Emma Bull - Bone Dance

“Jesus, I’m awfully sorry,” said the newcomer, who was still having trouble standing up. “I really don’t—oh, jeez! God, I’m really sorry.”

The man in gray had fallen. A noise like a blast of whiteness came from behind me, and I realized it was a truck horn. Then the truck was between me and the man in gray, and the other one, who’d been having trouble standing, was half dragging me across the street.

I was beginning to feel like a snatched purse. The Snake was tapering off a bit, and I could almost conceive of events outside my mind that might be urgent, so I pulled against his grip.

“Stop that,” said my new companion, in such an ordinary voice that I did. He hurried me up four steps and pushed me down into a hard seat. Just before a pair of doors flew open before me onto darkness, I realized I was m a car for the haunted house ride, I tried to bolt over the side, but the stranger pulled me back. Don’t worry, said his voice, unaccountably pleased, near my ear. “There’s nothing here that’s not dead.”

A skeleton dropped, phosphorescent with grave mold, in front of us, and was snatched away just before its toes brushed my face. The man next to me said, as if he hadn’t noticed, “You don’t want to go back out there yet, anyway. Those two’ll be right behind us.”

The corridor ahead was misty white with webbing; a hundred little movements, of things the size of my fist, scuttled in the haze. I ducked just as the car plunged sharply about four feet. It put my stomach directly under my tonsils, but we passed untouched under the things. I was reasonably sure they weren’t real, anyway.

The car flung around a corner, where a woman in white rotated at the end of a rope. Her face was swollen, purple, and authentic. My self-control was feeling gnawed at. “What is this?” I said.

“It’s a rescue. We kinda slow tonight? Here comes our stop.”

The tunnel in front of us was an illusion, painted on another door that swung open and pitched us into a hall of mirrors. The stranger yanked me out of the car as it took a ninety-degree turn, and I fell full-length on the floor. I could hear the next car hurtling through the doors, so I scrambled. A mirror yielded before us; I caught a glimpse of us before it folded back, our faces strange and wild in the dim light. Then we passed through stuffy blackness and out into the sharp-edged gloom of the Night Fair.

We ran for perhaps six blocks. I had no choice; his hold on my wrist was adamant, though not painful. We stopped when I stumbled for the third time, my breath sore in my windpipe. We’d reached the chainlink border of the Fair. He let the wire stop him and rolled until his back was against it, propped up on the fence. He was panting, too, and clutching his left side. His eyes were closed, his face set in concentration. I dropped onto the curb and took inventory of him. Not every stranger rescues me from the pink-haired, bug-eyed monsters. Or whatever he’d just done.

He was a little sharp-featured, but a wide mouth and dark thick eyebrows saved his face from austerity. His hair was foxy brown, glossy in the oil-lamp light. I could imagine people telling him he was handsome. Bad for his character, probably. He had a tapering, athletic look, and long legs. I was surprised at how much the six blocks seemed to have taken out of him. He looked more durable than that. He wore a polished cotton jacket in the style the SouthAm meres had affected, back before the Big Bang. It might have been that old, too; the glossy finish had dimmed along every surface subject to friction.

He opened his eyes, and they seemed to take a moment to clear, as if he’d been in pain and it was passing away. His eyes were darker than I’d expected, piercing as the stare of some fearless animal. They fastened on me and he grinned, wide and crooked.

“Well, thank you,” he said.

“What?”

“Never mind.” With the whole of his mobile face, he was laughing at me. He just wasn’t using his lungs.

I folded my arms over my knees, as if I was prepared to stay where I was in spite of him or an entire migratory flock of gray-suited, pink-haired men. “So, what the hell did you do that for?”

He looked confused for a moment. Then he dropped down onto the curb next to me, stretched out his legs, and leaned back on his elbows. “Nothing personal. I’m figuring to get to heaven on the strength of my good deeds.” His grin was strictly nonporous; nothing would get past it.

I looked at him, my mouth partway open in case some telling comment came to mind, and waited for the explanation that was owed me. He would realize it soon, that he owed me.

“Okay, okay. But you gotta keep this to yourself, all right?” He shifted on the pavement, settling in for a long chat. “I’m an agent from the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement. Those folks back there are ops of the Nic government in exile. See, they thought you were one of our guys.” He shook his head. “Probably figured to torture you for the location of our headquarters. “

I made my eyes big. “Then if they try again, I just have to click my heels together three times to get away?”

“You got it.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Oh! I’m sorry.” He smiled and stuck out his right hand. “Mick Skinner. Call me Mick, or Skinner, or whatever you want.”

He had a quarter twist of accent that I thought might be Texas. There was no guile in his face, only an alert sort of sweetness (except for those eyes). It annoyed me. Either Mick Skinner was the village idiot, or he didn’t rate me high enough to deserve a little cunning. Unless that was the most thorough cunning of all.

Then I recalled that the people in the City who would know his joke could be numbered on one hand and leave fingers left over. Only a few more would have gotten mine, about the heels. But he had.

Stiffly, I said, “If you work for the City, I just live here.”

He smiled the impenetrable grin. “Hell, no. I just got here. Not long ago, anyway. It’s not a good thing to work for the City?”

“Depends on the work.” I stood up. “From the samples you’re giving out, I’d say you’re a traveling fertilizer salesman.”

“And you’re not buying.”

“You want something to grow around here, try sprinkling some truth on it.” I looked at him expectantly.

“Ooo-kay.” The truth, to judge from his face, gave him less pleasure. “They thought you might be me.”

I waited for something more; when it didn’t come, I said, “Gosh, we do look so much alike.”

“They don’t know what I look like. They’re hunting on the basis of something else.”

“What?”

“Just something else. Last night I—in the bar, you did things they thought were a giveaway. So they bagged you.”

In front of the brownstone that edged the sidewalk was a ruined wrought-iron fence. I caught and held it to keep me still. Last night. My whole downtime seemed to have been in the spotlight last night, illuminated for everyone but me. “You mean they expected you to order drinks you couldn’t pay for and get kicked out of a club?”

He seemed to find that quietly funny. “Nooo. That was when you began to act like somebody else to throw ‘em off the scent. Too late, though.”

Now I had motives, too, out of my control, beyond my comprehension. I wished that the curb was twenty feet high, so I could throw myself off it. And drag Mick Skinner with me. “What else do you know about last night?”

A swift look up into my face. It wasn’t startled or guilty or meaningful at all; it was just a look. “Nothing,” he said.

“And how do you know it?”

“I was there.”