| |
I message Bits while me and Butler are walking to the helicopter place, or maybe just where the helicopter people live. Sure I’ve known him for a lifetime but, people change, so I wanna give her the space to check and see if Butler’s actually got nefarious connections and aims, but everything seems on the level, or at least still our type of crooked. //Who is this guy?// she asks.
//Somebody I know from home.// I glance at him; he must assume I’ve gotta make contact with my people, but he’s not even lookin at me, but out the cab window. //Look he knows some helicopter people, and even if one of their rides doesn’t work, they know other pilots.//
//Sounds good.// And I think that’s that but then Bits messages me again. //So Bristol is really excited that you’re bringing a man home so I guess be prepared for that.//
//Great. Roger that.// I assumed she’d be like this, it’s fine. I’d be more worried if she wasn’t, honestly. //I’ll let you know when we’re done and heading over.//
“You just got in today, you said?” Butler asks.
“Yeah, I haven’t even seen the inside of the place yet. I came right to the market after dropping ‘em off.”
“Over by Disney you said? Was prob’ly pretty pricey.”
“Right?” I grin at him; he’s fishing and it’s none of his goddamn business. Bringing a man home. I never brought Butler home, at home. He was home, if that makes any kinda sense. All the families knew each other, at home, all the families worked together, at home, because survival was work besides the other stuff that we did to get money for what we couldn’t just do for ourselves. All us kids just ran in a feral barefoot herd as we grew up, playing and scrapping and all of that, boys and girls alike. Sometimes people peeled off for more domestic pursuits and sometimes we got caught up in cybernetic super soldier programs, it’s just how it is. How it was. Well. We signed up for it. We thought it’d be good for our families.
I assume he messages his guys too, and where the cab leaves us is definitely not a place where helicopters are stored or manufactured, it’s still right in the city, an apartment building with stories and stories of rocking and crackling and humming AC units perched on the outside like the weirdest squarest pigeon problem. Seems like all the renewable energy people would be really into figuring out a better way for environmental controls planetside; they got it figured out in space after all.
The elevator’s got an Out Of Order sign written on it on cardboard and we go up the stairs, and then up the stairs, and then up the stairs. The building’s pretty quiet, probably everybody else sleeping. I don’t really know where the time went but it’s to that time of night where most decent people’re sleeping and people like us have drunk too much, or done other things too much, and are going about our business in a way that we tend not to in daylight, even though we could I guess. Bothers me less than a lotta people. Bits isn’t super into light in general, she’s practically mole people sometimes. Not normally so bad as when we drove back up through Mexico, finished off that job with Bristol and Nicolai.
Butler’s got a real actual key for the door and lets himself in. The door opens to a little hallway where shoes are lined up, and he kicks out of his unlaced boots, and I kick out of mine. I get a closer look, of course; they are definitely the same kind of laces. Old habits. Same socks too.
“Hello!” a gangly Asian guy in a coverall with the sleeves rolled up comes in the hallway and waves. I become aware of a repeating, high-pitched noise just at the edge of my hearing, maybe a fan, maybe some weird AC unit, but no, the AC units here are humming. “I’m Meatball.”
“Dolly,” I say, waving back.
“Scooter went out to get beers,” Meatball says to Butler.
“Aw, they didn’t have to do that.”
Meatball scratches the back of his neck, shrugs. “Sure they did. We did.” He’s got mechanic’s hands, scuffed and scarred, and his eyes have the replacement-glints that Bitsy’s do now. I wonder if his are recent, or if they’re post-market the way mine would’ve been, if I had ‘em.
“Well I appreciate it,” I say. In the apartment now, there’s a couple closed doors but mainly this living room I think, and a row of 3D printers on a long low table against one wall, their arms all moving. That’s the noise. None of ‘em are really big enough to be printing big helicopter parts, but I’m sure there’s lotsa small stuff that they can piece out here. Or other things that they can make faster and sell faster to support the helicopter habit. Everything’s orderly, though. Tidier than I’d known Butler to be, so either he doesn’t live here, or he pitches in. Or they let him take care of other things. Lots of possibilities. Lots of people willin’ to do housework for you, if you take care of occasional necessary violence for them. As me how I know.
“See? Somebody knows about hospitality!” Meatball says, and Butler actually chuckles.
“Yeah, Dolly hung some manners on somewhere,” he said. Did I? Kinda. Bristol’s manners by osmosis, maybe. “When we were kids, though...”
“I don’t think we need to revisit that era,” I say. God we’re gonna go over this again in the rental with Bits and Bristol, aren’t we. Maybe we’ll be late enough that Bristol will be asleep, anyway. Then we can at least all face it fresh with the morning.
“You knew each other when you were kids? That’s so cool!”
“Sure did! And Butler’s the biggest mama’s boy you ever did know. Every little bump or scrape, he’d go runnin’ home from wherever we were, sometimes across the whole damn county, so she’d kiss it and make it better.” I smile sweetly when Meatball laughs, and wander over to the printers as Butler defends his manliness.
“She’s always been this mean, as you can guess.”
“Sure have.” They’ve got all kinds of little parts going on the printers. Valves and clamps and other fiddly things. One of them is definitely gun parts, not really a surprise. Gotta print what pays, I assume. Or maybe it’s a one-off, maybe they started it when Butler called ‘em because they didn’t have any guns on hand. I guess that’s possible. Scooter and Meatball could be wide-eyed innocents in this terrible world, just helicopter enthusiasts. With their good new friend Butler. Hmm.
There’s a key in the lock and I glance at Meatball and Butler; Butler was looking at me already and our eyes meet for a moment. I don’t know what his play is here, I shouldn’t assume he’s got one, and I shouldn’t mess up whatever it is. We just need a ride, preferably sooner rather than later, preferably as discreet as a bootleg helicopter can be.
Scooter comes in cautiously, a little less vigorous than Meatball, but they do smile and hold up the beers. “I bought two six packs of Hong Kong Machine Men.”
“Sounds exciting, thanks a ton,” I say. Really, what I know about Hong Kong beers is that there’s a bunch of breweries here, actually, and that Party is the one that people really don’t like. There’s probably more but no matter how fun it sounds, Party beer is not where it’s at. Kinda like mandatory fun. Nobody wants that.
“You’re welcome! Any...friend of Butler’s is a friend of ours!” Scooter pulls out one of the bottles and hands it to me. Well that was a weird pause.
“Aw well thanks.” I look at Butler, and look at Butler’s belt buckle then. Yup, it’s the old spur one. He sees me looking and grins. I lever my bottle cap off with the offered opener; probably a table edge would’ve been fine, but you don’t do that when you’re a guest in somebody’s house unless they do it first. Plus, no sense showing off my cyber strength unless I have to, doin it with my bare hands. “So did he tell you why I’m in town?”
“Only that you need a ride to Vietnam and he offered one of our helicopters?” Scooter says, looking slightly worried. “Which, not that we mind really, except that—”
“I didn’t offer to give her a helicopter, I said that we could maybe arrange a ride,” Butler says with a laugh.
“And we’ll pay,” I say. “We’re not lookin’ to take advantage of anybody. Well. We’re not lookin’ to take advantage of you.”
Scooter looks less worried, and Meatball looks even more delighted. “From here to Vietnam? Where in Vietnam?”
“We were thinking Da Nang, but really, if you can get us in-country, we can figure it out from there.” We're all of us pretty good, directionally. For different reasons, I guess.
“If we’re taking your money to fly you to Vietnam we aren’t going to just drop you off wherever,” Scooter says, just total genuine disbelief.
“Hey, I’m not castin’ aspersions on your professionalism. I just know plans have to change midstream sometimes, it’s how things go.”
“Okay but how much money are you going to pay us to fly you to Vietnam?” Meatball asks, maybe with visions of new 3D printers in his head, who can say. Of the two, I think Meatball’s the dreamer. Probably also the impulsive one.
“Oh I dunno. I think just an airplane ticket is a couple hundred bucks nowadays. Let’s say we’ll cover your fuel and refuel, and then...” I watch Butler watching them and wonder what his play here is. He isn’t here out of the goodness of his heart, that just isn’t how he operates. Which isn’t to say there isn’t any good in him, he isn’t the villain of many stories that I know about. God knows none of us’re without sin; that’s not even Tragic Backstory, just plain hard truth. Where we’re from, it’s too far from the coast to’ve flooded and too far from cities to’ve benefitted and just the infrastructure crumbled when they built the hyperloop and stuff, and when factory farms kept buying out the family ones and then going vertical. Time marched on. “How about ten thousand dollars.”
That might still be too little, we might be takin’ advantage, I do have more than that liquid. But Scooter makes a visible effort to decide to play it cool, and for a second, I wonder what a whole damn helicopter costs to buy, anyway, bootleg or not. I think, of the two, Scooter's the worrier. The planner. “Well I think that sounds about right, between the fuel, and then the maintenance we’ll have to do once we get to Vietnam, and after we get home again. Plus our discretion of course.”
“Plus your discretion,” I agree, then I hold out my sweating beer bottle. “Drink to it?”
Scooter and Meatball look at each other, and Meatball has far less of a poker face and grins. Scooter shrugs, and we clink bottlenecks. “Drink to it.”