Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [7]
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 color 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 the city 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 mindfuckingly 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?”
Mal standing beside me, proffering a cigarette. “Yeah,” I said, lighting one and savoring 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. Mal 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. “Rumors. 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 toward 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.
Ten minutes later my arms and legs were aching and I’d reached the horizontal ventilation chute on 8. The MegaMall’s original ventilation system is now completely disused, and most of it is filled with garbage, sludge and unnameable crap from a million different sources. It’s like a lost river—paved over and diverted and hidden, but still there in the gaps and interstices. All but a couple of the original inspection hatches were welded shut a long time ago. I was hoping that no more had been