Pet Noir

by Katharine Kerr

  “Bet he dint, no.”

  “He no is laughing right now, either, cause the cops are in with him. I got a lawyer in there before I let the greenies and their hypnotist in.”

  “Damn right. Did the police give you the report on Sally Pharis?”

  On the tiny screen Carol’s face turns bleak.

  “Yeah. Sure did. Look, it might work this way: the bacteria keeps to certain limits until the victim dies, but then...hooboy, it just eats him up. I mean eat literally, by the way. This stuff digests non-living organics, dead cells like hair for example, and turns them into simple sugars and some kind of peculiar acid waste product. I got that running in the analyzing comp right now—never seen anything like it before—but that’s the molecule that stinks so bad. Those threads you saw all over Sally’s corpse? Strings of sugar crystals, like some gonzo kind of rock candy. The hospital gave poor old Joe his lunch, a soy-burger—you should’ve seen what the bacteria did to the bun, ate it right out from under him. Pretty disgusting. From now on, man, he’ll have to use a fork.” Distantly a beep sounds. “Got to go. Here’s my call.”

  “Okay. I’ll call through to Bates, see what Little Joe told them.”

  When the screen goes dark, Lacey punches in the chief’s number. She’s going to have to lie about her own destination, as she quite simply can’t tell him without causing a lot of trouble in the future. The Mayor’s address is a well-kept secret from, at least, honest policebeings like Bates. The chief answers immediately, and he looks elated.

  “Lacey, thank God you called! Little Joe gave us what we needed. I know why Sally got killed.”

  “Great. You going to give Little Joe immunity?”

  “You know damn well any confession made under hypnosis no is going to stand in court. Besides, who the hell cares about a little dope when we got a real gonzo weirdo on our hands?”

  “Sure enough. What did he remember?”

  “Sally told him, and I quote, ‘I saw some dude taking off his clothes right on the public street. He had another set on underneath, and it looked like he was planning on shoving the first set into this big old public recycler.’ How’s that?”

  “So now we know he was a dude not a donna, at least. Did Sally mention the blood?”

  “She dint. It’s the only thing that makes me wonder if she saw the right guy. Well, hell, she might no have been close enough to see the mess. It’s the only lead we got, and I’m no giving it up right away.”

  oOo

  Although it takes a strong act of will to ignore a fellow psychic when he’s mentally screaming at you to slow down and watch where you’re going, as well as howling out a long litany of curses, Mulligan manages. His reckless mood has swelled to encompass a romantic fantasy of dying in a good cause so that Lacey will tearfully realize that it was him she loved all along. (He is blissfully unaware that Lacey hasn’t cried in a good fifteen years.) He’s taken the battered blue skimmer up to its altitude limit and thrown the throttle open; now they are screaming through the sky at a good hundred and fifty kilometers an hour. Every now and then he makes it swoop in a grand, rolling gesture.

  Little brother: slow down now OR| >I kill you>>stomp on corpserepeatedly>.

  You no drive>> no can get home if I dead.

  Walking good exercise. SLOW DOWN NOW!!!

  Out of pity for the undercurrent of sheer terror in Nunks’ mind, Mulligan drops it down to an even hundred, and all the alarming rattles and bangs in the chassis ease off. By then they are circling the edge of the rehydration project, where under the dead-white glow of the maglev lights the shift is changing, the workers looking like tiny insects from their height. The sight convinces Mulligan that it might be a good idea to drop nearer to the ground. They plunge some two hundred meters straight down, then level off.

  >Kill you slowly> little brother>> use psionic tortures <
  [apologetic regret] I only do what you ask, big brother WHAT IF| crazies hunt Mrs. Bug >must hurry.

  [sheer rage] [forced agreement]

  Since Lacey’s skimmer is a road-only model, when the level surfaces come to an end, some two kilometers from the Yard, Mulligan is forced to land. Before he can even park the skimmer properly, Nunks sweeps off his safety harness, flings open the door, and staggers out. Mulligan eases the car into the shelter of a group of thorn-trees, locks it, and walks back to find Nunks running his hands through his fur. Apparently, judging from the handfuls of loose hair, the ride has made him shed rather badly.

  Little brother: [inarticulate fury, warning]

  [contrite apology]

  [somewhat lessened fury, warning]

  After a few minutes of poking around in the underbrush, Mulligan finds a trail along a ravine, thick with chaparral, that curves round the lip of the crater for a ways before it plunges down toward the Yard. Since the trail is narrow, he takes the lead and does his best to clear away any small branches that might snag Nunks’ fur, so that the elder brother can concentrate on sending psychic signals to Mrs. Bug. The rough-barked thorn trees are hard on the hands, and it doesn’t take long before he wishes he had a good laser-cutter with him. Then it occurs to him that they’ve come out without any weapons, not so much as a pocket-knife. Nunks picks up his flash of alarm.

  not kill>not harm>>no one.

  Enemies> not agree>

  [psionic equivalent of a shrug] too bad.

  The romantic fantasy slips away like a falling suncloak (which he has also forgotten to bring,) and leaves him with the knife-sharp realization that he could die out in the Yard and never get to play semi-pro ball again.

  Big brother, we wait herenot wait? Let Mrs. Bug come to us?

  Not wait. [contempt]

 
  Not frightened [immense dignity]
  In the flash and colored glare of the northern lights they make their way downhill in a silence broken only by the occasional buzz and whir of a nocturnal flyer or the tchak! of a startled reptile in the brush. Mulligan is only dimly aware of Nunks’ mind, all passive receptivity and awareness. He concentrates his own mind on finding their way through the grasping tangle of plants to avoid radiating his fear to Mrs. Bug, who, or so he suspects, is going to be a tough bird to net. They’re almost to the valley floor when Mulligan sees something large and shiny off in the chaparral about ten meters to his right. He sends a signal to Nunks to stop.

  Plants all torn up now, Big Brother.
  You go looknot look?

  Look.

  Since the chaparral’s already been thoroughly mashed down, Mulligan can walk straight over to the mysterious object. As he gets closer he sees that it’s a polyhedral tent, made of a green metallic film like nothing he’s ever seen before. Either it’s ripped in several places or the being who made it has odd ideas about windows. When something moves he freezes, crouching in the shadow of a thorn tree, but it’s only a local lizard, wandering past the structure with a small flyer in its mouth. With a brief and futile wish for a flashlight, Mulligan goes forward, angling round until he can see into the triangular opening in one face. Although there seem to be things piled up inside, he refuses to go any closer, because over the campsite hangs the sharp stink of spoiled vinegar.

  Big brother, I smell Outworld disease
  Remember. >Come back>

  As he walks back, Mulligan opens himself up slightly to the background signal. The eater is there, ravenous and eager, a vast cloud of pure appetite. Involuntarily he yelps aloud.

  I read it too, little brother. Strange beingvery very strange. Not sentient. A group mindlow level.

  Animal/not animal?

  Animal BUT| primitive. I not understand itwell.

  He crouches down beside Nunks, who’s sitting cross-legged in the middle of the trail. After a moment Nunks beams to him again.

  I begin/un
derstand> This tent thingnear rehydration crater. now leads back to crater.

  [confusion]

  [irritation] In crater now: what comes from off-world?

  Comet ice.

  Excellent [sarcasm]. So Outworld tent, creature,? <<
  [amazement]
  I guess only: some kind stasis capsule OR| sleeper unit<<
  [sudden shock] <
  [agreement] [melancholy]

  For a moment they crouch there in silence, communicating through sheer feeling their understanding of Mrs. Bug’s hysterical, rage-inflamed grief. It’s no wonder, Mulligan thinks, that she’ll approach them only to flee again; for all she knows, this entire planet is full of murderous crazies like those who killed her lover or mate or whatever, exactly, he was. (Mulligan knows enough about xenology to realize that of all the varied facets of sentient life, those pertaining to love and sex differ the most and sometimes wildly from species to species.) She may even be thinking that their sympathy is feigned bait to lead her into a trap.

  Nunks suddenly stiffens and turns wary. Picking up his mood Mulligan goes on alert, pushing away the sheer hunger of the eater, letting the confused babble of signal from the Rat Yard wash over him, sorting quickly and deftly through it until he finds a new element: the touch, the very brief and hastily withdrawn touch of another psionic mind. Even though he doesn’t recognize it, he can feel the cold, impersonal hostility like the graze of a knife-blade down his back.

  Little brother, someone spy> on us.

  Not Mrs. Bug?

  Not Mrs. Bug.

  The assassin!!! [terror]

  Maybemaybe not, little brother. Some of the crazies here now/psionicsunrecognized/why they are crazy.

  Oh.

  Although they wait there for some time, sifting the signal, sending their linked minds ranging, they never pick up the spy again. They do, however, reach Mrs. Bug. Even though she’s on the far edge of their range, Mulligan can feel her clearly, her mind wrapped in its grief. Nunks calls to her, softly and patiently, repeats the call, adds a wave of pity, calls again—she refuses to answer. A fragment of society’s attempt to educate him about something other than baseball suddenly floats to the surface of Mulligan’s mind, a few lines of a very old poem that he was forced to memorize in high school, and he sends it out to her:

  In a lurking place I lurk/at one with the sullen dark/what’s hell but a cold heart?

  The grief that pours back in response overwhelms him, tumbles him, half-drowns him until he weeps, sobbing aloud in the middle of the trail, yet he can feel that he’s drawing off some of her pain much as a doctor draws pus from an abscess. She, too, knows it. For a moment she hesitates on the edge of openness; then she wraps her fear-shot rage around her and flees. Nunks pats Mulligan’s shoulder until at last he can stop crying.

  Little brother, many sentients mock you. >Not listen anymore> You fine being.

  Mulligan nearly weeps again, this time in gratitude, but he pulls himself together and wipes his face vigorously on his sleeve instead.

  Must find her, Nunks goes on. IF ONLY| we get close, she see us, read us directly> THEN| she know we trustworthy.

  [agreement] BUT| how?

  [bafflement] >Walk on >>Try to!get closer.

  [agreement] Which way?

  [annoyed bafflement] Wait! [self-mockery] >We triangulate her> Little brother, knownot know?

  Not know.

  I teach now. Useful psi skill. >You stay here >>I walk on a ways. THEN| >we each contact her> >>feel angle/we three form triangle/fix on her position>>

  I get it! Like: astrogation.

  [pleased agreement]

  Before Nunks leaves, he and Mulligan sift out the wave of signal thoroughly, on guard against that hostile mind they felt earlier. Distantly Mulligan does pick up Old Meg, mumbling over her cards, but she’s the only psionic presence he can find for kilometers, besides, that is, the omnipresent eater. Moving carefully to avoid catching his fur on the thorn trees, Nunks sets out down the trail, heading toward the Rat Yard where, at least presumably, Mrs. Bug is hiding. Once he’s out of sight, Mulligan’s fear returns in force. It seems to him that every shadow is hiding an assassin, armed to the teeth with exotic weapons, and every glint of the northern lights off a leaf or pebble looks like the flash of a knife.

  The scream is so peculiar that it takes Mulligan a moment to recognize it for what it is: Nunks startled into howling out a physical cry of fear. He’s on his feet and running by the time the mental wave washes over him:

  Run little brother! Save yourself!

  But Mulligan hears another voice, a human male shouting in a manic glee, yodeling in a parody of a hunting call.

  “Lay off him!” He’s barely aware that he’s spoken; then he’s running after Nunks.

  Mulligan comes crashing out of the chaparral to see Nunks crouching with his back to a broken slab of plastocrete wall. In a ragged semicircle in front of him a black human male, with an amazingly long and thick tangle of hair, and a gray lizzie brandish lengths of plastopipe, while a third, a Blanco male, wields an actual axe. The Wild Man, John Hancock, and Blue-Beak Bizzer, Mulligan assumes. He can taste his fear like something rotten in his mouth. Slowly Nunks straightens up, holding out one hand, palm-forward, in what should be a recognizable sign of peace; he is also broadcasting a generalized feeling of calm and rationality. In answer the three shriek and cackle; the lizzie does a shuffling, foot-pounding war dance and waves his pipe high; the humans edge closer.

  Big Brother> get out of here> head to skimmer>>rehydro project>>>men there help!

  “Hey, you three scum-bags!” Mulligan waves his hands over his head to further attract their attention. “Shit-beak Lizzie! Worm-eater! And you, white boy! Screw any dogs lately? Hey, there, Wild Man! You crazy, know that? Crazy and you stink, too.”

  The three of them spin around, muttering, holding up their weapons as they peer at him in the shifting blaze of colored light. In his mind Mulligan picks up Nunks radiating a mind-shield of stupendous strength.

  Little brother escape with me!

  Both can’t> No use both of us die. >You go >>bring help >>>I join you>>>

  “Worm-eater, worm-eater!” With his mind muddled by terror he falls back on the elementary school playground for inspiration. “White boy, white boy! Stink-oh, stink-oh!”

  The lizzie’s first, gnashing his snout in rage as he rushes at Mulligan, but his two buddies follow right after, yelling, waving weapons, making half-articulate promises that center around divesting Mulligan of his arms and legs. With a howl of crazed laughter of his own, Mulligan leaps onto a pile of rubble, then jumps down at an angle and takes off running. Here he has the advantage, a natural athlete who’s made running laps into something of a religion against enemies who persist in wasting their breath by yelling insults. He paces himself, making sure that they keep following as he dodges through the rubble. When a length of pipe sails by his head, he leaps to one side, just in time to avoid a thrown axe.

  Ahead he can see the white rise of the broken tower and turns to his left, heading for a long flat stretch where he can put a little more distance between himself and his pursuers. Already the insults have stopped in a laboring of breath behind him. Mulligan bends low and pretends that he’s stretching a double into an inside-the-park home run as he whips around the tower and heads back the way he came. By now, he figures, Nunks should be well into the chaparral and safe. His breath is beginning to come hard, but the three crazies are a good long way behind him now, stumbling and cursing as they try to make some speed. His lungs pounding, his heart following suit, he races down the runway and into the green, grassy plain, crossed by small, sparkling streams under a yellow sun.

  When he looks back, the crazies are go
ne, and he slows to a walk, panting for breath at first. Ahead of him in the far distance are a low rise of purple mountains which seem to be the source of the river whose bank he’s walking on. All at once it occurs to him that he doesn’t know where he is. When he glances around, he sees a figure dressed in long flowing robes at some distance to his right. She seems to be bending over some sort of large furry animal.

  “Uh, hey, Miz?” With a friendly wave, Mulligan walks her way. “Scuse, but I’m kind of lost. Can you tell me the way back to the Rat Yard?”

  The woman turns his way and looks up with the gray lizzie face of Blue-Beak Bizzer. With a yelp Mulligan jumps back, but something hard smacks him across the back of the head, and he falls into darkness.

  Second Interlude: The Hunted

  After he killed Ibrahim, Tomaso took a long hot shower in Sally’s bathroom, but even though he used two kinds of scented soap, the smell of vinegar returned the moment he dried himself off. By then his skin was just beginning to itch and harden all along his arms, down his chest, and worst of all, around his genital area—everywhere, in fact, that he was in any kind of moist contact with Sally’s body. Although he gave himself a rubdown with perfumed lotion, it made only a temporary difference; as soon as he was dressed, he started itching and stinking again. When he left the building, a pair of lizzies happened to be walking past. He noticed one of them pause, sniff the air with his long beaky snout, then mutter something to the other. Tomaso nearly broke into a run, but his long training saved him. He walked on as casually as if he’d noticed nothing.

  Ducking down allies and along every confusing side path he found, he went to the nearest Metro station, took a train twenty stops north, got off, took another line six stops south, and transferred east to the train he’s currently on, returning to the Outworld Bazaar main station just about the same time as Bates and Lacey are discovering Ibriham’s corpse. As he rides the gravlift up to the surface, he realizes that he’s being watched. He can feel the mental attention coming his way as a warm glow, as if someone were shining a lightpen on the back of his head. Outside the lift exit is a covered shopping area—mall is much too elegant a word for this scruffy collection of shops and kiosks under faded awnings—where a handful of sentients drift down the street in their suncloaks, too tired to buy anything, too drunk to think of going home. Tomaso ducks behind a kiosk that sells chewing spice and turns to watch the exit just as pair of beings in white suncloaks come out, hesitate briefly, then amble slowly past him. Suncloaks, once his ally, have become his enemy. He has no idea of who or what those beings may be, but he’s fairly sure that they were the ones watching him as the transparent platform carried him up. The question is why—idle curiosity, quite possibly, as they waited their turn.