Bodyguard

16

“Once entrenched, new technology grows like an evil weed. Given sufficient time, it will overwhelm the garden of man and destroy that which sustains us. Our task is to identify the first twisted tendrils as they appear above the ground and destroy them before they can spread.”

From an “Ecological Manifesto,” by Hans Schmidt, father of the Radical Action Committee of the group known as Green Earth

Visiting hours started at 1000 standard and we were there when the doors opened. The women’s surgical ward was just that, a big open room with two rows of bio beds, each adjusted to meet that particular patient’s needs. Depending on what sort of surgery they had undergone or were about to have, the women lay on their backs, sides, or stomachs. Tubing and multi-colored wires snaked all around them. Most were miners, clearly identifiable by their short, easy-to-wash hair, but there was a scattering of spacers, tool heads, and freelancers as well. No corpies, though, since they had private rooms with hot and cold running robots to keep them comfy. My calf hurt where the drunk had chewed on it. I limped slightly as I made my way down the corridor.

The kid was located about halfway down the ward. Pull-out curtains screened her bed from the rest. Someone had combed her hair and given the bed permission to prop her up. Sasha was pale, and somewhat emaciated, but far better than when I’d seen her last. She managed a smile and held out her hand. It felt cold and weak. “Hi, Max. Hi, Joy. I like your dress.”

The little android squealed with pleasure, did cartwheels up the bed, and snuggled into Sasha’s lap. I perched on the edge. “Hi yourself. Howya feeling?”

“Like warmed-over vat slime. How do I look?”

“Never better,” I lied cheerfully.

“Liar,” she said equably. “They say I can bust out of here in three or four days.”

“Glad to hear it,” I replied. “We’ll have the apartment ready by then.”

She looked to see if I was serious. “Apartment? What apartment?”

“The one I rented this morning,” I said importantly. “Gotta have a place to stay, you know.”

Sasha frowned, and I saw the wheels start to turn. “That was thoughtful, Max, very thoughtful. Can we afford it?”

This was fun. I grinned. “Yup…my job pays pretty well.”

She looked genuinely surprised. “You’ve got a job?”

“Sure do. I’m the bouncer at a nightclub called Betty’s.”

I watched her absorb and process that piece of information. She looked up to where the bandana and hat covered the top of my head. “I like the fashion statement.”

I almost said, “That isn’t a fashion statement, it’s a disguise,” and realized my mistake. I nodded wisely. “Thanks, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“A very good idea,” Sasha said seriously. “I hope you’ll continue to think along those lines.”

I winked broadly. “Don’t worry, Mary. I will.”

Sasha rolled her eyes at the sound of the phony name. “Good. See that you do.”

I was about to respond with something witty when the bed interrupted. “The patient is tired. The patient is tired. Please leave now. Please leave now.” I felt a buzzing sensation under my butt. I stood. Joy ran to join me.

“Okay, okay. I’m leaving, already. Take care of yourself, Sash, I mean Mary, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

The kid smiled, held up a hand, and let her head fall back against the pillow. She managed to look pretty in spite of the eyepatch, pasty skin, and nonexistent makeup. Sasha was tough, you had to give her that, and I felt a sense of almost fatherly pride. I forced myself to leave.

The next couple of days developed into an almost pleasurable routine. Get up, shower, dump the fast-food containers left from the night before, drink two cups of Americano at the local expresso stand, visit Sasha in the hospital, and walk to work. Something I took seriously.

After some rather arduous thought, I discovered it is possible to handle most troublemakers without resorting to violence. The first step is to look intimidating. That’ll control about seventy or eighty per cent of your typical barroom yahoos right off the top. That’s why I took to wearing black leathers, chrome-plated chains, and a semipermanent sneer.

Of course, some drunks are talkers rather than fighters. Nine times out of ten you can bullshit them out the door, and as Betty likes to say, “Why fight if you don’t have to?”

Still, real honest-to-god barroom brawlers like to fight, and build their reps on how many bouncers they wax. The best way to deal with them is to launch a preemptive strike that is so unexpected, so violent, that they never have a chance. The trick is to sort them out from the rest of the crowd, and that’s what I was working on when trouble arrived.

The whole thing started about four hours into my shift. A few thousand miners had just come off duty, and two or three hundred of them had decided to spend some of their hard-earned pay at Betty’s. It wasn’t long before we had the usual number of arguments, squabbles, and scuffles. I sorted them out and took a break by the bar. Then something unusual happened. A set of honest-to-god, dyed-in-the-wool corpies walked through the doors, looked around, and headed for a recently vacated table.

I was clear across the room when they entered, but it was easy to tell who and what they were from the way they moved, and the greyhound-thin zombie that tagged along behind them. It didn’t take a genius to know they’d attract trouble. After all, miners have a tendency to blame corpies for everything from pressure leaks to the quality of their sex lives. I moved in and tried to see their faces, but the combination of smoke and heavy shadow made it difficult.

Nothing happened at first. The corpies ordered drinks, argued amongst themselves, and laughed at private jokes. Their zombie sat on the floor, rested her head against someone’s thigh, and stared into space. I wondered what she was thinking, if she was thinking, and how she’d wound up the way she was. I was still thinking about that when Betty came along.

“The rounds,” as Betty called them, were something she was known for. They were her personal touch, the way she made her club different from the rest, and built a loyal clientele at the same time. Such was her beauty, and the personality that went with it, that everyone wanted to know and be known by her.

Betty started by the autotellers, worked her way down along the bar, and drifted out onto the main floor. A robo-spot tracked her progress. Smoke eddied as it drifted through the light. Canned music thumped in the background. Betty knew the regulars, hundreds of them, and called them by name. All the rest were addressed as “honey, sweetie, or darling.”

“Murphy, nice to see you tonight…Rawlings, nice earrings. Where’d you get them? Hello, sweetie, welcome to Betty’s. Lopez, behave yourself tonight, Max is getting tired of throwing you out…”

And so it went until she approached the corpies. I tensed, hoping things would go well and sensing that they wouldn’t. She addressed their leader. He had his back turned in my direction. Her voice was husky sweet and carried over the noise. “Hi, honey, how are you tonight?”

“Horny as hell,” came the answer. “Why don’t you sit on my lap?”

I saw Betty frown and was already in motion when she replied. “Thanks, sweetie, but not right now. Some other time, maybe.”

I was halfway there when a hand grabbed Betty’s arm and pulled her down. She struggled but he held her down. “What’s the problem, bitch? You hard of hearing or something? I said sit on my lap.”

I approached from behind, looped the garrote around his neck, and pulled the handles in opposite directions. He let go of Betty and reached for the wire. She stood and I released the handles. The garrote fell away as the man turned in my direction. That’s when I realized that we’d met before.

It was Curt, the same Curt I’d called “pretty boy” back on Earth, though his looks had deteriorated since I’d blown half his nose away. The docs had done a good job on him, but it would take time and more operations before anyone called him “pretty” again.

I waited for him to recognize me, but the disguise worked. You could see it in his eyes. He didn’t know who the hell I was outside of some jerk that he wanted to hurt. Yeah, Curt was pissed, seriously pissed, and he started to rise. I hit his already damaged nose, felt it break, and grinned.

“Max! Max! Over here!” I turned to find that one of Curt’s bodyguards was on his feet. He was struggling to peel Joy off his face with one hand while reaching for his gun with the other. I measured the distance, kicked him in the balls, and watched him go down. That was a mistake.

The third corpie, a woman this time, executed a textbook-perfect spin-kick and hit me in the side of the head. I stumbled backwards, felt the zombie hit the back of my knees, and fell over backwards. The floor hit hard. The corpie was still celebrating when the bartender sapped her from behind. She slumped to the floor. I got up. The room tilted, swayed from side to side, and stabilized. I turned to the bartender. “Thanks.”

He shrugged and slipped the sap into a pocket. “I did it for Betty.” I nodded my understanding.

Some of the regulars grabbed the corpies, roughed them up, and carried them towards the doors. Curt, supported by a miner on each side, held his nose with one hand and pointed towards me with the other. Blood dripped off his chin. “Mgmpf!”

It didn’t make sense, but I understood. He planned to kill me, or have me killed, whichever was most convenient. I shrugged. So what else was new? The bastard had tried to grease me for months now.

The miners split into teams, vied to see which group could throw their corpie the furthest, and cheered their scores. It would have been fun to watch, except that a group of drunks had corralled the zombie and were pushing her around. She offered no resistance and bounced from one person to the next. She had a nice figure, and at least two members of the crowd were taking unfair advantage of that fact.

I walked over, thanked the miners for their help, and sent them to the bar for a free drink. The miners grumbled but obeyed. They were afraid not to. The zombie gazed at me through vacant eyes. I took her leash, led her outside, and gave control to a Zeeb. He frowned, started to say something, thought better of it, and led the zombie towards her master.

In spite of the fact that Zeebs aren’t exactly known for their humanitarian efforts, four of them had gathered around Curt and were loading him onto a stretcher. After all, corpies outrank everyone, Trans-Solar owned the company they worked for, and if it hadn’t been for the money that Betty paid them to stay off her back, the Zeebs would have hammered me right then and there. But they’d remember, yes they would, and the bill would eventually come due.

I turned and went back inside. My head hurt, and one eye had started to close. It was too bad, really, because if my vision had been unimpaired I might have seen the greenies and been prepared for what happened later. But I didn’t and wasn’t.

Two days passed. Days in which Curt could have sought revenge but didn’t. Sasha was released from the hospital. I took her home to the apartment. It was a one-room affair, similar to my pad on Earth, though a good deal cleaner. I was proud of the artificial roses on the fold-down table and hoped she’d like them. “So,” I said, gesturing to the room, the blanket that divided her sleeping space from mine and the miniscule kitchen, “what do you think?”

“I think it’s wonderful,” Sasha said sincerely. “And I love the roses. Thank you.”

My heart swelled with pride. “She liked it! Not only that, but I found and paid for it all by myself! Well, almost by myself, since Joy had helped.

Life was good, truly good, or so I thought as I left for work. Sasha was better, the worst was behind us, and the end of the assignment was in sight. Yeah, right.

The club was half empty when I got there, with only a scattering of customers left over from the first shift. I grabbed a cup of really bad coffee from the bar, sauntered over to my favorite stainless-steel table, and took a seat. I hadn’t been there for more than a moment before a man sidled up, pulled over a chair, and sat down. I was just about to snarl at him when I saw who it was. An ugly orange jumpsuit had replaced the green coat, but the man was the same. Still combed, still serious, and still Nigel Trask, greenie extraordinaire. He smiled, and the frown lines vanished. “Hello, Mr. Maxon. We meet again.”

I lifted my coffee cup in a mock salute. “We certainly do. Take a hike.”

Trask spread his hands on the tabletop. “Now, is that any way to speak to someone who traveled halfway across the solar system to see you?”

I got to my feet. “You people are nuts. First you try to kill me, then you want to talk. Get out before I throw you out.”

Trask stood. “All right, take it easy. The Mars thing was a mistake. I opposed it, but the locals disobeyed my orders.”

“They sure as hell did. Now get out. I won’t say it again.”

Trask backed away. “Okay, okay. But Trans-Solar knows you’re here, and would’ve nailed you too, if Curt was smarter. One of us will get you, Maxon, mark my words, and we’re nicer than they are.”

I stepped forward. He turned and walked away. I watched him go. Things were getting complicated, real complicated, and Sasha would want to know. I resolved to tell her the moment that I went off duty.

Time passed. The second shift got off and flooded in through the doors. I kept a sharp eye out for Curt, his friends, and anyone who looked like a popper. I saw some, but they were regulars. I watched them anyway.

A fight broke out. I cleared it. A spacer threatened to commit suicide. Betty and I talked her out of it. A miner slapped his girlfriend. I decked him. Then, just as I was helping him up off the floor, all hell broke loose.

A chair flew through the air. Insults were exchanged. Fists started to fly. I pushed and shoved my way through the quickly gathering crowd. When I reached the center of the disturbance, I found that four men were pushing each other around. Not fighting, mind you, just shoving the way kids do, and calling each other names. I was just about to break it up when they turned on me.

What ensued was quick, professional, and well coordinated. A man wrapped his arms around my chest, smiled, and blew mint-fresh breath in my face. I tried to move and found that I couldn’t. My feet were lifted clear of the ground. Something bit my left thigh. My thoughts slid apart, reassembled themselves in strange ways, and swirled as the chemicals pulled me downwards. Complete and total darkness followed.

I awoke to the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Not all at once, mind you, but gradually, until I wanted a steaming hot cup of Americano in the worst possible way.

It seemed as though my eyes were glued shut. It took a conscious effort to force them open. First the right, then the left. The picture was bleary. I blinked it clear. A room full of empty desks, computer consoles, and office equipment surrounded me. The clutter gave the impression of employees who might return at any moment. Curt sat two feet in front of me. A bandage covered the bridge of his nose. A thin red line signaled where the garrote had been buried in his neck. I sensed people behind me but couldn’t see them. My arms and legs were bound to a chair. The lifer nodded pleasantly and took a sip of coffee. “Well, look who decided to join us. Welcome back.”

I tried to muster a smart-assed reply but couldn’t seem to come up with one. Curt nodded understandingly. “A little short on repartee? That’s too bad, but nothing to be ashamed of, considering your low IQ.”

Curt took another sip of coffee and gestured with his cup. “Tell me something, Max, how smart are you, anyway? Nothing to say? Well, the experts say you have an IQ of about eighty, realizing that most people score between ninety and a hundred. Not too good, is it? Nothing like the 124 you scored prior to joining the Mishimuto Marines. They say you were one smart hombre back then, until you checked into a research station called T-12 that is, and had your ass kicked. Do you remember T-12?”

I mustered some saliva and used it to moisten my mouth. “Yeah, sort of.”

Curt nodded agreeably. “I thought so. And after your capture? Do you remember what happened then?”

I tried to shrug. The ropes made it difficult. “Bits and pieces. Nothing much.”

“And the girl? What did she tell you?”

I thought of Sasha and whatever it was that she’d been hiding. “I asked but she didn’t tell me anything.”

Curt placed his coffee cup on a table and leaned back in his chair. “Not too surprising, because if she told you the truth you’d run to us instead of away from us.”

I felt an almost overwhelming need to know what he knew, to be in on the secret, to understand my past. “I would?”

“Yes,” Curt replied quietly, “you would. Here’s what Sasha Casad doesn’t want you to know…Her mother, a more than competent physicist named Marsha Casad, worked for a company called Protech. She and a group of other scientists came up with a breakthrough, something worth a lot of money, and were just about to cash in on it when the war started. We know, because one of her closest associates was employed by us. Unfortunately for Dr. Casad and her fellow entrepreneurs, Protech was taken over by rank-and-file employees, and the scientists had little choice but to go along for the ride. A ride that started guess where?”

“On an asteroid called T-12?”

Curt pointed a finger in my direction. “Bingo! Not bad for an idiot. So, along comes Captain Maxon and his gung-ho Marines. They attack, get waxed, and the survivors wind up as prisoners.”

Curt leaned forward so the front legs of his chair hit the floor with a thump. “Now pay attention, Maxon, because this is the interesting part. It seems that Marsha Casad and her scientist friends had no desire to share their newfound discovery with the great unwashed horde. But where to hide it? In the computers that any tool head worth his or her salt could hack? On cubes the unionists could check? No, they needed something better, a hiding place where no one would ever think to look.”

I waited for Curt to continue, but he shook his head and smiled. He wanted me to think of it, to solve the puzzle with what was left of my brain, to…My god! That was it! The bastards had stored their data in my brain! Had used me as a zombie, or a near zombie, leaving just enough mental capacity to survive.

Curt saw the understanding fill my eyes and laughed. “That’s right, stupid. Sasha Casad was guarding you rather than the other way around. She may not look very imposing, but Sasha Casad has been in training for this mission since she was born.”

It all came back. The countless times when Sasha had been more competent than she should’ve been, when people came after me instead of her, when I should’ve smelled a rat. But not me, oh no, I was too stupid for that.

I fought the bonds, tried to pull free, but hands gripped my shoulders. Curt waggled a finger in my direction. “Naughty, naughty! We wouldn’t want to damage that shiny little head, now would we? Not after all we’ve been through. There were others, you know. Backups. A man and a woman. The man committed suicide shortly after discharge. I found the woman in a mental institution. Our shrinks siphoned a lot of crap out of her head, but very little of it made sense. That’s the trouble with schizos. They make piss-poor storage modules. The R &D types are working on that. We have high hopes for you, though.”

I remembered the greenie called Philip Bey, how he’d told me about the others, and how Sasha had refused to comment. The rotten little bitch. I struggled but the ropes held me in place.

“So,” Curt said, getting to his feet, and cracking his knuckles. “Enough of this bullshit. First, I’m going to break your nose. Then we’re going to drain your brain, dump the data to my pet zombie, and beat Protech to the punch. Adios, asshole.”

Curt planted his feet, pulled his fist back, and swung. I tipped my head forward, felt the impact on the top of my skull, and heard him scream. He was still dancing around holding his broken hand when a tox dart took him in the neck. He looked surprised, tried to say something, and collapsed.

I heard a commotion, tried to turn, and felt the hands leave my shoulders. Someone yelled, “Shoot her!” and swore as he took a dart. Feet scuffled, dart guns hissed, and bodies thumped as they hit the floor. That was when Joy appeared next to my knee, scrambled onto my lap, and went to work on my bonds. She was her usual exuberant self.

“Damn boss…you get yourself into the most amazing situations! I followed you here, called Sasha, and hung around until she arrived. Sorry it took so long. Are you okay?”

The last of the ropes fell away. I stood. My wrists hurt. I rubbed them to restore the circulation. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks to you.”

Joy giggled happily, made her way up to my shoulder, and grabbed my ear. I turned to find three bodies sprawled on the floor, the zombie huddled in a corner, and Sasha going through someone’s wallet. “What the hell are you doing?”

She didn’t even glance in my direction. “Borrowing some money so we can get the hell out of here.”

I shook my head. “The farce is over, Sasha. Curt told me all about it. How your mother used me, how you lied, the whole thing.”

Sasha looked up. I couldn’t place her expression. Was it concern I saw? Relief? Or another part of the performance she’d been trained to give? There was no way to know. “I’m sorry, Max, I really am. I wanted to tell but promised I wouldn’t.”

I searched for the words that would tell her how much it hurt, how much I hated her guts, but couldn’t find them. So I walked to the door, stepped through, and heard it close behind me.

I walked for a long time. Through the residential areas good and bad, past the heavily guarded scientific section, and out into the cathedral-sized atrium. It was one of those things that the corpies hated to pay for, but did because the shrinks said the workers would go bonkers if they didn’t.

The park consisted of carefully maintained flower gardens, patches of green grass, and gravel-covered paths. The gravel had been coated with white paint, but most of it had worn off. Genetically engineered trees grew around the edges and softened the hard gray rock behind them.

It occurred to me that the vegetation served to supply supplemental oxygen as well, and I wondered where the thought had come from. How did I know that? Was I as stupid as Curt said? What part was me and what part wasn’t? My thoughts whirled, and my head started to hurt.

People strolled around me, clustering around the trees as if seeking strength from them, or shelter from the duraplast sky.

A pair of Zeebs, both women, looked my way, invented a “chrome-headed weirdo with a robot on his shoulder” category, and dropped me inside it. They subvocalized to each other and watched me from the corners of their eyes as they passed.

I sat on a park bench, tried to look normal, and let my chin rest on a fist. The knowledge of what had been done to my head, what had been hidden in my brain, weighed heavily and increased the pain. I forced myself to think, to wonder what it was that Sasha’s mother had sacrificed my life to, and if I would approve of it. What had she hidden there, at the center of my being? A medical miracle? A doomsday weapon? And what should I do about it? Blow my brains out? Make my way back to Earth? What?

A bright red ball rolled towards me and came to rest against my foot. A little boy ran up, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and said, “Ball. My ball.”

I forced a smile and toed the ball in his direction. He picked it up, said, “My ball” again, and ran away.

“My ball.” The words seemed to echo through my mind, transformed themselves into “my head,” and refused to go away.

Suddenly I had it, one of those wonderful moments of clarity that had rescued me in the past, and knew what I wanted to do. Must do. My head belonged to me, damn it, regardless of what Marsha Casad had stashed there, and I would decide whether it would be released or not. So, given the fact that the greenies didn’t seem to know much more than I did, and Curt wasn’t about to tell, I had little choice but to obtain the information from Sasha’s mother. And do so without getting caught, brain-drained, or killed. All of which reminded me of Sasha, my little bodyguard, liar, and corpie-in-training. I would use her just as she had used me.

The decision felt good. I grinned, scared the hell out of a little girl, and headed for our apartment. Dr. Casad had sent for me, and I was on the way.