Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen

by Brad R Torgersen

  Mama and Papa stared at me for an instant longer, then looked at their son, then back at me. Antonio’s smile dropped, and he stared at me too.

  “What’s going on?” he said. “Who is this?”

  “Rodriguez,” I said. “I’m from the city. I need to talk to you about Elvira.”

  Maybe it was the way I’d said it? Maybe it was the fact that I still had the military-cropped haircut I’d kept since my Army days? Maybe he’d noticed the bulge of the stun gun I had in a holster tucked into the pit of my arm, under my suit jacket? Whatever it was, I never had a chance to get in another word before three things happened simultaneously:

  Antonio, spinning and running back down the steps.

  Mama screaming, “Antonio, no!”

  Papa screaming, “La policía!”

  I flew past the Aguilars and down the stairs, feeling the steps in my knees but pleased that I could still be quick when I wanted to be. He never bothered to close the door as he sprinted across the patio, around the detached garage, and down the filthy, narrow street beyond. I skidded around the corner—my loafers not quite as good on concrete as his athletic shoes—then shouted his name at the back of his head as he pelted for the nearest intersection. I followed, sweating and cursing, but managing to keep an eye on him as I went around the corner, saw him dodge two cars while crossing to the other side, and kept running for the next intersection further south. I pulled the stunner out and kept pumping arms and legs, at once dreading the chase, but feeling the muscle memory exhilaration of pursuit. Just like old times. I wasn’t the police, but I wasn’t going to let Elvira’s killer go, brother or no brother.

  Across an alleyway.

  Across another street.

  Down a sidewalk, headed for a larger thoroughfare.

  People stopped or stepped out of our way as I ran, still shouting his name.

  He stopped and turned once, just long enough to glare at me—the whites of his eyes large. Then he started running again, head still turned. Across the thoroughfare, against traffic.

  Cars skidded and honked—he slipped between two lanes.

  The tow truck never saw him. But I did, and it was too late.

  • • •

  Antonio Aguilar lived just long enough to give a full confession in the hospital, before he passed. I stayed well clear of the Aguilars, figuring they themselves might be incited to murder if they spotted me. Police at the hospital knew me, and let me loiter around; out of respect for the old days. Which is why I was shocked absolutely when I saw Josefina arrive. All Normal eyes darted to her, and stayed on her as she walked carefully through the hospital hallway, hands pensively clutching a purse in front of her as she padded along in canvas flats and a sensible, modest dress, holes cut in the back for her wings. She saw me, but didn’t stop to say anything. I kept an eye around the corner of the waiting area as I saw her approach her brother’s room, speak to the cops at the door, then pass inside.

  Ten minutes later, both she and her parents slowly walked out. The three of them appeared to be crying heavily. Josefina tried to hug her father. His arms just hung limply at his sides. When she tried to hug her mother, the older woman shakily reached her arms around her daughter, then squeezed with tentative enthusiasm.

  The Aguilars went back into their son’s room, and Josefina came back in my direction.

  This time, she did stop.

  I stared up at her face, damp green feathers and all.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “We are all sorry,” she said.

  “I didn’t mean for him to get hit.”

  “I know.”

  “I should have just let him run away.”

  “Maybe … but I do not think there was anywhere far enough for him to get away from the shame he felt, at Mama and Papa knowing what he had done for them.”

  “For them?”

  “Papa said that Antonio said he did it for the honor of the family.”

  “So why didn’t he try to kill both of you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe after he saw what he’d done to his little sister, he lost his nerve. Papa is sick with himself. After I left, he railed endlessly about what a disgrace I was, and then when Elvira left to join me, he railed against us both. How we had forever shamed the family. I think he didn’t realize that Antonio would take it as much to heart as he did. Papa almost feels like he’s the one who killed her. And Antonio now too.”

  I looked past Josefina’s shoulder, to the shrinking old couple slumped against each other as they walked painfully down the opposite end of the corridor.

  “What will they do now?”

  “Bury Antonio and Elvira both.”

  “And what will you do now?”

  She stared at the purse in her hands, her fists balled around the straps.

  “I will go back to work,” she said.

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “What else can I do?” She said. “I cannot go home, and I don’t have the money yet that I need to move on.”

  I cleared my throat uncomfortably, and scratched at my scalp.

  “There are other things—”

  “No, Señor Soto,” she said firmly. “It was my choice to become Special, and it is my choice to finish my plan. My sister would have wanted that, even if my family did not.”

  “Will you be speaking with them again?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Give it time,” I said. “Give your Papa time. He will need you.”

  “He still partially blames me for all of this.”

  “Yes, and when he’s a couple of years older and closer to his own grave, he will look at his pictures of you when you were a little girl, and he will wonder why he let himself come to hate you. Please, don’t lock that door again.”

  She stared down at me, this time one of her own eyebrows raising.

  “Fraternal compassion, Señor Soto?”

  “More like one poor, stupid father apologizing for another poor, stupid father.”

  She regarded me for many quiet seconds, then she reached down to take up one of my hands in hers—marvelously soft.

  “Por favor?” she said.

  “Por favor,” I said, squeezing her hand.

  She let me escort her out of the hospital, and together we drove back to the Aerie.

  Murder mysteries are a bit outside my usual scope, but when I was tasked with writing an original story—while participating in the annual Writers of the Future Contest in Los Angeles—a murder mystery is precisely what came to mind. The atmosphere along Hollywood Boulevard practically demands it. Both the best and the worst America has to offer, are strewn side by side on the Boulevard. At the Contest, I’d been given a deflated pink flamingo pool toy, and had done an anonymous on-the-street interview with a nearby mall security officer, to work with—as cues for my story. I’d also taken a trip down to the very same library where Soto and the anglo woman meet. I determined that all of it would find its way into the text, either literally or metaphorically. And all of it did.

  But why go furry?

  You know, furry. Or furries, plural. Those costuming fans who like to dress up like animals—often animal characters from Japanese anime.

  I blame my Writers of the Future roommate Jeff Young. See, Jeff and I had had a short conversation about the furry phenomenon earlier in the week. Either as a result of seeing furries featured on an episode of CSI, or having heard about a local furry convention in the news, etc. I don’t remember precisely what sparked that particular dialogue. Anyway, it occurred to me that on Hollywood Boulevard, nothing is off-limits. Everything is for sale. I wondered what might happen if in a future Los Angeles genetic engineering and surgical body modification advanced to the point that furry people could put their money where their mouths are?

  It then occurred to me that there would be furry fetishists who’d not have the guts to go all the way—but who would still crave the company of people who had gone all the way
. To include intimate company.

  And suddenly I had it: a furry brothel, catering to the rich and famous, at which a young working girl has been murdered, and only the girl’s sister and a tired old former cop have any interest in discovering whodunit.

  The story sat on my hard drive for a few months after I got home from the Contest, its ending incomplete. I noodled several possible extensions which would have run the story up to novella length, but decided ultimately that the road signs I’d established earlier in the text mandated I more or less finish the tale with Antonio taking the fall. Making him into an accidental victim wrapped some real poignancy around the relationship of Soto and Josefina. And it also did a better job highlighting the unintended consequences of Papa Aguilar’s anguish and rage, as expressed in Papa Aguilar’s house after his daughters fled.

  I subsequently sold the story to Mike Resnick, who was then editing Galaxy’s Edge magazine for Arc Manor books. I was hesitant to show it to Mike, because we’d done Peacekeeper together not long before, and I wasn’t sure Mike would like it if I sent him a “workshop story” when what Mike wanted from me was me firing on all cylinders; at the top of my game.

  Mike said phooey, kid, this is the best thing I’ve seen from you yet. Of course I want it for my magazine. Mike’s a much better judge of mysteries and crime fiction than I am, since he’s been immersed in those genre(s) in ways I have not been. I figured it would be tough to sell a “cross-genre” story like this to a crime-noir editor or a straight-up science fiction editor, but Mike doubles as both, and he snapped it up. I was therefore proud to see “The Flamingo Girl” in the pages of Galaxy’s Edge in 2012.

  As to the deeper theme and meaning, I have had one or two people tell me that my Specials are merely stand-ins for gay people. And I suppose from a certain point of view, that might be true? That’s not what was on my mind when I wrote the story, but given the setting and the way the story played out, I can see why that assumption might be made. As an author, I have a personal belief that whatever readers pull from my stories and take with them, those things are the “truth” for those readers, and it’s not my place to override or overrule. For each reader, the story then becomes unique.

  Re-reading the story, for myself alone, I feel “The Flamingo Girl” is ultimately about choices, and how we all have to live with our choices—one way or another. It’s also about heart, and the having of same. Even in a city and in a place where people with heart can be devoured whole by those too cynical, or jaded, or money-hungry to care who they hurt in their pursuit of fame and fortune.

  ***

  Reardon’s Law

  Chapter 1: uncharted territory

  Rain tumbled gently against the lifeboat’s small canopy.

  Kalliope Reardon was aware of the sound, but only in a detached sense. It had been a hard reentry, and a harder landing. Her brain and nervous system weren’t quite ready to connect all the dots yet. Despite the crash cocoon which had enveloped her during the fall, thus saving her life.

  And what a fall it had been.

  She’d barely had time to hurl herself through the lifeboat’s hatch before the lifeboat itself had been blown free of Kal’s ship, the Broadbill.

  End over end the lifeboat had spun through space, its trajectory arcing down towards the nameless, uncharted planet below.

  Now, there was darkness.

  And the quiet pattering of thick water droplets on the lifeboat’s scorched hull.

  Kal knew it was not a good idea to stay put. The people who had destroyed the Broadbill would be looking for her. Or rather, her lifeboat’s automated beacon. For all she knew, they were already on their way.

  Kal attempted to move her arms. The inflatable balloons of the crash cocoon held her as securely as a straightjacket.

  Kal concentrated hard, and attempted to speak.

  “Com—pyoo … com … compyoo … computer,” she finally said with a dull, rubbery tongue.

  The happy chime of the lifeboat’s automated response told Kal that she’d been acknowledged. She swallowed thickly, then flexed her jaw, like a patient who’s just come out of the dentist’s office.

  “Computer,” Kal said again, this time more slowly, but with added surety. “Release … emergency … restraining system.”

  At once, the balloons surrounding Kal began to deflate.

  The outer shroud of the cocoon slowly peeled away, and Kal got a look through the canopy itself. A misty haze greeted her glance outside, while wide rivulets of clear liquid ran across the transparent canopy’s dome.

  The little display panel at the canopy’s edge—which was connected to an external sensor—glowed a bright green. Nitrogen and oxygen atmosphere. No detectable toxins. Though, water and oxygen together meant chlorophyll. Life.

  An alien ecology, for which Kal’s immune system might not be prepared. She considered. Like any other Conflux Armed Forces troop being deployed into the Occupied Zone, Kal had been given a battery of xeno-bio inoculations. Stuff so potent that the running joke in the ranks said: if the alien germs didn’t eat you up from the inside, the shots themselves surely would.

  In times past, Kal had found such morbid barracks humor funny. Now, she wasn’t laughing. Once she cracked the lifeboat’s hatch, she’d be exposing herself to whatever lay beyond. Would it be a death sentence? Or did she dare stay put, and hope for official rescue?

  No, that was a silly thought. The mission plan had been clear. There would be no help.

  Chapter 2: civilization, many weeks earlier

  “Reardon,” Kal’s boss said as he reached across the table and up-ended a bottle over her glass, “I won’t lie to you. This is going to be a tough one.”

  “Do tell,” Kal said, waiting for him to finish refreshing her drink. The refill was a formality. She’d barely touched her cup since entering her boss’s office ten minutes prior. Her uniform remained crisp and pressed, with calf-length boots polished to a high gloss, and not a badge nor a pin out of place.

  It wasn’t Kal’s typical wardrobe, given her occupation as a Special Investigative Officer with the Conflux Armed Forces. She was used to working in duty uniforms or civilian clothes—a highly-trained military cop as adept at busting organized criminals and civilian perps as she was at cleaning up the CAF’s own internal trash.

  But one didn’t meet one’s immediate supervisor in his inner sanctum while looking like a hobo from the launch docks. Upon landing, Kal had gone directly to the Guest Officers Quarters on base, stowed her travel bag, then hit the automated grooming station at the GOQ’s south end. Kal now sported closely-cropped regulation-length hair, with nails trimmed down to the quick, and all fake tattoos and false-color eye lenses removed—for the first time in many Earth months.

  There was a promotion board coming up. Kal had been putting off getting her digital packet together. The official image in her old packet was at least three Earth years out of date. She toyed with the idea of having her boss use his desk’s AV unit to snap a few photos—as long as she was looking sharp. Who knew when she’d be this cleaned up again?

  Stow it, Kal thought. There were more important things to worry about. Questions that needed answering. Such as: what sort of job would require an in-person briefing? Given the huge delay and expense involved in dragging her light-years away from her last assignment?

  Ordinarily, Chief Investigative Officer Damont’s orders came through the digitally-secure CAF network. A job here, a job there, with attached paperwork for flights and safe passage both on and off-world, anywhere in the Conflux. In fact, Kal could count on one hand the number of times she’d seen her boss face-to-face—in the six Earth years she’d been working for him. While Kal was always on the move, Damont tended to stay in one place. Keeping his invisible strings attached to his dozens of Special Investigators via the Conflux’s circulating fleet of automated data transports: an interstellar pony express that moved information between the worlds of the Conflux at speeds thousands of times faster than mere ra
dio transmissions.

  Damont put the bottle back on his desk, picked up his own cup, and tipped back a healthy swallow—which he ran around the inside of one cheek, before gulping it down.

  “Tremonton Universal has been losing classified equipment shipments,” he said.

  Kal blinked. Tremonton was the multi-world manufacturing corporation that provided the CAF with much of its military hardware, including cutting-edge armor, aerospace fighters, and other toys. So large and spread out were the company’s assets, that it operated its own security force. Kal knew. She’d worked with them before.

  “Shipments to where?” Kal asked.

  Damont shifted in his high-backed chair.

  “The Occupied Zone,” he said.

  Kal sat up straight.

  “What the hell is Tremonton doing sending equipment into Oz?”

  “You’ve not previously been made aware of this—so everything I’m about to discuss with you must be held in strictest confidence—but Tremonton has been working with the CAF to test-drive some of Tremonton’s latest armor. Under realistic battle conditions. They’re doing it in Oz.”

  “Realistic?” Kal exclaimed, picking up her cup and taking a healthy gulp of her own. “The Occupied Zone is a feral sea. We didn’t pacify anything during the war. We merely knocked down some of their bigger cities, then cut those planets off from each other with the blockade. Sir, I’ve been into Oz, and I can tell you, if it’s ‘realistic battle conditions’ Tremonton wanted, then it’s realistic battle conditions Tremonton will get.”

  “I know,” he said. “And it’s your familiarity with the Occupied Zone that’s the main reason I picked you for this job. I need someone with experience. Someone who can slip into the black market network that evades the blockade—don’t look surprised, of course I know all about that—then pick up the trail left by this missing Tremonton hardware.”

  “Sir, finding missing armament in Oz will be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Whatever’s been taken to date, it’s liable to never surface again. The remnants of the Ambit League will be eager to pick apart any advanced gadgetry they can lay their hands on—to see if the technology can be adapted for their own use.”