05 - Changeling

by Chris Kubasik - (ebook by Undead)

  “It’s good. I like it.”

  “There we are. Let’s go. The cops’ll, cops’ll, cops’ll be here soon. Soon.”

  “What?”

  “That door you popped. I’m sure it was wired.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry? This is Chicago. The owner of the store wasn’t well-dressed enough to be paying off the force. The heat won’t be here for another two minutes.”

  8

  They got a room in a small hotel in Uptown, paying the owner a special bonus to let Peter stay in his hole.

  When Peter first saw the room, it seemed wonderful. The floor might be dirty, the walls cracked, and the sound of mice crawling around in the walls often woke him, but it was theirs. For months he’d lived on the street. Now he and Eddy had their own little haven.

  He could have gotten something at one of the new Chicago Housing Authority metahuman projects, but that would have meant having to admit he was a metahuman, that he was truly a troll, and Peter was not prepared to do that. Every day, the moment he woke up, he said aloud, “I’m human, pure human, I’m really human, and I’m going to be pure human again.” He feared that if he didn’t remind himself every day, he might forget his dream. And then where would he be?

  Once he’d mentioned this to Eddy, who shrugged and said, “Well, if you just forgot about it, then it wouldn’t bother you anymore. What would it matter if you were a troll?” He wasn’t sure if Eddy was joking, but decided not to bring up the subject again.

  But now that didn’t matter anymore. Peter had his portable and his chips and he was learning about biology.

  It was slow going, however. Anytime he read something, he had to re-read it again the next day, and then read it a third time later on to be certain it was firmly in his head.

  One day Eddy was out fencing some monitors they’d stolen the previous week, and Peter had the place to himself. He sat on the floor of the hotel room, his massive shoulders hunched over the small portable as he tapped out commands very carefully with the tips of his strong fingernails.

  Coming across an interesting item in a chip on basic genetics, he opened a file he’d named My Cure. The file was a collection of notes that intrigued him. He typed:

  Humans, pure and metahuman, have forty-six chromosomes in their bodies. During reproduction one of the chromosomes of each pair from the mother and the father form the genetic code for a new person. Independent assortment produces 223 kinds of sex cells. The potential number of DNA combinations is even larger than this, because genes on the chromosomes may be exchanged during meiosis.

  That’s 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible people all from the same act of sex.

  Imagine that.

  He picked up his big gnarled hand and looked at it. Inside his flesh, he knew, were his genes. And somehow, out of 2,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 possible combinations, his mom and dad had passed on the genes to become a troll.

  Peter stood up and crossed to the window. Outside he saw a man walking up and down the street. He’d been there all morning. Every so often some ragged-looking pure human or ork showed up and talked with the man for a few minutes. Chip deals on a fine spring morning. Two years ago Peter wouldn’t have guessed what was going on. Chip dealers and chipheads wouldn’t have been part of his field of thoughts. Now he’d forgotten almost everything he’d once learned in school, and he was alert to the scoop on the streets.

  He felt his rage rising again. He didn’t want to know about hallucinogenic sense-chips and prostitutes and the conditions of prison cells throughout Cook County. He wanted to be the old Peter Clarris again, contemplating abstract theories of molecular biology in the safe, pristine classrooms of a well-respected university.

  These thoughts made him want to hit something.

  But what was there to hit? It was his own body that had betrayed him, dumped him into the minorities known as metahumans.

  So he punched himself.

  He balled his hands into fists, slamming himself in the face over and over.

  He hit himself so many times that his face began to go numb, and through the stinging numbness, he felt a kind of pleasure, a sense of, “Well, at least I can still feel.”

  He smiled, as he always did after one of these assaults on himself. He invariably felt better afterward, and usually couldn’t remember at all the reason, the deep, non-verbal reason, why he’d wanted to punch himself in the first place. He heard the door open, and turned quickly toward the window so Eddy wouldn’t see his face.

  “We, we, we, made out like bandits.”

  “We are bandits,” Peter said without turning.

  “What is it?” Eddy and Peter had been together too long for the other man not to know the signs.

  “Nothing.”

  “Yes, yes, yes. Something. You’re not upset with the work, with the work, with the work, are you?”

  Peter turned. “No.” He gestured to the portable on the floor. “It’s going fine. I was just thinking about it when you came in.”

  Eddy laughed, a hissing kind of noise. “No, no. ‘The Work.’ Our work. When we go out and gather things. It’s not bothering you, is it?”

  “No.”

  “Good, ’cause today I spoke to someone about expanding our operations.”

  “You what!”

  Eddy rushed over to Peter. “Hey, hey, hey, take it easy. I just wanted to see if we might—”

  “No. No one else.” Peter rubbed his hands over his face. Things were moving too quickly. A flood of regret washed over him, and he wondered, not for the first time, how Eddy had talked him into the business of stealing in the first place.

  “We can make more money. We we we can get access to better fences. Better connections. Safer operations. They can pay better.”

  “No, Eddy,” Peter growled.

  Eddy jumped back in surprise. He rubbed his hands together and licked his lips. “Now, Peter. Peter. No need…. I think you’re not quite seeing. Seeing. Seeing the opportunity. Here.” He gestured to the portable. “What you have here, this is fine. But tell me honest. Aren’t you going to need more? For your research project. You’re you’re bright…. smartest troll I ever met, truth, truth, but no one’s going to take you in. You’re on your own, aren’t you? And nothing’s going to change that. Except me. I make you not alone. And I can help you get what you need. I may not understand what you’re up to. Up to. I don’t. I don’t understand what you’re up to. But I know that it’s going to take more than a few hundred dollars a week. Right? Right?”

  Eddy was right. Peter needed access to expensive computer time, research papers that only a few people had. “Who?” he asked quietly. “Who did you talk to?”

  Eddy raised his hands and clapped them together. “Now, that’s that’s that’s more like it.”

  They walked down the street.

  Eddy had bought a new leather jacket for the occasion. He said he wanted to come off as someone who was used to action, moving in and out of places quickly. Peter wore some beat-up fatigues he’d found in a used-clothing store, just like the kind he’d once seen the ork wear. He felt awkward in these clothes, as though they labeled him the wrong way, but he couldn’t think of any other style to wear, any other way of presenting himself. And Eddy had made it clear that on the streets you needed a front, an image that would tag you as someone with power and someone who should be left alone.

  “Now remember, don’t let on that you’re smart…”

  “I’m not smart.”

  “Whatever. Don’t let on. You come off smart at all, and the deal’s off. People like things simple. A guy is like this. A woman is like that. He’s a boxer, so he’s stupid. She’s beautiful, so she’s selfish. Selfish.” Eddy gestured to his head. “People people people don’t like to think. They don’t want to have to carry carry too much in their heads. Cops. Cops ain’t all bad, but they bust on you because it’s easier to bust on you than worry about whether you deserve it. They see you, a troll, you’re str
ong, you’re scary, you’re stupid.” He quickly raised his hand. “That’s what they want to see. You come off smart, that’s too much for them to handle. They don’t trust you ’cause they don’t know what you’re going to do next.”

  Peter thought about it and saw that it made sense. Kind of. He’d go along with Eddy. For a while.

  Up ahead a pink marquee with green letters proclaimed The Crew. As Peter and Eddy entered the club in the mid-afternoon, they saw orks on their hands and knees, scrubbing up spilled liquor from the previous night’s revelries. Their broad, round faces reminded Peter of something… a Flemish painting gone awry. He almost connected with them, with their pain and frustration; with their lack of hope of being anything more than near-slaves scrubbing floors and living in roach-infested city housing projects. But he killed the impulse immediately.

  Two young punks, Orientals, dressed in expensive silk suits, sat by double doors leading into the dance area. One of them had a portable flatscreen in his lap. The other touched his companion on the arm when he noticed Peter and Eddy. The two men got up, their faces like stone, so similar in their immobility that Peter thought they were brothers.

  “We’re here to see Billy,” Eddy said. One of the punks nodded and pointed to stairs leading up to the right.

  “Thanks,” said Eddy, and he and Peter went up the stairs.

  At the top of the stairs they came to a waiting area with chairs set along one wall. Across the room from the chairs was a frosted glass window.

  A man sat in one of the chairs, and he stood when they entered the room. He was middle-aged, with a potbelly and the jowls of a bulldog. When he moved, his leather jacket opened slightly and Peter glimpsed a pistol in a holster. The man eyed Peter suspiciously.

  Eddy stopped walking and raised his arms overhead. The man stepped up to him and patted Eddy down. He nodded, then turned to Peter.

  Peter didn’t raise his arms right away. The thought of someone searching him was offensive, reminding him too much of run-ins with cops. But seeing Eddy’s pleading, desperate glance, he relented.

  The man did a thorough job on Peter, taking much more time than he had with Eddy. He pressed hard, prodded, and Peter was certain the man was trying to provoke him.

  After patting a pocket of Peter’s jacket, he suddenly stopped and said, “Hold it.”

  Peter froze, unsure what was going on. He looked to Eddy, but Eddy’s glance showed equal bafflement.

  The man reached into Peter’s pocket and pulled out three chips. Peter rolled his eyes up, furious at himself. He’d slipped the chips into his pocket when he’d been working earlier. “What the hell’s this?” the man said. “Meta…” he said, sounding out the words. “Metahuman Correlative Neuroanatomy? You reading this stuff?” Peter saw a thick layer of ignorance over the man’s red face. He probably hadn’t read much past fifth grade. Today maybe he read the sports pages and perhaps a menu at a restaurant.

  Peter smiled weakly. “No.”

  “Then what are you doing with these?”

  “He was holding holding holding them for me. I rolled some guy yesterday. He had them on him,” said Eddy.

  “But why does he have them?”

  “I like the pictures,” said Peter.

  “What?”

  “I like the pictures.”

  “The diagrams,” Eddy added. “He likes to read chips on science, because he likes the pictures. I call him the Profezzur.” Eddy laughed, and the man joined in. Peter decided to play the man for a fool, looked from Eddy to the man with an expression of utter bafflement, then laughed also, as if he didn’t get the joke but felt obliged to pretend he did. This made me potbellied man laugh even harder.

  A strange good humor filled Peter’s chest. If Eddy was right and he had to appear stupid, at least he could take comfort in knowing that he was really only playing on the stupidity of others.

  The man dropped the chips back into Peter’s pocket and soon the laughter died away. He quickly finished patting Peter down, and opened the door for them.

  “Billy, the guy and the Profezzur are here.” The man laughed once again as Peter and Eddy passed by him. Once they were in, Peter heard the man’s idiot laugh even through the closed door.

  Billy was in his late twenties, a man with the eyes of a hustler, but the face of an angel. He was beautiful, his features sleek and gentle, a face women loved. Even Peter felt drawn to it. It was a face of the blessed. Peter discovered that he wanted to please Billy, just so someone so good-looking would favor him with approval.

  Not only that, Billy wore a beautiful suit. It caught the light and changed colors when he moved. Dressed in his own baggy fatigues, Peter felt ridiculous in the other man’s presence.

  “Profezzur?” Billy said, his head cocked to one side.

  “Yeah,” said Eddy. “That’s what I call him. He likes to make pretend he can read chips about science. Show him, Prof.”

  Peter reached into his pockets and pulled out his chips and placed them on Billy’s desk. As he leaned toward Billy, he put on his foolish grin. He added a bit of bashfulness, too, quickly looking away when Billy caught his eye. Throwing a quick glance at Eddy, Peter saw that his friend had covered his mouth with one hand, hiding a smile brought on by Peter’s act. Peter felt very proud of himself and very clever.

  Billy picked up the chips and smiled. “Well. Well, well, well. You read a lot of science?”

  “I like the pictures.”

  Billy turned to Eddy and he and Eddy shared a laugh.

  “Hmmm. That’s very interesting. But what I’ve asked you and Eddy here for… It’s come to my organization’s attention that you two seem to know how to work merchandise.”

  “Your organization?” Peter asked innocently. He didn’t know if it was prudent to take control of the conversation, but he guessed his assumed naďveté allowed him some latitude.

  “Itami’s gang. We’re just beginning to expand. We’ve heard good things about you chummers.”

  “When do we start?” Peter asked, full of innocence. He had a good feeling about the setup. Room for growth. More money. More chips.

  “Well, frankly, I hadn’t decided yet. How about if we take you on for a while? Give us time to get used to each other.”

  “I’ve got a job I think you’d like,” put in Eddy.

  “Really?”

  “Really. Listen…”

  Eddy outlined the job.

  He wanted to knock over a shipment coming in to the University of Chicago. The shipment consisted of the hides of three griffins. Eddy had gotten a lead on a group of mages who would pay eighty thousand apiece for the hides. “We can sell sell sell to this group for a clean two hundred and forty grand, or we can bid out, with a base bid of two hundred and fifty. It’ll take about fifty grand to set up the whole deal. Not a lot compared to what Itami wants to make… But it’ll be good seed cash. Cash.”

  “They want that stuff?” asked Billy, amused and interested.

  “Oh, yeah. It’s got magic in it. It. It. It focuses whatever it is they do or something. Look. Look. I really don’t know why they want it. They’re all mages, neh?” He laughed, and Billy politely joined in “But they want it. And we can get it for them.”

  “All right,” Billy said, his hustler’s eyes shining. “I like this. What do you need?”

  9

  When they got a block away from The Crew, Peter began shouting, “What was that? What was that? Robbing a shipment of magic hides? There’ll be guards. Guns. Big, big guns. If it’s worth a quarter of a million dollars, there’ll be enough protection to guard a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of merchandise. This isn’t our league. We shouldn’t be doing this! What are you doing?”

  Eddy looked up at him, incredulous and somewhat hurt. “We’re switching leagues, Prof. That’s the whole point. Point. I mean… I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I put in a lot of time just finding out about this shipment. And then more more more time into making sure there
was a buyer. I thought you wanted to do this.”

  “I did. I mean. I thought we’d do the same thing for the gang. I didn’t think we’d try something like this.”

  “But, Peter, this is just some flash to kick us off. Off. Off. If we do it, we’ll be in tight on the ground level of their operation. More money, more power. And things’ll be easier. The guys at the top, they tell people people what to do. That’s what we want.”

  “Eddy, nobody will ever let me tell them what to do.”

  Eddy grinned up at Peter. “You don’t know how it works yet, sonny. Stick with me. I’ll get you there.”

  They had two weeks to get everything ready. The whole thing made Peter nervous, and he didn’t want any part of setting it up. “Just tell me where to go,” he said.

  Eddy smiled at him and said, “Running.” So Eddy went out every day to case the site of the heist. He came back at night and reported who he had bribed. Because he knew some of the guards couldn’t be bribed, he hired a decker to break into the airport computer system in order to shuffle the security shifts to place only Eddy’s men on duty the night of the heist.

  “See,” Eddy said, “no guns. No killing.”

  “I don’t want to hear about it. Just tell me what I have to do.”

  Two days before the heist, on a Wednesday, Eddy came home early, his arms full of Japanese take-out.

  “So, how’s the research going?”

  “Fine,” Peter said, glancing up from his portable. He was certain Eddy was about to tell him all the things he’d done that day to set up the job.

  Instead Eddy began laying out food on the table and said, “No, really. Really. How’s it going? Tell me more stories. Hungry?”

  The smell of the food drew Peter—sushi and noodles and spiced rice and fish. It made his mouth water. He still thought Eddy was leading him on, but as long as he could eat…