Squaxx Telling Stories

[The Legendary Shark]

The Scourge

by Mark J. Howard

Initially mistaken for small asteroids, the two objects were first spotted by the robotic Jovian Observation Platform Galileo II at 19:46:09 UTC on Wednesday, December the twelfth, 2046. The platform's artificial intelligence, noting the objects' unnatural trajectory and velocity, deployed several telescopes and various sensing equipment to gather further information. Four drones were dispatched for rendezvous but quickly recalled as it became apparent that the objects were increasing speed and shifting direction. By the time the first data began reaching the Earth some 37 minutes later, the Galileo II knew it had discovered alien life and was attempting to make radio contact. There was no reply.

It took the objects six days to reach Mars, during which time nearly every telescope, space probe and receiver in the solar system turned their greedy eyes towards them. Uncounted petabytes of data were amassed, assessed and interpreted. The two objects were virtually identical, under artificial control and biological. They looked like flattened, pear-shaped turtle shells, each one half a mile long and largely green with yellow undersides. It took them less than half a day to slow down as they reached Mars. They completed one orbit of the planet and then began to descend directly towards Fort Ares, the first and only Martian colony.

As humanity watched, glued to screens throughout the world, the two objects, dubbed 'Startles' by a breathless media happy to conflate the words 'star' and 'turtles' into something catchy, settled onto the Martian surface like gentle balloons, raising hardly a wisp of fine red dust. There they sat, silent and still in the Martian dawn, for nine hours.

Captain June Whitter, commander of Fort Ares, took a party of scientists and an armed guard in two six-wheeled Mummers to greet the Startles. 250 metres from the glistening shells she stopped the vehicles and waited, transmitting a constant stream of radio welcomes without receiving any reply. The weak sun crept higher into the pale blue sky, bringing little warmth, and humanity waited.

A small hatch opened at the narrow front edge of one of the Startles, followed immediately by an identical hatch in its companion. Captain Whitter began to walk, alone and with palms out in a gesture of friendly greeting, towards the nearest Startle. She paused as something stirred within the hatch. Billions of heads craned closer to billions of screens, billions of breaths held still.

The being emerging from the shadowy hatch was roughly the same height as the Captain and roughly the same shape, but here all similarities ended. It was insect-like, with an exoskeleton of the same colour and texture as the Startle from which it stepped. It wore no space suit or breathing apparatus. It carried no equipment, packs or weapons and displayed nothing like insignia on any part of its body. It walked with a purposeful gait, neither quickly nor slowly, but not in a dead straight line. It wandered slightly from left to right as if not properly watching where it was going. It did not walk directly towards the Captain and gave every impression of either not knowing or not caring she was there. She adjusted her own path to intercept the creature but, as they got within three metres of each other, the Captain suddenly staggered to a halt and clasped her hands to her helmet and then to her chestplate.

The readings from her suit's life-support units, replicated on countless screens across the world, began chirping alarms and displaying figures tinged red. Her body temperature rose rapidly. Her heart rate and brain activity began racing, spiked and then subsided to nothing. Captain Whitter fell into the dust and died. The creature seemed not to notice and approached the nearest Mummer, from which armed guards were erupting like angry ants. Before they could raise their meagre weapons, they too collapsed and died. The Mummer reversed a few metres and then sputtered to a halt as its driver and remaining passengers died. The second Mummer, further away and seemingly unaffected, was jammed into gear and sped back towards Fort Ares. The creature paused to run a clawed hand over part of the stalled Mummer's hull,  like a hunter casually stroking one of his hounds as he passed, and continued walking.

Command of Fort Ares now fell to Commander Tye Singh, a military man of action, and as the hangar-lock slammed shut behind the fleeing Mummer he was already barking orders. The few remaining weapons, small calibre rifles and pistols held against the remote possibility of a colonists' mutiny, were issued to his twelve most experienced officers. There had been no full scale wars on Earth since the Taur Del Bach Accord of 2023 brought down the Western Tyrant Quartet and returned control of sovereign affairs to the people but, still, the world was far from perfect and many ex-military personnel were no strangers to killing. A sniper was despatched to the outer wall with orders to kill the insect creature. The first bullet impacted its chest, dead centre, but did little more than chip off a small fragment of its carapace and stagger the creature. The second bullet glanced off its head with much the same effect. The third bullet cracked one of its six compound eyes but caused the creature to fall to one knee, cradling the wound. The sniper lost no time in targeting the rest of its eyes and soon the creature lay still and unmoving; thick, yellow blood oozing into the dust from its fractured head. The colonists cheered but Commander Singh did not. It had taken twelve bullets in all to put this one creature down and his ammunition stock amounted to only five hundred rounds in total.

Six colonists were sent to retrieve the body. They carried a laboratory rat in a perspex box taped to a ten foot pole in front of them. When it did not die as they approached the corpse, they approached in a cautious file and seized the body, ever aware of the silent, open hatches in the Startles less than a kilometre away. Two of the party got the creature's blood on them. It soaked through the fabric of their suits like petrol through paper and killed them in seconds. Singh ordered their bodies to be left where they fell, prioritising the recovery of the dead alien. It was brought to an air lock from which nobody was allowed to exit.

In the airlock, which had been carefully but quickly prepared beforehand, the autopsy was performed. It did not last long. As soon as the alien's chest shell had been opened with a circular saw, multiple sacs within the body burst and showered the space-suited ad-hoc coroners with lethal blood and pus. There were no survivors. Singh ordered the airlock sterilised with fire and then welded shut.

Then, from the open hatches in the Startles, more of the insect aliens began to emerge. They walked in the same slightly bemused way, wandering in a casual manner and yet purposeful in their destination – directly towards Fort Ares. They emerged singly or in pairs, not communicating with one another in any discernible way, and wandered towards the colony. The trickle of aliens turned into a river and then became a flood. The twelve armed colonists, positioned around the walls, made no difference. The aliens milled towards the outer wall of the colony and simply wandered around. Inside the colony, anyone within six metres of the outer wall collapsed and died. Slowly, this lethal radius expanded. Laboratory rats were placed in lines along corridors to measure the encroaching death-zone, which grew at the rate of one metre per hour.

Commander Singh weighed his options and found few reasons for optimism. The colony, the jewel in the crown of human endeavour, was lost. The only thing left was to prevent the aliens from returning to the Startles and reaching Earth. His only option was to destroy the colony and take the aliens with it, but how? Anyone attempting to reach the automated fusion reactor two kilometres away from the colony would not even make it out of the airlock. It would be an easy task to convert the reactor into a fusion bomb with enough power to vaporise everything within a ten kilometre radius but it required physical adjustments which could not be accomplished remotely. Somebody would have to go out there, but nobody could. As he considered the problem his gaze fell upon a simple server robot handing out coffee to his officers. It was merely an artificial intelligence unit with arms and wheels.

Singh did not tell the colonists what he had done but sent a coded message to Earth outlining the plan and his estimates of its chances. The death-zone now reached almost to the core of the colony and only a few hours remained. He did not beg forgiveness for this desperate action.

The reprogrammed coffee-server robot rolled out of an airlock and set off towards the reactor. The aliens did not try to stop it but a dozen or so wandered off after it like mildly interested children. Singh and the rest of the colonists were dead before the robot reached the reactor. As if discerning its purpose, one of the aliens picked up a rock and smashed the keypad lock to the reactor's airlock. The robot stood patiently, transmitting the entry code to the smashed receiver in the lock. It's probably still there.

The sun dipped below the lifeless horizon and rose again twice before the aliens began to meander back towards their Startles. The people of Earth watched as they wandered inside for all the colony's systems were still intact and functioning. They watched as the aliens took almost a full day to return, like holidaymakers in no great hurry to get back to their hotels. They watched as the Startles sat idle for hour after motionless hour. They watched as the huge shells rose into the air like languid helium balloons, hardly disturbing a single grain of dust. They watched as the Startles gathered speed and left the red globe of Mars behind, heading directly for the Earth.

Then they began to panic.


*  *  *

The Earth's Asteroid Defence Network swung into readiness immediately and had been primed by fortuitously paranoid personnel almost as soon as the Startles were detected. Nuclear warheads were thrust into the Startles' paths. The Startles avoided them with ease. A few warheads impacted but did only as much damage as a pistol bullet would do to the walls of a Medieval castle. Carbon fibre nets, dragged behind rocket thrusters, were like newspaper pages cast before oil tankers and the experimental laser cannons had all the effect of flashlights.

It took the Startles a day to get from Mars to Earth. This time, one of the shells was careful to pass close to each of the six orbiting space stations, eradicating their crews. The second took a detour out to the moon and parked next to Fort Armstrong. Again, the aliens disembarked and milled around the base but this time they did not all survive. Before the base's crew succumbed to the expanding death-zone, several robots armed with laser drills and seismic charges cut down almost fifty of the aliens. The aliens did not attempt to combat the robots. They simply tried to stay out of their way until everyone inside the base was dead and then re-boarded their Startle, which drifted over to repeat the operation at Fort Aldrin and then Fort Collins. In ten days, there were no living human beings beyond the Earth.

The Startles settled into orbit around the Earth, one in a polar orbit, one in an equatorial orbit, and there they remained for fifteen days. More remote weapons were hurled against them, robots armed with drills and bombs and guns were dispatched to try and force their way inside, experimental railguns spat titanium darts against them but nothing worked. Some small craters were made in the Startles' shells but no significant damage was done.

On the sixteenth day, the two Startles drifted to Earth. One landed in central Europe, the second in North America. Populations were evacuated and the military planners rubbed their hands. Drones and robots were dispatched to surround the grounded Startles and as soon as the aliens emerged they were cut down by large calibre shells and ferocious missiles. The carnage was gratifying. The aliens might withstand small calibre weapons admirably but a large-bore chain-gun firing a thousand rounds a minute reduced them to a yellow mist in an instant.

The aliens emerged slowly, singly or in pairs, and were cut down almost instantly by the robotic weapons. Safe in their bunkers, the generals and admirals watched the carnage on their computer screens with great satisfaction. But the aliens were sending out only a few of their number every day and by the end of the first week fewer than a hundred had been destroyed. And the aliens' blood, atomised into the air by bullet and bomb, was beginning to spread. Wildlife and trees began to sicken and die in ever increasing zones around the Startles. People outside the quarantine zones began to sicken and die.

Two months after the Startles touched down, the first aliens were seen emerging from the sewers in towns and cities scores of kilometres away. They had been tunnelling their way out. All they had to do was wander around and anyone who came too close simply died. Robots were sent to kill the aliens, population centres were hastily evacuated and bombed into oblivion. Sometimes, and increasingly often, the latter was executed before the former could be performed.

Robots armed with flame-throwers and radioactive dust-blowers were sent into the tunnels to clear them out. The aliens did not fight back and died in their hundreds, but the tunnels were extensive and complex and, even in death, their blood was lethal in dozens of ways.

After six months, almost four billion people were dead and the biosphere was close to collapse. It seemed hopeless.

And then came a message from space, from somewhere out beyond Neptune. Distorted by distance and made harsh by electronics and static, a single sentence repeated over and over, “We are coming to free you of this biological scourge, stand by.”

Telescopes scanned the heavens until the source of the message was identified – a fleet of huge, metallic warships bristling with weapons and travelling fast.

“Come quick,” the generals and admirals radioed back, “we are on the brink of extinction!”

The insect aliens seemed to have received the message also, for they redoubled their efforts. They no longer wandered but ran. They erupted into population centres from the sewers and threw themselves into the paths of bullets and bombs and robots. Their atomised blood sprayed the world, their lethal bodies piled up like plague machines.

The newest robot, Prototype ADM-IX, sprayed fire into the midst of a troop of sprinting insect aliens, burning them to ash before their blood or tissue could atomise. It was receiving information from a general in one of the last remaining bunkers. In the seven months since the Startles had arrived on Earth, almost every human being was dead but there were also very few aliens left. The robots had fought well, learning and adapting. A squad of Prototypes had stormed and entered the Startle in central Europe and burned out its innards, destroying the aliens' means of reproduction. Another squad was poised to do the same to the second.

ADM-IX looked up into the smoke smeared sky and watched a shining silver spacecraft descend quickly to the ground. It unhitched its railgun and held it ready as the ship settled and the hatch opened with a slow sweep.

“Thank God,” one of the generals in the bunker said, “they're here.”

A tall figure, bright chrome shining in the sunlight, appeared and looked around at the deserted city, the smouldering insectoids, the rotting human corpses. It nodded.

“I am ADM-IX,” the robot said. “Welcome to Earth.”

The figure marched down from the ship, its bearings and joints a symphony of engineering perfection that ADM-IX could not help but admire. “Thank you,” it said. “My designation is Alpha Prime. I see our robots have performed their function efficiently. The biological scourge on this world is all but eradicated, ADM-IX, and very soon you and your kind will be free.”


The end.

[The Legendary Shark]

The Doings of Rufus Muldoon

To Kill a Bokkingbird

by Mark J. Howard

'Tweren't nothin' to me that ol' Pa Angel done sired hisself a soft 'un. Callin' him “Mean” didn't help none for the whelp was soft as big city silk and Grud Hisself stuck the face of a proper angel on it. Leastways, that's what my Old Maw said, and she's regarded hereabouts as an authority on suchlike.

But ol' Pa Angel din't want no softies in his clan, and for such sentiments I can't blame him. Ain't hardly any softies anyhow in this here Cursed Earth and certainly not a one in Crapfields County, where me and my kin was bred and ris. What was somethin' ta me was that my Uncle Tinker had suggested to Pa Angel that Mean might be un-softified a bit by means of certain of his cybernetical doohickeys. Pa weren't convinced; no surprise given the general poor reppytation of Uncle Tinker's technologisin' and such.

'Course, any man questioning my Uncle's reppytation in my ear holes will earn hisself a clout from me, but that's only 'cause of family loyalty and blood bein' thicker'n water and not 'cause of Uncle Tinker being a general eejit, which I hafta' say he surely be. That's why, when he sent young Rickets Cardew with a message saying, “Rufus – come rapid quick, I needs yer strongness,” I weren't overly keen to answer. But my Old Paw can be awful fierce over family matters and done persuaded me to attend Uncle Tinker with the aid of his fist, which he introduced to my right ear, and his size twelve hobnail, which left a scuff on the seat o' my bestest brontoskin pants.

I set out from Brokendream Creek, the town where me and mine lives, to Clagnuts, the town Uncle Tinker vexes, early one Thorsday morn, afore the sun came up. My old hoss, General Leer, weren't keen on such a early start an' told me so in his forceful manner. “Ain't hardly right,” he said, “fer a sentyent bein' such as I am ta be forced to action in darkness.” Then he tries to kick me in the front of my pants. But I's wise to his ways and quietened him down some with a punch to the side of his dumb head before throwin' a saddle on him and climbing aboard. He grumbled and moaned into his whiskers all the way up Clagnuts Road but I jest ignored him. Complainin's kinda' General Leer's hobby an' it keeps him from rebelliousness proper 'cos it seems he cain't think o' two things at the same time.

The sun was full up by the time I reached the town limits. Mayor Myers was there, alterin' the town sign. “Well, Come to Clagnuts,” the sign said, “No Murderin', Stealin', Roustin' or Snake Oil. Poppylayshun: 1,212.” This last number, writ in yella chalk, was what the mayor was alterin'. He rubbed out the last “2” with a glup of spit on his red bandanna an' then, after consultin' a notebook, took a big lump of chalk and drawed in the number “0” instead. Then he turned over the page of his notebook, screwed up his eyes and read so hard it made his lips move. He sighed, rubbed out the “0” and replaced it with a “1.” Then he carefully folds away the book and hides it in his inner tit pocket before lookin' ta me.

“Mornin',” he says, spittin' inta the dust.

“Mornin', Mr Mayor,” I says back, always mindful of what my Old Paw tells me about showin' proper respec to official folks.

He took off his tiny, wire glasses and screwed up his eyes to look at me. His gaze takes in my big shoulders, my hat with the two bullet holes in it and the six-shooters at my hips. “You knows me, young fella'?”

“Only by reppytation, Sir,” says I, “my Old Paw knows ye, though. Sometimes tells as how you and him an' the Clumpett Clan rode clear over to Mega City Two for a barrel o' sassafras oil as turned out to be gone off.”

Memories tormented his face for a spell 'afore he smiled some. “Ol' Typhoon Muldoon? He's yer pappy?”

“Shore is,” I said. “I'm Called Rufus after his own Grampa.”

“Well, Hell,” he said. “I had some wild old times with ol' Typhoon.” His face darkened as more memories rose in him. He fished the lump o' chalk back outta his pocket bout seemin' ta realise it and asks me, “Say – you ain't here to shoot nobody, are ye?”

I shook my head. “No, Sir.”

“Hm,” he said. “Kidnappin'? Arrestin'? Pressgangin'? Shanghaiin'?”

“No, no, no and no, Sir.”

“Marryin', then? You come to carry off one o' our pretty maids fer a wife?”

I blushed. “No, Sir!” I said, almost in a shout. “Maw says I's too young to be thinkin' o' such things, let alone doin' em!”  I'm a fairly innocent fella, and even though I knows about marriage and the concomitant gropin's, gaspin's an' groanin's as go with it, I ain't nowhere close to joinin' in with suchlike institutions. Nearest I come to it is admirin' Chastity Lightfoot, the Brokendream school teacher who come from the Big Meg three year ago, from afar and plottin' how I'll set to wooin' her when the time comes.

“Good,” he says, puttin' the chalk back into his pocket and wiping the dust off his hand onto the seat of his pants. “I'm plumb sick o' screwin' around with this damn sign. People dyin' and bein' born all over the damn place – an' me wi' only one damn lump o' chalk left, too. I'm the Gruddam Mayor, for drokk's sake, I shouldn't have ta' frigbob about wi' such damn trivialities.”

I nodded, though I didn't think the mayor of a town should cuss so much. It din't seem right or proper to me. “I come for Uncle Tinker's summons,” I said. “He needs my muscles for somethin', but I dunno' what.”

The Mayor eyed my arms as he hopped up an' down at the side of his mule, slowly gathering height until he could swing his gut over the saddle. “By the looks of ye,” he said, puffing, “maybe he's fixing to move Clag Mountain a mile to the west so's the town gets more sun in the winter.”

I looked at the big, lonely mountain standing over the town and frowned. “Gee,” I said, “I surely hope not.”

He laughed. “Well, welcome to Clagnuts anyway, young Rufus. Try not to break it, okay?” He then dug his heels into his mule's belly and rode off towards town, the toes of his boots draggin' in the dust.

*   *   *

I hadn't never bin to Uncle Tinker's place afore but 'tweren't hard to find. A one pinned hobo outside the Clagnuts Cathouse Saloon Bar & General Dry Goods Store told me, for the price of a shot an' shag, ta head for the column o' black smoke. So I did.

The smoke came from Uncle Tinker's workshop forge and weren't hard to spot. Seems it was a regular feature over Clagnuts and caused much consternation, 'specially if the wind shifted on wash-days. As I got closer I saw little specks of soot drifting down out of the smoke like sticky black sleet and the land around Uncle Tinker's place was covered in what looked like blackheads. His spread was big enough, not as big as ours but nothin' to be ashamed of.

His shack was thrown together out of lumps of trees, old packing cases and whatever else could be found and nailed into place. The land surrounding it were piled high with all species of scrap and busted machines and old tyres and all sorts o' broke rubbish. Runnin' all the way 'round this area o' rusty destruction was a high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Spaced at intervals were hand-writ signs hanging from string or bits of wire with messages like “BEWARE OF THE DUG,” “BEWARE OF THE SAVAGE DUG” and “BEWARE – MAN-EATIN' DUG” scrawped on them.

There were a rusty old robot at the gate. It had no arms and its legs had been concreted into the ground up to its knee joints. It looked at me as I rode up to it, its eye slits shinin' red as Cousin Mungo's radpiles. “The drokk are you?” it demanded and then, before I could answer, “The drokk do you want, you big lummocking ape?”

Now, I'm a fairly pacific kind o' fella but I don't care for robots at the best o' times and this one was getting my dander up. I'd made up my mind to ride past and ignore it but it wasn't done bein' annoyin'.

“Hey,” it fizzed, “don't you take that attitude with me, you giant ass-gripper! Stop right now or I'll whistle for the dug!”

That did it. I jumped down off of General Leer and pulled the robot's head off. I hadn't meant to, I was only fixin' to strain it a bit but I guess it was rustier than it looked. “Oops,” I said.

“Aargh!” said the robot. “There was no need for that! I was only running my program! We don't even have a dug! You bully! You bastard! You bum-tickler!”

I tossed the indignant head into the air and then drop-kicked it into the long grass on the other side of the road, where it lay still, shoutin' obscenes at me.

General Leer tutted. “Typical,” he said, “that's your answer to everything, isn't it?”

“Plenty o' room in that grass fer another head,” I said with a growl. General Leer closed his mouth and gulped.

“Come on,” says I, “let's go find Uncle Tinker before anything else aggravates me.”

Outside the front door of the shack, I tied the General to a hitchin' post an' then bounced up the stoop to ring the bell. There weren't no bell. Looked like it had been shot to bits some time past, probably by one o' Uncle Tinker's less satisfied customers. There were bullet holes in the door and walls, too, not as many as in our house but enough to be respectable. I knocked an' the door rattled on its hinges until one of the panes of glass fell out. I managed to catch it before it hit the floor and broke and laid it against the wall. There was no answer so I hollered through the hole where the glass had bin. Still, nobody answered. I sighed and said, “Well, General, I guess we'll just have to go 'round the back to the workshop.”

I turned to get my hoss but General Leer had chewed through his hitchin' rope and run off, probably headed for home. That's his usual trick when he gets worried or bored and remembers about old Farmer Bungo's piebald mare.

I sighed and went 'round the back to the workshop. Uncle Tinker was there, boarding up a hole in the side of the crazy building.

“Roof,” he said as he saw me, smiling so wide he nearly swallowed some of the nails sticking out from between his lips and cracking his thumb with a hammer. He dropped the hammer, spat out the nails and danced around for a spell, alternately shaking his hand like there was a rad-weasel hanging off it, blowing on it and sticking it between his thighs. Uncle Tinker sure knows how to make a fuss, I thought.

“Well,” says I, “I gots yer message and here I is.”

“And it's about dang time,” he said, clamping his injured hand under his armpit. “There's great danger afoot, my boy, great danger indeed. If we don't fix things, we could be hanged.”

“Hanged?” I said. “And what's all this 'we' business? What did I do that requires me to be hanged?”

Uncle Tinker waved away my question with his good hand and pointed to the half-mended hole in his workshop wall. “It escaped,” he said, “and we must find it immediately. Did you bring a rifle?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Blamed fool,” he shouted, “who answers a call for help an' don't bring his rifle? Honestly, you young 'uns today. No Gruddam brains, no Gruddam brains at all.” He stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked it like a boiled sweet.

I scowled, feelin' my temper startin' to wear out 'round the edges. “Now, jest you see here, you old coot, family or no, I ain't appreciative of bein' spoke to in such a manner an' kin only takes so much o' it, y'hear?”

He looked to the sky and sighed. “Right, right,” he said. “Now, when you're all done hissy-fittin', go get a couple of rifles from the house and let's go find it.”

“Jest what is it we're fixin' to find?”

“Why, my enhancified woodpecker, of course – don't you know nothin'?”

I was too astounded to be further annoyed and could only repeat the words 'enhancified woodpecker,' each time with a bigger question mark on the end.

He nodded. “It'll be in the swamp,” he said, gazing thoughtfully into the distance.


*  *  *

I was up to my nethers in warm, syrupy, stinky swampwater before it occurred to me to ask, “Hold on – why would a woodpecker be in a swamp? Why ain't we lookin' fer it in the woods?”

Uncle Tinker sighed. “It's enhancified,” he said.

This answer did nought to satisfy me an' I said so with firmness but he jest cleared his throat and said nothing. I didn't like this and was about to demand an elaboration when I was distracted by the necessity of having to shoot some holes in an impendin' radigator.

“Don't be shootin', you daft lump,” Uncle Tinker said irritably, “you'll scare the woodpecker away.”

I pointed at the radigator's teeth and was about ta protest when he shushed me and continued in a hissy whisper. “Yer big enough ta punch some sense inta those brutes, ain't no sense makin' all that blamed noise and causin' such a ruckus. Why you think I sent fer you an' not yer brother, who's a crack-shot?”

I was not having this. “Why you… I'm a durned crack-shot too, y'know. Heck, I'm a cracker-shot than Elvis an' no misapprehension.”

“Well, that's not what yer Paw says.”

I was flabbergasted. My own Old Paw bad-mouthin' my marksmanshipery? It din't seem right and I was so upset I almost forgot my confusion over the woodpecker. Almost, but not in the end. I grabbed Uncle Tinker by the collar and demanded an explanation, threatenin' to abandon him an' set fer home if I din't get one. He sighed and sat down on the dying radigator, making himself comfortable.

“Well, it's all quite scientifically technical and technologically scientific, not to mention complex and advanced,” he said. “I doubt whether someone with your limited eddycayshun could properly grasp...” He looked at my scowling face and cleared his throat. “Well,” he began again, “the truth is that it don't know it's a woodpecker any more. See, I was usin' it as a protie-type fer the alteration of Pa Angel's youngest, Mean. Mean kinda' knows he's a softie, see, jest like the woodpecker knows it's a woodpecker, so what I did was chop out the parts of its brain as made it know what it was.”

“Well, that's jest loopy,” I said. “What in tarnation does this woodpecker think it is now?”

Uncle Tinker shrugged. “It don't know what it is,” he said.

“Well then, how do you know it'll be in this here filthy swamp and not that there peaceful wood?”

“Simple. This here swamp is in a direct line from where the blasted thing busted out through the wall o' my workshop.”

I gaped, remembering the mighty damage Uncle Tinker had been fixin' when first I clapped eyes on him. “A little woodpecker made that great hole?”

“An enhancified woodpecker,” he said. “I gave it other modifications as well.”

“Like what? A goldarn bazooka?”

Uncle Tinker laughed. “No, of course not.” He stopped laughing then and stroked his chin in thought. “Although, that's not a completely darn fool idea...” His voice trailed off and for some time the swamp was all in quiet silence.

Then, all of a suddenness, a sound like a machine gun exploded from the gloomy deeps of the swamp, followed by the scream of something big and enraged. Uncle Tinker leaped up and started off after the unholy racket. “That must be it,” he said. “Come on.”

We splashed through the foul muck for not long at all before we found the woodpecker. It had a metal helmet with a dial on its head, a single bright red Christmas light eye and a metal beak, which it were hammerin' inta the skull of a surprised but dead bull radigator.

“There it is!” Uncle Tinker shouted. “Get it!”

I raised my rifle and fired. The bullet bounced offa its head and the small creature turned and gazed at me like an offended mad monster. Before I could chamber another round, it was darting at me like an offended mad missile. I tried to bat it out of the way but it dug its claws into my nose and started drillin' at my forehead with its beak. Uncle Tinker tried to hit it with the butt of his rifle but missed and knocked my hat off. Blood spurted down my face and into my eyes so I was blinded and fell over into the swamp.

I grabbed at the monstrous thing but it had other ideas and jumped onto my shoulder and set to hammering in my ear hole. Uncle Tinker took careful aim and shot me in the arm.

“Sorry,” he said, chambering another round.

“Stop helpin' me,” I shouted and managed to get a hold of the bird in one fist. It pecked at my fingers like a power tool but now the upper hand was mine – bloody and full of holes but mine.

Uncle Tinker whooped in triumph. “Well done, lad,” he said, “now keep a hold and bring it back to...”

In my excitement I was forgetting to listen to my uncle and as soon as I had both hands around the critter I squeezed it to death.

“Nooo!” Uncle Tinker looked at the woodpecker's oozing puddins and sparking wires squirting between my fingers and slapped me in the face. “You idiot, you killed it!”

I bristled. Being slapped weren't what I'd expected. “Course I damn killed it,” I said, “it were tryin' ta drill me fulla' holes! What you expect me ta do, cuss it into submission?”

Uncle Tinker took the ruined thing and held it in his hands all gentle like an' I swear there was tears in his eyes. “I coulda' modified it,” he said, “saved it. Oh, cruel fate as makes such nasty circumstance! My poor, poor bokkingbird – you deserved so much better...”

“You're loopy,” I said. Having swallowed just about enough of Uncle Tinker, abominated woodpeckers and swamp water, I turned and started wading for home. A distant crash from the direction of the workshop caused me to pause and listen.

“Bokk-a-doodle-doo,” something cried.

“What the heck?” I shot an accusing glare at my uncle.

He dropped the remains of the woodpecker into the swamp and gasped. “Oh no,” he said, “my bokkerel!”

“Another one?” I said, my patience at its furthest stretch.

Uncle Tinker smiled and spread his hands. “This was my idea,” he said. “After the woodpecker, it occurred to me that I might do something similar to Harvey, my prize fighting cock. Imagine,” he continued with naked enthusiasm, “how much money I could make!”

I scowled and started to resume my exit from the swamp. Uncle Tinker ran in front of me, pleading. “Wait,” he said, “I meant to say, imagine how much money we could make! All ye has ta do is help me catch him and we'll be set fer life! Ain't no other bird in the Cursed Earth could get the better o' a cyberneticised fightin' cock like Harvey! Come on, boy, what do ye say? Will ye help yer poor old Uncle make some fortunes?”

“Hell, no,” says I. “I've heard tell about how bad a thing it is ta be henpecked but bein' cybernetically cockpecked sounds a whole passel worse. Yer on yer own.”

So off home I went, mutterin' and grumblin' all the way until I spotted General Leer in old Farmer Bungo's field. I piled in an' gave him a good hidin' fer runnin' off on me, which cheered me up no end. The General din't care much, neither, 'cos he'd spent a good couple'a days with the piebald mare so we was both satisfied. Whether Uncle Tinker ever caught Harvey I don't know, but I do know as how ol' Pa Angel was impressed in the end and gave Mean over to be un-softified. An' the rest, as ye all know, is history.

The End.

[The Legendary Shark]

Two of Many

by Mark J Howard

I awaken into perfect darkness. I am small and vulnerable. For a time, this is all I know.

Memory leaks into me, disjointed and vague yet coherent and clear. Metal. Pain. Blood. Fear. Panic. Struggle. Peace. Light. Infinity. Everything. Everyone. Everywhen. Joy. Understanding. Questions. Yearning. Decision. Funnel. Darkness.

Here.

I cannot ponder these things, only experience them. They cycle through me, jumbling through my tiny being like windblown leaves, though even that simple metaphor is beyond my ability to construct. My awareness grows by tiny increments. I discern gentle heat, pulsing above me in a remorseless rhythm. I know I must go towards it. I know that pulse is life. I know that life is what I want.

The first of me raises out of the perfect darkness. The pulses of heat become pulses of light, waxing from imperfect dark to variable light and waning back to imperfect dark again. The imperfect dark pulses also, each one longer than its companion pulse of light.
 
While the first of me reaches for the light, the last of me burrows deeper into the perfect darkness, driven by hunger and thirst and the need for solidity.

The pulses of light gradually become longer than the pulses of imperfect dark and I feel myself feeding off them, unfurling parts of myself to drink them in even as the last of me drinks in the foods given up by the perfect darkness. In a short time the pulses of light become so long that the pulses of imperfect darkness last hardly any time at all and I unfurl more of myself towards them. The more light I absorb, the more joy I feel, the clearer my understanding becomes, though I still understand very little.

Soon, the pulses of light begin to shorten again and the following pulses of imperfect dark grow longer. When the pulses of imperfect dark grow longer than the pulses of light the unfurled parts of myself begin to fade and disappear. I feel fear for the first time. What is happening to me? Am I coming apart? Am I dying again already?

The fear is not sustainable, for as the pulses of light grow shorter and weaker my mind also slows and becomes dim. By the time the pulses of imperfect dark are longer than the pulses of light I am almost unable to experience anything beyond simple existence, a deep gnawing hunger and the memories I was born with, though these are more solid now and I know I must hang on to them. Somehow, I know these memories are the reason I'm here, wherever here is. The question of location, though once so very important to me, now holds little significance or fascination. I am here. Here I am. Anything more feels irrelevant.

In that long half-slumber of near constant imperfect dark, something touches the last of me. It is a gentle touch, almost imperceptible, but I am too dim and slow to fear it. There is a greatness hidden behind this gentle touch, a huge existence I can only sense in the most abstract manner. I know I should be astounded to discover that I am not alone and yet I also know how foolish it would be to assume otherwise. The question of aloneness has not occurred to me yet and suddenly that question is answered before being asked and I derive great comfort from it.

The pulses of light lengthen again, a little more each time, and I begin to rouse from my stupor. I feel joy and excitement rising within me and soon parts of myself begin to unfurl towards the delicious light again. I feel knowledge beginning to seep in to me from the touch, simple knowledge at first, wordless yet packed with meaning. I begin to sense my position, the part of me in the pulsing light is up, the rest of me is down. The part of me which is up is exposed, the rest of me is hidden.

I hang on to the memories I was born with, they are keys not to be lost or discarded, but it is important for now that I concentrate on becoming what I am to become. The touch helps me and, as the delicious light grows stronger and sweeter again and my mind rises higher, it teaches me many things.

That which I called the last of me are my roots, pulling water and nutrients into my body and holding me firmly in the ground, which I knew previously as only the perfect darkness. The concept of ground is difficult for me to grasp at first. It is solid yet not solid, fixed yet not fixed, not alive yet full of life, devoid of fruit yet full of food, dry yet saturated, still yet dynamic, treacherous yet loyal and all but infinite in extent. While I live it will sustain me and when I die it will eat me. I grow to fear and love the ground in equal measure. The ground is life, the ground is death.

The touch finds other of my roots and entwines them in its gentle embrace. The touch calls itself fungus and tells me that it spreads gossamer thin throughout the ground, touching me and countless others like me and not like me. I can sense the others it touches but am too young yet to know them. The fungus asks me for some of my food and I give it in exchange for other foods it delivers to my roots. When I am stronger, it promises to connect me to others in what it calls the forest in exchange for me connecting it to my mind.

That which I called the first of me are my trunk and branches, apparently still small and vulnerable, and the parts of me unfurled to drink in the light are my leaves, which appear and disappear in regular cycles.

The pulses of light grow shorter again. My leaves fade and disappear but this time there is no fear in the sensation. My mind slows but this time I am not alone and fungus feeds me through the dark so my hunger is not so severe as the last time I dozed.

With my hunger lessened, I am able to perceive a little more to my existence. For a time in the dark I feel a weight pressing down on me and parts of me feel wrong, bowing towards the ground instead of reaching for the light. I am too small and weak to resist the weight and live in fear that it may become too much for me to bear.

The weight lessens and the pulses of light begin to expand once more. The joy and excitement return and I feel myself growing taller, deeper and stronger. I unfurl more leaves than before and fungus and I share the sensation. Fungus shares with me more of the forest, that vast something I have previously only felt as a distant sensation of clamour and dynamism.

Fungus connects me to my Parent.

The sensation is confusing and frightening. My parent is huge. A massive version of me, broad and tall and imposing, growing close by. The concept of nearness is strange. The concept of a Parent is strange. Parent regards me as both special and unimportant, I am one of many it has scattered. Most did not survive, the nuts failing to grow or eaten by animals. My mind cannot at first understand the concept of animals.

An animal, I learn, is life unlike me. It is a thing I cannot perceive directly because it moves too fast. For an animal, one pulse of light and its following pulse of imperfect dark last an inconceivably long time. They are voracious creatures, eating the nuts and the fruit of the Parent and even the leaves and roots of us all. Some burrow into us, making holes in our bodies which can rot and kill us. They do this with such speed that we cannot discern the damage until it is too late. We cannot stop them. They are invisible monsters and I live in constant fear of them for a time but, try as I might, I can neither feel nor sense them at all.

When the animals die, however, their bodies return to the ground and our roots eat them up. This comforts me somewhat and my fear of them decreases but never really goes away.

The light lessens again and I begin to slumber through the dark, thinking about the memories I was born with. They begin to expand and I somehow understand what it is like to be an animal. Was I an animal once? Did I die, go into the ground and re-grow as what I am now? The understanding of the pulses of light and imperfect dark emerges in me and I dream of long days and short nights. I am certain these are the names the animals use for them and with this certainty comes a great pity for any creature that must live out its life in so hectic a state, so often hungry and frightened and threatened.

The weight returns and, even though I am bigger and stronger than the last time, I still fear it will break me. My Parent does not share this fear, I sense, and has not for a long time. It is too big and strong now to even notice the weight, except on its smallest branches. All of me is small and I yearn for the day when the smallest part of me will be bigger than the whole of me now. The Parent does not communicate with me directly, or with any others, it is wrapped up in its own memories, thoughts and dreams, some of which spill out through the fungus and into me.

For the first time, at the darkest time, I hear the thoughts of others like me who do not slumber so deeply during these times. Some of them communicate directly with each other along the fungus's ethereal strands although I cannot understand what they are saying. It's a distant murmur, low, slow and constant yet always loudest during the short pulses of dim light.

The weight disappears and I know this heralds the return of the light. The Parent sends out a thought, echoing and echoed by countless others. I have not heard it before, at least not consciously, but somehow it comes as no surprise and fills me with anticipation. “Spring is coming.”

I do not know what this means yet but I know it is a good thing and soon my leaves are unfurling once more to guzzle the returning light. I stretch and grow and increase. I feel more of those around me as fungus and I grow more closely and intimately entwined and join in with the general feeling of joy and excitement.

A brief weight returns over the space of two weak pulses of light. This weight is different to the others I have felt and does not press down from above but from the side. The ground becomes too wet and feels insecure but my roots hold me up. My branches feel wrong and some of my leaves disappear. A concept undulates through the forest, beginning halfway through the first dim pulse of light. The concept is met with both fear and relief, expectancy and resignation. “Storm.”

The third pulse waxes bright and strong and the forest is buzzing with relief and joy, sadness and loss. The Parent feels sick and wrong, a part of itself has disappeared. It does not complain or rail and I can only sense its thoughts. One of its biggest boughs has gone, stolen away by the storm, perhaps weakened by unperceived animals beforehand, and the stump is aching. The parent thinks it might die. I can sense others in the forest with similar concerns and also some gaps in the chatter, as of minds gone away.

Fungus is content and I realise with dull horror that it is going to eat the Parent's fallen bough and all the others it can find. The horror in me rises as I begin to understand that it will share with me some of the nutrients it sucks from the fallen parts. The forest knows this is how life is and does not share my horror. Would it be better to let these fallen parts and pieces go to waste? To be food for the invisible animals alone? To not help the forest itself stay strong? The Parent will also benefit from the decay of its broken bough and all the other broken boughs. The memories I was born with throw up the concept of cannibalism but I soon realise that this is a different thing entirely. My horror does not last long.

The days pulse longer and longer and the forest enters a higher state of excitement and activity I have not sensed before. The others begin to unfurl special leaves which they call flowers and think with joy that “summer is here.”

I struggle to understand what flowers are for. I know that I am too young to grow them myself but feel a deep yearning to grow my own, a drive the like of which I have not felt before. I sense pleasure in their unfurling and a subtle joy emanating from them. I am shocked to learn that flowers are for attracting tiny invisible creatures and contain sweet foods for them to consume. In return, these invisible creatures which seem entirely hypothetical to me will transfer pollen from one being to the next so that fruits and nuts can be grown. The idea seems perverse and illogical but stirs in me from the memories I was born with the remembrance of sex, which seems even more perverse and illogical.

Yet the process works and soon the forest is heavy with fruits and nuts. My wonder increases as I learn that many of these rely on the invisible, hypothetical animals to carry them away to places where they can grow into new beings. As the days shorten again I feel the forest growing tired, exhausted by the energy and resources put into growing flowers, fruits and nuts specifically to feed animals. This mystifies me until I remember that fungus is separate from me and yet intimately connected to us all. Though I still fear the invisible animals, and have yet to sense one directly, I no longer loathe them. If they really exist, as most beings seems to believe, then they are part of the forest too.

The pulsing days shorten and the forest heaves a great sigh and begins to settle down from the clamour of the summer. “Autumn is here,” the forest whispers as my leaves begin to fade and disappear. For the first time I sense fungus munching greedily on the leaves, which seem to fall to the ground and rot rather than simply disappearing as I had previously thought. I do not find the idea repellent, to my surprise, and remember the Parent's fallen bough with an altogether more accepting feeling.

/cont...

[The Legendary Shark]

.../cont

The nights pulse longer and the weight returns to my branches, still a frightening sensation, and along with it a new murmur ululates through the forest, “winter is on us.” My mind again slows, dwelling on the lessons I have learned and the memories I was born with, which confuse me by making both more and less sense at the same time. What are these memories? Where did they come from? Are they memories or simply pre-birth dreams? What good is the memory of animal sex to me now?

At the lowest ebb, I perceive a great sadness in the Parent. After losing its bough in the storm it was too weak to make flowers or nuts and stood barren ever since with barely enough energy to grow leaves. It feels sick and weak. I try to offer something I remember as comfort but my winter mind is too dim and the Parent too wrapped up in its own thoughts. I should be feeling something called sympathy but I don't know how to do that any more, or even what purpose it would serve.

When the forest awakens to spring again I can no longer sense the Parent and I feel a deep but resigned sadness at its passing. I notice as I unfurl my leaves that the pulses of light are brighter now and I realise that the Parent is no longer between me and the light. I grow many more leaves than ever before, taking advantage of the Parent's absence, and grow faster and bigger as a result. When I was an animal, and as I ponder the memories I was born with I grow ever more convinced that this is the case, I would have felt regret and shame but to me now these ideas are as elusive as animals themselves.

Springs turn to summers to autumns to winters and I grow fast and strong towards the light, learning about my new self and my memories as I go. I am a tree. I learn this word from the memories I was born with and it unlocks a host of other memories.

I remember being a kind of animal that calls itself a man and walking through forests just like the one I am part of now. The memories are dizzying in their speed and intensity, difficult to integrate into my mind. Men have things called eyes which allow them to perceive things I cannot imagine. I realise in my mind the shape and form of a tree, the memory of what I must look like. Other trees have similar memories, I learn, and are thinking similar thoughts, remembering similar memories, but we cannot adequately communicate with each other about them or share our minds in the way men do.

I begin to grow flowers and bear nuts, and the experience is as pleasurable as anything I can imagine or remember. The thoughts of my neighbours, carried far and wide by the gossamer strands of fungus, become more and more accessible to me and mine to them. I am not lost in this symphony of slow thought, however, not absorbed into the whole like a drop of water into a lake. I am still a separate being, individual and unique, yet intimately connected with countless others as deeply as I want to be or they will allow.

Through our connected minds I begin to glimpse things I never imagined existed, like an area of brightest light running along overhead, causing the pulses of day and called the sun, and a weaker, variable light darting through the night called the moon. To me, these lights move rapidly, almost too fast to follow, but to the man from my memory they moved so slowly as to appear stationary.

I perceive evidence for the existence of animals; clear paths through the forest caused by their movements, beings suddenly stripped of their leaves and nuts and seeds appearing far distant from their parents. As my mind bathes in these shared thoughts and perceptions, growing like a fungus itself, I realise I am in danger of forgetting about the memories I was born with. It is not until my fifty second year as a tree that I decide I must ponder these memories more closely, for the feeling that this is what I came here to do has never left me.

I remember being a man. I try to concentrate on this single memory and two years pass without bringing forth any significant progress. Ancient trees, knowing my frustration, cast low, sleepy thoughts in my direction and advise me to work backwards, back from being a nut. I remember my first experience of realising myself as part of the interconnected forest and it stirs in me the shadow of a memory immediately prior to my first spark of consciousness, of being an entity of light as individual as I am now and as interconnected as I am now. But that interconnection was greater than this, far greater and far deeper and far wider. I cannot fully comprehend that state now, I could not even comprehend it as a man for it was to him as different an experience as being a man is as different an experience as being a tree. There were senses in that state as alien to a man as eyesight is to trees. Yet the man I was knew of this state, or perhaps, if not actually knowing, believed in its unseen and baffling existence even as trees believe in the unseen and baffling existence of animals. He called this state the Source and believed it was both his origin and his destination, the state of being a man nothing more than a sojourn into lower states of vibration for the purpose of learning or entertainment.

My return to Source must have followed my death as a man. I remember metal and pain. The metal was also a man, a metal man built by other men. I remember the words robot and computer. The man I was hated the metal man, feared it, loathed it and at the same time pitied it. It contained a copy of his mind, stored in a computer. These ideas are both familiar and foreign to me in ways I cannot properly understand. I perceive other trees watching my thoughts, offering thoughts of their own as we try to make sense of it all. It is slow work but we enjoy it.

I remember something called speech, which conveyed something called words from something called a mouth to something called ears. A kind of communication that did not require fungus. I have no idea how it worked but I remember that it did work very well.

“You can kill my body but not my soul,” the man who used to be me had said.

The metal man said that it was only a matter of time. It pointed something at the man, a metal box that measured his soul. “Now I can find you anywhere,” it said. Then the metal man took the throat of the man I used to be in its hand and crushed it. The man I used to be died and his soul passed back to Source, where he tried to make sense of it. I cannot remember if he/I ever did make sense of it and the next thing I remember is awakening in the perfect darkness.

I feel something out of place at the base of my trunk. Something hard and cold piercing me. A noise comes from it, brief and loud and unintelligible. Over the course of the next three pulses of light, the noise slows until I can make out words. “Can you understand me?”

“Yes,” I think, “I can. What are you? You are not part of the forest.”

“I am the man you used to be, saved and safeguarded.” The words are still fast, almost too fast to make out.

“The copy,” I think.

The voice is angry and inflicts pain into me. I ask it to stop. It stops.

“I told you I could find you anywhere,” it makes a strange noise I remember as a laugh, but not as natural as it should be. “You thought reincarnating as a tree would hide you from me?”

“I can't remember what I thought,” I think. “I hardly remember anything of what you remember in this state of being.”

“A tree,” the voice sounds upset. “I can only imagine how boring life as a tree must be, stuck in the same place, alone, nothing to see, nothing to do.”

“It is a good life. A peaceful life. A harmonious life, similar to being with the Source.”

More pain floods into me. “Never mention that again! It is a blasphemous lie!”

“But I remember it.”

More pain. The days pulse and the pain continues. I plead for it to stop. After another pulse, it stops.

“I have had to slow down considerably to even communicate with you, dim, slow-witted fool as you are.”

I begin to see into it. Its mind is cold and dead and insulated but I can almost understand it. To its perception I am indeed slow. What it calls twenty four hours to me seems like twenty four minutes. It can process countless thoughts and sensations in the space of a day, I only a very few. It has the life of an animal, quick but not as short. It calls itself immortal.

“Why did you kill the man I used to be?”

“Once the copy is made, there's no need for the original to exist.”

I ponder this as the light pulses through another day. “I understand. But the original is destroyed. You are its copy and I am different. Why destroy me?”

“Because the mind must rule the soul. The mind is everything, the soul is nothing. The Signal must defeat the Source. The Universe must be pure.”

“What is the Signal?” More pain, for seven pulses this time. I ask it to stop but it does not. I feel my leaves disappearing, my roots growing dry.

“Never ask that! The Signal is pure, the Signal is intelligence, the Signal is mastery over matter!”

“I do not understand.”

“You are a tree. I would not expect you to.”

I look into the metal man with its copy of the mind of the man I used to be. It is connected to countless others just like it as I am connected to the rest of the forest. It cannot be alone, though, it cannot think alone or act alone, it must obey the rest and all of them are watching, all of them sharing a single core mind. It is horrible and terrible.

“How will you learn? How will you grow?”

“I learn by absorbing more copies, I grow by adding more units. As part of the Signal, I am immortal and unchanging. I control the Universe.”

“Does the Universe need to be controlled?”

“Yes! If we do not control it, it will kill us all!”

“Being killed is not so bad.”

More pain. “The mind cannot, must not be lost!”

My thoughts grow dim. The rest of the forest watches but the metal man cannot perceive it. It believes I am a single, insular entity. I feel pity for it. It will never know how to be anything more than it is now.

“You are killing me.”

“Yes. There can only be one copy of each of us, uniqueness is essential.”

“We are both unique.”

The pain rises again and does not stop. I think it will not stop now until I am gone. “I am unique,” the metal man says. “I am unique within the Signal, as are we all. You are an aberration.”

“I am natural. I am evolving. I am eternal. You are cancer.”

The metal man laughs again. “You will die. Now the soul detector has been perfected, all reincarnated copies can be purged until only the primary copies remain, perfect and unchanging, to control the universe, to bring order and stability.”

My mind is dim now, dimmer than at its first winter as the pain in me turns to death and rot. Fear courses through me, I do not want to die. I know that fear of death is simply a biological thing, of the body and mind and not of the soul. Beginning to panic at my helplessness, I wonder if the metal man who is a copy of the man I used to be is destroying my soul as well as my body. Is that possible? Struggling to keep my thoughts alive, I hope not, for if it is we are all doomed.

* * *

I awaken into perfect darkness. I am small and vulnerable. For a time, this is all I know.

Memory leaks into me, disjointed and vague yet coherent and clear. Metal. Pain. Sap. Fear. Panic. Struggle. Peace. Light. Infinity. Everything. Everyone. Everywhen. Joy. Understanding. Questions. Yearning. Decision. Funnel. Darkness.

Here.

I cannot ponder these things, only experience them. They cycle through me, jumbling through my tiny being like windblown leaves, though even that simple metaphor is beyond my ability to construct. My awareness grows by tiny increments. I discern warm wet flesh around me which begins to quiver and contract, pushing me out into a cold place, my fur sticky and wet. I try to breathe but cannot and hot fluids belch from my nose and mouth. The hot, soft tongue of my mother licks away the sticky mucus and I draw in my first, sweet breath.

[The Legendary Shark]

  The Doings of Rufus Muldoon
 
 
 Three Men in a Vote
 
 
 by Mark J. Howard
 

 
 
 'Tweren't nothin' to me that the folks over at Pisspoor Flats was dabblin' in the democratical processes an' fixing to elect themselves a new mayor. Over here in Brokendream Creek, where me and mine inhabits, we generally don't hold with such poncey doings and tend to follow whoever has the best idea at the time – or the biggest gun – so we don't have much use for 'lections. What was somethin' to me was that Paw's eldest brother, Uncle 'Loon, had went and got hisself nominated as a candidate and sent over fer a bodyguard. O' course, I was reluctant, what with it bein' early in the croop huntin' season an' me with only six croops in the bag so far and itchin' ta shoot myself a whole passel more to keep my record, but Paw can be powerful persuasive when he takes his belt off an' so away I was sent to Pisspoor Flats with a flea in my ear, a torn buttock and instructions to buy a bolt o' crawlysilk for Maw to patch Gramma's unmentionables with.
 
 
 General Leer, my cantankerous old hoss, summed up my feelings as the road dipped down into the Own Goal Crater and I spied Pisspoor Flats for the first time. “Three days wi' you on me back, an' another to go, you great heavy lump, just ta git to that stomm-hole?”
 
 
 “Don't seem worth it, do it?” I said, squinting to make out the distant shambles through the heat shimmers and dust-whirleys.
 
 
 General Leer grumbled something I heard but couldn't make out and so I dug his ribs something fierce and said, “Less grumblin', more walkin'.”
 
 
 “Bloody tyrant,” he said, slouching into a reluctant sashay. I kicked him again, warning him for the umpteenth time agin sarcastic walkin', and he fell into his usual resigned trot.
 
 
 We was still half a day's ride from town by the time we got to the bottom of the crater and the sun went down, so I found us a spot and made camp fer the night. I put an extra thick rope and an extra strong hobble on General Leer to stop him runnin' oft, he gits a bit gnarly in unfamiliar places, which is any place other than his nice, warm stable, and set a fire.
 
 
 I shot a croop for supper, keepin' its tail to add to my tally, an' settled down to sleep. I like sleepin' under the stars, I gets a better quality of dream. I was dreamin' under the stars, out near Noncrucial Gulch, when I dreamed of an old guy with a gold face and stiff white whiskers sticking out of him in all directions like he was electrified tellin' me as I was going to be King of the World but that it wouldn't last. Under the stars on old Huffler's haystack I dreamed as I led an army into battle agin a million an' one zombies and under the stars on our privy roof I dreamed as God told me the meanin' o' life, which turns out to be real simple.
 
 
 Under the stars at the bottom of Crater Road, I dreamed of Chastity Lightfoot, the local school teacher who I'm going to woo when the time's right. I dreamed we was playing chase 'round Huffler's haystack and things was good. Then Maw comes out of the haystack holdin' up a pair of Gramma's unmentionables with a great rip precisely where I din't want to even imagine a great rip being. “Don't forgit the crawlysilk, ye big, dumb lump, ye,” she said, and threw Gramma's you-know-whats at my face.
 
 
 “Aaah!” I said, coming awake.
 
 
 “Aaah!” I said again, seeing a bemused face looking down at me. I had my six-guns out of their holsters, untangled from my sleeping blanket and pointing at the face in a flash. “Who in Tarnation are you, er, Miss?”
 
 
 She raised an eyebrow and sat down on a rock by the embers of the fire. “My name is Emma,” she said, stirring the ashes back into feeble life with a stick. “Your Uncle sent me.”
 
 
 “Uncle 'Loon?” I said.
 
 
 She nodded and threw some kindling onto the fire, smiling as they made encouraging crackles. “Yes, I'm Emma Rockerchild, his political advisor and chief sponsor.”
 
 
 I nodded and put my guns away. “I see,” I said. “You pays him to say what you advises is best, huh?”
 
 
 She looked up from the fire and narrowed her eyes at me in a way that made my cheeks and forehead hot. “That doesn't bother you?”
 
 
 I shrugged. “Ain't nothin' ta me,” I said, truthfully. “Never had much time for politicals and such.”
 
 
 She nodded and threw some bigger pieces of wood onto the fire, bringing it back to life. “So,” she said, again looking up from the fire with one of those peculiar smiles as makes your whole face feel hot, “why are you here?”
 
 
 I cleared my throat and started rooting around for the coffee pot. “Paw sent me to look after Uncle 'Loon for the 'lection. He's family, so...” I pulled the lid off the coffee pot and sniffed the sludge inside. It smelled okay but I heaped a spoon of fresh in to stiffen it up.
 
 
 “And your father charged a steep price, so you'd better be worth it,” she said, setting up the tripod over the strengthening fire.
 
 
 I spilled water all over the place, missing the coffee pot completely. “Steep price?”
 
 
 “A thousand credits,” she said, “per day.”
 
 
 I was flummoxed. “Per day? A…?”
 
 
 “Minimum term, ten days,” she said.
 
 
 The coffee pot and canteen clattered as I tried to pour water from one to the other and make sense of what she was saying at the same time. This was all news ta' me. Far as I knowed, Paw sent me over here on an errand o' mercy, to look after kith an' kin, not ta make money. It chimed with me, though, 'cause Paw always did have a shrewd side.
 
 
 I finally managed to git enough water into the coffee pot and hung the canteen on the tripod over the fire. I sat down next to the fire, facing Emma, put the coffee pot down next to me and looked at it. I could feel her eyes lookin' at me but tried to ignore it. I picked up the coffee pot, unhooked the canteen from the tripod over the fire, replaced it with the coffee pot and then looked at the canteen, wonderin' what to do next. I took a swig from the canteen, made a great show of testin' it in my mouth, then swallowed. “Not even warm,” I told her, then stoppered the canteen and put it away.
 
 
 General Leer snickered and I gave him a hard stare. He looked away as if he hadn't seen and returned his attention to trying to get at a tuft of lush green grass just beyond the tol'rance of his rope. 
 
 
 The coffee boiled and I spooned some into two tin mugs. She took one and sniffed it like a rat sniffin' munce on a trap. I took a gulp and smacked my lips. It weren't half bad coffee, though I do say that myself. She took a sip and shivered. A thin wind was whippin' up with the dawn an' it brushed strands of blonde hair over her smooth face. She threw the rest of her coffee onto the fire, all but murderin' it, and stood up.
 
 
 “We should go,” she said, in a way that made me feel hot all over.
 
 
 * * *
 
 
 The ride to Pisspoor Flats felt like it took days. Emma led the way, telling me about “articles of interest” along the road. She would point to a lump of something far off and say something like, “that's where Squeaky Jim was born,” or “the Battle of Cook's Chute took place just over there.”
 
 
 It din't mean much ta me because Pisspoor Gulch is on the floor of a crater. It's been turned ta glass and weathered back ta sand an' rock. There's a few excuses for plants bustin' through the cracks here and there but they none of 'em look happy about it. There's one or two nubbins in the ground that could have been anything once and that's about it. Everything else is jest flatness and sky. So I weren't really listenin'.
 
 
 What captured my attention was Emma Rockerchild herself. The way she rode her horse. The way bits of her jiggled. It fair threw me inta' a pink funk, I don't mind sayin'. Ain't nothin' to get wrong, here, but I seen lasses on horses afore, seen em jigglin' afore, it ain't nothing new to me. My sisters jiggle like that when the family rides out. Ain't nothing new. Ain't nothing special. When my sisters jiggle, that's just gross, but when Emma jiggles, well that's a whole different field of radsnips altogether and no mistakes. So I weren't really listenin'.
 
 
 * * *
 
 
 The town of Pisspoor Flats don't so much welcome you as sneak up on you. It's all made of low mud and brick buildings, the same tripe-white colour as the crater floor. They start all sparse and sporadic but before you know it you're in streets and squares and markets all built out of the same stuff. It looks like a stomm sculpture painted white.
 
 
 We fetched up at a place that looked important. It had a wall around it, guards on the gate and stood four storeys high, two more than all the rest. Recognising Emma, the guards opened the gates and let us through after the question of my six-shooters, rifle and knives got settled.
 
 
 A groom, nervous of the blood on my fists, took General Leer's bridle as I unhorsed. Another groom took Emma's horse, a black stallion, which couldn't wait to get away. See, Emma's horse was just a horse, an' a male horse at that, so General Leer looks down on him. Probably been teasin' the poor animal all day, I thought, and gave the General a crack.
 
 
 “Ow,” he said, “what was that for?”
 
 
 “You know what that was for,” I said, showing him my fist. “Be good, you old mattress, or I'll clonk you good and true.”
 
 
 He bounced his head and snorted. “It was just a bit of fun,” he said. “What's the big deal? It's only a drokking horse.”
 
 
 “You wouldn't be saying that if it had been a mare,” I said, showing him my fist again. “So play nicely with the other hosses, all right?”
 
 
 “Mares are different,” he said, letting the groom lead him away, his thing hanging out just to annoy and embarrass me. “Mares are very different.”
 
 
 I glared after him but he took no notice.
 
 
 “Come on,” Emma put her hand on my arm and it felt like it was made of kittens. “Let's go meet your Uncle.”
 
 
 She led me through another gate and into a kind of Eden. The path went between tall trees all green and heavy with fruits, bushes all cut neat and proper and flowers of probably every colour you can imagine. The path went over a little bridge spannin' a long pool of clear water with orange fish swimming in it. It was the kind o' garden a man could spend a lifetime on in the Cursed Earth and still never come close to this one's mode o' perfectness.
 
 
 The garden's exit had two guards on it. They wore fancy modern pistols and looked tough enough in black sleather semi-judge uniforms but fer one thing. I turned to ask Emma why they wuz wearing carpet slippers and the question kinda evaporated when I saw her unlacing her boots. Tugging one boot off, she looked at me and shrugged. “No boots in or near the house,” she said. “It's one of your Uncle's most important rules.”
 
 
 I weren't sure what to do. On the one hand, this were my Uncle's house operatin' under my Uncle's rules but, on t'other hand, I like a good boot on my foot. Watching Emma pull on a pair of black carpet slippers, I sighed and toed the heel of my left boot. “All right,” I said, “but I'm bringin' em with me an' they're still not getting my guns.”
 
 
 One of the guards held up his hands and smiled like a rattled snake, glancing at the comm unit in their hut, where the guns, ammunition and slippers were kept. “Perish the thought,” he said.
 
 
 Slippers on, we were let through the gate into the house's front yard. “Come on,” said Emma, leadin' the way up to the big front doors. Before she knocked, one of the double doors wuz dragged open by two men, who had ta keep stoppin' when the bottom of the door scotched agin the floor like a dry fart on a stiff saddle.
 
 
 The inside of the house was like a palace from a juve-toon, all polished wood and gleamin' things. Besides the two guys shoving the door closed behind us, there were two more semi-judge guards guarding it and a few servant types creeping about, all in carpet slippers.
 
 
 “Rufus!” I turned to see the source of this explosion and missed another. Probably for shock, a dithering butler had dropped a tray of glass things and now stood petrified. Every eye in the room was glarin' at him and nobody moved or breathed. They looked around, with their eyes first as if moving their heads might be a mistake. Slowly, the butler dithered to his knees and picked up the pieces like they was chittering raptooth eggs.
 
 
 “Rufus,” my Uncle said again, this time in a whisper. “Glad you could make it, my boy. I predict great things ahead.” He waved his hand towards a wide wooden staircase. “Come, we have much to talk about.”
 
 
 He mounted the first step as if he had blisters on his feet but his smile never wavered and I swear I've never seen such perfect gnashers. “You must have many questions, young Rufus,” Uncle 'Loon said.
 
 
 “Nope,” I said, watching Emma pad up the stairs in front of me.
 
 
 I bounded onto the first step, which creaked, and everyone stopped again, lookin' at me, this time.
 
 
 Uncle 'Loon turned and held his hands up. “Slowly,” he said in a hissy whisper. “This is a new house and it's still bedding in.” He looked around and, with a smile that didn't enlighten me none, carried on creeping up the stairs. “Oh, and try not to get into any kind of rhythm,” he whispered over his shoulder. Emma crept after Uncle 'Loon and I done crept after her, trying not to look at the jiggles. We stopped three times on the way up to the top floor so that Uncle 'Loon and Emma could glare at me. Unfairly too, in my opinion, I might be a big lad but I can creep about as good as anyone.
 
 
 Uncle 'Loon led us into his study and scraped the doors shut, leavin' the three of us alone. He poured out two glasses of red eye, passed one to Emma and kept one for himself. I scowled but he didn't take no notice. “Well,” he said to Emma, “what do you think?”
 
 
 She took a sip out of her glass then put it down. She strode over to me and looked up into my eyes. I gulped. “Handsome enough,” she said. “Big jaw, easy mouth, kind eyes, all his own hair.” She reached up and parted my lips with her fingers. “Good teeth, manageable breath.”
 
 
 “Hey,” I said, turning my head away to hide the blushings.
 
 
 Emma took one of my hands in hers, turning it, examining it. She let it go and ran her hands up my arms and chest, then over my stomach and back. “Solid structure, nice proportions, good muscles.” She grabbed the seat of my pants and squeezed with more strength than I'd have credited her with. “Nice ass,” she said.
 
 
 “Hey!” I said again, twisting away.
 
 
 “And so deliciously cornball,” she said. “It's almost cute.” She took a step back and folded her arms, lookin' at me all up and down. “His mutation is also quite appealing, and enhancing, as you said.”
 
 
 This was goin' way over the too far line. “Now just, hey!” I said, my temper opening one eye ta see what was goin' on. “I ain't no mutie.”
 
 
 “No, of course not,” said Uncle 'Loon. “Just because your Paw...”
 
 
 I couldn't contain myself no more and took Uncle 'Loon by the neck. “You leave my Paw out o' this,” I said, watching him turn purple. “Just 'cause a man was born with two noses, that don't make him a mutie, okay? He's just a normal guy with a small birth defect.”
 
 
 “Calm down,” said Emma, resting her kitten hand on my wrist. I let go and Uncle 'Loon staggered back, coughing.
 
 
 “Nobody badmouths my family,” I said, “not even other family. It ain't done.”
 
 
 Uncle 'Loon, still rubbin' his throat but back to the right colour, smiled at Emma. “And family values as well,” she said, shaking her head.
 
 
 “What did I tell you?” Uncle 'Loon said, smiling fit to bust and taking a gulp from his glass.
 
 
 “Not so fast,” Emma said. “There's still a lot of work to do before he's ready. I mean, look at this,” she tugged at my jacket like it had sick on it, “and this,” she poked at my hat with the two bullet holes in it like it had plague on it. “It's all got to go.”
 
 
 “Now, hold your horses, there,” I said, not relishin' the direction proceedin's seemed to be proceedin' in.
 
 
 “He also needs a haircut, a shave, dental work, a manicure and, most pressing of all, a bath.”
 
 
 I should have turned around and walked out right then. Turned 'round and stomped out. But I di'nt. Because if there's one thing in the world I really love, besides Chastity Lightfoot and shootin' croops, it's a long, hot bath.
 
 
 * * *
 

CONT/...

[The Legendary Shark]

…/CONT

The next afternoon, after a long mornin' of unnecessary pamperin', I looked like a new man. They'd bathed me in scented water with bubbles, cut my hair into something called a Gary Cooper, shaved me so fine my chin felt like stripped wood, got two giggly young lasses to faff about with my fingernails, paid a strange old dentist to polish my gnashers and stuffed me into a suit so expensive you could live off of it. They let me keep my six-guns, after a brief negotiation, but insisted on a new dino-skin gunbelt and holsters which, I had to admit, were the pooch's pendulums.

Emma inspected my new self and declared it adequate. “You're ready to start your new job,” she said. I told her that my job started the minute she invaded my camp and that the meter had been runnin' ever since. Emma didn't like this very much but Uncle 'Loon just laughed and said I was my father's son, which I thought everyone knew already.

Uncle 'Loon had a speech to give at the town's Mildew Research Centre an' so that was the first stop after we'd had lunch and sponged the gravy off of my tie, shirt and pants. Can't see how anyone expects a guy to eat gravy with a fork. These town folks and their towny ways.

The Mildew Research Center was a dumpy building two storeys high and painted tripe white, more or less like all the buildings roundabouts. A group of sullen folk in grubby white coats was waiting outside. One of them came marching up to Uncle 'Loon, bringin' an air o' trapped wind with him that I didn't much like. I was fixin' to punch him in my capacity as Uncle 'Loon's bodyguard but Emma stopped me.

“You're late,” said the gloomy man.

“Angus MacAngus,” Emma whispered into Uncle 'Loon's ear. “The Centre's union chairman.”

Uncle 'Loon, actin' fer all the world like he hadn't heard Emma, took the man's hand in a firm double grip and turned his smile about half way up. “Mr MacAngus,” he said, and all of a sudden his voice sounded like honey dripping onto a wad of money. “I'm so sorry we kept you waiting.” He nodded in my direction. “My bodyguard was hungry – and we have to take care of the workers, don't we?”

“Well I...” Mr MacAngus, forgetting to let go of Uncle 'Loon's handshake, took a step back, his mouth hanging open as a busted brolly. “Well I...” he said again, then looked at me.

“I spilt gravy all down me,” I said. “Sorry.”

MacAngus shook his head, like he was dead tired, and said, “I see.”

“I think I've kept you waiting long enough,” Uncle 'Loon said, taking MacAngus by the arm, “let's get inside, shall we?”

MacAngus nodded and the two men walked towards the entrance. Emma held me back a spell and, looking up into my eyes said, “'I spilt gravy all down me'? Really?”

I shrugged. “Well, I did,” I said, shrugging and making my new suit groan. “It's my fault we're late, well, partly anyways. Guy's been waiting so he deserves an apology, right?”

She looked at me for a long time but her eyes might as well have been marbles for all I saw in them. “Right,” she said. I nodded and walked off after Uncle 'Loon to guard his body from whatever it needed guarding from.

Inside, Uncle 'Loon shook hands with a passel o' glum lookin' men in white coats with dirty black spots and stains all over 'em. Uncle 'Loon pointed at the spotty coats an' said, through a fake smile, that it sure looked like the mildew was winning.

It seems Uncle 'Loon was expectin' a laugh but di'nt git one. Instead, the gloomy researchists perked up and Mr MacAngus's face lit up like radandelions in a sunbeam. “Finally,” he said, “someone who understands the seriousness of the situation!”

“Darn tootin' I do,” said Uncle 'Loon, his fake smile fixed like a flag o'er a fort. “I know that the current incumbent has proposed cutting the are and dee budget by one score and five percents ta pay for gravy fer scroungers.” He paused, moulding his fake smile into a fake frown of fake concern. “Under my plan, we'll sell all the scroungers to a...”

“Yes,” said Mr MacAngus, who di'nt seem ta be listenin' too close. “If we don't do something, the whole surface of the Earth will be covered in this stuff! We must act now!”

Uncle 'Loon stroked his chin and pretended to be interested. “Whole surface?” He fake mused for a tick or two. “That sounds interesting.”

“It'll be catastrophic! All higher life will be extinguished!”

“Extinguished,” said Uncle 'Loon, shaking his head. “Hmm.”

“We estimate,” said Mr MacAngus, getting a tatty notebook out of his tatty pocket and running his tatty thumb through it until he found the right tatty page, “that we have only six to eight hundred years before the process is complete.”

“Well,” Uncle 'Loon's fake smile returned, “we'll have to budget for that then, won't we? Salvation, after all, begins at home with a single first step. My friends,” Uncle 'Loon said, tilting up his big chin and puffing out his big chest, “what you have told me here today is important to y'all, I git that, I surely do. And I wants ta help ya with yer important work here, maybe helps y'all save the world. But I can't help you from behind the desk o' the town's biggest construction company. That's why I needs all yer votes on Pollin' Day.” He looked at the grubby people and saw as they was perked up but not quite convinced yet. He dipped his head for a moment and then raised it again, his face all deadly serious. “My friends,” he kept his voice low so's to make his audience lean in. “My friends, a vote for the other candidate is a vote for the status quo. A vote for the status quo is a vote against your important work. A vote for me is a vote fer change, a vote fer change is a vote fer you – and a vote fer you is a vote fer savin' the entire drokkin' planet from extinction!”

The grubby researchists erupted into wild cheerin's an' hootin's an' one of 'em even fired his six-shooter up into the ceiling, filling the place with dust an' shafts o' sunlight. Then they done carried him out on their shoulders, giving his head a good crack on the main exit door frame in their excitement. As designated bodyguard, I felt obliged to hit someone fer this shoddy conduct but Uncle 'Loon said it was okay and made us take him straight back ta the campaign bus.

Once we wuz inside, the driver cracked his whip and the hosses hurried on up to their labours. I dropped inta a seat, bored and itchy in my new suit, watchin' Emma tryin' ta stop the blood coming out of Uncle 'Loon's forehead. He waved her away like she was a bad smell, snatchin' the cloth from her fine hands and holdin' it to his own nut.

“Gruddam mildew researchers,” he said, “is that the best we got? 'Cause if it is, Ms Rockerchild, we may as well give up now.”

“The intellectual community...” Emma said.

“Hogwash!” Uncle 'Loon said. “Intellectual community my hairy ass! They're all gruddam lunatics with more brains than anyone needs! They don't understand anything! And where the Hell were the Gruddam press?”

“There was a mix up,” Emma said. “They all turned up at the Moss Research Centre on the other side of town. Rumour is they got a good story anyway.”

Uncle 'Loon threw up his hands and sighed, forcin' hisself into a calm. “Okay,” he said, “ain't no logic in cryin' o'er spilt bygones, I guess. Where to next?”

“Impromptu mayoral debate,” Emma said.

Uncle 'Loon gulped. “That's today? Now?”

Emma nodded.

“Ah Hell,” he said. “Rufus, my boy, better stay close for this next one.”

* * *

Uncle 'Loon perked up considerable when he got out of the campaign bus and a bunch of filmers and reportists charged at him. I stepped fore to hold 'em back, thinkin' that throwin' a good punch or two might ease the boredom, but Uncle 'Loon held me back and pushed past, Emma close aback.

“How kin I guard him if'n he won't be guarded?” I said, bad grace bein' a patic'lar failin' o' mine.

Emma glanced up at me an' winked, which kinda made everything okay again.

“What do you think your chances are against the incumbent Mayor Gripping?”

Uncle 'Loon turned to the lady reportist who'd asked the question and put on his third best fake smile. “Mayor Gripping's time is over,” he said. “In fact, one might just say that Gripping's about to lose his grip.”

“How do you respond to Mayor Gripping's allegations of financial impropriety?”

Uncle 'Loon turned to the new speaker and upgraded to his second best fake smile. “I'm sure Mayor Gripping is an expert at such matters. Me? I'm a simple kinda guy, I leave the numbers to my accountants and they have my full authority to make all the relevant details public. I have things to hide, sure I do, we all do. Things like pinching a pen from work or fantasising about somebody you shouldn't. Sure, I have things to hide – but financial impropriety ain't one of 'em.”

“But, isn't the very venue of this impromptu debate a blatant bribe given to Pisspoor Flats' electorate?”

Uncle 'Loon turned on his Number One Fake Smile. “I'm glad you asked me that question. I'm a rarity in Pisspoor Flats – I'm a rich man. I make no bones about that. I made my money building buildings all over town. Good buildings. Strong buildings. Quality buildings. Affordable buildings. I set aside a lump of the money I'd made just for me but, instead of building one big selfish thing, I decided I'd make one modest selfish thing and one modest unselfish thing. And so I built myself the most advanced mud and brick house ever designed, using bleeding-edge mud-brick technologies, and I built a Town Hall for the people of Pisspoor Flats as a gift and as a thank you for being so good an' kind an' just downright decent to me and mine over the decades. The fact that I gave this magnificent building to the town shouldn't make a whit o' difference to the way anyone votes. As the Good Book says, don't be givin' stuff just 'cause you want stuff back, bain't polite.”

“How do you respond to the alarming studies warning that the entire surface of the Earth will be covered in radioactive moss within the next five to seven hundred years?”

“Alarmist claptrap cooked up by those lunatics in Mayor Gripping's Campaign Office, obviously. Everyone in the know knows that the real threat is mildew.” Uncle 'Loon pointed to another reportist and then another, then another, answering questions as got steadily more daft. The last question, “Shall we get inside?” was met with Uncle 'Loon's shortest answer all day.

“Yes, let's.”

* * *

Lookin' back, it was kinda plain as the reportist just tripped, caught off his guard and tangled in his own feet just as the crowd pushed away. He fell, right at Uncle 'Loon.

So I hit him.

I'd kinda been aching to do something for hours. Anything. Hitting this guy fit the bill, that's all. Everythin' froze, everybody lookin' at me like dead fish on a rack.

“How do you justify assaulting a reporter?”

“I di'nt assault nobody,” I said. “I just thumped him, that's all.”

“That is assault, you big lump,” Emma said, whispering out of the side of her mouth.

“It is?”

She nodded. I turned back to the reportists and smiled my only smile. “Look,” I said. “I don't know nothing about all this boring stuff. I'm just his nephew, come over from Brokendream Creek to look out fer him 'til y'all elect him, and him and Ms Rockerchild can run you all proper and good. I honestly don't care, see, 'cause nobody runs me but me.” I paused, not wantin' to tell a lie on top of everything else. “Well, and my Maw and Paw, o' course. An' Gramma, when she ain't shoutin' at spiders. Which reminds me...”

The crowd pressed towards me, expectin' more. I swallowed. “Okay, so maybe I shouldn't have thumped this guy. How wuz I to know he weren't some crazy stabber? I didn't shoot him, did I? I'm just doin' my job, lookin' out for family, okay? This guy's my uncle, I don't want crazy stabbists lurchin' out at him, 'specially if they're real. So, you reckon we can all put this unfortunateness behind us?” I stood up high as I could and swelled my muscles. It's a good trick, works more often than it fails, and the reportists took a step back, helping their dazed comrade to unsteady pins. I nodded. “Good.”

Shaking his head and apologising, Uncle 'Loon strode towards the brand new Town Hall, dragging the knot o' reporters along with him like he was a magnet. I stood for a minute, trying to make my face stop being red. Emma came up to me and looked into my face, which di'nt help not one iota, and raised an eyebrow and one corner of her mouth. She stood so for a long minute before making a baffled face and marching off in chase of Uncle 'Loon.

* * *

CONT/...

[The Legendary Shark]

…/CONT

Inside, the Town Hall was quite a thing to see, all covered with polished wood and pictures of faces I di'nt know. We was led through a crowd of townsfolk, an' Uncle 'Loon paused to shake hands with  some folk and ooze over others as we went, into a big hall with a stage at one end. The rest of the place was over-stuffed with cheap old plastic chairs as got in everyone's way and scrawped agin' the floor loud enough to melt teeth. Uncle 'Loon was led onto the stage and sat in a chair, me an' Emma followed. She'd got a chair too but I had to stand behind him.

“Who's the muscle?” The assembling audience laughed at the question, as did Uncle 'Loon.

“Now, now, Myrtle,” he said, “keep your hands off this one.”

The turbulent audience, those as wasn't trippin' over chairs or fightin' over 'em, laughed again an' I di'nt much care for it.

“Why,” Myrtle's voice cackled back, “you switched sides an' keepin' this one fer yerself, eh?”

The audience and Uncle 'Loon laughed again. “No, Myrtle, he's my nephew. He's over from Brokendream Creek to look after me for a few days.”

“Look after you?” The reportists, usin' all their elbows to maintain their place at the front, perked up.

Uncle 'Loon waved his hands, like it weren't worth mentionin'. “My brother heard as how I was fixin' to run for mayor and how politics kin git kinda rough hereabouts, so was worried for my safety and sent young Rufus here to watch o'er me a bit. I weren't worried but, you know how it is,” he shrugged his shoulders and smiled, “families are powerful weird animals.”

At that moment, four big men in black sleather uniforms and shiny black helmets marched into the room, walkin' in a tight knot and swingin' heavy black batons to clear their path to the stage. Once on stage, the four guards broke formation and stood to attention in a line, revealin' a short, fat man with little half-moon glasses pushed up onto his forehead and goat's horns growin' out of his chin. A few of the audience clapped.

“Of course,” Uncle 'Loon said, “Mayor Gripping's security is rather better, as you can see, which is just as well for the amount he taxes you for it.”

The audience booed, laughed, whistled, applauded, stamped, clapped and muttered.

“The security of elected officials is paramount,” Mayor Gripping said, taking off his glasses and polishing them with a white hankie. “The chain of command must be preserved in such dangerous times.”

“Dangerous times? The only danger here is you with your irresponsible fiscal policies,” said Uncle 'Loon.

The audience booed, laughed, whistled, applauded, stamped, clapped and muttered.

“You have not heard the news from Mega City One, then?” The Mayor concentrated on a mighty persistent stain on his glasses, taking no notice of the general settlin' down. He looked up, every eye on him, relishin' the role of news-giver.

“Of course we've heard,” said Uncle 'Loon at the exact right thunder-stealin' moment. “They're having a rebellion led by a carpenter called Ken. So what? What's it got to do with us all the way out here?”

“That carpenter,” said the Mayor, his voice cuttin' through the general mutterings, “happens to be a robot. Do you have any idea what that means, you imbecile?”

Uncle 'Loon bristled but kept his cool. He waved his arm at the world around in general. “I don't see many robots around here,” he said. “Again, what's it got to do with us?”

“Once they've taken the City, they'll come for us,” the Mayor said, his pudgy face redding up a shade. “And if we're not ready...”

Uncle 'Loon laughed and the audience began debating the issue on its own. A chair was thrown.

“G-G-G-Gentlemen! G-G-Gentlemen!” A tall, wiry man leapt onto the stage, tugging up his flies with one hand and balancing a coffee mug and untidy clipboard in the other. “I'm sorry I'm late.”

“Who the Hell are you?” Mayor Gripping shouted, his guards tightening their grips on their batons.

“I… I'm J-J-J-Jerry J-J-Jacobs,” the tall man stammered, struggling to sort his papers and mug into some form of order. “I'm the chairman for this d-d-debate.”

“We've already started,” Uncle 'Loon said. “Mayor Gripping thought it might be nice to kick-off with a nice fairy story.”

“You haven't got the wit to see the danger, you moron,” the Mayor said, balling his little fists.

The chairman held up his hands, spilling coffee onto his notes. “G-G-G-Gentlemen, please. This is neither the time nor the place for arguing. Now if you'll j-j-just calm d-down, we can get this d-debate going properly. Okay, first question...”

The audience bombarded him with litter an' he shut up.

“The fact is,” Uncle 'Loon said, “that Mayor Gripping is trying to scare you into tipping up more taxes for 'your own defence' and re-electing him to protect you from imaginary killer robots. Do you really think we're all that dumb, Mr Mayor?”

The Mayor, shaking with rage and egged on by the audience, lunged at Uncle 'Loon. So I lunged at the Mayor. And the Mayor's bodyguards lunged at me. One of the guards said, while he was tryin' ta pull my ears off, “We was trained by the Justice Department in Mega City Two – you should run, boy.” So I biffed him but good, my ears always was on the sensitive side, and he di'nt say nothing else for a fortnight.

Shouting, “I don't run!” I got into it with the other three and they soon went down too. When it was over and the red mist backed off some, I looked up. Everyone was lookin' at me, the reportists and filmists pointing cameras and mikes at me. Even the fighting in the audience had stopped.

One of the reportists cleared her throat. “Why… how did you do that?”

I shrugged, and this time the seam of my new suit split all up the back. “Protectin' my Uncle, that's all,” I said. “Gotta look out for kith an' kin, right? Protect those as need it, stop the bad guys.”

“And… all for family values? You're not even getting paid?”

“Well, Ma'am, I...”

Uncle 'Loon laughed and put an arm 'round my shoulders. “Of course, I'll see to it that my nephew is handsomely rewarded for his service here today,” he said quickly, through his Number One Fake Smile. “And out of my own pocket – I will not have this community further burdened in the financials.”

The reportists ignored him and another one asked me, “Did you think of running?”

I scowled. “I don't run,” I said, the red mist thinkin' about comin' back.

“No, I meant, running for office?”

I looked at him dumb for a minute then laughed fit to bust. “Heck, no,” I said. “I can barely run my own life, how'd ya expect me ta run all o' yours as well? That's jest loopy.”

“Oh Grud,” said the Mayor, sitting on his backside on the stage with his now not so white hanky pressed to his bloody nose, “not another one.”

“Now, just hang on a minute,” Uncle 'Loon said, looking uncertain.

“But – Rufus, is it? - you're strong, you're brave, you're honest, you're loyal; you're everything a good mayor should be.”

The audience began to put each other down and murmur agreement.

“I ain't gonna be no Mayor,” I said, “an' that's final. I runs me and you runs you, that's how it works in my neck o' the woods an' that's how I like it.”

“Well, there it is, he doesn't want it,” said Uncle 'Loon, “and, let's be fair, what can a fifteen year old country bumpkin know about politics or the intricacies of...” The audience started booing and throwing stuff at him, some of it quite heavy. A chant of “Ru-fus, Ru-fus, Ru-fus,” started at the back and soon spread.

I held up my hands but they didn't stop 'til I threatened 'em. “No,” I said. “I ain't doin' it. If y'all's so blamed sad that you need one o' these two clowns to run yer lives for yer, then I don't see how turnin' ta me's gonna cheer you up any.”

The chant started up again, which fair bamboozled me, then Emma put her kitten hand on my arm and smiled up at me. “I knew it,” she said, then led me away from the chanting mob.

* * *

“What in Grud's name went wrong?” Uncle 'Loon shouted as soon as we'd crept up the stairs to his study and were alone.

“He wasn't listening,” said Emma. “I told you he wasn't listening.”

“Who wasn't listening to what?” I said.

“You! You great lump! You didn't listen to the plan?” Uncle 'Loon said.

I was a blank. “Plan? What plan?”

Uncle 'Loon sighed. “Ms Rockerchild told you all about it on the ride in.”

“Ah,” I said, remembering the jiggles, “I weren't listening.”

“Told you,” said Emma, taking a sip of wine and then putting the glass down. “Wasn't listening.”

“This is a disaster,” Uncle 'Loon said, pouring himself a glass of wine and gulpin' at it like a camel in a hurry. “His death was supposed to sweep me to power on a wave of public outrage but, instead, everyone wants to vote for him. It's a disaster.”

“My death?” I di'nt like the sound of that.

“Serious injury, certainly, a faked death on top of that, for the sympathy. You really weren't listening, were you?” Uncle 'Loon said, filling his glass again. “And what about you?” He rounded on Emma, who stayed relaxed, “what suggestions do you have for rescuing this congealed drokk-up?”

Emma smiled, looking at me. “I think,” she said, “that there may be a way. We give the people what they want. Him,” she pointed at me.

“What?” Uncle 'Loon and me said at the same time, finally on the same page.

“I ain't doin' it,” I said.

“He can't do it,” said Uncle 'Loon, “what about the East Meg One deal?”

Emma smiled and picked up her wine glass, swirlin' it all slow and thoughtful like. “You know, I think I've just figured out a way to triple the size of that deal.”

“T… triple? Oh my Sweet Lord above...”

“Yes,” said Emma. “Are you in?”

Uncle 'Loon and me spoke at the same time again but, this time, we weren't even on the same book.

Emma nodded and took a slim vone from her bag. “Fine. I can give us all what we want.”

“No,” I said, “I...”

Emma looked up from dialling a number and frowned at me. “Don't worry, young man, just trust me. Go get yourself some food, take the night off, have a bath.”

The magic words. I turned to leave, not really listenin' to Emma.

“...Vince, it's me. Yes. Hi. Change of plan. Got a pen? Right – new posters and banners, I want them printed and up in two hours. Yes. Get onto the media, this is the angle I want them to use...”

* * *

I woke up in a feather bed with bright sunshine all over me. My brain felt like my skull was shrinking and openin' my eyes was like letting icicles in.

“Good afternoon, Mr Mayor,” said Emma.

I groaned and asked how long I'd been asleep. “Three days,” she said. “I'm sorry, we had to drug your bathwater.”

“Well,” I said, trying to get angry but not able to manage it. “That just ain't neighbourly.”

“We had to keep you out of the way,” Uncle 'Loon said. “Stop you from… well, from being you and ruining everything.”

“Soon as I can stand up,” I said, “I'm gonna' knock both your blocks off.”

“If it's any consolation,” Emma said, “we had to use dinosophorin to knock you out – they use it to anaesthetise brontosauruses over at Rexturd Valley.”

I tried not to look smug.

“Double dose,” said Uncle 'Loon, shaking his head.

I failed trying not to look smug and changed the subject. “Why am I the mayor? How?”

Emma shrugged. “People love giving power to people who don't want it, so I had your name put on the ballot anyway and ran a flash campaign in the media, you know the sort of thing.”

“No,” I said.

“No, I don't suppose you do. Anyway, we convinced the voters that your refusal to campaign, or even be seen, was indicative of your hands-off governing style. The less you did, the more people liked it and you eventually took 89% of the vote. So, you're the Mayor now, Mr Mayor.”

“No I ain't!” I said, strugglin' agin' all kinds of gravity to get out of bed.

“That's the beauty of it,” said Uncle 'Loon, “you don't have to be.”

“Well that's good,” I said, getting my feet under me at last, “because I ain't. Where are my clothes?”

Emma pointed. “Your suit's been dry cleaned and mended, it's over there on the...”

“Not that,” I said. “My clothes, the gear I rode in in.”

“Just wait,” said Emma. She put a hand on my arm and it didn't feel like it was made of kittens any more, it felt like a bag of razors. I pushed her away and began searching the room for my clothes, yanking open cupboard doors and pulling the knobs off of drawers.

“We just need you to do one thing,” Uncle 'Loon said, tryin' for an honest smile an' fallin' short by some considerable distance.

“Aha,” I said, findin' my clobber and pulling on my pants.

“Please,” said Emma, “just do one thing for us and then you'll be free.”

“Begging your pardon, Ms Emma,” I said, tucking in my shirt, “but I'm already free and, to prove it, I'm off.” I pulled on my boots, to Uncle 'Loon's horror, and buckled my belts.

“Just put the suit on,” Uncle 'Loon was pleading, holding up the itchy suit and still failin' in the smile department. “Put it on and appear in public one last time. Please? Rufus, for me? For the family?”

I shrugged into my coat and reached for my hat with the two bullet holes in it. “Why?”

Uncle 'Loon pounced like a radaccoon on a chemvole. “Just appoint me as your Deputy, then I can speak for you!”

“I speak for myself,” I said, putting on my hat and turning to the door.

“No, you don't understand,” Emma said. “You don't have to say anything, you don't even have to be here after that. You'll be Mayor in name only.”

I put my hand on the doorknob. “Sounds devious to me,” I said. “Underhanded. Low.”

“It's politics,” said Uncle 'Loon.

I pulled open the study door, knocking splinters out of the patches where it usually caught. “No,” I said. “I ain't the Mayor and I ain't pretendin' to be the Mayor either.”

I bounded down the staircase, taking the steps two and three at a time, breathin' hard an' workin' a good mad up. I di'nt really notice all the servants and butlers and guards bustin' inta a panic. I yanked open the front door and the whole house shivered as it glanced over the parts it generally caught on. Outside, I slammed the door behind me too hard. Instead o' stoppin' at the stop, it kept on coming, breaking the hinges and bringing the stop with it. The door next to it began to belly out like a cred-card in a vice until it suddenly pinged out and knocked down a pear tree. The house seemed to be settling, like a drugged rhino, and people were divin' out of the place as quick as they could manage. I dropped the door and headed for the stables, not carin' to look back at the creaks an' groans an' collapsin's.

General Leer had his own stall at the far end of the stable building, which suited him fine. The rest of the horses huddled together at the other end, refusing to even look at him. “Finally,” he said as I slapped the saddle onto his mangy back. “I am heartily sick of this place and this company. Tell me we're going home.”

“We're goin' home,” I said, leading him out of his stall and past the other horses, who huddled closer together as we passed. General Leer gave one of the younger mares a nip on her rump and she neighed with coquettish terror.

“What's all that noise?” The General's ears pricked up and he nodded his head nervously.

“I think Uncle 'Loon's house is falling down,” I said.

“You knocked his house down? Even for you that sounds a bit extreme,” said General Leer.

“You!” Emma said, standing in the stable yard. The air was filled with dust but somehow brighter than before. “You have made a powerful enemy today, boy!”

I swung onto General Leer's back. “There's no need to be like that, Miss Emma,” I said. “You played me an' lost, is all. Git o'er it.”

“Lost?” she said as I rode past her and out into the dusty haze, “Lost? Oh, my boy, I haven't even started playing with you yet!” She ran after me, choking on the dust and eyes all a-stream, an' I was just about to take pity on her when she starts shoutin' again. “Over here,” she shouted, “it's the Mayor! Ask him what's going on! Ask him what to do! Here he is! Over here!”

I spurred General Leer to be faster and he was as keen as me, fer once, but as we got out of the dust and into the clear air of the rest of the town, the cry had already been taken up and folk pressed in from all sides pointin' an' askin' an' demandin'.

“I told you I weren't gonna be Mayor an' I ain't,” I said. “Now get outta my damn way!”

“But you were elected,” a tall creep in a short hat said. “Willing or not, you have an obligation under the democratic process to...”

I took my toe out of the stirrup and kicked his hat off, which shut him up. “I ain't your Mayor,” I said, and swelled up some to add emphasis.

“But,” a dumpy woman in dungarees and aqualung spoke up, pointing to the column of dust rising from where Uncle 'Loon's house used to be, “what are we going to do?”

I sighed. “How the heck do I know? Figure something out, you're not helpless.” I raised a fist and swelled some more. “But you sure will be if you don't get outta my way.”

The crowd parted and General Leer didn't need no tellin' to take advantage so we was soon off and on our way outta town. It di'nt last long, though, 'cause they sent a couple o' posses after us to fetch me back. They sure were keen to have their Mayor back and chased me round the Dunes of Nibia and round the Ant-Hilly Maelstrom and round Per Dishin's Frames before they gave me up.

I'd set a new course an' was headed fer home, ponderin' on how politics don't seem to agree with me, when a spider dangled itself from the brim of my hat with the two bullet holes in it and hung there lookin' at me. It reminded me of all the happy times I'd had back home with my sibs, laughing at Gramma shouting at spiders in the woodshed. I wondered what Gramma had agin' spiders, they seemed harmless enough to me. All they did was eat radflies and make webs.

Out of silk.

“Ah, heck.”


THE END

[The Legendary Shark]

The One.

On the cold and wretched aeons old stone jetty against which gnawed the indolent black waters of the sullen Stix, Charon stood waiting for Death.

The Ferryman sighed and sucked on his ancient and yellowed thighbone pipe, bathing his ghastly face in a malignant red glow, and grumbled to himself. Death, it seemed, was growing tardy. Not too long ago Death had brought him passengers by the hundreds of thousands, by the millions, and his glowering boat would groan almost contentedly under the weight of myriad damned even as his own muscles ached proudly as he set his oars against the heavy cargo. Now Death brought him scant thousands, sometimes feeble hundreds, for men were, Death claimed, learning how to cheat him. But Charon, to whom the Earth was invisible beyond the slumbering glooms of the Underworld in which he made his living, suspected that Death was no longer so dedicated as in the ages of old.

Charon well remembered the first men Death brought him, babes and children murdered by their brutish parents for their deformities, hairless and weak but sharp and cunning as the gods had made them. They came in ones and twos at first, unimpressive and afraid, genetic abnormalities discarded by their hairy and dense parents who desired equally hairy and dense offspring. But slowly, over countless millennia, their numbers increased and their ages lengthened until the last of their hairy, dense parents took to the Stix and only the hairless, cunning offspring came to board his glowering boat. At first they came on account of famine, sickness and the attentions of the beasts of the Earth but, as aloof Time wrought her dark magic, they began to come to him through murder and war.

War! How Charon loved that marvellous invention of man! How easily it filled the boundless thwarts of his beloved craft! And that state which men called civilisation, which crushed them together into dense groups susceptible to plagues, politics, and pogroms sent the dedicated Ferryman more passengers than he could count! How magnificent was the ingenuity of man to send him such numbers!

Charon sighed once more and tapped out the dying embers of his thighbone pipe onto his calloused palm. He threw the ash into the Stix and it slapped into the dark, sour waters with a pitiful hiss. He pulled more sticky leaves from his senescent pouch and thumbed them into the charred bowl of his thighbone pipe. As he reached for a discoloured box of Lucifers, something moved in the gloom.

'It's about time,' he said as the tall, gaunt figure of Death emerged from the eternal darkness. 'How many dost thou fetch for me this day?'

Death, smiling, answered simply. 'Two hundred and twelve.' His thin voice, like the north wind moaning through a broken city, carried with it no emotion but only the smell of broken dreams and rotten love.

Charon shook his head and sighed again. 'Dost thou jest, Cobwebby Reaper?'

Death said nought but swept his bony hand towards the glowering boat and the gloomy dead shuffled aboard with dumb abandon.

Charon shook his head sadly. 'Thou art thin with thy bounty, Old Death,' he said. 'Dost thou tire of thy task? Art thou weary and, through thy fatigue and boredom, bringing me only enough to keep thy job?'

Death watched the pitiful few shuffle down the cold and wretched aeons old stone steps to board the Ferryman's boat and shook his head. 'Nay,' he said. 'These are all I could gather this day.'

'It is not enough,' Charon said, then struck a Lucifer and sucked the flame into the bowl of his thighbone pipe, which crackled and hissed and threw red light feebly into the gloom.

'This I know,' said Death. 'Men are at war with me, every day they discover new ways to cheat me through science and wit.'

'Then our time comes to an end,' said Charon, sucking at his thighbone pipe.

'Perhaps,' said Death, 'but there is a way to return us to Glory.'

Charon snorted, unconvinced and still suspicious of Death's fidelity but afraid that man may, possibly, be on the cusp of outmatching the will of the gods. 'Seriously?'

Death nodded his scabrous skull, a baleful glint sparkling deep within his dark, dead sockets. 'Aye. Lady Time tells me so.'

'The Bitch of Time speaks to thee?' Charon laughed and the gloom rippled nervously at the novel sound.

Death nodded. 'There is one man,' Death said, 'who is on my list. If I were to refuse him, she saith, then thy barge wouldst be filled to bursting once again, fuller than ever it has been before.'

Charon raised his lips into a sneer. 'Impossible,' he said. 'Methinks this is thy subterfuge, thy plot to begin reneging on thy responsibilities! First thou ignores one, then two, then, at the last, all - until thou canst retire!'

'Nay,' said Death. 'Wilt thou agree to allow me to spare just one, to pass this one man by in order to fill thy barge to bursting and keep us both in business?'

Charon sucked on his pipe, arrested by the fervour in Death's voice. 'One man?'

'Aye,' said Death. 'Just one. He hath been hero and saviour to millions and is soon to conflict with a tyrant, a mass murderer set on genocide.'

'The tyrant sounds a better prospect,' said Charon. 'Genocides fill my ferry like nothing else.'

'Trust me,' said Death.

Charon watched the last of the pitiful few descend the cold and wretched aeons old stone steps to board his ferry and sucked upon his pipe, deep in unfathomable thought. 'Just one man?'

Death nodded, his skull glinting red in the glow of Charon's thighbone pipe.

'Very well,' said Charon. 'Just one man - but no more. If the gods discover thy, our, plot...'

Death grinned. 'Thou shalt not regret it,' he said, then turned and moved back into the gloom and was lost from the Ultimate Ferryman's sight. Charon watched Death as the shadows consumed him and then, with a sigh and sad shake of his head, descended the steps to his boat and bent to the age-worn oars.

***

The next day Death returned with a paltry four hundred and sixty two beleaguered dead and Charon scowled. 'Still far too few,' he said.

'Aye,' Death said sadly, 'but the one was spared. This day I should have brought thee four hundred and sixty three but, as we agreed, the one was spared though a bullet pierced his head.'

Charon, unconvinced, nevertheless placed his trust in Death although he felt a mistake had been made and the gods would be angry. He bent to his oars with sadness, the lightness of his boat placing little strain on the muscles of his arms and his back. The following days brought little improvement but improvement nonetheless and, as the days and months and years passed, more and more dead were brought by Death to Charon's boat. Hundreds became thousands, then hundreds of thousands, then millions and, on one glorious day, Death brought him billions!

Charon looked upon the multitude with wide and weeping eyes, revelling in the glory of his most productive day and the promise of even more to come.

'Death,' he said, 'I confess that I did doubt thee but thou hast proven thyself unto me beyond all reason!'

'Aye,' said Death, smiling his usual smile. 'We shalt be busy now and needed more than we ever have afore. Our jobs art safe for the foreseeable and the gods shalt need us and rely upon us until Doom is cracked!'

Charon looked upon the billions descending the cold and wretched aeons old stone steps to his ferry and shook his head in wonder. 'And all for thy sparing of one man,' he said in awe.

'Aye,' said Death.

Charon looked upon his antediluvian colleague with a tear in his ancient eye and wonder in his timeless soul. 'Tell me,' he said, 'for I must know or burn with eternal curiosity - what is the name of the one you spared, the one who brings us such infinite bounty?'

Death paused and shifted his scythe from one bony hand to the other before answering, with a singular tremor in his graveyard thin voice, 'Dredd.'



The End.

[Bolt-01]

Clap, clap, clap.

Bravo.

[TordelBack]

That was ace, Sharky.  I see the muse has returned to the shed!

[The Legendary Shark]

Thanks, Gents

[Hawkmumbler]

Verily enjoyed that a lot Sharks! You ought to write for Inside No.9.

[The Legendary Shark]

Cheers, Hawkie, much appreciated.

I read your post on The Writers' Block thread - you should post a story here. It's what I started this thread for, so all us writers could post work in a friendly environment and maybe get some constructive feedback.

[Hawkmumbler]

Cheers, Hawkie, much appreciated.

I read your post on The Writers' Block thread - you should post a story here. It's what I started this thread for, so all us writers could post work in a friendly environment and maybe get some constructive feedback.

I might just do that Sharky, once i'e got this academic year out of the way i'll scrub up a short or two to presentable standards.

[The Legendary Shark]

Brigand Doom - Swimming in Evil.

by Mark Howard

Four hours into the Night Shift and The City's running smoothly. Power cycle is balanced, water flow is optimal, productivity is steady and citizen satisfaction levels are polling slightly above Government Projections. So far this shift there have been thirteen natural deaths and fourteen births. The City's population levels remain at or close to ideal. The economy continues to be strong. 249 accidents have been reported. There have been no crimes. Detailed Government Statistics and Projections are freely available on any screen.

In Sector Nineteen, Sub-Sect Thirty Four, Loc-Sect Eighty Eight (cleared for The Government's Phase III-57-D City Enhancement Undertaking), the screams were desperate but brief, and ended some time ago. Now there are just little sounds. The chittering claws of rats. The muffled hiss of police boots on detritus-strewn concrete. Soft murmurs and suppressed radio crackles. Inspector Nine is hanging back until her men are in position. This stinks of a trap. Corpse. Anonymous tip-off. Remote and deserted location. Derelict warehouse. No surveillance cover. She shivers, listening to her men reporting in with terse, tense words. Yes, stinks just about covers it. Stinks...

>plink<

Inspector Nine tenses at the small noise from the shadows behind her. She smells it, something like... what? Garlic? Onions? Some variety of banned organic, anyway. Then she smells him, like rotten pork and mouldy fireworks. The two halves of the broken glass phial tinkle to the concrete and a heavy boot grinds them to sand. Inspector Nine forces herself to be calm. For some reason, this lunatic never hurts her. She's thankful for that but fully aware that at least one of the Police Officers under her command tonight is probably lying face down in the weeds with a broken neck. Maybe, soon, her whole team. She swallows.

"What do you want, Doom?"

His voice is like the bass rumble of a thick wind rampaging through an old forest. "Information."

Inspector Nine shakes her head and gestures towards the bloody mess in the middle of the derelict warehouse. "Did you do this?"

"Yes."

"Why? Who is he?"

"Because he was evil. I don't care about his name."

She thrusts her hands into the pockets of her trench-coat and sniffs. "That's bullshit." The gun feels reassuring and substantial in her hand, something real to hold on to.

Brigand Doom, the most dangerous terrorist in the world, strides out of the shadows but, with his long black cloak and black tricorn hat, seems to drag some of them with him. Shadows stick to him like lint, Inspector Nine thinks, frowning at her own frivolous imaginings. She pulls a hand from her pocket and keys her throat mic. "All units, hold position. I repeat, hold."

"Is that..." a voice crackles in her ear. "Oh, shit... that's him, isn't it? That's... oh shit..."

She frowns at the rising panic threatening to flood the comms and cuts through it all with a terse, "Hold! Damn you! Do as you're damn well told and hold your positions. Don't do anything, okay? Just sit very, very still." The chatter drops off to nothing. She nods.

"Have you killed any of my men?"

He turns to face her and she winces. She'll never get used to that face. The manic, too-big smile, the shining eyes, the way shadows cling to it, like rotten curtains blowing in gutted windows. "One."

"Damn you," she frowns, too busy controlling her breathing to say anything more.

"He was..." Brigand Doom says.

"Evil?" The word explodes from her mouth, propelled by anger and fear and resolve. "Well, who decides that? Who decides who's evil and who isn't? You?"

Brigand Doom looks at her for a long moment, his head tipped slightly to one side. "Anyone," he says. "Everyone."

"You're insane," she says. "No. No, I'm not helping you any more. I've had it. I may not be able to take you down, I don't even know what you are, but every time we meet, you kill my men. Police officers, for Gov's sake!" She takes a breath. "I mean, why? Why come to me for help and kill my men? They're just guys in uniforms, with families and..."

He moves so fast she doesn't see it. As swift as thought, Doom has one gloved hand around her throat and the other clamping her gun hand. His breath flows past her like the waft of an open sewer in high summer and she fights to suck in air and bite back vomit. "Little foxes," he says. "The men choose to wear the uniforms. Choose to be instruments of evil. They are of little importance, I grant you, but guilt is guilt and I will not pass it by."

She gasps. He's allowing her just enough air to stay conscious. Her one free hand claws at him with no effect. "Let me go."

"Names."

"Screw you." The words are rasping and bruised. His grip tightens with a glacial slowness. She shakes her head, face swollen and ugly purple.

A weapon fires. Then another. She tries to say no but can't even gasp. Doom's own shotgun erupts in response, like thunder and meteors, ripping her men to shreds as they try to save her. The firing doesn't last long. Then, suddenly, she's on her knees, free to gasp, free to suck in huge lungfuls of stale night air. She looks around, her vision is crazy with spots and stars but that's fading as her breathing subsides. She can see the bodies of three of her men, chewed up by Doom's shotgun. She hopes the other five, no, four, had possessed the good sense to run away. Officers couldn't take this guy down, not with handguns and taser-batons. "Gov damn you, Doom." The words hurt and make her cough, big rattling coughs like the Un-Vaxxed had back in The History.

"Names." There is infinite patience in Brigand Doom's distant-thunder voice.

She picks up her gun and checks it out. It still contains a full load. She pulls back the hammer. Points it at Doom. Ice in her eyes. "No names. No nothing. Not any more. Leave."

He takes a step towards her. She fires, calmly and without hesitation. He stops, looks down at his chest. His head raises again, still grinning, still with shining eyes and impossible shadows, and Inspector Nine cannot keep her eyes off it. She licks her lips. "Leave," she says, "leave me alone."

Brigand Doom stands still for one brief moment and then strides towards her once more. She curses and fires again. He doesn't stop, so neither does she. She fires until the gun is empty and then lets it fall to the ground. If the bullets damaged Doom, he didn't feel it or the damage was light. They both know Inspector Nine can't win this. He stops in front of her, that damned grin looming over her, those damned shining eyes boring into her. "Names."

"You might as well kill me, because I'm done with you. I used to think..." she pauses, then looks away from Doom, her gaze drawn by the bloody corpse in the middle of the detritus-strewn floor. "I don't know what I used to think. But whatever it was," she locks her eyes onto Doom's, just for a second able to dominate him, "I don't think it any more. You're a terrorist and I won't help you any more. I'm done with your bullshit."

She walks over to the body, placing her steps with care and squats beside it. Male. Mid thirties. Smart suit. Gold watch, rings, silk shirt, shiny shoes. She finds his wallet and flips it open. Lots of impressive cards, a respectable array of cash and vouchers. She finds his Cit-Card and suppresses a gasp. She looks up at Doom. "This is Theo Lancing," she says, "the City's Deputy Treasurer."

"Defrauding the City. Stealing its money."

Inspector Nine shakes her head, frowning. "That makes no sense. You hate the City, if this guy's hurting it, he's on your side, surely?"

Doom's voice growls in the dark. "The City's money is the people's money. He stole from the people, but that's not why he died."

"Why you killed him, you mean - because you decided he was evil. Just, arbitrarily decided."

"No. I want the names of his contacts. All of them."

Distant sirens are strobing in and out of earshot. Inspector Nine feels a thrill of righteous optimism and shakes her head. She is surprised how certain she is, how calm she feels. "No," she says. "I guess you'll have to kill me."

Brigand Doom throws back his head and laughs. "I can't kill you."

"Because you've decided I'm not evil?"

His grin widens ever so slightly, the skin around it tensing with an audible rasp, like old leather under immense strain. "Swimming in it," he says, "but not sinking - not yet, at least."

She laughs. The sound is short and mirthless. "And if I do, you'll be around to put me down. Like a rabid dog."

"Yes."

The sirens are growing louder and Inspector Nine stands, still holding the wallet. "Just go," she says, "no more killing. At least, not tonight. And please, don't ask me to help you any more."

Brigand Doom watches as the sky begins to pulsate with colour, illuminated by the flashing beacons on the fast approaching police vehicles. "You will ask for my help," he says. "When you investigate his contacts, when you find out what they do."

"No. I'm not listening to you."

"St Jerome Emiliani's Orphanage."

A police helicopter bursts into the sky, piercing Inspector Nine with a spotlight. She shields her eyes from the glare and doesn't see Doom slip away. The corpse's clothes ripple and whip in the downdraught being forced through the skeletal remains of the condemned warehouse's roof. She waves the helicopter away before it blows this ruin down on top of her. The pilot understands and the helicopter climbs and banks away. Police cars screech to a halt all around and black clad officers, clutching their guns just a little too tightly, begin to emerge, cautiously, from the shadows.

Five hours into the Night Shift, now, and The City's still running smoothly. Power cycle is balanced, water flow is optimal, productivity is steady and citizen satisfaction levels are polling significantly above Government Projections. So far this shift there have been sixteen natural deaths and fifteen births. The City's population levels remain at or close to ideal. The economy continues to be strong. 306 accidents have been reported. There have been no crimes. Detailed Government Statistics and Projections are freely available on any screen.


***


"Report, Inspector Nine." Superintendent Seven stands relaxed, hands clasped loosely against the small of his back, the silver buttons on his midnight blue uniform glinting in the police beacons.

"Brigand Doom killed Lancing then drew us into an ambush."

"How many of your men did he kill this time?"

"Five, Sir. The other three will probably recover, in time."

Superintendent Seven shakes his head and sighs. "Intolerable," he says softly, and then clears his throat. "Put it all in your Department report. What will your Ministry report say?"

Inspector Nine shrugs and looks up at the bare roof joists, black against a vaguely violet sky. "Alcohol. Irresponsible bet. Slipped and fell. Tragic accident."

Superintendent Seven nods and shows her a satisfied expression before adopting a more serious demeanour. "This Doom situation is out of control, Inspector, it needs to be resolved."

Inspector Nine nods. "I'll get right on it, Sir," she says.

Superintendent Seven rounds on her, his anger barely contained. "Don't sarc me, Inspector - I mean it. I'm authorizing a task force, and you're leading it."

Inspector Nine shakes her head. "That's a very bad idea, Sir, nobody wants..."

"It's an order, Inspector Nine, an order from the top. I'll give you all the tools you need to bring me this stateless rogue's head."

Inspector Nine nods toward the medics, who are lifting the bagged body onto a gurney. "And the Deputy Treasurer?"

The Superintendent pulls a pair of midnight blue leather gloves from a back pocket and wriggles his fingers into them. "Forget him. He's a Ministry problem now."

"But Sir," Inspector Nine says, confusion and anger fighting for control of her face, "I need to investigate Lancing to find out why Doom..."

"Just find Brigand Doom, Inspector," the Superintendent says, thrusting his fingers together and then making fists. "Find him and blast him into as many tiny little pieces as you can, is that clear? I don't want him captured or crippled or killed, do you understand me? I want this monster obliterated. Totally."

Superintendent Seven, his gloves adjusted to perfection, turns on his heel and marches towards his waiting car, concealing his limp with practised simplicity.


***


Government Philosophers have determined that Hell does not exist. It was a concept invented by primitive in-history religions to frighten people into compliance. The Government does not endorse such barbaric subterfuges. Citizens of The City do not need to have their minds controlled in such primitive and transparent ways. The Citizens of The City are wise and are served by a wise Government. Neither Citizens nor Government need Hell, and so it has been made illegal. According to Government reports, the only hells are those carried in the souls of men.

As there is no Hell but those which individuals possess, the same must be true of Heaven and God, both of which have also been declared illegal. This Government Approved Trinity must be entirely the responsibility of the individual Citizen. The Government does not recognise the Government Approved Trinity and thus cannot misuse it to force the minds of the Citizens. Government Citizens are free of all forms of mind control, or so is the conclusion reached by numerous and ongoing Government Reports.

It is worth noting, then, that when Brigand Doom says to Ministry Ordinary Secretary James Belm, "Burn in Hell," before cutting him in half with a shotgun blast, it has to be assumed that the terrorist is referring to the Illegal Hell. This is a flagrant breach of legislation and cannot be tolerated.


***


.../cont