George Effinger - When Gravity Fails

The pain had gone, the overdose-induced hysteria had gone, my money had gone, Yasmin had gone. This was peace and contentment. I hated every goddamn second of it.

In this silent center of motionless and mindlessness, free of all the frenzy that had surrounded me for many days, I surprised myself with a piece of genuine intuition. It began by congratulating myself for figuring that the man with the James Bond moddy had a Beretta rather than a Walther. Then the Bond thought linked up to something else, and they hooked together with one or two more ideas, and it all illuminated an inexplicable detail that had been simmering in my memory for a couple of days, at least. I recalled my last visit to Lieutenant Okking. I remembered the way he didn’t seem to be at all interested in my theories or Friedlander Bey’s proposition. That wasn’t so unusual; Okking resisted interference from anyone. He disliked positive interference, in the form of authentic assistance, just as much. It wasn’t Okking himself to whom my thoughts kept returning; it was something in his office.

One of the envelopes had been addressed to Universal Export. I recalled wondering idly if Seipolt ran that firm, or if Hassan the Shiite ever received any curious crates from them. The company’s name was so commonplace that there were probably a thousand “Universal Exports” all around the world. Maybe Okking was just sending off a mail order for some rattan patio furniture to put next to his backyard barbecue.

Of course, the very ordinariness of “Universal Export” was the reason that M., the head of James Bond’s special 00 section, used it as a false cover and code name in Ian Fleming’s books. The forgettable name would never have stuck in my memory without that connection to the Bond stories. Maybe “Universal Export” was a disguised reference to the man who’d worn the James Bond moddy. I wished that I had memorized the address on that envelope.

I sat up, startled. If the Bond explanation had any truth to it, why was that envelope in Lieutenant Okking’s Out box? I told myself that I was getting as jumpy as a grasshopper on a griddle. I was probably looking for honey where there were no bees. Still, I felt my stomach turn sick again. I felt myself being drawn unwillingly into a morass of tortuous and deadly paths.

It was time for action. I had spent Friday, Saturday, and most of Sunday paralyzed between my worn and grimy sheets. It was the moment to get moving, to leave the apartment, to rid myself of this clinging morbidity and fear. I had ninety kiam; I could buy myself some butaqualides and get some decent sleep.

I threw on my gallebeya , which was getting a little on the soiled side, my sandals, and my libdeh , the close-fitting cap. I grabbed my shoulder bag on the way out the door, and hurried downstairs. Suddenly I really wanted to score some beauties; I mean, I really wanted them. I’d just gotten over three horrible days of sweating too much of everything out of my system, and already I was rushing out to buy more. I made a mental note to slow down my drug intake; crumpled the mental note; and tossed it into my mental wastebasket.

Beauties, it seemed, were scarce. Chiriga didn’t have any, but she gave me a free drink of tende while she told me about how much trouble she was having with a new girl working for her, and that she was still saving her Honey Pílar moddy for me. I remembered the holoporn ad outside old Laila’s shop.

“Chiri,” I said, “I’m just getting over the flu or something; but I promise, we’ll go have dinner some night next week. Then, inshallah , we’ll burn your moddy out.”

She didn’t even smile. She looked at me as if she were watching a wounded fish flopping in the water. “Marîd, honey,” she said sadly, “now really, listen to me: you got to cut out all these pills. You’re wrecking yourself.”

She was right, but you don’t ever want to hear that kind of advice from anybody else. I nodded, gulped the rest of the tende, and left her club without saying good-bye.

I caught up with Jacques, Mahmoud, and Saied at Big Al’s Old Chicago. They said they were all tapped out, financially and medicinally. I said, “Fine, see you around.”

“Marîd,” said Jacques, “maybe it’s none of my—”

“It’s not,” I said. I passed by the Silver Palm: no action there, either. I passed by Hassan’s shop, but he wasn’t in the back and his American chicken just gazed at me with sultry eyes. I ducked into the Red Light — that’s how desperate I was beginning to feel — and Fatima told me that one of the white girls’ boyfriends had a whole suitcase full of different stuff, but that he wouldn’t be in until maybe five in the morning. I said that if nothing else turned up by then, I’d come back. No free drink from Fatima.

Finally, at Jo-Mama’s Hellenic hideaway, I ran into a little luck. I bought six beauties from Jo-Mama’s second barmaid. Rocky, another hefty woman with short, brushy black hair. Rocky stung me a little on the price, but at that point I didn’t care. She offered me a beer on the house to wash them down, but I told her I was just going to go home and take them and climb back into bed.

“Yeah, you right,” said Jo-Mama, “you got to get to sleep early. You got to get up in the morning, dawlin’, and have your skull drilled.”

I shut my eyes briefly and sighed. “Where did you hear about that?” I asked her.

Jo-Mama pasted a slightly offended, wholly innocent look on her face. “ Everybody ’s been knowin’ it, Marîd. Ain’t that the truth, Rocky? It’s what everybody’s been having trouble believing. I mean, you getting your brain wired. F’sure, the next thing we be hearing, Hassan’ll be giving away free rugs or rifles or handjobs to the first twenty callers.”

“I’ll take that beer,” I said, very tired. Rocky drew one; for a moment nobody knew if this was the free beer or if I’d turned that one down and this was another one that I had to pay for.

“It’s on me,” said Jo-Mama.

“Thanks, Mama,” I said. “I’m not getting my brain wired.” I took a big gulp of the beer. “I don’t care who told who . I don’t care who they heard it from. This is me, Marîd, talking: I am not getting my brain wired. Comprendez ?”

Jo-Mama shrugged like she didn’t believe me; after all, what was my word against the word of the Street? “I got to tell you what happened in here last night,” she said, about to launch into one of her endless but entertaining stories. I half-wanted to hear it because I had to keep up with the news, but I was rescued.

“ There you are!” shouted Yasmin, banging into the bar and whacking a vicious swipe at me with her purse. I ducked my head, but she cracked me in the side.

“What the hell—” I started to say.

“Take it outside,” said Jo-Mama automatically. She looked as astonished as I felt.

Yasmin wasn’t in the mood to listen to either of us. She grabbed me around the wrist — her hand was as strong as mine, and my wrist was grabbed . “You come with me, you cocksucker,” she said.

“Yasmin, shut the fuck up and leave me alone,” I said. Jo-Mama got off her stool; that ought to have been a warning, but Yasmin paid her no attention. She still had my wrist, and her fingers closed even tighter. She yanked on my arm.

“You’re going to come with me,” she said in an ominous voice, “because I got something pretty to show you, you goddamn yellow-bellied pussy.”

I was really angry; I’d never been this angry with Yasmin before, and I still didn’t know what she was talking about. “Slap her face for her,” said Rocky from behind the bar. That always works in the holoshows for excitable heroines and panicking junior officers; I didn’t think, though, that it would quiet Yasmin down. She’d probably just beat the living hell out of me, and then we’d go do whatever she wanted in the first place. I raised the arm she was still clutching, turned it outward a little, broke her grasp, and grabbed her wrist. Then I twisted her arm and forced it up behind her back in a tight hammerlock. She cried out in pain. I pushed her arm further, and she yelped again.