The Last Horizon (2 page)

  “Oh come on now, Nikki, would ol’ Kurl steer ya wrong?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh stop, I’m starting to get giddy with all the flattery.”

  “Want to get down to business, Kurlie?”

  “All right, just cool your jets for a minute.” Kurlie grinned as he laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. “Ya know where Medusa’s set?”

  “Yeah, it’s a star neighboring Polaris isn’t it?”

  “Lemme get the chart out.” Kurlie replied patiently as he pulled out a star map and unfolded it onto the table. “The third planet around Medusa is Nexus,” Kurlie said dryly as he put his index finger on the satellite, “it’s settled by miners and deep space colonists. There are several colonies concentrated around the base of a mountain range called Sertina’s Pass.”

“I can also see that it’s a pretty good distance from here.” I squinted as I traced the distance from Earth to Nexus on the chart with my index finger.

“Sure is. The fastest growing city that’s significant to all the Sertina colonies is Fluture. Your destination. Can that Zephyr of yours hold a thirty-five thousand pound cargo?”

“Depends on what it is.”

“Wadda you care, Nikki? The trip’s illegal anyway. Since the conflict with the Serenian Empire has escalated again, there are no solo flights allowed outside the solar system.”

“I don’t haul weapons or drugs, you know that.”

“Now would I be mixed up in weapons or drugs?”

“Up to your ass.”

“Heh-heh-heh!” Kurlie shook his head, “There’s that sense of humor again.” He grinned as he took a sip of his drink. “No, nothing like that, Nikki.”

“No contraband, Kurlie.”

“Contraband.” Kurlie chortled. “What’s contraband? Everything’s contraband to somebody some where. Besides, this is just stuff for the ladies.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like I said, Nexus is just getting settled and it’s a wild, wild place. Lots of drinking and gambling. A bunch of mining colonies on the frontier and the settlers have their wives and girlfriends with ‘em. The cargo I need ya to take is stuff for the ladies--fancy soaps, powders, and lipstick. You know, things you ladies just have to have.”

“That’s contraband.”

“Sure, sure, but it’s nice harmless contraband, Nikki, you can go check it out for yourself on the docks.”

“So what’s the split?”

“Fifty-fifty, girlie, for four mil.”

“I...what? Two large? ”

“Ya heard me. Fifty-fifty. And four large
is
your cut.”

“Oh boy, what’s the catch? Nobody pays that kind of money to move cosmetics across space.”

“No catch, the split is right down the middle. Four million. I just need you to make the drop ASAP. That, and I wanna send an envoy along for the ride to make sure the goods get in the right hands on time.”

   “An envoy?”

   “Yeah, an escort for the product if you will. You get him to Nexus and back and that’s it.”

   “Kurlie, you know I work alone. No passengers.”

   “It’s just one guy. Name’s Fenmore Scott. He knows Nexus like the back of his hand. Besides, it’s always good to buddy-up with someone on these voyages, no? He’s part of the deal.”

   “Kurlie...”

   “Hey! Speak of the devil.” Kurlie smiled as he stood up and waved to a well dressed man working his way through the crowd toward us. “There he is now. You’re gonna love this guy...”

Fenmore

   I
woke up this morning on shaky legs; wobbling down the stairs with fog in my head--nauseous, and on the verge of having an out-of-body experience triggered by my hangover. I could still see the pools of blood from the night before. Even as I mixed a vodka and milk breakfast I could hear the sound of gunfire and still see the plumes of my breath absorbed into the darkness.

   Last night, while watching a funny movie on the telecom and not holding anything in particular in my mind, I heard the screech of tires, the thump of meat being slapped hard, and the thrashing of some terrible beast on the porch.

   When I parted the curtains and looked out my grimy window, there was a buck--an eight pointer, spewing blood from post to post on my front porch, kicking and bleeding, he was in shock and stopped only for a second or two as if he were transmitting a message for salvation as he looked at me with his marble-black eyes.

   Transmitted or not, I understood. I backed away from the glass, and ran and grabbed a pistol that I had stashed between the couch cushions. Barefooted and drunk, I ran up front and put one into his head. I went back inside to call the sheriff but the phone was already ringing.

   “Sir, we just received a call from a motorist and we understand a deer has been hit on your street. We’ve dispatched an officer to come and put it down.”

   “I’ve done that already.”

   “You’ve...”

   “Yes. Somehow it ended up on my front porch. You’ll have to send someone from the Department of Sanitation instead.”

   “Yes sir. We’ll have a clean-up crew out within the hour.”

   “Thanks.”

   Going to bed seemed the next best thing to do, so off I went. One thing that can be had by living out next to the woods that one can’t get within town limits, is privacy. For this I am grateful. I don’t like questions and I never have. Neighbors like to ask questions and I don’t want to be bothered. I don’t like dealing with the reciprocating ratios of self-disclosure.

   Out here, the houses are not real close together and the main road is just offset from my property for convenience. The beauty of it is that the road is concealed by a grove of birch trees and shrubs.

   Neighbors. Walter and Sandy live next door with their three kids; two from this marriage who are twins, a boy and girl of eleven years, and an older girl from Sandy’s previous marriage who is starting to drive now. I don’t really know them, but the kids tromp about the yard hip deep in snow--they are intrepid and determined in the face of northern winters.

  Yesterday when I was home drinking a vodka and lemonade, I heard a huge chunk of ice fall from the roof. Nothing for more than a second or two when I heard a thumping against the wall of the house. I went to investigate and found the younger girl’s legs poking out of a snow pile by the back door. Pulling her out was a lot easier than trying to get her to stop crying, and the whole scene would have been a disaster had Sandy not come out to help.

   I’m really not cut-out for this savior shit, and honestly, someone should have been watching this mouse. I see them though, trudging through the snow, trooping out after their dog who’s constantly whiffing for winter berries on frozen branches.

   Renting them the house was a good idea and here’s why: when I moved out here for good I didn’t look for work. I didn’t make my source of income known to anyone, and that’s the way I like it. But I almost forgot that small town people are nosy. They love to gossip, and someone in the area who cannot be identified as working there is definitely an outsider. The subject of gossip and speculation.

   I wanted to blend in, so I bought the house next door, rented to a nice family, and sent the money to the bank regularly. I kept my other finances separate from the local financial institution.

   The truth is I don’t have to work. Not now. Not ever if I live as I have been--modestly and well within my means. But from my personal history, work is all I have. It’s all I know. It’s actually who I am.

   I know what it means to look back centuries on the legions of soldiers that marched into battle and said the ominous words from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita: “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” Even as late as this war with the Serenians, the phrase is written on the backs of tactical helmets and body armor of grunts in the field...and so the tattoo of death remains unchanged to present day.

I am become drunk. That is what I know today. I am become vodka. Perhaps that’s a better way to put it. There’s a mil-spec assault shotgun in the bathroom and one by the door. I keep a Raven automatic pistol stashed in the couch cushions in the living room where I sit and watch the endless parade of interstellar news on a split-screen telecom. I keep a 24 hour clock on the wall so I know if it’s night or day. I’m often confused about if I need a drink or if I’ve just had one.

The groceries are delivered twice a week by a faded yellow and silver hovering automaton from the local chain so I don’t have to drive to town and interact with human beings. My list never changes from white bread, liquor, hamburger and eggs, some milk for my morning cocktail, and some lemonade for the afternoons if my stomach can take it.

Mostly though, the mystery of why my useless life is guarded with such energy is in fact a mystery to me as well. I have not produced anything of value in this life. I am a sociopath. I killed small animals as a boy and I’ve gone on to kill humans with frightening efficiency in the service of the military. To my understanding, my extraction from combat years ago was fast and covert.

I don’t remember much, the Alliance found my body crushed and half dead. It took a year, and the surgeons thought my recovery a miracle. So here I am, reconstructed and released as Fenmore Scott.

If by elimination a man can contribute to the sum of things, then show me the math. Here’s the real rub: now, with drink and sloth, I have drifted aimlessly into alcoholism. I stagger around in my fart smelling sweats, a hairless ape with some education and two biomechanical legs and a left bio-mech arm that can punch a hole through a concrete wall.

All this hardware cognitively integrated and sheeted with layers of synthetic tissue and epidermal membrane. They look and feel so real, and sometimes I forget that I’m a host to interlocking cybernetic neuro-transmitters and silicone micro-implants. I am become bionic.

Picture the scene of the neighbor’s child trapped beneath a hundred plus pounds of snow and ice. Her rescuer, drunk with a beard crusted stiffly with dried drool, stinking of a month without a bath; stumbling, and wheezing; unsteadily opens the door to discover tiny feet sticking out of a snowbank; yanking unceremoniously on the limbs he extracts the terrified child, who in red-faced fear leaps from him into the arms of her mother.

This is the beast I have become. Once sinew and the cat paw of death, now the soiled and malodorous sloth of number 1650, Route #28 in the little hamlet of North River. Were it not for my cat Damn it, who refuses to acknowledge me anyways, no one needs me, remembers me, or sends an awful fruitcake at Christmas.

The one thing that I have done besides remove my tumorous self from the body of society, the one thing I can say I’ve accomplished in my forty-six years on the planet, is pull an eleven year old from the snow.

My money, my position and rank in the military, and my love for Mozart and appreciation of Degas in the overall scheme of things will mean nothing. When death comes to call, I’ll end and that’s it. I’ll become protein; eaten like a shark eats a walrus. No soundtrack. No chorus of angels, last rites, or ceremony. Gone.