by John Zakour
“No. Roundtree said that the hit man was hard to understand. He thought it was a poor communication line but the hit man couldn’t say ‘kill.’ And the kid with the flowers, he told the police that he got them from someone who said that the flowers would ‘sway Sexy.’ It was a joke. It wasn’t sway the killer was saying it was …”
“Slay,” HARA said.
“It’s Lusty, HARA. Lusty’s the hit man. I mean hit woman.”
“Assassin,” HARA said. “And that’s a shame, because right now she has a meat cleaver in her hand.”
“Let Tony know,” I said. “And let him know that we’re taking her out.”
The “Love Cutlets” production number was a crowd favorite with its flying meat, flashing cleavers, and undulating dancers. Tonight was no different, except for the fact that, if I didn’t act soon, it was going to end with some real butchering.
“HARA, do you remember the guy whose leg I broke?”
“You’re going to have to give me more to go on, Zach,” HARA said. “There have been so many over the years.”
“The dancer the other night.”
“Oh, him,” she said.
“Throw a hologram of his image over me,” I said. “I’m going onstage.”
“You understand, of course, that a hologram won’t help your dancing abilities, right?”
“HARA!”
She shrugged and put the holographic disguise of the dancer over me. No one seemed to notice me as I stepped onstage, which is a good thing, because the sight of the fifty thousand screaming people stopped me dead in my tracks. I could actually feel the force of their screams pressing against me like a strong wind. The stage floor was shaking from the music and the heat from the spotlights was so intense I felt like a soy burger in the McMunchies warming tray. It was simply overwhelming.
“Zach?” HARA whispered. “Zach, snap out of it.”
I fought back the stage fright and began moving slowly across the stage. One of the security people at the foot of the stage looked my way and furrowed his brow. I quickly looked away and started bobbing my head in a desperate effort to find the beat.
“Nice cover job, Zach,” HARA whispered. “No one’s going to notice the background dancer who can’t dance.”
I carefully made my way over to where Misty, Sissy, and Lusty were dancing a couple of meters behind Sexy. All three of them (and the men with whom they were dancing) did double takes when they saw me approach but they kept up with the dance, if a little more awkwardly now.
Lusty was on the end of the dance line and I moved closer to her as she danced in front of one male dancer, bumping and grinding her hips against him. I wiggled next to them and tried to match their movements as best I could.
“Not the twist, Zach,” HARA pleaded. “Anything but the twist.”
The entire group of dancers, as one, moved to the left, but I caught Lusty’s hand and pulled her toward me as the others continued on. She shimmied alongside me, improvising as I leaned close to her.
“Don’t do it, Lusty,” I said.
“What?”
“I know what you’re planning,” I said. “Don’t do it.”
“Zach?”
“It’s not too late. You can turn back now.”
And turn back she did, only not in the way I had hoped. She attacked almost quicker than I could see, spinning around cleanly and swinging the cleaver in her hand at my neck. I brought my arm up and blocked the swing but the blade sank deep into my forearm, lodging itself in my body armor (not my flesh, thankfully) but hurting like hell nonetheless.
I fought off the pain and forced back any regrets I had about hitting a woman, then sent a left jab at her face. It was as quick as I could muster but she avoided it easily. I followed quickly with a right. She saw that coming as well and sidestepped it. Then she pulled me close and sent her knee into my crotch, then gave me a left jab and right cross to the face that knocked me to the floor. I later learned that Lusty was a minor psi as well. She had precog abilities allowing her to see a second or two into the future. That gave her a nice edge in a fistfight.
The fight had happened too quickly for anyone to notice. The crowd’s attention was firmly on Sexy and the others who were on the opposite side of the stage. So few people, if anyone, saw me go down. And only I, from my position on the floor, saw Lusty pull the laser knife from her boot and shimmy her away across the stage as the music began to crescendo.
I got to my knees as the holographic disguise dissipated. There was no time for subtlety now. I scrambled to my feet and launched myself at Lusty. She was close to Sexy now, whose back was still turned, caught up in her song and dance. Lusty ignited the laser knife and its electronic red blade flashed three hundred centimeters out from the handle. Everyone saw it now, Misty, Sissy, the musicians, even the crowd. Everyone saw the blade but Sexy, who was too caught up in herself to see her own death fast approaching.
“Lusty, don’t,” I yelled.
Lusty put a hand on Sexy’s shoulder and Sexy turned around, confused and annoyed. She saw the knife in Lusty’s hand and still didn’t understand what was happening. The music stopped, the crowd went silent and every media person in the arena began writing their lead for the next news cycle.
It was clear to me then that this wasn’t just a job to Lusty. It was personal. She wanted Sexy to see her death coming. And she wanted to watch Sexy die and make sure that Sexy knew who had ended her life.
But she never got the chance.
I leaped at Lusty from behind and this time she was too caught up in the work at hand to foresee it. I grabbed her knife hand just as she started to bring the blade down. We tumbled to the floor and rolled across the stage, each of us wrestling for control of the weapon. She head butted me hard in the face (which I wasn’t expecting) and then kneed me again in the groin (which I guess I really should have expected). I lost my grip on the knife and she quickly grabbed it. Then she rolled on top of me and raised the blade high over her head, giving her, she hoped, enough momentum to pierce my armor. I popped my gun into my hand and was just about to pull the trigger when Lusty froze in mid-swing. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and she tumbled off me, falling unconscious to the stage floor and curled into a fetal position.
I looked up and saw Carol standing on the stage, a little smile flaring the corners of her mouth.
“Hi, Tio.” Her words echoed in my head.
“You gave her a psi blast, huh?” I asked.
“I couldn’t have her putting a hole in my favorite uncle now, could I?”
The crowd that had gone silent a nano ago now began to applaud. Carol smiled, turned toward the audience, and gave them a little bow.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Sexy shouted into her mike, “please welcome my ub-zeenly old school bodyguard Zachary Nixon Johnson!”
The crowd applauded and I waved.
“And my double-xette and backup dancer, Carol Gevada!”
The crowd went wild. Tony’s men slapped the cuffs on the still unconscious Lusty and dragged her off the stage. The musicians took their places to finish the concert and I turned away, hoping to get off the stage as quickly as possible. I actually began to think that we were on our way to a happy ending.
You’d think that I’d have learned by now never to think that.
44
Things turned very ugly very quickly. Things have a way of doing that around me and I’m beginning to take it personally. It started suddenly but innocently (or so I thought). Everyone in the audience was applauding. And everyone onstage was happy and smiling. Then the stage lights dimmed dramatically and a blood red spotlight cut the darkness. The intensity of the light was so great that I feared at first that it was a giant laser and, in retrospect, that would have been much better. The light did no damage when it first hit the stage, it simply enveloped Carol. That’s when I noticed that the beam of light was the same shade of red as the projector beam from Smiles’ meditation chamber.
“Uh oh,” H
ARA said, appearing beside me.
“What is it?” I asked.
“The radiation level of the area just shot up.”
“Oh, that can’t be good.”
Carol stood motionless in the red beam and let it wash over her, actually lifting her head upward as though she wanted to feel the light on her face. Then she stretched her arms out wide and rose into the air.
“Carol!”
I ran to her but the heat from the beam was so intense that I couldn’t get close. And yet somehow Carol was safe inside it.
“It’s an oversized version of the meditation chamber,” HARA shouted. “It’s supercharging Carol’s power.”
“Where’s Smiles?”
“Right here, Johnson!”
Sammy Smiles strode onto the stage with the swagger of a conquering headliner. His orange suit was smeared with blood from his broken nose and split lip but, even though his teeth looked like a picket fence after a cattle stampede, he was smiling so widely that his cheeks were messing up his hair.
“Did you think I’d let Sexy just walk away from me? Did you really think I’d let her go without getting a replacement?”
“What are you doing to Carol?”
“She’s not Carol anymore,” he sneered. “She’s the new Sexy. Better and more powerful than ever before!”
He pushed a button on his wrist interface and the spotlight on Carol cut out. She fell to the stage floor with a thump, landing on her hands and knees.
“Carol!”
I rushed to her and helped her to her feet. She seemed weak and a little shaken, but otherwise intact.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said, shaking the cobwebs from her head.
A sort of distant look came over her eyes and she stood straighter, looking around the arena as though seeing it for the first time.
“As a matter of fact, I feel great.”
And then the audience began to cheer. Not the polite applause of a happy ending or even the emotion-filled cheers of appreciation for an exciting show, but the wild, raucous cheers of ecstatic frenzy. The musicians began playing again, more vibrantly than before. Misty and Sissy and the dancers onstage slipped back into their routine. And Carol ran to the front of the stage, pointing at the crowd who screamed every time she moved. The concert had picked up right where it left off. Only Carol was fronting the show instead of Sexy. The fact that Carol wasn’t singing didn’t seem to matter to anyone. They loved it just the same. Carol blew a kiss at the crowd and the people in the first few rows (male and female alike) were so overwhelmed that they simply fainted.
Only Smiles, Sexy, HARA, and I were unaffected.
“What the DOS is going on?”
“It’s like they say, Johnson,” Smiles shouted. “The show must go on!”
“She’s not even singing!”
“She doesn’t need to,” HARA said inside my head. “Carol’s psionic power is so strong now that she can simply broadcast her thoughts directly into everyone’s heads. Everyone out there is hearing her thoughts and they’re loving it.”
“But I don’t hear anything!”
“You and Smiles are wearing psi-blockers. Sexy, having experienced Smiles’ treatments for many years already, has built up an immunity to this type of psionic broadcasting.”
“No way!” Sexy said angrily. “There is no way that my fans would forget about me this easily!”
“Believe it, Sexy,” Smiles yelled. “You’re not even a has-been now. You’re a never-was!”
Sexy picked up her microphone and ran to the front of the stage, trying to get in front of Carol. But Carol waved her hand and telekinetically swatted Sexy away like a fly. Sexy flew head over heels and landed on a pile of red satin pillows; angry and stunned but otherwise unhurt.
“I’m still hotter than her,” she shouted to no one in particular. “Aren’t I? Somebody please tell me that I’m hot!”
HARA and I meanwhile were still focused on Carol.
“Carol’s never had that kind of telekinetic power before,” I said.
“You’re right,” HARA said with a nod. “Frankly, I’m not sure she can control it.”
“She can’t,” Smiles shouted, his gap-toothed smile beaming like an Alfred E. Neuman lighthouse. “But I can. I’ve built safeguards into the technology that will allow me to control anything up to a level four psi.”
“But Carol’s a level six,” I said.
“No she’s not,” Smiles said. “She’s level one, class six.”
“She’s class one, level six!”
“Which classification measures potential again, class or level?”
“Level!”
“DOS,” he said. “I always get those mixed up. I swear they changed those around now and again.”
“Well,” said HARA, turning her gaze from Carol to the arena ceiling, “there’s an extremely good likelihood that you’ll never make that mistake again.”
“Why’s that?” he asked.
The walls of the arena began to shake, and the scream of tearing polymer and twisting metal overhead nearly drowned out the music as the roof of the arena began ripping itself apart.
“Because we’re all about to die, you idiot!” I shouted.
45
Carol had literally blown the roof off the arena. Her telekinetic power had peeled back the hundred kiloton metal and polymer roof of the structure like the lid of a sardine can. The wet night air swept into the Fart like a whirlwind as the music grew louder and the still entranced audience cheered more raucously.
“This isn’t right,” Smiles shouted, frantically punching the buttons on his wrist interface. “The technology should allow me to control her.”
“She’s too powerful for your gadgets,” I yelled.
Over the past few days, Smiles had surreptitiously given Carol the same kind of psionic enhancing treatments that he’d given Sexy for years. But while supercharging Carol’s abilities he had unknowingly broken down the natural power dampening barriers of her brain. He had thought that the technology he’d used to control Sexy’s power for so long would work on Carol as well. But where Sexy was a babbling brook, Carol was a raging sea and all Smiles had was a beaver dam and a leaky bucket. And now we were all going to pay for it.
“What have you done to my niece, Chico?”
I turned and saw Electra climbing onto the stage (elbowing screaming fans aside as she did so) and she was wearing a psi-blocker, for which I was very grateful, so she was in control of her own mind.
“Electra, what are you doing here?”
“HARA netted and told me that you needed me here, remember?”
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “In retrospect, I think that might have been a mistake.”
“What’s going on?”
“Long story. Right now we have to get these people out of the arena before Carol brings the whole place down.”
“Evacuating the arena won’t help,” HARA said.
“What do you mean?”
“Carol’s power is still increasing.”
“That can’t be. The red spotlight’s off.”
“Smiles’ augmentation treatments only began the process,” she said. “They lit the fuse.”
“Please don’t use that metaphor,” I pleaded. “Nothing good ever comes from you using a fuse/bomb metaphor.”
“Without the natural dampeners in her mind, Carol’s power is continuing to increase. This wind you feel isn’t a natural one. It’s telekinetic leakage and it’s only going to get stronger. In a few minutes she won’t be able to contain her power at all. She’ll hit critical mass.”
“What happens then?” Electra asked.
“Let’s just say it won’t really matter who becomes governor of California in the next election,” HARA said, “because there won’t be a California to govern.”
The wind was getting stronger, picking up debris and hurling it around the arena. The structure itself was groaning as its damaged supports bent and
swayed from the force of Carol’s power.
“How do we stop her?”
“Other than rebuilding the dampeners in her mind,” HARA said, “I have no idea.”
“Then how do we rebuild the dampeners?”
“We can’t,” HARA replied. “Carol has to do that herself. We have to convince her to do it.”
I took a step toward Carol and got hit with a blast of telekinetic wind that nearly blew me off my feet. I popped my gun into my hand and aimed directly at Carol, who stood motionless amid the fury.
“Tarzan.”
The cable flew out against the wind and latched onto the only secure thing in the entire arena, Carol herself, wrapping around her leg several times. I detached the cable from the gun muzzle, popped the gun back into my wrist holster, and held on for dear life.
“Electra, HARA, help me get close to her.”
Electra moved behind me and leaned into my back, propping me up against the wind. HARA became as solid as she could (her hands mostly) and began pushing as well. Together, we fought off the wind and took a couple steps toward Carol.
“You know,” Electra said, “this isn’t the way I imagined this going.”
“You do you mean?”
“I opened the box you gave me this afternoon at your house. You forgot about it after you had whatever epiphany it was about this case and ran off.”
“I said that was for later.”
“You give a girl a little black box then run off and you expect her not to open it?”
“He gave you a little black box?” HARA asked.
We were making our way through the telekinetic storm, baby step by baby step. The winds were lashing us but we were hunkered down low and held tightly to the cable; Electra and HARA lending their strength to mine.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I think you have great taste in rings.”
“He gave you a ring?” HARA shouted.
“It was my mother’s ring,” I said. “And her mother’s too, I think. I’m not really sure. My family history is a little spotty. I’m fairly certain that it’s not stolen, though. So what do you think? Do you want to make things official?”
