Put The Sepia On Read online

  “Means detective.”

  “You’re with the Corporation?!”

  I take a sip of his drink (if you can call it that; brown would be much too nice a word) for effect before I answer. “Those are your words.”

  “So you’re not?” he’s frantic now, as he’s noticed that a few of the nearby Dogs are listening.

  “Those are also your words.” He’s about to lose it, when the voice I didn’t want to hear floats over my shoulder and slaps me in the face.

  “Ah, my old friend. I wondered when you’d darken my doorstep and brighten my day.” I turn around and there he is, the only Dog in the country who owns a tuxedo, and you bet he’s wearing it. His hair, and there’s plenty of it, is meticulously groomed and his smile shows off his big, sharp, pearly white teeth.

  I decide to lie to him, out of courtesy. “Nice to see you, Lime. But I’m afraid we were just leaving.” I hear a couple dozen guns click around the bar. Sigh. It was a nice thought.

  “You can’t leave, old boy… I haven’t given you the tour yet.” He’s still smiling, dammit, and now I feel guilty. Suspecting little Coral, getting all melodramatic. Probably would have kept with it, but Lime’s smile reminds me what a wolf really looks like.

  Chapter 3: A Man Who Likes Talking To A Man Who Likes To Talk

  I’m looking at this perfumed pit bull, and I can’t help but have a memory or three. Back when I was working for the Corporation, back when I was finding the people with pricetags, Lime was a pretty frequent feature of my evenings. He knew where people were, especially when they were in his basement, or his belly.

  But I’ll give him this: he was always a courteous cannibal (if Dogs and people are even the same species anymore; maybe he’s just a polite predator). A scavenger with pretensions (at least), or ambitions (in the middle), or a maybe a destiny far above the hand he’d been dealt… And while we worked opposite sides of the same two-faced coin, we got along pretty ok, considering. Lime, like me, knew the whole thing was one big joke. Sure, I had to put a few of his Dogs down over the years, and nobody was fonder of biting the hand that fed him (which incidentally was the same hand that signed my paychecks) than Lime, but… We’d trade laughs between shots, or shots between laughs. Looking at him now makes my arm ache, but it warms me up a little when I see he’s still favoring his left leg.

  “So,” he says, still grinning, as his boys frisk me and take away my big useless gun and pocket the money Coral gave me, “how do you know our lad Robert here?” Speaking of, Robbie’s sweating buckets, which might actually work out because he’s in so far over his head he’s going to need something to bail with.

  “Friend of the family,” I say.

  “You don’t have a family, old friend.”

  “Don’t have any friends, either,” I say. He stops smiling.

  “Well that’s not nice, pal, when I’ve been so good to you over the years.” He’s not wrong; he may be a murderous man-monster, but he’s a murderous man-monster who made me a lot of money and saved my bacon a time or two… when he wasn’t too busy trying to cook it.

  “Years, Lime, years. And I did ok by you, too,” and much to my surprise I’m not lying either; Lime’s still alive because of me, although I don’t think either of us are too happy about it.

  “Well,” he says as that toothy grin comes back and Robert struggles to keep down whatever it was he was drinking, “you and her. I assume she’s slinking around somewhere, ready to change the game?” Lime’s got a memory. And a couple of knife wound memos on the back of his left shoulder in case he forgets. Both came signed and delivered.

  “I haven’t seen her,” I say, and I haven’t lied to him in sentences. It’s like speaking a second language. His eyes narrow. He’s trying to decide if I’m a great liar or terrible at telling the truth. Can’t it be both?

  “Me neither,” I can’t tell if he’s saying it with relief or suspicion. Can’t it be both? “Anyways, I suppose I should show you what our lad Robert’s been doing to help us out. That is why you’re here, isn’t it old boy?” I don’t scare easy. But that smile will haunt my dreams if I live long enough to fall asleep.

  He (and five or six of his unkempt compatriots) escort us down a long hallways with nice red carpet on the floor and walls. It doesn’t do a great job hiding the bloodstains, but I only count three of them, so by Dog-side of the track standards, we’re getting a tour of a real five star joint.

  At the end of the hallway there are stairs. Looks like we’re going down them. Smells like Robert doesn’t want to. Lime’s been chattering away the whole time with “old boy” this and “chum” that. He hasn’t noticed that I’m not listening because he hasn’t stopped talking. That same habit scored him the limp that slows our descent.

  All of a sudden we’re in a warehouse, and I don’t like what I see. Boxes and boxes of old-make weaponry, the kind they used back before the Corporation put a leash on things. Weapons that have been illegal, and unmanufactured, for decades. Weapons no man could use, physically, or would use, morally.

  To my left there’s a four-foot shoulder cannon propped against a wall; the barrel is wider than most bowling balls. I know what it shoots, too. Nine pound spiked steel cannonballs that release a few thousand volts of electricity on impact. It fires seven per second, and with the right rigging, can hold about eighty. It was designed to fight helicopters and demolish buildings, but I figure in a pinch it could probably slow a fella down in a pretty permanent way, you know, if it had to.

  To my right, there’s an old-make Mech, designed for Dogs instead of Corporation trained pilots. It doesn’t handle as well as the models the Corporation uses today, but that’s ok because it’s three times the size and has enough power to lift seventy-five tons… per hand.

  And it goes on and on like that for a thousand feet. A whole bunch of classic (and restored) raider bikes, discontinued because no human is big enough to ride them and they’re twice as fast as anything cost-effective and man-sized. Lime’s hoarded about three hundred of them. All kinds of fun explosives, and lots of big blades, spikes, and bludgeons on the ends of heavy chains that no man could lift... but a Dog with a decent workout routine can handle ‘em one handed. I’m standing in an armory.

  “Robert works as a clerk for the Repossession Division,” Lime explains with a good-natured grin that’s scarier than all of the weapons in the room, except maybe for the box of grinder-grenades (bombs that release dozens of rotating and rusty drill-bits upon detonation) sitting on a nearby shelf.

  “So you’re opening a museum?” I ask because he’s waiting for me to ask something.

  “No, my old friend. We are tired of being fed table scraps. We are tired of being- pardon the pun- the underdog. We are tired of the Corporation.” He was a pompous sonofabitch, but he wasn’t necessarily wrong; the Corporation had been using the Dogs as, well, dogs, for decades. First class muscle, third class citizens. But…

  “There’s a lot of ground to cover between here and the capitol buildings,” I point out. Lime shrugs, the way he might if his afternoon drink only had three ice cubes instead of four.

  “Sure. And the people, they’re as oppressed as we are. They’ll fall in, marching behind us, a million tallies in the profit margin becoming a million patriots. Think of it as a revolution, if you will.”

  “With you sitting on top of the hill at the end, naturally.”

  He nods. “Naturally.”

  “Why tell me?” he might just be bragging. But he’s too smart for that. He walks up to me and pats me on the back, like we’re pals. I’ll try explaining that to the bruise his paw left; you don’t need to ache, buddy, it was a friendly smack.

  “Because, my dear detective, I want your help.”

  “Come again?”

  He clasps his giant hands behind his giant suit and strides away, musing. “Is it really so hard to fathom? You hate the Corporation- so do I. Our old enmity, if you choose to see it as that, which I don’t, for the record - more lik
e a friendly game of one-upsmanship - but whatever it was, it hardly matters now, does it? It was all at the instruction of the Corporation, no?” He turns back and grins at us. “It’s not so bizarre; and you wouldn’t be the only man on the winning team, of course. After all, Robbie here sees it our way, don’t you Robbie?”

  Robert’s too scared to speak, but he nods, and it looks like he means it. The Dogs are selling freedom, and that sounds ok as long as you don’t mind the tax. Being a former government employee, though, I hate me some taxes.

  “No soap, Lime. I don’t like the Corporation, sure, but at least I know how they operate. I can live in their world, and be left more or less alone. Yours? You’d have a knife in my back before the dust settled.”

  Lime shrugs amiably.”Technically, I could quite easily put one in you now. There’s no need for this posturing, my old friend; once the dust settles there’d be no reason for us to be at each other’s throats ever again. I’ll be in charge, you’ll be rich, and… well, does there really need to be anything beyond that?”

  I say nothing, but I must be thinking it pretty loud because he gets that gleam in his eyes again and…

  “Ah, her?” He pauses for effect, or maybe just to try and read my face. I’m guessing its light enough reading - like an obituary. He waves one of his big mitts, dismissing the issue. “Well, you can have her. Total clemency, for both of you. Free reign in a brave new world.” When I don’t say anything to that, he continues, “Don’t be so skeptical; I’m greedy, not petty, you know.” Robert almost works up the sack to ask me who the “she” is. Almost.

  I take a long look at Lime before I speak. I think he’s on the level with this; he’s played dirty before, but never cheap. And using her to get to me would be beneath him, although it would probably have worked if it weren’t, once upon a time. But times change, and while I can still remember how she looks and smells and sounds and tastes, I also remember how she plays. Put it this way; if I’m on the level, Lime’s under the table, and she’s poking around the basement. No sale.

  “Lime, I’m not your friend, and I’m not here for your revolution, or your money, or her. I’m here because somebody paid me a lot of money to take Robert here home and teach him some manners.”

  Lime’s smile disappears. He snaps his fingers, and one of his flunkies hands him my cash. “This money? This is nothing. Today, I could give you a hundred times this. Tomorrow, a million.”

  “Tomorrow?” I ask before my brain catches up with my mouth. Lime just nods. “Then what’s the harm letting me take Robert here?” Lime laughs a laugh like expensive wine made from sour grapes.

  “No harm, really. You won’t run to the Corporation- your pride won’t let you- and even if you did, it’s much too late for them to stop us… but on the other hand, you could make things a little tougher for us. We’d rather take them by surprise, you understand; no sense fighting a war when you can win an ambush. It’s just common sense.” His men heft their guns. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you one last time which side you’d like to be on, Detective.”

  “If it’s all so inevitable, Lime, why would you even need me?” I see something now I never thought I’d see. I’ve hurt his feelings.

  “You’re my friend,” he says simply, “and I’d like you to be a part of this. Sure, we’ve had our scraps- but that was business. You’re a man of the world, Detective, too smart to take your medicine, too moral to work for the Corporation, too proud to become a criminal… I don’t think I know anyone I respect quite so much, except perhaps for her… but then, I actually do hate her, so yes, yes now that I work it all out aloud, I suppose you are my best friend in this whole backwards world.” He’s lonely, and I’d be lying if I tried to convince myself that none of what he said was mutual; it’s why I never offed him back in my Corporation days. We’re two guys too smart to play by the rules, and too dumb to walk away from the game. There’s some camaraderie in that, if not the friendship Lime is shilling.

  It’s a rare vulnerable moment for him, and I can see it makes his boys uncomfortable. A smarter detective might be able to come up with a way to use that. But a smarter detective wouldn’t have been here to hear that little revelation in the first place.

  “Ah, yeah, I forgot we’re best pals… must be the guns your goons have at my back.” Buying time, and not much of it.

  “Ah, yes, sorry about that. Precautions, you know. I’m sentimental enough to like you, my friend, but I’m not dumb enough to trust you. Not without your word, anyways.”

  I stifle a chuckle. “You think it’s worth anything?”

  He takes a deep breath before replying. “Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Perhaps I’m too quixotic. Nonetheless, give it, and I’ll let you walk out of here alive and if you betray me… well, I won’t have too many people to blame for that, now will I?”

  I’m a helluva liar, but… I can’t do it. My life’s on the line and I can’t lie to him. Not about this. I hate the fucker, but he’s been straight with me, and I guess if nothing else I owe him the same damned courtesy.

  “Go to Hell, Lime.” He closes his eyes, accepts the pain, and bows his head slowly. Then he turns away. The guns behind me are ready, but they’re not aimed. The gunmen are thinking about Lime’s speech, not the allegedly unarmed gumshoe he’s about to tell them to execute.

  I drop my left shoulder, and that little compartment I had installed after Lime shot me back between laughs springs open. My little useful gun slides down my sleeve and into my hand. I’ve got it up, and aimed, fast enough to catch the Dogs off guard. Lime looks more amused than afraid. Robert looks much more afraid than amused.

  “Surely, Detective old boy,” Lime starts, “surely you don’t think you can blast through all of us with just that.” I look down the barrel at him.

  “Not us. Just you. But don’t worry, Lime, it’s a revolution; it’s too late to stop it, remember? It’ll happen just fine without you. And if I die with you, it’ll be an ambush instead of a war anyways, right? If you’re the patriot you claim to be, this is a no-brainer.”

  Things are real quiet and real tense for almost a minute, except for Robert’s frightened whimpering. The Dogs don’t know what to do. Lime’s smiling. My arm’s getting tired, on account of having a hollowed-out hiding place where half my bicep is supposed to be. Lime walks right up to me, and I have to raise the gun slightly to keep it aimed at his head. He tucks the money he took from me gently into my coat. As he does it, I catch a whiff of his breath. I bet he’s the only Dog in the world who brushes his teeth.

  “Well, I suppose we’re both liars until it matters, aren’t we, Detective? You and Robert are free to go. But please- and I ask you this as a pal – be smart about where.”

  With that, he nods his goons away from us and we backpedal up the stars, back through the hallway, back into the dirty streets that smell like freedom- and futility- and Robert’s urine. You’d think the Dogs would have potty trained their pet.

  Chapter 4: It Takes A Lot Of Lights To Make A City, Doesn’t It?

  We flee. We’re in a bad part of a bad part of the part just outside of the part that could charitably be called “town”. Outlands, the last bit before the desert. Where the Dogs live, and scavenge, and leave bodies in the street. The buildings are old, and made out of wood. The wood’s old, too, and smells that way. The streets aren’t streets, just patches of ground without a building or a body on them.

  We keep going, wordless, because I don’t have anything to say to Robert and he’s too out of breath to say anything to me. Into the slums we go, where the citizens too dumb to pick a poison live in equal fear of the Dogs and the Corporation… or would, if they weren’t mandatorily medicated into placidity. I’d be tempted to call them livestock, but even livestock has the sense to run from predators. These ones just sit in their square concrete homes and ride the train into that shiny, sterile city where they do simple jobs for sinful people and slight wages.

  Speaking of the train, we�
��ve reached the tracks now, and we have to stop, because it’s whistling by. A shiny bullet a mile long moving just a shade slower than sound, packed full of citizens who don’t know any better. They pump an aerosol variant of the meds through the AC, just in case somebody forgets their dose. We don’t have to wait long, and we cross the tracks into the nicer part of the sick sad slums, where the Dogs only wander if they’re hungry or bored. Besides that, the biggest difference is that the rats are polite enough to die in the shade most of the time.

  Here’s where the middle live. The people who aren’t rich or important enough to live in the part of the city that counts for something, and not dumb or desperate enough to live on the other side of the tracks and play chew toy. Joke’s on them as of tomorrow, of course. But before then and now, it’s been the place where people don’t live or die so much as exist, and they don’t even do that particularly well. My office is in this neck of the woods, just close enough to the center of the tracks that I can’t see the big boring beautiful capitol buildings; steel monoliths big on shine and short on sizzle.

  Coral’s waiting in my office. She’s been worried. What a deer.

  “Robert!” they embrace, and that’s nice, and all, but there’s something bigger on my mind.

  “Tell ‘er, Robbie,” I say as I fling my hat into my seat and my coat on my desk. “Tell ‘er what you helped them do.” He freezes. This guy’s got balsa wood where his spine oughtta be. I strike a match, light a smoke, and explain the way it is.

  “Ok, I’ll do it for you. Coral, your brother’s been telling the Dogs where to look for big, mean weapons to fight the Corporation. Sometime tomorrow, they’re going to storm through the slums, mowing down nice, helpless folk like yourselves, and start a big bloody war. Maybe they’ll win, and y’all can look forward to being at the mercy of a bunch of hulked out hedonists with chips on their shoulders - their chips larger ‘n your shoulders - or a giant, omnipotent Corporation with wounded pride and good reason to triple everybody’s dosage.” I look at Robert while she digests what he’s done. “I oughtta wring your neck,” I tell him. He nods.