Dark Tales Page 4

  She stared at him a moment, eyes still wild, then anger crossed her face like a cloud. It brought her back to herself, just like he intended.

  "You bastard," she snarled but he stopped her with a raised hand.

  "You're right, I'm not going to argue the point," he said. "But unless you've got an idea, running like that will only attract attention."

  The way her head drooped told him she was listening. Good, maybe their asses weren't cooked. Yet.

  So now what would he do with her? Leave her behind? Even as he thought the words, he knew he couldn't do it. Matrix had always been a fair contact. Not a friend; Pete didn't have friends, couldn't afford them. But if he had, he would have liked one like Matrix, maybe even one like this intense woman standing before him.

  Pete sniffed, rubbing his nose. His sinuses were clogging up and he could feel the beginnings of a headache pound out a rhythm in his temples. Just great. But it did give him a thought.

  "I have an idea," he said. "Some place the cops would never think of looking."

  ****

  Granny hadn't stopped wiping his hands with a handkerchief since they walked in, Pete noticed. He'd ushered them immediately into a small room off the foyer entrance as if their mere presence would pollute the apartment's atmosphere. The bay window in the room faced east, showing the glow from the Pickering Nuclear Plant. Granny stood there now, his tall, skeletal form awash in fabric. Beady eyes stared out from behind thick glasses. He glanced at Vriana and wiped his hands.

  "What do you want, Peter?" His voice held all the tension of a man being force to do something distasteful.

  Too damned bad, Pete thought.

  "I need information and passage," he said and then sneezed.

  Granny frowned, thin lips etching an ugly line across his face. "I don't know..."

  Pete pulled out a rumpled rag and rubbed his nose. "I do," he said softly. "I know lots."

  Granny stiffened, posture ramrod straight and so tight Pete thought Granny's spine would snap.

  "You know I wouldn't be here if it wasn't important," Pete said.

  The man sagged, nodding, looking even more glum. He wiped his hands one last time and stuffed the handkerchief in the pocket of his flowing jacket.

  "Talk," he grunted at Pete.

  Pete talked. Wilson, the stash, Vriana, Spike, the cops. Vriana scowled when he spoke about the homeless's virus theory but Pete knew he had to tell everything. Granny would sense a left out piece.

  By the end, Granny's thin face was crinkled with amusement. "Transplants, eh?" he challenged Vriana. She stared back at him, fists clenched.

  "I can see how you thought that." He nodded absently to himself. He turned toward the window, eyes defocusing. Pete tensed in anticipation.Info dump.

  "Virus adaptus they called it in the lab, a joke name for a not so humorous disease. It does clean out the organs, but more than that.Adaption, regulation, genetic manipulation from the inside out. The testing confirms the effectiveness of the virus, green for uninfected, red for mutation, yellow for appropriate adaption."

  "If not transplantation," Vriana said, "then what?"

  She'd spoken before Pete could stop her. He glared at her, silencing her next question. Her answering glare told him she didn't know what was going on but he couldn't explain now. Pete held up his hand to entreat her not to say another word.

  But Granny didn't seem to have heard.

  "Harvesting is completed at an early stage and the yellows are brought in for further conditioning," he continued. "Reds are destroyed because of possible transmittal of the mutant strain. Greens are left alone and may never be infected. In this way, they can ensure a specific type for transportation off-world."

  Pete bit his tongue to stop from speaking. His headache pounded across his skull like a drumbeat. This was always the hardest part, waiting for the info dump to finish. Usually he could be patient, but this cold was a constant reminder that his life as he'd known it was over and he was desperate for answers. But interrupting could be fatal to the reader and there were no better readers than Granny.

  "Labour camps," the thin man announced. "Off-world camps unsuitable for non-adapted humans. That's why the genetic reconfiguration as well as neural shut down of all upper mind functions. The virus begins the process internally but external physical mutation and erasure of neural processes must be done in the lab. Everything not related to obedience and work is erased."

  Vriana's face, pale to begin with, blanched white beneath her dark hair. Pete imagined he had the same haunted look. What was he now, a red, a yellow? What was she?

  He waited another moment but Granny was finished. Slowly the man came back, blinking, hands fluttering amongst the folds of fabric. After a deep breath, he shook his head. "Nothing else."

  "What the hell was that?" Vriana exploded.

  "He's a reader," Pete said. He rubbed absently at his temples.

  "But all readers are regulated, the government..." she paused as the skin on Granny's face tightened.

  "We don't discuss that," Pete said mildly. She gulped and nodded.

  "Are you sure that's a true reading, Granny?" Pete turned back to the thin man.

  "As true as it can be."

  That told Pete little. It could be true but it could also be a block. Many times he'd used readers in his work, but he's always been careful to verify everything. Too many corporations and governments employed senders to muddy the information the readers would dig up. A kernel of truth could be hidden in what Granny had said but there was no way to be sure.

  Unless Pete metamorphasized into some inhuman monster.

  A sneeze itched at his nose. He rubbed it. Already the lymph nodes on his neck were swelling. The cold, the virus, sure had a hold on him now. Monster. He suppressed a shudder.

  Well, if he was going to do that, the least he could do was keep his mind from being sucked away by government scientists. He imaginedVriana felt the same.

  "Okay Granny," he said. "That was the information. Now the passage."

  "Hold on, Peter," Granny protested. "That took a lot. It's more than I give my paying clients."

  "Consider it your payment," Pete said.

  Granny's hands twitched as if he wanted to pull out the handkerchief and wipe them. When he settled for rubbing them on his pants legs, Pete knew he'd won.

  ****

  Against the light from the wall screen, Vriana's face took on a greenish glow. Pete wondered briefly if the virus caused changes in skin colour, then shook his head. There was no sense in being morbid.

  Granny hunched over the keyboard, staring at the display. His skin colour looked positively putrid, but that was an improvement as far as Pete was concerned.

  "Not that way," Granny murmured. He plucked at the keys. "Lord, Peter, what the hell did you do? You've got warrants all over the place."

  Vriana's face tightened and Pete felt himself frown. Dammit, they had to get out fast before the net closed in. Maybe, just maybe, pissing Spike off had not been one of his smarter moves. He'd never thought her revenge would reach so wide.

  "Okay, I think I have something," Granny said. "It's going to cost."

  "Whatever," Pete said. He dug out a forged bank chip and handed it to Granny.

  "It's a father-daughter, heading for Chile. I can reroute the tickets and give them your id."

  "Daughter?" Vriana asked.

  "Not gonna get anything better," Granny said.

  "Good enough," Pete said. He had friends down in South Am. He and Vriana could disappear. He allowed a smile to touch his face.

  "That'll do."

  ****

  Vriana tugged at the collar of her style-of-life suit.

  "Stop that," Pete hissed. His voice came out like a whine through the mask.

  "This is so damned uncomfortable," she said.

  "Not as uncomfortable as being shot in the head."

  She released the collar. "Pete, could he be right about the virus?"

  Even thr
ough the distortion of the filter, he could hear the fear in her voice. It touched a similar chord in him but he couldn't afford to let it resonate. He couldn't be distracted.

  It was a job, that's what this was. He took a deep breath and his professional mask helped push the fear away. This was his last smuggle, the most important. No way would he blow it.

  It was the only way to think about it, the only way to keep the memory of Wilson's death dance at bay. The only way to keep from wondering about Matrix. Had he been a red when they found him in Rosedale? Or a green? Pete's head ached dully and a cough tickled his throat. The damned virus, damned cold. Anger rose up to blot out the fear but neither emotion was useful. Being emotional meant he was concentrating on something other than the job, and this job, more than any other, was too important.

  "It doesn't matter," he said. "We'll worry about the virus when we get out of here."

  She stared at him for a moment and then nodded.

  Just then the boarding call for their shuttle came over the loud speaker, almost unintelligible. Pete took Vriana's elbow and began steering her through the crowd, toward the gate.

  He didn't know what made him look back, maybe nothing, maybe instinct, the same way he knew which officials to bribe and which not. He caught a flash of grey silver out of the corner of his eye. Amidst all these colours it was probably nothing, or it was cops.

  In a split second, he knew and oddly, the knowledge took the fear away, leaving a sense of calm. He was a smuggler and the cargo was all important. The cargo, the woman whose arm he clasped. Warm and wild, strong enough not to need him. Not after this. Somehow that made it easier.

  "Hold on to your ticket," Pete whispered to her. "Don't say anything. Keep looking straight. Go through the gate and get your seat. Remember to dump the id when you land. Vriana, whatever you do, whatever you hear, don't look back."

  And he released her arm.

  She kept walking, the hard learned homeless discipline gave her that. Even when Pete broke and ran, trailing armoured-clad cops like bouncing marbles, she kept walking. As the hulking gorillas closed in, stunner sticks raised, he saw she'd taken his instructions to heart.

  She did not look back.

  Damn good smuggle.

  The world turned black.

  ****

  They must be approaching planetfall, the creature that had once been called Pete thought fuzzily. The hibernation units had started to hum an hour ago, slowly wakening their cargo. In his, Pete stretched, arm pairs unclenching. The unit was too small for him to stretch his many legs, so he kept them retracted. He realized he'd awakened first. He was always first to do something. When he'd begun to realize this, he pretended he didn't know or couldn't do it until later. That way his conditioning was less, that way they'd missed a few things.

  A few things like he remembered what he'd been before, a smuggler, a human. The others didn't remember but after being in contact with him for a while, he noticed a slight spark of awareness alight in their many eyes. And this started him wondering.

  He wondered exactly what the nature of this virus was, exactly how much mutation arose in the virus before it registered as a red. Was there a margin for error?

  And slowly, since most thoughts came very slowly right now, he realized that maybe his greatest smuggle wasn't Vriana (whoever that was), but himself. Himself and this virus. This mutated virus.

  And not a customs inspector for a billion miles.

  Pete snuggled in his hibernation tank and waited for his fellows to awaken.

  THE PERFECT HOMBURG

  With the onset of late middle age Rob Hunter is the sole support of a 1993 Geo Metro and the despair of his young wife. He does dishes, mows the lawn and keeps their coastal Maine cottage spotless by moving as little as possible. In a former life he was a newspaper copy boy, railroad telegraph operator, recording engineer and film editor. He spent the 60s and 70s as a Top-40 disc jockey. Rob's wife, Bonnie, is the secretary at a nearby rural elementary school. She is a gifted quilter who beguiled her new husband with the kaleidoscope of patchwork geometry. The nearest town to the Hunters that anybody is likely to have ever heard of-because of Stephen King's The Langoliers-is Bangor, Maine where there are real parking meters and a traffic light. They drive down every six months or so to watch the light change and see the trains come in.

  * * *

  Be careful what you wish for. And when you make that wish, speak up and enunciate clearly. Want rapture? You could go home with a rupture. Think about it.

  So, I sold my soul to the Devil for a writing job. Not an unusual kind of wish for a writer. Except it worked. And it wasn't the Devil, it was Apollo, the god of poetry and envelope flap literature. Except it wasn't Apollo, but one of his representatives: Prosper Epilegomenes, a mouse demon. Anyway, I got the job.

  An easterly ocean gale was cannonading the shores of Willipaq, Maine. It slammed down the chimney and blew my wood stove from bright coals to a full flame. Woo-woo-woo, the chimney whistled like a kid blowing a tune across the lip of a giant soda bottle. Not to worry, I reassured myself. There was a blacktopped town road between me and the fury of the North Atlantic.

  Woo-woo-woo. "Mother Carey's chickens," said a familiar voice. "Watch the north wind rise." A diminutive green figure stood before my airtight, thrusting his rear end into the heat like a life-long Mainer.

  I grumped, rolled over, and plomped another pillow over my head. "It's an east wind. Nor'easter-" I came up short. It was the demon. "Oh. Prosper." If he was here, he had a problem. And if the mouse had a problem, I had a problem.

  "Oh, Prosper. That is shiningly unenthusiastic," said the demon. "Flat. A minimal infusion of joy would be nice: 'Oooh...Prosper!' Like that. Yep, I'm back. Hi there." The demon sniffled and wiggled his backside closer to the stove. "Jim, Jim, I am saddened. You greet me more with apprehension than with joy. Ahh, wood heat. Can't beat it." He wrung out a pair of tiny green mittens.

  "What?" I said. After all these years it was unlikely my personal representative from Sminthian Apollo had dropped in out of the storm to blow his nose and keep me company.

  "What what? Just servicing your account, my old and rare. It is truly a dark and stormy afternoon," said Prosper. "Do you bowl?"

  "That's why I'm the writer," I said. "And, no, I don't bowl."

  My name is Jim Everhardy, and the mouse demon had granted my wish: to be read by millions. I now write the advertising blurbs on the envelope flaps of credit card bills. Not the Great American Novel, but it beats writing inventory codes for Wal-Mart.

  I had done last night's supper dishes, done laundry and hung it out by the stove on our accordion-fold wood racks. I had run the dust mop over the floors and shook it out into the wind, then flopped for a nap on the window seat. I am a house husband-no shabby occupation here in Downeast Maine where opportunities for employment are few and far between. My wife has the real job.

  Prosper opened the glass fire door and stuck his head inside. Woo-woo-woo.

  A shower of sparks smoldered on the braided rug, Bonnie's pride and joy.

  "Oops. Sorry about that." He closed the door and ran around stamping out tiny fires. The smoldering continued. "Nice fire, but we have some escapers. Got water?" asked the demon.

  "In the kitchen," I replied. "There's a bucket under the sink."

  Prosper hustled off.

  The mouse demon returned with a bucket of water and doused the rug. I had not moved.

  I had learned to keep my expectations under control when dealing with the lesser deities. Minor deities reward at minor levels: cheap T-shirts, herds of cattle, the usual stuff. But when they punish, it's major. Believe me, I know. From Prosper's last visit I had gotten the literary equivalent of cheap T-shirts, but the money was good. We thus far had the driveway paved plus a brand new washing machine. I liked things the way they were.

  "Ah, but I'm here to change all that," said the demon. "You're too good a man to fritter away on envelopes. I've got something really bi
g lined up. You are going to be a contender."

  Prosper was taller than a mouse, but not by much. Five years back, during the first visitation, he had strutted on my desktop, pointy gray ears topped off with an upside-down colander which he called the Helmet of Cleptath, a magic hat. According to the mouse, he had wrestled the colander away from Apollo's sister in a fight over cheese, the cheese of the gods. From the helmet dangled strings of those triangular flags you see at gas station giveaways and pizza joints. Then as now, Prosper wore green tights. Flags fluttered as he spoke.

  "And here we are, you and I, nattering away like old school chums at a class reunion."

  I didn't recall nattering. Typically, he was doing all the talking. He had popped back into my life like those unwanted barrages of advertising that regularly clogged my e-mail.

  "Spam! Jim Everhardy, really! That makes me sound like one of those pesky spammers who plague your dinner hour."

  Prosper was reading my mind. He was here to make me a proposition I couldn't refuse.

  "Of course I am, Jim old turnip, reading your mind, that is. And to characterize me as junk mail cuts me to the quick. Account Executive. I like that much better. Consider me your account executive. 'A title on the door rates a carpet on the floor.' That's a gem of literature from one of your advertising greats." He did a quick twostep on a residual smoldering coal and ground his heel into my wife's prized rug. It was ruined.

  "I only wanted to be an author," I whined.

  "You wished for success in writing. That is different." He flicked lint from a lapel and studied his manicure.

  "Consider the pickle," said Prosper," in its progression from a humble garden vegetable to picklehood. Spiced, diced, plucked, peeled, steeped and cooked in a jar, yes? For now, you are a cucumber-not much going on, just waiting."

  I considered the cucumber.

  "Let's cut to the cheese," said Prosper. "I am decidedly subfusc and awash in a sea of despair. Clothes may make the man but hats make the demon. Artemis wants the hat back. The Helmet of Cleptath."