Health Agent

by Jeffrey Thomas

  He wished he believed more firmly in a God. That would ease his pain, give him something to look forward to. He’d be ecstatic, maybe, to be dying. But it was because of his pain that he didn’t firmly believe. Black wouldn’t make any child of his suffer like this. So was he more loving than all-loving God? Maybe God was an energy more than an entity, but Black couldn’t feel loved by it.

  Idly he scanned the personal columns. Nothing like, “M-670 victim, female, young, attractive (once), seeks similarly afflicted male with whom to fuck away what little time we have left.” Why not? And what was keeping him from submitting his own ad? There had to be plenty of compatible people out there. She didn’t even have to be too young or attractive. And it wasn’t just sex he wanted, either. Vern’s slug wasn’t a good conversationalist.

  The first half of the paper he mostly avoided. He was living enough bad news. Black watched three very tall teenage boys with platinum-blond pompadours strut by. One of them thrust his face in the face of a black boy of about twelve and roared, “Boo!” The boy shrank, the assholes strutted away laughing. Ten-year-olds killed in gang wars. Why wasn’t Black out there with Vern’s arsenal, cleaning up some of this mess with what time he had left? Here he’d wasted his time pursuing Loveland when he could have been blowing away drug dealers and child pornographers who were only too easy to find.

  Well, sorry, but he didn’t feel up to it now. Or even up to placing that ad, really, despite the hunger. Best to just run his errands, wander around a little while more, go home and take a long, long bath.

  He finally reached the end of the great hall, entered a huge department store to cut through that to a nearby supermarket where he would pick up some groceries. Shit; the lights in here. He’d bought his drugs and the paper in the pharmacy and had forgotten his sunglasses. Oh well, they had them in the market. How could he have forgotten?

  A young teen with long, wavy red hair and tight white leotards walked in front of him in the department store. He thought of Helga Greenberg. Sorry, Helga. He wouldn’t be keeping that date. He wondered, though, if she even remembered him.

  To reach the exits he had to go through the children’s clothing department, but on its outer boundary Black came to a halt.

  His eyes were already watering, but now these colors, explosively bright in the full glare of store lights. Yellow screamed, orange, green, red. In hideous combinations, in hideous designs. Had they found a way to make colors brighter, more colorful? There seemed to be colors he had no names for. Had it always been this way? How could people look down at themselves enveloped in this garishness, how could parents bring these shrieking colors into their homes, dress their children in them, and why? Black stared at the expanse before him, unwilling to venture into it, disgusted with the human need for bolder stimuli, brighter peacock plumage, even as he recognized the ridiculous extreme of his reaction, even as the colors got through his eyes, poured down his throat and into his belly in a noxious mix of candy liquids. He staggered a few steps in another direction, fell to hands and knees and vomited up his coffee.

  No longer the anonymous spirit. A rotten apple fallen from its shelter of cool leaves.

  “Drunk,” someone above him hissed.

  “Oh for Christ’s sake,” sneered a teenage girl who worked here, abandoning her register as if afraid someone would ask her to clean it up.

  “Yuck,” said a child. Black could hear the wrinkled-up nose in its voice.

  Considering how revolting people found him, many were willing to stare. No one took his arm; Black pulled himself to his feet, tottering. No one handed him his dropped bags; he had to stoop for them. Meeting the sneering gaze of the red-haired girl in white leotards, who stood a safe distance from him, Black wiped his lips on the back of his sleeve and spat some of his tainted saliva on the floor. “What’sa matter? Never seen the Lava Man before?”

  “Disgusting.” The girl tossed her hair and strutted off, insulted in her youth and beauty by the visage of death.

  Black gulped some medicine for nausea from his bag and skirted the children’s clothing department on his way outside.

  It was cool, dusk, drizzling. The supermarket was near, a boy out front collecting hovercarts from the parking lot, corralling them. There were four pay vidphones in a row of booths. Black stood outside them. A teenage girl occupied one booth, laughing, a teenage boy’s naked rear-end filling the screen of her phone.

  I’ll shop first, Black thought. That girl might listen. After I shop. Later…

  Now, he ordered himself. Now. It’s already later. Too later.

  He didn’t have a hand phone, or a vidphone at his flat. If he waited until tomorrow he might not be able to rouse himself to leave the apartment. He had taken a few steps toward the phone. The laughing girl put him off—maybe he’d wait until she was gone. Maybe he’d have a cigarette first. The corner of his right eye twitched with a rhythmic pulse; he squinted hard and subdued it. His right eye felt swollen—it hurt to blink his lid across it. He was unconsciously feeling the change in his pocket. He couldn’t stand this girl. She was squashing her nose and lips into the screen, where the naked rear had returned. The boy broke wind, the girl leaping back with a squeal of delighted mock disgust.

  Black had drifted two uncertain steps away when the girl emerged from the booth. She eyed him suspiciously, grin vanishing, casually slid a hand into her pocketbook as she passed him. Probably a gun, Black thought, eyes downcast as he moved forward bloodlessly into one of the phone booths.

  No excuses. No time. He had to look up Opal’s mother’s number before he punched it in. As he waited for the call to be answered he thought he might vomit, nausea medicine or no.

  Maybe they’re not home.

  Her mother’s face filled the screen and Black flinched at its hugeness so close to his face. “Hello,” she said, before she could recognize him.

  “Hello, Mrs.—”

  He saw the face withdraw as she reached to touch a button.

  “No, wait! Please!” Black cried at her.

  For a second, before it was gone, he noticed the change in the woman’s face. Tired, even haggard. Did she now have it, too? he wondered for a foolish moment.

  “Wait!” he cried again, but it was too late already. And yet the call hadn’t been disconnected, after all. Black was startled by what he saw next.

  It was obviously Opal. There was a dim lamp on a table behind her but she was silhouetted, her face in darkness. He knew the patterns of her tangled, thick hair. Some of it, highlighted like filaments, even glowed with a soft blond incandescence.

  But the voice wasn’t familiar to Black. It made him want to recoil. It was a gravelly, painful wheeze, just a thin trickle of air through a bricked-up tunnel.

  “Monty,” it said. “There’s a few things…I want to tell you…”

  “Opal.” Tears were rising in him, as he felt his own throat closing up. “I’m so sorry…”

  “Please listen to me…”

  “I’m listening.”

  The head swayed, heavy, sunken into its shoulders. As it moved slightly a little light found its way around to the edge of her face for a moment. Black almost cried out. Her eye. It was sealed shut, swollen into a ball as large as a lemon, black and crusted. It had to have been an illusion…now gone.

  “I…it’s wrong for me to be mad at you…I know. I’m scared…”

  “I understand.”

  “I know you didn’t do this to me on purpose. I know it isn’t your fault. I’m mad at you because…I’m so scared…”

  “I understand, Opal…”

  “I was looking for him for a while…”

  “Loveland?”

  “I thought maybe…I don’t know.”

  “I was after him, too! I…”

  “I traced him back to his various identities, but I never got far with any of them. But I found out something weird…that happened when he was…when he was…at school.” She was straining to remember. Head swaying. “Paxton Polyt
ech,” she said at last. “When he was Manuel Hung. I went down there and spoke to people…they told me a funny story.” She began to cough, coughed for a good two minutes, her shoulders jerking. She moaned. She croaked out words through the chinks again. “During his stay at the school some animals disappeared from the labs. They pinned it on him, but I guess…charges were never brought. He paid for their replacement…”

  “Animals? What kind? How many?”

  “I never could trace his identity back to his childhood. HAP and the police can’t trace him. Who knows where he came from. I’m too…I can’t do anything any more. I’m dying.”

  “Can I come see you?”

  “I got it real good, huh?” she snorted, a half chuckle, more like a hiss.

  “I’m sorry, Opal.” The tears were here.

  “If you find him before it gets you, too, kill him for me. But try to hang on. A cure is just around the corner—right?” He heard the sarcasm in her voice as she echoed the line they had both heard endlessly.

  “It’s too late,” Black sobbed. “I’m dying, too…”

  “I’ve got to go,” she croaked.

  “Can’t I see you?”

  “My poor mother…” Opal said, a wafting sounded thought.

  “Oh my God, no! No! No!” At last, Black had realized. The realization lifted him out of his own fog. He pounded a fist on the phone console. “No, no! Opal! Opal!” he screamed at her hoarsely…even as he knew she was already dead.

  “Best of luck to you, Monty. God bless you. It wouldn’t hurt you to look for just a little faith…even if it’s just a painkiller…”

  “Opal…”

  “I’m sorry—I was selfish not to see you in person while I still could. This is the best I could do. I had to be mad at somebody. Please understand…I wanted to say goodbye but this is the best I could do.”

  As she prepared to end the recording she sat back a little in her chair. Though she had sought to spare him the sight of her, she now accidentally allowed the light to unveil her. It had been no illusion. Both eyes were swollen, black, crusted…like skull sockets turned inside-out. One sealed, a solid rock. The other one’s ossified lids open, the eyeball itself blackish-purple with a silvery pupil. Huge. The rest of the face was shrunken, wasted, festering, rotting. A monster with an Opal Cowrie wig on.

  “Monty…” it resumed in its corpse voice.

  This time when he slammed his fist down the screen went dead.

  Black slid to the floor of the booth, hugging his knees, sobbing. It was almost dark outside; rain came in earnest. He was curled in this sarcophagus a long time.

  *

  “This is ridiculous!” the man laughed, his hovercart bumping into the shelf of toilet paper rolls. He fought to wheel it around, point and guide it evenly.

  “Maybe it’s…uneven weight distribution!” his female companion laughed, and moved some things around inside the cart.

  “Oh, come on!” the man laughed back. He had short, neat hair, a bulky pink sweater over a high-collared white shirt, pink jeans and white high-top sneakers. The woman had neat silken hair, a gray blazer with huge shoulder pads over a white blouse, a gray skirt, black sneakers. He wore glasses with thick pink frames, hers thick and black. Neither had a vision problem; it was more a sort of jewelry, or statement of social status, like a primitive’s facial scarring.

  “It has a mind of its own,” the man exclaimed. “Surely it’s possessed by the soul of its previous shopper!”

  “Surely this is a sign of the apocalypse!” the woman gasped, clutching her chest. She tossed a four-pack of toilet paper into the clear plastic cart.

  “Which one?”

  “Which what? Sign?” She tossed in another four-pack.

  “No—which apocalypse?”

  “The apocalypse.” Another.

  “Oh—that apocalypse!” He tossed in a six-pack, and then another.

  She laughed, looked to see if the man at the end of the aisle appreciated their performance of wit, fine-tuned to the level of VT commercials. To live as did those grinning, droll, hip commercial beings. To live in the houses and apartments of those commercial beings. To buy the products of those commercial beings. Life.

  The man was studiously ignoring them, picking out paper plates and plastic eating utensils. He obviously wasn’t watching enough commercials to plot his life by. He was tall, the collar of his long black coat turned up, his hair plastered dark by the rain, his face white and bony.

  “There’s another sign of the apocalypse,” she whispered to her companion.

  He sniggered. “The Antichrist.”

  “Which one?”

  They saw the man incline his head ever-so-slightly, aware of their attention if not of their words. They saw how red his eyes looked, even from this far.

  “Want to buy a used hovercart?” the pink man called to the tall man.

  The woman slapped the pink man’s arm, suppressing laughter.

  “Fuck off,” the tall man said. He dropped a double roll of paper towels into his cart.

  “No sense of humor,” the pink man muttered, intentionally loudly enough for it to be heard.

  “I told you to fuck off.” Now the man faced them down the aisle. “Life’s too short for me to waste my time dealing with you.”

  “That’s right, you have better things to do, like sift through garbage cans.”

  “Brent,” the woman said.

  The man left his cart to come toward them. “Hey,” Brent said, holding up a hand, “don’t get belligerent with me, pal…I haven’t done anything to you.”

  The man stood a few steps from their cart. He looked even more terrible up close. His lips bloated, cracked, one eye twitching at the corner, both watering from the bright light. “And I haven’t done anything to you. So why couldn’t you just leave me alone? Why couldn’t you just respect my existence without commenting on it?”

  “What comment?”

  “Aren’t you afraid of me? Look at me. Can’t you see what’s in me? Can’t you see that? Are you insane? Do you think your money and imagined security will protect you from me? You think you’re watching VT? I can hear you, man. And I don’t like it. I shouldn’t have to put up with this.”

  “You need a doctor, I think.”

  “You’re just too smug and perfect and in control to back down, aren’t you? You’re so stupid. It’s too late for a doctor…”

  “I can see that. Come on, Jhayne.” The man was shaky but resolute in his stance. He started to turn the cart to make a dignified exit. The thing fought him. His face was reddening.

  “How did you get to live this long in Punktown?”

  “So nice to chat with you, sir…so sorry to have intruded on your time with our meager existence.”

  “Brent.” The woman was wiser.

  “You’re gonna get to stay and see trees and snow and new movies and drink coffee and I have to go?”

  “Yeah, you just be a good derelict and wax philosophical and we’ll be on our way. Shit!” The basket veered against the shelves again.

  “Here, the decent thing to do would be to put that poor thing out of its misery.” Black stepped forward and drew the red plastic semi-auto from inside his coat and blasted off a round which punched through the clear cart and into a melon. Orange meat was exposed, glistening. The next shot hit a jug of synthetic milk. The cart began filling. One shot went clear through the cart into the floor. The fourth shot tore through two rolls of toilet paper and dove into a big cake of expensive cheese.

  Brent and Jhayne screamed, covering their faces, babbled for mercy.

  Black felt like he had just shot his VT set. He left the store empty-handed. What did it matter?

  *

  They kicked in his door. They knew knocking would only alert him.

  Black was in the bathroom, naked. Out of bubble-bath liquid; the clear water in the tub steamed. His clothing was in a pile on the toilet lid. Atop the clothing was the glossy red compact semi-automatic Ver
n Woodmere had given him.

  Captain Nedland had a gun in his hand, loaded with sleep darts. The other two health agents also had sleep darts. The three black-uniformed, helmeted forcers, however, had automatic two-fisted ray blasters. One agent followed a forcer into the bedroom. The other agent followed a forcer into the kitchen. In the small parlor, Nedland looked behind the sofa.

  “I’m in the bathroom!” Black yelled out into the kitchen when he heard their feet stomp in there. “I’ve got a gun!”

  “We’ve got him!” called a voice. “The john! He has a gun!”

  Black was plastered naked to the cold wall tiles to one side of the door he had quickly closed and locked when he first heard them enter. The pistol was in his fist. Four shots left. They were big, fat slugs in these guns Vern favored.

  “Let me through,” Nedland hissed. He crouched behind the stove, poking only his head and gun around it to address the closed, blistered door. “Monty! It’s me—Nedland!”

  “Wow—what a surprise!”

  “I’m glad you’re still alive, Monty. I mean that. We weren’t sure. We locked onto your trail after that incident tonight in the market.”

  “Then you know I’m not in very good spirits lately and you’ll back off. Let me die in peace!”

  “You’ll want to hear what I’ve got to say, Monty. But some of it is good news and some is very bad news…”

  “Opal is dead. I know.”

  “How? Her mother?”

  “Yes. When was it?”

  “That was, ah, ten days ago. I’m sorry.”

  “What other bad news? They’re gonna make me pay for the shopping cart?”

  “Enough bad news. I’ve got good news. Come out here and talk to me…it doesn’t have to be this crazy!”

  “I can hear you fine.”

  Nedland sighed, glanced at a forcer ready to blast through the door at the slightest provocation. “You haven’t been watching VT, Monty.”

  “Why?”

  “It was in the news two nights ago. We’ve found a cure for M-670.”