It wore off ***WHAM*** as quickly as it had come on. There was a tingling in Stahn’s flesh, a kind of jelling feeling, and then he was lying there shaking, heart going a mile a minute. Too fast. This dope was giga too fast. Death practice, right: hit, melt, space, blank. Final blank. He wished his dead wife Wendy were still alive. Sweet, blonde, wide-hipped Wendy. Times like this—in the old days—she’d hug him and pat his head real soft . . . and smile . . . And you killed her, Stahn. Oh God, oh no, oh put that away. You blew a hole in her head and sold her corpse to the organleggers and used the money to come to the Moon.
Stahn alone on the office floor, shuddering. Bum kicks. Think about anything but Wendy. Flash of an old song: Coming down again, all my time’s been spent, coming down again. Old. Gettin old. Coming down gets too old. Does that even mean anything? Language with a flat tire. Talk broken, but keep talking. Regroup.
His clothes were awkwardly bunched around him. When he sat up, the headache started. Bummer bummer bummer bummer bummer. He took Yukawa’s silver flask and shook it. There was quite a bit in there, a few months’ worth if you only took it once a day. If he got back on drugs he was dead. He should be dead. He wished he was dead. Lot of slow death in that flask.
If one drop was a dose, and a dose was worth . . . uh . . . two hundred dollars, then this flask was something that certain elements—certain criminal elements—would . . . uh . . . kkkkkillll for. And that ridgeback cultie knew he was holding, oh my brethren. Can I get some head? “Hello, Mrs. Beller, you don’t know me, but I . . . uh . . . ” Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. Hot. WHAT TYPE OF SEX, BABY, WHAT TYPE?
The thing to do right now was to not go back out the office building’s front door. Focus. Rent a maggie. Garage on top of the building.
He picked out a black saucer-shaped maggie, fed it some money, and told it where to go. The maggies were like hovercars; they counteracted the Moon’s weak gravity with fans, and with an intense magnetic field keyed to a big field generated by wires set into the dome. They were expensive. It was funny that a junkie lab assistant like Della Taze would have had her own maggie. Stahn could hardly wait to see her apartment. Maybe she was actually there, just not answering the vizzy, but there and like waiting for a guy with merge. He had lock-picking wares in case she wouldn’t open.
The entry system at Della’s building was no problem. Stahn used a standard nihilist transposition on the door down from the roof, and a tone-scrambler on her apartment door. The apartment was Wigglesville. Creative Brain Damage, Vol. XIII. As follows.
The walls weren’t painted one uniform color. It was all bursts and streaks, as if the painter had just thrown random buckets around the apartment till everything was covered: walls, floors, and ceilings all splattered and dripped beyond scuzz.
The furniture was pink, and all in shapes of people. The chairs were big stuffed women with laps to sit in, and the tables were plas men on all fours. He kept jerking, seeing that furniture out of the corner of his eye, and thinking someone was there. Twist and shout. The whole place had the merge wine-turkey fragrance, but there was another smell under it . . . a bad smell.
Which, as it turned out, came from the bedroom. Della had her love-puddle in there—a big square tub like a giant wading pool. And next to it was . . . sort of a corpse. It had been a black guy.
Gross—you want to hear gross? A merged person is like Jell-O over some bones, right. And you can . . . uh . . . splatter Jell-O. Splatter a merged person into a bunch of pieces, and the drug wears off—the cells firm up—and there is this . . . uh . . . guy in a whole lot of pieces.
The skin had covered on up around each of the pieces—here was a foot with a rounded-off stump at the ankle, here was his head all smoothed off at the neck. He looked like a nice enough guy. Plump, easygoing. Here was an arm with his torso—and over there a leg hooked onto his bare ass . . . and all of it sagging and starting to rot . . .
Zzuzzzzzzz.
The vizzy in the living room was buzzing. Stahn ran in, covered up the lens, and thumbed the set on.
It was a hard-faced Gimmie officer. He wore hair spikes, and he had gold studs set into his cheeks. Colonel Hasci. Stahn knew the “cat.” Muy macho. Trés douche.
“Miss Della Taze? We’re down in the lobby. Can we come up and ask you some questions about Buddy Yeskin?”
Stahn split fast. It was a little hard to judge, but Buddy looked to have been dead two days. Why would anyone splatter good old Bud? Death is so stupid; always the same old punch line. It reminded him of Wendy. Whenever he was coming down everything reminded him of Wendy. He’d been stoned on three-way, shooting horseflies with his needler and he’d hit her by accident. Some accident. Sold her body to the organleggers and moved up to the Moon before the mudder Gimmie could deport him. Her poor limp body.
Stahn’s black saucer circled aimlessly. He wondered where Della Taze had gotten to. Merge with the cosmos, sister. Can I get some, too? WHAT TYPE, baby, WHAT TYPE OF SEX? Shut up, Stahn. Be quiet, brother. Chill out.
2
Christmas in Louisville
Merged. Gentle curves and sweet flow of energies—merged in the love-puddle, the soft plastic tub set into the floor of her bedroom. Exquisite ecstasy—Della melted and Buddy just sliding in; the two of them about to be together again, close as close can be, flesh to flesh, gene to gene, a marbled mass of pale and tan skin, with their four eyes up on top seeing nothing; but now, just as Buddy starts melting . . . suddenly . . .
Aeh!
Della Taze snapped out of her flashback and looked at the train car window. It was dusk outside, and the glass gave back a faint reflection of her face: blonde, straight-mouthed, her eyes hot and sunken. Her stomach hurt, and she’d thrown up three times today. Burnt-out and worldly wise . . . the look she’d longed for as a teenage girl. She tried a slight smile. Not bad, Della. But you’re wanted for murder. And the only place she could think of going was home.
The train was coasting along at a slow 20 mph now, click-clanking into Louisville, gliding closer to the long trip’s end: Einstein-Ledge-Florida-Louisville via spaceship-shuttle-train. Two days. Della hoped she was well ahead of the Einstein Gimmie—the police. Not that they’d be likely to chase her this far. Here in 2030, Moon and Earth were as far removed from each other as Australia and England had been in the 1800s.
Louisville in the winter: rain not even snow, lots of it, gray water, the funny big cars, and real sky—the smells, after two years of dome air, and the idle space! On the Moon, every nook and cranny had its purpose—like on a sailboat or in a tent—but here, gliding past the train, were vacant lots with nothing in them but weeds and dead tires; meaningless streets with marginal businesses; tumbledown houses with nobody home. Idle space. There were too many faces up in Einstein, too many bodies, too many needs.
Della was glad to be back here, with a real sky and real air; even though her body was filled with a dull ache. The weight. Old Mr. Gravity. In Florida she’d spent the last of her money on an Imipolex flexiskeleton with the brand name: Body by Oozer. She wore it like a body stocking, and the coded collagens pushed, stiffened, and pulled as needed. The ultimate support hosiery. Most returning loonies checked in for three days of muscle rehabilitation at the JFK Spaceport, but Della had known she’d have to keep running. Why? Because she’d jelled back from that last merge-trip to find her lover splattered into pieces, and before she’d had time to do anything, there’d been a flat-voiced twitch-faced man on the vizzy.