Lightspeed Issue 46

by Charlie Jane Anders

  The egg had an advertisement on the side, a photo of a cigarette smoldering on a dead man’s mouth. Tobacco Road. A movie he’d never see. He hadn’t seen a movie since …

  “You going inside?” McCallum glanced in the direction of the pub.

  “Yeah,” Rosalie. “I’ll check out the feeds.”

  McCallum’s uniformed operative brought him a small, clear bag with a woman’s cuff inside. Thick. Brushed aluminum with thin strips of pale bamboo embedded at set intervals.

  “The egg heads cleared it,” the op said. “And the advocate.”

  McCallum took the bag and held it up for a second, in the glow of the egg’s rear work lights. The bracelet looked caught, like a fish. Dead outside its natural habitat, which was a young woman’s wrist. Cuffs were such personal things, beyond the obvious, McCallum had learned. The type of cuff a person chose, the number and depth of its scratches, did the owner lock it around his or her wrist or something else? He knew a sculptor who kept his bracelet around his ankle so it wouldn’t mar his media. He had to sit down cross-legged every time he wanted to make a call. The tiny details said big things. This bracelet had been on the shelf two months ago. Flawless. A smart design, went with everything, a bit too expensive for grade 15, but not so expensive that it was a gift from a well-off other. Fresh, new, ready to advance. Flawless. No signs of a fight. Somebody stabbed this girl from behind without any kind of build-up she knew about. McCallum wanted to toss the bag into the egg and walk away. He slipped the cuff out of the bag, tapped it awake, called Help.

  “Ambyr Communications,” he heard in his ear.

  “Police over-ride. Authorization—” He gave his code.

  The top of the bracelet changed from dull silver to something like rice-paper. Geri Vasquez’s life appeared, organized into little bubbles of data. She had 60 friends, eight of whom she called regularly, none of whom had been selected tonight. No messages for the last two hours. No one asking Geri where she was, why she was late, how the date was going. Prior to six tonight, she exchanged between ten and twenty messages an hour. Then nothing. Odd. McCallum tapped the name Geri called the most. “Katrina.”

  A buzz in his ear, then “Gee?” A young woman’s voice, crystal clear, popping with energy.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  Katrina’s voice lowered, tensed, and nastied-up. “Who is this?”

  “Detective McCallum. Ambyr Systems Security. Sorry to alarm you.”

  “What are you … where’s Geri?”

  McCallum had heard the confusion before. No one called from someone else’s cuff. Unless …

  “Katrina, what was Geri doing tonight?”

  “Where’s Geri?”

  “I need your help. Can you help me, Katrina?”

  “Yeah. I’m rattling here. Is she OK? Is something wrong?”

  “Something’s wrong. I won’t lie to you,” McCallum said slowly and softly. “Can you tell me what Geri was doing tonight?”

  “Work,” Katrina said. “She was working tonight. A pie night. No idea what that means.”

  “That’s alright.”

  “Is she alright? Why are you on her cuff? Can I talk to her? She can’t be in trouble. She was working.”

  “I will have to get back to you.” He clicked off. He couldn’t listen to her descent into pleading. He couldn’t tell the girl her friend was dead before telling the parents.

  Official messages were easy to find on Geri’s bracelet. She had them separated by color and shape. Aqua squares for work-related memos. None related to tonight.

  “What were you up to, honey?” McCallum said.

  “No feeds,” Effchek shouted from the door of the pub.

  “What?” McCallum turned, scrunching up his face. He must have misheard.

  “No feeds,” Rosalie shouted again. “Either end. The manager says they’re malfunctioning.”

  Damn them all to Hell, McCallum shouted in his head. The uniform operative didn’t need to hear his frustrations. Not yet, anyway. He’d have to see how long he was going to keep all this steam in his kettle. With no video images of the act, that might not be too long.

  • • •

  Sylvia stared at Gavin Stoll’s mouth. The tiny curl in the corners, the “I know something you don’t” grin both irked and intrigued her. She didn’t get into the movie business because she was incurious; she could get past a grin she wanted to slap away.

  “The Milkman,” Gavin said.

  “What the fuck are you talking about.” She decided coy time had elapsed.

  “The Milkman. In the Lake Erie region.”

  “Is this a title? A working title, I hope.”

  “There’s a guy somewhere in the Niagara Falls catchment who tests milk and posts his findings.”

  Sylvia’s lips scrunched hard to the right, all on their own. This didn’t make a whole lot of sense. “The company lets some guy product test and post results?”

  “Yeah,” Gavin said. “He outs dairy farms that hold milk too long or contain too much feces or whatever.”

  “And the company lets him.”

  Gavin leaned forward, full smile glaring. “The company can’t find him.”

  “No way.” She didn’t give the answer any thought. Her mind jumped ahead, tracking the vigilante down, interviewing supporters and dairy farmers, wide pastoral shots, cut to tight dark ones of some ghost-geek in a barn, with bales of electronics, fooling the company, a Robin Hood of milk.

  The waiter returned with a bottle swaddled in a napkin. He made a show of secretly giving Gavin a glimpse of the label. They exchanged grins and the waiter uncorked and brought the neck to the top of Sylvia’s glass. Her hand sliced over the opening, peach-color knuckles like a tiny but impassable mountain range.

  “None for me, thanks,” Sylvia said.

  Gavin said, “Really? You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  “Sorry.” She wanted to get on with the conversation. It took the waiter five hours to pour a drop into Gavin’s glass, watch him swish it and smell it and taste it and pronounce it perfect. The Milkman, she wanted to snap. Is he real? Can we sniff around better than Ambyr Systems detectives? Is this doable? Because if it is …

  “Interested?” Gavin asked.

  “What are we talking?” She knew how to be crisp. Don’t ever let them see your tongue hanging out. Hold the drool. Besides, it sounded too good to be true.

  “A quick documentary. Couple of talkers, a little corporate shit, how this bastard can’t be trusted. That type of thing. Of course, you … you, Sylvia Cho … you can hide the pill in the peanut butter. You could slip the real message in under the corporate one without their lifting an eyebrow.”

  She could. She knew she could. Let Public Affair’s coifed, tailored models talk while the whole time she gets to tell the world about some wacko who is actually beating the system. Amazing. It didn’t even matter if the guy existed. Just the chance to prance the idea around was golden. This could be a masterpiece—redemption for all the propaganda she had to film. Art. Meaning. A difference.

  “Who has sign off?” She asked.

  “That’s the best part. I bundled. Lots of private savings and surplus. Corporate has little to say.”

  “Little’s not nothing.”

  “Such is the world,” Gavin said. “Such is the world you can change.”

  That was a bit strong, but the sentiment was right. She loved the Milkman. Three minutes in and she was in love.

  “What do you need from me?”

  Gavin glanced at the empty wine glass, then up to her.

  “An abortion. Then you’ll be clear to work.”

  • • •

  Emory Leveski sat at his kitchen table, in the dark. He wanted a glass of water. Warm. Body temperature. Nothing too cold. He just wasn’t sure he could handle a glass. He still shook. Maybe if he concentrated. Maybe if he used both hands, like a little kid. Yeah, that gave him another idea. Emory stood, went to the cupboard and took out a plasti
c sippy cup, with a lid and a stopper, hiding a tiny membrane. The cup had cartoony butterflies and frogs and bent green cattails on it. He got the lid off, water in, and the lid back on without too much spillage. He sat back down to suck on the little spout.

  The water felt so good in his mouth. He could feel cell walls cheering the rush of liquid, imagined them opening their gates and welcoming water like a hero returning from battle. Dry spots cracking and surrendering across his palate and down his throat. This is better, he thought. The sippy cup makes me drink more slowly. You had to work at it, suck … like that girl, wheezing in her last breath.

  The tremors returned. He set the cup down and pressed his palms to the table. No matter what he tried thinking about—sex, long division, picturing the most perfect brook rolling over speckled, polished stone—his mind replayed the same scene. That girl, the jelly coat, the stab, the stab, the stab.

  Crazy. He had to get control. Emory was a compact person. He understood that. That didn’t mean fragile. He could do better than this. What about those Lamaze techniques? Those classes weren’t that long ago. Breathe in through the mouth, out through the nose? No.

  “What are you doing?” Lillian’s voice, from his right. He turned and looked at her, arms folded across her chest. A T-shirt and long, flannel pajama-pants. She looked so cute in her short, new-mom hair.

  “I don’t know,” he answered.

  “It’s creepy.” She turned on the kitchen light and strolled to the refrigerator. “How did things go?”

  “I don’t honestly … I saw a girl get murdered.”

  “What? You’re kidding me.”

  “No,” Emory said. “Right where I was going. Right at my meeting spot. I was still in the car and …”

  Lillian plunged into the chair next to him.

  He said, “God, it was awful.”

  “Did you … what did you do?”

  “Nothing. I couldn’t. It was like … like when you’re running up a beach, in the water, you know? You can’t move half as fast as you want. It was like that. By the time I figured out what was happening, it was the past. I’m so freakin’ slow.”

  “Oh, sweetie,” Lillian said. “Are you all right?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, nothing happened to me. Nothing physical.”

  “Did you get a good look at the killer? Did you tell the ops? Did they give you any trouble?”

  “None,” Emory said. “I didn’t stay.”

  Lillian reached over and took his hands. She tried to press the shaking out of them. “It’s OK. I’m sure they’ll do what they do.”

  “No, it’s not OK. I wanted to help, but then, I kept thinking … I wanted to stay and tell the ops everything, but, in the back of my head, I kept thinking, ‘Shit, Emory. You’re insubordinate yourself.’”

  “You are not insubordinate. Not that kind.”

  “Yeah, see what you just did? Not that kind.”

  “What you do is not murder. It’s the antithesis.”

  “To the company?”

  Lillian gave his hands another squeeze. “There are policies and there are policies.”

  “I agree,” Emory said. “But what if someone else understood that too? What if they decided to mix things up? No … together.”

  “Calm down,” Lillian said. “I’ll make you some tea or something.”

  “No. Listen. What if this wasn’t a wrong place, wrong time thing? What if this wasn’t a coincidence? What if somebody out there decided the best way to get the Milkman was framing him for a murder?”

  Copyright © 2014 by Michael J. Martineck

  Excerpted from The Milkman by Michael J. Martineck.

  Published by permission of the author and

  EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the author.

  Michael J. Martineck has written for DC Comics, several magazines (fiction and nonfiction), the Urban Green Man anthology, and two novels for young readers. His last novel for adults, Cinco de Mayo, (EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy), was a finalist for the 2010 Alberta Reader’s Choice Award. Michael has a degree in English and Economics, but has worked in advertising for several years. He lives with his wife and two children on Grand Island, NY.

  NONFICTION

  Interview: Joe Haldeman

  The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy

  Joe Haldeman is the author of the classic 1974 novel The Forever War. That book and many of Joe’s other works are based on his experience of being drafted to fight in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat. His most recent book is a thriller called Work Done for Hire.

  This interview first appeared on Wired.com’s The Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy podcast, which is hosted by David Barr Kirtley. Visit geeksguideshow.com to listen to the entire interview and the rest of the show, in which the host discusses various geeky topics.

  Your new book is called Work Done for Hire, and it’s the story of a man named Jack Daley. Do you want to tell us about him?

  Jack Daley is a guy who was drafted into a slightly future army, maybe just as little as ten years from now, and having trained as a sniper, he goes off to a place that they just call “The Desert.” I think that it’s Iran, but I’m not sure what it is. I don’t really care because he’s back from it when the story starts. He was wounded. He lost a finger—from another sniper, evidently.

  But he’s getting along okay. He’s got a little disability pension, and he’s writing, and basically, when the story opens up, he gets an interesting contract offer to write a treatment for a movie, and then within a few days he gets a more sinister kind of proposal. There’s a knock on the door, and when he opens it, there’s a long, rectangular box, and inside it is a sniper rifle, exactly the kind he used in the war, with a little note saying, “Would you kill a really bad man for $100,000?” They give him $10,000 down as earnest money, so he’s kind of in a quandary. He definitely is not going to kill anybody for hire, but it is a little bit tempting, and he did kill a lot of people for not any great reason as far as he is concerned. He can entertain it as a thought experiment, even though he is not going to say yes. But then he finds out that the people who are offering the money will also punish him if he doesn’t take it, and they threaten to kill his girlfriend. It starts to get more complicated.

  You mention that it’s set in the very near future, but it’s essentially a straight thriller novel, unlike most of your work, which is more science fiction. Did you set out to write a more realistic novel or did the story just develop that way?

  It really just developed that way. As often happens, I just started writing without any plan as to what the novel was going to be about, and I’ve been reading about the war in the Gulf, and I read a couple of books about sniping, and I’d been interested in that for an earlier novel about ten years ago.

  [Sniping]’s always been an art that’s well studied. Although I’m not a very good shot myself, and the army didn’t have me do any sniping while I was in Vietnam, it was always kind of an interesting thing: This illusion of godlike power—and being able to murder strangers and be paid for it, which is just a strange kind of a fantasy.

  So I was drawn to write a story about a sniper, but I didn’t want things to have gone well for him. He didn’t enjoy being a sniper. He was always sort of morally confused, and slowly going mad during the job, so he carries that into civilian life, and he doesn’t really have a chance to recover from it when he’s approached by these people who want to take advantage of his experience.

  You mentioned that he is given this sinister offer to be a contract killer, and he’s also given this offer to write a screenplay novelization. Could you talk a little bit more about the title Work Done for Hire, and just what that means for writers?

  “Work done for hire,” in terms of contract law, is a book or a movie or whatever that you agree to do, but you will not take credit for it, and you wi
ll not get the copyright—the copyright will be assigned to a third party. Basically, I’ve done works done for hire myself. It’s kind of an ambiguous sort of achievement. It means somebody thinks you can do a book, and is willing to pay you for it, but they’re also willing to take the copyright themselves. Usually it’s associated with Hollywood. I’ve done two of them, and then did not do the third. It’s not too uplifting an exercise.

  Could you tell us a little bit about the work for hire assignment that Jack is given in this book?

  In this one, basically, they call him and say—or rather his agent gets in touch with a book producer in Hollywood—and the book producer wants Jack to write the treatment for a movie from a two-or three-paragraph description of what the story will be. He says, sure, he can do that, and really he just rattles it out without too much concern for literary value or anything. I drop chapters from that book into [the novel], and he actually has a lot of fun with it. But then it takes a sinister turn, and stories start to come together.

  The story that he’s writing: It’s about a private investigator who’s hired to track down a serial killer, and the serial killer believes that he’s an alien.

  The serial killer thinks that he’s from another planet, and we, the readers, are given to understand that that’s probably just a fantasy that he’s living through. But no external, objective proof is given for either assertion. I try to keep the reader a little off balance there.

  The serial killer character, who calls himself “Hunter,” is himself a science fiction fan, so there’s sort of like different layers to it. He’s a science fiction fan within a science fiction story within a novel. One novel that we see Hunter reading is called The Poems of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt. Does that title have any particular significance?

  The Poems of Null-A was a great classic of the 1950s which is often used as an example of how horrible science fiction was in the 1950s. Van Vogt was a really good writer of adventures and a certain kind of freewheeling science fiction which does not bear close analysis from a modern or postmodern point of view. Poems of Null-A was one of his most successful of these, but if it came out today it probably wouldn’t have been published, even though it’s a classic in the way science fiction and genre fiction books can be classics and still have bad writing. Really old-fashioned, and people who love them probably love them for their being old-fashioned.