"What?" It was hard to get Little Bird to concentrate, and the job needed a second set of hands.

"It's that nigger."

Slick stood up and wiped his hands down the thighs of his jeans while Little Bird fumbled the green Mech-5 microsoft from the socket behind his ear -- instantly forgetting the eight-point servo-calibration procedure needed to unfuck the Judge's buzzsaw. "Who's driving?" Afrika never drove himself if he could help it.

"Can't make out." Little Bird let the monocular clatter back into the curtain of bones and brass.

Slick joined him at the window to watch the Dodge's progress. Kid Afrika periodically touched up the hover's matte-black paint-job with judicious applications from an aerosol can, the somber effect offset by the row of chrome-plated skulls welded to the massive front bumper. At one time the hollow steel skulls had boasted red Christmas bulbs for eyes; maybe the Kid was losing his concern with image.

As the hover slewed up to Factory, Slick heard Little Bird shuffle back into the shadows, his heavy boots scraping through dust and fine bright spirals of metal shavings.

Slick watched past a last dusty dagger of window glass as the hover settled into its apron bags in front of Factory, groaning and venting steam.

Something rattled in the dark behind him and he knew that Little Bird was behind the old parts rack, fiddling the homemade silencer onto the Chinese rimfire they used for rabbits.

"Bird," Slick said, tossing his wrench down on the tarp, "I know you're an ignorant little redneck Jersey asshole, but do you have to keep goddamn reminding me of it?"

"Don't like that nigger," Little Bird said, from behind the rack.

"Yeah, and if that nigger'd bother noticing, he wouldn't like you either. Knew you were back here with that gun, he'd shove it down your throat sideways."

No response from Little Bird. He'd grown up in white Jersey stringtowns where nobody knew shit about anything and hated anybody who did.

"And I'd help him, too." Slick yanked up the zip on his old brown jacket and went out to Kid Afrika's hover.

The dusty window on the driver's side hissed down, revealing a pale face dominated by an enormous pair of amber-tinted goggles. Slick's boots crunched on ancient cans rusted thin as old leaves. The driver tugged the goggles down and squinted at him; female, but now the amber goggles hung around her neck, concealing her mouth and chin. The Kid would be on the far side, a good thing in the unlikely event Little Bird started shooting.

"Go on around," the girl said.

Slick walked around the hover, past the chrome skulls, hearing Kid Afrika's window come down with that same demonstrative little sound.

"Slick Henry," the Kid said, his breath puffing white as it hit the air of the Solitude, "hello."

Slick looked down at the long brown face. Kid Afrika had big hazel eyes, slitted like a cat's, a pencil-thin mustache, and skin with the sheen of buffed leather.

"Hey, Kid." Slick smelled some kind of incense from inside the hover. "How'y' doin'?"

"Well," the Kid said, narrowing his eyes, "recall you sayin' once, if I ever needed a favor ... "

"Right," Slick said, feeling a first twinge of apprehension. Kid Afrika had saved his ass once, in Atlantic City; talked some irate brothers out of dropping him off this balcony on the forty-third floor of a burned-out highstack. "Somebody wanna throw you off a tall building?"

"Slick," the Kid said, "I wanna introduce you to somebody."

"Then we'll be even?"

"Slick Henry, this fine-looking girl here, this is Miss Cherry Chesterfield of Cleveland, Ohio." Slick bent down and looked at the driver. Blond shockhead, paintstick around her eyes. "Cherry, this is my close personal friend Mr. Slick Henry. When he was young and bad he rode with the Deacon Blues. Now he's old and bad, he holes up out here and pursues his art, understand. A talented man, understand."

"He's the one builds the robots," the girl said, around a wad of gum, "you said."

"The very one," the Kid said, opening his door. "You wait for us here, Cherry honey." The Kid, draped in a mink coat that brushed the immaculate tips of his yellow ostrich boots, stepped out onto the Solitude, and Slick caught a glimpse of something in the back of the hover, eyeblink ambulance flash of bandages and surgical tubing ...

"Hey, Kid," he said, "what you got back there?" The Kid's jeweled hand came up, gesturing Slick back as the hover's door clanked shut and Cherry Chesterfield hit the window buttons.

"We have to talk about that, Slick."

"I don't think it's much to ask," Kid Afrika said, leaning back against a bare metal workbench, wrapped in his mink. "Cherry has a med-tech's ticket and she knows she'll get paid. Nice girl, Slick." He winked.

"Kid ... "

Kid Afrika had this guy in the back of the hover who was like dead, coma or something, had him hooked up to pumps and bags and tubes and some kind of simstim rig, all of it bolted to an old alloy ambulance stretcher, batteries and everything.

"What's this?" Cherry, who'd followed them in after the Kid had taken Slick back out to show him the guy in the back of the hover, was peering dubiously up at the towering Judge, most of him anyway; the arm with the buzzsaw was where they'd left it, on the floor on the greasy tarp. If she has a med-tech's ticket, Slick thought, the med-tech probably hasn't noticed it's missing yet. She was wearing at least four leather jackets, all of them several sizes too big.

"Slick's art, like I told you."

"That guy's dying. He smells like piss."

"Catheter came loose," Cherry said. "What's this thing supposed to do, anyway?"

"We can't keep him here, Kid, he'll stiff. You wanna kill him, go stuff him down a hole on the Solitude."

"The man's not dying," Kid Afrika said. "He's not hurt, he's not sick ... "

"Then what the fuck's wrong with him?"

"He's under, baby. He's on a long trip. He needs peace and quiet."

Slick looked from the Kid to the Judge, then back to the Kid. He wanted to be working on that arm. Kid said he wanted Slick to keep the guy for two weeks, maybe three; he'd leave Cherry there to take care of him.

"I can't figure it. This guy, he's a friend of yours?"

Kid Afrika shrugged inside his mink.

"So why don't you keep him at your place?"

"Not so quiet. Not peaceful enough."

"Kid," Slick said, "I owe you one, but nothing this weird. Anyway, I gotta work, and anyway, it's too weird. And there's Gentry, too. He's gone to Boston now; be back tomorrow night and he wouldn't like it. You know how he's funny about people ... It's mostly his place, too, how it is ... "

"They had you over the railing, man," Kid Afrika said sadly. "You remember?"

"Hey, I remember, I ... "

"You don't remember too good," the Kid said. "Okay, Cherry. Let's go. Don't wanna cross Dog Solitude at night." He pushed off from the steel bench.

"Kid, look ... "

"Forget it. I didn't know your fucking name, that time in Atlantic City, just figured I didn't wanna see the white boy all over the street, y'know? So I didn't know your name then, I guess I don't know it now."

"Kid ... "

"Yeah?"

"Okay. He stays. Two weeks max. You gimme your word, you'll come back and get him? And you gotta help me square it with Gentry."

"What's he need?"

"Drugs."

Little Bird reappeared as the Kid's Dodge wallowed away across the Solitude. He came edging out from behind an outcropping of compacted cars, rusty pallets of crumpled steel that still showed patches of bright enamel.

Slick watched him from a window high up in Factory. The squares of the steel frame had been fitted with sections of scavenged plastic, each one a different shade and thickness, so that when Slick tilted his head to one side, he saw Little Bird through a pane of hot-pink Lucite.