The week crawled by. He passed it dreaming innovative methods to torture Anand and Cyan. All the ways he could snap their bones. Flay the two Breeders, but keep them alive long enough to enjoy their screams. And he tingled at the thought of all the delicious memories he would repossess from them when he was done.
Other than during the annual Culling, The Tax Man had never set foot in the ghetto. The other tax men said it was lawless. That a tax man was liable to be beaten to a pulp if he flashed his credentials. “Let them try,” he’d said in a flash of bravado. But the stories he’d heard gave him pause. Barely a month ago, just after the end of the last tax year, they’d found the left leg of Tax Man 23 lying alongside the Wall. Took a team of sniffer-dogs to find all the pieces. The Bureau hadn’t cared much for the body parts though – they’d fed them to the vultures when they were done. No, they were looking for the hedometer to retrieve the memory of the murder. But they never did find it.
So when The Tax Man had recovered, and suited up for his foray into the ghetto, he wasn’t taking any chances. He wore full-body armor. A suit that covered every inch of his body in an almost indestructible mix of graphene and polycarbonate. The Bhutanese had developed the suit for combat in the Middle-East. Israelis caused all manner of havoc up there, and the Bhutanese Empire had decided to put an end to it sooner rather than later.
The Tax Bureau stored a handful of suits in case of riots or raids. Most of them were pocked with bullet ricochets and dents, but all were fully functional. He chose the obsidian suit, and loaded it with two percussion grenades, a pulse-rifle, an automatic pistol, and a flame-thrower attachment. Mania enveloped him as the suit knitted shut, zipping from his crotch to the crown of his head. The LED display on his visor flickered while the suit did a status check.
“All indicators green,” an androgynous voice sounded in his ear.
He lifted his arm, and hydraulics in the suit mimicked the movement instantaneously. The responsiveness in this latest model was superb.
“This will do nicely,” he muttered to himself.
“Glad you like me,” the suit said in a silky voice.
He jolted, and the suit hopped half a yard into the air, magnifying his movement. Three-hundred pounds of combat-ready metal landed with a bone-shuddering jang. But the built-in suspension field kept him relatively unrattled.
He took a step forward. Then another. And in a minute he was out of the Bureau’s armory, running toward the Wall. The suit could achieve a top speed of over 30 miles an hour, and he was in a hurry. Twelve minutes later, and he was at the gates to the ghetto. He shot the gatekeeper a look, and switched on his loudspeaker.
“Tax Man 16,” his voice boomed through the crisp morning air.
A sleepy-cum-panicked face darted out the window of the turret atop the Wall. A moment later, motors whinnied into action, and the gate shifted aside. He was inside the ghetto.
“Just how smart are you?” he asked the suit. But he forgot to switch off the loudspeaker, and his voice echoed through the ghetto. Breeders stared at him. He blushed, insofar as a man in a battle suit could be said to blush.
“You’re a smooooth operator,” said the suit, derision dripping from its synthetic voice.
He flicked off the loudspeaker by tapping a pad on his thigh.
“Bring up a list of known locations for Cyan Rustikov,” he snapped.
The LED overlay listed just one entry. A “Brann Wright” located by an abandoned factory on the other side of the shanty-town. The Tax Man set off at a gallop, taking route advice from the suit. It was such a pleasure not to have to worry about pedestrians. His hydraulic arms knocked aside any wayward Breeders as he moved through the ghetto. After a few minutes navigating the maze of shacks, he realized he was wasting time, so he ploughed through the flimsy dwellings instead. The dusty cloud of tin and bodies that exploded in his wake made him feel more alive than he had in years. After a bit of experimenting, he found that igniting the flamethrower as he ran made the whole spectacle even more dramatic. By all the hell realms, he hadn’t felt this good … ever. Is this what happiness feels like? he wondered.
Brann, not a day over 67, swept the floor of her little house every morning. It kept the dust-mites away and her back upright. But since she’d had that Brownie bleeding in the kitchen last week, she’d taken to scrubbing the floor too. It was linoleum, sure, so it shouldn’t stain. But there were scratches in the plastic from decades of use, and the thought of Brownie blood beneath her feet clenched her jaw.
He was harmless now, she knew. After the reset, Donys wouldn’t be doing any Brownie work for another ten years at least. But she couldn’t shake the feeling that Cyan was right. That the Brownies were coming. She smelt it on the clouds that rolled in that morning. The light was eerie. As the morning passed, the day darkened with the arrival of dust-clouds from the north. But here and there, as if by the hand of a giant child, blinding prisms of light perforated the pin-cushioned sky.
Well, let them come, she thought. She’d lived long enough. Raised a daughter good and proper, despite the Collapse. Despite the Debreeding, Cyan had wanted for nothing growing up. And by now, Brann likely had a grandchild. She smiled. No, she had nothing to complain about. But before they came for her, she’d clean this bloody floor.
The mop hardly discolored the water in the bucket now. But she knew the stains were there, and she was determined to get them out. Brann pressed her protesting shoulder into the mop again, and again, until she felt it was enough. The linoleum was clean.
She threw the water on the vegetable patch, and stepped inside to brew the morning tea. She was sipping the chamomile when the front door disappeared in a cloud of splinters. She took another sip, and replaced the teacup at the center of its saucer.
“Th-th-thank you,” said Milton, ending the call. He turned to Chokyong. “They’re coming. A tax man passed the gates a couple a’ minutes ago.”
Chokyong nodded. “What now?”
“We could run,” said Milton. “But the baby is too small for a l-l-long trip. He’d find us.”
Chokyong nodded again.
“C-c-come with me.”
Chokyong followed his friend to the basement. Milton pulled on the light-switch, and Chokyong’s breath froze in his chest. What he saw put to shame the armory above BIGS.
Milton’s grin was unshakeable. “Been waiting for this,” he said, without a stutter.
The Tax Man tapped the pad on his thigh. “Cyan Rustikov. Where is she?” his suit’s loudspeaker shook the tiny house.
It was dark inside, and the suit adjusted its brightness setting to accommodate. An old woman sat at a table, with a cup of tea before her. Slices and shards of the door were strewn around her, but there she sat, sipping her tea. She said nothing.
Some Enchanted Evening played in the background. It sounded tinny and dull through the suit, but he heard it.
The Tax Man stepped forward, the boot of the suit cracking the green linoleum as it landed. He pulled out a chair with an obsidian fingertip, and sat with a clunk. The wood creaked beneath him, but held.
“You look thirsty,” said Brann, smiling.
Fifteen minutes later, in a huff, The Tax Man left the little house, or the remnants of it. He’d learned nothing from the old woman, but the suit had informed him that it had triangulated the signal on Donys’s cellphone. The Tax Man, his suit black as the day, set off to The Olive Branch.
And behind him, buried somewhere in the scorched rubble, a gramophone sung out dreamily.
Chapter 17
You can’t have a bad day with a good attitude.
– Positivelifetips.com
Donys was having a great day. Larisa had found him fiddling in her makeup box the day before. He was sitting on the edge of the bed spreading cerise-pink lipstick everywhere but on his lips. He didn’t know she was watching until she cackled that Larisa-cackle from the doorway, a sound between an automatic pistol and a lawnmower.
He jumped at the sudd
en noise in the silent bedroom. The lipstick traced a long pink line across his cheek.
“I like the colors,” was the only thing he could think to say. His cheeks blushed purple beneath the rouge.
Larisa was shaking with laughter, slapping her leg, trying to catch her breath. “You chose …” but she couldn’t stop, “you chose the brightest pink.” Tears flooded her eyes, and trickled down the corners of her face.
“Let me take a look,” she said, composing herself by degrees. She walked over to him, and spotted the bioluminescent-green nail polish. She raised her face to the ceiling and howled with delight.
“Oh Jesus,” she cried, “oh dear Jesus.”
Donys tried to shrink into the floor, between the cracks in the wood. He wanted to become nothing.
Larisa wiped the laughter from her face, and sat beside him on the edge of the bed. “Would you like some help with that?” she asked eventually.
Donys nodded, but couldn’t unglue his eyes from the floor. She raised his chin with her fingertips. The feel of them, cool and firm, nudged his heartbeat.
“Right,” she said, using wet-wipe after wet-wipe to remove the layers from his cheeks, “that’s better. Now, show me which colors you like.”
The next half-hour had been a revelation for little-big Donys. He learned about essential and accent colors; about glossy, creamy, matte, iridescent and metallic finishes; about accentuating eyes and lips; about base and powdering.
That half hour, sitting in the warm, curtained bedroom, the light of the dresser bathing his face, was the happiest he could remember. And when they were done, the face he found in the mirror was the most beautiful, the most perfect face he’d ever seen.
Donys was happy.
And now, here he was, perambulating through the wheat field, his fingers drifting through the long, flexible stems. He’d walked outside at daybreak; watched the sun creep over the horizon beyond the sunflowers, beyond the hillocks and the old water tower. And the world had felt safe.
Donys walked and walked, wandering this way and that, his heart bigger than his chest, bigger than the farm. Until he opened his eyes, and he was on the servitude. The dusty road nibbled at his naked feet. And towering over him was … a machine, blacker than Larisa’s eyeliner, blacker than Cyan’s hair, blacker than the clouds and the soot at the back of the chimney. Blacker than anything. It was so dark, it shone.
Its hand jerked to tap something on its leg. A voice loud enough to knock him backward thundered, “Why haven’t you reported in?”
Donys raised his eyebrows.
“Report! You little shit,” boomed the machine.
Donys had been holding a sunflower petal – brighter than turmeric. He dropped it as he turned to run.
The shot from the pistol skipped along the road, wound around the aloes, their blooms full and crimson in the black sunlight, climbed up the porch, through the pine door, down the basement stairs, and found its way into the folds and ridges of a square ear.
Chokyong froze.
“He’s here,” said Milton.
Milton kept two combat suits down in the basement. Old generation, but still in working order. One was missing a left arm, “b-b-but it has two legs!” Milton had said.
Chokyong took the suit without the arm. Its gears grinded as the suit found its footing, and stood upright. Milton’s suit looked a little newer, and had all four limbs intact.
“Where’d you get them?” Chokyong asked, hoping Milton could hear. His friend’s voice returned to him from a speaker somewhere in the helmet. Sounded as though Milton was whispering in his ear.
“Stolen from Brownie barracks a year back.”
“That was you?” asked Chokyong.
Milton’s suit nodded. It was tall as the basement ceiling and puke-green. Suited Milton, he thought.
Chokyong grabbed as many weapons as he could reach, chucking them onto his suit wherever he could find a spot. The suit’s magnetic shell locked the weapons in place. A minute later, he and Milton were trudging up the stairs, through the lounge, leaving huge, sandy paw-prints as they moved to the porch.
Chokyong surveyed the fields. Wheat, sunflowers, and spinach. Nothing appeared amiss. He adjusted his visor to infrared. A squat figure appeared, low in the sunflowers. He bent his knees, the old wood creaking, and sprang forward. The suit leapt thirty yards. He hurtled toward the crumpled shape, the hiss and whir of hydraulics pumping him forward. His naked left arm flailed behind him as he ran, struggling to keep pace with the rest of his suited body.
He stopped twenty yards from the shape, and swung a pulse rifle round from his back. The rifle weighed over forty-five pounds, but the hydraulics in the arm compensated, and swiveled the weapon without any hesitation. Chokyong crept forward, shifting the sunflower stalks aside. A trickle of moisture ran down the inside of his arm.
There was a man huddled in a ball on the ground. A terrified face squinted up at him. Anand. Chokyong flipped open his visor so Anand could see he was friendly. The young man uncurled, revealing the baby beneath him. He stood warily, clutching the child.
“Where did the shot come from?”
“I think –” began Anand. But an explosion to his left knocked Chokyong off his feet. He spun to the source, managing to avoid landing on Anand. A simmering crater the length of a small truck had been dug out of the sunflowers. The universe was suddenly a mass of singed yellow petals floating everywhere, stems crinkling to black twigs.
“You okay?” he turned to Anand.
“We’re fine.” Anand was curled into a ball again, the baby screeching beneath him.
Chokyong only noticed now that his unsuited arm was burnt. The appendage bubbled black and red, skin peeling in places, and blistering in others. The suit had administered painkillers the moment it had detected the increased activity in his thalamus.
Chokyong snapped shut his visor, and tried to locate the source of the grenade – there was no use worrying about the arm now. Other than feeling a little light-headed, he was fighting fit. But the infrared on the suit’s visor wasn’t helping. The crater in front of him was hot enough to make readings of the background environment useless. Everything appeared as a white haze of radiation on his display.
“Milton,” he said into the helmet-mike, “could use some help.”
“Roger that. B-b-bastard won’t know what hit when I’m done.”
“Where is he?” All he saw was billowing smoke in every direction. The ground wasn’t cooling, and it was impossible to see through any of his filters.
“By the servitude. F-f-fucker shot Donys.”
Chokyong swallowed, and keeping to the ground, crept toward the road. “I’m on my way there now.”
“Flank the bastard. I’m c-c-coming from his right. You go to his left.”
“Understood.”
He crawled toward the road, his arm almost numb as it brushed against the sunflower stems and then through the wheat. Chunks of skin and tissue peeled away and stuck to the grass, but he didn’t feel the pain. A gray haze settled over him.
“Two minutes out,” he replied.
“I’m within range when you’re ready to fire. I say we use the p-p-pulse rifles first. Knock him down.”
Chokyong tried to remember what other weapons he had on his back. A few percussion grenades, two pistols and the pulse rifle, was all he could recall. There’d been a laser-gun on one of the shelves in the basement, but he couldn’t remember whether he’d grabbed it.
“What suit’s he wearing?” asked Chokyong.
“Looks like an Anti-Semite. Third generation.”
“Pulse rifles might knock him down. But won’t make a dent,” said Chokyong. He was nearing the edge of the wheat field now. He could see slivers of the sandy road through the crops.
“I brought the laser-gun. C-c-carve him up like a roast. But need to get close enough.”
A dull sensation from his arm seeped into his brain. The painkillers weren’t dampening the burn as well as bef
ore. He glanced down at his forearm, and saw exposed muscle, and what might have been the white of his ulna. The sight made his vision swim, but he bit down on his tongue and shook his head clear.
“Ready,” he said.
“Go in three, t-t-two, one …”
A sonic boom flattened the wheat above Chokyong’s head, as the shot from Milton’s pulse rifle rebounded from its target. He could see the machine now, struggling to keep its balance. It was a suit more massive than both of theirs melded together, and black as the Brownie soul. A body lay beside the machine. Its head was missing, mostly.
Chokyong aimed his rifle at The Tax Man, and fired.
Cyan had never slept so well. Nor eaten so well. Between Anand and Larisa, there were pounds of food diffusing from the kitchen at all hours. The trays of sandwiches and salmon and eggs and toast and roast-pork and creamed spinach and tortillas and honey-dripped-pancakes overflowed the dining-room table, and then onto the side-stools in the lounge, up the staircase to the bedrooms. In the last week of the pregnancy, Cyan had charged through the house, pounding up and down the pancaked staircase, gobbling every morsel as she passed, already reaching for the next plate. “J-j-jesus,” Milton would say, “the woman can eat.”
Once the baby came, Cyan couldn’t keep her eyes open. She slept, and slept some more. The baby could scream. The sky could fall, and she wouldn’t notice. But when the sky did fall that afternoon, she woke.
A bang shook the wooden frame of the house, hard enough to shift the bed away from the wall.
She felt for the baby on her chest. But there was no child. Her fingers searched every inch of the duvet in the dark bedroom. There was no child.
“Anand?” she called into the gloom. He must have taken her downstairs.
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