The Eternal Prison (Avery Cates) by Jeff Somers

Author:Jeff Somers [Somers, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: FIC002000
ISBN: 9780316052924
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2009-07-24T16:00:00+00:00

XXIII

YOU’RE GONNA NEED THE HAND

The sun had come out, and I deeply regretted it.

The sky was cloudless and immaculate, a sheet of blue over our heads that took sunlight bounced off the dark, dirty water and sent it right back at you. I could feel my skin getting red and purple, blistering, my brain baking inside my soggy clothes, sending stinking steam into the air around me. For two days I’d been living with Faliero while he and Gall tried to gather up my price for release of Faliero’s money: information on Michaleen Garda, his present location, and anything else they could give me. Two days of queasy, rolling life, the whole world bobbing up and down around me. Everything damp, everything smelling like sewage, the rotten water getting everywhere and hanging in the air heavily, soaking into you. And me reluctant to take off my coat, to sever ties with my lucky charm, so I kept bloating with stink and damp, soaking it up and turning into one walking rash. Faliero said it took yen to live in a place like this, and I believed him. I just didn’t understand why you’d want to.

Faliero’s place was opulent enough, in its way. The platform on top was just a landing point and outdoor space; below there was one whole floor—huge, fifteen rooms and each one bigger than any apartment or crash pad I’d ever lived in—and below that were two floors. The first floor, above water, was relatively comfortable. Below that everything was dark, lit by harsh white light, and damp. And I mean fucking damp. I woke up in my little room—watched, of course, on closed-circuit video that had been inexpertly hidden behind a mirror—in a puddle of myself every morning.

I leaned over the railing and stared down at the inky ocean. For a few feet you could see the city beneath us, the crumbling stone facades from centuries ago, old shit. It was being eaten up by algae and seaweed, disappearing into theory and speculation maybe four or five feet down, the cloudy sea its own atmosphere.

Touma was supposed to do something about this twenty-five years ago, Salgado muttered darkly. Incompetent piker. Twenty-five years ago there were options to salvage Venice.

Why in the world would we save it? Marin snickered. Because it is old? Dolores, I expect a higher level of thinking from you. I’ve got sixty million people starving to death because of you jackasses from the Joint Council, and you want me to spend one hundred seventy trillion yen to stop this pile of shit from sinking?

No, it’s much better spent turning us all into monsters.

I pushed them away, opening my eyes and blinking. I heard steps and glanced at Gall just as Faliero joined me at the railing. The cop looked fresh and comfortable, wearing a new suit of deep purple fabric that looked like it breathed well. He was smoking a real cigarette, making a show of paying me no attention, and I longed for a gust of breeze to send some smoke over to me.

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