The Garbage Chronicles Page 11

  “Blades!” Rebo said, disregarding her appeal.

  With the exception of Namaba, the gang members drew knives and popped them open. Their red eyes reflected on the shiny steel.

  Rebo glared at Namaba.

  Reluctantly, she slipped a hand into her jacket pocket, bringing forth a pearl-handled switchblade.

  Rebo gazed at her with the disdainful, detached stare favored by Southsiders. Impatiently, he grabbed her knife and snapped it open. “It’s no good to you closed,” he said. His lips parted into a cruel smile, revealing irridescent blue teeth that illuminated the shadows.

  “He’s just an old man,” she said softly.

  “He told the other shopkeepers not to pay our standard protection fee.” Rebo’s voice was cultured. “For that, he dies.”

  “We don’t need to kill him. Why not just rough him up?”

  “I need an example. One our people won’t forget.” The tone was resolute, indicating to her that his mind would not be changed easily.

  Namaba knew she was in no position to question Rebo. He had saved her from the laboratory fire, and by Morovian tradition this made him her lifelong master. There was no formal law decreeing such a thing; it was a matter of maintaining self-respect. Still, killing an old man did not seem the sort of activity conducive to nurturing self-respect. Her conscience would bother her long afterward, perhaps for the rest of her life. Rebo had told her often that a conscience was nothing for a Southsider to have. It was a meddling, unnecessary thing. Maybe he was right.

  Rebo’s red-eyed gaze moved around the group, and he spoke the club members’ names in his thoughts: Kaff, the big one; Yott, the lover Howack, the small one with blond hair covering his body; Namaba, the sensitive one; and Durl, the crazy one who never knew when to stop hurting people.

  “We rule the night!” Durl exclaimed. His glowing eyes flashed crazily. He lunged and slammed a heavy chain into the lamppost.

  Rebo laughed. Durl always made him laugh.

  Copycat laughter rolled through the group—except for Namaba. Rebo heard the chugging of their steam engine hearts and heavy, matching breathing. He felt his own cardiopulmonary system running roughly from the high excitement.

  Now Rebo turned his head and bounded across the street. As the others followed, he heard the clatter of their heavy chains. He smelled familiar street odors here: raw sewage in the gutter as he leaped over it, and the garbage of ripe fruit and meats from a cluster of overflowing trash cans on the sidewalk. A dog had its head buried in one of the cans.

  Rebo kicked this can over for effect, spilling garbage across the sidewalk and sending the dog fleeing. Rebo liked making noise, and Namaba had once offered a plausible explanation: It made others fear him.

  Rebo used his calloused front foot to kick in the glass storefront door, then glanced around as his gang fell in around him, awaiting instructions. Their irridescent blue teeth and red-pupiled eyes reflected readiness. The big one known as Kaff swung his chain and broke away the remaining spires of glass. Then Kaff stepped to one side.

  Rebo coiled on his haunches, then sprang through the doorway, making a beeline for the back office. Reaching the office, he found himself in a small room full of books and papers, with a wide, leafy potted plant in the corner to the right of the door. It was a Parduvian flytrap plant. The old man had threatened him with it once. Imagine that! Rebo thought at the memory. Threatening me with a plant! The room reeked of alcohol.

  Old Marnus sat at a paper-littered dark mahogany desk in the light of a suspensor lamp, resting his front leg on the desktop. His calloused toes were twisted and yellow, possible evidence of martial arts training. Rebo had learned to look for such things.

  Looking in from the doorway behind Rebo, Namaba saw that one of Marnus’s hands held a pen, which the old Morovian had been using to make entries on a faded yellow ledger sheet. His body and facial hairs were silver-gray, except the scraggly beard had streaks of black in it which seemed curious to Namaba, like paint drippings on the old flower vendor’s face. She touched Rebo’s forearm.

  Rebo pulled away to swat at a fly that buzzed in his face.

  The insect flew away, settling on the large plant in the corner. Wha-hoosha! The plant made a powerful sucking noise, drawing the hapless fly into its center. Rebo felt cool air from somewhere.

  “I have been expecting you,” old Marnus said. The voice was throaty, with a chronic wheeze. He set down the pen with a note of finality, then reached for a brass alcohol flask. After taking a big gulp, he smiled, as though having won a bet with himself that he could swallow the liquid before Rebo made his move. It was common knowledge around the Southside that old Marnus loved to drink. Calmly, he replaced the flask on the desk.

  Rebo felt his face flush with anger at the old Moravian’s apparent unconcern in the face of obvious peril. His heart did not even seem to be chugging. But Rebo’s was. He met old Marnus’s defiant stare, then lunged across the room menacingly with his knife extended.

  “Rebo!” Namaba yelled. “Please, Rebo!”

  The old flower vendor did not flinch.

  Rebo paused at the desk’s leading edge, still staring. Have to admire you, you old fool, he thought. Smiling, he dug the knife into the desktop, flicking off a piece of dark wood. Must have been a tough one in your day.

  For a fleeting moment old Marnus smiled in a kindly way, and Rebo felt himself returning the kindness with his own expression. They understood one another.

  “Can I have him, Mr. President?” Durl asked, moving to Rebo’s side. Durl fingered his chain.

  “You popped the last one,” Rebo said, leaning close to old Marnus and smiling cruelly. “This one’s mine.” He used the blade of his long knife to sweep the papers off the desk.

  Marnus salvaged his flask.

  Looking back, Rebo caught Namaba’s anxious gaze. She shook her head. Her eyes begged Rebo not to kill. But he knew she would stay with him no matter what he did. It was her Moravian obligation.

  Marnus raised the alcohol flask to his lips. But if he made a second bet with himself, he lost this one. Rebo’s razor-sharp blade sliced open the front of his neck. The flask clattered to the floor.

  The sound of releasing steam filled the room. Everyone ducked as old Marnus’s body flew around the room like a discharging balloon, bouncing off walls and furniture. There was no blood, for no blood coursed through Moravian veins. Only air and water.

  Presently old Marnus’s limp and shriveled form landed on the floor by the desk in a gray woolly bag. His foreleg twitched.

  “Search for cash and securities,” Rebo barked. He did not know what the word “securities” meant. It was one of those words buried in his brain on this high vocabulary planet.

  While the gang pulled open drawers and ransacked file cabinets for hiding places, Namaba knelt over Marnus’s lifeless form. The odor of death permeated the room. It made her gag. Tearfully, she rose to her feet.

  Rebo focused on the large potted plant in the corner. Namaba saw him staring at it. He moved toward it cautiously, saying, “Maybe the old buzzard hid his valuables in the plant.”

  A brass plaque on the plant’s red brick pot read: “parduvian flytrap.” Crouching, Rebo dug in the dirt with his fingers, stepping around the plant as he did so. He tried to move the plant away from the wall, but it was too heavy to budge. So he reached to the back of the pot and dug there.

  “Nothing here,” he said, rising to his feet. He studied’the central leaves, then inserted his knife blade between them.

  The plant whooshed ferociously. Angrily, it seemed to Rebo. And cold air came from somewhere. He pulled his knife away just before the jaws snapped shut.

  “Ha!” Rebo exclaimed.

  “What are you doing?” Namaba asked, loping to his side. Wiping tears from her face, she said, “You think there’s money in this thing?”

  “Could be.” He slashed at the base of the plant, but was unable to cut through its tough, fibrous skin.

  Namab
a tried to cut the leaves, also without success. Then she and Rebo tried to rock the pot. It did not move.

  “Kaff!” Rebo yelled. “Yott! Give us a hand!”

  They all tried to rock the pot, but still it did not budge. Kaff had the idea of pulling open the plant’s jaws. Three large leaves comprised the jaws, and they opened easily. While the others held the leaves open, Rebo reached inside.

  “It’s cold in here,” Rebo said. “And I can’t find a bottom.”

  “Try a little deeper,” Kaff said.

  Rebo climbed up on the edge of the pot and reached way inside. “It oughtta be here somewhere, but I still don’t feel it.” So he stuck his head in and groped deeper. “It’s cold in here!”

  Seeing that Rebo’s feet were in midair now, Namaba urged him to be careful,

  Without warning, there was a loud Wha-hoosha! and the plant’s jaws snapped shut around Rebo. This clamped the hands of Namaba, Yott, and Kaff between powerful leaves.

  “Hey!” Rebo yelled, his voice hollow and distant. “Get me out of here!”

  With great effort, Namaba and the others were able to pull their hands free. Then they tugged at Rebo’s ankles, trying to free him. He screamed in terror. Namaba tried setting her paws against the pot for traction, but this did not help. Slowly, Rebo was being pulled deeper inside.

  “Help me!” Rebo screamed.

  “It’s dragging him in!” Namaba said, panicky.

  Now the rest of the gang joined in the desperate effort to save their club president. But with all their grunting and tugging, it did no apparent good. Rebo continued to disappear, a little bit at a time.

  All gave up except Namaba. They told her it was no use. But she held Rebo’s ankles, closing her eyes and steeling herself mentally and physically. It may have been her Moravian sense of obligation which provided such determination. But Namaba was the sort who might have done this for anyone.

  “Give it up!” Kaff yelled. “He’s lost!”

  Opening her eyes, Namaba saw that only Rebo’s ankles remained visible. Suddenly, the plant made a loud Wha-hoosha! sound and pulled Rebo and Namaba inside. The leaves snapped shut.

  ‘They’re gone!” Yott said.

  “Let’s go!” Durl yelled. “We gotta get outta here!”

  Stumbling over one another, the survivors of Rebo’s cutthroat gang ran away, leaving a ransacked office, the woolly remains of old Mamus, and a mysterious potted plant.

  With his eyes closed, Rebo whirled through the bottomless vacuum of the Parduvian flytrap at hyper-light speed. He knew he was moving fast, perhaps too fast for Morovian flesh to survive. Cold air swirled past him, running along his face and down his neck, then along the bumpy length of his body, cutting through the thick hair that covered him. Knives of freezing cold cut into the skin, blades of air so frigid that they seemed hot. It was burning, searing cold. Unbearable cold.

  Plates and lances of shadowy blue color raged across his brain, and he absorbed them like metal against ice. Short stretches of blackness followed, and then the frozen storms of shadowy blue returned. He felt the temperature dropping, until it seemed to Rebo that it could not possibly get any colder.

  He wanted to shiver. But Rebo had no control over any of his bodily functions. Something pulled or pushed him along a great freezing tunnel. He sensed twinkling vastness all around. Or perhaps he saw dancing lights far ahead in the shadowy blue distance. He was not certain. Although his eyes were closed, he felt able to see something out there, at the dim reaches of his consciousness.

  Rebo screamed but heard no sound. His brain fogged over, then contracted and swelled like a great undulating ocean wave. Something held fast to his ankles in a clawlike grip. He tried to shake free but could not. A smell of cleanness snapped his nostrils alive, then faded, leaving him with memories of the stinking filth back home in Moro City.

  Now the twinkling vastness ahead focused into distant stars in the shape of old Marnus’s face, laughing at him and drawing him inexorably forward. Through closed eyelids, Rebo saw bright green and blue planets in the foreground. Inexplicably, he passed through some of them. Suns flared white-hot like great growling beasts on each side. Worlds and their suns approached quickly and faded. Now the image of old Marnus’s face neared, still laughing. Rebo passed right through the image, and then it was gone,

  Rebo’s body rolled into the shape of a three-legged fetus, then straightened for a time. Soon it resumed spinning, carrying him headlong through aeons or perhaps only seconds. He had no sense of time or space, only the sensation of eternity and vastness all around, pressing in on him and releasing him at the same moment.

  Namaba released her grip on his ankles, and for a time they walked together in the vacuum place without touching ground. Then they ran and skipped, frolicking through the universe like young lovers. Presently she took hold of his ankles again and they spiraled over and over into the bottomless maw of the Parduvian flytrap.

  A fly? Rebo thought, feeling Namaba’s strong grip. Is that all I am? A miserable speck of an insect?

  Strange, deep thoughts of life, love, and the meaning of existence touched him, but he forced them back. Gang leaders did not need to consider such matters. They were better left to Morovian philosophers, that odd breed who lived in another part of his world.

  Before Rebo could sort out these disturbing new thoughts he sensed the warmth of soft yellow and orange colors in place of the harsh, shadowy blue storms. He began to feel warmer, sleepier. Then a tremendous red flash blasted across his eyelids, making him terribly hot, as hot now as he had been cold before. He knew he could not stand more heat. Even so, the temperature rose. To unimagined limits.

  With Namaba still hanging tight, they spun at tremendous speed in a huge, clear tube. They spiraled from the center out, ending up in the outer ring. Here their speed slowed, and gradually Rebo was able to see objects outside the ring through the clear tube walls. It looked like a cave out there—an immense underground area with translucent spires and steeples of ice rock.

  In slow motion, they passed a great stone chair upon which sat a bearded creature with a split head and body. On each side of the creature art objects were displayed that looked as though they had been fashioned from pieces of scrap: great hunks of iron and ragged, broken slabs of plastic tied together by wire. The creature’s half face was contorted in anger, and he screamed at them as they passed.

  “Intruders!” the creature bellowed. Rebo did not understand this word.

  Soon they had passed the creature. They picked up speed again, remaining in the outer tube. Objects in the caverns outside became a blur. Moments later they slowed again. Rebo recognized the surroundings, for they were back in front of the half-faced one, passing in slow motion while he yelled at them in a language Rebo did not understand.

  “Intruders!” Lord Abercrombie screeched. “No one will steal my domain!” Then he laughed, and his laughter seemed to echo across the universe. Rebo wanted to plug his ears, but could not move his arms.

  This recurred perhaps thirty times. Each time the creature laughed, and each time he hurled a menacing epithet at them. Rebo had never seen anything like this in the Southside. Nor had he imagined what the universe outside his world was like. He was not surprised at what he saw, for he held no preconceived notions about how such things were supposed to be.

  He became aware of a change. Cool air rushed across his body, and he was no longer in the clear outer ring of the great spiral. Now he flew headfirst through a wide, black tunnel, with Namaba still holding fast. Up, he thought, judging from the pressures on his body.

  A blinding flash of light forced his eyes shut. He lapsed into unconsciousness. When he awoke moments later, Rebo found himself face down on a dirt surface with his front leg bent to one side. Namaba lay behind him, still grasping his ankles. From the aches in his body, it seemed to Rebo that he and Namaba had been through an eternity together.

  Namaba let loose her grip on Rebo and pulled herself up. When Rebo saw h
er terrified expression, he felt it must be a reflection of his own: a grimace with wide-open, burning eyes that flitted nervous glances in all directions. She was breathing hard, with intermittent gasps. He heard her steam engine heart chug, and felt his own doing the same.

  Rebo felt his chest swell and drop irregularly. A great tenseness climaxed inside him and released, leaving him limp and drained—a deep weariness such as none he had ever before experienced. It was worse than the time he had run from the police for two hours with no opportunity to catch his breath.

  Steam came out of Namaba’s ears.

  That was a faraway place, Rebo thought, looking around at the terrain, they were on a wide, dusty path, with the marks of many feet on the powdery surface. Lining the path were cream-colored upright cannisters which had red, yellow, and blue markings. He remembered seeing cannisters like them before. Two had landed in Moro City the year before, right in the middle of Nelson Park. The police had arrived quickly to take the cannisters away, and Rebo had never heard of them again.

  In the low light of dusk, the gaze of her red eyes met his. He followed her gaze to the edge of a cavernous black hole that was around twenty meters to Rebo’s left. He surmised that they must have traveled through it to reach this place.

  “Where do you think we are?” Namaba asked. The question seemed ridiculous to Rebo. How could either of them know?

  Rebo felt perspiration forming on his hair-covered body. Rising to all threes, he removed his club jacket. He became conscious of a stream of opposites during the moments of his journey: freezing and heat, cleanness and filth, seconds like aeons, speed and tremendous, painstaking slowness. As he set the jacket on the ground, he felt his breathing become slower and more even.

  Namaba’s terrified expression changed to one of curiosity. Beyond the cannisters she saw that they were in a large clearing, surrounded by a thick forest of pine trees.

  Their jutting heads moved in unison to watch a white glider plane fly gracefully over the opposite side of the clearing. The plane disappeared below the treetops for a time. Then it rose once and dropped again, not reappearing.