“Yeah. Um. Okay. Look, Mr. Webb, can I call you—”
“Please.”
“God, this is difficult.” He could be heard whispering to the woman to put some coffee on. “Look, Spider. I have to tell you.”
“Tell me? Tell me what?” Though, hearing that tone in the guy’s voice, Spider already knew. There were only two possibilities that would inspire that tone, neither of them good and wholesome.
“Molly’s disappeared.”
Spider took that in for a moment. “Disappeared? As in—?”
“Well, yes. The cops are looking for her right now.”
“The cops are looking for her?” Through the connection, he could hear no fewer than three different wailing sirens in the distance, and rattling, intermittent machine-gun fire. The thought of Molly in the middle of that gave him chills.
“It’s, oh God, look. Let me send you an email with all the details. Okay? I can’t do this over the phone.”
The cops were looking for her, the guy said. Spider tried to take that in. He said, not sure as he said it, what exactly he hoped to achieve by saying it, but it was the first thing that came to mind, “Nobody told me she was missing.”
“Spider, I wanted to call you. It seemed like the decent thing…”
“It’s okay. I get it,” he said, trying to maintain control, shaking his head. “Look, can you, I don’t know, can you just give me some idea of what happened? Anything at all? Maybe I can use some contacts at this end, it might help?” Maybe I should contact the Australian Embassy, he was thinking.
“Molly told me you were a cop once.”
“Yeah, once,” he said.
“She really admires you, you know.”
This cut through to where Spider lived. “Molly said what?”
Stéphane repeated the claim. “She told me, I hope you don’t mind, she told me what happened to you. I’m sorry, man.” He sounded genuine.
“Yeah, um, thanks,” he said, confused and baffled. Molly admired him? What the hell was that about? She admired him? She really admired him? He went to press Stéphane for further details, but at that moment his phone-patch died, out of power. Nothing. Silence. And it was his last phone-patch, too. Typically, he’d throw away the dead ones, but this one had Molly’s voicemail message on it. He peeled it off his jaw-stubble, looked at it, a thing the size of a ten-cent piece, and dropped it in his pocket. He touched that pocket. That phone-patch might now be the only piece of Molly he would ever have.
Forget that, he told himself. Focus. What was important was that Molly was gone, who knows where. And he was too busy basking in the glow of Molly’s supposed high regard for him to press Stéphane Grey for whatever details there might be about Molly’s disappearance. Had she just vanished, into thin air? Had she been bundled into a black van? Had she just gone for a walk one afternoon, not leaving contact details, and simply never returned? Had she gone underground, assumed a false identity, and slipped away on a night-flight to Switzerland or some damn thing? Iris was right. He really didn’t know her anymore. Any of those possibilities could be true. It was a frightening thing to contemplate how little he really knew of his once and former wife. Even so, he thought, finding the focus of concentrating on Molly’s disappearance helpful, what could he do from here? I should probably, he thought, buy some phone-patches. In the meantime, he still had tube access. He checked his watchtop to see if Stéphane’s email had arrived, but there was just noise, porn, and scams.
First thing was to get in touch with Iris. He dictated a quick note, sketching in the few details he had about Molly’s disappearance, and sent it off.
What was next? Food? Shower? Check on Mr. Popeye. Yeah, good idea. He got into his bike, closed the canopy, and headed off to Molly’s house. Was it his imagination or was there even more traffic on the roads — vehicles and bikes — than he’d ever noticed before? Everyone seemed in a ball-tearing hurry to go places, even if just to the nearest bank to pull out all their savings. The smell of barely suppressed panic rode the air, a pong distinct from exhaust fumes and dust and smog.
At length, pedaling hard to keep up with the flow, Spider’s mind spun with Molly’s disappearance. It did occur to him that Stéphane might be having a lend of him, for whatever Byzantine reasons. Who knew, maybe Molly thought it might be a fun jape to mess with Spider’s head in return for not signing those bloody divorce papers in a timely manner! Was Molly capable of such cruelty? He supposed, thinking about her recent HyperFlesh works, “Studies in Suffering”, she called them, strange robotic half-creatures bent over or huddling in all the various kinds of pain Molly could imagine, and that were altogether too effective at conveying the central, red-hot idea, that yes she was indeed capable of such cruelty. He had to shake his head to clear bitter memories. The things people said to one another, full of bile and spite, things they could never take back, that left scars.
All in all, though, Spider had a feeling deep in his guts that Molly really had vanished. It was no clever jape. It was, most likely, serious crime. Which in turn led Spider to imagine mobster types abducting her and holding her to ransom, chopping off her fingers, one by one, to send to her agonized parents, all that kind of thing. It disturbed him how easily he was able to dream up these scenarios. But why would mobsters be interested in her? An Australian sculptress, of all people. She had next to no profile, and certainly no money. Her main asset was the family home, fortunately all paid off long since. Was it just that she was a middle-aged woman in pretty good shape who didn’t know enough about life in post-crisis New York City to watch where she was going, and make sure she had at least five heavily-armed beefy bodyguards with her at all times? Could it be as simple as that? As naïveté? Oh, Molly, he thought, surely not that. The Molly he knew never had a naïve bone in her body, probably not even when she was a precocious kid going to all the best private girls’ schools. Never afraid of anything, always able to talk her way clear of anything, and God, could she talk.
He knew that things in the US these days were bad and deteriorating fast, with each day bringing fresh news of shocking chaos and collapse. Yes, Molly went over there. It seemed preposterous, but it also seemed like Typical Molly. Crumbling social order? No problem. I’ll just talk to people, make them see sense! He could imagine Molly saying that, dismissing all concerns as alarmist nonsense, and rejecting all concern for her well-being as barely disguised jealousy, because she might finally be successful. The thing was, Spider knew, as soon as Stéphane or one of his “lovely” mates had floated the idea to Molly that her work might find its way to MoMA, that would have been it. It was a name to conjure with. The Museum of Modern Art, the beating heart of twenty-first century art, an institution doing its best to hang on in a world gone mad, selling off parts of its famous collections to finance the institution’s defense. Molly would not care about that. Even if the media these days was much more interested in documenting the end of the world than publicizing the work of a little-known Australian sculptress, all Molly could see was the idea that she would be in MoMA, even as MoMA itself, like so much else, was going under. “I was there, I was there!” she’d say.
He thought back to Thursday night, when she’d first told him about all this, and remembered the squealing joy in her voice — Molly, squealing with joy! — as she told him all about it. It occurred to him that if he had a time machine, he could go back to that night, and try to talk her out of it. Molly, you can’t go. Something bad is going to happen to you! No, I don’t know what. No, I’m not making this up, I’m really not. Honestly. I’m not just thinking of my lying, selfish self. I’m not. You just can’t go, because, well, who the hell knows? Just, that’s right, Something Will Happen to You. Something Not Good. No, not even in an “Adventure Travel” sort of way. Yeah, that was going to fly, wasn’t it?
The worst part of all this? Molly actually had her own time machine, sitting ther
e in the garage at her place. Whether it was operational or not, he didn’t know, but it would be easy to check. Besides which, he knew very well, unless he went to the trouble of finding the nodal point in the timeline to go back to warn Molly, all that would happen was she’d end up disappearing somehow, probably. If trouble was coming, it was not easily put off by clever bastards with time machines.
His head hurt, and there was still that heavy sense of something big and serious going on inside his skull. Then again, what if he didn’t need to borrow anybody’s time machine? What if he really did have one right there, in his too-heavy noggin? It was an unbearable thought. It was the kind of thought that made a fellow want to grab a spoon — a very narrow spoon — and start digging in through his ear. Maybe a power drill would do the trick, and Spider knew his dad had quite a range of suitable power drills. Well, Dad, I need to borrow your drill because there’s this thing in my head — yes, that’s right, in my head, some kind of hardware that shouldn’t be there. Well, long story, so can I borrow the drill? Promise I’ll clean the bit after I’m done. Yeah, he could imagine that conversation. Iris said she was going to organize a brain scan for him to find out just what the hell was going on in there, but who knew how long that might take to set up? What if there were immune system problems with all this hardware clashing with his body? He could die of some horrible infection before he’d sorted out anything! As it was, he was starting to feel a bit clammy, and that couldn’t be good.
Besides which, suppose he did have some kind of whizzy time machine thingy installed in his head right now. He still had no clue how to use the damned thing. Stapleton never bothered to tell him how. And that was assuming the thing really was in there, and his head wasn’t just full of the runtime code for virtual Calgary. It occurred to Spider that he had punched out of his conversation with John Stapleton a little precipitously, and had no clue how to get back to ask a few pointed questions.
Shit!
What to do, what to do? He checked his email to see if Stéphane had sent him that note yet. Nothing. He checked again, immediately. Still nothing. He pedaled onwards, watching traffic, trying to concentrate, awash in chip-shop-smelling exhaust fumes, aware of the passage of time, thinking about Molly, thinking about Vijay and Phoebe, maybe caught in that trap in the year eight million AD, stuck in “Colditz” with all those other hapless time travelers. Hell, he was even thinking about Dickhead’s severed head. “Help me, Spider…” “Help you with what, exactly, you great git?” Spider muttered to himself. “Keep you from getting decapitated? Keep you from being captured by someone intent on killing you? Keep you from killing all of your loyal Zeropoint followers, for no good reason? Fuck, Dickhead, where do I even start?”
At length, feeling dismal, his stomach grumbling, still a little clammy, but that could just be sweat from making his bike go, he got off the freeway, and made his way to Molly’s place. Yes, he noted, it was still there. Good. The bike secured and locked, he hauled himself up the steps onto the porch—
The door was ajar.
Uh-oh, he thought. And, as he stepped closer, he noticed a strong, nasty odor wafting out from inside, an odor he recognized, not in a good way. Oh, shit. That was the odor hanging around the scattered remains of John Stapleton. Damn, damn, damn. So, first thing: call the cops. If he stepped foot in there without the police securing whatever the hell had happened in there, he’d be in deep shit. He popped his watchtop, and went to tap his phone-patch, and remembered that he was out of phone-patches. Ah, but wait: the phone-patch he did have, the one in his pocket with Molly’s voice-mail message on it, despite being dead, could still be used to make emergency calls, but that was it. He held the patch against his prickly jaw to maximize the bone-conduction, and told his watchtop to make the call. He called, the cops said they were on their way, and he was instructed to touch nothing.
A WAPOL cruiser turned up bearing two uniforms, a sergeant (male) and a young constable (female). The sergeant, his blue uniform bristling with leather pouches for equipment, reminding Spider, as always, of Batman’s utility belt, approached Spider, keeping it professional, all, “Good afternoon, sir. What seems to be the trouble?” Spider watched the guy’s face, waiting for the sergeant to realize he was talking to the legendary scumbag and traitor Spider Webb, but either the sergeant didn’t know (possible) or didn’t care (also possible). The sergeant asked Spider some questions about the situation, nodded a lot, made notes on his handheld, and had the constable patrol around the front of the property looking for anything unusual or suspicious. She set off and, Spider saw, looked like she was doing a thorough, by-the-book job of inspecting the premises. The sergeant noticed the odor. “Nasty pong, eh?” he said to Spider. When Spider agreed, saying nothing about last night, the sergeant added, “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about, sir, but please wait out here until we give you the all-clear, okay?”
Spider wanted to get inside and find out what the hell was going on. Knowing that odor, knowing that the thing which produced that odor had torn a man apart, filled him with fear for these two fresh-faced young coppers. They didn’t deserve to wind up in pieces, for no good reason. Well, shouldn’t you clue them in, Spider thought to himself. Shouldn’t you tell them to at least check with Iris? If they go in there and wind up dying, it’ll be on you. In the end Spider could think of no good reason not to tell them, so he approached the sergeant, as he was talking to the constable, planning their entry into the house, and told them about last night, and that they needed to talk to Iris Street about it.
“Is that right?” the sergeant said, looking him up and down, nodding, and shooting a glance at the constable, who was staring at that open doorway, rubbing her upper arms. The sergeant got on the radio, worked his way through the system, and at length made his way to Iris. They talked for a few minutes. When he mentioned Spider Webb, and the domicile of Molly Webb, Spider heard her demand to speak to Spider, pronto.
Spider took the radio mike. “Hey, Iris. Guess what?”
The radio crackled. “Spider, I can’t leave you alone for one bloody moment, can I?” She told him she was in a meeting, but that she’d be there as soon as she could. This turned out to be over an hour, involved a meeting she couldn’t easily get out of, and then getting stuck in rush-hour traffic. When her car pulled into the drive, Spider saw Iris and her junior, Detective Senior Sergeant Mullens, he of the “great face for radio”, and the barely controlled loathing of Spider. Spider watched him get out of Iris’ unmarked Holden, met his carcinogenic gaze, and could imagine the conversation in the car between Iris and him as they had made their way here. Iris came over, got briefed by the uniforms, and had a quick look around. “That is indeed that smell again,” she said, wrinkling her nose, looking at the house. “Oh, good.” She told the uniforms to set up a perimeter, and to call out the rest of the team to start door-knocking the neighbors up and down the street to see if anybody saw or heard anything unusual.
Then she turned to Spider, who was leaning against the uniforms’ cruiser, arms folded, watching everything. “Can’t get rid of you today, can I?” she said, coming over, Mullens in tow.
“Must be a sign,” Spider said. “Hey, Mullens. Cheer up, mate. Might never happen.”
Mullens shot him a look, said nothing, and stood there, taking up space, slumping in his bad suit, clearly wishing he was anywhere but here. Spider, surprisingly, was amused to see the big lug behaving like this. He’d been extremely impressed with the professionalism of the uniformed coppers, appreciated that they did not give him grief on account of who he was, and did their jobs. By comparison Mullens looked sour and churlish, a very poor example of WAPOL service — and Spider was also quite sure that Iris noticed it.
Meanwhile, Iris took Spider aside. “Listen, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but—”
Spider felt himself tense up. “Let me have it. I’m big and strong.” He coughed for comical effect.
> “Tonight’s regress op?”
Uh-oh, he thought. “Yeah?”
“It’s off. Mission scrubbed.”
“The hell!?”
“Out of my hands, Spider. DOTAS got wind of it, and that was it. They’re handling it now. Something about ‘clear and present danger’, ‘national security risk’, ‘too big for local pretend-coppers like you lot.’”
Spider heard the venom in her voice, telling him all that. “Fucking Feds!”
“Apparently, if any of us, and in particular you, Spider Webb — believe it or not that there was a specific mention of you in the memo, and how you were not to be allowed anywhere near the scene — even think of showing up, we’d be in danger of suspension.”
Spider was gobsmacked. He stood there, unable to speak, for a long time. “They mentioned me by name?”
“I’m only telling you what I heard.”
“How on Earth am I any kind of threat?”
“You’re personally involved with one of ‘the principals’, apparently.”
At first he was baffled, thinking this thing tonight meant a possible encounter with a rampaging Vore, but then remembered his chat with Stapleton, and remembered, too, Stéphane telling him that Molly had gone missing in New York. He had chills, thinking about it. “Meaning Molly?”
“You did say Molly and this Vore thing…” she said, still skeptical, still watching him, as if trying to spot some evidence that Spider had lost his marbles.
How on Earth did DOTAS know that Molly was even involved? he thought. He’d only told Iris, and he was sure she would not have told DOTAS anything they didn’t need to know, and indeed, would not have done them any favors at all. “Bloody DOTAS,” he muttered, dismayed. And dismayed, too, thinking that of course DOTAS, with their spies everywhere across time, would know everything, and know it before he did, most likely.
“The way they see it, and here I’m just relating what they had to say in the memo, okay? This is not my view, though on this point I think they may be onto something—”
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