Letters to the Cyborgs Page 4

  Jodie Standish was running for re-election as judge in a corrupt, rural county near Houston, Texas. Texas had stood its ground in the Cyborg Revolution and remained as it always had been: violent, ferociously independent. We were one of several Primitive States in the world, where life was normal instead of regulated by the zombies in their domed cities. As for Jodie, he had always shown himself to the public as an honorable family man whose community’s good was his highest concern, no matter what his private dealings were.

  I stared into his steady, green eyes. The heavy lines around Jodie’s face, which I had always taken for granted as smile lines, I now saw as forced etchings over an old map of malevolence. I knew that when Jodie looked at me he didn’t see a former local news reporter or his campaign manager. He was looking at his career’s end.

  “What else have you done, Jodie?”

  “Do you think I’d be stupid enough to tell you?”

  Jodie was about six feet two, two hundred pounds of rugged frame composed of many steaks and good whiskey, many ranching chores, and frequent hunting trips, usually to Africa or Alaska.

  “The Chinese are waiting,” Jodie reminded me. “You are scheduled to photograph me and Wendy with those damned Cyborgs. Whether you like it or not.”

  “All the more reason to put the gun back in the drawer.”

  He had just shown those Chinese Cyborg tourists some of the area’s most productive ranches and farms, his own included. He had returned to his office to make sure I would take publicity photos of him and his wife, Wendy, side-by-side with the Cyborgs, to help prove there were no hard feelings after the Revolution. Jodie was even going to offer the Borgies some untamed bull semen to upgrade their zoo specimens. That would be great press, and would bring more paying tourists into Jodie’s territory. After all, his ranch was the last of its kind this side of the Brazos River.

  “Take the photos,” Jodie said, “and remember to behave yourself. Then maybe you and I will go for a little ride.”

  Gomez, the over-muscled, scarred Cuban who always wore silver sunglasses that hid his sneaky little eyes, entered the room. I turned my head just a little to see if Gomez had figured out I was in trouble with Jodie. The crooked leer on Gomez’ scarred face put shivers down my spine.

  Suddenly, my voice rang out over the unfolding story… “I can see my wife, looking at me through the observation window! Why in hell you’ve let her live another 150 years while I’m still in a deep-freeze straitjacket is beyondunfair! Please send her away, or I refuse to go on!”

  “We’ll send her away,” the Cyber-Judge said. “Now continue your replay, please.”

  When the photo sessions were finished and the Chinese departed with Jodie, who was laughing and telling them jokes through an interpreter (the Cyborgs among them smiled politely at each joke), Gomez gripped me by the arm. Of course, I followed. I’d been under a ton of pressure lately, making sure that Jodie’s campaign was going picture-perfect. Everything had gone so well that I’d almost forgotten my little problem – until Gomez grabbed me.

  “You’re hurting my arm!” I whined.

  It reminded me of when Sharon and I used to fight. Now there is a woman who knows how to grip a man’s arm. I was lucky she didn’t break it in half, with all that karate and ninja stuff she’s into. She recently became even more formidable as the proud owner of a matched pair of Cybernetic frame-arms, smuggled in from the same Chinese.

  There was a gasp of horror from the Cyber-Jury. “You may be unaware,” the Cyber-Judge told them, “that the new laws allow Primitives to replace up to 49% of their bodies. We assure you that every Primitive you meet, anywhere in the Primitive Zones, is at least 51% Primitive. Some are 100% Primitive. This is a matter of exercising compassion and mercy.”

  “But they were to stay untouched,” one Juror objected.

  “In case of ––“In case of what?” the Judge responded, his face reddening. “In case of what? You do understand that by now, we Enhanced Cyborgs are legally recognized as perfect. Primitives are mere sources of recreation and amusement, whose genetic material is filled with transcript errors. They are not some kind of untrammeled gene pool that needs protection. They opted to fiddle with their genes and messed things up royally. The old ideas die hard, don’t they?”

  Sharon is long gone, the proprietor of her very own self-defense academy for women.

  I was now married to Clara, a gentle lady and wealthy, who has never raised her voice to me. She’s earned my trust. Since she was a reporter, and I used to be one, we shared that interest in common. I could imagine what she would do with a scandal like Jodie’s. I’m sure Jodie could imagine it, too.

  Gomez shoved me back into Jodie’s den, where I waited half an hour. I had time to mull over how, eight hours earlier, I’d caught one of the county road crews finishing a double-lane road that connected to a new highway. Trouble was, both the crew and its huge load of quick-set cement were not working on Vaclav Road, as scheduled. Instead, they were toiling on Jodie’s private ranch road.

  “Aw, Tony!” the crew leader, a Dutchman’s son, lowered his eyes as I demanded to see the work order. “Why get me in hot water? You don’t need to see any work order.”

  “This isn’t Vaclav Road,” I replied, after looking it over.

  “This is just a leftover, from Vaclav Road,” Henri said, scowling.

  “At this time in the morning?” I replied. “You had to start work on this thing before dawn. And quick-set cement? That costs a fortune. It looks like you’ve paved it all the way to Jodie’s new barn. Is that right?”

  Henri was a good man who didn’t allow a nut or a bolt of Cyborg improvement near his honest body. He even spent his Saturday nights at home with his wife and kids. “Come on,” he soothed me, “it’s just a little leftover stuff. What are we supposed to do with a little bit here, a little bit left over there? Leave it on the side of the road?”

  “It’s quick-set cement,” I told him. “You were paving this damned thing with cement all night, weren’t you?”

  “I have to feed my family,” Henri whispered. I looked at the long, slick mile of new cement road that began at my feet and extended uphill and out of sight, toward Jodie’s new barns. In the slanting morning light, the connection to the highway was as soft and gray and sleek as Jodie’s favorite thoroughbred horse, a descendant of Native Dancer, the Gray Ghost of horse racing. But this was no mirage. A second crew was coming into view, using prison farm labor to paint divider lines. Jodie’s pride had caused him to be a bit reckless: he had wanted to impress the Chinese. This road would be cured rock-solid by the time they drove over it.

  Burning with curiosity, I was at the County Commissioner’s office as soon as they opened. It didn’t take long to find Jodie’s paw-prints on “emergency road repair funds” and some last-minute tack-ons for “upgrading unpaved county roads” all over the county. Several “improvements” matched the installation dates for miles of new roads on Jodie’s huge ranch, but for proof, I needed to take some shots of the photographs. Big ranchers are proud of their holdings. Jodie, being County Judge, had easy access to the Sheriff’s helicopters. He owned a slew of overhead photos, framed and in chronological order, on display on the big wall behind his desk. The progress of paved roads was easy to document. I was just finishing when Jodie caught me.

  “You ought to see it from Andy’s helicopter,” he said. “I’ll take you up, sometime. Look how much green we have now, instead of all that brown.”

  “I’m not interested in the grass,” I answered. “I’m interested in all those new, white lines. The roads?”

  As Jodie’s proud grin faded into morose suspicion, I realized what a fool I was to tell him what was on my mind. It had been such a nice beginning, too.

  That’s how the issue started. After the Chinese left, and I’d been steered back into Jodie’s office, I waited for the hammer to fall. With dread I heard the heavy tread of his cowboy boots, and then Jodie flung open the big, polished cedar
door. I was prepared to do something very demeaning, such as to plead for my life, but hope rose in me: Jodie had returned in a magnanimous and warm mood, his face floridly rich from the influence of rare Scotch. Behind him came his wife, Wendy, with Gomez stalking along behind her. She was breathless, busy dragging her hand-tooled, silver-embossed Western saddle. Wendy was a cowgirl, fond of turquoise and silver jewelry, green-checkered shirts, and little leather skirts that matched her fancy, imported boots. She was a great shot with a pistol, too. I was surrounded by great shots. All three of them would laugh at the .22 hand-gun I carried in my car for protection.

  “At least tell me why you’re too involved here to hang my saddle!” she threw back at Gomez. “Why should I have to drag it in.…” Wendy stopped mid-complaint, seeing the look of fear on my face and the expression of malice on Jodie’s. “Oh, no!” she whispered, letting the beautiful rose-mahogany saddle slide from her hands. “Oh, no, Jodie! What is it now?”

  “Shut up, Wendy,” he said. “Gomez, for God’s sake, hang up her saddle.”

  The pair of hand-crafted his-and-her saddles that Jodie and Wendy owned were stored upon the backs of a pair of fifty-thousand-dollar ceramic elephants from ancient China. The genuine ivory tusks of these huge elephants pointed at the swimming pool. On some weekends, Wendy and Jodie just grabbed their saddles, drove to Hull Airport, and jumped into their jet, heading for Arizona where they kept their best riding horses.

  I had some hope when I saw the scowl on Wendy’s face. She liked me and surmised that I was in trouble. As Gomez picked up her saddle, she dipped her hand into the cooler that stood by the sliding glass doors and brought up a can of Coke.

  “Want one, Tony?” she asked. I think she was trying to force some civilization into the scene.

  “He’s going to tell the papers something awful about us,” Jodie said, darkly.

  Wendy made a low, carnivorous sound. Her whole face contracted to about half its size, and I was suddenly able to appreciate how she had managed to hold onto a man like Jodie for sixteen years. She pivoted around, her short, curly blond hair bobbing up and down as she grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me.

  “Just-what-are-you-going-to-tell-them?” she demanded in a staccato assault. “After all we’ve done for you, and all we paid you!”

  “It’s… I’m not sure I’m going to say anything,” I managed to blurt. The woman had shaken me so hard that I had bitten my tongue. The taste of blood in my mouth made my heart begin to beat rapidly. I steeled myself not to show any more fear: it would just encourage her. “Jodie is the only man in the county running for office who isn’t connected to the Mafia,” I said firmly. “That’s why I’ve been campaigning for him.”

  “Then, what’s your problem, you treacherous little prick!”“Let me handle this, Wendy,” Jodie said. “Believe me, we’ll straighten this out. Or else.”

  “Wendy,” I said pleadingly, “for all the times we’ve had, you and Jodie and me… can you please just have Gomez leave the room? Please?”

  “You fuckin’ little whoremaster!” Gomez snarled, making fists of his large hands.

  “Go on, leave,” Jodie told Gomez. “I can handle him by myself.”

  The first thing Jodie did when Gomez left was to grab his gun again and press it up against my head. It was a very cold, very unpleasant sensation. I felt like I was in the movies. Your mind is strangely calm, asking itself, shall this brain be blown to pieces? You don’t move. You don’t breathe.

  “Stop it, Jodie,” Wendy said.

  “He thinks we shouldn’t have paved our roads with county concrete.”

  “Why not county concrete?” she repeated. “What were we supposed to pave the roads with? Cornmeal mush?”

  Jodie waited, because he knew his wife was smart. Sure enough, Wendy went pale when she realized what “our roads” meant.

  “It’s all blown out of proportion, of course, honey,” Jodie said. “You look at those work orders, they estimate how much concrete they need. If they overestimate, it still has to be dumped, it can’t be left in the machines. We’re smack in the middle of the county. Hell, we’ve saved them having to truck it all the way to the river.”

  “Some of that overestimating was pretty big,” I stupidly said.

  “Nobody asked your opinion!” Jodie snapped. “Do you know what it costs, if the load of cement is too small? Another trip, another bunch of hours of labor the people have to pay for. What I’ve done, I should get a medal.”

  He waved at me dismissively as if I were some kind of large, pestilential bug.

  “Now, sweetheart,” he said to Wendy, “you go do a few things for me. First, throw all these aerial photos away. Next, have Gomez grab the saddles and put them in the truck. I’ll call our pilot and tell him to get the plane ready. Missy can take care of the kids until we get back. We need a break before the election!”

  Wendy gave me a look of hatred, pulled all the photos from the wall, and ripped them out of the frames. We all watched the evidence get eaten by Jodie’s paper shredder, and then Gomez came back in. He kicked at me perfunctorily as he passed, went through the French doors, and heaved up the saddles onto those huge shoulders. The bastard had been there, listening behind the door, the whole time.

  When Wendy and Gomez left the room, Jodie made a kind of cracked laugh and put the gun away.

  “I’ve got control of my temper now,” he said. “Forgive me, Tony. But, you’ve done a big no-no. Don’t you know that anybody with any green money has fudged the line, or they would have lost it all by now? It’s the way of the world. Nothing we can do about it. You’d think I murdered somebody!”

  “A gun can make you think like that,” I put in.

  “We need to work this out on a satisfactory basis for everybody.”

  “I need a break, too, before this election,” I groaned. “If you only knew the pressures, lately.”

  “Pressures?” Jodie huffed, drawing a big hand across his sweaty brow. “I remind you that the election is only two weeks away. Have you forgotten that I’m running neck-and-neck against Joe Whitney? Perhaps a break is what you need – a permanent one!” He stopped and raised his hand, palm out. “But I need to remind myself that you’re my campaign manager for good reasons. People like you, you little jerk.”

  Jodie reached over and grabbed himself a “Controlled Substance Cigar.”

  “Maybe you and your pretty wife should go visit my new diamond mine, in Africa. Have her do a big story there. You’d leave right after the election. Then, I’ll forgive. Maybe, someday, I’ll forget.”

  “When did you get a diamond mine?”

  “A week ago. Don’t ask how.”

  “I’m finished asking questions,” I told him sincerely. “And Jodie, I’d love a trip to Africa. But some other time.”

  “You know what they do in diamond mines?” Jodie said softly, his eyes narrowing. “They go down. Deep. There’s no light there. They have to pump air in. Sometimes people go down and they don’t come out again. Sometimes, that happens.”

  “This is just about some cement, over some hard clay and green grass, Jodie,” I said quickly. “Now you’re threatening me again!”

  I shouldn’t have said that, because Jodie’s face flushed with passion. “My wife,” he said. “My three children. The people’s trust… “He smashed his fist against the desk. “I swear, I’m the most honest man who has ever run for County Judge here!”

  Sadly, he was probably right. Even Joe Whitney, who had been elected Sheriff three times in a row and was a former FBI agent, was in tight with the Mafia. They supplied him with the names of petty drug dealers and Johns who had fallen out of favor, and Whitney always looked good when he turned them in. But then he owed the big guys some local immunity. That’s why the Mafia raised their families in the county and made sure their kids attend Catholic school there, while they did their dirty work in Houston. “They keep their nests clean,” is the way Joe had put it to me. Still, Houston had become too b
ig for even the Mob to handle. If the Cyborgs had any decency, they’d get rid of them. But they like the drama, the entertainment. If they get shot, fooling around with the Mafia, they get repaired at once. Whereas somebody like me, if I got shot, it’s bye-bye Tony.

  “If you don’t like the idea of going to Africa,” Jodie said, “I would like to know what I could do assure your silence some other way.”

  “I’m a man of my word,” I said quickly. “I’d never blackmail you.”

  Jodie thought about that a bit. “I suppose you wouldn’t,” he agreed. “But I had my P.I. do a little snooping into your situation today. After all – you snooped on me, didn’t you?”

  I didn’t like where this conversation was heading. “I’m only a Public Relations person,” I reminded him. “I pay my bills, including my alimony to Sharon, and I’m married to a part-time reporter. I haven’t got enough money to get into your kind of trouble.”

  “I thought about that,” Jodie said. “Take a seat, Tony. We have some talking to do.”

  “I won’t take a bribe,” I said, sitting into a deep, leather chair with buffalo horns for armrests.

  “Clara is an heiress,” Jodie said. “She dresses very well, doesn’t she? Nice car, too.”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “It’s not a bad house you’ve got, either,” he commented.

  “It’s mortgaged to the hilt,” I admitted. “I wanted her to continue to live the lifestyle she had when we got married. That happens to be expensive.”

  Maybe, deep inside, I was venially hoping that Jodie would give me a one-time payment of hush money.

  “You’ve been financing her goodies,” Jodie said, puffing on his cigar. “Not her daddy.”

  “I have my pride, damn it!” I retorted. “And I’d do it again, too. I love her! I want her to have her diamonds, her limo, her cute little job reporting on what the School Board is doing or on the local garage sales. Besides, soon her daddy’s going to die. He’s got one of those new cancers that are popping up in Primitives. In a few weeks, Clara and I will be worth millions.”