Michael Smith - Spares

Come on guys, I thought to myself. Let's try to act like normal people.

‘Is your friend letting us rest here?’ Suej asked.

I nodded. It was going to be a while before they directly addressed anyone other than me. She beamed, and whispered to Nanune.

‘Is it nice? Is Ratchet here?’ Nanune asked, and I shook my head.

‘No and no, I'm afraid,’ I said, winking at Mal. ‘But at least it's not raining.’

I introduced Mal to the spares by name. Suej and David shook his hand, and I caught him noticing David's missing fingers. Then Mal stood to one side and gestured them into his apartment. They trooped in, Mr Two ducking his head to get under the lintel.

Mal's apartment was pretty much as I remembered it. In other words, I knew what to expect. The spares didn't. Ten years ago he'd knocked down most of the internal walls, so that from anywhere in the apartment you could see the huge window he'd put in. This gave a view straight onto New Richmond. Mal had chosen to live outside New Richmond proper. He claimed he liked to get away from it every now and then, from the dark fizz and spark of the life inside – yet he'd deconstructed his apartment so he could see the building from wherever he stood. The interior decor was about what you'd expect from a single man who spent half his time drunk and the rest painfully sober. It was a mess, to be honest: baroque chaos overlaid with the smell of countless noodle-based meals.

Nanune actually started crying. Mal scowled at her and started kicking piles of stuff towards the walls.

‘Do you still have your display up?’ I asked quietly. Mal looked at me and nodded. ‘You couldn't, like, drape something over it?’

Mal grunted and trudged down the end, towards the window, and pulled a rope which ran down the wall. A sheet dropped from the ceiling, covering what was pinned on the walls – pictures of people who had been murdered in New Richmond. It covered them only briefly, unfortunately, because it carried on falling to the ground. Mal swore softly, grabbed a chair, and set about repairing the set-up.

Meantime, I led the spares into the area which served as his sitting room. I shoved huge piles of crap out of the way until there was enough space for them to sit fairly comfortably. Jenny's arms were wrapped tightly around herself, and her eyes were far away. In a nimbus of light from some partially hidden lamp, she looked beautiful and frail. Nanune still looked terrified, but Suej sat close to her, murmuring something. There were no words in what she was saying, but even I could feel the comfort in it. It was tunnel talk, I guess. Mr Two looked like he would withstand a direct hit by a tactical missile, and so I guess the spare on his lap was alright too. Considering the current circumstances.

‘How long are we going to be here?’ David asked. I realized he looked tired, though like a child trying to prove it was worthy of staying up late, his eyes were still wide open.

‘Not long,’ I said. ‘A couple hours. Just enough for me to go get some money. Then we're going to buy a truck and get out of here.’

‘To where?’ This had been David's constant refrain for the last twenty-four hours.

‘I still don't know,’ I said. ‘Somewhere safe.’ Jenny looked up at me and I winked at her. A ghost of a smile.

‘Florida?’ Suej asked hopefully.

‘Maybe,’ I said. A long time ago I'd told her about a place I knew there, and it had become fixed in her mind as a kind of nirvana. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was very unlikely we'd make it halfway there before we were caught.

I turned to Mal. ‘What's your water like these days? And don't say “wet”.’

‘There'll be enough if they don't all stay in too long.’ Mal had always known what I meant, especially when I was asking favours. I nodded to Suej, who understood, and she started drawing up a rota for the spares to wash. They weren't used to being dirty, and I knew that the one thing I could provide which would increase their short-term standard of living was a shower. It's good that there was that one thing, because there wasn't a lot of everything else, and wasn't likely to be in the foreseeable future.

‘We'll get your clothes washed … later,’ I said, vaguely, and wandered over to the window.

It was still raining outside. It always seemed to be raining in the Portal. In summer it's fat drops of dirty rain, in the winter thin biting lines of sleet – but it generally seemed to be dropping at least something out of the sky. The locals believe that it's rich people on the roof of the city, taking delight in pissing off the edge onto the lowlife below. Judging by the colour of some of the rain, they could be right.

New Richmond looked the same as it always had. Eerily so. That shouldn't have been surprising, and yet it was. I'd seen it in the distance on the way through the Portal, but that had been different. Seeing it through Mal's window was like seeing myself in one particular mirror again after a very long time away. I stared out at the points of light, the studs in the mind-fuckingly large expanse of wall. It still looked extraordinary, still said to me, as it always had, that I had to be inside it.

‘Are you okay?’

I turned to see Mal standing beside me, proffering a cigarette. ‘Yeah,’ I said, lighting one and savouring the harsh scrape of carcinogen on lung. I'd run out that morning, and not wanted to risk going into a store until the spares were safely stowed. He let me stand for a moment, then asked what he wanted to know.

‘Where have you been , man?’

For a moment, in the darkness of his apartment, Mal looked just as he always had. As if no time had passed, as if things were still the same and I had a home to go to after I'd finished chewing the rag with him. I shivered, realizing that I was crashing, that adrenaline was turning sour.

‘Didn't Phieta tell you? I asked her to let you know.’

‘I never saw her again, Jack. No one did. After you disappeared I put the word around, in case she knew something. But she was just as gone as you.’

‘I'm sorry, Mal. I thought about calling you. I just couldn't.’

He nodded, and maybe he understood. ‘I'm really sorry about what happened,’ he said. I nodded tightly. I wasn't going to talk about it. ‘If it's any consolation, the word is Vinaldi's having problems recently.’

I was glad that Mal was still enough my friend to simply say the name out loud. ‘What kind of problems?’

Mal shrugged. ‘Rumours. He's pretty much the man these days. Probably someone's just trying to climb over him. The usual shit. Just thought I'd let you know.’ He shook his head. ‘You really only staying a couple hours?’

I nodded tightly. ‘This shit's too deep to swim in. We've got to disappear and stay that way.’

‘Again.’ He smiled. ‘Something I want to tell you about later, though, before you go.’ Then he clapped me on the back with his massive hand and turned towards the spares. ‘You guys about ready for some noodles?’

They stared at him with wide eyes. ‘They've never had noodles,’ I said.

‘Then they haven't lived,’ he replied, and of course he was right.

I walked a long way through the bowels of New Richmond, my stomach growling, wishing I'd stayed to have some noodles with the spares. There hadn't been time. We had serious people after us, and were only safe for as long as it took them to realize that I'd given them a false name and previous address when I was taken on at the Farm. As soon as that was blown, all hell was going to break loose.

It was about two miles from my entry point to the stage where I started to climb, two miles of textured darkness and muffled sounds. When I saw the familiar shaft in front of me I stopped walking. I rolled my head on my shoulders, wishing briefly and pointlessly that I didn't smoke, then climbed up the metal ladder attached to the wall.