Virtually True (11 page)

“Well, be careful. I don’t relish analyzing your skin cells, DNA, and blood with my lab’s computerscope.”

The taxi yodels through the tunnel hugging the shanty’s edge. True sees his building. “Thanks for the help, de Bris. I’m home now.”

“But not home free.”

The sky bursts with ash-colored droplets falling hard as pigeon shit, staining windows. True pays the driver and steps out. His intuition is telling him something is up. Even though MedTekton isn’t a Japanese company, Edo is still emerging as a major theme. Is there some connection he’s missing? Blinking from the falling gobs, he watches the taxi soak into the distance, sees it stop at a long line of vehicles cramped this side of the tunnel. A traffic jam, maybe an accident. Since the tunnels are the only safe vehicular route through the shanties, odds are most of the drivers will wait.

True doesn’t feel like home yet. He’s frustrated by his slow thought process, feels like sponging up the city through the rain, searching for inspiration. He’s a shadow of what he was. Like a physicist who burns out at twenty, an athlete at thirty, a fighter who’s gone too many rounds, a pitcher who’s thrown too many pitches, he’s a journalist who’s raked too much muck.

“Don’t make moves or I shoot.” A voice True recognizes in an instant.

True turns to face Bong Bong and Pidge, armed to the gums. He looks around for help or witnesses, but even in nice weather, True’s is a neighborhood with few people out and about. “Saw you on TV, Bong Bong.”

Bong Bong steps closer. “How you think of me?”

“Good presence, but your grammar needs work.”

“But no presents for you, American.” Bong Bong shakes water from his cap. Even in the dim light cast by his building True can see new splotches. Bong Bong will have to go in for more melanoma treatments. “Why you break your words?”

“I paid you what your information was worth.”

“I give good informations. I give you good informations and you break your words.”

A Wagnerian symphony of horns. Drivers impatient with the traffic. “What’s with the traffic backed up from the tunnel?”

Bong Bong spits. “Big garbage truck and not-so-big tunnel. It’s stuck. No one knows how to fix. Ha ha. Ha ha.”

“To fix. Ha ha. Ha ha,” Pidge echoes.

The driver was probably afraid to drive the road to the incinerator because shanty dwellers are notorious for stripping trucks; and since he’s paid by the metric ton of imported garbage, he chose the tunnel. Bad move. Before True can react, Bong Bong laces into him with his pistol’s slab-side. Shock. True falls, touches his cheek to feel for blood, but there isn’t any. He knows it’ll hurt later, though.

Bong Bong standing over True. “You break your words and I break you.” The rain stings True’s eyes. A boot drives oxygen from his lungs. True rolls around, feeling ridiculous and hurt at the same time. “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” Bong Bong says, taking aim.

True reacts to the tempest with calm. What would it like to be dead, to not have to deal with life’s vicissitudes and the accompanying pain, to breathe just one last breath? Death to love, to fear, to pain.

“Bong Bong,” True hears himself say, “if you kill me, you’ll never get the money.”

“This is not about money, Mr. American.”

“Someone’s hired you to kill me? Who?”

Bong Bong steadies his aim with his other hand. “Such informations is not peritent to you.”

“Pertinent, Bong Bong, pertinent.”

“OK OK OK. Pertinent.” Bong Bong itches his nose with the butt of his gun. “I mispoke.”

“You know, you kill me, and this place will be crawling with journos. Is that what you want—what your government wants? It’s bad PR. Plus it’ll draw attention to you and to those who hired you to snuff me.”

“Tsk tsk. Not good enough.”

“But look, Bong Bong, I’ve taped and transmitted this whole conversation. If I disappear, this video will implicate you.” True holds up his wrist-top, a sapphire glinting light into the mist.

He screeches. “You lie!”

“Look!”

There’s silence, the sole sound is rain skittering on pavement. Peaceful. In the hurricane’s eye. Then Bong Bong kicks True, the dull thud inside his head undoubtedly less impressive than the satisfying smack Bong Bong hears. True weighs kicking Bong Bong’s legs out from under him, taking his gun away, firing on Pidge before he can react. But he’s braver in his fantasies than in reality. Bong Bong clutches a hunk of True’s hair, jerks his head back. Wet plastic rubs raw ear.

“You’re lucky, American. Today. But not so lucky I think.” Bong Bong falls on his knee, cracking into True’s ribs, punches madly in a windmill motion. Pidge then hands Bong Bong a taser and he jolts True with it, sending him into spasmodic fits, zapping his organs, noogie-ing his bones. He pants into True’s wrist-top: “I mistook this American for other criminals. Yes, I mistook. I am sorry to American government. Please excuse.”

The weight from True’s back is lifted; he watches Bong Bong and Pidge skulk off. “Bong Bong!”

“Goodnight, John Boy.”

Pidge’s hee-hees mix with traffic noises. A siren.

True lies there, the rain dripping into his eyes, nose, mouth. The big difference between real and make-believe? The pain. He calls, “You want to know how to get the truck out of the tunnel?”

It takes time for the message to travel to Bong Bong and for Bong Bong’s to get back.

“OK. You tell.”

“Let the air out.”

“What?”

“Let the air out of the tires. The truck will sink lower and you can tow it through.”

Bong Bong looks at True with a big McBuffalo Burger grin. “Good idea. But you are only lucky today, American. Tomorrow or tomorrow’s tomorrow, dead men tell no tells.”

Bong Bong is right. True is lucky. He looks at his wrist-top, which is and was off the entire beating.

CHAPTER 7

After soaking in the shower, swabbing his body with antiseptic and bruise relief gel, focusing ultrasound repair waves on his organs, and injecting liquid bone into his fractured ribs, True’s feeling better. But when his medkit, factory-synched with his DNA (to discourage piracy), malfunctioned, he had to spend a torturous hour telelinked with global tech support.

He strips off his clothes and hangs them to air, thanking technology for producing clothes that never need washing or ironing. Really, he can’t imagine how people did it in the past—they must have spent half their time in laundromats, mesmerized by spinning shirts and towels, sniffing soap and softener fumes. But True’s clothes are paved with chemicals that repel dirt, stains, and odor. A few minutes of airing and the clothes are factory fresh.

True sits at his computer, elbows leaning on his desk. He knows he’s safe only until Bong Bong risks murder, or subcontracts the job to another hired gun. Either way, True may not be long for this earth. He lifts his eyes to the screen, types in commands for information on MedTekton. As he waits to funnel onto the infonet, True bites into a lemon and his mouth is flooded by tartness. For the first time in ages, his tastebuds are not merely an afterthought. He wonders if in some way Aslam’s murder has resurrected him, given him a purpose—something in short supply in Luzonia.

On screen, True reads the computer’s summary:
MedTekton, a New York-based medical technology company, is a small company dealing with high technology in the medical marketplace.
True plugs in the command for more specific information and enters the word
phaseplast
. The computer displays:
100% degradable plastic and circuits
. Within hours, the material in this camera—which is capable of producing sharp images from the interiors of veins, arteries and organs—dissolves, then is flushed from the body along with liquid waste.

All those data banks, with all those trillions of bytes of information, and this is the sum on phaseplast?

He types:
Who invented phaseplast?

Phaseplast was patented by MedTekton.
No credit given to a single inventor.

True searches for past stories on phaseplast but the only two he finds are inadequate: one announced Food and Drug Administration approval, the other from a medical trade TV journal, which discussed the merits of internal camera work. Since the company doesn’t cultivate the media, blitzing on-line dailies, zines, and TV news ops with press releases and freebies, the media doesn’t bother to publicize the company. When True cross-references phaseplast for military uses, zippo. Requests a chemical breakdown. Still comes up empty. It’s secreted away. The Environmental Protection Agency has authorized unconditional approval based on the company’s confidential medical tests, which indicate the material to be nontoxic and fully degradable.

True queries:
Could there be military uses for phaseplast?

Affirmative
.

Types:
List possible uses.

The response:
Specify
.

True bites into the lemon, puckers his lips. Wide awake now.
Can phaseplast be used as missile casing?

Affirmative
.

Could such a missile have a range of twenty miles?

Insufficient information.

What causes plastic to dissolve?

Insufficient information.

Can certain biological chemicals dissolve phaseplast?

Affirmative. Phaseplast dissolves inside the human body.

Can TNT cause phaseplast to disintegrate without a trace?

The computer weighs all chemical data on phaseplast, its behavior in the human body, and after taking a moment to correlate and calculate, responds:
Affirmative
.

Access file on Aslam Q. Aziz. Compare video data of Aziz’s death with data on phaseplast.

Accessed
.

Can this missile’s shell be constructed from phaseplast?

Affirmative
.

Check all data banks. Are there any other materials exhibiting similar properties that could be used for missile skin?

The computer stays silent. True pops the last of the lemon, skin and all, into his mouth, silently rejoicing in the citrus burst.

Negative
.

True’s famished now. In the fridge, limp lettuce hangs over airplane scotch bottles, along with some eggs that were here when True moved in, olives, month-old bread, and more lemons. He picks at the olives and bread, is surprised by the salty, smoky olive flavor. Later, he promises himself, he’ll stock up on candy and fruit, maybe pick up some fish; not the local mercury-laced fish, but trout or tuna flown in from America, raised on organic fish farms. It’ll be expensive but worth it, if it ends up his last meal.

He’s under no delusions. Even though there’s a good chance he’s found the composition of the shell casing, it’s taken too long and too much effort. Why didn’t he discover it earlier? He pulls up the keyboard conversation he held with his computer after Aslam’s murder, and after scrolling it, realizes he asked the wrong questions. His reporting skills are shit. True rubs his forehead, feels a sandpapery gash over his eye—an injury he forgot to fix. He feels like shit, too.