nothing better to be found there now than old, just barely functioning televisions and radios, cassette players from the twentieth century, gear-driven watches, hydraulic pumps, gasoline engines, bottles of propane gas, plumbing fixtures, and toothed keys.
The only traffic happening there now, really, is that of the necro Triads, who recover all the bodies found in public areas and even private homes in order to harvest their natural, possibly profitable, organs. The Triads of Vortex Townships are the best organized in the entire territory; they compete easily with the small organizations of Big Bag Recyclo or Snake Zone.
Here, the human body is still used for something. Here nothing is lost, only transformed. Even death. Especially death.
Here, everything has some use. Everything is recycled.
Ariane Gallagher looks exactly like what she is—an old prostitute. She looks like what this city has become, like what the entire territory of Grand Junction has become.
Like what the world has become.
There is no need for preliminary small talk with a whore. Not even for conversation. And he doesn’t have one second to lose.
But on the other hand, he knows she is like him—business before anything—and that she would not believe he had come halfway across the city to exchange reminiscences about Flesh Market. He can attack directly. He can say everything he has come to say. He can reveal his secret.
“One of my old implants just broke down. I have a contact—I won’t tell you his name—who told me you might be able to help me. That you know someone.”
The old hooker permits herself the luxury of two or three seconds of suspense. “Yes. I know someone. A landlord. He owns a capsule building on BlackSky Ridge.”
“Okay, great. He’s the one?”
“No. I won’t tell you his name, either. My friend knows another guy very well, somewhere else in the city. I won’t tell you his name, either.”
Three degrees, including his contact in Clockwork Orange. Three degrees of separation, thinks James Vegas Orlando. Where is the man I’m looking for?
“The man told my friend more than once that he was waiting for someone. Someone important. He kept using those words. This stranger arrived around two days ago, my friend told me. He’s the man you need to see. He might be able to heal you, and maybe others. At least that’s what the man thinks who knows my friend at BlackSky Ridge.”
Ah, okay, thinks James Vegas. So it’s
four
degrees of separation.
“Great,” he says. “BlackSky Ridge, you said? A capsule building?”
“Yes, on the site of an old motel in Monolith Hills. You can’t miss it—it has a sign with the UManHome logo. They’re orange.”
“I’ll find it,” he says. “The usual price?”
“The usual price. I don’t like to change my habits.”
5 > OUTLANDOS D’AMOUR
The light falls in heavy rays on the face of Wilbur Langlois, illuminating the angular bones of his face in a play of halogen gold and dusty shadow. His black eyes shine like coals lit up by subterranean tungsten; the light makes him even more nocturnal, it brings something out of his being, the millennia of savagery buried in his genetic memory and a bare half-century of civilization—and then a few years of decivilization. It exposes the darkness he is made of, and makes it darker still.
The light streaming in from outside the dark-blue-tinted anti-UV Plexiglas, the solar dimness accentuating the hard planes of his face carved by the artificial light, gives him the look of a robot ready for his turn in a game of chess.
Here in Heavy Metal Valley, he knows he is protecting a sort of sanctuary. It certainly wasn’t his job originally; more than twenty years earlier, the Municipal Metropolitan Consortium of the Territory of Grand Junction, the owner of the cosmodrome, offered him the position of sheriff in this zone that was then in full expansion, built barely a dozen kilometers to the northwest of the launchpad,
The only traffic happening there now, really, is that of the necro Triads, who recover all the bodies found in public areas and even private homes in order to harvest their natural, possibly profitable, organs. The Triads of Vortex Townships are the best organized in the entire territory; they compete easily with the small organizations of Big Bag Recyclo or Snake Zone.
Here, the human body is still used for something. Here nothing is lost, only transformed. Even death. Especially death.
Here, everything has some use. Everything is recycled.
Ariane Gallagher looks exactly like what she is—an old prostitute. She looks like what this city has become, like what the entire territory of Grand Junction has become.
Like what the world has become.
There is no need for preliminary small talk with a whore. Not even for conversation. And he doesn’t have one second to lose.
But on the other hand, he knows she is like him—business before anything—and that she would not believe he had come halfway across the city to exchange reminiscences about Flesh Market. He can attack directly. He can say everything he has come to say. He can reveal his secret.
“One of my old implants just broke down. I have a contact—I won’t tell you his name—who told me you might be able to help me. That you know someone.”
The old hooker permits herself the luxury of two or three seconds of suspense. “Yes. I know someone. A landlord. He owns a capsule building on BlackSky Ridge.”
“Okay, great. He’s the one?”
“No. I won’t tell you his name, either. My friend knows another guy very well, somewhere else in the city. I won’t tell you his name, either.”
Three degrees, including his contact in Clockwork Orange. Three degrees of separation, thinks James Vegas Orlando. Where is the man I’m looking for?
“The man told my friend more than once that he was waiting for someone. Someone important. He kept using those words. This stranger arrived around two days ago, my friend told me. He’s the man you need to see. He might be able to heal you, and maybe others. At least that’s what the man thinks who knows my friend at BlackSky Ridge.”
Ah, okay, thinks James Vegas. So it’s
four
degrees of separation.
“Great,” he says. “BlackSky Ridge, you said? A capsule building?”
“Yes, on the site of an old motel in Monolith Hills. You can’t miss it—it has a sign with the UManHome logo. They’re orange.”
“I’ll find it,” he says. “The usual price?”
“The usual price. I don’t like to change my habits.”
5 > OUTLANDOS D’AMOUR
The light falls in heavy rays on the face of Wilbur Langlois, illuminating the angular bones of his face in a play of halogen gold and dusty shadow. His black eyes shine like coals lit up by subterranean tungsten; the light makes him even more nocturnal, it brings something out of his being, the millennia of savagery buried in his genetic memory and a bare half-century of civilization—and then a few years of decivilization. It exposes the darkness he is made of, and makes it darker still.
The light streaming in from outside the dark-blue-tinted anti-UV Plexiglas, the solar dimness accentuating the hard planes of his face carved by the artificial light, gives him the look of a robot ready for his turn in a game of chess.
Here in Heavy Metal Valley, he knows he is protecting a sort of sanctuary. It certainly wasn’t his job originally; more than twenty years earlier, the Municipal Metropolitan Consortium of the Territory of Grand Junction, the owner of the cosmodrome, offered him the position of sheriff in this zone that was then in full expansion, built barely a dozen kilometers to the northwest of the launchpad,
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