K Jeter: Farewell Horizontal

He was wasting time, he knew, trying to work it out. Either way, he was still on this side of the building, and everything he wanted – his whole life – was on the other, with a long walk in between. Worrying about who was lying to him – as if that were some novel state of affairs – was just a way of avoiding climbing into the entry site’s shivery black. Out of the light, as much of it as there was at the this hour of the eveningside’s half-dawn, and into the night inside the building, which never ended. Heavy spook territory.

Or he could starve to death out here. Axxter sucked in his breath and pulled himself into the entry site. He slowly got to his feet and stood up, feeling a solid horizontal surface under his feet; it had been a long time. The constant tension of moving around in the vertical world ebbed out of his spine, a sensation so pleasant that it sapped away most of his fear.

Cautiously, he walked forward, away from the circular light of the opening. Whatever the intentions of Sai and the other Dead Centers might have been toward him awhile ago, he probably hadn’t improved the situation by chasing Sai off with the travelhooks. That sort of thing could piss off the friendliest person, especially when it came in return for various favors performed. He’d have to watch out.

That worry aside, it wasn’t so bad inside the building. There was even light, parallel rows of faint blue radiance up on the ceiling; he hadn’t been able to see them from outside.

Maybe I’ll make it . He thought about that as he walked. Maybe he just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep going; maybe he’d find some Dead Center cache of groceries, a big pile of those round loaves, or Sai or one of the others would take a liking to him again and drop off little presents while he slept. He rolled that thought around as the entry site’s opening grew smaller and smaller behind him.

He smelled it first, coming from a smaller tunnel branching off the main one. Like gasoline, sharp and pungent. Pushed into the air by a wave of heat. Some kind of machine; he only had a second to consider what that meant, when it came out of the dark beside him and hit a blow straight to his chest. He fell backward, flying for a moment, until the back of his head and his shoulder struck the floor of the tunnel. He shook his head, dazed, eyes refocusing. In front of him was the megassassin.

He didn’t know it could smile.

All black, darkness inside darkness, a raw machine stench of oil and heated metal, and at the same time, the human smells of sweat and shit. From Axxter’s angle sprawled on the floor, the thing’s bulk blotted out everything else, as though its massive shoulders rubbed against the limits of the tunnel’s ceiling.

It looked down at him, with the little red dots that had been its eyes, and smiled as its chest opened to reveal the sharp and the blunt things moving into readiness. At the center was the death ikon, the image spiraling into view.

At least it’s not mine . Somebody else’s work, a mandala of skull-headed black maggots, grinning with needle teeth as they writhed around a thorned heart. It would’ve been too much to be killed by something with his work on it.

Then again – his brain had dropped into an odd lucidity, tranquil and slow – it might’ve been nice . To have his own stuff be the last thing he ever saw.

He looked up into the megassassin’s grin. The whirling devices at the end of its arms converged toward him.

Then the explosion hit, and all he saw was flame and smoke.

“What the fuck -” The floor of the tunnel had rocked hard enough to knock the megassassin off its feet. Axxter found himself slung against the wall, a curved section split open beside him.

A hand came through the smoke and grabbed his arm. “Come on -” A voice he’d heard before. “This way -”

He let himself be pulled through the jagged opening. Felony’s grip tugged him into a staggering run. Behind him, he heard the grinding howl of the megassassin echoing through the building.

“I think we’ll be safe here. For a while.”

She had led him through tunnels smaller and smaller, conduits branching off the main course. A world behind the smooth walls; ending finally in a tiny cubical space lined with pipes and a maze of wires. They both had to crouch under the space’s low ceiling.

The scramble on his hands and knees left Axxter panting. Head lowered, he saw his hands covered with oil and cindery ash. His jacket smelled singed. “What – what was all that? That explosion?” Maybe everything around him could go up in flame and smoke the same way.

Felony leaned back against the wall, arms wrapped around her knees. She shrugged. “No big deal. There’s some heavy-duty power lines running in spots, and the insulation has gotten old and unstable. All you gotta do is short ’em together, and you get a pretty messy bang – lots of smoke and stuff. I just did it to throw that big hulk on its can and make a hole big enough to grab you.”

He grunted his thanks. The slap of the explosion was still echoing inside his head. Alive – that amazed him. He’d never heard of anybody being shown a megassassin’s death ikon – not under the circumstances, at least, of its being out to get you – and being around later to talk about it.

“I thought… you’d taken off. To go take care of your business.”

Felony pushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “Yeah, well, I was just on my way; I got some safe spots around here where I usually stash this body – you know, so nothing happens to it while I’m over on the other side. And I spotted that thing lurking around; lurking around as well as something that big is able to. I figured it was just waiting for you to come cruising by so it could jump out and do you over. There wasn’t time to come out and warn you; plus – hey – I didn’t want that sonuvabitch scoping me out and going after my ass.”

“Thanks, I guess.” He rubbed his hands on his trousers, smearing the black stuff. “Didn’t know you were that concerned about what happened to me.”

“I’m not. I just don’t like some ugly asshole like that lumbering around on my turf. Pisses me off.”

“I still don’t get it, though.” Axxter gazed back the way they had come. “That thing shouldn’t have been here. Not this quick; it was reported as having crossed over to this side just a day or so ago. Those things don’t travel that fast.”

A shrug. “Maybe they were wrong. About when it crossed over.”

He shook his head. “That can’t be – I got the info straight from Ask & Receive. Paid top dollar for it, hundred percent reliability. They can’t be wrong about stuff like that. It’s their business to know.”

“So? Maybe they lied to you.”

“Lied?” He stared at her. “You mean, didn’t tell me the truth?”

“Yeah, that’s the general idea; that’s what the word means.”

It meant more than that. Axxter rocked back on his heels where he crouched. They lied? – meaning they hadn’t just not told him the truth; the info agency had cooked up something, a statement about the megassassin’s location, a lie, and told him that instead.

“If they did that -” He mused aloud, the conjecture and its ramifications too big to hold inside. “If they’re capable of doing that… that would mean… everything.”

Felony regarded him with distaste. “What’re you getting into such a sweat for? So they fed you a line – what’s the big deal?”

“Don’t you see?” He leaned forward onto his hands. “It would mean that Ask & Receive couldn’t be trusted.” It astonished him as much as the first time he’d seen the sun setting beyond the clouds. “They’re an impartial source of information; that’s their whole reason for existence. You have to be able to trust what they tell you.”