How could she attack him this way? She was only a waitress. His education was precious and rare, and it was the one thing he’d been certain would impress her if they ever got to speak to each other in a real conversation like this. Was she belittling it just to feel better about her own situation?
“But don’t you see, Lawrence? Anybody can get a beat-up old computer and get all the information in the world. School isn’t a unique source of any knowledge. But what school does do is make you believe in experts, and authority, and the idea that there’s one correct answer you can write on a test. That’s the real value of your education: You learn to do what you’re told.”
Lawrence leaned forward excitedly. “That’s where you’re wrong. If I get a better grade on a test, it means I answered more of the questions correctly on that test. And if I answered more questions correctly, then I knew more of the material.”
She sighed. “No. It means you memorized more vocabulary than someone else in your class. Or it means you took better notes on a really hot day when everyone else was falling asleep, and you were lucky enough to be tested on that material. It means you stayed up later than another student, and happened to remember what you crammed into your head. But a year later, all of you will have forgotten most of that stuff—that’s why universities direct-load your brains with the material when you graduate. Grades certainly do not measure the knowledge anyone keeps from the class. They only show what you were willing to do to get it—how obedient you are.”
His face felt hot. “Well, what’s wrong with that, anyway? If a company wants to find someone who is a really hard worker, then it has a pretty good way to do that, right?” He fidgeted on the floor, bringing his knees up by his chin and pushing himself against the wall a little for support. Was he breathing hard? “At least you have to admit that they work harder. That’s what school really proves: who works harder. The system may not find the smartest people, but it does weed out the lazy ones.”
The way she leaned back in her chair was very crude; she looked like a monkey in a zoo. These Zone people had no manners at all.
She looked straight through his eyes into the back of his head. The smile on her face should have made her look less aggressive, but it did not. “I know you rich boys think you deserve your lifestyles because you work very hard in school. But I’ve got to tell you, Lawrence, there’s more to that story, too. You don’t work any harder than the rest of us. You have advantages that let you do it in school rather than at some shitty job, but that’s all that makes you different.” She lowered her voice, folding her arms over her midsection. “Why don’t you tell me who washed your clothes for you, who fed you and kept you safe so you could study?”
Vacuum
Brian lay writhing in the mist.
“Yeah, I got your message, asshole!” he said, gasping. “I don’t give a shit about your mission. Get the fuck out of my head! You’re killing me!”
There were no sounds at all here. No sights, smells, or tastes.
But there was pain. More pain than Brian had ever felt. Each vertebra from his neck to his tailbone radiated a hot, electric spasm. The flesh and ligaments in his wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles were being pulled apart. He tried to lift a hand to his face, to feel the texture of the bubbling, blistering rash he knew burned there, but he found himself unable to move. Over and over, something whipped across the rash, and every other centimeter of his skin, causing first an impact, then a sharp, stabbing pain, and leaving a dull throb in its wake. Something was pulling his hair out.
“Kill me then, you piece of shit,” Brian whimpered. “Just kill me. Please.”
It went on. Old tortures would be replaced by new ones and then brought back, reused in new ways: always silent, always with no warning. Now his knees were being pulled apart and the whipping, burning and throbbing was on the soles of his feet. More of his hair was ripped out. The whip struck again and again, between his legs, then up his torso.
His entire body convulsed now, his limbs straining against bonds he could not see, yet which held him secure and entirely helpless. “Kill me, you sonofabitch!” he growled through his clenched teeth.
Thumbs, or maybe some tool, pressed deep into each of his broken knuckles. His brain filled with something putrid and hot. “If you don’t kill me, I swear to God I’ll kill you!” He roared, his voice louder than he remembered it ever being before, the words resounding before they dissipated into the mist. “I’ll rip you and shred you and I’ll make you pay—the whole world’s gonna pay for this! The whole world!”
Hate surged up from the core of his being, where it had boiled through years of suppressed pain and stress and humiliation, and he welcomed it. The torrent burst outward with a savage force, against those who were tormenting him now, against everyone who had ever made him suffer. Against the Fiends and the hoods and the teachers and the companies and everyone on the whole fucking planet, and they would all pay soon because now he had suffered a hundred times his share, a thousand, ten thousand times more than he deserved and now everyone had a debt and everyone would pay, and it didn’t matter what happened here because if he lived he would punish the whole fucking world.
And it felt right to think it, felt right to threaten and scream and know—utterly, truly, and completely know that he would do it. His mind looped back to that alley where Alfred had dosed him; he pulled his trigger and Alfred’s throat exploded again and again and he laughed and he did it again and he laughed and the pressure hissed out of his brain and he remembered every misery he had ever inflicted upon anyone but it was not enough. Nothing could ever be enough to make up for what was happening here in the mist. But he would give back as much as he could.
Mrs. Klaussen’s apartment
“Prophet?” Eadie said. She cleared her dry throat. “Seems like you’re a little more animated now. Are you all right?”
The Prophet fixed his vacant gaze on her. “Yes, General. Thank you, General.”
“Good,” Eadie said. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to keep her voice calm. “Prophet, do you remember meeting a woman in Dok’s place? You may have told her that I was going to lead a revolution or something?”
“Yes, General.”
Eadie rubbed her eyes “And did it occur to you that maybe I already had enough problems? Like, maybe I don’t need the Feds thinking I’m a fucking terrorist right now?”
“Yes, General. But that woman needed to know the truth. She was in great pain, having been beaten by her husband, who outranks her at their place of employment.”
“And what truth did you tell her, Prophet?”
“That you are the end to her suffering, General. That you will bring down the most oppressive regime in history. I told her that you were sent by God to stop the cycle of bullying, control, and misery that has plagued her for her entire life.”
Eadie groaned and turned to Lawrence, who shrugged. “It’s late. I’m too tired for this,” she said. She held her palms toward the little heater, with its inlet and exhaust pipes stretching out through the wall. They had burned the waitress uniform and some garbage they had found but eventually they had let the fire die down. Heat made the smell worse.
Someone knocked, hard and fast. Eadie pointed a finger at Lawrence and then at the door, making a hand-puppet “talking” action with her hand. Lawrence went to the door, lowering his chin and talking in a deep voice. “Who is it?”
“Shit. You again?” It was Dok. “I thought we got rid of you. You come back to give another report to the Feds?”
Lawrence started to move the chair away from the door but Dok was already pushing through. “What the hell are—” Dok stopped talking when he saw Mrs. Klaussen. The challenging demeanor disappeared and he walked slowly across the room. He gently touched the dead woman’s cheek as if to comfort her.
“Dok?” Eadie said, coming near. “What’s wrong with your face? What happened to you?” Dok’s eyes stared dully from swollen sockets that had come in
to view as he stepped into the light from the window. One eye was bleeding around the edge. His lips were puffy and split. His nose seemed rounder and flatter, and he was breathing through his mouth. He strained under the weight of a large backpack, setting it down on the bare floorboards with a metallic clunk.
Lawrence pushed the door closed, replacing the chair to hold it.
“I’m all right,” Dok said. “But Eadie, I’ve never seen anything like this. The Feds are hell-bent on finding you. One showed up downstairs, like we’d expected. I thought he’d just ask a few questions and go, but that isn’t how it went down at all.”
Dok took a deep breath. “He barges in and starts searching the place, demanding to know where you are. I’m doing everything I can think of to stall him for you, Eadie, but he’s triple my size and he’s flinging me around like I’m so much dirty laundry. He knocks me in the head a few times, and then he decides to start questioning my other patient. I’m sure it’s all over, that she’s going to tell him everything, but she says she doesn’t know anything about a girl with a cut face. Then we hear a door getting kicked in, and I try to send him to check it.” Dok nodded at the broken doorframe and shrugged. “At the time I’m thinking you’re settled in up here, having tea. He’s not interested in investigating. Instead he throws my patient out and pounds on me some more, asking me … just really bizarre stuff, like what address did I write on your bill.”
He half shrugged, shaking his head. “Won’t believe I don’t send bills.” Dok closed his eyes, breathing more deeply through his open mouth. “Then he lets me go. Tells me to gather my belongings because he’s closing me down for practicing without a license.”
Dok stared at the wall. “‘No, you can’t do that,’ I say. ‘Maybe I don’t have government paperwork, but I’m all the people here have. I’m the only thing keeping them alive.’
“‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘That makes you a criminal. I could take you to jail, but you really aren’t worth the trouble.’
“I put a few things in my bag and he pushes me out, making me unemployed and homeless, telling me he’ll be coming back to make sure I stay closed. ‘You know what else is easier than throwing you in jail, jungle man?’ he says. ‘Shooting you in the fucking head. Stay gone.’ Then he stands there in my doorway, watching me walk down the hall.”
“Oh, Dok, I’m so sorry.”
Lawrence spoke up. “Where’d you go?”
Dok’s eyes snapped toward him. “At first I don’t know where to go, just that I can’t come up here. I just head out, thinking maybe this Fed’s so nuts he might follow me. And he does. Stays kinda far back, like maybe a block. It’s dark around here and those gray suits blend in with the concrete, so for a long time I’m thinking maybe I lost him, but then I make a quick turn and catch a glimpse of him, still following.”
Dok looked down at his shoes. His body seemed to deflate, curving toward the floor.
“I head for a neighborhood where there’s this gang called the Surfers.”
Lawrence snickered at the name. Dok nodded.
“Yeah, sounds stupid, right? But these guys are real bad-ass scum: bad enough to get away with calling themselves something stupid. Robbing, raping, killing, you name it, they’re into it. I treated them once, about a year ago. About a dozen of ’em came in after a fight, all busted up. They needed my help. I couldn’t turn them away. A few months after that I was trying to get a new supply of some stuff I use, and I ended up in their shithole neighborhood … they would’ve killed me if they hadn’t recognized me and let me go.
“So this time I go there with the Fed in tow, and the same thing happens. They jump out, set to mug me and all that, but they see it’s me and back off. I slip into an alley, then come back around the other way, watching from behind a building, and they do the same thing to the Fed.” Dok lowered his face into his palms. “Why? How do they not see he’s a Fed? Maybe they’re on too much dope, or it’s too dark … maybe they think they’re tough enough. But they try to take on this Fed, right?” Dok exhaled raggedly.
“And the Fed pulls out this little pistol.” Dok held up two fingers a palm width apart. “Little, like this. And it makes this noise! Like ten train engines in a concrete room, this noise. And he mows them all down, maybe fifteen of them, maybe more.” He snapped his fingers. “Gone. Just a mess of blood, all over everyplace. Then he goes right into the alley the way I went. Just leaves those fifteen kids spread all over the gravel.” Dok sunk further down in the chair. “And I brought him there. I delivered all that death.”
“Dok? Are you okay?” Eadie put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t fall over, all right? Let me get you a glass of water.”
“I’m okay,” Dok said. “But I’m worried, Eadie. Nothing will stop that guy, and I know he meant it when he said he’d be back here to make sure I was closed. A stinking dead body and a broken door are going to attract attention. You can’t stay in this building.
“I came in the back door—broken camera back there—and obviously he didn’t see me.” He halfheartedly shrugged and gave a single, breathy laugh. “I’m still alive, so I know he didn’t see me.”
He nodded at Lawrence. “Gather up every bit of food you can find, any clean drinking water … you know, anything useful. Anything at all. I’ve gotta check a post about another patient—I think the Feds might trace mine, so Mrs. Klaussen’s computer might be my last chance for a while—and then I’ll help pack.”
Lawrence nodded and began opening cupboards.
Eadie squeezed Dok’s shoulder. “You said those gang guys were really bad. It must’ve been terrible to see, but, you know, if there’s a bright side … maybe the Zone’s a little safer now that they’re gone.”
Dok stared at the wall. “Is it?”
9
RickerResources Building, Central Business District, the Mighty Asshole’s office
The hologram above the secretary’s desk turned, looking Hawkins up and down. “All right,” it said. “You might as well let him in.”
The secretary nodded and the door behind her slid silently open, revealing a room that took up most of the top floor. The ceiling was more than three stories high, in a pyramid shape, built from long glass panels through which the stormy night sky was visible.
Hawkins passed through the door, into a sea of men wearing black suits with the same old-fashioned cut as a Federal Agent uniform. Their white shirt collars were all adorned with Accepted halo pins, and each Unnamed Executive wore double-fingered gold rings on the smallest fingers of both hands. In the room’s indirect light, the standard bulletproof sunglasses had turned transparent, revealing their crazed, beady eyes and UE smugness. Their self-righteous sanctimony arose from complete confidence that God was on their side, but Hawkins knew better. These men, and even Ricker himself, got their power from money. God put real power where He wanted it, and no single corporation came close to the strength of the Federal government. In the packed room, only Hawkins represented God’s true will. The men moved aside, forming a path to Mr. Ricker’s giant desk.
“Hello, sir,” Hawkins said.
Ricker shook his head. “You are an unmitigated disappointment,” he said. “No girl, no drunken bum …” His eyes stared through Hawkins. “Not even a pissant freshman student from my son’s college.”
“Mr. Ricker, I’m sure you’re aware that the three disappeared into the Zone. We have an Agent from Task Force Zeta there right now—”
“Ah, yes. Task Force Zeta. The super-secret Angels on their super-secret mission.” Ricker opened a box on his table, removing a cigar. Not paper soaked in tobacco juice made from genetically-modified bacteria, but actual tobacco leaves, rolled together. Since cultivation of full plants was illegal, tobacco leaves were individually vat-grown by Federal permit under strict security, making that cigar worth more than a week of Hawkins’ salary. Ricker laughed to himself, shaking his head without diminishing his Accepted smile by even a single tooth. He bit off the end of the cigar and spat i
t onto the floor. “You’re security guards, entrusted with protecting a few hardworking Americans from the mob of those who would rather slit a throat than do an honest day’s work. But we all just found out how competent you are at that, didn’t we?”
“Sir, as you know, Federal leaders are—”
“Yes, yes. Chosen by God, I know the rhetoric. Here’s the truth: Federal law mandates that a percentage of each company’s stock be held by the government, and in exchange, the Feds are supposed to protect their interests. But owning tiny pieces of everything and then having to act on everyone’s behalf makes you powerless. Corporations run the world, free from outdated regulations and encumbrances that cripple the likes of you. Men like me run the corporations, and we run you.” He lit the cigar with a petrol lighter, taking a drag and blowing smoke toward the pyramidal glass ceiling. “I was chosen by God. You were promoted by an antiquated, impotent bureaucracy. So be a good soldier and tell me what Zeta is doing to find my son’s murderer.”
Hawkins stared back. “Mr. Ricker,” he said. “It’s clear you are a powerful man, but please don’t mistake my cooperation as a sign of weakness. You may find it inconvenient, sir, but I truly am God’s representative on earth.” Ricker squinted slightly but Hawkins began his report before he could speak again.
“Task Force Zeta has installed an Agent in the residence of a local con artist, a sham doctor. The girl visited him, apparently seeking medical care after the incident with your son, sir.”
“What con artist?” Ricker asked, his voice softer but still irritated. “Where is this man?”
The Book of Eadie, Volume One of the Seventeen Trilogy Page 14