Rule 34 - Charles Stross [59]
“I’m hanging fine, cuz, just fine. But your mother is another matter. She is down in the kitchen with Bibi, and I am up in the attic and close to jamming cotton wool in my ears, I can tell you. She’s fucking lost it, she’s lost the plot, cuz.”
“Did you know the stiff she found was murdered? It’s on the Spurtle’s newscrawl, the filth are all over it. That’s some heavy shit right there, my man—and that’s before you get into the juicier rumours about how he was whacked. Fucking chancer if you ask me, fucker deserved it. But it’s hard on Mom, walking in on him while she was about her scodgies . . . Listen, I’ve got a job on. Do you have time to look over some templates for me? I’m customizing a chat room for Ali, and I need someone to whack the scripts and try to make them fall over.”
“Which Ali are you working for—short, fat Ali, tall’n’bearded Ali, or psycho punk Ali?”
“You know fucking well I don’t work with Shorty McFatso, and Skinny McBeardy’s a fucking space cadet—got no money because he spends everything he can scrounge on maryjane.”
“What, he’s got a Scottish girl-friend now?”
Tariq rolls his eyes as if you’ve said something dumb, then changes the subject: “I’m putting this board together on behalf of our mutual friend Ali the Punk, capisce? I just need a unit tester to walk the scripts over it. If you can spare me a few hours from your critically important diplomatic duties—”
“If you’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.” It’s not as if you’re busy in the office. “I can start as soon as you like.” You don’t know much about Punk Ali, but you’re pretty sure you’d have heard if he was a waster.
Tariq tilts his head slightly, casting his eyes in shadow: You can see the organized firefly flicker of his oh-so-posh contact lenses, retinal-scanning displays for the plugged-in generation. “Can you get away for an hour or two?” he asks.
“Guess so.” Anything to get away from the fearful caterwauling downstairs. “Where do you want to meet?”
“You know the Halfway House, on Fleshmarket Close?”
Of course you know it; it’s one of the Gnome’s favoured hang-outs precisely because it’s half-underground, in a microwave shadow, where mobiles work erratically and GPS doesn’t reach. Stands to reason Tariq would know about it, too. “Sure. See you there in half an hour?”
Tariq cuts the connection. You switch off the pad and lay it aside, then peer at the beer bucket. The wee transparent plastic hingmy—airlock? But you thought only spaceships had them—farts at you. It smells of yeast and a faint tang of something metallic. You fight back the urge to lift the lid and sneak a look inside (the brewing FAQs were all very insistent that you shouldna do that). “Sleep tight,” you admonish it, then you drop the trap-door and scramble down the ladder and out into the night.
It’s evening, but you need sunglasses: That’s Edinburgh in late spring/ early summer. The sun’s low, but staying up later and later, and the local pagans will be doing that infidel sex-festival thing that the local Christians get so hot and bothered about on Calton Hill in a couple of weeks. You pull your shoes and suit jacket on and trudge up to the high street, then down the steep and garish shop-frontage of Cockburn Street to the top of Fleshmarket Close. You walk down the steps carefully, clutching the handrail until you come to the landing with the Halfway House. Tariq’s in the back booth, of course, nursing a pint of heavy. You nod at him, then turn to the bar and order a lager. A minute later, you’re squeezing in knee to knee with Cousin Porkie McWideboy. He raises his glass to you cheerily.
“I didn’t know you drank here,” you tell him. Which is the truth.
“I don’t drink alcohol.” Tariq wipes suds