Bruce Sterling - Distraction

By phone light, with his fingernails, he slowly peeled the gag from her mouth. He gave her silent lips a healing kiss. There was no heating inside the evil little vault. Greta felt chilled. He climbed onto the stretcher with her and embraced her. He held her tightly, pressing warmth into her body. He was appalled to discover how much he cared for her. She was so human. So far beyond his help.

They’d been disappeared. It was as simple as that. They had made a little too much trouble for someone, and they had exhausted the patience of some deeply evil player. Now they were heading for an assassin’s graveyard. They were going to be tortured, humiliated, and buried with bullets in the backs of their heads. They would be gassed, rendered, and cremated. Vile and hideous people would replay the videotapes of their secret and lingering deaths.

Oscar rose from the stretcher. He lay on his back on the floor, and began stamping on the forward bulkhead. He industriously kicked his way through paint, a layer of porous plastic, and hit a wall of solid iron. The perambulating coffin now began producing a series of drumlike booms. This was progress. Oscar continued to kick, and with more enthusiasm.

A speaker crackled to life somewhere in the rear of the compart-ment. “Would you knock it off with the noise, please?”

“What’s in it for me?” Oscar said.

“You really don’t want us to get tough, compadre,” the speaker said. It was Willis. “You know, just ’cause you can’t see us, doesn’t mean we can’t see you. We can see every dang move you make back there. And frankly, I wish you wouldn’t feel up the merchandise while she’s unconscious. It’s kinda disgusting.”

“You think that I’m helpless back here — but I still have options. I could choke her to death. I could say you’d done it.”

Willis laughed. “Jesus, would you listen to this character? Listen, vato — you try anything stupid, and we’ll just turn on the knockout gas. Would you take it easy back there, please? We’re not your problem. We’re not gonna do anything to you. We’re just your delivery service.”

“I’ve got a lot of money,” Oscar said. “I bet you’d like some.” There was no response.

He returned his attention to Greta. He searched her pockets, fmding nothing useful for chiseling through solid metal. He tried to ease her position. He put her feet up, chafed her bound wrists, massaged her temples.

After half an hour, she emitted a series of groans and woke up.

“I feel so dizzy,” she said hoarsely.

“I know.”

She stirred. Her wrists drew up short with a hiss of plastic strap.

“Oscar?”

“We’ve been kidnapped. It’s an abduction.”

“Oh. All right. I remember now.” Greta gathered her wits. “They told me you’d been hurt. That you needed to see me at your hotel. So when I left the dome, they just… grabbed me.”

“That’s my story too,” Oscar said. “They used us as bait for each other. I should have been more suspicious, I guess. But why? How on earth could we live like that? There’s no way to outguess something like this. An abduction is completely stupid. It’s such a weird gambit.”

“What are they going to do to us?” Greta said.

Oscar was briskly cheerful. He’d already worked himself through a black pit of terrified despondency, and was properly anxious that she not share this experience with him. “I can’t really tell you, because I don’t know who they are yet. But they haven’t really hurt us, so they must want something from us. They took a lot of trouble, with the disguise and the ambulance and so forth. This isn’t my usual crowd of assassin lunatics.” He lifted his voice. “Hey! Hello! Would you people care to tell us what you want from us?” There was no answer. This was much as he had expected.

“They can hear everything we say,” he told her. “We’re bugged, of course.”

“Well, can they see everything we do? It’s pitch-black in here.”

“Actually, they can. I think they have infrared cameras.”

Greta thought this over for some time. “I’m really thirsty,” she said finally.

“Sorry.”

“This is craziness,” she said. “They’re going to kill us, aren’t they? This is such a mess.”

“Greta, that’s just a speculation.”

“They’re taking us for a gangster ride. They’re going to bump us off. I’m going to die pretty soon.” She sighed. “I always wondered what I’d do, if I knew I was going to die.”

“Really?” Oscar said. “I never gave that issue much thought.”

“You didn’t?” She stirred. “How could you not think about that? It’s such an interesting question. I used to think I’d react like Evariste Galois. You know, the mathematician. I’d write down all my deepest speculations in my math notebook, and hope that somebody understood someday … See, if you think that problem through, there’s an obvious deduction. Death is universal, but knowing when you’ll die is a rare statistical privilege. So since you’ll probably never know, you should take a few hours out of some random day, and prepare your final testament beforehand. Right? That’s the rational conclusion, given the facts. I actually did that once — when I was eleven.” She drew a breath. “Unfortunately, I’ve never done it since.”

“That’s too bad.” He realized that Greta was utterly terrified.

She was babbling. His own fear had vanished completely. He was overwhelmed with protective instinct. He felt elated with it, half-drunk. He would do absolutely anything for the slightest chance to save her.

“But I’m not eleven anymore. Now I know what grown-ups do in this situation. It has nothing to do with big ideas. It really, really makes you want to have sex.”

This was a completely unexpected observation, but it landed on Oscar like a match on oil-soaked rags. It was so utterly and compel-lingly true that he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He felt dual rushes of fear and arousal strong enough to split his brain. His ears rang and his hands began itching.

“So,” she whispered hotly, “if I weren’t all tied up right now…”

“Actually,” he breathed, “I don’t mind that very much…”

The speaker crackled into life. “Okay. Just stop that right now. Knock it off with that. That’s really disgusting.”

“Hey!” a second, male voice objected. “Give ’em a break.”

“Are you crazy?” Willis objected.

“Girl, you never been a combat veteran. On the last night before you go out to get killed — hell yeah, you wanna get laid! You’ll hump anything in a skirt.”

“Ha!” Oscar shouted. “So you don’t like it? Come back’ here and stop us.”

“Don’t try me.”

“What can you do to us? We have nothing left to lose now. You know that we’re lovers. Sure, that’s our big dark secret, but we’ve got nothing to hide from you. You’re just voyeurs. You mean nothing to us. To hell with you. We can do whatever we want.”

Greta laughed. “I’ never thought of it that way,” she said giddily.

“But it’s so true. We’re not making them watch us. They have to watch us. ”

“Hell, I wanna watch ’em,” the male kidnapper said. “I like their attitude! I’ll even play ’em some music.” A radio snapped on, playing a lively Cajun two-step.

“Get your hands off that thing!” Willis commanded.

“Shut up! I can drive while I watch.”

“I’m gonna gas both of ’em.”

“What are you, crazy? Don’t do that. Hey!”

The ambulance veered wildly. There was a loud splattering of mud and the overloaded vehicle yawed and half spun. Oscar was flung from Greta’s side, and thrown bruisingly against the bulkhead. The vehicle ground to a halt.