Rat’s fingers flew over the glowing keyboard, describing his situation, the layout of the rooms, a strategy for the assault. He had overridden the smart door’s recognition sequence. It would be tricky, but Security could take the fed out if they were quick and careful. Better risk a surprise attack than to dicker with an armed and unraveling dead man.
“I really ought to kill myself . . . would be best but it’s not only me . . . I’ve seen ten-year-olds . . . what kind of animal sells dust to kids . . . I should kill myself and you.” Something changed in the fed’s voice as Rat signed off. “And you.” He stooped and reached through the crack.
“It’s coming,” said Rat quickly. “By messenger. Ten doses. By the time you get to the door, it should be here.” He could see the fed’s hand and burrowed into the rotting pile of money. “You wait by the door, you hear? It’s coming any minute.”
“I don’t want it.” The hand was so large it blocked the light. Rat’s fur went erect and he arched his spine. “Keep your fucking dust.”
Rat could hear the guards fighting their way through the clutter. Shelves crashed. So clumsy, these men.
“It’s you I want.” The hand sifted through the shredded bills, searching for Rat. He had no doubt that the fed could crush the life from him—the hand was huge now. In the darkness he could count the lines on the palm, follow the whorls on the fingertips. They seemed to spin in Rat’s brain—he was losing control. He realized then that one of the capsules must have broken, spilling a megadose of first-quality Algerian Yellow dust into his gut. With a hallucinatory clarity, he imagined sparks streaming through his blood, igniting neurons like tinder. Suddenly the guards did not matter. Nothing mattered except that he was cornered. When he could no longer fight the instinct to strike, the fed’s hand closed around him. The man was stronger than Rat could have imagined. As the fed hauled him—clawing and biting—back into the light, Rat’s only thought was of how terrifyingly large a man was. So much larger than a rat.
TERRY BISSON
Bears Discover Fire
Science fiction does not always mix well with humor or fantasy, but Terry Bisson has managed fusions of both in his novels and short fiction. His first novel, Wyrldmaker, published in 1981, puts a science fiction spin on a hackneyed theme from sword-and-sorcery fiction. Talking Man works elements of both fantasy and science fiction into a tall tale format. His alternate-history novel Fire on the Mountain wreaks an original and compelling variation on the familiar theme of a future in which the South won the American Civil War: here, a successful slave revolt leads to the creation of Nova Africa, a new republic in the place of what would have been the Confederate States. The humor in Bisson’s stories ranges from slapstick to sly satire and invariably calls attention to the irrationality of increasingly complex worlds that simple humans are ill equipped to deal with. In his screwball adventure novel Voyage to the Red Planet, the first manned trip to Mars is a gimmick staged by a bumbling Hollywood producer banking heedlessly on a blockbuster to boost his sagging fortunes. Pirates of the Universe is a satirical space opera set in a future where Disney-Windows is the controlling corporate conglomerate. The Pickup Artist is a comic dystopia about a future where agents for the Bureau of Arts and Entertainment are charged with destroying artistic creations that the world has run out of room for. Bisson won the Nebula, Hugo, and Theodore Sturgeon Awards for the title tale of Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories. His other books include the short-fiction collection In the Upper Room; a posthumous collaboration with Walter M. Miller Jr., St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman; a sequel to the landmark novel A Canticle for Leibowitz; nonfiction books on Nat Turner and Mumia Abu Jamal; and novelizations of the films Galaxy Quest and The Sixth Day.
I WAS DRIVING with my brother, the preacher, and my nephew, the preacher’s son, on I-65 just north of Bowling Green when we got a flat. It was Sunday night and we had been to visit Mother at the Home. We were in my car. The flat caused what you might call knowing groans since, as the old-fashioned one in my family (so they tell me), I fix my own tires, and my brother is always telling me to get radials and quit buying old tires.
But if you know how to mount and fix tires yourself, you can pick them up for almost nothing.
Since it was a left rear tire, I pulled over to the left, onto the median grass. The way my Caddy stumbled to a stop, I figured the tire was ruined. “I guess there’s no need asking if you have any of that FlatFix in the trunk,” said Wallace.
“Here, son, hold the light,” I said to Wallace Jr. He’s old enough to want to help and not old enough (yet) to think he knows it all. If I’d married and had kids, he’s the kind I’d have wanted.
An old Caddy has a big trunk that tends to fill up like a shed. Mine’s a ’56. Wallace was wearing his Sunday shirt, so he didn’t offer to help while I pulled magazines, fishing tackle, a wooden tool box, some old clothes, a comealong wrapped in a grass sack, and a tobacco sprayer out of the way, looking for my jack. The spare looked a little soft.
The light went out. “Shake it, son,” I said.
It went back on. The bumper jack was long gone, but I carry a little quarter-ton hydraulic. I found it under Mother’s old Southern Livings, 1978–1986. I had been meaning to drop them at the dump. If Wallace hadn’t been along, I’d have let Wallace Jr. position the jack under the axle, but I got on my knees and did it myself. There’s nothing wrong with a boy learning to change a tire. Even if you’re not going to fix and mount them, you’re still going to have to change a few in this life. The light went off again before I had the wheel off the ground. I was surprised at how dark the night was already. It was late October and beginning to get cool. “Shake it again, son,” I said.
It went back on but it was weak. Flickery.
“With radials you just don’t have flats,” Wallace explained in that voice he uses when he’s talking to a number of people at once; in this case, Wallace Jr. and myself. “And even when you do, you just squirt them with this stuff called FlatFix and you just drive on. Three ninety-five the can.”
“Uncle Bobby can fix a tire hisself,” said Wallace Jr., out of loyalty, I presume.
“Himself,” I said from halfway under the car. If it was up to Wallace, the boy would talk like what Mother used to call “a helot from the gorges of the mountains.” But drive on radials.
“Shake that light again,” I said. It was about gone. I spun the lugs off into the hubcap and pulled the wheel. The tire had blown out along the sidewall. “Won’t be fixing this one,” I said. Not that I cared. I have a pile as tall as a man out by the barn.
The light went out again, then came back better than ever as I was fitting the spare over the lugs. “Much better,” I said. There was a flood of dim orange flickery light. But when I turned to find the lug nuts, I was surprised to see that the flashlight the boy was holding was dead. The light was coming from two bears at the edge of the trees, holding torches. They were big, three-hundred-pounders, standing about five feet tall. Wallace Jr. and his father had seen them and were standing perfectly still. It’s best not to alarm bears.