Free INTERZONE 254 SEPT-OCT 2014 by Andy Cox Page B

pumpkin?” She gives me a smile and a looking-over.
    I slip my sponsorship page onto her desk and it brightens the room. Her smile falls as the glasses rise again over her hair. “Silver Steed Screens. They are sponsoring like mad, I did another for them last week. And you are Dalisay. It’s a complete pleasure. I’m Manaia, that’s my name over the shop. Make yourself comfortable while I find the cartridge.”
    There are some wall hooks, hand-painted fish tails, onto which I hang my shirt. I lay myself on the inclined bench and reach back to part my bra, exposing my back and its many scars and brands. I rest my chin on my knuckles.
    “You’ve done this before.” She snatches up a cartridge from her drawer and returns to me. I stare at her stockings with envy, blue lace curled into geometric shapes. I could not slip into those without boring holes. “Too many times before. I won’t ask what you have, if it makes you uncomfortable. Some of my clients tell me a lot, even about the exhibitions, but you don’t strike me as up for chatter. That’s okay.” Her hand is cool between my shoulder blades. “It’s a pity.”
    “All that matters is if you’ve done this before,” I say.
    “Of course, of course.” Her finger rests on the brand beneath my left shoulder blade. “What is Saturn Enterprises?”
    “Silicone manufacturers.”
    Her hand withdraws, leaving my back longing. She shows me the cartridge’s design: two entwined stallions. There is no slogan or company name. The most successful ones like Silver Steed Screens are only logo.
    “Is the cartridge okay, pumpkin?” Manaia asks.
    “I wish my answer mattered.” I realise her stockings are tattoos.
    “You and me both! It’s an artless abomination, turning tattoos into stamps.”
    I hear her hauling the apparatus along the ceiling tracks above me, squeaking like rusted gears. I don’t need to turn around to know what it is: one long, shiny gun points at my back. Manaia clicks it on and it hums. She slides in the cartridge.
    “I am sorry if this stings you,” she says.
    “It’ll hurt less than the webbed bone between my ribs does right now.”
    The gun’s beam punches me in the back, its lasers penetrating my flesh, imprinting the stallions just above my surgeon’s dotted line. The beam bathes the room in a blue glow. It seals the ink on the bottom of my skin and cauterises my wounds. There is no bruising, only a new pigment showing through my skin.
    She slides the gun away. As I snatch my shirt, I bump my elbow on a lower hook. I curse.
    “Sorry, almost everybody does that,” she says, looking only a little concerned. “I’ve been meaning to move it.”
    I free a syringe-jet from my waist pack, and shoot it into my elbow. “I don’t have everyone’s body.”
    My body is my battlefield, and my mind its captive.
    ***
    “Vodka, straight,” I say. Neon light flares off the glass as the bartender slides it towards me. I down it in one gulp.
    A man pretends to read in a booth near the back, beneath a cluster of lights bent into a flickering beach ball. His hair is sculpted for maximum waviness, and his free fingers circle the rim of his glass. The rum that fills it is as dark as his hand. For the past half hour he’s been stealing looks my way and has not moved a page. The words wyld vitamins are scrawled into the back of my neck, and that does not seem to turn him off. I drop my shoulder, and my strap slides off it, passing a scancode. He approaches.
    “Who are you?” He claims the stool next to mine.
    “I was a sales clerk until two hours ago, then I got fired. My boss wanted me to lift inventory. Couldn’t do it. Who are you?”
    “You can call me Mr Roy.”
    “That doesn’t answer my question.”
    “Vish Roy. And yours didn’t answer mine.”
    “Dalisay Dumalahay. Why the formality?”
    “We’ve just met.”
    He suggests his place; I insist on mine. I lock my door behind us, and ignite the candle I keep beside it. In the