Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World
- Автор: Мосли Уолтер
- Год: 2001
- Язык: английский
- Год: Aspect / Warner Books
- ISBN: 978-0-446-52954-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World». Краткое содержание книги:
“If they’re so outside, then why you hang with ’em?” Folio asked, nestling back in a cushioned chair that was fashioned as an open vagina.
“Families got money,” Mingus said. “At least some of ’em. Chas and Mylo, Laddie and Azuma, too. Big bucks, baby.”
“And you like being around all that?”
“I trade in real estate. I’m good at it, too. Most’a these rich families got some liberal shit goin’ on about Common Ground. They wanna say they helped somebody crawl up outta there. I’m perfect for ’em ’cause I already did it. And I know how to turn a buck, too.”
“But they didn’t have some other kinda thing goin’ on?” Folio asked. The chair he sat in had all the colors and textures of a Caucasian woman’s genitalia, from thick brown fur to pink petal lips to a bright red interior. The fabric was covered by a clear material that had a liquid filling. The heat from Folio’s body caused the liquid to flow.
“Who?”
“The kids, their parents. Shit, I don’t know. I mean this New York is one crazy motherfucker, but people don’t start knockin’ off rich kids just ’cause they’re stupid.”
“No business I knew about.” Mingus lay back into the foreskin comforter. “Hey, you think they might find us here?”
“Who?”
“Don’t fuck with me, man. I don’t know who.”
“Sex pits are always the last on the list for searches. People payin’ cash and usin’ fake IDs. Almost every ID in this here sex hotel is fake. They have to send out manpower or fourth-generation nosers to check out a place like this. And even if they did come” — Folio tapped the orbital ridge over his blue eye — “I’d know they were here before they did.”
“That’s some eye there,” Mingus said. “How a street-level motherfucker like you hold on to that? I mean, I heard’a pirates stealin’ just a plain blue eye not even worth a thousand creds.”
“I’m wiry,” Folio said and then he laughed. “Was your boys gonna do anything soon? Anything different?”
“Naw. Them dudes just wanted to feel important. Last thing they managed to do was gettin’ us to talk every day at sixteen. I had some trouble with that ’cause I’m movin’ around all the time.”
“So? You could cell it.”
“Naw. They were doin’ it in-house to act like they were in business. But the internal lines have a security system that won’t allow external devices access. You know some people use those lines to transmit very sensitive information.”
“How much would that have cost the companies?”
“Hardly nuthin’. I mean, people do it all the time. Free calls just a perk in big business today.”
“So’s embezzlement.”
“I told ya, man, they got frog skins for guts. Any real trouble and them boys ran.”
“Runnin’ won’t help them now.”
Mingus scratched his eyebrow and looked away. When he moved around on the chair it arched upward in an approximation of a growing erection.
A searing pain sliced its way through Folio’s head.
“What’s wrong?” Mingus jumped up and grabbed Folio before he fell out of his chair.
Azuma Sherman was running down the lower ramp of the subterranean section of the Whitney Museum. Folio recognized the mutated inner organs created by the bio-artist Atta A that were on display. The point of view of the image came from the pursuer. Azuma’s long brown hair was flowing backwards; every few steps he would look back to see Folio’s mind’s eye catching up to him. Folio couldn’t think how this transmission had hijacked his eye.
Another pain exploded in Folio’s head.
“You okay?” Mingus shouted.
Azuma’s leg was nicked by a shard from a wide blast of a cinder gun. From his ankle to just above his knee burnt to a crisp in a second. The handsome youth fell to the floor. Through the eye-cam of the killer Folio saw Azuma’s amputated foot. The assassin kicked it away. Azuma looked up into the killer’s eyes. He was about to shout something and then his face burnt off.
The contact broke. Folio found himself sprawled on the floor, Mingus Black holding him by his shoulders. They were both shivering.
“Sherman’s dead,” Folio said.
“Mind if I share your bed, com?” Mingus asked Folio.
To shake off the nerves they had watched a very good matchup of Fera Jones against Mithitar the Mad Mongolian on the vid. The Mongolian had an interesting circular style of boxing, but he couldn’t deal with the amazon’s power. After six rounds Mithitar’s buzz-saw-like attacks had slowed enough for her logjam jab to take control; he was asprawl in the middle of the ring by the end of round eight.
“What?” Folio asked.
“Just need to lie next to somebody. That’s all. It ain’t sex.”
Folio sighed. He knew the trauma of ex-Backgrounders, especially those who’d spent their entire lives underground. They feared the loneliness of a full-size room.
“Just keep your pants on,” he said.
Folio awoke on a small blue island adrift in a scarlet sea. The sky was pink and yellow. Violet pelicans soared on the wind above him. Folio was completely aware that this place was a dream provided by his eye. It was an attempt to ease his tension, but as usual, in these hard times the mechanical eye was at war with Johnson’s troubled unconscious. He supposed that the eye had been trying to create a Caribbean island but was disrupted in color and size by Folio’s own fears.
There was a disruption in the water. Somebody was swimming toward his islet. When she climbed out of the water he could see that it was the young woman from the Crystal Bar. Immediately he felt a powerful erection.
“Is that for me?” Paradise asked.
“Every inch.”
“Keep it hard like that for me, baby,” she said. “But we can’t do anything yet.”
“Why not?”
“You have to keep out of trouble.”
“What’s that got to do with you?”
“That’s just the problem.”
“What?”
“I’m not important but you still want me. Your dick wants me. He can’t help himself but you have to hold it back.”
“Who are you?”
“Paradise.”
“Are you from the eye?”
“I met you today, at the bar.”
“But where are you from in my mind?”
“I’m your stupid side. You’re my fool.”
Folio felt his erection straining and suddenly he wondered if it wasn’t Mingus trying to be more than friendly.
The detective pulled himself awake and turned angrily toward his bedmate.
Mingus’s eyes were wide open, his throat cut from jawbone to jawbone.
With a heavy sigh Folio rose out of bed and switched on the vidphone.
4
“What was your relationship to the deceased?” the man’s voice asked.
“We were both natural-born human beings as far as I know,” Folio replied.
He was gazing into a mirror, in a room composed entirely of mirrors — floors, ceilings, and walls — everything was a bright reflective surface.
“This is murder we’re talking about here, Johnson. It’s no joke.”
“I’m not joking,” Folio said to a thousand thousand images of himself. “I met Mingus because I was told by a man named Spellman that a group of friends were dying mysteriously. Spellman wanted me to find out if it was some kinda conspiracy, and if so, who was the perpetrator. I was talking to Black about that.”
“In bed?”
“No. We were sleepin’ in bed. At least I was. He was dyin’ — I guess.”
“Who else died?” a woman’s voice asked.