It was one thing to stand out in the street, catching whatever came your way and dodging the eyecard carriers, but if you went in someplace, and got caught, then you had to deal with the proprietor and the police.
Chango crossed the street and went into the Pegasus Hotel and Casino. She stood in the foyer, dripping wet and fumbling with the clasps of her raincoat. The door man scowled at her. The Pegasus pretty much let anybody in, that's why she was there, but they let you know they weren't happy about it. Chango shrugged off his glare and went down the steps to the casino, losing herself in the crowd. The scanner in her raincoat pocket bumped lightly against her side as she wove her way through the throngs of gamblers clustered around the tables. The air was a warm, hazy soup of reefer smoke and damp bodies. She made her way to the bar, lit a reefer, and ordered a coke. Swiveling in her stool, she leaned back against the bar and took in the action. Someone was on a roll at table five, black jack. The crowd there was denser than at the other tables, and stiff with expectancy. Hungry eyes surveyed the table as the dealer laid down the second round. The focus of their attention was the player second to the right of the dealer. Over the craned heads of onlookers Chango just made out a head of feathery blond hair, but that was all. She couldn't see the pile of chips on the table — she didn't need to. The eyes of the spectators told her it was big, and growing. Chango examined the fringe of the crowd. An elderly woman in a gold lame turban sipped vodka from a fluted glass and glanced periodically around the room — security, the turban was armor. A young man watched the dealer with the patience of a veteran. Two women in matching glitter body suits whispered to each other and laughed. And there, beside them, a middle-aged man, his mouse-brown hair receding at the temples, stood rapt, following the deal of the cards, licking his lips as the players called their bets. Chango set her glass down on the bar, half drained, stubbed out her smoke and walked towards him at an oblique angle, her body facing the main flow of the traffic, not looking at him, but moving sideways with each step, her body language damped to a minimum, which was almost as good as being invisible, especially in a crowd like this. Each step brought her closer to her mark as he stared with desperate concentration at the winning player. Chango pretended to lean around him for a better view as she slipped her hand into his overcoat pocket and withdrew his wallet. She slipped it into her own pocket, the one with the scanner, her knowing fingers picking the cards out of their slots and swiping them. The codes could be sorted later, one of them was bound to be his cash card. She bumped against him as she went past, using the distraction to slip the wallet back into his pocket. "Sorry," she smiled at him, and moved away. Glancing over her shoulder she saw him check his pockets, and smile, relieved at finding his wallet still there, his cards still in it.
She didn't like to do more than one scan per place, so she moved on, to Rhoda's, the Laikon, Trapper's, Parthenomicon. That was where she saw her: A reasonably tall woman in a battered grey raincoat, her dark brown hair short and spikey with rainwater. She glanced about the crowded room with blank alarm. She was scared, but not in a focused way, only in the what-am-I-doing-here, what's-going-on kind of way that made for an easy mark. Chango began to circle in towards her. As she did she noticed that the woman's eyes were a startling shade of blue, her olive skin smooth and even. If she kept up this noticing, she wouldn't be able to make the score. She stopped looking at her, and focused instead on the pockets of the raincoat.
Chango moved up beside her and slipped her hand into a pocket, very softly, very slowly, as if she wasn't moving at all. She wrapped her fingers around a slim, smooth square and then bumped into the mark, actually pushing her away from her card. As Chango jostled her, she felt something beneath the raincoat, something long and rounded. She was carrying a shotgun under there. The last thing Chango wanted to do was mess around with somebody packing heat, for any reason.
"Sorry," Chango said, bending over and pretending to pick up the card. "Did you drop this?" she asked, but she got no answer, the woman was through the door before she had a chance to straighten up. "Shit," Chango glanced at the square in her hand. It wasn't a money card. It was a data card. Chango stared at it for a moment, and then she was out the door herself, glancing up and down the street. She caught sight of the woman almost a block away already, practically running and heedless of the disreputable figure that detached himself from a shop front to tail her. Chango fell behind him, following him follow her failed mark.
oOo
Helix fled down the street in a blind panic. There were so many people in there, and someone had bumped into her and felt — they had to have felt it. Helix swerved, barely avoiding collision with a heavily made up transvestite. People, so many people. Suddenly she felt as if she’d crawl out of her skin in order to get away from them all.
It was almost night now, the rain soaked streets glistening into darkness, reflecting the colors of the neon signs like the rainbow oil slicks of old.
Soon, she'd have to find someplace to spend the night. She couldn't just keep walking forever, despite what her inner urging prompted her to do. She sighed, glancing up at the windows of the Old Laikon Hotel. She had no money for a room.
Suddenly Helix was struck with a longing so powerful it stopped her in her tracks. She wanted... what?
To find her mother? Maybe. It was the only thing she could think of. She wanted something, badly, but her life with Hector Martin had been comfortable, safe. So what else could she be lacking? Only her mother, surely, and yet, just then, all she could really think of was a large tub of warm water. The thought distracted her and she nearly bumped into a man with orange hair sticking out from under a polyweave cap. He grinned and stepped even closer to her. Panicking, she darted down an alley on her right. The lights and music of the casino district faded into shadows and the distant drip of a leaking gutter. She walked past hulking waste modules, the peppermint smell of garbage eating microbes seeping from their seals. Ahead of her, leaning in the shadows of a service entrance, was a man, the faint red glow of his cigarette a beacon to his presence. As she approached he stepped away from the crates, flicking his cigarette into oblivion. Behind her, she heard other footsteps. She walked on stiffly, as if she hadn't noticed there was any one back there, but they undoubtedly had noticed her, and as she approached the man with the cigarette he called out to her, “Where you going, honey?” She didn't answer, she kept on going, but they were closing in behind her too. Finally, after seconds stretched out by the rasp of her breath, her footsteps stuttered to a halt and she turned to see the two who now stood, side by side, in the middle of the alley, blocking her exit. They were lean young men, with old faces and dirty t-shirts. One of them was the guy with red hair she’d nearly collided with earlier. The other one held the glimmering threat of a knife at his side. From behind her, a hand fell on her shoulder. "Hey, lady, you got some spare change?"
"No," she said, and turned halfway to face him. She stepped back, trying to keep all three of them in view.
"No?" the one with the knife queried, "you better be lying." She shook her head and took another step back, but Red Hair grabbed her arm, twisting it behind her. She gasped at the sudden flash of pain. "I don't-" she paused, "I don't know, let me see."