No Dogs in Philly (18 page)

“
You bastard.”

Was he taunting her? The scans showed nothing,
no body sign of lies or deception, no blush or elevated heart rate,
no blink or the conspicuous absence of a reaction that tagged along
with intent to deceive. Of course that could merely indicate
training, the superior self-control all these alien worshippers
seemed to exhibit. But her gut told her he was telling the truth,
that he really believed he was some sort of murderous Good
Samaritan, and he could bring people back from the dead. And there
was no doubt he intended to do the same to her, to mesmerize her
with whatever voodoo he could muster and then carve her up in some
insane therapeutic exercise.

Fanny Duvak. At last she remembered the name.
It was her, of course, one of the aliases she had used to navigate
the security bureaucracy—a condom ID, something you used once and
then tossed. But it had her picture, had a scrap of data winding
back to her and someone with a deep knowledge of the Net had
followed the path. The implications…too much to sort through. She
was on the list, one of the targets. That bastard ElilE, he had
known, suspected at least. Of course she had to take the case, she
was part of it already, from the very beginning. Blue eyes, about
as dull and gray as you could get, a cheap imitation, dollar-store
blue, but enough to make her a target, to tie her in with these
other lucky candidates. Did that mean she was a target for
something else, for the so-called Blue God? Was he right now
lurking in this room, watching this scene play out and judging on
his own incomprehensible score card?

“
Come,” the impostor cooed. “Come
join your friends.” He took a step forward, holding out his hand.
Her finger twitched over the trigger of her Betty. “Come, we’re all
here, Saru,” it was McCully’s voice. “It’s so nice here. You can
have whatever you want.” And then Terry, in her three-packs-a-day
croak: “It’s wonderful here. I’ve never been so happy.” And other
voices, voices from her past, barely remembered—Johnny Creek, the
first boy she’d kissed, in the Morning House after they’d stolen
the janitor’s flask of whiskey, trying not to grimace as they
slurped it in the cleaning closet, pretending it wasn’t their first
time, and then the passion of the transgression bringing their
mouths together. “Come Saru,” he said, but was he dead? Or was it a
trick of her mind? Emily Rothstein, the girl that had tattled on
her for sneaking a boy—not Johnny—into the girl’s dorm. She’d found
her on the playground, the fenced-in asphalt on the building roof,
and slammed her head into the ground, pinned her and pummeled her
until both her eyes were swollen shut. Saru hadn’t meant to hurt
her, not that much, at least, but she’d needed stitches and she
wasn’t as pretty after that. She too sang along: “It’s not your
fault, Saru, it was my fault. I’m sorry. Come, come with us, it’s
alright.”

Another step, the hand outstretched was less
than a foot from the gun barrel now. She saw her hands were shaking
and the Betty wasn’t as firm as it had been. “It’s okay, Saru, you
did your best. I’m better now.” Colton Mathews, one of her first
cases, a kidnapping fuckup. He had almost the same name as Colton
L. Mathews, of the Rittenhouse Mathews, but his parents were the
Richmond Mathews, living in assistance housing, paycheck to
paycheck off the mother’s truck-driving salary. The kidnappers had
learned their error, but they’d poked the kid full of holes and
left him behind a dumpster anyway. She’d never caught them, hadn’t
gotten close, hadn’t even taken the time to bring back the kid’s
body. She’d taken the family’s $2,000 and hit the bar. “It’s okay,”
Colton said. “I’m better now. I’m safe, I’m happy.”

She dropped the gun, let it snuggle back into
its holster. Her hand stayed where it was, just a few inches from
Jojran’s. “It’s okay,” Jojran said. “It’s all okay. We’re happy.
We’re safe. We’re complete.” It was true; they were happy, she
could see that. All these mistakes were just the symptoms of her
humanity, inevitable. And beyond that waited a better form of life,
a form that was perfect, that could not err, and she could be part
of it. There it was, the certainty, the absolute, a diamond,
irrefutable Truth. She had not erred. The very world she lived in
was an error, a false step on the path to existence, an abortion, a
failed world. Of course she caused pain and hurt others. It was
life, the life that she was part of and she could no more control
her nature than the maggots that wriggled in the meat of the
dead.

She saw that she was immaterial, that her
actions were meaningless, but she could join in something greater,
something real, a purpose, to bring joy to the joyless, to liberate
the other horrid, mistaken abominations of this tiny planet. All
the men and women mindlessly killing and fucking and scrabbling
together piles of junk—for what? Pointless action. Carnal routine.
The urge to fuck and murder propelling a horde of hairless monkeys
further and further into a hell of their own creation. She was
dead, they were all dead, even though they may move and copy they
were just machines, air-powered bags of gas and blood. Life! She
wanted life! Truth! Purpose! Certainty. Here, here was reality, and
everything she had known was nothing more than the lizard-brain
impulse, amebic stimulus-response. Oh God, she wanted
it!

She reached and their fingers touched. His
warmth flowed into her, a trickle, a river, an ocean of souls,
caressing her, running through their hands and over her skin,
welcoming her to reality. She was home. She was whole. Somewhere, a
distant part of her put its hands on her hips and clucked. Saru,
you moron, you fell for it, you swallowed his Kool-Aid. Oh well, it
was too late now. She luxuriated in the warmth, the joy, the
physical ecstasy of every atom in her body cumming at once. Yes,
this was better, oh how much better it was. It was hard to tell
amidst the torrent of souls, but somewhere in the process—amidst
the satisfaction of her own gullible stupidity and the ecstasy of
an alien touch—she realized that she was dead, or her body was at
least, and she was finally free.

Chapter 15

The sun was hot, a wonderful, luxurious hot on
her naked skin. She wriggled and dug herself deeper into the sand,
massaging herself against its cool, abrading yield. Oh yes, that
was it. The water was warm, coming in gentle waves to tickle her
feet. And it was quiet, so quiet, quieter than she had known was
possible. Not a sound except for the gentle lapping of the waves
and the crush of sand on her back. She dozed and woke and repeated.
How long had she been there? Forever of course. There was nowhere
else to be. No distracting hunger, no worry, no need to piss or
shit—was she even breathing? Yes, her lungs moved in and out in a
long, slow, relaxing rhythm, but she sensed this was merely a
feature for her comfort, that the action served no purpose other
than its absence would be frightening.

It was annoying when she realized this would
have to end, that this wasn’t life, and it wasn’t death. There were
memories, distant, from ages ago, but they were there, nagging,
poking her, prowling the edge of her calm. They were becoming
aggressive. She’d have to do something about it. She sat up and
opened her eyes. Her other senses had been right; she was on an
island. It was tiny, a hump of sand with a single palm tree amidst
an infinite blue ocean beneath an infinite blue sky. She marveled
at the blue, how it blended flawlessly from shade to shade, light
where it touched the ocean and steadily darkening until directly
overhead it was almost black. She could see stars amidst the darker
blue, scattered silver freckles in the sky.

“
It’s beautiful, is it
not?”

Friar, of course. She’d known he’d be here.
Known he’d find her eventually. He was standing next to her—had he
been there the whole time? He was naked too, she noticed, observing
this simply as a fact without any of the baggage of nudity imposed
by society, no judgment or breeding urge. He was naked, the sky was
blue, the sand was white, and the ocean had no end.

“
Yes,” she said. “Did you make
this place?”

“
No,” he said sadly. “You
did.”

“
I did?”

“
Yes. A part of you. This is your
margin, where your existence,” he gestured to the water,
“intersects with all the existences that are. It is your atomic
memory, the memory of your atoms as they were born, when they were
part of the super-universe before our own universe was born. They
remember their brothers and sisters and welcome them.”

She remembered herself, knew on an intellectual
level that this kind of talk bothered her, but there was no anger
or annoyance. She accepted what he said as fact, even if she did
not understand. The sky was blue. The sand was white. The ocean had
no end.

“
Friar?”

“
Yes.”

“
What am I doing here?”

“
I’m not sure,” he said. “I think
you are making a decision.”

“
A decision?”

“
Yes,” he said. “You’ve met the
enemy.”

“
Yes,” she said. It was strange to
call it an enemy. “He told me things, told me I’d be happy, that
others were happy. Is that true? He said that the women made him
torture them…that it was their humanity. He said we saw him as evil
only because we ourselves were evil.”

“
Yes,” Friar said, “It is true.
The UausuaU is truth. In our world it exists as we would have it.
And if we are monsters then the UausuaU is merely a reflection of
that.”

“
Then what’s the point?” she
yelled, and there was anger now, a familiar feeling, comfortable.
“Then it’s right! We’re the bad guys here, we’re the shit heads. We
should just join it, become part of it. Be happy.”

Friar said nothing. He looked out across the
water.

“
It may be that in the end it is
our only option.”

“
Well thanks, Friar, so glad you
stopped by, fat lot of good you are.”

“
I’m sorry, Saru, I can’t help
you.”

“
No shit. God, I have to do
everything myself.” She stomped around the island, kicking at the
sand. She picked up the single coconut and hurled it into the sea,
where it made a satisfying plop.

“
Rargh!” she yelled. “Let me out
of here. Friar!” She grabbed him by the shoulders and shook. “I
know you’re doing this. You were in my head, weren’t you, fucking
around, and now you brought me here.”

“
I was trying to warn
you.”

“
Of what?”

“
From coming here.”

“
You are useless!” she said,
pushing him so he stumbled back. “Some friend you are; I go looking
to you for answers and then you go and die—no, you make me kill
you—and then you camp out in my head like some squatter and when I
really need some help, some fucking coaching, all you can do is
vomit out this fatalist bullshit!” She yelled again, beating her
chest, screaming into the bored air. Ah that felt good; there was
the real joy, the real warmth. That instinct, the inside touch.
That was who she was and God she loved it, relished it, every lick
of it. Fuck this other shit, this alien bullshit and Friar’s
cryptic dithering.

“
Fuck this,” she said aloud. “I’m
out of here.”

She walked into the ocean, resolute, wading out
to her hips. The water was warm.

“
That’s not the way out,” Friar
said.

“
Whatever,” she called back. She
kept going. The water was up to her neck, then over her head and
her feet no longer touched the ground. She paddled forward
awkwardly, she didn’t really know how to swim, but it didn’t
matter. This wasn’t really water. She kept paddling until the
island disappeared, realizing it was accomplishing nothing and she
wasn’t getting tired. She let herself sink, let the water fill her
lungs, and at last she felt a pain, a pressure, a panic as the blue
sky disappeared under the darkness of the water, sinking, sinking,
sinking, and the pain growing and morphing into a body pain, and
then a face staring at her, some broken mask of a face, Jojran,
cackling at her, and she saw that they were holding hands, standing
in his kitchen.

She whipped the prod from its holster and
slammed it like a club into his temple. The soft bone crumpled and
the prod sank half an inch into his skull, crackling at full power.
He closed his eyes and opened them slowly, sighing as if
impatient.

“
How disappointing,” he said. His
right hand blurred forward, too fast for her response implants to
follow, and formed a vice around her neck. In a casual,
whoopsie-daisy motion, he lifted her up and dragged her across the
counter; the tiles cracked as he slammed her into the floor. Stars
floated across her vision—why was she staring at the ceiling? It
was hard to breathe, like one of her ribs had gotten lost and
wandered into a lung. Ow. The prod wriggled in her noodle grip,
still sending out sparks and arcs of electricity. Jojran,
broken-mask, crumpled-skull Jojran stood over her, massaging one
hand in the other. He laughed and threw up his hands.

“
Why is it so hard with you, Saru?
Why can’t you just be happy?”

She tried to spit and blood dribbled out the
side of her mouth—had she bitten her tongue? There was something to
say to that, something witty and defiant, but it wouldn’t come. She
seemed to be having trouble keeping a single thought in focus, it
kept getting pushed out by the pain in the back of her head.
Sitting up was impossible, but an arm managed to flop up and poke
at the wet sensation in the back of her head. Her nails came back
painted red. How pretty. She should paint her nails more, treat
herself more. It was okay to spoil yourself every once in a while,
maybe she’d even enjoy it. But first she needed to live.