Timecaster (11 page)

“We’ve had this conversation, McGlade. Several times. My grandmother and your grandfather used to be partners. Remember?”

“Of course I remember. Who are you again?”

“Cute. Lemme see the gun.”

He handed over the revolver, butt first. I’d never held a real gun before, and was surprised by how heavy it was.

“Don’t shoot it,” McGlade said. “The bullets are worth a fortune, and impossible to replace.”

“If it even fires anymore. You could go to jail forever for having this.”

“Fuck ’em. I’ll flee to Texas.”

When the US outlawed guns, Texas refused to give up its firearms and tried to secede from the nation, which lead to Civil War Two. The only person who died during the war was a Texan named Earl Stampton, who barricaded himself in a bunker with more than two hundred guns and ten thousand rounds of ammunition and then accidentally set the compound on fire while cooking some bacon. All they found of his body was a finger.

The remainder of CWII was fought with blockades and sanctions. Texas finally gave up after four years because they weren’t getting the latest Hollywood movie releases.

I returned the gun to him. “I need your help, McGlade.”

“I figured you did. Can you pay?”

“Eventually. I’m having a little chip problem at the moment.” I held up my arm, showing him the hole.

“An IOU from a lifer ain’t worth much.”

“I won’t be a lifer. They’ll kill me in prison. I’ll make sure you’re a beneficiary on my insurance.”

He brightened at that. “Okay. C’mon in.”

The interior of his house was much like the exterior, except for fewer plants. McGlade’s décor seemed to be of the
let it lie where it dropped
school of design. Dirty clothing, food wrappers, and assorted garbage competed for space amid the mismatched discount furniture. For art, McGlade plastered his walls with posters of old pinup girls. I’d asked once, and these were indeed paper. His favorite seemed to be someone named Heather Thomas, who boasted several different swimsuit poses. It was oddly quaint, because people hadn’t worn swimsuits in decades.

“Have a seat in my office. I’ll get some P and P.”

“Nothing too heavy. I have to keep my wits.”

He snorted. “What wits?”

McGlade veered off. I continued on through a hallway, and stepped in a small pile of shit.

“McGlade!” I called. “You have a pet?”

Boy, did I hope he had a pet.

“Yeah. His name is Peanuts. Don’t step on him.”

“I stepped on something else.”

“Smells awful, doesn’t it? They don’t tell you that at the genipet store.”

I scraped my shoe off on the carpet, figuring he’d never notice, and found Peanuts in McGlade’s office, curled up on the floor. At first I couldn’t tell what it was. Brown and hairy and lumpy, about the size of the raccoon I’d fed earlier. Then it looked up and me, shook its floppy ears, and gave me a deep, loud trumpet.

Peanuts was a genetically modified African elephant.

It trumpeted again, its tiny trunk sticking out like a bugle, and then padded up to me on little round feet. When he reached my leg he bumped my shin with its head. His tusks were capped with cork.

“Hello, Peanuts,” I said. I crouched down—an act that brought tears to my eyes—and gave the elephant a scratch on the head.

“Not
Peanuts
,” McGlade said, walking in behind me. He scooped up the elephant and held him at eye level. “
Penis.
Check out the size of his junk.”

The elephant did, indeed, have impressive junk.

“It’s like a second trunk,” McGlade marveled. “You want to touch it?”

He shoved the elephant in my face, its lengthy dong flopping around and threatening to take out one of my eyes.

“No thanks.”

“He’s a bonsai elephant.” McGlade set the pachyderm down. “That’s as big as he gets.”

“He’s . . .” I searched for a word that wasn’t derogatory.

“Very elephantish.”

“Yeah. I gotta get him a mate. Problem is, they’re so freakin’ expensive. I tried a few nonelephant surrogates. A cat and a poodle. He killed them both.”

“His tusks?”

“Naw. Slipping them the high, hard one.”

“Nice.” Wasn’t sure what else to say to that.

“They both sounded like they died happy. The poodle especially. Vet said it was a heart attack.”

“And the cat?” I asked, wondering why I cared.

“Internal bleeding. Here, take these.”

McGlade handed me six pills.

“What are they?”

“Morphine, hash, and valium.”

“There’s enough here to kill me, McGlade.”

“The other three are speed, so you don’t lapse into a coma. Take them and go shower. There’s a robe hanging in the bathroom.”

I noticed his apparel, which had more stains than there was space available. “Is the robe clean?”

“No. But after the pills, you won’t care.”

I took four of the pills, then hit the bathroom. The warm shower was both invigorating and painful, and then the drugs began to kick in and I was able to scrub my wounds with soap without crying for my mother.

I stepped out of the shower, pleasantly buzzed and feeling no pain, then toweled off and slipped into a robe that wasn’t too badly stained, though the fabric was a bit stiff in parts.

“I’m in the office!” McGlade called.

I walked to him with a spring in my step, thanks to the amphetamines. But it was a wobbly spring, thanks to the hash and valium. I’d skipped the morphine. That shit put me to sleep.

The satisfied smile on my face dropped off when I saw what McGlade had spread out on his table.

Surgical tools. A lot of them. Silver and sharp and shiny in the overhead lights.

“What’s all that for, McGlade?”

“This is why you came to me, isn’t it, Talon? They switched off your headphone, and you want it working again. Right?”

“Yeah.” But now I wasn’t so sure.

“How do you think that’ll happen? Hope and a head massage?”

As I stood there the room began to wobble, so I grabbed the doorway for support. “Have you done this before?”

“Four times. Two of them successful. I’m charging you five thousand credits for this, by the way. That includes patching up your arm and hand.”

“I also have some broken ribs.”

“We’ll call it an even fifty-five hundred. Though tipping isn’t discouraged.”

The doorway began to wobble as well. “I dunno about this, McGlade.”

“Don’t worry. Penis is here to help.”

Penis was standing on the table, holding a scalpel in his trunk. I giggled, because the thought of a miniature elephant sticking a knife in my ear was pretty funny.

That alone was proof I shouldn’t have been here.

“Sit before you fall over. Put your head on this semiclean towel here.”

He patted a rolled-up towel. Penis dropped the scalpel and walked up to it.

“Your pet is getting amorous with the towel.”

“Just the inside. You’ll have your head on the outside.” That made a warped sort of sense. I weaved over to the chair and managed to sit down without falling over. The elephant was really going at it, his tiny elephant hips a blur. After a few more thrusts he trumpeted and walked away.

“I want a new towel,” I said.

“You’re such a little girl.” McGlade tossed the towel over his shoulder and placed a pillow on the table. “Head down, princess.”

I complied, resting my ear on the towel. Just a few inches away, Penis stared at me. It was a prurient stare. His trunk extended and he sniffed my nostrils. I had a bad feeling he was judging their depth and flexibility.

“Get him off the table,” I said. “I don’t trust him.”

“He’s fine. He won’t hurt you.”

“He looks like he’s sizing me up.”

“Don’t worry. He’s got a long refractory period.”

“Off the table, McGlade.”

“Fine. Sheesh. You’re some kind of animal hater, you know that, Princess Talon?”

“I want my nose to remain a virgin.”

McGlade grabbed the elephant and set him on the floor. Then he picked up a bottle of iodine.

“First I’m going to sterilize the area. Then it might get a little, um, uncomfortable.”

The iodine felt warm, almost soothing.

The scalpel wasn’t soothing at all.

“Hold still. I don’t want to rupture your eardrum.”

He brought down a magnifying lens on an articulated arm, then went at it. I tried to stay still, wishing I’d taken the morphine. It felt like . . . Well, it felt like someone was jabbing a scalpel in my ear.

“All headphones have a very tiny external jack, for updating the firmware,” McGlade said. “A guy I know, he made a nanochip that can reflash the bios. It cycles WLAN channels and piggybacks on nearby users, which means free calls via Wi-Fi. Of course, it also works for people who get their headphones disconnected. Not really good with long distance, but it’ll do for a hundred miles or so.”

I wasn’t paying attention to him, my jaw locked on the corner of the pillow in an effort not to flinch and Van Gogh myself.

“Okay, I’ve exposed the jack. This is the tricky part. Don’t move.”

He ripped open a small plastic package, taking out what looked like a dental pick.

“Chip is in the tip. I place it into the jack, and we’re good to go.”

“What’s that slurping sound?” I said around the pillow.

“Suction hose, sucking up all the blood. Stay still.”

He jammed the pick in my ear, but it was sort of anticlimactic, and I only wished for death twice instead of the five times I’d wished for it when he was using the scalpel.

“There. Now I’m going to use some living stitches. This might sting.”

I’d been stung by bees before. Living stitches felt like I was having my skin pulled off with hot pliers. I may have cried a little. Or a lot.

“Okay, we’re good. Let’s work on that hand.”

“I think I want the morphine,” I said, shaking my leg. The elephant had wrapped himself around my ankle.

“Don’t be a baby, Talon. Living stitches aren’t that bad.”

“Have you tried them?”

“Several times.”

“And you didn’t scream?”

“Of course not. I passed out before I could scream. Gimme your hand.”

After a liberal dose of iodine, he draped some living stitches over my hand. Living stitches were a synthetic fabric seeded with genetically altered bacteria. The germs were packed with human codons, specifically the genes that repaired skin. A miracle of modern medicine. But the rapid healing involved the little buggers reopening the wound and rearranging the cells, which hurt more than the damage they were repairing.

After my third scream, Penis ran out of the room, frightened.

“You scared away my pachyderm,” McGlade said.

“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!” I replied.

“Now let’s get started on that arm.”

The arm hurt a lot worse, and apparently at some point I followed McGlade’s advice and passed out.

NINETEEN

I awoke lying on the floor. Penis the bonsai African elephant was sitting on my chest, staring at me.

The first thing I did was check my nose. It seemed okay. I also smacked my lips, trying to detect any funny tastes in my mouth.

“Rise and shine, sleepyhead.” McGlade was sitting at his desk. “While you were out, I injected your ribs with nanotubes. How do you feel?”

“Better,” I said. My brain was still a bit foggy, and my stomach felt like I’d been on a cruise during a typhoon, but my various aches and pains had all vanished. Except for my arm, where Sata had hit me. That was still numb.

“My fingers are tingling.”

“I noticed that. You’ve got some sort of nerve damage. That’s beyond what I can do here. You need to visit an ER for that.”

Penis trumpeted at me, spraying my face with elephant snot.

“Your pet sucks,” I said, gently shoving him off my chest.

“Yeah. But he’s really expensive.”

I sat up, letting the room come into focus. The first thing I thought of was Vicki. I pressed my earlobe. No dial tone. I pressed it again.

“Try hitting yourself on the side of the head,” McGlade said.

I gave myself a swift tap.

“Harder.”

I reared back and really whacked myself, almost tipping over.

“Is that how this is supposed to work?” I asked, shaking away the wooziness.

“Naw. I haven’t turned it on yet. I just wanted to see if you’d hit yourself.”

“Asshole.”

McGlade grinned, then pressed a button on a remote control he had in his hand. A dial tone came on in my head.

“Call Vicki.”

The headphone connected to hers, but I got voice mail. She must have still been dealing with the cops and couldn’t talk.

“Still with the SLP, huh, Talon?”

“Yeah.”

“You know, she’s got to be one of the last natural redheads on the planet. They’re almost extinct. She is natural, right? The carpet matches the drapes?”

“She’s natural.” If he hadn’t just saved my tail, I might have objected to where this conversation was heading.

“That’s so hot. You know, maybe I could reduce my fee if she could fit me into her schedule. Is she taking new clients?”

“No.”

“How about for quick sessions? I’d only need about two minutes.”

“Let’s stop talking about Vicki.”

“What if it wasn’t overtly sexual?”

“That wasn’t a suggestion, McGlade.”

“I like feet,” he stated matter-of-factly.

I stared at him.

“Maybe she could step on me sometime,” he continued.

Seeing he wasn’t going to let it go, I said, “I’ll check her calendar.”

“Thanks, pal. I also like blow jobs.”

I stood up and rubbed my neck. “How long was I out?”

“An hour. I threw your clothes in the washer/dryer. Should be done by now.”

“You have a washer/dryer?”

“I get it. You said that because my clothes are always dirty. Jackass.”

“Next you’ll say you have a maid.”

“I do have a maid. But when she comes over we spend the whole time in bed and she never has a chance to clean anything.”

“Does she have cute feet?”

“No. Her toes are hairy, and they smell like cheese. But I let her step on me anyway.”

I reminded myself that I’d come here willingly. “Where’s my DT and belt?”