It has been many, many years now since I flew on ebon wings through these skies. Do you know what it means, to reject death as a means to the finish of life? You are still among the living; of course you do not. You may be keen to know that I do not myself, either. I grapple with the concepts of life and death as a child grapples with shoelaces. I am neither mortal nor immortal; I am created by mortality. My birth was with the first few amoebas that shared their genetic information; my death shall be when molecules even vaguely like those you yourselves call organic are no more. To your eyes--rather, to your perceptions--I seem something dark and fanciful, almost the village idiot. I appear sometimes with little warning, "a flutter of wings", while other times I seem to "circle above you" for great times. I do not go unbidden, unlike death. You call to me. You fashion my body, you give me wings to fly on. And when I deliver you, I get no thanks. I expect none. You have done me honor enough during your life. I have been known by many names in the violet hurricane of space-time: Ro, Karasu, Corvus, Crow. Now, my name is Outlaw, for to fly is banned. More, to have life with a meaning, even a meaning of evil manifest, is discouraged. And last, death is cheated: cybernetics and simulymph take the place of atrophy and gangrene. Few rise now. And those who do...oh, if I could sink so low as to feel joy, it would be for them. -- Spacefall. Enveloped in a womb against the black world around her she felt herself small, a head, a chest, little more. No limbs, no control, powerless. The blue and brown Earth was rushing towards her. She rotated as she fell, watching it move smoothly into the upper part of her eyes, then spin down below her chin; it darted around her again and again. She looked at her once- forsaken home, and she told herself that as soon as she reached it she would die. She would be battered into oblivion, not even her soul would live. If that did not happen... The fallen angel behind her clutched at her. It smiled through its vertical mouth, peered at her through its central eyespot. Two massive limbs reached out for her, and its phallus clutched at her. The Butterfly with One Eye would take her and swallow her up forever. She tasted fear; but the one in ten billion walked beyond the fear. She knew hate. She knew the hatred and jealousy that the dead have for the living. There was a blackness that only the human mind could paint, and it was tantalizingly close. It was a hairless and clammy idiot god that yearned to suckle the blood of the living. It was the larva of the devil. _DON'T LOOK! DON'T LOOK!_ Consciously, she built arms to grasp and legs to walk. She wrapped her newfound limbs around this, her savior in formaldehyde. She pressed its cheek to hers and bowed her head in submission. Its teeth began to pluck at her third eyelid-- impact. She stood, naked beneath her armor, atop the scrap heap. She tried to breathe, and inhaled smog and fumes in place of stale recycled air. Every nerve that her spine and brain could feel screamed in fetal agony. Her mind was in a daze, as though ravaged by bedsores. Around her was a dust-red sky, with the sun setting behind a city that floated in that terrible air. Scraps of metal--more like rust--were below her feet. Like the hands of a subterranean behemoth, cranes reached to scoop and turn the scrap. _This...this is your world now._ She screamed, and the life force of the world trembled. -- Ido felt Gonzu's eyes on his back, and tried to pay them no heed. For years, he had simply dismissed the hypocrisy he injected into his life, and this was to be another night of it. He slipped into his greatcoat and wheeled the Racketehammer beside him into the lift. In his mind, he pictured a map of the Scrapyard. Within it, he superimposed where bodies had been found, assembling the diagram chronologically. There had been no pattern to them, aside from their gender, but they were restricted to a particular area. Not a reputable one, but one where he felt he could attract little attention. His path took him through areas gentile and profane alike. The humans of the lower world, his kindred a hundred times removed, made their way in whatever way they chose around and about him. He gave them little thought, only enough to ensure his safety. If they paid him no concern, they were of no concern to him, a most simple arrangement. He entered the arcade around Mbera Square. This part of the city was one that excited his curiosity as well as his fear; for it seemed to him that the buildings around him were from a bygone, pre-Tipharean age. The steel and concrete that made them was often obscured by pollution, but held up against time far better than any building he had seen in the Scrapyard. More, the architecture was radically different, akin to a warren than the open areas that the Factory preferred for its own security. But because of these attributes, it was also one of the basest places in the Scrapyard. Thugs and low-lifes of all natures would hide there and be free from persecution. Gang warfare, replete with explosives and projectiles, was a way of life. Ido genuinely feared for his safety. The reward, on the other hand, was beyond measure: simple release from pain. Perchance, joy. To do something so blackly wrong, and yet something that meant more to him than almost anything he could think of. The adrenaline rush was good, and the chance to do well for his community was a balm; but he would forfeit both these goods if only he could kill. Death. Blood to call his own. Not the power that came from inflicting pain, not the sexual release of a warm, supplicant body, only the act of murder, the very nature of the Beast itself. He jerked his head at a sound. Footsteps; footsteps that sounded like the ones on the night that those two prostitutes had been killed. A smell of death and of repulsion. With it, the smell of the silver nitrate that had caused her mutations. Now was the time of the kill. Ido threw open his suitcase and extracted the two halves of the Racketehammer. He fit them together; and with the "clang" that resonated from their meeting, he felt his body temperature rise. His prey, ignorant of his presence, approached. Ido turned the corner and swung. As he did, his hammer was caught squarely by the left hand of a new entrant to the scene. Her right hand, in a fist, prodded him along the base of his rib cage. His solar plexus felt only enough pain for him to react. There was a flash of steel across his vision: a face in white, with metallic marks across the eyes and in the pits of the mouth. Light was in her honey-brown eyes, a light like the detonation of a home-made bomb. -- --I presume I have your attention now, Doctor Ido?-- "What?" --What?-- --You are Daisuke; sorry, one moment.-- The woman half- turned and reached behind her to the mutant. Her right hand seized the creature's jaws, and her fingers began pressing on three major and two minor pressure points. The mutant was incapacitated. --Now then, you are Daisuke Ido? You speak like you're Zalemon.-- --Y-yes, my name is Daisuke Ido.-- --Good. I wish to speak with you; but first, I'll beg a moment more of your time. Observe.-- In one smooth motion the woman swung around and drove her hand up and along the belly of her opponent. The flesh and muscle were scooped out of the body, disemboweling the mutant along a neat trench. She had collapsed before her guts could hit the ground. Ido staggered backwards in shock. --Do you know of your history, Doctor Ido? What carnage and rapine brought you to the luxury you now know? For a foundation is everything.-- --M-madam, I'm afraid I have no idea...-- She reached up, pressed eight fingertips against the side of his head and jammed her middle fingers into his ears. --The Battle of the Sea of Tranquillity? The Exodus from Martia? The motherfucking Rockinghorse Liberation Army?-- --Yes! Yes!-- He dropped to his knees. --Are you ignorant, stupid, or feigning humility? Do you know what I'm talking about, Daisuke Ido?-- --Yes! Yes! Stop it-- She let go, and he gently massaged the side of his head. --Aye, this is all common knowledge, all in the history books. What do you want to know for? Who are you?-- -- All in the history books... -- "Do we have freedom? Do we have equality? This planet is changing! It is no longer for all the people! It is for some of the people! "Can anyone here call themselves free? Do you call going where you want, buying what you want to buy, as long as you don't step out of line, do you call that free? That's not free. That's being a sheep. Following orders, not giving them yourself, not deciding what's right and what's wrong, you might as well be spending the days chewin' your own cud. Who wants a chance? Who wants to break free from the groundboys, eh? 'Cause it could be you! It could be you who's standing tall and proud! It could be you making the choices! It could be you, in a gold leaf border, on the front page of a history book with the caption, 'Founder of our Nation!'" -- --Who am I?--she said. She seized the lapels to his coat and jerked him to her face. --I am disarticulated reality. I am perception filled with knives. Now you answer me, how do I get to Zalem from here?-- Ido gaped. --To Zalem?...You cannot.-- There was a blur; then Ido's head and body were at an obscene angle to one another, and both his arms were pinned against his back. Two more centimeters, at the most, would break his neck. --Scream.-- He did so, with genuine shock; and to his tormentor's surprise, no one came to his aid. --If you're through with that, then we may continue. Ever tried?-- --NO! NO! I HAVEN'T! NO! Stop it!-- The woman let out a sigh and threw him prone onto the pavement. --What an utter waste of effort.-- "He's a demotorg," said the crow on her shoulder. "No point in trying to strangle him or bleed him to death, since the bio-chip in his head will still be active. You'll have to either destroy it or the electricity it's getting from the central nervous system. 'Course, he doesn't know that his brain's missing." She nodded, then kicked Ido over and sat down upon his abdomen. --Your friend Doctor Chiren hadn't tried either, but she said that you might well. Is there anyone here in this zoo who has, or knows how, or will I have to resort to walking up the bloody tube?-- --Ded---t...D-----t...-- --Who?-- Blood was running out of Ido's nose, and several patches of skin on his face had been rubbed raw, making speech difficult. The woman helped him sit up and he said, --Dedekint. A former colleague...of mine. He used to know...the whereabouts of most...every...Tipharean in the Scrapyard. One of them might.-- --Ah. And where might I find this gentleman Dedekint?-- -- "Hey, Bert!" "You know I don't like you to call me that." "Well, doesn't 'Bertram' sound kind of dorky?" "So blame my stepparents, not me. What's up?" "Intel reports are in." "Great, hook us up with some." The room around them was a womb of blued monitors and green LED lights, in the liquid inky blackness of the late night. There was a quiet hum from the cooling system that kept the room cold enough for the computers to function; and a smell of stale air, recycled God knew how many times, hung in the air. No sweat. No methane. Dust billows. "My hunch was right. We've got a mindcrime on our hands." "Glad you snagged it, what's the damage?" "Video feed from the turbing's been altered. Look here, here and here." "What am I supposed to see?" A cybernetic hand pointed to pictures on glossy paper. The one Luxor light threw a glint off the middle phalange of the index finger. "Three people, males, Caucasian I THINK, dark clothes, so on." "Yeah, uh huh." "And they're not on this still. This is the one that got broadcast on Earth." Four eyes looked at a piece of paper. She had her hair pulled back in a pony tail to keep it away from her face; his was kept short. Below their eyes were red marks that looked like cygnet's heads. Hers were new and almost fresh. "You're right. They're not." He held the paper in his left hand looking at it closely. The light threw shadow against half his face, showing up his strong jaw and large nose. His eyes were piercing and astute, testament to both his training in the Haus PanzerKunst and his lessons learned on the streets and in the underground of New Vancouver. "We'll have to bounce it off the Leader, but the next moves should be to ID these three AND find out who was supposed to take out the camera. That may be the real source of the mindcrime." Her eyes were no longer as dewy as they had been only weeks before; they were crisping, becoming more lupine. She glanced back at the photos, as though it would give her the missing clues she needed to reconstruct the betrayal somewhere in their ranks. "Know what?" "What, Bert? Sorry! Bertram. What?" "The fact is, Yuk..." "Hey!" "Sorry! Yoko. The fact is, you're getting pretty good at this job of ours." In her mind's eye, the flag is red at its base and blue-green on its top. At the middle is a figure looking mostly like an asterix. It is a rocking horse, with its arms and legs splayed out from its body, a stubby tail hanging between its legs, and its head cocked to its left. Below it is a banner, "EQUUS AMBULABIT"--"The horse will walk." "Aw, you think so?" "You bet! We still on for Friday?" Fade to black.