guitar is singing…
Chapter Four
The city is melting, its outlines blurring in the August heat, the buildings swaying.
Sarah closes her eyes and rests her temple against the cool metal frame of the window. Images of flame pulse orange and red on the backs of her eyelids. Just below the window frame, the ventilator seems to whisper, to urge her in a strange, occluded tongue toward some course of action. She does not know what it wants. She shakes her head, feeling exhaustion beating at her.
“Cunningham’s people are offering money for you, mi hermana.” It is the soft voice of the Hetman. “I have let it be known that anyone who accepts their offer is no longer my friend. But that can only go so far. There are many who will do their job for them. And they have only to keep a watch on Daud. ”
Sarah opens her eyes. The city melts. “I know,” she says.
She turns to face him. They are standing in a corner of the hospital waiting room, a circular chamber cantilevered high above the city in a corner of the hospital tower, its mirrored windows facing in a dozen directions like multiple insect eyes. A vid set blithers in a corner, stared at without interest by two Cuban women, sisters, each with vast makeup eyes and eyebrows painted like wings. Their father is in the last stages of viral Huntington’s, his mind gone: he thinks they are harpies, come to eat his liver while he is chained to the rock of his disease. Passively, at a distance, they await his dying. Near them a young man cries softly into a succession of paper tissues. Twisted pastel colors litter the floor near his feet like broken flowers. Michael’s eyes are watery, red-rimmed. His gestures are jangled. Sarah suspects he’s coming down from something.
“I have a job for you,” he says. “It’s not even illegal, and it pays in gold, very well.” He names a sum, and from the size of it Sarah knows it has a high risk factor. Michael is an honorable man, at least as thirdmen go, but charity is not one of his traits.
Sarah walks to a chair and lets herself sink in it. Orange plastic cushions, trying to be cheerful. She puts her head down. The air is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. “Who will I be working for?” Hopelessly.
Daud lies in a room a few doors away amid the blinking eyes that are the LEDs of his machines. He is conscious now, pain masked by doses of endorphins far greater than he took even at the height of his addiction. His body is striped by bright pink tissue, all factory-new, including a whole lower arm. His legs are still swathed in gel, awaiting transplant of tissue and muscle. And the transplants await new funds.
Sarah is running low on chloramphenildorphin. It was supposed to be scarce and in high demand, but a new source appeared just when she needed to pay for Daud’s first bills, the price plummeted. Normally she would have waited for the price to rise again, but the hissing machines that kept Daud alive were indifferent to market conditions... She had to put the ’dorphin on the street, even at the lowest value in months. She wonders if Cunningham had somehow arranged it. She is poison now, and knows it. Her usual sources of income are gone. Normally she works as a bodyguard, but who wants a guard who will draw fire? And as for the special jobs...she hasn’t had an offer. There is word that she comes tangled up with matters no one else wants to touch, that her profile is far too high. She can make a few street deals, move things for other people who don’t want to move their action personally, but that won’t pay for the hospital and would also expose her, keep her too much in the public view, never knowing if any of the people she is hustling for will be eager to collect Cunningham’s reward.
So. “Who will I be working for?” As if the answer mattered.
Michael the Hetman stares out the window, his face bleached by the sun. “For me,” he says. “There is a job...” He screws up his face and
Chapter Four
The city is melting, its outlines blurring in the August heat, the buildings swaying.
Sarah closes her eyes and rests her temple against the cool metal frame of the window. Images of flame pulse orange and red on the backs of her eyelids. Just below the window frame, the ventilator seems to whisper, to urge her in a strange, occluded tongue toward some course of action. She does not know what it wants. She shakes her head, feeling exhaustion beating at her.
“Cunningham’s people are offering money for you, mi hermana.” It is the soft voice of the Hetman. “I have let it be known that anyone who accepts their offer is no longer my friend. But that can only go so far. There are many who will do their job for them. And they have only to keep a watch on Daud. ”
Sarah opens her eyes. The city melts. “I know,” she says.
She turns to face him. They are standing in a corner of the hospital waiting room, a circular chamber cantilevered high above the city in a corner of the hospital tower, its mirrored windows facing in a dozen directions like multiple insect eyes. A vid set blithers in a corner, stared at without interest by two Cuban women, sisters, each with vast makeup eyes and eyebrows painted like wings. Their father is in the last stages of viral Huntington’s, his mind gone: he thinks they are harpies, come to eat his liver while he is chained to the rock of his disease. Passively, at a distance, they await his dying. Near them a young man cries softly into a succession of paper tissues. Twisted pastel colors litter the floor near his feet like broken flowers. Michael’s eyes are watery, red-rimmed. His gestures are jangled. Sarah suspects he’s coming down from something.
“I have a job for you,” he says. “It’s not even illegal, and it pays in gold, very well.” He names a sum, and from the size of it Sarah knows it has a high risk factor. Michael is an honorable man, at least as thirdmen go, but charity is not one of his traits.
Sarah walks to a chair and lets herself sink in it. Orange plastic cushions, trying to be cheerful. She puts her head down. The air is heavy with the smell of stale cigarettes. “Who will I be working for?” Hopelessly.
Daud lies in a room a few doors away amid the blinking eyes that are the LEDs of his machines. He is conscious now, pain masked by doses of endorphins far greater than he took even at the height of his addiction. His body is striped by bright pink tissue, all factory-new, including a whole lower arm. His legs are still swathed in gel, awaiting transplant of tissue and muscle. And the transplants await new funds.
Sarah is running low on chloramphenildorphin. It was supposed to be scarce and in high demand, but a new source appeared just when she needed to pay for Daud’s first bills, the price plummeted. Normally she would have waited for the price to rise again, but the hissing machines that kept Daud alive were indifferent to market conditions... She had to put the ’dorphin on the street, even at the lowest value in months. She wonders if Cunningham had somehow arranged it. She is poison now, and knows it. Her usual sources of income are gone. Normally she works as a bodyguard, but who wants a guard who will draw fire? And as for the special jobs...she hasn’t had an offer. There is word that she comes tangled up with matters no one else wants to touch, that her profile is far too high. She can make a few street deals, move things for other people who don’t want to move their action personally, but that won’t pay for the hospital and would also expose her, keep her too much in the public view, never knowing if any of the people she is hustling for will be eager to collect Cunningham’s reward.
So. “Who will I be working for?” As if the answer mattered.
Michael the Hetman stares out the window, his face bleached by the sun. “For me,” he says. “There is a job...” He screws up his face and
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