by Jeter, K W
All that remained of the movement was Anna Manfred and her small bands, growing smaller and more ineffectual every day as they continued to dynamite easily replaced farming units. All that remained of Program Drench B were relics such as the flashglove Adder gazed at, and a small group of abandoned buildings surrounded by decaying walls and barbed wire out in the Mojave Desert.
The power of it, thought Adder. Several hundred thousand anarchists and sympathizers died in that little fenced-off rectangle in the desert. Executed continuously, three shifts a day, by machines like this. Lying in the briefcase, the flashglove looked like a severed forearm and hand of gleaming chrome, rigid, blunt-fingered, and studded with various small apertures. Gass had surpassed himself in designing it, taking a minor archetypal image of the twentieth century for inspiration. The metal hand, the incorporation of some lethal inanimate object into one’s own being, appearing as it still does in the nightmares of all age groups and used too in lots of cheap popular media. In some old TV programs and pulp stories it is merely weighted into being a crushing hammer; in others it can talk. It could be argued that western man’s obsession with the idealized karate blow is a form of the metal hand archetype, the rigid, steel-calloused striking hand representing the same fascination with the artifacts of destruction, the desire to make them part of oneself, the fear of those who have succeeded in that.
At any rate, said Adder to himself, Gass succeeded. The flashglove materialized some dark part of everyone’s subconscious.
Many of its victims had frozen, like hypnotized rabbits, when the executioners, each with a forearm amputated and glove installed into its place upon the stump, approached through the crowded enclosure, swinging ceaselessly and randomly. The device operated off the energy of the bearer’s central nervous system; it was equipped with optical, auditory, and thermal sensors and detection devices giving the bearer a fantastically heightened awareness of everything around him; and programmed with enough logic/memory circuits to respond, under the bearer’s control, faster than either he or the victim could even see. A special alloy sheathed the glove, capable of emitting lethal harmonic vibrations that exploded flesh and bone upon contact. The image of the executioners, with the multisource blood flowing off their leather aprons, their eyes glistening with growing lunacy, one bloody hand upraised, had been psychologically conceived by Gass to transfix and terrorize everyone who saw or even heard of it.
After Program Drench B’s success, and a certain revulsion that set in the ordinarily unsoftened hearts of the government, there was nothing to do but shoot the now hopelessly psychotic executioners. Gass eluded the hit team sent after him, and died somewhere in the desert west of the camp, ending his faceless and mysterious career. The flashgloves were all destroyed or defused into inert lumps of metal. Except for this one, thought Adder. This one escaped somehow.
Along one side of the briefcase’s interior, little rectangles glowed, surrounding minute black words with red. SERVO MECH I: OPERABLE, read Adder to himself, SERVO MECHII, OPT. INPUT, ONF-R. Oh fuckin’ marvelous! thought Adder. The best of all, the largest little red sign that blinked on and off with a quiet, demanding authority: READY FOR GRAFTING ... READY FOR GRAFTING ...
Adder’s throat felt strangely parched. “Tell me,” he said. “How did you get ahold of this?”
“Lester Gass was my father,” said Limmit. “When the flashgloves were originally produced for the CIA, he had one more made than the contract called for. The hiding place out on the Phoenix Egg Ranch was the only thing of value he left me.” He felt his voice tremble—would Adder be able to tell that everything after the first sentence was what Goonsqua had coached him to say?
“I suppose,” explored Adder, “you have an idea of how much something like this is worth to me.”
“I think we could arrive at a price that would be ... mutually satisfactory.”
Sharp little bastard, thought Adder, grinning. He’d better be careful. Hate to have to snuff him.
Droit leaned across the desk. “May I see?” Adder, with elaborate graciousness, turned the briefcase around to him.
“Very nice,” said Droit after a few seconds of silence on everyone’s part. “Most rewarding from many viewpoints. Though I wonder what it being bugged signifies?” He pulled his lip abstractedly, lost in thought.
“Bugged?” said Adder, stiffening. “Where?”
“Right there,” replied Droit, pointing to a near-microscopic dot near the edge of the briefcase’s lining. “Pinhead scanner.”
Adder, mouth set and eyes narrowed in fury, tore the black velvetlike cloth away from the lid. He extracted a small, flat metal pack connected to the scanner node by a silver filament.
Jesus shit, thought Limmit, feeling the blood drain away from his extremities. That lying bastard back in Phoenix shopped me good, all right.
“All right, Mr. Limmit, if that’s really your name,” said Adder grimly, holding the scanner and transmitter toward Limmit on one flat palm. “Just what the fuck do you think you’re trying to pull?”
Limmit shook his head desperately. “I didn’t know that was in there. It’s someone else’s scam, not mine.”
“Sure,” said Adder. “Hope it doesn’t offend you if I check that out a little. Even if this isn’t your own cute little idea, I’ve got a good notion who’s behind it.” He flipped the metal pack over. Inscribed on the reverse side were the words PROPERTY OF GREATER PRODUCTION CORPORATION, BROADCAST MEDIA DIVISION. Adder picked up the scanner node between one thumb and forefinger and waggled the extended middle finger of his other hand at it. “I hope you’re watching, Mox,” he snarled. “Up your ass with your pathetic schemes.” He turned back to Droit. “Did you know anything about this whole shtick?”
“Sorry,” said Droit brightly. “It’s completely new data to me.”
“Well, since you’re so fucking useless,” Adder said, pulling from the lab coat a .44 Magnum, the same one he had slept with the night before, and handing it to Droit, “I’m sure you won’t mind keeping an eye on our little friend from Phoenix here. Just make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
Limmit turned slowly to face Droit as Adder got up from the desk, tore off the lab coat, and threw it over the empty chair. Droit was casually cradling the pistol in one hand, the barrel unwavering at the very center of Limmit’s chest.
“I thought you were a dispassionate social researcher,” said Limmit.
The gun in Droit’s hand didn’t waver. “I am,” he said. “Then how come you’re holding that on me? Aren’t you afraid you’re going to bias your findings a little?”
Droit shrugged. “Maybe, but then again I’ll be able to keep on collecting data if I stay on good terms with Adder. If I piss him off, I won’t be collecting anything much longer.”
“Shit.” Limmit collapsed back into his chair. The short dialogue had exhausted all the bravery he could summon up. Into the pit, he thought wretchedly. Even as a kid he had periodically sensed an abyss beneath himself, one into which at any moment he could fall, the inevitable result of the simplest or even cleverest of his actions. He felt it always there, waiting for him to slip up, the subreality beneath the whole world, an alternate universe from his science fiction paperbacks constructed of shit: Fecal planets moving around long, brown stars. Busted hopes. This must be what hell feels like, he said to himself, filled with self-disgust at his own stupidity, even more than fear of its consequences. This is what I get for listening to that fucker Goonsqua.
Droit coughed apologetically. “You really don’t have that much to worry about,” he said. “Adder isn’t vengeful or anything, if you’re really on the level with him.”
“Wonderful,” said Limmit. “The only trouble is I’m not.” He watched despairingly as Droit shifted the gun from his right to his left hand, then wiped the sweaty palm on his pants.
“Does anybody have any cigarettes?” Limmit and Droit both turned their heads in the direction of the girl’s voice. In one of the two doorways on the f
ar side of the office a young girl stood, pallid blonde and naked. She looked back at them, unblushing. “I’ve looked all over this goddamn place, but I swear that guy’s some kind of ascetic or something.”
She crossed the room, small breasts shimmering, and perched on the front edge of the desk between Droit and Limmit. She leaned across its surface, one leg placed farther out for balance, converting her body into a single pleasing line from bare foot to shoulder. Limmit thought he could detect a gray pallor, an analog of L.A.’s atmosphere, growing beneath her still-pink skin. She searched through the desk’s surface rubble, pushing the closed briefcase to one side. “I give up,” she said disgustedly, turning around and, hunched over casually, placing her palms on the desk’s edge next to her thighs. Her movement dissipated the pure line, the body lapsing back into gravity-bound postadolescent flesh. “Sure you don’t have any cigarettes?” she asked.
“Sorry, don’t smoke,” said Limmit, detumescent from misery.
“Neither does Adder,” said Droit, “so there really isn’t much point in looking around here.” With his unoccupied right hand, he fished his notebook from his coat and propped it on his knee. “By the way,” he said from behind gun and pen, “how did things go with Adder last night, after Pazzo got shot? Your little deal still on?”
The girl peered at him. “Oh yeah,” she said after a moment. “You’re that nut Leslie told me about, always going around asking weird questions. You were there last night, weren’t you?” She considered for a few seconds. “Yeah, I guess everything went all right last night. I mean, he wasn’t so shook up or anything that he couldn’t function, if you know what I mean. He said he was going to run an ADR on me later today, when he got done with some other business. Is this”—she nodded at the gun in Droit’s hand—“part of what he was talking about?”
“No,” said Droit, smiling and jotting something down. “This is something else that came up. Did he say whether he was going to start work immediately after the ADR? Was it going to be a straight ADR run, or with any variations? Just asking for research, you know.”
“What the fuck’s an ADR?” asked Limmit before the girl could reply. “I keep hearing those letters.”
Droit looked at him in mild surprise. “You know,” he said, “I’m really beginning to wonder about you. Are you sure you’re in the right line of work? I mean, you don’t know shit about L.A.”
Limmit glanced briefly up into the naked girl’s amused eyes. “Come on,” he said to Droit, “just tell me what it is. Maybe I’d like to know before I die, okay?”
Scratching his chin thoughtfully, Droit said, “It’s not that I don’t want to tell you; it’s just that, after all, information is my business, you know ...” He trailed off, looking expectantly at Limmit.
“You must be kidding.” Shaking his head in disbelief, Limmit extracted his roll of bills and peeled several off into Droit’s empty hand. This is ridiculous, he thought. I’ll probably be dead in a few hours. He marveled at the fatalistic calm that had suddenly descended upon himself. What a way to spend the time.
“That’s fine,” said Droit, pocketing the money. He coughed, clearing his throat. “ADR is an acronym of undetermined meaning, referring to a process invented, in fact, by your father, Lester Gass. That is, if you really are his son.”
“I am.” Worse luck for me, thought Limmit.
“Well, we’ll see. At any rate, the ADR was devised by Gass for interrogation purposes, but not for extracting information based in reality. Gass was interested in something else, something below that.”
“The pit,” mumbled Limmit to himself. It figures. “Materially, the ADR consists of two unique drugs, synthesized exclusively now for Adder by the same person who manufactures nearly all the drugs in L.A. Both drugs are injected intravenously into the subject and the interrogator. The first shot acts to eliminate the barriers between the different evolutionary stratifications in each person’s cerebral cortex. All the submerged, bestial layers are united with the topmost, conscious layer into a single entity. An alligator that can talk.”
“What’s the use of that?” asked Limmit.
Droit ignored him. “You’ll see. The second shot establishes a telepathic rapport between the subject and the interrogator. It’s a cumulative effect—it wouldn’t work without the expanded psychical energies created by the other drug. Both individuals, or rather their egos complete with the formerly buried parts, meet on a common symbolic ground outside their bodies.”
“That part’s kinda hard to believe.”
“Believe what you want—you paid to know. The whole effect of the second drug is a refinement of some of the original mind-uniting drugs of the late seventies. Those were eventually given up by most people because they were only able to give the sensation of a rapport between minds, without any actual details—so faint a sensation that it would be impossible to tell whether it was an illusion or not. The other drug Gass devised for the ADR resolved that question.”
“So what’s the point?”
Droit showed a small irritation at the interruption. “The point is,” he said, “that the interrogator, if he was strong enough, could examine the totality of the subject’s mind, conscious and subconscious, while they were in this common psychical meeting ground. It’s like a separate world or universe: the details of it are created by the interaction between the two minds. Most people, after having the first drug injected, have the topmost, normally the only conscious, layer of the mind overwhelmed by the release of the submerged parts. The individual’s psychic energy goes into constructing elaborate fantasies, satisfying the buried, primeval lusts and hungers of the former subconscious, using the symbols and thought patterns of the mind’s top layer. If the interrogator can control those portions of himself, and resist the attacks of the subject’s expanded and united mind, then it’s all spread out before him—the entire contents, not just the conscious part, of the subject’s mentality.
“The only problem with it,” continued Droit, “was that, at the time, Gass himself was the only person able to control it to that purpose. CIA men who tried it either came back with nothing, having succumbed while under the ADR to the power of their own subconscious, or else, if they persisted, becoming subject to a particularly nasty and irreversible decay of the higher conscious functions. A unique cancer, sort of, since it consisted of those sections of the brain that contained the primitive, unconscious areas of the mind absorbing the other sections. As if the beast within had been finally aroused by the ADR and was attacking and eating its long-time captor. Eventually, after some really interesting personality changes, the autonomic functions would also be consumed and the would-be interrogator would die.
“The only effect on Gass, and since then, of course, on Adder, was a residue of the telepathic effect created by the ADR’s second drug. Close physical proximity to someone who’s been a subject under the ADR before, and the injection of the two drugs into either individual’s bloodstream, is enough to stimulate the ADR’s complete effects in both.”
“I still don’t see,” said Limmit, “what good that is to anybody, let alone Gass or Adder.”
Droit sighed and spread one hand alongside the gun. “Gass used it for his own purposes—he got the inspiration for the flashglove from interrogating captured anarchists with the ADR. Adder, however he got ahold of it, is able to control it too, but for a little different end. Evidently it takes a certain type of mind, where the conscious layer isn’t as far removed from the submerged sections to begin with as in other people, to get control of it.
“The heart of Adder’s position in L.A.’s little social scheme is that he does two things with the ADR. For one price, sometimes taken as a percentage of future earnings, he’ll run a young girl, fresh on the Interface, under the ADR, and then surgically bring about the particular masochistic fantasy he saw there. It’s kind of moral, actually. An aptitude test for determining what degradation would be most satisfying; what they were looking for in L.A. to begin
with, or else they wouldn’t be here, only it was too far buried for them to be sure of discovering themselves.”
“That’s what I’m here for,” said the girl, emotionless.
“For a higher price,” said Droit, “Adder runs the ADR on those who can afford to pay for it, mostly big shticks in the GPC and high army brass. That’s to find out what private, basic lusts are in them, aching to be released and satisfied. Whereas most poor schmucks from Orange County you see on the Interface have to find their own private kinkhood through experimentation. In both classes, nearly all the fantasies deal with the amputation or mutilating or altering of the sexual object. Hence, all of the chopped hookers out on the street. The rich customers get one cut to the exact specifications of their ADR-revealed hunger—there’s never any problem finding the girls for it—and store them in little rooms in the buildings along the street. They swap door keys every now and then for variety, but for the most part they’re fantastically attached to their little pets. After all, deep below, that’s what they’ve been lusting after for millions of years.”
“Some humanitarian, all right,” said Limmit. He accepted Droit’s explanation—it revealed too much about L.A. not to be true to some degree.
“In his own way, he is,” replied Droit. “Though I doubt if he gives a shit about much of any of it except the money.”
“You guys are fulla shit,” the girl said disgustedly. “Lotta metaphysical garbage, if you ask me.” She looked Limmit full in the face. “You’d understand better the way things are in L.A. if you spent more time out on the street instead of listening to weird bullshit artists like him.” She jerked a thumb at Droit. “Do you want to know how it is with this ADR thing?” Limmit nodded dumbly, vaguely wondering why the girl was affecting such a phony “from the gutter” speaking manner.