The Ultra Thin Man

by Patrick Swenson

  “You don’t have any way out of this,” I said.

  He laughed again. “I don’t need a way out of this.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “Let her go. You kill her, you’re a dead man. You know that.”

  “Dave, why should I care—or anyone else care—what happens to me? What do you think? I’m just a copy. A copy, Dave. I came from a Brindos pattern in the buffer. They got your partner, scanned his pattern, and turned him loose. If he’s lucky, that’s all they did to him. They could change him from a dozen captured patterns if they wanted to. His pattern is there. It’ll be there long after I’m dead. After your partner Alan Brindos—wherever he is—is dead. The aliens gave me his memories, or some of them. As many as I needed to do this job.”

  “Who are you?”

  “I don’t even know anymore. They used Brindos’s pattern to burn me out. Decided to fill me with his memories, and lock my own away from me by injecting me with some shit.”

  In the pub doorway, Forno made an effort to turn over. He seemed to be looking for something. His own weapon?

  “I want the key, Dave,” the Brindos said. “And if you don’t give it to me, then I’m done.”

  Done? My heart thumped as I realized what he might do. Cara.

  The whine I’d heard earlier came from a shuttle, and it was now somewhere over the resort, perhaps the parking lot behind us.

  “Terl Plenko,” the Brindos said. “He will find you.”

  The shuttle flew in, its thrusters screaming overhead. I didn’t dare look up as it hovered above the road, flurries of snow whipping around us.

  “The key, Dave!” Brindos yelled.

  Someone shouted from the shuttle, but I couldn’t hear what.

  Brindos brought his weapon up and fired a few quick pulses at the shuttle, and my eyes flicked upward. He hit the fuselage, scoring it from door to turbines. It wavered a little as it tried to stay in place, correcting as it slew to the left. No one up there returned fire, and I didn’t have a clear shot at him myself.

  Tucked in tight behind Cara, he said something to her I couldn’t quite hear. My eyes darted from her face to his, and I stepped forward.

  “See you around, Dave,” he said, then straightened, giving me the clear shot. But as I aimed the blaster,the Brindos pulled the trigger of the stunner underneath Cara’s chin.

  I screamed, running now as I fired at the Brindos, catching him on his right shoulder. I saw another beam strike him from behind. Forno had found his own stunner.

  Cara fell. The Brindos fell too, the smile on his face cemented there, and he was dead before he hit the ground.

  I rushed to Cara as the shuttle’s high-pitched whine modulated, the thrusters backing off. I knew the shuttle was lowering, settling onto the service road. I reached Cara’s body, falling to my knees.

  Time slowed.

  Forno coughed next to me.

  I breathed, and tears came to my eyes. I turned my head as the door of the shuttle opened. It clacked into place and Jennifer Lisle stood perfectly still in the opening.

  Twenty-eight

  Dorie came out of Temonus Tales and jogged back across the street with a bag in her hand. Before going in, she’d given Brindos some RuBy, a whole paper. At best it had numbed the pain, which never let up now. He wasn’t sure how much more of the ups and downs he could handle. He’d missed the timing for at least one treatment, maybe two, and he wouldn’t last long after missing two, according to Plenko.

  Dorie opened the passenger’s side front door and ducked inside, offering the bag. Inside the bag was a flashbook of the latest issue of Stickman.

  Lowercase letters and numbers glowed red on the outer skin of the rolled-up flash membrane: Stickman 38.

  “Number thirty-eight,” Brindos said, flicking his fingers over the green-tinged membrane, unlocking the roll.

  “There’ve been that many?” Joseph asked.

  “Stickman debuted long before Plenko started up. It’s only in the last few years that the story line’s moved toward the whole Plenko archenemy thing.”

  The membrane, flexible and stretchable, powered up, opaguing enough to keep bleed-through away. The front cover snapped into place, filling the membrane completely with the image. It showed Stickman, a normal-looking human by most accounts, except for his extreme thinness and, of course, his special power of elasticity. He held a pose that suggested he was about to have his head handed to him on a platter, for he was stiff and rigid, not engaged in his well-known Stretch-O mode he acquired after some type of scientific experiment went haywire. His gray head-to-toe uniform (especially designed to morph with his elastic body) glistened with some yellow ooze. Near the edge of the cover, standing bigger than life, was the massive bulk of Terl Plenko, his mouth set with an evil laugh, his unnaturally clawed hand holding the weapon that spewed the yellow ooze.

  Brindos hadn’t read a lot of comics as a kid, and when he did, it was usually via immersion specs at a few of the foster homes he’d stayed at, none of them very up-to-date, and he certainly could never have afforded implants, or even the earliest flashbook models. But this cover was like those his great grandfather had told him about, explaining how the images themselves gave a hint of the story to come inside.

  He thumbed the lower right corner for acknowledgments, and words snapped into place at the bottom of the cover, announcing “Pictures by Tad Anthony, Story by Paul Melok.”

  “So,” Dorie said, “Melok was with Cal Gaz, but he was probably also researching a future issue of the comic.”

  “But what can this tell us?” Joe asked. “It’s just stories.”

  “Stories based on reality,” Brindos said.

  Joseph pointed at the comic. “Mr. Brindos, the likelihood of this story line in this particular issue being of any use to us—”

  “I know,” Brindos said, nodding, but he concentrated on the issue, flicking the control nodes imbedded in the flashpaper to navigate the comic. The art was damn good, the inside art matching the feel of the cover, the colors bright, the likeness of Plenko nearly flawless. Stickman, in Stretch-O mode, twisted all over the page, allowing for writer and artist to work together to create an almost sinuous look.

  Brindos might not get any hints from the story but it might help them find Melok.

  He found the search node, brought up the contents list, and ran his finger down until he found the staff box. He flexed the membrane there and pulled, the text zooming out large and bold until he found the publisher’s name: Skinny Press. Underneath was a logo of the letters S and P looking like sticks branching off each other. The publisher had included a holo-animation within, the logo morphing slightly, the colors of the letters switching between red and blue, a halo of white light appearing every few seconds to orbit around them.

  Below this was the address.

  “Skinny Press,” Brindos said. “Twelve-A, New York Avenue. Please tell me, Mr. Concierge, you know where that is.”

  Joseph gave a hurt look, then accessed his memory a second before answering. “That’s residential, not too far away.”

  “Do you think Melok publishes the comic himself?” Dorie asked.

  “He might. He might do the work from home and send it out from there. Only one way to find out. It’ll save a lot of time if it’s Melok’s house.”

  “Then hang on,” Joseph said. He pulled his black car out into the street, then turned left at the first corner he came to. “Have you there in five minutes.”

  During the ride to New York Avenue, Brindos skimmed Stickman 38. Dorie and Joseph were right. Just stories. Based on fact, but nothing in the story line gave any real hints about what was happening to the Union. Only Plenko and—by default, it seemed—the Helks seemed to be implicated and based on some measure of reality. Brindos wasn’t that impressed with Melok’s storytelling abilities, but the juxtaposition of the words with Tad Anthony’s art, along with the odd, somewhat flawed character of Stickman himself, pulled him through.

  Flawed. Sounds li
ke me, he thought.

  A stampede of various aches and pains rushed through him all at once on its way over a goddamn buffalo jump. He didn’t want the crash at the bottom. Closing his eyes, taking deep breaths, he let the dust clear before returning to the comic.

  In Stickman 38, Terl Plenko had taken innocent humans hostage, ready to sell them off one by one to the various crime lords of Temonus as slave labor to help solidify the alliances the Helks had with each of them. Plenko’s internal monologues, however, spoke of betrayal, and how his Movement would eventually make the crime lords bow at his feet. At the same time, having perfected his Slime Stunner, Plenko had baited Stickman with the human hostages and trapped him with the slime that neutralized the Stretch-O ability.

  And there it ended. Despite himself, Brindos smiled. He enjoyed a good cliffhanger.

  “Just ahead,” Joseph said.

  Brindos caught a look of the neighborhood as the car slowed down. The prefabs were older here, or at least less cared for. Otherwise, they looked similar to most homes outside the Helk district.

  “That’s the one,” Joseph said, and pulled over across the street from a white two-story that looked in better condition than most.

  Brindos was sure the money was good for Melok, since Stickman had quite the following. If this was indeed Melok’s place. There was only one way to find out.

  “All of us out,” Brindos said. “Strength in numbers.”

  Joseph laughed. “You’ve got my strength somewhere in your little finger, I think.”

  Brindos rolled and popped another square of RuBy, then they exited the car and crossed the street, which luckily was as quiet as the rest of Midwest City this morning. The rain from earlier had come back in a thin drizzle. Brindos kept to the side of the door, out of sight, and Dorie and Joseph positioned themselves in front. Brindos nodded to Dorie, and she reached up, her rain slicker swishing a bit with the motion, and rang the doorbell. All the quaint customs of an earlier era. No fancy sensors, recognition programs, or greeting routines. Just a button that when pushed made a bell inside say ding dong.

  A few moments later, someone answered the door. Brindos kept his eyes on Dorie and Joseph.

  “Yes?”

  Joseph smiled. “Mr. Melok, by chance?”

  A pause.

  “Who wants to know?” came the voice.

  Brindos tried to remember Melok’s voice from the airport, but that had been awhile ago, and frankly everyone sounded a little different to his Helk ears.

  “I’m with the Orion Hotel,” Joseph said. “The head concierge.”

  “What does the Orion want with me?” he asked. Then he snorted. “Wait, don’t tell me. They want to carry Stickman in their gift shop, is that it?”

  Stickman. That was enough for Brindos. He left his spot and came up behind Dorie and Joseph, towering over them.

  “Hello, Melok,” Brindos said, keeping his voice low and menacing.

  Melok’s eyes went wide as he looked up, his face blanching at the sight of the Helk Movement leader. He was as skinny as Brindos remembered, and of course it all made sense now: the writer of Stickman, not much more than a stick himself, writing himself into his comic. Now, on his doorstep, right in front of him, was Stickman’s archenemy, Terl Plenko, and he was about ready to pee his pants.

  It was delicious. Brindos wanted to play the part, grab him by the collar and shake him, ask where the Stick was, threaten him with some horrific method of punishment if he didn’t talk.

  “Plenko, I—” He glanced down at Joseph, then at Dorie, shaking his head.

  Brindos wedged between Joseph and Dorie a little so that he had an unobstructed path to the writer. He was so hazy now from the constant RuBy-induced high that he could barely hold on to any cogent thought. Haze and pain. They were constant companions now, and he couldn’t escape either of them.

  Brindos flexed his arms and leaned forward.

  Melok flinched, his face growing paler by the second. He was not happy to have the leader of the Movement on his front doorstep. “What do you want?” he croaked.

  “Why did Cal Gaz fire you?” Brindos asked.

  He frowned. “What?”

  “Because of your article on the Conduit disaster?”

  “You know about that?”

  “I know you, Melok. At the airport. You talked to me over lunch. You had a patty melt and I had the California burger.”

  He kept staring, unnaturally long, until finally light dawned in his eyes. “Dex?”

  “Dexter Morrison was the name I gave you,” Brindos said.

  “What the hell?” he said, looking Brindos over head to toe. “You’re not Plenko? How is this possible?”

  Several cars passed by on the road behind them, and Brindos cringed. “Inside,” he said. “We need privacy. I’m not exactly supposed to be running around Midwest City.”

  “That’s a fact,” Melok said. He might not have wanted to invite us in, but he didn’t have much choice, considering Brindos’s size.

  They entered a small entry room with dark hardwood floors and white walls filled with framed paper covers of Stickman. Several stills of the covers hung there too, and a few of them even had holo-animations, superhero and foe grappling each other, looping in five-second intervals. Melok moved into the main living room, where the hardwood gave way to stone tiles that nearly matched the color of the earlier wood floor. A number of leather couches and chairs made a circle around a lush, circular woven rug. Melok sank nervously into a chair, and didn’t look the least bit comfortable sitting there.

  “You can sit if you’d like,” he said, his voice weak. Where was the earlier bravado he’d shown at the airport, challenging Brindos about locals being ignorant of their world’s importance?

  “I’ll stand,” Brindos said. So did Dorie and Joseph.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Brindos got right to the point. “Dexter is an alias. I was undercover, working for the NIO.”

  “Tell us about Stickman,” Dorie said. She’d been quiet since Melok first opened his door to them.

  “It’s my own side business,” Melok said. “I’ve put my own time and money into it. Cal Gaz never paid me much, but I had enough to get started on Stickman, and then it became very popular. I was lucky, even if a bit brave for doing it under Cal Gaz’s nose. They found out about it, mulled over the fact that I had made a Helk a bad guy—”

  “Plenko the terrorist is a bad guy,” Dorie said.

  “And just who are you?” Melok asked.

  “I’m Dorie … I’m Plenko’s mate,” she said, and Melok’s eyebrows raised. Dorie shook her head. “His wife. The Plenko I was married to was copied and taken away from me. He’s dead now.”

  She gazed at Brindos, seeing him, he knew, as the Helk she had loved. She felt closer to him as she tried to get farther away from Plenko the bad guy.

  Melok looked at Brindos. “If you’re Dexter—”

  “Brindos.”

  “Yes. So … you’re a copy?”

  “Copies everywhere,” Brindos muttered. “Created by the Transcontinental Conduit. You were right about it. It was sabotaged, but we don’t know who was responsible. We’re trying to stop the Science Consortium, and stop Plenko’s revolution, but we really need to thwart the real villains behind it. An alien race we know nothing about.”

  Melko leaned back slowly in the chair, his eyes wide. “An alien threat. Not Helks?”

  “No.”

  “What can I do about it? Look, I’m a writer. I just wanted my work out there. I love adventure stories, and hell, what could be better than Plenko and a superhero trying to stop him?”

  “You’re more than a writer, you’re a journalist with a keen knowledge of getting yourself from place to place at a moment’s notice. I know you have knowledge of the press shuttle.”

  Melok shrugged. “I guess I do.”

  “You can help us stop Plenko for real,” Brindos went on. “We need to stop the aliens making copies. They’re i
nfiltrating every corner of the Union, little by little.”

  Melok shook his head. “The Conduit is down. Inoperative, from what I can tell.”

  “We don’t think so.”

  “You realize, don’t you, that the Union government okayed the construction of another Transcontinental Conduit a few months ago? I did some digging. I am a good reporter, Dex. I mean, Alan.”

  “Another Conduit?” Joseph murmured. “I’d heard rumors. Where?”

  “Aryell.”

  Brindos’s heart twisted a bit, and not because of the tearing-down process going on inside. “Crowell,” he whispered.

  Melok shook his head. “Who?”

  “My partner. He’s there. We’ve been out of touch since just before this all happened to me.”

  “Well, that Conduit?” Melok said. “It’s barely started. Just towers. They still need the wire.”

  Wire. Thoughts bombarded him, some of them jumbled due to his less-than-perfect state of being, but many of them began to make sense. The wire of the Temonus Conduit that came crashing down during the disaster, but sliced a cruiser in half, the ship pulling and uprooting a massive tower and dragging it for many city blocks.

  A very thin wire that had not broken.

  “What’s the wire made of?” Brindos asked.

  Melok smiled. “You know, if you’d asked me this question at the Temonus Trolley, I wouldn’t have known, but shortly after speaking with you, I found out from a reporter who’d been on assignment here. Sadly, a reporter who no longer has a paper to work for.”

  “He was from Ribon,” Brindos said.

  “The Venasaille Observer. Anyway, it’s not even a guarded secret, but the wire is made of a metal only found on Coral Moon.”

  Brindos had the name on his tongue in an instant, and the gears of his mind clicked into overdrive. “Mortaline.”

  Melok leaned forward again. “But good news. No more Coral. No more mortaline.”

  He shivered. “Not true.”

  There was more mortaline. Coral had been mined out years back, but there was definitely more, and the aliens were out to get it. Brindos hadn’t paid much attention to the fact that many NIO operatives had made noise about the stockpile. And now he knew why. The NIO had been infiltrated with copies of this alien species, including Timothy James.