SF in The City Anthology (12 page)

             
“The Alexandria roll is splendid, and I imagine that it will set well with someone who has less experience with high class sushi,” Freja thought to Taisei, bringing on another round of blushing.

             
Despite the constant reminders that he was not an elitist, Taisei enjoyed the meal that evening. Sushi houses were not the most trusted establishments in the Furze. One never knew if the food was really raw fish or raw…something else. He never expected just ten rolls to fill him up.

             
“What do they put in these, adapta-crete?” Taisei said in appreciation.

             
“Quaint.” Freja replied with a laugh. “Tell me Taisei, how has your position at Smithson’s Ol’ Factory treated you?”

             
“It’s incredible, and I owe it all to you!”

             
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Freja smiled subtly. “You know I never imagined that I’d find a fragrance genius in the Furze.”

             
“Well The City is full of surprises,” Taisei looked on the nighttime skyline with pleasure, adoring the millions of lighted windows and the imposing way in which the skypermeaters filled the darkness with their incredible height.

             
“Speaking of surprises,” Freja communicated this telepathically, her tolerance for mundane verbal conversation apparently at an end. 

Oh no, I hope she doesn’t want to make me one of her boy toys
, Taisei thought dejectedly. Then his stomach turned circles. He was still getting used to telepathic communication, what with his nanotubes only added a few weeks ago, and he worried that he had accidentally sent that last thought to Freja as a message.

             
“We are opening up a new line of fragrances – ‘xeno-scents’ as a matter of fact.”

             
Good he hadn’t sent it as a message
. “What exactly do you mean by xeno-scents?”

             
Freja paused for a brief eternity. “You haven’t been a part of the business world long enough to know, but the truth is that the vast majority of large corporations have a close working relationship with Central Authority. We provide them with economic power, and they keep us informed and protected in turn.”

             
“What does the CA have to do with this?” Taisei loved much about The City, but its ruling body had gotten on his bad side. He lived with his grandmother in the Furze because his father had been accused of the worst kind of crime – tax evasion. When he was indefinitely detained without a trial, Taisei’s mother had brought up the issue, only to mysteriously die from a new form of cancer that killed within days. As an orphan, he had been kicked from a luxurious upper-class home into the underbelly of The City.  

             
“I’ll let you in on a little secret,” Freja continued. “The CA has been beaming signals into space for over a century. They have heard nothing useful in return. Our colonists on Mars have never encountered extraterrestrial life forms. Deep space probes have found nothing. People have wanted aliens to exist from the very beginning of time, but the sad truth is that even if we aren’t alone, we’ll never have the resources to contact our neighbors. That’s where we come in.”

             
“I’m afraid I still don’t understand,” Taisei scratched his head.

“We are going to engineer scents so foreign to the human olfactory system that they demand to be labelled xeno-scents.”

              “But what about our Mar’s fragrance line? Isn’t that alien enough?”

             
Freja rolled her eyes, a bit perturbed that a man of such creative genius could not follow the company’s train of logic. “We have already produced thirteen unique fragrances. Believe me, I’ve taken a small sniff of each one, and they are beyond comprehension!”

             
“Why are you telling all this to me? How can I help?” Taisei just wanted to get to the bottom of Freja’s offer.

             
“We’ve experienced some…technical difficulties with the xeno-scents. Don’t get me wrong, they smell amazing, but they have raised some issues a toxicologist should address.”

             
“So, why didn’t you contact me about this until now?”

             
“This is a very secretive project,” Freja said.

             
“That’s right; you never told me what the CA has to do with all of this.”

             
  “Well, the toxicological effects of the xeno-scents related to cognitive functions. You see, our greatest accomplishment and most lucrative fragrance – The Scent out of Space – also causes the greatest damage to, would you believe it, the human mind.”  

             
“How exactly does an artificial aroma harm a brain?” Taisei felt himself being pulled further and further into a dangerous world.

“Insanity results in those exposed to all but the smallest of doses,” Freja responded. “People don’t stop to wonder how the mind can respond to something so alien and foreign. You
can see why the CA’s defense division would want this kind of technology. They didn’t exactly tell me what they had in mind for the scent, but to be quite honest, I think it’s something terrible. Of course, all you’ll have to do is help us better understand it. Like many of the products humankind has produced throughout the centuries, our capabilities advanced faster than our comprehension.”

             
“And you work with these people?” Taisei was suddenly regretting the day that he saved Freja from her attackers.

             
“Oh come on Mr. Mori, you mean to tell me that you wouldn’t do the same for the sake of visiting this sushi house whenever you wish? You wouldn’t work with the government, a ruling body the citizens of The City put into power by the way, for the sake of a view like this. You haven’t looked at me half as interestedly as you did at that skyline out there. I want to live the good life Taisei, and helping the CA is the best way to do so. It’s not my fault if they abuse the tools I give them.”

             
“I think,” Taisei swallowed hard, “that you will need to find a different toxicologist to look at these xeno-scents for you.”

             
“Do you want to live in the Furze again?”

             
“What does it matter where I live if my conscience is put through hell?”

             
“I thought you might say something like that,” Freja shook her head in disappointment. “When I brought you back from that
rat hole
you called home, it was for your intelligence, not your prudence.” She nodded to a large man who sat nearby, and he gravely approached their table.

             
“If you think that you can threaten me into doing your dirty work, you are sadly mistaken,” Taisei tried to sound brave as he saw the giant brute open up his coat, revealing a holstered Nachzehrer 44 machine pistol.

             
“Given the environment in which you were raised, I doubted that you could be coerced solely by threatening your person,” Freja sent Taisei a mental message with an image attached. “Access it.”

             
As the file opened inside Taisei’s mind, he couldn’t help but gasp. It was a picture of Howin with a gun to her head. He could not tell her geographic location from the image, but he could identify the man who pointed the weapon at her. It was Yejoon Esposito, a thug who used to terrorize women in the Furze.

             
“I see that I’m not the only one you recruited out of the rat hole.” Taisei glared at the woman he had once saved.

             
“People who have nothing are more willing to take risks and break rules for advancement,” Furza pulled a stick of blood red lipstick and applied an extra layer as words continued to flow from her mind rather than her mouth. “That was our company’s theory. Of course, we encounter an outlier, like you, every so often who lacks the wisdom to take an offer at face value and put aside ethical qualms. If you had performed the tasks we needed of you, a promotion to scent designer would have followed. You’re certainly qualified.”

             
Taisei gritted his teeth, feeling like a fool for dreaming that he could suddenly have such a remarkable job without strings attached.

              “Now you’re just going to kill Howin if I don’t play along,” the toxicologist sighed inwardly.

             
“Precisely. Now let’s stop wasting time. We need to pay a visit to your laboratory.”

             
“Tonight?” Taisei did not imagine they would want results from him so suddenly.

             
“There’s an aerodeslizador  awaiting us in the tower’s landing zone.” Freja turned to her large thug and thought to him “Come Baer, show our guest to the transport.”

             
Taisei was hauled to his feet by the giant, who wrapped an arm around his victim as if they were good friends. He walked with the toxicologist so forcefully, the small man felt as if he left the ground at some points along their brief journey to the tower’s elevator. As they descended in the clear plastic tube all the way to the landing platform, Taisei looked grimly at the cityscape that had just recently appealed to him with its beauty. He contemplated an escape from Baer and Freja, but he knew that they would kill Howin if he made a move at this point. At his laboratory, he would be more in his element. Then he would have the upper hand.

             
“Excuse me
boss
,” Taisei thought to Freja, “can you have Howin brought to my laboratory as well. I would trust you a lot more if I knew she wasn’t hurt.” 

             
“She’s already on her way there,” Freja responded with uncharacteristic stoicism. “It will take you at least a few days to find out what is wrong with the xeno-scents, so we have already provided accommodations for Howin until you have completed the task.”

             
“What will happen to her, and
me
, after you have gotten what you wanted?”

“The CA has ensured us that both of you will live,” Freja said. “They did not say in what condition, but you will be alive.”

              When the trio had boarded the aerodeslizador, Freja and her “great ape” as she called Baer became less friendly with Taisei than when other eyes could see them. Freja now asked to be called Miss Hollingberry, and she paid little attention to her dinner guest for the rest of the journey. Baer said nothing, as usual, and the pilot and copilot in the front of the vehicle only spoke when it was time to mention safety instructions to the occupants.

             
Taisei observed the hustle and bustle of the street below him, simultaneously encouraged and unsettled by the understanding that life would go on with or without him. If he jumped out of the flying vehicle at that moment, it would throw a monkey wrench in the company’s plans, but they would find someone to replace him in time. Freja had said citizens of the Furze had nothing to lose. He did not believe that this was really the case, but he determined then and there that Smithson’s Ol’ Factory would lose much more than he did before the night was out.   

***

After landing at Smithson’s, Taisei was relieved when the pilot and copilot, a man he did not recognize and a slightly familiar woman, staid with the hovercraft to perform maintenance. He would have two fewer people to contend with once they were inside.

             
As promised, Howin was pulled out of the shadows in Taisei’s laboratory by Yejoon. She was alive and well, except her appearance had been altered since they last met. A black eye upset the delicate balance of her face. Taisei’s anxiety transformed into rage.

             
“You weren’t supposed to hurt her,” the toxicologist turned to Freja angrily.

“That was never part of our agreement,” the scent designer smiled. “Now it’s time for you to get to work.”

              Taisei’s laboratory had some newly added equipment. Apparently the company had taken it upon itself to place a Neltranch 4500 chemical makeup scanner/manipulator in the room. Several vials of The Scent out of Space rested inside the coffin like machine. Looking through its glass divider, he found the sickly yellow color of the compounds repulsive.

             
“How did you plan on marketing this to the public at large,” Taisei shook his head. “The look of perfume or cologne matters as much to buyers as fragrances.”

             
“The CA will handle everything, once the product is safe,” Freja rolled her eyes. “Do you think you could get to work?  I’m only staying here long enough to insure that you have a good start. I’ll check back with you tomorrow. I guarantee it.”

             
“And you can take Howin back to her cell or
accommodations
as you call it,” Taisei felt that she would be safer out of the room for the next few minutes.

             
“No, Yejoon and Baer will keep her here until you finish your night’s work. Remember that we are on a strict timetable.”