Supplejack

by Les Petersen

  Well, the information prediction–which a real human would call a hunch–was a fairly sound one. I’d often logged into satellite feed, though usually it was a private station, or Government funded. Sometimes a shadow existed on the feed, and I was certain it was military in nature. As well as that, the weather service had put most of their satellites into orbit before the European War and they were in stationary orbits above us. What better way for the Big Boys to watch our every move?

  “Mind if I ask my crew?”

  Gilamens nodded. “Go right ahead. Shapocket will hang in and listen, if you don’t mind.”

  Of course I minded, but I wasn’t going to get toey about it. I shrugged and tapped up comm. “Hey gang, everyone been listening?”

  Sansan answered for them all. “Every word, Jack.” She sounded like she was sifting the sounds as they left her box. “Should I implicate–?”

  “No. Hold there for a while.” She had wanted to trap Shapocket and give him a false dialog to keep him happy. I didn’t need to hide what I said. “Sansan…give me a list of all hoard sites with a floating capital of say ten billion dollars. Non-government. And estimate success probability of funds acquisition through HR strike.”

  She had already done her homework. “Current information suggests that only three corporations have near that amount in hoard presently. New Grendel Corporation, Bell International and Firestorm Corporation.”

  I hadn’t heard of Firestorm before. “Who’s this Firestorm?”

  “As far as we can tell, the Steel Hand uses it as a cover corporation, Jack.”

  Woops. Keep away from them. “Ah…we’ll leave them alone for the moment. Success estimation?”

  “Twelve point six one three seven five percent for Bell, Jack; three point six zero zero for New Grendel.”

  I didn’t bother asking why New Grendel were more prepped for Hit-and-Run strikes by Samurais. They were building up for an attack on Bell and they’d have their guards out in case of reprisals. Most would be Mercenary Troops – AIs along for a bit of a thrill.

  “Thank you, Sansan.” I looked around the table at all the faces. Some still bore wounds from a fight I’d brought in here. Some had lost partners, friends, lovers. Children, even. Independence would make them no safer than they were currently, but it would give them a dream to hold in their hands. I looked at Gilamens, who was watching me very closely. A cat watching a mouse.

  “So, Gilamens,” I said, “I’ll agree to the task. You get me breathing space and I’ll get you a billion dollars. With no traces to where it came from. Everyone will know, but no one will be able to prove it. And that’s the important point. I’ll route it through Asian and Africa, clean it whistle clean., but not just the Mil. When you’ve got all the money, you get the Brothers Four off my back for good.”

  She glanced around to see that everyone was in agreement, and then she asked Sam to tell me what to do next.

  Sam stood up. “My PAN will give you as many account numbers for the funds transfers that you need. Nothing larger than five hundred thousand into any one account. The money will be transferred out of there as soon as it arrives. Don’t bother chasing it.”

  She turned to face Shotgun. “Take him to the river and have him wait there for pickup. Gilamens, you get one of your people to pick him up and get him to the weather station.” She tapped up her holoface and the small digital display showed the time. 1:20 am. “Right,” she was all authority then, “I want this affair closed up and this sanctuary sealed. Let’s do it.”

  “And the military raid coming down on us here?”

  Gilamens smiled. All teeth. “Never was coming. I just reported that the raid was a complete success. It’ll take a while for all that to be investigated and by that time, the right people will have been bought off.”

  Now I remembered why I didn’t like her.

  Chapter 12

  “God, what a mess that was.” I was jogging beside Shotgun who seemed to be made of steel. Even though my ankle was strapped tightly, it hurt like all of God’s anger was being aimed at one small area of my body. Mind you, I wasn’t going to admit it hurt and I didn’t have time to complain. We’d kept up a dogtrot for the last hour and a half – cutting straight south toward Marne River, Shotgun maintaining a pace through the bush that had my legs burning and my throat dry. He looked as fresh as the day he was spawned. Proto-man if I have ever seen one. “And that Sam…is she always such a hard-hearted bitch – I thought she was a real good looker as a librarian.”

  Shotgun chortled. I was using the red light from my holoface to light our way and with it swaying with each step, when I looked at him, his beard appeared like fire around his face. “Yeah, she’s a surprise that one,” he said. “Ex-military. SAS. You wouldn’t know it, would you?”

  I stumbled a bit. “Jeezus Bloody Christ. SAS. I didn’t think they took women.”

  “Have for twenty years. Tough nuts.”

  “Nuts. Yeah. I felt like my nuts were two inches away from steel every time she looked at me.” A thought intruded on the image of her reloading her pistol. “Was she ever…?”

  “A man?” He laughed. “Nope. She’s pure hellcat and as cool as ice when it comes to laying down lead. And if you ask me, she wouldn’t want to be anything other than a woman.” He laughed a little more. “Geez, that’s a good one. Two inches…heh heh. You ever get that close to her, your nuts wouldn’t be the only thing she’d cut out.” Again, he laughed.

  My macho side surfaced. “Yeah, well, if we ever meet again I’d still like to see if she had a feminine side. She’d be into leather whips and iron chains, no doubt.”

  “With spikes.” He chuckled.

  “How would you ask a woman like that out? Christ, you wouldn’t want to make the mistake of taking her parking! And a restaurant wouldn’t be any good ‘because she’d use a knife to split the bill, would she? Still, there’s something about her. Maybe that’s why male praying mantises chase their partners: nothing like a nibble on the neck for excitement.”

  We slowed and walked for twenty minutes, sharing ribald jokes that made us feel like men and brought us a little closer. While we walked Sansan gave me a read out of known military movements and I was relieved to see that no further move had been made against Haven. The Press had renewed activity around the area and GaZe patched one report through to me of a cholera epidemic that had broken out in the Nildottie area. Gilamens was there in her studio giving everyone the story, showing how the military was called in to help contain the outbreak and warning of the brutal results of unclean living. It was being beamed out of Haven.

  “Hey, Big Guy,” I asked Shotgun, “what’s Gilamens really doing in a Feral compound? She’s the voice of the people; she should be somewhere well away from a contentious place like this. If anyone found out, she’d be lynched.”

  He signalled for a break and while I dropped down into a crouch and gathered air back into my lungs, he looked at me and gave me a grin that broke his face into two parts. His eyes were sparkling and his teeth were flashing from the light of my holoface. “She’s there because I’m there. She’s my wife.”

  You could’ve knocked me over by breathing on me. I shook my head in disbelief. “You kidding me?”

  “Straight shooting, buddy. I met her during a lull in the Riots when I was hospitalised. A group of Luddites thought my Hog was a symbol of technological domination and beat the fuck out of me. She interviewed me for her station and made me look like a hero fighting to allow freedom of choice. Really, I was just a thug looking to cream a few of those stone carvers. When I recovered, and moved to Haven to help clean out the feral pigs and goats, I got involved with the group and she was part of it. The Riots bought many people into Haven.”

  I shook my head to acknowledge the memory. The Riots had finally been put down by the military. Part of the Beautification. I hadn’t really followed the Riots when they’d been happening. I was too wrapped up with my studies.

  “Anyway,” Shotgun co
ntinued “Gilamens came down to report on the replanting the same day the Green senator was assassinated at that Doomsday rally – where the Ferals were demanding the right to live in the forests. We’re some of the guys who helped get his advisers out when the clan war erupted. She asked me to marry her the moment we got them to safety. I thought she was a fine woman and was taken with her, so I said yes, as long as she helped the Ferals get what they wanted., but I also demanded a long courtship to give either of us a chance to back out and I made her wait a year. I think it was the longest she had ever been celibate.”

  I had to know. “Were you? Celibate, I mean?”

  “Hey, I’m still a virgin.” He slapped me on the back and laughed so hard he almost fell over. His laughter was so infectious I ended up holding my side and wiping tears of laughter out of my eyes. The sound washed through the area like a fresh breeze.

  An hour later we were standing at the river, watching the stars wheel around in the sky above us.

  “Now we wait,” Shotgun said. He sat down on a rock and seemed to become part of it. A grey stone gargoyle watching over the world.

  I shut off the holoface and tried to doze, but sitting out in the open with insects zipping near my ears or crawling over me wasn’t as pleasant as the brochures on camping make it out to be. In the darkness, I thought of many things, but the face of the dead girl, Trandy, kept intruding. She too was in the dark, staring up at the stars.

  I also thought about the change in Shotgun. He’d been pleasant as we headed toward the river, in complete reversal of how he had been when I arrived in Haven. Then he had wanted to kill me: now he was being friendly. I couldn’t make it out. Almost as if he too was changed by my being on his side in the fight. Or maybe the thought of getting rich was doing it to him. Even Sam had smiled at me when we had left.

  Five hours later we were still sitting there. In the east, the sun was breaking through a red skyline. It was strange to see the sky almost empty of airships; though high in the stratosphere a commuter moved northward like a bayonet slicing the night. Water birds bobbed just off shore. I didn’t bother to read the Heads-up that Sansan supplied: I was enjoying their smoke colour and shape. They were soft and small, with lace grey bodies and long white bills that ended in a spot of black. Their round red eyes watched us sitting on the bank in case we were going to toss them food. That would have been illegal, of course.

  Shotgun stood up, so I did the same. He sighed and faced me. “This is the beauty I came to the bush for, Flintlock,” he said, “All this you miss in the city. This isn’t planned – this is nature doing what she does without all the interference by the Big Boys. This is true beauty.”

  The river was like molten glass with ripples of colour like Shahn’s palette – rose madder and Indian yellow. I agreed with him in some ways., but then he may never have seen the walls of borealis that shone around a corporate boardroom, or the cascading lights showering off liquid funds in Cyberia. Each of us understood one kind of beauty. I tried hard not to allow the nostalgia of one reality compensate for the presence of the other; hoping that by taking both to my heart I could fill in the dark corners of my world where the staring eyes of a child and the missing laughter of my son were like weights hung around my neck.

  “Yeah.” I drew in a deep breath and was reminded of the wound in my chest. Reality hurts.

  Shotgun turned and looked at me. “I’m heading back before it gets any lighter,” he said. “You stay here and wait for pick-up. Things’re quiet, so I guess Gil’s got it sorted out. Oh, before I go, I got something for you.” He reached over his shoulder to the shotgun sheaths, and I had the uneasy feeling he was pulling them out on me. The last six or so hours had been an act to put me off guard. That was why he had been friendly. My heart sunk.

  I held my hands up and backed away. “Look, I can give myself up to…”

  But when his hands came down, he was holding a pair of sheathed combat knives. He frowned. “What are you on about?” He looked at the knives he held. Then grinned. “Hey, no, these are a gift. I took these off one of them Tinmen before he self-destructed. He didn’t need them anymore and I know from the background we dug up that you prefer not to carry firearms of any sort. These will help a little. Nothing like a little bit of compensation.” He handed them to me and watched me quite closely.

  I felt a sudden surge of affection for him. “Thanks, Big Guy,” I said.

  “You deserve it.” He clapped me on the shoulder, almost driving me into the ground with the power of his hands. “We were on the butcher’s floor there for a while. You made a difference.”

  He could’ve floored me with that comment. I’d done nothing. “I’m sorry I brought it all down on you.”

  “Don’t let yourself get caught up with the guilt. We at Haven get raided all the time. It’s part of life here.” He gave me a sad grin. “It’s not all smoke and tie-dyes. The raids are part of the military’s commitment to the Beautification.” He lost the smile and shook his head. “They come in and kill a few of us, then go back and use the footage as propaganda.”

  I still felt guilty so I looked at the knives in my hands to avoid his gaze. Like everything else the military used, their scabbards were coloured in khaki hues. Each was the length of my forearm, with a wide tapering blade, double edged. They were unexpected gifts.

  “You’ll be able to cut your steak into little pieces with them.” Shotgun said. “Save your teeth for your old age.”

  I grinned and offered him my hand. “Thanks, Buddy.”

  He took it with his own and gave me a firm shake. The bones of his hands felt like they were made from rock. “Gil’s friends will be along shortly to pick you up and take you upriver. If this works out for you, you come back and join us. We’ll be independent within a few years and we can do with someone like you. Oh, and keep quiet about Gilamens being in with the Ferals, okay? Everyone in the Government and the Press knows about it and does nothing – it keeps her entertained and out of the thick of their plans –, but if it became public property and she goes to the wall, then I’d have to hunt you down and skin you.”

  I could tell from the hard edge to the words that he meant it. He looked once more at the river and said, “Keep your pecker dry. See ya.”

  “Yeah, see you.”

  He jogged away without turning back and I turned and looked in the other direction, watching the sun lever itself out of the darkness and pull with it a blaze of colour and heat. I shut down the holoface, turned to face west and walked into the departing darkness to stretch out a little before the pickup, feeling the natural warmth on my back, smelling the rich earth and the woodlands.

  And once I started walking, it was hard to stop.

  Life has those moments. My chest thumped away with pain now that the Gracelands had left from my system and I came down off the enhancement. The shoulder wound tugged away at my coat, demanding to be looked at and I could feel a small crust of blood on my left cheek., but I didn’t care about it. Or my ankle. Seemed like a lifetime ago that I was battling in the darkness.

  Eleven a.m. came and a Grey-card still hadn’t picked me up. They were probably looking for me back at the drop off point, but I’d kept walking once I’d started and I’d walked seven and half kilometres – or hobbled is more like it. I was sure I had left a good enough trail. I feeling very hungry and I could do with a drink – whether it was gin, vodka, or any other alcohol. Hell, I’d even drink water if I had to.

  I began wondering if Gil’s friends should take me to the weather station, or whether it wouldn’t be better to face the music. Too long to think about the difficulties. I was tempted to patch through to Shapocket, tell them I’d changed my mind, but then thought the better of it. Until I was certain of what was happening, I contacted no one. This is what exile must feel like: a dusty road, a blue sky and a body torn by war and guilt.

  As I walked the road reminded me of one of Shahn’s paintings and I remembered the first time I saw her playing around with
paints and easels, trying to capture in two dimensions what the world was really like. It was at the opening of the Forbright Virtual Environment Exhibition where I’d given a lecture on emotive scan searches. The place was packed with JON enthusiasts racing each other with their customised systems and fighting each other in virtual wars. Shahn was standing in for some old trooper who had fallen ill just the day before and she was fielding questions at the amateur guild’s workspace and displaying some of her techniques on graphic translations. We’d fallen into a conversation and she finally admitted that no matter what she put down on the canvas she still wasn’t satisfied. When I asked her whether she’d like to begin her images with newer technologies she said “No, thank you,” around a glorious smile that melted my heart. “There is too much activity, too many fiddly bits.” She scrunched up her nose delightfully.

  I poked fun at her. “Fiddly bits? You mean like full colour disillusionment and drunken orchestras playing Bach three octaves above normal and psychedelic rooms that stand you on your head?”

  She smacked me on the arm playfully and told me to come back when I was a little bit more understanding. I asked her out to dinner, so she could instruct me on the proper way to appreciate art. She agreed to the date without hesitating. “If you are paying then I can be bribed.”

  I smiled. “Just remember, virtual meals cost nothing.”

  Little did I know the meal we shared that night and the long lovemaking session afterwards in the honeymoon suite of the Chicago Hilton had a price I could never imagine. It led us to the death of our son and me to this dusty road.

  I walked a little longer and wondered what she was doing now.

  Chapter 13

  Afternoon came on as hot as rocket exhaust. I sat in the shade of an old oak that had somehow escaped the eyes of the Ferals and now grew with glorious abandon near the riverbank. I’d made a decision. It was time to suit up and fight. No matter what it took, I had some right to control what was going on. High Command would hunt me down and slaughter me even if I could prove the truth of the matter or defend myself in front of the media. Gilamens might back me up and see I’d a fair trial, but only if I could chop through all the crap and find the cherry in the pie. Independence, she had said. And I wanted independence as well. Independence to live and breathe and play with my friends. Just because the pickup hadn't arrived didn’t mean I’d no longer go through with my side of the bargain. I began with the basic tool bar and search parameters. And while I was at it, I would make sure a backdoor existed.