Voices in the Stream: Phase 02 (The Eighteenth Shadow)

by Grafton, Jon Lee

  “Not everybody likes everything. I bet your girlfriend likes poetry though, doesn’t she? Adrienne Moon?”

  Virgil ginned up, “Yes, Addy loves poetry!” He shook his head, “Or at least she used to, until her second hospital stay.”

  Tara snapped her fingers, “I like the name, Adrienne. It’s vintage. Look, that Bmod shit’ll take the shine off a girl’s battery like nobody’s business.”

  “Yeah,” said Virgil. He looked at Virginia inquisitively, “You ever been?”

  “Nope,” said Tara.

  “It’s rough,” said Virgil. “We were gonna get married and everything. But this time when she came home, it was like someone turned out the light in her eyes. I’d literally kill myself to make her happy again! Her dad says they can’t afford a wedding. They get one bill paid, another comes from the IRS. Addy didn’t know she was signing up for IRS assistance at intake. She’s been kicked out of school and is waiting tables again.”

  Hugo tapped the silver comdot affixed to his jaw, focusing on some unheard communication as a Kansas State Hovway Patrol hovcar rocketed past in the left lane, flashing LED’s casting multicolored swabs over the black interstate. From behind, in the waning light, the big propulsion fans on the patrolman’s Dodge Charger glowed a faint green from the ambient heat of their electric turbines.

  Hugo said, “Roger dat, boss,” and again tapped his comdot. He then reached out and patted Virgil on the back with an affable smile, “Dat sheet wit yo betty’s a bummer, mang. Ain’t you’s a leetle young to d’ geeting married, jovenzuelo?”

  “I am,” admitted Virgil. His eyes brightened, “But it’s what I want. For us. I want a house with an extra bedroom that I can write in and a room for Adrienne and the baby. And a dog that’s not quite so gigantic and mean looking as these of Mr. Abner’s,” he paused, petting LOFN’s head. “That’s all I want in life. Oh, and to stick it to CNED.”

  “Dat’s d’ spirit!” said Hugo, tossing a smoked roach out the window. He extracted a freshly rolled spliff from the tin smoke box in his shirt pocket, “Here you goes, leet’s smoke dis. Just being here, you gonna help us steek eet to d’ CNED. You know, mang?”

  Hugo handed the fresh, unlit joint to Virgil.

  “I’m really not even sure what I’m doing. Or how I’m helping,” said Virgil, staring at the joint. “How do you know which end to light? A vaporjoint is so much easier.”

  Tara snatched the joint from his hand, “You talk like a girl. Yes, a vaporjoint is easier,” she produced an antique flame lighter and ignited one end of the spliff, puffing it until the cherry glowed a steady orange, “but it would also take away the texture, sensation and overall mystique of smoking ganja. And you can light whichever end you want, Hawking,” she said, taking a long drag.

  She handed it back to him as she blew the smoke out her nostrils.

  Virgil took a hit and passed the joint back to Hugo, who didn’t smoke it, but rather held it burning between his fingers above the steering wheel. The detailed tattoo work on Hugo’s forearms was highlighted in bright greens, reds, blacks and blues by the low angle of the windshield sun.

  “Preety mama right, mang. I smoke d’ jane cause I get a beeter, longer high than wit d’ vapor. Plus,” he chuckled amicably, “Dere’s nothing can replace d’ taste of smoke. But howeever you do eet, ees right. Some people drink beer, some vodka. Dere no right, no wrong, long as you drink, you helping, leetle Virgil dude.”

  “How am I helping?” asked Virgil.

  Tara sat up in her seat and again dropped her holotab and sketching stylus in the door pocket.

  She ignored LOFN’s whine of protest as she stretched her lithe, olive legs over the Rottweiler, “Last week you slid us some solid news, helped flush out a rat. Once a rat’s cover is blown, they’re done.”

  “How does that help? I mean, your real jobs are at a pumpkin farm, after all. I get so confused sometimes.”

  Tara put a finger to her lips, “You, us, we help the greater cause. That’s what Mr. Abner is doing. We smuggle a few cases of vodka out to Salina under the cover of our real business, which is selling spiced pepitas.”

  “Pepitas?”

  “Pumpkin seeds!” said Hugo and Tara at the same time, laughing.

  “Pumpkin seeds? That’s what we’re supposed to be carrying?”

  “Yep,” said Hugo, “We are carrying pumpkeen seeds too. Maybe a few leeters of vodka.”

  Tara’s breast pressed against Virgil as she leaned across and took the joint from Hugo, “Sorry, ace.”

  Virgil looked like he might choke on his own daydream, “No problem,” he bumbled. “So, uhh, you guys really use the names of those CNED narcs I ping?”

  “Yes, Virgil. Just keep telling Joan when you hear stuff around campus,” said Tara.

  “What does an AI do with the names?”

  Tara’s eyes got unrealistically big, “She feeds them to the resistance!”

  Virgil frowned, “There’s a resistance?”

  Hugo couldn’t help smiling out the corner of his mustache, but he kept quiet and returned his gaze to the road as she leaned over Virgil and handed the joint back.

  “Yes,” said Tara emphatically. “Anyone who drinks is in the resistance. Whether they know it or not.”

  “So there isn’t an organized resistance?”

  Tara screwed up her face with whimsy, “Well, there are the people who operate hidden stills and microbreweries around the North American United States. They have networks that talk to each other, yes.”

  “That’s who Joan talks to?”

  “No. Joan’s like a liaison. She’s the girl who knows the guy who knows the chick.”

  “Huh?”

  Tara spun her hands in front of her, “Check it out, Galileo. We know Joan. Joan knows Mr. Abner. Mr. Abner knows the chick who runs the still. It’s the chick who runs the still who pays Mr. Abner. Then Mr. Abner pays us. Then we float the booze to Manhattan in this here seed truck,” she smacked the Ford’s dashboard.

  Virgil looked at the GPS display as they blew past Junction City, “So you guys just wanted me to float along to make things look normal?”

  Tara rolled her eyes, “Yup. We brought a poet with a backpack full of antique paper books along so we wouldn’t attract attention.”

  “Really?” asked Virgil.

  “No, dumb,” Tara rolled her eyes back to him. “The boss wanted to see how you’d do in a talk.”

  “A talk with who? Is this a test right now?”

  “Guero, you ask more queestions dan a monkey vaporizing d’ psuedoameeth,” said Hugo, cracking his window and tossing out another roach. The rushing noise of the hovtruck’s prop fans and wind was deafeningly loud. Hugo pushed the window back up and looked squarely at the boy, “Dees d’ gauntlet, boy. We just wan to see eef you can talk to d’ cops or not.”

  “Cops? What cops?”

  “Those cops,” said Tara quietly, gazing at the mirror outside her window.

  Virgil frowned, tapped the dashboard display and swiped to the rearview cam. A kilometer behind, in their lane closing fast, was another Kansas Hovway Patrol cruiser, emergency LED’s flashing.

  Virgil’s blood turned to ice, “You knew about this?” he said, looking at Hugo accusingly. “You were just smoking a joint! We’re gonna get an FUI! What if they find the liquor?! Transporting alcohol is a felony! That’s straight to the slaughterhouse… oh man, oh man…!”

  The 25 cm computer display in the dashboard suddenly flashed red. A bronze colored Kansas Hovway Patrol icon filled the screen. The cabin music muted and was replaced by a computerized female voice, “Ford 800 flatbed transport, Kansas DMV registration Ipv7 address (2071:0db8:85a3:0042:1000:8a2e:0370:7334) listed on-screen, you are requested to authorize comsync in compliance with KHP stop and assist request, unit KHP-APOLLO9.”

  Hugo sat up lazily in his seat and tapped a button on the truck’s steering wheel.

  A different, more relaxed sounding female voice spoke, “FordCom 8
00, switch to oral command?”

  “Si,” said Hugo.

  “Oral command active,” responded the computer. “Do you wish to comply with the Kansas Hovway Patrol unit APOLLO9 request for navigational override? You have fourteen seconds to respond.”

  “Yees,” said Hugo again breezily.

  “Hovlev gradient to maximum, auto traction engaged,” replied the dash com.

  Virgil’s eyes grew wide, “Are you serious?! You’re high! I’m high! We have Dog knows how many liters of drugs in the truck!”

  Tara put her hand on Virgil’s leg and looked at him over the tops of her sunglasses, “Oh, for the love of sky, will you simmer down?”

  Virgil was suddenly able to breathe again. His head filled with that familiar, warm honey. Time stretched slowly from second to second.

  I have met Aphrodite. Everything will be alright.

  “But…” he began.

  “Shhhh…” Tara placed a finger over his lips.

  He was so very Utopian. So very sweet and idealistic. For a brief second, she considered eating him for an afternoon snack.

  Dax has some purpose with this one.

  She knew almost every permutation of thought that flowed through the mysterious conduits of her lover’s mind. She saw the visions and objectives that were shrouded to all others. It was true. They needed a campus spy. Helpful. But why this tard? Because of mother’s prophecy?

  I fell for a momma’s boy…

  Virgil was popular with the professors. The professors liked to drink. They worked in the English Department, after all, which was like being employed at an antique library located next to a funeral parlor that embalmed dead horses, near as Tara could tell. She’d be drinking heavily also. But popularity was not enough. Dax obviously had no intention of bringing him into the fold.

  So we’re back to your mother’s prophecies, my love…

  To ask the motive behind an action was simply not their way. They were courtezan. The information flowed of its own accord.

  Regardless, they would never again bring Virgil on the gauntlet.

  Because the gauntlet’s secret is, you always get pulled over.

  Virgil felt himself compelled to turn to Hugo in that moment, “What’s the gauntlet?”

  Hugo had removed his hands from the steering wheel. He did not appear surprised in the least when the hovtruck began piloting itself in a slow and deliberately nerve-wracking fashion. The KHP trooper was less than a half kilometer off their bumper. He would auto-glide them to the next off-ramp, which was 4.7 kilometers down the Interstate, according to navcom.

  Hugo looked on Virgil with compassion, “You ees floating on eet, jovenzuelo. D’ gauntlet be dees stretch of hovway, I-70 between Topeka and Salina. On further out weest, eef you running supply to Hays or Denver. We only float so far as Salina dough.”

  “The gauntlet is where drug mules go to die,” added Tara chipperly, gazing out the window.

  The sirens of the patrol hovcar could now be heard over the slowing whine of the Ford’s propfans. The flashing LED’s of the officer’s vehicle reflected in the side mirrors, splashing swatches of primary color over their hovtruck’s dashboard.

  Despite the logical desire to panic, Virgil’s head reeled with a sense of contentment that emanated from the spot on his thigh where Virginia Rose kept her hand.

  “Then why do I feel so calm? Do we not have liquor on board after all?”

  “That’s right,” said Tara, “We aren’t doing anything wrong. Knowing that is half a mule’s battle.”

  “You a mule now, guero,” said Hugo. “You so calm cause a leetle criminal done built a nest eenside your soul, got me? We mules live with d’ fear. At first, d’ mule float through’s d’ life looking constantly een d’ rearview. Den, eef you survive long eenough, you come to find d’ cops don’t know no-theeng.” Hugo nodded towards LOFN, who had not moved her head from the seat’s edge, “Cops be dumber dan d’ sheet dat fall from dees dog’s ass. Dey only do what their coms tell dem, and,” he looked at Tara with a little sideways grin, “we got d’ computers covered. D’ only scanners out dere we can’t hack are d’ eyes of a human. Dat’s where Virgeenia come in. You too, homey. You gonna talk to dis trooper now, get hees curios off our funky beesnees, say?”

  “You want me to talk to the cop?” asked Virgil, somewhere between panic and elation.

  “No time to explain,” said Virginia with a comfortable smile. “We’re sitting on tarmac in about two minutes, Ahab.”

  Virgil knotted his forehead bravely, “I’m just gonna tell this pig to leave us the hell alone! I’m gonna say we’re within our rights, just traveling and he has no cause to search us.” He giggled nervously, his knee beginning to shake. A tear ran down his face, “Like, this is for my girl, Adrienne, all the shit the man did to her!” He punched the roof of the hovtruck, pop! “Then I’m gonna punch him in the face like that!”

  “Listen to me, Virgil,” said Tara.

  “There’s nothing to listen to!” Tears were pouring down both cheeks now, “This is it! We’re going to the slaughterhouse! We’ll be martyrs! They’ll write songs about me and Adrienne!”

  Tara took her hand off Virgil’s leg and slapped him. Then she slapped him again, harder.

  “Ouch! Jeezus!”

  Tara again put her hands on Virgil’s blustery cheeks and forced his eyes into hers.

  “64 seconds until full stop,” said the navcom.

  Tara waited ten seconds to speak until she had the boy’s emotions fully under control, “Virgil, I’m going to make one thing damn clear. There are no martyrs in this business.”

  Virgil sniffed, consumed by the black of her pupils, “It’s a violation of my civil rights…”

  Tara shook her head, satisfied with the pliability of his mind.

  She removed her hands from his face and again rested her left on his leg. “You’re a drug mule, Virgil. Could be moving alcohol or heroin, no difference. Most citizens would as soon us rot in a Vision work camp as look at us. Civil rights? You’re not Malala Yousafazi, dude.”

  “Thirteen seconds until full stop,” said the com.

  Virgil was breathing rapidly, but no longer cried, “Okay, Okay. I get it. Virginia?”

  “Yup?”

  “Thank you.”

  “Whatever. Quit being a bitch. You’re embarrassing my ovaries.”

  The Ford 800 at last floated to a rest halfway up a rural Exit ramp. They were eleven kilometers east of the Salina Metroplex. The parking mounts deployed and dropped to the asphalt shoulder, auto-levelers vibrating. LOFN sat up and crawled between Tara and Virgil and disappeared over the seat into the narrow cargo space behind them.

  “This dog kinda has a mind of its own, huh?” asked Virgil.

  “You could say that,” said Tara vacantly, her attention focused on the side mirror. The KHP trooper had not yet stepped out.

  “Don’t worry bout d’ dog, dog,” said Hugo. “Here we go.”

  The hovtruck’s computer spoke in default monotone, “You have been selected for an operational review by the Kansas Hovway Patrol. Pilot navigation systems are temporarily locked out for your safety. Please set combud and holotab security protocols to open access and release all encrypted passenger data, including operator Ipv7 and social security code. You have thirty seconds to comply.”

  Hugo tapped his comdot, “Access granted.” He looked over at Tara, “Eet’s a man, ain’t seen heem before. Leet’s hope he not queer.”

  “I don’t think it really matters anymore if they like me or not.”

  Virgil felt his heart rate begin to accelerate, “What are you guys talking about?”

  Tara squeezed his thigh slightly harder. He melted back to silence.

  “Steel ain’t gon be quite so easy, sees,” said Hugo.

  “Why?”

  “Dees one got dos RIOT class borgs een d’ squad car, plus a live German Sheepherd.”

  Tara smiled brightly, “Fuck it. Thing’s are gonna be fine
, boys! There’s nothing we can’t make vanish.”

  Virgil started to stammer but Tara silenced him.

  Hugo touched the silver comdot affixed to his jaw, listening, “Shhh. Joan ees saying teengs.”

  “What else?” asked Tara.

  Hugo whistled low, “Dis hombre ees military. Colonel Apollo een d’ National Guard at Fort Riley. Dude ees borg Army Ranger, hardcore mang. Dey call heem d’ Butcher of Chābahār from d’ war days.”

  Tara’s eyes narrowed, “Be all the more my pleasure to ruin his Dogdamn day. Joan fully plugged in?”

  “Yeep. Synched to LOFN. She got a fat, clear stream.”

  Hugo breathed calmly as he watched the trooper step out of his hovcar. The man was in his late 50’s, bald and of African descent. He stood nearly two meters tall and had the square jawed frame of a body builder. His black boots shined and his sunglasses twinkled with official clarity in the dying afternoon light. The beige pants of his uniform were crisp and pressed. Up each leg ran a brown stripe that matched the darker tone of his polyhemp shirt and round, broad-rim trooper’s hat.

  The man strolled deliberately, briskly processing incoming data on his holotab when Hugo saw him stop abruptly. The trooper’s hand moved to his sidearm.

  “Oh sheet, mescaleros.”

  “What up?” asked Tara.

  Hugo held a hand up to quiet her. He continued watching the officer in the side mirror. After a few seconds, the trooper frowned, shook his head and removed his hand from his gun. He tapped the glass surface of his holotab aggressively.

  He walked all the way to them now and stood just behind Hugo’s window, leaning in, “Mr. Gabriel Martinez?”

  The trooper’s voice was deep and commanding. The timbre of it made Virgil realize he needed to urinate.

  Hugo was sitting up straight with a smile stretched across his face, “Si señor, dat’s me. Se habla?”

  “No, I don’t habla, son.” The trooper looked over the tops of his mirrored sunglasses, “Let’s see here. Abner Family Pumpkin & Gourd, LLC. Says you’re a KDOT-C7 registered transport out of Douglas County carrying… pumpkin seeds. Registration good, license clear, insurance verified. Do you know why I pulled you over, Mr. Martinez?” The trooper rapped the back of his holotab against the Ford’s window at the precise moment he got done saying, Mr. Martinez?