items—numbers and loan-sharking they used to call it. We also got a cut from all of the fences, and we had interests in about a dozen legitimate local businesses as well, but most of those were pretty much break-even propositions. Lotto and the Bank—that was the real money, always had been. And now Laugh. Kolya cooked it and we sold it, mostly through Arrie, although we had a couple other Varoki contacts that did a little business. Laugh was a Varoki-specific drug, which made it perfect for us—the Varoki had all the money, and our people didn’t get hurt. But anyone who thought it could go on like this was nuts, and Kolya was at the top of that particular list.
He’d fought the Cottohazz before, and for him, Five Races be damned—there was only one race in the Cottohazz that meant anything: leather-heads. If Laugh messed them up and eventually killed them, then that was just a bonus as far as Kolya was concerned. Me, I’m a businessman, not a revolutionary.
It was past quarter-night—about hour 25 of the 28-hour Peezgtaan day—when we broke up and I sent them on home.
“I got an autocab pickup wired. You need a ride?” Ricky asked. Maybe he’d decided he’d gone a little far and wanted to mend some fences. I thought about it, but I shook my head.
“No, thanks. I’m gonna walk.”
He looked relieved. The small talk in the cab probably would have sucked.
THREE
I walked along the irregular archipelago of yellow islands cast by the overhead lights that were still working. I stepped over or around the sleeping drunks and addicts, took in the smell of rotting garbage, illegal cooking-fire smoke, urine and shit and vomit and people way too long without a bath. I listened to the background noise of techscreech booming from big speakers in bars, to laughter, angry curses, and coughing—always coughing. I nodded to the whores and hustlers and club bouncers, said hi to those I knew by name, but I kept going.
Whenever I started feeling sorry for myself—and I was armed, like I was that night—I’d take a walk down there. Even armed, I’d stick to the main thoroughfares. There were too many people with nothing to lose for anyone not in an armored vehicle to feel really safe, unless they had nothing to lose either. I walked down there to remind myself how most people lived at the bottom of the Crack, in the Human Quarter. That I sometimes needed reminding is, I think, evidence of a flawed character.
They lived without the certainty of the next meal, or the security of a safe domicile. They lived without the means of protecting their property, and so they lived without property. They lived in constant danger of injury and disease, and without the means of coping with either. All life leads to death, one way or another, but for them, the progress was visible, palpable. Their journey was a crippling, disfiguring death march, losing bits of themselves along the way—tooth, finger, eye . . . hope, self-respect, sanity.
And most of them lived without love, because loving someone, and being loved in return, carries with it an obligation on which they could not deliver, and the inability to provide for the people you love is the most soul-crushing burden of all. People—a lot of the good ones, anyway—willingly lived an empty, loveless existence in preference to acquiring that obligation, and failing.
There was a lot of excitement and optimism back on Earth when we made first contact with the Five Intelligent Races of the Cottohazz : the turning point in man’s history, the dawn of a remarkable new age—you know. It all seems pretty naïve, looking back at it now, but how were they supposed to know? Races with the wisdom to travel the stars surely would have worked out all those little things like wealth and distribution of resources.
And the guys in charge had. They surely had.
* * *
Depending on your point of view, my condo was either a luxury suite or a hole in the wall. Since I’m
He’d fought the Cottohazz before, and for him, Five Races be damned—there was only one race in the Cottohazz that meant anything: leather-heads. If Laugh messed them up and eventually killed them, then that was just a bonus as far as Kolya was concerned. Me, I’m a businessman, not a revolutionary.
It was past quarter-night—about hour 25 of the 28-hour Peezgtaan day—when we broke up and I sent them on home.
“I got an autocab pickup wired. You need a ride?” Ricky asked. Maybe he’d decided he’d gone a little far and wanted to mend some fences. I thought about it, but I shook my head.
“No, thanks. I’m gonna walk.”
He looked relieved. The small talk in the cab probably would have sucked.
THREE
I walked along the irregular archipelago of yellow islands cast by the overhead lights that were still working. I stepped over or around the sleeping drunks and addicts, took in the smell of rotting garbage, illegal cooking-fire smoke, urine and shit and vomit and people way too long without a bath. I listened to the background noise of techscreech booming from big speakers in bars, to laughter, angry curses, and coughing—always coughing. I nodded to the whores and hustlers and club bouncers, said hi to those I knew by name, but I kept going.
Whenever I started feeling sorry for myself—and I was armed, like I was that night—I’d take a walk down there. Even armed, I’d stick to the main thoroughfares. There were too many people with nothing to lose for anyone not in an armored vehicle to feel really safe, unless they had nothing to lose either. I walked down there to remind myself how most people lived at the bottom of the Crack, in the Human Quarter. That I sometimes needed reminding is, I think, evidence of a flawed character.
They lived without the certainty of the next meal, or the security of a safe domicile. They lived without the means of protecting their property, and so they lived without property. They lived in constant danger of injury and disease, and without the means of coping with either. All life leads to death, one way or another, but for them, the progress was visible, palpable. Their journey was a crippling, disfiguring death march, losing bits of themselves along the way—tooth, finger, eye . . . hope, self-respect, sanity.
And most of them lived without love, because loving someone, and being loved in return, carries with it an obligation on which they could not deliver, and the inability to provide for the people you love is the most soul-crushing burden of all. People—a lot of the good ones, anyway—willingly lived an empty, loveless existence in preference to acquiring that obligation, and failing.
There was a lot of excitement and optimism back on Earth when we made first contact with the Five Intelligent Races of the Cottohazz : the turning point in man’s history, the dawn of a remarkable new age—you know. It all seems pretty naïve, looking back at it now, but how were they supposed to know? Races with the wisdom to travel the stars surely would have worked out all those little things like wealth and distribution of resources.
And the guys in charge had. They surely had.
* * *
Depending on your point of view, my condo was either a luxury suite or a hole in the wall. Since I’m
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