“You were right about me. I want to tell you to go find yourself a new girl…”
“I can’t. It’s not our way, though some give in nowadays. But the kind of female I’d want wouldn’t accept me, because I had a mate before.”
“How did that ever evolve? It isn’t biologically practical in terms of guaranteeing procreation and the continuance of your race. What if a disease wiped out a lot of people…what about a war?”
“My people don’t war each other. And our behavior didn’t evolve biologically—we chose to be this way. It’s love, honor, respect. Loyalty. Loyalty is big with us, man, it’s everything. You can’t see the beauty in that?”
“Yes, I can.”
“In the afterlife, if one exists, I want it to be me and her, not some three-way scene. Yeah, smile…that’s heaven for you, not for me. My wife is indispensable. It’s not like a job you fill again. You mustn’t forget that person—she’s part of your soul.”
Monty nodded, stared into his glass. “I can’t shake Opal. I love Mauve—I’m sure I do. I want a thing with her…I want us to live together. And Mauve cares more for me romantically than Opal ever did. But I can’t shake her. A lot of it’s guilt, I know. A lot of it isn’t. I loved her. I don’t want to forget…abandon her. That’s what it feels like. That sound to you like I should have a bird beak?”
“Yeah, but you don’t. My advice to you, man, is to go on. Go for Mauve…leave Opal in the past. You don’t have to forget her. But go on…’cause your people do. You can’t be like me. You have to do like your people.”
“Do your folk look down on us for that?”
“My people realize that different beings have different needs.”
“I’m sick of your fucking perfect people, Beak. Is there anything wrong with your people, is there any intolerance or selfishness?”
Beak laughed. “Nope.”
“Right.” Monty sipped his mead.
“Gonna Kama in your Sutra, darlin’…’til the break of dawn…”
A hand fell on Monty’s shoulder and he jolted. “You boys can’t even wait ‘til I get here to start drinkin’?”
“Whoa, look at this guy!” Beak exclaimed, holding out his hand for his ex-partner to squeeze. “We’re in the wrong business I guess, huh, Monty?”
Standing over them, Vern Woodmere looked strikingly good. He wore a square-shouldered blazer in alternating bands of metallic red and gold over a black silk shirt and black high-waisted trousers, fashionably baggy like Monty preferred. Metallic gold slippers. His grayish hair was neatly cut and slicked back; he was even clean-shaven. Though all the ravaged look could never be painted over, he appeared relaxed and healthy and happy. No trace of the hideous shrapnel wound Monty remembered from the last time he’d seen him, so long ago.
“Well, since you guys got a head start on me, I’ll have to make up for it.” A waiter came as Vern seated himself. Vern ordered a yaupon—a powerful drink as black and opaque as India ink. Vern shook Monty’s hand across the table. “Blackie. Shit, man, you look better than last time I saw you.”
“You too.”
Vern returned his attention to Beak, and some of the old intensity revealed itself in the hatchet-wound creases between his eyebrows. “You did good nailing those fucks, man. I knew you’d get them someday. Who’d have believed it had anything to do with all this other dung?”
“Monty bagged one of them, but he did a good job so I’m not complaining.”
Vern looked from one to the other. “So…fill me in on this, huh?”
They talked. The waiter brought Vern’s drink, another mead for the other two, a plate of appetizers to go with their drinks. Beak did most of the talking, except where Monty knew the details better or from closer experience. They brought things up to the gun battle—battles—at Cugok, though Vern had caught a lot of that on VT this past week. He’d seen Beak on VT but not Monty, as Nedland had said it would be.
“I was afraid to meet you in public, where I’ve been on the screen,” Beak said quietly. “What if one of the Teebs see me with you and recognizes me? We shoulda met in private, don’t you think?”
“Hey, my last name isn’t Teeb—I do what I want. I’m not hurting them. I’m still me and this is more important.”
“Glad to hear that,” said Monty. “Nedland calls you an enemy to HAP.”
“Hey, Teeb isn’t into illegal hazardous dumping like some of the other crime orgs are. He’s careful what he gets into and he’s even got a conscience about what he does, believe it or not. I like him. I’m not close, of course…but I’ve got a comfortable future. Anyway, don’t worry, Beak—this is a big town and it’s not like Teeb’s got gorillas in every fucking bar, right? If I can’t have some drinks with my best friends then I’d rather they did waste me.”
“Did you find out if they had anything to do with Ferule Cangue having a memory wipe?” Beak asked him.
Vern munched a salty dilky root. “I didn’t dare poke into their computer files, but I do have a few reliable and trustworthy friends in there, some of ‘em even from when I was at HAP. My old buddy—and don’t let this name go anyplace—is Blud Fulcrum, one of Teeb’s two top weapons boys. He’s the one who got me into Teeb, though he didn’t have to work hard to convince him, with my HAP experience. Anyway—yeah, Blud told me. We did do Cangue’s wipe.”
Monty sat up and forward, frankly surprised that Beak’s theory had been correct. “Jesus, they did? All this stuff Dwork and Loveland can do but they have Cangue wiped by Teeb?”
“Well, Dwork is dead and who knows about Loveland. Anyway, Cangue might not have been sent by anybody but himself, his own idea. Blud doesn’t know much about it and I can’t press him, you know? They make a lot of money wiping big shots and they can’t let anything happen to jeopardize business…weaken their customers’ confidence in them.”
“That’s it? No word on what Cangue knew?”
“Nothing specific—the obvious. Affiliation to some extent with that Dwork fuck. I’ll tell you anything I can safely learn, believe me.”
“Safely,” Monty stressed. “I almost got you killed once—that’s enough.”
“Hey, shut that right now, pal, I mean it. Don’t ever let me hear those words coming out of your mouth again or I’ll push ‘em back in with my fist. It was my choice to help you before…just like it’s my choice now. You think I’m not a part of this? I am. We all lost. We all want revenge. Don’t you even think about not counting me in on that.”
“I’ve got your slug,” Monty smiled.
“How’s it doing?”
“Great. Want it back?”
“You don’t like it?”
“I do—I talk to it. I love that stupid thing.”
“Keep it. I’ll visit it sometime and bring some flies. Me and Yas got a cat, anyway…I’m afraid the cat might hurt it.”
“Yas? Is Yas what I think it is?” Beak said.
“She’s gorgeous, man—I wish I had a picture. You’ll have to meet her. I thought I told you about her; it’s been three months now. So far, so good. And there I used to hate hebs. Ginzburg.” Vern laughed.
“You hate everybody,” Beak observed.
“True. Maybe I’ll turn Ginzburg to Woodmere…we’ll wait and see, huh?”
Monty wanted to tell Vern about his relationship with Mauve but didn’t, out of deference to Beak, a widower. Later. Anyway, he wasn’t so sure where things stood anymore.
Beak clapped Vern on the back, and they all ordered a mead—Vern wisely resisting a second yaupon. For now they drank and laughed. In the general anxiety and gloom of life, brief islands of happiness like this were to be embarked upon and enjoyed, and meager supplies collected to last through another stretch of seemingly endless black ocean.
Vern departed from them with promises of further information when and if he got it. Monty was glad he was back in his life, even though the danger Vern seemed to radiate and attract simultaneously was still there, only partially disguised under
his expensive cologne.
*
Monty tried on a jacket like Vern had worn yesterday, only with wide horizontal bands of metallic green and silver instead.
“I don’t like it,” Mauve commented.
“Black and orange.” He took that one down in his size. “Yeah.” He tried it on. “Nice and Halloweeny. This is the latest style.”
“Try pink and gray—you look like a bee.” She watched him. “That’s better. It’ll be time to Christmas shop before you know it, you know…I should really start now.”
“Mm,” agreed Monty. He had suggested they make time for each other today. It was he who hadn’t been able to make time lately, really. Her show was still only once a week—despite the fact that a week was no longer needed for the healing of wounds—since the theater schedule was filled with other productions…though another performance or two a week would be added later if its popularity still warranted it. It appeared that it would. In any case, they had had lunch today and Mauve had needed to go to a store for a few items. It was the Canberra Mall, where Monty had wandered philosophically in his dying.
“Red and green—for Christmas.” He held it out from the rack.
“Hideous.”
“Agreed.” They moved on, Monty with the pink and gray jacket draped over his arm. “Mauve…I hope I didn’t hurt your show in any way. I know you know Dwork was a sick dangerous monster, and you aren’t sad to see him gone, but I appreciate that the prologue thing was a real challenge to you and everything…”
“You and your guilt, Monty. Don’t worry about that. I did it—I proved my commitment. After finding out about Dwork I don’t think I’d want anybody slicing my face again. Everything’s fine. I’m getting more attention than ever, right?”
“I’m sorry, too, that I didn’t tell you what I knew about those two punks, but I didn’t want to make you so afraid that Dwork suspected you knew something…”
“Monty, I understand. You think I’m mad you found those two scum?”
Killed, she meant, him and Beak. He’d killed one of the Stems, and Westy Dwork himself, he knew she knew…and he wondered if she viewed him any differently for it. Not that killing in Punktown was a unique achievement, but Monty had claimed three unique victims in one day.
“You seem cold.” He came out with it.
“I’m just tense.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Hurt.”
“I told you I was sorry. You aren’t jealous about…my thing about Opal…”
She stopped, he stopped. People were close by; he hated fighting with a woman in public but Mauve was uninhibited. “I understand your thing about Opal, Monty…I want you to follow it through to some kind of a conclusion so you can get her out of your system enough to make room for me!”
“Don’t hate her.”
“I don’t, you jerk, I just told you—I understand!”
“I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to give you enough credit.”
“I noticed. Or trust.”
“I don’t blame you for being hurt. But I’ve gone through a lot of hurt, too. Just soften up a little…bear with me—please.”
Mauve sighed, brushed her hair out of her eye. “All right.” She blinked, breathing deeply and slowly. “I’m sorry.”
He took in her smooth beauty. The scary thought came that had come before, since the raid on Westy Dwork’s lab: just as on the day of The Big Frown, had he lived to see it, at any time Dwork could have reversed the healing effect on Mauve. With a few strokes on his computer screen, reopened her face wounds. Or slit her throat. Or mutilated her beyond recognition, perhaps. The picture in Monty’s mind sent a chill through him. As did the idea—the possibility—that Dwork had had another lab other than the one at Cugok. A lab with Loveland. Where there might be duplicates of the “friendly flesh” equipment…
How frail was her smooth, pale tissue. Vulnerable, a mist of cells. Mortality. He wanted to protect her.
“I was wondering if we could start thinking more serious,” he said. “Like moving in, serious?”
“Me with you?”
“Well, I like yours better.”
Mauve smiled, embarrassed at her earlier bitterness. “Sounds good.”
“We can enact pagan beer-drinking and sex rituals on that mysterious fraternity emblem on the floor, summon up the spirits. I hope you like slugs.” He’d throw away his poster of Dora Deering.
“Do you want to wait until this is over…you know what I mean? Until it’s all out of your system?”
“It’ll never be all out of my system. Like you said, I just want some kind of definite conclusion. But that could take a while. Besides, I worry about you. If Loveland is truly alive, he could still want to involve you in this again in some way. Always keep your gun handy…”
“You don’t know if you believe he’s alive any more?”
“Who knows? Who knows what to think?” he sighed.
Mauve leaned up to kiss him—another thing which embarrassed him in public. “We can spend a nice Christmas together, huh?”
“Looks like it.”
A Choom woman had floated up to them, her huge mouth in a grin of recognition. “Excuse me—aren’t you Mauve Pond?”
*
Monty slapped across the tiles in bare feet, naked and muss-haired, to activate Mauve’s loudly beeping vidphone. “Hello?” he growled, bleary-eyed.
“You’re of the circumcised persuasion, eh, Monty?” It was Beak.
Monty pulled over a chair and sat to hide his body. “I know this is too much to wait until tomorrow, but convince me of it.”
“Remember I told you I was trying to reassemble names to see if I could find any significance in them—like Tate Hurrea was Auretta Here? Well, I wished I did this before. I asked my computer to take names like Vicelord Godfucker, Toll Loveland, Manuel Hung, Ferule Cangue, those punks Johnson and Melendez and everybody, and see if they match up with any other names of people in the Loveland and Dwork case files, in a rearranged fashion.”
“And?”
“Get ready.”
“Yeah?”
“Godfucker. As in The Godfucker?”
“Yes, yes—come on!”
“Drop the ‘ick’ from Fredrick. Fred Cugok…”
“What?”
“Fred V. Cugok becomes V. Godfucker, as in Vicelord Godfucker, as in Toll Loveland.”
“Jesus, Beak…Jesus, man!”
“What? What?” Mauve mumbled from bed.
“Let me write this down.” Monty scrawled on the corner of a newspaper. “My God,” he breathed. It was confirmed.
“He’s alive,” said Beak. “He has to be.”
“But I spoke to Cugok on the phone; he’s an old guy. Makeup?”
“A stand-in. Did you record your call?”
“Yeah—right. I know…we’ll compare Cugok to actors who attended P.U. while Loveland was there…have the computer run through school records to look for a match. My God, Beak…an entire fucking company. Just another part of his crazy fucking games.”
“Well, I’m sure he didn’t mind making the money. And Dwork, too. They were going to ride it for as long as it held, then go underground.”
“Come back as somebody else. Shit, I’ve got to call Nedland! That place has to be seized, everything from it recalled immediately—everything! Everybody there has to be questioned. I’m sure this Cugok person, whoever he is, has gone back to his real self and vanished, but we have to send a bulletin out to Kai-hany anyway. Shit, man! You know, I thought that fuckin’ place was a wee bit too artsy-looking inside…”
“The scariest part of it all is that this nonexistent Fredrick V. Cugok was able to fake his way into opening a pharmaceutical research company to begin with,” noted Beak.
“Fucking terrifying,” Monty agreed.
*
“I was just playing around, mostly—I couldn’t sleep,” Beak explained, proud of his discovery. They drank coffee. It was an hour yet until dawn.
“Nope—sorry; no match.” Olive pushed away from her computer. “This man you spoke with doesn’t match anybody who attended Paxton University while Manuel Hung a.k.a. Toll Loveland did. He could be anyone, any friend…not even an actor. I’ll have the image broken down to see under the makeup he’s obviously wearing—you should get a good accurate picture.”
“You think it is makeup, then…that he really is younger?” Monty said.
“Unquestionably. The wealthy head of an experimental pharmaceutical company wouldn’t have wrinkles like that. They overdid it to make him look old. Have a tech read his voice, too. It sounds younger…faked.”
“Thanks, Olive.”
Monty and Beak left the phone recording with a lab tech for further examination, and then responded to a page instructing them to report to Captain Nedland’s office. He had just arrived, but had called ahead to have a raiding party gathered. Giddry was in Nedland’s office, rumpled and irritable, more about having been notified of this development last than by the early hour.
“Coming along?” Nedland asked the health agents when they came in.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” said Monty.
Those four went in one hovercar, and a van full of men and women in black rubbery suits followed. The security people from the Fog Agency were, to say the least, surprised…but calling ahead might have alerted one or more of them (if so inclined) to destroy evidence or escape. Giddry removed their weapons and cuffed the four men together pending questioning, remained outside in the cold with them. “Always the sludge work,” he grumbled at them accusingly.
The Fredrick V. Cugok Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Company was swarmed, and seized.
Within two hours, much had been ascertained. The plant had thus far registered negative in every toxins test administered. Of course, many more tests would be performed yet—for days, no doubt. And even if all the drug products tested negative, they would still be destroyed.
So far, the only thing amiss besides Dwork’s office and personal laboratory was, naturally, the office of Fred V. Cugok.
There were files, progress reports, the like, as one would anticipate…and that was just the point. One would expect to see such details, and so they’d been provided for. Even down to a photograph of Cugok with a white-haired wife. Another overdone effort at disguise: wouldn’t a man of Cugok’s wealth have a gorgeous young wife? Probably, Monty thought cynically.
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