Richard Kadrey: Metrophage

"No score. Shit," mumbled the pickpocket, still ignoring Jonny.

He had aced the chauffeur.

This wasn't going to be any fun at all, Jonny decided. He pushed the release button on the plug at the back of Smokefinger's head. The wire dropped and a spring-loaded coil drew it back inside the game console.

"What the hell-" yelled Smokefinger, grabbing for his neck. He looked at Jonny dumbly as his eyes slowly re-focused. In a moment, he said, "Hey Jonny, que pasa?"

"Not much," Jonny said. I can't believe you're still playing this game. Haven't you killed everybody in Dallas by now?"

Smokefinger shrugged. "I pop 'em, but they keep coming back."

Sweat pooled on the pickpocket's glasses where the rims touched his cheeks.

Jonny smiled and looked around the room hoping there was anyone else from whom he might get information. However, in the pastel glare of meteor showers and laser fire, none of the faces looked familiar. "You seen Easy Money around?" he asked Smokefinger. "I've got to talk to him."

"Right, talk. You and everybody else." Smokefinger looked back at the empty hologram chamber and cursed. "I almost broke my own record, you know," he said. He looked at Jonny accusingly. "No, I ain't seen Easy. Random's tending bar tonight. Maybe you should go talk to him. To tell you the truth, you're distracting me." Smokefinger never took his finger from the trigger of the fiberglass rifle. Jonny pulled some yen coins from his pocket and fed them into the machine.

"Thanks for all your help, killer," he said. But Smokefinger did not hear him; he was already jacking in. Jonny left Smokefinger, wishing he could find peace as easily as that, and pushed his way into the bar.

Jonny always found it a little disconcerting that the main room never seemed to change. He imagined it frozen in time, like a scratched record, repeating the same snatch of lyric over and over again. The usual weekend crowd of small-time smugglers, B actors and bored prostitutes stared from the blue veil of smoke around the bar. The same tired porn played on the big screen for the benefit of those unfortunates not equipped with skull-plugs. Even the band, Taking Tiger Mountain were blasting the same old riffs, stopping half-way through their own Guernica Rising" when the crowd shouted them down. They switched to a desultory Brown Sugar a song that was out-of-date long before anybody in the club had been born. Dancers undulated under the strobes and sub-sonic mood enhancers as projectors threw holograms of lunar atrocities onto their hot bodies.

In fact, the only real difference Jonny could see in the place was the darkness in the HoloWhores bundling booths.

Jonny pushed his way through the tightly packed crowd and tried the door to Easy's control room. It was locked, and the bar far too full to force the door. He would have to wait. Feeling relief, and guilt at that relief, Jonny made his way to the bar for a drink and some questions.

Random, the bartender, was drying glasses behind a bar constructed of old automobile dashboards. Tall and thin, his skin creased like dead leaves, Random offered Jonny the same half-smile he offered everybody. Jonny ordered an Asahi dark and gin; he put a twenty on the bar. Random set down the beer and slid the bill into his pocket in one smooth motion.

The bartender inclined his head toward the dance floor.

"Necrophiliacs," he said above the roar of the band. "They can't stand new music. Like it's deadly to them or something. Bunch of assholes."

Random shrugged. Then he looked away, like a blind man, eyes unfocused. "They just nuked Kansas City. The Jordanian Re-Unification Army, a New Palestine splinter group. They called the local Net up link. Said Houston's next," he reported. The bartender shook his head. "Those boys must really hate cows." Random had a passion for morbid news items and stayed plugged into the Net's data lines constantly, relaying the most worthy bits to his customers.

Jonny thought it was one of his most charming qualities.

He turned back to Jonny as if anticipating his question. "Easy split. Been gone a couple of days now. Left quick, too. Didn't touch his holo stuff."

"I don't suppose you have any idea where he went?" asked Jonny.

"I'm afraid he neglected to leave a forwarding address. A shame too, so close to Thanksgiving and all."

The band's volume jumped abruptly as they broke from the song into a tense, rhythmic jam. Saint Peter, the guitarist, stood at the edge of the stage between soaring liquid-cooled stacks of Krupp-Verwandlungsinhalt speakers. Eyes squeezed shut, shoulders loose, Saint Peter pumped walls of noise, his myoelectric left-hand racing like a frantic silver spider up and down the fretboard. As he played, a pattern of light glinted off the chrome hand, marking its progress through the air. Then, just as the jam reached its peak, the song died; the porn faded and the lights dimmed. "Brown-out," said Random. He casually threw a switch under the bar and the power returned. "Tell Sumi gracias for the watts", he said.

Jonny nodded. "Did you hear that Easy had another Flare Gun Party?" he asked.

"No, who got burned?"

"Raquin."

Random raised an eyebrow in sympathy. "Sorry, man," he said.

"Although, I must admit, I'm not entirely surprised to hear he's been up to something. He took a long hit from a hookah next to the cash register. Looking for Easy Money seems to be the hot new game in town. Last night the crowd was so thick I had 'em line up and take numbers. Of course, Easy's not the only one who seems to have captured the public's imagination." Random smiled at Jonny. "You appear to have developed a bit of celebrity all your own."

"Me?" Jonny asked guardedly. "Who's been asking about me?"

Random shrugged. "No one I knew." The bartender winked conspiratorially. "Come on, boy-o. Whose ankles have you been nipping at?"

"I am pathetically clean." Jonny said. "Tell me about them. Anything you can remember."

Random stuck two nicotine yellow fingers into his shirt pocket and pulled out a glicene envelope of white powder. "Pure as Mother Mary and twice as nice", he said, giving the envelope a light kiss.

"Interesting lads. They didn't try to pay off in crude cash." He dropped the envelope back into his pocket.

"Smugglers?" asked Jonny.

"Could be, only what's a smuggler lord doing shooting for small shit like Easy Money? Or you for that matter."

"Who knows," Jonny said. He took a long gulp of his drink.

"Maybe he's decided he's in the wrong business."

"Hell," said the bartender, everybody in Last Ass's in the wrong business.

Random set down the glass he had been cleaning and said, "Weather." His eyes shifted. Junior senator on the Atmospheric Management Committee announced they can clean-up the mess left by the Weather Wars. Says they ought to be able to stabilize weather patterns over most of North America in three to five years.

"Didn't they announce that same program three to five years ago?" asked Jonny.

"At least." And with that, Random gave Jonny the other half of the smile and moved on to other customers.

Swirling the dregs of his beer, Jonny turned and studied the noisy crowd moving through the bar. He searched their heads for a sign of goat horns grafted above a thin face, inset with darting, suspicious eyes. Or arms thick with tattooed serpents, like the stigmata of some junky god. Easy Money always stood out in a crowd which, Jonny supposed, was the idea. If Easy was around, he should not be hard to spot.

Jonny had met Easy while they were both in the employ of the smuggler lord Conover. This was just after Easy had made a name for himself with his first Flare Gun Party.

The party had become something of a legend with the pushers.

It went like this: Easy Money, a human parasite with the unerring ability to detect the softest, most vulnerable part of his prey, had acquired a contract to kill the leader of the Los Santos Atomicos gang.