As he cut himself for the fifth time on the edge of a crushed can of Mallow-Fluff, he roundly cursed America and all it stood for, most particularly its undisciplined garbagemen, who picked up a university's trash whenever they felt like it. In Russia, picking up the garbage an hour early was grounds for dismissal; missing the schedule by an entire day would require punishment be-
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ginning with flogging and leading to more memorable disciplinary action.
He was not a happy man. Compounding his misery was his observation, after slipping on a mackerel of indeterminate age, that the Hollywood Disposal Service was being overrun by local citizens stepping gingerly over the rubble and exclaiming to one another as they displayed broken bits of trash with what seemed to be great pride.
"Eek!" shrieked a young woman as she waved a swatch of gray cloth over her head. "It's Dustin Hoffman's jockey shorts! I found them! Oh, I can't believe it." One of her hands flew to her chest as the girl simulated orgasmic ecstasy. The other held the torn underpants aloft.
Another young woman snatched the treasure away from its discoverer, examining the block printing inside the waistband. "Hey, this don't say Dustin Hoffman."
"It says Hoffman, don't it?" the girl yelled in defense of the garment.
"Aah, lots of guys are named Hoffman. And that's just the laundry's writing, anyway. It's in magic marker. No monogram, nothing." With disdain, she shunted the unauthenticated shorts back to the girl who had found them.
"They're his, all right," the girl pouted.
She was dressed mostly in makeup. Thick black and red lines outlined her eyes like a Hollywood version of Nefertiti, and her lips were slashed bright purple. Her hair was dyed a bizarre shade of electric blue, and was cropped into a USMC-style crew cut. Below the neck the girl sported a black leatherette vest, a grimy white plastic mini-
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skirt that, Istoropovich noted, had gone out of style even in Russia, and a pair of scuffed red ankle-length boots. To Istoropovich's horror, she regained her composure and was walking straight toward him.
He tried to right himself, but as soon as he got his footing in the mire, he slipped again and went sprawling on his face.
"Hi," the girl said breathily. "Checking out the garbage of the stars? It's really incredible, isn't it?"
"What's incredible?" Istoropovich asked crank-
«y-
She smiled vacantly. "This. Everything. Life." She extended a hand to him. "My name's Helen. Helen Wheels."
"Get away," Istoropovich said. "Don't come near me." He skidded and lumbered to his feet, noticing that the side of his trousers was covered with slime and fish scales.
"You don't have to be uptight, mister," the girl said. "This is California. Home of the free. Here, I'll even let you hold Dustin Hoffman's skivvies."
"My dear child," Istoropovich said acidly, "that is the last thing I am about to hold. Now, go away."
"I got some other incredible stuff over at my place. Want to come look it over?"
"Hardly," he said.
"Feel like getting high? I got a couple of incredible 'ludes."
"Whatever the 'lewds' are, I'm sure you've got them. Perhaps a doctor and a bath would help. . . ." He drifted off as his concentration
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focused on a page of the Los Angeles Times half buried in the muck at his feet. In the lower right-hand comer was the headline: "GARBAGEMAN ARRESTED FOR COWORKER'S MURDER."
The story went on to relate how Marco Juan San Miguel de Ruiz Gonzales, 25, who was now being held in a holding cell in the Los Angeles County Courthouse, for his own protection, had been arrested for the bizarre skinning murder of his partner, Lewis J. Verbanic, at the Hollywood Disposal Service grounds after the two men had finished their final pickup of the day, from UCLA.
Istoropovich seized the paper, stared at it a moment, then stuffed it excitedly into his coat pocket. He sniffed a lead. Only one thing could have prompted one garbageman to murder another on Tuesday night after a pickup at UCLA. This Gonzalez had to have seen the value of the LC-111 and kept the computer. He had wanted it badly enough to kill, but he was still an amateur, Istoropovich thought as he ran down the filthy mound of the dump toward his car. An amateur with a very short time to live. The LC-111 was strictly for the pros.
Through a mist of Quaaludes and Kool-Aid, Helen Wheels saw several figures rooting through the trove of the Garbage of the Stars. She opened her mouth to speak, but only a belch came out. The figures coming into focus seemed to notice her, and she smiled fuzzily.
Her vision was obstructed by thick crusts of mucus over her eyelids, brought on by hours of drug-induced sleep in the septic conditions of the
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Hollywood Disposai Service grounds. Once the crud was out of her eyes and safely nestled in the folds of her sleeve, she saw that the figures were five or six males dressed in chrome and leather.
"I told you she'd be here," one of the group snickered. "Whatcha doin', Helen? Looking to stretch out with a rotten banana?" The group laughed loudly.
"Hi, Ratman," she said.
"Me and the guys were looking for some action. You know, the heavy stuff."
Helen's voice was a squeak. "I told you, I'm not into that anymore," she said, rubbing her hand over her blue crewcut. "You burned off all my hair the last time."
"We just got kinda carried away. It won't happen again. Honest." He crossed his heart in a broad pantomime the others found uproariously funny.
"You all got girlfriends," she said, trying to raise her rubber legs from the debris.
"Yeah, but they ain't as low as you," another member of the group chimed.
The one called Ratman moved closer. "Listen, fly turd," he said, "You come out here from the boondocks looking for some real men. Well, who takes you in, huh? Who shows you the good times?"
"I didn't have a good time with you, Ratman. You just beat me up and sicced your creepy friends on me and stuck pins through my nose and set my hair on fire. It wasn't like in the movies."
"We're New Wave, fly turd. And you loved it."
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"I didn't." She struggled to her feet. "That's why I ran away from you. I just want you to leave me alone."
"Hey, fellas, she wants us to leave her alone. How 'bout that?"
Someone wearing a row of safety pins in his ears pulled a short, heavy linked chain from inside his jacket. "I don't think I want to leave her alone," he said.
"Ironhand never could stop playing with garbage. Hey, just like you, huh, Helen? Maybe you two garbage freaks ought to get together."
"Go away," she said miserably.
"We'll go away," Ratman said. "But first, we're gonna teach you a lesson about running away from the High Riders."
He grabbed her wrist. She struggled, but another High Rider had her by the leg, and then the whole group was carrying her as she screamed and bucked, to the top of the mountain of garbage.
"You're no High Riders," she yelled frantically. "You're just a bunch of losers."
A fist shot into her abdomen. She looked around in panic. The place was deserted. Helen's fellow scroungers in the Garbage of the Stars had all left for other hunting grounds as soon as the High Riders had appeared. She was alone with the young toughs she thought she had left behind. As the sun blazed high in the California sky, they set her roughly on the debris. One of them picked up an old tin can and scooped it full of dirt. He tossed it in her face.
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They waited until her coughs and sputters died down before the Ratman spoke.
"Now, just so you know what happened to you, in case you pass out or anything, I'm going to lay it out for you now. First, we're all going to take turns doin' you. You'll like that part. Old Smiley'11 be last, cause he got the creepy crawlies. Then we're gonna make sure you don't run away from nowhere again, 'cause we're going to break both your legs and both your arms. Then Ironhand's going to chain you up real good, and ..."