Version 43

by Philip Palmer

  “What do you want from me?” said Kim, frightened of me by now.

  “Imagine: acquaintances and work colleagues will love you and respect you, and reverence you, as a goddess.”

  “They do that already!” Kim protested.

  “You know that’s not true,” I chided her. “You have power, and with that comes toadying and arse-licking. Are you fooled by that? Are you really so easily suckered?”

  “Do you have this ability?” Kim asked, slyly.

  I looked at her, and smiled. And I coiled and furled the remnants of my human personality and my buried memories of human emotions into a virtual fist, and I struck her, like a cobra, with an empathy shaft of piercing power.

  And I saw the tremor in Kim’s face, as she fell madly, desperately, pathetically in love with me.

  “Yes,” I said.

  The Mayor loomed over the partygoers, his metal skull shining in the candlelight.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and brushed past him, and the Mayor glanced at me and did not know me.

  “No worries.”

  “Love your suit.”

  “Thank you.”

  And a wall camera took our photograph, and I moved on.

  And as he walked away, I accessed the camera, and downloaded the photograph into my cybernetic brain.

  And as he ate canapés, and sipped champagne, I transmitted the photograph to one of Fernando Gracias’s pimps. It was an image of the Mayor and an unknown man, exchanging intimate words. But the camera’s microphones hadn’t picked up the words; all that remained was the image of two men exchanging glances and signals.

  In a paranoid world, that would be enough.

  “Who the fuck are you?” asked Fernando Gracias.

  “I’m just a barman,” I said, calmly. “What’s the problem?”

  “The problem is, I have my eye on you,” said Fernando, nastily.

  We were in the finest and most famous of Fernando’s clubs, the Blue Note. A guitarist was on stage, practising. He strummed a series of fast chords, switching from acoustic guitar to piano to electric guitar with each strum, and planting sharp notes in the air that wailed and decayed then transformed into remembered epiphany.

  “You’re working for Billy Grogan,” Fernando continued. “But you’re also working for the Mayor. Don’t fucking lie about it! I have my spies. I know you’ve been meeting with him.”

  I shrugged. “I like to spread my bets.”

  “And you’re a killer. A mercenary soldier and a trained assassin. How am I doing?”

  “That was back on Kornbluth,” I conceded. “I’m a reformed man now. Making a new life for myself in the Exodus Universe.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Bull, as you say, shit,” I acknowledged.

  “So what’s your game?”

  “The Mayor asked me to work for him. I said yes.”

  Fernando thought about this.

  “Doing what?”

  “What I do best. Killing.”

  Fernando sucked in a breath. It was so loud, the guitarist missed a beat.

  “Who’s your target?” hissed Fernando Gracias.

  “Billy Grogan.”

  “Abe is paying you to kill Billy?”

  “You’ve got it.”

  “Why! Why the hell does the Mayor want Billy dead!”

  “Because Billy’s a wild card,” I explained. “Undisciplined. And because the Mayor wants more control over the gangs. He’ll install his own man to run Billy’s turf once he’s President. I mean, let’s face it: once he’s the democratically elected leader of the nation, Naurion isn’t going to want to be surrounded by a bunch of fucking crooks and lowlifes. Like you guys.”

  “How charming,” snarled Fernando.

  “Like it, hate it, I don’t care. It’s the truth.”

  “And will you do it? Kill Billy?”

  “I will, unless someone pays me not to,” I hinted.

  “Fuck, kill the bastard, I don’t care,” sneered Fernando, and then he thought a moment. “But what about me?” he asked. “Will you assassinate me too?”

  “Someone else has that job.”

  Fernando Gracias was shaken by that.

  “Who? Who the fuck would have the balls to try and kill me?”

  I paused. Everyone knew that Fernando Gracias and Kim Ji went way back.

  “It’s Kim,” I said. “She’s the one who’s closest to you. She’ll do it.”

  “You’re lying.”

  The guitar’s wail carved scars in my heart.

  “I’ll bring you proof,” I said.

  I hid in the shadows of the dojo, and watched.

  Hari Gilles was dressed in black, doing his kata. Around him were four black-masked, black-clad assassins – Gill’s Killers all.

  The Killers and Hari moved like lightning, with astonishing grace. I was awed at their speed. I knew the Killers were bio-engineered, but these creatures seemed more than human. They were like light, dancing in air, moving in deadly kata so swiftly their images blurred in my vision.

  Hari was a Killer too: he was fast and strong and would, I mused, be hard to execute.

  And so I hid in shadow, and wasn’t detected by the surveillance cameras, and did not breathe, so could not be heard by the hidden microphones. And I studied the Killers, until I knew the limits and the range of what they could do.

  They made poetry out of the kata. It was a joy to watch them.

  Chinte.

  Hakutsuru.

  Empi Sho.

  Teisho.

  Sushiho.

  Sanseiru.

  Zen Shin Ko Tai.

  Dan Enn Sho.

  The precision and dazzling speed of their movements impressed me, and the grace of the Killers was inspiring.

  I felt touched with joy at the sight of something so beautiful, so deadly, so utterly alien.

  I would enjoy slaughtering these creatures.

  It was 3 a.m. in Grogan’s Saloon.

  “Tell me about yourself, Tom,” said Billy Grogan.

  “What’s to tell?” I replied.

  “You listen to my stories. You’re the best listener I’ve ever known. But you never talk about yourself. You’re just a great fucking sponge, aren’t you?”

  I shrugged.

  “I was broke, my family were dead,” I conceded, “and I took to crime.”

  “Now that’s starting to sound like a story.”

  Billy and I were sitting at a dining table, surrounded by bottles of whiskey, as the cleaners got the bar set straight for the dawn shift of drinkers. Two moons were visible through the bar’s skylight.

  “I was a leader,” I said, “I learned that early on. Men and women followed me. I had that quality.”

  “It’s a rare quality.”

  “You have it too.”

  “Far from it,” said Billy modestly. “I struggle to lead. I have doubts you see. Am I doing the right thing? But people trust me. My ma trusts me. My sisters, my brothers. They think I’m my da, but I’m not. I don’t have his confidence. Sorry, you were saying—”

  “No, go on.”

  “Are we even doing the right thing here?” Billy argued passionately. “Ours is a brutal fucking business, but does it need to be? We could quit all this, the killing, the stealing. We could have democracy.”

  “We have democracy,” I countered.

  “That’s just window-dressing,” snorted Billy. “The only democracy worth having is one that doesn’t involve any of the gobshites who run this planet. We’re just like a bunch of fucking kids, with our ‘gangs’. Is that mature? Is that the way human beings should behave in a century like ours?”

  “You’ve given this some thought.”

  “Humanity is asinine,” said Billy. “Fucking juvenile! We have dictators. We have charismatic leaders. We have wars to unite us. We don’t need any of it! Space is big enough. We could have town councils, local power, individuals in charge of their own destiny. We don’t need cops and politicians and gang
bosses.”

  “There’d be no role for you.”

  “I could be a bar-owner. That’s all I am, or need to be. The killing, the thieving, there’s no need for it.”

  “There’s always been crime.”

  “Yeah, because in the past, there was a fucking real need for it! If you don’t have a loaf of bread, you steal a loaf. But now we have enough loaves to go around. We have robots and fabricators. I sometimes think—Now, just listen to me droning the fuck on!”

  “Not at all. I’m fascinated.”

  “I sometimes think,” said Billy quietly, “this is an unreal society. A fake. Everything we are and everything we do is just a construct.”

  “Reality is an illusion?” I suggested.

  “No, no! That’s just pretentious shite! What I’m saying is, maybe our reality is an illusion. We’re just pawns in someone else’s game.”

  “You’re losing me now Billy.”

  “Forget it. I’m confusing myself. Tell me Tom. Tell me your stories.”

  And I told my stories.

  I talked for hours, all through the night and into the morning until the dawn lit the bar. I took stories out of my database, stories from history, and I wove myself into them. I became the captain of a pirate crew, I became a buccaneer, I became a warrior, I became a thief on a massive scale. I painted a portrait of myself as a dark hero, an immoral adventurer, and the stories wove a spell upon my listener. And I realised that, despite what I’d always thought, I do in fact have a remarkable flair for storytelling – provided that the stories are all lies.

  “You’ve led a grand life.”

  “We all have,” I said, with flagrantly insincere modesty.

  The days passed, the weeks passed. I became part of this new world.

  But I did not falter in my purpose, or my resolve.

  “Will you make love to me?” said Kim Ji, and I smiled.

  We were in her bedroom now, which was even lusher and more luxurious than her salon. A thousand candles lit the room, casting many shadows, making the air itself flicker. And Kim was naked, and magnificent, and stood before me proudly, her red hair dawning on her bare shoulders.

  And she snarled her wolf-snarl; but it had no effect on me. I felt slightly sorry for her.

  “No.”

  “No?” Kim snarled again, still naked, still glorious.

  “No.”

  I paused. And I held the pause.

  “You want me don’t you?” I said, at length.

  “Yes,” Kim whispered, sincerely.

  “But you can’t have me,” I told her, firmly.

  There was a painful pause, then Kim slowly smiled.

  “I get it,” she said. It was, after all, the oldest trick in the mind-melding book. “Not having you – that’s meant to be the turn on?”

  I nodded.

  “All your life,” I confirmed, “you’ve had whatever you wanted. Money, fame, sex. Now you can’t. You want me, you love me, but you can never have me. I am untouchable, and pure.”

  “Pure?”

  I smiled. “Maybe not pure.”

  “You’re just full of shit. You have no secrets.”

  I looked deep into her eyes, deep into her soul.

  “Forgive yourself,” I said.

  Kim blinked, shocked and startled.

  “For what?” she said, coldly.

  “For Jessica,” I said. I had learned this from my database: Kim’s daughter had been a whore, then had committed suicide.

  Kim shuddered. “I can’t.”

  “You can. Purge yourself.”

  “How?”

  Kim sat on the bed, raised one leg, rested an arm on her own shoulder, concealing her nakedness, refusing my gaze.

  “There was a man,” I said, “who told your daughter to commit suicide. As a joke. Just, as a joke. He wanted to see what effect it would have on you.”

  Her profile did not flinch; her white skin was marbled in the light of the many candles.

  “I never mourned her,” Kim said coldly. And then she turned her head, and her red hair swirled, and she fixed me with her gaze. “I never even went to her funeral,” she said fiercely.

  “He wanted to see,” I said, “if he could break your heart.”

  “Who?” she screamed. “Who was that man?”

  I smiled. “Fernando Gracias,” I said.

  It was all lies, of course. But even in the dim candlelight, I could see that Kim’s eyes were glittering with rage.

  The set was finishing as I walked in. Fernando Gracias nodded to me as I passed him, and took my regular seat. The musician on stage, Blind Jake, was singing a ballad to his own accompaniment on air guitar and piano. It was a haunting melody, with random lyrics.

  I beckoned a waiter, took a glass of whisky from his tray, and nursed it. The club was emptying. Before long, only the musicians and the bar staff and I would be left. Blind Jake finished his song, and expertly made his way down from the stage, guided by body-radar and instinct.

  I was aware that Jake had been born with sight but raised in darkness, to heighten his musical skills. After fifteen years locked in a small room without light, and without human companionship, surrounded by music, he emerged into the world stone blind but able to see sound.

  This was one of Fernando Gracias’s legendary experiments: he had succeeded in growing musical genius. On Earth, I mused, this would have been illegal.

  Jake’s talent for composition and improvisation were legendary, and his music touched the souls of all who heard him. Even I, who had no soul, could sense the greatness of Blind Jake.

  “Goddamn, that was good, “said Pete Mullery, as Jake found his way to the table, and slumped in his regular seat. Pete was a harpist and singer, one of Fernando Gracias’s newest protégés. Pete used a real harp; he had no fondness for air instruments. Like Jake, he was some kind of genius, though his music was less bluesy, more ethereal, almost alien in its strangeness.

  I sat in the neighbouring booth, near them but not belonging to their company, nursing my drink, eavesdropping shamelessly as the musicians relaxed at the end of a long night.

  Blind Jake grinned. “Barley, hoe, Mexican,” he said suddenly, and loudly, and randomly.

  At first, I had been bewildered to hear the regulars in the bar speak this kind of gibberish. But now I knew that the musicians had their own language, which they called random jive, or just “random.” The die-hard randomists used words that they liked the sound of, with no attempt at conveying a meaning. I often listened to them for hours, as they rapped and jammed with words, while consuming terrifying amounts of alcohol.

  “Heaven, sent, shining, beast, adore,” said Joni Susurrus. She was a blonde skinny marvel, with an odd but captivating look; a soulful singer who could also rap and dance.

  “Foin, foist, flying jigger,” said Marco, a dark-skinned percussionist and rhythmist who had a fondness for ancient thieves cant.

  “Firkydoodle, caterwaul, ling grappling,” canted Blind Jake back at him, obscenely.

  “Cusp, crepuscule, husk,” said Pete.

  “Dusk, shuck, share,” replied Blind Jake, going with the rhyming riff.

  “Shilling, shoe, shite.”

  “Lerricombtwang,” said Marco, definitively.

  “Disrezpezzy, coochie, eyeless, don’t see shit don’t no shit don’t hear shit, shorty, motherfucka, face gator, gold-digging ho, dukey rope, fetti, krillhead, nose candy, moola, soyf,” said Joni, in homage to the ancient rap of the twentieth century.

  “Mymi, cokchewer, fufuyou, lickoram, dumshaire, eyeball-eater, virginho, damblam, hoochiestar, juvejunkie, diamond-head, lost in space, blackholeheartedlover, lubelicker, aripar,” retorted Pete, in homage to his beloved zigzaggers of the mid-twenty-second century.

  “Aal,” I said, from my seat in the nearby booth, and all heads turned to hear me out.

  “Aam,” I continued, in the same loud clear tones, “aardvark, aardwolf, aaron’s rod, ab, aba, abaca, abacinte, abaciscus, aba
cist, aback, abackward, abactor, abacus, abada, abaddon, abaft,”

  “Hey man, can you just—”

  “Can someone—”

  “abaisance, abaiser, abalienate, abalone, aband, abandon,”

  “Yeah right – why don’t you fucking abandon—”

  “Saying this nicely: shut the fuck up?”

  “Man, you just do not—”

  “abandoned, abandonee, abandonment,”

  “STOP!”

  I stopped. I grinned, confident I would now be accepted as one of the guys.

  But instead, there was a jagged pause, like, or so it seemed to me, the hole caused by an elbow inadvertently thrust through an art connoisseur’s favourite painting.

  “You ain’t got no fucking clue, do you?” said Blind Jake wonderingly.

  My smile wavered.

  “You’ve got,” said Blind Jake kindly, “you do, you really do, you really do have what I would call, po-tential.”

  He sipped his whisky. I listened, chastened, to his words.

  “Potential for sure,” concurred Joni.

  “Abada I liked,” said Marcus. “That’s a rhinoceros, right?”

  “It is,” I said, huffily.

  “Abaciscus has a lovely feel to it,” Joni said.

  “It’s a tile in a mosaic,” I explained.

  “No guff? It should be a flower.”

  “That’s ‘hibiscus,’ ” I explained.

  “The marrow of the matter being,” said Blind Jake firmly, “there is an art to this art which we call random.”

  “’Cause it is,” said Joni.

  “random,” added Marco.

  “and,” said Pete: and then the words flowed faster:

  “it’s”

  “comprised”

  “and”

  “constituted”

  “and”

  “inspired”

  “by”

  “words,”

  “namely”

  “nouns”

  “adjectives”

  “adverbs”

  “verbs”

  “that”

  “don’t”

  “make”

  “sense”

  “but”