Moral Zero (20 page)

It’s all of me.

Red
smelled the scent of sex on the breeze and he looked up but there was nothing to see and he looked down and back at the cat. He dropped his hands from its body and opened his mouth.

There’s somethin
just not right about this life. His voice was low and sombre. It’s so goddamn stale. It’s so fuckin banal and painful. There’s nothin to it. It’s just this whole string of nothin. Wasted potentials and empty livin. It all rings so hollow. I never been able to get over it.

The cat seemed to nod at him, and he continued, his voice cracking.
Nothin means anythin, nothin means anythin to anyone. I want everthin from life and I get nothin in return. I have to take more. I have to take more and more and I still get fuckin nothin. But what choice do I have? If I give up . . . Well. Then I wing my way to oblivion and a graveside with nobody standing over it. Why do you think I push myself, push everone around me? I’m trying to extract some fuckin sensations out of life. Drawin it out like . . . like some blood from a broken fuckin vein. I’m trying to be goddamn
alive
. I’d like to experience life before I die, wouldn’t you? He stared at the cat through blurry eyes and it stared back at him.

Wouldn’t you?
he said again, his voice mumbling lower and lower, turning near indistinguishable from the very rumble of the world. Wouldn’t you. Wouldn’t you.

BAR

Red slept until the
late afternoon. Mr White watched Red sleep and then he wandered the street outside the hotel, blinking in the light. He felt a creature of the night that no longer belonged under the judgement of the sun. There was nothing for him out there and he came back and turned the TV on and once more it was pornos and torture horrors. He switched unenthusiastically between the two. Back and forth. When Red was finally up and dressed they went to the bar. This was Mr White’s suggestion. Red nodded and smiled but his mind did not seem to be in place.

When they had entered the bar and met Johnny, waiting for them as always, and had their first drinks, Red seemed to
pick up, becoming animated once again. He looked at the women around him cavorting so close in their outfits proper and improper, women of all shapes and sizes and ages, all faces and all races, the augs and the implanted and the all-natural, those who gave him the eye and those who didn’t, those who wiggled and drank and those who talked seriously with each other, deeply engaged in more intelligent conversations than Red could follow, and he laughed and laughed. A joke known to nobody. Perhaps not even him.

His eyes
lingered on the voluptuous rear end of a woman in a short brown jacket. She moved confidently and she turned as though feeling his gaze on her and she smirked at him and turned away. Red’s eyes blinked indolently and he smiled like a cat and swivelled back in his seat.

Sure she ain’t
too old for you? Johnny Black’s eyes bore into Red’s.

Ah, for fuck’
s sake man.

You never did explain to me wh
y pedophilia is wrong, let alone murder. Johnny’s eyes glinted. Relishing the argument.

For fuck’s sake.
Not this again. It just is, alright?

A
h. It’s one of those arguments.

Look. I
t’s takin advantage of people, alright?

And why is that wrong?

Because . . . It harms them. I know you don’t give a shit about that.

Tell me why it’s wrong.

It’s not right is it? So it’s wrong.

Fantastic argument. Must everything in this universe be one or the other? Why attach a moral value to it at all?
If I pick up a coin from the floor and put it down again, was that right? Was it wrong?

You think killin someone is . . . morally valueless?

Now we’re getting somewhere. Should it be?

A
fuckin sane person would say yes.

Don’t get me started on what constitutes sanity. Tell m
e again why what I do is wrong.

Don’t
do unto others as they would . . . as you would not have them do unto you. Um.

How poetic.
We’ve been through this before.

If we have I weren’t listening.

Of course. So . . . don’t do unto others . . . Why not?

It’s hypocritical.

Except they are not me. I am as separate from others as I could be. Whatever goes for them, it in no way follows that it goes for myself. I can justify killing others without supposing that I should then accept them killing me. We are different creatures.

Some things just fuckin
are. There’s no talkin to you.

There’s that argument again. Some things just are
. Are you talking about some definitive morality?

I guess.

If a majority of others think what I do is wrong, fine. But the majority ain’t never definitive, and claiming the majority is always right sets some very poor precedent. Johnny inhaled and exhaled a black puff of smoke. Now, if we go by internal morality, and of course, all moral judgements anywhere are self-interested, directly or indirectly . . . well any random choice of moral values could come about. Anybody could pick and choose anything. Taking socks out in the dark and throwing them into different piles. Let’s see now . . . Torture is good. Rape is bad. Am I doing it right? No? Torture is bad, but good if they’re hiding secrets. Rape is bad, but good if the victim’s a bad person themselves. Bad if they’re a woman, good if they’re a man. Thievery is good if you’re stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Murder is good if you’re killing a thief or a trespasser. Capital punishment is just fine. We must kill if we are to teach others not to kill. This is how it’s done, is it?

Yeah, just like that, Red said sarcastically.
I can’t put it plainer then some things just are. I know you don’t see it that way. Maybe I don’t say it’s all for sure, but that’s how I see the world and that’s how most people see and that’s how I continue to. Tellin people there ain’t no fuckin definitive morality, that really ain’t gonna do no good.

Perhaps God judges us. Do you think he offers us that definitive morality, that he’s the
final arbiter who knows what’s wrong and right?

If that’s what you believe
.

Johnny Black took off his hat, raised up his arms and l
ooked up as if to the heavens. God! he yelled out. It’s me God! Johnny Black! If you think anything I’ve done in my life is bad or wrong, smite me down as a wicked sinner else I’m going to keep on doing it, over and over! I will keep killing, God! I will keep torturing and raping!

Keep your fuckin voice down!
Red hissed.

Johnny Black grinned and put his hat back on.
If there is a God, and he is some moral arbiter, you got to factor in two things. First, there is no way of us knowing what this unknowable cosmic force thinks about what is right. He could be thinking murder is just fine and applauding whenever we get on with it. It is, after all, natural within us to rape and kill. He certainly ain’t been consistent with any punishments we could conceivably attribute to his divine interference. Hell, there’s enough infanticide and other divinely sanctioned wickedness in the old books to put even me to shame for my “misdeeds”.

But I won’t go on, all that problem of evil shit has been done to death. There’s the second factor though. Why should I care?
God ain’t me. Well, he could be. Johnny Black smiled and winked. But I am my own person. My morality is my own to hold. I do not care if some big moral judge sits up there in the sky. I’m down here, doing things my way. Alone. Nobody holds rule over me. I don’t surrender that to anybody.

Brilliant.
I don’t know why we have these conversations.

You don’t enjoy them?

I don’t know. I’d rather be fuckin.

A doer not a thinker.

Whatever. Red got up and moved through the bar to approach the woman in the brown jacket. Johnny and Mr White watched him through the ever-changing gaps in the crowd. They watched him appraise her and saw her look at him cockily, smiling with a curled lip. Soon they were in quite animated conversation, the woman laughing and Red laughing also, but with considerably less self-assurance. He kept shifting his weight and looked a little put out.

Mr White was the first to break the silence between them.
Do you really think Red is a paedophile?

No,
said Johnny. I know he ain’t. He’s just an easy target.

Mr White raised his eyebrows.
How do you know he isn’t? After all that you’ve said to him.

Johnn
y put down his whiskey. If we took his conquests of teenagers as all the evidence there was, then he might be an ephebophile, potentially a hebephile at worst, not a pedophile. But Red is none of those. He does not value a child’s body and he does not value innocence.

Red said to me once that there is no
such thing as an innocent girl.

There ain’t
no innocence in any human. Any suggestion of innocence or right to such is taken as soon as we are possessed into existence. But that’s another matter. No, Red ain’t no pedophile, as some of society may be so quick to vilify and lynch him as. Ignorant as most are in such matters, and yet perhaps with good hearts. Sometimes. But Red has no predilection for such things, no set type. There is nothing innate and incurable about his fetishes, merely the wandering lusts of the slavering dog. He just gives a lot less of a fuck about age than most people.

Does tha
t mean that he’s . . . not that bad?

You’ve heard what I
got to say about good and bad.

Red confessed to me that
he thought he was a bad person. Mr White put a hand up to his mouth, as though he felt such a thing should be secret and he had in some way committed a small betrayal. His hand moved at the last second to scratch his head, hoping the cover-up of such a silly reaction was fluid to the eye.

But not from this,
said Johnny, not looking at Mr White.

Not from this. Mr White repeated the words
as if he had to ask himself.

Johnny nodded.
Red is going his own way, as we all are, for better or worse. In sickness and in health he goes. But there is something ill about his manner. He does not believe in what he is doing. He believes he is living a crude and ugly life, full of sin and devoid of meaning. He thinks there is no help for him, that it is how it is and must be.

He smoked and clo
sed his eyes and smoked again. There is only one person that can change Red and that is Kidd Red himself. The question is, is there anyone who could ever give him a good reason to?

I think I feel sorry for him.

Johnny peered at Mr White curiously, and then looked back to his drink. I advise against that.

Mr White said nothing for a while and thought to himself, glancing at Johnny every so often but there was nothing to see. He sipped his water and put the glass back down, observing the way the lights of the bar refracted through the liquid, taking on some new otherworldly quality that seemed to fit it better than before.

If he is not . . . predisposed to such things, started Mr White again, hesitantly, Then why are most of his partners underage?

Johnny paused for a second. Three reasons come to mind, he said matter-of-factly.
Firstly, Red, like many men, and a lot of women too, is attracted to youth and vitality. He is also attracted to the enthusiasm of the young, the unjaded mind, the absence of sexual cynicism and the weariness of moral complacency that decorate one as they drag out their time on the earth. Perhaps also too he is attracted to a lower IQ. A simpler, less demanding . . . lover. Johnny said the last word as though he considered it ill-fitting of a man such as Red.

I’ve never heard you defend him like this, interjected Mr White, genuinely surprised.

Johnny smiled briefly. Don’t expect a repeat performance. He took a drag on his cigarette and continued. Secondly, there is the whole issue of the law, particularly here in Rule. That’s why most of us are here, to use this ridiculous place as a playground. The place I come from is a little . . . lawless. Actions go unpunished.

Mr White thought he saw the trace of a snarl on his countenance and a flash in his eyes, but then it
was gone and Johnny continued.

The laws here, they are
here to break. Even I respect the artificial freedom that it gives you, the sense of power over that which rules over you, that which you got no say in. There is some sense of personal victory in it. Even if all it boils down to is point-scoring against a pointless authority, in a larger world such as ours that pride of one-upmanship is needed to keep us on the level, to prevent the sheer scope of impotence from cracking our brains like eggshells. And Red too, Johnny added, can be quickly pleasured by the mere thrill of doing something somebody somewhere has said to be wrong, even if a few hundred metres away the same thing is now right.