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"Are you sure you feel well enough?"
"I'm all right. And there are things I have to do."
"Where will you go? What will you do?"
"First I'll need money."
"Without your cards, how can you apply for assignment?"
"You're thinking about legal methods," Bailey said. "I'm afraid that's a luxury I can't afford. I'll go where
the cards don't count."
"You mean Preke territory?"
"I don't have much choice." Bailey leaned across to touch her hand. "Don't worry about me," he said.
"Forget me. At worst, I won't be any worse off than when I was strapped to a slab in the
slaughterhouse."
"I still don't know how you got away."
"Neither do I." Bailey rose. "But never mind the past. It's what comes next that counts."
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2
Bailey took the walkaway to the nearest downshaft, rode the crowded car to Threevee Mall. No one
paid any visible attention to him as he walked briskly along past the glare-lit store fronts through the
streaming crowd that bumped and jostled him in a perfectly normal fashion. He passed the barred entry
to a service ramp, continued another thirty feet past the green-uniformed Peaceman lounging near it; then
he flattened himself against the rippling façade of a popshop. A stout man with an angry expression
bellied past, trampling his foot. Bailey stepped out behind him, delivered a sharp kick to the calf of the fat
man's left leg, instantly faded back against the wall as the victim whirled with a yell. One windmilling arm
caught another pedestrian across the chest. The latter dealt the fat man a return blow to the paunch. In an
instant, a churning maelstrom of shouting, kicking, punching humanity had developed. Bailey watched
until the Greenback arrived, cutting a swatch through the crowd with his prod; then he moved quickly
along to the gate, jumped to catch its top edge, pulled himself up. There were a few shouts, one
ineffective grab at his leg by a zealous citizen who staggered back with a bruised chin for his efforts. Then
Bailey was over, dropping on a wide landing. Without hesitation, he started down the dark stairs toward
outlaw territory.
3
The odor of Four Quarters was the most difficult aspect of that twilit half-world for Bailey to
accommodate to. The shops were shabby antiques, badly lit by primitive fluorescents and garish neon,
relics of an age that had by-passed and buried the original city under the looming towers of progress. The
Prekes the lawless ones, without life permits, work papers, or census numbers seemed not much
different than their catalogued and routinized brethren on the levels above, except for the variety of their
costumes and a certain look of animal alertness. Bailey moved along the wide street, breathing through
his mouth. He strolled for an hour, unmolested, before a tiny, spider-like man with sharp brown eyes
materialized from a shadowy doorway ahead.
"New on the turf, hey?" he murmured, falling in beside Bailey. "Papers to move? Top price for a clean
ID, Frosh."
"Where can I take a lay on the Vistats?" Bailey asked his new acquaintance.
"Oh, a string man, hah? You're lucky, zek. I'll fence it for you. Just name your lines and give me your
card "
Bailey smiled at the little man. "Do you really get any takers on that one?"
The pinched brown face flickered through several trial expressions, settled on rueful camaraderie. "You
never know. Worth a try. But I see you're edged. No hard feelings, zek. What size lay you have in mind?
An M? Five M's?"
Bailey slipped the Three-issue watch from his finger, handed it over. "Take me to the place," he said. "If
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you con me, I'll find you sooner or later."
The little man hung back, eyeing the offering. "How do I know you're on the flat?"
"If I'm not, you'll findme later."
A hand like a monkey's darted out and scooped the ring from Bailey's palm. "That's the rax, zek. This
way."
Bailey followed his guide along a devious route, skirting the massive piers that supported the city above,
into streets even meaner and dirtier than the first, wan in the light that filtered down through the grimy
plastic skylights spanning the avenues. In a narrow, canyon-like alley, supplementally lit by a lone polyarc
at the corner, the guide pointed with his chin and disappeared.
Bailey stood in a unswept doorway and watched the traffic. A man in a shabby woven-fiber coat
passed, giving him a single, furtive glance. A hollow-cheeked woman looked him up and down, snorted,
moved on. Across the street, a man loitered by a dark window, glancing both ways, then pushed through
the unmarked door beside it. A fat woman in shapeless garments emerged, shuffled away. Bailey waited
another five minutes until the man had gone, then crossed the street.
The door was locked. He tapped. Silence. He tapped harder. A voice growled: "Beat it. I'm sleeping."
Bailey kept tapping. The door opened abruptly; a swarthy, pockmarked face poked out. The expression [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]