The Hormone Jungle

by Robert Reed

  “She was shit upon,” says the offstage voice.

  The Magician shakes his head. “I don’t know. It’s easy to feel sorry for her, but she was already pretty good at looking out for herself. I was surprised by what I found in my research.” He says, “She made demands from her new father, and she usually won. Zebulina was a kind of artist of manipulation. Absolutely without peer, I think. She stayed with the old man for ten years—five years longer than any previous daughter—and she went into the world with cash reserves and her own roomy apartment and a brigade of suitors already on her doorstep—”

  “Not a good girl,” says the voice.

  “Nor bad. Not really.” He tells his invisible audience, “She never did intentional injury to anyone. She juggled her suitors with ease and dismissed them without incident and found replacements from out of the upper echelons of Quito. Mostly male, but not always. Mostly older, but that’s demographics talking. She was still quite young, and did her peers have wealth to burn? Not normally. No.” He pauses, running one hand over his sleepy face. “I looked at Zebulina and thought to myself, ‘Now here is someone who would make a good Flower, given the chance.’ In her flesh-on-blood life, you see, she lived a Flower’s existence. Somehow it was woven into her nature—”

  A chill comes into Steward now. He shifts his weight, feeling his bound wrists and aware of the lightning outside, but he stares at the Magician’s nervous hands, long fingers a little crooked, and listens to the strange impossible story.

  “Then she was Ghosted. An accident and no choice, and she changed her name to Wisp and tried to live like Zebulina had lived.” He says, “She was shallow.” He says, “Wisp, like Zebulina, was incapable of looking at her own life in any objective fashion. She was cunning, yes. And very smart. But she was like a little girl when it came to patience and long-term thinking and her need for constant sensory input. So of course she spent herself into Gray-time. And of course no other Ghost could be lured into giving up his or her moneys. Not for charm, certainly. Not for sex. Not for anything Wisp had to sell.”

  “You found her,” says the voice. “You sold her on something.”

  Something in the Magician’s face starts to shine. He halfway smiles and says, “I like that. I sold her a chance at life, sure.” He is proud and a little happy now, nodding and telling the voice, “It’s not as tough as you might think. These new Flowers that we’re building are very, very sophisticated. Laying a Ghost into one of the Chiffon brains doesn’t require much that’s new or unique. The genius comes from realizing that it’s possible and then finding a reason, a target and volunteers—”

  Minus hits another button, freezing the image.

  Steward is numb. His first impression was that the image and noise was something synthesized by AIs. This Magician is a fiction. And yet now a dozen scattered clues come together when he lets them, staring up at him with predatory smiles. Why would anyone, crazy or not, go to this much trouble just to catch a simple Flower? Crime lords aren’t nearly crazy enough, he thinks. At least not the little ones he has known. So why didn’t he see the truth before? he wonders. But then he doesn’t have to wonder. A harsh pain comes to his belly, and he works at suppressing it. He thinks of Chiffon and feels his stomach turning, rejecting its bile and his last meals, and he turns toward Minus and asks, “What do you want from me?”

  “Your cooperation.”

  Steward waits, saying nothing and trying to regain his balance. His poise. He wants to be absolutely sure of everything—

  “She’s milked our kindness, yours and mine.” Minus tells him, “She’s done all of us a lot of grief.”

  “What did she do?”

  “What did she do, Magician?” Minus laughs and punches a button. The holo image jerks and wiggles, time rushing one way or another. Then he’s talking again, telling his interrogator:

  “—it’s more money than all of us could use. It’s blood money, stolen by Dirk and beyond legal reach, and with a Miss Luscious Chiffon of my own set inside the bastard’s home…well, I guess I don’t have to tell you about opportunity and greed. Do I?” He is scared. He is looking up at someone and talking faster than he can think. With crisp technical terms he paints a picture of the process—how he put a Ghost into a newly born Flower, how he suppressed Zebulina and Wisp while allowing their pure natures to show through and how he planned to use his own share to make the process work for everyone with the money and desire. He laughs. He says, “I guessed that that much money and my head would make a good team. You know? Maybe it doesn’t mean much to you, but I was going to do some real good with those quiver chips—”

  Again the Magician stops. This time he dissolves too, coming to pieces and flowing down into the seat and vanishing. Steward looks ahead. He can see the storm clouds coming and hears more thunder, then notices a pair of bright tear-shaped rainboys at the head of the clouds. They’re pulling the clouds with the brilliant lassos of pure plasma.

  What do I feel? Steward wonders.

  It’s too much of a shock. He can’t judge his own emotions, feeling the cords around his feet and wrists, his hands behind his back and nearly immobilized. He doesn’t have the strength to fight the cords. Suddenly he is too weak to breathe, it seems. Chiffon is…what? A human being? He thinks it without believing it. She cheated him, he tells himself, and Minus is right. He feels so cold now that he starts to shake.

  “How much was it?” he asks.

  “The chips?” Minus tells and smiles, enjoying everything, and he touches the wheel and moves them closer to the storm clouds. “She had you like she had Dirk. Believe me.”

  “I never saw any quiver chips,” he says. “Where were they?”

  “She’s not carrying them in her pockets. No way.” Minus says, “A thief in Quito will sometimes make a cut and insert chips into the wound. Which is probably what she managed. Flowers heal, of course, and there aren’t even any scars.”

  “Except she wasn’t cut,” Steward offers. “I know.”

  “And you’re lying.” Minus has to laugh at him, amused by the loyalty. “You are spinning stories and she is still free.”

  Steward says nothing.

  “You and your honor shit. Isn’t that what you got taught in the Freestates? Honor? Trust? Teams and tribes and all that nonsense?” He shakes his head in disgust, or amusement or maybe just to shake it and irritate his captive. “The Flower smiled and told you lies and you did her work for free, believing her lies, and you never stopped to consider the mess you were getting up to your ass in. Isn’t that what happened?”

  “You know a lot about honor, do you? And trust?”

  “Not much and enough. Believe me.” He says, “What do you think? You’re going to die without even giving us a hint as to where we might find her? What if she latches up with someone else? What if she gets out of this mess in the end? Are you thinking about that?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Maybe you should think harder.”

  Steward waits, then asks, “How did you find out where I was living?”

  Minus has a cocky look. His face is tilted, watching Steward and thinking for a moment, then saying, “Your neighbor, the big Morninger, did us that good favor,” and his white teeth show inside the beard.

  Steward breathes. Okay, he thinks. Okay. She’s cheated you. You gave her plenty of chances to be honest, you did everything humanly possible to prove your worth, and this is where it leads. You cut out your soul and set it in her hands…and what? What are you going to do? Where do you take it? Breathe hard and think and come up with something, you hard-worn piece of integrity. Try hunting the humor in it, will you? Or get mad and give it your best shot. One way or another.

  “My neighbor?” says Steward. “What about him?”

  “Forget him.” The voice is chilled and final. “What about our precious Flower?”

  Steward tells him, “I don’t believe you.” He breathes and swallows and pinches himself until the pain makes his entire arm ache. Th
en he makes a hollow place and fills it with the pain, his senses clear and his mind clear and his doubting voice telling Minus, “That Magician is a projection. A lie. You and Dirk cooked up this nonsense—”

  “Cooked up? Cooked up?” Minus is furious. Good. He adjusts the wheel and then strokes the buttons of the holo controls, and the Magician reemerges beside Steward, his body tilting and his hands blurring and the scared face begging for mercy. “We’ll listen to the whole damned thing, you bastard. I’m not dumping you until you believe me.” The Magician freezes, then talks. He starts describing how the Flower can use her skills to bend a man’s will, even someone tough like Dirk. Someone that seasoned. He is proud about the Chiffons. His holo leans forward to tell its interrogator about the power of passion and love, and Steward reads everything in that instant. He sees the Magician. He sees Minus. He has a vague sense about the storm clouds and rainboys that are so very close, and he launches himself without warning. His body is tight and sore and extending itself. Minus is staring at the Magician, smugly satisfied. Steward brings his feet up through the Magician’s holo, using it as cover for a split instant. Too late, Minus starts to draw back. The pointed toes erupt from the holo’s chest and stretch. Too late, Minus is putting one hand into his shirt, hunting the handle of some gun, and Steward’s toes strike his forehead hard enough that two of them break, popping, and Minus is tossed backward into the dash and wheel.

  Suddenly the floater accelerates.

  Up it goes, then down.

  And now Minus is awake again, aware of the floater’s descent and his own blazing headache and the Freestater jerking and twisting against the cords, trying to pull his hands out from behind his butt. Minus tries sitting upright. He bumps the wheel and makes the world spin. Then he turns and assesses the situation in an instant, using the throttle and ignoring the headache and somehow trimming them. A rainboy is passing on his right—enormous and liquid-metal bright, the blaring roar of its horns ripping at the air—and he thinks it’s a fucking good deal that he caught this in time, look where they were going, thinking how it should take a couple seconds to turn them and get them clear…

  …and Steward has gotten his arms out in front, reaching now and grasping the hair on the back of Minus’ head and pulling. Minus feels himself being thrown up out of the seat, over the back of the seat, his hands off the wheel too soon and the rainboy’s horns subsiding behind him. His hair pulls from his scalp. He reaches behind his head and grasps Steward’s hands while he locks his feet under the seat, the pressure on his back mounting; he can’t see Steward but he feels him, can imagine him using his bulk and brawn to break his poor back. So he starts busting Steward’s fingers. He feels a little bone snap, then another, and Steward does nothing, won’t let go or even flinch, and then he feels Steward’s mouth against the meat of his hand. The teeth cut at him. They work from side to side, him resisting, him thinking that no ass-wipe Freestater is going to take him like this…and now he looks up through the canopy and sees only clouds upon clouds. Everything is smooth like eggs. Lightning flashes somewhere within, the glow milky-blue and heatless, and Minus curses at Steward with a tiny choked voice, telling him, “We’re going the hell in. Now!”

  The floater gives a violent jerk, then another.

  Minus lets go of Steward’s hands and tries twisting out of his grip.

  A blue-white bolt strikes the floater, killing the lights on the dash, and now it’s dark, like pitch, and now it turns light again, lightning in the distance, and the floater’s engines cough before finding purchase again, the winds tugging at it and spinning it around. More lightning comes crackling over them. The two men are facing one another, Steward still bound around his wrists and ankles and Minus wondering how to hit him to put him down. One good hit. He needs one good hit. Water slams down on the canopy, neither man able to scream loud enough to hear himself. I don’t dare shoot, he thinks. Not with everything bouncing. There’s more lightning and just as the glow subsides, in that instant, Minus takes a hard swing at Steward’s throat and neck. But nothing connects. Steward’s melted away. You’re not fucking going to beat me! he thinks. He tells himself. He wills it so. He tucks against the dash and waits for the next bolt, and when it comes he leaps straight at Steward and takes it to his face, working his cheeks and around his eyes with hammer blows, and then again the big Freestater slips out of his reach, Minus turning, blinking, another bolt and him too slow to miss another one of those kicks.

  He’s driven up against the canopy.

  He slides down its curved face, feeling broken ribs and tasting blood and thinking nothing. He’s stunned. Bolts come quickly, without apparent sound, and he’s only aware of the drumming of the thick, thick rain. He needs to rest. He wishes he could breath in peace for a minute. Where is he? he wonders. Where are you? It’s pitch again. Absolute night. Minus is sitting in the corner where the front seat meets the curling dead dashboard, and with one bleeding hand he pulls out his gun. Put it on low power, he thinks. Low dosages, he thinks. Then something else occurs to him.

  Why need worry? he tells himself.

  We’re both dead anyway.

  Another bolt, white and fat and streaking overhead, and Minus puts a couple of shots into the seat. Twin clouds of stuffing and burned fabric come up into the air. He can’t see Steward anywhere. Nothing. Nothing. He shoots twice more, guessing where he might be hiding and spacing his shots. There are more bolts, all colors, all intensities, and nothing like flesh or blood in the air. No hits. “Where are you?” he screams, his voice inaudible. “You red-haired turd—!”

  The floater’s engines sputter and quit.

  Minus is thrown upward, striking the canopy with a shoulder and losing the pistol as he sees Steward’s body come out from between the seats, intact and the hands out free now. There’s more lightning, and he glimpses the man’s broken fingers and thinks that the bones in the hands have got to be shattered too. He had to have busted them to pull them out of that cord, he thinks. And the engines come on again, nothing audible but the floater steadying while it dives. Steward comes over the back of the seat, reaching for the wheel. He trims them. Minus is back in the corner, holding his ribs. Steward punches the autopilot with one swelling finger, lightning turning the rain around them to scalding white fire, and Minus sees the pistol waiting for him on the seat, and he grasps it and shoots too fast, aiming low.

  Steward grabs the pistol and his hand and presses both skyward.

  Okay, thinks Minus. Drink your air, damn you!

  The pistol shoots twice. A section of the canopy melts and flows until the rainwater blasts through with a keening roar. Both men are pressed downward, slammed down, and the rain feels cold and sharp. Again Minus loses the pistol. He doesn’t care where it goes. The rain pools around the floor and forces out the air, liters and liters coming in every moment and him getting in a few hits while he has the chance. Punish Steward some more. He knows some ribs get bruised before the man pulls away, climbing into the back end and leaving Minus to pant and think for a minute. God, he decides, this is some fucking waste of a way to end.

  The floater is shit. They’ve probably hit the plasma barrier a bunch of times already, doing a flat-stone skip back into the cloud. It’ll never hold up for a straight-on charge, but then they won’t take the chance because the rainwater’s coming over the seats already. They’ll drown first, he thinks. His ears are bursting with the jerking changes of pressure and the noise, and his lungs can’t find much good with the air. He coughs hard. He looks for Steward. He sees him untying his feet now, shattered hands just managing the knots, and Minus glances skyward just as an enormous blue bolt lashes out and blinds him.

  The floater engines quit.

  Then start again.

  The water is bitterly cold, churning as the floater tips and turns itself. Minus tries to get close to the canopy’s hole, to the last fresh swallow of air. Neither man fights. A kind of truce has sprung up between them. Steward is standing near him, bleed
ing badly but not caring in the slightest. He’s talking, screaming loudly enough for Minus to hear some nonsense about the weight of water and the plasma barrier and maybe, just maybe…what? “What?” Minus screams back at him. “It’s a draw. Call it and fucking quit!”

  The engines die.

  The floater tilts and dives, and Minus feels himself being pulled upward towards the hole. Glass and the high wind bang him up. For the briefest instant he feels, or thinks he feels, a hand around his ankle. Restraining him? Or pushing? He doesn’t know, airborne now, the storm around him and the floater dead below and the sheer winds coming to pick him higher and higher into the flaring rivers of light.

  He can’t breathe.

  It doesn’t seem as though he needs to breathe anymore, his mind clear and comfortable now. He feels as though he is drifting, too numb to notice his body being spun and twisted apart. He thinks this isn’t bad, he wonders why he ever thought this was bad. It’s just dying. It’s easy. All that time he spent dropping people in, and once you’re past the fear it’s nothing. Pretty lights and noise and nothing…

  22

  The only strength is knowing your strength…

  —a Morninger proverb

  “They fixed him up with a sound box and ears.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Asked him who did it.”

  “Who did it?”

  “He said he doesn’t know. That’s what he tells them, at least.”

  “Doesn’t know? Or won’t say?”

  “Maybe you’re right. Who’s to know?” she says. “He claims that he never guessed something was wrong. He was tired. He plugged in. It sounded normal, and you know how the draining goes. If you’re not looking for the feeling, you can miss it. And by the time they came for him he was pretty well empty.”