Slaughtermatic (8 page)

‘
You understand I’ve a limited time to stand here being lectured to by some fired semicop with a brain smaller than my fist.’

‘
Duty is in the eye of the beholder.’

‘
I don’t mean or need to belittle your career, propellerhead, but Blince assesses people’s character by the way they sound falling downstairs. He has a downer on you, and always will. Bring him Cubit, he’ll rip off your balls and call you a consultant.’

‘
I don’t make the rules.’

‘
Then you’re an idiot who needs to cultivate the faculty of manipulation. The trouble with the law is that it’s yet to fall into the right hands.’

‘
We can’t all have a collateral limb structure, Mr Specter. Or your low bandwidth morality.’

‘
Fool’s gold and fossil fruit, Tredwell - hearsay and heresy. Justice anywhere is a threat to injustice everywhere. If they isolate another Cubit back at that napalmed bank it could work in our favour. Time to grab the snail by the horns.’

‘
You can keep your snail. And your strawman notion of justice, which had its beginnings anyway in the kind of revenge you propose.’

‘
Congratulations - you’ve spotted your first irony. Tredwell, you’re as boring as a self-important movie extra playing a mayor.’

‘
And you are the most depressing excrement to have sluiced through the bilges of history.’

‘
This interchange is useless.’

‘
You are free to fire.’

‘
Wild courage implies the end of all restraint.’

‘
Yes.’

Specter head-faked a little and Tredwell’s Zero Cannon started buzzing like a wasp swarm. Specter couldn’t believe he was being stood off by someone as dynamic as a bigot in a peatbog. Garnishee had previously exhibited a meekness which was difficult to justify and it had unnerved Specter. And now this gush of defiance.

Specter was used to stating his opinions as law, a practice known as Dworking. He’d utilized it in the perjury room to clear a guy who’d shot a hundred people near a gun shop. Citing American military procedure, Specter proved that the slaughter was a pre-emptive strike. Another time he got a total innocent worked up as a multiple killer despite a transglobal alibi - the only doubt was the guy’s state of mind. Sanity was denoted by the presence of remorse, but as the accused was innocent he had none - he was deemed as crazy as a chef and thus unequal to the task of knowing anything but evil. As a lie the law had the virtue of being visible. All it took was a little leverage.

‘
Maybe the Chief’ll take you back for this,’ he said, producing the duplicate thesaurus. ‘It’s the book Cubit boosted. Must be a ... rare edition or something special. Cubit was a textropist, after all. That what you are, Tredwell?’

‘
Give that to me.’

As Garnishee extended his hand, the gun encasing his other arm dipped a fraction. Specter fired and Garnishee’s Cannon instantly blasted back.

Rosa stormed past brainstem-piercing salons, gaudy needle bars and gore-tarred car wrecks - neon signs flickered and buzzed like rattlesnakes. Alert with anger, she watched details pass with a hypodermic intensity. The microwave pistol felt alive in her hand.

Shouldering her way through a crowd on Dive, she felt strange - Download’s ego patches kicking in? Maybe it was near dawn - like many others Rosa had inverted her sleep patterns so that day was night, night was day.

She stopped in front of what had once been Brute Parker’s all-night gun shop, now a drillbit-fetish emporium. Pretending to examine a 20mm Heavy Duty Impactor, she watched the dark reflection of someone standing still in the crowdflow behind her. The figure pushed quickly forward and she turned, firing the pistol - on a long setting, it passed harmlessly through the crowd and exploded inside a TV store across the street. She struggled to re-range as the Entropy Kid stepped into the striplight, slapped the gun from her hand and whispered hello.

2

PUFFING ON A CUBAN

Puffing on a Cuban shock behind a desk which resembled a steam locomotive, Hustler Meese nested in an underworld basement. On the wall behind him was a tattered poster of Kennedy’s erupting head and a ‘BBs KILL’ slogan. Meese got into the murder game when he realized the taking of life was being portrayed as perfectly acceptable. He quit the army with a toy-neat philosophy and an M60 light machine gun.

Meese was debating whether to send a scout to the shooters’ shindig when someone banged into the chamber trailing blood like a noir shadow. Parts of the person were black and smoking like volcanic vents. It shambled toward the desk as Meese stopped drawing on the Cuban, his only concession to surprise. The man dropped into the seat opposite.

‘
Mr Meese, my name is Tredwell Garnishee.’

‘
I guess that explains it.’

‘
I wish to hire you, Mr Meese,’ said Garnishee, his breath grating. ‘My own efficiency is now impaired.’

‘
You don’t say. Who’s the target?’

‘
Mr Dante Hinton Cubit. Here is a photograph. He is possibly armed, and probably wounded.’

‘
Some party. Sure I can put someone on it. Pulse collecter. Inhumanity of a saint. Name of Brute Parker. Got a real fascismo about him. Used to run a gun shop. Half bastard, half bastard.’ Meese exploded with loud, honking laughter. ‘Only guy I know could shoot someone from the other side a revolving door.’

‘
For special reasons,’ continued Garnishee with effort, ‘I wish for Cubit to be completely obliterated. No remains, Mr Meese, this is the deal.’

Meese leaned back in his seat, frowning. ‘We got a special service for doppelgangers, Mr Garnishee.’

Garnishee’s eyes, which had been squeezed shut in pain, sprang open.

‘
Sure I know about ‘em. Couple times a year we have to do one - this town’s nicest-kept secret. Never knew a loose end I couldn’t handle. They’re paranoid, insecure, know they don’t belong. Surplus to reality. Long as you get the right one.’

‘
Mr Meese, I am in a dreadful hurry.’ Garnishee was tilted aside in his seat, beneath which his reflection tilted in a lake of blood. He reached under his scorched coat. ‘My card.’

Meese took the smartcard and swiped it through the machine. ‘This won’t take a minute. Um ... Where was the target last seen?’

‘
Crane ... Street.’

‘
This won’t take a minute,’ Meese repeated, staring at the machine.

There was an extended silence, punctuated only by the faint
pat
of dripping liquid. Then Garnishee coughed horribly, his body racked. The machine began to whir at last.

‘
We’re in business.’ Meese tore off the slip and placed it before Garnishee, holding out a pen. ‘Sign on the line.’

Garnishee, drained by the gargantuan effort to see beyond his eyelashes, directed the dregs of life energy toward his hand. He clenched the pen in a fist and brought it to bear like a crayon, trying to recall his own signature. He tortuously signed as though forging a stranger’s name, then dropped the pen.

‘
Here’s your card,’ said Meese, ‘and here’s your receipt.’

But Garnishee didn’t take either. After a moment, Meese reached for the phone.

In a hideout off a subway inspection tunnel, Brute Parker was systematically fieldstripping his mind. A spartan psychology made it a quick task. He began again. A buzz alarm alerted him to someone’s approach and he put aside a big-word issue of
Throatknife
which included details of the sniper AGM. Straddling a wooden chair and swiveling an XL73E2 Light Support Weapon toward the door, Parker thought of the changes time had wrought on the bloody mayhem industry. The old three-day cool-off period had enabled customers to plan ahead - it was a boon to those who knew themselves well enough to predict their next rage. Nowadays nobody ordered in advance. Shithead protocol had given way to bastard fatigue and stupid, arty guns. Drug guns, fax guns, fossil guns, wetware guns, anabolics, guns which fired calories, guns which charmed the birds out of the trees, static-electricity guns you rubbed on your sweater, microsoft guns which fired an hour after the trigger was pulled, glark guns which did something surprisingly different each time, deconstruction guns which turned everything to shit.

Parker was in demand as a hitman because he had principles. When he heard people scream during an attack he said they were speaking with their ‘true voice’. He knew he was making an impression on someone when they started coughing up blood. The higher the calibre the higher the contrast between the target’s health before being shot and after. Never wear beige. He lived by these rules because he had made them. They made him elite in a scene flooded with amateurs.

‘
Conventions,’ he rumbled.

Dante Cubit appeared on the security screen, and knocked the special knock. Parker released the door.

Dante Two had always based his choice of pants on whether they made good tourniquet material. So when he entered the bargain-surgery dive on Scanner he was pretty tidy. In fact despite everything he was feeling better than he had in years. So what if he was superfluous? He didn’t
feel
superfluous. And wasn’t everyone, under a certain wage level?

He was thinking of Rosa, his cock ticking like a bomb. An aching, intravenous beauty, all crucifix earrings and cracked tarmac leather. He saw her spread upon a bed of liquid codeine, grinning from head to toe. She was wired so differently it hurt.

These considerations kept him strong under the knife, holding little pains like trophies. He intended to live until death forced him to abandon it.

His coat and guzzlers had been boosted by those who took him for cod-eyed. Now at Parker’s door, numb with painstunners, he anticipated with relish the thrumming energy which coursed in a fine gun or blade. Parker’s armoury was the full rip.

The door opened on to the barrel of a bullpup machine gun.

‘
This is what I live to see,’ Dante Two laughed. ‘A guy who is generous and liberal in matters which are inevitable.’

Dante Two’s statement peppered the wall over Parker’s head but, seeing that Dante was alone and unarmed, Parker stepped from behind the XL Light. ‘You wanna guzzler, Danny Cubit?’ And he stood utterly still so that the alloy gleam of the rifle racks drew Dante’s eye.

All of fundamentalist Christian life was here. Armalites, Remingtons, Weatherbys, Webleys, Ingram subs, Uzi barkers, Hocklers, Redhawks, Bulldogs, Streetsweepers, Mossbergs, Bloopers, Caliburns, Macs and Mitsubishis. No roids or metabolics. There was what appeared to be a blowpipe missile in the corner. Dante Two waded through flechettes and shok lock rounds.

Beautiful antiques. A stainless Smith & Wesson 659, packing fourteen 9mm rounds into a staggered-line box magazine. A Steyr 5.56mm AUG with a cycle rate of 650 rpm and grenade capability. A Remington 870 riot gun. Dante Two was in such a good mood he cracked a joke about Parker’s ‘antipersonnel ears’. The only flicker of response in Parker’s expression was that of the striplights reflected in his mirror shades. Dante Two cleared his throat and became deadly serious. ‘This Beretta 92F now Parker, what’s the charm velocity?’

‘
Fully 1,280 feet per second, Danny Cubit. Modified to a twenty magazine.’

‘
I need a steamer which would disencourage the brotherhood from approaching an edgy fugitive wanted for a crime he has not achieved.’

‘
The H&K Tolerance is your man, Danny Cubit. Nine thousand foot-pounds and 3,000 fps of charm.’ Parker lugged a semiautomatic minicannon from the wall. It was pupstocked, had a thirty-round mag and weighed twenty-five pounds. A gridpulse replaced the sighter. ‘Muzzle break reduces recoil by thirty per cent. I have placed my heart and soul carefully into this machine, Danny Cubit.’

Four years ago the Intolerance Gun had been doing the rounds, but the joke was on everyone. A variation on the Stone Pistol - which instead of aiming at the target ignored everything the target wasn’t - the new gun dealt with the target by going into denial. But it was clear to the denizens of Beerlight that intolerance of a target didn’t make it go away - at best, only sent it underground a few years.

As a believer in gun karma, Parker shunned the Zero Approach and its like. Fair guns automated judgment and took the responsibility out of the user’s hands - he considered this immoral.

But there was something about the new gun which appealed to him - a potential for the most direct expression of contemptuous disregard. He set about engineering the fatally dismissive in the postbyte age. With the help of his scareweather friend Download Jones he reversed the ethigraph grid codes. Rather than acknowledge and reject the target the modified weapon never recognized the target at all - this was utterly annihilated by the force of the shooter’s ignorance. Energy was conserved by scorning the need for a reasoned rebuttal. ‘Tolerance’ was a shooters’ abbreviation.

‘
I’ll take it,’ said Dante Two, delighted. He paid from the discreet surgical cavity in his forearm.

After his departure the phone rang and Parker picked up. Hustler Meese from the rubout agency. ‘Got a commission - a jim-dandy. Client died right here in the office - the boys just took him away. Evaporation job - guy called Cubit.’

Parker slammed the phone and holstered a Scatterat as he banged out of the hideout.