9 Tales From Elsewhere 4

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  "I'll ruin you, I swear it. I'll call the police and testify myself. I'll have this place shut down in a week."

  The robot smile. "As a lawyer, I'm sure you're aware of what an accomplice is. You provided us with the DNA. We would never have gone after this man if you hadn't come to us first. In a court of law you would be convicted of aiding those men for killing three people. One of them was a little girl."

  "I know she was a little girl!" Greg shouted. "And her mother..."

  "Yes. But the fact remains, this is your fault. You came to us."

  "By referral only, huh?"

  Mother nodded. "Shall we continue?" She didn't wait for his answer.

  The last video was of Irving. The strangeness was gone, Greg could tell this was the real Shawn Irving. He was sitting in a police interrogation room, a heavy bandage on his right shoulder, his dreads free and dangling in his face. By the way his shoulders were heaving, he was clearly crying. The officer held files just in view of the camera and Mother paused the video so they could be read.

  She said, "Mr. Irving is in prison on a $10,000 bond. He killed two men, the ones that killed his girlfriend and daughter. The police had a BOLO on him after the store clerk showed them the video. They found him with the murder weapon in his pants, bleeding out next to his victims. He plead guilty to manslaughter, and claimed he was beside himself with grief.” She stopped the video. “Consider him Duped. He won't bother you again."

  Greg was speechless. His mind was wrecked and he did the only thing that felt right; he dropped his head in his hands and wept.

  Mother gave him a moment, then opened the door. He stood and she extended a hand to him. In it was a business card. "Your referral card. Use it wisely."

  Greg took the card and slumped toward the elevator. "I won't pay you for this," he said.

  Mother nodded. "Then I suggest you find someone to refer to us. Otherwise we'll be in touch."

  ><><

  The bar was empty except for Greg and Buddy Alton. They sat together, this time at a table instead of the bar. A pile of shot glasses surrounded a half empty pitcher of beer between them.

  "I should have stopped them," Greg said for the tenth time that night. "Aubrey was ok, I should have called it off."

  "For the record," Buddy said, "I don't blame you. It's completely natural to want revenge after something like that. From what you told me, this Irwin guy...

  "Irving," Greg snapped.

  "Irving. He sounded like trouble. Everything that happened probably would have happened eventually anyway."

  "Not definitely. Not until I showed up." He threw back another shot

  "It would have happened anyway," Buddy reiterated.

  "What do you know," Greg said. Something clicked in his mind and he cocked his head at his friend. "What do you know?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "Why did you have a referral card? Who did you Dupe?"

  Buddy smiled drunkenly. "I Duped "Filthy" Frankie Buchelli.

  Greg felt his jaw drop.

  Buddy continued. "It was perfect, they didn't even need his DNA. I got them to clone two of his dealers instead. One ratted him out and called in the bomb threat at our office while the other ran off with a duffel bag full of Frankie's heroin and money. So when Frankie whacked the snitch, the police were right on his trail. Needless to say they didn't have to look far for a motive. Plus they got his fingerprints on the murder weapon and a lock of his bloody hair in the dead clone's fingers."

  "Wow. Filthy freakin' Frankie." Greg raised his drink to Buddy and drank it after they clinked glasses.

  Outside, the sun was setting and people were starting to enter the bar. One of them was a client of Greg's, a sad sack that had been taken for over a million dollars in a bank scam. Greg had told him point blank he had no case. He had been a willing investor and it was all correct according to the law. The guy had been a mess when he left, and judging by the cheap liquor he bought, he hadn't gotten better.

  Greg excused himself and went to the bar. The two chatted for a few minutes, then Greg slid the man a business card from his pocket. Phil, the sad sack investor, stood up, hugged him, and practically danced out the door.

  Back at the table, Buddy asked how it went.

  "I told him they could get his money back and put the guy behind bars. I hope it wasn't a lie."

  "Feels better, right? Like you know you're not the only one that would do something like that. Plus you don’t owe them any money now."

  "Yeah it does feel better," Greg said. "It does."

  Both men took another drink.

  Greg said, "No, it doesn't."

  Buddy said, "No, it doesn't."

  "You know, as long as I live I'll never forget that picture I found in Shawn’s house," Greg said.

  Buddy didn't look at him, so he continued. "At first I only noticed Shawn, but I remember now there was a pretty light skinned girl in a black dress beside him. She had long hair, half red and half black that matched his Bulls hat. He must have loved the Bulls. And in his arms was a little girl, probably less than two at the time. She was so beautiful. They were all smiling. Happy together."

  There was a long, heavy silence. Buddy broke it with an odd, forced laugh. "You know the other dealer they cloned, the one that ran off with Frankie's drugs?"

  "What about him?"

  "They never found him. Last they saw him, driving away with his duffel bag, he was wearing a Bulls hat too."

  THE END

  RAINS OF LA STRANGE by Robert N. Stephenson

  Tyson fast dropped from the underside of the tower city. With ears popping with pressure changes and his communication’s shell crackling he knew if he didn’t get down fast, he would be killed. This was his punishment for a mistake. Tyson was to bring back his affection partner and the thought she had stolen from the thought vault of la Strange. No one stole in la Strange, it wasn’t even a concept in tune with the society; they were above such pettiness. The clouds rushed up at him, the drop line sang with tension.

  Tyson had trusted Shana but she had fled the tower city of la Strange to the city beneath the clouds. Her simple betrayal could end in his death. He’d wanted to drop faster but the winch operator said the stop would snap his back. Once into the under-damp he had to recover the thought and bring Shana back for adjustment, or termination if that failed. From sunlight he fell to the clouds, a blanket over the land and a cushion between the races; a soft barrier between the biological-machine-people of la Strange and the Thoughtless below. Humans also existed under the clouds but they only ever came out when it was time to trade. Most of the conflict, though restricted to the tidal prone city, was between the uber-intelligent la Strange and the lowly Thoughtless who existed in a primitive, almost technological society.

  Above him loomed the shadowed underside of the tower city, the winch handler now too small to see. It had been a year since he’d been under the civilized world and seen the massive tower that held it above the clouds. Even though he couldn’t see the base he knew it stretched out for fifteen kilometres below; he should touch land five kilometres from the barriers that protected the tower base.

  “Station.” He touched the interact stud on his throat.

  “Report.”

  “Dropping through clouds, any indications on target’s location?” He hoped the news was better than the last report.

  “Tracking system disabled. Last known location will show on your map. Proceed with caution. It is vital full retrieval be achieved.”

  “Tyson out.”

  Great. They didn’t know where she was and he had a city of at least a hundred thousand to search. With that many low lifes and their penchant for killing those from la Strange, it wasn’t going to be an easy visit.

  Why Shana had stolen the thought didn’t make much sense. Wasn’t she happy with the life they had and shared? Couldn’t she have asked for a change in the dendrite? She didn’t have to steal; you could easily apply for thought adjustments. The behaviour w
as no better than the Thoughtless.

  His system running auto mood stabilizers, pushed back the negativity he was thinking towards the woman his programming had paired him with. Did she have a serotonin deficit, he should have picked it up? That could have been fixed, it only took a small tweak to increase receptor sites; he’d done it himself on occasion. Her fleeing troubled him and once again he tried to boost release from the presynaptic cells. He felt a little better. Tyson pulled the thought he’d been trying run from the reader at the base of his skull, now wasn’t the time to be messing about. He let the thick layer of skin flap closed over the reader and then put the disk in his pocket. He would hit the dark clouds soon and be subjected to the inclement weather; he needed everything sealed. To those in the under-damp he would be little more than a human looking machine to be broken up and sold as parts. Know a Strang-er by the green of their eyes; something that always gave them away, much like the muddy brown of the Thoughtless gaze said no one home. He really didn't want to die. He had trading currency which would buy some time, but how much time did he have? Would it keep him alive?

  Once through the thick, stormy clouds and into the damp air the scene cleared from cloud-grey opaqueness to the shifting shadows of rain. Tyson continued the long fall and hoped no one looked up. He could see the watery city of ‘Deep Sea’ its cylindrical structures glowing with porthole lights and tower lights dotted the wide expanse. One of his kind couldn’t hide amongst the great unclean for long. Shana would need help and what could she offer the Thoughtless that they couldn't just take? Currency wouldn’t last long, and she’d been missing for over a week.

  “Fifty metres,” he said into the mike. The fall slowed rapidly, the strain ached in his back, made his head light. “Ten. Hand winch slow.”

  He sank to his calves in the swampy ground, the tidal plain that surrounded the tower. He wasn’t travelling much at all when he touched down, such was the experience of the handler.

  Somehow this boggy land supported the lives of the Thoughtless but humans never lived here, they only came to trade for biological cargo, they took younger Thoughtless, from reports, and paid in cured animal meats. The humans of the under-damp were unfathomable.

  Tyson unclipped the buckle and stepped from the harness then watched as it disappeared into the clouds. To return he would have to walk to the base. He struggled through the seaweed stink and thick muddy- black sand to a raised road of stone. This road led to the trading station used between la Strange and the Thoughtless. In his mind the map of the land rotated, the roads highlighted in green. If he kept his pace quick he should make the city before the tide flooded the streets. A blue ‘x’ marked Shana’s last known location.

  The Thoughtless, what he believed to be the rejects of human design, lived there with their troubled, violent ways. They were an anomaly to la Strange, they coexisted in a way, accepted some unwritten law of unity, yet were quick to kill if antagonized. The humans also defied general explanation; they were the trading people from whom la Strange got its genetic material for life production, their full role in the great scheme of things well above his classification. In return they also took member of the population; volunteers they were called, for what purpose was never spoken about, if at all known. He had seen many film records of the humans, though the historians were thin on details. Some called them the great creators; others suggested they were the death bringers. The Thoughtless traded fish for medicines with la Strange, to fight the water disease and vitamins to control nutrient deficiencies in their diet. Knowing some of these details would help, but trade matters where not his concern, surviving in the under-damp was. He lowered the demister lenses over his eyes and started for the city.

  It always rained beneath la Strange. ‘Deep Sea’ was a wet place, a hazy place, a land inundated by the sea at night and wallowing in muddy muck during the oppressive days. All the training and information did little to lighten his mood, and down moods were not logical; a neurotransmitter adjustment, a quick blip of the axon, had things looking a bit brighter. Everywhere stank, his leather clothes were damp and the stone road stressed his ankles. Tyson pulled his coat tighter about his shoulders to fight off the cold; leather was useless against cold. Every breath became wet in his mouth and his part-machine body, the mechanisms that drove his lungs and heart were sluggishness under the elements. Even with his carbon fibre skeletal system he felt heavy, the world beneath the clouds weighed upon him.

  The closer he got to the town the more the air stank of fish, seaweed and corroding metal. It would be safer to enter the town via the docks, the last known location for Shana. Tyson left the road and waded to the nearest structure. About twenty anchored boats stuck out of the mud, the returning tide sloshing about their crusty hulls. Green and black-slimed water lapped at age-browned pylons and the rusty red wall of a submerged building; all sound was muffled under the drum of rain on metal roofs, metal walkways and long wooden jetties. In the haze he saw a body wearing la Strange uniform tied to a pylon, its eyes cut out, gaping wounds about its head and chest. This was what he was meant to find, Shana’s last location alright. After the Thoughtless had taken what they wanted they would leave the rest as fish food. The body was a mess, already it had been through a few feedings. Shana was dead. Something dropped over him, a thought, a connection with the body but he was quick to push it aside. He searched what was left of the uniform - the body was female, he could work out that much - there was nothing; absolutely all technology has been stripped from her. He rearranged priorities to exclude his and her interactive relationship; it helped distract him from the water's nauseating putridity. He considered Shana's and his mutual affections program, a brief flicker in his mind, it would have to wait for proper removal later; he had a job to complete first. He paused, the transition to logic wasn’t smooth, a stutter in his programming. The weather was interfering in his processes, he had to move faster.

  The thought was now somewhere in the city. How do you track a thought in an unenhanced population?

  “I found her,” he said into his throat stud, the bronze device bobbing on his Adam's apple, the copper strap cutting into his reddening neck. “The target is dead.”

  “The Thought?” the reply through his ear shell.

  “Not here.”

  “Find it.”

  “Understood.” Water seeped past his collar and down his back. “What is the nature of the missing thought?” Shana could have taken anything; he’d given her the access codes to the thought vault; it was part of the affection/share commitment after all. He trusted her, supported her views on life, the research she had been doing on future emotional development in the population. Had she just been using him? He wasn’t sure how he felt about the concept.

  The interact hissed with white noise, the world crackled with the sound of precipitation on overhead power lines; a dull song of greyness. Grey light and camera towers looked down like dead eyes on a world they no longer cared for; a sign of times forgotten.

  “Repeat. What is the nature of the thought?”

  Tyson climbed the gangway to the top of the docks, the tide was rising and he needed a safe place to wait out the night. Low, cylindrical buildings, pressure chambers, many centuries old, pressed up against each other, intersected by laneways and platforms that led down to the docks. In the diminishing daylight soft yellow glows could be seen in some of the buildings’ porthole windows.

  Once free of the rising tide for a time he walked the cobbled lanes looking for an inn, somewhere safe. Still there was only noise in his ear shell. Though he saw no one Tyson knew eyes watched his every move.

  The ear shell sparked back into life. “You must find... “ Pause, “... forbidden...”

  “Repeat?” Tyson didn't like the sound of the relayer's voice. It sounded different . He sheltered in a hatchway. How did she manage to get a forbidden thought? His code only allowed access to common thoughts for her studies. “Who is speaking?” He knew most of the relayers.

&nb
sp; “Find her.”

  “I told you I have found her. Who are you and what is this forbidden thought?” Couldn't the relayer hear him?

  “Find her.” The connection dropped out.

  A dead fish lay on the walk outside the closed hatch for Swampy’s Inn. The silver skin sparkled against the greys and seaweed greens of the buildings. Tyson tried the hatch, the locking ring was dogged. No lights glowed in the street, no candles burned in the portals; algae stained the glass. Tyson thumped on the hatch. The hatch was thick, his fist cold. He had to get indoors, out of the rain, out of the dulling light. The tide was rising and soon the city would be underwater.

  He pressed a handful of batteries against a porthole and tapped the glass. The lithium power cells should buy him food, drink and at least two nights' bed. The Thoughtless couldn’t resist batteries, they were one of the key sources of trade between la Strange and the Thoughtless. They had many battery operated machines; lights, mixers and still warmers and some basic communications gear for trade discussions. While humans traded in living people for genetic material, La Strange was less callous. Candlelight drifted across the green, a flicker, a shadow; a haggard face against the glass.

  “Strange – er!” it cried.

  “Let me in.” Tyson tapped the batteries again. They were better than coin and would guarantee safety of a kind. Strange-ers might have been hated and hunted outside of visitation times but throw in a handful of power cells and the Thoughtless would become your long lost brother.

  A clang of steel rang into the fading light as the locking wheel spun. The hatch opened outwards.

  “Alkaline?” the white, haggard face said, thick eyebrows covering his eyes.

  “Lithium.”

  “In, in, my friend.” The man stepped aside. “Get out of the cold, I’ve got a broth on, if yer hungry?” His dirty, long shirt barely covered his thick waist; a wide dark stain spread out from the neckline.