When Gravity Fails

by George Alec Effinger

  After a few seconds, a small crack opened. I took out a thousand-kiam note, put it in the kid’s hand, showed him all the rest of the cash, and said “Hassan! Hassan!” The door shut with a whuff and my thousand kiam disappeared.

  A moment later the door opened again, and I was all ready for it. I grabbed the edge and pulled, wrenching the door out of the kid’s grasp. He cried out and swung with it, but he let go. I flung the door open, then doubled over as the kid kicked me as hard as he could. He was too short to reach where he was aiming, but he still hurt me pretty bad. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and slapped him a few times, then whacked the back of his head against the wall and let him fall into the refuse-strewn alley. I let my breathing catch up; the daddies were doing a fine job, my heart was pumping away as if I were just humming along with Fazluria, not running for my Me. I paused only to bend down and snap back the thousand-K bill the ’ricain kid was still holding. “Take care of the fîqs,” my mother always taught me.

  There was no one in the ground-floor room. I thought about slamming and locking the iron door behind me, so that the American kid or any other bogeyman couldn’t sneak up without my knowing, but I decided instead that I might need a handy exit in a hurry. I made no noise as I walked carefully and slowly toward the stairway against the wall to my left. Without the daddies I would have been elsewhere, whispering into a stranger’s ear in some romantic language. I took out my rack of daddies and considered them. The two corymbic implants I had were not fully loaded; I could still chip in another three, but I was already wearing everything I thought I might need in a crisis. All but one, to tell the truth: there was still the special black daddy that plugged directly into my punishment cells. I didn’t think I’d ever use that one voluntarily; but, if I had to face somebody like Xarghis Moghadhîl Khan again with nothing but a butter knife, I’d rather go out a snarling, vicious beast than a rational, whimpering human being. I held the black daddy in my left hand and went on up the stairs.

  In the room above there were two people. Hassan, smiling faintly and looking just a little distracted, was standing in a corner and rubbing his eyes. He looked sleepy. “Audran, my nephew,” he said.

  “Hassan,” I said.

  “Did the boy let you in?”

  “I gave him a thousand and took the decision out of his hands. Then I took the thousand out of his hands, too.”

  Hassan gave me his little ingratiating laugh. “I am fond of the boy, as you know, but he’s an American.” I’m not sure what he meant by that, “He’s an American, so he’s a little stupid,” or “He’s an American, there are plenty more.”

  “He won’t be bothering us,” I said.

  “Good, O excellent one,” said Hassan. His eyes flicked down to Lieutenant Okking, who was spread-eagled on the floor, his wrists and ankles tied with nylon cords to rings set into the walls. It was obvious that Hassan had used this set-up before—often. Okking’s back, legs, arms, and head were marked with cigarette burns and streaked with long, bright slashes of blood. If he was screaming I didn’t notice, because the daddies had my senses concentrated on Hassan. Okking was still alive, though. I could see that much.

  “You finally got around to the cop,” I said. “Are you sorry his brain isn’t wired? You like to use your bootleg moddy, don’t you?”

  Hassan raised an eyebrow. “It is a pity,” he said. “But, of course, your implant will suffice. I am already looking forward to that with pleasure. I owe you thanks, my nephew, for suggesting the policeman. It was my belief that my guest here was as witless a fool as he acted. You insisted that he was withholding information. I couldn’t take the chance that you were correct.” I frowned and looked at Okking’s writhing body. I promised myself that later, when I was in my own mind, I’d get sick.

  “All along,” I said, as if we were merely discussing the price of beauties, “I thought there were two killers wearing mod-dies. I’ve been so stupid: it turned out to be one moddy and one old-fashioned crackpot. Here I was trying to outthink some international high-tech hoodlum, and it turns out to be the neighborhood dirty old man. What a waste of time, Hassan! I should be ashamed to take Papa’s money for this.” As I was saying all this, of course, I was edging slowly closer to him, looking down at Okking and shaking my head, and generally acting like a kindly police sergeant in a movie, trying to soft-talk a frantic slob from jumping off a ledge. Take my word for it: it’s harder than it looks.

  “Friedlander Bey has paid you the last kiam you’ll ever see.” Hassan actually sounded sad.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” I said, still moving slowly. My eyes were on Hassan’s thick, stubby fingers wrapped around a cheap, curved Arab knife. “I’ve been so blind. You were working for the Russians.”

  “Of course,” Hassan snapped.

  “And you kidnapped Nikki.”

  He looked up at me, surprised. “No, my nephew, it was Abdoulaye who took her, not me.”

  “But he was following your orders.”

  “Bogatyrev’s.”

  “Abdoulaye took her from Seipolt’s villa.”

  Hassan only nodded.

  “So she was still alive the first time I questioned Seipolt. She was somewhere in his house. He wanted her alive. Then when I went back to demand answers from him, he was dead.”

  Hassan stared at me, fingering the blade.

  “After Bogatyrev died, you killed her and dumped her body. Then you killed Abdoulaye and Tami to protect yourself. Who made her write those notes?”

  “Seipolt, O clever one.”

  “Okking’s the last, then. The only one left who can link you to the murders.”

  “And yourself, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said. “You’re a hell of a good actor, Hassan. You had me fooled. If I hadn’t found your underground moddy”—his teeth flashed in a startled snarl—“and some things that connected Nikki to Seipolt, I would never have had anything to go on. Both you and the Germans’ assassin did first-rate work. I would never have guessed you until I realized that every goddamn important piece of information passed through you. From Papa to me, from me to Papa. It was right in front of me the whole time, all I had to do was see it. Finally, I just had to figure it out—it was you, you and your goddamn fat, short, stubby fingers.” I was only about ten feet from Hassan, ready to take another cautious step, when he shot me.

  He had a small, white plastic pistol and he stitched a row of needles in the air in a big, looping arc. The last two needles in the clip caught me in the side, just below my left arm. I felt them faintly, almost as if they’d happened to someone else. I knew they’d hurt bad in a little while, and part of my mind beneath the daddies wondered if the needles were juiced or if they were just sharp bits of metal to tear my body apart. If they were drugged or poisoned, I’d find out soon enough. It had become time for desperation. I completely forgot I had my seizure gun with me; I had no intention of having a sharp-shooting match with Hassan, anyway. I took the black daddy and slapped it into place even as I was collapsing from the wounds.

  It was like . . . it was like being strapped to a table and having a dentist drilling up through the roof of my mouth. It was like being right on the edge of an epileptic fit and not quite making it, wishing that it would either go away or seize me and get it over with. It was like having the brightest lights in the world blazing in my eyes, the loudest noises exploding in my ears, demons sandpapering my flesh, unnamable vile odors clogging my nose, the foulest muck in my throat. I would gladly have died then just to have it all stop.

  I would kill.

  I grabbed Hassan by his wrists and fastened my teeth in his throat. I felt his hot blood spurting in my face; I remember thinking how wonderful it tasted. Hassan howled with pain. He beat on my head, but he couldn’t free himself from the purely insane, purely animal hold I had on him. He thrashed, and we fell to the floor. He got loose and slammed another clip into his pistol and shot me again, and again I leaped on his throat. I tore at his windpipe with my teeth,
and my stiff fingers dug into his eyes. I felt his blood running down my arms, too. Hassan’s shrieks were horrible, maddened, but they were almost drowned out by my own. The black daddy was still torturing me, still burning like acid inside my head. All my screaming, all the infuriated, savage ferocity of my attack, did nothing to lessen my torment. I slashed and clawed and ripped at Hassan’s bloody body.

  Much later, I woke up, heavily tranquilized, in the hospital. Eleven days had passed. I learned that I had mangled Hassan until he was no longer alive, and even then I did not stop. I had avenged Nikki and all the others, but I had made every crime of Hassan’s look like the gentlest of children’s games. I had bitten and torn Hassan’s body until there was barely enough left to identify.

  And I had done the same to Okking.

  20

  At was Doc Yeniknani, the gentle Sufi Turk, who released me from the hospital at last. I had taken my share of hurts from Hassan, but I don’t remember getting them, for which I thank Allah. The needle wounds, lesions, and lacerations were the easy part. The med staff just crammed me back together and covered me all over with gelstrips. My medication was taken care of by computer this time—no snippy nurses. The doctor programmed a list of drugs into the machine, along with the quantity and how often I was allowed to request them. Every time I wanted a jolt, I just punched a button. If I punched it too often, nothing happened. If I waited just the right amount of time, the computer slipped me intravenous Sonneine right through my feeding tube. I was in the hospital for almost three months; and when I got out, my ass felt as nice and smooth as the day I was born. I will have to get one of those mechanical drug-pushers for myself. It could revolutionize the street narcotics industry. Oh, they’ll put a few people out of work, but that’s always been the price of free enterprise and progress.

  The physical beating I took while I was reducing the former Hassan the Shiite to soup bones wasn’t bad enough to keep me in bed so long. Actually, those wounds could have been treated in the emergency room, and I could have been out dining and dancing a few hours later. The real problem was inside my head. I had seen and done too many terrible things, and Dr. Yeniknani and his colleagues considered the possibility that if they just disconnected the punishment daddy and the other override daddies, when all the facts and memories hit my poor, unbuffered brain, I’d end up as crazy as a spider on ice skates.

  The American kid found me—found us, I mean, me and Hassan and Okking—and called the cops. They got me to the hospital, and apparently the highly paid, highly skilled specialists didn’t want any part of me. No one wanted to risk his reputation by taking charge. “Do we leave the add-ons in? Do we take them out? If we take them out, he might go permanently insane. If we leave them in, they might burn their way right down into his belly.” All those hours that black daddy was still juicing the punishment center in my brain. I passed out again and again, but I wasn’t dreaming about Honey Pílar, you can bet on that.

  They popped the punishment chip first, but left the others in to leave me in a kind of insensible limbo. They brought me back to full, unaugmented consciousness slowly, testing me every step of the way. I’m proud to say that I’m as sane today as I ever was; I have all the daddies in their plastic box in case I get nostalgic.

  I didn’t have any visitors in the hospital this time, either. I guessed that my friends had good memories. I took the opportunity to grow my beard back, and my hair was getting long again. It was a Tuesday morning when Dr. Yeniknani signed my releases. “I pray to Allah that I never see you here again,” he said.

  I shrugged. “From now on, I’m going to get myself a quiet little business selling counterfeit coins to tourists. I don’t want any more trouble.”

  Dr. Yeniknani smiled. “No one wants trouble, but there is trouble enough in the world. You cannot hide from it. Do you remember the shortest sûrah in the noble Qur’ân? It is actually one of the earliest revealed by the Prophet, may blessings be upon his name and peace. ‘Say: I seek refuge in the Lord of mankind, the King of mankind, the God of mankind, from the evil of the sly whisperer, who whispers in the hearts of mankind, of the djinn and of mankind.’”

  “Djinn and mankind and guns and knives,” I said.

  Dr. Yeniknani shook his head slowly. “If you look for guns, you will find guns. If you look for Allah, you will find Allah.”

  “Well, then,” I said wearily, “I will just have to start my life fresh when I get out of here. I’ll just change all my ways and how I think and forget all the years of experience I’ve had.”

  “You mock me,” he said sadly, “but some day you will listen to your own words. I pray to Allah that when that day comes, you will yet have time to do as you say.” Then he signed my papers, and I was free again, me again, with nowhere to go.

  I didn’t have an apartment anymore. All I had was a zipper bag with a lot of money in it. I called a cab from the hospital and rode over to Papa’s. This was the second time I’d dropped by without an appointment, but this time I had the excuse that I couldn’t phone Hassan to make an arrangement. The butler recognized me, even favoring me with a minute change in his expression. Evidently I had become a celebrity. Politicians and sex stars may cuddle up to you and it doesn’t prove a thing, but when the butlers of the world notice you, you realize that some of what you believe about yourself is true.

  I even got to give the waiting room a miss. One of the Stones That Speak appeared in front of me, did an about-face, and marched off. I followed. We went into Friedlander Bey’s office, and I took a few steps toward Papa’s desk. He stood up, his old face so shriveled up in smiles that I was afraid it would snap into a million pieces. He hurried toward me, took my face, and kissed me. “O my son!” he cried. Then he kissed me again. He couldn’t find the words to express his joy.

  For my part, I was a little uncomfortable. I didn’t know whether I should play the brick-fronted hero or the aw-shucks kid who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. The truth was, I only wanted to get out of there as fast as I could with another thick envelope of reward money, and never have anything to do with the old son of a bitch again. He was making it difficult. He kept kissing me.

  At last it got thick, even for an old-fashioned Arab potentate like Friedlander Bey. He let me go and retreated behind the formidable bastion of his desk. It seemed that we weren’t going to share a pleasant lunch or tea and swap stories of mangled corpses while he told me how terrific I was. He just stared at me for a long time. One of the Stones crept up beside me, just behind my right shoulder. The other Stone planted himself behind my left shoulder. It felt eerily reminiscent of my first interview with Friedlander Bey, in the motel. Now, in these grander surroundings, I was somehow reduced from the conquering hero to some slimy miscreant who’d been caught with his hand in someone else’s pocket, and was now on the carpet. I don’t know how Papa did it, but it was part of his magic. Uh oh, I thought, and my stomach started to grumble. I still hadn’t learned what his motives had been.

  “You have done well, O excellent one,” said Friedlander Bey. His tone was thoughtful and not wholly approving.

  “I was granted good fortune by Allah in His greatness, and by you in your foresight,” I said.

  Papa nodded. He was used to being yoked together with Allah that way. “Take, then, the token of our gratitude.” One of the Stones shoved an envelope against my ribs, and I took it.

  “Thank you, O Shaykh.”

  “Thank not me, but Allah in His beneficence.”

  “Yeah, you right.” I pushed the envelope into a pocket. I wondered if I could go now.

  “Many of my friends were slain,” mused Papa, “and many of my valued associates. It would be well to guard against such a thing ever happening again.”

  “Yes, O Shaykh.”

  “I have need of loyal friends in positions of authority, on whom I can rely. I am shamed when I recall the trust I put in Hassan.”

  “He was a Shiite, O Shaykh.”

  F
riedlander Bey waved a hand. “Nevertheless. It is time to repair the injuries that have been done to us. Your task is not finished, not yet, my son. You must help build a new structure of security.”

  “I will do what I can, O Shaykh.” I didn’t like the way this was going at all, but once again I was helpless.

  “Lieutenant Okking is dead and gone to his Paradise, inshallah. His position will be filled by Sergeant Hajjar, a man whom I know well and whose words and deeds I need not fear. I am considering a new and essential department—a liaison between my friends of the Budayeen and the official authorities.”

  I never felt so small and so alone in my life.

  Friedlander Bey went on. “I have chosen you to administer that new supervisory force.”

  “Me, O Shaykh?” I asked in a quivery voice. “You don’t mean me.”

  He nodded. “Let it be done.”

  I felt a surge of rage and stepped toward his desk. “The hell with you and your plans!” I shouted. “You sit there and manipulate—you watch my friends die—you pay this guy and that guy and don’t give a good goddamn what happens to them as long as your money rolls in. I wouldn’t doubt that you were behind Okking and the Germans and Hassan and the Russians.” Suddenly I shut up quick. I hadn’t been thinking fast, I’d just been letting my anger out; but I could tell by the sudden tightness around Friedlander Bey’s mouth that I’d touched something pretty goddamn sensitive. “You were, weren’t you?” I said softly. “You didn’t give a flying fuck what happened to anybody. You were playing both sides. Not against the middle—there wasn’t any middle. Just you, you walking cadaver. You don’t have a human atom in you. You don’t love, you don’t hate, you don’t care. For all your kneeling and praying, you got nothing in you. I’ve seen handfuls of sand with more conscience than you.”

  The really strange thing was that during that whole speech, neither of the Stones That Speak came any nearer or shoved me around or broke my face for me. Papa must have given them a signal to let me have my little oration. I took another step toward him, and he lifted the corners of his mouth in a pitiful, ancient man’s attempt at a smile. I stopped short, as if I’d walked into an invisible glass wall.