“Don’t worry about it,” Emily says. “Zack’s got more sense than to…”
She sees the look on my face and stops talking.
~
The ball hits my palm. I turn to see Emily standing in the doorway of the utility block. She has an incredulous look on her face.
“Danny? What the hell…?”
“What? What’s the matter?”
“What’s the damn matter? What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Nothing. Just thinking. Why’re you back so soon?”
“So soon? It’s six-thirty. I thought you were going to fix dinner today. You promised me. What is this? What the hell are you doing, Danny?”
Six-thirty? That meant I’d been in here for four hours or more. I roll the ball across the floor and look around the room, suddenly bemused by the dull space. That long-ago summer’s day still lingers in my mind, but the memory of it is diminishing and instead the walls seem to be closing in on me. Four hours?
“I was just…”
Emily cups both hands over her mouth and drags them down over her jaw, stretching her bottom lip until it springs back.
“Is this what you’ve been doing all day? I’ve called you like ten times with no fucking answer. I was so worried I called the agency! Have you been in here all that time?”
I don’t know what to tell her. Could I really have been sitting here for four hours? I stare at the wall, at the dark grey shape staining the masonry. It looks blurred; there’s something in front of it, another shape I begin to perceive floating there. That shape. The sight of it startles me causing me to sit up straight, my backbone pressing up hard against the wall behind me. There’s a chill that crawls along my spine and I tell myself it’s the cold brick, though I know it’s not. I look at the shape and it seems to have grown to an obscene mass that’s bearing down on me. I can’t believe Emily can’t see it too, though it’s obvious she can’t. In the midst of my confusion, I think of all the men I’ve neutered. I recall the look in their eyes during their evanescence, like they can sense the catastrophic change in their being, the precise nature of their loss. Sitting on the hard floor I have one cogent thought: can a man also sense when he’s lost his mind?
Emily begins to cry, there in the doorway. She slumps her shoulders, her chin resting on her breastbone. Her hand brushes through her hair, sweeping back the fringe that’s covering her eyes.
“Danny, what’s happened to you? What’s happened? You used to be…so different. You used to…to do things. Take an interest. You used to…”
I should take her in my arms right now. I should get up from this dirty floor and embrace her. I should whisper in her ear that I’m just fine, that everything is just fine. I should say I’m there with her, by her side just like always. But instead I sit on the cold concrete and look dumbly up at her stricken face, fixed to the spot by my own…
I hate that word.
Impotence.
~
A few weeks later, I arrive home from work to find Emily sitting in the lounge on our Kinetic KarmaChair, nursing a glass of something or other, and gazing at the ethereal holographic shapes morphing before her eyes. Since our trip to the park I’ve been a little more attentive, making all kinds of promises. Some of them I even intend to keep. When the snap of the door doesn’t bring her out of her semi-trance, I guess she’s back to ignoring me again, and I can imagine why.
It must be—I can only assume—what I’ve begun to think of, in my own crass way, as a red day.
Every month when her period arrives, Em blames me, even accusing me of not having my heart in the job of impregnating her, as if my reluctance to father a child could somehow inhibit my fertility. I have my suspicions as to the real reason she isn’t getting pregnant, mainly concerning the possible side effects of my occupation. During assignments, I wear a lead-lined Kevlar codpiece—standard issue. Although it’s designed to protect me from all the exposure to the sterilization ray, I still think there’s something not quite…right. I haven’t told Emily this. A few months ago she arranged a complete mediscreen, including fertility testing, so now she’s insisting I undergo similar tests. My reluctance to discuss this is at the core of our current marital strife.
What I haven’t told Em is that I secretly had the tests done three days ago—agency policy. Back in ’49 an agent neutered a bunny called Kapp Garrigan during a routine assignment. Kapp Garrigan, it turned out, was actually Kapp Garrigan III, and he came from a moneyed family. His daddy’s expensive lawyers subsequently discovered the agent who executed the warrant was himself sterile. They brought a case against the state citing that the agent’s condition represented a conflict of interest, successfully arguing that the judgement of any agent who is physically unable to procreate may be psychologically hindered and consequently might jeopardize his ability to make a cogent decision regarding the enforcement of a live warrant. It was bullshit, of course, but erudite bullshit that won the day and brought into existence the Garrigan Clause: infertile men cannot be licensed and if an active agent is subsequently found to have become infertile he must immediately relinquish his gun and his badge and withdraw from service. QED: If it turns out I’m sterile, I’m desk-bound for the rest of my life.
I’m still waiting for the results. I don’t know why I haven’t admitted it to Emily. It’s something inside me, something deep down. I guess I’m prolonging the calm before the hurricane.
“Since when have you become so attuned to the MesmeriChannel?”
Emily looks up. She even smiles. Maybe it’s not a red day after all.
“Oh…er…you know, since we…”
“Since we started having problems, you mean?” I say. I toss my coat onto the sofa.
“Danny, it doesn’t…”
I kneel down at her feet, like I’m about to propose again.
“Em, you know I still do love you, right? You’re everything to me. I mean it. I love you very much. I know things have been difficult lately. The way I feel about…you know…a child. I’m not just being stubborn.”
“I know, Danny, and I wasn’t even watching that…I forgot it was even on. I was just…thinking.”
Emily’s whole demeanour appears strange, almost ethereal. She seems to be in some kind of a trance, but perhaps not brought on by the images.
“What were you thinking about?”
“Oh…about when I was five years old. About a doll my dad gave me for my birthday.”
“A doll? You were thinking about a doll?”
Emily’s cheeks flush.
“What was special about the doll, honey?” I try to hide the unease in my voice and maybe I manage it. Or maybe not.
“It was the most perfect doll I’d ever seen. It was made of cloth and had bright yellow hair. It had a dress with coloured polka dots and a pink printed face with rosy cheeks. She had bright red shoes and I called her Pompoms. I wanted to call her Pamela but I’d lost some of my milk teeth and it came out Pomla, so my dad called her Pompoms and then so did I.”
Emily laughs but her voice quavers on the edge of tears and my heart flips over.
“She was the most beautiful doll in the world,” she continues, “and I took her everywhere with me. She was the thing I cared about most and do you know why?”
“No.”
She looks into my face and smiles. “Because my daddy gave her to me.”
“Ah. I see. So…where is she now, old Pompoms?”
Emily’s face sags and the colour drains from her cheeks.
“I burned her. After Marnie, after I came back from the hospital. I took her into the utility room and set fire to her hair, her beautiful yellow hair.”
Tears collect at the corners of her eyes. I clutch her hand even tighter and stroke her arm.
“Aww…no, honey, please. I didn’t…”
Emily steels herself.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m sorry, Danny.”
“I just want to know what’s upset you, that’s all.”
“Upset?” She utters a little laugh and shakes her head.
“What is it? Is it work?”
“Work? No. Work…work is fine. Bogden gave me that brief I’d been pitching for. Did I tell you? I can’t remember. I’m all over the place lately.”
“What’s the problem then? Just tell me, I want to…”
“Problem?” She looks me right in the eye. “Danny, there’s no problem.”
“What is it then?” I’m beginning to get a feeling. It’s her expression. Suddenly, I know what’s coming. I know.
“I’m…I’m pregnant, Danny. I’m pregnant.”
Planets collide inside my head. Normally, it might take me time to digest the enormity of it. I might need to analyse my wife’s face whilst turning that brief, yet colossal, sentence over and over in my mind, scrutinizing it from every angle, breaking it down into single words and translating every one of those words individually, to ensure I haven’t mistaken their significance one iota. Danny. I’m. Pregnant. But there’s no confusion now, no bewilderment. I get it instantly. I understand it utterly and completely.
I let go of her hand and sit, like a child at his mother’s knee, waiting for a story.
“You’re…pregnant?”
Emily wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and laughs as if she can’t quite believe it herself.
“Yes. I tested myself yesterday and it was positive, so I made an appointment today with Doctor Zool, and he just called…twenty minutes ago…to confirm it. I…Oh, Danny, it’s…”
She holds out her arms and I lift myself on shaky knees to embrace her, sinking into her breasts to save myself from collapsing to the floor. Emily strokes my hair and continues crying. Tears burn in my eyes, but I hold them back.
“It will be okay, Danny, I promise. Everything will be fine. You can be a wonderful daddy.”
~
The next day I turn the hybrid onto Norvega Street and head towards the agency HQ. I’m still three minutes away, but I can already see the Stratton Tower looming ahead like some monolithic temple. As I approach the turn-off to the underground parking bays I see that outside HQ a crowd has gathered, as usual. They are here almost every day now, waving placards and hurling abuse that would make an old hooker blush. There’s all kinds of folk in the melting pot; fathers, mothers, grandparents, teachers, waitresses, construction workers, cab drivers, secretaries, doctors and dentists, you name it. There are even small children sitting in motorbuggies with homemade signs forced into their tiny fists:
YOU MURDERED MY SISTER!
KILL SECTION 12!
NEUTER NAZIS!
Much of the throng is made up of members of Vas Defense, an extremely vocal anti-sterilization brigade who’ve recently started attacking agents and who attempt to inhibit our operations at every turn. They are also responsible for the sporadic firebombing of the BioTEK lab, which developed the neutering beam. Luckily, the lab is situated within a protective compound so the bombings generally only result in minor damage to the outer walls, well away from the research facility itself.
The majority of VD members are simply irate citizens who’ll only go so far. They daub slogans on company vehicles, smash the windows of District FSA Bureaus, and help finance propaganda messages throughout the cities. They label us Nazis, fascists, autocrats, despots and Blackshirts, utilising the whole lexicon of totalitarianism. Their favourite term of abuse is to refer to agents as Claubergs, after the notorious doctor who conducted horrific sterilization experiments at the Auschwitz concentration camp over a century ago.
Some of their members have resorted to more vicious attacks; a militant cell of Vas Defense were suspected of killing three of the city’s agents and of carrying out an assault two weeks ago on an agent called Jerry Frosche, a guy who sat at the next desk from mine. They removed his codpiece in a rundown hotel room in the notorious 5th District before neutering him with his own sterilization gun, then beat him around the head with a wrought-iron stake. Frosche still lies in a catatonic state in a darkened room at Zion International, with no visitors allowed.
I pass the rabble shaking their homemade placards and hurling abuse—as well as some valuable eggs—at my hybrid as I steer it down the ramp to the underground parking bays. I exit the vehicle and quickly scoop up the slimy remnants of albumen and yolk, then vacuum-seal the contents into a Mylar bag for later. Upstairs in the office, I pass Punta Sur, who’s holding a soya wrap and wiping mayo from his silk tie.
“How’d it go?” he says, not even looking up. “That Brooks guy. You get him?”
“Piece of cake.” My geniality sounds forced, even to me. Sur glances up and looks me in the eye, as if he’s noticed some inner turmoil, so I add, “Nice dance too. He really had some moves.”
Sur continues watching me for a long moment before he smiles and says, “Outstanding. By the way, Frosche is dead, this morning around ten. Massive internal haemorrhage.”
“Shit,” I say. So that makes four.
“Cap’s in there as we speak, with three investigators from IAD. It’s not pretty.”
As I walk towards my booth I glance over at Captain Blochbauer’s office. The blinds are closed.
A fellow agent, Wozniki, is sitting at his desk, writing something on a yellow notepad.
“You heard?” he says.
“Yeah, Punta just gave me the heads up.”
“Fuckin’ raw, man. His wife had to be sedated right there in the ward. She totally lost it. And those scumbags are still outside. They were fuckin’ cheering, man. You believe that?”
“Yeah. They’re not going away are they?”
“Remember when they first put this building up, and the glare from the sun when it hit the windows was melting cars and shit out on the sidewalk? Remember that? Some clown in the architect’s office had royally fucked up. Well, I’m thinking now, they should have left it like that instead of putting that black plastic stuff up to kill the glare. I’d like to see those VD fuckers congregate in that kind of heat. We could call it a happy accident. I think I’d enjoy watching them fry.”
I nod, and make the appropriate noises, but I’m not really listening to him. All I can think about is poor Jerry Frosche. I glance towards his empty cubicle, with a sudden sense of something moving closer, death moving closer, and of myself as the next in line. The thought makes me feel cold inside.
I hang up my overcoat and walk to the caffeine dispenser like a man in a trance. Returning to my cubicle, I take a welcome gulp of the brew and switch on my Comstat. The Bureau’s badge appears before being replaced by various icons. An amber box pops into the centre. It’s an attachment sent from the BioTEK lab. I sit and stare at it for a few minutes, the amber box glowing faintly like a pulsating virus, or like a gangrenous sore. Then I tap it with my finger, and the box opens, scattering attachments across the screen like cards dealt at a casino.
MEDISCREEN FILE62X
DEGENERATIVE RNA
PROTEIN/SIALIC ACID STAT
TESTICULAR MALFUNCTION
AGENCYDOC 16
DECODE/SUB-SECTION 11
RESULT: STERILE
I stare at the screen, resisting the urge to smash it to pieces and dance on its sorry remains. Instead, I shut down the device and flip the lid closed. I see the small Rorschach shape hanging at the far end of the office. This time my heart doesn’t beat any faster. Truth be told, I was almost expecting it, but waves of despair roll over my entire body. The feeling is almost physical and it’s an effort to remain upright and not slump into my chair beneath its weight. This has to be a mistake. It has to be. I think of the child Emily is carrying. My child. It couldn’t be anybody else’s. Could it? I feel sick and utterly despondent. I half expect the shape to be gone in a blink but when I squint into the dimness once more, I can see that it’s still there.
Without thinking, I punch my home number into the comms hub on my desk. No one answers. I scan the office. It’s a beehive, but nobody’s paying attention to me, until I stan
d up and Wozniki stops writing and leans back in his chair.
“You leaving?”
“Yeah. I…uh…I got some stuff to take care of.”
I grab my overcoat and head for the exit. Before I get there, somebody yanks my arm. It’s Punta Sur, although for a long time I just stare, not recognizing him.
“Where’re you going?” he says. “We’ve got a new Bunny for you. Just in.”
“Sir, I…”
“My secretary’s got the details.”
~
The building looks pretty dire, judging from the derelict facade. Broad collars of brown sludge hang from every window, advertising the place as a veritable guesthouse for all manner of slime moulds and damp spores that might care to take up residence. I suck in a lungful of acrid air, and then check my wrist hub.
FILE 7893/AH655: VANTAX, KEVIN J. DATE OF BIRTH: 01-12-28. LAST KNOWN LOCATION: APARTMENT 17b, 2216 REINA & SPARGO, 6th DISTRICT.
Vantax’s face hovers above my wrist, projected from the 3D hologram chip inside the hub. The lambent digital image turns ninety degrees to present me with his profile. I take a good long look at him, even though I’d already studied every zit and pore on his ugly mug as I’d headed out from HQ. What those protesters down there don’t realize is that we meticulously approach every operation; every detail is analysed and studied before the trigger is pulled. If we‘re going to strip-mine some poor schmuck of all his precious ore, then the very least we can do is to pay him the courtesy of executing the warrant with the utmost consideration. Every Bunny has his day in court and ample opportunity to abide by the law. That’s if he actually decides to attend—an opportunity Kevin Vantax has definitely ignored. He obviously had more pressing matters, such as hospitalizing the young lady who was carrying his fourth bastard because of her refusal to terminate the pregnancy. He’d been arrested and arraigned to appear before the judge the following month, but skipped bail to—as far as I know—hide out in apartment 17b at 2216 Reina.
I cross the road and enter the lobby, which is surprisingly neat, considering the terrible condition of the outside of the building. A hefty black guy sits behind reception watching a game show on a V-6 Plasmaset fixed high up on the wall. He glances at me as I approach the counter. I fish inside my overcoat for my FSA identity.
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