Instead, she kept her eyes forward, clutching at her leather clasp. A bit of turbulence struck the plane, and Constantine took the opportunity to stumble on her high heels and pitch forward against Petruso Demchak. As she fell, she let the point of her syringe slip out from the clasp and puncture Demchak's neck, just outside the carotid artery. Constantine pushed hard on the plunger, injecting the Ukranian assassin with the contents of the syringe. It didn't contain insulin at all, but rather cyanide. To the passengers on the plane it looked as if Constantine had merely fallen against the Ukranian, but as she withdrew, concealing the syringe inside her clasp, Demchak began to clutch his neck and convulse. His breathing became raspy and his skin began to turn blue.
“He's having a heart attack!” gasped Constantine. “Is there a doctor aboard?” She knew full well that a doctor could do nothing to save Demchak. Once the poison had entered his body it was too late.
For just one moment, Demchak fixed his deep, dark eyes upon Constantine and his lips moved as if to curse her to the hell into which he was preceding her. Then his chest heaved and his body stiffened one last time before he fell slack in his seat, stone dead. Constantine staggered away, apparently overcome by shock, as other passengers rose up about Demchak. One intrepid soul laid him in the aisle and began to administer cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
Constantine ducked into the bathroom, where she disassembled the syringe and flushed the components down the toilet. Then she shut the lid and sat down on the commode, removing her left shoe. She twisted the heel hard, separating it from the rest of the shoe, then she pried a two-and-a-half inch ceramic blade out of the resin heel. She locked the blade into place, so that the heel would serve as the hilt of the knife. It was something special that the Shoemaker in Milan had created for her.
The door to the bathroom rattled and unlocked itself. Constantine shoved the ceramic blade into the waist of her skirt, at the small of her back. A handsome man with sunglasses and a mustache entered the cramped quarters of the bathroom and they stood face to face. He held a silenced .38 semi-automatic pistol, the point of which he shoved beneath her left breast, so that it was aimed right at her heart.
“Cyanide, Monica Killingsworth? That was a rather clever show you put on.”
“Today, it's Alison Constantine,” she replied. “Did you really think that if you wore a pair of sunglasses and pasted on a fake mustache that I wouldn't recognize you, Perrin?”
“It's a real mustache,” said Perrin. “And it's been a couple of years. I didn't think you'd notice me.”
“I'm kind of disappointed,” said Constantine. “I was hoping that the next time we met we could pick up where we left off. Instead, I find that you're trying to assassinate me. So much for the memories.”
“It's a harsh world,” said Perrin. “Now where's that syringe?”
Constantine ran her hands along the hard lines of Perrin's torso. “Flushed. Just how much are they paying you, Perrin? Because I could make it worth your while to let me go.”
“Three million total,” said Perrin. “Thanks to you, my cut just got bigger.”
Constantine began to unbutton Perrin's shirt. “You won't take an alternate form of payment?”
“I'm already a member of the Mile High Club, 'Alison,' and you vastly overestimate the value of your skills.”
He pulled the trigger of his .38, but Constantine had moved her hands to the inside so she could shunt aside his aim, and she had already struck his wrist, so that the bullet plunged through the wall of the bathroom. With her other hand, she struck precisely, sliding the narrow ceramic blade through the ribs and into Perrin's heart.
As Perrin stiffened and his eyes glazed, he made one last attempt to shoot Constantine, but her slender fingers were wrapped around his gun wrist now, and there was surprising strength in her hands. She dug her thumb into the soft part of his wrist, between the tendons and into a nerve bundle, so that that Perrin's fingers were momentarily incapacitated—at least long enough for him to die. His failing heart leaked blood out the puncture wound when Constantine withdrew her ceramic blade. She shoved Perrin onto the commode, crimson staining the front of his shirt, and she pried loose the .38, a sweet little construction of hardened ceramic which could be smuggled through the airport x-rays and metal detectors in hard to recognize pieces. She hid the pistol beneath her shirt. Despite having a firearm, she wasn't quite ready to part with her ceramic blade, and after cleaning it on Perrin's shirt she shoved it back into the heel hilt and reattached it to her shoe. This way she wouldn't be walking lopsided when she left the bathroom.
Constantine slipped out of the stall and pasted an OUT OF ORDER sign over the handle. Outside the lavatory, things had calmed somewhat but Katerina Jamison and the Colombian stewardess stood watch as a passenger continued to alternate between chest compressions and breathing into the lungs of the already expired Demchak. From their seats, the other passengers craned their necks to see what was happening. This was good for Constantine because no one was interested in looking at her.
The third assassin was Bilfur Bodjanik, but everyone who worked with him called him Bob, for the sake of brevity. Constantine had never had the displeasure of working with him, but she knew his reputation for large appetites, strange perversions, and a predilection for doing his assassinations close up. This meant he probably didn't have a gun, but maybe a plastic or ceramic knife that had been secreted in the bottom lining of a carry-on bag. These type of weapons had no problems defeating a metal detector, but still had some difficulty passing through an x-ray. The trick to smuggling a knife through the x-ray was to conceal it as part of the stiff plastic lining inside a suitcase, so that the x-ray couldn’t distinguish between it and the lining. Constantine knew this because she had used the technique a number of times to smuggle knives aboard flights. Bob would already be armed, and she would no longer have the element of surprise, like she had used on Demchak. As she moved toward the tail of the plane she caught sight of Bob. He was a large man, weighing well over three-hundred pounds, but beneath the thick paunch and a layer of fat was a powerhouse who had strangled dozens of his victims with his bare hands.
Bob looked up, and by the gleam in his eye, Constantine knew that he recognized her. He slipped something into his sleeve and so Constantine also knew that he was armed. Though Constantine carried Perrin's ceramic .38, she couldn't very well pull it out and put a few rounds through Bob's skull. She'd performed public assassinations before, but a mile in the air, there was nowhere for her to go after she made the hit.
Bob started to struggle out of his seat, ready to bring his knife into play if Constantine dared make a move against him. If the knife was poisoned it would only take the slightest nick to kill Constantine, and Bob would see that he drew at least a pinprick of blood as she passed.
Constantine thrust one hand beneath her shirt, her fingers finding the cold ceramic of the pistol, turned sideways so the barrel of the pistol lay across her belly, and then she coughed three times. Each time she coughed she pulled the trigger of the pistol, covering the squeal of suppressed gases escaping the gun. Constantine saw three spots of blood appear on the assassin's plaid red shirt. The blood was barely visible as Bob fell back into his seat with a sigh.
With powder burns on her belly, Constantine continued past Bob, who now lay with his head slumped on his chest, fingers twitching on the armrest. The passenger next to Bob was sleeping, and hadn't noticed his neighbor’s sudden demise. Demchak was lying in the middle of the aisle, Perrin permanently occupied a commode, and Bob was taking an eternal nap. The last two dead assassins were bound to be discovered before the flight was over, and each and every passenger would be thoroughly searched and questioned before being released, or hauled off for incarceration. Surreptitiously killing three men aboard a 747 took an immense amount of skill. Escaping punishment for the deed would take even greater audacity, not to mention a huge dose of luck.
Constantine turned around as if she had forgotten something a
nd made her way back to the stewardess, Katerina Jamison. She spoke quietly. “Excuse me, Katerina, but I found something that I think you ought to see.”
“What is it?” asked Katerina, who thought it was poor timing to be viewing curiosities, when a dying, or more likely, already dead man lay on the floor near her feet, and all efforts to resuscitate him had failed miserably.
“A dead body in the lavatory,” whispered Constantine.
A stunned expression crossed the blonde's features, proving she wasn't the emotionless ice queen that her demeanor might suggest. “In that case I'd better take a look.”
In fact, Constantine led her to the lavatory across the corridor from the one labeled OUT OF ORDER. When Jamison opened the bathroom door, Constantine shoved the snout of the pistol into the stewardess's back. “Go inside.”
Jamison did as she was told, and Constantine followed her, locking the door behind them.
The stewardess spread her palms, but spoke calmly, with only the slightest quiver in her voice. “What are you going to do to me?”
“Nothing long term, Katarina,” replied Constantine. “I like you, so if you cooperate I'm going to let you live. Now, take off your clothes.”
“What?”
“We're going to make a trade,” said Constantine.
A few minutes later the jet began a quick descent into Miami, and Jamison was bound hand and foot, wearing nothing but her bra and panties. Constantine stripped off her black wig and tossed it on the floor with her former clothing. The assassin now wore the uniform of the stewardess and she examined Katarina Jamison's ID card with great interest. “Not a perfect likeness, but one pretty blonde is as good as another—or so I hear the men say.”
“You killed that man in the aisle, didn't you?” asked Jamison.
“He's not the only man I've killed aboard this plane,” said Constantine.
“Then why aren't you killing me?”
“You've behaved yourself, haven't tried to scream, and there's no profit in it. I kill for profit or survival.” Constantine emptied her black Prada bag and shoved it in the garbage receptacle. “This bag is yours for your trouble. After you're freed, don't forget to collect it. There's twenty thousand dollars hidden in the lining.”
“You're paying me?”
“To keep your mouth shut,” said Constantine. “If I hear you've been wagging your tongue, I'll be forced to track you down and kill you.” She waved Jamison's driver's license. “Not a difficult proposition to find you, since I happen to know exactly where you live.”
The jet plane touched down, and when Constantine left the lavatory in the guise of Katarina Jamison, Bob's body had just been discovered. The police met the captain at the boarding tunnel and Constantine's disguise fooled them just long enough for her to slip through the chaos of scared and disgruntled passengers, past the police, and flee through the boarding tunnel, where she borrowed a luggage cart and quickly lost herself in the tumult of the airport.
A NEW YARSIS
By Edward J. Indovina
Sarillion – unit of time = second
Marsin – unit of time = minute
Yartil- unit of time = year
Eyon – unit of time = eon
Wilt – ease or recede
Thronemere – Head
Quantril – Home planet of the narrator
Glunt – overly self-righteous liberal
Tyrean – EarthT
Geansean -God
Eangeler - Heaven
Najean – Unit of distance –mile
The inky darkness spread in front of me as though I was immersed in a giant Swronmeer’s expulsion at the bottom of the ocean. As I descended from the surface terra my eyes strained to adjust to the darkness. While I paused at the bottom step of the hidden entrance I attempted to shift my senses to my ears and body so as not to be surprised by those that I hunted. I dared not light a torch for fear of attracting more attention than I was ready to handle.
Quickly, I heard the distinct slithering of their slimy appendages from their anthropod like bodies upon the smooth floor of the underground subterrain. I leveled my blaster in what I sensed was the direction of the sound. Although I could begin to make out shapes I still couldn’t quite focus distinctly on what I accompanied down here.
Just as I was ready to tap the firing pads on my blaster in the direction of the noise, my concentration was broken by the touch of the hand on my wrist.
“Come, come quickly!” a feminine voice urged as her slender fingers gripped my wrist harder and gently pulled me in towards my right. I followed her lead as my eyes started to snap into focus to my surroundings.
As briskly as my new companion and I had left our prior position I turned back to see the spiked appendage strike at where I had been. However, I didn’t have time to dwell on what I had just seen. I barely ducked my head below the stalactite in front of the opening we entered.
The hand on my wrist tugged in urgency to lead me down a winding series of turns that were carved in the stone. “Watch your head!” my guide hoarsely whispered to me before I proceeded to knock my head against another low opening.
“Ufff damn it! Watch it there!” I shook my head in attempt to clear my vision from the bump on my head. As my sight cleared up the first thing I saw was the illuminant glow of the iridescent algae that grew on the wall of the cave. It gave everything a blue aura within the confines of the stone walls. In addition to the algae, the room had what appeared to be a table and a small makeshift area which appeared to be a sleeping area. A pile of dried grasses and reeds were laid out in rectangular shape against the far wall. Then, my eyes fell upon my guide.
Although I realized that it was the algae creating the illusion, I would have thought that this race of people were blue. And, not only blue, but beautiful blue. At least, the present example of this planet’s race that was in my vision. Her fine featured face glowed in the blue light and, her hair; her hair framed her face with an even deeper shade of azure. If I didn’t know which planet I was on, I would almost think that I was among the Censuvians of Alpha Centauri. Their blue skin and features were similar to what I was seeing. However, the one thing that differentiated her from the Censuvians that I noticed was the total lack of the reflective amphibian scale structure on her epidermic surface. In extreme contrast, her skin was lustrously smooth and in reflection was probably a deep shade of alabaster in order to reflect the glowing light. Especially the area between her breasts which was framed by the opening on her one piece dress.
“Hey! Are you there!” my new found companion broke my concentration.
“Yeah, yeah. Wilt it down a sarillion will you? I just rattled my thronemere.”
“Huh? Wait a minute. You’re one of them!”
“One of them?”
“Yes, one of the off-worlders who have made a home on this planet, my planet!”
Her planet?
***
It was approximately fifteen Yartils ago when our scientists came to the crushing conclusion that our planet, Yarsis, would no longer be able to sustain life. The geophysical shifts that were occurring planet wide became more frequent by the marsin. And that meant that the planet deterioration cycle was in the last stages.
Of course, this news, while all planets go through it, created the usual flap. The environmentalists stood on their rooftops denouncing the selfishness of mankind. It was our fault that the planet was encountering this, the signs have been there, we should have found alternate ways, blee blee blee…
Meanwhile, while the whiners and glunts reveled in the attention they were attracting, the rest of us were trying to think of solutions, not blame.
We knew that this moment had been approaching. In the study of our geological historical patterns it had become evident that every twenty two Eyons our planet went through what our scientists called ‘upheaval plate adjustment’ periods. Our beloved planet, while bountiful and nurturing, was also at the end of her life-cycle.
At the current
period of adjustment, the atmosphere had become increasingly toxic while the core temperature of the planet plunged. As the center core released its magma and ventilated itself it also brought about the cooling of the planetary surface. Without the contained core the planet grew quickly colder. This, in turn, altered the dynamics of the solar equilibrium between planet and sun.
Fortunately, we, the Yarsilian Science Federation, had begun planning a relocation of sorts to preserve what we could bring with us, to another planet.
As most of us worked feverishly on manufacturing the cargo ships, the more cerebral of us toiled on finding us a replacement planet. Just as we had finished construction of the thirty-second carrier, the upper echelon had confirmed our destination. The third planet in the Solstice system, Tyrean.
While we had tried to do our research, we miscalculated in a terrible manner. Yes, the planet appeared to be uninhabited by a primary life form on the surface. Yet, that’s where we erred in fatal judgment.
It turned out that the primary life form existed under the surface of the planet, deep within its bowels. And, as we would soon discover, the life form came to the surface to feed at the planet’s night cycle. Of course, we didn’t know that or why they hunted at night until tragically later.
As the planetary plates moved more often we managed to obtain a fair number of ships to leave the planet. Of course, despite our best efforts, we were forced to leave many behind. Some decided not to come because they felt that they were too old. Others deemed that the ships were not Geansean’s way. And that if the maker deemed it was their time, who were they to defy him?
Rat-A-Tat: Short Blasts of Pulp Page 4
