MEMP’IS
BOOK ONE – “A LITTLE LESS
CONVERSATION”
(Tuesday, January 2, 2035)
There is an empty tomb in Memphis, a cavity that
yawns beneath three fathoms of roiling river water, mud and overstanding
silt and rubble; a garden of chrysanthemum skulls... that vault of waving
anemones, calamaries, cenobites... a cavity in
reason's sleep. Its guardians writhe
with agitation as Becoming nears... murmuring and booming, spearing flies out
of the heavens, baring fangs to feast upon the dead of transport. Clouds scud - winter's weak sun girds herself against a last debauch. A score of molting ravens soaring from the
Arsenal to roost in the crannies and crevices of the King's magnificent ruin,
their mottled, falling feathers an anxious, black
rain.
And in Jatesland,
three hundred miles south... a hundred miles southwest of diluvian
New Orleans... a pencilshaft of light widens: it
narrows... widens again...
Frank Desperate cries out...
"Hey!
Hey... assholes!... I'm talking to you. Hey!"
The light narrows... on a cluttered desk, a pencil
rises of its own accord and, shuddering, begins drawing spirals that might be
towers, seas, dunes on the backside of an aged, manila file.
The Trouble Factory plumbing groans. It is no ancient building... less than two
decades old... but hastily and cheaply constructed and, even at this early
hour, far more populated with both freemen and gulageurs than it ought to be.
Its pipes shudder with the flush of every
HRI-approved Scan-O-Matic Evacunit;
dingy brown stains ooze from bare, overhead pipes of this sub-sub basement,
rappelling down the basement walls of C-Squad to congeal in viscous layers -
intimating intimate diseases. These
walls breathe laboriously, like old men.
The light widens.
The pencilstrokes grow frenzied, the integrity
of their gyre... their wedergheeder (Triple-J's shorthand for the
vicissitudes of life) corrupted.
A slap of footsteps swells, passes the door to
C-Squad and the grimy window one meter high, three long, before which passersby
may linger... if they choose... watching Frank dangle. The prisoner sways in shadow, writhing in his
duct tape fetters. And...
complaining.
"Hey!
I'm freezing here. It's
dark! Can't feel my kebbin'
feet.
Hans' gone to sleep!"
There is a dim buzzing across the
hall, where the metal doors to eight-person containment cells for LCs recede
into a distance of curvature endemic to Barataria,
where influence and sway of Triple-J remains strongest. Most LCs stirring in the cells behind these
doors are sad, defeated creatures... they fear Frank's outbursts will bring
down more unpleasantness upon them, and wish he would shut up... although, of
course, they dare not voice their vexations.
Brr... fshlap! Brr... fshlap!
The waxbot
passes this basement corridor of the Trouble Factory at precisely 0645 hours
each morning, trailed by its attendant, a dead-eyed trusty in washed-out green
scrubs. Unpiloted, the furious pencil
draws crosshatchings over its work, then a series of small, precise rectangles
before collapsing; a marionette stylus, with severed strings.
Behind the metal doors (with
twelve-centimeter wide barred portholes affording a view of the hall and waxbot and... to a favored few... the window to C-Squad and
its shaft of widening and narrowing light), LCs pace and sigh and dream of
conditional liberties. Breakfast is near
and, then, the work of the day.
Brr... fshlap!
The waxbot,
like most appliances of the Trouble Factory, doesn't do a very thorough job...
the floor remains speckled with filth after it passes, and the plodding brown
gunk that crawls down the hallway walls (and would congeal in corners, if there
were corners) remains down there. Surface dust is excited, but soon resettles
atop a thin limn of vegetable tallow, barely enough to maintain a state of
desultory slipperiness. The trusty
shuffles forward behind the waxbot like a blindman; behind him a uniformed
police officer hurries, swiping his keycard to enter darkened C-Squad. Hungry cops are drawn... like mosquitoes, to
warm blood... to the ancient, pre-k'ball refrigerator
whose door sways slowly, still throwing widening and narrowing shafts of weak
light, its criminal cargo borne through dark and darker spectra of shadow.
The duct tape binding Frank to the
refrigerator door by his neck, waist, wrists and ankles at least allows him to
swivel his head and plead...
"Hey!
It's dark! Assholes!
Hey! Off'ser..."
The policeman shoves the door open,
allowing enough light to command a clear view of the contents of the fridge
and, also, push Frank out of sight, if not hearing. Frankie's a cheap hood in cheap, shiny
clothes with lank, greasy hair, too many freckles and a pale, haunted face
(paler, certainly, for all the blood migrating to his extremities during these
long hours of disciplinary crucifixion).
"Hey! Talkin' ta you!"
The policeman, rooting through bags and cans in the
fridge... coupla of soygurts,
half a bitter melon, some Integral popsicles in the freezer... grunts, removes
a gray, half-eaten JatesBar in a torn glastic wrapper.
Ignoring the prisoner, he kicks back absently... the refrigerator door
swings, but does not close, the approaching and retreating image of Frank
shimmering in the dirty mirror over C-Squad's sink...
"Hey! Din't shut the
door, jateshole!..."
"Sorry..." (he pauses on his way out with his plunder, pondering)...
"naw, ain't
sorry!"
The refrigerator door swings rhythmically after the
policeman's departure - a somehow weakening shaft widening and narrowing with
rhythmic openings and closings.
The policeman is gone, the waxbot and trusty gone, the LCs silent and fretful behind
their doors. Still, Frankie keeps
complaining...
"Hey! K'ballin' cold in
here! Can't feel my fingers! Can't... hey!...
assholes, hey!"
The pipes shudder, more filth rolls
down the walls like volcanic mucous, a steady drip drips into C-Squad's sink.
"Jatesholes!... I'm callin' Compliance. Brutality... brutal brutality... I gotta case. Hey!..."
And his appeals and curses falter as he swings in
waxing and waning shafts of light that brighten and darken the pleaders on the
scuffed, stained metal desks and the old-fashioned paper files heaped
everywhere. At 0700 hours the dim lights of the sub-sub-basement corridor
brighten incrementally and... far, far down the
hall... a metal wagon with squeaky wheels rolls, stops. A trusty, under the supervision of uniformed
officers, unlocks apertures and thrusts glastic bowls
of nutrient slop into each of the cells.
At 0715, another officer walks the curving corridor, rattling the bars
of the portholes to remind the LCs of their impending workday and, at 0730, the
bolts of the first cell are sprung.
Blinking in sudden light, LCs totter into the hallway and press hands to
the metal wall to be shackled with tempered glastic
chains... HRI-approved, lighter (yet stronger) than iron... counted, and
marched off.
Nobody comes for Frank.
At 0755 hours, the tall, blond policeman, Eric Ice,
flips a switch that bathes C-Squad in weak, flickering fluorescent light,
glares at Frank, and kicks the refrigerator door shut, skimming the prisoner's
knee. Ice swaggers to his desk; the top
two buttons of his shirt, undone, reveal a necklace of grisly souvenirs.
"Hey!" Frank calls out. "Jus' what makes ya
think I'm kebbin' invisible, here? Hey!"
"Gonna say somethin'
useful - or do I tape your mouth
again?"
"Hey! Got things
up there, onna ceilin'..."
and, being unable to point, Frankie wriggles his neck, "...you maybe don't see 'em, but they gimme the shakes!
I'm gonna...."
But then, thinking the better of it, he closes his
mouth, watching two other officers enter.
The uniformed policeman is Homer Sack... there is something not quite
human about his long, hangdog face and drooping ears. The other undistinguished fellow, in
plainclothes... a cheap, wrinkled suit under the overcoat he tosses on a shelf,
off-white shirt and loose, spotted tie... is Corporal Norlin,
titular head of C-Squad.
The basement office is dank, full of files, some
sprouting pernicious mold; the dark stains on the walls are, well, crusty in the weak light beneath a
network of leaking pipes and vacuum comtubes. An old digital clock between the sink and a
metal rack of punchcards, now shows 0757 hours.
Ice holds up an envelope from his desk, like a dead mouse, taunting his
supervisor.
"Letter from one a-your
girlfriends, Corpse..."
"Drawer
twenty-one," Norlin points.
Glancing at the clock as Eric skims the letter into
C-Squad's battered wastebasket, Norlin opens the
fridge, removes a glastic bottle of Integral 24 herbjuice. He
squeezes and is gratified with the satisfying little pop. He drinks, winces... reminding himself that it's good
for you... and Frank continues struggling against his restraints...
"Lemme
have a drink!"
"Tape him!" Norlin directs.
"My
pleasure!" Ice rips off
eight inches of duct tape, seals Frank's mouth with it in mid-complaint, and
gives him a punch in the stomach for emphasis as Homer and Norlin
stare at the clock, counting up to 0800.
"Wanna
talk about funny glass, jus'... well, wiggle somethin'..."
"...and...
eight! Officially
on duty... I'm gonna take roll call."
"Roll call!" Eric smirks.
"Norlin, present.
Sack..."
"Present."
"Ice?"
"Yoo-hoo..."
"Cattigan.
Present, of-course," Norlin spits. "Rimpaul Ranzany Lugosi... present..."
"K'ballin' gypsy!
Hollywood! Jesk'ballin' Compliance!"
Norlin punches the cards, one after the other, and the
clock replies:
"The time
is oh eight oh two hours... thank you for your compliance."
There is a grating tone from the autocom console on Norlin's desk,
and Homer smiles weakly... "'Nother
girlfriend, boss. Right on
schedule..."
Norlin swears under his breath, flips the autocom switch and Peg Reilly's strained, reedy contralto
permeates the office, liberally seasoned with early-morning static.
"I saw three men going into that
brothel on Eleventh, last night, using the back entrance."
Norlin taps his fingers on the desk. "That's interesting, Peg..."
"Three men... and a woman. With
dogs! There is prostitution going
on..."
Eric Ice begins breathing heavily - panting and
whimpering - Norlin scowls, picking up earphones and
killing the speaker.
"Go on..." he prompts.
"Dog prostitution. I know the
ways of the world, Officer Norlin. And, where there is prostitution, there are
probably narcotics, too, dog narcotics.
Those dogs were fairly bouncing
when they came out of that building, young man... are you taking this
down?"
"Of course I am..."
From above comes an unholy shudder of plumbing - a
regiment of new leaks sprouting from exposed pipes crowding the ceiling...
dirty water spattering Frank and the three policemen.
"K'ball!"
Eric jumps.
"Anti-convulsants,
Officer, epilepsy narcotics. Worm
pills..."
"Keep up your good work with the
telescope, Peg. Keep me informed."
"Evil arises from the subjective
within, Officer, and its downloading."
Norlin hangs up with a directionless hum. By 0900 hours, he and Ice are lining up glastic buckets to catch drips while Frank struggles and
Homer Sack kneels to pray - aligning himself to the Jatesaneum,
that shrine at the center of Jatesland.
"God is good, and great is Triple-J, his
messenger. Let our praises ascend with
the sun... the wisdom of the annular. Health, security and property!" He rises, throwing his associates an unheavenishly smug glance.
"Five more days! Five more blessed days until Becoming..."
"Hey, if that Jates
Transport plumbing busts up on the Spaceport pad like them others," Eric
points out, "you won't have time to worry 'bout your shoes."
"That's not possible... all the
new models have been approved by HRI."
"Just like our pleaders," Norlin breaks in, slapping his back into life.
"Too busy becomin'
dead..." Eric worries the
sad-sack Sack, and Frank Desperate begins banging his head against the
refrigerator door for attention. Norlin, carefully transcribing the gist of Peg's claim onto
his draft Daily Report form, looks up...
"Don't worry 'bout Frank,
boss," Eric sniggers. "He's...
unarmed!"
Norlin's weary smile's cut off by the arrival of C-Squad's
morning mail, tumbling down a vacuum tube patched with the same gray duct tape
that binds Frank to the ancient refrigerator... three coughdrop-sized
Papillon Digital Datalozenges
and a half-dozen paper envelopes, rolled up in a cardboard cylinder. He pries the paper out while, one-handedly,
sliding a lozenge into his pleader, riffling, with the other, through sundry
crazily scrawled missives, such as...
Dear Trouble Factory:
Last night I barely noticed the phony
funeral energy off the Saboteurs of Jatesland
(premeditated, or not premeditated) for free-conditioning of chocolate
vastnesses and extensions.
I
asked persons gathering please not to pay one cent more in taxes to support
teenage girls who, I charge, are on the "Go-Go" on the Hamorite Strip, falsifying in doorways. I was told "Your crazy!" but who,
really, is snuffed out by terror screens?
You cannot consent with Lemonarchy in Bork
City, nor with the man with the baby's photograph on
his elbow.
Who
drives perdition's ambulance... and who, only, seems to be driving?
Richard Craik
Northwest Abraham Street
then, also, from a correspondent with an illegible
signature...
... when the human ears on my back that I had
contracted to host... ears to replace souvin-ears
taken by Zeutrons... grew tumorous, I crossed over
that frontier between the Hu-man and Tu-man. Although Tu-man
constantly experiences duality in talk and walking, he mimics Hu-man
individuality; his is syn - dividuality,
when the cancer speaks with two Official voices...
At 0920 hours, Ice sidles past,
glancing over Norlin's shoulder.
"Usual
suspects?"
"Mmmm... Trooshka's appealed the Law Firm's declination of her suit
against the Solar Furnace for cutting off utilities. Says Triple-J killed her family with gas from
the replacement family in the apartment above. Vona
Rae's got more Animal Shelter mischief, Goofy Louie says Northwest Station's
conducting illegal doop-human wedding ceremonies -
they come out after midnight, they do! Ice? Eric?"
Officer Ice has sidled back to his pleader.
"Sorry, corpse. Hadda check the markets... my Sosa's up a quarter. Gimme Puckett's up
seven-eighths, but Obi Wazio's tankin'...
it's the kebbin' fex-dumpin'
from the kebbin' Koranese! Hey, wanna go
shares onna primo flask of pre-K'ball
Justin Guarini?
"Germs catches you playin' the FexMarket on
Departmental time," Norlin warns, "I didn't see anything."
"Hey... this is C-Squad! Nobody gives a k'ball
about us, Germany least of all."
As if conjured into being by mention of his name...
which lingers, invisible, yet pungent, like illicit smoke... Norlin's supervisor drops by. Intelligence Chief Germany Smith's a thin,
pale giglio under a green Bavarian hat with a little
gray-yellow feather (wearing a slightly aggrieved smirk of chronic
constipation; everything about Frank Desperate offends his digestion).
"Captain wants you in on the Departmental meeting upstairs ten on the dot. Don't ask me, but it might have something to
do with him!" Smith nods.
Frank smiles, drool overflowing the lip of the duct tape, bubbling into
a rabid froth by the time it congeals into small, white pearls and drips to
C-Squad's filthy linoleum. "And,
for jayssakes, take that kebbin'
tape off his mouth, you want more fex with Compliance
and the Law Firm? Anything I should know
about?"
Norlin raises the letters tentatively and Germany
snatches them away...
"Nothing you'd want to know..." the
Corporal apologizes, "... Peg Reilly, Vona Rae complainin' the FexMarket won't
list her kebbin' piss. Penhauer on the universtikal of high faith, the co-universtikal...
meanin' he resents havin'
to use his ID to cross the street..."
"Be there, then, and on time. Don't make me send somebody after you. I fail to see why decent citizens should
suffer from proximity to paranoiacs in their midst," and the Intelligence
Chief lets constituent letters flutter down towards Drawer 21. "In my small way, I hold back the course
of God's black comedy, and am satisfied.
And what, Ice, are those kebbin' dried things round your neck?"
"Pigeon claws. Rats of the air, Chief."
"Button your shirt, you walkin'
Compliance case." Because Homer is
still, somehow, under Smith's authority, waiting for advice, he turns,
advising: "Reconsider, Sack. The path to ascension is not opened by form
annihilation." He turns back to Norlin. "Be
there, 0955..."
Chief Smith tips his hat and departs -
a pouting Ice rips the duct tape off Frank's mouth savagely and the prisoner
cries out...
"I am goin' ta the Law Firm. I yam!
You're a disgrace to the Nades, or wasn't it
the Zeutrons you used ta
run with?..."
"Zeuts? Never heard of 'em!"
There's another rumble of plumbing, a shudder and
more sewer-rain. Norlin
blinks at the ceiling; the maze of pipes, mold and crumbling plaster seeming to
shimmer briefly, as if seen through Frank's queer glass. He rubs his eyes,
looks down at correspondence summaries on his pleader, then
at a couple of officers, just arrived on break from one of the interrogation
rooms down the hall. One opens the
fridge and pulls out a glastic bottle of Integral
with a plain brown label, 28, smirking at his partner.
"Hey Norlin, heard
from Max Bend recently? Oh... yeah,
forgot... he's takin' a sabbatical down at Stimwood...
all-expenses paid, courtesy of the city..."
"Do the world a favor, Norlin,"
the other one suggests, "an' jump outta
window..."
"Can't, you dook,
we're under the kebbin' basement!"
"Then, maybe, swallow a box of rat
poison?" suggests the officer, snatching the bottle from his partner. "That's what they make it fer... rats, you know?..."
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