Authors: Warren Hammond
W
E
faced the curtain of strung monitor teeth, light leaking out from Chicho’s office. We’d already chased out all the hookers from the lobby. The johns too.
“You ready?” whispered Maria.
I was. Chicho had to be tamed once and for all. Prick thought he could welsh on our deal? Thought a little case of buyer’s remorse entitled him to dump me for Mota? This asshole cut up Maria’s sister and set me up to die.
But the business wasn’t mine anymore. I put my hand on Maria’s shoulder. “You need to do this on your own.”
She turned her eyes on me, heavily inked lashes and painted lids, little worry lines in the corners.
“You’ll do fine. I’ll wait right here.”
“But—”
“Remember what he did to your sister.”
She nodded and erased the fear from her face, the lines becoming deep, angry cuts. She extended the telescoping steel baton in her hand.
“Be strong but stay under control. Never lose control.”
She tilted my way to give me a peck on the cheek. I leaned into the kiss, took a welcome shot of perfume up the nose.
She went through the curtain. I listened to the strands of teeth clacking and chattering. I heard him argue. Then a thump. Followed by more thumps. Apart from the yelps and whimpers, it sounded like somebody using a rug beater on a heavy rug. A dirty, filthy, mud-caked rug.
I found a seat and reclined into the cushions. Rug like that might take a while to clean.
thirty
M
AY 10–12, 2789
I
WATCHED
the street, a woman sweeping her sidewalk, another pushing a squeaky-wheeled cart piled with fried dough. Signs of a waking city.
I waited on Maggie’s steps just like I had a couple weeks ago. She would come out soon. Almost time for work. I hadn’t tried to contact her until now. Keeping my distance seemed like the right thing to do. Let her take time to cool. Let her reason things through.
I looked over my shoulder at the door. Through the crack along the bottom, I could see lights on inside. Wouldn’t be much longer.
I decided to keep myself busy. I reached into a pocket and pulled out a small spool of fishing line, the thickest, heaviest line I could buy. Using my leg as a meter stick, I uncoiled a rough ten meters and threaded one end through a sinker. Now how in the hell was I going to tie a knot?
I manipulated the line with one hand, looping and twisting, pulling the knot tight, holding it up, and watched the sinker fall off the end. Damn.
I tried again, used all my powers of concentration. It was a momentary break from a constant rehashing of the last few weeks, my thoughts shadowed by storm clouds, menacing black billows of my own making.
I wished it would end, the nonstop barrage of racing thoughts. The constant accounting of a lifetime full of mistakes. Failures of courage and pride. Failures of stupidity and hubris.
The door opened behind me, and I heard a weary sigh. I twisted around to see her: pressed blouse and slacks, shined shoes that reflected the porch light.
She looked down at me. “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
I took a deep breath, organized the thoughts in my head. “I need you to know I had your best interests at heart from the very beginning.”
She came down the first few steps to take a seat. “I know you did.”
“Things just went to hell.”
“You can say that again.”
“Everything I did, I did for the right reasons. I didn’t mean to—”
She put a hand on my arm. “You can stop.”
Relief blew through my mind like a fresh breeze, stormy skies parting. “So we’re okay?”
“I’ve been thinking about something you asked the last time we talked on these steps. You remember asking what I saw in you when we worked that first case?”
I did.
“Loyalty. That was what stood out. Loyalty to the chief. Your wife. Your people. You’re the most fiercely loyal person I’ve ever seen.”
The praise made me uncomfortable. I looked down, fiddled with the still-unattached sinker.
“You were a loyal friend to me until you seized that crew of yours. That was when you started shutting me out, started making decisions without me. Big decisions. All the shit you put me through, that’s the thing that bothers me most.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“Of course you were.” She chuckled to herself. “Always loyal.”
We both stewed in the irony, me rolling the sinker in my fingers, her silently rubbing her hands together. “You heard all the cases closed. Mota and the Yepala sheriff. Carew. Wu and Froelich.”
I nodded, my voice somber. “Kripsen and Lumbela too.”
“Nobody will ever know what really happened on that rooftop.”
“Nobody but you and me.” I needed confirmation, had to ask again. “So we’re good?”
“You done shutting me out?”
“I’m done.”
“We do this together?”
“Together,” I said. We were partners again. A team. The goal hadn’t changed. I still had to take back KOP. Maggie had to become chief. Only this time we’d do it different. We’d do it without a power base centered in criminal activity. This time, we’d do it the
right
way.
“What are you going to do about your arm?”
“I made a doctor’s appointment for next week.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Are you going to have them grow you a new hand or go with something artificial? They can do some amazing stuff, you know.”
“I don’t want that high-tech shit.”
She smiled. “A newly grown hand it is.”
“Actually, I was thinking of a hook.”
She laughed like I was joking. But I wasn’t. I could do some damage with a hook.
The laughter faded, but we stayed where we were, together again. I had to tell her what I had planned. From now on, decisions like this had to be made together.
I cleared my throat. “I’ve been figuring I should go to Yepala tomorrow and kill the doctor. What do you think?” I almost laughed at how ridiculous it sounded, but there it was. Business partners talking business.
Her body tensed. I could see it in her posture, the way her spine straightened, the way her shoulders crept up. She wrung her hands as if they were a poor substitute for my neck. But she stayed silent. She knew I was right. It was the only way.
She pulled up her legs, dropped her chin onto her knees. “I reported the doctor to the governor’s office.”
“And?”
“His staffer brushed me off. Thanked me for bringing the issue to their attention and showed me the door.”
“Did you expect anything different?”
“No. But I had to try.”
“The doctor has to die, Maggie.” Simple as that.
“He’s an offworlder. You know how many self-defense systems he must have inside him?”
“I made a plan.” I held up the sinker. “Help me tie this thing on.”
* * *
I flicked another gecko off my arm. The little shits kept crawling all over me. The clinic’s thatch rooftop was totally infested with geckos and ’guanas. I reminded myself that this was a good thing. It meant there was so much scratching and climbing, nobody would notice if I made some noise.
I remembered the first time I had the chance to kill the doctor, when he was sleeping in Mota’s bed. At the time, I didn’t know he was an offworlder. Didn’t even know there was a man under those curly locks and that petite nose.
Turned out I was lucky as hell that I didn’t make the attempt or the doc would’ve smoked me a dozen different ways. Killing an offworlder wasn’t easy. I had to be smart. Careful. Patient.
I’d been up here for more than a day now. Snuck past the guards in the dead of night and climbed the slatted west end of the building. Not as hard a climb as I thought it would be. My right arm still had an elbow, and the slats were spaced plenty wide enough for me to hook my forearm through.
The doctor arrived eleven hours ago. Right on schedule. The guy I’d bribed at the flyer rental company had the time nailed.
I’d watched the flyer land. Watched him check on the snail pen. Watched him walk up to the clinic and disappear under the eaves.
He’d be in bed by now. Sleeping directly underneath me. I’d seen him sleeping once before.
He slept with his mouth open.
I drank down the last of my water and stuffed the canteen back in my pack. I rolled over and peered through a narrow copper pipe I’d inserted through the thatch. I waited for my eye to adjust to the darkness, the room barely lit by an outdoor floodlight. Forms took shape. Pillow. Head. Hair. Mouth.
He was sleeping on his back, but his open mouth was to the right of where I wanted it to be. I pulled the pipe out of the thatch, picked a new spot, and began the tedious effort of working it through the many layers of weather-beaten fronds.
I pushed my way through, cringing at the crinkling, crunching sound of dried leaves. I told myself he wouldn’t notice. Mating season was over. It was nesting time, ’guanas all over this roof, gnawing and digging and burrowing.
I put my eye up to the pipe again, waited for my vision to adjust. The stupid bastard had moved.
I kept at it for ten, twenty, thirty minutes until I finally lined it up. I took the fishing line and sinker, dropped the sinker into the pipe, and slowly played out the line, lowering it down centimeter by centimeter. I looked through. Lowered some more. Looked through again.
The sinker dropped slowly, painstakingly, toward that open mouth, farther and farther, straining the limits of my depth perception. I hoped I wouldn’t make contact by going too far. I stopped, put the line in my mouth, and gripped it with my teeth. Reaching for my bag, I dropped fingers into the side pocket and pulled out one of the snails I’d five-fingered from the snail pen.
What comes around goes around, Doc.
I set the shell on the thatch and dug the snail out with thumb and index finger. I gripped it in my palm and squeezed, let the juice run off my hand into the shell.
I took the shell and held it to the line, gently poured a drop onto the cord, watched the drop disappear into the pipe. I had to imagine it the rest of the way, a tiny bead of liquid descending from the rafters. A raindrop rolling down a blade of grass. A dewdrop running down a spider silk.
I poured another drop and another and another, the genie on its last magic carpet ride.
I pulled the line back up, stuffed it into my pack along with the short run of pipe. I grabbed the pack, slipped the shoulder straps over my shoulders, and went to the roof’s edge, lay facedown with my feet hanging off the edge. Squirming backward with my legs hanging down, my feet found a rafter.
I crouched on a beam of rough-hewn wood. The doctor was awake, sitting up in bed, his light turned on. He was in his underwear, revealing toned legs and sculpted offworld pecs. Styled hair hung to his shoulders.
I kept my voice low, knowing there was at least one guard somewhere downstairs. “Stand up.”
He did.
“Come over here and help me down.”
Bare feet padded across rippled planks. He reached up and spotted me as I climbed down. I reached the floor and stood face-to-face with him. I looked deep into his eyes. Looked for signs of terror, but I found nothing. His eyes were flat. Unfeeling. I was used to instilling fear, great buckets of it.
This felt so wrong. So unnatural.
“You know what’s happening to you, don’t you? You’re in my control now.”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“Where’s your new nurse?”
“She left. I don’t make her stay overnight when I’m here.”
“Who else knows how to produce the genie?”
“Nobody. I don’t need the competition.” His voice was bland. Monotone.
“What about breeders? Who’s breeding them?”
“They can’t be bred.”
“Why not?”
“I wired them to be sterile. That way I was sure to keep my monopoly.”
“How do you produce them?”
“I let unmodified snails mate and treat the eggs.”
I needed to verify it again. “Nobody knows how to do the procedure?”
“Nobody but me.”
“You have a phone in your head?”
“Yes.”
“Delete everything.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your notes. Your inventions. Delete every fucking thing you’ve ever done. Delete the backups. Delete it all.”
He closed his eyes, his brain jacking into unseen systems.
I reached into my bag, pulled out a few meters of rope, a noose on one end. I picked a rafter near the bed and tossed an end over.
“Call your nurse,” I told him. “Tell her you have to leave. Make her come in as soon as she can.”
Her holo appeared. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t look at him. I stayed focused on the rope, tying a well-practiced one-handed knot to keep it attached to the rafter.
“She’ll be here in an hour,” he said.
I checked my knot, gave the rope a rough tug. I turned around to find him waiting for his next order. His face was as blank as rock, his eyes made of glass.
This was supposed to be a righteous kill. He stole my arm. He created the genie. He experimented on people. Disfigured them beyond belief.
I should be riding a wave of virtuous vengeance. I should be soaring on wings of ruthless victory.
But all I felt was disgust. Disgust for a drug that could erase a person’s humanity. A drug that could enslave both the body and the mind.
I went to the door without looking at him again, gave my final order on the way out. “Hang yourself.”
I passed the staircase, didn’t worry about my creaking footsteps. Some of the patients walked around from time to time. I’d seen it myself.
The sound of rope snapping taut made me pause, the to-and-fro creak of a rafter. It was done.
I went into the circus of horrors that posed as a patient ward. I needed to see them one more time.
I moved from bed to bed telling them not to worry. Their nurse would be here soon. And in the morning aid workers would come to take them away from here. Maggie had anonymously made arrangements.
Bed to bed, I consoled them.
Help is coming.
I pulled up the sheet for one. Straightened the pillow for another.