by Alan Deniro
I could talk about my time in the prison at Zigurrat Station, charged with Commandeering a Parameter Vessel without Licensure. They put me in solitary and frisked me for state secrets and fed me split pea soup.
I could talk about how it finally happened: a shepherd coming to me in the middle of the night on my second day of prison, as I was sucking my supper from a gravy tube, and how my brain expanded sideways and elliptically. Just like they said. The shepherd gave its name (which shall remain nameless). I kept true to my word, and didn’t give the shepherd a pet name of my own devising, or call it boy or girl. It was “just” a shepherd.
I could talk about how Chartering shocktroops rescued me from the jail (even though the jail was following strict Parameter penal code) and cleared my charges and whisked me back to the Chartering. There was no more precious commodity in the Parameter than people like me, and I needed care and constant attention during my first week of shepherd-bonding. It trumped everything, even Commandeering a Parameter Vessel without Licensure. When my prison guard gruffly protested, the black-vested Chartering officer (a part-time phys-ed teacher at the school) sighed and snapped the guard’s pinky finger. I was able to eat lots of gelato at the Chartering upon my return.
I could talk about my year-long fling with America and Lund, but . . . no.
Now here’s something. I could talk about how Drexley tried to shoot his head off with a zun gun. But they were able to reattach his mouth, and he’s rehabbing on Mirabai very well, I’ve heard, so there’s no happy ending there. His family ensures/insures that.
No, it has to do with Kathy. It’s taken me a long time to realize that people are organisms, and are more mitochondrial than they want to believe. People bend, break, accrete with others in new forms. The rest of my time in the Chartering was uneventful in a good schoolgirlboy kind of way. I kept my nose to the screens, had a few, um, aforementioned affairs. But Kathy flat-out dropped out of the Chartering and disappeared after he was released from prison. I tried in vain to find any trace of him. Traces were supposedly easy to follow in the Parameter, but not his. He was gone in all senses of the word, and though I was guilt-ridden about the disaster of our joyride, I’d been plunged into adjusting to my new life with my own shepherd, with everything inflected and charged and changed. Kathy felt like an odd footnote from my not too distant past.
This last story happened three days before graduating from the Chartering. I had obtained a residency aboard a medical trawler on a Mirabai-to-Earth route. Not lucrative but not shabby either, which fit me pretty well. I decided to trek off grounds by myself and head to the Flowering Ape, for old times’ sake—
I couldn’t believe it, but I was already starting to sound like an alum. The curfew avatar had been banned; a few months before, I’d led a petition to the regents regarding that quite vigorously.
The place was mostly empty, but the place was smaller in actuality than my memory had constructed it two years before. I had to use the toilet, as I was the owner of the Parameter’s smallest bladder. As I moved to the toilet, and passed under a big statue of the arms-crossed ape, I saw Kathy. He looked like he needed someone to talk to, preferably someone with professional training. His beard was long and scraggly, his dress a taut snakeskin that made him look ratty. His face was smeared with makeup, a terrible loosestrife blend. I imagined him putting it on in front of a mirror, hands slipping, crying, trying again.
When I sidled next to him, and he looked up—not at me, only at my movements—I saw that he was Rended. An untouchable among telepaths.
His shepherd had left him.
It was rare, but not unheard of, for a person on the brink of dissolution to lose that bond with a shepherd. In a way, it was worse than dying. Telepathy required sharpness, openness, acumen—three traits Kathy didn’t possess anymore, it seemed.
His head rose up. “Hey you,” he said, mumbling. He didn’t recognize me. He reeked of illegal ethers.
“Kathy. Hey. How . . . how you’ve been?”
His eyes focused for the first time—on me, on my white, gleaming jumpsuit and my white teeth and the white lock of hair I braided in on a whim. I was embarrassed at how well I was doing. “Just wonderful,” he said, without much conviction. He reached for a vodka juicer and squeezed the nozzle into his mouth. For all intents and purposes, it looked like he was attacking a nipple. I wasn’t helping, I know. I wasn’t helping. I watched a desultory duo of kids—Chartering prospects, no doubt—take the pods up and down the air shaft. Li Po, that green-pink pearl, was in full incline from the viewport of the Flowering Ape.
It occurred to me that, when Kathy gazed up and beckoned me down from a pod two years ago, his life was ending. He didn’t know that; how could anyone ever know the precise moment when things would start to go downhill? When finally realized, it was usually too late. People back home in the colony write me and think I have some great foresight or wisdom because I can communicate with a shepherd, but nothing could be farther from the truth. On that night two years before in the Ape, I wanted nothing more from Kathy than a quick, sloppy kiss in the corner and some friendly inclinations. Now, our lives had changed—what could he have possibly wanted from me? Except, perhaps, to tell me to get the hell out of his life, you’ve already done enough damage.
If his life waned from that moment on, mine waxed. My mind shot out for a few nanoseconds to my shepherd, who was languidly orbiting Li Po. There, there, shepherd. Good shepherd. I didn’t want to imagine losing my shepherd.
After he slurped and set the bottle down, I asked him, “Kathy. I need to know. What went on when we were on the Gray Freighter? What happened between you and Drexley?”
His eyes welled up with moisture, and he grabbed my hand, turned it as white as my teeth. But he didn’t say anything for a minute, until he finally whispered, “What was going through me? A lot of pain from Drexley. I wanted to call him Drex so badly. He told me—” He started to choke up, and gave each word a phlegmy inflection.
Kathy let go of my hands and buried his face in his own. The kids in the pods above us stared. Who was this emotive man in a dress, they probably wondered.
“He told me that I wasn’t good enough to take us into wherespace. That my shepherd wasn’t good enough. He tried to have his own shepherd take over. And I liked him. I wanted him to like me. But he kept harassing me. He told me that I was worthless, my shepherd was worthless. And now . . . it’s true.” He turned his head from me.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I whispered, trying to focus on the past instead of the present, because the present was too painful.
“I was too stressed just to keep the ship on-course. And besides I was worried that . . . that everyone would have turned on me, even you, because they liked Drexley more than me.”
“No, Kathy, they all hated him. Sure they might have been scared to show it, but . . .”
I trailed off. I didn’t know how much I could have offered to him. Kathy was my friend at one brief, hot point in my life, but what did that mean? Crudely, violently, I thought I had “solved” the problem by tackling Drexley. But Kathy was too ashamed—or too damaged—to confide in any of us. Then he blinked out of everyone’s lives.
How clumsy of me, that I didn’t figure out the hints of the confrontation myself—the fluctuations in the engine room, Kathy falling apart in front of my eyes, Drexley’s erratic control mechanisms—and then do something about it besides attacking the perp.
“I thought I belonged,” he said suddenly. “I thought I belonged with something better than myself.”
I needed to compose myself, needed to be “strong” for his benefit. “Why didn’t you report it when you got back to school?”
“Drexley’s family filed a preemptive slander order against me. My words wouldn’t have meant anything. The slander spiders would have eaten up all traces of me, so I didn’t try.”
He gazed at me with a hopeless, feral look. So that was why I was never able to track him down—Drexley and his lawyers made sure that I couldn’t. That no one could.
I took his hand. He was trembling. “Kathy, I am so sorry. I really, really am.” My bladder was about to explode. Clear thought was becoming increasingly impossible, and Kathy needed clear thought. “Kathy, I need to use the toilet. But don’t go anywhere, okay? Promise me? I’ll be right back, and we can talk about this some more.”
He weakly nodded and slumped over. A bad Mirabain song laced through the speaker ether, a popular song about loving and caring that never sounded more empty to me. “I’m here for you,” I said in his ear, but softly, so only he could hear. I stroked his long, course hair, and got up.
Splashing cold water on my face after I urinated, trying to control my breathing, pure panic spread through my body. Maybe it was a telepath’s intuition, who knew, but as I ran, and before Kathy’s table was in sight, I knew it would be empty.
And it was. His vodka pouch was tipped over on the floor. The kids resumed their pod racing, laughing. He was gone, and I was sure I’d never see him again, and do you know what? I haven’t.
I really haven’t.
Moonlight Is Bulletproof
On the first day of spring, Dispatch awakens me with a case.
“This is a good one,” she says.
“Okay,” I say.
I head over to my desk and log in. Holland, my partner, is already on the scene. An apartment complex looks ready to fall over, the fifth story on fire.
“Where are we—Morocco?” I say.
“Dijon,” Dispatch says. “Now, listen. The building’s been secured. Two kids were shooting each other over a Game Boy they must have stolen. But the Game Boy was coated in this poison—or at least the buttons were—and when the first kid—”
“What are their names?” I ask. Holland is still groggy. He’s coughing and his proxy is polishing a gun to cover him.
“Don’t have those yet,” Dispatch says. “Anyway, the first kid shoots the second kid in the head, and starts playing the Game Boy, but then he dies right away.”
“Wow,” I say. “Okay, bring the family over here.”
“Has the building been eradicated?” Holland says to me.
“Do you mean evacuated?”
“Yeah. That’s it.”
But the family moves into the trailer on the scene and there’s no time to answer him. My proxy arrives, huffing. He was woken up too, even though it’s the middle of the afternoon where he is. “Sorry,” he says. PROXY is written on his vest.
“It’s okay,” I say.
When the family comes, I go over the incident with them. Holland is bored. I wish he would pay attention more. Two proxies, two detectives, four screaming kids, a mourning mother, a father trying to hold it all in, a few uncles . . .
“Wait,” I say to Dispatch. “Is this for the first shooting or the poisoning?”
“The poisoning,” Dispatch says. “The CO doesn’t care about the shooting. The locals are handling that, detective.”
“Right,” I say. I start asking them questions. Our proxies are shitty translators. They try French, and then Arabic. Nothing seems to be getting through to the family, but I can’t tell whether it’s the poor quality of the translation or recalcitrance.
My proxy says to me, “Okay, uh, I guess the kids stole it from this video store . . . they shoplifted it, and they tried to work out turns to play it, but . . .”
“And it was in their possession at all times?” I ask.
A pause to ask and answer the questions in a language that I don’t understand. It’s beyond me. I treat it like noise, like the cooling fan on my remote access station, the humming from the connection.
“Yes, so . . .” my proxy says, “I guess they didn’t see anyone else that would have been able to apply the poison?”
“Let us make the conjectures,” Holland says, “proxy.”
“Holland, easy,” I say. “Okay, thanks. So get them to shuttle the Game Boy over. I’m sending you my contact info now.” I send him my card. Then the father rushes Holland’s proxy, passing right through Holland. My proxy shoots the father in the kneecap. The family is screaming, and they try to rush out while hauling the father away, but the trailer door closes on them.
“Okay, well now,” I say, trying, to an extent, to keep things under control.
“Shit,” Holland says. “’Board them all up.”
“We don’t have enough kits,” his proxy says. He pulls a shield off his back and pushes the family toward the back, while my proxy cuffs the father.
“Let’s back up a bit,” I say. Holland is in the Chicago office. I’ve never met him, but we go back two years, which is a long time in this line of work. A French gendarme in camouflage pops his head in the trailer.
“Get the fuck out of the trailer!” Holland shouts at the gendarme, waving his arms. But the proxies are busy; mine is pulling the father through the front of the trailer for processing, and Holland’s is putting a mesh layer down, preventing the family from moving forward. I can hear jets screaming overhead. The gendarme takes a step inside but my proxy, thank God, shouts at him in French.
“Jesus,” Holland says.
“Holland, let’s process the father and let the family go.”
He stares at me. We can see through each other. “No fucking way, Jackson. They’re all co-conspirators, at this point. Aren’t they?”
“The father, yes, but look . . . we need to get moving on the poisoning. We don’t have time to deal with every little nuance, do we?” My proxy comes to stand next to me. He looks upset. I can tell he’s Muslim, and that’s fine, but something’s visibly shaken him, some instinct that he can’t explain.
“Fine,” Holland says, fading out. “Whatever. I’m on break, anyway. Get the father ’boarded up,” he barks to his proxy. So soon I’m alone with the two of them. The trailer back opens up, and the family spills out, all running as hard as they can back to the apartment building. Helicopters are hosing it down, but it’s unclear whether they’re putting out the fire or performing crowd control.
“What is it?” I ask my proxy. “Did the father say anything to you?”
My proxy shakes his head, and the other one punches him on the shoulder and they start arguing. Then the French gendarme comes back, pushing open the door and standing next to all of us. In fact he’s standing right inside of me. Then he pulls a cord at his chest and there are a ton of screams. I’m out. I jolt out and I have an earbleed.
“Ah,” I say, leaning back in my chair.
“We lost them,” Dispatch says on the auxiliary channel.
“Really?” I say, jamming Kleenex into my ears. “Is that so?”
“Sorry,” Dispatch says. “I’ll call a medic.”
“No, no, it’s okay,” I say. “I’m used to it. Thanks, though.”
“So . . .” I can tell she’s still monitoring the situation. “I guess they’re all dead.”
“It looks that way.” I stand up. There are three other detectives in adjoining cloakrooms. I don’t speak to any of them, though Dispatch does. We each have our own caseload, our own partners. Beyond these cloakrooms are other tunnels, with other departments, other common areas and other apartments. I happen to live on-site. Detectives’ apartments are about as interesting as their investigations and it’s pointless to pretend otherwise.
So I fix my ear, get my equipment checked, process about a dozen outsourced warrants, shoot off a quick email to my therapist about the suicide bombing as part of protocol, and take a nap. When I wake up, the Game Boy is in a baggie at my desk. There’s a toxicology report, which I skim. Something to do about a contact poison that is only manufactured in Yemen. Dispatch calls in to tell me that the owner
of the shop is in custody already, and awaits me. Holland is already there. Holland never sleeps.
“France again?” I say, as I log into my desk.
“Actually, she’s been moved to Romania.”
“So soon?” Romania, then. She’s Canadian. Her name is Amanda. Holland is in the corner, staring at her, sucking on a tooth. The interrogation room has a remarkable view of a desert valley, shielded by the shadows of mountains. Is it safe? It’s as safe as anywhere. I had a choice, once, to enter the field, to see places as they really are. But that would likely have involved dying of sarin in some tin caravanserai.
“Hey,” I say to Holland.
“Our proxies are fucking late,” he says.
“I can hear you,” Amanda says.
“Shut up,” Holland says, pointing a finger at her. “Shut the fuck up.”
“What are you going to do to me? You’re not really here.” She leans back in her chair.
“No, but you’re not either, really. I mean legally. You don’t have shit.”
“So you’re from Canada, huh?” I say. Both she and Holland stare at me.
“Jesus, Jackson,” Holland says. Then the proxies come. They’re bored, tired, overweight. There are no Romanians left in Romania. So Americans had to be shipped in.
“Sorry,” mine says. Proxies are always apologizing the world over. “We had to process her papers with the warden.”
“Eh, leave that to an underling,” Holland says.
“We’re the underlings,” his proxy says, crossing his arms.
I lean forward to Amanda, eager to end this. “Did you poison the Game Boy?” I say.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says. “It was a resell. Someone sold it to me like—”
“So what the fuck is a Canadian doing in the middle of fucking Dijon operating a secondhand video game store?” Holland says.