Absorption (27 page)

No sense worrying about the murder of someone long dead, or anything else in between. How about the boredom? Could he really take a couple of weeks with thugs even stupider than he had been? He got up, pushed aside his clothes, checked the floor in the back of his closet. Sure enough, the cheap plastic books and cheaper electronic wafers with books hard wired into them were there. He could have afforded better even now, but going to a bookstore wasn’t something a Lord did.

Despite himself, Brett would be pleased to see some of those wild adventure stories again. But this was all from his brain, so he couldn’t read them unless some part of him remembered them word for word. That didn’t seem right either though. This just didn’t feel like a dream.

And Brett had gone through a fair amount of effort to get this C series. Nobody had told him he had to cooperate once here, but it seemed only common sense – if he wanted to do this at all.

Suddenly exhausted and ready to sleep, Brett got into bed and switched out the light without pausing to wonder why.

In the morning everything looked different. Sun poured through the window. They called themselves the Lords for a reason. They really were Lords of the Earth. They didn’t fear crime, they were crime. Nobody but Jarvis dared cross a Lord. If you wanted something you took it. Girls loved them and sometimes didn’t even ask for money. If you robbed someone and got recognized, people knew not to talk to the police. Lords remembered.

Brett blinked, perspective suddenly reversing again. Even as criminals they weren’t much. They knew how to stay out of the way of the big time gangs, while living in neighborhoods the police didn’t patrol – unless the stakes were big enough. Kidding themselves had helped cause the problem.

He pulled on some clothing, stuffed some crackers in his mouth. There wouldn’t be food in the kitchen. He would have to go out for breakfast.

What should he do after that? Oddly, he wanted to talk to Jarvis. Sometimes he didn’t really like him. Brett still had knife scars from when the head Lord had accused him of faking a broken leg to chicken out on a gang fight. You didn’t cross him, ever.

But Brett had been beaten worse than that before he joined the Lords. It had been a regular thing. Once people knew he was a Lord, they let him alone. Jarvis had taught him to fight. The adult Brett realized how little technique Jarvis had known, but Jarvis had taught him things. If someone knew they would have to kill you to beat you, because you would never back down, they probably wouldn’t start up with you. They might even let you push them a bit, even if they thought they were better than you, because the fight wasn’t worth the hassle.

Jarvis might not be a genius, but the slums of Burnton were his element. He could beat any one of them in a fight, but they could have killed him all together. Only who would have gone first? More important, he was always out front in a fight with another gang, always ready to give and take the first blow.

In the hallway, Brett saw cracks in the paint. He grinned at the idea of telling the other Lords they needed to move out for a few days and hire a painter, or do the job themselves.

He smiled again at the noises coming from Jarvis’s room. He’d be in a better mood when he was done with the girl. He turned around and headed towards the front door.

Sharpie met him on the way. Sharpie was the shortest of them all, and seemed to have something to prove. His black eyes moved quickly, and his close cropped black hair looked almost military. He could be quicker to start a fight than anyone but Jarvis, but also had a brain he concealed better than Brett.

He told Brett, “Kelly’s. C’mon.”

The greasy spoon up the block was owned by a fence, who had muscle to back him up, so everyone knew not to bother him. This also meant they were welcome to come there to buy breakfast, so long as they didn’t start trouble.

Why was he drinking cola for breakfast? Brett shrugged, and took another forkful of lukewarm eggs.

Sharpie asked, “Whadja think of yesterday?”

Brett replied, “Jarvis’s top. We livin.”

The other boy shook his head. “He wasn’ happy. That’s trouble.”

The younger Brett didn’t see the problem, but in retrospect Sharpie was right. Jarvis had done the only possible thing, but somehow set himself off kilter.

Then he scrutinized Sharpie suspiciously. Sharpie had egged Jarvis on when he saw his new toy, and been the first to testify against him in court. If he had known his leader was headed for trouble he could have said something.

That ended the conversation. A certain camaraderie lay between the gang, but no real friendship. Even the name of the gang pretended to mean something it didn’t. If they didn’t want to see themselves, they could hardly let anyone else get close enough to see them.

Moodily Brett headed back to his room and memory lane. He could have looked up these old books again before now. Or did he only find his imperfect memory of them here? Since only the past replayed itself, he didn’t need to get emotionally involved.

Wandering out in search of dinner, Brett ran into the rest of the gang in the hall. Sharpie, Jeff, Red, and Clyde all clustered around Jarvis.

Even before getting close enough to see, Brett knew the plaything that Jarvis brandished. Jarvis had gone out and bought a gun.

“Nobody gonna slam Jarvis,” he said triumphantly.

In a voice oozing with admiration, Sharpie said, “You top, Jarvis. You a killer.”

How could Brett tell Jarvis the gun would only get him into trouble? They didn’t need a gun for the kind of crimes they committed, and the police wouldn’t just let a murder go. They weren’t Razors.

The Lords never talked like that though. Surely he’d known underneath even back then, but aloud they always pretended they feared nothing.

The best he could say was, “We don’ need. We slam great without one.”

Jarvis looked straight at him. “Sharpie likes it. You got somethin’ to say?”

There was only one answer to that. “No.”

Later he passed Sharpie in the hall. Sharpie knew exactly why he was pissed. “You can’t say nothin’ to him. Fool if you try.”

Almost true. Jarvis didn’t need his crew to like him, but he needed them to admire him, almost worship him. Brett could understand that better after all these years. So there should be some way to use that need to persuade him – only even now Brett couldn’t see it.

That didn’t make him a teenager again. As an adult he could plan, could take responsibility for his actions. With what he’d learned, he had nothing to fear from anyone here.

No more tap-dancing around. Brett would take the direct approach.

Jarvis’s room had garish posters on the wall: a mix of naked women and fight scenes. A few ants had discovered the crumbs on the carpet.

“Give me the gun.”

He deliberately spoke clearly and distinctly like an adult, and not with the mumbled slang of the Lords.

“Wanna fight outside?”

Jarvis spoke happily, like Brett had made his day. His black eyes and black hair didn’t make him look anything like a larger version of Sharpie. Jarvis was overweight, though not enough to slow him down. The fat was most visible in his face, swelling around the eyes to give him a piggish look.

“Here and now, or give me the gun.”

Brett could visualize the fast eager lunge which froze opponents in fear an instant before the knife cut them. He knew exactly how he would move out of the way, letting Jarvis lose his balance, and had contingency plans in case Jarvis didn’t fight as he always had.

“You still don’t know why you’re here, Bookie. To prove an adult mind in your teenage body could have avoided the killing? Is that why you’re here?”

Brett started, but Jarvis’s lips hadn’t moved. With a rush he remembered the future he had forgotten so quickly. Not the future but the present, though time must be distorted, surely he hadn’t been in that tank over twenty four hours.

Even with the momentary distraction Brett’s reflexes should have carried the day, but apparently the reflexes hadn’t come back with him. He doubled over as Jarvis planted a fist in his stomach, struck the floor after a savage blow hit his shoulder. When he lay on the floor Jarvis kicked him in the ribs, and he saw the world though a haze of pain. The adult Brett who could have distanced himself from that pain seemed very remote, and it was hard to believe that this was a hallucination, and he would wake in a tank of water after Jarvis killed him, only knowing he had failed to do – what? What should he have done?

Jarvis stood over him. “Always liked you, Bookie. Never thought you wanted to be Top. Taste my knife to help you remember better?”

Brett shook his head, praying it was more than a rhetorical question.

Jarvis grinned. “Okay. Always liked you Bookie.”

Then he walked around Brett without touching him. He closed his eyes briefly to try and block out the pain – but dammit, that was no way for a Space Force doctor to deal with injuries. Eventually he staggered to his feet and checked himself over. There would be some nasty bruises, but no bones had broken. He went to his room to lie down awhile.

Hunger woke him. He saw the setting sun through the window. Sometimes there would be hot food in the kitchen around this time. One of the other Lords might have ordered it. None of them worked for a living, so they weren’t cheap about money. Brett managed to lever himself off the bed without putting any weight on his newly hurt shoulder.

The rest of the Lords were there too. Brett dragged in a chair from the adjoining room, which had once been a dining room.

Clyde grinned at him, then turned to Jarvis. “Bookie givin’ you trouble? Wan’ me to have a little talk wit him out back?”

Brett didn’t let his face show fear. Clyde wasn’t quite as big as Jeff, but he knew how to fight, and was practically an adult. If Clyde and Jarvis declared open season on someone, they would make a good target for anyone hoping to show how tough they were with no risk.

Jarvis grinned back. “Give him a coupla days. I wouldn’ mind seein’ if anyone besides me can take Bookie. Watch yourself though.”

The warning could have been mockery, but Jarvis delivered it in a flat tone, and Clyde looked away, evidently taking it seriously. Apparently Jarvis really had liked Brett. Or wait, that was just how he remembered Jarvis. Only now this world seemed a lot more real than the other one. Would he really grow up to be a doctor-soldier? Did he want to?

Over the next few days, Brett was reminded that the candy store incident had affected Jarvis deeply. They committed crimes when they didn’t really need the money, and Jarvis wasn’t quite as careful. Then it stopped, but Bookie knew they would slam the convenience store in a week – unless all those strange memories of the future were a crazy dream.

If all that stuff were true, Brett couldn’t live this way much longer even if he wanted to. But everything seemed so real. Could he somehow stop the shooting, or get the Lords away safely afterwards? This wasn’t a bad life, the only one he knew really. And Jarvis was good to have on your side.

When it came up, Bookie couldn’t talk Jarvis out of slamming the convenience store, even though he pointed out they had slammed the place twice in the past four months. A ghost of the older Brett thought it was no wonder the owner had gone mad with rage, but Bookie had bigger worries. Somebody needed to talk to Jarvis all right, but Brett didn’t know what to say. Anyway, Jarvis didn’t really confide in anyone, or let anyone confide in him. Jarvis had shown Brett some scars from where his father used to beat him, but even then Brett knew that pity or even sympathy would have been dangerous. He had expressed awe at what Jarvis had survived, and at Jarvis for surviving it.

In the end Brett decided to forget all the crazy crap. Maybe he’d been hit on the head during his fight with Jarvis. Everyone else acted like they always had, nobody worried they were part of a hallucination. Anyway it had been a couple of weeks now, long enough for a guy in a tank of salty stuff he couldn’t drink to die of thirst. At the very least he would have shit himself by now. Bookie didn’t want to be him again. He had never liked the name Brett.

They pulled their masks over their heads, and walked into the store. Bookie never thought about it, but Brett realized the old man had to be the owner, since he was there all the time. This time something snapped, and he started screaming. By some fatal mischance, he was clever enough to tell Jarvis was the leader but not clever enough to keep his mouth shut, or at least avoid talking to his face.

“You stupid punks have garbage for brains! You could earn more money shoveling snow than you get from my goddam empty cash register. You’re a useless lazy idiot!”

Brett froze. It was real, all of it. This was exactly what he had remembered from the future.

Jarvis never let anyone talk trash to him. He pulled the pistol out of his waistband, the pistol they hadn’t even needed for the other robberies. For an instant Brett thought he could change the past, throw himself at the other boy when no words would be heeded. Instead he stood unmoving as he had long ago, and would never know if the moment available was enough to act in.

The echoing gunshot deafened Brett for a moment. The old man man’s skull split open, and his twitching body fell to the floor.

Jarvis froze in shock at what he had done, then forced his mouth into the approximate shape of a smile. “I showed him.”