Jones hated to ask, but agents Black and Cowrie looked to be taking this pretty well…like professionals. After all, certain doctors had contracted the virus also from their infected patients. Hospital patients had the right to ask their doctors if they had M-670. The doctors, however, were not legally obligated to answer. There were infected doctors still practicing. But what Jones asked was, “What’s the longest a victim has lived so far—a year, was it?”
“Since the first cases we know of, appearing fourteen months ago, the longest a victim has lived once afflicted was just short of twelve months. People are affected differently, according to their individual physical state. Healthy people usually last longer, but sometimes a drug addict will live eight months and a healthy person will last two. Many factors.”
Black noticed that Jones glanced at him again. He had also noticed that not once since Jones had arrived—and even longer than that—had Opal looked at him.
*
Captain Nedland’s meeting with Jones and the detectives from Precincts 34 and 19 was interrupted by a call from Agent Beak.
“I’m in Path-4, Captain. I’ve been trying to locate family or friends of this guy Tate Hurrea, the mutant from Block Ave.? Well, he’s in no phone book, no computer, nothing. In fact, his government index number is a fake…at least, it doesn’t belong to him. All his ID in the wallet turned out to be forged.”
“Interesting.”
“So I kept looking to find his name somewhere, anywhere. Tate Hurrea, Tate Hurrea…”
“Yes?”
“Tate Hurrea.” Beak pronounced it slowly.
“So?”
“Auretta Here.”
“Shit! Is it?”
“Path-4 has found evidence that the blob on Block Ave. at one time had M-670. The body’s in no shape to check for an arrow wound in the behind, but I’d guess she wasn’t killed in the street after all. Loveland took the mutstav, and then when he was done with her he gave her the genetic disruptors and mutant chromes and dumped her to die in the lot with the fake wallet.”
“Playing games,” Jones repeated disdainfully.
“It’s his idea of art,” said Nedland. “He’s weaving patterns.”
“He’s like a psycho on a rooftop with a paintbrush instead of a rifle,” Jones said, admiring his own analogy.
“Good work, Beak,” said Captain Nedland. He considered paging Black and Opal in case they were still in the building, but what was the use in that? They were both off the case.
*
It was no one’s break-time, fortunately, and this section’s little cafeteria with its six tables was empty. They had come here together; Opal had muttered that she wanted a coffee. Black ordered a juice instead of hot mustard, which sometimes upset his stomach. It wasn’t good for his health, and he had to cling to his health now. The more time he bought, the better his chances of being around when they found a vaccine and cure.
He fought not to smoke, chewed at a nail instead. He felt nauseous. He could feel it in him, rotting him, he imagined, could hear each cell as it crinkled up black and dead. It made him want to run and scream, run from it, but he had to sit still and listen to it eat him like ants crawling all over his body and face. It was equally maddening watching Opal’s shuttered, averted face and trying to read her thoughts. He would have to lance her with probes.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, not looking at him, sounding irritated to talk.
“You didn’t want to have sex. I pushed you into it. If I hadn’t, the scanners would have detected it in me before I could give it to you.”
“If we hadn’t fucked last night, we would have this morning, probably. Having sex was normal for us. It was inevitable for me to catch it.”
“One night. I should have waited for one fucking night.” He wasn’t faking it, wasn’t manipulating her to sympathize with him or exonerate him for his guilt. He was a little beyond wanting to be reassured that he was innocent. He was convinced that he was guilty, beyond the realm of exoneration. He just wanted her to know he was sorry…forgiveness was too much to ask for. He felt sure he would vomit soon, was conscious of the portable trash zapper near their table. He also wanted to cry. “One fucking night I couldn’t wait,” he hissed.
“It’s his fault, not yours. They’ll find a cure soon…how long can it be before they find a teleporter filter?” Opal’s coffee shivered in her cup as she lifted it to sip. “I’ll just pick up a few things at the apartment—I won’t need much.”
“Do you want me to come with you? Help carry things into your mother’s place?”
“No, I can manage.”
“I’m sorry.” It seemed a race now, vomit or tears. Which would win?
“I know! Alright? I know. They’ll find a cure—this is nothing.”
“Don’t drink coffee, Opal, it isn’t good for you,” he found himself babbling.
“Yes, doctor.” Opal stood and dropped it, barely sipped, in the zapper. The cafeteria door slid open and a guard leaned in a little. He looked like he’d been searching for them.
“Ah, excuse me, but I was asked to tell you not to use the staff cafeteria, please, or wander unescorted in the building. There’s a number of visitor and patient caf…”
“We’re finished.” Opal brushed roughly past him. Black darted after her, forgetting his nausea and tears, but desperate.
“Opal, let me drop you off at the apartment. Then I’ll leave you alone, uninterrupted.”
She didn’t reply but allowed him to walk beside her.
“Idiot,” the guard hissed, going to their abandoned table to throw Black’s forgotten juice container in the zapper. He sprayed down the tabletop with a bottle of disinfectant from a shelf.
*
In front of their tenement house, Opal had her door cracked open as soon as Black’s vehicle came to rest. “Are you gonna stay here?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be in touch.” She was out of the helicar and walking up their driveway, where her car was parked. She hadn’t looked at him directly since the conference, and didn’t look back now.
Black was going to call after her to take care, something of that nature, but lifted the helicar high and drove off into the cold air before she could come back and see the tears capping his eyes. He felt certain that for one reason or another, he would never see Opal again.
Just inside the ground floor hall, Opal remembered something and hurried back out into the driveway, but Black’s car was gone, no longer in sight even in the air. Well, she could leave him a note, and that was of course better anyway. She had wanted to ask him to keep on putting food and water out for Feral, just in case.
*
Black both dreaded and hoped to find Opal still at the apartment when he returned from his driving two hours later, and was relieved and disappointed to find that she wasn’t. The sight of the note quickened his pulse with dread and hope again, but its message only depressed him, especially its futility. How could she still harbor hope?
He had walked for a time through the park. Last spring he and Opal had come here to walk and had watched a couple being married on a radically arched bridge over a fabricated stream in which aquatic birds bobbed, scudding under the laden bridge which Black had joked might collapse under the congregation. The stream widened and there were a few grassy, bushy, tree-shaded little islands in it almost close enough to jump to, but not quite. The submerged child in him had awakened to yearn for the exploration and temporary colonization of them.
Now they were dismal, the trees like the masts of sunken ships; maybe he could reach them across the frozen stream, but who’d want to? There was still snow gathered around the trees in the park like a photographic negative of shade. Black liked the change of seasons, that it wasn’t always artificially warm and temperate like it was in many planet colonies (though violent storms and too extreme blizzards were not allowed despite those who liked even these manifestations
of weather), but walking through the park he couldn’t see the justification in prolonging this bleak limbo.
Now he was home, and warm, and alone.
She hadn’t taken everything, as he’d thought she would despite what she’d said about taking just a few things. She’d left clothes. Things on the walls of the kitchen (but was that because she considered them their things, instead of only hers?), decorations elsewhere. She either intended to come back to live here later, or come back to remove the rest of her belongings…or she didn’t believe she’d live long enough to need all these things.
No longer crying, numb and tired, Black made himself a drink and sat down in front of the VT, watching it but listening to the soft, soothing bubbling-gurgling of her (their?) aquarium. She had left her fish. Living eyes in the room with him, eyes connected to creatures she cared about. That made him feel both melancholy and a little less alone.
He dozed in the chair, woke, numbly watched VT, dozed, VT, dozed, VT, slept in the chair. In fact, he spent the next three days primarily in that chair, doing the same.
The second day he hadn’t taken a shower, and remained in the T-shirt and sweat-pants he’d slept in until the next day, and he didn’t shower or change that day either. He scuffed about in slippers. The sharp glinting whiskers on his cheeks were attempting to assimilate his mustache and goatee, a neglected hedge losing its trimmed definition. He had to force himself to eat, a little at a time, fighting the nausea that was mostly psychosomatic, as he still imagined he could feel his organs corroding like spoiled meat inside his refrigerator.
The only time he had left his apartment these three days had been to check into HAP as promised, and for these occasions he had added only socks, sneakers and an overcoat, and to hell with the rest and what anybody thought. He was sick—they’d understand. The first day, Nedland told him about Auretta Here. She was the blob of decaying mutated flesh found in the lot on Block Avenue. Other than that, no developments. The lawyer knew nothing of Toll Loveland, nor did Auretta Here’s old friends and fellow prostitutes, even when shown tapes of Loveland’s show and his cameo in Auretta’s vid message.
“His name obviously isn’t Toll Loveland,” said Nedland, “It’s just his latest ‘phase.’ Before, he was Vicelord Godfucker. The name he graduated under from P.U. was the same one he used at Paxton Polytech—Manuel Hung. Nothing before that. All previous addresses rented to new tenants; no family, still. No government registration. We’re running his picture and voice through census files anyway to see if it eventually rings a bell somewhere, either here or Earth or the other colonies.”
“He’s still in town,” said Black. “It wouldn’t be any fun for him if he wasn’t close to watch it all. He’s got a new name, maybe a new face.”
“And a new art project planned for the future, no doubt,” muttered Nedland.
Black nodded grimly. “Mm.”
On his third check-in visit, Nedland didn’t come to see or talk to him. He showered in the decontamination area, the only place he had showered in the past two days, and this time had brought a change of clothes. He even shaved at HAP. Perhaps he was stalling, hoping that Opal would come in. She didn’t.
He shaved off his mustache and goatee.
He went home to watch VT, listen to the aquarium and feel his organs rot in the vacant lot of his body like the corpse of Auretta Here.
It couldn’t be kept a secret, of course—it was good ratings. Black was mentioned, though not by name, a celebrity again, but his face was not revealed…a reversal of before. This and the Bum Junket incident were not linked, his name not put to the executioner’s face. Opal was mentioned… “a young female agent.” Toll Loveland’s face was shown—indeed, the entire Cupid of Death film from his Pandora’s Box show was run on the news and talk shows. He must be ecstatic, thought Black. Loveland’s smile in the vid where he crossed the art museum lot behind Auretta Here seemed broader and more mocking each time he saw it.
Probably all of those who had seen the show at Greenberg eventually came forward, unless some had gone out of town and were unaware of all this. They and as many of their sexual partners as could be rounded-up were tested. Thirty-five of the perhaps eighty people in the audience had been bitten and infected. Not too bad, considering the number who hadn’t been. Of the rounded-up lovers and their subsequent lovers as thus far accounted for, however, another fifty-four people were diagnosed as having contracted M-670.
Many of the people who had seen The Godfucker came forward in desperation. Only two had M-670, and one had also been to the Pandora’s Box show, had been bitten, the second being the girlfriend of another infected man who had seen Pandora’s Box, though she herself hadn’t. Nothing else wrong or unusual was detected in the remainder of The Godfucker’s audience.
At the Agency they offered to enroll Black in an outside counseling group for M-670 victims and their families and they proffered him a drug that would nullify his sex drive completely for as long as he took it. He turned down both offers, insulted greatly by the latter. After he had infected Opal, did they really think he’d go out and try to get laid? What did they think he was, Bum Junket reincarnated?
He had programmed his VT to tape anything and everything—news, talk shows, specials, even a music benefit—on M-670, and quickly filled up several chips, some shows having to be taped simultaneously, the news especially, on two or more channels. There were too many stations for him to scan himself, even though he spent the next few days in front of the VT as before.
But Black had seen it all before in the past fourteen months, and found himself switching the recorded shows off after a short while, watching some movie instead. The stories concerning Toll Loveland—and thus himself—he watched, of course…and he watched the six-hour music benefit, featuring Del Kahn and a few other favorite performers. But only three items he saw on VT really caught his interest, and these he encountered in random flipping.
The first was a critique of Toll Loveland’s performance Pandora’s Box in the art reviews of a trendy sort of net magazine Opal had subscribed to through their computer service. A little ways into it, Black had to start at the beginning again to believe what he was reading.
Toll Loveland was brilliant. Portraying the candy-like, chemical-ridden children’s breakfast cereal Screaming Pink Nazis as a Pandora’s box of flying poison (in place of the real cereal’s rampaging holographic soldiers) was a biting statement on society and its merchandise, a stroke of genius. That Toll Loveland showed his face during the show only on a VT screen was further criticism of society’s flat, VT-oriented presentation of life, shallow and inorganic and product-obsessed…not to mention a clever echo of the Auretta Here vids, his cameo appearance there. The symmetry between those vids and the blob on Block Avenue and the Cupid of Death film was praised. Loveland’s so-called one-night-only show had actually been unveiled and running earlier in Here’s vid messages, and still continued on through the infected M-670 victims. Loveland’s creation was a pyramid, this critic said, growing higher and more awesome as the M-670 victims multiplied…though he correctly observed that the pyramid’s growth would have been radically curbed by the Health Agency by now.
Holding the performance in the old Greenberg Products plant, retired after a chemical spill, was a splendid choice of stage. Again, that Loveland never once revealed his own flesh during the show was a brilliant comment on the passionless plastic of society. And Cupid of Death was “an encapsulated artwork all its own, a gem within a gem, a stunning masterpiece of erotic horror. The audience watched Loveland’s arrow pierce Auretta Here’s body full of M-670 even as moths filled like syringes with her infection pierced their unsuspecting flesh…”
All in all, Toll Loveland’s Pandora’s Box was a “masterwork of existential art.”
The critic, incidentally, had not personally been to the show but had watched the entire piece played on various VT programs, as extracted from the memories of health agent Beak and others.
Black
had a brief, harmless fantasy of showing up at the critic’s door at midnight to let him know how he felt to be a block in Toll Loveland’s brilliant pyramid. He imagined cutting himself and forcing the man at gunpoint to drink his blood…then he could be a part of the masterwork, too!
Browsing channels, Black came upon a face which filled the screen and halted him. It was a face that made Bum Junket’s look well-nourished, and Black couldn’t believe the man was still alive at this point…but he was in a hospital bed, obviously, a portion of a glowing monitor screen showing behind him. The eggshell of a skull, its hair only a few last wisps like cobwebs, rested on a pillow…the teeth grinned horribly from shrunken-back gums…the eyes were glazed and quietly, wearily frantic in skull socket pits. There were sores, one on the forehead patched with a bandage. Of course Black had seen worse things. Addicts of the drug “fish” deteriorated to something like this, their whole bodies shrinking but their arms and legs—mere sticks—lengthening, the skin going purple-black…ending up looking like mummified gibbons, and little larger than that. And he and Opal had found a headless corpse lying on the sidewalk outside the house in the gentle tree shade one morning when they were leaving for work. But this was personal. Black felt his nausea rise to the occasion. This might be a mirror of the future.
There was a phone number superimposed at the bottom of the screen, and the man was croaking words. Black listened, like a priest to a confession.
“I used to live for sex…it was my whole life. My job meant very little to me. I didn’t have any male friends…if you were my friend, you were my lover. I didn’t…hang around bathrooms or anything, but bars, clubs. I didn’t know names, sometimes. I…couldn’t tell you how many…”
A photograph of the victim as a boy replaced the face, and then one of the man as an adult, good-looking and smiling a smooth-skinned, chubby-cheeked boyish smile. Black heard himself groan. Back to the skeleton. A caption read Two Days Later. Days were years for this man. Black could see the patient had only hours to live. The eyes had no life, could have been glass. The clenched teeth could barely part, but still the man confessed his guilt, laid out his sins.
Health Agent Page 7
