The Trashman

by William Alan Webb

  “What does it want with us?” I yelled.

  “Dinner!”

  A section of the ceiling canted downward, prevented from crashing on us only by thick rebar rods. We continued firing and our lasers struck its hide without effect; I smelled something like burnt hair. I aimed for its eyes, but the ocular flaps folded back; I couldn’t hit what I couldn’t see. So, I steadied the rifle and waited until, for a brief flash, its right piggy eye gave me a target. It wasn’t much of a target considering the floor shook, my hands shook, and it shook its head like a cement mixer. No matter; I didn’t miss. The beast jerked its head backward, and this time its roar betrayed pain.

  Then something blue flashed through our narrow view of the surface and vanished atop the Ropoco. It rumbled away, out of our direct sight. All three of us turned to the big monitor to see Merkus dodging the Ropoco’s swiping horn wearing his turtle armor. The creature turned to gore him, and a horn skittered off his back. Without the shell he might have been cut in two, but the armor held and Merkus swung up to mount the thing like an orangutan racing through the jungle canopies of Borneo.

  Merkus rode the Ropoco bareback like a Sioux warrior charging Custer during his Last Stand. The beast’s neck was five feet thick, but the muscles only worked when pulling up, as if digging with its horns. The neck muscles that controlled pushing the head down were as weak as the ones pulling it up were strong. Merkus must have known that. Using his long, muscular arms, he reached out and grabbed its nose horn and leaned backward.

  Merkus steered the Ropoco using his massive strength. Corded biceps tensed and flexed with the effort. Letting go of the nose horn with one hand, he grabbed the one atop its skull and wrenched it back toward the rip hovering in the sky. The Ropoco shook and stamped and bucked, but Merkus held on. In desperation, the giant beast leapt into a sprint, looking like a rhino charging Cheetah in an old Tarzan movie.

  As it ran in circles Merkus fought to keep it pointed toward the slash, and like a bucking horse it only wanted him off its back. Finally, either tired or hurt or both, the Ropoco charged toward the rip in the sky and jumped five feet off the ground to disappear back into wherever it came from. Merkus threw himself off at the last second and rolled on the runway until his blue fur was dusty brown.

  Chapter 13

  Concrete dust hung in the chamber like mustard gas. I bent over, used my sleeve to cover my mouth, and sucked down gulps of air, more from relief than the need for oxygen.

  “Nice shot, Steed,” Ribaldo said.

  “That’s high praise coming from my brother,” said Jürgen. Although breathing fast and heavy, he wasted no time brushing the arms of his suit coast. Bits of concrete still trickled down from above, which he side-stepped to avoid. “You may consider your orientation finished, Steed. And now that you’ve had a proper introduction to Special Activities Division, what say we have a drink to celebrate?”

  “What?” I said, unable to come up with anything witty. I wanted a smoke more than anything. Clean for a month and the call of nicotine was stronger than ever.

  “Do we have any Balvenie left?” Ribaldo said. Although he was rubbing his eyes like he was afflicted with severe allergies, he made a show of sounding not the least bit startled by what had just happened. Only later did I discover that it wasn’t a performance, they really weren’t surprised by any of it.

  Jürgen’s expression changed to one of true sadness. “I’m afraid not, but we have still have some Macallan.”

  “The Lalique 62?”

  “Yes.”

  “That will have to do.”

  “When do I wake up?” I said, after bending over and putting my hands on my knees until the ventilators sucked the air clean of particulates. I registered they were talking about rare Scotch whiskeys that went for tens of thousands of dollars per bottle, but at that moment alcohol, even really expensive alcohol, didn’t seem like a subject we should be discussing. I also noted that their accents had taken on a decidedly more English tone. “I’ve never had a dream last this long.”

  “That’s rather the point of the whiskey,” Jürgen said.

  I straightened and brushed the dust off my suit.

  “Alcohol’s going to help me understand—” I waved my arms “—all of this?”

  “I assure you, it cannot hurt.”

  “What’s a Ropoco?”

  “Steed, you weren’t even scheduled to meet Merkus for at least three months. Learning all of the world’s truths may come as something of a shock to you. Wouldn’t you prefer a libation first?”

  “No.”

  Jürgen pursed his lips.

  “If you insist—”

  Ribaldo interrupted his brother and pointed at the monitor.

  “We have no choice but to wait, brother. Knemon is here.”

  Following Ribaldo’s finger, my gaze went to the hole above to see the figure of a man standing ten feet off the ground in front of the…the rip in the air. There was no ladder or rope that I could see; he was just hovering there. I forgot all about the Ropoco for the moment and switched my view to the monitor.

  “The old boy does get around, eh?” Jürgen said.

  “Who is that?” I said.

  I wasn’t aware that my mouth was hanging open until Ribaldo chided me.

  “Close your mouth, Steed, you resemble a hooker demonstrating her technique.”

  Jürgen ignored his brother.

  “His name is Knemon, and before you ask, he is the Man Who Repairs Time.”

  Never in my waking lifetime did I think someone would speak those words. “What do you mean he repairs time?” I asked, not bothering to hide my scorn at such a preposterous statement.

  “Just that, he cleans up situations like this. He repairs time.”

  “I’m sure glad somebody does.”

  “Despite your sarcasm, Steed, you should indeed be glad that someone does,” Ribaldo said, once again wearing his placid frown. “Ropocos typically live and travel in herds, and while having a few hundred of them mucking about trying to eat you might be your idea of a fine day, it is not mine.”

  Jürgen nodded in agreement. “And if you’re not glad to see Knemon now, you will be.”

  “It’s a dirty job but somebody’s gotta do it?” I asked, more for something to say than anything else. The twins shared a confused look before Jürgen replied.

  “I’ve never noticed it being particularly dirty.”

  About this time, I had the first inkling that everything I’d seen might all be real, but my mind wasn’t ready yet to swallow it whole.

  I followed the twins up a concrete stairwell with steel tube railings, the kind you see in parking garages, wondering if I could light up a smoke. At surface level, Jürgen pushed aside a heavy deadbolt on the underside of a hatch then threw it open. We emerged to one side of the runway. Standing in such an open space in bright sunshine I felt very exposed but wasn’t sure why, since I was still resisting that what I’d seen was reality, and I assumed I’d been drugged and was hallucinating the whole thing. Were hallucinations like dreams? If you died in the delusion, would you also die in real life? Rather than worry about it, I decided to just play along and see what happened, figuring they’d tip their hand eventually.

  The gash in the sky resembled nothing more than an overstuffed burlap bag sliced open with a knife, except that instead of brown coffee beans in…in whatever I was looking at inside the rip, I saw what looked like a framework of some kind. What immediately came to mind were videos of the old German Zeppelin Hindenburg, with a fabric skin covering its metallic skeleton.

  “Care to explain that?” I said, pointing to the anomaly.

  “You were not supposed to see this, Steed,” Ribaldo said. “Not now, and perhaps never, and certainly not today.”

  “Can’t you flash me with something and make me forget everything?”

  “Don’t be absurd. This isn’t a movie.”

  It sure as hell felt like one.

  “What you’re seei
ng beyond the rip in the continuum is interdimensional space,” Jürgen answered. His tone differed from his brother’s because he didn’t sound like he was speaking to a young child, or a golden retriever. “The space between space, as it were.”

  “The universe is held together by an erector set?”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “It’s nothing like that!” Knemon called out from above, in an old man’s cracking voice. From where I was standing, 15 feet below him, all I could see were his legs and butt. He was wearing a pair of denim overalls and a white T-shirt, and he looked to be nothing more than an ordinary octogenarian human of medium height, lean and clean shaven, with cheeks drooping far past his jawline. He could have been a retired plumber fixing his neighbor’s clogged sink. But the way Knemon climbed around was more simian than human, and a young simian at that. I couldn’t see any wires supporting him in midair, so from what I could tell he was moving around with no means of support, much like my one-time brother-in-law. His footing was clearly solid as he shuffled his feet around the gash, though.

  Floating beside him was a black object that looked like a roughly scuffed artist’s portfolio case, except floating gave the impression of a balloon tied to a string in a breeze. Instead, it stood upright and stable as if it were sitting on the floor, or maybe on a workbench. Knemon scuttled about using a tool I couldn’t see and scraping it sideways along the seams of the gash, similar to applying paint or glue to a wall. Grumbling in a low voice, Knemon reached into the case, and while his voice wasn’t loud, I could hear every word.

  “With trillions of galaxies in this one universe, and countless parallel universes, why does this damnable planet take up so much of my energy?”

  Ribaldo craned his neck to answer. “I can pass on what the aliens tell us, if you like.”

  I looked sideways at him.

  Aliens, orange rhinos, blue orangutans… Had I wandered into a Hunter S. Thompson novel?

  “Prattle away,” Knemon said. “Listening to you is so much better than working in blessed silence.”

  I thought his sarcasm was obvious, but Ribaldo kept going as if Knemon hadn’t spoken.

  “It would seem that much of our universe finds Earthly fauna delicious, an opinion that now seems to have spread to other dimensions, thus the Ropoco. As an example, my brother and I just returned from Paris, where a Glipp had acquired a taste for French derelicts and established a nest in the sewer system to eat them at his leisure. The Parisian authorities were delighted at having useless mouths taken off the dole, until someone posted a flyer with the Glipp’s likeness and warning the Parisians of the danger. At that point they called us to intervene.”

  “Glipps,” Knemon said, “are anal polyps in the ass of the universe.”

  He pulled something out of the case that required his hands to be spaced apart as if holding a pane of glass. At first I thought he might be, since it was invisible, but there were no reflections as would happen with glass. Whatever it was, Knemon laid it over part of the gash, brushed it down as though removing air bubbles, and then leaned back to inspect work his work.

  Part of the rip had disappeared and become normal sky again. After repeating the process twice more, the gash was gone. Without a wave or even a backward glance, Knemon climbed into the portfolio case. Then he and it vanished.

  Ribaldo and Jürgen seemed to take it in stride, like they’d just watched the HVAC repairman pump coolant into the air conditioner. A moment later, Knemon popped back into sight holding an article of clothing at the end of a long screwdriver. Curling his lip, he tossed it to the ground.

  “The Ropoco dropped this and I sure as hell don’t want it.”

  Again, he disappeared, this time for good. It took me a moment to realize what he’d thrown down to us. It was a pair of black and gray shorts.

  “Those are mine,” I said. “They came up missing early this morning…in Jamaica.”

  Jürgen turned to me and raised his eyebrows.

  “Now how about that drink?” he said.

  Shooters usually had vices, although LEI policy limited the ones you could use and still retain your license. Fast cars, faster women—or men, or both—and suits like the ones Ribaldo and Jürgen were wearing, ones that cost more than most people’s cars, were common. Not only was looking sharp encouraged, but the cost of your suit became a status symbol among some of my colleagues.

  Alcohol was fine, too, even to excess, but not to chronic excess, and never while executing a contract. Tobacco use might have been frowned upon by society in general, but for Shooters it was almost de rigeur, because Shooters who lived long enough to get lung cancer defied the odds. Between bad luck, bad planning, a target prepared to defend him or herself, and suicide, we tended to die young. Shooters couldn’t get life insurance because the underwriting companies couldn’t collect enough payments to make it pay off. Issuing a policy for a Shooter was virtually a guaranteed loss. At 40 years old, I was within shouting distance of our average age of death.

  Mind-altering drugs were strictly verboten. The license agreement we all had to sign contained a clause that allowed the company to contract for our deaths should we ever be caught taking drugs for recreational purposes. A few did it anyway, but only a few. Likewise, gambling in any way, shape, or form could cost you your license, and maybe your life, too. Marijuana was also a hard “no,” despite it being legal in many states and countries. If you wanted the big bucks, you played by the rules—or else.

  So, when Jürgen poured me a generous finger of Macallan Scotch, I didn’t catch which one, I knew it was top-flight whiskey and took it gladly. I’m more of a beer drinker than a connoisseur of fine liquors, although I am picky about which beers, but given that he’d probably handed me $2000-worth of Scotch, I sipped it without comment. I didn’t want to sound like a rube.

  After inspecting the hole at ground level and leaving Merkus to deal with having it fixed, I followed the brothers through a warren of concrete tunnels and descending elevators to a large suite of rooms that would have been appropriate to a condo overlooking Park Avenue in New York. From the travertine floors to the Brazilian Rosewood wall paneling inlaid with African Blackwood and Ebony, the entire underground complex screamed ostentatious wealth. The furniture was equally as arrogant, and while I could appreciate every square inch of its majesty, I found the place gloomy. Standing barefoot on a Jamaican beach, drinking a Red Stripe, and watching the sunset was more my style.

  We sat around a gas fire pit in the center of a recessed living room. I was sipping the whiskey, which wasn’t half bad, and taking the first drag off a cigarette when Ribaldo leaned forward to start the conversation I was obviously been brought there to have. The words didn’t come easy, though, and I realized he had rehearsed one speech and now had to give another.

  “This is not the way it was planned,” he said, his accent shifting into something more guttural…Russian? “Disorder can be so messy.”

  “Da,” said Jürgen.

  “Fighting for my life seems like just another day at the office,” I said. It was a lie, as they surely knew. My days involved paperwork interspersed with the occasion hit, but I wanted to play this out and see where it led. “Aside from the lizard-men, armed drones, MANPADs, and orange rhinos popping out of a clear blue sky, that is. But I figure those are the results of whatever hallucinogenic you gave me.”

  “No drugs involved,” Jürgen said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You are skeptical?” Ribaldo said. It was less a question than a statement.

  “What’s to be skeptical about? You own a blue talking orangutan and the space-time continuum is some sort of artificial structure. What’s not to believe?”

  “Merkus is a free citizen,” Ribaldo said, turning to lift a tablet computer from an end table to his left. “He is English, apprenticed in the Midlands, in case you did not recognize the accent. Let us leave the nature of space-time for another day and concentrate on the matter at hand.”
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  “Which is what?”

  “Your newly accelerated learning curve.”

  I started to respond when the flames in the fire pit died down to be replaced by a ball of swirling blue and white light particles. Within the spinning sphere was the vague form of a face. I didn’t gape at the holographic technology because I’d seen it often enough in movies and on TV shows, although I didn’t know it actually existed.

  “The assistant director wishes to speak with you,” Ribaldo said.

  For the past few years, I hadn’t kept up with the day-to-day doings of LEI, aside from checking the stock price. As a franchise owner none of it made any difference to me. I vaguely remembered the CEO but not the director and didn’t know we had an assistant director.

  “I wish I’d been this popular in high school. What’s he want?”

  “You may ask her that question yourself.”

  The shimmering disco ball coalesced into a square face of hard-edged beauty that at once sent my heart racing and my mind thinking of every swear word I’d ever known.

  “Is this a joke?”

  “I assure you it is quite serious.”

  “She’s the assistant director?” I asked, pointing at the woman’s transparent face.

  “You will address me, if you please,” she said.

  Ribaldo raised his eyebrows and waved his hand to indicate that I should comply.

  “You’re the assistant director?” I said, this time speaking directly to her.

  “I am.”