Streetlethal

by Steven Barnes

  He pushed her away, holding her at arm's length. "I'm going to find my woman," Aubry said, "and I'm going to kill Tomaso, and then I'm coming back."

  Without another word, he was gone.

  All of the lights were on him, and the glare was so bright he was nearly blinded. The lights overlapped in searing pools. He stood in the middle, dead still, hands raised as the armed men swarmed out to take him.

  Aubry listened to the wind whipping the waves under the cliff. He could taste the salt foam and the icy mist numbed him, even this far to the front of Casa Ortega. There were eight men guarding him, and from the look on their faces, it was clear they wanted eight more. None came closer than five paces, and none lowered their weapons from the ready.

  They waited. After what seemed like an hour, a huge figure approached. He was as tall as Aubry, but thicker through the chest and legs. He broke through the ring of guards, pistol in hand, but came no closer than the others.

  "Aubry," he said.

  "Diego. It's been a long time."

  "It has. Hell of a fight your people put up." He smiled, searching Aubry's face. "I'm sorry it had to be like this. I assume that you came to make a deal."

  "Bargain," Aubry said.

  "The mushrooms?"

  Aubry nodded silently.

  Mirabal drew a little closer, cocking his massive head sideways. "For a woman, Aubry? You must know thatyou're dead. It's not in my hands. In fact"—he lowered his voice—"it's not in Tomaso's either." His eyes met Aubry's squarely. "In fact, things have been out of Tomaso's control for quite a while now."

  He squeezed the trigger of his handgun. There was a dull report, and Aubry felt a stinging pain in his ribs, then a spreading numbness. He tried to move, but the chill moved far more quickly, until he collapsed on the wet gravel outside Casa Ortega.

  His first waking sensation was one of hardness. His cheek lay against the bare metal floor of a cell. As awareness expanded outwards, he realized that he was naked, bound hand and foot. He struggled to an upright position, and leaned back against the bare wall of the cell. A glaring lightsquare burned in the ceiling.

  His hands were bound behind him, but he could see his feet, and they were tied with the unbreakable plastic straps he had grown to hate in prison. Human flesh and bone would give way long before the bonds.

  He was struggling with them when the door to the cell opened and Diego Mirabal entered. He looked at Aubry, then at the torn skin around his ankles. "I knew you'd fight. What else is there for men like us?"

  Aubry glared at him. "You've done pretty good for yourself, Diego. I didn't expect you to still be with the Ortegas. Not after what they did to Walker."

  A cloud passed behind Mirabal's eyes. "He was a fool. I told him he could never kill you."

  "Did you know that they taped it?" The cloud darkened. "Yes, they did. I killed him, sure. But the Ortegas set him up and taped it—and watched about a hundred replays of him kicking around on the sand."

  Mirabal's eyes were distant now.

  "Diego," Aubry said, "he died for your sins."

  Mirabal finally managed to smile. "That was really rather subtle, Aubry. I'm surprised."

  "I'm telling you the truth."

  "Homophobe Luis? No doubt. Well, he paid the price of his machinations, didn't he? I happen to know that Tomaso tried to talk him out of it. And it's Tomaso I serve now."

  "You never served anyone but yourself."

  He nodded soberly. "And I usually get what I want. Except for you." He reached out and touched the straps at Aubry's ankle. "I wish I could loosen these for you. I really do."

  He stood. "One last thing, Aubry. The rest of these fools I can understand. But you... you're a man. The drug. Is it really that good?"

  "Better."

  Mirabal smiled. "I'm tempted to try it, Aubry. But there's almost no one I'd want to try it with. Do you know what I mean? Tomaso is obsessed. He thinks that that poison is the key to the kingdom. So, I have to get it out of you. I hope you won't make things too hard."

  "We were friends once, Diego. I think that if you gave your word to me, you'd try to keep it. Will you do what you can for Promise?"

  He shrugged. "What I can. But it had better be the real thing."

  "It is."

  "All right then—where are they?"

  "Destroyed."

  Mirabal started forward, his hand brushing aside his light coat to rest on the gun butt beneath. "What? You deliberately—"

  "No, no," Aubry said hastily. "There was an explosion. The mushrooms were flooded out. Destroyed."

  "Then what exactly do you have?"

  "The original sporeprint. With it, Tomaso can grow his own from scratch."

  "Yes." The hand came back away from his gun. "I can see that. All right. Tell me where it is."

  "There's a streetlight about a kilometer north of here. Behind it, there's an envelope under a rock. It's there."

  "All right. I'll check. I hope you're telling the truth, Aubry." He rapped twice on the door. As it swung open, he said, "If you are, I'll try to make your death a good one. Maybe you and I can do a one-on-one."

  "I... could go for that."

  Mirabal nodded thoughtfully, then slammed the door shut behind him. Aubry closed his eyes, resting against the wall.

  He wondered where Promise was.

  He wondered when he would die.

  And he wondered how he would kill Tomaso.

  The light in the cell was turned on and off irregularly, and Aubry had no way of knowing exactly how much time passed. It seemed like weeks, but could only have been days. Surely they fed him at least once a day. From the taste of the paste they gave him, it seemed to be some kind of high-nutrition concentrate. At least they weren't trying to starve him to death. His stomach felt drawn and he could taste the acid on his breath, but he didn't weaken much except for the ache in his wrists. He believed that the paste was sometimes drugged. Sometimes he fell into deep sleep, and when he woke the bonds on his feet and ankles were shifted slightly, and his limbs didn't hurt as much.

  He withdrew into the space that Warrick had shown him, a place where time and pain and hatred and memory and expectation all merged into a single point, a point where total weakness and total strength were the same, where all color and sound converged. And there he stayed.

  Waiting.

  Promise stood in the opened doorway, framed in light.

  She walked in without being pushed, her face drawn, a bruise above her right cheek. Her eyes were ringed darkly, and her belly seemed more swollen than when he saw her last.

  She fell to her knees beside him, cradling his head in her lap. She didn't cry, for which he was grateful. She wore a simple smock, and he was profoundly glad that they had not humiliated her by stripping her naked.

  Gently, she kissed his cheek. "Aubry. You idiot." Their eyes met, and hers wavered as she looked away, the milky plastic on the left side of her body shifting delicately into pink and then blue, the patterns of color breaking up, swirling with each breath. "We're going to die," she said.

  He nodded. "Together."

  They curled together as closely as possible.

  If only we were alone. If I could tell what I feel without it being recorded and analyzed by Tomaso and his freaks.

  The silence lasted a long time, and he watched the lights play on her skin, swirling around the damaged portions where the color bled out and dulled.

  Just in holding each other there was more peace than he had known for a long time. More peace than any time since...

  He closed his eyes and relaxed into another world. At first it seemed to be the timeless place that Warrick had given him, and then the world of the drug, where there seemed to be nothing but is. Then the two merged into a world of feeling.

  It was dark, utterly dark there, but he sensed that he wasn't alone. He followed a spectral voice that whispered his name.

  AUBRY. PROMISE.

  He was already touching her, but now there was a dif
ferent kind of touch, a different kind of joining.

  I'M HERE, PROMISE.

  THEN ITS TRUE? I'M NOT CRAZY? GOD. I FELT SO MANY THINGS, FOR SO LONG—

  He opened his eyes and met hers. They were terribly frightened and in need of reassurance. He nodded his head and whispered, "Yes."

  She almost fainted against him.

  WHAT IS IT? WHY CAN I HEAR YOUR THOUGHTS? I DON'T UNDERSTAND, AUBRY.

  IT'S NOT TO UNDERSTAND. JUST TO HAVE AND TO SHARE.

  BUT I'VE HEARD THE ORTEGAS TALKING ABOUT THE DRUG. NONE OF THEM HAVE HAD ANYTHING THIS POWERFUL HAPPEN TO THEM.

  IT'S NOT JUST THE DRUG. THE DRUG ONLY RELEASES WHAT'S INSIDE YOU. MAKES YOU SENSITIVE TO YOUR TRUTH. NOW WE SEE THAT WE'RE TWO PARTS OF SOMETHING BIGGER.. .FEEL THAT WE'RE NOT QUITE WHOLE WITHOUT EACH OTHER. I THINK...I THINK THAT MAYBE THAT'S WHAT LOVE REALLY IS.

  WHAT DO WE DO, AUBRY? WHAT IS THERE TO DO? I DON'T WANT TO GAIN SO MUCH JUST TO LOSE YOU LIKE THIS.

  WE HAVE TO WAIT, PROMISE. WAIT AND SEE. WE HAVE TO STOP LOOKING AT THE PIECES AND START UNDERSTANDING THE...

  He struggled for the right thought, and before the word was formed, she had it.

  Totality, aubry. wholeness. She held him tightly, as —LONG AS I'M WITH YOU, I CAN BE STRONG. YOU'RE MY WHOLENESS.

  He touched her belly, warm and full. Doubt seemed to belong to another universe and time, not a part of anything he understood or cared about.

  AND YOU ARE MINE.

  Tomaso Ortega sat in his command chair, his hands shaking, his eyes unfocused. He was looking through the wall in front of him, seeing a panorama of faces, hearing sounds, feeling fingernails shearing through his flesh. A woman's screams, the smell of her sweat and musk, the terrified clasp of her body— all were upon him. The empty container at his feet spoke of the impotence of the compressed Cyloxibin spores.

  He didn't move when the door eased open and Steinbrenner walked in. She looked at Ortega as if he were someone she barely knew, someone she feared and pitied. There was nothing there of the confident man who had taken over his dead brother's organization a year before. His mouth hung slack, his eyelids drooped. Except for the occasional flashes of pain and fear that racked his body, he might have been mistaken for a corpse.

  She stepped closer to him and held out her hand. In it was a glass vial. He looked at it dully. "What... is that?"

  "Cyloxibin," she said, and stepped back a pace as the whole of his attention focused on her.

  "So quickly?"

  "I knew that it was important, so we didn't wait until the spores reached the fruiting stage. The mycelium, the infant stage of the mushroom, contains the active drug. I condensed it and tested it. It's the real thing."

  He stood, stepping down from the chair, and took it from her. He twisted the capsule open and spilled the two tablets out into his hand, the touch of them in his palm seeming to quiet the shaking. He swallowed one down dry, without water, then looked at her questioningly. "Just one," she said. "This is fresh and much more powerful than the compressed form."

  He fought the urge to swallow the second tablet, staggering back to his chair, collapsing there. Steinbrenner watched for a moment, then left the room.

  He groaned, his entire body burning with need, making little animal sounds, twitching. At last the feeling of warmth started in his stomach, a sensation that changed to hot and cold flashes and from that to a dry mouth and a constricted throat. Tomaso sighed with relief, his muscles growing flaccid.

  Time passed. He was lost inside himself, but the warmth dissipated all of his pain, brought him back to balance.

  And beyond. The warmth gave way to cold, and that to a numbness that chilled his soul, all of the voices and feeling and needs swept away, blown out like the bottom of an overfilled basket.

  He opened his eyes and smiled a smile that was hard and arctic. He bent over and touched the communicator switch. "Send Steinbrenner in," he said flatly.

  The first thing that Steinbrenner noticed when she came back through the door was the breathing. It was dry and raspy and seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  "Mr. Ortega?"

  The room was in shadows, most of the light from the ceiling turned out. A thin strip of illumination crisscrossed the floor. "Tomaso?"

  His chair was empty. When she touched it it was still damp with perspiration. She looked around the room nervously.

  She pinpointed the sound of the breathing. Tomaso was crouched in the corner of the room, his head down, staring at the floor. He looked up at her, and his eyes shone like huge glassy spheres.

  "Steinbrenner " She tried to take a step backward, but couldn't. She watched him rise like a snake uncoiling from its nest, and felt her panic swirling away into those eyes.

  The eyes!

  They were a lover's eyes, vast and moist and wanting. They were fixed and hot, engulfing and deadly cold, and there was no way that she could tear herself away from them.

  He came to her and held out his hand, held it directly under her mouth, and his hands weren't trembling at all, although they were perspiring freely. In the middle of it was the other tablet, the tablet containing just 500 milligrams of dried mycelium.

  It stuck to his palm as she lifted it free. Her flesh burned at the slight contact. She stumbled back away from him.

  "I know you want me," he said, eyes gouging into her. "This is your chance. Take it."

  She whimpered, tried to say no, but there was just no strength. She could smell him, feel him. When she closed her eyes she could see him. He seemed to have expanded past the limits of his body. She choked on her panic, trapped.

  Slowly, she raised her hand to her mouth and swallowed.

  Tomaso Ortega took her hand, and together they sank to the floor.

  She heard her clothing being ripped away from her body. The tile against her back was scaldingly cold. And a moment later she felt something that was beyond sanity, or pain, or anything else she had ever known...

  Magnificent! Tomaso marveled, stretching. Still in the grip of the drug, he felt every interplay of sinew. Every thought sent nerve impulses racing like flame along a fuse. His body was magnificent, his mind extraordinary. How strange that it had taken a tiny black tablet to show him just how godlike he was.

  Next to him, Steinbrenner quivered, naked on the floor. He turned to her, and she dropped her eyes, trying to press her face against him. She was pale, trembling, shattered.

  She tried to reach her lips to him, and he laughed, slapping her. "Never," he hissed. "Unless I tell you. Do you understand?" Her eyes were wide and glassy with need. He could feel the heat from her, and reached out, grazing his palms along her body, barely touching her. A sob caught in her throat.

  He grinned viciously. "Now get dressed and get out."

  Diego Mirabal stood near the open cell door, his expression flat.

  Aubry and Promise lay huddled at the far end of the cell. Aubry looked from Mirabal to the doorway and back again, the questions written clearly on his face.

  A smaller figure, moving with terrible slowness, entered.

  Aubry sat up straight. "TOMASO&o." He looked up and down Ortega's frame, stopping for a moment at his eyes, subduing a slight chill at the way he looked at Promise.

  "I hope you're comfortable," Tomaso said, unsmiling. "I have to keep you alive for a while longer."

  "I'm going to kill you, Tomaso."

  "Yes," he said, and the slightest bit of dull life crept into his eyes. "I'm sure you think I have much to answer for. Patricks. Kato. Black."

  Promise stiffened.

  'Is that a surprise?" Tomaso said, too politely. "I'm sorry. I thought you knew she was dead. At any rate, you may get your chance for revenge if you answer my questions exactly." He waited for Aubry to reply. "All right, Knight. What do you know about the drug?"

  "Less than you do. I didn't even know we'd been carrying it around with us."

  "Did you take it?" He looked at Promise's head nestled tightly against Aubry's naked frame, an
d laughed nastily. "Yes, obviously you did. And even you . . ."He bent down closer, as closely as he dared. Mirabal saw Aubry's toes tense and put a restraining hand on Tomaso's shoulder, pulling him back.

  "Diego thinks so much of you. Considers you so damned strong. You don't know what real strength is, Knight."

  "And you do?"

  "Yes. You've given me the world. I just wanted to thank you."

  "It won't work, Tomaso. They won't stay hooked forever."

  "You're referring to the rather interesting built-in tolerance. Yes. I've seen. The stronger you are, the sooner you can throw it off. But give me three months, Knight. Three months in which a man or woman is totally at my mercy. In three months people can die, Knight. Laws can be changed. Stocks and bonds and Marks can change hands, and power can shift. How does that old song go? 'All you need is love.' I've always liked that."

  "So I've done you a big favor," Aubry said sullenly. "What about Promise? Are you going to let her go?"

  "Of course not. Didn't you know?" He turned and grinned at Mirabal. "Diego did ask about it, but there's a somewhat more important need for the both of you."

  He turned back to the door, Mirabal leaving first.

  "What need?" Aubry yelled. "Damn it, what now?"

  "My grandmother wants to meet you," he said.

  Neither of them slept. Promise cradled his head, wishing that she could comfort him. She touched him gently, his bruises and wounds, and the many indignities his body had taken in the years since her friend Maxine had sent him to prison.

  "What are you doing?" he said, watching her run her hands over his body, touching the light ridge of a scar.

  "Just memorizing you," she whispered. "Death will be here soon. Certainly for you, perhaps for both of us. I just want to know you the best way I can, to remember everything about you. In case I live. In case I live to have our child, and one day I want to tell her what her father was like."

  "Her?" He wiggled to an upright position. "That's a boy for sure. Too big for a girl."

  "Silly male. It's a girl. A mother knows."

  "I put it there. It's a boy."

  "All right, I give in—but only because you're bigger than me." She traced the light line of a scar on his leg. "Does this still hurt?"