Download was yammering about another device, one he had to re-set every day - if he wasn’t free to do so it would unleash itself. He rarely made a noise on the subject, as there were people who would kill him if they thought it would cause trouble. ‘Ten past one, man. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it till I’m a seething heap of bugs.’
‘That may not be long,’ the surgeon told him, meaning he had a space reserved on Olympus Dump.
For years it had been assumed that expensive overcrowding would lead the city to establish the cod-eye sentence for all offences or abolish visitation and allow inmates to die and rot in an unofficial capacity. But it occurred in a more roundabout fashion due to some low-spark suggesting that lifers could be stored cheaply and easily in bulk cryogenic freezers. When the policy was adopted, the entire population went berserk in the hope of being slammed in a fridge and thawed out to a better world. The system was turned off and the powerdown blamed on faulty equipment - technology hadn’t advanced enough to keep the inessential alive. The authorities saw that the exercise had been unnecessarily elaborate and that rather than stacking thugs in a freezer they might as well stack them in a landfill. The Dump towered over Beerlight, a lesson to potential lawbreakers that the law was already broken.
Download was pounded to the floor. He moved his arm as though he’d the temerity to protect himself. In what form would his atonement come to fruition? They refused to tell him, feigning bafflement. A fist smashed into his jaw and with a sound louder than a bomb, the building vaporized so fast a dozen cops were left falsifying evidence in mid air.
How many times does a man have to shave, thought Blince, before his chin gets the message? He threw the razor aside and gazed through the tank window. Stubborn horrors passed in darkness. That’s how fish stay smooth, he thought - no chin. And birds? No chin, forehead, ears or nose to speak of. Imagine an army of such men. Worse than useless.
‘Den’s exploded,’ mentioned the driver without looking back. ‘It’ll be Parker.’
‘Sure, he’s been tryin’ to put me under the bridge for years. Remember the last one, Benny?’ Blince reminisced. A Barrett 82 Light Fifty blasted at the denfront, the shooter leaving the rig in the road and screeching off in a customized drophead. Brute Parker thought ‘passive aggressive’ meant shooting someone from a lounger. ‘Sure, distributin’ bullets with a real largesse.’
‘He’ll give you the cod eye, Chief,’ taunted the driver.
‘Not me. Nobody’ll get this joker coolin’ on a slab - nobody but God in his infinite wisdom.’ Blince thought about an early Parker attack and Benny getting winged. Few people Parker shot were ever shot again. ‘Someone’s been takin’ liberties with democracy, Benny. Democracy in its smartest pants.’
Benny sat opposite, his face revealing nothing - not even his eyes.
‘Wake up Benny goddammit, am I talkin’ to myself here?’
‘Sorry, Chief - feelin’ daffy.’
‘Daffy ain’t an option, trooper boy - what if we hadn’t called back-up and wound up stuck in the Mall? We’d be gettin’ rid o’ crooks only to have ’em spring up again to the crack o’ doom.’ He said it without conscious irony. ‘Boredom shoulda tipped us off, Benny, no gettin’ round it.’
The tank jerked to a stop and Blince threw the hatch open, lolling out and approaching the cop emplacement through the spackle of gun hits. Benny followed after, skirting bodies and bonfires.
A guy with a face like a spaniel trotted toward Blince. ‘Damn fine to meet you, Mr Blince. I’ve followed your career with astonishment and horror. Never in my wildest nightmares did I expect to shake your hand.’
‘Foresight’d be a gift in a smarter man,’ Blince remarked, sailing past the proffered limb and peering at the Deal Street bank front, where employees were screaming demands and throwing out their dead. A cop earthmover ploughed the corpses aside to allow the free exchange of gunfire. ‘Get a real sense of deja vu, eh Benny?’
The spaniel man was shouting through a hailer. ‘The violence you manifest is compromised by its appearance.’
Blince stopped in the act of lighting a cigar. ‘Just what at the subatomic level was that?’
‘Testin’ a new strategy uptown, Chief,’ Benny fidgeted, embarrassed. ‘Phenomenology.’
‘Phenomenology my bulgin’ ass,’ roared Blince, lumbering back toward the barricades.
‘Throw down the guns - an object is an object only insofar as it may happen to resemble what is in your hands,’ hailed the spaniel man, breaking off amicably as Blince arrived.
‘What’s your name, soldier?’
‘Tredwell Garnishee.’
‘What did you just say to me?’
‘My name, sir.’
‘His name, he says. That’s not a name, Tredwell, it’s a stab in the back for the forces o’ light. All bets are off. I’m takin’ over this investigation. What the hell is this?’ Blince snatched a bag from Tredwell. ‘Trail mix? You got trail mix for a bank job? I oughta slap your droolin’ face.’
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