by John Helfers
‘‘Do I take you on all at once or one at a time?’’ he asked and laughed, knowing he only had the small caliber sidearm in his belt to defend himself. ‘‘Why are all of you dressed like Herschel on ‘Muddy Flats’?’’ he asked, citing a popular hologram program that mocked rural folk from the twentieth century. ‘‘Any of you married to each other?’’
Samuel was fortunate that a man with silver hair and wearing a heavy blue wool suit more appropriate to the Highlands of Scotland than to the desert of eastern Oregon strode into the circle of armed men and told them step back.
‘‘He is no doubt here to see me,’’ said the man, who was as thin as a scarecrow and moved with excruciatingly straight steps. ‘‘Frisk him, then we’ll go to my office.’’
One of the men in coveralls patted Samuel Butler down, found the pistol in Sam’s belt, and handed it to the man in the blue suit.
‘‘We haven’t even been introduced,’’ Samuel said the man searching him. ‘‘Don’t get any ideas,’’ he said as the man patted Sam’s pants. ‘‘I’m not that kind of fellow.’’
‘‘You aren’t as amusing as you think, sir,’’ said the man with the silver hair. ‘‘Come on. I’ll give you your gun back when we’ve had our conversation.’’
He conducted Samuel to a white frame house in the middle of the town. Inside the unimposing structure were shelves of books and a workstation holding half a dozen computer terminals. The precisely moving man asked Sam to take a chair in front of his work desk.
‘‘Before you tell me why you are here, sir,’’ said the man, ‘‘we need to know who you are.’’
‘‘What’s your name, boss?’’ asked Sam.
‘‘Mr. Jones,’’ said the man in the suit.
‘‘Then you can call me Mr. Smith,’’ said Sam.
Mr. Jones stretched the straight line that was his mouth a little farther, which was his manner of smiling.
‘‘Sir, we can do this the easy way; i.e., you tell me your birth name and your Universal Union Citizen Identification Number. Or, second option, I can knock you out with a microwave beam and scan your palm print into my computer to match your prints against those in the government’s files. Your choice.’’
‘‘Citizen Samuel Kent Cutler, UUC ID 786-755- 9356,’’ said Sam, and Mr. Jones typed the name and number into his computer.
Seconds later, row upon row of information appeared on Mr. Jones’ computer screen, and none of it was flattering to Sam.
‘‘You’re a thief, Mr. Cutler,’’ noted Mr. Jones. ‘‘Good God, your arrest record goes on and on.’’
‘‘I’ve long felt that thief is a very negative term,’’ said Sam. ‘‘I’m only somebody unlucky enough to be arrested forty-two times. It’s a sign of the latent discrimination society still has for my Irish ancestors. By the by, do you call everybody ‘Mr.’ instead of ‘citizen’?’’
‘‘We have quaint ways here in the Steens Mountain Association,’’ said Mr. Jones. ‘‘Someone in the year 2110 needs to uphold the old social niceties. No one else will. But I do not think we can help you, Mr. Cutler, as we do not extend our services to criminals.’’
‘‘I’ve got money,’’ said Sam, and undid the belt the farmer who frisked him had failed to check; from inside the belt’s hidden side he produced five gold coins minted in South Africa. ‘‘This is just a little of my stash,’’ he said and held the coins out to Mr. Jones. ‘‘I can give you ten times more than this after the job is done.’’
Mr. Jones frowned at the money and said: ‘‘We in the Association have plenty of gold already. We are not going to help you commit another felony.’’
While huddling around a fire in hobo jungles or during bull sessions held in prison courtyards, Sam had heard the stories others told of the Steens Mountain Association, of how the group, living way out in the western desert, had mastered the creation of small reactors using something called Helium III, and thus could make electrical weapons that were more powerfulthan any in the world. The stories had it that the Steens Mountain Association was so dangerous the government left them alone, so long as the Association did not interfere in the government’s work. The stories also said the Association would sometimes, for a price, help individuals who were in a particularly bad bind.
‘‘Let’s start this again,’’ said Sam, forcing himself to smile at the dour Mr. Jones. ‘‘I got this out of a newspaper,’’ he said and took a folded piece of paper from his shirt pocket.
‘‘There are no newspapers anymore,’’ said Mr. Jones, reluctantly taking the paper in hand. ‘‘You’re too young even to remember them.’’
‘‘Electronic newspaper, then,’’ suggested Sam. ‘‘Is everyone out here so particular about language?’’
‘‘Which organization put this out?’’ asked Mr. Jones, scanning the page.
‘‘The United People’s Voice in Good Person Louis,’’ said Sam.
‘‘We still call it ‘Saint’ Louis out our way,’’ said Mr. Jones. ‘‘An affection for the old names is another of our quaint ways. This is an item retelling how you were arrested by a Mr. Jonathan Savage and brought in front of a local magistrate for stealing two hundred pounds of Japanese silk from a ladies’ dress shop four months ago. You are out of jail this soon, a man with your record?’’
‘‘A man can always bribe his way to freedom,’’ confessed Sam. ‘‘Now, this guy Savage—’’
‘‘That’s surely not a real name,’’ commented Mr. Jones.
‘‘I bet ‘Mr. Jones’ isn’t all that real either.’’
‘‘You aren’t in a position to make wagers on anything,’’ said Mr. Jones. ‘‘But you were going to say something about this Mr. Savage.’’
‘‘He’s also been called Jon Watson, Jon Cotton, Jon Wilde, Jon Collins, Jon—’’
‘‘Wait!’’ interrupted Mr. Jones. ‘‘Go back. You say Jonathan Savage is also known as Jonathan Collins, the man the media call the Denver Dog? The fellow responsible for arresting Wild Bill Martin?’’
‘‘The one and the same,’’ said Sam. ‘‘He operates in twenty different cities ’cause all the gangs cooperate with him. You and he ever cross paths?’’
‘‘No,’’ said Mr. Jones and shook his head in the negative. ‘‘And what you suggest about the gangs is nonsense: they never cooperate with anyone, especially with each other; it is a point of honor among them. To work in so many cities, your Mr. Savage would have to be working for the government. He is, if my memory serves me correctly, a thief catcher, a sort of bounty hunter who makes a living out of bringing in criminals the police can’t collar.’’
‘‘On the surface, he is,’’ said Sam. ‘‘The fact is he’s the biggest crook of them all. His racket is setting folks up in some sort of scheme, he collects whatever gets stolen, and then he arrests the folks he sent out to do the stealing, collects a reward for a crime he planned, and he also gets a reward for returning the stolen goods. What kind of creep does that?’’
‘‘Many of these so-called thief catchers play both sides of the law,’’ said Mr. Jones. ‘‘Nothing you say concerning this Mr. Savage—or whatever his real name is—none of this surprises me. You were foolish to have trusted him, and I still see nothing here that would interest our organization.’’
Samuel Cutler had only one more trick in his hand. He prayed—to which God, it is not clear—that the rumors he had heard were true and the ploy would suffice to bring Mr. Jones over to his side.
‘‘Would you care if I told you Savage has an associate you might want to get your hands on?’’ Sam asked.
‘‘We are not the police, sir,’’ said Mr. Jones. ‘‘We take a case only when there is an innocent victim, and when that victim can pay. You can merely pay.’’
‘‘He works for the Green Man,’’ blurted out Sam. ‘‘Now what do you say?’’
Mr. Jones let forth a burst of grim laughter.
‘‘You’ve been listening to some gimcrack stories,’’ he said. ‘‘There is no such being as the Green Man. He is a will o’ the wisp, a chimera, a tale your gangster friends tell each other, as the Green Man is everything they wish they were.’’
‘‘ ‘Green grow the lilacs all covered with dew,’ ’’ recited Sam. ‘‘ ‘I’m lonely, my darling, since parting with you. But by our next meeting I hope to prove true—’ ’’
‘‘So you know an old song,’’ said Mr. Jones, no longer amused, for he recognized the ancient song as one the Green Man used as a code signal to his followers throughout the world whenever a major crime was about to take place. ‘‘That doesn’t mean you can produce this creature.’’
‘‘But I do have your attention now, don’t I?’’ said Sam, noting the change in Mr. Jones’ demeanor.
Sam would not have been surprised that a week later Mr. Jones, now dressed in one of the gray, unisex jumpsuits most lower middle class men were wearing that year, was sitting in a Denver flophouse and awaiting a phone call from someone he hoped would be Jon Savage. The day before Mr. Jones had sent a voice message to a number listed on an electronic kiosk, a number Samuel Cutler had told him was one of the five Savage always used in his operations. Mr. Jones dared not lie on the bed for fear of contact with the vermin that had taken up residence there, and he did not turn on the room’s hologram projector because he cared less for the programs it received than he did for the fleas and lice living elsewhere in the room. To pass the time Mr. Jones read from a koine edition of Plutarch’s Lives or went to the window to watch the traffic on Colfax Street. When he did gaze outside, he beheld a typical urban scene of giant armored personnel carriers taking the wealthy and the government bureaucrats from their downtown offices to their dachas in the countryside and he also saw the thousands of workers going home on their motor scooters and self-propelled rickshaws and the tens of thousands of poor slogging to nowhere in particular on foot through the winter darkness. The skyscraper immediately across the street, which was decorated with the popular Neo-Assyrian motifs of stone lions and dragons, was that evening displaying the projected image of a beautiful geisha, who was slowly dancing about a large fuel pump marked Imperial Diesel. The words projected above the geisha’s head explained that Imperial Diesel was superior to all of its competitors because it alone was made entirely from organic peanuts, nature’s natural energy source.
‘‘ ‘Nature’s natural,’’’ thought Mr. Jones and despaired over the condition of the English language, which had fallen with the rest of the Universal Union into very hard names. ‘‘Yet no one seems to notice,’’ thought Mr. Jones and looked into the enchanting almond eyes of the geisha.
At that moment he heard the soft beeps of both the sensors in the hall outside his door and the one in the window, indicating the presence of nitrogen-based munitions in both directions. Mr. Jones stepped away from the window and switched on the generator in his pocket. At once the room filled with a blinding white light, and everyone and everything within two hundred meters of the room slowed to a dead stop when struck by the microwaves transmitted from the grid within the cloth of Mr. Jones’ suit. The armed men outside his door felt only a prickly heat on their skins before they passed out. The grenade launcher across Colfax fired prematurely when its computer chips short circuited, and the grenade itself looped into the street, leaving a trail of smoke behind it, before it exploded in the middle of a stunned host of pedestrians and killed a score of innocents.
Mr. Jones turned off his pocket reactor and tossed his belongings into a bag. The men outside his room were still stunned when he ran out the door, so stunned were they then and for the next hour Mr. Jones could pause and lift the mask off each man he came upon, as he searched for the wide, fair face of Sam Cutler among the would-be assassins. He stopped at seven different men, but none of them was Cutler.
Outside, there were more explosions and gunshots beyond the area the microwaves had reached. Something more than an attempted assassination, something Mr. Jones had not expected, was unfolding on the streets of Denver. Most of the violence, as well as he could tell from a quick glance, appeared to be directed at the large personnel carriers and the armored cars, all of which held wealthy passengers. The immediate crowd Mr. Jones entered was still stunned from the microwave burst, but several men dressed in forest-green shirts—the informal uniform of the Green Man sect—charged into the mass of semiconscious people and fired their automatic pistols point-blank at anyone in their way. Mr. Jones hit his fusion reactor a second time and stopped the green-clad thugs in their tracks. He checked the faces of these newly fallen men as he had the faces of the men inside the flophouse. Again, none of them was familiar.
Down the street Mr. Jones could see even more men in green shirts attacking other armored cars and the flickers of light that were the bodyguards of the wealthy returning fire. Rather than linger near the place where he had nearly been murdered, Mr. Jones walked cautiously toward the parking garage in which he had left his car. When he was approximately three hundred meters from that building, he switched on his reactor again, clearing the ground ahead of him of potential killers up to a few meters of his automobile. He hit another button, turning on the reactor inside the car itself, which broadcast microwaves in an area about fifty meters around the parked machine. Mr. Jones thus avoided short-circuiting the electrical systems within his auto and also set off an explosive device someone had planted in the garage elevator. Once inside the vehicle, Mr. Jones turned on the machine’s second and more powerful reactor, causing the entire car to glow like an incandescent lamp, a lamp that put to sleep everything human or mechanical in its vicinity. Using the vehicle’s four terrestrial wheels, Mr. Jones drove into the chaos of Colfax Avenue, weaving his way past stalled conveyances and the piles of unconscious humanity. At the first open space of several hundred meters, he turned on the car’s hover rotors, lifted off the pavement, and soon thereafter entered the darkened sky. Glancing down as he rose, he saw fires breaking out in hundreds of different places in the city, as if Denver were a vast, sun-baked prairie suddenly set ablaze by countless bolts of summer lightning.
Half an hour later, safely parked within the dead shelterbelt of an abandoned farm thirty miles east of the city, Mr. Jones dialed the only number Samuel Cutler had given him. The receiver on the other end of the call, whatever and wherever it was, rang five times, then played a recorded message, a familiar song that began:
The Green Man, whom none can see,
Has left the world behind him,
I know him well, he speaks to me,
Yet no one can find him.
Mr. Jones had heard th
e tune before when it was played on one of the pirate radio stations the Green Man sect operated from hidden places deep in the countryside. He decided that hearing it again did not improve his opinion of the song. The recording asked him to leave a message at the beep after the song, and Mr. Jones said:
‘‘I may not be able to find the Green Man— presuming there is a person known as such—but finding you, Mr. Cutler, is not going to be that difficult.’’
Thus it was that three months later Sam Cutler awoke expecting to be in the holding cell of the Good Person Louis’ Justice and Retribution Center and insteadfound himself lying in a sunny field somewhere in rural Missouri. His head was racked with pain. With a grunt, he sat upright and simultaneously became aware of someone standing beside him, a tall, slender man with silver hair and dressed in a heavy blue suit.
‘‘Jonesie!’’ exclaimed Sam Cutler, trying to put a happy tone to what was not a happy situation. ‘‘I didn’t expect to see you again. Where’s the rest of the jail?’’
‘‘Oh, we never give up seeking anyone who had tried to kill a member of our Association,’’ said Mr. Jones, crouching on his heels to speak to Sam. ‘‘In your case, we only had to wait till you were arrested again. We have access to all police files, you know. As for the guards and inmates you were with back in St. Louis, they are awaking from a deep sleep just now. I knocked them out when I did the same to you, although you were the only one I took with me.’’
