Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World
- Автор: Мосли Уолтер
- Год: 2001
- Язык: английский
- Год: Aspect / Warner Books
- ISBN: 978-0-446-52954-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World». Краткое содержание книги:
Mingus looked around to see if there was someone with Johnson, then he looked the detective in the eye.
“What’s Charles to you?”
“A piece’a shit,” Folio said. “But a piece’a shit who laid out hard creds for me to save his ass.”
“You think that’s it?” Mingus asked. “That it’s because they’re in the IS?”
“We should be so lucky to live in a world where they kill the fascists and spare the lambs.”
“Maybe it’s coincidence?”
“Is that the kinda thinkin’ bought you downtown Tokyo?”
“So what do you think?”
“Nothin’ yet. I’d like to know who’s killing you boys. And in order to know that I have to know why.”
“I have no idea.”
“What were you guys discussing at your last meeting? Other than the ten-million-mile pool cue.”
“Education and labor and their relation to citizenship. Azuma was thinking that Elite Education Group had the right idea, that everyone should be tested as to their abilities and that their scores should be the basis of the degree of their citizenship.”
“Anything else?”
“No. Nothing. They thought they were getting somewhere, though. Fonti and Derry set it up so that we could have daily meetings. They were all excited by the possibility of presenting the IS with a model for political organization that would lead ultimately to social change.”
“How could you hang with Itsies, man?” Folio asked. He took his glass and drained it, thinking of the barmaid’s fingers as he did so.
“They ain’t worried about us, man. There’s a place for all the races up in there. All except Jews and Gypsies.”
“You believe that?”
“Sure.”
“Then why don’t you belong?”
“How do you know I don’t?”
“I know.”
“Another drink?” the barmaid asked. She had a glass with a doubleshot of rum in it. Her finger already submerged.
Folio took the glass and the hand. This time he kissed the fingers and then licked his lips.
“My name is Paradise,” she said.
“What else could it be?”
“I get off at midnight.”
“I have to work the next three nights,” Folio said seriously. “But I will be at the front door on the fourth night at midnight. And I won’t do anything until we’re together. You know what I mean?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Eightday night, then?”
“Uh-huh.”
Folio smiled and handed her his wild card. “My friend and I have to go, but I’ll see you then.”
Paradise swiped the card through a payment slot on her left wrist. When she handed the card back Folio tapped in her tip on the screen over her artery.
“See ya,” she said meekly.
“You bet.”
“How do I know that you’re working for Chas?” Mingus asked Folio on the way down the Crystal Stair escalator.
“You don’t. And I can’t prove it either. But I bet you you know what’s goin’ on, that your boys are being eradicated and that you’re on the list. I’m not trying to kill you. If I was, you’d have never seen me comin’.”
“Maybe you need something first,” Mingus said. “I don’t know.”
“I went to the police,” Folio said.
“What?”
“Don’t worry. It was a guy I know pretty good. He wouldn’t turn on me, I’ve done him too many favors.”
“What did he say?”
“He can’t do a thing.”
The escalator had completed its steep descent and was now almost parallel to the water. A large photo-animae sign covered the side of the monorail bridge before them. The sign displayed a cinematic picture of boy and girl children marching with automatic rifles and cinder guns, firing on a unit of adult troops. After a moment soldiers on both sides began to die. The wounds were very realistic. One child was hit in the chest with a cinder blast that charred her body, leaving only her pretty face intact. As the head fell from her shoulders the image faded into giant words composed of flaming letters: TWELVE IS TOO YOUNG FOR WAR.
On the pier they strolled under the transport bridge.
“Maybe I should disappear,” Mingus said.
“Give up everything?”
“Red Raven or nobody else could pay me if I’m dead.”
“Common Ground won’t hide a Backgrounder, M Black,” Folio said. “That’s the first place they’d look for you.”
“The cops won’t help. Common Ground won’t hide me. What are you sayin’?”
“Let’s work together. I got resources and you know all about the guys gettin’ killed. Maybe we can figure it out.”
“Why didn’t you do that with Chas?”
“ ’Cause Chas is an Itsie. I hate fascists.”
“Then why work for ’em?”
“The job don’t have politics, Mingman. The job is straight.”
“I might not be in the IS, but all my friends are. Doesn’t that make me just as bad?”
“You’re just usin’ them.”
“What makes you think that?”
“Mingus Black,” Folio recited from an amalgam of reports gathered by his eye, “born twenty-seven years ago, given up for White Noise at the age of six months. Arrested for larceny at the age of seven. Transferred to a maximum juvenile authority at the age of eleven. Suspected of drug distribution from the age of twelve but never convicted because you became a fink for the Social Police. At sixteen you saw your chance. The Underground Party kidnapped the daughter of Mina Athwattarlon, chief counsel of Red Raven NorthAm. You turned in the cell and got a university berth and a good job once you graduated.”
“Nobody knows that. Nobody but Mina and me.”
“And me,” Folio said. “Brother, I got senses so sharp I can see the rhinoviruses grazin’ on your face. I can hear your heart rate rise and blood slither in your veins. But I don’t care. The UP means nothing to me. Neither do Itsies or cops. I took on a job and I intend to do it. And if you help me you might be saving your own life.”
“What do you need?”
“I need to know what you guys were sayin’ in the last few meetin’s you had — exactly.”
“We weren’t talkin’ ’bout nuthin’.” The Backgrounder came out in the land dealer’s speech again. “We—”
Folio put up a hand to cut Mingus short. He began scanning the upper area of the huge Glassone ramp. He moved his hand from Mingus’s face and pointed to a shadowy area just under the lip of the trestle’s underbelly. There, both men could make out a black form about the size and shape of an old American football.
“Noser,” Mingus hissed.
“It hasn’t uploaded yet.”
“How the fuck you know that?”
Folio ignored the question, concentrating instead on the image of a control panel conjured up by his eye. The panel exhibited a grid of Manhattan that had little yellow lights for every city spy device, commonly called nosers. Folio had already located their CSD and was busy downloading a series of commands.
The football began shaking, its fail-safe survival mode enacted, but then suddenly it plummeted forty feet, striking the ground with a brief flash of fire. It landed near a group of Infochurch priests in their iridescent blue cloaks and transparent skullplates.
“Let’s go,” Folio said.
“I told you already,” Mingus Black said. He was sitting on a couch the shape of a large, half-erect phallus. “Them guys didn’t have nuthin’ to say or think about that could scare anybody. They aren’t even real Itsies.”
“What does that mean?”
“They just belong to the fan club. Buttons and banners, you know. They pay dues and go out to drink synth on Six-days, that’s it. They don’t know nuthin’ an’ they don’t do nuthin’. Talk about all the great things they do in business but you know they’re just shopkeepers, dustin’ off the big boys’ merchandise.”