
By The Shorts

By Kevin Williams copyright 2020

April 2020

Smashwords License Statement Smashwords Edition. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover Art: van.bc.can webcam

Disclaimer: This is a work of satire; similarities to persons is a coincidence?

Canadian ISBN:978-1-988261-34-8

ISBN:9780463366370

Author's Note: Fan-mail, biz, complaints and suggestions to teddyhunter10@gmail.com

Kevin Williams is on

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/packrat2

https://kevinwillpkgd.tumblr.com

https://imgur.com/packrat2/posts

He authors an SF series, Teddyhunter: (about runaway teddybear robots), a few books of short stories, comics and the Aaron+Henna fantasy series. The first in every series is usually a free ebook.

***

## chapter 1 easy chair killer

A beauty but she wasn't moving or talking. Dead did that kind of thing to you.

"Keep looking, boys. Double donuts to the one that finds proof this guy's a multiple killer."

Aldrin again, trying to transfer to a better position in the force. Grunting noncommittally at that official-type noise coming from the suit by the door behind me was all I could manage. Aldrin was always sure of the worst till it was proven otherwise, even at work when we did murder investigations together. Especially then, really. It had something to do with his desire for promotion, I think, glory-hound that he is.

The only problem was he took his frustrated fantasies out on the team when that turned out wrong. Nobody liked working with him when the case we got sent out on by GVRD didn't look like it would make good paper.

Here? Greater Vancouver Regional department. Hire talent, promote locals and politics is your life-blood. It's a family thing.

The apartment was dark and damp around us; typical cramped Village-Vancouver living with a TV prominent. All clues about the messy demise of tonight's body was in the process of being destroyed by big, flat feet and clumsy prying fingers. Patrol officers desperate to get off the street, ones that hadn't fallen into anything worth knowing about yet.

Looking around carefully (That's what I was being paid for), I squatted down and started with the wall in front of me. There was something and I checked again with one eye closed. Freckles were dancing merrily on the wall, suspicious-looking freckles dark against light paint. I did a double-take and looked at the tiny spots again, more carefully this time and with a pocket microscope glass.

Those weren't freckles, they were specks of dried blood. Old dried blood and lots of it.

Something special and deadly had gone down here and from the lack of dirt on the freckles, fairly recently. Long enough back the blood had turned into concrete as it'd aged.

But not tonight, there were fresh splatters about too. This was old, dark and hard dried blood, stuff that'd been wipe-washed once or twice. The problem was the murder we were called in on was only hours old. These spots were too old, too dark for that.

There were lots of them too, more than a few sprays, mostly around the baseboards in the apartment. Unless somebody here liked washing dried bloodstains clean, this was a recent previous, with older ones around it. And tonight's, of course.

That meant a whitewash, a coverup, and habitual murderer most foul. Not a shaving-accident story unless Bozo-the-killer here shaved near the floor and shaved fairly carelessly to boot. A lot.

Things looked bad. Maybe Aldrin was right for once in his petty little life. Stranger things have happened to nicer people in this city.

We'd gotten told on the way in by the super that Bozo-the-killer was a hustler with a taste for the more poisonous bitches out there; gaming in the city for hot ones that lived on big money from the looks of it. We knew one fox had died noisily here tonight, one that was with him when he came in.

This case started to look hot to me. And nasty. Hopefully someone else's problem.

Putting my pocket-scope back in a pouch, I considered things, sitting back on my heels to think a bit and look around the room for whatever story it could tell me.

It was a clear yarn. There were two dirty glasses, one with lipstick-stains, both by an easy-chair that looked like it was designed for two to cuddle up in. That looked like a good place to start looking for sups to me, so I went over and looked at the chair.

Surprise, surprise. By damn, it was designed as a cuddler. A classy little set-up too. Expensive. It was heated, leather-covered, a vibrator massage built in, dual controls and a soft-stuff terry cloth towel with sticky stains on it puddled on the seat. Other pseudo sex-toys were littered around, most within easy grabbing distance of the chair. This moved girls from necessary hobby to lifer-obsession-with-rituals status in here.

This definitely wasn't an accident. Bozo had a problem getting it slaked, from the looks of things. A twisted type that snapped and killed.

Some people do like to frolic at home. I grinned. Frolicking at home was better than frolicking in the park. The suggestions some people shouted when you tried that were disgusting, usually.

"Aldrin! Come scope this out. There's a donut-claim on this one. Maybe a half-dozen or so." That snapped a head or two out of notebooks and looking my way as I pointed at the stains on the wall behind me.

That little hint got most of the team up and over messing up my find, but I was finished with it already and didn't care. I already knew where Bozo killed his babes; and how and when. The lab labbies would dig the proof out of the walls and carpet that led back to the chair when they wanted it.

Skipping the team-effort thing, I headed out to the balcony of the small apartment-cum-condo, looking for the rest of this guy's personality. I found it in another chair out there.

The balcony was low, and protruded into the branches of a tree growing out of the lawn below, since this place was only the top half of a house that gotten remodelled as a single. Probably illegally, too.

Walking out there on the balcony was a lot like walking into a room that glowed leaf-green in the streetlights and rustled in the breeze. Very nice, very peaceful. There was a hanging wicker chair screwed into a beam overhead and it was swaying gently in the cool night air while Burrard Inlet and the city lights shone away in the distance. There was a second, empty hook for another chair in the beam.

A dirty one. Scratched up.

I stuck my head back inside and made calf-eyes at the group that was huddled around the blood stains without saying a word. George our lead tech looked up to see what I wanted this time.

Jerking my head behind me was all it took. He knew. "Better find the complainers hereabouts too, George." I added quietly. "It looks like he took his dates out here for a bit of a moan first occasionally."

George nodded and left the wall-stains, coming over to check out my new locale. He saw what I did and nodded agreement. Double hooks in the beam. Both tearing out of the wood from some vicious, repeated strains. A stained, dirty cushion on the chair. Fresh tears in the wood. Frayed fibre on the second hook.

Obviously, Bozo roped his hot ones up out here occasionally. Semi-publicly, yet. The stains the freshly-dead always left behind on the floor would prove it; the cushion on the hanging chair had more than wet-weather stains on it too.

Myself, I moved out of the apartment, stepping over the sheet-covered body of the snuffed sweet-thing leaking fluids on the floor and stomped around the house, pretending to start the banging-on-neighbour's doors bit.

George could handle the tech things in the apartment from there better than I could. Uniforms would look for the little old lady complainers in the building and block; the ones that could tell us what we wanted to know about this guy's noisier habits.

There were always complainers. There were always murders. Life in the city Vancouver goes on. Sometimes complainers helped you out, sometimes they didn't.

Since the site was now hot and there was reason to call specialist in, I left fast and kept away. Better scopes than mine and every climber in the department would scrounge every last scrap of info out of the place now, Aldrin sitting there like a starving spider on top of everything and signing every report that went by in big red letters.

You could pick the reports off the computer if you wanted them but I already knew more than would get mentioned there. God, I hated working with Aldrin but I hated working with anyone anyway. At least George had some sense; him you could rely on to order the background out, a national check on names and methods, local gossip, all the usual stuff. He could even find his hand in front of his face, if you pointed him in the right direction first.

George did the data-dance. Aldrin did politics. I worked on catching killers. So far we fit even if we didn't talk much anymore.

Actually, I usually went out tripped over the obvious and tried not to get killed doing it. That was my whole part. Occasionally it was the killer but more usually leads that daytimers traced down.

Collars, not data-windows; much to Aldrin's regret. The force knows who's on top of the action and I call them on a regular basis. Sometimes to tell them what I'm digging up this time, sometimes to cover a complete lack of progress. They put that through the AIs and caught up to me. Sometimes the AIs bugged right past me. It's a living.

City-life goes on. I shrugged and went out to play the game again with yet another looney killer.

***

Dancing the flake-dance in the old biddy's movie was simple; she liked what she saw in me and I found out what I wanted to know fast. She was good, I'll give her that.

There was even got a list of atrocious things that Bozo did to the hot and responsive bodies he brought home from the bars, or at least the noisier parts of them. I linked the biddy's name into the d-base on our latest lady-killer and thanked her profusely, promising more visits from even cuter guys in the future.

She thanked me back. I grinned till my face hurt and left, already busy trying to figure out Bozo's bar circuit.

When your last-seen-wth-you babes-of-choice disappear suddenly, completely and totally, you move around a lot. Otherwise, even the dullest hustler on Keith st would get suspicious of you. Bozo would have a long list and circuit of bars to collect babes from, so I went downtown to get a paper update on disappearances.

Head-office was already burning up CPU time trying to dump every unsolved disappearance for the age-group and neighbourhood on the guy when I got there. My reaction was to sit and start the slow, laborious typing of my time-reports in while the AI digested what data we had on Bozo. With my peculiar insights into things tagged for special consideration on my own private box, thanks.

My speculations were far too weird to get into the official reports. UFOs and Elvis would play far more prominent parts if I thought they were getting leaked.

Aldrin was still sitting on the case, sucking political juices out of it and happy with himself. He didn't mention any of the gruntwork to me and I didn't mention any of the ideas I had on Bozo to him. We were both happy.

Nobody made any official mention of Bozo's stopper of choice, the way he liked to give his babes the chair. One of a couple of them. This was a new killer to us, then. So far. Maybe Bozo was somebody smart enough to cover up a disgusting hobby, but at it so long he'd finally gotten careless.

Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy. A careless sex-killer was a caught sex-killer since now it was my turn at things.

***

Poop came in. According to the AI Bozo was, in order, a transient, an immigrant, a freshly issued government ID-worker and squeaky clean. He'd lived in that apartment for fifteen years so far. All money accounts were held in cash and emptied recently.

No trophies where found. The cash was cleaned out friday. This was saturday eve; that little item gave me some nasty chills as I thought about it.

This was a planned snuff, the beginnings of a finely plotted-out tear. Bozo was also much smarter than I'd given him credit for, given his hobbies. He'd gotten the feds to cough up a clean ID, easy enough when you know how, and he was living behind that collecting money, No prints, no records, no anything else on him.

Nothing on where the bodies went, but there is a whole lot of empty here in BC. A whole Pacific of it, for starters.

From the looks of things he'd banked enough money for a vacation and now was letting loose with something he'd probably been planning for years. Other cities had no record of an Easy-chair killer, but requests were heading out to the other established pros with enough experience to guess about this and get it right.

Myself, I was back at the grind, checking bars, his contract-work consulting AI-computers and the groceries left over in the apartment. It was pretty dry work reading the reports and snooping like that, but the missing hot-body list was 'way too confusing. I needed another lead to pull data out of the noise.

Any hint would do and Bozo's clothes were the best lead we had. Bozo liked hot babes, the type we ordinary mortals collected by rattling Jag keys in their faces. He dressed for the part and acted instead, all hand-fitted stuff.

Suave. Smooth. Ice-cold. Unless you were cute or rich or famous, most of us were zeros with these babes. Maybe extraordinarily talented in some way.

Bozo's talent seemed to be putting it on and over on them. He had three different cell and pager services, with three different names on it, all calling him Doctor Somebody-or-other. People messaged him, usually late at night, and the messages always got ignored as they were non-returnable ones, according to the answering service.

AI repair. On call dating receptionist babes? The missing foxes on the data-dump were all colours, sizes and types. The only thing they had in common was being beauties, available and apparently running bored.

Bozo never called the advertised services, from what we could see. Maybe he was a known somewhere and spending the time priming innocents. Maybe he just wanted to kill friends. Maybe this was his first blown body.

This was too bad for Bozo, really. The blood came back mixed. The lab said last night's number got the drop on him in some way and kicked up a fuss before Bozo had his way with her. I laughed at that and made a note to check for older-type killers.

Young ones did get surprising on you sometimes, something I'd found out playing hockey at the rink years before. Girls could do that too. Sweet young things are quick sweet young things that can out-run rabbits when they want to.

Profile came up dud from the AI-doc box, till more info got put in. I snorted my disgust at the machine and kept reading and digging, making my own notes.

Transport we blanked on, an item of interest to me. Bozo didn't seem the type to want a cold, system-less car, but there were no records of any license, insurance, ownership or taxis. He had to get around somehow. He had an off-net transport? He only did cute taxi-drivers, maybe? Was that his obsession?

Maybe the clothes weren't the only things he got specially fitted. Cold cars were easy in the city, as long as you stayed out of trouble and had cold plates too.

Being off-net, there was no heat from the tracers Detroit and Japan had to build into them these days. I wondered briefly about staking out the nearest lover's lane for something registered cruising thru, but didn't wonder about it long. Car-seats didn't seem like this guy's style. His start maybe, but not his style.

Bozo looked to me more like he was into comfort and toys; not fast and sloppy heat. I put a couple motels I knew of that specialized in that on my check-list.

Most of those places had cameras. An unregistered car there regularly would turn up soon enough if I could get my hands on some security disks. There was even a crummy work-id photo from one of the shops he'd been in on-line now, bad enough to be anyone but enough to start on motel clerks with.

Taking a bad picture is an art too. His was classic. I put another notch in this guy's deceit column and moved on to tracing purchases the toys.

Then we got a report of another fox found in a hot-tub, way out highway one. Near Harrison Hot-Springs. I played a hunch and followed it up instead of trying my luck in the sex shops, a notoriously low-wage group that burned thru staff as fast as this guy went thru girls.

The motel fit. Older man, halter-top fox. Fox had paid for the room. A snub-nosed cutie, lush-bodied, naked, now very dead. Found sitting in a hot-tub, strangled by maids. Her clothes were still there.

Gene samples came out of the pool. It was our boy Bozo again and this was starting to look bad.

Even the Doc-box AI agreed with me. Profile said Bozo had kept his habit under control until just recently. Right now he was on a burnout dive-down, needing more and more sooner and sooner just to get the same high. I was of the opinion he was just starting a well-planned vacation and had blistered his heels first day out, but kept it to myself. You can't argue with a computer anyway.

I asked the force for a lover's lane watch in case the car-angle panned out and the beats laughed at me. One snarky femme took the reports, laughed, and promised to solve the case for me if I was good to her in the future. Ha. More work? Not likely. Grunts bug me too, but I didn't worry about the witch and cruiser types.

You see, motels take money and Bozo would run out of cash soon, no matter how much he had stashed away for this. His dates did not look the types to carry large amounts of cash with them.

Yes, the fox's purses were empty, but everyone lives on the card these days anyway, unless you want to be more or less untraceable and living in a cash society. Bozo wasn't down to robbery yet but would be soon, if I knew anything about him at all.

We traced him thru the beepers and found another body, one still sitting back to front in her car-seat and handcuffed to the steering-wheel. Fibre-optic cable noosed around her neck. The beat-cops listened to that report, stopped laughing and started watching the lanes and back alleys, or promised to. The witchey one got a good laugh out of it and asked what we were going to do, other than dump things on her?

I groaned. What were we supposed to do, put out a kinky-sex alert? We'd get seventeen copy-cat killers by Tuesday if we did. Jokers! You don't tell little people anything, in the long run it doesn't pay. I made official noises and she wandered away again, still chuckling.

Next day another dead fox turned up; at the library, of all places. Same MO, just younger. Not as foxy as usual, but probably hotter. He kept the cuffs this time, she was still dressed, but the cable was the same and so was the position. Another sitting strangle, girl roped high and quiet.

I made bets he was starting to offer money for his action. The library? If he was running out of patience like that, he'd blow it entirely soon. The media went on alert after that, there being a shortage of lerts in the news that week. We promised them the moon by monday, but we never did get to Bozo.

The morgue called us a couple days later. Somebody all torn up had gotten picked out of the river that morning. Somebody that matched Bozo's gene-ID that'd gotten tossed from Lion's Gate bridge. Interested, I went down there to check and close the case up. I wanted to see what Bozo looked like anyway.

As it turned out, Bozo looked like hell. Torn up wasn't a good enough description of the corpse, mangled, stomped and shredded fish-food was a lot closer to it. It was a laugh.

Bozo's last date was his last date. She'd gotten loose somehow and then had proceeded to scientifically beat him to death, tearing him into screaming bloody chunks and tossing the still-quivering body off the bridge. There was water in the lungs so Bozo had eventually drowned in Burrard Inlet after long fall down and almost swept out to sea by the tide.

The saltwater had washed the body clean, any evidence of who did it gone in the currents and mud. We couldn't trace her, even to give her the medal I thought she deserved for stomping this guy.

Some of the wounds twigged something, something I'd heard of a long time ago. The AI-doc agreed, pointing out the same pattern of wounds had been used to kill a few other boy-toys around town over the last few years. The nastier ones that had reps for using runaways hard and burying bodies in the swamp.

I nodded at that, flushed the doc, then closed the case. Whoever snuffed Bozo didn't concern me. Slasher babes weren't my style and she was fighting the good fight anyway.

Then I sat down to finish up the reports. Hire talent, promote locals; let politics sort it out. Murders may come and go around here, but the paperwork lasts forever.

The beat-witch snarked at me about girls solving all my troubles for me for a long time afterward. I ignored her.

-30-

## chapter 2 blood bank

Slipping in the fresh blood on the floor, I knew instantly it was going to be a bad day for me; my first big clue was that the splotch of blood down there was mine.

The second big clue was the spray-bandaid on my arm, the third was me being dizzy enough to stumble around in bed; I collapsed panting and groaning to the rug after thrashing my way out of the covers. Third, I had to lie there gasping in exhaustion as darkness and energy patterns gathered around my eyes. It gradually dispersed.

Sin-scope. Something had happened to me last night while I slept to make that pass-out happen, but what? I figured it all out while basking in the liquid warmth of a hot shower. While trying to drink the shower dry actually, and getting rid of the new spray-on bandaid.

The bandaid had covered a fresh hole in a vein. Healing by now; it was obvious what'd happened. She had done it to me again.

Disappointing. As I remembered, the night had started so promisingly too. "Relief, relationship or development tonight, dear?" That got my attention immediately. Cuddles wanted to play and she had some new ideas. So far, so good.

Her old tricks came out. They still worked, because I happily fell asleep an hour or so later. Then some new vamp moves got unloaded on me; they included toys with needles in them.

Getting volunteered this way was distressing, but not totally unknown to me. My love-life the vampire had struck again. Garlic-with-garlic meals weren't working anymore; it was time to try something new.

You see, I'm a weird blood type, rare and in big demand in certain places. People live and die by what I can spare this week.

Dearheart, my live-with, had recently joined (or gotten forcibly recruited into, I hadn't decided which yet) a weird-medical volunteer group; one that quietly promoted and used an unofficial cannibalism at their clinic. Young-bloods.

Or at least in my case, marriage-vampires.

Yes, there were people out there that needed me or at least my blood. On a regular basis, for strange things like living another day. Some of them were in cults, too.

Wicked Velvet Happy-humpy was part of this now and by default, so was I. This was really, really weird med-tech, with apps no one in the right mind expected to see anywhere other than TV. All body energy-fields, not MNR. Mind-reader stuff, instant physic healers, auras. And some new-type vampires just for fun.

Well, cold chattering teeth are not good for a toothache. I stoically pulled myself together while towelling off, busily trying to decide just who to kill for this latest outrage. So I'd losta pint-in-the-night for a good cause, that being keeping alive whoever some local loon thought worth keeping alive.

I did not want to know who. Political survival meant playing lots of politics and these charitable raids on my butt usually turned out to be nasty political maneuvers for the rich, powerful and connected. Not selfless charitable healing ones.

This was a small clinic, right? I'd watched the whole mess develop and I knew, I just didn't want to admit anything.

Sweetness and Light, my better half, had started on a phone asking for volunteers and donations for the group. Nowadays she was borged to the brows with lots of strange tech-toys. She found, scouted and recruited energy 'batteries' for this weird doc-shop, using these high-tech scanners. She talked, dragged, or put people in the clinic, sometimes as volunteer apprentices, sometimes as a source of some energy they wanted to use.

Yes, put. That's where her targets ended up. The unco-operative ones, anyway.

Nasty, especially the ones who had lots of 'good' energy and didn't really need to be in a hospital in the first place. Batteries, right? They were made to be drained, according to her. Used. I was how she got into the group. Some wanted my juice and Sweetness and Light was a handy way into my unknowing arm.

Bad news, eh? Apparently a couple med-techies had gone full-time into stealing whatever weird energy and power they needed to get healing jobs done; instead of hiring power-people that could order up the work.

They recruited drainers and vampires too, all with the same tech, all in the name of bigger and better healings. As far as I could figure from snooping thru phone messages, anyway. Only the ones that could pay cold, hard cash for this re-gaussing, naturally.

Wifely was a snoop for the group. Scanner, crowd-control and greeter. Chief cook and mugger for the new darkside of saving our city's important lives. (And only important lives, but I'm a cynic.)

No, she didn't steal kidneys and livers from impromptu volunteers in back alleys yet. Yet. As far as I was concerned the bad news in this was this group not only mugged and stole whatever they needed by hunting sources down, they also did nasty numbers on whoever was in opposition to them.

Me, for instance. Not a real big strain to see that one coming, was it?

One hears rumors and learns things, if one is careful. One could learn a lot of things with eavesdropping habits; right now my home was wired to the gills. She borged, I borg, Big-brother borgs borgs. Life in the big city, right? It's all in self-defence. If you have something someone out there wants badly enough, lots of quiet electronic defences. Big Brother watches hard these long grey days and the cults play even harder.

Worse yet, it's a well-known political/social fact of life that destroying your enemies is far more important than performing, even performing brilliantly. Monopolies, right? Work-zone warriors are real close to each other.

The thought of cheerleaders bothers me most, my girl was one. Managers! You could hang a lie-detector on any of 'em and lock them up every time they opened their mouths. Thanks to these pathological liars, snooper-ware political shrapnel is a common hazard now, as is being targeted by rivals, climbers using connection politics and now, medical psychic-vampire cults.

Whatever sells. Holy teenage skateboarding ninja zombies, eh?

Worse than a deliberate plague to wipe out the old crumbly farts, some loose deviants screwing about and a moribund insurance economy. Conspiracy theories 101.

This group was fresh, nimble and on at least the dripping edge of so-far legal evolutionary evil chicanery. I looked around. My home-life was full of their electronic monkey-shines these days; most of it was German or Korean tech. Asian med-tech like this was weird, they usually stuck to acupuncture and stuff, but they did have manufacturing over there.

Currently, if their crowd-readers (like my wife, for instance) said according to the scans a power was loose in the city, the sucker in question promptly had a heart-attack. Or something ulcerous. Maybe a nasty local fungus.

This was proving to be a sure-fire method of getting targets within range of their resident vampires at the hospital.

Then came a reference to the clinic. Pro-vermin and a real militant group.

Bad corporate news, eh? Bad money drives out good even in hospitals.

A couple pressing problems presented themselves. First off, evil might mug up some impressive evolutionary results but long term, it sucked at developing anything.

They also tended to wipe out rivals, ie: anybody else competent at the art. 'There can only be one' means not a heck of a lot of expertise to go around anymore; and with only one 'one' left, that one that was eternal and unchanging.

Medical science had birthed another rowdy teenager fixated on will-to-power here, not development or life. Maybe it was time to flex some shame on these idiots in a really public way.

Light would make these roaches scatter, but that was true for almost anybody in the establishment these days. Big brother lives in shadow, right? Or at least spends most of his time there. Social climbing for fun and profit was a no-holds-barred vicious game with lots of broken bodies littering the road.

Unfortunately, my biggest problem was much more immediate. Today my better half was volunteering my butt, blood and bod in pursuit of her personal goals again, something I'd warned her against doing after the first time she'd tried to climb all over me.

OK, so she'd ignored me. Some local needs, a needle and I was bled in the name of the cause. Again. Very irritating. OK, it was now time for me to do something it, as it hadn't even been a month since the last time I'd gotten tapped for the cause.

It takes a month to grow mature replacement blood cells. Evil did have both the upper hand and a few dirty low ones too. Not that I knew any saints in the first place. They were a rare breed in this town, and getting rarer.

Worse yet, I still like her. Blood-money for new times, right? It got worse. I was afraid my particular ball-and-chain was getting high up and into the organization; with me anchoring her (and dragging her down to relative screaming sanity occasionally). Having Soft+Sweet a continuing part of the corps would soon become a real liability to them.

Losing a pint for charity, climbing and care was one thing. Watching us both get killed because someone knew too much about the dark-siders of modern healing was another thing altogether, something I really wanted to avoid.

Well, being volunteered to death was another thing I wanted to dodge too if I could. Me, I was all for pulling out before someone killed me with kindness. Or for.

Time to get down, and come down on something really hard before they perfected stealing the life-force from babies instead of healing from grunts.

Phoning in for a sick-day was easy. Vengeance is best served chilled, right? The latest calls looked interesting and the numbers familiar. It was her voice.

"Looks like leprosy, smells like leprosy but it's really just herpes? Ha! YOU got the new one, you got the new one! You da zombie, kid!"

Bleah. She was gloating at someone. Hospital news, not anything I wanted to hear about. I skipped the next few calls back, they were mostly to her mother.

Then pay-dirt, a call-in. The official request for more of my life's blood. Dearheart's cheerful surrender. And the sly instructions for a new spray can of local painkiller and antiseptic, with an offhand warning if anyone breathed it they'd be out for hours.

Rats. Putting lots of garlic, drugs and alcohol into my system hadn't slowed them or their thirsts down any. Neither had the usual collection of childhood and adolescent diseases. They still wanted me and my blood.

My adult problems were kicking in too but I didn't see that ruining things either.

Could I could fake up a real vampire and stick a wrench in their system that way? If a good nasty got in there would things only get worse? Dracula would love to get this organization dumped in his lap, right?

That left ordering my significant other to back off, something she hadn't shown any signs of wanting to do, dumping her, or shining a light into their darkness and hoping I didn't get us both killed in the process.

Dumping her was out. I liked the little pest. Nothing looked good to me, but finally a plan did come to light.

Whatever else the official orthodoxy was, Hot-and-Soft drummed up fresh blood for this place; I was a recent example of that. There had to be quite a few other unwilling or unknowing victims somewhere; disgruntled batteries irked at their treatment and happy to help take the place down.

Other random thoughts accrued to me as I stewed. This might not even have been the first place the scam was worked. Other cities might've had the same vamp wander thru; there might be good ideas on how to get rid of them netside.

Other experts sounded good to me and so did an underground network of anti-vampire med-techs. If I could find them, that is. Myself, I was hardly past the garlic stage, except for collecting some odd information.

Collecting information was something I was good at, thou. Please pardon my mis-spent youth, yes? Information was what I did for a living and knowing people who could scrounge the off-net thoroughly if they wanted to was part of it.

Not dark-siders, tho I knew a few there too. Freelance DB hackers who knew the difference between players in porn, Mafia scam-games, terrorists and casuals.

I did need to know more and something drastic had to be done. Sitting down at my box I swallowed the last of my cold breakfast, scrambled a line out and set out trying to collect a few on-line favors.

***

"So bug the bitch thoroughly and use whatever turns up there to force 'em out. Jeez pal, you're such a dork!"

I glared at the phone line. So far, my old e-friends had been less than enthusiastic about getting involved in this little counter-action of mine. In fact most of them had just hung up on me as soon as they found out I was recruiting.

Their little way of announcing they weren't about to disturb the niches they'd landed in for the pleasure of my company and delicate little butt, I guess.

This recruit sounded more or less interested, thou. I was barrel-scraping, so I put up with the noise on the line. He was still sounding me out, trying to see what could be gotten out of the deal.

No pay, no play, no matter how much he owned me. It felt like home to me.

"Hey, cut me some slack, you fiend you." I growled back. "Jef. Right now? The med scene. You program? I need something to pop my girl out of this hold. Something nasty enough to spaz the whole ship if you've got it."

"Ha. Robotics. Cost you serious bucks to get me back into a B+E four-bit world." The flat voice at the other end said. "Completely unofficial about protecting their turf, right? Serious money and right now for people, events or any ideas I might have."

"She's in, thou. That's perfect." He added slowly, as if he really didn't want to admit anything. "Like shooting fish in a barrel, really. Easy job."

I mused for another moment, then the way this friend of mine worked came back to me. If you couldn't keep up to him, he'd dump you as a loser. A glimmer came thru and I danced a little harder.

"OK, OK, you get the leftovers." I reluctantly offered. "All of 'em. Nurses included."

There was a whimper. "OK, so I use the local resources as a bomb, right?" I hazarded a guess at the plan I knew he had now. If Jef didn't have an iron he wanted in the fire, he would've hung up long ago. "Scanners. Let my little red riding herring-hood carry bad news into the heart and soul of the big bad med-computer. I'm with you so far. Then what?"

"Run, cause you just crashed the hospital comp and they have serious connections." Jef snapped at me. "Idiot. And got some very grumpy security people looking for any handy scapegoat after her. Besides, dumping a virus thru a chip-reader is tough and stupid. Don't know many people who can manage that backdoor."

Backdoor. My evil twin, the one I'd killed and buried inside me years ago, started twitching. A backdoor into a hospital clinic, a place where lots of weird drugs were cheap and plentiful? Lots of expensive tech? Serious bucks there.

Firmly repressed my marauding instincts, I tried to think covertly instead. Priorities. Pry Soft+Silly out, then dump vengeance on the vamps for chowing down on my home-life. Then cash in on the flack.

"Won't work anyway. From the sound of it, your mark is holed up in a private clinic somewhere. Comes into the hospital only for consulting services and only when he can't move people to his place instead. Standard med procedure."

I grunted. That sounded about right to me. I vaguely remembered Cute and Roundness blathering about how much trouble it was to get people from one place to another without using ambulances.

"Private transport firm. Sounds about right." I allowed. "Private clinic, def. So now what? We find someone to storm the abortion-palace with lots of righteous furies for us? Recruits? His last place of employ, perhaps? Pissed ex-patients or employees?"

"Naw. Takes too long to lawsuit your way in, or find any local furies that aren't evil psychotics. They want scorched earth and I want tech. Lots and lots of hot techs."

Jef chuckled. "Your way, ok? We take their line-feeds and dump bull in from the front door."

The chuckle from the other end of the line was evil. "Better long-term results there. They use electronic toys for Big-Brothering the sheep, right? Fancy ones? Bad move, I know everything there is to know about doing that."

"We let loose a nasty something on the inside that gives false feeds." Jef mumbled on, happy again. "Lots and lots of falsies. We salt their mine, they find the hallways paved with fool's gold for a while."

"And in the buffer over-flow we strike." I answered, a little awed. "DOS. Recovery with root-kit and you're tucked in. My girl gets scapegoated out, I get to keep my blood inside me, you get the firmware backdoor."

"Yeah. That's some of the fun, but only some of it." The on-line chuckle was back and nastier than ever. "Whatever powers that be there will get their newfangled treatments confused for a while."

"Bad readings, right? Lotsa fun there, if there's anybody you want seriously snafu'ed. After the more ambitious staff will probably take off with as much glitter as they can carry. Wonder-boy will be reduced to being a do-it-yourselfer for a week or two."

"He probably won't be able to sign-in on the system without help till the system runs clean. Plus he has to recruit replacements. Delays and confusion." I could almost see Jef's grin. "That won't make the sick deadwood he's carrying very happy."

"Yow. Enough angry deadwood makes for one hell of a burn." I mentioned casually. "Especially well-placed deadwood down at City hall permits department. You got a hole deep enough to hide in if all this blows up in your face. Jef? Our faces?"

The answer was slow and careful. "Me? Yes. And a few other irons in a few other fires if I need to beat anyone to death. You take care of yourself."

The silence on the line was the usual artificial quiet of a clean digital security line.

"You dig your own grave son, mine's full already. Do we have action-plan?" It was still and quiet on the line as I thought. Jef finally coughed gravely. "Commitment here, boyo. You are putting yours directly into the line of fire for this, you know. She's catches the heat for this, eventually."

"Good on her." I snapped back instantly. "The bitch likes to use people. Getting bitten back every once in a while is part of the game."

"Right. Deep hole to hide her in prepped already. Hope she thinks like that too. Just don't let her know it was you that tripped her into the spotlight."

The chuckle on the line was evil again. "I'll drop off a few gadgets today. Maybe some dust." My new partner sighed to himself. "Be a lot easier to just dump her and run, you know. You're sure 'bout this?"

I grunted. I was sure. Death to cannibal zombies.

"Then make sure she wears the stuff her next trip inside the clinic, OK? Salt her undies yourself if you have too. We need to get it as close to the inner circle as we can before opening transponders." Jef sounded like he was thinking hard. "Interview rooms and maybe the data-center. Open lines to their heart and soul, if she can."

"Perfect. Salt of the earth doing a dust-off." My reply was automatic and only a little gloating. "Dusted sterile. Make the drop soon, buddy, she's hot right now."

"I have some toys here, and you bring a few. After a victory last night, gloating her way around headquarters is a given, but won't last long. Her welcome should be worn out there by tomorrow."

"I'm on it." The reply was fast, and absentminded. "Bring me something, I'll load it with nastiness. Prepping the package as we speak. Be at Harvey's for lunch, the old place. I'll drop there."

"Done."

The line went dead. It was early yet. Sitting back, I put out a few more gentle feelers on the net, hoping for a few friendly nurses turning up, oiled or not. Disgruntled ex-staff from the weirdness clinic. And I looked at other weirdness, witch-doctors and whatnot around town too but that turned out to be a much bigger arena than I thought it would be.

There are way too many counter-cult meds, in fact. Even more desperately sick people.

Clinics are a lot like a family-firm, there was bound to be disgruntled employees or a ticked victim somewhere, probably ticking in one of the other weirdness spots. Maybe a pissed patient, too. I concentrated on back-tracking the head-vamp and looking for people that'd blown thru his shop in one city or another.

The sheer amount of weirdness that could be bought in town surprised me, thou. Last-ditch efforts, I guess. Some of the ditches I was finding things in made me wonder if there were any straight medics left in town at all. Then got to work.

***

"What's with the toys?"

I tapped the dismantled wands on the Harvey's tabletop and grinned up at my new contact and partner. Cheeky-and-Hot had left quite a few of her old-style scanners about our place; right now I was happily taking them apart, checking them out while waiting for my bomb-drop. The bugs from Jef.

For high-tech gadgets they were simple, not much difference between them. A crystal for receiving frequencies, varying types, analog to digital converter, some ROM to dump readings into and a beamer. Not impressive at all.

"You asked for them, stupid. These are our ticket in." I mumbled, using a screwdriver to gently lift a breadboard and look at the dust underneath it. It looked like dust to me. "It's all pretty standard stuff here. Look for yourself." I tapped the board back in place gently and gestured at the other wands. "Those are the newer ones."

Partner snorted disgust at me. "Already did. Already have. Looked into the hardware from home. The feed is encrypted, you need the key and I don't have time to hack commercial PGP today. It's 256."

Leaning over, Jef make sure the battery was in place, then tapped a wand of his own against mine. He waved it at all the others in an offhand way. "And be careful, the wand you have in pieces there is already loaded. It's a backdoor key now. No, you can't have my wand."

I blinked. That was quick, even for Jef. Eproms were old-fashioned, I guess.

"Three of 'em. I hope they're different keys. Damn." That last was pure sop. 128 bit encryption was bank level, but not military. It'd still take 10,000 years to break the cipher on my machine. Or 10,000 machines working for year, I reminded myself.

Partner sounded like an impressive hacker, if this was true. Who was this guy working for? Unless they got lucky, nobody was gonna break that cipher. Unless they had great work connections.

Snorting, Jef looked over the table carefully. "Patch 'em back together and put 'em back where they belong, lad. Get her to dump 'em at the clinic without resetting 'em. We have different fish to fry and don't need anyone looking for trouble-makers. Not us, anyway."

I nodded at that, then winched as my new partner made a grab for my fries. "This stuff 'll kill you, you know." He mumbled while helping himself to my lunch. "I'm saving your life here. No extra charge."

"You know, that's really weird crap there." He mumbled around a hot mouthful while pointing at my wands. "There're triggers in it. Certain wavelengths only. Not good tech, really. The good news is these guys have to catch you doing something before they know it's there. Other than that, you can scan all day and not see anything."

"Doctors! Seeing is believing. So arranging incidents to scan will be second nature to 'em, right? Dandy. Psycho-dramas and pro-manipulators are alive and well." I grumbled, making a grab at the last of my fries. "Well, so are my people downtown."

Irritated at my nearly empty fry-bag, I glared at Jef. "My girl-friend, for instance. Stop doing me favors and leave my lunch alone, wouldja?"

"Ha. Drop this on her coat. This on her blouse. This on her shoes. Mostly silicon, they won't do anything but make 'em shiny till I trigger 'em." The three envelopes I got handed were marked with small stamps. Nothing to trace there. I nodded and put them in my pocket.

"Any of 'em will emit whatever I want, assuming they don't get walked on vigorously. Or vacuumed away." Partner grimaced happily as he blinked at me.

"They'll put out just what the clinic wants to see, according to my best guess. Gimme two minutes and I'll salt more wands for ya, if ya have any. Any of them will get me inside the main box and the dust'll blow around and settle in odd spots. She takes them both in today and we own their setup by tomorrow. Good enough?"

"Yah. She'll be turfed out of the organization by, say, Friday?" I asked hopefully.

Friday was special me to me, there was a game I wanted to watch. Getting dragged out to some special function so Giggles-and-Grabs could scan some fresh new faces for a new mark to vamp was probably her plan. I planned to plead exhaustion.

"By Friday they'll be too confused to work anything down there, even the door." Jef grumbled, eyeing my burger like it was a long-lost friend. "And I'll be 'way too busy to hold your hand by then. This is our only meet, dig?"

Out already? That I didn't believe. Jef must have buyers lined up already.

"Unless the shop needs a second dose, fine." I said carefully, unwrapping the burg and sniffing it happily. "Or you need something else special planted."

"Or I have to walk in and get more wands. Or the food at Harvey's here gets too irresistible and you need a good excuse to come mooch my lunch. Burger?" I added, waving the day's special at him. "Charcoal broiled, lots of radicals. Just like mom used to burn."

"You talk too much." Jef sighed, looked at me for a moment, then grabbed the burger. "Um. You want something? What? In on some of the faster action?"

I shook my head 'no' at that. Whatever was in the clinic we were about to raid, I could tell that whatever my cohort-in-crime wanted out of it wasn't anything I could ever use.

"A cure or two would do me fine." I mentioned idly. "For my girl, that is. I want her out from under whatever they're using on her; and enough of it to stop that from ever happening again."

"Ah. You think I can do that?" Jef cringed a little.

Evasive looks started skittering all over the face across the table from me.

"Yes, I do. I know so. I did some traces after you answered my call. You're hard to find; impossible unless you want to be found. So I didn't find you, you found me, after a tip I was looking. Right?"

The grin on my face was tired. "I'm key here. You're up to your pits with heavyweights trying to crash this clinic right now. You already have their tech cold. Fine, do whatever you want to in there. Me, I want out of it. You do know how to get my girl out from under their thumb? I want that too."

"Or what?" Partner asked carefully, chowing his way thru my burg slowly and thoughtfully. I hoped the jalapeno peppers in it choked him, but he looked like he was enjoying the burn himself. Jef hadn't changed much.

"I walk. And plaster maps of med counter-culture groups all over the web, starting with this tribe and their retreats." That threat didn't seem to bother Jef much and I grinned.

"The med-scene could use a few scandals right now, like what the private retreats are used for. I can fake that up and post it, no problem."

"That'll get the loonies after 'em." I went on. "You don't need any trace heat right now, the vicious are out there."

"This whole scene is a hold-over from when religion was tax-free." Jef admitted that quietly. "It's officially R+D. Tax-free. Dug into various players like you would not believe. It's one of the things we're trying to do something about."

Jef seemed to think for while, even if his eyes never left the burger he was eating. "If we clean up your girl, she becomes one of ours. You realize that?" He asked absently still chewing madly and with less-than-fiendishly glee now. "An agent. You too, and our politics aren't any cleaner than theirs."

"Yah. Better that than what she's into now." I grumped out. "Working the salt mines under the influence. On me."

"OK. She's in. And she'd better be under the influence, friend." Partner warned, shaking his head sadly. "The cure can kill if there isn't anything there."

I held my peace. The wands were reassembled. Gathering up my stuff, I left. Jef was fishing the last fries out of a rattling greasy bag with a contented look on his face as I walked out.

Jef was as good as his word. There were people waiting for me when I walked back into the house. Narcotics! They had a little spray can of knock-out stuff; I was asleep before even getting my coat off.

***

"Stop hitting me!"

No one listened. The biffing went on till I figured out what was doing and backed off. A truly weird happening was going down, as I'd been zombied.

Being a zombie is hell and no fun at all. I resolved to get away and failed completely.

Sort of gradually waking up, I watched myself from a distance; watched myself charm Small-and-Softer into taking the load of bugs into the clinic under pretense of setting up regular blood appointments for me.

The AIs had improved automatism into a waking nightmare. This was worse than sleepwalking, something I've done and remember doing, but as total lunch-meat. There was an overrider on my butt and was nothing I could do about it.

Dream-time. No movement, damn little sensory input, and it was like trying to think with only half a brain. Zombied, soul-transmigration, I didn't know what this was, but I wasn't in control anymore. Not even a little.

I had goals and no will to fight back. Fuming in the dark, I tried to fire up some resistance neutrons. No luck. There was nothing I stop; my little busybody was made into another zombie when she got home.

Something in my spray did a fast number on her, complete with nano-bugs, high tech implants, subliminal suggestions, hypnotic controls and a lot of tech weirdness I didn't understand.

Whatever we were wearing did it and did an astounding job. I couldn't even make anything twitch anymore. My live-in pest got zombied too. Under a parasite's control, there was nothing for me to do except watch the monster eat up my life and silently whimper as my life passed me by. It included a salting clinic visit.

Well, I did look inward. My top-half did sleep even if the controls didn't relax much. As it turned out, my new parasite was sitting on the top floor, but I had the basement all to myself. If I was careful enough to move with getting any undue attention.

And there was me, too; my floating ego-center and it's resources. Look at that invisible hand! Meat, electronics and soul? I was a soul-man now, I had no choice about it.

Two out of three wasn't bad. Control up top felt total, but underneath?

That was all mine, baby. Here there were several interesting possibilities left over, once you learned how to muck about without setting alarms off. Leaving a screaming fraction slamming and crying at the locked rabbit-garden of my senses while I quietly poked around inside the rest my mind was next.

It was slow, but I gradually learned lotsa new things about myself. Powerful new things and how to use 'em. Jef doesn't know yet, but I think I can win the lottery with my mind-power and I'm seeing traces of this in wifey too.

This should get interesting by next week.

-30-

## chapter 3 blank ticket

"Humph. The problem with today's problems is that it's mostly people out there."

Shopping with my girl. The pavement of the mall-lot was wet, jagged and lumpy; cratered with rotting snow. I stopped my slush-splash and looked up from the pod in my hand anyway and let my puzzlement shine thru. "Gotcha. The open end goes up, dear. Right?"

For my girl that people-people statement made a lot more sense than usual; I stopped my glad-hand surfing for techno-news and cocked my head to listen to her instead, ignoring the drone of cars as they tried to spin, grind and moan their way into and out of parking spots around us.

"Learn from the master, dear. The open end always goes up unless you want to dump on someone."

Silence was being golden (if slushy) on my right. Obviously not the proper reply. Strike two was being curved at me in silence.

"Topside rules. True words of wisdom, Sweetness and Light. The soup is on and nothing gets past it." I added absently, thrashing around now.

She was encouraging, I guess. The hook was planted because Hot-stuff relented enough to talk to me while flouncing happily away up on the sidewalk. She grinned like a maniac at me as I caught up, stomping my boots clean beside her.

She was waving her new glossy like it was a razor-club.

"Listen to this! Most crime takes place within a couple hundred yards of a big transit station, right? Bus and subway stops? Major intersections? All those breakins, muggings, car theft, dealers..."

"Like that one at the edge of the lot there? Yeah, lots of car-thefts around here. Big lots attract attention and more than sales-vermin. Lemme guess. If we shut the system down, crime will disappear?"

Snarking was purely automatic. Whatever she had in mind, I was ag'in it. Still wondering just how she was planning to get my goat this time, I held the door open for pest-coat and wandered into the mall proper after her, ignoring the dangly teens hanging around outside shivering in the raw cold.

Teens hanging at the mall. I wondered how bad TV had gotten as my better half elbowed me, glaring at my scoring guess.

That was the game; scapegoat, old goat or roast goat. Tickles always did it to me, too. Apparently making me feel like an idiot was one of her perverse little pleasures in life.

I took the hook and yanked anyway. Hey, what's life without a little risk once in a while? Besides, she wriggled so nicely while in the grip of sweet reason.

"Ha. Shutdown the ticket booth. dear? Nope, no deal. Crime will just migrate, shift back to the low-rentals; downtown where it belongs. Us? We stay home, learn to take taxis and network the net."

I added that carefully, not really all that willing to egg her on till figuring out where this arch-conservative line of thought was going.

Well, the local perv-ferry carried the stimulation-starved to lots of quiet private clubs hidden around town. The more industrious muggers out to the airport casino and other local hunting grounds too?

"Well.... Maybe hitchhikers would turn to car-jacking instead or something equally horrible. Food-court. I'm hungry." Soft and Gigglish mentioned. She agreed with me a lot too fast to suit me; my eyes narrowed as I looked for the zing she was setting me up for.

"We can bug the cars and gate the neighborhood instead. Cameraing the park included." She added happily. "Throttle the traffic instead."

"Huh. Wonder if they'll ever let me back in after that nasty little escalator incident last year." I said quickly, heading towards the foods div of the mall.

I did look; there was nothing on my mental horizon from softy. I couldn't see anything coming and that bugged me more than knowing something was bearing down the tracks towards me at all.

What was she up to?

Facing north with a south-bound moose, that's me.

Yah, I'm a live-with and I've been trained. That was a song everyone knew a little too well. (I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK.) Myself, in the last few years I'd been planed, skated, roller-derbied and walked on. Don't let me run on about it. It gets ugly.

"No, no, a thousand times 'no!'" I grumbled, just to throw a little levity into our somewhat barbed home-life. "Pick a knosheria, dear. I want man-food, you want?"

"If you're planning to trap adrenaline-junkies downtown by firewalling our place? Don't, that's bad for business. Pure concentrated evil is bad for the joggers, clubers, lounge-lizards, culture-vultures, bike-couriers, pensioners and the innocent condos-creepers hanging DT."

"I want tofu. Cold. Wait, this gets better." Cute-elbows grinned at me and marched me along. "The tolerated hot-spots downtown?" She giggled happily as her favorite salad type-thing got ordered while I flagged and ordered my usual meat, cheese and additives. "If we shut down the second-hand stores, all the auctions, pawn shops, crack-houses, flea-markets...." She continued excitedly.

"Police operations would come to a halt." I sighed heavily and shook my head, sad at this nativity. "Badges would nothing to do except shoot jay-walkers and wrestle domestic complaints out of the biz of their home-bliss."

She seemed hurt, so I went on. "Crack-down and slap-down, hon? We do this spam-control thing and so dies the hot-goods trade and most property crime?"

Cuteness collected her dish and headed to a table. She nodded hopefully at me, eyes gone big as I settled down with her. My sigh was heartfelt and mocking as I unwrapped my suicide-sandwich and leered at it.

I do like to live dangerously sometimes.

"Nope, not even close. Love of my life, you shut down hookers and sex-crimes sky-rocket. Use fink-world to crush traffic? Instant disaster. Take out the all established twerpies and boom! Lotsa instant new gangs-wars would erupt. Turf wars."

I shivered in fear. "It'd get very hairy, dear. If it even worked. People-places of all kinds would sour. Parks, malls, bus-stops, everything. Weasels would be dealing crap out of the trunks of their cars till another new central opened up for 'em."

"With their guns handy for complaining customers, snoops and innocent pedestrians." I added dryly. Her frown increased. Having her nice simple solutions to some permanent problems crash and burn was bugging her. A win for me so far. I chomped into my burger happily.

"For the drive-bys, cameras work." Sweetness stuck in, prying open a lid and sniffing the green and white sauce mess inside hopefully. "I know. And the teenies. But listen! The article says there's only about fifty important people underground in any big city. The rest are just flunkies, gofers, meat and grunts."

"Yah, but very motivated flunkies." I said flatly, picking out the tomato from my lunch-munch.

I hate tomatoes. The slimey red circle got slopped back into the lid with contempt.

"Gunslinger motivated, ambitious ones with insider know-how. Just like what happened to raves a few years back. Hot tickets, right? Remove a local and boom; instant gang. Like the net. Open up a new market and boom, applied sleaze festers."

"Cleaning out the big-wigs won't work well. They'd shoot the crap outta the place and new wigs will be back in a couple weeks."

"The police'd be looking for meat to drop very public convictions on." I snorted that very unhappily. Local policing had gotten sorta political around here with the last new chief; I was not pleased with the force these days.

The police studiously ignoring all our local problems had finally convinced me that our metro was seriously politically skewed. Sucking up way too much cash for their vote-value, I guess.

I was not going to try convincing her of that. "Hon? Police? Forget the chronic troubles, psychos and sleaze. Ditto our monkeys, gorillas, and terrorist nut-cases. Brag, gossip or plot? Newspaper panics would rule the courts. Fink-world results."

"Big-Brother wants finks and patsies, I know, I know. Instant latin ghettos." Happiness-with-cuddling sighed heavily while spearing another white chunk from amid the sauced greenery. I shuddered and looked away. "I know. Fixing the blame is more important than curing the problem; we suggest fixing it on your enemies."

She smiled at me happily. "I've heard all this before. But this is so neat! Look! We can automate judges now, as well as shut down hot-spots with spy-eyes. Lots of stuff, maybe even the black-ops squad cars!"

Pretty-legs was getting excited about this. I wondered if it was going to turn into a new obsession, one with me getting the grunt end of things again. "Camera-ware works!" She went on happily. "Any PC with jurimetrics software can replace a human Judge these days with 96% accuracy."

Chirping that at me happily while waving her magazine like it was a bible. I did not want to try prying anything out of local hands. Most of their sons would come out shooting to protect it.

"Real cheap." She went on. "Wouldn't lots of cheap justice be nice for a change? And real enforcement instead of political disputes?"

The portable computer in my pocket was starting to feel inviting again, but I did the verbal follow thru in case my live-with was serious about this. "Really? Cheap justice would be as much fun as cheap cops. Dangerous. It'd be a real ticket-world in days."

"Ticket-world?" She interrupted questioningly.

I nodded, sweating because I'd let something new loose. Silly-hands did not always adapt well to new thoughts.

"Ticket world? Like traffic tickets, dear. You're automatically guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty! Speeding, walking the dog, whatever. Here's your ticket. Pay it or fight it... and on your own nickel. Or no permits next year. We can even find that library fine from grade school, or make one up."

"Computer judges? Won't work out. We've been able to do that kinda replacement since the 80s. Right up to the Supreme court level." I nodded sagely at her.

"Jurimetrics. The little finkers? You'd have to get that past the people who like manufacturing evidence on their enemies first, then build jails big enough for say..."

"I made a pretense of thinking hard. "Every rowdy fifteen year old of passionate culture in town. The lynch-mob of the day, type o'thing norms. Then convince whoever just got dinged this was a good thing and not a revolting development."

I grinned happily, sure the quicksand under my feet was turning into mud-slinging again and really hoping I could handle it.

Using a chunk of bun to chase from errant sauce from my sloppy 'stash, I grinned at her. "Won't happen dear. Not here. Retired politicos would have nowhere left to go if we did away with human judges anyway." I muttered that darkly, beetling my brows together as I tried to guess at her next move. "Who'd vote that in?"

Better-half was quiet. Ominous, that. I wondered. Was it snit-time already? Had I stomped too far down? I thought about getting more fries while she stewed at me.

Throwing gasoline on the fire was my best hope of peace tonight.

"Listen, hon. How far have we gotten hanging lie-detectors on politicos?" I asked quietly, salting the wound. Maybe I could score while in exile. It was worth a shot. "Even the convinced ones? Outlawing booze won't cure the Valentine's Day massacres or help drunks."

"Hurrah for victimless criminals in ticket-world? Legalizing pot, 24 hour shopping and gambling and we tax their butts to death."

Grinning expansively, I showed open hands to my quietly munching other.

"Your way? 4000 porn busts mean 40 suicides, 1000 convictions and still more porn. Cameras in every streetlight means spitting-on-the-sidewalk offenders get their picture published on the web. Ticket world; you're as guilty as the establishment is broke. Selective vermin would get targeted, not broke ones."

"See it? Is this leading anywhere?" I asked hopefully.

"Just trying to make our life a peaceful place." Cuteness replied loftily, ignoring me and my rational protests. "Tick-free. We can shut down problem-areas with a high-tech heaven. Anything wrong with thinking about that?"

"Yes. You'd be making a concentrated hell versus a pit-lined road. Or at least in my world." My groan was heartfelt.

"A big pit instead a putting potholes and speed bumps in for the unwary? Bleah." I shook my head sadly. "The upper-class ticks need subservient ticks. They would go after little people, not troubles."

She didn't understand me at all.

"Try framing this as murder versus slavery." I tried, hoping for a fast exit. She could shop, I could go surf+read.

"Cameras. The concentrated, automated version?" I snorted angrily. "Slaves to a system. That's the romantic or passionate model of corruption. Doesn't work well unless you're got a ticket to ride. Connected to a good family or the system; most aren't and most don't get anything out of it. Everyone else is pitted as grunts that don't fit."

"Gates on the neighborhood? This is corruption? Credit, crime and psycho registries?" Happiness snapped back at me.

"Bingo. Zero tolerance? Blind justice puts the paperwork stateside, money thru the Bahamas and blame on their enemies." I replied kindly. Too kindly and overdoing the condescending. That dashed my hopes of more food. "You get a ticket to flounder, not ride."

"Get real, dear. Cameras would witch-hunt, not enforce. Tickets would cash-grab."

Crushing an empty bag dramatically, I sighed as the aroma wafted past.

"Politics is patronage and cannibalism, not entertainment. Sleaze dealing with vermin. Hunting Robin Hood down and selling him into rowing-slavery is being nice."

"Hardball and nasty business all round, always has been. You spend money on your supporters only or you suicide." I went on, blinking at her.

"Why the sudden interest in this? You have something that needs doing? That you want someone else to pay for?"

She ignored me. I wondered about that for a moment, then blathered on. Better to find out what was going on now rather than deal with a big, nasty surprise later.

"Isolation. One more bad apple for the road, right?" My interest in this utopia topic was fast waning and I let it show.

"You gotta remember yer basic people stuff." I grumped out, already twiddling with the phone and hoping for a new link to come up on my surfing wave. I was finished my burger already and Honey had barely started her salad.

"One needs it for free, one wants to beat you and the idea to death for various reasons, one'll claim credit for the work, one is cluelessly indifferent and the last wants the benefits for their politics and only their politics. Apply globally."

"Same for the 'freedom versus control' stuff in that article." I nodded at Silly's book, my pod out and me doing a slow surf among the links. "Well, the control part of it, anyway. Murder and slavery, in my books. Concentrated evil and tickets."

The silence over there was not so golden. I dug my hole a little deeper.

"Won't work, it just sets up explosions and witch hunts. So where do you want the dirty old net to take you today? To a prohibition clean and dead reserve like a good Minnie-knight should, or downtown where the action is?"

"Not in my yard." Home-life grunted, unhappy again. "Put the traffic out past the gate. Camera-stomp those twerps flat. Ticket-world topia, if need be."

"Yah. And get addicted to using force. You'll end up with lots of people using force because they like to use force; or worse yet, are good at torture. Reasons won't matter much after a while, or who they use it on. Money might. Politics will rule."

I shuddered. "Yuck again. And yick. Live by it, die by it. Armed camps, ethnic ghettos and evolution being conservative all over the place. No way, Hon."

"Huh?" That reference escaped Happiness and Joy. I shrugged that off. There was a lot here she wasn't getting here.

"Once there, the label would stick. Scalpers, too. Connections in ticket-world."

"Huh?" Dearheart was really out to sea now. She wanted to cut down crime at the bus-stop, not worry about possible takeovers by a hostile dragon.

And I was not about to admit she had a good case for cleaning up the people-places by force, including right here at the Mall. People-places did tend to decay into public housing real fast, don't they? The car-lot outside was a haven for breakins, kids liked to deal at the doors and rowdies here in the food-court were annoying. Dead-park live-ins. Ticket-world would ticky-tacky them right out of my life; and I won't miss them a bit.

Happy-girl sniffed at me, then went back to her mag, ignoring me completely now. I stopped the pod and went on a fried search.

I didn't have far to go.

-30-

## chapter 4 voodud

"The doll is fine. You have a problem, thou."

The office of Applied-Evil, incorp. was having its usual trivial day. Tuesdays!

Making short work of a stupid situation seemed like my best bet, so I turned from the doll in my hands and glanced at the young, pretty and distinctly annoyed girl that'd come complaining to me today.

"Seems you've got an attitude problem here, girl." The sweetie ignored that as I wasn't exactly doing the work she wanted done, ie, help put a full-tilt-boogie whammy on her target of choice. I bore on anyway.

"Tough. It's your block, not mine." Tossing the manikin back, it thunked on the desk between us, The girl winched, then pouted at me, furious at the callous remarks. There wasn't a whole lot I could do about it, really. She'd messed up, not me.

Her self-defeating rage punched a button and my pity-mode kicked in against my better judgment. Here come da insight, twit. Even if people usually hate being told they'd make mistakes. Worse yet, even if they hate the person that tells 'em about it even more.

In my business, hate is a dangerous thing. You avoid it if you can.

"Here's the show, small one, just in case you missed it the first time." I let the air-conditioner chill the apprentice witch a little as I blinked, rubbed my neck, sighed and got the story in order.

I pushed the pin-cushion doll back to again her, with a flourish. It was all for show. I've done this so many times I could do it in her sleep, let alone mine.

"Listen carefully. You're a sweetie doing Voo-doo, stuff you pulled from one of my many, many books on how to aid-and-abet natural forces. Swell. Problem is, you poured out sweetness and light insteada harm when needling your dummy. What you're doing will never harm him."

Sad. That startled her and it shouldn't've. I sighed again. The girl had no idea what she was yet, a fairly basic thing for doing any magic, but she seemed to expect nasty magical results from her first attempt with one of my basic primers. My news got the expected reaction. Amazement.

"Maybe you still like him, maybe you don't have a killer instinct, maybe you he thrives on abuse. Not-right results anyway, yes?" I prompted. The girl blushed, too flustered to say anything coherent in reply.

"No." I grumbled, having got to the bad news. I absentmindedly blessed my cash-in-advance policy again. The girl looked like she was one of the flighty ones who ran from their troubles, troubles like over-due bills included. "Perfect results, actually. Bad methods. Net result, when you vamped into the doll you made of your... Ex-boyfriend, was he? Right. Him. Anyway, you accidentally did him a whole lot of good instead hurt. Niceness, not harm."

'Get into a foul humor, then use your hate. Make yourself uncomfortable too, just blame him for everything." I sighed wearily again and scratched my weak little chest, pointing to the little doll she'd brought in. It was a good one, well-made with hair, sperm, nail-clippings, perspiration stains and looked like it'd been tucked under his pillow for a week or two too.

"Nice try, but bad method. Basically you don't do a good evil yet. Probably just don't have any in your system." I let that sink in. She seemed to digest that news well, as it wasn't all bad. "Now today, you want me to teach you how to hate. Right?"

This was the hard part and I hated smacking the little chirpie down. It was sad the way she perking up. I continued, with a nasty look on my face.

"For free. Forever. And with instant results. Good, but wrong. Not a chance, hon. You ever see who a teenager takes after when 'the system' tries to force them into doing the right thing, ie, grow up a little? Wanna guess what happens if I teach you some applied harm?"

That puzzled her a little. I was grateful for that, as it was the first sign of intelligent life I'd seen from her so far today. "You figure you're all being all grown-up about this?" I nodded sagely to myself as the girl pouted at me, about to do a tear-filled flit out of my life. I could tell, I'd seen this happen a hundred times before. "Did you know learning is hard?"

"That's right. Me. The teacher. My butt, in this case. Any meddling by yours truly in your life and wham! You'd be after my delicates hammer and tongs. Trust me, you'd want to hurt me a lot more than you want to harm your boyfriend; AND know how by then. It's silly, but that's what happens. No, I will not teach you how to do the voo-doo I do so well. You gotta do it yourself."

The girl bust into tears then, just like I thought she would, grabbed her doll and stormed out of my office, leaving the door open behind her. I thankfully watched her go, glad to be out of that one so easily.

An easy dumping, rare when the client had already turned to applied hate for revenge. Some girls turn stalker when dumped by the boy. Some gossip instead, some go on extended binges of one kind or another. Some sit at home watch TV till pulled out of their shells.

This one had been a nasty dump too. He'd moved out as soon as he graduated from university. Chirpiness in question now wanted blood in exchange for the last four years of her life. She was a giver, thou, not a killer, and the voo-doo had turned on her.

As far as I could tell from the doll she'd made, she'd cleaned up her fella's attitude with her acupuncture voo-doo, gotten rid of a few of his nastier vices and done some good to his digestion. Improved his sex-life and cleared up a nasty cold sitting in his lungs too.

I didn't have the heart to tell her that. She was nice and the full force of her personality hadn't done him anything but good. Typical results, unless you made a life's work of sabotage.

Water under the bridge. I stretched in the chair and contemplated getting up and closing the office door, but it was too much effort. She'd go home, having a good cry along the way, then resolve to do better evil next time.

And fail a few more times before she gave Voo-Doo acupuncture up entirely. I knew all she'd ever manage to do would be more niceness, but I wasn't gonna mention that. Hey, serious advice costs serious money and all she'd paid for was the reason why things hadn't turned out the way she's wanted them to.

Teaching this girl hate would be mostly a waste of my time as she'd never change much. From an annoying ditz to a highly-motivated-to-please annoying ditz, maybe, but that was about it. Another force for good released on an unwitting world and about to die of frustration.

Chuckling happily, I went back to my normal efforts at promoting the quick and easy way of applied evolutionary evils on your fellow man. That's my life, people. The constructive use of destruction, like. On people you dislike, yes?

'The best Evil in your system.' That's my motto, or what the books I wrote said it was. Cash in advance was my adage these days, as the business side of things had worn me down a lot.

Voo-doo tech. Applied evil. Most people went for it, or at least enough of them did I could make a living at it. A sign of the times, right? Maybe it was a justice system that took three years to process a mugging or drunk-driving charge, maybe it was ineffective religions or expensive poisons, but there was lots of traffic at my door these days.

Revenge wasn't all I got hit up for either. Most clients were disappointed my shop wasn't more of a 'gunslingers for hire' thing, but all I ever did was hand 'em the tools to do the job themselves. That rule I did not break.

You learn better than that fast. Not kind, but clean work. And safe. I sold gun-kits, basically. What you put into them and what you did with them was your concern, not mine.

Very practical, I thought. The local God-fathers of gangs ignored me and my bunny-hunts, but not all idiots wanting vengeance did. You learned to live with stuff like accidental kindness. Cheerfully, in most cases.

So? Give those dead babies more guns! The church might've frowned on educating peasants for a few thousand years, but I promoted it.

"Bleah. Abomination, disgrace and perversion."

A familiar voice tch'ed shame from the still-open doorway. It was Harin, my part-time partner trying to look wise, and failing miserably. "Personal, social and cosmic hiccups, still. A masochistic failing, pervert. Whatta way for a religion-junkie like you to make a living."

"Walkins? Beats the hell outta playing office politics." I mumbled, religiously concentrating on the meaningless paper on my desk. "Or sharing commission work."

Looking up, I feigned shock. "Well, well, well. Look what trash the wind blew in. I'm still downtown so you got your hand stuck out, right? The answer is no, so leave already."

"Why are you still here?" My ex and occasional partner in mucking things up royally ignored his latest eviction and grinned at me happily.

"Who, me? Why pick on me? I'm just another mutant in an age of proto-mutants. It's not my fault. I'm a late-birth defective. Pollution hurt my sperm-dad, destroyed my concentration and taxes ruined my schooling. Sunlight took the great outdoors away. Deadwood in the official system stole the only ideas I ever had, so all I have left is 'tude and results. Gimme a break."

I snarled something inaudible and ignored him. Harin was just floating about looking for work and we both knew I didn't have anything for him today. It would've come out already if there was.

Harin did whatever dirty work got farmed out to him, some of it from me. I didn't even charge a reference fee for it, most of the time.

Sometimes the work was snapping pics for insurance companies, sometimes it was disappearing inconvenient items. My more frustrated clients usually wanted blood from somebody, not that that mattered much to Harin. If paid in advance, Harin was very flexible about a lot of things, things like stomping a habitual drunken driver's arm or late-payer's face in two or three pieces.

Far more flexible than I was; there was a lot of traffic for that kind of indiscriminate action about these days. He still could not understand why I didn't just put a big show on for the more gullible out there, then charge big bucks for it.

"You've fallen off the straight and narrow path, I see." I sniffed down at Harin's boots. They showed signs of a more than salty slush soaker, something you got a lot of in the spring snow if you weren't careful around here.

"Dry pavement in the center of the walk. Did the sidewalk-shuffle around a mother and child, The second you step off the path and on the bank..." He started wearily, fluffing his war-wounds off. "Instant slusie."

"Soaker." I corrected him, sniffing. It was more likely a dog had chased him off a back-yard path and he'd crashed thru the snow-crust there.

Or he had seen and couldn't resist collecting the lost pucks from around the outdoor rinks as they melted themselves loose from the ice. Spring brought all sorts of lost treasures out of the snow and weirdos looking for them.

Harin would couldn't say no to a freebie; like an unguarded porch. He was a drifter today, but not visibly bleeding, so I let it ride. If he wasn't talking, it wasn't worth pursuing. Like the official news, a lot of what he decided to tell you got heavily sanitized for consumer convenience. The disposable kind of cons.

"The one that just left is a classic case." I mentioned happily, nodding at the still-open door. "A do-gooder trying to do evil. Didn't work. Hello, eh?"

"So I heard. God is trying to tell you something there, partner." Harin grumbled, squelching in his boots as he moved. I nodded at the small electric heater by the wall. A warm place for him to peel soaked socks off; he sighed happily heading for the chair beside it.

"You don't know the half of it." I grumbled as a coat got shucked off. "I get desperate sharks and wolves in here, frantically trying to heal their cancers and wondering why it doesn't work. With a voo-doo doll. Try telling them when a pirate tries to doctor it always ends up looking like you were doctored by a pirate."

"Carefully." Harin grunted, losing his collar before going for his boots. "Telling any shark anything is careful work. Try diplomatically. Use a phone and long distance charges."

"Or do-gooders looking for revenge and wondering why things just keep getting better for their targets." I rambled on. "The other twenty percent? If my doo does work, they praise Allah and throw money at their favourite religious terrorists insteada me."

"Bah. You can't win in this game." I grumbled on, Harin finally settling down to working his sloppy boots off. "Trying to build an organization is like hiring monkeys right outta the hostel. Worse than useless. Barrel-scraping doesn't really describe it when you need a specialist working the people-work."

"Ha. You wanted to do it this way." Harin grumbled, tugging on a reluctant sock.

"Sticking your head into traffic is a loser's game, you fool you. You tried running with the pros already once, didn't ya? It soured. What are you complaining for?"

"Yah. True. I got burned by an organizer once, that was more than enough." I spat out, enraged by the memory. "It took a couple years to build the traffic up, then he walked off with most of it."

"And 80% of the people. Hint-hint. Built with his expert help too, remember." Harin added absently. "He was a people-person. Very good at it. Recruiter par excellence. Good salesman."

"And they were nothing without my expertise. They had no product. The place crashed and burned. Now they're gone and none of 'em is ever getting back in." I grumbled. I hated that little maneuver in political realities from my youth. It still rankled me.

"Control by denial. Waste of time." Harin said, stretching his bare feet out to the heater and sighing happily. "You're still upset about it? Hire me to harm him for ya if your dolls aren't doing the trick."

"No. No dolls." That rankled me too. I still had one for the treacherous little vermin (The one he stole when he left was a dummy. I'm not that stupid.) and hadn't used it yet.

"I know my strengths." I muttered. "And weaknesses. Plus, come to think of it, your weaknesses boyo. What brings you here today?"

"Well, I'm not offering you work as a stealth killer-for-hire. You'd get too many ideas about my butt if you started that." Harin started, grinning at me. "You hate the literary-tea circuit, too. And paying rent, apparently."

Harin stared off into space with a suffering look in his eyes. "Lemme see. You sell a book, a doll with directions, needles, curses and a DVD."

"With lots of footnotes on how voo-doo might do some good." I added bitterly. "Needles. Voo-doo acupuncture charka energy systems. How to tune up OR flatten people."

"Ah, I know. I remember." Harin rattled on in a bored way. "How to meet, alter or create demand, in a soul-searching kinda way."

"And the only ones that e-mail me back are the complainers. Or somebody looking for a cheap hood." I finished up for him. "Like you. Yah. Big deal. Old news. Talent seems to take care of itself for some odd reason, I get the clueless coming in here."

"And I have an offer for you." Harin grunted, slapping his wet socks on the heater. They sizzled and the aroma of used socks started to sweep thru my little office. He turned to grin at me. "A cash-money deal. Ya wanna hear it?"

"An offer from you? Not really." I sighed and turned the fan on the air-conditioner on. It swept the fumes away. "It probably involves curing some little old lady's parakeet or gout. Something like that."

"Close. Somebody that smells like CIA wants you to crank up the juice for a few people." Harin kept grinning at me. "Very hush-hush work, right here in town. Secret experiments, onna results basis, natch. They want an enhanced team. Double-bind secret levels, whatever that is. You're the trainer for his troops."

"Train-wrecker, you mean. No." I sputtered out. "No way. Even with a high-tech version of my doll, built to my specs, I can't guarantee top performance from anybody. They have to know what's happening, work at it and stay working at it. There's no way I could get the little farts to move."

"The dark side is much easier, yes, quicker too young Jedi. But there's more." Harin chuckled happily.

"See, they really want to test you out. I think. Thoroughly. The deal is simple. You doll and enhance as many as you can handle. They set up everything else, including the double-bindings."

Harin grinned happily. "Personal training sessions. All paid work. Take the job, you idiot. Get cashed for thinking positive at people for once. Teach."

"No. No way." I sputtered, still a little startled. "You can't do a decent job on very many people at once, for starters. Can't be done for a mean-team anyway. Apprentices? no. Thinking positive about a destructicon is pure applied frustration. No way. Can't be done."

***

"So I get five students an hour a day for six weeks, teaching them to how to work out. Really? Another hour a day, teaching a selection of advanced people how to amp their dolls. All dolls are modded to my specs, right? And it's cash in advance?"

"Yep. Welcome to the dark side. We have cookies."

"Improve, develop, problem-solve. This is all development?"

Harin nodded. "Looks like it. What they want done they want to do themselves."

"Ow. Gun to deadly babes. Lemme think about this."

"That's guns and these are needles." Hardin chuckled. "Decide fast. Welcome to making the irradiating little peasants literate is dangerous, monk. The results can be scary and tick the other nobles off severely."

"And so is the rest of the real world." I sat and fumed. Harin had just offered me, on a platter, what I'd been trying to do for years. With the guarantee it'd go bad on me instantly.

"Training the enemy too will kill me. Is there was a witness protection program I can sign up for?" I asked carefully.

"Not one that doesn't involve getting buried first. Alive, probably."

I sat and tried to think of another way I wanted to suicide, other than doing what I liked most.

There wasn't one.

Harin nodded. I nodded back at him. Valley of the dolls, here I come." I breathed. "Getting your nasty on will kill them, it's poisonous. Do they care?"

"Not yet." Harin replied absently. "Don't tell them, either."

-30-

## chapter 5 snivel follies

In the hacker's tradition, you had to get above the rest by cutting the ground out from under them. I really hated it when that happened to me.

"Damn. Doom and gloom, plague and pests. Plus a pox apon all their houses." First thing in the morning and my computer insisted on getting some attention. "Being fiber-optic ready isn't helping, box!"

BEEP! My computer baffed reminders at me while continuing on with it's merry social-agenting. Intent on giving me all the bad news it had gathered, actually.

Mondays! The web was hungry today. There were a few over-due notices, then the clunker. A suspicious on-line complaint notice.

With blink tags. Yes, I still got the blasted notices, no matter what AI-filter I put in my computer. The AI in the box was more than a little officially mindless that way. This one was interesting, tho.

Time to de-gear and find out why admin was hitting on me. I dumped my ipod, phones, TV, rad-io, unplugged and generally went analog.

"Ha! Is this a slice before me? One that shuts down my e-life? I borg with my little borg-box a little threatening note."

My best superior sniff went unnoticed, so I tried confusion on my link-up instead. "I boggle, therefore I am. Prepare to be assimilated, fool-notice. Dis-integrate this, don't dis that."

My link-up ignored me. Nattering at the screen wasn't helping any, but I had to sit thru the usual official bad-news dump before I could do anything else. Password. Sign-in. Send ack. The box, also as usual, ignored me and my pleading, so I stuck my tongue out at it and rambled on.

My VR helmet clattered on the bed beside me as I shucked shackles and readied for reality. "Ass it were, sailor. Today I spam, therefore I'm dead. Smack into the bit-bucket we go, me hearty heartless!"

Things were getting familiar and I had a sneaking feeling I knew what this was about. I'd been spamming the job-search again and about to get officially pummeled for it.

The groaning noise I made did scare a few pigeons and gulls outside my room, but even that wasn't much of a flap. Even the flying rats were against me. My life as an independent was not going well, not even with simple politics.

Weak afternoon sunlight eased past the curtain and almost lit up my life as I waited. Blinking, I wondered if the park had any people hanging there today. Deadheads in the deadzone like me, but the screen adjusted itself to new light levels and resumed it's blare before I could run away.

The park? Naw, it was a complete deadzone. Not wired, online or interactive there. De-bugged, cameras stolen and buried in a weak reception zone.

Life in there was kinda random and completely unofficial. A null spot worked like that these days. No cells, no monitors, traffic cameras, nothing. People went there to rant, dump and connect with other ranters.

There was lots and lots of illegal traffic in a deadzone too, as well as dead-beats like me trying to survive in freebies. The computer beeped at me again. Anything was better than this slippery spam-not note, I figured. Continuing muttering as I scanned the dump, I prepped myself for a life as a social outcast.

"Get out there and into the valley of industry, idiot. Millions of hits can be yours if you act and act now."

The lock-em-up nasty come thru on my box, finally. E-mail admin notice, WITH the right password. "Bah. Slogging it out like this has all your daily vitamins plus ironing." I gritted out, reading the warning sent to me grimly. "With tough lemonade to boot."

My self pep-talk was so saccharine it was threatening my teeth with terminal rotters, but I kept it up anyway. Being e-shutdown was not a happy thing to have happen; I desperately needed the system.

"Ha! The bit-player carumba! Sorta onward, backpass and do not pass go. Campaign with cell-fluff. Power-point ads. The better the shovel, the worse the response, right?" None of this helped change the blinking notice. It was as bad as I thought it would be, too. My e-mail was getting bounced and they (my provider) was threatening to shut down the account if I didn't stop nagging people.

"Damn. Gotta stop talking to myself. Almost talked myself into filling the xerox paper-feeder this time." I grumbled on, ticking off promise boxes as I replied to the bad news. "Sure sign of applied stupidity, your imaginary friend talking you into the low-road like that. Even if that's a step up right now. Bad enough being insane, but silly and stupid too? I am so dead."

Taking another look at the data was pure machismo. I took another look at the notice anyway, checking addresses. Just to make it sting, I think it was Mom who bounced my latest trash-mail attachment.

My efforts got dumped and dumped hard so I grimaced and tried to forgive. Always a little vague on the difference between trashing mail, filtering mail and reporting it as nasty, those were mt friends.

I looked again and sighed. And family. E-literate they weren't and their AI-agents were almost as stupid. The stats didn't lie. Nothing had moved in my zone. Everything sent out had vanished completely into the ether, except for the complaints.

"Rhinoed from real close range." I whispered. "Doing the zombie-woof now."

Whimpering some more, I looked out at the park again. "Maybe I should suck my way into a stable full of chosen people and sit back to a rich, full life of cheerleading and cherry-picking other striving gits." I mumbled hopefully.

Rumbling on like this was cathartic, if almost imaginary. Wondering if someone was using my account to send out Viagra ads on the sly, I made the usual grand gesture and sent out my vague promises to the ISP.

"As an ethnically-pure clone, natch. Stealing marketable ideas and doing what you're told, right to spec. Half a spec onward, right?" The merge-lane was not a plan and I already knew it. At best, joining anything was optimistic thinking. Accepted, recommended, recruited?

The more rabid cheerleaders and campaigners I knew of in our cultural establishment did have a few traits in common; one was stables full of hackers. Another was they decided who, then what, happened. Talent was not relevant, control was. Pure power politics, right?

Other happenings? None to speak of anymore. Cash yes, but mostly rumors.

Still, ya can't fight city-hall garbage collectors. Trust me, nobody really wants to either. Or arm-wrestle the bag-lady in the park for any great length of time, come to think of it.

I was considering the note as a manufactured crisis (Cut my mail off? Hate-campaigns were simple, popular and almost always made money. I could almost see it happening.)

"We have target-lock, Captain boss-sir. Looks radical, too. Whatta ya wanna us to do now?"

"AHA! Good show. Fire at will, Mr. Peon-lackey. Blow him off the web. Play with him first if you want, go ahead and enjoy yourself. There's always more where he came from."

"You see it's all part of our grand plan, lackey." My imaginary captain nodded sagely. "The spring campaign lynch-mob needs a target. Go make one for them. Get out there and fight some crime."

"Invent it if you have too. Or at the very least, smack a climber down."

Shutdown was it. I de-rezed and went off-line, heading for the park and making plans for spamming the whole city from an illegal node hidden deep in a deadzone. Dump silliness on the whole city.

That'd be fun, if I could dump popular material on 'em. In the hacker's tradition, you had to get above the rest by cutting the ground out from under them. Changing the names only worked occasionally.

I hated it when that happened to me.

-30-

## chapter 6 book 2

### Bank-zombies

MONSTERS? Got lots around here, fella. Those hills there are 4 billion years old. Oldest rocks in the world.

Lotsa political mons here too. Mon.

Oh, them. The zombies.

Yah, there's tons. Got lots of 'em here, they came out the other day ago. From snow dumps, the backs of NHL and local rinks, all kinds of places. Lots of 'em.

Yah, the worst of 'em came from curling rinks, but that's another story. They came outta the snow, then they invaded.

Yah, even at work. Want to hear about it? Zombies invading a mall? Friend of mine had a good story.

OK, listen for sec an' I'll tell ya about it. The GLA zombies. Everything, OK?

The GLA? The Greely Liberation Army, The GLA.

Just listen!

Lemme get one thing straight first. Our zombies didn't get their walk from snowshoes, got it? They came out that way.

Anyway. The city of Ottawa grew and ate most of the surrounding country a while back.

Again.

Amalgamated everything, including the town of Greely. About the same time, Hong Kong money started coming into town. Arab, Lebanese and Russian cash. New Admin, lotsa new big-bucks in the city.

So the fast money poured into whatever real estate was handy. City hall and lawyers. Well, Immigration lawyers, mostly.

Inta crime too, but later, OK? Not all new money is clean, ya know. As a matter of fact, not much of the old stuff is either.

So anyway, all this cash promptly started buying up local politics as fast as they could. Mostly trying to get parks rezoned for condos, but getting poverty, dogs and minimum wage outlawed was on the list too."

Yeah, poverty AND minimum wage. Dogs too.

So lots of instant, convenient, disposable, urban-renewal hit here hard.

What did we get outta this? New buildings and tons of people out in the snow. Old goats on pensions and welfare cases. The usual range of women, children, criminals, lunatics and Indians. Drifters, get it?

Snow-drifters, ha! Another Canadian banking effort, OK? HA!

Anyway... A couple hit-and-run cases got plowed under, too. Women and children first, of course. Single moms are an easy target, eh?

Forced de-urbanization, they called it. Living inna snowbank isn't easy, so a lot of 'em didn't. They died and got plowed right into snow-dumps.

Before and after air shots, Van's hidden lagoon, Slum to super-development. 4 miles of HUGE apt buildings. Toronto's young street. Ottawa snow heap.

Call 'em Ottawa's great people. Air-vent grates, right? They all ended up in those big, dirty, salty heaps of snow you see everywhere. Every parking lot in town has one.

Yes, I _KNOW_ it isn't salt on the roads anymore. Not all of it, anyway. You're right. So guess what came out?

That's right. Pickled zombies. Weird-road-salt chemical pickled zombies.

Warm weather came and BHAM! All shapes, sizes and colors of zombies started popping out of the snow and right into the worst possible place.

Yah! Right here.

So, this is how we took care of it that day.

On the day the zombies got out of the banks.

-30-

## chapter 7 gla zombie march

"You idiots!" Marsha was vocal with her protests. I looked up in exasperation. An acorn was still hanging in the tree branch above me, brown-grey and dripping wet in the icy spring rain.

The squirrels hadn't gotten to it. It felt just like me, a black greatcoat huddled against a tree. Lean black twigs against a grey sky with just a few forlorn-looking acorns and lonely leaves dripping a cold wet march rain; dripping chill wetness right on the annual GLA March-meltdown picnic underneath it, actually.

Well, it wasn't quite a picnic yet. I shivered and looked hopefully at the snowbank. With any luck it'd eat Marsha and her constant griping too when she crossed it.

Right on cue, "Party, party, party!" came out of the snowbank in question. Cheerfully, yet. Melvin the dwarf had walked over it a few seconds ago and had crashed right thru the crust, disappearing entirely into the heaped snow. We hadn't seen him since but we could still hear him, so no one was all that worried.

"Come on, get your skinny butt over here already!" I shouted at Marsha. "We can't picnic in the road." The meltdown picnic was an idea stolen from an Ultimate group, a frisby football league that'd recently gone republican and started fixing their elections; they forced Wolfy out of the league too, almost as an afterthought.

Apparently having to play against werewolves galled the slower types there. Dogs, beer and children were also on their hit-list, from what I'd heard. Wolfy could out-sprint any of them, but did insist on carrying the disk in his mouth occasionally, so he'd gotten bounced.

A slushy snowball got tossed leeward and Marsha again screeched her protests to the wind.

"Relax. That's a GLA ball!" I shouted at her. "A PC one. Very nice."

The GLA was our very own political party, one bent on getting our beloved village of Greely back out of the city of Ottawa's last expansion. This picnic was a combination maple-sugar season, GLA glee event, sympathy for Wolfy and general excuse to get sugar-shacked outdoors after a winter of being cooped up.

We were all Goth types here in the GLA; real ones. Vampires, werewolves, dwarfs, avatars... Most of us even lived on Goth street.

"You're all a bunch of idiots!" Marsha, who was standing in the middle of the street (the only dry spot available in the spring mini-melt flood) and cursing us for being stupid. She was dressed for a cold mall-walk and didn't want to get her boots wet.

"We know, that's why we asked you out." grumbled Emanuel.

Wolfy had chosen a picnic table that hadn't quite managed to struggle and pop out of the melting snow yet; he was still industriously making the heaped snow fly as he dug it out. Marsha didn't like the soggy mess we'd chosen to walk into.

Or the rain, or the melt, or the rotting slush all over everything. It didn't bother me. Unlike her, I had my rubbers on. I knew soaker-season when it started sapping all over me.

Emanuel was working at getting the park's barbecue pit free of snow and hadn't stopped grumbling about digging out the driveway since he'd started.

That was a bad pun he was beating to death. The park driveway was where we were picnicking.

Off in the distance there was another dull boom as crews there hurriedly blew more ice on the river up, trying to let the melt flow downstream as fast as possible.

Maybe it was just ice flows shifting. It's hard to tell.

"Hey, there's something down here!" Came echoing out of the snowbank.

Wolfy looked over at me, peering shortsightedly over his beard and blinking. I shook my head 'no' and he went back to digging the wooden picnic table out. Melvin wasn't getting us to dig him out of the snow all that easily.

"Good. Let us know what it is." I snapped out, checking the bag under my arm for supplies.

We were a few ants short of a picnic, but I wasn't complaining. Charcoal, lighter fluid, industrial strength hot dogs, buns, condiments...

"I mean it!" The invisible voice insisted. "There's somebody down here with me! Somebody dead."

"Oh good. That saves us the trouble of killing him. Or digging him up, as he's already buried." I answered. "Is that firepit ready yet, Emanual? Melvin is hungry enough to start digging up his own food."

Marsha snorted. She was still on her yearly treasure hunt collecting change from the curbside, treasure that only comes out when the snow melts.

With new friends in the snowbank and I need that fire soon to cook anything.

"Thanks for the news-flash." Steaming in the cold now, Wolfy shook snow off his coat and beard, looking at the oak I was huddling under.

"Any dryiads in there?" he asked, breathing a little harder. Wolfy had been ticked ever since our Christmas dyriad (Yes, we got a tree with Christmas spirit. Spirits. A real one. Please don't ask.) had slipped away on him. He'd been hopefully sniffing trees ever since.

Well, since he'd been doing that before, it wasn't all that different for him, but now he was sniffing with a purpose. "It's empty. Trust me, I checked." I grumbled at him. Wolfy shrugged and went back to knocking the last of the ice off the top of picnic-table and wiping it dry.

"The barby, she is ready!" Came a happy cry from the other side of me. "Make with the fuel already." Nodding, I dug into the bag and started tossing makings in that general direction.

Wolfy sat down on the wet bench of the table, sighed and opened a thermos flask of something hot from one of his pockets. "Ice-wine." he grunted when he saw me looking at him thru the steam. "And a pocket heat-pack."

"Hey, wave that at Marsha." I mentioned to him while patting down my pockets for some matches. "It might finally get her off the road."

There was another painful screech from the roadside as Marsha finally started across the loose, wet snow near the curb. A slush-soaker. "Ah, the joys of spring." I winched in sympathy. One of my own boots had gotten a slush-load already poking a hole in the snow and my one dry sock left was starting to feel weird.

Marsha stopped halfway across the bank, bent down and hauled a sputtering Melvin out of his hole with one small hand. Then she casually tossed him in our direction.

Melvin flew past me and did a header into the snow around the picnic-table. Well grinned as Marsha could do things like that. She was an over-built wisp of girl, but she could push Wolfy into in the air with one hand and slap him silly with the other, all without breathing hard.

And had. For sniffing at her shoes, in fact. Lasciviously, or so she claimed.

Well, Wolfy did drool occasionally, I do have to admit. He says it comes with the beard. That's when a cold grimy hand erupted out of the snow beside Marsha and grabbed her pixie-booted ankle.

That's also when all hell broke loose.

***

"A zombie?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Couldn't be anything else, could I?"

The new body in our group leaned back in the kitchen chair and sighed. Or tried to. He had breath in first to do that which kind of ruined the effect.

The suspicion in the air was thick enough to spread on toast. The GLA had convened an emergency meeting at my house and Soft+hot, my housemate, had gotten off work and joined us.

Our resident vampire hadn't come upstairs yet, but that didn't bother me. He won't be fit company till his evening tea woke him up anyway.

"Hey, I didn't get all the way home from the bar. I wake up a few months later in a snowbank and don't need to breath anymore. What else would I be?" he asked grumpily, brushing at a few drying stains on his clothes.

"Other than pickled. Still pickled. I think the road salt in that ditch helped, you know? All I do know is I was dreaming. You could feel that tree pushing up sap and getting energy in the sun. I wanted to join it."

"Ah, trees. We've been here before. So you sleep thru winter and spring back to life when Melvin steps on your head?" I nodded sagely at the group. "And Marsha bounces you off a picnic table a couple times. Zombie. Pickled zombie maybe, but zombie. The Count will have the last word on this, thou. He's our expert on the undead."

"Where is he?" I asked Cuddles, who had tucked her feet under her beside Marsha on the living room couch and looked like she was preparing either a wedding or funeral for him.

With my girl, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between the two.

"In the basement. Sleeping." Tiny and Tearful looked solemn and glanced at Marsha. They both blinked at back each other, some sort of girl code. Morse-code, right? "You know how he is."

"Where's the basement?" Zombie asked absently, looking interested. "I've got a few questions for him myself."

"The basement? Oh, we keep it downstairs." With that little non-answer, both and all female members of the GLA went off to chatter at each other.

"Oops. Executive session going on." Wolfy grumbled as they passed him by. "We'd better warn the Count the girls have already decided what they want us to do."

"Naw. Let him stuck his foot in it." I grumbled back, peeved. "Seeing what they do to him for daring to say 'no' should be pretty good."

"I get health food and lectures on shaving." Wolfy admitted. "Lots of soap. You?"

"Don't get." I snapped out sharply. "And the incident of emergency vacuuming during hockey games increases sharply."

"Hey, this might not be so bad. I can work two jobs now. If I don't need to sleep, maybe three." The zombie mused to himself. "Sleep goes with eating and breathing, right? And I don't need that anymore."

"Or working, if ya do it right." Wolfy sounded envious. Most of them rest just looked it.

"Anyway. Welcome to the GLA." I sighed. It was time to face facts, however bad they smelled. "We're the local Goths. Real ones." I added as the zombie looked at me like I was the crazy one.

"We're trying to save the outer burbs of Greely from downtown parking regs."

The zombie just sat there and peeled ice from his hair, looking us over dubiously.

"I was single before." he started carefully. "I wonder how far north I have to go to stay fresh?"

"Just wait till the count fills you in." I start absently. "He might know something."

-30-

## chapter 8 goth tech

The morning started badly. Mornings usually do for me.

"Huh? Goth-tec? Whatsa? Sounds like the Munster's got a computer to me. Maybe the Adams family live and on-line."

"Err. No?" I said weakly as the room chilled a few degrees around my more-or-less random male density. "Sorry, dear. I woke up on then wrong side of the millennium this morning. Whasup?"

The nasty look shot across the table at me was dirty enough to qualify for a class eight pollution award. Unclassified. Nasty. Cancerous, mutagenic and poisonous, but there still weren't enough clues in it to start any bells ringing for me.

Well, except for alarm-bells and life with Silly was always like that. I was Drone to her Drama-queen and so far, I liked it. Tolerable, anyway. Shaking my bacon at the sound of her bell, (when I noticed it) but still alive and well. Right?

I think she liked it too. It did get hard to tell sometimes.

She sniffed at the reminder. "Idiot. Goth-tec is the hi-tec propaganda scheme the GLA put together last week. You remember the GLA, don't you? Hairy the werewolf, The Count and the rest of those bums? The Goth-street boys deciding to get down and dirty in the info-age?"

My grunt was noncommittal. "And the girls. Goth. Oh, yeah, with cable TV shows, right? The Greely Liberation Army shoving insight where it'll do the most good, our new-news motto. I remember now." That bounced. Sarcasm didn't become her so Perky Eyebrows ignored it.

At least I wasn't being biffed again and that made it a good start to the day. Us? The GLA was a political organization dedicated to pulling our beloved small town out of the last messy urbanization that'd passed by. The one where Greely got eaten alive by the city of Ottawa late one dark and stormy expansion and had never gotten loose again.

Silly and I? Greely was, past our love-life, my work-life and her 'aid and a bet' family, our official reason for living together. Mine by default. Amalgamation hadn't done much for us around here except fund bigger and better downtown festivities. Taxes! We're a long, long way from downtown out here.

Hence the GLA, an official registered municipal party. Us. Any bonus in this? Well, I have to admit we did get all the paper they could shovel at us after expansion. Downtown rules for a place that had more birds than people, for instance. There were midnight parking regs in a place where any traffic at all after 6pm was non-existent. And we were paying for the police to back up the tickets they handed out.

Goth street was where we Gothic types lived. That part I remembered, even first thing in the day.

"Yes, dear. I remember. Goth-tec is what, the cable show Miranda wanted to put out? Three thousand ways to bury the city in it's own vicious electronic slime or something like that?"

There was a small, careful answering nod at that and a quiet dimpling. I sighed relief at being out of today's domestic blisters and quietly made plans to be officially very busy for the rest of the week.

I'm not stupid. This topic wouldn't've come up unless Tickles had some cauldron-grunting for me to do. No luck there. Little Miss hob-nail boots came back on-line, now that she had me paged.

"Yes, Miranda's new tv show, the cable one. Unless the city has decided to start crushing free-speech again, it's a go. Now we need researchers. Count Choc-full-of-it wanted to track official news releases from the city then swamp official-dum with line-noise. Add paper-blitzes like petitions to their In-Boxing."

"Leak and campaign, slant and dig, mud, shovel and dump, professionally. Heap irritants on city of Ottawa admin till they got tried enough to get rid of us."

She sounded smug. Nagging our way out of the city did not sound so hot to me. "News releases and cable TV, eh? The idea behind running after the crowd like this being what?" I asked carefully. "To throw spit-balls from a safe distance? Something they'll hire a few more bilings to make reports about, at most."

I hadn't being paying all that much attention during the last GLA meeting. The girls had been centered in the kitchen cooking up plans, as usual... (Everything except who got to pay for the scheme was their normal speed. Or do the work.) The guys had been in the living-room glued to the tube. Hockey, natch.

Well, I'd been watching the sen-sens not doing well and calling it hockey. The Count, our resident uptown vampire, had been muttering constantly about all the problems pollution had been making for him. Blood gases. Heavy metal contamination from pulp and paper plants, I think. MSG overdosages. Pig-farm viroid epidemics.

You got used to it. The Count, our vampire, did love to hunt over in Gatineau park, Quebec and the pulp and printing plants there made everyone taste funny according to him.

This was nastier than you'd think. Cadmium and fire-retardant pollution made our vamp twitchy. Unsteady nerves were a very big problem for vampires who had to hit the jugular on the first try or risk having their current lust-life wake up and beat them to death with a purse. Or mace, or a stun-gun. Or start screaming into a very sensitive ear, at the very least. A messy vampire is soon a hungry dead vampire, or so he tells us.

That was all normal traffic for the Count. After the first few stories about the weird drugs turning up in blitzed kids downtown these days, you stopped listening. His problem. The count didn't appreciate our group suggestion he try preying on church groups instead.

"Advanced computer propaganda tech, silly." My love-life sighed soft exasperation at me; I winced and started looking for the whip-lash on my free-time hiding behind this topic. "Goth-tec. Gossip with a purpose, remember?"

I shook myself back to the real world, looking for a handy way to weasel out of this. It stayed hidden from me. "Talk? Small talk? OK. Too much info, over-sharing and giving freedom of speech a bad name."

I blinked. "That's us, all right. Why are you telling me this? Isn't the computer supposed to do all the work?" I asked suspiciously, already lining up all the excuses I could think of to get out of whatever she had planned for me.

"We need the poop. That's your job." The line was final, like an axe dropping.

Yup, hacking a manure-mouth, that's me. I could feel the iron grip of reason descending on my privates as Giggles grinned and slowly kept explaining the plan to me, regardless of the constant whimpering I was involuntarily doing.

Her grin was malicious, directed and aimed only at me. "You turn all the council meetings, reg releases and by-laws into data. The count is on with local recycling, pollution and community town-hall meets. The computer turns all this into timely propaganda campaigns. We turn that into shows."

"Oh. I get it now." I sighed and scratched a neck that felt like it was on-line in the guillotine again. "You read. I write. The computer directs. Divine Miss M yaks."

"Peachy, dear. Just peachy." I grumped, sticking a finger down my shirt collar and wrenching at a suddenly tight collar. "What good will mulching, for instance, the noise regs into a data-base do? We don't get dump-trucks before 7am out here; or 18 wheelers after."

Trash regs? I wasn't about to start there, I already knew who owned the garbage companies and how many local plasma plants had crashed and burned. Nothing but trouble there.

HA! You go make a mafia garbage-man mad at you, I dare ya. Or start messing with the beer-store's 18 wheeler supply-line and see what happens to ya.

"Noisy trucks are illegal, eh? Neat. I dunno." Slippery-when-wet grinned evilly at me. "That's the computer's job. You input the stuff, the computer colors, we make waves. Timed, organized, directed waves. Complete with lotsa dead civic babies, city-staff drug-smugglers, hot goods coming across the river on bridges and all with see-how-they-skim background music cable can pump out. Simple."

"Yeah." I tried to sound overenthusiastic but didn't have it in me. Love-life, inc. had lots of it in for me already, that much was obvious. "If and only if our local cable provider hasn't wriggled outta this community-service thing yet. You know how popular this free-speech stuff is with big-brother, Big Momma S'mother and twisted sister news.".

Weepiness threatened water-works, the wet I-ball. I surrendered. "OK, we're on. If: One, if we can get the cable-co seal of approval. Two, if we can turn the dog-catcher ticket cash-flow into real-time ink. Three. If we can get any eyeballs on the sets at all."

"Watchers? Don't you worry about that. Everything has been taken care of." Snuggles had a fix there and I wondered what she was up to. A topless divine Miss M was about the only thing I could think of that get viewers and they'd be a little vague on about the talk even after watching a few them.

If they could talk at all after watching a few shows. I had no faith in the great homogenize making changes.

Smug-and-Snuggles looked pertly at me. I groaned. "Blast. The ladies are in on it. Recipes, interesting things to do with flowers? Bad-news Bessie?"

"Yeah. Me too." That last little statement coming from Cuddles was enough to curdle last night's lunch on me. Slow-hand Tickles here had a real bad habit of taking care of business in such a way that I got seriously dumped on; before, after and during her little stunts.

She'd fund product-placement from the darkside cafe if it occurred to her. Most of her stunting had been on my career prospects, too. Unfortunately, Greely was still firmly part of the city. The last time I had to pull her fat out of the firing-squad, my boss had started calling me Mr. T-boy.

Why? De-tox clinics. For-profit baby-clinics squeezed cash outta immigrants with purity tests, see. Anti-pollution stuff, back home remedies, mud.

We'd tangled with fake meds after Silly had exposed their DNA profiling tech for what it was being sold for, that being finding and making psychotics. Semi-isolated loons from immigrant homes made for lotsa cheap gun-fodder for someone, right?

Eventually. Or so it looked. They'd gone, eventually getting busted for breaking garbage regs, if I remember right.

Birthing was a concern here on the home-front. I'm a zombie, a computer hack. Cuteness is an avatar, an honorary zom. We're all Goths of one type or another in the GLA. My girl liked kids, tho. Way too much.

"OK dear. I'll see about setting it up." I grumped, already making serious plans to stay out of this heat-sink. Me, I'd drop the scanning-job on Alfie, he was a ghoul anyway. He'd LIKE eavesdropping on councillors and hacking into a bean-a-year spending program plan. Putting lotsa static regs into an idiot AI was data-dump to him.

Me, I started planning the spam-filter we'd need. We had friends to protect and whatever news Alfie dug up stood a real good chance of being planted back on us, that much I could see already.

'Vengeance is mine' from city-hall? Heavens, what made you think that? If we got irksome I was betting that little trend would be continued, abet in a much more directed 'housing-regs' manner.

If this Goth-tec propaganda-machine thing really was a serious effort to black-sheep Greely outta the new civic Union, I had to make sure we avoided looking silly long enough to use whatever we dug up.

Or it'd be our graves we plotted, not getting Greely outta Ottawa.

-30-

## chapter 9 a Christmas stalking

A dwarf, a vampire and a werewolf all walked into a tree-lot one chilly Christmas Eve, looking for a tree.

Only the werewolf was nervous about it, thou.

The tree-lot in question was in a corner of the mall parking lot; it temporarily sparkled, glittered and out-shone the merry lights all around the mall, the one lone streetlight far above it imitating a lonely weak lighthouse, putting out a decrepit sodium-yellow glow that looked like it was designed for fog, not sidewalks.

It did add a ghastly tint to everything, thou. A festive sick-mustard yellow that reflected off the weakly blowing snow in random, sporadic spots.

"Christmas, eh? Sure. So how come all the trees here are fake then?"

The three stood there in a dry aching cold, powder snow blowing ankle high like a misty dusty fog across the lot and wisping all around them. There wasn't a good answer for that, so ignoring the grumpy dwarf the vampire and said nothing, tossing his long dangling toque over one shoulder dramatically. Somehow he managed to make his winter greatcoat look like a cape.

"Behind the cold fake tinsel of a mall Christmas-tree lot..." he started, looked over the lot, scratched one bare ear absently and fell quiet.

"Is more tinsel. The real stuff." The hairiest of the three groused, holding his coat collar closed against the wind with one thick red mitten and pointing his long pointy nose to some waving shimmering silver-glitter. The ear-flaps on his hat waved against the wind, oddly enough, and only accented the heavy beard on his face. "Oops, sorry. More fake tinsel, actually. More fake trees back there too."

"Come on, lets get going." The werewolf whined nervously, glancing around at what looked like a garnish metal-flake nightmare come to life, shaking his ear-flaps in a sick way. "Pick one and go. Trees and werewolves have history and I'm starting to feel urges here. Bad urges."

The dwarf of the bunch snorted and wound his scarf a little tighter around his neck, adjusting his ski-mask as he did. The vampire noticed that, glanced away and gulped hungrily. "Give us a second, wouldja? Who are these people? Bad enough the trees are fake, but pre-assembled?" The dwarf grumbled. "Look! A two-foot one-use paper tree? This is just sick!"

"What's sick is your Christmas stocking." The vampire said absently, still looking around the tree-lot and eyeing the off-colored metallic spectaculars carefully. "You could put a whole telephone pole in that thing. Where did you ever find a tube that big?"

"Hey, ever see one of my usual stockings, pal? You couldn't get two fat grapes into one, let alone any decent presents." The dwarf snapped back. "You should talk. You used one of Marsha body-stockings, if I remember right. Still warm, and she's ticked about it. Come on, let's pick out a tree and go before the lot-guy shows. Unless you want to steal one from NCC property instead." he added hopefully. "There's a few along the canal I've had my eye on. Nice ones. Exotics."

"Ha. The last time you had you eye on anything, it got kneecapped for you." The werewolf grumbled, his head weaving back and forth. He seemed agitated by something. "By a ten-year-old. Besides, you two are out of it. My Christmas stalking is the only fun one. Werewolf-style stalkings. You should learn."

"Bah. Marsha doesn't think so. She objects to you taking pictures of her in the shower like that." The dwarf folded his arms and looked around angrily, disgusted with whatever he was seeing down there.

"Yah, but she's using them. Christmas GIFs, for sure. And they make a darn popular calendar. I say we take the gold one and go. Maybe the silver one. It doesn't even look much like a tree." The werewolf tugged his beard nervously and pointed to a nondescript tree sitting forlornly nearby. It was the nearest specimen available.

"The true Christmas spirit..." The vampire started.

"Isn't drunk second-hand, the way you like it. Uck. Who ate this first? It's gotta taste like liquid crud." The dwarf snapped out, eyeballing the deep, dark corners of the lot carefully. "And true Christmas spirits don't hang around and haunt you either."

"Leave Uncle Morris out of this." The vampire said, sounding hurt. "He's still trying to get things together after his little accident."

"Accident! He pigged out on some stoners and fell asleep getting home." The dwarf waved the whole topic off angrily. "He was giggling dust long before rush-hour started."

"Damn. I gotta go." The werewolf suddenly snarled urgently, pulling on his long-coat down frantically and sniffing the trees all around him with regret. "You two wait here a sec."

The werewolf trudged away quickly, muttering to himself and disappearing behind a row of leaning metal trees. "Um. Should we tell Wolfy everything in this place is wired with lights?" The dwarf asked the vampire slowly, his eyebrows coming up. He was interrupted by a sudden crackle and an eerie long, drawn-out howl from behind the row of trees.

The lights suddenly flickered; a transformer that looked like a pail nailed to a tree suddenly dropped it's hum a few octaves and groaned a bass rumble that sounded like someone was trying to lift the whole lot. The lights flickered back on as the unholy screech from behind the trees resounded thru the lot, most of the surrounding neighborhood and the night sky, rapidly shattered the still of the eve. The howl had an odd, painful quality as it echoed off the buildings and died, anguished and whimpering, in the distant suburbs.

"Ah, the cry of the wild." the vampire said, just barely heard over the dwarf's low, nasty chuckles. "Socket to me. No, no need to warn him, Hanson. I think he knows by now. Ah-ah-ah."

"Yodelling again?" The dwarf asked nastily as the werewolf stumbled back to the group, still beating out small brush-fires in his coat, hat and beard as he did. There was a definite order of burnt hair in the wind now. "I thought we broke you of your mooning habit already."

"Didn't take. Marsha gives lessons." The werewolf grunted, still frantically waving and batting smoke away from his coat.

"Whew. Man, do you know how you get after 12,000 volts goes thru your zip? Fried! I thought I was finished back there."

"Merry Christmas, gents! How can I help ya?" The cheery cry of the vendor came out of the mustard colored gloom and towards them, the vendor stamping his feet and rubbing his hands together. It was not a reassuring sight as he was small, fat and looked more like Santa's evil twin than anything else. "Want a tree tonight?"

"No, we came here for bark and berry-beer blasMURMPH!" The dwarf got one of the werewolf's mittens backhand; shoved hard right in his mouth. "Yah. We wanna tree."

The werewolf said, fanning the other mitten in front of his face in a distracting way and blinking innocently at his trailing smoke wisps. "One for the Sen-sen fan club colors, if you've got it."

"Hockey? Pucker up, eh? A tree in team colors? I dunno 'bout that." The vendor said craftily, rubbing his hands together a little faster now as his eyes flickered over the group. "Specials go kinda fast, don'tcha know. I'll tell you what I can do, thou."

"See, my Christmas stocking is kinda low now." The vendor chortled. He grinned at the three warily, not liking the sudden chill that swept over the group. "Christmas Eve and it's the only stocking you wanna do." He finished weakly. "Ha-ha-ha..."

The quiet of the lot got a little more quiet. "A tree." The werewolf finally said shortly, in what could only be termed a menacing growl. He stepped over and hulked down at the cringing vendor, hair bristling from most of his visible body, some of it still seeping smoke. "A real one. Now."

"Cheap, too." The dwarf spat out, having worked the mitten out of his dented ski-mask at last. "We're only using it for one night."

"Gottaspecialonerighthere, onlyusedoncecheapforyougents..." The vendor fell back and hurriedly led the way to the rear of his pile, waddling hard and fast and looking behind him often. He pointed out a tree. It was a non-nondescript dry little spruce, small, tied up with twine and dry, but it was a real tree.

Sniffing, the vampire nodded and started grinning toothily at the vendor, happy to be bargaining. "I'm V'Kee." He stared absently, shaking the vendor's hand graciously. "Now about this tree." The werewolf helped the bargaining by lurking over the vendor's shoulder; the dwarf just stood there and fumed at them all.

***

"Hey, boys. Nice tree." Marsha nodded, hiding behind the open front door. "Set it up in that pail of water there, wouldja? Let it warm up a bit before we decorate it. What's with Wolfy?"

The dwarf came waltzing in, supervising the labor from far in the rear. "Oh, hiya Marsha. Woof? Unfortunately the personality transplant didn't take. A team of sturgeons, working round the clock..."

Grimacing, Marsha waved at him to stop, shutting the door in the process. "Got it. Stop right there, Hanson. He's ticked but not tocking yet. Sounds fishy to me."

Hanson grinned evilly as he stripped his ski-mask off. "Bingo. Did our spies give us any more information on the state of the revolution, Hon?" he asked, busily working some loose fibres out of his teeth with one dirty fingernail.

Flapping air away from Wolfy, Marsha snorted in a lady-like manner. "Us? Some revolution. The GLA glee club? We just want to de-annex our little town from the last Ottawa rationalization, not revolt. And no, they didn't. Our single over-worked spy downtown got a new memo copied over to us, that's all."

"Hey, great. Let's see it." Hanson scratched his cheek and looked expectant.

Leaning over, Marsha plucked a dirty page from a hat-shelf loaded with gloves. he made a show of under-handing it to Hanson the dwarf. "Here ya go, runt. Fresh off the centralized govt printing service. Our very own Christmas leak."

"Ouch. Don't say leak." Wolfy muttered as he grappled with the tree, wrestling it into the living room. Paper rattled in a low way as Hanson read; Wolfy the werewolf and the vampire V'Kee together muscled the small tree into it's new watering hole and wired it in place.

_THE MEMO_

Herb:

Your (loyal, entrapped + serfish) staff giving you headaches? Worry no more. Just show 'em this. If they don't jump on it, bend over fast enough or forge something evil for your p-file, call me. We need to be able to force resignations on a moment's notice around here.

Herpes.

Nb: Keep it quiet, it's a top-secret privy-council security brief. App'x One is a silly-service crime-survey with breakdowns by position; incidents, charges and convictions by Pol, Eco and Cult backgrounds. WITH new AI targeting software included. 'Way past using sex, money and violence on decision-making flakes. Use it, it works. Click on a few links. Disrespectfully snaggle the hair between their ancestor's ill-formed teeth if you have to, but get them hooked.

***

"Humph. Wow, nifty stuff. Scams, abuse and selective attention from and for the Silly-Service. Fraud, screwups and patronage games, basically. Very professional. Emergency meeting! Off to the donut-shop, boys!" Hanson screeched. He seemed impressed and very excited with the leaked memo.

"And girls. Remember us? What, no Starbucks?" Marsha seemed a little distressed thou Wolfy perked right up at the prospect of being awake all night. He stopped his efforts to make friends with the tree by slipping a blast of wood-alcohol into the pail; twine twanged as he leaned over and cut the last strings binding the tree branches up instead.

Coughing politely, V'Kee lifted the memo from the dwarf and started reading it carefully, ignoring the newly potted tree. Wolfy wandered over shaking stay needles off and peering over V'Kee's shoulder in a near-sighted way, started reading it too.

Shaking his head sadly up at Marsha, Hanson tossed his ski-mask from hand-to-hand. His coat wasn't even unzipped yet. "Coffee-shops? Naw, culture-vultures hang there. We could try the pizza crowd sometime, but the traffic there bites crack. You can get hot goods from the truck-drivers back of the restaurant next door or get your house-jacked, thou. Hotels are out too. Booze, drugs and girls are delivered from the taxi-stand. Way too much temptation in those places."

Wolfy looked up from his reading the memo over the V'Kee's. "Hey Hanson, this stuff is useless." he snorted in disgust. "It's all federal, not local. It isn't even provincial. We're the GREELY liberation army, remember? The anti-amalgamation disenchanted enfranchised. Bottom-feeders-unlimited. GLA-r-us. Local yokels and the farm team, not federal or provincial crap."

"Ha. Welcome to Ottawa, pal. We are the feds and this place is a fiefdom. We can work this." Hanson sighed again while Marsha happily pulled on her coat. "On someone. Somewhere. Or just work 'em all over a bit, if we can. Ya do know the other municipalities don't even invite the city to their city-conferences, right? We might even use this stuff on the NCC."

Even V'Kee didn't look happy with that statement, just puzzled. "No, we can't. How? It's old news over there. They're more interested in making Gatineau Park the ONLY green-spot in the region, even if they have to rig every contract and condoize every park in the city to do it."

The ski-mask came back down as Hanson knuckled the door-knob, opening the door to the cold outside world again. "Yah, I know. The NCC is a slush-fund like the Nation Arts Center. Quarter mill for a Montreal composer and 256 dark nights a year. Some of those guys there have made careers outta it. Not filling in potholes, repeat masonry, renovating empty buildings; that kinda thing. Just like the City of Ottawa's roads and sewers department. Same thing. A hundred years behind or renovated weekly, with no middle road."

Wolfy nodded sagely. "Yeah. Sorta like Quebec's shipyards, eh? Rebuild, renovate, scrap. You'd think the old Mayor had apprenticed there. Then on to container-traffic from China."

"Wow." Wolfy scratched his beard in admiration as he thought about it. "Ya know, maybe Quebec could wobble the patronage-game in the rest of Canada for us."

"Never happen." Hanson interrupted quickly. "Quebec has it's head shoved so far up it's..."

"Or maybe give lessons in cooking the books, eh?" Wolfy bore on waving one of his mittens at Hanson threatening. "Holy Bombardier. When they build Opera houses in Toronto, like. These people are masters at it. Lookit how Air-Canada plays the regulation-game. Or farming there. Better than BC rail's con-artists, or even Alberta's reg dumping for ice-rinks, I'd say."

Sighing, Hanson shook his head wearily at the werewolf. "Naw, no good. Different politics. The Expo domed-stadium just fell apart after a few years, remember? Well, after they finally finished it, that is. Lots of labor trouble in that event. People learn. You're right about one thing, thou. Wobbling le patron is a world-class sport there. They might've even written this. Now think a bit, dummy. Whatta 'bout leaning on PW, the SS, DND, CEDA, CP, CPP, F+D, EI, External Affairs and the rest of 'em with this stuff?"

Door open, winter's chill leaked in and a draft rattled the tree. It seemed to whimper a bit at the new breeze. V'Kee picked his head up as he sniffed the great outdoors along with Wolfy. Marsha was now cuddling into him, after another quick sniff or two of Wolfy's singed hair odor; Wolfy was looking forlorn again. V'Kee shook his head and wrapped an arm around her.

"Nope, no go. Like CSIS, Ports-can and all the rest. They're mostly Mont Royal traffic now. The admin hires from the old bi-ling family-compact, the family funnels all their spending back home. Even t-shirt money from the squad managers in Nat.Rev.Can.Tax gets channeled back, fergoshsake. Nothing for us there."

"So what do we do with this thing? It's only chapter titles!" asked Marsha, shivering in the wind. "Hey, it's cold already. Somebody get that car STARTED!"

"Wolf, you still got they keys? Go start the car. That's what the meeting is for, girl. A brain-washing session. Call up the trooplings, wouldja? We gotta get beyond the feds trying to force-feed the electronic age to Montreal, Triads to BC, the wheat-board to Saskatchewan, or PEI to McDonald's." Hanson looked cheerfully at the blowing snow outside. "This memo is our ticket out, people; there's a handle for us in here somewhere."

Hanson looked happy with the leak. Nobody seemed to notice the tree hiccup, give a small treeish giggle and settle into it's pail happily, shaking out a few more needles and a couple drips of slush onto the carpet.

Marsha did not look quite as over-joyed as the dwarf did. "Right. Christmas Eve and you want an emergency meeting of the GLA. The Divine rite of Lynch-mobs group, Ontario wing? The Ninja-jo squad? Maybe the entire GLA? You're nuts. Nobody is gonna show, it's Christmas Eve."

Looking aggrieved, Hanson waved a retrieved memo at her. "Listen hon, we go eat donuts for an hour or two or we try to decorate a frozen, dripping tree right now. Your choice."

There was a small pause as everyone considered this. Then they started getting dressed. "Right. Donuts it is." Chorused the protesters. Marsha reached into a pocket and revved up her cell-phone, busily e-mailing copies and pics of the memo to the collection of probable no-shows. The whole group stomped out, heading for the car and settled in, still yakking.

In the quiet they left behind the tree giggled, slowly stretched out it's branches and sighed happily. Then hiccuped and giggled again.

***

"Look. Forrent. What's that?" Pointing out the sign in a nearby shop-window, Marsha seemed puzzled as she settled into her chair. "There's lots of those signs around town these days. What're they up to?" she asked, pointing to another one in another shop in the mall. Hanson groaned and tugged his ski-mask loose.

"Airhead. Not forrent. For rent." He explained in a small, quiet voice. "While we on that topic, drop the 'crim' stuff tonight too, wouldja? Discrim-ination and crim-inization are not the same thing. Honest. Don't bring it up."

"Crimny. OK, crap-for-brains. If you say so." Hurt, Marsha seethed into her seat at the donut shop and eyed the crullers Wolfy was bringing over, angrily stirring her coffee with a clanky spoon.

"Listen, boys. The only feedback we're getting tonight is from Trevor the troll." She started as everyone got settled and got at least one bite into their crullers.

"Ya really wanna hear the TT on cultural corruptions?" She looked around at the happy munching faces around her and nodded to herself. "Yes? OK, here goes."

"Pick one. Aristocratic corruption in BC, giving out land-scams. Mercantile stuff. Three pages."

"Investment corrosion in Alberta, by-buying the govt. Bad, bad pun there. Five pages.' "Pay as you vote, Ontario. Phone-ins. Globalism. Applied Big-Brother tech in Quebec, 6 pages. Adventurism here in Ottawa, ie: getting food+drug to use the country as guinea pigs for bio-tech."

"He goes on for ages and ages. There's nothing usable for the GLA in it at all."

Shaking her excitedly, Marsha waved her cell at the rest of the room and slapped it down on the table. Most of the room was watching her chest heave; she seemed to be enjoying it.

"Then he gets worse. Listen to this one. 'The passionate don't care except for their passions, their desires. Like, want, need, should. The vain and greedy are just as bad. Bull, screwups, patronage, it doesn't matter. You live by it, you die by it; a lesson most cultures never learn. Even Canadian ones.'"

"Like, want, need, should. Um, that sounds familiar. He'll be talking about rational management next. Or the passionate not developing past want." Wolfy stretched his arms over his head and grinned, a fairly horrible sight that only Marsha found vaguely reassuring.

"Maybe he'll mutter about will to power into his beard tonight. Yah, Trevor is reading psy again, shut him down." Sighing, Wolfy bit into his cruller hungrily.

"Back on track, people." he said around a hairy and crumby lip. "We need a way to shake our beloved Greely back out of the outskirts of Ottawa's clutches, not tickle a cultural fancy."

"Tickle a historically scared cow, you mean. And bull. Bah. Our members need love too, Wolfy. Poor Trevor. His haunting demon is a real nasty one." V'Kee mentioned quietly.

"Out for vengeance, it is. Uncle Morris says it's someone Trevor helped once... and someone who died of it. Someone that didn't want any help. Trevor did a physic prayer on him without being asked. It took. Now a demon is using his newfound abilities to destroy him."

"I've heard. No good deed unpunished. Shoulda never cured the guy of his love of beer like that." Hanson agreed solemnly. "Ruined his whole life for him."

"OTTAWA, boys!" Wolfy started sounded annoyed and sprayed a few crumbs around as he choked that out, glaring at the rest of the group. "And girls. Get on the pager already."

"GLA. The rotten cannibalistic city-state of Ottawa. A billion-dollar baby with all the usual crime-lords, developer's slush-funding, nepotism, paving-crew shoot-outs and a police department that had 90% of the senior staff quitting The last expansion Ottawa ate Nepean's city-hall, remember? This time they ate us up. We need a plan!"

"Naw. It's Christmas Eve. We need to decorate the tree." Marsha reminded him gently. "Come on gang, lets go home. The revolution can wait till we open our presents."

"Good idea. 'Sides, I want to hang the Borg cubes I got in a good spot." V'Kee agreed happily with Marsha. "They're great ornaments. I've always had a soft spot for assimilating things."

"Uck. Like the City does. It ass'ed us!" Hanson protested, still hurriedly stuffing cruller into his mouth.

"Yeah. We know." V'Kee sighed heavily, shaking his head. "The MS method, right? Steal it, duke it out in court for 15 stewing years, say your sorry, pay 'em off with peanuts. Meanwhile your victim is long dead."

"So is everyone else! Ya don't accept corruption, ever." Wolfy looked upset again.

"Not in taxis, not in zoning. Come on, man! City hall reeks. 20 projects in downtown for certain developers, the rest of the city smothered."

"Man, that council. If they could smuggle, they'd do it." Wolfy groaned again and slurped the last of his coffee down.

"Power corrupts, that's for sure. Kanata hydro and farmer votes for instance. Ya'd think they'd encourage industry insteada fake English schools, but no!

"A few private clubs stay underground. A stable of known, replaceable criminals rather than gang-wars? Watch the zoning commissioner get gunned down in a parking lot again? No. All cities are like this nowadays. Ya gotta fight it, not bull your way in."

"No money in fighting, pal." Hanson started heavily, eyeing Wolfy carefully. "And that's the problem. We gotta find a way to cut Greely loose by making it a paying proposition for them."

"Before we bankrupt our supporters by freezing 'em out of the action, right? Naw, not today. Let's get home and decorate the tree before it's time to take it down again." Marsha leaned over and whacked Wolfy gently on the shoulder. "And you. You should learn to control those urges of yours, buddy. Some of 'em, anyway."

Wolfy looked sheepish, as much as it was possible for him to do.

It wasn't very convincing.

***

"She's giggling again."

The CCC cell of the GLA sat and watched the dyraid in their living room carefully. Some more carefully then others, as the only thing the green, shapely young lady was wearing was a long string of flapping mistletoe wrapped around herself.

And a smile. "I know she is. It's cute." Shrugging his coat off, V'Kee sat back on the couch. He looked around the group as the Dyraid spun and giggled in the lazy-boy chair in her corner of the room. "We're agreed , right? She's a spy."

"She's dyraid, not even human." Hanson stuck in. He was nervously pacing back and forth in the living room, looking from the tree to the girl suspiciously. "Lives in a tree-house. Not a spy. She isn't talking to us either. Or listening, really."

"She looks harmless to me." Wolfy gulped hard. Again. "And EI isn't sponsoring dryads these days, are they? I mean, is she a fed plant out to seed trouble here? The way favors were handed out in BC to their imported favorites of the day?"

"A insider?" Hanson shrugged helplessly. "Honestly, we're not worth that kind of effort. We couldn't even be built into something worth that kind of effort. Not unless CSIS has some real losers they want to keep busy. Thumb-footed clowns and political jocks need not apply. Her? No. We'd rate the rabid and real lunatic political finks, joy-oh-joy-oh joy. If anything at all."

"A spy? Not realistic, we have no money. Funds in BC and Sask took all the new Asian money they could." Hanson added absently. "And lost it. Shoe-boxes full of cash too. We have none. Politics is politics, Wolfy. It's dirty but not cheap. Technocrats run things, politics runs things in their favor. Who ya gonna call on? Us?"

There was a sad shake of a Vampire head. "Our culture over your person, that's Quebec. Ouch. Finally, our very own Dyraid and it's a Quebec plot. Maybe just a Montreal one."

"Remember the unions?" He mused quietly. "First thing they did after independence was launch recruiting raids in Ontario. 30% of that province in the silly service, 30% in aerospace, an industry that screams govt subsidy, the tongue-police a cultural institution, 90% of CSIS being native Quebecers, smuggling and the mobs a good chunk of the rest?" V'Kee sighed heavily "She's a spy. Plus, she's mostly naked. And cute. Defiantly a Montreal spy."

"I wonder if she wants everything west of the Mississippi for her own again too. While still not talking to us much." Wolfy added. The dyraid giggled and spun around in her chair some more. Wolfy, Hanson and V'Kee all stopped and watched carefully, mouths open, heads bobbing, tracking her every move. And her distracting flapping mistletoe wreath.

"Quibble is branching out, so what? Sex, violence and money. What's cheapest? You figure out what they'd use on us. Darn it, she doesn't even want to get dressed!" Marsha complained, waving a t-shirt angrily in one fist. "I say we tree the twit again and real soon. Using a nice thick rope to do it is OK by me."

"Now, now, now. It's Christmas. Be nice." Hanson said absently. "Use this little trouble, people. A dyraid, french or not. Think! How can we use this opportunity in the GLA?"

"Get her to campaign for a greener Greely. Trees are people too. No clear-cutting development lots anymore. We'll end up getting shot real quick by developers. The local lumber-kings after us too, eventually." Wolfy put one finger on the side of his nose and narrowed his eyes a little. "There's still lots of mills in Northern Ontario. If we could convince her to run for office..."

"No. Something we can get her to do, please. First, we have to convince her to talk." Hanson blurted out angrily. "And put clothes on. Dress up a little too."

"Probably. Maybe sell her as a real Christmas spirit? That's seasonal." Wolfy mumbled out, still staring at the Dyriad's green barky skin in a doggy way. "A land-spirit? What'd move? Selling trouble and slime about her like your average bad-news Bessy maybe?"

"Whatever people want to believe. Hallo, CSIS? Something here is threatening Quebec supremacy. whatever it is. Now pay us for it. Quiet, now. She's giggling again."

V'Kee mentioned absently. They all watched that intently while Marsha fumed silently at them all. "Heavens, that's a nice giggle. Everything jiggles. Why don't we work on saving her from them, whoever they are. She does look like an innocent to me." V'Kee said quietly, appreciating the art in motion with a feverish but glazed look in his eyes.

"And she's innocently... Oh crap!" Marsha fumed as the dyraid stopped spinning and picked up a loose tree ornament from a box, looking at it absently. "Now what she up to?"

"Hey, lemme show ya what to do with that, girl." Wolfy started quietly, trying to grin at the girl. It was a horrible sight. He gently removed the flashy Borg-Cube from the dyraid's slightly wooden fingers and turning, hung it on the tree for her.

The cube blinked and offered to assimilate the room. The dyraid watched absently for a few more seconds, head tilted. Then her eyes widened, she grinned broadly and she started giggling again; clapping her hands too.

Or trying to clap, really. She missed her clap a fair amount of the time, but the intent and the joy was there. So was the fairly wooden rattle of her little fingers banging together occasionally.

The men in the room leaped up and promptly started hanging decorations on the tree in a sudden blaze of furious festive activity, Hanson was taking the low end of things happily.

"Swell. Now she gets a dress-up party." Marsha grumped."Why don't we go whole-hog on this and get her a boyfriend too?" She groused, folding her arms against her chest grumpily as she glared at them.

"A boyfriend? Sure. I volunteer." Hanson, Wolfy and V'Kee all said in unison, struggling for room around the tree, all rapidly hanging tinsel, strings of lights and boxes of odd Gothic ornaments in a fairly sporadic and random way all over the tree.

"Oops. Boys, wait! Better check Woody out. She's not doing so well." Marsha suddenly stuck into the furious rattling of decorations. "Something is setting in over there. That's a record-setting speed-hangover, that's for sure."

The dyraid had stopped spinning and giggling and was hanging her head almost to her knees now, hands at her temples and grimacing painfully. There was real agony in her delicate features.

"Gotta be the tinsel you're putting on her spiritual home, Hanson. Told ya so." growled Wolfy, putting on more ribbons and icicles even while turning around to look at the dyraid. "Take it off."

"Naw. It's V'Kee's weirdness that's hurting her." Hanson spat out. "Borg cubes and bat ornaments, no wonder she's sick."

"Whoa. She's fading out." Marsha breathed in disbelief. "Look at that. For a second there I could see right thru her."

"You're right. We've got to do something, she is disappearing." V'Kee sounded smug.

"Leaving. Uncle Morris says her tree is dying and so is she. She has to move to a new tree soon or fade away." V'Kee sounded superior and gloating with his news. No one challenged his information, thou there were more than a few dirty looks shot his way.

"Hey, it's Christmas eve. What else would ya wanna do other than help move a new friend to a new home?" Hanson started wearily, wiping one eye sadly. "Err. Anybody know of a real friendly tree around here? An empty one?"

All eyes went to Wolfy, who blushed. "Try the one in the front yard." He finally growled, embarrassed. "But don't tell 'em I sent ya. It'd ruin me."

"Ruin you? How?" Asked Marsha curiously. "Oh, never mind. Somebody get the twig-twit... Hanson, don't grab her there. And don't try to grab her anywhere you sink in... That's it, V'Kee. Get her up now, she's fading fast. Quick, Wolfy, get the front door open. Move! Where's that tree?"

"Out on the front lawn, stupid." Wolfy growled, hurt. "The big green thing out there, remember? And I object to everyone thinking I know a friendly tree from an unfriendly one. That's discrimination."

"Shutup, Wolfy. So how do we move her into a new tree-house? Anyone know? Tabernack, that's cold!" Hanson shivered and pulled his shoulders in as he stomped out, holding up his end of the dyraid carefully. "And me with no boots on. Crap!"

"Sock it to ya, sock it to ya." Mumbled Wolfy quietly as he walked behind, helping haul the slumping Dyraid. "Tis the season, I guess."

The small group clumsily stomped their way out to the tree in their socks, sinking to their knees in soft powder snow, constantly shifting their grip and grabbing for the dyraid's as she melted thru their fingers. Only Wolfy and V'Kee seemed unaffected by the bitter cold.

"Um. V'Kee. Does Uncle Morris have any suggestions on this?" Marsha asked as the group stopped hesitantly beside the tree with a rapidly fading and semi-transparent dyraid slipping thru in their hands. The vampire shrugged and shook his head no.

"Try leaning her up against the trunk." Hanson started. "Oops. That's the way. Look, she's going in."

"Maybe. Maybe she's going out instead." Growled Wolfy, snaring a little at the tree. "Forever, like." The rest of the small group said nothing as the dyraid melted into the tree in front of them and silently disappeared.

"Well, I guess that's it." Wolfy said quietly, picking up the string of plastic mistletoe left behind and sniffing sadly at it. "She's gone now, right?"

"Right. I'm heading back in." Hanson muttered, stamping his feet in the snow and shoving his hands into his armpits. "We can figure the rest of this out somewhere warm."

"Agreed." The whole group trotted back into the house, banged the door closed and made domestic noises for a few moments while pulling cold, soggy socks off and warming chilled hands up.

"Wolfy, stop pouring booze into the water-pail. It won't help her anymore." Marsha sighed and looked at the shelter-shelterly decorated tree. "If it ever did. Yuck. You boys even that deco mess out, then we'll get the presents out. Wolfy, where are they?"

"Yours are still in..." Wolfy started, then blushed and quickly snapped his mouth shut. He blushed and seemed to evaporate from the room, going to fetch his stash of presents.

"V'Kee?" Marsha started challengingly. The vampire put an innocent look on his face and moved over to settle the tree decorations a little. He was gone in the blink of an eye, thou. "Hanson?" She finished, staring down at the dwarf. The dwarf just eyed her, muttered evilly to himself and stomped away.

"Merry Christmas, girl. Good luck." Marsha sighed and whispered to the tree out on the front lawn. "And to all A Good Knight. Even you." She finished happily, leaning over and tweaking a Borg Christmas cube-ornament into a more stable position.

END
  1. chapter 1 easy chair killer
  2. chapter 2 blood bank
  3. chapter 3 blank ticket
  4. chapter 4 voodud
  5. chapter 5 snivel follies
  6. chapter 6 book 2
  7. chapter 7 gla zombie march
  8. chapter 8 goth tech
  9. chapter 9 a Christmas stalking

  1. Cover

