Toxicity (12 page)

Horace walked across the gravelled
drive, boots crunching, breath smoking, and stopped to look at his shed. It was
a large, rough-timbered affair which Horace had built himself. He stared at it
proudly, analysing its odd angles and imperfect planking. Silka had constantly
derided him for his limited carpentry skills, but Horace simply nodded,
watching his shed grow and expand and become... complete. If truth be known, he
revelled in the fact that it was imperfect. It had to be imperfect. He
wanted
it to be imperfect. Every angle was slightly different. The frame was not
square. The roof slope was a different elevation on each side. Most of the
frame and indeed the covering boards were of modest, unequal length.

It has to be uneven, distorted,
warped. Because that’s the way I am. Deep down inside.

Horace worked hard in the cold
morning air, sawing fresh planks to line the back wall, and nailing them in
place. Sweat dropped down his face and he stripped off his heavy shirt, the top
half of his naked, wiry body showing a heavy slew of twisting, swirling
tattoos. There were no distinct images; just patterns, almost random swirls and
arcs and spikes.

Horace was just completing the
rear wall, covered in a second skin of fine sawdust and sweat, when he heard
the heavy drone of a large engine. He knocked up the last plank with three
accurate, hefty swipes of the hammer, removed several nails from between his
lips and moved to his shirt, pulling it on and deftly fixing the buttons. Only
then did he turn and look out from his hilltop vantage.

It was a large black 4x4,
sweeping along the narrow track at a dangerous rate of knots. Horace moved to
the shade of the large white house, leant with his back to the wall and placed
his hands in his pockets.

The car halted, and waited,
engine running, exhaust fumes pluming. After a few moments Horace asked, voice
quiet, “Who is it?”

“The Fat Man,” said Silka,
materialising; drifting into view as if phased into reality by a gradual
analogue dial.

“He has a new car.”

“Yes.”

“Let him in.”

Horace ignored the gates swinging
open, and set about tidying his tools into a large black toolbox. The car
growled up the long gravel drive, tyres crunching, blackened windows showing
the reflection of the white house. It stopped to one side, and the engine cut
out. The door opened, and the Fat Man stepped out, his huge frame almost too
much even for the vast 4X4.

“Horace!” boomed the Fat Man, and
strode mightily forwards, hands outstretched, a big smile on his big face. His
hair was black and shaggy, his shoulders broad, his belly huge, his legs like
sturdy tree trunks.

“Fat Man,” smiled Horace,
encompassed by the embrace, and not for the first time he acknowledged Fat Man’s
prodigious strength. Yes, he was fat; but it was a layer of fat over a
rock-hard, iron-ridged, muscle core. He had been underestimated many times by
lesser men.

“It’s been a while,” said Fat
Man. “The Company has missed you!”

“Yeah, well. I work when there is
work to be done. You changed your car. That’s a shame. I liked your old car. It
had... character.”

“Ach, she met with a large
accident. Unfortunately, there were two bad men in the boot as she went over a
cliff. You know how it is.”

“Yes,” said Horace, face
registering no emotion.

“A drink?” suggested Fat Man.

“Of course. Come in. I’ll get
Jemima to rustle up something to eat.”

Fat Man grinned and rubbed his
hands together. “Good,” he said.

~ * ~

THEY
SAT ACROSS from one another. Horace’s house was decorated with sparse but
expensive taste. He had white pash ornaments placed strategically on puf-watch
puf-stands. The carpets were seaweed and edible. The furniture was bombool
crack coca cane, and glittered orange.

The Fat Man finished his third
piece of black slab cake, and licked his fingers noisily, dusting crumbs off
himself and smiling at Horace. “The Company has a job for you.”

“I am ready,” he said.

Fat Man reached inside his suit,
and pulled out a sheaf of metal leaves. He laid them out on the table, shifting
the cake plate with a scraping sound, and brushing aside a few more crumbs from
his expensive trousers.

“Greenstar Agency is having a
few... problems.”

Horace gave a little shrug. “They’re
always experiencing a few problems.” He gave a tight smile. “That’s the nature
of your business. That’s why you employ me. It’s why I exist.”

“The Company thinks you’re a
little too...
high profile,
at the moment. Here on Earth. So we have
another option for you.”

“Go on.”

“On Amaranth, which you know is
our principal recycling facility, there has been ‘an escalation of violence.’
An increased number of bombings and attempted sabotage of various facilities.”

“I know. I saw reports in the
papes and on ggg. The whole of Manna knows this.”

“What’s not being reported is the
success rate of these bastards. You know what The Company is like; even if the
bastard ECO terrorists wiped out our entire HQ with a Q Bomb, we’d put it down
to rats in the cabling, a glitch in the matrix, and weather it out until our
repair squads got us at least superficially up and running. You know how it is.”

“I do,” said Horace, and broke
off a corner of cake. At the same time, he touched the metal leaves before him,
eyes scanning the data, the pictures, the statistics, the gathered intel.

“These ECO terrorists have five
operational squads,” he observed.

“Yes. And because of the poor
living conditions on Amaranth, they’re recruiting more and more to their ‘cause’
all the time.”

“Why don’t they leave?”

“You know what these freaks are
like. It’s their homeland, ancestors buried under the ground, blah blah. The fact
is, until Greenstar arrived, the planet was a backwater shit-hole, a no-place
for hillbilly redbollock rednecks. The Company brought jobs and education.”

“And toxicity,” said Horace,
showing a rare smile.

“Don’t you fucking start.
Everybody knew the deal when they signed.”

Horace held up a hand. “Hey. I
don’t care. You pay me, I do the job. I leave the politics to the...
politicians.”

“So. That’s where you come in.”

“Oh? I thought I’d be going after
the ECO terrorists.”

“No. There has been a leak from
the Green House. One of The Company’s own
directors
is pissing out intel
to the ECO nuts, giving them access codes, handing out military-grade weapons
and explosives like it’s candy at a little girl’s party. It’s a fucking
political
nightmare.
We need you in there. Fast. A clean kill. No
witnesses. You know the score. We don’t know which director - yet. But we have
a location of leaked and uploaded files. Rather than send in the pigs - well,
we thought we’d send in you.”

“When do I leave?”

“We’ve got you booked on a
Shuttle. As a tourist.”

“A tourist?
Tourists
go to
the Toxic Planet? What are they hoping to see?”

“You tell me, pal,” said Fat Man.
“How long do you need to sort your shit?”

“Ten minutes.” Horace stood,
lifting the metal leaves with him. “You go and warm the car. I’ll get my case.”

“Good. The Company will owe you
one if you pull this off.”

“I’ll pull it off,” said The
Dentist, face straight, eyes staring straight ahead. “I always do.”

~ * ~

NEVER
LOSE YOUR temper.

Horace was sat on the Shuttle in
a casual suit with black shiny shoes, listening to the argument behind him. Two
half-drunk shebangs wearing spotted shirts and too-tight shorts had been
sneaking cheap voddie into plastic cups and fumbling with each other under the
blankets. They were caught by a Shuttle stewardess, who tried to confiscate the
voddie, and an argument ensued:

“You’re not having it!” the male
shebang said, facial tentacles waving.

“Sir, it’s company policy that
you do not bring liquor aboard Greenstar Shuttles. We have an adequate drinks
trolley where you can buy the beverage of your choice.”

“Yeah, at your over-inflated
prices!”

“That’s not the point,” said the
stewardess. “Rules are rules. Now...
give
me the bottle.”

There were sounds of a scuffle.

The male shebang was growling
something incomprehensible, and as Horace stood up and turned, the female
lurched upwards, eyes on him. She pointed in his face. “Don’t get involved,
shitbag!”

Horace hit her with a right
straight on the feeding tube, so hard it would have dropped a horse. It
certainly dropped the female shebang, whose alien head folded in on itself for
protection, leaving nothing but a tennis-ball-sized mini-head.

Horace turned to the male. “Are
you going to give up the voddie, you cheap little shit? Or shall I pop your
inflatable head as well?”

“Bastard!” he shrieked. “Bastard,
bastard, bastard!” and leapt at Horace, who dodged a slapping tentacle with
ease, dropped his shoulder, then cracked him with a right hook that could have
felled an elephant. As the shebang hit the ground, there was a hissing sound
and fluid pissed out, and his head deflated into a miniature head.

“Oh, thank you, sir! Security are
just arriving now! But thank you, thank you for stepping in!” “

Horace, who was still staring at
the shrivel-headed aliens, shrugged. “What a strange defence mechanism,” he
said, frowning, then looked at the stewardess. He gave her a nod. “My pleasure,
ma’am,” he smiled, and knew by the look in her eyes that he was going to be
very
well looked after on the Shuttle voyage.

~ * ~

IT
WAS RAINING at the Shuttleport in Bacillus Port City, Toxicity’s capital. They
flew in low through heavy rainclouds which sounded like thunder on the Shuttle’s
hull. Horace watched the vast sprawl of the grim, dark, polluted city hove into
view. It was like an architect’s nightmare, a vision of Hell and a toxic
wasteland, all rolled into one. It was rumoured to be the most poisoned city on
the planet, but Horace doubted it. He’d read the files. However, it wasn’t
called Bacillus for nothing and he welcomed the fine antibacterial spray which
constantly emanated from the Shuttle’s CleanBeing WishYouWell
ConstaDecontaminate System.

As the spacecraft touched down,
stubby legs groaning and creaking into suspension housings, the rain eased off.
Horace made his way into the connection umbilicals and along endless corridors
filled with... space. Lots of space. As if Amaranth had once had a booming
tourist industry, but now only catered for a dribble of curious visitors. Which
was probably a good analogy, thought Horace, as he collected his single case
and stepped through immigration. A toxic dribble. Pus from the overflow pipe.

He showed his Quad-Gal passport,
several other papers, and walked across gleaming tiles, his boots clicking,
until he stepped out into the fresh air of Bacillus Port - although the air
wasn’t very fresh. It stank like a rancid corpse.

“Hmm,” said Horace, and moved to
a nearby taxi rank. All the taxis were hover models, as if by refraining from
the use of wheels they might somehow halt the spread of contagion across the
planet. Doubtful, when they welcomed it in by the billion-tonne tanker-full.

As he relaxed back in the hover
taxi, the driver growled, “Where to, Mister?”