Chapter 29
Speeding recklessly down a pier past midnight with two dead men might make your average detective a little nervous. It wasn't the most comfortable thing I'd ever done, but I had experienced stranger. Since the Change, I couldn't walk into a convenience store without something unbelievable happening. You could see it on people's faces. Hesitation and fear lurked behind every pair of eyes. Everyone was a little disturbed, a little on edge, waiting for the next change. Yet, there were truly unsettling moments, and this was one of them. There are intuitive flashes one gets when in the company of the dead. I suspected some dark brotherhood--minute adrenaline impulses of warning--nanoseconds of paranoia flickered where a comment or action was mistaken for envy. I had to remember I was with Elmo. He was my partner.
The pregnant bellies of freighters bowed out toward us. The pier and the looming shapes of rusty hulks were created instantaneously from the fog ten feet in front of us only to be returned to the gray chaos the moment we passed. The pier's uneven planking gave the car an unsettling bounce.
"Ease it back a little, Elmo." I patted the dash. "Ease it back."
Elmo's driving managed to shake Moreau's tough demeanor. "This fucking partner--he's crazy. We don't need to go so fast, but he goes so fast! Ah, fuck!" He leaned forward and pointed. "Just ahead." Moreau breathed the word. "Clementine." he repeated, "Clementine."
Elmo must have spotted a dime, because he stopped on it. "Ease it back next time," I scolded him. If I wore dentures I would have had to pry them out of the dashboard. But Elmo was all primed for something. Perhaps speeding down a pier past midnight with a dead man and a gun-toting clown might make your average dead gunsel a little nervous. His hands gripped the wheel as though the rest of his body were hanging over a cliff.
On our right was an old, well-patched freighter named Clementine. Large rectangles of steel were welded over its many portholes. From the awkward angle of its smokestack and superstructure, I could tell that the Clementine's well-traveled keel rested on the garbage and junk that made up the bottom of Greasetown harbor. Its tie lines were slack. The dock it leaned against had shifted with the weight. Its planking zigzagged dangerously away from the ship. I climbed out of the car, cautiously fingering my gun. Moreau followed me. I stared up at the superstructure of the freighter and barely made out a dim orange glow.
"So this..." I was cut off.
"Is the Clementine. Jeeze, Dick, I don't think you gotta be no smart guy to figure that," he chuckled. "No wonder you need help investigating…"
"Right." There was no use getting upset with Moreau. I wasn't afraid of him there was just no point in having it out with someone who was undoubtedly tough. It would be a rather meaningless display of violence, and a messy one at that. Instead I chose to frustrate him with pleasantries.
"Right, you're right, Mr. Moreau. And thank you for helping me and my partner find the Clementine."
"Hey." I noticed a demonic lack of light in Moreau's heavy-lidded eyes. "You ain't taking a sort of stab there are you, Dick?"
"Of course not, Mr. Moreau. Just making light, you know."
"Oh, haw, haw," Moreau laughed in his unnatural way. "I just wanted to be sure. I never know."
I smiled and turned away breathing a "No kidding…" and then mumbled to Elmo. "Well, Elmo, here we have the Clementine. I wonder if anybody is home."
"Go on up," Moreau said plainly as he lit a thin black cheroot. "He's waitin'."
I didn't ask who was waiting, because I knew I would receive a "Well, a scientist a'course, Dick! Haw, haw!" I could feel Tommy's anger just beneath the surface of my mind. He did not like insults. I released the suppressed anger by tearing the soles out of my boots with my toenails.
"Thanks." I nodded again, and lit a cigarette. Moreau backed into the fog. Elmo followed me along the wharf to a rusted iron gangway--the weight of the Clementine was slowly driving it through the dock. I saw a large silhouette at the top of it. It carried the sharp angle of a machine gun.
"You Wildclown?" The words came out as a growl.
"Yes." I tried to do my serious face.
"Come on up..." The machine gun jerked up and down to encourage us. Tommy appeared like an afterthought to me, intensely aware of the gun barrel.
I muttered to Elmo. "Let's remember Plan A." Plan A was a simple one we kept around for trouble in close quarters. It ran like this: if someone had the drop on us, and didn't just gun us down, whoever didn't have a gun pointed at him would moan like a lovesick moose. We had used it once and it worked when we found ourselves ambushed by an angry man we had photographed with another man's wife. He had caught us in a bar with a couple of his friends. In that case, Elmo had moaned, and I was able to deliver a searing right hook that downed the protagonist. His friends just carried him away, unimpressed by any of our actions. Regardless, Plan A became part of our repertoire.
I reached the top of the gangway. A lantern suddenly flashed in my face. "Shit." I heard. "You do dress like a clown!"
"My detective costume is at the cleaners," I snarled. "We're here to see someone."
The lantern fell from my face. The voice grunted: "Follow me." I did my best. It was difficult with all those little green dots in the way, and with the deck of the ship rising at an uneven and steep incline. I heard Elmo bark his shin on something and swear. We were led along a shadow-strewn companionway to the bridge of the old freighter. Inside was all of the equipment you would expect to find there. A large wooden wheel and an instrument panel commanded a good portion of two walls. There was a cabinet for nautical charts and a broad brass and oak table to spread them out on. The ceiling was low, lit by a forty-watt bulb. The smell of fish and oil was heavy. There had been some changes. A leather couch stretched along a wall opposite me. In front of that was a battered coffee table bearing magazines, overflowing ashtrays and a couple of empty whiskey bottles. There were three fiberglass chairs arranged around that. Everything listed toward the dock.
Against the window, was a man in a long, black overcoat wearing a wide-brimmed fedora. He stood in shadow, staring away from us. The greasy, flyspecked window afforded him an ugly view of the fog. Smoke trailed up from his cigarette. I heard a funny trickling sound, like the last syrupy drops from a beer bottle.
"The most important point..." came a voice that was soft like the fog. "Is why you would want to talk to me. I don't trust Pogo's judgment. He takes too many of my drugs."
I gestured for Elmo to sit in one of the fiberglass chairs. He quickly complied. "I just wanted to ask a few questions...."
"Don't, Wildclown, if that is your name! Not about drugs, not about the infinitesimal parameters that they hold--the crystalline magnificence of chemicals. The more you know, the closer you get to death: by my hand, by the drugs, by Authority. Knowledge of them, the drugs, gives you knowledge of the Netherworld. Knowledge of the Netherworld gives you the power of Anarchy."
"I'm not interested in drugs. At least not other than a severe alcohol dependency that I'm nursing." I moved a little further in. I still couldn't see his features.
"Not now, but you could be, if you began to know the complexity, the hidden qualities. They're the building blocks of life--and death. I don't care how strong you are. You would become addicted. If not to their effects--then their eternal natures. Such knowledge could make you god of the underworld--or a maggot in the belly of a corpse," he chuckled, and then turned away from me when I drew nearer. He hissed, "No closer!" Again the strange trickling sound. "Take a chair. Take the couch. No closer." I did as I was told, dropping into the chair beside Elmo. The man in black called to the guard that I now noticed had remained at the door. "Lonny! Get them a drink. Whiskey is all I have for you gentlemen. I will not insult you by offering less potent pharmaceuticals." He chuckled quietly. I concentrated on his speech. There was a quality to the whispering that was forced. His words were pronounced with supernatural articulation. His diction reminded me of a bad stage actor.
"No, Wildclown, you w
ould not be able to resist. There are too many interesting things to know, and you're a detective. One clue leads to the next, and you go on and on, despite the fact that the clues may be leading you to your own death. You have no control over it after a while. We are the same in that, Wildclown. Explorers, driven and obsessive." Again, I heard a low chuckling. The shoulders bunched.
"You have me at a disadvantage," I started. "I'd like to know who I'm talking to, but if you'd rather not..."
"Why not," the voice was bitter, petulant. "Why not? Oh, oh, oh what if I had a respectable life? Is that what you mean--what you infer? That there is some respectable set of circumstances I would keep my nefarious activities secret from?" His shoulders tightened around the words. "That is the inference you make!"
Lonny returned with a bottle of Five Star and a couple of gray glasses. He placed them on the table and left. The man in black continued. "Have a drink, gentlemen. Forgive my outburst, but you see, I no longer have a respectable position or life, for reasons I am reluctant to divulge--even now, and yet, it is ever the same. I now have no choice; but I did not choose this life...death." I poured two drinks, made them good ones and lifted mine.
He turned as I tipped it to my mouth and I immediately felt my stomach turn to stone. The speaker entered the half-light given off by the single dim ceiling bulb. His hat threw dark shadow over his face so what I saw was mainly in diffuse, reflected light. A skull grinned out from under the hat. I could see the bone gleam waxily. The jaw worked and I saw that where his cheeks should be were the thin remnants of leathery muscle. Drool caused the prominent teeth to glisten like wet pearls. He twitched his head with the chin up, and jerked saliva down his throat in spastic motions. The most horrifying part of the gruesome face was the very human but lidless eyes that stared from within the bony sockets. A clear plastic tube looped up from his coat and over his forehead. It fed two thin brass nozzles bolted to the ridge of bone that ran from temple to temple. A faint gesture from him, and two streams of water sprayed his eyes. Excess liquid trickled over shiny bone.
"I make drugs, Mr. Wildclown," he admitted moving closer--now I could hear the rehearsed inflection. He would have made a great ventriloquist. "Some of the most intricate and complex interactive hallucinogens ever invented. I have made drugs that I consider too powerful for Pogo to sell. I have created hallucinogens that work on the chromosomes that bond with genetic material: their effects, permanent. But, in the best case, I can only create an altered state that inevitably and inexorably leads me back to this reality. Can you understand why I don't take them, Mr. Wildclown?" He took a seat opposite me. My mind gibbered at the bony face. "My respectable job was lost when I had my accident. 'It's not because you're dead, that we have to let you go,' they said. 'It's because you don't have a face.' They forced me to give up a respectable life in the name of aesthetics."
"I can see it made you bitter." I was strangely angered by the self-pity.
"BITTER!" he screamed, leapt up, whipped away from us before tearing his hat off. "This is, that's..." His yellow cheekbones glistened with eye lubricant. Gloved hands crushed the hat into his face. There was an agonizing moment as his chest heaved and strained against tortured moans. I tensed, hoping I had not gone too far. The terror and self-hatred in the sound suddenly changed to a cynical, self-mocking chuckle. Soon muffled laughter, contemptible satire, absorbed him until he doubled over. Yet, there was no real humor in its tone--only bitterness. Fear and madness tinged every sound. Slowly the sobs of laughter trailed off. He replaced his hat and, chuckling horribly, lit a cigarette. A strand of drool hung from his jawbone. "I suppose that will teach me for being dramatic." He shook his head. "Yes, it has made me bitter, Mr. Wildclown. It has caused me from time to time to add cyanide to the syncrak we sell. I'm a wanted man. They are calling me Skullface. Simple and brutish."
"Well, what you do is your business." I got a truly notable twinge of responsibility at mention of the murders. I had read about them, but, everyone took their chances these days; and for the moment, I was investigating another murder.
"I just want to ask you a question about another scientist. He was working in the field of Regenerics."
Skullface leaned in toward me. His mouth opened, the icicle of drool fell from his jawbone, pasted the back of my hand. His eyes cantered on me. The brass nozzles pumped. I felt a thin mist on my cheeks. "Regenerics, ah, that titillating bit of nonsense. Regenerics. Don't tell me you give it credence." He stepped back, crossed his arms over his chest and caressed his chin with his left hand. Skullface absently squeezed saliva between his fingers.
"It doesn't matter to me one way or the other. I'm more interested in the actions of people who do give it credence. Belief is nine-tenths of reality."
"Of course, of course. Regenerics… I've heard of it. Any dead scientist would give it a glance wouldn't he? Life for the dead. Dead tissue transmuted into living tissue. Biological alchemy. Regenerics…Isn't that what I heard? Yes, somewhere, but where, where! Regenerics was a theory held in very low esteem. Most of all, because the scientist who was its greatest proponent was of no reputation. Oh, believe me, anything to do with the dead or treatment of dead tissue gets immediate attention. The problem with this fellow's...what was his name, Cotton's, theory was that it depended too much upon another unanswerable question."
"What's that?" I asked to validate my existence.
"He needed viable fetal tissue to start his process. And, as we all know, there is no more viable fetal tissue. Conception no longer occurs. That is the true question of the day. Why are there no more offspring?"
"What about embryos preserved from before the Change? Frozen or whatever--won't they work?" I took a stab.
"Excellent thinking, Wildclown, but about fifty years too late. Those embryos that were thawed out after the Change did not grow. They live, as the living, in stasis. They do not develop. They do not age. The only cellular activity to occur is like your own. Maintenance, mitosis, no meiosis--nothing more than replacement."
I knew about the forever children out there. Most of them had gone into hiding, or been conveniently rounded up for study by Authority. Apparently their minds aged, but their bodies remained those of children.
"What about the babies born before the Change." Something about Skullface's intensity drew me in. "They aged."
"To the approximate physical age of five, and no more." Skullface's eyes gleamed with moisture. "And those tissue samples taken at that time and frozen, have since been found locked in the same mitosis cycle."
"Okay, but what about someone who didn't know or understand these factors. I suppose something like Regenerics, if it worked, would threaten a lot of livelihoods."
"Of course, of course. That is exactly why I believe that even if he could make his theory an actuality, Authority would keep it a secret for the very select. It would be eternal life, would it not? Given the strange circumstances the world finds itself in--immunity to natural death. And resurrection for the dead. No more fear."
"And to the best of your knowledge his theory was useless without fetal tissue."
"Useless." Skullface kept caressing his bare jaw. "There was something, oh yes. What he hoped was to graft a dead gene onto a living gene--a process that is unthinkable without a reliable computer lab. He was certain that the viable genes would jumpstart the dead. With his technique, you see, he depends upon a certain assumption. That with the entire absence of bacteria which degrade tissues, the genetic material of the dead is unchanged from the living state. The genes are simply in stasis. Therefore, life functions could cease and since dead matter is resistant to corruption, the dead would be in a holding pattern, so to speak--though plagued with a host of other problems. He believed that fetal genes, the proteins from them, would jumpstart the normal processes in the dead genes. He had no luck with existing genetic matter. Its growth is retarded. It is in a pattern of self-replication--no new development. That fact is responsible for the absence of offspring. But that is th
e important part and the nail in the coffin for Regenerics. The genetic material had to come from developing tissue. It had to be taken from tissue that is growing, and that, Mr. Wildclown, we have not had since the Change." Though Skullface was excited by the discussion his body language was slowly driving him away from the light.
"Did you know Cotton?"
"Not personally. We didn't travel in the same circles, you understand. I'm no longer welcome in reputable company--though his was hardly better. He was hired by King Industries which surprised me because the King is no fool."
"So they might have had some kind of breakthrough."
"I doubt it, but that's something you'll have to find out. It means nothing to me. To be returned to life," he gestured to his missing face, "would be worse than death. Don't you think?"
"So, in your opinion," I pushed. "Cotton would never have been successful."
"Not without a brand new baby. And I have a feeling that if there were babies, there wouldn't be things like me, or your partner." He gestured towards Elmo.
"Thanks for your time...Mr."
"Skullface will do. I am not unaware of the defensive power of the sinister." He shifted his position--turned away from us again.
"My feelings exactly." Elmo and I left Skullface after he had resumed his position at the window on the gloom. We drove along the pier and then back toward the office. Skullface had left me with a bad feeling about birth and death, and life in general. What kind of a world was it that could fire a good man for aesthetic reasons? Then, my skepticism kicked in, as I realized that under all that ugly Skullface was still a human being. I had a feeling he wasn't telling me everything he knew. But I couldn't be sure. He had no face to read. As he told me his story, of course he'd be the victim in it. The pathos in the tale would evoke compassion and soften my stance. Everyone did the same thing. Everything happens to me. I don't deserve this! Who does? As the vacant warehouses passed, I thought of a victim humanity. Strange twists of fate had played upon it. How much of what was happening did humanity deserve?
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