The med-technician, Laura Palmer, gave Eddie another booster-shot of the Leash. She seemed healthy enough, but sullen, glaring at him with barely-suppressed hate.
Obscurely, Eddie felt like he should apologise.
“Hey, listen,” he said. “I’m really sorry for, you know…”
“Fuck off,” Laura Palmer told him curdy. For some reason there was a sheen of tears in her eyes. “I thought you… I thought you were… just fuck off, okay?”
Eddie could think of any number of reasons for this reaction, any number of possible interpretations, but had long since learned that it was safer to take what people said at face value. So off he fucked.
He left the makeshift medical bay to find Masterton, standing in the Arbitrary Base compound and idly watching GenTech techs as they cleaned up the bodies of their fellows and the US Military troops who had attacked them.
They were dumping such bodies as were unsalvageable onto pallets to be fork-lifted into mass-grave landfill, but carefully preserving such… materials as might still survive to be useful for biomedical procedures in refrigerated canisters similar to those that had held the cargo of the Brain Train.
“Waste not, want not,” said Masterton, sensing Eddie’s presence behind him and turning to present him with a shit-eating grin.
“Isn’t it, you know, all a bit gruesome?” Eddie didn’t really think it was particularly gruesome, on account of his famous lack of sympathy with other human beings and what happened to them. He said it more of less for the sake of something to say.
“Not really,” said Masterton. “If you think about it. I mean, for a start, all of our guys, and all of the military guys, sign organ-donation waivers as a part of their employment and enlistment. This was a clusterfuck, on any number of levels, and we can all have a cry about that-but why not use the materials made available to increase the sum of human happiness while we’re about it?”
“What, like transplanting shit into rich old bastards?” Eddie said.
“Or providing the raw materials for experimentation that ends up with shit being transplanted into rich old bastards.” Masterton grinned again. “So what? At some point the trickle-down effect means that the benefit will be felt by Joe Six-pack, his fat ugly wife and their appalling little brats. What goes around the High Table comes down in scraps for even the most worthless little turds. You’re a prime example of that yourself.”
Eddie began to miss the company of the Talking Head, which had burned along with the GenTech Command rig in the battle with the US troops. At least his relationship with the Head had gotten to a place where it didn’t take every opportunity it could to insult him.
He had come out of his Loup-induced fugue to find the Ship gone, Trix Desoto gone and a GenTech combat squad standing around him, some of them in pieces, having zapped him back to physical normalcy.
Sympathy for other people and what happened to them Eddie might not have had, but he could work out numbers as well as then next man who could work out numbers a bit. Masterton could hammer in the general worthlessness of Eddie Kalish all he might-but somebody, somewhere, thought he was worth the expensively trained troops lost in reclaiming him.
Off to one side was the bulk of the GenTech VTOL-carrier. Every bit a match for the NeoGen craft that the Hammer of God had so summarily smitten. Form following function, the craft were so similar that you could have stuck any logo you liked on one or the other and the result would be the same. When you came right down to it, Eddie thought, that was pretty much the fucking point.
“Strikes me,” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the GenTech VTOL, “that you could have just flown the… cargo in on that without dicking around with the Brain Train or anything else.”
Masterton snorted.
“If it came to that,” he said, “we could put the GenTech CEO in an air-conditioned bio-dome, with enough food and hookers to last him the rest of his life, and just kill everybody else. The Multicorps, these days, are mechanisms for keeping as great a number people alive and useful as is humanly possible.”
Eddie watched the tech hauling a number of dead and ultimately useful human beings away.
“You could do a better fucking job of it,” he said.
“There speaks a son of the wide open spaces peopled by rat-fuck scavengers and gangcults,” said Masterton. “You think that’s better, do you? You think you’re better? Come and have a look at this.”
He stalked over, in a somewhat irritated manner, to the mobile command centre, hauled out from the VTOL, from which the clean-up and cover-up of Arbitrary Base was being directed. Eddie wandered after him.
Masterton shooed an operator from her seat and started punching keypad buttons.
“One of the main reasons we set up the Brain Train,” he said, “apart from keeping people gainfully occupied and giving them some excitement in their lives, was that we needed just a little bit more extra time.
“Bit of a juggling act admittedly. We had to get the Artefact-the Ship, sorry, basic human types like me still can’t quite make our minds think of it as a Ship-we had to get it up and running before NeoGen made their move on behalf of their sponsors who wanted their property back…”
“Hang on,” said Eddie.
“For this we… what? What is it now?”
“You just said that they wanted their property back. You’re telling me that this was all a scam? That our Faction was stealing the Hammer of God?”
“You could put it like that, I suppose,” said Masterton. “The thing about that is, who knows what the other guys were intending to do with it. I get the feeling that they were actually intending to use it-which, whatever else it would have done, would have almost certainly destroyed our world as a mechanism for supporting human life.
“Our guys, on the other hand, just wanted it gone from here and now-and that’s what was best for all concerned. That’s what they told me, anyway, and I believe them.”
“And that would be because?” said Eddie.
“It’s hard to kid a kidder,” said Masterton, grinning.
“Or extremely easy,” said Eddie.
“There is that,” said Masterton. “I suppose. Anyhoo. What we were basically doing was patching human synaptic tissue into the mechanisms of the Artefact. The problem with that, of course, was that it was incompatible on any number of levels. We needed the equivalent of a sub-operating system to make it work. You know what a memoplex is?”
“A complex of memes,”said Eddie as the Loup dropped the info into his conscious mind. “The bundle of memories that makes a person who he is.”
“Close enough. It was far more complicated than that, of course, but the upshot is that we had to feed the Artefact what was basically the living heart and soul of a human, everything that made them who he is and what he was as a human being. That was what we had you slated for, originally-“
“What?” said Eddie.
“That was going to be your function. What are you looking at me like that for? There’s no point in lying to you about it. You’d have pretty much worked it out yourself in time. And there’s nothing you can do about it, since we have you firmly on the Leash.
“In any case, that was to be your function, but you fucked it up by going off on your unscheduled little visit to the Mimsey World of Adventure. We never got the chance to implant the processes to the point where they took hold.
“We set things up with the Brain Train, like I said, to give things a little bit more extra time-we hoped that the combination of tension and responsibility might have the Loup generating what we needed. In the end, of course, it all came to shit. You were developing a number of marked involutions, but nothing like to the extent that we needed. We had to tell Trix to do the job instead of you. Bit of a pity, cause she was far more valuable, as an operative, than you ever were or will be.”
“Just not quite valuable enough to keep alive,” Eddie said.
“Oh, she’s alive,” said Masterton. “I assume so, anyway. I’m sure she’s still alive. In body at least. Have a look at this.”
He punched up a monitor display.
“Feed from GenTech microcams and the Arbitrary Base security system,” he explained. “We’re going to have to wipe the lot before we’re done. See the shadow-form falling from the Artefact? That’s Trix, what’s left of her.
“And then there’s you. Look at you transforming. We presume that the Artefact itself had some hand in it, since I gather that at this point you were still quite comprehensively Leashed.”
Eddie watched as the two shadow-forms of dead black pixels streaked for the advancing NeoGen troops and, quite spectacularly, tore them apart.
“Jesus…” he breathed.
“Quite impressive,” said Masterton, “I’ll admit. Bit of a pity we have to wipe the footage as part of the cover-up.
“And there go the last of the troops. Scratch one problem. Now look at what the pair of you are doing now. Circling around each other, getting closer. Now look at what you’re doing, and doing quite comprehensively, before our Trix goes off to burst through the perimeter and scamper for the hills.”
Eddie stared at the monitor-footage disbelievingly. “Fuck…”
“Fuck,” said Masterton, “is almost certainly the proper word.”
“Why do I need another shot this soon?” Eddie asked. “It’s only been a few hours since my last one.”
“The Leash is time-dependent,” said Masterton, “not cumulative. You now have twelve hours before the Loup flips out. It’s only fair to give you as good a chance as possible.”
“What?” said Eddie.
“We’re nearly wrapped up here. The Pentagon are flying in troops to take command again, and it’ll be like nothing ever happened. Time we dusted off and headed back to the Factory. There’s no room for your car, though-and that’s quite an expensive piece of kit.”
“What, millions?” said Eddie.
“Don’t make me laugh,” said Masterton. “It’s far more expensive than that. We want it back and back at the Factory, and you’re just the chump to do it.”
“What, out on the road alone?” said Eddie.
“Alone and with no back-up.” Masterton grinned. “You have twelve hours. Think of it as a character-building exercise.”
After Eddie had stormed off in the direction of the Testostorossa, Laura Palmer threw the hypodermic gun into the secure trash-pod that they would be taking with them, for incineration, when the VTOL dusted off.
“He should have cottoned on long before now,” she said. “Do you think he’ll ever work out that the Leash is purely psychosomatic? That it’s nothing more than a saline solution?”
“Mm?” For a moment Masterton had been lost in thought.
Now he said, “I suppose so. Possibly, on the other hand, he already knows on some deep level. He merely needs the excuse for us to keep on poking him. Giving him some motivation and structure to his life.
“Then again, it’s just possible that he has some inkling of what’s really going on-that the Factions might be fighting out there in the stars, in other worlds and times, but they’re also fighting on other levels here and now. That thing that’s happening over there in Deseret, for example. He might have some idea of his place in all that. What the Factions-not only ours but the others too-plan for him to become.
“ Nuts to you, fucker, ” said the Testostorossa. “ Do you write? Do you call? Nah, not you. You’re off giving blow-jobs to soldier boys while bullets rain around me and nearly scratch my paintwork. ”
“Don’t start, all right?” said Eddie wearily. “Just don’t fucking start. I’ve had a rough few days.”
“ Oh, you poor fucking dear, ” said the Testostorossa. “ Want me to suck your fucking dick and make it all better? ”
“You know, it strikes me,” said Eddie, thoughtfully, “that someone who continually goes on about people being fags must have it on their minds all the time. Bit suspicious, if you ask me. Like, maybe they’re scared that they really, really like boys, but they can’t find a way of admitting it, even to themselves…”
“ What? ” said the Testostorossa.
The GenTech VTOL lumbered up into the air. A supercharged Testostorossa crossed the Arbitrary Base perimeter and headed down the access track. Heading south.
Somewhere quite close by, in the Nevada desert, something that had once been Trix Desoto gestated her young.
It would be some months before anything would come of this. It would be some while before the first one spoke.
Postscript: The Future
The High Priest was gripping the dame like an iced tea on a hot summer’s day… “Don’t do it, mister,” I yelled over the rising cacophony… The sky turned the colour of week-old vomit and the gate opened… I fired off one, two, three shots but it was too late… He had come unto us… the Blood God had arrived to eat the Earth.
“In the Night, He Comes” Spicy Detective January 1947