Wetware

by Craig Nova

  The waiting left him tired, and he was glad to get away for a few hours. He took the subway home. It passed into the darkness of the tunnel between stations, and there he looked up at the faces that came out of the yellow gloom of the lighting, and while cheeks and lips were streaked with shadows, they still had an air of vitality, the women with their cheap makeup, the men in their tight jeans and shirts. In the onward shaking and rush of the car, Briggs was mildly comforted by their resilience. You did what you had to, and that was that. A woman at the end of a bench, in a black dress, flirted with a boy in a cheap coat. He nuzzled her neck briefly, his lips against her neck under her brown hair.

  Briggs came up the stairs of the underground and walked to the end of the block, where names had been put up on a brick wall.

  They had been done in the new script. A few Mungo Men were copying from the wall onto scraps of paper with a piece of crayon that had come out of a child’s room. One of the new names was One of the Mungo Men had false teeth that were too large. Underneath the coat he had on a flannel shirt for which he had made buttons out of chicken bones. He hadn’t shaved, and his beard showed as white lines, which suggested the chaotic way in which it grew. A cowlick, a kind of turbulence where the hair of his neck mixed with the stubble on his jaw. He had a piece of bread in his pocket, which he took out and started to chew, and then he turned to Briggs and said, “Slim pickings tonight, but, shit, what can you do?”

  CHAPTER 6

  May 1, 2029

  IN THE blue light of the basement room, Briggs watched as the fluid dropped into the vial, one silver pendant at a time. He had a pneumatic syringe with him, a portable one that still had good power and was capable of shooting a large dose through his skin. But now he put it down and watched the accumulation of the vaccine. The first thing to do was to print the formula, to make notes about it, and to make sure those notes were available to anyone who wanted to see what he had done if things didn’t work out. He made a hard copy, and then stored the formula on a number of machines, mailing it to himself at home, to the machine upstairs. All shipshape and orderly.

  Over the years he had learned to have confidence, not of a bragging kind, but of a kind that suggested that if he had enough time, he could do good work. This had gotten him through a lot of bad spots. The difficulty now was that there hadn’t been a lot of time, and he had had to do quickly things that usually were done with all the attention to detail that hard-learned procedures required.

  He didn’t like to think about the specific possibilities, but what he wanted didn’t have much sway when he loaded the pneumatic syringe. It had a stainless-steel body and a piston in which Briggs put the vaccine. Even the dose was a matter of conjecture, although he had used the models of other vaccines, and he supposed he was pretty close. But it wasn’t the dose, so much as the effect. He thought about mucus membranes turning black, the lining of his nose, for instance, or other, more intimate orifices. Or the lining of the esophagus sloughing off in black tubes. And these were the best of possibilities if things went sour. What if the lining of the brain were affected? The world would seem toxic, stinging. He would perceive every surface, every wall, as poisonous to the touch. And of course there was the possibility, under these circumstances, that he would simply cease to exist as he had always had, and that while he would be gone, the almost infinite misery of living without a sense of self would be the method by which he knew that he was still alive. So, he picked up the pneumatic syringe and cocked it and held it against his arm. Well, he thought, do you believe in yourself or not?

  “Ah, shit,” he said.

  The syringe made a little p ft! He felt the cool sensation of the injection on his forearm, and then rinsed out the syringe with the cleaning solution that came with it, and turned it upside down to dry. Didn’t hurt much. He ran his finger over the red spot, which looked like an insect bite. A little swelling was all right, he guessed, but he wasn’t so sure about more than that. His finger lingered on the stinging itch as he tried to abandon the impulse toward brooding about the possibilities this bump suggested. There was nothing to be done now. Still, this was a moment when the short-term comforts of fatalism were obvious. Fatalism helps with the jump, but not the fall.

  CHAPTER 7

  May 1, 2029

  “PSSSST, ” SAID one of the Mungo Men. “Hey. You.”

  In the shadows, their plumes of breath spewed into the air like bubbles coming out of an Aqua-Lung. Briggs looked around, not expecting help, but still taking an inventory of possibilities. The moon above the rooftops was so large and clearly visible that Briggs could distinguish white mountains and lunar seas and the accumulated debris of endless impact.

  “Not now,” said Briggs.

  “Not now?” said one of the Mungo Men. “You hear that? That’s what they all say. One way or another.”

  Up ahead Briggs made out the steps of his building, but he didn’t think it was a good idea to go there. All he had was a list of things that were bad ideas. The evening dew gave every surface a gleam as though it were covered with freezing rain. He looked around and realized that he was in the last refuge of the hunted: no plans, just the habit of what he had been doing last.

  The lights in the brownstones were impossibly promising, and as he looked at them he tried to imagine the smell of soup, of chops broiling. Maybe soap and the slight domestic reminder of bacon that had been cooked for dinner. In the living rooms men sat reading newspapers or listening to music. Behind him, the limping shapes came out of the space between the buildings, the shadows falling away like capes.

  Briggs stopped. He turned to face them.

  He stood at the entrance to an alley, and a sound came from the back of it, a sigh of some kind, a slight intake of breath. He had guessed that under those circumstances the best thing was to be absolutely still: it was what an animal did when cornered. He heard light footfalls in the shadows, and when he glanced that way, he saw movement, like moonlight on a black scarf.

  “Briggs,” said Kay.

  She wore a raincoat, her hand in one pocket, and as he turned to her, the men in the street came along, limping, dragging their feet, drawn forward with determination. Kay took a step closer to him, her breath trailing over her shoulder. She opened and closed her raincoat to tie the sash more tightly, and when she did so, he saw that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it.

  “I think what we need to do is to walk away from here as though we haven’t got a care in the world,” she said. “Letting them know you are afraid brings out the worst.”

  She had put her lips against his ear to whisper, and her words came as warm, insistent puffs.

  “Come on. Let’s just walk away. I’m going to take your arm. Is that all right?”

  The street was lighted by a few neon signs, reds and greens that were so bright as to suggest a taste, like cherry or mint. Kay pulled on his arm a little, trying to steady herself. When they walked together, the cadence of their steps was perfectly matched.

  One of the Mungo Men had a knife, which he scraped along the metal rods of a fence, and when he came up to the wall of a building, he ran it across the bricks. Kay pulled Briggs’s arm against her side, and turned a little so that she could briefly hug it against her chest.

  “I never thought it would be like that,” he said.

  “What?” she said

  “Being able to touch you,” he said.

  She took his hand and put it under her coat, against the warm skin of her side, his fingers feeling the texture of her ribs.

  “You’re not going to leave me, are you?” she said. “After I took a chance to find you? Do you know how long I waited in the cold?”

  The men behind them whistled to each other, as though arranging themselves in some preconceived pattern to cut off avenues of escape. Briggs thought of the details that were reported about people the Mungo Men had caught: the small, deep puncture wounds, the disfiguring slashes, the bones that had been pulverized into wet grit. The papers
tried to suggest what tools might have been used, a bat, a pipe, a homemade weapon of some kind. He looked back.

  “I’m not going to leave you,” he said.

  She hugged his arm against her. At the end of the street there was a lamp, and in the light of it he looked at her hair, her eyes, touched her skin.

  The all-night café had windows all the way around, and the light from the place fell onto the sidewalk in trapezoids. Inside it had a counter, some chrome coffee urns, and a man in a white shirt with a white hat bent over a sink, washing dishes. At the counter, one man had spread out a newspaper, which he read, one sentence at a time. Then a bite of a doughnut. A sip of coffee. The next sentence.

  The diner smelled of coffee and Danish, home-fried potatoes and toast and jam, the heavy atmosphere of the roast-beef special with mashed potatoes, peas, and gravy. The man who was washing dishes looked up briefly when Briggs and Kay walked to the back, where there was a booth. The men in the gray coats came in too, their beards showing as black and white sand, their eyebrows bushy. The man behind the counter was about to say something to them, but then thought better of it. He stood up, drying his hands on a gray towel, looking around. Then he came over to Kay and Briggs.

  “What’s it going to be?” he said. He wore a white cap and a white apron. He glanced over his shoulder, just once.

  “Ice cream,” she said. “Vanilla.”

  It came in small stainless-steel cups, which reflected the green tabletop and Briggs’s and Kay’s hands as they picked up their spoons and began to eat. Kay kept her eyes down when she took her first bite, holding the sweet ice cream in her mouth. The Mungo Men milled around in the front, shoving each other, sitting down, standing up. One of them licked a palm and poured sugar on it and then put it into his mouth.

  Kay put a spoonful of ice cream into her mouth and drew it out, the surface of the ice cream grooved by the texture of her lips. She left a point of vanilla, almost like the curve of an ice skate, at the tip of the spoon.

  “It burns my mouth,” she said. “It’s so good.”

  He ate his, too. She finished, scraping the small bowl all the way around so as to get all of it. Then she put the tip of her tongue into the cup and licked the edge. She got up and came to his side of the booth and took his hand, which she put under her coat, the warmth of her side coming as a smoothness of temperature, of air almost more than skin.

  “Where are we going to go?” he said.

  “Are you sure you want to come with me?” she said.

  “Yes,” he said, “but where?”

  “We could go into the bathroom and lock the door,” she said.

  He looked around.

  “I’d like something else, though,” she said. “My hotel isn’t far away. Are you willing to try to get there? It would mean going back out on the street.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “Don’t be afraid,” she said.

  “No,” he said. “I won’t.” He looked up at the front of the diner. “Come on.”

  They got up and walked up to the counter, where there was a line of stools on chrome posts. The cash register was chrome too, and polished. Along the top of the counter was a sign that said, HAM AND EGGS, HOME FRIES, POTATOES, $36.00. The counterman wrote on his pad, tore off a small green slip, and passed it over. Briggs paid him and the man made change, and when he passed it over, he said, “Are those guys after you?”

  Briggs nodded.

  “Well, that’s too bad, isn’t it?” said the man. Then he glanced once at the men behind Kay and Briggs.

  “Good night,” said Kay.

  “Yeah,” said the man. “Good night.”

  In the street Kay said, “The hotel is up here.”

  In the storefront windows they saw distorted images of themselves. Briggs thought the red lights of the hotel were far away. Kay walked with her head up, shoulders back, the heavy object in her pocket swinging back and forth, bumping against her thigh.

  They came up to the front of the hotel, into the lobby, the men in gray coats behind them. At the back of the lobby, Kay pushed the button for the elevator. The men behind them stopped at the desk and said to the clerk there, “What room is she in?”

  “Her?” said the clerk. He glanced from one of them to another. “Five-oh-six.”

  “A couple of you take the stairs,” said one of the men.

  The elevator creaked down and stopped. Kay and Briggs got in, and she pulled the gate shut, the dark geometry of it swinging out with a squeak and then a bang. The cage had antiquated bars with spear-shaped points at the top, and above them, around the entire car, was a pattern of iron leaves and vines, which, against the dim light of the lobby, looked like black lace on white skin. Kay put her hand on Briggs’s face, one finger just tapping his lips and then running back and forth over them, her touch at once gentle and yet shaking. The elevator went up the center of the spiral staircase, where it was enclosed in a wire mesh.

  She breathed with an asthmatic panting. The elevator rose in its erratic ascent, jerking a little, trembling, squeaking in the pulleys up above. In the stairwell beyond the mesh, they heard the pounding of steps, the gasping of men who were out of shape, shouting to one another not in words, but in exhausted syllables.

  Kay hit the emergency button. The lights went out and the elevator was filled with the gray luminescence that came from the floor above as it hung there, suspended in the iron mesh that surrounded the cage. The touch of Kay’s tongue in his ear overwhelmed the dim light, the sound of the men pounding on the walls, their cries of distress and anger. She looked into his face, put her hand on his belt and unbuckled it. She said, with her lips against his ear, the words almost inaudible, “Shhhh. Now, you look at me, just at me. That’s right. That’s good. Oh.”

  “Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

  “For what?” said Kay. “We don’t have time . . . ”

  She opened her coat, her skin white in the dim light. Her hands went along the small of his back, pushing his trousers down, her fingers slipping under the band of his underwear.

  “You’re going to tell me you don’t want to? Look at me and tell me you don’t want this . . . ”

  “What about a child?” he said. “About getting pregnant . . . ”

  “Oh, that,” she said. “Don’t worry. Don’t be afraid. We don’t have to worry about a child. Is that what you are worried about?”

  In the hall, one of the Mungo Men said “Fee, Fi, Fo, Fum . . . ”

  “What?” said the other. “What did you say?”

  “Just something from when I was a kid,” said the Mungo Man. “ ‘I smell the blood of an Englishman.’ Did you ever hear that?”

  “Naw,” said the other Mungo Man. “We didn’t talk much at my house.”

  She went on looking at him, pursing her lips, sucking his fingers, her skin white in the dim light of the car. Above her he saw the scrollwork at the top of the cage like the shadows of a tree on a sunny day, at once lacy and intricate. She held his face so that he couldn’t look away, and she whispered, telling him that she forgave him, and that all she wanted was a little time. Wouldn’t he give her that? He slumped down on the floor, and she sat over his naked legs, the front panels of her coat opening so that she could press her sweaty skin against him.

  “You know what I want,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Well, won’t you let me have that?” she said.

  He saw that she was crying, the paths of her tears running from the side of her eyes and down her face as she heaved, still shaking her head, still saying, or seeming to say, Don’t make a sound. Not a sound. As she heaved, he felt her contractions, the tightening grip of them.

  She put her lips against his and said, with a pant, a shudder of excitement, “You thought you could say, No . . . didn’t you? Didn’t you?”

  “No,” he said. “I knew I never would.”

  She pulled his face against her, put his lips against the tear
s. She whispered that she was crying, not out of sorrow, but happiness, delight. Did he understand that? Outside, the Mungo Men shouted, banged on the wall. She put her head against his, the hardness of the bones coming through the caress of her hair. Her lips were warm and slippery, insistent.

  “Have you ever wanted something, waited for it, dreamed of it, tasted it in your imagination, needed it? And when you got it was it everything you wanted, hoped for . . .? That’s what this is, even on the floor in this rundown elevator. Can you understand that?”

  She put her hands on the bars just above him, and when she pulled against them, the panels of the coat opened, the texture of her skin brushing against his cheek, his forehead. She strained as she grasped the black bars, shaking them a little, her breath asthmatic.

  “Trust me,” she said.

  “I trust you,” he said.

  “Do you? Show me. Come in me.” She looked at his face. “Yes. Like that. Oh, just like that.”

  In the darkness the men stamped, whistled, hammered on the mesh of the cage.

  She stood up. He did too, trying to pull himself together as she tied the belt of her coat, and then she reached over and kissed him, nicely, innocently, like a kid. She reached over and hit the red button and the elevator lurched upward. He put his lips next to her ear and said, “Oh, Kay, Kay . . . ”

  She put her head against him and said, “My room is just down the hall.”

  He listened to the men around them, pounding the walls.

  “I’ll grind his bones to make my bread . . . ” said one of them.

  The elevator stopped. The door creaked open. Briggs looked up at the antiquated floor counter, the arrow of it pointing to 5. As they stepped out, Briggs squinting a little, already recoiling a little from the first blow, he saw that Jack was standing there at the top of the stairwell, looking down. Then he turned to Kay and said, “Are these guys bothering you?”

  The Mungo Men stood there, just on the threshold, the mass of them coming up from the dark clutter, the mesh like fishnet stockings, the banister made of black metal and supported by those same wrought-iron vines and leaves. They looked up and hesitated and then one of them looked at Briggs and said, “We haven’t forgotten. Don’t you worry. Some other time.”