Asimov's SF, October-November 2011 (29 page)

"Murray, you dumb chimp! What kind of an operation are we running here? What happened to professionals, huh? What do I pay you for?” I stab a finger downward. “Carry the damn equipment down and pick up my tools!"

Murray scrambles down the tree with a harried look. I scamper down the other side where Embassy security won't get a good look at me. At the bottom of the tree, we're shielded from view. Murray is fumbling my screwdrivers out of the grass of the park like he's preening the lawn. Sirens whine in the distance.

"All right! All right! Come on! Forget the screwdrivers! Get in the car!"

We high tail it (no pun intended) to my Renault 4L, the finest car produced in its price range in France, Colombia, and Slovenia in the early seventies. As far as I know, there are no other cars in this price range. I won it in a drunken contest of strength from a big, ham-handed gorilla who got deported a few weeks ago.

Those two events are entirely unrelated, by the way.

He was pissed when he found out about my myofibril-augments, but like they say, you shouldn't hustle people strange to you.

The little red box of a car leans heavily to the passenger side as Murray gets in. I'm too light to balance it when I get behind the wheel. I'd love to squeal the tires to make our getaway, but I'm still learning the clutch, and it doesn't have nearly as many horses under the hood as . . . well, anything. Still, I get it up to thirty-five. We're on the main road and into thick traffic long before the flashing lights come into view.

"Damn it, Murray! Do you know how much money you just blew us?"

"Sorry, boss,” he says. Murray's got a strong, slow accent from the Chimpanzee townships to the south.

"This business is all about reputation! Do you think anyone is going to hire me, hire us, if we can't grease an old bonobo in a diaper?"

"Sorry, boss."

"And Murray, I can't stress this enough. If I'd have killed her, I wouldn't have had to have seen her diaper fall down."

"I won't do it again, boss."

Last week was so much more promising. Gibbons and Bonobos are pretty stuck up about jobs having to do with death. They don't do them. It's beneath them. You can't pay most Gibbons love or money to euthanize the decaying elderly. I was running out of time on my visa pretty fast and staring at deportation to macaque territory if I didn't find a scam soon. That's when I fell into the euthanasia business. I acquired a failing company from a low status Gibbon with a gambling problem. How hard can euthanasia be? The clients want to die, right?

That business deal got me an extension on my visa. All I had to do was turn a profit and I could do that any time I wanted, just so long as it was within ninety days. Problem was, the bigger whack shops, made up mostly of hulking gorillas, had cornered the euthanasia market. Also, I knew nothing about needles, dosages, or the sterile technique.

That's when I got my great idea. Imagine this ad on late-night TV: “Is your time up? Die with excitement and adventure! Struggle to the very end! Hire an international assassin to finish the job that nature started! If you see it coming, you get your money back!"

It doesn't matter that I'm not really an assassin. Most of business is image and branding, right? I'm exotic. I'm international. That's why Gibbon Immigration wants to deport me back to my shit-hole country where military coups come more often than Christmas.

Gibbon country has great euthanasia laws. They don't specify how it has to be done. And their weapon laws favor the rugged individualist in each of us. There are plenty of places in this town I wouldn't walk without a high-powered rifle and a bulletproof chimpanzee. So International Hit Squad was born. I even got six column-inches on page twelve of the
Gibbontown Shopper,
the third-most-read free paper in the capital, right under the story about the debate on zoning changes. You can't pay for that kind of publicity.

Clients were slower to react than the press corps. It took two weeks for the first one. Unfortunately it was Alexandra, the harpy they use to scare little Bonobo children at night. A bodyguard wheeled the saggy bitch into my office. I'd put on my best business face.

"Fucking macaque!” she said when she saw me. Then she spit on my floor. I shit you not. She spit on my floor. Who spits on a floor?

"How can I help you, ma'am?” I held a clipboard to give myself an air of efficiency.

"Your operation is bullshit!” she yelled. She yelled everything. Her bodyguard, a biggish Bonobo with a heavy pistol on his hip, rolled his eyes.

"I beg your pardon, ma'am?” I asked.

"I read your ad,” she said. “This is a big scam! You can't deliver shit in a pot, much less give me an exciting death!"

"You'll never know when I strike, ma'am. You'll never see me coming.” I smiled my confidence-inspiring, businessman smile.

The bitch spit on my floor again.

"I was a sergeant in the Bonobo Marines!” she said. “I worked close protection for the Bonobo Secret Service and kept a senator alive during the Gibbon invasion. No one can sneak up on me, least of all a goddamn poseur of a macaque!"

I shrugged. “My guarantee is there, ma'am. If you see me coming, you get your money back."

"It's a scam."

"Try me out,” I said. “Unless you're yellow."

She slapped her wrinkly hand on the armrest of her wheelchair. She looked like she was having an aneurysm, foaming and sputtering. I didn't want her to die. She hadn't signed the contract yet.

"Bring it on, little man."

My eyes narrowed and I felt my augmented muscles debating whether to choke the bitch right here. Sure, there are lots of smaller primates, and macaques aren't very big, but everyone, and I mean everyone, knows we hate being called little. Racist bitch. Macaques just have delicate bones.

I snapped a contract onto the clipboard and shoved it at her. “You'll never see me coming, ma'am. Whatever you think you knew way back when has been made obsolete, just like you."

Little veins on her neck thumped under papery, dark skin. White spit collected at the points of her mouth.

She scrawled her name across the bottom of the sheet and threw it back at me.

"It's on!” she yelled.

"Not yet!” I yelled over her.

She'd signed in the wrong spot. As a businessman, I'm a stickler for detail. I handed her a fresh contract and put an X where she had to sign. “Do it right, this time!"

Her long, old fingers flexed and released, like she wanted to slap me. Then she filled out the whole form. Then, she signed in neat little letters and handed it back to me. I looked at it.

Oh shit.

Listed next of kin was the Bonobo ambassador. Address, the ambassador's residence. That place was crawling with security.

She cackled when she saw my expression change. “And I've got augments, little man,” she said, pointing at her eyes. “I can see farther than a hawk and I've got nothing to do all day but watch for you.” She cackled louder and signaled for her bodyguard to wheel her out.

Damn.

After being chased out of a tree on my first attempt to off the hag, I hire a Gibbon to do some surveillance work. She's an aging street vendor with long arms and pale, thick fur. She trundles a soup cart around, and with my encouragement, sets herself up close to the Bonobo ambassador's official residence. The Bonobos don't go near her, but the Gibbon diplomatic police, tall, black-eyed, with white belts and holsters, take their cigarette breaks beside her cart, nursing cups of soup, and sometimes something harder. Good girl.

At the end of the third day, she tells me that one of the diplomatic cops said that the ambassador's mother is going shopping on Saturday at the crafts market. Sweet. The crafts market has lots of cover and is crawling with Gibbons and foreigners. Murray and I can blend in.

Early on Saturday, Murray, loaded with my gear, follows me in. It rained yesterday and the market stinks of wet fur and fine mud overlaying older paving stones. The stalls, framed in wood, are covered by woven tarps of so many colors that it looks like a rainbow barfed on the whole sprawling hippie-fest. The stalls creak under the worthless weight of woven grass baskets, wooden masks, carved salad spoons, and hemp blankets. Nothing here couldn't have been made better and cheaper by a good, solid, greenhouse-gas-producing machine.

The market had congealed a long time ago around an old cathedral tower. The rest of the cathedral had burnt down or been knocked down or something, but the old tower is still there. I bribe some janitorial type and he lets us in. We wind our way up the damp, rotting stairwell and I set myself up on the fourth floor, where the absent old bell has left a space for a marksman with a rifle to cover most of the place. I leave my dumb-ass sidekick on the landing and he's only too happy to not be involved.

Don't get me wrong. Murray's good at some stuff. I just haven't found what it is yet. He's loyal though, like a stupid dog. If he hadn't married my sister, I would have booted his ass a long time ago.

I can see the parking lot and it doesn't take me long before I see a dark Ford Bronco with tinted windows and diplomatic plates driving in. I watch through the scope. I recognize Alexandra's Bonobo bodyguard by the balding head and the long vertical wrinkles around his lips. He and the driver help the witch out and put her into the wheelchair. She looks positively delighted today. Although, to be honest, the Bonobo bitch could have gas for all I can figure out of their expressions sometimes. Still, there's something.

Good day to die, you old hag.

I have a clear shot at any of a dozen positions once she's in the market. I aim my scope down the rows of stalls, looking for where the most surprising shot could happen. Should I shoot her in the head as she's looking at something, or in the chest as she's paying? I want her to know it was me. She paid for surprise. Still, a paycheck is pretty important. This one will put me in the clear for a while, and will sort out my immigration problems.

Lots of customers, even early in the morning. Lots of old Gibbon ladies, but more of the button-down crowd than I expected. Slumming? Faux new-agers? I scan a few through the scope. They're big Gibbons, mostly males, picking at the merchandise. They've got smocks on, the latest Gibbon fashion. These guys all have one hand in their pockets. Cops? Doesn't matter. I'm not doing anything illegal. I've got a license for the rifle. No receipt, but a license. And I've got a contract signed by Miss Bitchy herself to kill her. I'm golden.

One of the Gibbons looks a little familiar. Long black hair, pronounced eye ridges, wrinkled face hanging off the nose ridge, black skin and pinkish lips. Over his forehead is a receding V of baldness. Why does he look familiar?

Fuck.

I've seen him a few times. He's an immigration supervisor. Scanning the market. Now that I look closer, I recognize a few others. All immigration officers. Not mine, but pretty much everyone else. Shit. They're holding passport readers in their pockets and walking through the crowd. The chips in Gibbon ID cards, as well as the smart passports and RFID visas of foreigners, are all automatically checked. I pat my chest pocket. Passport and visa are there. Good. They'll stand a cursory check, but if I get too close . . . not so much.

My visa troubles, as I said, are mostly solved. I didn't say they were solved legitimately. The business visa in my passport isn't exactly mine. Let's leave it at that.

But what the hell is immigration doing here? Lots of foreigners here, for sure, but doesn't immigration have bigger fish to fry? I huddle close to the corner, only the end of my black scope showing above the sill. I scan. I spot the bodyguard pushing the wheelchair of my diapered Bonobo target. Her flabby, drooling mouth is spread into a wide grin.

That bitch!

She set me up.

She tipped off immigration.

I can probably make it out of here without running into them, but she's daring me to put a round between her smug, black eyes and draw attention to myself. The cops will swarm the place. Then I'll show my euthanasia license. Of course, seeing as how I'm a macaque, immigration will want to have a look at me. A close look.

God, I hate old people.

I kick the wall, startling Murray. He sticks out his bearded bottom lip, and his pink ears look even more awkward sticking out of the sides of his head.

"We're heading downstairs, Murray,” I whisper. “This place is crawling with immigration."

His big eyebrows rise in alarm. I sorted out his immigration problems, kind of the same way I sorted out mine, but I didn't spend as much money on it. There aren't a lot of immigration officers who'll believe that Murray is a visiting professor of physics. Don't get me wrong. Some Gibbons are absolutely stupid. I just don't want to bank an operation on Mister Tenure Track here.

"Come on,” I say, and lead the way downstairs and out the door. Murray follows, lugging my gear.

I swing him to the left, and spot one of those buttoned-down types at the other corner of the tower. He's scanning the crowd, looking away right now. I pull Murray to the right, almost setting our fur on fire on an open charcoal grill. An old Gibbon lady is making tortillas. Murray squeals. We weave around her. Lots of people around, but I'm starting to think that maybe we stand out a little. Two foreigners carrying non-hippie gear. Yeah, which one of these things doesn't belong in a handicrafts bazaar?

I grab us two Andean-style ponchos at a stall decorated with old, framed lithographs of dragons, rainbows, and unicorns. Murray admires them. I shove the poncho over his head. Watch unicorns on someone else's dime. I pay the Gibbon weaver more than I want to for the ponchos, but we look a lot less conspicuous now.

An immigration guy is sort of standing nonchalantly at the other end of this alley, too. I pull Murray with me between two stalls, shoving past some Gibbons smoking on stools while they weave dream catchers.

"Go back where you came from!” one of them yells after us.

I lick my finger and flip him the bird.

We find a narrow alley, undertrafficked, with lots of puddles. The stalls here are filled with specialty stuff. If you want rings of South German mettwurst or dried Baltic cod with wrinkled eyes, I can now point you here. This alley crosses a couple of busier ones, but immigration seems to be staking out the bigger intersections. Still, I don't let myself react until we're in the Renault, on the road, and in second gear.