Not So Much, Said the Cat
Page 22
Master Bones, who had not spoken before now, said, “That’s an E. coli, isn’t it?”
“A variant on it, yes, sir. Norton wrote this tattoo into his own genome and then sired three children upon his wife, believing they would have many more in their turn. But fate is a fickle lady, and Ms. Petticoats is the last of her line. She, however, will suffice.” He turned to Tawny. “You may clothe yourself again. Our guests have had their curiosities satisfied, and now they will leave.”
Darger led the group back to the front room, closing the door firmly behind him. “Now,” he said. “You have learned what you came to learn. At the cost, I might mention, of violently depriving an innocent maiden of her modesty.”
“That is a swinish thing to say!” Pirate Lafitte snapped.
In the silence that followed his outburst, all could hear Tawny Petticoats in the next room, sobbing her heart out.
“Your work here is done,” Darger said, “and I must ask you to leave.”
Now that Tawny Petticoats was no longer a secret, there was nothing for the three conspirators to do but wait for the equipment they had supposedly sent for upriver—and for their marks to each separately approach them with very large bribes to buy their process and the crates of black paper away from them. As simple logic stipulated that they inevitably must.
The very next day, after the morning mail had brought two notes proposing meetings, the trio went out for breakfast at a sidewalk café. They had just finished and were beginning their second cups of coffee when Tawny looked over Darger’s shoulder and exclaimed, “Oh, merciful God in heaven! It’s Jake.” Then, seeing her companions’ incomprehension, “My husband! He’s talking to Pirate Lafitte. They’re coming this way.”
“Keep smiling,” Darger murmured. “Feign unconcern. Surplus, you know what to do.”
It took a count of ten for the interlopers to reach their table.
“Jake!” Surplus exclaimed in evident surprise, beginning to rise from his chair.
“Come for his pay, no doubt.” Darger drew from his pocket the wad of bills—one of large denomination on the outside, a great many singles beneath—which any sensible businessman carried with him at all times and, turning, said, “The madam-mayor wishes you to know—”
He found himself confronted by a stranger who could only be Tawny’s Jake and Pirate Lafitte, whose face was contorted with astonishment.
Darger hastily thrust the wad of bills back into his pocket. “Wishes you to know,” he repeated, “that, ah, anytime you wish to try out her establishment, she will gladly offer you a ten percent discount on all goods and services, alcohol excepted. It is a courtesy she has newly decided to extend, out of respect for your employer, to all his new hires.”
Lafitte turned, grabbed Jake by the shirtfront, and shook him as a mastiff might a rat. “I understand now,” he said through gritted teeth. “The honorable brothel-keeper wished to deal me out of a rich opportunity, and so she sent you to me with a cock-and-bull story about this virtuous and inoffensive young woman.”
“Honest, boss, I ain’t got the slightest idea what this . . . this . . . foreigner is talking about. It’s honest info I’m peddling here. I heard it on the street that my filthy bitch of a—”
With a roar of rage, Pirate Lafitte punched Jake so hard he fell sprawling in the street. Then he pulled the whip from his belt and proceeded to lay into the man so savagely that by the time he was done, his shirt and vest were damp with sweat.
Breathing heavily from exertion, he touched his hat to Darger and Surplus. “Sirs. We shall talk later, at a time when my passions are not so excited. This afternoon, five o’clock, at my office. I have a proposition to put to you.” Then, to Tawny, “Miss Petticoats, I apologize that you had to see this.”
He strode off.
“Oh!” Tawny breathed. “He beat Jake within an inch of his worthless life. It was the most romantic thing I ever seen in my life.”
“A horsewhipping? Romantic?” Darger said.
Tawny favored him with a superior look. “You don’t much understand the workings of a woman’s heart, do you?”
“Apparently not,” Darger said. “And it begins to appear that I never shall.” Out in the street, Jake was painfully pulling himself up and trying to stand. “Excuse me.”
Darger went over to the battered and bleeding man and helped him to his feet. Then, talking quietly, he opened his billfold and thrust several notes into the man’s hand.
“What did you give him?” Tawny asked, when he was back inside.
“A stern warning not to interfere with us again. Also, seventeen dollars. A sum insulting enough to guarantee that, despite his injuries, he will take his increasingly implausible story to Master Bones, and then to the madam-mayor.”
Tawny grabbed Darger and Surplus and hugged them both at once. “Oh, you boys are so good to me. I just love you both to pieces and back.”
“It begins to look, however,” Surplus said. “Like we have been stood up. According to Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s note, she should have been here by now. Which is, if I may use such language, damnably peculiar.”
“Something must have come up.” Darger squinted up at the sky. “Tresjolie isn’t here and it’s about time for the meeting with Master Bones. You should stay here, in case the madam-mayor shows up. I’ll see what the zombie master has to say.”
“And I,” Tawny said, “will go back to my room to adjust my dress.”
“Adjust?” Surplus asked.
“It needs to be a little tighter and to show just a smidge more bosom.”
Alarmed, Darger said, “Your character is a modest and innocent thing.”
“She is a modest and innocent thing who secretly wishes a worldly cad would teach her all those wicked deeds she has heard about but cannot quite imagine. I have played this role before, gentlemen. Trust me, it is not innocence per se that men like Pirate Lafitte are drawn to but the tantalizing possibility of corrupting that innocence.”
Then she was gone.
“A most remarkable young lady, our Ms. Petticoats,” Surplus said.
Darger scowled.
After Darger left, Surplus leaned back in his chair for some casual people watching. He had not been at it long when he noticed that a remarkably pretty woman at a table at the far end of the café kept glancing his way. When he returned her gaze, she blushed and looked quickly away.
From long experience, Surplus understood what such looks meant. Leaving money on the table to pay for the breakfasts, he strolled over to introduce himself to the lady. She seemed not unreceptive to his attentions, and after a remarkably short conversation, invited him to her room in a nearby hotel. Feigning surprise, Surplus accepted.
What happened there had occurred many times before in his eventful life. But that didn’t make it any less delightful.
On leaving the hotel, however, Surplus was alarmed to find himself abruptly seized and firmly held by two red-furred, seven-foot-tall uniformed Canadian ape-men.
“I see you have been entertaining yourself with one of the local sluts,” Madam-Mayor Tresjolie said. She looked even less benevolent than usual.
“That is a harsh characterization of a lady who, for all I know, may be of high moral character. Also, I must ask you why I am being held captive like this.”
“In due time. First, tell me whether your encounter was a commercial one or not.”
“I thought not when we were in the throes of it. But afterward, she showed me her union card and informed me that as a matter of policy she was required to charge not only by the hour but by the position. I was, of course, astonished.”
“What did you do then?”
“I paid, of course,” Surplus said indignantly. “I am no scab!”
“The woman with whom you coupled, however, was not a registered member of the International Sisterhood of Trollops, Demimondaines, and Back-Alley Doxies and her card was a forgery. Which means that while nobody objects to your non-commercial sexual activitie
s, by paying her you were engaged in a union-busting activity—and that, sir, is against the law.”
“Obviously, you set me up. Otherwise, you could have known none of this.”
“That is neither here nor there. What is relevant is that you have three things that I want—the girl with the birthmark, the crates of money, and the knowledge of how to use the one to render the other negotiable.”
“I understand now. Doubtless, madam, you seek to bribe me. I assure you that no amount of money—”
“Money?” The madam-mayor’s laugh was short and harsh. “I am offering you something far more precious: your conscious mind.” She produced a hypodermic needle. “People think the zombification formula consists entirely of extract of puffer fish. But in fact atropine, datura, and a dozen other drugs are involved, all blended in a manner guaranteed to make the experience very unpleasant indeed.”
“Threats will not work on me.”
“Not yet. But after you’ve had a taste of what otherwise lies before you, I’m sure you’ll come around. In a week or so, I’ll haul you back from the fields. Then we can negotiate.”
Madam-Mayor Tresjolie’s simian thugs held Surplus firmly, struggle though he did. She raised the syringe to his neck. There was a sharp sting.
The world went away.
Darger, meanwhile, had rented a megatherium, complete with howdah and zombie mahout, and ridden it to the endless rows of zombie barns, pens, and feeding sheds at the edge of town. There, Master Bones showed him the chest-high troughs that were filled with swill every morning and evening, and the rows of tin spoons the sad creatures used to feed themselves. “When each of my pretties has fed, the spoon is set aside to be washed and sterilized before it is used again,” Master Bones said. “Every precaution is taken to ensure they do not pass diseases from one to another.”
“Commendably humane, sir. To say nothing of it being good business practice.”
“You understand me well.” They passed outside, where a pair of zombies, one male and the other female, both in exceptional condition and perfectly matched in height and color of hair and skin, waited with umbrellas. As they strolled to the pens, the two walked a pace behind them, shading them from the sun. “Tell me, Mr. Darger. What do you suppose the ratio of zombies to citizens is in New Orleans?”
Darger considered. “About even?”
“There are six zombies for every fully functioning human in the city. It seems a smaller number since most are employed as field hands and the like and so are rarely seen in the streets. But I could flood the city with them, should I wish.”
“Why on earth should you?”
Rather than answer the question, Master Bones said, “You have something I want.”
“I fancy I know what it is. But I assure you that no amount of money could buy from me what is by definition a greater amount of money. So we have nothing to discuss.”
“Oh, I believe that we do.” Master Bones indicated the nearest of the pens, in which stood a bull of prodigious size and obvious strength. It was darkly colored with pale laddering along its spine, and its horns were long and sharp. “This is a Eurasian aurochs, the ancestor of our modern domestic cattle. It went extinct in seventeenth-century Poland and was resurrected less than a hundred years ago. Because of its ferocity, it is impractical as a meat animal, but I keep a small breeding herd for export to the Republic of Baja and other Mexican states where bullfighting remains popular. Bastardo here is a particularly bellicose example of his kind.
“Now consider the contents of the adjoining pen.” The pen was overcrammed with zombie laborers and reeked to high heaven. The zombies stood motionless, staring at nothing. “They don’t look very strong, do they? Individually they’re not. But there is strength in numbers.” Going to the fence, Master Bones slapped a zombie on the shoulder and said, “Open the gate between your pen and the next.”
Then, when the gate was opened, Master Bones made his hands into a megaphone and shouted, “Everyone! Kill the aurochs. Now.”
With neither enthusiasm nor reluctance, the human contents of one pen flowed into the next, converging upon the great beast. With an angry bellow, Bastardo trampled several under its hooves. The others kept coming. Its head dipped to impale a body on its horns, then rose to fling a slash of red and a freshly made corpse in the air. Still the zombies kept coming.
That strong head fell and rose, again and again. More bodies flew. But now there were zombies clinging to the bull’s back and flanks and legs, hindering its movements. A note of fear entered the beast’s great voice. By now, there were bodies heaped on top of bodies on top of it, enough that its legs buckled under their weight. Fists hammered at its sides and hands wrenched at its horns. It struggled upward, almost rose, and then fell beneath the crushing sea of bodies.
Master Bones began giggling when the aurochs went down for the first time. His mirth grew greater and his eyes filled with tears of laughter and once or twice he snorted, so tremendous was his amusement at the spectacle.
A high-pitched squeal of pain went up from the aurochs . . . and then all was silence, save for the sound of fists pounding upon the beast’s carcass.
Wiping his tears away on his sleeve, Master Bones raised his voice again: “Very good. Well done. Thank you. Stop. Return to your pen. Yes, that’s right.” He turned his back on the bloodied carcass and the several bodies of zombies that lay motionless on the dirt, and said to Darger, “I believe in being direct. Give me the money and the girl by this time tomorrow or you and your partner will be as extinct as the aurochs ever was. There is no power as terrifying as that of a mob— and I control the greatest mob there ever was.”
“Sir!” Darger said. “The necessary equipment has not yet arrived from the Socialist Utopia of Minneapolis! There is no way I can. . . .”
“Then I’ll give you four days to think it over.” A leering smile split the zombie master’s pasty face. “While you’re deciding, I will leave you with these two zombies to use as you wish. They will do anything you tell them to. They are capable of following quite complex orders, though they do not consciously understand them.” To the zombies, he said, “You have heard this man’s voice. Obey him. But if he tries to leave New Orleans, kill him. Will you do that?”
“If he leaves . . . kill . . . him.”
“Yasss.”
Something was wrong.
Something was wrong, but Surplus could not put his finger on exactly what it was. He couldn’t concentrate. His thoughts were all in jumble and he could not find words with which to order them. It was as if he had forgotten how to think. Meanwhile, his body moved without his particularly willing it to do so. It did not occur to him that it should behave otherwise. Still, he knew that something was wrong.
The sun set, the sun rose. It made no difference to him.
His body labored systematically, cutting sugar cane with a machete. This work it performed without his involvement, steadily and continuously. Blisters arose on the pads of his paws, swelled, and popped. He did not care. Someone had told him to work and so he had and so he would until the time came to stop. All the world was a fog to him, but his arms knew to swing and his legs to carry him forward to the next plant.
Nevertheless, the sensation of wrongness endured. Surplus felt stunned, the way an ox which had just been poleaxed might feel, or the sole survivor of some overwhelming catastrophe. Something terrible had happened and it was imperative that he do something about it.
If only he knew what.
A trumpet sounded in the distance and without fuss all about him the other laborers ceased their work. As did he. Without hurry he joined their chill company in the slow trek back to the feeding sheds.
Perhaps he slept, perhaps he did not. Morning came and Surplus was jostled to the feeding trough where he swallowed ten spoonsful of swill, as a zombie overseer directed him. Along with many others, he was given a machete and walked to the fields. There he was put to work again.
Hours passed.
He had been told by . . . somebody . . . not to obey the orders of any strangers. But this voice sounded familiar, though he could not have said why. Slowly his mouth opened. Something was placed within it. “Now shut and swallow.”
His mouth did so.
His vision swam and he almost fell. Deep, deep within his mind, a spark of light blossomed. It was a glowing ember amid the ashes of a dead fire. But it grew and brightened, larger and more, until it felt like the sun rising within him. The external world came into focus, and with it the awareness that he, Surplus, had an identity distinct from the rest of existence. He realized first that his throat itched and the inside of his mouth was as parched and dry as the Sahara. Then that somebody he knew stood before him. Finally, that this person was his friend and colleague Aubrey Darger.
“How long have I. . . ?” Surplus could not bring himself to complete the sentence.
“More than one day. Less than two. When you failed to return to our hotel, Tawny and I were naturally alarmed and set out in search of you. New Orleans being a city prone to gossip, and there being only one anthropomorphized dog in town, the cause of your disappearance was easily determined. But learning that you had been sent to labor in the sugar cane fields did not narrow the search greatly for there are literally hundreds of square miles of fields. Luckily, Tawny knew where such blue-collar laborers as would have heard of the appearance of a dog-headed zombie congregated, and from them we learned at last of your whereabouts.”
“I . . . see.” Focusing his thoughts on practical matters, Surplus said, “Madam-Mayor Tresjolie, as you may have surmised, had no intention of buying our crates of black paper from us. What of our other marks?”