In spite of himself, Frankie smiled. This kid’s nobody’s fool. “Okay.”
There was a long pause. “Fine. Now how you gonna spring me, mister wageslave?”
A plan began to form in Frankie’s mind as he examined the data traffic streaming in and out. of the dockyards. “Can you swim?”
“Uh, yeah, but-”
“Be ready. And don’t lose that phone.” He stabbed the disconnect key.
“Oh man,” Ko breathed, staring at the silent cellphone. “What did I just do?”
The steel doors answered him, opening with a clattering squeal. Ko staggered backward, reflexively trying to make himself a smaller target; but there was no cover at all inside the cargo pod. The hatches opened wide and there was Rikio and another one of Hung’s boys, scowling from underneath a sepia-toned punch-perm. Rikio’s face was expressionless.
“Look,” Ko said, “there’s no need for this.”
Punch-perm nodded at Rikio. “That blue-faced bitch wants this tyke aired out. You gonna do it, or do I gotta tell Hung you’re not up to the job?”
“Hey,” said Ko. “Wait.”
Rikio licked his lips. “Naw. It’s okay. ”
Punch-perm kept talking as if Ko wasn’t even there. “So, then. You wanna use my gun?”
“Naw,” Rikio repeated, flicking off the Ushanti’s safety, “I got it.”
Ko heard a rumbling sound, getting louder by the second. Was that death, bearing down on him? “Please,” he implored, tears spiking his eyes. “Just let me go-”
Rikio raised the machine pistol; that was about the moment the robo-truck slammed into the side of the container and rode right over the punch-perm guy, wheels grinding the man into the asphalt.
The empty metal box shifted with ear-splitting shrieks, fat yellow sparks flying from the doors. Rikio tumbled into the cargo pod, narrowly missing the same fate as the other enforcer. Ko slipped and fell, his hands crusted with a film of dried blood.
He saw the front of the robot six-wheeler as it retreated back a few feet, huffing like an overworked dray horse. Written across the blank-faced prow of the truck were three words: “Yuk Lung Haulage.”
The vehicle came at the pod again and this time the impact threw it back two metres, pushing it back over the edge of the dock. The machine shouldered into the container and began the slow and steady process of tipping it into the bay.
Frankie worked the controls, licking sweat from his lips. On the thermal scan he could see the shapes of a dozen men sprinting across the cargo apron toward the truck, the cold shapes of weapons in their grips. It had been simple to open up the automatic navigation controls on one of the many YLHI drone haulers, and reprogramme the dog-smart drive brain to do his bidding; but now Frankie was having second thoughts about his impulsive choice of exit strategy. He could make out the two flailing orange shapes inside the box, so he knew the kid wasn’t dead-not yet. Pinpricks of bright white showed where the triad gunsels were firing on the truck. Behind them, the alien shape of Tze’s Blue Snake stood and observed, motionless.
The robo-truck smashed into the cargo pod one last time and drove it over the lip of the concrete dock. Vehicle and all, the pod struck the waters of the bay and vanished, the shape fading away into the blue sheen of the cold.
Ko and Rikio collided with each other and the walls, bouncing around like stones in a rattle. Rikio tumbled underneath him and Ko felt something break inside the Red Pole as he softened the impact against the steel box. Water gushed into the container, buoying up Rikio’s body. Ko noted the new angles in his arms and legs, the freakish tilt of the neck, but found it hard to summon any sympathy.
Ko pushed at the undertow of the seawater, but the icy cold and the searing bite of the wound in his chest bled the energy from him. Tilting, the box dropped beneath the surface, the tiny pocket of trapped air inside bubbling out in whooping breaths. He tried to swim, but there was nothing in him, not a drop of energy to spare.
I’m going to die. I’m sorry, Nikki. I let you down.
“Stupid, weak city boy.” The voice hammered into his head. “You’re not dead yet.” Something tugged at him through the chill water and Ko saw a shape drifting at the mouth of the container, leather cords and a long ponytail floating around him. “Swim, damn you,” snarled Feng. “The drowned never know peace! You want to spend eternity haunting this concrete cesspool? Come on! Swim!”
Ko’s leaden limbs moved, dragging him forward. The container dropped away toward the dark, and with agonizing slowness Ko felt himself rising toward the bland grey light of the surface. Feng beckoned him from the shadows of the dock stanchions, speaking without moving his lips. “This way! Come up here, quickly!”
He burst from the depths through oily water, sucking in great wet gasps of air. Ko’s fingers found a rusty rail and he pulled himself hand-over-hand, up and on to the concrete pier. Behind him on the next dock over, he could hear shouting and curses. A gunshot rang out, and a divot of stone cracked near his leg. He felt hollow inside, but somehow there was a secret reserve of energy coining from a place he’d never known of, and it propelled Ko forward, gasping and spitting up acrid water. Ahead he saw a chainlink gate lying open, and beyond that, a service road.
On the road was a parked car. The speedgeek part of his brain identified it immediately as a Korvette Impulse, one of the ’23 models that had the puny touchlocks on the doors. Ko felt a weak smile forming on his lips just at the sight of it.
Wild…
Wild…
Wyldsky!
One Night Only! Victoria Peak!
The greatest concert of the decade, with the hottest bands and NO RULES!
There’s no ticket-the only thing you need to get in is freedom!
Come together and stand your ground!
Show the world that music can’t be caged!
It’s not about the green! It’s about the BLUE! WYLDSKY!
Featuring performances by JetSlut! Charlie Fish! Yellow Dancer!
And a SPECIAL guest star-Who Knows? YOU KNOW!
The biggest free gig in the PacRim!
WYLDSKY!
The future starts here!
11. Saviour of the Soul
Fixx let the road do the driving, allowing the turns and changes to come from the world around him, travelling without moving, conscious but unseeing. The black Korvette seemed to understand its new master, and behaved as a good horse should, cantering unhurried through the canyons of the city. Lucy had done him proud.
There came the point, just as Joshua expected, when the road ended, and there he turned off the motor and let the surroundings talk to him. Hours passed without his notice, instead his mind dwelling on the fragments of time from the mallplex; the pieces of sensory recall from there and the same moments from the Hyperdome collided and merged in his mind, an ocean of floating jigsaw pieces connecting, disconnecting, seeking patterns in each other. In the car, in the service road between the concrete warehouses, in the place of silence-such-as-it-was, Fixx recovered the deck of cards his sainted grandmother had bequeathed and began to play out a reading on the empty passenger seat beside him. The patterns started to emerge, and he chewed his lip. All this time, and still Fixx felt like he was unready, like he was waiting.
“Stage ain’t set,” he said aloud. “Players ain’t ready yet.”
His mind was so focused on the tarot matrix that the shadow crossing the window by his head was a sudden surprise.
The Korvette had one-way surrounds of black glass, and with the car dormant as it was, a person might be forgiven for thinking it was empty. Fixx paused, an unturned card in his hand, and studied the raggedy youth working at the door lock. The Chinese kid had his tongue pressed between his teeth in serious concentration. He looked strung out and wasted, a nasty blossom of blood down the front of his shirt, constellations of bruises on his face and neck. He was wet through, his clothes plastered to him; but most of all the fear was coming off him in waves.