The guard looked convinced, but his companion leaned in the window and focused on Vern. “Hey, wait a minute—you see him? That guy? He’s the guy who killed Gato.”
“Who, him?”
“I was there that night, I saw his face! I thought they were gonna expel that guy! What is this, huh? You can kill anybody you want and…”
“They did expel him,” Black said calmly, before Vern could speak. “He’s out of the agency…but he was there that night and I’m using him as a source of information in my investigation. I want him to show me around the grounds, and inside too if we can.”
“You can’t, not without an appointment,” said the first guard. “The place was sold and they’re cleaning it all up inside.”
“Sold?” Black looked toward the plant through his windshield. “To who?”
“Some pharmaceutical company.”
“The place stood here empty for years and now suddenly, of all times, it’s bought?”
“Maybe all that Toll Loveland controversy attracted the attention of a buyer,” the guard suggested.
“Maybe. But we can look at the grounds?”
“Yes.”
“Are there any other health agents on the property right now, inside or out?”
“No.”
Good.
The guards let them in and they parked in the lot close to the Beds. There were a dozen or so other vehicles in the lot, but closer to the plant. Stepping out, Black heard the hum and rumble of heavy machinery from the other side of the plant, and then a great crashing as of cars colliding. He pictured the old mechanical guts of the Greenberg company being extracted and unloaded at the docks into great scrap-eating robots, to be recycled.
“I seriously doubt Loveland’s still hiding in there,” said Woodmere.
Black said nothing, but why had he imagined that Loveland might be?
Together they walked toward the odd track beds of the extra-dimensional Bedbugs. In the light of day, Black took note of the fact that there was no length of charged fence separating the property of the Greenberg plant from the Beds. Odd—he and Opal hadn’t thought of that before. Had there ever been? It wasn’t likely that anyone could enter the Beds and thus walk onto the Greenberg property that way, however—surrounding the Beds there was still a fifteen-foot high fence of what looked to be wrought iron, each of its bars covered in razor-edged black knife blades. Only a helicar could get over that. But there was no length of frightening metal bars separating the two properties, either. Had there ever been?
“Come on,” said Black.
At the end of the Beds the wall of knives rose high, and—less high—the charged fence hummed. From here, at the rear border of the Greenberg property, they watched fork-lifts on the loading docks dump tangled masses of machinery into hungry yellow robots as Black had imagined. Then, returning to the matter at hand, he inspected the ends of both the towering metal fence and the charged fence.
On both end posts were the scarred indications that there had once been sections blocking the two properties off from each other. Now gone.
“Did one side remove both walls, or did they both remove their own, and why?” asked Black.
“You don’t think Loveland would do all that.”
“No…not necessarily. I don’t know what to think. Let’s go look at that tran.”
The tran which Black and Opal had climbed up into on that night was an old, lonely thing in the daylight. Tentacle-like weeds had woven themselves inch by inch through and around the wheels and underbelly of the complex black machine, securing it, claiming it as a captive. Bird turds stood out as bold graffiti on its riveted back. A sad, beached whale corpse. The two men hoisted themselves up inside its carcass.
Thick porthole-like windows let in the light. And up front there was the soft glow of the two globes filled with their Navigator fluid. Within them writhed the shadowy forms of the twin metallic blue fish. Just like the painting. Vern grunted.
Below the globes, those six silver metal rings like miniature steering wheels, one for each of a Bedbug’s whip-like pincered arms. To one side, six small glass balls were set into a wall section. A greenish-yellow glowing fluid half-filled them, and floating in each one was a smaller silver metal ball. Gauges of some kind. There were rows of yet tinier silver rings, some large black levers set in the floor and ceiling, but hardly enough controls, it would appear, for a machine that traveled through dimensions. Vern had crouched to look under the front console with its six metal wheels while Black tried to pry a wall panel open without breaking off his nails.
“Black…hey, Black.”
Black came to crouch beside Vern. Vern shifted to let Black twist lower and gaze up under the hollow console. He could see inside clearly by the light from the exposed undersides of the two Navigator spheres. There were rows of metal rings with alien characters etched beside them in silver. And there was a plastic box the size of a thick paperback book fixed to the inner wall. Cables from it were clamped to a few rings…but most notably, two cables ending in sticky disks were adhered to the undersides of both Navigator balls. A tiny red light blinked alive on the plastic box.
“Doesn’t look like Bedbug technology,” Vern observed.
“It isn’t.” Black smiled with grim satisfaction.
“Smart boy.”
Black didn’t know if Vern voiced the compliment for him or for Loveland. He straightened up to face the older man. “I don’t want to fuck with it. It’s obvious it’s still active. It must operate by a hand remote…he’s probably still using it. If we fuck with it we could ruin it.”
“So what, then? We report it?”
“No. Maybe we can make it work for us. Who do we know who could understand it, maybe manipulate it to our needs? What about Bubba Hernandez? He’s a whiz.”
Bubba was yet another expelled Health Agency employee, but a technician, not a field agent. His drug habits had led to his dismissal, especially after a near hazardous spill in his lab. Woodmere laughed. “Man, Bubba is a burn-out.”
What are we? thought Black. “Well…”
“Listen, lemme think a minute, here. There’s a guy I know from the Teeb family—his name’s Dirge.” The Teeb organization was the biggest illegal arms and black market dealer in Punktown, and with their illicit cloning and manifold other services was considered a threat the Health Agency had been trying to crack for years. Those agency people who weren’t paid off, that is. “Dirge is a freaking whiz…he’d be our best bet. But it’ll cost.”
“I’ll pay it. What else good is my money now?”
“Don’t’ keep talkin’ that way, man!”
“I’ll take you home. Go find this Dirge…see if you can get him down here tomorrow. I’ll call you tonight.”
“Right.” They both rose and departed from the tran.
*
Black’s lips hurt—he hated to talk. Before he got on the vidphone in his apartment he dabbed a numbing ointment on them. It was numbing after the initial acidic fire, which made him moan, nearly swoon. He felt extremely nauseous.
He took his weight off gelatin legs, sat before the screen. In a moment it was filled with a woman’s face and he swallowed ointment-tainted saliva, which didn’t help his nausea. The woman had a severe look. Humorless gray eyes, a small twisty sneer of a mouth in a doughy face. She looked surprisingly old for her forty-some-odd years. Would Opal appear this old if she lived long enough to double her life?
“Mrs. Cowrie, can I speak to your daughter?”
“She isn’t here right now.”
“I know she told me she’d call me, but she hasn’t…and, um…I have some very interesting developments to tell her about the Loveland case.”
“I’ll tell her you called.”
“Do you know where she went or when she’ll be back?”
“No. I’ll tell her you called.”
“Could you have her call me tonight? I’ll be here all night.”
“She’ll call you when and if
she’s ready. I’m sorry. Goodbye.”
The screen went dead. Probably sitting right there beside her, Black thought.
He was both dismally disappointed and shamefully relieved.
*
In the guard shack at the entrance to the Health Agency’s back parking lot, Jose the ex-health agent received a call on his vidphone at the same moment Black pulled up in his helicar. Rather than make the caller wait, Jose made Black wait. Black groaned, shifted his weight in his plush seat. He found himself becoming more and more impatient with little things. Life was short.
“You can see my fucking face, Jose,” he muttered under his breath, “just let me in, will ya?” He could see the vidscreen in the shack from here, a man with a crewcut and black handlebar mustache. The man seemed to turn his head a little to glance back at Black a few times over Jose’s shoulder.
Black lit a black-papered cigarette. Brain damage, he thought about Jose, and regretted it a moment later. Probably was, from when he’d lost his face. Jose had once been electric, an energetic agent. Now he seemed to shamble in his booth, move and speak as if inside a tank of thick liquid. The man with the handlebar mustache definitely was craning his neck to see Black over Jose’s shoulder.
A shocking-pink hovercar pulled up alongside the helicar on its left; Black looked out his window, saw the two men inside the vehicle and threw himself across his passenger seat, raising an arm to shield his face as his driver’s side window exploded.
One of the men in the pink hovercar had used a metal tube to shatter the window, touching it to the surface and activating a sound vibration. Tubes like these were used by car thieves to gain access. But this was no parked car.
Crystal pebbles covered Black; he bucked on the seat, thrashed in his tight coffin as the man with the tube now leaned out far to point a pistol. The pistol barrel actually entered into Black’s car. The health agent had finally yanked free his own gun but it snagged his jacket lining and he cried out, kicked at the pistol uselessly as it went off.
A tiny dart hit him in the face beside his nostril, spiking deep. Still crying out, one cry on the tail of the next, Black brought up his civilian, licensed Decimator 220 and emptied three of its six revolving chambers, hardly aiming. The blasts inside the car were ear-splitting.
The man was hit squarely in the face by one of the projectiles, directly on the left eyebrow. He pitched back.
Insane screams from the other car; Black quit his firing and sat up, the crystal pebbles flying off him. The other man, the hovercar’s driver, had been hit by one of the strays. In the ear. Even as Black rose to look, the screaming had stopped, the ear having become a crater filled with steaming bluish glow. The weak plasma available to the licensed public. Black looked back to the first man. God, he was still alive. A little. Head tossed back, his face was melting like glowing blue wax, the holes for the eyes and nose stretching out into long slits, and his mouth gaped open wide to accept it all as it ran off the more slowly dissolving bone. The man choked a little softly; Black saw his throat move as he swallowed his face.
A moment later the man was dead but the plasma still hissed, spread inside him a little longer. Black felt a trickle of blood tickling down his face from the dart embedded near his nose, and then black flowers sprouted in profusion before his eyes and he pitched back on the pebbly car seats before Jose could get to him.
Black heard the man on the vidscreen yelling and cursing—at him, it seemed—and then it went blank, and so did he.
*
The Currier and Ives calendar had been advanced to a new picture since Black had sat in this conference room last. Opal had been here then.
Captain Nedland came in, as before. He smiled at Black and put a coffee in front of him. “Thought you could use this. I remember it right, black and two sugars?”
Black could drink it black or with milk and sugar but not black with sugar. “Close enough,” he said. “Thanks.” He could use it, just the same.
“We played back the call from the guard shack. The caller was in police files—Granite Buttercup. He belongs to a homosexual militant group, the Gay United Liberation Party. A bunch of psychos. Did you see the news last night?”
“I haven’t been watching VT.”
“Two of them infected with M-670 killed themselves on the steps of Town Hall last night after spraying policemen with squirt guns filled with their urine and blood. One forcer got squirted in the mouth. I haven’t heard how he’d made out—they got him to the hospital fast and may have had time to clean him up before the virus took hold. Before the forcers could get their hands on the two of them, one shot himself in the head and the other slashed his own throat. Contaminated blood all over, just what they wanted. Protestors.”
“Because of the Bum Junket thing.”
“That’s why they came after you. They must have been watching you for a while.”
“Do they know my name, where I live?”
“Very doubtful, or they would have attacked you there where the risk is less.”
“Well, they’re suicide squads, right? It’s more symbolic to attack me here.”
“Yeah, but the two you killed didn’t have M-670…I’ll bet they wanted to make it out alive. They don’t know your name, I’m sure, but be careful. I’m having your car held for now and we’ll have the window fixed for you. We’ll lend you an agency car. Dye your hair or something.”
“So the dart was what I think?”
Nedland nodded. “Mutstav six-seventy.”
Black had to laugh out loud. “Those stupid fucks. Threw their lives away for nothing.”
“Scary intentions, nonetheless. How do you feel?”
“My face is numb. I just got queasy and passed out.”
“You aren’t eating or sleeping right, I hear. Don’t do that.”
Black had stopped laughing. “I haven’t seen you in a while. I haven’t seen Opal, either. Has she been coming in?”
“Once a week.”
“What day and time?”
“I don’t think she wants to see you.”
“Dammit, man…” Black sprang out of his chair, spun on his heel and shot into a tiger’s angry, caged pacing.
“Give her time.”
“We don’t have time!”
“We’ll find a cure soon.”
“Mutant shit!”
Nedland sipped his own coffee. Waited instead of arguing.
In a softer voice, facing the calendar, Black asked, “So how’s she doing?”
Nedland sighed a little. Black didn’t like that. “She doesn’t feel too good. It affects people in different ways, according to many personal factors. She’s been eating and sleeping right, she mostly just stays home in her mother’s care. But she’s not doing as well as you are.”
“Great.” Black felt like a drunk driver who in a collision with another car had killed the driver but had only received minor scratches himself. And he had chosen to drink. His responsibility. His fault.
“A cure is within reach, Monty. That isn’t the standard VT line like you think.”
“I can’t afford to get my hopes up.”
“At least calm down.”
“Go stick that dart in your arm and then tell me to calm down. I wanna rip right out of my skin. I want to run and scream. Can you understand that?”
“I think I can, yes.” Nedland studied the back of the standing man. “I hate to change the subject, but I’m not, really. One of our people saw you and Vern Woodmere down at the Hill Way Galleries.”
“Yeah, we went there. I looked him up for lunch, then I wanted to see Toll Loveland’s painting they have there. And when they have that big exhibit of his work they’re planning, I’ll go and see that, too.”
“You’re being awfully defensive, Monty.”
“Well, you seem to be implying something.”
“Only that you should be careful.”
Black faced his former commander. “Don’t threaten me, please.”
�
�Good Lord, I’m not threatening you! I’m concerned for you, Monty, can’t you believe that? I’m on your side; we want the same thing. But let us handle this, alright? You know what I mean. When I say be careful it’s concern. In fact, look here. You aren’t taking care of yourself, and now you’re in danger from that bunch of psycho-terrorists. Why don’t you come stay with us here in the ward? We’ll take care of you and protect you. It won’t be long, I know it.”
“No. Absolutely not.”
“Monty, what are you now, Auretta Here? You think we’re going to throw you in a zapper and disintegrate you?”
“I don’t want to be a prisoner in a white smock. I’m not a lab rat.”
“Monty, for your own good…”
“Don’t tell me my own good. I’m not interested in spending what could very well be the last few months of my life in a hospital room. I come here every day; that’s enough.”
“You’re twisting this all around. We can keep you fit! Look at you, look at your eyes! You’re losing weight fast. Your skin looks yellowish to me.”
“I’m dying.”
“You’re sick. You don’t have to die; you’ve got to get that into your skull.”
“You just want to study me and keep a health hazard off the street. You’re mad because I won’t take the libido blockers you offered me…like you think I’m gonna go out and seduce school children.”
“You’re the one talking mutant shit, Monty. This is all Bum Junket-style paranoia. You’re talking Bum Junket.”
“I know about Bum Junket, man. You had me kill him, remember? We could have taken the selfish bastard in here by force and studied him and made his last days comfortable. That would have been a fair compromise. But you had me kill him.”
“You were all for it, as I remember.”
“Things have changed. Extremes aren’t good.”
“We have to protect the public.”
“I am the public! Bum Junket was the public!”
“That sounds good, Monty. And Toll Loveland? Isn’t he also the public, then?”
“I’m no threat. I’m no Bum Junket or Auretta Here and I’m no fucking Toll Loveland. I’ll come in and give you my damn blood and cell samples. And that’s it. You understand me? I’m a free man.”
Health Agent Page 10
