Budayeen Nights by George Alec Effinger Page A

if I’d been staked out under the desert sun for a couple of days. Inside, my muscles felt quivery. I had lots of uncontrollable little spasms in my arms, legs, trunk, and face. I had a splitting headache and there was a horrible, sour taste in my mouth. I was having a lot of trouble focusing my eyes, as if someone had spread a thick translucent gunk over them.
    I strained to make out who was talking to me. I could barely make out the voice because my ears were ringing so loud. It turned out to be Shaknahyi, and that indicated that I was still alive. For an awful moment after I came to, I thought I might be in Allah’s greenroom or somewhere. Not that being alive was any big thrill just then. “What—” I croaked. My throat was so dry I could barely speak.
    “Here.” Shaknahyi handed a glass of cold water down to me. I realized that I was lying flat on my back on the floor, and Shaknahyi and M. Gargotier were standing over me, frowning and shaking their heads.
    I took the water and drank it gratefully. When I finished, I tried talking again. “What happened?” I said.
    “You fucked up,” Shaknahyi said.
    “Right,” I said.
    A narrow smile crossed Shaknahyi’s face. He reached down and offered me a hand. “Get up off the floor.”
    I stood up wobbily and made my way to the nearest chair. “Gin and bingara,” I said to Gargotier. “Put a hit of Rose’s lime in it.” The barkeep grimaced, but he turned away to get my drink. I took out my pill case and dug out maybe eight or nine Sonneine.
    “I heard about you and your drugs,” said Shaknahyi.
    “It’s all true,” I said. When Gargotier brought my drink, I swallowed the opiates. I couldn’t wait for them to start fixing me up. Everything would be just fine in a couple of minutes.
    “You could’ve gotten everybody killed, trying to talk that guy down,” Shaknahyi said. I was feeling bad enough already, I didn’t want to listen to his little lecture right then. He went ahead with it anyway. “What the hell were you trying to do? Establish rapport or something? We don’t work that way when people’s lives are in danger.”
    “Yeah?” I said. “What do you do?”
    He spread his hands like the answer should have been perfectly obvious. “You get around where he can’t see you, and you ice the motherfucker.”
    “Did you ice me before or after you iced Al-Muntaqim?”
    “That what he was calling himself? Hell, Audran, you got to expect a little beam diffusion with these static pistols. I’m real sorry I had to drop you, too, but there’s no permanent damage, inshallah. He jumped up with that box, and I wasn’t gonna wait around for you to give me a clear shot. I had to take what I could get.”
    “It’s all right,” I said. “Where’s The Avenger now?”
    “The meat wagon came while you were napping. Took him off to the lock ward at the hospital.”
    That made me a little angry. “The mad bomber gets shipped to a nice bed in the hospital, but I got to lie around on the filthy floor of this goddamn saloon?”
    Shaknahyi shrugged. “He’s in a lot worse shape than you are. You only got hit by the fuzzy edge of the charge. He took it full.”
    It sounded like Al-Muntaqim was going to feel pretty rotten for a while. Didn’t bother me none.
    “No percentage in debating morality with a loon,” said Shaknahyi. “You go in looking for the first opportunity to stabilize the sucker.” He made a trigger-pulling motion with his right index finger.
    “That’s not what Complete Guardian was telling me,” I said. “By the way, did you pop the moddy for me? What did you do with it?”
    “Yeah,” said Shaknahyi, “here it is.” He took the moddy out of a shirt pocket and tossed it down on the floor beside me. Then he raised his heavy black boot and stamped the plastic module into jagged pieces. Brightly colored fragments of the webwork circuitry skittered across the floor. “Wear another one of those, I do the same to your face and then I