by Joshua Klein
Baby and Esco didn't say much, didn't ask where they were going, and Tonx didn't bother to ask if they were coming with. He knew they were stuck with him for now and didn't need the fight to get rid of them. Pharoe would hear about what had happened, and if he wanted to renegotiate he'd wait until he got the full facts to present his case. Pressing the point now wouldn't help any.
So instead they just drove. Esco was changed, shaved, and cleaned, sitting shining and pristine in the front seat. Baby sat in the back with his headset on, running maintenance on his big black wasp. The two of them had had some sort of heated conversation about another of his flyers, but Tonx's Spanish wasn't up to the task and he kept misunderstanding something about a dildo. The little robot, Fox, was toast.
They'd been driving for a few hours when Poulpe woke up.
"I take from the smell that I have been remiss?" were his first words. In the rearview Tonx saw the warm light of sanity in his eyes, let go of a breath he hadn't known he was holding.
"Welcome back, Poulpe. I don't think we ever properly met. I'm Tonx" he held one hand over his shoulder, withdrew it when he saw the other man struggling with the tightly wrapped sheet, extended it again as he got a hand free and pushed it forward. They shook upside-down and backwards, awkwardly.
"I thank you for the rescue. You two are the ones who saved me from the Boers?" he asked, turning his head softly towards Esco and Baby.
The smaller man grunted through his headset and Esco nodded his head, looked out the window.
Tonx's eyes met Poulpe's through the rearview mirror, held them, cautioning. Poulpe smiled.
"Even crazy men have ears, gentlemen" said Poulpe in smooth, accented Spanish. Esco's head slowly turned around.
"Gracias" said Poulpe. He leaned back, then, and closed his eyes. Baby's hands resumed running their routines. Tonx drove.
An hour later they pulled into a lone gas station and Tonx helped Poulpe unravel himself and limp to the restroom. Poulpe limped out in clean garage coveralls, the sheets a rumpled mess on the bathroom floor behind him.
"I am still in need of a shave" he said as he stumbled through the minimart inside the station, his bad foot shoeless and tied up in cloth strips torn from his former shirt. "But I hope I appear more human now."
"As long as you're feeling better" said Tonx. Esco was outside smoking, his jacket fluttering slightly in the breeze.
"Listen, Poulpe, I know you're just now recovering, but we really need that data… " Tonx let the words hang. The events of the last few days had him spooked, but now he had contracts out to several people and could only push forward. Given Poulpe's state of mind when he'd found him he was suddenly presented with the possibility that he'd bet on a bad horse, had pulled someone out of Disney for nothing.
Poulpe smiled and put his arm around Tonx's shoulder, leaning on him as he limped. He led them out towards the door, letting their heads pull together. As his hand rested on the metal bar of the door's handle he whispered in Tonx's ear:
"The Latin American Jewish Association of Hawaii homepage background image. Standard Rijndael/CTR encryption, then RSI encrypted data set. Key phrase is 123654. Very good, Tonx?"
Tonx smiled with relief. "Very good" he said, pushing through the door and helping Poulpe to the car. As soon as the man was seated he turned to look at where Esco was leaning against the sun-bleached side of the minimart and walked out into the empty gravel parking lot. He pulled the yellow Hello-Kitty phone from his pocket. Its tiny glyph flashed to life as it detected the light of day, Kitty's shotgun waving overhead in a cycle ending in a skull-shaped cloud on the smooth flat screen. He checked the time. If what Chueng had told him was true, he had another couple hours until the 24-hour safe period was over. His fingers tabbed in Cessus's secure mailbox, waited the prescribed three rings before hitting the zero. A Korean woman's voice read off a request to leave a message and there was an ancient beeping noise. Tonx smiled, remembering how his Mom had always got nostalgic about the beep.
He repeated what Poulpe had told him into the phone and hung up.
Chapter 30
Fede had been almost completely useless, huddled down behind the tree. He'd pretty much known he would be. But the others had waited, which told him what he needed to know. When he got back he ignored the three of them, sitting around the fire, Cessus's ancient laptop out and laid flat so they could look at his GPS maps. He went around the far side of the truck and hauled the back door open, got into the freight container. He left the door open and walked back to the futons.
After a few minutes the voices stopped and Marcus's silhouette filled the doorway. He pulled the door shut behind him, locked it in place and strolled to the other couch while the truck rumbled to life. The container lurched and jumped, smoothing out after a while as Cessus got them back on some paved roads. The grind of the engine in front of them became a gentle background rumble.
Fede rubbed the smooth rubber on the edges of his gogs, thought about how long it'd been since he'd cleaned them. Not since he'd had dinner with Bark and his Mom, he figured, smiling in the half-light at the thought. The smile was bittersweet. He didn't miss his Mom, didn't miss the housing complex they'd lived in, the burbs where he'd grown up. But he missed the familiarity. He missed knowing there'd be food in the fridge when he woke up, empty beer bottles on the floor on Saturday mornings. He missed working towards something he thought he could trust, missed the certainty of getting into a good school. He missed not being shot at. The thought appealed to him, and he chuckled in the darkness.
"What's funny?" said Marcus.
"Nothing" said Fed, looking at the larger man. Marcus's head still had a crease where a bullet had grazed him, his huge arms splayed out over the back of the couch. His eyes were lost in the meaty folds of his face, but there was something about the split where his lips should be that suggested a smile. Fede was glad; for a monster, Marcus was a pretty welcoming human being. And right now, despite everything else, Fede was lonely.
"You ever miss home, Marcus?" asked Fed.
"Home?"
"Your folks, where you grew up. You ever wish you could go back?"
Marcus grinned, the interlocking mesh of his metal shark teeth gleaming wetly in the dimness.
"Yeah, I do. I miss my momma. My home, not so much, but my momma… she was a hell of a woman."
Fede was surprised - he'd never thought of Marcus as having a mother.
"What happened?" he asked.
"Lung cancer. From the plastics they were using in the walls. The projects were full of it. Turned out the builders were getting kickbacks from the paint companies for using the shit up."
Marcus sighed, an over-long whooshing noise like a garbage bag being deflated.
"We couldn't afford any of the gene-therapies, so she tried chemo, and it killed her."
Fede stared. Chemo hadn't been used in years, not even in most second world countries. It debilitated people. It was a torture, not a treatment. There wasn't even a high success rate; they just - poisoned you - and if you survived, maybe the cancer didn't.
The silence stretched out, Marcus's eyes lost in shadow.
"Made me into who I am today, though" he said eventually. "Got the same shit, but by then they had lung replacement. Couldn't afford it, of course, but got me started rumbling, trying to enjoy myself before I kicked. I was just a dumb thug, but I've always been big."
He stretched one huge three-fingered hand out in front of him, flexed it.
"What happened?" asked Fed.
"Cessus covered cloning my lungs, told me if I did him a favor he'd pay for them. I was close to dying, had lost a lot of weight. Couldn't keep my drugs down anymore, couldn't make any money. Twenty three and almost stupid enough not to care."
"You were 23?"
"Yep. With an IQ to match. But Cessus had known me on the street for a while. I couldn't figure out why he'd want to do that, get my lungs cloned for me. I'd never even worked for him."
"What'd he
ask you to do?" asked Fed.
Marcus let his hand drop to his side, looked up at the ceiling overhead. Fede heard his ribs creak as he inhaled and exhaled, slowly.
"Listen, Feed, I know you're pissed off by how shit has gone down. But don't be. It's going to work out."
Fede looked at the big man and frowned.
"Then why's it so important you get a contract?" he asked.
Marcus spread his arms out across the back of the futon couch.
"Would you want to tell me how much I'm worth once this whole thing plays out?" he asked. "What about if Cessus gets killed? What if I lose an arm, can't ever fight again? What if you make a million? What if you make just a hundred?"
He pointed one huge finger at Fed.
"You don't want to have to make that decision. None of us do. We're in this because we believe in you guys. But that doesn't mean we want to argue about it afterwards. You follow?"
Fede said nothing.
"Well I hope you do, Fed, because we're risking our lives for you and you're acting like a little bitch about it."
They stared at each other in the darkness, Fed's breath quick, lost in shadow. Marcus heaved a sigh. He turned and rolled over onto the couch, pulled the tiny blanket over his shoulder.
"Think about it" he said.
The truck rumbled on, streetlamps overhead yellow blurs flashing through the translucent ceiling.
"What did Cessus ask you to do?" asked Fed.
The truck jumped, swaying as it changed lanes.
"He told me to go get my Momma," said Marcus, his voice a deep rumble from the dark heap on the couch. "He told me to go get her from the hospital freezer and bury her the way she deserved."
He pulled the blanket further up his shoulder.
"Now let me sleep."
An hour later Marcus's breathing had slowed and Fede had gotten back into his code, mostly filling in details and running error-checks over some of the larger functions. He was coming to the point where he was just guessing, writing code based on what he thought the data set would look like. It bugged him; it was stupid to write that way. He was starting to worry he'd never get the thing done when the truck slowed and shuddered to a stop. They heard the driver's door thud open and shut, and a moment later the back of the freight container swung open. The roar of the highway flooded in along with Cessus.
"We got it, baby" he shouted, tossing Fede a white, cigarette-box shaped device.
"It's an old MP3 player" he explained, fumbling in his pocket for an adaptor. "Here, it doesn't have wireless built in."
He walked back and forth in a tight circle, watching Fed fumble around for the wireless plugin, then toss it aside to pull on his gogs. He found the device in his PAN, opened it up and saw a big image file, a plain data file, and a database file. He flipped up one gog, lifted an eyebrow at Cessus.
"Crazy motherfucker encrypted it as a washed-out mostly-black background image on the Latin American Jewish Association of Hawaii homepage. Used standard Rijndael/CTR encryption. Safest place in the world, man - right out in the open."
Fede knew this wasn't strictly true; it was risky leaving anything out in plain sight. But it did mean they could get to it from anywhere without leaving much in the way of tracks, and it had been encrypted once already before it had been merged into the image. Clever.
"What's the first-layer encryption?" Fede asked.
"RSI, but I already decrypted it all. That's the data file. It turns out to be the database."
"Oh fuck yeah" interrupted Fed, his hands shaking as he clutched at his chord, scanning the data. "Totally pre-orged, separated along first-take similarities."
He looked up at Cessus, "We're ready to roll."
"Marcus, you mind driving with Cass? I want to watch this guy run with this shit. Maybe learn a thing or two. Spot-check you at the very least, yeah?" Cessus winked at Fed.
Marcus grunted and sat up, strolled towards the back of the freight.
"Marcus" called out Fed.
He turned.
"Um, thanks. For what you said earlier, I mean."
Marcus nodded, and disappeared over the edge of the truck bed.
"You boys have a chat?" asked Cessus, settling onto the other couch, lenses rolling out.
"Sort of. I was being an asshole. I'm sorry. You want to code now?"
Fede heard Cessus grin in the dim light as the truck pulled back onto the highway.
"After you, my friend" he said.
Chapter 31
Tonx made a few more calls before he hung up and tossed the phone onto the dirt of the parking lot. He'd pulled the chip from the phone so at least his call record should be gone in case anyone picked it up. Esco had returned to the car and was watching Baby run take-offs and landings with the black wasp bot. Poulpe was doing something with the mix kit, but he couldn't see what in the shadowed inside of the car. As Tonx walked back towards them Esco slid forward, stopping him a dozen feet from the car.
"A word, man" he said, delicate fingers splayed level to the ground.
"What up, Esco" sighed Tonx. "You get word from your boss?"
"No. No, we didn't. We just got to hold tight with you and the Frenchman. But that doesn't mean we don't want to know where we're going. You follow?"
Tonx sized up the slightly larger man. Esco's shoulders were loose, his knees bent. He looked and sounded like he was talking about the weather, or a sports game he didn't care much about. But there was a certain carelessness about him that reminded Tonx of Mil. He was comfortable. Too comfortable.
The moment hung in the hot air, silent. Tonx sighed again.
"No" he said.
Esco rolled back and forth on the balls of his feet, twice.
"Yes" he said, his eyes not leaving Tonx' face. "You're going to tell us where we're going, my friend. It's not a choice."
"I tell you and we're all worse off. It's better you don't know."
"That's not the business agreement" said Esco.
"It's the way it is" said Tonx.
They stood for a long moment, still and silent.
"We got to know something, man" said Esco, quietly. "You would want the same if you were in our place."
"You know it's a bad idea" said Tonx. "You know it'll make things complicated."
"Doesn't have to" said Esco.
"But it will" said Tonx. He turned and spat in the dust. Neither of them moved. Behind them Baby landed the flier and started packing it into the trunk of the car. The sun fell on them hard from overhead and the wind kicked up a little, died again.
Tonx sighed. "We're going to Mexico, motherfucker" he said.
Baby slammed the trunk shut twice, the rusty latch failing to catch.
Later, when they'd all gotten back in the car and driven for a while, Poulpe leaned forward and quietly asked Tonx why they were going to Mexico. Esco'd looked at Baby, Baby had looked at Tonx, and Tonx had looked back at Poulpe.
"You don't ask that" he said. "We're keeping you safe. I'm getting us somewhere we can do that. The less you all know until then, the better."
"I am not sure that's in my best interest" said Poulpe, his accent drawn out, nasal.
"It's in your best interest that if one of us gets caught and tortured, we can't say where you are" said Baby, his hands still for once. "It's in your best interest that if you get caught you can't tell them where we are before we track you down."
"Then why was it so important that you gentlemen know?"
Esco and Baby shared a glance. Tonx stared out the window, driving.
"We still don't know shit" said Esco. He leaned forward and snapped on the radio, tinny country songs in Latvian or Swedish rolling out through the punctured speakers. The road went by beneath them.
Hours later, and Esco was driving. Tonx and Poulpe sat together in the back seat.
"So why risperidone?" Tonx asked. Poulpe hadn't proven to be a very charming guest, but Tonx knew from their long correspondence that the man was brilliant. More important, he
knew that very soon he might need him.
Poulpe licked his lips with the tip of his tongue before he replied.
"My former employer used a specific chemical addiction to assure my loyalty. While I thought I had found a solution it was clearly an insufficient dose. After your friends here treated me to a variety of chemical cocktails my neurochemistry began to go through withdrawal. The risperidone helped combat all of these effects."
He smiled thinly at Tonx.
"Fortunately you were there in time to catch one of my lucid moments and administer the correct dose."
Tonx shrugged.
"You seemed to be arguing with yourself about it. Suggested amilsulpride, but in a tweaked-out voice. I went with the risperidone."
Tonx had kept his voice light, but Poulpe pasted on an imitation of a smile as soon as he mentioned amilsulpride. There was something wrong there, something out of sync with the man that made Tonx's throat tight.
"Delusional talk" Poulpe said. "Nothing to worry about. Now, I seem to recall that we communicated some time ago about using prions to stimulate acceptance of new RNA sequences. Have you learned any more about that?"
The rest of the conversation was just biz.
Chapter 32
Fede and Cessus coded for a good four hours before Fed started dropping cycles, losing track of the details. Cessus called it first; "You're getting burned, man. That's the third time in as many minutes you've tried to tweak that same function."
"Yeah. Yeah, you're right, I'm crunched" said Fed.
"No worries. Your code's tight, looking real good. Was I helpful at all?"
"Very. I like how you made the mockup of the network to run the client side through. I was getting stuck on that part of the architecture until I looked over and saw you playing with the solution."
