A Fire in the Sun Read Online Free PDF

and I don't own a Spanish-language daddy. If I ever run into any Columbian industrialists, they can just damn well speak Arabic. I have a soft spot in my liver for them because of their production of narcotics, but outside of that I don't see what South America is for. The world doesn't need an overpopulated, starving, Spanish-speaking India in the Western Hemisphere. Spain, their mother country, tried Islam and said a polite no-thank-you, and their national character sublimed right off into nothingness. That's Allah punishing them.
    "I hate that song," said Indihar. Chiri had given her a glass of Sharab, the soft drink the clubs keep for girls who don't drink alcohol, like Indihar. It's exactly the same color as champagne. Chiri always fills a cocktail glass with ice and pours in a few ounces of soda—which should be a
    tip-off to the mark: you don't get ice in your champagne in the real world. But the ice takes up a lot of space where the more expensive stuff would go. That'll cost a sucker eight kiam and a tip for Chiri. The club kicks three bills back to the girl who got the drink. That motivates the employees to go through their cocktails at supersonic speed. The usual excuse is that it's thirsty work whirling like a derwish to the cheers of the crowd.
    Chiri turned to watch Janelle, who was on her last song. Janelle doesn't really dance, she flounces. She takes five or six steps to one end of the stage, waits for the next heavy-footed bass drum beat, then does a kind of shrugging, quivering thing with her upper body that she must think is torridly sexy. She's wrong. Then she flounces back the other way to the opposite end of the stage and does her spasm number again. The whole time she's lip-synching, not to the lyrics, but to the wailing lead keypad line. Janelle the Human Synthesizer. Janelle the Synthetic Human is closer to the truth. She wears a moddy every day, but you have to talk to her to find out which one. One day she's soft and erotic (Honey Pilar), the next day she's cold and foulmouthed (Brigitte Stahlhelm). Whichever personality she's chipped in, though, is still housed in the same unmodified Nigerian refugee body, which she also thinks is sexy and about which she is also mistaken. The other girls don't associate with her very much. They're sure she lifts bills out of their bags in the dressing room, and they don't like the way she cuts in on their customers when they have to go up to dance. Someday the cops are going to find Janelle in a dark doorway with her face pulped and half the bones in her body broken. In the meantime, she flounces in time to the ragged screams of keypads and guitar synths.
    I was bored as hell. I knocked back the rest of my drink. Chiri looked at me and raised her eyebrows. "No thanks, Chiri," I said. "I got to go."
    Indihar leaned over and kissed me on the cheek? "Well, don't be a stranger now that you're a fascist swine cop."
    "Right," I said. I got up from my stool.
    "Say hello to Papa for me," said Chiri.
    "What makes you think I'm going there?"
     She gave me her filed-tooth grin. "Time for good boys and girls to check in at the old kibanda."
    "Yeah, well," I said. I left the rest of my change for her hungry register and went back outside.
    I walked down the Street to the arched eastern gate. Beyond the Budayeen, along the broad Boulevard il-Jameel, a few taxis waited for fares. I saw my old friend, Bill, and climbed into the backseat of his cab. "Take me to Papa's, Bill," I said.
    "Yeah? You talk like you know me. I know you from somewhere?"
    Bill didn't recognize me because he's permanently fried. Instead of skull wiring or cosmetic bodmods, he's got a large sac where one of his lungs used to be, dripping out constant, measured doses of light-speed hallucinogen into his bloodstream. Bill has occasional moments of lucidity, but he's learned to ignore them, or at least to keep functioning until they go away and he's seeing purple lizards again. I've tried the drug he's got