She laughs at me. “The story’s all over the street. The arrests were in the news, and now everybody knows the big boys are looking for Walker. They want him so bad the whole street can smell it.”
“What if they knew it wasn’t his fault?” says I. “What if they knew it was an accident? A mistake?”
Then Mama Pimple squints at me—not many people can tell when she’s squinting, but I can—and she says, “Only one boy can tell them that so they’ll believe it.”
“Sure, I know,” says I.
“And if that boy walks in and says, Let me tell you why you don’t want to hurt my friend Dogwalker—”
“Nobody said life was safe,” I says. “Besides, what could they do to me that’s worse than what already happened to me when I was nine?”
She comes over and just puts her hand on my head, just lets her hand lie there for a few minutes, and I know what I’ve got to do.
So I did it. Went to Fat Jack’s and told him I wanted to talk to Junior Mint about Dogwalker; and it wasn’t thirty seconds before I was hustled on out into the alley and driven somewhere with my face mashed into the floor of the car so I couldn’t tell where it was. Idiots didn’t know that somebody as vertical as me can tell the number of wheel revolutions and the exact trajectory of every curve. I could’ve drawn a freehand map of where they took me. But if I let them know that, I’d never come home, and since there was a good chance I’d end up dosed with speakeasy, I went ahead and erased the memory. Good thing I did—that was the first thing they asked me as soon as they had the drug in me.
Gave me a grown-up dose, they did, so I practically told them my whole life story and my opinion of them and everybody and everything else, so the whole session took hours, felt like forever, but at the end they knew, they absolutely knew that Dogwalker was straight with them, and when it was over and I was coming up so I had some control over what I said, I asked them, I begged them, Let Dogwalker live. Just let him go. He’ll give back the money, and I’ll give back mine, just let him go.
“Okay,” says the guy.
I didn’t believe it.
“No, you can believe me, we’ll let him go.”
“You got him?”
“Picked him up before you even came in. It wasn’t hard.”
“And you didn’t kill him?”
“Kill him? We had to get the money back first, didn’t we, so we needed him alive till morning, and then you came in, and your little story changed our minds, it really did, you made us feel all sloppy and sorry for that poor old pimp.”
For a few seconds there I actually believed that it was going to be all right. But then I knew from the way they looked, from the way they acted, I knew the same way I know about passwords.
They brought in Dogwalker and handed me a book. Dogwalker was very quiet and stiff, and he didn’t look like he recognized me at all. I didn’t even have to look at the book to know what it was. They scooped out his brain and replaced it with glass, like me only way over the line, way way over; there was nothing of Dogwalker left inside his head, just glass pipe and goo. The book was a User’s Manual, with all the instructions about how to program him and control him.
I looked at him and he was Dogwalker, the same face, the same hair, everything. Then he moved or talked and he was dead, he was somebody else living in Dogwalker’s body. And I says to them, “Why? Why didn’t you just kill him, if you were going to do this?”
“This one was too big,” says the guy. “Everybody in G-boro knew what happened, everybody in the whole country, everybody in the world. Even if it was a mistake, we couldn’t let it go. No hard feelings, Goo Boy. He is alive. And so are you. And you both stay that way, as long as you follow a few simple rules. Since he’s over the line, he has to have an owner, and you’re it. You can use him however you want—rent out data storage, pimp him as a jig or a jaw—but he stays with you always. Every day, he’s on the street here in G-boro, so we can bring people here and show them what happens to boys who make mistakes. You can even keep your cut from the job, so you don’t have to scramble at all if you don’t want to. That’s how much we like you, Goo Boy. But if he leaves this town or doesn’t come out, even one single solitary day, you’ll be very sorry for the last six hours of your life. Do you understand?”
I understood. I took him with me. I bought this place, these clothes, and that’s how it’s been ever since. That’s why we go out on the street every day. I read the whole manual, and I figure there’s maybe 10 percent of Dogwalker left inside. The part that’s Dogwalker can’t ever get to the surface, can’t ever talk or move or anything like that, can’t ever remember or even consciously think. But maybe he can still wander around inside what used to be his head, maybe he can sample the data stored in all that goo. Maybe someday he’ll even run across this story and he’ll know what happened to him, and he’ll know that I tried to save him.
In the meantime this is my last will and testament. See, I have us doing all kinds of research on Orgasmic Crime, so that someday I’ll know enough to reach inside the system and unplug it. Unplug it all, and make those bastards lose everything, the way they took everything away from Dogwalker. Trouble is, some places there ain’t no way to look without leaving tracks. Goo is as goo doo, I always say. I’ll find out I’m not as good as I think I am when somebody comes along and puts a hot steel putz in my face. Knock my brains out when it comes. But there’s this, lying in a few hundred places in the system. Three days after I don’t lay down my code in a certain program in a certain place, this story pops into view. The fact you’re reading this means I’m dead.
Or it means I paid them back, and so I quit suppressing this cause I don’t care anymore. So maybe this is my swan song, and maybe this is my victory song. You’ll never know, will you, mate?
But you’ll wonder. I like that. You wondering about us, whoever you are, you thinking about old Goo Boy and Dogwalker, you guessing whether the fangs who scooped Doggy’s skull and turned him into self-propelled property paid for it down to the very last delicious little drop.
And in the meantime, I’ve got this goo machine to take care of. Only 10 percent a man, he is, but then I’m only 40 percent myself. All added up together we make only half a man. But that’s the half that counts. That’s the half that still wants things. The goo in me and the goo in him is all just light pipes and electricity. Data without desire. Light-speed trash. But I have some desires left, just a few, and maybe so does Dogwalker, even fewer. And we’ll get what we want. We’ll get it all. Every speck. Every sparkle. Believe it.
No one had ever won the Hugo and Nebula awards for best science fiction novel two years in a row until ORSON SCOTT CARD received them for Ender’s Game and its sequel, Speaker for the Dead, in 1986 and 1987. Card, who lives in Greensboro, is the prolific writer of dozens of books, plays, short stories, poems, and film and television scripts in every genre. Card has taught writing at several universities and written two books on writing, one of which won yet another Hugo award. His inventive and groundbreaking works have received acclaim—and best-seller sales—all over the world.
Copyright 1989 by Davis Publications. First printed in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, November 1989. Reprinted with permission of the author.
The Corn Thief
Guy Owen
I hadn’t used up but one week of my month on Grandpa Eller’s farm when the corn thief came for the first time. I was the first one to find it out, too. That morning I got up early and put on my blue jeans and new chambray shirt. Already I heard the catbirds and mockers fussing in the chinaberry tree, and somewhere in the pasture toward the old sawmill site a mourning dove was calling.
I slept on a cot in Grandpa’s room, so I moved about easy and slipped out to the backyard barefooted. I was twelve years old, and nothing in the world pleased me more than having my grandfather brag on me.
But when I went to the corncrib to shell the corn for the domineckers in the chicken run, I let out a whoop that must
have waked up all of Cape Fear County. The lock had been pried off the facing, and the door was flung wide open. Wolf, the old one-eyed German shepherd that always smelled of mange medicine, was sniffing about the crib door, whining.
“Grandpa,” I hollered, “come quick. We’ve purely been robbed!”
“What’s come over you, Joel?” He was already hurrying across the backyard, stopping under the worm-eaten catalpa tree to hitch the galluses on his blue overalls. Without his felt hat on, his thin hair was white as snow in the morning sunlight. His face was seamed and old—all except his periwinkle eyes—and his short legs moved like a beagle’s. I remembered then what Mama had said about him being too old to look after me, especially since he’d already had a stroke.
Ransom Martin, the new hired man, came scurrying out from the packhouse behind Grandpa, stretching his long legs. “What’s all the commotion about?”
When Grandpa leaned in the crib door, he wasn’t much taller than me. His sleepy eyes squinted, studying the pile of unshucked corn. “He didn’t take much,” he said, “whoever he was. Not more than a sackful he could tote on his back.” His voice was matter-of-fact, and he didn’t seem excited at all.
“Let’s call Sheriff Slade, Grandpa,” I suggested. “If he can’t come he’d be sure to send a deputy.”
“Shoot, boy,” Ranse spoke up quick. “Make him drive all the way from Queen City for one sack of weevily corn?”
Grandpa agreed that it wouldn’t be necessary to call the sheriff from the county seat.
“What you aim to do, Cap’n Jim?” Ranse asked, cornering his greenish eyes at my grandfather.
“First thing I figger to do,” Grandpa said, calmly looking at the tall hired hand, “is get me a brand-new lock. A big one. And I reckon I’ll tie old Wolf someplace close by tonight.”
“I could stand guard with my new .22,” I volunteered.
But they didn’t pay me any mind, Ranse and Grandpa.
“That old dog,” Ranse said, “he ain’t no ’count.” He spat tobacco juice toward the scalding barrel where a few chickens were scratching in last season’s hog hairs and new mule-hoof parings. “He ought to be shot and put out of his misery.”
When I turned around, Grandpa’s housekeeper was standing by Ranse. Myrtle’s face was puffy, and she acted as if she was mad from being waked up by all the hollering and whooping. Ranse told her about the stolen corn.
“I’m not surprised a bit in this world,” she said. “I heard something. I kept hearing something the whole enduring night.” Then she looked at Wolf and made a face. “He’s too old to keep any thieves away. He’s not fit for anything but to eat biscuits and carry fleas.”
Grandpa stooped to pat Wolf. “You live long enough, you’ll be old too one day,” he said to Myrtle in a low voice. “Just because something’s old don’t mean it’s worthless.”
“I brought my rifle, Grandpa,” I broke in. “I could stand guard on the back porch tonight.”
“We’ll wait and see, Joel.”
Before we turned away, Ranse said, “I know a way to stop that thief.”
“How’s that, Mr. Martin?” I asked. For some reason I didn’t like to call him “Mister.” I’d seen the way he had of rubbing against the housekeeper when he thought they were alone.
But Grandpa was walking away. “I reckon me and Joel here’ll get that lock.”
Which is what we did. That evening, after we finished grading tobacco in the packhouse, we rode to the store at Eller’s Bend in Grandpa’s rattletrap Studebaker and bought the biggest lock that Uncle Sam Eller had in stock.
“Jim, you trying to keep something in or out with that all-fired lock?”
Since there were a few customers in the store, Grandpa didn’t say anything, just sort of smiled. He bought me a nickel sack of peppermint sticks and a box of shells for my .22. Then we drove on back, and I helped him nail the new lock on the crib door.
For all the good it did. Because next morning we saw that the corn thief had come again and made off with another sack of corn. And Wolf, who was tied close by, hadn’t barked once. It was puzzling. I knew the German shepherd was getting blind; maybe he was almost deaf, too.
“What’d I tell you, Cap’n Jim?” Ranse said with a knowing grin. “If that sorry no-’count dog was mine I’d shoot him, sure.”
That night I slept in the barn loft with Grandpa, waiting for the corn thief to return. Lying awake on the sweet-smelling oats, I did a lot of thinking. One thing I decided, quick enough, was this: I wouldn’t write Mama about the thief that plagued us, slipping about the farm so quiet in the night that Wolf wouldn’t even bark at him. I wouldn’t tell her because she didn’t want me to spend July with Grandpa in the first place, since Grandma had died and Grandpa had been in the hospital and had to hire Myrtle for his housekeeper. But I reasoned that Grandpa needed me more than ever, and in the end I convinced her.
It wasn’t Grandpa’s idea to sleep in the barn loft; it was Myrtle’s notion. She kept pestering him about it, in that scratchy voice of hers, until he gave in, maybe just to get some peace. And, of course, I went along. The truth of the matter is, I sort of sided with Myrtle—though I didn’t like her at all, even if she was Mama’s second cousin once removed. She was too bossy and sulky, and she never kept tea cakes in the stove warmer the way Grandma used to do. Not to mention coconut pies and pound cake in the food safe.
But Ranse Martin, the hired hand that slept on a cot in the packhouse, had his own plan. “You listen to me now, Cap’n Jim. I’ll fix a trap with that double-barrel twelve-gauge of yours that’ll take care of the lowdown thief.”
The housekeeper was clearing away the supper dishes. “You might pay Ranse some mind now, Jim Eller,” she said. She was a short woman, with frizzly hair dyed the color of cornsilk, except for the dark roots. Like Grandma, she dipped snuff, but she wasn’t clean with it. Sometimes her lips and teeth were stained with Sweet Society snuff.
“I wouldn’t want to harm a man just for a shirt-tail full of corn.”
Nor for the whole cribful, I thought. That’s the kind of man Grandpa was. He was a gentle soft-spoken man.
Anyhow, when it was good and dark, we took our two guns and a flashlight and climbed up the ladder in the aisle of the barn. We took two old raggedy patchwork quilts and some of the tow-sack sheets used to spread over the cured tobacco and made ourselves beds. Grandpa raked up a thick mattress of oat hay, and we put two bales of peanut hay in front of our heads at the open loft door to rest our guns on. Grandpa said we’d keep our shells in our pockets; we wouldn’t load unless we heard the thief coming.
Then we stretched out, talking low for a little while. I watched the fireflies blink on and off and the heat lightning off in the distance toward Clayton. Millions of stars were out like shiny bits of mica, and the moon was like a quartered cantaloupe. The light was so clear I could see the corncrib, which set off a little ways from the big barn, almost like it was day. I aimed my .22 toward the board window, pretending it was loaded and clicking my tongue against the roof of my mouth for a shot.
“You think the thief will come back, Grandpa?”
“I don’t know, son,” he said. “It’s not likely he’ll come tonight. Some other night maybe.”
“If he comes, we won’t shoot him, will we?”
“No, we won’t shoot. It would be a terrible thing to shoot a man for a few bushels of corn. A man whose family may be hungry.”
“Ranse, he doesn’t think it would be wrong to shoot him.”
“Every man to his own notions.”
“We’ll just capture him, then, won’t we, and holler for Myrtle to call Sheriff Slade?”
“That sounds like a mighty good plan. But you ought to get a little sleep now. You’ve got a lot of tobacco to take off the sticks in the morning. We’ve got to get that curing ready for the auction.”
But I couldn’t begin to sleep. “Don’t you think we ought to keep guard, I mean stay awake in shifts so we wouldn’t mis
s him—if he comes?” That was the way they did in all the books I read.
But Grandpa said it wasn’t necessary. He told me he’d propped some old tin cans against the door. If anybody broke in the crib, we’d be bound to hear and wake up.
But I made up my mind I’d stay awake all night by myself, and for a long time I did, after Grandpa was asleep on the oat mattress. Once when the quartered moon was way up high, I thought I heard something in the barnyard. I gripped my rifle and peered over the bale of hay. But it was nothing but a barn owl looking for mice.
After that I eased back down and scrooched under the quilt. A breeze was rising from the Cape Fear River and it was cool. For a while I lay awake on my back, smelling the oats and listening to the breathing of the brindled cow in the stable below.
Toward midnight in the hayloft I started getting sleepy. Then, before I knew it, it seemed like a hoot owl had lifted the woods up and was carrying them far, far away.…
Grandpa woke me, shaking my shoulder. “Joel,” he called gently. Then we went down the cobwebby ladder together. I pumped a basin of water, then we washed up. Just as Grandpa always did, I sloshed the cold water on my face, drying with the towel hanging on the nail.
“We’ll sleep out again tonight, won’t we, Gramp?” I asked.
“Maybe. We’ll wait and see, son.” He looked tired, and there were worry lines around his pale eyes.
When we went in to eat breakfast, Ranse Martin and Myrtle were already sitting at the kitchen table. Like Myrtle, Ranse was from Queen City, and she had hired him herself on the spur of the moment when the old hired man quit while Grandpa was in the hospital. I suppose Josh Shipman got tired of Myrtle’s sharp tongue or hard biscuits, maybe both.
Anyway, she sent for Ranse to help her tend the crops, claiming him for her dead sister’s brother-in-law. One thing sure, he didn’t know anything much about farming. He told me he’d been in the transportation business, but I found out all he did was drive a taxi. I heard Uncle Sam Eller say he probably sold a little moonshine on the side.
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