Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World (17 page)

"You don't. And I can't prove it either. But I bet you you know what's goin' on, that your boys are being eradicated and that you're on the list. I'm not trying to kill you. If I was, you'd have never seen me comin'."

"Maybe you need something first," Mingus said. "I don't know."

"I went to the police," Folio said.

"What?"

"Don't worry. It was a guy I know pretty good. He wouldn't turn on me, I've done him too many favors."

"What did he say?"

"He can't do a thing."

The escalator had completed its steep descent and was now almost parallel to the water. A large photo-animae sign covered the side of the monorail bridge before them. The sign displayed a cinematic picture of boy and girl children marching with automatic rifles and cinder guns, firing on a unit of adult troops. After a moment soldiers on both sides began to die. The wounds were very realistic. One child was hit in the chest with a cinder blast that charred her body, leaving only her pretty face intact. As the head fell from her shoulders the image faded into giant words composed of flaming letters: TWELVE IS

TOO YOUNG FOR WAR.

On the pier they strolled under the transport bridge.

"Maybe I should disappear," Mingus said.

"Give up everything?"

"Red Raven or nobody else could pay me if I'm dead."

"Common Ground won't hide a Backgrounder, M Black," Folio said. "That's the first place they'd look for you."

"The cops won't help. Common Ground won't hide me. What are you sayin'?"

"Let's work together. I got resources and you know all about the guys gettin' killed. Maybe we can figure it out."

"Why didn't you do that with Chas?"

" 'Cause Chas is an Itsie. I hate fascists."

"Then why work for 'em?"

"The job don't have politics, Mingman. The job is straight."

"I might not be in the IS, but all my friends are. Doesn't that make me just as bad?"

"You're just usin' them."

"What makes you think that?"

"Mingus Black," Folio recited from an amalgam of reports gathered by his eye, "born twenty-seven years ago, given up for White Noise at the age of six months. Arrested for larceny at the age of seven. Transferred to a maximum juvenile authority at the age of eleven. Suspected of drug distribution from the age of twelve but never convicted because you became a fink for the Social Police. At sixteen you saw your chance. The Underground Party kidnapped the daughter of Mina Athwattarlon, chief counsel of Red Raven NorthAm. You turned in the cell and got a university berth and a good job once you graduated."

"Nobody knows that. Nobody but Mina and me."

"And me," Folio said. "Brother, I got senses so sharp I can see the rhinoviruses grazin' on your face. I can hear your heart rate rise and blood slither in your veins. But I don't care. The UP means nothing to me. Neither do Itsies or cops. I took on a job and I intend to do it. And if you help me you might be saving your own life."

"What do you need?"

"I need to know what you guys were sayin' in the last few meetin's you had--exactly."

"We weren't talkin' 'bout nuthin'." The Backgrounder came out in the land dealer's speech again. "We--" Folio put up a hand to cut Mingus short. He began scanning the upper area of the huge Glassone ramp. He moved his hand from Mingus's face and pointed to a shadowy area just under the lip of the trestle's underbelly. There, both men could make out a black form about the size and shape of an old American football.

"Noser," Mingus hissed.

"It hasn't uploaded yet."

"How the fuck you know that?"

Folio ignored the question, concentrating instead on the image of a control panel conjured up by his eye. The panel exhibited a grid of Manhattan that had little yellow lights for every city spy device, commonly called nosers. Folio had already located their CSD and was busy downloading a series of commands. The football began shaking, its fail-safe survival mode enacted, but then suddenly it plummeted forty feet, striking the ground with a brief flash of fire. It landed near a group of Infochurch priests in their iridescent blue cloaks and transparent skullplates.

"Let's go," Folio said.

__________

"I told you already," Mingus Black said. He was sitting on a couch the shape of a large, half-erect phallus. "Them guys didn't have nuthin' to say or think about that could scare anybody. They aren't even real Itsies."

"What does that mean?"

"They just belong to the fan club. Buttons and banners, you know. They pay dues and go out to drink synth on Sixdays, that's it. They don't know nuthin' an' they don't do nuthin'. Talk about all the great things they do in business but you know they're just shopkeepers, dustin' off the big boys' merchandise."

"If they're so outside, then why you hang with 'em?" Folio asked, nestling back in a cushioned chair that was fashioned as an open vagina.

"Families got money," Mingus said. "At least some of 'em. Chas and Mylo, Laddie and Azuma, too. Big bucks, baby."

"And you like being around all that?"

"I trade in real estate. I'm good at it, too. Most'a these rich families got some liberal shit goin' on about Common Ground. They wanna say they helped somebody crawl up outta there. I'm perfect for 'em

'cause I already did it. And I know how to turn a buck, too."

"But they didn't have some other kinda thing goin' on?" Folio asked. The chair he sat in had all the colors and textures of a Caucasian woman's genitalia, from thick brown fur to pink petal lips to a bright red interior. The fabric was covered by a clear material that had a liquid filling. The heat from Folio's body caused the liquid to flow.

"Who?"

"The kids, their parents. Shit, I don't know. I mean this New York is one crazy motherfucker, but people don't start knockin' off rich kids just 'cause they're stupid."

"No business I knew about." Mingus lay back into the foreskin comforter. "Hey, you think they might find us here?"

"Who?"

"Don't fuck with me, man. I don't know who."

"Sex pits are always the last on the list for searches. People payin' cash and usin' fake IDs. Almost every ID in this here sex hotel is fake. They have to send out manpower or fourth-generation nosers to check out a place like this. And even if they did come"--Folio tapped the orbital ridge over his blue eye--"I'd know they were here before they did."

"That's some eye there," Mingus said. "How a street-level motherfucker like you hold on to that? I mean, I heard'a pirates stealin' just a plain blue eye not even worth a thousand creds."

"I'm wiry," Folio said and then he laughed. "Was your boys gonna do anything soon? Anything different?"

"Naw. Them dudes just wanted to feel important. Last thing they managed to do was gettin' us to talk every day at sixteen. I had some trouble with that 'cause I'm movin' around all the time."

"So? You could cell it."

"Naw. They were doin' it in-house to act like they were in business. But the internal lines have a security system that won't allow external devices access. You know some people use those lines to transmit very sensitive information."

"How much would that have cost the companies?"

"Hardly nuthin'. I mean, people do it all the time. Free calls just a perk in big business today."

"So's embezzlement."

"I told ya, man, they got frog skins for guts. Any real trouble and them boys ran."

"Runnin' won't help them now."

Mingus scratched his eyebrow and looked away. When he moved around on the chair it arched upward in an approximation of a growing erection.

A searing pain sliced its way through Folio's head.

"What's wrong?" Mingus jumped up and grabbed Folio before he fell out of his chair. Azuma Sherman was running down the lower ramp of the subterranean section of the Whitney Museum. Folio recognized the mutated inner organs created by the bio-artist Atta A that were on display. The point of view of the image came from the pursuer. Azuma's long brown hair was flowing backwards; every few steps he would look back to see Folio's mind's eye catching up to him. Folio couldn't think how this transmission had hijacked his eye.

Another pain exploded in Folio's head.

"You okay?" Mingus shouted.

Azuma's leg was nicked by a shard from a wide blast of a cinder gun. From his ankle to just above his knee burnt to a crisp in a second. The handsome youth fell to the floor. Through the eye-cam of the killer Folio saw Azuma's amputated foot. The assassin kicked it away. Azuma looked up into the killer's eyes. He was about to shout something and then his face burnt off.

The contact broke. Folio found himself sprawled on the floor, Mingus Black holding him by his shoulders. They were both shivering.

"Sherman's dead," Folio said.

__________

"Mind if I share your bed, com?" Mingus asked Folio.

To shake off the nerves they had watched a very good matchup of Fera Jones against Mithitar the Mad Mongolian on the vid. The Mongolian had an interesting circular style of boxing, but he couldn't deal with the amazon's power. After six rounds Mithitar's buzz-saw-like attacks had slowed enough for her logjam jab to take control; he was asprawl in the middle of the ring by the end of round eight.

"What?" Folio asked.

"Just need to lie next to somebody. That's all. It ain't sex."

Folio sighed. He knew the trauma of ex-Backgrounders, especially those who'd spent their entire lives underground. They feared the loneliness of a full-size room.

"Just keep your pants on," he said.

__________

Folio awoke on a small blue island adrift in a scarlet sea. The sky was pink and yellow. Violet pelicans soared on the wind above him. Folio was completely aware that this place was a dream provided by his eye. It was an attempt to ease his tension, but as usual, in these hard times the mechanical eye was at war with Johnson's troubled unconscious. He supposed that the eye had been trying to create a Caribbean island but was disrupted in color and size by Folio's own fears.

There was a disruption in the water. Somebody was swimming toward his islet. When she climbed out of the water he could see that it was the young woman from the Crystal Bar. Immediately he felt a powerful erection.

"Is that for me?" Paradise asked.

"Every inch."

"Keep it hard like that for me, baby," she said. "But we can't do anything yet."

"Why not?"

"You have to keep out of trouble."

"What's that got to do with you?"

"That's just the problem."

"What?"

"I'm not important but you still want me. Your dick wants me. He can't help himself but you have to hold it back."

"Who are you?"

"Paradise."

"Are you from the eye?"

"I met you today, at the bar."

"But where are you from in my mind?"

"I'm your stupid side. You're my fool."

Folio felt his erection straining and suddenly he wondered if it wasn't Mingus trying to be more than friendly.

The detective pulled himself awake and turned angrily toward his bedmate. Mingus's eyes were wide open, his throat cut from jawbone to jawbone.

With a heavy sigh Folio rose out of bed and switched on the vidphone.

4

"What was your relationship to the deceased?" the man's voice asked.

"We were both natural-born human beings as far as I know," Folio replied. He was gazing into a mirror, in a room composed entirely of mirrors--floors, ceilings, and walls--everything was a bright reflective surface.

"This is murder we're talking about here, Johnson. It's no joke."

"I'm not joking," Folio said to a thousand thousand images of himself. "I met Mingus because I was told by a man named Spellman that a group of friends were dying mysteriously. Spellman wanted me to find out if it was some kinda conspiracy, and if so, who was the perpetrator. I was talking to Black about that."

"In bed?"

"No. We were sleepin' in bed. At least I was. He was dyin'--I guess."

"Who else died?" a woman's voice asked.

Folio reeled off the long list, including the sixer he had killed.

"Seven murders and you didn't report it?"

"I did," Folio replied. "I told Aldo Thorpe."

There was a moment of silence in the infinite field of himself. Johnson's baby finger could not transmit or receive from the heart of Police Central but the memory chips still held more information than the UN's Library of Earth. Instead of giving in to the dizziness of the tilting images he began a restructuring routine of the images of Azuma Sherman as he died.

The young man was wide-eyed with fear and pain after his leg was disintegrated under him. He stared right into the lens that transmitted the execution to Folio's eye. He cropped out the left eye and expanded the block of that image. He increased the image until there was a face, reflected in the pupil, a face unknown to Folio or his electronic memories. It was the wide white visage of a man who hadn't shaved in two days or more. It was an evil face, a gleeful image. He was smiling. Folio imagined the rank breath. The man wore an ocular camera over his left eye; nothing special. Nothing that would explain where he had gotten the protocols to transmit directly to Folio's eye.

"Who were the other members of this organization?" the male interrogator asked. "The ones that survive."

"Leonard Li, Brenton Thyme, and Fonti Timmerman. And my client, of course, Charles Spellman." Another spate of silence ensued.

Folio had another idea. He searched his synthetic memory, but the data was unavailable without his transmitter.

"All dead," the woman said.

"Accidental or murder?"

"They were assassinated."

"That's some hard luck."

"You don't seem surprised," the masculine voice said. "Are you?"

"It was your job to protect them, you say."

"I said no such a thing. I said that Spellman hired me to find out why they were being killed and by whom."

"Where is Charles Spellman?"

"OC. I don't know where."

"You know nothing?"

"I didn't say that. I said that Spellman's off-continent. I don't know who's been killin' his friends but I do know that it's too much of a coincidence for it to be anything but a conspiracy."