SOME YOUTH HABITUATED TO THEIR HEADGEAR blocked the elevator to my bunkroom, an isolated rent at the top of one of the Parshall Towers on the Sino side of the bridge that can’t be won. Parshall Towers ain’t like them superstructures they got down in Ames, they’re just poor imitations. There’re three of them and they’re supposed to be silver. German silver, maybe. All the shine rubbed off before my time and the windows stay fogged till midday, so they got a wintry look about them. But a guy’ll burn his shoulder leaned up on them, they got that metal the soldiers wear. That’s how come I knew the youth blocking the elevators were truants, because I seen one lean against the wall on my way into the lobby and jump like he touched the stove. Babes from town trying to make a name, probably. Some of them had guard on the elevator, some just stood and chewed their cheeks and all of them had headgear so you didn’t have to be an office boy to guess they were waiting for the gensets to start up so they could bum lustre. They were blocking the elevator and my room was up the elevator, so it was a natural kind of problem. The pride lion was taking money, he done the fellow who went in before me. That old fellow, I suspect, is a spy for the Americans, so he paid it, but he paid it so easy it wasn’t any fun, so that youth made him pay again. “Twice-a-toll,” the kid said, something like that. The other youths with him were suspended about the lobby kind of taking his cue. I’d be a devil if I ain’t say what I already said and am going to say again: I saw them before ever they saw me and knew what they were about. I kept toward them anyway. I’ve been taken once already two years back by some truants like them, so I wasn’t no sucker, and so maybe it was a little trouble that suited me. I went straight to that pride lion and he stepped up like they do, those that have been thieving for a long while, like they only mean to ask for the time. I said to him what I shoulda said to them youth two years back.
I said, “Move or I’ll pink you, kid.”
He heard the words and he caught on some to my attitude and he held up his hand like to tell me to calm down and listen. He even smiled a little bit. He had eyes like mountains and the brain drug hadn’t done any work yet at all on his skin, so here was a real angel come to make me swoon so he could swindle me. He didn't take a durn word I said serious because he smiled, and even his teeth hadn’t any rot and were straight as my picatinny. So here come Belial in the flesh and blood.
“What are you, kid?” I asked.
“Am-ur-ee-cun,” he said, sounded like.
“No you ain’t,” I said.
Hell knows what he was, but not American. I turned cloak for the Sinos twelve years back, God take my soul, but an American knows his countryman when he meets him, and this kid wasn’t a countryman.
“Mm—Yess ah am,” he said. He let his hand out like for me to put something in it.
“You’re on the wrong side of the bridge if that’s the case. As far as I can tell, bridge is still at an impasse. An impasse, you know what that means?” I said.
All his friends started throwing their eyes at me because I must’ve been the first one who ain’t come right out with what I had in my pockets. Six youth kind of come up to attention. There was a girl with them to make seven, but wasn’t much left of her. She threw me her eyes the hardest, not like she wanted nothing, but like some devil had commanded her to look my way. A guy felt bad for her. She might’ve been an angel once too, but wearing headgear had done its work on her already.
That kid in front of me smiled bigger when he seen me see his friends, then they all smiled, except that girl with them, she was the only one wasn’t smiling—her and me anyway. That kid put his hand down and stepped back a step. He knew he had to play a different game.
I spat. Time was getting on and so was I ready to. But before anything, there was a loud clunk, and all of us looked toward the back wall like we could see through it to the lustre generators outside. They whirred up and not a second later the scalptrodes in them kids skulls got to flashing and their eyes lit up too. That electrochem liquor filled the air, and if you paid attention and didn’t wear headgear yourself, you could feel the zephyr tickle your hair. The boy in front of me relaxed into himself. Lustre greased them well-worn pathways in his brain and he started to sweat about the temples and blink more than what was natural and I think he was itching to nod off and so were the rest of them. He shuddered like it felt good. I bet it did, but I ain’t got no scalptrodes or headgear of any kind and never did have, so I ain’t certain how it feels. Anyway they can’t help it when them gensets start up I don’t guess. That’s how it is with them youth, especially truants. But I was still standing there being a devil still, so that kid lost his patience, wanting both my money and to nod off. I never had no patience to begin with. That’s why I was standing there and if he had a brain in his head instead of all that drug, he’d have maybe caught on. So when he lost his patience I was thinking: finally, we come around.
“Move,” I said.
He wouldn’t move for nothing. Durn addict, not more than fifteen years old and less than that on all of them along with him. His friends were losing interest in me. That girl hadn’t ever stopped watching me, though.
“Move. I got to get on that elevator,” I said. Course he wasn’t going to move. Course I didn’t want him to.
It was as hot as if the durn sun were asleep on my neck and the sweat come worse than it did an hour ago turning wrench at the hangar. He took out his blade. I had one too.
“Keep back, soldiers,” I said to his friends. Whether they understood me or not I don’t know, but they ain’t move an inch.
The kid wasn’t seasoned enough, which you’d guessed by his angel face. I got him easy between the floating ribs, laid him down to the sound of them other kids’ feet scuffing the lobby floor on their way out. Their scalptrodes were glittering blue at the back of their heads as they went, flashing fast with all that fresh lustre in the air. Them scalptrodes in the skull of the dead kid I laid down went from blue to dark, like a fuse done blown, but his face was still contented like that lustre was still greasing his brain. He wasn’t no American. Them Americans are across the bridge and they know a bit about knife play and they got that metal for armor anyway. That girl, she went with them youth when they ran, but she gave me a look before she did like she was glad the kid wasn’t quicker. She gave me a look like she meant to smile any second. She gave me a look like she was glad I come around.