Underground Airlines(67)

From this I’d counted out Martha’s $29,500 and brought it to her in the laundry bag.

I told her the truth—a version of it. A portion, calved off from the whole. I was an agent of the Underground Airlines. I was going down into the Four to recover something that had been lost, a weapon in the battle against the old foe. All true; no lies. All true.

And no black was permitted to travel into any of the states of the Hard Four without a white companion to vouch for his whereabouts and be responsible for his conduct.

I needed a white person.

“I know this is a lot to take in,” I told her.

“It’s okay,” she said. “It’s okay.” I kept going. I spoke quickly.

“I will provide you with a false identification for the border crossing,” I told her. “When we’re across, clear of the border, you will reenter the North with your real ID and burn the false one. Then you’re done. You go back to Indy and get your money and you’re done. You can do what you had intended with it, or you can—I don’t know. Take your boy and get out of the country. Go to Europe. So—”

“Yes,” she said.

She wasn’t listening to what I was saying about Europe. About leaving. I could see the option sliding past her, untouched. She was going to hand my money over to the clown from Steubenville, Ohio, who claimed he could get her into TorchLight, and that was a foolish move, but that was not my concern. She was an adult, and I was making her an offer, and all I needed was for her to take it, and she took it. She was in.

I handed her the laundry bag. She didn’t look inside. She didn’t count the money. She held the bag carelessly by its thin plastic strap, looking with new interest at my face. “I have one condition.”

“What?”

“You have to tell me your name. Your real name. That’s my only condition.”

It took me a minute. I had to fish around to find it. Castle called me honey and Bridge called me Victor. I’ve hung so many names on myself, one after another. And I actually have a name, a real human name that my mother whispered in my ear when I was four years old, before I was taken from the breed lot and put into the school. Sweet and secret private name.

I almost told it to Martha, but then I decided to give her my service name instead. My Bell’s name. That was fine. That was close enough.

“Brother,” I told her. “My name is Brother.”

That was last night. Now here we were, five hundred miles away, and I was staring out the window, standing in my pants and undershirt, watching red taillights stack up in the darkness. Martha came out of the bathroom.

“Whoa.”

“What?”

She was squinting, coming closer, looking concerned. “Your shoulder.” I realized I was holding on to it, clutching the spot where bands of pain were radiating out into my neck and upper back. “That needs to come out.”

I took my hand away, and it was slick and glittering with pus. “Shit.”

“Yeah. Shit. That is definitely infected.” Martha took a step closer and squinted at the wound.

“Let’s get it out,” I said. “Now.”

We had no extra time tomorrow. No time tonight for a fever, no time for the course of illness. A hospital, obviously, was out of the question.

And Martha, as it turned out, a frequent traveler and an unemployed medical assistant, had with her everything she needed, more or less, to pull a piece of battered metal out of my flesh. Suture kit and bandages, aspirin and gauze, even a small scalpel.

“The only thing I don’t have,” she said, “is any kind of anesthetic. But in the morning I’m sure we could get to a pharmacy—”

“No,” I said. “Now.”

She shook her head and looked at me, a wounded stranger in the dim hotel room. A long way from Jim Dirkson.

“All right, Brother. Go ahead and lie down on the bed.”



She fetched ice from the vending machine, and she wrapped some in a washcloth and held it on my shoulder till it was numb.

“Well, that oughta do something,” said Martha, and I couldn’t say if it did or not: her knife slid into my shoulder, and it hurt like hell.

I winced. I held my breath. My shoulder was on fire; my shoulder and my back.

“You’re doing great,” Martha said in the soft, coaxing tone I’d heard her use with her boy. “You’re doing just fine. Just hang tight.”

She breathed carefully while making her careful incisions, and then I felt her fingers working on and in my flesh, burrowing, sentient things, insects crawling around. I clutched the edge of the thin mattress with both hands and squeezed. I wasn’t born for this, I was thinking. I wasn’t born to be any kind of soldier or spy. This was all a mistake.

“I see it,” she said gently. “I see it already. It’s close to the surface. Just hold tight, Brother. Just hold on.”

Martha began to tug, carefully at first, and then quickly, and I felt the bullet wriggling loose, pulling free. I wondered if this was what it would be like with Bridge. Bridge’s doctor, taking out the chip. That was part of it, part of the deal we had made, the deal I had forced him into. It was deeper down than the bullet, of course, deeper down and more tightly interwoven. Tied in to the base of my brain with a million tiny fibers. Tucked tightly between the two upmost vertebrae.