The Noise Within

by Ian Whates

  And he still needed to pee.

  Moving as slowly as his bladder would allow, he managed to untangle himself from the assorted legs and body parts, tenderly lifting his sister's thigh to fully free his legs. She mumbled something as he sat up, but she didn't wake.

  For a few seconds after he made it to his feet he simply stood there, making sure he could. Daylight streamed in through the cracks in the planking of their clumsily built shelter and he wondered idly what time it was. Tentatively, he moved towards the door, pulling aside the curtain and stumbling outside. Late morning he judged, squinting upward to gauge the sun's position.

  After shuffling a few steps away from the doorway, he grabbed his cock and relaxed, allowing his bladder to empty into the weeds and the dirt. This brought such blissful relief that he sighed, closing his eyes until the aching pressure eased.

  It was when he opened them again that he first saw the stranger.

  The man didn't belong here - you could see that straight away - but at the same time he looked different from the usual forastcerdos who thronged to Frysworld the year round - the pampered and gluttonous tourists who were only here to eat, drink, gamble, patronise and fuck as much as they could. After they were sated or had run out of money they would go, feeling good in the face of others' misery and leaving behind everything they'd fucked and abused to sink back into the pocilga and again become part of the rich cultural mire of Paraíso, the real Frysworld - the place the tourists never saw and never wanted to see.

  Yet the stranger was here. Not strolling down the broad streets ogling the local cabronas or stuffing his face with 'authentic' native delicacies, but here where he had no right to be, where if he wasn't careful he'd get more of the authentic culture than he ever bargained for.

  After he'd stopped peeing, Emilio turned to face this newcomer. He saw that he wasn't the only one watching him. Curious gazes followed the man as he walked confidently, now seeming to head directly towards Emilio.

  "Hey, bambino, put that thing away, or are you hoping the sun will make it grow some?" Carla called from across the street.

  She seemed the only one paying attention to anything other than the stranger.

  "Carla, sweetheart, gimme a minute and I'll come over there so you can feel it and judge for yourself if it's grown any." But his commitment to the banter was half-hearted and his gaze only flickered away from the stranger for a second.

  The man moved with a purpose and apparent self-assurance which no forastcerdo ought to have here. Pale skinned and muscular, he wore one of the feather-light shirts that were supposed to keep you real cool. Not bad looking either, in a rough, pasty-faced sort of way. No question now, he was making a beeline for Emilio.

  The boy assumed he wanted a fuck and was already calculating how much he could take him for.

  "You're Emilio."

  Mierda! The bastardo knew his name. That put a very different, almost sinister spin on things. For the first time Emilio began to worry. He tried to keep all of this from showing in his voice though, as he said, "Who wants to know?"

  Chasing hard on the heels of his initial panic came the realisation that somebody had most likely recommended him to this man as a good lay. After all, why else would a forastcerdo be looking for him? The thought caused his best 'come on' smile to spontaneously materialise, lifting both his eyebrows and the corners of his mouth upward, while at the same time the price he had been thinking of demanding went up a few notches.

  "Look, kid, I'm not in the mood."

  "You sure about that, mister?" Emilio asked.

  He stood facing the stranger with hands on hips. This close up the man was far more imposing than he had first seemed; Emilio registered just how well toned his body was, not like the usual flabby forastcerdos at all. He pictured this stranger naked and, at the thought, felt his cock starting to stir. Making sure the smile never stopped dancing around his lips, Emilio gyrated his pelvis slowly, provocatively.

  From across the way, Carla wolf-whistled.

  For his part, the stranger pursed his lips and shook his head as if losing patience. Emilio knew the sort. In denial; not wanting to admit what he had come here for.

  Suddenly the stranger moved, so fast that Emilio couldn't even think to react.

  He felt a vice-like grip close on the back of his neck and what could only be the barrel of a gun press against his head, just above the ear. Fuck! The stranger was behind him. How had he got there? Panic blotted out all thought and caused his knees to wilt. If Emilio hadn't squeezed every last drop out of his bladder already, he felt sure he would have wet himself. From what seemed a long way off he heard Carla shout something, but he didn't catch the words.

  "Into the hut," a voice hissed in his ear.

  The boy half stumbled and was half propelled back to the doorway and through the curtain, his feet scrabbling to prevent him hanging from the stranger's grip like some dangled mannequin.

  Coming back in from outside the hut's stink was even worse than it had been when he first woke up. Caz still looked to be out of it, but Juana was beginning to stir - perhaps disturbed by the commotion and Carla's shouting, or perhaps having simply metabolised enough of the Giazyu to allow her body to start functioning again.

  "What the fu..." Juana began as they burst in. Presumably the sight of her brother dangling from the stranger's fist like some gutted conejo hung out to dry must have had her wondering if she'd really woken up at all.

  The stranger spoke across her, demanding, "Tell me who this is." The gun barrel jabbed at the side of Emilio's head, causing him to wince and pull away, in as much as he was able to. What if the man's finger twitched? What if the gun went off, even by accident? It couldn't end like this!

  Juana blinked stupidly, as if in the hope that her eyelids could wipe this apparition away. Caz finally showed signs of life, rolling over and groaning.

  "Tell me!"

  "Tell him, Juana, for fuck's sake!" Emilio heard himself scream. He no longer cared what the stranger was here for, he just wanted that gun away from the side of his head.

  Juana presumably concluded this really was happening, or at least that she might as well act as if it were. She stared at him. "Emilio... bro... what's goin' on?"

  "Good enough." The pressure of the gun finally lifted, though Emilio would have sworn he could still feel it pressed there even after he saw the weapon waved in Juana's direction. "You two, get out."

  Neither Juana nor the still-groggy Caz made a move to go anywhere.

  "I said out! Or first I shoot this piece of shit and then the two of you!"

  That got through to them. Juana scrambled to her feet and helped the bemused Caz do the same, almost dragging him past them and out the door. Emilio wanted to cry out again, wanted to plead with her not to leave him alone with this maniac, but he was too scared to articulate the need and the fear, too terrorised to form the words, so instead simply screamed them inside his own head.

  Then it was just the two of them.

  The man threw him down onto the sleeping mats - the same ones that had been vacated by his sister and friend mere seconds ago. At last that crushing hold on his neck was gone and he felt able to think again, to act. Except that the gun was still there, resting on one knee as the stranger squatted in front of him.

  "Right, Emilio," the man said slowly, casually, as if they were old friends, "I'm told you're the stud with his ear to the ground and his cock in every club, that you're 'The Man' when it comes to knowing what goes down around here. Am I right?"

  "Sure." Emilio forced a grin, recovering a hint of his usual cockiness. "I hear things, everything." At that particular moment he was ready to say whatever the stranger wanted to hear, anything to keep that gun away, but in this instance he didn't need to lie. It was true.

  "Good." The man produced something, a sheet of four photos. "You recognise any of these?"

  Emilio looked. Four forastcerdos but he hadn't seen any of them before. He was tempted to joke that all forast
cerdos looked the same to him, but thought better of it, both because they didn't and because the stranger did not strike him as the joking kind, so he simply shook his head.

  The man grunted. Suddenly money appeared in his hand. Not the local shit printed on paper which could disintegrate if you stared at it for too long, but genuine 'live through a couple of washes' Universal Standards. Maybe the bastard did want to fuck him after all.

  "If you should see any of these four, call me, at once. The stranger pulled a tiny comm from his pocket and passed it to Emilio, along with the pictures. "This is preset to my number only. Remember, call immediately at any hour, day or night, if you see them."

  "Yeah, yeah, I get it." Emilio's gaze was still transfixed by the money.

  "Here's 50 US to make sure you do."

  Fifty? For that much, this forastcerdo could have had him for the rest of the day. He reached to take the money, but the stranger didn't let go. "This is just the down-payment. There's twenty times as much again in this once you lead me to one of these four. That's 1,000 Universal Standards." The man spoke each word very precisely, as if Emilio were some kind of simpleton. "Do we have a deal?"

  "Hell, yes!" Emilio could hardly believe his luck. This was enough to buy passage off of this God-forsaken dung heap for good. "For 1,000 US I'll find you all four of these forastcerdos if they're anywhere on the planet and will even throw in a night or two with my sister as well, if you want her."

  The stranger simply stared and then stood up, before heading for the doorway. Emilio didn't care; he was grinning from ear to ear, partly from relief and partly because of the 50 US clasped in his hand. The best thing about it was that he hadn't even needed to bend over and drop his pants to get it.

  He grabbed a pair of trousers from the floor and pulled them on before following the stranger outside; mainly because this gave him a pocket in which to stash the money and the pocket comm. No point in advertising his new found good fortune. A small crowd had gathered in front of the shack, some with makeshift clubs and even a knife or two, though Emilio noted that at no point had anyone tried to rush in and save him. They looked like a bunch of people who reckoned they ought to be doing something but deep down didn't especially want to. Caz and Juana were there, the former seemed indignant, while Juana just looked vulnerable and scared - she was particularly good at doing 'vulnerable' - earned a living that way. She had somebody's shawl clutched around her in an effort to cover her modesty; as if she had any.

  The stranger was facing up to the gathering with a nonchalance that suggested he did this sort of thing every day. He stood there with arms folded and feet firmly planted. In fact, it looked to Emilio as if the man was amused by the whole thing. Emilio put on his best swagger as he left the hut, coming up to stand by the stranger.

  "Hey, thanks and everything, but me an' my man here were just talking a little business, is all."

  "You sure, kid? He didn't force you?"

  Absurd, really; had someone raped him on one of the dingy back streets off Strip, no one would have cared less, they would have snorted and said that it served him right, but because this stranger had dared to enter their world and walk down their streets, suddenly everyone came over all concerned and neighbourly.

  "Nah, everything's good."

  There were a few mumbled curses and black looks as people drifted away, the glares mainly in Emilio's direction rather than at the stranger, which was crazy. Not as if anything here was his fault.

  The stranger walked away as calmly as he'd arrived.

  Carla was still there. She came towards Emilio while everyone else steadily disappeared.

  "You all right, Emilio, really?" Her hand rested on his shoulder. Her touch felt warm against his naked skin.

  "Sure, you know me. Invulnerable."

  Carla was quite a looker for an oldie, no doubt about that. The two of them had always flirted with each other in a half meaning it half joking sort of way. She might have been a decade or more older than him but this woman still had a good figure and a nice ass for all that she'd had a couple of kids, and there was no grey yet in that long dark hair of hers. The main reason Emilio had never put a move on her was because Carla had one mean bastard for a husband, and he valued his own good looks too much to risk having his face beaten to a pulp. This morning, though, Emilio was on a high, both from the residue of Giazyu still floating around his system and in reaction to having survived what had been a shit-scary incident, so he chanced pushing things a little further than he usually would and placed a neighbourly arm around Carla's slender body, his hand resting casually on her butt.

  "So where's Miguel?" The muscle-bound brute worked security at one of the rougher clubs off Strip.

  "Oh, he's already gone for the day. Won't be back until the early hours."

  Emilio closed his hand slowly as the woman spoke, grabbing a good handful of one of Carla's buttocks and squeezing. It proved to be pleasingly firm. He then began to massage her cheeks with his finger tips. She didn't pull away but instead smiled in a deliciously sexy way and pressed her hip against his.

  "Really?" They were of similar height. Her hand drifted down from his shoulder to his waist and Emilio felt his cock semi-harden. He began to walk, steering her towards her home. "And the kids...?"

  "Huh! As if I ever know where they are."

  He didn't doubt his ability to perform, to do Carla justice, despite the previous night's heavy session; though he would probably have to sleep the afternoon away or he'd never be ready for work that night. "Shame..."

  And then they were stepping inside, away from prying eyes. He stopped walking and pulled her to him, savouring the pressure of her breasts against his chest and the feel of her warm, soft lips pressed to his.

  Frysworld was basking in the sort of warmth guaranteed to generate both heat hazes and scanty clothing - the type of climate preferred by holidaymakers throughout human history. Sleeveless neckless legless backless and sideless dresses skirts shirts shorts sarongs and thongs were in evidence throughout the central thoroughfares, in a bewildering array of styles and colours which defied the rainbow.

  The frequency of balmy days such as this was just one of the reasons why Frysworld had become so popular as a resort destination. Certainly the Strip and its attendant districts offered everything a vacationer might want - at a price; and that price wasn't even all that unreasonable if you knew the right places to go. The vacation experience was made all the more enjoyable by a dark-skinned, slightly exotic featured and invariably eager to please local population.

  After two days on Frysworld, Leyton was bored stiff.

  It might have been different if this were a real vacation but it wasn't; he had a job to do, which meant he could not even relax and immerse himself in the pleasures that surrounded him but instead felt compelled to stay alert. Nor was the mission proving as simple as he'd hoped. On the face of it, finding out whether specific individuals were here or had ever been here should have been pretty straightforward. After all, both the ports kept records, there was a well-resourced local police force to call upon and all the reputable bars, clubs, casinos, hotels, brothels, racetracks, combat arenas, games centres, flying zones, safari cruisers and restaurants were equipped with surveillance systems. Not only that but their owners were, for the most part, falling over themselves to cooperate; if only to demonstrate they had nothing to hide.

  But the keyword there was 'reputable'. For every place that could claim to be, there were half a dozen or more which held no such ambitions. The further away from the Strip you went the less reliable the various establishments tended to be, until you reached those where a 'surveillance system' equated to a peephole into the boudoirs and the dungeons.

  Spacers being spacers, Leyton had a fair idea which type of place the four who had defected to The Noise Within were likely to go for, should they ever come here. So he had to establish a network of informants to cover the sleazier areas - locals who had their fingers on the pulse and were desperate
enough and greedy enough to do what he asked. To find such people, Leyton was prepared to leave the safe and cosy environs of the Strip and its attendant tourist districts and risk stepping into the far edgier world of Paraíso, where Giazyu reigned supreme.

  Giazyu was the primary reason - climatic considerations aside - that Frysworld had gained such notoriety as a resort destination. Native to this world, the plant grew in abundance, and its root and leaf, even the bark of some of the more mature specimens, contained a substance with highly hallucinogenic properties. The local people had grown incredibly resourceful when it came to processing and utilising the extracts from different parts of the plant. Giazyu was commonly available to tourists around the Strip as sanitised pills, the colour of which were uniformly coded to depict the strength and origin of the dose, but here in the slums of Paraíso it was to be found in far rawer forms. The natives tended to inhale, smoke, inject, chew or swallow their Giazyu, depending on what part of the plant had been subjected to which preparation process.

  The pungent, slightly acrid stench of the drug lay heavy in the air as the eyegee made his way between the squalid hovels of the native quarter. That was how the area appeared on official maps: 'the native quarter'. In fact it was a vast sprawl of land carved out of the surrounding jungle, far greater in size than all the tourist districts put together. If the part he was currently crossing was typical, he could well appreciate why the maps tended to decorate the native quarter with ominous warnings and discouragements. There were guided tours into the districts, he understood, conducted aboard air-conditioned vehicles; though he couldn't imagine what anyone would want to come here to see.