“Where were you?” Rat rose up on his hind legs. “When I got there the place was swarming with cops.”
He froze as the tip of the penlight flared. The spook traced a rough outline of Rat on the stainless steel door behind him. “Fuck your lies,” she said. The beam came so close that Rat could smell his fur curling away from it. “I want the dust.”
“Trespass alert!” screeched the wounded elevator. A note of urgency had crept into its artificial voice. “Security reports unauthorized persons within the complex. Residents are urged to return immediately to their apartments and engage all personal security devices. Do not be alarmed. We regret this temporary inconvenience.”
The scales on Rat’s tail fluffed. “We have a deal. The marechal needs my networks to move his product. So let’s get out of here before…”
“The dust.”
Rat sprung at her with a squeal of hatred. His claws caught on her turtleneck and he struck repeatedly at her open collar, gashing her neck with his long red incisors. Taken aback by the swiftness and ferocity of his attack, she dropped the penlight and tried to fling him against the wall. He held fast, worrying at her and chittering rabidly. When she stumbled under the open emergency exit in the ceiling he leapt again. He cleared the suspended ceiling, caught himself on the inductor and scrabbled up onto the hoist cables. Light was pouring into the shaft from above; armored guards had forced the door open and were climbing down toward the stalled car. Rat jumped from the cables across five feet of open space to the counterweight and huddled there, trying to use its bulk to shield himself from the spook’s fire. Her stand was short and inglorious. She threw a dazzler out of the hatch, hoping to blind the guards, then tried to pull herself through. Rat could hear the shriek of burster fire. He waited until he could smell the aroma of broiling meat and scorched plastic before he emerged from the shadows and signaled to the security team.
A squad of apologetic guards rode the service elevator with Rat down to the storage subbasement where he lived. When he had first looked at the bunker, the broker had been reluctant to rent him the abandoned rooms, insisting that he live above ground with the other residents. But all of the suites they showed him were unacceptably open, clean and uncluttered. Rat much preferred his musty dungeon, where odors lingered in the still air. He liked to fall asleep to the booming of the ventilation system on the level above him and slept easier knowing that he was as far away from the stink of other people as he could get in the city.
The guards escorted him to the gleaming brass smart door and looked away discreetly as he entered his passcode on the keypad. He had ordered it custom-built from Mosler so that it would recognize high-frequency squeals well beyond the range of human hearing. He called to it and then pressed trembling fingers onto the printreader. His bowels had loosened in terror during the firefight and the capsules had begun to sting terribly. It was all he could do to keep from defecating right there in the hallway. The door sensed the guards and beeped to warn him of their presence. He punched in the override sequence impatiently and the seals broke with a sigh.
“Have a pleasant evening, sir,” said one of the guards as he scurried inside. “And don’t worry ab—” The door cut him off as it swung shut.
Against all odds, Rat had made it. For a moment he stood, tail switching against the inside of the door, and let the magnificent chaos of his apartment soothe his jangled nerves. He had earned his reward—the dust was all his now. No one could take it away from him. He saw himself in a shard of mirror propped up against an empty THC aerosol and wriggled in self-congratulation. He was the richest rat on the East Side, perhaps in the entire city.
He picked his way through a maze formed by a jumble of overburdened steel shelving left behind years, perhaps decades, ago. The managers of the bunker had offered to remove them and their contents before he moved in; Rat had insisted that they stay. When the fire inspector had come to approve his newly installed sprinkler system she had been horrified at the clutter on the shelves and had threatened to condemn the place. It had cost him plenty to buy her off but it had been worth it. Since then Rat’s trove of junk had at least doubled in size. For years no one had seen it but Rat and the occasional cockroach.
Relaxing at last, Rat stopped to pull a mildewed wingtip down from his huge collection of shoes; he loved the bouquet of fine old leather and gnawed it whenever he could. Next to the shoes was a heap of books: his private library. One of Rat’s favorite delicacies was the first edition Leaves of Grass which he had pilfered from the rare book collection at the New York Public Library. To celebrate his safe arrival he ripped out page 43 for a snack and stuffed it into the wingtip. He dragged the shoe over a pile of broken sheetrock and past shelves filled with scrap electronics: shattered monitors and dead typewriters, microwaves and robot vacuums. He had almost reached his nest when the fed stepped from behind a dirty Hungarian flag that hung from a broken florescent light fixture.
Startled, Rat instinctively hurled himself at the crack in the wall where he had built his nest. But the fed was too quick. Rat did not recognize the weapon; all he knew was that when it hissed Rat lost all feeling in his hindquarters. He landed in a heap but continued to crawl, slowly, painfully.
“You have something I want.” The fed kicked him. Rat skidded across the concrete floor toward the crack, leaving a thin gruel of excrement in his wake. Rat continued to crawl until the fed stepped on his tail, pinning him.
“Where’s the dust?”
“I . . . I don’t . . .”
The fed stepped again; Rat’s left fibula snapped like cheap plastic. He felt no pain.
“The dust.” The fed’s voice quavered strangely.
“Not here. Too dangerous.”
“Where?” The fed released him. “Where?”
Rat was surprised to see that the fed’s gun hand was shaking. For the first time he looked up at the man’s eyes and recognized the telltale yellow tint. Rat realized then how badly he had misinterpreted the fed’s expression back at Koch. Not bored. Empty. For an instant he could not believe his extraordinary good fortune. Bargain for time, he told himself. There’s still a chance. Even though he was cornered he knew his instinct to fight was wrong.
“I can get it for you fast if you let me go,” said Rat. Ten minutes, fifteen. You look like you need it.”
“What are you talking about?” The fed’s bravado started to crumble and Rat knew he had the man. The fed wanted the dust for himself. He was one of the dead.
“Don’t make it hard on yourself,” said Rat. “There’s a terminal in my nest. By the crack. Ten minutes.” He started to pull himself toward the nest. He knew the fed would not dare stop him; the man was already deep into withdrawal. “Only ten minutes and you can have all the dust you want.” The poor fool could not hope to fight the flood of neuroregulators pumping crazily across his synapses. He might break any minute, let his weapon slip from trembling hands. Rat reached the crack and scrambled through into comforting darkness.
The nest was built around a century-old shopping cart and a stripped subway bench. Rat had filled the gaps in with pieces of synthetic rubber, a hubcap, plastic greeting cards, barbed wire, disk casings, baggies, a No Parking sign and an assortment of bones. Rat climbed in and lowered himself onto the soft bed of shredded thousand-dollar bills. The profits of six years of deals and betrayals, a few dozen murders and several thousand dusty deaths.
The fed sniffled as Rat powered up his terminal to notify security. “Someone set me up some vicious bastard slipped it to me I don’t know when I think it was Barcelona . . . it would kill Sarah to see . . .” He began to weep. “I wanted to turn myself in . . . they keep working on new treatments you know but it’s not fair damn it! The success rate is less than . . . I made my first buy two weeks only two God it seems . . . killed a man to get some lousy dust . . . but they’re right it’s, it’s, I can’t begin to describe what it’s like . . .”
Rat’s fingers flew over the glowing keyboard, describin
g his situation, the layout of the rooms, a strategy for the assault. He had overridden the smart door’s recognition sequence. It would be tricky but security could take the fed out if they were quick and careful. Better to risk a surprise attack than to dicker with an armed and unraveling dead man.
“I really ought to kill myself . . . would be best but it’s not only me . . . I’ve seen ten-year-olds . . . what kind of animal sells dust to kids . . . I should kill myself. And you.” Something changed in the fed’s voice as Rat signed off. “And you.” He stooped and reached through the crack.
“It’s coming,” said Rat quickly. “By messenger. Ten doses. By the time you get to the door it should be here.” He could see the fed’s hand and burrowed into the rotting pile of money. “You wait by the door, you hear? It’s coming any minute.”
“I don’t want it.” The hand was so large it blocked the light. Rat’s fur went erect and he arched his spine. “Keep your fucking dust.”
Rat could hear the guards fighting their way through the clutter. Shelves crashed. So clumsy, these men.
“It’s you I want.” The hand sifted through the shredded bills, searching for Rat. He had no doubt that the fed could crush the life from him—the hand was huge now. In the darkness he could count the lines on the palm, follow the whorls on the fingertips. They seemed to spin in Rat’s brain—he was losing control. He realized then that one of the capsules must have broken, spilling a megadose of first-quality Algerian Yellow dust into his gut. With a hallucinatory clarity he imagined sparks streaming through his blood, igniting neurons like tinder. Suddenly the guards did not matter. Nothing mattered except that he was cornered. When he could no longer fight the instinct to strike, the fed’s hand closed around him. The man was stronger than Rat could have imagined. As the fed hauled him—clawing and biting—back into the light, Rat’s only thought was of how terrifyingly large a man was. So much larger than a rat.
The Friendship Light (1989)
GENE WOLFE
GENE WOLFE’s (b. 1931) many novels include Peace, The Devil in a Forest, Free Live Free, Soldier of the Mist, and, most recently, The Land Across. He is possibly best known for the novels that comprise The Book of the New Sun, the story of Severian, a member of the Torturer’s Guild in a far-future world. Wolfe’s storytelling skills sometimes seem sorcerous, and his short fiction—which includes such well-known tales as The Fifth Head of Cerberus, “Seven American Nights,” and “The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories”—has often worked a magic spell on readers. Wolfe’s stories sometimes draw on mythology, and they are allusive and elusive at times, but casual and close readers find them potent.
OR MY OWN part I have my journal; for my late brother-in-law’s, his tape. I will refer to myself as “Ty” and to him as “Jack.” That, I think, with careful concealment of our location, should prove sufficient. Ours is a mountainous—or at least, a hilly—area, more rural than Jack can have liked. My sister’s house (I insist upon calling it that, as does the law) is set back two hundred yards from the county road. My own is yet more obscure, being precisely three miles down the gravel road that leaves the county road to the north, three-quarters of a mile west of poor Tessie’s drive. I hope that these distances will be of help to you.
It began three months ago, and it was over—properly over, that is to say—in less than a week.
Though I have a telephone, I seldom answer it. Jack knew this; thus I received a note from him in the mail asking me to come to him on the very day on which his note was delivered. Typically, he failed to so much as mention the matter he wished to discuss with me, but wrote that he would be gone for several days. He was to leave that night.
He was a heavy-limbed blond man, large and strong. Tessie says he played football in college, which I can well believe. I know he played baseball professionally for several seasons after graduation, because he never tired of talking about it. For me to specify his team would be counterproductive.
I found him at the end of the drive, eyeing the hole that the men from the gas company had dug; he smiled when he saw me. “I was afraid you weren’t coming,” he said.
I told him I had received his note only that day.
“I have to go away,” he said. “The judge wants to see me.” He named the city.
I offered to accompany him.
“No, no. I need you here. To look after the place, and—You see this hole?”
I was very tempted to leave him then and there. To spit, perhaps, and stroll back to my car. Even though he was so much stronger, he would have done nothing. I contented myself with pointing out that it was nearly a yard across, and that we were standing before it. As I ought to have anticipated, it had no effect upon him.
“It’s for a friendship light. One of those gas things, you know? Tess ordered it last fall. . . .”
“Before you had her committed,” I added helpfully.
“Before she got so sick. Only they wouldn’t put it in then because they were busy tuning up furnaces.” He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead with his index finger, flinging the moisture into the hole. I could see he did not like talking to me, and I resolved to stay for as long as I could tolerate him.
“And they don’t like doing it in the winter because of the ground’s being frozen and hard to dig. Then in the spring it’s all mushy.”
I said, “But here we are at last. I suppose it will be made to look like a carriage lamp? With a little arm for your name? They’re so nice.”
He would not look at me. “I would have cancelled the order if I’d remembered it, but some damned woman phoned me about it a couple of days ago, and I don’t know—Because Tess ordered it—See that trench there?”
Again, I could hardly have failed to notice it.
“It’s for the pipe that’ll tap into the gas line. They’ll be back tomorrow to run the pipe and put up the lamp and so on. Somebody’s got to be here to sign for it. And somebody ought to see to Tess’s cats and everything. I’ve still got them. You’re the only one I could think of.”
I said that I was flattered that he had so much confidence in me.
“Besides, I want to visit her while I’m away. It’s been a couple of months. I’ll let her know that you’re looking after things. Maybe that will make her happy.”
How little he knew of her!
“And I’ve got some business of my own to take care of.”
It would have given me enormous pleasure to have refused, making some excuse. But to see my old home again—the room in which Tessie and I slept as children—I would have done a great deal more. “I’ll need a key,” I told him. “Do you know when the workmen will come?”
“About nine-thirty or ten, they said.” Jack hesitated. “The cats are outside. I don’t let them in the house anymore.”
“I am certainly not going to take any responsibility for a property I am not allowed to enter,” I told him. “What if there was some emergency? I would have to drive back to my own house to use the telephone. Do you keep your cat food outside, too? What about the can-opener? The milk?”
“All right—all right.” Reluctantly, he fished his keys from his pocket. I smiled when I saw that there was a rabbit’s foot on the ring. I had nearly forgotten how superstitious he was.
I arrived at the house that for so many years had been my home before nine. Tessie’s cats seemed as happy to see me as I was to see them—Marmaduke and Millicent “talked” and rubbed my legs, and Princess actually sprang into my arms. Jack had had them neutered, I believe. It struck me that it would be fairly easy to take one of the females—Princess, let us say—home with me, substituting an unaltered female of similar appearance who would doubtless soon present Jack with an unexpected litter of alley kittens. One seal-point Siamese, I reflected, looks very like another; and most of the kittens—possibly all of them—would be black, blacks being exceedingly common when Siamese are outcrossed.
I would have had to pay for the new female, however—fifty dollars at least
. I dropped the idea as a practical possibility as I opened the can of cat food and extended it with one of tuna. But it had set my mental wheels in motion, so to speak.
It was after eleven when the men from the gas company came, and after two before their supervisor rang the bell. He asked if I was Jack, and to save trouble I told him I was and prepared to sign whatever paper he might thrust under my nose.
“Come out here for a minute, will you?” he said. “I want to show you how it works.”
Docilely, I followed him down the long drive.
“This is the control valve.” He tapped it with his pencil. “You turn this knob to raise and lower the flame.”
I nodded to show I understood.
“Now when you light it, you’ve got to hold this button in until it gets hot—otherwise, it’ll go out, see? That’s so if it goes out somehow, it’ll turn off.”
He applied his cigarette lighter, and the flame came on with a whoosh.
“Don’t try to turn it off in the daytime. You’ll ruin the mantle if you light it a lot. Just let it burn, and it’ll last you maybe ten years. Should be hot enough now.”
He removed his hand. The blue and yellow flame seemed to die, blazed up, then appeared almost to die once more.
“Flickering a little.”
He paused and glanced at his watch. I could see that he did not want to take the time to change the valve. Thinking of Jack’s irritation, I said, “It will probably be all right when it gets a bit hotter.” It flared again as I spoke.
“Yeah. I better turn it down a little. I got it set kind of high.” The sullen flickering persisted, though in somewhat muted fashion.
The supervisor pointed. “Right over here’s your cut-off. You see how long that valve-stem is? When the boys get through filling in the trench, it’ll be just about level with the ground so you don’t hit it with the mower. But if you’ve got to put in a new light—like, if somebody wracks up this one with his car—that’s where you can turn off the gas.”
The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Volume 2 Page 29