“I suppose a few gay groups will make some noise, but not for long if we can get Auretta Here,” said Captain Nedland. “If we can eliminate her they’ll see we aren’t prejudiced. And I want her.”
“Unbelievable selfish bitch,” fumed Opal.
Auretta Here had been on VT already. An attractive young female human prostitute, Miss Here had been diagnosed as having M-670 at a street clinic, which reported her to the officials when she didn’t admit herself to the Health Agency’s control and study program. She believed that victims of M-670 were actually being disintegrated in the HAP building by the scores, which was in fact not true. Only a hundred or so victims were interred at HAP itself, and their deaths were by M-670 with its one hundred percent death rate. Yes, then they were either disintegrated or dissected and preserved. Other victims were patients of hospitals cooperating with HAP, while many more victims were free to return to the streets after checking in with the HAP program…where they received drug treatments to fully negate their sex drives. Only if the plague worsened beyond program containment would diagnosed M-670 victims be forcefully rounded up for mass detainment—and possible mass disintegration, probably at the waste plant. HAP hoped not to have to resort to this, however…as it could mean full-fledged war in the streets of Punktown. Seldom had the Paxton Health Agency had to deal with an organic threat of such potential proportions.
Auretta Here was in hiding, and on VT her lawyer was defending her civil rights as a free individual. He had been truth scanned and honestly didn’t know her whereabouts, so he was not harboring a fugitive. Auretta’s vids which had appeared on VT had been shot by friends, apparently, and mailed.
She seemed to relish this publicity, felt Black.
“Do you want us on it?” asked Opal.
“Not yet—four’s enough for now. Two would be plenty except that she’s shoving her vids up our arses.”
“Arrogant whore,” Opal raved. “She must resent everyone who isn’t infected and want them to die if she has to die, like a guy who kills his wife and kids before he commits suicide. She can’t bear to have the world go on without her so she’s gonna tear down as much of it as she can and take it with her.”
“Whatever makes you a star,” mumbled Black.
“I don’t want her to be a star, or hero, or rebel or martyr,” said Nedland. “Damn irresponsible VT…they won’t stop running her vids. And when she’s dead in six months or a year they’ll make a VT movie about her, I’ll bet you a year’s salary.”
“No bet,” said Black.
“Just go back on your regular assignments until further notice, kids. Soon we’ll be drafting people as health agents to keep up with just our M-670 problem! As if we don’t have enough to do.” Nedland watched his agents move to the door, teased, “And change your faces if you’re itchy about that tape.”
“No way,” said Black over his shoulder, only in a half-joking way. He would be adamant about not changing his natural features. This was his face, even though he had been born with it, with no more influence over it than over his having been born, hadn’t created or altered it to match his individual personality and identity as many people did. It wasn’t out of loyalty to his parents, who were somewhat reflected in his flesh, since he wasn’t particularly close to them—having been primarily raised by their computer—otherwise he wouldn’t have altered his name. It was simply that he was pleased with, and rather vain about, his given appearance.
*
The halls of the third floor labs were quite empty at the moment, but much of the work down here was performed by robots anyway. Narrow halls with white-tiled walls, many doors, some open to reveal bright laboratories glittering with metal and glass, studious figures in white smocks intensely peering through microscopic goggles. Many looked like pre-med students. Some were. The target-like yellow/black symbol for radioactivity affixed to many doors; a door with the warning BIOHAZARD was left carelessly open. Agents Black and Cowrie parted to allow a young man in an open smock, flowered shirt, faded blue jeans and dirty sneakers to run between them. He jumped up and slapped a NO SMOKING sign over a door before skipping through, singing aloud.
A robot admitted them into a room. It was a hovering box with probes and cameras and insectoid arms, and someone had attached to its top a blankly smiling department store mannequin head with foolish hair like a toupee. Sometimes they put a surgical mask on the head.
A small Asian woman swivelled on her metal stool. “All set for you.”
Opal bent her eye to the scope of an instrument. “Hmph. The chromes look like Tikkihotto hieroglyphics.”
“There’s a whole pack of a half-dozen that’ve been reported. They could breed. Their blood is poison. Pests had fed on this one.” A nod at a tacked-up, blown-up photo of—supposedly—a dog carcass. “I’d say a pretty good hazard.”
“Now we’re dog catchers,” smiled Black.
“I’d hate to have to kill a dog,” Opal moaned, smiling apologetically as she straightened. “Any kind of dog.”
“You didn’t mind helping me melt Bum Junket down today and you’re whining about a mutant dog,” Black chuckled.
“Everybody’s got their soft spot. Really, I don’t want it—let’s give it to somebody else, huh?”
“Certainly.”
“Even exterminating pests makes me guilty,” Opal said. “Their poor little shiny eyes.” She pouted.
“Yeah—once I saw a rat with five poor little shiny eyes. Maybe Bum would’ve fared better if he’d been gnawing on some celery, huh?”
“A carrot would be more appropriate.” The three laughed, the robot’s head smiling blandly. “What else has come in here?” Opal asked the tech.
“A human body was brought into Path-4, Rena told me…they don’t know what the hell happened to it. A high degree of noncongenital mutation. Lethal progression. It was in a lot, pretty purulent; they have the site sealed off for investigation and sanitation.”
“Ha,” said Black. “Who’s on it?”
“Ahh, Beak and Woodmere.”
“Maybe I’ll see if they need a hand, if I have time.”
“We’re going to a show tonight,” said Opal.
“Oh?”
“Some kind of actor-artist is performing tonight at the old shut-down Greenberg Products plant on Pigeon Street. He’s licensed—the owner is letting him—but we’re gonna make sure everything’s secure.”
“I used to love their Greenbread. I can’t believe one chem spill would put them out of business.”
“Well, Mr. Greenberg passed away, too, and his wife took over. She should sell what’s left so they can make something out of it while there’s still something to sell.”
Black eyed a wall clock. “Better be off, if you want to catch us on the news,” he told Opal. “We’ve gotta change into our tux and gown for tonight, too.”
“I’m in the tux,” Opal told the tech.
They left, though in no actual hurry, since Black had phoned home and ordered his VT to tape the news on the channel he had found out would be playing the story. He confided to his small companion, “Greenberg Greenbread always made me gag.” He chuckled…
*
Ground floor was all security, aside from reception. Joking, Black and Opal entered the standard decontamination unit. It was large; no one left the building without at least this much decontamination. In a glistening white changing room they stripped, alone but for the sounds of two men distant in the labyrinth of lockers, echoed laughter, slamming metal compartments. Bare-chested, Black waited for Opal to meet his eyes and he wiggled his brows. She gave him a blank look but he knew humor was behind it. Most of her expressions seemed a bit cold, blank, intimidating on the outside, her eyes the same mysterious impenetrable gray as his own. She was pretty, not beautiful—not very pretty, even—but there was a natural unforced sensuality. Her mouth was a pouty sneer, small, twisty as if from being compacted, unevenly bee-stung, her smile haughty and tough when she did smile. She could be cu
te, with her diminutive body, pale skin, wavy dirty blond hair cut short of her shoulders, unkempt and falling across one eye, but her pouty profile was rather flattened-looking, the lower jaw subtly thrust. She turned away from him as if to hide but also probably to tease him with her moving back and the bisected sphere of her bottom as she stepped out of her panties, her bare feet making sticky slapping noises on the tiles.
“Yum.” Naked, Black stepped over, held her shoulders, nuzzled her hair-curtained ear; his hardening but still downward-pointing arrow nuzzling in the cleavage of her bottom. “Can I show you some tricks Bum Junket taught me?”
“Not until you been through the shower, scum.”
“You’re so romantic.”
“Come on, don’t get me going.” Opal slipped out of his hands and walked towards the showers. “It’s getting late.”
Black sighed, trying not to get irritable. He knew it was late but she didn’t have to turn so cool and make him feel stupid. He gathered up his clothes, pushed them into a numbered compartment in a honeycomb of sealed compartments outside the showers, tapped keys on a small panel. While he showered, his belongings, gun and all, would be disinfected. It was just as well…too many times they had punched in late because he had instigated sex with Opal when he knew there wasn’t really enough time. Just a little, he told himself, nice and quick, but they ended up having to scramble to work with uncombed hair, unshowered (though he soaped and rinsed off his genitals—otherwise he couldn’t bear it). When it came to sex he was undisciplined, he recognized, too impulsive. But wasn’t that spontaneity, that crazy abandon, where the fun came from?
Still, in the showers he chose a nozzle a good four nozzles away from her, barely looked at her pink body misty in the hissing spray of chemicals. This was why they couldn’t love each other in a romantic way, he mused…she was so hard and cynical. A woman didn’t have to be vulnerable to be soft and inviting, he believed, but she had to at least—or rather, most importantly—be capable of sweetness, gentleness, sensitivity. Opal could, if in the mood, manage gentle…sensitive…but sweetness was a coat that fit her uncomfortably; she squirmed in it. Opal had a terrible temper, had stormed out of their apartment, left him—once for a full month—had struck him, though he had never struck her…not so much out of respect but out of fear of letting loose his own temper. They both bedded other people occasionally, with little or no lasting jealous conflict. Mostly they were partners, friends, who conveniently shared a rent and enjoyed a nearly compatible sexual relationship.
Black and Opal had tried to fall in love but it had been a grating attempt, two gears in a machine that didn’t mesh, and they had given up. Black supposed he had been in love a few times in his life and Opal said she had once (she was more than ten years younger), but neither of them were going out of their way to look for it or even wait for it now. To Black, love was like the lottery, and you couldn’t count on winning the jackpot, just a lesser prize (an extra free ticket) here and there.
More sober than before but still speaking, they moved on to a rank of individual clear plastic cylinders which they entered and in which they were blow-dried while invisible rays cleaned them further but didn’t penetrate outside the special plastic tubes. By the time they stepped out their clothes were ready, still warm to the touch, as were their guns.
Opal dropped her disposable foam slippers into a trash unit to be disintegrated. As she turned, a peripheral movement caught her eye; it was a frantic scurrying black beetle near the foot of the trash zapper. She caught it in her hands, rose, cooed to it, “Poor thing,” and then dropped it into the zapper.
THREE
The parking lot to Greenberg Products lay adjacent to the Beds, a sort of train yard, ill-lighted now that it was also no longer used since the chemical spill, of indeterminable extent in the void of night. Mostly just the fringe of the Beds bordering the parking lot was lit, the tran tracks stretching off into the black like snake skeletons—or, more properly analogous, the spinal columns of dinosaurs. A few of the old trans squatted about in the yard, a couple of them disused for a decade even before the spill. They resembled old-Earth locomotive steam engines but weren’t intended to pull cars…they were trans, after all, not trains.
Rising from Opal’s stilled hovercar, Black lit a cigarette as some measure against the cold and squinted out across the Beds. Beyond them somewhere two cats were howling a challenge at each other. Opal took in Greenberg. “Anybody die in that spill?” Black asked her.
“No, it was handled pretty well. The place is salvageable, too. I guess Mrs. Greenberg’s waiting for a buyer instead of reopening. She’s probably afraid the spill will discredit the reputation of the products.”
“Nobody would remember it.” Black glanced over his shoulder. “Place is lit up pretty good. This is more of an event than I thought—I figured a dozen people.” There were maybe forty vehicles in the lot so far. “Half of ‘em are probably critics. I’ve never heard of Toll Loveland, have you?”
“Not before today. For his last one-man show, he called himself Vicelord Godfucker.”
“I like a reserved, humble kind of guy like that.”
“For his last show he cut off his left hand’s little finger on stage and swallowed it.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Brilliant.”
“He had mixed reviews. It was a one-night show only, like this.”
“He probably used all his proceeds on hospital bills.”
Opal had run a search on Toll Loveland through their home computer while Black had dressed. “He cloned it back as the climax of the show, the whole finger, in just three minutes.”
“A magic trick.”
“No. He majored in bioengineering at Paxton Polytech and then got his masters in Liberal Arts from P.U.—a weird combo, eh?”
“A man with a vision. What’s he gonna do tonight, decapitate himself and tap dance while he clones his head back?”
“A ‘Mixed Media Presentation’, is all I know. Brrr, let’s go in.”
“Lemme finish my cigarette.”
They had a few minutes. Opal produced a small pink-enameled pipe, thumbed the “on” switch and puffed. Black strolled toward the Beds and after a moment his partner trailed him. Tall yellowed weeds, a rumpled guard-rail which he stepped over. He stopped to stare down at a few objects of debris like shells washed on a lonely shore. A child’s ski boot. In Punktown one might seriously stop and pick up such a thing to see if a foot were inside it. He nudged it and it seemed empty. A flattened cat, like a skinned hide, was camouflaged with the dead grass, but the tail was still roundish and he could feel it run through the hand of his mind, silky and alive. One tooth bared and unflattened in tiny defiance; a cat to the end. Maybe it was the ghost of this cat challenging another spirit that he had heard, Black fancied in self-amusement. As he had expected, Opal said, “Awww.”
“Give me a break.”
“Shut up. Poor thing. Maybe it was somebody’s pet. Or if it wasn’t, it should have been.”
“Street cats are like bugs; they live and they die by the millions. Fast lives, like bugs. A six-month to one-year span, I read.”
“In a home they can live twenty years; decades more if you don’t mind paying for it. And you’re just a bug compared to some species—even to a tree. Stop pushing me about animals, Monty. You just don’t like to see yourself in them.”
“I had a cat as a boy. I loved it. Happy? I just hope you have an ‘awww’ left for me when I die, after all your ‘awwws’ for these millions of stray animals.”
“What an ignorant and pointless thing to say. You’re the only guy I know who gets jealous over a cat mummy.”
“You’re the only woman I know who has more compassion for a dead cat than a live man.”
“Maybe some dead cats are more deserving of it than some live men.”
“Me?”
Opal glared through the mist of her breath. “No, not you. How did this ever get to be abou
t you, anyway?”
Black didn’t know. This gear sometimes still moved mindlessly of its own accord even though hers didn’t try to turn and mesh with it. She was right; he was talking stupid. He walked toward the nearest of the hulking black metal trans, one of those decommissioned and set off the tracks for a decade or more. When he had climbed up inside, Opal could see his flashlight in the few windows, sighed and followed, glancing at her watch.
By the time Opal had hauled herself up and joined him, he had dropped his light back into his coat. There was just enough soft, eerie illumination from two crystal globes set into the control console, filled with a glowing, translucent milky liquid—Navigator fluid. Moving shadows inside; a beautiful metallic blue fish swam close to the glass in one globe and lazily vanished again—purely a decorative touch, the only life left to this forgotten machine. Black expected Opal to comment on their abandonment, suggest they take them home for their aquarium or free one fish and join it with the other for company, but she said nothing—maybe out of embarrassment, he considered guiltily.
Below the globes were six silver rings, in two rows of three, like miniature steering wheels which in a fashion they were. Trans had been ridden by the Bedbugs, as they were nicknamed; bipedal giant black beetles with six whip-like arms ending in pincers. Sometimes they would have mechanical arms implanted in addition to or in place of these feeler appendages, better suited to this hominid-dominated society. They were extra-dimensionals who used the trans to enter this material plane or return to their own. The acceleration of the tran along its pattern of tracks sent the device and its occupants beyond. But they used another bed of tracks these days. For whatever reason that a particular group becomes feared, scorned, abhorred, many people hated the so-called Bedbugs. Black was sure it didn’t help that one of Punktown’s most notorious street gangs, the Dimensionals, was composed entirely of Bedbugs.
“What do you say we drive this baby home after the show?” he joked, trying to restore camaraderie.
“I say we get to the show before we miss it.”
Health Agent Page 3
