The Hormone Jungle

by Robert Reed

  “Don’t.”

  “Goddamn!” cries Dirk. He throws off the sheets, his face panicked and his voice galloping. “He’s here! Somewhere! Herd!”

  Steward waits. Two more men come through the doorway, suspicious but not nearly so scared. Dirk says something about invisibility, a crazy holo trick or something. All three of the new men are built the same. They look the same. Each has a killing pistol, Steward notes, and he starts to fire at them, aiming for their chests and hands.

  Pain pulls them down.

  One manages a bad shot, a red-hot circle of molten glass forming on the window and flowing. Steward rushes the last man. He kicks and puts him down and leaps through the door and then dances to one side, two more shots passing close enough for him to feel the raw heat. It’s dark in the big room. He killed the power the moment he was on the floor, the same way he killed the connections to the watchdog AIs. But now someone’s carrying a portable spotlight, the shaky beam coming out and chasing him. More shots go wide. He makes for the elevator. While the AIs studied the climbing miners, distracted, Steward came in through the elevator. He had everything figured except the time it would take with Dirk and then these two new soldiers.

  The elevator door is closed.

  He turns and fires, pumping rounds into each target. A shot in each chest, then another, then again; and while the three of them scream, rolling and pulling at their bright hair, he gives the elevator door a steady shove. Nothing happens.

  All locked tight again. Someone’s got him where they want him, all right.

  Steward instinctively steps away from the door. A couple shots slam home. Bits of molten metal spray out from double craters. Metal is in his hair, burning him, and he ignores the sensation and moves and fires until Dirk shouts:

  “Alive! Get him alive!”

  The original bodyguard, Minus, says, “Guns down. Guns down!”

  Steward puts a couple of bolts into Dirk, who crumbles and sobs.

  “I got the spot,” someone mutters. “I got him spotted.”

  “Up! Get up!” says Minus.

  The man stands. Steward pumps agony into his chest, but Minus is behind the man and holding him upright, pushing. The man screams and faints, absorbing the blows, but Minus carries him and collides with Steward and the gun is useless and Minus reaches around and grabs a wrist with luck, twisting and grunting, “Got you.”

  Steward loses his weapon, saving his hand.

  He puts a knee into Minus’ head and kicks him away and reaches back into the little pack under the holo webbing, coming out with a small shaped explosive charge.

  Dirk says, “Shoot low! Cripple him!”

  Minus has a gun. Steward leaps straight up and the blast hits beneath his toes, and he lands and jumps sideways and the next shot misses by less. One more trick remains. One hand holds the shaped charge while the free hand hits a control in a pocket, tripping one of Dirk’s own preset safety systems. It’s something Olivia steered him toward. In case of total collapse, the building’s floor leaks a high-density foam intended to bury everyone, saving them. Now the floor believes that it is falling. The foams well up through the carpeting, hissing, and Dirk and Minus and the others vanish. Steward has time to slam the shaped charge to the elevator door and step away. A mass of foam is flowing around him, hardening to a jamlike consistency. He hides his face and hears the thump of the blast, and the elevator shaft is suddenly before him and the foam grudgingly lets him get loose. He climbs now, not down as expected but up.

  Below him, again and again, killing pistols are firing.

  This is crazy, he thinks.

  Just crazy.

  He expected a little pervert coming in here, and now it looks as though he’s made a damned little war for himself.

  11

  I once met a famous Belter philosopher. A very wise woman, tiny even for a Belter. (Growth genes tailored, of course. Subdued. Otherwise the Belters would be clumsy low-gee giants.) She lived in a modest home on a minor world and spent her days in study and reflection. Of course I couldn’t talk to her for long. I couldn’t let myself intrude on her precious time. But I did ask her if there was any thought, any wisdom, that she could give to me. Something I might use to bolster my will and my optimism in black times, say. So she said to me, “You know, regardless of the situation, I truly believe that people do the best they can.” I nodded. It was comforting to hear her say so, I confessed. How about a dark insight? I then asked. Some hard truth with which I could temper the good times? And she smiled and told me with the same knowing voice, “People do the best they can…”

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

  Minus was up and running when the foam began to rise, trying to get to the bastard, but then it was everywhere and he couldn’t move, could only fire until the gun was dead and a chamber was blasted out of the drying foam beside him.

  Now he drops the gun and flexes and manages to split the cushioning foam, pushing himself into the chamber. He can see nothing. He feels the soft hot walls, the gunblasts mostly absorbed, and he uses his bare hands to dig at the stuff. He thinks about Dirk somewhere behind him, safe at least, and he wonders if the alarms are going to kick in soon. The AIs will reestablish power soon. They must be working on it now. And with all the police watching the damned cyborg show, he thinks, there are plenty of would-be rescuers nearby. No need to worry.

  He shoves his way into a man-shaped chamber buried in the foam. A part of him notes the man’s height and build, then he’s through and on the brink of the elevator shaft. He looks down and up and down again. He takes a breath and listens, tasting crushed bits of foam in his mouth, like strong plastic, and decides the man might just go upstairs. It’s a chance, leastwise. So Minus takes another breath and leaps and grabs the access ladders, climbing hard and fast.

  He was never young enough for this shit.

  The ladder has him gasping inside two minutes. Leaden arms grab the rungs and the leaden feet lift and push. He keeps peering up through the stinging sweat. Safety lights are burning in the shaft, reflecting off the smooth metal walls and the worn elevator tracks. One of the elevators is tucked away in a berth off to one side, no need to use it at this hour. Minus breathes and jumps off onto the ledge of the berth and draws a knife from his boot and a little spotlight from his shirt pocket, shining the beam into every corner, not knowing what to expect.

  There’s nothing to find. The man went higher if he came this way. Sure. So Minus pockets everything and climbs on, limbs numbed by exertion.

  Maybe he’s got a floater waiting on the roof.

  He considers how a man could make himself invisible, a couple probables coming to mind. Something reminds him of something he has heard of late. What was it? Oh well, he thinks. Forget it. Keep on the bastard, he tells himself. Pick up the pace.

  There’s nowhere to go but up. It’s AIs and Ghosts on all sides, no more apartments; and all the access ports are tiny, intended for robots doing maintenance. It was no Ghost that knocked him silly just now. He starts to think: Next time. Wait till the next time, asshole.

  The shaft is coming to an end. He can see the final berth and an elevator in the berth and the ladder leads him into a slot where the elevator’s door opens for him, hissing and letting in the cackling racket of people laughing. Cyborgs look at Minus the moment he steps outside. He ignores them, staring at the groomed trees and brush and flower beds. Standing feels unnatural. His limbs want to climb rungs. He slowly walks into a patch of tame ornamental jungle, kneeling to pull the knife discreetly from the boot again. He can see more of the huge cyborgs. Police floaters crowd together on the floater pad. The police themselves are talking to several cyborgs, the tone of their voices hard and formal. “What law was broken?” asks one of the big machine-skinned people. “Were we wrong having fun? Is that it?”

  “Fun?” The policeman talking is wearing a dark blue uniform and several kinds of guns, and he has all the light and life that the
uniform allows him. “I think the lot of you are a damned public menace. That’s what I think!”

  “Hey!” says a different cyborg. “You want your fucking rare earths dug up, Small Fry? You dig them yourself. You hear me?”

  “I think you’re out of line, mister. All of you are.” The policeman’s voice is calm and hard and scared at its roots. “I say we’re pulling everyone in.”

  The cyborgs laugh at him, shaking their heads.

  And he turns mad. “All of you! Every last one!”

  Except one cyborg doesn’t laugh. One’s been watching Minus for a few moments, more curious about him than entertained by the policeman. At least Minus guesses so. He moves past the lot of them, the moon high and bright and several days past full. Far to the west, resembling so many mountains lit from within, are clouds linked into a chain dropping its water. Suppose it’s a holo trick to make invisibility, he thinks. Just suppose. The man sure as hell can’t be invisible in every part of the spectrum. Not in the infrared surely. So he creeps into the recessed garage where their own floater is stored, plus some extra gear, and he slips on a pair of night goggles and does a slow turn and studies the entire roof. He can see the cyborgs through the trees. They’re bright in the infrared, bleeding heat out of their shells. The police floaters are nearly as warm, and here and there are animals and the policemen sweating in their uniforms. But little else. Where’s the son-of-a-bitch? he wonders. If he came out this way, how could he get away?

  Minus starts to circle.

  He goes around the open floater pad and comes to the edge of the roof. A pair of cyborgs are waving up at the sightseers in their floaters, and the sightseers wave back and laugh and flash holo cameras. Minus happens to look at the edge, noticing a series of knobs on top of a short stout wall. Something was once lashed to the knobs—guidewires to a tower or some microwave antenna—but now they’re just knobs of some imprecise metal, slightly corroded and rough-edged. He touches one and thinks for a moment, then moves, touching the next one and the next one and so on. Sure, he thinks. It’s what he would do, roles reversed. He follows the wall, the tidy jungle growing flush to the wall in places and him working to crash through and miss nothing. Branches cut at Minus. He keeps watching everything. A few sleeping birds curse him now and again. It’s late, they seem to say. Get the fuck to bed!

  He finds what he wants ten meters from his starting place. He has circled the entire roof in order to find a hair-fine strand of hyperfiber—one-dimension-strong stuff—looped around a knob and padded with a thin foam collar. Otherwise it’d cut through the knob when weight was applied. Sure. He reaches without breathing, grasping the hyperfiber and giving a gentle tug. There’s no perceptible weight. He’s too late. The guy is lucky, not to mention clever, and Minus takes the time to lean over the wall and admire the view.

  He’s going to beat this guy.

  From now on there’s more at stake than business. This is pride talking. This is his good name.

  “The problem is that they don’t allow themselves to be put on public roles.” Minus is talking to Dirk, the two of them finally alone. The building’s AIs have taken away the maintenance robots and the dissolved masses of foam, leaving a mess plus stinks that the ventilation system can’t quite kill. “Chances are that he’s a Freestater. The pain gun. The hand-to-hand skills. No doubts.” Minus says, “We can’t even know what tribe, what Freestate, the big bastard came from.”

  “I figured.”

  “She’s found herself a real champion.”

  “Tell me.”

  Minus does. “There’s two or three working in Quito. Remember that big girl who does disposal work for the Irregest Operators? The one with the missing hand?”

  Dirk thinks for a moment. “The ugly one?”

  “And strong. And tough. And Reformed Amish, pure and simple until she came away from home.” He laughs, probably trying to comfort Dirk with his easy humor. “The story’s that she cut off her own hand when it got caught in a quick-freeze trap. Better her hand than everything, she figured.”

  “Is that so?”

  “That’s a crazy bunch of natives up there.”

  Dirk thinks craziness is endemic to everywhere. Outside Quito, at least. He remembers the miner standing on his ledge, pausing before he finished his crazy climb. “Think cyborgs and the Freestater are tied up in this?”

  “It’s too early to know.”

  “Check with our police friends.”

  “First thing in the morning. Yeah.” He pauses, thinking. Then he says, “The only thing…this isn’t home. Sometimes these Freestaters have local pull. They do freelance work to make their livings. Even Brulé might have reason to hire them and keep them friendly.”

  “So go to Pyn.”

  “I was going to say it.”

  “And stay careful.”

  “Sure.”

  Dirk looks at him, at the tired pink eyes, and says, “If anything, tell him that we want to hire someone for our own good. A freelancer of some kind.” He gestures at the tipped furniture and the pools of drying solvent, the ventilation system roaring in his ears. “Tell him we’re pissed. Tell him we come to this fine little city and have a burglar get past his precious city’s reputation, into my home, where we were fortunate enough to drive him off in the end.”

  “That’s an idea.”

  “Get outraged.”

  “That’ll be fun.” Minus laughs again.

  Dirk asks, “What do you make of this character’s skills?”

  “Maybe fifty people, give or take, could slide past our defensive systems. I’m talking Quito people.” Dirk can sense a clear admiration in his voice. “Most of the fifty would have used more equipment and would have needed more groundwork. More preparation. That Reformed Amish woman is an exception.”

  “I’ll tell you. I think I’ve got him figured,” declares Dirk.

  “The Freestater?”

  “She found him. Either she was lucky, which is pretty unlikely, or she had him spotted beforehand. Either way, she’s lied to him. She’s told him some nonsense about me abusing her. Judging by what he said to me, innocent as blood, I’d say that’s pretty much established. You agree?”

  “From what you told me, yeah.”

  “Okay.” Dirk squints at the wall and touches a control. It’s a normal World-Net panel that comes awake, links established. “She’s fucking him over like she did me. He doesn’t even suspect it.” He reaches into anthropology texts, requesting random Freestater shots. The wall is suddenly full of blue-green pines and a low sun and large athletic people dressed to match the terrain. He watches the images and works at understanding what they’re up against. He says, “Let me get this set in my head. They’re fighting, but no one wins.”

  “No one dies,” says Minus. “They want to win.”

  “Win what? It’s a war, right?” A firelight has begun. He requests to see the entire battle, much of it senseless. Guns are fired. No one drops. Flashes of light move bullet-quick. No one is injured. He thinks of watching two birds fighting for a worm. Neither bird stabs with its beak. It’s all posturing and intimidation and half-real blows delivered with a practiced, highly evolved style. What are they shooting at one another? He asks if Minus knows.

  “You know,” says the man.

  Pain. They shoot blue-white bolts of pain. What tricked him, he thinks, is that the soldiers aren’t dropping. If it’s the same big doses he suffered earlier, then they must lack nervous systems. Or they can’t aim worth shit. “Why don’t they wear armor? Padding or something?”

  “Against the rules.”

  “Rules.” Dirk has trouble believing him. “If this is war—”

  “It’s more like a sporting match, really. Formal rules and endless. The Freestaters aren’t fighting over territory. The battles happen along established fire-zones, a loser is determined, and the loser pays the winner so much food or electronic equipment or timber. Whatever.” He says, “I know a little about them. Each Freestate
has its own religion, for instance. Its own basic codes. But each is the same at certain points. Everyone’s a warrior. And no one kills.”

  “Never?”

  “It’s a great dishonor,” Minus swears.

  Dirk says, “Dishonor, huh?”

  “Most of the emigrating Freestaters are dishonored. They’ve been given the boot or they do it to themselves, out of shame.” He says, “Our boy might be that kind of case. A renegade.”

  “Sounds like something useful,” adds Dirk. He flexes his hands and thinks how he feels better than a few days back. In spite of everything last night. Saner. Whole. In control again. “I bet our Miss Chiffon is trying to make him a puppet. Only I bet she didn’t know he was going to make his little move. You think?” He watches Minus nod, pushing a hand through his long colored beard. He looks out the windows, a wall of clouds descending on the city. It’s nearly dawn. Rain is coming as fat scattered drops. Dirk can see the big handprints of several climbing miners. Even at this distance, he can make out the whorled patterns of their hyperfiber fingerprints. “I bet he got the miners to do it,” he thinks aloud. “I bet he planned the climb and everything himself.”

  “You’re probably right.”

  “Thought he could scare me away.”

  “That’s what you said.”

  The Freestaters on the wall are done fighting. Some of the strange warriors have been surrounded and outgunned. Outpained. Dirk watches without great interest, saying, “Hell. I’d have sold her if she was just a Flower. Even if I had strange fun with her.” He thinks about some tailored spies Minus is arranging. Some kind of hawk tied into their AIs. What they should do, he thinks, is send the hawks to where these cyborgs live. In case. He sighs and says, “He must be crazy about the bitch.”