The Hormone Jungle

by Robert Reed

  We’re that close? asked a muscle.

  Yeah, he said. He said, Alive. I want her alive!

  The muscles looked at each other, nodded and led the way. They were probably thinking about bonuses, each wanting to be the one to catch her. They went straight up a hill covered with the worst jungle Dirk had ever seen, thorny brush and sucking bugs tormenting them. She had to be crazy with fear to be running now, he thought. She couldn’t last long, he told himself. Not with her body. Dirk remembers how the muscles got too far ahead to see. He remembers one of them shouting back at him, shouting something about a clearing ahead, and then after a few seconds there came a quiet, almost gentle gun blast. You assholes! he screamed. Don’t fucking kill her! he roared. He charged up through the undergrowth and got into the open, panting, his weak old legs like gelatin underneath him.

  There were Farmers in the clearing.

  A gray-haired woman stood staring at them from the top of an old stump. I guess you got lost, she began. You people look like you could use some reliable directions, huh?

  What happened here? Dirk demanded. What’s going on?

  What I think, said the woman, is that we’ve come upon poachers.

  Poachers?

  Because when your man stumbled on us, do you know what he did? He mistook us for a herd of fat roodeer and tried to shoot what isn’t his to shoot.

  Dirk remembers licking his dry lips, measuring the situation. Hey! he then said. Listen! We don’t mean anything. We can see our mistake. We’ll go. Right now.

  The muscles were standing together. The injured one was holding his shoulder. Dirk walked up to him and pushed him off his feet, driving him to the grassy ground. Then he repeated himself:

  We’re leaving. Okay? We’re gone!

  There was no other choice. He hated it and felt sick because of it, but the woman was watching him and so were the other Farmers, maybe a couple dozen. We can’t kill all of them, he thought. If only we could.

  The Farmers watched them retreat. They had an enormous floater that lifted off and hung overhead while they struggled back through the jungle. Then they escorted Dirk’s floater to the border of Brulé, the injured muscle moaning in the back end and Dirk wondering about Minus. Like he wonders now, the elevator door opening and no one waiting and him feeling so damned alone. Who would have guessed? he thinks.

  He punches into the AIs. “Any messages from Minus?”

  “None,” says the gray voice.

  He tells the one muscle to get clean and bandaged. “Then get some rest,” he says. “Both of you. We’re going out again before dark.”

  “Going where?” asks one of them. “Back there?”

  “Who’s doing my thinking? Are you doing my thinking?” He looks straight at them. He says, “Rest.”

  They shake their heads and leave him.

  “Has Minus been here?” he asks the AIs.

  “No.”

  “Has he accessed any of the data stores?”

  “No.”

  “Has he been near the Cosgrove?”

  “We haven’t seen him.”

  “Okay,” he says, collecting his thoughts and ignoring the worst of them. “Any other messages? From anyone?”

  “Two messages.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Mayor Pyn. He left a fairly extensive message.”

  “Give me essentials.”

  The gray voice delivers a point-blank ultimatum. Contingencies force Brulé into asking for certain payments, good-faith investments, or he will cease to be a welcomed guest by tomorrow. Noon.

  “Huh,” says Dirk. “Would you look at me? Do I look surprised?” He doesn’t feel anything. By then, by tomorrow, he has the feeling it will all be finished one way or another. She’ll be out of his reach or she’ll be dead, and he’ll be rich or a pauper. “The other message. What’s it say?”

  “It’s two words. No voice. No images.”

  “Yeah?”

  “‘Too bad.’”

  “Too bad? That’s the message? Just too bad?” He gets a sensation in his belly, a burning. “Did he leave a name.”

  “Of a sort.”

  “Well what sort of name?”

  And the AI pauses for what seems like an age. Then it says:

  “‘Too bad.

  “‘Signed.

  “‘The Rain.’”

  23

  In the word garden is the implication of a fence…

  —a Garden proverb

  Toby spent the night in a closet with a padded body-worn floor and a broken World-Net panel fixed to the square ceiling, cash and no names asked and the door refusing to close tight and shut out the sounds in the hallway. He was the living picture of elation, him lying on the floor with the vivid images still fresh in his head—true delights—and him smiling even while a pair of less elated whores slammed some customer against the door, demanding payment or an appendage in its place. The noise was nothing. The violence was nothing. He didn’t care about any of it. Now, thinking back, he can’t even remember how the customer made good on her commitments.

  And still the elation persists. He has scarcely slept, even in the rare quiet moments, yet he feels fresh and clearheaded and thoroughly removed from his surroundings. For several hours he has been sitting on a living bench in a shady corner of the Old Quarter, in the same rundown district where he found his hotel and obscurity, watching what passes and thinking about many things at once. Like his future. He can’t go back to the apartment, the police surely knowing him by now; yet he can’t leave Brulé City until he has ample money and the opportunity. And what destination? He doesn’t know what to choose, or even his criteria. And how to make the money? Again, he is ignorant. Yet he doesn’t feel any pressure from his situation. Not like he would have felt just days ago. The air itself seems blessed with possibilities. It began last night—the transformation, the lifting of his blinders, whatever—him standing over the ruins of Gabbro, his nemesis, knowing now what courage and cunning will produce when applied hard to a difficult goal. Any goal. He can still see his hands pulling away the quivering, dying slices of hyperfiber, the soft wasted skin exposed to the first light in who-can-say how long? The ripping of neural tissue brought anguish—a suitable justice—and he smiles at the memory, the pleasure something joyless and colorless and cold.

  He has no doubts at this moment.

  Not one.

  And now he consciously turns his attention to the remote future. What to do, what to do? He tells himself to wait. He needs to go somewhere and apply his newfound confidence. His father won’t live forever. But until that date he needs to make the most of his exile. Toby starts to think of himself as a political exile—someone in a rare position to study Garden from without and make bold pronouncements about its society and its far goals. He can feel his studies and his thoughts on the Prophet Himself percolating out from his bones, some ultimate answers to come. To emerge from him, proud and true and ready to win converts among the Gardeners themselves. Purity for the Garden! The Prophet’s words must live again, unalloyed by these evil times. He feels himself on the brink of something great, vaster than him and wiser, and he has nothing but contempt for all the people in all their vulgar shapes who walk past him now, ignoring him or not, ignorant of so much and so far beyond the Prophet’s reach.

  The afternoon is passing into dusk now.

  The sun has dropped behind a drab stone tower at the end of the narrow parkway, the shade in Toby’s corner extending and merging with the tower’s shadow and him watching the mix of people change by degrees. The whores are coming out to work, fresh-faced and secure in their homeland. A single male whore spies Toby and comes to him, sitting without an invitation on the far end of the bench. He says, “A lovely night,” with a thin conviction. “Don’t you think so?” One of his hands is picking at a place where the bench’s bark is missing, some colorless fungus eating the wood beneath. “But we’re going to get a washing later, I understand.”

  Toby giv
es him a stare, saying nothing.

  “Well,” the whore replies amiably, “fuck you,” and he stands and leaves.

  No, Toby believes, he cannot be bruised anymore. He is immune. From somewhere in his experience, World-Net or deep in his childhood, he recalls the descriptions of religious conversion and finds that they apply to him. Clarity. He is buoyed up by a crystal clarity, uncompromising and undeniable and eternal. The Prophet Himself must have once felt the same. What I need to study next, he thinks, is the Prophet Adam. Not just Him but His times. His place. What was the Earth in that remote age? What awful abominations did he experience day by day, and what was the source of His great visions?

  Time passes, Toby lost in the dreaming.

  Then he suddenly blinks and looks out on the curling path. A familiar shape wearing the usual skullcap is passing him. It takes Toby a long instant before he can bring himself back to the present, to here, but then he leans forward with his eyes squinting, following the walking figure as she moves without elegance or haste.

  Toby stands.

  He begins to follow, planning nothing and careful not to get closer to the whore. He’s just watches as she moves through the gathering gloom, to the stone tower and then right and then left and left again. He feels curiosity. He wants to see a customer or two. How does she win them? How does she play with them? Will she treat them differently than she treated him? He stops and steps out of sight when she begins talking to some nondescript Terran man. Her laugh is unmistakable. That build is unique, the enormous stone-hard breasts poking the man in the side. It’s all the same, he thinks, and he follows them. Another hotel famous for closets and cash, and Toby sits on another bench and watches the entrance while he waits for the whore.

  It is night. The wind, mild for most of the day, begins to gust from the south. If anything, the heat has grown worse since the sun has gone down. Toby starts to sweat, ignoring his discomfort, counting the quarter hours and watching the path, too. A uniformed policewoman is standing under some lights beside a floater pad. She’s looking for me, he thinks. He can’t imagine that there isn’t some sort of alert, at least for questioning him, Gabbro’s neighbor, and that’s why he bought the floppy-brimmed hat earlier today. And new clothes. And that’s why he’s avoided the police when he has seen them. Nonetheless, he realizes, they will find him in time. No amount of cleverness can save him in Brulé.

  The policewoman strolls down the path toward him.

  Toby is careful, ever-so-careful, sitting there as if he has no concerns in all the world.

  And she passes him, looking at him and blinking and gone. He is safe again. Invincible. He fights the urge to chase after her and taunt her with his face, proving his invincibility. But don’t, he thinks. “Don’t even consider it,” he mutters, one hand wiping his forehead dry.

  The whore, minus customer, emerges from the hotel.

  She continues toward the south with a certain studied deliberation, and Toby begins closing the gap between them. He doesn’t have any exact plan. His interest now is obscure even to him. Yet trailing her seems right. His every motion brings him closer to something…he isn’t sure what…but now, without warning, he glimpses what he needs to do. The whore has stopped and turned, spying him. She seems to smile, inviting him closer. Does she remember him? He can’t know. Does it matter to her? Apparently not. She waves at him, beckoning him, and he stops and waits and she seems to say, “Bashful,” to him and shakes her head and points. Buildings surround a narrow dead-end parkway. She turns and walks up the parkway, out of sight, and Toby looks both ways and sees no one else and goes to the mouth of the parkway and squints and can just make out the swirling colored light of the whore’s skullcap. She’s up there waiting for him. He knows it.

  Slowly, without noise or tentative motions, Toby moves halfway to the whore. Then he turns into an absolutely black patch of shadow, kneeling behind thick tree trunks, and he sweeps the ground with his hands and finds several dead branches. He chooses one. He breathes and grasps it and waits. The whore can’t see him. She grows tired of his bashfulness, walking back down the path. She has no warning. He is up and swings and the branch catches her on the back of the head, bone breaking and the skullcap flashing red, and Toby is on top of her, tugging at her limp arms and pulling her into the shadows, buying time.

  It takes him a few long seconds to notice the face. It isn’t the right face. For an instant he feels cheated, groaning softly before he comes to his senses. Hurry! He goes through her pockets and her private places, finding two rolls of glass bills and a single quiver chip of unknown worth. Then he stands, looking at the wrong face one last time before he flees. The red light pulsates behind him. He is running out of the parkway, and then he catches himself and slows and looks both ways without haste. There is no one. People are in the distance, but no one is nearby. That face was all wrong, he tells himself. How could I have missed it by so much? He shivers, walking now. Money in his pockets and nowhere to go. He starts to smile, then laugh, then skip. Then he starts to whistle, and the wind gusts in his face, hot and damp.

  “I’d like, if I could, to have a few words with you.”

  “I don’t know,” he responds. “I was about to get up and have a walk.”

  No answer.

  “It’s a joke,” says Gabbro. He starts to giggle, hearing himself through the temporary ears and imagining a woman sitting beside his bed—dressed in formal clothes, colorless and clean, looking down at him with an outraged, even horrified expression. “I’m sorry,” he tells her. “You want to talk?”

  “Yes…well, yes.” She sounds puzzled, off balance. “A joke, yes. I suppose humor’s part of the healing process.” Gabbro hears her shifting in her chair. “What I want,” she confesses, “is to ask you some simple questions. If that’s possible.”

  He says, “Sure.”

  “First, how are you feeling?”

  “Good.”

  “Is there pain?”

  “None. None at all.”

  “Is there any sense of boredom? Any hallucinations? Anything that implies sensory deprivation?”

  “Not really,” he assures the woman. The doctors keep plying him with drugs to curb any of that nonsense. In other cases, particularly where the trauma wasn’t so severe, they would leave temporary senses lashed to the patient all day or stimulate the brain by artificial means. But not with him. Not with profound trauma of his magnitude. That’s their word—profound. Not simply bad or ugly, he thinks. “They’ve got me good and pickled,” he says. “I’ve never felt better.” It’s like drifting in darkness and not feeling your hands or feet, or anything. He asks, “Who are you? Did you tell me?”

  “I work for the Brulé mines.” She mentions her forgettable name, then tells him, “I’m involved in public relations and the miners.”

  “Well, what else can I tell you?”

  “There is one item.” She pauses, then wonders, “The police have interviewed you several times. You say you can’t recall who attacked you, am I right?”

  “I never saw a face. Nothing in focus, at least.”

  “Did you hear them?”

  “No,” he lies.

  “How many were there?”

  “I told the police.”

  “You don’t know.”

  “How can I know?”

  “You were powerless.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “And you don’t know who attacked you?”

  “I guess that’s what I’m saying.” Gabbro tries guessing the point in all of this nonsense. “I don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake.”

  “A mistake.” Her voice is level and slow. “How do you mean?”

  “Well, I’ve been thinking hard…because I want to help you people, I do…and the thing is that someone might have confused me for another miner. Anyone. I don’t know.”

  “Like who, for instance?”

  “What miner? I don’t know.”

  She clears her throat and then makes no sound
for a long while. Then she tells him, “Frankly, I came here hoping for some statement from you. A few words to the effect that you do not blame Brulé or any of its citizens for the tragedy that has befallen you.” She clears her throat once again, with more force this time, and asks, “Is that possible?”

  “A statement?”

  “If you’d like, I could supply the words.”

  “All right. Sure.” He says, “Anything to be helpful.”

  “Fine. That’s just fine.” She moves in her chair, then changes the subject once again. “I’m also here to assure you that every step is being taken to see you home and recovering soon. As soon as possible. Believe me.”

  He says nothing, knowing just what she means and ready for the moment. He’s been thinking of little else all day.

  “Gabbro?”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m sorry. Did you hear me?”

  “As soon as possible?”

  “Absolutely—!”

  “But the thing is,” he explains, “I don’t see the need.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Going home.”

  “Oh, no. No. I’m not talking about your apartment, no. I’m referring to Morning. You’ll be returning there!”

  He waits, imagining her flustered face and her stiff straight back. She says, “Your friends and family are eager to see you well again. I’m told everyone is concerned.”

  “Just the same, I’d rather stay here.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “On the Earth.”