Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

Empty for over ninety years, the station possessed a certain Victorian feel to it, wonderfully consistent with the period of the League’s founding. Twigg could almost believe that he had traveled back in time, back to that romantic age of the great industrialist Robber Barons: Carnegie, DuPont, Rockefeller, Getty, Rothschild, Hearst, Krupp—

  Not that he would have traded places with any of those legendary figures. Sure, they had had a few nice perks. No inflation, no taxes, no government regulations. Truly classy playgrounds like Newport and Saratoga and Baden-Baden. Half the world’s resources and population subjugated as colonies under their boots. The respect and ass-kissing admiration of society.

  But taken all in all, the present offered so much more!

  The assembled members—eleven, Twigg quickly counted, making him the last to arrive— hailed him with varying degrees of civility and enthusiasm. Here were important personages — competitors and rivals—who would, upon receiving any news of Twigg’s painful demise, lose not a minute in popping their finest champagne, toasting his anticipated afterlife roasting, and pissing the metabolically transformed fluid on his grave. Yet they were constrained by the rules of the League from doing more to his person now, or elsewhen, than uttering a mildly cutting bon mot

  Such was the strength of the bond between them.

  The League members were a motley assortment of international figures, most of whose faces would be instantly recognizable to the average newspaper reader or television viewer, all leaders of enormous, globe-girdling enterprises, media talking- head sources of quotes and advice.

  Twigg catalogued his peers.

  Sasha Kapok, of Kalpagni, Ltd.

  Ernest Firgower, of Stonecipher Industries.

  Isabelle Fistule, of Burnes Sloan Hardin Hades.

  Jack Burrows-White, of Crumbee Products.

  Nick Potash, of Harrow & Wither.

  Edouard Ensor, of Somnifax et Cie.

  Alba Cumberbatch, of Asura Refineries.

  Osada Sarakin, of Preta-Loka Entertainments.

  Abruptio Placentae, of Culex, SA.

  Cooper Stopford, of Brasher Investments, Pic.

  Klaus Kunzi-Fuchs, of Rudrakonig, GmbH.

  Lastly, of course, came the nervous-looking new recruit, Samuel Stanes, of LD-100 Pharmaceuticals, whose initiation would bring the League up to its full strength of thirteen.

  After greeting his compatriots, Twigg moved to the absolute edge of the platform and looked down the tunnel for the train. Not seeing it, he made a dismissive noise and stepped back, joining the rest.

  Like a group of commuting meat cutters, they waited silently.

  At last the train arrived.

  Not modern subway cars, nor even antique carriages, but rather primitive open mining cars like riveted iron buckets with seats, pulled by a tough little engine, at the helm of which sat the Dark Intercessor.

  Kraft Durchfreude.

  Durchfreude was one of the League’s rare failures. Something had gone wrong in the procedure that would have made him a full-fledged League member. A portion of his higher individualism and initiative had been unfortunately excised. The team and head surgeon responsible for the screw-up had soon come to wish they had never seen a scalpel. Durchfreude himself had been declared officially dead, and his corporate empire had devolved to a son, who knew nothing of his father’s actual fate, nor of the League.

  Yet a use and further half-life had been found for Durchfreude. Unwaveringly loyal and obedient, he made an excellent catspaw, a unique tool, disposable if need be, rotating his services among the League’s initiates as requested.

  And in fact, if no one had a more pressing need for Durchfreude’s services, Twigg himself intended to borrow the creature soon for a short and simple private assignment on behalf of Isoterm.

  Stepping carefully, the PGL’ers filtered into the various cars, except for the caboose.

  That car was filled with bound unconscious bodies.

  Men, women, children. Some animals.

  Once they were all aboard, Durchfreude rang a little mechanical bell (with what mix of sardonicism and actual childlike glee, Twigg could not discern in the dimness), and the train chugged off, its single kerosene lamp the only illumination.

  Not far beyond the station, the tracks began to slope to a non- negligible degree. Soon, the train’s brakes were squealing, the engine’s gears in low, as they dropped into the earth’s depths, torturing rasping shrieks from the rails.

  After a time, the tracks leveled out. A light at the end of the tunnel appeared after they rounded a bend.

  The train emerged into a cavernous room hewn from the living rock, and stopped. Naked flames from bracketed torches illuminated the rough clammy walls. Hidden vents created slight air currents that caused the flames to jump and lick like hungry tongues. Thick Persian rugs—stained despite the best cleaning attempts—softened the hard floor.

  Durchfreude leaped down and hustled carpeted wooden steps up to the cars so that the thirteen passengers could dismount.

  The room was furnished with various comfortable chairs and couches—as well as shrouded equipment whose shapes implied a more sinister nature. Scattered tables were laden with fine gourmet food and vintage drink, as well as various recreational pills and needles. Full sanitary and ablutionary facilities were half- visible behind a folding screen.

  At one end of the room was a kind of dais supporting a lectern. On the wall behind the podium hung a large reproduction of the PGL crest as well as a framed portrait. The painting depicted a mustachioed white man with the looks typical of the mid-1800s. There was, however, a curious deformity to a portion of his skull.

  The members dispersed among the furniture, helping themselves to the refreshments, making small talk. After unloading the unconscious cargo, stacking the hogtied bodies like cordwood, Durchfreude had vanished somewhere, down the tunnel or behind the screen.

  When the men and women of the League had settled down, business began.

  As the oldest member, Ernest Firgower ascended the dais to conduct the meeting. Behind the podium, not much of the short elderly man was visible save for his vigorous shock of silver hair towering over his wrinkled brow (where that same small scar, which Twigg and the others shared, leered obscenely), and his green eyes shining like the tips of poisoned stakes. Twigg fancied that his countryman resembled Bertrand Russell, had that philosopher ever included in his CV the management of, say, a concentration camp.

  Firgower coughed, began to speak in a reedy voice. “Fellows of the Rod, let us commence our business. The first matter on the docket is the division of Zairian natural resources—”

  Twigg listened with only half his attention. The rest was focused on a blonde woman sprawled atop the pile of warm and gently respiring bodies. Her immaculate features and contorted limbs evoked the air of a Renaissance martyr portrait.

  Twigg sucked in her delicious helplessness, tuning Firgower out. Twigg was a man who believed firmly in granting business and pleasure equal status.

  At last the humdrum League affairs had all been dealt with. Twigg suppressed a yawn. It was hours before his normal sleep period. Was his onboard pump working as well as it should? He made a mental note to have it checked.

  Now Firgower had begun the ritual preface to the initiation of Samuel Stanes, the last duty before they could all cut loose in that hot red festival that was a simultaneous abandonment and affirmation of their unique privilege.

  Twigg perked up in his seat and listened. The old story never failed to enthrall.

  “We are gathered together tonight in honor of our symbolic founder, the hapless yet lucky Phineas Gage. While he did not literally lay the first bricks of our organization—that honor belongs to the farsighted entrepreneurial visionaries of our great- grandparents’ generation—Gage provided the actual inspiration for our magnificent accomplishments.

  “Phineas Gage was a simple untutored manual laborer during the middle of the last century. At the time of his remarkable transfor
mation, he was helping to construct a railroad. The blasting of interfering rock ledges was underway. Gage was assigned to make sure the explosive charges were well in place. Taking his tamping rod, he went to work.”

  Firgower waved a thin arm backward at the crossed bars of the PGL crest, then almost toppled. He righted himself and continued.

  “Gage performed his task a trifle too enthusiastically. At one drill hole in the stone, he created sparks and ignited the powder charge.

  “The iron rod was sent rocketing upward, out of the channel as out of the barrel of a gun, through Gage’s right eye, blazing a trail of gorgeous destruction across his lobes, and emerging in its entirety out the top of his cranium.

  “Let us leap ahead, over the confusion attendant on this accident and the subsequent primitive medical treatment. Gage survived his wonderful injury. But as all his old friends attested, he was utterly changed. From an easygoing, laughing, careless sort, he turned moody and unpredictable and demanding. He seemed to be without the normal constraints of civilization. Regard for his fellow humans, he had none. Completely self-centered, his actions — reprehensible to an ignorant milksop society—led to a life of ostracism and despair.

  “We now know, of course, that along with much needless peripheral damage, Gage was the first man to undergo the removal of his brain’s ethical nucleus. Or, as some of the more old-fashioned among us refer to it, his conscience.

  “Lacking all power, occupying the wrong social stratum, Gage never benefitted from his inadvertent surgery. He could not fully make use of the miraculous ease and fluidity of action which one who is blessed with the destruction of one’s conscience experiences. Never to doubt, never to allow pusillanimous sentiments for human cattle to interfere with one’s own self-interest, never to waste a moment of one’s precious time in introspection. To see clearly the quickest path to one’s own ascension. Such is the legacy given to those of us who have undergone the perfected operation.”

  Firgower stepped out from behind the lectern. “And now, Samuel Stanes, we of the Phineas Gage League invite you to join our ranks. What sayest thou?”

  Stanes stood on visibly weak knees. “I—I accept!”

  Durchfreude had appeared from nowhere.

  “The Dark Intercessor will administer the sacrament,” intoned Firgower.

  Twigg watched as Durchfreude fastened a stasis box to Stanes’s wrist. The leader of Isoterm found his finger straying almost of its own accord to his own temple, and restrained the traitorous digit with an act of will. Someone else flicked a wall-mounted switch, and the hissing of an electric-powered air compressor resounded.

  Sweat like an oily evil dew spontaneously broke out on Stanes’s brow. He closed his eyes.

  Durchfreude brought into view a heavy-duty carpenter’s nail gun, its tumescent hose trailing. He placed the muzzle against Stanes’s right temporal ridge and squeezed the trigger.

  The pop of the gun was followed by the crunching sound of the short nail driving through flesh, striking and partially penetrating the skull.

  Stanes turned then into a rigid snowy sculpture of himself, as the stasis box was activated by the control in Firgower’s veined hand.

  Durchfreude caught the unstable toppling figure, hoisted it and loaded it into the train. Mounting the engineer’s seat, he drove Stanes off to the awaiting surgery.

  No ride home for the others would be needed for hours.

  For now the fun commenced. Already, as planned, the victims were waking up.

  Twigg moved swiftly to claim the blonde.

  But he need not have rushed. There were plenty of subjects to go around.

  When Twigg next looked up amidst the screams and howls and guttural roars—the animals sounding human, the humans animal—he saw Cumberbatch with her mouth incarnadined, a wide red clownlike smear, Ensor holding a fluid-darkened saw, Sarakin pulling tight a noose, Fistule with her arm imbrued, buried inside a dog’s split mortal shell.

  Not jealous in the least, the superman returned to his own pleasures.

  7.

  “What’s Wrong With You?”

  Alert, almost vibrating, Thurman watched the regal and youthfully glamorous Shenda Moore stride swiftly across the Karuna’s polished floorboards and pass behind the counter. She set her courier’s case down with visible relief.

  Verity eagerly started up a conversation with the Karuna’s owner, of which Thurman caught only the opening.

  “That sleazy new distributor came to the delivery door again, Shenda. This time he had a couple of greaseballs with him. Heavy muscle. Thought I’d be scared or something. Huh! I told them to go fuck themselves—”

  Shenda’s face darkened into a scowl. Thurman thought her intense and concentrated protective wrath was nearly as attractive as her general wide-focus warmth. She opened her mouth to speak, but her reply (beyond a prefatory “Those bastards—”) was lost to Thurman in a sudden swell of noise: kitchen clatter, door laughter, street traffic, patron hooting. By the time things had quieted somewhat, Shenda had disappeared into the rear of the shop.

  Thurman slumped down in his seat, cut off from the source of his momentary invigoration. For a moment, he had actually forgot his illness, succeeded in imagining himself whole again.

  What he wouldn’t give to get a little closer to this intriguing woman! He envisioned the way their conversation would swiftly flow, from easy early friendliness to gradual whispered intimacy. And then, in some quiet, private setting—

  At that moment Thurman began to cough. Not a polite, out-in-public cough either, but one of his regularly occurring TB-victim-in-the-isolation-ward, lung-ripping, throat-searing gaspers. Clutching a sheaf of napkins for the expected expectoration, he tried to turn his body toward the window, away from the other customers. His knee jerked involuntarily, bumping the small table and sending his pill vials tumbling to the floor.

  In the midst of his agony, Thurman felt waves of searing humiliation.

  Nothing could make his embarrassment any worse.

  Nothing?

  A soft yet strong hand descended on his shoulder, followed by a familiar voice.

  “Are you all right? What can we do?”

  Oh, Sweet Mary!

  It was her!

  Thurman struggled to get his body under control. He finished gagging into the napkin wad, then instinctively stuck the filthy mass of tissue (paper) and tissue (cellular) into the pocket of his sweatpants. Trying to compose his mottled features into a semblance of normality, Thurman turned to face a standing Shenda Moore.

  A sweet floral scent wafted off her. She clutched half a bite-rimmed sandwich unselfconsciously in one hand. Her exquisitely planed Afro-Caribbean face, framed in lax layered Fibonacci curves of thick hair, was a blend of alarm and curiosity, her taut body poised for whatever action might prove necessary.

  Weakly, Thurman found a joke. “I—there was a fly in my coffee.”

  Shenda laughed. The sound was like temple bells. In a bold tone she completed the old joke: “Well, don’t spread the word around, or everyone will want one!”

  Then, just when Thurman expected the Karuna’s proprietor to turn and walk off, she pulled up a chair and sat down beside him. Now she spoke in more confidential tones, and the watchers attracted by Thurman’s discomfort turned back to their own business.

  “Do you mind if I finish my lunch here?”

  “No, never! I mean, sure, why not? It’s your place.”

  This hardly sounded the note of gracious invitation Thurman intended. But Shenda seemed not to take offense. She waved over Nello.

  “Nello, I’ll have a Mango-Cherry, please. And—what’s your name?”

  This information was not immediately retrievable. After a dedicated search, however, involving all his processing power, a few syllables surfaced. “Thurman. Thurman Swan.”

  “Get Mister Swan whatever he wants.”

  Thurman had never tried any of the many Tantra-brand juices available at the Karuna. “Um, I’ll have
the same.”

  Nello left. Shenda took a bite out of her sandwich, meditatively studied Thurman while she chewed. Their juices arrived. Shenda uncapped hers and drank straight from the bottle, her lovely throat pulsing. Thurman took a tentative sip, cautious as always when introducing new acquaintances to his hermit stomach. Not bad.

  Shenda finished her sandwich with deliberation and obvious enjoyment, washing it down with the rest of the sweet juice. She set the empty bottle decisively down. Still, she said nothing. Thurman was dying.

  But when she finally spoke, he almost wished she hadn’t.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  Of course. She wouldn’t have been human if she hadn’t zeroed in on his obvious sickly condition. Still, Hunchback Thurman had hoped the pretty gypsy girl could have avoided the touchy subject.

  He wearily started to recount his sad and baffling tale with its lack of a clear conclusion or moral.

  “Well, you see, I was in the Gulf War—”

  Shenda impatiently waved his words away. “I don’t care about that shit! That’s old shit, kiddo! I assume you got a doctor for whatever happened to you there. Maybe not the best doctor or the best kind of treatment. That’s something you gotta look into some more maybe. But what I want to know is, what’s wrong with you?”

  His mouth hanging open, Thurman couldn’t answer.

  Shenda leaned closer, drilling him with her unwavering gaze. “Look. I see you in here every day of the week, any hour I come in. Now, I certainly don’t bitch about anybody taking up space without spending a lot. Hell, that’s one of the things this place is for! And I’m flattered that you find this joint so attractive. But no one should be so desperate or lonely or unimaginative that they’ve only got one place to go! I mean, like Groucho said, ‘I love my cigar, but even I take it out of my mouth sometimes!’”

  Thurman struggled to recover himself. “Well sure, I agree, if you were talking about a normal person—”

  Shenda banged her hand flat down on the table, raising a gunshot report. “Where’s your tail? You got a tail? Show me your tail! Or maybe you’re hiding a third eye somewhere?”