Arms raised above his head, pistol dangling by its trigger guard, Black swallowed a baseball of saliva. “Who are you?” he asked, expecting a bullet to plow into his nape at any moment.
“Oops,” said the voice. “Sorry—you’re one of those health agents, aren’t you?”
Black faced the teenaged security guard with a drawn-out sigh. “Yes. Stay on that door; no one gets out. Be careful what you shoot—one of our people is running around in there.”
“Right. I only have a tranq gun anyway.”
“Thank God.”
Black stopped the car next at a small loading dock in the rear of the plant; not the primary loading dock. This one had a large, powerful waste disintegrator backed up to one of the dock openings. Again, the docks faced toward those bent-down tall yellow weeds and the black patch of forest, partitioned off by the charged fence. Out there in the weeds was an abandoned empty husk of a helicar, its plastic shell not corroding but tangled in brown vines, as if they were tentacles that had reached up to pluck it out of the air and had spider-like sucked out its juices, leaving only an exoskeleton. Unlikely and illogical, but Black imagined that something was crouching inside that husk, peeking out at him. Well, unlikely it was Loveland, at least—maybe a dog, or a mutant. Black briefly passed his beacon over it but saw only skull socket windows.
He mounted the dock platform—the two accessible doors were locked.
Black continued skirting the plant in his car. One door was open and a security guard stood in the threshold. Black paused, the police lamp swinging green light around over his head like helicopter blades, out across the weeds, briefly restoring them to life, but barely touching the black trees—a solid wall of barbed branches. Leaning out, he asked, “Was that door open when you found it?”
“No sir—I opened it. It was locked.”
Finally there was only the main loading dock. Two gigantic tanks on elevated scaffolding towered above him, the dock like a multiple vagina between the skeletal legs, the four openings locked like a chastity belt, he discovered a moment later. What kind of liberties had Mrs. Greenberg allowed Loveland—a full set of keys? Impossible—the security guards must have supervised his comings and goings. How had he escaped? Had he escaped?
Black heard distant police sirens. Then he heard a gun blast, loud but muffled and distant, from inside the plant. Black charged to his car.
Opal was still with her captive. “Did you hear a gun?”
“Yes.” Black walked up to her. “Where’s Beak?”
“I don’t know. Stay here, Monty, the police are coming. This has gotten too weird. It’s murder, it’s out of our hands.”
Reluctantly Black obeyed her, glanced at the seated ticket girl, her hands clasped together on her knees. She avoided looking at him.
“You. Does Loveland have a gun?” he asked her.
“I don’t know.”
“Do you know anything about that woman he killed?
“No, nothing…I’m not his friend, I don’t know him, I just wanted to know him…I’m a fan of his art.”
“Some art.”
“Her name’s Ivory Ebon. She’s nineteen,” Opal informed him. The girl’s right eye was hidden under her jagged black hair; she seemed to want to pull all of her being under that projecting curtain to hide.
“Black,” called a voice. He looked up. It was Vern approaching, his night glasses off, his pistol hanging loosely by his leg.
“Are you alright, did you hear a gun?”
“It was me.” Vern stood before him. Black felt instinctive dread at what he saw in the older agent’s face. It was doughy white, more agonizingly haggard and worn and bruised with perpetual shadow than usual. The eyes silently screamed, blinked hard as if swatting away the nearing bugs of tears. “I shot one of the guards, some stupid kid. Dead.”
“Oh my God—Vern!” Black breathed.
Defensive anger leaped into Woodmere, his face becoming a nexus of angry lines converging at snarling mouth, flared nostrils and especially between eyes blazing with a fury which almost caused Black to step back from him. It was an inhuman anger, tremulous, too much for a man to contain. The Red War had struck him like lightning and still crackled inside him. Black found himself remembering the story of how Vern had cudgeled to death a trail guide who turned out to be an enemy spy—with a crowbar.
“The fucking kid popped out from behind a tank and he wasn’t wearing his fucking hat! He should’ve been wearing his damn fucking clown hat!”
“Alright, man, ease it…ease it. Give me your gun, Vern.”
“My gun? My gun? Do you think I’m sick or something, boy? You think I’ve lost it? You think I’m gonna go on some fucking psycho-vet berserk shooting spree and kill you and your little slice?”
Spit had hit Black in the face. His face remained cool but twitched inside. He held out his palm. “No, Vern, but the forcers might think that. Don’t make them take it from you—you don’t want that.”
Woodmere cocked his head; the sirens were near. The taut lines loosened, his eyes brimmed again, looked ashamed. The heavy semi-automatic was handed over. “I’m sorry, man,” he croaked. “Shit—that’s it for me.”
“It’ll be alright,” Black sighed.
The lights in the plant finally came on, a glaring flood that stimulated several moths from the show. They danced excitedly, frenzied, electrified in the air.
FOUR
From a machine in a small cafeteria Opal bought a coffee for herself and a hot mustard—a drink favored by the indigenous Choom—for Black. At a table sat their boss Captain Nedland, already with a coffee, Beak smoking, and Detective Churchill Jones, the investigator assigned to head the case, a drab and tired-looking man who was making no effort to halt the thinning of his hair. This was the police station of Precinct 4, nearest to the Greenberg plant, and it was the early hours of the morning.
“There is no sign of Loveland’s escape, no prints on restricted door knobs, no indication of his still being in hiding inside, according to our scans,” said Jones. “The girl Ivory Ebon submitted to truth scan and she isn’t lying; she isn’t an accomplice, never even slept with the suspect. She’s been released for the time being.”
“Does she know where Loveland lives?” asked Nedland.
“No, and he isn’t on current census. His last residence on file has been rented by someone else. The identity of the woman in the film your agents watched, who was seen being dragged into a black hoverlimo, has also not been determined…but the forensics lab at Precinct 34 has sent us an interesting development. Especially interesting to you people.”
“What’s that?”
“Blood on the scene has been found to contain the mutstav six-seventy STD.”
“Ha,” said Nedland.
“What about Vern?” Beak grumbled unpleasantly.
“We’ll probably release him tomorrow pending trial, which shouldn’t go too badly for him, but of course you are required to take his badge.”
“It’s done,” said Nedland gloomily. He and Vern had collided on numerous occasions, and Vern had showed Nedland his fury face more than once, but Vern had been one of his best agents. That was over now, for good, as Woodmere himself had predicted.
“We’ll be working closely with P-34 on this and we’ll keep you people informed, particularly about that blood, but for now we should be all set,” Jones told them.
“Shouldn’t we be in on questioning Mrs. Greenberg?”
“We’ll keep you informed if there appears to be a need.”
Captain Nedland nodded. The Health Agency and Punktown’s police force often had a conflict of interest, or at least a competition—the forcers resentful, the agency felt, of their authority to investigate and arrest, and sometimes exterminate.
“Now, could one of your agents submit to a memory imaging session so we can review and copy Loveland’s Cupid film?”
Black was tired and reluctant, though interested in the outcome, and if Opal stayed he would have
to stay. Fortunately Beak volunteered. His memory of the Loveland show would be located in his mind, extracted, projected and recorded via computer hook-up. The film could then be slow-framed, frozen, blown up, etcetera. The entire Loveland presentation could be minutely examined, scrutinized for clues as to how he had executed his magic escape.
“Well,” sighed Detective Jones, “I guess the rest of you can go home.” Jones nodded at Black, who had given him Agent Woodmere’s pistol. Like all health agents’ firearms, Vern’s gun took a photo of its target every time the weapon was discharged, the photo transmitted instantly to Health Agency headquarters—this to insure that the agent did not misuse his authority to kill, owing to the consideration that the gun’s plasma rounds could leave no body and thus no evidence and an agent might otherwise kill anyone he/she desired. Anyone found overriding the photo insurance mechanism was subject to immediate termination, by law, though it was still done and Vern had been caught once and merely quietly suspended by Nedland for several weeks. His gun had sent an alarm to headquarters with his tampering; he’d been drinking at the time. When he had shot the teenaged guard his gun had been loaded with lead bullets, however, not plasma. Vern liked lead. Lead freed blood. He’d laughed this once with a teasing menace to agents Black and Cowrie.
Crushing out his cigarette, Beak mumbled, “Let’s get this brain drain over with, huh man?”
“See you all later,” Opal drawled, rising. “Good luck, inspector.”
“Thank you all for your help and patience with this.”
Black and Nedland exchanged parting glances; Nedland gave Black a sigh and a shrug.
*
They lived on the third floor of a huge tenement house, on a short street on a hill lined on both sides with tenement houses of similar character. Old, but pretty well kept. There were actually large trees on this short road, thick-trunked, leafy and shady in the warm seasons, copper and brass in fall, though the street was only a few minutes away from the town’s deep core, far from being in the suburbs. One man owned five of the big houses, three of these being sectioned into low-income housing apartments. He was allowed certain tax write-offs for providing this service to the town. Black and Opal lived in one of his two high-rent buildings. The situation was the same with the rest of the street, and so the inhabitants of this pretty, tree-punctuated oasis were an odd yin/yang mixture of quiet, well-paid, work-oriented office types and loud, poor, jobless types. But their landlords were very strict and the outsides as well as the insides of the houses remained surprisingly clean, so that it was hard to tell from the street which types lived in which houses.
Outside the door, Opal drew her snub-nose. Black looked at her.
“We were VT stars tonight, remember?” she explained curtly.
“Oh yeah—I want to look at that before we go to bed.”
“You look at it—I’m exhausted.” Opal tapped out their code on the panel by the door. The hall beyond was black, seemed empty. She led the way in.
At each of the three landings there was a huge, long open window which made the landings more like porches. Black and Opal had to pass through one and two to reach their porch, but no one ever had cause to come up to theirs. It was dark, but out through the breezy window the Earth-founded colony-city of Punktown loomed up its thousands of thousand-eyed heads to eavesdrop on them, filling the sky. Even now lights burned. There were people out there working, watching VT, having sex, laughing, crying, dying…so distant. The town never slept, just rested various limbs, laid down assorted parts of its immense body at different times.
On the broad sill were potted plants, a few more hanging from the top frame. Opal. The rules against pets were firm, but often a certain stray cat sunned itself sphinx-like on the sill; Opal put out food and water every day. Feral, Opal had named him, though he was becoming ever less so. He hadn’t come around for a week now at least. His water was ice. His food untouched. Someone took him in, Black kept assuring Opal. Yeah—to eat, she’d said.
In the summer they sat out here in lawn chairs, in bathing suits, drank beer, cooked on a grill, watched a small VT, fucked on the mattress from the small guest bed that Black slept on when they fought. In the summer on weekends they spent whole lazy days out here, fucking again and again until they sweated and filled the porch with their smell, and then they would sleep naked on the mattress until day. Have coffee, smoke. Listen to their trees rustle. This porch was Black’s favorite place in all of the world that he knew.
But it was cold now, lawn chairs and VT put away, the mattress back on the guest bed. Opal let them into their apartment and put a few lights on. She moved directly into the bedroom to change for sleep.
Black played back the recorded vid of tonight’s news, scan-forwarded to the story on the extermination of Bum Junket.
The tube station’s security cameras showed a good, clean picture, and the tapes were replayed at a higher magnification, one zooming in on Bum’s disintegration. Opal was hardly noticed, but Black’s face filled the screen. He groaned, wagged his head. He’d have to shave the new mustache and goatee. And he liked himself with them.
Angered male prostitutes from Red Station were interviewed. Then an outraged spokesperson from a gay community organization. Then a cool, rational someone from the Health Agency—a public relations person. Black heard Opal pad up behind him.
“A lot of attention, huh?”
“M-670 is great for ratings,” said Black. “The news people probably creamed their panties when they heard about this.”
“Did they mention our names?”
“No, but I got enough close-up time to make a movie star drool.”
“Yeah, but they’ve got you cast as the villain. Let’s see how monstrous they think we are when this thing spreads up to their doorsteps. It’s a flood, and we’re trying to save them from getting washed away. We plug up one hole in the dam and they act like…”
Black leaned backwards on the ottoman he sat on and smiled at Opal upside-down. “You’re so romantic when you start getting poetic.”
“Fuck you.”
“Oh—you are in a romantic mood, aren’t you?”
“I’m wiped. I’m going to bed.” She padded away barefoot in her baggy men’s pajamas. Black saw a mellow light go on in the bedroom. His eyes remained on the mellowly lit doorway framed in darkness. Then he rose, went to quickly brush his teeth in the bathroom. He’d made a decision and he had to race sleep. If she got too far she wouldn’t want to turn back. He was already as afraid to pursue it as a shy boy asking a beautiful girl for a first date—dreading the very probable rejection. But he’d been aroused earlier in the shower, and he always remained subconsciously aroused for hours, days, until release. Sex was as important to him as anything in life, more important than nearly anything else.
She was curled away from him, small like a clenched fist, to begin with. She knew when he didn’t put the lights out, put his hand on her hip instead as he curled beside her, his front almost touching her back.
“I’m tired, Monty. I mean it.”
“Just quick. Fifteen minutes, I promise.”
“No. Why can’t you ever respect my ‘no’?”
“I have, many times.”
“Yeah, after I had to say ‘no’ a half-dozen times. Maybe some day I’ll say ‘no’ once and you’ll respect it.”
“Maybe some day you’ll say ‘yes’ without me having to ask a half-dozen times.”
“There’s been plenty of times I’ve said ‘yes’ right away, and plenty of times when it was my idea.”
“Not lately.”
“I’m not your wife; it’s not my obligation to keep up with your needs. I do it when I want to. Why should I sacrifice?”
“Where’s the fucking sacrifice?”
“Making myself a fist for you to masturbate in. Fifteen minutes. You just want to use me to get yourself off.”
“Only when you don’t want to participate. It’s not my preference. I get nervous, stressed out e
asily. It builds up. Getting off calms me down. It all goes out in my sperm.”
“And into me. Then you make me tense and upset.”
“Hey, I’m sorry I aggravate you so much.” He had already taken his hand off her. Now he rolled the other way, presenting his back to hers.
“You’re selfish.”
“Only because you won’t let me give to you.”
“Yeah, blame me for all your problems.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t live together.”
“Oh, I see. You can’t live with someone unless they fuck you, huh? I’ll leave if you really want, Monty.”
“No—I don’t. Go to sleep. I’m sorry. Man. Fifteen fucking minutes.”
“Alright, here.” Opal rolled onto her back, arched her hips in the air to jerk down her pajama bottoms. She kicked them off, pushed the ball away with her feet. The bed rocked. She lay with her bare legs scissored out. “Come on, here I am.”
“You’re being cruel now. Forget it.”
“I’ll do it, alright? Fifteen minutes. I don’t want to have to say ‘no’ more than once next time—understand? I shouldn’t even have to negotiate with my body.”
“I can’t do it now if you’re gonna be resentful.”
“I’m not—I’m just tired, can you understand that? I like sex but I need sleep.”
“I need sex. I never met a woman, never, who liked sex more than a man.”
“Oh, you poor tormented species.” Black rolled onto her. He had peeled off his underpants, all he’d had on, another sign of his intent. “We just use sex to hook a man for what we really want—to get married, or get the man’s money, or have a baby, then we’ll never fuck again. Him, anyway. You told me a similar theory once. Well, I admit it, you were right. I’ve just told you the sacred age-old secret of our society…now I’ll have to kill you.”
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