by Greg Herren
“Somewhere along the line people have forgotten how to act decently to one another. I expected more from women, but I see now that was naïve. For instance, I didn’t expect that you’d avoid me the way you did after the night we made love. I went to JJ’s every night for a week and you never showed up. The bartender said she didn’t know where you were, but I could tell she was just covering for you. I left a note for you with my phone number, but you never bothered to call me.”
That must have been when I went into rehab, Sara thought. There was never a time she didn’t go into JJ’s for a whole week. Impossible. If she stayed at home one evening a week she thought she was a paragon of virtue. And by some miracle, she’d not been back to JJ’s since. A whole year now. Though if someone had put a drink to her lips as she sat tied up and sitting in a puddle of her own urine, she doubted she’d struggle much.
“I left town for a new job shortly after that. When I came back during the summer for a visit I saw you at the farmers market, wandering around with a basket on your arm, looking a little sad. I wanted to hate you, but my heart leapt in the same way it had when I first met you and I knew that I should try again. There had to be a reason you’d abandoned me last year.”
Tammy put the end of her ponytail back in her mouth, staring down the barrel of her gun at Sara. She remained silent for another few minutes, an agonizingly long time during which Sara started praying. She knew it was a foxhole prayer, that it wasn’t how you were supposed to connect to whoever it was she was praying to. But she wasn’t asking for a new car or a girlfriend. Her life hung on how Tammy worked out whatever was in her crazy brain. A little intervention was needed. She remembered the woman at the farmers market, but would never have connected her to the woman across from her now.
“I approached you as you were looking over some tomatoes and you smiled when I called your name and asked how you were. But your eyes were blank. You denied knowing who I am, but kept being terribly polite about it. When I reminded you that we had slept together and shouldn’t you be decent enough to acknowledge that, you just turned your back on me and left.”
Sara desperately wanted to tell Tammy that none of it had anything to do with her. She didn’t doubt that Tammy was telling her the truth about what happened that night. She hadn’t turned away from her at the market because she lacked respect for Tammy. She fled because she still couldn’t face the things she’d done. She remembered getting home from there and desperately wanting a drink. She didn’t leave her house for two days.
It was the drinking, she wanted to say. But that might just have the effect of making Tammy feel even less significant than she already seemed to. Learning that Sara only slept with her because she was dead drunk wasn’t likely to lessen her anger. And Sara also feared that if she tried to say anything at all she’d be shot.
“I have to say that I was crushed. You aren’t worth it, of course, but I did really love you. I know I wasn’t wrong about how you felt about me that night, but apparently it’s easy for you to throw away an experience like that. Apparently it’s easy for a lot of people. But that day at the farmers market was a turning point for me. Do you want to know how?”
Sara nodded, half expecting another bullet to whiz by in response. But the gun now lay still on Tammy’s lap.
“I decided to take action. I made my list and started going through it, and that’s kept me busy until now. You’re the last on my list.”
Oh, fuck, Sara thought. “Please let me talk to you,” she said. “I know we can work this out.”
Tammy picked the gun up and shot the tip of Sara’s right ring finger off. Sara screamed and thrashed and somehow managed to drive the little stick of wood farther into her neck. Then she started sobbing.
“Please,” Sara gasped.
Tammy shot the tip of her middle finger off.
“Actually, that was the finger I’d been aiming for, so thanks for being idiot enough to not follow my instructions. It gave me another shot.”
The blood was streaming down Sara’s hand, dripping onto the cement floor next to her. Her hands were still numb and she didn’t feel the wounds as much as she’d expect. But she threw up anyway.
“The brilliance of the list,” Tammy continued, unperturbed, “is that for the first time I was totally in control of my relationship with women. No more waiting to see if they’d be nice to me, if I’d be treated with respect. Each woman on the list has been a shit to me. I’ve made twelve trips to houses like this, spread all over the country, in all the towns I’ve lived in the past twenty years.”
Sara looked at her beseechingly.
“Yes, I’ve made twelve trips, and all twelve women are dead. You’re lucky thirteen.”
Tammy pulled some keys from her pocket and put them by Sara’s phone on the floor next to her.
“So, here’s the deal. I’ve put both our cars in the garage and turned out all the lights upstairs. I don’t suppose anyone from around here is going to notice anything different about the place, not so’s they’d investigate. And here’s the key to the house. I shut the lockbox, so if any other agent comes by she won’t be able to get in. That’s unlikely, though, don’t you think? This dump has been on the market forever. I think that makes us safe here for a while.”
Jesus. Did that mean she was going to be here, alive, listening to Tammy and having pieces of her shot off as the days dragged on? Her mind was whirling out of control, trying to think what to do. She didn’t want to die.
“With the other women I said my piece and then shot them. It wasn’t a big deal. Nothing dramatic or prolonged. They knew what they did to me and what their punishment was. I told them up front that I’d be killing them. Frankly it was a little anticlimactic. But you’ve always been different. You were the one I wanted the most. Unlike with the others, I was only with you the one time, but it somehow meant more.”
Tammy sighed and looked a little sad.
“It’s nice to sit here talking to you. I don’t hate you, just so you know. A lot of the anger seems to have left me. But I can’t very well let you escape when the other twelve didn’t, can I? I mean, if it hadn’t been for you, I probably wouldn’t have ever drawn up the list. Fair’s fair, after all.”
Sara hung her head again. In her terror she hadn’t stopped to think that were it not for her own actions with Tammy, the other twelve women might not have died. For a moment she welcomed the idea of death. Quickly, like the others.
“I can practically see the thoughts unraveling in your brain, Sara, but you shouldn’t bother trying to figure out how you’re going to get out of this. You’re not. And now it’s time to draw this to a close.”
Sara squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the sound of the gun, the end of her life, the stupid, crazy end to the life she thought she was just starting to live over again. When she heard the gun go off her heart stopped, and then it began again with the next beat. She opened her eyes to see Tammy slumped over, the gun now on the cement floor, the blood running down her face from the wound in her right temple.
The keys, the tools, the phone, the food and the water. Every means of freedom or sustenance lay ten feet away. With her hands and feet bound, they could have been ten inches away and just as useless. She knew she had no options. She was the lucky thirteenth.
Feedback
Lindy Cameron
The airboat splashed to a stop outside the dilapidated facade of 223 Collins Street. I hadn’t said a word but the pilot had rightly figured this was the place to drop me. Even without the five cops providing crowd control on the dock out front, I knew it was the right place, too, coz I’d been here before. I also knew I was about to face one of those dreaded moments when the victim at the scene was someone with whom I’d been acquainted.
I powered up my anti-grav pod, hauled myself into the seat and strapped in. The idiots loitering in the drizzle hoping to catch a glimpse of something dead really pissed me off. I made a close calculation and just cleared the heads of the nearest on
lookers. I did shout “look out,” so it wasn’t entirely my fault that half of them ended up face-down on the wet promenade.
“Thought they revoked your licence for that thing,” Officer Jordan said.
“Just a wild rumour,” I said over my shoulder as I hovered towards the lifts.
“Another one?” She smiled. “Lifts aren’t working. Chief said use the fire stairs.”
Oh great. I leant forward to check for downward traffic before I began my ascent. The tightly angled stairwells in these late–nineteenth-century buildings were not designed for anti-grav manoeuvring; in fact, they wouldn’t be much use in a fire. At least they’d only burn down to water-level these days. Aggie and I—yeah, my inanimate anti-grav pod does have a name—made our way up to what had once been the nineteenth floor, but was now the fourteenth above high-tide canal level.
The fire door at the top opened directly into the warehouse space of Napper Trading, which overflowed the entire 15,000 squares. Rows of metal shelving stretched in every direction piled with terminals, naru-engine parts, jakka tools, odd pieces of weaponry and satellite components, cranial fittings, vintage hologram projectors, service bots, vid-screens, and even antique radio and TV parts. The reception area was an old Teflon desk with a metre of clear space around it.
“What’s the deal?” I asked the officer who was ferreting in the apparent havoc.
“Place has been ransacked,” she said. “I’m looking for clues.”
“Wouldn’t bother,” I said. “This place always looks like a lunatic looking for a whippet screw went through at warp speed. Where’s…”
“Chief’s in the back with the Cutter and the deader.” She pointed.
“The chief? He never leaves HQ.”
“Reckon this case has connections that require his physical participation.”
I hovered in the direction of the chief, the coroner and the body, keeping to the dead centre of the aisles in case I brought a century’s worth of recycled tech down on my head.
The sound of Chief Bascome’s gravelly voice biting off orders prompted two medtechs to scuttle out of the corner office, as if keeping their skin intact depended only on getting out of his reach. This was strange indeed. In six years I hadn’t known him to leave HQ, let alone attend a crime scene.
“You’re scaring the children, Chief,” I said from the doorway to the room where Chief Bascome was leaning over the corpse that lay in the crash chair, and Dr Huang Delta Anne was crawling round the floor.
“Where in Hades have you been?” he bellowed.
“Having my toenails buffed.”
The chief gave me the once-over, from my head to where my feet would be if I had any, and snorted: “And my cat has joined the space cadets.”
I ignored the dig. The casual observer might think the old man didn’t like me, but in truth the chief loves me like a daughter—okay, like the daughter he never wanted, but he loves me nonetheless.
“Why are you so grouchy? After all, that’s my uncle you’re prodding.” I floated over to take a look.
“Jimmy Strong’s long past caring; and I didn’t think you’d give a damn,” he stated.
“True.” I looked down at the deceased. Jimmy wasn’t really my uncle—that being a scientific impossibility—but he had co-habited with my aunt Juno for five years until last summer. She’d insisted I call him Uncle, a request I avoided by not calling him anything at all. Poor stupid bastard. He hadn’t been good for much when he was alive, and now he was good for nothing at all. Judging from the muscle spasm in the face that contained his vacant eyes, even his brain would be rejected by the organ banks.
“Where’s he been?” I asked, removing the burnt-out lead from the socket behind his ear.
Delta Anne got to her feet. “No idea. The external black box is scrambled.” She handed me the matchbox-sized Data Locator Unit that, in situations not like this, records a trawler’s route and flags the cords of places they wish to return to. “All I can do now is tell you what killed him.”
“That’s obvious,” I remarked. “The real question is why.”
“Take a guess,” the chief said. “Stupid jerk—wrong place—wrong time.”
“That’s why we have to ask why,” I said. “Jimmy didn’t go trawling, Chief. The man had a phobia about cyspace. He dealt every kind of tech, but only ever hardware. And look at this jack.” I indicated the dodgy skull socket. “This is a bad pirate job. It’s not even fitted properly. Some backyard tech implanted this in such a hurry it’s amazing Jimmy didn’t have a stroke on the way home.”
The chief looked hopeful. “This might be a stroke?”
“No way,” Delta Anne stated. “This is murder. Capra is going to have to find out where he’s been.”
I smiled joylessly. Capra, that’s me. Agent Capra Jane—cybercop, attached to the Southern Indian-Pacific Corps, headquartered in Melbourne City. I trawl the mean streets of Cy-city and the other virtual resorts—the ones that ordinary beat cops fear to tread. And that doesn’t mean they’re gutless and I’m some kind of hero. Far from it. In fact, even I’d agree that statement says a boat-load about common sense versus foolhardiness. They have it—common sense, that is—and I, well I basically don’t give a shit.
I removed and studied the other end of the lead that had introduced Dr Death to Jimmy’s cerebellum. It couldn’t have been just inexperience that made him incapable of protecting himself against the surge that effectively desiccated his brain.
I glanced at the vibrating plasma-phone in my forearm. It was my mother’s ID; the one with her “urgent” face. As her idea of imperative differed greatly from mine, I figured she could wait. I opened Aggie’s tool kit instead.
Delta Anne was right—the black box was cactus; but at least it hadn’t fused to Jimmy’s Terminal Interface. Once I cleaned out the charred wiring in the TI’s input socket, I’d be able to jack in and use my own sensorpad to search the TI’s internal black box. I could trace where Jimmy had gone trawling—or, at least, where he’d last been.
“Capra Jane?” the chief said.
“Why are you here?” I asked him. “Since when do you even leave your office?”
The chief ignored me. “Just do a prelim scout for now, CJ. You’ll have a partner on this case.”
“Oh no, you know that always ends badly, Chief.”
“Part of the exchange deal with the Space League. We all get to pull duty with the RSL.”
“Returned Spacers,” I said in horror.
Pouting seemed like the best response, but I controlled myself. “There are only ever two reasons for space jockeys to be classified ‘returned.’ Either they’ve been sectioned-out coz they’re psycho from space fever, or they’re old codgers who might not last the next voyage.”
I snapped a surge protector into the socket I’d cleaned. It wouldn’t save me from a direct hit but it’d give me a few seconds’ grace to get out if I saw an attack coming. I opened Aggie’s deck to reveal the tools of my trade: the left-hand keypad, calibrated precisely to the measured speed and dexterity of my fingers; the cylindrical joystick, connected to my control-deck by a long flex-wire; and, finally, a set of state-of-the-art, three-point tracer leads.
I logged in with my left hand, then removed my hat and fitted the second point of the tracer lead to the skull socket over my right ear. I palmed the joystick, picked up the free end of the tracer lead, leant forward and jacked into the terminal.
Jimmy Strong’s office and its occupants dissolved around me as I made contact with the cyber matrix. It’s never a good idea to keep your eyes open when the connection is made, coz the shift in perception is kind of like stripping away the reality of your existence.
But if you do, the rush out the other side is exhilarating.
The tracer program began its hunt for the entry or exit trail of the previous user, while I swerved bodiless against the precipitous transparent walls of information that surrounded me and progressed forever outwards in every direction.
>
Waiting for entry induces a nausea that makes mentally pacing this void unpleasant. None of this is necessary if you know where you’re going, or what you want to access, but when you’re tracking someone else, this is invariably how you have to start. And the wait depends on the skill of the previous user. An expert who doesn’t want to be followed can keep you out for several minutes and then lay false trails all over the matrix. But idiots like Jimmy can keep you at bay for longer simply coz they have no idea what they’re doing, so there’s no logic to follow.
I received the sensory shove that indicated re-entry and surged up and over—these being relative terms—the splendid purple rim of the DaerinCorp Research Foundation’s feeder link and into the record banks of their research division.
Shit, Jimmy, what were you up to? I followed his trail, which paused at the towering data stacks of DaerinCorp’s Future Projects Division, which, not surprisingly, he’d been unable to get into. Even I don’t have clearance for that level access, despite my badge and closer family ties to Daerin’s board of directors.
An odd shimmer below caught my attention. It appeared someone else had piggybacked on Jimmy’s poorly executed hack. I wondered if the hitch had been intentional or the trawler had just been passing and decided to latch on. I slowed my onward motion to try and make out the tag name but couldn’t quite…Whoa!
A virtual quiver in the matrix at my back sent an orgasmic frisson curling into my brain.
Nice—but, naturally, I spun around.
Nothing and no one. Not that I could see anyway.
I could, however, sense someone laughing.
I returned to the original trail but suddenly everything went black. This was followed by a rippling sensation and the realisation that the mid-section of Jimmy’s trail had been fried, and his last port of call was about to cross paths with my current position.
