The Best of Science Fiction 12

Jolo Trevnik avoided the glassed-up, crowded planktonia. His stomach, accustomed to a balanced carbohydrate intake, turned on the lead oxide that came with every boxed cereal these days, a legacy of the brightly-painted free gift needed to sell any competitive product.

His system revolted against battery lamb and the beef and chicken, he knew, contained sterilising agents. Not that he was bothered particularly about potency. The unborn were the lucky ones, he reasoned.

A shape above his table cut out the light. Momentarily, he started, his mind still fixed on the snatcher with the Santa Claus face.

Then the woman sat down opposite him and he noted the carefully-highlighted features and the overbright eyes with a measure of relief.

He took a sip at his acorn coffee to steady his nerves. When he put his cup down, she said, "Mr. Trevnik?"

He nodded.

"I saw the name on the door of your gymnasium."

"But that's a long way away. What ... ?"

"I followed you," she said quickly. "I couldn't help noticing I wasn't the only one."

Trevnik dropped his eyes and considered the gray coffee. He felt — unclean; a curiosity, a freak. All the more for having someone else notice his humiliation.

"I'm sorry for you," she said, and that made it worse.

"You don't need to be sorry, lady," he said, almost angrily. "It doesn't bother me. I look after myself. I avoid accidents."

"My husband was the same."

"Should I know your husband?"

"I think he came to your clinic a few times — Harry Stogumber."

"Stogumber."

His echo of the word chilled her with a memory.

"Tall man," he said. "Not too fat. Not much meat on him at all, really ... "

"Please." The woman laid her gloved hand across his fingers.

"I'm sorry," said Trevnik. "Did I say something ... ?"

"A phrase. It has associations ... "

Trevnik went over it in his mind. " 'Not much ... ' " He bit his lip. "I am beginning to understand," he said. "I didn't realise. Forgive me, ma'am. Maybe I should ... "

Trevnik freed his great legs from the meager table and turned his seat at an angle to allow them access to the gangway.

"I hope you're not going," the woman said. "Please don't go."

Elsie Stogumber was running her eyes over the breadth of his shoulders, the width and density of his hands. The frankness of her inspection began to embarrass him. "I was going to ask you a favour," she said finally. "That man who keeps following you. He was there when the car hit my husband. He ... " She swallowed hard.

"Don't trouble yourself," said Trevnik. "I can work out what happened."

"I want to hurt him," she said. "Really physically hurt him. But what can I do?"

Trevnik looked down at his hands, saw how the tendons moved under the skin.

"So you want me to hurt him for you ... Do you know that I have never in my life used my strength to hurt anyone?"

"I could offer you money," she said. He looked up angrily. "But I won't. I can see that you would do it only if you wanted to do it."

"Lady, that man is only waiting for me to die so he can tear me apart. I wantto do it now."

"Then what is stopping you?"

Trevnik clasped his hands to stop them from moving of their own accord. He rested his chin on them.

"It is against the law," he said.

"What law? What human law could possibly deny that I have a right to hurt that man?"

"You, maybe. Not me."

"You could plead self-defence ... if you said he tried to push you into the road or trip you into the rotor plant, you would have provocation."

"Lady ... Mrs. Stogumber, ma'am. How could I plead self-defence. I mean ... I mean ... look at me. I looklike an attacker. I wantto help you, Mrs. Stogumber, but ... "

"It's all right," said Elsie Stogumber. "I'll find somebody else."

Trevnik found himself on his feet. The woman said no more. All she wanted was for him to stand still while his thoughts progressed. She allowed perhaps 15 seconds to pass while Trevnik hesitated, towering above her. "Of course, they wouldn't have to killhim," she said quietly.

"Maybe if I ... " Trevnik sat down again. "Maybe if I told them how he'd been following me and all and ... and ... taunting me, they'd understand."

Elsie Stogumber let him talk on, convincing himself, committing himself.

"I am sure nobody on earth would blame you," she said eventually. "He is trying to — well, interfere — with you. That's almost an offence in itself."

Trevnik smiled happily for the first time in a long while. "You're right, Mrs. Stogumber," he said. "You're sure as hell right."

Again the plump man waiting on the far pavement; again the thunder down the rotting wooden stairs. Jolo Trevnik emerged and turned to lock the door. Hejar shifted his weight from one foot to another, anxious to be away.

Trevnik turned from the door and looked straight at Hejar. Then he started across the road. Hejar was suddenly afraid. He sought desperately for another purpose to give to his presence.

"That building," he said before Trevnik could reach him. "Doesn't look too safe. It could fall down any time."

"Is that why you keep following me?" Trevnik mounted the curb. "Because you're afraid I'll go down with it? I'm not much use to you crushed, am I?"

"No ... no. We — my department — we wanted to find out where you live, where you eat, your transportive habits, so we can site your replacement office accordingly ... "

"Rubbish," said Trevnik.

"No, I assure you ... "

Trevnik hit him first on the nose, drawing blood. "See a little of your own," he said pleasantly.

Then he sank his right fist deep into Hejar's solar plexus and followed it with his left. He began to enjoy the way the stout man yielded and swayed before him; the way the flesh gave beneath his knuckles.

He began a methodical destruction, aware that he was going beyond his brief, but somehow no longer able to call back his massive fists.

He chopped down on the nerve centres inside Hejar's collarbones.

"Grave-robber," he said without expression. "My, how you little pink people love to get blood on your hands."

He hit Hejar twice more in the stomach, and the man was there, jack-knifed in front of him.

His knees spoke to him. Use us. Smash him. But he controlled them. If he used anything but his fists in this, it would no longer be fair, would no longer carry a justification.

Hejar folded slowly to the ground. Trevnik's feet spoke. Let us finish him. Please.

"No," Trevnik shouted. He turned Hejar face upwards then, and with tears streaming down his face, he walked away.

Hejar, his senses reeling, his mouth salty and crowded, saw roofs tipping at him and tried to twist out of their downward path. But he could not move.

A shadow lingered above him. His flooded nostrils barely caught a woman's scent before a smell he knew only too well, a smell of ancient perspiration.

The woman pushed back his damp hair and then seemed to be going through his pockets.

Hejar closed his eyes. Get on with it, he thought through a blood-red mist. Take my wallet and go.

The woman spoke. "Mr. Hejar." The voice had a familiarity but it defied identification as the torrents of imbalance raged against his ear-drums.

He opened his eyes. The woman bent towards him. Something glinted in her hand.

He tried to scream but choked on his own blood, his own overpowering smell.

"A widow has to make a living somehow," said Elsie Stogumber. Then she brought the stamp down right between his eyes.

The astonishing prospect (as I write — half an election year before publication, remember) is that the worst might not happen. The flashes of light on several (new and old) horizons are just frequent enough to give an illusion, at leasts of predawn.