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By Root 460 0

way down, but couldn’t get a signal through because of all the newcomers in town jamming up the lines. Their families lived on the far side of Zekeston, over an hour away on foot. The centripetal transports were all booked hours ahead, and the spokeway lifts were running at a snail’s pace. Geoff had never seen Zekeston so crammed with people, not even during the Cluster Fair. Emergency lines were open to the police station, but the police sergeant on duty at the Bottomsville precinct—whom they had reached after four attempts—had been harried and distracted. When she learned that no bulkheads had been breached and no one was bleeding, dying, or firing weapons, they had not been able to get her attention. She had just told them in a weary tone to take their ice claim documents to one of the banks, and hung up.

“Somebody has to just go there and get in their faces,” Amaya said. “Force them to listen.”

“Why do I have to go? Why not you? Or Geoff?”

“Do you really want to tangle with a bunch of thugs?” Geoff asked. The truth was, Kam was not exactly tough. Shit, neither was he. Geoff would love it if he could hand this off to somebody else. But it was Geoff’s ice, and Geoff’s fight with him, that had set Ian off. And, he admitted to himself, he would rather have Amaya with him than Kam. She was no bigger than he, but she was tougher.

Amaya stood. “We don’t have time for this. Could you just do this?”

Kamal eyed them both, then sighed forlornly. “All right. I give. I’ll go.”

Geoff handed Kam a slip of paper. “Here are the coordinates for Ouroboros and my best guess on how much ice there is. That should get their attention.”

“We’re not far from New Little Austin,” Amaya added. “Go to the Phocaean Community Bank on Mall Row.”

“Andre Ramirez?”

“Yeah,” Amaya said. Ramirez was a bank officer they had traded ice harvest takings to once or twice, and he had always been fair. “Get him to call the cops.”

“And hurry!” Geoff and Amaya said in unison.

Then they took off at a run down the stairs.

Contacting the black marketers wasn’t all that hard, so the wikis said. You hung out on a corner in their neighborhood with your waveface wide open. Eventually, someone would ping you with an address. The message had a short half-life, and the address was always different, but the destination was somewhere in the borders of the Badlands, just above Bottomsville. There, they would cut you a deal in one of the surveillance shadows—out of sight of motes, mites, security cams, and other such devices.

When they first reached the appointed corner, Ian was nowhere to be seen. Because he was already dead? Geoff tried to shake off the thought. The whirring of engines echoed down the Promenade from a nearby manufacturing plant, or a bug juice piping manifold. Gusts of steam emanated from grates and rolled down the street, smelling of bug juice, trash, machine oil, and old urine. The odor made Geoff queasy, and the heavy gravity made his joints hurt. He shifted, turned up his collar, and stuffed his hands in his pockets. At least the stink was a warmish one; it wasn’t as cold here as up in the spoke.

“What now?” Amaya asked.

“I suppose we could ask around,” Geoff said. A few people were scattered about the neighborhood, but none of them seemed to be black marketers. A woman was carrying groceries and trying to keep her toddler from dashing into the middle of the Promenade, toward the tracks where the commuter and robotic traffic ran. Three workers in greasy coveralls had removed panels from the walkway and were repairing a utility line. Three school-aged kids were bouncing a ball off a wall to one another, singing a rhyme, the Zekie Spokeways rhyme, as fast as they could:

“No, Noonie, Weenie, Wee;

“Weesu, Suzee, So, See;

“Easy, Ee, Eenie, Nee;

“Drop the ball and breach the Zee…”

But right then Ian came strolling up. His right eye was swollen. Geoff suppressed a guilty grimace. Amaya, arms folded, glowered. Geoff reconsidered his choice: maybe she had not been the right one to bring. He gave her a warning glance. She shrugged, microscopically.