leaving the customer without a pot to piss in.’
‘Ain’t that illegal?’
‘Sure - till it happens.’
‘Okay, let’s see if I understand this - the bank uses the customer’s money for investment.’
‘No it doesn’t - it uses its own money. When d’you ever find your credit balance reduced because the bank manager lent it out or invested it someplace?’
‘Never. How about that.’
‘Hey, Danny,’ whispered the Entropy Kid, edging over.
‘Wait a mo, Kid. So listen, how does the cash newt?’
‘Think about it,’ said the teller in a tone of gentle encouragement. ‘The only investment cash the bank takes from the customer is payment interest and charges.’
‘My deposit’s sittin’ pretty?’
‘Right,’ nodded the teller, delighted with Dante’s progress.
‘Danny,’ hissed the Kid, pulling at Dante’s sleeve. ‘We got work.’
‘Listen to this guy, Kid. So what you’re saying,’ Dante asked the teller, ‘is despite the bank using its own money to back up lending and investment, it’s the customer’s cash it draws on when the shit hits the fan.’
‘Exactly - supported by the myth that banks do business by relending and investing the customer’s funds. They even draw up their books with depositors’ and borrowers’ sums on either side of the balance sheet.’
‘No shit. You hear this, Kid? No shit.’
‘Yeah that’s great Danny,’ the Kid coughed.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Dante was saying, dazed. ‘My greatgrandaddy died in the Depression.’
‘That’s a shame,’ said the teller with real compassion.
A perky, gum-chewing teller strode brightly up to the old guy. ‘Slips to sign, Mr Kraken,’ she said, then saw Dante’s gun and shrieked, dropping everything.
‘For God’s sake, Corey,’ complained the old guy. The rear guard pulled a gun and the Kid’s Kafkacell went off like a grenade, putting the guard through the wall - a shell the size of a silencer flew against the teller window. The front guard spun with a snub repeater and the Kid blew him into the street in an explosion of glass.
The Kid backed across the marble floor, brandishing the cannon gun twitchily. ‘Keep a cool cortex nobody gets hurt,’ he whispered.
‘What he say?’ squinted Mr Kraken.
‘He says keep a cool cortex, nobody’ll get hurt - means everyone, everyone’s cortexes. And that includes the inner matter of the cerebrum itself. The Kid’s got a speech problem but he’s okay. Ain’t that right, Kid?’
‘Tell ’em to keep off the tills, Danny,’ whispered the Kid.
‘Yeah, keep off the pills, ladies and gentlemen - it’s a slippery slope and you know it. Kraken, you the head teller, right? Get in back and chip the vault.’
This was fine by Mr Kraken - even lazy flies with no vested interest in anything had participated in the festival of alarm-tripping which Dante’s gun had triggered. The old man chuckled to himself and shuffled along so slowly that palaeontologists were pouring plaster into his tracks. Dante and the Kid put their heads together. ‘Must have been a glacier in a past life, Danny.’
‘Yeah, lucky we ain’t really after cash - this rate it won’t be worth shit after inflation.’
‘Denizens at the door, Danny.’
Passers-by were standing on the oblonged guard and peering in through the shattered entrance. Cop sirens were howling. ‘Quit stallin’, old man,’ shouted Dante.’ Gimme the key.’
Dante left the Kid on guard and took the keychip into the vault room.
The vault was on a timelock - when the chip was used without the correct combination the user was thrown twenty minutes into a future in which he or she was already cuffed and surrounded. The computer man Download Jones had hacked a card swiper which was now housed in Dante’s belt buckle - Dante swiped it through, altering the program. He pushed it into the lock, tapped out a random set of numbers and was thrown twenty minutes into the past.
The sirens cut out instantly. Nobody knew he was in the vault room. He had ten minutes before the Entropy Kid entered the bank, and fifteen before he himself did.
Rosa Control had excised the real combination from the manager by threatening to cut off his hand, and because his palmprint was also required, had cut off his hand. Dante thumped the hand against the print panel and tapped in the code - the door clanked. He pushed at it like a stalled car and it slowly swung.
Dante went immediately to a deposit hatch, opening it with a tension wrench and rake pick. Inside was a book bound in PVC. He removed it and placed his ballast thesaurus and the hand in its place, closing the hatch. Leaving the vault and swinging closed the heavy metal door, he sat at the depositors’ table and fired up the volume with a mixture of tense excitement and reverence.
“Life and death have equal authority in nature. When laws contradict so fundamentally, they cause mere confusion in the average soul - rarely a clean break. Yet when two principles meet which can’t be reconciled, the intervening space is perfect for demonstrations of balloon-folding and fart ignition. In the right place and at the right time, it’s possible to gall both the non-evolving head of the fascist and the dilute mind of the vapid liberal. Opposites attract, resulting in a narrowing of possibilities. Explosions amplify in an enclosed space. People say that those who attack a system should be prepared to live without it and assume they are not. The worst thing about the ogre in a nightmare is having to dispose of its corpse.”
Satisfied, he stood and tucked the book into his pants. He found a fusebox and blinded the bank-floor cameras with a boltcutter. Waiting just inside the vault room, he watched the clock and idly thought of how a jester’s costume of matching halves was a handy guide for sawing. Then he entered the bank floor and pressed the Uzi to the rear guard’s temple. ‘Drop the guzzler.’
The Entropy Kid was nearby gnashing painkillers and messing with an euthanasia form. The guard’s gun clattered to the floor and the Kid looked up, jittery and startled. Dante saw the Kid’s fear in all its polychrome ferment - from the jug of his skull poured a spine of unset jello. ‘This the second time for you, Danny? How’d I do?’
A commotion at the entrance - the front guard had drawn and been grabbed from behind - shots cracked off into the ceiling, blowing lights. Tellers screamed. The guard was knocked cold by the newcomer, who stepped forward and spread his arms casually wide. He wore a full-length coat, three shades of black. Dante again. ‘Hell’s other people, Cubit,’ he said, ‘especially when they’re gassing you.’
Dante raised the Winchester, and hesitated.
Dante Two took another step forward. Alarms were clamouring. ‘Spill, Cubit. We agreed.’
Dante aimed and Dante Two threw
