by Mark Lingane
He stood up, removed his shoulder holster from the back of his chair and put it on. He picked up his gun and waved it in the air. “They say that every time a level-niner dies another star appears in the sky.”
“Who?”
“Hmm?”
“Who says that?”
“Don’t know. I suppose those who pay the executioner’s bill.”
“There’s gonna be a sparkling constellation tonight,” said the assistant.
24
“THE PIZZA BOXES ARE gone,” observed Joshua. “And it looks like you’ve vacuumed the place. I can see the floor. Hallelujah.”
“I thought it was time for a change.” Damien started to pack his tools and prepare for the night. He put on black. Every inch of him was covered in black material except for his eyes.
Joshua thought he looked like a fat guy dressed all in black. “We’re not in the Far East, you know,” he said.
“I’m just getting into the spirit of it, that’s all. Jeez, I don’t know. What’s the world coming to when a guy can’t have his fun?”
“It’d probably be a safer place,” Joshua replied.
Damien looked at him sideways through narrowed eyes. “I just need to pack my stuff and we can be away into the pit of the night.” Damien’s sense of the melodramatic stopped at Meatloaf songs.
He picked up his two multi-meters, a keyboard, a curly lead, two pens, a pocket calculator, another curly lead, two ribbon leads, then another two, figuring it was better to be safe than sorry, two kettle plugs, a small satellite dish, two more pens, a credit card-sized plastic card, a retractable TV antenna, a small mirror, two cans of undisclosed soft drink (painted black), a pager, nylon thread, a modem, a hand-held scanner, several maps, a map holder, a small keypad with another ribbon lead, a copy of Computing Today, a small ultraviolet light, two small range-communication devices, a small motion detector, a not-so-small thermal printer, batteries, a battery recharger, a penlight, a can opener, a small LCD monitor, a Bunsen burner, a gas cylinder, and a small amount of rope. He turned slowly and looked in the mirror and, ever so gently, toppled over.
“So this is the Ninja of the modern day, is it?” Joshua said from his relatively safe location on the other side of the room. He was sitting forward, clasping his hands and gently rocking.
Damien hadn’t noticed Joshua’s disturbed state. “Shut up and give me a hand up,” he said.
With a great deal of effort Joshua levered Damien up from the gravitational force of his current destiny. “I think it might be wise to, maybe, leave some of this stuff behind,” he said.
“Possibly you’re right. I think it would be useful if I could move.”
“How are we going to get there?”
“We’ll walk.”
“Walk! Can’t we catch a bus or something?”
“Oh, you happen to know the bus timetables, do you?”
“Well, not really.”
“That’s OK. I don’t think bus drivers know them either.”
The two black-clad figures wandered.
“You know, I heard they use them at comedy conventions,” came a voice from behind the front door.
“What?”
“Bus timetables. They get a laugh all by themselves.” The voices were lost to the outside world.
“You know what I’ve always wondered about?” Damien said.
Joshua stopped his spectacularly bad whistling. “What?”
“How come when there are an infinite number available to them, bus numbers seem to be ridiculously crowded?”
“I think it’s a locality thing. On my travels I’ve noticed that places with a small population, and therefore a small number of buses, number the buses extraordinarily far apart. Like, they might have three buses numbered three, one twenty-eight, nine sixty-nine. Yet places with lots of busses seem to number them closer like sixteen, sixteen-A, N-sixteen-A, XN-sixteen-B, and so on.”
“Yeah. But why?”
“I don’t know. I think it’s one of those government things. It just happens with very little—or way too much—thought involved.” Joshua rocked back on his heels.
“I thought you said we weren’t going to catch a bus.”
“We’re not,” said Joshua.
“Oh.”
There was a pause as Joshua picked up his whistling.
Some cars zoomed past. The rain splashed against Damien’s chubby face.
This was one of the safer streets the sober inhabitants could parade down without the fear of mugging. It backed onto a large, dark parking lot. The streetlights were thin and dim enough for anyone wearing enough black to fade into the background without too much effort. Across the road were new service buildings selling the major survival groups: food, fuel, sex.
“Then why are we waiting at this bus stop dressed like this?” queried Damien.
“We’re establishing an alibi.”
“I get it. We wait for the bus then highjack it with this, this”—he looked around wildly, trying to find an object he could lift—“dangerous, fear-inducing, life-threatening banana peel.”
“No.”
“Well, what then?”
“Wait and see.”
After a short pause Damien asked, “Wait for how long?”
“Not long, soon,” responded Joshua
After another short pause, “How soon?”
“Soon enough.”
After another short pause, “How—”
“Stop it, Damien.”
“Sorry, I’m nervous.”
The two whittled away the minutes looking at the action on the street.
On the opposite side of the street a robo-policeman strode into a petrol station that was in the throes of being held up.
“Stop, or there will be … troble.”
The figure at the teller window spun around and leveled a shotgun at the advancing policeman, unsure what to make of the robot form glinting in the rain. “Ha! You’ll never get me alive, metal man.”
“Dead or alive, you’re coming with me.”
The hood’s mouth dropped open as he recognized the words. His eyes widened as the impossibility of it all sank in. “Hey, we killed you. You’re dead, man.”
The man started backing away from the metal cyborg. He raised the shotgun and fired two shots toward the robo-policeman. It recoiled from the impact and then paused for a few seconds as though it were thinking. Then the chromed crime fighter raised its own weapon, which seemed to be its entire arm. It fired a brief round of bullets from its hand and hit the hood in the shoulder, sending blood over the window behind him. The hood screamed and fired a return round. His shots went wide and hit a petrol pump next to the cop. It exploded, sending the cop sideways through a bus, overturning a car, and spilling two motorcyclists. The rest of the petrol pumps, presumably on some form of hair trigger, exploded, and the petrol station went skyward on top of a vaporizing cloud of fire and metal. Shrapnel rained from the sky, landing heavily on the street until all that was left was the debris, which made pinking noises as it cooled.
A heavily charred petrol pump attendant staggered out of the smoke, coughing and looking dazed. Not thinking as clearly as he should, he took out a cigarette and patted his pockets for a set of matches.
“There’s something you don’t see every day,” Damien said, picking his teeth.
“You’re right there,” replied Joshua. He glanced at his watch and righted himself from his slouching position against the bus stop. “Bus should be along any minute soon.”
The bus tore around the wreckage on the street and screeched, sliding for several meters on the damp streets, to a halt. The doors opened, revealing an empty bus.
Joshua took a step up into the bus and cleared his throat. “Er, excuse me.”
“Don’t shoot me!” shrieked an almost hysterical voice.
“Why can’t I see you?” Joshua asked.
“I’m hiding,” replied the invisible respondent.
“Who are you?”
“I’m the driver.”
“Shouldn’t you be in the driving seat?”
“Ah, that’s where you’d like me to be, isn’t it? So you can shoot me.”
“Where are you?” Joshua looked around, trying to see a place to hide in the shell of a vehicle.
“If I told you, you could shoot me.”
“Look, I don’t want to shoot you. All I want to know is if you’re heading uptown, toward Stibble Road.”
A pair of eyes appeared from beneath the change counter. “No. You need the 14A3X to the central station then catch the N14AD out along Stibble.” The voice was calmer now and was oscillating between the high octaves.
“Ah.” Joshua looked down into the crazed eyes. “Thank you and, er, good luck.” No sooner had he stepped back out onto the street than the bus tires were squealing and the bus was roaring off down the street.
“Strange fellow,” Joshua said. He shook his head. “All right, it’s off to the department we go.”
“But didn’t you ask the bus driver about Stibble Road?”
“Yes,” Joshua said, setting off in the opposite direction.
“Oh,” Damien said.
In the city, absolutely no one who was up to anything mischievous wore black. Joshua and Damien might as well have been wearing a sign saying: Arrest me. I’m about to do something illegal. But because the world is the way it is, doing something as stupid as dressing and acting suspiciously usually draws attention away from what you are actually doing, like getting everyone’s attention by juggling blazing torches and burning down the house while they are watching you. Usually.
“Excuse me, sir. Are we a little lost? Maybe on our way to a fancy-dress party or something?” said the policeman who had found out through a short but hopefully long and safe career that the best thing to do was pick on people who didn’t look like they were doing anything dangerous.
Damien didn’t have the best social or survival skills to make it in a big angry world, mainly because he didn’t know exactly what those skills might be. His instant reaction to the officer was guilt, as though he was a young children caught doing something he shouldn’t be doing. He turned bright red.
“No, officer, we’re not lost. Not at all. We’re on our way to, um, somewhere. Yes. Somewhere casual like.”
“Don’t I know you?” he said, looking suspiciously at Joshua.
“I don’t think so. Do you hang around gay bars?” Joshua said.
“No, I certainly do not. No, not at all.” Now the policeman turned red.
“Are you sure? You look familiar.”
“Well, just make sure you don’t get into any mischief, then.” The policeman looked sideways and started sweating slightly.
“Oh, we definitely won’t do anything wrong, will we, dear?” Joshua said to Damien.
“Oh no, definitely not,” Damien responded.
The policeman moved on quickly before any other questions could float into his mind. The two watched the man scurry away.
“Phew, that was close,” said Damien. “How did you know he went to gay bars?”
“I didn’t.”
“But he ran away real quick.”
Joshua turned to Damien and took up the pose of the experienced explainer. “First off, it was the less embarrassing of two ideas that came to mind. Secondly, well, look at it this way—people like him have a problem with identity. That’s why they join the police force. It’s either that or the armed forces. Most people like him seek shelter in the safety and power in a lack of identity and the strength of many. Conformist. Insecurities you could pile to the sun.”
Joshua was warming to his theme. “So there were two options available to us with the cop. If a man isn’t a gay and he’s told that he looks like one, his insecurities come up and do horrible things to his ego. If he is gay it’s instant social death in the circles in which he associates.”
“Now that’s thinking.”
“And … I think I’ve seen him at a gay bar as well.”
“You mean you’ve been to one?”
“Yes.”
“But I didn’t know you were gay.”
“I’m not, dopey. But some of my friends are and occasionally they invite me along.”
“What’s it like inside? I’ll bet it’s all leather and whips and small moustaches and a veritable source of moral decay.” Damien looked expectantly at Joshua to feed his imagination.
Joshua looked at him like he was, quite possibly, the most stupid thing on the earth. “No. Not really. It’s just like an ordinary bar. People drink and fall over or sing badly on the karaoke machines. Sometimes the pairings are different but it’s pretty much like any other bar. Well, some of the women may have little moustaches.”
“No leather or moral decay anywhere?” Damien seemed almost disappointed.
“You really need to get out more.”
“What was the other idea you were going to use with the cop?” asked Damien.
“What? Oh yeah. I was called Verne and you were Jules, and we were on our way to a science-fiction convention. But when I thought about it, no one in their right mind would own up to that out loud. So the gay option seemed more believable.”
25
THE TWO FIGURES TREKKED on through the streets. Eventually they came to the expansive grounds of the Department of Personal Information. More accurately, they came to the edge of the grounds. It had been many years since any unauthorized people—those who were not considered divine—were allowed in. The Freedom of Information Act made it impossible for anyone to know anything about anyone else, unless they worked for the Department of Personal Information or a bank. Theoretically anyone could gain information if they could prove who they were, why they needed it and had the owner’s authority. They couldn’t have information running all over the place for anyone to grab—it had to be safe from unauthorized people. So to make sure no information could escape the building they locked it behind a twenty-foot-high, fortified wall currently being scaled by two figures wearing far too much black to be fashionable.
“Watch where you’re treading.” Joshua tried to take the strain of having someone very heavy stand on his head. His hat was getting a thorough going over.
“Well, you had the choice to go up first.”
“Oh, as if you’re capable of helping someone up.”
“I could be,” Damien said. “I’ve just never had the chance to find out. That’s all. Pass me my pliers.”
“What? Don’t you already have them?”
“No. They’re in the backpack.”
“Why didn’t you get them out before you started climbing?”
“And how, pray tell, was I meant to carry them?”
“Don’t you have any pockets in that ninja suit of yours?”
“No. I couldn’t afford the one with pockets.”
Joshua mentally drummed his fingers on an imaginary table. “You could’ve shoved them in your mouth. I mean, it’s got to be useful for something.”
Damien was silent for a moment. “There’s no need to be nasty. Look, if you could just see your way to climbing down and getting them. Please.”
Joshua sighed deeply and looked down at the ground. There, low and behold, was the backpack sitting quite happily at the base of the wall. He looked up at the great bulk above him. “You sure you can hold on?”
“Oh yes, no problem here,” Damien said chirpily.
Joshua started to scale back down the wall, muttering to himself about the total uselessness of intelligent people. They were fine in their own kind of harmless way, especially when it came to doing things like taxes and banking, but ask one of them to do something simple like pour a drink or wind a clock or remember to bring a backpack and see how far they climb. He reached the bottom and grabbed the bag angrily. It contents spilled out. He muttered some more and collected the items. He was about to start climbing back up when Damien fell on him.
“Why didn’t you warn me?” Joshua cursed, nurs
ing his head.
“I didn’t want to draw attention to us. Something which you obviously didn’t think about when you started swearing loudly like you did.” Damien said reproachfully. “I mean, such language indeed.”
“If someone hadn’t already realized something was going on with a twenty-stone man at the top of the wall hanging onto barbed wire with his trousers around his feet then nothing would get their attention.”
“It’s not my fault the elastic went! Lucky I brought the rope, hey?”
Joshua staggered up and hauled Damien to his feet. “OK, let’s try it again. And this time stop treading on my head.”
Eventually the two reached the top and cut the wire. Joshua’s hat was rammed halfway down his head and badly crushed. He tugged at it until it came off with a loud foooopp! They sat perched on top of the wall looking at the next problem that faced them. The other side of the wall was perfectly smooth. There was no possible way of getting a foothold.
“Any ideas?” Damien queried.
Joshua looked at Damien’s makeshift belt. He had to decide whether to jump twenty feet onto concrete or look at Damien’s underwear. It was a close call but the jump loomed as more of an immediate survival problem.
After several complaints from Damien, Joshua took the rope off and tied it to an upright on top of the wall. Joshua led the way with a demonstration of How to Climb Down a Wall Using a Rope: Lesson One for Beginners. He reached the bottom and signaled Damien to follow. He looked around, trying to make out if any of the shadows offered large teeth and sharp claws. He looked up just in time to see Damien falling on him again.
Damien sat on the prone form of Joshua and his trousers fluttered down, landing on Joshua’s head, possibly in an effort to pass comment about what he was thinking.
Damien whispered, “Sorry.”
Joshua couldn’t think of something to say that hadn’t been said before so he didn’t say anything. This, somehow, made it worse.
Damien, who didn’t know when to quit, said, “The upright gave way.” His trousers seemed, somehow, to look very angry. “And I think I left the pliers up there too.”
