Her eyes bore the heavy makeup she wore to work. “Jesus,” Marlene said. She screwed up her face. “You smell like someone’s been putting out cigarets in your pockets. Where the hell have you been?”
“Smoking cigars with a rentacop. He wears so much equipment and armor he has to wear a truss, you know that? He got drunk and told me.”
“Which rentacop?”
“One who works for the hospital.”
“The hospital? We’re going to take off the hospital?” Marlene shook her head. “That’s pretty serious, Ric.”
Ric was wondering if she’d heard take off used that way on the vid. “Yes.” He eased the whiskey down his throat again. Better.
“Isn’t that dangerous? Taking off the same hospital where you were a patient?”
“We’re not going to be doing it in person. We’re going to have someone else do the work.”
“Who?”
“Cartoon Messiah, I think. They’re young and promising.”
“What’s the stuff in the plastic bottle for?”
He looked at her, swirling the whiskey absently in the glass. “The stuff’s mostly potassium hydroxide,” he said. “That’s wood lye. You can use it to make plastic explosive.”
Marlene shrugged, then reached in her pocket for a cigaret. Ric frowned.
“You seem not to be reacting to that, Marlene,” he said. “Robbing a hospital is serious, plastic explosive isn’t?”
She blew smoke at him. “Let me show you something.” She went back into the living room and then returned with her pouch belt. She fished in it for a second, then threw him a small aerosol bottle.
Ric caught it and looked at the label. “Christ,” he said. He blinked and looked at the bottle again. “Jesus Christ.”
“Ten-ounce aerosol bottle of mustard gas,” Marlene said. “Sixteen dollars in Starbright scrip at your local boutique. For personal protection, you know? The platinum designer bottle costs more.”
Ric was blinking furiously. “Christ,” he said.
“Some sixteen-year-old asshole tried to rape me once,” Marlene said. “I hit him with the gas and now he’s reading braille. You know?”
Ric took another sip of the whiskey and then wordlessly placed the mustard gas in Marlene’s waiting palm. “You’re in America now, Ric,” Marlene said. “You keep forgetting that, singing your old Spanish marching songs.”
He rubbed his chin. “Right,” he said. “I’ve got to make adjustments.”
“Better do it soon,” Marlene said, “If you’re going to start busting into hospitals.”
9
The next day Ric went to the drugstore, where he purchased a large amount of petroleum jelly, some nasal mist that came in squeeze bottles, liquid bleach, a bottle of toilet cleaner, a small amount of alcohol-based lamp fuel, and a bottle of glycerin. Then he drove to a chemical supply store, where he bought some distilling equipment and some litmus paper.
On his way back he stopped by an expensive liquor store and bought some champagne. He didn’t want the plastic bottles the domestic stuff came in; instead he bought the champagne imported from France, in glass bottles with the little hollow cone in the bottom. It was the biggest expense of the day.
10
Ric was distilling acrolein out of toilet bowl cleaner and glycerine when Marlene came home from work, cursing at her boss from the moment she entered the apartment. She watched as Ric put the acrolein into the nasal mist squeeze bottles, which he’d emptied and washed earlier.
“What’s that, Ricardo?” she asked. He gave her a bottle.
“Use it instead of the mustard gas,” he said. “It isn’t quite so … devastating.”
“I like being devastating,” Marlene said. She put the squeeze bottle back on the table and poured a glass of champagne.
“I made plastic explosives today,” Ric said. “They’re in the icebox.”
“Great.” She put some pills in her mouth and swallowed them down with champagne.
“I’ll show you a trick,” Ric said. He got some twine from the cupboard, cut it into strips, and soaked it in the lamp fuel. While it was soaking he got a large mixing bowl and filled it with water and ice. Then he tied the string around the empty champagne bottles, about three inches above the topmost point of the little hollow cone on the bottom. He got his lighter and set fire to the thread. It burned slowly, with a cool blue flame, for a couple minutes. Then he took the bottle and plunged it into the ice water. It split neatly in half with a crystalline snapping sound.
Ric took some of the plastic explosive and packed it into the bottom of the champagne bottle. He pushed a pencil into the middle of it; making a narrow hole for the detonator.
“There,” he said. “That’s a shaped charge. I’ll make the detonators tomorrow, out of peroxide, acetone, and sulphuric acid. It’s easy.”
“What’s a shaped charge, Ricardo?”
“It’s used for blowing a hole through armor. Steel doors, cars. Tanks. Things like that.”
Marlene looked at him appraisingly. “You’re adjusting yourself to America, all right,” she said.
11
Ric took a bus to Phoenix and rented a motel room with a kitchenette, paying five days in advance and using a false name. In the motel he changed clothes and took a cab to the Bar. Super Virgin waved as he came in. She was with her friend, Captain Islam. He was a long, gawky boy, about sixteen, with his head shaved and covered with the tattoos of Urban Surgery. He hadn’t had any alterations yet, or the eye implants this group favored. Instead he wore complicated mirrorshades with twin minicameras, registering radiation in UV and infrared as well as the normal spectrum, mounted above the bridge of the nose and liquid-crystal video displays on the backs of the eyepieces that received input from the minicameras or from any vid program he felt like seeing. Ric wondered if things weren’t real to him, not unless he saw them on the vid. He didn’t talk much, just sat quietly behind his drink and his shades and watched whatever it was that he watched. The effect was unsettling and was probably meant to be. Ric could be talking to him and would never know whether the man was looking at him or at Video Vixens. Ric had first pegged him for a user, but Super Virgin said not.
Ric got a whiskey at the bar and joined the two at their table. “Slow night?” he asked.
“We’re waiting for the jai alai to come on,” Super Virgin said. “Live from Bilbao. We’ve got some money down.”
“Sounds slow to me.”
She gave a brittle laugh. “Guess so, Marat. You got any ideas for accelerating our motion?”
Ric frowned. “I have something to sell. Some information. But I don’t know if it’s something you’d really want to deal with.”
“Too hot?” The words were Captain Islam’s. Ric looked at his own distorted face in the Captain’s spectacles.
“Depends on your concept of hot. The adjective I had in mind was big.”
“Big.” The word came with a pause before and after, as if Captain Islam had never heard the word before and was wondering what it meant.
Ric took a bottle of nasal mist out of his pocket and squeezed it once up each nostril.
“Got a virus?” Virgin asked.
“I’m allergic to Arizona.”
Captain Islam was frowning. “So what’s this action of yours, buck?” he asked.
“Several kilos of Thunder.”
Captain Islam continued to stare into the interior of his mirrors. Super Virgin burst into laughter.
“I knew you weren’t here as a tourist, Marat!” she cackled. “‘Several kilos!’ One kilo is weight! What the hell is ‘several’?”
“I don’t know if you people can move that much,” Ric said. “Also, I’d like an agreement. I want twenty percent of the take, and I want you to move my twenty percent for me, free of charge. If you think you can move that kind of weight at all, that is.” He sipped his whiskey. “Maybe I should talk to some people in California.”
“You talk to them, you end up dead,
” Virgin said. “They’re not friendly to anyone these days, not when Thunder’s involved.”
Ric smiled. “Maybe you’re right.”
“Where is it? Who do we have to steal it from?”
“Another thing,” Ric said. “I want certain agreements. I don’t want any excessive force used, here. Nobody shot.”
“Sometimes things happen,” Captain Islam said. Ric had the feeling that the Captain was definitely looking at him this time. “Sometimes things can’t be avoided.”
“This stuff is guarded by an organization who won’t forget it if any of their people get hurt,” Ric explained. “If you try to move this kind of weight, word’s going to get out that it’s you that has the Thunder, and that means these characters are going to find out sooner or later. You might be tempted to give me to them as a way of getting the heat off you. Which would be a mistake, because I intend on establishing an alibi. That would mean that they’re going to be extremely upset with you misleading them.” Ric sipped his whiskey and smiled. “I’m just looking out for all our interests.”
“A hospital,” Captain Islam said. He shook his head. “You want us to take off a hospital. The one up in Flag, right? You stupid shit.”
“I have a plan,” Ric said. “I know their defenses, to a certain point. I know how they’re organized. I know how they think.”
“That’s Folger Security, for chrissake,” Captain Islam said. “They’re tough. They don’t forget when someone makes idiots out of them.”
“That’s why it’s got to be my rules,” Ric said. “But I should probably mention something here.” He grinned, seeing the smile reflected in the Captain’s quicksilver eyes. “It’s an inside job,” Ric said. “I’m friends with someone on their force.”
Virgin whooped and banged him on the shoulder with her left hand, the one with the sheathed claws. “Why didn’t you say so?” she said.
“You people,” Ric said. “You’ve got to learn to be patient.”
12
Treble whimpered against a throbbing bass line. Shafts of red sunset sliced into the violet depth of the Grand Canyon.
Marlene backed, spun, turned back to Ric, touched palms. She was wearing Indian war paint. Colors zigzagged across her face. Her eyes and smile were bright.
The band was dressed like hussars, lights glittering off brocade, the lead singer sweating under her dolman, threatening to split her tight breeches with each of her leaps. Her eye makeup dazzled like butterfly wings. Her lyrics were all heroism, thunder, revolution. The romantic wave against which Cartoon Messiah and Urban Surgery were a cool reaction.
Marlene stepped forward, pressing herself against him. He circled her with his arms, felt her sacral dimples as they leaned back and spun against each other. At the end of the five-bar chorus she gave a grind of her hips against him, then winked.
He laughed. Here he was, establishing his alibi in grand style, while, back in Flagstaff, Cartoon Messiah were working for him. And they didn’t even know it.
13
Readiness crackled from Ric’s nerves as he approached the hotel door. They could try to kill him, he knew. Now would be the best time. Black Thunder tended to generate that kind of behavior. He’d been telling them he had ideas for other jobs, that he’d be valuable to them alive, but he couldn’t be sure if they believed him.
The door opened and Super Virgin grinned at him with her metal teeth. “Piece of cake, Marat,” she said. “Your cut’s on the table.”
The hotel room was dark, the walls draped in blueblack plastic. More plastic sheets covered the floors, the ceiling, some of the furniture. Coldness touched Ric’s spine. There could be a lot of blood spilled in here, and the plastic would keep it from getting on anything. Computer consoles and vid sets gave off quiet hums. Cables snaked over the floor, held down with duct tape. On the table was a half-kilo white paper packet. Captain Islam and Two-Fisted Jesus sat beside it, tapping into a console. Jesus looked up.
“Just in time,” he said, “for the movies.”
He was a skinny boy, about eighteen, his identity obscured by the obsessive mutilations of Urban Surgery. He wore a T-shirt featuring a picture of a muscular, bearded man in tights, with cape and halo. Here in this place, the hotel room he had hung with plastic and filled with electronics, he moved and spoke with an assurance the others hadn’t absorbed, the kind of malevolent grace displayed by those who gave law and style to others, unfettered by conscience. Ric could appreciate Jesus’s moves. He’d had them once himself.
Ric walked to the paper packet and hefted it. He tore open a corner, saw a row of little white envelopes, each labeled Genesios Three with the pharmaceutical company sigil in the corner. He didn’t know a test for B-44 so he just stuffed the envelope in his pocket.
“This is gonna be great,” Super Virgin said. She came up behind him and handed him a highball glass half-filled with whiskey. “You got time to watch a flick? We went in packing cameras. We’re gonna cut a documentary of the whole thing and sell it to a station in Nogales. They’ll write some scenes around it and use it on an episode of VidWar.” She giggled. “The Mexicans don’t care how many gringo hospitals get taken off. They’ll put some kind of plot around it. A dumb love story or something. But it’s the highest-rated program, ’cause people know it’s real. Except for Australian Rules Firefight Football, and that’s real, too.”
Ric looked around and found a chair. It seemed as if these people planned to let him live. He reached into his pocket and fired a round of nasal mist up each nostril. “Sure. I’ll watch,” he sniffed. “I got time.”
“This is a rough cut only, okay?” Captain Islam’s voice. “So bear with us.”
There was a giant-sized liquid-crystal vid display set up on the black plastic on the wall. A picture sizzled into existence. The hospital, a vast concrete fortress set in an aureole of halogen light. Ric felt his tongue go dry. He swallowed with difficulty.
The image moved, jolting. Whoever was carrying the camera was walking, fast, across the parking lot. Two-Fisted Jesus tapped the keys of his computer. The image grew smooth. “We’re using a lot of computer enhancement on the vid, see?” Super Virgin said. “We can smooth out the jitters from the moving camera. Except for select bits to enhance the ver—the versi—”
“Verisimilitude,” said Captain Islam.
“Right. Just to let everyone know this is the real thing. And we’re gonna change everyone’s appearance electronically, so no one can recognize us.”
Cut to someone moving into the hospital’s front door, moving right past the metal detectors. Ric saw a tall girl, blonde, dressed in pink shorts and a tube top. White sandal straps coiled about her ankles.
“A mercenary,” Virgin said. “We hired her for this. The slut.”
Captain Islam laughed. “She’s an actress,” he explained. “Trying for a career south of the border. Wants the publicity.”
The girl stepped up to a guard. Ric recognized Lysaght. She was asking directions, pointing. Lysaght was gazing at her breasts as he replied. She smiled and nodded and walked past. He looked after her, chewing his cigar, hiking up his gunbelt. Ric grinned. As long as guards like Lysaght were around, nothing was safe.
The point of view changed abruptly, a subjective shot, someone moving down a hospital corridor. Patients in ordinary clothes moving past, smiling.
“We had a camera in this necklace she was wearing. A gold owl, about an inch long, with 3D vidcams behind the eyes. Antenna in the chain, receiver in her bag. We pasted it to her chest so it would always be looking straight forward and wouldn’t get turned around or anything. Easy stuff.”
“We gotta do some pickups, here,” Jesus said. “Get a picture of the girl moving down the corridor. Then we tell the computer to put all the stripes on the walls. It’ll be worth more when we sell it.”
Subjective shot of someone moving into a woman’s toilet, stepping into a stall, reaching into a handbag for a pair of coveralls.
“Another pick
up shot,” Jesus muttered. “Gotta get her putting on her coveralls.” He made a note on a pad.
The point of view lurched upward, around, out of the stall. Centered on a small ventilator intake high on a wall. Hands came into the picture, holding a screwdriver.
“Methanethiol,” Super Virgin said. “That stuff’s gonna be real useful from now on. How’d you know how to make it?”
“Elementary chemistry,” Ric said. He’d used it to clear out political meetings of which the Cadillacs didn’t approve.
The screen was off the ventilator. Hands were reaching into the bag, taking out a small glass bottle. Carefully loosening the screw top, the hands placed the bottle upright in the ventilator. Then the point of view dipped, a hand reached down to pick up the ventilator screen. Then the ventilator screen was shoved violently into the hole, knocking the bottle over.
Airborne methanethiol gave off a horrible, nauseating smell at one-fiftieth of a part per billion. The psychology wing of the hospital was going to get a dose considerably in excess of that.
The subjective camera was moving with great rapidity down hospital corridors. To a stairwell, then down.
Cut to Super Virgin in a phone booth. She had a small voice recorder in her hand, and was punching buttons.
“Freeze that,” said Two-Fisted Jesus. Virgin’s image turned to ice. Jesus began tapping keys.
The tattooing shifted, dissolved to a different pattern. Super Virgin laughed. Her hair shortened, turned darker. The black insets over her eyes vanished. Brown eyes appeared, then they turned a startling pale blue.
The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection Page 66