Spares

‘Noodles,’ he said, eyeing me warily. ‘You want some?’

‘Depends how much you've got. I'm not alone.’

‘How many guests are we talking?’

I took a deep breath. ‘Including me, seven,’ I said. His eyes opened wide and he shook his head – not in negation, just bewilderment. I tried to make it easier on him. ‘Well, six and a half, I guess.’

‘That's a lot of noodles.’

‘Too many?’

‘Not necessarily,’ he said. ‘I buy in bulk.’ He turned back towards his apartment for a moment, biting his lip, considering. I noticed that he wasn't wearing his shoulder holster and wondered whether that meant he was out of the Life, or just less paranoid these days. More likely he'd been cleaning his gun when I knocked. The two things I didn't think Mal was ever going to get were less paranoid or out of the Life.

Then he turned back to me, eyebrows raised in friendly resignation. In one sighing breath he asked, ‘Where are these guests now and just how much unhappiness am I risking by letting them into my life, however fucking briefly?’

‘I left them downstairs,’ I said, realizing that I ought to get back to them very soon, whichever way this went. Mal's building is where bad people go to have fun. That's why he's paranoid – and also why he likes it. ‘I just need to leave them with you for an hour, then we're out of here.’

‘Why didn't you call ahead?’

‘When I want to ask old friends for lunatic favours I like to do it in person. Also, I didn't have any change.’

‘And the trouble rating?’

‘What scale are you talking?’ I was gabbling, strung tight. I had to let Mal see I was okay, because otherwise he was likely to get freaked. Being freaked would in fact have been a reasonable reaction, but I didn't want him to know that yet.

‘One to ten.’

‘I don't know,’ I said, suddenly giving in and getting panicky. ‘At least ten, possibly higher, certainly getting worse by the minute.’

Mal let go of the door.

‘Get them up here.’

I let out a short exhalation of relief. ‘Mal …’

‘Yeah, all that,’ he said, brushing my thanks aside. ‘And then you're going to go get me a jar of Japanese pickles. I forgot I'd run out.’

‘I'm going into the city. On the way back I'll get you the biggest jar of Samoy I can find.’

Mal rolled his eyes and shook his head. ‘Samoy pickles are from hunger. Get me Frapan or nothing.’

‘For a guy who eats so much you've got terrible fucking taste.’

‘You got that right,’ he said, shaking his head again. ‘Look at my choice of friends.’

I grinned and walked the couple of yards to the shadowy stairwell. I thought I was going to have to shout, but I saw Suej's face in the darkness, upturned anxiously towards me, and just gestured instead. She turned to David and they corralled the others up. Mal and I waited while they trooped upstairs, Mal's face eloquent with laconic intrigue. Out in the slightly less murky light of the corridor the skin on his face looked a little ruddier than it had, and there were lines around his eyes which hadn't been there when last I'd seen him.

We're getting old, I thought. Suddenly we're nearly forty and getting old.

David was the first to reach the landing. He came up with his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his jeans, limping slightly from where his leg had been operated on. The jeans had originally been mine, and were inexpertly folded up at the bottoms and belted tight around his waist. He looked younger than his fifteen years, even though his face was still set with the belligerence it had assumed the moment we left the Farm. Jenny came up right behind him, huddled into her coat and still looking frightened and alone. I'd tried to patch things up with her in the last twenty-four hours, but she still thought she was to blame, and I hadn't really had time to convince her otherwise.

Suej came up next, leading Nanune by the hand. Suej looked okay, like a normal fourteen-year-old, apart from the scar on her face. Nanune looked scared shitless, and with only one leg was having difficulty climbing the stairs. When she reached the top she caught sight of me, and appeared momentarily relieved, which was nice. It's been a long time since anyone has looked relieved to see my face.

And then finally Mr Two, carrying the bundle in his arms. Mal coped reasonably well with the rest of them, but when he saw a teenager who stood about six five, carrying a small brown sack with a head protruding from it, I did catch a twitch on his face. Mr Two stood straight-backed on the landing, glared abruptly both ways, and then let his head drop as if he'd been switched off. The spare in the bag said, ‘Nap.’

Come on guys, I thought to myself. Let's try to act like normal people.

‘Is your friend letting us rest here?’ Suej asked.

I nodded. It was going to be a while before they directly addressed anyone other than me. She beamed, and whispered to Nanune.

‘Is it nice? Is Ratchet here?’ Nanune asked, and I shook my head.

‘No and no, I'm afraid,’ I said, winking at Mal. ‘But at least it's not raining.’

I introduced Mal to the spares by name. Suej and David shook his hand, and I caught him noticing David's missing fingers. Then Mal stood to one side and gestured them into his apartment. They trooped in, Mr Two ducking his head to get under the lintel.

Mal's apartment was pretty much as I remembered it. In other words, I knew what to expect. The spares didn't. Ten years ago he'd knocked down most of the internal walls, so that from anywhere in the apartment you could see the huge window he'd put in. This gave a view straight onto New Richmond. Mal had chosen to live outside New Richmond proper. He claimed he liked to get away from it every now and then, from the dark fizz and spark of the life inside – yet he'd deconstructed his apartment so he could see the building from wherever he stood. The interior decor was about what you'd expect from a single man who spent half his time drunk and the rest painfully sober. It was a mess, to be honest: baroque chaos overlaid with the smell of countless noodle-based meals.

Nanune actually started crying. Mal scowled at her and started kicking piles of stuff towards the walls.

‘Do you still have your display up?’ I asked quietly. Mal looked at me and nodded. ‘You couldn't, like, drape something over it?’

Mal grunted and trudged down the end, towards the window, and pulled a rope which ran down the wall. A sheet dropped from the ceiling, covering what was pinned on the walls – pictures of people who had been murdered in New Richmond. It covered them only briefly, unfortunately, because it carried on falling to the ground. Mal swore softly, grabbed a chair, and set about repairing the set-up.

Meantime, I led the spares into the area which served as his sitting room. I shoved huge piles of crap out of the way until there was enough space for them to sit fairly comfortably. Jenny's arms were wrapped tightly around herself, and her eyes were far away. In a nimbus of light from some partially hidden lamp, she looked beautiful and frail. Nanune still looked terrified, but Suej sat close to her, murmuring something. There were no words in what she was saying, but even I could feel the comfort in it. It was tunnel talk, I guess. Mr Two looked like he would withstand a direct hit by a tactical missile, and so I guess the spare on his lap was alright too. Considering the current circumstances.

‘How long are we going to be here?’ David asked. I realized he looked tired, though like a child trying to prove it was worthy of staying up late, his eyes were still wide open.

‘Not long,’ I said. ‘A couple hours. Just enough for me to go get some money. Then we're going to buy a truck and get out of here.’

‘To where?’ This had been David's constant refrain for the last twenty-four hours.

‘I still don't know,’ I said. ‘Somewhere safe.’ Jenny looked up at me and I winked at her. A ghost of a smile.

‘Florida?’ Suej asked hopefully.

‘Maybe,’ I said. A long time ago I'd told her about a place I knew there, and it had become fixed in her mind as a kind of nirvana. I didn't have the heart to tell her it was very unlikely we'd make it halfway there before we were caught.

I turned to Mal. ‘What's your water like these days? And don't say “wet”.’

‘There'll be enough if they don't all stay in too long.’ Mal had always known what I meant, especially when I was asking favours. I nodded to Suej, who understood, and she started drawing up a rota for the spares to wash. They weren't used to being dirty, and I knew that the one thing I could provide which would increase their short-term standard of living was a shower. It's good that there was that one thing, because there wasn't a lot of everything else, and wasn't likely to be in the foreseeable future.

‘We'll get your clothes washed … later,’ I said, vaguely, and wandered over to the window.

It was still raining outside. It always seemed to be raining in the Portal. In summer it's fat drops of dirty rain, in the winter thin biting lines of sleet – but it generally seemed to be dropping at least something out of the sky. The locals believe that it's rich people on the roof of the city, taking delight in pissing off the edge onto the lowlife below. Judging by the colour of some of the rain, they could be right.

New Richmond looked the same as it always had. Eerily so. That shouldn't have been surprising, and yet it was. I'd seen it in the distance on the way through the Portal, but that had been different. Seeing it through Mal's window was like seeing myself in one particular mirror again after a very long time away. I stared out at the points of light, the studs in the mind-fuckingly large expanse of wall. It still looked extraordinary, still said to me, as it always had, that I had to be inside it.