Saga Read online

  A personal touch that had grown and grown as the weeks passed was that provided by our very own artist, Nathan. He was a gentle lad, so mild mannered in fact that you had to worry for him, hanging around with a gang of punks like us. But we all treasured him as he had a genius for tattoos, tags, and murals, without which a gang could never hope to have any sense of identity.

  The vast canvas provided by the walls of our den had been Nathan’s biggest opportunity for showing his talent. By the violet bubble-plastic glow of portable xenon lights, a wild jungle had grown up around us. Leaves of black and indigo twisted a design of intense complexity, in which you could lose yourself, following a tendril as it looped toward the roof and back down to the carpeted floor. Deep in this fantastical jungle lurked all sorts of wonderful creatures and absurd characters. We were all there, of course. I was little more than two shadowy eyes peering from a tree trunk that displayed my trademark ♥. Swinging from a vine came Jay, the boss, lord of the jungle, jaw set proud, king of all he surveyed. Below him, comically anxious that he might fall, were Carter and Milan, both in their martial-arts gear. Our techie, Athena, was portrayed sitting in a tree house, quietly reading, while Nathan painted himself as walking dreamily through a grove of giant palm trees. We loved it, even Jay, who had understood the mockery signaled by his pose in the design but still enjoyed the world that the mural created. It was as though by entering our den we left the City behind, to live in a magical forest where we were free to pursue our dreams.

  What the mural could not possibly have portrayed, though, was the tension that existed between Jay and the rest of us, arising from our classifications. All of us were reds, holders of the lowest-ranking social card. Strictly speaking, I wasn’t even a red because I hadn’t been issued a card at all. But I considered myself to be a red; you simply can’t get any lower. On the other hand, Jay was a yellow. His parents were managers of the biggest printing company in the City. Half the posters and paper media you saw around the streets were theirs. Like the big smile outside. Normally, being a yellow was not a problem, but an asset. A yellow card got you into pleasant shopping areas, nice restaurants, civic utilities like libraries and museums that the rest of us were banned from. But if you were the leader of an anarcho-punk board gang, being a yellow was more than slightly embarrassing. Which is why Jay overcompensated by being more reckless, wilder, more dangerous than the rest of us. He played guitar in a band, NoPhuture, took heeby-jeebies like they were chocolate biscuits, and had spiderweb perma-tats down both his arms. This meant he fooled everyone, including himself.

  Right now, Jay was rummaging in the filing cabinet he had made his own, tearing open a foil pack of jeebies and scooping out a couple.

  “Want?” he asked.

  The rest of us shook our heads, apart from Carter who held up his hand. A dark disc flitted through the air. Carter gulped it down, then lay back with his eyes closed to let the hit sink in.

  “Ouch.” I winced as I settled into a big black executive chair, relieved to be taking the weight off my left leg.

  “Did that drop hurt you?” Nathan came over, catching his blond bangs back behind his ear to look at me sympathetically.

  “Aye, maybe sprained it.”

  “Let me see.” He moved his satchel around behind him so he could kneel and take my foot in his hands. The boot I was wearing took some effort to remove, but he worked at the laces gently until, with one hand bracing my leg, he could lever it off. Then he rolled down my sock, and, although it was painful, the sensation was also sweet. “Yes. It’s swelling badly. You’d better have some ice on it.”

  I nodded and watched fondly as Nathan left for the kitchen, having first carefully placed my sore leg on a desk he had dragged over for the purpose.

  “That calls for revenge.” Milan looked over at me with a scowl. Revenge. This was Milan’s way of showing concern for me, and I smiled back at him appreciatively.

  “Yeah,” responded Carter immediately; you could see the rush of energy that the jeebie had released in the flush of his face. “Yeah, let’s do something.”

  “You really want to do something?” Jay’s face glowed eerily in the pale violet light cast by the strips of xenon bubbles that we had stirred into life by boarding over them on entering the room.

  “Yeah.” Carter was rubbing his hand around and around his close-shaven head. “Yeah, let’s do something really class.”

  “How about a mall raid, on a green mall?” suggested Jay, looking around the room from one of us to the next, knowing he had our attention.

  “Green? Which one?” It was Athena who was going to have to deal with the security system, and I could see how the idea had instantly appealed to her. Up to now we had ridden only yellow mall raids.

  “Fourteenth and Coleridge. Mountain Vistas Mall.”

  “Got it.” Athena had already unrolled her notebook, the glow from its screen reflecting in the piercings of her lip, nose, and eyebrow and turning them from silver studs into turquoise jewels. She switched on a projector that I had stolen for her the previous month, and soon we were focused on a 3-D image, which she scrolled around so we could all examine the mall from every angle. It was a beauty, with only the world’s most exclusive chains on display: clothes by XFK, 0n02, and mr. green; jewelry by +++, and Quintain; perfumes by L’yele. They made me snarl like an angry dog, these companies who paid a great deal of money to shut me out of their world, and I suddenly found I was no longer weary or feeling the pain from my ankle.

  “Sweet.” Carter looked around, laughing. “That’s a sweet-looking mall.”

  “Class,” agreed Athena. “This has to be done.”

  “But how did you check it out if it’s green?” asked Milan.

  “Just from the outside, just the outside. But don’t worry. Athena can get us all the schematics. The only question is access. See here.” Jay switched on a red laser pen and flashed its light at the projection. Athena kept up with his moves, zooming in as the red beam led us around to where a road dipped into a tunnel under the building. “There. Underground delivery access, elevators to the top. Security just seemed the usual to me, trips and echo stuff. Ghost, you can get us through that, right?”

  “Yeah.” I spoke that one word with confidence because I knew that I could enter any building from red all the way up to violet, card or no card, and maybe I could even get into violets, too. I’d have tried, but for the fact I’d never even seen a violet-access building.

  Nathan returned, the only one of us not interested in the luminous emerald structure that revolved as we examined our target.

  “Now, stay still.” He had tied ice into a cloth and was trying to wrap it around my swollen ankle. I waved him away.

  “No time for that, Nath. We’re going on a mall raid.”

  His face fell. “You should rest, keep the weight off it.”

  “I’ll be fine. Toss me the medic bag, will you?” This was directed at Milan, who looked up from the projection, then pushed himself across the floor, the wheels of his chair allowing him to coast to where we kept a bag of medical supplies.

  “Here.” He lofted it over.

  There was a lot of junk in the bag, in no particular order, but I rummaged out some spray and elastic binding. The effect of the spray was instant and I prodded at my ankle, curious that I couldn’t feel the pressure of my finger, let alone any pain. After I had bound my ankle tightly, the boot went back on easily. I was aware of Nathan’s anxious presence somewhere behind me.

  “I’m set,” I announced.

  “Me, too.” Carter beamed happily.

  “We’re out of here in ten, then.” Jay snapped off his laser pen and jumped from his chair, looking for his gear.

  “Nobody is going anywhere!” You hardly ever got to hear Athena shout, so when she did, you listened. Even the pigeons stood still. “We are not setting out while you two are rushing. Let the jeebie burn off some, or you’ll charge out thinking you can do anything and you’ll forget the basics.”<
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  “But I can do anything!” Carter laughed.

  Milan gave Carter a long, steady look. “Athena’s right. Take your time, get your head together.”

  While we packed our satchels, Nathan came over to me again.

  “You gonna tell me not to go?” I looked at him defiantly.

  “Of course not. I brought you this.”

  It was a board tattoo.

  “Oh. Sweet. Thanks, Nath. Let’s see it.” I heaved my board around and we knelt on either side of it. Holding back his hair with one hand, Nathan sprayed off the old tattoo, and then peeled the backing from his new one. The tattoo settled on the center of the board, before spreading its tendrils toward the edge. The focus of the design was a black ♥, but all around it a terrible specter took form, a wraith of bony claws and hooded eyes. When the design stabilized, it was perfect. I had a board from hell.

  “Wow, Nath! That’s your best one yet.” I leaned over and gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Thanks, mate.”

  He smiled, a very shy and genuine smile. “Pleasure.”

  Thirty minutes later, we were mall raiding. A professional hit squad, not a bunch of kids. T-shirts and torn jeans had been swapped for combats, pockets filled with sprays, tags, gum, putty, ball bearings: anything that could really make a mess of a shopping center in a short space of time. Then there was the high-tech gear donated to us by a variety of stores with poor security systems. We all had Levcast body armor: “Tough times demand tough protection.” Our coms were Fcom Ava 440s, “pure sound, pure listening,” and I was particularly pleased with our anti-tracking Celere V IIs: “freedom is a right.”

  Right now, our coms were saturated by a series of two-minute punk anthems. The Greatest of the Greatest Punk Bands—Volume 34, no less. They weren’t bad for hyping you up, although I’d never have deducted good credit to download them.

  The music suddenly stopped mid-riff, which was slightly disconcerting. We were in position, on a walkway behind a restaurant. My face screwed up against the odor of rotting vegetables. That stink wasn’t on the schematics.

  “See it?” Jay pointed to a nearby alley.

  “Aye-aye, Cap’n.” You could hear the mockery in Carter’s voice.

  “Masks on; here goes,” Jay continued, unperturbed.

  The masks were not just for disguise—vision actually improved in the goggles; dark shadows were enhanced and glare cut out by a green tint.

  This was my part of the raid, and I was the first to tip my board over the edge of the walkway, gliding down the alley to where it joined the delivery road.

  “Two cameras. Wait here.”

  I left them in the shadow of the wall, while I double-footed. The alley was sufficiently narrow that you could ollie your board to get alternative uphits, frontside and backside, zigzagging to get some height. Once high enough, I took off, to land on the cameras from above. Then I slid my toolkit from its pocket and paused the video send. I quickly boarded over to the other camera. Both were frozen in less than a minute, locked onto an image of innocent order.

  Once I was down again, opening the gates took less than thirty seconds.

  “Go.”

  Silent and swift, they boarded past me and into a vast underground parking lot, from which trucks unloaded their goods into elevators. There were a few trucks around and several workers in overalls, but they were a long way off.

  We continued along the shadows of the walls to a corridor that led to the elevators we had identified as the best way in. There were two ways of reaching the end of the hall undetected. One was to disable or fool the swipe-card access, which I could certainly do. But the second was the quicker way.

  “Fibers in the hole!” I tossed a grenade.

  Fummpfff. With a soft sigh, the corridor was filled with minuscule strands of polypropylene. As they swirled around, millions of tiny reflections revealed the path of some fifty laser trips. Now we rode the corridor like a stunt course, ducking and weaving along a path created by the gaps between the beams.

  Once we were in the elevator, it was Athena’s turn to set to work, opening a panel to get at the colorful wires behind, and clipping her notebook into their system. I felt a surge of affection for her. It was fantastic to have someone so competent on your team. I hoped the others felt the same way about me. The elevator carried us all up, smooth and swift, a gentle mall broadcast in the background.

  A polite, warm female voice spoke over a distant melody. Carter was nodding his head to the background Muzak, and I couldn’t tell whether this was a parody or the effect of the jeebie he had taken earlier, turning the music into something he actually enjoyed.

  “Customers, enhance your shopping experience with a visit to Fowler’s manicure and pedicure parlor. Browse the catalogs of all our stores while you relax in their award-winning comfort seating, and receive the attentions of the finest beauticians in the City. All free and part of the service of Mountain Vistas Mall.”

  The Muzak swelled up slightly.

  “Fowler’s can be found on the fourth floor, between the swimming pool and Café Noir.”

  Ding.The elevator doors opened.

  There are chemicals in the air of shopping malls, I’m sure. Every time we got in one, I was struck by their smell, a kind of sweet vanilla. Probably years of research have gone into the subject, to make the air as shopper-friendly as possible.

  This mall was worth its green rating. We looked down a wide central space through which we were about to descend, at six floors that glowed with a pleasant shopping ambience, created above all by the huge glass dome above us.

  Time for chaos with wings.

  “Customers, as a special offer—”

  We will never know what treat was in store for the green-card shoppers. A massive heavy guitar chord crashed through the mall’s P.A. as if someone had thrown a piano down all six floors. Drums kicked in, a thunderstorm breaking in the ears of the people below.

  I have no future, I have no past

  You can stick your green card up your—

  “Customers, we apologize for”—bzzt.

  Athena shrugged. “Sorry, they have a good system. But it’s ours now.”

  And the band played on.

  Don’t tell me where to stand

  Don’t tell me what to do

  Every command you give

  Is gonna come right back to you.

  Personally I preferred more sophisticated lyrics. But it was Jay’s band, and it did make mall raiding more fun to have it blasted out around us by the mall’s own system. A kind of revenge for the Muzak they forced on people.

  I was already on floor three, the tropical island experience. Security guards were beginning to recover from their initial shock and were all talking at once into their nonfunctioning walkie-talkies. Rapidly I fired out a few slogans. I began with big red anarchy signs. They looked good on the glass frontage of a swimwear store. Even better on the autobarman’s white shirt at Malibu Bar. Best of all, a nice row along “Vistas of Heaven—Art Prints for the Discerning Home.” A red-faced guard, waving his arms, caused me to cut back, but no harm. I hadn’t yet gummed the escalators, which I did now, smiling to see the consternation of those who now found themselves having to engage in the unexpected exercise of walking up a staircase.

  Then I lined up on some immense billboards and shot.

  Shop, don’t stop till you drop. That looked good on a sports footwear ad.

  Property is theft.A classic. Worked well, I thought, on a board showing green-card apartments.

  Poverty is a crime.Lacking in humor, but still, needed to be said.

  Consume more. It is the measure of your life. Exaggerating the real slogans of the corporations sometimes worked well to expose the absurdity of their claims. Occasionally, though, the advertisers themselves shamelessly used the very same slogans.

  “Four more minutes.” Athena’s voice came through our headsets.

  “How we doing?” asked Nathan.

  “I’ve
got the giggles. I’m still twisted; I can’t stop giggling.” And we could hear a constant gurr-gurr sound as Carter chuckled away to himself.

  Time for a couple more slogans. I weaved in and out through frightened shoppers, leaving the chasing guards far behind.

  “Heads right up, look at this!”

  It took me a moment to reach the center so I could look up and see what Jay was referring to. He was grinding along a metal stanchion right underneath the roof of the dome. A can was in his hand from which he was spraying a jet of yellow-and-blue flame.

  “Lunatic,” Milan muttered.

  “What are you doing?” asked Carter with genuine curiosity.

  Jay didn’t have to answer. A moment later, cascades of water sprang from the fire-safety nozzles. Soon a thousand wonderful rainbows glittered throughout the mall, created by the reflection of the bright lights of the shops in the thin haze made by the spray.

  “Class, huh?” Jay laughed.

  “Classimundo!” cheered Carter.

  It was a good touch. I had to admit it.

  “You have a hundred and fifty seconds to get out. Time to leave.” Athena called it. She was monitoring the police systems.

  As I nose-boarded down toward my designated exit, arms outstretched, feeling the simulated rainfall, I took a moment to enjoy the view. Green-card holders in expensive dresses and suits were hurrying toward the exits, bags with the logos of the large corporations held above their heads, flimsy protection from the thin but persistent spray of the fire alarms.