Strange Trades (37 page)

For he had found in the days after the massacre underground that, having attained a safe refuge, he could not summon the will to leave his room.

Oh, of course the phobia was quite understandable and certainly only of temporary duration. After all, what survivor of such carnage wouldn’t jump at every sharp report or look with suspicion at formerly trusted faces? He just needed a little time to regather his wits and confidence, his sense of the rest of humanity as easily manipulated cattle.

But: dangerous cattle, who could gore.

That had been his mistake. Not to realize that even witless subhumans could inflict pain.

But not as intently and ingeniously as he, Twigg himself, could.

Therein lay his superiority.

Twigg had not delayed in pursuing what would strengthen him.

Immediately upon receiving the requisite medical attention, he had begun to sweep up the crumbling empires of his erstwhile PGL peers. Kalpagni, Ltd.; Stonecipher Industries; Burnes Sloan Hardin Hades; Crumbee Products; Harrow & Wither; Somnifax et Cie; Asura Refineries; Preta-Loka Entertainments; Culex, SA; Brasher Investments, Pic.; Rudrakonig, GmbH; LD-100 Pharmaceuticals. All these firms, unlike more democratic ones, had been particularly susceptible to disintegration upon the lopping off of their heads. Now Isoterm, the insect god of homogeneity, was engulfing them.

With every glorious business absorption, Twigg felt power flow into him.

And yet, something was missing. These conquests were all ethereal affairs of bytes and EFTs, votes and bribes. Too impersonal.

What Twigg needed to fully reinvigorate himself was much more elemental.

Blood. The blood of the cow that had set off the stampede that had nearly trampled him.

And this was the day, now the hour.

A knock came at Twigg’s door. He took his feet off his new hassock, pausing to pat the frozen kneeler appreciatively before he stood.

Alas, poor Paternoster. Decades of loyal service undone by one incautious aged stumble while bearing the breakfast tray. Now enjoying his retirement.

Without pension.

“Enter,” called out Twigg imperiously.

The unconscious woman carried into the room by the two thugs was not in immaculate condition. Contusions mottled her naked form, and her features were smeared. An arm dangled crookedly. Experts had inflicted a certain high degree of damage on her prior to her delivery here. Twigg had not fully recovered his strength yet, was used to dealing with drugged victims, and had heard that this one was a fiery bitch. Best to have her vitality taken down a notch or three beforehand.

Twigg was not greedy. There was plenty of play left in her still.

The men dumped her on the rug and left. Twigg picked up his favorite knife, a slim Medici stiletto, and kneeled beside her. With expert prickings and a final slap across the face he managed to raise her eyelids.

“Ah, my dear, so pleased to meet you. I’m Marmaduke Twigg, your new best friend. Here is my calling card.”

Twigg sliced shallowly across the bridge of her nose. Blood flowed, crimson on brown like lava down a hillside.

“We’re going to get along famously, I can tell. What do you think?”

The woman was murmuring something. Twigg had to lean over to listen, since her bruised lips and lacerated tongue had trouble forming words.

“Dog. Your… name. A dog.”

Twigg straightened. “Oh, dear. How
gauche
. I’m afraid I must register my dismay.”

Twigg began to carve.

Delightful hours passed. Despite all his experience at prolonging agony, matters seemed to be reaching a terminal point. So Twigg paused for refreshment.

A deep swallow of Zingo.

Lowering the bottle from his avaricious mouth, Twigg was inspired. He bent over the shattered woman lying curled up on her side.

Her lips were twitching. Twigg thought to hear her mutter, “Lou—Louie…”

“He’s not here, dear. Would you care for a drink? I know you’re famously not partial to this beverage though. Too much like vinegar, I take it? Oh, well, if you insist—”

Twigg emptied the cobalt liquid onto her grimly painted face.

It seemed to revive her a bit. With infinite exertion she rolled fully onto her stomach and began to crawl. Twigg watched indulgently.

She reached the table supported by the two male statues. Using their organic irregularities as handholds, she dragged herself upward until she managed to catch the gilt edge of the glass top.

The active workstation across the room chimed, signalling its need for a share-selling authorization. Twigg moved quickly to attend it, so that he could resume his pleasures.

When he looked again, the woman held the control for the tiger.

“No!”

Too late.

Death roared.

The neuronal dam crumbled.

Twigg dashed insanely for the door.

Impossibly, the woman stood like an iron wall between him and safety.

Something supernaturally strong dwelled now within her.

She clasped Twigg in an iron embrace.

“Come with me,” rasped a voice not hers.

And then the tiger was upon them both, claws, jaws and tropical volcano breath.

But tigers are not cruel.

16.

Long May You Run

A key turned in the repaired door to Shenda Moore’s apartment. The door swung inward.

First entered Titi Yaya.

Behind her, Thurman, cane thumping.

After him hopped a three-legged Bullfinch with bandaged front stump.

Titi Yaya stopped.

“I know this won’t be pleasant. But we need to go through all her papers if we are to salvage what she built. You know that’s what she wanted.”

“Yes,” said Thurman. The word came out of him easier and more evenly than he would have expected, given the surroundings. Apparently, he was, for the moment anyway, all cried out.

He had been dreading returning here, had delayed the necessity till a week after the funeral. (Shenda’s savaged corpse had come home to them only through Titi Yaya’s string-pulling on both supernatural and earthly powers.) But now, with the future of Karuna, Inc., at stake, they could delay no longer.

“You take the desk here,” ordered Titi Yaya. “I will look in the bedroom.”

Thurman was not inclined to argue. The bedroom was not a place he cared to revisit. “Feeb—” He sat at the desk chair; Bullfinch dropped down beside him. He began to leaf through papers. Shenda’s handwriting was everywhere.

After a time Titi Yaya emerged, bearing various folders, Shenda’s big satchel—and a small glass vial.

“What is this doing unopened?” she demanded. “How do you expect to accomplish anything if you stay sick? Here, drink this now!”

Thurman did as he was told. The potion was not exactly pleasant, but not vile either. Musty, loamy, musky, powerful.

“I have to go now, child. Meet me at my apartment when you are finished.”

Alone, Thurman sorted through a few more sheets and ledgers. Then an irresistible drowsiness started to creep along his limbs from his feet on up, until it crested over his head and swallowed him entirely. His hand dropped down to graze Bullfinch’s back.

He was on a flat city rooftop. Bullfinch was with him, smiling and rollicking, lolloping about on his remaining three legs.

“Throw the ball! Throw the ball! Quick!” said the bulldog.

Thurman realized he held a tennis ball.

“I don’t know how! Get Shenda to do it. Where is she?”

“She’s everywhere! Just look! She’s always here! Now let’s play!”

Thurman looked around. The sun, the sky, the commonplace urban fixtures. Was that Shenda? It seemed a poor substitute, a deceitful trade for the living woman.

“Don’t you see her? Wake up so we can play! Wake up!”

Bullfinch’s last words seemed to echo and reverberate. The rooftop scene wavered and dissolved.

Thurman opened his eyes and saw Shenda.

It was only a picture of her as a child, an old snapshot lying atop the papers on the desk.

But it hadn’t been there when he fell asleep.

Thurman stood to go. He reached for his cane, then hesitated. Somehow his legs seemed stronger.

Cane left behind, he moved with increasing confidence toward the door.

Behind him gamely trotted Bullfinch.

Thurman guessed that now he had a dog.

* * *

[Compassion or karuna] does not seem to die. Shantideva says that every uncompassionate action is like planting a dead tree, but anything related to compassion is like planting a living tree. It grows and grows endlessly and never dies. Even if it seems to die, it always leaves behind a seed from which another grows. Compassion is organic; it continues on and on and on.

—Chogyam Trungpa,

Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

In a collection of stories devoted to various modes of employment— the classic “working for a living” theme, if you will—the author’s attitude toward the workplace and the marketplace are bound to emerge fairly strongly—if he’s done his job right. Contradictory and shifting, my take on earning one’s bread by the sweat of one’s brow has undergone a number of metamorphoses. But at the core has remained a distaste for rigid, authoritarian environments, big corporate cube farms and their ilk. Some twenty years ago, when I was still a COBOL programmer for an insurance company, one of the goads to leaping blindly into the freelance writer’s life was a newly instituted office clothing policy that required us formerly unrestrained coders to don a tie. I gave my notice shortly thereafter.

As Thoreau famously advised, “Beware of all enterprises requiring new clothes.”

Suits

I’ll never forget the first time I saw a suit. The sight took five years off my life.

I was hunched over my CAD-CAM station, trying to finish up the specs for a new waste-burning facility (thankfully to be situated in a state far away from mine). The smokestack scrubbers were giving me a hell of a time. I couldn’t come up with a configuration that would match both the money allotted and the cleansing capabilities needed. The simulations kept showing we’d either have to spend twice as much as we had in the budget, or end up spewing dioxin over half the Midwest. I could guess which option we’d choose. With EPA pollution credits available comparatively cheap, it would definitely be the latter.

As I agonized over my mouse and keyboard, trying to squeeze out the last possible ounce of utility from the scrubber models available in my price range, I could sense someone hovering behind me, looking over my shoulder. At first, I figured it was just Carl, checking on my progress, and I didn’t bother turning around. But as minutes passed and no caustic comment was forthcoming, I gradually realized that it couldn’t be Carl. Anne would’ve laid a hand on my back. Jerry would’ve been slurping his omnipresent coffee. Marcie would’ve been popping gum. But behind me was only an eerie silence, and the subliminal sense of someone—or something— watching me.

I swivelled my chair around.

And that’s when I saw the SUIT.

The empty cuffs of its perfect wool trousers floated several inches off the carpet. The legs of its pants were bulked out as if they contained living flesh, but I knew instantly and unerringly that they were empty. The suit jacket—one button buttoned, lapels neatly creased—showed the vacant cuffs of a white shirt out its sleeves, and a swath of the same shirt across the nonexistent but shapely chest. The hollow neck of the shirt was ringed with a red tie that hung down neatly.

It was like coming face to face with the Headless Horseman. Only this apparition lacked limbs or torso of any kind.

“Jesus Christ!’’ I yelled, and scrambled backward in my wheeled chair.

Laughter broke out from the doorway, and I looked.

Carl led a pack consisting of the whole office staff. They had been waiting patiently for my reaction to this bizarre thing, and I had been gratifyingly dramatic.

Now Carl stepped into my office. “What’s the matter, Mark? That’s no way to greet your new coworker.”

I got up and hastily placed the desk between me and the floating clothing. Even with the first shock fading, I found the thing too uncanny. It simply gave me the creeps.

Now that the show I had put on was over, the others were dispersing back to their desks. Soon, I was left alone with Carl and the strange mechanism.

“What the hell is it?” I asked.

“It’s a SUIT. Sensor Unit for Interior Telemonitoring. Not only does it keep track of the building’s microclimate—dust levels, heat, drafts, things like that—but it also functions as mobile security.”

I started to relax just a little, my engineer’s fascination with clever gadgetry taking over.