The John Varley Reader

by John Varley

  The woman shrugged, spreading her hands with a rueful expression. “I just do what I’m told.”

  Bach made a long face, then burst out laughing again.

  “But you should know a flashball doesn’t work unless you slip the victim the primer drug beforehand.”

  “The beer?” the woman suggested, helpfully.

  “Oh, wow! You mean you . . . and, and that guy with the comic-book name . . . oh, wow!” She couldn’t help it, she just had to laugh aloud again. In a way, she felt sorry for the woman. “Well, what can I tell you? It didn’t work. The warranty must have expired, or something.” She was about to tell the woman she was under arrest, but somehow she didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

  “Back to the old drawing board, I guess,” the woman said. “Oh, yeah, while I’ve got you here, I’d like for you to go to the West 500th tube station, one level up. Take this paper with you, and punch this destination. As you punch each number, forget it. When you’ve done that, swallow the paper. You have all that?”

  Bach frowned at the paper. “West 500th, forget the number, eat the paper.” She sighed. “Well, I guess I can handle that. But hey, you gotta remember I’m doing this just as a favor to you. Just as soon as I get back, I’m going to—”

  “Okay, okay. Just do it. Exactly as I said. I know you’re humoring me, but let’s just pretend the flashball worked, okay?”

  It seemed like a reasonable enough suggestion. It was just the break Bach needed. Obviously, this woman and Jones were connected with the Bellman, whoever he or she was. Here was Bach’s big chance to catch him. Of course, she was not going to forget the number.

  She was about to warn the woman she would be arrested as soon as she returned from the address, but she was interrupted again.

  “Go out the back door. And don’t waste any time. Don’t listen to anything anyone else says until someone says ‘I tell you three times.’ Then you can pretend the game is over.”

  “All right.” Bach was excited at the prospect. Here at last was the sort of high adventure that everyone thought was a big part of police work. Actually, as Bach knew well, police work was dull as Muzak.

  “And I’ll take that robe.”

  Bach handed it to her, and hurried out the back door wearing nothing but a big grin.

  It was astonishing. One by one she punched in the numbers, and one by one they vanished from her mind. She was left with a piece of paper that might have been printed in Swahili.

  “What do you know,” she said to herself, alone in the two-seat capsule. She laughed, crumpled the paper, and popped it into her mouth, just like a spy.

  She had no idea where she might be. The capsule had shunted around for almost half an hour, and come to rest in a private tube station just like thousands of others. There had been a man on hand for her arrival. She smiled at him.

  “Are you the one I’m supposed to see?” she asked.

  He said something, but it was gibberish. He frowned when it became clear she didn’t understand him. It took her a moment to see what the problem was.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not supposed to listen to anyone.” She shrugged, helplessly. “I had no idea it would work so well.”

  He began gesturing with something in his hands, and her brow furrowed, then she grinned widely.

  “Charades? Okay. Sounds like . . .” But he kept waving the object at her. It was a pair of handcuffs.

  “Oh, all right. If it’ll make you happy.” She held out her wrists, close together, and he snapped them on.

  “I tell you three times,” he said.

  Bach began to scream.

  It took hours to put her mind back together. For the longest time she could do nothing but shake and whimper and puke. Gradually she became aware of her surroundings. She was in a stripped apartment room, lying on a bare floor. The place smelled of urine and vomit and fear.

  She lifted her head cautiously. There were red streaks on the walls, some of them bright and new, others almost brown. She tried to sit up, and winced. Her fingertips were raw and bloody.

  She tried the door first, but it didn’t even have an interior handle. She probed around the racks, biting her tongue when the pain became too great in her shackled hands, satisfied herself that it could not be opened. She sat down again and considered her situation. It did not look promising, but she made her preparations to do what she could.

  It might have been two hours before the door opened. She had no way to tell. It was the same man, this time accompanied by an unfamiliar woman. They both stood back and let the door swing inward, wary of an ambush. Bach cowered in the far corner, and as they approached she began to scream again.

  Something gleamed in the man’s hand. It was a chain knife. The rubber grip containing the battery nestled in his palm and the blunt, fifteen-centimeter blade pointed out, rimmed with hundreds of tiny teeth. The man squeezed the grip, and the knife emitted a high whine as the chain blurred into motion. Bach screamed louder, and got to her feet, backed against the wall. Her whole posture betrayed defenselessness, and evidently they fell for it just enough because when she kicked at the man’s throat his answering slash was a little bit too late, missing her leg, and he didn’t get another try. He hit the floor, coughing blood. Bach grabbed the knife as it fell.

  The woman was unarmed, and she made the right decision, but again it was too late. She started toward the door, but tripped over Bach’s outstretched leg and went down on her face.

  Bach was going to kick her until she died, but all the activity had strained muscles that should not have been used so roughly; a cramp nearly doubled her over and she fell, arms out to break her fall and protect her stomach. Her manacled hands were going to hit the woman’s arm and Bach didn’t dare let go of the knife, nor did she dare take the fall on her abused fingertips, and while she agonized over what to do in that long second while she fell in the dreamy lunar gravity, her fists hit the floor just behind the woman’s arm.

  There was an almost inaudible buzzing sound. A fine spray of blood hit Bach’s arm and shoulder, and the wall three meters across the room. And the woman’s arm fell off.

  Both of them stared at it for a moment. The woman’s eyes registered astonishment as she looked over to Bach.

  “There’s no pain,” she said, distinctly. Then she started to get up, forgetting about the arm that was no longer there, and fell over. She struggled for a while like an overturned turtle while the blood spurted and she turned very white, then she was still.

  Bach got up awkwardly, her breath coming in quick gasps. She stood for a moment, getting herself under control.

  The man was still alive, and his breathing was a lot worse than Bach’s. She looked down at him. It seemed he might live. She looked at the chain knife in her hand, then knelt beside him, touched the tip of the blade to the side of his neck. When she stood up, it was certain that he would never again cut a child from a mother’s body.

  She hurried to the door and looked carefully left and right. No one was there. Apparently her screams had not been anything remarkable, or she had killed everyone involved.

  She was fifty meters down the corridor before the labor pains began.

  She didn’t know where she was, but could tell it was not anywhere near where Elfreda Tong had met her death. This was an old part of town, mostly industrial, possibly up close to the surface. She kept trying doors, hoping to find a way into the public corridors where she would have a chance to make a phone call. But the doors that would open led to storerooms, while the ones that might have been offices were locked up for the night.

  Finally one office door came open. She looked in, saw it led nowhere. She was about to close the door and resume her flight when she saw the telephone.

  Her stomach muscles knotted again as she knelt behind the desk and punched BELLMANXXX. The screen came to life, and she hastily thumbed the switch to blacken it.

  “Identify yourself, please.”

  “This is Lieutenant Bach, I’ve got
a Code One, officer in trouble. I need you to trace this call and send me some help, and I need it quick.”

  “Anna, where are you?”

  “Lisa?” She couldn’t believe it was Babcock.

  “Yes. I’m down at headquarters. We’ve been hoping you’d find a way to report in. Where do we go?”

  “That’s just it. I don’t know. They used a flashball on me and made me forget where I went. And—”

  “Yes, we know all that. Now. After you didn’t show up for a couple minutes, we checked, and you were gone. So we arrested everyone in the place. We got Jones and the piano player.”

  “Then get her to tell you where I am.”

  “We already used her up, I’m afraid. Died under questioning. I don’t think she knew, anyway. Whoever she worked for is very careful. As soon as we got the pentothal in her veins, her head blew itself all over the interrogation room. She was a junkie, we know that. We’re being more careful with the man, but he knows even less than she did.”

  “Great.”

  “But you’ve got to get away from there, Lieutenant. It’s terrible. You’re in . . . shit, you know that.” Babcock couldn’t seem to go on for a moment, and when she did speak, her voice was shaking. “They’re meatleggers, Anna. God help me, that’s come to Luna now, too.”

  Bach’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

  “They procure meat for carnivores, goddam it. Flesh junkies. People who are determined to eat meat, and will pay any price.”

  “You’re not trying to tell me . . .”

  “Why the hell not?” Babcock flared. “Just look at it. On Earth there are still places you can raise animals, if you’re careful. But here, we’ve got everything locked up so tight nobody dares try it. Somebody smells them, or the sewage monitors pick up traces of animal waste. Can’t be done.”

  “Then why . . . ?”

  “So what kind of meat’s available?” Babcock went on, remorselessly. “There’s tons of it on the hoof, all around you. You don’t have to raise it or hide it. You just harvest it when you have a customer.”

  “But cannibalism?” Bach said, faintly.

  “Why not? Meat’s meat, to someone who wants it. They sell human meat on Earth, too, and charge a high price because it’s supposed to taste . . . ah. I think I’m going to be sick.”

  “Me, too.” Bach felt another spasm in her stomach. “Uh, how about that trace? Have you found me yet?”

  “Still proceeding. Seems to be some trouble.”

  Bach felt a chill. She had not expected that, but there was nothing to do but wait. Surely the computers would get through in time.

  “Lisa. Babies? They want babies?”

  Babcock sighed. “I don’t understand it, either. If you see the Bellman, why don’t you ask him? We know they trade in adults, too, if it makes you feel any better.”

  “Lisa, my baby’s on her way.”

  “Dear God.”

  Several times in the next quarter hour Bach heard running feet. Once the door opened and someone stuck his head in, glanced around, and failed to see Bach behind the desk with one hand covering the ready light on the phone and the other gripping the chain knife. She used the time to saw through the metal band of her handcuffs with the knife. It only took a moment; those tiny razors were sharp.

  Every few minutes Babcock would come back on the line with a comment like “We’re getting routed through every two-mark enclave in Luna.” That told Bach that the phone she was using was protected with anti-tracer devices. It was out of her hands now. The two computers—the Bellman’s and Babcock’s—matching wits, and her labor pains were coming every five minutes.

  “Run!” Babcock shouted. “Get out of there, quick!”

  Bach struggled to ignore the constriction in her gut, fought off fogginess. She just wanted to relax and give birth. Couldn’t a person find any peace, anywhere?

  “What? What happened?”

  “Somebody at your end figured out that you might be using a phone. They know which one you’re using, and they’ll be there any second. Get out, quick!”

  Bach got to her feet and looked out the door. Nothing. No sounds, no movement. Left or right?

  It didn’t seem to matter. She doubled over, holding her belly, and shuffled down the corridor.

  At last, something different.

  The door was marked FARM: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. PRESSURE SUIT AREA. Behind it was corn, corn growing on eight-meter-high stalks, corn in endless rows and files that made dizzying vanishing points in the distance. Sunlight beat down through a clear plastic bubble—the harsh, white sunlight of Luna.

  In ten minutes she was lost. At the same time, she knew where she was. If only she could get back to the phone, but it was surely under guard by now.

  Discovering her location had been easy. She had picked one of the golden ears, long as her arm and fat as her thigh, peeled back the shuck, and there, on each thumb-sized yellow kernel was the trademark: a green discoloration in the shape of a laughing man with his arms folded across his chest. So she was in the Lunafood plantation. Oddly, it was only five levels above the precinct house, but it might as well have been a billion kilometers.

  Being lost in the cornstalks didn’t seems like such a bad idea just now. She hobbled down the rows as long as she could stay on her feet. Every step away from the walls should make the search that much more difficult. But her breathing was coming in huge gasps now, and she had the queasy urge to hold her hands tightly against her crotch.

  It didn’t hurt. The midwife was working, so while she was in the grip of the most intense sensations she had ever imagined, nothing hurt at all. But it could not be ignored, and her body did not want to keep moving. It wanted to lie down and give up. She wouldn’t let it.

  One foot in front of the other. Her bare feet were caked in mud. It was drier on the rows of mounds where the corn grew; she tried to stay on them, hoping to minimize her trail.

  Hot. It must have been over fifty degrees, with high humidity. A steam bath. Sweat poured from her body. She watched it drip from her nose and chin as she plodded on.

  Her universe narrowed to only two things: the sight of her feet moving mechanically in and out of her narrowed vision, and the band of tightness in her gut.

  Then her feet were no longer visible. She worried over it for a moment, wondering where they had gone. In fact, nothing was visible at all.

  She rolled over onto her back and spit out dirt. A stalk of corn had snapped off at the base when she tumbled into it. She had a clear view upward of the dome, a catwalk hanging below it, and about a dozen golden tassels far overhead, drooping languidly in the still air. It was pretty, the view from down here. The corn tassels all huddled close to the black patch of sky, with green stalks radiating away in all directions. It looked like a good place to stay. She never wanted to get up again.

  And this time it hurt some, despite the midwife. She moaned, grabbed the fallen cornstalk in both hands, and gritted her teeth. When she opened her eyes again, the stalk was snapped in two.

  Joanna was here.

  Bach’s eyes bulged in amazement and her mouth hung open. Something was moving down through her body, something far too large to be a baby, something that was surely going to split her wide open.

  She relaxed for just a moment, breathing shallowly, not thinking of anything, and her hands went down over her belly. There was a round wet thing emerging from her. She felt its shape, found tiny hollows on the underside. How utterly amazing.

  She smiled for the first time in a million years, and bore down. Her heels dug into the sod, then her toes, and her hips lifted from the black dirt. It was moving again. She was moving again. Joanna, Joanna, Joanna was being born.

  It was over so quickly she gasped in surprise. Wet slithering, and her child fell away from her and into the dirt. Bach rolled to her side and pressed her forehead to the ground. The child nestled in blood and wetness between her legs.

  She did what had to be do
ne. When it came time to cut the cord, her hand automatically went to the chain knife. She stopped, seeing a man’s threatening hand, hearing an almost supersonic whir that would in seconds disembowel her and rip Joanna away.

  She dropped the knife, leaned over, and bit down hard.

  Handfuls of corn silk pressed between her legs eventually stopped the bleeding. The placenta arrived. She was weak and shaky and would have liked nothing better than to just lie there in the mothering soil and heat.

  But there was a shout from above. A man was up there, leaning over the edge of the catwalk. Answering shouts came from all around her. Far down at the end of her row, almost at the vanishing point, a tiny figure appeared and started coming toward her.

  She had not thought she could get up, but she did. There seemed little point in running, but she ran, holding the chain knife in one hand and hugging Joanna in the other. If they would only come up to her and fight, she would die on a heap of slashed bodies.

  A green finger of light sizzled into the ground at her heels. She instantly crossed into an adjacent row. So much for hand-to-hand combat.

  The running was harder now, going over the hills rather than between them. But the man behind her could not keep her in view long enough for another shot.

  Yet she had known it couldn’t last. Vast as the corn plantation was, she could now see the end of it. She came out onto the ten-meter strip of bare ground between the corn plants and the edge of the dome.

  There was a four-meter wall of bare metal in front of her. On top of the wall was the beginning of the clear material of the dome. It was shaped and anchored by a network of thin cables attached to the top of the wall on the outside.

  It seemed there was no place to run, until she spotted the familiar blue light.

  Inner door latches shut, outer ones open. Bach quickly did what Tong had done, but knew she had a better chance, if only for a while. This was an old lock, without an outside override. They would have to disconnect the alarms inside, then burn through the door. That would take some time.