“Fast,” said Jilly.

“Anal,” I said. “They must be loading those things on a timetable, which gives us an in.” I licked my hand and wiped the mud and grime away from my face. “How do I look?”

“Messy as hell.”

“Yeah, but can you see my ink?”

Banks nodded. I wiped my hand on his cheek a few times until his regular pale complexion shone through. I smeared mung on Jilly’s face, much to her protest.

“Follow my lead. We’re getting out of this hole.” I walked into the light and yelled, as loud as I could, “HOLD UP!”

The goons spun around, their tasers pointing at us. I brushed them aside, pointing to my cheek as I breezed past them. The man with the clipboard turned to me, and I said, “That’s right, you! What are you doing?”

“Uh, making sure the shipment’s packed,” he said.

“You call this packed?” I said, pushing him out of the way. “Good God, man, you could shove another fifty drums in here. Look.” I walked into the can and sat down on an empty pallet. “See? Plenty of room.” I motioned for Banks and Jilly to sit next to me, and he hopped to. “My associates and I shouldn’t be able to sit in here. Fill it.”

“But the schedule–”

I pointed at the fist my face. “You see this? This says I outrank you, and you don’t want to know what happens to insubordinates in this operation.”

“But–”

“No buts,” I said. “You close this thing up, so I can go topside and kick the appropriate ass. And you fill every can to the brim from now on.”

“But–”

I put a finger to his lips. “I knew you could. Don’t bother locking it; I need to hit the ground running.” I leaned back and motioned for him to close the doors.

He hesitated for a moment, then said, “Where’s your clipboard?”

There was a shout from the stacks and the
thud-thud-thud
of hobnailed boots. I grabbed the kid’s clipboard and kicked him in the stomach. He staggered back as the crane clanked down on top of the can and hauled us skyward. We swayed like a ship on stormy seas, and loose drums rolled toward us as we clambered away from the still-open door. I dropped the clipboard so I could shove the molasses overboard and was rewarded with a very satisfying thud and splash below.

“You gonna help me with this?” I called to Banks.

He was leaning against a drum, flipping through the pages on the clipboard. “They’re moving everything to the lifter.”

I grabbed the clipboard and leafed through timetables, loading manifests, and slots in the lifter queue. Saarien wanted to send ten million barrels up the cable, put them on ships heading all over Occupied Space. “What the hell is he doing?” I said. “And how? How in hell can he pay the gravity tax on all this?”

“I hope your friend will be able to help,” said Banks, nodding to the stained cargo pocket that held the flask.

“If she can’t, then we are beyond screwed,” I said as morning light filled the can. I could see the rusted pipes of the refinery through the open door, smell the rotting molasses. It was a marginal improvement over the stench of Saarien’s new stuff. The can lurched, sending us tumbling to the side as the crates clanked against the can’s interior walls. We hit the ground with a thud, and then the whole can shook like it had been tossed on a vibrating bed.

“Jump!” I said, and we leaped out of the can onto soggy asphalt. Above us was a massive crane, and in front of us was a cloud that smelled like burnt molasses. The can, now secured to a trailer, rumbled away. A column of empty flatbed trucks hunkered away as far as I could see.

“Shouldn’t we follow that can?” said Banks.

“I think we won’t miss a few kilometers’ worth of trucks. We need to know what they’re moving first,” I said, looking around for something mobile we could steal. Instead, I saw an empty industrial yard filled with too-clean corporate types, all of them with fake ink. I remembered being one of those people, my head full of ambition and heart full of nothing, and my gut boiled at the sight of their fraudulent tattoos. I grabbed the clipboard from Banks and walked to the nearest one, a kid with stars under his eyes. “Oy! You!” I yelled in my best Command Presence voice. “What’s the holdup?”

“What?” said Star Eyes.

I turned the clipboard toward him and stabbed it with my finger. “This last shipment was under quota and behind schedule. Who’s in charge here?”

“Uh–”

“Not good enough!” I yelled. “You’re running behind, and that means I have to get this sorry excuse of an operation back on track right now! You!” I pointed at a young woman who looked like she was about to piss herself. “Get me and my associates a ride, one that’s worthy of our status. You have thirty seconds before I have your names and faces on the wrong people’s desks. Move!”

The entire flock scattered. I grabbed Star Eyes by the collar before he could flee. “And you,” I said, lowering my voice to a hair above dangerous. “You’re going to tell me just where you think you’re going.”

“To, um, get my superior,” he said.

“And why would you do that?” I said.

“Because I need to–”

“You need,” I said, thumping Star Eyes on the chest. “Let me tell you what
I
need. I need to know just why these shipments are being held up so I can make sure the entire supply chain can keep pace. You realize this is the only advantage we have over these miserable Union parasites, right? We have a supply chain that spreads across light years, that will keep running long after you and I and our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren are dead, buried, and turned into worm food. We are the lifeblood of humanity across a hundred planets, and we will only fail if we take our eyes off the ball. Now.” I put my hands on his shoulders. “Go get me the biggest cup of coffee you can find, and, if you do it under sixty seconds, I’ll make sure to put in a good word.”

Star Eyes relaxed, then ran off.

“That was amazing,” said Banks.

“Business Vocalization was one of my favorite classes,” I said.

“Though, I notice you didn’t get
me
a cup of coffee.”

“Or me,” said Jilly.

“Deal with it.”

The flock of WalWa juniors jogged around the corner, all of them surrounding a bright green tuk-tuk with a massive speaker system. “We found this,” said the piss-pants girl from the driver’s seat. “It’s a little dirty, but–”

“It’ll do,” said Jilly, leaping into the driver’s seat and shoving the woman aside. She revved the engine a few times and grinned.

Banks and I hopped into the back. “You’re all going to get commendations for this,” I said. “Be sure to bring this up on your next performance review with–”

“PADMA!” roared someone behind us. I turned long enough to see Evanrute Saarien and a goon squad appear from nowhere.

“GO!” I shouted, and Jilly stepped on the gas as hard as she could. The tuk-tuk shot forward, sending the WalWa juniors scattering as we belted away. Saarien’s voice echoed off the pipework.

“Turn on the stereo,” I said. “I’m not in the mood to hear any more yelling.”

We zipped through the column of trucks, smashing through traffic bars, and dodging the occasional potshot from a riot hose. We screamed out of Sou’s Reach, and Jilly didn’t take her foot off the gas until we were well down Brapati Causeway on the road to Brushhead.

I blinked up a call to Tonggow, but the line immediately went dead and the sound of a millions chainsaws cutting through coral steel filled my skull. I grabbed my head, then doubled over as the pain slammed down my spine. Somewhere in there, Jilly must have hit the brakes. The tuk-tuk screeched to a stop, traffic stacking up behind us, and I staggered out, trying to blink my pai off. I hunched over, hands on thighs, wanting to puke, but I couldn’t even manage that.

The noise cut off, and Soni’s voice came on: “Did that get your attention?”

“Christ, Soni, I know I skipped bail, but–”

“You can call me Captain Baghram now,” she said.

“You think I meant to leave the city?” I said, straightening up and waving off Banks, who gave me a worried
what-the-hell?
look. “I was on incredibly important business, and–”

“I don’t care,” she said. “You disappeared last night, and it’ll go a lot easier if you give yourself up before I have to bring you in.”

I looked around and saw a bumblecar half a klick behind us. A second waited on the other end of the causeway. “I can’t come in, Captain. There’s something bigger going on.”

“You know, just once I wish someone would say they’re not giving themselves up because they just don’t want to,” said Soni. “Instead, I always get all this crap about unfinished business and you-don’t-understand and I-just-need-to-do-this. Not this time. Come in, Padma. I don’t want to have to crank up the sound again.”

“Then do us both a favor and call Estella Tonggow,” I said. “She’ll vouch for me.”

“I would, except she was in a collision this morning.”

“With what?” I said. “Her limo was a tank.”

“Maybe,” said Soni, “but her tank wasn’t waterproof.” She sent me a picture of Tonggow’s limo, sunk in the Musharrad Canal up to its boot.

“Is she OK?” I asked.

“We’re still trying to saw our way in, but her pai isn’t reading any lifesigns,” she said.

I looked over the side of the causeway; the water was mostly clean, flowing from the kampong toward the ocean. We were so close to Brushhead I could smell Giesel’s morning bread. There would be nowhere to run to, though, not with my pai pinging my location to the whole world. There was no way to find a tech to reburn it or shut off Soni’s little reminder; I had to get somewhere out of range–

And then I saw the rusting hulk of Partridge Hutong, not a hundred meters away. If I couldn’t get out of range, I could get buried under interference. I looked at Jilly and said, “You just keep driving.” I stepped onto the pourform apron of the causeway.

“Padma, as your attorney–”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, because I jumped into the water. It tasted salty and stale, but that didn’t stop me from swimming as hard as I could for Partridge Island. I got halfway there before Soni pinged me: “Padma, you need to stop now, or I’m going to have to crank it up.”

I just kept swimming, my shoulders burning as I freestyled away. I was almost to shore when the sound of heavy machinery and howling cats cut through my brain. I curled up, the pain in my head too much to concentrate on swimming. I opened my mouth to scream, but got a lungful of water instead. I clawed and thrashed, but couldn’t find anything to grab on to.

And then someone grabbed me by the waistband and hauled me up and out. I hacked and coughed and fought off the fire in my lungs and the pounding in my head, and rolled onto my stomach and pointed at the mountain of ISO-20K-compliant cargo canisters stacked six high. I got a look at a pair of scuffed WalWa company shoes as I was dragged into the mass of cans. The noise cut off, and I groaned to Banks, “What the hell kept you?”

“I’m not a swimmer,” he said, sitting next to me. “What happened to you?”

“Policeman on my back,” I said, sitting up then leaning against one of the cans. “They’ll be here soon, so we’ll have to get ourselves lost.”

“That’ll be tough to do when you’ve got a tracker behind your eye.”

“Networks don’t work here,” I said, knocking on the can; it rang back, deep and hollow. “Too much metal, and no line of sight. Used to drive me crazy when I lived here.”

“When was that?”

“When I first Breached,” I said, getting to my feet. “I moved here that first week, and I got out as soon as I’d saved up enough cash.”

“Seems charming enough,” said Banks as we walked along the wall of metal.

“It was too hot, too noisy, and it smelled like chicken soup and rust,” I said, the pain in my skull fading. “The only thing that made it bearable was my upstairs neighbor, Mrs Powazek. She was an old LiaoCon food scientist, made the best garlic pickles in the world, with just a hint of chili flakes. I still dream about them. Plus, the smell during bottling time covered up the stink of my downstairs neighbor.”

“Is he still here?”

“Yeah,” I said, “I don’t think Bloombeck’s ever going to get out.”

“That guy who lead us into the sewers? You lived
above
him?” said Banks. “You deserve a medal.”

“It got even worse when he started monkeying around with distilling,” I said. “I don’t know if he using bad molasses or if his gear was dirty, but it always came out wrong. He even started monkeying around with this sad patch of cane–”

And something clicked. I had heard this before. Where? I stopped and rewound my pai’s buffer, to Bloombeck’s first scam pitch two days ago. He had licked his lips and rattled about his neighbor who had a cane patch on Sag Pond. “Sag Pond,” I said.

“Did you live there, too?” said Banks.

“Bloombeck’s neighbor had a patch out at Sag Pond,” I said. “And that’s where Marolo said the black stripe started. And Sag Pond is downwind from Thronehill, and something was blowing on the Sag Pond patch from the WalWa burn room. And what else did we find in the burn room?”

“A body.”

“The last time I saw Jimney, well, before I saw him again, his paper coverall was covered in muck. I thought it was just dirt, but it wasn’t. It was black stripe.”

“On a suit?”

“The paper was made of cane bagasse,” I said. “All the paper on this place is. Jimney’s suit was covered in black stripe, and he sent it up the chimney every week when he burned it.”

“His suit?”

“Best thing he could do with it,” I said. “The man didn’t really believe in hygiene.” I bit my lower lip, trying to cram all this together. “But that doesn’t make any sense. Burning the suit would have burnt the black stripe, too. Besides, the timing’s not right. Marolo said they got nailed with the black stripe months ago, so Jimney couldn’t have spread it.”

“But he’d been
exposed
to it,” said Banks. “How? What do Sag Pond and Jimney have in common?”

I looked up at the hutong wall and heard the faint wail of police sirens in the background. Soni would be coming here for me, and then I would lose grip on all of these threads. “Goddammit, if I only hadn’t listened to Bloombeck, I wouldn’t be in this... Holy crap. He’s the link. Come on!”