Elizabeth Bear - Hammered

Sigourney Street

Abandoned North End

Hartford, Connecticut

“Jenny, it’s Gabe. Hope everything’s okay — sorry I missed you. I was just calling to let you know I’ve moved back to Toronto and give you my new contact information, but I guess I’ll e-mail it to you instead. Yes, as you’re guessing, that means I finally found work. It’s a good job, too, but I have to warn you about the shocker — I’m working with your old ‘friend’ Captain Valens. Except he’s Colonel Valens now, but anyway, I figured I should warn you before you heard it through the grapevine.

“I hope you’re out having a hot date on a Friday night, or at least down at that dive you call a corner pub watching the game. My money’s on Chelsea. Call me. Bye!”

I step away from the one-tenth-scale holographic projection of the head of Gabriel Castaign, formerly holding the rank of captain in the Canadian Army. Razorface watches over my shoulder. Boris stands on the fender of the Cadillac, and Face scratches him under the chin. The old tomcat rocks his head from side to side, leaning into the caress. “ Jenny? ”

“Don’t push your luck, Dwayne.”

He curls a corner of his lip at me in a close-mouthed smile. I’m probably the only person other than his momma who knows that name anymore. “Mexican standoff,” he says. “That your only message? You nearly ready to roll?”

“Yeah,” I say, downloading the information Gabe e-mailed me into my HCD. The H stands for holistic, but through the magic of linguistics, everybody calls it a “hip.” Whatever.

Valens? Fucking A, Gabe, you’d better have a hell of a good reason for that. He does, though. And it’s hard to be angry, because I know perfectly well what his reasons are.

His wife’s name had been Geniveve, and the irony of that still scalded me if I thought about it too hard. He’d married her after we were both out of the army, and their daughters were born late — the younger one only a year or so before Geniveve died. Long after he’d forgotten that he saved my life that time. I never forgot, even if I never got around to mentioning it to him. Like I never got around to mentioning some other things he didn’t need to know. We can put bases on Mars and miners on Ceres, but we can’t cure common heartbreak.

I stop playing with my HCD, thumb it off, and refill Boris’s automatic cat feeder and water fountain. He’s got a cat door keyed to a microchip. Face watches me, not quite letting me see him smile. Yeah, dammit, I take in strays. When I’m done, I grab my jacket and an overnight bag and lead Face over to the only-just-antique Bradford Tempest pickup in the left-hand bay.

I figure I’ll answer Gabriel’s call when I get home and have a little time to talk. And when I’ve cooled off a little, to be honest.

The Bradford isn’t much to look at, but it runs. The solid rubber tires and boulder-climbing suspension aren’t easy on the kidneys as we bushwhack our way to the highway, but thirty minutes later we’re southbound on I-91, passing the exit sign that reads “Dinosaur State Park Veteran’s Home and Hospital” and accelerating steadily toward New York City.p>

Because, baby, it’s Friday night.

We ride in silence, down highways older than my grandmother, through the acid-rain-etched hills and the centers of commerce of southern Connecticut. The highway unwinds before us, the sun gliding down the sky. Our first sight of the city is burn-scarred gray concrete towers flanking the highway — deserted now and unmaintained.

It’s still only early evening — three hours transit, more or less, and then another half hour looking for a spot before I pay too much to park the brave old truck in a guarded lot. I disarm the security system so Face can climb out the passenger side. I’ve got my gun unholstered and am leaning across to open the glove box when he stops, turns back, and slides his own piece out of the shoulder holster. He weighs it in his hand, standing close enough so the door blocks him from casual sight.

“Leave it,” I say.

He looks like he wants to chew his lip. I admire his restraint. “New York,” he says.

“Not the place to carry a gun.” New York City has a shoot-on-sight law, and the cops here aren’t content to let the neighborhoods run themselves. Never mind the martial law that’s gone into effect since the dikes went up between the City and the cold, rising Atlantic. That spot between my shoulderblades starts to itch as soon as I get within smelling distance of the place. I meet his eyes and frown. “Glove box, Face.”

He takes a breath to argue, so I let my expression slide toward Sergeant and he lets it out again and puts the gun in the box like a good boy, only slamming the door a little. I meet him by the front bumper. “So, do you have any idea where to go?”

He’s already walking, and I set the alarm and the flame-throwers before I follow.

He nods, but doesn’t say anything. The narrow street is dark and smells of garbage and the salt-sewage tang of the sea. I hurry to catch up, matching strides with him as he reaches the sidewalk. His shoulders are squared hard, and as I fall in on his right side I lay my metal hand on his elbow. “Talk to me.”

He turns his head away and spits. “Nothing to talk about. Will you stop fussing at me? You been acting like my grandmother all day. We just going to see a guy.”

I’m annoyed with myself, because he’s right; I have been clingy. It has something to do with the dark-haired woman who knows my name, though, and I’m not going into that right now. What sort of a guy? I would ask, but my head whirls as if I had spun in place for too long. I gasp and steady myself, one hand on a tenement wall in wet brick. Not good, Casey. Not good at all. I can almost feel the eyes of the predators marking me as my hand comes off Face’s arm. He checks himself midstride and turns back, irritation blending into concern.

Blurring, and the smell of dead people in the sun. Sound of rotors as I bring the chopper in low, a steaming clearing among strangler fig and vines. The door gunner swear-ing, and—

No.

I get it under control and stand up, leaning on the wall more than I want to. “S’all right, Face.” He doesn’t believe me, and I wave him off, striding forward again. I try not to let him see me clenching my jaw. “Just old bones and the drive.”

It isn’t, though. I know what it is — it’s feedback from my neural taps, and flashbacks, and I haven’t had one that bad in twenty years.

Ignoring Face’s anxiety, I move down the street toward wherever he’s leading me.

Avatar Gamespace

Phobos Starport

Circa A.D. 3400 (Virtual Clock)

Interaction logged Friday 8 September, 2062, 1900 hours

Leah gulped, leaning against the triple-thick crystal plates of the reception lounge view port, her booted feet firmly magnetized to the floor. If her VR were better, she would have been able to feel the space-chill seeping through them. She focused beyond the blinking sponsor-ship logos hanging in the glass just at eye level ( AppleSoft, Venus Consolidated Erotic Industries, Unitek, Miller Genuine Draft, Amalgamated Everything ) and let a long cool comforting draft of air flow into her mouth. “My God,” she whispered.

The starship hanging in the tiny moon’s shadow was visible as nothing so much as a silhouette and a more-regular pattern of lights against the stars. Leah reached up and tapped the crystal where the great ship’s lights were, calling up an outline display and then a schematic. She shook her head. Not quite. And tapped once more.