by Tim Scott
We edged past his swinging legs, down into the increasing darkness as his voice faded. Faint red lights fixed high on the side blossomed into small pools.
Another person hung limply from the track in the darkness, her face picked out by a sharp slither of light so that it resembled a fifteenth-century painting. She looked unconscious.
A smaller tube ran off to the side, and I realized I had forgotten the map. I tried to visualize the route and took a left, hearing the clattering discordant cry of the track, punctuated now and again by shouts of the people hung in the sacks. Above a fraying cable spat white sparks.
I took another smaller spur to the left again, and I felt the metal floor rise as the tube staggered through the buildings and we were met by the groan of traffic noise.
Chinks of daylight speared through tiny holes in the rusted sides. The track over us was dead now and all I could hear were our stumbling footsteps and the heavy gasping of my own breath that seemed to fill all the spaces in my head.
I led the fridges on in the gloomy light. The noise of the wind tapping a wire on the outside of the tube let out a mournful cry. A door banged far away, and the thump echoed in waves. We came to a discarded cap lying pristine and untouched on the floor like a calling card from the dead. And all the time, the musty, damp smell of filth—stale and heavy—lay on everything.
Here the track was utterly dead, and sheaves of wires hung down in tentacles.
A pool of red light. And we came to a doorway with a grimy sprawl of hydraulic arms. It was stamped “number 322.”
“This one,” I said as the noise of someone running through the tube far away echoed around us. I plugged in the lead from the head and the door opened.
“Hurry.” I helped the fridges out into the harsh bright light.
The alley was deserted.
“It’s one block and then you’ll be safe,” I said hustling the fridges through the mud.
chapter
FIFTY
Huckleberry Lindbergh?”
There was a phwump and hiss of hydraulics as the nurse released the torsion boards from his cheeks. They were all that was holding him upright in the chair and he slumped forward in the sack. But the chain connecting him to the track in the roof stopped him from collapsing completely.
“I can’t make sense of it,” said the doctor. “He seemed to have picked up memories of working in an office. Perhaps they are phantom images. I’ve heard it can happen. Anyway, I’ve wiped away a large chunk of memories to make certain he wasn’t hiding anything underneath. But I can’t find anything that would make him want to skip a hack. Strange. But there’s probably a reason. I’ll check my notes later tonight.”
The doctor wasn’t normally perplexed, and this was a mystery that he felt was a worthy adversary to his intelligence.
“Well, I’ll put a copy of his pictures with him.” The nurse trotted off.
Malbranque stirred. He looked sluggish, like a boxer who’d gone way too many rounds in too many fights.
“There, that wasn’t too bad, was it? All done, Mr. Lindbergh,” said the nurse clacking back into the room. “I’m going to staple a copy of your pictures here, to the front of your nice sack. You can have a look at them later. There are some nice pictures of a puppy for you.”
“Where am I?” he said groggily. “And has anyone seen my Spanish homework?”
“We’re just going to send you down to the cells now. We’re all done here. Well done.”
“Am I going to meet the wizard at Christmas? He promised me an owl,” said Malbranque, and then his head fell forward again.
The nurse pressed a button and the sack was hoisted up and swung up to the track in the ceiling. He became conscious again just long enough to say: “He promised me a very happy owl.”
The doctor flipped through the records while he was thinking, but more out of habit.
“Maybe he had his memories altered in some grimy back-street operation.” He paused. “I’ve heard rumors of such things.”
“Shall I get the next one in?” said the nurse.
“Yes. Actually, recommend this one for Fridge Detail. He won’t know anything too much. And we don’t want to make an issue of losing his mind.”
“Fridge Detail recommended,” said the nurse, selecting a huge sticker and placing it on his forehead. She pressed a button.
“I really do like the way there is so much variation in this job. Each day is different isn’t it?” she said as Malbranque was lugged out.
chapter
FIFTY-ONE
I walked cautiously through the side door to the back of the store where the old cop drongles were stacked.
The rain dripped in through the ceiling, landing with an intermittent patter on a drongle roof nearby. “Hello?” I called, but my voice just echoed back, sounding strangely monotone as it shuffled around among the mechanical debris, old drongles, dust, oil, and cookie wrappers. “Just the rain and nothing more,” I said. “Now I need you guys to stay here and hide if anyone comes, all right?”
“Sure,” said the Frost Fox.
“What about a little singing?” added the Ice Jumper.
“Just not too loud,” I said as I knelt down by the Tiny Eiger. “Open your door again little fellow,” I said. And when he did, I slipped the box with the head back inside.
Then I left them and headed to the Halcyon motel.
It was only a few blocks. If Nena had killed that cop and my bribe had had no effect, they would find out from the head hack and lock her up for good. But if she was only wanted for some minor misdemeanor, they might just wipe her mind of the last day and she’d end up back at the motel.
I didn’t fancy tangling with the guys in the lobby, so when I got there I headed across the parking lot and straight to the door of her room. It was locked.
I looked around, then kicked it in. The flimsy lock gave with barely a murmur.
The room hadn’t been touched. The hole in the roof where I had jumped through was still there and the debris lay scattered across the carpet as though the moment had been frozen in time. I took out one of the head hack pictures I had of her in the drongle and wrote a note explaining that if they had wiped her memory, she would need to talk to me, and I left Gabe’s address.
If she had killed that cop, and they found out, she wouldn’t be back, anyway.
I placed the picture on the table by the bed hoping it would attract her attention without being too obvious to anyone else snooping.
I was about to leave the room when I felt a crack on the back of my head.
“Where’s my money?” said a voice.
I staggered as my vision bled away at the edges and then finally fell. I felt a hand roll me over. Above loomed the shadow of a huge dark guy. He took another swing that caught me on my jaw.
“I haven’t got any money,” I said feebly, but it wasn’t the best reply.
“You took the money. Where is it?”
“I haven’t got any money,” I found myself saying again, and he began roughly checking my pockets. He found the gun and the wallet I had taken from the police marketing guy.
“So you haven’t got my money, eh?” he said riffling through the wallet and pulling out a wad of notes.
“Take it,” I said, struggling to focus.
Then he whacked me again and I heard the sound of the crack of my jaw but felt nothing.
chapter
FIFTY-TWO
Shuddering.
Much more than seemed ideal.
I opened my eyes to be met with the soft blue light that bathed the inside of a drongle dome and a smatter of rain on the shell. Outside, the leering swagger of buildings swept by as a wheel hit a pothole and the jolt spiraled through my lower back, jarring the air from my lungs.
I clawed my way up and sat on the torn seat, and I found my jaw ached like I had been hit by an angry wrecking ball. The blurred shaken forms of other drongles stumbled by.
I ran my hands over my head, feeling
its dead weight as the bruises throbbed. I had been out cold, rumbling around, for God knows how long.
At least I was still alive.
I held my head more firmly in my hands as the drongle hit a pothole and threw me back onto the floor. A grouchy sneer came from somewhere deep behind one of the panels.
I had to get out.
I tried to force open the door as we slowed up without any success. Then I pulled the emergency handle, but it came off in my hand. I braced my back on one side of the drongle and kicked the shell.
After a couple of attempts, the dome cracked. Then it shattered and my foot went through a small hole. I pulled it in, stuck my head out, and tried to squeeze through when we stopped in traffic. But the hole was tight and we picked up speed before I could get out and I was caught, half in and half out. Then we squealed through a junction, and the momentum threw me tumbling to the sidewalk in a ball of limbs.
I got to my feet. People were staring and I hobbled away before there was time for any of them to call the cops. Something in my inside pocket had dug into my ribs. I felt around and found out it was the bottle of healing balm I had been given by the girl as a free sample.
“Ideal for bruises,” it said on the label.
“They were dead right about that,” I said.
A coffee table lurking in the shadows was disturbed as I stopped and began coughing. They’d had a plague of them in New Seattle. Although most were culled, a few still evaded the catchers, living in the sewers and dark corners and normally coming out only at night. They all had pretty much the same personality, which had been bred in a computer program by feeding in data from thirteen thousand salesmen and seeing what they all had in common.
Top of the list had been the belief that golf was a sensible pastime, but I think they suppressed that from most of the models.
This one scooted up alongside and started to make small talk, one of its wheels squeaking wildly. They had been built to sell insurance and equities, but no doubt the companies that had made them had gone bust years before.
“Quiet out tonight, eh?” it said.
“It’s ten thirty in the morning,” I said.
“Sure. I knew that. What, you thought I didn’t know that?”
“What are you selling, then?”
“I’m not selling. Do I look like the kind of coffee table that would sell financial products?”
“It would be easy to think so.”
“No. Hedge funds, corporate bonds, stock-tracking medium-risk packages, I ain’t selling those. I ain’t selling equity bonds, even if they do look like a solid, long-term bet.”
“I have to go,” I said.
“All I will say is they give you 4.5 percent on a lump sum over a minimum of three months and you get a free gift of your choice. That’s all I’m saying—unless you ask about the management strategy, or the start-up costs.”
“Listen, little fellow. I’m not buying, so you might as well go away now.”
“Sure. Sure,” said the coffee table, squeaking along and nudging at my ankles. “But listen, if you signed up for a plan where you paid a fixed sum every month, you could choose a free gift. Maybe you’d like the carriage clock, or are you someone who would prefer a baby badger?”
“A baby badger?”
“Yeah, they make nice pets. It’s a talking point to have a badger set at the bottom of your garden.”
“No. And I haven’t got a garden anyway.”
“Okay, so maybe you’ve got a window box.”
“Actually, no. Go on back to your hiding place.”
“A badger might like living in a window box. He’d get a nice view.”
“I’m not buying.”
“Okay, but if you’ve got a lump sum, you should invest it. I’m offering you a unique opportunity here.”
“Thanks, but no.” We had nearly reached the junction with a much busier street and the coffee table was clearly nervous about being seen.
“All right,” it cried, and began hauling itself back into the alley. When it was halfway back, it cried, “I have friends, you know. I know a coffee table who once held a mug for the president!”
chapter
FIFTY-THREE
The main operations room was doused in soft green light and Mendes struggled to adjust his eyes.
An object came flying toward him. It struck the wall and landed on the floor near the trash. “Hey, I need to destroy that,” said a man over by the document destroyer, without turning, “but I can’t work this thing.”
“That’s the wrong setting,” called Mendes. “It needs to be on five. Can’t anyone work that out?”
“Oh, sorry, sir,” said the man turning around. “I hadn’t realized.”
“It’s done it again,” said Kahill rapping the screens. “Look what we have now! ‘Can someone tell me what the fuck algebra is?’”
“So how do we cure the virus?” said Mendes, leaning against his console.
“I don’t know. You delete files and then they all come back. We’ve never come across anything like this before.” He swiveled his chair too far and had to backtrack.
A single sheet of paper rose in a small fireball from the document destroyer in the corner.
“Hell!” cried the operative. He pawed at the thing hopelessly as it drifted toward the floor. “Fire!”
“That setting is too high!” cried Mendes. “You just need it on five. Five shreds the documents! Can’t you understand that?”
“Ahh, I see, sorry, sir,” said the man stamping out the fire. “I had it on eight. Hadn’t realized this machine had such a range.”
chapter
FIFTY-FOUR
Health and Safety guys were everywhere, wandering around in hard hats and yellow reflective bibs. They were fixing up a huge new Health and Safety sign across the street: “Do not buy clothes on holiday. Ever. It will dawn on you halfway through the first evening you wear them back home that you look odd. A strong Health and Safety Department means a strong city.” The cheery logo of the squirrel wearing a large pair of ear protectors stared at me from the corner.
A drongle was flopped up on the sidewalk and struggling to close its door.
“Your lucky inhumanely produced pate for today is foie gras,” it said as I passed by and into the block.
The door to Gabe’s apartment was wide open. “Marcy?” I called as I edged in. The place was quiet. I poured myself a drink.
“You must be Huck,” said a voice.
“Nena?” She stepped out of the kitchen. “How did you get here so fast? You want some whiskey?”
“You’re a cop.” Her voice was flat, shorn of any kind of recognition. It felt as if our friendship had been reset to zero.
“I was a cop. That was a long time ago. You saw the photo of us?”
She nodded. “So, you’re not a cop now? You know what happened to me?”
“Yeah. Are you sure you don’t want some whiskey?”
“All right.” I poured her a glass and she finally sat down.
“Were you head hacked as well?” I said, handing it to her.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “They didn’t give me any printouts.”
“Good.” The bribe had paid off.
I looked into her brown eyes, took a swig of whiskey, and recounted roughly what had happened.
“So that’s it?” she said after a pause.
“That’s it,” I said, finishing my whiskey.
“No. You left things out.”
“That’s what happened, Nena.”
“Yeah, that’s what happened. But that’s not why it happened.”
“What do you mean?”
“You left out some things, didn’t you? You want to know what I think? I think you lost your way in life. And then you met me and you thought I could help you find the switch that would start it again. And then…There’s something else. There’s something between us. I can feel it.”
I stared at her as the door to the apartment swung
open with a crack.
“Feeling safe, are we?” said a voice.
“Feeling safe?” echoed another voice.
Two Health and Safety guys swept in and loomed over us.
“We’ve been waiting. We found a problem with your kiss,” said the fat guy.
“My kiss?” I said, momentarily disoriented. They were the same two I had seen that morning. But how did they know about my kiss with Nena?
“You’ll have to come in. The DNA from your kiss on the form brought up a red flag.”
“Red flag. Red flag. Feeling safe, are we?” The tall one rubbed his hands and leaned farther over me.
“There must be a mistake,” I said, understanding. “I arrived in the city yesterday.”
“Mistake? There’s no mistake.” They both laughed. “Mistake! The only mistake we ever made was with that tiger.”
“Yeah, we hate tigers.” And he held up a hand to show a finger missing.
“Right.”
“So we’ll check over your details and then send you in,” said the fat one, waving a jack plug at me from a feed reader.
“Okay,” I said, trying to think my way out of this.
“This isn’t just a toe-stubbing hazard. This is a red flag. We need to get you down to Head Hack Central.”
“There won’t be a problem,” I said to Nena, and she tilted her head to one side as if to contradict me.
“No? Let me give you a hand,” said the fat guy, leaning in. I just caught the manic fire in his eyes and I tried to shuffle back as he jabbed me roughly in the shoulder with something sharp and a numb molten ache erupted in my arm.
“What the hell is that?” I said.
“A little Health and Safety cocktail.”
“Health and Safety cocktail!” echoed the taller one and they both laughed.
My mind staggered under the weight of the drug and my thoughts collapsed into slurring colors as I slumped.
I heard the laughter from the two men run around my head. And then it stopped. Through the grainy drug-induced darkness, I saw Nena stand up and take them out so fast that they sprawled across the floor.