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  Martin wanted to know why Shady felt that way, but thought better of it. He'd learned from Dooley they called him Shady on account of no one knowing anything about his past, about where he came from or what he used to do before he arrived in Asia. He'd definitely been born in America, though whether or not he'd shipped out before the pig flu virus took out half the population was impossible to say without asking. He didn't have any of the telltale scarring on his face.

  Dooley finished his display of precision pissing and got back inside the car. The tyres were rolling before he'd closed the door.

  'You ever fucked an android?' Dooley asked, twisting in his seat again.

  'Can't say I have,' said Martin. 'I went into a cyber brothel once, you know where you wear one of those suits.'

  'They're cool, man. But for a real thrill you gotta have a sim. They can manipulate their bodies in a way a real woman can't, tighten muscles to make it feel so sweet, get into positions you've never dreamed of. I once –'

  'You've never had sex with a sim,' Shady broke in.

  'I never said I'd had sex with one. There are no pleasure model sims, they're too smart. Androids are different. They work for the government. Yeah, it's true. Think about it. How could something so ridiculously expensive and high-tech work in a strip club? How can they afford a piece of hardware like that?'

  Martin was shaking his head and about to say he didn't know, when Shady answered for him. 'Who fucking cares?'

  In the gloom of the car, Martin watched Dooley rolling his eyes. 'You gotta care. When you have sex with an android your jizz goes inside a little box, where it's analysed and all the info 'bout your DNA is sent to a big computer in Hong Kong.'

  'What about sims?' asked Martin.

  'Don't be a dumbass. Sims are completely organic.' Dooley seemed annoyed at Martin's lack of understanding. 'Androids have electronic components, like their brains and some of their organs. They probably keep a record between themselves of all the humans that have used them. You know, they probably use the semen to genetically engineer new sims. You cum inside an android, it goes into a little tube and gets frozen. All the little tubes are taken to a lab where they use your juice to fertilise sim eggs. Using your stuff without you knowing.' He waved an accusing finger. 'The world is sick!'

  Shady was laughing quietly to himself. 'Right. The cyberbabes could be just keeping tabs on users like the 'net gives you a cookie.'

  Martin settled back, thinking he'd ride out the rest of the conversation and let Shady take over. Outside the windows there was nothing to see, only the black shapes that lined the road. Better just to sit here, Martin thought, and listen to what Shady and Dooley had to say.

  He closed his eyes for a few minutes, hearing Dooley talking about something else now, Shady telling him that no way could life be better in the wastelands. It's the natural life, Dooley said. Shady sighed and Martin heard him light a cigarette. Shady saying, natural if you wanna eat nothing but cabbage and find Jesus. Martin thought about telling them of his father's farm in Texas, how he wanted to make a living growing stuff, but Dooley was already back onto sims and government conspiracies. Man, we're all been fucked by men in suits, Dooley was saying.

  Martin heard a vibrant purring to his right, the sound of an engine gaining on them fast. There were no headlights to warn them of its coming. No time to think. The Japanese girl was riding a bike alongside them with an automatic weapon resting across the crook of one arm. Hair flying like a silk banner. There was a flash of light so bright Martin was partially blinded for a second.

  The window on Shady's side of the car exploded. His body jerked violently and the car fishtailed out of control. Dooley braced himself between the dashboard and the back of his seat. Two rounds ripped through his sternum like a fist through a paper drum.

  Particles of bone, clothing and liquid filled the air. Black rain in the eye of a hurricane. Martin wasn't too sure, but he guessed they'd hit a barrier. Another window shattered, glass fragments reflecting the light from an eruption of sparks. The car was spinning. It slammed against the opposite barrier. Martin felt the car buckle, the passenger door snap inward toward his legs. Then he knew the wheels had left the road and the car was turning over onto its roof.

  She'd chosen to attack them on a flyover, leaving no exits or dirt roads to form an escape. He was thinking he'd have done the same, even when the car left the flyover and tumbled down the embankment to the road below.

  11

  Love Dolls

  The tractor had been a cherry-red Holbox, a six cylinder, four-stroke, injection-pump monster. The paint had flaked over the years.

  Sumbitch, Martin's father had mumbled. Martin watched him wipe his hands on a rag. He spat on the dirt and thrust his hands into the pockets of his overalls, looking at that giant Deestone like he was going to kick it again but couldn't be bothered.

  A tumbleweed blew across the west horizon. Martin didn't remember the Road Runner appearing and going meep! meep! But he was sure that it had. Tongue wobbling at them with an irritating noise. One day the coyote was going to catch that Road Runner. Catch it, kick it in the head and give it a damned good porking. No way would a coyote go to all that trouble for a snack. That coyote's one horny bastard, Martin's father might have said.

  Same day the tractor broke down they went into Brownwood. They had apple pie and coffee at Bootle's. It was on the second refill that Martin's father decided to ship out. He was beat, the country was beat. It was time to move on while there was still a place to go to. They sat there for maybe thirty minutes, watching people and traffic go past the window.

  They left the dust farm behind. That's what Martin's father called it since after a while that was all they could grow. Europe was better, cooler. Martin went to school, his father went back to what he was good at, teaching advanced robotics at Nice University. He was way too smart to be a farmer, maybe that's why his crops failed, because he saw the world in vectors and numbers. It was his last shot at rescuing a part of the world that was long since dead. But the man deserved credit for trying.

  He'd died during a robbery. Took a bullet through his nose and had the top of his head blown off. Martin wasn't there, he'd seen the photographs on Netnews. Laid on the ground like he was taking a nap, the contents of his head spilling out. Sumbitch. Then blackness. Martin realised then you had to be strong to survive in this world. Stronger than most.

  'Asia, that's the place to go,' his friend, Tom Rawlings, told him one day. After twenty years in the army Martin took a job in a warehouse. It was here when he started growing his beard back. During the breaks they'd go to their secret corner to play cards and drink cheap beer. 'Europe's screwed. Asia's gonna be the only place left soon. You wanna get in there before the rush starts.'

  He didn't like Asia. Now they had refugee Americans and Europeans treating the country as their own. He once heard a Chinaman say Americans were like fleas on a dog. And there was nothing worse than an itch you couldn't scratch.

  A Road Runner you couldn't catch.

  Martin kicked open the twisted door of the car. 'Sumbitch.'

  He dragged himself from the wreck. It was raining now. He tried to get to his feet but his legs wouldn't cooperate and he fell onto his back. He could just make out the outline of the car in the milky glow from the moon. A crescent. Narrow and slanted.

  Martin loosened his shirt, already sticking to his back. The dree dree of cicadas was a constant noise in the background

  'Dooley. Hey.' Martin shook the man's arm. No response. He figured Shady wouldn't be any different.

  Martin scrambled, slipped and crawled his way back to the road. There was nothing else to do except to start walking. His elbow throbbed, shoulder felt like somebody had gone to work on it with an iron bar.

  The road was a long black river, which he strayed from occasionally. He held his Smith and Wesson six-shot in his pocket. The rain tapped a staccato rhythm all around him and unseen animals chirped and barked.

  He
stopped, turned around. He listened for the drone of a bike. 'Sumbitch,' he said softly.

  •

  Dawn was paling the sky by the time Martin swiped his keycard to unlock the door to his apartment. Even that small effort seemed to drain him. His feet, lead bricks, dragged his aching body into the kitchen, where he pulled his wet shirt over his head and tossed it into a basket.

  He took a dirty plate from the sink and started the cold tap running, using both hands to throw water onto his face and around his neck. Blood had clotted, making a brittle crust in his hair and around his ear.

  He collapsed onto the sofa holding a half-empty bottle of water in one hand and a spicy sausage in the other.

  The teenager who appeared in the doorway looked at him for several seconds, then curled herself into an armchair. She was wearing white and blue striped pyjamas. Auburn hair fell around her small shoulders.

  'Hey,' she said.

  Martin took a bite of the sausage, eating out of necessity and not really enjoying it. 'Hey, yourself.'

  'You look terrible.'

  'I don't think this job's working out.' He chomped another chunk off the sausage. 'I thought working for this Yang guy might get us somewhere, make some money, make some contacts.'

  She got up and sat on the arm of the sofa next to him, gently massaging his shoulder. 'Things'll work out,' she said. 'You always make things work out. I'm going back to bed.'

  'And no reading,' he called after her. 'Get some sleep.'

  She wiggled her ass at him in a childish manner. Jessica did her own thing and there wasn't a damned thing he could do about it. What he did do was make her carry a 9mm automatic, a surrogate father to take care of her when he wasn't around.

  He laid on the sofa, bruises and cuts aching. He'd walked for maybe two hours, until an old Hungarian woman had appeared and given him a lift back to the city. She'd talked about the days before the virus, before the floods, a time when everything worked. Then what it had felt like when it had seemed the world was about to end.

  He'd been there in the thick of it. House to house to collect the dead, driving a bulldozer to push skeletal rag dolls into mass graves. He'd seen it all. The butchery of civil war, kid-soldiers blown apart by coil grenades. He closed his eyes and wanted to see Jessica's mother, but instead he saw Tomoko Iwamoto. He could still hear the drone of a bike, in his head now like other memories, the ones he wanted to forget. He drifted into a restless sleep.

  It didn't seem like six hours later when he woke up. He called Jessica's name, realising after there was no answer that she would have left for work. He had a horrible taste in his mouth, like he'd been eating chilli dogs and drinking cheap tequila.

  The curtains were still closed, though they weren't thick enough to stop the brightness of the sun from entering the room. He fumbled around on the sofa for the air-conditioning remote, saw it resting in front of the old Sony TV in the corner of the room and wiped at the sticky sweat on the back of his neck. He needed a shower and some breakfast, thought about the other things he needed to do when the bottle of Scotch on the oval coffee table caught his eye. He read the label, trying to remember placing it there. Someone had been in the apartment, walking around while he slept.

  Martin bolted upright, swaying slightly as blood rushed to the front of his skull, making him dizzy for a second.

  He rolled off the sofa and reached for the telephone.

  He couldn't get through to Jess at the Chinese herbalist where she worked. He could only hope she was safe. He had to meet Benz at one o'clock.

  •

  The Sultan Abdul Samad was a long building, a cross between Arabic and Moorish design, or what the colonial builders thought the Muslim Malays of the time would have liked. Huge bronze domes caught the sun. The clock had stopped at five minutes to three.

  He eventually found Benz in the shade under an arch.

  'Where the fuck have you been?' asked Benz. 'I've been waiting for twenty minutes. That dumbfuck Dooley hasn't turned up yet.'

  Martin closed his umbrella. 'He's dead. So is Shady.'

  'Run that again.'

  'She hit the car on the way to Ho's place.'

  'You're telling me this now. When?'

  'Last night. We might have been about halfway there.'

  'Does Travis know?'

  'No.'

  'Why didn't you call?'

  'I lost my cell phone in the car. It took me four hours to get back to the city. I tried calling Peter when I got back to my apartment.'

  'You called Yang?'

  'That's the only number I've got. I couldn't get through.'

  Benz exhaled noisily through his nose. 'I gotta make a call.' He moved to the privacy of another arch and started prodding buttons on a cell phone. After a brief conversation - Martin guessed with Travis - he came back and said, 'Okay, we're going to Klang. Jimmy Ho's got a small business there. He's not at home so there's a good chance that's where he'll be.'

  They started walking.

  'How do you know?' Martin asked.

  'One of Yang's employees from a northern territory knocked on Ho's door this morning. He wasn't there.'

  'What about Dooley and Shady?'

  Benz glanced sideways at Martin. 'What about 'em?'

  'We just gonna leave 'em there?'

  'If they're dead, they're dead.'

  Martin caught his arm and pulled him to a stop. 'What's that supposed to mean? Like maybe you and Travis knew she'd make a hit on the car and that's why we were sent?'

  Benz' expression was emotionless. 'Travis might have known. They're dead. Let go my fucking arm.'

  Martin let go of him and they resumed walking. They passed a tower with a spiral staircase. Some kids were bashing an automech's arm against a wall.

  Benz was laughing. 'You really care? You only knew 'em for like an hour or two.'

  'Strikes me as odd that Travis sent those two when he could have sent some people more capable.'

  'You were with 'em. They should have had no need to worry.'

  They took the next left down Jalan Mahkamah Tinggi and crossed the street, dodging cabs and streams of locals on bicycles. Benz' car was a beige Proton, showing rust corrosion around the wheel arches, parked under the shade of a palm tree. Benz got in right away and Martin moved to the passenger side. He slid his umbrella onto the floor of the back seat. He didn't like umbrellas, but it beat getting soaked every day.

  Martin said, 'Didn't you have the car locked?'

  Benz hit the ignition. 'What for? Travis is letting us have it until we find the girl, or until somebody else does. They raised the bonus for the first person who finds her.' He nosed the car into the traffic. 'Yang'll be taking a fee for this ancient piece of crap out of the final pay cheque.'

  Martin nodded, even though he had no idea how much money was involved. He figured it wouldn't be much. Maybe if the girl was resourceful she'd be harder to find, and maybe the bonus would keep going up.

  'I need to drop by Jalan Clara, next to the old cinema,' said Martin.

  'What for?'

  'I gotta see someone?'

  'That's in the opposite direction. Can't it wait?'

  They were approaching a red light. 'Make a detour or let me out here.'

  Benz groaned. 'All right. Make it quick.' He spun the wheel and they made a U-turn back to the main street.

  Martin didn't know what the shop was called. All the writing on the outside was in Chinese. He just knew it as the herbalist on Jalan Clara. Inside, a thousand smells. There was a long, high counter, dark wood that could have been ransacked from a thousand-year-old temple. At the end, sat on a pile of newspapers, was the biggest cat he had ever seen. A huge lump of orange fur, sleeping soundly and not in any way disturbed by the ringing of the bell above the door.

  'Hey, you.'

  The voice came from behind the counter somewhere. Hundreds of square drawers stretched all the way to the ceiling. Jessica appeared. She had two plastic butterflies in her hair.

&
nbsp; 'How did you know it was me?'

  She opened her arms, as if to embrace the heavens. 'The ancestors told me.'

  'Yeah, right. Everything cool?'

  'Sure. Why shouldn't it be?'

  'I was just passing so . . .' He wasn't doing a very good job pretending everything was fine.

  From a room behind a beaded curtain the man who owned the place started shouting something. Jessica responded. Martin didn't understand a word, but it seemed to be a rebuke of some kind. The man just laughed.

  'The old fart wants his tea. Why don't you join us?'

  'I've got someone waiting.'

  She saw Benz sat in the car just outside the shop window.

  'He looks creepy.' She moved to a drawer and pulled out what looked like a short twig. She gave it to him. 'Here, I got a feeling you might need this.'

  'Don't I need two of these to start a fire?'

  'Wrong fire. It helps with vitality. You're supposed to chew it.'

  Benz honked the car's horn. 'I've gotta go.'

  He was halfway through the door when she called to him. 'Hey, look after yourself.'

  Benz honked the horn again.

  The cat yawned, showing its fangs.

  He waved and went out the door.

  'Chew the stick,' she shouted after him.

  'Not bad,' Benz said when Martin got in the car.

  'Look as long as you like, this is as close as you're gonna get.'

  'You can't keep that all to yourself.'

  Benz sniggered and made the car dart into a gap in the traffic. He was making a sound like he was eating the world's most delicious cream pie.

  'Man, oh, man,' said Benz. 'You can't beat spanking new pussy. Making my mouth water just thinking about it.'

  'That's my daughter, Benz.'

  'Young and firm, tight as a drum.'

  'Did you hear me?'

  'Doesn't bother me none. If she was my daughter, I'd be doing her.'

  Martin turned in his seat, ready to leave a permanent imprint of his fist in the man's face if he said another word. Benz didn't and Martin was disappointed. He should have flattened him the moment he opened his mouth.