“The legs thing is not a subject for today, Decker. Okay? Spose it is a good bar story—how I lost them in a swivel grenade blast—but there’s nothing you need to know about that. And what you might want to know is a matter of public record. Go look it up. Also, I have no intention of helping you comprehend a near-decade of bloody warfare by letting you inside my head.”
Decker’s Apollo-visage smiled a genuine apology; so I smiled back.
“Besides, my ringside account wouldn’t give you an objective view. You’d just get my anger, my gunsight and my nightmares. And believe me you don’t want to know about my nightmares.”
Or my escape. That incredible dance on the edge of utter abandon. I took a swig of burly. I hadn’t told a soul about that imagined passion with my exotic lover. Weird that it was the second time today, and the first time in years, it had come to mind. The memory felt like a coiled snake of pure elation had shifted in my chest.
“History is never objective,” Decker said. “It’s always written by the…”
“The winners, I know. And we were the winners, so from me you’d get double-subjective, coz personally I think we should’ve walled the Raven Brigades into their precious enclaves afterwards. They’re a scourge, liable for more life damage on this planet than any other group since humans first stood upright and worked out how to whack someone else over the head with a rock.”
“Easy to say with hindsight,” Decker nodded. “But back before the Raven Corporation was so blatantly manipulative, they…”
I snorted. “Rackers! You do need a history lesson, Decker. Manipulative is how Raven Corp began; genocidal is how its brigades ended up. That we didn’t know about it for half a century just shows how deceitful they were. But let’s start with the World War, precipitated by the fuel crisis…. Oh, but you were here in 2047 weren’t you? So you’d remember—bad war, good result; coz it led to the International Power Pact.”
“I was seven.” Decker grinned.
“Oh, reality check,” I groaned. “I wasn’t even born then; and now I’m ten years older than you. Okay, so as a kid you were oblivious to the rumour, later proven, that the fuel crisis was facilitated by the Raven Corporation.
“Then, after you left earth, the United Nations’ Eugenics Moratorium was abandoned after a decade of legal stoushes over the ‘right to free trade’ bankrupted the UN. The resulting Gene Trade Disputes, while an obvious outcome of an economic system with no controls, were just legal money-spinning clashes of ego and marketing between the world’s largest gene-makers like the US Genofactory, EuroGene and Raven Corp.
“But, having opened the market to free trade, these egos then tried to control it; but buggered themselves by not noticing the emergence of an international blackmarket, orchestrated by the secret Raven Corp Brigades.
“The once morally-respectable Gene Trade took a back seat to the truly free but illegal street trade. And, in a decline reminiscent of the previous century’s drug wars, the gene trade soon degenerated into armed skirmishes, then major border conflicts and finally the full-blown Gene War of 2060.
“The latter made the Gene Traders, especially Raven Corp, rich beyond belief but even their wealth couldn’t protect them when one of their own, that lunatic Ferry Barcolin, let loose the Mantaray retrovirus in 2063. And you do know the result of that, Decker, coz of what you are now you’re home.
“But,” I continued, making the most of the soapbox I hadn’t intended to climb on, “out of every parcel of man-made shit—and I used the word man quite deliberately—comes something good; and in 2067 we got the very best that civilised human beings could come up with: the Alpha-Omega Accord.
“The AOA enabled First Contact, the Interplanetary Exchange, unprecedented techno-progress, world peace until—and again after—the seven-year Border War; which was, of course, initiated by feral remnants of the Raven Brigades.
“These are the bare dry facts, Decker, and all a matter of historical record. You want colour? Go to the holomuseum. Maybe, if you stick around long enough I’ll tell you my legs story. Until then it’s personal, and it’s history—much like my actual legs.”
Decker looked like I’d beaten him around the face with an old-fashioned encyclopaedia; and then he smiled. No idea why that delighted me as much as it did. It was very disturbing.
“It was Second Contact,” he said.
“What?”
“Your wonderful Alpha-Omega Accord enabled Second Contact. Our Probe Ship made First Contact. We traded with the Creons, lived with the Benin; hired several Avanirs as pilots.”
“That may well be Ensign—but if the Jump Ships hadn’t found your vessel out there beyond the Belt we’d never have known what you did or who you met.”
Decker smiled again. “Except for the strange stories those other spacefarers would’ve told about our passage.”
I shrugged. “True. But right now—apart from warning you that one of my way-weird snitches is about to join us—there’s only two stories we need to know about each other in order to bond. And they are that you are one of only four thousand human males on this planet with viable sperm; and I am Lambda Capra Jane of the Alpha-Omega Clan.”
My snitch was a tech-trader called Zippo Farqar. Tonight his avatar was a scaly humanoid with antlers and piercings. He sat, I ordered him a stinger, he sniffed at Decker.
“Weird one, this.”
“True,” I agreed.
“No. I mean frak’n weird,” Zippo insisted.
“How do you recognise each other if you’re always switching avatars?” Decker asked.
Zippo sniffed again. “Pheromones.”
I grabbed Zippo’s antler but addressed Decker. “Every trawler has a batch of tags; separate people-specific codes we can exchange. I enter Downside with my Farqar-tag switched on. If he’s in, and wants to meet, he finds me. Or vice versa. If incognito is preferred, the tags stay off or ignored.”
“Ah, she’s a cleanskin,” Zippo said, running a talon across Decker’s hand.
The reaction was instant, and bone-crushing. Zippo nursed three fingers.
“Impulse-control not your thing?” I asked my new partner.
“Do I look like a she?” Decker asked.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Downside is the great lie, remember.”
“Want my intel, or not?” Zippo asked.
“Want,” I nodded.
“Okay. Uncle J came Downside three times. Or three times shared his tags.”
“I gave Zippo the master ID to Jimmy’s tags,” I explained to Decker.
“First time, he asked all around for word on stem factories, organ harvests and gene therapy.”
“What the frak for?” That made no sense. Jimmy cared bugger-all for anything but hard-tech.
Zippo shrugged. “Second, he got took to a Zen-den down Styx Alley.”
“Which one?” I asked, giving Decker the ‘later’ signal before he asked the obvious.
“Triple 6. Run by Charon Marx.”
“What did Jimmy want?”
“Charon wouldn’t say. Third visit, Jimmy gets turfed from Triple 6, goes troppo on Styx, and is rat-gunned and dies a click away by the flagpole on the Crop. Though no one saw nothin.”
“Of course not.”
“This next is for your ears only.” Zippo waved a dismissive finger.
“Decker, go wait outside while I pay my dues.”
When we were alone Zippo said, “Didn’t think you’d want this shared with your weird frak’n girly-boy-Apollo. Intel threw up a connect to your Juno.” He raised his hand. “I know they had a thing, CJ. It was a threat against her.”
I stood. “Jimmy would never harm Aunt Juno.”
“No; he was Downside doing whatever coz of the threat.”
Jimmy playing hero? That didn’t gel either.
“What’s with the she refs to my Apollo?”
“I thought you, of all dykesters, would have sniffed to that one.”
“I was with De
cker when he cloaked. I chose his avatar.”
Zippo touched his nose. “I told you, CJ—pheromones.”
“Dream on. The person who masters original-trawler scent will be rich indeed.”
He smiled. “You know I’m a real-world Pharma. I’ve almost perfected it.”
“Almost is the word, Zippo. Come see me, real-world, when you perfect at least a valid gender id. I might bankroll you.”
I rejoined the buff Milo ‘Apollo’ Decker outside.
“Secrets?” he said.
“Maybe.”
I led the way to the seamier, nastier realm of Downside; the quarter known as Hangman’s Crop. We threaded our way between street vendors—hawking everything from food and microchips to T-shirts and banzai—and entered Crop Plaza. Trawling there—where Bernezlee Drag met Pyramid Way and the five Cracker Alleys—was a circus of freaky avatars trying to outdo each other with visible weirdness or strange behaviour. And Decker, still the dopey tourist, kept bumping into them.
“Watch it, jerkman!” snarled a three-foot kewpie doll. With chainsaw teeth.
Decker recoiled, then snorted.
Please don’t laugh, Decker. I grabbed his arm in the same moment that mine—back in my rack—had been touched; reassuringly.
“The green kewpie,” I said, yanking Apollo Decker from trouble, “could be an amped-up gym-jock. While lugnuts there,” I pointed to a scarified ogre, “is probably a schoolgirl.”
“The lie thing again,” Decker smiled.
“Yup.” Despite feeling strangely turned-on by—I’ve no idea what—I clasped Decker’s forearm and headed for the flagpole at the centre of Hangman’s Crop.
“What are you looking for?” Decker asked as I scoured the area.
“This is where Jimmy bought it.”
There was no such thing as a crime scene in cyspace; no way to collect forensic evidence; and, as Zippo said, ‘no one saw nothing.’
“And?” Decker said, sussing I was clueless.
“Doesn’t make sense that Jimmy died here. The feral with the rat gun was down an alley near the Pit Club.”
“Could he have made it here and then died?”
“Technically no. If a rat gun kills you, which it did Jimmy, then you die where you’re hit. Unless where I entered on his trail was the last moments of his life; not the end. I had to run; maybe he did too.”
“You look excited.” Decker sounded surprised.
“Graffiti! Look for a message.” I turned to the closest walls.
“You’re joking!” Decker’s reaction was understandable given Downside’s exterior walls were an ever-evolving canvas of doodles, scribbles and the rare masterpiece.
“Incognito,” Decker called.
“Yeah?” Whoa! An unconventional thrill surfed my brain. Decker’s fingers—back in my office—were on my arm again.
“Stop that,” I snarled. “I don’t do boys.”
“Sorry. But remember I can’t feel stuff in here like you can.”
“Doesn’t mean you get to real-world touch me. What do you want?”
He was on his knees, pointing at the flagpole’s base. “Did you say your Alpha-Omega honorific was ‘Lambda’?”
I joined him on the ground. “Oh Jimmy, you clever, stupid bastard.”
My left office-hand took a snapshot of Jimmy’s graffiti. It was a small rough circle containing the letters, λCJ; the words, Daerin Juno; and the scrawl, 37.48 144.57 libr.
“Damn. Zippo was right.”
“About what?” Decker asked.
“Jimmy’s being here was connected to my Aunt. Come on.”
We headed into Chin Sha’s Emporium, zigzagged a multitude of tables laden with exotic curios, to the entrances of the five notorious Cracker Alleys. I pointed and named them for Decker: “Acheron, Erebus and Tartarus; Hades—location of the Pit Club; and Styx—which is where we’re going. Welcome to Hell, Ensign Apollo; try not to draw attention to yourself.”
Decker gestured at his pecs and barely-there toga.
“It’s attitude not avatar that gets you noticed down here,” I said and waded into the ankle-deep fog that forever-curled above the flagstones of the sharply-angled Styx Alley. We followed a centaur along its twists and turns until he slipped into Black Persephone’s Tavern. I then calculated the best route to the Zen-den enclave.
“You were going to elaborate about these Zen places,” Decker said.
“Ah, yeah,” I frowned. “They’re like last decade’s oxygen, b-boy or porn bars,” I began, then recalled Decker hadn’t been on Earth last decade. “A Zen-den is this century’s hookah bar or opium den; where people zone on whatever floats their boat. Some dens have virtual reality pods; others are hands-on S&M joints, fight rings or saunas. Drugs, sport or sex—pretty much covers everything.”
“Isn’t VR superfluous in a virtual world?”
“I guess; never really thought about it.” I stopped before a red door bearing a large brass 666, but had to grab Decker by his toga and yank him back to me. I rang the bell, an eyelevel door slot slid back and a foul-smelling voice demanded the password.
“Frakn hell,” Decker swore, “how are we…”
The door opened.
I laughed and pushed my partner into the haze and heavy-metal thump of the Triple 6 before the door drek changed his mind.
“I can’t touch you, but obviously you can drag and shove me on a whim,” Decker complained. The hand that Apollo the avatar placed in the small of my back, was matched by Decker’s real one.
I glared at him. “Do that again and I will break your fingers.” I scoped for the Boss of 666. The place was kitted out like Valhalla—all stone, shields and animal hides—but with demon heads on pikes and human torsos roasting over braziers. Wenches of indeterminate sexes delivered ale mugs to patrons at pitted log tables in barred booths.
“Popular joint,” Decker shouted.
“His joint,” I said, nodding at the towering mish-mash of scary mythic beings who sat on his skull throne on the dais above ‘Hades Gates.’
“Charon Marx?” Decker verified
“Real-world Bruce May,” I said. “He is such a poser!”
“He’s not alone,” Decker said, running to keep up with me.
I knew the trolls and ogres loitering below the dais were Charon’s goons, employed to keep the hoi polloi at bay. Also knew the only way to the top of any pile is on the backs of those you step on. So that’s the route I took.
I barely touched the first five trolls, but they ended face-first on a beer-soaked floor rug. I felled a gnarly ogre on the second step with groin kick and another with an elbow to his throat, and then literally used them as a stepping stones to the top.
No idea where Decker was in 666, but beside me in my office there were noises suggesting he was being thumped or was choking in disbelief. No one else in the Hall paid much attention—except Charon Marx himself who’d leapt into a defensive squat on his menacing throne.
“Step away from my man!” It was a Cyclops—with huge bare breasts.
I was still laughing after my spinning back kick laid her out at the foot of Charon’s high chair. I love my legs!
I leapt up beside the God of 666, and whispered, “Hey, Bruce.”
“Oh crap, CJ!”
“Come on mate,” I cajoled. “Buy me a drink.”
Moments later Decker and I were sconced in Charon’s private suite chatting about old times.
“So tell me why you threw a punter into the alley about 18 hours ago…”
Charon gave his best Overlord laugh. “Don’t know why the last five scrags were bounced, CJ, let alone yesterday’s…”
“To get chased and ratgunned—to death,” I finished.
“Oh. Him.”
“Yeah him. My Uncle Jimmy.”
“Uh-oh.” Charon’s avatar morphed from the Hellgod of Supreme Ugly to a face and figure only a smidge removed from the original Bruce May—or at least the one I’d met in the flesh five years ago. This a
vatar was bald, thin and ancient; but still oozing his trade-mark androgynous sex-appeal.
Decker must have sensed a bit of reality had arrived in the Triple 6, coz he grabbed my real-world arm again. I didn’t raz him this time because Bruce really was almost a collector’s item.
“Hang on,” Bruce frowned. “You can’t have an uncle. It’s genetically…”
“Impossible, I know Bruce. But he and one of my Matriarchs had a thing, so he’s almost family.”
“Don’t call me Bruce, you know I hate it, CJ.”
“Why was he here, yesterday?” Decker was finally doing the cop thing.
I patted his real-hand encouragingly; then stopped immediately as that same damned-exquisite vibration flooded the parts of me that Zanzibar Black had switched on earlier. A burning urge to track her down and give her a piece of my…everything made no sense at all. And then…
Frakn hell; again?
“You okay?” Decker whispered in my real ear, while his Apollo-avatar faced the still-talking Charon. I made mine get up and pace the den.
“First, I didn’t know the man,” Charon stated. “He got ejected from my premises after a scuffle. Second, I vestigated after I heard he got fried and—still didn’t know the man—but Ragnor said he’d been here once before wearing a different Cloak.”
“A scuffle? Really, Bruce? Sorry, Charon.”
“Okay. A bloodbath brawl.”
“Jimmy was fighting?”
“Didn’t say that CJ; said there was a brawl. Ragnor reported the now-fried pirate, er your Uncle, was in it; but it more happened around him. And maybe to him.”
“He got beat up in your establishment so you threw him out?” Decker said.
“Threw them both out.”
“Two people had a bloodbath?” I said. “Was Jimmy cage fighting?”
“Course not, CJ. Was obvious to a gnat the bloke was a Startup.”
“A what?” Decker asked.
“Fresh meat,” Charon said. “Like you. All wooden and such.”
Apollo glanced down at his perfect form and then at me, and acknowledged, “Attitude not avatar.”
Charon poured three cups of mead and pushed ours over. “Didn’t know he was the same bloke till hours later.”
“What same bloke?” I asked.
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