The Branch

by Mike Resnick

  “Are we going to do anything about him?”

  “I think we’d better—before he gets around to doing something about me. As soon as the Thrill Show shuts down for the night, send some muscle over to pay our friend Jeremiah a friendly little visit.”

  “And?”

  “And kill him,” said Moore.

  Chapter 4

  The young man sat up in bed, fondly patted the bare, rounded buttocks of his still-sleeping partner, and began putting on his clothes.

  He knew they’d be coming after him before long, and the Thrill Show was the first place they’d look, which meant that it was time to make himself scarce.

  He stuck his head out the door of the trailer, made sure that no one was lurking in the shadows, and slipped out into the night, avoiding the bright lights and gaudy neon signs.

  Jeremiah had confidence in his ability to escape detection for as long as need be. Moore might own or control most of the vice dens in the Chicago complex, but he didn’t know them. Jeremiah did, and that was all the advantage he needed.

  Moore would turn the city upside down trying to find him, but it wouldn’t do him any good. Jeremiah could stay buried until Moore gave up the search, and then make his pitch: a one-third partnership.

  He’d learned enough about Moore to know that he never destroyed what he could assimilate, and if Jeremiah could hold off the entire force of Moore’s organization, he would have shown all the boldness and resourcefulness that Moore could demand of a would-be associate.

  The setup at the Bizarre Bazaar had been just that—a setup. He hadn’t expected Lisa Walpole to be able to kill Moore. If she had pulled it off, so much the better; but the likelihood was that she’d fail, and that Moore would find some way to extract his name from her. He knew nothing of her current whereabouts, but felt reasonably certain that Moore had her by now. However, he viewed the Dream Come True application as his masterpiece. If there was a better way of announcing his presence, he couldn’t think of it.

  The trick now was to stay alive, to keep Moore constantly aware of the fact that he was still in Chicago, and to wait him out. He’d been playing for pennies long enough; this was his chance to make the big time in one giant step, and he had no intention of blowing it.

  He had already decided where to hole up: Darktown, that sleazy underground section of the city, just west of the old Loop, with its tawdry subterranean dens of drugs and sin. Whether you wanted to buy a woman, a man, a child, a murderer, a narcotic, a fingerprint graft, or whatever, if it was illegal or contraband you could get it wholesale in Darktown.

  It wasn’t an easy place to reach, though anyone who had business there knew the way. It existed, ghostlike and serene, a good quarter-mile below the huge, forty-foot-diameter sewers that ran beneath the city. The service elevators and escalators stopped at the mammoth pipelines, and after that one had to know exactly where to go to find his way into Darktown.

  The construction of Darktown had consisted of one disastrous blunder after another. It had originally been commissioned by the city as a stormwater reservoir, then changed to a garbage dump. During the initial drilling and digging the contractors had, not once but three different times, come upon the Lake Michigan water table, practically drowning themselves and their huge work crews. Then, when they finally managed to avoid the water, they created an artificial cavern about half a mile square, only to have it collapse within the first month of its existence. These setbacks were followed by ventilation and temperature-control problems, and finally, as costs continued to skyrocket, the project was abandoned, leaving a massive but empty area one mile long and just over half a mile wide, with heights varying from fifty to ninety feet. It stood deserted for almost a decade, and then the criminal element moved in and took it over.

  The first to go underground were the whores, the pimps, and the drug merchants. They were soon followed by the fences, who built long, low warehouses in which furs, jewels, paintings, appliances, and the million and one collectible items that so fascinated the bored multitudes could age before going back on the market.

  Then came the dealers in big-ticket contraband products. Robots had made a brief appearance in human society before people discovered that their presence created even more leisure time; they had been outlawed for years, but they could still be purchased in Darktown. Automobiles, either those that ran on fossil fuels or those requiring electric or solar power, were prohibited under most of the nation’s domes, but the man who had the room to keep one in secret could buy it in Darktown.

  Weapon shops abounded, as did those stores specializing in the hardware of the burglar’s trade.

  The streets were usually empty, for Darktown was not a place for window-shoppers. If a man had business there, he knew where to go; if he didn’t have business to conduct, he didn’t come to Darktown.

  There were no streetlights as such, but a number of argon lamps had been set into the rocky walls of the cavern, giving Darktown a perpetual dull-blue glow.

  Jeremiah, all his worldly possessions in his backpack, and his entire bankroll—such as it was—folded in one of his pockets, slunk into Darktown as silently as one of the rats that prowled its alleys. He went straight to a dingy flophouse and, using an assumed name, rented a small room.

  This done, he walked down the dank, foul-smelling street to the Bar Sinister, a drug saloon which, despite its relative inaccessibility, had acquired a reputation that extended far beyond the Chicago complex.

  Here a man could order up a glass of Venusian joyjuice—which did not come from Venus and was not a juice—and go instantly into a hallucinogenic trance that lasted anywhere from ten minutes to two hours.

  Some of the more notorious concoctions—the Big Bang, the Pulsar, and the ever-popular Dust Whore—were potent enough to burn out every neural circuit of a habitual user’s brain in a matter of days; beginners had been known to die from two drinks. Jeremiah was no beginner.

  He sat down at a small table and waited for one of the seminude waitresses to come over and take his order. Nobody seemed to notice him for the better part of five minutes. Then a well-dressed man approached him.

  “Hello, Karl,” said Jeremiah.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” snapped Karl Russo, who was both the owner and bartender of the Bar Sinister.

  “Waiting to order a drink,” said Jeremiah.

  “What are you using for brains?” demanded Russo. “Don’t you know Moore’s put out a hit on you?”

  “His men will be looking for me at the Thrill Show,” replied Jeremiah confidently. “It’ll be days before they get down here.”

  “It will be, huh?” said Russo. “Then how do I know there’s a price on your head?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Who the hell do you think owns half the joints in Darktown? Moore, that’s who! And you, like an idiot, let him get a description of you, right down to the color of your eyes! He’s offered fifty thousand dollars to anyone who can finger you, and there’s an artist’s drawing of you plastered up in every joint down here.”

  “He works fast, doesn’t he?” remarked Jeremiah, obviously unperturbed.

  “He sure as hell does,” answered Russo. “You’d better leave the city for a while, if you know what’s good for you.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like it here.”

  “Then at least get out of Darktown.”

  “I especially like Darktown,” said Jeremiah.

  “Have you got rocks in your head?” said Russo. “How many people have you seen since you got here? Five? Ten? Half of them have probably already told Moore’s goons where you are!”

  “I suppose they have,” said Jeremiah. “Now, how about that drink?”

  Russo slammed a fist down on the table. “Goddamnit! You’re acting like you want him to find you!”

  “No. But I sure as hell want him to try.”

  “You’re out of your mind! Whatever you think your angle is, forget it. You stay in Darktown
two more hours and you’re a dead man. Hell, you’re probably one already.”

  “I’ll have a Dust Whore, I think,” said Jeremiah with a grin.

  “You think you’ve got something Moore wants?” demanded Russo. “Some skill, some information? Forget it! All he wants is your scalp. I don’t know why he’s after you, but if he’s mad enough to put out a hit and a reward, he’s too damned mad to deal with.”

  “Not for a smart young feller like me,” said Jeremiah, still smiling. He felt elated. If the whole of Moore’s attention was focused on him, that would just make his bargaining position that much stronger later on.

  “If you had half as much brains as guts, you’d be scared shitless,” said Russo disgustedly. “Now get the hell out of here. They ain’t going to shoot up my place just to get you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Get out. I’ll give you a five-minute start, and then I’m letting Moore know you were here.”

  “I thought we were supposed to be friends,” said Jeremiah.

  “Only when it’s good for business. And right now, being your friend is about the worst thing in the world for my business, to say nothing of my health.” Russo pointed to a clock on the wall. “Four and a half minutes left.”

  Jeremiah shrugged, then stood up and walked to the door, giving one of the waitresses a salacious wink as he passed her.

  “I’ll be back next month,” he said to Russo. “I figure you owe me a couple of freebies for this.” He turned to the waitress. “I’ll see you then, too.”

  He went to three more boardinghouses, rented a room at each of them, and was heading toward a fourth when he saw a number of men clambering down the stone stairs that were carved into the side of the wall behind the Bar Sinister. He ducked behind a small warehouse and scrutinized them carefully. They were dressed neither like wealthy slummers nor like the usual inhabitants of Darktown, and coming in quantity like this, they could only be Moore’s men.

  He was surprised that they had arrived so quickly, but not dismayed.

  It had been said, back before deer became extinct, that one such animal could easily hide from two armed hunters on a mere acre of forested ground; he was a hell of a lot smarter than a deer, and Darktown was a hell of a lot larger than an acre.

  He removed his shoes and shoved them into his backpack, then donned a pair of rubber-soled sneakers and ran silently at right angles to the gunmen. He continued at top speed past a lengthy stretch of brothels and drug parlors, then ducked in between a pair of buildings to see if he was being followed.

  So far, so good. He clambered up the side of one of the buildings and soon reached the roof, some twelve feet above the ground. Then, removing his backpack, he laid it down and stretched out, using it as a pillow. It would take them hours to check out the dozens of flophouses, and he’d be as safe here as anywhere. Food would be no problem, either; after he’d gone to Dream Come True, he had placed a number of small retort pouches of concentrated soya products in his backpack, enough to last him for more than two weeks, three if he was careful.

  Some time later he awoke with a start. There was no way of measuring the passage of time in the subterranean chamber, but he was sure he couldn’t have been dozing for more than a couple of hours, for he felt neither stiff nor refreshed. One of Moore’s men was walking slowly down the street just in front of the building, and the hollow clicking of his feet on the damp pavement had awakened Jeremiah.

  He arose and walked silently over to the edge of the roof. It would be an easy matter to jump down on top of the man; the force of the fall alone would probably be enough to kill him. But he rejected the idea; he wasn’t out to fight a war, but rather to impress Moore with his ability to survive. Besides, if he killed the man, Moore would just send more.

  He observed Moore’s man for a few more minutes, then decided to go back to sleep. He turned and began walking back toward the middle of the roof. Suddenly his foot crashed through a weak section of rotting boards.

  The man in the street turned and fired four quick shots in his general direction. Jeremiah raced to his backpack, picked it up on the run, and hurled himself off the back of the building. He landed on his feet and raced into the alleyway, zigzagging in and out of the long, eerie shadows.

  He ran until he reached the end of the alley, then turned to his right past the nondescript building that constituted the unofficial headquarters of the city’s unofficial murderers’ guild. Nobody shot at him, which meant that they were either unaware of his identity or—far more likely—had no intention of helping a man who kept gunmen on salary.

  He ducked into a small abandoned firearms factory, raced to the back of it, and eased himself out through a broken window. He stopped for a moment, listening for footsteps, but couldn’t detect any. Slowly, cautiously, he peeked out around the corner of the factory, trying to see what he could of the street. It seemed deserted.

  Then, after stepping back out of sight, he turned and headed off in the opposite direction. He stopped when he came to the corner, and barely avoided bumping into another of Moore’s men, who was advancing down the street, gun in hand.

  He waited until the man was more than two hundred yards past him, then crossed the intersection. He had almost made it back into the dim shadows when he heard the sharp report of a gun, and little pieces of stone sprayed his face, ripped off from the edge of a building by the bullet.

  He started running again, darting in and out of warehouses, changing directions every half-block or so, slowing to a walk whenever he dared.

  In less than an hour he had made an almost complete circle of Darktown, and now he could see the Bar Sinister glittering just ahead of him.

  He got to within three hundred yards of it, panting heavily, then saw two of the gunmen standing in front of the entrance. Turning once more, he ducked into an alley that led him behind a row of drug parlors.

  When he came to an open back door he stepped through it, leaning against a wall and gasping for air. He could hear strange, gurgling moans ahead of him, and decided not to risk cutting through to the front.

  Chances were that the sounds were coming from someone who was too far gone in a featherheaded trance to be much of a threat, but he couldn’t be sure that the person was alone, and it wasn’t worth the risk.

  He eased himself out through the back door, then saw a man coming down the alley toward him. He began running in the opposite direction, heard a number of shots, and felt a burning sensation just above his left elbow. He cursed, increased his speed, and ducked into the first building he came to that had a door in the back.

  Without hesitating, he ran to the front of the building, out the front door, and across the street. Two more shots rang out from a new direction, and he darted into another structure.

  It was large and well-appointed, with a circular staircase ascending to some upper level that was lost in shadows. He raced up the stairs, taking them three at a time, and burst through a door at the top. It closed automatically behind him, and he found himself in a sumptuously furnished drawing room. The rug was plush and deep, the wallpaper was flocked velvet, a number of tufted loveseats lined the walls, and soft recorded music was being piped in through a hidden speaker system.

  “Welcome,” said a deep, resonant voice.

  He jumped and looked behind him. The room was empty.

  “You have just entered the Plaza Gomorrah, the ultimate experience in bordellos.”

  He ran to the door through which he had entered, but it was locked.

  “We commend you on your selection of the Plaza Gomorrah, where sensual experiences undreamed-of await even the most jaded hedonist. Except for your fellow seekers after fulfillment and gratification, not a living soul is in attendance. Even the voice you are now hearing is a recording. You need fear no embarrassment here, no humiliation, no threat of public disapproval. Be wild, be wicked, be inventive, be uninhibited, be yourself! We ask only that you allow us to demonstrate our unique ability to se
rve you and cater to your every desire.” There was a momentary pause. “Rooms four, fifteen, eighteen, and twenty-four are currently available. All can be found down the corridor to your left.

  Payment will be made on your way out. We accept every form of currency and credit card currently in use in Europe and the Western Hemisphere, as well as any properly endorsed corporate bonds rated double-A or better. Alternative forms of payment can be made by special arrangement.”

  A door on the left side of the room swung open, and Jeremiah shot through it. He tried the first room he came to, found that it was locked, and raced to the end of the long, dimly lit hallway, where he found a door with the number 24 affixed to it in blinking diodes.

  He opened it, stepped through a dressing area, heard the door close and lock behind him, and walked swiftly toward a window on the far wall.

  “Hi, good-looking,” said a soft, sultry voice.

  Jeremiah stopped in his tracks and saw a voluptuous redhead, totally naked, standing by the foot of a king-size brass bed.

  “Not today, sister,” he said. “I’m in one hell of a hurry.”

  “I’m glad you could make it tonight,” said the redhead in level tones, reaching out and taking his arm.

  “Look!” he snapped. “I told you—I’ve got no time for this now!”

  He tried to pull his arm loose, and was astonished to discover that he couldn’t.

  “I’ve been waiting all week for someone like you,” said the redhead, pulling him over to the bed.

  He heard a door crash down in the distance.

  “Damn it, they’re here already!” he snarled. “Let me go, you stupid bitch!”

  “If there is anything special you’d like me to do, you have only to ask,” said the redhead, lying back on the bed. “I am programmed to perform any act in The Kama Sutra, The Perfumed Garden, or the works of Krafft-Ebing.”

  “Programmed?” shrieked Jeremiah, as two more doors caved in. “Oh God, let go of me, you damned machine!”

  He began smashing his fists into the robot’s face. She smiled and nibbled gently on his ear.