Farewell Horizontal by K. W. Jeter Read Free Book Online Page A

the info to Ask & Receive. And copped the initial report fee for it. Two hundred bucks is the standard payment for a confirming report from a second-on-the-scene. There isn’t any money for anybody who comes after you, Ny.”
     
    “Two hundred bucks.” Axxter gritted his teeth, bitter spit under his tongue. They’re screwing me. First the angels tape, now this. He looked around, Brevis’s face floating superimposed over the charred corpses, the walls bowed and blackened by explosion, the torn skin of Cylinder itself. He had climbed in and taped it all, greed circuits kicking in at the sight of so much destruction. You get paid – you’re supposed to get paid – lots for info like this. The unprofitable corpses went on grinning at him.
     
    “They’re screwing me.” Out loud. “There’s no one else around here who could’ve reported it. I’m the only one out in these sectors.” Except maybe Guyer Gimble, he noted to himself. And she would’ve told me if she’d spotted anything like this. “And the metal was still hot . From . . . whatever happened.” Still reluctant to speak it, the name the skull had shouted. “Nobody else could’ve come across it before me. They’re cheating me of the initial report fee.”
     
    “Hey.” Another wave of Brevis’s professional sympathy. “I know that. You know that. But what do you want to do, get a bad rep with Ask & Receive? You’re gonna have to deal with these people long after this. They want to cheap out on you – just let it slide, Ny. You won’t be able to get as much money from anyone else.”
     
    “They’re screwing me.” Axxter closed his eyes, but Brevis’s face didn’t go away. “Shit.”
     
    “Take the money, Ny.”
     
    The voice behind Ask & Receive’s logo sounded smug when Axxter got back to him. “Two hundred dollars all right, then?”
     
    “Yeah, sure.” Your ass. He read out the coordinates for the zone and logged off. Not even bothering to check his account for the deposit of the fee.
     
    It was a moment before his spirits rose again. “Not yet,” he replied to the nearest corpse’s grinning comment. “Soon enough, but not just yet.” Hadn’t been a total waste of a day. Two thousand for the mating angels, another two hundred – those fuckers – for coming across this place . . . Not bad; not really. “Puts me ahead of you.” A fly in search of unscorched nourishment crawled over the white face.
     
    The dream came back to him as he reached across the floor and retrieved the gun. I get it now. The spooky lecturer, the hole in the top of his own skull, the darkness running down inside. Everything except the point of it all. He stood up, the gun heavy in his jacket pocket, and started walking back toward the exterior, the deepshade lighter than the ruined interior. His boots, pithons nulled on the horizontal, raised little clouds of gray dust.
     
    At the jagged floor edge, the welcoming corpse lay across his path, white face turned toward where he had spotted it in his camera’s viewfinder. He stepped over it – bony hand reaching for his ankle, unable to grasp it – and looked back inside. He could still smell the burnt odor.
     
    That’s what happens. Stupid shits – gave your lives for me, and all I got out of it was two hundred bucks. The people who had lived in this horizontal sector – bumpkins, this far from toplevel; machine tenders – had made their little deal with the Dead Centers – the name finally spoken inside Axxter’s head, the dream skull having broken the ice – and had made their final payment for it. That’s what happens. Even if you don’t think it’s going to happen to you.
     
    He wondered what had made them decide to do it.
     
    How long they had thought about it, talking during their lunch breaks at the widget factory, first sotto voce , then right out loud when everybody in the sector had been in on it. What had the Dead Centers said to them – the