I-I-I

"Fuck. Just a moment, Cutie old boy, got a visitor."

I pull the headset off my ear. The bell on the wall is jangling like billy-o. I give it to the count of ten to pipe down, but it doesn't, so I surrender. I rise, feeling like old Lazarus after a bender. I start undoing locks. I crank open the door of my study -- the thing's a four-inch-thick sandwich of plate steel and asbestos, and my back makes its feelings on the subject quite clear. Still, precautions, what? A chap's home is, after all, his castle.

"Hold on, hold on, I'm coming. No need to pull the bally bell rope off." I trot down the corridor. My flat's front door is a charming old iron-and-wood bastard with a peepslit and a hatch for transacting biz. I flip open the slit. "And what can I do for you, my good man?"

My visitor is wearing a black hoodie with the drawstring pulled tight over his face. "You Spex?" He asks. "I hear you sell red. I want the good stuff."

"Half a mo'." I let the slit flap shut. My instincts are generally spot-on with this sort of thing, and this johnny feels harmless as a lamb, but with unexpected referrals it pays to stay on the safe side. That's why I keep an old deck of Bicycle playing cards on a shelf beside the umbrella stand. I pick it up, give it two quick riffles and a weave, and do an Elmsley pop from the middle of the deck. I catch the popped card in midair, and flip it. Four of diamonds. Harmless.

"Back again." I give my visitor a friendly wave through the slit. "Looking for a bit of the tip-top in the red department, are we? Well, one does one's humble best. So,it's not too inquisitive, what exactly the fuck I can do for you on this fine day?"

He looks up and down the corridor. There are places where the market gets so black that no law enforcement even cares anymore, so this fellow's a dab. "How much for Type-V?" he asks.

Listen to the chap, talking the talk. "Two thousand will get you a pint and a smile."

"I can get it from Archie for seven hundred."

"My Type-V is not the same as Archie's Type-V," I point out. "I can serve you from the rail for four hundred -- guaranteed human, and that's as far as I go. For one thousand I can offer you the top-shelf stuff. Certified low-mileage, some probably V and some probably not. Two thousand gets you the guaranteed V."

He thinks about this. If he's got any sense he'll take the bargain bin option, because there's nothing he could possibly be up to that requires actual virgin. If he's one of Archie's clients looking to trade up, he's either rich and stupid or rich and very clever indeed.

"I'll give you two-five apiece for two pints of the Type-V, if you can guarantee it," he says. He pushes the cash through the hatch. A stack of fifty hundred-dollar bills in a paper band.

"That's dashed generous of you, considering I just fucking said that I guarantee it at two thousand." I pull out ten of the hundreds and push them back through. "Hold on a tick."

My cold room is mostly empty at the moment. Anatomicals and biologicals are moving too fast for me to keep them on the shelves, and that's when I can even get them. Got a couple of hands and hearts in the deep freeze, Mexican cartel up from Juarez. No good unless you're desperate, but people do get desperate, what? At the moment, most of my refrigerated stock is pre-packaged pints of the old human bean juice. I know a chap who knows a chap who runs a bent Bloodmobile service for girls' boarding schools.

I pull two bags off the rack, check the labels, and grab a can of Beast on the way out.

"Here you are, chum." I push the plastic pouches through the hatch and into a waiting duffel bag. "Pleasure doing business with you."

"Are you sure--"

But I'm already back in my study, turning the crank. The door closes, four inches of tank armor between me and the world. Not precisely elegant, but it keeps out anything that gets kept out by doors. "Hoy, Cutie," I say, clipping my headset back on. "Back again. I do apologize, new customer. Dabblers -- more money than sense, what? Bless their curious little hearts."

The translation takes a split-second in both directions. "You kept me waiting."

"Why, Cutie, that's funny!" I laugh, so he'll know that I’m sincere. "Jolly good joke, bravo."

"Thank you," Cutie says. "The statement is absurd, because 'to wait' implies a chronological perception of time, which I do not possess."

"Jokes aren't quite so funny if you go explaining them, Cutie. Spoils the whole effect." I pop open my Beast and pour the whole bally thing down my throat at one go. My head feels all full of needles. I yawn until my jaw aches, and it dawns on me that I haven't been getting just oodles of sleep lately. "Must pop off now, I need a wash."

My bathroom opens right off the study, still inside the skin of metal and chemical protection that sits in the walls and ceiling and floor around my sanctum. It isn't until I've got the water on that I realize I'm still wearing my tuxedo from last night -- no mirrors allowed, you see. With what it cost me to seal this place, I'm not about to go leaving a bloody window open, what? Anyhow, I bung the ghastly stiff things into the laundry basket and slip in under the hot water.

Time for a quick checkup of the corpus. The week has not handled old Spex with kid gloves, but in my book it's not how many lumps you take, it's how many you avoid. A quick count puts fresh bruises at seven, whereas I feel that I've earned twelve at the least. A nasty great slash up my left leg from that beastly rosebush I jumped into merely testifies to the buttock-load of buckshot I'd have received if I hadn't jumped. Scratches on my back from that nice Armenian aristocrat, teeth-marks in my ankle from her Pomeranian, two loose molars from her husband. All in all, not so bad. Bit older, bit wiser, but neither so old nor so wise as to give up the game just yet. Brisk scrub, splash the soap from the eyes, and tally-ho.

I step out onto the mat feeling a good deal more civilized. Toweling off the old torso, I pad back into my study and feel the deep burgundy pile between my toes. When I first settled on this little pad of mine it was with the knowledge that I might one day find myself locked inside it, possibly for the duration of my life. To a bloke who's picking out a couch that he may breathe his last on, attention to detail is of the utmost -- inside my study, which is also my bedroom and my little command center, you'll find only the best. The wallpaper is cream-and-gold antique silk, and fucking expensive. I received the Chippendale wingback armchair as a bequest from a darling old socialite who turned out to have a great deal more life in her than the doctors had promised. To enjoy the contents of the humidor on my desk, a gift from brother Adrian, is an act of simultaneous worship and desecration.

Apart from my brother's gifts, which are generally intended to be imbibed or inhaled, my only souvenir of home is the carved stone mantelpiece. Shipped across the wide Atlantic to the District of Columbia and now set into a wall that boasts no fireplace, it bears the arms and motto of the House of Haruspex. A great eye, sable, upon a field, azure, with stars. Supported by a serpent, dexter, and a great hand, sinister, the shield is crested with a broken coronet. Beneath: spes vincit fatum. My ancestors terrify me.

Back to the headset, and perhaps a bit of work done before breakfast. "Hullo, Cutie?" His name's actually something a bit like Ku'taghot'ka, but that's such a fuss to pronounce that I generally use his nickname except when I'm cross with him. "You still there?"

His voice -- not really his, I suppose, and I suppose he isn't strictly a 'he' -- always reminds me a bit of my geography master back at Eton. "Hello, Spex. You kept me waiting."

"Joke's not funny the second time you tell it, chum," I reply. "Got to let it rest for a century or two, what? Anyhow, enough dilly-dallying. Have you got anything for me, or not?"

"Rumors," Cutie says. "Letters of transit have been stolen, and are expected to end up on the open market. They may find their way into your neighborhood."

Of course, he didn't really say "letters of transit," but some concepts don't translate literally from one plane of reality to another. I knew what he meant, and I knew that it would mean a pot of trouble for whatever poor bugger lost his rag and tried to fence something with that much heat on it. "That's a nasty affair. Sort of thing that turns brother against brother, what? Any reason to think the merchandise will be coming my way?"

"Rumors. Only rumors."

"Right." I begin to contemplate getting dressed. Seems like an awful bore; I'd been to an embassy party the night before, the guest of an old dab I tell fortunes for, and the wine had flowed well past four in the morning. "You'll let me know if it turns into more than that, what? And I'll keep my ear to the ground. Oops, must let you go, got a call on the other line." I switch over. "Hullo, Allie old girl. How's tricks down the Coil?"

"Hello baby." Blind Allie's got a voice like honey on a razor blade. I'd adore her even if she weren't proprietress of the premier watering hole for fellows in my line of business. "'Fraid we might have a teensy-weensy problem with a language barrier over here. There's a new girl in town, and I thought you might want to come around and get acquainted."

"Oh yes? Flattered you'd think of me." Flattered and concerned. My wheelings and dealings have taken me a bit off the beaten path, to be sure, but I'm hardly what dear brother Adrian might call a cunning linguist. Besides, on an average day the regulars at the Mortal Coil can be counted on for fluency in twenty or thirty non-human languages between them. Only one reason Allie would think that I might be better equipped to chat with this Jenny-come-lately. "Troublemaker, what?"

She giggled. Allie doesn't break hearts, she just melts them into unresisting goo. "Nothing a guy with a posh accent and some old-world charm can't handle. Come on by, I'll scramble some eggs for you. Please?"

Dashed difficult to refuse, of course, when a girl like Allie's applying the old oil like that. "I ... well, right ho, I suppose."

"Thank you, baby." And with that, she rings off.

I gaze unhappily at my painted ceiling. With mirrors out of the question, I'd been at a bit of a loss with regard to decorating the old c., but then the Marchese Ercole passed away and brother Adrian pinched a few frescoes from his palazzo in Umbria before the historical chappies could get there. I quite like it -- triton with sea horses, lots of water nymphs cavorting about in the altogether -- and usually it cheers me up. Today, however, even a renaissance rendering of breasts and buttocks can't drive away the sense that I've agreed to trade my life for a plate of eggs. I glare at a laughing naiad. "Fuck you," I tell her. "And the porpoise you rode in on."