Version 43

by Philip Palmer

  Back at Grogan’s Saloon, in the back bar, the gold was divided up. A band was playing Golgothan rhythmrap to herald our return. There were no casualties, and no fear of the law. The gold was carelessly strewn on the tables.

  Annie Grogan winked again at me. “Time for me to go,” she whispered.

  “Why?”

  She laughed. “You’ll see. Take care, big man.”

  She winked a third time, with exaggerated care. It was meant to be a grown-up gesture. Instead, it made her seem so much more the child.

  I analysed my reactions to Annie Grogan. I decided I found her annoying, exasperating, immature, foolish, and, for reasons which eluded any precise analysis, charming.

  Annie slunk off. Billy watched her go.

  “Behave, now, bro,” she called out as she left. “Don’t bring shame on your family, like you did last time. And the time before that. And—”

  “Away with you,” he grinned.

  When her presence was a memory, Billy visibly relaxed.

  “Right lads and ladies,” said Billy, “let’s hit the whorehouse.”

  My detailed forward planning was paying off; I had designed my current body to be a fully functional replica of a human being – outwardly at least – able to participate fully in all social and sexual contexts.

  In other words, I had a penis, full tactile and olfactory sensation, erectile function, artificial semen, and a detailed knowledge of the etiquette and choreography of human sexual practices.

  All this enabled me to avoid detection throughout the whole of that long, wild, debauched evening. I drank to excess, and faked drunkenness with skill, though since I had no blood or brain tissue, I could never become intoxicated. I sang wild rebel songs with perfect pitch and an authentic growl. And I had sex with at least four of the girls, including a threesome with one of Billy’s lads and a blonde lady, and I did not disappoint.

  I found the images of carnality and nakedness associated with the night’s debauch to be noteworthy, and used my database to compare and contrast these sights with artworks of nude humans that had been painted and sculpted and computer-conjured through the ages. All this helped alleviate my underlying and crippling sense of boredom.

  For what pleasure was there, truly, in this? This bodily coupling and pawing and kissing and licking and thrusting and moaning and screaming? This lust? I raged inwardly. The whores, male and female and hermaphrodite, were all beautiful and supple and charming and amusing, and they were paid to be so. But there was no truth in these sexual transactions; no warmth of genuine human contact.

  I was repelled by the whole ghastly charade. The whores faked their orgasms; Billy and the other punters faked friendship with the whores; I myself faked humanity.

  I endured it, and loathed it, and longed to be back in my usual metallic robot body.

  “Great fucking night, huh?” Billy said, as he drove us, erratically, home.

  “You betcha!” I said.

  I was renting a room just across the way from Grogan’s Saloon and Casino. At 4 a.m. I woke and dressed in black trousers and shoes and a black top and covered my face with a black mask and then clad my body with tight black body armour and stepped into the street.

  I used personal-stealth diffractors to blend in with the shadows. I moved without noise. A dog sniffed me and it growled, and I sprayed sedative at its snout and the growls ebbed.

  I disarmed the security system at the back of the Saloon, and made my way inside. An all-night poker game was in progress in the deserted bar. I moved through into the Casino. Craps were flying. Holographic dancers writhed on stage. The Hazard tables were busy, and weary-eyed gamblers staked all on a roll of an n-dimensional die.

  I took the silencer off my pistol, and drifted through shadows down the spiral staircase, until my black-clad figure sprang into existence beneath the unforgiving strip lights.

  A security guard stepped forward. “What the fuck—” he said. I shot him. His torso exploded in a torrent of blood and guts, his face went slack. I put a bullet through his brain for good measure, and the guard twitched and was a floppy rag doll by the time he hit the ground.

  The Casino’s security system kicked in, and bullets rained at the spot where once I had been. I ran up the stairs in a small series of bounds, and fired a plasma blast at the hardglass of a window and threw myself through. Shards of toughened glass clung to my body. I landed on the street in a single effortless roll and sprinted away.

  I was dressed like one of Gill’s Killers; the message couldn’t be clearer.

  It was war.

  “Buy you a coffee?”

  I was sitting at the counter in the diner near to Grogan’s Saloon. I heard footsteps behind me, and glanced round, and my face registered surprise. Although, in fact, my radar and olfactory senses had already told me I was being approached by the uniform cop, Sergeant Aretha Jones.

  “Hi,” I said, letting my eyes roam approvingly over her face and bosom, aware from my etiquette programs that this would be considered appealing behaviour from a man as good-looking and “hot” as I, superficially, was.

  “Hi,” she grinned, tucking in her tummy with a subliminal abdomen-clench.

  “You know me?” I asked casually.

  “You’re a friend of Billy’s.”

  “Yeah. I work for him.”

  “I know. You served me a drink the other night.”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  She sat on the bar stool next to me.

  “I’m keeping this informal,” she said, “but I got a coupla questions.”

  “Hell, I thought this was a pickup.” I grinned. I’d practised this grin: charming, shy, devastatingly predatory. It generally seemed to work.

  “There was a shooting last night at the Saloon.”

  “Not me officer. I was at home, fast asleep.”

  “One of Billy’s security guards was badly injured,” Aretha said, and sipped her coffee. “Shot through the heart; he’ll be laid up for at least six months.”

  I sipped my own coffee. It was extra strong, extra black. Just the way I liked it. I took no pleasure from the taste, nor could I experience its caffeine kick, but I still liked it strong and black. It cued some kind of trace memory in my human personality, made me feel more “myself.”

  Why, I wondered, was she lying to me?

  “I heard,” I said casually.

  Because, of course, the guard wasn’t injured: he was true-dead. I had given him a coup de grâce through the brain with an exploding bullet. No one could have survived that.

  “His name was Harry. Harry Barker. He was a cousin of Billy’s. Which makes him a kind of distant cousin of mine,” Aretha continued.

  Ah! I got it now. It was a trick! I had been on the verge of correcting her error, but to have done so would have provided her with certain proof of my guilt.

  Damn, the old ones really were still the best.

  “For a police officer,” I said, still grinning, “you’re related to a hell of a lot of gangsters.”

  “It’s a small planet.”

  “Why are you talking to me?”

  “I’m talking to all of Billy’s crew. Witnesses ID’d the killer. He was a ninja. A Gill’s Killer.”

  “I know nothing of ninjas, and Gill’s Killers.”

  “I’m telling you what I’ve told the others: Go easy. No retaliation. We don’t want any war.”

  “Don’t we?” I said, and Aretha blinked at the savage tone in my voice.

  “I’ve met you before haven’t I?” Aretha said.

  “Yeah, we were just talking about it. At Billy’s party. I served you a drink.”

  “Before that.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Aretha looked weary. “Yeah, whatever. Look, if Billy’s planning something, walk away.”

  That night a bomb exploded in one of Hari Gilles’s downtown fetish houses. A hundred people were badly burned. Hari hi
mself was at the City Arena, watching his star gladiator kill a pride of lions with his bare hands.

  The following morning, I walked past the wreckage of this former House of Pain. Police cars were parked or in hover mode outside. Forensics teams were looking for traces of the bomb. They would, I knew, discover that it was a home-made explosive device, bought from materials purchased in Lawless City.

  I could of course have used one of the devices from my space lifeship armoury, but that would have been too sophisticated. There would have been no forensic traces, and the blast would have spared anyone without a recent criminal record. Even the local police would have figured that one out: only non-local technology could be that smart.

  So instead, I had used a home-made bomb, the kind that a dumb Golgothan-Irishman like Billy might use.

  The war was hotting up.

  There was a pro-Democracy rally in the city square. Brightly coloured holos were projected into the air like banners. Young people with long hair and body studs were chanting and singing, semi-naked and cheerful and full of innocent passion. Uniform police officers in body armour were strolling around, collars unfastened, armour loose, chatting to the rallyers. There were no riot police. There were no fights.

  Photographs of the President-to-be-Elected Abraham Naurion were on every wall and floated as holos above every street. No one seemed to find it bizarre that the Mayor was standing for President unopposed.

  I walked through the crowds, absorbing the small talk and the gossip. There was a lot of angry talk about Earth, and its “dictatorship.”

  The words made me seethe with rage. These poor fools had no idea what dictatorship really was!

  They didn’t deserve the freedom they had snatched.

  The Mayor made a speech via giant holo at midday. His bloated features leered down at the people, but there were cheers and roars of approval. The Mayor spoke without autocue, without MI prompt, and without sense, and, in my considered opinion, everything he said was empty cliché.

  Ever since the Quantum Beacon link had been destroyed, this planet had been isolated from Earth. There was no news, no stream of information from Earth and its satellite planets, no cultural input. I guessed that in a few years’ time the technology would start to break down, and a mood of pessimism and despair would spread among the populace. For without Earth scientists to advise and teach the Belladonnans, and without access to the global culture and inspiring influence of Earth and the Solar Neighbourhood planets, this entire civilisation was doomed to crumble and decay.

  I couldn’t allow that.

  And eventually, of course – though not as a matter of urgent priority, since no one really gave a shit about the Exodus Universe – the SN Government would decide to curb the rebels on Belladonna by sending a robot battlefleet. There would be a brief war, and the rebels would be defeated. And thus law and order would, in due course, be restored.

  I couldn’t allow that either: for that would mean my mission had been a failure. I had never, in all my centuries as a Galactic Cop, failed.

  And so I couldn’t allow the Mayor to become President. And I couldn’t allow the gangs to continue their hegemony over Lawless City.

  Thus, I had evolved a plan: first I would kill the gang leaders, by starting a war that none could survive.

  And then I would kill the Mayor.

  And then I would kill anyone else who, in my infallible and impartial judgement, deserved to be killed.

  And yet, for several hours after reaffirming this strategy, I did nothing.

  Instead, I lingeringly stood beside the city lake, and watched the birds in flight. There were Earth birds here in abundance – ravens, eagles, seagulls, sparrows, magpies, thrushes, and kestrels. And there were alien birds too, able to survive in an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere – sunlights, blind desires, archangels, hoverbirds, jewelbirds, argosies, and even rocs. (Three different genuses of roc, in fact, from as many different planets.)

  I marvelled at how such very different creatures from such very different planets had managed to carve out a new ecological balance on Belladonna. The ravens hunted the sunlights, culling these fecund creatures even though they were inedible to an Earthly digestive system. The rocs hunted the kestrels, which allowed the smaller species that were so relentlessly hunted by the kestrels to thrive. And the sunlights ate the soil-beetles by the tens of thousands, thus preventing them from metamorphosing into aerial-beetles of appalling predatory zeal.

  And, astonishingly, all these very different birds had acquired an ability to flock together, in eerie synchrony – yellow sunlights flying in perfect formation with blue blind desires and white seagulls and white-breasted magpies, like stars whirling around a swiftly orbiting space station. This was truly extraordinary: a phenomenon that never occurred on Earth, or indeed, on any other planet that I knew of.

  I rummaged in my database through my last downloaded version of The Encyclopedia of Alien Life, and found my suspicions confirmed: the birds on Belladonna were evolving in totally unique ways. They weren’t mutating, not yet at any rate; but they were learning new habits, new patterns of behaviour. They were no longer variously alien inhabitants of this planet. They were Belladonnans.

  I considered this fact and its consequences.

  And I concluded that I found it extremely vexing. It seemed to me to be a strange and undesirable new state of affairs.

  I would, I decided, much prefer it if things didn’t always change so very much.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I want to make a deal,” I said calmly.

  “What kind of deal?” asked Kim Ji, amused and intrigued at my sheer bloody nerve.

  I noted that Kim’s hair was red like flames; her eyebrows and lashes were red too, while her pupils were jet black; her skin was pale and perfect; her ruby lips held a smile of infinite promise. She was lean, with curves of perfect symmetry, and her dress was made of woven gold which hugged her tightly yet offered revealing glimpses of breast and legs and midriff.

  Kim was, in summary, a woman of considerable beauty. I was fully aware of this datum, and was at pains to simulate an almost gauche sexual attraction towards her whilst in her presence.

  “What do you want, Kim? What do you really want?” I crooned.

  I had called ahead to make this appointment, promising her vital information about her enemies. Even so, Kim was billing me by the hour, and her rates were prodigious.

  To ensure privacy, we met in her private apartment, in a mansion block which abutted the river. The salon in which we sat was luxurious beyond belief. I marvelled at the magnificent kitschness of it.

  “Everything,” said Kim Ji. “Name a luxury, a vice, a drink or a meal, and I want it, and I want it now.”

  “But what do you want that you don’t already have, or can’t easily obtain?” I coaxed.

  “The love of a good man,” kidded Kim.

  I looked in her eyes. “I can give you that.”

  “Ah, get away! You’re just a fucking barman.”

  “You have a power, right? Over men.”

  Kim was very still. After a while, she nodded.

  “You’re an empath,” I said.

  “Yeah. How did you know?” she asked, warily.

  “I’m a good guesser. Any man, any woman, any herm, they’re putty in your hands. Am I right?”

  Kim made a wolf-like snarl, the kind that could reduce heterosexual men and lesbians to tears.

  I flinched, as she expected me to do. Kim smiled, and basked in the sublime self-confidence of a woman who could induce orgasm in others with a single facial expression.

  “I can enhance that power,” I whispered.

  “How?” Kim scoffed.

  I waited, and let her think about the implications of what I was saying.

  “It’s easy enough,” I said softly. “There are techniques. Implants.”

  “Banned technology.”

  “I can get it for you.”

  “Why would you want to
do that?”

  I sipped my drink; I could feel the lure of her empathy on me and resisted it. I focused on remaining unemotional, controlling her mood through my own blankness.

  “Your empathy is limited, am I right?” I told her.

  Kim snarled a wolf-snarl again. I simulated a spasm of desire.

  “That’s amazing!” I said. “But let’s be honest – it’s all you can do, isn’t it? It’s a party trick, right? You can make men and women desire you. But I can give you more than that. You know what I mean. Don’t you?”

  “I have some idea,” Kim said nonchalantly.

  “Would you like that? Such a gift?”

  Kim was very still. “Not possible.”

  “It is possible.”

  “Then why don’t—”

  “It only works if you’re an empath. It’s rare. Your gift is rare.”

  “Not that rare. A lot of my girls have it,” Kim admitted.

  “It’s a useful gift for whores and lapdancers. You dance for a punter and make him, or her, feel desire. You fake an orgasm and make your lover feel you are sharing their passion. But just imagine…”

  I grazed her arm with my fingers, lightly. I looked in her eyes, with visible fondness.

  “Imagine you have a child,” I said to her, “who is having teenage tantrums. Imagine if you could give the child a look, a touch, and instantly command that child’s unquestioning love.”

  “I have children. I hate ’em,” she sneered.

  “That’s because they don’t love you.”

  Her face twisted in grief: the truth was betrayed.

  “From your friends,” I continued, “you will get adoration, not just friendship. You will be the ‘best friend’ of each of your friends.”

  “All my friends love me already.”

  “Not truly. They love your wealth, and your beauty. Imagine if they loved… you.”

  Another tiny spasm of regret; I knew I had her.

  “Imagine if all your lovers loved you till their dying day, with a passion that eclipses any passion known before.”