6
“You a cop, buck?” The style was different from the people Ric knew in Iberia. In Granada, Ric had worn a gaucho mode straight from Argentina, tight pants with silver dollars sewn down the seams, sashes wound around nipped-in waists, embroidered vests.
He didn’t know what was worn by the people who had broken up the Cadillacs. He’d never seen any of them.
Here the new style was something called Urban Surgery. The girl bore the first example Ric had ever seen close up. The henna-red hair was in cornrows, braided with transparent plastic beads holding fast-mutating phosphorescent bacteria that constantly re-formed themselves in glowing patterns. The nose had been broadened and flattened to cover most of the cheeks, turning the nostrils into a pair of lateral slits, the base of the nose wider than the mouth. The teeth had been replaced by alloy transplants sharp as razors that clacked together in a precise, unpleasant way when she closed her mouth. The eyebrows were gone altogether and beneath them were dark plastic implants that covered the eye sockets. Ric couldn’t tell, and probably wasn’t supposed to know, whether there were eyes in there anymore, or sophisticated scanners tagged to the optic nerve.
The effect was to flatten the face, turn it into a canvas for the tattoo artist who had covered every inch of exposed flesh. Complex mathematical statements ran over the forehead. Below the black plastic eye implants were urban skyscapes, silhouettes of buildings providing a false horizon across the flattened nose. The chin appeared to be a circuit diagram.
Ric looked into the dark eye sockets and tried not to flinch. “No,” he said. “I’m just passing through.”
One of her hands was on the table in front of him. It was tattooed as completely as the face, and the fingernails had been replaced by alloy razors, covered with transparent plastic safety caps.
“I saw you in here yesterday,” she said. “And again today. I was wondering if you want something.”
He shrugged. It occurred to him that, repellent as Urban Surgery was, it was fine camouflage. Who was going to be able to tell one of these people from another?
“You’re a little old for this place, buck,” the girl said. He figured her age as about fourteen. She was small-waisted and had narrow hips and large breasts. Ric did not find her attractive.
This was his second trip to Phoenix. The bar didn’t have a name, unless it was simply BAR, that being all that was said on the sign outside. It was below street level, in the storage cellar of an old building. Concrete walls were painted black. Dark plastic tables and chairs had been added, and bare fluorescent tubes decorated the walls. Speaker amps flanked the bar, playing cold electronic music devoid of noticeable rhythm or melody.
He looked at the girl and leaned closer to her. “I need your permission to drink here, or what?” he said.
“No,” she said. “Just to deal here.”
“I’m not dealing,” he said. “I’m just observing the passing urban scene, okay?” He was wearing a lightweight summer jacket of a cream color over a black T-shirt with Cyrillic lettering, black jeans, white sneakers. Nondescript street apparel.
“You got credit?” the girl asked.
“Enough.”
“Buy me a drink then?”
He grinned. “I need your permission to deal, and you don’t have any credit? What kind of outlaw are you?”
“A thirsty outlaw.”
Ric signaled the bartender. Whatever it was that he brought her looked as if it was made principally out of cherry soda.
“Seriously,” she said. “I can pay you back later. Someone I know is supposed to meet me here. He owes me money.”
“My name’s Marat,” said Ric. “With a silent t.”
“I’m Super Virgin. You from Canada or something? You talk a little funny.”
“I’m from Switzerland.”
Super Virgin nodded and sipped her drink. Ric glanced around the bar. Most of the patrons wore Urban Surgery or at least made an effort in the direction of its style. Super Virgin frowned at him.
“You’re supposed to ask if I’m really cherry,” she said. “If you’re wondering, the drink should give you a clue.”
“I don’t care,” Ric said.
She grinned at him with her metal teeth. “You don’t wanna ball me?”
Ric watched his dual reflection, in her black eye sockets, slowly shake its head. She laughed. “I like a guy who knows what he likes,” she said. “That’s the kind we have in Cartoon Messiah. Can I have another drink?”
There was an ecology in kid gangs, Ric knew. They had different reasons for existing and filled different functions. Some wanted turf, some trade, some the chance to prove their ideology. Some moved information, and Ric’s research indicated that this last seemed to be Cartoon Messiah’s function.
But even if Cartoon Messiah were smart, they hadn’t been around very long. A perpetual problem with groups of young kids involving themselves in gang activities was that they had very short institutional memories. There were a few things they wouldn’t recognize or know to prepare for, not unless they’d been through them at least once. They made up for it by being faster than the opposition, by being more invisible.
Ric was hoping Cartoon Messiah was full of young, fresh minds.
He signaled the bartender again. Super Virgin grinned at him.
“You sure you don’t wanna ball me?”
“Positive.”
“I’m gonna be cherry till I die. I’m just not interested. None of the guys seem like anybody I’d want to fuck.” Ric didn’t say anything. She sipped the last of her drink. “You think I’m repulsive-looking, right?”
“That seems to be your intention.”
She laughed. “You’re okay, Marat. What’s it like in Switzerland?”
“Hot.”
“So hot you had to leave, maybe?”
“Maybe.”
“You looking for work?”
“Not yet. Just looking around.”
She leaned closer to him. “You find out anything interesting while you’re looking, I’ll pay you for it. Just leave a message here, at the Bar.”
“You deal in information?”
She licked her lips. “That and other things. This Bar, see, it’s in a kind of interface. North of here is Lounge Lizard turf, south and east are the Cold Wires, west is the Silicon Romantics. The Romantics are on their way out.” She gave a little sneer. “They’re brocade commandos, right?— their turf’s being cut up. But here, it’s no-gang’s-land. Where things get moved from one buyer to another.”
“Cartoon Messiah— they got turf?”
She shook her head. “Just places where we can be found. Territory is not what we’re after. Two-Fisted Jesus— he’s our sort-of chairman— he says only stupid people like brocade boys want turf, when the real money’s in data.”
Ric smiled. “That’s smart. Property values are down, anyway.”
He could see his reflection in her metal teeth, a pale smear. “You got anything you wanna deal in, I can set it up,” she said. “Software? Biologicals? Pharmaceuticals? Wetware?”
“I have nothing. Right now.”
She turned to look at a group of people coming in the door. “Cold Wires,” she said. “These are the people I’m supposed to meet.” She tipped her head back and swallowed the rest of her drink. “They’re so goddam bourgeois,” she said. “Look— their surgery’s fake, it’s just good makeup. And the tattoos— they spray ’em on through a stencil. I hate people who don’t have the courage of their convictions, don’t you?”
“They can be useful, though.” Smiling, thin-lipped.
She grinned at him. “Yeah. They can. Stop by tomorrow and I’ll pay you back, okay? See ya.” She pushed her chair back, scraping alloy on the concrete floor, a small metal scream.
Ric sipped his drink, watching the room. Letting its rhythm seep through his skin. Things were firming in his mind.