Nova Swing

He pushed his way between the tables and sat awkwardly on one of the chromium stools at the Long Bar. He seemed dispirited. He spent some time trying to order a drink which, when it came, the bartender placed in front of him with exaggerated care, and which settled out quickly into distinct layers of pink and yellow. It was popular, he told the people near him, on Perkins' Rent. No one seemed convinced. Aschema

"Antoyne? Maybe you don't recognise me. Maybe in this light you don't see me as well as you could."

"I know who you are," Antoyne said.

Aschema

"Only I got work now. It's temporary."

"That's good news, Antoyne!"

The fat man didn't seem to know how to encounter the enthusiasm of this. "It's temporary work," he said.

"So how is Vic?"

Fat Antoyne swallowed the other half of his drink and stood up. "You know," he said, "I like the light in here. I always liked a low light to drink by. It's the music I don't like." He wiped his mouth and gave the band a look which he transferred somehow to Aschema

"I was leaving anyway," he said.

"There's no need for that," the detective insisted. "Look, I'll just sit here and have another drink. You should have one too." He would be hurt, he implied, if Antoyne went off like that. He pulled up the bar stool next to Antoyne's and took a moment to get comfortable on it. "You don't mind if I sit," he said. "We're both out of place here, surely we can sit together?" He took a matchbook off the barman-it had a tiny hologram of the Live Music Nightly sign, which he turned appreciatively this way and that-and then another glass of rum. "Do you mind if I just fold my coat," he asked, "and put it here on the bar?" He held up his drink to the light. He had a habit of smiling around at people to show that he was enjoying the evening the way it had turned out. He tapped his fingers to the music for a minute or two, then concluded, "Myself, I don't mind this. But what I like is that old New Nuevo Tango."

The fat man received the news without interest.

"A lot do," he acknowledged.

Aschema

"Vic's OK," Antoyne said defensively.

"Still, people will get hurt."

"There's nothing wrong with Vic. Vic Serotonin to my mind never hurt anyone."

"And yet, you know, he's in and out of the site, like all those people. We can't stop them finding new entrances-" here, Aschema

Something new seemed to occur to him. He touched the fat man's forearm suddenly to get his attention.

"Antoyne, has Vic upset you in some way?"

Antoyne shrugged.

"I won't give up Vic," he said, and walked off.

"Vic's giving himself up," the detective called after him mildly. "Not just to me. To whatever's in there."

Antoyne did not reply, but instead pushed his way more energetically between the crowded tables to the door. In the end there was a kind of fat dignity to Antoyne, which remained intact despite his habit of always putting himself at a disadvantage, of appearing to disentitle himself in a society where anyone could be what they wanted. No one understood why Serotonin tolerated him, but maybe that was why. For a moment or two Aschema

While he was thinking, the band squeezed out two or three thin boys in white singlets, earrings and studded leather belts. Aschema

Aschema

The way this came about was unforeseen. Three women and one man were picked up two miles from the Cafe Surf, in the back lot of another bar, where they were apparently trying to have sex with one another. There was some sense they didn't know how to progress with this but were willing to learn. Aschema

"What's that?"

"Make sure no one hurts them."

She was back on to him perhaps an hour later. Things were fine, she said. It was like handling refugees. Though they were curiously pliable, they were slow to give names. They smelled a little. They didn't seem to be from an alien species. They didn't seem to be hungry. They were not chipped, she said, by any method the holding cell diagnostics understood, neither were any of the usual markers encoded into their DNA; she could therefore assign them no point of origin in the Halo.

"What do they look like to you?" Aschema

"They look like idiots," she said.

When she last saw them, that was how they looked. It was perhaps two after midnight. They stood all night like that, puzzledly, in the centre of the cell, talking to one another infrequently in their slow, gluey voices; and in the morning they were gone.

"There's no explanation for it," she said.

Her skin ran with data. It was like a pore-bleed. Nervousness or anger was causing her to clench and unclench one fist, as if by pumping the forearm muscles she could pump the mathematics too. He wondered if she had been taught that, or if it was just a ma

"There's no explanation," she concluded again.

Aschema