She was
running for her life, exerting every ounce of strength, her pursuer right
behind her. His footfalls on the plas-crete sidewalk beating themselves into
her consciousness as they steadily caught up to her. She had no time to look
back to see but had reached the place to which she was fleeing. It was a rotten
gaping hole in the mortar foundation of a massive tenement building. One of
many thousands of such entrances throughout the ghetto that let into the old
sewers below, the warrens as it was now known. Tanya jumped straight into the
opening with the footfalls of her pursuer right behind her, she slipped and
slid, gouging out a long deep patch of meat along her lower thigh on the rough
edged opening in her frantic hurry. She hit the ground and instantly turned
with the scrap of carbon in her hand to slash at the hand which was reaching in
for her through the opening.
Her pursuer
had not expected the beautiful, frightened, filthy slip of a girl-child to turn
on him. Nor had he expected the razor sharp scrap of carbon. He had not
expected the raggy street urchin to turn and attack, like a crazed animal
rather than a human being.
Tanya was a
thirteen year old ghetto-vagabond who had already seen the worst life had to
offer and clearly understood what this one had wanted with her. She had seen
him before, with his girls, and now apparently he had seen her. There was no
law here in the tax-free zone, so whatever could be taken and held was
property, to be sold or bartered to the constant stream of those who frequented
this place. Whatever could be taken and held was the property of the holder.
That was the only law of the ghetto, the tax-free zone. That was the only law
Tanya knew, so she would struggle just as ferociously to escape the jaws of a
predatory lizard as she would this man, or the many others like him who thrived
in these places. The outcome in both cases would be the same.
Showing the
coordination of a trained gymnast, the ferocity of the gladiator, or maybe it
was only her utter terror that drove her, Tanya spun as her feet hit the
ground, slashing at the hand reaching in for her. The piece of carbon was
sharp, its edge only one atom thick, but of this or anything else which would
be learned in an educational institution Tanya was unaware. She knew there were
places where people lived normal lives, but of those place’s inner workings she
knew nothing. She could neither read nor write nor even spell her own name.
Tanya knew
only that the merest touch of the scrap would sever anything of flesh and bone.
She took off the last three fingers of his left hand with a desperate stroke,
the fingers leaving the hand to flip almost as in freeze-frame through Tanya’s
vision. Before the first squirt of arterial spray had even left the severed
ends of newly shortened fingers, she was running again while he screamed his
agony and despair, and then she was gone into the darkness of underground
passages she knew better than the streets above. Better than she could remember
her own mother, now seven years gone, and a killing ground for anyone foolish
enough to attempt to follow her. Many had followed. They all wanted the credits
she could earn them, or her alone. They wanted her blond hair and her blue eyes,
because she was different, because she was beautiful. She stood out in a now
nearly homogenized race. Her mother and father had come here from someplace else,
but they hadn't survived long once they had gotten here. Her father had simply
failed to return the last time he had gone out, the victim of a violent social
structure he had not been able to adapt to quickly enough. Tanya understood
intrinsically what had occurred, her father’s sad but smiling face still in her
memories, sad with the knowledge of his failures but trying to put a brave face
on it. Her mother had worked as a prostitute at the end, but there was little
else she could remember of those times. They had not been good times. As a
thirteen year old girl, Tanya was now well acquainted with the lusts of men.
Those who had pursued her recently had met death in the underground warrens,
the scrap of carbon flashing out of darkness too Stygian to comprehend, then
Tanya fleeing like a ghost while the predator turned prey pumped his blood out
onto the thirsty plas-crete.
