COSMOS magazine

Monday, July 7

He eased out of the mortuary, dressed in mismatched stolen items, creeping from a side door that creaked noisily. As he'd hoped, though, no alarm burst into shrieking life; the system would be set against intrusion as the last of the staff left. Nobody expected the dead to escape.

Wayne found each step excruciating. Cells strained to reconstruct their original order and improve upon it. To add to his misery, he had to stop twice and throw up. He remembered what Paul Gibson had said about the possible side effects of the drug without the second regulator shot, and wondered sourly if he was going to die a second time.

In his misery Wayne Elliot almost longed for the cessation of all pain that death would bring, that it had brought him once, if only for a timeless interval that now was done. Perhaps religious teachings about death were true, and he'd get to see Melody again. He tried to remember being dead. He had not met her then, he felt sure. No, he had a mission to complete, a reason to stay alive. Blick, he thought, and the name was a curse and an anathema. Rutherford and Blick. But Rutherford was dead.

He found a half-empty dumpster full of rags behind an upholstery store and lay in it nearly torpid until morning. His thinking was too muddled for long-range planning; he hoped only to scrounge something to eat and drink and find a safe place to spend the next few days. He had no idea where he was, where he'd awakened. Houston, probably. The county morgue, maybe.

A pushcart vendor ringing an annoying bell woke him, gave him an aging tuna sandwich for free, and told him about The Edge, in San Antonio.

 

A scab on the edge of San Antonio's central business district, The Edge Community had been started by a homeless woman who built a rough shelter out of scrap sheet metal on a vacant tract of land at the intersection of three huge freeway overpasses. The city had left the unattractive zone for use eventually as parking, but never developed it. While the founding woman had long since moved on, people kept coming. It was one of the few places in the city you could camp without being hassled by the cops, with the added benefit that the river ran past and provided enough water for drinking and cooking, after boiling, and for bathing if you weren't fastidious. The surly inhabitants of the Edge had never been known for their cleanliness.

As knowledge of The Edge spread and its mostly transient population grew, the level of violence and its frequency increased. Police took sporadic action, but found life easier if the vagrants gathered themselves together. But following the rape of a young woman and her ten year old daughter, one of the longer-time residents decided to do something to improve living conditions. A large, handsome man known only as Curt, he posted a set of rules and enlisted the help of several other residents to enforce them. Within a month, The Edge was transformed into a safe, comparatively clean place to stay. Within six months, Curt was undisputed leader. People began calling him King Curt.

"Sounds like the place for me to hide out," Wayne told the vendor.

"Hey, you go see my buddy when you get there. Yusuf. I teach him how to make a living. Poor bastard, they lock him up in prison eight months. Why? Because he African refugee but follow Islam. Here for years, they lock him up. Bastards!"

Monday, July 7

James Branigan settled back for the flight, a china plate of hors d'oeuvres by his side. He had expected the reading material to deal with current genetic engineering; but instead it was political theory in date order of publication, beginning with The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli and ending with an article titled "A New Definition of Negotiating Power," apparently copied from an academic journal. He sank into his assigned reading, scarcely surfaced until the airport limousine dropped him off in San Miguel.

When Franz the butler ushered James into Blick's underground office, with its ancient Persian carpet that could properly have hung in a museum, Blick was already at his antique mahogany desk. Without rising, he waved James to a nearby chair.

"You read the material I sent you." Blick was not one for elaborate greetings.

"Naturally."

"Tell me, then, what do you think of the notion of using fear as a uniting force?"

James frowned. "Those psychological studies do indicate fear as a primary motivator. People are more likely to avoid what they dread," he said, "than to seek whatever it is they believe they want."

"And what do you think people fear the most?"

James mentally searched through the huge mass of new information he had just absorbed. "Machiavelli mentions swift and severe punishment. Actually—" he allowed himself to smile "—one of the psych papers claimed that people fear public speaking even more than death."

Bruce, though, did not find the comparison amusing. "And well they might. To make oneself ridiculous in front of the tribe could result in expulsion and awful suffering, before subsequent death. To be different. To stand out. Wouldn't you think?"

"I don't know about that. I should think most people would be more afraid of ten lashes with a whip than being laughed at."

A small dark skinned girl of sixteen or seventeen appeared at the open doorway. "Mr. Blick, your lunch is ready," she said timidly.

"Thank you, Almaz. James, the reason I asked you to come all the way down here today is that I want you to put together a public relations campaign of fear. I want people so afraid of genetic engineering they'd jump off a hundred and ten storey building to get away from it."

James felt his mouth clamp tight. It was typical of Blick that to make his point he could draw without a qualm upon so frightful a memory as the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York. He forced his expression into neutrality, nodded, rose and took his leave. There had never been the least chance that Blick would invite him to share luncheon.

Monday, July 7

A noisy bunch of small children were playing outside at Li'l Tykes Daycare when Wayne passed, and he stopped for a moment to watch them. He and Melody might have had children, if she'd lived. I hope you don't hold it against me, Baby, what I'm fixing to do now. I hope you understand.

But Melody was dead and buried, and it was time to bid her farewell at last. And Fern, too, was now part of his past. She had seen him die; kinder to let her go her own way without troubling her dreams. That decision grieved him terribly, he found.

He remembered the days when he and Fern were first going out together, how his heart would lift when he saw her little blue car coming to pick him up from work. Fern had been nothing but sweet to him all these years, and he'd paid her back cruelly. Surely he'd do things differently if he had them to do over again, but there could be no turning back now. He had burned those bridges. To Fern he was dead, and he must remain dead.

He stole a black Ford Focus two blocks from the mortuary, drove carefully, stopped after an hour to buy gas on the outskirts of Sealy. The girl at the cash register glanced at his ill-fitting medical scrubs and rubber boots, and he diverted her with a charming smile as he leaned across the counter. His right hand with its sweet new fingers flashed into the register and seized a handful of notes with blinding speed. He cursed his luck in sleeping in an upholstery store dumpster instead of a clothing store, and swore to find a Goodwill store. No need to pay them for less conspicuous clothing, either, if he was quick enough.

At the edge of the parking area a man wearing cowboy boots and hat had set up a display of purses, silver buckled belts, rugs, bright blouses and scarves under a red-stencilled banner: "BARGAIN SALES." Fern liked to wear a scarf around her neck to add a touch of colour. Wayne picked one out in chartreuse with bright orange tropical flowers, and paid the cowboy $3.50. If he mailed it today, anonymously, she should get it before the end of the week. Yes, she thought he was dead and he would stay dead, no need to screw up her life any further. But she'd be touched, he sensed, by a gift arriving from nowhere. Maybe she'd assume he mailed it before the cops had cut him down.

He stopped at the post office in Luling, and marvelled at how alive he felt, waiting in line with six other people. Oddly, nobody gave him a second glance; no one had the slightest suspicion of what he had done in the past, or what he planned to do now. Still, he worried. People might remember seeing a brown haired man of medium height. Maybe he should try a disguise, dye his hair, wear a fake beard and glasses. Or something more drastic.

FBI Wanted posters were pinned on the bulletin board. Christ, his own name and photograph might be there, if he was unlucky. His gaze passed with lightning speed across the board. Some of the fugitives were shown in several different views—long haired, short haired, bearded and clean shaven. His own face was not on display. Wayne smiled to himself at the antics some of these clowns got up to. One guy, he saw, a Horace Cleburg, sometimes posed as a meek little grey haired woman; looked like someone's kindly grandmother. Well, he'd done it himself and gotten away with it. He mailed his package, checked his wallet. Just enough stolen cash to replenish the nearly empty gas tank.

A somewhat dubious Hispanic woman with an alert pitbull paused for a moment on the sidewalk at his enquiry and advised him to try Seguin for inexpensive clothing. It was on the way to San Antonio, she told him, pretending not to see her dog take a shit on someone's front lawn.

In the Plaza del Rey Shopping Center in Seguin, he found two large dumpsters to one side of the Goodwill store, emblazoned with warnings against placing perishable foodstuffs or explosive devices inside, nor to sleep therein. He foraged out a shirt, trousers and, luckily, a pair of worn-down shoes only one size too large. He pulled on an extra pair of hideous socks, despite the prickly heat. A passerby or two looked away, embarrassed for him.

Back on Interstate Highway 10, Wayne mused on his plans. Stay in hiding, he thought. Get in touch with Roberta Treadwell. They owed him, he told himself. He'd looked after the kid, hadn't he? It would work, he thought, as long as they didn't turn him in to the cops. Just long enough to get the third shot. Long enough, after that, to hunt down that bastard Blick.

Monday, July 7

Drew leaned across his girlfriend's plate of chicken-fried steak and grinned shyly. "I ran blood tests on me and Maureen, Roberta. I have you to thank for my life."

She stared, then smiled back. "Not at all. You're an ornament to your profession and our labs, Dr. Chang, sir. Why, without you—"

"No, he means it literally," Maureen Baumgarten told her.

"AUX-2," Drew said. "We're both carrying it. You too, I assume. I'll need a cell sample from you tomorrow, bucal smear should do, we'll look at it under the mike and put it through the scanner if you're showing 48 chromosomes."

"How could you possibly—"

"You infected him with the auxosome."

"From the mice," Drew said. He picked up his knife and fork once more.

Maureen grinned. "You didn't think he came back from the edge of the grave because Alyssa prayed for him, I hope?"

"I—What?" But the image presented it to her as if she were standing back and watching: Drew, nine parts dead, his breathing in the charge of brute machine. Herself leaning across his still face, tears dripping from her eyes and welling on his cheek.

"Oh my god," she said. "I did. I gave it to you."

"And nobody's ever been happier to catch a strange disease," Drew said, holding out his hand and taking hers, squeezing it tightly. After a moment, Maureen joined her hand to theirs.

"You're very welcome," Roberta told them both. She found she was weeping again.