by Jack Yeovil
“Better?”
“Different.”
“I don’t think I really want to go back to being what I was. I’d have been dead in a few years more with the Psychopomps. I was just wasting my life.”
“You don’t have to be what you were. You can be what you would have been. You have many qualities. You could join me.”
“And look forward to the Big Nothing? That doesn’t sound like much of a prospect.”
“For some, there will be an afterward. For a select few. You could be one of them.”
“That still sounds creepy to me, Seth.”
“Well, decide…”
“No.”
“As you will.”
“That’s it? No more persuasion?”
“No. You have decided. I can tell. It is to be regretted, but I can do nothing.”
“Yeah, sure. It’s to the death, then?”
“If you will have it that way.”
“Fine. I’ll live with it.”
“We shall meet in Deseret, Krokodil. On the last day of the world, we shall meet again.”
“Goodnight, old man…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“…”
“… Krokodil, good night.”
IX
Hiroshi Shiba, Assistant Director of the GenTech Florida compound, wrapped up his daily report to Dr Zarathustra, knowing that the high-flying medico would do no more than glance over the whole sheaf when he was next in Narcoossee for one of his quickie inspections. The “events” blank was easy to fill: the “A,” “B” and “C” teams were fulfilling their experimental commitments as scheduled, and there had been no unexpected occurrences. The “comments” box was more difficult. Shiba chewed his lightpencil, and tapped the screen, trailing ungrammatical bloops across the report form. There was nothing exactly he could put into official words, but duty tugged at him. He should say something about the strange atmosphere he had perceived recently. He had mentioned the oddly oppressive feelings he had been having to Visser, but the security man had just laughed, scratching his scrotum through his well-filled chinos, and said that summers in the swamp were always like this. That had sounded reasonable, but it still did not explain away all of Shiba’s contradictory feelings about the progress the compound was making. It was as if an invisible miasma hung over the whole place like marsh gas, slowing people down, making them irritable, bubbling inside their brainpans.
Shiba was as bound to GenTech as the compound indentees who made the recaff, cleaned the test-tubes and donated their blood. Recruited at the age of eleven, after a four-hour examination assessed by the central computer, he had been taken from his family home in Akashi to the corp’s college in Kyoto. The assessment programme had marked him down as an administrator of the future because of the way he had slotted together a selection of irregular shapes on his screen. He had further demonstrated an aptitude for biochemistry by designing some simple gene-splices in order to create a strain of water snail that breathed only half as much as its parent generation. The first night in the Kyoto dormitory, he had wet the bed, and Inoshira Kube, the thirteen-year-old trainee captain, had recommended him for electro-corrective treatment. By the time of his eighteenth birthday he had fully qualified to fill the slot GenTech East had prepared for him, and been initiated into the Blood Banner Society. The corp encouraged him to take an interest in Japan’s traditions, and in the political expression of them. He had also been the beneficiary of seven years of intensive and expensive training, which put him in the corp’s debt. He was legally bound to work for them at least until his fiftieth year. After that, he would be entitled to seek employment elsewhere if he could find any organizations looking for a fifty-year-old junior trainee with his specialized skills. He fully expected to stay with GenTech until his retirement. He had advanced within the Blood Banner society, along with many of his generation of executives, and had received a substantial yen bonus the day after his satrap arranged for the incendiary-bombing of a Kyoto record store specializing in decadent Sovrock and worthless British pop music.
Shiba downloaded his report into the computer’s memory. A print-out would be prepared for Zarathustra, but a copy would be logged at the GenTech US computer banks in Maryland, and eventually logged along with an entire world’s worth of data by the masternet in Seoul. Sometimes, the masternet would cross-reference trivial details filed by GenTech managers as far apart as Antarctica and the Isle of Skye, and come up with a conclusion that could mean billions of yen in profits. He slotted his lightpen back into its hole, and straightened his desk. A neat executive was an efficient executive, and an efficient executive advances steadily. He crossed his sparsely-furnished office and checked his snail tank. The overwhelming majority of his specimens hadn’t breathed in over a month, and yet they were still active. Eventually, he would turn over his findings to the masternet and—who knows?—maybe a profitable application would be found. At eleven-o-eight, he left his office, and began his rounds, leaving the admin tower and crossing the compound to check on all three research blocks. His shirt was drenched through by the time he got to “A” block, and he had been badly bitten again by mosquitoes. He was artificially immune to any diseases they might be carrying, but the bites still irritated him like the acne he had left behind with adolescence.
He had been selected for an overseas post by a programme instituted by CEO Kobayashi himself, and had been given a complete gene-level overhaul at the company’s expense before being sent to Florida. There had been a moving ceremony at the Kyoto office as he was sent on his way, his belongings in the presentation set of whalehide luggage handed ritually over to him by Inoshira Kube, now advanced to Kyoto bureau chief. At least a third of the smart-suited men and women at the tea ceremony had worn the discreet red ribbons in their lapels that marked them as fellow members of the Blood Banner Society. The Florida appointment was obviously intended to signal to everyone that Shiba was a rising star within the corp. The titular director of the project was Dr Zarathustra, but he was everywhere and nowhere, pursuing his own researches, almost never on site. In the Narcoossee Compound, Hiroshi Shiba was the top dog.
But he felt strangely isolated, almost as he had done those first few weeks away from Akashi. Despite his success with snails, a field he had pursued, he was essentially an organizer, and that set him aside from all three of the distinct groups he had noticed in Narcoossee. The highest and mightiest were the scientists, who felt themselves beloved of director Zarathustra, and made a game out of thwarting Shiba in every minor detail. They were the ones who never kept a correct log of their computer time, and who wasted the satellite link window exchanging chess moves and incomprehensible mathematical in-jokes with their counterparts in Japan, Korea and Europe. Then there were the security people, the Good Ole Boys. They came from one of the Op Agencies, thanks to a secret treaty of alliance made by the corp with someone with the improbable name of Judgement Q. Harbottle. In Japan, Shiba had imagined all American Sanctioned Ops were like Johnny Salvo, the cartoon hero who was always zooming down the roadways of the West taking on the toughest gangcults.
Captain Spermwhale Visser, the GOB Op in charge of security, was about as far from whip-thin, square-jawed Johnny Salvo as Ken Dodd was from Mozart.
The third group were the most difficult for Shiba. The scientists were sneaky, the Good Ole Boys were surly, but the indentees were shuffling, smiling and servile. Whenever he saw an indentee sweeping up the corridor, swabbing a slide in the lab or restringing the eternally-ragged compound fence, Shiba had the feeling that the man or woman was planning to assassinate him as soon as his back was turned. God knows what was in the daily drug cocktail they all had to down—something to keep them going throughout an eighteen-hour shift, something to keep them placid, something of Dr Blaikley’s just to see what it would do. Nobody could predict what a diet like that could do. Yes, the Good Ole Boys might have the guns, but the indentees were the ones to be worrie
d about. And yet, these slaves-in-all-but-name were the group Shiba felt himself closest to.
Outside “A” Block, Reuben, the rough-skinned indentee whose job it was to keep the test subjects fed, smiled at Shiba and said “Howdy, Mr Assistant Director.”
“Good morning, Reuben,” Shiba said. His English vocabulary and syntax were perfect, but he had trouble with the consonants. Sometimes Visser or one of the scientists, usually Mary Louise Blaikley, would pretend not to understand him, but he knew they were simply being obstreperous. Reuben, like all the indentees, knew better than to try such monkey tricks.
“Hot enough fer you?”
Shiba had heard that question before. He could not understand it.
“Quite the opposite, Reuben. It is too hot for me. This atmosphere is not congenial to human comfort.”
Reuben chuckled. “Ain’t that the truth, doc?”
“I am not a doctor.”
“Sorry. So many docs around a man gets confused.”
“That is understandable.”
A flight of birds flew low above the compound, squawking wildly. Shiba did not like such birds. They were inelegant and unclean.
“Somethin’s sure spooked ’em. The Suitcase People are on the prowl again. We lost chickens from the pens last night.”
Shiba was shocked. “What? Why was I not informed?”
“Captain Visser took a look at the damage, suh. It weren’t my place to come to you.”
Reuben scraped the back of his hand across his forehead. He sounded like two pieces of sandpaper being chafed together. He must have an allergic reaction to the environment. Shiba would order Blaikley to take a look at him. After all, what was the point of having an immunologist in the compound if she didn’t take all the opportunities available to further her knowledge.
Visser appeared, with a couple of his gun- and prod-toting Good Ole Boys trotting behind him. His uniform shirt was missing two lower buttons, and a fold of hairy belly poked out above his belt. He hadn’t shaved this morning, and Shiba judged that the dark patches under his arms were almost pure alcohol.
He jogged over, gut wobbling obscenely, and cuffed Reuben about the head.
“Don’t you be botherin’ the Assistant Director, boy,” he snapped at the man, who was a good fifteen years older than him.
“These nigras,” he said, “they ain’t like you and me, Mr Shiba. They ain’t like white folks.”
Shiba was impatient. “Reuben informs me there was an incident last night. Why wasn’t I told?”
Visser wasn’t ashamed of his failure. “Nothing to tell. A couple of birds got themselves scragged is all. A ’gator will chew through the wire if its gets hungry enough. Or maybe a couple of our Cajun neighbours got a hankering for somethin’ to put in their gumbo.”
“I want a full report.”
Visser tried to smile his way out of it with an “aw, c’mon, you don’t want me to waste my downtime tapping keys when I could be doing some real good, like flushing out that still we all know the ’denties got out there in the wetside. You know what the corp brass are like. If we log it, it’ll get inflated by everyone who scans the report and by the time it gets to head office it’ll sound like the Beast from 20,000 Fathoms smashed the compound into the mud.”
Shiba wasn’t impressed. “Just get me a report, Captain Visser. I will deal with head office.”
Visser spat a substantial glob of mucus at the ground, and shrugged. He turned away and left, his Good Ole Boys with him. The security staff wore light brown suits, Sterling shades and stetsons, and carried Colt pistols they privately referred to as “coonstoppers” in addition to electroprod truncheons with slick black leather handles. The scientists called them “goons,” and the indentees called them “sir” to their faces. The Good Ole Boys called the indentees “nigras” and worse, and called the scientists “eggheads.” The indentees tried to keep away from the scientists as much as possible. Everybody, Shiba was sure, called him “that Jap squirt.” He missed the community atmosphere of the Kyoto Complex, where there were 20,000 GenTech executives living in their own self-contained community. He told himself that this posting was necessary to his advancement, but also to his spiritual growth. He had originally joined the Blood Banner Society because he had heard it would serve him well in his career, but now he was beginning to understand Lodge Master Kube’s speeches about the dangers of succumbing to decadent, non-Japanese influences. From its television programmes, America seemed such a glamorous, exciting, seductive nation. Shiba needed these years in the swamp to reveal the deep corruption that lay beneath the sparkly surface.
The main gates opened, and Dr Blaikley walked in at the head of a crew of indentees. They had poles slung between them, and drugged alligators were hanging in nets from the poles, their pop-eyes glazed over, surplus teeth poking out from their snouts. Blaikley wore a safari hat, thigh-high wading boots and a multi-pouched waistcoat over a green lurex skinsuit. She saluted Shiba with a trace of mockery.
“We’ll get that jolly bridge up ouever the Kwai in neau taime at h’all, commandant,” she said with an exaggerated British accent.
“More test subjects?”
“We need ’em if we’re to stay on schedule, Hiroshi. We’re losing ’em faster than we can bag ’em.”
Shiba was exasperated. “You know about last night’s incident?”
“What, did I wake you up? I’m a screamer, you know, and that GOB Martens has a truncheon on him like a German sausage. He’s a regular Rod Rambone. I was strapping him on all night. You know how it gets, I’m still raw and itchy.”
In some obscure way, Shiba thought she was needling him. She was promiscuous, he knew, but Martens was barely intelligent enough to scrape through even the GOB’s feeble IQ requirement. Dr Blaikley would never consider bedding him. She thought she could shock the Japanese by acting like a vulgar harlot. She didn’t understand. She was not slim like Imiko, his GenTech-appointed geisha. She did not conduct herself in a seemly manner. And yet…
“No, I mean…”
“The break-in? Sure. Reuben told me.”
The indentees stood stock still, their burdens grumbling in their sleep.
“Why did you not bring the information to me? You know I make my report at eleven sharp. I was not able to include a record of the incident. It is a breach of good business practice. Even if we only lost chickens, we should be scrupulous in noting it down. As a scientist, you should know that.”
Dr Blaikley took off her hat, and shook out her golden hair.
“Hold on there, Hiroshi. Don’t jump on my bones for this. Visser’s the security honcho. Break-ins and -outs are his bailiwick, not mine. Besides, you’ve got all your facts in a twist…”
Shiba tried hard not to stamp his feet. “Please explain.”
Dr Blaikley turned to the indentees, and addressed them in the patois they had developed since their transportation to this area. Blaikley was the only non-indentee to have mastered this evolving language. They scuttled off to the animal pens.
“Well?”
“Hiroshi, please stop yanking my nipples, will you? I’ve been bitten badly enough. We didn’t just lose chickens.”
She slipped a hand into her waistcoat and, with deliberate provocation, massaged her breast. Her eyes went to the disappearing indentees and their reptiles. “Did those babies look like Foghorn Leghorn?”
“Alligators?”
“Yeah, ’gators. Luggage lizards. We needed two, so I went out and got ’em.” She wet her glossed lips and pouted. “Just call me Trader Horny.”
“Something broke in and freed the alligators?”
“No, not freed the beasts. Ate ’em.”
Even in the swamp heat, Shiba felt a sudden chill.
X
Nick rolled up the streetshutter, and the big pink Cadillac eased out onto the road, its engine purring like a big, happy cat. Behind the wheel, which was padded with pink real-leather to match the seat covers, Elvis felt the thrill in his bo
nes. Only three things gave him this sensation; starting up his car, slipping into a willing lover, or, long ago, hitting that first note as his vocal cut in over the guitar. It was a feeling he needed to convince himself he was still alive. Thanks to the incredible suspension, the automobile seemed to float like a hovercraft down the bumpy ramp and onto the hardtop. It was a bright, early summer day. Elvis turned on the air conditioning. It was not uncomfortable inside the car now, but it would be in an hour or two if he didn’t take precautions.
He keyed off the engine and slipped out of the Cadillac. It sat at the kerb gracefully, longer than a powerboat, attracting wolf whistles from passing motorists. It was as beautiful now as it had ever been. Elvis wished his Mama could have got more pleasure out of the perfect machine. Nick emerged blinking into the light, and sighed as he ran his eyes over the car’s perfect lines. Gandy stood next to him, a shoulder for the mechanic to cry on when he lamented his unrequited love for the Cadillac. Some cars are curved, like a beautiful ass, and make a man want to seduce them. Elvis could understand that, but didn’t want to drive around in a Playboy centrefold. The Cadillac was long and gleaming and clean, but its beauty was manly, like a Greek discus thrower or a gloss-coated stallion. Under the hood, this automobile was packing a pair of testicles the size of basketballs, and he wanted passersby to hear them clacking as he ate up the highway. Have you heard the news, the machine shouted silently, there’s good rockin’ tonight.
The Cadillac was gassed up good for a thousand miles, and all the weapons systems were primed. The motto of Elvis’ old army unit was “Hell on Wheels.” He wasn’t one of those car queers who gave their machines fancy names—anything that was called Lightning Streak, Road Warrior or Tiger Tornado usually wound up crumpled in a ditch while the anonymous, functional machines were still roaring along the tarmac—but if he had been, “Hell on Wheels” is what he would have chosen. This machine was like the man inside it: you didn’t cross it if you wanted to stay healthy, and if it was on your side you didn’t have to worry about covering your back.