Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  “Is that so? Okay. I get it. Well, all the best, then, Balot. I’m Oeufcoque. My personality might be soft-boiled, but I’m not so half-baked that I don’t have a PI’s license from the Broilerhouse, so I’m fully qualified to supervise a case as Trustee. Scramble 09 cases being my specialty. Mind you, they do consider me to be human, of course.”

  –And so do I.

  Before he had a chance to resist Balot gave Oeufcoque a kiss on his little head.

  And for the third time, Oeufcoque’s red eyes, usually so sophisticated and mature, grew as wide as saucers.

  Balot got Oeufcoque to turn into a choker again, faced the scorched earth that spread out from her feet, and waved goodbye. Ever so softly.

  06

  The monitor on the Doctor’s desk displayed a number of emergency signals when the pair returned to their hideaway. Each one a summons from the public prosecutor.

  The Doctor himself was in the lab at the rear. He was grappling with a microscope, both arms deep inside what appeared to be some sort of fish tank.

  “Hey, Doc, looks like the DA’s trying to overload the circuits,” Oeufcoque said jokingly. The Doctor just shrugged without turning around.

  “Doesn’t concern me,” said the Doctor. “I’ve done all I can for them over there. Now we’ve just got to get on with things the best we can, make ourselves useful.”

  Balot stood there, isolated from the other two who seemed happy to exchange banter without even looking at each other.

  Suddenly she felt mischievous. She playfully bumped the Doctor’s back with the box she was carrying.

  “Watch it!” the Doctor complained, breaking away from the fish tank and turning toward Balot. “That’s quite a big box—what’s in it?”

  “A fancy new suit for you, Doc. Balot wants you to wear it at the trial. A condition of her appearing,” explained Oeufcoque as he disentangled himself from Balot’s neck and stood—now a mouse—on her shoulder.

  “And you picked it out, did you, Miss Rune-Balot?” asked the Doctor.

  Balot nodded. It was the last thing she’d bought on their shopping trip.

  “Well, er, I do already own my own clothes for formal occasions, you know…” continued the Doctor.

  “Unfortunately, Doctor, your sense of style isn’t particularly to our client’s taste.” Oeufcoque pointed at the Doctor’s hair. The mottled, dyed mess. Then Oeufcoque mimed bunching up his own hair, as if to say, Do something about your hair, will you?

  “Well, fine, all you had to do was say so earlier, you know,” said the Doctor. “And what’s my own sense of style got to do with anything? The public prosecutor is doing everything he can to try to force us to make things easy for them, accept a summary hearing instead of a proper trial…”

  Balot looked offended. She pushed the box toward the Doctor.

  “You just don’t get it, do you, Doc? Our client is sensitive and whimsical. You’ve got to respond to her feelings properly, or else before long we’ll find a request has been filed for new Trustees for this case,” Oeufcoque said in a grave tone of voice, leaning over Balot’s shoulder.

  “Well, someone’s been doing their research,” the Doctor said, his lips curled.

  Then he looked at the sizes written on the box and nodded. “A perfect fit.”

  An easy enough feat for Balot, with her newfound abilities. But Balot just pointed at the monitor, disgruntled.

  The Doctor didn’t seem too bothered about it. Rather his attention kept drifting back to the contents of the fish tank.

  “Don’t worry about that. You’ve changed your mind about attending the trial, so that changes everything at their end too,” the Doctor said, holding the box under his arm nonchalantly while touching the fish tank with his other hand.

  “There are still a few tests I need to run on these babies. When you stop and think about it, it’s quite a task, after all. Trying to completely regenerate something that was still in middevelopment in the first place. It’s not like you’d want to make do with a cheap substitute or anything.”

  Balot frowned. She had no idea what the Doctor was going on about.

  “What exactly are you up to, Doc?” asked Oeufcoque, sensing Balot’s confusion.

  “What do you mean, ‘what’? I’m looking at ways of getting Balot’s voice working again, of course!”

  Now Balot’s mouth gaped open. She remembered the Doctor’s words from earlier.

  Now we’ve just got to get on with things the best we can, make ourselves useful. That was definitely what the Doctor had said. And she hadn’t taken the words in properly, not at first. But now, all of a sudden, a wave of emotion rose up inside her, as if escaping through a hidden crack. I’ve met them at last—that was how she felt about the odd pair, man and mouse. She realized that her heart had never dared let her feel this way before, ever, so afraid she was of being betrayed.

  “Oh. And, thank you, Balot. For the suit. I accept it gratefully. I’ll have to keep quiet about it in my report to the Broilerhouse, though, as it might be interpreted as a bribe from the Concerned Party. But I like this sort of gesture now and then. Reminds me of back when I was a civilian…” The Doctor trailed off.

  Balot bowed with a flourish. She wanted to thank Oeufcoque and the Doctor. But no voice came out of her throat, so, instead, she grabbed the Doctor’s box away from him and planted a kiss on it.

  Oeufcoque was thrown from her shoulder by the sudden movement. He landed skillfully on the desk.

  The Doctor was now holding the box, which had been thrust back into his arms by Balot. She did a quick turnabout and ran out of the room, with the Doctor still staring at her. The door slammed shut with a bang.

  The Doctor stared at the door before turning to look at Oeufcoque. “What was that about?” he asked the mouse.

  “I don’t know. It looked like she was overjoyed for a moment, but then she was gripped by contradicting emotions—shame and fear. Oh dear. She may be starting to have her doubts as to our usefulness.”

  “Are you sure about that? Look at this,” the Doctor said, hoisting the box around toward Oeufcoque to flaunt the poppy-red kiss mark.

  “That’s a human trait, isn’t it, Doctor? We can interpret that as a sign of gratitude?”

  “Exactly, Oeufcoque. Do you know what? I think she quite likes us.”

  The next moment Oeufcoque and the Doctor were up, jumping for joy like a pair of children.

  Balot returned to her assigned quarters and locked the door securely.

  Both the electric lock and the chain. Then she took out the day’s purchases and lined them up on her desk.

  She picked up the Eject Poster and stuck it on the wall.

  Resting on the bed, holding her knees to her body, she snarced the projector on and chose some pictures of fossils.

  She stared into the air, watching pictures of hundreds of different spiral shells appear and disappear. She tried to fade out of consciousness, project herself into the blank space, just like she always used to.

  She couldn’t do it. And she couldn’t stop crying.

  It was as if all the day’s events had crept up on her and exploded all at once. As if they’d piled up bit by bit into a mountain before collapsing in a landslide.

  She’d run away from the misery of not being able to speak when she wanted to, but before long she started wondering whether this had really been necessary, whether it wasn’t an over-reaction. The thought of this made her tears fall even harder.

  She stayed in that position for a long time, but eventually she rose back up, her breathing now sounding like a cold winter wind. She took the lipstick out of her jacket pocket and wrote in big letters on the wall where the endless shells were appearing and disappearing with dizzying speed:

  THEY ARE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

  Then, right below that:

  YOU HAVE NOBODY, NOWHERE.

  And then again:

  THEY ARE RIGHT HERE, RIGHT NOW.

  Crying without being able to
make a sound was tougher than she’d imagined. Almost all the air in her body seemed to want to escape through the void that was her mouth. Her insides were as hard as steel.

  Balot endured. Just as she had endured everything up to now. Pushing her whole body to its limits.

  But unlike the previous occasions, she didn’t need to kill herself this time. This much she was sure of.

  The fossils swirled across her body and the wall like a whirlpool, floating up, then disappearing.

  Why me? The question was now about to get yet another answer.

  “There’s one problem, though,” said Oeufcoque. “What’s the definition of love?”

  The Doctor pulled away from the water tank and turned toward Oeufcoque with a surprised expression. “Should I interpret this as a sign of a new ego developing, Oeufcoque?”

  “No, just a request for information, pure and simple. I think I’m going to have to be able to answer this question with, er, a degree of flexibility.”

  “Well, it’s a difficult enough question to answer in any case, particularly when you’re trying to lump all different kinds of love together. There’s familial love, neighborly love, agape—that’s godly love—all sorts,” explained the Doctor.

  “Seems complicated. But I’m just asking about the need to be loved,” said Oeufcoque.

  “What, you want me to make a female version of you? But you’re unique, a miracle prototype. Even if the army were to resume their program, I’m not sure if we could make a female…”

  “Not me, her! I’m talking about Balot!”

  “Ah, I see.” The Doctor nodded. But then he pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and asked, doubtfully, “By you? You’re saying that she’s looking for something from you?”

  “She’s looking for foundation, for some sort of emotional stability… I’m guessing that’s the best way of explaining it. According to my intuition—my nose—she’s got all these qualities, these needs. Because she’s never been in a decent environment. To survive in the world that she’s been living in, she’s needed some sort of foundation, or stability. And she calls this love.”

  “Oh, I know all too well how sharp your nose is,” interjected the Doctor. “Within the team responsible for you, most of the researchers feared you from the bottom of their souls. They were afraid that you’d show up all their inadequacies. You’d analyze people as if they were nothing more than the sum of their chemical parts.”

  “You’re talking about a long time ago, Doc. That was then and this is now. I know a lot more now than I used to.”

  “I’m sure. So, what exactly is it that you’re trying to say, Oeufcoque?”

  “I want to protect the girl. But I’m not sure what more I should be doing.”

  “Well, I know what you should be doing. But I don’t know what the right thing is,” said the Doctor.

  “It’s as if she’s trying to treat me like a human.”

  “I didn’t realize that this wasn’t what you wanted, Oeufcoque. I treat you like a human, and so did your former partners. It’s just what happens naturally.”

  “It’s different, though. Something’s different from what happened before. Something’s changing inside me. She’s made the decision to appear in the courtroom, and that’s fine. But it makes me feel terrible, as if I’d done something inexcusable.”

  “Hmm.” The Doctor looked Oeufcoque up and down as if he were inspecting some rare specimen.

  “I think I should try to be drier, more detached,” continued Oeufcoque.

  “Uh-huh,” the Doctor mumbled, and then continued, sympathetically, “but that’s not really who you are, is it?”

  He spoke with a serious expression. Oeufcoque rolled over on the desk onto his side and sighed deeply. His little body seemed to wilt, and he looked smaller than ever.

  Chapter 3

  CRANK-UP

  01

  The Stairway to Heaven shone, dazzling, beautiful in the morning sun. The spiral stairway—the unofficial symbol of Mardock City—wound round in three circles before stopping cleanly in midair, an unfinished monument that was designed to be just so.

  Symbols of Jupiter—the planet of the king of gods—were carved into its outer edge, and every part of the handrail and supporting pillar was ornamented with scenes from the myths.

  The monument that migrants had built long ago to express their hope and their faith.

  Mardock—the Stairway to Heaven—was now seen by the steady influx of people into the city as a symbol of their own dreams and ambitions. This epitomized life in the city: to climb to the top, to arrive, was the ultimate virtue.

  Under the stairway that soared up over the municipal offices of the Broilerhouse, Balot waited, Oeufcoque wrapped round her neck as a choker and the newly besuited Doctor beside her.

  –Every time I look at this staircase I can almost see the phantoms of people falling from the top.

  Balot snarced Oeufcoque, and he replied, “It’s the system that people devised long ago, sorting the world into winners and losers. But it doesn’t necessarily have to be that way—there’s more to mankind than that. We’re just talking about part of a system. Try not to let it get to you.”

  –If I fell from the top, I’d die, wouldn’t I?

  “I’d turn into whatever tool I needed in order to prevent that.” Oeufcoque’s voice may have been small, but it was wonderfully reassuring to Balot.

  Balot readied herself, then entered the Broilerhouse with the Doctor.

  The court hearing started at nine thirty precisely and later broke for a thirty-minute lunch recess.

  After everyone was seated they waited another two minutes for the judge to return from the restroom.

  Twenty minutes later Balot decided on absolute silence, and before long the time was 15:32 and the judge lowered his gavel, signifying the end of the proceedings.

  The six hours of deliberations produced results that were entirely satisfactory as far as the Doctor, Oeufcoque, and the district attorney were concerned. For Balot though, it was all one long humiliation.

  “The fact that you can’t speak may well turn out to work in our favor. Consider the impression it makes,” said the DA just before the discussions started.

  “It might only be a grand jury, but there’s no better way of demonstrating the suffering you’ve been through,” said the senior assistant district attorney, a man in his early thirties—the DA assigned to their case. He was welcoming the Doctor and Balot who had joined the throng of court personnel congregating on the eleventh floor of the Broilerhouse on Central Street and was treating them like royalty. He wasn’t the only one—DAs who were supposed to be busy with other cases were finding reasons to drop by the waiting room to catch a glimpse of Balot.

  Hey, is that the survivor that everyone’s talking about? She seems in pretty good shape to me, what’s she going to accuse them of?—they could hear these sorts of snippets of conversation from the other side of the door.

  “Some of the veteran DAs like to make fun of this sort of case,” said their DA apologetically. “They still don’t think prostitution or rape is anything to get worked up about.”

  Their DA seemed different, though. He said so himself, and the Doctor introduced him as a different sort of man. A man who was sympathetic toward innocent victims, women who were the victims of violence, and those of a low social standing.

  “The counsel for the defense will probably follow the same line of thinking. Are you sure you’re ready for that? Just try and compose yourself as much as you can. Remember, the counsel for the defense doesn’t really care whether their client is guilty or not.”

  The DA smiled brightly as he gave Balot her instructions. As if that was part of the plan to ensure that Balot would be nice and relaxed.

  “Remember, the truth means nothing to these people. No matter what sort of criminal their client is, they’ll use every sort of legal trick up their sleeve to try and get them off the hook, and in return they’re rewarded in
the region of sixty thousand dollars a year, a pretty damn good salary these days…” The DA shrugged his shoulders at this point, as if to say he was troubled by it, but what could you do?

  “And it’s our job to face these people, specifying which of the material witnesses should be treated as suspects,” he continued with a shake of his head. “The counsel for the defense we’re up against in this case is quite a formidable opponent, I have to admit. Even as we’re bringing the lawsuit against them, there’s no sign of the defendant, Shell-Septinos—he’s not in jail, and he’s not even been named a formal suspect. He hasn’t even denied the charges—just called to have the deposition denied. Well, to make up for it we left everything right till the last minute ourselves, as well, I suppose, not letting them see the charges before we absolutely had to.”

  The DA giggled, as if he’d told a particularly witty joke.

  “I bet there was some discussion among the other side’s camp when it came to tactics—they would have been wondering right till the last minute what we were going to hit them with.”

  Balot just sat there, still.

  In the waiting room. And later, at the DA’s table in the courtroom. She sat still, making no noise or sound of movement, just enduring words such as She seems fine to me or Well, it stands to reason, I’m not surprised.

  “So I’m sure the defense will be unnecessarily—well, they’ll say all sorts of things about you and won’t pull any punches. If he could get a not-guilty verdict for his client by appealing to the court’s latent misogyny, he’d do it, make no mistake. At any rate, all you need to do is stay calm—even more so this time given your injuries—and all you need to do is to press the yes, no, or no answer button.”

  At this point Balot nodded for the first time. That was all it took for most men to take the lead, tell her what to do. The DA was no exception.

  “Well then, let’s go,” said the DA, heading toward the courtroom with the petitioner and Concerned Party, Balot, and the Doctor, who was the Trustee in charge of the case.