Lester chuckled wryly. “Still a clever bastard. You look like you’re having some hard times, my old son. Maybe that you’re not even worth robbing, eh?”

“Right. I’m skint. Sorry. Nice running into you, now I must be going.” He tried to pull away, but Lester’s fingers dug into his biceps, emphatically, painfully.

“Hear you ran into Tom, led him a merry chase. You know, I spent a whole week in the nick on account of you.”

Art jerked his arm again, without effect. “You tried to rob me, Les. You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, all right? Now let me go—I’ve got a train to catch.”

“Holidays? How sweet. Thought you were broke, though?”

A motorized scooter pulled up in the kerb lane beside them. It was piloted by a smart young policewoman with a silly foam helmet and outsized pads on her knees and elbows. She looked like the kid with the safety-obsessed mom who inflicts criminally dorky fashions on her daughter, making her the neighborhood laughingstock.

“Everything all right, gentlemen?”

Lester’s eyes closed, and he sighed a put-upon sigh that was halfway to a groan.

“Oh, yes, officer,” Art said. “Peter and I were just making some plans to see our auntie for supper tonight.”

Lester opened his eyes, then the corners of his mouth incremented upwards. “Yeah,” he said. “‘Sright. Cousin Alphonse is here all the way from Canada and Auntie’s mad to cook him a proper English meal.”

The policewoman sized them up, then shook her head. “Sir, begging your pardon, but I must tell you that we have clubs in London where a gentleman such as yourself can find a young companion, legally. We thoroughly discourage making such arrangements on the High Street. Just a word to the wise, all right?”

Art blushed to his eartips. “Thank you, Officer,” he said with a weak smile. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

The constable gave Lester a hard look, then revved her scooter and pulled into traffic, her arm slicing the air in a sharp turn signal.

“Well,” Lester said, once she was on the roundabout, “Alphonse, seems like you’ve got reason to avoid the law, too.”

“Can’t we just call it even? I did you a favor with the law, you leave me be?”

“Oh, I don’t know. P’raps I should put in a call to our friend PC McGivens. He already thinks you’re a dreadful tosser—if you’ve reason to avoid the law, McGivens’d be bad news indeed. And the police pay very well for the right information. I’m a little financially embarrassed, me, just at this moment.”

“All right,” Art said. “Fine. How about this: I will pay you 800 Euros, which I will withdraw from an InstaBank once I’ve got my ticket for the Chunnel train to Calais in hand and am ready to get onto the platform. I’ve got all of fifteen quid in my pocket right now. Take my wallet and you’ll have cabfare home. Accompany me to the train and you’ll get a month’s rent, which is more than the police’ll give you.”

“Oh, you’re a villain, you are. What is it that the police will want to talk to you about, then? I wouldn’t want to be aiding and abetting a real criminal—could mean trouble.”

“I beat the piss out of my coworker, Lester. Now, can we go? There’s a plane in Paris I’m hoping to catch.”

I am: sprung.

Father Ferlenghetti hasn’t been licensed to practice psychiatry in Massachusetts for forty years, but the court gave him standing. The judge actually winked at me when he took the stand, and stopped scritching on her comm as the priest said a lot of fantastically embarrassing things about my general fitness for human consumption.

The sanitarium sent a single junior doc to my hearing, a kid so young I’d mistaken him for a hospital driver when he climbed into the van with me and gunned the engine. But no, he was a doctor who’d apparently been briefed on my case, though not very well. When the judge asked him if he had any opinions on Father Ferlenghetti’s testimony, he fumbled with his comm while the Father stared at him through eyebrows thick enough to hide a hamster in, then finally stammered a few verbatim notes from my intake interview, blushed, and sat down.

“Thank you,” the judge said, shaking her head as she said it. Gran, seated beside me, put one hand on my knee and one hand on the knee of Doc Szandor’s brother-in-law, a hotshot Harvard Law post-doc whom we’d retained as corporate counsel for a new Limited Liability Corporation. We’d signed the articles of incorporation the day before, after Group. It was the last thing Doc Szandor did before resigning his post at the sanitarium to take up the position of Chief Medical Officer at HumanCare, LLC, a corporation with no assets, no employees, and a sheaf of shitkicking ideas for redesigning mental hospitals using off-the-shelf tech and a little bit of UE mojo.

30.

Art was most of the way to the Tube when he ran into Lester. Literally.

Lester must have seen him coming, because he stepped right into Art’s path from out of the crowd. Art ploughed into him, bounced off of his dented armor, and would have fallen over had Lester not caught his arm and steadied him.

“Art, isn’t it? How you doin’, mate?”

Art gaped at him. He was thinner than he’d been when he tried to shake Art and Linda down in the doorway of the Boots, grimier and more desperate. His tone was just as bemused as ever, though. “Jesus Christ, Lester, not now, I’m in a hurry. You’ll have to rob me later, all right?”

Lester chuckled wryly. “Still a clever bastard. You look like you’re having some hard times, my old son. Maybe that you’re not even worth robbing, eh?”

“Right. I’m skint. Sorry. Nice running into you, now I must be going.” He tried to pull away, but Lester’s fingers dug into his biceps, emphatically, painfully.

I have wished for a comm a hundred thousand times an hour since they stuck me in this shithole, and now that I have one, I don’t know who to call. Not smart. Not happy.

I run my fingers over the keypad, think about all the stupid, terrible decisions that I made on the way to this place in my life. I feel like I could burst into tears, like I could tear the hair out of my head, like I could pound my fists bloody on the floor. My fingers, splayed over the keypad, tap out the old nervous rhythms of the phone numbers I’ve know all my life, my first house, my Mom’s comm, Gran’s place.

Gran. I tap out her number and hit the commit button. I put the phone to my head.

“Gran?”

“Arthur?”

“Oh, Gran!”

“Arthur, I’m so worried about you. I spoke to your cousins yesterday, they tell me you’re not doing so good there.”

“No, no I’m not.” The stitches in my jaw throb in counterpoint with my back.

“I tried to explain it all to Father Ferlenghetti, but I didn’t have the details right. He said it didn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t. They don’t care. They’ve just put me here.”

“He said that they should have let you put your own experts up when you had your hearing.”

“Well, of course they should have.”

“No, he said that they had to, that it was the law in Massachusetts. He used to live there, you know.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Oh yes, he had a congregation in Newton. That was before he moved to Toronto. He seemed very sure of it.”

“Why was he living in Newton?”

“Oh, he moved there after university. He’s a Harvard man, you know.”

“I think you’ve got that wrong. Harvard doesn’t have a divinity school.”

“No, this was after divinity school. He was doing a psychiatry degree at Harvard.”

Oh, my.

“Oh, my.”

“What is it, Arthur?”

“Do you have Father Ferlenghetti’s number, Gran?”

28.

Tonaishah’s Kubrick-figure facepaint distorted into wild grimaces when Art banged into O’Malley House, raccoon-eyed with sleepdep, airline crud crusted at the corners of his lips, whole person quivering with righteous smitefulness. He commed the door savagely and yanked it so hard that the gas-lift snapped with a popping sound like a metal ruler being whacked on a desk. The door caromed back into his heel and nearly sent him sprawling, but he converted its momentum into a jog through the halls to his miniature office—the last three times he’d spoken to Fede, the bastard had been working out of his office—stealing his papers, no doubt, though that hadn’t occurred to Art until his plane was somewhere over Ireland.

Fede was halfway out of Art’s chair when Art bounded into the office. Fede’s face was gratifyingly pale, his eyes thoroughly wide and scared. Art didn’t bother to slow down, just slammed into Fede, bashing foreheads with him. Art smelled a puff of his own travel sweat and Fede’s spicy Lilac Vegetal, saw blood welling from Fede’s eyebrow.

“Hi, pal!” he said, kicking the door shut with a crash that resounded through the paper-thin walls.

“Art! Jesus fucking Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?” Fede backed away to the far corner of the office, sending Art’s chair over backwards, wheels spinning, ergonomic adjustment knobs and rods sticking up in the air like the legs of an overturned beetle.

“TunePay, Inc.?” Art said, booting the chair into Fede’s shins. “Is that the best fucking name you could come up with? Or did Toby and Linda cook it up?”

Fede held his hands out, palms first. “What are you talking about, buddy? What’s wrong with you?”

Art shook his head slowly. “Come on, Fede, it’s time to stop blowing smoke up my cock.”

“I honestly have no idea—”

“Bullshit!” Art bellowed, closing up with Fede, getting close enough to see the flecks of spittle flying off his lips spatter Fede’s face. “I’ve had enough bullshit, Fede!”

Abruptly, Fede lurched forward, sweeping Art’s feet out from underneath him and landing on Art’s chest seconds after Art slammed to the scratched and splintered hardwood floor. He pinned Art’s arms under his knees, then leaned forward and crushed Art’s windpipe with his forearm, bearing down.

“You dumb sack of shit,” he hissed. “We were going to cut you in, after it was done. We knew you wouldn’t go for it, but we were still going to cut you in—you think that was your little whore’s idea? No, it was mine! I stuck up for you! But not anymore, you hear? Not anymore. You’re through. Jesus, I gave you this fucking job! I set up the deal in Cali. Fuck-off heaps of money! I’m through with you, now. You’re done. I’m ratting you out to V/DT, and I’m flying to California tonight. Enjoy your deportation hearing, you dumb Canuck boy-scout.”

Art’s vision had contracted to a fuzzy black vignette with Fede’s florid face in the center of it. He gasped convulsively, fighting for air. He felt his bladder go, and hot urine stream down his groin and over his thighs.

An instant later, Fede sprang back from him, face twisted in disgust, hands brushing at his urine-stained pants. “Damn it,” he said, as Art rolled onto his side and retched. Art got up on all fours, then lurched erect. As he did, the axe head in his pocket swung wildly and knocked against the glass pane beside his office’s door, spiderwebbing it with cracks.

Moving with dreamlike slowness, Art reached into his pocket, clasped the axe head, turned it in his hand so that the edge was pointing outwards. He lifted it out of his pocket and held his hand behind his back. He staggered to Fede, who was glaring at him, daring him to do something, his chest heaving.

Art windmilled his arm over his head and brought the axe head down solidly on Fede’s head. It hit with an impact that jarred his arm to the shoulder, and he dropped the axe head to the floor, where it fell with a thud, crusted with blood and hair for the first time in 200,000 years.

Fede crumpled back into the office’s wall, slid down it into a sitting position. His eyes were open and staring. Blood streamed over his face.

Art looked at Fede in horrified fascination. He noticed that Fede was breathing shallowly, almost panting, and realized dimly that this meant he wasn’t a murderer. He turned and fled the office, nearly bowling Tonaishah over in the corridor.

“Call an ambulance,” he said, then shoved her aside and fled O’Malley House and disappeared into the Piccadilly lunchtime crowd.

Art nearly leapt out of his seat when the flight attendant wheeled up the duty-free cart, bristling with novelty beakers of fantastically old whiskey shaped like jigging Scotchmen and drunken leprechauns swinging from lampposts.

By the time he hit UK customs he was supersonic, ready to hammer an entire packet of Player’s filterless into his face and light them with a blowtorch. It wasn’t even 0600h GMT, and the Sikh working the booth looked three-quarters asleep under his turban, but he woke right up when Art stepped past the red line and slapped both palms on the counter and used them as a lever to support him as he pogoed in place.

“Your business in England, sir?”

“I work for Virgin/Deutsche Telekom. Let me beam you my visa.” His hands were shaking so badly he dropped his comm to the hard floor with an ominous clatter. He snatched it up and rubbed at the fresh dent in the cover, then flipped it open and stabbed at it with a filthy fingernail.

“Thank you, sir. Door number two, please.”

Art took one step towards the baggage carousel when the words registered. Customs search! Godfuckingdammit! He jittered in the private interview room until another Customs officer showed up, overrode his comm and read in his ID and credentials, then stared at them for a long moment.

“Are you quite all right, sir?”

“Just a little wound up,” Art said, trying desperately to sound normal. He thought about telling the dead friend story again, but unlike a lowly airport security drone, the Customs man had the ability and inclination to actually verify it. “Too much coffee on the plane. Need to have a slash like you wouldn’t believe.”

The Customs man grimaced slightly, then chewed a corner of his little moustache. “Everything else is all right, though?”

“Everything’s fine. Back from a business trip to the States and Canada, all jetlagged. You know. Can you believe the bastards actually expect me at the office today?” This might work. Piss and moan about the office until he gets bored and lets him go. “I mean, you work your guts out, fly halfway around the world and do it some more, get strapped into a torture seat—you think Virgin springs for business-class tickets for its employees? Hell no!—for six hours, then they want you at the goddamned office.”

“Virgin?” the Customs man said, eyebrows going up. “But you flew in on BA, sir.”

Shit. Of course he hadn’t booked a Virgin flight. That’s what Fede’d be expecting him to do, he’d be watching for Art to use his employee discount and hop a flight back. “Yes, can you believe it?” Art thought furiously. “They called me back suddenly, wouldn’t even let me wait around for one of their own damned planes. One minute I’m eating breakfast, the next I’m in a taxi heading for the airport. I forgot half of my damned underwear in the hotel room! You’d think they could cope with one little problem without crawling up my cock, wouldn’t you?”

“Sir, please, calm down.” The Customs man looked alarmed and Art realized that he’d begun to pace.

“Sorry, sorry. It just sucks. Bad job. Time to quit, I think.”

“I should think so,” the Customs man said. “Welcome to England.”

Traffic was early-morning light and the cabbie drove like a madman. Art kept flinching away from the oncoming traffic, already unaccustomed to driving on the wrong side of the road. England seemed filthy and gray and shabby to him now, tiny little cars with tiny, anal-retentive drivers filled with self-loathing, vegetarian meat-substitutes and bad dentistry. In his rooms in Camden Town, Art took a hasty and vengeful census of his stupid belongings, sagging rental furniture and bad art prints hanging askew (not any more, not after he smashed them to the floor). Bad English clothes (toss ’em onto the floor, looking for one thing he’d be caught dead wearing in NYC, and guess what, not a single thing). Stupid keepsakes from the Camden market, funny novelty lighters, retro rave flyers preserved in glassine envelopes.

He was about to overturn his ugly little pressboard coffee table when he realized that there was something on it.

A small, leather-worked box with a simple brass catch. Inside, the axe-head. Two hundred thousand years old. Heavy with the weight of the ages. He hefted it in his hand. It felt ancient and lethal. He dropped it into his jacket pocket, instantly deforming the jacket into a stroke-y left-hanging slant. He kicked the coffee table over.

Time to go see Fede.

##Received address book entry “Toby Ginsburg” from Colonelonic.

## Colonelonic (private): This guy’s up to something. Flew to Boston twice this week. Put a down payment on a house in Orange County. _Big_ house. _Big_ down payment. A car, too: vintage T-bird convertible. A gas burner! Bought CO2 credits for an entire year to go with it.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Huh. Who’s he working for?

## Colonelonic (private): Himself. He Federally incorporated last week, something called “TunePay, Inc.” He’s the Chairman, but he’s only a minority shareholder. The rest of the common shares are held by a dummy corporation in London. Couldn’t get any details on that without using a forensic accounting package, and that’d get me fired right quick.

Trepan: /private Colonelonic It’s OK. I get the picture. I owe you one, all right?

## Colonelonic (private): sweat.value==0 Are you going to tell me what this is all about someday? Not some bullshit about your girlfriend?

Trepan: /private Colonelonic Heh. That part was true, actually. I’ll tell you the rest, maybe, someday. Not today, though. I gotta go to London.

Art’s vision throbbed with his pulse as he jammed his clothes back into his backpack with one hand while he booked a ticket to London on his comm with the other. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he ordered the taxi while scribbling a note to Gran on the smart-surface of her fridge.

He was verging on berserk by the time he hit airport security. The guard played the ultrasound flashlight over him and looked him up and down with his goggles, then had him walk through the chromatograph twice. Art tried to breathe calmly, but it wasn’t happening. He’d take two deep breaths, think about how he was yup, calming down, pretty good, especially since he was going to London to confront Fede about the fact that his friend had screwed him stabbed him in the back using his girlfriend to distract him and meanwhile she was in Los Angeles sleeping with her fucking ex who was going to steal his idea and sell it as his own that fucking prick boning his girl right then almost certainly laughing about poor old Art, dumbfuck stuck in Toronto with his thumb up his ass, oh Fede was going to pay, that’s right, he was—and then he’d be huffing down his nose, hyperventilating, really losing his shit right there.

The security guard finally asked him if he needed a doctor.

“No,” Art said. “That’s fine. I’m just upset. A friend of mine died suddenly and I’m flying to London for the funeral.” The guard seemed satisfied with this explanation and let him pass, finally.

He fought the urge to get plastered on the flight and vibrated in his seat instead, jiggling his leg until his seatmate—an elderly businessman who’d spent the flight thus far wrinkling his brow at a series of spreadsheets on his comm—actually put a hand on Art’s knee and said, “Switch off the motor, son. You’re gonna burn it out if you idle it that high all the way to Gatwick.”

Art nearly leapt out of his seat when the flight attendant wheeled up the duty-free cart, bristling with novelty beakers of fantastically old whiskey shaped like jigging Scotchmen and drunken leprechauns swinging from lampposts.

By the time he hit UK customs he was supersonic, ready to hammer an entire packet of Player’s filterless into his face and light them with a blowtorch. It wasn’t even 0600h GMT, and the Sikh working the booth looked three-quarters asleep under his turban, but he woke right up when Art stepped past the red line and slapped both palms on the counter and used them as a lever to support him as he pogoed in place.