recently.’
I was glad that Mal was still enough my friend to simply say the name out loud. ‘What kind of problems?’
Mal shrugged. ‘Rumours. He's pretty much the man these days. Probably someone's just trying to climb over him. The usual shit. Just thought I'd let you know.’ He shook his head. ‘You really only staying a couple hours?’
I nodded tightly. ‘This shit's too deep to swim in. We've got to disappear and stay that way.’
‘Again.’ He smiled. ‘Something I want to tell you about later, though, before you go.’ Then he clapped me on the back with his massive hand and turned towards the spares. ‘You guys about ready for some noodles?’
They stared at him with wide eyes. ‘They've never had noodles,’ I said.
‘Then they haven't lived,’ he replied, and of course he was right.
I walked a long way through the bowels of New Richmond, my stomach growling, wishing I'd stayed to have some noodles with the spares. There hadn't been time. We had serious people after us, and were only safe for as long as it took them to realize that I'd given them a false name and previous address when I was taken on at the Farm. As soon as that was blown, all hell was going to break loose.
It was about two miles from my entry point to the stage where I started to climb, two miles of textured darkness and muffled sounds. When I saw the familiar shaft in front of me I stopped walking. I rolled my head on my shoulders, wishing briefly and pointlessly that I didn't smoke, then climbed up the metal ladder attached to the wall.
Ten minutes later my arms and legs were aching and I'd reached the horizontal ventilation chute on 8. The MegaMall's original ventilation system is now completely disused, and most of it is filled with refuse, sludge and unnameable crap from a million different sources. It's like a lost river – paved over and diverted and hidden, but still there in the gaps and interstices. All but a couple of the original inspection hatches were welded shut a long time ago. I was hoping that no more had been sealed while I'd been away, or I'd be in trouble.
I swung myself out of the shaft and crouched down in the horizontal corridor, using a pocket penlight to peer into the gloom. The way was still clear, so I walked quickly north for about eight hundred yards until I found the wall panel I was looking for. I loosened the bolts and put my dark glasses on. This wasn't a matter of vanity. I didn't want anyone to make me while I was in New Richmond. It was a small chance that someone would recognize me, but I don't like to take chances of any size unless they seem like fun. The other reason is that the hatch opens into a cubicle in the women's toilets in a restaurant on 8.
I pulled the panel back about a millimetre, saw the cubicle was empty, and clambered through the hole as quickly and quietly as I could. It wasn't easy. I stand over six feet tall and am kind of broad in the shoulders. Ventilation hatches aren't built for people like me. I could hear the thump of music beyond the door to the john, but it didn't sound as if anyone was there.
I replaced the panel, pulled the door of the cubicle open and stepped through. A woman was standing there. Nice one, Jack, I thought. At least you haven't lost your touch or anything.
She was hunched over by the sinks at the far end. She was very slim, had thick brown hair and was wearing a short dress in iridescent blue. Good legs in sheer stockings led to shoes with very sharp and pointy heels.
Uh-huh, I thought, making a guess at her profession. As I glanced at her she shifted slightly, and I saw the mirror over which she was bent, and the rolled-up hundred-dollar bill in her hand. I took a quiet step towards the door, assuming she was sufficiently occupied to miss me.
Wrong. She looked up vaguely but immediately.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘A big man. Intense.’ Her face was caught somewhere between pretty and beautiful – her nose a shade too big for everyone's pretty, but the bone structure too perfect for beautiful. Her eyes were clear and green, and looked natural.
‘You've got good hearing,’ I said.
‘Yeah. It's a feature.’ She sniffed, and bent to do her other nostril. Then a thought occurred to her, and she peered at me again. ‘What are you doing in here?’
‘Pest control,’ I said.
‘Yeah, right,’ she said. ‘Well I got a licence. I'm allowed to be a pest in here. You, I'm not so sure about.’
‘Is there any way,’ I asked, ‘that I could just walk out of here, right now, and you'd think nothing more about it, ever?’
She looked at me for a long moment, considering. Then she shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ she said, bending back over her mirror, and I turned and walked quickly out of the door.
A short corridor led out into the restaurant proper, and I skirted round the edge of the room toward the exit. With the time now coming up for nine o'clock, the place was in a transition period. The 8th floor runs on a kind of shift system. It romps twenty-four hours a day, but in practical terms this breaks down into three evenings of eight hours each. I once went round the clock twice. I can't recommend it, except as an expensive suicide attempt. The restaurant was about half-full of people from floors in the 60s and 70s, most of them either on the edge of unconsciousness or so wired you could hear their teeth vibrating. The others looked spruce and enthusiastic, rubbing their hands together in anticipation.
No one saw me walk out of the ladies, and no one paid any attention as I walked through the restaurant. Feeling light-headed at seeing so many normal people at once, I escaped into the avenue outside.
Floor 8 is an anomaly in the lower levels of New Richmond. It's fairly civilized. Floors 1 to 7 and 9 to 49 are bad. Each varies, depending on who's got control of it at any given time, but basically they're places you don't want to go, especially the 20s and 30s. They're dead code, cut out of the loop of normal life and left to fester by themselves.
You probably wouldn't actually want to go to the 8th floor either, but at least it has pretensions. Originally, it had been the lowest food court in the MegaMall, and it was still predominantly a place where you came to eat, drink or have a good time. Whatever the focus of your sexual inclination, you can go to the 8th floor and watch it dancing on a very small stage. You can also score recreational quantities of pretty much whatever you want, without danger of being caught in a fire storm. Most of it is only one storey high, and they keep the ceiling lights off, relying on orange street lamps which run along either side of the thoroughfares. If you don't check the corners too closely the floor has a kind of lop-sided charm, like a run-down but cheery portion of some European capital, or the Old Quarter of New Orleans. The ceiling is covered in creepers and foliage, making the roads feel like paths in a forest. Forests usually give me The Fear, but I like 8, and always have. It's full of neon, autumn jazz, the smell of good food and, for some reason, the feeling that it has just stopped raining. It never has, of course, but it always feels that way to me.
I walked quickly down the centre of the street, noticing what was new and what remained. The streets were quiet but music slunk out of most of the open doors, buoying up the desultory strippers who swayed on table tops. A few down-and-outs sat on street corners, stuck in main() with their handleMouseDown() mitts held out, but from the look of them I didn't think anyone's cursor was ever going to find them. It's an image problem, I think. Maybe they should all club together and hire a PR consultant, put out a few TV ads, find some way of making begging seem cool. I'm sure there's money to be made in it somewhere.
I had to be out of here quickly, but I wanted to make my last visit right. I stopped at one corner to catch a few minutes from a news post, just like I always used to. New Richmond has a twenty-four-hour local events feed on every corner. Flatscreen monitors hang like banners wherever your go, twisting and turning to foist information on the unwary public as they approach. It helps the upper floors think they know what's going on. They don't, of course, but they spend so much time talking about the twenty per cent it covers that no one even guesses at all the rest.
Arlond Maxen had opened a new school on 190, I learned. Big fucking deal. The people who lived that high had so much money they had to be sedated every