Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  “Let’s go then.”

  People were already gathering expectantly about the central focus of the bandstand, growing quiet and alert. The crowd parted for Shenda, and she found Thurman somehow still behind her, his face drained from the small exertions.

  “Oh, shit, I am so sorry I dragged you around like this!”

  “I —I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.”

  “Listen—you can’t stand for the whole time, and the only seat is up there with me. Do you mind?”

  “Nuh-no,” panted Thurman.

  They ascended the three stairs, finding themselves amid the band’s equipment and instruments. Thurman collapsed onto Buddy Cheetah’s drumset stool. Shenda picked up the microphone and tested it. It was on. With a backward glance to make sure Thurman was okay, she shifted into business mode and began.

  “This meeting of Karuna, Inc., is now officially underway. Can I have the minutes of the last meeting, please? Ellen Woodrose, are you out there?”

  Business was conducted. People ascended the stage as called. Officers read reports. Motions were proposed. Yays and nays were tallied. People were praised or confronted. Plans were debated and modified. Arguments expired in compromise. Agreements were reached. No blood was spilled.

  At last Shenda was able to utter one of her favorite sentences. “If there is no more business, then this meeting is adjourned—”

  Chef Mona called loudly out from the mass of people. “Shenda, I got a shortage of help and grill space today! Which should I cook first? The veggie burgers or the meat?”

  The crowd went into noisy spasms. “The meat, the meat!” “No, the falafel first!”

  Then an anonymous voice called out: “Let the dogs vote!”

  The whole crowd took up the absurd chant: “Let the dogs vote! Let the dogs vote!”

  Children ran off screaming to herd the romping packs up to the tables. Like a madman’s cattle drive, the dogs were chivvied toward the food tables.

  Shenda knew them all by sight. Spaniels, briards, whippets, shepherds, Scotties, terriers, Great Danes, greyhounds, sheep dogs and many a miscegenetic mongrel. Hounds and lapdogs, hunters and retrievers. Ten thousand years of human-inspired breeding. There was French Fry, Slinky Dog, Muzzletuff, Often- bark, E. Collie, Dogberry, Wagstaff, Nixon, Tuff Gong, Gromit, G-Spot, Snake, Whiskey, Deedles, Subwoofer—and dozens more.

  And of course, sticking out like a bright bouncy beachball, the resplendent Bullfinch.

  The kids had succeeded in massing the dogs around Chef Mona. In her hands, she held two patties: one meat, one bean. The crowd fell still as Arctic night.

  Strangely, the dogs too had grown calm and composed. They seemed aware of the responsibility that had devolved on them.

  Mona bent and offered the patties.

  Not a single dog moved forward out of the ring. Instead, they seemed to consult with muted growls and ear prickings among themselves.

  Then one animal emerged from the pack as if nominated by the rest, strutting with immense dignity right up to his own personal canine Judgment of Paris.

  Bullfinch.

  And without a second’s hesitation he chose the falafel.

  Half the crowd applauded, half booed, before dissolving into a disorganized surge toward the buffet.

  On the stage Shenda turned to Thurman, whose face was wreathed in amazement.

  “And that’s how we do things por la Karuna!”

  9.

  The Illogic of Conquest

  In his vast, statue-littered bedroom, before his official busy day began, Marmaduke Twigg sought to fortify himself for his off-the-record meeting with Kraft Durchfreude. The guiding black light of Isoterm lifted his silken pajama top, revealing a small titanium port like a robot’s nipple implanted in his side. He attached a transparent feedline leading to an IV sac hanging on a stand. Triggered by the connection, his inner pump began to hum. Blue fluid flowed directly into his veins.

  No time to get the Zingo through his slow digestive tract now! Durchfreude would be here any moment.

  Twigg dreaded the meeting. All he could picture was Durchfreude holding the nail gun and firing into Stanes’s head. The expression on the creature’s face! Something not present at previous initiations—a trace of deadly disengagement, of schizoid withdrawal—had crawled beneath the tightly held surface of the Dark Intercessor’s face.

  Twigg suspected that Durchfreude’s unstable brain was finally fractionating. As when a glacier meets the sea, parts were calving off, achieving or struggling for autonomy. The jigsaw pieces of Durchfreude’s mind were twitching with a life of their own, hopping out of their former plane of alignment.

  Of course, this made the catspaw of the PGL highly unreliable—dangerous in fact—and subject to immediate termination.

  Still, Twigg hoped to get just one more assignment out of him. A simple one, to be sure, but necessary.

  As the IV bag collapsed with an accompanying mechanical sucking sound from Twigg’s thorax, he felt a twinge of regret at Durchfreude’s disintegration and imminent demolition. None of this had been the man’s own fault, of course. Why, Twigg remembered when Kraft Durchfreude had been the ultra-competent head of Squamous Securities, a legend in the world of cutthroat business dealings. And even after the surgical bungle he had lived a useful life, performing with eclat and brio the dirtiest tasks the PGL members could dredge up for him. Why, even as far back as six or seven years ago, when Twigg had sent the Dark Intercessor to the Persian Gulf, the monster had still been at the top of his form. Look how ingeniously he had raked Isoterm’s nuts from the fire, destroying all evidence of the company’s sales to Iraq of CBW materiel. Even the highly over-rated CIA had been unable to prevent Durchfreude’s access to pertinent records of theirs, which had forever after gone conveniently missing.…

  But now—now was a different story.

  After this job, Twigg would present his suspicions and proofs to the godsons and goddaughters of Phineas Gage. Surely they all must have noticed the falling-off in Durchfreude’s performance, the strains in his behavior, and would agree on his lethal disposition, despite any temporary inconveniences.

  Twigg suspected that only one real issue, never made explicit, had stayed their hands thus far.

  Where would they ever find a successor with Durchfreude’s exquisite taste in kidnap victims for the monthly rites?

  The bedroom door opened as Twigg was unsnapping his feed. A quivering Paternoster ushered in the bald and skeletal Kraft Durchfreude, then hastily backed out, as if from the vicinity of a cobra.

  Dropping his pajama shirt, Twigg manufactured affability out of unease. “Kraft, my good man! Come right in. I hope they fed you well downstairs.”

  The thing’s voice was as uncontoured as a worm. “I ate.”

  “Wonderful! Never conduct negotiations on an empty stomach, that’s my rule. Makes one too eager to have them over! Not that we’re performing what one might term negotiations, of course.”

  “No.”

  Unnervingly, Durchfreude’s popeyed gaze never strayed from Twigg’s mouth, as if the Dark Intercessor were contemplating cruel refinements in the form and function of that organ. Twigg stammered, “Yes, well, be that as it may.” He tried to project authority. “Here is your assignment. I have recently encountered several nuclei of resistance across the nation, holdouts fighting the introduction of a new Isoterm product. Zingo, a soft drink. I’d like you to visit each of these sites and insure that they are permanently removed as sources of opposition. You should start with one in particular, more organized than most. It’s at the head of the list. You’ll find the specifics in these papers.”

  Twigg handed over a file folder. “Is everything clear?”

  “Why?”

  The simple word stopped Twigg like a wall. He couldn’t recall Durchfreude ever uttering that syllable before. Further sign of his slide into mental chaos.

  “‘Why?’ What do you mean?”

  The monster struggled to cloak
nebulous thoughts in the proper words. “Why must—why must you go where you aren’t wanted? Can’t you purchase those who would be purchased, and —and leave the others alone?”

  “Kraft, my good fellow, surely you jest! It is my absolute nature to flow into all available niches, to drive out and break all competition, to smash and burn and crush, to grind the faces of the conquered into the dust, until only I alone am left standing, regnant over all I survey, even if that should be a smoking wasteland of my own devising! My categorical imperative is that all my actions must conduce toward the magnification of my supreme presence. Why, had I infinite time and infinite space to fill, it would still not be enough to hold my tremendous vitality! It’s not that I particularly want to sell soda pop! Great Satan, no! And there is nothing sinister about Zingo, no addictive properties or brainwashing qualities. In fact, the drink is a not completely unhealthful, if nasty tasting mix of electrolytes, Olestra, Nutrasweet, and some artificial flavors and coloring. Good for keeping the masses fit for the assembly line. And of course, the money is trivial. No, it’s simply a matter of not allowing my will, however arbitrary and capricious, to be thwarted.”

  “I—I see.”

  Twigg clapped a hand on Durchfreude’s shoulder. “Of course you see. You may do no other.”

  Twigg’s shifted line of vision now encompassed the stasis-control device on the tabletop. On a powerful whim, he picked it up, aimed and brought his tiger nemesis instantly to life. At the same time he stepped behind Durchfreude as a screen, so that the tiger would spot that man first.

  The enraged wild tormented beast rocketed toward Durchfreude. But the Dark Intercessor never so much as flinched.

  Twigg froze the big cat only when its whiskers were nearly touching Durchfreude, who—only upon seeing the threat neutralized—stepped deftly aside to allow it to crash to the carpet.

  Durchfreude regarded his employer emotionlessly. Then he turned and left.

  Twigg sensed then that he should have let the Siberian finish the job.

  But now it was really rather too late.

  10.

  Karuna Kaput

  Thurman really could not think of much he would want to change right now in his life, except of course for the state of his health, the less-than-optimal condition of his tainted organs and flesh and bones. A collection of mismatched parts barely holding together (although seemingly, thankfully, not getting worse).

  And yet—even with that grim toe-stepping partner, Miss Function, he was learning to dance, to shuffle gamely around life’s ballroom.

  After all, as Shenda had said, his problems were old shit.

  He was really getting his act together at last, after the disastrous end to his Army career. Coming out of his shell, turning over a new leaf, climbing every mountain, and a raft of other natural metaphors.

  Why, one day it seemed possible he might even own a dog!

  Things looked sweet.

  Every morning he arose early after a semidecent night’s sleep. (His joints still pained him, his stomach still often rebelled against supper, but somehow his mind was more at ease, and that helped a lot.) Dressed, he measuredly walked the ten blocks to the Karuna Koffeehouse and through the laffing door, where he was treated to Verity-whipped espresso eggs and the latest creation of that baking genius, Odd Vibe: a buttery, cheddary croissant with fractal flaking layers.

  “You eat good now, Tor-man, you betcha!”

  “Very good, Odd Vibe. Thanks!”

  The familiar faces and repeated rituals of the place soothed him. There resounded Chug’em’s fourth long slurp, here came Nello with his latest dirty joke, there was Buddy executing intricate rhythms on the countertop with two wooden spoons.

  Even the mean scowl and mimed expressions of distaste directed his way each day by Fuquan Fletcher (who had never again verbally or physically accosted Thurman) were an integral part of his daily routine.

  The place to come when even home isn’t kind enough.

  Indeed, indeed.

  At a quarter to nine, the taxi from Kall-a-Kab would pull up and beep for him, and he’d ride to his job.

  Vance von Jolly had proved to be a decent boss. Any sternness or disdain exhibited by the man was a tartness solely in service to his art, and would just as likely be turned toward himself.

  “Thurman, I ask you—have you ever seen such a pitifully derivative waste of canvas? If Big Daddy or the ol’ Kootchie-Koo hisself could see this sad excuse for a painting, they’d break all my brushes in half and throw my ass out on the street. Scrape it down, will you, before I barf. I’m gonna go sand down that T-bird.”

  Having no artistic talent or insight, Thurman simply did as he was told. (When working with potentially noxious chemicals, he wore full protective duds: respirator, gloves, smock. The proximity to pigments and sprays and solvents seemed not to be worsening his ailments anyhow.) His natural obedience and alacrity, modified by his body’s limits, seemed to suffice. For the past two weeks he had collected a more than generous paycheck.

  And many times a week, he got to see Shenda Moore.

  The vibrant, seemingly inexhaustible leader of the Kompassionate Konglomerate (as Thurman had mentally dubbed Karuna, Inc., inspired by its treatment of himself and all others) blew into the garage like an hourglass-shaped twister at unpredictable intervals, bearing directives, advice, questions, checks, official forms, gifts of food and flowers. And she always offered up a personal comment or two, out of that massive Rolodex concealed in her pretty head.

  Whenever she wasn’t around, Thurman thought he had no illusions about Shenda ever being more to him than a not-too-intimate friend. That moment of connection under the willow tree had been a fluke, never referred to again.

  But when her warm and radiant body and blithe spirit actually occupied the same room as Thurman, he was convinced he loved her and always would.

  Maybe all he needed was another opening.…

  Early Saturday evening in Morley Adams Park. Dusk calls of birds, skybowl purpling, lawns releasing their night odors, stone wall still warm against his back, planks of the bench rough under his butt. Hands folded in his lap, Thurman contemplated the foot-gouged trough of dirt at his feet.

  What had brought him here? Usually he was abed by now, watching TV or listening to the radio. Hoping to recapture some of that magic willow-shrouded day perhaps.…

  A tennis ball rolled up to nestle between his V-angled sneakers.

  Then a beautifully ugly jonquil dogface appeared, tongue lolling out to drip approximately a pint of slobber on Thurman’s Nikes.

  “Hey, Thurman, what’s up?”

  Shenda dropped down beside Thurman. If a transdimensional imp had materialized and hauled a giant cartoon moneybag out of some fold of hyperspace and offered it to him, Thurman could not have been more stunned.

  Shenda ignored his blank amazement. “Me and Bully are out for the first time in days! I could kick myself sometimes! Get so involved in the biz, you know. And what’s it all for, if not minutes like this?”

  “I agree. Minutes. Just like this.”

  Shenda said nothing for a time. Thurman recalled the silence she had cultivated prior to blasting his psyche apart, and inwardly flinched. But when she spoke, her words were mild.

  “How’re SinSin and Pepsi and you getting on these days?”

  “Oh, them! Great, fine. They’re very nice to me. They even took me to the beach the other day. I don’t remember the name of the place, but there was a real big-hair crowd—”

  “Uh-huh. Been there once with them myself. You should have seen this one lifeguard. Buff but dim! Well, he just went straight after Pepsi like—”

  Shenda’s story was long and involved and funny. She rattled on as if she hadn’t talked recreationally in too long a time. Thurman had only to nod and interpolate a few monosyllables to keep the narrative flowing. One tale segued into another. Every few minutes one of the humans offhandedly tossed the ball for Bullfinch. When it became too dark for t
he dog to see anything, he lay beneath the bench and began to snore.

  Thurman began to talk a little about himself. Presently he found that their roles had flipped, with Shenda doing most of the listening and nodding.

  Around ten-thirty, Shenda jumped up. “Louie Kablooie! I have to make my rounds!”

  “Your rounds? At this hour?”

  “Before I can sleep, I go around to all our businesses and make sure they’re locked up safe. The Koffeehouse is last, at midnight.”

  Thurman thought this sounded obsessive, but only said, “Even on the weekend?”

  “Like maybe thieves don’t work weekends?”

  “Well, I guess I’ll say goodbye then—”

  “No, don’t! Please. You can keep me company.”

  “Ride shotgun?”

  Shenda made pistol fingers and fired a few imaginary shots into the dust. “Dance, pardner!”

  The three of them got into the Jetta, Bullfinch sprawled in the back seat, and were soon circulating down lonesome urban trails.

  Their small sedate city was winding down by the time they pulled up to the Karuna.

  All dark, save for a lone light still on in the kitchen.

  “That’s probably Fuquan, getting the beans ready for tomorrow so he can sleep in late. He’s got a key.”

  Emboldened by this time spent together, Thurman was about to inquire just what, if anything, Shenda felt for that obnoxious guy.

  Then a gunshot sounded, plain as a million dollar vase shattering.

  From inside the Karuna.

  “No!” yelled Shenda.

  The woman and the dog were out of the car before Thurman could even get the unfamiliar door open. Damn, where was the handle—!

  All hell arrived, with bells on.

  An enormous CRUMP!, followed by a WHOOSH!, and the Karuna burst into flames, sending glass flying like deadly stars into the street.

  A stick figure in a business suit emerged from the storeside alley like a demon stepping from an inferno. He walked calmly away from the blazing structure, gun hanging down by his side.