He was in Gentrys loft. He was watching Cherry do nurse-things to Gentry. Cherry looked over at him from where she sat on the edge of Gentrys bed. "How ydoin, Slick?"
"Okay . . . Im okay."
"Remember me asking you before?"
He was looking down at the face of the man Kid Afrika called the Count. Cherry was fiddling with something on the stretchers superstructure, a bag of fluid the color of oatmeal.
"How yfeel, Slick?"
"Feel okay."
"Youre not okay. You keep for "
He was sitting on the floor of Gentrys loft. His face was wet. Cherry was kneeling beside him, close, her hands on his shoulders.
"You did time?"
He nodded.
"Chemo-penal unit?"
"Yeah . . ."
"Induced Korsakovs?"
He
"Episodes?" Cherry asked him. He was sitting on the floor in Gentrys loft. Where was Gentry? "You get episodes like this? Short-term memory goes?"
How did she know? Where was Gentry?
"Whats the trigger?"
"What triggers the syndrome, Slick? What kicks you into jail-time?" He was sitting on the floor in Gentrys loft and Cherry was practically on top of him.
"Stress," he said, wondering how she knew about that. "Wheres Gentry?"
"I put him to bed."
"Why?"
"He collapsed. When he saw that thing . . ."
"What thing?"
Cherry was pressing a pink derm against his wrist. "Heavy trank," she said. "Maybe get you out of it . . ."
"Out of what?"
She sighed. "Never mind."
He woke in bed with Cherry Chesterfield. He had all his clothes on, everything but his jacket and his boots. The tip of his erect cock was trapped behind his belt buckle, pressing up against the warm denim over Cherrys ass.
"Dont get any ideas."
Winter light through the patchwork window and his breath white when he spoke. "What happened?" Why was it so cold in the room? He remembered Gentrys scream as the thing lunged for him
He sat up straight, fast.
"Easy," she said, rolling over. "Lie back. Dont know what it takes to set you off . . ."
"What dy mean?"
"Lie back. Get under the covers. Wanna freeze?"
He did as she said. "You were in jail, right? In a chemo-penal unit."
"Yeah . . . Howd you know?"
"You told me. Last night. You told me stress could trigger a flashback. So thats what happened. That thing went for your buddy, you jumped for the switch, shut that table down. He fell over, cut his head. I was taking care of that when I noticed you were funny. Figured out you only had a consecutive memory for about five minutes at a stretch. Get that in shock cases, sometimes, or concussion . . ."
"Where is he? Gentry."
"Hes in bed up in his place, plastered with downs. The shape he was in, I figured he could do with about a days sleep. Anyway, it gets him out of our hair for a while."
Slick closed his eyes and saw the gray thing again, the thing that had gone for Gentry. Man-shaped, sort of, or like an ape. Nothing like the convoluted shaped Gentrys equipment generated in his search for the Shape.
"I think the powers out," Cherry said. "The light went out in here about six hours ago."
He opened his eyes. The cold. Gentry hadnt made his moves on the console. He groaned.
He left Cherry to make coffee on the butane cooker and went looking for Little Bird. He found him by the smell of smoke. Little Bird had built a fire in a steel canister and gone to sleep curled around it like a dog. "Hey," Slick said, nudging the boy with his boot, "get up. We got problems."
"Fuckin juices out," he mumbled, sitting up in a greasy nylon sleeping bag grimed the exact shade of Factorys floor.
"I noticed. Thats problem number one. Number two is we need a truck or a hover or something. We have to get that guy out of here. Its not working out with Gentry."
"But Gentrys the only one can fix the juice." Little Bird got to his feet, shivering.
"Gentrys sleeping. Whos got a truck?"
"Marvie n them," Little Bird said, and lapsed into a racking cough.
"Take Gentrys bike. Bring it back in the truck. Now."
Little Bird recovered from his coughing fit. "No shit?"
"You know how to ride it, dont you?"
"Yeah, but Gentry, hell get "
"You let me worry about that. You know where he keeps that spare key?"
"Uh, yeah," Little Bird said shyly. "Say," he ventured, "what if Marvie n them dont wanna gimme that truck?"
"Give em this," Slick said, pulling the Ziploc full of drugs from the pocket of his jacket. Cherry had taken it after shed bandaged Gentrys head. "And give em all of it, understand? Cause Im gonna ask em later."
Cherrys beeper went off while they were drinking coffee in Slicks room, huddled side by side on the edge of the bed. Hed been telling her as much as he knew about the Korsakovs, because shed asked him. He hadnt ever really told anybody about it, and it was funny how little he actually knew. He told her about previous flashbacks, then tried to explain how the system worked in jail. The trick was that you retained long-term memory up to the point where they put you on the stuff. That way, they could train you to do something before you started serving your time and you didnt forget how to do it. Mostly you did stuff that robots could do. Theyd trained him to assemble miniature geartrains; when hed learned to put one together inside five minutes, that was it.
"And they didnt do anything else?" she asked.
"Just those geartrains."
"No, I mean like brainlocks."
He looked at her. The sore on her lip was almost healed. "If they do that, they dont tell you," he said.
Then the beeper went off in one of her jackets.
"Somethings wrong," she said, getting up quickly.
They found Gentry kneeling beside the stretcher with something black in his hands. Cherry snatched the thing before Gentry could move. He stayed where he was, blinking up at her.
"Takes a lot to keep you under, mister." She handed Slick the black thing. A retinal camera.
"We have to find out who he is," Gentry said. His voice was thick with the downs shed administered, but Slick sensed that the bad edge of craziness had receded.
"Hell," she said, "you dont even know if these are the eyes he had a year ago."
Gentry touched the bandage on his temple. "You saw it too, didnt you?"
"Yeah," Cherry said, "he shut it off."
"It was the shock," Gentry said. "I hadnt imagined . . . There was no real danger. I wasnt ready . . ."
"You were out of your fucking skull," Cherry said.
Gentry got unsteadily to his feet.
"Hes leaving," Slick said. "I sent Bird to borrow a truck. I dont like any of this shit."
Cherry stared at him. "Leaving where? I gotta go with him. Its my job."
"I know a place," Slick lied. "The powers out, Gentry."
"You cant take him anywhere," Gentry said.
"Like hell."
"No." Gentry swayed slightly. "He stays. The jumpers are in place. I wont disturb him again. Cherry can stay here."
"Youre going to have to explain some shit here, Gentry," Slick said.
"To begin with," Gentry said, and pointed at the thing above the Counts head, "this isnt an LF; its an aleph."