Asimov's SF, October-November 2011

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Good day to die, you old hag.

  I have a clear shot at any of a dozen positions once she's in the market. I aim my scope down the rows of stalls, looking for where the most surprising shot could happen. Should I shoot her in the head as she's looking at something, or in the chest as she's paying? I want her to know it was me. She paid for surprise. Still, a paycheck is pretty important. This one will put me in the clear for a while, and will sort out my immigration problems.

  Lots of customers, even early in the morning. Lots of old Gibbon ladies, but more of the button-down crowd than I expected. Slumming? Faux new-agers? I scan a few through the scope. They're big Gibbons, mostly males, picking at the merchandise. They've got smocks on, the latest Gibbon fashion. These guys all have one hand in their pockets. Cops? Doesn't matter. I'm not doing anything illegal. I've got a license for the rifle. No receipt, but a license. And I've got a contract signed by Miss Bitchy herself to kill her. I'm golden.

  One of the Gibbons looks a little familiar. Long black hair, pronounced eye ridges, wrinkled face hanging off the nose ridge, black skin and pinkish lips. Over his forehead is a receding V of baldness. Why does he look familiar?

  Fuck.

  I've seen him a few times. He's an immigration supervisor. Scanning the market. Now that I look closer, I recognize a few others. All immigration officers. Not mine, but pretty much everyone else. Shit. They're holding passport readers in their pockets and walking through the crowd. The chips in Gibbon ID cards, as well as the smart passports and RFID visas of foreigners, are all automatically checked. I pat my chest pocket. Passport and visa are there. Good. They'll stand a cursory check, but if I get too close . . . not so much.

  My visa troubles, as I said, are mostly solved. I didn't say they were solved legitimately. The business visa in my passport isn't exactly mine. Let's leave it at that.

  But what the hell is immigration doing here? Lots of foreigners here, for sure, but doesn't immigration have bigger fish to fry? I huddle close to the corner, only the end of my black scope showing above the sill. I scan. I spot the bodyguard pushing the wheelchair of my diapered Bonobo target. Her flabby, drooling mouth is spread into a wide grin.

  That bitch!

  She set me up.

  She tipped off immigration.

  I can probably make it out of here without running into them, but she's daring me to put a round between her smug, black eyes and draw attention to myself. The cops will swarm the place. Then I'll show my euthanasia license. Of course, seeing as how I'm a macaque, immigration will want to have a look at me. A close look.

  God, I hate old people.

  I kick the wall, startling Murray. He sticks out his bearded bottom lip, and his pink ears look even more awkward sticking out of the sides of his head.

  “We're heading downstairs, Murray,” I whisper. “This place is crawling with immigration.”

  His big eyebrows rise in alarm. I sorted out his immigration problems, kind of the same way I sorted out mine, but I didn't spend as much money on it. There aren't a lot of immigration officers who'll believe that Murray is a visiting professor of physics. Don't get me wrong. Some Gibbons are absolutely stupid. I just don't want to bank an operation on Mister Tenure Track here.

  “Come on,” I say, and lead the way downstairs and out the door. Murray follows, lugging my gear.

  I swing him to the left, and spot one of those buttoned-down types at the other corner of the tower. He's scanning the crowd, looking away right now. I pull Murray to the right, almost setting our fur on fire on an open charcoal grill. An old Gibbon lady is making tortillas. Murray squeals. We weave around her. Lots of people around, but I'm starting to think that maybe we stand out a little. Two foreigners carrying non-hippie gear. Yeah, which one of these things doesn't belong in a handicrafts bazaar?

  I grab us two Andean-style ponchos at a stall decorated with old, framed lithographs of dragons, rainbows, and unicorns. Murray admires them. I shove the poncho over his head. Watch unicorns on someone else's dime. I pay the Gibbon weaver more than I want to for the ponchos, but we look a lot less conspicuous now.

  An immigration guy is sort of standing nonchalantly at the other end of this alley, too. I pull Murray with me between two stalls, shoving past some Gibbons smoking on stools while they weave dream catchers.

  “Go back where you came from!” one of them yells after us.

  I lick my finger and flip him the bird.

  We find a narrow alley, undertrafficked, with lots of puddles. The stalls here are filled with specialty stuff. If you want rings of South German mettwurst or dried Baltic cod with wrinkled eyes, I can now point you here. This alley crosses a couple of busier ones, but immigration seems to be staking out the bigger intersections. Still, I don't let myself react until we're in the Renault, on the road, and in second gear.

  That dirty Bonobo bitch!

  Two can play with corrupt officials. Now it's really on. It's got to be. I'm down to sixty-two days.

  * * * *

  I meet my immigration officer in a small café far from her office. Her name's Khao Yai. She's descended from the Thai Gibbon populations. After one of the many Thai coups, lot of Thai Gibbons moved to these parts. Their exotic gray-white fur and black bellies made them in demand for TV commercials and even acting roles, but if you asked me, that fad wasn't over fast enough. None of them could act worth shit (and we're talking soaps, here) and their accents were pretty thick. Khao Yai was born here and speaks like a native. She leveraged her looks to get a job in the Gibbon Immigration Service. What I like best about her is her pragmatism.

  I slide a thickish wad of bills across the table. Low denominations, but it's not like I'm asking to get the ambassador's mother deported. I just want the immigration computer system to mark Alexandra's diplomatic visa as expired.

  A diplomatic visa would normally be dealt with on paper by some low-level bureaucrat in the Gibbon Protocol Office, but the Gibbons and Bonobos have been at each other's throats in three separate wars in the last twenty years. You can bet that the Gibbons won't make anything easy for the Bonobo diplomats.

  Here's how I figure it'll go down. The old hag has to drive from the official residence to the immigration office. On the way, I put a bullet through the car window, and her head. My client is satisfied with a surprising euthanasia experience. I get my pay, minus the cost of one car window.

  I'm a genius.

  Khao Yai calls me from her office the next day. She's never called me from her office.

  “The date of expiry got changed,” she says. “I couldn't access the system with my clearance. I needed to get my supervisor's help. I'll need more money.”

  Of course she will.

  “Fine,” I say. “We can work something out, maybe not now, but when I'm a little more flush. When is she coming to your office?”

  “That's the thing, Reggie. Protocol Office and Foreign Affairs are tangling their fur over this. They're probably going to send an officer to her.”

  “Damn it!”

  “They asked me a lot of questions about you.”

  “What?” I ask, feeling my stomach cool. “Who did?”

  “Foreign Affairs and my boss.”

  “Shit. What does that mean?”

  “Relax. I didn't tell them anything about your . . . funny status. As far as they're concerned, you're a legit businessman—”

  “I am a legit businessman! I have a contract!”

  “That's what I told them. They're looking to help out. Apparently, they need to make some sort of gesture of peace-making to the Bonobos. The big bosses at Foreign Affairs are trying to play nice.”

  “What does this all mean?”

  “Can you fax me over your contract?” she asks. “They want proof that you're legitimately authorized to euthanize the old Bonobo.”

  “Then what?”

  “How would you like to get into the Official Residence, as part of the Protocol team going in?”

  “Uh . . . everyone
knows I'm a macaque, right? I don't look anything like a Gibbon bureaucrat and neither does Murray.”

  “Are you strong enough to be a porter?” she asks.

  “Hell, yeah!” I say, warming up to the possibilities. “I've got some pretty sophisticated myofibril-augments. I can change a tire on my car without a jack.”

  I don't mention that the car is a Renault 4L, or that I can only do that on the back end, but let's see you lift the back end of a car with one hand.

  “What are me and Murray going to have to carry?”

  “Foreign Affairs figures they help you get the contract done under the cover of you carrying in something big while they sort out her visa. This makes everyone happy. Apparently the ambassador knows about the contract and hates his mother.” There's a surprise. “Fax me the contract in case it's some kind of trick on the part of the Bonobos. Foreign Affairs doesn't want anything to go wrong, Reggie. Nothing will go wrong, will it?”

  “No, of course not! I'll fax you the contract right away. Nothing will go wrong.” I glare at Murray meaningfully.

  “Good.”

  I hang up. My big, dumb sidekick waits for me to say something.

  “Murray, luck is breaking our way. You better not screw this up for us.”

  * * * *

  Gibbon number one at the Protocol Office (Howard) is one of the elite, white-handed gibbons. He's stuffy. He doesn't look at me twice before taking his perfectly preened, dark and fluffy fur out to the Ministry car that will take him to the Bonobo residence. Gibbon number two (Remi) is friendlier. His cream-colored fur is matted at the waist where a leather belt holds two Blackberries, a cell-phone, and a pack of Marlboros. His black face, surrounded by a halo of white fur, regards me with some boredom.

  “You guys going to be able to lift these boxes?” he asks.

  Murray keeps his eyes down. I told him again just before getting here that he'd better not fuck this up. The boxes of pristine white cardboard are heavy and big, but we've both got augmented strength. The boxes will make beautiful camouflage.

  “No problem.”

  Remi guides us to a second Ministry car (they get their own) with the boxes.

  “So you really got hired to euthanize the ambassador's mother, eh?” Remi asks me.

  “I'm the best. When you want to be offed by an international assassin, I'm your guy.”

  “I'll keep you in mind,” he says. “My mother-in-law is getting up there and soon she'll have to come live with us.”

  “See if she's open to the idea,” I say brightly. “Let me know if a talk with one of our sales reps would help.”

  “Thanks, I will.” He takes my card and heads to his own vehicle to join Howard.

  “See?” I say to Murray, in the back of the Ministry car they've assigned us. It's got a Gibbon driver up front. “That's what gets us business: personal contact. People are looking for warmth. When are you going to show some warmth and bring us some business?”

  Murray looks sheepish, pouting out his lower lip as the two-car convoy pulls into traffic. I sit back, trying to think of all the angles. I've gotta get this one right. Potential clients are going to be watching. I try to think of every way that Murray can screw this up. There are way too many ways, so I try to group them. I give him some last minute instructions as we drive through the gate of the Bonobo Official Residence.

  The Protocol Office has duded us out in yellow coveralls, like we're debt-bonded criminals or something. The box I'm carrying has a small flap on one corner, where I can access some heavy statues with a lot of curved and confusing lines that mask the stashed carbon-plastic pistol with a full magazine of ceramic rounds. I get to pull it out when I can find a clear shot. I'm almost giggling inside thinking of how many rounds I put in the old hag's chest and how many I put in her head. She should never have bet against Reggie.

  We pull the boxes out of the trunk and bring them to an x-ray scanner. Remi's a real expert at distracting them, and guides the Bonobo diplomatic security into each of the boxes, pointing at all the little moving parts on the sculptures. They are appropriately baffled and they don't find the plastic pistol. We carry the boxes behind Howard and Remi. We go through a big receiving hall with marbled floors and a lot of tropical plants, out to a garden in the back of the house.

  An older Bonobo male, lightly furred in black over gray skin, stands by a fountain. A Bonobo waiter in an apron and white shirt stands near him with glasses of scotch and wine on a tray. Alexandra the Bonobo sits in her wheelchair under a tree, in front of her bored bodyguard.

  I'm not sure what I expected. I mean, based on half the stories you hear about Bonobos, I'm expecting the ambassador to be rubbing genitals with the waiter, but maybe those are just stories. You've heard the old joke? “What's the difference between Bonobo porn and real life? Nothing.” It's an oldie, but a goodie. Unsurprisingly however, the ambassador's mother is complaining loudly about something.

  Murray is beside me, blocking the hag's view of me, and most of the attention is on Howard anyway, who is shaking hands and exchanging a lot of fancy, meaningless words with the ambassador. I've got my shot. Goodbye, you racist old bitch.

  I slip my hand through the flap and reach for the pistol in the innards of the statue.

  It's not there!

  I feel frantically in the box and around the statue. I've got a couple of seconds before I'll start looking stupid holding a box in front of my face. Once I put it down, with no gun, the cranky bitch is going to see me. Then, I'll be the laughing stock of the euthanasia profession, before I'll have even killed anyone. The room goes silent.

  I sag and put down the box. Murray puts his down.

  And there's Remi, pointing the plastic gun at the ambassador, but staring down the Bonobo bodyguard.

  Aw, shit. In a second, I can see where all this is going. I'm not just going to lose my reputation and my business and get deported. I'm about to get killed.

  The Gibbons and the Bonobos hate each other's guts. The Gibbon Foreign Ministry got wind of my contract and saw their opportunity to kill the ambassador, and blame the hit on a macaque migrant worker. In about ten seconds, everybody in this room is going to be dead except Remi and Howard. The Bonobo investigators will find the gun in my hand.

  We're unarmed. I look at Murray for help. The dumb chimp's eyes are wide and he looks like he's going to need a diaper in a second. Good-for-nothing son-of—

  I grab my sidekick and throw him at Remi with all my strength.

  They fall like coconuts in a hurricane. Howard jumps after them, after my damn gun.

  The Bonobo bodyguard whips out his pistol and pumps eighteen rounds into the simian tangle on the floor. With the two rounds left in his chamber, he swings the barrel at me.

  I've already got my hands high in the air. I'm a non-combatant.

  “I'm not with them!” I say slow and loud. “I kill old people. I'm here to kill her!” I point one finger at the ambassador's mother. “I've got a contract! You saw her sign it!”

  “And you haven't been able to get close to me even once, you little macaque failure!” she cackles, standing in her soggy, stained diaper.

  Her bodyguard flinches, and then swivels his pistol back at the bullet-ridden bodies of Howard and Remi. Underneath them, Murray sits up, rubbing three vicious welts on his arm where bullets hit him. “Ow!”

  A motivational speaker, he ain't.

  “He's with me,” I say. “He's my employee. We're fully bonded.”

  The doors to the garden burst open and a bunch of armed Bonobo security guys rush in. Everybody's loud. It takes a while for the Bonobos to take away the two Gibbon corpses and the gun. A few extra security guys stick close to the ambassador.

  “Junior, get this little trash out of here!” Alexandra the Bonobo yells. “He's failed again, this time miserably! International assassin, my ass! Pathetic!” she says. “Get me out of here!”

  The ambassador has an irritated look on his face as the bodyguard starts wheeling her o
ut. Alexandra turns her nose from me disdainfully.

  As she passes, I snake my hands out, one on her chin and the other on the crown of her head. I twist. The snap silences the garden.

  Guns whip out again, but I've already got my hands up. Murray ducks to the floor and covers his head.

  “I had a contract! She hired me to kill her! I'm a euthanasiast.”

  I'm not sure if that's even a word, but everyone looks at the ambassador. He and the bodyguard nod.

  “I promised her an exciting and surprising death,” I say, lowering my arms slowly. “Mission accomplished. She never saw it coming.”

  * * * *

  It takes a week to sort everything out. The Gibbons don't have their public excuse for a war they want, unless the Bonobos tell everyone what happened, which they don't. For saving the ambassador, Murray gets a reward. I don't know what the hell fight the ambassador was watching. At least Murray shares it with me, seventy-thirty. He uses his thirty percent to have his wife and kids smuggled in from the Chimpanzee townships and I get them some passable documents. Well, yeah. Passable. And I get my fee from finally helping the old bag shuffle off the mortal coil. I'm sure she would have said I didn't do my job the way she wanted it in the contract, but the ambassador must have liked the service. He let slip that he's flying in his mother-in-law from the Bonobo capital for a talk.

  Copyright © 2011 by Derek Kunsken

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  * * *

  Short Story: A HUNDRED HUNDRED DAISIES

  by Nancy Kress

  Nancy Kress tells us, “Although I now live in Seattle, I used to live in various cities along the Great Lakes, where the issue in this story is a very real one. I heard a lecturer from the University of Rochester say that ‘The next big war will not be fought over oil, but over water.’ Because the Great Lakes hold so much of the world's fresh water, people like Danny and Ruthie will be right in the line of fire. This story is less fiction than prophesy.” Nancy Kress's most recent novel is Steal Across the Sky (Tor). She lives in Seattle with her new husband, writer Jack Skillingstead. You can follow her blog at nancykress.blogspot.com.