Everybody Scream! (8 page)

Was it just their constant exposure to animal pain and suffering? A defense? No, not necessarily. The head vet, who had put Hector’s husky to sleep, had had tears in his eyes when Hector’s mother sobbed over her dog which he had just put to death, and Hector’s cousin had told him that the woman behind the counter at her vet had cried along with her when her dog didn’t survive efforts to save it after a hit and run. It wasn’t the job; it was the type of human.

Years ago, a friend attending med school had told him that doctors sometimes laughed behind the backs of some of their more amusing patients, trading stories. They were only human, the med student chuckled in their defense. It didn’t sit so well with Hector, who didn’t believe it was unrealistically idealistic to expect doctors to be ethical, professional and dignified.

Hector had once heard that at a burn unit for children much of the staff commonly referred to the children as “crispy critters”; this was said to be a defense mechanism to keep the staff from becoming too involved, too unglued. Hector had never forgotten it. Did he simply expect too much of people?

He wanted so badly, so
badly
to turn around in his seat and say to them that he would never bring his animals to that hospital again, and that he intended to write an editorial about this experience for a newspaper. But they would only laugh, sneer, tell him to fuck off. They couldn’t possibly be made to feel ashamed. Hector said nothing, his attempt at a peaceful breakfast treat rotted.

Hector grew alert and watched them when they got up and left. He was really shocked at how pretty they were; he had expected this from their shallowness and smugness, but most of them were actually glamorous, could have been models, in tight gray skirts, long hair, ruffled blouses. Heels. Early twenties. Not one of them yet in her uniform. The money had to be good, was the only thing Hector could figure. He had shaken his head with disbelief during their story, but none had noticed him then or noticed him now as they filed out in a cloud of perfume. Hector was filled with a despairing contempt.

Hector drove his expensive vehicle on autopilot; as a Theta researcher he had made good money. He read the newspaper, a hard copy printed off his car’s computer. It was, as always, an encyclopedia of horrors. On one page alone there was a father who had killed three of his children and wounded one, killed his ex-wife and his brother’s ex-wife and her new boyfriend (he was distraught, poor father, that he had lost a custody battle for the children), another man who had stabbed his wife and sixteen-year-old son to death (there was “blood all over” from the struggle with the poor boy, who was found at the foot of the living room stairs), and a boy being tried for stabbing his grandmother with a knitting needle and beating her to death because she wouldn’t lend him money (he gave his girlfriend some of his grandmother’s rings to wear, sweet boy, as if they were heirlooms passed down to him). A single newspaper page often held even greater horrors, but it was notable that all three of these cases were linked by family violence. The hell of disharmony.

Hector could scarcely believe that there could still be a population in Punktown with all this violence. To think that one or two towns in this country, Duplam, had even higher percentages of violent crime. Why did he torment himself with the paper? He swore, one day soon he was going to lock himself in his apartment all day, read no papers, and watch no VT but for a children’s channel or carefully selected vids. He would listen only to particular music chips. He’d take a hot bath and read in the tub. He’d keep the shades down all day…

Junk mail for his ex-wife still occasionally came to his address. She had liked receiving catalogs of sex-oriented merchandise (they had liked sex) and some had been extreme. Hector had gotten one yesterday. One of the more elaborate pieces pictured in the handsome, glossy pages was a kind of bed covered by a cylindrical plastic canopy, with two odd enclosed trays running along either side. Inside individual cells in these transparent trays one could seal bumbles, four on either side of the bed. Bumbles were a popular genetically engineered pet, the size and appearance of a large, floppy-eared rabbit, with alternating bands of black and yellow fur. A tube was inserted into each bumble, and their blood drained. Their panicky convulsions inside the tiny cells was an “additional stimulus,” according to the catalog. Their blood was conveyed to an overhead sprinkler system and rained down on the human lovers in the narrow bed (“or the Scarlet Shower can be enjoyed alone”). It was more a device for people with money, jaded and bored and experimental, and bumbles weren’t cheap either, though any small creature would do. Cats. Plain rabbits could be kept and bred freely for the purpose. But bumbles were so especially cute and colorful and beloved, a fad pet right now.

Hector had fantasized one day about flicking off the autopilot but still not piloting the car, except to accelerate on some forest-flanked highway late at night with no one else close. But he couldn’t. Not after having remembered crossing over, which he tried not to remember. Hector was afraid to die. He was even afraid to sleep, because dreaming could be like crossing over, and he had dreamed about crossing over and what he had seen, what he had spoken with, and now he took drugs so he didn’t sleep. Five months since he had been put on disability leave, and he hadn’t slept a wink for the past three. The drugs got expensive, and they did strange things to you, and to be constantly awake could be the greatest nightmare, but whenever he was tempted to escape into sleep he grew too afraid.

Sedatives helped, though mixed with the anti-sleep drug did yet stranger things to his mind and body. Deep narcotic-like drugs were out of the question–the idea of being too lax, too unaware, too dreamy made him shiver. Too much like sleep, like crossing over. The sedatives were prescription, but the powerful anti-sleep drugs he took were illegal. He didn’t have much left, and he had to stock up on them tonight, because he had found out last night that his regular dealer Moband had been killed. This morning over the phone he had arranged to buy them tonight directly from Moband’s source, Roland LaKarnafeaux, who worked at the fair–but this would be its last night and Hector wasn’t sure when or where he’d be able to get them again, so he would bring a lot of money.

Sophi Kahn wore a loose-fitting, oversized violet sweater with sleeves pushed up her forearms, a gift from last year’s winner of the ribbon for best adult sweater in the craft competitions, very faded and very tight straight-legged jeans, and old white sneakers without socks. Her hair looked scarcely less tousled than it had upon her waking, mostly pushed over to one side, threatening to obscure one eye. A cigarette was like a constant sixth finger in her right hand. She narrowed her eyes up at the ride called the Double Helix.

Gooch Varvak, a Choom, had the standard Choom bristly short haircut but for one tight braid hanging down to the small of his back, a heavy tool belt slung low over his hips. Little red and yellow lights glowed or flashed on a few of the odd devices in its pouches. His hands grease-stained even at this early hour, Gooch pointed his Styrofoam cup of hot mustard up at the towering skeletal machine.

“There’s no way I can get it to work tonight without a new crystal board, and nothing I have is compatible except the Whirlpool, and I don’t have a spare for that. So it’s a matter of choice…you can have the Helix disabled, or the Whirlpool.”

“You can’t run a cable or set up a transmission from the Whirlpool’s board to the Helix, and run them both off one?”

“You’re right, I can’t. Not without an overload. You’d have to crank the power so low, if you did, that you’d have kids falling asleep on them.”

“Fuck,” Sophi muttered, glancing elsewhere; dragged on her cigarette. “The Double Helix is one of our best rides, and so it the Whirlpool…but the Helix does better.”

“So switch?”

“Yeah, switch. If you get a chance you might as well start packing up the Whirlpool–that’ll give you a head start on tomorrow. It’ll also keep people away from it and asking about it.”

“Right.”

“Gooch, yesterday I read in a paper that they dug up some ruins in Baloom and they found sealed clay vases of wine and intact loaves of bread–almost two thousand years old. Two thousand year old bread, and we can’t buy a new crystal board that lasts all summer.”

“What’s the big deal? My wife makes bread like that.”

“Next year we buy a spare, whatever the expense.” Sophi began walking away.

“I’ll teleport one now, if you want!”

“And pay that for one night’s work?” Sophi kept walking.

“We’ll still have it around for next year, practically new.”

Sophi stopped, turned to face her chief mechanic. “Do it, Gooch.”

“Yes, ma’am. Right on it.”

“Thanks.”

Again Sophi walked. She felt rather stupid for not thinking of it first, and she didn’t like to feel stupid about running her carnival. That was Gooch’s department; naturally he should come up with the solution, she tried to tell herself logically on the one hand. On the other, she made it her policy to be harder on herself and expect more of herself than anyone. But her irritation decreased a few conspicuous notches anyway. Distractions, she justified to herself.

Almost nine o’clock. At ten the gates opened. It was still pretty dead around, considering. Sophi wondered where Del had made off to. She walked past the miniature merry-go-round. Her eyes were drawn to a knocked-over trash barrel. Fucking clean-up kids–probably smoking seaweed behind a ride somewhere…

A peripheral movement on her left, she turned her head and gasped. The KeeZee had come out of nowhere. It stood staring at her, down, as she might look upon a child. Its three black marble eyes glistened. Glossy blackish-gray skin almost translucent in thinner areas over the hard bones of the monkey-wrench head. Black hair flowed from the sides and back of the skull. The creature loomed six and a half feet in its black uniform, but was a foot or more shorter than the even more dreaded white-skinned northern KeeZee. It didn’t speak.

“Thanks for the heart attack,” said Sophi. She knew the names of the two KeeZee security officers but couldn’t tell them apart.

Now came Mitch Garnet, catching up with his bouncy swagger. “Mornin’, boss-lady.”

“Just ‘boss’ will do.”

“You’re not a lady?”

“Sometimes, when I’m in the mood, but what I mean is there’s no boss-gentleman.”

“What’s your husband?” Mitch smiled.

Sophi wasn’t really joking. “An investor and a pain in the anus.” She was trying to remind the security chief that she was the owner and manager and Del had no actual authority, but without seeming insecure about her position. It was a constant problem, and not really Del’s fault because often she did rely on him to help her, but sometimes people consulted Del where they should have consulted her, brought their problems to Del first. Mitch was good for that, too often. It chafed her.

“Got a body this morning behind the Screamer. Care to see it?”

“Mitch, have you considered selling admission to the morgue? And you could be the barker. I’ll even buy you a ringmaster’s top hat.”

“You’d make good money.” Garnet didn’t take offense, although Sophi was in reality criticizing him–she always had this sarcastic humor.

“I’d rather you just tell me what happened; I have a good imagination.”

“A teenage girl, no I.D., her face totally caved in from a heavy intake of purple vortex and probably some other shit.”

“Great.”

“I asked your husband if I could run the fat man out but he said no, it’s just one more night. But another kid or two could die tonight. And those fucking Martians that come around here make me edgy–that situation could always explode.”

“A lot of situations could explode. You know you can get buttons from the guy who runs the corn dog stand? And iodine from about half the other shops?” She was exaggerating. “You can get anything here. They make good money on the kids. What can we do? If I really screened, if I ran a clean shop, a great portion of our crowd would be a lot less inclined to show. It’s their choice, Mitch. I choose not to sniff vortex, but if some teenage nit-wit wants to cave in her face that’s her choice in life. She’d do it elsewhere. How bad can I feel? You have to be a realist, ugly as it may seem.”

“She didn’t
choose
to cave in her face, Mrs. Kahn.”

“She chose the road that
led
to the caving in of her face, Mr. Garnet. And call me Sophi, please, like I’ve told you–I’m getting tired of being Mrs. Del Kahn, like I’m just the female extension of him or something.”