The Hormone Jungle

by Robert Reed

  He laughs to himself, realizing it’s so.

  The crow circles and circles, then tires and comes in to land. It’s on the facing building and keeps up the vigil while it rests, eating what happens to be close and drinking the warm stale rainwater in the cracks of the bark. Always, always it’s aware of the window and glass door. It’s possessed by its solemn task. The brain’s set patterns are like a fever, and all that matters is tormenting this Mr. Shoo. Any means will do nicely, please. Mr. Shoo! Mr. Shoo!

  Around dusk, either thinking it safe or suffering from the day’s heat, Mr. Shoo decides to open the window a crack and gives the crow its chance. It drops to the window’s ledge, looks inside and spies a figure reclining on a simple mattress. An entire bedroom wall is filled with a multitude of figures engaged in procreation. The figure is breathing softly, both hands gripping the edge of the mattress and a faint sheen of sweat showing in the gloom. “Mr. Shoo!” shouts the crow. “Mr. Shoo! Eat my milky gobs of shit, why don’t you!”

  Mr. Shoo throws the pillow.

  And like before, the crow watches it slide off the screen. Then it cries out, saying, “I’ll teach you, Mr. Shoo! I’ll show you manners! I’m the Angel of Knowing and you’ll wish you were dead—!”

  He has stood. He moves as if pained, passing out of view and then returning with a big bowl in his hands. Too late, the crow sees him fling scalding water through the screen. The crow turns and drops, flying weakly down to the little pool. There it shivers and finds its senses. It looks up and sees only glass made dark for the night, all the seams sealed, and it feels a terrible frustration followed by a sudden hunger. The fever has left it. It forages by the moon’s rising glow. The wild bushes have been picked clean by the day’s monkeys, but a few rotting half-eaten fruits are enough to make a full belly. Then it belches with a soft, contented voice and hops up high and flies to the facing building, to the second floor, and perches on the wooden railing of a balcony.

  Time passes.

  It sleeps and then wakes to the vibration of people moving behind it. It feels them through its curling feet, and it pivots its head and looks through the glass door, moonlight illuminating a little empty room. The crow doesn’t have the flexibility to be puzzled. It doesn’t look twice, and eventually the vibrations cease.

  Sleep comes over it again.

  Below, unnoticed, are motions in the narrow yard.

  A high, almost inaudible sound wakes the crow. It’s a familiar sound, and the crow feels compelled to go toward it. A large figure is holding a humming box in one hand. Somewhere dim between its passions is the memory of this figure standing in the tailor shop where the crow was born and raised. The crow flaps its big wings and descends. It makes no sound. Yet the big hand knows where to reach, taking it by the neck and squeezing so fast that it doesn’t seem to squeeze at all.

  Gabbro is dressed for the mines. His clothes are durable, and dirty in spite of the sonic cleanings, and the pockets bulge with tools and the various etceteras required for his job. Having killed the bird, he tells himself it’s for the best. Live, he thinks, and let live. Whatever it was that started this feud…just forget it! He considers burying the corpse in the soft earth, then thinks, Why? If I’m calling a truce, why not tell Mr. Shoo what I’m doing?

  He looks up at the Gardener’s balcony, seeing no lights and no hint of motion. He considers notes and apologies and decides to simply show him that it’s done. Let him figure it out for himself. With a small precise throw, he puts the corpse up on the balcony. A small quick thud and then nothing. And Gabbro squats and leaps high enough so he can see the bird laying against the glass door, good and dead, its black head turned at an unnatural angle and its crushed body leaking fruit meat and crow meat and drying blood.

  All right, thinks Gabbro. All right.

  If that doesn’t make everyone happy, I don’t know what will!

  6

  The church was one of the oldest structures in Quito. Built of native stone and ancient European design, it seeped a distinct sense of Faith and Trust and Charity. I found it lovely. I studied its history with fascination. It was once Catholic. Then the Catholics were driven out and it became Fundamentalist. Then they were gone and several vanished sects took it over, each remodeling according to their needs, and now the Fundamentalists have returned—devout and traditional and full of fire and fire-tinged speeches. I sat through one of their services, in the back and out of view. I listened to the minister wail about the sins of Ghosts and the sins of cyborgs, the immortality of the human soul and the peace of God beyond our mortal understanding, and I watched a pair of gold-winged Angels building a nest in the highest reaches of the church, their tailored monkey bodies lovely, their steady voices like the ringing of small bells…and somewhere it occurred to me, somewhere in the middle of that fire and Faith, that those Angels had been inside the minister’s private quarters because they were using her stolen robes in order to make their home for the night!

  —excerpt from a traveler’s notebook, available through System-Net

  Sometimes he can hear the Ghosts.

  Minus says he’s wrong, of course. Minus swears the floor above is too much for any sound or sensation to seep through; he mutters something about the forced hypnosis, the blocking, and him losing his perspective; then he says that Dirk should relax, sleep and heal, everything is being done for him now. But Dirk has no faith in the soothing words. He knows what he hears and feels. Delusions indeed! This has nothing to do with the doctor’s treatments or his lovesick mind. There are Ghosts nearby! Like now! He’s alone in this place when this happens, always, Minus out on some errand and the AIs keeping tabs on the building around him, and here comes the clear soft eerie whispering of some disembodied soul. He hears it! Listen! Listen! What’s it doing pestering him?

  Maybe a few random shots will scare it away, he thinks. He’d shout, only he’s afraid the damned thing would shout back, saying something horrible. And then what would he do? Piss his pants, probably. And he’s not going to act that old. Not for anyone or any damned thing!

  Dirk breathes.

  He works to calm himself. Minus is right about one thing, he thinks. The doctor’s left him in a real state. He feels a terrible cold insanity snug against his bones, and he breathes again and wonders if part of the problem is the chemical uproar inside his body. But he has always hated Ghosts, and feared them. It’s just that he typically keeps control over the feelings. He breathes once more, aiming for bravery. Real or not, he thinks, you bastards aren’t making me cower in my own home!

  People would think it’s funny if they knew. They might ask him, Why don’t you mind AIs? Aren’t they just a different flavor of the same kind of blasphemy?

  But they aren’t.

  Not at all.

  AIs were never human. Not even close. They’re just computers with enormous speed and perfect memory, serving people’s needs and not their own. Plenty of times, and for plenty of reasons, Dirk has talked to AIs. He’s made arrangements with some of them. He’s extracted favors, or they’ve done the same for their own clients, and sometimes it works both ways. AIs are supposedly intelligent. Which is a joke. Talk with one for one minute and you learn that they haven’t any sense of humor, or any spark of good thinking, or anything. It’s the way they’ve been built. It’s the way they like to be, or so he’s heard. They’re fast and precise and each has its own identity. But they’re indistinguishable from a room full of hyperactive bookkeepers or lawyers—bland and glad to be bland, tap water having more spirit and sparkle than their most radical members.

  Ghosts are entirely different.

  That’s what has him worried now. Ghosts were once people, living and fornicating and mortal. The trouble began when it was time to die, whatever the reason, and they decided to live on by any means. It’s not a cheap trick. A brain is disassembled one neuron at a time, and all the memories and tendencies and stupid quirks are encoded into a set of laser-interface circuits. They tie up enormous n
umbers of AIs just so they can pretend to be alive. And too many of them dream of technologies that will allow them true life again. Dirk shudders, the bitch Flower coming into his mind again. Leave me alone! A walking, talking, fucking Ghost and I slept with her! If ever he found himself with the power, he tells himself, he would break those crystal brains into dust. Without doubt! To him and to any rational person, Ghosts represent a true evil. The souls of Men and Women belong with God when it comes time to die, and tinkering to do otherwise is the ultimate crime.

  Dirk is a religious man.

  He was raised in one of the Fundamentalist homes so common in the oldest parts of Quito. His particular district is famous for its stoic poverty and its enormous-faith. But it wasn’t until he was an adult that his training took hold. That’s when Dirk was working as an assassin, his name taken from his weapon of choice. He had a fondness for daggers. Quito is particularly suited for such things. Crowds and tiny curving streets and the constant press of bodies on bodies, plus the need to spread terror with the punishment, means a good dirk in good hands is always in demand. Dirk remembers the victims and how they struggled against him, kicking and screaming even when he had them bound and gagged; but then there came a point when they would give in, letting the end come easily, saying nothing and their faces softening and him shutting their eyes afterward, thinking it’s right and they’re with God now, and He was with them, and what could be construed as even a minor evil when all he had done was release a fool to where he belongs?

  Dirk is lying on a gemstone sofa, not sleeping because of the pain and nerves and the nagging sense that he’s being watched by half-dead entities. The Old Quarter stands outside, dressed in bright lights without seeming bright itself. He watches the quick, silent floaters moving in and out of their streams, and he spots a pair of rainboys shepherding a little cloud toward the north. He thinks about Minus leaving to pick up a couple men from Quito—they don’t dare bring more, what with the need for secrecy—and he thinks how Minus has been taking care of everything while he’s down and suffering. It’s the one bright spot. That Minus is one tough, reliable animal. He is human enough when he needs to be, sure, but underneath his colors and his skin is something that makes even Dirk keep his breath to himself and watch what he says and does when he’s in the room.

  There was a problem a few years back.

  For instance.

  A married couple had come to them—a woman and a man—and made some promises. Teach us to sneak and steal, they said, and we’ll give you a cut. A considerable cut. Absolutely.

  Of course, cracking a home is work these days.

  The AIs are everywhere in Quito and forever watching. They’re the best watchdogs ever devised. And Dirk has always made a portion of his living because of those tight security systems. Centuries ago, a kid with gristle and balls could make reliable money. The same kid today has to get a sponsor and schooling and promise his or her teachers payment for their trouble and time and risks. That’s custom. That’s part of how a person like Dirk expects to make his money—teaching eager babies how to fool the AIs and survive.

  Anyway.

  There was this couple. The woman was the boss. She was good looking and willing to do anything to succeed, by any means, and her man was a weepy-faced boy with a genius for technical things. They made a dream team. Minus had seen it at a glance. He brought them to Dirk’s penthouse high on the Ten Klick Tower, and both of them were impressed by the view through the Masking Glass and impressed with his place and the talk turned to business and how they needed some help. So Dirk told them, Fine. I’ll give you the best help possible. And the woman thanked him. And he said there’d be costs, to which she said, Nothing’s too much if it means steady employment. We’re not greedy people, she swore. We just want a living share.

  He gave them everything. They couldn’t miss with their abilities and his hard-won knowledge, plus resources, and as part of the early payment plan, the woman returned to the penthouse for several private parties. It was she and Dirk and sometimes a Flower or two. Those were the days when he started using Flowers. He can’t remember details from the parties—they’re recorded somewhere, he supposes, and if he wanted to he could access them from here—but the funny thing is that he remembers the woman as good looking yet he can’t picture a body or face or much of anything else. Not even color. The older he gets, the more he’ll forget the bounce in an ass or the mouth giving suck. The only exception is in a person’s character. No, he thinks, I always remember character. The first time she was up in his place, sharing the view with her weepy-faced husband, it took all of five seconds to know that she would cheat anyone by any means, big stakes involved or not.

  Which was fine.

  Knowing you can’t trust is sometimes better than knowing you can. Like with her and her man. Dirk sent them out on jobs. Minus kept tabs on their performances, knowing what to expect. When the woman started to keep back too much, in the early going, the amounts were small. It was as if she were testing them, and Minus did nothing but tell Dirk the news. Certified antiques and occasional quiver chips—with she taking some of the extra chips—and her man entirely stupid to the situation.

  She got greedy.

  It took time, but Minus kept tabs on the greed. He found where she was stashing the chips, and when their worth was about equal to the harm the two might do in the future, Dirk said to finish them. Do something good, he said, and he left it to the animal inside Minus.

  Minus caught them. He disarmed them and put them inside one of the unmarked, untraceable floaters they had kept in Quito for this kind of work, and then he climbed into the bright sky and talked to them while they sat, bound together, staring as much at each other as they stared at Minus. It was news to the husband that his darling lady was dipping twice. It came as a shock on top of shocks, and he was angry and scared and ready to turn her in himself. He’d never imagined this! And Minus took them south, keeping out over the Pacific and the pea-green kelp farms, then he swung back over the jungles where the world’s storms are born, no one following them. No one tracking him or even aware of him. He found a nice fat storm, full of moisture and being towed inland by a mess of rainboys, and he edged the floater closer and cut loose the husband’s ropes and put a one-shot pistol in his hands, telling him, Do her and the file’s clean. Okay?

  Do her? he asked.

  That’s simple, isn’t it? Just do her!

  His face filled up with conflicting thoughts. There was anger and there was fear too, and a kind of slow-boiling hope.

  Minus said, And don’t try aiming at me. He brought up his own artillery and made certain the man wouldn’t confuse targets.

  Minus said, Go on.

  The wife started to talk just then.

  She had this way of pleading and crying all at once, working on her husband’s nerves. It was an effort for him just to put the tip of the barrel on her skull. She claimed to have done it for the both of them. Didn’t he see her intentions? The husband started applying pressure to the trigger, crying too. He said she was a fool. She agreed with him. He said she should be thankful to have it this way. Fast and painless. She said, Take him! You can take him! But he didn’t try. He managed to make the trigger click, the tip of the barrel glowing for an instant and burning her flesh in one small spot; then nothing more happened and he pulled the trigger again and again, frantic and sobbing, and Minus laughed and said:

  Hey what? No juice?

  They were like a pair of wet sacks full of nothing. Minus loved to tell it, and Dirk could still imagine it. His bodyguard made certain they were tied together. Then he took the floater straight up over the storm and opened the hatch and flung them down into the spinning air and water and blazing bright lightning. Storm clouds have been a reliable disposal system since the first rainboy. A freefalling body has enough momentum to break through the plasma walls. You don’t die fast when you’re inside one, either. The sheer winds and the suffocatingly thick clouds tear at you and choke
you, and the plasma walls are doubly hard to puncture from inside. You die. You’re torn to pieces, nothing larger than a raindrop, and you mix with the rain and vanish, pretty as can be, and then you come dribbling out. You’re diluted and lost. Not even a world of blue-dressed policemen can ever, ever be sure you were there or who you were or what it was you had done to deserve it.

  He sleeps for a little while, then wakes.

  This time he’s absolutely sure that he hears a noise. It’s got to be a Ghost, he thinks. He blinks and breathes and looks across the dark room, glancing at the big Tau Ceti panel—it’s night there too—and then standing, his joints aching but not hurting so badly anymore, and he starts walking around the apartment, aware of his breathing and wondering how he can prove what he knows to Minus. Minus thinks it’s nothing. Well, thinks Dirk, fuck him. I know. By stopping and holding his breath for a moment, he clearly detects motion coming from there. There! Across the room. He bends and starts to approach the sound, cautious and not a little bit scared. Sweat is under his arms and rolling down his face, burning his eyes, and he pauses again and stoops even lower and takes a long breath that he holds when a sudden vertical line appears before him, brilliant and thickening and sounding for all the world like voices.

  The elevator comes open.

  Minus emerges, followed by a pair of Quito-born men with the same kind of tinted hair and white, white skin.

  “What’s going on?” asks Minus.