Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, page 11
“You heard me.”
“Interesting. Then you would say that yesterdays ‘bender’ was a one-off affair?”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
“Duly noted.” He placed the biro very carefully in his breast pocket. “Mr. Maquina, I hardly need remind you that—as a Seeker—you are in a position of authority and therefore bear with you a certain amount of responsibility. You also must be well aware of branch policy, particularly concerning substance abuse and relations with colleagues. It is evident you are going through some kind of emotional crisis. Our decision has not been made lightly.”
“I get it.” God, I thought. Game over, man, game well and truly fucking over—Hospital here I come.
“You are hereby suspended without pay, pending a medical review in one month. Do you understand the implications of this assessment?”
I was stunned. I’d felt the bullet whiz by my ear. “Then—I’m free to go home?” I tested.
“Of course. What were you thinking, my boy? That we’d Relocate you?”
“I don’t know, it was on my mind.”
“Pfaw! Well, Mr. Maquina, we’ll schedule you in for an appointment next month. If you have any questions at all, or if you want to discuss any issues you may have, this is my card.” He handed me a beige plasti-card. Underneath his name, telephone number and title were the words, printed in bold caps:
MANAGEMENT CONTROL DIVISION
“I don’t think I’ve heard of you guys. What d’you do?”
“Well, that is odd. Didn’t you receive last week’s memorandum at Seeker Branch? All staff members were notified.”
“I haven’t exactly frequented the office of late.”
“Ahh.” He rubbed his hands together like a wee tacker who’d just got his favourite cartoon character soft-toy for Christmas. “Well, we’re a newly-founded government authority, set up to address the Deviant problem. We now oversee Seeker Branch and the newly formed Controller Branch and have full jurisdiction in regard to all aspects of Deviant apprehension and control.”
“No shit?”
“No shit. Now, you go home and clean yourself up, Mr. Maquina. If you don’t mind me saying so, you look like crap. And may I suggest you lay off the drink?”
I looked down at the plasti-card again, and turned it over. There was a large circle-H logo on the back. It hit me then—Deaps’ speech, the big corporate contribution. Of course. It made a kind of weird, disturbing sense. I’d probably have put two and two together right away if not for the drink and cracked head. Fuck.
“This Management Control Division—it wouldn’t be bankrolled by the Hylax Corporation, would it?”
“That’s right. They’ll be overseeing us.” He smiled.
Damn. This was more than my battered brains could process. I needed rest, stat.
“One last question?”
“Yes?”
“Have you seen my shoe?”
the cricketing police
There was no factory fresh hoverchopper for the homeward bound journey, just the back of a rusty old police divvy van. Since getting home from the holding facility I’d slept about forty hours, with extended showers capping both sides of that sizeable siesta. I’d scraped off scabs, swabbed my wounds, and located some clean clothes in the recesses of my apartment. Perhaps most notably—and completely out of character—I’d avoided all alcohol. Granted, I was sleeping most of the time, but that’s still an accomplishment. I’d only smoked a packet of cigarettes and was feeling decent. That in itself was a goddamned miracle.
When I finally left my apartment I was feeling pretty good—and was certainly looking far more dapper—than the last time the world had seen me. I was also late for my very important date with a pair of long time comrades at The Ruritania on Bay Street.
I stopped for a minute to finish my cig outside before I made my way up to the second-floor bar. Above the building was a large 3D billboard poster of a certain fossil named Wolram E. Deaps, the Hylax big-wig who’d given the speech on the telly. I suppose he was also my new boss of bosses, the John Hancock on my floral pay stub, now that Seeker Branch seemed to have morphed from a government entity into a cozy subdivision of Management Control Division under the Hylax umbrella.
In the poster, Deaps was reclining before a fireplace, dolled up in a conservative wool cardigan (where’d they get the sheep for that?), a soft smile, and rose-coloured cheeks. All that was missing from the diorama was a mute ’50s housewife Hoovering about behind his lordship. His trademark Hylax plasti-pipe hung from his lips and smoke curled up into the air above it, forming the words ‘Hylax is the answer!’’.
Deaps, in addition to being the longtime CEO for Hylax, was also their spokesman and had coined their now famous and somewhat enigmatic corporate slogan—“We make the impossible, plastic.” If there was a reason Hylax was the most successful corporation on the planet—or, in the city, as the case may be—that reason was ol’ Wolram himself. The functioning plasti-pipe was symbolic of their dedication—giving credit where credit was due, they really had embraced the synthetic revolution and were constantly innovating. The latest word on the street was they had recently developed a bulletproof plasti-fabric that was far superior to Kevlar—perfect for the Dev in all of us.
Hylax products were impossible to avoid as nearly all products these days had a significant percentage of their patented plastics in them. Both the bag and the brolly I carried were straight off their production line. Sure, it was all at the expense of the air we breathed, but who the hell’s keeping track?
Hylax weirded me out a bit. I mean here we had a post-apocalyptic plastic company, right? And everyone knows plastic is essentially a petroleum product—but if everything is wasteland outside Melbourne, where is the oil coming from? What did they do, change the recipe? Hylax plastic did feel different than plastic did when I was a kid, so that was a possibility. But then I’d start to draw parallels with Charlton Heston’s infamous discovery in Soylent Green, and ditch the subject, just as I’m doing now.
I still hadn’t got my head around this new corporate arrangement between Hylax and Branch and what impact it would have on my being a Seeker. If I was lucky, maybe I’d get a nifty discount on all my plasti-needs. New plasti-cards with my name carved into them, certainly. I took another look at Deaps—man, I hated this guy and everything he stood for. And now I worked for him. I wonder what god I’d insulted to earn this particular karmic cheap shot.
As I snubbed out my smoke, an old gent with two fistfuls of balloons shuffled over to me and thrust his wares in my face. I ended up buying one with ‘The World Is Yours’ printed across its surface just to get rid of the guy. It was made by Hylax, of course. Like I said, inescapable.
I cut the mulling and headed upstairs, entering to Louis Prima singing “I Wanna Be Like You.” The small bar sported a baker’s dozen of the old and ageing, all of them Joe Average non-enhancements like me. The bar’s walls were violent orange in colour, covered in reproduction old-school oil paintings of Slavic pastoral scenes, along with several portraits of mustachioed hussar in cavalry uniform with those wild busbies positioned at jaunty angles on their heads.
My friend Colman sat slumped in an orange plasti-chair, with a half-full—I’m trying to be an optimist today—plasti-jug of beer in front of him. He stared up at the filthy TV in the corner of the bar. I hauled a chair over and sat down opposite him.
“Card thrower.”
“Hammerhead.” His eyes remained on the TV.
“Beer killer.” I’d known Colman since my Uni days, where he’d actually been my professor for some electives. We quickly discovered we had more in common than an interest in music theory and I probably spent more time with him over drinks in the pub than poring over books. Colman had led an interesting enough life, starting out as a radio DJ and evolving into a music journalist before settling down as the teacher I met. Now, though, he was in his sixties and had given even that up and instead grew the best weed I’d ever indulged in—though recently I steered clear of the stuff because it made me too paranoid and tended to victimize my midriff—attack of the munchies, and all that jazz. He swept back his long, scraggly hair and I could tell that he was stoned. It felt just like old times.
He was my alcoholic role model and the godfather of inebriation. His liver had collapsed during a rather insane drinking binge a lifetime before and legend had it that he’d paid for the ambulance with a South African gold Krugerrand he’d conveniently found that same night on the floor of a pub. He’d then nursed his liver back into shape in order to continue his personal crusade of intoxication. It was always a wonder to me that his wife, Madeleine, had put up with it all for so long—but Colman was a truly special person, the type who could always get away with murder.
He got out of the chair and came around the table to give me a hug, a gesture made extra awkward due to the fact I was sitting down. I did my best to hug him back and then gave him the balloon.
“What’s this?”
“A present. For you.”
“Cheers.” He shuffled back to his chair, tied the balloon to it, then pushed an empty glass over to me and lifted the beer jug. “How’s Iva?”
“Same as usual.” Colman had first met my mother at my wedding. He was happily married but loved the chase a bit too much. Iva, of course, didn’t want a bar of it and ran scared, but that didn’t stop Colman from tormenting me and/or my mum any chance he got.
“So how’s the work?”
“Haven’t you heard? They say Deviancy is on the rise.”
“You don’t say? I suppose it keeps food on your table.” I could feel the tip of the shiv in his words. He never took to my becoming a Seeker. In fact, he hated the idea. We were still mates, but he’d never ever let me live it down.
“Wish it didn’t.”
“But it does.” Colman poured the beer with a steady hand and avoided any head whatsoever. I knew there was a reason why I loved the guy.
“Yeah. I suppose it does. Mum’s been in a tizz, actually.”
“Why? What’s she got to say?”
“The usual. She wants me higher up on the totem pole, or something, and she’s got a thing for that dope Deaps. She’s as happy as a lark, because all this Dev uproar is making him look good.”
“Wolram Deaps? Tell Iva she should know better. That man is scum of the earth. You hear me? Absolute scum of the earth.”
Crap. I’d blundered myself right into this one and I should’ve known better. Colman always got himself into a frothing rage on the rare occasion Deaps came up. Time to distract—“Yeah. Um. So Ant should be here soon.”
“Fucking absolute scum. He has his fucking hands in everything. You know Deaps supplies your bloody bullets too? Fucking plasti-shells, man.”
“Hey, I try not to use any bullets at all.”
“All the same.”
“What is it with you and Deaps? You make it sound personal. Fill me in.”
“It is personal, Floyd. And no, I don’t want to get into it. I—I used to know the blighter. Way back. And I know first hand he’s scum of the earth.”
“You knew him? Where from?” The curiosity had got the better of me like it always did. Colman looked at me, then downed his drink.
“He—you know, screw this conversation. I don’t want to talk about it. Seriously. Don’t ever mention his name again. Desist. Final warning. Not a joking matter. I’ll get up and walk on out that door.”
“Alright, alright.” I dreaded the day he found out Hylax now ran things at Seeker Branch. Colman looked off into the distance, still seething. No time like the present to bring another shitty topic up. “Been through some stuff myself lately.”
“Oh, shit. I’m sorry. About Veronica. I should’ve called you before now. How’re you bearing up?”
“I’m still standing.”
“That’s good.” He nodded towards the door, cutting the conversation short. I looked over and saw Ant entering the bar and flagged him down, pointing at the empty jug of beer and then holding up two fingers—international drinkers’ sign language. “Lovely. I might as well go and cut my wrists now, before he brings us those drinks and I feel duty-bound to stay here, carouse with him, and buy him a round in return. He’s such a bloody downer.”
Ant Hope was a rather lofty individual, at least twenty centimetres taller than me, and he towered over Colman’s slouched stance whenever they stood together. These days his slicked-back hair was starting to recede and he had a salt-and-pepper goatee. When he reached the table Ant plunked two jugs on the table, found a chair, and sat down with us. “Gentlemen. Anything stirring?”
“Nah,” I answered.
“Then how’s work?”
“You first.”
“After you.”
“I insist.”
“Oh, for god’s sake,” Colman finally howled, breaking his silence.
“Good to see you, too, Colman—okay, so me first. That’s easy, work is the arse end of fucked.”
“Likewise. Got myself suspended.”
“Hell. I’m on my way there too, maybe. Fuck it.” Ant poured two beers, ignoring Colman. Colman snagged one of them, forcing Ant to pour a third.
“Amateur.”
“You’re such a cynical old bastard, Col. Either of you gentlemen watch the game last night?”
Colman and I both remained silent.
“Really? Neither of you can be arsed to watch a cricket match? What’s wrong with you?”
“Come on, Ant. How long’ve you known me?”
“I don’t know. Since sixth grade?”
“How’d we meet?”
“Wasn’t it on the cricket team?”
“No. How many times have we had this discussion?”
“It seems to me like the man has been struck on the skull by a few too many cricket balls,” Colman suggested.
“I was never on the cricket team. We met when you helped me scam money out of the school tuck shop. I’m not into sports. Never was. You know this.”
“Oh yeah, that’s right. How could I forget? Well, it’s good to see you anyway, Floyd, even if you don’t like cricket.”
“Yeah, yeah, good to see you too, Ant, joy to the world and all that crap.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He whacked his glass into mine.
“Finally something sensible,” Colman joined in, and we all finished our glasses. “Bollocks. Whose shout is it, anyway?”
“Yours.”
“In that case, heathens, I shall return shortly.” Colman got to his feet and took the jugs with him. He’d likely be a while. He liked to flirt with the female bartenders.
“What’s in the bag?” Ant asked as he peered beneath the table.
“Not important. So, how’d it go?”
“How’d what go?”
“The game last night.”
“So now you’re interested?”
“Course I am, in my own way.”
“Oh well, yeah. We lost.”
“Fucking hell, Ant. You guys always lose.”
“Yeah.” He scowled—an expression I’d seen on his face countless times over the last year or so—and I could tell he was getting geared up to launch into his usual rant. “Not my fault my team is incompetent. The World XI—the World XI, my arse! What absolute bullshit! What you’ve got is a bunch of fourth-rate immigrants, not one of whom would’ve qualified for their own country’s team back in the day—and these blokes were all born here, in Australia, anyway.”
“A World XI made up of locals. D’you need a foreign accent to qualify, or do they give lessons?” I was praying for Colman to return.
“You’d be surprised.”
“I still don’t understand how they were able to squeeze you onto the team—I mean, I can’t imagine you affecting a workable Manchester lilt. You sound too bloody Australian for your own good—and aren’t you always bragging that your family’s been here five generations or something?”
“Seven.”
“Something, then. Exactly.”
Ant sat back and contemplated his glass. “My time’s over, Floyd. I’m on my last legs, out-of-form, and have been for the past three years. It’s why I got dropped from the Aussie team in the first place.”
“I thought you said you retired.”
“No. That’s what they said. They gave me the nudge.”
“Ah.”
“Me getting on the World XI team was all political, heck, that’s why they nominated me captain too. The media gets to have a field day, saying I’m out for revenge against my old team. They go on about the whole grudge-match thing. That kind’a shit. It’s not real. Hell, it’s not even sporting. It’s cricket, not pro-wrestling.”
“That’s one of the reasons I don’t watch. D’you have to perform under nicknames, like the Iron Sheikh or the Mad Menace?”
“Yeah, yeah, laugh away. To answer your question, once again, you’d be surprised.”
“Classy—so it’s all a bit fake-and-bake.”
“Yeah, and you don’t know the half of it. It goes deep, it’s the Cricket Authority and the Australian XI, the so-called ‘Seamless Squad’. What a crock of shit. It’s loaded choc-a-block with all the best bloody players and most of them’ve been artificially-enhanced to boot. The Australians get the best of everything—players, coaches, facilities, meds—”
“They’re all Australians. Every team, Ant. There’s nobody else now.”
“Yeah, yeah, right, I know, but that’s sort’a my point—it’s all so bloody symbolic—Australia versus the world, in constant battle!” He performed some quick moves that looked like he was air-wrestling, but then just as quickly stopped—which was a shame, really, it was great theatre—I don’t know how I kept from laughing. “The Aussie team has to win. Always. And we have to lose. What kind of cricket is that?”
“It makes people happy chappies. Besides, excuse my ignorance, but wasn’t sport always like that, anyway?”
“Yeah, well, maybe so, but before it was just what was supposed to happen, not what had to happen. But it’s bloody obvious now—they’ve loaded us up with a crew of players who’ll never, ever, make an even match out of it. The fix is in. You know something is wrong when bookies don’t even touch the sport.”
