“We’ll deal with that when we come to it,” Madison said, guiding her deftly into the elevator. She thought in the distant back of her mind: This must be what my old-fashioned parents meant when they talked about an “escort” for me to go places with, and in my present state it’s kind of nice, I like it, I’m dreadfully scared about what we’re going to find when the elevator reaches the tenth floor and yet somehow I’m not going Out of my skull and-
Stop.
Facing the elevator car, waiting to ride it down, the Gottschalk from Apt 10-W.
And his face uttering uncensored thoughts: Last night you tried to kill me when I was being helpful, and here you’d rather accept help from a knee, in this city torn apart by the black X Patriots who killed your man.
But he said nothing, merely moved aside to let them pass. And waited, not getting into the car.
The reason, instantly. Lying out in the corridor, the recognizable belongings. Books heaped. The stained bed on end propped against the wall. The less attractive miscellanea of a doomed household, including the Lar for which no doubt a debt-collection order had been filed today. And the door to the apt shut tight, locked, with a hundred-kilo deadfall beyond.
The Gottschalk sniggered. “Too bad, Lyla!” he said. For commercial reasons Gottschalks used first names, preserving the illusion that they too constituted a family such as a man was seeking to preserve (it says here) when he bought from them guns, grenades and mines. “They didn’t shut the door behind you this morning, and it was kind of tempting for anyone who came by, wasn’t it? Did your mack make a will leaving you the lease?”
“I-” Lyla’s mind was frozen, sluggish as congealed old porridge. “I don’t think he made a will for anyone.”
“Too bad,” the Gottschalk said again, his tone a sneer, and stepped into the elevator car to ride it down.
“Him I don’t like,” Madison said musingly, with a jerk of his head. “However, that’s not important. Is this your apt, the one with all the furniture and stuff heaped up outside?”
“Yes, but-” Lyla was having to drive her nails deep into her palms, stiffen her muscles everywhere to save herself from screaming. “But someone’s moved in, somesquatting there! When the busies dragged me off today they didn’t lock the door and-and what can I do? It wasn’t my lease, it was Dan’s, and.”
She turned blindly and crumpled against the wall. “And I haven’t even got a key!”
There was a long time of nothing happening. Evenshe recovered and was able to lift her forehead from the corridor wall where she had been leaning it and blink away confusing tears from her eyes. Madison was still standing where he had been, bag slung over shoulder, one dark stubby hand conspicuous against the gray oversuit where he had reached up to grip the strap. She felt horribly ashamed of herself from years of being taught that one must not not not reveal one’s weaknesses, eight months a year from age ten onward in the school from which she had ultimately run away.
But all Madison said was, “Punch lock, I guess-hm?”
“What-? Oh. Oh, yes. A Punch lock, of course.” Alno other kind was fitted to modern apt doors; any lock with an exterior hole for the key to be inserted was far too vulnerable.
“I see,” Madison was saying in a musing tone, having turned to look at the jamb alongside which was propped up the broken bed with Dan’s blood on it, drying now to a foul brown crust that attracted a buzzing fly. “Mm-hm-it’s a one-two-eight code, I think. Right, Miss Clay?”
She stared at him in bewilderment.
“I mean it’s got one-two-eight in it somewhere? Like the first three digits, or the next-to-first maybe?”
“Ah.” She swallowed enormously, not understanding but giving what seemed to be the most sensible answer. “Yes, I guess it does start with one-two-eight. But I never memorized it.”
She hesitated, intending to ask how he’d known, but he had turned his back and was doing something she couldn’t see because his body concealed his movements. What she did see was the door opening, and a chink of light across its top.