Cory Doctorow - Walkaway

Hubert, Etc had made a concerted study of that voice and had concluded that it was an asshole. He tried to think past the self-serving rationalizations. He grabbed a bag someone left behind and, working gently, rolled Billiam into recovery position and put the bag under his head. He was propping Billiam up with a broken chair and a length of pipe, eyes squinted, head hammering, when someone grabbed him by his sore shoulder. He almost vomited. This was the day he’d known was coming all his life, when he ended up in prison.

But it wasn’t a cop – it was Natalie. She said something inaudible over the music. He pointed at Billiam. She knelt down and made a light. She threw up, having the presence of mind to do so in her purse. Hubert, Etc noted distantly that she was thinking of esophageal cells and DNA. That distant part admired her foresight. She got to her feet, grabbed him again by his bad arm, yanked hard. He screamed in pain, the sound lost in the roar, and went, leaving Billiam behind.

SETH CAME OFF of Meta hard, around 4:00 A.M., as they sat in a ravine, listening to their ears ring and water below them burble, listening to the efficient whooshing of passing law-enforcement vehicles on the road above. He sat on a log with that superior grin, then he was weeping, head in hands, bent between his knees, with the unselfconscious bray of a toddler.

Hubert, Etc and Natalie looked at him from their spots against tree-trunks, braced against the ravine’s slope. They went to him. Hubert, Etc awkwardly embraced him, and Seth buried his face in Hubert, Etc’s chest. Natalie stroked his arm, murmured things that Hubert, Etc thought of as feminine in some comforting sense. Hubert, Etc was conscious of Seth’s crying and the possibility it might be detected by law-enforcement apparatus. This interfered with his empathy, which wasn’t so extensive to begin with, because Seth was fucked up because he’d taken a stupid drug at a trendy party they’d had no business attending and now Hubert, Etc was covered in dried blood he hadn’t been able to wipe away on dew-dampened leaves and rocks.

Hubert, Etc squashed Seth’s face harder against his chest, partly to muffle him. Hubert, Etc’s ears still rang, his head throbbed with his pulse, his fingertips tingled with the soft wreck of Billiam’s face. He was sure Billiam was dead when they left. And because he was Hubert, Etc, he was suspicious of that certainty because if Billiam had already been dead, then they hadn’t left him to die alone on the floor.

Natalie patted Seth’s arm.

“Come on, buddy,” she said. “That’s the comedown. Think it out with me, you can do that with a Meta comedown, it’s part of the package. Come on, Steve.”

“Seth,” Hubert, Etc said.

“Seth,” she said. She was just as impatient with Seth as he was. “Come on. Think it out. It’s terrible, it’s awful, but this isn’t your real reaction, it’s just dope. Come on, Seth, think it out.” She kept on repeating “think it out.” This must be what you said to people who had a hard time with Meta. He said it too and Seth’s sobs subsided. He was quiet for a time, then snored softly.

Natalie and Hubert, Etc looked at each other. “What now?” Natalie said.

Hubert, Etc shrugged. “Seth had the car-tokens to get home. We could wake him up.”

Natalie squeezed her eyes tight. “I don’t want to do any messaging from here. You came in lockdown, right?”

Hubert, Etc didn’t roll his eyes. His generation perfected lockdown, getting their systems to go fully dark on their way to parties. It hadn’t been easy, but everyone too lazy to bother ended up in jail, sometimes with their friends, so it became widespread.

“We came in lockdown,” he said. They’d carred to a place with a thousand statistically probable destinations within a short walk, walked a long way to the party. They weren’t stupid.

“Well, do you think it’s safe to light up?”

“Safe for what?”

He could see her suppressing an eye-roll. “To be an acceptable risk. And if you say, ‘acceptable in what way,’ I’ll slug you. Do you think it’s a good idea to light up?”

“I want to say, ‘good compared to what?’ I don’t know, Natalie. I think—” He swallowed. “I’m pretty sure Billiam is.” He swallowed. “I think he’s dead.” Neither of them looked at the other. Such a stupid accident. “Whatever else, I think it means that the cops’ll be brutal, because a dead person puts the thing in a different category. On the other hand, our DNA is all over that place, and with the deal they’ll make, they’ll come after us no matter what. On the other hand, I mean, in addition to that, or with that in mind, if we light up now, we’re adding corroboration to any inference that says that we were there, which means that—”

“Enough paranoid rat-holing. We can’t light up.”

“How did you get here?”

“A friend,” she said. “I’m sure she got herself home, she’s warm and cozy under a blanket with a cup of tea waiting for her when she gets up.” Natalie sounded bitter for the first time. Hubert, Etc realized he was half-frozen and half-starving, so thirsty it was like the inside of his mouth had been painted with starch.

“We’ve got to go.” He looked at himself. In the gray dawn light, the dried blood looked like mud. “Do you think I could get onto the subway like this?”

She craned her neck, shoving stray elements of Seth off her lap. “Not like that. Maybe in Steve’s jacket, though.”

“Seth,” he said.

“Whatever.” She shook Seth by the shoulder, a little roughly. “Come on, Seth, time to go.”

They arrived at the station at 5:30, Hubert, Etc wearing Seth’s jacket, which was big on him, carrying his jacket under his arm. The first train rolled in and they shuffled in with bleary morning-shifters and wincing partiers. The people with jobs glared at the partiers. The people with jobs smelled good, the partiers did not, not even to Hubert, Etc’s deadened nose. During the zeppelin bubble, he’d had early mornings as they crunched on meaningless deadlines with the urgency of a car-crash for no discernible reason. He’d ridden the first train into work. Hell, he’d slept in the office.

Seth’s comedown had plateaued. He was a perfect oil-painting of “Man with drug hangover,” in grubby colors, a lot of shadow and crosshatching. The cold air had turned his bare arms the color of corned beef, but Hubert, Etc didn’t feel bad about having commandeered his jacket. “Look at ’em,” Seth said in a stagey whisper. “So well-behaved.” They were Desi, Persian, white-bread, but all the same, all in their working peoples’ uniforms of respectability. A couple of the employed gave them shitty looks. Seth noticed, getting ready to pick a fight.

“Don’t,” Hubert, Etc said, as Seth said, “It’s the ultimate self-deception. Like they’re going to be able to change anything with a paycheck. If a paycheck could change your life, do you think they’d let you have one?”

It was a good line. Seth had used it before. “Seth,” he said, in a firmer tone.

“What?” Seth sat up straighter, looked belligerent. Toronto’s subways, like most subways, were places of civil inattention. It took a lot to get other people to overtly acknowledge you. Seth had done it. People stared.

Natalie leaned over and cupped her hand to Seth’s ear, hissed something. He clamped his mouth shut and glared, then looked at his feet. She gave Hubert, Etc a half-smile.

“Where are we going?” she said. Hubert, Etc was cheered by that “we.” They’d been comrades-in-arms for the night and he had her contact details, but he’d been half-expecting her to say that she was going home and leaving him with Seth.