A tall dark being stepped up into the tran with them. “Freeze!” it snarled.
“Shit!” Opal and Black slapped their hands to their guns.
“Hold it, hold it, hey—it’s me, Beak!” the newcomer babble-laughed.
Opal had gotten her snub-nose out first and seemed reluctant to put it away, in her anger. “You freakin’ demento.”
Beak came forward, still laughing. “You’re no fun, Opal.” He had the look of a weasel in clothes; long-bodied, short-limbed, with short brown fur, coarse and sleek, but with a hard little black bird’s beak. He had on a black windbreaker over a purple wool sweater, and a purple ski hat over his tiny pointed ears.
“What are you doing here?” Black asked him, restraining his own temper.
“Woodsy’s here too. I wouldn’t miss Toll Loveland for the world!”
“Come on.”
“The body of a guy named Tate Hurrea was found today in a lot on Block Ave.—a noncon mutant, real sludge.”
“Yeah, I heard—so?”
“In his wallet we found a ticket stub to Toll Loveland’s last show, The Godfucker. A little funny. Woodsy thought we should come down here and double-date.”
“That is funny, huh? It’s not like Toll Loveland is a household word.”
“After the show Woods wants to ask this clown if he knew our boy in better days. Shall we go?”
*
A young woman at the plant’s reception desk took their money and traded them ticket stubs. Black read the show’s title from the stub—Pandora’s Box. The ticket girl was dressed all in black with a pretty face but waxy-milky skin and no expression and her choppy black hair falling over one eye like a shielding visor.
They trailed after a wall-dressed couple who strolled and conversed, chuckling. Red stick-on arrows and bare hanging light bulbs led the way through narrow halls and then out into the dark, open plant itself. The path narrowed again to a tight squeeze behind a giant oven the size of a house. Voices ahead, and more light. When they emerged from behind the oven, health agent Vern Woodmere was there around the corner smoking a cigarette.
“Shit,” breathed Opal, “I wish you guys would knock off the jack-in-the-box stuff.”
Woodmere stubbed out his cigarette on the oven and slipped the remainder in a breast pocket of his scuffed, brown leather flight jacket. He had been a young, long-haired pilot during the Red War, now had permanent shadows clinging to his worn face like moss to stone, rust to metal, the lines of his mouth a hard dragged-down scowl, eyes like metal—maybe rusted, maybe not—in deep sockets, and short silvered slicked-back hair. He was in need of a shave. Hard to get along with. Black had joked to Opal once that Vern looked like an axe murderer.
“You two can punch out, we got this one now,” he drawled.
“And miss my idol?” said Black.
“Hey, I’m not stealing your glory, pretty boy, I’m doing you a favor. We’ll keep an eye out for ya, and we have some questions for Loveland, too.”
“I appreciate the offer but we might as well stay. Big place—some idiot might stray off and make trouble. Anyway, Beak’s got me curious. This guy might have accidentally got some poor theater-goer killed with his tricks.”
Woodmere glared at his partner. “You tell everybody our business, dung-dong?”
“Hey, they’re agents too, Vern!”
“Moron.” Woodmere left them.
“Nice to feel wanted,” Black muttered.
“That’s Vern,” said Beak. “Come on.”
Ahead was an open area, high-ceilinged and vastly black in all directions around an oasis of light. Ten rows of ten folding chairs were ranked and being filled before a stage made from a large sheet of plastic supported on either side by a fork-lift. Inside these little vehicles were complete skeletons (fake? wondered Black) wearing old-style goggled fallout masks. There was a three-sided black curtain behind the elevated platform. The only other prop was a seven-foot-high monolithic replica of a box of Screaming Pink Nazis cereal, very well painted, obviously by Toll Loveland. Screaming Pink Nazis cereal came with a holograph chip which, when slipped into your home computer or VT, released ten miniature pink holographic soldiers to run about the house, ghost-like in that they were not solid, though they looked solid and disappeared when they passed behind material barriers. You would then hunt them down and kill them with your SPANK (Screaming Pink Automatic Nazi Killer) gun (which you had to send away for).
Beak said, “You’d think the guy would be more original than that—everybody’s spoofed Pink Nazis by now.”
“It’s become mythic by now,” Black said. “This guy’s obviously into symbolism.”
“I’m bored already.”
Vern had fallen back a bit so the others turned to him. He said, “Let’s not sit together. We might spook him. He knows you two are coming but not Beak and me. Anyway, we can see more if we spread out.”
“Whatever,” said Opal. “Where you do you want?”
“Second to last row, far left.”
They split up and stepped into the light. Black and Opal seated themselves in the fifth row, far right. Black strained his eyes into the murk around them. Here and there light was snagged, as if on barbed wire, on the metal of a conveyor belt, glinted dully on a machine or lonely fork-lift.
The lights dimmed away but for those illuminating the stage, which were soft. The eighty or so people in the audience grew quiet, and then gasped as the front of the giant cereal box opened out like a door with a sound effects haunted house creak. Standing in the box was a figure, but difficult to see at first through the bluish luminous cloud of smoke billowing out.
Before Black could say anything Opal was analyzing the smoke with the portable toxin scan from her purse, now held in her lap. She leaned to Black. “It doesn’t rate poisonous.”
He settled back, but was aware now of the weight of his holstered gun like a parasite affixed to his ribs. The spreading fog thinly wafted over him, had the powdery perfumed smell of concert smoke bombs. Now he could see strange fluttering shadows in the billowing clouds, darting and zig-zagging. He realized they were moths of all sizes, mostly large white ones he could see when they spun out of the reach of the smoke, which was clearing. Both moths and smoke dispersed; Black ducked and batted one insect away from his hair. He hated moths; they gave him the creeps. Butterflies too, even. Weird, erratic things. He had punched a wall and hurt his hand once trying to kill a moth as it ricocheted in his bathroom. Opal caught bugs in cups and put them outside.
Visible in the box was a man dressed in a white jumpsuit, with gloves and high gray boots. Over his head he wore a rectangular box three feet wide and two feet high, which was a VT monitor. On the screen were the words:
PANDORA’S BOX
BY
TOLL LOVELAND
The audience applauded. The title cleared and the man stepped down out of the cereal box. At the edge of the stage he stopped, and a film opened on the screen that was his head. Black could feel the leaning attentiveness of the audience along with his own.
It was a traveling shot apparently filmed out the window of a car down a street in Punktown; Black recognized the street. The car came to a stop at an angle in a parking space. Across the street were two banks side-by-side. There was street noise, but no noise from the cinematographer. There was a cut. It was later—twenty-five minutes, by the clock in front of one bank. Superimposed at the bottom of the screen was the title:
CUPID OF DEATH
Then gone. A woman stepped out of a sporty red hovercar that had just arrived in front of the banks, walked to a black hovercar with windows tinted black on the outside and leaned into the open driver’s window. Other cars passed. The woman’s cold breath rose. She had blond hair and big dark glasses, a short coat of silvery-blue fur and tight faded jeans, clinging to the rear which proudly and slyly projected toward the street like a moving beacon, a second face scanning for attention. As she shifted her weight it would sway and seem to follow a pa
ssing car. It might be winking its asshole at the cars under the tight jeans, for all its studied animation. Black wished the camera would zoom in on it.
It did, a moment later, though not in the manner he would expect. The camera floated out of the car window lazily as the film wound down abruptly to slow motion. No sound. Slow, slow, smooth and languid. The camera was out of the car and into the street. It was floating toward the young woman. A number changed finally on the digital bank clock. Black noticed now that this film had been shot only two days ago, by the date shown in smaller numbers over the time. Odd, since this performance had been scheduled for several weeks at least…
The camera was out in the middle of the street. Had to be a remote hover camera, operated from inside the car. Black began to realize that the camera was zooming in as well as moving closer, and that it did seem to be focusing in on the blue-jeaned rear of that blond. Was it only zooming and still inside the car? But it felt so like the camera was actually in motion itself…
The blue-jeaned bottom now a blue-jeaned planet, subtly bisected under those dull woven oceans. Sound was welling up, a whooshing of air. The zoom abruptly jumped up and the weave of the jeans was of great ropes, great tree trunks criss-crossing, and then a great fizzing-ripping sound as the camera plunged into darkness. My God, thought Black, as did the audience, judging from some of the mumbles and soft exclamations.
“Did that go in her?” Opal hissed.
“I think so.”
A light came on in the movie. The camera was plummeting through a strange red ocean, sinking, and finally coming to a rest. Stillness. The zoom increased, however. There were things, alive, swimming in and out of the light like moths. The camera was now a microscope.
“Some kind of dart or arrow,” said Black.
“Is it fake?”
“I don’t know. The film might have spliced in the dark part.”
A hissing, roaring, rushing, gurgling—and rising up from it in slow motion came a demon’s wail, growing to a near-deafening, shrill but also bass-thick rumble. Black scrunched his face. It was meant to be, or actually was, the woman’s scream from inside her body.
The screen went black. The scream echoed away throughout the great dark chamber of the factory. The audience murmured and hissed with whispers, shaken…there was a scattering of meek, obligatory applause, and a few people applauded enthusiastically.
“A bullet?” said Opal.
“It would spin or tumble. A stabilized dart of some kind. Some kind of homing probe.”
“Should we call the forcers down?”
“Maybe. It could be fake. Let’s wait until after, talk to Vern.”
“Do you remember hearing about a woman sniped in the ass in front of those banks two days ago?”
“No, but this is Punktown.” Enough said. One would have to watch the all-news VT stations all day, and even then some days they couldn’t list every major crime and killing. Mostly, one just got an assorted sampling.
The man on stage remained unmoving, robot-like, hands flat to the outsides of his legs, but the screen flashed to a new image. It was the head of Toll Loveland in proportion to the body, but the background was of swirling luminous blue vapor filled with darting moths. A white moth had alighted on his hair. He was smiling faintly.
He was a handsome man, in his mid-twenties, with a high smooth forehead and his brown hair slicked back to further emphasize its highlighted surface with its low, dark brow. From under this bony brow his blue eyes stared, deep and dramatic. His lips were thick and sensuous, compressed in the smile which seemed to indicate that he knew how charismatic his attractiveness was. It was a face both intelligent and primal, sensitive and brutal, twinkling with humor but sullenly dissolute.
The head seemed truly to be seeing them, the eyes flicking. Black felt sure they would flick onto his. Perhaps it was seeing them, or perhaps just a recording. The lips moved.
“I broke the lock—of Pandora’s Box
I pried open her chastity belt
It smelt
Of the decay of repression
I sought her depression
Then—wagon before horse
I became dragon
Of our intercourse
She was the cart—I was the ox
With a new-found freedom
I built a kingdom
From tumbled disordered blocks
I tore castles down
Built them inverted in ground
Turned backward the hands
Of clocks
I spread my new vision
Borne on glassy veined wings
My song was transported
In the buzz the bees sing
My art they inscribed
With their ink-dipped bee stings
I became God
You are my flowers
Your colors my whim
To be cultivated
Or plucked
To be rejected or fucked
Such is my power
Shapes you ape hapless
The Void opens mapless
This box was inside me
No longer you ride me
You won’t make me hide me
Now I am inside thee
Inside me you’ll see”
Throughout this the face had gradually enlarged until now the mouth alone filled the screen, the pores over the lip like craters, the lips hideously seamed and split. The mouth opened, wide, wider, the image still enlarging, the blackness inside the mouth becoming a cavern…starless space. Black empty screen.
More spotty applause.
“This guy’s kind of baroque,” mumbled Black.
“Kind of sick,” opined Opal.
“Ow—shit.” Black slapped at the back of his neck, twisted in his chair. A small brown moth bobbed as if on a string—an indigenous blood-drinking variety. He swatted at it and lost sight of it. “Fucking guy. I hate three-dimensional art.”
“Is it over or what?” said Opal, as though cheated.
Black saw that the jumpsuited man was bowing to a polite, half-convinced applause. Hesitant, sharing Opal’s confusion and surprise. The figure turned and walked to the curtain, slipped through it; gone. The empty cereal box remained open.
The lights came up. “That’s it,” Black marveled. “Ha. What a genius, huh? I’ve never been so moved.”
“I’ve never seen such a bowel movement. There’s Vern.” Opal and then Black rose from their seats to catch up with Woodmere and Beak, who were already walking up front to the stage, while the rest of the small crowd milled about chatting or trickled back reluctantly the way they had come—these people no doubt convincing themselves and their companions that they had appreciated and understood the brilliance of Toll Loveland, and hadn’t really wasted their money or time on something they hadn’t enjoyed or comprehended in the slightest. There was almost a lost, disoriented dejection to their solemn filing out. Two security guards who worked for Mrs. Greenberg appeared to make certain that no one decided to do some exploring beyond the lit path. Another guard stepped in front of the stage to block the health agents.
Woodmere flipped his badge out. “Step aside, gramps.”
Opal trotted up beside him. He was replacing his badge and slipping out a big semi-automatic pistol. Opal asked, “You hear anything about a woman shot in the ass with a dart in front of those banks?”
“Witness said she was pulled inside the black car and driven off.”
“God.”
“A guy in the row behind us recognized it, too,” said Beak, his own handgun emerging. “I heard him tell his girl he was gonna call the force down here.”
“Want me to call them, too?”
“We got it under control,” growled Woodmere, flashing his eyes onto Black. “You and the girl go around the other side.”
Woodmere and Beak stole around to the left of the curtain behind the makeshift stage, Opal and Black trotting softly around to the right, their guns sliding out. Those remaining in t
he audience stood staring as though this were a part of the performance.
After allowing a moment for agents Black and Cowrie to reach their side, Woodmere swung around the corner of the curtain with gun extended in both fists. Opposite him, Black appeared in a mirrored pose. Their eyes briefly touched. Nothing behind the curtain. “Fuck,” snarled Vern, whirling to Beak. “He must be in the plant somewhere—get those security clowns to bring the lights up. Tell ‘em to escort out the rest of the audience and secure all doors they can.”
“I’ll call the police now,” Opal intoned grimly, lowering her snub.
“Yeah yeah,” grumbled Vern. “But first go grab that ticket girl—cuff her.”
Opal darted off. Black came beside Vern to look off into the impenetrable blackness as though standing on a wharf’s edge gazing out at a night sea. Vern was unfolding a pair of sunglasses from his pocket, put them on, flicked a tiny switch and a red dot of light appeared in the center of each lens.
“I’m going to look around before the fucking troops come in and treat us like meat inspectors.” And with that, Vern plummeted into the darkness and disappeared.
Black was left with little to do. He had a flashlight, but what was the use? Loveland had planned this all out, mapped it, designed it. Vern would become lost and Loveland would already be out of the building. Rather than follow Vern, Black trotted down the lighted path past the last of the filing out audience, past Opal hand-cuffing the unresisting, pale and gaping ticket girl (Opal nodded to him that everything was under control) and out into the parking lot. Starting cars. Black bolted for his, long legs pumping, dodged out of the way of one departing hovercar.
Black knew the password for Opal’s car, keyed it in, wished they’d brought his helicar with its capacity for greater elevation, its spotlight beacon. He wheeled the car around, drove toward the plant. He activated the magnetic, rotating health agent lamp and placed it on the roof to keep the security guards from opposing him. In a vehicle he could more quickly cover the area around the plant and its various doors and loading docks.
Ahead, a side door of blank metal, no insignia. Black paused the car, stepped out, pistol drawn, scanned around him, swept the flashlight. A high chain-link fence, barbed wire atop it—and the fence hummed softly, giving off the faint bluish glow of a mild current. Beyond this, dead yellow grass stretching off to a patch of black woods, a gray marshy stream cutting through the grass, sulphurous yellow mist curling up from the stream in ectoplasmic exhalations. Not a likely escape route. Black moved to try the door. Rattled the knob—locked. As he began to turn the door flung open behind him and a voice hissed, “Freeze!”
Health Agent Page 4
