by Tim Scott
“Yeah, you’re right,” I said, doing up the jacket.
“I really respect you for it. There should be more people like you,” said the girl. “I’m a student doing my master’s in ‘Overly Long Moments of Coughing in Postwar European Literature,’ but I don’t know any students who would dare have a red shirt. But I am so behind you. You show ’em.”
“Yeah, you must have been lying under the Tree of Courage,” said the boy, who had shoulder-length hair. “I’m studying coughing in nineteenth-century literature, as well, but my classes have more of a slant toward flu and colds in general.”
“Sounds useful,” I said.
“Yeah, it’s an amazing subject, actually. It has a real relevance. Get this. When you analyze Dostoyevsky, you find that without coughing his work is really nothing. The fact that his characters do a lot of coughing is what lifts it out of the ordinary, and makes it speak.”
“Is that so?” I said, as the wedding-cake columns of Head Hack Central slipped from view.
They talked a little more about coughing in literature, going on about Circe and James Joyce, but I didn’t know what they were talking about, and I was relieved when they eventually got out, no doubt off to drink cappuccinos and stare into each other’s eyes and talk about the size of the essay crisis that was gradually enveloping them.
Someone had once worked out a formula for calculating the actual size of an essay crisis. It had something to do with the time until the deadline, the length of the essay, and a variable factor related to how much access there was to children’s programs.
“Your lucky medieval instrument today is the crumhorn,” said the drongle, coming to a jerky halt. “Your receipt is being printed on material that may contain nuts.” Then I heard the extended sound of printing, but only a tiny receipt about an inch square appeared in the slot.
Then nothing.
I picked up the tiny piece of paper and heaved back the drongle door to be met by a rush of kids.
“Take your receipt for a dime,” they cried. I showed them the tiny thing.
“What’s that?” said one kid, and they turned away. I was still a mile from Gabe’s apartment but I decided to walk.
chapter
FORTY-FIVE
The marketing man struggled inside the sack as he thrust down a final length of track to the head hack area.
“I’m Sky Malbranque! I am in marketing. Stop this!” he cried as he saw the nurse.
She smiled, but it was so laden with insincerity that it made unusually high demands on the muscles in her cheeks and the layer of makeup that she had plastered across her face.
She swung him toward the chair, maneuvering the chain.
“Please! He escaped and put me in the sack,” said Malbranque, trying to wriggle to face the nurse.
The chain clanked madly in the track.
“That’s very sweet,” she said, “but the system is the most sophisticated on the Western Seaboard. Did you know they are going to have pictures of a puppy all the way down the tubes? We know you have to be Huckleberry Lindbergh.”
“But I’m not! Lindbergh escaped and put me in his place. I am Sky Malbranque from marketing. Ring my department. Ring them now!”
The nurse slacked off the wire with a control and Malbranque sank awkwardly into the chair.
“Fire the head torsion please, Nurse.” The doctor didn’t look up as he spoke. He was engrossed in studying a chart.
Two flat hydraulic plates squeezed in on Malbranque’s cheeks and it became impossible to make out any of his actual words. Only a squashed, fluctuating squeak and drawl.
“I’ll just pop these on you,” the nurse said, sliding some protective clear glasses over his eyes. “And I’ll pop a bib on just to protect the nice sack,” she said, fitting a small, pristine white bib awkwardly over the filthy sack and links of oily chain.
“I want to step up and use 3-C with alfalfa this time please, Nurse.” The doctor gave her a hurried look and you got the sense he felt this was an overly generous use of his time.
“Yes, Doctor. I’ll just pop the picture of the puppy there,” she said. Then she put on a pair of latex gloves over the ones she already had on, dolloped a handful of goo onto the man’s hair, and slopped it around.
The doctor moved so he was within Malbranque’s line of vision.
“Mr. Lindbergh, you escaped a head hack yesterday, presumably because you have a memory you wish to hide. We will be checking your short-term memory, but if we don’t find anything there, I also have instructions to probe back a bit further, so you may lose some of your past. I will do my best not to ferret around anywhere too deep. You have my word under the oath I have sworn to the Medical Council Bear. And, I am also part of the Lodge of Maculfry, which has a strict code of morals,” he said, returning to look through the notes. “So, can you please sign here and here for me? And kiss the page here. Kiss. Thank you.” He shoved the form in front of the man’s face. “Kiss there again. Good. Look at the picture of the puppy to help yourself stay calm. Prepare the vault for the images please, Nurse. Sanction the input. Memory is on. We are locked. And stand by, please. Head hack in five, four…”
Malbranque erupted into a frenzy of muffled shrieks, but neither the doctor nor the nurse took any notice. “Pretend you are stroking the puppy. Three, two, one…”
chapter
FORTY-SIX
At Porlock, the computer was displaying this message: “What’s with all the numbers in brackets?”
And as soon as they deleted any infected files, more sprang up.
Mendes watched the world below through his window. A handful of rays burst from behind a cloud. A summer storm was moving in pregnant with soft, heavy rain. The world was moving on. The world was always moving on whether you were a part of it or not.
He was tired now, and he felt his career slipping through his fingers. If he was unable to babysit this project, then he would be farmed out to some desk job in a department on the edges of D.C., where they dealt with nothing more interesting than food allergies.
His arms ached and he mopped his forehead.
He had a fever.
chapter
FORTY-SEVEN
I tried the handle to Gabe’s apartment, but the door was locked. I called to the fridges but I didn’t get any reply. Finally I heard the tumble dryer asking me if I wanted my clothes dried, and it tried to open the door, but after five minutes I sensed it wasn’t going to happen.
I kicked at the door and the lock burst in a splinter of wood.
“Hi,” said the tumble dryer, waddling up to me. “Those clothes look wet.”
“Hey,” said the Ice Jumper. “You’re back. Would you like some Primula?”
“No, thanks. We have to get ready to leave.” I closed the door as best I could.
“Great,” said the Ice Jumper. “Are we going food shopping?”
“No,” I said. “How’s the Tiny Eiger?”
“Quiet. He’s always quiet.”
“You know what he’s got inside?”
“It’s not taramasalata, is it? I love that stuff,” said the Frost Fox.
“Hey, come here,” I said to the Tiny Eiger as it loitered near the bedroom. “How are you?” It hummed a lot more for a moment, then tried to hide unsuccessfully behind a lamp shade.
“Come on, little fellow, open your door,” I said, crouching down in front of it. “I need to have a look.” It was a much smaller fridge than the others. Probably it came originally from a motel room.
“Maybe something went bad inside of him and he’s hallucinating,” said the Frost Fox. “I had that once. A mango went bad in my salad drawer. I felt really woozy for days. Kept warning everyone about a polar bear in the hallway.”
The Tiny Eiger hummed a little harder.
“Come on,” I said. “I’m here to help you.”
It hummed harder still, opened its door a tiny amount, and then, after another few minutes of coaxing, swung the door wide. Inside were
racks and racks of test tubes. I stared and then pulled one out.
“City of New Seattle Fear Virus,” I read. “Where did you come from, little fellow?”
But the Tiny Eiger wouldn’t say anything more. I put the rack of test tubes carefully back, and noticed a wooden box on the bottom shelf. I pulled it out.
“He was already in Nena’s room when we arrived,” said the Ice Jumper. “Are those test tubes inside?”
“Yeah,” I said.
The box was heavy. On the outside it said Sergeant Liebervitz. I opened the lid and nearly dropped it immediately. It was the head of a man packed in some chemical with a lead poking out from the feed on the neck.
“Gee, what’s in there?” said the Ice Jumper, waddling over. “Nothing,” I said, closing the box quickly and forcing the revulsion in my stomach to settle. I put it back in the fridge. Then I sat on the floor by the Tiny Eiger.
“Where did you come from? It’s important.”
“Nena,” said the Tiny Eiger. Then it closed its door and shuffled behind a potted plant.
chapter
FORTY-EIGHT
I poured myself a whiskey and sat down. I needed to get out of here fast with the fridges, but it was no good just wandering the streets. The obvious place to take them was the drongle warehouse, just as Gabe had planned, but it wouldn’t be dark for hours.
What the hell had Nena done? Had she killed that cop? Was that why she didn’t want to be head hacked? And what of the test tubes? Had she stolen them? Or bought them in some black-market deal?
“Don’t look in the fridge,” she had said.
Perhaps Gabe had been right all along.
Perhaps she was just a criminal who had been playing on my weakness. After all, that was all she ever claimed, but I didn’t want to believe that. I wanted to believe that she was the one who knew how to fix my life.
I had more whiskey.
There had been stories of people trying to control the population with fear strategies before.
There had been a clumsy attempt while I had been a cop by a marketing consultancy firm working for police finance. As a marketing strategy, they thought up a criminal gang called Warriors from Nowhere You Would Actually Know. Their whole plan was to secretly create an atmosphere of fear in the city. That way, they argued, the people would be happy to see more money poured into the police budget to combat the threat. And the more money the police had, the more they could enhance their image through marketing without having to spend it all on actually fighting crime, because there was no crime. The plan was that simple.
So they had set out to spook the city by giving the impression that this gang—Warriors from Nowhere You Would Actually Know—was rife, even though it didn’t exist.
But it all went spectacularly wrong.
The name of the gang was an error, for one thing. One of the marketing people came up with the idea of calling them “Warriors” and put in brackets, “from nowhere you would actually know,” meaning that at another time they would think up some make-believe place.
But some marketing graduate with a degree in graffiti husbandry at Tampa Bay University had taken that to be the actual name. And before the error could be rectified, a graffiti spray team from New York had been flown in. They hit the city wearing a flurry of baseball caps and, with a dash of exuberant lettering, the name was out.
It wouldn’t have mattered, but something else happened after that. Something way more sinister.
Kids on the street, seeing the graffiti, became intrigued and agitated, and they wanted to join the gang. And in the months that followed, amid the rumors, whisperings, and posturing, Warriors from Nowhere You Would Actually Know somehow slipped into existence.
And then it grew.
For a little while, Warriors from Nowhere You Would Actually Know became a powerful underworld player on the Western Seaboard. And initially, the New Seattle Police didn’t have the resources to keep tabs on them.
They fired the marketing company, and I remembered how the new one was always scathing about what the old marketing company had done. They spent a lot of time going around and saying, “Who did your marketing for you last time? Cowboys they were.”
So maybe it was police marketing. Maybe they had created a whole new generation of fear strategies.
Marketing companies wielded a lot of power.
Even the army had image consultants assigned to each unit who went into battle. They had major input in what the best way of attacking an enemy should be, so they put across the most aggressive image.
I had to get the fridges out of here, and I realized I was trying to form a plan.
And I’d deliberately not made any plans in years.
chapter
FORTY-NINE
I made a real effort to get more information from the Tiny Eiger, but it just kept calling for Nena, and my thoughts returned to the head in the box. I coaxed the little fridge to open his door again and examined it further.
Presumably the feed on the neck still worked and that was why someone had gone to so much trouble to preserve the guy’s head. The chemical in there reeked.
I searched through Gabe’s bookshelves and pulled out a map of the city. I opened it up, flattened it on the table, and marked the drongle warehouse. Then I traced the tubes from the Prisoner Rapid Removal system. There was an entrance five minutes from Gabe’s apartment and it was possible to get from there to an alley close to the drongle warehouse through the system. I marked the route in red on the map.
But it would only work if the feed on this dead cop’s head would give me access.
I buttoned my jacket, picked up the box with the head, and left the fridges, telling them not to wander out of the apartment.
I took a left down the first alley in the slanting rain.
The huge tube ran down the side and I could hear a grinding howl of machinery. After a couple of minutes I found a door marked “New Seattle Police Department. Hookup 159.” The fuck-off yellow letters had been newly painted. I opened the box and plugged in the feed from the head.
There was a pause.
I glanced around but the alley seemed deserted. Still nothing. I was about to give up when finally the door opened with a slow sigh. It was dark inside but there was easily enough room for the fridges. I closed it again and ran back to the apartment.
“Hey,” said the Frost Fox. “Did you pick up any milk? Or fromage frais? I’ve never had any, but they tell me it’s pretty special.”
“No,” I said. “We have to move now. We’re going on a little trip.” I searched around for a flashlight, but I couldn’t find one. “We have to be really quick. If anyone calls the Fridge Detail, then it’s over.”
“Sure, we’ll be quick,” said the Ice Jumper. “What about singing?”
“No singing. Everyone ready?”
“Sure,” said the spin dryer.
I led them out of the apartment, and jammed the front door shut as best I could. We had to go about twenty yards down the main street before we turned into the alley.
A kid passed us, then shouted: “Let’s see your eggs then!” at the fridges. But when I turned to look at him, he ran off laughing.
A man with a dog had picked up a newspaper from a bin and held it like a sodden halo above his head as protection against the rain. The dog came over to sniff out what was going on, but the man didn’t bat an eyelid at the fridges.
We turned into the alley.
Some faded graffiti on the wall declared Let’s Party! The streets became choked with sodden wood smoke, and the buildings grew more and more dilapidated as I headed into the slum. I stared into a room as we passed, and saw it was lit by a swinging pool of faint yellow light thrown out from a bare bulb that was strung precariously on wires. Someone was banging on something far away. A piece of tin or metal.
Voices jumbled out of one window on my left in a weird soft language I couldn’t place. “Ishi,” someone seemed to be repeating. “Ishi.”
&nbs
p; Another woman’s voice was shouting in rehearsed anger from a balcony up above. It rose and fell over ground I sensed she had trodden before. We walked on. Eyes watched us from dark rooms.
The fridges padded along as best they could, but the road was uneven, and the place was strewn with garbage, which jammed in their feet, so we had to stop a couple of times and free them.
I stopped. “Hide! Fridge Detail.” About fifty yards ahead, I saw a group of figures in dark orange shirts saunter out from the alley in a shamble of shouting, and begin searching halfheartedly through the crates in the rain.
The fridges all hunkered down, using the alley doorways and garbage for cover. After another two minutes the detail left, headed the other way, and we continued down the alley, splashing through the puddles until we reached the door. I took out the lead from the feed on the neck of the severed head and plugged in.
A woman approached. Her face was drawn into a tight, pained expression that revealed her top teeth and made it look as if her cheeks had been taped up in folds toward her eyes. I sensed it was her form of protection, a shield to keep the world away. She walked by without even exchanging a glance.
Finally, the lights blinked sadly in the rain, and the door opened with a moan.
I eased the fridges inside, and then shut the entrance. They began shuffling along with their doors open, throwing just about enough light around to see as the track clattered noisily high above our heads.
After a while a woman came swinging gently toward us, her gray hair cropped short. Her wide eyes were full of fear as she was pulled past us, pleading.
After another five minutes, a man appeared hanging from the track in the distance and began shouting wildly. “And on the fifth day God created sin and blaspheming!” he cried, his eyes staring out of the gloom. “And man fell from grace into a great cesspool of sin. A huge steaming ocean of sin! A great big vat of stinking sin!” The track dragged him over us. “Sinners and thieves!” he shouted down. “Sinners, thieves, and electrical suppliers! All damned! All damned to hell.”