Cronix (19 page)

Wexler stared into this glass for a moment. “Not all of us did. Of course, after a while …I don’t how long it was, months, maybe years…we wanted to kill ourselves, anything to get out of that hell hole. But you can’t, because you’re not really there, up there,” he said, pointing at the ceiling. “There was one torture they used to love: you’d be in this grotty Arab shitter, you know the ones, just a hole in the ground, full of crap. And you’d be locked in this tiny, fetid space, and suddenly the excrement would start to bubble up and overflow, until it got deeper and deeper and there was no way out, and pretty soon you’d be drowning in shit…” A glaze came into his eyes.

“That’s when I decided to stay Earthside, forever, whatever it might cost me,” he said.

Oriente muttered again, barely audible this time. “Amen to that, too.”

“Anyhow, they pretty much abandoned the Death Star, about a hundred years later. Too outmoded. Some of the more pious Mohammedans said they were going to stay there, sipping honey and water or whatever it is that they do, but most of them secretly got theirselves transferred to the new generation of Orbiters which were just starting up roundabout then, once they realized no one could track ‘em. The Orbiter companies were quite happy to create their Muslim paradises for them, if it meant getting more clients. A few crazy jihadis stayed in the Death Star, may be up there still, chopping off heads and hands and screwing virgins for all eternity. But then, of course, most of those guys refused to go in the first place…they were determined to get the
real
heaven, not some man-made blasphemy.”

There was a moment's silence, and Oriente decided it was time to broach the reason for this illicit rendezvous. “I had a meeting a while back at the clinic, with a…” He realized just how crazy it would sound to say ‘insect.’ “Er, with a small emissary whose visit I believe you helped facilitate.”

“The mantis?” Wexler grinned. “That was mine. Beautiful work, wasn’t he?” His manner turned abruptly business-like and he nodded at the door. “But listen, no disrespect to your friends here, but I think we ought to discuss this alone. Let’s go outside a minute. Ma’am, if you’ll excuse us,” he said with mock courtesy, pushing back his chair and not waiting for a response. Lola shrugged, as if his presence were a matter of total indifference to her. She raised her eyebrows at Oriente, as if cautioning him. Oriente followed Wexler outside.

The rear deck was stacked with crates of empty bottles, buckets and coils of rope. Wexler picked his way through the debris until he was standing stern rail, the river bubbling just below his feet. He pulled out a cheroot and lit it. The smoke whipped away on the river breeze.

“So,” he said. “You want to get the hell out of Dodge, and the cops have an interest in keeping you here a while longer. Do I have that right now?”

“More or less,” nodded Oriente.

Wexler nodded. “Well, as you’ll have seen from the mantis, there is a way of storing human consciousness, or scraps thereof, in an animal’s brain. It’s not so difficult, just very illegal. Not that you’d get caught. It’s just a question of where you want to go.”

“Why?” Oriente was horrified at the thought of his mind being transplanted to an animal. “What difference does that make?”

“Listen, I’ve done this a few times before.” Wexler let out a smoke-filled wheeze of a laugh. “One time I did it for a man here who loved his dog more’n his wife, and the wife got so pissed at him, always patting the dog and rolling around with it, that she had herself downloaded into the dog’s mind. Boy, she must have loved that feller something crazy. Or hated the dog, since she wiped its mind when she had herself implanted.”

“And she…” The old man’s mind boggled. “Could she talk? How did she communicate?”

“Oh, wagged her tail when she was happy, begged when she was hungry.”

Oriente stared at the carpet beater in disbelief. Wexler burst out laughing. “I’m shitting ya, she could talk, just about. Sounded like a drunk, but she could communicate okay. We just always wondered what they did for a
sex
life.” He cracked up again.

A slow suspicion grew in Oriente’s mind. “You said you’d done a few of these. Did you do one recently? A man’s mind into a wolf?”

Wexler’s eyes narrowed in the dark, then he grinned and wagged a finger. “Client confidentiality, Mr Oriente. I’m sure you of all people would appreciate that. Now, as I said, the kind of transfer will need to be tailored to the client’s specific needs. You wanna get out of these British Isles, you’re gonna need something that either swims or flies. And if you’re going long distances, you’d better be equipped to span the deep ocean blue.”

Wexler leaned back and started to croon some old folk song.
“But the sea is deep, and I cannot swim over, nor have I wings that I might fly…”
He chuckled again. “Always thought that song was pretty dumb. Christ, no one had wings back in those days. Kinda stating the obvious. But for you, Mister Oriente, I think wings might just do the trick. I’m reliably informed you intend to undertake a long, long journey, under the radar of any kind of the constabulary forces.” He tapped all his fingers on the wooden railing and cocked his head.

“You seem to know more about it than I do,” Oriente said. “I just seem to be following the advice of emissaries dispatched through your laboratories.”

“Well, after some confabulation with your sponsors, I decided we could send you on your merry way in a flock of migratory geese.”

Oriente squinted into the darkness, trying to make out if this was one of Wexler’s weird jokes. “Did you say…a
flock
of geese? How would you put a single human mind into a bunch of birds?
”



”Well, it’s not so strange,” Wexler said. “You see, bird brain's not so big. Hence the expression ‘bird brained’ for dimwits,” he said, spitting a rind of tobacco from his lip. “Now, that mantis I sent you had a teeny weeny little brain. But I still squeezed a part of a human mind in it. A very small part, obviously. Likewise your lizard in the can back here. Lizard’s a lot dumber than a goose, let me tell you. So we downloaded just a small part of the mind, enough for him to find you and deliver a fairly basic message. Now, if we divvy up the carrying capacity of a human mind and memory into a number of smaller containers, we can reassemble them at some later date. You just have to have someone capable of the job at the other end. Otherwise, you’re gonna be eating a lot of bugs and laying a lot of eggs in future.”

“But why geese? I mean, why not get something with a larger brain like…like a dolphin? I mean, they swim oceans.”

“Too risky,” replied Wexler. “You see, these technologies have all seeped out of official labs, and the authorities are aware of their existence outside of authorized channels. And while the relevant law enforcement authorities are really not too worried about a man playing housey with Rex the Wonderdog here in London, they might well get kind of irked about some fugitive swimming up to the beaches of the Zone.”

“The Zone? Is that where I’m supposed to be headed?”

Wexler shrugged. “By way of an example, Mr Oriente. But I’m assuming you’re not going on vacation to the Med. Now, a large-brained mammal like a dolphin voluntarily beaching itself on the shores of Yucatan may trigger some sort of an alarm. Whereas a bunch of lame-ass geese flapping their way into the Zone is far less likely to draw attention. It’s all a question of strategy, you see Mister Oriente.”

Oriente was silent, horrified at where all this was leading. The prospect of his mind, his very essence, being distributed through the walnut-sized brains of birds filled him with horror.

“How would I know what I was doing? Where I was going?
”



Wexler smiled. “Ah, therein lies the beauty of this scheme. Geese follow a lead bird, always. We’ll put the bulk of your consciousness into the lead bird, which will still retain its instinctive navigational abilities. Another bird will have enough to take over if something happens to the first. The rest, the deadweight subconscious and the majority of your memories will ride in the rear animals. I think a flock of six should cover it.”

Oriente laughed in sheer horror. “
If something happens to it
? This is my mind we’re talking about! I can’t have something happening to it. It’s who I am, for god’s sake. What if one of these bloody birds gets eaten? Shot by a hunter? Jesus Christ, I’d have to be insane to ever agree to this.”

“Calm down, my friend, calm down,” Wexler waved his hands in a placatory gesture. “I know it all sounds a bit odd when you’ve been out in the woods for umpteen years, but technology progresses around here at an astounding rate. It’s all perfectly safe. And besides, we’ll keep a back-up of you, all complete and unactivated, right here in London, just in case the memories of your salad days ends up in the drink.”

Oriente was speechless. A welter of questions flooded his head, but each seemed too crazy to put into words. In the end, he just said he’d have to think about it.

“Okay,” the carpet beater said, pushing his backside off the railing. “Take your time. Your friends know where to find me. Meanwhile, that juicy fly my friend Mr Gecko just chomped on your behalf? Well, I figure the sudden demise of one of the DPP’s bugs probably means there’s a Ranger or a constable en route to its last known location. So I’m just going to make myself scarce for the time being. Me and the police, we don’t always see eye to eye. Buenos noches, Senor Oriente,” he said, flicking a mock salute before scissoring his legs over the port-side rail and dropping overboard. Oriente expected a splash but instead heard a wooden thunk. By the time he reach the side of the deck, Wexler was slipping the knot in the bow line of a small skiff, then pushing off into the strong night ebb of the Thames.

***

She stepped out the front door, one arm across her chest, hugging her shoulder. It was a strangely defensive gesture, a woman in a lonely farmhouse coming out to greet a stranger. Nothing like before. She stood waiting, hair flitting in the breeze. The plains stretched out bright and endless ahead of her, patches of snow mixed with last autumn’s stubble.

Glenn forced his feet from where they had taken root in the icy mud. As he approached the door, she turned and disappeared inside. He followed her into the hallway, paused in front of a barometer hanging at the foot of the wooden stairs, a coat rack hung with parkas and woolen hats. A cupboard opened and shut in the kitchen: he walked through.

"You want a whiskey?"

Whiskey was the last thing on his mind right now, but he nodded anyway. She reached up to a shelf lined with a connoisseur’s selection of single malts in cylindrical boxes: Dalmore, Bunnahabhain, Ardbeg. She pulled out a 25-year-old Talisker, splashed two generous measures into tumblers. No ice.

He stared at her as she poured. She was in her late thirties, perhaps early forties, slim turning on rangy, thick straw-colored hair pulled up at the back, a few strands breaking free round her wide forehead and thin neck. The sinews of her shoulders stood out as she poured. She shoved his drink at him.

"How d'you find me, Sherlock?" She had an all-over worn-out look, middle-age closing in with a snarl on a life already burdened with its share of woes. Glenn noticed the odd juxtaposition of laugh lines round her eyes and deep furrows on her forehead, as though at some point her life had undergone a drastic change, though it was impossible to tell whether the tide went from happy to tragic or the other way round. He sipped his drink, breathing in the high smoky scent of Scotch.

"The people at the gas station. They had a CCTV which picked you up." He was relieved he'd been able to get it in so quickly -- the fact that other people knew her was his only insurance against whatever mischief she might have in mind.

She took a drink and grimaced briefly, either from what he had just said or from the alcohol burn. She shook her head.

"That won't save you, if that's where you’re coming from. Not out here, not with this lot. You'd better tell me why you showed up here all out of the blue."

Glenn took a long swig of whisky, felt it warm his chest.

"Hey listen, people know where I am. So please, let’s just drop the threats."

"Tell me why you came out here. You must be a retard. I almost killed you out there, then you come looking for more. What's up, life not looking so good to you?"

Glenn shook his head, put his glass on the table. "Hey listen, you begged for help. To save your brother, remember?”

She stared at him, eyes narrowed. It was impossible to imagine what was running through her mind. When she smiled, it threw him only deeper into confusion.

"So you want to play at mortician's mute, then?" she asked.

"Listen, I just think you owe me an explanation. I didn't go to the police, I didn't tell anyone about what you did. But I want to know."

"Just for the record, Glenn, I don’t owe you shit. But you were willing to come to the lonely psycho-woman's house to find out. I’m touched."

Glenn smiled, hopeful this was an injection of humor, of human content, rather than a disturbing statement of fact.

"That's not why you came back though," she said. "You came back because, like most people in the western hemisphere, nothing ever happens in your life. You came back because you're still young enough to want something to happen. Because people have become addicted, over the millennia, to things happening, even when they’re bad things. What we can't abide is when nothing happens. Avoidance of boredom is the great, overlooked driving force of history."