Crowe and Coyote

Crowe and Coyote IX

Maprod, this one is for you. Love TruthHertz? Just wait for the ending.

****

"With what can I be helping you?" The man Zacharias had repeated. Then, sharply: "what color is town?"

"Red," said Moll, taking a not-so-wild guess. In the toilet bowl the water, reflecting the lights above the vanity, seemed almost to sparkle.

"Yes, yes. Town is red. Leave house at one fifteen tomorrow, yes? Take J bullet from station, get off on fourth stop. Man waiting for you there, half of hair blue. Follow him, he lead you to me. Follow quickly, quickly. You have not much time."

"Right," Moll said. "And why the hell should I want to find you?"

"I am Zacharias," the voice said patiently. "I am Gardener. You need weeds removed? I remove. Find me."

The line went dead. The whole conversation had taken perhaps thirty seconds. Moll continued staring into the toilet bowl, praying nobody watching could see her face.

She had never heard of Zacharias, but The Gardener, sure. That name was legend and myth in the Sunrise Lower Levels. A madman, he was presented as in the newscasts. Unsociable, irresponsible. A friend of PAINT, but not one of them, necessarily. Long ago his school ability tests had shown an almost impossible aptitude for the medical profession in him, surgery in particular. His hands were, it was whispered, the steadiest in the world.

He had been an Upper Level doctor, treating all the Glossland girls and the Soyful Noise magnates, sculpting the aesthetically pleasing bodies of the well-to-do. He had, rumor had it, been the one to craft Soyful Noise CEO Alice Franke's tits, which were said to be the best in business.

No one was entirely sure what had happened to this law-abiding doctor. There had been an accident, perhaps, or he had simply snapped. The newscasts painted a gleeful picture of residual radiation, PAINT terrorism, a neatly kept clinic of well-to-do clients gassed and burned out. Moll remembered some of the visuals, more than she'd like--one especially of a woman's white arm, complete with candy pink nails, lying amidst the wreckage.

The arm had not ended in a shoulder.

This doctor had disappeared. Had become, in fact, one of maybe three people known to the public who had successfully eluded Sunrise PD. In his place had risen the myth of The Gardener, a man who could do the impossible--who could give you an entirely new face, whichever face you pleased. Who could work with the tiniest of tiny machines, machines smaller than even single-celled life.

Who could, in fact, neutralize percomm.

It was not technically illegal to do it. Then again, in Sunrise, it wasn't technically illegal to do much of anything, short of mass murder. But it was frowned upon--deeply frowned upon. Your neighbors would talk, your employer would probably fire you, bars would refuse to serve you. It was considered a highly unsociable gesture. Anyone who had percomm removed probably had something to hide.

Moll had only known a few people who had done it. They had done it for innocent enough reasons--tired of the klaxons, tired of the chiming, tired of constant connectivity. They had all disappeared within a few weeks. People received messages from them, of course--in Starfall with the wife and kids, ailing grandmother, just had to start anew, that sort of thing.

These messages were sent and received through percomm.

Nobody bought it, really. People just recognized when it was smart to shut up.

If you didn't recognize this, in Sunrise, you were likely to wind up blackboxed. Moll, who suspected she had been even worse at this particular survival skill before erasure, wouldn't be surprised to find one of the small obsidian cubes was waiting for her, polished and ready, in the upper levels of PDHQ. They had probably carved her name on it. They probably kept it dusted.

So, Moll thought to herself. You are going to consult a backalley possibly criminal surgeon for a procedure that will, with an almost perfect likelihood, result in your introduction to a shiny black two-by-two PDHQ storage cubby. You will have to leave this place and never come back to it. And getting rid of the percomm isn't beating erasure. It isn't anywhere close.

But it's a step.

A step, she thought, that would result in seeing the man Crowe again without immediate ear-splitting pain.

She didn't know why she thought it was worth it, but she did. For freedom, maybe. Or the memory of love.

She didn't leave a note for Bobbitt and Elaine. They had their own troubles to deal with, and the last thing they needed was a less-than-comfortable visit from Sunrise PD. Without her there, they could maybe find a boarder who could give them more for monthly rent. Maybe Elaine wouldn't have to work any more.

She fell asleep to comforting thoughts like these, to dreams of self-justification. She had percomm play her some soothing music as she drifted off. Soon, she would not have that privilege. She would not have instant credit access, news at a glance, the ability to sober herself up instantaneously. She would only have herself. She would have, at most, her own dubious intelligence. It was a little frightening, a little exciting. After all, she didn't remember not having these things.

She dreamed of movement against the sky, of weapons and steel and strange dark dust. She dreamed of lights sliding slowly overhead, like oil swirling in water. She dreamed images of her past--at least, she was relatively sure that was what they were--but they were images grafted onto one another, massive and hallucinatory, as dark and bulbous as the soyroaches in their plots of earth.

Mostly, she dreamed of Thelonius Crowe.

****

She woke. The clock by the bed informed her it was 1:05. Elaine and Bobbit would already be gone. The house was closed and quiet, tomblike. She could smell the lingering scent of breakfast bacon in the air, knew poor old Bobbitt would have left her a plate.

CHRISTUS, WOMAN, scrolled the TruthHertz alarm. IT ISN'T EVEN MORNING ANYMORE. THIS IS POOR EVEN BY YOUR STANDARDS.

Moll smiled. She had already packed a few changes of clothes, the few little things from her room she valued.

She now realized she had something left to do.

TAKE A SHOWER, said TruthHertz. IS IT REALLY SO HARD TO TAKE A SHOWER?

Moll went into Elaine and Bobbitt's room. Climbed onto their grey sagging bed.

Lifted the shotgun from its spot on the wall.

YOU'RE LAZIER THAN A BAG OF SEA SLUGS, TruthHertz scrolled. AND YOU'RE FILTHY. DO SOMETHING RIGHT FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE.

"Okay," said Moll.

She pumped once and pulled the trigger.

Hours later, when the search for Moll Greer had started and PD was present in force all over the house, the detectives marveled at this random burst of violence in what had been, otherwise, a peaceful escape. They measured powder burns and the holes the wall, used percomm to compute the trajectory paths of the twisted pieces of plastic and metal buried in the bedding.

"What the fuck was this?" one detective asked, examining a piece of the steelmesh outer shell.

"An alarm clock," said Hurtwin, who knew without having to see the evidence on camera what she had done and why she had done it.

"But why? Why spoil a perfectly good escape with the possibility of a noise alert for a goddamn clock?"

"Because," Hurtwin ground out, having no choice but to say it, "truth hurts."

He didn't know if he hated the pun she had left him with or if he relished it. A bit of both, maybe.

Bitch.