Prophet Margin

by Simon Spurrier

  It would be fair to say I lost it somewhat. By "it" I mean "the plot". My temper. My self control. Whatever.

  It would also be fair to say there was a spot of collateral damage, a few wobbly goo-filled locals got themselves slightly dead and, sneck it, I was sort of too busy with my kill-crazy thermonuclear rampage to bother hiding from the Stronts.

  All of this is now academic. There's a guy in a green jumpsuit pointing a handcannon this way and I'm about to die. Fingers crossed, I won't have to put up with any irritating playback of my life. All that flashing-before-your-eyes stuff makes me nauseous.

  Then I remember the hardcore dose of giga-class neurochemical narcotics I shot shortly before arriving on this world and all hopes of a speedy departure go right out the window.

  Blam.

  TWO

  The knack, he knew, was in the reaction.

  Anyone with a spare year or seven could learn the skills. Anyone with time and effort and - these days - money could invest in the training, the equipment, the lifestyle. Oh, there were variances, of course: differences in background, ancestry, biology, state-of-mind. Some were more successful than others, some lasted a lifetime, others ended abruptly.1 This was beyond the point.

  1. The shortest recorded career of any officially sanctioned Bounty Hunter was that of Zim "Zalla" Bim, whose tenure with the Search/Destroy Agency, thanks to an illegal time-travelling incident, lasted minus four hundred and fifty-six years.

  Regardless of whether the skills required were obtained from fifteen years in the Milton Keynes ghetto or from the latest combat stimchip; regardless of whether those skills were even learnt at all, anyone in the entire universe could snap their fingers and call themselves a professional killer.

  The talent, the soaked-into-your-genes gift that separated a born hunter from, at best a successful amateur, lay not merely in the ability to squeeze a trigger, but in what happened afterwards.

  The Man Without Eyes reholstered his gun - a Westinghouse blaster in unfashionable gunmetal and silver, sporting variable cartridges and an antique filed-tip muzzle - slotting its heavy barrel into its holster with practiced precision. A brief trickle of smoke followed it down.

  He nodded.

  There was a purity, almost, to the profession. Almost.

  Killing the guy who looked at you funny, killing the guy who stole your girl, killing the guy who turned your face into puff-pâté in the school playground: these were the hallmarks of a murderer. Killing a guy for money, well... that's business.

  The way to look at it, he knew, was this: you're not hunting people. You're hunting a profit. Your basic illegal killer, he worried about evidence, cops, alibis. The Man Without Eyes worried about tax breaks.

  Across the street, tangled in burnt architecture, a raggedy shape twitched, splattering a thick paste of blood across the scorched masonry. It attempted to stand, failed and watched its guts slap onto the floor. This had clearly never happened to it before.

  The Man Without Eyes had seen kids on their first hunt - good kids with all the right moves, all the best gear - ruined in moments like this. He'd warned them. He'd said, expect it to get messy. Expect pleading and gagging and dribbling and farting. People don't die quick or easy.

  It still took them by surprise, those first timers.

  Anyone can pull a trigger, once. The knack was in doing it again and again, in watching people shuffle off their jagged little coils in the sure and certain knowledge that it was you who had put them down, that you'd do it again, that you did it for money...

  That you didn't regret it.

  Anyone could be a killer, once. It took a special kind of mind to shrug it off.

  Johnny Alpha, the Man Without Eyes, the Alpha-Ray hunter, the All-Seeing-Guy, stood over his prey, biting away the regret, the horror, the guilt. It all happened automatically these days.

  Algernon "Standing" MacGregor, not standing any more, was taking his sweet snecking time about going the way of the Dodo.

  "Hey," Johnny said, keeping his voice slow and clear. The slab of meat twitched, eyes swivelling. "You're dying. You know that, right?"

  Standing Algie moaned, a cappuccino froth of dribble and gore lathering his chin.

  "Thing is..." Johnny poked vaguely at a puddle of slime nearby, formerly one of the locals. "Thing is, I reckon you're saveable. You took it in the guts. That's got to hurt, right? But, you don't mind me saying, you look pretty wired. Could be a big help, situation like this. What are we talking here? Dren? PulseGo? A neuronet?"

  "Ss-stimmZap..."

  "StimmZap, right. Fashionable. Probably saved your life." He pursed his chin. "Yeah, I've seen guys go two, maybe three days without biting it, wound like that. What I'm saying is, there's every chance you could pull through, if we get you to a sawbones."

  "H-hurrtss..."

  "It would. Look, Algie, you don't mind if I call you Algie, do you? I want to help you. You've done some pretty bad things and, well, I think you killed maybe fifty of these blobby guys but... I'm not one to judge. I'm trying to help you here."

  Johnny tugged a sheaf of paper from a pocket and held it up. The mugshot that glared back, beyond the obvious lack of saliva and bloodsplatter, was a reflection of Algie's face. The self-translating holotext jumbled itself into standard English: "Reward: 8000cr. Alive or Dead".

  "Call me old fashioned," Johnny said, "but I prefer 'alive'. You with me?"

  Algie did something slippery that might have been a frantic nod. Johnny waited until the hope and relief was fully ignited on the man's face, before dropping the bomb.

  "Only... The thing is, my partner... he doesn't see things that way."

  At the crest of a nearby hill, thick with scorched buildings, a distant shape was picking its way through the tongues of flame.

  "Wh-whuh?"

  "He's what you could call a..." Johnny searched for the word, pantomiming his uncertainty, "a hardliner."

  "H-hardliner?"

  "Well, okay, he's a bloodthirsty bastard. The way he looks at it, you keep a guy alive, you're just going to regret it. Food, med bills, bed for the night. It all adds up, he says."

  Algie's eyes widened as the ramifications of this bombshell sunk in.

  "Cuh-couldn't you... Couldn't you t-talk him - uuh - out of it?"

  Johnny made a show of wincing, stroking the stubble of his chin with a gloved hand. "Not a chance. He's not the sort of guy you mess with." The distant figure was almost at the foot of the hill now.

  "P-please!"

  Johnny glanced down, reproachful. "Listen, you weren't there last time this happened. That whole 'let's-be-reasonable' routine. I've seen it tried." He leaned down, whispering "They never found the guy's remains."

  "B-buh, but, but-"

  "Sneckssakes, breathe! Look, I'm not in the business of messing with heads. Just thought I'd give you time to... pray. Whatever. Going to need a heavy incentive, that's all I'm saying."

  "W-what do you want?" It was almost a squeak.

  "The usual. News from the rotten criminal underbelly of society, that sort of thing."

  "I don't know anyth-"

  "Oop, here he comes."

  "Okay, okay, okay!"

  Something twitched behind Algie's face, making him shiver. Johnny frowned. Through his eyes the activity of Algie's brain was picked out in a haze of colour and shape, a haze currently fluctuating weirdly, coruscating in strange patterns before settling.

  "I've got a name," the dying man said, his voice strangely calm. "A lead."

  "Go on."

  "It's about Mr Grinn."

  Johnny wasn't in the habit of being surprised. He almost choked.

  The threat of a murderous partner had kept him in business with lowlifes and nobodies from the wanted lists during the leanest of times, but he'd never expected anything like this. Tired mobster sell-outs, a local crime snitch or two. Conmen, gravsmugglers, tax dodgers - their kind sold each other out all the time, particularly when threatened by the chimera of some b
lack hearted mutie sicko, lurching ever nearer. But not Grinn.

  "T-there's a scientist..." the man winced, a gobbet of bloodpaste slugging its way across his chin. "D-did some work for Grinn. Got mixed up in stuff..."

  "What scientist?"

  Across the street the approaching figure paused to clamber over a blast melted goods vehicle before resuming its theatrical advance.

  "Name... name of Koszov. Big on... hah... mutation..."

  "Koszov. What's his connection to Grinn?"

  "H-hey! Kkh. You got to promise! You got to keep that snecker away from me!"

  "No deals. Talk! Then we'll see."

  "You gotta protect me from the... the..." An arm thrashed in the direction of the onrushing figure. Johnny peered up to gauge how close his partner was, hoping for another minute or two of bargaining time, and swore under his breath - the big goon was way too early. Algie's moist mumblings petered out.

  The shadow that fell across Johnny and Algie was unremarkable, in mutant terms. It described a broad figure with a bouncing beer-paunch, fingers crooked into menacing claws, heavyset legs stamping forwards with a lurch. Despite its best attempts to growl and mutter, this was clearly not the physically outrageous collection of spikes and teeth that Algie had imagined.

  The uncertainties began when his eyes tracked upwards to inspect the figure's face. This posed something of a difficulty.

  It had no head.

  "Rrrraaa!" it said unconvincingly, from somewhere near the ground. Johnny rolled his eyes.

  "Oh, sneck..." said Kid Knee, catching sight of Algie, his voice returning to its naturally whingesque cadence, "I can't stand the sight of blood."

  Persuading Algie to spill his guts (rhetorically) thereafter was an object lesson in futility. Johnny couldn't claim to be surprised: of all the physically grotesque mutants that the Search/Destroy agency could have offered him in his period of partnerlessness, Klarence Kneeble Jr ("Kid Knee" to his fr-... acquaintances) didn't rate highly on the "terrifying visage of dribbling fury" front.

  Shaped like a pear with arms, dressed in faded kevlycra, the Kid would find it hard to terrorise a granny, let alone the hardened scum of the galaxy. Johnny grudgingly allowed his regard for the pathetic specimen to crank its way down from "low-level loathing" to "pity". This was happening with annoying regularity, and didn't tend to last long.

  Some mutants were born with psionic powers. Others could knock down walls with their fingertips, or sprout claws from their elbows, or fire digestive acid from their nipples, or any one of a million "defects" that could potentially come in handy.

  The Kid had been born with his face on his right knee. End of story.

  It was hard to imagine any situation where the special talent of having a biting-altitude of half a metre would save the day. Johnny shook his head and returned his mind to the current dilemma.

  When confronted by further demands for information, Standing Algie, to Johnny's surprise, had eschewed the "your-pet-freak-doesn't-scare-me" attitude and slipped instead into a bizarre rendition of the "don't know nuffink" routine.

  "Tell me more about Grinn."

  "Who?"

  "You know who. Mister Grinn. Mister-snecking-evil-crimelord-Grinn."

  "I... I don't know any Grinn..."

  "A second ago you fingered a guy who could lead me to him, now you've never heard of him. Spare me the sneck, Algie..."

  "W-what guy? I don't know no-"

  "A scientist, you said. Man called Koszov."

  "Don't know any Koszov..." His eyes bulged, the ragtag remains of his stomach bubbling over. "I'm snecking dying here!" he squealed, as if suddenly remembering, "I need a hospit-"

  "I'm not buying it, bozo. Spill."

  This, as it turned out, was a bad choice of words. The guy's guts were already making a spirited - and noisy - stab at freedom. Johnny sighed.

  "If I get you to a doctor, you'll tell me what you know, right?"

  "I told you! I don't know anyt-"

  "Yes or no, Algie. Simple as that. 'Alive or dead', remember?"

  "Boddah's piss, I'll tell you whatever you want! Whatever! Just get me to a d... kk... a doct... a... hkk..."

  "Algie?"

  The man's eyes crossed. A strange noise bubbled in the back of his throat.

  "Algie? Algie!" Johnny shook the moist body, stopping when it occurred to him that there probably wasn't much holding the scraps together anyway. Changing tack, he scrabbled in the utility pockets of his belt, hunting medical supplies.

  Not that he tended to carry them. Or would know what to do with them even if he did. He was in the business of making holes, not fixing them

  He swore out loud. Algie choked, eyes bulging like pingpong balls.

  "Kid!" Johnny shouted.

  A meaty leg appeared around a hunk of wreckage, piggy eyes wincing. "W-what...?" it quailed, chunky fingers covering its eyes at the first hint of blood.

  "I need some..." Johnny frowned, on unfamiliar ground. "I don't know... bandages. Or something. Medicine!"

  "Why?"

  "Why do you think? He's dying! Look!"

  The command was a mistake. The Kid looked.

  It was testament to a lifetime of coping with his deformity that, when he fainted, he tumbled backwards onto his well-padded arse rather than a fatal slump onto his knees.

  "Kkk!" was Algie's response. And, as it turned out, his last word.

  There was a noise like something wet hitting the ground, and it was only when the sudden mist of red vapour cleared, and a single moist eyeball slurped stickily from the pommel of his helmet that Johnny realised what had happened.

  Algernon "Standing" MacGregor-Durant's head had exploded like an overripe melon.

  "This," said Johnny to no one in particular, "is so snecked-up."

  THREE

  "And would regularly descend upon isolated coastal villages in their warships - known, by the way, as Lungboats - with the sole aim of raping livestock, slaughtering men and looting from women."

  Grin, smarm, grin, puff-out chest, grin.

  "Our archaeological digs in actual Viking settlements paint a disturbing picture of this horrific and savage race," (frown, earnest shake of head, grin) "which, we now know, were directly responsible for the collapse of the Roman empire, the disappearance of Atlantis and, significantly, the loss of the Sphinx's nose." (pause, grin, ingratiating blush) "Naturally all this is covered in the new book Ignoble Savages, by me, Marteh Gumption. In all good dataoutlets, ahaha."

  Grin, smarm, nod.

  The crowd cheered with an intensity beyond the realms of mere obsession and breaching the turgid waters of religion. Somewhere at the front a trio of Urchinslags from Kapardia 9 waved their spines suggestively, at which the man on the stage unleashed a withering assault of embarrassed waves in their direction. All but one fainted, and she was left hyperventilating through her thirteen anus-mouths.

  At the back of the stage a holographic banner opened; a vast grinning representation of Professor Marteh Gumption, magnified so enormously that each tooth reflected the lights in a supernova of smarm. The man himself, brandishing lecture notes and a copy of his book, basked in the adulation of his flock grinning, nodding, puffing out his chest and grinning some more.

  Such was the volume of applause that the unmistakable sound of someone smashing chairs in fury at the back went entirely unnoticed.

  PastCon, the industry festival for historians, archaeologists, palaeontologists, revisionists, recordists, evolutionists, macrodimensionalists, tempusfugitists and thimble collectors,2 was traditionally held throughout the first ten storeys of the Kentucky Fried Holiday Inn on the halfworld Sebraxus. Given the propensity for the attendees - released from the drudgery of their professional lives - to go overboard on drinks, narcotic substances and pandimensional blue movies, any hopes of confining them quickly faded. By the end of the week, Sebraxus would become a commune for spaced-out professors, considering complex historical problems through a haze of uppers, down
ers, inners, outers, rounders and throughers. This was considered all part of the convention "experience", and was therefore a taboo subject for the rest of the year.

  2. Who, lacking the organisation or financial clout to hold their own intergalactic meeting, were the subject of almost parental pity on the part of whichever trade-event they decided to piggyback. The DeathRock MusicFest of '34, during which the popular "Skreeming Angst" range of thimbles were launched, was amongst their most successful years.

  On the first night of the current shebang, such wilful disgrace had yet to be embraced. The hotel bar was a quiet zone of concentrated drinking, where historians with unfashionable specialisms - theorists in temporal impossibility, ethertologists, proponents of big bang denial - vented their bitterness in a storm of silent alcoholism. The multi-limbed alien behind the bar distributed drinks wordlessly, well used to the kamikaze approach to drunkardness, and in quiet moments traded wagers with the AI drinks dispenser as to which customer would perish first.

  The one small fly in the barman's ointment was the patron occupying the dingiest alcove-stall, whose thickly accented calls for mead, of all things, were growing progressively louder. On the somewhat redundant premise of collecting used glasses (for which a small army of drones and clonepets were poised), the barman slithered from his hangperch and slipped in for a closer look.

  The customer was human, the barman was fairly sure, but if he was indeed a historian it was for an obscure branch of research involving, by the looks of it, a prodigious amount of firepower, blunt weaponry, grizzled attitude and ultraviolence.

  The man was big - easily seven foot tall, with shoulders stolen from a steroid-abusing bull. Draped across his neck and chest was a thick pelt - gronkhide, by the barman's estimation - which only half succeeded in concealing the arsenal of knives, grenades and pointy objects poking from his armoured jerkin. That his only projectile weapon was a small handblaster was not reassuring: the giant looked as though he could stamp his authority onto a crowd of aggressors using a toothpick.