Slaughtermatic (17 page)

Dante Two came over to the window, and immediately suffered a kind of molecular vertigo. Dante was standing down there.

The figure turned and looked directly up at him.

‘
What are those, boxers?’

‘
Surf shorts. It’s worse than I thought.’

Dante saw the reflection of himself in one window and himself in another - with Rosa. Everything he’d read and all that Gamete had said was true.

There was a subterranean shift. Something clenched his guts, put him through his own opinions and out the other side. Every cell of his body shivered - he was fizzing like sherbet. What was Dante Two wearing, pyjama pants?

Thank God he’d got some pants off the cell guard. Dante Two took up a clerk-issue Roadblocker and started toward the door. ‘Hey, where you goin’ after all this?’ Rosa yelled, and pointed at her chest. ‘Hey, I tore one for you!’

Dante Two threw open the door and took off three heads with the first careful shot.

The lawyer’s wounds were closing like eyes. He sat up and flexed his malice. It was gaining strength by the minute.

Criminals often return to the scene of the crime to have a good laugh. Intent on checking out the upper storeys of the Deal Highrise as the blubberbrained brotherhood should have done hours ago, Specter took up his corpse and walked.

Driving the torn and rattling copcar, Panacea tried accelerating the process of getting used to it all and the relentless fact that it was real. Windshield glass sifted like sand on the tin floor and dusty wind howled through the cab. He gulped at detail.

Benny the Trooper seemed stern and empty as he kept the .66 Combat Magnum on the level with Panacea’s appreciative gaze. It had a snubbed stainless-steel barrel which shone like a spoon.

The driver and passenger were linked by two chunky silver bracelets, a chain and Benny’s confusion.

Panacea kept talking, carefully avoiding any mention of VR hypnosis or autosuggestion. Benny just took it upon himself to come rescue him - a nice guy. The handcuffs were a mere disguise surely, in case they were stopped and had to mouth off - taking a dangerous criminal cross-state, brother, hence the cuffs.

But the burglar couldn’t help boasting about his tactics in the Mall. The demographic handgun which Blince had taken to like a long-lost mother was a virus Panacea smelted in the smithy of his resentment. It replicated itself in the form of a gun and contaminated the streets to be taken up and fired by one and all until Panacea had the entire clench and most of the day to himself. The dial was jammed on full and he’d seen enough of the desperate and dumb to know few would learn to leave the weapons alone. ‘Neat, huh?’ He flashed a grin into the all-too-real barrel of Benny’s snub. ‘I can straighten everything out - I’m the one. Timebreach. I appropriated something, see? Your boss’s bosses’d kill for it and only I know where it’s stashed. You wouldn’t need to be Blince’s yes man no more. A crime doesn’t have its being outside the law - the law has its being inside crime. No new ingredients required, Benny - just reconfigure your circumstances. Everyone steals something. But make it count as an expression of your unique self and evolutionary requirements.
That’s
the arting of crime by bringing to it a sense of absolute specificity.’

Benny’s dirt-and-glass-powdered face took a while to respond, his dry, cracked lips unsealing like a bodybag.

‘
What are you trying to pull?’

As Blince and Geryon watched from the second floor, another figure emerged from the crowdpleaser turret. Not for the first time, Blince couldn’t believe the evidence presented to him. Brute Parker was down there - the hitman, capering around. Blince and Geryon were momentarily arrested with curiosity - what was the bastard doing?

Parker was tugging at an old streetskull which was lodged between the tank’s treads and rear idler wheel. He pulled it free and ran quickly forward, squatting to scrape it across the concrete like a football-sized chalk stub - it made a thin white mark. Working fast, he backed up and began another line.

Blince and Geryon exchanged frowns and considered it a poor bargain.

Parker was writing something on the forecourt in tall, thin strokes. He laboured quickly, puffing and lacking his usual reserve. Then he threw the skull aside, looked up at them and pointed to what he had made.

‘
What that say?’ asked Blince.

Geryon looked hard. It said FLAN THROWER.

‘
Says “flan thrower”, Henry. Flan’s a sort of dessert or pie.’

‘
I know what it is.’ Blince was momentarily expressionless. ‘Flan thrower. What’s that, some kinda hitman slang for somethin’, what is that?’

‘
Hey simmer down, Henry.’

‘
Don’t tell me of all people to simmer down, that turbo-monkey blew up the downtown den. Now he’s makin’ sick accusations - castin’ a sturgeon at me. Look at him.’

They looked down at Parker as he pointed to the message, his eyes unreadable behind mirror shades.

‘
He’s sayin’ I throw pies around the place - yeah, like a sloppy kid without any values! Goddammit he’s insultin’ a police officer!’ Blince whipped the Uzi barker from Geryon’s belt and flung open the block window’s gun-slit, letting rip one-handed. Parker ran, scrambling on to the tank and diving headfirst through the hatch. ‘Well he did,’ added Blince as the clip emptied.

The tank hatch slammed closed with finality. ‘Good work, Henry,’ said Geryon.

‘
Thank you, Tell. Now it occurs to me there’s somethin’ I oughta tell y’about this little circumstance. Gimme another clip.’ Geryon handed over and Blince recycled the Uzi. ‘About this here twin, Tell. He ain’t exactly a twin - he’s kinda trouble.’

Behind Dante’s reflection in the rocketproof glass, Dante Two appeared. The Dantes approached each other and placed their palms on the smooth surface - the glass began to hum.

6

YOU’RE ALIVE

‘
You’re alive then,’ said Dante - Dante Two found he could hear him like a bell, though the glass was surely a yard thick. ‘I didn’t shoot you hard enough.’

‘
Don’t beat yourself up about it,’ chided Dante Two, gesturing vaguely to the clotted bandage. ‘You shot me fine - it was a fluke, some life-urge crap. You okay?’

‘
Terrible. Where’d you boost those gruesome pants?’

‘
A guard. What
you
wearing, Cubit?’

‘
Surfers. Are these great or what? Found ’em in the tank. You know I’m a careful shopper.’

‘
Careful not to pay for anything, right? They ain’t black - don’t go with the coat.’

‘
Yeah, well, at least I got me a coat, pyjama boy. I see them scars on your chest and them dents in your head from a wrench - Rosa been busy, eh?’

‘
I got there first.’

‘
I bet you did.’

‘
Hey, don’t get personal.’

‘
Personal? Remember who I am, lughead? Look at your hair, you’re a mess.’

‘
So are you, behind your face. Ain’t you gonna ask how Rosa is? I’ll tell you she’s angry.’

‘
Great, great. I dropped by the place, saw the carnage, came here with Parker.’

‘
Parker, you moron? We’re crayoned in at the top of his giftlist.’

‘
I know all that, believe me.’

‘
Yeah, we’re headed for a
Gun Crazy
finale with this one.’

‘
Eh? Rosa’s not some spineless bimbo.’

‘
What? You talking about the remix?’

‘
Yeah the ‘92. 1 ... I prefer it to the ‘49.’

‘
How can you prefer it to the ‘49?’

‘
The Joseph H. Lewis?’

‘
I need this?
Yes
, the Joseph H. Lewis. Remember the continuous take in the getaway car? The exhausted swamp scene with no music?’

‘
Ah, shove it up your ass.’

‘
We’re the same person, how can you prefer the remix? For that matter how can anyone? And since when?’

‘
Since. . .’ Dante looked perplexed,’.. . this morning.’

Dante Two couldn’t think. There was a shrill, semi-register squealing in his head, as if his atoms were in vibration. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘
I know, it stinks, I’m as much in the dark as you are. Ah, let it slide - listen I met Eddie Gamete.’

‘
You’re kidding.’

‘
You know I don’t kid. He’s holed up in the Highrise grinding axes.’

‘
Gamete. How’d he do it? What he have to say?’

‘
Everything and nothing, Cubit. The caper - dust and a plan.’

‘
What?’ Dante Two could barely hear him for the ringing in his ears. The image of Dante was vibrating to a blur. ‘What’s the matter with you?’

‘
It ain’t worthwhile,’ Dante stated, and as Dante Two clapped his hands over his head the glass shattered in a spiderweb which radiated from Dante’s palms.

Parker was wrong about the fire-control mechanism, which was intact and switched off. The tank’s armour consisted of steel sections sandwiching layers of composite lead, ceramics and depleted uranium which had incidentally shielded the fire-control software. The cannon was live.

Throwing a switch and finding the fire deck lit up like a pre-fall cityscape, Parker wished for the first time he’d kept up with fair gun technology. There was a grid in which squares patched in and out at random like an idling jukebox display. He hit the fire release and nothing happened. A readout flashed the words PENDING OBSTACLE/PROXIMITY ADJUSTMENT. This was the straw that broke his patience. Whatever happened to direct action?

Back in the driver’s seat, Parker was reunited with his antagonisms. His mercy was swollen shut.

The frosted glass was turning to slow transparent sludge, like glue paste - Dante was pushing through it like a newborn at its caul. He waded through sluggish crests of the stuff as Dante Two snatched up his Mag-10 and backed away bug eyed. Dollops of jellied glass plopped to the foyer floor. Dante slowed like an insect which had blundered into amber. He reached into his coat with glaced hands and drew out two Ronell rotary handcannons. Steam and weirdness were roiling around him. He waited in the lobby.

Rosa entered through the near door as a squad of bigots stamped through the far one, dressed in casual riot gear and armed to the back teeth. She hit the desk for cover - Dante Two stood his ground with Dante. The troopers lined up behind denial shields and Blince aimed a bullhorn between the shoulder crenellations of the human blockade. ‘You’re under arrest, folks, that’s all you need to know for now.’

Dante Two raised his forefinger toward Dante. ‘Back off or I touch him on the arm!’ he yelled.

‘
Don’t be a fool, Danny,’ hailed Blince. ‘There’s more to life than blowin’ yourself and your enemies sky-high.’

‘
Like what?’

‘
Wiseguy, eh?’

‘
Run, Dante,’ hissed Dante Two aside. ‘Run like the wind.’

‘
I’m ... I’m mixed up, Dante.’

‘
About what, you moron?’

‘
Stay clear,’ he said, and glanced down - he was fizzing into the floor, losing coherence, a monument to flux. Floormatter was creeping up his legs as he seeped outward, knocking carpet-waves into solid marble.

Dante Two retreated a little in alarm - the floor was bubbling toward him like slow surf. The surface of Dante’s face roiled with Brownian motion and his hands had become semi-metallic, fusing with the gun handles.

‘
Howzabout a plea bargain?’ Dante Two shouted to Blince.

‘
Well,’ chuckled Blince, ‘look what the chicken hauled in. I guess if you were real nice Specter might negotiate some deal whereby you help a court to pretend their proceedings are morally acceptable.’

‘
Will it make much difference?’

‘
Now easy does it, Danny boy - you got problems bigger’n a whale here - your, er ... brother there looks kinda gnarly, don’t he? Time’s runnin’ real slim. I see you back there, Rose - whatta they call this, a love triangle? More like a goddamn dodecahedron.’

As Rosa opened her big mouth to yell, the Malacoda tank boast poked in through the lank glass, followed by the rest of the vehicle. As it entered it was coated in transparent jello so that when it was fully through and the engine cut out, it sat glistening like a newly varnished toy. The lid popped and swung, glass string stretching - Brute Parker clambered out, becoming slathered from head to foot in waxen molecular paste as he stepped down.

He stared about and spotted Rosa, stepping toward her and gesturing to himself. ‘See here, Rosa Control –’ Uzi fire cut across the hitman and trailed a series of periods along the wall behind him. He toppled like a badly nitroed tenement block.

‘
We havin’ fun yet?’ shouted Blince, recycling the Uzi. ‘Now drop your weapons.” The troopers dropped their weapons. ‘Not you sons o’ bitches!’ They picked them up again, muttering and becoming bored with the exercise. ‘Now, Danny boy, your repeated retreat into logic exhausts every possibility for dialogue and by the look o’ your familiar we don’t got that kinda time, so put up your steamers on three.’