Anyway, it helps to know your way around. Partly owing to the somewhat iffy infrastructure but also because of the thieves, jackers, addicts, whores, androids, scammers, pimps, pushers, and corrupt cops who prey on the weak, cater to the weirdos, and screw the few honest citizens we have left.

  The slimeballs were everywhere as I made my way along the litter-strewn corridor. Leaning against the cold, clammy urine-drenched walls, gathered in tightly knit groups, screwing in doorways, barfing into garbage cans, dancing to bar music, and, in the case of one poor soul, sitting dead on a plastic chair. The Takers, robots with permanently sad faces, would collect the body during the night and take it to the death train. They say the machine is black, like death itself, and about fifty cars long. It stops in the smaller plexes, too, and while some people get on, nobody gets off. Not till they arrive in North Dakota, where endless rows of graves take up more than a thousand square miles.

  I turned a corner, stepped onto “the vard,” short for Norley Boulevard, and headed north. Most of the people I passed could be divided into two groups: predators and prey. The predators watched me the way predators always do, through sleepy half-lidded eyes, and the tension generated by their never-ending hunger. Most of them lose interest. After all, why tackle another predator, when there’s plenty of prey?

  The prey, which is to say regular citizens, travel in protective groups, avoid eye contact with dangerous beings such as myself, and maintain a brisk purposeful stride. Most but not all of the cits make it home in one whole piece.

  It doesn’t work for vendors, though; people who, like my friend Bobby Wang, are forced to stay in one place all day. Bobby owns a taco stand, a sort of wagon that he and his wife constructed themselves. Each morning they get up, shoo the kids out of their tiny kitchen, and prepare the necessary ingredients.

  Once the cart is loaded Bobby kisses Chris good-bye, rolls the wagon out into the hall, and starts his long grueling day. It begins with a walk through dimly lit, graffiti splashed corridors to the point where Tunnel F intersects the romantically named Passageway 123. That’s where Bobby hooks up to an illegal power tap, locks the wheels in place, and opens for business.

  The local cops, also known as Zebras, or Zeebs because of the skin tight striped body stockings they wear, arrive first. Two breakfast burritos. That’s the price they charge for strolling past the stand once every hour.

  Then comes a long uncertain day during which business may be moderate, bad, or just plain crappy, none of which matters to the preds who assume it’s good and want a cut. That’s where I come in. The trouble with being a sevenfoot-two-inch bodyguard is that nobody wants to hire you. Not when there are pretty biosculpted models to choose from. It’s a struggle to pay the rent on my crummy apartment and feed my two-hundred-and-fifty-pound body. Still, it’s all I have, so that’s what I do. All of which explains why I tend to show up in the vicinity of Bobby Wang’s taco stand about 5:00 P.M. or so. He gets an armed guard, which he definitely needs, and I get four or five tacos, or, if business was slow, a couple of leftover burritos. My personal favorite.

  On this particular afternoon I sidestepped the remains of a recently stripped messenger droid, wondered who had been stupid enough to send the poor piece of shit below Level 10, rounded a corner, and noticed that Bobby had company. Not the good kind, like old friends, but the bad kind, of which there are plenty.

  Three men, all dressed in leather and lace, surrounded the stand. The largest had a knife. The kind that comes all gussied up with a custom handle, blood gutters, and fancifully curved blade. He appeared to be explaining the weapon to Bobby, who, judging from his expression, was extremely interested.

  Bobby isn’t very big, maybe five-foot-eight or so, and looks even smaller. That, plus a light frame, receding hairline, and cheap eyeglasses all scream “victim” in letters ten feet tall. The problem is that appearances can be and often are deceiving. Bobby has the heart of a lion. A wonderful trait—but one that could get him killed.

  The alpha thug gave Bobby a shove, and, contrary to good sense and the dictates of the subterranean food chain, Bobby shoved back.

  The street thugs were amazed. There was a script, a good script, in which they shoved and other people didn’t. Except this guy hadn’t read the script, or didn’t want to follow it, which made them angry.

  The guy with the knife damned near fell, heard someone laugh, and turned bright red. I winced. It was personal now. Bobby was toast.

  The thug growled like an animal, assumed what he believed to be the correct knife-fighting stance, and shuffled forward.

  Bobby, brave to the last, grabbed the only weapon available: a pair of tongs.

  That’s when I reached inside my jacket, grabbed the .38 Super, and waved it over my head. “Alright, break it up, and leave while you still can.”

  Now, this may sound ineffective, but it requires a license to pack heat, and the little bastards are hard to come by. Unless you’re a corpie, or work for the corpies, like I had.

  The knife fighter stopped where he was, but one of his buddies went pocket diving. Maybe he needed to scratch what itched, or grab a piece of gum, but I didn’t wait to find out. The .38 jumped in my hand, the thug jerked as the slugs hammered his chest, and a .9mm disposable clattered to the pavement. Its owner landed on top of it.

  The thugs hauled butt, all except for the guy with the knife, who looked to me for permission. I nodded, and he ran like hell.

  I looked around. Not a Zeeb in sight. Fine with me. They make you fill out forms when you shoot people. A whole lot of them . . . and that makes my head hurt. Passersby averted their eyes, gave us a wide berth, and walked a little faster. Good idea. I motioned to Bobby. “You ready? Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  It took but a moment to roll the body over, collect the .9mm, and give it to my friend. “Here . . . if the guy with the knife comes back, shoot him. What were you thinking anyway? Pushing the guy like that.”

  Bobby shrugged. “I was tired of taking shit.”

  “Yeah? Well, that’s real nice except for the fact that you have a family. Chris is gonna kick your skinny butt. Now come on, let’s haul.”

  It took the better part of forty-five minutes to escort Bobby home, tell Chris what an idiot her husband was, and collect my tacos. She was still chewing his ass when I left.

  Maybe it was the tacos, which I ate while I walked, or maybe it was the brain damage, or maybe, and this seems most likely, I had gotten lazy. Whatever the reason I forgot one of the most important precepts of personal security: Vary your routine.

  That’s why I was strolling along, licking the grease off my fingers, when a pair of very burly androids converged from left and right, grabbed my arms, lifted my size thirteens right off the pavement, and carried me away. Plenty of people saw it, and none of them said a word.

  The one on the left looked like a zombie that someone had forgotten to bury, and the one on the right wore whiteface and a black grim-reaper outfit. They were supposed to look intimidating and they did.

  My first thought was that the thugs had located me and were bent on revenge. That didn’t make sense though, since they couldn’t afford machines like these, and wouldn’t use them if they could.

  No, the knife fighter and the rest of his posse would want to get close and personal. They would want to see their fists hitting my face, feel the way my flesh split beneath their knuckles, and hear me beg for mercy.

  So, who did that leave? The corpies that’s who. The handful of men and women who ran all of the major corporations, enjoyed the perks that went with the guarantee of lifetime employment, and used freelancers to handle the grunt work. Millions, no billions of people who eked out whatever living they could working for an hourly wage. Competing with each other, robots, and automated machinery for what little work there was. But which ones? And why?

  The machines carried me around a corner and into one of the ubiquitous lift tubes that no one ever seemed to use but were plastered with decals that read for OFFICIAL USE ONLY, HIGH VOLTAGE, and DANGER! All of which was bullshit meant to keep subterranean scum such as myself from trying to hijack them. The droids turned me around so I could see my own image in the shiny doors. “How ’bout putting me down?”

  The zombie looked at the reaper, I imagined that a high-frequency conversation took place, and they put me down. The zombie had a voice like a gearbox filled with gravel. The same clowns who had dressed the machine in graveyard chic had customized its speech patterns. “You make trouble I rip head off.”

  I had every intention of offering a snappy rejoinder, but the platform coasted to a stop, and the doors slid open. It was dark topside, but there were plenty of lights, and a limo floated not ten feet from the tube.

  A greenie had spotted the vehicle and summoned some of his or her buddies. Call them what you will, “Earth-firsters,” “tree-huggers,” or just plain nuts, the Greenies oppose the corporations and advocate what they call “demechanization,” and a return to the land. Land which the corpies just happen to own.

  I considered calling on them for help, realized that they didn’t give a shit, and ducked as a bottle crashed against the wall above my rather reflective head. The zombie gave a three-hundred-pound nudge and I took the hint. We stepped out onto the pavement. The air stank of sulfur, ozone, and all the other crap that the corpies continued to pump into it. It made me cough. The robots were unaffected. The reaper pointed a long bony finger toward the limo. “Get in.”

  There seemed to be very little point in debating the issue, so I did as I was told. Something smashed against the roof. The interior smelled of leather, stale cigar smoke, and the faint scent of a woman’s perfume. I didn’t know what the stuff was called but I liked it.

  The zombie planted his steel-plated ass in the seat next to me, the reaper took his place next to the empty driver’s seat, and the limo lifted off. The aircar’s onboard computer guided the vehicle upward, demanded a slot commensurate with its owner’s status, and was integrated into the carefully managed flow of traffic.

  Skyscrapers rose all around. They were more like monuments than office buildings, since the corpies didn’t need much space, and those freelancers fortunate to cop a few hours of work did most of it from home. Still, you had to stash your computers somewhere, and the high-rise boxes, towers, and cylinders functioned like silicon silos.

  The limo banked to the left, skimmed an aluminum-clad pyramid, and headed south. Logos floated past. There was Droidware Inc., better known as “the big D,” Elexar Corp, Trans Solar, Seculor, and a half dozen more. Individual pustules within the concrete acne that started in Vancouver and stretched south to Ensenada. An endless sprawl of refineries, tank farms, slums, and haz dumps. All leaking their various toxins into the planet’s underground bloodstream.

  Something beeped, the limo started to lose altitude, and I scanned the buildings ahead. Which were we headed for? Then, as if to answer my question, a luminescent blue X materialized at the center of a flat-topped roof. The name Alfano Inc. was spelled out in twenty-foot-high red letters and circled the top of the building like a dog chasing its tail.

  It’s weird about my memory, how I have days when I can’t remember where I live, interspersed with moments when everything is so clear. I knew, don’t ask me how, that Alfano Inc. was the nine-hundred-pound gorilla in the terrestrial freight business, and that everyone knew the Alfred Alfano story, partly because it was interesting, and partly because the old fart never stopped talking about himself. “The last self-made billionaire,” that’s what the audio pops claimed, and maybe it was true.

  The limo kissed the center of the X, the door whined open, and the zombie slid off the seat. I followed. It was breezy outside, breezy enough to blow the worst of the stink off toward the Cascade Mountains, and cut through the fabric of my lightweight jacket. The roof was open, and with the exception of the boxy elevator lobby, flat as a pancake.

  There were heavies standing around, not bodyguards like me, but paramilitary types complete with chemically assisted bodies, urban camos, assault weapons, a lot of attitude. Just the way I used to be when I was a big, bad Mishimuto Marine.

  One of them, a woman with a light machine gun cradled in her arms, wore a purple crew cut. She eyed my skull plate as if wondering where she could get one installed. “You packin’ ?”

  “Yeah. Under my left arm.”

  She nodded. Her voice was level, one pro to another. “No offense . . . but we gotta check.”

  I assumed the posture, arms out, legs spread. One of her troops ran a metal detector over my body, confirmed the .38, and got the predictable beep off my head.

  “Okay,” the woman said. “I ain’t got no instructions about your piece . . . but keep it holstered. Andre handles internal security, and he runs a tight ship.”

  I gestured toward her team. “What’s the deal? You expecting trouble or something?”

  She grinned. “Of course I am! That’s what I get paid for.”

  It was a good answer, the kind any pro might give, but I thought I saw something in her eyes. A sort of expectant wariness, as if a shit storm was on the way, and might arrive at any moment.

  The reaper escorted me across the roof to what looked like a one-story box. It had been fortified with sandbags. More evidence that something was cooking.

  Doors slid open, I entered, and found myself standing in front of a full-length portrait of Alfred Alfano. The family patriarch looked like a man who should’ve been bald—and would be if he stopped rubbing stuff into his scalp. He had dark penetrating eyes, the kind that look right through you, and that some women find interesting. Alfano’s nose looked normal enough, but there was something about his mouth, a quality I couldn’t quite put my finger on. What was that expression anyway? A smile? Or a sneer? There was no way to be sure. “Mr. Maxon?”

  I turned around. The elevator had arrived. The rather polite use of my name stood in marked contrast to the manner in which I had been abducted. The android sounded female but looked androgynous. “Yes?”

  “Please follow me. Mr. Alfano is waiting.”

  It was tempting to say “So what?” Or to make some other withdrawal from my vast store of witticisms, but I managed to resist. I was alive, which meant Alfano wanted something. Something for which he would pay. Or so I hoped. “Of course. Lead the way.”

  The elevator was a luxurious affair complete with walnut paneling and some sort of nondescript music. And there was something else as well, the faint but unmistakable scent of expensive cologne, the same perfume I had noticed in the limo. Who was this elusive female? And what would she look like? The guy in me wanted to know.

  The platform coasted to a stop, and the robot gestured toward the door. The outer part of Alfano’s office was quite imposing. A single individual sat behind a rosewood barricade. She looked up from a computer and frowned. She was far too homely to be a robot—and looked a little bit like the portrait I’d seen. A relative? Probably. Corpies use nepotism like glue. In any case the woman looked more like a guard than a secretary. “Yes?”

  “Mr. Maxon here to see Mr. Alfano.”

  I was surprised when the desk Nazi nodded toward the inner sanctum. “Mr. Alfano is on the com right now . . . but go on in. He’ll be free in a moment.”

  Ever obedient, and curious as to what the whole thing was about, I circled the desk and passed through double doors. The room was mostly the way I had expected it to be. A lot of dark wood, shelves full of books that Alfano probably hadn’t read, and a forty-acre desk. There was an old-fashioned hinged picture frame. Ornate silver circled two holo stats, one of a young woman so beautiful that she could have been a model, and a second of a woman who, though well made-up, was handsome rather than pretty. Alfano waved a half-smoked cigar toward one of the guest chairs and continued to talk. “So, what are you telling me? That he doesn’t want her? Who the hell does the punk think he is?”

  I took a chair and tried to disappear. Alfano listened to the other person’s answer, said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” and shook his head in disappointment. “All right, Marty, thanks for trying. I’ll see you at the shareowner’s meeting.”

  The com set clattered in its cradle, and Alfano turned his attention to me. I noticed that the patriarch was smaller than he appeared to be in the portrait and a good deal older. The eyes were the same however—and seemed to drill their way into my head. “I’m a busy man Mr. Maxon . . . so I hope you’ll forgive me if I get straight to the point. Do you know what a shareowner’s meeting is?”

  I shrugged. “It’s an opportunity for the corporation to provide shareowners with information regarding how the business is doing.”

  “Exactly,” Alfano replied. “I have enemies, lots of ’em, and the meeting would make the perfect place for a hit. Everybody knows I’ll be there. That’s why we hire some freelancers each year, men and women like yourself, to beef up the team.”

  “Why?” I asked stupidly. “You have plenty of security.”

  The eyes looked flat and hard. Alfano wasn’t used to questions and didn’t much care for them. “Think about it, Mr. Maxon. We have to defend the building even when we aren’t in it, especially when we aren’t in it, and still move enough muscle to handle the gathering.”

  I nodded. “Hobbletygorp.”

  He looked the way most people do when I say something like that. Surprised, confused, and a little bit annoyed. Can’t say as I blame them. The shrinks can’t explain the nonsensical words, and neither can I. Odds are that they have something to do with the headaches and the weird repetitive dreams, the worst of which involves some sort of operation. There are doctors, the harsh smell of antiseptics, and a general sense of disorientation. That’s when it starts. The general sense of inflow, a virtual blizzard of words and numbers that seem to bury me alive, and choke off my air. That’s when I escape from my body, hover just under the ceiling, and watch them bring me back. I forced a smile and pretended to clear my throat. “Yes, sir. Thanks for the clarification. Who will I report to? Andre?”