The Hormone Jungle

by Robert Reed

  “I won’t and you won’t.”

  Steward blinks. He doesn’t move. He fills the end of the tunnel, halfway leaning against one wall, and he says, “Try.”

  “No and I guess you’ll have to touch me.”

  He says, “When this is finished I’ll give you all the chips but one. My finder’s fee.”

  “That’s awfully damned nice.”

  “You’re a client. This is business.” He says, “Forget nice.”

  “And why don’t you put yourself in someone else’s place and forgive them? Learn to do that and maybe you could forgive yourself for all kinds of shit, too. If you tried.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Like Chaz, for instance.”

  He starts to come down the tunnel, angry enough that he has to rein in his anger. He says nothing. He hits a button and the door starts to open, Chiffon sliding clear and hearing the wind now, feeling the warm damp air bulling its way inside. Steward is past her without having brushed against her, reaching now to grab the dangling rope. She sees him framed against the lightning and a pair of bright, distant rainboys. What to do? she wonders. Painkillers from the med-kit are working. She can stand without too much discomfort. But she doesn’t get close. At least not too close. “I’m going to follow you,” she promises. “I am.”

  “Do what you want,” he tells her, shrugging.

  “You’ve got an awfully high horse, Steward.”

  He has the rope in both hands. He turns to look toward her, then checks himself. Then he jumps and descends hand over hand, the rope taut and flinching and him gone in an instant. She looks out at the swaying trees and the approaching clouds and wonders what’s reasonable. I should let you kill yourself, she tells herself. I’ll wait out the night here and then go charm some Farmers…live out my months with them. That’s better than dying now. Anything’s better than that, she thinks. Sweet sphincters of God, she thinks, I nearly killed myself scrambling down here in the first place. I could break my neck trying to chase you and what good would that do anyone?

  Thunder breaks against the old river bluffs.

  She blinks. She decides to stay, wait here and not even worry. But then she can’t make herself back away from the door. Not for anything. Her pistol is on the floor, on top of the med-kit. Steward gave it back. She has glass money in her pocket. Kneeling, she scoops up the pistol and puts it with the money, and then before she can think it through again she leaps, grabbing the rope somehow and sliding, feeling her flesh burning and wondering how Steward managed this with his hands. Those poor sad hands.

  A few sloppy raindrops strike the floater’s canopy, and the wind smears them and then pulls them back into the air. Steward leans and watches the Old Quarter passing below. He tries to think about nothing but what’s next, that’s what matters, only all sorts of nonsense creeps into his head. Like that bar. He sees a brightly lit patch of glass—the roof of that bar where whores play edible chess—and he guesses that someone will soon kill the lights so they can watch the storm. He sees the nondescript windowless tower where Olivia Jade lives, in a sense, and he tells himself that he should have left her a message of some kind. Just in case. Then he whispers, “Listen to yourself,” and shakes his head and starts moving in the seat, stretching, tendons cracking and the muscles complaining. With his tongue he checks on the little pain grenade, tiny and hopefully hidden. He breathes and catches himself before he starts dwelling on the stupid things. He is in control. He tells himself so. He breathes and feels no better for stretching, and he glances downward again. He can’t make out the glass-roofed bar. It’s past or it’s darkened now…there’s no telling which…

  The Cosgrove Tower is the highest structure in view, lying straight ahead, the strokes of lightning visible on its faces and its roof dark and bursting with groomed little trees. Steward can’t see anyone on the lone floater pad. He tells the floater to circle once, in close, and then to set down. If it would, please. If he were laying an ambush, he thinks, he would do it this way. Or this way. Or this way. He makes quick mental maps of the landscape, and he tries guessing how long the rain will hold off. Two figures have appeared at the edge of the pad, the thin one Dirk. They look uncomfortable in the gusting wind. Steward flexes his hands and tucks away the pain, at least most of it, and he tells himself not to be fancy or clever. This is no place for showboating now. The floater is down. He can see Dirk’s face smiling and the placid, stupid expression on the Quito muscle at his side. The other muscle will be sprawled out in the little trees, trying to keep the crosshairs on Steward’s head. He’ll be working for a clean shot, probably holding off until confirmation that Steward’s got what they want. He wonders what the muscles know. He thinks of making a deal with that one beside Dirk, playing with his greed. Then he tells himself to quit it. Nothing fancy. Just wait for the opening and let instincts rule—to a point—and make it so Dirk won’t hurt anyone again.

  The canopy comes open, the smell of rain thick in the air. Dirk is stepping closer, the smile too large and the confidence close to brazen. Steward comes out of the floater like an old, old man. He shows everyone a feeble body, torn and bloody and close to helpless. “Think of Gabbro,” he says to himself. “Think of him and get it done.”

  “What was that?” asks Dirk.

  “Let’s get this done.” The three of them are standing close together now. He tells Dirk, “I’ve got them,” and pulls out the round box. The wind is at his back. A few more sloppy raindrops fall, icy cold on bare skin. He kneels as if his knees might break. He breathes as if he’s in utter agony. Without watching Dirk or the muscle, Steward keeps aware of how they move in response to him. He senses the lane of fire. Time is crawling while he works the lid free of the box, and Dirk is kneeling before him and watching with his tongue partway extended and both hands set on the pad with fingers spread. He looks ready to jump. He tells Steward to count them.

  “First,” says Steward, “show me you’re clean. No guns.”

  Dirk nods. He and the muscle both open their shirts and turn once, one at a time, and pull up their pant legs. There’s no trace of weapons, meaning nothing. Then Dirk tells him, “I trust you. You’re honorable, right?” Very brazen. “Let’s get on with this.”

  “Sure.” Steward counts the chips. He has them in one sore hand and puts them back into the box one at a time, stopping at eleven and then making a show of swallowing the twelfth chip himself. He stares straight at Dirk while doing it. Then he secures the lid again.

  “Cute.” Dirk is amused. One of his hands decides to reach for the box and the standing muscle starts to shift his weight ever so slightly, tilting backward, and Steward slips the little pain grenade to his front teeth and bites hard and aims and spits. A blue plasma cloud blooms in front of him, and Steward is up and running as a burst of hot air comes in behind him, the shot missed. Dirk is screaming, falling backward and writhing in terrible pain. The standing muscle is taking it somehow, and Steward has to rush into the blueness and take the muscle himself. He uses a knee and then his elbow, his every last nerve on fire. He has the man stumbling backward. They’re off the pad and in the air, falling down among the trees as another blast of hot, hot air just misses him. Steward rams his knee into the breastbone, landing on top. Then he rolls and tries to break an arm with a quick motion, missing with his motion, the muscle suddenly on top now with a knife pulled from somewhere.

  Steward breaks the muscle’s nose.

  He grabs both wrists and turns him and pushes him against a wall of branches, ripping the knife free and then using it. Key tendons cut like cheese. The Quito muscle is down, helpless and finished, and Steward stands and runs hard and drops, hearing someone shooting at nothing and then hearing Dirk shouting into the wind. He can’t make out the words. Smoke is rising off the floater pad, and sparks are pouring from the floater’s gunshot engines. Where to go? he thinks. Their only move is the elevator, he thinks. He gets up and runs too slowly, his feet heavy and the air like syrup. He d
oesn’t hurt anywhere. All he feels is a nagging dreamlike stupor. Where’s that sniper? What can he see? Near the elevator door, by the greatest good luck, is a heating vent old enough and sloppy enough to mask his presence to someone with night goggles. He gets beside the vent and crouches, breathing hard for a minute. He thinks how they’ll have to come past him to get free. How much time is there? The floater’s pilot might be calling the police, or maybe not. Probably not. It’s probably assuming mechanical failure, power down and no passengers. So a routine maintenance call. And will Dirk try getting his own floater airborne? Steward can’t see how. In the open? On that pad? He can’t know my weapons, he thinks. He can’t risk the exposure.

  So he sits and he waits.

  After a few minutes the rain begins to come hard, lightning straight overhead and thunder reaching into the bones. The rain feels warm now, beating down on the little trees and the neat trails and sliding down the elevator’s heavy metal doors. Steward pulls out the blade hidden in his clothing. He drives the muscle’s knife into the earth and squints out into the rain, trying to keep alert. He can see the pad when there’s lightning, and he doesn’t count the minutes but they’re piling up high. He ignores the rain. It begins to feel cold but he suppresses the shivering. He can’t hear any gunfire, but that doesn’t mean much. Dirk’s probably found the surviving muscle, the two of them huddled together and Dirk making some plan. A limb at a time, Steward moves to fight stiffness. To keep ready. He couldn’t be wetter. More minutes and he knows Dirk will be moving soon because soon the rain is going to be done, and at least with the wet and this racket he can get close to Steward and the elevator without much trouble. Sure. So he tilts his head skyward and takes a drink, then spits and breathes and happens to see motion up on the pad. He turns without jerking. A floater has just settled beside the gunshot floater, and a distinct figure climbs out and starts to run. He doesn’t have to look again to know it’s Chiffon. She meant it when she threatened to follow him, all right. “Came to save her investment,” he says in a whisper, without a trace of passion. What to do now? They’ll go for her, he thinks. If they saw her, and he can’t see how they couldn’t. She did it right by running and hiding so fast. Why didn’t they shoot? Because they’re on the far side of the roof, he decides. Sure. Just when I had them trapped, he thinks, and he climbs to his feet now and runs.

  He doesn’t care for the Flower. She’s a client, he tells himself, and this is what you do for clients. Yet now he’s running hard, something of the old spring back in his legs. He has both knives in one hand, the splints making them tough to hold. At one point he stops and squats and tries to listen through the roar of the rain, hearing nothing but catching a faint faraway glimpse of something colorful. Something gaudy. Bolts of lightning are sliding past at treetop level now, or so it seems. He can see the gaudy something moving down a path. Steward turns and crashes into a stand of ornamental brush, trusting in the storm to hide him. It’s all a damned gamble and what if Dirk’s using this chance to get free? No, he won’t. He won’t leave Chiffon and the twelfth chip. Steward bulls his way through a row of evergreens and turns on the path and sees the surviving muscle running, chasing something. He accelerates, driving off his broken toes, and the muscle stops to shoulder a big rifle and aims, Steward coming down on him before he can fire. The rifle and a pair of night goggles go flying. Steward slits fat tendons in the ankles and knees and wrists, then grabs the rifle and pulls its power pack and tosses both away. He can’t see anyone else. He trots and squats and then thinks to sniff the air, and from somewhere comes the strong sweet Flowery stink that still makes him crazy. After everything. It takes him a second to stand. It takes longer to shake off the craziness and move.

  The storm is ebbing.

  A lone shot comes from near the pad. A little gun’s shot. Steward feels himself sink a little, running toward the sound and hearing nothing else and believing it’s over. Done. Whichever way it’s turned out. And then there’s two more shots and he follows the path around a curve and sees both of them. Dirk’s closer. Chiffon has her pistol leveled at Dirk, both arms extended, and Dirk has a burned shoulder. Steward is running for him. No time for decisions. He presses and Chiffon fires high, the blast clipping Steward’s ear and making him drop and roll. Chiffon screams, not having seen him. He can’t find his knives and Dirk’s beside him, surprised enough to glance down at him and pause. “Shoot again!” Steward screams. She doesn’t. She won’t or she can’t. Dirk has a hard focused look, obsessed and miserable. He looks up at Chiffon and aims, and Steward stretches and kicks blindly and catches the back of Dirk’s skull. Dirk goes down. The blast turns rainwater to steam, gravel and mud scattering, and Steward is on top of the old man and breaking his bones. It doesn’t take much coaxing. He ruins the hips and then one arm, Dirk’s good arm, crushing the shoulder and then pulling a blade out front under his splints. He starts to cut, crying now, intending to kill him slowly and do the world good…and then he stops himself, sobs and feels Dirk’s pockets and pulls free the round box and then stands, the ground wobbling. He throws down the blade. He says, “No, I know what…,” and takes a long look around. The rain is stopping. A bright rainboy is overhead, shoving the clouds to the north. Chiffon is gazing at him, and so is Dirk, and he tells Dirk, “I’m going to Ghost you. Now. Ghost you and put you in Gray-time, all right, and keep you there for an eternity. All right? Think of living like that for a hundred million years, you dead little hunk of grease—”

  And Dirk says, “No,” with a wheeze. He says, “Forget that,” and pulls a second pistol out from behind his back, using the burned arm but somehow moving fast. He doesn’t have to lift or aim. He just places it snug against his temple and says something, or starts to speak, the word half-finished when the trigger is tripped and the head is gone and the body itself is limp. The air is full of the stink of cooked meat, bitter and penetrating.

  Chiffon sighs and then stares at Steward, saying nothing.

  “So they’re there. All yours.” He points at the box. “I guess you got what you came to get, huh?”

  And she gets a fierce look in her eyes, challenging him and then turning, turning and grabbing the box and throwing it with all of her strength. “To hell with them and you!” Steward runs to where she has thrown the box. Chiffon curses and sobs behind him, and he looks over the building’s edge, not listening, thinking a Flower’s arm isn’t much and maybe…sure, he thinks. Here it is! The box must have bounced off the low wall and dropped here, here on the damp ground, and he takes it back to her and puts it her hands and then pulls it away again when she tries to throw it away again, kicking him and claiming it’s hers to do with what she wants, damn him, damn him, damn him!

  “Enough,” he says.

  “What do I have to do?” she asks. “How do I make up for things—?”

  “Would you stop?”

  And she says, “That’s the point! I’ve stopped! I’ve quit. Haven’t I proved it yet?”

  Again she tries for the box, begging for it, and Steward says, “Quit. No you can’t, so quit! I’m not going to let you kill yourself!”

  So she quits shouting, but the eyes keep cutting at him, wounding him. Finally he has to turn away, not knowing what to think, watching the storm moving and feeling a breeze around his legs and the bare back of his neck and smelling her, with every breath, wondering what is best. What makes sense. Choose, he thinks. Choose.

  25

  I was once at a place called Brulé. Well, I exaggerate. I was actually in its tubetrain station for a portion of an hour, no more, but I did watch the local people with care. I saw those who worked in the station and those bound for other places with bigger names and numbers. No clear details come to mind, but I did take away some general impressions. For example, it seems like a quiet community. Peaceful, yes, and maybe a little slow. I think it’s the sort of place where you arrive by accident and leave on purpose, if you know what I mean…

  —excerpt from a traveler’s not
ebook, available through System-Net

  She sees three of them up ahead, walking her way, and no, they don’t seem to have seen her yet. So April steps off the path, into the early shadows, and watches them pass—three cyborgs, two men and a woman, giggling and tickling each other while they tell little jokes that can make no sense to bystanders. Private jokes about Morningers and the mines. She listens for her own name, or Gabbro’s, and hears neither. She is relieved and disappointed both, and she steps back on the path when they’re gone, a quick look in both directions and then she starts to walk again. Just roaming.

  April will have to find a new apartment soon.

  In another part of town, she thinks. Something high, with a view, and only Terrans for neighbors. No Morningers. No Cradlers. And please no Gardeners either! She’s been ever so lucky, she thinks. After what happened, after the hell of it and the fear it put inside her, she was ever so relieved last night to hear an announcement from the Chief of Police. Brulé would continue its search for Gabbro’s attacker or attackers, but a lack of physical evidence and eyewitnesses were hampering efforts. There were no suspects, and unfortunately the case would have to be closed in a day or two if nothing new was found.

  So April is free.

  She halfway wants to skip now. For the joy of it.

  Last night she sang. She lay on her back in the tiny, tiny hotel room. The song was something she had learned as a girl, the tune happy and the lyrics sweet and her voice carrying through the door and down the hallway. Some gravel-voiced whore had joined in, she recalls, and they’d done several choruses before shouts and catcalls from elsewhere drowned them out. Then she had switched from the local news to that fictional island with its invented City-State and all the familiar characters. She had watched the characters without sound, thinking things through for herself. If anyone ever asked about Gabbro, she had a story waiting. Her actions on such-and-such night were like this…and she practiced the story until it was perfect, without seams or flaws or doubts. Just in case. Just in case she met a Morninger who remembered her and Gabbro, or anyone else who might have their suspicions. Lying in that room, halfway between wakefulness and sleep, she reached a point where the fiction was more real than what had happened. It felt as if she hadn’t played any part in poor Gabbro’s tragedy. What a sad shame, isn’t it? What makes people behave in such ways?