Kalifornia Read Free

to the seventh floor. This was the maximum height
from which she could hope to leap and stand any real chance of survival.
    Sixth. The odds were only slightly better. Broken legs and spine
for her . . . and for the child, who knew?
    From above came a screech and a thud. More shadows roosted on the
fire escape. Some dropped directly from level to level, ignoring the stairs,
slipping over the rails and leaping.
    Fifth floor. The street below looked like a doll street, a model
awaiting her hand. Pedal cars, bikes, and wagons swerved around pedestrians who
clogged the walks and teetered on cement columns that otherwise supported only
flowerpots. Llamas and cows cried counterpoint to their owners’ frustrated
shouts. More pervasive were the cries of glee, of celebration. Every bar was
full, the drug counters crowded with jostling bodies. Houses doubled as
saloons. Celebrants packed onto the balconies of other buildings, jumbling
from the habimalls. She wished for revelers on this fire escape, to offer
camouflage.
    From above, as she reached the fourth floor, she heard crumbling
metal. A shape tumbled past her, followed by a rain of rust and particulate
iron. It landed on the sidewalk in a heap of garbage, one of the night’s many
casualties.
    Poppy hesitated. The third-floor landing was ragged and full of
dangerous gaps like broken teeth.
    As for the second floor ramp, it hadn’t existed for years.
    Whispering, screak of rubber, a breathy, bubbling voice called
out: “Poppy!”
    She must descend, futile as it seemed. Bricks and boards blinded
all the windows of the third floor. The ruinous landing sagged beneath her
weight, inching closer to the street. Old brackets tore from the walls, brick
dust and iron flakes sifting down like poor man’s confetti onto the revelers
below. No one noticed. They brushed the grit from their shoulders and hurried
on.
    She stepped gingerly over the largest of the gaps, clutching the
rail with one hand. The whole landing moaned. She was level with the
streetlamps now, still dizzyingly high. As she shifted her weight to the far
side of the hole, suspicious of the metal, two of her pursuers dropped into her
path.
    She threw herself backward, over the gap.
    The fire escape screamed and broke in two.
    Poppy landed on the edge of rotten metal, her legs dangling. The
two pursuers watched from the far side, holding perfectly still. She stared
into their dark, liquid eyes, saw their pink tongues lolling.
    “You can’t escape,” one growled, extending a shaggy hand. “The
child is ours.”
    It was the hoarse voice from the hallway.
    “Tell the president to go to hell!” she cried.
    They stared at one another, then sniffed the night. Both were
transgenic—or teegee—dogs, leftover “Lassies” from the first days of
animal-human hybridization. The SPCA had fought against creation of such
unhappy teegee breeds, with limited success. Animal rightists argued that it
was purest cruelty to subject innocent canines to the traits of humanity; cruel
to instill the happy creatures with guilt, remorse, ambition, indecision.
Other creatures arguably benefited from the humanimalism, but the change
destroyed dogs, turning the mildest breeds into killers.
    Loyal killers, true. Auggie-doggies made superb assassins, risking
anything to please a full-human master. In this case, President McBeth.
    Very carefully, the Lassies began to clamber upward. They would,
she realized, run along the fourth-floor ramp and come down again beside her.
They might knock the whole ramp loose. She would fall . . . she
would probably die, or be too stunned or crippled to run.
    She looked down at the street, the crowd. “Look at me,” she
murmured. “Why won’t anyone see me?”
    In the constant flood of traffic, in the unprecedented midnight
clangor, the groan and collapse of the fire escape was little noted.
    Rubber-soled feet tiptoed overhead.
    She moved a fraction of an inch. The fire escape shuddered.
Another fraction