Everybody Scream! (39 page)

“Off Colon, maybe. She still might have had them herself, too.”

“Why wouldn’t they have just shot her with the rest?”

“They’re sadists! They throw acid in their own women’s faces! Let’s find these bastards and grab ‘em if they’re still here!”

“Mitch. We can’t cuff Red Jihad. I’ll put a call in about the possibility and let the authorities contact their embassy.”

“Are you
insane
?” Mitch snarled at Sophi, not even seeing Del through his rage-inflated eyes. “Why not stand around and watch ‘em slit babies’ throats, next?”

“I’ll
call
, Mitch. I hadn’t considered the significance of Habash...it’s a possibility, alright? But I don’t want you cuffing them–it’s too dangerous.”

“You’re afraid!”

“Next year we’ll open up and the first night a bomb will level the fair. Then what will the body count be, Mitch? I will call the authorities, alright? And you will respect my judgement. You work for me.”

“Not any more.” Out of his rear pants pocket Mitch Garnet pulled his billfold like a gun, slid out his security badge and flicked it past Sophi. It clattered. From another pocket came his hand phone. It clattered onto a desk, bounced off onto the floor to clatter some more. Del almost expected the gun with its explosive bullets to follow but should have known better.

“Mitch, come on,” he said, “calm down...”

“I don’t want your impotent, meaningless job. I’ll call my grandmother–maybe she’ll do it for you.” And Mitch stormed past the others on his way out. Even Mrs. Horowitz paused from her wails and accusations to watch him slam the door.

Sophi and Del looked at each other. “He’ll mellow down,” said Del.

“He’s a cement-head fucking fanatic.”

“He cares.”

“He isn’t being realistic. Look how he talked to me! And you didn’t say anything!”

“Hey, you’re the boss, as you so often remind me.”

“And I’m your wife!”

“Oh-ho-ho.”

“Blast you, Del. Alright?”

“Everyone’s wired. We’ll all calm down. Just stay mellow yourself, will ya?”

Dingo approached them now. “The latest developments. I called down to the gate guards about the Red Jihad. No one saw them come or go around the times the victims would have been killed. And they’ve left...right around when Horowitz died.”

“See?” Sophi told Del, lifting her chin defiantly. “That scared them off. Why didn’t shooting the other five scare them off, if they did it?”

“Hey, it’s Mitch’s theory, not mine.”

“Also,” Dingo continued, “I described Horowitz over the phone and one of the gate boys thinks he remembers her; red hair and all. Disoriented, he said, like she was drunk. He asked her to show her hand stamp so she could come back in. He’s not sure on the time but it was shortly before we got called down to the Spinnet. I asked him to come to the morgue.”

“Good.”

“Thing is, she came in alone.”

“No Red Jihad with her?”

“Alone.”

“Good work, Dingo, stay on it,” said Del.

“Couldn’t have been the R.J.s,” said Sophi. “Mitch is shorting his circuits. Looks like you’ll be my new top security man, Dingo.”

“What?”

“Sophi,” said Del, angry.

“He quit.”

“Give him a chance to calm down, will you? Man!”

“Mitch quit?” said Dingo.

“He’s just frustrated–we all are. Too bad you were a few seconds too late, Dingo–Mitch is sure the Red Jihad did all this. I don’t know if he’s gone out to look for them or if he’s back at the med trailer but I’m sure as hell glad they left.”

“I’ll call him.”

“He left his phone. Don’t worry, he’ll calm down...he just needs to get away from all the screaming.”

“So do I,” said Sophi. Now one of the two police detectives approached, having slipped away from the blast furnace of Mrs. Horowitz’s anguish to find out what the latest developments were, and why Mitch had stormed out.

“Remind me never to marry a Jew,” he said confidentially, smirking around the cigarette he was lighting. “She isn’t gonna lose her daughter without some kind of reimbursement in money to make it worth something.”

Del Kahn sighed irritably. He was primarily Jewish himself. Why shouldn’t a bereaved parent want to lash out at something tangible? He would have wanted to own the carnival too. But then, only so he could burn it down.

Sophi called into town. It took twenty minutes to get hold of someone in authority. Her request to shut down the annual Paxton Fair early was denied.

At the edge of the grounds was a large building especially constructed for the fair, two stories high, which museum-like exhibited most of the entries in the various agricultural, craft, and art contests which had taken place throughout the season. There was a stage outside where some of the exposition and judging had taken place, and a few days ago a mind-reader/hypnotist (a telepath somewhat more gifted than Sneezy Tightrope) had entertained there, calling up members of a large audience seated on benches. At present the stage was a barren wharf, a few teenagers sitting on its edge or far under it, smoking and drinking quietly.

Inside, the mood was similar, if brighter. On the second floor Hector Tomas found much to engage his interest, but there were only two couples with him in this single, immense, barn-like room. Near the stairs where he had first come up were the framed, hanging prize-winners in the various art and photography contests. A fraction of it was impressive, most was pedestrian, several deserved ribbons but the prize-winning status of some of the artwork was incomprehensible to him. It wasn’t a matter of style–he had very eclectic taste in art–but of talent, skill. All the people in Punktown and this was the best they could offer? Either not many people were to be bothered creating art these days, or else the deep Punktowners kept to their own galleries and had left this contest, less sophisticated, less chic, to the outer dwellers.

Much of the photography was so good as to be professional, but aside from composition and subject the technology took care of that. What most compelled him were the quaint displays of knitted sweaters, wood projects, floral arrangements, other crafts spread on nearby tables. A lot of the wood pieces were lovely and he would have liked to purchase them. There were tables spread with plastic-covered prize-winning pies and pastries, bread and various dishes. A tall bookshelf-like rack held a great many canned and pickled goods in pretty colors; red, pink, purple, amber, green, luminous with the gelatinous translucency of whatever it was inside them. This floor made him feel peaceful, gratified, as had the floor below with its agricultural displays: flowers, vegetables, fruits, plants. The care, the dedication. Who were the people who took the time to do these things? He didn’t know them. Even the poor art was done with pride and love. Was it where they lived–on the periphery of the vast city–that inspired this patient dedication, or simply that in the deep of town there were too many stressful, loud distractions for him to notice this kind of thing? Both, probably. But he thought, seriously, that maybe the best thing for him now would be to move out this way. What must it have been like once, when these items were more commonplace, more utilized, than novel or decorative as they chiefly were now? He would have liked to have lived amongst the pre-colonial Chooms, he fantasized. That was a nearer daydream than Earth’s ancient, similarly quaint and homey times.

Did the woman who made this prize-winning pie cheat on her husband, or snort gold-dust, or dress in leather and whip her nameless lovers? Did the man who made this bench molest his own daughter? Were these real expressions? Could he dare trust the hope they seemed to symbolize to him…of passions which didn’t involve greed and lust and avarice?

By the time he decided to descend back to the room below, the second floor was empty but for him and a seated woman reading a magazine who was no doubt meant as a guardian lest someone steal a prize-winning cookie.

Previously below he had marveled at sunflowers from Earth, never having seen them before–taller than he was, with maned heads like lions. Children had painted or carved jack-o-lanterns out of pumpkins and native gourds, displayed on one table. Another held hideously warped and deformed gourds, like cancerous organs ripped out of giants for exhibition, in an ugly gourd contest. Fortunately, he reflected, this fair hadn’t tolerated a contest to create the most hideous, mutated version of a rabbit, pig, cow or other such domestic animal as he had seen as a teenager at several other fairs. The person who could create the most absurdly grotesque creature which could remain alive without artificial life support would win, so long as the “artist” worked within certain nonprofessional technological limits.

Again, questions stirred in Hector’s mind as he once more scanned the spread fruits and vegetables, potted plants and flowers, relishing the near empty quiet of this place. The
work
. The dedication. So important to these people, so meaningless to others. But then, even the greatest art, the greatest books, might be burned by some just to have something to toast wieners over to go with their beers. People would never agree on what was of value. And wasn’t the growing of vegetables just as primal and mindless an instinct as the desire to do drugs, copulate and spin in a loud colorful machine? It was just a matter of quiet animals and wild playful animals, Hector thought. Animals. We are just that. He thought of the Bedbugs...and of their huge, horrifying stockyard...

Turning, he gasped out loud against his will. A bizarre coincidence, or had that thought been a weird premonition? Through the dangling vegetation of hanging potted plants, luckily shielding him, he saw them. There were three of them. One had the strange device he had decided was a camera, and was no doubt the same being he had watched photographing the mysterious insectoid leg. They were standing around a row of cages on a low table, each containing several birds of a kind that Hector had never seen before. Apparently they laid small but delectable eggs, yet that hadn’t stirred his memory either. The birds had just flown into a crazed uproar, fluttering in their cages like moths in a spider web, honking frantically. Hector remembered them as being a little smaller than chickens, gray with iridescent wings, pigeon-like in that regard, but with tapir-like snouts rather than hard beaks. As he watched, the Bedbugs began to buzz and chatter in an odd clicking code to each other.

Hector had come here aimlessly, but wondered now vaguely if maybe some other instinct had guided him. Some submerged, half-formed knowledge...or linkage.

The three black, beetle-like entities moved on, briefly examined the display of mutant gourds, luxuriantly ghastly. The odd birds, however, showed no sign of calming down yet. One of the Bedbugs turned to look back at them, causing Hector to flinch and attempt to appear inconspicuous as its gaze swept across him. After some more clicks and buzzing the three beings made their way toward the exit. It was obvious to Hector that they didn’t care to draw attention to themselves.

Why did he feel this strange
need
to follow after them–almost a desperate tugging? He started out from his shelter of leaves, but his eyes were drawn to a man he had barely acknowledged before–small, pot-bellied, dressed in a tropical shirt and white shorts, with a high balding sunburnt forehead. The man had also started a few steps after the Bedbugs as they left the building, coming out from where he had been standing previously behind the towering sunflowers, his shirt like camouflage...but now he stopped in his tracks dazedly, open-mouthed. Staring out of the building. Hector was oddly perplexed by him, but would have moved swiftly past him out of the exhibition hall (and where then?) had the man not suddenly collapsed limply. Hector found himself surging to him, crouching by him. An old Choom woman nearby glanced over sourly and clucked her tongue. The tapir-nosed birds still honked and fluttered behind Hector.

He saw thick, almost blackish blood running out of the man’s nostrils, into his mouth. His temples throbbed visibly–alarmingly. The man’s eyes rolled up to meet Hector’s eyes, and a hand grasped Hector’s wrist. Hector glanced longingly after the Bedbugs but they were already gone. Had they glimpsed him, had that been it after all, not the noisy birds? Had they seen his Theta researcher’s black jacket and recognized it as such?

The man was mumbling, squeezing more urgently for Hector’s attention. Hector said to the old woman, “Could you call for an ambulance, please? There’s a medical trailer here...”