Page 32 of Green City Wars

It’s been Skotch’s general experience of life that things can always get worse, and this latest twist should, therefore, come as no surprise. He bares his teeth at the squirrel and she all but rattles the barrel of her popgun against them.

“What?” she demands, with that nasty cheer. “Public-spirited animal like you? You never wanted to contribute to the common good?” A particularly grim little Gehirner joke.

Skotch considers himself considerably beyond Ripley in wit, but right then he’s short of snappy comebacks. Instead he gets up on the trolley, with the corpses, even as the crows laboriously haul the rest out from inside. Sly, the dogs, the badger, the remaining Graycoat dead. A bumper haul for the funereal birds, whose scavenging way of life has become a civic office.

Up above, wings of a different hue flurry away, but Skotch attaches no hope to them.

13THAT PART OF YOU THEY CAN'T RE-USE

The number of times he’d thought it, over the last few hectic days. Ever since Benson had those ampoules balanced on the rim of his tank. Since Skotch took this damned job and the down payment. I need to take another tab of Plangent. But he was used to eking it out. Maybe getting a little dumb just to make the stuff last. Even when he’d had a handful of doses rattling around in his super, he’d kept on living like he was starving.

Maybe, if he’d indulged a little more, he would have been sharp enough not to end up here.

They’ve shoved him in a cell. Just a square space in the works of the place. Metal, because this is somewhere the business can’t be done with organics. A lot of steel here, enough that the spaces outside the bits where the biz gets done can be repurposed to hold those not here voluntarily.

And, honestly, nobody’s here voluntarily except the guild that runs this place. Another little closed shop, like the water reclamation works. Not, in this case, because of physiological requirements, but through something that must count as next-door to superstition.

Do raccoons have a sense of the numinous? That the world might contain more than can be grasped, smelled, bitten? Skotch, despite being one, can’t say. If a lion could speak, the old human saw goes, could we understand it? And yes, it turns out you can understand the lion. But the act of reworking the lion to allow it to talk removes enough of its lion-ness that, when you ask, What’s it like, being a lion? the thing can only shrug with the new shoulders you’ve given it.

It’s probably something about the engineering process, though, that makes space in a Gehirner’s head to think about the other and the beyond. Not a huge amount of space, because they’re small heads and full of work stuff most of the time, but still. The big questions squeeze in there somehow. Not quite What are we for? because that’s a known quantity, given they’re literally made for specific tasks. Is there more than this? though, that’s always a good one. What do we aspire to? What happens after? And the Jeffists have their self-improving creed, and that focuses strongly on the first. In this place, though, a place that focuses more on the endings of things, they prefer the other question.

Skotch is in no position to answer it. Should have taken the Plangent. But probably there isn’t a mental accelerator in the world that can tell you where you go when you die.

They rifled through his super, squirrel hands scrabbling about in that marsupial addition they grafted onto his genome. Never a comfortable experience, unpleasantly intimate, and worse when they came out with the ampoules of Plangent he’d got off Benson, plus the couple of his own he’d had to start with. Took it all off him. He’d watched the squirrels squeezing it into their tear ducts in a little celebration of their own good fortune. Like pillaging armies everywhere, eager to divide the loot. So that was his stash, that was his future as a thinking being. Now, the longer they keep him locked up here, the dumber he’ll get, until he’s no use to them or anyone, not least himself. So probably they aren’t going to keep him around for long and that isn’t an upside either.

They put a collar on him again. That ambivalent sartorial note. Signifying belonging, whether that’s a good or a bad thing. Pets belonging to human masters, once. Gehirner belonging to a guild or a company, benefiting from the protections, following the orders. Accepting that the goals and enemies and reputation of that greater body will stick to your fur so long as the collar’s around your neck. And most Gehirner in the city accept that as a baseline of life, but it never sat well with Skotch. Raccoon geneware was always sketchy. They’re an independent-minded breed.

Which independence of mind has led him nowhere but here, in this cell. Should have kept the original Uzco collar, honestly.

The collar he’s wearing now is also one of belonging, cinched tight enough that he won’t be able to get out of this particular association. It’s attached to the wall by a metal cable. He’s done all the usual: wriggling, pulling, prying. For a species whose closest relative is a bear, raccoons are surprisingly flexible. Not enough to squirm out of this onerous responsibility, though. Szerky could probably have done it, but Skotch would swear they put some snake in the stoatweasel genome, the way she moves.

And she’s won, in the end. And he helped her win. She came to his nook. She saw Sly’s messenger pup on its way out. And, despite her being the outsider whom he’d mocked for not knowing the city, she’d been able to work out what that meant. And she’d had the Grays on board, probably already, primed to move at her word. Deep pockets, the Country Club. Enough to buy all the mercenaries they needed.

Skotch had got Sly killed. Sly had known something, found something out from the snips and snaps of chemical notation. Had been on at Skotch to come hear the revelation, but Skotch had always had other things to do.

If I’d gone to Sly first, the Baron after … Probably he’d have been there when the Grays fought their way in. And while Skotch’s usual high opinion of himself would want to argue he could have made all the difference, right now he sits in the dark and knows he’d just have taken a shot himself. Or have ended up right here anyway.

There’s no handle or purchase on the inside of the door. That’s what makes it a cell. No lock on the outside, but a complex lever arrangement. Over-complex, but crows like their Rube Goldberg stuff. He hears the various parts of it rattle and shift as his keepers open up. The artificial light stings his eyes after all the dark.

A crow hunches in, looking sidelong at him through one black eye. The crows are their own guild, and they run the Separation Plant, which is where this little oubliette is.

“Your name,” the crow croaks, “is Skotch?” Speaking Tiersprech, but then switching to, “Amerikaner? You prefer Furze maybe?”

“Sister”—Skotch has taken a wild guess at the bird’s gender, and still isn’t sure he’s got it right because there’s no real reaction—“unless you’ve got a tab of the good stuff under your wings, maybe that would be best.” Because, now he can feel his mind degrading, the effort of working in a second language is starting to elbow out other thoughts.

She?—call her she—switches effortlessly into the US argot. Crows are good with languages, and this sort of extreme unction is just about the only use they put their gift to. “Mister, we’ll be taking you to the factory floor soon.” Even with a creditable Midwest accent to go with the words.

“Yeah, I guessed that,” he admits. “Things not looking so good for old Skotch right now.”

“Who can say how things will go? This ain’t a standard disposal, Mister. Don’t know what you did nor how you made so many enemies, but you got a whole guest list of notables come to hear your speech from the gallows. Maybe if you say the right things they’ll let you down gently. Maybe not.”

“You’re a barrel of comfort,” Skotch mumbles.

“Comfort is what I bring to you, Mister,” she says. “You can call me Sister Craw.” So either he was right or she’s just rolling with it. “I’m come to give you a chance to become something greater.”

“Sister, I don’t really do religion.”

“You figure there’s a better time to start?” She actually pecks at him, the way crows do when they want you to pay attention. “You need to be ready to let go, Mister. You know how it is.”