by M. Suddain
So there. That is why I don’t care for clowns. Is that enough reason, Colette? It is perhaps, too, why I’m somewhat allergic to birthdays. Somehow Doctor Rubin discovered these memories, and now he uses them to torture me – I suspect for fun – but also to leverage me into revealing useful information about Gladys. He can do his worst. Nothing he can do could ever be as bad as my eighth birthday party.
CONCLUDING NOTES ON A VISIT TO THE MIRROR LOUNGE
We stayed in the Mirror Lounge for a long while. A kind of sunset seemed to fall across the place, invisible shadows lengthened in the stillness. Gladys seemed happier than I’d ever seen her. I noticed she’d put the flower given to her in the lobby in her hair. The bracelet now glittered madly from her wrist, which she rested on the glass table. Her small, green-nailed hand sat upturned, pale as a fossil.
‘I’ve made a list of thirty-seven strategic weaknesses in this system,’ she said, putting down her glass. It’s so rare for her to voluntarily share something. ‘For a start, Cyranoids only have a sensory range of twenty feet.’
‘Cyranoids?’
‘That’s what they’re called.’
‘Who?’
‘The VIPs.’
‘And how have you come to know this?’
‘Observations.’
‘Just tell us, Gladys.’
‘First tell me what happens when we die, Jonathan.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘There are signs around the place. For human maintenance workers, I guess. They’re in ultraviolet so the guests won’t read them.’ She flicked the UV beam on her watch for a short burst, and we caught a glimpse of writing stamped on the table: ‘MIRROR LOUNGE, ARTEFACT 49278DJ’. She flashed it at her glass and we saw: ‘GUEST OBJECT 97RT – “GLASS”’. And a rectangular cluster of lines of varying widths that G said was some kind of tracking icon. ‘We have them on our wrists, see?’ She flashed her light on the back of my wrist and I was sickened to see a similar jail-bar grid.
‘They stamped us.’
‘Yep. And the corpses all have them. Anyway. There’s a sign on a maintenance hatch near our room: “WARNING. SECURITY-MONITORED HATCH. ENSURE CYRANOIDS INACTIVE BEFORE OPENING.”’
‘Gladys, you’re not going to go around causing trouble, are you?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing. Just …’ I couldn’t risk saying it out loud: that I was starting to suspect that I’d been tricked into bringing her here, possibly so they could have the contents of her head. I couldn’t tell her I was worried about what they might do to her, or that I feared she’d enact some desperate plan to get us out of this place – maybe a run on my contract – and that she’d do this before I had a chance to have my meal. The longer I spent in this place the more its horrors receded, and the more its potential pleasures came shyly into the light. Of course, it was possible she was experiencing this same effect. Maybe she was being seduced by potential pleasures of her own. The light from her bracelet was blinding. She had that far-gone look in her eyes. ‘I just need you to be careful.’
‘You don’t have to worry about me.’
‘You know I don’t.’
She went off into thought again. There was colour oozing from her pale skin. I knew tonight there would be wild entries in the temporary diary she’d created from hotel stationery: paragraphs of excruciating frankness; tracts which would shame those passages in the holy books stashed in our apartment for sacred, secret, soulful lust. You forget sometimes that this small/deadly creature is a woman/girl, and in some ways a fragile/hopeful one. I saw her tiny figure reflected from all angles in the mirrors. Our doctor was right, she is a fascinating specimen. And not because there’s nothing happening below the surface, but because she gains no satisfaction or esteem from allowing others to know her. Imagine being that self-contained. I felt a cruel pleasure at the fact that even if Doctor Rubin could somehow break her skull open, spill all the contents on some surgical table, pull out vivid strands of thought like some terrible magician, he’d never know her.
It can help a little if you read her private journal.
But that, as I had learned one night, is a breathtakingly powerful mistake to make.
We were on a short trip to review a popular boutique canine kitchen near Heliogabulus, little knowing that we would be drawn into a deadly game with the managers of a local lobster-smuggling ring. After that, it was a routine visit. I returned to our apartment, slightly drunk from dinner, and noticed she’d left her journal on the table in the main room. G never makes mistake like this, especially with her journal. So naturally I interpreted it as a subconscious desire to have me read it. As I said, I was drunk.
I was instantly plunged into a vortex of terrifying emotional intensity. She accused the universe of failing to understand her, read betrayal in glances, wrote epic tragedies on the interpretation of a single comma in a message from a boy she hardly knew.
There must have been an error in the way I replaced the diary, or maybe a hair from her head had been plastered over the page ends with spittle. Maybe she’d intentionally set a trap. She spotted the invasion instantly. Turned her eyes on me with a look which communicated that I had mere seconds to get my affairs in order. I slammed the door to my room on a spatter of hollow-point bullets. I had the door locked by the time she threw herself against it. She came back with her picks and had the lock slipped in under four seconds. I could hear her measured breaths through the fresh holes in the door. No shouts or threats. She said nothing. Didn’t have to. I heard the fabric of her dress scrape against the jagged bullet holes. Each time I relocked the door, she’d start again, and I have never been so sure I would die. I pleaded with her to be reasonable. She said nothing. Finally, when she’d calmed, and the staff and I no longer feared for our lives, we were thrown out of the hotel. And this, Colette, is why you should never read a girl’s diary.
Of course Gladys hadn’t meant to kill me. To maim me, certainly. For what I did I could at least expect to end up in a hospital bed. She could have busted open that door in under a second if she’d wanted. One kick was all it would have taken. She was playing with me.
On the trip home I bribed two hefty marshals to guard me while I told her we could no longer work together. I paid them more money to stand outside my cabin, and to fix two deadbolts to the inner door. Sometime in the morning I woke to find her standing over my bed. She said, ‘If I wanted to kill you I would have.’ It would be the first of four times we’ve parted company, only to come together again when I realised, with great agony, that there is simply no one else in the great sphere of catastrophe we live within who can provide the counter-measures I require, while staying just below the lunacy equator.
Gladys has had a very interesting life. Almost as interesting as me, in some ways. There is a place called Fire River. It’s the district where all the technology and electronics firms are located. It’s where Doctor Rubin was born, incidentally. And it’s also where G was born. She was formed in the artificial womb of a company which makes weapons. They clone girls, this firm, because their factories need workers with tiny nimble hands to put their devices together. They engineer these girls so they have enhanced dexterity, eyesight and endurance. And when the girls grow too big they’re disposed of.
One day T-anxia City, the administrative hub of Fire River, got a new and enlightened leader, a woman called Mono Koschei. She managed to pass laws banning the creation of clones in manufacturing. Most were freed and given jobs; ironically, jobs in factories making gadgets. Some, like Gladys, declined the job offer and left the region, or joined gangs who ran black-market operations below the substrate of the cities of Fire River. G joined one of these girl gangs soon after she was released, aged twelve.
But Koschei had bigger problems than the gangs. Fire River was an independent district, and fantastically valuable. They made most of the technology in the Cloud, including the weapons systems for all the major powers. The Great Butcher had been eyeing it up ever sinc
e her Revolution. She’d even audaciously carved a little off the eastern edge. Just a few telcom hubs. But it was enough to make the West consider pre-emptively annexing the whole region, for its own ‘protection’. Because if the Butcher got her hands on it, she’d be unstoppable.
But Koschei had another idea. She’d seen in the gangs of Fire River, and in children like Gladys, an opportunity. Here was an army of girls with certain qualities – fierceness, independence, cunning – and with no identities, and no ties, and not a thing to lose. She put most of her money, and a lot of her friends’ money, into the Water Bear project. Then she went to the world and said, ‘Hey, everyone, we had a meeting a while back, and here’s the deal. We’ve decided we’re going to stay independent. And to make certain of this I’ve started the Water Bear Legion. They are a small army of girls – Let me finish. These happen to be highly trained and modified girls. I have already recruited 125,000 assassins, and over the past few years we have begun to infiltrate every corner of your society. One could be sitting next to you right now. She could be the dearest person in your life. You just don’t know. Our mission is not to frighten or intimidate you, it is to avenge and protect ourselves. There will be retribution for any act of aggression against us. As a demonstration of our purpose: the leader of the next nation or institution to threaten us will die within a week.’
That unfortunate soul was Kleinman Winderbluss, chair of the immensely powerful International Elements Consolidated Investments and Development Group, who wrote an editorial calling on world leaders to condemn this ‘classic and provocative act of female passive-aggression’. He called for an international taskforce to carry out immediate incursions against T-anxia to protect Western commercial interests. He died the next night of a heart attack, his wife lying beside him. No foul play could be found. So that got people thinking.
Many thought it was a stunt, so some extremely powerful individuals had to die mysteriously before everyone got wise. And after that, even the Great Butcher didn’t have the nerve to challenge the Water Bears. To this day Gladys won’t talk about her time with the Bears. Some kind of oath. She had to leave after a bungling comms operator blew her cover. After she left their service she went to school, attempted a diploma in Women’s Studies before dropping out. She tried journalism for a while, reporting from the ground in international conflict zones. And she was pretty good at it. Fearless. But killing is her art. She started picking up private work, and made a lot of money from it, obviously. Who knows how she spends it. Certainly not on clothes.
Beast introduced us at a party not long before the incident aboard the TOMAHAWK, on Zoraster. Have I told you about that, Colette? Maybe another time. That trip definitely cemented my decision to hire her. Beast said, ‘This is my cool friend Gladys. She used to be a Bear.’ Not having the ability to tell by ear when someone has used a capital letter, I was briefly confused. But believe it or not, we hit it off. She openly hated on all the vacuous women in the room, which I liked, and I even found her look kind of ‘edgy’. She asked how I got bruised up, so I told her about my adventure on Zoraster. I told her how I used to box a little when I was in the cadets. She asked if that’s how I got the scars on my knuckles, and I said yes. (Lie – I accidentally put them through a glass antiques case when I was eight.) And she said, with a rare smile: ‘Liar.’ She said she liked my writing – in a throwback kind of way. I said I liked her leather jacket for the same reason (and honestly, I wasn’t lying about that). I even gave her a nickname: G-force. (I know, right?) And I thought she was hot, under all that weirdness. I can say that. Gladys is an objectively attractive woman.
Gladys is also uncultured. And Gladys is crude. She does things intentionally to provoke me. Also, and somewhat ironically, she reads my journal. This is why I’ve had to start writing in code. Not to preserve my privacy, but because some of the things she learned when she violated my privacy made her try to almost kill me again. But some of the things I read in her journal, in those giddy minutes before I dropped the book in shock, made me understand the woman finally, made it just possible to work with her. I learned, for example, that clones like her were bred to be infertile. She will never have children.
There is a feeling I get when we work together that she isn’t just protecting me for the money. I’ve tried other protectors. What sets her apart is that, even though she doesn’t like me, I truly believe she cares whether I live, and she takes secret pride each time I survive a trip. Perhaps because I tend to make surviving these trips such a challenge. And a challenge, beyond anything, is what this woman craves. So we play our game. Gladys has the kind of innate protective instinct which maybe only a female guardian can have: a secret pride which comes from keeping ungrateful dependants safe.
Gladys is my pet shark, and she wouldn’t be doing her job if she did not occasionally remind me to fear her.
NOTE ON PREVIOUS NOTE: IMPORTANT!
Colette, it goes without saying that the specifics in that last entry are not for public consumption. They are context, and any attempt to publish them will certainly result in your death.
NOTES ON A WINTER GARDEN
Thinking about Gladys for too long makes a man depressed. I slugged back the rest of my drink, said, ‘I’m tired of my own reflection. How about a change of scene?’ and heard a voice behind us echo: ‘How about a change of scenes, yes?’
‘Yes, I was just saying … ah … Roxy? That’s an unusual name.’
‘My mother gave it for me.’
‘No fooling?’
Her accent was Kaukassian. I noticed she had her nails painted green. Strange. I saw Gladys notice, too. Roxy leaned in close to say to me, in a kind of conspiratorial drawl-whisper: ‘I hear you sent a note to Ms Mae-Mae. So now Massimo is mad because Ms Mae-Mae took down his picture from her secrets chest and put up yours there. And she has many notes now, even from Fabio, who is most handsome.’
‘I see.’
‘And Fabio and Massimo both have sent a note to Rose M. And both were friends, though not no more.’
‘Scandalous.’
She was leaning in very close to whisper. ‘But Rosie cares more for Rabinko in the Pressing Room. And Robert and Dorothy down in Boxes say he prefers other boys for fondles. And Franz is dead so any game is possible.’
‘You don’t say. Have you just come to gossip with us, Roxy?’
‘No. An admirer wishes to send you a drink. And there is a message. In a special place. Shhhhhhhhhh.’
I spoke to her in low Kaukassian: ‘I accept. The drink at least. But I’m not in the mood for any more messages.’
‘Is not for you, sir. Is for her.’ She extended a pale painted finger across me.
G said: ‘What? For me?’
‘So. Is a very special secret place. Just for you to see. Because you are special. We must have care to go there. A trap for fools. But we are not.’
‘Wait. Are you trying to tell us Gladys has been invited to a special secret place?’
‘So. Why surprised? She is beautiful woman.’ Gladys Green turned a pale pink. ‘When somebody today is a hunter after someone’s heart they send to them some secret or note or small gift. Like what you did with Ms Mae-Mae.’
‘No, now, see, what happened there was –’
‘Or they start a nice gossip for them. Like how, sir, you once loved a handsome bearded woman.’
She was addressing me. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘No need for apology. So I hear there is a secret in the Winter Garden for that girl who killed Franz. But is risky to do.’
‘I agree, it’s risky. Best just to take our drinks and not to draw further attention. No need to hunt for a three-legged cat. Right, G?’
‘So. We can escort you handsome cats back to your room. She and me will sneak like mice to the garden.’
Gladys was staring at the girl, uncomprehending. I spoke for her. ‘Absolutely not! I’m not going to let Gladys go wandering off to some dark corner alone. She’s supposed to be protecting u
s. Right, Gladys?’
‘Is not your decision, though,’ said Roxy.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Is not for you to say if she can go. Is for us to.’
‘Who?’
‘Us.’
‘I see.’
‘I know you do.’
‘I’ll meet you back in the room in an hour,’ said Gladys. ‘You know my knock.’
‘Gladys!’ She shrugged. Roxy mimicked. Then Beast. ‘Well, if you’re determined then we go together. We’ll all trot off to this so-called Winter Garden. It sounds perfect, Roxy, actually. Fine idea. We’ll take drinks there, and you’ll bring them personally.’