The Hormone Jungle

by Robert Reed

  Dirk nods, pressing his tongue against a cheek. “A Morninger, huh?”

  “Maybe one of the ones involved in our troubles. Maybe someone hired by this Freestater.”

  “Maybe?” says Dirk. “I say probably.”

  “Want another maybe?”

  “Try me.”

  “She was alone. The Freestater is out trying to lay down this false trail, trying to make us believe they were gone. She happens to look out the window and sees this sort of thing…well, maybe she thought it was us doing it. You and me.”

  “What happened to the Morninger?”

  Minus tells him. Dirk shakes his head and admits admiration for anyone with the courage to go against a cyborg. “Cleaned him like a raw living oyster,” says Minus. “You know? They say the guy is nothing underneath the shell. They won’t let the cameras inside, the police won’t, because it’s too grisly.”

  “Huh.”

  “Anyway, she got scared. She ran. Which means she’s close to that apartment. To that pool.” He tells Dirk what’s in the pool, ruined, and then says, “I made calls to our friends in the department. They don’t have suspects yet, no. They don’t know the story. There’s a missing girlfriend, but who’s to say?”

  “She’s not a Flower? The girlfriend?”

  “Descriptions don’t match.”

  “So what do you think?”

  “Well, I’ve got AIs hunting through city records. I want to know all the neighbors, everything, but I doubt our Freestater is going to show himself so easily. So I think the four of us should go have a look for ourselves. In the Spirit of enterprise.”

  “No sense waiting,” says Dirk.

  “I’ll wake the others.”

  “Do.”

  “The thing I’m hoping is that we can catch the Freestater himself. You know? If she’s spooked, maybe she didn’t get word to him. Maybe he doesn’t know what’s happening.”

  “Don’t even tease me with the hope,” Dirk tells him, hands sweeping at the air. “Let’s get going. We’ll take a look and then draw back. Give him a few hours.”

  “All right.”

  “And make our AIs keep hunting her. See if they can monitor the city’s security systems.”

  Minus has seen to that contingency. He tells Dirk so, now watching the view from the news cameras. A stretcher comes floating out of the apartment sheets shrouding a lean unsubstantial figure that shows himself as a pale pink face, hairless and eyeless, and one spidery-long hand without the strength to close itself.

  Minus doesn’t think about the miner.

  He stands with his feet apart, remembering the night when he and that damned Freestater grappled and it came out a draw. Not again, he tells himself. Never again. In his mind, over and over, he wrestles with the invisible figure and doesn’t let himself come out short. Not once. It’s close but he always wins.

  The bike is a fold-down model without lights or any excess weight, riding smooth and quiet down the path and Steward pedaling without trying to work himself, sweating but not breathing hard. He had stored the bike in a locker down in the Old Quarter. Using floaters late at night can draw attention, the traffic so sparse. The bike makes sense. It’s long after three in the morning. Things have gone well tonight, he has decided. Slowly, in chaotic increments, a trail leading through Jarvis and Luna and into Titan will appear to anyone with the interest. Olivia’s Ghosts and Steward have been plugged into one of the main World-Net terminals in Brulé, linking with System-Net and prodding the illusion along. A good night, he reasons, but not flawless. There’s more left to do. He needs to pull out his bankable moneys and make a few friends believe he has gone away, the destination unclear. More to do, but Chiffon is alone and he can’t stay away any longer. She has gotten to him. She has him so well that he has to wonder if he could fight her talents, given the urge. Maybe tonight, for a minute or two, he’ll try resisting. Just to see. Just to discover the depth of her hold on him. That’s the funny thing, he thinks. He doesn’t truly know how much he’s in love, if it is love, because for these last days he has let himself coast without bothering to test the bindings. He hasn’t seen the need. What happens if he evades her kisses and her easy praise? Three or four minutes and then he’ll take his emotional pulse. Sure. It’s not because he wants to break the binds, he tells himself. Not at all. It’s because the testing will make the binds more real, biting into his flesh, his glands, and then he’ll be free to surrender to her and they’ll have their fun and everything will be right for a little while.

  The bike rolls onto an upgrade now, gentle but steady.

  Steward is alone on the path. There were pedestrians back toward the Old Quarter, but now no one. He concentrates on taking his time. Don’t pedal like a maniac, he tells himself. Don’t shave off seconds. “Be a rebel,” he mutters under his breath. “A little bit.”

  He starts thinking about time. A specific sum. Five months, give or take, and then the Flower is done.

  A cold, weak feeling comes into his knees. He has to shudder, some part of him not doing its job, not keeping tabs on this one sad fact like it should…and he suffers accordingly.

  He can’t let the gloom get into him.

  He wills it away, consciously and only with partial success.

  Chiffon will die. He has always known it; from the first he was motivated by the knowledge, but somewhere he made a decision with himself, vowing to ignore the truth. How about Ghosting her? He tells himself to ask Olivia Jade about Ghosting a Flower…a hypothetical case, he’ll stress. He can’t begin to contemplate the money it would take. Or the sacrifice. He doesn’t even know if Chiffon would agree, provided it’s possible. Has it ever happened in the past? He can’t remember a time. What do Ghosts think about Flowers? Olivia will know. Sure, he thinks. For a little while he entertains the thought of Chiffon and Olivia being roommates, staving off the horrors of Gray-time together.

  The slope tops out and the bike begins to roll down toward home. The stream flows beside him, sounding jolly, buoyant and optimistic, and Steward rolls faster without pedaling, finally braking a little and sliding up over a tiny bridge and down and around a course he could follow with his eyes tightly closed.

  A water rat is squatting in the middle of the path.

  Steward makes a catlike hiss, just once, and the rat wheels and vanishes into the undergrowth.

  Almost home, he finds a knot of excitement rising in his throat. For a moment he wonders about the identity of this fellow inside him, this corny boyish goof so much in love. Then he smells something. Or several things, it isn’t clear. He detects a lingering warmth and a fishy odor and something without identity. But then it’s gone. There and gone. And he files the knowledge beside the wandering water rat, braking and pulling in alongside the public doorway and coming off the bike while it’s rolling, lifting his right leg over the hard narrow seat.

  The wheels fold into the frame in a few seconds.

  The pedals do the same.

  Steward drops the bike and kneels beside the stream, breathing once and then pressing his face underneath the water, chilled and marvelous, and he drinks his fill and stands again and lets the residue run down his face and soak his shirt in the front. Then he picks up the bike and goes inside, and when he’s in the hallway he pauses, not knowing why. He can’t recall having seen or heard anything special. But again he puts down the bike and retraces his steps with a special care. The stream is still running, of course, and most of the windows and balcony doors and patio doors are darkened at this hour. Of course. He looks up and down with a certain studied ease. There is nothing. He can be absolutely sure of the fact. But when he returns to the bike he takes the trouble of looking both ways down the curling hallway. Nothing again. No one and no funny lingering smells, either, and he starts to pick up the bike with one hand, ready to put the frame on his shoulder, and he knows without having to concentrate that his bike, built of durable featherweight plastics and the farts of running gazelles, has suddenly and myst
eriously just gained a few grams of unmistakable mass.

  He sets down the bike and retreats, taking care not to jostle anything, his eyes going over every centimeter while he feels adrenaline bulling its way through his system, every sense absolutely awake and working hard to find anything anywhere that he can use.

  He has a pistol, charged full of pain.

  He brings it out with one hand while he focuses on something wrong in the gears of the folded rear wheel. A cartridge has been set inside the workings. No telling what’s in the cartridge—probably some kind of gas, explosive or toxic and simply the knockout variety. He steps away and thinks it must be the knockout variety. Otherwise they would have touched it off already. When he was close. They were here, he thinks. They probably have sprinkled remote sensors everywhere, and if this was just him in here he would turn and run out the door, outside and away, or down the hallway until he found an apartment where he could hide…

  …but he has to get upstairs.

  The image of Chiffon wells up before him, in the dark, her waiting for him while unseen men work to break the locks on the door.

  He takes the stairs three at a time. He comes up into the second-floor hallway, firing, sending blue bolts in both directions and hitting nothing, no one there to serve as targets. He strides to the door, thinking that they have to know just where he’ll be going. They can’t be this close and not know. Thankfully the locks are tight. The door reports no one has done anything against the apartment’s integrity. How was Steward’s day? The mag-locks undo themselves. He steps inside ready to fire, wheeling and knowing in an instant that she’s missing. He can smell her missing. He has lived for so many years in these rooms that he doesn’t need to look further.

  Someone is running in the hallway.

  The door says she left, his guest left, and gives the exact time and none of the circumstances. “She said to tell you a dirk was in the yard. I’m not sure I understand.”

  Steward shuts the door and punches a hidden switch under one shelf. The apartment goes into war mode—the third time in more than twenty years. The Masking Glass turns black on the inside, mirrored on the outside, and Steward falls back and asks himself how long before they can unfasten all of his safety features. An hour? These Quito people are a clever lot. Okay, probably less. But they can’t afford a long siege, either. He could call for the police. For anyone. So they’ll do it quick and dirty, he decides. Explosives. If Chiffon did leave when the door reported—“Was she alone? You’re sure?”—then maybe she got free of them. Good girl! he thinks. Why else would they be bothering with me? Of course, they don’t have her yet! So he tells himself, Okay. Quick and dirty. They want me alive. They want me to help them find her. Shaped explosives. Out and in. “Who’s outside?” he asks the door.

  The door describes one of the hairy Quito men. Just one.

  “What’s he doing? Display!”

  One wall shows him kneeling, working with shaped explosives. Just like Steward imagined. I can take him, he knows. How far is he along? Another twenty seconds, no more. So he gives the door orders and kneels like he did in the tunnel a few days ago, preparing to charge at those apes. He braces one foot against the living sofa and breathes hard and consciously plays the scene through his head. Then he says, “Now!”

  The door flings itself open.

  Steward is up and running, charging, but instead of one Quito man there are three of them, plus Dirk, standing in a row with looks on their faces and guns in their hands. The door’s eye is covered with some piece of technical wizardry. False images, of course. And he can’t shoot before the gas hits him like a wall, greenish and sickeningly sweet, the strength going out of Steward’s legs as the floor rears up in his face, the pain momentary and halfway comforting. It’s the one thing he really understands.

  They got him inside the place easily, without noise, and now Minus and the other two are taking the place apart. She was here. Dirk knows it just by looking in the corners, by sniffing the sheets, by sitting on the bed itself and thinking no, no, she hasn’t told him the truth. What’s his name? Steward? The big Freestater’s feet are visible on the nearer arm of the sofa, him sleeping off the knockout potion, and so far three sets of hands ripping up books and globes and the furniture haven’t brought any clues. Not one. Where is she? He can almost feel her warmth in the smelly sheets, he thinks. An odd pang comes to him, to his belly, and when he thinks how much he wants Chiffon he isn’t sure how he wants her…isn’t sure of his own mind. They’ve got to find her! They’ll have to break the Freestater somehow. And fast!

  Outside, down in the yard, the swimming pool continues to boil.

  Not much water left. The coral is dead and someone from the city has put up barriers—bars of holo light and singing alarms to warn away the careless citizens—and now Dirk stands and gazes down at the scene. A shitty little neighborhood, he thinks. It’s hard to know what happened to that Morninger. Probably bad blood between miners. “All right,” Dirk says to himself, “what are we going to do?”

  And then he knows.

  Minus is cutting open the back of the big sofa, the living leather leaking a clear sparkling sap. There’s nothing inside but foam and connective tissue. He growls and says, “I give up,” and drops his knife on the floor.

  “This is what we do,” Dirk begins. Minus listens, nodding and telling him that he understands. Sure. “You’ll need help getting him up there,” says Dirk, “and I’ll need another floater. Can you order one in an hour?”

  Minus can. “You going on a hunt?” he asks.

  Their little thief is probably trying to get outside of Brulé. Dirk has been thinking about the possibilities since he woke up, and that’s the best one. That’s why she went underground. There are all kinds of big Farmsteads. A Freestater might keep a safe house on one of them, or several houses. “We’ll do our looking while you’re gone. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  Minus is smiling. “It’s all turning around on us. It feels pretty good, doesn’t it?”

  Dirk doesn’t want to analyze it. He just wants to move.

  “He won’t be out much longer.” Minus looks at their prize, at the hard sleeping face and the dampened shirt. “I better go. Get this package wrapped up and delivered.” He uses strong cord and practiced knots, nothing to chance. Then one of the Quito men takes the shoulders and he has the feet; he glances at Dirk for a moment, his expression asking if there’s anything else now. Anything?

  “Tell me about it later. All right?”

  “A mess of times. You bet.”

  “We’ll trade stories. You with him. Me with the Flower.” He feels a little crazy again, Chiffon coming into his head. There are still secret places inside him that love her, and he knows it and works to keep them hidden from everyone. “Till we’re sick of telling them.”

  “Never,” says Minus. Then his face turns hard, pink eyes glaring down at the sleeping Freestater. “Hey! Guess where you’re going. Hey! You know what I’ve got planned?”

  21

  There’s a smoothness to Terran clouds. Smooth faces and rounded tops and bottoms that are utterly flat. At night they present an awesome show of light and noise and the implication of enormous, scarcely controlled energies. In the day they are brilliantly white in the distance, and when they come overhead they shut out the sun. They are lids of densely packed vapor, angry and forever growling, and more than once I have heard people mention that when you don’t pay for a rain—when the clouds just rumble on by—you feel as though the gods themselves are angry at you, cursing your poverty or your thrift…

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

  There’s this voice he doesn’t know, cannot even understand for a long choking moment; then he swallows and tries opening his eyes and Steward sees a flash, bright and silent, and his seat drops to the right and makes him ill. He coughs. He blinks and there’s more flashing, then he hears the telltale drumming of thunder, and he spots the brightly colo
red mess of hair and beard growing from the floater’s pilot. The pilot is sitting in the front, on his left, and someone else is sitting in the back beside Steward. He hears a young voice, slow and tired. He doesn’t know the voice. He’s certain. But when it says, “Chiffon,” he blinks and turns to look at the stranger’s face.

  He is a tall man without bulk. A Terran, yes, but he’s spent some growing years elsewhere. He’s sitting to Steward’s left, talking with the dry dead voice of someone who hasn’t slept in living memory. Steward can’t quite make out the words. The pilot shouts back at him, “His name’s the Magician. Or was.” It’s Minus in the front. “Listen to this, why don’t you.” Minus hits a button, jerking the Magician into a new position.

  It’s a holo, Steward realizes. The Magician is a recording.

  A new voice comes from some hidden place. It asks about Chiffon. The Flower. What was her real name?

  “In which life?” he says. The Magician says. “As a Ghost? Or before?”

  “Both lives,” says the offstage voice. “Begin with the first one. Her situation. Her times.”

  Steward hasn’t a clue as to what’s happening. “Zebulina Trish,” the Magician begins. “A pretty girl by birth. A halfway wealthy family with a minor kind of prominence in Quito. The mother was a politician, shrewd and probably too greedy for her own good. The father was a sculptor, full of energy and devoid of talent. Zebulina was spoiled in her early years. But then that happens a lot, right? Particularly when the parents hate each other and use the daughter as a kind of prize. And both of them, acting separately, managed to go bankrupt at the same time. The mother lost her political standing. The father had run out of credit. Zebulina was given up for adoption…I don’t know which parent managed that trick. Maybe both of them working in concert. She became the ‘daughter’ of a certain elderly gentleman with certain novel tastes. She was eleven years and four months old, and certain debts were wiped off the ledger in the process.”