Catspaw by Joan D. Vinge

Author:Joan D. Vinge [Vinge, Joan D.]
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Science fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction - General
ISBN: 9780445205314
Publisher: Warner Books
Published: 2010-03-07T00:00:00+00:00

EIGHTEEN

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The Tube that ran under the bay from N’Yuk island to the island called Stat had been built nearly three hundred years ago. It hadn’t been intended to make stops along the way. But then they ran out of room up above, and the city had started oozing off the end of the land into the cold, dark waters of the harbor. Now most of the sea bottom between the islands was covered with a separate city, clear domes spreading like a mass of fish eggs over the silty muck, reclaiming it for the air-breathers.

But nobody could call that part of town real desirable, and so like Oldcity it had filled up with the dregs, the losers and the users, the kind of people who slipped through holes in the combine nets—by choice, or because they couldn’t help themselves, and couldn’t find anybody else who wanted to help them either. The Tube made stops there now, and at the third one I got off. To reach the surface, I climbed about three hundred steps that smelled like piss, because the lift was out of order. The pilastered cavern of the station itself didn’t look so bad—the FTA managed the services here like it did in Federal Trade Districts everywhere. They did a pretty good job of it. And then they left the human flotsam who lived there to drift, instead of taking care of them too. They needed their pools of desperate, unskilled labor all over the galaxy for their press gangs to feed off of, to sell to the combines to do their dirty work. I stepped over a sick dog that lay panting at the top of the light-strung stairs, my hands clenched inside my jacket pockets as I looked around me at the graffiti and the garbage. I didn’t want to touch anything, have the greasy dirt rub off on me, stick to my skin, pollute me. I felt sick when I remembered how it had been once, when I’d been one of these people. When I hadn’t known where the filth stopped and my flesh started, and hadn’t even cared…

“Shit—” I said softly. I stopped, forcing myself to lean against a wall while I got my bearings. Now I knew I’d been too long with the taMings. I hadn’t just begun to forget who I really was, I’d actually begun to hate myself. It must be catching. I pulled up my collar as I moved away from the station steps. I almost thought I could still smell the sea bottom, that stench and tang I used to catch a whiff of sometimes in Oldcity, when an accidental breath of real sea air found its way inside. But the sea bottom was buried under monomole and composite. It was only my imagination, trying to make something better of the stale smell of sweat and urine.

This was the place I wanted, the station called Free Market Square. Argentyne and the players had described it to me,

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