by Jeter, K W
The meeting room of the Front’s Lead Committee must have been originally, long ago, the executive offices of some financial corporation. On the walls, under a layer of dust, Limmit could see elaborately framed graphs and charts, filled with jagged lines. The lines were colored blue and red, like diagrams of the blood’s circulation. The committee’s five members looked up from whatever they had been discussing when he entered.
“Well,” said Mary, leaning across the imitation-mahogany table. Her eyes seemed more intent than he could ever remember seeing them. “What did you decide?”
Limmit glared back at her, his body rigid with repressed anger. “I decided,” he said, “that you’re a bunch of fucking ghouls.”
“Aw, Christ, Gorgon,” the figure sitting next to her said disgustedly. Limmit remembered, from the night before, his name as being Eddie Azusa. “Why do you even fool around with this schmuck? Who needs him?”
Mary ignored him. To Limmit she said quietly, “Things have changed. Two days ago this Front didn’t even exist. You’ve got military experience; we can use you. Need you.”
Limmit sneered, his lower lip trembling with emotion. “You mean I can have a good place in line for sucking off Dr. Adder’s dead body.”
“Fuck it,” said Azusa. “Look, asshole, if you want to join in, fine. We’ve got barely enough people as it is to man the defense stations around the slum’s perimeter. But if you don’t care for it, don’t hand us any of that ghoul shit. You’re just like that idiot Milch I had to dump. A good triggerman, but he couldn’t face up to the fact that this is A.D. now: Adder’s Dead. Who cares what he would think if he was alive? If we can distort his image enough to draw people into a revolutionary movement, that’s all that counts.”
“Revolution, shit,” Limmit spat out. “There might be one person here who’s some kind of a revolutionary, but she’s barking up her ass if she thinks she can get me in with the rest of you mindfuckers.” He turned and strode to the door before Azusa or any of the others could do anything but jeer an obscenity after him.
They’re right, thought Limmit. Adder’s dead. Facing the committee, he had felt himself fill with rage; now he felt emptier than before. Rising momentarily from the pit, he looked around. The alley he was in was unfamiliar, the light from the sun sucked away into the layers of dirt and trash—he had wandered into some unknown area of the slums. Shit, he thought wretchedly. The abyss. Bottom at last. Curl up and die.
“Hello, Limmit,” said a voice behind him. He whirled around, startled, to see Droit with a small grin.
“You made it,” said Limmit. It sounded to himself like an idiotic thing to say but he could think of no other. “I thought you must have gotten snuffed during the Raid.”
Droit shook his head. “It just took me a while to get here. I ran the other way that night, into Orange County. Even found a pay phone over there, but it didn’t help.”
“What do you mean?”
“I got through to Adder—warned him about what was happening. He even managed to escape, I found out, but Betreech screwed him, handed him back over to the MFers. After everybody else on the street was dead, they dragged him back there and stomped him.”
“How the hell do you know that?” asked Limmit. “You mean you just watched while it happened?”
“Fuck, no. I wasn’t anywhere near there—you think I’m crazy? My former client, KCID, told me about it.”
“How?” muttered Limmit. He felt ill as the last hope buried inside—that Adder might have somehow still survived—started to shrivel. “How could he know?”
“Beats me,” said Droit, spreading his hands in mystification. “Besides Adder, KCID was my only other big client for info. But how he ever found out the things I didn’t tell him, I never figured out. He had some sort of process worked out, an oracle or something. It had to do with randomly generated numbers —he had a little box, a minicomputer that lit up with seven- or eight-digit figures, I think. He told me that when he had enough data worked into the system he could predict any series of events connected to Adder, a few minutes before each event actually occurred. When I went to see him last night and told him I called Adder the night of the Raid, that must’ve been the final datum—he said he had no need for my services anymore, after he let me know what happened to Adder.”
“But he can’t prove it,” Limmit said desperately. “You don’t know for sure that’s what happened.”
“Oh, he proved it,” said Droit. “Told me where to go look.” He nodded. “KCID’s got some kind of inside track on Adder, all right. Seems like a pointless achievement now, though. I mean, what’s left to predict?”
“You saw it? Adder’s ... corpse?”
“Well, almost.” Droit’s expression grew sickly. “Just about the closest thing to it.”
Christ, thought Limmit, looking into Adder’s face from only inches away. This isn’t the closest thing to being a corpse. This is worse than dead. As if the stone had been rolled away, and Jesus had shambled out, giggling idiotically, his brains lapping like watered oatmeal behind his eyes, his shroudcloth all mired with his no longer controllable excretions. No wonder nobody knew. Better he shouldn’t come back at all than to come back like this.
“How long has he been like this?” Limmit asked without turning around as he knelt by the couch Adder lay on. Droit had left without saying anything more, as soon as he had brought Limmit to this room.
“Days,” said the old woman behind him, her voice oddly inflected. “Since she brought him here. You know, her, Mother Endure. She found him in that alley, you know. I told her then that he was dying. Not dead yet, of course, but close to—just sits there or lies there, depending on which way I’ve put him, swallows a little of what I put in his mouth, lets me wipe and clean him. No trouble. No trouble at all. Just like my little girl Melia.” Limmit turned, still on his knees, and watched the woman indicate with a nod a young girl squatting in a corner of the filthy room, huddled next to a softly muttering television. Laughing faces passed back and forth on the screen. The girl’s eyes, below her matted hair, were blank, staring sightlessly into the center of the room. Limmit could sense that she was deaf as well as blind.
He looked up at the old woman. “No trouble at all,” she mumbled, smiling. She’s insane, Limmit thought with a sick horror. One of L.A.’s walking wounded. He slowly turned back to the figure on the couch.
Adder’s blank face swelled and mocked him as Limmit felt the room’s walls sway and bend closer toward him, breathing stale dust over his shoulder like this psychotic old woman. Did you expect to find me here? asked the unseeing eyes. All your life you were waiting for me, and now I’ve moved on, behind locked doors of gray tissue you’ll never have the key to. Poor Limmit missed the connection. Too bad for Limmit. Still ...
He sprang back from Adder’s face, and started to back out of the room. There seemed barely enough room for him to squeeze through, the walls heaving in a gross peristalsis in time with the old woman’s thundering breath, which seemed somehow to absorb the room’s few scraps of light with each contraction. The only illumination came from the three pairs of dead or near-dead eyes that swiveled toward him, following his panicky retreat. Jesus, thought Limmit fearfully, I’m losing my mind. It’s too much for me. I’ll never get out of here; I won’t make it before it goes completely ... I’ll stay here forever, just like Adder. She’ll take care of me, spoonfeed me and wipe my ass; my teeth will fall out, and my hair, and my arms will wither and fall off, and my legs from disuse, and I’ll grow into a giant baby intestine, like a pink slug, with an open mouth at one end that she spoons oatmeal into, and an open anus at the other that she empties the bucket underneath every hour, blind, helpless, mewling, puking—
His fumbling hands found the doorknob between them. The door oozed open reluctantly, and he almost fell through to the corridor beyond. He pushed the door shut and leaned against its surface for a moment to catch his breath, until he felt, through the back of his coat, the door g
oing soft and yielding, about to squirm open and suck him back into the dark room like a gut, a womb. He sprinted down flights of dark, moist stairs that vibrated like flesh beneath his boots, soft, breastlike layers of tissue.
It was only when he emerged into the smoky sunlight that filtered down and washed over the planes and surfaces of Rat-town’s buildings and alleys that he felt safe. Whatever giant placenta lurked up there, waiting for him to weaken and surrender to her tender care, swallow him up and soften his bones to baby softness, it had remained behind. In order not to risk losing that which it already had. Adder.
Droit was waiting for him outside the building. “You rotten fucker,” gasped Limmit, doubled over, trying to fill his aching lungs.
“He’s alive, isn’t he?” said Droit defensively. “I didn’t say in what condition.”
“Go to hell. Christ, I should have known. Don’t you want my reactions? Take my pulse, shove a thermometer up my ass? You and your asshole data, you make me sick.”
Droit said nothing, only looked back at him in smoldering anger.
“Go on, get out of here,” said Limmit, straightening up. “Leave me alone. No wonder KCID got rid of you. Who the fuck needs you? Or KCID, for that matter. Just like everything else in this shithole—two phonies sucking each other off.” Droit’s face filled with blood beneath the surface. “Okay, fuckhead,” he said, his voice tight. “Here’s the last piece of info I’ll give you for free. Did you see his arm? Did you?”
Limmit nodded, his own face beginning to burn.
“It’s not there, is it?” snapped Droit. “He had the glove grafted on before they caught up with him. And that’s what burned out his brain—what you brought him. Stick that up your ass and suck on it!” He pivoted on his heel and strode away, his figure compressed into an angry wedge through the alley.
Limmit felt the hollowness swell within, a bursting vacuum. Numbly, he thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and automatically drew out the yellow plastic radio. I don’t even understand, he thought abjectly, gazing at the silent object. But I know it’s true—I helped. He switched the radio on with one finger.
“Hohl! Alles hohl/” the radio sang out. “Ein Schlund! Es schwankt! Hörst du, es wandert was mit uns da unten! Fort, fort!”
Wozzeck again, thought Limmit as the music continued thornily. My song now. “All hollow” is right.
In a few moments the opera’s scene ended and the split-second of silence following was broken by a strangely cheerful, yet thoughtful voice. “KCID here at the mike,” it emerged humanely from the radio’s tiny speaker, “somewhere in the heart of L.A. You know, friends, I think more and more we’re all becoming like poor Wozzeck. I know my faithful listeners have their little problems, right, gang? But it would be so much easier, wouldn’t it, if the earth really weren’t hollow. Hohl, alles hohl That’s the way it is, all right. Isn’t that what you were just thinking? Ein Schlund, a gulf, an abyss, yawns beneath us and what can we do, friends? Some of us wait all our lives for something, somebody to come and make us whole, make us what we dreamed we were meant to be. And then, friends, he’s snatched right away from us. The ol’ abyss yawns and the awaited one falls right out of our sight. It seems like that pit is always there beneath us, waiting for us to forget about it, then it opens up again, swallowing up some part of us. Right, friends? Doesn’t it seem like that? Poor Wozzeck, poor radio audience. You bunch of losers. But there’s still hope. Yes, I sincerely mean that, and I’m talking right now to a certain specific individual out there, he knows who he is, and the rest of you just butt out, okay? Now listen, fella: there’s things down there in that pit, too. Es wandert was mit uns da unten, right? Something’s moving down there. Go talk to it, if you think something was coming for you. How long will you go on thinking that, hmm? There’s levels beneath this one, you know. In that abyss is a world. Fort, fort! Get off your ass and down beneath Rattown, where the action is! Maybe you should look behind you, too. In the meantime, how about some Schubert lieder?” Different music flowed on, replacing the voice.
Limmit started, amazed, at the radio in his hands, sweetly singing now. The congenial voice had poured itself into him, warm as alcohol. He switched the radio off in mid-lied. Where’s Droit? he thought excitedly, looking down the alley. He’ll know what it means.
Surprisingly, he could see Droit about a hundred yards away, running back toward him. He was waving his arms and shouting something. Limmit strained to make it out. Suddenly, he comprehended—“Behind you!” in a frantic voice.
Limmit whirled around and saw nothing but the wall of the building several yards away that terminated the alley. His eyes traveled up its grime-encrusted surface to its roof, where he could see a figure standing at the edge, silhouetted black against the sun. The figure leaned its head against the side of some long object braced against its shoulder and pointed in Limmit’s direction.
The sight froze him for a second, then he jerked back, his feet slipping from beneath him in the alley’s garbage. As he fell backward he could feel his bowels knotting in fear, and a bright flare of light appear in front of the figure on the roof. The ground exploded a few feet behind where Limmit had been standing, showering him with gravel.
When he wiped his eyes clear again, the distant figure had been replaced by Droit standing over him. “On the radio,” Limmit panted, reaching for the outstretched hand. “KCID— he talked to me.”
“Shit,” Droit half grunted. “As if you don’t have enough problems already.”
The woman called Mother Endure stepped silently into the room, from the smaller room behind it. She had observed Adder’s visitor from there.
“Oh, strange indeed,” the old woman cooed to her. “I imagine our little guest here,” she said, stroking Adder’s dark hair, “had lots of interesting friends. But that’s all past now, isn’t it?” Her blind daughter pressed herself closer to the side of the television, seeing nothing.
Mother Endure knelt in front of Adder’s body to look into his blank face. Her own was hidden in the cowl of her dark monkish robe. She took his one flesh hand and cradled it in hers. “All past now,” she said softly. “All of it.”
“This is what he meant,” said Droit, pausing to stamp, Wozzeck-like, upon the paved surface of the alley through which they were walking. The late afternoon sun slanted over their heads. “As far as L.A. is concerned, the earth is hollow. Before the Greater Production Corporation consolidated everything over in Orange County, things got pretty wild here. Expansion in every direction, just like a cancer. Catacombs, warrens, caverns, great big fuckin’ maze of old sewers, fallout shelters, subterranean apartment complexes, abandoned rapid-transit systems, warehouses, layer upon layer of interconnected tubes and tunnels, vaults, cathedrals, and abysses. All underground. If you know the way, you can go anywhere you want on the Sump Line, as they call it. People down there, too: loners and sump tribes. Not all the crazies in L.A. are on the surface, believe me.”
“Why would KCID tell me to go down there?” asked Limmit. The excitement he had felt when listening to the voice over the radio had cooled slightly.
“// he did—”
“Is there any way I can go see him?” interrupted Limmit. “Can you take me to him?”
“No way. He told me he was going into hiding. All his broadcast equipment and tapes fit into a suitcase—he could be anywhere in the slums with it now.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“Beats me. But you’ve got reasons to head below anyway, whether he was talking to you or not. That guy on the roof wasn’t just some crank berserker—that was a professional.”
“How could you tell? Why would anybody come here just to snuff me?”
“The gunner’s equipment, for your first answer. That wasn’t any resurrected CIA weapon; that was shiny new army issue. Why he’s been sent after you I couldn’t say.”
“Who then?” asked Limmit. “Who could have it in for me now?”
“Well,” Droit said, smili
ng thinly, “as far as killing goes, there’s only been one person recently with much of a large-scale interest in it.”
“Mox.” He paled; the vision of Joe Goonsqua’s neatly penetrated forehead flashed in his mind. “That must be it—for some reason he’s getting rid of everybody who had anything to do with that flashglove business.”
Droit shrugged. “Maybe. Whatever’s happening, though, your chances above ground right now aren’t much.”
“There’s more to it than that,” insisted Limmit. “There’s something ... down there. ” He lowered his eyes to the layer of trash his feet were stepping over. Nothing was visible below that.
“The only thing I can think of like that is the Visitor.” “Visitor? What the fuck’s that?”
Their eyes met. “I don’t know,” said Droit flatly. “I’ve never gone to look for it. It’s supposed to be up north, beyond the outskirts of L.A. even. All I know about it is what the Sump Liners I’ve talked to have told me. They say that something large fell and crashed into an abandoned town up there twenty or so years ago. Practically nobody down here noticed or cared much about it one way or the other. A group of scientists and technicians living in the slums, unemployed since the universities shut down, went up one of the underground aqueducts to look at whatever it was. They didn’t come back, but made arrangements with one of the sewer tribes to salvage all the old computer equipment from the linguistic labs at the former campuses. The story got started that the scientists had found something enormous still living at the crash site, buried about a mile into the ground. Messenger from the stars, eh? And that the scientists were devoting the rest of their lives to transcribing and translating what it’s saying. It’s supposed to be taking that long because the Visitor’s time sense is so much slower than ours.”