And again the question came: What could be more disgusting than a man sized cockroach?
Answer: A man sized cockroach with a penis.
For shit’s sake! Lois thought again. I’m about to get fucked by a bug!
Gregor’s works bloomed, a steadily distending, meaty pink mound betwixt its walking joints. She could almost hear herself say: Hey, Gregor, is that twenty five pounds of hamburger in your pants or are you just happy to see me? Well, Gregor was happy indeed. The mound swelled forward, showing a puckered hole. Eventually something popped out and slapped to the floor—a slack pink tube with a fleshy nozzle. It drooped like loose hose.
Gregor crawled daintily over her, as if great care were utmost on its mind. But did this thing even have a mind? Vivificated breaths whistled through multiple spiracles along its shell, and she could see horny passion in its compound eyes. Dollops of green goo dropped from its irised mandibles onto her bare belly. Lois was revolted, yet her physical excitement, somehow, refused to wane. Gregor lay fully atop her now. The nozzled glans snuffled fanatically, and at last the pink cannula found her sex. Lois’ orgasms unwound in spastic quakes. The cannula throbbed, passing jets of warm bug-sperm into her cervical canal as Gregor muttered sweet insectoid nothings into her ear.
“For shit’s sake!” Lois was finally able to exclaim.
Gregor’s armored face inched up to hers. The mandibles opened to fullness, revealing soft lips and tongue, and more than a modest portion of the opaque green saliva, which dribbled liberally into Lois Hartley’s aghast mouth.
««—»»
In this business you were one of two things. You were either legit, or you were dirty. And if you were legit, you were also something else:
You were poor.
Czanek was dirty.
It wasn’t Czanek’s dirt; it was other people’s. He did not feel bad about uncovering the evil of others; he was just a cog in an inevitable machine. Bug planting was a good gig; he could pull in twenty large a year from bugs alone. Industrial espionage paid well too, and sabotage paid even better. Czanek had once taken ten grand for stealing a composite formula from a textile factory and fifteen more for burning the records room and production facilities. By the time they cleaned up the mess, the other company, Czanek’s client, had already patented the stolen formula and was in full production. These were examples of what the trade called “surreptitious entry” or “black bag.” It involved invading privacy, violating personal rights, and, of course, breaking the fuck out of the law. If you were good at black bag, you made lots of money. If you were bad, you lost your license and went to jail. Though Czanek was small time, he was good at black bag, perhaps very good. Its diversity challenged him, and it brought in the cash. Dean Saltenstall, for instance, paid five hundred dollars per hour for a job. Good work reaped good money.
Tonight, though, Czanek was working for free.
Saltenstall was his best client, period. But if the dean ever found out that one of his bugs was transmitting to someone else’s, Czanek would lose his professional credibility in less time than it took to wipe his ass. He may have been the best dirty P.I. in the state, but he wasn’t the only one. Other dicks would kill for a client like Saltenstall. Some literally.
He walked up to the third floor of the sciences center. He wore maintenance overalls and had a phony card identifying him as Peter Hertz, a campus a/c technician. The building was empty at this hour, and the security guard wouldn’t be making his rounds for another forty five minutes. Czanek used a 2mm tension wrench on Besser’s office lock, applying nominal downward pressure with his pinky. Each lock had its own feel; too much pressure seized up the pins, and too little wouldn’t hold them flush. Czanek stroked the pins twice with his #2 rake, and the cylinder opened. He was in the office and had the door locked behind him in four seconds.
He let his eyes adjust, then turned on a red filtered penlight. His gloved hands snooped a bit first, an unavoidable professional impulse. He memorized the exact position of everything on the desk and in the drawers. The bottom drawer, however, was locked.
It was an old Filex disc tumbler with an 18mm keyway. He used a wider tension wrench and a “doubleball.” The slide bar slipped open immediately.
What he saw first made little sense—a list of typed names: L. ERBLING, S. ERBLING, L. HARTLEY, I. PACKER, E. WHITECHAPEL. L. Hartley’s name had a line through it.
Beneath this lay a stack of folders stamped with the Exham seal. Medical files, Czanek noted. The top five matched the five names on the list. All the files belonged to female students. But next was another stack of files, males. A Qwik Note on the top folder read: Choose one holotype for Supremate. And the next line, in red: Wade St. John.
Holotype? Czanek thought. Supremate? And who’s Wade St. John?
At the back of the drawer was a gun.
Czanek was stumped. The piece was some offbeat .25 auto. It smelled of cordite. He wrote down the serial number and put it back.
He didn’t like any of this. Why would Besser have a gun? Czanek didn’t know what to make of the notes and lists, but the gun was something else—guns were of his world. Could Winnifred and Besser really be planning to kill the dean for his insurance?
At the back of the drawer he spotted another Qwik Note. Four notations in florid writing, like a woman’s:
1) Pick holotype. Wade seems best.
2) 2nd vassal in case Tom wears out. Jervis Phillips?
3) Have Tom bury Penelope and Sladder.
Czanek should’ve been alarmed, extremely alarmed. One note mentioned Jervis Phillips, Czanek’s own client. Another mentioned burying bodies. But none of that mattered to Czanek now. He could only stare unbelieving at the fourth and final notation:
4) Kill Czanek.
Czanek’s eyes jittered. They knew about him, but how? Had Jervis squealed? There was no reason, and there was no reason for the dean to turn on him either. Had Winnifred hired her own dick to watch her back? Had Czanek actually been made?
Then the thought toppled like rubble.
The bug.
Holy fucking shit! he thought. The bug!
His gloved hand ran under the inside lip of the desk front. The bug he’d come here to replace wasn’t there.
I am in some shit, he thought very slowly.
“Looking for this, Mr. Czanek?”
Czanek ducked, doused his light, and pulled the Charter snub from his ankle holster. The desk lamp flicked on. Some husky kid in a T shirt and jeans faced him from the desk. Between the kid’s fingers was Czanek’s tiny 49 MHz transmitter.
“I found the other ones too,” the kid said. His face was pale. He was smiling. “The ones in Besser’s house and Winnie’s office.”
“Don’t move,” Czanek said. “I gotta think.”
“What’s to think? You’re caught.”
Czanek cocked his piece. “Who the fuck are you?”
“The name’s Tom. I used to be a student, but now I’m a…guess you’d call me a myrmidon. Ever read Lovecraft?” Tom’s smile stretched to hideous thinness. “I’m a haunter of the dark.”
“You’re gonna be the haunter of the morgue if you don’t start talking. You’re a paid tail, like me. You work for the dean’s wife, don’t you?”
Tom laughed huskily. “That horny sleaze? No way. She doesn’t even like me—she calls me ‘the thing.’ I’ll bet she masturbates fifteen times a day. She’ll do it right in front of you, she doesn’t care. She can’t help herself. It’s the influence of the labyrinth.”