Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [76]
I had one more try. “You’re not going to answer the questions, are you?”
“You a clever guy,” he croaked.
“Okay, well here’s the deal. I’ve changed my mind. We’re not going to throw you down the shaft just yet, because later we may be able to get you to reconsider. Howie’s going to put you in the back, and someone’s going to watch over you. You show any sign of being antisocial, this employee of Howie’s is going to chainsaw off your legs. You’re healing in a very weird way, my friend, but I think that could keep even you out of action for a while.” I watched him carefully, and added: “Especially without a top-up.”
A tiny flicker. Enough.
I stood and nodded to Howie. “Have Paulie sling him in the back—away from the food—and sit over him. I’m not joking about the chain saw. Don’t take any crap from this guy.”
“Paulie’s dead,” Howie told me. “He was here when this guy arrived.”
“Shit, I’m sorry,” I said.
Howie nodded distantly. “That’s okay. Dath can do it. He’ll enjoy fucking this fucker up. What do you want to do with that shit?”
He pointed over at the mess on the table. While our attention had been diverted, the bird’s other leg had come off, and most of its back section had collapsed in on itself. Vinaldi stared at it, face drawn, and just when I’d decided it was dead the bird’s head made a small vicious movement, pulling its front half away from the rest. Using the stumps of its wings like paddles it tried to crawl along the desk, trailing the remains of its insides behind it and shedding skin and fur like snow from shaken trees.
“Take it somewhere and burn it,” I told Howie. “Burn it until it’s gone. And ignore anything it says. It isn’t even a real bird. It’s just a fragment of something else.”
“I am so a bird,” the bird said suddenly in a voice that sounded like two rusty nails being rubbed together. “And I know what you did. You’re going to be punished, Jack Randall. You’re going to die for that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, and shot it. The chest blew apart, spreading shit over the room, and the head fell to the floor.
“Was that something out of The Gap?” Howie asked, looking down at the still-moving beak. “I mean, I assume that’s what all this is about?”
“It is, but that isn’t,” I said. “It’s something from nowhere. Just a dream. It got created accidentally on the edge, and couldn’t hack it. Something formed out of nothing, without being honed by evolution. It can’t even hold itself together.”
“Oh, you wrong,” Ghuaji said suddenly from the floor. “You wrong, man. It all going to hold together.”
I turned and held my gun steadily at his head, losing patience abruptly and completely. “Were you the one who shot Mal?”
The man shook his head slowly. “Yhandim. Yhandim going to kill you too, and Vinaldi. Most especially Vinaldi.”
Vinaldi rather charmingly spat at him, and Ghuaji still did nothing but smile. His wound was looking worse.
“Yhandim’s going to be real busy then,” I said. “He should consider delegating. Howie, get Dath and lose this guy before I blow his fucking head off.”
Before he left Howie handed me a sheet of telefax printout, with Nicholas Golson’s name on it. “He called.” Howie shrugged. “Said there was something you might want to know.”
“Thanks,” I said. “You going to be okay?”
“Yeah,” Howie said. “Just as soon as you come up with a plan. I don’t expect you to keep to it, but it would be nice to know there was one.”
“When I’ve got one you’ll be the first to know,” I said.
I tried to use my fake pass to get up to 104, though Vinaldi had offered to just ride me in as a guest. The man on the gate was a little more eagle-eyed than most, and tossed my pass, so I ended up relying on Vinaldi anyway. The key thing about pride is that it ends up making you look more of an idiot than you would have in the first place. By that stage I didn’t really care. We’d already been to 66 and I was hyper with fury and fear. Nearly’s door was locked, but there was