The Long Run | Page 4

blocked the walkway from the maglev platform, looking back as they did so at Trent and the French women. Trent turned to leave also and then suddenly, just the other side of the maglev gates, turned around to face the French women again.
"Do you speak English?" he demanded.
The one nearest him said in English, haughtily, clearly, "I do not speak English."
"Oh." The maglev gates closed on the women, and the power on the platform suddenly died. The platform went dark. "One hundred and fifteen million people," said Trent in his best French, "died last year because there wasn't enough food for them." Behind the gate, on the maglev platform, the women were pushing frantically at the pressure points. Trent did not think they had even heard him. He looked at them for just a moment, stood watching them without expression from the other side of the gates. The one who was not punching at the pressure points suddenly became aware of Trent standing and watching them, and pleaded in French, "Young man, will you call someone to let us out?"
Turning away, Trent shook his head. "I'm already late," he muttered.
He almost tripped over the juice junkie.
The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life.
--The Player's Litany
Heat rises; it was always notably cool on the bottom level of the Down Plaza.
Walking out onto Eight, those who were new to the Plaza, even New York natives, tended to gawk like tourists. The upper seven levels of the Down Plaza were illuminated by yellow light with a greenish tinge: a mixture of yellow sunpaint and the omnipresent, wavering flickering light of the blue-green glowfloats in their eternal migration between the first and eighth levels of the Down Plaza.
Level Eight was a riot of color; glittering adholo, real neon and neonlaser and glowpaint. Eight was the only level with a floor, though those who spent any amount of time down on Eight learned to avoid those areas around the maglev tower where the ceiling opened up; the eight level drop into the crowds was a favorite with jumpers.
Eight was easily the most popular level in the Plaza. There was a whorehouse behind the furniture shop, and two sensable parlors that catered to those with refined, largely illegal tastes. CalleyTronics was located there as well, and Players from over a hundred kilometers around came in person to buy from Calley, who had been a rather famous Player himself as a young man, in the wistfully remembered days before DataWatch.
The BloodSilk Boys were mixed among the crowds at the west end of the Plaza. Four gendarmes--cops, New York City Police officers--sat in full goldtone riot armor at Googie's Place on the eastern edge of Eight, watching the Plaza through the coffee shop's glassite walls. Trent did not look at either group as he walked away from the diminishing sound of the swearing French women and went to see Bones.
On the crowded floor of Down Plaza, well back from the jumper zone, eight floors beneath the surface of Brooklyn, the old black man who was considered by many the world's greatest contortionist gathered up the hard Chinese and SpaceFarer CU in the basket before his platform and prepared to take a break from his routine.
Trent came to a stop just off the walkway, beside the low platform on which Bones worked. Pulling on his shirt, Bones had to raise his voice to be heard above the loud music and the babble of the crowd.
"Evening, Trent. Take dinner with me?"
"Hi, Bones. Not tonight."
"Something goin', Trent?"
Trent did not even turn his head as Bones spoke to him. "What do you mean?"
"'Bout an hour ago I seen Jimmy Ramirez; and Tammy the Rat been hanging around, and not fifteen minutes ago I seen your midget. And there was six Peaceforcers, they was here when I got here this morning. I ain't seen the Left Hand of the Devil in the Plaza that early in, oh, five years."
Trent heard barely audible popping noises as Bones' joints slowly realigned themselves. Still he did not look at the old man. "Six Peaceforcers?"
"I don't trust that midget, Trent." Peering through the crowds and flickering adholos, Bones tried to see what it was that Trent was looking at, but could not.
"You don't trust who?"
"That midget working for you."
"Which midget?"
"The pretty one."
"Oh, Bird. Bird's a doll, Bones."
"He's the right size," Bones agreed.
"He's only fourteen, Bones. He hasn't started growing yet. When were the Peaceforcers here?"
Bones sighed audibly. "You got something going today, don't you? You ever going to get a job, Trent?"
"Bones."
"What?"
"Don't start on me today. I'm not in the mood for it."
"Just wonderin'. You so good with the Net, I knows you could get work."
"Bones, this is starting to look like a very bad day. I don't want