L. Neil Smith - North American Confederacy 02

by Nagasaki Vector

  At Win’s house, there were shadows waitin’ for us in the dark. The detective’s hand went casually to his S&W; I found the grip of my .45.

  “Good evening, sir. You’re the owner?”

  “What can I do for you?” Win answered neutrally. There were four of ’em, a chimp, two gorillas, an’ a human. They stepped out into the moonlight wearin’ severe black uniforms an’ more hardware than I’d seen in one place since the Normandy Landing. The chimp spoke again: “We’re from Griswold’s Security-—”

  “Griswold’s..." Win sounded impressed. I was impressed that he was impressed.

  “We’re looking for a.. .a ‘Bernard M. Gruenblum’?”

  I felt m’Yamaguchians pull into tight formation—right behind me.

  “How come?” I demanded.

  “We have orders to arrest him. For murder.”

  12 Nor Iron Bars

  WIN’S FIST CLAMPED FIRMLY OVER THE HAND I’d filled with Hartford steel.

  “Relax, Bernie. This isn’t the States. Our friends here are civilians, businessmen, and they haven’t any rights on my property.”

  Coulda fooled me. Who was it usta talk about guys “so tough y’could roller-skate on ’em”? At the moment, I was discoverin’ that there isn’t anything funny at all about gorillas wearin’ kilts—even the tartan was black-on-black— pistols, ammo-belts, an’, insteada the usual nightstick, bowie-knives with sixteen-inch blades. Made me wonder if they even bothered with handcuffs.

  Brrrr.

  “This isn’t your pidgin, Bear,” the leader warned. Like the others, he wore an ebony tunic, his cap tucked under an epaulet. “Just go inside and let us—”

  “Lighten up, Li-Li—I know you’re a hard ape, just don’t let that fancy monkey-suit go to your head.” The detective grinned at him, showing teeth.

  The chimp took an angry step forward, peelin’ back his own lip. Win brushed eloquent fingertips over the rubber handle of his revolver an’ stood his ground.

  “Remember, you’re in the property -protecting business, Li-Li, and this parcel happens to be mine! Since you overdressed Boy Scouts haven’t been hired to guard my plastic flamingos, maybe you’d better explain—very politely—why you’re trespassing!”

  The security-agent’s fury evaporated gradually, leavin’ a residue of exasperation. “My apologies, sir," he said stiffly—then shrugged. “Oh, for Albert’s sake, Win, I’ve got a hurry-order to take this Gruenblum nake on a double sapicide. Condemnation, I didn’t know he was a customer of yours!”

  “And a friend.” Win relaxed visibly, as did the chimpanzee’s trio of back-ups. “That’s ‘naked ape,’ Bernie, about as insulting as ‘monkey’ going the other way. But the Captain here is young. He’ll learn.”

  He took a deep breath and exhaled. “Li-Li, let’s go get this idiot mistake ironed out over a glass of something toxic. You can use my Telecom to find out what your dispatcher’s been smoking. I vouch for Bernie; he isn’t going to rabbit.”

  Seemed t’suit everybody better’n the High Noon reprise we’d been headed for.

  “I’ll have to have his weapon,” the chimp said, lookin’ at me, then beside me to the slabba granite wearin’ white socks an’ brown shoes, then t’me again.

  Win said, “That’s something I’d buy a ticket to watch. C’mon, Li-Li. You’re a bourbon drinker, as I recall.”

  The Confederate slammer.

  The fact they spell it “gaol” ain’t the only thing different about it. The bell-person ushered me in, turned back the bed, adjusted the window-dimmers, pointed out the Telecom where I could order room-service an’ the wet-bar. He hesitated, waitin’ by the door for a tip. I offered him the one at the end of my boot, an’ he dematerialized.

  I still felt indecently exposed in the region of my waist. Win’d assured me it was a necessary ritual, for which Gris-wold’s’d hafta pay restitution eventually.

  I hadn’t let ’em take the field-density frammis.

  Again, I examined the lurid holos Captain Li-Li’d proffered in Confederate lieu of a warrant. There, carved up to a fare-thee-well in 3D an’ Yechnicolor, lay Professors “Marvin N. Hulbert” an’ “Hubert N. Merwin”, B.S., M.S., D.O.A. No wonder I’d never been able t’tell ’em apart.

  Havin’ been duly certified as “murder weapons,” Charm, Spin, an’ Color were incarcerated with me. Which seemed a waste—there were five other “cells” goin’ empty in this six-room Big House. The proprietors’d greeted us like the new freeway had by-passed ’em. The actual beef was a civil one, there bein’ no criminal charges in the Confederacy, ’cept what I was payin’ t’stay the night: Negligently Importin’ Dangerous Animals Contributin’ Thereby to the Wrongful Demise of a Paira Sapient Inhabitants of North America.

  The professors’d be thrilled t’know they’d been posthumously adopted.

  This business of the Freenies’d been a compromise. The pseudocops were hardly accustomed t’hearin’ disputed property object t’bein’ impounded. What it’d come down to was that I’d take up residence with the Yamaguchii while Win hightailed it down t’what passes for Denver—coupla little burgs they call St. Charles an’ Auraria—t’verify the charges where they’d been preferred.

  They’d been brought, interesting enough, by one Den-ward T. Kent, Confederate Inhabitant—this place was gonna hafta look to its immigration laws-—who’d pointed to his bandages an’ claimed t’be another victim of Gruenblumian heinosity.

  That drippin’ y’don’t hear is th’ bleedin’ of m’heart.

  He’d provided the pop-eye polaroids. Win wanted t’find out how Captain Li-Li’d found me. I wanted t’know how come everybody an’ his asshole was titled “Captain”—no colonels, obersts, subalterns, or generalissimos, jus’ captain.

  Win laughed, which I thought sorta smacked of bad taste, seein’ as how he was drivin’ me to the slammer at the time. Nice car: a Neova—we slowed to a hundred through the hospital zones.

  “I wondered the same thing when I first got here, Bemie. Their ‘gaols’ threw me, too. They let a prisoner of mine suicide because they hadn’t shaken him down thoroughly— no more expertise developing penal institutions than military ranks. And for the same reason.”

  “Howzat?” They’d sure known enough t’take my .45 away—makin’ hilarious remarks about museum pieces. Wished I hadn’t sent Olongo’s gun back.

  “Well, everybody’s armed here as a matter of individual—not societal—defense. Sure, there’s the militia, but it’s largely vestigial, covers only a county-sized area, supports itself through bake-sales and raffle-tickets, and hasn’t any more official status than the thousand others like it scattered over the continent. There’s no official status to have."

  “So, if I started my own Greater Laporte militia?...” He laughed again. “They’d welcome the competition— and challenge you to a tug-of-war at their annual fundraising picnic. That’s the best way to look at it, sort of a volunteer fire department. They haven’t had any real combat experience since the Russian War, and likely never will again. A country where everybody has a gun and nobody has the-authority to surrender—that’s a militarist’s nightmare!”

  I realized he hadn’t answered my question. “Yeah, but what’s all this ‘Captain’ jazz?”

  “Well, anyone who heads a group of individuals—not easy in this unruly continuum—gets the honorific ‘Captain.’ That’s what it means, and that’s about all it amounts to. Will’s elected-—by unanimous consent—and Li-Li’s a hired hand. As for why there isn’t any prison-science, how many crimes do you suppose get committed around here?” I opened my mouth.

  “Never mind; I’ll tell you...”

  I shut it.

  “These murders would be the first in five years, locally. The tiny population of burglars and muggers usually doesn’t live long enough to get to gaol.” He reflected. “You know, you’re going to be famous in the morning.”

  “Just what I need! Say, Win, if nothing nor nobody’s official an’ there ain�
��t no real cops, how come you’re takin’ your buddy off to the calaboose? Whyn’t we just ignore this hoorah an’ get on with findin’ Georgie?"

  The Neova slowed. A sign ahead offered “High Security Lodging— Vacancy—For Sale Cheap.” Gaol business must be lousy.

  “Look, Bernie, there are over six thousand Telecom channels in the Confederacy. The average person can’t go an hour without using the Telecom, to look up the definition of a word, check a recipe, buy a carton of cigarettes, or catch the reruns of Hello, Joe—Whadd'ya Know?. And you should see the media-wide alert when somebody writes a bad check! You wouldn’t last three hours on the outside, and I’d never do business again for aiding and abetting.”

  He popped the gull-wing doors. We went inside t’see the night clerk. They didn’t even ask t’see my luggage.

  So here I was, at 3:30 in the momin’, lyin’ on my back, tryin’ t’find somethin’ interestin’ on the Telecom t’watch between my toes. The room’s disintegrator chute was still absorbin’ the remains of a postmidnight snack, an’ that in itself’d been somethin’ t’ponder.

  Eagleburger. Seems like the local conservationists’d discovered a century ago that chickens an’ turkeys weren’t in danger of extinction on accounta they were private property an’ economically useful. It might disturb some tender anticommercial sensibilities, turnin’ mighty raptors into mun-chies, but at least there were plenty of ’em t’spare.

  Back home they’d been extinct for two hundred years.

  The Freenies were finishin’ their third cuppa java apiece. Dunno what they were gonna do tonight; the little buggers never seemed t’sleep. Musta been all that coffee.

  There was somethin’ like a TV guide on the nightstand. Turned out, it was only a guide to the guide. Dozens of utility channels just listin’ what was on now. Even more listin’ what was on later. The main channels advertised their up-comin’ features—-an’ even carried ads for other channels, as well. There was an interactive query-service, cross-referencin’ current programs by subject, title, author, producer, director, principal actors, an’ bit-players—an’ a couple channels you could call in t’request anything else y’ wanted.

  Naturally, the gaol itself had a well-stocked library of postage-stamp recordings of books, music, movies, an’ suchlike.

  You could even make yourself a channel, speak your piece or hum through a comb-and-tissue-paper, if you were willin’ t’pay for the time. ’Course nobody had t’watch y’do it.

  Maybe it’s just the idea of TV: there still wasn’t anything interestin’ on.

  But I noticed one or two items that woulda gone right by the average Confederate viewer. First of all, there weren’t any mass-spectator team sports. A sprinklin’ of individual efforts, like target-shootin’, tennis, an’ boxin’. An’ with about as much audience-appeal—I gathered from the near-empty bleachers in the screen—as celebrity hopscotch. Full-contact karate, a recent import from the States, was enjoyin’ a modest vogue, though they hadda spot the humans a few dozen extra points.

  Another thing was. the decided lacka religion. I think there was just one church in the whole of Greater Laporte— though it coulda been Chicago, kinda lost track which channel I was watchin’ at the time—an’ that was an inflatable hut that was only there three days a week. Saturdays for Adventists an’ my folks, Sundays for the gentiles, an’ Mondays for the Freudians.

  Resta the week it was a parkin’ lot.

  But most disturbin’, somehow, was that Confederate swear-words are as different as everything else. They don’t refer t’sex, an’ they don’t refer t’God. Pie-in-the-sky just don’t mix too well with folks usta runnin’ their own lives, thanks. Instead, they swear by their heroes, like Lysander Spooner an’ Albert Gallatin; they swear by baddies like Washington an’ Hamilton. “Condemnation!” Li-Li’d exclaimed when pressed t’some kinda limit, referrin’ more t’govemment’s way with other folks’ real estate, than the state of anybody’s soul. An’ they swear by excretion, just like everybody else in the known universe.

  But if somebody here’d said “Get fucked!” the ad-dressee’d likely look at him a bit funny, shake his head, an’ answer, “Why thanks, pilgrim—you have a nice day, too!”

  Prime time. There I was in the TV studio, disguised as a paper-shredder, recordin' the assassination of Blocky Yocks. Dunno why the Academy’d bothered—it was seen live coast t’ coast by half the population of the country at the time.

  It was durin’ the ratin’s sweeps of 1991. The week before, America's most popular ventriloquist'd forgotten t'pay his phone bill on time. Good ol TPC’d cut his service on a Friday, leavin’ the poor guy outa touch with the network, columnists, agent, fans, an’ the three exwives he was still talkin’ to, over a whole weekend. That kinda thing’s ruined bigger stars—lookit the rumors about Kermit the Frog bein’ dead. Never did make much of a comeback after that.

  But this time, it meant war. Come Wednesday night, he’d recited the business office numbers for the Ameche monopoly in Anchorage an’ Honolulu an’ pointed out to 60,000,000 viewers that whenever they called a long-distance number that was busy or didn’t answer, it cost the phone company. Not much, a measurable pittance for switching, line-use, an’ the ring-ring or buzz-buzz at the other end.

  So when 60,000,000 people tried those numbers, every fifteen minutes, twenty-four hours a day—but only on weekends—for seventeen months running, it put a crack of doom right in the Bell System.

  But, in its early dyin' throes, the system lashed out at its tormentor. The week followin’ Blocky’s announcement, as I was crouched, sweatin’ inside a plastic bagfulla confetti an' he was in the middle of his openin’ monologue, two CIA loaners an’ a paira outa-work installers busted into Studio B with silenced Ruger Mark IIs an’ emptied their clips into poor Blocky, endin’ his career forever.

  Too bad the stupid jerks didn’t think t’ shoot his partner, the ventriloquist.

  I woke up, not havin’ realized I’d nodded off. Sheesh! Past few nights, m’whole life’d been flashin’ before my eyes. Gotta lay off that vitamin B6.

  Sunlight was streamin’ in the window, an’ the Telecom was blarin’ at my alien friends. I amazed m’self by feelin’ pretty swell, all things considered. The Freenies were watchin’ some kinda porno flick on a local program titled Punching for Platinum. Now an’ again the host’d call up his viewers, an’ if they could name the page in the Kama Sutra closest t’what’d just happened in this momin’s movie, they won. What kinda spoilt it for me was that all the actors were chimpanzees. The host, bobbin’ in a big glass tank, was a porpoise.

  I got up, showered, retrieved my coverall from the autogroomer, an’ started pushin’ a little plastic complimentary razor around on my stubble while the Yamaguchii ordered breakfast. Jake with me—I coulda eaten a...

  ... I caught a glimpse of the Telecom screen in the mirror, nearly decapitated an’ strangled myself at the same time, swivelin’ my neck around, an’ lost my appetite immediately. Seein’ yourself unexpectedly on TV’ll do that to ya:

  IMMIGRANT DENIES BUTCHERING TWO DETAILS ON CHANNEL 1130

  Dazed, I stumbled to the bar, shave an’ breakfast forgotten. Win’d been right about gettin’ famous in a hurry. Dunno when the camera’d caught me with that dumb look on my face, but it was obvious the gaoler’d found a way t’supplement his meager income. I poured myself a straight shot, gargled it down, an’ set up another on the rocks.

  There was a scratchin’ at the door.

  Hell, I’d never even checked t’see if it was locked last night. Now I kinda hoped it would be—t’keep nosy strangers out.

  More scratchin’ scrabblin’ noises.

  Wishin’ more’n ever I still had my Colt, I approached the door cautiously. I wondered how good a weapon a Freenie’d make if y’grabbed it by the neck an’ swung it. I opened the unresistin’ door a crack, peeked out into the hail.

  Nothin’.

  Suddenly, the door moved of its own accord. I looked down
, glass in hand, an’ there at my feet was a brownish medium-sized pooch. No, not quite, but somethin’ else. It nosed on through the door, stopped in the middle of the room, sat on its haunches, scratched an ear with a rear foot, an’ cocked its head.

  “Surely it’s not cocktail hour already,” the animal said. “Is it, Captain Gruenblum?”

  13 The Dog Who Knew too Much

  “G. HOWELL NAHUATL AT YOUR SERVICE." Whiskers twitchin’ an’ a twinkle in his eye, he hopped up into a chair by the window. “The G stands for Greenriver.” “Er.. .I’m Bernard M. Gruenblum—the M stands for Confused. These’re m’friends Snap, Crackle, an’—say, you’re a coyote, aren’t you?”

  “How nice of you to notice.”

  I sighed. “Well, whaddo coyotes drink when they’re visitin’ folks in gaol?”

  “It is rather early, isn’t it? How about Coca-Cola—” Perfect for a momin’ pick-me-up. There bein’ no Confederate FDA, Coke is the real thing.

  “—with perhaps the slightest splash of rum? I’m not actually here to visit, Captain Gruenblum, but to—” “Don’t tell me you’re a lawyer?” Most attomeysa my acquaintance’d been fwo-legged coyotes, but I didn’t think it politic t’mention.

  He chuckled. “No, I’m here to get you out. Win Bear sent me.”

  Bear sends coyote. I’d be palaverin’ with Br’er Rabbit next thing I knew. Now all I hadda solve was this little etiquette problem: couldn’t hand Nahuatl his drink, an’ he’d look silly sittin’ on it like a Freenie.

  The critter noticed m’hesitation: “Please set it on the end-table. I’ve a long nose and a longer tongue. Now, as I was saying—”