“You also have a responsibility to society.”
“And society has a responsibility to me!”
“Yes. And that’s why I want to help you.”
“I don’t need your kind of help.” Black went to the door, pushed its button. It wouldn’t open. He stabbed the button again, again. “Let me out! Let me the fuck out!” He glared at Nedland, his face twitching, ready to rip out of its skin. He looked like Vern Woodmere.
“Let him out,” Captain Nedland said softly, and the door opened.
Monty Black plunged through it, and the next day he didn’t show up for his daily appointment at the Health Agency.
EIGHT
Extremes weren’t good. But didn’t he want, and intend, to kill Toll Loveland—as he had killed Bum Junket?
He had demanded back his helicar and driven away in that, demolished window and all, instead of in their proffered agency car. Had checked the helicar into a repair garage and rented a nondescript-looking, black, wheeled car, which Vern had just let himself into in front of a café where they’d agreed to meet. From now on Black couldn’t afford to be caught at Vern’s apartment.
He told Vern what had happened. And that they’d been seen.
“You still with me?” he asked.
“I knew they’d catch on sooner or later…I just hoped it’d be later. We’re not hurting anybody…they can’t touch us yet. Fuck it.”
“Did you contact that guy Dirge?”
“He can’t come until tomorrow afternoon.”
“Damn. Now what?” Black watched traffic pass, a skinny gray dog drifting dejectedly along the sidewalk. Collar hanging loosely. He felt contempt for the smartly-dressed business types and students from a nearby university who strutted past it without looking. Opal would be cursing now. “I’d like to find the Bedbugs’ new track-bed, see if I can meet with some of them. Maybe we could get them to look at Loveland’s hook-up, and sniff them out while we’re at it…see if it looks like any of them might’ve been paid to help him.”
“It’s something, but they don’t care for humans…I say they didn’t help him and they won’t help us.”
“What about the widow Greenberg? You wanna go talk to her, or is that too obvious for you? Too risky?”
“Well, that’s not so much the thing…it’s just that she’s probably been all questioned out already.”
“But not by us, Vern. Remember the painting?”
“Alright, whiz, do it. I just wish I’d shaved today.”
A handsome dark-haired student expensively dressed all in black looked over his shoulder at the dog, turned, crouched down beside it amidst the busy throngs of people to look at its license and I.D. tags. A feeble ray of sun found its way to Black’s heart as he pulled into the flow of traffic.
Despite its great size, Paxton was called a town to Miniosis’s city, and on Earth both of them together would be like a city block by comparison. But to Black, Punktown was huge even with his lifetime of familiarity. So it was ironic that he should have been so familiar with Mrs. Greenberg’s house for years without ever realizing that she lived there. He could remember staring at it, even, with Opal once or twice from a path in the park he had wandered through recently alone, which the house overlooked.
It rested atop a mint green, exclusive apartment building with only ten stories, a rather simple design but elegant. The Greenberg house sat upon it like a leafy hat, not a connected piece. Leafy because three-quarters of the three-story building atop-a-building were engulfed in a thick green ivy, green even now though probably not synthetic, neatly trimmed around the rectangles of windows. The box-shaped, flat-roofed building was covered—as patches in the ivy revealed—in glossy checkered tiles of peach and jade, a beautiful design to be so largely obscured, but also beautiful in its obscurity. The roof was no heliport (vehicles parked there would be crassly intrusive) so ivy covered it instead.
Black and Vern checked into the guard station outside the mint green larger structure. Black had called an hour ago to make an appointment to see Mrs. Greenberg. She hadn’t been able to come to the screen—she was bathing—but she relayed the message to her servant that they were welcome. Beyond the guard stop Black and Vern caught an elevator to the roof of the host building, where its beautiful scaled parasite waited.
Vern rang the bell while Black stood at the high scrolled parapet watching tiny figures stroll through the ant farm of the park.
The glossy jade door opened and the servant from the vidphone was there—a friendly, pretty young woman with red hair in a frizzy flood down the back of her black uniform. Black couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen an actual—as she appeared, at least—redhead. She talked more like a waitress than a rich widow’s servant.
“She’s just gotten dressed and put together, finally. Mrs. G. doesn’t like to get up before noon, usually. Sorry for the wait. Hope you haven’t had lunch.”
“We just did, while we were waiting,” Vern said. They’d been told on the phone to give Mrs. Greenberg an hour. “No problem, hon.” Vern was all smiles for this succulent redhead.
“Damn…my fault…I forgot to tell you she asked me to invite you to join her. I remembered just after you hung up. She’ll kill me.”
“We’ll tell her we ate before we even called,” said Black.
“Thanks, guys. At least will you have coffee? Great. Alright, follow me.”
Even Black watched her ample hips roll inside her tight black skirt. But for him the stimulation brought the confusing torture of guilt.
Glinting coppery red hair. Black stockings, heels. Perfumed alabaster flesh, the so-soft cleavage up front like a child’s rear poking out of its pants. It was almost like looking at a corpse for him, however, and drooling over that. His nausea awakened to boil in his gut. He should have accepted Nedland’s fucking pills after all.
Many potted plants, native Choom antiques of polished wood and sparkling crystal and glowing metal. Down a wide courtyard-like corridor, its ceiling, floor and walls all tiled in peach and jade, flanked on either side by tropical plants in museum-style jungle dioramas, miniature pools filled with darting coppery fish. But Black only had eyes for their guide. He’d never taken a sex suppressor; how could one see and smell a woman like that without feeling anything? Without wanting to see and smell more? He supposed that it would feel like looking at an elderly woman, or mutated or nonhuman alien woman, or a man, felt to him now. A dismal concept. But still, if he’d had one pill in his pocket today he’d have popped it in his mouth.
And the worst, to his surprise and displeasure, was yet to come.
The redhead rapped on a glossy peach door, opened it. “Your guests, Mrs. G.—are you ready for lunch?”
“Yes. Will our guests be joining me?”
“For coffee; they already ate.”
“Thank you, Linda. Gentlemen, please come in and be comfortable.”
Black and Woodmere entered, Linda closing the door after them. It was a combination office and book-lined study, and Mrs. Greenberg sat behind a desk of black marble or perhaps crystal, with blood-red veins or striations—very expensive, whatever its material. She got up from behind it to come offer her hand.
She saw their amazement, an almost gaping shock, at her appearance…and explained good-naturedly, “Yes, I’m Mrs. Greenberg—Helga Greenberg—not her daughter. I don’t have any children. And no, this isn’t the result of illegal longevity drugs or treatments…I suffer from a metabolic mutation that greatly slows my aging process naturally. If you can call this natural.” She gestured at herself with an apologetic chuckle. “Sometimes I feel lucky, sometimes I don’t.”
“How old are you?” asked Vern. “If I can ask?”
“You just did. No problem. I’m forty-two. Physically, I’m thirty years younger than that. Before puberty my rate of aging was normal. Then I changed. I’ve aged only months in decades. My old schoolmates have children older than me, physically. Like I said, it can be a mixed blessing.”
“You must get tired of talking about it,” said Black.
“I’m used to it, don’t feel bad.”
“Is your mind twelve?”
“My brain is twelve. My mind is forty-two. I have forty-two years of memories and experiences. I don’t have temper tantrums or play with dolls, Agent Black, I promise you.” She laughed again, as friendly as her servant. Black was surprised. But more surprising, as startling as her physical age, was her physical beauty. That had dazzled these men into their initial gaping just as much.
Had she been this beautiful at twelve, or had the years of inner maturity lent her youthful form its aristocratic grace and sophistication? Had to be—not your standard twelve-year-old’s face. But maturity couldn’t have done it alone—couldn’t give her eyes of so pale a blue, disturbing as the rare blue eyes of a dog, under their fleshy, almost Asian folds. Black was familiar with the old Earth movie actress Lauren Bacall, and Mrs. Greenberg looked like an adolescent version, a tadpole. Her nose hadn’t lengthened, was still a button close below her eyes. When smiling she was a casual, open gamine, but normally her features fell into a model’s sullen, pouty frown, her brow frowning over the far-spaced, icy, unsettling eyes. Tangled wavy hair, dark blond and parted on the side to half hang over one eye, fell to her waist. She was tall for twelve but still small, and wore a black woolen sweater that fell to mid thigh, her legs bare, thin, white. She didn’t have much for breasts; maybe not much, if anything, for pubic hair.
But Black had the start of an erection, and it was rare for him to be so moved primarily by a face. It had to be many factors at work, conspiring. Her physical age linked with her womanly beauty. The hint of pedophilia, no matter how justified, still made his flesh crawl. And perhaps now that he couldn’t have sex, he wanted it a little bit more, was more aware of the sexual stimulations he was encountering. Had to be. He had seen beautiful girls and women, some stark naked on the street, every day of his life and seldom been so moved—you became jaded. You looked, you hungered, if you didn’t have a lover you ached—but the stirrings of an erection? Despite his body’s arousal, Black was greatly dismayed. He felt almost certain, too, that Mrs. Greenberg was aware of his swelling.
He was grateful when she returned to her desk, hid her slim bare legs, and he could sit to take the weight off his own rubbery legs and hide his erection. Problem was, when he sat it seemed to swell a bit larger. The nausea lapped against his inner walls in a storm-edged surf. His head fizzed, bloodless. The blood was all down low, pounding at his crotch door, some of it seeping under the crack. Vern was going to have to carry this one.
“I don’t mean to be rude or uncooperative but I don’t know what more I can tell you guys…I’ve talked to others from the Health Agency and police force.”
They hadn’t had to show their bogus badges, or relinquish their weapons. Vern replied, “Well, we’re a separate HAP branch running our own investigation and I’m afraid there’s a little too much in-house competition…you know how it is. Our comrades are keeping us in the dark so they can get their faces on the news.”
“Speaking of faces on the news, I remember seeing you on VT, Agent Black. You’re the one who terminated that male prostitute in Red Station.”
Black had had enough of being recognized for that accomplishment today. “Yes, I’m afraid I am. Just following unsavory orders.”
“I won’t hold it against you, I promise.” Gamine smile again. Then the pout. “Did you hurt your face today? Looks like a bite.”
It was swollen, red and shiny, near his nose from the dart. “Just a stupid accident.”
“Well, anyway, I will tell you whatever I can—everything I told your greedy comrades, I promise.” Linda came then, set Mrs. Greenberg’s lunch tray before her on the desk, and left the men their coffee on a wheeled cart between them. She winked at Black for protecting her secret on her way out.
“So Toll Loveland approached you directly to ask to use your old plant…not through an agent or associate or anything?” Vern asked, slurping coffee.
“He made an appointment and met me here, where you sit. He paid me for the privilege of using Greenberg Products as a theater for one night. Needless to say, I had no idea of his intentions. He described the performance but not the so-called Cupid of Death film, or the infected moths. I never saw any associates, if he had them. I’d never met him before that and I haven’t met him since. After what happened I had myself tested for M-670, in the thought that somehow during our meeting he had infected me, too. He hadn’t.”
“You’re a lucky one,” said Black.
“You didn’t attend the performance yourself?” asked Woodmere.
“Well,” Mrs. Greenberg bit in half a huge shrimp dipped in cocktail sauce, “he had shown me a vid of his last show…you know…the one in which he cut off his finger and cloned it back?”
“The Godfucker.” Vern wasn’t afraid to say it.
She smiled, a shy twelve-year-old. “Yes. A little too gruesome, not for me. My instincts may have saved me.”
“Have, ah, any of our associates approached you to have your memories of that play and your meeting with Loveland recorded for them to view?”
“They asked me—I’m afraid I declined. A creepy thought; I’ve never cared for the idea of someone paging through my private life like that.”
“Why let him perform, if you didn’t like his art?”
“Well, Agent Woodmere,” the widow Greenberg giggled, “just because I don’t care for a man’s approach to art doesn’t mean I won’t help support the arts. It isn’t for me to judge what should and shouldn’t be seen. I could hardly turn him down. In fact, I felt guilty at the time for accepting his money instead of simply lending him the plant. Now, of course,” she grew solemnly pouty, “I blame myself for this tragedy. If I had only turned him down…I feel like an accomplice.”
“No one blames you, ma’am,” Vern reassured her. “He would’ve held it someplace else with the same effect, that’s all.”
Mrs. Greenberg sighed, picked the shell off a soft shrimp body. “I was receptive to the idea because I love art, as you might tell from my home. My husband Emmanuel and I were always supportive of it, and my husband himself was a fine painter—did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Oh my, yes. This picture.” She swivelled her chair to point. “He did that.”
Both men had noticed it. It was a lovely, stately, highly realistic oil painting of Helga Greenberg, her small hands clasped on her black lap. It could have been painted today…or thirty years ago.
“He was very gifted,” Black spoke up.
“How did he die again, ma’am?” Vern asked reluctantly. “Not in the chem spill…”
“No, no, a common misconception. He did die shortly thereafter, however—Garland Syndrome.”
“Oh,” said Vern.
“Yes, it was terrible. He mutated absolutely beyond recognition in two weeks. Thank God when it got that bad it was like he was in a walking coma. When he died he was more fungus than man. I can talk about it now, but I’ve never remarried…never will, I suspect. We don’t do too well with mutation around here, do we?” she tried to joke. “Both Emmanuel and me.”
“I’m really sorry,” Vern said, profoundly gentle. Vern—gentle? A first for Black.
“I’m fine, but thank you for your concern, Agent Woodmere.”
Black dared speak up again (his erection had dwindled back to nothing). “We hear you were able to finally sell Greenberg Products—to a pharmaceutical company.”
“Yes. I think previous buyers were reluctant about the site after the spill, but I was also reluctant to sell the business my husband loved so much, put so much into—it was him. But I suppose all the controversy surrounding my plant recently attracted the attention of these people, and I decided it was finally time to sell. This incident kind of soiled it for me anyway, you know? Best to put the plant behind me.”
“Who are they?”
�
�A new group, Cugok Pharmaceuticals. In full, the Fredrick V. Cugok Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Company, Inc. They just got their research and manufacturing licenses this year but they’ve got a lot of fine minds fresh out of the best schools. I felt good passing the plant on to them.”
“Mrs. Greenberg,” said Black.
“Helga.” Smile.
“Helga. Ah…was there once a fence between your plant and the Beds of the Bedbugs?”
“Yes—two fences, theirs and ours. They were removed after the spill to connect the two properties because my husband once owned the land the Beds were built on, and after the spill the Coleopteroids sold it back to us.”
“They bought that land from your husband?”
“Yes, and sold it back when they moved.”
“Coleopteroids?” said Vern.
“They don’t like to be called Bedbugs. Coleopteroids—it means beetle beings.”
“They left a lot of stuff. Some of it looks salvageable,” said Black.
“I wouldn’t know about that. How can we tell what they need and don’t? Emmanuel had as good a relationship with them as any human ever has—he found them very intriguing.”
“Do you know if Toll Loveland had any contact with them?”
“I have no idea. They seldom come ‘round now to the Beds near Greenberg. Is there a problem with the Coleopteroids?”
“We don’t know yet. Maybe a connection to Loveland.”
“Hm—I see.” She sipped her tea, weirdly lovely eyes on Black over the rim of her cup. Hard to read, more so even than Opal’s.
“Well,” he broke their gaze to look at Vern, “nothing else really comes to mind.”
“I’m here if you ever need to return, gentlemen. I’ll do anything to assist you…as I said, I can’t help but feel partly responsible for all this. Some more coffee?”
They declined. “You got a bathroom, ma’am?” asked Vern.
“No…sorry. Just kidding.” Helga rang for Linda, who took Vern away. Black and Helga rose, and she came out from behind her desk.
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