by Jim Stark
Julia blushed shyly. She gave his bare feet a little friendly rub with her right hand and then returned her gaze to that nice Mr. Wu, who had something to say.
"The—uh—arrangements,” Mr. Wu said, trying to be gentle by being oblique. “We—uh—we've got to have your instructions,” he tried.
"'Rangements for what?” asked Julia.
"The—uh—funeral,” said Mr. Wu quietly, with worry lines deepening throughout his round, sixty-year-old face. He had been hoping not to have to say that “f” word, but now he'd done it, of necessity.
"How about a barbecue?” suggested Victor. “Haul me over to Victor-E, gut me, ram an apple in my mouth and turn me on a slow spit for the best part of a day. I bet I'd be ... scrumptious,” he declared.
Julia was in stitches, slapping his knees and rocking back and forth. “We eat meat, but not people meat,” she said ... and then she jerked back to full sobriety as she got his point.
"Perfectly good protein,” said the inventor. “You could probably invite the Callaway number six clan and still have leftovers. But if you're still too hung up to roast me, then ... let's see ... I'd hate to see my body go to waste. I know! Dump me in the Amazon and let the piranhas go on a feeding frenzy. They aren't so picky about who they eat."
Julia was giggling and slapping his knees again, although this time she wasn't so sure of her foundation. “Jeeze, Victor,” she said. “I don't think pianos eat people either."
"Pi ... ra ... nhas,” explained Victor. “They're a tiny little fish with great big teeth, in South America. If a monkey or something falls in the river, these piranhas get so excited the water just churns, like it's boiling, like at the bottom of a little waterfall or a fountain, and just minutes later there's only bones left. Look it up on the Net, Julia. It's an amazing sight."
"I—uh—really have to know what you want, Victor,” said Mr. Wu. “Your will's all set up, but this part was never—"
"There used to be these Indian guys that would hoist you to a platform up in a tree,” offered Victor. “The scavengers got the best bits, and the worms got the rest."
"Victorrrrr!” wailed Julia. She was still laughing at his silly suggestions, but seemed a bit upset. “Stop it!” She wiggled closer between his knees, and briefly rubbed his shins.
"Okay, I'll settle for being made into pet food,” he said. “I never liked scavengers anyway—they remind me of pawn shops—but I always liked dogs, especially samoyeds. I used to have two dogs, Snowball and Kodiak, but they died, and I never had the heart to...” A pithy silence ensued, and Victor's eyes seemed to gaze right through the far wall.
"I think ... you should let us do like a regular-type funeral, Victor,” Julia said into the void, staring at her bare feet. “Like they did for Daddy when he got killed, and like they did for my sister Sarah when she got in the car accident."
Victor knew that these were the only unsalvable wounds on Julia's psyche. He put his coffee on a side table, leaned forward, and wrapped his arms around her neck, resting his crossed hands soft on her breasts. “Why?” he asked. He was fully prepared to give in, but not without a good answer to that question.
"So we can feel sad and cry,” she answered timidly, putting her hands on top of his. “I think it's okay to do that when you love somebody,” she offered, her head hung.
"Of course it is,” said Victor as he kissed the crown of her golden head, extracted his arms and sat back. “So be it,” he said, touching the back of his neck, beneath the veil of long white hair, only vaguely aware that he would be surprised yet again to find the lump still there, killing him softly.
"Good,” said Mr. Wu as he stood up, hoping to escape before either of them had time to start up another round of tomfoolery.
"And half of my money goes to Foundation-E for the implementation of phase two?” Victor said ... asked, really, just by way of confirmation.
"Yes,” said Mr. Wu. “That's all set up in—"
"And the other half to my son,” he said.
"Victor,” said Julia, “you don't have a son, and Mr. Wu was just—"
"Or daughter,” Victor said.
"Victor!” scolded Julia. “You don't—"
"Or his mother, actually."
"Victorrrrr!"
"Or her mother."
Mr. Wu turned and left the two in the middle of another play-fight that was bound to spill coffee—and surely couldn't be good for a dying man. What the fuck am I thinking? he asked himself silently after the door had clicked and the sounds became muffled. Who ever died so happily?
Chapter 71
THE MOLE
Wednesday, May 11, 2033—11:00 a.m.
"Freedom!” was all the note said. Lilly held the scrap of paper up to the opaque light of the window at the back of her apartment, but no clues were yielded from that experiment. She'd found the note taped to the screen of her MIU, and the maid hadn't been in. Lilly was the only person in Victor-E who ever locked her doors, and the maid was the only other person with a key and permission to enter. Who could have done this? And why?
Lilly hadn't Netlinked with Michael in almost seven weeks, although she'd thought about doing it a hundred times a day. He hadn't called her either, which is why she hadn't called him. It was a classic Mexican standoff, but Lilly wasn't about to fire first ... or to surrender. He's the one who spoiled everything on the alter of his political ambition, she reminded herself as she fondled the mysterious note. So if he wants to make up, he can damned well grovel.
She read the note aloud ... “Freedom!” ... and then it registered. It was she who had shouted that word, out at Lars’ old hunting shack, when she released the trapped squirrel. How did he get in here?
Lilly tried not to signal her insight with any facial cues—her MIU was sitting there, staring at her, waiting for her long-overdue reports on both Michael Whiteside and Victor Helliwell. Every day she found it impossible to sit down and get them done, and every day she expected Control to appear unannounced on her screen and demand that she do her duty, and every day he didn't. Control must be either dead or way ahead of me, she thought. And he ain't dead.
She checked her appearance in the mirror by the front door—she was still drop-dead ... intriguing, she settled for. She put on her only-used-once tramping boots. “I'm going for a walk in the bush to clear my head,” she said in the direction of her MIU. As far as she knew, that was the truth—not the whole truth, but the truth nonetheless. It was also true that she had almost quit caring whether Control caught her lying. Sometimes she felt it might be a relief to get fired ... better than her present purgatory, anyway. She closed the apartment door, leaving it unlocked, for the first time ever.
No one will say “hi” to me if I go through the E-tery, she thought as she stood in the hall, feeling more than alone. She went back inside, refused to even look at her MIU, and walked through the apartment to the back door. She unlocked it, went out onto the tiny balcony, and left that door unlocked too. The written side of the note was taped facing the screen, she recalled as she walked down the metal-slatted stairs of the fire escape. There were a dozen or so Evolutionaries down inside the empty swimming pool, cleaning it out, preparing for the glory days of summer. Lars wasn't concerned about the possibility that my handlers might see the note, she realized as she sent a chilly nod to the maid, who was now working with the pool crew. The maid acknowledged Lilly's existence with a barely visible nod of her own. In fact maybe he even wanted my handlers to see it, Lilly clued in, knowing the WDA wouldn't understand the thing. They would have seen him anyway, when he came in the apartment. “The thick plottens,” she said out loud as she stuffed the note into her pocket.
Lilly walked around the side of the old motel, got into her green Aura, drove east for a half mile and turned north onto the first dirt side-road. A light drizzle hung in the air, caught in limbo between actual rain and none at all. She set her wipers on “intermittent,” and neglected—deliberately—to insert her Sniffer in the angled slot on th
e dashboard.
About a mile later, she pulled over at the crest of a hill and stopped. There was little that could be called a shoulder, so half of the car was really still on the driving surface ... but she parked anyway. There were ditches on both sides of this secondary road, and just bush beyond. Victor-E was now to the southwest, Shawville wasn't far to the east, and if she figured it right, she'd find the hunting shack if she walked due west for about twenty-five minutes. And if I miss it, I miss it, she said to herself as she put her Sniffer under the driver's seat and closed the car door. She knew she couldn't miss Dora's Creek, and that his cabin was right beside that creek, so if she did miss it on her first effort, she'd merely have to decide whether to follow the water upstream or down.
I'm taking the day off, she thought, so Control can stay the hell out of my private business. She had depressed the button before closing the car door, so it was locked. It occurred to her to leave it unlocked, just to be consistent, but she didn't. I'm sort of like this drizzle, she thought as she checked the slate-gray sky. An ape with a human heart, not really one thing or the other.
The first few steps into the wilds of Québec brought many memories flooding back, memories of the bizarre “hunting” trip she'd had with Lars in March ... that was almost two months ago! If Lars was in the shack, waiting for her, she would have sex with him this time—she knew that for sure. It wasn't that she had any great feelings for the person of Lars ... what is his last name anyway? She just needed something happy in her life—anything at all would do ... apparently; obviously, she thought.
Minutes later, Lilly's jeans were soaked up to the calves by a thousand brushes from baby-leafed ferns and the budding branches of low-lying shrubs. The drizzle had largely disappeared from the air, and Lilly was finding the moment-to-moment decision-making required by the difficult terrain to be an effective diversion from the never-ending stream of unwelcome and unanswerable questions that seemed to preoccupy her life lately. In fact, she was rather enjoying herself—something she hadn't done much of since ... that last day in Freeport, she realized. She even got a kick out of the thin layer of perspiration that now covered her body and dampened her clothes from the inside ... my own drizzle, she contemplated.
A few types of trees had sprouted little green knobs, embryonic leaves, but most of them seemed to be holding off. Maybe they fear a late frost, she imagined. Maybe trees have instincts, and know the value of prudence. I wonder if Victor ever looked at plants that way?
Lilly cut around a shallow depression in the rock. An old dead tree was suspended horizontally across the bottom. The blacks and browns of nature were broken at the foot of the gully by a spot of white, she noticed. Christ, that's where I went to pee last time I was out here, she thought. I didn't even bury the tissues I used. How ... how Human Two of me!
She carefully eased her way down to the scene of the crime, put the tree-trunk to good use, as she'd done before, and then dug a hole with the steel toe of her hiking boot. She kicked the new tissues along with the old ones into the hole and covered the lot with dirt and rotting leaves. Not that anyone will ever know ... or care, she thought as she stamped things down. But I'll know ... and I ... seem to care.
On a whim, Lilly decided to play commando. She hadn't done that since her days at the Academy. She had been quite confident back then that she'd never have any use for such pre-Revolutionary skills. But why not? she snickered. I owe him one.
She crawled up to the top of the depression, enjoying the sensation of wetness on her knees. Dirt clung to her hands, worked its way under her fingernails. It took her almost ten minutes to crawl across the ground to the back of the shack, because every shift in weight required certainty that no twig would snap, giving away the game.
At the back of the shack, she lay still, flat against the ground, relishing the God-awful mess she'd made of her clothes. Even the ends of her hair had picked up mud and debris. She lifted her head, and saw a minute crack between two boards. Her heart was pounding pointlessly. Her breathing was deliberately light, in spite of her body's demand for a great gasp. She slowly raised her head to the crack, about three feet above the floor level, and peeked in. The width of a board away, she saw brown hair. Lars’ hair!
Lilly lowered herself silently back down and crawled a couple of yards to where she saw a broken branch that was vaguely the weight and shape of a baseball bat. She cleared away a few twigs, and lifted it noiselessly from its bed. Then she stood up ever so gently, raised the branch—wrist thick at the heavy end—and took two careful steps backwards to the corner of the shack. She set the “bat” at shoulder height, reviewed the physics of the golf swing, and let fly against the wall. WHACK!
"Holy fuck!” she heard from inside the shack. Lilly put down the club, barely choking back her laughter, and ducked behind the back of the shack, avoiding the crack between the boards. With any luck, she thought, he'll come tearing out to investigate and I'll scare the shit out of him again.
She heard Lars run out of the front opening, where a door had once been, and then she heard nothing. She waited ... and waited ... still nothing ... after half a minute. Her curiosity started to melt into fear, or at least concern, so she decided to peek around the corner of the shack. She'd do it as she'd been trained, in one third of a second ... out, in. She would see all she needed to know, and if she was seen, the opposition couldn't get a shot off before she withdrew her head. It was a silly precaution, she knew ... but what the hell! He's got to be playing some sort of game.
Zip!
"BANG!” she heard, as she pulled her head back to safety. A bullet ripped through her hair, ricocheted off a branch and thudded into the trunk of a tree. “It's me ... Lilly,” she shouted. Her heart was racing madly now, this time for serious. She used to always carry her weapon, but for the last several weeks she hadn't, since it became clear to her that she could never shoot anyone. She hadn't even brought her Sniffer with her, so she had no way to summon help. “Lars, it's me,” she repeated.
"Step out very slowly, showing your hands first,” screamed Lars. “Do it NOW!"
Lilly eased the fingertips of her left hand beyond the corner of the shack, and when they didn't get shot to bits, she did the same with her right hand, then her forearms, and finally she rose up and stepped out. Lars was flat on the ground, with only the top half of his head and eyes showing around the front corner of the shack—plus his right arm and hand, holding a pistol, a standard-issue Smith and Wesson.
"On your knees, NOW!” he screamed. “Put your head down, look only at the ground, and crawl forward, slowly."
Lilly recognized the drill, and did exactly as Lars had commanded. She didn't look up, and her hair swept the earth. “Lars,” she said pleadingly, “it's me. What the fuck are you doing with a gun. I thought—"
"Shut up,” shouted Lars. He was standing now—Lilly could tell by the angle of his voice. “Crawl into the shack and lie on your stomach on the floor. Do it NOW!"
Lilly obeyed. Lars has to be WDA, she realized. How could I not know, not be told? How could it even be? It ... can't be!
"I wish you hadn't done that,” said Lars angrily. “I have her in custody now—please advise,” Lilly heard him say.
"Accelerate the plan,” came a voice from the speaker of Lars’ Sniffer.
Lilly thought she recognized the voice. It sounded like ... Control—my Control—Mark Drummond! But ... that can't be!
"Right,” said Lars. “Captain Petrosian, crawl slowly to the corner, turn around and sit. Face me with your arms fully outstretched and fingers flared."
Again, she obeyed. When she turned around, she saw Lars in a wide stance, his pistol pointed at her heart, pure fury in his eyes. “Can I lower my arms?” she asked the young man she'd come here to ... to have fun with, she remembered as she stared at the barrel of his weapon.
"Are you armed?” asked Lars without the slightest change of position.
"Yes,” said Lilly.
"Beep,” went Lars�
�� LieDeck-equipped Sniffer, confirming for Lilly that he really was WDA.
"No games,” said Lars as he lowered his gun and relaxed a little. “You should not have done that,” he said in a voice so harsh that Lilly barely recognized it as his. “Now we'll conduct your debriefing,” he said as he sat cross-legged on the floor, his gun still in his hand. “You will address me as Colonel Johannsen, Captain Petrosian. You came here alone?"
"Yes."
"Anyone know you're here?"
"No."
"Got your Sniffer?"
"No."
"That's an offense."
"I couldn't care less."
"Beep."
"No more lies. Last warning. Where's your car?"
"On a dirt road about a mile east of here."
"Pick up the car,” said Lars towards his vest, without taking his glaring eyes off Lilly.
"Roger,” came a different voice from his Sniffer.
Lars seemed to relax even more. He continued to stare at his prisoner, though, and Lilly wondered why he didn't take his Sniffer out, so that Control could see what was happening. Then she remembered the Academy again. Losing your Sniffer was as serious an offense as losing your weapon, and both hands were needed in any weapons-drawn situation.
"I suppose you think you got this incredibly important assignment up here in Québec on merit?” said Lars, with an almost animal sneer.
"Apparently ... not,” said Lilly.
"You got it because you were so weak!” said Lars as his free left hand fished in his pocket for something. “We knew you'd cave if the going got rough, and we knew you'd cop a man if the money was right ... and we knew you'd even convert to Evolution and become Human Three if your world fell apart,” he snarled as he pulled a pen from his shirt pocket. “Plus, you're reputed to be a great lay,” he said with a wicked smirk. “We got quite a kick out of the MIU feed from Freeport."
"You fucking voyeuristic bastards!” spit Lilly.
Lars raised his right hand and fired a bullet into the wall above Lilly's head, causing her to duck instinctively. “The next one goes through your left tit!” he shouted viciously.