9

To Each As He Is Chosen

THE DEAD LENINISTS were live in Bydgoszcz, belting out The Money that Love Can’t Buy. Kohn was trying to filter out the band’s smoke-scarred heavy-water sound and listen to the buzz. A lot of talk about the Alliance’s actions and the ANR’s intentions, a lot of politicking going on. After a random walk through it he realized he’d been neglecting Janis for at least two tracks, maybe three smokes … He said as much to the off-duty fighter he was talking to, bought another couple of liters and turned from the bar. He almost collided with a young man who had obviously been leaning forward from the stool he was sitting on, listening to their every word.

Big-boned, sandy-haired, he had the look of a country boy without the rude health: a bit ruddy-faced, a bit flabby. Young, very intense and slightly drunk. He swayed out of Kohn’s way, and looked right back at him, unabashed.

“Hello,” he said. “I … couldn’t help overhearing.”

“Yes. And?”

“You were asking that guy about what the ANR’s up to, yeah?”

“Uh-huh.” There didn’t seem to be much point in denying it.

“I’ve been trying to find out about that myself.” The man kept his eyes fixed on Moh’s, raised a brim-full glass of whisky to his lips and sipped it. The cool-dude effect was more or less ruined by a startled look as he swallowed. “There’s one theory I’ve come across. It involves the Last International, the Watchmaker, the Black Plan and bar codes.”

Kohn heard his own voice as a distant croak.

“Bar codes?”

“Bar codes containing the number 666.” The youth’s face broke into an engaging grin. “That’s the only bit that surprises you?”

Kohn had the disconcerting feeling of having lost a move.

“I think we should talk about this,” he said. “Come and sit down?”

The man followed Kohn to the table, dragging a rucksack. Kohn sat beside Janis and the man sat at right-angles to them. He smiled at Janis, almost as if he recognized her, and said, “Hi. My name’s Jordan Brown.” He stretched out a hand to shake. She introduced herself.

Kohn decided it was time to shift the advantage slightly.

“Dunno about the lady here,” he said, “but I’m always happy to meet a refugee from BC. Welcome to space.”

“How do you know where I’m from?”

“Clothes,” Kohn sympathized. “Accent. Traces of skin conditions.”

Jordan looked indignant for a second, then laughed.

“Stigmata!”

“Don’t worry. They’ll wear off. OK, Jordan, you might find it a bit more difficult to figure us out. Janis is a scientist and I work for a protection agency. Some people would call me a Communist. Much-abused label, but…”

He waved a hand to take in all the unfortunate associations he might have evoked.

“Doesn’t bother me,” Jordan said. “I believe in taking people as you find them. I’m an individualist. And a capitalist.”

“And surprisingly well informed,” Kohn said. “Considering.” He leaned back. Over to you.

Jordan peered around in a way that triggered Kohn’s memory of how Janis had looked over her shoulder that morning.

“Uh … is the ANR legal here?”

Kohn smiled. “That’s not a simple question but, if having an office block with its name in lights is anything to go by, yes. And we do have free speech, as you may have noticed.”

Jordan sighed, shoulders sagging a little.

“Stigmata again…”

Kohn nodded. “The right of free speech is one thing,” he said. “But the stuff in that glass is the best thing going for helping you exercise it.”

Jordan took a sip of whisky and began to talk.

*   *   *

While Jordan was getting a round in, Janis and Moh conferred frantically.

“Do you think he’s … on to us?” Janis whispered.

“Some kind of agent?” Kohn shook his head. “Anything like that, it’d be someone I know … He’s just sharp. Heard me asking around.”

“We could get him in on this. You want to keep off the net, and I’m no good on it. He is.”

Kohn gazed at her. “That’s an idea.”

They shifted apart as Jordan came back, looking down and moving like someone steering a car with his elbows. He smiled at Janis as he put the drinks down.

“I’m impressed,” Kohn said. “Really. You’ve sifted an incredible amount of stuff off the net, come up with a big spread of ideas about what’s going on. How did you get that good, back there?”

Jordan scowled at his drink, then looked up. “I don’t know,” he said. “I was using better kit than I’ve ever had before, and I was doing the same sort of thing as I do at work. Did at work. A feel for how the markets move, like Mrs. Lawson told me today.” He laughed. “And a feel for virtual reality from playing Paluxy, I guess.”

“What’s Paluxy?” Janis asked.

“Dinosaur-hunting game. It’s in the only VR arcade Beulah City’s got. Noah’s Park.”

“I see,” Kohn said. He glanced sidelong at Janis, who didn’t see, either. “You came here looking to put some flesh on what you found. So did we.” He spoke slowly, trying to get his zooming, looping thoughts into some kind of formation-flying. “Or, maybe, we’re the flesh. So now you’ve got a choice. You can go and do whatever it is you really wanted to do in Norlonto that you couldn’t do in BC—read, net-surf, get laid, whatever—and forget about this. Or you can come in on it with us. If that’s what you decide, we’ll tell you all we know.”

Moh leaned closer and spoke quietly, barely moving his lips. He was sure even Janis couldn’t hear him. “And if you betray us, I’ll kill you.”

He straightened up and smiled at Jordan as if he’d just given him a hot betting tip, watching the fear and eagerness that seemed, now, so evident on Jordan’s carefully impassive face.

“OK,” Jordan said. “Let me think, OK? You’re not talking about anything that … would be criminal, here?”

“Nope,” Moh said.

Janis shook her head fiercely.

“You’re not working for the”—he lowered his voice, his face squirming with distaste—“government or the UN or anything like that?”

Moh guffawed, putting an arm around Janis’s shoulders and slapping Jordan on the back.

“You’re all right,” he said.

Jordan looked pleased and embarrassed.

“So what’s this big secret, and what do you want me to do?”

Moh looked around. “Surprising as it may seem, this ain’t exactly the time or the place for talking about secrets. As to what we want you to do, basically it’s just what you have been doing. But with a bit more to go on, which is what we can give you. I live near here and you can use our place as a base until you get somewhere for yourself. If that’s what you want.” He passed Jordan one of his business cards and gave him a quick rundown on the Collective.

“So what do we tell the comrades?” Janis asked.

“As near the truth as possible,” Kohn said. “Jordan’s helping us with research, and building up a database of possible contacts, customers…”

“OK,” Jordan said, “but why me, and why for you?”

“Suppose we make it something you’d want to do anyway. I mean, like today you’ve sort of had your wish come true, got booted out of BC with a nice little stash. So … what would you have done, if you hadn’t got any further with your search?”

“Found somewhere to live. Got a job—in futures maybe—and, uh, read and written a lot.”

“What would you write?”

“Philosophy. Kind of. Oh, not just atheism, humanism, I’m sure there are plenty doing that out here—”

“You’d be surprised,” Kohn remarked.

“—but I want to do more. I want to attack all these cults and ideologies. I have this, this vision that life could be better if only people could see how things really are. That it’s your one life, it’s yours, you have this inexhaustible universe to live it in and God damn it isn’t that enough? Why do we have to wander around in these invented worlds of our own devising, these false realities that are just clutter, dross, dirt on the lens?—all these beliefs and identities that people throw away their real lives for.”

“Like, there is no God, and you shall have no other gods.”

“That’s it. That’s what I want to write.”

“I have a better idea,” Kohn said. The understanding of how good an idea it was glowed within him, spreading like an inward smile. “Would you like to be on television?”

Only cable, and with a small subscriber base, he explained. But items did get picked up sometimes by the networks, and the Cats had schedules to spare since all they put out was their own edited exploits and an alternative news-slot with a bit of radical/critical/Marxist analysis thrown in.

“If you can just talk like that to a camera you’ll be fine,” Kohn said. “Nothing to it. No interviewers. No professionals to sneer. It’s your show. Say what you like—basically we hate the barb and the mini-states, and if you do too then you’re on our side; anything rational would be better than those smelly, cozy subtotalitarianisms. The only viewers will be watching because they want to, so you won’t bore anyone. And, you being a capitalist, you can measure your success by the credits that you clock up!”

“Oh man.” Jordan had fire in his eyes now. “That sounds great. Too good to be true.”

“No, just true enough to be good.”

“Speaking of clocking up credits … what do you guys, your comrades, do with the money you make?”

Kohn frowned. “Savings bank account.”

Jordan laughed. “You’d do better buying gold and keeping it in an old sock!”

“What else could you do with it?” Kohn asked, genuinely puzzled.

Jordan looked at him, shaking his head. “Call yourselves mercenaries … Look, you’ve got an inside track on the whole micropolitics of this place, you’re in the middle of a free-trade zone, you don’t pay taxes, you’ve got access to news and rumors more or less as they break … You know, I could make a bit of money from what I learned on the net tonight!”

Kohn looked at Janis for guidance. She shrugged. “Sounds feasible enough.”

“Great!” Kohn straightened up and raised his glass. “Here’s to the international Communist-Capitalist conspiracy, to which I’ve always wanted to belong.”

For Jordan they drank to philosophical speculators, which they all thought was rather good, and for Janis to mad scientists who did awful things to rats. After that they got loud and, eventually, quiet. “Is Molly Biolly a crank band?” Janis was looking at the stage when Kohn swung into the seat beside her, returned from another prowl through the buzz.

“I don’t know. What—?”

“That guy at the back, looks like Brian Donovan. Like the picture of him on the back of his book.”

Behind the holo image of three girls in second-skin plastic doing indecent things with synthesizers stood the scratchy spectral fetch of a man with long gray hair and a long gray beard. He seemed to be staring at them.

“Weird,” Kohn said, sliding away from and in front of Janis.

“Isn’t it just a projection?” Jordan asked.

“The band is,” Kohn said, not turning round. “But this stage has its cameras, too, so you can patch in a moving point of view from somewhere else … That’s how a fetch works, out in AR. Shit, he is watching us. And he knows we know. Let’s make some space, keep it natural, knock back the drinks and head for the door. You first, Jordan, then Janis.”

Kohn stood, gulped whisky. The figure moved forward, through Molly Biolly, a ghost through ghosts. Some yells of complaint and disgust went up. The fetch glided across the edge of the stage and into the crowd. Irrationally, people made way. Smoke coiled into colors inside it.

The band, which had been TALKIN’ ’BOUT MY GENE RATION!!!! fell to mouthing soundlessly, like terrorists on television. The crowd in the pub was silent, too, eyes focused on the moving image.

The fetch pointed a translucent arm at Kohn. Its lips moved out-of-synch as the speakers boomed back to life.

“MOH KOHN!” it said. “I ACCUSE YOU OF BREAKING THE RULES OF ENGAGEMENT! IF YOU DO NOT APOLOGIZE IN PERSON AND IN THE FLESH TO MY EMPLOYEE, ACCEPT A RANSOM AND CLEAR HER NAME WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR HOURS, I WILL SEE YOU IN THE NEAREST GENEVA COURT. IN THE MEANTIME AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE I OFFER A REWARD FOR YOUR ARREST AS A RENEGADE AND A PUBLIC MENACE.”

Donovan’s fetch looked around, as if to make sure everyone had heard that, and vanished.

Kohn was backing off—on the balls of his feet, ready to lash out.

The music came back on. Somebody laughed. Just a terrorist dispute. Attention returned to the band; heads turned away.

A heavily built man sitting on a bar stool casually slid an empty stein along the slick of beer, pushing at the bar with his toe so that the stool spun, carrying him round, the sweep of his arm carrying the glass around to the final flick of a discus throw.

Kohn ducked so fast his feet left the ground. The glass hit the wall behind him and bounced off, almost getting him on the rebound.

Kohn lunged forward, doubled fists driving into the attacker’s midriff. The man gasped but pushed back, up and off the stool. Kohn reeled away and a table caught him across the back of his thighs. He staggered but didn’t fall.

In a moment something changed: his point of view. He looked down at his head from a meter or so above it, two meters, and everything was laid out for him like an architect’s diagram. Some calm undertone soothed the frightened australopithecine that was in his skull but thinking it was out of it. Only a picture, a visual aid, an icon: this is what it would look like if you could look at it like this. He reached—saw his hand reach—behind him and caught a full glass as it slid from the table and dashed the contents in his opponent’s face, then stepped forward and neatly wrecked the man’s knee. He was back behind his eyes in time to see the other’s fill with pain and shock before a sideways topple took them closing to the floor.

Kohn pulled his credID card from his back pocket and held it up as he turned to face one of the pub’s security cameras.

“I suppose you got all that,” he told the record. “I’ll not press charges but if you want to you can call me as a witness.” He looked at the people whose table he’d cannoned against. They were still getting out of their seats, wiping at their clothes. He pointed at the slumped figure.

“A round on him,” he said.

Everybody was looking at him again.

“Don’t fucking mess with me,” he added, and walked toward the door. Jordan had been holding Janis back. He let go of her upper arms and stooped to rub his shins.

“Spirited little tyke, isn’t she?” Kohn said.

He smiled at the two indignant and relieved faces.

“C’mon gang, let’s go. Don’t look back or you’ll turn into a pillar of salt.”

*   *   *

At the Clearing House Donovan turned around in the privacy bubble to face a seething silence. Everyone had been and gone, flitting out and back through the evening to attend to their several businesses, while he had divided his attention between calling off various live actions and haunting a succession of pubs, nightclubs and drug dens. But they’d all been present to see him finally find Kohn. The images from the pub’s cameras were still spread around them like scraps of newsprint, rippling with rerun movement.

“Donovan,” Mrs. Lawson said, “I do wish you had engaged your brain before you opened your mouth.”

Donovan glared at her. “Why? I told you I would challenge Kohn.”

“The attempt to incite a citizen’s arrest was, shall we say, excessive,” Bleibtreu-Fèvre interposed. “However, we do at least now know for certain that Taine is with him. Even if we have temporarily frightened them off.”

“That’s not the problem!” Melody Lawson snapped. “If you’d given me a chance … there was another person with them.” She reached for a patch of scene and stuck it where they could all see it: a young man walking backward, open-mouthed, behind Janis Taine. “That isn’t one of Kohn’s gang. It’s Jordan Brown, who was involved in the Black Plan penetration incident this afternoon.” She ran her hands distractedly through her shining hair and halo, leaving little flecks of gold figment on her fingers. “That suggests very sinister possibilities.”

Donovan felt some calm returning, a recognition that perhaps he’d lost it for a couple of seconds.

“I … apologize for my haste,” he said. “All the same, there seems no reason why Kohn shouldn’t show up to claim the ransom. I’ll have the hospital staked out by morning. In the meantime, why don’t you check your exile’s records?”

“I certainly shall,” Mrs. Lawson said grimly. “He was disaffected for some time. Goodness knows who he was in contact with.”

“This man Kohn,” said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. “Do you know anything about him?”

Donovan frowned. “He’s the leader of a small gang of security mercenaries … other than a nasty streak of pro-technology fanaticism, they’re nothing special. As it happens, the hired fighter who was on my team last night is a former member.”

“What?” Bleibtreu-Fèvre looked appalled. “I find that suspicious.”

Donovan could see the paranoia building as Lawson and Bleibtreu-Fèvre exchanged glances. He tried to head it off before he started down that path himself.

“She broke with them and their outlook a long time ago. No, the only significance this has is that it creates a strong personal antagonism between her and Kohn. As I said, this could work in our favor.”

“Could you raise some local forces to watch their house?” Dr. Van asked, suddenly leaning into the discussion. “Possibly intervene directly?”

“Not a chance,” Donovan said. “The whole area is covered by a network of defense agencies, crawling with ANR cadres and sympathizers, patrolled by space-movement militia. Most of the houses are built to withstand at least indirect blast damage. Kohn’s is probably capable of holding off a tank.”

“… I see,” said Van, reacting after seconds of satellite delay. “A liberated zone.” For the first time, he smiled at them all.

“Quite,” said Bleibtreu-Fèvre. “I wonder if Kohn has any, as we say, form.”

“Why not check your agency’s records?” Mrs. Lawson suggested.

Bleibtreu-Fèvre’s fetch seemed to diminish slightly. “I would have to give a full accounting of the circumstances,” he said. “That might … raise unnecessary alarm.”

Might be embarrassing, Donovan thought, unsympathetically. As a field operative, Bleibtreu-Fèvre must have a great deal of autonomy, but the bureaucratic mechanisms of Stasis would still kick in at sensitive points. Personal records was probably one of them, surrounded by smoke and mirrors: safeguards—reassurances that a secret police force which went around stamping on dangerous scientists wasn’t any kind of threat to normal folks’ privacy and civil liberties, no sir.

“I can help you there,” he said. “Just let me know your passwords and procedures and I’ll do an end-run around them.”

“Impossible!”

Donovan looked straight back at the Man In Black’s glowing, glowering eyes. Cheap trick, Hallowe’en lantern …

“Not with your help, it isn’t,” he said.

Bleibtreu-Fèvre considered it, his face frozen in a downloading trance. Donovan had counted past sixty when the fetch’s lips moved again.

“Very well,” he said. “What is there to lose?”

*   *   *

Using the codes and pathways supplied by Bleibtreu-Fèvre, Donovan got into the US/UN system so easily that he marked time for a few seconds before launching the database call. He regretted it as the retrieval time clocked on and on—seconds, one minute, one and a half, two … Was the damn thing written in COBOL?

Two minutes fifty.

Three. Three ten.

I mean what sort of crap programmers do these guys have?

And then it all started coming in, a whole structure of links and inferences building up around them like the result of some cartoon character making a cast with a fishing line and snagging it, hauling in seaweed, a chain, a wreck, a whole rustbucket fleet pelting down on the quay …

The four of them stood looking at the mass of recovered data.

“Oh,” Donovan said at last. “That Kohn.”

*   *   *

“What was that all about?” Jordan asked. He and Janis were hard put to keep up with Kohn. The best place to walk was immediately behind him.

“Donovan was trying it on,” Kohn said over his shoulder. “I interdicted one of his sabotage teams last night. There’s something else. Personal. Too complicated to go into right now … Plenty of time to sort it out in the morning. Whatever, he found out where I was and tried to rouse against me any opportunist bounty-hunters who might be around. Not very successful.”

He turned away, “Renegade…” His laughter floated back.

“Slow down, willya?” Janis gasped.

“Oh. All right.”

Suddenly they were a threesome, moving through the shifting crowds in a normal way. Jordan felt a heightened alertness, the effect of the drink creeping back after a sobering shock had banished it. A woman in a militia uniform stared back at him defiantly as he noticed the division of her face, half mature and half twisted baby-features, growing in. She had one chubby doll-like arm to match, sticking out of a hole torn carelessly in the top of her sleeve.

“Why doesn’t everybody use that to stay young and beautiful?” Jordan said after she’d passed.

“Regen? Some do,” Kohn said. “It’s expensive. Most mercenaries have it as part of their insurance package, but the no-claims kickback is crippling. Probably just as well. You don’t want people getting reckless just because no nonfatal wound is permanent.”

“Better reckless than wrecked,” Janis said.

When Jordan had gone into the bar he’d hoped to get not just more information but also a rest from Norlonto’s restless streetlife. He’d got more of one and less of the other than he’d hoped. Now he was partly supported by his arm around Janis and by Moh’s arm, also around Janis, locking his in place. It seemed appropriate. He felt knocked sideways by both of them.

Like a hatchling imprinted by the first large moving object it sees, he reflected. So be it. He had never seen a woman as beautiful, as fascinating and free, as Janis. And Moh, he was something else: everything Jordan wasn’t—thin, tough, clued-up—but he made Jordan feel at ease and accepted. What it would be like to be so open, so at home in the world!

“You know something?” Jordan said. “I’ve always believed in you people.”

The others laughed.

“You must have a lot of faith!” Janis said.

“Reason, not faith,” Jordan retorted. “I never had any proof that people like you existed, but I knew you had to. That rational people existed—somewhere else. They damn well don’t exist down there. So I never actually met any. I just read about them in books—read their books. Also I suppose I saw their works. Sort of like the argument from design.” He looked up, waved his free fist at the sky. “Every aeroplane is a proof that there must be a rational mind somewhere!”

“Yeah, well, we know that,” Kohn said. “What amazes me is the uses they can get put to, not to mention the pilot’s birth sign hologram medallion, satellite televangelists—”

“—and Creation astronomy kits—”

“—credulity drugs to make alternative medicine more effective—”

“—designer heroin for dying soldiers—”

“—instant access to more lies than you could refute in ten lifetimes—”

“—Well, that’s freedom for you,” Janis said, grinning up at the two men’s faces. “From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen, right?”

*   *   *

Jordan shrugged off the rucksack in the hallway and stood still for a moment, trying to recover a sense of balance. His ears sang and his eyes still delivered an unfamiliar illusion that everything was spinning, but not actually moving. His knee-joints felt unreliable. Here he was, going with two people he barely knew into a fortified house full of drug takers! Loose women! Armed Communists!

He followed Moh and Janis into the main room. No one else seemed to be around.

“Coffee, anyone?” Moh said.

“Sounds like a really good idea.” Jordan sat down on the sofa, too hard. Faint ringing noises echoed into the distance.

“Here’s another good idea.” Moh tossed something over his shoulder. It landed beside Jordan. “Have yourself one of these.”

Jordan picked up the pack of marijuana cigarettes and looked at it doubtfully as a battered Zippo landed on the identical spot. He turned to Janis and raised his eyebrows. “What do you think of this stuff?”

“Well—it’s not particularly good for you if you smoke a lot, and it makes some people lazy or at least lazier than they’d be anyway, but on the other hand it isn’t addictive and it’s a lot less carcinogenic than tobacco.” She shrugged. “I’m having one, anyway.”

“It doesn’t make holes in your brain?”

“No, I don’t think the latest research really bears that out.”

Jordan took the lighter and packet over to Janis.

“I’ll try it,” he said. “But I’m not quite sure how.”

“Best a little smoke and a lot of air.” She demonstrated. Jordan lit up and went back to the sofa. Away for one evening and already he was on drugs. Rather to his surprise he made a fairly creditable fist of it, and had got over the coughing by the time Moh brought him a big earthenware mug of Nicafé.

“Good stuff?” Moh grinned, settling beside him.

“Yes,” Jordan gasped, wiping his eyes and sipping coffee. He looked at how the man sat: arrogantly relaxed, one ankle resting on the other knee, the ebony gleam of his leather clothes; and the woman, half-lotus in the chair, alabaster skin and tender flesh in black silk, smoke curling around her curling hair. “Can’t say I’ve noticed much effect yet.”

Moh’s lips and brows twitched, but he made no comment.

“So…” Jordan looked from Moh to Janis. “Are you going to tell me what you know?”

Moh rolled his eyes and closed them. “Not tonight we ain’t.”

He seemed to have drifted off into some kind of trance. Janis noticed Jordan noticing, and made a pacifying gesture.

“He’s had a long day,” she said.

“Not to mention the drugs.”

“Yeah,” said Janis. “Not to mention the drugs. Tell me about yourself, Jordan.”

Jordan took another hit. He still couldn’t identify any effect. His mind felt clear and calm, and he couldn’t look at anything but Janis. She had flared when she spoke, and now was settled back to a steady flame with a flickering hint of mischief. They talked quietly while Kohn watched something else, and said nothing.

Moh saw the darkness and the lights of the city around them as if the walls were transparent; and the new strange company he kept, the bright city of clean sharp logic at the back of his mind. It ran pictures for him, eidetic memories that played like VR diskettes, of the world that had made the world he walked in now:

the bright world the banner bright the symbol plain the greenbelt fields the greenfield streets the Fuller domes the crowds the quiet dark moments

the plastic model spaceships hanging from black threads the old Warsaw Pact poster of a little girl cradling the Earth DEFEND PEACE the stacked clutter of toys and books and tapes the VR space-helmet

the war. The Republic didn’t disdain the help of children. The party set up a special militia, the Young Guards. Moh toted his first rifle then, a lightweight British SLR, in boring nights of watching the entrance to an office tower. (The trick was that he was guarding it secretly, from a safe house window across the street: the government was already behaving like a resistance movement.) The days were more exciting: demonstrations and street fights, the tensions of the struggle to maintain neutrality, to keep out of the war. Josh and Marcia made jokes that he didn’t get, about fighting for peace. They were literally doing that, kicking into demonstrations of what they called the War party: Royalists and Tories and Fascists. Sometimes the police joined in on both sides.

Moh, later, found himself surprisingly ignorant of the details of the actual course of the War of European Integration. At the time he picked up the assumption that the news was all propaganda, and only caught glimpses of it on television. German tanks rode battering sleds of air, carrying the star-circled banner into Warsaw and Bucharest and Zagreb. German MiGs cleared the skies.

The Peace Process. No, not that. He jolted himself awake, gulped cold coffee and thought about something else.

*   *   *

Jordan was explaining to Janis the distinction between dispensationalism and premillenarianism (which seemed very important but difficult to grasp) when he heard Moh’s mocking laughter and saw him stand up, looking as if he’d had a good night’s sleep.

“It’s time I went to bed,” Moh said.

“I think it’s time I did,” Janis said. She yawned, stretched, and jumped to her feet.

“D’you mind just crashing here, Jordan, just for tonight?”

“That’s fine. That’s great. Thanks.”

“Okay. See you in the morning, Jordan.”

“Good night.”

Janis waved, smiling. A moment later they were gone, like birds through a hole in the roof. Jordan sat still for some time and then took most of his clothes off, wrapped himself in blankets from the back of the sofa, and stretched out on it and stayed awake for a long time.

*   *   *

“Well?” she said, leaning against the door of his room.

“Well what?”

“Have you found a place?”

“Yeah,” Kohn said.

“Good. Well … I feel like another joint before turning in.” She raised her eyebrows and looked at him. He still seemed wide awake, and he grinned back at her as if this were the most unexpected and delightful suggestion he’d heard in a long time.

“Yeah, why not?”

She turned and opened the door, watching him. His arm came into the room, past her shoulder; he did something with a switch. Small lights glowed on in the corners as she kicked off her shoes and sat down on the edge of the bed. He sat beside her, leaned an elbow against the pillow and offered her the now depleted and battered pack. She took one out and lit up.

“Do you want to share?”

“No, thank you,” he said. “Lipstick tastes.”

She caught him just as he reached for the pack, with her right hand suddenly behind his head. Her fingers dug into his curls. She drew in the smoke to her throat, held it, and grudged the breath that escaped as she whispered, “Taste this…”

She brought their mouths (hers open, his opening) together and breathed out while he breathed in. They both broke away, gasping. The second time she gave less attention to fire and more to water, darting her tongue tip against his.

“You took me by surprise,” Kohn said.

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“I’ve been wanting to do this for hours.”

“Wanton woman.”

“Abandoned,” she agreed. “An outcast of society.”

She stubbed out the filter roach. Kohn kicked off his boots, shrugged out of his waistcoat, then leaned forward and drew her onto him. She trailed her hair from his shoulders down to his hips, then did the same with her lips and tongue, discovering as she did so that it was time to get his trousers off. She straddled him and took her time with the belt and zip. She moved on her knees down over his thighs, tugging the trews and shorts away, and then suddenly it got urgent and she pulled them fiercely over his feet. She sat on his bare thighs, facing away from him, while he pulled the silk top over her head and unlaced her basque. She slipped her own trousers and pants off. She leaned forward, letting her hair tickle his toes, until the pale opalescent shell of the basque fell away from her chest, and his arms slid around her waist. His erection pressed against the small of her back. She turned over on her knees and put her hands on his shoulders and he lay back and she moved forward and up and Moh rose to meet her and she moved, slowly up and swiftly down, and so they continued, the cannabis in their racing blood stretching time.

She did not know when it was she spoke his name and got no answer; and looking down at him, smiled to see that he had fallen asleep just like that.