Last to Rise(10)
A frigid wind swept into the city, crept through every crack and crevice so I was frozen to the bone long before I got to Erlat’s.
Erlat’s house wasn’t far away from the lab, in the area Under Trade where the rich boys came to play if they were feeling a bit adventurous but not quite so brave as to try Under proper. It’s a haven for smooth bars that sell – all right, used to sell – overpriced “authentic” beer, set to the beat of dancers that at least probably didn’t have the pox and probably weren’t out of their heads on Rapture. You know, kind of fake shabby, just so people could say they’d tried Under and lived to tell the tale. I often wanted to take one of the patrons down to the real Under, but I suspected they’d last about half a heartbeat before they had no clothes on their backs, and possibly no lips to brag with.
Erlat’s place isn’t a bar, but home to one of the other reasons the rich boys came down to play – women. Over Trade, well, it’s all pious and Ministry-run, the Goddess looking over everyone’s shoulder to make sure they behave. Not exactly conducive to Erlat’s business. Frankly, I’m surprised the Buzz didn’t get more trade than it did, given that. But it got enough and Erlat’s house, being fairly new and full of “exotic” ladies from the ’Pit with that blue-white undertone to their skin and oddly alluring accent, had been a hit.
Kersan met me at the door with the news that Erlat wasn’t in, but also told me where she was and that he was sure she would be pleased to see me. So I took myself off to a small and discreet bar not far into the Buzz proper. Not too bad, this one: it had actual carpet on the floor, even if was so stained I couldn’t tell the colour. Or maybe that was the “discreet” lighting that meant I had to grope my way to the bar to find a drink.
I sat at the bar, tried to look into murky corners without seeming obvious about it, and wished Erlat had been at home instead.
The place wasn’t full, unsurprisingly. They didn’t have much behind the bar that didn’t have a good chance of making me blind, even in a place as up-market as this. Shortages were really starting to bite. For most of us anyway – Ministry men still had money, food, probably whatever they wanted. They were conspicuous down here the same way a slug is conspicuous in your dinner. Chubby soft hands waved money, more money that I’d seen in months, perhaps even years. The girls – classy and tastefully dressed but still working, and still wanting to get themselves fed – clustered round them.
A boom-shudder made the barman hang on to his glasses. One escaped and flew off a shelf to shatter on the floor. By the look of things, it wasn’t the first. One of the girls let out a little scream of surprise at the noise, but the drunken Ministry boys laughed and groped and promised them the world, promised them a way out of this, out of Mahala. The girls laughed in return but there was no mistaking the fear in their eyes – that this was the only way out they had, sucking up to smug pricks like this.
The barman finished sweeping up the glass and came over. He checked me out, took in the imitation-Specials look with an air that said he didn’t believe it for a second, before he raised an eyebrow inviting me to state my drink. I considered my finances, and what he had behind the bar. Screw it, you only live once. “Whatever won’t kill me.”
A conspiratorial wink, a quick check to make sure the Ministry boys weren’t watching, and the barman slid out a bottle. Something brown and rich-looking flowed into the glasses.
“I’m shutting up after tonight,” he said, as though to thin air. “Got nothing left to sell any more. Except moonshine that’d take the varnish off the saints and martyrs, and this one bottle. Fed up with Ministry coming to rub our faces in it, even more than usual too. Been promising the girls everything – not just money, no, the chance to get out, the chance to live. They don’t actually follow through, naturally. They’re just using it for a chance at free girls. And the girls are desperate enough to take a gamble that they might come through. Some of them, anyway.”
We raised a glass each, and I savoured the taste of real, good booze. It’d been a while. Then I saw where the barman was looking.
A far dark corner. Erlat was sitting with a guy, Ministry perhaps because he was smooth and fat and smug as hell. He patted her hand and she laughed, and she looked like she meant it too. I turned back to my glass of heaven and left her to it.
Erlat is… I find it hard to say what Erlat is, or was. One of the most beautiful women I’d never tried to take to bed. Not because of what she did for a living – I was no better and the only difference was I didn’t charge – but because of the way she had of unbalancing me, taking what I thought I knew about myself and the world around me and turning it on its head.