Bone Dance

Good guess, me. “Did he say that? Not exactly. It’s nothing serious.”

She popped a tape into the B deck and turned to me. “Sure. Robby says you showed up white as a bar of soap and looking like you slept in your clothes. Nothing serious.”

Well, I had slept in my clothes. I noticed, too, that she called him Robby. I felt as if I were looking in the window of some place I used to live in. “Spangler dropped a wrench,” I said.

“Oh, excuse me for asking. I just figured if there was something I could do, maybe you’d like to mention it.” This sounded like Sher being acerbic, which she did often. It also sounded like Sher being hurt. I looked up and met her eyes. Sher wasn’t the sort to avoid eye contact at a moment like that. But I was.

“It’s no big thing,” I said, changing the tape bias on one machine, then changing it back. “It’s taken care of.”

She brought up B deck: a series of shots of the head of a daisy, a chambered nautilus that came apart into animation. There were fractals right after that, I knew. I ought to cue up something trippy. “Sparrow,” she said, “if you really don’t want anybody to give a shit about you, say so, and we’ll just let you go to hell.”

I almost cracked wise. If it had been any conscious impulse that stopped me, I would have overridden it. “It’s important to me,” I said instead.

“Why? What’s so private that you have to make an enemy of the whole world to keep it that way?”

Just for that instant, I was tempted to tell her.

But Theo came in, a beer in each hand, and kicked the door shut behind him. “Who needs a fresh one?”

“You take it,” I said. “It’s my turn for a break.” Then I caught a look at the third monitor. The camera, which wasn’t feeding to either screen, was on the front door. I saw Robert leaning on the frame, a pack of nightbabies newly arrived and staring just in front of him, and behind them a head of pale curly hair, a big white smile, shades — no, not shades.

I grabbed the camera remote and zoomed in. Dana’s friends hadn’t found me. The other ones had. It was the man in the silvertones.

At the corner of my eye I saw the shift in room light that meant the picture had changed on the screens. “Sher, no!” I cried, but it was too late. The camera feed was up on the left screen. I pa

Sher was chalky, and her eyes were big. “I’m sorry,” she said faintly. Theo stood as still as I’d ever seen him.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’ll use the back stairs.”

“And we’re go

Sher looked at him. “Yeah,” she said. “We are.” She stood up and stretched, flexed her hands, glanced over the edge of the balcony at the dance floor.

“Then I guess we are.” Theo shrugged, picked up a heavy flat-bladed screwdriver from a box by the sound board, jammed the blade between the stairway door and the door frame, and pounded it in as far as it would go. “Door’s sticking again. Bummer.”

“I’m sorry.” And I was, but I didn’t know what to do.

“Get out of here,” Theo said to me, his face blank as tape leader. I plunged through the door in the rear wall of the balcony and shot the bolt home.

I said before that I had a place at the Underbridge. This was it. I passed through without really registering it, beyond deciding that nothing in the closet-sized space could help them find me: a mattress, a couple changes of clothes, a toothbrush. Maybe the barre

It was raining steadily, steamily, and everything shone. Somewhere many blocks away, a fire alarm was wailing. I heard the Underbridge’s sound system from the open front door. Water gushed over the dam in the river in front of me. The storm, stalking away to the east, gave a long, low rumble like an empty stomach. I hoped the accumulated noise was enough to cover the sound of me ru

I ran down most of them, actually. Five of them I fell down, loudly, because I forgot that things are slippery when wet. And the last three I skipped entirely and just jumped to the pavement. I was feeling hopeful when something small and hard settled against my skull over my right ear, and a cheerful female voice said, “Darlin’, you must think we’re awfully thick. Were you hoping we’d forget to look for another exit?”

I stood very still, because I had a suspicion about the hard thing over my ear, and wondered if I should tell her that no, the forgetting was all on my side, thank you. Because, of course, I’d known that the man in the silvertones had a partner.

“Put your hands behind you,” she said. When I did, something closed around my wrists. Handcuffs? No, these people were not City security, I knew that. What was happening here? What had I done?

“What do you want with me?” I asked, and there was more than a hint of a wail in my voice.

She came around in front of me. Yes, that was a gun she had. Under the ma

“You were with the nightbabies. Outside the Odeon,” I said. I was forgetting to breathe, which broke my sentences up. “With the bone in your nose.”

She looked pleased. “Very good! I didn’t even have to do the voice for you. Now — who are you, at the moment?”

I stared at her.

“All right, I don’t think your other half is a good enough actor to do that brain-damaged look. You’re still the little scavenger, whatsits… Starling? Sparrow.”

Behind me, I heard the steel door slam and feet come pounding down the fire stairs. “Well, damn it, Myra,” the pink-haired man said, “sometimes I feel like your damned bird dog. You can do your own flushing and chasing next time.”

He was simmering with something: adrenaline, anger, speed, maybe all of them. I could feel it behind me, and it made the skin on my back want to crawl around to the front of me for protection.

“Dusty, honey,” the red-haired woman — Myra — said, “I let you have all the fun while I stood out in the rain, so what are you complaining about?”

I cleared my throat and said, “Did you… was there anyone there when you passed through?”

Dusty came around at last into my line of sight. He might have been studying my face. Then he smiled his huge fluorescent smile. “That’d bother you, if I hurt somebody? No — messed up the real estate some, but the tenants, they’re all safe and sound. And I know where to find ’em if I need to.”

“What do you want?” I said again, and this time I was pleading in earnest. “Is there something you want me to tell you? I’ll tell you. You don’t have to hurt me — you don’t have to hurt anybody.”

“That’s good,” said Myra. She took me by one elbow and pulled me toward the packed-dirt service drive by the riverbank. The rain had turned the dirt to slurry. I hadn’t realized it would be so hard to walk with my hands stuck behind me.

I could feel the major arcana at work, the cards that said someone else was in control of my future. I was in terrible trouble, and yet it seemed to stand a polite distance from me. All I had to do was be propelled around, by these people, by another set — simple. They would make me do what they wanted me to do, right or wrong. I had no choice, and no responsibility.

There was a little electric delivery van parked in the drive, painted dark maroon with “Kincaid Adjustments” on the driver’s side door in gold. I wondered if I was going to find out what the inside looked like. I could start yelling, I thought, and hope someone came to see what the problem was before they could club me senseless and make me disappear. Silly. Who would come?