Inga
San Francisco, 2062
"Jake . . . Jake?" Inga Roberts stirred awake. Jake wasn't lying on his side of the bed. There was a rumpled infrared impression where his body had been. Inga could tell because she wore heat-seeking contact lenses as part of her Pentacle Krull security apparatus.
She even had a collection of Veronica's Virus nighties in case someone tried to hack into her REMs when she slept at home. But she never wore the gear when she was sleeping over at Jake's. Their naked flesh pressed together was armor enough against the intrusion of psiko rapists and home invaders. It was a well-known fact in her industry that the entwined limbs of lovers generated a more effective defense-shield than any neuro-flak jacket on the market.
Inga read Jake's dissipating heat signature. He'd been gone fifteen minutes. She was pissed. Shit, they had an understanding!
No narcoleptic hanky-panky when they were spending the night together. No unscheduled trips to the Z-Zone without prior consultation. She'd seen what it was doing to him, how he was slowly wasting away, body and soul. How he was gradually, inevitably, drawing away from her.
Now, look at this! Jake hadn't bothered to disguise the luminous traces of the EMG signals he'd emitted when he got out of bed. That obsessed S.O.B.! If that's the way he wants it, so be it . . . .
Inga was about to will herself back to sleep when she felt a prickly ping! on the third vertebrae of her spine. She sat up when she registered the familiar warning signal of her tradecraft.
There was another presence in the loft dojo. Not the other half of Jake's schizo-signature which Inga knew only too well.
No, this one was different. Unique. A force-field bordering on the diabolic.
For all her professional training as a Shaolin firewall warrior, this was the moment that Inga most feared might come to pass. That one day she'd encounter a force she didn't have the power to disable. She'd be totally defenseless against it.
She'd still have all the weapons in her arsenal. Oh yes, the best of the Beast that Pentacle Krull had incubated in her. But she'd be absolutely paralyzed in the face of a single smirk from this mythical opponent. He/she/it could do whatever it wanted with her. Her secret dread. And sometimes, she wondered, perhaps her deepest longing.
She slipped out of bed smelling trouble. Jake trouble. And Jake-In-Trouble trouble. Yes, there was definitely an alien presence in the loft dojo. She could sniff its evil underarm odor as it wafted down the hall from Jake's REM-studio and into the bedroom.
Inga hesitated as she glanced at her corset weaponry that she'd tossed to the floor when she'd grabbed Jake and wrestled him into bed for their bout of love-making.
She shook her head. No time for corsets or getting dressed, for that matter. Whatever it was, a loaded corset wouldn't stop the skulking intruder. Inga checked the pulsar-power in her nipple-clamps. Uh-huh. Those little psi-peashooters would have to do. Naked and determined, she opened the door and stepped into the long hallway. Even her goose bumps were armed for bear.
Inga padded on her bare feet down the hallway that led to Jake's bio-manga studio. She saw a thin yellow crack of light under the door at the end of the corridor. She still felt that alien presence, its signal pulsing more strongly as she drew closer to the dojo door.
She paused wondering if she should return to the bedroom to retrieve her Pentacle Krull corset. In case she needed more firepower. Then she remembered her newest weapon, the one she'd recently installed at the PK clinic and never used in the field. So far.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that, she thought. She'd tested it on the Krull firing-range a few times, but always balked at initializing it because of the possible side effects to her system. It was a weapon of last resort.
Better activate it now. Inga performed a half-squat on the kilim carpet runner and made the necessary contraction. Click. Her whole body was now loaded and ready to fire.
Then Inga noticed the photon traces on the burnt orange and brick-colored kilim. The sunset shades and geometric patterns of blues, yellows, and greens of the carpet had disguised the intruder's spores.
Inga froze. Shit! Her heat-seeking contact lenses dipped into the glow-traces as her pupils ran a quick diagnostic check. Shit! Shit! Shit! How could she have missed it when she sprayed the room with her electron-tagging aerosol?
Source confirmed: Nihongi 26, Ninja Photon Drone.
There must have been more than just the three EM-ninja drones that the courier from the Imperial New Nippon consulate had infiltrated into Jake's flat.
This one was a more advanced model. Not easily detected. Sentient to the seventh degree. Assassin class. The others were just decoys.
Inga berated herself again. Stupid, stupid, stupid! She ran her fingers through her short curly brown hair, then went into a Shaolin firewall martial stance. Her shoulders were hunched loose, her knees flexed for a 'Jade Girl Kicks Ass' knee jab.
She pushed the door to Jake's REM-studio open. All right, motherfucker. Let's see what you're made of.
Inga saw the drone-ja right away. Or what was left of it. It lay sprawled, a charcoal crisp on the tatami-mat floor. It was two-feet tall, broad-shouldered in its designer black-hole tunic, armed with a psi-crossbow chest-implant. Lever cocked, triaxial accelerometer calibrated, tilt-sensor ready and geared to fire a Chinese firecracker-round of delta-bolts at 200 fps. More than enough juice to mince your brainwaves from across the Yellow River.
Correction: > Its< brainwaves.
The pigmy assassin's skull had been completely flattened. Its only recognizable features were its samurai forelock and sideburns. Jesus, those New Nippon designers didn't skimp on their packaging even if the face was never meant to be seen by a living being!
It took a moment for Inga to register the anomaly here. Jake was a pussycat when it came to squabbling, much less street fighting. She'd seen him in action with aggros in the city. He kept an International Planetary Union-certified wand in his fanny-pack. Anyone got into his face over a parking space and he'd whip it out. The wand was programmed for negotiating peace-treaties between rival tribes of cannibals. Strictly pacifist ammo.
So . . . Who'd DONE the drone? Jake? Not likely.
Inga glanced at him quickly. Jake was all 'troded up and REMing like a baby on his raised bio-anime workstation in the middle of the dojo. He wriggled like an eel with elbows, his platinum-bleached thatch of hair sopping wet from journey sweat and 'trode gel.
His closed eyelids twitched from the dance steps of some inner tango. He was outfitted in his favorite Akaji Maro thong, that leopard-spotted antique sock-thing which he'd bought for the equivalent of 300,000 Neuroyen at a vintage dance costume auction in Basle. His showiest threads.
Dammit, Inga fumed. He'd gone back into the Z-Zone after all! What WAS it about the place? Dimensionless space had its attractions, okay. But she was no fool. She always suspected there was another woman involved. A dimensionless woman? Fuck, who cares? He must be fooling around on the side.
From the look on Jake's face, he was coming back in and it was a bumpy road. Brainscrolling in some distant delta-vector, he mumbled disjointed phrases. "Get your scrilla in shape . . . Keep your pimp hand strong . . . The freestyle starts to flow . . . Get used to being gaffled by the pigs . . . You'd better call Ghost . . . Bust this! . . . Got ducats?"
No, Jake hadn't done the drone.
"Jesus Fuck!" Inga Roberts' mouth widened into a silent scream.
What had done in the drone was that other. That singular abstraction that was slowly descending from a rope that hung from the studio's sixteen-foot high ceiling. The creature advanced towards Jake's dreaming body that lay a few meters beneath it on the workstation-dais.
It moved headfirst, upside-down. With each flick of its wrists, its skeletal fingers grasped the flypaper texture of the spiraling cord.
>Sap-Snap!< >Sap-Snap!< >Sap-Snap!< The rope made viscous sounds as the creature lowered itself down.
So intent was the specter on its hellish task that it ignored Inga's presence in the dojo. Then its egg-shaped skull and glittering black eyes turned towards her.
Another flick of its eyes as it measured the charcoal crisp outline of the dead Nihongi assassin-drone that lay on the floor. It smiled again and resumed its sticky descent.
What happened next made Inga scream out loud.
Jake's chest began to thump outwardly, his chest cavity bubbling like a pot of stew. With a sickening wrench, his sternum split open and the cage of his ribs assumed the shape of a breadbasket. His exposed heart beat red and pulpy gray. Jake groaned in his deep REM sleep. "Just an image . . . " he mumbled.
The specter was a naked man, his body was painted chalk-white. He had a shaved head. His long fingers elongated into bony raindrops that were going to pour themselves into the gutter of Jake's heart and lungs.
"The FUCK you're doing!?" Inga shrieked.
The naked specter hissed at her. From his mouth came a steady stream of crystal arrowheads propelled by whirring nanobe wings. Inga's training as a Pentacle Krull Shaolin left her in no doubt as to what they were. Electromagnetic pulsars with a shearing density that would turn her into a burnt scarab. A charcoal bookend to the dead Nihongi drone.
Inga's naked body went into a Shaolin cartwheel. The nanobes blasted the doorway into splinters where she had been standing a moment earlier.
The specter hissed again. Just as he was about to aim another thunderbolt of sizzling nanobes at her, Jake opened his eyes and deflected the specter's concentration with an icy stare. The two men faced each other off, nose to nose. Then the nanobe projectiles bisected themselves in a hailstorm of self-annihilation.
Fractals of white explosions blanketed the dojo like snow.
That was enough of an opening for Inga to execute her coup de grace. Her cartwheel completed, her feet assumed the Shaolin stance for "Crystal Flower Fires Death Petal."
The specter's eyes widened in surprise. It saw Inga in her kata squat, her thighs open and the razor-pulsar cervical disc shooting out of her womb. This was the first time she'd used her secret weapon in open combat. But what the hell, it was worth it just to see the EM diaphragm slice through the specter's rope.
But then . . . Oh, no . . . Inga winced in pain as the whiplash of the afterburn seared her pubes. Sometimes, you just can't win. No matter what you do. Case in point: Jake Hill.
For all of Inga's technology: the technology of her heart, the technology of her love, the technology of her Krull hardware, the specter had fallen all right.
Right into Jake. She had merely expedited its fall. Midwife to the devil, that's what she was. Tears of frustration filled her eyes.
"Honey," Jake spoke to her in a voice that sounded different. He was fully awake and back on terra infirma. "Don't be so hard on yourself. It's not your fault. I've got death growing inside me now. Who doesn't?"
Then he passed out.
The next morning, it was a bright blue Bayplex day with pink-inlaid powderpuff trapezoid clouds and ice-green vinyl colored boomerangs. Today's sky collection was individually signed by the Prix de West artist Nina Helmsley. There wasn't much traffic on the maglevway. Only a quarter of the forty southbound chutes were amped to their full streaming capacity.
Inga Roberts was chuting Jake Hill to the SF International Airstation in her maroon ETT Pipeliner. He rolled down the window of her 12-coil rotordynamic 'wagon and breathed in gulps of minty air through his facemask. "Ah, that's so refreshing!" he exclaimed. The City's fleet of cleaning blimps had vacuumed most of the orgone debris from the transparent underbelly of the Trans-Bay Dome.
"I'm so happy that you're happy," Inga said sarcastically. "You sure that you packed everything? Amanda Jones insisted that you bring six months of your most recent work with you. They're going to exhibit your REM-cels at the Zuntory Museum, you know."
"Everything's been pre-sold in advance," Jake said delightedly. "Isn't that great? Rocky Ikkyu fetched top prices for the whole lot."
"That Rocky Ikkyu must be quite an agent," Inga remarked acidly as she switched chutes to the coupon track. They'd been on the road for fifteen minutes, and she'd already amassed 12,000 shopping points at Tesla Plus, Cirque de Samovar Fine Teas, and Haley's Comet Carpetdrome.
"Amanda only deals with the very best," Jake declared confidently.
"I know. She represent you, doesn't she?"
Jake rolled up the window and unsnapped his facemask. "Are you still mad at me?"
"Mad at you?" Inga gripped the steering wheel. "Why should I be mad at you?"
"For leaving town. Listen, it's going to be a quick trip. Five days, no longer. Before you know it, I'll be back. Richer and wiser. More infamous. Don't think I'm unaware of the fact that my accepting the award is a propaganda coup for the Nipponese neo-fascists. I'm not that insensitive."
Inga made a face. "Let's face it, Jake. You're a hopeless jerk. It's never going to work out between us."
"Don't get started on that again! Another few minutes, and you'll be letting me off at the terminal. Let's enjoy the time we have left together."
"You're already off, Jake. Off your rocker."
"I told you a hundred times! I don't remember anything about last night!"
"Ha!" she snorted. "There's a huge scar running down your sternum. You don't remember that?"
"I've always had a weak chest. It's hereditary."
"You never knew your parents, you asshole. That's what you told me."
"That's true," Jake agreed. "All that's a blank. I'm my own greatest mystery. According to my birth records, I was an adopted clone."
"I've made up my mind, Jake," Inga said bitterly. "If I'm not around when you get back from Tokio, you'll only have yourself to blame."
"Let's see what's the Voice of New Nippon is saying," Jake was anxious to change the subject. "I've got to catch up with the Zengeist across the Pacific. How do you turn this thing on?"
He thumped on the dashboard where her Omnitron IMAX panel was mounted.
"Hey, don't be so rough with that!" Inga protested. "It's sensitive equipment! On loan to me from Pentacle Krull."
"They can afford it! You're one of their top operatives!"
"If they only knew who I was dating, I'd be fired. You jerk!"
Two maglev tracks to the left of Inga Roberts' maroon ETT Pipeliner, a blue HTSC 42-magnet bike with a refrigerated side-cargo hull keened directly behind the Pipeliner.
"Yes, I've got the subject in sight right now, Colonel Tanaka." Courier Mizoguchi from the Imperial New Nippon Consulate spoke into the transponder inside his helmet. "His woman friend is driving him to the SF Airstation to catch his connecting flight to Manila."
The conversation was being beamed via nano-satellite to the Tokko military counterintelligence HQ in Tokio Metro.
Mizoguchi heard some static on his end of the line and frowned. "Yes, I know. None of the ninja drones I planted in his studio seem to have worked. His girlfriend works for Pentacle Krull, the firewall security people. That may be the reason. I took every precaution in releasing them properly."
Mizoguchi listened to the angry voice and scowled. "I apologize for any inconvenience. I will continue to report."
Mizoguchi's real name was Fukuzawa and he worked for the Tokko station in San Francisco. As part of his disguise, he was dressed in the zucchini-dyed vegetal leather overalls of an organic produce deliveryman from the Farmer's Market in San Rafael. His refrigerated side-cargo hull was filled with the live spores of cauliflower tofu. By the time he delivered his shipment to the Korean food warehouse in South San Francisco, the cauli-fus would be fully-grown and ready to be served for lunch in San Bruno.
Inga instructed her ETT Pipeliner. "Get us the East-Asia Co-Prosperity II Channel." Then she asked Jake. "You've got a stopover in Manila, don't you?"
"That's right," he replied. "All flights from the U.S. to New Nippon were suspended since the Nipponese warlords annexed the Korean Peninsula two years ago. That's why Rocky's booked me on the Manila Clipper."
"The Manila Clipper!" Inga said with a note of envy. " That sounds so luxurious. Like one of those Pan Am flying ships that used to cross the Pacific over a century ago."
"That's exactly what it is," Jake nodded. "It's got sleepers, a dining room, everything. But it's an overnight trip."
The Omnitron IMAX screen on the dashboard was suddenly filled with images.
"Look!" exclaimed Jake, "It's a live feed from the Admiral Yamamoto Stadium in Manila!"
The caption on the screen read: "Foreign Minister Matsuoka Addresses Co-Prosperity 'Village Meeting' at Luneta Park."
Tens of thousands of Filipinos waving tiny Rising Sun and Philippine flags filled the huge brightly-lit stadium. Onstage, beneath the white stucco Moorish Gothic bandshell stood a thin Nipponese man dressed in a black frock coat. He held a top hat under his arm and mopped his brow with a handkerchief as he squinted into the klieg lights. New Nippon officials, military officers and Filipino functionaries surrounded him on all sides.
"See that guy to his left?" Jake pointed out a burly Filipino in a khaki uniform with a Rising Sun armband. "That's President Jose Lim, the Filipino Quisling. Look at the size of his jaw, it's awesome! He had his plastic surgeon model it after Mussolini. And that woman right next to him, she's his wife Keiko Lim. She's a fourth-generation Nipponese from Luzon. They have four children, Bing Bing, San-san, Little Giant and Hit a' Homer."
Jake got carried away with his commentary. "See that Nipponese officer with the moustache who's standing by himself at the left corner of the stage? His name is Koga. He's a colonel with the Kempeitai. Head of Nipponese military intelligence operations in the Philippines. He works out of an underground bunker in Fort Santiago in Manila. He's Keiko Lim's lover. President Lim doesn't know it, but Hit a' Homer is really Koga's kid."
"Huh?" Inga looked at Jake suspiciously. "How come you know all this stuff?"
Jake shrugged. "I dunno. Beginner's intuition."
"That doesn't explain anything. Oh, my God!" Inga blurted out.
"What is it?"
Inga jabbed at the screen. "Don't tell me YOU don't see THAT!"
"See what?"
Inga gave Jake a frantic look. "Coming down that rope directly above the Foreign Minister's head! Are you blind?"
But Jake Hill leaned back against the headrest of Inga's 'wagon and didn't reply. The whites of his eyes were somewhere south of the equator of his forehead.
Inga Roberts swore under her breath as she watched the naked chalk-white Butoh dancer-creature in his assassin's thong reach for Foreign Minister Matsuoka's bald head. He tapped him on the head lightly. As Matsuoka looked up with a baffled expression on his face, the Butoh crooked his left arm around the diplomat's neck, and twisted it hard until it snapped with a loud amplified crack.
The East-Asia Co-Prosperity Channel cut the picture abruptly and switched to a papaya green-tea infomercial.
The image of the Hanging Butoh lingered on Inga's Omnitron screen for a few seconds longer. He gave her a wink, a nod, and blew her a kiss before he dissolved into a green mist.
On the maglev track behind Inga, Courier Mizoguchi leaned forward on his HTSC 42-magnet bike. He spoke in an excited voice. "Yes, sir, I've just heard that Matsuoka was assassinated . . . No, I can't see Hill's face, but he appears to be slumped in the front passenger seat. I'm getting a REM-reading on his 'waves right now. He's in deep delta. Less than 0.1 Hz. Much deeper than he's ever gone before. I'll try to maintain contact with him. Yes, sir. He appears to be projecting himself through some delta wormhole. I haven't got a fix on its frequency yet. I'll do my best. Over and out."
On the maglev track behind Inga, Courier Mizoguchi leaned forward on his HTSC 42-magnet bike. He spoke in an excited voice. "Yes, sir, I've just heard that Matsuoka was assassinated . . . No, I can't see Hill's face, but he appears to be slumped in the front passenger seat. I'm getting a REM-reading on his 'waves right now. He's in deep delta. Less than 0.1 Hz. Much deeper than he's ever gone before. I'll try to maintain contact with him. Yes, sir. He appears to be projecting himself through some delta wormhole. I haven't got a fix on its frequency yet. I'll do my best. Over and out."
Still in shock, Inga Roberts steered her 'wagon up the congested rampway that led to the San Francisco International Airstation. Navigating carefully through the flow of rickshaws and heavy foot traffic, she pulled up at the curbside.
"Wake up, Jake," Inga nudged him in the chest with a trembling hand. "We're here. End of the line."
Jake was in a deep trance and hadn't twitched a muscle in the past ten minutes. Not since . . . Inga shuddered. Not since the bastard had nodded off during the Omnitron broadcast and fused into that diabolical creature who'd taken over his body and soul. What kind of a freak had Jake become?
Jake Hill's eyes popped open suddenly. "Are we here already?" He rubbed his face blinking. "That was quick."
He smiled at her. "I must have had a nap. Thank you, Inga. I feel much better now. More refreshed."
"I'm . . . so glad, Jake. " Inga tried to control herself as she leaned over to give him a light kiss on the cheek. There was a strange fragrance on his face. She wondered what it was. That's right, she remembered now. They had visited the holy city of Benares together on a trip to India. That fragrance . . . It smelled like the rosewater aftershave on a corpse crackling on a funeral pyre at one of the burning ghats on the Ganges.
"Well," Jake said in a chipper voice as he opened the door and stepped outside. "I'd better be off. Things to do before I sleep again, y'know . . . . "
He arranged his suitcases in a neat pile on the curb. Then he turned around to give Inga a goodbye kiss. "Huh, Inga?" Where was she?
Inga Roberts was gone, her Pipeliner lost in the traffic. She had shot out of there like he was some kind of ghost with a contagious disease. He was on his own now. Jake shrugged as the realization hit him. Well, not exactly. He was carrying some unauthorized baggage inside him. If you could call Butoh dancer assassin plasm baggage. Now wasn't that just peachy!
What do I do now? Jake felt overwhelmed as he grappled with his dilemma. Then he picked up his luggage, and strode confidently towards the terminal doors. He was wearing his khaki suit and jodhpurs, the outfit of his super-hero 'toon character "Tao" Smith. New adventures and new worlds awaited him. Mustn't dally any longer. Mustn't keep the damsels or the enemy waiting.