Cormorant Run Read online

  A shrug was all the communication he received.

  Zlofter’s irritation showed itself in a single eyebrow-twitch. “Well, it worked. She’s at the Institute right now.”

  That produced a reaction. The other man closed his eyes, leaning back a little. Something about that small fluid movement would have told any onlooker familiar with such things that they were looking at a rifter. When he finally spoke, he didn’t bother keeping his voice down. “Shine.”*

  The corporate man winced, his chrono finishing its reboot and blinking a small green light twice. “It’ll be a full team. He acts like he doesn’t know what’s in there.”

  “You act like you do.” It was a mild enough observation.

  “So do you.” The corporate man’s wide round face set itself in immobility. “I couldn’t find out when they’re going in. He’s a cagey bastard.”

  The rifter tilted his head slightly as the joyhole at the synthesizer switched keys again. The door opened again, squeak-thumping, and another corporate man with slicked, shiny hair stepped in. This one was Yesil Inc., you could always tell those fuckers by their canary neckties and their brass-gleaming Aurovoxes.

  “Don’t matter,” the rifter finally said. He took another swallow of his beer, appearing not to notice it was warm. The sleeves of his jacket matched the weak alcohol’s color. “She won’t wait.”

  “Well, as long as you’re sure.” Zlofter pursed his lips. “You have everything you require.”

  A brief nod.

  “The rest of the payment on delivery.”

  Another one, even briefer. The rifter’s pitted, scruffy cheeks flushed. He hadn’t shaved, and his broad, capable hands were hard and callused. For all that, they were clean, and his dungarees were too. His corduroy coat moved stiffly, flexarmor patches inserted and broken in hard.

  “Well, then.” Zlofter almost made a dismissive movement, thought better of it. He glanced nervously at the Yesil man heading for the bar.

  The rifter began to slide along the bench seat, obviously considering the conversation over. He stopped dead, though, in that creepy way they all did. Freezing wherever they happened to be, nostrils widening a little, ungainly posed as setters pointing at an unwary bird. “How’d she look?” This time, he almost whispered, so Zlofter had to lean in to catch the words.

  For a moment, it made no sense. Why would he ask? Of course, rifters were cagey, too. Maybe this one was looking for an edge. Zlofter was a big believer in giving subordinates what they needed to perform efficiently. “Like shit,” he said, finally. “Skinny, ugly, dirty. I was surprised she didn’t need medical attention.”

  The rifter nodded. He slid out of the seat, unfolding to his true height, and his belt buckle gleamed. It was a piece of pig iron, too heavy for his lean hips, shaped in wavelike whorls. He headed across the Rabak’s almost-empty interior, opened the door quietly as a regular, and vanished into the glare of white light beyond.

  Zlofter shook his head, settled back in his seat, and eyed the joyhole at the synthesizer. He’d send the bill to the Institute, since he was technically “consulting.” When you worked hard, you were entitled to a few perks.

  He took another drink and allowed himself a wide, bright, unsettling smile.

  9

  ANIMAL BODY

  A real shower, from one of a row of chrome showerheads arching serpentine from the wall. Hot water. Not tepid, hot. Government-issue soap, orange and vile-caustic, but it cut the crust on her scalp and the greasy black mess between her long toes. She stayed under the spray until her fingers wrinkled and the tile was squeaky-warm underfoot, until the very last swirling thread of gray dirt in the water had gone down the drain with a throat-clearing gurgle. Svin might have stayed until the water turned cold, if it ever did, but there was a prospect of food as well. Even if it was colorless prison slop, it would be welcome.

  Her ribs stood out starkly, her hipbones too, and her face was a gaunt ruin, bruise-puffy circles under her eyes and her lips turned to thin lines. There was a slice of mirror over the sink, and it showed her the gray-tinged pallor of sunless solitary confinement stretched tight over bone framing. She hadn’t quite hated being cubed—other people were a distraction at best and dangerous at worst—but she’d been homely in a sort-of-fetching way when she still had the glow of youth. Not so much, now.

  Ashe the Rat liked them young and worshipful. Not that it mattered now, did it. Svin hadn’t expected letters, the Rat wasn’t the epistolary type. Maybe she’d expected Svin to be too canny to get deezed.*

  Kopelund had issued her a duffel packed with various clothes and oddments—anything she had on her had been incinerated or sold when she went into Guan. It was all right, though, a rifter learned early to never get too attached to anything you couldn’t hide, in an orifice or otherwise. Live like a snake, wriggling out of a skin when it got too confining, or breaking off your tail to escape a trap.

  She almost swam in the clothes. No panties, not that she wore them anyway, no bra. Not that she needed one, she was down to mousebites on her chest. Faded dungarees, a military-issue undershirt that had been washed so many times it wasn’t scratchy anymore, a huge gray wool sweater with a wide neck and stretched hem, leather patches at its elbows. Everything in the world was too big for her, and always had been.

  Except the Rift. At least there was a worn, thin leather belt to cinch the jeans around her hips. There was even a tube of unscented lotion in the bag, but she didn’t want to grease herself.

  No windows in the locker room. The lockers all stood closed, red paint chipping from corners and edges. Her prison jumpsuit was filthy, so she stuffed it in one of the empty lockers. It would have been more satisfying to clog one of the toilets with it, but she didn’t have anything in her bowels to really finish the job, so to speak. She hefted the dirt-colored duffel and headed for the door. There didn’t seem to be cameras, either, but acting as if there were was good tactics.

  No guard at the door. Stupid of that Kopelund asshole. But really, there was only one place for her to go, and it made sense to get a meal or two and maybe some supplies beforehand. So, maybe not so stupid. Maybe they didn’t have the manpower to guard one skinny-ass felon rifter? Where were all the rifters who should have been on duty, watching the blur or scraping nootslime, or just sitting around bullshitting, drinking, and playing various games with the guards? She’d never worked an Institute, preferring to freelance, but she’d heard plenty about how to kill time in one.

  Svin slid down the blue-flecked linoleum hall, peered cautiously into the left-hand turn at its end. Canteen’s down there. I think today’s chicken day. After that, ask anyone where my office is, and they’ll tell you.

  It was strange to walk without the shackles instead of shuffling, and strange to keep glancing around without seeing bulky armed guards with smoked-glass lenses over indifferent peepers. She didn’t have to follow the painted line on the floor, or cross her wrists, or listen for the crackle of stimsticks. The doors to the canteen were open, and a soft murmur of conversation floated down the hall.

  Svin stopped dead, as if she were in the Rift and sensed a change. Good or bad didn’t matter, you simply waited until you could tell the difference. The new boots were military-issue too, but at least they fit, and there were even thick socks without holes. The duffel got heavier and heavier on her thin shoulder, the strap cutting, but she didn’t shift it.

  People. Shoving food into their stupid faces. Probably men. A cold, clammy shudder raced up from her heels; she clamped down every muscle she could, not even daring to sway.

  In a Rift she wouldn’t have the duffel. A backpack was best, with a mapbag at the hip, its strap diagonal over the chest. Sometimes they argued about how to hang it, under or over the backpack straps, and what exactly you wanted in the mapper other than strips-and-bobs.* You didn’t look in another rifter’s mapper, you could claim to have a scuttlesnake in yours and nobody would argue.

  What exactly was the problem?
/>   Well, after being in fucking solitary for a while, seeing other people was goddamn unpleasant. It was slightly better when you had no choice, you could fill your ears with static and just let your body do what it had to. Deliberately walking into a roomful of assholes chewing and laughing and smoking and metabolizing …

  But there was food. She could smell it. Her mouth was full of thick spittle, her head a little woozy. After a certain point the animal body didn’t care if the situation was dangerous, it wanted some fucking calories.

  Even if the rest of her was paralyzed.

  Svin stepped forward, boot-toe touching lightly, testing the linoleum. It looked ordinary, felt ordinary, was ordinary. She rolled through, set her heel down, and the floor didn’t move. It stayed right where it was, doing just what it should. Out here, treacherous ground was all inside the meatsacks moving around. Chewing. Breathing. Processing food and beer and harder fluids, sweating out nicotine and sour sugars.

  She tested each of the next five steps, and after that, it got easier. Roast chicken, the faint gritty undertone of potatoes, a thread of coffee stitching it all together, a sinker pulling her in. Swallowing again and again, like a flucwasher* with top front teeth eaten away and the roof of the mouth gone too, the cavity filling up with grit and hardening mucus. Two maroon-painted doors, CANTEEN stenciled in white above them. They wouldn’t move on their own, a human hand had to push them.

  Fuck them all. I’m hungry.

  With one last check of the empty hallway, Svin shook her damp, still string-knotted hair and hitched the duffel higher, then strode for the door as if her legs didn’t remember metal cuffs and chains, as if she were about to meet Ashe for the first time again, her heart pounding high and hard and her skin alive with cleanliness and danger.

  10

  FIELD EXPERIENCE

  That’s her.” Aleks craned his skinny neck, hunching over his tray. His shoulders were sharp points under his lab coat, twin peaks almost touching his jug-handle ears. “Look—it’s her.”

  The fluorescents in here turned him pasty, picked out every crack and divot in the round plywood tables. A clatter of trays and cutlery being washed warred with the hum of conversation from scientists on lunch breaks, sardies catching a bite before guard duty, sweeps, or tower watch, a few of the perennial coffee-swillers avoiding work. A greasy smell of communal boredom underlay the aroma of roasted chicken and garlicky paste-potatoes, cheap imitation butter and a bitter tang of alcohol sugars-and-sweats.

  “Sure, stare like you’re at the zoo.” Captain Morov snorted, wiping his mouth with a napkin that rasped against dark stubble. A filthy-smelling cigar, half smoked and extinguished, laid neatly by his plate, waiting for him to finish shoveling potato paste. His boots were spit-shined, his uniform trousers pressed, and even sitting still his back was regulation-straight. He might have been mistaken for a martinet if amusement hadn’t lurked behind his dark eyes, a sour cynical gleam.

  “Never been to a zoo. Do they even have them anymore?” Aleks kept staring, sandy eyelashes all but quivering. The lump in his throat bobbed. “Shit. She’s tiny. How old is she?”

  “Why don’t you go ask?” Curly-headed Riggs jabbed his fork into a plump, if somewhat rubbery, chicken breast with fat-rich, crispy skin. His hair was a little longer than regs allowed, but Kopelund had other things to hassle his sardies for. Which meant Morov allowed a little leeway in personal grooming if you kept other bits—nose, dick, and mouth-hole—reasonably within limits. “I hear she’s a real winner.”

  “The Yarker T-dick had it coming.” Morov speared a solidified chunk of potato paste, chewed around the words. Small starch-crumbs escaped while he spoke, a sure sign of his own unsettled mood. “Don’t fuck with rifters, man. Remember when the Rat stuck a fork in that guy’s cheek?”

  “I thought that was just a story.” Aleks settled back in his seat, every bird-thin line of him jittering with the desire to turn around and stare again.

  Fresh out of uni and spastic as a private before his first bordello call, Morov thought. Like a puppy, just aching to attach himself to any humpable boot and pee on every lilac bush. “No story. They get funny in the head, after a while. Just fine, and then all of a sudden, you say something and whap! Slit his cheek just like a bag of klish.* Could see his teeth.” The amount of blood had been amazing, too, and the wet flapping noise as the man gurgle-howled could have starred in a nightmare or two, if you were prone to them.

  “Well, what did he do?” With his eyes round like that, the kid looked about twelve himself. They were always starry when they arrived clutching their degrees and full of that crap about Science solving all problems. It took a while for the gloss to wear off and the desperation to set in.

  “Asked her on a date.” Riggs snorted at the memory. He dug below the table for his silver flask, added a healthy splash of colorless sliv* to his mug. Morov pretended not to notice.

  “He what?” Aleks almost spluttered.

  The kid was kind of fun sometimes. Pull the tail and hear the puppy squeak. “You’re a dimshot,” Morov announced. “I hear this one killed four cops when they dragged her in for running poppers.”

  “That wasn’t all.” Riggs washed the potato down with a swallow of hot coffee-plus-sliv, grimacing a little at the bite. “The Rat was mixed up in that, and some warboy. I heard the cops were moonlighting for the warboy, and they were after the Rat. She jumped in time, but this one didn’t. Didn’t say a single word at sentencing, either.”

  “Old-school.” Morov grunted a little, a slight sound of approbation. You didn’t see anything like that anymore—honor among thieves, and all that shit. The world was going downhill, just like it always had. “Stupid, more like.”

  “Why would she do that?” Aleks jabbed at his own chicken. The canteen was alive with whispers as the new rifter walked slowly but surely for the counter. She moved strangely, like they all did, not committing her weight through the first half of the step then doing so all at once, with a queer fluid grace. She looked half starved, and the duffel slung on her shoulder—regulation sardie issue, excavated from some storeroom or another—was almost bigger than she was. Her hair was still damp, and stringy-colorless, hanging in clotted, tangled snake-ropes.

  For all that, her dark eyes glittered with feral intensity, and fat gray-braided Manda behind the glass shield didn’t hesitate to give her a tray. Sometimes the Canteen Queen, in her kerchief and rubber gloves, demanded to see a newcomer’s meal card. Standing in front of the shield with a pained smile while she examined it like an ILAC MP* with a chain gorget and a severe case of furious constipation was a rite of passage.

  Not this time. The Queen of the Canteen just nodded at the rifter, normal as you please, but took care to shove a battered red plastic tray at her with fingertips only.

  “What’s she gonna eat?” Aleks whispered. Each day he wore a freshly washed white lab coat, as if his barcode tag wouldn’t convince people he was in the science division. Old Barko certainly had his hands full, with this little sausage-choker yapping at him all day.

  Barko was all right, for a civilian. Morov made a mental note to get the old man alone and find out what he thought of this. It was bound to be interesting. Balding Barko didn’t say a lot, but when he did open his mouth it was obvious there were actual wheels working behind his eyes and not just doped-up rats in the skullhouse like most of the scientists.

  Dealing with Rift shit made you crazy. You caught it, like a disease.

  “Food, just like the rest of us.” Riggs set his coffee cup down, exactly on the ring it had made when he first placed it on the table. He picked up his fork, always left at a precise angle across a medium-sized chipped enamel plate.

  “I think he’s in love.” Morov contemplated the remains of his chicken-and-paste. It was about time to pick up his cigar and have his post-lunch smoke. “Better not, kid. The radiation in there gives ’em mutations. She could have teeth in her vag.”

  “I saw some papers on that.�
� It was Aleks’s turn to sound dismissive. “No conclusive evidence, just a lot of conjecture—”

  “Yeah, because the rifters won’t let you guys poke at ’em.” Riggs stabbed a callused finger at the kid. “I hear that at the Penta* they injected people with glaslime just to see what would happen.”

  “That’s unethical.” Aleks’s chair scraped back along the linoleum, with a long rancid squeak. “No scientist would ever—”

  Morov couldn’t decide whether he believed that or not. Either way, the kid was getting on his nerves. It was only mildly amusing to listen to brainless, youthful mouth-diarrhea, and no more. “What did happen, then?”

  Riggs was more than happy to supply the gossip details. “Crazy shit. Bodies exploding, blood turning to glass, brains turned into beef—”

  “Oh, come on, you don’t believe that, do you?” Aleks’s voice threatened to break. They were turning them out younger and younger these days, smart on the tests but dumb as rocks where it counted. This kid would have been given an exemption from frontline duty, one way or the other, especially fresh outta basic. You got to have a sense, after a few tours, of which ones would break and endanger the whole damn unit. It was a good thing he was civvie.

  “Ever been in the Rift, kid?” Riggs knew perfectly well the little scientist hadn’t. “After you go, you come back and tell me what you believe.”

  “Wonder if I can get in this time.” Aleks rubbed at his cheek, almost bouncing in his seat. Too much wasted energy, it was about to give Morov a goddamn headache.

  He pushed his plate away. It was enough to kill anyone’s appetite. A smoke would help. “Kopelund’s doing the roster. Talk to him. But between you and me, stay the fuck out of there, kid. Nothing good ever happens inside the blur.”