Metrophage | Page 3

offering up flickering flesh-images of
dead video and rock stars), the anarchist-physician Croakers, the
Yakuza Rebels and the Gypsy Titans; even the Naginata Sisters were
out, swinging blades and drinking on the corner in front of the Iron
Orchid.
As Jonny crossed Sunset, a few of the Sisters waved to him. When he
waved back, a gust of wind pulled open his tunic, revealing his
Futukoro Automatic. The Sisters whooped and laughed at the sight of
the weapon, feigning terror. A tall Sister with Maori facial tattoos
crooked her finger and began blasting him with an imaginary gun.
Coming toward him from the opposite direction was a ring of massive
Otoko Niku. Meat Boys--uniformly ugly acromegalic giants, each
easily three meters tall. In the center of the protective ring, an old
Yakuza oyabun openly stared and pointed at people. It was rare enough
for people to see a pure-blood Japanese in the street that they stopped to
stare back, until the Meat Boys cuffed them away. Jonny thought of a
word then.
Gaijin. Foreigner. Alien.
That's me. I'm gaijin, Jonny thought. He could find little comfort in the
familiarity of the streets. Jonny realized that by acknowledging his
desire to kill Easy Money, he had cut himself off from everybody
around him. He walked slower. Twice he almost turned back.
A tiny nisei girl tried to sell him a peculiar local variation on
sushi--refried beans and raw tuna wrapped in a corn husk--commonly
known as Salmonella Roll. Jonny declined and ducked into an alley.

There, he swallowed two tabs of Desoxyn, hijacked from a Committee
warehouse.
It was good stuff. Very soon, a tingling began in his finger-tips and
moved up his arms, filling him with a pleasantly tense, almost sexual,
energy. Beads of sweat broke out on his hands and face, ran down his
chest. He thought of Sumi.
"I might not be back tonight," he had told her before he left the squat
they shared. "Uno tareja. Got some deliveries to make," he lied.
Routine stuff."
"Then why are you taking that blunderbuss?" Sumi asked, pointing to
the Futukoro pistol Jonny had hidden under his tunic.
Jonny ignored her question and tried to look very interested in the
process of lacing up his steel-tipped boots. Sumi terrified him.
Sometimes, in his more callous moments, he considered her a slip-up,
his one remaining abandonment to emotional ties. Occasionally, when
he felt strong, he would admit to himself that he loved her.
"I'll be passing through the territories of a dozen gangs tonight and then
if I'm lucky I'll be landing in Carnaby's Pit. That's why the
blunderbuss," he said. "I should be taking a Committee battalion with
me."
"I bet they'd be thrilled if you called them."
"I bet you're right."
Almond-eyed Sumi stroked his hair with delicate, callused hands. He
had met her at the zendo of an old Buddhist nun. The Zen study had not
stuck, but Sumi had. Her full name, Sumimasen, meant variously,
thank you," I'm sorry," and this never ends." She had been on her own
almost as long as Jonny. Along the way, she picked up enough
electronics to make her living as a Watt Snatcher; That is: for a fee she
would tap right into the government's electric lines under the city and
siphon off power for her customers.

Jonny got up and Sumi put her arms around him, thrusting her belly at
the pistol in his belt. "Is that your gun or are you just happy to see me?"
Sumi asked. She did a whole little act, rolling her eyes and purring in
her best vamp voice. But her nervousness was obvious.
Jonny bent and kissed the base of her neck, held her long enough to
reassure, then longer. He felt her tense up again, under his hands.
"I'll be back," he said.
During the last few months, Jonny had begun to worry about leaving
Sumi alone. Officially, the government's power lines did not exist. All
the more reason the State would like to wipe the Watt Snatchers out.
All the gangs were outlaws, technically. The elements of the equation
were simple: its components were the price of survival divided by the
risks that survival demanded. And in an age of rationing and
manufactured shortages, survival meant the black market. The gangs
produced whatever the smuggler lords couldn't bring in. And the
pushers sold it on the streets.
Jonny had chosen his own brand of survival when he walked away
from the Committee for Public Health and threw in with the pushers. It
was a simple question of karma. Now he worked the black market,
selling any drugs the smuggler lords could supply--anti-biotics, LSD
analogs, beta-endorphins, MDMA, skimming the streets on a
razor-sharp high compounded of adrenaline and paranoia.
In his more philosophical