by DarkMark

part 2

Even for something like Breakdown, I didn’t miff a date with Karen King.  In that, I think she holds the whip hand, and I’m perfectly comfortable with it being there.  Within limits, of course.  I’m lonely, but not as lonely as I’d be without her.  And I use a lot less vapors with her around.

But I really wasn’t up to much of the Italian, Irish, or Viet food that the waiters tried to foist on me that night.  Actually, what I needed I needed to drink.  Alcohol and stomach flattener.  I ordered their blandest pasta and toyed with it between the booze.

Karen leaned over with her green eyes leading.  "You’re inattentive.  Why aren’t you tracking on me?"

I looked at her.  She was wearing a modest enough black blazer and pants, but had one of those sticktite halters under it and was bare-stomached under the blazer.  The only things she wore for shoes were those plastic see-thru soles that adhered to the bottom of your feet.  I should have been tracking all over her, as Karen knows how to build her personal portfolio most nicely from a modest base.

However, she hadn’t seen a human head poking up out of a floorful of paste that night.  "Work," I said.  "You know how it is."

She looked down at the Vietnamese-style chicken she was twirling on the plate with her fork, then up at me again.  "I only know some of it, Rog.  The stuff I get out of you in bed, most often."

I ate some pasta just to make sure I had time to formulate an answer.  "This kind of stuff you don’t even want in bed, believe me."  I didn’t really want to ponder the double entendre.  It was just too much.

"You know what I would like?" she asked.

I shrugged.  "A partner that was more open with you, maybe?  A guy with a job in a safe firm where he doesn’t get shot at?"

She shook her head.  "I’d like to see you laugh and smile a whole bunch more.  The way you do when you’re around Pamela."  Pam was her daughter and she was right.  I did smile a lot when I was around that blonde-headed half-pint.   I enjoy kids, especially semi-bright ones like Pamela.  She could almost get me to talk about what I did.  Almost.

I tried smiling.  "This any better?"

"Would be if it wasn’t so forced."

I exhaled and set my fork aside.  "Look.  Karen.  Is it okay for your digestion if I tell you that I was attacked today, and that isn’t even what’s upsetting me?"

"My digestion," she said, slowly, "is fine.  And I’m sorry you got attacked, Rog.  How badly?"

"Got punched up a bit.  Painease took care of it.  Should’ve seen the other guy."

"A mutant?"

"What do you think?"

"I think I’d like to know what else it is you found."

I shook my head.

"Is that why you were late?"

"I was late because I called my dear friend Inspector Casey and had him send one of his flying squads down to check out what I had found.  Had to tell them about it.  Even when I told them I had a date with you, they wanted to know what I knew."

"I do too, Rog," she said.  I don’t know how she managed to display more cleavage under her mesh when she did that, but she did.  It almost distracted me from the concern in her eyes.

"No, you don’t."

"Oh," she said.  "So you don’t think I’m supposed to be concerned when your life is at stake?"  She pulled up some of the chicken and vegetables on her fork and ate thoughtfully, looking at me while she did it.

"It’s that way all the time."  I tried to shovel in as much food as I could.

"Not all the time," she said.  "If you quit this job, it’ll end.  No more of that—"

"Some people have a damned long memory."  I threw down some of the Viet beer.  It was easy to tell where this was heading and I wanted to get as much out of dinner as I could before it happened.

"Roger."  She leaned across the table to grasp one of my wrists.  I thought about shaking it off but didn’t.   "How long will it be before you’re just a memory to me?"

"Don’t know."  The mutton was good, especially with the green sauce.  I was going to have to get a carry-out.  I knew it, I knew it.  "Isn’t that your decision?"

"Damn it, I’m not talking about leaving you.  I’m talking about you dying."

I paused, looking at her over the tablecloth that shifted colors every twenty seconds, from red to soft purple to powder blue to purple to red again.  She wasn’t letting go and I didn’t want to answer just then.  So, while she held one hand, I used the other to keep forking up what was on my  plate.  It seemed there was less on my plate than there should have been at that point.

She still didn’t let go.

I ate to give myself time and was giving myself heartburn as well.  Didn’t do much to help my disposition.  "Karen, why the hell are you like this tonight?  Just tell me why.   Why are you doing this to me tonight?"

She released my wrist and sat back.  "Because you do this to me just about every night."

"That isn’t true."

"It is true that I love you, I want to see more of you, and I don’t want to be a widow before I even get married to you."  She paused.  "And quit feeding your face at double-Mach when I’m talking to you?"

"Oh, god."  I put the fork down.    She was sitting there, not eating, both hands in her lap.  "The reason I eat this fast is because I know we’re going to have to get up from the table before I’m finished."

She took a long pause before she said, "It isn’t like this all the time, Rog."

"You’re right.  It isn’t."  I couldn’t eat any more.  The gut was about to go on strike as it was.  "Why is it like this now?"

Karen put her elbows on the table and  buried her hands in her black hair.  "Because you’re in the middle of something.  When you’re between these things, it’s different.  You’re different."

I looked at Karen and saw the soft whiteness underneath the black of her outfit and hair.  I knew her for a woman, a mother, a worker / artist, a lover.  She had to be tough in the right places to do all those things, and, great god, she was.  But there were other places that I didn’t think she was tough enough in.  Or perhaps I  did not want her to have to be tough in them.  Bad enough I had to be, or that I thought I did.

How in hell could I expect her to put Pamela to bed without haunted eyes if I told her everything I’d seen as a Hunter?  Or even what I’d seen tonight?  A guy’s head protruding from a plane surface of human paste?   I had to keep pushing it to one side so I could even eat.

There were other people eating, talking, laughing, experiencing other things, in a universe just a few feet beyond our table.  Perhaps they were as cut off from our world as we were from theirs.  Restaurants are nexuses between dimensions, perhaps.

The only problem was that you had to go back to your own world when you were finished.

"I’m sorry, Karen.  I thought I was between things, too.  This just came up."

"It always just comes up," she said.  "It always does.  Well?"

"Well, what?"

"Aren’t you going to do the bit for the carry-out?"

Her face was as stony as a statue of Medea and I wondered what it cost her to look that way.

I passed my hand over the light-trigger on the table.  A center section rotated towards me and popped up with a plastic box.  I took it out and started shoveling dinner into it.  "Sometimes you make me sick, Karen."

"It’s a communicable disease," she said.  Karen reached in her purse and fit a keychip into the slot provided for such on the table.  I didn’t mean us to go Dutch, but there it was.  She stood up and started to go.

"Karen," I said.  "It’d really help me if you could be there when I need you."

She didn’t turn around, but she did pause.  "I always am."

Then she did go.  Some diners in alternate universes looked at us for a polite moment and then got back to their own realms.  I got an antacid from another table section.  When the battle died out in my stomach, I followed, but she was gone.

It was time to hit the Traveltube for home.  Should’ve been routine.  You hardly ever get in trouble inside those things.  Just get in, input your destination in the Finder, step onto the Belt, get in the seat, grab those metal handles and hang on till you get there.  Plastic tube with a great view of the outside if you were above ground and of pink-painted metal facing if you were underneath it.

Occasionally there’s a mugging, but not often.  The things are monitored, every inch, and a guard can come in at every stop along the way.  Plus an automated sleepgas nozzle can kick in when a guy on monitor duty detects nasty activity.  And the thing travels at such speeds that a mugger has to be really, really good at keeping his balance at high speed.  I know how to take care of myself and I’ve got my Neut, so I didn’t worry that much.

I should’ve worried that I wasn’t worrying enough to be wary of it.  But I had other things on my mind.  Such as Breakdown, such as Karen, such as Rael and his talk about my readings.  I held the clear box with dinner on it in my lap and planned to raise my knees when we decelerated so that it wouldn’t spill off.

The Tube slowed near my stop and I punched a control that let a push-arm shove my section into a holding bay while the rest of the belt moved on.  I’ve got a land car, true, but it’s a lot cheaper this way and I don’t like trying to find a place to park.

The two guys flowed out of the wall of the holding bay like ghosts.  Both of them looked like muscle.  I had my Neutralizer out as soon as I saw them phasing in.  That’s a rare talent and I don’t know if either of them could really do it or if they were riding someone else’s.  One in a blue suit, the other in green casuals.  Holding the mutton and pasta under one arm, I went with a double-strength charge.

It spattered off an energy web one of them erected in front of them both with a raise of his hand.  Neat power.

I was about to hit the Commchip in my thumbnail when the bigger of the two (and both were larger than me, which was probably why they were singled) slammed me in the side of the head with an open hand that was stone.  Not like stone.  It literally was stone.

I went flying as I saw, peripherally, a guard running up.  The web-making guy was turning to do something to him.  I didn’t see what it was because Stone Hand was looming over me with a mitt that was coming down fast.

Did I ever tell you something else I don’t like about mutants?

They hardly ever seem to need weapons.

******

When you wake up after being knocked unconscious, you always seem to need to throw up.

There was light, of a dim sort of variety, the kind you might find in an atmospheric bar, and I couldn’t make out much of the two forms in front of me at that point, other than that they were too small to be the pair who had racked me.  One of them knew what he was doing and shoved a pan under my chin.  I think I managed to say "Thank you" before it happened.

Once it was over, the other guy said, "We’ve saved the rest of your dinner for you, Mr. Black.  I think you might be needing it."

"Don’t…mention it," I said, focusing my vision and lurching off the bench on which they’d laid me.  I was in a small, yellow-walled room that seemed to be as functional as hell.  There was a door in the opposite wall and I intended to try for it as soon as I had the situation sized up and my head compressed back into a semblance of itself.  The two guys with me didn’t look like they much cared what I thought.

There was a time in history, I’m told, when mutants on both sides dressed up in colorful costumes as kind of badges of what they were.  Those times were not ours.  Now, the muties on both sides wore normal dress and tried not to look as outsiders.  They had enough trouble as it was.

The guy who’d done the speaking was an inch or two over six feet, fairly massed, with a chest and arms big enough to show that he’d pumped enough iron to construct a small landcar out of it.  But his beard and hair had grey streaks, he had a nose that looked strong enough to indent concrete, and his eyes, brown and alert, gave one the impression that he knew who was in charge here and, baby, it wasn’t you.

In one of them he had an antique monocle.  I’d never seen anyone wear one of those things, really, before now.  But there it was, and he managed to keep it in without having it fall out.  Must have been a mutant trait.

His suit was coal grey and his shoes were brown with what looked like metallic soles.  For what purpose, I couldn’t guess.

The other bloke was a lot thinner, a few inches shorter, and wore glasses and a white suit that made him look something like a doctor.  He stayed near the other guy, though out of fear for either one of us was impossible to tell.  He’d already disposed of the pan through a wall slot.

"My name—well, actually, my self-given one—is Planar," said the big man.  "My associate is Mr. Corner.  Our names describe our, ah, special attributes.  We don’t demonstrate them unless we absolutely have to."

My overcoat was gone, and the Neutralizer with it.  "You’re Magnusites," I said, to add to the conversation.

"Brilliant," said Planar.  "Can you deduce more, given what clues you have before you?"

I sat back on the bench and rubbed the sides of my head.  "If your pickup guy hadn’t given me such tender attention, I’m sure I could do better."

Corner didn’t say anything, which seemed characteristic of him by now.  But he smiled a bit.  Planar said, "Perhaps I could give you a little clue.  There was a certain artifact you found earlier tonight."

"Didn’t find it," I said, trying to make the pain abate.  "I was taken to it.  A human head.  Cripes, don’t you people know anything about subtlety?"

Planar came a little closer.  "In our business, Mr. Black, subtlety is an unaffordable luxury.  Our callling cards have to be large and blatant."

"Who was the guy you killed?"

"Oh…just some juicebum back from selling his blood," said Planar, shrugging.  "We promised him more money than he could have made in a month of blood-farming.  He agreed."

I scoffed.  "I can imagine."

Corner looked displeased.  Planar said, "Mr. Black.  If the gentleman had survived the test, we would have given him the payment.  We are not without honor.  As he did not, we put the money back in the kitty for further projects."

I leaned back against the wall and exhaled.  "How did the Xavierites get word?"

"We told them.  They had contacts with you and that brought you into the fold, and then the police.  Now it is known what we can do."

"You could kill before this," I said.  "Why go to all this trouble?"

He got in my face, almost.  "Not this dramatically.  The Breakdown serum causes the cell walls of the human body to dissolve.  As you can see, one needs a blotter just to gather enough to bury."

His talk wasn’t helping my head or gut any.  "So you snatched me to tell that to the powers that be?"

Planar nodded.  "Exactly.  Unless we receive what we demand, within 72 hours Breakdown will be unleashed.  If not in this city, in another.  The ‘powers that be’ will have a constituency of paste."

"All right," I said.  "Better start telling me what you demand."

He smiled a bit more, leaning back on his heels, and folded his arms.  "To begin, all anti-mutant laws will be repealed, all mutant persecution will cease, and the Hunters will be disbanded.  Second—"

I hit him with a blow in the side, under the ribs, and it was good enough for me to push past him and shove Corner out of the way at the same time.  The door was right in front of me and I yanked the thing open.  I was out of it by the time I heard him yell.

A hall, painted grey, was in front of me and I ran down the left-hand side of it.  Doors were all up and down the walls.  They bore numbers and they were all closed.  The end of the hall was still some yards away.  I heard Planar behind me holler, "Stop!"  I wasn’t on his payroll and didn’t see the need to.

I made the end of the hall and turned, coming out onto a landing with a clearfibre plastic fence.  Below me was a sight I wasn’t decided on whether I was gratified or horrified to see.

It was an industrial sort of room, with a large vat, several feeding tanks, and a number of workers in blue protective suits that covered their entire bodies.  Probably not built for this purpose, but appropriated and directed to it nonetheless.  I could tell what was being produced there.  What I needed was a way out, and the plastic steps of the stairs just beyond seemed a good start.

Mr. Corner was bounding up them.

He couldn’t have gotten there that quickly.  Not without some sort of, well, mutant power.  So I’d gotten that much established, at least.

I sprinted forward at him and he came at me in a tackle.  The two of us hit and damn near went over the side of the protective fence.  We’d been heard and I could see, peripherally, the workers looking up at us and pointing.  I tried kicking Corner over the fence while he was grabbing the side of my mouth with two fingers.

I think that was when I saw the shining wall behind us on the catwalk materialize and push forward, shoving us back like a pair of hockey pucks.  The damn thing was about as resistable as a juggernaut, or as the Juggernaut, if you remember your history of the 20th.

Whichever, it rolled us back down the hallway to the man who had unleashed it.  Planar.  He was waiting for the both of us.  When we got within reaching distance, he grabbed me with his right hand about the throat and pinned me against the energy wall.  I tried to knee him but he had his hip turned towards me.

"You’ve already seen enough, and more than enough, Mr. Black," said Planar.  "We’ll just send you back with our demands in writing.  First, this."

His other hand had a patch on it, which he slapped on the side of my head.

As I went under, I considered how lucky I had been.  The go-between for both Xavierites and Magnusites, the first one to learn what was really  going down in a bit of national blackmail.

If it hadn’t been for the lumps I’d been taking, losing my Neut, and having to face Rael again before long, I might even have felt proud of myself.

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