The Big Book of Science Fiction

by The Big Book of Science Fiction (retail) (epub)

  Tommy gave an annoyed laugh. “It’s absurd. Why should an animal want God simply because it’s given the gift of human speech?”

  He came up close behind Kumo and traced the collar of purple on Kumo’s bare neck.

  “What’s this?”

  Kumo laughed. “Sukoshi kega o shimashita.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “It had to do with my part of a performance piece. I made a misjudgment.” Kumo spoke sadly.

  “Very crazy, those fucking artists.”

  “Yes, that’s right, Tommy. You’re the sane one, yes? You dropped out. Kerist, I have bad dreams about all of this, Tommy. Here, lean down.” He leaned down and she pushed his hank of black hair away from his forehead.

  “What’s this?”

  “Thought I might find seven horns or something.” Kumo gave him a faint smile.

  Tommy shook his head, put his arms around Kumo. “Let’s not worry about God so much, Kumo. Animals have no souls. You should rejoice in that.”

  “And what about angels, Tommy? Don’t they have souls either?”

  Tommy looked straight ahead. “No, angels are like eagles or tigers. They have no mercy, just a cold brilliance and glittering eyes watching for prey.”

  Kumo shuddered. No, Tommy wasn’t going to China. She couldn’t see it even though she was certain he had connections straight from Japan.

  She leaned her head back against Tommy’s chest. She knew he was a snuff, couldn’t figure out why he hadn’t loved her into oblivion. And the strangest thing of all was that the only place she felt safe in this crazy world was here, in Tommy’s tank. Her lids closed over her feral eyes. Her skin was satin and amber, yet marred with scrabbled tissue and hundreds of scars from the hard life she’d seen.

  Still, she had a way of moving, and stretching, a large erotic animal offering some sandalwood-scented secret to Tommy’s skin and steel. He pressed his mouth to her bare shoulder, while pushing her back on the bed, his left hand supported her head as they flowed down, to the thick quilts and the soft buttery light of the heated lamp. Kumo rolled away from Tommy, holding his advances away with her shoulder. She turned over on her stomach, shielding breasts that she was ashamed of. But Tommy only laughed. He crouched over her like a puma. He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her to her hands and knees. Kumo made a low dangerous sound, but Tommy put one of his hands on the back of her neck and clamped hard enough to keep her immobile. Once she was still a moment, he entered her, gripping her hard to force their movements.

  —

  Afterwards, when they were lying side by side, Kumo placed his hand on his mirror, her face.

  “What does this mean, Tommy? What are we?”

  “Cub scouts.” He stretched and rolled over on his stomach.

  “Huh?” She slapped him on the backside.

  He shrugged. “From the same litter maybe.”

  “You mean this is incest?”

  They both sniggered. Kumo elbowed him playfully in the ribs.

  “Tommy, tell me your genetic profile.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “I can guess why you want to know.”

  “Can you?” Kumo smiled brightly.

  “You’ve figured out everything.”

  Kumo looked up into his smooth face. “I had it in a dream. Remember, I’m just a dumb beast with a gift to speak.”

  “An obstreperous animal who dreams of having a soul.” Tommy laughed. “And the odds?”

  “It would be a kind of final miracle.”

  “Hu-Wi-SL-…”

  “Ba?” Kumo asked.

  Tommy looked at her and laughed. They both laughed, slapping their knees. They had this final secret then.

  “This is a good time to die, sister!”

  Kumo choked on her laughter, and then nodded solemnly at him.

  “It is.”

  —

  In the low morning sun, the rusty, abandoned steelworks glowed blood-red. It was only two blocks from Tommy’s tank. Kumo photoread most of the interior into the CPU and then, from there, made the appropriate adjustments.

  From Tommy she asked for twelve sound chips. He produced them cheerfully, working alongside her from time to time to rid the world of Pinkeye flies. Normally, Pinkies were below his notice—but now that they had been called to his attention, he wanted the whole holy world rid of them.

  While she worked, Kumo whistled fragments of a strange tune called “Second Object”—and then laughed at the irony of it all.

  It only took a few hours for Kumo to transfer Tommy’s stabilizing cameras, deflected beams, portable lasers, and mirrors to the steelworks.

  “I’ll bring them back,” she told Tommy as she noticed him watching her move the junk.

  “Not necessary. I’m finished with them.”

  Kumo shrugged but she was affected by his blatant extravagance.

  She soon moved her bedroll into the steelworks. Her eyes burned at night as she tried to get warm in the polytherm packing straw she dragged into the icehot furnace.

  A couple of days later, Kumo went back to Tommy’s tank. He was gone and the whole drum seemed to thrum with the tension of the anticipation of his return. She took a sonic shower, oiled her clone suit, and rustled out the rest of the glo-nuts. Then, feeling the cold pressure of so many waiting machines, she dashed out and hurried straight to market.

  —

  This week was to be her scene in the sun, as Motler was wont to say. This had been scheduled for months. Kumo had the same piece ready for some length of time. Though she couldn’t see how it related anymore. Nothing related. Kumo was nervous. Now Motler was in charge of the set at market, not Tanaka as always had been.

  She trotted through her old section and hunted up the number-seven boxcar. It was still uninhabited, smelling a bit too civetlike for even the lowliest vermin.

  The graffiti had all changed to Hoodoo. The Mikan signs were mostly rubbed out or holoed over. Kumo didn’t recognize any street deities but they all looked the same, skinny, skull faced, and square toothed with spooky pop-eyes. “Boring,” she said aloud.

  The charter house was bereft of even the crimestop holo. The bento stall drums were full of black goo and the smell of rotten meat covered the area.

  Packs of wiggers flowed around the corners of the streets, but even they were looking more wraithlike than ever. The rocky-goat sign at market was toppled. The whole market seemed deserted of anyone she knew. JuJube was nowhere in sight. Dori was dead. David—dead. Yugi, dead. Amos gone to the Bell Factory. She hurried to the Japanese craft section. Kanda was off to China too. Where was JuJube? she wondered. The station was deathly quiet for a market and cleaned up like a corpse in preparation for burial.

  She brought up the holo on a small viewer. There was the white flag with the red circle just exactly center. And as the camera zoomed on the red spot, the lines became distinct and the viewer could see that it was a huge red spider. The white web glittered with dew diamonds and three large bundles bounced on the web. The first bundle contained a hollow sugar egg. Inside the egg from a cutaway end, one could see a little fairyland of blue skies and sun and butterflies on daisies. The second bundle contained a giant worker ant. Its mandibles were large, but it was unable to turn its head to free itself from the web. The third bundle struggled with an angry buzz. It was a large wasp whose stinger was immobilized in silk. Its wings could only move enough to give the creature the illusion that it was freeing itself.

  Suddenly, with a giant heave, the red spider launched herself into the air, and floated away on a parachute of web. The victims were left to blacken in the sun, with no merciful bite or anesthetizing sting.

  Kumo set the holo up in a temp view from her locker and watched it three times. When she checked back into the scene she noticed the Friendly Navvys were standing by. Their golden banners were limp with no wind, and the wiredogs were strangely stationary. They were all watching her holo with opaqu
e black eyes and set, grimacing masks. She looked straight back at them. Their numbers had dwindled. Like missing yellowjackets in late fall, after a good hard frost.

  Kumo turned off the holo and bowed to them. One of them, a sergeant, bowed back, then the others did, quick to follow suit.

  Kumo walked away slowly, and stiffly. You could always appeal to the protocol of a Navvy. That’s what made them bearable.

  —

  That evening Kumo climbed to her vantage point from the warehouse and shouted at the Pinkies below who were performing their boring little ritual with the salt and suds.

  She got a head start on them, but it wasn’t long before all thirteen Pink Flies buzzed down the alleyway on the way to the steelworks.

  The chase she led them on was almost too easy and she wondered if they were on some kind of brain-cell-crisping drug.

  They followed her straight into her holographic web at the steelworks. Kumo was nervous. It was going too well.

  When she hit the switch at the door, they all poured in after her. They all shouted at the metal doors when they slammed shut. Realizing that Kumo was also locked in with them, their howls of rage turned to sinister laughter and hoots of derision.

  They felt the sounds before they heard them, strange thrummings and thuds. In a short time the derelict steelworks had suddenly come to life. A switch clicked on, whooshed, and then let out a high-pitched keening. The rusted hulks of gears suddenly began to turn. The rust flaked off in the movement. Shining steel and black grease gleamed with naked intent. A pit opened before them and a huge bucket swung out and began to tilt with a high squeal and thunk.

  The Pinkies shrieked with horror as a waterfall of molten red steel came cascading down, surprisingly heatless in the iron room. The walls began to shimmer red, then orange.

  They milled about in terror but Mute Fly began shouting, “No, not…! Wait—it’s a holo!” After more shouting, the others began to calm, but the yells turned to whimpers as one of the walls began to melt and a big jagged hole opened into it. The sounds of the chips was deafening now and the subsonic levels did more to frighten them than what their eyes told them.

  Mute motioned for them to go through the hole, and reluctantly, they did. Kumo was standing at the far end of room—smiling. They took a few steps into the room and then stopped. They weren’t on solid ground, but four hundred feet in the air with the city dizzyingly far below. The Pinkies stood on a steel girder two feet wide and Kumo was poised on another girder beckoning to them.

  “Pinkbooties!” She laughed. All of them at once sat down on the girder, unable to move for a moment despite the fact that they knew it was just an illusion. One of the men stood up and yelled.

  “It’s solid, solid!” He jumped off the edge to show them and screamed all the four hundred feet down. CPUs adjusted to movement. He’d only fallen five feet but was now out of sight. The real Kumo was waiting below in a trench and she hit the Pinkie over the head and knocked him out. She tied and gagged him—then stalked the other twelve.

  The rest of them scaled the imaginary beam and entered a room full of catwalks and running motors. Glowing steel ingots moved on a conveyer belt. The pings of metal and throbbing sound of huge machinery were loud enough to stun them temporarily. One of the men fell to his knees with blood pouring from his nose and ears. The whole structure of the building shimmered like an image in a heat wave.

  The sound grew louder and then dropped. Five Kumos stood staring at them. The leader noticed the hesitancy of the Pinkies and screamed. “Bash them—bash them all!!!”

  As they jumped forward and began swinging wildly—for none of these were Kumo—they looked around to see their own number increased. All of them had quadrupled now, all of them and their selves were swinging. It wasn’t long before they started swinging at each other. Out of chance and pure ferocity, they sometimes smacked one another just for the satisfaction of connecting with something solid. Leaders were screaming in quadruple for them to knock it off—and they did, but not before a good deal of damage was done.

  The images stopped hitting each other. There were a lot less of them now. The real Kumo called to them while fake ones looked on at her. The Pinkies swung chains forward and ran toward her. She disappeared into another room which was all gleaming steel and quiet. No machinery moved, no metal glowed molten. There was a sound like a huge metal handle moving, and thunks like some iron chain slipping. The men and their holo clones looked up and around.

  Camera eyes revealed themselves out of reach. A high window burst inwards with a shattering of glass and bent steel. Something black and slimy rushed through the window with a gurgling, sucking sound. It not only looked and sounded disgusting—it smelled horrible. From the far end of the corridor, a wave of the black-brown stuff flowed. Too late to run. The wash of shit lashed around their legs.

  Nobody paid much attention to the river of effluvium, they were too riveted on what was floating on the top, huge maggots with evil, lamprey mouths and rows of teeth. These rapidly attacked the holo images with insect fury. The holo images were screaming and going down in the current with the maggots on their faces and torsos.

  Other Pinkies tried to help but rarely got a grasp on anything real. When one Pink touched another by accident, the other was sure it was the maggots and struck out blindly and viciously.

  The wave of shit passed as rapidly as it had come and the Pinkies that were left stood in the emptied hall panting, staring at each other, wondering who was real and who wasn’t. Suddenly one of the leaders started screaming and clawing at his face. Parts of his face fell off in ulcer orange clusters, fingers and hands fell off. Instant leprosy plagued them all. Immense bottle-green flies flew around them, buzzing ominously. When someone fell he was instantly covered with filthy iridescent flies who would partially consume him and leave a mass of glutinous eggs on what was left. Pinkies began throwing up and slipping in their own puddles of vomit.

  Mute Fly was too quick for it and ignored the decaying corpses of his holographic gang members. He followed a long pink tongue waving at him from a small vent and crawled down the shaft of it into another room. His own tongue was now wood in his mouth. He called out to Kumo.

  “Aiy now yo in vere!” he screamed. “I mow yo fo what yo are! Come hya! Kumo!!! Faaaaiiiighht!”

  Kumo dropped down before him from a junked heister. She was crimson in the cold light of the holo, once again showing a molten furnace all around them. Maggots and roaches crawled along the floor, devouring each other, and carrying phalluses and pieces of testicle in their mandibles.

  The Mute stared at her, refusing to look at the insects, though he shuddered. The walls crawled with flaming cockroaches. Some of the roaches were impervious to fire, but others sizzled, charred, and fell in a blackened heap. The whole derelict steam-works had a potent sulfuric smell to it.

  The Mute Fly glared at her with hot, cornered rage. Sweat rolled into his eyes and he shook his head. He lunged forward and then jumped back as her sides were ripped open and eight hairy legs thrust through.

  Another Kumo came in a side door, a ruby-black Kumo. This one, too, burst open like an overfilled tick. A spider’s legs and mandibles jerked through torn skin. Blood-filled laughter coated the room. A third Kumo came into the room and hissed at Mute Fly. This time when he jumped, his guess was correct. He shat and came in his clone suit as he grabbed her. The elation of connecting with the actual Kumo almost made him faint.

  Kumo yowled triumphantly as she heard the remaining Pinkies get rerouted to a room of metal horror. Just as suddenly, she froze and allowed Mute Fly to beat her.

  Something was wrong. There was another presence here. A faint smell of onion and cumin rolled down the corridors. Mixed with this was the smell of rotting meat.

  She didn’t like what her mind was telling her, no revenge should be so complete. These were not screams of terror, but of pain.

  Mute Fly dropped her in fear at the analogue cries. Real Pinkies were screamin
g in living pain.

  Kumo and Mute Fly were both stunned. Mute Fly turned to run but Kumo grabbed him.

  “No—wait,” she yelled as he struggled. “Hoodoo!”

  “Shit!” he screamed back at her, obviously thinking she was in league with them. He broke free and ran.

  Kumo staggered to her feet and trotted after him. Her limbs were weighted down with dread. Those shitting zombies. Goddamn them. They’d been following her and now had them all trapped in here. Her bowels sloshed with liquid ice. She just wanted to hide.

  Fly turned into a room with a polished steel floor, took a step forward, and fell into stagnant icy water. Kumo slid to a stop just behind him and, teetering on the edge, was able to right her balance before going into the water. She knew nothing about this fluid. It wasn’t part of her plan.

  As she backed rapidly away, she saw Pinkies swarm up to the door covered with huge black leeches.

  Kumo hissed at the real leeches. Saliva and blood poured from the wax-white Pinkie faces, now maskless and terrified as they sloshed wetly past Kumo. She grabbed one to help him, but he screeched in fright and careened off the walls.

  Mute Fly jumped out last, giving Kumo a tormented glance as he ran past. Kumo ran after him, skidding on the slime from his dripping clothes. She wanted this all to stop now, no more.

  Mute Fly suddenly tripped and fell into a huge pile of soft ground meat. It was icy and greasy. He cried out in disgust and dismay and stood stinking and steaming in the cold room. Kumo vomited up a glo-nut mess. There were a lot of zombies, she decided.

  “Hey, Mute, it’s only food,” she yelled over his carrying on. He smelled putrid.

  “Here, I’ll—I—can help.” She reached for him but he turned and ran down the hallway, looking in all doors for a cleansing clone-water tank. Kumo followed, she’d smelt a bad omen.

  They both rounded a corner and ran into a room that held five vats. Kumo guessed it was probably a cooling and dipping room. One of the vats held clear liquid. Mute Fly hesitated, looking desperately at it. Kumo guessed his panicked intent, caught his hand, and held tight.

  “Hey, don’t. Who knows what—”