The New Weird - Ann VanderMeer [192]
"Where are you from?" She was growing more confident. She unlim-bered the gun from its enclosure and poked him with the pistol's muzzle.
"It really doesn't matter anymore," he said. "You're talking to a dead man."
He turned his back on her and began shambling off in the direction of the terminal.
"Wait," she said, sheathing the gun. "Come with me."
Safiya had never, in all her time at the hide factory, been back to the building so late in the day. Valvay did not ask her to work late and no functions were held behind its doors after the tanners and seamstresses had downed tools. She wondered, as she bypassed security, whether Valvay would still be in his office, or had decided to go hunting for women in the fevered carnival streets. The temptation would surely be too great for him, she thought, with a smile. The books could wait when there was so much flesh caroming around the city.
She led the way through a great hall of stitching machines, pistons raised into the heights like steel elbows. She was used to the rich, animal smell, the ammoniac tang of the treatment baths, the brown stench of the tannery, but the man was suffering, trying to cover his mouth and nose with the strap of his bindle.
Kerao slid out of the shadows ahead, his slingshot draped loosely at his hips. An insouciant smile, the ever-present smolder of his resin crucible cupped in his fingers. The sharp hit of it reached her seconds later. It was a wonder that he could draw a bead on anything after breathing that for most of his shift. But the fruits of his labor were there to see. A stack of pale, hairless bodies: rind rats, attracted to the factory by the smell of wet membranes. Kerao was good at his job.
"Valvay's going to void bodkins if he finds out you're bringing lovers back to his factory."
"He won't find out," Safiya snapped. 'And anyway, this is no more my lover than you are my future husband. He's hurt. He needs help."
Kerao lazily traced the shape of his weapon with a finger. He eyed the other man keenly. "What's your name?" he asked.
"I don't need to answer you."
Kerao spread his hands. "Of course not. I was being friendly. Cannot a man cheated of his time at the Festival take advantage of an unexpected visit? Eke out a little warmth from his fellow man?"
He followed, strolling, occasionally loading and emptying his slingshot with hands that knew the task so well they didn't need his eyes to guide them anymore.
They passed through to a room with a bench and a sink and a red chest. From the chest, Safiya pulled a small, lozenge-shaped disc. She pressed her patient into the seat and tenderly wiped the ugly, puffy wound with a wipe teased from a clear envelope. The man clenched his jaw. "Wait," Safiya said. She positioned the lozenge over the wound and gently shook it. Thin wafers, the color of wet cement, slid out on to the wound, concealing it. A second or two, a flare of intense light, and the smell of burned flesh. The man might have passed out had he known what was coming, but the heat was bearable. He shot Safiya a quizzical glance.
"There's an anesthetic in there. It's heat-sealed now. No threat of infection. I just hope it will heal okay."
There was a clean, soft moment of calm. Nobody talked. A veil came down. Safiya and the man shared a smile. Their first. Their last.
A sound, a soft pop in triplicate, audible over the dulled fizz of the crowd outside.
The wall next to Kerao sprouted a red branch; Kerao looked down at his chest and spread his hands, as if to say How am I going to wash that out? He crumpled, the breath grunting out of him as his body found new, awkward configurations on the way down.
Safiya thrust out her hand. The man took it. She risked a look behind her as she ran with him through a pair of wooden doors and down the stairs to the chaos of Poonma Way.
Men strolling through the bands of shadow in the sweatshop, reloading, their targets locked on retinas that would not refresh for any other image until they had been dispatched.
The terminal