Nova Swing

"I never did, no."

"He's cute. Vic?"

"What?"

No answer.

"Alice?"

Paulie DeRaad was kneeling on the concrete, muttering into a dial-up. Vic went up to him and said:

"Alice is dead, and to an extent, Paulie, I blame you." During his encounter with Aschema

"I got a bad mouth ulcer, I know that," he said. "You want to just pull down my lower lip and look?"

"Jesus, Paulie."

"That police fucker won't leave me alone. Everywhere I go, he's there first. He's asking questions, he's taking names. You remember Cor Caroli, Vic? K-ships on fire across half the system? Wendy del Muerte tried to make planetfall in an Alcubiere ship with the drive still engaged? There won't be anyone like Wendy again."

"I wasn't there," Vic said.

"Yeah? I love it!" Paulie said, and laughed as if Vic had brought to the table some reminiscence of his own they could both enjoy. His eyes lit up, then almost immediately took on a perplexed cast. He had forgotten who he was. "I love all that stuff," he said. He leaned over, vomited weakly, and fell on his side. Vic made sure he was alive, then left him there.

"I want you to know I've had it with you, Paulie," he called back over his shoulder.

The job was fucked as far as Paulie was concerned; compared to him, Lens Aschema

At this, the assistant gave a little smile. "Vic won't be ru

Eighteen miles above their heads, one of DeRaad's co

Paulie was on his feet, dancing about on the concrete, shouting and yelling and trying to wave his arms.

"Oh fuck," he shouted. "Just fucking look at this!"

With the care of a living thing, the K-ship lowered itself to earth in front of him. A cargo port opened. Paulie stumbled towards it, his arms swinging out haphazardly. "Hey, Vic," he called, "what do you think of her? It's the old Warm Chicken. Is she ugly, or what?" Tears ran down his face. He struggled up the cargo ramp, turned round at the top. "Can I tell you something, Vic?" he said. "Just before I go? Even the paint on this vehicle is toxic." Someone pulled him inside suddenly and the hatch closed.

The K-ship raised itself a little and slid smoothly forward, nose down, until it hung just above the hood of the Cadillac. There was a frying sound-the air itself being cooked-as its armaments extended and retracted in response to a change of government fifty lights down the Beach. In the Cadillac, Aschema

Lens Aschema

No answer. The driver's door swung open in the wind.

Paulie DeRaad's rickshaw girl had watched all this from a couple of hundred yards away on the city side of the Lots.

She didn't know what to make of it. She wasn't prepared to say it was the grossest or most interesting thing she'd ever seen, because here in 2444AD, everyone saw new things all the time. "And when you pull for a living," she remarked to her fare, "you see it all." In this case, "all" meant bodies were scattered over the Lots. White, thick, gritty smoke was still going up from the crashed vehicle. Two small figures-kiddies, you'd say-were helping each other crawl away. She wasn't sure what happened to Paulie DeRaad, though he didn't look well when she last saw him.

One thing: a breeze had got up for a change, so maybe they could look forward to better weather. Another: as the K-ship took off on its line of light like a crack right across the solidity of things, a figure in a black watch cap was sprinting away from the Cadillac. It was the guy Vic who she had talked to. "He can run, that guy," she was forced to admit. "He has a nice action if he would train a little. Or, easier, he could get a package." The rain turned to sleet as it moved away to the west, which briefly made visibility even poorer than before; but she could see he had his bag over his shoulder and his gun in his hand. After a minute or two, the Cadillac's engine started and it rolled slowly over the concrete as if it would follow him. But they never got out of first gear and soon drifted to a halt. Shouting came from inside, some kind of disagreement was in progress. The driver's door opened and a woman got out. Then she got back in again and slammed the door. Vic Serotonin put the Baltic Exchange between him and the Cadillac and disappeared into the event site. Don't blame me, the rickshaw girl thought. I offered the guy a lift.

"Did you see that?" she said. "He went the wrong way."

The fare, who had something wrong with his voice to add to his troubles, made a noise like three notes of music played at the same time. "Moths mated to foxes," he said, "fluttering into their faces in the desert air." He laughed. A few dim motes of light issued from under the rickshaw hood to join its shoal of sponsor ads. "The faces of the foxes are like flowers to them, they circle closer." The A

"Hey, are we going to haul?" she wanted to know. "Because we got no business here."

"Let's haul," said the three voices, one after another.

"It's your ride, hon."

She took one more look at the pink Cadillac and sighed. That sure was her favourite car. With its subtle paint blends and frenched tail lights, it had been the best part of her day so far. "I'd just once like to be that pretty," she told herself. Then she turned the rickshaw around and trotted off towards Saudade at a steady pace. "Don't you worry," she reassured the Point kid. "I know where they kept you."