It wasn't hard to find the tent. You could hear them talking from the sidewalk outside. There was a guard at the door and I bummed a smoke. He was smoking some mix of mutant kudzu, tobacco and a pungent grass he called Toledo Window Box.
I nodded my thanks and gestured to the tent, "What gives?"
"Better not to ask." He replied. A typical Green afterall. Grunt down to the bone.
"I'm a carrier for that crew." I said.
"Sucks for you. And even better not to ask." He replied, and shrugged as in a way that said something like, 'move along, motherfucker, you're sucking up my air.'
I nodded my appreciation for the smoke and walked away and around to the back end of the tent and enjoyed the smoke while I listened.
They were arguing inside. I could hear Jasmin speak on occassion, but mostly it came from three men, one of them Franklin. On occassion Stowe would speak, and her husky female voice cut through the others. The power of sexual allure. Only greater than the power of female sexuality was the ways in which it could be used.
"It is insane that he split us up. I insist that he reconsider splitting us up." Said one I didn't recognize, an older man.
"It's the Major's choice and he feels this is safer." Said Jasmin.
"But we are a team. We work together." Said another, judging by his voice I took to be a younger man, whose voice betrayed his fear.
"Doesn't he understand that we are just specialists and are needed to compliment, not substitute for each other?" said Franklin.
Jasmin didn't speak, probably because there was nothing left to say. The Major called the shots and you played by his rules.
"In some ways this might be better." Said Stowe, "We're not even sure where to look."
"Either here on the North Tip at Columbia of it's at further, here, at this place called NYU." Said the old man.
The nervous man wasn't buying it. "Speculation is all you got. Look, here at this site. This large blast site, it could be the location as well. It could even had been moved away from Manhattan to Queens, there are at least two possibilities, Jamaica or Flushing."
"I doubt they would have moved it, there just wasn't enough time." Replied Franklin.
"Or perhaps it was destroyed? Or did they move it off the island to Jersey? We know there was a lab affiliated there." The nevous man spoke.
Maddy Stowe spoke again, her voice not without a bit of rancor. "Manhattan, Queens, Jersey. Hell it could be out in Brookhaven, at the old National Labs. It could even be out as far as Plum Island or perhaps they moved it to Groton. And if they took it to Groton, maybe it's miles underwater in a crushed submarine."
The others got quiet and waited for Stowe to speak again. "We have to go with what we know and start there. Personally I think it's still in the bank vault and buried under rubble. But we won't know until we find out."
"Madness, this is just madness. We don't even know...." Said one, an older man.
"No, we don't. But we have our orders and we know the price of failing to comply." Said the nervous man.
No one spoke.
Finally Jasmin said. "Then you know what's expected."
Maddy got up. "I need to breath some fresh air." She got up and left the tent. Outside she nodded to the guard and walked along the road that led towards the Major's office.
I followed her and watched as she moved slowly down the road. Perhaps she was going to the Major or maybe to her own quarters to relax. Outside the canteen she stopped to light a smoke. I thought she was going to go in, maybe to buy a drink to take off the edge, but she just watched. An outsider.
Inside the canteen people were drinking and flirting. The night was still early that most hadn't gotten piss drunk yet, or had paired off with something to keep them warm. Most of them were regulars: grunts, whores or locals.
But Stowe wasn't watching what was going on but something else, in the dark alley way. The shadows hid them, but you could tell what they were doing by the panting and cries. A woman was being fucked against the wall, her legs wrapped around a man who holding her up. Her hands were running through the man's hair and occassionally she put her mouth against his neck. Maddy puffed on her smoke and stood their watching when I came up next to her.
"So you don't really know where it is." I said.
If she was surprised she didn't show it. "Nope, just a few ideas where it might be. Heard you came back."
"Did you expect different?"
"Not really." She said, still watching the couple that was fucking across the street. I hadn't taken M. Stowe to be a voyuer. 'Did you get what you were looking for."
"More or less." I said. "I think I can get us in the city."
"Well let's hope so or this is all a fucking waste of time, isn't it." She said.
"What's so damn important?" I asked.
"You'd like to know. But sorry, mum's the word. Secret. Means if I tell ya, that black bitch will kill the both of us." She smiled, and she looked at me, her eyes deep pools of seductive blackness, "And we wouldn't want that, least not yet. Besides, you'll find out eventually, you look resourceful enough."
"The deal is too cheap. It needs to be renegotiated." I said.
"The Major won't like to hear that." She said.
"Then he can hire someone else." I said.
"Already has." She replied her voice lanquid and bittersweet. She gave me that wry smile, which made me think of how cat might smile when it plays with a mouse.
"I wouldn't take that trip if I were you." I said.
"You say that as if I had a choice. Besides, why should you care where I go."
"Life is short enough without taking short cuts to get you there."
"We all die Kilrick, and few get the chance to decide when or where. That's life over there. We die and we fuck and that's about all we do anymore."
Across the street the couple were disengaging. The man let the woman go, and she slid down the wall to sit on the floor, while he zipped up. Then he threw some coins at her and went back to rejoin the party in the canteen. The girl slowly picked up the coins but either didn't have the strength or will to pick up the coins.
"Used and abandoned." Said Maddy Stowe, "That's our fate, and what will come of us in the end. Don't you deny it, either. All we got, we live, fuck and die. And usually we have little choice in the matter."
I wasn't about to argue with her. Most of these people seemed to do only the two things, fuck and kill, and in the process live off the people who broke their back working the wasted soil so that others could fuck and kill as they pleased. Maybe it had always been that way. The powerful do what they will and weak try to get by until they get used and swept aside. That's why I'm an independent contractor. I choose my own marks.
"Let me buy you a drink." I said.
"Nope," She said, "the shit they serve in their will kill you faster than a bullet. And I'm not ready to die just yet. I'd rather fuck."
That surprised me. Before I could speak she said. "But not tonight. killer. You or I might mistake it as charity, and I don't want no mercy fuck. Besides, the good things in life you got to earn."
She smiled at me and then turned to walk back to the tent.
