The Clarity of Cold Steel

Chapter 47.

THE TECHNICIAN GRITS his crooked rodent teeth and scowls as he snatches the cigarette from between my pursed lips. “Y’all crazy?” He hurls it into the night.

“I wasn’t going to light it.”

“To kingdom come, I swear…” The tech ignores me as he mutters to himself and savagely ratchets down the harness straps over my shoulders so hard I fear my arms might fall off. He’s grinning, eyes glowing with each pump of his arm.

I’m strapped to the top of a Civil War era surplus rocket. It’s painted matte black and seems to absorb the night’s darkness. It’s been explained to me that some have a tendency on liftoff to blow up from time to time. The tech used those exact words, ’from time to time,’ along with a shit-eating grin. I focus on the still water, the sheen of polished onyx stretching out invisible to all directions. We’re situated about five miles off the coast of Mortise Locke, on a garbage barge dubbed the Lackland.

The weather’s gorgeous.

“Tight enough?” the technician asks in his Confederate drawl.

“I can’t feel my arms or legs,” I answer.

“Good.” The pudgy technician nods his head, sucking at his bottom lip, those huge teeth protruding from his sloped mole head. His tiny eyes gleam as he forces the straps even tighter.

“By Brahma…” I grunt.

“Got to be tight.” He stands erect for a moment, rubbing his chin and looking like nothing so much as a rotund rat. “Keeps the blood in yer head and core, where it needs be.” He leans forward and ratchets a strap even tighter. “Better?”

“Fuck you,” I grunt.

He tries to slide a finger beneath the strap and can’t. “With the g’s y’all be pulling, you don’t be wanting no slack.” He whistles through his teeth as he talks. It’s annoying. Like the rest of him. “It’s like to tear your arms off. Other stuff, too.”

“Awesome,” I manage.

He picks at his nose as he waddles around to the other side of the rocket. The scaffolding creaks beneath his feet. Out of sight but not mind, he starts work on Brooklyn. I can hear Brooklyn grunt as he’s ratchet-strapped into his own harness.

“What’s a ‘g’?” I hear Brooklyn ask.

“Where y’all from, boy?”

“The Boneyard.”

“Ain’t gonna waste my breath, then.”

“Screw you.”

The tech comes giggling and waddling into my field of vision which is mostly straight up into night sky.

“It is not too late, my boon fellows.” Johnny Shakespeare’s watching on, leaning nonchalantly against a scaffold support.

“This was your idea,” I say.

“Well, if you had the cojones to come to me before they put the kibosh on all wogs and darkies, we could have smuggled you topside.” He grins. “There is a small but extremely lucrative market topside for darkie man-whores.”

“That plan’s sounding better and better.”

“Oh, yes, and especially for subjects of such exquisite bone structure.” He reaches out with that hook and strokes my cheek. I bat it away. “You’d be surprised just how lively the market can be.”

“Right.”

“Indeed. You’d need be very convincing, of course.” He smirks wide, gesticulates with that hook for a hand. “I could offer tutelage?”

“Thanks,” I take as deep a breath as I can take in my straight jacket and pat the rocket, “but this should kill me just fine.”

“Might I remind you?” Johnny Shakespeare sighs dramatically. “You were the one that insisted on speed.”

“Yeah, I meant speed in getting topside, not breaking the sound barrier with my face.”

“But now you shall do both!” His amphibian grin lights up the night with dazzling terror.

“Huzzah.”

“Oh, stop being such a baby.” He reaches inside his shirt, pulls out a folded scrap of paper.

“What is it?” Unfolding it, I squint, hold it close. It’s a series of letters and numbers. XXG-547.

“I don’t know.”

“Where’d you get it?”

“I asked the king about your problem when he was blowing me,” he snaps. “What the hell do you care?”

“Just wondering if it’s gonna get me killed.”

“You’re strapped to a rocket and you’re worried about a scrap of paper?” He slaps his thigh and brays like an inbred mule. “Hah!” He sniffs, dabs at his eye with that rusty hook, straightens out. “I’m told it has to do somehow with your boy. And don’t you worry where I got it.”

“Sure…” I fold it up, stuff it in my coat. Wonder if it’s the cherry topping the dessert meant to choke me to death. I shake it off. Focus. Pray to Brahma. Garuda. Kali. Whoever the hell will listen.

Johnny Shakespeare frowns up at the rocket. “You understand how this is to work?”

“Sure.” I nod, recite the plan, more for myself than him. The plan is this and it’s shit: the rocket takes us up about a million feet and then dies and falls back into the ocean. Sinks to the bottom. The first part of the plan is to not be attached to it when that happens.

The good thing is that we’re so far out to sea that we’re over the horizon. Maybe someone on the God Wheel could see us if they’re staring out east as we ascend. But even if they can, we’ll hopefully just look like some sort of cosmic ray shooting up over the horizon or an angel taking a shit or something.

Thing is, when the rocket starts to sputter, we detach from it just after it dies, keeling over like a falling tree, and plummeting back in the ocean. From there, we pilot matte black ultralight gliders the five miles west to Mortise Locke, guided and lifted by the thermal updrafts of a series of trash barges Johnny Shakespeare swears’ll be on fire, and land on the roof of the Bilious March, a hotel/brothel/tavern topside of the God’s Wheel that Johnny Shakespeare supplies with a rotation of prostitutes and other illicits.

Sweet Sally’s already made the trip up, and she’ll be positioned on the roof with a unidirectional arc light monitor that should guide us in the final leg. Voilà. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. So long as nothing in a series of about a million lemons goes sour.

Behind, Brooklyn grunts assent that he’s all geared up and ready to go.

The technician waddles back around, does a final check on me. “Built a few o’ these ole girls myself.” He pats the hull of the rocket. “Y’all sure about his now?”

“Are you?”

“I ain’t the one strapped to five-hundred pounds of crystallized ammonium chlorate.” He squints at the top of the rocket, frowns, shakes his head in obvious doubt. I don’t dare ask. “You feel any hard thuds, like mule-kick hard, a few seconds after takeoff, pull the rip cord right quick, y’hear?”

“Mule-kick hard?”

“That’s what I said.”

“Sure. But what’s it mean?”

“Means pull the cord quick enough and maybe y’all can have an open coffin at yer funeral.” He fingers his nonexistent jaw. “Most likely not, but…” He crosses his fingers ostentatiously.

“I hate you,” I say then turn to Johnny Shakespeare. “Let’s get this over with.”

“That’s the spirit!” He taps his temple with the tip of his hook. “And just remember, my delicious prince,” his smile lights up the night like balefire, “you owe me. Big time.”

“Only if this thing doesn’t blow up.”